Marriott and Brazilian State of Amazonas Partner to Protect Rainforest

Bethesda, MD – Marriott International, Inc. (NYSE: MAR) and the state of Amazonas today signed an agreement to support the first project of its kind to help protect 1.4 million acres of endangered rainforest. This innovative partnership between government and the private sector is one of the first in the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation. Marriott has committed $2 million to fund an environmental management plan administered by the newly created Amazonas Sustainable Foundation. By year end, Marriott guests and group customers will also be able to offset the greenhouse gas emissions generated from their hotel stays by contributing to this rainforest fund. In addition to offering this carbon offset, Marriott is taking new steps to reduce the company’s water, waste and energy consumption; green its supply chain; build greener hotels; and engage employees and guests to take action.
“At Marriott, we believe the future of business is green,” says Arne Sorenson, Chief Financial Officer and co-chair of the company’s Green Council. (…)
To reduce and offset its global environmental footprint, which it has calculated at 2.9 million metric tons of CO2 emissions annually* – or .030 metric tons (65.5 pounds) per available room – Marriott has developed a five-point strategy in collaboration with Conservation International, a global conservation organization. This includes:
• Carbon Offsets…Protecting the Rainforest – Help protect the 1.4 million acre (589,000 hectares) Juma Sustainable Development reserve, an area rich in biodiversity.
• Water, Waste and Energy – Further reduce fuel and water consumption by 25 percent per available room over the next 10 years, and install solar power at up to 40 hotels by 2017.
• Supply Chain – Engage the company’s top 40 vendors to supply price-neutral greener products across 12 categories of its $10 billion supply chain.
• Green Buildings – Empower our hotel development partners to site, design and construct new hotels according to green standards in line with the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards by the end of 2009.
• Employee and Guest Engagement – Educate and inspire employees and guests to support the environment through their everyday actions at home, while at work and on travel.
For more details about this announcement, visit http://www.conservation.org/newsroom/pressreleases/Pages/CI_Marriott_green_hotels_announcment.aspx and www.marriott.com/environment.

Murdered Delivering UN Food Aid

Two More Transport Workers

Murdered Delivering UN Food Aid

How can we help if they don’t let them. People give their lives to do good to those countries instand wars and childrens without parrents. Nothing it’s easy as it seems. Even to give a plate of food it is now a matter that cost lives. Lives of those who had the brave to do it. It’s just so pitty, when here we have it all.
Here is the article from allafrica.com.

Sudan (10 April 2008): “A truck driver and his assistant been murdered delivering food aid in Southern Sudan, bringing to five the number of people killed in attacks on transports of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Sudan in less than three weeks, the agency announced today.
Hamid Dafaalla, 47, a father of four, was shot dead by unknown assailants while returning from a food delivery to the town of Rumbek on Monday, 7 April. His assistant was shot while trying to flee. (…)
The attack occurred 6 kilometres from Mayom in Unity State, not far from where two WFP-contracted drivers were stabbed to death on 22 March. Another contracted driver was shot dead two days later and his assistant injured while delivering food to Nyala in South Darfur.
Since the start of the year there were 60 hijackings of trucks in Darfur, with 42 trucks missing and 29 drivers unaccounted for, in addition to the recent killings, the agency said.”

Seal hunt

On March 28, the Canadian commercial seal hunt began in earnest, setting off a wave of killing that will take the lives of 275,000 seals—virtually all pups just days or weeks of age.
This is dangerous, expensive work, and sealers hurry to get in and get out of the area—spending little time to ensure the limited suffering of seals. In many years, hundreds of thousands of seals are killed in just a few days.
The sealers literally compete against each other for quotas, killing as many animals as quickly as possible before the region’s quota is reached. Vessel owners are loathe to remain in the treacherous ice conditions of the seal hunt for any longer than they have to, putting added pressure on the sealers to work quickly. The speed at which the hunt is conducted increases the suffering of the seals as sealers fail to take the time to ensure each animal is unconscious prior to cutting them open.
Long hours, slippery ice, fragile ice floes, pressure to work quickly, and moving targets all contribute to the suffering of the seals. In recent years, The HSUS has consistently filmed hunters beating seals repeatedly on the jaw, the face and the body—failing to render the animals unconscious. Veterinary studies have confirmed that sealers often fail to crush the skulls of the seals they club, instead striking them in other areas such as the jaw—failing to ensure unconsciousness, let alone death.
Some of this has to do with how inappropriate the weapons used to kill seals are for use in the sealing environment. Seal hunters use wooden bats, hakapiks (clubs with metal spikes on the end) and rifles to kill seal pups. Post mortem examinations performed by veterinarians in recent years have revealed that an unacceptably high percentage of seals were not even rendered unconscious after being struck with clubs or hakapiks or shot with rifles.

When No One’s Watching

Hundreds of thousands of seal pups are killed every year, almost entirely out of sight of the public—as well as the authorities who might penalize sealers who violate regulations.
The hunt takes place in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean, over an area of the size of France—such a large span that the Canadian government cannot effectively monitor the thousands of sealers on hundreds of vessels to ensure standards for humane killing are being met. Most of the slaughter happens so far off shore that very few individuals—public or government—can even reach it.
But more and more, the world is turning its eyes to this senseless and cruel slaughter. The HSUS and HSI are off the east coast of Canada again this year, bearing witness to the killing with the hope that this year will be the one to galvanize public sentiment into action, persuade the European Union to ban seal products, and finally shut down this hunt forever.

For more information

http://www.hsus.org/marine_mammals/marine_mammals_news/inherently_inhumane.html