Orang Utans star attraction at New York travel show

Malaysian monkeys become star attractions at New York travel show
Yusof Sulaiman, TravelVideo.tv 4 Mar 08;

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (eTN) – The recently concluded annual New York Times Travel Show had a new pin-up--Malaysia's orangutans. Visitors to one of the largest trade and consume travel show on the US east coast have shown a "marked interest" in eco and adventure tourism, according to Mohamad Taib from Tourism Malaysia's New York office.

"Interest in the orangutans has shown a marked interest," said Mohamad, who is pitching Malaysia's riches of flora and fuana in Malaysian Borneo along with Langkawi island in peninsular Malaysia. "We are now promoting wildlife tourism in the US."

On July 28, 2006, the US government announced it is donating US$100,000 towards the "Heart of Borneo" conservation project, an imitative to protect and preserve the biodiversity of 220,000 sq km of equatorial rainforest which straddles Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei territories on Borneo island.

The region is the source of 14 of the island's 20 major rivers and is considered one of the most important centers of biological diversity in the world.

According to a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report, besides being home to the orangutans, the largest tree-climbing mammal and the only great ape found in Asia, it is also home to gibbons, macaques, Sumatran rhinoceros, and the pygmy elephants.

The area hosts about 90 different species of bats, as well as a variety of squirrels, cats, civets and mongooses. "Only half of the original forest cover remains, down from 75 percent in the mid-1980s," said WWF. “Rapid deforestation has significantly reduced Borneo's forest in recent decades."

The ASEAN stand at the show, with participation from Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, has received similar interest during the three-day show, which was hosted by American Express.

Tourist arrivals to Malaysia from the US increased by 17.5 percent in 2007, compared to the previous year following a slump. Negative publicity following the September 11 terrorist attacks lumped Malaysia into the "unsafe" destination category.

Tourism has since then been instrumental in helping to break down prejudices and misconceptions, putting Malaysia back as a country with few or no bureaucratic hassles, and a safe destination.

Syed Nasir, whose New York-based tour agency offers package tours to Malaysia and Singapore, told newsmen Malaysia is now viewed as a liberal country compared to other Islamic countries. "There has been a gradual change in perception."

Despite Singapore offering better connectivity to the region, Nasir says Malaysia still offers the visitor better "value for money" than Singapore and Thailand. "Southeast Asia still offers value for money to the US visitor. The open skies policy for ASEAN effective in 2009 will make the region an even more attractive destination."

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Take cover by saving urban trees: stop chopping them down

Vassili Papastavrou, BBC The Green Room 4 Mar 08;

Let's stop chopping of our urban trees and embark on a scheme to plant lots of fast-growing trees that soon leave us in the shade, argues Vassili Papastavrou. In this week's Green Room he tells us to take cover, because we need city canopies more than ever before.

While cycling to and from my home in Bristol, I have become aware of the large number of trees that are disappearing from surrounding streets.

A quick glance on Google Earth shows gaps like missing teeth along the once tree-lined avenues. It appears that a reason can be found to remove any urban tree.

Other neighbours shared my concern for the disappearing trees, so we looked in vain for an organisation that might help us; but there was none.

So, together we set up a local group called Bristol Street Trees. We also found out first-hand how nearly impossible it was to plant street trees in new locations, despite a huge willingness amongst the public to contribute money.

As we add to our collection of photographs of stumps, it seems that we are witnessing a dramatic loss of urban trees on public land, and street trees in particular.

Even if replacements are planted they are often species of tree that will not become large; the dramatic London planes are going, only to be replaced with rowans or flowering cherries, which will never provide the same benefits.

Though our interest is local, the problem is national. Scouring the press, we have found the most bizarre reasons for removing trees.

In Whitehall, street trees were removed as part of the "war on terror" and received global media coverage. In the London Borough of Islington, "killer pears" were given the chop.

In my local area, trees are removed for three main reasons: there are concerns about the hazards posed by "dangerous" trees, worries over often bogus subsidence claims, and road re-alignment projects which seem to require completely unimpeded sight lines, despite the slow crawl of urban traffic.

We live in a risk-averse society, but the danger from trees is tiny. Each year, about three people in the UK are killed by falling trees in public places, which works out as roughly a risk of one in 20 million.

The UK's Heath and Safety Executive considers a one-in-a-million risk as very low and the threshold for what is considered acceptable.

Contrast this with the risk of one-in-16,800 for an average Briton being killed in a car accident in any one year.

Take cover

The risks to our health and well-being from removing trees are far higher. The benefits that urban trees bring are only just being formally recognised.

We now know that they can reduce urban temperatures by 4C (7F); more urban canopy cover will be critical as temperatures climb as a result of global warming.

Trees also absorb floodwater and slow run-off and increase house prices. Studies in the US show they can even reduce crime rates.

Urban trees also absorb pollution of all kinds, particulate, chemical and noise; their ability to do this depends on their size.

The conflict between risk and benefit is a head-on clash between two major ideologies in a rapidly changing environment. Local councils are stuck in the middle, so no wonder their decisions are controversial.

In the case of an individual tree, only the problems it presents are considered; there is no mechanism to balance the benefits provided by the tree.

It is no coincidence that the biggest arguments happen over the biggest trees. Even ancient and veteran trees, some hundreds of years old, are under threat.

The very cavities and hollows that are seen as "problems" are important for woodpeckers, bats and other wildlife. Woodpeckers drum on dead wood, carefully choosing sounding boards that amplify the noise. But councils don't like dead wood - at least not outside their chambers.

Notable trees on private land are legally protected, as are all trees in conservation areas. In contrast, trees on public land have no protection.

Some councils do not even provide advance notice of tree removals, let alone consult residents. Days before one local tree was removed, a notice appeared on it saying: "Help, I need a solicitor".

Although there are many to make the case for the prosecution, it is Kafkaesque that no one can take up the defence.

The consequence is that the public is completely disenfranchised and watches powerlessly as trees are removed. We often hear of conflicts with tree officers, despite them sharing common values over the importance of trees.

Root of the problem

So what is the solution? Firstly, the discussion on risk that is already happening in the technical journals and industry conferences needs to be brought into the public domain.

Members of the public are quite capable of understanding risks - we do this every day when we decide whether or not to walk under a ladder or cross the road in a particular place.

We need to know just how unlikely it is to be killed by a tree.

The presumption should be one of retaining the tree, rather than reaching for the chainsaw at first sight of a "problem". There are ways of reducing risk other than felling.

In a park, it can sometimes be as simple as closing a path, or changing the mowing regime to make it less attractive for people to spend time under the tree.

Instead of reducing the risk by removing the tree, one could remove the bench under the tree. Having fewer people under the tree decreases the risk of injury. Or, one could give the canopy a trim.

"Fell and replace" is usually the wrong approach, as it will not provide us with the canopy we desperately need right now.

Then, we need councils to open up and consult before removing trees and also to develop strategies for increasing our urban canopies.

When trees are identified with problems, there should be consultation about the options, with all the facts disclosed.

But more than facts, we need to give some weight to ethical values, because people care about trees. We wouldn't ignore values in any decision on a historic building, so neither should we on trees.

Councils need to be up-front about the cost implications of different options. In Bristol, the tentative first steps towards consultation have just started with the first meeting this March of a Street Tree Forum.

Highways work should also retain trees rather than remove them.

Finally, it needs to become socially unacceptable for householders or insurance companies to petition for the removal of trees when the problem is the lack of proper foundations in our Victorian housing stock.

People who live in tree-lined streets should enjoy the benefits or move out.

Unless something changes fast, we will continue to lose our urban canopy at just the time that we need it most. Now that is a real risk.

Vassili Papastavrou is a biologist who works for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw). He is particularly interested in large, long-lived organisms such as whales and trees

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

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Philippines' largest lake under threat: study

Yahoo News 4 Mar 08;

Pollution, slums and an invasion of foreign fish species are threatening the Philippines' largest lake, one of the nation's major fish farming regions, according to a study published Tuesday.

Laguna de Bay on the outskirts of eastern Manila covers more than 90,000 hectares (222,300 acres) but since 1965, fish pens and cages have been built out across some 15 percent of the lake.

The study, by the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Centre, said the lake's ecosystem was also being threatened by pollution caused by residential, commercial and industrial development and the encroachment of squatters along its shores.

"The worsening water quality in Laguna de Bay, which is caused mainly by water pollution, leads to water algae that kill fish through oxygen depletion as well as taint the flesh of the surviving fish," the report said.

Foreign fish species, such as the janitor fish, destroyed nets and competed for natural food and living space with the cultured species, it added.

Fishermen are being hemmed into ever smaller fishing areas, while illegal construction of fish pens along navigational lanes is causing friction between them and farming industry operators, the report said.

The study said the silting-up and pollution of the Pasig river connecting Laguna de Bay with the sea on Manila Bay also obstructed the natural backflow of saltwater to nourish aquatic life.

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Australian company claims tuna breeding breakthrough

Yahoo News 4 Mar 08;

An Australian aquaculture company claimed a world first Tuesday in artificially breeding endangered southern bluefin tuna.

Clean Seas Tuna said the successful collection of significant quantities of tuna sperm and eggs from captive fish at a breeding facility in South Australia would allow sustainable production of the species.

The breakthrough would allow the company to effectively double Australia's 5,200 tonne southern bluefish tuna annual quota within the next five years, it said in a statement to the Australian stock exchange.

"From a global perspective, successfully recreating the natural breeding cycle of one of the world's premier pelagic fish species is a key step towards ensuring sustainability of this key species at a time when wild stocks are under significant pressure," the company said.

The fish would not be subject to the strict Australian wild catch quotas and there were no trade barriers for their sale into the major markets of Japan, China, the United States and Europe, said chairman Hagen Stehr.

"Clean Seas will now have the ability to stimulate and then satisfy consumer demand for greater quantities of SBT, and we can potentially produce the fish year round," he said.

Clean Seas was listed on the Australian stock exchange in December 2005 and in November last year US-based Simplot, the company behind the John West brand, took a strategic stake in the company, the statement said.

Within half an hour of a trading halt being lifted after the announcement, Clean Seas Tuna shares were up 26.6 percent at 2.14 dollars (2.01 US dollars).

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Hundreds of kangaroos face cull in Australia: report

Yahoo News 4 Mar 08;

More than 400 kangaroos living on Australian defence department land face being culled after a plan to relocate them was blocked, a report said Tuesday.

The state government of the Australian Capital Territory has refused to grant export licences to move the eastern grey kangaroos to neighbouring New South Wales, The Canberra Times said.

As a result, the department of defence had abandoned plans to move them from the former naval station in Belconnen in Canberra, leaving a cull as the only alternative, the paper said.

There was an international outcry in 2004 when about 900 kangaroos were destroyed at the site of a dam supplying water to Canberra, and a new cull would spark "significant national protest action", said Wildlife Protection Association president Pat O'Brien.

State Environment Commissioner Maxine Cooper said that while the kangaroos at the site were considered over-abundant, she had recommended against relocation because experts considered it inhumane.

"The advice I'm getting... is the amount of trauma that occurs to the animal in the first instance is something they feel is unacceptable," Cooper told ABC radio.

Relocation would reportedly involve darting and sedating the kangaroos.

Cooper declined to say whether she had recommended culling the animals in a report to the state government on managing the territory's lowland grasslands.

A political row over kangaroo management in the state erupted last year and then defence department shelved its plans to cull kangaroos while it considered the proposal to relocate the animals from Belconnen.

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Best of our wild blogs: 4 Mar 08

Seafood to be featured on today's episode of Once Upon a Tree
details on the wildfilms blog

Red Dot Goes Green
CNA programme on environmental issues in Singapore, more on the AsiaIsGreen blog

More bad news on the future of Johora singaporensis
on the johora singaporensis blog

Updates on Singapore’s environmental efforts in the Committee of Supply Debate on the AsiaIsGreen blog

UNEP South China Sea Project
an indispensable website for recreationists, researchers, links on the hantu blog

Javan mynah chick rescue
on the bird ecology blog

Sea almond tree
some fascinating facts on the manta blog

Cockatoo at NUS
on the urban forest blog

Power of blogging helping Masai Mara wildlife
on the Social Media and Environmental Education blog

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Volunteers needed at Acres roadshow 7-18 Mar

From an email from Charlene at Acres

Dear ACRES Supporters,

We will be holding a roadshow at Causeway Point starting this Friday and we are in urgent need of volunteers to help out for 12 consecutive days!

ACRES will be having a booth to raise awareness on the illegal wildlife trade in Singapore and other animal protection issues. There will be exhibits on different animal welfare issues through informative educational panels and physical displays/replica models depicting the issues, for example toy animals crammed into crates showing how animals are smuggled for the illegal pet trade. Visit us at our booth and learn how you can help by living a cruelty-free lifestyle.

ACRES will also be celebrating 1 million signatures being collected worldwide for the global campaign "Animals Matter to Me". This will be held on the 14-16 Mar.

If you would like to do your part to raise awareness and funds for the ACRES Wildlife Rescue Centre (AWRC), please email james@acres.org.sg and inform him of the day and time that you will be available.

If you would like to volunteer and fulfill your involvement with the Community Involvement Programme (CIP), please bring your form down on the day and present it to an ACRES staff.

Time: 11am-9pm
Venue: 1 Woodlands Square map
Website: http://www.acres.org.sg/
Contact: To volunteer at the event james@acres.org.sg

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NEW Publication: Wild Animals of Singapore

‘Wild Animals’ is the most comprehensive account of Singapore’s wild animals ever produced in one volume. Almost all terrestrial vertebrates currently occurring are described and illustrated in brilliant habitat photographs, all taken in Singapore.

A total of 180 species are covered, including 38 mammals, 87 reptiles, 25 frogs and toads, and 30 freshwater fishes. There are additional chapters on how and where to find wildlife in Singapore, as well as a revised checklist of all non-avian vertebrates ever recorded in the country, including those extinct, introduced or of indeterminate status.

With images contributed by 28 local photographers, project coordination by Nick Baker and Kelvin Lim and generous sponsorship by Aabar Petroleum Investments, this publication is truly a team effort.
Profits from the sale of this book go to the Vertebrate Study Group of the
Nature Society (Singapore).

The book will be available from 29 March at $25 from Nature Society (Singapore) and $29.95 from Nature's Niche.

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Elias Estate residents ask: Why kill our trees?

Town Council Replies: They're a danger

Casuarina trees in Elias Road estate chopped down
Cheryl Teo, The New Paper 4 Mar 08;

IT takes 15 years for them to grow to a height of 14 storeys but only a day for them to disappear.

That is the lament of some residents of the Elias Road estate after seven of the 27 casuarina trees there were removed from around three blocks in the estate.

When Ms Law Kah Yen, a 32-year-old PR consultant, woke up on 23 Feb, she found seven of these 'gentle giants' being chopped down and uprooted.

The Pasir Ris-Punggol Town Council had decided to have the trees removed because of safety concerns.

Ms Law said: 'We were really upset when we saw what was being done.

'The trees had added a lot of character and comfort to the neighbourhood.

ADMIRATION

'Visiting family members as well as overseas friends admire the trees.'

Another resident, Madam Chang Kim Yin, a 40-year-old housewife, said in Mandarin: 'I feel the trees made the HDB estate classier.'

A 52-year-old building consultant, who gave his name only as Mr Teo, said the trees provided shade, especially for the houses on the lower levels, from the afternoon sun.

But it was a job that had to be done, said the town council.

In an official response, the Pasir Ris- Punggol Town Council said it sympathised with the residents.

However, 'it is essential for us to proceed with the removal (of the trees) in view of public safety'.

During routine horticultural maintenance, hairline cracks had been found on the trunks of the trees.

These cracks indicate the possibility of the trees developing internal decay, which cannot be easily detected.

The trees were located close to pedestrian crossings and footpaths.

The town council said: 'We have previously received calls from concerned residents who have witnessed snapping branches and requested a complete removal of such trees.'

HARD TO MAINTAIN

Yet another worry of the town council is the ability of the trees to grow to 40m in height, making maintenance and inspection difficult.

Mr Lim Choon Hoe, who is in his 40s and has been living in the area for eight years, recalled: 'A few years back, one of the trees near the covered linkway collapsed.

'I am quite worried as they may cause danger to the residents, especially to young children who often play around the area.'

He added: 'I support the town council as they are experts and are taking preventive measures.'

But Ms Law is still unhappy.

She said: 'I am hoping that they'll be able to work around it and not just take the easy way out.

'I have grown emotionally attached to these trees, having seen them grow from five-storey young trees to their current 14-storey height.

'They are a big part of our home.'

The town council said the removed casuarina trees will be replaced with 3-to 4m-tall trees 'so as to provide an instant visual impact to complement the current landscaping'.

The remaining casuarina trees do not have to be removed immediately, though they will continue to be checked.

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Research begins on jatropha as biofuel

Singapore firm hopes to develop a better, more productive strain of the plant
Jessica Cheam, Straits Times 4 Mar 08;

ON A small new research farm in Singapore's rural district, the seeds of a so-called wonder plant, jatropha curcas, have just taken root.

The sprouting of these hardy plants - touted as the 'fuel of the future' - could mark a new chapter for Singapore's fledgling biofuels industry.

Scientists in Singapore hope to develop a superior and more productive strain of jatropha at the 1.7ha farm, located near Sungei Buloh Nature Park.

The plant has caused a stir in the scientific community worldwide, as its seeds could emerge as a rival to leading biofuel feedstocks such as palm oil, whose price has been soaring in tandem with that of crude oil. Biofuels are fuels made from plant matter.

Firms around the globe are also fast getting involved in jatropha plantations - and Singapore aims to get ahead of the pack with this research.

Home-grown research organisation Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL) has set up the farm - which will eventually grow 3,000 plants - using land allocated to it last year-end by the Singapore Land Authority (SLA).

SLA said the three-year lease is renewable up to 2015.

TLL's director of plant biotechnology, Dr Hong Yan, who is spearheading the jatropha research in Singapore, said that there is 'no single plant which has received so much attention in such a short span of time'.

Spurred by growing climate change awareness and rising crude oil prices, global biofuel industry revenue hit US$20.5 billion (S$28.6 billion) in 2006 and is set to reach US$80.9 billion by 2016, says United States research firm Clean Edge.

Biofuels are seen as less pollutive than fossil fuels as they emit less carbon dioxide when used to power engines.

But many critics argue that biofuels have led indirectly to deforestation and rising food prices, as farmers around the world switch to growing more lucrative biofuel crops.

Jatropha is widely seen as a solution to this problem. The plant is not edible and grows on semi-arid land unsuitable for food crops. It can grow up to 5m tall and has long been a source of lamp oil and soap. Some studies show the big, leafy shrub outperforming other feedstocks such as palm oil.

Despite the keen interest in jatropha, very little research has been done - so the plant's yield is unpredictable and mass cultivation methods have not been proven.

'This is why we're going big on this, in researching all aspects of jatropha. We hope to develop a superior strain that yields big quantities of oil for biodiesel,' said Dr Hong.

TLL chief operating officer Peter Chia said the farm will eventually serve as a showcase: 'Renewable energy has always been a big area of focus for us. We want to secure the know-how and eventually export this Singapore technology.'

TLL's jatropha research is another boost for Singapore's clean energy drive - an area singled out as a major engine of growth by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong last year.

Recently, Finnish oil refiner Neste Oil announced it will build the world's biggest biodiesel plant in Singapore at a cost of $1.18 billion. Meanwhile, Australia's Natural Fuel, which has a biodiesel facility in Singapore, also recently switched the feedstock it used from palm oil to jatropha oil.

Publicly listed GKE International, which recently bought over Van Der Horst Biodiesel - which has acquired land in neighbouring countries to grow jatropha - will also stand to benefit from the next phase of Singapore's biofuels research.

The biggest challenge now is to demystify the plant, said Van Der Horst chief executive Peter Cheng, who confirmed that he was in talks with TLL to collaborate on the quest for the best jatropha strain that could make mass biodiesel production a reality.

'Many biodiesel factories are hungry for feedstock,' said Dr Hong. 'They are waiting for the first breakthrough.'

However, he said that while jatropha could be the answer the biofuels market - and the world - is looking for, there are still a lot of questions that need to be answered. 'We'll just have to wait and see,' he added.

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Singapore group diversifies into biofuels, solar energy

Europtronic diversifies into biofuels, solar energy
Jessica Cheam, Straits Times 4 Mar 08;

EUROPTRONIC Group, an electronics component distributor, yesterday unveiled its masterplan to diversify into one of Singapore's hottest industries: clean energy.

The locally listed firm is moving into biofuels - a sharp contrast from its core electronics business - and plans to export a jatropha seedling much in demand across the world. Jatropha, a tough bushy plant with oil-rich seeds, holds much promise as a source of biofuel.

Europtronic's radical shift was set in motion in January, when it announced its investment in Chinese firm Dinghan Biotechnology, which specialises in breeding and cloning orchids and jatropha.

Europtronic is paying $6 million in the form of 30 million of its own new shares for Dinghan's. The Chinese firm will then become a wholly-owned subsidiary. A further US$5 million (S$6.97 million) will be pumped in over the next two years to expand Dinghan's capacity, said Europtronic chief executive Justin Huang yesterday.

Dinghan's greenhouse - where it grows jatropha seedlings - will be expanded from 80,000 to 120,000 sq m by year-end, added Mr Huang.

The area dedicated to growing jatropha is expected to hit 67.5 million ha by 2017. The biofuels industry has recently grown at a rapid pace with growing awareness of climate change issues and rise in oil prices.

Dinghan managing director Jerry Huang - the two men are not related - claims Dinghan's strain of jatropha has an oil yield of 55 per cent - 15 per cent higher than the published average of 40 per cent. He also guarantees disease- and germ-free seedlings.

Dinghan, which began researching jatropha a year ago, expects to reach an annual capacity of 13 million plants by the fourth quarter. It will sell each seedling for three yuan (58.8 Singapore cents).

Europtronic said it was in talks with buyers from America, Indonesia and Malaysia. It is considering patenting Ding-

han's technology, a form of 'mericloning'. This involves cloning the best DNA from the stem of a jatropha plant.

The company is also planning to go into the solar industry, according to Europtronic's Mr Huang. The firm has no plans to divest its electronics business, although it is open to such possibilities in the future, he said.

Dinghan has a team of 40 scientists. It made a net profit of 4.3 million yuan last financial year.

Europtronic shares closed 0.5 cents up at 15 cents yesterday.

Europtronic to go environmental; invests in jatropha
The group invests US$6m in jatropha, a form of biodiesel, and solar power
Matthew Phan, Business Times 4 Mar 08;

EUROPTRONIC Group, a maker of electronic components, is the latest Singaporean company to enter the environmental services field with ventures into jatropha and solar power, it revealed yesterday.

At a briefing for the press and analysts, the firm shed light on Dinghan Biotechnology - a Chinese biotech firm it is acquiring via a US$6 million new share issue - which grows high-yielding jatropha seedlings for sale to plantations.

Its jatropha seedlings are high-yielding, with mature plants able to yield fruit with oil content of over 55 per cent, compared with the typical 40 per cent, said Justin Huang, chief executive of Europtronics.

If a hectare of land is planted in 3m by 3m rows, for about 2,500 high-yielding seedlings in total, the seed yield per ha would be about 12,500 kilograms, compared with 7,400 kg normally, he said.

Dinghan plans to mass-clone and sell the seedlings to plantations, or biodiesel companies, said Mr Huang.

For example, it plans to contact D1, a London-listed firm that has a JV with British Petroleum to plant jatropha in Africa and India, to produce biodiesel. D1 has over 200,000 hectares of land worldwide, for which it will need seedlings, according to Europtronics.

It also plans to contact Singapore-listed GKE International, which is planning to plant over 150,000 hectares of jatropha in Asia, said Mr Huang.

However, when asked if he expects concrete deals to flow in, Mr Huang said the company is 'at the very beginning stage'.

'It wouldn't be a big contract, more like one-off buys from plantation owners. We've received inquiries from the US, Indonesia and Malaysia,' he said.

Dinghan expects to start shipping seedlings in six months' time, he said. The firm currently has capacity for about 18 million seedlings a year, but plans to raise this to an annual 30 million by the fourth quarter this year, and possibly 50 million in 2009. It expects to spend some US$5 million over the next two years for this, Mr Huang said.

It sells jatropha seedlings at 3 yuan (S$0.60) each, he said. Dinghan had net profits of 4.3 million yuan on revenues of 20 million yuan in 2007.

Separately, Europtronic, which has a market value of US$50 million, announced an MOU with Taiwan's Millennium Communication, which manufactures and researches solar cell components, to acquire up to 10 million new shares in Millenium for NT$30 (S$1.34), or about US$1.35, a share.

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Singapore petrochemicals: Managing high energy costs

Business Times 4 Mar 08;

IN today's high oil price environment, managing energy costs - which account for 15 per cent or higher of manufacturing costs for the chemicals industry - has become more critical for multi-billion-dollar petrochemical complexes worldwide.

Just as spanking new facilities like ExxonMobil's complexes in Singapore are moving to be 100 per cent energy self-sufficient by building in-house electricity/ steam generation capability, so too the established European complexes like BASF's giant 700-hectare integrated Ludwigshafen site.

As part of the German group's six billion euro (S$12.7 billion) package over five years to modernise its flagship complex, it has junked its older, inefficient coal-fired stations at Ludwigshafen.

These have been replaced by new energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) units that supply power and steam to the more than 250 chemical plants at the complex.

Its latest unit, a 440MW cogeneration plant that cost 240 million euros, raised in-house electricity generation at Ludwigshafen from 65 per cent to over 90 per cent. 'And we are supplying 100 per cent of electricity from this year,' a BASF official told visiting Asian journalists.

Ludwigshafen's cogen units are fuelled by natural gas piped from Russia, he said, adding that BASF has 'through backward integration' ensured security of supply by buying into the Russian gas fields.

'We are a shareholder of gas fields in Siberia through Wingas, which is a joint venture of Russia's Gazprom and BASF's Wintershall,' the official said.

'It's important to have access to gas,' he said with a degree of understatement. Ninety per cent of the power units at Ludwigshafen rely on the fuel, so as a back-up, Ludwigshafen is also connected by pipelines to gas from the North Sea, as well as to liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals.

High oil prices - which have hit US$100 a barrel in the past year - have forced up natural gas prices about 20 per cent over the same period. Ludwigshafen's challenge is not unlike that faced by the newer complexes coming up in Singapore.

For instance, ExxonMobil, which is building a second petrochemical complex - reportedly costing more than US$5 billion - is building a 220MW cogen plant to supply all its electricity needs at the complex, operational in 2011.

This will be its second cogen unit, after a 150MW unit that supplies its first complex. To ensure supply security, it recently signed a $3 billion-plus long-term deal with Keppel Gas for Malaysian gas supplies.

Ludwigshafen has three cogen plants of 390MW, 440MW and 40MW capacity, an oil-fired 800MW standby plant and another 100MW plant that produces electricity from chemical waste.

Compared with coal-fired power plants, the cogen plants help BASF reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by almost 40 per cent. Globally, the group operates more than 16 such cogen plants at its sites.

On our plant tour, our guide pointed out an old coal-fired power station that is scheduled to be pulled down, but hinted that BASF may just leave some of the coal-loading cranes.

'After all, coal still remains an option,' the official said, alluding to new, less polluting and more efficient coal-fired technology in the pipeline. Staying competitive remains the bottom line.

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Singapore gives solar energy sector a $20m boost

Incentive scheme to spur innovative approaches and capability
Lynette Khoo, Business Times 4 Mar 08;

(SINGAPORE) The government is giving the renewable energy sector a push amid soaring oil prices, by setting aside more than $20 million for the Solar Capability Scheme, the Minister of State for Trade and Industry S Iswaran announced yesterday.

In a bid to diversify sources of energy, this grant-based incentive is meant to spur more innovative approaches and capability development, in the architecture, design and system integration of solar panels as part of green buildings.

The fund will go towards offsetting part of the installation cost of solar panels for new buildings which attain a certain level of Green Mark standard. The Economic Development Board will be releasing more details of this scheme in due course, Mr Iswaran told the House yesterday.

In view of the global nature of energy issues, the government has also decided to set up an International Advisory Panel on Energy, which will be chaired by Mr Iswaran and consist of thought-leaders, eminent persons, and energy experts. The group will meet for the first time this November, which would coincide with the first International Energy Week, which will include a Singapore Energy Conference.

'Energy security has re-emerged as a growing concern for many countries, not just Singapore,' Mr Iswaran said.

Some members of parliament yesterday raised concerns over high energy prices and its impact. Singapore is a price taker as it depends fully on imports for its energy needs. The government's basic policy tenet has been that energy costs should be borne in full by end users because subsidies will create price distortions and the incentive to over-consume.

As subsidies are not sustainable in the long run, the government encourages competition which would exert a downward pressure on prices. Since competition was introduced in the electricity market in 2001, electricity tariff for low tension users - mainly households - only increased by 14 per cent although fuel prices more than doubled over the past seven years.

Mr Iswaran said he is hence not in favour of suggestions by some MPs to provide subsidies to solar energy in the form of feed-in tariffs, but rather allocate resources to R&D and test bedding to develop technologies that will bring down the cost of generating alternative energies.

To cope with intensifying global competition for resources, Mr Iswaran said the government's response has to be on two fronts. On the demand side, more efficient and innovative use of energy is required, and in this aspect, the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources outlined its efforts last week.

On the supply side, Singapore needs to diversify its sources of energy and continuously explore new fuel and energy technologies. To this end, the government has decided to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) to reduce its vulnerability to possible supply disruptions as some three- quarters of Singapore's electricity is generated using piped natural gas.

'We are currently in the final stages of liberalising the gas market and that will further enhance competition in our energy sector, Mr Iswaran said. He informed the House that Singapore's efforts to import LNG are on track.

PowerGas, the owner and operator of the gas pipeline network in Singapore, was designated the LNG terminal operator last September and the Energy Market Authority is now in the final stages of a request for proposal (RFP) process to select the LNG 'aggregator', which will consolidate demand from end-users, and import LNG into Singapore. The outcome of this RFP process will be announced in the second quarter of this year.

Why no subsidies for solar power
Zakir Hussain, Straits Times 4 Mar 08;

THE Government will not subsidise solar power, Minister of State (Trade and Industry) S.Iswaran said yesterday. This is in line with its policy of not helping end-users pay for energy.

However, it is setting aside $20 million for a Solar Capability Scheme.

The fund will offset part of the cost of installing solar panels in new, green buildings. The Economic Development Board will release more details soon.

Mr Iswaran was responding to Nominated MPs Edwin Khew and Eunice Olsen, who suggested subsidising solar power, which is costlier than energy from more pollutive sources such as fossil fuels.

'Our basic policy tenet,' MrIswaran said, 'is that energy costs should be borne in full by end-users. We do not subsidise the cost of energy because it will dampen price signals and create the incentive to over-consume.'

He added that the Government should be consistent and not subsidise a specific type of renewable energy.

Otherwise, questions would be raised about why it subsidised solar power but not bioenergy, or why it provided subsidies for energy but not other goods.

It is thus better for the Government to invest in research and development to develop technologies that will lower the cost of generating alternative energy, MrIswaran said.

There would then be no need to talk about subsidies.

Subsidies are also not sustainable in the long run, he said, noting that the Government has instead encouraged competition to put downward pressure on prices.

And consumers have benefited, he said.

To back his point, he observed that the price of fuel oil has doubled since 2001, but the electricity tariff for households has gone up by only 14 per cent, even though fuel makes up 55 per cent of the cost of electricity generation.

Households will also gain when the gas market is further liberalised.

Mr Iswaran noted the tensions and trade-offs between energy security, economic competitiveness and environmental sustainability, but stressed that economic growth is the best response to the current uncertain global energy outlook.

With growth, Singapore will have the resources to secure its energy supply, keep the environment clean and find new solutions.

The Government is also diversifying its sources of energy, such as by importing liquefied natural gas.

It has set up an International Advisory Panel on Energy comprising thought leaders, eminent individuals and energy experts from around the world.

To be chaired by Mr Iswaran, the panel will meet for the first time in November as part of the first International Energy Week here.

Green developers get $20m fund
Fund will cushion cost of integrating solar panels into new Green Mark buildings
Cheow Xin Yi, Today Online 4 Mar 08;

DEVELOPERS of new and green buildings can now tap into a $20 million fund set up by the Government — a decision that is certain to sit well all-round as oil prices continue to surge.

The fund will partly offset the cost of integrating solar panels into new buildings "which attain a certain level of Green Mark standard", Mr S Iswaran (picture), the Minister of State for Trade and Industry (MTI) told Parliament yesterday.

Under a 2005 scheme, buildings that meet environment sustainability standards will be Green-Mark-certified by the Building and Construction Authority of Singapore.

"This (Solar Capability Scheme) is a grant-based incentive, to spur more innovative approaches and capability development, in the architecture, design and system integration of solar panels as part of green buildings," he said, adding that more details would be released soon by the Economic Development Board.

It is part of the Republic's drive to encourage the adoption of renewable energy amidst concerns of high-energy costs fuelled by spiralling oil prices.

While the Government will encourage the use of solar energy through incentives and lowering grid connection fees, Mr Iswaran stressed that it will, however, stop at subsidising the cost of renewable energy through feed-in tariffs (Fit).

Fit is a form of energy subsidy where renewable energy companies are guaranteed contracts for energy produced at higher prices as compared to those from traditional sources.

The issue cropped up recently when Today ran a story on how the business community had urged MTI to consider Fit to promote the energy sector. MTI had argued against it, citing distortion to market and a possible increase in electricity prices.

Responding to a query from Nominated Member of Parliament Eunice Olsen as to how much more it would cost consumers with the adoption of Fit, Mr Iswaran said compared to a pool price of 22 cents per kilowatt, solar energy produced under Fit would be as high as "two to three times the cost, perhaps a little lower because oil prices have gone up now".

He added that it was not an "optimal strategy because what we are effectively doing is encouraging solar".

"The question is why solar when it can be bio-energy, bio-diesel and so on ... why not subsidise others as well?" he asked.

Asked by Ms Olsen if MTI's insistence against Fit for renewable energy is a reflection of its low priority for developing the industry, especially when tax credits are granted for expensive commodities like green cars, Mr Iswaran explained that the promotion of solar energy, or any other industry, can be done through other means.

Citing research and test-bedding initiatives such as the recently launched Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore and the $170 million allocated to the Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council for Solar Research and Development that aim to develop alternative energy technologies, Mr Iswaran said such approaches "give better returns in the long run".

"The right strategy is to help the industry get into a position of competitiveness vis-à-vis existing supplies of energy, but to subsidise it is to distort the market in terms of production and consumption decisions and we don't think that's the right thing to do," he said.

Amid the ongoing debate, Singaporeans were hit again by the impact of higher oil prices — which hovered around US$102 per barrel yesterday — as Caltex raised its price for petrol and diesel by 4 cents a litre.

S$20m Solar Capability Scheme to help new buildings tap solar energy
Channel NewsAsia 4 Mar 08;

SINGAPORE: The government has announced more initiatives to fuel growth in the energy sector in Singapore.

They include a S$20 million Solar Capability Scheme to encourage businesses to diversify their energy sources.

Singapore can now do more to grow the clean energy sector which will help to mitigate the risks of high oil prices and to ensure energy security.

The new Solar Capability Scheme will help to spur innovative use and integration of solar panels for new buildings.

Minister of State for Trade and Industry, S Iswaran, said: “The fund will go towards offsetting part of the installation cost of solar panels for new buildings which attain a certain level of Green Mark standard. EDB will be releasing more details of this scheme soon."

Mr Iswaran will also chair a new international advisory panel on energy.

The panel, comprising experts on the topic, will meet in November, as part of Singapore's first International Energy Week.

The event will also feature a Singapore Energy Conference where policymakers, academics and industry players can share ideas and spearhead new initiatives.

Apart from energy concerns, MPs continued to call for more measures to give businesses a leg up, in view of rising costs.

MP for East Coast GRC, Jessica Tan said: “Just a week ago, one of the industrial park manufacturers shared with me that he had a customer cancel an order with his company - the reason given was that Singapore products were getting too expensive due to our high costs, and the weakening US dollar."

Another questioned the role of JTC - a government agency tasked to supply industrial land at competitive rates.

MP for Ang Mo Kio GRC, Inderjit Singh, said: "First Ascendas was formed and now the perception is that JTC is ploughing its industrial space into Mapletree. REITS will require market driven prices.

“So the question is, has the government shifted from the policy of providing affordable industry and commercial space?"

Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang, replied: "For the flatted factory space, JTC's market share is around 20 per cent, so we take our cue from the market. And it is this sector that we are divesting, because we believe that industrial space in Singapore is fairly competitive market.

“So JTC need not stay in this field, JTC will concentrate on land. For the pricing of JTC's industrial space, factory space, this is set by the market. But for the pricing of land, we benchmarked ourselves against our competitive location and we are careful not to price ourselves out of the market.”

Mr Lim added that R&D and innovation will take Singapore further up the value chain.

And despite the tough global conditions, the outlook this year is for a slower but still healthy growth at between four and six per cent. -CNA/vm

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A cute puppy is not just a status symbol

Letter from Tan Ai Ling, Today Online 4 Mar 08;

I refer to the report "More abandon pedigree dogs" (Feb 28).

If there are stricter laws on licensing, the problem will only escalate. May I suggest the following two-pronged approach?

First, pet shops should micro-chip the dogs and submit the particulars of those who buy them to Agro-Veterinary Authority (AVA). Only those who are able to prove that their abode is suitable for the type of dog they wish to buy will be allowed to do so. Immediate registration should be part of the service and the duty of responsible pet shops.

Second, the AVA and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) seem to have different aims, though I am given to understand that the underlying principle of both organisations is to ensure the humane treatment of animals. Furthermore, the grim burden of the SPCA can only be eased with the support of the AVA. As such, the AVA should enforce front-end practices in pet shops to create a more responsible pet ownership environment.

This two-pronged approach should curb impulse or inappropriate purchases. Hopefully, like the World Wildlife Fund's slogan, "When the buying stops, the killing can too".

Finally, the SPCA should seriously consider campaigns which avoid depicting cute animals in favour of the truth. After all, young, healthy animals that end up there are likely to be euthanised and not become candidates for resort-living. I have met many people who tell their children that "Fluffy has gone to a lovely home" when they drop a dog off with a donation.

I appeal to everyone considering a dog — the cost is not the initial thousand dollars, but the thousands of dollars for vet bills (especially in their last days), damaged furnishings, as well as the hundreds of hours spent cleaning, training and integrating a dog into your family.

I have had two dogs, both lived to ripe old ages of 13 and 15 respectively. Unfortunately, dogs are not like children who learn to clean up after themselves and can be reasoned with.

Dogs remain eternally child-like and thus, unless you are ready for a toddler for the next 10 to 15 years, I suggest you get a RoboDog.

A gracious society is not one where, if you scratch the surface, what is revealed is the shallow need to purchase a status symbol.

Pet COEs to stop impulse buys?
Letter from James Teo Teck Nam, Today Online 4 May 08;

I refer to the report "More abandon pedigree dogs" (Feb 28). The number of dogs being abandoned tells us just how "gracious"our society is.

My suggestion is to issue Certificates of Entitlement (COEs) for dog ownership. This idea may sound frivolous but it will discourage impulse buying of dogs and add value to the life of animals — especially the abandoned ones.

Before anyone can say that this will turn into another revenue-generating scheme, I suggest that all funds thus raised be channelled towards animal welfare organisations, like pet shelters, including the one run by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The funds raised can also help increase resources towards areas such as (animal welfare) supervision and enforcement.

As a dog owner, I am willing to pay for such a COE so long as society as a whole (pooches included) can benefit from it.

Hopefully such a scheme will lessen the sufferings of our four-legged friends.

Dogs can be a godsend, but beware the costs

Letter from Maria Loh Mun Foong (Ms), Straits Times Forum 4 Mar 08;

I REFER to the article, '1,521 pedigree dogs dumped' (Feb 28).

About six years ago, I nearly added myself to the shameful statistics of people who abandoned their dogs.

Like many first-time dog owners, I could not resist my shih tzu's beseeching brown puppy eyes at the pet shop and bought it on impulse. Prior to getting it, I was absolutely clueless on typical canine behaviour, as well as how to take care of dogs. I had to learn the hard way.

Besides infecting me with mites the very first week, it was chewing my furniture to shreds and defecating indiscriminately on my rugs and carpets. Driven to sheer frustration, I was on the verge of returning it to the pet shop when a friend serendipitously told me: 'Dogs are not toys; you can't throw them away on a whim.'

I was really ashamed of myself and vowed to be a responsible dog owner from then on. But responsibility comes at a price: Annual licence fees are now $70. Its food costs about $50 a month (for a small dog), while grooming sets us back by more than $50 a few times a year, not to mention the weekly hour-long baths with special antiseptic shampoo that costs twice as much as mine.

It was, and still is, a magnet for all kinds of canine ailments, especially skin, eye and ear allergies and infections which have seen us going to the vet umpteen times. In addition, it gets an annual check-up and vaccination at the vet's.

Rain or shine, we bring it downstairs three times a day for it to answer the call of nature, as well as to exercise. Fortunately, we have a maid who helps us take care of it, especially during our holidays - otherwise, we would have to send it to a pet boarding hostel. And the list of responsibilities goes on.

What do we get in return? It is an unwaveringly loyal companion who wakes me each day with frenzied tail-wagging and greets us, frantic with joy, when we return home. It is a little shadow who follows us faithfully around the house and delights us endlessly with its antics. In short, it has sort of become a member of the family.

Dogs are a godsend, but only if we have the resources and ability to take care of them.

Related articles

more letters on dealing with abandoned pedigree dogs: Ban import of pets

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Over 900 stricken with typhoid in Philippine city

Channel NewsAsia 3 Mar 08;

MANILA : More than 900 people have been stricken with typhoid in a city just south of the Philippine capital Manila, a Red Cross official said on Monday.

The number could rise further as officials in Calamba city in Laguna province continue to track down the source of the disease, provincial Red Cross administrator Rutelly Cabutin told AFP.

"As of 5:00 pm today (0900 GMT), we have confirmed 903 cases. This includes those still in the hospital and those discharged," Cabutin said.

"It is quite alarming because the disease was not confined to one village, but is spread out in 18 villages. There could still be other undiagnosed cases," she said. "If the source can be immediately detected it can be stopped, but if it remains unknown, the number could increase."

The outbreak started last month but the cases have quickly piled up over the past two weeks, she said, adding that some 5,000 residents in 18 villages have sought medical help from the local government.

Health department officials in Manila were not immediately available to comment, but Cabutin said the local district water authority was testing samples.

She said only the health department in Manila can officially declare an outbreak, but local news reports have said hospitals in the area were having a hard time coping and that medical supplies were running out. - AFP/de

1,200 in Philippine city down with typhoid
Straits Times 6 Mar 08;

CALAMBA (PHILIPPINES) - THE Philippine government rushed medical aid to a city south of the capital Manila yesterday where an outbreak of typhoid has seen more than 1,200 people admitted to hospital, officials said.

'This is an outbreak and every outbreak is alarming,' Health Secretary Francisco Duque told reporters.

He said the government had established a coordinating centre in Calamba 60km south of Manila and was sending medical teams and aid to help local workers who were struggling to cope with the outbreak.

At the overcrowded JP Rizal Memorial District Hospital in the city, sick children in soiled nappies and on intravenous drips spilled into hallways from overcrowded wards, many in makeshift cots.

The first person showing symptoms of typhoid was taken to hospital on Feb 21 but more than 200 patients have been admitted since Monday.

Ms Maxima Balanes, 35, lay beside her twin toddlers Genely and Ashley on the floor of the hospital. All were hooked to IV drips and too weak to move.

'I think we got it from the water we drank,' she said, adding that one of her older children was also sick but had been discharged.

Nearby, another young patient, seven-year-old Lika Rose Sadicon, held on tightly to her plastic doll while propped on a small plastic chair, her eyes welling with tears.

Mr Duque said the latest field bulletin showed that 1,262 people had been rushed to hospitals with various typhoid-like symptoms.

Of the total, 27 cases were confirmed, while blood culture tests were being carried out on the others.

City officials in Calamba have so far not traced the source of the bacteria, Mr Duque said.

Most residents suspect contaminated drinking water as the source, but tests carried out by city officials have 'yielded negative results', the Health Secretary said.

'It is very important now for the short term for everybody in Calamba to boil their water,' he said, adding that medical staff had distributed chlorine tablets to add to drinking water.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Doctors struggling to cope with typhoid fever outbreak in Philippine city
Channel NewsAsia 7 Mar 08;

CALAMBA CITY, Philippines : Philippine authorities fear a shortage of medical resources in Calamba City which has been hit by a typhoid fever outbreak.

Doctors at JP Rizal Memorial Hospital in the Philippine city of Calamba are struggling to cope with the outbreak of typhoid fever.

With the sudden upsurge of patients, health officials said they are running out of medicines and medical supplies.

More than 1,400 residents have displayed symptoms of the disease in less than a month, prompting authorities to declare a state of calamity.

The normal maximum capacity for patients at the hospital is just enough for 50 patients, but it has increased to 180 patients, just trying to find their own space in the cramped hospital.

So far, 13 villages around Calamba have been hit.

Dr Dennis Labro, Calamba City Health Office, said, "We were caught by surprise. There are still new cases coming in, so medicines are still a big problem. Not only the space and the beds in the hospital, but the medicines as well."

Dr Natividad Ocampo, JP Rizal Memorial Hospital, said, "We were caught off guard because the patients just kept coming. We didn't know what caused the illness. We now have a 300 percent admission rate or more."

That is why sick children have to settle for makeshift beds on the floor in this small government hospital.

Leah Medallion, whose two-year-old son has typhoid, said, "It's hard for the children because it's very cold at night. Our situation here is really miserable."

Renalyn Dimayuga said she had to fight for a small bench for her three-year-old daughter to sleep on.

She said, "We have been staying here for three days. It's a good thing she is sleeping on this bench instead of sleeping on the floor."

Residents suspect the salmonella bacteria which caused the outbreak spread through contaminated drinking water.

However so far, water tests carried out by city officials have yielded negative results.

Additional tests are being done on the city's water basin to determine the source of the typhoid outbreak. - CNA/ms

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Climate skeptics roast Al Gore on global warming

Steve James, Reuters 3 Mar 08;

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Al Gore, who won the Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar for his environmental advocacy, was the main target on Monday at a conference of dissident scientists skeptical of his views on global warming.

Several speakers at the conference on climate change whose theme was "Global warming is not a crisis," took pot-shots at the ex-vice president and his film, "An Inconvenient Truth," which won last year's Academy Award for best documentary.

"Whether we like it or not, it was extremely effective propaganda," said Timothy Ball, an environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg.

"It was appropriate that he got an Oscar from the land of make-believe," he joked.

The gathering was sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a non-profit libertarian organization that studies environmental and other issues "from a free-market perspective" and argues that "property rights and markets do a better job than government bureaucracies."

Attendees watched a movie, "A Climate of Fear," by conservative TV commentator Glenn Beck, who charged that anyone who opposes the view that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing the earth to warm up, are branded "heretics or Nazis."

"Al Gore's version of climate change has no longer become science. It's dogma. And if you question it, you are a heretic," Beck said in the film.

The conference challenged a strong majority of world scientific opinion that has concluded that greenhouse gases are contributing to global warming.

This view has been backed by bodies such as the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"Our imperfect understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change means the science is far from settled," said Fred Singer, of the Science and Environmental Policy Project.

"Proposed efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions are premature and misguided. Any attempt to influence global temperatures by reducing such emissions would be both futile and expensive," he said.

Lord Monckton, who advised former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, blamed "the international left," for promoting that global warming is dangerous.

"It's the media wanting a scare story," he said.

(Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner, editing by Alan Elsner)

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Global warming threatens more than just coral

Antara 3 Mar 08;

Wellington (ANTARA News/Xinhua) - Rising sea levels from global warming will threaten the livelihoods and homes of more than 200,000 people who live on coral atolls in coming generations, the PACNEWS reported on Monday.

The warning came from Australia`s University of Queensland archaeologist and expert on the prehistoric use of coral atolls, Marshall Weisler.

Weisler said the Central Pacific islands of Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands as well as the Maldives in the Indian Ocean are most at risk.

Weisler said the situation was more serious than people realized with agricultural and already being lost to rising seas in the Marshall Islands, the PACNEWS, a Suva-based regional news agency reported on Monday.

"People have shown me where there used to be gardens, are now lagoons. There are coconut trees that are 20 meters off shore, half falling over," Weisler said.

"In Kiribati, there are high tides that inundate portions of villages, so people are on dry land in the morning and on stilt house villages with water under their house during high lunar tides.

"There are very serious problems for the next generation which may not even be able to live on the island that they are living on now," he added.

The International Panel on Climate Change has predicted sea levels could rise between nine and 88 centimeters this century.

Atolls are at risk because they are small, coral islands barely meters above current sea levels.

Weisler said predicting sea level rises was complex as waters could rise by different levels and have different effects, depending on the atoll location.

He said island nations would face tough decisions in the future about land ownership, economic futures and relocating entire countries within other nations.

"The people on these islands have a small voice because they are not Western industrialized countries with high populations. People aren`t paying attention to them," Weisler said.(*)

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Wind farms could drive bird species to extinction: conservationists

Karin Zeitvogel Yahoo News 4 Mar 08;

More than 60 years after it was pushed to the edge of extinction, one of North America's rarest birds, the whooping crane, faces new danger from environmentally-friendly wind farms, conservationists warned.

"Companies want to put their farms where the best wind is, and that overlaps with the migration corridor of the whooping crane," Tom Stehn, the whooping crane coordinator of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, told AFP.

"There are areas where we know large numbers of whooping cranes stop (during migration) and we would like wind companies to avoid those areas, with a good buffer zone," Stehn said on the eve of a key business-to-government conference on renewable energy, the three-day Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC).

The majestic whooping crane, which stands around five feet (1.5 meters) tall, was pushed to within 15 birds of extinction last century.

Since 1941, conservation groups have painstakingly built the whooping crane population back up to around 360 in the wild and 150 in captivity.

Whooping cranes migrate annually between wetlands on the coast of Texas and the Northwest Territories in Canada, flying a route that corresponds to the corridor wind companies are eying for their huge turbines as their industry expands.

That expansion was given a boost last week when the US House of Representatives voted to extend tax incentives for developers of the renewable power source.

Non-profit organization Audubon, a nature conservancy group with a focus on birds, also urged that wind energy not be allowed to develop unchecked.

"We're very much in favor of wind power because we're so concerned about the other sources of energy that are contributing to global warming," said Greg Butcher, Audubon's director of bird conservation.

"The trick is to get the siting and the design of the turbines right so that big birds like the whooping crane can avoid collisions," he said.

Of greater concern than collisions with turbines was the reduction of natural habitat of the whooping crane and other birds found only in North America, said Butcher and Stehn.

Loss of natural habitat was key in nearly driving the whooping crane to extinction, said Stehn.

If the wind industry is allowed to develop unchecked in the grasslands of the US Midwest, other animal species would suffer significant habitat loss and could be in danger.

One such species, according to Butcher, is the prairie chicken, which will not nest near tall structures such as wind turbines.

One subspecies of the prairie chicken, the heath hen, is already extinct; another, Attwater's prairie chicken, is endangered.

Laurie Jodziewicz, a spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), said the renewable energy industry was aware of the threat to bird species of wind development, and has engaged environmental groups, government agencies and academics in talks to seek ways to expand production without harming wildlife.

"We have an ongoing research program that focusses on prairie chickens but we are also looking at other grassland bird species to understand the different kinds of impact that development might have," Jodziewicz said.

"But it's important to remember that wind development is not the only thing that is causing habitat loss," she said.

"Wind development probably pales into insignificance compared to oil and gas, and town development."

Stehn aired concern about how wind development will result in "more and more powerlines" and urged that they be well marked to minimize the number of birds that collide with them and die.

Wind energy provided electricity to one percent of US homes last year and is projected to grow by 25 percent annually, with most of the expansion planned for the breezy corridor that stretches from Texas to Canada, according to the AWEA.

"They have to tap into the best wind resources," said Stehn.

"They can't take areas where the wind isn't going to blow every day -- it's not economically feasible."

Read more!

Cities Force Plants to Evolve

Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Yahoo News 3 Mar 08;

As concrete slabs chop up more and more of our urban landscapes, plants are forced to evolve in ways that may not benefit them in the long run, a new study suggests.

As a plant or any organism's habitat becomes fragmented - whether by intervening sidewalks and roads in cities or by logging in rainforests - it can be cut off from other members of its species, making reproduction more difficult.

Ecologists at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France studied how a weed, Crepis sancta, changed its reproductive strategy when faced with growing amounts of concrete sidewalks .

C. sancta produces two types of fruit, one that is heavy and falls on the ground near its parent plant, and another that is lighter and blown to other patches of ground by the wind. The researchers compared plants that grew in small "tree boxes" along the sidewalks of Montpellier, France, to plants that grew in open areas outside of town.

The C. sancta plants that grew in the sidewalk patches produced fewer lighter fruits than those that grew outside the city. The finding suggests the plants had evolved to favor the heavier fruit because they were more likely to survive; they tended to fall in the parent plant's dirt patch, whereas lighter fruits blown away from the plant were more likely to land on the concrete.

Using a model, the researchers estimated that it took the city-dwelling C. sancta plants only about 12 years (or 12 generations) to evolve to produce mainly heavy fruit.

Ironically, though the weeds evolved this way because it favored the survival of the isolated population of the species, ultimately it likely only intensifies that isolation by reducing the population's gene pool, said study author Pierre-Olivier Cheptou of CNRS.

Though the study only examined C. sancta, its findings, detailed in the March 3 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, likely would apply to any plants or other organisms that can make a similar reproductive trade-off, Cheptou told LiveScience.

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"Eat whale and save the planet": Norwegian lobby

Alister Doyle Reuters 3 Mar 08;

OSLO (Reuters) - Eat a whale and save the planet, a Norwegian pro-whaling lobby said on Monday of a study showing that harpooning the giant mammals is less damaging to the climate than farming livestock.

Environmental group Greenpeace dismissed the survey, saying almost every kind of food was more climate friendly than meat.

The survey, focused on whale boats' fuel use, showed that a kilo (2.2 lbs) of whale meat represented just 1.9 kilo (4.2 lbs) of greenhouse gases against 15.8 for beef, 6.4 for pork and 4.6 for chicken.

"Basically it turns out that the best thing you can do for the planet is to eat whale meat compared to other types of meat," said Rune Froevik of the High North Alliance, which represents the interests of coastal communities in the Arctic.

"Greenhouse gas emissions caused by one meal of beef are the equivalent of eight meals of whale meat," the study said.

The Norwegian-based Alliance said it was the first to measure the "carbon footprint" of whaling. Fish and seafood was comparable to whale meat with relatively low emissions.

Norway and Japan, the two main whaling nations, are seeking new arguments to promote whale meat after years of condemnation from anti-whaling nations for breaking with a 1986 moratorium on all hunts meant to save many whale species from extinction.

Oslo says, for instance, that the small minke whales it hunts are plentiful in the North Atlantic and that a 2008 Norwegian quota of 1,052 animals will not harm stocks. The meat is eaten mostly as steaks or in stews.

GREENPEACE DISMISSIVE

Greenpeace said the threat of extinction was more important.

"The survival of a species is more important than lower greenhouse gas emissions from eating it," said Truls Gulowsen of Greenpeace. "Almost every food is more climate friendly than meat. Most fish and seafood has similarly low emissions."

The Alliance survey, covering eight of Norway's 30 whaling vessels, said they emitted 885 tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2007 by burning diesel fuel and landed 461 tonnes of whale meat. That meant an average of 1.9 kilos of emissions per kilo of meat.

By contrast, raising cows in developed nations requires use of tractors, ploughs and fertilizers to produce feed. The animals themselves generate methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, in their digestive tracts.

The Alliance said that the "carbon footprint" was up to the first sale -- for whales the landing point and for livestock the farm gate. Neither included processing or transport costs to shops.

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) will hold a special meeting in London this week to review deadlock between pro- and anti-whaling nations.

Froevik said the IWC had turned into a group devoted to banning whaling rather than allowing hunts under strict controls. "We compare it to a soccer club where the only rule is that soccer is forbidden," he said.

-- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: here

(Editing by Charles Dick)

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King of soya: environmental vandal or saviour of the world's poor?

Vast plantations are a source of cheap food - but also encourage deforestation
Rory Carroll and Tom Phillips, The Guardian 3 Mar 08;

Erai Maggi does not look like a villain who is destroying the planet; nor does he look like a hero who is saving the world's poor. Wearing jeans and work boots, he can be found on a typical day driving a battered Fiat car on one of his farms south of the Amazon rainforest.

For someone who excites extreme views he seems miscast, neither Darth Vader nor Indiana Jones. But the 48-year-old Brazilian farmer is protagonist in a drama about climate change, globalisation, poverty and hunger.

Maggi owns more than 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) of soyabean plantations in Mato Grosso state. It is reckoned to be the biggest such holding in the world making him the king of soya.

"What really makes me feel happy is seeing the beans in the fields," Maggi said last week, shading his eyes from a tropical sun while gazing over yellowing fields ready for harvest. "Growing crops is the only thing I know how to do."

According to environmentalists Maggi also knows how to accelerate deforestation of the Amazon, at least indirectly. By buying up the savannah for soya cultivation, he forces cattle ranchers north into the rainforest where they slash and burn, releasing millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, said Paulo Adario, the Amazon director of Greenpeace in Brazil. "It is an indirect but fundamental impact."

There is another version of Maggi: a pioneer who helped turn a sea of barren scrub fit only for some cattle into highly productive farmland - and in the process turned Brazil into an agricultural superpower which is expected to overtake the US as the world's leading food exporter while the global population surges towards 9 billion people.

Brazilian government scientists discovered that the acidic soils of the savannah could be made fertile with phosphorus and lime, a momentous technological breakthrough that Maggi and other migrants from the south exploited when they moved to Mato Grosso in the 1970s and 1980s.

"They arrived with nothing and look what they've achieved, it is a great success story," said Alan Goldlust, the head of Comexport, a Sao Paulo-based trading firm. "Nobody thought it was possible."

Not so long ago Maggi's story would have been cast in terms of development versus ecology. Now a new dimension has complicated the picture. An upward surge in commodity prices has created, what the United Nations last week called, a "new face of hunger".

Annual global food price increases of up to 40% are hitting the poor and raising the spectre of urban malnutrition. Food riots have broken out in Morocco, Yemen, Mexico, Guinea, Senegal and Uzbekistan. Emergency price controls and subsidies have been declared.

Surging demand for meat and other foodstuffs from a new middle class in China and India is the main cause, followed in part by the transfer of land and grains to the production of biofuel and the hikes in energy costs. Volatile weather linked to climate change is a small but growing factor, said the International Food Policy Research Institute.

For Maggi this prompts a dramatic conclusion: Brazil's soya producers, without subsidies, are helping to save humanity. "We are a vital part of the food chain," he said. "We are producing the cheapest and healthiest protein there is. No one in the world can grow soyabeans as sustainably as we can."

Soya, a legume native to East Asia, has been called a "miracle bean" owing to its high protein content. Long popular with vegetarians, it is now valued as a quick, cheap and safe animal feed.

Maggi started out with a small plot and bought up neighbours one at a time, building an empire requiring a two-prop plane to keep tabs on its outer reaches.

His firm, Bom Futuro, uses 300 combine harvesters and 500 tractors to produce more than 600,000 tonnes of soya a year, most of it to feed livestock which will end up as meat in China and Europe. This generates £175m in revenue but there is a humanitarian impulse, said Maggi. He and other producers could cut output to drive up prices further, Opec-style. "But we don't," he said. "This isn't just about money, it's about doing something meaningful."

Asked, tongue-in-cheek, if soya barons should be considered for the Nobel prize, he nodded. "It makes a lot of sense," said Maggi.

That Al Gore received the call from Stockholm betrayed the ignorance of the Amazon's self-appointed protectors, Maggi said. Priorities were askew when environmental regulations prevented him transporting his crops to an Atlantic port via waterways and instead forced him to use a largely unpaved dirt road.

The married father of three denies any responsibility for deforestation. Soya farmers kept 35% of the savannah untouched, as mandated by law, and did not operate in the rainforest, said Maggi.

In 2006 Greenpeace gave its Golden Chainsaw Award to his cousin Blairo Maggi, the governor of Mato Grosso and at the time a bigger landowner than Erai. But that was absurd, fumed the soya king last week. "Neither I nor Blairo have cleared a tree in 10 years," he said.

Erai Maggi has put his name forward for Brazil's senate because he wants to accelerate Mato Grosso's development by paving roads and harnessing rivers. "That will mean cheaper food for China, for India, for everyone," he said. "I'm thinking of the big picture."

For critics this is the self-serving claptrap of a deluded or cynical tycoon. That producers are striving to keep prices low is implausible as they squealed in unison when prices plunged three years ago before recovering in 2007.

Nor is there much doubt about the link with deforestation. Soya producers buy up land already cleared by cattle ranchers who then acquire cheaper land deeper in the Amazon jungle, replacing virgin forest with vast pastures.

The rocketing of soya prices - up 72% in the past year - has been widely blamed for the accelerating clearances. "When soya becomes valorised on the market you get direct deforestation for soya," said Adario of Greenpeace.

Soya is also directly penetrating the Amazon, accounting for up to 10% of national production according to most estimates, he said: "The expansion is not just limited to the [savannah], it has started to enter into the forest."

There are also concerns about labour conditions. This year Brazilian officials extracted 41 workers from what were described as "slave-like" conditions on one of Maggi's farms. But workers on another farm, called Filadelfia, told the Guardian they had no complaints.

Regardless of whether Maggi is a hero or villain there is no doubting Brazil's importance in the global food chain. Across the savannah new towns built on soya have fancy hotels with clocks showing the time in Chicago, home to the world commodities market.

Prices fluctuate according to the unpredictable zig-zag of weather, investment and production data. Brazil's soya farmers like to point out that when the bell sounds at the end of a trading day there is one number which always, without fail, shows a relentless, remorseless rise: that of mouths to feed.

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Chicken shit in the US

Oklahoma fight over poultry waste escalates
Justin Juozapavicius, Associated Press Yahoo News 3 Mar 08;

In a region that produces billions of pounds of the nation's poultry, part of doing business for the past half-century was trying to ignore the smelly waste dropped by the birds.

Now, the chickens have come to roost, as Oklahoma wants a federal judge to stop 13 Arkansas-based poultry companies from dropping any more chicken litter in a once-pristine watershed.

The preliminary injunction request is part of the state's 2005 lawsuit against the $2 billion poultry operation here — including Tyson Foods Inc., the world's largest meat producer, Cargill Inc., George's Inc. and Simmons Foods Inc._ for polluting with chicken waste, which contains bacteria, antibiotics, growth hormones and harmful metals.

The Oklahoma-Arkansas region supplies roughly 2 percent of the nation's poultry and is one of several regions nationally where the industry is most concentrated.

At stake is a practice thousands of farmers have employed for years: Taking the ammonia-reeking stuff — clumped bird droppings, bedding and feathers — and spreading it on their land as cheap fertilizer.

However inexpensive, decades of mass-dumping of the litter has wreaked havoc in the 1-million-acre Illinois River watershed, turning it into a murky, sludgy mess, environmentalists say.

If a judge orders an end to disposing the waste here, the ruling could lead to similar environmental lawsuits nationwide against the industry, which produced more than 48 billion pounds of chicken in 2006.

The federal court hearing on the injunction continues Monday in Tulsa.

Oklahoma estimates more than 345,000 tons of poultry waste are produced annually in the river valley, with the bulk of that tonnage disposed of in the same area. More than 1,800 poultry houses are in the region, most of them in Arkansas.

Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson said while the industry spends tens of millions of dollars on self-promotion — such as the $75 million "Powered by Tyson" campaign — its decision not to properly dispose of the bird waste is about the bottom line.

"They could burn it as energy, process it and pelletize it, they can even properly compost it until the pathogens are dead," Edmondson said. "And they have chosen economically not to."

To try the case, which so far has cost more than $12 million, Oklahoma has retained the South Carolina law firm of Motley Rice, known for winning a settlement of nearly $250 billion against the tobacco industry in the 1990s.

The poultry industry, which has refused to disclose how much it has paid to defend the lawsuit, is fighting back.

It says Oklahoma is using unreliable, untested data to make its case and refuses to accept other factors of pollution in the watershed, such as cattle manure and urban runoff.

"It's junk science," said Tyson Foods attorney Robert George.

They also defend poultry litter's use as an organic fertilizer, and add that Oklahoma and Arkansas state laws already regulate land application of the waste.

Industry spokeswoman Jackie Cunningham said an injunction could be a major blow to the economy in Oklahoma, which ranks 10th in the nation in poultry production at 1.3 billion pounds annually.

"It's important to keep in mind the monetary demands being made (in the lawsuit) could potentially bankrupt family farms," said Cunningham, director of community relations for the Poultry Community Council.

Here in Colcord, a town of about 900 near the Arkansas state line, many residents have their fortunes tied in some way to the poultry industry.

Ranchers Bill and Betty Anderson, whose land has been in the family since the 1930s, depend on the litter from six chicken houses as fertilizer to grow hay for cattle. Their alternative is paying hundreds of dollars per ton for commercial fertilizer.

When they heard news of an injunction to stop a practice they've known for decades, they thought it was some kind of joke.

"I think it's about the money," Bill Anderson offered. "The chicken people like the Tysons and Cargills, they're the only ones who've got money.

"You can't get blood out of a turnip," he said.

For ranchers Al and Bev Saunders, who have up to $750,000 invested in their chicken-growing operation, an injunction could be a backbreaker.

"I don't think that Oklahoma really wants to put farmers out of business," Bev Saunders said.

But what about what the litter could be doing to the watershed?

"The farmers, we want good water too," she said. "If I even thought there was a health threat, I would be the first to stand up and say something about it."

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