Dominican Today posted this item on Friday after we received a very well-researched tip from one of our readers about illegal seine fishing in Samaná.

This is one of those cases where all you can do is consult the proper authorities to corroborate the story, put it on the record, and hope that when they tell you they plan to investigate it, they actually do. But props to our reader, Nelson Pereyra, for demonstrating both effective citizenship and effective citizen journalism.

When I hear about or work on stories like this (or this or this) I become convinced that global warming is a red herring. Communities all over the world are losing or have already lost their livelihoods because of severe environmental degradation due to lack of education among the population and/or carelessness on the part of governing authorities and/or commercial industries.

It frustrates me then that the United Nations hemorrhages cash issuing glossy publications and organizing global and regional conferences on climate change every six months where the participants discuss the last conference and draw up an agenda for the next one and use jargon like "harmonization," "capacity-building," and "institutional strengthening" that doesn't actually translate into any kind of meaningful action below the legislative level. When public policies are drawn up to prevent abuse of the environment, they aren't enforced, or exemptions are too cheaply bought, and you end up with a situation like what's happening in Samaná.

Santo Domingo hosted the 16th Meeting of the Forum of Latin American and Caribbean Environment Ministers (an initiative of the UN Environment Programme) last week, and I attended every morning. (The croissants were delicious, abundant, and free.)

I couldn't even take a guess at how many commissions, framework committees, agreements and partnerships were mandated over the course of the week, since most of the actual sessions were in camera, but writing up my daily reports was like slashing through a thicket of acronyms. The finished products were not my proudest journalism moments by a long shot. (I've been spoiled by DT because I get to write about whatever I want, and it's a lot easier to write about something you believe in than something that bores/irritates you.)

I did truly appreciate when Yvo De Boer, the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Commission on Climate Change (the body responsible for the Kyoto Protocol) said climate change, especially the anticipated intensification of weather phenomena, would have the worst impact on communities and populations already made vulnerable by long-term environmental degradation such as deforestation.

A priority for the next global climate change convention in Copenhagen in 2009 will be looking at ways to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change through environmentally sustainable alternatives to bad practices (clear-cutting, slash-and-burn short-cycle agriculture, seine fishing) that are as economically viable as those bad practices, especially in developing countries, he said.

Remove climate change from that equation for a moment. Can't we just work on environmentally sustainable and economically viable alternatives to current bad practices in resource management?