Best of our wild blogs: 1 Sep 08

The Grouper's Cousin
a record-making video clip on the Hantu Blog and algae from Hantu also make the press

Singapore's largest sea star at Changi
on the wonderful creations blog

Nudis galore at Pulau Hantu
on the hantu blog and colourful clouds blog and hbing's site

Missing in action: Megafauna and seed dispersal in Asia's empty forests Missed Richard Corlett's talk? No fret, there's a wonderful write up of the talk by Marcus Ng on his annotated budak blog

I've been to Cyrene
Gabriel shares about his trip to Cyrene on his e-tour singapore website

Big sunrise on Little Sisters
on the wild shores of singapore blog

Blue Magpie eating Red-whiskered Bulbul
from Bird Ecology Study Group blog

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Reefs will be dead within 30 years, Australian expert warns

The Australian 1 Sep 08;

THE world's reefs, including Australia's Great Barrier Reef, will be dead within 30 years unless human activity changes quickly, a leading researcher says.
Addressing the 11th international River symposium in Brisbane, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said it was crunch time for the world's reefs.

“Let's say we delay another 10 years on having stern actions on emissions at a global level, we will not have coral reefs in about 30 to 50 years,” he said.

Professor Hoegh-Guldberg, from the Centre for Marine Studies at the University of Queensland, said rising CO2 levels and melting ice caps meant the ocean was becoming uninhabitable for reefs.

This worldwide change in climatic conditions was in addition to land-based pollution spilling from Queensland's coastal river systems, a symposium session into the impacts of river systems on the reef was told.

“We're rapidly rising to (CO2) levels which will be unsustainable for reefs in the very near future,” Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.

“If you ask the question, `Will we have coral reefs in 30 years' time?', I would say at the current rate of change and what we're doing to them, we won't. But it's all up to us right now.

“We're at the fork in the road. If we take one road - the one we're on right now - we won't have coral reefs.

“If we make some very, very, very aggressive actions, if we reform how we do things, both at the global and local level, we'll have a really good chance of bringing coral reefs through in some shape or form, which will still provide the basis for the 100 million people that they support.”

He said ice core samples showed CO2 levels were the highest for at least a million years, possibly 20 million years.

“That changes the circumstances under which corals form their skeletons, so they become less vibrant,” Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.

“Then if you keep hitting them with things like bleaching events, they just don't bounce back as much.

“So we're changing essentially the rules under which biology is trying to operate, and that's the problem.”

He also warned that an increasing incidence of coral bleaching was a growing threat.

“If we have them (bleaching events) now every four to five years, we're getting to a point where reefs no longer have time to recover.”

The impact on Queensland's $6 billion-a-year earnings from reef-based tourism would be enormous, he said.

“So we might have an industry that's half the size, but it certainly won't have the pull that it does today,” he said. AAP

'Crunch time for Barrier Reef'
Tony Moore, Brisbane Times 1 Sep 08;

There are grave doubts that the Great Barrier Reef can continue to attract tourists worth $6 billion-a-year to Queensland, a coral specialist told the International Riversymposium in Brisbane this afternoon.

And there are further doubts the Great Barrier Reef will even survive the next 30 years.

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said there was no time left to delay the impact of climate change on Queensland's premier 2000-kilometre coral reef.

"It's crunch time," Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.

"Let's say if we delay a further 10 years on having stern action on emissions at a global level we will not have coral reefs in 30 to 50 years," he said.

He said tourism was adaptable, but Australia's best tourist feature was under attack from climate change.

"Tourism industries are remarkably flexible, but one salient feature of our industry is that we have the best example of a large continuous reef system in the world," Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.

"And that is what is bringing people in," he said.

"If we don't gave that, then we don't have the same drawcard.

"So we might have an industry that is half the size, but it certainly won't have the same (tourist) pull that it has today."

Professor Hoegh- Guldberg, from the Centre for Marine Sciences at the University of Queensland, said the future of the Barrier Reef depended on what happened next.

"We have C02 levels at 1 to 2 parts per million per year - they are 380 parts per million - and that is significant because they have not been that high for the past 720,000 years," he said.

Until the industrial revolution, atmospheric carbon was around 280 parts per million.

Higher carbon levels means coral colours become less vibrant and more frequent coral bleaching destroys the reefs.

"So if you ask the question will we have coral reefs in 30 years time, then I would say at the current rate of change and what we are doing to them - we won't," he said.

"But it all up to us right now."

He said rising ocean acidity from warmer oceans would also prevent coral reefs being able to form the calcium carbonate they need to form the reefs themselves.

"Ocean acidity, while it doesn't have any really big impacts right upfront now, will become the looming problem of tomorrow," he said.

Coral bleaching has occurred over the past 30 years, but came to public attention in the early 1980s, he said.

"Since then we have had six major episodes of coral bleaching," Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.

While coral bleaching did happen before the early 1980s, he said reefs had time to recover between incidents.

"If we have them now every four to five years, we are getting to the point were reefs no longer have the time to recover," he said.

"And that is when you start to lose the fish, the million species that lives on coral reefs.

"And that, is what draws tourists to Australia and supports our industries."

He said one major thrust of the International Riversymposium in Brisbane this week was to understand the links between rivers and reefs.

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Visitors still at Lim Chu Kang farms despite chikungunya virus

Ca-Mie De Souza, Channel NewsAsia 31 Aug 08;

SINGAPORE: Visitors are still enjoying the countryside in the Lim Chu Kang area, even though part of it has been hit by the chikungunya virus.

Touted as the last bastion of an authentic Singapore countryside, the Lim Chu Kang area has been linked to five recently reported cases of chikungunya fever. Some farm operators said fogging does not help with the situation.

Ivy Singh-Lim, president of the Kranji Countryside Association, said: "How do you fog the entire Singapore countryside? The answer is not about fogging, the answer is to understand eco-friendly practices.

"Instead of doing things like fogging, which actually creates an even more dangerous situation because you are eliminating the natural predators, stem the disease before it enters our country."

The National Environment Agency (NEA) said fogging is an important part of its two-pronged approach to control the mosquito population. The other strategy is to remove as many mosquito-breeding habitats as possible.

NEA said its officers have found more than 60 breeding sites in the area – 55 of which were on farms. That is why, as an added precaution, 400 visitors at a Kranji farm for a company function on Sunday have a blue patch on them to keep mosquitoes at bay.

Kenny Eng, business development manager, Nyee Phoe, said: "We are much more concerned than anyone who comes to our place because if we don't do well in upkeeping our venue, people won't come, then there is no business."

A new establishment, D'Kranji Farm Resort, said it is not delaying its planned opening next weekend. In fact, it has already hit 70 per cent occupancy rate for the weeks ahead.

Harry Quek, resort manager, D'Kranji Farm Resort, said: "We did engage our pest control company to do fogging every week, and we make sure that there is no water logging and we clear all the rubbish every day."- CNA/so

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Singapore's chemical romance continues

EDB expects to bring in specialty chemical projects from emerging markets
Jamie Lee, Business Times 1 Sep 08;

(SINGAPORE) The Economic Development Board (EDB) is expecting more specialty chemical players in the form of national owned companies (NOCs) and others from emerging markets such as China, India and the Middle East to set up shop here soon, as it steps up efforts to attract more downstream players.

And while EDB sees investments in the sector declining from last year's $8.6 billion in fixed asset investments as a result of the cyclical slowdown, the industry - which topped the manufacturing cluster with $81.7 billion in output in 2007 - will still remain a significant contributor this year.

'The last two years were exceptional because of the cracker investments. I think this year we'll be expecting more of the downstream,' EDB deputy director of energy, chemicals and engineering services Loh Boon Chye told BT.

'For the chemical industry, we talk about whether there is a way we can engage the future 'seven sisters' of the world,' he said, referring to NOCs that are building up their capacities to rival conventional giants such as ExxonMobil and Shell.

'We are now also engaging them, talking to them to see how we can strike a partnership,' he added.

The deals in the pipeline will include a mix of new players and companies that have 'a small presence in Singapore', said Mr Loh. He declined to say how much the upcoming deals would be worth, but noted that Tamil Nadu Petroproducts' US$110 million petrochemical plant - the first Indian petrochemical project on Jurong Island - is a relatively large deal.

'Margins are being squeezed because raw material prices are high; there's uncertainty that they cannot pass on the costs easily. But because everybody knows that it's cyclical, a lot of people will time their investments such that when they start up the facility, the industry will be heading towards an upturn,' he said, adding that the downstream projects are expected to begin construction in 2011 and will take about 18 months to be completed.

Other traditional partners are looking at further investments. Japan's Mitsui Chemicals - which has pumped in around US$700 million in several plants on Jurong Island - is mulling the set-up of another phenol plant here, while Asahi Kasei Corporation said it has considered building a synthetic rubber facility. Mr Loh said other companies are still doing feasibility studies but are 'close to making a decision' by the end of the year.

He added that he was 'quite confident' of the sector maintaining the compounded annual growth rate of over 20 per cent that it has been registering in the last eight years. Singapore's ethylene capacity - a form of production measurement - is about 2 million tonnes per annum and is expected to double by 2011 when the Shell and ExxonMobil's crackers are completed.

Despite rising costs, Mr Loh said Singapore remains cost-competitive as it has a critical mass of petrochemical industries and brings its logistics strengths to the table.

'In this industry, big is beautiful. If you have big facilities, it means you have the economies of scale, so your fixed costs can be spread,' he said.

Mr Loh added that having a strong talent pool has become a priority for EDB as it tries to dispel notions that working in the chemical industry is restricted to factory production. Besides hosting more than 700 tertiary students to the once-restricted Jurong Island last Saturday, it is looking to promote scholarships and internships offered by global chemical firms to woo more students.

He also said that while education opportunities are enough for now, more chemical industry-related courses at the undergraduate and masters level are likely to be needed in the future to match rising demand for skilled workers in the industry.

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Can engineering the earth save it from catastrophe?

By Steve Connor, The Independent 31 Aug 08;

Fears that the world is not doing enough to cut carbon dioxide emissions are forcing scientists to "think the unthinkable" by taking seriously the idea that humans may have to alter the global climate artificially with mega-engineering projects.

The Royal Society will launch a study later this year aimed at reviewing the possibility of saving the planet by "geoengineering" the climate on the grandest scales imaginable.

Geoengineering encompasses schemes such as fertilising the oceans with iron filings to draw down CO2 from the atmosphere, creating more reflective clouds, or even pumping vast quantities of sulphate particles into the air to simulate volcanic eruptions that cut out sunlight and lower global temperatures.

Until recently geoengineering has been a technology that dare not speak its name. However, a growing disillusionment with the ability of governments to reduce CO2 emissions has forced scientists to come up with a possible last-ditch technological fix to avert global catastrophe.

"Global emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise, so there is inevitably interest in technologies that may be able to provide a 'fix'," said Lord Rees of Ludlow, the president of the Royal Society.

"It's not clear which of these geoengineering technologies might work, still less what environmental and social impacts they might have, or whether it could ever be prudent or politically acceptable to adopt any of them ... None of these technologies will provide a 'get out of jail free card' and they must not divert attention away from international efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases."

The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, published today, devotes an entire issue to examining ways of altering the climate or interfering with the carbon cycle in a way that could offset the rise in greenhouse gases and the consequent increase in temperatures.

Professor Ken Caldeira of Stanford University said it was important to plan now for the possibility of having to use geoengineering. "Every year CO2 emissions continue to climb," he said. "Reducing CO2 emissions requires individual sacrifice in the here and now for the public good of the distant future. If we start soon, we can phase in climate engineering slowly and cautiously, and back off if something bad happens. The least risky thing to do is to start testing soon."

Professor Stephen Schneider, a climate scientist at Stanford who has resisted geoengineering in the past, said: "We are being placed in the precarious position of choosing the lesser of two evils. Potentially dangerous, uncontrolled climate change due to greenhouse gases emissions; or technological fixes involving large-scale geoengineering projects."

Geoengineering projects

*High Reflection

The eruption of Mt Pinatubo in 1991 pumped enough sunlight-reflecting sulphates into the upper atmosphere to cool the Earth by 0.5C for up to two years. It may be possible to inject sulphates into the stratosphere from aircraft, right, but this would not deal with ocean acidification caused by rising CO2 and might cause acid rain.

*Low Reflection

A variation would be to pump water vapour into the air to stimulate cloud formation over the sea, thus raising Earth's albedo (proportion of light reflected). Seawater could be atomised to produce tiny water droplets that would form low-level maritime clouds.

*Fertilising the sea

The limiting factor for growing phytoplankton – tiny marine plants – is the lack of iron salts. Adding iron to "dead" areas of the sea leads to blooms which absorb CO2. But whether the plants will sink, taking the carbon out of circulation, or be eaten, returning it eventually to the atmosphere is not clear.

*Mixing layers

Giant tubes could be built to carry surface water rich in dissolved CO2 to lower depths where it will be locked under the temperature gradient that keeps deep water layers from surfacing. Critics fear it could instead bring carbon locked in the deep ocean to the surface.

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Scientists issue warning that technology to beat global warming may backfire

Mark Henderson, The Times 31 Aug 08;

Engineering solutions to modify the Earth's environment and climate may be necessary if humanity is to adapt to global warming, a group of influential scientists will say today.

Technological fixes such as encouraging cloud formation and increasing the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the oceans have the potential to limit climate change, according to papers published in a special issue of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

The experts, however, also give warning that there is no guarantee that such ingenious schemes will work, and that so-called geo-engineering needs to be assessed properly to ensure that it does not cause more problems than it solves.

Professor James Lovelock, the environmental scientist who developed the Gaia hypothesis of the Earth as a self-regulating organism, likened geo-engineering to 19th-century medicine — a tool that might sometimes work, but was generally too primitive to stave off disaster.

“Whether or not we use ... geo-engineering, the planet is likely, massively and cruelly, to cull us, in the same merciless way we have eliminated so many species by changing their environment into one where survival is difficult,” he said.

“Before we start geo-engineering, we have to raise the following question: are we sufficiently talented to take on what might become the onerous permanent task of keeping the Earth in homeostasis [balance]?”

He raised the example of introducing aerosols into the stratosphere to induce a cooling effect. While this might have positive effects, it would not address ocean acidification, a separate problem caused by rising carbon emissions, which would then require another engineering solution. “We have to consider seriously that as with 19th-century medicine, the best option is often kind words and painkillers but otherwise do nothing and let Nature take its course,” Professor Lovelock said.

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Massive floating generators, or 'eco-rigs', to provide power and food to Japan

Leo Lewis, The Times 1 Sep 08;

Battered by soaring energy costs and aghast at dwindling fish stocks, Japanese scientists think they have found the answer: filling the seas with giant “eco-rigs” as powerful as nuclear power stations.

The project, which could result in village-sized platforms peppering the Japanese coastline within a decade, reflects a growing panic in the country over how it will meet its future resource needs.

The floating eco-rig generators which measure 1.2 miles by 0.5 miles (2km by 800m) are intended to harness the energy of the Sun and wind. They are each expected to produce about 300 megawatt hours of power.

Some energy would be lost moving the electricity back onshore, but when three units are strapped together, scientists at Kyushu University say, the effect will be the same as a standard nuclear power station.
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The eco-rigs' gift to the environment does not stop there: some of the power that the solar cells and wind turbines produce will be hived off to fuel colossal underwater banks of light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

The lamps are intended to convert the platforms into nurseries for specially selected seaweed that absorbs carbon dioxide and feeds fish and plankton. Deep-sea water that is rich in minerals will enhance the seaweed growth. The wind turbines will power pumps that will then draw the water to the surface.The rigs will be unmanned and comprise several hexagonal platforms.

Strapped between them will be large nets designed to support the weight of wind turbines and about 200,000 hexagonal photovoltaic generators — super-efficient solar panels that are about the size of a double bed. The LEDs will shine down from the panels.

As a country with virtually no fossil fuels, price rises in oil and gas have chilled the corporate sector and the Japanese Government.

Japan's faith in nuclear power has also taken a beating. An earthquake caused its largest nuclear plant to shut down in 2007 and engineers and seismic experts cautioned that the country's high susceptibility to quakes placed the industry at risk.

The Kyushu team says the plans are about three years away from becoming reality. It began tests on a scale version of the eco-rig last month, and full-scale official evaluation is expected to begin soon.

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Rising seawaters lapping at windowsills on South China island

Xinhua 29 Aug 08;

NANNING, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of people living on a south China island fear rising sea levels may soon take their homes and their livelihoods.

The sea is eating into the 25-square-kilometer Weizhou Island, submerging beaches, coastlines and buffer forests.

The 15,000 residents of the island, 20 nautical miles south of Beihai City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, have seen the seawater creeping inland for the past decade.

"In the bay area were buffer forests, but the seawater has crept 60 to 70 meters into the island," said 76-year-old resident Zhou Ziquan.

Jiang Taile, a restaurant owner, said he once drove his car on the beach up to 40 meters away from the present water line, which is spotted with the stumps of trees that have died in the salt water.

The beach area was full of seawater even at low tide, said Jiang.

Chen Xiangxu, a Weizhou Town construction official, said seawater had made inroads of more than 100 meters at some sites.

The high tides even splashed the windows of homes behind the island's levees, said Chen.

Many residents worried that the island would be eaten away, Chen said, but they were yet to consider moving their homes.

High tides were gradually getting higher according to records, said Li Wuquan, head of the State Oceanic Administration's Beihai Oceanic Environment Monitoring Center.

Global warming was believed by experts to be a key cause of the rising seas, but there were also human factors. The protective coral reef has been destroyed by the taking of coral for money and fishing with explosives. Tourist diving at scenic sites also affected the reefs.

"Little remains of the coral reef, which helped prevent erosion in the shore area around the island," said Jiang.

The official said the township government had banned fishing with explosives near the reef and been cracking down on coral harvesting. Some coastal areas have been listed as special protection areas.

According to a 2007 Sea Level Bulletin released by the State Oceanic Administration earlier this year, the seas rose by 0.09 meter on average around China over the last 30 years, but the rate was accelerating.

Sea levels have been predicted to rise between 9 and 88 centimeters this century due to global warming.

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Past evidence boosts concern for Greenland icesheet: scientists

Richard Ingham Yahoo News 31 Aug 08;

Scientists Sunday said they could no longer rule out a fast-track melting of the Greenland icesheet -- a prospect, once the preserve of doomsayers, that would see much of the world's coastline drowned by rising seas.

The researchers found that the great Laurentide icesheet which smothered much of North America during the last Ice Age melted far swifter than realised, dumping billions of tonnes of water into the ocean.

The discovery raises worrying questions about the future stability of Greenland's icesheet, for the Laurentide melt occurred thanks to a spurt of warming that could be mirrored once more by the end of this century, they said.

"The word 'glacial' used to imply that something was very slow," said climate researcher Allegra LeGrande of New York's Columbia University.

"This new evidence from the past, paired with our model for predicting future climate, indicates that 'glacial' is anything but slow. Past icesheets responded quickly to a changing climate, hinting at the potential for a similar response in the future."

Their investigation, published online by the journal Nature Geoscience, centres on a key factor in the climate-change equation.

In February 2007, in the first volume of a landmark report, the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted the oceans would rise by between 18 and 59 centimetres (7.2 and 23.2 inches) by 2100.

The increase would depend on temperatures stoked by man-made greenhouse gases. The panel predicted warming of 1.8-4.0 degrees Celsius (3.25 and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) over the century.

But nine months later, in a precis for policymakers, the IPCC scrapped the 59-cm (23.2-inch) upper limit, admitting it did not know enough about meltwater runoff from Antarctic and Greenland, the world's two mighty stores of land ice.

Although scientists are confident Antarctica has so far escaped major damage from global warming, they are far less sure about Greenland, whose icesheet holds enough water to drive up sea levels by seven metres (22.75 feet).

Seeking help from the past, geologist Anders Carlson at the University of Wisconsin, led a team that delved into sediment left by the Laurentide Icesheet.

At its apogee some 20,000 years ago, the Laurentide was three kilometres (1.9 miles) thick and reached as far south as New York and Ohio today.

Then a big warming occurred, apparently caused by a slight orbital shift which increased radiation that the Earth received from the Sun.

Carlson's team looked for radioactive tags, left by organic debris in the sediment, as a telltale of when the icesheet retreated and vegetation began to sprout once more on the denuded surface.

Using this, they built up a map and a timetable for the Laurentide's retreat and compared this with coral records pointing to Earth's historic sea levels.

They calculate that the Laurentide had two bursts of very fast melting before finally disappearing about 6,500 years ago.

The first phase, around 9,000 years ago, drove up sea levels by around seven metres (22.75 feet), at 1.3 cm (half an inch) each year. The second, around 7,500 years ago, accounted for a rise of five metres (16.25 feet) at the rate of one cm (0.4 of an inch) annually.

By comparison, sea levels today are rising around 3.3 millimetres (0.12 of an inch) every year.

The researchers caution that Greenland is an island bathed in chill water, has a somewhat different geology from that of North America, and so the timetable of the Laurentide's breakup may not exactly apply to it.

Even so, the upper range of the IPCC's temperature estimates at century's end are in line with those of the naturally-induced warming that doomed the Laurentide, they said.

In addition, the Greenland ice sheet is far smaller than the Laurentide and thus lacks frigid bulk to help shield off warming.

"We have never seen an ice sheet retreat significantly or even disappear before, yet this may happen for the Greenland icesheet in the coming centuries to millennia," said Carlson.

In a commentary, also published in Nature Geoscience, Earth scientists Mark Siddall and Michael Kaplan said Greenland's glacial slab was entering into a temperature range at which it was becoming "particularly vulnerable."

"[The new] work suggests that future reductions of the Greenland ice sheet on the order of one metre (3.25 feet) per century are not out of the question," they said.

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U.N. chief warns against waiting for climate deal

Laura MacInnis, Reuters 31 Aug 08;

GENEVA (Reuters) - The world should not wait until next year to cobble together a new climate change pact, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Sunday.

Ban, addressing diplomats and officials at a ceremony for the 20th anniversary of the U.N. climate panel, said countries negotiating a successor deal to the Kyoto Protocol should aim for a meaningful breakthrough in Poznan, Poland, in December.

Delaying major advances until the end of 2009, when a Copenhagen summit will aim to finalize an accord to tackle rising global temperatures, may be ill-advised, Ban told the event in Geneva.

"We must fight the urge to postpone everything until Copenhagen. Surely we can make concrete progress on some issues," the U.N. chief said, adding that the Poland meeting should serve as "a very successful bridge" for Copenhagen.

"I would emphasize the need to make the most of the upcoming opportunity in Poznan," he said. "It is my sincere hope that by the end of this year in Poznan parties to the climate change convention will have achieved a better understanding of a shared vision for long-term cooperative action."

The Kyoto Protocol binds 37 developed nations to curb emissions of global warming greenhouse gases until 2012. Neither the United States nor China, the top two greenhouse gas emitters, have imposed limits under Kyoto.

Negotiations last week in Ghana, in which countries made commitments to help save tropical forests, were the latest of a series of international meetings meant to culminate in a new accord to counter the effects of climate change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), formed in 1988, has warned global warming will cause rising seas, big storms, heatwaves and droughts. That U.N. panel shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore last year.

U.S. President George W. Bush, who has opposed the Kyoto accord, will leave office in January. But the slowing global economy may make it difficult for Washington and others to accept a climate change accord that could add to energy costs.

Ban said it was imperative for the new U.S. government to play a leadership role in climate change for the international community to agree on strong emission cut targets.

"Whoever may be elected as president of the United States, they may be in a better position to address and to lead this process," the U.N. chief told journalists at the Geneva event.

(Reporting by Laura MacInnis; editing by Sami Aboudi)

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Ghana's grass-roots bid to save country's last forests

Aminu Abubakar, Yahoo News 31 Aug 08;

For five years now the heat has been less intense and the rainfall more abundant in a small cocoa farming area in Ghana's Upper Volta region, thanks to villagers bent on affecting climate change.

In this region in Afiaso in the country's south, their efforts have focused on conserving the nearby Kakum National Park.

"We used to cut down many trees for agricultural use, which brought us a lot of hardship including windstorms, decreased rainfall and increased solar intensity," said Nana Opare Ababio III, the traditional chief of a 620-member village.

But with conservation efforts, "the amount of rainfall has dramatically increased in the last five years and heat from the sun has reduced and we now have better yield," he said through an interpreter.

In recent decades, the forests in this west African state have been severely depleted, raising "serious concern for future economic development and sustained rural livelihoods," said Daniel Kwamena Ewur, manager of Kakum National Park which lies 160 kilometres (100 miles) south of the capital Accra.

In 1960, Ghana's tropical rain forests covered 63,400 square kilometres (24,500 square miles) but human activity has shrunk them down to about 13,500 square kilometres, or 25 percent of their original size.

Logging, slash-and-burn agriculture, poaching, mining and quarrying as well as wood collection for fuel have mainly been responsible for decimating the country's primary forests, Ewur said.

The current forest area includes seven national parks, six resource reserves, two wildlife sanctuaries and five coastal wetlands.

According to an official 1992 survey on national living standards, more than 33 percent of all the people in rural forest regions lived in abject poverty, hence their reliance on depleting the forests to make ends meet.

With deforestation having already transformed the north of Ghana into savannah lands and the central region facing a similar fate, the government took a radical turn in forest and wildlife management.

Until 1994, the central government had handled everything itself but that year changed tack to actively involve local communities living on the fringe of the country's forests.

"We were doing everything by ourselves but we realised that we were not achieving much and we now involve local communities around the forests, without whose help we would fail in our conservation efforts," said Ewur.

Instead of policing the vast parks on its own, the government set up village groups to monitor nearby parklands and report any suspicious or unauthorised activities to authorities.

The reform also differentiated Ghana's forests into three zones: "protection" areas for conservation, "production" for logging and "archaeological" zones for preserving national relics or areas with historical interest.

All seven national parks are classified as "protection" zones, and Kakum is the largest.

"Kakum is one of the last vestiges of the Upper Guinea forest and one of the biodiversity hotspots in the world," said park ranger Rockson Moro.

It covers 366 square kilometres and is home to 40 species of mammals including five endangered species, 200 bird species and over 400 species of butterfly, two of which are found nowhere else in the world, according to officials.

Like all the other "protection" zones, the reforms put it out of bounds for any reason other than tourism.

The trend towards ecotourism has generated huge revenues, forestry officials said without giving figures, and under a 2006 deal, some of the revenue made by parks is returned to local communities.

"The government now devolves more power to the forest communities in conserving the forests, and shares the revenues coming from the forests, and the results are quite remarkable," said Glen Asomaning, a forest officer with World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Logging is one of Ghana's major revenue earners which it cannot stop completely but now the country is recording success regulating it and with a four-way revenue sharing system.

The government and logging firms each rake in 40 percent of the total revenue, while the farm owner gets 15 percent and the community benefits from five percent of the proceeds.

In return for keeping off the production zone, forest communities share in the ecotourism revenues and provide unskilled staff of the forest management authority as volunteers and tour guides.

Although the monies are meant for development projects, their use is left to the discretion of the local authorities which receive them, which sadly exposes them to mismanagement.

Two years after the enactment of this law, not a dime has gone to Afiaso due to bureaucratic obstacles. And the village needs the money.

"Despite the delay in receiving the (ecotourism) royalty, we are willing to continue with the conservation project and we want the government to bring more of the seedlings it promised us to plant because we have seen the benefits we can derive from them," chief Ababio III said.

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