Caring for our Country - Funding - Sustainable Environment - Target Area Grants: Target Area Grants
Overview Target Areas How to apply FAQs
Caring for our Country Target Area Grants are the open call funding component of the Sustainable Environment stream of the new Caring for our Country program.
Target Area Grants will provide funding of between $50 000 and $2 million for projects to maintain ecosystem services, protect our conservation estate, and enhance the capacity of Indigenous communities to conserve and protect natural resources within the Kimberley and five other locations within Australia:
Caring for Country, a federal government program that is about Caring For Country, but what the Goolarabooloo and the Broome Community have had to face by doing just that
We as a community have been arrested, issued move on notices out of country, initiated, invaded by hundreds of police and corporate security thugs, push and pulled, lied to, ignored, dismissed and have generally been roughshod by state government department public servant lackeys under orders from their corporate masters.All, because WE CARE.
This grant funding is drenched in hypocrisy and is such an insult to the people who do really Care for Country.
Photo Damian Kelly
Posts
YOU ARE SO RIGHT THERE.
ReplyDelete.......
With all this science it would seem a bad idea to raise our emissions by over 50%.
.
WA warned of severe droughts
Perth and the South West would face almost permanent drought unless urgent action is taken now to stop greenhouse gas emissions, a report to be released today warns.
The Climate Commission also argues the State's Wheatbelt could be left a shell of itself, with yields plummeting, as extended dry and hot periods make cropping increasingly difficult.
The report outlines how Australia's climate is already changing because of a build-up of greenhouse gases in the environment.
It notes that heatwaves have become longer and more numerous, more record hot days are being experienced and when it does rain, those events are heavier and more destructive.
Between 1911 and 1974, Perth's dams averaged 338 gigalitres of inflow annually.
Over the past six years that inflow average has fallen to just 65.8 gigalitres.
The sharp drop in inflows is because of a 15 per cent drop in average rainfall in Perth since 1975.
Based on current warming patterns, the commission estimates that rainfall could drop another 10 per cent by 2030 and 20 per cent by 2050.
With that type of decline, the entire South West faces an 80 per cent increase in drought months by 2070, consigning the region to regular drought-like conditions. Combined with higher temperatures, winter wheat yields could be 30 per cent of their 1999 levels by the middle of this century.
Coastal areas would also be at risk with tens of thousands of homes in Perth and Mandurah facing increased chances of sea surges because of a lift in ocean levels.
.
The cuts in greenhouse emissions necessary to avert environmental catastrophe appear enormous.
"Globally emissions must be cut rapidly and deeply to nearly zero by 2050, with Australia playing its part," the report said.
...........
WA plants, animals in danger
Several WA plants and animals will become extinct unless urgent action is taken to save them, according to internationally renowned conservation biologist Stephen Hopper.
The University of WA professor of biodiversity, who previously headed up Kings Park and Britain's Kew Gardens, said the list of endangered species continued to grow, despite the efforts of a range of people.
"I do sense there's urgency here," he said. "With some species if we don't do stuff tomorrow then we've probably lost them, with other species we've probably got a little bit of time.
"But it's very clear if we just sit on our thumbs and don't do anything different, then things are going to be falling off the perch."
Professor Hopper pointed to a banksia species he was studying in a dieback-affected area near Albany, comparing the plant's status to being in an emergency ward in a hospital.
"There are more than 100 plants at this location and about a third of them are dead," he said.
Professor Hopper's comments were echoed by Australian Wildlife Conservancy chief scientist Sarah Legge, who said six to eight mammals would become extinct in the next 20 or 30 years in northern Australia alone if their rates of decline continued.
She said there was a need to control the threatening processes that had caused the animals' decline.
Two of the biggest problems were introduced fauna and changes to fire regimes.
"Australia has the worst modern mammal extinction in the world
She said in WA's south the western ground parrot was a likely contender for extinction and although numbats were not on the critically endangered list there were only 750 left in the world.
Professor Hopper said in his 30 to 40 years working in the area, when a plant became extinct more often than not it was poorly known.
He said the world was at a turning point and many people were of the view that the next few decades were critical because biodiversity was going to be increasing under threat from climate change as well.
Climate change making extreme events worse in Australia – report
DeleteCountry faces more frequent and more severe weather events if it fails to make deep and swift cuts to carbon emissions
.
The extreme heatwaves, flooding and bush fires striking Australia have already been intensified by climate change and are set to get even worse in future, according to a new report. Only fast and deep cuts to carbon emissions can start to reverse the trend, say scientists from the Climate Commission, an independent advisory group set up by the Australian government.
"Climate change is making many extreme events worse in terms of their impacts on people, property, communities and the environment," said climate commissioner professor Will Steffen. "We are very concerned that the risk of more frequent and more severe extreme weather events is increasing as we continue to emit more and more greenhouse gases."
Chief commissioner, Tim Flannery, said: "Records are broken from time to time, but record-breaking weather is becoming more common as the climate shifts. Only strong preventative action, with deep and swift cuts in emissions this decade, can stabilise the climate and halt the trend towards more intense extreme weather."
....
Global warming predictions prove accurate
Analysis of climate change modelling for past 15 years reveal accurate forecasts of rising global temperatures
.
Forecasts of global temperature rises over the past 15 years have proved remarkably accurate, new analysis of scientists' modelling of climate change shows.
The debate around the accuracy of climate modelling and forecasting has been especially intense recently, due to suggestions that forecasts have exaggerated the warming observed so far – and therefore also the level warming that can be expected in the future. But the new research casts serious doubts on these claims, and should give a boost to confidence in scientific predictions of climate change.
....
Earth-cooling schemes need global sign-off, researchers say
World's most vulnerable people need protection from huge and unintended impacts of radical geoengineering projects
.
The dangers arose in projects that cooled the planet unevenly. In some cases these caused devastating droughts across Africa; in others they increased rainfall in the region but left huge areas of Brazil parched.
"The massive complexities associated with geoengineering, and the potential for winners and losers, means that some form of global governance is essential," said Jim Haywood at the Met Office's Hadley Centre in Exeter.
The warning builds on work by scientists and engineers to agree a regulatory framework that would ban full-scale geoengineering projects, at least temporarily, but allow smaller research projects to go ahead.
Geoengineering comes in many flavours, but among the more plausible are "solar radiation management" (SRM) schemes that would spray huge amounts of sun-reflecting particles high into the atmosphere to simulate the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions.
Volcanoes can blast millions of tonnes of sulphate particles into the stratosphere, where they stay aloft for years and cool the planet by reflecting some of the sun's energy back out to space.
25 years after Chico Mendes, killings in the Amazon are endemic
DeleteThis week's trial of men accused of killing two activists last year highlights the continuing problems faced in the Amazon
.
On Wednesday, in the Brazilian state of Pará, the trial begins of three men accused of murdering José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva
and his wife Maria do Espirito Santo, who had campaigned against loggers and ranchers for years. Their assassinations in May 2011 generated international outrage, just like that of Chico Mendes, 25 years ago, and that of the American-born nun Dorothy Stang in 2005.
"This trial exposes the problems and challenges in the Amazon today," says the Brazilian political ecologist Felipe Milanez, who will attend the trial. "It's something we haven't dealt with in the past 30 years. The same thing that happened to Mendes and Dorothy happened to Claudio, and will happen to other people defending the forest."
These high-profile murders are just the tip of the iceberg. In Pará alone, 231 people were killed and 809 received death threats between 1996 and 2010, according to NGO Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), while in 2011 78 people received death threats and 12 people were killed.
"Violence is the instrument of local capitalism," says Milanez. "They're proud to kill and they're seen by some as local heroes defending their property with their blood. It's insane, but it's what happening there."
Trials like that starting on Wednesday are extremely rare. According to the CPT, out of 918 people killed across Brazil's Amazon between 1985 and April 2011, trials were held in only 27 cases.
"The only ones that have a real chance of going to trial are those that get the attention of the national, and especially the international, press," says Brazilian journalist Eliane Brum. "This impunity sends the message killing is permitted and that it's a way 'to solve' land conflicts or silence people fighting for social justice."
One of the men on trial is José Rodrigues Moreira, whose controversial purchase of 144 hectares of primary forest and expulsion of the families living there in order to graze cattle was opposed by Ribeiro da Silva and denounced to the government's land agency, INCRA.
But on 14 December 2012 INCRA recogniaed Rodrigues Moreira's wife's right to the land – a decision INCRA quickly called a "mistake", according to a statement from Pará's Federal Attorney's Office on 15 March, after it was exposed. "A reward for the man who ordered the killings," was how three local organisations described it.
Some fear violence may increase following recently recognised environmental legislation.
"The new forest code has granted amnesty to environmental crimes and will result in more disputes over land in the Amazon,' says Greenpeace's Paulo Adario, based in Manaus. "This means we can expect to see an increase in the deforestation and conflicts in the Amazon in the near future."
"In the early days since Chico's assassination we saw an increase in global solidarity and proposals for the Amazon's sustainable development," says Marina Silva, former environment minister and presidential candidate in 2010, who worked as a rubber tapper among Mendes' family. "Recently things have regressed. Even the goals of reducing carbon emissions and deforestation are now under threat."
.
Chico cont....
DeleteTwenty-five years on from the murder of Mendes it is worth remembering his extraordinary life. After starting to tap rubber as a child in Acre state in Brazil's far west, he co-founded the local rural workers' union and Brazil's National Council of Rubber Tappers, organised demonstrations to stop thousands of square kilometres of rainforest being destroyed for timber and ranching, saved hundreds of families from destitution, and hooked up with the international environmental movement to lobby US politicians and the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington over its loan to pave a highway to Acre's capital, among many other things.
"Chico's movement of rubber tappers called into question the strategy, advocated by the political elite and well-off sectors in Acre, that rubber was dead and cattle-ranching the next great thing," says Tony Gross, who worked with Mendes and knew him for 10 years.
"Chico Mendes' life, and especially his death, brought a great deal of attention to the need for a new approach to the Brazilian Amazon," says Kathryn Hochstetler, a political scientist at the University of Waterloo in Canada. "One of his most lasting contributions, together with other rubber tappers', was the idea of the extractive reserve: a model of conservation that saw that communities could effectively manage their forests together and make sustainable livings doing so."
Today Mendes's daughter, Elenira, and son, Sandino, are president and vice-president of the Chico Mendes Institute, just one of many things bearing their father's name. The Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, for example, was established shortly after his assassination, and there are now 59 such reserves at the federal level totalling more than 12m hectares, according to the Environment Ministry.
Mary Allegretti, a close associate who worked with Mendes from 1980, sees these reserves as his legacy and greatest achievement. "The idea was that the standing forest has more value than the felled forest, and that it is in the interests of the communities who depend on the forest to survive to protect it," she says.
It is past time the Shire and the BCC got with it and got aboard FLNG,before we miss out on it completely.
ReplyDeleteForget JPP there are lots more permanent jobs with FLNG.
But where is all the talk and future planning?
.....
Push on for FLNG port work
ExxonMobil and BHP Billiton's Scarborough gas field development is expected to pave the way for a major expansion of one of the Pilbara's supply base ports, underscoring what industry players say should be WA's focus on cashing in on the floating LNG boom.
Project operator ExxonMobil yesterday confirmed a report in _WestBusiness _last week that it and 50 per cent partner BHP were pushing to become the latest oil and gas majors to adopt FLNG for their gas resources. They want to build a 495m long and 75m wide vessel that will house five LNG processing trains capable of producing between six and seven million tonnes of the liquefied fuel a year.
The FLNG operation will be serviced by a supply base in the Pilbara, with Exmouth or Dampier considered the most likely ports, to look after the massive offshore venture and its 200-person crew, rising to 500 during maintenance periods.
Kick-starting the environmental approvals process for the project yesterday, ExxonMobil forecast first LNG cargoes from 2020 and expected to develop as many as 10 trillion cubic feet of gas over Scarborough's 35-year operating life.
No development cost estimate has been provided, and ExxonMobil cautioned that Scarborough's development remained subject to successful front-end engineering and design studies ahead of a final investment decision in 2014 or 2015.
ExxonMobil used its referral document to the Commonwealth environment department to state that FLNG was the preferred option when compared with a land-based processing plant in the Pilbara - both greenfield and existing - as well as an LNG plant located in shallow waters off Onslow.
Scarborough's proposed development option is likely to reignite concern among WA's construction and support services sectors, as well as within Colin Barnett's Government, that the FLNG boom will bypass the State.
But an oil and gas industry insider said the State had to shift its focus from the construction to the long-life operational phase of projects such as Scarborough.
Darwin looms as the biggest threat to WA's hope of benefiting from Browse Basin gas field developments, having already snared the supply base work for Inpex's Ichthys and Royal Dutch Shell's Prelude ventures because of a dearth of Kimberley-based options.
Darwin is considered too remote for Scarborough, which is located in the Carnarvon Basin, assuming an adequate and timely expansion of existing or proposed supply bases on the Pilbara coast.
...
"Darwin looms as the biggest threat to WA's hope of benefiting from Browse Basin gas field developments, having already snared the supply base work for Inpex's Ichthys and Royal Dutch Shell's Prelude ventures because of a dearth of Kimberley-based options."
SO WHERE ARE ALL THE VOICES SCREAMING "WE MUST HAVE JOBS FOR INDIGENOUS PEOPLE NOW?"
NOT ONE - TOTAL SILENCE.
JUST LIKE RED ASKED FOR THE TOURISM AND FISHING VOICES - WHERE ARE THEY?
WHERE ARE THE VOICES OF THE KIMBERLEY CATTLEMEN ABOUT FRACKING.
TOTAL SILENCE.
At 10Tcf Scarborough isn't a small field.
ReplyDelete...
"Given the remote location of the Scarborough gas field and reservoir characteristics . . . FLNG technology is currently deemed the most appropriate technology to develop the field," Exxon, the operator of the project, said in the approval documents.
"The FLNG concept provides a reduced environmental footprint in comparison to the . . . alternative development options."
.
The documents confirmed the FLNG platform would be capable of producing six to seven million tonnes of LNG a year and that front-end engineering and design studies would kick off this year.
The unveiling of the plans comes as WA Premier Colin Barnett pushes for onshore, rather than floating, processing of gas from the Browse LNG project being studied by Woodside.
There is talk FLNG would be more economic for the Browse project, whose owners have agreed to decide whether to go ahead with a controversial onshore plant at James Price Point, 60km north of Broome.
Mr Barnett has said he will do all he can to force an onshore development because it will bring greater benefits to the state.
But he is unlikely to have an issue with yesterday's confirmation on Scarborough, which is 220km northwest of Exmouth. Mr Barnett has previously used Scarborough as an example of a project unlikely to be developed through onshore processing.
.
The giant ship, which Exxon is targeting a final investment decision for in 2014-15, will be 495m long, 7m longer than Shell's world-first $US12bn ($11.46bn) Prelude FLNG project being built in the Browse Basin to the northeast. Prelude will produce only 3.6 million tonnes of LNG a year but will also produce valuable liquids. Exxon intends to export 80 to 110 LNG cargoes a year from Scarborough, which contains up to 10 trillion cubic feet of gas.
........
Malaysia could be about to find some major gas.
..
Malaysia: Newfield announces significant discovery offshore Malaysia - provides update on 'strategic alternatives' for International businesses
The B-14 well encountered 1,800 feet of gross column and 1,585 feet of net natural gas pay in the main carbonate objective. A drill stem test was recently conducted, which confirmed commerciality of the reservoir. Newfield estimates that Gas Initially In Place (GIIP) ranges from 1.5 – 3.0 Tcf. Newfield operates Block SK 310 with a 30% interest. Partners Diamond Energy Sarawak, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corp and PETRONAS Carigali, have 30% and 40% interests, respectively.
The B-14 discovery is located less than three miles from Newfield's first pinnacle reef gas discovery, B-15, also located on Block SK 310 in approx. 250 feet of water. Recoverable reserves on this discovery are estimated at approx. 265 Bcf and will be developed in conjunction with the B-14 discovery.
'This is the largest conventional exploratory success that Newfield has made in its 25-year history,' said Lee K. Boothby, Newfield Chairman, President and CEO. 'Recent amendments to gas terms in Malaysia make natural gas developments economically competitive with oil developments. We have multiple 'reef' prospects to test along trend, and additional drilling is expected to resume in the third quarter with the drilling of our B-17 prospect.'
Newfield Exploration Company is an independent energy company engaged in the exploration, development and production of crude oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids. Newfield is focused on North American resource plays of scale. The Company's principal domestic areas of operation include the Mid-Continent, the Rocky Mountains and onshore Texas. Internationally, Newfield has oil developments offshore Malaysia and China.
..
Some interesting worries for Woodside.
ReplyDelete..
Israel's huge new offshore gas resource offers its enemies an obvious target and gives its navy, long overshadowed by other branches of the Israeli armed forces, a big job that will require extra spending. On patrol boat 836, circling two gas platforms in choppy Mediterranean waters, Captain Ilan Lavi flipped through pictures of the possible threats: BOAT BOMBS, DRONES, SUBMARINE VESSELS, ROCKETS AND MISSLES. 'We have to build an entire new defensive envelope,' said Lavi, head of the navy's planning department who talks as knowledgeably about the financial aspects of the gas industry as he does about security. 'But you can't have a defence system that costs more to build than the gas itself.'
.
The Gaza Strip, ruled by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which has fired thousands of rockets into southern Israel. The platforms are within range of the rockets, although these are not very accurate.
The Lebanese Shi'ite militant group Hezbollah poses a more formidable threat. Last year it sent a drone deep into Israel, covering more than enough of the distance needed to reach some of the gas fields. The group, backed by Israel's enemy Iran, also says its rocket arsenal has the range to hit anywhere in Israel, which indicates more sophisticated technology.
.
A JOB FOR THE HOSTILES.
The two Israeli gas platforms visited by patrol boat 836 have private security teams...
.
Most new drilling, like that at the Leviathan field, the world's largest offshore discovery of the past decade, is happening much farther from land, increasing exponentially the area Israel's fleet needs to patrol.
'They may not be too complicated to attack, but we are aware of the threats and are prepared for them.' The navy says it is under-equipped, however, to defend a maritime area larger than Israel itself.
......
Fracking fails the poll test
Three-quarters of NSW voters oppose coal seam gas exploration on agricultural land, the latest polling reveals, as the government draws more fire over its handling of the resource.
A Fairfax Media/Nielsen poll shows fewer than one in five supports allowing the process, with 17 per cent favouring it.
In a blow for the government, the poll indicates opposition is as strong among Coalition voters (75 per cent) as Labor voters (73 per cent). The finding comes as the government was singled out for not yet signing a protocol to refer big coal and coal seam gas projects to a national expert panel for advice on their environmental impact.
The independent expert scientific committee was set up last year by federal Environment Minister Tony Burke under an agreement with independent MPs Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott. A report by the Council of Australian Governments Reform Council, released on Tuesday, said NSW was the only participating state not to reach agreement with the Commonwealth on how to decide which projects were referred for advice.
.
Drew Hutton, president of the anti-CSG group Lock the Gate, said the poll showed that ''if it's necessary to protect residential areas and industry clusters, it would seem just as important to protect our best farmland''.
.
The eastern region chief operating officer with the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, Rick Wilkinson, said the poll asked the wrong question.
''We expect that a poll asking whether people in NSW want cheaper energy costs, more economic growth, and an industry that co-exists with farmers and creates tens of thousands of jobs, would have seen the numbers reversed,'' he said.
.
The poll findings come as the government renewed its push to facilitate coal seam gas development by sending dedicated community liaison officers to affected areas.
Barnett on Hutchinson this morning very upset about FLNG.
ReplyDeleteQ. When will you say I cant win this.
A. Never.
Barnett wants to know where are all the Australians to stand up for Australia?
Why am I the only voice?
Why is it in Australia the media barracks for these things.FLNG.Why do they keep saying JPP is going to fall over?
Why?
Why is public opinion and the media against it?
"I feel pretty lonely in that..."
HE WAS FIRED UP AND REFERRED TO HIMSELF AS "THE LONE VOICE".
Q. What do you say if the JV partners say its uneconomic?
A. Australian people own the gas.
(THE LONE VOICE AND ONLY THE LONE VOICE WILL SAY WHERE IT IS PROCESSED)
Hutchinson kept referring to Barnett as Hugo Chavez,a nationalist.
Barnett seemed to like it!
BUT when he mentioned he had spoken to Coleman a week ago his voice and bluster dropped,caught in his own trap he told his usual porkies.
Presumably the meeting did not go well for him.
Q. What will you do if the partners decide on FLNG?
A. I will see to it the project is delayed by 5 - 10 years and it is redone in a different form and processed onshore.
...
After Barnett left,and after a John Lee Hooker song,"Boom Boom",Hutch said,"Colin Barnett is so adamant that the Browse gas be processed onshore that I wouldn't mind betting the transcript of this mornings interview is sitting somewhere on some important Woodside persons desk".
....
NOTE : I cant do shorthand so this was really just my best effort as best I could.
But accurate as so far as the general drift is concerned.