VN’s Phuc launches tree-planting campaign in Tuyen Quang province
VIETNAMESE Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on February 23 launched a tree-planting campaign in the northern mountainous province of Tuyen Quang.
In his remarks, Phuc highlighted Tuyen Quang’s advantages for forestry development, saying that over the years, the province had performed well in forestation, forest protection and forestry-based economic development in tandem with new-style rural area building.
“Environmental protection is the responsibility of all people,” he said, adding that tree-planting and preservation is a practical activity to ensure sustainable development.
The government has worked with localities nationwide in this regard, aiming to maintain forest coverage at 42 per cent, and raise the export revenue of timber and forestry products to at least $14 billion this year, and more than $20 billion in 2025.
He called on administrations at all levels, departments, agencies and ethnic groups in Tuyen Quang to respond to the tree-planting festival initiated by former President Ho Chi Minh in the spring of 1960.
Phuc assigned the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to assist the province in implementing programmes and projects and suggested Tuyen Quang combine forestation and forest preservation with eco-tourism.
The same day, the prime minister attended a ceremony announcing
Tuyen Quang city as a second-tier urban area, a subordinate administrative unit of Tuyen Quang province.
Speaking at the event, Phuc said: “Tuyen Quang city plays a significant role as a political and socioeconomic centre of the province, and a hub of transport and infrastructure of the northeastern and northwestern regions.”
He asked the city to spur socioeconomic development while ensuring national defence and security and environmental protection.
The government leader urged Tuyen Quang city to make greater efforts to win the status of a firsttier city by 2030.
SOLIDARITY in the global endeavor against the Covid-19 pandemic has so far proved to be meaningless as far as the fair distribution of vaccines is concerned. Since the number of doses administered in 10 developed countries accounts for 75 per cent of the world’s total and inoculation has not even started in 130 countries, the prospect of effectively containing the spread of the novel coronavirus worldwide is not as bright as it should be.
That explains why World Health Organisation directorgeneral Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus pleaded with rich countries on February 22 to check before ordering additional vaccine shots for themselves whether that undermines efforts to get vaccine shots to poor countries.
Although the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) industrial countries said their countries have committed a collective $7.5 billion to COVAX, the WHO head said “even if you have the money, if you cannot use the money to buy vaccines, having the money does not mean anything”.
It is not a matter of money, it is a matter of whether there are enough doses of vaccines for COVAX to buy for developing or less-developed countries.
As early as May 2020, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that the vaccines China developed and manufactured would be a global public good. China has already promised to provide 10 million doses to COVAX to meet the emergency needs of developing countries.
And it is setting a good example by providing vaccines to as many countries as it can. China has already provided vaccines to 53 countries and is exporting vaccines to another 22 countries.
It is not that China has manufactured vaccines that are more than enough for its own use. It is because China knows well that as the world’s second-largest economy, the country must fulfill its international responsibilities and do what it can to help others in need. It is also because China is clear that aiding developing countries in desperate need of vaccines is also helping itself, for so far as the pandemic is concerned, no one will be safe until all are.
Just as the WHO head says: “This is not a matter of charity, it’s a matter of epidemiology. Unless we end the pandemic everywhere, we will not end it anywhere.’’
The international community has a shared future in this matter as the virus knows no borders.
Hopefully, the leaders of G7 countries practice what they preach and accelerate and support “affordable and equitable access to vaccines and treatments for Covid-19”.
Only when vaccines are distributed in a fair manner in the way that is most effective to stop the spread of the virus will the fight against the pandemic see an end.
A GROUP of 28 pilot whales were successfully refloated at a notorious New Zealand beach where more than a dozen of the marine mammals died this week, jubilant rescuers said on February 24.
The long-finned pilot whales, which had re-stranded themselves once before, appeared to have finally swum out to sea, animal rescue charity Project Jonah said.
“The live whales haven’t stranded overnight, so it’s looking like success right now. We’re using the phrase ‘cautiously optimistic’,” the charity’s general manager Daren Grover said.
The whales were part of a pod of around 50 found on February 22 at Farewell Spit, about 90km north of the South Island tourist town of Nelson.
Some 40 whales were pushed out to sea on the evening of February 22 but swam back ashore by the next morning, with around 60 volunteers moving the 28 survivors back into the water for a second time.
“The beaches have been checked all the way along Farewell Spit and there’s no sign of live whales . . . So far, so good,” Grover said.
He said the dead whales would be moved to an area of the beach not used by the public, where the bodies will receive a blessing from the local Maori iwi (tribe).
Farewell Spit, a 26-km hook of sand that protrudes into the sea, has been the scene of at least 10 pilot whale strandings in the past 15 years.
The most recent was in February 2017, when almost 700 of the mammals beached, resulting in 250 deaths.
Scientists are unclear about why the beach is so deadly. One theory is that the spit creates a shallow seabed in the bay that interferes with the whales’ sonar navigation systems.
Pilot whales, the most common species of whale in New Zealand waters, are particularly susceptible to mass strandings.
The whales, which grow up to 6m long, are regularly found beached in large numbers.
They were involved in New Zealand’s largest recorded mass stranding at the Chatham Islands in 1918, when a pod of 1,000 swam ashore.
The remote islands, about 800km east of the South Island, was the scene of another incident in November last year when almost 100 whales died.
It is thought that the highly sociable animals may follow a sick leader ashore, become panicked by predators or stressed in extreme weather.
CANADIAN Gilbert Cardin worries about the future of the ice road he maintains every winter on a frozen river west of Montreal.
“At some point, it is certain that we will no longer be able to open if these mild winters continue,” he says.
Since February 14, the 900m-long path, cleared of snow and marked with fir trees, has allowed motorists to travel between two villages on opposite sides of the Ottawa River without having to drive 40km roundtrip to the nearest bridge.
Such ice roads – or “winter crossings” as they’re called by Quebec locals – were once commonplace in these parts.
In the 1800s, one even carried the weight of locomotives on a temporary rail line across the Saint Lawrence River between the island of Montreal and South Shore communities on the mainland – although one steam engine sank into the river.
In southern parts of Canada, seasonal ice roads are now increasingly scarce due to wide swings in winter temperatures – from deep freeze to balmy – that make it harder to maintain them.
Only a few dozen of these vestiges of winters of yesteryear remain today in all of Canada and just a handful in Quebec.
Cardin’s ice road between Pointe-Fortune and Saint Andrew d’Argenteuil is the only one of three in the Montreal area to open this year.
“This winter we opened a month late,” he laments, pointing to global warming and a very mild start to winter this year as the cause.
14 inches thick
Under a bright blue sky, the 54-year-old big rig truck driver plunges a chainsaw into the ice in the middle of the frozen river. A stream of ice shavings burst out as he cuts out a block of ice and measures its thickness against markings on the blade: 35cm.
It is thick enough to allow cars to drive across the frozen river, but not trucks. In past winters the ice has usually been as much as 1m thick.
“At this time of year, we should be seeing [65 cm] of ice,” he says.
He doesn’t expect to make a profit this year, given his late start and forecasts of an early spring, which will likely force him to close the ice road in a few weeks.
In the meantime, he must continually plow it over, as snow cover would keep the ice from thickening (acting as insulation from the cold) at a rate of about an inch per day in cold weather, Cardin explains.
“Having an ice bridge open for two months would be an excellent operating season, one month would be very good,” comments Claude Desjardins, owner of another ice road further downstream on the river.
He was unable to open his 2km ice road between Hudson and Oka this year, he says, due to “really unsafe” ice conditions. The situation was the same in 2017 and 2018.
Pandemic restricts travel
“Each year, it’s different and you never know what to expect,” says Cardin. His crossing, which he’s been operating for 25 years, also remained closed in 2018.
The last decade has seen more frequent warm spells, reducing the average length his ice road is open to an average of five weeks, down from a record 12 weeks in 1997.
He hopes a recent Arctic cold snap will stretch into early March so he can stay open a bit longer, but acknowledges it’s a long shot with the current ice thickness at the bare minimum.
“If the ice is not thicker than that, as soon as the warm weather comes, it’s all over,” he said.
Compounding his weather woes, he said there have been fewer drivers on Canadian roads this year due to public health restrictions to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
“Customers haven’t been there because of Covid-19. There’s no one on the highways, everyone who can has been teleworking,” he explains.
“Who’s using the bridge? Construction workers and housekeepers going from place to place, that’s it,” he says.
These days, barely 30 motorists per day use it, down from 100 normally.
“When I found out it was open today ... I said to myself, this is where I’m going,” says regular ice road user Eric Deschamps.
He paid C$7 (US$5.55) to use Cardin’s ice road, avoiding adding 50k to his trip. “It costs less than gasoline, especially with a pickup,” he concludes.