Killer of Philippine Environmental Official Sentenced to 20-40 Years

The killer of a Philippine government official and environmental activist was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison in September, as the victim’s wife and colleagues, including INECE Executive Planning Committee member Tony Oposa, vowed to continue their hunt for his accomplices.

Marcial Ocampo, a police officer, was found guilty of the murder of Elpidio “Jojo” de la Victoria, a Cebu City government official. Mr. Ocampo was also ordered to pay monetary damages to Mr. de la Victoria’s family.

Mr. Ocampo shot and killed Mr. de la Victoria outside his house last April. In the days after the murder, Cebu City Police Superintendent Mariano Natuel was quoted in local media as saying the murder was “work-related,” referring to Mr. De la Victoria’s and Mr. Oposa’s efforts to curb over-fishing and blast and cyanide fishing. Both Mr. de la Victoria and Mr. Oposa had received death threats and just prior to the murder had learned that bounties of one million Philippine Pesos (approximately $20,000 US) had been placed on their heads.

Both Mr. Oposa and the late Mr. De la Victoria had signed a broadly-supported petition to close the Visayan Sea to commercial fishing and blast and cyanide fishing. The proposal resulted from a University of Philippines study demonstrating the extent to which the area has been over-fished.

In the wake of Mr. de la Victoria’s death, Mr. Oposa has continued his efforts to protect the Sulu Sulawesi Marine Triangle, one of the world’s most threatened and biologically rich marine areas.

For more information, see Jujemay G. Awit, “Court finds cop guilty of murder,” Cebu Sun Star, September 19, 2006.

Compliance Critical to Expanding Role of Forests in Combating Climate Change

INECE Secretariat Director Durwood Zaelke led a panel at the November 2006 Climate Change Convention on how improved compliance and enforcement is essential for expanding the role of forests in fighting climate change.

“Compliance will make forests work for the climate and create value and enhance competitiveness in the process,” Zaelke said.

Current rules under the Kyoto Protocol provide only limited mechanisms for forests and other land-use activities despite accounting for nearly one-fifth of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Avoiding deforestation in the developing world – home to the largest forested ecosystems in the Amazon and the Congo Basin – is completely excluded from the current regime.

“It’s time to get serious about forests and climate change,” Zaelke said. “We need a 60%-80% reduction from 1990 emissions, and possibly more, to avoid dangerous interference with the Earth’s climate, and dramatically improved forestry is key to our success.” After years of limited success on countering illegal logging and promoting sustainable forestry management, the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change now present a major opportunity for the world’s forests and the multitudes of people that depend on them directly for survival.

There have been three major objections to the expanded use of forests in mitigating climate change in the past: (1) expanding biocarbon projects will divert attention away from energy reduction projects and renewables; (2) biocarbon sequestration is too hard to measure and monitor; and (3) enforcement and verification is too hard to ensure compliance, especially in the developing world.

These objections are no longer credible, Zaelke said. First, both biocarbon and emission-reduction projects are necessary for averting catastrophic climate change; the two are not mutually exclusive. Second, methodologies – both high- and low-tech – have been developed for accurate measurement and monitoring. And third, governance tools exist, or can be created, to ensure enforcement, verification and compliance of biocarbon projects.

Rules and procedures for managing biocarbon have been devised under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Although far from perfect, they provide a starting point for a larger-scale forestry governance system. Another key to success is recognizing and supporting the grassroots compliance and enforcement processes that local groups like Kenya’s Green Belt Movement have mastered over the past few decades of community-based tree-planting.

Wangari Maathai, the founder of the Green Belt Movement and the 2004 Nobel Peace laureate, also attended the event in support of efforts to expand the role of local communities in ensuring compliance with biocarbon projects. “Groups like Green Belt can provide the boots on the ground to ensure compliance with international, national, and local laws, thus improving the value of biocarbon projects while also promoting sustainable development in some of the poorest parts of the world,” Zaelke said.

INECE is expanding its compliance work with the Green Belt Movement and other local partners with the establishment of a new Nairobi office.

Workshops Expand Role of IT in Emissions Trading Compliance
By Chris Dekkers, Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment, The Netherlands, Chris.Dekkers@minvrom.nl  

The U.S. EPA’s Acid Rain Program, which involves an emissions trading system for sulphur dioxide emissions among power plants, has achieved near-universal compliance rates and achieved cost-effective emissions reductions in large part because of its use of sophisticated information technology. Some European countries have also expanded their use of information technology for the monitoring and reporting functions in the EU ETS as well as in trading operations, emissions registries, workflow systems, databases, reporting templates, and audit and enforcement tools.

But the challenge for the EU ETS as a whole is to ensure that Member States do not take an individualized approach to using various forms of information technologies and create new problems due to inconsistency and lack of compatibility.

The INECE-IETA dialogue has raised awareness as to the importance of using information technologies to establish an accurate and uniform system to ensure compliance that is both transparent and cost-effective.

Participants in the dialogue are working on drafting a Memorandum of Mutual Understanding on the information technologies to be used, including details on the functionality of the software. The security requirements, communication and reporting protocols, and the preferred formats to be used are among the key elements being discussed.

For communication protocols, the Member States hope to develop a Extensible Emissions Trading Language (XETL) program, which would be indispensable for ensuring that information sent by the server of the Messenger-Organisation is immediately understood and put in the right format by the server of the Receiver-Organisation.

The program would link databases and allow for quick cross-checks of data between different countries. It would also facilitate the development of remote verification and inspections and the implementation of monitoring and reporting tools still under development. Finally, the program would include linkages to other automated processes to comply with Article 21 requirements of the EU ETS, PRTR reporting, and other IPCC requirements.

Member States that already employ advanced information technology systems will work with Member States with less sophisticated systems as part of the EU’s overall effort to develop a well-designed, well-functioning global XETL that can operate both within the EU and connect to other systems, such as in the US.

A group of 8-10 Member States will proceed with a pilot version over the next several months, with an EU-wide deployment by early 2007. It is hoped that the pilot would provide the basis to begin drafting a master framework for the use of information technologies worldwide.

Compliance and Enforcement Take Center Stage at 4th IUCN-INECE Environmental Law Colloquium

The 4th IUCN Academy of Environmental Law Colloquium, co-sponsored by INECE, focused on enforcement of, and compliance with, environmental law at the local, national, and international level.

More than 200 practitioners, members of civil society, and environmental law professors from 47 countries gathered at Pace University's School of Law in White Plains, New York, on 16-20 October 2006. Participants noted the growing support for addressing global environmental issues, as evidenced by the increase in ratifications of major multilateral environmental agreements. But they cautioned that success will hinge on effective implementation and enforcement of those agreements.

In a message to the Colloquium, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recognized implementation and enforcement as the "true test" in ensuring compliance with the major multilateral environmental agreements and drew attention to the contribution of the Colloquium to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The final outcomes of the Colloquium were presented at the UN Headquarters in New York.

The Colloquium addressed numerous issues, including:  

• The role of voluntary actions, economic instruments, criminal enforcement, corporate social responsibility, and custom and culture in compliance;
• Compliance with multilateral environmental agreements;
• The public’s role in environmental compliance;
• Strengthening environmental governance;
• Strategic approaches to environmental compliance;
• Compliance approaches in the context of biodiversity protection, natural resources protection, air quality, and marine resources; and
• Strengthening empirical research related to compliance and enforcement.

This was the fourth IUCN Academy of Environmental Law Colloquium. The previous colloquiums addressed issues of the law of energy for sustainable development, held in Shanghai, China in November 2003; land use and management in Nairobi, Kenya, in October 2004; and biodiversity in Sydney, Australia, in July 2005. The next colloquium is scheduled for July 2007 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on “Sustainable Development Revisited: 5 Years after Rio.”

Click here for more information, including a complete agenda and list of submitted papers.

The Secretariat of the Basel Convention (SBC) and INECE signed a Memorandum of Understanding to start a project aimed at enhancing public awareness about the Basel Convention.

An over-arching aim of the project is to increase civil society interactions with the Basel Convention for a two-way purpose: spreading knowledge about the Convention and obtaining information about expectations related to the Basel Convention. Another aim is to reach as many stakeholders as possible, across all sectors, including the general public, while engaging, promoting, and enhancing the image and role of the Basel Convention Regional and Coordinating Centres in the process.

A first draft project paper has been produced and is currently under discussion. The next steps will be the formulation and implementation of activities, preceded by joint fundraising efforts.

For more information, please contact Ms. Nicole Dawe, Information Officer, SBC.

INECE Offers Graduate Level Course on Compliance and Enforcement

As part of the second annual Summer Session on Environmental Law at American University’s Washington College of Law, the INECE Secretariat led an intensive, two-week course on Environmental Compliance and Enforcement in May 2006.

The INECE course provided law students and practitioners with an opportunity for in-depth training in environmental law and regulation. The Summer Session offered a broad range of courses taught by leading practitioners from government, business and non-governmental organizations. Students chose among one and two credit classes for up to six credits.  Students successfully completing more than four credits received a ‘Certificate of Completion’.

Click here for more information on the Summer Session on Environmental Law at WCL.