Photo: WWF
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The ongoing debate about how best to manage the wolf population in Switzerland took a new turn Wednesday with the cabinet (Federal Council) agreeing to put forward a proposal to the Bern Convention that would allow Switzerland to lodge “reservations” about the wolf.
The move comes after Parliament voted in 2010 in favour of a motion requiring Switzerland to ask for the modification.
WWF Switzerland, which has taken a tough stance on Switzerland’s obligations to respect the ban on killing wolves, has not yet reacted.
The convention as it stands allows only new members to state their “reservations” in order, for example, to allow some hunting of endangered species. Switzerland will ask the convention to consider allowing current members to register their reservations if the situation at the time when a country adheres to the convention has changed significantly.
When Switzerland signed the convention in September 1980 there were no wolves in Switzerland. They returned and the population remains small, but they have caused tensions between farmers, whose animals have been killed on a few occasions, and environmentalists who insist Switzerland must respect the ban on hunting wolves, part of the convention.
The process of getting the proposal approved is long and complicated, ultimately requiring the approval of all signatory countries. If Switzerland fails to achieve this, the Federal Council says, it will have to leave the convention, draft its reservations for the wolf, then apply again.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Supermarket chain Migros is doing its bit to make Switzerland more habitable for endangered hares, birds and plants by empowering Facebook users to help support TerraSuisse financially. Migros will supple enough seeds for an IP (integrated production) Suisse farmer working with the TerraSuisse programme to plant one square metre of wildflowers in 2012 for each Facebook user who “likes” the Terrasuisse FB page.
TerraSuisse is Migros’s sustainable development label. Farmers who apply integrated production methods, which are close to organic, make a commitment to provide small habitats, or safe spaces, within larger fields and orchards, for wild flora and fauna.
Cucumbers: when will we learn to love them again?
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – “It’s the bean sprouts”, the source of the E. coli outbreak in Germany, Reinhard Burger, Germany’s head of infectious diseases programme, said Friday morning 10 June. The actual sprouts that are behind what the WHO labels the “the unusual enteroaggregative verocytotoxin-producing Escherichia coli (EAggEC VTEC) O104:H4 bacterium” have not yet been pinpointed.
Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment and Food Safety and the Robert Koch-Institute will publish a joint press release Friday.
The number of new infections has been falling in recent days, but E.coli itself has killed 6 people in Germany and the HUS complication has killed 26, with an additional death in Sweden, according to WHO worldwide figures for the outbreak. In total, 2,909 people have been infected.
The European Union said Tuesday it would set aside €210 million for farmers touched by the outbreak, but a European farmers organization, Colos, says the losses are reaching €400m a week. Spanish farmers, the largest fruit and vegetable producers in Europe, calculate they have lost €200m in business since the start of the outbreak at the end of April, and German farmers say they have lost €60m, according to news agency AFP/TSR (Fr).
Nut and fruit grove farmers in California, USA, are the latest group to protest a planned high-speed train that will cut through the centre of the state, 200km from Madera to Bakersfield. Farm groups say they are in the dark about the details of planned lines, but they are worried about new proposals that would splice century-old family farms with complex irrigation systems. Earlier proposals would have used existing lines but the town of Hanford in particular, famous for its 123-year-old rail history, which it has turned into a tourist commodity, resisted. The rail authority says environmental studies will look closely at the impact on farms.
The rail authority is rushing to push through its plans in order to obtain federal credit to start construction. New federal funding is available because other states returned funds for high speed rail lines.
Public transport and California residents have not been close friends over the years, with the car as king in the western USA, but the state has been trying to shift this with its plans for a network of bullet train lines. The flat Central Valley is the starting point, in part because it would cost less to build there. Joblessness in the Central Valley region is well above that in the rest of the state and the new line would create jobs, especially in construction, plus link the agricultural area south of Fresno to other regions, with an expected positive impact on the depressed regional economy.
Links to other sites: CNBC, Los Angeles Times
Asia’s first refugee resettlement programme underway
Karen mother and daughter, newly arrived at Mae Ra Ma Luang refugee camp near the Thai-Myanmar/Burma border (photo ©2010 UNHCR / J Redfern)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Three families who have spent 25 years in the Mae La camp in northern Thailand have landed near Tokyo, Japan, where they are being resettled as refugees, the first in Asia’s new refugee resettlement programme. UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) in Geneva announced that the 18 people, two couples and their children ages 3-15, will soon be joined by another two families who had to stay behind in Bangkok because they had come down with the flu.
The families are farmers from the Karen ethnic minority in Myanmar/Burma.
Japan says it will accept up to 90 refugees over three years. The families will be settled in Tokyo, given apartments, language lessons, vocational training and help in finding jobs. Two more groups of refugees will be accepted by Japan in one and two years.
A two-year drought across the countries of Eastern Africa and the Horn of Africa is taking its toll on the most vulnerable people: subsistence farmers and pastoralists. In Kenya’s northwestern Turkana region, the worst drought in 40 years is forcing people to sell weakened animals at below market rates in order to survive. Others are moving into emergency feeding centres.
The UN’s World Food Program is feeding one in six Kenyans, almost 4 million people, and says it needs $300 million to feed them for the next six months. Ethiopia’s government has launched an international appeal for $175 million in aid to head off the crisis. AllAfrica, BBC, Wall Street Journal
The European Commission has ordered French farmers to repay €30 million in subsidies that were paid out from 1992-2002, provoking a harsh reaction from the farmers. The Financial Times quotes François Lafitte, leader of Fédécom, the fruit and vegetable producers’ union, as saying that “Nobody will pay these subsidies . . . Firstly, because the amounts put forward by Brussels don’t add up. Secondly, because it would spell ruin for the industry.” The money was provided to help the industry face a crisis, but Brussels has ruled that the state aid was unfair competition. EU Business
Farmers in 42 countries in Africa should benefit from a $17.5 million project that will take soil samples, analyze them and provide farmers with advice on how to improve soil that is deficient. The project is being funded by the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation and Agra (Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa). The soil will be sampled by Ciat (Centre for International Tropical Agriculture). BBC Ed. note: Agra is an African-led partnership, chaired by Geneva-based Kofi Annan, former UN secretary general.
