Indonesia, home to the world’s third-largest tropical forests and a powerful palm oil industry, will extend a ban on forest clearing, a government official said on Wednesday. Southeast Asia’s largest economy is under international pressure to curb deforestation and destruction of carbon-rich peatlands and forests that palm oil and mining companies say they need for expansion. Policy advisor for the ministry of environment and forestry, Nur Masirpatin, told reporters that the moratorium policy will continue, without giving an exact timeframe or length of the renewal. The world’s biggest producer of palm oil imposed a two-year moratorium on clearing forest in May 2011 under a US $1 billion climate deal with Norway aimed at reducing emissions from deforestation, and extended for two more years in May 2013. (Reuters)
Energy
New Oil and Gas Authority will be able to impose £1 million fines and revoke licences
The Oil and Gas Authority (OGA), an executive agency of the UK’s Department of Energy & Climate Change, will have the power to fine oil and gas companies up to £1 million and revoke operating licences to maximise production. The right to levy fines of up to £5 million on under-producing oil and gas companies in certain circumstances could also be granted to the Aberdeen-based authority. OGA’s creation was recommended in last year’s Wood Review and as part of what the government describes as a major package of support for the oil and gas industry. The government also outlined the new investment allowance for the North Sea basin oil and gas industry. North Sea oil producers will receive a £1.3 billion tax cut in a bid to extend the life of ageing fields, the supplementary tax on the industry will be reduced from 30 percent to 20 percent, and the petroleum revenue tax will fall from 50 percent to 35 percent. (Supply Management)
International Development
The UPS Foundation links tracking technology with global humanitarian relief efforts
The UPS Foundation, the philanthropic arm of UPS, yesterday announced the launch of the UPS Relief Link program which partners with The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), to optimise distribution and tracking of critical supplies to refugees in crisis-affected areas. UPS Relief Link combines the use of a hand-held scanning tool and durable identification cards to improve efficiency by eliminating paper records in refugee camps. Using this solution, UNHCR and UPS aim to speed up distribution time, provide verifiable receipt of vital provisions ensuring equitable distribution, and minimise theft. The UPS Relief Link program first implemented the technology to assist The Salvation Army, a Christian NGO, with relief efforts following the devastating earthquakes in Haiti in 2010. The technology provides full visibility into the supply chain journey of urgently-needed items through the critical “last mile” of delivery to refugees, where human tracking and data input errors often lead to inconsistent delivery and distribution. (Just Means)
Waste
EU to ban owners from scrapping ships on South Asian beaches
European, Turkish and Chinese recyclers are set to benefit from strict new EU rules on breaking up old ships. The new legislation will require EU-registered ships to be recycled only at sustainable facilities, and a list of these is expected to be published next year. It is likely to include yards in China, Turkey, North America and the European Union, but not South Asia. However, the practice of dismantling ships on beaches in South Asia, at great human and environmental cost, will still be hard to stop. According to figures from the NGO, Shipbreaking Platform, which campaigns for an end to the hazardous practice, 641 out of 1,026 recycled ships were taken apart on beaches in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan in 2014. The Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai estimates that some 470 workers have died in the past 20 years in accidents. (Reuters)
Employees
McDonald’s to raise pay at outlets it operates
McDonald’s announced on Wednesday that it would raise wages and offer new benefits to 90,000 employees in the 1,500 outlets in the United States that it owns and operates. The decision, however, does not affect the 750,000 employees who work for the more than 3,100 franchisees that operate roughly 12,500 McDonald’s restaurants around the country. The company will increase wages to at least US $1 over the local legal minimum wage for workers in restaurants under corporate control to an average of US $9.90 an hour. Employees who have worked in company restaurants more than a year will also be eligible for paid time off, whether they work full or part time. Mc Donald’s will also expand a program intended to help employees of both its own restaurants and those operated by franchisees to take classes online toward earning high school diplomas. (NY Times)
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