Today, the Senate once again blocked drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This was the right decision, as drilling in ANWR threatens valuable biodiversity while failing to increase our energy independence. While our politicians are all focused on ANWR, though, let’s not forget about other critical areas around the Pacific Rim that are threatened by oil and gas extraction: the Beaufort Sea (offshore of ANWR), Bristol Bay, Russia’s Sea of Okhotsk offshore of Kamchatka and Magadan, Russia’s Sakhalin Island, China’s Bohai Sea… the list goes on and on.

The news we see every day is troubling. In the last week, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development caved in to Shell on the problematic Sakhalin-2 project, accepting Shell’s environmental documentation for public review – despite the Bank’s own admission that its policies have been violated. Korean National Oil Corporation announced its intention to explore and drill offshore of western Kamchatka – an area valuable for salmon and fisheries – despite widespread local opposition in Kamchatka.

Along the U.S. West Coast, we’ve made the right decision to limit offshore drilling. But let’s not push the damage from oil and gas drilling overseas. It’s high time that we changed our energy choices. We don’t need to be dependent on fossil fuels, and we certainly don’t need to build enormous new infrastructure in the form of Liquified Natural Gas terminals along our coast to make us even more dependent on foreign fossil fuels. We need to make a choice. And that choice should be to commit strongly to renewable energy. Let’s take all that money we would put into LNG terminals and public subsidies to the oil and gas industry and instead put it into renewable energy.

The news I get to see every day is also heartening. December is a particularly enjoyable month, as I write thank-you cards to our many supporters around the Pacific Rim. Together, we’re building a community of people throughout the Pacific Rim who understand that the Pacific Rim is not just an economic and trade region – it’s also an environmental and cultural region. We can’t do this work alone. But with your help, we can make sure that communities around the Pacific Rim are empowered to stand up for their environmental rights and interests. If you’re already a supporter, thank you – we can’t do this without you. If you’re not a supporter, join our community working to protect the living environment of the Pacific Rim.

I wish everyone the very best for the New Year.

For the Pacific Rim,

David Gordon

At this time last year, a freighter carrying soybeans from the Puget Sound to China foundered in the Bering Sea. The captain shut down the engine for repairs in the middle of a storm and the freighter was blown onto rocks near Alaska’s Unalaska Island in the Aleutians. The ship broke in two and spilled more than 300,000 gallons of heavy bunker fuel into these biologically rich waters. Six crew died in a failed rescue attempt. The ship, named the Selendang Ayu, created Alaska’s worst oil spill since the tragic Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.

Following the Selendang Ayu spill, a number of groups including Pacific Environment came together to create the Shipping Safety Partnership. This coalition of groups is working to improve shipping safety standards around the “Great Circle Route” for tankers and freighters transiting the North Pacific. More than 2,700 cargo ships transit through the North Pacific each year. We thought it was about time that we strengthened our efforts to protect the North Pacific from the risks of oil spills coming from this traffic.

Earlier this week, I attend a forum in Seattle on oil spill risks in the Puget Sound and Alaska, timed to occur a year following the Selendang Ayu spill. The forum, hosted by People for Puget Sound and the Shipping Safety Partnership, was a great place to discuss how to improve shipping safety from Puget Sound to Alaska, and extending across the Pacific Rim to Russia and China. We learned about new legislation that is being introduced by Senator Maria Cantwell and Representative Jay Inslee to strengthen oil spill prevention standards. We were inspired by Rick Steiner and Walt Parker – two of our long-time Alaska colleagues and supporters – about the opportunities to improve our oil spill prevention systems. The time to act is now – before we see any more accidents like the Selendang Ayu. And the focus needs to be on prevention – once the oil is in the water, it’s too late.
We tend to think of the Pacific Rim as an economic region. Indeed, shipping across the Pacific Rim embodies the trade ties between North America and Asia. But we have to come to terms with the environmental impacts of our increased trade. We have to recognize that this increased shipping comes with environmental risks. And if we don’t address these risks, a large oil spill could threaten communities, local economies, and cultures at any point along the Great Circle Route.

Oil spills happen – especially in bad storms. But they are preventable. Most oil spills occur due to human error. We can improve safety standards and regulations, creating redundant systems that can reduce the number of oil spills throughout the Pacific Rim.
We can do better here. I think the Shipping Safety Partnership is a great start. The Partnership is not an environmental coalition. It’s a coalition that brings native tribes, municipalities, labor groups, and conservation groups together to fight for a common goal: protecting our marine resources from oil spills. We’re working with the Partnership to expand it internationally – to bring in partners from Russia, Korea, Japan, and China – so that we can address shipping safety standards all across the North Pacific.
Our friend and colleague Pete Hendrickson is a crabber, fisherman, and longshoreman in Dutch Harbor, on Unalaska Island in the Aleutians. He lost out on crabbing last year due to the Selendang Ayu. Let’s work together to make sure we don’t see more such accidents – they are entirely preventable.
Cheers,

David Gordon

PS – On another “Pacific Rim connection,” check out this excellent editorial cartoon from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

PPS – You might also be interested in this excellent column by Joel Connelly in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which provides more information on the forum.http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/251994_joel14.html

The Russian Duma is considering new legislation that would restrict the activity of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The Duma wants to force all of Russia’s 450,000 NGOs to re-register, which will be nothing more than a bureaucratic mess. As pointed out in Kathleen Braden’s wonderful op-ed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (click here), this won’t be a problem for the big, national, well-funded NGOs. But it will be disastrous for the local community-based groups, spread out through Siberia and the Russian Far East, who will be dependent on the Oblomov-like whims of local bureaucrats for their success in re-registering. Many new people who want to make a difference will be scared away from becoming NGO activists. And some ofRussia’s brightest lights – people who are truly working toward sustainable and positive change in the society – will end up without support.

Supposedly, the Russian government wants to prevent foreign funding of political campaigns. I don’t have a problem with this. We have restrictions in the U.S. that prevent Pacific Environment, as a 501c3 charitable organization, from endorsing political candidates or spending more than a modest amount of our time and resources to lobby for legislation.However, these restrictions should be as minimal as possible to protect a free and open discourse. There are no restrictions here on our ability to raise concerns about administrative officials or administrative policies or to publicize issues, even if they are controversial. But inRussia, some pundits are saying that a ban on political activity should include a ban on working with the media to publicize issues or a ban on raising concerns about actions by governors or other administrative officials.

This would be ridiculous. Russian NGOs have played a fundamentally important role over the last decade in helping to promote rule of law within Russia. In the environmental sphere, they have helped ensure Russia’s Law on the Protection of the Environment and Law on Environmental Impact Reviews have been implemented. They have prevented capricious actions by local officials and companies when they did not follow a fair process of due diligence in reviewing industrial projects. Most of all, they have steadfastly argued for regular, engaged public participation to ensure that communities have a say in their environmental future. A recent article from Dow Jones highlights the role our partners at Sakhalin Environment Watch play in helping local government officials, who don’t have the resources to monitor large oil and gas companies like Shell and Exxon. In the article, Sergei Kotelnikov, Sakhalin’s head environmental regulator, said that “he relies heavily on information passed to his staff by local environmental groups such as Green Patrol and Sakhalin Environment Watch.”

As we wait for the pollution from Harbin to flow down the Amur River to Khabarovsk, and indigenous communities who live along the Amur worry about eating fish, don’t we want communities to have a voice in ensuring that they have access to clean water? What will happen if communities don’t have the ability to organize as professional NGOs and engage the government and the private sector in a healthy and open dialogue about the future, and instead problems are allowed to fester?

I hope that President Putin and the Duma will re-consider this proposed law. Meanwhile, inRussia’s increasingly hostile climate, I think it becomes even more important for organizations like our own to maintain and strengthen our partnerships with groups in Siberia and the Russian Far East who are working to create positive change in the society.

Cheers,

David Gordon

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about water pollution in China. The recent explosion at Jilin Petrochina that sent 100 tons of benzene flowing down the Songhua River was horrifying. The pollution traveled through the massive city of Harbin and is now approaching Russia’s Amur River and the city of Khabarovsk. Friends in Khabarovsk say they are just hoping that the river will freeze more quickly than expected, potentially trapping the benzene in ice before it reaches the city. Check out our statement regarding the Harbin crisis here.

The statistics about China’s pollution are staggering: Sixteen of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in China. More than a quarter of China’s population lacks access to clean drinking water. Seventy percent of China’s rivers and lakes are considered to be polluted. Earlier this year, villagers rioted over water pollution, and such protests are becoming more and more common.

But there are hopeful signs. China’s central government has recognized that environmental degradation is becoming a barrier to economic prosperity. China’s government is becoming more open to civil society organizations, as the government realizes that it cannot solve these challenges itself. Environmental groups in China can play a vital role in helping villagers work with the government and companies to mandate enforceable pollution norms, gain just compensation, and close down the most egregiously polluting factories.

In short, we can’t ignore China’s pollution issues. What we can do is help local community groups in China have more of an impact in preventing the pollution from happening.

Cheers,

David Gordon

(Executive Director)