Development Threatening Environment

07
Afghan Health Gains
March. 12, 2012
Afghanistan risks giving up advances made in healthcare and humanitarian
development, as global attention and financial support wane ahead of the
planned withdrawal of foreign combat troops in 2014.
Society
Development Threatening
Environment
By Farzaneh Shokri and Leila Imani
T
he member countries of Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), which signed an
agreement on the cross-border transfer of ecological species, believe the
measure can prevent the extinction of
the region’s unique species.
They also maintain that animals
and plants are in unsuitable conditions
because of development projects and
will be saved from extinction.
Speaking on the sidelines of Tehran’s ECO Conference on CrossBorder Transfer of Ecological Species, Asghar Mohammadi-Fazel,
the deputy head of Department of
Environment for environment and
biodiversity, told Iran Daily that unrestrained development is the biggest
problem threatening the ecosystem.
He noted that dam and housing
construction, destruction of habitats and development of tourism are
among the most important challenges
facing the countries with regard to
environment protection.
Mohammadi-Fazel noted that
some countries do not pay adequate
attention to water rights, pointing out
that the total areas of Hawr Al Azim
and Khor al-Amaya wetland basin,
located on Iran’s border with Iraq,
have reduced from 700,000 hectares
to 100,000 hectares.
The official noted that procuring
the water rights of Orumieh Lake will
help resolve a large number of related
Animals and plants are in unsuitable conditions because of development projects and will be saved from extinction.
problems.
“Fence building in border areas
separates natural habitats,” he said.
Fazel noted that countries refusing
to abide by the ratified regulations
will be fined, stressing that their voting rights and membership may be
suspended or cancelled.
He stated that the implementation
of the agreement is obligatory for all
ECO member countries, adding that
environmental experts are expected
to present strategies for its implementation.
A conference on intergovernmental strategies for preserving biologi-
cal diversity, attended by representative from Asia-Pacific countries,
is being held in Tehran from March
10-12.
Fazeli said the ratifications of the
conference will be presented in the
biodiversity conference to be held in
Panama next year.
France’s Muslims Hit Back at Halal Meat Policy
Les Enfants Terribles, a chic restaurant in Paris’s 12th arrondissement, was packed.
Plates of halal foie gras à la maison, halal braised lamb
with rosemary and halal caramelised duck were being dispatched to tables. Fresh fruit cocktails and exotic non-alcoholic concoctions replaced glasses of wine.
Mohamed Abdenebi, 36, a history and geography teacher,
was a typical diner: young, French, Muslim, dynamic – and
furious, Guardian reported.
According to Abdenebi, France has let its Muslim population down.
“They said to us, ‘Do your studies, and you will get a job.’
We did our studies but there were no jobs and they said we
hadn’t done the right studies. Each time there was a new obstacle,” he said.
Instead of being integrated and treated with equality, Abdenebi says the halal row shows the extent to which France’s
Muslims are being made to feel like “the enemy within”.
Muslims Dismayed
Similar complaints were being heard across France. President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to make the labeling of halal
meat pivotal to his reelection campaign has infuriated, alienated and dismayed France’s Muslim community, which may
number as many as six million. And the backlash is growing.
Members of the booming educated and entrepreneurial Muslim middle class say they are tired of being cast as scapegoats
in Sarkozy’s wooing of the extreme right and have accused
him of dangerous and divisive election tactics.
Fateh Kimouche, a high-profile Muslim blogger, said the
new class of second- and third-generation Muslims in France
was not prepared to lie down and let the French republic roll
over it as their parents had done.
“My parents came from Algeria and, like many others,
they didn’t make a fuss because they felt like invited guests
who had to be on their best behavior. But I was born here.
We are Muslims and we are French, but every day we are
attacked, insulted and treated like terrorists or extraterres-
trials,” he said.
“France educated us; we have energy and enthusiasm and
we have brains, businesses and money. The old generation
of politicians don’t seem to realize this.”
Phony War
The phony war over halal meat erupted in February
when Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right Front National,
claimed consumers were eating halal unknowingly. Sarkozy,
trailing the Socialist frontrunner François Hollande, accused
her of whipping up an artificial controversy.
Shortly afterwards, with Le Pen snapping at his heels in
the opinion polls, Sarkozy performed a volte-face. In spite of
surveys showing that voters were less concerned about halal
meat than they were about the weather and football, he announced it was “the issue that most preoccupies the French”.
For France’s Muslims--already feeling victimized by a bur-
qa ban, by controversial government-sponsored debates on
national identity and by the outlawing of Muslims praying in
the streets, a sight Le Pen likened to the Nazi occupation--it
was a low blow.
Few believed that the halal uproar had anything to do with
how animals are slaughtered or who eats them.
“It’s a blatant attempt to divert attention away from the
real problems,” said Yanis Bouarbi, founder of the successful restaurant website paris-halal.com.
“You can have a debate about how animals are killed, but
this is pure electioneering.”
Kimouche, 36, who has a degree in political philosophy,
worked as a publisher’s proofreader before he spotted the
untapped business potential in France’s nascent Muslim
middle class. He left his job and started a profitable blog,
Al-Kanz, which covers all aspects of Muslim life and rituals,
and boasts up to 10,000 visitors a day.
“Nicolas Sarkozy and Marine Le Pen have resorted to this
because they have no solutions to the real problems. It’s the
last desperate thrashings of a mad dog that has nothing to
lose,” he said. “It’s part of a chain of thought that goes from
halal meat to Islamism to terrorism.”
In alienating Muslims such as Kimouche and Bouarbi,
Sarkozy is ignoring the spending power--the halal market,
for example, is growing at 20 percent a year more than organic food--of a socioeconomic group that might otherwise
have been tempted to vote for his business-friendly, freemarket agenda.
Kimouche points out that there is not one Muslim MP
in the French Parliament. “In France, they say there are no
communities within the republic; everyone is the same. But
this is not true. No matter what we do, no matter how hard
we try, we are seen as a fifth column, the enemy within, a
threat, a menace.”
Japan Marks Anniv. of Tsunami Tragedy
From Page 1
In Okuma, home to the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, displaced residents
arrived by bus to pay their respects to
lost loved ones.
Television footage showed sobbing
relatives wrapped up against the radiation in protective suits, gloves and shoe
covers, holding a ceremony for those
who perished in the town.
In the nearby city of Koriyama, monks
banged drums and offered prayers ahead
of an anti-nuclear protest rally, where
numbers overwhelmed the seating avail-
able at a baseball stadium.
Organizers opened up parts of the stadium that have not yet been cleansed of
radioactive fallout, asking participants
with small children not to use the area.
“We demand all children are evacuated from Fukushima now,” said organizer
Setsuko Kuroda.
“Some experts say one third of children in Fukushima were affected by radiation. Leaving the situation like this is
like they are committing a murder every
day.”
Among those demonstrating were
some of the nuclear refugees forced to
flee their homes in the shadow of Fukushima Daiichi as it began venting toxic
radiation over homes and farmland.
The government and plant operator
Tokyo Electric Power announced in December “a state of cold shutdown” for
three runaway reactors that went into
meltdown when their cooling systems
were swamped by the tsunami.
But with radiation having leaked from
the crippled plant for months, many parts
of a 20-kilometer (12-mile) exclusion
zone around it are likely to remain unin-
habitable for years--perhaps decades--to
come, scientists warn.
Akihito and Prime Minister Yoshihiko
Noda were joined by around 1,200 people at the national theater in Tokyo.
A single pillar symbolizing the souls
of those who died stood in the middle of
the stage, decorated with white chrysanthemums and lilies.
The emperor, who three weeks ago underwent heart bypass surgery, said Japan
would “never forget” the tragedy.
Noda pledged Japan would recover
from its tragedy.
News in Brief
Citizens Not Pushing H
Hard
For Climate Deal
Ordinary people are not putting enough pressure on governments to deliver a legally binding deal on cutting greenhouse
gas emissions, the UN’s climate chief said.
“There is not enough well up from the bottom up. I don’t
see millions of citizens demanding climate action,” Christiana
Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said Reuters reported.
“The reality we have to deal with is the process is very slow
and the urgency is every day growing. The only way out is to
continue to push on the government side but we can’t depend
100 percent on governments because they can’t deliver the
100 percent.”
After years of talks on a new deal to cut greenhouse gas
emissions, countries from around the globe agreed last December in Durban to forge a new deal by 2015 forcing all the
biggest polluters for the first time to limit pollution.
Some critics were disappointed with the deal, which would
not come into force until 2020, saying it was too late to avoid
the catastrophic effects of climate change.
Countries should start work in May in Bonn on a plan towards getting a legally binding deal by 2015, Figueres told
reporters.
“They will hopefully look at the workplan from now to
2015 so they can identify the milestones they would want to
have reached each year,” she said.
“The content and shape of such milestones will be up to
countries to decide.”
Countries had to submit proposals by February 28 on ways
of raising the level of mitigation targeted under the so-called
Durban Platform, although most submissions were late.
India, China and some other countries maintained the idea
of “common but differentiated responsibilities”, which puts
most of the onus on developed countries to cut emissions as
they were historically more responsible for global warming.
The United States in particular is against this principle as
it does not want heavily emitting developing countries to exempt themselves from legally binding mitigation measures.
Dementia Next Global
Health Time Bomb
Dementia should be made a top health priority on a par with
cancer and lung disease, a leading expert has said, after it has
become the next global “time bomb”.
Professor Peter Piot, former Under-Secretary General of
the United Nations, compared dementia to the AIDs epidemic
and said one person is diagnosed with the mental illness every
seven seconds, News.yahoo reported.
The population of sufferers, which currently stands at 36 million, is set to double by
2020 worldwide.
He is now calling on the World Health Organization to add dementia to their list of top
priority diseases to fund research and treatment across the globe. He said: “It’s not adding years to your
life, but life to your years.”
Despite his calls to improve diagnosis, Prof Piot admitted it
may not always be ethical to diagnose the condition, in parts
of the world where treatment is not yet available.
He told BBC program that developing countries in Asia and
Latin America were seeing the greatest rise in dementia sufferers, as better healthcare led to people living longer.
Prof Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine, said: “The figures speak for themselves.
We are really going into the next global health time bomb.”
Hong Kong Monitoring
Fine Particle Pollution
The Hong Kong government began releasing hourly readings of
the smallest, most dangerous pollution particles, as it bowed to
public pressure for greater transparency about air quality.
The Environmental Protection Department released real time
updates of fine suspended particulates known as PM2.5 on its
website, as measured at 14 locations around the southern trade
hub, Channelnewsasia.com reported.
A spokesman said the department had been monitoring the fine
particles, which are considered more damaging to health than
larger particles, since 1999 at a limited number of stations, without releasing the results publicly.
Levels of PM2.5 in Hong Kong fell by 17 percent from 2005
to 2011 as a result of control measures implemented by the Hong
Kong and Guangdong provincial governments, he added.
“We will continue to collaborate with the Guangdong provincial government on emission reduction measures to further
reduce the levels of particulates and other pollutants in Hong
Kong,” the spokesman said in a statement.
New PM2.5 monitors had been acquired in anticipation of the
inclusion of the fine particles as a “criteria pollutant” in proposed
new Air Quality Objectives announced by the government in January in response to strong public pressure. The installation and
testing of the new PM2.5 monitors have been completed.
Hong Kong was embarrassed in January when Beijing responded to a vocal online campaign over poor air quality and began publishing readings of fine particles. That move only came
after the US Embassy in Beijing began publishing its own fine
particle readings on its Twitter feed, leading many residents of
the Chinese capital to rely on the American figures rather than the
official ones. Roadside pollution levels in Hong Kong were the
worst ever last year, according to official figures.