Islamic fundamentalism with leadership election

David Charter in Brussels

The UK Independence Party is set to head in a fresh direction, fighting radical Islam, with the election today of a replacement for Nigel Farage as its national leader.

The two favourites to take over from Mr Farage are committed to adding the battle against Islamic fundamentalism to the party’s main goal of withdrawing Britain from the European Union.

Mr Farage resisted strong grassroots pressure during his three-year leadership to broaden UKIP’s focus to include actively campaigning against Islamism and immigration. But both Lord Pearson of Rannoch and the London MEP Gerard Batten - the two front-runners in a field of five candidates - say that they are determined to target Islamic fundamentalism.

The other three candidates are Mike Nattrass and Nikki Sinclaire, both MEPs, and Alan Wood, a councillor from Wiltshire and a senior party insider.

The result of the ballot of UKIP’s 16,500 members will to be announced today. Lord Pearson, 67, an Eton-educated self-made millionaire, was endorsed by Mr Farage as his only “serious” successor this month. Mr Batten called the endorsement an “insult” to the other challengers.

Lord Pearson invited the anti-Islam Dutch politician Geert Wilders to the House of Lords in February only for Jacqui Smith, then the Home Secretary, to issue a banning order so that Mr Wilders was turned away at Heathrow. The Dutchman travelled to Britain in October after overturning the ban.

Lord Pearson’s own outspoken views about Islam were recorded in Washington DC last month. Asked how much time Britain had before losing control of its cultural identity he said: “What is going to decide the answer to that is the birthrate. The fact that Muslims are breeding ten times faster than us. I do not know at what point they reach such a number that we are no longer able to resist the rest of their demands . . . but if we do not do something now within the next year or two we have in effect lost.”

He later insisted that his remark was directed at Islamists. “One is talking about the violent end of the spectrum,” he said.

Mr Batten, 55, has also invited Mr Wilders to speaking engagements and has called the Dutch politician “a brave man trying to defend western civilisation”. This year, writing in the magazine Freedom Today, Mr Batten addressed the notion of the confrontation of Islamism and the West. “It is a clash between civilisation and barbarism. It is a clash between everything that has made the modern world what it is and an ideology that wants to enslave us to a belief system that belongs in seventh-century Arabia and which was primitive and backward even then.”

Ms Sinclaire, 41, a newly elected MEP, has campaigned strongly and is regarded as having an outside chance of taking the leadership. Her main aim is to professionalise UKIP and organise a Shadow Cabinet to extend its appeal.

Mr Nattrass, 63, an MEP for the West Midlands since 2004, believes that UKIP’s main focus should be on winning votes in the next general election but has largely been absent during the campaign due to an illness in the family. Mr Wood is well known within UKIP as its nominating officer.

A UKIP source said that if Lord Pearson or Mr Batten were elected “You are going to see quite a lot stronger position from us. Nigel has always been afraid of the Islam thing backfiring. But the BNP are taking ownership of issues that have not been addressed by Labour, the Conservatives or the Lib Dems and they need addressing.”

Rainforest destruction accounts for 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions

Environmentalists across the world are to be enlisted as armchair detectives to monitor satellite images of rainforests and report any illegal logging.

The images will be frequently updated and anyone with internet access will be able to make instant comparisons with historical images and spot destruction of rainforest almost as soon as it happens.

Every four seconds an area of rainforest the size of a football pitch is cut or burnt down for timber and paper or to clear land for cattle and plantations.

Rainforest destruction accounts for 17 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than is produced by all the world’s cars, ships and aircraft. Tropical forests cover 15 per cent of the world’s land surface and have a double cooling effect, soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and maintaining high levels of evaporation from the canopy.

(Rickey Rogers/Reuters)

Rainforest destruction accounts for 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions

The armchair detectives will be able to report their findings to an international agency being created to monitor whether countries are meeting their commitments to reduce deforestation. Any state found to have broken its pledge will lose its share of a new global fund established by rich countries to pay nations for leaving their trees standing.

The fund, called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (Redd) and worth up to $30 billion (£18 billion) a year, is due to be approved at the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen next month.

Google is helping to create the new online detective tool, which is likely to be launched next year. Philipp Schindler, from Google UK, said: “Our engineers are exploring how we might contribute to this effort by developing a global forest platform that would enable anyone in the world, including tropical nations, to monitor deforestation and draw attention to it.”

Mr Schindler was speaking yesterday at a seminar on deforestation hosted at St James’s Palace by Prince Charles and attended by leaders and ministers from several of the largest rainforest countries.

President Jagdeo of Guyana told the seminar that the cheapest way for industrialised countries to reduce carbon emissions was to pay poor countries, such as Guyana, not to fell their trees.

Contributors to the Redd fund will pay about £4 for each tonne of CO2 saved by reducing the rate of deforestation. Fitting carbon capture and storage systems to coal-fired power stations costs more than £50 for each tonne saved.

Norway announced last week that it would demonstrate how Redd could work by paying Guyana up to £150 million over five years to preserve its trees.

Guyana’s forests have been far less logged than in many tropical nations, and under the terms of the new deal with Norway, Guyana could actually be paid for increasing deforestation. The memorandum states that Norway will compensate Guyana if it does not cut down more than 0.45 per cent of its forests per year, but Guyana is currently felling trees at a far slower rate. The countries contributing to Redd are concerned that their money could disappear into the pockets of corrupt officials in poorly governed countries. There are also fears that payments will result in logging companies switching to unprotected areas, resulting in no net reduction in deforestation.

Per Frederik Pharo, of the Norwegian Government’s forest protection fund, said payments would only be made when countries could prove that they had reduced their annual rate of deforestation by an agreed amount. He said the targets would be raised every five years.

Brazil has halved its rate of deforestation in the past year but Tasso Azevedo, of Brazil’s Forest Service, warned that it could increase again unless the country received substantial sums of Redd “People have to have some income and we need a lot of cash for the community to maintain the forest,”he said.