A major blow has been dealt to illegal fishing in the Southern Ocean with the detention of the Nigerian flagged poaching Vessel, Viking, in Malaysia.

Held for violations of Malaysian maritime law, Malaysian authorities have indicated that the Viking will also be investigated for alleged illegal, unregulated, unreported (IUU) fishing violations.

The vessel was detained with 18 crew on board; one Chilean, two Peruvian and 15 Indonesian citizens. The Captain of the vessel, whose nationality is unknown, has been arrested.

The Viking is one of the six remaining illegal, unregulated, unreported (IUU) fishing vessels – which Sea Shepherd calls the ‘Bandit 6’ – that are known to target vulnerable toothfish in the waters surrounding Antarctica, and is the second vessel of the six that has been detained by authorities this month.

The Viking, like its five counterparts, has a long history of illegal fishing. In 2013, the vessel, then called Snake, was the first vessel to be issued with an Interpol Purple Notice for fishing-related violations following a petition from authorities in Norway.

The owners and operators of the vessel are suspected of violating national laws and regulations, as well as international conventions by engaging in fraud and fisheries-related crimes.

Sea Shepherd in hot pursuit of second bandit vessel

Meanwhile the Sea Shepherd ship Bob Barker is engaged in a record-breaking pursuit of the most notorious of the ‘Bandit 6’ vessels, the Thunder, which prior to it being stripped of its registration last week, was also flagged to Nigeria.

Peter Hammarstedt, Captain of the Bob Barker, said, “In May 2014, the Thunder was detained in Malaysia. Despite being found guilty of illegal fishing activity, the vessel was let off with a small fine and allowed to return to its illegal operations.

“Seven months later, my crew and I intercepted the Thunder on the Banzare Bank in Antarctica, again engaged in illegal fishing activity. These are seasoned, repeat offenders who will not be deterred by a slap on the wrist.”

Captain Sid Chakravarty of the Sea Shepherd ship, Sam Simon, said, “Last week, Sea Shepherd reported the attempted suicide of an Indonesian crewmember on board the poaching vessel, Thunder.

“We have sought the advice of human rights experts who have indicated that the suicide attempt was all in likelihood directly related to the poor and exploitative conditions experienced on board that poaching vessel.

“In light of this, and the extensive body of information which indicates that a rampant slave trade underpins IUU fishing operations, we implore Malaysian authorities to speak to the 15 Indonesia crew on board the Viking, and to thoroughly investigate the likelihood that human rights violations have taken place.”

Bandit Captain charged for false reporting of toothfish catch

Thai authorities have confirmed that the Captain of a third poaching vessel, the Kunlun – which was chased from its hunting grounds inside Australian waters by the Sea Shephed vessel Sam Simon in February – has been charged for falsely reporting its illegal catch of 182 tonnes of Antarctic toothfish as grouper.

Captain of the poaching vessel, Jose Alberto Zavaleta Salas, faces further charges for falsely reporting the ship’s flag and registration.

The handler that received the fish, South Services Co Ltd, has also been charged for its role in illegally importing the fish into Thailand.

Captain Chakravarty has praised international policing organisation, Interpol, for their efforts in spearheading the investigations into the Viking, Thunder and Kunlun.

“All three of the vessels that are currently being investigated have been issued with Interpol Purple Notices. By doing so, the Environmental Crime Unit’s Project Scale has set in motion the wheels to bring together international cooperation to tackle poaching in the Southern Ocean.

“Under their expertise, national investigators now have the chance to investigate fisheries crimes to bring about successful prosecutions of these vessels. From the waters of West Africa to the shores of Mauritius and now the ports of Thailand and Malaysia, Interpol is leading the proceedings to shut down these poachers.”

A successful first season for Operation Icefish

The poaching vessels are the target of Sea Shepherd’s first Southern Ocean Defence Campaign to target IUU fishing operators in the waters of Antarctica, Operation Icefish.

While Sea Shepherd applauds the detention of the Viking, the organisation is now appealing to Malaysian authorities to ensure that the owners and officers of the vessel are prosecuted, the vessel scrapped and its catch confiscated.

“The only way to ensure that the Viking does not return to pillage the Southern Ocean is for the vessel to be impounded, and for the operators and officers to be arrested for their crimes”, said Sea Shepherd’s Captain Peter Hammarstedt.

Source: Sea Shepherd.

Medact, the UK-based public health group concerned with the social and ecological determinants of health, have published their long-awaited report on the impacts of fracking upon public health.

First announced last year, following Public Health England’s questionable report into the impacts of shale gas, Medact’s review considers a number of existing reviews of the evidence of ‘fracking’ on public health.

Given the likely public health consequences of climate change, it also examines claim that shale gas might aid the transition towards a low carbon energy system.

The conclusion of the report, which is likely to beget further vitriol from the UK’s pro-fracking lobby, is clear:

“On the basis of our existing knowledge, it would be both prudent and responsible to call for, at the very least, a five year moratorium on all activities related to shale gas development … “

Unlike ‘official’ bodies, Medact actually reviewed the evidence

The report reviews a number of existing studies from public health agencies, as well as a wide range of journal papers. For example:

• The December 2014 review of evidence by the New York State Department of Health;
• An August 2014 report for the Nova Scotia Department of Energy by the Independent Panel on Hydraulic Fracturing;
• A study carried out in July 2014 for the Maryland Departments of Environment and Health by the University of Maryland School of Public Health;
• The April 2014 study by The Council of Canadian Academies; and
• A 2012 environmental impacts study for the European Commission prepared by AEA Technology.

This last study is notable in that, despite its relatively early date, from the available evidence on environmental effects its screening exercise determined that many aspects of shale gas were “high risk”.

And yet, when Public Health England reviewed AEA Technology’s report for the UK Government they concluded that the risks were likely to be low. This dismissal of risk by Public Health England, in favour of the Government’s belief in ‘gold-plated regulation’, is the starting point for Medact’s review.

This view was outlined in their letter to the British Medical Journal, signed by the report’s authors and 18 other UK public health professionals, regarding the need for precautionary action to prohibit ‘fracking’ rather than regulate it:

“Fracking is an inherently risky activity that produces hazardous levels of air and water pollution that can have adverse impacts on health. The heavy traffic, noise and odour that accompanies fracking, as well as the socially disruptive effects of temporary ‘boomtowns’ and the spoilage of the natural environment are additional health hazards …

“The arguments against fracking on public health and ecological grounds are overwhelming. There are clear grounds for adopting the precautionary principle and prohibiting fracking.”

Government turning a blind eye to fracking waste and toxins

In assessing the evidence on the impacts of shale gas extraction, Medact found that there were many more and complex effects upon the environment and public health than the Government’s reviews have been willing (or politically constrained) to acknowledge.

While there has been discussion about earthquakes and water pollution, there has been little consideration given to the trace contaminants of shale gas – and how these affect public health.

Nor is there any realistic assessment of the waste management implications of shale gas development – and how the large volumes of toxic solids, liquids and gases generated by the process will be safely dealt with.

Given their significance, Medact’s report includes a supplementary paper specifically on the toxic contaminants associated with the process.

The practical problem, and the implicit strength of the Government’s call for ‘regulation’ in response to criticism is that it defers the need to produce reasoned solutions today – allowing the policy to proceed unhindered.

This approach, as the report outlines, stores up a whole range of uncertainties over health and environmental impacts which, at present, have no quantifiable answers.

The ‘known unknowns’ of fracking

The Medact report poses three key ‘known unknowns’ in relation to the Government’s policy on ‘fracking’:

• Firstly, we have incomplete knowledge, caused by a lack of information about fracking operations in the US and elsewhere which has hampered attempts to conduct evidence-based public health studies;
• Secondly, fracking is a relatively new activity and, as acknowledge by The Council of Canadian Academies, evidence about the longer term cumulative impacts of fracking are generally not yet available and difficult to predict reliably; and
• Thirdly, human exposure to the risks and hazards associated with ‘fracking’ will vary from site to site, depending on a host of geological, social, demographic, agricultural and economic factors – meaning that health impacts will be unevenly and often unfairly distributed between and within local communities.

The report goes on to state: “For these reasons, although one can state categorically that fracking poses threats to human health, the precise level of risk cannot be known with certainty.

“Assessing the level of risk requires careful judgement based on the available evidence and an appropriate attitude towards the precautionary principle, whilst considering contextual factors and the potential benefits of fracking.”

In addition to Medact’s own report, they commissioned an additional study produced jointly by the UCL Energy Institute, Warwick Business School and UK Energy Research Centre. This sets ten evidence-based conditions which unconventional gas production needs to satisfy in order to demonstrate its viability and sustainability.

As this paper states in relation to this list of conditions, “most if not all of them are not [met] at present”. The paper concludes:

“Given the current incomplete state of knowledge about shale gas and its potential role in a low-carbon transition, we suggest that policy makers should take as their basis for energy policy that there will be no shale gas produced domestically and plan their gas security strategy accordingly.”

A five-year public health moratorium

In the conclusions to their report, Medact highlight the inconsistencies between the reviews carried out by various medical and scientific organisations from different countries, and the paucity of evidence underpinning the UK Government’s policy conclusions.

They also note the growing number of state or national governments who have concluded, on the basis of the presently available evidence, that the risks and harms associated with ‘fracking’ outweigh the potential benefits.

Given the state of our knowledge of ‘fracking’ today, Medact consider it prudent and responsible to call for a five year moratorium on all activities related to shale gas development. During this time public health agencies should review all new published research, and carry out a debate on the uncertainties which are identified.

In the present media tit-for-tat of claim and counter-claim, Medact’s report is a positive contribution to the evidence-based debate over ‘fracking’ in Britain. I am sure that those campaigning against the process will find much in it that will inform and improved their work.

However, in the current political climate, exemplified by the rejection of the Environmental Audit Committee’s recent call for a moratorium on future development, I believe Medact’s review will be officially ignored.

The positive point is that the industry funded Task Force on Shale Gas (TFSG) has just begun its own review of the health and environmental impacts of unconventional gas extraction. Medact’s report, given its scope and source material, sets a high bar for the TFSG to reach if their report is to be considered an honest and reasoned review of current evidence.

The Government’s policy on ‘fracking’ is not based upon a reasoned consideration of evidence. It is an ideologically-driven policy – based upon a mistaken pursuit of economic growth at all costs, and which supports fossil fuels irrespective of their consequences for human health, climate change and wider environmental sustainability.

Medact’s report adds to the growing indictment of the UK’s current energy policy, and its implications for our future well-being.

Paul Mobbs is an independent environmental consultant, investigator, author and lecturer, and maintains the Free Range Activism Website (FRAW).

The report: ‘Health & Fracking: the impacts & opportunity costs‘ is published by Medact.

The letter: ‘Public Health England’s draft report on shale gas extraction‘ is by Dr Robin Stott et al and published in the British Medical Journal.

A fully referenced version of this article is available on-line.

A team of researchers from universities in New Zealand and Mexico have discovered that three herbicides (weed killers) widely used in agriculture and in gardens can make disease causing bacteria resistant to antibiotics.

Their paper, published in the online journal MBio, offers a new perspective on the problem of antibiotic resistance, which may help to explain why it has been increasing so rapidly in recent years.

The three herbicides they looked at were glyphosate, the world’s most widely used pesticide (formulations are sold by Monsanto as ‘Roundup’), dicamba (Kamba), which is proprietary to Monsanto, and 2,4-D, the active ingredient of the notorious ‘agent orange’ herbicide used by the US military to ‘defoliate’ rainforests in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1960s.

These were tested on E. coli and Salmonella bacteria treated with one of five different antibiotics: Ciprofloxacin, chloramphenicol, ampicillin, kanamycin and tetracycline. E.coli cause more infections that any other type of bacteria. Both E.coli and Salmonella can cause serious, even fatal, infections.

In most cases even low levels of the herbicides had the effect of inducing antibiotic resistance before the antibiotics had time to kill the bacteria. In a few antibiotic / herbicide combinations they actually made the bacteria more susceptible to the antibiotic, while in other cases they had no impact.

The danger is on-farm, not in food

Residues of these herbicides typically found in food were not sufficient to induce antibiotic resistance, but the researchers have identified a number of situations in homes and on farms where more direct exposure to the herbicides could result in antibiotic resistance.

“The effects found are relevant wherever people or animals are exposed to herbicides at the range of concentrations achieved where they are applied”, say the authors.

“This may include, for example, farm animals and pollinators in rural areas and potentially children and pets in urban areas. The effects were detectable only at herbicide concentrations that were above currently allowed residue levels on food.”

Those at risk of suffering the immediate consequences also include farm workers and others exposed to the herbicides while applying them, residents close to farms within range of ‘spray drift’, and honeybees, which can need treating with antibiotics to cure bacterial infections.

The principal concern is that doctors treating life-threatening infections often need to get the dose of antibiotics right first time in order to save lives.

To do that they base decisions on existing knowledge of bacterial susceptibility to antibiotics, but where the bacteria are simultaneously exposed to antibiotics and one of the herbicides, doctors may prescribe antibiotic doses too low to control the infections, creating the opportunity for resistance to those antibiotics to develop.

And then, anyone infected by the resistant antibiotics would be at risk.

Roundup to blame for rising observed antibiotic resistance?

“This is a very important scientific discovery”, said Richard Young, Policy Director with the Sustainable Food Trust. “The study shows that the use of herbicides in intensive farming may be one of the reasons that antibiotic resistance has been increasing so rapidly in recent years.

“We will be calling on UK and EU regulators to consider this research carefully and to reassess the safety of all herbicides to include their impact on antibiotic resistance.

“In the US there are an estimated 2 million new antibiotic-resistant infections every day and it has to be noted that glyphosate is used extremely widely in the US on genetically engineered Roundup Ready crops of soya, maize and oilseed rape [canola]. It has even been found in rainwater.”

Due to the development of superweeds in the US that have become resistant to Roundup, two new generations of ‘stacked’ GM crops have been developed which are resistant to more than one herbicide.

Dow has engineered its ‘Enlist’ varieties of soybean and corn varieties that are engineered to resist its ‘Enlist Duo’ herbicide, a mix of glyphosate and 2,4-D. Both the crops and the herbicide were approved in 2014 by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). Monsanto has also applied for USDA clearance to sell GMO soybean and cotton varieties engineered to resist both Roundup and dicamba.

The use of these varieties appears certain to further increase the volumes used of the three herbicides examined in the study, giving a further boost to antibiotic resistance.

Another possibility – not tested in the recent experiment – is that certain combinations of the three herbicides may have even greater effects in stimulating antibiotic resistance than when they are acting singly. There are also many other combinations of potentially pathogenic bacteria, herbicides (and other pesticides) and antibiotics that are yet to be tested.

And as the authors warn: “New antibiotics are hard to find and can take decades to become available. Effects of chemicals such as herbicides could conflict with measures taken to slow the spread of antibiotic resistance.”

The paper: ‘Sublethal Exposure to Commercial Formulations of the Herbicides Dicamba, 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic Acid, and Glyphosate Cause Changes in Antibiotic Susceptibility in Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium‘, by Brigitta Kurenbach, Delphine Marjoshi, Carlos F. Amábile-Cuevas, Gayle C. Ferguson, William Godsoe, Paddy Gibson, & Jack A. Heinemann, is published by mBio.

Principal source: Sustainable Food Trust.

Also on The Ecologist: ‘IARC: Glyphosate probably carcinogenic‘: The International Agency for Research on Cancer has labelled the world’s biggest herbicide, glyphosate, as ‘probably carcinogenic’. Another four widely used organophosphate insecticides may also pose a cancer risk.

Almost all of us walk somewhere every day of our lives. According to the UK’s most recent National Travel Survey 22% of all trips are undertaken on foot – and walking continues to be the second-most important form of transport for all journeys after travel by car or van.

For short trips of less than a mile, walking is totally dominant accounting for over 78% of all such travel. One third of all trips less than five miles in length are also on foot.

By contrast, cycling accounts for just 1.5% of all journeys. Even if we only look at all trips under five miles, cycling still makes up less than 2% of journeys.

But you wouldn’t get this impression from listening to politicians, reading policy documents, or observing investment in infrastructure.

While both cycling and walking improve personal health and the environment, one gets far more attention than the other. The government has just released its response to a major consultation on its ‘vision for cycling and walking’, for instance. The document’s name? ‘Cycling Delivery Plan‘.

Although walking is given some consideration in the detail of the document, the priority is clear. While cycling is being actively promoted as a healthy and sustainable form of urban transport, walking remains largely neglected in terms of active policy and investment.

Cycling investment is great! But don’t forget the foot-soldiers

Look at London’s ‘cycle superhighways‘, for instance, announced earlier this year to much fanfare. These highways follow significant increases in trips by bike in central London following investment in new infrastructure promoted by the London mayor.

Such investment is of course welcome and long overdue, and much remains to be done as cycle infrastructure remains poor in most other parts of the country. But the fact cycling is beginning to be considered an important form of urban transport that needs to be planned for highlights the fact that travel on foot is not given such recognition.

It can, of course, be argued that pedestrians do already have their own dedicated infrastructure – in urban areas at least – in the form of pavements, pedestrian zones, and crossings. For the most part we accept these conditions as adequate and do not question how they might be better, however a closer look suggests that this is rarely the case.

In most locations, road space continues to be dominated by, and planned for, motor vehicles and people on foot are crammed on to pavements that are often too narrow. Pedestrians are made to wait for long periods to cross busy roads, exposed to traffic noise and emissions, and then given insufficient time to cross before the lights change to keep the traffic moving.

Poorly placed (and often unnecessary) street furniture, together with inconsiderately (and potentially illegally) parked cars often obstruct the pavement, while pedestrian surfaces are often poorly maintained and rarely cleared of leaves or snow and ice.

Try to negotiate the average urban pavement with a child’s buggy or in a wheelchair and the difficulties become all too obvious. Poor pedestrian infrastructure disadvantages all those who do not have access to, or choose not to use, a motor vehicle.

Sleepwalking into car cities

We’ve got into this situation because walking is taken for granted. Such a simple activity has been largely ignored in the planning process; it is seen as making few demands on the environment and thus needs only a minimum of facilities. In contrast, because motor vehicles make much greater demands on the environment their needs have been prioritised.

Pedestrians also suffer from being classed as ‘walkers’ – those who walk for pleasure rather than as a means of transport. The cultural dominance and convenience of the motor vehicle has meant that urban space has been disproportionately allocated towards cars and away from pedestrians. When walking for anything other than recreation is increasingly seen as abnormal, cars will always win.

I recently headed some research in four English cities which clearly demonstrated this. As one respondent in Leeds said, “you feel unusual walking”. Most respondents enjoyed walking, and did walk sometimes, but they frequently encountered unnecessary difficulties and inconveniences.

The problem was summarised neatly by a Lancaster respondent: “That road is awful, the pavement is very narrow, and in autumn it’s covered in leaves so you slip over half the time, it’s terrifying. But by car the road is fine.”

Walking is a cheap, simple, healthy and environmentally friendly way of travelling short distances. It is something most people enjoy doing, but our cities are built in ways that often make life difficult and unpleasant for pedestrians.

Walking needs to be taken more seriously as a means of transport (and not only as a form of exercise or leisure) – and should be actively planned for and given priority, as is beginning to happen with cycling.

If more people walked and fewer people drove, it would not only benefit personal health but also cities would be more pleasant for all.

Colin Pooley is Emeritus Professor of Social and Historical Geography at Lancaster University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

A leaked secret dispute-settlement provision of a pending US trade deal with Asia is raising concerns among nonprofit groups which say it favors big companies over governments.

The classified document, released this week by WikiLeaks, deals with a controversial investor-state dispute settlement tool that is part of closed-door negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 12-nation free-trade agreement including Japan, Australia, Singapore and Vietnam.

According to the 20 January document, the US-led negotiating parties want to establish investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) courts where foreign firms can sue states and obtain taxpayer compensation for expected future profits, overruling national court systems.

ISDS tribunals are also part of the vast trade pact the US is negotiating with the European Union, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or TTIP.

The cover page of the leaked document said the document “is supposed to be kept secret for four years after the entry into force of the TPP agreement or, if no agreement is reached, for four years from the close of the negotiations.”

US taxpayers would face huge liability claims

Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, said the leaked document shows that the TPP would open up the United States to huge liability claims.

“Enactment of the leaked chapter would increase US ISDS liability to an unprecedented degree by newly empowering about 9,000 foreign-owned firms from Japan and other TPP nations operating in the United States to launch cases against the government over policies that apply equally to domestic and foreign firms”, the Washington-based organization said in a statement.

Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, added: “With the veil of secrecy ripped back, finally everyone can see for themselves that the TPP would give multinational corporations extraordinary new powers that undermine our sovereignty, expose US taxpayers to billions in new liability and privilege foreign firms operating here with special rights not available to US firms under US law.”

Environmental group Sierra Club said the leaked document confirms the threats of the TPP to clean air and water, because the provision “would expand a system of investor privileges.”

Last week an arbitration panel established under the North American Free Trade agreement (NAFTA) ruled in favour of a US mining company, Bilcon, against Canada, after permission to mine basalt in Nova Scotia near a breeding ground for endangered whale and dolphin species was denied for environmental reasons. The company is now demanding $300 million ‘compensation’.

Obama seeks ‘fast track’ authorization

The TPP leak came as Congress plans to discuss next month the so-called ‘fast-track’ authority that President Barack Obama is seeking for trade negotiations.

Fast-track would allow the White House to agree to a trade deal and submit it in its entirety to Congress to ratify, without allowing lawmakers the power to make amendments.

“This leak is a disaster for the corporate lobbyists and administration officials trying to persuade Congress to delegate Fast Track authority to railroad the TPP through Congress”, said Wallach.

The US Trade Representative, the agency in charge of US trade negotiations, was not immediately available Thursday to comment on the leaked document.

Similar provisions in EU-US TTIP deal

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) also contains investor-state dispute-settlement (ISDS) clauses, but these have yet to be released into the public domain.

The European Union won’t decide whether to include them in the agreement until the “final phase of the negotiations” with the US, and is asking member states to submit their views.

ISDS is controversial because it allows investors to take governments to international arbitration tribunals rather than to domestic courts. It could be dropped, modified or kept in its current form, when the trade pact is finally sealed. The US wants ISDS included in the landmark free trade agreement.

Negotiations on investment in TTIP were suspended in January 2014. They will only resume once the Commission believes its new proposals guarantee, among other things, that the jurisdiction of national courts won’t be limited by special regimes for investor-to-state disputes.

This article was originally published by EurActiv.

Public opposition to reactor restarts (and the nuclear industry more generally) continues to exert some influence in Japan.

Five to seven of the oldest of Japan’s 48 ‘operable’ reactors are likely to be sacrificed to dampen opposition to the restart of other reactors, and local opposition may result in the permanent shut down of some other reactors.

Currently, all 48 of Japan’s ‘operable’ reactors are shut down – and the six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi have been written off.

However, slowly but surely, the corrupt and collusive practices that led to the Fukushima disaster are re-emerging. The ‘nuclear village’ is back in control.

Energy policy

After the Fukushima accident, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government commenced a review of energy policy. After deliberations in a committee that included more or less equal numbers of nuclear critics, proponents and neutral people, three scenarios were put forward in June 2012 – based on 0%, 15% and 20-25% of electricity generation from nuclear reactors.

These scenarios were put to a broad national debate, the outcome of which was that a clear majority of the public supported a nuclear phase-out. The national debate played a crucial role in pushing the DPJ government to support a nuclear phase-out.

After the December 2012 national election, the incoming Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government repudiated the DPJ’s goal of phasing out nuclear power. The LDP government also revamped the policy-drafting committee, drastically reducing the number of nuclear critics. And the committee itself was sidelined in the development of a draft Basic Energy Plan.

“From a process perspective, this represents a step back about 20 years”, said Dr Philip White, an expert on Japan’s energy policy formation process.

“A major step toward greater public participation and disclosure of information occurred after the December 1995 sodium leak and fire at the Monju fast breeder reactor.” Dr White wrote.

“Although public participation was not conducted in good faith, at least lip service was paid. It seems that the current government has decided that it doesn’t even need to pay lip service.”

The Basic Energy Plan approved by Cabinet in April 2014 contains nothing more than a meaningless nod to widespread public anti-nuclear sentiment, stating that dependence on nuclear energy will be reduced ‘to the extent possible’.

Junko Edahiro, chief executive of Japan for Sustainability and one of the people removed from the energy policy advisory committee, noted in November 2014:

“Now what we have is a situation where government officials and committees are back to doing their jobs as if the March 2011 disasters had never occurred. They have resumed what they had been doing for 30 or 40 years, focusing on nuclear power …

“In Japan we have what some people refer to as a ‘nuclear village’: a group of government officials, industries, and academia notorious for being strongly pro-nuclear. There has been little change in this group, and the regulatory committee to oversee nuclear policies and operations is currently headed by a well-known nuclear proponent.”

‘An accident will surely happen again’

Yotaro Hatamura, who previously chaired the ‘Cabinet Office Investigation Committee on the Accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations of TEPCO’, recently told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper that pre-Fukushima complacency is returning.

“Sufficient investigations have not been conducted” into the causes of the Fukushima disaster, said Hatamura, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at the University of Tokyo.

The Cabinet Office Investigation Committee report called on the government to continue efforts to determine the cause of the nuclear disaster, but “almost none” of its proposals have been reflected in recent government actions, Hatamura said.

He further noted that tougher nuclear safety standards were introduced after the Fukushima disaster, but with the exception of this “regulatory hurdle … the situation seems unchanged from before the accident.”

“It does not appear that organizations to watch [government actions] are working properly”, Hatamura said. “There could always be lapses in oversight in safety assessments, and an accident will surely happen again.”

Hatamura questioned the adequacy of evacuation plans, saying they have been compiled without fully reflecting on the Fukushima accident: “The restarts of reactors should be declared only after sufficient preparations are made, such as conducting evacuation drills covering all residents living within 30 kilometers of each plant based on developed evacuation plans.”

Japan Atomic Energy Commission

In September 2012, the DPJ government promised that a review of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) would be conducted ‘with its abolition and reorganization in mind’. The government established a review committee, which published a report in December 2012. After taking office, the incoming LDP government shelved the report and commenced a new review.

The second review recommended that the JAEC no longer produce an overarching Framework for Nuclear Energy Policy. But an LDP committee has reportedly decided that the JAEC will be tasked with putting together a nuclear energy policy that would effectively have equivalent status to the Framework for Nuclear Energy Policy.

Two reviews, very little change – and far from being abolished, the JAEC retains a role in framing nuclear policy. Moreover, the government has proposed that the JAEC, a promoter of nuclear power, could acts as a ‘third party’ in the choice of a final disposal site for nuclear waste.

Some experts who attended a ministry panel meeting in February questioned the JAEC’s independence.

Government’s massive financial support for TEPCO

Many have called for TEPCO to be nationalised, or broken up into separate companies, but the LDP government has protected and supported the company. The government has also greatly increased financial support for TEPCO.

For example in January 2014 the government approved an increase in the ceiling for interest-free loans the Nuclear Damage Liability Facilitation Fund is allowed to give TEPCO, from 5 trillion yen to 9 trillion yen (€39.0-70.2 billion)

The government will also cover some of the costs for dealing with the Fukushima accident which TEPCO was previously required to pay, such as an estimated 1.1 trillion yen (€8.6 billion) for interim storage facilities for waste from clean-up activities outside the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The government has also amended the Electricity Business Act to extend the period for collecting decommissioning funds from electricity rates by up to 10 years after nuclear plants are shut down. The amendments also allow TEPCO to include in electricity rates depreciation costs for additional equipment purchased for the decommissioning of the Fukushima plant.

Special Committee for Investigation of Nuclear Power Issues

An early example of the LDP government’s reconstitution of the nuclear village was the Special Committee for Investigation of Nuclear Power Issues, established by the LDP government in 2013 to monitor nuclear power administration.

A majority of the Committee members double as members of the LDP. “We avoided anti-nuclear lawmakers”, said a senior official of the LDP’s Diet Affairs Committee. LDP parliamentarian Taro Kono, a member of a multi-party group of anti-nuclear parliamentarians, wanted to join the committee but was snubbed.

Ironically, the Special Committee was formed as a result of a recommendation from the Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, which was scathing about the sort of cynical cronyism that its recommendation led to.

Media censorship and intimidation

Japan has steadily slipped down Reporters Without Borders global ranking for press freedom since the Fukushima disaster, from 11th in 2010 to 61st in the latest ranking.

Journalists have been threatened with ‘criminal contempt’ and defamation suits, and Japan’s ‘state secrets’ law makes investigative journalism about Japan’s nuclear industry a perilous undertaking. Under the law, which took effect in December 2014, the government can sentence those who divulge government secrets – which are broadly defined – to a decade in jail.

Benjamin Ismaïl from Reporters Without Borders wrote in March 2014:

“As we feared in 2012, the freedom to inform and be informed continues to be restricted by the ‘nuclear village’ and government, which are trying to control coverage of their handling of the aftermath of this disaster.

“Its long-term consequences are only now beginning to emerge and coverage of the health risks and public health issues is more important than ever.”

Reporters Without Borders said in March 2014:

“Both Japanese and foreign reporters have described to Reporters Without Borders the various methods used by the authorities to prevent independent coverage of the [Fukushima] disaster and its consequences. They have been prevented from covering anti-nuclear demonstrations and have been threatened with criminal proceedings for entering the ‘red zone’ declared around the plant.

“And they have even been interrogated and subjected to intimidation by the intelligence services.”

Lessons learned … and quickly forgotten

The corruption and collusion of Japan’s nuclear village led to numerous accidents before the Fukushima disaster.

And the corruption and collusion of Japan’s nuclear village was a root cause of the Fukushima disaster itself. On that point the Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission could not have been blunter: “The accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO, and the lack of governance by said parties.”

A big part of the post-Fukushima spin is that lessons were learned from the nuclear disaster and improvements made. But the real lesson from this saga is that the nuclear industry – in Japan at least – has learned nothing from its catastrophic mistakes.

As Yotaro Hatamura says, an accident will surely happen again.

Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and editor of the Nuclear Monitor newsletter, where this article was originally published (March 19, 2015 | No. 800).

Nuclear Monitor is published 20 times a year. It has been publishing deeply researched, often strongly critical articles on all aspects of the nuclear cycle since 1978. A must-read for all those who work on this issue!

Scientists believe they may have found how to safeguard a staple tropical crop, on which hundreds of millions of people depend, from the depredations of climate change.

They have discovered – through conventional breeding rather than genetic modification – 30 new varieties of beans that will thrive in the higher temperatures expected later this century, and which will pose a particular threat to harvests in Africa and Latin America.

The new ‘heat-beater’ beans, an important source of protein for around 400 million people, have been identified by plant breeders with the CGIAR global agriculture research partnership.

Steve Beebe, a senior CGIAR bean researcher, announced at a conference in Ethiopia: “This discovery could be a big boon for bean production because we are facing a dire situation where, by 2050, global warming could reduce areas suitable for growing beans by 50%.

“Incredibly, the heat-tolerant beans we tested may be able to handle a worst-case scenario where the build-up of greenhouse gases causes the world to heat up by an average of 4°C.

“Even if they can only handle a 3°C rise, that would still limit the bean production area lost to climate change to about 5%. And farmers could potentially make up for that by using these beans to expand their production of the crop in countries such as Nicaragua and Malawi, where beans are essential to survival.”

An essential and nutritious food around the tropics

Beans are often called the ‘meat of the poor’. They are highly nutritious, providing not only protein but fibre, complex carbohydrates, vitamins, and other micronutrients. In addition to heat tolerance, CGIAR researchers are also breeding lines with a higher iron content, in an effort to tackle malnutrition.

But how are the new beans likely to fare in farmers’ fields exposed to real world conditions, and pathogens? “So far, so good”, Dr Beebe told Climate News Network, referring to the outcome of field trials.

“Some of the lines are also drought-tolerant, and some are resistant to Bean Golden Yellow Mosaic Virus. There are two caveats. First, so far the best lines are small red types for Central America and parts of East Africa, so we have a long road to improve a range of grain types, colours, etc.

“The other issue is that we are taking these beans into a new environment that we don‘t know from the bean perspective. We have seen that a soil pathogen, pythium, is more severe. Will we find more surprises?”

Rising heat as climate change intensifies is expected to disrupt bean production in central and South American countries, including Nicaragua, Haiti, Brazil and Honduras. African countries thought to be at risk are principally Malawi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, followed by Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.

‘Heat-beaters’ emerged from testing over 1,000 varieties

The new beans are the result of CGIAR’s work to develop new crop varieties that can thrive in drastic weather extremes, based on research in its ‘genebanks‘, which preserve the world’s largest seed collections of the most important staple crops.

The heat-beaters emerged from the testing of more than 1,000 bean ‘lines’ – work that began as an effort to develop beans that could tolerate poor soils and drought.

The focus turned to heat-tolerance following a 2012 report from CGIAR scientists warning that heat was a much bigger threat to bean production than previously believed.

Many of the new heat-tolerant beans developed by the CGIAR scientists are ‘crosses’ of the common bean – which includes pinto, white, black, and kidney beans – and the tepary bean, a hardy survivor cultivated since pre-Columbian times in what is now part of northern Mexico and the southwest US.

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

A leaked secret dispute-settlement provision of a pending US trade deal with Asia is raising concerns among nonprofit groups which say it favors big companies over governments.

The classified document, released this week by WikiLeaks, deals with a controversial investor-state dispute settlement tool that is part of closed-door negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 12-nation free-trade agreement including Japan, Australia, Singapore and Vietnam.

According to the 20 January document, the US-led negotiating parties want to establish investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) courts where foreign firms can sue states and obtain taxpayer compensation for expected future profits, overruling national court systems.

ISDS tribunals are also part of the vast trade pact the US is negotiating with the European Union, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or TTIP.

The cover page of the leaked document said the document “is supposed to be kept secret for four years after the entry into force of the TPP agreement or, if no agreement is reached, for four years from the close of the negotiations.”

US taxpayers would face huge liability claims

Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, said the leaked document shows that the TPP would open up the United States to huge liability claims.

“Enactment of the leaked chapter would increase US ISDS liability to an unprecedented degree by newly empowering about 9,000 foreign-owned firms from Japan and other TPP nations operating in the United States to launch cases against the government over policies that apply equally to domestic and foreign firms”, the Washington-based organization said in a statement.

Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, added: “With the veil of secrecy ripped back, finally everyone can see for themselves that the TPP would give multinational corporations extraordinary new powers that undermine our sovereignty, expose US taxpayers to billions in new liability and privilege foreign firms operating here with special rights not available to US firms under US law.”

Environmental group Sierra Club said the leaked document confirms the threats of the TPP to clean air and water, because the provision “would expand a system of investor privileges.”

Last week an arbitration panel established under the North American Free Trade agreement (NAFTA) ruled in favour of a US mining company, Bilcon, against Canada, after permission to mine basalt in Nova Scotia near a breeding ground for endangered whale and dolphin species was denied for environmental reasons. The company is now demanding $300 million ‘compensation’.

Obama seeks ‘fast track’ authorization

The TPP leak came as Congress plans to discuss next month the so-called ‘fast-track’ authority that President Barack Obama is seeking for trade negotiations.

Fast-track would allow the White House to agree to a trade deal and submit it in its entirety to Congress to ratify, without allowing lawmakers the power to make amendments.

“This leak is a disaster for the corporate lobbyists and administration officials trying to persuade Congress to delegate Fast Track authority to railroad the TPP through Congress”, said Wallach.

The US Trade Representative, the agency in charge of US trade negotiations, was not immediately available Thursday to comment on the leaked document.

Similar provisions in EU-US TTIP deal

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) also contains investor-state dispute-settlement (ISDS) clauses, but these have yet to be released into the public domain.

The European Union won’t decide whether to include them in the agreement until the “final phase of the negotiations” with the US, and is asking member states to submit their views.

ISDS is controversial because it allows investors to take governments to international arbitration tribunals rather than to domestic courts. It could be dropped, modified or kept in its current form, when the trade pact is finally sealed. The US wants ISDS included in the landmark free trade agreement.

Negotiations on investment in TTIP were suspended in January 2014. They will only resume once the Commission believes its new proposals guarantee, among other things, that the jurisdiction of national courts won’t be limited by special regimes for investor-to-state disputes.

This article was originally published by EurActiv.

Public opposition to reactor restarts (and the nuclear industry more generally) continues to exert some influence in Japan.

Five to seven of the oldest of Japan’s 48 ‘operable’ reactors are likely to be sacrificed to dampen opposition to the restart of other reactors, and local opposition may result in the permanent shut down of some other reactors.

Currently, all 48 of Japan’s ‘operable’ reactors are shut down – and the six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi have been written off.

However, slowly but surely, the corrupt and collusive practices that led to the Fukushima disaster are re-emerging. The ‘nuclear village’ is back in control.

Energy policy

After the Fukushima accident, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government commenced a review of energy policy. After deliberations in a committee that included more or less equal numbers of nuclear critics, proponents and neutral people, three scenarios were put forward in June 2012 – based on 0%, 15% and 20-25% of electricity generation from nuclear reactors.

These scenarios were put to a broad national debate, the outcome of which was that a clear majority of the public supported a nuclear phase-out. The national debate played a crucial role in pushing the DPJ government to support a nuclear phase-out.

After the December 2012 national election, the incoming Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government repudiated the DPJ’s goal of phasing out nuclear power. The LDP government also revamped the policy-drafting committee, drastically reducing the number of nuclear critics. And the committee itself was sidelined in the development of a draft Basic Energy Plan.

“From a process perspective, this represents a step back about 20 years”, said Dr Philip White, an expert on Japan’s energy policy formation process.

“A major step toward greater public participation and disclosure of information occurred after the December 1995 sodium leak and fire at the Monju fast breeder reactor.” Dr White wrote.

“Although public participation was not conducted in good faith, at least lip service was paid. It seems that the current government has decided that it doesn’t even need to pay lip service.”

The Basic Energy Plan approved by Cabinet in April 2014 contains nothing more than a meaningless nod to widespread public anti-nuclear sentiment, stating that dependence on nuclear energy will be reduced ‘to the extent possible’.

Junko Edahiro, chief executive of Japan for Sustainability and one of the people removed from the energy policy advisory committee, noted in November 2014:

“Now what we have is a situation where government officials and committees are back to doing their jobs as if the March 2011 disasters had never occurred. They have resumed what they had been doing for 30 or 40 years, focusing on nuclear power …

“In Japan we have what some people refer to as a ‘nuclear village’: a group of government officials, industries, and academia notorious for being strongly pro-nuclear. There has been little change in this group, and the regulatory committee to oversee nuclear policies and operations is currently headed by a well-known nuclear proponent.”

‘An accident will surely happen again’

Yotaro Hatamura, who previously chaired the ‘Cabinet Office Investigation Committee on the Accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations of TEPCO’, recently told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper that pre-Fukushima complacency is returning.

“Sufficient investigations have not been conducted” into the causes of the Fukushima disaster, said Hatamura, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at the University of Tokyo.

The Cabinet Office Investigation Committee report called on the government to continue efforts to determine the cause of the nuclear disaster, but “almost none” of its proposals have been reflected in recent government actions, Hatamura said.

He further noted that tougher nuclear safety standards were introduced after the Fukushima disaster, but with the exception of this “regulatory hurdle … the situation seems unchanged from before the accident.”

“It does not appear that organizations to watch [government actions] are working properly”, Hatamura said. “There could always be lapses in oversight in safety assessments, and an accident will surely happen again.”

Hatamura questioned the adequacy of evacuation plans, saying they have been compiled without fully reflecting on the Fukushima accident: “The restarts of reactors should be declared only after sufficient preparations are made, such as conducting evacuation drills covering all residents living within 30 kilometers of each plant based on developed evacuation plans.”

Japan Atomic Energy Commission

In September 2012, the DPJ government promised that a review of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) would be conducted ‘with its abolition and reorganization in mind’. The government established a review committee, which published a report in December 2012. After taking office, the incoming LDP government shelved the report and commenced a new review.

The second review recommended that the JAEC no longer produce an overarching Framework for Nuclear Energy Policy. But an LDP committee has reportedly decided that the JAEC will be tasked with putting together a nuclear energy policy that would effectively have equivalent status to the Framework for Nuclear Energy Policy.

Two reviews, very little change – and far from being abolished, the JAEC retains a role in framing nuclear policy. Moreover, the government has proposed that the JAEC, a promoter of nuclear power, could acts as a ‘third party’ in the choice of a final disposal site for nuclear waste.

Some experts who attended a ministry panel meeting in February questioned the JAEC’s independence.

Government’s massive financial support for TEPCO

Many have called for TEPCO to be nationalised, or broken up into separate companies, but the LDP government has protected and supported the company. The government has also greatly increased financial support for TEPCO.

For example in January 2014 the government approved an increase in the ceiling for interest-free loans the Nuclear Damage Liability Facilitation Fund is allowed to give TEPCO, from 5 trillion yen to 9 trillion yen (€39.0-70.2 billion)

The government will also cover some of the costs for dealing with the Fukushima accident which TEPCO was previously required to pay, such as an estimated 1.1 trillion yen (€8.6 billion) for interim storage facilities for waste from clean-up activities outside the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The government has also amended the Electricity Business Act to extend the period for collecting decommissioning funds from electricity rates by up to 10 years after nuclear plants are shut down. The amendments also allow TEPCO to include in electricity rates depreciation costs for additional equipment purchased for the decommissioning of the Fukushima plant.

Special Committee for Investigation of Nuclear Power Issues

An early example of the LDP government’s reconstitution of the nuclear village was the Special Committee for Investigation of Nuclear Power Issues, established by the LDP government in 2013 to monitor nuclear power administration.

A majority of the Committee members double as members of the LDP. “We avoided anti-nuclear lawmakers”, said a senior official of the LDP’s Diet Affairs Committee. LDP parliamentarian Taro Kono, a member of a multi-party group of anti-nuclear parliamentarians, wanted to join the committee but was snubbed.

Ironically, the Special Committee was formed as a result of a recommendation from the Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, which was scathing about the sort of cynical cronyism that its recommendation led to.

Media censorship and intimidation

Japan has steadily slipped down Reporters Without Borders global ranking for press freedom since the Fukushima disaster, from 11th in 2010 to 61st in the latest ranking.

Journalists have been threatened with ‘criminal contempt’ and defamation suits, and Japan’s ‘state secrets’ law makes investigative journalism about Japan’s nuclear industry a perilous undertaking. Under the law, which took effect in December 2014, the government can sentence those who divulge government secrets – which are broadly defined – to a decade in jail.

Benjamin Ismaïl from Reporters Without Borders wrote in March 2014:

“As we feared in 2012, the freedom to inform and be informed continues to be restricted by the ‘nuclear village’ and government, which are trying to control coverage of their handling of the aftermath of this disaster.

“Its long-term consequences are only now beginning to emerge and coverage of the health risks and public health issues is more important than ever.”

Reporters Without Borders said in March 2014:

“Both Japanese and foreign reporters have described to Reporters Without Borders the various methods used by the authorities to prevent independent coverage of the [Fukushima] disaster and its consequences. They have been prevented from covering anti-nuclear demonstrations and have been threatened with criminal proceedings for entering the ‘red zone’ declared around the plant.

“And they have even been interrogated and subjected to intimidation by the intelligence services.”

Lessons learned … and quickly forgotten

The corruption and collusion of Japan’s nuclear village led to numerous accidents before the Fukushima disaster.

And the corruption and collusion of Japan’s nuclear village was a root cause of the Fukushima disaster itself. On that point the Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission could not have been blunter: “The accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO, and the lack of governance by said parties.”

A big part of the post-Fukushima spin is that lessons were learned from the nuclear disaster and improvements made. But the real lesson from this saga is that the nuclear industry – in Japan at least – has learned nothing from its catastrophic mistakes.

As Yotaro Hatamura says, an accident will surely happen again.

Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and editor of the Nuclear Monitor newsletter, where this article was originally published (March 19, 2015 | No. 800).

Nuclear Monitor is published 20 times a year. It has been publishing deeply researched, often strongly critical articles on all aspects of the nuclear cycle since 1978. A must-read for all those who work on this issue!

Scientists believe they may have found how to safeguard a staple tropical crop, on which hundreds of millions of people depend, from the depredations of climate change.

They have discovered – through conventional breeding rather than genetic modification – 30 new varieties of beans that will thrive in the higher temperatures expected later this century, and which will pose a particular threat to harvests in Africa and Latin America.

The new ‘heat-beater’ beans, an important source of protein for around 400 million people, have been identified by plant breeders with the CGIAR global agriculture research partnership.

Steve Beebe, a senior CGIAR bean researcher, announced at a conference in Ethiopia: “This discovery could be a big boon for bean production because we are facing a dire situation where, by 2050, global warming could reduce areas suitable for growing beans by 50%.

“Incredibly, the heat-tolerant beans we tested may be able to handle a worst-case scenario where the build-up of greenhouse gases causes the world to heat up by an average of 4°C.

“Even if they can only handle a 3°C rise, that would still limit the bean production area lost to climate change to about 5%. And farmers could potentially make up for that by using these beans to expand their production of the crop in countries such as Nicaragua and Malawi, where beans are essential to survival.”

An essential and nutritious food around the tropics

Beans are often called the ‘meat of the poor’. They are highly nutritious, providing not only protein but fibre, complex carbohydrates, vitamins, and other micronutrients. In addition to heat tolerance, CGIAR researchers are also breeding lines with a higher iron content, in an effort to tackle malnutrition.

But how are the new beans likely to fare in farmers’ fields exposed to real world conditions, and pathogens? “So far, so good”, Dr Beebe told Climate News Network, referring to the outcome of field trials.

“Some of the lines are also drought-tolerant, and some are resistant to Bean Golden Yellow Mosaic Virus. There are two caveats. First, so far the best lines are small red types for Central America and parts of East Africa, so we have a long road to improve a range of grain types, colours, etc.

“The other issue is that we are taking these beans into a new environment that we don‘t know from the bean perspective. We have seen that a soil pathogen, pythium, is more severe. Will we find more surprises?”

Rising heat as climate change intensifies is expected to disrupt bean production in central and South American countries, including Nicaragua, Haiti, Brazil and Honduras. African countries thought to be at risk are principally Malawi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, followed by Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.

‘Heat-beaters’ emerged from testing over 1,000 varieties

The new beans are the result of CGIAR’s work to develop new crop varieties that can thrive in drastic weather extremes, based on research in its ‘genebanks‘, which preserve the world’s largest seed collections of the most important staple crops.

The heat-beaters emerged from the testing of more than 1,000 bean ‘lines’ – work that began as an effort to develop beans that could tolerate poor soils and drought.

The focus turned to heat-tolerance following a 2012 report from CGIAR scientists warning that heat was a much bigger threat to bean production than previously believed.

Many of the new heat-tolerant beans developed by the CGIAR scientists are ‘crosses’ of the common bean – which includes pinto, white, black, and kidney beans – and the tepary bean, a hardy survivor cultivated since pre-Columbian times in what is now part of northern Mexico and the southwest US.

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.