Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for March 7, 2006

India Short of Uranium: PM Singh

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Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard has been visiting India and was on All India Radio with Prime Minister Singh. The interview was short and focused on Australian uranium.

JOURNALIST:
Sir, I am from All India Radio. I have a question for both the Prime Ministers. What are both of your expectations from this visit?

PRIME MINSTER SINGH:
India and Australia are members of the Commonwealth. We are two English-speaking countries. We have a large Indian community in Australia. We have nearly 30,000 students studying there. Our trade is expanding very rapidly. This is a unique opportunity for me and the Prime Minister to review the progress we have made in working together and explore new options so that our two countries can cooperate more intensively and diversely.

PRIME MINISTER HOWARD:
This is a wonderful moment in the history of the relationship between the two countries to consolidate what we have achieved in the past and have in common but also to explore a lot of new fields. India’s economic growth, her influence, is very significant. India is now the fourth-largest economy in the world and in a short distance of time may in fact become the third. Its growth rate is very significant. We have a lot in common. We have the shared history and the shared love of certain sports that you’re very familiar with. All of those things bind us together and both the Prime Minister and I believe very strongly that now is the right time to achieve what you might call a quantum leap in the relationship.

JOURNALIST:
Dr Singh, are you hoping to buy Australian uranium?

PRIME MINISTER SINGH:
We would like to trade with Australia in all areas and we are short of uranium. We would very much like Australia to sell uranium to India.

JOURNALIST:
Would you like a deal on uranium done while Prime Minister Howard is here?

PRIME MINISTER SINGH:
Well I will discuss all relevant issues.

JOURNALIST:
Are you hopeful of Mr Howard acceding to your request for Australian uranium?

PRIME MINISTER SINGH:
We will discuss all these issues.

PRIME MINISTER HOWARD:
I think we will talk about them and we’ll talk about them against the background of the policies and the needs of the two countries. Thank you.

In a speech to a business luncheon in New Delhi, the Australian Prime Minister said:

“Energy of course plays a critical role in our economic relationship and I know in your minds will be the agreement signed between the United States and India only three days ago regarding the nuclear industry. This will be an issue to be discussed between myself and the Indian Prime Minister later today and I will be interested to hear more about that arrangement and I will be interested to hear the views that the Prime Minister may wish to put to me in relation to it.

Australia supplies 25 per cent of India’s gold market, and Australian coal is used in more than 50 per cent of the steel that is produced in India. And with the large global increase in demand for energy, the international market for some resources – such as LNG – is extremely tight and I am encouraged that people from both India and Australia are working on these issues and I note that the leader of the Australian delegation Mr Charles Goode of Woodside is with us today and his knowledge of those matters is very, very impressive indeed.

The establishment of the Australia-India Joint Working Group on Energy and Minerals will be an important vehicle to address these issues. I am very pleased that this afternoon I will witness, with the Prime Minister, the signing of an Australia-India Trade and Economic Framework Agreement and this will provide an important basis for the facilitation and the future development of the trade and economic relationship and it will encourage closer strategic cooperation in many of the key economic sectors.”

While India would like to buy Australian uranium, Australia currently won’t sell to countries that are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and that includes India and Israel.

But I get the impression something is going to change?

Interestingly the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty recognises ‘the right’ of the US, Britain, France, China and Russia – all permanent members of the UN Security Council – to have nuclear weapons but stops other countries from having nuclear weapons.

Worldwide Protest Against Australian Forestry

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So there is not a lot of outrage in Australia, so the protest against the timber industry in Tasmania moves to San Fransciso and the rest of the world…

Yesterday Paul West from the Rainforest Action Network put out the following media release. Before or after you read this nasty work of propaganda, you may want to find out some facts and figures on the Tasmanian forestry industry, click here, here and here.

The media release is titled ‘Global outcry over falling forests and failing democracy on Australia’s island state of Tasmania’ and begins:

“Outraged world citizens today protested at Australian embassies and consulates in America, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom to decry the destruction of old-growth forests and the undermining of democracy in the country’s island state of Tasmania by Forestry Tasmania and Gunns, Ltd., a rogue billion-dollar logging giant whose practices rank among the world’s worst according to recent reports.

The IUCN compares Gunns’ operations to rampant illegal logging in the Third World.

Demonstrators delivered a letter signed by leading international sustainability groups to Prime Minister John Howard demanding that the government act in accordance with scientific recommendations to protect Tasmania’s virgin forests from a well-documented arsenal of logging tactics deployed by Gunns and industry-controlled Forestry Tasmania. In the wake of massive clearcuts by Gunns, the industry routinely scorches the Earth with Napalm firebombs to eradicate all remaining life.

Gunns has also killed hundreds of thousands of native mammals using carrots poisoned with Compound 1080, a lethal super-toxin listed as a biological weapon by both the Canadian and US governments. Gunns CEO John Gay has publicly stated that it is okay that his company kills endangered animals because “there’s too many of them.” Tasmania’s forests are currently being clear-cut at an unprecedented rate equivalent to approximately 44 football fields per day. The vast majority of Tasmania’s priceless ancient trees are being processed into woodchips by Gunns to make disposable paper products destined for landfills in America and Asia.

The worldwide call for action today echoed a dozen of Australia’s leading scientists who signed a 2004 statement of support for the protection of Tasmania’s forests calling for the “urgent need for Australian government intervention.” The effort to protect Tasmania’s forests is one of the largest environmental issues in Australian history, and according to a 2004 opinion poll by Newspoll, over 85 percent of Australian citizens favor full protection for Tasmania’s pristine forests.

Carrying signs reading “Stop Gunns” and “Save Tassie’s Trees,” forest defenders around the world protested with “GUNNS” taped over the mouths in solidarity with 20 silenced citizens in Australia who are currently being sued by Gunns for speaking out against the company’s attacks on environmental treasures and public health. Likened to McDonald’s “McLibel” lawsuit, websites like Gunns20.org and McGunns.com are evidence of a growing global grassroots movement to protect free speech, reassert democracy and save old-growth forests. The Gunns 20 lawsuit has also been condemned by leading human rights lawyers in the UK. For the Tasmania Forest Campaign, Rainforest Action Network and its allies today launched TreesNotGunns.org to organize future worldwide action.

At the Australian High Commission in London today, British MP and Deputy Environmental Minister Norman Baker met with the Deputy High Commissioner to deliver the NGO letter and spoke about the atrocities he witnessed on his visit to Tasmania last month. Over 100 members of the British Parliament recently signed a motion condemning Gunns’ actions and calling for an international boycott of woodchips and paper sourced from Tasmania’s old-growth forests.

… Spearheaded by San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network, the worldwide day of protest expands one of the largest environmental protection campaigns in Australian history to global economic centers including Houston, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Vancouver and Washington, D.C. The letter to Prime Minister Howard was signed by coalition of US and European-based groups including Forest Ethics (ForestEthics.org), Friends of the Earth International (FOE.org), Global Exchange (GlobalExchange.org), Global Response (GlobalResponse.org), International Forum on Globalization (IFG.org), Native Forest Network (NativeForest.org), Pacific Environment (PacificEnvironment.org), Rainforest Action Network (RAN.org), Ruckus Society (Ruckus.org) and the Sierra Club (SierraClub.org).”

Now you may want to find out some facts and figures on the Tasmanian forestry industry, click here, here and here.

Selling an On Farm Environmental Service

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Australian farmers could soon be selling their environmental management services to the public, such as fencing riparian zones, according to Farm Online.

I am not sure how fencing a riparian zone could be seen as selling an environmental service to the public? Do they mean the public will pay to have the riparian area fenced?

Apparently Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran is finalizing a new system for “stewardship payments” to farmers.

The federal government’s Agriculture and Food Policy Reference Group recently released a report titled Creating Our Future:Agriculture and Food Policy for the Next Generation that recommended government support a new market based program for the delivery of environmental services including a system that:

1. Operates nationally, but be administered at a regional or sub-regional level to target areas of higher conservation value

2. Allow a range of purchasers to participate (such as philanthropic conservation groups or private companies), although governments will be the main purchasers through, for example, a successor program to the NHT and NAP

3. Be equitable and allow landholders to bid competitively for funding on a basis that reflects the marginal value of maintaining land in its current use and the direct cost of conservation measures (such as fencing and maintenance of the area being conserved)

4. Have clear objectives and targets, with funding decisions based on an assessment of the environmental benefit relative to the price tendered

5. Be efficient to run with low transaction costs.

According to a CSIRO “news flash” on 8th August last year, auction-based systems are the most cost effective mechanism for distributing funds to private landholders to improve water quality and biodiversity on private land. This recommendation was based on a trial conducted by CSIRO and the Onkaparinga Catchment Water.

The more tradition method is by ‘devolved grant’ schemes.

Pressure for a new mechanism follows recognition that the state-based vegetation management laws are costing farmers a lot of money.

The financial cost was the focus of a paper delivered at this year’s ABARE Outlook conference in Canberra. The study by Lisa Elliston reported that native vegetation legislation in central and western New South Wales alone would cost the economy A$1.1 billion in today’s terms over a 15 year period.

And just yesterday, according to ABC Online, the Queensland government released its new draft guidelines for the assessment of tree clearing applications for thinning and weed control.