Muehleberg peaceful anti-nuclear protest (©2011 Herbi Ditl, flickr.com/photos/herbivore)
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss anti-nuclear groups are continuing to call for an end to nuclear power plants, with the latest in a series of peaceful protests taking place Tuesday 26 April at Muehleberg.
An estimated 500 people formed a human chain around the centre from 07:00 to 08:30, but workers were allowed to enter the plant.
A human chain around BKW, which owns the Muehleberg nuclear power plant in Switzerland, 26 April (©2011 Herbi Ditl, flickr.com/photos/herbivore)
The protest was supported by the Socialist and Green political parties, as well as several groups, including Greenpeace. It marked the day 25 years ago when Chernobyl became the world’s worst nuclear accident, with an explosion and fire at the power plant in Ukraine that spread radioactivity across much of Europe.
The Bernese power station received a vote of confidence from citizens in February, who agreed to plans to rebuild the aging plant, but after Japan’s post-earthquake Fukushima nuclear problems Switzerland’s energy minister, Doris Leuthard, called a temporary halt to all nuclear power plant construction.
The groups protesting in Bern have set up a camp in front of the offices of BKW, which owns Muehleberg, and say they will stay there until the plant is closed down. The city of Bern is currently tolerating their presence.
Ed. note: Herbi Ditl on flickr has a collection of photos of the camp as well as protests
Underwater banner to save bluefin tuna © Greenpeace 2010/ Marco Care
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The black market in bluefin tuna spans three continents and is estimated to be worth $4 billion annually in a recently released report by a group of investigative journalists. And the European fishing industry blatantly violates its own management rules by continuing to overfish the bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean, according to the international environmental group, WWF, based in Gland, canton Vaud.
Breaking its own rules
Observers of bluefin tuna fishing vessels in the Mediterranean Sea reported violations of the fishing regulations in 2010 that resulted in under-reporting of tuna catches, illegal transfers of live fish, and falsifying official documents, the joint report by Greenpeace and WWF says. The observers in some cases were denied access to ships or were limited to accepting the skipper’s tally of fish caught.
The groups base their claims of “lack of compliance with management rules” of bluefin tuna hauls in Mediterranean waters on data provided to the governments who are parties to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), an “inter-governmental fishery organization responsible for the conservation of tunas and tuna-like species in the Atlantic Ocean and its adjacent seas.”
ICCAT meets in Paris, France for an extraordinary meeting, 17-27 November. France and Spain together hold one-third of the allowed catch quota. The European Commission has said it would welcome real reductions in tuna catch quotas at the meeting.
A $4 billion dollar illegal trade
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a Washington DC-based organization, sent 12 reporters on the trail of the black market bluefin tuna trade, which resulted in a report, “Looting the Seas“. They conducted more than 200 interviews with fishermen, ranchers, divers, scientists and officials over a seven-month period.
Key findings from the report
A massive black market lies behind the plummeting stocks of Eastern Atlantic bluefin stock, the report alleges. At its peak, between 1998 and 2007, more than one in three bluefin were caught illegally, creating an off-the-books trade conservatively valued at $4 billion.
Fishermen blatantly violated official quotas and engaged in an array of illegal practices, including misreporting catch size, hiring banned spotter planes, catching undersized fish, trading fishing quotas, and plundering tuna from North African waters where EU inspectors are refused entry.
The report’s other highlights include:
- National fisheries officials have colluded with the bluefin tuna industry to doctor catch numbers and avoid international criticism. France, for example, allegedly filed fraudulent catch data with the European Commission for years until France came clean in 2007.
- Sea ranches, where bluefin are fattened to increase their value, became the epicentre for “laundering” tuna in the Mediterranean and North Africa. Many ranches grossly under-reported the fish they had in their pens and faked releases when forced by authorities to let go of illegally-caught bluefin.
- The paper-based reporting system implemented by regulators in 2008 to bring transparency to the trade—dubbed the Bluefin Tuna Catch Documentation scheme—is full of holes, rendering the data almost useless. For example, during 2008 and 2009 more than 75 percent of all purse seiner vessels catches, which comprise nearly half the overall catch, are missing crucial information that regulators need to follow the fish from vessel to market.
- A widespread, off-the-books trade in bluefin tuna has existed in Japan since at least the mid-1980s. ICIJ obtained a confidential 2006 investigative report commissioned by Australia and Japan that exposed widespread overfishing and laundering into Japan of southern bluefin tuna, a sister species of the Atlantic bluefin tuna.
- While there are signs that EU officials have started to crack down, illegalities remain a serious problem. In North Africa and Turkey, even less accountable fleets are ramping up operations.
- A wall of secrecy protects the bluefin industry. Officials in countries from Spain to Croatia failed to produce records on fishing and farming infringements. Even the European Commission denied access to fishery infraction records, citing protection of commercial interests and “military matters”.
Background: GenevaLunch
Anti-nuclear hike Goesgen, Switzerland 24 May (image, Herbi Ditl on flickr)
Solothurn, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – More than 4,000 people gathered in Goesgen, canton Solothurn, in northern Switzerland Monday, for a peaceful protest against the continuing development of nuclear energy in the country. The protest had participants from 83 groups in Switzerland, France, Germany and Austria. One of their key points was that switzerland’s nuclear power plans are preventing the rapid development of alternative energy programmes.
Links to other sites: Greenpeace (Fre), RSR (Fre)
Greenpeace protesters dressed as orangutans swing into action for Nestle annual meeting
Vevey, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Food giant Nestlé has become the first global consumer goods company to become a partner of TFT, The Forest Trust, “to build responsible supply chains”, starting with palm oil.
The company’s sourcing policy for palm oil came under attack at its April 2010 annual general meeting, when Greenpeace protesters arrived dressed as orangutans to draw attention to the problem of deforestation from palm oil suppliers.
The Vevey group says it is also studying pulp and paper sourcing.
Greenpeace credits its campaign to get KitKat fans to pressure the manufacturer, as does TFT, with Greenpeace noting that the decision will affect another multinational, Cargill.
Greenpeace protesters dressed as orangutans swing into action for Nestle annual meeting (photo: ©2010 Herbi Ditl on flick: http://www.flickr.com/photos/herbivore/)
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Nestlé annual general meeting held at the Palais Beaulieu in Lausanne promised to be a relatively dull business session, compared to the UBS one the previous day. But that was before Greenpeace protesters dressed as orangutangs crowded the area outside the meeting and two of them were spotted by an AFP reporter abseiling into it and dangling above the discussions.
Greenpeace and the company have been at odds over the Vevey group’s use of palm oil, which the environmental group says is playing a significant role in destroying forests and the habitat for orangutans.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Winners of the awards to Switzerland’s and the world’s “most dismal” corporations – the 2010 Public Eye Awards – will be announced in Davos 27 January to coincide with the opening of the World Economic Forum in that Alpine resort. The Hall of Shame candidates are those companies with the most “dismal record in terms of social/environmental responsibility” during the year, according to the Public Eye Award site.
Frontrunners this year include:
WWF International has called on the International Convention for the Conservation of the Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) to impose a ban on catching the bluefin tuna, as well as a ban on trading in it. ICCAT is holding its 21st regular meeting in Recife, Brazil Monday 9 November. It meets to decide on whether to heed its own scientists’ calls to end its members’ fishing of the bluefin tuna, stocks of which are close to collapse in the Eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
Monaco proposed 14 October that the bluefin tuna be placed on the CITES list of endangered species banned from international trade. A CITES ban on the trade in ivory in 1989 is credited with saving African elephant populations.
European tuna fleets export most of their catch to Japan, the world’s largest importer of tunafish.
WWF International joined Greenpeace 28 October to call on the organization to heed its scientists’ findings, pleas that have largely gone unheeded in the past. A single bluefin tuna sold for $173,000 in January 2009. In 2007, it is estimated that the tuna catch was 61,000 tonnes, more than twice the quota fixed by ICCAT.
