Thailand's northern provinces battle haze

Yahoo News 25 Mar 08;

Thailand's northern provinces are battling a haze which has blanketed parts of the region after the annual burning of wood and agricultural waste, health authorities said Wednesday.

Provinces including Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai, popular with tourists and trekkers, are suffering from poor air quality because of the smog, which descended earlier this month.

Air quality in Thailand is measured in micrograms of particles of matter per cubic metre, with 120 considered unhealthy, and 300 considered dangerous.

Chiang Rai town recorded levels of up to 137.9 on Monday, while Chiang Mai city saw levels soar to 171.3 on the same day, the pollution control department said. Mae Hong Son and Lamphun provinces are also affected.

Air quality was returning to normal levels on Wednesday, but Health Minister Chiya Sasomsub said his ministry will give 200,000 face masks to villagers affected by the haze and ask local hospitals to be on alert.

"Health officials will also educate and campaign to try and tell villagers that they should not burn forests, rubbish or grasses, as this will help reduce the amount of dust in the air," he said in a statement.

The Thai government declared a state of emergency in much of its northern region in March last year after forest fires and slash-and-burn farming sent a cloud of smoke and dust across eight provinces.

Seasonal fires bring haze to Thai north
Chiang Mai among areas suffering poor visibility and high levels of pollution
Nirmal Ghosh, Straits Times 27 Mar 08;

BANGKOK - SEASONAL forest fires and the burning of chaff and corn stubble continued to shroud Chiang Mai and several other parts of northern Thailand in smoke and dust yesterday.

A day earlier, Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej had voiced concern over the pollution problem.

There was some improvement in conditions yesterday compared to several days back, Chiang Mai residents said, but the pollution level was still bad.

One resident told The Straits Times over the phone that a recently installed air purifier could work for only 20 minutes at a time before the filter became clogged.

The Thai authorities use a standard called PM10 - indicating levels of dust particles smaller than 10 microns in diameter, likely to be inhaled by humans - to measure smoke and dust pollution.

A few days ago, the PM10 pollution level was at a dangerous 200, but as of yesterday afternoon, it had dropped to between 74 and 95 in and around Chiang Mai.

Anything above 120 is considered hazardous to health.

Amid the mounting summer heat, Mae Hong Son province, which usually bears the brunt of forest fires in the rugged hills of the Thai-Myanmar border, has been the worst hit.

Wildfires could be seen in the hills at night, residents said.

On Tuesday, an incoming Thai Airways flight had to be diverted because of poor visibility.

Yesterday's morning flight from Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Son was also cancelled.

By 3pm yesterday, however, visibility had improved from 1.2km to 5km, and normal air services had been restored.

An official of Mae Hong Son municipality told The Straits Times that conditions in the morning were usually bad but would improve by the afternoon - and yesterday was better than previous days.

The Ministry of Public Health in Bangkok on Tuesday scrambled to send 200,000 face masks to northern towns after King Bhumibol asked for daily reports on the situation.

Pollution Control Department chief Supat Wangwongwatana said that the problem was related to forest fires in 'hot spots' in Thailand, as well as neighbouring Myanmar and Laos.

On Tuesday, he was reported as saying: 'The number of hot spots in Indochina was getting high on March 22 with 952, and gradually dropped to 575 and only 271 on March 24.'

Local officials and residents are hoping for rain to dampen fires and clear the air.

They include those involved in Chiang Mai's thriving tourism sector, which according to some reports has seen a dip in bookings following reports of the pollution.

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Vast Antarctic Ice Shelf on Verge of Collapse

Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Yahoo News 25 Mar 08;

A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming's impact on Earth's southernmost continent.

Scientists are shocked by the rapid change of events.

Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado was monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and spotted a huge iceberg measuring 25 miles by 1.5 miles (41 kilometers by 2.5 kilometers) that appeared to have broken away from the shelf.

Scambos alerted colleagues at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) that it looked like the entire ice shelf - about 6,180 square miles (16,000 square kilometers - about the size of Northern Ireland)- was at risk of collapsing.

David Vaughan of the BAS had predicted in 1993 that the northern part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf was likely to be lost within 30 years if warming on the Peninsula continued at the same rate.

"Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened," he said. "I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread - we'll know in the next few days and weeks what its fate will be."

Aircraft reconnaissance

The BAS scientists sent an aircraft out on a reconnaissance mission to survey the extent of damage to the ice shelf.

Jim Elliot, who captured video of the breakout said, "I've never seen anything like this before - it was awesome. We flew along the main crack and observed the sheer scale of movement from the breakage. Big hefty chunks of ice, the size of small houses, look as though they've been thrown around like rubble - it's like an explosion."

An initial iceberg calved away from the Wilkins Ice Shelf on Feb. 28. A series of images shows the edge of the ice shelf proceeding to crumble and disintegrate in a pattern characteristic of climate-caused ice shelf retreats throughout the northern Antarctic Peninsula. The disintegration left a sky-blue patch of hundreds of large blocks of exposed old glacier ice floating across the ocean surface.

Though these broken chunks of ice have spread into the sea, they won't raise sea levels because the ice shelf was already floating on the water.

By March 8, the ice shelf had lost just over 160 square miles (414 square kilometers) of ice, and the disintegrated ice had spread over 540 square miles (1,400 square kilometers). As of mid-March only a narrow strip of shelf ice between Charcot and Latady islands was protecting several thousand more kilometers of the ice shelf from potentially breaking up.

The region where the Wilkins Ice Shelf lies has experienced unprecedented warming in the past 50 years, with several ice shelves retreating in the past 30 years. Six of these ice shelves have collapsed completely: Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and the Jones Ice Shelf.

Antarctic warming

The Wilkins Ice Shelf was stable for most of the last century until it began retreating in the 1990s. A previous major breakout occurred there in 1998 when 390 square miles (1,000 square kilometers) of ice was lost in just a few months.

"We believe the Wilkins has been in place for at least a few hundred years, but warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing it to break up," Scambos said.

The Antarctic Peninsula has warmed faster than anywhere else in the Southern Hemisphere; temperature records show that the region has warmed by nearly 3 degrees Celsius during the past 50 years - several times the global average and only matched in Alaska.

Other parts of Antarctica, including the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, seem to be more stable, though areas of melt have been observed in recent years.

Melting in the Antarctic is different than the recent record melt in the Arctic. Antarctica is composed of ice sheets, or huge masses of ice up to 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) thick that lie on top of bedrock and flow toward the coast, and ice shelves, the floating extensions of ice sheets. Arctic ice is primarily sea ice, some of which persists year-round and some of which melts in the summer and freezes again in the winter.

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Peru tribe battles oil giant over pollution

Dan Collyns, BBC News 24 Mar 08;

It is a familiar story. Big business moves into a pristine wilderness and starts destroying the environment and by turn the livelihoods of the indigenous people who live there.

But in a reversal of plot, there are now cases of people living traditional lifestyles who are now invading the territory of the big companies and taking them on at their own game.

The story of the Achuar tribe living in the Amazon rainforest of north-eastern Peru is one of them.

Last year, they filed a class action lawsuit against oil giant Occidental Petroleum, in Los Angeles.

Now they are awaiting a judge's decision on whether the case can proceed in the US or will be sent back to Peru, where it stands little chance of coming to court.

'No credible data

The Achuar people, who have lived for thousands of years in the rainforest, allege that the company contaminated their territory during more than 30 years of oil drilling, making their people sick, even causing some to die, and damaging their land and livelihoods beyond repair.

Occidental Petroleum, which pulled out of Peru eight years ago, denies liability in the case.

It has responded, saying: "We are aware of no credible data of negative community health impacts resulting from Occidental's operations in Peru."

The oil bonanza began in Peru almost 40 years ago when many foreign companies were given an open invitation by successive governments to test and drill in the Amazon.

What they did not consider was the devastating impact it would have on the native people, principally the Achuar - their land, their livelihood and their health.

The Achuar's spiritual leader, Tomas Maynas, wears a bright red headdress made of toucan feathers, and has red war paint streaked on his face. He is the plaintiff in the suit against the company.

He remembers how everything changed when the oil companies arrived. He says the animals ran away, the fish died and their crops started to wilt.

"The Peruvian state just wants to extract as much oil as they can from our land. They've made millions of dollars but we haven't seen it here.

"We know there's wealth here and there'll be more drilling so the state will keep on killing us. But sometimes, when there is pressure, the state gives in."

The lawsuit alleges Occidental Petroleum ignored industry standards and employed out-of-date practices, dumping around 9bn barrels of toxic waste water into streams and rivers over 30 years.

After Occidental left, its operations were taken over by Pluspetrol.

Pluspetrol agreed to change practices in late 2006 when the Achuar, after repeated attempts to negotiate, took direct action.

Shotguns and spears

Many of the older Achuar men once fought in tribal wars with their neighbours, now they finally had the chance to hit their elusive new enemies where it hurt - in their pockets.

Peacefully, yet armed with shotguns and spears, they occupied and held the Amazon oil wells in October 2006.

The government and the company, losing millions of dollars a day, were forced to come to the negotiating table.

The Achuar came away with a commitment from Pluspetrol to reduce contamination and to pay millions of dollars to clean up and establish a 10-year health plan.

It was thanks to help from outside but also a new generation of indigenous leaders who are learning how to protect their rights in the modern world.

"A whole generation had their health damaged. How can we keep quiet as our parents did?" asks 29-year-old Petronila Chumpi.

"We can't allow this, we're a new generation, we know how to read and write and we have to help our people because they didn't have the knowledge to defend themselves against the oil companies. But now we do."

Improvement

Even on a fast motorboat, Trompeteros is a long day's journey up three rain-swollen rivers from Loreto's regional capital, Iquitos. A hamlet of some 3,000 people, it is situated right opposite Block Eight, one of the main oil wells.

Local people say there is still contamination and oil spills, but now the Achuar have GPS transceivers to log the problems where they find them.

Little by little there are signs of improvement.

But there is frustration on the part of Pluspetrol, which has pledged to pay millions of dollars, that the government is not playing a bigger role.

"This oil industry should be of benefit for everybody - maybe today it's not of benefit to indigenous people and the government should find the best way to solve that problem," says Roberto Ramallo, general manager of Pluspetrol Norte.

But the problem is that the Achuar and other tribes live on top of potentially enormous reserves of crude oil.

Thanks to an intense drive to auction it off, almost three-quarters of the Peruvian Amazon is leased for oil exploration and extraction.

High global demand and the price of oil is also making companies look at the Peruvian Amazon as an attractive prospect, but is it sustainable?

"All of this petroleum exploration in the Amazon is a grand experiment," says Bill Powers of E-Tech, a not-for-profit engineering firm.

"It's just coming into the jungle, developing the resource, getting the economic benefit and historically it's been whatever happens to whoever was there before, happens.

"There's no plan, there's no effort made to ensure that they maintain their cultural integrity or that they have something to do once the rivers and the forest don't provide what they used to provide."

Future plans

Carbon trading schemes have yet to reach this part of the Amazon and the oil boom is not the only threat.

President Alan Garcia has proposed privatising large areas of the rainforest, but local officials say the government in Lima does not understand the impact this would have.

The regional president of Loreto, Ivan Vasquez, says the Amazon needs to preserve its diversity at all costs.

"The ecosystem is the genetic bank of the Amazon, as it brings together genetic matrices which don't exist anywhere else - thousands of interconnected genetic bases.

"That is our capital, the genetic bank that we have to preserve for humanity, and for the world."

The Achuar have so far rejected new oil exploration on their territory.

Their story is an emblematic case of resistance for indigenous Amazonians and is unprecedented in Peru.

But the Peruvian rainforest, the biggest stretch of Amazon outside Brazil, is still the focus of the relentless global hunt to find new sources of fossil fuels.

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New 'battle of Midway' over plastic

David Shukman, BBC News 26 Mar 08;

On the coral atoll of Midway in the central Pacific - famous for America's first victory over the Japanese fleet in World War Two - wildlife experts are facing a new battle against a rising tide of plastic waste.

The Midway Islands are home to some of the world's most valuable and endangered species and they all are at risk from choking, starving or drowning in the plastic drifting in the ocean.

Nearly two million Laysan albatrosses live here and researchers have come to the staggering conclusion that every single one contains some quantity of plastic.

About one-third of all albatross chicks die on Midway, many as the result of being mistakenly fed plastic by their parents.

I watched as the deputy manager of the wildlife refuge here, Matt Brown, opened the corpse of one albatross and found inside it the handle of a toothbrush, a bottle top and a piece of fishing net.

He explained how some chicks never develop the strength to fly off the islands to search for food because their stomachs are filled with plastic.

"It is disheartening to see such a monumental problem. It's really going to take not just people in a refuge or people working with birds like this - it's really a global effort to solve this problem."

According to Matt Brown, the need for action is urgent because plastic waste adds to a list of existing threats.

"The plastic is just another, very large straw on the camel's back that's really endangering the future of these birds."

Many albatrosses are found to have swallowed disposable cigarette lighters - which look remarkably similar to their staple food of squid.

Others become ensnared in plastic. We were alerted to one albatross chick with a large green hook fixed inside its beak. The beak itself had become deformed.

One of the experts here, John Klavitter, carefully extracted the hook and found a small plastic net dangling from it.

The net may once have held some fruit, hung on display in some distant shop, only to end up threatening the life of one of the world's greatest sea-birds.

The staff here regularly try to clear up the plastic but the task is huge.

We filmed a clean-up operation on one short stretch of beach and after just 30 minutes there was a vast pile of fishing floats, bottles, plastic sheeting, toys, torches, and deodorant sticks.

One challenge is finding every small piece of plastic - it's often the tiniest fragments that cause most damage.

Another is maintaining morale as each tide or wind brings another load of plastic to Midway's shores.

In theory the wildlife here enjoys a double layer of bureaucratic protection - lying within a wildlife refuge and a newly declared Marine National Monument.

But none of that counts for much if products designed to be cheap, durable and long-lasting are allowed into the oceans in the first place.

Related links

Diary from the middle of nowhere on the BBC website

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Switch off and save the earth, Singaporeans urged

One hour of total darkness?
Jinny Koh Today Online 26 Mar 08;

SHOULD Singapore experience an islandwide blackout from 8pm to 9pm this Saturday, it would, for once, be good news — at least for the environment.

Proponents of Earth Hour 2008, a worldwide effort to create awareness about global warming, are urging Singaporeans to switch off all lights for that hour.

Already, seven major corporations, including Microsoft, CapitaLand, Suntec Convention Centre and Philips Electronics Singapore, have pledged their participation. Today, more than 50 students from Raffles Girls School and Chong Cheng High School (Main) will be getting schoolmates to join the programme.

But how would the average Singaporean respond? Of the 25 people Today polled, 16 declined to participate, most because they said moving about at home in the dark could be dangerous, or they needed to work. Some felt turning off air-conditioners would be more useful. Others saw no point in saving energy for just an hour. "The effort on my part is an everyday thing — I switch off the light if I'm not using it," said Ms Anita Tan, 40, a business development executive.

But nine people thought an hour was a small sacrifice in light of the global environmental crisis.

"It wouldn't make a huge difference to my electricity bills but if my whole block can do that together, the collective impact on the electricity saved would be quite significant," said student Lim Yan Wen, 22.

Launched in Sydney last year, Earth Hour — a World Wide Fund initiative — saw 2.2 million Australians taking part, and the symbolic event has become a global movement.

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Green Plan keeping Singapore in sync with nature

Lee Poh Onn, Straits Times 26 Mar 08;

THE recent MasterCard Worldwide report on the environmental vulnerability of cities ranked Singapore third-best among the 21 centres of commerce it surveyed.

Melbourne was first, followed by Johannesburg. Other Asian cities besides Singapore ranked as follows: Kuala Lumpur (9th), Bangkok (12th), Shanghai (13th), Shenzhen (15th), Beijing (17th), Jakarta (18th), New Delhi (20th, second last), and Mumbai (21st, last).

What is the significance of the report?

To begin with, it indicates that environmental considerations are becoming important for business entities, including credit card companies. Adequate water supplies, clean air and a good sewerage system matter in attracting businesses.

The report designated environmental factors under government control - such as water availability, potability, sewerage system, waste removal, air quality and infectious diseases - as the first dimension. The report gave a 70 per cent weightage to these environmental factors, for they have the biggest impact on the health and welfare of residents and visitors. Singapore was ranked second in this dimension.

Environmental factors not directly under government control - such as rising sea levels, water scarcity, severe storms and fires - were designated as the second dimension. Singapore ranked 16th in this dimension.

And environmental factors that are highly unpredictable - such as earthquakes, typhoons and volcanic eruptions - were designated the third. Singapore was ranked 9th in this dimension.

That Singapore was ranked so well overall speaks well of its Government. The Singapore Green Plan 2012 will ensure that Singapore remains a clean and green city in the years to come despite rapid development.

In terms of management of water supplies, not only will Singapore become potentially self-sufficient by 2011, it is also fast becoming a hub for water recycling and desalination technology. It is already exporting such technologies to China and the Middle East.

By 2011, Newater production facilities will contribute more than 30 per cent of our domestic water supplies, reservoirs about 60 per cent, with the remainder coming from desalination and supplies from Malaysia.

The completion of the Marina Reservoir next year will increase Singapore's domestic water catchment areas to two-thirds of its total land area. This would make Singapore self-sufficient in water. Historically, Singapore had been dependent on Malaysia for around 40 per cent of its total water supplies.

In spite of these successes, however, Singapore faces some challenges. It does not have a rural hinterland and, hence has to conserve its existing nature areas as best it can.

The link between humans and nature should never be severed. People living in an urban setting tend to forget the importance of nature conservation and preservation.

The Singapore Government has adopted the position that ungazetted nature reserves and areas will be kept 'for as long as possible'. This is commendable but also slightly worrisome as such areas may have to be forgone for development in the future.

The current 4 per cent of land that has been gazetted for nature conservation and the protection of bio-diversity already falls below the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's recommendation of 10 per cent.

By ensuring that more nature areas are legally protected, Singapore will be able to protect its bio-diversity pool. In this respect, the gazetting of the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve in 2002 was a very important step for land-scarce Singapore.

The protection of nature reserves performs two equally important functions.

A country which has beautiful natural landscapes and open spaces, together with a lively and creative urban landscape, has character. A pleasant green environment would engender a sense of rootedness as well as pride in belonging to a beautiful city. Nature reserves can also boost tourism. Tourists will be 'surprised' that a city can have beautiful 'untouched' nature reserves.

Second, nature reserves serve a hydrological function by ensuring that our regular rain and weather patterns are not affected by the excessive removal of forests. Our reservoirs can continue to function as storage areas for the water we need.

Singapore as a small city state can be lauded for managing successfully its urban environment and for reducing its environmental vulnerabilities.

Our connection to nature and the intrinsic and non-intrinsic values attached to nature areas must never be unwittingly traded off for the sake of urbanisation.

The writer is a fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

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Eco-friendliness last on shoppers' minds: survey

Business Times 26 Mar 08;

GROCERY buyers are more turned on by value for money than environmental friendliness when it comes to deciding where to shop, a survey conducted by marketing information firm The Nielson Company has found.

A worldwide survey that included Singapore found shoppers rate environmental friendliness the least important factor - below price, product quality, convenience and location - when deciding where to spend their grocery dollars.

'Good value for money' was rated the No 1 consideration.

Conducted in mid-2007, the Internet study quizzed 26,486 people in 47 markets across Europe, the Asia-Pacific, the Americas and the Middle East.

The ranking of factors in terms of importance was largely the same across the region - though Singaporeans do not seem particularly worried about whether a store uses recyclable bags and packaging.

On a scale of one to five, with five denoting high importance, only 17 per cent of respondents here registered a four or five for recyclable bags and packaging, while an average of 33 per cent of consumers in the Asia-Pacific region did so.

Conversely, 92 per cent of Singaporean respondents gave value for money the thumbs up - above the regional average of 83 per cent.

'Despite growing consumer demand for shops to be environmentally friendly in conducting their business, consumers don't necessarily make this a priority when choosing where to shop - good value for money and convenience comes out tops instead,' said Nielson Company director Soumya Saklani.

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Hunger grows as global food prices soar

Straits Times 26 Mar 08;

Bad weather, high oil prices, less farmland and rising demand all forcing prices up
MEXICO CITY - IF YOUR grocery bill is going up, you are not alone in facing that problem.

From subsistence farmers eating rice in Ecuador to gourmets feasting on escargot in France, consumers worldwide face rising food prices in what analysts call a perfect storm of conditions.

Freak weather is a factor. But so are dramatic changes in the global economy, including higher oil prices, lower food reserves, loss of farming land to industrialisation, and growing consumer demand in China and India.

The world's poorest nations still harbour the greatest hunger risk, with deadly food riots breaking out in Egypt and Cameroon.

But food protests now crop up even in Italy.

The price of spaghetti has doubled in impoverished Haiti but well-off Japan is not spared either, with the cost of miso now packing a punch.

'It's not likely that prices will go back to as low as we're used to,' said Mr Abdolreza Abbassian, economist and secretary of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) Intergovernmental Group for Grains.

'Currently if you're in Haiti, unless the government is subsidising consumers, consumers have no choice but to cut consumption. It's a very brutal scenario, but that's what it is.'

No one knows that better than Haitian Eugene Thermilon, 30, a day labourer who can no longer afford pasta to feed his wife and four children now that its price has nearly doubled to the local equivalent of US$0.57 (S$0.80) a bag. Their only meal on a recent day was two cans of corn grits.

Their hunger has had a ripple effect. Haitian food vendor Fabiola Duran Estime, 31, has lost so many customers that she had to pull her daughter out of kindergarten because she cannot afford the monthly tuition.

In the long term, prices are expected to stabilise.

Farmers will grow more grain for both fuel and food and eventually bring prices down.

Already this is happening with wheat, with more crops to be planted in the US, Canada and Europe in the coming year.

However, consumers still face at least 10 years of more expensive food, according to preliminary FAO projections.

Meanwhile, rising demand for meat and dairy in rapidly developing countries such as China and India is sending up the cost of grain, used for cattle feed.

In China, the food price hikes are both a burden and a boon.

With the rise of the Chinese middle class, per capita meat consumption has risen by 150 per cent since 1980, encouraging people like Mr Zhou Jian to switch from selling auto parts to pork.

The price of pork has jumped 58 per cent in the past year, yet every morning, housewives still crowd his Shanghai shop.

At the same time, rising costs of food staples in China are driving up inflation, forcing Beijing to sell grain from its reserves to hold down prices.

Record oil prices are also forcing food prices up, driving up the cost of everything from fertilisers to transport to food processing.

The oil price spike has also turned up the pressure for countries to switch to biofuels, which the FAO says will drive up the cost of corn, sugar and soybeans 'for many more years to come'.

In Japan, the ethanol boom is hitting the prices of mayonnaise and miso, two important culinary ingredients.

A 1kg bottle of mayonnaise his risen by about 10 per cent in two months to as much as 330 yen (S$4.60) said Mr Daishi Inoue, a cook at a Chinese restaurant.

For countries like Burkina Faso in Western Africa, the situation is dire. Ms Irene Belem, a 25-year-old with twins, struggles to buy milk, which has gone up by 57 per cent in recent weeks.

'We knew we were poor before, but now it's worse than poverty,' she said.

In Egypt, where the price of bread is up 35 per cent and cooking oil 26 per cent, at least seven people have died in fights in queues for subsidised bread.

In the Philippines, amid fears of a looming rice shortage, President Gloria Arroyo yesterday said the government would clamp down on rice hoarders who artificially jack up the commodity's price.

She has tasked Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap with staking out all government warehouses that stock the subsidised rice varieties 'so he can follow the big 10-wheeler trucks and see where they are bringing rice'.

She warned: 'He is investigating all warehouses, watching them, relicensing them. He shall hit the hoarders.'

ASSOCIATED PRESS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Relentless rise in food costs
Countries act to ease the plight of lower income
Today Online 26 Mar 08;

— AGENCIES

IT is not just Singaporeans who are striving to cope with global price rises — particularly of food — with several countries yesterday unveiling a range of measures to mitigate the impact on their populations.

Malaysia's Mr Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced, as one of the priorities of his second term as prime minister, measures to alleviate the burdens faced by lower-income Malaysians.

In addition, the government would also review the implementation of economic plans to ensure that benefits reached those who needed them the most, even as it continues to work on narrowing the income gaps between and within ethnic groups.

Mr Abdullah's other priorities include drastically reducing crime and fighting corruption, issues that had "resonated with voters", he said yesterday at the Invest Malaysia 2008 conference.

South Korea, on its part, will cut import tariffs on four products and exempt duties on 69 others — including grain and industrial raw materials — to help ease price pressures amid surging global costs for oil and commodities.

The Ministry of Strategy and Finance yesterday said that tariffs on petrol, kerosene, diesel and heavy oil would be cut to 1 per cent from the current 3 per cent each, with effect from Tuesday.

The government also plans to increase low-tariff imports of 14 items, such as corn and soybeans.

The moves are expected to help lower consumer and import prices by about 0.1 per cent and 0.27 per cent respectively, the ministry said.

South Korea's consumer price inflation rate, year-on-year, stood at 3.6 per cent in February — above the central bank's target band of 2.5 per cent to 3.5 per cent for the third month in a row.

In the Middle East, Bahrain has called on the Gulf Cooperation Council to buy food in bulk to bring down prices for consumers in the region.

The grouping comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry chairman, Dr Esam Fakhro, said the proposal was still in its early stages.

"The bloc would fight a potentially disastrous inflation that is threatening the region's economies," said Dr Fakhro in a report in the TradeArabia News Service.

From Haiti to France, Ecuador to Japan, consumers are now facing spiralling food prices in what analysts have called a "perfect storm" of conditions.

Freak weather is a factor, as are dramatic changes in the global economy, including higher oil prices — which increases the cost of everything from fertiliser to transport and food processing — as well as rapidly growing consumer demand in China and India for meat and dairy products.

The bad news? Consumers still face at least 10 years of more expensive food, according to early projections by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Its statistics showed that food costs worldwide spiked by 23 per cent from 2006 to 2007 — grains went up by 42 per cent, oils about 50 per cent and dairy by some 80 per cent.

However, what is rare is that the spikes are hitting all major foods in most countries at the same time.

Food prices rose 4 per cent in the United States last year, the highest rise since 1990.

In Singapore, food inflation was 4.1 per cent in the second half of last year.

In China, inflation reached 7.1 per cent in January, the country's highest in 11 years, led by an 18.2-per-cent jump in food prices.

Why drought in Australia can affect escargot prices in France
Straits Times 26 Mar 08;

IN AN increasingly interlinked world, the price of escargot in France can be affected by drought in Australia.

In decades past, farm subsidies and support programmes allowed major grain exporting countries to hold large surpluses, which could be tapped during food shortages to keep prices down.

But new liberal trade policies have made agricultural production much more responsive to market demands - putting global food reserves at their lowest in a quarter century.

Without reserves, bad weather and poor harvests now have a bigger impact on prices.

'The market is extremely nervous. With the slightest news about bad weather, the market reacts,' said economist Abdolreza Abbassian.

That means that a drought in Australia and flooding in Argentina, two of the world's largest suppliers of milk and butter, sent the price of butter in France soaring by 37 per cent from 2006 to 2007.

Butter can constitute up to 40 per cent of an escargot (snail) dish.

'You can do the calculation yourself,' said Mr Romain Chapron, president of Croque Bourgogne, which supplies escargot. 'It had a considerable effect.'

The same climate crises sparked a 21 per cent rise in the cost of milk, which with butter makes another famous French food item - the croissant.

Panavi, a pastry and bread supplier, has raised retail prices of croissants and pain au chocolat (a French pastry with chocolate bits) by 6 to 15 per cent.

Attempts to control prices in one country often have dire effects elsewhere.

China's restrictions on wheat flour exports resulted in a price spike in Indonesia earlier this year, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

'We need a response on a large scale, either the regional or international level,' said Mr Brian Halweil of the environmental research organisation Worldwatch Institute.

'All countries are tied enough to the world food markets that this is a global crisis.'

ASSOCIATED PRESS

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Carbon tax: Channel the dollars into energy research

By Monica Prasad, New York Times Straits Times 26 Mar 08;

EVERYONE seems to be talking about a carbon tax. It's probably the most glamorous - and certainly the most unlikely - use of the tax code since Al Capone got hooked for tax evasion.

The idea is that polluters should pay for the environmental damage they cause. Slap a tax on carbon, the theory goes, and you will get fewer carbon emissions, more revenue for government and energy independence, all at the same time. No wonder people from both sides of the political divide have come out in support of it.

But a carbon tax isn't a new idea.

Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have had carbon taxes in place since the 1990s, but the tax has not led to large declines in emissions in most of these countries - in the case of Norway, emissions have actually increased by 43 per cent per capita. An economist might say this is fine; as long as the cost of the environmental damage is being internalised, the tax is working - and emissions might have been even higher without the tax. But what environmentalist would be happy with a 43 per cent increase in emissions?

The one country in which carbon taxes have led to a large decrease in emissions is Denmark, whose per capita carbon dioxide emissions were nearly 15 per cent lower in 2005 than in 1990. And Denmark accomplished this while posting a remarkably strong economic record and without relying on nuclear power.

What did Denmark do right? There are many elements to its success, but taken together, the insight they provide is that if reducing emissions is the goal, then a carbon tax is a tax you want to impose but never collect.

This is a hard lesson to learn. The very thought of new tax revenue has a way of changing the priorities of the most hard-headed politicians - even Genghis Khan learnt to be peaceful, the story goes, when he saw how much more rewarding it was to tax peasants than to kill them.

But if we want lower emissions, the goal of a carbon tax is to prompt producers to change their behaviour, not to allow them to continue polluting while handing over cash to the government.

How do you get them to change? First, you prevent peacemakers from turning the tax into a cash cow. Carbon tax discussions always seem to devolve into gleeful suggestions for ways to spend the revenue. Reduce the income tax? Give the money to low-income consumers? Use it to pay for health care? Everyone seems to forget that the amount of revenue is directly tied to the amount of pollution that is still going on.

Denmark avoids the temptation to maximise the tax revenue by giving the proceeds back to industry, earmarking much of it to subsidise environmental innovation. Danish firms are pushed away from carbon and pulled into environmental innovation, and the country's economy isn't put at a competitive disadvantage. So this is lesson No.1 from Denmark.

The second lesson is that the carbon tax worked in Denmark because it was easy for Danish firms to switch to cleaner fuels. Danish policymakers made huge investments in renewable energy and subsidised environmental innovation. Denmark back then was more reliant on coal than the other three countries were (but not more so than the United States is today), so when the tax gave companies a reason to leave coal and the investments in renewable energy gave them an easy way to do so, they switched. The key was providing easy substitutes.

The next president of the United States seems sure to be more committed to environmental policy than the current president is, and a carbon tax is high on everyone's list of options.

Indeed, a carbon tax has been promoted almost as a panacea - just pop in the economic incentives and watch them work their magic. But unless steps are taken to lock the tax revenue away from policymakers and invest in substitutes, a carbon tax could lead to more revenue rather than to less pollution.

An increase in petrol taxes - the first instinct of many American policymakers when the idea of a carbon tax comes up - would likewise be the wrong policy for the United States. Higher petrol taxes would raise revenue but do little to curb pollution.

Instead, if we want to reduce carbon emissions, then we should follow Denmark's example: Tax the industrial emission of carbon and return the revenue to industry through subsidies for research and investment in alternative energy sources, cleaner-burning fuel, carbon-capture technologies and other environmental innovations.

The writer is an assistant professor of sociology and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University

NEW YORK TIMES

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Meet the solar cabby

Ng Jing Yng, Today Online 26 Mar 08;

IN a solar-powered car, Mr Louis Palmer, 33, has so far traversed more than 20 countries to find out what the world is doing to stop global warming.

Calling his car a Solartaxi, he offers a ride to anyone keen on solar energy, although the Swiss adventurer had a slight hitch when he arrived in Singapore yesterday as his car had to be held at customs for a few hours as it did not have the necessary insurance.

That aside, he has been heartened to see how many are doing their part. In Melbourne, for instance, he noted how some citizens campaigned to get people to stop drinking milk, as cows emit methane gas when they belch.

"My main purpose is to convince people that global warming can be stopped," said Mr Palmer, who has covered more than 40,000km in nine months.

Speaking at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Mr Palmer said his Solartaxi — which took three years to assemble — has ferried more than 400 people, from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to a German couple who used it as their wedding car.

In Saudi Arabia, he endured temperatures of 51°C, he said, while India had the most challenging traffic conditions. Still, "it was great fun meeting different people and I could not single out a favourite country".

While he is optimistic about the future of solar-powered cars, Mr Palmer said one big obstacle is getting companies to invest in such eco-friendly cars.

Yesterday, a group of final-year NTU engineering students showcased their solar racing car which will race in Japan this August. Mr Xu Wen Xiang, 24, said the biggest challenge had been securing sponsorship, but he was inspired by Mr Palmer's achievements.

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Not enough done to keep Singapore beaches clean

Letter from Kevin Chua Hock Meng, Straits Times Forum 25 Mar 08;

DURING the long weekend, we went to the beach at Loyang with our neighbours. It was delightful to see more and more families camping out at the beach enjoying what little nature we have in Singapore.

What continues to mar our experience at local beaches is their littered state. I understand that we need to continue educating ourselves to keep our environment clean and litter-free. But shouldn't the authorities clean the beaches more frequently until public education really kicks in?

When the condition of the beaches is already in such a littered state, beach goers don't think twice about littering. The only clean beach that comes to mind is in Sentosa. In other countries, beaches are cleaned frequently, usually in the early morning before the crowd arrives.

The cleaners at our beaches restrict themselves to cleaning the walking pathways and to emptying the trash bins. Another obvious need: more bins and bigger ones which can hold the large amount of rubbish and which can withstand the robust sea breeze.

System in place to keep beaches clean
Straits Times Forum 7 Apr 08;

WE REFER to the letter 'Not enough done to keep beaches clean' by Mr Kevin Chua Hock Meng (March 26).

The National Environment Agency (NEA) has a system in place to ensure the cleanliness of recreational beaches such as those at East Coast Park, Changi and Pasir Ris. Beaches are cleaned by our contractors either daily or on alternate days. During the monsoon seasons, the cleaning frequency is increased as more debris and flotsam are washed ashore from the sea during these periods. Additional manpower is also deployed for beach cleaning during festive seasons.

Following Mr Chua's feedback, we will provide more litterbins in areas that are more crowded, for example, near the barbecue pits in the parks. During peak periods such as weekends and public holidays, we will increase the frequency of emptying the bins. As for the bins, they are secured to the ground, and are thus able to withstand strong winds.

NEA and the National Parks Board will continue with both public education and enforcement to remind the public against littering in parks and beaches. We also seek the cooperation of beach and park users to be civic-minded as no amount of cleaning will be sufficient if users continue to litter.

We thank Mr Chua for the feedback.

S. Satish Appoo
Director, Environmental Health Department
National Environment Agency


Kong Yit San
Director, Parks
National Parks Board

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Ship owners must help cut pollution

Geoffrey Lee, Business Times 26 Mar 08;

THE sea evokes many different feelings and emotions in people. Adjectives that come to mind include majestic, tranquil, vengeful, beautiful, open, vast and endless.

Add polluted to that list.

From the United States to Singapore, along any major shipping lines and routes up the Atlantic or down the Pacific, tens of thousands of ships ply their trade every day.

And that in turn amounts to a great deal of garbage, ship waste and used oil that is dumped daily into the seas, as well as tonnes of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.

Singapore pointed out at the 25th General Assembly of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) last November, 'shipping remains the most environmentally friendly mode of international transportation today', there being 'no viable alternative that can support the enormous movement of goods and resources between countries today with less impact on the environment'.

However, new research done by Intertanko, the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners, suggests that much more work needs to be done.

In a confidential report produced for the IMO, it said that the impact of shipping on environmental pollution has been seriously underestimated, with the shipping industry actually emitting almost twice the amount of greenhouse gases as the aviation industry.

Estimates suggest that the world's shipping uses between 350 and 410 million tonnes of fuel each year, which equates to up to 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. Previous reports had put that figure at only 600 million tonnes.

In contrast, the aviation industry produces an estimated 650 million tonnes annually, according to the Intertanko report.

Traditionally though, the worst visible form of shipping pollution occurs when collisions or wreckage result in oil spills.

The last major oil spill happened in December when an oil tanker carrying more than 260,000 tonnes of crude oil collided with a barge just off the west coast of South Korea, with the resulting damage causing at least 10,500 tonnes of oil to leak into the sea.

As with all other oil spills, the incident deeply affected not just the surrounding local population, but also a vast extent of the marine ecosystem in and around the area.

Oil discharges

Though figures vary from year to year, oil spills generally account for about only 5 per cent of the total amount of oil pollution in the seas. It is oil discharges from operational and maintenance purposes (although hard to pin down exact figures due to the nature of occurrence) that contribute a substantially larger share of maritime oil pollution.

Ships travelling across oceans also introduce potentially harmful foreign elements to different marine environments. Ballast water discharge in particular results in the establishment of harmful aquatic organisms and pathogens which pose threats to indigenous human, animal and plant life, and the marine environment. Studies have shown that many species of bacteria, plants and animals survive in the ballast water and sediment carried in ships even after several months.

Another new concern is anthropogenic (human-generated) noise levels in the marine environment that cause serious harm to marine creatures like whales and dolphins. Studies show that such noise results in increased stress levels among these animals, and could be a factor in issues such as whale beaching.

Recently, cruise ships have also been blamed for an increase in waste that enters the seas. In addition to operational discharges, these ships would also dump a higher amount of dirty water from sinks, showers, laundries and galleys, sewage from toilets and solid wastes (plastic, paper, wood, cardboard, food waste, cans and glass).

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) tries to regulate ship pollution. IMO has 167 member states which form almost the full body of shipping countries around the world.

The MARPOL (short for marine pollution) Convention is the main international convention covering prevention of pollution of the marine environment by ships from operational or accidental causes. It is a combination of two treaties adopted in 1973 and 1978 respectively and updated by amendments through the years.

The convention includes regulations aimed at preventing and minimising pollution from ships - both accidental pollution and that from routine operations - and currently includes six technical annexes, covering pollution issues.

While most of the convention puts the onus on maritime states to ensure the prevention of pollution, part of it is also voluntary.

This effectively means that the job of preventing or scaling down pollution ultimately rests - as it should - on the shoulders of shipping conglomerates and ship owners.

There are some positive signs going forward. Engineering firms like Greenship have come up with technologies like Sedinox and the Sedimentator, that resolves the ballast water problem in compliance with IMO guidelines.

Homegrown Viking Engineering manufactures an oil discharge monitor known as Marpoil that meets new criterion adopted by legislative bodies and also helps monitor oil-like noxious liquid substances.

Norwegian firms Yara International ASA and the Wilhelmsen Maritime Services (WMS) even created the Yarwil joint venture, aimed at launching environmental solutions for the maritime market.

Yara's solution can cut emissions such as nitrogen oxide, which are formed during the combustion of fossil fuels and are harmful to human health and the environment, by 95 per cent.

The process involves passing the hot exhaust fumes from the engine mixed with a urea solution through a catalytic converter where the nitrogen oxide is broken up into harmless nitrogen and water vapour.

New regulation

The shipping industry has grown exponentially in the last century, and is expected to continue growing. And so will pollution figures. Singapore is doing its part in this situation. The government has announced that from April this year, new harbour craft licences will only be issued to bunker tankers that comply with the limits on nitrogen oxide emission as set out under the IMO's MARPOL convention.

But the onus will still be on the owners of ships that continually flout IMO guidelines. They must care for the environment as much as they care for profit.

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Krakatau child generates flames and fireballs

Antara 26 Mar 08;

Serang (ANTARA News) - After having remained quiet for the past two weeks, Mount Anak Krakatau in the Sunda Strait on Tuesday resumed its volcanic activity spewing glowing material and fire balls into the sky, an officer at an observation post in Serang said.

During the early morning of Tuesday (March 15), the volcano was five times recorded to have been shaken by volcanic tremors, to have produced explosiona and emitted glowing material, Jumono, the officer at the Anak Karkatau observation post in Pasauran village, Serang district, said.

To date, the weather in Banten province is mostly cloudy coupled with heavy rains which caused the Krakatau child condition was not clearly detected, he said.

In addition, waves averaged two meters in height coupled with high velocity wind occurred in Sunda Straits, Jumono said.

Jumono said, the recent tremor and explosion interval which was detected as a beyond normal activity compared with five years ago frightened the fishermen to go fishing.

"The Krakatau child which has generated flames coupled with loud sounds along Tuesday scared us to go nearer the waters as well as reduced our income," the Serang district fishermen, Dudung said.
(*)

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Chinese dams threaten Cambodia's forests, farmers

Ek Madra, Reuters 26 Mar 08;

CHAY ARENG RIVER, Cambodia (Reuters) - Along the Chay Areng valley in Cambodia's remote Cardamom mountains, children still scamper barefoot through one of mainland southeast Asia's last remaining tracts of virgin jungle.

If they take the same paths in a few years, they will probably have to be swimming.

Faced with a rapidly growing but power-starved economy, Prime Minister Hun Sen has decided the rivers flowing from one of the few elevated spots in a relentlessly flat country should become its battery pack.

With this in mind, in the last two years he has agreed to at least four Chinese-funded hydropower projects as part of a $3 billion scheme to boost output from a measly 300 MW today to 1,000 MW in a decade, enough to power a small city.

The indigenous communities who have lived off the forests in the Cardamoms since the dawn of time appear to be the ones who will be paying the biggest price.

"We have been living here without a dam for many generations. We don't want to see our ancestral lands stolen," said 78-year-old Sok Nuon, lighting a fire inside her wooden hut nestled in among the trees near the Chay Areng river.

"I do not want to move as it takes years for fruit trees to produce crops. By then, I'll be dead," she said.

WAR ON BLACKOUTS

Few people argue that Cambodia's 14 million people need more power.

After decades of war and upheaval, including the Khmer Rouge "Killing Fields" of the 1970s, the economy has finally taken off, growing at nearly 10 percent a year.

But its antiquated, mainly diesel-fuelled power plants can meet only 75 percent of demand, meaning frequent blackouts and unit prices around twice those of neighboring Thailand and Vietnam -- both factors inhibiting faster expansion.

With the closer ties Hun Sen has cultivated with Beijing in the last five years, Chinese cash and dam-building expertise has become a logical solution to what is one of the inevitable pains of breakneck growth.

"Chinese investment in hydropower is so important for Cambodia's development," Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said in January after meeting with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi.

But critics maintain that much of the planning is taking place with scant regard for the long-term impact on the environment in a country where (80) percent of people still rely on agriculture for their livelihoods.

"Poorly conceived and developed hydro-power projects could needlessly and irreparably damage Cambodia's river system with serious consequences," said Carl Middleton of the U.S.-based International Rivers Network.

MUDDY WATERS

The Chinese embassy in Phnom Penh denied Beijing was taking any short-cuts in dam construction in Cambodia -- part of a massive aid package designed to ensure a compliant friend in the region.

"They comply with environmental standards and are approved by the Cambodian government," said a Chinese diplomat who did not wish to be named. "We just want to help Cambodia as much as we can."

But the Chay Areng project hardly appears to be a model of transparency.

The deal was signed in late 2006 with China Southern Power Grid Co (CSG), one of China's two grid operators, to build a 260 MW plant at an estimated cost of $200 million and with a completion date of 2015.

With no prior consultation, the first villagers knew of the project was when Chinese engineers turned up this year to start working on feasibility studies -- details of which CSG and the government are reluctant to discuss.

Environmentalists who have conducted their own studies say the dam's lake will cover 110 sq km (42 sq miles) and displace thousands of indigenous people in nine villages.

More than 200 animal species, including elephants, sun bears, leopards and the endangered Siamese crocodile, would be affected upstream, said Sam Chanthy, head of the NGO Forum, a foreign-funded non-governmental organization in Phnom Penh.

Downstream, the delicate ecosystem of the flooded forest, home to some of the world's rarest turtle species as well as hundreds of types of migratory fish, would also be hit by disruptions to water flow, he said.

"It won't take long for these invaluable assets to disappear when the dam is built," said Eng Polo, of wildlife group Conservation International.

(Editing by Ed Cropley)

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New road threatens Indonesian tigers: conservationists

Yahoo News 26 Mar 08;

A new road linked to one of the world's largest paper companies threatens a massive peatland forest sheltering rare tigers on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, conservationists said Wednesday.

The road's construction by companies linked to Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) could have "devastating effects" on the area, conservation group Eyes on the Forest said in a report.

The group says it is concerned APP, owned by the Indonesian conglomerate Sinar Mas, will use the new road to restart forest clearances in an area considered one of the last havens for the endangered Sumatran tiger.

"Even as our investigators were out surveying the site last month, they came across tiger tracks along the APP logging road," said the group's coordinator Nursamsu.

"The tigers of Kampar do not stand a chance once APP begins logging full-scale and the poachers discover there is easy access to this critical tiger habitat."

Sumatra's Kampar Peninsula lies on top of a deep peat dome and acts as one of the planet's biggest carbon stores, as well as being home to several rare species.

Sumatra is the only island where tigers can still be found in Indonesia, and their numbers are estimated at around 400 to 500.

Poaching and deforestation to make way for pulp, paper and palm oil plantations are the main factors behind the animal's decline.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono launched a 10-year conservation strategy for the Sumatran tiger last December.

APP did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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US bans harves of horseshoe crabs to save rare shore bird

New Jersey protects crab to save rare shore bird
Jon Hurdle, Reuters 25 Mar 08;

TRENTON, New Jersey (Reuters) - New Jersey acted to save a rare shore bird on Tuesday, banning the harvest of horseshoe crabs whose eggs are an essential nutrient for the red knot on its 10,000-mile (16,000-km) annual migration.

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine signed a law that bans the horseshoe crab harvest until both the crab and red knot populations have returned to sustainable levels, as determined by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The red knot stops on the New Jersey and Delaware beaches of the Delaware Bay each spring on its migration from the southern tip of South America to breeding grounds in Arctic Canada, one of the longest migrations in the avian world.

The bird's population has plummeted to around 15,000, well below the level of about 100,000 ornithologists believe is necessary for the species to sustain itself.

Many birds have recently been unable to find food because the crab population has been decimated since the early 1990s by fishermen, who use the crustaceans as bait.

At an average of 10 inches long and weighing about 4.7 ounces (135 grams), the birds will gorge themselves on the eggs, replenishing their fat reserves to complete their epic migration.

Some birds starve while others fail to reach the Arctic, or if they do, are too exhausted to breed, scientists say.

Dr. Larry Niles, a biologist who has worked on the red knot since the 1980s, said the law is the most important step yet to protect the bird, although it is still vulnerable to other factors beyond New Jersey's control, such as bad weather in its Arctic breeding grounds.

Niles said he expects the population to "skim along the bottom" for another two or three years but then show signs of recovery, thanks to the new law.

"If things go wrong in other places, at least we know we did the best that we could do," Niles said.

(Editing by Daniel Trotta and Sandra Maler)

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Best of our wild blogs: 26 Mar 08

Once upon a Tree review
Another super fast, mega detailed review on Jun's ashira blog PLUS lots of secret behind-the-scenes photos of the people who made this series possible.

Hantu Anniversary Dive
fabulous vis, fantastic sighting and more on the hantu blog with a video log and the colourful clouds blog

Labrador Park designated temporary holding area for barge used in rock-filling operation on the wildfilms blog

NUS advertorial featuring the Chek Jawa project
on the cj project blog

Nominating Heritage Trees
from Singapore's Heritage, Museums & Nostalgia blog

Sungei Buloh
by Dr Stan on his singapore blog

Antics of an Indian fantail
on the bird ecology blog

Chinese Pond Heron and its status
from the bird ecology blog

4 May 2008 - International Dawn Chorus Day!
on the habitatnews blog

Waving goodbye to frogs
New study finds no evidence that climate change causes amphibian decline on journal watch online

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