Best of our wild blogs: 9 Sep 08

Fatal cycling accidents at Pulau Ubin
on the pulau ubin stories blog with an update and another update on the same blog.

Big Sisters Island (Subar Laut) reef survey
coral cover as on 19 Jul 08 on the BlueWaterVolunteers blog

Crabs at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve
on the urban forest blog

Mangrove Pitta at Sungei Buloh
on the tidechaser blog

Does an EIA protect?
lessons for Singapore from a Malaysian forum? on the wild shores of singapore blog

Fragile seahorse habitats in the UK at risk
on the teamseagrass blog

Linnaeus Legacy #11
blog carnival to celebrate Carl Linnaeus and his contributions on the Other 95% blog

The problem with plastic bags
on the blogfish blog

Bottled Water Demand May Be Declining
on the Worldwatch Institute

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Whither the EIA?

Hilary Chiew, The Star 9 Sep 08;

A forum evaluates the effect of a 20-year-old piece of environmental regulation.

HAVE we placed undue expectation on the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) system as an environmental safeguard? That was the over-riding question posed to participants at a one-day forum to evaluate the effect of that piece of regulation that has been enforced since 1988.

Rightly or wrongly, many have come to rely on the EIA to be the shield against adverse impacts of development. To a great extent especially for would-be affected communities, the EIA is deemed their only chance of stopping an undesirable project.

The perception is misplaced, some argue, as the Department of Environment – the agency tasked to enforce Section 34A of the Environmental Quality Act 1974 which gave birth to the Environmental Quality (Prescribed Activities) Environmental Impact Assessment Order 1987 – has unwittingly become the Department of Everything, when its power is so limited.

DOE assessment director Halimah Hassan admits that Act and its array of regulations only address pollution from point sources, or better known as “brown issues”, while development projects often involve more than pollution. Siting of projects that are incompatible with sound land use policies like the National Physical Plan resulting in damage to vital ecosystem and loss of natural resources is one example.

DOE officials are ill-equipped to analyse and quantify damages to biodiversity and ecosystem (green issues) and it relies on the consultants to produce an honest assessment. Furthermore, natural resources are beyond the purview of federal laws like the Environmental Quality Act.

“The EIA is not the panacea for all our environmental headaches. A lot of environmental concerns should be addressed at the various agencies’ level,” adds Halimah.

Passing the buck

Dr G. Balamurugan, managing director of ERE Consulting Group which initiated the forum EIA: 20 Years On, What Next?, concurs. He says many agencies especially local councils are passing the buck by asking for EIA even for non-prescribed activities.

“There are many safeguards in other approval procedures. For example, earthwork and erosion control can be monitored by the local authorities. Buffer zoning is required by the Town and Country Planning Act and dust control is stipulated in any quarry plan. When the issues that are addressed in other planning submissions are also addressed in the EIAs, then we are wasting resources,” he says.

Balamurugan advocates less EIA, saying that if DOE has a reduced EIA workload, it can handle environmentally complex projects more effectively.

And DOE should focus instead at strategic issues at the macro level that clearly lacks environmental perspectives, he adds, referring to a number of contradictory national policies – for instance, land clearing in Cameron Highlands for temperate agriculture as promoted by the National Agriculture Policy and the National Water Resources Master Plan that calls for the construction of 50 dams.

“Instead of fire-fighting at the project implementation stage which is a bit too late, DOE and even environmental NGOs should exert influence at the policy framework development stage,” he asserts.

Is the EIA just a “tick in the box” – a formality that project proponents reluctantly embraced?

While many agree that EIA is a planning tool to assist developers to avoid negative impacts on the environment, most concur that project proponents are more concerned about fulfilling a legal requirement to get the project going.

Maybe that explains why after 20 years, there are still developers who complain that EIA is a hindrance to development although the approval time has seen significant improvement over the years. Approval period for preliminary EIA is within five weeks and 12 weeks for detailed reports.

EIA consultant Mazura Mazlan notes that much has been done to improve the technical aspects of the process, such as the publication of sector-specific guidelines and the registration of companies and individuals that offer EIA-related services to assist project proponents looking for consultancy service.

However, the measure was done on an administrative basis and does not preclude non-registered bodies from submitting EIA reports.

The pool of consultants has grown but like any other profession, there are bad apples. Poor quality reports has prompted DOE to make it mandatory for consultants to be registered last year and from October 2007, the DOE does not accept EIA reports from unregistered entities.

One contentious issue is the level of independence of the consultants preparing the report. Balamurugan argues that consultants should be ethical but not independent simply because according to EIA guidelines, their responsibility is towards the project initiators who hire them to plan the projects with the least adverse environmental impacts.

“An EIA consultant’s duty is to assist the developer to meet all environmental guidelines but he does not decide whether the project is right or wrong. If he thinks the project is immoral, he should not participate in the project,” he opines, adding that EIA is essentially a document in support of a project.

World Wide Fund for Nature-Malaysia (WWFM)’s Sarada Srinivasan, however, disagrees.

She says since its first implementation in the United States in 1970, EIA did not originate to support a project but to aid informed decision-making.

EIA reports that Sarada had reviewed in the past convinced her of the importance of the independence of consultants as too many reports were biased as shown in consultants prescribing unrealistic mitigation measures.

Citing a detailed report that she recently examined, the consultant has suggested the replanting of seagrass as replacement when there is no proven technology or successful cases to support it.

To maintain a certain degree of independence, she proposes that the DOE and the EIA consultant sign a contract as equal clients that give sufficient clout to DOE to demand for unbiased assessment.

Another criticism of the system is the lack of public participation. Sarada points out that although social impact assessment is a component required, it is limited to surveys and not proper consultation, adding that procedures for public participation are ambiguous in the EIA process.

Costly

Even the EIA report is not easily accessible with a price tag that is deemed prohibitive by some. The price is not fixed but the highest charged by a consultant so far is RM1,000.

Sarada recommends that as part of good governance, there must be a sound legal basis through provision in the law and the procedures clearly defined in the key stages of Terms of Reference drafting, report preparation, review and post-approval.

“Make it mandatory for project consultants to respond to public comments and publish comments of review panel for meaningful public participation. In The Netherlands, for example, the Review Commission is independent with a recognised status and government-allocated budget,” she adds.

After 4,000 EIA reports, many feel there’s a need for an overhaul of the system against the sobering fact that Malaysia is a fast-growing polluting nation in terms of carbon emission, waste generation and deforestation.

Towards this end, views expressed in the forum will be forwarded to DOE and Halimah promises to consider all of them in light of the amendment exercise currently being undertaken.

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‘Bright future ahead for IRs’

New Sentosa Leisure Group chief is upbeat about tourism growth
Cheow Xin Yi, Today Online 9 Sep 08;

ECONOMIC growth forecasts may be trimmed, and hiring may falter, but a slowing economy may actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise for Singapore’s integrated resorts (IRs).

So says Mr Mike Barclay, the new chief executive of Sentosa Leisure Group, which manages the 500-hectare (1,235-acre)island on Singapore’s southern tip where the Resorts World at Sentosa integrated resort is being built.

“With a slower economy, you could see a little bit of relief in some of the drivers, including increasing constructions costs”, Mr Barclay told Today on the sidelines of a Forbes Global CEO Conference ­briefing yesterday.

A combination of rising costs and supply shortages has reportedly caused the budget of some building projects across Singapore to soar by as much as 30 to 50 per cent.

Marina Bay Sands, Singapore’s other IR being built near the central business district, was recently reported to have blamed soaring prices of building materials for costs increasing from an estimated US$3.6 billion($5.12 billion) to US$4.5 billion.

Similarly, last November, Resorts World bumped up its budget to $6 billion from $5.2 billion.

Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World are slated to be open by the end of 2009 and 2010 respectively.

When asked about the progress of construction for the Sentosa IR, Mr Barclay said that Genting, the company behind the 49-hectare project, is “pushing very hard” to meet the deadline.

“They see the great long-term goal of getting the ­integrated resort up and running. Resorts World has a lot to offer businesses to Singapore and I think they share in this vision which.. (wouldn’t) be affected by the short term turbulence in the economic situation”, he added.

Mr Barclay, who is less than a month into his Sentosa role, also expressed optimism in Singapore’s tourism industry despite the recent hiccups in tourist arrivals to the Republic.

“The whole tourism industry is really looking at medium to long term goals, so whatever the short term turbulence this and next year, there’s a very bright future for the industry. We are coming out with some really great attractions in the coming years,” he said.

Future attractions at ­Resorts World include a ­Universal Studios theme park and a marine-life park.

Mr Barclay predicts visitor arrivals to Sentosa Island will reach 15 million a year by 2015, a target set in February this year.

Sentosa island currently enjoys annual visitor arrivals of about 6 million.

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Singapore should focus on green buildings

Business Times 9 Sep 08;

SINGAPORE should move towards constructing more green buildings, as buildings tend to be energy guzzlers, said Ray Anderson, chairman of Interface, a carpet manufacturer known for promoting sustainability since the early 90s.

'The place to start is with buildings,' said Mr Anderson, who was in Singapore yesterday for a seminar.

'Energy efficiency in buildings is a big payoff. Buildings are huge consumers of energy and materials.'

'The whole green building movement, as far as I can tell, has not really come to Singapore yet but it has all the potential to do so,' he added.

Singapore is currently re-designing the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) Academy along Braddell Road into the country's first zero energy building.

The government has also launched programmes such as the Green Mark incentive scheme under BCA, which pays out cash grants of up to $3 million to developers that construct buildings of high environmental standards.

Interface pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2020 and has reduced its gas emissions by about 80 per cent thus far.

The Nasdaq-listed company said it has saved more than US$350 million through waste reduction and has seven facilities operating fully with renewable energy from solar, wind and biomass projects.

Mr Anderson said the company plans to open a new factory in China to tap on the rising demand for carpeted flooring among corporations and institutions such as universities.

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Foldable bike on bus trial extended by three months

Straits Times 9 Sep 08;

THE Land Transport Authority (LTA) is extending the trial period of a scheme to allow foldable bicycles on board buses for another three months.

In the past three months that the scheme has been on trial, an average of only two people per weekend had boarded buses with their foldable bicycles.

The LTA is now extending the permitted hours from weekends and public holidays to include off-peak hours on weekdays as well.

From next Monday, commuters can take their foldable bicycles on buses on weekdays from 9.30am to 4.30pm, and from 7.30pm to the end of bus services.

In a statement released yesterday, the LTA said that during the original three-month trial, it had taken into account the feedback of cyclists, bus commuters, bus drivers and bus operators

So far, there had been 'neither adverse reports nor injuries reported', the statement said. The LTA would not reveal more details on the feedback.

Most commuters were also found to be accepting of those with foldable bicycles.

Among the general guidelines commuters with foldable bicycles have to follow:

Bicycles must be no bigger than 114cm by 64cm by 36cm when folded.

Bicycles must remain folded at all times while on the bus.

The wheels of the bicycles should be wrapped up if they are dirty or wet.

Protruding parts likely to damage property or injure other passengers must also be covered up.

Only two foldable bicycles are allowed on each bus at any one time.

Bicycles are not allowed on the upper deck of the bus or on the staircase.

With the extension of the bicycle on buses trial, the end date - Nov 24 - will coincide with the end for the trial to allow foldable bicycles on trains.

A six-month trial to allow commuters to take bicycles on board trains is also under way during weekends, public holidays and off-peak hours on weekdays.

MARIA ALMENOAR

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Different languages, same anti-littering message

Anti-littering banners in a variety of languages, including English, Chinese, Tagalog, Thai, Tamil, Hindi and Bengali have been put up at an open field next to Jurong East MRT station. They also warn offenders of a possible $200 penalty. The area is frequented by foreign workers, who often congregate there on week nights and Sundays.

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Taiwanese perspective on Singapore

Offering a lot to learn from
Straits Times 9 Sep 08;

Taiwan's CommonWealth magazine ran a series of articles on Singapore last month and an interview with PM Lee Hsien Loong. We carried the interview last week and today we carry excerpts of the reports by Alice Yang and Ting Chia-lin.
COMPLEX emotions have always accompanied the relationship between the two Asian dragons, Taiwan and Singapore. Singaporeans often criticise the kinetic nature of Taiwanese democracy, yet Taiwanese entertainment programmes are popular among many Chinese Singaporeans.

'It's fortunate that Taiwan is there as a 'model of democracy' which makes Singaporeans uninterested in pursuing democracy,' quips Nanyang Technological University's Tan Khee Giap.

Still, many Singaporeans privately envy the Taiwanese for being able to curse their government. And many Taiwanese decline to feel awe for Singapore, feeling that such a small place is naturally easy to administer.

When it comes to people, both Singapore and Taiwan have their charms. Taiwan is full of enterprising energy - when one coffee shop folds, another pops up in its place. Singapore is dominated by big franchises and international brands, while mom-and-pop stores are few and far between. The entrepreneurial spirit there pales in comparison to Taiwan's, but the people are restrained, diligent and law-abiding.

Having one party in power for so long has admittedly helped tiny Singapore. Yet there are many small countries around the world, and many of them are weak. Similarly, many countries have a single ruling party, but most of these are beset with corruption and graft.

A comparison is telling: Last year, Singapore's per capita income was US$35,000 (S$50,000), surpassing Germany's, while Taiwan's was US$15,000. When it comes to quality of life, according to the World Values Survey, Singapore is the world's 31st happiest country, while Taiwan is 48th. In the 2008 IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook, Singapore ranked second, Taiwan 13th. And when it comes to transparency, Singapore came out top, while Taiwan hovers just outside the top 30.

Singapore offers a lot to learn from. Thanks to long-term planning, Singapore is neither anxious nor chaotic, but instead moves forward steadily. Amidst the tide of globalisation, Singapore analysed its strengths and weaknesses, and has cautiously invested in China. With the rise of Asia, it seeks to become a gateway to the region. The Middle East is flush with wealth, yet it suffers from shortages of water, electricity and energy, and Singapore is looking to make an impact on the Arab world.

Hardworking, committed and never taking anything for granted, Singaporean officials consider and reconsider each proposal. Cabinet members receive e-mail messages from Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at two or three o'clock in the morning. 'In the past, you could 'think three times' before taking action, but now you have to think several times every 10 minutes,' PM Lee explains in an interview with CommonWealth Magazine.

All this can be largely attributed to Singapore's ability to do things systematically. Thinking systematically means setting goals, and proceeding step by step, not reactively responding to issues as they arrive. For instance, Taiwan is still bickering about water issues, with discussion concentrating largely on how to build dams and dredge waterways. In Singapore, water is managed as a comprehensive cycle.

On the very first day of her independence in 1965, Singapore put water policy first, establishing an inter-ministerial water resources agency. As Mr Lee Kuan Yew asserted, all policies must bow to ensuring the liquid that gives life.

Singapore is equally systematic and methodical when it comes to attracting manpower. For example, Singapore used to attract foreign high school students to study. Now it looks for top students from primary schools in China and India, giving them scholarships and assisting their entire families to immigrate. 'We grab them a bit earlier, so in the future they will have a closer bond with Singapore,' says Professor Tan.

But just as the danger of falling down increases the higher one climbs, Singapore is vulnerable to every little movement on the international scene.

Can Singapore keep the good times going for another 50 years? Will its skyscrapers end up as dinosaurs?

'At least history has Venice, which has managed to survive for 600 years,' reflects Professor Wang Gungwu, chairman of the Governing Board of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, revealing the optimistic yet guarded attitude of most Singaporeans.

Translated by David Toman

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Habitation harms turtle fertility

ScienceAlert 9 Sep 08;

'How's the serenity?' We all love peace and quiet when it comes to a get-away, but for marine turtles it appears that nesting on beaches untouched by human development actually affects the number of offspring born.

David Pike, a PhD student in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Sydney, has found that two species of marine turtle - the loggerhead (Caretta caretta) and green turtle (Chelonia mydas) - produce more babies when nesting on natural beaches compared to those with human development.

David's work is the result of an extensive scientific literature survey of journal articles published from 1900 to 2007 from around the world.

"Coastal ecosystems provide vital links between aquatic and terrestrial habitats, so they support extremely high levels of biodiversity," David said. "But, of course, we humans also love coastlines - they have the highest densities of human development anywhere on the planet.

"Beaches are a favoured destination for tourists, but are also a critical habitat for nesting sea turtles, so we have a situation where the potential for negative effects on these species is extremely high."

The data gathered on marine turtle reproductive output showed that female loggerhead and green turtles nesting on natural beaches produced more hatchling turtles per nest when compared to those nesting on beaches with permanent human development.

"Females who successfully produce more offspring will have higher lifetime reproductive success than females of the same species who produce fewer offspring.

"My study indicates that female marine turtles nesting on natural beaches are likely to have higher evolutionary fitness than female turtles nesting on developed beaches.

"This difference in the number of eggs that hatch has important implications for increasing the numbers of marine turtles that are out there.

"Over the last century numbers have plummeted because many fisheries practices accidentally capture and drown adult turtles. Protecting the remaining natural beaches may help build numbers in the coming decades."

The research highlights the conflict between coastal development and sea turtle conservation, and shows that protecting and maintaining natural beaches will benefit sea turtle populations.

Marine turtles are ecologically important in both marine and terrestrial ecosystems and are distributed in tropical, temperate and even sub-arctic waters worldwide, although they nest only in tropical and temperate regions.

David's research has been published in the UK Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

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Endangered China monkeys double in number

UPI 6 Sep 08;

GUIYANG, China, Sept. 6 (UPI) -- The number of endangered gray snub-nosed monkeys, found only in China's Guizhou province, has more than doubled to about 850, a government bureau says.

The population, which lives in Guizhou's 260-square-mile mountainous Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve, has grown because of steady environmental improvements and governmental protection measures, the Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve Administration Bureau said.

Back in 1979, there were just 400 gray snub-nosed simians, the bureau noted in a report carried by Xinua, China's official news agency.

The reserve, seeking to end more than a century of mining that depleted the forest on the mountains' northern slope, was established in 1978.

The monkey, on China's list of most-endangered wild animals, is the rarest among the three species of golden monkeys in China.

Since 1992, the bureau has successfully bred 16 of the monkeys, also known as Guizhou golden hair monkeys or gray golden hair monkeys, from seven captured in the wild, Xinhua reported.

The monkeys get their name from the short, stump of a nose on their round face, with nostrils arranged forward.

Primarily tree-dwellers, they inhabit mountain forests up to an altitude of two to three miles, in the winter moving into the deeply secluded regions.

Rare monkeys double in number in China but remain under threat
mongabay.com 8 Sep 08;

China's population of the gray snub-nosed monkey, a critically-endangered species endemic to Guizhou Province in southwestern China, has more than doubled in the wild since conservation measures were implemented in 1979, reports Chinese state media.

The primate is the among country's most endangered species — even rarer than the better-known panda — with a population of around 850 according to the Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve Administration Bureau, which manages the 260-square-mile (670-square-kilometer) reserve where the bulk of individuals are found. The population has increased from about 400 in 1979. The species, which is also known as Guizhou golden hair monkey, was under threat from poaching and habitat loss caused by mining and logging. Efforts to breed the monkey in captivity have met little success — only 16 have been bred since 1992.

The species — like two closely related species of golden monkey in China — inhabits high-altitude evergreen forests at elevations from 3,000 to 4,500 meters (9,800 to 14,800 feet), where temperatures may fall below freezing for several months in a row.

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Found after 300m years: rainforest fossils show how climate change could look

Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter
Times Online 8 Sep 08;

A series of fossilised forests the size of small cities have provided prehistoric evidence of how tropical rainforests are destroyed by global warming.

The fossil remains represent the first rainforests grown on the planet and their demise more than 300 million years ago “points to the future” of the modern-day Amazon.

Six petrified forests, dating from 303.9 million to 309 million years ago, have been discovered in coalmines in the United States. Because they straddle a period of intense global warming researchers have been able to see the effects of climate change on an ancient landscape.

One forest that stretched 10,000 hectares (100 sq km) is the largest fossil forest yet found, dwarfing a 1,000ha forest that was announced last year as the biggest.
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Howard Falcon-Lang, of the University of Bristol, said that the forests were frozen in time and show changes in the tree cover before and after the global warming began.

Fossils reveal that the landscape now deep beneath Illinois and Kentucky was covered in huge club moss trees, horsetails and ferns 309 million years ago. Once global warming had taken place 306.5 million years ago, the landscape altered enormously and the trees were replaced with “weedy ferns”.

“These are the remains of the first rainforests to evolve on our planet,” Dr Falcon-Lang said at the British Association yesterday. “They had lush rainforest vegetation, not dissimilar to the Amazonian rainforest. These are the largest fossil forests in the world. It's quite extraordinary to find a forest landscape preserved for miles.”

The forests were buried during earthquakes and the vegetation was swiftly preserved as the sea rushed in and buried it under sediment. Proof of their existence can now be seen in more than 50 mines where the coal seams have been dug out.

Walking along the mine tunnels was an extraordinary experience, Dr Falcon-Lang said: “The coal represents the soil on which this rainforest was growing. The trees are on the roof. You can see roots hanging down.”

He said it appeared that the huge trees suffered enormous stress and died out when faced by global warming. “We are beginning to show there appears to be a threshold in ancient rainforest systems beyond which the whole system begins to unravel quite quickly,” he said.

“The rainforest dramatically collapses during this period of warming. This was very, very extreme global warming. Giant club moss trees vanished overnight to be replaced by rather weedy fern vegetation. All this points to the fate of the Amazon.”

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EU Looks at 2009 Quota Cuts for Baltic Cod, Salmon

PlanetArk 9 Sep 08;

BRUSSELS - Fishermen in the Baltic Sea will have to cut their catches next year if overtrawled species like cod, herring and salmon are to stand a chance of survival in those waters, the European Commission said on Monday.

For nearly all species that are subject to annual quotas, the Commission recommends cutting 2009 catches by 15 percent from this year. But for one, cod in the eastern Baltic, it says fish numbers have recovered enough for a 15 percent quota rise.

Last year, scientists advised that eastern Baltic cod had been overfished to the point where it might vanish from the area, and recommended an outright fishing ban.

After a lot of haggling, EU ministers managed to set a quota cut of 6 percent for 2008 but offset that concession by agreeing that vessels would have to tie up at ports for longer periods.

"When the recovery plan for Baltic cod was put in place last year, scientists were warning that the eastern cod stock was on the verge of collapse," EU Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg said.

EU fish recovery plans normally combine management of catch volumes with restrictions in the number of days that vessels may spend at sea trawling for fish, spread over several years.

"By applying that plan, we have been able to turn this situation around, and that stock is beginning to grow again. This is a very encouraging sign," Borg said in a statement.

Catches of salmon, sprat and plaice in Baltic waters should be cut by 15 percent from this year, the Commission said.

Scientists warn that salmon has become a concern in Baltic waters due to a very low survival rate of young fish, meaning that adult salmon numbers may decline in the next few years.

Herring was also a problem, especially the stock in the western Baltic where fish intermingle with already depleted numbers of herring in the North Sea, it said, proposing a massive quota reduction of 63 percent for next year.

EU fisheries ministers will discuss the Commission's quota proposals at their next meeting in October in Luxembourg. (Reporting by Jeremy Smith; Editing by Catherine Evans)

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Why the West should put money in the trees

Bharrat Jagdeo, BBC Green Room 8 Sep 08;

In 2006, Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo outlined an offer to place almost the entirety of Guyana's rainforest under international supervision as part of the world's battle against climate change. In the Green Room this week, President Jagdeo sets out his views on how to reduce the 18% of greenhouse gas emissions caused by tropical deforestation.

Imagine a business which invested 80% of its profits in products with the lowest rate of return.

Is this business destined to succeed? Unlikely.

Yet global efforts to combat climate change bear a worrying similarity.

The Kyoto Protocol has resulted in the emergence of a more than US$60bn (£34bn) carbon market as the world's main mechanism to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This is a welcome start. But about 80% of this money goes to countries which cause less than 20% of emissions.

We will fail future generations unless we address this lack of proportionality.

In early December, we will have a chance to do this when representatives of almost 200 countries gather in Poznan, Poland to continue forging an agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

As a rainforest country, securing a proportionate response to tropical deforestation is of particular importance to Guyana.

Tropical deforestation contributes about 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That is about the same as the total emissions from the US, and more than the entire global transportation sector.

Yet under the Kyoto Protocol, it remains more valuable to cut forests down than to leave them standing.

Economic question

If we are to solve this problem, we need to first accept a fundamental point.

Legal deforestation takes place because forest communities and countries can earn money and create jobs by selling trees and clearing land for agriculture.

These are legitimate objectives for citizens and governments to pursue - particularly because most rainforest countries are among the poorest in the world.

By contrast, the global economy does not value the services that forests provide when trees are kept alive, including the avoidance of greenhouse gas emissions.

Correcting this market failure will require recognising that protecting rainforests is not only an environmental concern but an economic issue that cuts to the core of a nation's development.

It therefore needs sustained attention from the highest levels of governments.

Partners in progress

I was my country's minister of finance when the Kyoto Protocol was agreed, and I paid very little attention to it.

This was a mistake; and I advise today's ministers of finance, prime ministers and presidents to ensure that they give climate change and deforestation a greater priority than I did.

As well as national leadership, we need international partnership. No country can go it alone.

We need the active involvement of governments, businesses, non-governmental organisations and conscientious people everywhere, to advocate for action and to devise realistic solutions.

In Guyana, we are ready to play our part, and to provide a model for other rainforest countries to share.

Our deforestation rate is one of the lowest in the world and we want it to stay that way.

However, we also face considerable development challenges. We need better schools and hospitals, more jobs and economic opportunities, and to meet all the other economic and social demands of Guyana's people.

Poverty indicator

I frequently receive proposals from investors to convert our forest into land for agriculture or biofuels.

Agreeing to these would be a quick way to meet the development challenges we face.

But in Guyana, we are acutely conscious of climate change.

Most of our population and productive land are below sea level and suffering from changing weather patterns.

In 2005, floods caused economic damage equivalent to 60% of our GDP.

We recognise that as a nation where over 80% of our surface area is tropical rainforest, we have an obligation to our own people and the wider world to seek to preserve it.

This is why in 2006, I suggested that the UK and Guyana could work together to identify bold rainforest solutions that could be used as models for the world.

For our part, we are willing to place almost our entire rainforest - which is larger than England - under internationally verified supervision if the right economic incentives are created.

This does not mean sacrificing sovereignty over our forest or restricting the development aspirations of our people. It simply means allowing globally recognised supervision to verify that activities within the forest are sustainable.

At the UN climate meeting in Poznan, I will be outlining our vision in greater detail, and I hope that many British people will support our efforts.

This hope stems from my experience at the 1998 meeting of the G8 in Birmingham, when I joined British NGOs to lobby for debt relief.

Thanks to the efforts of these NGOs and thousands of individuals from across the UK, the British government took the global lead on securing debt relief for countries such as mine.

This has transformed the lives and livelihoods of millions.

With climate change and deforestation, the prize is greater still.

I hope that the months and years ahead will see us renew our partnership.

And I believe that this can be our contribution to winning the battle against our generation's defining challenge.

Bharrat Jagdeo is President of Guyana

UK readers can hear more about Mr Jagdeo's proposals on rainforest protection, and debate and discussion of the issues involved, in this week's edition of Panorama , broadcast on BBC One at 2030 BST

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

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Arctic shipping set to explode in legal vacuum, experts warn

Yahoo News 9 Sep 08;

As the Arctic ice cap melts away, shipping in the environmentally fragile region is expected to balloon, but there is virtually no legal framework to regulate the new activity, experts cautioned Monday.

"The problem is that the ice is going to recede and we are going to see an increase in the economic activity in this area ... There is going to be a huge expansion of shipping," said Tatiana Saksina of the WWF's International Arctic Programme.

When the Northwest Passage becomes free of ice in the summer months, something scientists say could happen in a matter of years, "there will be an invasion of alien species, we're going to see over-fishing, we're going to see an expansion of petroleum development ... Far stricter rules are needed," she told AFP.

Saksina is one of around 40 legal experts gathered at the University of Akureyri in northern Iceland for a three-day conference aimed at staking out a new legal framework for the fragile and changing polar regions.

While commercial activities in the Arctic have so far been limited by the region's inaccessibility and its extreme weather conditions, scientists now say it is a question of "when", not "if," the ice cap will vanish during summer.

An ice-free North Pole holds the promise of far shorter shipping routes between Europe and Asia and of making the region's untold wealth of natural resources, including oil and gas, more accessible.

Yet as governments and companies line up to get in on the action, experts warn there are still virtually no laws regulating their activities in a region with one of the world's most fragile ecosystems.

While there are already certain regulations in place, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, David Vanderzwaag of Canada's Dalhousie University points out that they are mainly non-binding general guidelines that do not take into account the specific nature of the Arctic.

"We really are moving into an era where guidelines will no longer be adequate. We need binding requirements," he told AFP.

"We will have more tourism ships going up, eventually more minerals being shipped out of the Arctic, oil and gas being shipped out. All these things are on the horizon, and some are already happening, and the question is, are we prepared?" he asked.

"Globally, there's a considerable amount of pollution that is allowed into the oceans, but the question is, are the global environmental standards adequate for the Arctic? And if there is a problem with a tourism ship up there, are we prepared to deal with that?" he continued.

Saksina agreed, pointing out that "we are already witnessing the expansion of tourism. All these cruise ships in the Arctic obviously put pressure on the marine environment, but first and foremost we see here a danger for human life, because if something happens in these waters there is no mechanism for response."

"It's a quite dangerous situation," she said, stressing that the Arctic Ocean is particularly difficult to navigate due to floating ice blocks and lacking daylight.

"And nobody knows how to clean oil spills on ice. We have no technique to do it now," she said.

Timo Koivurova of the University of Lapland's Arctic Centre in Finland also emphasised the urgency of putting in place a binding legal framework that takes into account the peculiarities of the Arctic, insisting that unbridled, rapid change in the region could lead to catastrophe.

"The problem is that if and when these economic operations enter the area, then it is already too late to put in place any kind of international treaty," he told AFP.

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Hunger in Africa blamed on western rejection of GM food

Ian Sample, The Guardian 8 Sep 08;

The rise of organic farming and rejection of GM crops in Britain and other developed countries is largely to blame for the impoverishment of Africa, according to the government's former chief scientist.

Sir David King, who left the job at the end of last year, says anti-scientific attitudes towards modern agriculture are being exported to Africa and holding back a green revolution that could dramatically improve the continent's food supply.

King, who is due to give the presidential address at the British Association's Festival of Science in Liverpool this evening, will criticise non-governmental organisations and the UN in his speech for backing traditional farming techniques, which he says cannot provide enough food for the continent's growing population.

"The problem is that the western world's move toward organic farming - a lifestyle choice for a community with surplus food - and against agricultural technology in general and GM in particular, has been adopted across the whole of Africa, with the exception of South Africa, with devastating consequences."

Last week, King, who is now director of the Smith school of enterprise and the environment at Oxford University, said genetically modified crops could help Africa mirror the substantial increases in crop production seen in India and China. "What was demonstrated [there] was that modern agricultural technologies can multiply crop production per hectare by factors of seven to 10." But traditional techniques could "not deliver the food for the burgeoning population of Africa".

King said a recent report chaired by Professor Robert Watson, the government's chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, was shortsighted. The report concluded that GM crops had only a minor part to play in eradicating world hunger. The research, based on the findings of 400 scientists, noted that food was cheaper and diets better than 40 years ago, but that while enough food was produced to feed the global population, still 800 million people went hungry.

"You cannot argue that Africa has hunger because it doesn't have GM today," said Watson. "We have more food today than ever before but it isn't getting to the right people. It's not a food production problem, it's a rural development problem."

King will also call for a shift in research towards tackling climate change. More effort, he says, is needed on solar power, which could provide enough energy for the world 10,000 times over.

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Garnaut not strong enough on saving Reef

Chris McGrath
couriermail.com.au 9 Sep 08;

AT least Ross Garnaut was honest about the cost to our greatest natural treasure in his recent report on greenhouse gases.

Saying that Australia should initially aim for a global consensus to stabilise greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at 550 parts per million, he was brutally frank: "The 550 strategy would be expected to lead to the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef and other coral reefs."

The Australian and Queensland governments have always avoided this point when explaining their climate policies. Neither has ever stated a stabilisation target for the rise in global temperatures or greenhouse gases. To do so would expose them to the criticism that their policies would not save the Great Barrier Reef and a host of other ecosystems.

Garnaut's frank admission reflects the findings of reef scientists who have been warning of the impacts of climate change to the Great Barrier Reef since mass coral bleaching occurred globally in 1998 and 2002.

Rising sea temperatures and increasing acidity of the oceans due to our use of fossil fuels are now well recognised as major threats to coral reefs in coming decades.

Dr Charlie Veron, former chief scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences in Townsville, reviewed the expected impact of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef in A Reef in Time: The Great Barrier Reef From Beginning to End.

"We are now facing the inescapable conclusion that the Great Barrier Reef, along with all the other coral reefs in the world, will be diminished beyond anything we have ever considered 'normal' as a direct result of human-induced climate change - and this will happen during the present century," Veron wrote.

Garnaut's frankness is welcome, but his conclusions leave us to wonder whether this is the best we can do. Should we just write off the Great Barrier Reef and the $7 billion it generates annually for the economy? Should we just write off the 66,000 jobs that go with it?

As a boy growing up in the Whitsundays in the 1970s, I did not dream the Great Barrier Reef would be severely damaged by human activity within my lifetime. Much less would I have dreamt that we would choose to allow these impacts to occur. Garnaut's targets are not ambitious enough and we should not accept them.

We should judge our climate-change policies by this simple test: Will we leave the Great Barrier Reef for our children? At present the answer is "no". We are all responsible for changing the answer to "yes".



The current science indicates our target should be stabilising atmospheric greenhouse gases at 350 parts per million, but Garnaut does not even mention this.

We do not know whether we can stabilise atmospheric greenhouse gases at 350, 450 or 550ppm, but think of it this way: If we wanted to build a bridge across a 1km-wide river, we would not ask our engineers and scientists to build us a bridge that was 500m long. We should apply the same logic to climate-change policy and set targets that produce the results we want to achieve.

We need vision, ambition and hard work to solve the climate crisis. Garnaut's approach lacks the vision and ambition that is needed. We need to add these ingredients to Australia's many hard workers to solve the climate crisis.

Dr Chris McGrath is a Brisbane barrister specialising in environmental law.

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China Government Adviser Urges Greenhouse Gas Cuts

Chris Buckley, PlanetArk 9 Sep 08;

BEIJING - China should bind itself to international goals to slash greenhouse gas pollution, one of the nation's most prominent policy advisers said, in a striking break with Beijing's official stance.

Hu Angang, a public policy professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, warned failure to act could doom global climate change talks.

In submissions to leaders and a recent essay, Hu has argued China could emerge an economic and diplomatic winner if it vows to cut gases from industry, farms and transport that are trapping increasingly dangerous levels of solar heat in the atmosphere.

"It's in China's own interest to accept greenhouse gas emissions goals, not just in the international interest," Hu told Reuters in an interview on Sunday.

"China is a developing country, but it's a very special one, with the biggest population, high energy use and sooner or later, if not now, the biggest total greenhouse gas emissions. So this is a common battlefront we must join."

Hu's arguments are likely to stoke debate about China's stance in accelerating negotiations to forge a global climate pact to build on the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

China has insisted that, as a developing country with relatively low average greenhouse gas output per person, it must grow first and not accept any caps until wealthier. Rich nations that caused most emissions must lead and help more, it says.

But many experts and Western politicians say Beijing must accept measurable limits so other big polluters will also commit.

Hu acknowledged that backing caps was a minority view in China. But the professor, who has helped shape environmental and social policy, said his stance would gain support as the damage from global warming and benefits of binding cuts become clearer.

"I've always started out in the minority but ended up as the mainstream," he said.


CONTRIBUTOR OR VICTIM?

In the scheme recently proposed by Hu in the Chinese-language Journal of Contemporary Asia-Pacific Studies, China's greenhouse gas pollution would continue rising until around 2020.

The country would then "dramatically" curtail emissions, cutting them by 2030 to the level they were in 1990 and then half that by 2050. China's greenhouse gas emissions amounted to 3.7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 1994.

Hu's plan is ambitious for this fast-growing nation of 1.3 billion people. China's emissions of carbon dioxide have raced past the United States', reaching 6.2 billion tonnes in 2006, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency has estimated.

But China should commit to cuts in a global pact, even if the United States resists, Hu said. Washington refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, under which China and other poorer nations need not accept emissions limits.

"Like joining the WTO, this should be used as international pressure to spur our own transformation," he added, referring to the World Trade Organisation, which China joined in 2001.

"If China makes a 1 percent error in handling climate change, that could mean 100 percent failure in making agreement."

Bold reductions will need infusions of pollution-reducing technology from advanced economies. But by accepting them, China would win diplomatically and economically by rising as "green" power and a massive market for energy innovation, Hu said.

An economist often quoted in official media, Hu said he submitted his climate proposals to President Hu Jintao, no relative, earlier this year.

China and other poor countries with many farmers would suffer most from rising sea levels, worsening droughts and erratic rainfall triggered by global warming, said Hu Angang.

"Unless we become one of the biggest green contributors, we will be one of the biggest victims of global warming," he said. (Editing by Nick Macfie and Alex Richardson)

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