wildsingapore news: Feb 19, 2008

Singapore's AA to develop road safety and environmentally-green vehicles

Channel NewsAsia 19 Feb 08;

SINGAPORE: Singapore's Automobile Association is looking into ways to improve road safety and reduce the environmental damage caused by vehicles.

This was the focus of a meeting held on Tuesday, attended by delegates from automobile associations around the region.

Singapore's AA said it would like to see more initiatives implemented for environmentally-friendly vehicles. This includes an increase in compressed natural gas or CNG refuelling stations and for them to be more easily accessible.

The AA is also working closely with the authorities to introduce a road assessment programme.

The system is in place in 30 countries worldwide, and serves to identify roads that are particularly dangerous.

Greg Hunting from the New Zealand Automobile Association, said: “What they do is examine the roads, look at the safety record and also the furniture on the roadside, what's safe and what's not.”

“They rate the roads with star ratings of 1-5. Now that's a benefit to our members and to motorists generally because they can see whether a road is very safe or not but it also helps governments prioritise where they invest in roads to make them safer,” he added.

Bernard Tay, President of the Automobile Association of Singapore, said: “Those that have a lot of accidents, the assessment will be reviewed by having specified vehicles going through it and experts will make recommendations to make changes to the road so it will be more safe for motorists to drive.” -CNA/vm

Scientists capture giant Antarctic sea creatures

Michael Perry, Yahoo News 19 Feb 08;

Scientists studying Antarctic waters have filmed and captured giant sea creatures, like sea spiders the size of dinner plates and jelly fish with six meter (18 feet) tentacles.

A fleet of three Antarctic marine research ships returned to Australia this week ending a summer expedition to the Southern Ocean where they carried out a census of life in the icy ocean and on its floor, more than 1,000 meters (yards) below the surface.

"Gigantism is very common in Antarctic waters -- we have collected huge worms, giant crustaceans and sea spiders the size of dinner plates," Australian scientist Martin Riddle, voyage leader on the research ship Aurora Australis, said on Tuesday.

"Many live in the dark and have pretty large eyes. They are strange looking fish," Riddle told local radio.

"Some of the video footage we have collected is really stunning -- it's amazing to be able to navigate undersea mountains and valleys and actually see what the animals look like in their undisturbed state," Riddle said.

"In some places every inch of the sea floor is covered in life. In other places we can see deep scars and gouges where icebergs scour the sea floor as they pass by," he said.

The Australian Antarctic Division expedition will help scientists monitor how the impact of environmental change in Antarctic waters, such as ocean acidification caused by rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, will make it harder for marine organisms to grow and sustain calcium carbonate skeletons.

"It is predicted that the first effects of this will be seen in the cold, deep waters of Antarctica," said Riddle.

"What we saw down there were vast coraline gardens based on calcareous organisms and these are the ones that could really be lost in an increasing acidic ocean," he said.

The three ships, the Aurora Australis, France's L'Astrolabe and Japan's Umitaka Maru docked in Hoabrt on Australia's southern island state of Tasmania, with their decks full of an array of sealife including unknown species of sea creatures collected near the eastern Antarctic land mass.

Some creatures, which were retrieved from between 200 - 1,400 meters (yards) below the surface, weighed up to 30 kg (65 pounds), while some 25 percent of the sealife chronicled was previous unknown.

The census of life in the Southern Ocean is known as the Collaborative East Antarctic Marine Census (CEAMARC). The French and Japanese ships examined the mid and upper ocean, while the Australian ship studied the ocean floor.

"This research will help scientists understand how communities have adapted to the unique Antarctic environment," said Graham Hosie, leader of the census project on Umitaka Maru.

"Specimens collected will be sent to universities and museums around the world for identification, tissue sampling and bar-coding of their DNA. Not all of the creatures that we found could be identified and it is very likely that some new species will be recorded as a result of these voyages."

CEAMARC is part of the international Census of Antarctic Marine Life, coordinated by the Australian Antarctic Division, which will see some 16 voyages to Antarctic waters during this, the International Polar Year (2007-2009).

The census will survey the biodiversity of Antarctic slopes, abyssal plains, open water, and under disintegrating ice shelves. It aims to determine species biodiversity, abundance and distribution and establish a baseline dataset from which future changes can be observed.

Antarctic depths reveal bizarre new life forms
Nick Squires, The Telegraph 19 Feb 08

Sea spiders the size of dinner plates, giant worms and jelly fish with 18 ft-long tentacles have been discovered by a scientific expedition exploring the largely unknown waters of Antarctica.

The bizarre menagerie - many of the creatures are new to science - was documented by a fleet of three Australian, French and Japanese marine research ships which docked in Hobart, Tasmania, this week.

"Gigantism is very common in Antarctic waters," said Australian scientist Martin Riddle, voyage leader on one of the research ships, the Aurora Australis.

"Many [of the creatures] live in the dark and have pretty large eyes. They are strange looking fish."

The expedition collected video footage of the sea bed at depths of up to 4,200ft.

"It's amazing to be able to navigate undersea mountains and valleys and actually see what the animals look like in their undisturbed state," Dr Riddle said.

"In some places every inch of the sea floor is covered in life. In other places we can see deep scars and gouges where icebergs scour the sea floor as they pass by."

The collected specimens, which include sea urchins, fish and glass-like animals called tunicates or sea squirts, will be sent to universities and museums around the world for identification, tissue sampling and DNA analysis. Some of the creatures hauled up from the deep weighed up to 65 lbs.

"Not all of the creatures that we found could be identified and it's very likely that some new species will be recorded as a result of these voyages," said Graham Hosie, leader of the Collaborative East Antarctic Marine Census project.

The scientists are monitoring how the impact of environmental change in Antarctic waters, such as ocean acidification caused by rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, could affect marine life.

It is feared that acidification will make it harder for marine organisms to sustain their calcium carbonate skeletons.

Scientists are also concerned that another threat to Antarctica - global warming - could draw sharks to the Southern Ocean, shattering a delicate ecological balance.

Biologists who gathered in Boston last week for the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science warned that sharks would devastate soft-shelled mollusks and other invertebrates inhabiting the ocean floor.

Global warming has already pushed temperatures up by 1 - 2ºC in the past 50 years, and within a century sharks might be able to move into Antarctic waters, scientists said.

"The Antarctic seafloor has been dominated by relatively soft-bodied, slow-moving invertebrates, just as in ancient oceans prior to the evolution of shell-crushing predators," said University of Rhode Island biology professor Cheryl Wilga.

"The water only needs to remain above freezing year round for it to become habitable to some sharks, and at the rate we're going, that could happen this century."

"Once they get there, it will completely change the ecology of the Antarctic benthic community," she said.

Global warming would also make Antarctica more appealing to crabs which have previously been unable to survive the freezing temperatures, threatening marine life which has not changed since the Paleozoic era of 250m to 500m years ago.

"Predatory crabs are poised to return to warming Antarctic waters for the first time in millions of years, which will disrupt the composition of the archaic marine communities," said Rick Aronson, of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama.

Dead poultry raises bird flu alarm in Vietnam

Yahoo News 19 Feb 08;

Dead poultry have been found in rivers and streams in northern Vietnam, a sign of a possible new bird flu outbreak during a prolonged cold spell, officials said on Tuesday.

The Agriculture Ministry said in a report that callers to an animal health department hotline reported large numbers of dead birds in five provinces, but was not specific.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu killed three men in northern Vietnam between January 18 and February 14 during a record-long cold spell. The H5N1 virus seems to thrive best in cool temperatures.

"In recent days the Animal Health Department has received many reports about poultry dying in large numbers in provinces," the Agriculture Ministry-run department said in a report on its Web site (www.dah.gov.vn).

"A bird flu outbreak is forecast to emerge in the northern region when cold days extend," it said.

The department, in a separate report, said that bird flu has killed nearly 2,500 ducks and chickens in the northern provinces of Hai Duong, Nam Dinh and Tuyen Quang, bringing to seven the provinces on the government's bird flu watchlist.

Animal health workers have slaughtered the remaining 1,900 birds at the three infected farms.

Doctors confirmed at the weekend that a 7-year-old child from the northern province of Hai Duong had the virus. The child has been under treatment in Hanoi along with several suspected cases.

Bird flu has killed 50 people in Vietnam out of 106 infected cases since late 2003, the Health Ministry said.

Officials said they have not been able to control poultry smuggling from northern neighbor China, which reported its latest human death on Monday, bringing its toll to 18.

H5N1 remains mainly a virus of birds, but experts fear it could mutate into a form easily transmitted from person to person and sweep the world, possibly killing millions.

The virus is known to have killed 227 people globally since late 2003, according to the World Health Organisation, not including the latest death in China and two cases in Indonesia in recent days.

(Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; Editing by Grant McCool and David Fogarty)

China warns of forest fires following snow storms

Reuters 18 Feb 08;

BEIJING (Reuters) - Unseasonably cold weather across large swathes of southern China killed trees which could worsen forest fires later in the year and lead to landslides and pest outbreaks, officials warned on Tuesday.

The country's forestry industry incurred direct economic losses of 57.3 billion yuan ($8.01 billion) from the snow and ice storms, which impacted millions of people who depend on the sector for their livelihood, said deputy State Forestry Administration head Zhu Lieke.

"The disaster situation is at present still continuing for the forestry sector, and the losses will get ever bigger," he told a news conference.

"Areas affected by this disaster were those where the industry was growing the fastest and was the most vibrant, and also had the most abundant resources, covering one tenth of the country's forestry cover," Zhu said.

"It will seriously affect the environment and our ability to reach the goal of covering 20 percent of the nation with forests by 2010," he added.

The large number of trees toppled in the storms would create ideal conditions for devastating fires, Zhu said.

"Often after heavy snows what follows are dry conditions," he added.

Forest cover in some parts of China had dramatically fallen following the cold snap, said Xiao Xingwei, head of the forestry administration's resources department.

"This will lead to a sharp decrease in biodiversity, increase in water run-off and landslides, and induce forest fires and pests," Xiao said.

The snow had killed or maimed an estimated 30,000 creatures classified as belonging to a protected species.

Yet Xiao said China's timber output would not be seriously affected overall.

"Timber supplies should generally be able to remain steady," he said. "But in areas hard hit by the disaster, output could be impacted for the next three to five years."

"Some factories may have to close," Zhu said.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by David Fox)

Carmaker Porsche challenges London gas guzzler tax

Jeremy Lovell, Reuters 18 Feb 08;

LONDON (Reuters) - Luxury carmaker Porsche said on Tuesday it planned to legally challenge London mayor Ken Livingstone's decision to help fight global warming by taxing gas guzzling cars driving in the city centre. Porsche said on Tuesday the 25 pound ($48.74) daily charge was unfair, would not cut emissions of carbon dioxide and would deter businesses from moving to the city.

"A massive congestion charge increase is quite simply unjust," said Andy Goss, Managing Director of Porsche Cars GB.

"Thousands of car owners driving a huge range of cars will be hit by a disproportionate tax which is clear will have a very limited effect on CO2 emissions," he added.

Livingstone rejected the move as a public relations stunt and called it an attack on Londoners.

"No one is allowed to throw their rubbish in the street and Porsche should not be allowed to impose gas guzzling polluting cars on Londoners who do not want them," he told reporters.

Announcing the plan last week Livingstone admitted that it would have little immediate effect on carbon emissions but said it would discourage people from driving polluting cars in the city centre and encourage manufacturers to make cleaner engines.

He said the new scheme would raise 30 million to 50 million pounds a year and cover most of the cost of a major cycling initiative that will include a Paris-style roadside bicycle hire scheme in the city centre.

Livingstone, who has made the environment a central plank of his tenure, is facing a tough re-election battle in May. If he loses, his emissions policy is likely to go with him.

The 25 pound daily tax on vehicles emitting 225 grams or more of carbon dioxide per km would apply in the same way as the normal 8 pound ($16) daily charge does to all but the cleanest cars.

"I have every sympathy with a Scottish hill farmer who needs his 4x4 to get around. But there is absolutely no justification for cars producing high amounts of pollution being driven in central London," Livingstone said when he announced the scheme.

Environmentalists lashed out at the Porsche move and called for even tougher measures against the most polluting cars in next month's budget.

"Along with the rest of the German car industry they are desperately resisting the strong measures needed to tackle the car industry's contribution to climate change," said Friends of the Earth head Tony Juniper.

Porsche said it would write to Livingstone this week asking him to reconsider the plan.

If he failed to respond in 14 days or refused to reconsider the plan that will come into force in October, the carmaker would make a submission to the courts for a judicial review.

"The proposed increase will be bad for London as a whole and will send out the signal that it is not serious about establishing itself as the best place in the world to do business," Goss said.

The court could force a delay, alteration or even a rejection of the plan.

A judicial challenge by Greenpeace last year forced the government to mount a major public consultation on its proposals for a new fleet of nuclear power stations.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Hough; editing by Elaine Hardcastle)

Consequences of GM crop contamination 'are set to worsen'

James Randerson, The Guardian 18 Feb 08;

The consequences of contamination between GM crops and non-GM varieties will be much more serious with the next generation of GM crops, an influential group of US scientists has warned.

Mixing between GM and non-GM varieties has already caused serious economic losses for producers in lost sales and exports. But the consequences of mixing will be much more serious with new crops that are altered to produce pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals, the scientists argue. The crops could harm human health and be toxic to wild animals.

"What would be the impact societally, economically if for example, cornflakes were contaminated by some sort of drug or chemical? I think it would be a vast impact economically," said Karen Perry Stillerman, senior food and environment programme analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"I think it's really hard to say [what impact contamination would have] because there is a variety of different drugs and chemicals that might be manufactured in plants this way," she added. "Our perception is that some of them might be toxic, but all of them would certainly cause tremendous economic upheaval."

The group presented its findings at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Boston.

Huge research effort

Up to now, commercial GM varieties have been restricted mainly to modifications for herbicide tolerance or resistance to pests. But a huge research effort is going into a new generation of crops that are genetically modified to produce drugs, hormones, vaccines and industrial chemicals such as the precursors of plastics.

Although public opinion in Britain and the rest of Europe remains firmly against GM crops in general, it is more favourable to crops with medical benefits. But the Union of Concerned Scientists said that these are precisely the crops that pose the greatest risks if they exchange genes with wild relatives or conventional versions of the same crop.

So-called "pharma crops" can offer advantages over current methods of drug manufacture. Vaccines produced this way could be grown cheaply in developing countries and simply given to patients in the food. That would remove the need for sterile needles and refrigerators to keep vaccine doses cold - a major obstacle for delivering therapies in poor countries.

Prof Paul Gepts, a plant geneticist at the University of California, Davis, said past experience suggests that "contamination" events cannot be avoided. "Gene flow is really a regular occurrence among plants. So if you put a gene out there it's going to escape. It's going to go to other varieties of the same crop or to its wild relatives," he said. "It's clear that zero contamination is impossible at present."

Major economic losses

There have been a handful of examples in the US and elsewhere of genes from GM varieties not cleared for human consumption getting into nearby food crops and hence the human food chain. This has led to major economic losses for producers in lost sales, exports and clean-up costs, but there have been no proven cases of damage to human health.

"With the products we are talking about, there's the potential for that to be much more serious than what we have seen so far," said Prof Robert Wisner at Iowa State University.

According to Gepts, most of the ideas for keeping crops apart are inadequate, because pollen and seed are carried on the wind, by animals and birds and on farm machinery. He said the only way to be sure that food crops would not be contaminated by drug genes or genes for industrial chemicals would be to use non-food crops such as tobacco.

Alternatively, GM food plants could be grown in greenhouses or underground to prevent pollen escaping, he said.

Call for ban

The Union of Concerned Scientists is calling on the US Department of Agriculture to ban the growth of GM pharma crops outdoors unless they are species that are not eaten by people or livestock.

The USDA is currently putting together new guidelines on GM that are expected to be completed by the end of the year. Currently, no GM crops that produce industrial chemicals or pharma crops are grown commercially, although there are some field trials under way in the US.

Similar issues will apply in the UK and Europe if pharma crops are approved. So far, though, only a handful of GM crop varieties are grown in Europe.

Birds choke to death on migrant fish

Robin McKie, The Observer 17 Feb 08;

Baffled scientists warn of a 'catastrophic' impact as snake pipefish flood into British waters

Britain's sea birds are facing a deadly new threat from a population explosion of strange, seahorse-like creatures in our coastal waters. The snake pipefish, virtually unknown around the UK in 2002, has undergone a massive, baffling and dangerous expansion since then, scientists have discovered.

Divers report seeing hundreds on single dives, while dozens of pipefish - which can grow to more than 18 inches in length - have been found in the nests of puffins, kittiwakes, terns and other sea birds.

The discovery has alarmed biologists because they have found that chicks are choking to death on the rigid, bony bodies of pipefish, while adults are feeding on them despite the fact they have very little nutritional value.

The implications for future generations of sea birds - already badly affected by depletion of Atlantic and North Sea fish stocks - are alarming, scientists warned at a meeting of the Zoological Society in London last week. 'It is an extremely worrying development,' said Professor Sarah Wanless, of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), Edinburgh. 'The spread of pipefish in our waters could have a catastrophic impact on sea bird breeding.'

The explosive growth of the snake pipefish (Entelurus aequoreus) in the past five years has been one of the most mysterious events affecting Britain's coastal waters in recent years. Six years ago they were unknown around the UK. The next year divers and fishermen reported finding occasional specimens.

'Since then the species has increased dramatically in abundance and its spread continues. Indeed it may be accelerating,' states a paper on marine biology by a team led by Professor Mike Harris, another CEH scientist. 'In June last year, 500 were caught in a 15-minute haul off the Farne Islands, while in July and August large catches were recorded in the Norwegian Sea, for example.'

The cause of the pipefish's spread is puzzling. Some scientists suspect that sea warming caused by climate change may be involved, but the link is not obvious. The snake pipefish is a subarctic species unlikely to be attracted directly by our warming coastal waters. Instead, scientists speculate that changes in ocean currents may be driving increasing numbers into our waters, or that their principal foodstuff, various species of plankton, may be becoming more abundant around Britain. Whatever the cause, they say that the impact on sea birds could be disastrous.

Sea bird numbers have been hit by a series of consecutive breeding failures in recent years, affecting skuas, guillemots, shags and others. The problem is starvation. Since 2000 sea birds have not been able to find sufficient food either to sustain their chicks or give them the energy to breed, a problem that is blamed on the dwindling populations of small fish and sand eels that sea birds eat, a phenomenon scientists have been unable to explain.

Now parent guillemots, terns and puffins are scooping pipefish from the sea for their chicks as substitutes for their normal fish food. But the pipefish body is rigid and bony and extremely hard for chicks to eat. Biologists have found dozens left uneaten in single nests while chicks have choked to death on their bodies.

In addition, studies have found that the species is low in fat content and represents poor nutritional value. Nevertheless, sea birds - already affected by poor diet - are turning to pipefish for food, a move that will only further damage their breeding.

'In the longer term, it is going to be very dangerous indeed for the future of sea birds around Britain,' added Wanless. 'Sea birds breed fairly slowly and a number of bad years could have a long-term devastating impact.'

Alien species 'wreck world's oceans and rivers'

Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 19 Feb 08;

Alien species are wreaking havoc on the world's oceans and river systems, say scientists.

Marine invasive species damage waters and land that native species and plants rely on to survive.And governments have to spend millions of pounds trying to get rid of them, says the Nature Conservancy study.

Examples in the UK include Floating pennywort (Hydrocotyle ranunculoides) a native of North America which was brought to Britain in the 1980s as a garden pond plant but which quickly spread to the wild.

The pennywort chokes rivers and streams depriving water creatures and plants of essential oxygen and light. Individual stems can grow up to 20cm in a day, creating a mat of vegetation up to 15m from the bank in one season.

Invasive and predatory marine animals which cause massive problems for our native creatures on waterways include the American mink, American crayfish, and the zebra mussel from the Caspian sea.

Once in the wild, these aquatic invaders cause massive disruption and with no natural predators and a benign climates they expand rapidly to nuisance proportions.

The latest study contains a global assessment of the impacts and causes of invasive marine species and says 84 per cent of the world's coasts are being affected by foreign aquatic species.

Stephanie Meeks, acting president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy, said: "Everyone in the world depends on healthy oceans and coasts for survival. Invasive species are severely impacting native plants and animals, and are causing significant economic damage at the same time.

"By understanding the scale and scope of these invaders, we are better equipped to stop them."

According to the study, in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, international shipping and aqua culture are the major causes of the spread of harmful species introduction world-wide with 80 per cent of all invasive introductions accidental.

The economic costs of invasive species are huge with the US alone spending £60bn annually to control and repair damage from more than 800 invaders. Throughout the world's oceans, aquatic aliens damage economies by hitting fisheries, fouling ships' hulls, and clogging intake pipes. Some can also pose a threat to human health through disease.

Examples of the damage invasive species can cause include:

* The comb jellyfish carried to the Black Sea on a ship in the early 1990s. It devastated fish populations and disrupted the entire food chain by feeding voraciously on fish eggs and zoo plankton.

* The Pacific oyster was transported from Japan to be farmed in coastal waters around the world since the early 1900s. Once introduced, they aggressively attach themselves to rocks and group together, squeezing out other species. In Australia and elsewhere, this fast-growing species can smother prized native oysters and mussels, hurting local fisheries.

* Wild Atlantic salmon stocks in Scotland and Scandinavia are being decimated by new pathogens, while escaped farm salmon are weakening the genetic resilience of native fish. Each year, up to 500,000 salmon escape from fish farms in Norway alone.

* San Francisco Bay, California, is the most invaded aquatic region on earth. More than half of its fish and most of its bottom-dwelling organisms are not native and new species are being introduced at an alarming rate.

Jennifer Molnar, conservation scientist at The Nature Conservancy and lead author of the study, said: " "The scale of this problem is vast. Every day, thousands of vessels cross our oceans with invasive species hitchhiking on their hulls. Because of this, as many as 10,000 species are estimated to be in transit at any one time.

"Once alien species become established in marine habitats, it can be nearly impossible to remove them, The best way to address these invaders is to prevent their arrival or introduction in the first place."

Best of our wild blogs: 19 Feb 08

wildfilms contributes to Arts Central's "Once Upon a Tree Part 2"
which debuts at 9.30pm tomorrow, more on the wildfilms blog

Another fabulous Hantu Dive
on the hantu blog

New butterfly species for Singapore?
on the butterflies of singapore blog

Ubin Civil Service Chalets
and lots of other long-awaited updates too on the pulau ubin stories blog including update on endangered ubin lontong and on this day, 66 years ago.

Ubin montage
photos and thoughts about the price and value of our natural heritage on the budak blog

Red-legged crane at Botanic Gardens
several sightings on the bird ecology blog

Saga seeds on a beach
and memories on the leafmonkey blog

MacRitchie Reservoir and back
on the mountain and sea blog

Green Tip: Collect rainwater for plants and others
on the Asia Is Green blog

Vision to fly first solar-powered airplane round the world by 2011

Channel NewsAsia 18 Feb 08;

SINGAPORE: Imagine a plane that can fly round the world day and night with zero fuel, zero emissions - and powered by just solar energy. With skyrocketing jet fuel prices, that's not a pipe dream anymore - but a real vision that adventurer Dr Bertrand Piccard hopes to turn into reality by 2011.

It may just be a prototype now. But this dream of a plane - the Solar Impulse - developed by Dr Piccard's team, should go on its first test flight by 2009.

And by 2011, the team hopes to build a second plane that will travel around the world, day and night.

However, when the sun goes down, what happens to this plane that depends on solar energy to stay in flight?

Piccard said: "On solar energy, you have to capture the energy with solar cells on the wings, store this energy in the batteries and at the same time, run the engine during the day."

"So when you get the dark, you can use the energy from the batteries until the next sunrise, and continue the next day and next night and next day again," he added.

Batteries are expected to last at least 16 hours after dark. But to fly without fuel, obtaining the right aerodynamics was tough.

However, that dream is now a reality with a cool US$70 million tag - of which 65 per cent of the financing has been obtained.

And with a man who has gone round the world non-stop in a hot air balloon, an adventure like this at the frontiers of aviation should be no barrier.

With an aviation industry vision of zero carbons emissions in 50 years, we could be travelling on a 300-passenger plane powered solely by clean energy in the future. - CNA/vm

Lean, green flying machine
Leong Wee Keat, Today Online 19 Feb 08;

THIS plane will have the wingspan of a superjumbo Airbus A380 but the weight of a car. And when it finally takes off in three years' time, the single-seater Solar Impulse plane will attempt to create aviation history — by flying around the world purely on solar energy, with zero emissions.

And after that flight is completed in May 2011, the Solar Impulse's next ambitious target will be to carry a payload of 300 passengers in little more than 40 years' time.

Founded five years ago, the Swiss-based Solar Impulse project seeks to realise the dream of an aircraft capable of taking off autonomously and maintaining itself in flight for several days without any fuel, propelled solely on energy generated and stored by the solar cells on its wings.

Yesterday, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) signed a cooperation agreement with Solar Impulse on the sidelines of the Singapore Airshow Aviation Leadership Summit.

The agreement is the first the IATA has signed since it announced in December its goal of having air travel achieve carbon-neutral growth in the medium-term, en route to a carbon emission-free future in 50 years.

With the industry under the spotlight amid climate change concerns, airlines and manufacturers have begun taking steps to reduce emissions, such as reducing fuel burn and attempting flights on alternative fuels.

Yet, founder and president of Solar Impulse, Dr Bertrand Piccard — who piloted the first non-stop, round-the-world balloon flight in 1999 — acknowledged that aiming to fly without fuel sets "the bar extremely high".

"In the 20th century, we have to rewrite aviation history with the same passion and enthusiasm but with other technologies which are less greedy in terms of fuel," he said.

Current solar airplanes are not designed to store energy and have to land when there is insufficient sunlight.

But the plane — which looks like a glider with 250 sq m of solar cells — can fly up to 16 hours in darkness on solar energy stored in lightweight lithium batteries. If energy levels are low, the plane can climb to greater altitudes, similar to those reached by jet planes, to reach the sun's rays.

Construction of the first prototype is underway. Test flights will be carried out later this year, with the first night flight set for next year. A second plane will then be built to cross the Atlantic a year later.

In May 2011, the Solar Impulse plane will attempt to fly around the world, with stops in China, Hawaii, Florida, Morocco or Spain, before returning to its starting point in the United Arab Emirates.

The plane will land after every five days non-stop in the air for a change of pilots. Dr Piccard said the plane's auto-pilot would allow the pilot to rest and only sound an alarm if it detects trouble or turbulence.

In all, 52 engineers are working on the US$70-million ($99-million) project.

Asked how he would persuade major commercial aircraft manufacturers to adopt his idea, Dr Piccard said: "We don't need to convince anyone.

"The price of energy will oblige everyone to find alternative solutions. When you have oil at $200 a barrel, the price of the ticket will not remain the same."

Government hopes more CNG stations will be built

Samuel Ee, Business Times 19 Feb 08;

Private sector should take initiative on more CNG refuelling projects: minister

SMART Energy officially opened its sprawling Mandai Link CNG refuelling station yesterday and the government hopes that more such privately funded projects will be seen in future.

Compressed natural gas (CNG) is pumped directly from Jurong Island to Smart's 5,700 square metre mother station - the biggest on the mainland. There, the gas can be dispensed to up to eight cars, two buses and two bulk transporters at the same time, with a capacity of up to 100 cars an hour. Previously, vehicles running on CNG had to travel to Jurong Island to refuel. Smart began selling CNG at its Mandai Link site on Feb 1. A week later, SPC also began dispensing CNG at its petrol station on Jalan Buroh.

At yesterday's ceremony, guest-of- honour Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, said that he would like to see the private sector take on more such CNG refuelling projects, just as Smart, the first company to do so, has done.

'We will try to encourage as much as possible the private sector to take up the initiative,' said Dr Yaacob. 'Where necessary, we will find ways in which we co-fund them but eventually we want the private sector to take this up on their own and build it up.'

Smart sells the CNG at $1.09 per kg. It takes a car with two 50-litre tanks about a minute to refuel, said Smart Energy general manager William Chua. Each tank can hold up to 10kg of gas and a two-litre car can travel up to 270km on 20kg of CNG.

Mr Chua said that same distance in an ordinary car would require about 30 litres of petrol at $1.90 per litre.

There are about 520 CNG vehicles on Singapore roads today, out of the total population of 700,000 or so vehicles (excluding motorcycles and scooters). Slightly more than half of these CNG units are taxis, of which Smart Taxi, Smart Energy's parent company, operates 100. The rest of the CNG vehicles are private cars and a dozen buses.

The bi-fuel cars can run on either petrol or gas. Most of the cars have been retrofitted here with conversion kits to allow them to operate on CNG. Only the Mercedes-Benz E200 NGT (Natural Gas Technology) cars are factory-fitted with the gas tanks and injectors.

'There is therefore considerable scope for more vehicles to switch to CNG,' said Gas Supply Pte Ltd (GSPL) CEO Tan Chin Tung in a speech. 'The potential impact of CNG vehicles on the environment should not be underestimated.'

Mr Tan called CNG an efficient and environment-friendly fuel that emits less carbon monoxide, less hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxides, and practically no particulate matter, compared with Euro IV diesel vehicles, which emit about 0.025g per km.

Smart has invested almost $12 million on the Mandai Link mother station because the company believes in the product, said Mr Chua.

'Even the big oil companies won't invest in a mother station nor such a huge facility,' he said. 'We are bold enough to take the first step because this is the way to go. As oil prices continue to rise, we need an alternative fuel - and CNG is it.'

Smart is planning to open another station in Serangoon North in September. The Mandai Link facility will supply this second site with CNG by trailer.

Pump up on CNG
First dedicated refuelling station outside Jurong Island opens
Sheralyn Tay, Today Online 19 Feb 08;

WHILE it may be early days yet for compressed natural gas (CNG) cars here, there has been a surge in demand for the environmentally friendly vehicles in recent months from both taxi fleet operators and individuals, as CNG suppliers set up more refuelling stations.

Yesterday, Smart Energy — an affiliate of taxi operator Smart Automobile — opened Singapore's first dedicated CNG refuelling station outside Jurong Island. The station in Mandai joins a smaller SembCorp Gas-run CNG operation at Jalan Buroh, which operates two CNG pumps at a tri-fuel SPC petrol kiosk.

Smart Energy's 10-pump station, which can serve up to 200 cars an hour, marks a "significant" step in the move to drive green, said Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim, who officiated at the opening ceremony yesterday (picture).

"We believe that when the infrastructure is in place, then the whole chicken and egg problem is solved. People can now proceed to buy CNG vehicles or retrofit and they can stay on the mainland to get their top-up," said Mr Yaacob.

Smart Energy plans to open another CNG refuelling station in Serangoon North by the end of the year, and SembCorp Gas is expected to launch two more stations in Bedok and Bukit Merah.

With more CNG stations in the pipeline, some taxi operators plan to expand their fleets. Smart's managing director Johnny Harjantho hopes to add 300 CNG taxis by year's end to the 180 in his 850-strong fleet that already run on CNG. He hopes to have a full CNG fleet by 2012. Prime intends to add 500 CNG taxis over the same period. SMRT is exploring the feasibility of CNG, while ComfortDelgro, whose fleet runs on Euro IV diesel, has no immediate plans for CNG conversion.

There are currently more than 500 CNG cars in Singapore, about half of them privately-owned. According to C Melchers, which installs CNG engines, demand has "boomed" since last August, a far cry from the "slow response" when it first started operations here in 2006.

While it costs about $3,900 to install a CNG engine, the investment can be recouped in about one-and-a-half years, depending on the car and fuel type. CNG costs about half the price of petrol and a 1.6-to-2 litre family car that travels 20,000km a year can yield savings of about $2,700 during the period, according to Melchers.

More bicycle parking facilities at MRT stations, bus interchanges

Channel NewsAsia 18 Feb 08;

SINGAPORE : Transport Minister Raymond Lim said more and better bicycle parking facilities will be made available around MRT stations and bus interchanges.

The initiative will be implemented progressively, starting with towns where demand for bicycle parking facilities currently outstrips supply.

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) will carry out a year-long pilot study in 2009 in Pasir Ris, Tampines and Yishun to gather feedback and better understand the needs of cyclists before extending it to other MRT stations and bus interchanges, said Mr Lim.

He was responding to a written question by Tampines GRC MP Irene Ng on integrating cycling into urban transport planning.

Mr Lim said other cycling initiatives have been listed in the land transport review.

From March this year, cyclists will be allowed to carry their foldable bicycles onboard buses and trains on a trial basis during off-peak periods.

LTA will impose size restrictions and other conditions to ensure that the safety and comfort of other commuters are not compromised. - CNA /ls

Diesel car tax: Will it be axed after 2009?

Levy may be cut further or removed once Euro V standard is used here
Christopher Tan, Business Times 19 Feb 08;

THE Government is likely to continue taxing diesel cars more heavily than their petrol counterparts, at least till 2010.

The Land Transport Authority announced on Friday that the annual supplementary tax for Euro IV diesel cars, which are considered more pollutive than petrol models, will be slashed from July. Despite that, the tax will still prove too high for most car buyers to consider a switch to diesel power.

Currently, the tax is four times the annual road tax of an equivalent petrol car. But, from July 1, it will be cut to $1.25 per cubic cm of the car's engine displacement.

That works out to be $2,500 for a 2,000cc car, down from $4,856 now. The road tax for a 2,000cc petrol car is now $1,426, but this will be cut by 15 per cent in July, when electronic road pricing coverage expands.

But diesel cars could have their day in the sun some time down the road.

The Straits Times understands that the tax will be cut further or done away with when the Euro V emission standard is implemented here. Europe is expected to embrace the Euro V standard by late next year. Singapore is likely to follow suit a year or two later.

The Euro V standard for diesel cars is more stringent than the Euro IV one currently in place here. For instance, it stipulates that the amount of fine soot leaving the tailpipe should be no more than 5mg per km, down from the 25mg per km allowed under Euro IV.

Diesel cars complying with the Euro V standard would then be emitting the same amount of fine soot as petrol cars.

Environment and Water Resources Minister Yaacob Ibrahim said yesterday that Euro V diesel cars 'will be neutral with petrol in respect of emission standards'.

Dr Yaacob, who was speaking to reporters at the opening of a new compressed natural gas (CNG) refuelling station in Mandai Link, said: 'We are keen on Euro V, but it's not available yet.

'Our position is that, when all vehicles move to Euro V, it will solve our PM2.5 problem,' he added. 'PM2.5' refers to particulate matter, or soot, 2.5 microns or smaller in size, which is a health hazard.

The new CNG station, which is run by Smart Energy, has 10 nozzles and can refuel about 100 vehicles an hour. This is five times the capacity of the only other CNG station on the mainland, SembGas' CNG kiosk in Jalan Buroh.

Smart Energy will open a second station in Serangoon North in the third quarter and may open another in Jurong later on.

Dr Yaacob also said the green vehicle rebate, which is equivalent to 40 per cent of a car's Additional Registration Fee, is 'working well', as there are about 1,000 hybrid and 500 CNG cars here. The rebate is valid till the end of next year and 'we will review it then', he said.

Tie-up to look at cheaper way of recycling water

Shobana Kesava, Straits Times 19 Feb 08;

PILOT tests aimed at producing recycled water more cheaply will start in April.

The work will be done by Japanese companies Nitto Denko and Mitsubishi Rayon Engineering on the grounds of the Bedok Water Reclamation Plant (WRP), following an agreement signed yesterday with national water agency PUB.

Each cubic metre of Newater, as Singapore's reclaimed water has been named, is now being sold to industries at $1.

The two companies and PUB say it is still too early to predict how much cheaper reclaiming used water will become.

If the pilot is successful, new membrane bioreactors could eventually do away with massive aeration and sedimentation tanks now used at the production plants.

Just over 1 per cent of Singapore's daily water consumption is now made up of Newater. By 2011, this will be increased to 2.5 per cent, or at least 7.5 million gallons per day.

The membrane bioreactors developed by the two companies merge conventional filter systems, which separate dirt from pure water, with biological ones, which use waste-eating bacteria, PUB chief executive Khoo Teng Chye explained.

Combining the two parts of the process promises to lower Newater's production cost. Because this new technology is housed in a more compact unit, space saving of 40 per cent is expected, said Nitto Denko regional manager James Iong.

Bedok WRP, for example, occupies 30ha - about three times the size of VivoCity.

'Removing bulky equipment helps land-scarce Singapore and offers great potential for rural areas, say in China and India, which don't have access to clean water,' said Mr Iong.

Speaking for the two Japanese companies, Nitto Denko's global head of the membrane division, Mr Minoru Kikuoka, said: 'The advantage of doing this in Singapore is that once we are successful in the pilot tests, PUB will allow us to show how the technology works on a larger scale.'

Mr Iong said that, at that point, the companies will run about 10,000 cu m of water a day through a demonstration plant before commercialisation, which they aim to do in April next year.

The effort places the companies in the running to come up with the gold standard in water reclamation.

Beef supply in Singapore unaffected by US recall: AVA

Channel NewsAsia 19 Feb 08;

SINGAPORE : Beef supply in Singapore will not be affected by the beef recall in the United States.

The Agri-food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) said this was because the California slaughterhouse involved in the recall is not accredited by the AVA to export beef to Singapore.

In what is believed to be the largest such move in America, the US Department of Agriculture has recalled 65 million kilogrammes of frozen beef from a California slaughterhouse following alleged animal abuse practices.

This follows incriminating footage released by the US Humane Society last month.

The video showed workers at the plant using several abusive techniques, including ramming cattle with forklift blades, to force ill animals to stand up and pass a pre-slaughter inspection. - CNA/de

Brand of beef not sold in Singapore
Straits Times 19 Feb 08;

THE US beef recall will not affect Singaporean consumers, as the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority (AVA) said Westland/ Hallmark does not have approval to export to Singapore.

It also said that none of the company's products is brought into the Singapore market.

In fact, overall, very little American beef from any company finds its way here.

The AVA said that total beef imports last year amounted to 28,497 tonnes, out of which only 349 tonnes came from the United States.

The bulk of the beef brought into Singapore came from Brazil, which supplied 14,530 tonnes, and Australia, which provided 8,933 tonnes, while 4,585 tonnes came from New Zealand.

Beef taken off menu after largest US meat recall
Channel NewsAsia 18 Feb 08;

WASHINGTON, Feb 18, 2008 : Schools in Washington state and California took beef off the menu on Monday after a Californian meat packer recalled the largest amount of beef in US history.

But agriculture officials played down the risk to humans after Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing agreed to take back more than 143 million pounds of raw and frozen meet when it was found in violation of inspection rules.

The company, based in Chino, California, voluntarily recalled the beef after the federal Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) determined the cattle "did not receive complete and proper inspection."

The company did not "consistently contact the FSIS public health veterinarian in situations in which cattle became non-ambulatory" before being slaughtered, the USDA statement said on Sunday.

Federal rules usually ban the slaughter of "downer cattle" - those unable to walk - as a safeguard against mad cow disease or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

US Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer said Hallmark/Westland had been suspended by the FSIS, and that the federal government had suspended food and nutrition contracts with the company.

"I am dismayed by the inhumane handling of cattle that resulted in the violation of food safety regulations" by the company, Schafer said in a statement.

"It is extremely unlikely that these animals were at risk for BSE because of the multiple safeguards; however this action is necessary because plant procedures violated USDA regulations," he added.

The department did not say where those food products had been sold, but schools in Washington state and California removed beef from their lunch menus as a precaution, local officials said.

America's meat packing industry has already been plagued by outbreaks of E. coli bacteria and other problems.

In September, Topps Meats Co. of New Jersey recalled 21.7 million pounds of frozen hamburger patties after people in New York and Florida fell ill because of E. coli poisoning.

The New Jersey company later filed for bankruptcy because the recall involved a full year's worth of production.

The largest previous recall involved 35 million pounds of ready-to-eat meats in 1999.

James Reagan, Chairman of the Beef Industry Food Safety Council, backed Sunday's recall, describing it as "a precautionary measure," but sought to reassure consumers that the US beef supply is safe.

"We have multiple interlocking safeguards in place in every beef processing plant in America so that if one is bypassed, the other systems continue to ensure the product we serve our families remains safe," Reagan said.

But William Marler, a food safety attorney from Seattle, Washington, called for congressional hearings on the safety of the US beef supply, accusing the Department of Agriculture of failing to enforce its own ban against use of downer cattle in the nation's school lunch program.

"In light of the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company, which was caught on film processing 'downer' cattle, in violation of US law, we now know that USDA ban was a lie," Marler said. - AFP/de

Largest-ever beef recall
65 million kg recalled in US following cow abuse scandal
Today Online 19 Feb 08;

WASHINGTON — A meat company based in California has issued the largest beef recall in United States' history, 143 million pounds (64.9 million kilograms) — 37 million pounds of which was used to make hamburgers, chilli and tacos for a national school lunch programme, Department of Agriculture officials announced.

The Westland/Hallmark Meat Company's recall of all its raw and frozen beef products since Feb 1, 2006, comes after a widening animal-abuse scandal that started after the Humane Society of the United States distributed an undercover video on Jan 30. The video — which showed workers kicking sick cows and using forklifts to force them to walk — raised questions about the safety of the meat, because cows that cannot walk, called downer cows, pose an added risk of diseases including mad cow disease.

The video was embarrassing for the Department of Agriculture, as inspectors are supposed to be monitoring slaughterhouses for abuse. It surfaced after a year of increasing concerns about the safety of the meat supply amid a sharp increase in the number of recalls tied to a particularly deadly form of the E. coli pathogen.

There were 21 recalls of beef related to the potentially deadly strain of E. coli last year, compared with eight in 2006 and five in 2005.

The recall on Sunday was more than four times bigger than the previous record, the 1999 recall of 35 million pounds of ground beef by Thorn Apple Valley, federal officials said. It was prompted by a Department of Agriculture investigation that found that Westland/Hallmark did not always alert federal veterinarians when its cows became unable to walk after passing inspection, as required.

"Because the cattle did not receive complete and proper inspection, FSIS [the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service] has determined them to be unfit for human food and the company is conducting a recall," Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said in a statement.

The announcement on Sunday was classified as a Class II recall, indicating that the chances of health hazards were remote.

Agriculture officials also said there was little health risk from the recalled meat because the animals had already passed pre-slaughter inspection and much of the meat had already been eaten. — the new york times news service

US to recall 65 million kg of beef from sick cows
Straits Times 19 Feb 08;

Abattoir has been slaughtering such cows for two years; USDA fears most of the meat has already been eaten
LOS ANGELES - THE US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced the country's largest beef recall to destroy 65 million kg produced by a California plant which slaughtered cows that were too ill to walk.

However, the USDA said the vast majority of the meat - including 17 million kg that went mostly to schools - had probably already been eaten.

Cattle weakened by disease are not supposed to enter the food supply because of the possibility they could suffer from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), better known as mad cow disease, although officials said the danger to consumers in this case is minimal.

The recall applies to beef slaughtered at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co in Chino, California, since Feb 1, 2006. The company has produced no meat since Feb 2 this year, when operations were suspended.

The action came nearly three weeks after the Humane Society of the United States released a video showing workers at the plant using forklifts and water hoses to rouse cattle too weak to walk to slaughter.

'Downer' cattle are not supposed to be used as meat unless a veterinarian determines that an animal stumbled or fell because of injury - a broken leg, for instance - that would not affect the safety of their meat.

But Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer said his department has evidence that Westland did not call in veterinarians.

Mr Steve Mendell, president of Hallmark Meat Packing, and its distributor, Westland, declined to comment.

Some supermarkets immediately began removing Hallmark meat from their freezer shelves, but because the company suspended operations two weeks ago, it is unlikely that any of its fresh meat is still being sold.

Meanwhile, the amount of beef affected by the recall may be far larger than the 65 million kg from Hallmark because meat from different companies is often mixed as it goes through numerous processors.

At a USDA telephone briefing for retailers, school districts and food safety experts on Sunday, concerns were raised about beef that gets 'commingled', according to Humane Society president Wayne Pacelle, who was on the conference call.

He said a representative of the Costco warehouse club chain estimated that the total beef recalled may top 450 million kg.

USDA officials said the whole impact of the recall was difficult to estimate because beef from Hallmark was supplied through a 'huge pipeline', including numerous processors and distributors.

As an example, Mr Bill Sessions of the Agricultural Marketing Service told reporters: 'Coarse ground beef...goes into further processors, who make end items such as cooked hamburger patties, chili meat, taco meat, that type of thing, that then goes into a distributor, and then is distributed to a local school system.'

By that time, the food packaging is not likely to carry any indication of where the meat came from.

California Representative George Miller, who has been closely following the Hallmark case, on Sunday called for a congressional hearing into the USDA's inspection process.

He said that the 'severity of this issue for both our nation's schools and consumers' made it necessary for Congress to step in.

LOS ANGELES TIMES, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Climate focus 'ignores wildlife'

BBC News 18 Feb 08;

Many efforts to curb climate change have paid little attention to conservation or helping the world's poor, a think-tank has warned.

A paper by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) said bad policy threatened biodiversity and made poor nations more vulnerable.

The authors called for projects tackling global problems to work more closely together in the future.

The findings coincide with the start of a UN biodiversity meeting in Rome.

"Pro-poor, biodiversity friendly ways to adapt and mitigate climate change are clearly the way forward," said co-author Krystyna Swiderska.

"But for them to work, local communities must be involved in decisions about how biodiversity is used. Good governance and fair access to land and resources must be at the heart of these efforts."

She warned that "bad polices" could accelerate biodiversity loss and increase the vulnerability of the world's poorest communities.

Balancing act

Ms Swiderska and co-author Hannah Reid wrote that poor communities heavily depended upon biodiversity for food, medicine and sustaining livelihoods.

Protecting diversity would give these communities more options to adapt to a warming world, they added.

While global agreements - such as the CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Millennium Development Goals - acknowledged the impact of climate change on biodiversity and poor nations, the authors said there were no shared or common goals to ensure the strategies did not conflict.

"Policymakers have focused on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions but biodiversity is also key," observed Ms Swiderska.

"For centuries, traditional farmers have used the diversity within both domesticated and wild species to adapt to changing conditions."

She said that greater recognition of local knowledge could help deliver results on a global scale.

"Many communities are already using agricultural -biodiversity and traditional practices, such as seed exchange and field experimentation, to adapt to climate change.

"Farmer/researcher collaboration can bring added value that each alone could never realise."

The publication of the IIED's paper comes as the CBD holds a government-level meeting in Rome, ahead of the organisation's annual high-level gathering in May.

The CBD, formed in 1992, has three main goals:

* the conservation of biodiversity
* sustainable use of the components of biodiversity
* sharing the benefits of genetic resources in a fair and equitable way

The convention is the key international policy tool to deliver the commitment of significantly reducing the global rate of biodiversity loss by 2010.

Managed Forestry Offers Hope Of Saving Amazon

PlanetArk 19 Feb 08;

MONTE DOURADO - Buzzing chain saws and heavy machinery hauling logs through the Amazon jungle look at first like reckless destruction. But a forestry project on the Jari River in northern Brazil is being hailed as a model for preserving the world's largest rain forest.

Evidence in January that the pace of Amazon deforestation has increased after falling for nearly three years renewed a fierce public debate over saving the forest. It also opened a rift in President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government.

Loggers illegally clear vast swathes of forest for timber and farmland every year, wreaking environmental havoc while creating little long-term income.

But a handful of forest management projects have emerged as conservation models, extracting resources with little impact.

"Selling certified timber harvested in a sustainable way is the only solution for the Amazon," said Augusto Praxedes Neto, a manager at Brazilian pulp and paper company Grupo ORSA.

For five years ORSA has managed the world's largest private tropical forest, located on either side of the Jari River in the northeastern Amazon region.

It harvests only 30 cubic metres (12,713 board feet) of timber per hectare (2.47 acres) every 30 years, just under the natural regeneration rate. Trees are felled and transported so as to cause minimal impact on the forest and are recorded in a computerized inventory.

"I can tell a customer in Europe which tree his table is made of," said operations manager Euclides Reckziegel as blue and yellow macaws flew over a solid forest canopy that echoed with the growls of howler monkeys.

"Illegal loggers kill 30 trees to get one. These projects protect far more trees than they extract," said Ana Yang of the Stewardship Forestry Council (FSC) in Brazil.

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the international industry watchdog, certifies and inspects the Jari project every six months. Harvesting began in 2003.

Much of Para state surrounding the ORSA property is troubled by the kind of land disputes that cause death and destruction throughout the Amazon. In one such dispute in February 2005, Dorothy Stang, a US nun and human rights activist, was killed by gunmen hired by ranchers.

Other conservation areas such as national parks or Indian reserves often lack resources for protection against illegal loggers and generate little income for local populations.

ORSA's security guards and forest dwellers, who receive company health care, help prevent intrusions, Neto said.

Communities still lack proper education and basic sanitation facilities but many residents say they are better off because of the project, which created 400 jobs.

"It's not a huge income but it makes a difference," said Zeneide Costa Pinto, aged 47, one of 14 women who make jewelry, baskets and cookies from rain forest products.

GOVERNMENT TAKES CAUTIOUS APPROACH

Jari's 1.7-million-hectare (4.2-million-acre) property is just over half the size of Belgium. Roughly 80 percent of it is standing forest and one-third is managed and FSC certified.

"If the government were to put the same effort into sustainable forest management that it put into developing agriculture in the 1970s and 1980s we could preserve much of the Amazon," said Judson Ferreira, a senior researcher with government farm research institute Embrapa.

The government is taking a more cautious approach. In March it will select three companies to manage just 96,000 hectares (237,200 acres) of forest, the first such tender of federal land.

"Forestry management is a great alternative and ORSA is a good example of it but we want to take things slowly," Tasso Rezende, head of Brazil's forestry service, told Reuters.

"We need several projects doing well over a long period -- private ownership in the Amazon is controversial."

For forestry management to take off, authorities need to tackle uncertainty over land ownership, crack down on illegal deforestation, and cut red tape, Yang said.

"It's still easier to get a license to cut trees than to plant or manage them," she said.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

'Greenwash' is losing its shine

Rebecca Swift, BBC The Green Room 18 Feb 08;

Simply being seen to be green will soon not be enough, says Getty Images' Rebecca Swift. In this week's Green Room, she argues that time is running out for advertisers who "greenwash" audiences with empty eco-cliches.

As a company that generates imagery for the news wires and the world of advertising, we could not help but notice a global shift in interest towards "green" iconography.

Photography has its fashions like everything else, but once in a while something "mega" comes along that touches nearly everything we see.

As we all go about our daily business we probably don't give it much thought, but after observing what is being transmitted over days, weeks and months, a trend starts to appear.

Our research team spent a year wading through all commercial imagery from around the world relating to the environment. We found that, in relation to what companies say they are doing versus what they doing, there has been a great deal of "greenwashing".

The fascinating thing is how many ads actually recycle the same narrow range of the colour green in an attempt to raise their eco-profile.

There are two spectrums: one is what we call "kelly green" (think Kermit the Frog), and the other is "forest green" (think Landrover Destroyer classic colour).

Naturally, by extension, green trees, green leaves and green grass abound as green icons.

These natural icons have become cliched icons for the environment. So why has this happened and why should we care?

Firstly, it is to do with what is called mass culture. Scientists and governments are telling us that we are destroying the Earth and we all need to consume in a new way in order to slow down the destruction.

We are told, in emotive terms, about the risks facing our children and grandchildren's futures and presented with graphic depictions of the potential effects of our lack of consideration for our planet.

Substance verses spin

As our social behaviour has shifted and we spend more time being careful about recycling, buying organic, composting and not using plastic bags, the mass media has used these considerations to differentiate and sell.

"Green", as a selling point, used to be the endeavour of an earnest few. Now it has become a necessary and lucrative element in promoting a brand; but green advertising is still searching for its visual language.

The advertising with the really impactful imagery is being used by campaign groups like Greenpeace and WWF, which have the advantage of not actually having to sell anything but awareness.

Commercial advertising is now borrowing imagery from the campaigners. We see polar bears on melting ice caps, penguins in urban environments and famous skylines under water.

Ordinary people going about their everyday lives are subjected to messaging and imagery that all feel the same and therefore diminish in meaning as time goes on.

The last time I remember something similar happening was the propaganda associated with the "millennium bug" as the world approached the dawn of 2000.

As well as communication that educated, there was a wide range of products and services available that could alleviate the potential aftermath of the bug's impact.

At the same time, there was a blue-washing of commercial imagery, a shade called "millennium blue".

The 1990s had been a time of exponential growth for the technology industry; it was a time in which anything seemed possible.

We moved towards 24/7 industry, business hours lengthened across all time zones and e-mail became the defacto communication tool.

The millennium bug was the first threat to our new technological future. The dot.com crash followed soon after. Socially and psychologically, we found ourselves stressed out and yearning for technology-free time-outs.

Brands at the time were looking for a way to attract customers, so they promoted the fact their products were the answer to combating stress.

Blue became the colour that represented something calming and relaxing; it evoked the feeling that we all wished (and wish) to feel.

Advertising adopted it as the imagery equivalent of practising yoga. Most of the time it was literally a wash across the image; other times it was an icon or element within the image.

So, with the overwhelming amount of communication about green issues, we do look to trustworthy brands to lead us in our environmentally friendly choices.

We should care about the "green-washing" of advertising imagery because we all need to differentiate between brands that embody green and others that have simply jumped on the bandwagon in a bid for a fast buck.

As with the millennium bug era, we will move out of the propaganda phase.

By all accounts, the environment issue will not disappear overnight as the "bug" did, but image producers like us and those that use imagery to say something about themselves are still searching for a more sophisticated language to communicate green agendas.

Expect imagery of the future to be any colour but green and imagery of the natural world to leave the cliches behind.

Rebecca Swift is global creative planning director for Getty Images, a global photo agency

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website

Norway mall offers shoppers greenhouse gas credits

John Acher, Reuters 18 Feb 08;

OSLO (Reuters) - Half a kg of salmon; two kg of potatoes; a tonne of greenhouse gas reductions -- shoppers at one Norwegian mall can now buy cuts in their carbon footprint as they pick up their weekly groceries.

The Stroemmen Storsenter shopping centre outside Oslo began selling the certificates on Saturday, at 165 Norwegian crowns ($30.58) per tonne, to people who feel bad about contributing to climate change.

By midday on Monday, its second day of offering the U.N.-approved Certified Emissions Reductions, it had sold more than a third of the 1,000 CERs on offer and would consider buying more if they sell out, the mall's managers said.

They said the certificates were bought by private individuals and by small firms wanting them for their employees.

One CER corresponds to a tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reductions via the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows those in rich countries to invest in emissions cutting projects in developing nations and count the cuts as their own.

Each Norwegian accounts for about 11 tonnes of greenhouse gases every year, mainly from burning fossil fuels.

"Many people want to buy reductions, but until we started this in the shopping mall, they haven't known where to get them, but now they are available to everybody," said Ole Herredsvela, the shopping centre's technical manager.

"We are doing this also to create awareness among people towards the problem (of climate change)," he said.

Up until now households have been able to obtain emissions credits mainly when buying airplane tickets, with the airlines buying them on behalf of passengers or through various credit card schemes offsetting the carbon footprint of card purchases.

Over-the-counter sales are something new.

Norway's third-biggest shopping centre is not making money from the sales, but rather is selling them at cost plus a 10 percent administration fee which goes to its partner, Norwegian carbon management services firm CO2focus, Herredsvela said.

CUTS FROM INDIAN WIND POWER

CO2focus bought the CERs from Oxford-based EcoSecurities which has obtained them from its involvement in a wind power project in Maharashtra in India, company officials said.

"This is an offset where we sell a paper saying that this is proof that you have bought a U.N.-approved emissions credit, a CER, from this specific product," Per Otto Larsen, a partner at CO2focus, told Reuters.

One tonne of CO2 is roughly equal the emissions from 5,000 km (3,107 miles) driven in a car or about six average flights within the Nordic region, Larsen said.

Larsen said CO2focus has found wide interest in obtaining emissions reductions among its clients -- companies such as taxi and bus services, car leasing companies but also firms marketing consumer goods.

"We are working with companies so they can implement credits in their products," he said.

But selling directly to retail customers is a fresh idea.

"I think this is unique," Larsen said.

(Reporting by John Acher, editing by Anthony Barker)

China To Create Environmental Disaster Insurance

PlanetArk 19 Feb 08;

BEIJING - China plans to launch an insurance system to cover environmental disasters, aiming to ensure that the victims of major pollution incidents receive due compensation, Xinhua news agency said on Monday.

Xinhua quoted Pan Yue, deputy head of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), as saying that the system would start out as a pilot project but would be intended to cover all industries with a high risk of pollution incidents by 2015.

SEPA and the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) would initially require firms dealing with high-risk chemical products to join the insurance scheme, along with petrochemical companies and those involved in hazardous waste disposal, Xinhua cited Pan as saying.

"Enterprises and industries having caused serious pollution accidents in recent years will be specially targeted," it quoted him as saying.

Xinhua said the programme aimed to prevent firms involved in big pollution incidents from going bankrupt because of clean-up and compensation costs, thereby cutting down on the need for government bailouts to pay victims.

"It, however, doesn't mean polluting companies can rest assured to pollute, as the insurance premium is in proportion to a company's pollution risks," it quoted Pan as saying.

China is fighting widespread pollution and environmental destruction, including a rash of major pollution incidents in recent years that have soiled the land, water and air.

In 2005, millions of residents of Harbin in the northeast of the country had their water taps shut off for weeks after an explosion at an industrial plant sent toxic chemicals flowing into the Songhua River.

Last week, a tanker truck carrying more than 30 tonnes of sulphuric acid crashed in the southwest of the country, spilling its load into a river. At the weekend, an oil pollution scare in the south cut off drinking water to 100,000 people.

Altogether, the country experienced 108 emergency environmental incidents last year, Xinhua said.

Pan said the scheme comes after a "green credit" policy launched last summer that tells banks not to lend to polluting and energy-guzzling firms -- a policy he conceded last week had met strong resistance from local governments, many of which profit from such industries.

(Reporting by Jason Subler; Editing by David Fogarty)

Water supplies cut in south China city due to oil slick: report

Yahoo News 18 Feb 08;

Water supplies to about 100,000 residents in a southern Chinese city were suspended on the weekend after a two-kilometre (1.2-mile) oil slick tainted a local river, state media reported Monday.

Domestic water supplies to about half of the population of Foshan in Guangdong province were cut for about six hours on Saturday, Xinhua news agency said.

Local environment officials said that the water was now safe to drink after the oil pollution scare forced restaurants and businesses to close and sparked a surge in bottled water sales, according to the report.

"Tests show the water is safe to drink, but we will keep on monitoring the water quality of the river," said an official surnamed Li with the city's publicity department, according to Xinhua.

No information was given as to how the oil slick emerged on the river, with Xinhua saying that environmental authorities had launched an investigation.

However Foshan is a major manufacturing and industrial hub, giving rise to speculation one of the many factories operating near the river may have been the source of the oil slick.

No pollutants were found in the upper reaches of the Xijiang River, which is a major water resource for Foshan and four other cities in south China, Xinhua said.

But the Nanfang Daily, a local newspaper in Guangdong, said on Sunday that Heshan city, to the south of Foshan, may now be at risk from the slick.

Three decades of unchecked industrialisation have led to massive contamination of China's water supplies and reports of polluting factories causing disruptions to water supplies emerge frequently.

More than 70 percent of the country's waterways and 90 percent of its underground water is polluted, according to previously released government figures.

Water Back In South China City After Oil Spill
PlanetArk 19 Feb 08;

BEIJING - China has reassured residents in a south China city that their water is safe to drink after an oil pollution scare at the weekend left 100,000 residents cut off from supplies, Xinhua news agency reported on Monday.

Much of the city of Foshan, in the Hong Kong border province of Guangdong, was without water for several hours on Saturday after a white, foul-smelling slick was spotted in the Xijiang River, forcing an emergency operation to clean up the spill.

"Tests show the water was safe to drink, but we will keep on monitoring the water quality in the river," Xinhua quoted an official surnamed Li in Foshan's publicity department as saying.

China is fighting widespread environmental degradation that threatens many of its vital water sources.

In 2005, millions of residents in the northern city of Harbin were without water for weeks after an explosion at an industrial plant sent toxic chemicals streaming into the Songhua River.

Last week, a Chinese tanker truck carrying more than 30 tonnes of sulphuric acid crashed in the southwest of the country, spilling its load and causing what state media described as "serious pollution".

Environment officials were investigating the source of the spill in the Xijiang, a tributary of the Pearl River.

(Reporting by Lindsay Beck, editing by Ken Wills and Sanjeev Miglani)

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