deforestation

High-tech smuggling operations may not be what you'd normally associate with the ongoing clearance of the Amazon rainforest, but logging companies intent on plundering it for timber have been using hackers to break into the Brazilian government's sophisticated tracking system and fiddle the records.

To monitor the amount of timber leaving the Amazon state of Pará, the Brazilian environment ministry did away with paper dockets and two years ago introduced an online system. Companies logging the rainforest for timber or charcoal production are only allowed to fell a certain amount of timber every year and this is controlled by the use of transport permits issued by the state government's computer system.

Flying over forest fires in the Amazon © Greenpeace/Beltra

With the current climate talks now underway in Poznan, the Brazilian government has finally fulfilled a promise it made at the previous round of talks in Bali last year and set targets for reducing deforestation in the Amazon. It's great to see they finally have some targets to work towards (and it's been a long time coming) but as is often the way with these political initiatives, it all falls short of what's really needed.

EU leaders - 20 years of broken promises...

On 11 December at Poznan in Poland, our governments will decide Europe's response to climate change for the next 12 years. Unless they agree to at least 30 per cent cuts in European greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, we'll have no chance of keeping global warming below 2°C and avoiding climate catastrophe.

So far there is still an utter lack of any kind of visionary leadership in these talks. There are still governments that repeatedly fail to grasp the urgency of the crisis. That's why we need to make ourselves heard, because the impacts of climate change are racing ahead of the scientific projections.

After painting and obstructing various palm oil tankers in Dumai earlier this week, we of the Esperanza have been playing a waiting game. There was one tanker due in which the campaigners were particularly interested in - not only was it bound for Europe, but it was picking up a cargo of palm oil from Sinar Mas, the largest palm oil company in Indonesia. As soon as it arrived, a climber was installed on the anchor chain and then there was some more waiting. A lot more waiting. 

A policeman pushes a Greenpeace climber down from the anchor chain of the Gran Couva © Greenpeace/Novis

An update from Indonesia: yesterday, the climber occupying the anchor chain of a ship carrying a cargo of palm oil was brought down, arrested and later released without charge.

Yesterday, we also received the intriguing photo above (later chosen by the BBC for its day in pictures). As it took us in the office a while to get our heads around what was happening, I thought I'd pass on Jamie's explanation:

Indonesia: oil palm saplings are still replacing peatlands and rainforest

Cooking oil, chocolate, soap, washing powder, cosmetics and biofuels are just a few of the hundreds of products reliant on one key ingredient - palm oil. Demand for this versatile oil is rising rapidly. Today 80 per cent of world production comes from plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia. Palm oil is the leading cause of destruction in Indonesia, where it is spelling disaster for local communities, biodiversity, and climate change as palm plantations encroach further and further into rainforest and critical peatland areas.

These issues are meant to be addressed by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the self-regulating industry body created in 2001 to develop sustainable solutions to palm oil production. To date, despite seven years of existence, no "sustainable" palm oil has entered the market place appearing in products of its members (who include household names like Boots and BP). But that's supposedly now about to change as the first certified palm oil shipment from Malaysia arrives this week in Rotterdam.

It's been a little while since I've updated here about the Esperanza's Forests for Climate tour of Indonesia, but continue it most certainly does. For our exploits crossing from one end of the country to the other and our stop in Jakarta, catch up on the Forests for Climate blog.

But we've arrived in Sungai Pakning, a small port on the coast of Riau in Sumatra, and the Esperanza is anchored in a wide, silty channel running between the mainland and two islands, Pulau Bengkalis and Pulau Padang. The soupy water flowing gently past the ship will be down to the Siak river, the mouth of which is just a few miles south.

Jayapura (image by sandranahdar, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0)

As I write this, I'm sat in a hotel lobby looking out on to a market place where women are sat on the hard tarmac, blankets with tomatoes, lemongrass, onions and chillies spread out before them. Towering behind them is the incongruous bulk of the local KFC and, although there was torrential rain an hour ago, the streets are bone dry. That's because it's very very hot which is not surprising when you're a few degrees south of the equator.