IYOR 2008 Keynote: LM Chou envisions a marine paradise in Singapore
on the Habitatnews blog
International Coastal Cleanup Singapore 2008: Site and Participant Status on the Habitatnews blog
Sisters Island
fishes galore and mushroom madness and pinching hermits on the wild shores of singapore blog
Chek Jawa efforts featured on the Other 95% blog
on the other 95% blog
White-bellied Sea Eagle catching dead fish
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Just one species gone; concerted effort can reverse extinction trends
Shobana Kesava, Straits Times 16 Aug 08;
JUST one coral species out of more than 250 has disappeared from Singapore waters in over 100 years, despite the fast and furious pace of urban development here.
Quantity-wise, the figures are dire: About 60 per cent of local reefs has already been destroyed, and another 15 per cent is expected to be wiped out through current coastal development. However, the rich diversity present makes experts hopeful of reviving the reefs.
Professor Chou Loke Ming, a marine biologist with the National University of Singapore (NUS) said a concerted effort made now by the Government, business sector and those in civil society can reverse current trends towards extinction.
Speaking last Saturday at the second International Year of the Reef.
(IYOR2008) event, the pioneer conservationist said that to make this happen, 'development agencies must treat reef protection as a real exercise and not just for public relations, and draw up improvement plans at the same time as their development plans'.
Before the latest study by NUS, scientists had thought at least 50 species had been lost to development work.
Prof Chou envisions a marine paradise by 2018, with many large young thriving reefs lining Singapore's shores. He noted that restoration efforts had begun over the last decade.
One example is on Pulau Semakau, where screens were set up to protect existing sun-loving coral reefs from being choked by sedimentation during the creation of a landfill there.
Another is the work by Keppel Industries, NParks and NUS teams to build a coral nursery near the Southern Islands using fibreglass as a base for coral fragments to grow.
'Today's restoration efforts are a start but they still have to go beyond saving small coral colonies here and there,' Prof Chou said.
Environmental companies which can take on such work, he said, should also be given ample time to carry out assessments and save more corals standing in the way of land reclamation.
'Two weeks is not enough to tell them to get organised, and to take what coral they can before closing the whole place.'
To reverse the damage done, Prof Chou suggested a mix of preserved natural, newly created and restored sites, supported by development agencies.
Already, better private-public sector partnerships are springing up, he said, with resorts in Bintan and One deg 15 Marina interested in saving corals.
Sentosa Development Corporation has even considered how to grow corals in its canals. He added: 'We have a rich heritage; why squander it?'
Prof Chou's audience was made up largely of nature enthusiasts from non-governmental organisations as well as those from the Government and business community who support conservation issues.
About 500 visitors attended the weekend event at the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Chairman of IYOR2008 Francis Lee said a proposal from the people, private and public sectors to conserve Singapore's marine life will be submitted to the Government by the end of this year.
Links
Video clip of Prof Chou Loke Ming's keynote address on the singapore celebrates our reefs blog.
The hottest new cause here is the environment, and various activities to save Mother Earth have spread like wildfire online
Shobana Kesava, Straits Times 16 Aug 08;
'Otterman' spreads the eco-message
POSSIBLY the country's first green blogger, Mr N. Sivasothi (above), 42, helped bring to public attention Pulau Ubin's Chek Jawa, which started the effort to save the wetlands from reclamation in 2001.
In the last decade, the ecology lecturer at the National University of Singapore (NUS) has trained hundreds of NUS students to be nature guides, as part of a commitment to share Singapore's natural heritage with its people.
To spread the message of eco-oriented goings-on here, the tech-savvy zoologist, who goes by the moniker Otterman, began sending out e-mail lists in 1998.
He set up webpages in 1999, and went on to upload digital shots in 2001 on his website, habitatnews.nus.edu.sg. Each step kept pace with the milestones of the Internet's evolution, he said.
His dedication proved useful to galvanising support for Ubin's Chek Jawa.
'One e-mail to NUS staff and another post on habitatnews and we saw several hundreds of people responding and turning up at Chek Jawa over two weekends.'
Today, besides giving talks, conducting guided tours and leading the Toddy Cats in their annual coordination of the International Coastal Clean-up Singapore (ICCS), he encourages students to blog about their discoveries in green, blue and brown - flora, marine life and trash-collecting, calling the few who do 'modern-day naturalists, putting out the news of tomorrow'.
The latest way to get started, he suggested, is 'mini-blogs' at posterous.com, where each e-mail is turned into a posting.
They watch over marine nurseries along the shores
TEAM SeaGrass - or TeamSG for short - is one of seven groups monitoring Singapore's shores.
It is led by Ms Siti Maryam Yaakub, 27, who is also a senior biodiversity officer with the National Parks Board.
They gather data on the meadows and submit it to international group Seagrass-Watch.
Ms Siti explained: 'Seagrasses are nurseries, protecting and helping to feed young sea stars, fish and prawn species.
'They form the connectors between reefs and mangroves.'
She'll take you for a walk on the wild side
MS RIA Tan, 47, founded www.WildSingapore.com seven years ago, and spends over three hours a day updating it with news and pictures from Singapore's best green websites.
She even goes as far as to ferry volunteers to offshore locations to help them protect Singapore's shores.
'It still surprises Singaporeans to hear their country does have wildlife, as much as it does the international marine experts who are amazed at the variety here,' she said during a recent 5am expedition to Cyrene Reef with Team SeaGrass.
That week's excursion was paid for by the National Parks Board, which supports the group.
The large reef, all 45ha (about 65 football fields) of which is exposed only at very low tides, sits between Pulau Bukom, Jurong Island and the mainland.
Learn about natural heritage from Crabs and Cats
THE Naked Hermit Crabs (NHC), Hantu bloggers and the Toddy Cats have the low-down on Singapore's natural heritage.
NHC (on a guided walk in Sentosa) and the Toddy Cats, affiliated to the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research at the NUS, conduct public tours of areas threatened by urbanisation.
Toddy Cats (an affectionate name for the rare carnivorous forest dwellers, the palm civets) also coordinates the annual ICCS every September. It attracts about 3,000 volunteers each year.
The Hantu bloggers are avid divers. At Pulau Hantu, its 20 members explore and photograph the area, also playing underwater guides to 900 visitors every year.
They do so, its founder Ms Debby Ng, 26, said, 'because we know the history of the area and the issues that surround it, and that it may not be here for long'.
Family, welfare group offer
$6,000 TO HELP NAB CULPRIT WHO DID THIS
Teh Jen Lee, The New Paper 16 Aug 08;
STRAY cats may not matter to most people, but one family in Aljunied is willing to pay $4,000 to catch those responsible for the abuse of three strays in Pasir Ris.
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and the Cat Welfare Society have also offered $1,000 each for information that can lead to a prosecution in the case, bringing the total reward to $6,000.
Ms Deirdre Moss, executive officer for SPCA, said: 'We're very touched that the Aljunied family, which has requested anonymity, has come forward to top up the reward by $4,000.'
On 2 May, two bleeding kittens and a mother cat suffering from chemical burns were found at Block 253 Pasir Ris Street 21 by a resident.
Both the SPCA and the police were called in.
Mr Ananth Thirunauckarasu, 25, animal handling officer for SPCA, received the call at 9.20pm. When he arrived, he found the kittens dead, with blood coming out of their mouths.
He said: 'There were patches of blood on the floor. The mother cat was alive but struggling a lot.
'Its uncontrolled movement looked like it was having fits.'
Nearby was a broken brown glass bottle which was labelled 'thinner'. After quickly taking pictures, MrAnanth rushed the cat to a veterinarian.
MEWING IN PAIN
During the journey, the cat kept mewing in pain.
Mr Ananth, who has been with SPCA for more than two years, said: 'I felt sad to see the cat suffering like that.'
The vet's report stated that the adult cat, estimated to be about 2 years old, was 'rolling about in distress with laboured breathing'.
It is believed that the cat had probably been doused with paint thinner and had breathed in the fumes, affecting its lungs.
Its body had angry red patches where the chemical had burnt its skin.
The woman who found the cats declined to be interviewed by The New Paper.
She told SPCA that her husband had put the cat under running water to alleviate its suffering before the SPCA arrived.
He felt a burning sensation in his hands when he carried the cat to a tap. But his efforts were too late to save it.
The vet had to put the cat down because it was in 'extreme distress'.
A post-mortem on the kittens, which were about 6 months old, found that they had serious head injuries.
They could have been hit with the thinner bottle, Ms Moss said.
She said the case is one of the most extreme cases of suffering that she has seen in the 24 years that she has been with SPCA.
She said: 'There's no doubt that the two kittens died in a violent manner and the mother cat suffered beyond what can be imagined. It's horrific.
'It's a pity that no witnesses have come forward so far. It has been three months. The culprit or culprits deserve to be put behind bars.'
Cruelty to animals is punishable by imprisonment of up to 12 months and/or fine of up to $10,000.
# Anyone with information can call the SPCA at 6287-5355.
PREVIOUS CASE
THE New Paper's report on a cat that was brutally kicked while the incident was filmed on a handphone - and SPCA's $1,000 reward for information - resulted in the culprits being caught.
In September 2006, we had received a video clip of a teenager pretending to befriend a stray cat before giving it a vicious kick that sent it flying a few metres in the air.
On the same day the report was published, SPCA received a call about two tertiary students who had made the video.
Following police investigations, the Attorney-General's Chambers recommended that the boys go through a six-month Guidance Programme conducted by the Ministry for Community Development, Youth and Sports.
The SPCA paid $1,000 to the informants, but does not want to release details about them.
BBC News 15 Aug 08;
Marine biologists being filmed for a BBC TV series have confirmed an astonishing 13 new fish species on a single expedition in the Pacific Ocean.
The researchers have a further 15 animals they think may also be new to science but require additional study.
The haul comes from deep dives made across reefs in Micronesia.
The quest to find the novel fish is detailed in the series Pacific Abyss and includes the capture of a long-sought and spectacular damselfish.
The team concentrated its efforts on waters referred to as the "twilight zone".
Sited some 60m (200ft) to 150m (500ft) down, this is a transition region between depths that still receive some sunlight during the daytime and waters that are in perpetual darkness.
The twilight zone is rarely explored, being below the activity of normal scuba activity but above the operations of most submersibles.
The scientists had to use sophisticated closed-circuit rebreather gear to avoid decompression problems. Even so, for safety reasons, their dives were strictly time-limited, and each sortie saw a quick scramble to net as many different fish as possible before the required slow ascent to the surface.
The newly described species include several new colourful damselfish in the Chromis genus; at least one new species of basslet (from the Plectranthias genus); an unusual hawkfish and a new species of butterflyfish.
The most spectacular recovery was of the bright blue damselfish found 120m down off Palau. This was described recently in the scientific literature by team-member Dr Richard Pyle, from the Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii.
The fish has been named Chromis abyssus in honour of the TV series.
The story is a more complicated one, however, because Dr Pyle first saw this fish more than a decade ago. Other researchers, too, had sightings, including one from a small submersible and another from a Remotely Oerated Vehicle (ROV).
It was during the BBC filming, though, that nine specimens were finally captured, allowing for an official scientific submission this year.
Yahoo News 15 Aug 08;
A red-breasted bird discovered by accident in the forests of Gabon is a new species, U.S. scientists said on Friday.
They have named the little bird the olive-backed forest robin, or Stiphrornis pyrrholaemus, but say they know little about it yet.
The Smithsonian Institution team found the bird while visiting the forest on a biodiversity project, said Brian Schmidt, a research ornithologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
"I suspected something when I found the first bird in Gabon since it didn't exactly match any of the species descriptions in the field guides," Schmidt said in a statement.
"Once I was able to compare them side by side to other specimens in our collections, it was clear that these birds were special."
Genetic tests confirmed the bird, which measures 4.5 inches
in length and averages half an ounce (14 grams) in weight, was a unique species.
Writing in the journal Zootaxa, the Smithsonian team said the males have a fiery orange throat and breast, yellow belly, olive back and black feathers on the head. Females are similar, but less vibrant. A distinctive white dot in front of each eye helps distinguish the species.
"Although finding an unknown species like the olive-backed forest robin was not the goal of the ... project, it is definitely a reminder that the world still holds surprises for us," Schmidt said.
(Reporting by Maggie Fox, editing by Will Dunham and Xavier Briand)
Richard Gray, The Telegraph 16 Aug 08;
A highly elusive species of leopard has been captured on film in a rare encounter in its natural habitat.
Researchers from Oxford University managed to get the picture of the Bornean Clouded leopard, which was only recognised as unique species in 2007, during a trip to assess whether the animals were living in the Sebangau National Park last month.
Bornean clouded leopards, the smallest of the big cats, are notoriously difficult to study in the wild as they are mainly nocturnal and highly secretive.
They inhabit inhospitable peat swamp forests and usually hunt their prey by ambushing from the trees.
This rare picture of a male Bornean clouded leopard was captured just before dawn using a remote camera placed 2 miles into the dark tropical forest.
The researchers set up 22 remote cameras in the area in the hope of spotting one of the sky creatures and now believe they have managed to obtain pictures of two separate animals in the national park.
Dr Susan Cheyne, from the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at Oxford University's Department of Zoology, said: "These cats are extremely elusive and shy.
"If they are surviving in an area that has had extensive disturbance from mankind and logging then it is very positive. As the level of disturbance in the park decreases then we hope they will do well.
"They also provide a good indicator of the health of the forest as cloud leopards are the largest predator in Borneo. If there was insufficient prey, they would not be able to survive.
Bornean clouded leopards are listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List and there are thought to be around 10,000 of them left in the wild.
With long bodies and short limbs, clouded leopards are expert tree climbers. They feed on monkeys, birds and wild pigs.
They also have the largest canine teeth relative to their body size compared to any other cat.
Professor David MacDonald, director of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, said: "The Bornean clouded leopard is a top priority for our programme, and we are very excited by this evidence that they occur at Sebangau - a great deal remains to be discovered about these beautiful felids, which are a flagship for conservation in South East Asia."
The team also captured pictures of endangered Orang-utans, gibbons, the mysterious Sun bear and other smaller cats such as the marbled cat and flat-headed cat.
The Telegraph 16 Aug 08;
Millionaires are purchasing entire ecosystems around the world and turning them into conservation areas. Their goal? To stop environmental catastrophe. Jonathan Franklin reports with pictures by Morten Andersen
Sebastián Piñera, one of the richest men in Chile, has a CV that includes introducing credit cards to his country and many large-scale property developments. Now he has added what every chic millionaire needs - his own private ecosystem.
Parque Tantauco, which Piñera created in 2005, is on one of South America's largest islands, Chiloé, off the coast of Patagonia.
Piñera bought the land and immediately set about protecting the offshore habitat of blue whales and the inland virgin forests.
Pulling out a map of the park, Piñera explains his plan, tracing his finger over a trekking route that will be connected by rustic cabins.
'We have been buying all the land around us. We started with 110,000 acres and now we have 150,000,' he says. 'I want my children and grandchildren to remember me for making one more million? No! So I now have many projects like this.'
While yachts and jets marked the status of last century's super rich, today the stylish accessory for millionaires is their very own ecosystem.
From Patagonia to Montana, hundreds of thousands of acres are being bought by wealthy businessmen and placed in private charities, conservation trusts or handed over to governments as a gift.
Johan Eliasch, chairman of Head, the ski and sporting goods manufacturer, and the grandson of a Swedish property developer, has taken his business skills and invested them in a new industry - Amazon Forest conservation.
Eliasch, who has a personal fortune estimated at £360m, has bought 400,000 acres in the Brazilian Amazon, near the river town of Manicore.
Deforestation, argues Eliasch, causes more carbon emissions annually than transportation, yet is often overlooked.
In his parcel of land, Eliasch estimates that some 80m tons of carbon are trapped in the forest - about the same amount the entire Swedish population will produce over the next 15 years at current rates (53m tons per year).
'The key to saving the Amazon and the rest of the world's great rainforests is actually very simple: just put a fair price on the role they play in providing a quarter of the world's oxygen, a fifth of fresh water and 60 per cent of its species,' declares Eliasch.
'I truly believe that with their values as a carbon store at last being recognised, we will see mass deforestation halted in five years.'
Eliasch's interest in the Amazon came about from a concern that one of the effects of global warming was its destruction of the European ski season due to the lack of a critical component - snow.
'The Swedish winters and summers hold the most enduring memories for me. Now when I am back in Stockholm in November, it is difficult to imagine being able to ski to school. I think that is a tragedy,' he remarked.
The efforts by Eliasch to protect the rainforest have hit a nerve among some people in Brazil who are suspicious of foreigners coming in with plans to invest in the Amazon.
Eliasch, who admits that shutting down sawmills and putting hundreds of workers out of a job is controversial, insists that hacking down the rainforest is a wildly inefficient use of natural resources.
'Once timber is cut, there is little that can be done with the land that is is sustainable,' argues Eliasch. 'Timber extraction provides big profits at the expense of local communities.'
'Providing communities with unfettered access to harvest a forest that is protected in perpetuity provides better and more reliable incomes.'
Still, some people remain unconvinced, and it might be years before Eliasch is able to fully utilise his business acumen within the complex world of conservation.
'There are pitfalls everywhere,' says Evan Bowen-Jones of the conservation body Fauna & Flora International. 'In some countries it is possible to buy large chunks of lands and preserve it, and in other areas it is impossible.'
Bowen-Jones cautions that entering the world of large-scale conservation requires patience, and he strongly suggests consulting experienced individuals who have already been through the process.
Working with local groups or, better yet, being invited by local environmental groups is another key to success, he says.
'With the current pace of biodiversity loss posed by climate change, we are going to have to stretch the methods available to us and that is going to bring in the wealthy individuals,' says Bowen-Jones.
'If they [wealthy donors] bring the right attitude to the table, then there is a good chance for success.'
'It is pretty hard for a country to turn down a gift of 300,000 hectares [740,000 acres],' says Douglas Tompkins, 65, the American-born founder of Esprit and The North Face.
From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, Tompkins amassed a multi-million dollar fortune. He lived in a huge estate in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighbourhood and had a world-renowned art collection.
Then he read a book on deep ecology, the philosophy pioneered by Norwegian Arne Naess, who calls for a radical re-evaluation of man's relationship with the planet.
Tompkins was an instant convert. He sold his estate, the art and everything else, then moved to the remote wilds of Patagonia.
Since 1992, Tompkins has spent nearly £110m buying or organising the purchase of around 25 properties covering 2.2m acres in Chile and Argentina.
Once purchased, the land is placed under strict environmental protection by its new owner. Tompkins has even coined a phrase for this movement - wildlands philanthropy.
When Tompkins met someone with the same philosophy and her own pile of money - Kristi McDivitt, the former CEO of the Patagonia Clothing company - they began to focus their business acumen on building coalitions of funders, environmentalists and governments to create national parks.
'Spend your money on land conservation,' says McDivitt. 'To restore a creek is patriotic in my mind. Restoring the land in any form is a patriotic act.'
This eco-power couple have now created two national parks - Parque Nacional Corcovado in Chile and Parque Nacional Monte León in Argentina.
Another two are being finalised, with a total area of close to two million acres. At the centre of Tompkins' conservation efforts is Chile's Parque Pumalin, a pristine wooded ecosystem that includes volcanoes, old growth forests and hidden hot springs. The park's 740,000 acres are off limits to all development except small-scale enterprises.
'I fundamentally believe in national parks,' Tompkins said. 'I don't believe in private parks. I believe that nations do best and have done best when they really value their parklands and areas that are off limits to development.'
Hansjörg Wyss, one of Europe's richest men, agrees. After amassing a fortune estimated at £4,200m from his position of CEO of Synthes - a company that produces artificial spinal discs and nails for repairing broken bones - Wyss has tackled a far larger reconstruction project: the wild areas of the American West.
Through The Wyss Foundation, he has donated millions of dollars to preserve wild lands in Utah and Montana.
As chairman of the board at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a grassroots conservation group in the American southwest, Wyss has instituted a corporate structure that includes a £3.5m cash surplus, investments in stocks and mutual funds and an £800,000 office building in Salt Lake City.
In order to save thousands of acres in the Rocky Mountains of Montana from development, Wyss bankrolled a simple solution; he offered to buy up the mineral rights from the mining companies.
Thanks to Wyss's understanding of corporate America, the Foundation had discovered a strategy for effectively paying the oil and gas companies to leave the area.
In that Montana battle, The Wyss Foundation was an early funder and longtime proponent of the 'buy 'em out' strategy.
Even investment bankers Goldman Sachs have caught the bug. In 2003, Goldman Sachs received 670,000 acres of forests in southern Chile and Argentina as the result of a bankruptcy settlement.
'It was part of a large package of distressed debt. We started asking, what do we do with a million acres of forest at the end of the earth? We had to get out an atlas,' laughs Lawrence Linden, an advisory director to Goldman Sachs.
He continues: 'As an investment bank, we know what to do with shopping malls and apartment complexes. But an ecosystem in Tierra del Fuego? So we called in The Nature Conservancy to study the land and they came back with the conclusion that it was actually a very valuable piece of land from an environmental point of view.'
Today the Goldman Sachs land is a vast tract of wilderness and is home to the guanaco, a llama-like animal that roams the forests. It also has an endowment of around £9m.
"We didn't want to be a burden for taxpayers. This is not just a question of preserving a pristine wilderness,' says Pete Rose, a Goldman Sachs spokesman. 'This is about using 21st-century science to preserve a pristine wilderness.'
Across Europe, eco-barons have also invested heavily in land conservation.
Dutch businessman Paul Fentener van Vlissingen, who died in 2006, was a leading figure in the movement. From his 82,000-acre estate in Scotland - which he proudly advertised as public lands - van Vlissingen managed supermarket chains, energy companies and investment trusts. His passion was Africa's beleaguered national parks.
In barely two years, Vlissingen poured millions of dollars into the then incomplete Marakele National Park in South Africa, a job that would have taken at least 10 years without his funding. Today Marakele is part of a far bigger park system and is a healthy home to African wildlife, including elephant, white and black rhinoceros, buffalo, hyena, cheetah, wild dog, giraffe and eland.
To consolidate his philosophy, Vlissingen helped create the African Parks Foundation, an NGO that continues to reinforce the infrastructure and funding for national parks in Africa.
Before his death, van Vlissingen was widely considered the richest man in Scotland, and with tens of thousands of acres, the country's biggest landowner.
But van Vlissingen refused that title, 'You can't own a place like this. It belongs to the planet,' he once said. 'I'm only the guardian.'
Yahoo News 15 Aug 08;
Stung by high oil prices, Indonesia plans to tap more into renewable energies and change course from a "nation that splurges" to one that saves, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Friday.
"The soaring prices of oil on the global level during these last six years have reminded us of the importance of safeguarding energy security in our homeland," Yudhoyono said in his annual state-of-the-nation address.
"We're raising the energy supply capacity through accelerated energy diversification, the utilisation of non-fuel oil alternative energy, including new and renewable energy such as micro-hydro, geothermal and biofuel."
Indonesia is Asia's only member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, but Jakarta is planning to pull out of the cartel at the end of the year as falling production has turned it into a net importer.
The vast archipelago enjoys some of the lowest domestic fuel prices in the region thanks to generous subsidies, feeding demand for cars and motorbikes while sucking state money away from welfare and infrastructure projects.
Yudhoyono's poll ratings ahead of elections next year have suffered since he authorised an average 30-percent domestic fuel price rise in May, but he appeared in no mood Friday to sidestep the energy debate.
"In addition (to tapping renewable energies), we must effectively save energy. Thus far, we have been a nation that splurges on the use of energy," he said, adding that he had ordered the creation of an "Energy Saving Tax Force."
"The whole of society is ... expected to save, whether in private offices or in households."
He said energy savings of 20 percent would free up 17.6 trillion rupiah (1.9 billion dollars) of state funds for other projects.
"This is a very significant amount as we can make use of it for the development of our education, health, infrastructure and even defence," the president said.
Yudhoyono also said the country would step up the capacity of power generation across the archipelago by 10,000 megawatts to gradually end an electricity supply crisis.
"God willing, by the middle of 2009, the power crisis on Java and Bali will begin to be overcome," he said.
Despite the fuel price rises, Indonesian new vehicle sales jumped 59 percent year-on-year and 11 percent month-on-month to 60,836 units in July, the Indonesian Car Assembler Association said Wednesday.
New vehicle sales rose nearly 50 percent to 353,501 from January to July, against 235,702 in the same time a year ago.
Lee unveils ‘greengrowth’ plan as Seoul marks anniversary
Today Online 16 Aug 08;
SEOUL — On Friday, President Lee Myung-Bak unveiled a “green growth” strategy to drive South Korea’s economy in future decades as the nation celebrated its 60th anniversary marked by dramatic economic growth and democratisation.
“Green growth is a future strategy that will enable a ‘Miracle on the Korean Peninsula’ to succeed the ‘Miracle on the Han River’,” Mr Lee said in a speech.
The conservative President, whose government was rocked by months of street protests against beef imports from the United States, stressed the importance of the rule of law. He vowed to upgrade South Korea’s image, lamenting that it is best known overseas for “labour-management disputes and street rallies”.
Mr Lee touted “Low Carbon, Green Growth” as the core of the country’s new vision. “The renewable energy industry will create several times more jobs than existing industries,” he said.
He vowed to increase energy self-sufficiency through overseas exploration from the current 5 per cent to more than50 per cent by 2050.
Efforts would also be made to raise the use of new and renewable energy from the current 2 per cent to more than 20 per cent by 2050. South Korea would strive to become one of the world’s top four nations producing “green” cars, he said.
“Even if soaring oil prices drop in the years to come, now is the time for us to bid farewell to the era of excessive oil dependence,” Mr Lee said.
Security was tight in Seoul following a summer of protests against the resumption of US beef imports. The demonstrations have died down after the government secured extra safeguards against the supposed risks of mad cow disease.
After World War II, Korea was divided into US and Soviet zones of influence, with North and South Korea coming into existence in 1948. Two years later, the North invaded the South, sparking a war that left the country in ruins and an estimated1.7 million Korean civilians dead.
Since then, the size of the economy has grown 750 times to become the 13th largest in the world, and democracy was achieved in 1987 after decades of military-backed rule. AFP
Michael Perry, Reuters 15 Aug 08;
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Rising acidification of the ocean could reduce fertilization of marine invertebrates and might eventually wipe out colonies of sea urchins, lobsters, mussels and oysters, according to a study.
Scientists knew that ocean acidification was eating away at the shells of marine animals, but the new study has found that rising acidity hindered marine sperm from swimming to and fertilizing eggs in the ocean.
Climate change and the subsequent acidification of the world's oceans will significantly reduce the successful fertilization of certain marine species by the year 2100, said the report by Australian and Swedish scientists.
"If you look at projected rates (of acidity) for the year 2100, we are finding a 25 percent reduction in fertilization," lead-scientist Jane Williamson from Macquarie University told Reuters on Friday.
"We were completely surprised because people had been looking at the effect of acidification on calcified structures of marine animals, but there was no evidence to suggest it was affecting non-calcified structures, like a sperm or an egg," she said.
The surface of the ocean absorbs up to 30 percent of the world's yearly emissions of carbon dioxide. Absorbed carbon dioxide forms a weak acid that is gradually increasing the acidity of the oceans.
The study of sea urchins around southeast Australia found a link between increased ocean acidity and a reduction in swimming speed and motility of sea urchin sperm.
The researchers measured sperm swimming speed, sperm motility, fertilization success and larval developmental success in sea urchins in normal seawater with a pH 8.1 and also in water with a pH 7.7, which is projected to be the level of acidification by 2100.
The experiment found that in water with acidity at 7.7, the sperm swam much more slowly and began failing to meet the eggs.
fertilization fell by 25 percent and in almost 26 percent of cases where eggs were fertilized they did not survive to develop into larvae, said the study published in "Current Biology".
"It is widely believed that seawater is chemically well-buffered, but these results show that the acidification process already well underway may threaten the viability of many marine species," Williamson said.
She said acidity levels of 7.7 were already occurring in patches of ocean off the west coast of the United States.
She said that when acidification rose to 7.4, which is projected by 2300, sea urchins failed to fertilize eggs and died.
"The paper has looked at the projected rates within the next 80 years, but we have actually looked at higher acidification values and we have had mortality of the animals," she said.
"What we have now is evidence that the world's marine life is far more sensitive to ocean acidification than first suspected, and that means our oceans may be very different places in the not-too-distant future," Williamson said.
(Editing by David Fogarty)
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