By Cynthia Ong Ed. The following is written by my friend and colleague, Cynthia. I endorse her views and recommend you read them because by chosing to mobilise around the issue of clean energy, Cynthia has shown how our shared values of environmental conservation, sustainable development and just government are being swept under the carpet in Malaysia. Dear Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, I write to you as a deeply concerned and saddened citizen of Malaysia. For most of the 45 years of my life, I have been proud to be Malaysian....

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and carbon credits sound like a good idea but I’m not sure how much they benefit rainforest conservation. Behind my suspicion lies a concept that I have been aware of for a while but only recently learned that it has a name – ‘additionality’. It’s a new jargon term which hasn’t yet made it into the dictionary. In understanding what it means I was lucky to meet a chap called Mike Packer who patiently and concisely explained things to me. Mike is the founder of a company called...

On 17th December, the European Parliament is due to vote on two pieces of legislation, the Renewable Energy Directive and the Fuel Quality Directive, each of which will lead to large-scale agrofuel expansion through long-term (2020) targets. Those laws are likely to trigger more land conversion, particularly in the global South, to grow fuel for Europe’s cars, at the expense of forests and people, climate, food and biodiversity. Rettet den Regenwald (Rainforest Rescue) is coordinating a campaign to persuade MEPs to vote...

Despite evidence of the harmful effects of biofuel expansion, the British and European Governments are pushing ahead with legislation to increase biofuel use particularly in transport. I was sufficiently agitated by this development to instigate discussion with my MP and MEP.The correspondence began with a standard letter produced by the biofuelwatch 'take action' page. I was impressed that my MEP wrote back and so took the opportunity to engage in more personal dialogs in the form of the following text: * * * * * Dear Richard...

To get things moving I'll publish an edited version of an email that I originally sent on 17 Oct 2004 * * * * * I knew when I took on this job that it would involve chopping down a few rainforest trees, the justification being that you’ve got to loose a few to save a lot. This still did not prepare me for the tearing destruction of a big tree falling to the ground. The tree in question was probably over 50m tall and was undoubtedly a small ecosystem of epiphytes, lianas, frogs, insects, mosses etc all in itself. Its only...