Dam on Red Sea Would Harm Environment

Andrea Thompson, LiveScience.com 6 Dec 07;

Damming the Red Sea could alleviate growing energy demands in the Middle East, engineers say, but such a massive project could also have untold ecological impacts, like those brought about by other major dams worldwide.

Scientists and policy makers have recently been exploring more ways to provide people with energy and electricity without using fossil fuels, which are driving Earth's rising temperature.

One fossil-free way to make electricity is to dam a river. But an entire sea?

In a new study, Roelof Dirk Schuiling of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and his colleagues examined the possibility of damming the Red Sea to feed the growing energy demands of surrounding Middle Eastern countries through hydroelectric power. While such a huge project could significantly reduce fossil fuel use, and therefore cut greenhouse gas emissions, it could also cause irrevocable damage to local wildlife and displace people from their homes, the researcher conclude.

A March 2007 report by the World Wide Fund for Nature noted the impact of dams on the ecologies of the Nile, Danube, Rio Grande, South America's La Plata, Australia's Murray-Darling and Asia's Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, and Ganges rivers, including damage to fish habitats and loss of wetlands.

Red Sea dam

Schuiling's study looked at the possibility of damming the southern entrance of the Red Sea at the Bab-al-Mandab Strait, separating it from the Indian Ocean. (Such a seawater barrier has already been planned for the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf.)

The proposed Bab-al-Mandab dam would stop the inflow of seawater from the Indian Ocean into the Red Sea, and as the sea gradually evaporated (because of its high evaporation rate), water levels on each side of the dam would reach a point where the flow of water could be used to generate electricity. The dam would have the potential to generate 50 gigawatts of power, Schuiling estimates—by comparison, the largest nuclear power plant in the United States has an output of 3.2 gigawatts.

But, as Schuiling and his colleagues point out in their paper, the ecological impacts of such a project would be "irreversible and far-reaching, both in terms of regional as well as environmental impacts."

Dam impacts

One of the biggest impacts of a Red Sea dam would come from the increase in salinity in the already very salty Red Sea as its water evaporated and left salt behind. An increase in the salt content of the water could harm the coral reefs, crabs, fish and other organisms that are not adapted to the higher salinity.

The dam would also lower the Red Sea by about 2.1 meters per year (6.8 feet per year), and "consequently, coastal wetlands, mangroves and coral reefs would begin to dry out and die almost as soon as the [dam] closes," the authors wrote in the latest issue of the International Journal of Global Environmental Issues.

This reduction in water level and damage to ecosystems would also endanger the crabs, fish and sea birds that depend on these Red Sea habitats.

The authors also note that because ocean water will no longer flow into the Red Sea, world sea levels would rise by about 12 cm (4.7 inches) over 50 years, reaching a maximum of 30 cm (11.8 inches) after 310 years. But if serious measures were taken to curtail greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, the dam would actually help to slow sea level rise by also reducing emissions, the authors said.


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Ngee Ann Polytechnic plugs gap with new diploma course in business and social enterprise

Lin Yanqin, Today Online 6 Dec 07

They have the passion to run a sustainable business, but not the skills. They also lack support. These were some of the problems confronting social enterprises that a committee recently identified — and now, Ngee Ann Polytechnic (NP) will take a step towards addressing these issues.

Its School of Humanities is offering a new diploma in business and social enterprise. For its first intake next year, the school plans to take in 40 students for the three-year programme, which will cover a mix of business and social enterprise modules from the principles of accounting to non-profit organisation management. Just as importantly, students will also be mentored by local and foreign social entrepreneurs and gain hands-on experience by working on social projects.

In their final year, students will be attached to private and public-sector organisations to work on a social enterprise project, either locally or overseas.

Said industry practitioner Alfie Othman, a member of the Social Enterprise Committee: "It's good that a specialised course is being offered and not something that's just part of a bigger course."

Mr Othman, the managing director of Ikhlas Holdings, a catering company that hires ex-offenders and single mothers, added: "This course and the infrastructure recommended by the committee will encourage people to commit to and take a shot at the industry."

On the other hand, while teaching the basics of running a business "would be helpful", the passion and creativity that social entrepreneurship needs is not something to be taught in the classroom, said Lien Foundation Centre for Social Innovation centre director Carolyn Seah.

Its report last week on social enterprise recommended that more courses be launched at the tertiary level to teach the application of business skills in a non-profit sector. "We can create all the infrastructure and support, but that's just half the component. You still need the heart component, which can't be taught," said Ms Seah.

NP's School of Humanities director Choo Cheh Hoon, underlining the "growth potential" of the sector, said the course could help make the sector more "robust" and equip students with a social heart with the right business skills.

A possible partner in the mentorship scheme is the Schwab Foundation for Social Enterprise, which also helps to find internships worldwide. The school will hold its annual open house next month.


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Singapore youths deployed to Orchard Rd to encourage more to volunteer

Channel NewsAsia 6 Dec 07;

SINGAPORE : People at Orchard Road may soon find themselves being approached by youths who will talk to them about volunteering their time for charity.

It is part of an effort to mark International Volunteers Day, which falls on Wednesday.

Starting Wednesday, and for the whole of December, some 500 youths will be deployed to solicit donations. But they are not asking for money, they are looking for manpower hours.

The aim is to secure online pledges of at least 50,000 hours from members of the public, to volunteer at more than 50 charities.

The effort is part of the month-long "Giving from the Heart at The Atrium" festival, which celebrates volunteerism.

Organisers hope to make volunteering a lifestyle choice and not just an occasional act.

The festival will also feature 50 retail and novelty stalls, performances and a 300-square-metre skating rink.

The venue is at the open space between Plaza Singapore and Dhoby Ghaut MRT Station.

Those who would like to volunteer can go to www.bank4u.org , or call the hotline at 1800 968 2265.

The event is hosted by youth charity Heartware Network, and supported by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports; the National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre and the Singapore Community Development Council.

The community partners are Maybank, the Singapore Police Force, The Atrium @ Orchard, Ngee Ann Polytechnic and Serangoon Junior College. - CNA/ms


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"Green jobs" to outweigh losses from climate change

Alister Doyle, Reuters 6 Dec 07;

NUSA DUA, Indonesia (Reuters) - Climate change is creating millions of "green jobs" in sectors from solar power to biofuels that will slightly exceed layoffs elsewhere in the economy, a U.N. report said on Thursday.

Union experts at U.N. climate talks in Bali, Indonesia, said the findings might ease worries among many workers that tougher environmental standards could mean an overall loss of jobs for many countries.

"Millions of new jobs are among the many silver, if not indeed gold-plated, linings on the cloud of climate change," Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) said in a statement.

"New research reveals that these jobs are not for just the middle classes -- the so-called 'green collar' jobs -- but also for workers in construction, sustainable forestry and agriculture, engineering and transportation," he said.

The study of "Green Jobs" around the world said that measures to promote ethanol in Brazil, for instance, had created 500,000 jobs. In China, 150,000 people were employed in solar heating, a sector with sales revenues in 2005 of $2.5 billion.

And it said that renewable energy programs in Spain and Germany, such as in promoting wind power, had "already created several hundred thousand jobs".

The environmental industry employed more than 5.3 million people in the United States in 2005, according to a UNEP statement that did not give a breakdown by sector.

"There's every indication that there will be a net gain (in jobs) but probably not a very large net gain," Janos Pasztor, a senior UNEP official, told a news conference in Bali.

NUCLEAR POWER

"The labor intensity of renewables is higher than those of fossil fuels or nuclear power," he said. Jobs could be lost in coal mining, for instance, if the world sought to shift away from fossil fuels.

The study did not try to estimate the total number of jobs that could be created or lost by measures to combat climate change, which U.N. reports project will bring more droughts, floods, heatwaves and rising seas.

"The fears that this will turn into a job killer...are unfounded," said Peter Poschen, a development specialist at the U.N.'s International Labor Organization. "There is a huge opportunity for 'green jobs'."

"Fear of job or livelihood losses...continues to pose a barrier to greater worker involvement," said Lucien Royer of the International Trade Union Confederation, grouping workers in more than 100 nations.

He welcomed the study as confirming past economic theories about net gains in jobs linked to combating global warming.


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Costa Rica plants 5 million trees

Reuters 6 Dec 07;

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (Reuters) - Costa Rica, a leader in eco-tourism and home to some of the world's rarest species, planted its 5 millionth tree of 2007 on Wednesday as it tries to put a brake on global warming.

President Oscar Arias shoveled dirt onto the roots of an oak tree planted in the grounds of his offices, reaching the milestone in the Central American nation's efforts to ward off what some experts say are the first signs of climate change.

By the end of the year, Costa Rica will have planted nearly 6.5 million trees, which should absorb 111,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year, Environment Minister Roberto Dobles said. The country aims to plant 7 million trees in 2008 as part of the newly launched program.

Along with other green-minded nations like Norway and New Zealand, Costa Rica is aiming to reduce its net carbon emissions to zero, and has set a target date of 2021.

"I don't know if we will end up being carbon neutral in 2021 as we have proposed, but the important thing is the audacity of the goal and the work we have to do," Arias said.

Costa Rica is a magnet for ecology-minded tourists who come to visit the lush national parks and reserves that cover more than a quarter of the country and are home to almost 5 percent of the world's plant and animal species including exotic birds and frogs.

Over the last 20 years forest cover in Costa Rica has grown from 26 percent of the national territory to 51 percent, though environmentalists complain that loggers continue to cut down old trees and that the national park system is under funded.

Costa Rican authorities have blamed the loss of more than a dozen amphibian species, including the shiny yellow "golden toad," on higher temperatures caused by global warming.

Experts also say climate change is behind a spike in mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever at high elevations where they were once rare.

The number of dengue fever cases so far this year in Costa Rica's high-altitude central valley stands at 3,487 -- 86 percent higher than in the whole of 2006.

(Reporting by John McPhaul, editing by Eric Walsh)


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China releases Three Gorges water to ease drought

Reuters 6 Dec 07;

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has raised the flow of water from behind its massive Three Gorges Dam to ease a downstream drought that is the worst in half a century, the official Xinhua agency reported on Thursday.

Low rainfall along the upper parts of the Yangtze River, China's longest, meant levels on the middle stretches had retreated 1.5 meters below average, stranding at least 26 cargo ships over the past month.

River authorities issued a warning to shipping about low water levels, and ships had to be checked for weight and unload excess cargo before heading through the drought-stricken section, the report said.

Over 1,000 workers and 100 boats were also digging out silt along the river, which is usually lower over the autumn and winter but replenished by spring floods, Xinhua added.

The flow of water has now increased by more than 5 percent from Tuesday levels, according to the China Three Gorges Project Corporation (CTGPC), raising downstream water levels around half a meter. The extra flow will last at least until next Tuesday.

Large areas of south China are also suffering from serious drought, with water levels on two major rivers -- the Gan and the Xiang -- in rice-growing provinces dropping to historic lows, state media said in November.

China suffers a water shortages of nearly 40 billion cubic meters a year which its Water Minister has blamed largely on global warming, state media have reported, although severe pollution and rising consumption by both farmers and booming cities have compounded shortages.

(Reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison; Editing by Alex Richardson)


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Mangroves help Indonesia fend off climate change

Adhityani Arga, Reuters 6 Dec 07;

SUWUNG KAUH, Indonesia (Reuters) - Dark, foul-smelling mangrove swamps can help Indonesia's coastal communities fend off rising seas and stronger tropical storms caused by climate change, experts say.

As 190 nations meet for December 3-14 U.N. climate talks on the resort island of Bali, looking for ways to broaden a pact to slow down global warming, experts say mangroves are not getting the attention they deserve as a protective coastal barrier.

"Mangroves are a natural way to lessen the severity of the impact (of climate change) to coastal communities," said urban planning and climate change expert Enda Atmawidjaja.

"They are natural sea barriers, and they are also much cheaper then building sea walls made of concrete."

Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of 17,000 islands, is extremely vulnerable to a rise in sea levels, storm surges or more intense tropical storms linked to global warming.

The U.N. climate panel says seas could rise by 18 to 59 cms (7-23 inches) by 2100. More than 40 million of Indonesia's 220 million population live less than 10 meters above sea level.

Mangroves are trees and shrubs that grow along a saline strip along the coast, now and then swamped by tides. The thin roots provide a habitat for shrimps and small fish, break up waves and hold back silt and soil from that damage coral reefs.

Mangroves can keep rising seas at bay to a certain extent, giving communities more time to adjust. The trees can help people cope with heatwaves and help break up waves in the event of a tropical storm.

DEFORESTED

But decades of rampant development along Indonesia's 57,000 kms (35,000 miles) coastline have left nearly 70 percent of its 5 million hectares (12 million acres) of mangrove forests deforested or degraded, scientist Hiroyuki Hatori told Reuters.

"Indonesia is the world's number one country in terms of mangroves. Some statistics say that 25 percent of the world's mangrove exist in Indonesia," said Hatori. "However in many areas of Indonesia mangroves are fast receding."

Like in many parts of Indonesia, vast swathes of mangrove forest in "the neck of Bali", a strip of land that connects a tiny peninsula in the south to the main part of the island, were turned into shrimp ponds during a boom in the 1980s.

But the ponds were soon abandoned, leaving large areas barren. Scientists later discovered that violent waves were chipping away at the coast, sparking fears that lower part of the island could be cut off in a decade's time.

A government project sponsored by Japan's development arm set off in the early 1990s to restore the area's vast mangroves, filling about 1,000 hectares of land with nearly 20 types of mangrove.

It became the first big-scale restoration project in Indonesia, with a mangrove nursery supplying free saplings to 18 restoration projects across Indonesia.

Today, project head Sasmitohadi said Indonesia has made giant leaps in its effort to preserve mangrove forests, but the increasing demand for settlements in the world's fourth most populous nation is putting pressure on the mangrove forests.

"To be honest, human beings are the biggest threat to mangroves," Sasmitohadi said. Small-scale conversion into shrimp and fish ponds also continue to pose a threat to mangroves.

"Indonesia should step up its conservation efforts for the world's next generation," Hatori said. "There are only 18 million hectares of mangrove forests left in the world, once degraded, it would be difficult to recover."

(Editing by Alister Doyle)


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Half of Amazon could be gone by 2030

Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 6 Dec 07;

More than half of the Amazon rainforest could disappear or be damaged by climate change and deforestation by 2030, a new report warns.

At the same time the clearing of forests to make way for crops and livestock could release almost 100 billion tonnes of CO2 - the equivalent of more than two years of total global greenhouse gas emissions.

The destruction would threaten one of the key influences on helping keep the global climate cool, according to the WWF report.

It warns that the future of the Amazon is on a knife-edge and if logging and the spread of farming is allowed to continue unchecked - fuelled by world demand for soya, biofuel, and meat - the forests will be caught up in a vicious spiral of slash and burn leading to a dramatic reduction in rainfall.

The report, The Amazon's Vicious Cycles: Drought and Fire in the Greenhouse, was released to coincide with the Bali climate summit.

WWF used the report's findings to call for measures which would reduce cattle ranching and farming and expand protected areas.

Dan Nepstad, Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Research Centre in Massachusetts, and the report's author, said: "The importance of the Amazon forest for the globe's climate cannot be underplayed.

"It's not only essential for cooling the world's temperature but also such a large source of freshwater that it may be enough to influence some of the great ocean currents, and on top of that it's a massive store of carbon."
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The report claims that changes already under way in the Amazon are much further ahead than had been predicted and will lead to extensive conversion and degradation over the next 15-25 years.

As much as 55 per cent of the forests could be lost or damaged by agriculture and livestock expansion, fire, drought and logging.

An ecological tipping point would be reached when a combination of all these factors would reduce pristine rainforest to fireprone brush with a consequent loss of biodiversity and the chances of conserving the forest greatly reduced.

Forests that burn are more susceptible to further burning because the loss of trees allows more sunlight to reach the forest interior, drying dead leaves and branches on the forest floor.

The loss of the Amazon forests could speed up global climatic disruption, influencing the amount of rainfall in far-flung places around the planet.

Some models indicate that rainfall could decline in India and Central America, and that less rain may fall during the crop growing season in the grain belts of Brazil and the United States of America.

If the trends continue important eco-regions of the Amazon, such as the Maranhão babaçu forest, the Marañon dry forest and the cloud forests of Bolivia would be lost and many species of animal, including several primates, will lose more than 80 per cent of their forest habitat over the next few decades.

Beatrix Richards, head of forests at WWF-UK. said: "The Amazon is on a knife edge due to the dual threats of deforestation and climate change.

"Developed countries have a key role to play in throwing a lifeline to forests around the world.

"At the international negotiations currently underway in Bali governments must agree a process which results in ambitious global emission reduction targets beyond the current phase of Kyoto which ends in 2012. Crucially this must include a strategy to reduce emissions from forests and help break the cycle of deforestation."

The report called for a bold new conservation strategy for the Amazon which would avoid the tipping point and allow the forests to rapidly regrow.

Freed from the slash and burn policy and properly protected, the Amazon would return to closed-canopy forest and would recover its rainfall stabilisation role within 15 years.

The report concludes: "There is still time to lower the risk of widespread forest degradation and the acceleration of global warming that it would stimulate.

"All opportunities to govern Amazon frontier expansion must be seized. One of the most promising approaches to the large-scale conservation of Amazon forests is to compensate tropical nations for their reductions in heat-trapping gas emissions from tropical forests."

LINK

Climate change speeds up Amazon’s destruction
on the WWF website



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Australian PM distances himself from big emissions cuts by 2020

Yahoo News 6 Dec 07;

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Thursday denied his government would support deep carbon emission cuts for developing nations by 2020 aimed at curbing global warming.

Rudd said Australia remained opposed to the binding cuts of between 25 and 40 percent in the next 12 years, despite reports that Australian officials had publicly embraced the plan at a major UN climate change conference in Bali.

Speaking after his cabinet's first meeting in the eastern city of Brisbane, Rudd told reporters his government was opposed to the target, which originated from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change earlier this year.

"(Nations) have ... indicated that they do not necessarily accept those targets, nor do they accept those targets as binding targets for themselves," he said.

"That is also the position of the Australian government," he added, days before flying to Bali to attend the conference along with four of his senior ministers and just after he moved to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Two major Australian newspaper groups reported earlier Thursday that Australian representatives to the Bali conference had told delegates that Canberra "fully supports" the proposal that developed countries need to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020.

Environmental groups had praised the reported announcement, while Australia's new opposition said such a move would have a "devastating impact" on the country's economy.

Rudd had earlier repeatedly said Australia would not set its own 2020 target until he received a report he has commissioned from his climate change economic specialist next year.

The prime minister, who has set a 2050 target for cutting greenhouse gas pollution by 60 percent, said Thursday he would wait for the report before setting short-term targets.

"I think speculation on individual numbers prior to that is not productive and I would suggest it would be better for all concerned if we waited for the outcome of that properly deliberated document," Rudd said.


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Johor on red alert as floods hit

Meera Vijayan and Farik Zolkepli, The Star 6 Dec 07;

JOHOR BARU: Continuous rainfall over the last 24 hours has caused floods in five districts in Johor.

As at 2pm Thursday, over 1,000 victims had been evacuated in Johor Baru, Segamat, Batu Pahat, Kota Tinggi and Kluang. The Meteorological Services Department has also upgraded its heavy rain warning from orange to red for Kelantan, Terengganu and northern Pahang, and advised the people to be on alert for floods.

The red stage warning refers to tropical storm or typhoon with sustained wind speed of at least 60kmph accompanied by moderate to heavy rain, while orange stage means moderate monsoon rain is occurring and expected to continue for several hours.

A bridge from Labis to Segamat near Sungai Karas has been cut off and was accessible only to heavy vehicles.

Johor Police Chief Dep Comm Datuk Hussin Ismail said that police had opened their 24-hour flood operations room as of 8am on Thursday.

“We are prepared for the floods and all our men are on standby,” he said.

State Women, Family and Community Development Committee chairman Dr Robia Kosai said that the Welfare Department had already sent out food and emergency supplies to all districts as of Wednesday.

“The supplies have even been sent out to the islands off Mersing and interior areas like Kampung Peta in Endau-Rompin,” she confirmed.

For more information, the public can contact the police hotline at 07) 221-6393 and the Fire and Rescue Department hotline at 07) 224-7444.

The Meteorological Services Department also issued a first category warning on strong winds and rough seas for the coastal waters off Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, east Johor, Sarawak and Sabah. The first category warning shows strong northesterly winds of 4050kmph with waves up to 3.5m.

Hundreds in Johor evacuated as flooding fears rise
Authorities in two states on full alert as heavy rain tipped to continue
Straits Times 7 Dec 07;

JOHOR BARU - HUNDREDS of people on the outskirts of Johor Baru and surrounding areas were evacuated yesterday from their homes as continuous rainfall since Wednesday night flooded five districts.

More than 1,000 people have been evacuated in Johor Baru, Segamat, Batu Pahat, Kota Tinggi and Kluang. Segamat is in north Johor while the other districts are in the central and southern parts of the Malaysian state.

The authorities are on full alert in Johor and Pahang. The two states suffered widespread flooding after heavy rain last December and January, with 110,000 people evacuated.

Those floods caused damage estimated at more than RM100 million (S$43 million).

A resident of Masai, Mr Arbain Wahab, 67, said he had not expected the water to rise so quickly as the rain was not that heavy on Wednesday morning.

'The water suddenly came up to my chest level...there was no time to save many things,' he said.

Social welfare officer Manayi Ibrahim was quoted as saying by the Bernama news agency that eight relief centres had been opened in Johor Baru, with two more in Kota Tinggi.

The Malay-language Utusan Malaysia daily said more than 1,000 families living in low-lying areas had been warned they might be evacuated if the rain continued.

The Meteorological Services Department has issued a 'red' alert to residents in Johor and southern Pahang as weather forecasts predicted torrential rain for three days starting from yesterday.

It also upgraded its heavy-rain warning from 'orange' to 'red' for the northern states of Kelantan, Terengganu and northern Pahang.

The red alert is the highest level in a three-stage warning system.

The red alert refers to tropical storms or typhoons with sustained wind speeds of at least 60kmh together with moderate to heavy rain, while 'orange' refers to moderate monsoon rain.

Meteorological Services Department deputy director-general Che Gayah Ismail said: 'Such heavy rain can cause floods. However, it may not be as bad as last year's floods.'

Johor Civil Defence Department director Che Othman Hussin said rescue teams had been deployed to monitor the situation in flooded areas.

'We are ready for the possibility of floods, and we can deploy our teams at any time,' he was quoted as saying by Utusan Malaysia.

Johor police chief Hussin Ismail said police opened a 24-hour flood operations room yesterday.

'We are prepared for the floods, and all our men are on standby,' he said.

Meanwhile, residents in low-lying areas in Sarawak have been told to prepare for the possibility of floods between Dec 22 and 29.

Bernama also reported that Sarawak has placed 6,000 rescue officers on standby, identified 584 temporary relief centres that could shelter more than 200,000 people and prepared more than 1,000 boats and 3,410 life jackets.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK


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Bali Conference: Diplomats warned that climate change is security issue, not a green dilemma

Daniel Howden, The Independent 6 Dec 07;

Foreign policy-makers are waking up to the impact of climate change on conflict zones worldwide, and will add their voice to those calling on governments at the UN conference in Bali to act urgently.

An internal presentation to senior diplomats at the Foreign Office listed every recent, serious breakdown of civil order around the world and mapped it against those countries hardest hit by climate change.

The fit was almost perfect. One of the diplomats present said there was an "audible intake of breath" from the audience when the slide was shown.

As the scientific debate has been unequivocally settled by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this year, it has become increasingly apparent that its effects will have major implications for foreign policy.

"Climate change presents an enormous challenge to the international community, and unless we respond effectively we won't be able to deal with the implications," said John Ashton, the UK's special representative for climate change. "We need to see how we can use the assets at our disposal to something about it."

Those assets include the know-how to build international coalitions, and the kind of influence over governmental decision-making that environment ministers can only dream of. Analysts point out that while environment experts know how to make emissions trading work, it's a "political fact" that you get a quicker response to a security crisis.

Delegations from some 190 countries began talks on the Indonesian island of Bali yesterday, aimed at agreeing a "road map" for a successor to the Kyoto protocol. There are concerns that, despite scientific and business consensus on the urgent need for deep cuts to carbon emissions, Bali will be simply more talks about talks.

From rising sea levels in the Indian Ocean to the increasing spread of desert in Africa's Sahel region and water shortages in the Middle East, global warming will cause new wars across the world and is being described by diplomats as a "threat multiplier" – adding new stress to areas of traditional geopolitical instability.

Mr Ashton was brought into the Foreign Office by the former foreign secretary Margaret Beckett last year as a "climate-change ambassador" to try to instil a sense of urgency on the issue in the diplomatic service. Britain also used its presidency of the UN Security Council to lead its first debate on climate change and conflict. "What makes wars start?" asked Mrs Beckett. "Fights over water. Changing patterns of rainfall. Fights over food production, land use. There are few greater potential threats... to peace and security itself."

Those sentiments were echoed in June by the head of the UN Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, who launched a report revealing the environmental roots of the conflict in Darfur.

Mr Steiner said global warming would produce new wars. "People are being pushed into other people's terrain by the changing climate and it is leading to conflict," he said.

"Societies are not prepared for the scale and the speed with which they will have to decide what they will do with people."

How 'climate proofing' could prevent conflict

Were global carbon emissions to be cut by half today, any mitigating effects on climate change would take at least two decades to appear. In the short term we are locked into global warming, so efforts to "climate proof" the nations set to be hit hardest by it is one of the biggest tasks facing the UN, and the most effective means of reducing the likelihood of climate-driven wars.

Schemes to mute the impact of climate change, such as wider use of drought-resistant crops, irrigation or better forecasting of storm surges, could help protect hundreds of millions of people.

In parts of Sudan, for instance, a study showed that a shift to small-scale irrigated vegetable gardens and efforts to stabilise sand dunes had raised food output.

For Uruguay and Argentina, the report urged "a review of coastal and city defences, and of early-warning systems and flood-response strategies" along the river Plate. In Gambia, a projected decline in rainfall this century is likely to cut yields of millet. Cases of dengue fever in the Caribbean could triple, and better education about the risks could help. "Adaptation is not an option – it's essential," said Neil Leary of the International Start Secretariat in Washington, who led the studies.


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Thin-film solar sheets seek time in the sun

Richard Dobson, Reuters 6 Dec 07;

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Soaring oil prices approaching $100 a barrel are fueling a sleek new kind of solar technology that could some day set skyscrapers and high-rise apartment windows quietly buzzing with renewable energy production.

The emerging technology uses thin films mounted on the glass windows of skyscrapers and other surfaces to harness the sun's power.

It's more aesthetic and cheaper than the bulkier conventional solar cells made from polycrystalline silicon whose supplies have tightened and prices have risen as solar energy has taken off.

Current thin-film surfaces generate less power per area than traditional polysilicon modules, but they also use less polysilicon then conventional cells making them attractive to some of the world's top solar panel makers.

"Silicon is in short supply. This is a very critical issue so at the moment we are focusing on thin-film investment," said Tatsuo Saga, deputy general manager of Japan's Sharp Corp solar systems, one of the world's leading solar panel makers.

Thin-film is cheaper to produce, more durable and more aesthetic than bulky solar panels, which are often accused of being eyesores. The transparent sheets can serve as facades for skyscrapers and housing roofs where they absorb the sun's rays and turn it into energy.

"One big advantage of the thin film products is that they don't have to use too many raw materials and they are much cheaper than silicon solar wafers," said Robin Cheng, an analyst at UBS Securities.

The potential has attracted major solar energy players such as German-based Q-Cells AG as well as the likes of industrial giants like Applied Materials Inc, the world's biggest maker of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, which see big growth potential in thin-film machinery.

Thin film solar cells use much less silicon -- which accounts for between 40-50 percent of a module's costs -- than traditional crystalline silicon cells which require 200 times more silicon.

Thin film's advantage comes in its low price in terms of production costs as well as its ability to serve as attractive transparent panels on large buildings.

"We are sure in the years to come we'll have the same sized (products) as architectural glass," said Winfried Hoffmann chief technology officer of Applied Materials' solar business group at an event in Taipei.

HALF-BAKED?

Despite thin film's promise, the technology still faces many challenges, said Jerry Yang, vice president of United Solar Ovonic Corp, a U.S. company.

In terms of generating efficiency rates, or the percentage amount of power made from the available sunlight, thin film modules average around 6 percent. That is less than half of the 15 percent for traditional crystalline silicon cells, according to Solarbuzz LLC, a solar energy research and consulting company.

"A lot of work needs to be done to expand the market, reduce costs and improve the efficiency," said Yang. "Our product efficiency is 8 percent. Within a short time we will reach 8.5 or even 9 percent. That's our goal."

The pay-off is in the lower cost.

Thin film module prices were being sold in Europe in November for $3.69 per watt compared to $4.29 per watt for the lowest priced traditional multicrystalline module of similar power sold in the United States, according to a Solarbuzz survey.

"The lower retail prices are making companies interested in the technology as an alternative. However, there is a large capital expenditure to build a thin-film plant and the solar power conversion rates are low," according to KGI Securities researchers in Taipei.

"It's still too early to know if it can be a profitable technology in the future, as we'll have to see if the conversion rate can be boosted and also how many players enter the market, which will affect competitiveness," said KGI.

Obstacles aside, many believe that thin-film efficiency will steadily rise, possibly reaching 15 percent, with improving technology to take a bigger share of the solar energy market.

Thin-film solar cells could account for up to 30 percent of the global solar cell market by 2010, from around 7 percent in 2006, according to estimates compiled by Taiwan's E-Ton Solar.

Japanese electronics maker Sharp Corp plans to boost its thin-film solar cell production capacity from 15 megawatts per year to 1,000 megawatts (MW) by 2010 with the construction of a massive plant in Sakai City.

No investment figure was available from Sharp, but rising costs of silicon are making the new technology more attractive.

The lure of thin film is spreading, with firms across the industry getting involved with the technology, including Taiwan's Motech Industries, China's Suntech Power Holdings and Germany's SCHOTT Solar. Chi Mei Optoelectronics, Taiwan's No. 2 maker of LCD panels, also recently said it was entering the thin-film business.

Germany's Q-Cells has invested aggressively in companies producing or planning to produce thin-film technologies, buying as Calyxo GMBH and Brilliant 234 GMBH, with annual capacity of 25 MW and 24 MW, respectively, by the first quarter of 2008.

(Additional reporting by Baker Li)

(Editing by Doug Young and Megan Goldin)


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Pedal power and recycling at UN meet buck the trend in Indonesia

Charlie McDonald-Gibson, Yahoo News 6 Dec 07;

Rubbish is generally cast aside with little thought for the environment in Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, while exhaust-belching traffic clogs the roads in big cities.

But among the lush manicured lawns of the Nusa Dua resort on the island of Bali, delegates at a key United Nations climate change conference are being treated to a different vision of a greener Indonesia.

Eco-friendly bicycles glide along the thoroughfares linking the luxury resorts, while representatives from nearly 190 nations are encouraged to think before they throw away their lunch wrappers and superfluous schedules.

"The bicycles, they are handy, delegates are using them ... they are faster than walking, and they are environmentally friendly," said Salwa Dallalah, the UN's conference coordinator.

She told AFP that the UN had worked with the Indonesian government to make the 11-day conference as green as possible.

That is not an easy task when about 10,000 people are gathering, trying to negotiate a plan for tackling climate change when the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol -- a treaty to battle global warming -- expires in 2012.

Special bins dotted around the conference centre divide plastic and paper, where some delegates can be seen hovering before deciding where to deposit their waste.

Indonesians outside the conference walls have other ideas for disposing of rubbish.

"We put everything into the hole which I share with my neighbours, and every day we burn it," said Kadek Murtini, a 27-year-old street vendor in Bali's main city of Denpasar.

While some Denpasar residents say they pay rubbish collectors to haul away their refuse, scavenging for valuable waste is something of an industry in Indonesia.

Teenager Romli makes his living picking up what other people throw away.

"I go everyday from 5am until 3pm around the city. I collect plastic, and all kinds of tin, aluminium and papers," he tells AFP. "I take everything to my boss and he measures the weight and I get the money."

Romli is not sure where the toils of his labour end up, and the concept of formal recycling has yet to take off.

"I've never heard about (recycling). It must be high technology with big machines," said shop owner Nyoman Sudarna.

Previous investigations by local environmental groups have found that many residents in Jakarta dispose of waste directly into rivers and canals, while old vehicles ply the capital, contributing to the choking pollution.

But delegates enjoyed lungfuls of clean air in Bali on the free bicycles.

Angela Anderson, of US-based group the National Environment Trust, dismounted her yellow bicycle looking slightly breathless, and said she felt "a little overwhelmed and a little exhilarated".

"It's wonderful, the distances are close enough that it is convenient, and it saves a lot of unnecessary emissions. And some of us get exercise that they would not have got otherwise," she told AFP.

Jenny Farmer, from the Ugandan delegation, sized up which bike to take on a short hop, and was full of praise for Bali's roads.

"Compared to Uganda, they are amazing. There are no pot holes, and people stop at traffic lights," she said.

But despite the best of intentions, there are pitfalls to pedal-power.

Attendants at the bike drop-off said they were having to start closing up early after 13 bikes "went missing" on the first day.

RELATED ARTICLE

Carbon footprint fears for UN climate summit

Charles Clover, Telegraph 2 Dec 07;


Read more!

Best of our wild blogs: 6 Dec 07

8 Dec upcoming RMBR gallery: a guided walk in aid of ACRES
focusing on wildlife trade in Singapore, on the toddycats blog

Long weekend at Pulau Ubin
and lots seen and done on the tidechaser blog

Ubin Sensory Trail
antics on the above and under sea forest blog

Daily Green Actions: 4 Dec
a hand-powered generator sheds some light on lights-out?
on the leafmonkey blog


Little Heron's nest
on the bird ecology blog

US Carbon Rally for Singapore?
thoughts on the champions of the environment blog

Wait for costs to come down before adopting solar energy?

Some thoughts on the AsiaIsGreen blog

Bali's magic fuel
Water? or what? on the reuters environmental blog

Wild Happenings on Habitatnews!

Siva says many kind words on habitatnews


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Retain scenic trees in South Buona Vista Rd

Letter from Chong Kuan Mui (Ms), Straits Times Forum 6 Dec 07

I WAS shocked to learn of the Singapore Land Authority (SLA)'s intention to fell 63 Albizia trees along South Buona Vista Road, at the foot of Kent Ridge Park.

Although there are about 25ha of state land in that area, the trees are concentrated in pockets of green. Some have been around for 20-30 years. To fell so many trees in one go means deforesting the area.

Even though there have been instances of these trees falling and taking innocent lives, this should not warrant that every one of them be removed.

South Buona Vista Road is very scenic and it would be such a pity if so many trees are felled. It would not only destroy the beauty of the place but also the natural habitat of rare species of birds and other wildlife.

SLA should have the trees, be they the Albizia or any other, inspected and fell them only if they are diseased or in danger of snapping. It should not take the easy way out.

RELATED ARTICLES

Are Albizias 'killer' trees?

Sharon Lee Siew Kiang, Today Online 15 Nov 07;


Read more!

Bring your own bag every week?

NEA is talking with retailers, they're generally keen on idea
Sheralyn Tay, Today Online 6 Dec 07;

IT began with one day a month — but soon, consumers here may have to pack their own shopping bags along more often, perhaps even once a week.

The National Environment Agency (NEA) is considering increasing the frequency of Bring Your Own Bag Day (BYOBD), having received feedback that shoppers would welcome this move.

According to an NEA survey, more shoppers have become aware of the BYOB initiative since it launched six months ago, with about 60 per cent supporting the campaign by bringing their own bags, making donations for plastic bags, buying reusable bags, or refusing plastic bags for small items.

Significantly, 67 per cent of respondents "even commented that the campaign could be carried out more frequently", said NEA chief executive Lee Yuen Hee.

An NEA spokesperson told Today it was "exploring" a weekly BYOBD. Currently, this falls on the first Wednesday of every month and yesterday marked the ninth instance.

"We are in constant consultation with retailers and they are generally quite keen on the idea," the spokesperson added. No timeframe was given, as discussions are ongoing.

In response to queries, a spokesperson for supermarket chain NTUC FairPrice said: "Over the past few months, we observed that many customers have made an effort to bring their own shopping bags to bag their groceries."

FairPrice stores have cut down the use of plastic bags by between 30 per cent and 80 per cent on BYOBD. The chain has also sold more than 60,000 reusable bags. And in July, FairPrice launched a Green Reward Scheme where shoppers who use their own bags on any day of the week get a 10-cent rebate if they spend at least $10.

Joining the more than 200 participating retailers in the BYOBD initiative yesterday was local bookstore chain Popular Book Company, which launched a line of reusable bags.

"We aim to encourage our shoppers to be more environmentally-friendly by bringing their own reusable bags for their purchases and reducing the request for plastic bags," said director of retail operations Yeo Kar Han.

On BYOBD, shoppers who do not bring their own bags can buy reusable bags from participating supermarkets and hypermarkets, or choose to make a 10-cent donation for each plastic bag taken at the checkout counter. Donations are channelled to the Singapore Environment Council.

RELATED ARTICLES

60% of customers support "Bring Your Own Bag" campaign: NEA

Channel NewsAsia 5 Dec 07;


Read more!

City Developments programme aims to cut 1million kg of carbon emissions a year

Channel NewsAsia 5 Dec 07;

SINGAPORE : Property developer City Developments has started an environmental programme with a specific target - to cut a million kilogrammes of carbon emissions a year.

The programme is being implemented in more than half of its buildings, including Republic Plaza.

The air conditioning in these buildings will be raised by one degree to 24 degrees Celsius. This means that the buildings will use less energy to cool the premises.

Research by the Energy Market Authority of Singapore and the US Department of Energy has shown that about 3 percent of an electricity bill is saved for every 1 degree Celsius that the thermostat is raised, in a 24-hour period.

There are now 10 City Developments buildings involved in the programme, which was started in October 2007. - CNA/ms


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Row over China tiger photo 'fakes'

Michael Bristow, BBC News 5 Dec 07;

Photographs supposedly showing a rare South China tiger in the wild have sparked a controversy that at times has bordered on the farcical.

The saga has involved Chinese wildlife experts, government officials, internet users and an influential US magazine.

They have all been drawn into a row over whether the sub-species of tiger still exists in the wilds of China's Shaanxi province.

To resolve the debate, the Chinese government has now dispatched a team of experts to search for more evidence.

The drama began in October when Chinese farmer Zhou Zhenglong supposedly snapped the tiger in the forested mountains of Zhenping County.

According to state news reports, Mr Zhou took 71 photographs on two cameras, one digital, the other using film.


Only one shot was publicly released, but it was immediately hailed as proof that the South China Tiger is not extinct in the wild.

That claim was given credence when the US magazine Science published the photograph and an accompanying article about the row.

Other media organisations, including the BBC, also reported the story.

But critics were almost as quick off the mark, suggesting the photograph had been digitally altered and was a fake.

It did not help matters that farmer Zhou, a former hunter, was reported to be asking for 500,000 yuan ($68,000, £33,000) for the photographs.

'Flourescent' fur

Debate raged over the internet as both experts and laymen pointed out flaws in the photograph, which shows a tiger crouched in green undergrowth.

The more knowledgeable talked about how tigers are solitary, vigilant animals that are notoriously difficult to spot, let along photograph, in the wild.

Others could not believe the tiger's fluorescent-looking fur belonged to a real animal.

One internet user even posted a picture on the web showing the similarities between the Shaanxi tiger and one on a New Year calendar that hung in his home.

The debate seemed to be resolved when the China Photographers Society joined the growing band of doubters and declared the picture fake.

But some Chinese government officials are still clinging to the possibility that the photographs are real.

At a press conference, State Forestry Administration spokesman Cao Qingyao said an investigation had been launched to settle the matter.

A 10-strong team will scour an area covering 200,000 hectares searching for black bears, leopards and, of course, the South China Tiger.

Mr Cao said he was keeping an open mind about what they would find, according to state media.

"Whether the tiger on the photo is real or not, it's still difficult to evaluate the situation of the tigers at large in the area," he said.

Mythical creature?

The last wild South China tiger sighting in the country was recorded in 1964, and if they do still exist in the wild experts say their numbers do not exceed 30.

There are only about 60 in captivity, including one born in a wildlife reserve in South Africa last month - the first to be born outside China.

But the tiger debate has now become more than just a row about the survival of one of the world's most endangered animals.

It has become a discussion about conserving China's wildlife in the face of rampant economic development, and about telling the truth.

For some, it also appears to be about creating a myth.

One Shaanxi forestry official recently mentioned the tiger in the same breath as Scotland's Loch Ness Monster.

China wildlife office sued over "paper tiger" saga
Reuters 10 Dec 07;

BEIJING (Reuters) - A legal scholar has sued China's top wildlife authority for not getting involved in a national controversy over a farmer's "snapshots" of a wild tiger believed to be extinct, a newspaper said on Tuesday.

In October, Zhou Zhenglong, from mountainous Zhenping county in the northern province of Shaanxi, produced photographs of the tiger he said were taken in the forest near his village.

A local forestry authority said the photographs were proof that the South China tiger, belonging to a subspecies long feared extinct, still existed in the wild.

But Internet users have accused Zhou of making the tiger images with digital software, and local authorities of approving the photographs to bolster tourism.

China's top wildlife office, the State Forestry Administration, has drawn fire for sponsoring a so far fruitless search for the tiger, and for refusing to rule on the veracity of the photographs which experts have lined up to dismiss as fakes.

Hao Jingsong decided to sue the wildlife office after it turned down his demands to appoint a "professional organization" to verify the photographs, according to Tuesday's Procuratorial Daily, an official paper of China's top prosecutors' office.

"The (administration) sent a group of experts to Zhenping to conduct investigations into the tiger, without first verifying that the photographs were real," the paper quoted Hao as saying.

"This is irresponsible behavior," said Hao, adding that the suit was a "call for official credibility."

The suit would be registered by the Beijing Second Intermediate People's Court within a week, the paper said, citing a court official.

The South China tiger debate has captivated local media and Internet users in China, and has intensified in recent weeks following the emergence of a Chinese New Year commemorative poster whose image of a tiger bears a striking resemblance to the one in Zhou's pictures.

Earlier this month, a panel of photography, zoology and botany experts that analyzed Zhou's pictures out of a "sense of social responsibility," unanimously dismissed his tiger as faked.

RELATED ARTICLES

Public anger rising over tiger photo fiasco

Their trust in the authorities shaken by refusal to verify authenticity of photo
Sim Chi Yin, Straits Times 5 Dec 07;

Rare Chinese tiger spotted for first time in decades
Yahoo News 12 Oct 07



Read more!

Tigers Pitted Against Tribes by Indian Forest Law

Paroma Basu in New Delhi, West Bengal, and Orissa, India
National Geographic News, 5 Dec 07;

Konka Murmu, an unemployed member of the Santal tribe, strode barefoot through the jungles of Buxa Tiger Reserve, casually sidestepping thorny brambles and razor-edged stones.

As he approached his home in Panbari—an impoverished forest hamlet in the heart of India's eastern state of West Bengal—Murmu surveyed the rickety straw shacks of the only home he and his family have ever known.

For reasons Murmu is only partly aware of, a political storm brewing hundreds of miles away in India's capital city of New Delhi is about to determine his future.

In 2006 India passed a new law that recognizes for the first time the rights of forest-dwelling tribes and other traditional residents to occupy and cultivate land that they and their ancestors have lived on for generations.

The law came as a welcome relief to hundreds of forest communities nationwide.

But since then it has pitted tribal rights groups in a bitter standoff with conservationists, who believe that the move could devastate India's wildlife—including the iconic and endangered Bengal tiger.

The issue is so polarized that the act has yet to be enforced. Deciding how to implement it has become a sticking point at the highest levels of government.

Activists around the country have held heated demonstrations, and the national press has been rife with scornful editorials on both sides of the debate.

All the while, millions of forest residents are hanging in limbo. It's a familiar feeling for Murmu.

"Nobody comes to see us or hear what we have to say about our own future," he said. "Politicians come to get votes and then never come again. This law might sound good, but who knows whether it will actually happen?"

Landmark Step

Known as the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, the law applies to families that have lived in the forest for at least three generations.

These families may occupy up to 9.8 acres (4 hectares) of land—including regions within protected areas set aside for wildlife.

Under the law, the responsibility of deciding a family's rightful territory falls to each village's gram sabha, or democratic village assembly.

The law outlines 13 rights, including the right to farm and to collect and use traditional forest products such as seeds, sticks, wax, and leaves.

Shankar Gopalakrishnan works for the Delhi-based Campaign for Survival and Dignity, which represents dozens of grassroots groups nationwide that advocate for forest rights.

If enforced, the new law would represent a landmark step forward for Indian forest communities, Gopalakrishnan said.

"These people have been systematically deprived of every livelihood resource," he said.

Human-Free Zones

During India's colonial period in the 19th and 20th centuries, the British had declared thousands of acres as reserved forest for timber without determining the rights of communities already living there.

In the 1980s and '90s the independent Indian government set aside many forests as wildlife sanctuaries and national parks with the particular aim of protecting tigers.

The big cats have been in decline over the past few decades, with recent estimates of between 1,300 and 1,500 individuals left in the wild.

In accordance with India's Wildlife Protection Act (WPA) of 1972, certain forest areas in these reserves—such as core tiger-breeding grounds—must remain human-free.

The WPA includes a section on how to assess the holdings of people living inside such habitats and provide them with viable resettlement options. But observers on either side of the debate say the process has largely been ignored.

"It's been almost as if the local people don't really matter when setting up a protected area," said Ashish Kothari, co-founder of Kalpavriksh, an environmental research and advocacy group in Pune in Western India.

Kothari estimates that three million to four million people currently live within India's 602 protected areas, including 28 tiger reserves.

Although data are scarce, observers estimate that in the last few decades the Indian Forest Department has forcefully evicted up to 200,000 forest residents in the name of conservation.

Dushman Padhan is a Kisan tribal and activist who lives inside the Badrama Wildlife Sanctuary in the coastal eastern state of Orissa.

Nobody consulted with him or any of his people, he said, when the sanctuary was created in the late 1980s.

More than local 1,500 families once derived primary income from saal seeds and leaves collected in the forest and sold in the nearby town of Sambalpur.

Oil from the seeds is used for cooking—although most if it these days goes to chocolate-making companies—while the broad leaves are stitched into plates that are used throughout Orissa in weddings, funerals, and sacred ceremonies.

But these forest families faced a devastating cut in earnings as sanctuary guards began to bar their access to the jungle.

Many tribals have resorted to illegal activities, Padhan said. They sneak into the forest preserve to collect saal and other leaves, assist the local timber mafia in felling trees, and even help animal poachers.

Tigers' Rights?

Most wildlife scientists and forestry officials concede that India's forest peoples have had a raw deal. But they bristle at the fact that the Recognition of Forest Rights Act also applies to pristine wildlife habitat.

Sensitive species such as the tiger, they say, need access to untouched spaces to breed and grow.

"In my opinion this law is eco-suicide," said Ashok Kumar, a senior advisor and trustee to Delhi's Wildlife Trust of India. "It would pockmark the heart of tiger country and there simply won't be any forest anymore."

Sejal Worah is program director of conservation for the India branch of the conservation nonprofit WWF.

"Critical areas of high biodiversity value constitute only 4 percent of India's land, so this law should really have another mechanism for the people within these areas," Worah said.

The new act does allow for scientific assessment and identification of "critical wildlife habitats." Forest dwellers can be relocated from such regions on the condition that they are involved in every stage of the process and are offered viable livelihood options.

But critics say that the rules are ambiguous and that in reality the process is likely to be a big mess.

Prashanta Kumar Sen is former director of the government-run Wildlife Institute of India and an outspoken critic of the new law.

"There is no guarantee that gram sabhas will do things in a proper way, and by the time critical wildlife habitats are actually identified—which could take one year or ten years—forests will have already gone down the drain," Kumar Sen said.

The other big obstacle may come from forest dwellers themselves, many of whom cannot conceive of a life outside the trees.

Regina Drukpa, a mother of four, lives in the remote mountain village of Lalbangla, which sits inside core habitat in the Buxa Tiger Reserve.

There is no road to Lalbangla, and Drukpa and her family have to walk for three hours just to get to the nearest weekly bazaar. But even if the government offers all the incentives in the world, Drukpa says she can't imagine being anywhere else.

"There is a smell in this earth; we are in peace here," she said. "There is just no way we can leave."

Finding Balance

Political pressure from both sides of the debate has leaders in the Indian National Congress, the country's dominant political party, frantically trying to break the impasse.

Hectic meetings between government ministries are ongoing, and several conservation and development groups have now joined forces to propose a middle path.

Still, many believe that when implementation finally happens, the rules will represent a huge departure from the way the law was originally envisioned.

"People who drafted this law with the best of intentions have not been in the center of the debate, because it got taken over by different political lobbies," said Sanjay Upadhyay, an environmental lawyer who helped draft the original act.

"Unfortunately no one is seeing reason."

Rajesh Gopal, inspector general of forests and member secretary of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, believes there is a way to find balance.

With regard to tiger reserves, Gopal has proposed the creation of 386-square-mile (1,000-square-kilometer) core areas that are to remain human-free.

These would be surrounded by a 386-square-mile (1,000-square-kilometer) buffer zone, where animals and humans would co-exist and commercial activities such as mining and plantation work could continue.

Gopal added that the government will earmark a significant sum—a little more than a billion U.S. dollars—to properly relocate the estimated 273 villages within India's tiger reserves.

It remains to be seen what courses of action the Indian government will actually adopt.

"We will have to give a fair deal to people as well as tigers," Gopal said, "and strive for a complete harmony between the two."


Read more!

Sanitation woes cry out for low-cost solutions

P. Jayaram, Straits Times 6 Dec 07;

IN NEW DELHI - WHEN sanitation campaigner Bindeswar Pathak walked into Delhi's five-star Maurya Sheraton with a ragtag group of 38 in tow, the hotel's general manager pleaded with him to go elsewhere.

The manager knew Dr Pathak, a high-caste brahmin, well. The problem was with his companions, who belonged to India's community of nightsoil carriers who remove sewage from toilets manually and are considered the lowest of the low in the Hindu caste ladder.

'I told him I will have lunch with them and assured him I'll pay,' Dr Pathak, 65, told The Straits Times, recalling the incident three years ago.

Despite a ban in 1993, nightsoil carrying continues. There are still an estimated half a million people who clean toilets without sewerage manually.

And they are much needed if shunned by society.

A staggering 73 per cent of the Indian population, or about 750 million people, either relieve themselves in the open or use unhygienic, dry bucket latrines.

'It is like the entire population of Europe sitting on their haunches from the Elbe in the east to the Pyrennes in the west,' said Dr Pathak, who heads the Sulabh Sanitation and Social Reform Movement, a Delhi-based toilet advocacy charity.

India is not alone in its lack of proper sanitation.

Some 2.6 billion people - or a third of the world's population and most in developing countries - have no access to proper toilets.

Half of them live in India and China, a stark reminder of the challenges facing the world's two most populous countries despite their spectacular economic growth.

It was to look for viable solutions to this problem that 170 delegates from 40 countries met at the World Toilet Summit in New Delhi last month.

The main theme of the summit - co-hosted by Sulabh, the Indian government and the Singapore-based World Toilet Organisation - was realising the United Nation's Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people living without water and sanitation by 2015.

The UN has declared 2008 the 'UN Year of Sanitation' as part of efforts to reach this goal.

The deliberations at the summit centred on how to bring low-cost, environmentally safe toilets to millions of people, mostly in developing countries. It is a daunting task.

In India, the first sanitation law was passed in 1878, just 30 years after being passed in England. Another Act banning manual scavenging and construction of dry latrines was passed in 1993.

As always, there is a wide gap between government policies and their implementation.

Although cities like Delhi have laws imposing fines of 50 rupees (less than S$2) for people caught relieving themselves in the open, they are hardly enforced.

Dr Pathak said unless adequate social awareness is created, significant progress will be elusive.

Health experts warn that human waste that seeps through the soil contaminates the water table and water bodies.

In India, this causes waterborne diseases that kill 500,000 children every year before they reach the age of five, mostly from diarrhoea.

According to the World Health Organisation, the lack of safe water and sanitation causes 80 per cent of enteric diseases like cholera, dysentery, typhoid, paratyphoid, hepatitis, hookworm and diarrhoea.

But the situation in India is improving ever so slightly even in the rural areas.

A Rural Sanitation Programme launched in 1986 was restructured to the Total Sanitation Campaign in 1999. Under it, 9.45 million flush-latrines have been built, according to official statistics.

Federal Rural Development Minister Raghvansh Prasad Singh told last month's conference that India was investing US$3.45 billion (S$5 billion) in sanitation projects, including schemes to re-train nightsoil carriers for other vocations.

However, a resource crunch and shortage of water make building expensive sewage systems in remote rural areas unfeasible.

Dr Pathak said: 'Sewage systems are essentially 19th-century technology. We need modern solutions.'

His Sulabh sanitation movement has introduced eco-friendly, affordable and hygienic twin-pit composting toilets that use less than two litres of water to flush, as against conventional toilets that need 12 to 14 litres. They can be built with locally available materials, are free from foul smell, flies and mosquitoes and can easily be connected to sewers when the latter are set up.

Dr Pathak, who began building these simple toilets in the 1970s, has also developed a low-cost system that turns waste into water, fertiliser for crops and biogas to generate electricity.

Sulabh has set up over 6,000 such community toilets across India. It has also helped 15 countries in Africa to build such toilets.

Cambodia and Laos have approached his organisation to set up Sulabh toilets there, he said.

At the summit, a South African company, African Sanitation, showed a solar-powered commode that runs without water, and requires no plumbing and almost no maintenance.

Once a week, a tray below it is emptied of waste that has been turned into an almost odourless compost by a solar heater and natural bacteria.

But as African Sanitation's Lukas Oosthuizen discovered, cultural differences would require the addition of a water tray to the design before it could be deployed effectively in India.

'We discovered that people here are washers, not wipers,' he said.


Read more!

Hitching businesses to the green bandwagon

Michael Richardson, Straits Times 6 Dec 07;

AS GOVERNMENT negotiators from around the world try to agree on the outlines of a deal to reduce the impact of climate change, one of the biggest problems they must tackle is cutting the huge amounts of global warming emissions from the burning of coal to generate electricity and run heavy industries.

The officials, now meeting in Bali under United Nations auspices until Dec 14, face a daunting task. The world's three largest coal-burning countries - China, the United States and India - oppose mandatory emissions reductions, arguing that they would undermine economic growth.

In doing so, they foreclose the most radical but effective way to cut a heavily polluting energy source. However, an alternative path - developing low-emissions coal use - is a major opportunity and a major challenge for international cooperation. But it can be achieved only if Asian and Western governments and companies work more closely together for the common good.

Because coal is cheap and relatively abundant, it accounted for 25 per cent of the world's commercial energy supply last year, second only to oil. But due to its high carbon content, coal was also responsible for about 40 per cent of the carbon dioxide released from fossil fuels, despite supplying only 32 per cent of fossil fuel energy.

Carbon dioxide accounts for about 80 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions and is considered the monster of global warming.

World coal consumption reached a record level last year, with China, the US, the European Union and India the top four users. But power generators in America and Europe are now finding it more difficult to get regulatory approval to build new coal-fired plants, partly because of growing public concern about pollution and climate change.

Meanwhile, China and India have embarked on major expansion of industrial coal use, saying it is essential for their economic growth, jobs and poverty alleviation, despite the costs to the environment and public health.

Last month, China's biggest coal-burning plant, a 4,000MW complex built at a cost of US$2.1 billion (S$3 billion), started supplying electricity to energy-hungry factories and cities along the country's eastern coast.

The official China Electricity Council said earlier this year that 90,000MW of coal- fired generating capacity - the equivalent output of 90 nuclear power stations - was added to the national grid last year alone. This staggering figure may well include some double-counting.

Moreover, as electricity supply catches up with demand in China and energy conservation measures take hold, the rate of power station construction will slow.

Even so, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned in its recent annual report that if unfettered growth in global energy demand continues, demand for coal is set to grow most rapidly, driven largely by power sector demand in China and India.

As a result, energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide would increase from 27 billion tonnes in 2005 to 42 billion tonnes in 2030 - a rise of 57 per cent.

China is expected to overtake the US by the end of this year to become the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, while India is projected to become the third-biggest source by around 2015.

The IEA suggests that any new deal to curb global warming should include incentives for China, India and other rapidly emerging economies to use energy more efficiently and invest in cleaner power.

The UN is not the best forum to work on the details of low-emissions coal technology. With almost 190 nations, it is too cumbersome. But any agreement related to climate change would need the UN's final seal of approval.

A better forum would be the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP). Launched barely two years ago, it encompasses the governments and corporate sectors of seven partner nations, including Australia, Canada, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the US. The APP needs more resources and could be enlarged to include other major coal users and exporters such as Russia, Indonesia and South Africa. It could also draw on the coal expertise of the IEA and other bodies.

A key advantage of the APP is that it engages companies and governments. In the West, it is these coal and engineering businesses, rather than governments, that own the technology that enables modern coal plants to filter out nitrous oxide, a significant greenhouse gas, and other harmful emissions.

These same companies are the leaders in developing the next generation of coal-fired plants that will capture carbon dioxide for burial underground, although this may add substantially to the cost of electricity.

Last month, the Centre for Global Development in Washington, a non-partisan research institute, compiled an online database listing carbon dioxide emissions from 50,000 power plants around the world, with figures for the years 2000 and 2007, then forecasts for five to 10 years in the future, based on published plans.

The data base shows the US power sector is now the top emitter, spewing nearly 2.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. China is close behind at 2.7 billion tonnes, with Russia at 661 million tonnes, India at 583 million tonnes and Japan at 400 million tonnes. Germany, Australia, South Africa, Britain and South Korea round out the top 10 carbon polluters.

A significant finding of this study is that senior executives of the 100 largest power companies worldwide are responsible for plants that emit 57 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions from this sector.

Bringing them into coal-related climate change negotiations could help to ensure the businesses they head move from being an important part of the problem to being an important part of the solution.

The writer is an energy and security specialist at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. This is a personal comment.


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Saving Rainforests A Thorny Issue At Bali Talks

David Fogarty, PlanetArk 6 Dec 07;

NUSA DUA - Protecting tropical rainforests, which soak up vast amounts of greenhouse gases, is proving a real headache at UN-led climate talks in Bali, where delegates are trying to sort out a pay-and-preserve scheme.

Scientists say deforestation in the tropics is responsible for about 20 percent of all man-made carbon dioxide emissions blamed for global warming. Halting the destruction, or at least curbing the clearing and burning of remaining tropical forests, is widely regarded as a crucial part of any new climate pact.

Under a scheme called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries (REDD), developing nations could earn billions of dollars through carbon trading by simply leaving forests such as in the Amazon and Congo basins.

"I do think we will see deforestation in the agenda for the future (negotiations). The focus here is pilot projects and more methodological work," said Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat.

"It's clearly one of the issues that a number of countries want to introduce," he told Reuters.

Curbing deforestation has become a top issue for the thousands of delegates at Bali because the Kyoto Protocol does not include schemes that reward developing nations to preserve tropical rainforests.

The United Nations hopes the two-week conference will agree to include a REDD scheme in negotiations to work out a broader climate pact by 2009 to replace or expand the Kyoto Protocol, whose first phase ends in 2012.

The problem, though, is finding a scheme that fits all developing nations, said Hans Verolme of conservation group WWF.

"My instinct is there will be an agreement on a phased approach where we will start with some countries that are more ready than others," said Verolme, director of the WWF's Global Climate Change Programme.

Nations also needed to sort out the type of compensation scheme, such as a market-based carbon scheme, a fund-based scheme or a blend.

CASH FOR FORESTS

To help nations prepare, the Bali meeting is expected to launch a series of pilot projects, which have not been finalised.

At its simplest, the idea is to issue carbon credits to qualifying developing nations and rich nations buy these credits to offset their emissions at home.

It's a system that commoditises forests and rewards poor nations for keeping forests that might otherwise be cleared for their hardwood or to create vast plantations for biofuels or timber to feed ever-growing global demand for pulp and paper.

"Right now there are no standards for these credits," said Verolme, adding it was crucial to ensure any new forest credits did not flood Europe's carbon market.

Delegates are still sorting out how to monitor the world's remaining rainforests, how to ensure a halt in logging in one area or country doesn't shift the problem elsewhere, how to work out the amount of carbon that can be saved from a particular forest and the historical rate of deforestation.

But by far the biggest issue is compliance.

"The most difficult thing is how to ensure that within the institutions and governance of some of these countries that things are going to truly happen and that in the long run those things will not be undone," said Pep Canadell, executive officer of the Global Carbon Project.

He said total emissions from deforestation over the past 7 years from Southeast Asia had risen while those from the Amazon basin, described at the lungs of the earth, had fallen.

Indonesia, which is losing vast areas of forest every year, is keen to earn money from saving what's left and some provinces have already taken a headstart by signing agreements with international carbon investment companies.

The government also plans to launch studies measuring emission cuts from deforestation and distributing the benefits from a possible financing scheme to forest-dependent communities.

A Brazilian delegate told the Bali conference her government did not believe in market-based mechanisms to limit deforestation unless rich nations agreed to make major emissions cuts at home.

Canadell, from Australia's state-backed research body CSIRO, said rich nations needed to curb their appetite for tropical timbers.

"Despite our efforts and developing standards and global markets that are conscious of, and aware of, destroying the tropics, the developed world has continued buying tropical timber from non-sustainable sources," he said.


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Indonesia pledges to protect 4,300ha of forests

But green activists are unimpressed, saying gesture is too small
Arti Mulchand, Straits Times 6 Dec 07;

IN BALI - INDONESIA pledged to protect some 4,300ha of its rapidly disappearing forests at the world climate change meeting here yesterday, but environmental groups slammed it as too small a gesture.

The move was meant to show the thousands of delegates at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meetings that Indonesia took its mission to save the planet seriously.

Six tracts of plantation forests of meranti, acacia and pine in Bogor and Kalimantan will be classified as 'permanent and regulated'.

This would offset the amount of carbon emissions generated by participants' flights and during the 12 days of the conference itself, said Mr Sunaryo, the Minister of Forestry on Partnership.

But a spokesman for the Greenpeace environmental group, Mr Arief Wicaksono, said: 'It is a piecemeal move.'

Greenpeace estimates that Indonesia leads the world in deforestation. Between 2000 and 2005, an area of forest equivalent to 300 soccer pitches was destroyed every hour, it said.

In contrast, 4,300ha is roughly equal to the size of 4,000 soccer pitches, which is the size of the forested area destroyed in Indonesia in about half a day.

At that rate, the country's 133.57 million ha of forests will disappear within 47 years, according to some estimates.

About 85 per cent of Indonesia's emissions of greenhouse gases also comes from deforestation.

But Mr Sunaryo said the 4,300ha of protected forests will also be used for research.

The research will include the tricky task of figuring out how to calculate reduced emissions from 'avoided deforestation', which is also something delegates are trying to pin down during the climate meet.

But environmentalists at the conference had hoped for a more substantial show of Indonesia's commitment to curbing the destruction of its rainforests, which has an impact on the ecology of the entire Earth.

'If they are going to make any gestures, why not make it a grand one and opt to protect pristine forests instead of plantation forests, since their emissions reduction value is so much higher?' said Ms Ronnie Hall, international campaign coordinator of Global Forest Coalition.

Protecting pristine forests also means that the delicate eco-systems within them are afforded protection, she said.

Greenpeace called for a 10-year moratorium on further encroachment of plantations into peatlands.

Mr Wicaksono said: 'Protecting the peatlands would have reduced (Indonesia's) emissions by 50 per cent, because it is higher-value carbon...a real demonstration of its commitment to the environment.'

Nonetheless, UNFCCC spokesman John Hays said Indonesia's decision was 'significant, because it means they acknowledge how big a problem deforestation is'.

Mr Sunaryo said that were it not for the conference, those forests might not have been protected at all.

Up to 20,000 people in all are expected to attend the climate meetings, and estimates put emissions at between 4tonnes and 6.4 tonnes per person. That works out to more than 80,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide being pumped into the air, mainly from flights.

Indonesia's Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said that Indonesia's move - together with the 79 million trees planted ahead of the event - more than compensated for the emissions.


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Global warming wreaks havoc with nature

Michael Casey, Associated Press, Yahoo News 6 Dec 07;

More than 3,000 flying foxes dropped dead, falling from trees in Australia. Giant squid migrated north to commercial fishing grounds off California, gobbling anchovy and hake. Butterflies have gone extinct in the Alps.

While humans debate at U.N. climate change talks in Bali, global warming is already wreaking havoc with nature. Most plants and animals are affected, and the change is occurring too quickly for them to evolve.

"A hell of a lot of species are in big trouble," said Stephen E. Williams, the director of the Centre for Tropical Biodiversity & Climate Change at James Cook University in Australia.

"I don't think there is any doubt we will see a lot of (extinctions)," he said. "But even before a species goes extinct, there are a lot of impacts. Most of the species here in the wet tropics would be reduced to ... 15 percent of their current habitat."

Globally, 30 percent of the Earth's species could disappear if temperatures rise 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit — and up to 70 percent, if they rise 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit, a U.N. network of scientists reported last month.

It wouldn't be the first time. There have been five major extinctions in the last 520 million years, and four of them have been linked to warmer tropical seas, according to a study published last month in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British scientific journal.

The hardest hit will include plants and animals in colder climates or at higher elevations and those with limited ranges or little tolerance for temperature change, said Wendy Foden, a conservation biologist with the World Conservation Union, which catalogs threatened species.

Butterflies that lived at high altitudes in North America and southern France have vanished, and polar bears and penguins are watching their habitat melt away.

The carbon dioxide emissions that are a leading cause of global warming also turn oceans more acidic, killing coral reefs and the microscopic plankton that blue whales and other marine mammals depend on for food.

"In the long run, every species will be affected," Foden said.

A few will benefit, chiefly those that breed quickly, already exist in varied climates and are able to adapt swiftly to changing conditions, scientists said. Think cockroaches, pigeons and weeds.

The spread of a deadly fungus that thrives in warmer conditions has decimated some frog populations in South America, Africa and Europe.

Then there are Australia's flying foxes.

More than 3,500 gray-headed and black flying foxes — huge bats — died in 2002 after temperatures rose above 107 degrees Fahrenheit in New South Wales, according to a report published last week in the Royal Society B journal.

The rising temperatures are related to global warming, said the author, Justin Welbergen of the University of Cambridge.

"It got really hot and suddenly started raining foxes from the trees," said Welbergen, who witnessed the die-off. "It was quite gruesome. This colony had between 20,000 and 30,000 animals and about 10 percent of those individuals died."

In Australia's Queensland state, temperatures are projected to rise 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit, an outcome that could drive half the species to extinction in a mountainous stretch of tropical rain forest, Williams said.

Even a 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit increase would reduce by half the habitat of the Thornton Peak nursery frog, golden bowerbird and the spotted-tail quoll, a cat-like mammal.

"There are many species and plants that are restricted to the higher altitude areas," he said. "It doesn't take much of an increase in temperature to push them off the mountain. They can't go anywhere."

As temperatures rise, animals are seeking cooler climes. In a study of more than 1,500 species, University of Texas biologist Camille Parmesan concluded that 40 percent had shifted their ranges, mostly toward the poles.

A dozen bird species have moved about 12 miles north in Britain, and 39 species of butterflies have shifted north by as much as 125 miles in Europe and North America, according to another study that Parmesan took part in.

Millions of Mediterranean jellyfish have turned up off Northern Ireland and Scotland. The Humboldt squid, which can grow up to 7 feet long, has moved up the California coast as ocean waters warmed.

"It's the latest in a long series of bad news for fishermen," said Stanford University's Lou Zeidberg, adding that squid have been found as far north as Alaska in the past five years.

With warmer weather, 60 percent of plant and animal species are migrating, breeding and blooming earlier in the spring, Parmesan said. But not all are, and that could upset relationships between birds and the insects they feed on as well as insects and the flowers they pollinate.

"Frogs, birds and butterflies are responding more strongly to warming winters and springs than are plants," she said. "The concern is that this will cause population declines for both plants and animals."

With many species unable to evolve fast enough to adapt, conservationists are considering the creation of natural corridors to encourage animals to move and even relocating them to cooler places. The latter is controversial.

"You are effectively playing God. You are effectively changing evolution on purpose," Foden said. "If our job as biologist is to conserve species, then certainly we must move them. But if it's to conserve natural evolutionary processes ... then we have to give them corridors and let them do their thing."


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Scientists beg for climate action

Seth Borenstein, Associated Press, Yahoo News 6 Dec 07;

For the first time, more than 200 of the world's leading climate scientists, losing their patience, urged government leaders to take radical action to slow global warming because "there is no time to lose."

A petition from at least 215 climate scientists calls for the world to cut in half greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It is directed at a conference of diplomats meeting in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate the next global warming treaty. The petition, obtained by The Associated Press, is to be announced at a press conference there Wednesday night.

The appeal from scientists follows a petition last week from more than 150 global business leaders also demanding the 50 percent cut in greenhouse gases.

That is the estimate that scientists calculate would hold future global warming to a little more than a 3-degree Fahrenheit increase and is in line with what the European Union has adopted.

In the past, many of these scientists have avoided calls for action, leaving that to environmental advocacy groups. That dispassionate stance was taken during the release this year of four separate reports by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

But no more.

"It's a grave crisis, and we need to do something real fast," said petition signer Jeff Severinghaus, a geosciences professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. "I think the stakes are way way too high to be playing around."

The unprecedented petition includes scientists from more than 25 countries and shows that "the climate science community is essentially fed up," said signer Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in Canada. It includes many co-authors of the intergovernmental climate change panel reports, directors of major American and European climate science research institutions, a Nobel winner for atmospheric chemistry and a winner of a MacArthur "genius" award.

"A lot of us scientists think the problem needs a lot more serious attention than it's getting and the remedies have to be a lot more radical," said Richard Seager, a scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The organizers of the petition — two Australians, two Germans and an American — would not comment about their efforts before their 11 p.m. EST press conference. But several scientists who signed on talked of losing patience.

"Action needs to be taken and needs to be taken now," said Marika Holland, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who signed on. "The longer we wait, the worse it's going to become."

Negotiators in Bali are working on the initial groundwork for a treaty that would take effect after 2012, the expiration date of the Kyoto Protocol, a climate treat the United States didn't sign. However, no on expects concrete results at the closed-door sessions.

NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt, who signed the petition, said "the time for half-measures and the time for voluntary agreements and the time for arguing about 1 percent here and 1 percent there — those things are no longer relevant."

Schmidt noted while scientists have been dismissed by some as unrealistic, the call for a 50 percent emissions cut by business leaders "helps give credence to the idea that it's achievable."

Policy analysts, who weren't part of either petition, split on how meaningful the two petitions are.

What's happening is people are agreeing "that the cost of inaction is on the high side and the cost of action is affordable," said Joseph Romm, a policy analyst at the liberal think-tank Center for American Progress, energy business consultant and trained physicist.

But Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute said "scientists are in no position to intelligently guide public policy on climate change." Scientists can lay out scenarios, but it is up to economists to weigh the costs and benefits and many of them say the costs of cutting emissions are higher than the benefits, he said.

Granger Morgan, a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, said he sees "a growing realization among a wide variety of players that we've got to stop talking about this and start some action." But, he added, "I'm not going to hold my breath that we're going to get anything."

The declaration: http://www.climate.unsw.edu.au/bali/

Scientists demand swift climate action at Bali meet
David Fogarty Yahoo News 6 Dec 07;

Climate scientists from around the world urged delegates at U.N.-led talks in Bali on Thursday to make deeper and swifter cuts to greenhouse emissions to prevent dangerous global warming.

In a declaration, more than 200 scientists said governments had a window of only 10-15 years for global emissions to peak and decline, and that the ultimate goal should be at least a 50 percent reduction in climate-warming emissions by 2050.

"We appreciate this is a significant challenge for the world community," Professor Andy Pittman, from the University of New South Wales in Australia, told reporters in Bali.

"But it is what is required to reduce the risks of dangerous climate change, and that is what we are all trying to do here."

The meeting in Bali, involving about 190 nations, aims to initiate a two-year dialogue leading to a broader climate pact by 2009 to replace or upgrade the Kyoto Protocol.

The goal is to find a formula that will bring outsiders such as the United States, China and India into a global compact to fight growing emissions of carbon dioxide, which is produced from burning fossil fuels in power stations, industry and transport.

The United States, the world's top carbon emitter, has come under intense pressure from all sides at the Bali meeting to curb its emissions and on Wednesday U.S. lawmakers moved a step closer to approving caps.

A Senate committee approved legislation outlining a cap-and-trade system for industry, power generators and transport. The bill is headed for debate in the full Senate.

"The United States simply has to take a leadership role," Senator John Warner, a Virginia Republican and the bill's co-sponsor told the committee.

"We are the superpower in the world and we've got to utilize our status to try and help correct a situation I think all of us acknowledge is causing hardships ... that are really without precedent."

TIME TO ACT

President George W. Bush pulled America out of the Kyoto Protocol saying it threatened the economy and unfairly excluded big developing nations such as China and India from binding emissions cuts.

In turn, China and India say rich nations must do more to cut emissions and that caps would hurt their economies as they try to lift millions out of poverty.

"If we don't act, China and India will simply hide behind America's skirts of inaction," Warner said.

A group of U.S. scientists in Bali welcomed the committee's move. "This is a very welcome development. It shows the increasing isolation of the U.S. administration," said Alden Meyer of the U.S. Union of Concerned Scientists.

Professor Diana Liverman of Britain's Oxford University said the world was already seeing substantial impacts from global warming, but a warming of 2 degrees Celsius would have severe impacts in Africa, Australia, the polar regions and the Pacific Islands.

The U.N. climate panel, which released a series of reports on climate change this year, says the world is at risk from rapidly melting glaciers, vanishing sea ice and loss of icesheets.

Polar bears have become an iconic symbol of climate change because the area of Arctic sea ice they rely for hunting has shrunk to record lows during the summer.

Outside the Bali conference centre, eight activists dressed as polar bears added a twist to the climate debate by holding banners reading: "Humans need help too."

Separately, the WWF conservation group said that 55 percent of the Amazon rain forest could be wiped out or severely damaged by 2030 by a "vicious feedback loop of climate change and deforestation."

It said the effects of warming could cut rainfall and aggravate current trends in farming, fires, droughts and logging in the world's largest tropical forest.

The Amazon's forests are a giant store of carbon dioxide -- trees soak up the main greenhouse gas as they grow and release it when they rot or are burnt.

(Additional reporting by Alister Doyle in Bali, Deborah Zabarenko in Washington and James Grubel in Canberra; editing by Jeremy Laurence)


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