par Sabine Casalonga Journal de l'environnement

La France a soumis à la Commission européenne ses priorités nationales en matière de préservation de la nature et de la biodiversité, dans le cadre du programme de financement pour l’environnement Life + (1), selon un communiqué de presse du ministère de l'écologie, de l'énergie, du développement durable et de l'aménagement du territoire (Meeddat) daté du 24 septembre.

La France a émis des priorités uniquement pour le volet Nature et biodiversité. Celles-ci regroupent des mesures de préservation et de restauration des habitats et des espèces au sein du réseau Natura 2000 dans le respect des engagements de la directive Habitats, des mesures de protection des espèces menacées, le développement d’un réseau Natura 2000 marin ou encore la mise en œuvre d’une continuité écologique (trames verte et bleue).

Life + comprend trois volets : nature et biodiversité, politique et gouvernance en matière d’environnement, information et communication. Son budget s’élève à plus de 2 milliards d’euros pour la période 2007-2013. L’allocation française pour 2008 est de 18,2 millions € en augmentation par rapport à 2007 (16,4 millions). En 2007, un projet retenu de conservation et restauration d’habitats au sein du parc national de la Réunion avait reçu un budget de près d’1,3 million €.

La date limite de remise des dossiers au Meeddat ou à la Direction régionale de l’environnement (Diren) est fixée au 21 novembre 2008. Onze autres pays de l’Union européenne ont également présenté leurs priorités nationales.

(1) «L’instrument financier pour l’environnement»

par Montray Kreyol

La filière aquacole n’en finit pas de payer les conséquences de… l’inconséquence des grands planteurs de banane, le plus souvent békés. En effet, la nouvelle est tombée le 03 octobre dernier, cela dans un silence médiatique assourdissant : un arrêté préfectoral interdisait désormais à deux fermes aquacoles de la commune du Robert de vendre leur production. Motif ? pollution grave à ce dangereux pesticide organochloré, le Chlordécone, utilisé à tout va durant 30 ans dans les bananeraies martiniquais (1972-1992) alors qu’il avait été interdit aux États-Unis dès…1976.

S’il n’y avait pas eu le livre de Louis Boutrin et Raphaël Confiant (« Chronique d’un empoisonnement annoncé », L’Harmattan, 2007), s’il n’y avait pas eu le battage et les conférences de Dominique Belpomme, l’éminent cancérologue français, s’il n’y avait pas eu les manifestations de l’ASSAUPAMAR, de l’ANC (Association Non au Chlordécone) et de l’ASSE ainsi que des Verts-Guadeloupe (avec Harry Durimel), personne n’aurait soulevé la question de l’empoisonnement de la Martinique (25.000 hectares contaminés) et de la Guadeloupe (5.000 hectares). Chose criminelle quand on sait que dès 1979, des rapports émanant des propres services déconcentrés de l’État français aux Antilles dénonçaient la gravité de la situation.

Les gens de Basse-Pointe (Martinique) continueraient à s’alimenter à la source « Bod Lanmè » dont les analyses ont montré qu’elle contient 44 fois le taux de chlordécone supportable par l’organisme humain. Quarante-quatre fois ! Les gens de la Basse-Terre continueraient à se baigner et à piqueniquer au bord des magnifiques rivières de leur région alors qu’en janvier 2008, la préfecture a pris un arrêté interdisant la baignade et la consommation d’eau pour 12 de ces rivières. Douze ! Et dire qu’on trouve des Antillais, comme un certain Dégras de l’INRA-Guadeloupe pour déclarer que la situation n’est pas si grave et que les écologistes s’agitent pour des raisons politiciennes !

Si ce Dégras avait raison, comment expliquer alors que le gouvernement français ait mis 33 millions d’euros sur la table pour commencer à chercher des remèdes à la pollution au chlordécone ? En période de crise financière, cette somme n’est pas rien. Comment expliquer que la Direction des Services Vétérinaires de Guadeloupe et de Martinique soit sur le pied de guerre depuis la mise en place de ce « Plan de contrôle du chlordécone » et multiplie ainsi les contrôles ?

Contrôles qui ont abouti justement, il y a une semaine, à la fermeture de ces deux importantes fermes aquacoles du Robert. Et malheureusement, ce n’est qu’un début…

Tristes Martinique et Guadeloupe où l’on trouve encore des Antillais pour nier une catastrophe écologique et sanitaire que l’État français lui-même reconnaît !

SELA Press

Havana, Mar 2 (IPS) - Fear of a tragedy similar to the one caused in Asia by the tidal wave in the Indian Ocean just after Christmas in 2004 has alarms buzzing in the Caribbean, where moves are afoot to establish an Early Warning System (EWS) for tsunamis.

Scientists working on the project are convinced that the occurrence of tsunamis in the region is entirely possible, and they emphasise the importance of complementary prevention and risk mitigation programmes alongside the EWS.

"As well as investing in satellite systems, buoys and probes, people must be trained and educated. Prevention is essential to reduce the risk of a disaster," Enrique Arango, an expert at the Cuban National Seismological Research Centre (CENAIS), told IPS.

All over the world, statistics indicate that natural phenomena are causing increasingly large losses of human lives and material damages, owing to the increase of population density in coastal areas, and the social and economic vulnerability of many island territories.

Arango warned that "a technocratic view of the problem could lead to the conclusion that a disaster can be avoided simply by implementing an EWS," which is a network of seismic and wave sensors on land and sea, linked by radio to a satellite that transmits continuously to a monitoring centre.

This centre issues an automatic alert if an earthquake capable of generating tidal waves is detected, or if an unusual wave pattern signals the creation of a tsunami.

"The problem is not merely to issue a tsunami warning. Risk evaluation and risk management must be worked on in parallel, which means diagnosing and eliminating existing vulnerabilities, and not creating new ones in the danger areas," Arango said.

A regional alert system needs to include seismological, oceanographic and civil defence services, interconnected in real time. The population must be educated and prepared, and because of the speed of the tidal wave, it must be taken into account that places close to the epicentre will receive their warning too late.

More than 220,000 people died in Asia and parts of Africa in late December 2004 as a result of the tsunami, a Japanese word for the enormous waves formed as a result of undersea earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.

The tsunami was produced by an earthquake registering a magnitude of nine on the Richter scale, with its epicentre close to the Indonesian island of Sumatra. After the tsunami, many islands and coastal countries began to study the risks and develop local prevention and contingency programmes.

But implementing a regional EWS will require more resources, and will depend above all on the good will and real capacity for participation of many countries and institutions with disparate interests.

"To a certain extent this makes it difficult to create a regional EWS in a short time that satisfies all countries equally," said Arango, who said it was important for Cuba to be part of this network, even though the main threats to his country were really hurricanes or earthquakes.

The expert said that CENAIS has a network of seismological stations with technical equipment capable of detecting earthquakes in the Caribbean and along the Pacific coast of Central America, which it is willing to share with the planned EWS.

Since the 15th century there have been between 30 and 40 tsunamis in the Caribbean, caused by undersea earthquakes, landslides resulting from the quakes, or volcanic eruptions in the Lesser Antilles.

In Arango's opinion, the data indicate that there is a real risk of new tidal waves. One of the danger points is Kick-'em-Jenny, an active underwater volcano about eight kilometres from the small island of Grenada, which has erupted more than 10 times since its discovery in 1939.

"The islands located on the arc of the Lesser Antilles are exposed to the greatest danger, because the tectonic process at work there is subduction, which is when one tectonic plate slides under the edge of another. That's when the strongest earthquakes happen, and they frequently generate tsunamis," Arango said.

The expert said that this process is similar to that which occurs in the Indian Ocean, and in the "Ring of Fire" bordering the Pacific coast from Asia to America, where a large number of tectonic plates are undergoing subduction and other movements, and there is high seismic activity.

Subduction leads to the formation and development of active volcanoes, which can erupt and cause tsunamis, like the eruption of Mont Pelée on the island of Martinique in 1902, he said.

The tsunami risk for Central American countries is far greater on the Pacific coast than on their Caribbean shores. One of the worst tsunamis was in Nicaragua in 1992, which caused the deaths of 170 people.

The southeast of Cuba is prone to earthquakes because of its proximity to the contact zone between the North American plate, to which the island of Cuba belongs, and the Gonave microplate, located between Cuba, Jamaica and Haiti. Along the fault line known as the Cuban Margin (falla Oriente), these two plates slide horizontally past each other at a rate of 20 mm a year.

However, this sliding type of movement is very unlikely to cause earthquakes of high enough magnitude to generate a tsunami that would be catastrophic for Cuba or any nearby country.

The most likely source of tidal waves produced by an earthquake near Cuba is the subduction zone located north of the islands of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico.

In mid-March, Venezuela played host to the second meeting of the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Tsunami and Other Coastal Hazards Warning System for the Caribbean and Adjacent Regions (ICG-C).

This meeting, that followed a previous conference in Barbados in January 2006, decided to create an information centre and to study the feasibility of making Venezuela or Puerto Rico the headquarters of the EWS.

The vast majority of Latin American and Caribbean countries with a coastline do not have advanced systems for measuring earthquakes on the sea bed. They are practically entirely dependent on the Pacific Tsunami Warning System, based in Hawai.