Operation Island Chief protects Pacific from illegal fishing

Fiji and Australian navies work together in a recent operation to curb IUU fishing in the Pacific.

Fiji Navy / Stuff NZ
By Samantha Mattila

1 September 2022 at 17:13

Operation Island Chief completes a 12-day Operation in the Pacific waters to collate, analyse and filter data to improve national and regional surveillance efforts in the High seas

Operation Island Chief, a Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency-led surveillance operation covering 18.2 million square kilometres, came to a successful closure Friday 26th August 2022.

Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) Director Fisheries Operations, Allan Rahari said the 12-day Operation was strengthened by local knowledge and expertise.

“Island Chief, one of four operations conducted annually, is a massive operation that covers the Pacific waters of 11 participating FFA member nations – Fiji, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Nauru, the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and the high sea area,” said Rahari.

The operation involved close to 400 personnel from the navy, police, air force and national fisheries bodies from across the Pacific.

The FFA Regional Fisheries Surveillance Centre (RFSC) team, supported by 11 officers from the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF), Solomon Islands Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Fijian Navy, U.S Coast Guard and Australian Defence Force, provided watchkeepers and intelligence gathering and analysis capability, supplementing targeted information before and during the operation in order to support targeted surveillance activities by Member countries.

“Regional collaboration, the co-operative sharing of resources and intelligence, and the ongoing training and strengthening of local expertise is a critical cornerstone of the success of our surveillance operations- our Pacific personnel are highly experienced,” Rahari said.

“Supporting Members to collate, analyse and filter data in order to improve national and regional surveillance efforts as well as to encourage and coordinate members monitoring and surveillance efforts in the High seas were key aims for Operation Island Chief. These aims were achieved during the operation.

Pacific QUAD partners, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, provided support through aerial and surface surveillance, alongside the FFA Aerial Surveillance Programme aircraft, further enhancing the maritime surveillance coverage during the operation. 11 ships, six aircraft and dark vessel detection technology rounded out the assets included in this complex operation. The operation was also supported by FFA partners, Global Fishing Watch, Canada Dark Vessel Detection (DVD) system and Xerra with data intelligence analysis and remote sensing capabilities.

“We’d like to thank and acknowledge our international partners who have a long history of support for these important Pacific surveillance operations,” continued Rahari.

FFA has been conducting surveillance operations in partnership with its Member countries and partners for over forty years. The FFA Operations have seen increasing levels of success with actions to tackle IUU evolving from previously being about protecting against illegal boats entering the fishery to being more around policing the operations of licensed vessels who haven’t followed the rules and regulations governing their activities. The Pacific region is a vast expanse and collaboration across the many partners, providing personnel and assets, is crucial to ongoing success.

This story was originally published at FFA on 26 August 2022 by Samantha Mattila, reposted via PACNEWS.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Two convicted of conspiracy and fraud in cattle Ponzi scheme

Individuals fraudulently raised money from investors across the country for cattle or marijuana businesses.

Aug 29, 2022

A federal jury has convicted a woman and man of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering relating to a scheme that fraudulently raised money from investors across the country.

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Reva Joyce Stachniw, 70, of Galesburg, Illinois, and Ron Throgmartin, 58, of Buford, Georgia, ran a Ponzi scheme from late 2017 and continuing through in or around early 2019 that raised approximately $650 million from victim-investors. Stachniw and Throgmartin fraudulently represented to victim-investors that their investments were backed by short-term investments in cattle. They also used false and fraudulent pretenses to solicit money from victim-investors for the conspirators’ Colorado-based marijuana business, Universal Herbs LLC. Other victim-investors gave the conspirators money based on false promises that investment money would be used for legitimate business activities related to cattle or marijuana, without having the investment money linked to specific investment opportunities.

Stachniw and Throgmartin were convicted on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, five counts of wire fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. The defendants are scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 6, 2023, and face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on each of the wire fraud counts and the conspiracy to commit wire fraud count, as well as 10 years in prison on the conspiracy to commit money laundering count. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division made the announcement.

‘Bark Map’ social media app causes outcry in Turkey after spike in number of poisoned street dogs

Activists in Turkey say dogs are being hunted with the Havita app. 

Pictured is Kusadasi on Turkey's Aegean coast. / Zeynel Cebeci, cc-by-sa 4.0.

By bne IntelIiNews

 August 24, 2022

Havrita (“Bark Map”), a Turkish social media app that targets stray dogs by providing users with a mapping/location service, has come under fire after a spike in the number of poisoned street dogs.

Launched in May 2022, Havrita allows the app user to share a picture of a dog and its location across all 81 provinces of Turkey. This appears to have led to the surge in the number of cases of poisoned dogs. Head of the Animal Rights Commission of the Istanbul Bar Association, Gulsaniye Ekmekci, told Gazete Duvar how in the southern Antalya province, around eight to 10 dogs were found dead around the same locations indicated on Havrita.

Amid a growing outcry, social media users in Turkey have started a hashtag (#HavritaKapatilsin (“Shut down Havrita”)) to call for the shutting down of Havrita. Protesters have taken aim at the platform's spokesperson, lawyer Devrim Kocak. However, in a tweet, Kocak suggested those wanting the platform taken offline were misguided.

According to the pro-government Sabah newspaper, “the platform is the work of a group of activists who founded it after a high school student was killed after he was mauled by 25 stray dogs in the central province of Kayseri in 2019.”

In another tweet, Kocak described the app as a “user-friendly social media application” that should be protected under Article 56 of the Constitution. The article protects people's right to live in a healthy and stable environment.

GlobalVoices noted that the Havrita website is full of photographs of stray dogs with locations. Havrita's founders, the media outlet reported, claimed it was not for targeting but for identifying locations, while adding that Havrita bears no responsibility for what happens to the dogs once their location is pinned on the map.

Guliz Gunduz, who works to help stray animals, raised concern about Havrita's past in an interview with online news platform Bianet. Havrita’s founders, he said, were involved in a public campaign several years ago that targeted street cats. The campaign went by the name of Anadolu Kedisi (“Anatolian Cat”).

“Then they went after dogs, and we, animal rights defenders and organisations, responded seriously. They stopped for a while, until approximately a year ago, the same people founded a website called Basibos Kopek Sorunu [‘The problem of the stray dog’]” said Gunduz was quoted as saying in the interview. In response, he added, people started feeling uneasy when passing stray dogs. “Even though, street animals are afraid [of] us anyway. They face violence and abuse anyway. Instead of punishing the culprits, we are now seeing that the stray dogs are held accountable,” he said.

On August 22, after orders from the Ankara Criminal Judgeship of Peace no. 1, access to the Havrita app and website were blocked. On the same day, Kocak said the application would be paused due to the public backlash.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has previously described shelters available for stray dogs as clean and safe environments. But critics claim there are very few shelters in Turkey that provide adequate services to stray dogs.

In an interview with The Independent, Mine Vural, an animal rights activist and veterinary technician in Istanbul, said: “in general in Turkey, shelters are trauma and death camps for animals.”

STRAY DOGS ARE ALLOWED TO ROAM FREE IN TURKEY AND HAVE CREATED THEIR OWN DOG CULTURE ON THE STREETS AS THIS DOCUMENTARY SHOWS

 

 

 

Turkey's stray dogs at risk in government roundup. Director of the film "Stray," Elizabeth Lo on CNN

Feb 15, 2022

Stray dogs are a common site in Turkish cities with more than 100,000 of them roaming the streets in Istanbul alone. For many, the canines are beloved four-legged members of the community that had been protected under the country's no kill, no capture mandate. But late last year, the Turkish president asked city leaders to round up strays... after a child was bitten in one incident. It's not clear whether that dog attack actually involved strays. But since then, some places have begun capturing and removing them. The biting incident set off a culture war, with many dogs being captured, terrorized, left to die... even killed. Filmmaker Elizabeth Lo documented some of Turkey's stray dogs surviving, if not thriving, on the streets of Istanbul in her movie, "Stray," released in 2020. Since the government crackdown, Lo returned to Istanbul to find and rescue one of the stars of her film, this charming pup, Zeytin. Elizabeth Lo joined CNN's Rosemary Church on February 15, 2022, to bring awareness to the plight of Turkey's dogs.

Philadelphia Beagle Brigade protects U.S. agriculture

CBP

Recent seizures include 44 pounds of beef, uncooked rice, fruits, vegetables, leaves and seeds as well as 19 pounds of prohibited beef, pork and fruit.

Aug 22, 2022

At first glance, U.S. Customs and Border Protection's agriculture-detecting beagles look like adorable little pets who greet international travelers to the United States. But that cuteness belies the very serious role that CBP's Beagle Brigade plays at Philadelphia International Airport to protect the nation's agricultural interests and economy.

That mission was on display recently when CBP agriculture detector dog Harrie detected nearly 44 pounds of beef, uncooked rice, fruits, vegetables, leaves and seeds in the checked baggage of a couple who arrived from Bangladesh. The couple denied possessing any agriculture products during their primary inspection, but Harrie easily sniffed it out.

These seemingly harmless products, however, pose a very real threat of introducing foreign animal or plant diseases, invasive insects, or federal noxious weeds into U.S. agriculture and ecology.

According to the USDA, uncooked rice is prohibited from importing in passenger baggage from countries infested with Khapra beetle. Khapra beetle is one of world's most destructive pests of grain products and seeds. If Khapra beetle establishes in the United States, it could have a crippling effect on our ability to export grain products. Additionally, unpermitted beef products from regions that have experienced episodes of animal diseases are prohibited from the United States. Previous outbreaks across the globe indicate that bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease, is costly to eradicate.

Last year, CBP agriculture canines detected 120,269 prohibited items at CBP Ports of Entry across the country, and 96,450 items through June this year. For context, CBP agriculture detector dogs intercepted 153,620 prohibited items in 2019 before COVID-19 suspended international travel.

This latest seizure continued K9 Harrie's recent string of impressive detection successes.

On Aug. 10, Harrie alerted to the baggage of a student arriving from Kenya whose mother sent him off to school with nearly 15 pounds of vegetables, and on Aug. 1, Harrie alerted to the baggage of another traveler from Bangladesh. Inside his baggage CBP agriculture specialists discovered about 19 pounds of prohibited beef, pork and fruit.

Earlier, Harrie's cheery canine comrade Bowey detected more than 60 packets of propagative seeds in the baggage of yet another traveler from Bangladesh while Harrie discovered 12 pounds of unknown fresh leaves and three pounds of powdered chicken bouillon packed in six different checked bags belonging to a traveler from Nigeria.

All seized products were destroyed.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Beagle Brigade in Philadelphia works hard to sniff out potential threats to our nation's agricultural industries and continue to rack up impressive detections of prohibited animal products, vegetables and propagative seeds.

Both Harrie and Bowey have served on CBP's Philadelphia Beagle Brigade for less than one year, but they routinely earn results like seasoned vets.

"Canines are a critical component to protecting our nation's agricultural industries from the accidental or deliberate exposure to diseases or pests because the scent of travelers' forbidden fruit can't escape our Beagle Brigade," says Joseph Martella, area port director for CBP's Area Port of Philadelphia. "Customs and Border Protection strongly encourages all travelers to know what they can and cannot pack in their baggage before returning to or visiting the United States. For those who try to smuggle prohibited products anyway, know that our agriculture detector dogs will be very happy to point those products out for CBP agriculture specialists to seize."

CBP agriculture specialists have extensive training and experience in the biological sciences and agricultural inspection, and they inspect tens of thousands of international air passengers, and air and sea cargoes being imported to the United States. They are on our nation's frontlines to ensure our nation's economic vitality by protecting our vital agricultural resources.

During a typical day last year, CBP agriculture specialists across the nation seized 4,552 prohibited plant, meat, animal byproducts, and soil, and intercepted 319 insect pests at U.S. ports of entry.

With international travel picking up post-COVID and the busy summer travel season, CBP urges all travelers to visit CBP's Travel website to 'know before they go' and learn what products that are prohibited or inadmissible to bring to the United States.

Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is solely responsible for the information provided, and wholly owns the information. Informa Business Media and all its subsidiaries are not responsible for any of the content contained in this information asset.

IAEA chief Rafael Grossi arrives at the occupied Zaporizhzhia power plant 

By Dominic Culverwell in Kyiv September 2, 2022

Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrived at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) on September 1, despite shelling that shut down operating unit 5 and attacks on the nearby city of Enerhodar.

The strikes came as 14 experts from the IAEA announced a visit to the Russian-occupied NPP amidst concerns over a nuclear disaster and abuse of the Ukrainian workers, Ukrainian Pravda reported on September 1. Repeated shelling at the plant has caused fear that an accident is waiting to happen, with both Kyiv and Moscow accusing each other of the attacks.

“On the eve of the visit of the IAEA mission, the Rushists [Russian soldiers] resorted to new provocations at the ZNPP. On 1 September, at 04:57, as a result of another mortar shelling by the Russian occupying forces at the site of the ZNPP, the emergency protection system was activated and operating power unit 5 was shut down," Ukraine’s state-run nuclear operator Energoatom announced.

The IAEA experts made it through Russian-controlled territory, despite being initially denied special passes from Moscow’s forces, and arrived at the ZNPP accompanied by a Russian convoy. After months of requests, the experts finally inspected the plant.

“We were able, in these few hours, to gather a lot of information. The key things I needed to see, I saw,” IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said. He confirmed that representatives from the IAEA will remain at the plant until September 3 with a permanent presence planned in the near future, BBC Russia reported.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on Russia last month to “immediately and unconditionally allow representatives of the IAEA to the station” and “unconditionally withdraw its troops from the territory of the station”, during a meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on August 18 in Lviv.

Moscow responded by saying that the proposal to demilitarise the area around the ZNPP was “unacceptable”, Reuters reported. Moreover, Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov denied that heavy weapons were in proximity to the plant and insisted that Moscow was ensuring the safety of the site. However, Russian military trucks were secretly filmed in the plant last week and were spotted again in footage from the IAEA inspection. It is not known what is inside the vehicles.

The plant is the largest in Europe and accounts for one-fifth of Ukraine's annual electricity production. Last month, Russia announced that it wants to switch the ZNPP to the Russian grid under the control of Rosatom in order to transfer power to occupied Crimea, which would result in blackouts across southern Ukraine and mean that Kyiv would have to recapture the plant in order to reconnect it to its grid. Although disconnecting from Ukraine’s grid would be extremely difficult, it is not impossible.

Despite the war, Ukraine has managed to keep eight out of 15 nuclear energy reactors online. The seven other reactors are shut down for regular maintenance or held in reserve. Safety systems remain operational at the four NPPs, and they also continue to have off-site power available, Ukraine said.

LACK OF CENTRAL PLANNING

Hawaii closes last coal-fired power plant

Associated Press

Hawaii’s only remaining coal-fired power plant closed this week, but renewables meant to replace that energy production are not yet ready. (Sept. 1)(AP Video: Caleb Jones)

Crypto finds its wings amid hard times in Mongolia

Screenshot of a promotional video for Inflation Hedging Coin,

 or IHC, launched in Mongolia.

 / IHC video screengrab.

By Antonio Graceffo in Ulaanbaatar August 26, 2022

It’s no wonder Mongolians are increasingly turning to cryptocurrency. Mongolia’s 3.3mn people are enduring a third year of the Covid economy, while they are also beset by skyrocketing gas prices, a falling currency and shortages caused by economic effects of the war in Ukraine.

Thirty-nine-year-old Sundui, coin director (operations) at Coinhub, explained how Mongolians use cryptocurrency to mitigate financial risk. “It's not a risk-free move to keep money in tughrik savings in the bank when inflation is high. Inflation is 15%, savings are 9% and prices are rising. But the reality is that you're losing 6%.”

Sundui’s sentiments were backed up by numerous Mongolians from various walks of life.

Twenty-one-year-old university student Naranbayar said that he started investing in cryptocurrency two years ago as a result of high inflation. “The inflation rate began rising rapidly a year after Covid-19 happened. And I started investing in crypto and local coins. This is a common reason for crypto investment. Mongolia even has the Inflation Hedging Coin [IHC].”

“Mongolians are investing in crypto,” said Minga Batsukh, co-founder and director of Blockrock Management. “They don’t want to put all their eggs in one basket, but crypto is one of the options, particularly for young people. It has increased tremendously over the past six to seven months. The number of people talking about crypto is much larger than a year ago, or two years ago. And the numbers keep growing.”

Investing in crypto was not always an option for Mongolians. Minga first became interested in cryptocurrency in 2016 after talking to a coworker from New York. He recounted how in 2017, when he started investing, “Mongolia did not have platforms, and most people did not know what crypto was. I had to use foreign platforms from China or Europe. Now you can invest directly from Mongolian bank accounts, easily moving money in and out.”

Mongolia’s first cryptocurrency was ArdCoin, which was issued by Ard Financial Group in January 2019. ArdCoin offered Mongolians the opportunity to exchange ArdCoin for Mongolian tughrik, US dollars or other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Having a homegrown coin also affords Mongolians living abroad the opportunity to access their country’s financial markets. Some sources claim that as many as 500,000 people, or one in six Mongolians, own ArdCoin. Sundui estimated that across all of the coins, the number could be as high as 600,000 active traders.

As of November 30, 2021, there were 12 cryptocurrency exchanges in Mongolia: DAX Crypto exchange, Coinhub exchange, Trade Exchange, Complex Exchange, Corex Exchange, Capex Exchange, National Crypto Exchange, Ebit Exchange, Stock Exchange, Retex Exchange, My coin Exchange and Coinsea Exchange. While the exchanges trade online, many of the companies that operate them have physical addresses in Ulaanbaatar.

Mongolian investment in coins is directly correlated to the Mongolian calendar with investment dropping during cash-intensive holidays such as Tsagaan Sar (Mongolian Lunar New Year), Valentine's Day, Women's Day and Men's Day. During the pandemic, these holidays were cancelled, so investment was high. In 2022, the holidays were reinstated and investment fell off.

Cheap money transfers

Although cryptocurrencies cannot be used to purchase anything in the country, Mongolians have found other uses for them. Sundui said that Mongolians were using coins as a fast and cheap means of transferring money abroad. “The total time to receive an external USD swift transaction is two days, but crypto is only a matter of minutes and the cost is even lower. So, it is more convenient to use crypto to make international payments.”

Davaadorj, a 25-year-old UX/UI designer and social media specialist, invests in crypto for growth and to generate passive income. “The main reason why I invest in crypto is that when compared to stocks, index-wise, they are far more fast-growing and profitable.”

The pandemic accelerated cryptocurrency investment as many Mongolians saw an alternative way to earn money during lockdown. Twenty-six-year-old Baasanerdene, of Capex Exchange, said: “During the pandemic, the number of people who invested in crypto increased, because people were staying home, and most of them were searching for ways to earn money online.”

While interest in cryptocurrency is growing in Mongolia, domestic coins have been problematic. The high penetration of ArdCoin is in part due to the fact that at least 33 companies are offering ArdCoin as a bonus to their customers. These companies, who regularly purchase coins to issue to customers, are creating a market and giving the coin some liquidity. Lack of liquidity has been a key reason why international cryptocurrencies are preferred to domestic coins.

Mistrust of Mongolian coins is another factor steering Mongolians toward international coins. Twenty-one-year-old Naranbayar, a university student who invests in cryptocurrency, reflected, “Local cryptocurrencies are somewhat in a big mess right now. Because people have invested, people lost a lot. A lot of times, the majority of times, people lost money, which is bad… [An exception is] the IHC, but now its price is declining to 0.40 tughrik [a fraction of its previous value] and that just shows the true nature of local coins”.

The language barrier has made domestic coins more appealing for some because it’s harder to access information on international coins; however, international coins are more profitable because of the size of the market according to Ariunjargal, a 52-year-old construction engineer who recently turned his attention toward international coins.

With coins such as Bitcoin losing as much as 50% of their value in 2022, the Mongolian government has been increasing the regulation of cryptocurrencies. In particular, Mongolian coins are coming under government scrutiny. Legislation regulating the cryptocurrency industry, known as the Law on Virtual Property Service Providers, came into force on December 14 last year.

At least 59 cryptocurrencies have been issued in Mongolia but 21 of the coins have been banned under the Virtual Investor Law. However, 26-year-old Baasanerdene of Capex Exchange said that of the roughly 41 Mongolian coins currently in existence, only 17 are traded on Capex Capital. Sundui confirmed that there are 32 international coins and nine local coins in Mongolia.

Baasanerdene commented on the government regulation, saying, “Since the Financial Regulatory Commission [FRC] set a threshold, there has been no new coins issued. There are also crypto coins that are at risk of being removed.” He recalled that on February 25, the FRC legislation led to the suspension of several coins.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February, a lot of Mongolians have ceased their crypto investing. “People react to war and different economic situations very fast,” said Baasanerdene. The macroeconomic situation has also spooked some investors. “And despite the large number of customers in the crypto market, the value of the crypto currencies has been depreciating, and in these situations investors have been reluctant to invest as a way of offsetting risk,” added Baasanerdene.

Davaadorj agreed that pessimism has spread aross crypto investing because of the war. “Since the beginning of the war, the market as a whole has been in a slump, making long-term trading impossible.”

Suldbayar, on the other hand, has increased his investment activity since the conflict began. “The war in Ukraine made me invest more because saving the money as tughrik means lost value over time; it is beneficial if I convert it.”

And there lies the crux. In fraught times, many, including Ariunjargal, continue to conclude that it is safer to keep their assets in currencies that are tradable in USD.

Antonio Graceffo, PhD, China-MBA, is an economist and China analyst who has spent over 20 years in Asia, including seven in China, two and a half in Taiwan, and two and a half in Mongolia. He conducted post-doctoral studies in international trade, at School of Economics Shanghai University, holds a PhD. from Shanghai University of Sport, and China-MBA from Shanghai Jiaotong University. Antonio is the author of seven books about Asia, 3 of which are about the Chinese economy. For the past 10 years, he has been reporting on the Chinese economy, US-China trade war, investment, geopolitics, and defence. Since 2019, Antonio has been based out of Ulaanbaatar, where he continues his China economic research, while also reporting on the Mongolian economy. In addition to publishing reports and articles on a regular basis, he makes frequent appearances on television as a China economic expert on NTD TV, Bloomberg Mongolia TV, and VTV.

NGO says air pollution kills thousands in Bosnia every year

The country ranks among the most polluted during 

winter months as it still relies strongly on coal and wood

for heating and electricity generation.

By Denitsa Koseva in Sofia August 29, 2022

Air pollution is killing thousands of people prematurely each year in Bosnia & Herzegovina as authorities have failed to tackle the problem, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement on August 29.

The country ranks among the most polluted during winter months as it still relies strongly on coal and wood for heating and electricity generation. According to HRW, Bosnia has the fifth-highest mortality rate caused by air pollution.

“An outdated reliance on coal in Bosnia and Herzegovina is killing thousands every year, while the authorities do little to prevent the problem or even to warn people of the risk to their health,” Felix Horne, senior environment researcher at HRW, said in the statement.

It added that every year around 3,000 people die prematurely from exposure to air pollution, which is 9% of all deaths. During winter, the level of fine particulate matter, nitrous dioxide, sulphur dioxide and other deadly pollutants regularly exceed the safe levels set by the World Health Organisation.

People living near any of the Bosnia’s five coal plants said that friends, family and neighbours had died from cancer and cardiovascular or respiratory ailments, allegedly caused or exacerbated by the pollution from the plants. That has been confirmed by healthcare workers in those areas.

At the same time, local government authorities have admitted that the country’s 17 air pollution monitoring stations sometimes are out of service, especially in Republika Srpska – the Serb-dominated autonomous entity, which, along with the Muslim-Croat Federation, make up Bosnia. At the same time, many of the stations do not adequately monitor particulate matter 2.5, which is one of the main pollutants.

BOOK REVIEW: Climate change on the Arctic treeline

By bne IntelliNews September 2, 2022


Trees almost surround the North Pole, with vast forests spreading across Scandinavia, northern Scotland, Greenland, Canada, Alaska and – the largest stretch of unbroken forest – northern Siberia and the Russian Far East. In The Treeline: The last forest and the future of life on earth, Ben Rawlence travels to remote settlements along the treeline, charting the gradual northward creep of the forests onto land that was once too cold to support tree growth.

As the world grapples with the climate crisis, the importance of the world’s northern forests can hardly be over-estimated. After the oceans, this is the world’s second largest biome: it covers one-fifth of the globe and contains one-third of its trees. It has also – despite the ravages of logging and ever more frequent forest fires – survived better than the Amazon, which one of Rawlence’s interviewees, the author, medical biochemist and botanist Diana Beresford-Kroeger, says is “done for”, while other tropical forests are “severely degraded”. That leaves the northern boreal as the world’s “last forest”.

However, climate change is taking its toll in the far north too. The position of the Arctic treeline broadly tracks the line around the globe where the average summer temperature is 10C, but this no longer coincides with the Arctic Circle. The great forests are moving northwards as the earth heats up, taking over the tundra to the north, while some of the southern reaches of the forest become dry steppe. The place where Rawlence starts his journey, the Scottish Cairngorms, will be well south of the treeline by the end of the century.

Even in the most northerly forest on earth at Ary Mas in the far north of Russia, things are changing. Deep inside the Arctic Circle, Rawlence reaches Ary Mas after a gruelling journey over tundra and the frozen sea, finding a mix of nostalgia for the old way of life and a welcoming of new technologies among the Dolgans. While the changes the region’s residents observe are small, there are clear differences: new kinds of birds migrating north, daisies and dragonflies appearing in the tundra.

Climate change accelerating

Climate change is happening much faster than anyone predicted in Siberia; the forest fires seen in 2020 not been forecast until four decades later. That year, temperatures broke records, and a massive toxic spill from oil tanks in the Arctic city of Norilsk was caused at least partly by melting permafrost.

The worrying developments have continued in 2021 and 2022. The wildfires in the taiga forests in Siberia and the Far East in 2021 were unprecedented, covering an area of at least 18.8mn hectares, and for the first time ever smoke from the fires reached the North Pole.

This summer, attention has been diverted to the war in Ukraine, but the forests are still burning, and states of emergency have been declared in seven Russian regions. Nor was the western part of the country spared; in late August fires south of Moscow blanketed the capital with smog.

At the Sukachev Institute in Krasnoyarsk – where the author arrives in an unseasonably warm February – Rawlence interviews Nadezhda Tchebakova, a scientist modelling future scenarios for Siberia’s forests.

Tchebakova’s model, based on scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), forecasts that while the northern treelike will shift polewards slightly, "the real change was the taiga’s southern limit. With increasing drought and more frequent fires, the steppe of Central Asia was projected to expand, consuming the burned out taiga as it went, preventing it from regenerating.” That is already happening.

The increased frequency of fires – which typically used to break out between five and 30 years apart and are now annual events – mean that instead of forests regrowing after fires, the trees are not coming back.

Changed forests

An important point made by Rawlence is that simply having more trees, further north, is not a solution to climate change.

“While the boreal is the greatest planetary source of oxygen, more trees there does not necessarily mean more carbon sequestered from the atmosphere,” he writes.

“As trees invade frozen tundra they hasten the melting of permafrost, frozen soils that contain enough greenhouse gases (GHGs) to accelerate global warming beyond anything scientists have modelled.”

The new northerly forests and those that grow back after fires are not the same as the old forests; their structure is dramatically different. In Siberia, Scots pine is replacing larch on burn sites, leading to a reduction in the carbon the forests can hold. Of the carbon dioxide that the taiga sequesters, larch is responsible for soaking up 55%, even if under 40% of the trees are larches.

That leads to a major hole in many models, which rely on fixed assumptions of how much carbon dioxide forests can store. However, a “warming forest is less efficient at cycling and sequestering carbon”, warns Rawlence, citing one study which says by 2040 forests will only absorb half as much carbon dioxide as they do at present.

In some of the other changes he observes, aggressive tree growth in northern Scandinavia is putting reindeer herding at risk, as reindeer need old growth forests that take 160 years to grow. Pines in Scotland are releasing seeds sooner, disrupting seasonal cycles of the forest. In Alaska the trees are turning brown as the warming air sucks moisture out of their leaves.

Opening the Arctic

Tchebakova forecasts, as quoted by Rawlance, that by 2100 50% or more of Siberia’s forest will become steppe. The southern boundary of the forests will move around 1,000 km north, making around 85% of Siberia suitable for agriculture.

The warming climate is already opening up the Arctic economy. Among the developments listed by Rawlance are wind farms inside the Arctic circle in Norway, RusAgro expanding wheat farms near Vladivostok and the opening of Arctic shipping routes.

At the same time, as large swathes of the Arctic are set to become habitable for humans within this century, the opposite is happening further south. By 2070, an estimated 3bn people will be living areas where it is too hot to work outside or sleep without air conditioning. A wave of emigration from south to north – including to Arctic areas – is forecast.

Cruel feedback loops

Multiple examples come up of what Rawlence calls “cruel feedback loops”, where one change precipitates further developments that accelerate the process of climate change.

Thus the blackening of glaciers in Greenland leads to them absorbing more heat and accelerates melting. Another example is that Siberian rivers are now discharging 15% more water into the Arctic ocean than they were a decade ago, which in turn is changing the salinity of the ocean.

And, as documented in the book, forest fires, the warmer climate and the steady northward movement of the forests are melting the permafrost, which stores more carbon than humans have released since they started burning fossil fuels.

Erdogan regime protests ‘fake news’ after Reuters probes Turkey’s muzzled media
Fahrettin Altun, head of the Erdogan administration's 

Directorate of Communications, is seen bottom right. 

/ Turkic States, cc-by-sa 2.0.

By bne IntelIiNews September 1, 2022

A Reuters investigation into Turkey’s “muzzled media” on August 31 drew a charge of “fake news” from Fahrettin Altun, head of the government’s Directorate of Communications.

The news agency’s report concluded that “the Turkish mainstream media, once a more lively clash of ideas, has become a tight chain of command of government-approved headlines, front pages and topics of TV debate.

“Interviews with dozens of sources in the media, government officials and regulators portray an industry that has fallen in line with other formerly independent institutions that [President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan has bent to his will, including, his critics say, the judiciary, military, central bank and large parts of the education system. Government pressure and media self-censorship share the blame, according to the people interviewed by Reuters.”

Responding to the investigation, Altun was reported by government-controlled TRT World as tweeting that Reuters was an "apparatus of perception operations and systematic manipulation".

The news service referred to more than a dozen industry insiders as saying that directions to newsrooms in Turkey “often come from officials in the government’s Directorate of Communications, which handles media relations... The directorate is an Erdogan creation, employing some 1,500 people and headquartered in a tower block in Ankara”. Altun’s officials, it added, “issue their instructions in phone calls or Whatsapp messages that sometimes address newsroom managers with the familiar ‘brother’,”.

The Reuters report also observed: “As Turkey approaches presidential and parliamentary elections, which are due in the course of the next year, Erdogan finds himself trailing in many polls. His unorthodox policy of slashing interest rates set off a currency crisis and inflationary spiral even before the war in Ukraine caused a surge in global energy and food prices. The lira has lost more than a quarter of its value this year and annual inflation is 80%, deepening poverty among Erdogan’s main working-class and lower-middle-class supporters.

“Political analysts say the president will need as much media help as he can get if he is to extend his tenure to a third decade leading Turkey, a Nato member and regional military power that sits at the crossroads of global migration, trade and history.”

In May, the Erdogan administration proposed a law it claimed would fight media “disinformation”. It did not define what that is.

Exiled editor warns of fear, loathing and wishful thinking in Turkey ahead of Erdogan fight for survival

Erdogan chairing a national security council meeting. / Turkish Presidency.

By bne IntelIiNews August 31, 2022

Turkey has steadily descended into a dark abyss during the past three years, and is now entering “a phase of fear, rage and loathing and, among the Turkish elite, one of wishful thinking”.

So writes Yavuz Baydar, self-exiled Turkish editor-in-chief of Ahval, while warning those who want to see the back of Turkey’s president of two decades Recep Tayyip Erdogan in elections due by next June that, whatever the polls might be telling them, they risk “underestimating the skills of a political animal”.

Baydar, who in 1999 became Turkey’s first news ombudsman and left the country after the failed coup against Erdogan in 2016, assesses what might be in store for Turks during the run-up to the elections, cautioning: “With the elections seemingly fixed for late spring next year (unless unexpected, extraordinary circumstances force snap polls) the country, whose bumpy adventures leave its neighbours—and allies afar—short of breath, shows all sorts of signs of a systemic crisis. It is bound to become unbearable at some point, inevitably leading to a domestic confrontation. Whether or not that clash is a peaceful one is anyone’s guess. Nobody has any idea what awaits Turkey in the course of some 10 months—and beyond.

“The main reason for this immense set of uncertainties is, primarily, the success of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in creating a country in his own image. His mind has always been chaotic, labyrinthine. Extremely volatile and ‘slippery’ in his acts, Erdogan has projected a sense of unpredictability to the entire society, and a mindset that thrives on it. The deeper the crisis he may have caused, the more determined his drive for survival appears.”

Turkey, says Baydar, is marked by an absence of the rule of law and the collapse of checks and balances, “accompanied by the de-institutionalisation of the state and a massive transformation of the bureaucracy by the appointment of partisan—and unqualified—cadres”. This, he adds, has “pumped up a tsunami of corruption and missteps—at the central and local level”.

Now ruled by the strategic notions of “security and militarism”, Turkey is now arguably a combination of a “police state” and “mafia state”, observes Baydar, saying of the nation’s authoritarian leader: “Having been extremely obstinate (in his quasi ‘economic theories’), relentless (in targeting the opposition and dissidents), and surrounded by greedy business circles (from all sides of the societal spectrum, not only Islamists), flunkey bureaucrats and the mob, Erdogan is fully aware of the stakes as the elections approach: The sheer scale of his abuse of power makes the vote a lethal game of survival: He simply cannot afford to lose.

“On the other hand, as contradictory as it seems, he has a vision for 2023. He is resolved to crown his rule as an ultimate victor, as Turkey will celebrate its centennial. Having come this far, Erdogan will do his utmost to turn the pages written by the nation’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. If he wins the elections, one should take it for granted that Turkey will have passed an historic threshold, a point of no return.

“With its Western vocation terminated, we shall all see the emergence of a Central Asian type of Turkish republic, with more ingredients of political Islam than those in existence, but otherwise identical in its structure: A dynasty taking shape with a dead-loyal administration, and a paralysed society, driven by fear—pushed to a uniform identity.”

But, says Baydar, the opposition “seem either unaware or indifferent”.

“The current political tendency,” he adds, “is to adopt the conformist notion that ‘the economic crisis will hit rock bottom so badly that Erdogan and his men will fall by themselves’.

Thus far, says Baydar, the election preparations of the six-party opposition alliance resemble a loosely connected “discussion club” which, despite months of “deliberations”, is yet to come up with a candidate to challenge Erdogan at the presidential elections. “Instead,” he adds, “their leaders are busy designing what they call an ‘empowered parliamentary system’, about which dismayed voters seem to have neither interest nor understanding.”

As the clock ticks towards the fateful day, Erdogan has on his side the state apparatus—with both the ministers of justice and interior “his men”—the Supreme Electoral Board, with its vote counting algorithms and his supporters, “many of them men armed to the teeth, ready to act whenever the ‘boss’ says so,” writes Baydar.

“Against this backdrop, some hopefuls nowadays claim that Turkish voters will, by way of the ballot box, set an example to the world that ‘it is possible to oust an autocrat’. This may prove to be a case of wishful thinking. Hoping for democratic change is one thing, underestimating the skills of a political animal is another. Yes, Turkey is heading for an extremely delicate period,” concludes Baydar.