Bid to Halt Tuna Decline

Tuna Populations at Risk International Agency Challenged to Stop Over-fishing WASHINGTON, D.C. (June 19, 2008) -- A historic meeting next week may decide the fate of tuna in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, one of the world’s most important marine resources. The Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) has an opportunity at its annual meeting June 23 – 27 in Panama City, Panama, to reverse a trend of inaction, and take concrete steps to stop the decline of tuna stocks. Failure of the IATTC to compromise effectively in the past has blocked the consensus required for the adopt ion of binding resolutions. A coalition of organizations representing the international conservation community and the tuna industry agrees that urgent action is needed. The coalition is calling upon the Commission to follow the advice of its scientific staff to adopt time and area closures to protect tuna, and implement a research program to investigate how to manage fish aggregating devices (FADs) to reduce the capture of non-target species. Bigeye and yellowfin tuna populations are falling and the average size of captured fish is shrinking, a clear sign that those tuna are in dire need of conservation measures. At the same time, the size and efficiency of fishing fleets continue to increase. As fish become less abundant, their market value rises, and operators invest more in technology resulting in more pressure on the stocks. In the face of declining populations, some nations are demanding the right to increase the size of their fishing fleets. “Despite a clear legal mandate and declining tuna stocks, three international meetings of the IATTC held over the past year have failed to produce measures to protect the very resource upon which not only the tuna industry, but the health of the Pacific marine ecosystem depends,” said Scott Henderson, director of marine conservation at Conservation International. “This is truly the ‘tragedy of the commons’ in action,” observed Meghan Jeans, Pacific fish conservation manager for U.S.-based Ocean Conservancy. “The health of the ocean environment, the long term sustainability of tuna stocks and the interests of many are being put at risk by the short-sighted self interest of a few,” she added. The IATTC is responsible for the conservation and management of fisheries for tunas and other species taken by tuna-fishing vessels in the eastern Pacific Ocean. It is comprised of 16 member countries. A fundamental problem underlying IATTC’s failure to adopt effective science-based conservation measures is the inability of member states to negotiate measures agreed to by all. Humane Society International’s vice president Kitty Block remarked, “As it currently stands, there is every incentive to block consensus and none to reach it. If, instead, the fishery were shut down until consensus is reached, member countries would undoubtedly work harder to agree on effective management measures.” In 2007, representatives of the IATTC agreed to be more proactive in mitigating and preventing tuna stock declines and to undertake a comprehensive review of its performance. This review has yet to begin despite continuing stock declines. “The IATTC once had an enviable track record of following scientific advice, conserving tuna populations and tackling major conservation issues like dolphin mortality,” said Dr. Bill Fox, World Wildlife Fund vice president of fisheries. “It needs to recapture that spirit and dedication, perhaps using the new management ideas and methods it is exploring like property rights for fishermen.” “For conditions to improve, conservation groups, the tuna industry and seafood consumers need to cooperate and play a more effective role in promoting the adoption of responsible management measures,” said Randi Thomas, vice president of sustainability at the National Fisheries Institute. Humane Society International is the international arm of The Humane Society of the United States, the nation's largest animal protection organization — backed by 10.5 million Americans, or one of every 30. For more than a half-century, The HSUS has been fighting for the protection of all animals through advocacy, education, and hands-on programs. Celebrating animals and confronting cruelty — On the web at www.hsi.org. Ocean Conservancy promotes healthy and diverse ocean ecosystems and opposes practices that threaten ocean life and human life. Through research, education, and science-based advocacy, Ocean Conservancy informs, inspires, and empowers people to speak and act on behalf of the oceans. In all its work, Ocean Conservancy strives to be the world's foremost advocate for the oceans. For more information, please visit: www.oceanconservancy.org Conservation International (CI) applies innovations in science, economics, policy and community participation to protect the Earth’s richest regions of plant and animal diversity and demonstrate that human societies can live harmoniously with nature. Founded in 1987, CI works in more than 40 countries on four continents to help people find economic alternatives without harming their natural environments. For more information about CI, visit www.conservation.org. For more than 45 years, WWF has been protecting the future of nature. The largest multinational conservation organization in the world, WWF works in 100 countries and is supported by 1.2 million members in the United States and close to 5 million globally. WWF’s unique way of working combines global reach with a foundation in science, involves action at every level, from local to global, and ensures the delivery of innovative solutions that meet the needs of both people and nature. Go to worldwildlife.org to learn more. The National Fisheries Institute (NFI) is the leading seafood industry advocate representing all aspects of the seafood community from water to table for over 60 years. For more information, please visit:www.aboutseafood.com.
http://uk.oneworld.net/article/view/160717/1/

Mary Poppins and magna Carta

Jun 19th 2008From The Economist print edition British liberties have been eroded under Labour. Few seem to mind much...

Illustration by David Simonds






LIBERALS have long lamented that, despite much stirring rhetoric about the mother of parliaments and Magna Carta, modern Britons have little real interest in their hard-won liberties. On June 17th, as Gordon Brown gave a speech on the subject, that pessimism seemed confirmed when one rapt listener fell asleep in the middle of the prime minister's oration.
Yet civil liberties are much in the news these days. Mr Brown's speech came in the wake of the surprise resignation on June 12th of David Davis, the Conservative shadow home secretary. Mr Davis quit the House of Commons after it voted to allow terrorist suspects to be detained without charge for up to 42 days (the bill now looks set for a rocky ride in the House of Lords). From the steps of the Palace of Westminster, Mr Davis accused the government of presiding over the “slow strangulation” of freedoms and the “ceaseless encroachment of the state” into daily life. He hopes to use the resulting by-election in his Yorkshire constituency as a referendum on Labour's liberal credentials, and on the growth of the nanny state in general.
The charge sheet against the government is long and damning. Besides its 42-day detention proposals (and earlier, failed plans to imprison suspects for 90 days), it is accused of colluding with America to transport terrorist suspects to secret prisons abroad. It has created new crimes, such as glorifying terrorism or inciting religious hatred, that, say critics, dampen freedom of speech. Those who breach one of its Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, introduced in 1998, can be jailed for things that are not illegal in themselves (such as visiting a forbidden part of town or talking to certain people). In 2005 the prohibition on double jeopardy—trying a person twice for the same offence—was removed for serious offences. The government has tried to cut back the scope of trial by jury.
Along with the new crimes have come new ways of detecting them. Millions of publicly and privately owned closed-circuit television cameras (no one is sure precisely how many) monitor town centres. The latest innovation is unmanned, miniature aircraft (adapted from army models) that can loiter over trouble spots, feeding images to police on the ground.
Vast computerised collections of information have become popular too. Britain possesses one of the largest police DNA databases in the world, containing the records of over 4m of 60m citizens (including a third of the black men in the country). Records are kept for everyone who is arrested, meaning that many on the system have never actually been charged with any crime. The government's identity-card scheme, the first phase of which is due to start later this year, aims to record the fingerprints and biographical details of everyone in the land.
Other big databases are justified on grounds of administrative convenience rather than crime-fighting and security. One such is a plan to centralise the records of all patients of the National Health Service. Another would allow social services to monitor every child in the country, including how parents spend their money and how many portions of fruit and vegetables they feed their offspring each day.
Mr Brown argues that frightening new threats—terrorism, drug trafficking and (rather incongruously) benefit fraud—require new powers. In his speech he turned criticisms about authoritarianism on their head, saying that new state powers were guarantors of liberty, not threats to it. He expanded on the risks—the 2,000 terrorist suspects whom the security services are apparently tracking—and the benefits—the 8,000 suspects who have been matched with crime scenes since 2001 thanks to DNA evidence retained when they were released, uncharged, after a previous arrest. He repeated his promise that Parliament would prevent abuse of the 42-day detention law. Labour has passed a raft of other measures too: the Human Rights Act in 1998, freedom of information legislation in 2000 and changes to ensure the rights of gays and other groups.
An unhappy few
Government reassurances do not impress civil libertarians, who argue that, once restrictive new laws are in place, uses for them tend to multiply. In March it emerged that local councils had been using surveillance powers intended for deployment against serious criminals to check up on footling infringements: people who flouted smoking bans, for instance, or tried to game the school-admissions system.
And promises that sensitive personal data will be carefully stewarded look rather limp next to an official proclivity for leaving confidential material in public places. Mr Brown was badly embarrassed in November, when CDs containing 25m child-benefit records were reported lost by the Inland Revenue. More recently, on June 12th a civil servant was suspended after top-secret papers about terrorism were found on a train; on the same day another set of documents—this time on financial fraud—turned up on a different train. Five days later it emerged that a laptop stolen from the office of a cabinet minister may have contained confidential documents, violating data-protection rules.
But Britain's small band of civil libertarians has bigger problems than a recalcitrant prime minister and careless civil servants. Despite Benjamin Franklin's famous advice, the public seems happy to trade a little liberty for a little security. Surveys before the 42-days vote consistently showed public opinion in favour. More recent polling for The Economist shows broad public support for many liberal bugbears (see chart). Women tend to be more authoritarian than men, Labour supporters more relaxed about infringing civil liberties than Tories and Liberal Democrats, and richer folk more worried than the poor (full details can be found here). Half of the respondents were consistent in their answers to most questions; this, says YouGov's boss, Peter Kellner, is rather high.
The poll suggests that people are vehement in defence of civil liberty and privacy when considered in the abstract. Confronted with specific situations, their resolve wilts, especially when specific security gains are promised (although administrative benefits can overcome libertarian instincts too). Trust in private firms is much less than in the government—odd, since more than half of all consumers are voluntarily enrolled in data-tracking supermarket loyalty schemes.
Mr Davis's supporters point to a poll in the Daily Mail in which 57% of respondents said they supported his crusade. That is hard to reconcile with the findings of our survey. The alternative explanation—that any politician seen to thumb his nose at the establishment delights disenchanted voters—seems rather plausible.

E-waste

Lagos, a city whose population is rapidly approaching 20 million, has a huge waste disposal problem. And, thanks to the monthly arrival of up to 500 shipping containers of waste from the US and Europe, the problem is getting worse. According to US environment group Basel Action Network, up to 75 per cent of the loads contain so-called e-waste – obsolete electronic items such as computers and TVs, often in the guise of ‘charitable donations’.
Although there is great demand for second-hand imported electronic goods in the city, the vast majority is discarded on arrival and ends up in dumpsites, where it is burnt. With some of the components containing hazardous substances, environmentalists are extremely concerned.
‘It is a very worrisome situation,’ says Leslie Adogame of the Nigerian Environmental Society. ‘People around the areas where the waste is burnt are suffering from chest-related diseases because they inhale a lot of noxious substances.’
Laws on safe disposal of electronic goods have been introduced in the US and Europe but continue to be flouted, despite campaigners’ efforts to ensure companies comply. The US Government recently proposed a new e-waste law which would allow US shippers legally to send waste anywhere in the world as long as it is labelled ‘recycling’.

New Internationalist
April 2008 Issue 410

Teen Finds Way to Decompose Plastic Bags

If ordinary plastic bags would rot away like banana peels there’s no doubt a host of environmental problems would be solved, the fate of the turtle above included. And one 11th grader from Canada set out to make that dream come true as part of his school science project. A wildly successful endeavor he figures will make them decompose in just 3 months.
But how did this extraordinary young scientist named Daniel Burd pull it off?
Well, he decided the fact that they do, eventually, decompose after 1,000 years on their own meant there must be something out there causing it, and postulated that it might well be naturally occurring microorganisms behind it.
So he set about with the good old-fashioned scientific method as his guide, searching for the microorganisms, rarely found in nature, that actually do make plastic decompose.
Ultimately, he identified two strains of bacteria that work together to pull it off, with Sphingomonas serving as the primary decomposer with help from Pseudomonas.
And according to Burd, industrial application should be easy, "All you need is a fermenter . . . your growth medium, your microbes and your plastic bags."
As many folks know, the simplest solutions are usually the ones that work best. And this kid has clearly come up with a potentially world changing idea.
So congrats from all of us here at TreeHugger, where we are inspired by your creativity!
By Kenny Luna,

The Myth of Western Aid

The story of Western aid to the Third World needs to be demystified. Western populations almost universally believe that the story of Western aid is of massive transfers of aid to poor Third World countries for purely altruistic reasons. They know that much of this aid has not resulted in successful development. But many believe that this is not the fault of the West. It is true that there is a huge scandal of corruption on Western aid that is waiting to be exposed. However, if and when this story is fully exposed, it is the West that will be deeply embarrassed. The full story will show that the wide-held belief of altruistic Western aid is nothing but a myth. [ By Kishore Mahbubani ]It should be stressed upfront that there have been some beneficial effects of Western aid. Considering the huge sums involved, even if only a trickle did good, the results would still be significant. Hence, the West can legitimately point to a university in Lahore (LUMS), a bridge in Bhutan, a road in Laos or Colombo Plan Scholars in Singapore. But these are the exceptions. The vast majority of Western aid is as good as wasted. Or perhaps, wasted is not the correct word. It has been used – but it has been used to help the donor countries, not the poor developing countries. My rough guess is that out of every $ 10 of Western aid that is allegedly spent in the Third World, $ 8 returns to the donor country in the form of administration expenses, consultancy fees and contracts for donor country corporations. In short, there is very little actual transfer of aid to the developing countries. Sunset OECD The Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was set up in 1961 to assist countries in economic development and sustainable economic growth. By any objective standards, the OECD has failed in its mission. Still, the West continues to spend € 342.9 million a year maintaining an expensive secretariat in Paris, which produces excellent research papers but achieves little in delivering results on its core mission. More critically, the OECD happily provides estimates of the total amount of Official Development Assistance (ODA) provided by the West. Recent estimates show that the OECD members gave approximately $ 104.4 billion to the developing world. However, what is missing from this massive OECD estimate is how much of it actually reaches the developing countries and how much of it is effectively recycled back into the donor countries. The OECD has more than enough bureaucratic and academic resources to carry out such an audit. But it would not even dream of doing so for it will be killed by its own Western paymasters for attempting such an audit. Nor will anyone in the West have the courage to state another obvious truth: after having failed in its core mission, the OECD has clearly become a “sunset” organisation. Its disappearance will have no impact on the developing world. There are many other distortions in the provision of Western aid; indeed too many to be documented in a brief article like this. A few deserve mention: - Western aid does not go to the poorest or neediest countries. It goes to those countries which support the foreign-policy agendas of the donor countries. Take American aid, for example. OECD estimates show that on a per capita basis, American aid is the lowest among the OECD countries. But even the relatively little amount that America gives goes only to select countries, like Israel or Egypt even though Israel is a developed country. In recent years, Israel has received between $ 2.5 to 3 billion annually in US aid (Sharp, 2007) – and that is more than what all of sub-Saharan Africa gets. - Western countries do not hesitate to pull the plug if any recipient country fails to support their foreign policy agenda. Many African countries signed on to the International Criminal Court (ICC) statute because Africa clearly needed the ICC process. But when some African countries took a principled stand and refused to sign the side agreement to exempt American nationals from ICC prosecution, America threatened to cut off, and in some cases actually withheld, foreign aid. Altruism never featured in these deliberations. - Much of the aid given could be nullified by other hugely damaging actions of the donor countries. Take the case of the EU. In 2003, Johan Norberg wrote: “According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, EU protectionism deprives developing countries of nearly $ 700 billion in export income a year. That’s almost 14 times more than poor countries receive in foreign aid”. 14 times! Much will have to be done to correct that distortion.- In 1969, the OECD countries pledged to raise ODA to 0.7 % of their gross national incomes (GNI). Yet very few OECD members have honoured this pledge. In 2006, the actual ODA flows amounted to 0.31 % of member countries’ GNI (OECD, 2007). The difference between 0.31 % and 0.7 % amounted to approximately $ 134.7 billion. Even if only 20 % of this would have actually reached the developing countries, this amounted to a real loss of $ 26.9 billion. Compare theses figures with the total GNI of Least Developed Countries, which, according to UN statistics, was approximately $ 148 billion in 2006. Does anyone really expect the people in the developing world to be impressed by the West’s repeated pledge that the 0.7 % threshold will finally be met in 2015?- Even aid channelled through multilateral organisations is not immune from these distortions. The donor countries are often able to control the agenda of the multilateral aid organisations and also ensure that the budgets of these organisations are used in favour of their countries. When Australia “donates” scholarships through the Asian Development Bank (ADB) most of them have to be used in Australian universities or on services provided by Australian academics. Undoubtedly, some good comes from these scholarships. But if someone from Papua New Guinea could find a degree or more relevant course in another developing country institution, the scholarship cannot be used. Donor sensitivities The multilateral aid organisations also know that they pay a price if they ignore the wishes of the donor countries. The Scandinavian countries enjoy the reputation of being most generous in the provision of aid (in 2006, three out of four Scandinavian countries met the pledge of giving ODA up to 0.7 % of GNI). But they too are not immune from applying pressures. In 1999, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan decided to choose the new Administrator of UNDP on merit and not select the candidates traditionally imposed on the UN by the EU. The EU had nominated Poul Nielsen, the Danish Development Minister at the time. On the basis of merit, Kofi Annan chose Mark Malloch Brown, a British national, instead. The Danish government retaliated by slashing Danish aid to UNDP by 23 %. No one knows how many poor Africans or Asians suffered because Danish national pride had been wounded. The real tragedy of this whole story is that the West could have actually accomplished its ostensibly altruistic goals in the developing world if it focused its efforts on helping the recipient countries, instead of ensuring that most of the ODA was used to secure their own interests. And it could have accomplished this with a fraction of the money that has been ostensibly transferred to the Third World. This is what the real story of the Asian economic miracle is all about. The Asian countries that have succeeded are those who took charge of their development agenda and used the ODA given to them to develop the capabilities that they really needed, not those that the donor countries were pushing on them. The biggest success story for UNDP is probably Singapore. Two UNDP consultants, in particular who were sent to Singapore, made a huge difference: They were Albert Winsemius, a Dutch national, and I.F. Tang, a Chinese national. They developed good relationships with the architect of Singapore’s economic miracle, Dr. Goh Keng Swee. They worked together as a team and Singapore took off. Depressing realities Contrast the Singapore experience with two real-life stories of how aid was distorted. In 1973/74, I served as the Charge d’Affaires of the Singapore Embassy in Phnom Penh, a war-torn capital, which was being shelled everyday by the Khmer Rouge. I was 25 years old then. I met another 25-year-old female diplomat from the American Embassy. The Lon Nol regime then in power was being kept afloat by American aid. Each day, this young American diplomat would call on the Cambodian Minister of Economic Affairs and instruct him on what measures to implement. She was a good person and well intentioned. But she, not the minister, was running the Cambodian economy. It is no wonder that the Lon Nol regime collapsed. No foreign aid succeeds if there is no sense of ownership of the development process by the recipient country. While OECD rhetoric has become aware of this fact for some time, it is doubtful, to say the least, that Western donors really accept the principle of national ownership. There is another similar horror story, a story which is worse in some ways because it was carried out not by the “hegemonic” American power but by a respected multilateral institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Joseph Stiglitz (2002) recounts this story well, it concerns Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in the world. Ethiopia’s leaders tried to take charge of their own development agenda, and yet, received no support from the IMF in doing so. In 1997, the lending programme to Ethiopia was suspended ostensibly on the grounds that the Fund was concerned about the country’s budgetary position. Ethiopia was pressured to limit expenditure on development to only money from tax revenues, instead of relying on international assistance, which was deemed less stable. Actual statistics showed the IMF assumption to be untrue. When Ethiopia repaid an American bank loan early using its reserves so as to be free from the high interest rates, the country faced strong objections from the IMF and the United States, despite the sound economic move, as prior approval had not been obtained from the IMF. It is evident that neither the sovereignty of the country nor its right to formulate its own development strategy was respected in both cases. I end this article with these stories to illustrate how sadly distorted the Western aid project has become. The real tragedy is that given the overwhelming amount of goodwill among Western populations towards the poor developing countries, so much could have been done with the money approved by Western taxpayers for the aid budgets. Unknown to these Western populations, very little of the money reached the Third World or was actually used to help the poor developing countries. The Western populations deserve to be told what really happened to their money. The time to tell the truth has come.

Sources:
OECD, 2007: Final ODA flows in 2006,
Norberg, Johan, 2003: American and European protectionism is killing poor countries and their people, CATO Journal, 4 September.
Sharp, Jeremy M., 2007: CRS report for Congress: U.S. foreign aid to Israel, 25 April 2007.
Stiglitz, Joseph E., 2002: Globalisation and its discontents, New York: Norton & Company.
United Nations, 2007: “The list of least developed countries (2006 Review): Key indicators”, retrieved from http://www.un.org/esa/policy/devplan/ldc06list.pdf on 2 January 2008. »» http://www.un.org/esa/policy/devplan/ldc06list.pdf
Kishore Mahbubani is the Dean of National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and a former Ambassador to the United Nations. His forthcoming book is “The new Asian hemisphere: The irresistible shift of global power to the East”. He would like to thank Loh Su Hsing for her research assistance in preparing this article. »» http://www.mahbubani.net

Safe Sex Subsidy

In an interesting experiment, the World Bank plans to use conditional cash transfers to keep HIV/AIDS in check. A pilot project is to be launched in southern Tanzania this year.[ By Eleonore von Bothmer ]Over the next three years, the World Bank plans to pay 3000 young Tanzanians between the age of 15 and 30 for having safe sex, so they don’t catch AIDS. According to The Financial Times, each participant will receive $ 45 if no sexually transmitted diseases are found in regularly conducted laboratory tests. For most of the people concerned, this amount is equivalent to a fourth of their annual income. The researchers who are designing the pilot study hope that the financial incentive will make people consider long-term consequences of their behavior. It is believed that the payment, along with counseling, can reduce infection rates, especially in the target group most in danger: young women. Many of them depend upon the generosity of their lovers. Once these women have more money of their own, they will be in a stronger position when negotiating the use of condoms. In the pilot project, there will also be a control group that is not paid any money. Conditional cash transfers have proven successful in Mexico and Brazil. In either country, however, they are not used in relation to sexual behavior. Rather, poor families there are paid for sending their children to school and having them vaccinated. For good reason, the World Bank wants to launch the new health programme this year to slow down the spread of HIV/AIDS. In spite of large sums spent on prevention and care all over the world, 2.5 million people become infected every year, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The finishing touches are still being put on the scientific concept, which also has yet to undergo an ethical review. The approach makes sense. Should the experiment not be undertaken, it would be a pity if, in the neighbourhood of the White House in Washington, the only reason was conservatives’ obsession with other people’s sexual morals.

Eleonore von Bothmer is current-affairs editor at D+C/E+Z. »» euz.editor@fsd.de

The Fall of Tonderai Ndira

Death of a Zimbabwean activist
The body of Tonderai Ndira was found this week, the 43rd Zimbabwean opposition activist to die in violence since elections in March. Journalist Farai Sevenzo looks back at his life and the circumstances leading up to his murder.
It is clear that the change we were waiting for is here. If we do not get it, the people must rise up and fight for their victory Tonderai Ndira
Tonderai Ndira lived in the desperately poor township of Mabvuku and Tafara, east of Harare.
He was no stranger to the Zimbabwean police and at one stage had 38 charges levelled against him, ranging from "political nuisance" to attempted murder.
He was one of a group of young men and women, barely in their thirties, who formed the backbone of the opposition's ranks.
Theirs was the thankless and arduous task of mobilising moribund, disillusioned and tired folk to believe in this new concept called change and to sign up to the messages of the eight-year-old opposition - the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
On election day, 29 March, the tall and charismatic Ndira was hanging around by what passes for shops in his sewage-ridden constituency, where electricity is erratic and where cholera has already claimed lives in the last 12 months.
I asked him what he felt that day would bring, and if, given the history of elections in this country, the day would make any difference.
"It is clear that the change we were waiting for is here. If we do not get it, the people must rise up and fight for their victory," he said.
Rising up and fighting for victory pits one against the awesome strength of the security machinery the state has at its disposal.
That is an undisputed fact in the history of this country's opposition.
It is an impossible task.
Beyond politics
In the weeks following polling day, a campaign of intimidation was unfurled which largely affected opposition people rather than ruling party folk.
He was campaigning for things like better streets, more rubbish collections, healthy water supplies ZimRights official
Huts and houses were torched on both sides of the political divide; images of the beaten and tortured were wired around the world, and diplomats based in Harare collected eyewitness accounts of the horrors being unleashed in the countryside by people variously described as war veterans, militias or soldiers.
It was with this background that Tonderai Ndira continued to lend his leadership to the idea of democratic change, and his activism went beyond the politics of the MDC.
An official from human rights organisation ZimRights, who declined to be named, outlined what Ndira meant to civic society in and around Harare.
"I knew him personally, he was a youth activist who went around the country holding workshops and teaching people their rights.
"He was very active in the Combined Harare Residents Association - campaigning for things like better streets, more rubbish collections, healthy water supplies.
"And so he became a target for the Zanu-PF, because they are targeting active members."
And why would such people become targets of the ruling party?
"They know that if people like Ndira are removed, there will be less likelihood of an uprising."
Disappearances
Ordinarily it was a mission to find Ndira.
He would venture into the centre of town for the odd demonstration and then disappear for days on end.
His wife and three young children became used to the idea of him coming home after weeks away because a healthy sense of paranoia was needed to avoid spurious charges and lengthy stays in remand prison.
But on Tuesday 13 May, according to his friends and eyewitnesses, Ndira came home and slept the sleep of the exhausted in Mabvuku township.
At around 0645, a pick-up truck packed with 10 men arrived on his narrow street and drove past his house, stopping at the neighbours.
The 10 men were armed with revolvers and AK-47s - some of them wore masks.
The neighbour's child duly told them the right address and they reversed, disembarked and told Ndira's wife they were looking for her husband.
The presence of so many armed men frightened her into calling out his name and announcing that there were people there to see him.
He answered with a voice drunk with sleep and asked her to tell them to come by later, as he needed his rest.
We are like chickens waiting for the knife to reach our throats Tonderai Ndira's brother Cosmas
He was abducted in his underwear, in front of his young children as they were heading to school and beaten into the truck until he was bleeding.
In the ensuing week, his family and friends desperately tried to locate him.
The omens were not good, several activists had been found dead and funerals were happening throughout the city and the rural areas - all connected to Zimbabwe's protracted political impasse.
On Wednesday, the MDC went to claim two more bodies from Harare's Parirenyatwa Hospital morgue.
Party officials were told by the mortician there was another body that had not been claimed.
Unrecognisable
This new body was badly decomposed; a pair of bloody shorts was plastered to a face clearly broken and shattered.
"We only knew it was my brother by his distinctive ring, his bangles, and his unmistakeable height," said Cosmas Ndira, as family and friends filled his small home to mourn his passing before his funeral, which is yet to be finalised.
"His jaw was shattered, his knuckles broken, a bullet hole below his heart, many many stab wounds and a large hole at the back of his head which seemed to have been caused by a hammer."
Jimmy Chidakwa, a colleague and fellow activist, struggled to contain his anger both at the assassins and his party's leadership.
"They are cowards, all of them. Ten men to take down one unarmed man.
"And where are our leaders? Out of the country."
I know so many people now too frightened to vote with their hearts come the run-off Activist Jimmy Chidakwa
Cosmas chipped in: "Yes, we are like chickens waiting for the knife to reach our throats.
"Given his position in the party, my brother should have had more protection.
"I know so many people now too frightened to vote with their hearts come the run-off."
Unlike the opposition leadership, who are not here and have been at pains to tell the world of diplomatic efforts under way as they travel - to Botswana, South Africa, Kenya, the UN headquarters in New York - the foot soldiers like Tonderai Ndira remained on the ground, visiting the injured, co-ordinating relief efforts to the displaced.
The opposition may yet feel the full force of the loss of such urban activists in the weeks to come as the country heads for the presidential run-off on 27 June.
Story from BBC NEWS Published: 2008/05/23 15:12:43 GMT© BBC MMVIII