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TORONTO, May 18, 2012 /CNW/ - About 600 employees who provide telephone and television service and installation for residential and commercial customers of Rogers across Ontario, are set to strike June 15th, at

One of the four pension plan groups at Corner Brook Pulp and Paper voted against giving Kruger 10 years, instead of 5, to repay the shortfall in their pension plans.

Results of the vote:

-Pension Plan for Unionized Employees:
-Active members (326): ……………177 objections ……….54.3%
-Retired members (617): …………. 31 objections …………. 5.0%

-Pension Plan for Non-Unionized Employees:
-Active members (78): ………………6 objections ………….7.7%
-Retired members (218): …………..7 objections …………..3.2%

Under Newfoundland and Labrador legislation, in order for the relief measures to be applied, they cannot be opposed by more than one-third of members in each group (active and retirees). Consequently, with 54.3% of active unionized employees opposing the proposal, the relief measures cannot be applied to the unionized employees’ pension plan.

Kruger now plans to reassess the viability of Corner Brook Pulp and Paper’s operations. The pension relief measures were a crucial element in the Kruger’s strategy for the mill to improve its competitiveness and secure its future.

Kruger said the Kruger Company has gone to extraordinary lengths to support its Corner Brook operation in a very challenging market afflicted by declining demand for newsprint, increasing energy costs and the negative effects of a strong Canadian currency on exports.

In addition to these challenges, the Corner Brook Mill has to contend with other Canadian paper mills that have competitive operating costs and benefit from the additional advantage of funding relief measures for their own pension plan deficits.

Kruger said is disappointed with this outcome, especially considering the countless efforts that were put in over the last few weeks to communicate with plan members to seek their support.

Source: Kruger

Kruger to reassess viability of Corner Brook operation after vote doesn’t go their way is a post from: ForestTalk.com

Pension plan funding relief measures rejected by active unionized employees

The government has got a commitment of $8.3 million (around Rs 720.93 million) grant under the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

"Nepal has received a commitment of $2.7 million grant for biodiversity, $4 grant for climate change and $1.6 million grant for land degradation," chief of foreign assistance division

under the finance ministry Lal Shankar Ghimire briefed the Global Environment Facility's sixth constituency meeting of South Asia held in Maldives.

Earth's ecosystems keep soaking up more carbon as greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, new measurements find.

The research contradicts several recent studies suggesting that "carbon sinks" have reached or passed their capacity. By looking at global measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the new work calculates instead that total sinks have increased roughly in line with rising emissions.

The growth and plant water relations of Eucalyptus tereticornis Sm. and E. camaldulensis Dehnh. in relation to soil salinity were studied by transplanting one and half month old seedlings in the pots filled with eight levels of artificially created soil salinity levels.

Main Topic: 

• Forests

thesaurus: 

• Eucalyptus
• Soil Capability
• Biomass
• Soil Salinisation
• Wasteland Development
• Industrial Forests
• Hisar (D)
• Haryana

Attachment(s):  eucalyptus.pdf Name of the Journal: 

• Indian Journal of Ecology

Author: 

• Avtar Singh
• O. P. Toky
• Baljit Singh & et al

Mark Content Private(Internal): Email Alert: 180-183238Publication Date: 01/12/2011

CHENNAI: Forest and tree cover has declined in Tamil Nadu and the State has not prepared its own forest policy even though five years have passed since a recommendation to do this was made by the National Forest Commission, says a report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

The report - released by principal accountant generals Suhasini Srinivasan and S Murugiah at the office of the the Principal Accountant General on Wednesday - states that the state achieved only 22 per cent forest and tree cover against the target of 25 per cent, by 2007.

Wall Street Journal, 17 May 2012 | Europe's economic misery is having some unlikely consequences for its climate-change bulwark, the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). European utilities are returning to coal—the dirty, high-emissions stuff that the cap-and-trade program was supposed to make less economically sensible for power companies. So far this year, coal-fired power generation in Germany has grown to 68% from 53% as a share of nuclear and fossil-fuel generation, according to the Leipzig-based European Energy Exchange. Profits at coal-fired plants in Germany are up by 30%. The British government reports that U.K. coal plants are running at capacity, and that coal's share in power generation has been rising from 2009 lows.

Shillong: Despite the French cement giant Lafarge Umiam Mining Private Limited (LUMPL) depositing a total amount of Rs 3 crore towards the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA), the State Government is yet to carry out the plantation drive of about 4 lakh saplings in 470 hectares of land in the State.

“Under compensatory afforestation, about 4 lakh trees would be planted in an area of 470 hectares in the State,” LUMPL Board of Directors chairman Shivesh Sinha said during an informal interaction with media persons here on Thursday.

Guwahati: The death of a female elephant undergoing treatment for paralysis in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district Wednesday has again brought to light the human-elephant conflict in the region.

“Conflict is a fact of life in areas where people and elephants coexist, especially due to agriculture,” said Abhijit Rabha, chief conservator of forests in the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council.

FOREST WEALTH: The policy process to arrest forest degradation needs to be modernised with up-to-date techniques and civil society participation that is timely and proactive
Use Eye in the Sky to Manage Forest Cover
Employ remote sensing and spatial maps to bettertrack forest degradation with sound initiatives
HARINI NAGENDRA

By Nina Chestney and Oleg Vukmanovic, Reuters, 16 May 2012 | The chance of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius this century is getting slimmer and slimmer, the head of the International Energy Agency warned on Wednesday. "What I see now with existing investments for plants under construction... we are seeing the door for a 2 degree Celsius target about to be closed and closed forever," Fatih Birol, the IEA's chief economist, told a Reuters' Global Energy & Environment Summit. "This door is getting slimmer and slimmer in terms of physical and economic possibility," he warned.

The jatropha puzzle has finally been solved.

In 2005-06, most of the districts in the State were abuzz with the talk of jatropha. In press conferences, the then District Collectors, especially in those adjoining western and eastern ghats, talked of largescale jatropa plantations as the oil extracted from its seeds (blended with diesel up to 20 per cent) could be used as a substitute to petroleum diesel.

Says State has no elephant population

PANJIM: As the Union Government is bracing up for three-day synchronized National Elephant Census in six States including Goa, the Forest Department has said that ‘State has no elephant population and the jumbos who come down here usually migrate from the neighbouring States.’ According to a directive issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), the six-State Census would begin from May 22 and will be later conducted throughout the country, the MoEF notification reads.

Reference Emission Levels (gross) and Reference Levels (net) requires the combination of a land use transition matrix and typical C stocks per land use type.  Four ways of calculating REL for any (sub) national entity are:

• REL/RL1A: Projected emissions are based on historical emissions
• REL/RL1B: Projected emissions are based on historical emissions relative to remaining carbon pools
• REL/RL2: Future emissions are projected based on land use plans (forward-looking scenario)
• REL/RL3: Emissions levels projected on the basis of political commitment

 

The scope of this contribution to the quantification of REL/RL is:

• Explore consequences of various forest definitions for the metrics proposed
• Assess REL/RL options and their consequences
• Identify potential technical barriers and solutions
• Suggest ways to achieve capacity strengthening of local stakeholders

 

The purpose is to:

• Clarify need for agreed forest definition and scope of reducing emission from land-based sectors in order to reach the objective to reduce emissions
• Suggest simple scientific-based guidelines for REL/RL development supporting negotiations
• Recommend ways to overcome technical barrier, including data gaps
• Share lessons learnt from building capacity of local people to develop options for setting REL/RL within the overall land use planning specifically targeted for low land-based emission development as a proof of concept

 

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Opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions exist across all sectors of the economy and across a wide geographic area, but emissions from forest and peatland conversion dominate the field, as well as the public debate. With the advent of REDD+, the introduction of an Indonesian action plan for emissions reduction under the remit of the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action (NAMA), and the potential for increased financial flows into carbon-rich landscapes, the question of how to relate national commitment to local context and effective implementation is more important than ever. Rather than focusing on short-term emissions reduction strategies, the debate has shifted towards new ‘clean development’ strategies that focus on maintaining high carbon stocks with low carbon flows, while still achieving development goals.

 

Land Use Planning for Low Emission Development Strategy (LUWES) is a platform for developing a multiple stakeholder decision-making process to establish land use plans for sustainable development, which can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from land-based activity while simultaneously maintaining economic growth. It can simulate emissions reduction scenarios within specific zones of a landscape, or across an entire landscape, in order to produce ex ante emissions reduction and opportunity cost forecasts. It also recognizes the impact of land use allocation policies and distribution on tenure and livelihood. LUWES can accommodate the integration process between multiple modalities of land-based emission reductions (such as REDD+; Locally Appropriate Mitigation Action (LAMA); and the voluntary carbon market) at the planning stage across a common landscape.

 

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The cultivation of cash crops in the understorey of tropical forests is an ancient practice, but the effects of cultivation on forest ecosystem processes are poorly understood. Authors assessed the effects of planting the high-value spice crop cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum) on forest structure, tree species composition, and soil properties in the montane forests of the Knuckles Forest Reserve in central Sri Lanka, where cardamom cultivation has been banned since 1985 because of the high conservation value of this site. Vegetation and soil were sampled in forest under-planted with cardamom and adjacent natural forests without planted cardamom. The densities of woody plants (⩾5 cm dbh), saplings (<5 cm dbh and ⩾1.5 m tall), and seedlings (<1.5 m tall) were lower in cardamom plantations than natural forests, while stand basal area was marginally higher in cardamom plantations. Canopy openness at 1.3 m height was higher in the cardamom plantations (mean ± SEM: 35 ± 8%) than in the natural forests (19 ± 3%). Pioneer tree species such as Macaranga sp. increased in abundance in cardamom plantations, and this contributed to the emergence of a difference in species composition between cardamom plantations and adjacent natural forests. Species richness of trees ⩾5 cm dbh per plot was higher in natural forests than cardamom plantations, while species diversity was higher in cardamom plantations. The concentration of total N in top-soil was higher in natural forests, while concentrations of total P and exchangeable K were higher in the cardamom plantations.

 

This study concludes that cardamom cultivation results in a net loss of tree stems through weeding and opening of the canopy to promote cardamom production. The higher concentrations of total P and exchangeable K in the soil of cardamom plantations may be associated with the application of fertilizer, while total N concentration may have been higher in the natural forests because residual uncultivated forest occurs at a slightly higher elevation than the majority of cardamom plantations and/or because of elevated denitrification rates in the cardamom plantation. Since cardamom cultivation has affected forest structure and soil properties, management interventions may be required to mitigate these effects in high conservation value forests where cardamom cultivation has been banned.

 

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Objectives of this meeting is to support the development of tree biomass and volume AE. Specific themes to be addressed include the following;

• Data analysis and model development;
• Statistical analysis and accuracy assessment for biomass and carbon stock assessment;
• Institutional issues and roles (development, QC and data management);
• Identify gaps and future steps

 

Please click here for more information.