Pacific Ocean Plastic Mistaken for Plankton Threatens Wildlife

Adam Satariano, Bloomberg 10 Apr 08;

Marine researchers Charles Moore and Marcus Eriksen surveyed the dark water of the Pacific Ocean aboard a catamaran about 700 miles (1,126 kilometers) north of Hawaii in January and found trash everywhere.

They were in the eye of the North Pacific subtropical gyre, where opposing ocean currents form a vortex bigger than Australia, trapping tons of floating debris in its circular flow.

Trash that wound up there used to decompose. Now, with 403 billion pounds of plastic produced annually, according to the Houston-based consulting group Chemical Markets Associates Inc., areas of the gyre have turned into a soup of indigestible shards that can break down to the size of plankton and be mistaken for food, endangering millions of fish and birds.

"No matter where we go, we find plastic," said Moore, 60. "The ocean is now this plastic soup, and we just don't know what that's doing."

Marine debris worldwide kills more than 1 million sea birds and 100,000 mammals each year, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. The chemical-laden materials have been found in the stomachs of dead fish and birds.

"We know that these plastics can carry high levels of toxins that they collect as they float," said Eriksen, 40, an oceanographer with Moore at the nonprofit Algalita Marine Research Foundation in Long Beach, California. "The next step is to see if it bio-accumulates up the food chain onto your dinner plate."

No clean-up efforts are under way, according to the NOAA and researchers. Moore and Eriksen said such an endeavor wouldn't be feasible because of the distance from land. The oceanographic agency has focused on removing derelict fishing gear threatening marine mammals and corals. The plastic industry is funding litter-reduction efforts.

Garbage Patch

The gyre isn't a solid floating trash heap visible from the air, Moore said. Instead, billions of tiny plastic scraps bob on the water's surface along with occasional larger pieces like fishing gear, wood, bottles, toothbrushes and cigarette lighters. Ocean sampling shows that there are as many as 1 million plastic pieces, each 1 to 2 millimeters across, in each square kilometer (0.4 square mile) in the area, Moore says.

The vortex covers about 10 million square miles north of the equator, rotating clockwise from about 300 miles off California's coast to near Japan. It's the result of prevailing winds that move west to east on the northern side and in the opposite direction to the south.

Though a comprehensive study on the garbage patch's size hasn't been conducted, Moore estimates debris accumulates in about half the gyre, mostly in separate swirls in the east and west. The highest concentrations are near Hawaii, he said.

Moore discovered the garbage patch in 1997. He was testing his boat's engine by traveling through an area of the Pacific known for its calm winds. For days, he saw plastic shards glistening in the flat ocean 1,000 miles from the nearest port.

`No End Game'

In January, Moore, Eriksen and other researchers boarded a 25-ton, aluminum-hull catamaran for a monthlong trip to the gyre. The concentration of debris increased to 0.01 grams of plastic in each square meter of water from 0.002 grams in 1999, Eriksen said.

"Every product now is expected to be wrapped in plastic, and there is no take-back infrastructure for that packaging," Moore said. "This lubricant of globalization has no end game. There's no after-life for it and since the ocean is downhill from everywhere, that's where it ends up."

The United Nations in 2006 estimated that each square mile of ocean carries 46,000 pieces of debris. Water samples of the garbage patches show six times as much plastic as plankton, Moore said. He will receive an award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for his research on marine debris on April 14 in San Francisco.

Plastic Production

U.S. plastic production surged four-fold to 113 billion pounds in 2006 from 29 billion in 1973, according to the Washington-based American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group. There is no correlation between plastic production and marine debris, said Sharon Kneiss, vice president of the organization.

"Plastics don't belong in the ocean; they don't belong in the roadway; they belong in the recycling bin," Kneiss said. "Yes, there are plastics and other debris in the gyre. It is a problem that we're concerned about."

About 80 percent of ocean trash starts on land and is carried along by wind, rivers and storm drains, according to the UN. Water bottles discarded in Tokyo or beach toys thrown out in San Diego wind up in the whirlpools after breaking down into smaller pieces along the way.

Threat to Hawaii

About 600 tons of industrial fishing gear washed up on Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in the past decade, threatening the Hawaiian monk seal, the most endangered U.S. marine mammal, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Climate change and marine debris are the most serious threats to the islands' ocean habitats, said Rusty Brainard, head of coral reef ecosystem research at the NOAA.

"All the plastic is unbelievable," said Brainard, 49. "These are places that are uninhabited, thousands of miles from where anybody lives, and yet they are just covered in human trash."

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Warmer seas, over-fishing spell disaster for oceans: scientists

Frank Zeller, Yahoo News 10 Apr 08;

The future food security of millions of people is at risk because over-fishing, climate change and pollution are inflicting massive damage on the world's oceans, marine scientists warned this week.

The two-thirds of the planet covered by seas provide one fifth of the world's protein -- but 75 percent of fish stocks are now fully exploited or depleted, a Hanoi conference that ended Friday was told.

Warming seas are bleaching corals, feeding algal blooms and changing ocean currents that impact the weather, and rising sea levels could in future threaten coastal areas from Bangladesh to New York, experts said.

"People think the ocean is a place apart," said Peter Neill, head of the World Ocean Observatory. "In fact it's the thing that connects us -- through trade, transportation, natural systems, weather patterns and everything we depend on for survival."

Marine ecosystems and food security were key concerns at the Global Conference on Oceans, Coasts, and Islands, an international meeting of hundreds of experts from governments, environmental groups and universities.

"There is a race to fish, but in wild capture fisheries right now we can catch no more," said Steven Murawski, fisheries chief science advisor at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

"We catch 100 million metric tonnes per year, and that's been very flat globally. Our only hope is if we conserve and rebuild stocks," he said, adding that sustainable aquaculture could help make up the shortfall.

The current plunder is risking long-term sustainability with "too many fishing boats taking too many fish and not allowing the stocks to regenerate," said Frazer McGilvray of Conservation International.

"Once the oceans are gone, we're gone. The oceans sustain the planet."

The world has already seen the effects of over-fishing, experts said.

North Atlantic cod fisheries collapsed in the 1990s, anchovies previously disappeared off Chile, herring off Iceland and sardine off California.

Sixty-four percent of ocean areas fall outside national jurisdictions, making it difficult to reach international consensus or to stop illegal fishing -- a growing concern as high-tech ships scour the high seas.

"It's the Wild West. It's a very small number of boats but the technology allows them to take enormous amounts of fish," said Neill.

"They take only the high commercial product and they throw the bycatch overboard. The waste is extraordinary."

Marine life is also being harmed by climate change, said Murawski.

"We've seen that fish populations go up and down with variations in the climate," he said. "Increasingly we are starting to see long term change affect the productivity, the distributions, the migrations."

The trend is speeding up, Murawski said.

"Our forecasts are wrong," he said. "The melt-off is much faster than has been forecast in the models."

Meanwhile land-based pollution puts heavy strain on oceans, said Ellik Adler of the UN Environment Programme.

"Rivers of untreated sewage, factories, refineries, oil industry discharge their effluent into the marine environment, and this causes huge damage," he said. "Marine pollution has no political borders."

There are few easy fixes, experts said, but one initiative now being considered is setting up a global network of marine protected areas.

"You've got to get agreements between countries," said consultant Sue Wells, whose has worked in coastal East Africa. "Some developed countries have already closed some areas, and most coastal countries are now considering it."

Satellites could monitor no-catch areas, she said, while inspiration could come from South Pacific fishing communities.

"They have taboo areas, coral reef sanctuaries, where fish would be saved for bad weather periods or major festivals and feast," she said. "They know if they leave an area and don't fish there, they'll have much better stocks."

It is a view that has been lost in modern times, she said, where the common view now was "if I don't go and fish it, someone else will."

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Hopes Rise Global Trade Deal Can Avert Fish Crisis

Jonathan Lynn, PlanetArk 11 Apr 08;

GENEVA - Negotiations on fisheries rules within a global trade deal have reached broad agreement that certain subsidies promoting overfishing should be banned, the chairman of the talks said on Thursday.

And progress in the talks, part of the long-running Doha round, suggest the World Trade Organisation (WTO) could play a key role in averting an environmental crisis, Uruguay's WTO ambassador Guillermo Valles Galmes told Reuters.

Environmental advocacy groups say the impact of overfishing on food stocks and biodiversity is an ecological threat comparable to climate change.

"There is a positive approach from civil society and the members of the WTO recognising that they could make a good case to show that the WTO, through trade, can help achieve broader environmental goals," Valles said.

"In general terms, there is acceptance that we should have prohibitions of certain forms of subsidies that contribute to overfishing."

Valles said WTO members were pushing for various exceptions to the subsidy bans and other proposals, and much work remained to be done to reach agreement on these.

In particular, developing countries are concerned at the impact of the new rules on small-scale artisanal fishermen, many of whom live in poverty.


TACKLE FISHING

Senior trade officials say the Doha round, launched in 2001, is close to a breakthrough. Ministers could be called next month to Geneva to clinch the outlines of a deal to open up world trade, intended to be concluded by the end of the year.

But on the core chapters of agriculture and industrial goods negotiators are hung up on a series of technical issues. The progress on fisheries is one of the more hopeful signs.

And it bodes well for forthcoming talks on climate change and growing interest in the impact of trade on the environment.

That said, the deal is not in the bag.

Banning operating subsidies on materials such as fuel, bait and ice, as proposed, would make many fishing fleets uneconomic.

The European Union is worried about the impact of a subsidies ban on fishing communities where there may be few other employment opportunities.

Countries such as Norway and Canada share those fears.

And the ban would certainly have an impact on the deep-sea fishing operations of China, South Korea and Japan, where fishing firms such as Maruha Nichiro Holdings and Nippon Suisan Kasha will be following the talks closely.

Advocacy group Oceana, which advises the US government, cites one recent study showing that one third of commercial fishing stocks are collapsing and all commercial stocks will be in collapse by the middle of this century.

Senior campaign director Courtney Sakai said subsidies were running at about $20 billion a year in an industry with sales of $80-100 billion -- a higher rate of subsidy than agriculture.

The key to tackling these subsidies was new trade rules.

"This is a major outcome that could come from the round that would benefit the environment and one of the most important commodities in the developing world," she said.

Those subsidies create an enormous incentive to overfish.

But Sakai said studies showed that stocks could rebound quickly within years if fishing is restricted.

Developing countries recognise the problem and the negotiations reflect intensive work done by Argentina and Brazil in particular.

Sakai said Oceana accepted the need to protect local fishermen working in a traditional way. But she said some developing countries wanted waivers to proposed limits on fishing boat lengths to operate vessels longer than 25 meters, enabling them to continue industrial high-seas fishing.

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Ships dumping waste in Mediterranean illegal as of 2009: UN

Yahoo News 10 Apr 08;

Dumping of waste by ships in the Mediterranean Sea will become illegal as of May 1, 2009, the United Nations Environment Programme said Thursday.

"This represents major progress in efforts to protect the Mediterranean environment, because ships often jettison their garbage into the sea," Luisa Colasimone, spokesman for the Athens-based Mediterranean Action Plan agency, told AFP.

A statement said the new rules prohibit the ditching of "all plastics, including but not limited to synthetic ropes, synthetic fishing nets and plastic garbage bags".

It also extends to "all other garbage, including paper products, rags, glass, metal, bottles, crockery, dunnage (loose material used in ship storage), lining and packing materials".

The application of International Maritime Organization measures had been suspended for years to allow for improvements to inadequate garbage collection facilities in ports around the sea's coasts.

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Freaks of Madagascar Get Protection Plan

Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 10 Apr 08;

Loads of freakish animals, from fingertip-size chameleons to bug-eyed lemurs, crowd the island of Madagascar. Now researchers have combed the island's nooks and crannies to create a map of critical animal hideouts in need of protection.

The map is part of a new plan to expand the current reserve areas, boosting the number of species protected within them from some 70 percent to 100 percent, the researchers say.

The plan is based on a new computer model designed to spot regions that would give refuge to the greatest number of high-priority species. More than 2,300 species, including ants, frogs, geckos, butterflies and plants, were included.

Two lemurs given priority due to dwindling real estate included Coquerel's sifaka and the Decken's sifaka. Madagascar, the fourth largest island in the world, is home to many species that are only found there, including lemurs (which are primates like us humans), three bird families, six species of baobab trees and the fossa - the mongoose-like mammal feared by the lemurs in the animated feature film "Madagascar."

Some of the animals highlighted in the conservation plan include:

Greater bamboo lemur - This critically endangered bamboo eater once roamed much of Madagascar, but is now isolated to a few restricted spots.

Giant butterfly (Pharmacophagus antenor) - Madagascar's largest butterfly lives in the island's spiny deserts and forests.

Malagasy poison frogs - These colorful, yet toxic, frogs are endemic to Madagascar.

Giant leaf-tailed gecko (Uroplatus fimbriatus) - A rain-forest dweller endemic to Madagascar, this large gecko has suffered habitat loss. (With no eyelids, this gecko uses its tongue for dust-removal.)

Amazing ants - Madagascar is crawling with the oddballs, including the Trap Jaw ant (Odontomachus coquereli) and the Dracula ant (Mystrium mysticum).

The study, detailed in the April 11 issue of the journal Science, also identified areas that had been neglected in past conservation assessments, such as the central plateau massifs and coastal forests.

Scientists unveil conservation roadmap for Madagascar
Yahoo News 10 Apr 08;

A vast study of the plants and animals unique to Madagascar was published Thursday in a bid to protect thousands of rare species found only on the large African island.

The island is home to two percent of the Earth's total biodiversity, and only in Madagascar can you find wild lemurs, as well as several species of butterflies, frogs, geckos and ants. Half of the world's chameleon species also live there.

A team of 22 scientists has drawn up a detailed plan to protect this unique environment from the ravages of modern life and protect some 2,300 species which co-habit on the island, the fourth largest in the world.

The team drew up a road map for the 226,642-square-mile (587,000-square-kilometer) island, considered one of the most significant biodiversity hot spots in the world, the Science study said.

They collected detailed data on the exact locations of animal and plant species across the island and then used special software to track their ranges and create special protection zones.

Those species at greater risk of extinction because their habits are fast disappearing due to deforestation, were given priority in the plan.

"Conservation planning has historically focused on protecting one species or one group of species at a time, but in our race to beat species extinction, that one-taxon approach is not going to be quick enough," said co-author Claire Kremen from the University of California, Berkeley.

"Never before have biologists and policy makers had the tools that allow analysis of such a broad range of species, at such fine scale, over this large a geographic area," she added.

"Our analysis raises the bar on what's possible in conservation planning, and helps decision makers determine the most important places to protect."

The study was carried out by a diverse group of 22 researchers from six countries gathered together from museums, zoos, as well as universities and non-governmental organizations.

"This study will serve as a blueprint to help Madagascar achieve its ambitious conservation goals in the most effective way possible," said Steven Sanderson, president of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

"Madagascar has become a global leader in saving wildlife and wild lands, and we're enormously proud to support the Malagasy commitment to protect its natural heritage."

Scientists join forces to save Madagascar wildlife
Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters 10 Apr 08;

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leaping lemurs and crawling ants are part of a massive plan to save Madagascar's wildlife, using a new method that could be applied to other "hot spots" of biodiversity, researchers said on Thursday.

Drawing on decades of field research about 2,315 species found only on the island nation off Africa's east coast, conservation scientists have mapped out a way to protect all these animals and plants, instead of concentrating on only a few and hoping that saves many of the others, too.

Earlier efforts have focused on one so-called umbrella species -- such as China's giant pandas or photogenic big-eyed lemurs in Madagascar -- on the theory that saving the habitat of these high-profile creatures will also save nearby species.

That is not necessarily so, said Claire Kremen, a conservation biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-lead researcher on the project, whose results were published on Thursday in the journal Science.

"That's one of the very clear findings of our study: if you develop a plan to protect all the lemur species, you're not going to get all the frog species ... You're going to miss a lot," Kremen said by telephone.

LEMURS, BUTTERFLIES AND GECKOS

Dozens of scientists and other workers collected data on the exact locations of wildlife across Madagascar, from lemurs to ants, butterflies, frogs, geckos and plants, then used this information to estimate the range of each species and determine which regions were most vital to saving the greatest number of species.

Species that have already lost habitat because of deforestation were given higher priority in the plan because of their greater risk of extinction.

The world's biologists have long flocked to Madagascar, where about 90 percent of species are unique to the island. Part of the reason for its profuse biodiversity is its varied terrain -- including rainforest, dry forest, lowlands and mountains -- and part is its geologic history.

Once part of the African mainland, Madagascar drifted away some 100 to 200 million years ago. It eventually attracted colonist species, including lemurs, whose ancestors probably rafted over on floating vegetation, Kremen said.

Lemurs and others then evolved and diversified to fill environmental niches on the island, she said.

Kremen stressed that the plan for Madagascar is at this point simply a map of biodiversity priorities, one of many factors to be considered when the country decides what places to protect. Others include human habitat and cost.

She said the Madagascar model could be used for other biodiversity "hot spots" around the globe.

Helen Crowley of the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society agreed.

"We're going to have to make these decisions all over the world about which areas need to be looked after and conserved," said Crowley, who was not involved in the study.

This model could eventually be used to help scientists predict where species might go for refuge when habitats are endangered by climate change, Crowley said in a telephone interview.

(Editing by Patricia Zengerle)

Madagascan wildlife mapped using satellites
Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 10 Apr 08;

Scientists have used ground-breaking satellite technology to examine in minute detail one of the world's richest wildlife areas.

High resolution images have been taken of the entire 226,657 square-mile island of Madagascar in a scheme designed to protect its unique natural heritage and safeguard its most endangered species.

Madagascar is regarded as a biodiversity hotspot and renowned for its variety of wildlife with 80 per cent of its 30,000 known species, from lemurs to brightly coloured chameleons, found nowhere else on the planet.

The international team involved in the unprecedented survey was led by conservation biologists at the University of California, Berkeley and included experts from both the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and the Natural History Museum.

Using high-tec tools that had previously never been available they were able to analyse a huge range of 2,315 species from six major groups: lemurs, butterflies, frogs, geckos, ants and plants over a wide area.

The blueprint produced could fundamentally change the way conservation priorities are mapped around the world.

Unlike most conservation projects which focus on a particular species the study used new techniques to identify the areas most important for saving the highest percentage of fauna and flora. The aim was to find the most effective areas for expanding the island's existing network of nature reserves.

The task was made more difficult by the complex distribution patterns of the Indian Ocean island's unique plants and animals, many of which do not overlap.

The team started with distribution, conservation and status data on all species in the six groups and then added data on habitat suitability from satellite images and several layers of climatic information including average monthly temperature and rainfall.

The research showed that conserving the habitat of only one group excluded up to 50 per cent of rare species from other groups. And giving priority to one group in any given area in Madagascar would exclude up to 39 per cent of all species.

The study has provided a map that highlights the areas and species most in need of protection. It also highlighted habitats overlooked in the past, such as coastal forests and central mountain ranges with small pockets of trees.

Madagascar's nature reserves have previously concentrated on scenic isolated blocks of forest, without an overview of how they are connected.

The study has resulted in a conservation plan that will build on the 6.3 percent of the island's land already under some form of natural reserve status, which currently protects some 70 percent of the species in the study.

The study recommends how the reserve system should be expanded within the target of an additional 3.7 percent to boost the number of protected target species.

David Lees, butterfly researcher at the Natural History Museum and a co-author of the study, said: "Our results have shown that basing conservation on the needs of single species groups like butterflies just isn't enough.

"It is now feasible to map the complex web of life in the world's richest wildlife areas to help guide tough conservation choices, and increase chances of survival in the face of climate change."

Alison Cameron, co-lead researcher of the project, at University of California Berkeley, said: "Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world, which makes the government's commitment to biodiversity even more remarkable.

"Government leaders have developed a very progressive vision for social and economic development, in which the natural landscape is viewed as a valuable resource."

It is hoped the study will help the Malagasy government reach a commitment made at the World Parks Congress in 2003 when President Marc Ravalomanana pledged to triple Madagascar's protected area network to 10 per cent of its land mass.

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Brazil's President Lula rejects biofuels link to rising food prices

Yahoo News 10 Apr 08;

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Thursday rejected any link between rising global food prices and the growth in biofuels, of which his country is the world's biggest exporter.

Speaking in the Netherlands on the first day of a state visit, Lula told reporters: "Don't tell me biofuels are causing inflation," Lula told a press conference on the first day of his state visit to the Netherlands.

Brazil is the world's second largest producer of ethanol biofuel and the sugarcane used to produce the ethanol is taking up an ever greater part of Brazil's agricultural lands.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Thursday wrote to his Japanese opposite number, demanding that the forthcoming G8 summit look at whether biofuels are "responsible and sustainable" in the light of rising food prices. Some experts say the biofuel crops are squeezing out other crops grown for food, causing a hike in food prices, but Lula rejected that.

"Today there are more people who eat. The Chinese eat, the Indians eat, the Brazilians eat ... and people live longer," Lula said, arguing that the growing number of mouths to feed is causing the inflation in food prices.

"I ask the whole world to produce more" to meet the global food needs without an increase in prices, Lula told journalists after a meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.

Last year Brazil reported an inflation figure of 4.47 percent, the highest since 2005. For meat consumer prices were up 22 percent in Brazil in 2007 while the prices of bread and soy bean oil were up 7.93 percent and 7.58 percent respectively.

Brazil is the world's largest exporter of ethanol biofuel and it is set to sign a bilateral agreement with the Netherlands on Friday increase cooperation on biofuels.

The Netherlands is the biggest foreign investor in Brazil, pumping in 8.1 billion dollars (5.1 billion euros) last year and buying up around 8.8 billion dollars' worth of imports, according to official Brazilian figures.

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"Clean Coal" Elusive As Governments Balk At Cost

Gerard Wynn, PlanetArk 11 Apr 08;

LONDON - Governments and the private sector are balking at the expense of kick-starting a technology to bury planet-warming gases underground, casting doubts on "clean coal" plans seen vital to help fight climate change.

A handful of nations are developing audacious plans to trap and seal beyond reach the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) produced from burning fossil fuels in power plants.

The technology -- carbon capture and storage (CCS) -- may help answer the riddle of how to get more energy for less CO2, given high carbon-emitting coal is the world's most abundant fossil fuel.

But no plant has yet been built anywhere in the world, challenging power company claims in Europe and the United States that they are building "CCS ready" plants, as western companies and governments face growing environmental opposition to coal.

The notion of being CCS ready is that companies build coal-fired power plants, for example, and bolt on CCS technology later when it becomes commercially viable.

But in the short-term being "CCS ready" does not commit them to very much at all.

"The power plant itself is not really very different," said Markus Ewert, head of research at Germany utility giant E.ON, adding the main difference was to set aside extra space for CCS equipment in the future, and to be within about 200 km of a suitable, underground CO2 storage site.

E.ON says all new coal plants will be CCS ready, and aims to fit the technology to all its coal plants by 2020. It has spent over 55 million euros ($87.15 million) on CCS research projects to make it work.

"It's not a gimmick," said Ewert.

Several US states have required that all new coal-fired power plants have the "capability" for CCS.

"The problem is that the carbon capture technology isn't here yet," said a spokesman for the office of fossil fuel energy at the US Department of Energy.

"It is remarkably difficult to define exactly what it is," said a spokeswoman for Britain's department for business enterprise and regulatory reform, referring to the "CCS ready" label.

Industry estimates suggest that the first commercial-scale CCS test plant will be running some time between 2012 and 2015, but the timetable has looked vulnerable after recent project cancellations in the United States, Britain and Canada.


HOPE

Some environmentalists dislike CCS, as well as coal, because they say it is a distraction from a drive to develop non-fossil fuel energy, and leaks may wipe out the point of burying gases.

But industry hopes are high for what it could do for climate change, energy security, and business.

CCS has the capacity to curb global carbon emissions by about a third, analysts say, given that it can remove around 90 percent of all carbon from fossil fuel-fired power plants, which in turn account for about 40 percent of all carbon emissions.

It could then aid energy security by allowing countries concerned about climate change to continue to burn coal, and so for example cut imports of lower carbon-emitting natural gas.

Economically, CCS could also have applications beyond cleaning up coal-fired power plants, for example helping develop low carbon-emitting transport fuels from wood, trap CO2 emissions from oil refining, or produce hydrogen fuel for cars.

A rule of thumb suggests CCS would add half again, or about 500 million euros ($786.8 million), to the capital cost of an average-sized demonstration coal-fired power plant.

Multiplied across dozens or even hundreds of power plants that implies a market in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

"For 2030 we estimated it could be between 76 and 225 billion euros per year," said Societe Generale analyst Sarbjit Nahal. "Some people say as high as one trillion euros."

Beneficiaries could include heavy industrial manufacturers, such as Alstom, GE and Siemens, an oil and gas industry which may own suitable pipelines and CO2 storage sites, and power generators selling the resulting, "low carbon" electricity.

Key uncertainties remain a legal framework which could furnish construction permits, cost inflation on rising steel prices, and a network of pipelines which may need to be twice as large as that of the entire natural gas industry now.


TOO LATE

But the biggest doubt is government backing for a technology which has only been a firm option for three or four years.

Britain and the United States are leading the world in ear-marking finance for commercial-scale pilot plants -- about 500 million pounds ($985.2 million) and $1.3 billion to fund one and up to three projects respectively.

Norway has budgeted this year over 1 billion Norwegian crowns ($197.7 million) for research, and China has a full-scale plant slated for 2015. Norway has long experimented with burying CO2, although not trapped from power plants.

The US, British and Chinese initiatives may be pipped by private sector-led initatives.

"The way Britain has written the rules allows people to drift on to 2019 whereas actually there's two or three we can pretty confidently predict will be operating full-scale by 2012," said University of Edinburgh's Stuart Haszeldine.

Aside from one-off grants no policy exists yet for supporting CCS in the same way as solar and wind now, said Lewis Gillies, chief executive of Hydrogen Energy, a joint venture between mining firm Rio Tinto and oil company BP, which aims to develop three, commercial-scale CCS plants.

Hydrogen Energy wants to split fossil fuels into hydrogen and CO2, bury the latter and sell the hydrogen as a clean fuel to utilities.

Last year it shelved a project in Britain after a lack of government support there, and is now targeting 2012 for a similar plant fuelled by natural gas in Abu Dhabi, although it has no details yet of support there, either.

The joint venture is also in talks with US utilities to sell hydrogen from a proposed CCS plant in California from 2014, arguing it can compete with rival clean fuels such as solar.

Similarly German utility RWE, wants to be allowed to sell for a price premium clean power from two or three major CCS demonstration plants, much like solar power gets in Germany.

"That's what we are looking for, similar to the renewables tariff," said head of Johannes Heithoff, RWE's head of R&D.


CARBON PRICE

A European emissions trading scheme may provide help, both by forcing all power generators to buy permits to emit CO2 from 2013 -- delivering a cost saving from burying the gas -- and possibly yielding government cash from permit sales.

A carbon price of 70 euros per tonne of CO2 now and 35 euros in 2020 may be enough to make CCS competitive, and less for promising post-combustion technnologies which absorb CO2 from a power plant smokestack. EU emissions permits are trading now at about 25 euros and are widely forecast to rise.

Royal Dutch Shell is lobbying the EU for an extra emissions permits per tonne of stored carbon, to help finance the capture of CO2 normally vented from oil refineries.

Norway, Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing states are lobbying for the United Nations to award carbon offsets to CCS plants under a Kyoto Protocol carbon trading scheme, with a decision due at a UN meeting in Poland at the end of the year.

Read more!

Laos Faces Thorny Land Issues In Asia's Orchard

Darren Schuettler, PlanetArk 11 Apr 08;

VIENTIANE - After decades of isolation, Communist-led Laos is enjoying an economic boom fuelled in part by surging demand for its abundant commodity -- land.

From China to Japan and South Korea to Thailand, agri-business firms are flocking to the landlocked Southeast Asian nation to grow everything from rubber and pulp trees to organic vegetables and "green" crops for alternative fuels.

"Laos will be ASEAN's orchard in a couple of years," Thai embassy commercial officer Chalaempon Pongchabubnapa said of the 10-nation Southeast Asia grouping of which Laos is a member.

One of the poorest countries in Asia, with many of its citizens living on around $1 per day, Laos has gradually opened its tiny economy to foreign investment since the Pathet Lao Communists adopted market reforms in the mid-1980s.

In its 2008 outlook, the Asian Development Bank forecast nearly 8 percent growth led by mining and hydropower, but "an expansion of agriculture remains the key to raising incomes and employment".

However, the rapid investment in agriculture so far -- 39 projects worth $458 million were approved in 2006 compared to six valued at $14 million in 2002, according to the Ministry for Planning and Investment -- has not gone smoothly.

The system for granting concessions "is a mess", said a foreign advisor to the central government, which imposed a halt on new land grants last May that provinces have largely ignored.

Land conflicts are rising as plantations encroach on village fields and nearby forests, taking away traditional livelihoods with little or no compensation, activists say.

"Laos has one of the lowest population densities of any Southeast Asian nation by far," retired professor and Laos expert Martin Stuart-Fox said of its 5.8 million people living in an area half the size of France.

"There is land available and the government can very easily take it off the people and sign deals for plantation agriculture," he told Reuters.


SCRAMBLE FOR LAND

With commodity prices soaring and land scarce at home, plantation firms are going further abroad in search of good soil, favourable weather and investor-friendly policies.

In Africa, South Korea's AFinc has leased 100,000 hectares in the Democratic Republic of Congo to grow soybean and corn. Malaysia's Sime Darby is developing rubber and palm plantations in a relatively stable Liberia.

Rubber, palm oil, tapioca and sugar plantations are sprouting up in nearby Cambodia as it emerges from decades of civil war and the Khmer Rouge "Killing Fields".

In Laos, some 150,000 hectares of land has been ceded to private investors for 30-50 years "at inconceivably low fee rates," according to the environmental group TERRA.

In the north, where a new paved highway to China's border opened last month, Beijing firms are heavily investing in rubber to feed their country's surging auto industry.

Yunnan Natural Rubber Industrial Co plans a 66,700 hectare plantation in Laos, aiming to double it to 133,300 hectares by 2010 and to 333,300 hectares by 2015.

Vietnam, one of Asia's fastest-growing economies, is carving out concessions in Cambodia and southern Laos for rubber trees and other cash crops.

Japanese, Indian and Scandinavian tree farms dot central Laos, while Thai tapioca growers are shifting their operations across the Mekong River into Laos to benefit from lower European import tariffs granted to poor nations.

Some argue the scale of the plantation sector is not really known because Laos has no land inventory, although it is working on one. Another issue is that multiple levels of government can grant concessions, leaving the door open to corruption.

"The national government has a hard time understanding what is going on. Even at the district level, concessions are given that the province does not know about," said the foreign advisor who would not be identified because he was not authorised to speak.

Other foreign experts and researchers asked for their names to be withheld due to concern the authorities might expel them or hamper their work if they spoke out of turn.

WHERE ARE THE COCONUTS?

Last May, Prime Minister Bouasone Bouphavanh declared an indefinite moratorium on large land concessions for mining and agriculture "to address shortcomings of our previous strategy".

Some plantations had turned out to be illegal logging camps. In one case, a foreign investor who promised vast swathes of coconuts stripped the concession of its valuable timber and left.

Yet only a month into the moratorium, the governor of Vientiane province granted 705 hectares of land to a South Korean rubber project, according to state media reports.

"Plantations need land and local officials can deliver it. They go to a village and say 'this land is degraded and can be used for plantation development'," said a researcher with a foreign NGO.

In northern Laos, once home to swathes of opium-covered hills that formed part of the infamous Golden Triangle, farmers are now planting rubber trees under contract to Chinese firms.

"They are told they will become rich and own lots of Vigo pickup trucks," said a foreign academic who studied plantations in Oudomxay province. In reality, the farmers will have to tend their trees for seven years before any latex is tapped.

The government says plantations are fighting poverty by employing villagers, including ethnic minorities relocated from upland areas with promises of schools, healthcare and new land.

But critics say the policy has ensured a cheap source of labour for the plantations.

Tamang, 56, is still waiting for the parcel of rice paddy the government promised him two years ago when his family of eight moved to a village in central Laos where a large eucalyptus plantation is being developed.

The plantation owner, Japan's Oji Paper, has built a new school where some of his children attend.

Tamang works 3-7 days a month, earning 20,000 kip a day clearing fields for the slender trees. A nearby forest where villagers could gather mushrooms, bamboo shoots and other non-timber forest products to eat or sell was cleared.

"Two years ago it was easy to find food, now it's much harder," he said outside his family's ramshackle wooden home.

"We are waiting for the government to give us land but we have heard nothing yet".

(Editing by Megan Goldin)

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Global Warming Not a Cosmic Swindle

Andrea Thompson, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 10 Apr 08;

Skeptics who argue that global warming is caused by cosmic rays rather than man-made greenhouse gases have been dealt another blow.

Some who question the human-induced global warming scenario argue that changes in the intensity of these rays, which are caused by variations in solar activity, affect the cloud cover of the Earth, allowing heat from the sun to build up, and accounting for the rise of global temperatures in recent years.

But a new study detailed in the Institute of Physics' journal, Environmental Research Letters, finds no link between the incoming cosmic rays and global cloud cover. The research was led by Terry Sloan of Lancaster University in the UK and Arnold Wolfendale of Durham University, also in the UK.

The sun's rays are of course the key drivers of Earth's climate as they are the main source of our planet's energy.

However, some skeptics have argued that changes in solar activity are responsible for the current period of warming. They argue that the sun's magnetic fields cause fluctuations in the intensity of cosmic rays, which they contend can ionize gases in Earth's atmosphere, creating small particles that collect water to form low-level clouds. These clouds, in turn, scatter incoming light, causing a cooling effect.

Among the skeptics, a small group of scientists say it is a decrease in cosmic rays that has decreased the amount of low-level clouds, causing the current phase of warming. A recent British television special, "The Great Global Warming Swindle," which aimed to debunk current scientific understanding of the causes of global warming, named this as the main cause of Earth's rising temperatures.

But the new study found no significant link between the intensity of cosmic rays hitting the Earth and low-level cloudiness. Its findings "suggest that it is fairly unlikely that [cosmic rays] have any discernable effect on the cloudiness," said Rasmus Benestad of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, who was not involved with the study.

"If the effect were important, then we would have seen it," Benestad told LiveScience. "[Cosmic rays] cannot account for the present warming trend."

Benestad also pointed out that no long-term trend in cosmic ray intensity that corresponds with the decades-long rise in global temperatures has been detected, which is a bigger stumbling block for those who support cosmic rays as the source of global warming.

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'If Singapore can't go green, who can?' : Lord Stern

Sheralyn Tay, Today Online 11 Apr 08;

All it takes for Singapore or any country to go green — with measures that make a real difference to climate change — is a one-off commitment of 1 to 1.5 per cent of gross domestic product.

It is an amount every economy already accepts as a variable, given rising oil prices or currency fluctuations, for example.

That is why arguments that pit business competitiveness against climate change mitigation are "blown out of proportion and are without empirical support", according to Lord Nicholas Stern (picture), author of the influential Stern Report on Climate Change, who is in town at the invitation of the civil service.

And Singapore is the country which can best prove the environment does not come at the expense of the economy, he said.

"Singapore has a way of getting things done, you've shown that, and we've all stood by and watched in amazement … If Singapore were to get to a low-carbon economy quickly, it would be a powerful example for the world. If you say you cannot, it would be discouraging because, if Singapore cannot do it, who can?" he said yesterday in a lecture at the Civil Service College as part of their Distinguished Visitors Programme.

But some audience members raised Singapore's size, lack of natural resources and emphasis on economic growth as challenges.

In January, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said no one should expect Asia to stump economic growth by reducing production at this high point of its development.

Lord Stern, who is with the London School of Economics, did not think these issues should impede a commitment to climate change mitigation, though.

Business competitiveness and reducing carbon emissions are not mutually exclusive, he said, as the opportunities from green technologies would eventually outweigh the initial costs.

"I don't think the special case argument stands for Singapore, comparative to other countries," he said and cited the Republic's edge — in terms of geographical location, economic status and high technology focus — to address the issues.

In any case, the issue should not be weighed using cost-benefit scales but looked at from a risk-based assessment, said Lord Stern, who asked if we could live with the risks of not making the hard decisions.

"Continued high carbon growth would eventually undermine itself," he said, referring to sea level rises and extreme weather conditions.

"We cannot turn it into a two-horse race (between the economy and the environment). If we do, both of them will lose."

Singapore can take lead in cutting carbon emissions
It can leverage on technology and efficiency to be role model: economist
Tania Tan & Shobana Kesava, Straits Times 11 Apr 08;

PLANET Earth is barrelling towards climate change faster than originally thought, an economist warned yesterday.

Lord Nicholas Stern, director of the Asia Research Centre at the London School of Economics, said previous estimates of the impact of climate change on global temperatures were 'very conservative', so efforts to adopt greener practices must be stepped up across the board now.

He said new evidence had surfaced to show that if the world continues to generate carbon dioxide as a result of large-scale industrial and commercial activities, global temperatures could climb by 5 deg C by 2050 - just 40 years away.

A change of 5 deg C will make a world of difference. The polar ice caps will melt, triggering widespread floods. Acres of crops - food - will be destroyed.

The last time Earth saw a temperature change of that magnitude, it was gripped in the Ice Age, he noted.

Lord Stern was delivering a lecture on the economic impact of climate change to about 100 people at the Civil Service College, as part of the college's Distinguished Visitors Programme yesterday.

He is known as the author of the Stern Report, a groundbreaking 2006 tome on the financial cost of climate change to the world economy.

His poser to the audience yesterday: 'So what is the world to do?'

The short answer: Each individual must 'reduce his carbon footprint'.

This means to say everyone has to cut back on the amount of carbon his activities - including using cars and flying on aeroplanes - pump into the Earth's atmosphere.

But cut back by how much?

Lord Stern said each individual now produces an average of 7 tonnes of carbon a year. This number must come down to 2.5 tonnes by 2050 to help mitigate the effects of climate change.

It will be a daunting task, considering each American produces 25 tonnes of carbon a year, twice that of Europeans. Singaporeans produce about 10 tonnes annually.

Lord Stern said: 'It's an ambitious target, given where we are starting from, but it's the bare minimum we must do.'

With most of the world's population living in Asia, the pressure is on to cut gas emissions in this region, he added.

Singapore must make a 'stronger commitment' to help its neighbours combat climate change, he said.

Challenging the view that Singapore is too small to make a difference in the world, he urged policy makers here to take the lead in cutting carbon emissions.

Leveraging on its technology and efficiency, he said, Singapore could be a model for a successful balance between going green and achieving economic progress.

'If you say it can't be done, it would be very disheartening,' he said. 'People would say, if Singapore cannot achieve it, who can?'

Ms Kavita Gandhi, executive director of the Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore, which counts solar energy firms among its 70 members, said the talk was an eye-opener but she had hoped for more.

She said: 'I would have liked to hear more about what could be done to implement subsidies, because that is what most companies which are in the solar business are interested in.'

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Preserve value of natural world: Lord Stern

Shobana Kesava, Straits Times 11 Apr 08;

WHEN Lord Nicholas Stern and his team released a groundbreaking report on the economic cost of climate change in 2006, it sent reverberations through governments concerned about the bottom line.

Now, a new series of reports on the value of the natural world might soon change the way nations view conservation.

While few details are known, the reports could look at how the economy would be affected by the extinction of things like medicinal plants and as yet undiscovered animals.

Lord Stern, who was an adviser to the British government from 2003 till last year, expects a number of reports to be ready in a year or so, but said they would be harder to do than the report on climate change.

'Valuing the benefits of biodiversity is quite difficult in their full magnitude,' he said. 'But weighing the costs and benefits of maintaining biodiversity is vital.'

He declined to reveal who will write the next report and said he would have only a minor role in its production.

'I think what they will show is that... investing in maintaining biodiversity and allowing forests to grow and flourish will be very wise,' he said.

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Just because it's difficult to go green doesn't mean that it's not necessary

Some sacrifices are worth making
Budget Tai Tai, Tabitha Wang Today Online 11 Apr 08;

MY FLAT faces an office building and, from my living room, I can see directly into one of the rooms. If I had nothing to do, I could be entertained round the clock with the goings-on in there.

I tell you this not to show how much of a kaypoh (busybody) I am but to illustrate how much electricity is being wasted. The reason I can look straight through the tinted window any time of the day is that the guy who uses the office never switches off the lights.

Half the time, he is not even there. All I can see is the blue light from his computer screen. Sometimes, when I wake up in the wee hours of the morning, I can see flashing lights, indicating that his screensaver has kicked in and he, obviously, has gone home.

I've shown the office to my visiting friends but they don't seem as bothered as I am. "Who cares?" they say. "After all, he's not paying the bill and neither are you."

That's not the point. It doesn't matter who pays the bill — in the end, we all pay. Because to generate that power, we need fossil fuel, which is getting costlier and, more importantly, adding more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

But you see, if I so much as whisper the words "greenhouse gas", I know people's eyes will start rolling. Most Singaporeans don't buy into this concept of saving energy. All right, some switched off their lights for Earth Hour last month, but would they continue to do it long-term?

An ex-colleague used to drive me crazy because she wouldn't switch off the office air-conditioner even if she were the last to leave. When I asked her about it, she looked at me, wide-eyed, and defended herself, saying: "But the air-con needs to be on to cool the computers." Needless to say, she never switched off her computer, either.

I think it's because Singaporeans are spoilt. We are so used to an uninterrupted supply of electricity that we take it for granted.

When was the last time we had a blackout? The only time the electricity went off at night in my flat, the first in more than a decade, we were caught unawares and had to burn aromatherapy candles for light. We didn't even have torches.

It was the most boring and stifling two hours of my life. I couldn't use the computer, watch television or read. As the fans weren't working, I had to make do with a piece of cardboard. To occupy myself, I made a mental list of all the things I was missing — my hi-fi, TV, computer, fan, reading lamps ... the list went on and on.

I even started missing my cake mixer and blender even though I was in no hurry to start baking or make a smoothie at 9 o'clock at night. Just the thought that they weren't available at the flick of a switch was enough to make me nostalgic.

I went down to the coffeeshop for a teh peng and some fresh air, only to find every seat occupied with people who had the same idea. When the lights came on again, everyone scrambled to get home to their beloved air-cons and TVs.

I once spoke to a woman who had lived in Pulau Ubin. Her kampung house was so out of the way it couldn't be connected to the grid. For water, they had a well and for electricity, they relied on a generator — which would run for only two hours at night. It was a throwback to the olden days.

"How did you wash your clothes or mix your cakes?" I asked.

"By hand."

"How did you survive without air-conditioning?"

"We went outside to catch the breeze."

"What did you do at night, seeing as you couldn't read or watch TV?"

She gave me a strange look: "We went to sleep."

Tabitha Wang will celebrate Earth Day by buying more aromatherapy candles.

little not-green-at-all dot

• Earth Day falls on April 22 this year

• In Singapore, close to a fifth of the electricity generated is consumed by households.

• The biggest energy guzzlers are air-conditioners (30 per cent), refrigerators (17 per cent), lighting (10 per cent) and video and computer equipment (10 per cent)

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Singapore's forests: Farms, streams, illegal hideouts

A fugitive's playground?
Farms, streams, illegal hideouts – there's plenty in the forest to help a man survive
Today Online 11 Apr 08;

YOU might have sped along the expressway past this snarl of green. You might even be living in the modern housing estate just 70m from the forest's edge.

It may seem like some primal otherworld. But to dive into the forest at Bukit Panjang — which, with its abundance of vegetable farms, wild-growing fruits and labyrinth of canals, is a natural haven for a fugitive on the run — it is as easy as crossing over a park's borders or dashing across a four-lane flyover.

Once there, a network of jungle trails takes you anywhere through the massive central catchment area, whether from Lornie Road to Mandai Road, or from the Seletar Expressway to Chestnut Avenue.

Alternatively, if you so chose, you could lose yourself effortlessly in an area the size of 3,000 football fields and encompassing three reservoirs — a region webbed with partly-covered canals that offer both the perfect hideout and a way to move discreetly below-ground over long distances.

But how would you survive?

Easily, if you were a terrorist leader who knew the basics of survival and was skilled at trekking.

Over four hours, this city-bred reporter — with the help of a local farmer and a companion trained in jungle survival — came across patches of spinach, tapioca, sweet potatoes and yam grown on the fringes of the forest.

Some of this largesse is courtesy of the green-fingered retirees who are enthusiastic participants in community garden projects established by the Bukit Panjang Group Representation Constituency.

Maintained daily, these farms are ingenuously irrigated by manmade streams or water from dammed up channels.

But, further into the forest, you find a different breed of farms — haphazard plots not on any official register, with hand-painted banners and raffia string demarcating boundaries and warning off thieves.

The primary forest, meanwhile, is itself a rich source of edible plants and animals, and learning how to identify or trap these, or to build a shelter, would be one of the first things a survivalist learns.

Even had it not been raining frequently in recent weeks, finding water would not pose a big problem.

Pointing to one of the many gushing streams criss-crossing the landscape, the farmer who was showing this reporter around joked: "It's like a spa there. The illegal immigrants love to bathe here."

His smile, however, fades quickly at the mention of Mas Selamat Kastari.

The escape of the former Jemaah Islamiah leader has brought unwelcome disruption to the serenity of the farms, what with the heavy presence of gurkhas, police and army officers and their sniffer dogs.

The authorities have since scaled down their search in forested areas, relying instead on a more targeted approach based on intelligence.

Like some Singaporeans, the farmers wonder if a fugitive could indeed survive for months in this wild portion of Singapore, even with the ready supply of food and water. Without fire to cook the food and boil the water, he would not survive for long, the farmers said.

But matches and lighters are not hard to come by in this particular forest — it is a known hideout for the illegal immigrants-cum-cigarette peddlers from Bau Bau, Sulawesi.

Despite stepped-up patrols by Singapore Customs and Certis Cisco, the Bau Bau group is still active in the area, according to the farmers who see them almost daily.

Their presence is obvious even to the first-time visitor: Manmade shelters, clothes hangers littering the canal, food wrappers under the flyovers, woks stacked under a tree.

Living in makeshift huts and bathing in the canals, these illegal immigrants play a cat-and-mouse game every night, emerging from the thick foliage at Petir Road off Dairy Farm to peddle their cigarettes to drivers who stop their cars there.

One cannot help but speculate: Might these peddlers, living outside society and outside the law, have formed an impromptu support network for Mas Selamat — a recognisable figure among Indonesians after his earlier high-profile escapes while in the custody of Indonesian authorities?

If so, would he be tempted to seek their help in leaving the country, by some discreet means?

Then again, perhaps after all he might not be in their patch of forest. What Singaporean urbanites might be surprised to learn is that about one-fifth of the island is under forest cover.

One thing this reporter now has few doubts about, after his eye-opening trek through the forest: It would be naive to dismiss the possibility that, even after six weeks, a fugitive could remain hidden and alive in this wild side of Singapore.

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Best of our wild blogs: 11 Apr 08

TeamSeagrass at Cyrene
Roundup of a fabulous trip on the teamseagrass blog and the nature scouter blog and wonderful creations blog with a special post of NEW sea stars seen on the wonderful creations blog and budak blog and Marvellous Melibe with video clip on the colourful clouds blog and other stories on the wildfilms blog.

TeamSeagrass at Tuas
more stories on the teamseagrass blog

Sea anemones and their friends and food
on the singapore celebrates our reefs blog

Swimming with whale sharks at the Georgia Aquarium
Is the tourist attraction again putting its star animal at risk? on the creative loafing blog

Greater Racket-tailed Drongo mobbing Changeable Hawk Eagle
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Cicada rain
on the manta blog with video clip on the tidechaser blog

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