Last primary rainforests of Sarawak under immediate danger of destruction

12 February 2007

Samling, the Malaysian logging giant, has started to log the last primary rainforests of the Malaysian state of Sarawak after the police removed a roadblock set up by the local indigenous Penan communities. This was learned from the Borneo Resource Institute BRIMAS, a local NGO based in the city of Miri.

Environmental groups are withholding judgment on the deal struck Thursday between Shell and Russia in which the government-controlled Gazprom apparently acquires a majority stake in the problem-plagued Sakhalin II oil and gas project.[1]

There’s good news to celebrate with our campaign partners in New Caledonia! A French court ordered a temporary halt to construction of the Goro Nickel plant in New Caledonia, on environmental grounds. Since 2003, Global Response has organized several rounds of letter-writing in support of the indigenous Kanak people who oppose the Goro project.

Tropical Rainforest and Native Communities May Never Fully Heal From Three Decades of Carcinogenic Dumping: Online Interviews with Achuar Leaders

By Tony Thien

Some 3,000 Penan from 11 longhouses in the Belaga district in Sarawak filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) against a private company engaged in logging, plantation and reforestation activities on a sizeable area of their land.

A Suhakam team which went to the area recently to follow up on the complaint found clear evidence of what one of its commissioners Dr Denison Jayasooria described as "the devastation of forests as far as the eyes can see."

Russia has ordered a full environmental probe of Royal Dutch Shell's US billion Sakhalin-2 oil and gas development in Russia's Far East

Shell has already spent upwards of US billion on Sakhalin-2, due to start up in 2008. Much of the initial production has found customers in the United States and Japan.

Until August, the company said it had worked in step with Russian regulators to fulfil all necessary regulations.

Celebrate this victory in a campaign we launched in January 2004!

Thanks to all who have written letters to the Russian government and to the Sakhalin II oil project's potential financial backers. With this week's decision, the Russian government has taken an important step to put some teeth into corporate accountability and to protect Sakhalin's fragile wild salmon habitat.

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Russia Revokes Permit for Sakhalin Energy Project

We've just received good news from Kosovo, where the United Nations is at long last providing appropriate medical treatment to Roma children who are suffering from lead poisoning. The poisoning occurred while displaced Roma families lived in UN-administered camps that were contaminated with lead.

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's environmental regulator said Tuesday it had filed suit seeking to revoke approval for a billion international oil project led by Royal Dutch Shell on the Pacific island of Sakhalin.

The Federal Service for the Supervision of Natural Resources had signaled for several weeks that it planned to ask the Natural Resources Ministry to withdraw its approval for the Sakhalin-2 project in Russia's Far East.

Environmental groups today welcomed the decision by the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources to sue to halt construction of the Royal Dutch Shell’s Sakhalin-II pipeline. The Russian Ministry of Natural Resources announced on August 3, 2006 that it will sue Shell’s Sakhalin II oil and gas project due to poor engineering that has resulted in land slides that are environmentally harmful and a safety hazard. Several independent environmental organizations have confirmed these findings.

We just received great news from Kosovo: almost all Roma families have been safely relocated from lead-contaminated camps where they lived for seven years. Two of the three lead-contaminated camps have been leveled (Kablare and Zitkovac). A few families remain in the Chesmin Lug camp, but almost everyone is safely relocated in the new camp Osterode.