My friend Rezal Kusumaatmadja contacted me in July to ask if I could join him and some of his associates for a couple of days in the village Mendawai, located along the Katingan River in south central Kalimantan. The purpose of the gathering was to bring everyone in the group up to date on progress and challenges related to the Katingan Peat Conservation Project, as well as to give the group an opportunity to meet one another. The Katingan Project aims to create a forest-based carbon containment facility defined and guided by REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Destruction in the developing world) principles and methodology. Currently, nearly 25% of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions are caused by felling, burning and converting the world’s remaining primary forests. While areas surrounding the Katingan peat forest vividly express this statistic, Katingan is part of a growing strategy to reverse the trend. The Katingan project endeavors to transform conservation into a product that might offer strong competition against illegal logging and expansion of industrial agricultural plantations - whose practices cause enormous emissions of greenhouse gases, as well as destroying biodiversity, depleting and polluting watersheds and corroding native cultures. The central purpose of REDD projects is to protect primary forest lands in order to inventory and store carbon, mitigate climate change and thus orient conservation to the marketplace through its creation of salable carbon offset credits. Certified carbon-offset credits derived from REDD sites can be sold in a rapidly growing voluntary carbon off-set marketplace. Additionally, they will likely extend their market value into an evolving international compulsory off-set marketplace which will take effect after the Kyoto Protocal expires in 2012.

Very conservatively, the Katingan site, by simply remaining undisturbed primary forest land through intentional prevention of exploitative strategies that would otherwise claim it, generates one-million Verifiable Emission Reductions (one VER equals one ton of sequestered carbon) per year. One forest-based VER today sells for between six and ten dollars. Additionally, Katingan also recognizes and cultivates other benefits provided by the conservation site, such as protecting biodiversity and watersheds, availing ancestral non-timber forest products for local use and broader trade, and creating eco-positive jobs for the site community. Many rare, charismatic species gorgeously manifest Katingan’s biodiversity. Hornbills, proboscis monkeys, clouded leopards and approximately 1500 orangutans populate the site. It is reasonable to judge that Katingan’s carbon-offset credits are distinguished by the project’s intentional cultivation of other environmental and social benefits and thus more valuable in a marketplace increasingly driven to become part of the solution to unprecedented social and environmental challenges. But our intuition precedes the logic of this observation. From our wholesale trade of rare species and life-sustaining watersheds for nice floors and tables, to the Great Pacific Garbage Gyre whose surface area exceeds two Texas’, the industrial world’s broadly misguided approach to conveying progress is rivetingly clear.

Rezal is a founder and the Managing Director of Starling Resources, “a consulting firm specializing in the design of solutions and opportunities to positively address social, economic and environmental concerns.” The Katingan Peat Conservation Project is an important part of a multi-strategy solution to climate change. Its success as a market opportunity requires only that we recognize obvious, critically important and irreplaceable values in natural systems. The health and quality of life of future generations depend on our adjusting the terms of our interaction with nature.

Convergence in Borneo

My schedule allowed three days and two nights to visit Mendawai. Mendawai isn’t easy to get to. It doesn’t have an airport and no roads lead to it. Much travel in Kalimantan occurs in narrow long boats with high and jutting prows to cut through sometimes sizable waves that can occur on wide, wind-swept rivers.

I awoke at four in the morning in Ubud, Bali to drive an hour or more to the airport in Denpasar to catch a 6:30 am flight to Jakarta. Bali seems most expressive of its extravagant gods in the very early morning. Raucous with birdsong, mist undulating through deep river gorges, the storied island’s compelling architecture vivid and not yet obscured by a dense population scrabbling for a piece of the modern world, nor by a nearly ubiquitous fever of tourist traffic that compels much of the scrabble. In Jakarta I rendezvoused with Agus Rofiqkoh, the director of Tropical Salvage production who had flown from Semarang. We flew together to Palankaraya, in Kalimantan. We met Asep and Ganden on the flight, two members of Starling Resources GIS mapping crew. Our group of four was met at Palankaraya airport by two other Starling Resources crew members, Panci and Aba.

The Starling team is jolly, quipping company who added much convivial spirit to a long ride. They are also extremely informed about the ecosystems and social environments in which they work. We drove through late morning and part of the afternoon more than four hours to a boat dock along the Mentaia River. Our 500 kilometer drive through south central Kalimantan revealed that much land viewable from the road had been reduced, by narrow-interested exploitation of forest resources, to expanses of deserted, white, nutrient-depleted soil dotted with scrubby plants. Ganden explained that topsoil in tropical forests is thin because growing conditions are optimal and thus competition for nutrients is so crowded and sharp that soil cannot accumulate appreciably. Lose the forest and intense rainy seasons soon wash away topsoil and, without a steady fall of tree and plant litter to replenish nutrients, precipitate desert conditions. Driving through the heart of Borneo, forest lines were far away but sharp against reaches of white. The road was notably smooth and wide for rural Indonesia, doubtlessly to facilitate the world’s unrestrained grab at Kalimantan’s diminishing natural bounty.

We reached the boat dock along the Mentaia River during late afternoon. A couple of guys were removing racks of hand-sized, sere fish that had cured beneath the day’s sun. An antlered deer head leaned at a side, awaiting apportionment, perhaps, into materials for Chinese medicines and global handicrafts. Winds chopped waves to anxious white caps. Various sized long boats were arrayed without clear order around the dock. Those unable to gain position directly against the dock were tied to one that was, or to one that was tied to one that was.

Boarding the long boat was a little steadier than boarding a canoe. Once in, we sat on floor boards elevated above the boats bottom and any water that might get in. I created rough comfort by positioning my backpack against a cross-board that braced the boat’s gunnels. The river appeared to be about a quarter mile across. We set out toward the other shore in a long diagonal and against the tossed waves. Two sea eagles soared above us, regarding the river casually. A deafening uncovered motor spewed bluish smoke, overwhelmed conversation and propelled us forward. The boat driver steered a wheel at the front and soon spray from a blunt fray of wind, waves and prow advised us to unfurl a tarp. At dusk we reached the mouth of a narrow canal dredged through deep peat. It had been cut during recent years of unmanaged, indeed unbridled, logging to facilitate a flow of loggers and logs into and out of the area, first in great abundance and lately in stunning depletion.

Some ways along into the canal we stopped at a rude dock and disembarked to wait for smaller boats to take us the rest of the way, as the dry season had made the water very shallow in places. We waited for the boats at a spare food stall, or “warung,” operated by a native Dayak family. We sipped sweet coffee and chewed delicious campfire-roasted salted peanuts; several of us tried to answer a bird’s lonely haunting inquiry at dusk. “Where am I,” it seemed to wonder. The warung’s proprietor explained they had settled into the outpost some twenty years ago to take advantage of a logging boom. They followed the forest cut until the cost of gas to travel by boat to and from the cut-line grew too high to make economic sense. Currently, they are growing vegetables and fishing, and when possible selling food and drink at their warung and charging fees for boat rides. Some neighbors are trying to grow rubber trees.

It was dark when smaller boats arrived. We boarded two to a boat, Agus and I in the front boat. We motored into the dark, guided by a small but strong-beamed light affixed to the tip of the prow. As soon as we started, several bats flew into the light beam, hurtling just ahead of the fast boat, apparently taking advantage of the light’s allure to insects. Twice, a kind of night raptor tore from the canal’s bank and seized a bat made careless by its predation. An odor of burning, musty wood was thick through the canal. The canal’s centuries old peat walls, their dense entanglement of tree roots, appeared primeval and haunting in the glancing light.

When we rounded a bend the source of smoke became clear. Along the canal bank a long menacing sneer of red coals burned beneath the top soil: a peat fire. In a healthy peat forest that possesses dense tree canopy to retain moisture and regulate ground temperature, it’s very difficult for fire to spread. If you remove the forest’s protective canopy, then deep dead roots and exposed peat become a tinder in the dry season, awaiting combustion. Peat fires, often intentionally set to hasten conversion of land to agricultural purposes, usually oil palm, are why Indonesia is the world’s third largest emitter of carbon, behind China and the United States.

A climax to the bizarre wonderment of our ride through the canal occurred when an enormous wild boar charged into the river, in front of our boat, close enough to me so that I adjusted my position to a ready squat, in case of a collision. Water stirred from its commotion splashed me in the face. In the beam it appeared very riled, perhaps driven to fear or anxious confusion by the peat fires. I tried to call my wife, Eli, and two young children, Maddie and Rowan, in Bali to report this encounter but no signal was available.

After travelling through the canal and crossing the Katingan River, to which the canal was connected at the other side, we arrived at Mendawai Village at about ten pm. A group had arrived before us that included Rezal, Taryono, Starling Resource’s field crew leader, Andrew Wardell, the Director of the Clinton Climate Initiative, Brer Adams, Senior Manager for Utilities and Climate Change with the MacQuarie Group, Dharsono Hartono, Managing Director of PT. Rimba Makmur Utama ( First Prosperous Forest) and the Katingan project’s principal investor, Kirk Lange, Head of Research and Development at PT. Rimba Makmur Utama, and Amy Chew, a Senior Correspondent with the New Straits Times, published in Kuala Lampur.

Emerging Vision

We walked up one of Mendawai’s only three or four roads. All of the roads are graded dirt and very pot-holed from the previous rainy season. We stopped at a warung where some of the group sat, greeted them and ordered from the option of chicken soup or fried chicken. Earlier in the day, several in the group had flown back-and-forth in a small plane over Katingan. Some of the site’s boundaries are marked by rivers. Others are encroached on by oil palm plantations, artisanal gold mines and illegal logging patches. These three rudely narrow valuations of natural resources are ripping the heart out of our world’s ancestral biodiversity and extensively degrading global ecological integrity and the prospect of a reasonable quality of life for our children.

Under an intense canopy of stars and amidst competing choruses of nocturnal creatures, Andrew Wardell eloquently reminded us that peat forests are the world’s richest forest-based carbon storage – the peat layer reaching some twelve meters down in many parts of Katingan. Their destruction over recent decades has released billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, accelerating climate change. He described peat fires that burn for months uncontrolled beneath the ground - and undetected until they reach a forest edge where mature standing trees begin to fall over because fire has cut through their root systems.

Within the next hour or so of conversation, it became clear to me that the group gathered at Mendawai shared a common vision, shaped by irrefutable logic wrought by climate change, to reinterpret the defining relationship between humans and our natural environment. The vision integrates conservation initiatives of enormous scale with market principles.

I slept deeply on a thin mattress laid on the floor of a small room in Mendawai’s only losman. As no bed cover was provided, I awoke early in the morning to lay an extra shirt across my bare feet. A little later, at about 5 am, an extremely loud morning call to prayer, azan, blared from a mosque located directly across the road from the losman. It sounded burdened and bedraggled, in contrast to other calls to prayer I’ve heard, whose mellifluousness can coax an agnostic from his bed before sunrise, to his knees and seeking redemption. Yet the sound seemed fitting to Mendawai’s circumstances.

A setting could hardly better answer the description “in the middle of nowhere.” Yet, by 6 am I was seated on an old wooden bench, listening to a fantastic racket of birdsong and sipping sweet tea with Andrew, Dharsono, Brer and Rezal, all of them possessing expertise in understanding climate change and actively involved in shaping large forest-based mitigation responses. They are among the vanguard of innovative problem solvers who envision a world where respect for natural systems is an integral component of economic viability and success. Andrew leads teams in formulating methodologies to measure and monitor forest-based carbon sinks. He also manages stakeholders so that all might duly benefit from a site’s development. Currently he manages projects in Cambodia, Viet Nam and Indonesia. He is a strong proponent of a REDD response to climate change. REDD was created because most of the world’s remaining old-growth tropical forests, the forests richest in carbon containment, are located in developing countries. Until the recent debate – precipitated by climate change - about integrating carbon responsibility with our economics, most of the world’s tropical developing countries served as natural resource depots which industrialized countries could recklessly exploit to help sustain their invention, prosperity and growth. The traditional model of exploitation, though, has significantly paused as a struggle escalates to redefine value of the world’s natural resources. But exploitation is not patient.

Mendawai’s Uncertain Future

After breakfast, we walked to Mendawai’s government administrative building. As with many government entities in Indonesia, its presence seems out-sized relative to the location’s small population and spare infrastructure. It is the biggest building in the village and contains many offices populated by officials wearing pressed uniforms emboldened by prominent epaulettes. Approximately ten-percent of Indonesia’s two-hundred and forty million citizens are on a local, provincial or federal payroll. Compare that to the United States where only four or five percent of the population work for a government sector. It would not seem so disproportionate if Indonesia boasted an exemplary civil infrastructure which skilled government officials routinely and assiduously maintained and improved. Instead, Mendawai serves as a telling microcosm for Indonesia’s political and economic challenges. The village is ramshackle, sagging from tropical dissolution, while the government administrative offices remain tidy, its many pairs of epaulettes starched and vigilant, awaiting opportunity.

Most government employees in Indonesia aren’t paid enough to live on and are, in fact, expected to finesse a living income by profitably asserting power attained from their position. Also, government employees often incur debt from having borrowed money to buy their position. Money and connections supplant merit; reasonable compensation depends on irregular exploitation of legal and illegal business revenue streams: when people speak of “systemic corruption” these are conditions from which it arises.

Systemic corruption in Indonesia must change and can change beginning with a serious and committed effort by the international community to engage Indonesia as a partner in fee-based, forest carbon containment. A first step might be to ensure the Ministry of Forests hires Indonesian personnel according to merit and offers them compensation appropriate to affording a reasonable standard of living.

During decades of unrestrained timber harvests around Mendawai, opportunity availed itself to all. The forest’s bounty of timber seemed a limitless sea. Mendawai is founded on that period of exploitation. During those days, a harvest crew leader could make $1000 a month, sawyers $300-$400 a month – enormous compensation, at that time, for unskilled and little-educated Indonesians. Results from unregulated logging of forests whose wood attracted wide international demand are what you would expect. Today, all the low-hanging fruit is gone and expanses of land appear obliterated. Also, continued harvests have been greatly staggered by a logging moratorium imposed by the government in 2005, when they began to take seriously the prospect of collecting higher revenues from their forests’ managed carbon storage.

During the past few years, Mendawai’s population has declined by about half, to approximately 1500 citizens. Incomes, patched together from small-holder agriculture, fishing, boat-building and whatever other opportunity might pass up or down the river, are a fraction of their previous timber-era standards. Tropical rains and sun bear down, modern conveniences purchased during flush times show stress, people wait. Arrayed in a spacious office, we listened to an articulate government spokesman describe the direness of Mendawai’s situation. He explained they were interested in examining any potential that might improve their economic condition. He suggested we could gain the community’s undivided attention to our conservation and carbon-containment vision if we built a road between Mendawai and a more economically strategic place.

Peat Forests Versus A World of Desire

Peat forests are the richest forest-based carbon sinks in the world. Conserving the integrity of remaining peat forests and, if possible, expanding them is very important to mitigating climate change. Scientists who are expert in understanding forests’ roles in regulating climate have warned that further degradation of existing primary forest lands will prove a strongly enabling piece to catastrophic climate change. Industry fells trees in Kalimantan’s peat forests to generate wood material favored for structural beams, flooring and furniture. Plenty of ecologically sustainable substitutes exist to replace trees harvested from Kalimantan’s peat forests, but desires are hard to subdue. A market is opportunity to answer material need or desire. In our wealth-obsessed era, markets are often exploited, without due consideration of broader consequences, to acquire excess. When a market’s broader consequences become untenable and logic of serious regulatory correction fails to respond, what strategies might be employed to oppose it? Elective self-restraint has not yet gained popular momentum in “the commons.” The majority of us respond to immediate alarm; the closer alarm comes to compromising our well-being, the more responsive we become. For too many of us, enough response arises only after our well-being has been chafed or battered. Science has modeled consequences of climate change. They are alarming. In many models, anticipated expressions of challenge are exceeded by reality. “Feedback loops” are asserting magnitudes of negative change – disastrous change - at a much faster pace than many scientists projected. These are some common projections based on widely accepted climate change models: By 2030, after the polar ice caps have significantly melted, approximately 2000 of Indonesia’s some 16,000 islands will have been swallowed by rising seas. Millions – tens of millions? Hundreds of millions? - of people living in coastal communities around the world will have been displaced. To where? Provoking what disruptions? How will the seas’ rising temperatures and disrupted chemistry affect marine ecosystems and food-stocks? How will changing weather patterns affect terrestrial ecosystems and food-stocks? Rising temperatures and extended dry seasons caused by climate change have sharply increased incidents of record fires throughout the world. How many records will be broken by 2030? Global population will be pushing 8.5 billion by then, unless fierce competition for diminished natural resources pares that number through multiplying conflicts and wars.

We are spiraling into an era of the unthinkable. Is it possible for us to respond to an atypical issue with atypical efficiency of logic? Might capitalism’s principles –and guiding instincts - be rapidly modified to support a natural world of which we are inextricably a part? I know some well-educated, good-hearted people for whom growing wealthy and surrounding themselves with material signals of wealth is a life-defining objective. Capitalism encourages this perspective but history reveals the perspective has ever existed prominently in many cultures. If desire to accumulate material excess is an ingrained characteristic of many of us, might it be possible to redefine the signals of wealth so that our pursuit of them adds to the common good? Could we reinterpret values of goods so that the values accord with sustaining the broader quality of our social and natural environments? In such a system, for example, gold, the world’s perceived default safe investment, might sharply decline in value. We would replace our perception of gold with its reality: mining gold destroys vast areas of important ecosystems; it pollutes watersheds with toxic chemicals such as cyanide and mercury; because we have decided to assign it high and very liquid value in trade, gold is largely compiled as bricks and coins and worked into jewelry rather than applied to constructive use. We might choose to apply a stigmatization to gold that it has earned through a long, well-documented history of influencing environmental destruction, cultural upheaval and social conflict. Is it possible to decide not to assign gold high value? In doing so, we would choose a better future for ourselves by helping to protect the integrity of natural environments.

Also, in a holistically considered world, maybe cultivating a forest garden in your back yard, using native species and organic techniques, could generate valuable tax credits through its carbon storage, contribution to protecting a watershed and maintenance of biodiversity. Adding forest gardens could raise property values if we simply chose to acknowledge and support their value. People might seek and compete for an excess of this sort of wealth, cultivating brilliant, expansive, luxurious forest gardens. Gold pebbles, left over from the ore’s price-crash, when people shrugged and decided it was wildly over-valued for no good or useful reason, might be mixed with other types of recycled rock material to form a gravel path through the garden.

Instead, as consequences of climate change grow clearer and more ominous, gold is priced historically high and trees harvested from Kalimantan’s peat forests are still perceived by many as being more valuable turned into objects than they are for their multiple benefits as part of a forest ecosystem. The trajectory of our material covetousness has arrived at a juncture where it might begin to contradict Darwin’s well-regarded theories about survival. Even against the full force of science’s findings and vivid, enduring, negative consequences that undermine our common good, we remain deeply challenged to restrain consumer excess.

Tropical Salvage

“Tropical Salvage” is a part I bring to Rezal’s and Dharsono’s visionary Katingan collaboration. Tropical Salvage integrates business with best environmental and social practices because we understand the business community must join the lead in answering unprecedented challenges to environmental and social integrity. In spite of cynicisms’ prodigious draw – one particularly affecting in an era when the world’s leading power, my government, bails out financial institutions that have financed and grown rich from practicing a variety of capitalism that trails a century-long wake of global-scale environmental devastation – I choose optimism and believe a form of economic activism will recover and deliver us from generations of arrogance. I believe this because climate change leaves no other rational choice and because I believe an emotional portal unlocked by caring for children, and offering no quarter to cynicism, fortifies our intention with redeeming grace. I believe that, once bailed out, the same financial institutions will invest strongly in businesses that enable environmental recovery, as these many emerging businesses modeled after common good capitalism are the future’s best, if not single, hope for a reasonable quality of life.

And make no mistake, it is largely the “developed world’s” responsibility to lead this economic gambit. Indonesia well reflects challenges to the “developing world” in assuming roles of leadership to advance positive change. Restricted by economic circumstances, most Indonesians haven’t had the opportunities or experience to interpret their choices in the context of broader consequences – whether locally or globally. Starkly, they need money, they need food, they need health care and, in the case of Mendawai, they need a road connecting their village to higher value markets. That’s the breadth of vision their experience allows them. If felling, legally or illegally, some peat forest trees answers their spare needs for a day, or a week, then, without the existence of alternative work to answer those needs, the forests will fall.

In Mendawai, Tropical Salvage can help to abate this logic. It will provide jobs salvaging wood from rivers and deconstructing defunct, dilapidated milling warehouses. The work will reduce illegal logging and poaching, as well as create a platform from which to communicate a conservation perspective that is critical to protecting Katingan and thus to adding a piece to restoring global ecological integrity. We will work in concert with local and federal government and forestry administrators, with the project’s eco-entrepreneurs and investors, with carbon scientists and forest mappers, with wildlife biologists and ethno botanists, with community organizers and forest product industry spokespeople, with fishermen and rattan gatherers. We will be part of an integrated strategy to become part of the solution.

Tropical Salvage products are a fruit of positive change. We build furniture from discovered and deconstructed woods that are largely perceived as waste, applying building techniques to convert material irregularities into added value. Also, when consumers buy Tropical Salvage products, in addition to acquiring exceptional value, they directly contribute to forest conservation and restoration projects in Indonesia, including, we hope, the Katingan site. We make positive impact consuming convenient; we practice common good capitalism. While we vigilantly attend to a business bottom-line, accumulating material wealth is not a specific objective. Instead, we aim to contribute to salvaging a peaceful relationship between people and tropical environments. Social and environmental health is the new wealth. Should we succeed at establishing and growing our part of the solution, no amount of gold can compete with the legacy.

Bringing the Forest Home

On the way out I silently inventoried potentials for salvageable wood in Kalimantan. Limbs, logs and whole trees litter the banks of the Katingan and Mentaia rivers. Walls of defunct milling warehouses fade and buckle along the shores. The prow of an enormous log-hauling ship protrudes from the Katingan River’s surface where excess sank it. Loggers I spoke to in Mendawai remembered cutting all the trees standing in the way of targeted stands and leaving off-species behind; they confirmed a common logging practice of sending only tree bodies to the marketplace and leaving their limbs in the forest to burn or float away in floods. Based solely on visible salvage potential, there are decades of work, here, transforming waste into high value.

Crossing the Mentaia, we encountered a ship hauling a pile of newly milled logs, headed down-river to the sea and our world of commerce. The trees were taken from Borneo’s far and receding wild interior, where, I recently read, some members of the last nomadic Penan tribes are answering incursions on their ancestral lands from logging and oil exploration with blow guns and bows and arrows. Diameters of some of the logs were greater than my six-foot height.

As we approached a dock where we would meet our ride back to Palankaraya, we passed several tall, simply-constructed, white buildings with many small rectangular portals. I recognized them as towers built to attract swallows whose nests are the anchor ingredient of a soup widely favored in China. Many swallows flew around the buildings, some entering and some exiting. A racket of bird squawk and chatter sounded distinctly over the boat motor’s din. The deafening bird sounds suggested there were many more birds in the buildings than outside. I tapped Taryono’s shoulder, and with my other hand pointed at the towers. “Jutaan burung walet!” (“Millions of swallows!”) I exclaimed, pointing to the buildings. He shook his head. “Bukan!” (“No, that’s not right!”). “Mereka pakai pita suara!” (“They use a sound-track!”).

As I listened to ersatz swallow-shrieking, it occurred to me that the sound-track was likely calibrated to sound optimally attractive to the species of swallow sought for its edible nest. I’m struck at least as often by my species’ genius as I am by its idiocy. I believe our genius has, like Las Vegas’ gambling parlors, an edge. As if to punctuate the thought, my phone vibrated in my pocket. Still very deep in Borneo’s hinterland, I could already call my aging mother in Chicago to ask how her garden is growing.

My daughter, Madeline, answered my “Hello” to tell me she “loves me like a whale.” It’s a thing we say that characterizes the size of our feelings. I imagined the sentiment ricocheting between signal towers across stretches of land and sea. What genius we’ve employed to be able to instantly cast our audible love across the world. And what genius is our capacity to love. It will prevail.

In recent news, large utility companies PG&E and Exelon, along with a number of other companies, have announced that they are leaving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of the Chamber's persistent efforts to defeat the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES).

The bill "would establish an economy-wide, greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system and critical complementary measures to help address climate change and build a clean energy economy...[it] would reduce aggregate GHG emissions for all covered entities to 3% below their 2005 levels in 2012, 17% below 2005 levels in 2020, 42% below 2005 levels in 2030, and 83% below 2005 levels in 2050."

It has been reported that inspired Nike shareholders have just asked the company to also cut its ties with the Chamber, for the same reason.

Our commentary: this has brought up two important possibilities.

First is the possibility that shareholders of large corporations can make a difference for climate change. When the will is there, shareholder pressure can shift our big businesses toward creating a green economy. PG&E and Exelon are huge companies, but regional and mostly unknown to the American mainstream. If Nike agrees that its mission is not in line with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's position, and joins PG&E and Exelon by accepting its shareholders' requests to leave the Chamber of Commerce, that could make a big splash. It could be like dominoes, where demands by shareholder groups cause a wave of businesses to also pull out of the Chamber. One of the biggest opponents of ACES could lose much of its influence.

Which brings us to the second possibility: that organizations which persist in fighting against serious action on climate change face obsolescence. It is a clear and present possibility that right now, your constituents will abandon you, or your customers will refuse to buy your products/services, if you do not support real solutions for clean energy and a green economy.

The article by Helaine Olen explores an unusual and exciting financing strategy for small businesses: obtaining funding and investment from members of the local community.

I recommend perusing the article to discover how community funding led to unexpected benefits for local businesses -- benefits that went well beyond just an infusion of capital in a down economy.

Kim Harmson, the orchestrator of Kizuri Spokane, commented on the article: "One important factor that was not mentioned in the article is that Kizuri gives 7.5% of annual profits back to the community. This was built in to the business plan/proposal and was a key consideration for investors. Their dollars have a long lasting effect in building and supporting our Spokane community. It's a beautiful thing!"

July 19, 2009 -- Alas, my recent visit to Banda Aceh, the capital of the province of Aceh on Sumatra, wasn’t just about pristine, wildlife-rich tropical forests. In the hills and mountains surrounding the city, I saw areas which before the December, 2004 tsunami were lush with old-growth trees, that are now significantly deforested.

The destructive waves that took an estimated 130,000 lives in this region in the Boxing Day disaster did not lay waste to these hill forests. But legitimate timber harvests started, understandably, in order to produce the raw materials needed to re-build the coastal areas devastated by tragedy. Illegal logging continues here because the demand for wood has grown well beyond the needs of post-disaster reconstruction.

Streams had flowed since time immemorial in the watersheds above Banda Aceh, but village leaders told me they now run dry during the dry season. Life for everyone along these formerly perennial watercourses, all the way into the capital itself, is worse since the tsunami struck and the timber harvests began.

The larger rivers of the region, now receiving too much use, are receding and being rapidly polluted. It all happened fast. It was predictable. It bodes ominously for the future of this Indonesian region that still retains fragments of pristine, healthy rainforest – and too many timber thieves and officials who look the other way.

Tropical Salvage furniture at Portland's "Views of the Pearl" Street of Dreams.
Click to enlarge.

Well, having previewed the unit, I can say that Phyllis, along with the other unit designers and contributors, has pulled it off beautifully. Not only is the unit, The Ambassador, exquisitely styled with lovely things but it looks like the kind of place in which you could envision a real person living — a real person with extremely good taste!

And so, since that person has extremely good taste, the unit has a large number of Tropical Salvage pieces, of course! The master bedroom is outfitted with a Tropical Salvage bed, dresser, nightstands, and Taproot Hang Tree. The music room features two Asymmetrical bookshelves and a Stalwart Console. The living room revolves around a large Kretek Coffee Table. But the large, Pithecanthropus Feasting Table and benches in the dining area are perhaps the most striking arrangement in the entire unit. The juxtaposition of the glittering, modern chandelier and the irregular, organic table is stunning. The large painting on the wall with its soft colors and lines pulls it all together. Anyone who thinks you can’t pull modern and primitive together need only look at this arrangement!

I encourage you to visit the Street of Dreams in the Pearl this August, and stop by The Ambassador. Tropical Salvage wishes to thank the tireless efforts of Phyllis Spaulding, Pivotal Design NW, and Carole Bordak of Forever Art. Their vision and hard work have created a warm and welcoming space that Tropical Salvage is proud to a part of.

Tropical Salvage furniture at Portland's "Views of the Pearl" Street of Dreams.
Click to enlarge.

The Fair Trade the White House coalition consists of fair trade companies, organizations, vendors, retailers, schools, and individuals, who are all cordially inviting the First Lady to join the fair trade movement and declare the White House a "Fair Trade Home." By declaring the White House a "Fair Trade Home," Mrs. Obama can encourage households throughout America to continue refining their buying habits toward ethical consumption so that poverty, both in America and around the world, is reduced.

The goal of the campaign is to encourage the First Lady to accept the the "Fair Trade the White House" invitation and conduct a ceremony in May 2010, on "World Fair Trade Day." Many participating companies will help her get started by donating fair trade products and services. Tropical Salvage will be providing a gift of salvaged wood furniture for the White House.

We encourage you to sign the public invitation to the First Lady. From Girl Scout Leaders to actors such as Tony Hale from "Chuck" and "Arrested Development" fame, all types of fair trade supporters are signing the First Lady’s invitation.

July 17, 2009 -- I flew back to Jakarta today from Banda Aceh. The person who was supposed to pick me up at Soekarno-Hatta Airport became mired in a security gauntlet for so long that I took a taxi, instead. I'm relieved to say that my family and I are fine in our Jakarta lodgings, about ten kilometers from the bomb sites. Security alerts everywhere have spiked up, and I am confident in Jakarta's safety. We are cautious but unafraid, and looking forward to travel to Bali next week.

Just yesterday, I spent the day hiking in a forest about an hour and a half outside the city of Banda Aceh. I'd seen it from the road in passing the previous day, and thought it might contain some wonders. Boy, did it.

The local guide we hired lived at the forest's edge. He told us it was extremely rare to see a tourist, bule (white foreigner) or Indonesian, go into the forest. The only people he knew to enter were rattan gatherers and an occasional Japanese entomologist seeking unusual butterflies.

Despite an absence of trails, we were able to venture forth through the difficult, up-and-down terrain because it's the dry season. We encountered several pig-tailed macaques, many lutungs, three orangutans, about twenty hornbills, one sun bear (mostly its cry of surprise and very obscured retreat through the bush!), one wild pig, a pitch-black creature that looked like an enormous forest rat, and myriad musical birds and colorful butterflies. And forest elephant scat and the elephants' matted-down "beds" in several places. Everywhere were giant trees of diverse species.

I was astonished to startle a flock of monarch-butterfly-sized black bats by climbing on an enormous natural-fall tree. Just one wonder, in a day full of wonders.

Tropical Forest president Tim O'Brien at the buttressed base of a forest giant in Aceh, Sumatra

We arrived in Jakarta in reasonably good shape. Maddie and Rowan (ages 4 and 2), a little stunned by the inverted time (14-hour time change!), awoke last night at 2 a.m. to tumble around for an hour like squirrels in springtime.

To recover from the journey, we’ve checked into a material fortress that integrates three shopping malls with four spendy, excruciatingly stylized hotels. Those of us inside the fortress are spared the polluted air, intractable traffic, discomfort, and struggle that make up Jakarta’s pervasive reality.

My visit to Indonesia this summer has two aims: First, to sit down with Tropical Salvage production manager Agus and our team at the workshop in Jepara to review details of furniture design, construction, and finish to increase the value and appeal of our products. Second, to visit our Mount Muria project site on Central Java and review the Jepara Forest Conservancy’s effort to create jobs and restore forests on this mountain landscape near our production headquarters.

The Jepara Forest Conservancy, a local non-governmental organization created with Tropical Salvage’s support, is our first effort to link eco-positive jobs salvaging and processing wood with other community benefits including environmental education and ecosystem restoration – and to tell the story and attract financial support through our growing network of vendors.

This summer, I’ll also look at ways to expand the Jepara Forest Conservancy’s vision to southern Kalimantan, where the Katingan Peat Forest Conservation Project (protecting Orangutan habitat) looks like a promising partner, and to northern Sulawesi, where the Paguyaman Forest Conservation Project protects habitat for the North Sulawesi babirusa, an endangered wild relative of domestic pigs.

We think we can connect fair trade, job creation, forest restoration, and conservation of threatened species in a way that respects social traditions and local culture. This is what I think of as “common good capitalism,” and I’ll have more to report as soon as I leave the fortress!

Sumatran orangutan in North Sumatra

The United States will forgive nearly $30 million in debt owed by Indonesia in exchange for increased protection of endangered rainforests on the island of Sumatra, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The deal is the largest debt-for-nature swap under the U.S. Tropical Forest Conservation Act — unanimously reauthorized this May by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week — and its first such agreement with Indonesia, which has the second highest annual loss of forest cover after Brazil. Under the terms of the pact the government of Indonesia will put $30 million into a trust over the next eight years. The trust will issue annual grants for forest conservation and restoration work in Sumatra, an island that lost nearly half of its forest cover between 1985 and 2007 as a result of logging, conversion for plantations, and forest fires....

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Calanolide, an anti-HIV drug derived from the Bintangor or Calophyllum tree, is now in the clinical trial stage, said Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr George Chan, speaking to reporters in Miri, Sarawak at the launch of the official website for the Borneo Research Council Conference 2010.

. . . .

Rainforest plants have long been recognized for their potential to provide healing compounds. Indigenous peoples of the rainforest have used medicinal plants for treating a wide variety of health conditions while western pharmacologists have derived a number of drugs from such plants....

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Healthy forest and recently cleared forest adjacent to Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo). Photos Rhett Butler.

Every year, tens of millions of acres of tropical forests are destroyed. This is the most destabilizing human land-use phenomenon on Earth. Tropical forests store more aboveground carbon than any other biome. They harbor more species than all other ecosystems combined. Tropical forests modulate global water, air, and nutrient cycles. They influence planetary energy flows and global weather patterns. Tropical forests provide livelihoods for many of the world’s poorest, most marginalized people. Drugs for cancer, malaria, glaucoma, and leukemia are derived from rainforest compounds.

Despite all these immense values, tropical forests are vanishing faster than any other natural system. No other threat to human welfare has been so clearly documented and simultaneously left unchecked.

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Readiness plans are the first step toward a country qualifying for payments under the proposed Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) mechanism, a climate change mitigation scheme that would pay tropical countries for conserving their forests. The details of REDD are expected to be hammered out this December....

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Top: land use under policies aiming to achieve a CO2 concentration target of 450 ppm, which limits fossil fuel, industrial, and terrestrial carbon emissions with a common carbon tax on emissions. Bottom: land use under a scenario in which only fossil fuel and industrial emissions are controlled to achieve the same 450-ppm CO2 concentration.

Failure to develop policies that account for emissions from land use change will lead to widespread deforestation and higher costs for addressing climate change, warn researchers writing in the journal Science.

Using a computer model that incorporates economics, energy, agriculture, land-use changes, emissions and concentrations of greenhouse gases, a team of researchers from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and the University of Maryland found that efforts to limit atmospheric carbon dioxide levels while ignoring emissions from terrestrial sources would lead to nearly a complete loss of unmanaged forests by 2100, resulting largely from increased expansion of bioenergy crops. Meanwhile placing a value ("tax") on terrestrial carbon emissions equivalent to that on industrial and fossil fuel emissions would lead to an increase in forest cover.

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The population of orangutans in Indonesia's Kutai National Park has plunged by 90 percent in the past five years due to large-scale deforestation promoted by local authorities, reports The Centre for Orangutan Protection (COP), an Indonesian environmental group.

According to park officials interviewed by COP, the population of morio orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus morio) declined from 600 in 2004 to 30-60 this year. COP attributes the drop to state-sponsored colonization of the Kutai, which has led to hunting and forest clearing....

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The 90 second video advocating rainforest conservation features the newest James Bond, Daniel Craig; longtime rainforest activist Harrison Ford; spiritual leader in exile the Dalai Lama....

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Rice yields, the agricultural staple of Southeast Asia, will be hit particularly hard....

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The book, titled Forests for the Future, describes "the skills and knowledge used for generations to manage forest ecosystems without destroying them", according to a statement from Indonesia's Indigenous Peoples' Alliance (AMAN) and Down to Earth, the NGOs that published the work.

"Forests for the Future avoids romanticizing the indigenous way of life," the statement continued. "Instead it presents lessons learned from communities striving to meet today's economic and political challenges....

Click here to get the book free via the Web

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The environmental group — which is marketing its own non-market carbon scheme ahead of December's U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen — said that REDD would allow industrialized countries to continue emitting greenhouse gases while offering few benefits to local people....

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Ayers rock region of Australia. Makarieva and Gorshkov's theory claims to explain why the Australian outback is so dry. Photo by Rhett A. Butler.

Two Russian scientists, Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva of the St. Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, have published a revolutionary theory that turns modern meteorology on its head, positing that forests—and their capacity for condensation—are actually the main driver of winds rather than temperature. While this model has widespread implications for numerous sciences, none of them are larger than the importance of conserving forests, which are shown to be crucial to 'pumping' precipitation from one place to another. The theory explains, among other mysteries, why deforestation around coastal regions tends to lead to drying in the interior.

....

"An actively evaporating natural rainforest will work as a pump continuously supporting lower air pressure above its canopy and thus drawing moist air from the [the ocean]" say Makarieva and Gorshkov. If the rainforest is cut off or destroyed, water will simply stop being pumped from the ocean and will cease inland, leading to desertification.

But how does this new model, radical in its emphasis, play out against observations of actual weather patterns?

Makarieva and Gorshkov say that their theory "is significant enough to numerically account for the observed wind velocities in all observable circulation patterns, from large scale stationary continental patterns like the Amazon forest pump to spatially and temporarily concentrated patterns like hurricanes and tornadoes"....

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An indigenous settlement in Borneo

"The Committee has received information according to which Indonesia continues to lack any effective legal means to recognize, secure and protect indigenous peoples' rights to their lands, territories and resources. For instance, it seems that Indonesia's 2008 'Regulation on Implementation Procedures for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation' reiterates Law 41 of 1999 on Forestry that appears to deny any proprietary rights to indigenous peoples in forests," wrote Fatimata-Binta Victoire Dah, Chairperson of the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (UNCERD)....

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Armed gangs are logging rosewood and other valuable hardwoods from Marojejy and Masoala parks in Madagascar following abandonment of posts by rangers in the midst of the island nation's political crisis, reports marojejy.com and local sources.

Illegal logging of rosewood, ebonies, and other hardwoods has emerged as one of the primary drivers of forest degradation in northeastern Madagascar in recent years but, as noted by marojejy.com, the situation has been exacerbated by the political crisis that has led rangers and park officials in some areas to abandon their posts. Timber poachers and other interests are now moving aggressively into protected areas to take advantage of the opportunity according to a local source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

"Turmoil is going to last for months — no more rules, no more laws, no more police or control, just weapons and people starved for money or by greed," said the source. "2000 to 3000 people went to Masoala to harvest rosewood"....

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Now that Barack Obama has been president for nearly two months, it is time for him to give a defining speech on climate change. While Obama has spent most of his time on what the majority of Americans consider the most pressing issue—the economy—he has proven himself adept at juggling the economy with other vital issues.

A fact-based speech on climate change would accomplish several goals. First, by using his unique position in the world, Barack Obama could directly impact the debate on climate change, which has spent far too many decades stuck in the scientific consensus vs. denialism and not discussing what should—and must—be done to address what the majority of scientists consider a clear and growing threat....

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According to an article by the International Tropical Timber Organization, any wood that is harvested illegally in its native country now comes under the Lacey Act and "anyone who imported, exported, transported, sold, received, acquired or purchased the wood products made from that illegal timber, who knew or should have known that the wood was illegal, may be prosecuted for violation of the Lacey Act"....

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But it’s not just married couples that must support reforestation. Couples filing for divorce must provide at least one tree, according to Wibowo, the district secretary. The new rules are due to budget difficulties within the Garut district government....

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This week Indonesia submitted an application to join the partnership, which has raised $350 million to support projects under the United Nations' Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) mechanism....

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Whole Foods pledges to use only sources of palm oil that have been independently verified and certified to meet environmental and social sustainability criteria in its private label brand products by 2012.

America's largest organic grocer has announced its products will no longer use palm oil sourced from unsustainable producers, reports the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), an activist group that has led a campaign against destructive palm oil production. The move adds pressure on the palm oil industry to develop an effective and credible certification system for palm oil.

"Whole Foods Market is concerned with the social and environmental impacts of palm oil production in tropical rainforest ecosystems around the world," Whole Foods said in a statement. "Whole Foods is committed to protecting rainforests, communities and our global climate, and therefore....

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Indonesia's Minister for the Environment has approved a decree that will allow the conversion of carbon-rich peatlands for oil palm plantations, reports The Jakarta Post.

Rachmat Witoelar said that oil palm plantations will only be established in areas where peat is less than 3 meters (10 feet) deep. Conversion will require an environmental impact analysis (Amdal).

"The conversion of peatlands is possible for certain criteria, but should be done very selectively," Rachmat told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday. "The conversion is strictly forbidden in [peatland] more than 3 meters deep."

Wetlands International estimates that 8 percent of oil palm plantations in Malaysia and up to 25 percent in Indonesia are now on peatlands. These plantations account for 150 million tons of CO2 emissions annually in Indonesia....

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The Indonesian government will allow developers to convert millions of hectares of land for oil palm plantations, reports the Jakarta Post. The decision threatens to undermine Indonesia's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from land use and fashion itself as a leader on the environment among tropical countries.

Gatot Irianto, head of research and development for the Agriculture Ministry, said the department is drafting a decree that would allow the drainage and conversion of peatland areas into oil palm estates.

"We still need land for oil palm plantations. We must be honest: the sector has been the main driver for the people’s economy," he told the Jakarta Post on the sidelines of a meeting organized by the National Commission on Climate Change.

"We’ve discussed the draft with stakeholders, including hard-line activists, to convince them that converting peatland is safe," he said. "We promise to promote eco-friendly management to ward off complaints from overseas buyers and international communities."

Degradation and destruction of peatlands in Indonesia results in hundreds of millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year. Generally, developers dig a canal to drain the land, extract valuable timber, then clear the vegetation using fire....

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The value of the global carbon market surged 84 percent to $118 billion in 2008 despite the worldwide financial crisis, reports New Carbon Finance.

Data from the market research firm shows that transaction volume for carbon dioxide emissions allowances reached four billion tons....

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Telapak and Forest Watch Indonesia say the Indonesian Ecolabel Institute (LEI) has issued sustainability certificates to two companies with documented environmental abuses in Sumatra: Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper, a subsidiary of Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Ltd., and Wira Karya Sakti, a subsidiary of Asia Pulp and Paper.

"LEI's certification only looks at how the timber estates are managed once operational, without considering...."

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The project, dubbed "POTICO" (Palm Oil, TImber, Carbon Offsets), integrates sustainable palm oil, FSC-certified timber, and carbon offsets in order to "divert new oil palm plantations onto degraded lands and bring the forests that were slated for conversion into certified sustainable forestry".

WRI says POTICO would allow the palm oil industry to expand without destroying tropical forests. The implications for forest conservation are....

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The global economic downturn has caused demand for many commodities to plummet. The resulting decline in the prices of timber, energy, minerals and agricultural products may do what conservationists have largely failed to achieve in recent years: slow deforestation....

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We are often asked if we use teak wood to build our furniture. We source teak wood from deconstruction salvage projects in Java. The teak structures we salvage—houses, schools, bridges and boats—are aged 70-200 years. Teak wood that was used to build those structures was sourced from mature trees, when stocks of old-growth teak from Indonesia’s many vast teak plantations were plentiful. In former times, mature trees were commonly older than 100 years, although any tree older than forty or fifty years is considered mature. Construction-grade teak to build houses and boats is sourced from mature trees, as mature trees have tighter grain, higher concentrations of oil and more strongly express teak’s natural resistance to many insects and fungi. While these natural properties that are desirable to woodworkers derive from the soil conditions and climate in which trees are grown, and while there is debate about which combination of soil and climate produces trees most desirable to industry, there is consensus agreement that mature teak provides material of higher integrity than immature teak.

Indonesia’s teak plantations account for about one-third of the world’s existing teak plantations. However, today Indonesia possesses practically no stocks of mature teak trees. This is due to rampant theft and mismanagement of the country's state-owned teak plantations during the chaotic years following former President Suharto’s loss of power in 1998: between 1998 and 2005, nearly all of Indonesia’s mature plantation teak trees—a historically high-value material—were pillaged and sold in both domestic and international markets for a fraction of their value. During that time, teak furniture produced in Indonesia using old growth wood flooded the market, and was priced ridiculously low. Additionally, there were not enough seasoned and skilled craftsmen to answer a suddenly expanded need for labor; so, a lot of poorly made furniture built from amazing material, then, filled containers headed to destinations around the world.

Being that Indonesia’s plantation stock of mature teak trees is largely exhausted for the present, new teak furniture currently produced in Indonesia is built using immature trees, usually no older than fifteen or twenty years. Immature teak is a quite different and less desirable material than mature teak. At the same time, the price of this low grade teak wood has increased sharply beyond the cost of teak during the days when old trees could be stolen with impunity from state-owned plantations. Additionally, costs for other production materials—such as epoxy, finishing solutions and brass fixtures—has soared in recent years. And labor time applied to building furniture has also increased because a lot more joinery is required to work with smaller dimensions of wood that come from smaller trees. Unless it is constructed using teak wood salvaged from old structures, teak furniture built in Indonesia has become an expensive product derived from wood inferior to what it can and should be.

The name, teak, though, is rich with mystique. People know the name, revere the reputation and thus demand to have it. However, at Tropical Salvage we have discovered that few people who demand teak know much about it. The Dutch East India Company began to establish Indonesia’s teak plantations during the seventeenth century. In time, they greatly succeeded at marketing teak to Europe and the United States as one of the world’s premiere woods for constructing buildings, boats and furniture. Teak is of course a fine wood, but hardly the only species of wood from Indonesia’s highly diverse forest stocks suitable to constructing buildings, boats and furniture. The Dutch strategized to make it seem so because they created and controlled Indonesia’s vast teak plantations, where teak grows faster than anywhere else in the world in tropical, alluvial, volcanically-enriched soils. The mystique of teak which the Dutch East India Company encouraged in the seventeenth century persists today. Viewed in realistic context, though, teak’s historical cultivation in plantations as an international commodity whose trade enriched colonial entities has rarely served the interests of social or environmental ethics. Applying brutishly narrow land-use policies provoked by the rudest commercial calculation, the Dutch East India Company displaced many native peoples from their ancestral lands and deprived vast ranges of land of its ancestral biodiversity.

Without intending to take anything away from teak’s considerable versatility and beauty, it cannot be ignored that its highly exclusive reputation was intentionally invented by the Dutch East India Company and other colonial entities settled in south and southeast Asia to increase their exploitative prospects. They succeeded at this strategy prodigiously.

New satellite research presented for the first time at a symposium entitled “Will the rainforests survive?” showed that selective logging is impacting over a quarter of the world’s rainforests. Gregory Asner from the Carnegie Institution presented the “first true global estimate of selective logging” which showed that 5.5 million square kilometers of rainforest has already seen selective logging or is slated to be logged in the near future.

Such figures were not possible in the past due to the difficulty of monitoring the impacts of selective logging....

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Prominent biologist Joseph Wright, who has come under fire for saying that warnings about habitat destruction in rainforests are exaggerated, passionately argued that climate change was the greatest threat to rainforests.

"Climate change, I believe, is a much greater threat to biodiversity in the tropics than habitat destruction," Wright said.... "Tropical species are much more sensitive to small increases in temperature than temperate species."

....

Tropical biologist William Laurance did not disagree with Wright about the dangers posed by climate changed, but repeatedly emphasized that scientists, conservationists and leaders could only ignore habitat loss at their peril.

"I would argue that habitat destruction is what we should focus on," Laurance stated definitively.

Other scientists, such as Gregory Asner from the Carnegie Institute and Thomas Rudel from Rutgers University, supported Laurance by showing that deforestation was still on the rise and that the major drivers of deforestation had changed from subsistence farmers to global corporate and industrial interests, which level forests and keep them from re-growth with great efficiency.

"Pressures on land are not going to diminish" Laurance concluded....

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On December 26th, 2004 an earthquake recorded at a magnitude of 9.3 in the Indian Ocean created a massive tsunami that struck nations across the region. Enormous waves took the lives of nearly 250,000 people while destroying cities and towns in minutes. The tsunami also caused extensive environmental damage, including reef systems along many coastal areas.

Four years after the tsunami researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have returned to site of the disaster to survey the damaged reefs and work with local communities on preserving this important resource. After exploring sixty sites of coral reef off the coasts of Aceh, Indonesia, the scientists report that reefs damaged by the 2004 tsunami are on the path to recovery....

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Since 1990 the growth of coral in Australia's Great Barrier Reef has slowed its lowest rate in at least 400 years as a result of warming waters and ocean acidification, report researchers writing in Science. The finding portends a bleak near-term future for the giant reef ecosystem as well as calcifying marine organisms around the world.

....Ocean acidification is increasingly caused by the absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Because atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are rising, oceans are becoming more acidic....

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A new study finds that shade-grown coffee protects the biodiversity of tree species, as well as those of birds and bats. Published in Current Biology, the study found that native trees in shade-grown coffee plantations aid the overall species’ gene flow and can become a focal point for reforestation.

...."More than 60 percent of the earth's surface is managed by humans as agriculture or pasture, and these landscapes provide us with a great opportunity to support native biodiversity...."

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The area of rainforest in the process of being deforested — razed but not yet cleared — surged in the Brazilian Amazon during 2008, according to new figures released by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE). The announcement comes shortly after the Brazilian government reported a 4 percent increase in forest clearing for the year.

Using an advanced satellite system that tracks changes in vegetation cover INPE found that 24,932 square kilometers of Amazon forest was damaged between August 2007....

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By some estimates, diseases introduced by Europeans may have killed more than 90 percent of population on the New World within a century of first contact. The rapid depopulation led to large-scale abandonment, and subsequent reforestation, of agricultural lands....

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More than 1,000 previously unknown species have been discovered in the Greater Mekong, a region comprising Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Vietnam and the Yunnan Province of China, in the past decade, according to a new report from WWF....

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...."Hopes were not fulfilled on REDD," Fred Boltz, Vice President of Conservation Strategies at Conservation International (CI), told mongabay.com....

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Canaan Fair Trade's new showroom, with Tropical Salvage-made display shelves and furniture. Photo by Amanda Nunn.

How did a furniture manufacturing business headquartered in Portland connect with an olive oil producer in the West Bank? Through a shared commitment to Fair Trade — to creating healthy, sustainable employment opportunities in areas of economic hardship.

Canaan Fair Trade gets its olives and other ingredients from Fair Trade cooperatives in the area around Jenin, Palestine. The company contracted with Tropical Salvage, based in Portland, Oregon, to provide custom furnishings for its new state-of-the-art olive oil processing/bottling facility, showroom and offices. The new 32,000 square-foot West Bank building was just completed in late November.

The furniture was built using 100 percent salvaged tropical hardwoods by artisans in Indonesia, where logging (both legal and illegal) threatens some of the world's few remaining primary tropical forests.

Tim O'Brien, who founded Tropical Salvage in 1998 out of a commitment to protect those forests, was happy and surprised to be shipping two hundred pieces of furniture to a Palestinian customer. "It's amazing to discover how much people all over the world are drawn to our products and what we are accomplishing in Indonesia. There is a poetic symbol of hope in sending our furniture—whose strength and beauty is created entirely from salvaged woods and human ingenuity—to a country ransacked by conflict. Our hope and action for positive change joins Canaan's hope and action for positive change."

For more photographs, click here.]]> Kevin Havice, Tropical Salvage Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:31:54 +0100 http://tropicalsalvage.com/?p=blog&id=30 The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), a forest policy think tank, today released its assessment on the proposed REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) mechanism for slowing climate change.

The report, titled "Moving ahead with REDD: Issues, options and implications", reviews the challenges facing REDD and makes policy recommendations to....

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HSBC has cut lending to oil palm developers and logging companies in Malaysia and Indonesia due to environmental concerns, reports Reuters.

...."We're planning to exit 30 percent of client relationships in the forest land and forest products sector in high-risk countries...."

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A new report finds that the World Bank is not doing enough to protect indigenous rights under its mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD)

...."Cutting Corners" alleges that the Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) — which provides seed funding for REDD projects — has rushed its review process and is failing to follow its own rules set to protect indigenous people and forest communities.....

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The report, issued by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), calls for the implementation of adaptation measures to reduce the vulnerability of forests and forest-dependent communities to wildfires, drought, flooding, disease, and other environmental challenges.

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The report — which will be presented at the upcoming UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Poznán, Poland — suggests that....

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Scientists have rediscovered a long-lost species of primate on a remote island in Indonesia.

Conducting a survey of Mount Rore Katimbo in Lore Lindu National Park on the island of Sulawesi, a team led by Sharon Gursky-Doyen of Texas A&M University captured three pygmy tarsiers, a tiny species of primate that was last collected in 1921....

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In an agreement signed yesterday at a climate change conference in Beverly Hills, California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pledged financial assistance and technical support to help reduce deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia. The Memorandum of Understanding commits the California, Illinois and Wisconsin to work with the governors of six states and provinces within Indonesia and Brazil to help slow and stop tropical deforestation, a source of roughly 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions....

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....The standard may help usher in a new era of "avoided deforestation" projects which capitalize on the carbon sequestration capacity of forests. Deforestation presently accounts for 15-20 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions — more than the global transportation sector....

Chart based on net deforestation rates from 2000-2005 and average above-ground biomass according to U.N. FAO data. Note that FAO data is controversial and does not account for emissions from drainage and conversion of peatlands or other land-use change, factors that would significantly boost Indonesia's carbon emissions. It is generally accepted that Indonesia's emissions from land-use change exceed those of Brazil, which may be over-estimated using raw FAO data.

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In a two-hour meeting Saturday in the city of Miri, representatives from the Berawan-Tering....

Click here for the full article (from October 5, 2008)

"If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you'd collapse. And while you people are over consuming the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster… as prosperity goes down political ruthlessness and one-party rule, nationalism and bellicosity begin to rise."

-Aldous Huxley, Island

Gold mining in the Amazon rainforest, Peru

When proposing and exploring solutions to environmental crises we rarely, if ever, consider social and geopolitical factors such as massive refugee migrations, economic market instability and collapse, wars for resources, the peaking of oil, civil uprisings/riots, and the rise of fascism/military oppression. If we hope to create lasting and effective solutions to environmental issues of the 21st Century it is clear we must consider facets beyond the realm of traditional environmental science and shift towards multi-disciplinary systems-level approaches. In addition to the long list of existing and impending environmental crises (passing points-of-no-return in tropical deforestation and climate change, widespread coral bleaching, and the accelerating mass extinction of biodiversity) we must recognize and adapt to the effects of current and emerging social issues (resource wars, economic collapse, and the rise of fascism).

It is becoming increasingly evident that....

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In Jepara, we are planning to lease an additional production warehouse; obtain more equipment; and create more jobs.

The Prince of Wales yesterday put forth a proposal to have developed nations pay a "rainforest utility bill" for the services the tropical forests provide globally, which include the provision of oxygen for the atmosphere, fresh water, and biodiversity. The speech was delivered to the Indonesian president and his cabinet in Jakarta, a short drive from the Tropical Salvage production facility.

Said Charles: "These funds could be provided directly by developed world governments, perhaps from expanded development aid budgets, from surcharges on activities which cause climate change or from the auction of carbon market emission allowances ... The issuing entity would pay the proceeds from the bonds to the rainforest nations. They in turn would use the money to re-orientate their economies to halt or refrain from deforestation."

Prince Charles proposes that because the world's remaining rainforests provide the above-mentioned benefits for everyone around the world, plus many additional local benefits; because people from developed countries like Europe and the United States have led the historical and continuing destruction of the rainforests; and because we can foresee a nearly complete loss of the already much-diminished forests (and their benefits) within our lifetimes, therefore, it is time we pay a "utility bill" for the benefits we receive, and to ensure the continued existence tropical forests.

More information: Prince's Rainforests Project

"Carbon offsets" are just one of many emerging environmental markets, in which producers create a particular quantity of ecological protection or ecosystem services, and offer them in measured amounts to buyers. Some innovative public policy leaders around the world "are now considering and in some cases implementing new rules" to require businesses and public projects to purchase various kinds of "credits" to offset their impacts, when they cannot comply with tightening environmental regulations.

A greenhouse gas "cap and trade" system would be one example.

For a quick, interesting introductory article to environmental markets, click here.

The Jakarta Post reported that deforestation and conversion of water catchment areas have caused two thirds of the natural springs in Banyumas regency, Central Java, to rapidly dry up in recent years. (Click here for the original story.) The springs are the main source of water for the residents of the regency, who now face a drought.

It is another example of the difficult obstacles humanity faces today in our effort to provide for everyone and eliminate poverty. People need to make a living, so we clear forests for wood and then use the land for agriculture. But then the water stops flowing during the dry season, because the catchment areas have been lost.

Tropical Salvage is located in the Jepara regency, also in Central Java. Similar springs flow on the slopes of Mount Muria, where the Jepara Forest Conservancy aims to restore the natural balance and create sustainable economic opportunities for residents there.

Worldwide, this planet's capacity to provide ecosystem services such as water catchment and fresh water flow has dramatically declined in recent decades. Our industrial and agricultural practices during the last couple of centuries have led us to this threshold: if, during our lifetimes, we do not transform the way our human economy (how we get food, energy & goods) interacts with the natural world, then the very likely outcome will be a planet which will simply not be able to support as much life, human and otherwise.

That is why we are a stand for positive change. The seeds of this kind of transformation have sprouted, and are growing robustly. We invite you to join us. (So What Can I Do?)

Click below to contribute a few trees to our mini-tree-planting campaign. We are aiming for 150 trees.

The show will air on The CW this Saturday, April 19, at 4:00pm; and will be repeated on Sunday at 4:30pm. In the Portland metro area, Portland's CW is available on cable channel 3, or if you use just an antenna, you might find it being broadcast on channel 5.

Updates to the online catalog: several new pieces have been added in the last week; more items will be added periodically.

Updates on climate change: according to a new study that used climate models which are more finely tuned with each passing month, "Carbon Output Must Near Zero To Avert Danger".

Updates to my home: I just got some Asymmetrical Shelves and an Equilibrium Hutch (pictured below) for myself. They look fantastic!

(Click here for access to the original paper, "Hope for Threatened Tropical Biodiversity: Lessons from the Philippines," via BioOne.)

One of the world's most striking stories of environmental degradation is that of the Phillipines. "The Philippines is a megabiodiversity country, but it is also often seen as a country of ecological ruin whose biodiversity is on the verge of collapse." In the Philippines—the archipelago neighbor of Indonesia, which has experienced similar ecological degradation—"soil fertility has decreased while pollution has increased due to mining; fisheries have become increasingly less productive while flooding and landslides occur annually due to erosion from deforestation."

The situation in the Philippines is so extreme that many have given up on the islands as a "lost cause for conservation."

A new research paper shows, however, that conservation initiatives there have made a difference. The authors demonstrate that even in places like the Philippines—where human activity has displaced vast expanses of rich natural ecosystems, where over half of the native plant species are threatened by extinction—even there, we are able to save critically endangered species and reverse ecosystem degradation.

If we study and learn what actions make a difference, use our resources for taking effective action, and direct our dreams and our intentions toward it, then we can have and maintain these wild, biologically diverse ecosystems that provide us with incalculably valuable ecosystem services and incomparably beautiful places to connect with nature and with ourselves.

As the lead author of this paper said about the Philippines, "to dismiss the country as a lost cause for conservation would merely create a self-fulfilling prophecy that dooms biodiversity where there are still opportunities for effective action." I believe that this is also true of our natural world as a whole.

Currently, more than twenty percent of the human-generated greenhouse gas emissions fueling climate change derive from logging and burning the world's remaining primary tropical forest lands. While these forests amount to no more than five percent of the world's remaining primary forest lands, they account for approximately fifty-five percent of its terrestrial biological diversity. If we continue to allow business practices such as logging, mining and commodity-driven agricultural schemes to destroy these rare tropical ecosystems, then most of their life will permanently end, and their stores of greenhouse gases will be released into the atmosphere.

Change is a choice. In a world afflicted by war, poverty, destruction of natural ecosystems and multiplying negative consequences of global warming, it is difficult to generate a hope for the future strong enough to divert the ominous momentum. But our hope is fueled by a logic, imagination and ingenuity that distinguish our species. We possess abilities of deductive reasoning to understand consequences of our actions, we possess imagination to envision improvements, and we possess ingenuity to figure out how to adjust our actions to shape improvements. Protecting the world's remaining stands of primary tropical forest is an achievable goal that should be met in order to pass on to generations who succeed us the natural wonders, conveniences and potentials for scientific discovery we have enjoyed in our lives.

The international community of scientists, heads of states and environmental and economic thought leaders has in recent years aimed enormous intellectual and capital resources at understanding and addressing this challenge. The United Nations, The World Bank, Nature Conservancy, World Wild Life Fund, The Center for International Forestry, to name some of the prominent leaders in the campaign to broaden awareness and instigate meaningful positive change, all agree on the paramount importance of conserving remaining primary tropical forest ecosystems. And all have formulated strong conservation and restoration strategies. One gaining wide acceptance assigns monetary value to the natural services provided by tropical forest ecosystems. Protecting biological diversity and wildlife habitat, providing abundant clean water and a rich array of non-timber forest products, maintaining soil stability and securing containment of greenhouse gases: all of these ecological services are invaluable and must not be discounted by narrowly self-interested business objectives. Ecosystem services translate into a price that can be traded on environmental responsibility offset markets wherein businesses dependent on practices measurably harmful to our natural environment can voluntarily compensate for the practices by purchasing measurable conservation and restoration credits. The trades are vetted by independent third parties who apply current and rigorous science and accounting. Not surprisingly, it is already indicated that on the open market values of these perennial life-sustaining and life-enriching services provided by primary tropical forests will shortly exceed values of finite resource extraction from the forests and/or their conversion to commodity-driven agricultural use which inflict vast and usually irreparable environmental, social, cultural and economic damage.

If business people react to environmental responsibility offset strategies as causing unnecessary drains to the bottom line, then it might be time for them to reassess the bottom line. The pursuit of wealth without due accountability for social and environmental consequences was forgivable before such consequences became indisputably clear—before science arrived at consensus and the internet made facts proved by science instantaneously available. Clarity of information has taught us that we live in a global ecosystem which will care for our health only if we, reciprocally, care for its health; wealth cannot usefully grow independently of social and environmental health. At this historical juncture marked by unprecedented social and environmental challenges, it might be considered that money better serves us as a tool to effect solutions to social and environmental challenges than it does to multiply redundancies of extravagance.

The new bottom line, then, asks what we might think of a species that knowingly practices strategies to attain wealth which sharply compromise its children's future quality of life. The new bottom line understands that we are endowed with more intelligence and compassion than to accept such a pathetic spiral.

In temperate and industrial North America, undisturbed tropical forests seem far away, a world away. They are located in "foreign" countries, and getting to them requires hours on an airplane and perhaps navigating an unfamiliar culture and language. It might be difficult to accept that they directly and integrally impact the air breathed anywhere on earth -- as well as the water consumed, climate experienced, and quality of life sensed. They are a vital and indispensable organ of the Earth's ecosystem anatomy. They are the cradle of our species and thereby a vital and invaluable conduit to our soul.

It is not necessary to cut trees from the tropical wild in order to meet reasonable human demand for materials. Wild tropical wood can be readily replaced in the market by supplies of wood cut from plantations, supplies of salvaged woods and supplies of alternative materials. While some aesthetic and durability properties of wood from old-growth tropical trees are uniquely favored, the trees' extraction from the last wild forests causes permanent losses that exponentially eclipse the temporary gains. Our million-year ecological heritage would be traded very cheaply for a single generation's supply of favored flooring and furniture. And no gated and guarded residential hill-top cul-de-sac can segregate itself from climate change and a precipitous depletion of biological diversity that might shortly consign us to permanent biopoverty. It is time—it is the eleventh hour—for money to assert itself without hesitation toward intensifying engagement of critical social and environmental crises and applying focus and follow-through to strategize better outcomes.

Among other strategies, we can easily and routinely contribute to protecting primary tropical forestlands by adjusting our consumer choices. A choice to avoid purchases of wood products deriving from harvests of primary tropical forests, whether the product's origins are "certified" as coming from responsibly harvested trees or not, asserts a stand that rationally answers the day's clear, scientifically solid facts. Similarly, we can avoid purchases of products which contain palm oil, a commodity whose cultivation causes rampant conversion of primary tropical forest lands into vast mono-culture plantations that are ecological disasters. Consumer choices are activism, and their collective effect can generate economic and political leverage.

Focus the Nation is a nationwide teach-in focusing on creating solutions for global warming. It is expected to be, by far, the biggest national teach-in in U.S. history, with more than one million Americans expected to participate.

The Oregon regional event will feature a live OPB radio "Green Democracy" forum in which students from nine universities and colleges across Oregon will pose questions, with follow up, to Governor Ted Kulongoski, Congressman Earl Blumenauer, State House representative Jackie Dingfelder, and State Senate representative Ben Westlund.

We at Tropical Salvage are committed to a healthy planet for all people and all life, and addressing climate change is one way in which we are acting on that commitment. Starting soon, we will be a "climate neutral" business. I am in the process of measuring the greenhouse gas emissions that resulted from our operations and supply chain in 2007 (using the GHG Protocol), and once this report is finalized, we will obtain "carbon credits" to offset our emissions. This report will also show us where the bulk of our emissions are coming from, and inform us of areas to focus on for reducing our emissions.

My intentions for attending Focus the Nation tonight are to encourage other businesspeople (and business students) to have their lives and their businesses be about something more than just commerce and profits; to discover new resources that I can use for creating a "climate neutral" business; and to connect with other people who are committed to creating a healthy, sustainable world.

UPDATE February 1, 2008
Last night, during the panel discussion with the above-mentioned elected officials, my thoughts and emotions ran the gamut as I heard proposals for strong solutions, proposals for more of same (which is clearly insufficient), genuine and thoughtful responses, blatant boosterism, scary statistics, huge opportunities, wild applause and cheering, and hesitant clapping.

I sensed the the college student-filled crowd overflowing with enthusiasm for positive change. It felt good to me. I wondered why the whole nation is not filled with that same energy. "Why is this kind of passion so prevalent in university students?" I wondered. "Who would resist these wonderful changes that we seek in order to halt runaway global warming?"

I thought about these questions, and some ideas occurred to me. Many of our big corporations, who are leaders in job and wealth creation, are failing to be leaders in addressing climate change. A lot of people in the U.S., and a lot of our representatives in government, acknowledge that global warming is a critical problem, and want to do something about it. In our roles as employees, board members, and financiers of publicly held corporations, however, we too often hesitate, or worse, deny.

Most of the business done by large, public corporations today does not contribute to clean air, thriving communities, and healthy ecosystems. Rather, these organizations' current way to prosperity comes from externalizing costs, profits, and growth; these are the goals on which business school training, corporate culture, and U.S. law all focus.

Big changes, such as the changes we need in order to address global warming and our other social and ecological crises, could introduce new costs or risks for some existing businesses. If shareholders and analysts perceive new costs or risks, then share values could go down in the short term. Therefore, we avoid the big changes.

We each play many roles in our lives. Why do so many university students become activists for positive social and environmental change? Maybe it is because they have no stake in big business. They do not play any roles in any corporations.

A new report by the Botanic Gardens Conservation International identified hundreds of plants that are at risk from over-harvesting and deforestation. "Over 50% of prescription drugs are derived from chemicals first identified in plants. ...Researchers warned the cures for things such as cancer and HIV may become 'extinct before they are ever found'."

We at Tropical Salvage are committed to the health and abundance of the ecosystems which many threatened plant species call home. We created the Jepara Forest Conservancy to preserve, cultivate and study plants and non-timber forest products in an area where deforestation continues to diminish the planet's wealth of biological diversity.

PORTLAND, ORE. – Four local businesses and non-profits have become Founding Reporters of The Climate Registry by being among the first 54 organizations to join. The Climate Registry is a non-profit organization established to measure and publicly report greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in a common, accurate and transparent manner consistent across industry sectors and borders. 39 U.S. states, five Canadian provinces, three Native American tribes, two Mexican states and the District of Columbia are the founders of the organization.

The four Portland-based Founding Reporters are:
Earth Advantage, Inc.: works with builders, developers and industry partners as a primary resource for green building and climate solutions through education, training, consulting and third-party building certifications
Ecos Consulting: works with clients to reduce energy use, manage carbon emissions, and make operations more environmentally sustainable
PacifiCorp: the parent company of Pacific Power, a local electricity producer with a growing renewable energy portfolio
Tropical Salvage: a furniture business creating positive change, using 100 percent salvaged tropical hardwood and certified Fair Trade practices

By joining as Founding Reporters, these organizations have demonstrated a commitment to solving global warming by voluntarily committing to measure, independently verify, and publicly report their GHG emissions on an annual basis utilizing The Climate Registry General Reporting Protocol, which is based on the internationally recognized GHG measurement standards of the World Resources Institute and World Business Council on Sustainability. Measuring their GHG emissions in this way is the first step in reducing emissions, and enables them to offset their emissions by obtaining GHG offsets in growing "carbon markets."

"We pride ourselves on aligning our behavior with our progressive thinking," said Sean Penrith, Executive Director of Earth Advantage, Inc. “Being a Founding Reporter cements our solid commitment to the role of environmental and climate stewardship Earth Advantage advocates. We trust that other firms in the region will join us in charting the path to climate solutions."

Oregon has long been a leader in addressing climate change and environmental sustainability issues. Setting a standard in 2003, Governor Ted Kulongoski spoke about Oregon's ongoing commitment to a healthy environment and its integral relationship with business and the economy. He stated,

"A healthy environment is essential to a livable Oregon and a strong economy... There is a complementary relationship between a clean environment and a robust economy - they exist and support upon each other. Thus, it is important that we keep Oregon's existing environmental standards in place. We cannot lower our environmental bar."

"These Portland institutions have demonstrated exemplary environmental leadership by stepping forward to support The Climate Registry in its preliminary stages. We are deeply grateful for their integral support in helping to address the challenge of climate change," said Gina McCarthy, Chair of The Climate Registry.

Habits of philosophical misperception endure because escaping them requires humility. Change takes a lot of energy. The light is not availed to us without honest self-examination and complete acceptance of what we find. This can be a struggle; we tend to turn a blind eye to the things that we think came of the darkness, though such things are always present.

The dark is an age-old companion. It exerts a cloistering and comforting familiarity and simplicity. Sometimes it is manifested as tradition reflecting and reinforcing kinship. Darkness is not evil. We can say it is simply inaction or counter-productive action caused by sloth, apathy, cynicism or myopic self-interest. Being very adaptable and inclined to the lull of habits free of surprising stresses and risks, people can feel okay in the dark.

But the light is about life and legacy, about what generations who follow will receive in their lives as a direct result of our exertions in this world. A great value of enlightenment is its clarification of responsibility.

Both the light and dark will always be present in each of us. How we choose to act on them will bear directly on the generations who follow us. Building and passing on a legacy of honest, ethical and constructive responses to the world's existing body of knowledge is our responsibility. Pak Suliman rejoices because he believes we are drawn naturally to the light; he is saddened because we cannot get there without major changes.

Maddie likes agile gibbons, too, and leopards. All of these animals occur in some of her books; a leopard and agile gibbon are represented in her collection of stuffed animals. To a two year-old's formative consciousness, our culture appears to practice a peaceful, happy and respectful relationship with the natural world around us. Might this seed of mythology later yield a fruit of cynicism? If you check out information about all three of the animals my daughter favors, you will learn they are all endangered in the wild. Their declining numbers are attributed to “habitat destruction” largely caused by logging, ore extraction and conversion of wild lands to commodity agricultural use. Their declining numbers are also attributed to “illegal capture and trade” for use as pets, food and medicines peculiar to Chinese traditions. The animals are disappearing in the wild because the wild is disappearing.

Science has made it unequivocally clear that protecting the world’s remaining primary tropical wild lands against our species' various inclinations to exploit them unsustainably is critical to preserving biological diversity. While these tropical forests amount to no more than 4 percent of the world’s remaining primary forest lands, they account for approximately 55 percent of its terrestrial biological diversity, including endangered slow lorises, agile gibbons and leopards. Biological diversity is what wonderfully expresses, enriches and eases the experience of life for humans everywhere on the globe. Biological diversity means an array of doors of scientific inquiry remain open to us. Through some of them are discoveries that will improve our quality of life, in some instances dramatically. Shut the doors, we diminish our potential for discovery, compromise the balance of life that sustains us and add considerable disadvantage and danger to the future world our children will inhabit. The list is long of important foods and medicines, extracts and fabrication materials, environmental services and pleasures to our senses deriving from “the wild.” We regard many of them as essential to sustaining our quality and way of life. The list is longer of species never properly characterized by science that we pushed to extinction through irresponsible, exploitative practices driven by narrow business interests.

Many of us unwittingly contribute to destruction of ecosystems that sustain biological diversity through our consumer choices. In a vast, diverse global marketplace where law is variable and not always the best representation of ethics, we are disconnected from understanding the full meaning of these choices. We are unwitting in the Age of Information: even as the Internet has made it easier than ever, we are busier than ever, and taking the time to become informed seems very challenging. But its importance cannot be over-emphasized. The global ecosystem’s margin for enduring destructive business practices has grown ominously thin. Nature’s bounty and beauty, upon which our quality of life is dependent, is everywhere expressing its inability to continue supporting our extravagant material shaping of the world.

Unrestrained demand for products fueling unrestrained exploitation of natural resources in the service of “creating wealth” -- the cycle we know as “business” -- has brought us this mess and peril. If we are to succeed at reining in climate change and destruction of the natural environments critically important to our greater well-being, business must assert itself, with or without law’s mandate, toward forming a solution-oriented marketplace. While we would all welcome a few miraculous strokes of technology that might allow business to occur as usual but without imperiling the future, there is too much at risk right now to depend on such unlikely developments in the future. Success will more likely be realized through a thousand adjustments in perspective and behavior that amount to a new way of doing business. Crises—and the new laws that they precipitate—will cause some adjustments; but most will be self-initiated, engendered by the logic of honest, appropriate responses to clear, ominous challenges. While people will always trade, and through trade seek improvements to their lot, we have arrived at a historical juncture when "improvement to our lot" is being forced by clear information to be redefined. Today, improving our lives and our children's lives might mean valuing pursuit of solutions to the world’s problems above pursuit of personal wealth without due restraint. We can no longer afford the tactics of self-interest that have brought us to this hard place. Perhaps ironically, those who have accumulated wealth through centuries of unrestrained exploitation—the developed world—are the only ones who have the capacity to lead in forming and practicing global mandates that assure a better future.

A child’s affection for endangered slow lorises, agile gibbons and leopards, as she sits on your lap oblivious to the world’s tumult, is a very strong message. We owe children the natural wonders, beauty and bounty that our generation has enjoyed and exploited. We must demand of our species' stewardship of the world a continued integrity in the web of life that supports natural environments where lorises, gibbons and leopards have existed since time immemorial. Vigilance in meeting our demands can be supported and strengthened through the Internet’s web of information that instantly connects and dissects the world. Enabled by the Internet, never before in history have contributors to our problems and contributors to our solutions been more obvious. For the generations who follow us, we should assist social and environmental peace by forcing the marketplace to practice and promote ethics that appropriately answer the most formidable challenges our species has yet encountered.

Along the way, we also encountered a vast area of recently clear-cut primary forest. It looked like a particularly psychotic episode of vandalism. A place that had been one of the most biologically diverse spots on earth since time immemorial had, in the course of a few months, been reduced to an eerie, silent ruin of power-saw litter. It was ominous and affecting.

The rightness and wrongness of our management of tropical forests might be aptly illustrated by looking down the line formed by a still standing primary forest abutting a clear-cut forest. The cut side appears exactly like what it is: reckless squander driven by short-sighted business interests. The forest s role as an invaluable multi-faceted resource is ended. The living side illustrates a world in which we thoughtfully and respectfully observe, interact with, derive pleasure from and learn to use the full spectrum of life s phenomena.

The experience in Sumatra was so disturbing that I couldn t passively absorb it into a complex world s expanding landscape of unsettling experience. Living in the "age of information," when science has made clear the dependency of human quality of life on eco-system integrity, asserting a more active role in contributing to tropical forest conservation seemed a useful course to follow.