Monthly Archives: January 2014

Will Arctic business collaboration lead to a greener northern economy?

30 January, 2014Generalarctic counciluser

A new forum will bring Arctic businesses together to advise the Arctic Council, the Arctic’s main international governing body, on the unique economic challenges facing the north.
A flagship initiative of the Canadian chairmanship of the Arctic Council, the Arctic Economic Council (AEC) was developed to foster sustainable business development in the Arctic through international cooperation, and bring a business perspective to the Arctic Council.
WWF welcomes the AEC, and hopes it will ensure the long-term health and prosperity of the region by committing to corporate social responsibility, managing risk and environmental impacts, and planning for long-term stability.
Specifically, WWF hopes the AEC will:

Create green investment mechanisms to finance sustainable development in the circumpolar Arctic, particularly renewable energy projects.
Establish and share common Arctic regulations for the assessment of risk and environmental impacts, and conducting those assessments at every stage of industrial development projects.
Finance and share research that establishes environmental baselines and monitors industrial impacts.
Take into account all aspects of an ecosystem – biological, economic and cultural, and the cumulative impacts of human activity on the entire system.
Develop local, national and international policies that lead to long-term economic stability, rather than short-term domestic revenue.
Agree on a broad membership, including civil society organizations, and invite only businesses with a demonstrated record of environmental protection.

Industry is a critical player in the future of the Arctic. The AEC presents an opportunity to harness the private sector’s resources to develop innovative solutions leading to sustainable business decisions throughout the Arctic.
Few details are currently available about the AEC. We hope our recommendations will be reflected in the group’s operating terms.
See the official release from the Arctic Council.

Responsive Layout

30 January, 2014CMS Newscss, layout, mobile, panda.org, responsive, tablet, templateuser

Great news! The panda.org, WWF New Zealand and WWF India websites have just launched the responsive version for mobile and tablets. The other sites will receive this update as well in the coming weeks. Continue reading →

The Arctic by ship – what we learned about change

28 January, 2014From the fieldindigenous people, narwhal, oil and gas, sea ice, students on iceuser

Orca, Tremblay Sound.© Pascale Otis / Students on Ice

Development is increasing

Just in the time we have been sailing in west Greenland and the eastern Canadian Arctic, we have seen a large increase in shipping associated with resource development (mining and oil and gas exploration).

Hunting is more difficult

Hunters spoke to us about changes in the migration timing and pathways of many species, including caribou, narwhal and polar bear.

Less sea ice, unpredictable weather

Both scientific and anecdotal evidence clearly shows a reduction in summer sea ice in the Arctic. Although it is difficult for us to see this trend from just a few seasons sailing, long term monitoring, and stories from elders show that this is a very real manifestation of climate change. Over the short term that we have observed, from season to season, sea ice cover and weather patterns have proved to be more erratic, and more difficult to predict.

More ship traffic

This year, about 30 small yachts tried to transit the Northwest Passage (compared to 2 in 2006)! Although reliable commercial shipping through the passage is still some time away in the Canadian Arctic, there has been a marked increase in commercial traffic through Russian waters in recent years. With such an increase in traffic issues like search and rescue, pollution control is of key concern.

New species are moving north

This year, we filmed orcas in the north predating on narwhal… something that had never been filmed before! Although this is thought to have occurred for a number of years, it is still a poorly understood species interaction that might be related to climate change and reducing sea ice, allowing orcas to extend their range. We have heard similar stories of Pacific salmon being caught in the eastern Canadian Arctic.

We can’t clean up one Arctic oil spill, let alone hundreds

24 January, 2014Generaloil and gasuser

A warming Arctic means a new frontier is opening to oil and gas exploration, with the promise of prosperity for Arctic nations. But can oil companies clean up even one oil spill in icy waters?
WWF’s Alexander Shestakov argues that the technology simply does not exist to ensure safe oil development in the Arctic, in this new documentary from Danish broadcaster DR.
Watch the documentary (In Danish and English, with Danish subtitles)

Note: Mr. Shestakov speaks (in English) at 1:30, 5:35, 9:50 and 27:20.

A small ship in the big Arctic

21 January, 2014From the fieldstudents on iceuser

The Arctic Tern I, © Students on Ice / Pascale Otis

A small vessel allows close interaction with communities. Arriving on a small yacht (as opposed to by plane, or sailing in on a large ship) instantly signals to communities that you have made a big effort to visit. We have found that small boats, although more and more common in the north, still create a real interest with people in every town we visit. A small boat provides an environment that both youth and elders appear comfortable and happy to visit (and possibly work on in the future). Arctic Tern has been a great facilitator for meeting the locals, sharing stories and having a laugh as we sit around the table over a hot coffee!

We can spend more time on individual projects, for a lot less cost, compared to larger expedition ships that typically have multiple projects sharing time and resources, and a very inflexible schedule.

We can access shallow coastal waters, exploring areas of the coast where larger ships generally don’t sail.

Doing anything in the north requires either a helicopter/plane or boat to go anywhere. A small yacht allows us to operate autonomously, providing a floating research platform, film platform and comfortable living for all aboard!

What are the challenges of piloting a small ship in the Arctic?

To stay safe while sailing the Arctic in a small vessel, the crew pays close attention to the elements.

The weather is a daily obsession aboard, and one of the main factors determining when we start and end the season, and when we move the boat.

We track sea ice cover very closely in the Spring. We can’t cross the Labrador Sea and Davis Strait, or get to remote northern communities, until the sea ice has melted or broken out. During the summer we constantly monitor ice charts to keep track on drifting pack ice and areas with a high density of icebergs. Ice is obviously a constant risk in the north that governs every decision.

Sailing north in spring, daylight hours increase rapidly, making our job progressively a lot easier – we can see most ice (unless it’s foggy). Conversely, sailing south at the end of the season, it gets dark quickly. Combined with the poor weather, this is a key factor determining when we move the boat, as there can still be a large number of icebergs around in late summer.

Studying the Arctic by ship

14 January, 2014From the fieldLast Ice Area, polar bears, students on iceuser

Arctic Tern I is a polar expedition vessel acquired by the Students on Ice Foundation in partnership with WWF to provide a safe, environmentally friendly, cost effective, and versatile platform for education, research and media projects in the Arctic. In summer 2013, Arctic Tern I headed to the eastern Canadian Arctic and on the first of a five-year mission to assess biodiversity in this important and fast-changing part of the world, and contribute to constructive and collaborative solutions for a sustainable future.
Polar sailors and scientists Grant Redvers and Pascale Otis share their experiences and photos from the journey, in the first of a four-part series. All photos are courtesy Pascale Otis / Students on Ice.
What type of research did you conduct in the eastern Canadian Arctic and what did you discover?

The Arctic Tern I is a great platform for scientific research. We can spend large amounts of time in one area and even access remote places that would be out of reach to larger ships.
In 2013, the crew of Arctic Tern I set sail for the North with a project from the Canadian Wildlife Service on our hands. We completed offshore bird surveys, which meant counting every bird that we encountered while crossing to Greenland and also in the Canadian Arctic. As we reached the northern parts of Baffin Island, we sailed close to two Thick-Billed Murre colonies and took high-resolution photos. These would be later used to estimate the number of breeding pairs nesting on the cliffs.

Also on our busy agenda: banding 20 Murres on Bylot Island with special geolocator tags. These will allow scientists to track where the birds are going in the wintertime. It was hard work climbing the cliffs and catching the birds, but all worth it!

We had the privilege of joining scientists while they were tagging orcas in Tremblay Sound near the community of Pond Inlet. The GPS tags placed at the base of the dorsal fin of 6 adult orcas will allow the scientists to follow their movements for the next few months. We know very little about these whales, so the information recovered from this study will surely be extremely valuable.
What is a typical day onboard Arctic Tern I?
There’s really no such thing as a typical day onboard any sailboat! We always try to plan in advance, but our schedule is usually very flexible.

Every day is full of surprises, as we never know when and where we’ll see something to add to our growing list of once-in-a-lifetime-opportunities. Perhaps a polar bear will come swimming around the boat this morning… so of course we’ll probably put off lifting the anchor for a couple hours and set up our cameras on deck instead!
Depending on the project, the crew of Arctic Tern I can take on various roles from sailors to filmmakers, photographers and scientists. We have strong scientific backgrounds, but we also work in the media quite a bit.
You might also like:
2012 expedition to the Last Ice Area aboard the Arctic Tern

January 2014: Where are the bowheads now?

10 January, 2014From the fieldbowhead, species tracker, whaleuser

Arctic whale specialist Pete Ewins gives us an update on the bowhead whales being tracked by Nunavut Wildlife Management Board and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Canada.

The new year started with another impressive map for all the bowheads still with working satellite radio tags, yeah! As the sea ice continues to thicken and extend southwards, the bowhead are concentrating in areas they’re familiar with from previous years, where there’s ample ice movement and large leads (cracks) for breathing.
For anyone that inspects the Canadian Ice Service maps for this region, you’d be forgiven for being a bit puzzled. The area where most of these bowhead whales are this week, just N and NE of Charles Island, just NE of Salluit and Deception Bay, seems to be at the maximum ice cover – 9-10/10ths. Well, that’s right! These whales love to be close to and among the heavy annual sea-ice. Their huge reinforced heads and the rostrum, and lack of a dorsal fin, enable them to break ice a few feet thick if they need to, so that’s how this species has evolved over tens of thousands of years! The 3 bowheads to the east of Iqaluit /Baffin Island are in an area of broken/patchy sea-ice, at the edge of the open water in Davis Strait. All will be well clear of any predatory Killer Whales that may be still hanging around these regions. (Overnight temperatures in Salluit-Hudson Strait region are around -30C now).
Of course we can’t travel to these areas, so we rely heavily on this fabulous technology to beam the locations back to our computers! Beyond simply tracking the whale movements, the aggregated information over a season and then over years helps resource managers and scientists produce a well-informed picture of the key areas used by these magnificent whales as they over-winter. And in the face of increasing industrial development activities (like commercial shipping, oil & gas, and fishing) it is vital to know where these key areas are, and then to put all the measures in place to truly protect them from adverse impacts of human activities, especially in these high risk arctic marine environments.
Learn more about bowhead whales

Being a volunteer in the Congo basin: Personal transformation in a changing climate

8 January, 2014People, Uncategorizeduser

Tapang Ivo Tanku, Cameroon (WWF) – The first time I suggested dropping my pen as an international journalist and becoming a communications volunteer for the World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF), nobody batted an eyelid.

In my country Cameroon, it is common for international news correspondents and national journalists to pick-up several beats for their news organizations. But they rarely think of conservation as a strong beat that could transform the environment, where humans live in harmony with nature.

I have eventually found myself working for WWF, an experience I know I will enjoy for the next few months.

While volunteering for WWF’s Central Africa Regional Programme Office (CARPO) I came across multiple challenges over the past two months which have inspired me in my career in the regional communications department.

Investigating and reporting the truth is no longer enough for me. I now push for public policy implementation through advocacy and lobbying at several political and social levels. By engaging in stronger communications and media relations strategies, I am certain that I now have a real opportunity to invest much of my experience acquired into a broad spectrum over a number of years.

The statistics I received from our WWF experts have been particularly alarming. Though they inspire me to push for change, I find it hard to swallow a pill as bitter as 200,000 hectares of land in Cameroon that is lost to logging every year. This ranks my country second in deforestation after the Democratic Republic of Congo – another Congo Basin country.

What a shock, I exclaimed to Kevin Enongene Enongene, an intern at WWF, and the first true friend I made at WWF CARPO just few days after.

The fact that illegal logging and extractives industries have pushed the Baka indigenous group in Cameroon to the brink of extinction was another quite startling revelation.

“This is an indigenous community that strongly represents Cameroonians even on the international platform,” Enongene, who specializes in a WWF climate change project, told me as we sat down together to review documents while sipping coffee.

I took on the task to investigate, narrate and produce a short documentary on climate change in Cameroon that was presented in November at a UN Climate Change summit in Warsaw, Poland.

Just as I had finished recording my script, UN scientists made me re-frame the story all over again to include their report revealing with a 95 per cent assurance, how humans are to blame for the rapidly changing climate.

“This is absolutely true. Cameroon has witnessed a huge and persistent increase in rains, floods and droughts in recent years – causing severe food insecurity,” a Climate Focal Point expert for the Cameroon government Dr Joseph Armathe Amougou told me in my first video interview I recorded for the WWF documentary.

This situation will become worse if we do not integrate the local communities and indigenous people in Cameroon into the fight against climate change, Amougou added.

It is amazing to be part of a team of conservationists and climate change experts working on the field to change the destiny of the Mbororo, Baka, Bakola, Bagyeli and Bedzang minorities and indigenous people, who make up nearly 50,000 of Cameroon’s population.

“Our rights to property and access to land have been seriously jeopardized by large-scale industries,” said Thomas Mbarga, an indigenous person in the East region of Cameroon speaking in his local Baka language.

Mbarga, 25, raised concerns of the extinction of his community if WWF was to end its fight for humans to live in harmony with nature.

May this never happen, I told Mbarga whilst interviewing him in his thatched home.

Another conservationist who inspired my work was Fideline Mboringong, a young lady who joined WWF-Cameroon a few days after I took up service. Tapang, you seem to do everything with passion, from journalism to communications and media relations, Fideline said to me while I mounted an HD Camera to record an expert.

I believe in having multi-dynamic and multidisciplinary skills in communications to so that we can successfully/efficiently live in harmony with nature, I told “Fidel,” as I usually call her.

I have had the opportunity for the first time in my career to send out a press release to relevant national and international media. Unlike receiving emails from communications officers, as was the case with my previous position as a journalist, I find myself in another realm of success.

What is more humbling is seeing these stories published by national and international media, with reporters always calling to have more facts from our experts.

“I am only happy we are reaching out to a wider public. We will do even more,” I told my friend Enongene when we discussed at length about our different career achievements at WWF CARPO.