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Monday, November 14, 2005
Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior arrives in Iloilo Nov. 17
GREENPEACE has embarked on a historic ship tour of Asia and the Pacific this year to communicate the urgency of the climate crisis as well as the availability of solutions to problem.
According to Greepeace this solutions are not working because they are not being used.
Climate change is today considered the greatest environmental threat facing the planet. It is caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Also known as global warming, climate change can be stopped only if we begin the massive shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power. It is a shift that must begin not tomorrow but today.
Last October 27, the Greenpeace sailing vessel called the Rainbow Warrior arrived in the Philippines to bring the message of urgency and to amplify the need for government's to take action against climate change.
The arrival of the ship in the country is the third leg in what has been called the Asia-Pacific Energy Revolution Tour 2005. The tour began in Australia and will make its way through Hong Kong, the Philippines and ending in Thailand.
The Rainbow Warrior is the most famous campaign ship of Greenpeace. The vessel's name was inspired by a North American Indian prophecy which foretells a time when human greed will make the Earth sick, and a mythical band of warriors will descend from a rainbow to save it.
The ship was launched on July 10, 1989. The sailing vessel that originally bore the name was sunk in 1985 by agents of the French government who wanted to foil Greenpeace campaigns aimed at stopping nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific. The French government's plan backfired, sparked worldwide condemnation and provided global focus on the anti-nuclear campaign. The rebuilt Rainbow Warrior proved that "you can't sink a rainbow" when it returned to battle successfully against the testing program. Nuclear testing ended at Moruroa in 1996.
The Rainbow Warrior's decks have been graced by the Dalai Llama and members of the rock band U2. She has challenged environmental crimes, relocated the population of a South Pacific Island contaminated by radiation, provided disaster relief to victims of the 2004 Tsunami in South East Asia, and sailed against whaling, war, global warming, and other environmental crimes on every ocean of the world.
Greenpeace is mobilizing the power of young people in order to amplify the appeal and necessity of individual action. Greenpeace is also working with celebrities to drum up support for renewable energy through a campaign called Star Power for Clean Power, a project that demands that 10 percent of our country's power must come from the sun, the wind and modern biomass by the year 2010.
Numerous open boat days are also scheduled to give universities and schools the chance to go on guided tours of the Rainbow Warrior in Manila, Puerto Princesa, Iloilo City and Bacolod City to learn more about Greenpeace campaigns and to meet the ship's multinational crew, the international team of Greenpeace campaigners and volunteers who will be taking on the biggest polluters and perpetrators of global warming during the tour.
The Asian Energy Revolution ship tour in the Philippines means plenty of adventure and stunning contrasts at sea and on land. It is a fantastic opportunity to show young people that change is so very much necessary and possible.
The Rainbow Warrior's first stop in the Philippines was in Palawan city of Puerto Princesa. A warm welcome by the city government is planned for the Warrior and its crew of international campaigners, who will play host and guide to Palawan students, professionals and families who wish to tour the environmental campaign ship while it is docked in Puerto Princesa.
The international campaigners of Greenpeace visited Puerto Princesa's underground river and cave (also known as St. Paul Subterranean River) to install renewable energy systems in the coastal station that serves as a jumping pad to the vital tourist destination.
The underground river St Paul is a major source of pride and income for Palawan and is, like the Tubbataha reef, a Unesco site. Climate impacts to St Paul's karst and cave system are expected to be potentially catastrophic. Caves and karst areas hold a huge amount of information that has remained undocumented. Increases in rainfall or rising sea levels will forever damage extremely fragile and endemic fauna in St. Paul and will probably make them extinct as cave fauna are very rare and are limited in number. Just recently, a significant number of unidentified life forms were discovered in the St. Paul subterranean.
From Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, Greenpeace staged a three-day dive at the world-famous Tubbataha coral reef, another world heritage site, where the organization and its friends and regional media will bear witness to what is at stake if climate change worsens.
Coral reefs are among the ecosystems most vulnerable to global warming. In Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Coral bleaching events are set to increase in frequency and intensity if greenhouse gas emissions increase unabated. Corals tend to die in great numbers immediately following coral bleaching events.
Considered as one of the most diverse habitats in the marine tropics, the Philippines is home to 488 coral species out of the 500 known coral species worldwide. Over a third of the 2,300 known fish species in the Philippines are reef-associated. According to the renowned coral reef expert, Dr. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, untrammeled global warming can spell "catastrophe for tropical marine ecosystems everywhere", with bleaching events "very likely" occurring annually within three decades and events as severe as the 1998 episode possibly becoming commonplace inside twenty years(1). The 1990s was the warmest decade in recorded history and 1998 was the hottest year of all.
The close to three-week stop of the Warrior in the Philippines is jam-packed with exciting events. Universities, children's schools, celebrities and scores of environmental organizations are avidly awaiting the arrival of the Greenpeace ship and the beginning of its classic high-profile campaigns in the country. Open Boat activities in Manila will be held on November 14 and 15.
The tour of the Warrior will cover Palawan, Manila, dirty energy hotspots in Luzon, and includes two day stops in Iloilo (Nov. 17 and 18) - home to the most rapidly growing environmental movement in the Philippines - and Negros Occidental (on Nov. 19 and 20), the first province in the country to declare that it will go for 100 percent renewable energy-led development.
In Iloilo, a live, combo-powered traditional "baile" - or town dance - is planned on the evening of the 18th, with the participation of hundreds from towns in the province. The dance is in celebration of the victories of towns in Iloilo that have successfully rejected proposals for the construction of coal-fired power plants and also to empower those currently facing the threat of coal-based power stations.
On Nov. 20 in Pulupandan, a local sail-boat regatta race is in the offing to celebrate a town from which the first windfarm in the Visayas will be built. Sailboats will represent their barangays for the honor of being named the fastest sailboat in the town - or the best to read and harness the wind - and the pride winning for their village a renewable energy system.
(1)Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Climate change, coral bleaching and the future of the world's coral reefs, Greenpeace.
(November 14, 2005 issue)
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