Iran’s parliament has approved the nomination of Ahmad Vahidi, who is accused of involvement in a 1994 bomb attack in Argentina, as defence minister. Argentine officials have said Vahidi is “deeply implicated” in the attack on a Jewish cultural centre in Buenos Aires in which 85 people were killed. Argentina has condemned his nomination as “an affront to the victims” of the bombing and has formally accused Iran of masterminding it, which Tehran has denied.
In Gabon post-election violence has led to one city being put under curfew and police firing teargas at furious crowds. Enraged opposition supporters claim the presidential poll there was rigged. When Ali Ben Bongo, the son of Gabon’s late dictator, was declared the winner in the polls, violence erupted. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for calm after protests greeted the announcement of the winner. More from All Africa.
Armed with spears and blowpipes, hundreds of indigenous tribesmen in the jungles of Borneo island have mounted a last-ditch attempt to try to save their land from logging.
Al Jazeera’s Divya Gopalan reports from Sarawak on the Penan, some of whom still live as nomadic hunter-gatherers in the rainforests of this Malaysian province.
They have been battling loggers since the 1980s, when large-scale industrial logging commenced in the Malaysian state. At times the Penan have faced intimidation and violent crackdowns at the hands of security forces hired by logging firms and Malaysian police.
Meanwhile, vast tracts of Sarawak’s rainforest has been stripped of its valuable timber. Now forestry firms are eyeing forest lands for conversion to oil palm plantations, which will likely leave the Penan even worse off since these estates support less game than even logged-over forest.
Malaysia’s deforestation rate is accelerating faster than that of any other tropical country in the world, according to data from the United Nations. Analysis of figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) shows that Malaysia’s annual deforestation rate jumped almost 86 percent between the 1990-2000 period and 2000-2005. In total, Malaysia lost an average of 140,200 hectares—0.65 percent of its forest area—per year since 2000. For comparison, the Southeast Asian country lost an average of 78,500 hectares, or 0.35 percent of its forests, annually during the 1990s.
The Malaysian government failed to provide FAO with figures showing the change in extent of primary forests during the period. Primary forests—forests with no visible signs of past or present human activities—are considered the most biologically diverse ecosystems on the planet.
Declining forest cover in Malaysia results primarily from urbanization, agricultural fires, and forest conversion for oil-palm plantations and other forms of agriculture. Logging, which is generally excluded in deforestation figures from FAO, is responsible for widespread forest degradation in the country, and green groups have blamed local timber companies for failing to practice sustainable forest management. In late 2005—despite photographic evidence suggesting otherwise—the Samling Group denied claims from NGOs accusing the timber giant of recklessly harvesting timber in one of its Sarawak concessions on the island of Borneo.
Forest cover has fallen dramatically in Malaysia since the 1970s. While FAO says that forests still cover more than 60 percent of the country, only 11.6 percent of these forests are considered pristine.
Logging
During the 1980s, rampant logging in the Bornean states of Sabah and Sarawak allowed Malaysia to temporarily outpace Indonesia and become the world’s largest exporter of tropical wood.
On paper, Malaysia has probably one of the best rainforest protection policies in developing Asia, but in practice logging still carries on as it always has. The majority of Malaysia’s remaining forests are managed for timber production, and each state is empowered to formulate forest policy independently. During the past two decades, sustainable forest management has been non-existent. While Malaysia has the policy framework for sustainable forest management in the form of the National Forestry Act of 1984, it has failed to enforce the legislation.
Peninsular Malaysia’s primary forests are mostly gone, though some magnificent forest still exists in Taman Negara, a national park. Scientists believe that at 130 million years old, the rainforests of Taman Negara are the oldest in the world.
Most of Malaysia’s remaining primary forest exists on the island of Borneo in the states of Sabah and Sarawak, but the majority of the forest area in Malaysian Borneo—especially the lowlands—has been selectively logged, resulting in reduced biodiversity. Loggers are now operating in more marginal areas on rugged mountain slopes, which increases the risk of soil erosion and mudslides. In Sabah (Northeastern Borneo), cutting has slowed over the years after a period of rapid deforestation. Timber production appears to have shifted to Sarawak (Northwestern Borneo), where about half the forest cover is slated for logging. About 8 percent of the land area in Sarawak is designated as reserves, but these protected areas are generally understaffed and threatened by illegal logging and encroachment by colonists who settle along logging roads.
In the 1980s, through roadblocks and sabotage of logging equipment, the indigenous Penan of Borneo attempted to stop logging in their traditional homeland. Their protests were ruthlessly and savagely put down by the Malaysian government, which blocked media access to the region until the unrest was settled and the forest dwellers cleared. The attacks on the Penan brought international attention to the logging of Borneo’s forests but appear to have had relatively little long-term impact, since logging increased dramatically in the following years.
According to the UN Environment Programme, 20 per cent of the world’s animal species will disappear by 2050. In this edition of 101 East follows a conservation programme that could be a template for saving big cats around the world. Founded in 1981, the Snow Leopard Trust is the world’s leading authority on the study and protection of the endangered snow leopard.
The Snow Leopard Trust uses a combination of approaches that focus on partnering with communities in snow leopard habitat. But as they build community partnerships they use science and research to determine key snow leopard habitat, assess wildlife-human conflict levels, and identify potential resources for conservation programs. Once they have this information they prioritize the areas where they will work. High priority areas include key snow leopard habitat, with a history of conflict between predators and the communities, and potential resources to sustain a community-based conservation program.
When the science and research identifies an area as a priority site, the Snow Leopard Trust spends time with local residents, listening to their hopes and learning their concerns, and only then do they take the step of jointly developing a conservation program. The conservation effort must meet four important goals.
1) The protection of snow leopards and their habitat, involving local communities in this effort.
2) An improved quality of life for the members of the community.
3) The program developed must have a path to becoming self-sufficient – where after a time it is no longer dependent on donor dollars.
4) The results of the program must be verifiable through monitoring programs.
The Snow Leopard Trust strives to follow these principles in all its community-based conservation efforts. Please support their efforts by making a contribution.
Dr. Abdullah Laghmani, the second most senior intelligence officer in Afghanistan, was killed by a suicide bomber outside the mosque in Methar Lam. The full story in the New York Times:
The second-ranking intelligence official in Afghanistan was killed by a suicide bomber on Wednesday morning, in an explosion that killed at least 15 other people outside the main mosque here in the official’s hometown, officials and witnesses said.
The intelligence official, Abdullah Laghmani, was the deputy director of Afghanistan’s National Directorate for Security and a prominent ally of President Hamid Karzai. Afghan officials and colleagues conceded that his death was a severe blow to the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
A spokesman for the Taliban in Afghanistan claimed responsibility within hours of the explosion. The spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said Taliban fighters had long sought to kill Mr. Laghmani, blaming him for detentions and jailings in Kandahar Province, where he was head of intelligence in the province, the Taliban’s heartland, from 2003 to 2004.
“We were looking for him for a long time, but today we succeeded,” Mr. Mujahid said.
The assassination of such a powerful member of the country’s security apparatus highlighted the overall lack of security in the country, even in cities like Mehtar Lam, where the Taliban have not carried out an attack of this scale before.
Two senior officials of Laghman Province were killed in the attack, as were a leading religious figure in the area and at least a dozen civilians, including three women. Mr. Laghmani was killed about 9:30 a.m. as he left the main mosque in the center of Mehtar Lam, the capital of Laghman Province, which is 60 miles east of Kabul. He had returned home during Ramadan and was helping to refurbish the mosque.
Mr. Laghmani was accustomed to mingling with people on his visits home, provincial officials said, and the bomber managed to catch him while his guard was down. He had just left the mosque, surrounded by a crowd of officials, security guards and local men. As he was getting into his armored sport utility vehicle, the suicide bomber ran toward him and detonated his explosives, said Lutfullah Mashal, the provincial governor.
The blast ripped away the passenger side of Mr. Laghmani’s vehicle and damaged one of his security contingent’s vehicles a few feet away. Shrapnel struck bystanders at a nearby marketplace and shredded a large poster of Mr. Laghmani posing with Mr. Karzai and provincial officials.
“In Laghman, he was regarded as a respected elder,” Mr. Mashal said. “But as an intelligence expert he knew a lot about Al Qaeda, and he was a person who was very actively fighting against the Taliban, against Al Qaeda, in the 34 provinces of Afghanistan. He was leading in managing most of the activities of this directorate, so his loss is really a major loss for the country, and especially for the province of Laghman.”