Green Gleanings - November 07
A year ago, the
Reveller and I set up
GreenIndonesia.net in the hopes that this would serve as a portal for environmental news, good and bad and, if we could attract contributors, as multifarious as possible. As with so many good ideas, this one didn't take off and I ended up as (almost) the only writer.
That we set up a
Wordpress template for the site is a major problem as much of the posting has to be done whilst online and I am reliant on an intermittent dial-up connection. You are reading this on a
Blogger site, and all formatting including previewing, apart from uploading pictures, can be done whilst offline, so, until I get affordable broadband in Jakartass Towers, this is what you get.
I do write a lot about the environment and having recently posted a series of articles about the hybrid seed industry's attempts to control the food industry here in Indonesia, I realised that I do need a specific site for such focussed writings. Therefore, this past week I have set up another blog spot and called it, with no attempt at originality,
Green Indonesia. My hope is that it will serve as a resource on particular environmental issues, particularly as each article posted, albeit opinionated, has a host of links to further reading material.
I make no great claims for the layout and colours and I may yet transfer it all to the Wordpress site, but it will have do for the moment.
And I hope the following gleanings will do for a while as well.
1. Grain Blog reports that the push to plant hybrid rice seeds is more hype than hope.
Both the government and the seed industry are well aware of the susceptibility of hybrid rice to diseases and pests. In the decrees authorising the 31 hybrid rice varieties approved for commercialisation in the country, all are listed as having, to various degrees, susceptibility to brown planthopper, tungro, and bacterial leaf blight.2. Report (.pdf) on a field monitoring trip by Riza Tjahjadi of
Biotani Indonesia Foundation giving details of item 1 in greater depth.
3. Today Greenpeace launched the
Forest Defenders Camp Satellite Station (FDCSS) at Monas Park in Jakarta.
The event will disseminate information compiled by Greenpeace's Forest Defenders Camp in Riau, stationed near a peatland forest cleared for palm oil plantations, and support the organization's campaign to include deforestation talks in the next phase of the Kyoto agreement.
The FDCSS will showcase the beauty and destruction of the pristine rain forests of Indonesia, highlighting their impacts on biodiversity and climate in an exhibit of photos, cultural performances, lectures and short films. With support from the Jakarta administration, the event will feature local artists and musicians from Nov. 3 to 11.
I hope visitors can find a gate open so they can enter the park. Hint: it's near Gambir train station and nowhere near the Busway stop.
4. This coming Thursday (8th November),
KEHATI, the Indonesian Biodiversity Foundation founded by the eminent
Prof. Dr. Emil Salim, is holding a seminar on
Business and Biodiversity, also in Jakarta.
Many plants and microbes in the forests, on high lands and in the bed of the oceans of Indonesia are hiding magical cure for deadly deceases such as cancer, HIV/Aids, cardiovascular, not to mention plants for food security, cosmetics, natural coloring and preservation etc. This is not a wishful thinking. It's already a fact to be commercially and sustainably utilized. Come and listen to the facts disclosed by senior researchers and practitioners.
If you are in pharmaceutical, food or beauty business, or you want to try a new core, then biodiversity is your fortune in waiting.As much as I am not a believer in the accumulation of personal wealth, because the oceans and forests surely belong to us all and thereby represent our communal wealth, this seminar could be another way forward. Hopefully it's a wedge keeping a door open into a new way of thinking for humanity, albeit an ancient way.
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