Jo departs

In the shamefully unlikely event that the contribution Sophie and I have made to the world of NGO communications is recorded in a book, the role of Jo Frost will be writ large across many chapters. Jo has made a huge and unique contribution to the general amazing-ness that we like to think of as Comms Inc and we are only allowing her to leave because she’s off to do human rights (one can’t argue).

In the inevitable event that Jo’s life is recorded in a book, we shall be but a footnote in some early portion, squished out by the many other extraordinary things she will go on to do.

So I’m just going to take this opportunity now to claim all credit for her. I found Jo in the gutters of Westminster University – its all down to me!

Mirella

GCCA Communications Coordinator Vacancy

As the GCCA roles out the 2010 communications strategy we are seeking to hire a Communications Coordinator for the campaign. We are asking that you circulate this role through your offices and amongst your networks and are inviting applications by Friday 25th June 2010.

If you have any questions surrounding the role please contact Manish Joshi (manish.joshi@tcktcktck.org).

What are the new government's policies on climate change and how do they match up up to the global challenges of the next five years?

Last week a discussion was held at the Frontline Club in association in with Communications INC that looked at the coalition government's policies and the challenges that lie ahead during the new parliament's fixed term.

Listen to the discussion here:

http://frontlineclub.com/events/2010/06/climate-change-the-next-five-years.html

Looking ahead to key events such as Rio 2012 and the 2015 Millennium Goals we examined the coalition government's policies and approach to climate change and asked if it met the scale of the challenges that lie ahead. What role do NGOs and journalists need to play holding the coalition to account?

Are more natural disasters around the world likely as a result of climate change and if so what role will NGOs need to play as the world begins to change? What challenges will the media face as they are confronted with human tragedy as a result of climate change?

With Mark Maslin, director of the Environment Institute, UCL, a leading climatologist with particular expertise in past global and regional climatic change; John Vidal, the Guardian's environment editor; Matthew Spencer, director of Green Alliance and Fiona Harvey, The Financial Times environment correspondent.

Chaired by Lawrence McGinty, health and science editor ITV news.

European Fish Week 5-13 June

Global fish stocks are in decline; in Europe over 80 percent are overfished and a third are outside safe limits. The European Union and its member states have failed to manage fisheries responsibly on our behalf. As part of European Fish Week June 5-13, OCEAN2012 has launched a petition calling on Maria Damanaki, Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries to put environmental sustainability at the heart of European fisheries policy.

http://www.ocean2012.eu/OCEAN2012

Watch the animation:

Transforming European Fisheries from OCEAN2012 on Vimeo.

UN Fish Stocks Agreement Review Conference Review

The United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement (FSA) Review Conference is considered to be the most important legally binding global instrument for the conservation and management of fishery resources since the 1982 adoption of the Convention on the Law of the Sea. It establishes a comprehensive legal regime for the conservation and sustainable use of global fish stocks. During the last week of May Parties met to resume the last review of 2006, and consider progress made in the implementation of the FSA and subsequent recommendations since 2006.

At the conference The Pew Environment Group presented two key studies exposing failures and weaknesses in the international management of fisheries. The Port State Performance report found that port States and regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs) were ineffective at preventing illegal fishing vessel activities, concluding that a system with much more transparency, accountability and global coordination was essential in the fight against IUU fishing. For more information on the report go to http://www.portstateperformance.org.

The Failing the High Seas report, the first to quantitatively access the performance of RFMOs, found that two-thirds of the commercial fish stocks under RFMO management are either severely depleted or overfished. Results show that RFMOs are not meeting best practice standards and are failing to halt declines. For more information please visit: http://www.seaaroundus.org/researcher/dpauly/PDF/2010/JournalArticles/FailingTheHighSea.pdf

What remains to be seen is how much actual impact recommendations to and even by the FSA review conference will have on our high seas fisheries.

To read what the journalists have to say, please visit:
Science: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/328/5983/1235
Mark Kniver: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10131041.stm
Bryan Walsh: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1991172,00.html
AP: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h7WTZu7c35S6dhJtTdU4UmIqqazQD9FTGGCG0

Happy World Oceans Day!

World Oceans day (June 8th) saw 40 senior Members of Parliament from 15 key fishing nations and regions, including Japan, US, Europe, Canada, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil agreed a Global Marine Recovery Strategy on world fisheries intended to reverse the decline of global fisheries.

Initiated by the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE), the legislators were advised by the world’s leading scientific and policy experts, lead by IPSO's Alex Rogers, who presented a bleak outlook for fishery stocks if immediate political action was not taken.

The legislators pledged to advance the strategy through their respective parliaments with the following priority actions:

• Mandate the UN to review and monitor RFMO performance based on existing benchmark standards for RFMOs in the UNFSA.
• Support the development of a multilateral and enforceable agreement on fishing subsidy reform within the World Trade Organisation.
• Require all fishing and reefer vessels to carry unique identification, such as IMO numbers.
• Hold non-compliant states accountable using the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea.
• Adopt modern MPA network targets to propel the creation of marine reserves and networks globally.
• Investigate a new Global Framework Agreement for Marine Spatial Planning in areas beyond national jurisdiction.

Inconvenient timing: Selling the climate change story after climategate

First appeared @ http://frontlineclub.com/blogs/theforum/2010/05/inconvenient-timing-selling-the-climate-change-story-after-climategate.html

While last autumn's climategate scandal has not completely decimated the public's belief in global warming, campaigners and scientists need to reach out to unconventional audiences and getter better at communicating the facts if they want to tell - and sell - the climate change story.

That was the consensus at last night's Frontline Club discussion on climate change, featuring panelists Kelly Rigg, executive director of the Global Campaign for Climate Action; Richard Black, environment correspondent for the BBC News website and author of BBC Earth Watch and James Randerson, editor of environmentguardian.co.uk. The panel was moderated by Julian Rush, Channel 4 News' science correspondent.

Randerson said that although people might be a little more sceptical about climate change, this is largely due to the recent bitter winter and not climategate.

He added that the scandal couldn't have been less convenient for the Guardian's environment desk and other journalists:

All of our environmental resources were pointing at Copenhagen, so climategate was a distraction that was quite difficult to deal with. Further, the PR was dire from the University of East Anglia, so nobody was offering the scientists' side of the story. On top of it, when the story broke on Friday, the lawyers wouldn't allow journalists to quote from the emails due to libel laws.

Randerson claimed that climategate has made 16 percent of people believe even more in climate change.

Rigg cited an American study that found that 53 percent of people who heard about climategate did not alter their views. "In America, where only 40 percent of people believe in evolution, having 75 percent of people believing in global warming is actually a big deal," Rigg said.

Rigg added, though, that in order for the climate change lobby to be successful, it needs to reach out to the viewers of Fox News and readers of the Daily Mail, The Sun and the Daily Express.

Local charities will have their day in the run-up to the 2010 election

Mirella von Lindenfels - Column in Third Sector, 12 April 2010

It's election time, and many charities have stepped up their communications in the hope of making their causes 'election issues' and gaining coverage for them.

One such organisation is Oxfam, which is running an advertisement that says: "You're right. People dying thanks to climate change is a long way off. About 5,000 miles, give or take."

It goes on to say that the Government can help secure a climate deal to tackle this, and that I can help to make it an election issue.

In my case, the advert is preaching to the converted. But even so, my reaction is: "Yes, I know; no it probably can't; and I doubt it."

To the unconverted - the majority of people who might see the advert on the London Underground - the reaction is likely to be rather less positive. If you don't already know about the impact of climate change in the southern hemisphere, this one sentence isn't going to convince you. Yet it relies on that knowledge and engagement to get you to expend your election capital accordingly.

I fear this kind of approach won't make much difference in this environment at this time, and I wonder if Oxfam might have done better by saving its money for a better time or a more appropriately targeted advert.

The advert does work better on the Oxfam website, where visitors can email their concerns to the party leaders and make donations.

But I still suspect that groups with more obviously domestic concerns are more likely to gain support during the 2010 election. It's an opportunity for smaller organisations to have a big impact by harnessing their resources and being highly targeted in what they do, particularly at a constituency level, where they can produce greater movement with less pressure. But that means communicating with people in appropriate ways about relevant matters and through relevant channels.

Smaller organisations are often prevented by their lack of resources from advertising or running mass mobilisation campaigns, but as the election approaches they have the opportunity to achieve a much greater impact by being highly focused on local dynamics.

This means identifying what aspect of their causes will resonate with the immediate electorate, developing a way of communicating that is appropriate for who they are and what they believe and deciding where best to focus that support to leverage the greatest change.

The more targeted and focused you can be, the more effective the result - it's a lesson the ad buyers sometimes need to remember.

- Mirella von Lindenfels is director of Communications Inc

FACT FILE - The general election

This year's general election will take place on 6 May.

The NCVO, the Institute of Fundraising and Age UK are among the voluntary sector organisations to have published election manifestos.

Several prominent campaigners from the voluntary sector, including ChildLine founder Esther Rantzen, are standing for election.

Charity Commission guidance says candidates from charities must declare whether they are standing so that trustees can decide if there is a conflict of interest.

Oliver Letwin, author of the Tories' election manifesto, said earlier this year that some charities put too much effort into campaigning.

Labour says campaigning is a valuable role for the sector. The Lib Dems say that it enhances the political process.

The Last Pine

In a Victorian photograph of this village, a line of towering pines delineate between the boundaries of habitation and the open countryside of the Downs. All but one were lost to the hurricane, to disease and the passage of time. The one remaining is opposite my study window – visible from miles around, a landmark used by all to indicate arrival in the village or as a means of finding your way home from a hike.

Today they arrived to cut it down. No one was told, no one was informed, it was set upon without ceremony or lament.
The tree now has a disease which means a strong wind – perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in five years time – will knock it over and it will destroy things, maybe my things since I am within the sweep of its highest bows. So they’re cutting it down.
I would have taken the risk but no one asked me. For a moment I thought about grabbing a chain and locking on but the tree is dying and this I hope this is better than allowing it to rip out of the ground the next time the wind is too high.
So I lament and mark the passing of this tree and the 200 odd years it has stood over our village and I hope there will be an outcry. I hope people will rebel against its dispatch, complain that they were not consulted, demand an explanation for the loss of this magnificent life because it should not be allowed to pass unremarked. There was just cause in this case, but people should want to know that, to value the life of a tree and its place in nature over what might be the whims of the council, or home owners who re-arrange nature to suit their ends.

In a world without balance, which places a value on things over the natural order, you have to find hope in the smallest of places and in the defense of a lone tree.

Why Oliver Letwin's words on charity campaigning reveal an insidious hidden agenda

First published in Third Sector Magazine 15th February 2010

Oliver Letwin's comments at the NCVO's campaigning conference last month reminded me never to underestimate the power of language, particularly of words that slip quietly into your subconscious and then sit there, affecting your views.

Letwin spoke mainly about the Conservatives' vision for the voluntary sector, but he also shared his personal view that some organisations in the sector spend too much time campaigning.

Of several things that struck me about his comments, the most insidious was his application of the term "vast and powerful" to the sector. That was just slipped in there to seed the idea that anything so big and with so much unelected power should be managed and regulated tightly.

It is critically important to the sector that it is always perceived as David to its opponent Goliath - whether that opponent is a campaign adversary or a crisis a charity is seeking to address. And however large or wealthy individual charities might become, the basic truth of the matter remains that we are working against the odds and without the resources of those elected into power who are actually in a position to do something about the problem. If people ever lose sight of that basic truth and begin to think that the sector is too vast or too powerful, our support will be eroded and our impact lost.

Letwin's opening premise was that the sector is exactly that, so it needs to remember its place and accept whatever role his party or any other political party might choose to allot to it. One can assume from his further comments that this role would not include having a voice, for Letwin does not value a sector that does much campaigning. We are, he said, supposed to "change things and solve problems", but without campaigning; yet change is actually what campaigning helps to produce.

Instead he envisages the sector as one of the "cornerstones" of the Conservative vision. Cornerstone - another important word that slips into the subconscious. Cornerstones are solid and reliable, stable, part of the foundations, part of the establishment - so they can't disagree, criticise or go their own way.

What I value about the sector is that it is not part of Letwin's world. This is the third sector, not a cornerstone for the first sector, and although any power should be controlled, it should not allow itself to be co-opted or coerced. Above all, it should not allow its voice to be muted. Election or no election, the business of "changing things and solving problems" goes on, and we need a strong voice to do it.

Mirella von Lindenfels is director of Communications Inc

Fact file: Letwin on campaigning

• Oliver Letwin is Conservative MP for West Dorset. He is a former shadow Home Secretary and shadow Chancellor.
• Speaking at the NCVO's campaigning conference last month, he said he regretted that "so much of the effort of some parties in the voluntary sector is devoted to campaigning".
• He added: "They are free to do it, but what I treasure about the sector isn't its campaigning role. Its special contribution is to do something to change things and solve problems."
• He described the voluntary sector as "one of the cornerstones" of what the Conservatives wanted to achieve and said that a "vast and powerful" sector was necessary to deal with problems that the private sector was unwilling and the state unable to address.
• Letwin will write the Tories' election manifesto this year. The election must take place by 3 June.

The End of the Line Screens at the UN and Rapid Development on Bluefin

http://members.greenpeace.org/blog/greenpeaceusa_blog/2010/02/12/the_end_of_the_line_screens_at_the_un_an

By Charles Clover, award winning Environment Editor of the Daily Telegraph and author of several books, including The End of the Line, now a feature documentary film.

From the Seafood Summit in Paris last week, where we were all agog for news of a shift in the French position on bluefin which only happened after we left, I flew to New York for a screening of The End of the Line at the UN General Assembly, organised by the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition. This screening was arranged to co-incide with a UN working group reviewing the effectiveness of UN resolution 61/105 passed four years ago that called on states and regional fisheries managers to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems such as sea mounts from deep-sea trawling.

The screening of a 25-minute version of the film was well attended, with some 80 or so diplomats and experts filling the delegates dining room for the screening, Q&A and reception hosted by DSCC. As you can imagine, there were some searching questions, for instance “What can the UN do about over-fishing?” and “What is the attitude to sustainability in Japan?” I attempted an answer and about 50 people departed with a copy of the book on which the film is based.

The audience was greatly fascinated by the announcement, at last, by two French ministers that day, of the French position on bluefin tuna – support for an Appendix 1 listing, a full international trade ban, but with an 18-month delay.

It seemed timely for us, the film-makers, Oceana and Greenpeace to put out a release relevant to the United States, so we pointed out, what few US consumers seem to know, which is that imports of endangered bluefin tuna into the United States for the sushi trade are contributing to the collapse of the population in the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic. The bluefin that finds its way on to the menus of the New York and LA restaurants that have such poor ratings for sustainability on www.fish2fork.com is more likely to have come from the Med than the US. Official export figures from the European Union, compiled by Roberto Mielgo, one of the major players in our film, show that up to 3,341 tons of bluefin was exported from the EU to the United States between 1998 and June last year. In 2008 the US was a net importer of bluefin, importing 360 metric tons from around the world, notably the Mediterranean, compared with the 266 metric tons that were caught domestically. Such is the value of bluefin - nearly $9 a pound on average - that the total trade in the United States is worth nearly $100 million a year.

I returned to England to hear that frenzied briefings were going on in Strasbourg ahead of a crucial vote in the European Parliament on whether the EU should support Cites Appendix 1 for the bluefin. MEPs came under heavy lobbying pressure from DG Fish which told them that an Appendix 1 listing was an incredibly dangerous precedent to set and might one day be applied to the cod. What disgraceful nonsense. MEPs also had their ears ringing with briefings from the European fisheries inspectorate saying they had the fishery screwed down and could police an 8,000 tons a year sustainable quota imposed under Cites Appendix II, which regulates but does not stop trade. There was a rocky moment for our campaign to save the bluefin when it looked as though this advice would prevail. Then, MEPs realized that the EU was not the only player in the bluefin game and that Turkey, Libya, Croatia, Algeria and the Japanese long-liners in the Atlantic were quite capable of wiping out the bluefin on their own if the Japanese market was not closed. Wise counsel prevailed and a majority of MEPs voted to place the bluefin on Cites Appendix 1, without the 18-month delay called for by France. This will make it difficult for DG Fish, or the Commission, to resist pressure to do the same. The same day as the vote, Italy finally declared for Appendix 1, making it inessential that the conditions imposed by France should apply. The fishing lobby was furious. It is looking more and more as though the EU’s 27 member states might actually go to Doha supporting Appendix 1 for the bluefin. Fingers crossed!

Clover Charles Clover is the award winning Environment Editor of the Daily Telegraph. He is author of several books, including The End of the Line, now a feature documentary film.

DSCC Members Attend UN Meeting on Biodiversity 5 February 2010

DSCC members attended the third ad hoc informal working group meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (known as BBNJ ), at the United Nations 1st - 5th February 2010. The meeting was convened to study issues relating to the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity beyond areas of national jurisdiction.


"There were a lot of constructive suggestions made on the need to establish marine protected areas in the high seas, on the need for environmental impact assessments and strategic environmental assessments or activities on the high seas and for the need to address the potential impact of new and emerging activities on the high seas, such as ocean fertilization, geo-engineering and bioprospecting for marine genetic resources," said DSCC political and policy adviser Matthew Gianni.


"While it was disappointing that more progress to operationalize these essential steps was not made at this meeting, we are encouraged that there is to be another meeting on this next year, instead of in two years time, and DSCC will be encouraging discussion and facilitating the development of ideas in the coming year," said DSCC co-ordinator Duncan Currie.


Earlier in the week, DSCC members made an intervention to the group and held a side event where leading scientists gave presentations on the mapping of VMEs, high seas areas closed to bottom fishing, biogeographic classifications of deep-sea and open ocean ecosystems and options for conservation of biodiversity beyond national jurisdictions.


In the evening of 3rd February, over 70 UN delegates attended a DSCC organized cocktail reception with journalist and author Charles Clover, where a UN premiere (25 minute version) of his film, "The End of The Line", the first major film documentary on the devastating effects of overfishing, was screened and a discussion followed.


The next BBNJ meeting is expected to be held next year.