Some Aboriginal leaders rejected the plan as paternalistic and said the measures were discriminatory and would violate the civil rights of the country's original inhabitants. But others applauded the initiative and recommended extending the welfare restrictions to Aborigines in other parts of the country.
Prime Minister John Howard was responding to a report last week that found sexual abuse of children to be rampant in indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. The report said the abuse was fueled by endemic alcohol abuse, unemployment, poverty and other factors causing a breakdown in traditional society.
"This is a national emergency," Howard told Parliament. "We're dealing with a group of young Australians for whom the concept of childhood innocence has never been present."
Howard announced the measures for the Northern Territory, an Outback region where the federal government retains powers it doesn't have over Australia's six states. He urged state leaders to apply similar tough rules in their jurisdictions.
The federal government can change laws in the territory with an act of Parliament, where Howard has a majority that ensures he can implement his policy.
Australia is home to about 400,000 Aborigines. About 60,000 live in the Northern Territory, often in isolated, impoverished communities where jobs are scarce and substance abuse is widespread. The land was returned to them over the past 30 years and accounts for about half the Northern Territory, which is about twice the size of Texas.
The plan angered some Aboriginal leaders, who said it was the kind of government behavior that has disenfranchised Aborigines and created the problems in the first place. They also complained they had not been consulted; the government had not previously indicated it was considering such action.
"I'm absolutely disgusted by this patronizing government control," said Mitch, a member of a government board helping Aborigines who were taken from their parents under past assimilation laws who uses one name. "And tying drinking with welfare payments is just disgusting."
"If they're going to do that, they're going to have to do that with every single person in Australia, not just black people," she said.
Howard said the sale, possession and transportation of alcohol would be banned for six months on the Aboriginal-owned land, after which the policy would be reviewed. The child abuse report found drinking was a key factor in the collapse of Aboriginal culture, contributing to neglect of children and creating opportunities for pedophiles.
Hardcore pornography also would be banned, and publicly funded computers would be audited to ensure that they had not downloaded such images. The report said pornography was rife in Aboriginal communities and that children often were exposed to it.
Under Howard's plan, new restrictions would be placed on welfare payments for Aborigines living on the land to prevent the money from being spent on alcohol and gambling. Parents would be required to spend at least half their welfare on essentials such as food, and payments also would be linked to a child's school attendance.
Howard also called on state governments to send police to the Northern Territory to address a shortage on Aboriginal land there and offered to pay their expenses.
The child abuse report was commissioned by the Northern Territory government and is widely regarded as credible although it attracted some critics. It was unable to quantify the extent of the sexual abuse problem, since anecdotal evidence suggested much of it went unreported.
Conducted by an indigenous health worker and a government lawyer, it found children had been sexually abused in all 45 remote communities visited. The abusers were both Aborigines and non-Aborigines operating in or near their communities.
The report made 97 recommendations, including boosting procedures for reporting and monitoring offenders, and addressing widespread poverty and alcoholism.
Australia's original inhabitants suffer far higher rates of poverty and substance abuse than the rest of the country's 21 million people, and their life expectancy is 17 years shorter.
For years, white men were banned from marrying Aboriginal woman, and mixed-race children were taken from their Aboriginal mothers to be assimilated into mainstream society.
Though many found employment in the cattle and sheep industries, they were paid less than whites, sometimes working just for rations. Unable to achieve economic independence, many have become welfare dependent.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070621/ap_on_re_au_an/australia_aborigines;_ylt=As68M783ZpHnNrgC3tA4wXYDW7oF感想： アボリジニーはオーストラリアの先住民で国の保護を受けながら伝統的で静かなな生活をしているイメージがあったが、この記事を読んで初めてアボリジニーは国から受けた支援などを子供の教育に使わず、酒や娯楽に使いまた、女性に対するドメスティックバイオレンスや児童虐待を頻繁に行っていることを知りました。アボリジニーの中で起こった事はなかなか表に出ることはなく、被害者は苦しんでいる。だから、何か対策があればいいと思う。
Darfur's tragedy could be repeated in much of North Africa and the Middle East, experts fear, because growing populations are straining a very limited water supply. Data show rainfall steadily declining in the region, possibly because of weather changes linked to global warming.
"The consciousness of the world on the issue of climate change has to change fast," said Muawia Shaddad of the Sudan Environment Conservation Society. "Darfur is just an early warning."
Darfur's ethnic African farmers and tribes of mostly Arab nomads had long been competing for the region's meager water and land resources, experts say. But the severe droughts of the 1980s and meager rainfall since then sharpened the conflict between the two populations.
When African tribes took up arms against Sudan's Arab-dominated government in 2003, the Arabs in Darfur were willing allies of the government because they already were competing with the farmers for water.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote in a Washington Post editorial earlier this month that the world must learn from the Darfur conflict, including the effects that global warming have on hopes for peace.
Darfur is usually discussed "in a convenient military and political shorthand — an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against black rebels and farmers," Ban wrote. "Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic."
"In Darfur, we really saw it coming," Shaddad said, pointing to a chart measuring annual rainfall in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur.
The chart shows average annual rainfall has dropped by nearly half since figures were first collected in 1917.
In 2003, when the large-scale conflict began, 7.48 inches of rain fell on El Fasher. Meanwhile, Darfur's population has increased sixfold over the past four decades, to 6.5 million.
That created a strain on resources beyond the capability of the tribes to manage.
As the desert closed in, Arab nomads drifted farther south, bringing their herds of cattle toward lands that African villagers were farming.
Those herds destroyed fields and worsened soil erosion. With land being made unfit for farming, the Africans rebelled when the central government in Khartoum seemed indifferent to their plight.
On a recent morning in southern Darfur, camels grazed aimlessly on what used to be fertile fields. Village after village in the area lay destroyed and abandoned, with houses plundered and water pumps knocked down along the dirt track road winding across the arid landscape.
Nomads have cut down many of the trees in the war zone. Trees are crucial to farmers, because they help stabilize the soil and provide shade for crops. Without them, it will be even harder for farmers now in refugee camps to return to their villages.
In such a fragile environment, even steps designed to reduce human suffering are causing environmental problems.
With an estimated 200,000 people killed and 2.5 million left homeless by the conflict, international relief organizations set up vast camps to care for and protect those at risk.
Aid groups dug bore holes to provide water. Darfur's land is largely hard rock, so most of the scant rain that does fall during the June-September rainy season washes away, and the underground reserves are the only reliable water source. But the wells are depleting that water.
The problem has become so severe that some refugee camps in neighboring Chad may have to be moved soon. In El Fasher's Abu Shouk camp, seven bore holes have already dried up, according to a report by the British aid group Tearfund obtained by The Associated Press.
Furthermore, refugees are rapidly destroying forests around the camps by cutting trees for firewood. Refugees also use wood to reinforce the mud walls of their homes.
Many in the camps also earn money by producing mud bricks, which requires lots of water along with still more wood to fire the kilns. It takes the equivalent of 35 trees to bake bricks in just one kiln, the Tearfund report said.
In Abu Shouk, whole families — including children who don't go to school — could be seen digging hundreds of small holes in the sweltering heat in search of clay for bricks.
Behind them stood a large, barren sand dune that aid workers and conservationists said was covered by a trees only three years ago.
Once the war is over, families who attempt to return to their villages will require more scarce wood to rebuild their homes. A traditional family compound requires the wood from 30 to 40 trees, Tearfund says. That means 12 million to 16 million trees for the 2.5 million refugees, the report said.
With resources so depleted, U.N. and private aid groups are struggling to devise a "do no harm" policy.
In the Es Sallam camp next to El Fasher, a U.S. aid group, International Lifeline, has introduced a redesigned stove that uses up to 80 percent less wood. Nearly three-quarters of the camp's families now use the stoves, said Wahid Jahangiri, an Iranian who spent weeks in Es Sallam teaching women how to operate them.
"We started this as an environmental project and we're only beginning to realize the whole social and cultural impact it's having," said David Welf, the aid group's director.
In southern Darfur, where the damage is less than in the north, aid groups and U.N. agencies are seeking to reconcile farmers and nomads to protect what has not yet been destroyed.
Near the nomad encampment of Damrat Surmi, Arab chiefs have agreed to revive a "peace committee" to manage resources in common with local leaders of the African tribes.
"There used to be forests here, antelopes, even sometimes elephants," said Abdelnumin Adam, an African leader on the peace committee, pointing at the barren landscape.
Abdallah Durru, an Arab representative on the committee, said the Arabs agreed to pay for damage done to crops by their cattle because they realize they must live in harmony with the African farmers.
"We know that when the war ends, the government will leave us on our own," Durru said. "If we can't share this land with our black neighbors, no one can live."
For its part, Sudan's government says it has plans for a pilot project to spend $10 million to replant trees and build dams.
Conceding that amount is "peanuts," Ismail al-Gizouli of the government's High Council for Environment and Natural Resources, said, "We need the richer countries to realize desertification is the emergency and help us."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070621/ap_on_re_af/darfur_environment;_ylt=AnjIsqydY96Bns5hp6gr3Hy96Q8F感想： アフリカの砂漠で生活をしている難民たちは食料や資源の争いが長い間続いていて。温暖化によりさらに難民の生活は苦しくなっている。また彼らの伝統的な家族の家はは30から40本の木を木を必要とするとします。それは250万人の難民のために1200万～1600万本の木を必要とし。また、キャンプの多くの人々も泥レンガを生産することによってお金をかせぎます。そして、それは窯を焼くことをまだより多くの木と一緒のたくさんの水に要求します。ちょうど1つの窯でレンガを焼くには35本の木相当が必要である。するとさらに砂漠化が深刻になる。損害が北でより少ない所で、援助グループと国連機関はまだ破壊されなかったことを保護するために農民と遊牧民を和解させようとしています。
砂漠でより生活が厳しい場所では生活様式などを変えて、自然を壊さないようにして民族同士が仲良く暮らせたらいいと思う。
The Brussels sprout is a cultivar group of Wild Cabbage cultivated for its small (typically 2.5 - 4cm, 1 - 1.5 inches diameter) leafy green heads, which resemble miniature cabbages. The name stems from the original place of cultivation, not because of the vegetable's popularity in Brussels.
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