Dredging off East Coast and dumping at Labrador
massive works continue, on the wild shores of singapore blog
Another oil rig to park off Pulau Semakau
on the wild shores of singapore blog
Black-naped Terns and projectile vomiting: Published!
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Christine Dell'Amore, National Geographic News 6 Oct 08;
An extinction crisis continues to ravage the planet's animals and plants, according to the new Red List of Threatened Species released today.
The elevated threat level has even sparked a Dow Jones-like index of endangered species, designed to spot troubled species before it's too late. But, despite the inevitable comparisons to the U.S. financial crisis, there appears to be no bailout plan in sight for threatened life-forms, experts say.
There are 44,838 species on the 2008 Red List, compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Thirty-eight percent of Red List species are close to extinction, with 25 percent of all mammals on the verge of oblivion.
The Red List is an annual "health check of the planet," IUCN director general Julia Marton-Lefèvre said.
For the 2008 list, for the first time, every known amphibian, mammal, and bird was assessed.
Species unlucky enough to make the list are grouped into eight categories, from "least concern" (low risk of extinction) to "critically endangered" (extremely high risk of extinction in the wild in the near term).
"If you look ahead a hundred years to our grandchildren and great grandchildren, how are they going to measure whether we were successful in our conservation efforts?" Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International, asked a briefing at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Barcelona.
"Perhaps the most important basis is whether we really saved the full range of animals and plants and everything else out there."
Heightened Threat Levels
Among species whose status is downgraded on the new Red List, some are falling victim to disease, such as the Tasmanian devil.
The Australian marsupial saw a rapid fall from "least concern" to "endangered" status after an infectious facial cancer wiped out 60 percent of its population.
Also, the deadly chytrid fungus continues to threaten amphibians, which have hit a new low.
Thirty-two percent of all amphibians are now threatened or extinct, said Simon Stuart, chair of IUCN's Biodiversity Assessments Sub-committee. For example, Holdridge's toad of Costa Rica, previously listed as critically endangered, has now been deemed extinct.
But most species are plummeting because of habitat destruction, "the most significant threat to [land] species," Stuart said.
For instance, the newly listed, "critically endangered" Rameshwaram parachute spider—a tarantula species found only on the Indian island of Rameshwaram—has lost nearly all its habitat to plantation development.
Likewise, Asia's fishing cat, now labeled endangered, has suffered from the draining of its wetland territory for farms and settlements.
"Good News"
There are a few bright spots in the findings.
The La Palma giant lizard—presumed extinct for the past 500 years—has been rediscovered on La Palma island in the Canary Islands—"very good news," according to Stuart.
Overall, 5 percent of threatened mammals show signs of improvement in the wild, the report found.
For instance, North America's black-footed ferret and Przewalski's horse, a wild Mongolian subspecies, leaped from "extinct in the wild" to "endangered."
These two successes point to the potential of reintroduction programs to save species, Jan Schipper, of IUCN-Conservation International Global Mammal Assessment, told National Geographic News.
But reintroduction is not the most cost-effective strategy, Schipper added. Efforts should be made to stave off species extinction before the threat to a species reaches a critical level, he said.
"Dow Jones Index" for Species
As part of that effort to spot trouble early, IUCN and the Zoological Society of London have launched the sampled Red List Index, "which could be considered the Dow Jones Index for biodiversity," according to a press statement.
As in the Dow Jones approach to tracking stock market trends, a few individual "stocks" (in this case, species) are tracked as indicators of the overall health of the "market" (in this case, an overall taxon, or group of species—for example, reptiles).
The approach is also similar to election polling, in which the responses of a random sample are used to gauge trends.
"We need to know if things are getting better or getting worse. And when we have interventions, are they successful?" Jonathan Baillie, conservation-programs director for the zoological society, told National Geographic News.
Baillie and colleagues have already assessed reptiles and some invertebrate groups.
After adding the "Dow Jones" reptile data to the new Red List assessments of mammals and amphibians, he predicts that 24 percent of the world's land-dwelling vertebrates (animals with spines) may be under threat.
This initial use of the Dow Jones approach, "indicates that biodiversity is in peril," he said.
"And we don't see any [U.S.] $700-billion bailout plan on the horizon."
Quarter of species on Earth may face extinction: expert
Yahoo News 6 Oct 08;
A new tool for measuring biodiversity suggests that a quarter of all animal and plant species may be at risk of extinction, a top scientist said Monday.
Up to now, scientists have only been able to assess the survival status of a relative handful of species due to the sheer variety of life forms inhabiting the planet.
The newly updated "Red List" -- widely viewed as the global standard for conservation monitoring -- includes assessments of 44,838 species, mostly mammals, birds, amphibians and some plants.
But this is only a tiny fraction of the world's life forms, which almost certainly numbers in the tens of million, many of them microorganisms.
"The status of the rest of the world's biodiversity is very poorly known," Jonathan Baillie, director of conservation programmes at the Zoological Society of London, said at the World Conservation Congress in Barcelona.
"The problem is the size of some of these groups -- how do you assess a million plus beetles?"
One way is to borrow a technique from opinion polls and stock market indices such as the Dow Jones or Nasdaq: a representative sampling.
"We have political, social and economic indices, but we lack broad biodiversity indices for the very things that underlie our existence," he said.
Scientists first tested the concept by assessing 1,500 randomly selected reptiles, much as survey institutes might poll a thousand likely voters before an election.
What they found was that about 22 percent of the world's reptiles could be in the process of dying out.
When that tally was added to what was already known about mammals, birds and amphibians, it turned out that 24 percent of the world's terrestrial vertebrates are threatened with extinction.
As scientists extended the method to other animal groups a larger pattern began to emerge as to the portion that are threatened: 14 percent of dragonflies, 32 of fresh water crabs, 33 of corals.
"There is great variation, but the question that emerges is whether 25 percent is representative of broader biodiversity," Baillie said.
"The idea that one-in-four of the world's species may be threatened with extinction does not seem unreasonable," Baillie said.
"We don't know yet because we have not assessed invertebrate groups and plant groups. But we have begun to do this," he added.
"The first attempt to do this indicated that biodiversity is truly in peril, but we don't see any 700 billion dollar bailout plan on the horizon."
The Congress, organised by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), brings together more than 8,000 ministers, UN officials, NGOs, scientists and business chiefs to brainstorm on how to brake species loss and steer the world onto a path of sustainable development.
It runs from October 5 to 14.
Reptile loss threatens global biodiversity
The Independent 6 Oct 07;
More than a fifth of the world's reptiles are threatened with extinction, a new method of monitoring the fortunes of groups of species revealed today.
Instead of assessing each individual species to see if it is at risk of dying out, the Sampled Red List Index (SRLI) examines a sample of 1,500 species from a group such as reptiles, and uses it to model how groups are doing overall.
The method, which revealed 22 per cent of reptiles are at risk of extinction, can be used to track large groups such as insects, where it is not feasible to monitor every individual species.
Complete assessments have been done on all known bird, mammal and amphibian species - but they only make up around 2 per cent of the world's wildlife, according to Dr Jonathan Baillie, director of conservation programmes at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).
Other plants and animals are covered on the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species, but the picture is far from complete - which means conservation decisions are being made on the basis of knowledge of less than 4 per cent of the Earth's biodiversity.
The new index, which uses the IUCN's criteria for threatened species, is "an amazing tool for communicating the status of the world's biodiversity", he said.
It will enable conservationists to identify families of species which are under threat - for example the results showed 43 per cent of crocodiles were at risk of extinction - and also which ecosystems or parts of the world have high levels of at-risk wildlife.
Dr Baillie said: "This is a quantum leap forward in our understanding of biodiversity. The disadvantage is you can't look at all individual species, but to address the bigger problems we have to understand things at an ecosystem, or habitat, level.
"The index enables us to identify a family of species or region that is particularly threatened."
Adding the new data on reptiles to the assessments on birds, mammals and amphibians has revealed that a quarter (24 per cent) of the world's land-based vertebrate species are threatened with extinction.
The scheme, developed by ZSL and IUCN, will go on to sample other groups such as crayfish and lobsters, dung beetles, butterflies, freshwater molluscs and squid and octopuses.
The findings will feed into work toward halting the loss of global biodiversity by 2010.
Kimberly Johnson, National Geographic News 6 Oct 08;
One in four of the world's 5,487 known mammal species face extinction, according to a new conservation "report card" unveiled today.
Marine mammals face even steeper odds, with one in three species at risk of disappearing, according to the study.
The assessment, done as part of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN's) Red List of Threatened Species, took more than 1,700 experts from 130 countries five years to complete.
The report's findings were released today in conjunction with this week's IUCN meeting in Barcelona, Spain, and will appear later this week in the journal Science. "Our results paint a bleak picture of the global status of mammals worldwide," the study authors wrote.
Humans are mostly to blame, as habitat loss, pollution, and hunting continue to squeeze at-risk species.
Under Threat
The new report updates the last IUCN survey conducted in 1996 and adds 700 species not previously assessed.
"Perversely, the species that humans show greatest affinity toward—the largest mammals such as primates, big cats, and whales—are significantly more likely to be threatened with extinction," Barney Long, a biologist at the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C., said in an email.
Some of the most threatened species are found in Asia, a region undergoing rapid human population and economic growth.
"This is leading to habitat loss due to agricultural expansion; development of infrastructure such as roads, which fragment critical landscapes; and increasing areas for industrial crops such as oil palm and pulp for paper," said Long, who helped create the new assessment.
Currently, 79 percent of Asia's primate species face extinction.
Worldwide, habitat loss affects roughly 40 percent of threatened mammal species, while human hunting affects 17 percent, Long said.
Seventy-eight percent of marine mammals are threatened by accidental deaths, such as becoming bycatch in fishing nets intended for other species.
Marine mammals are "threatened purely because humankind does not care enough to mitigate deaths that do not even benefit our species," Long said.
"All these threats represent human-driven activities that, if not controlled, will soon lead to a dramatic increase in the 76 species of mammal that are known to have gone extinct since 1500," Long said.
Restoration
Timothy Ragen is executive director of the U.S. government's Marine Mammal Commission in Bethesda, Maryland.
"We are causing a period of excessive decline or loss in the diversity of nonhuman life over time," he said, adding that the problem will only get worse as human populations grow.
"If we expect to be good stewards, we will have to reexamine our relationship with other forms of life and be willing to make the changes needed to conserve our natural world," Ragen said.
The IUCN Red List is apolitical in scope, but political will is required to reverse species' downward spirals, added lead study author Jan Schipper, director of global mammal assessments for IUCN and the nonprofit Conservation International based in Arlington, Virginia.
"The species that are recovering are the ones we're focusing restoration and recovery efforts on," he said.
According to the report, 5 percent of threatened species have seen rebounds due to conservation efforts.
Mammals facing extinction threat
Richard Black, BBC News website 6 Oct 08;
At least 25% of the world's mammal species are at risk of extinction, according to the first assessment of their status for a decade.
The Red List of Threatened Species says populations of more than half of mammalian species are falling, with Asian primates particularly at risk.
The biggest threat to mammals is loss of habitat, including deforestation.
But there is good news for the African elephant, whose recovery leads to removal from the high-risk list.
This year's Red List looks at 5,487 mammals, and concludes that 1,141 are currently on the path towards disappearance.
This may be an under-estimate, the authors caution, as there is not enough data to make an assessment in more than 800 cases. The true figure could be nearer to one- third.
"Within our lifetime, hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live," said Julia Marton-Lefevre, director-general of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) which publishes the Red List.
"We must now set clear targets for the future to reverse this trend, to ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out many of our closest relatives."
The report's authors said the current concern with financial matters must not be allowed to obstruct the decline in the Earth's natural systems.
"The financial crisis is nothing compared with the environmental crisis," the deputy head of IUCN's species programme, Jean-Christophe Vie, told BBC News.
"It's going to affect a few people, whereas the biodiversity crisis is going to affect the entire world. So there is a risk that because of the financial crisis, people are going to say 'yeah, the environment is not that urgent'; it is really urgent."
About 40% of mammal species are compromised because human expansion is putting a squeeze on their habitat.
This is especially important across the tropics, the regions with the highest diversity of land-based mammals.
South and Southeast Asia are identified as regions where extinctions are especially likely in coming years, as that is where the size and living standards of the human population are rising fastest.
The second biggest threat on land is identified as hunting, for food or medicines.
However, where hunting has been controlled and conservation programmes implemented, as with southern and eastern populations of the African elephant, populations and entire species can recover.
The elephant's risk status is lowered from Vulnerable to Near Threatened.
Some species are included for very specific reasons, such as the Tasmanian devil which has been decimated by a viral cancer.
In the seas, bycatch - entanglement in fishing nets, which is usually although not always accidental - emerges as the biggest factor behind current declines, affecting a staggering 79% of marine mammals.
The assessment - which is also published in the journal Science - warns that lack of data about marine mammals may be masking a bigger decline.
"Whales, dolphins, porpoises, and sirenians (manatees and dugong) are so difficult to survey that declines that should result in a Vulnerable listing would go undetected at least 70% of the time," the authors write.
Outside the mammal arena, the Indian tarantula enters the Red List for the first time, a consequence of over-harvesting for the pet trade.
A further 366 amphibians have been added to the list. This is the most threatened animal group of all, with about one-third on the high-risk list.
A new assessment of climate impacts on the natural world suggests that many species not currently on the danger list will enter it as temperatures rise, particularly in East Africa and parts of South America.
The Red List is published approximately once every year. Although designed as the definitive global list of threatened species, in practice the rankings come from assessments covering different types of plants and animals, and some areas of the list will be more up to date than others.
An assessment of sharks, originally slated for inclusion this year, was delayed and will probably be released later in the year.
In an attempt to make species assessments more certain, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is developing what they colloquially term a "Dow Jones index" for biodiversity.
The idea is to take a random sample of all the world's species, which will be representative of the whole, and revisit it regularly - perhaps once every five years - to gain a better idea of global trends.
"We are now emerging from the dark ages of conservation knowledge, when we relied on data from a highly restricted subset of species," said Jonathan Baillie, ZSL's director of conservation programmes.
The first group to be assessed this way is the land-dwelling vertebrates, but the project will eventually encompass insect, fungi, plants, and various types of marine creatures.
Half of mammals 'in decline', says extinction Red List
Marlowe Hood, Yahoo News 6 Oct 08;
Half the world's mammals are declining in population and more than a third probably face extinction, said an update Monday of the "Red List," the most respected inventory of biodiversity.
A comprehensive survey of mammals included in the annual report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which covers more than 44,000 animal and plant species, shows that a quarter of the planet's 5,487 known mammals are clearly at risk of disappearing forever.
But the actual situation may be even grimmer because researchers have been unable to classify the threat level for another 836 mammals due to lack of data.
"In reality, the number of threatened mammals could be as high as 36 percent," said IUCN scientist Jan Schipper, lead author of the mammal survey, in remarks published separately in the US-based journal Science.
The most vulnerable groups are primates, our nearest relatives on the evolutionary ladder, and marine mammals, including several species of whales, dolphins and porpoises.
"Our results paint a bleak picture of the global status of mammals worldwide," said Schipper.
The revised Red List, unveiled at the IUCN's World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, is further evidence that Earth is undergoing the first wave of mass extinction since dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, many experts say.
Over the last half-billion years, there have only been five other periods of mass extinction.
The Red List classifies plants and animals in one of half-a-dozen categories depending on their survival status.
Nearly 40 percent of 44,838 species catalogued are listed as "threatened" with extinction, with 3,000 of them classified as "critically endangered," meaning they face a very high probability of dying out.
There were a few slivers of good news showing that conservation efforts can prevent a species from slipping into the category from which there is no return: "extinct."
The black-footed Ferret, native to the United States, was moved from "Extinct in the Wild" to "Endangered" after it was successfully introduced into seven U.S. states and Mexico.
The European bison and the wild horse of Mongolia made similar comebacks from the brink starting in the early 1990s.
But these remain exceptions that highlight the need to act before other species populations dwindle beyond the threshold of viability, experts say.
"The longer we wait, the more expensive it will be to prevent future extinctions," said Jane Smart, the head of the IUCN's Species Programme. "We now know what species are threatened, what the threats are and where."
The window of opportunity for great apes and monkey appears to be closing far more quickly that scientists realised, the new study shows.
"I was blown away when I saw the results, even though I was deeply involved in the work," said Michael Hoffman, a mammal expert at Conservation International who helped compile the Red List.
"Nearly 80 percent of primates in Asia are threatened with extinction, overwhelmingly because of hunting and habitat loss."
A voracious appetite in China for traditional medicines and prestige foods is the main driver of primate loss in Southeast Asia, he said.
Sea mammals are also highly vulnerable. "The situation is particularly serious ... for marine species, victims of our increasingly intensive use of the oceans," said Schipper.
Mile-wide fishing nets, vessel strikes, toxic waste and sound pollution from military sonar kill up to 1,000 air-breathing, ocean-dwelling mammals every day, previous research has shown.
There are many drivers of species extinction and all of them stem either directly or indirectly from human activity, scientists say.
Overwhelmingly, the main threat is habitat loss, with hunting and pollution major factors as well.
But climate change is also emerging as a menace.
Species dependant on sea ice such as polar bears and harp seals, for example, are especially vulnerable to shrinking ice cover in the Arctic Circle.
Scientists are also alarmed by "catastrophic declines" in fresh-water amphibians and some mammals caused by poorly understood infections, said Schipper.
More than 60 percent of Tasmanian devils, for example, have been wiped out in the last decade by a disfiguring facial cancer that spreads through physical contact.
"Disease has always had a role to play in affecting populations, but now we are seeing diseases that are highly pathogenic," said Hoffman.
With 11,000 volunteer scientists and more than 1,000 paid staff, the IUCN runs thousands of field projects around the globe to monitor and help manage natural environments.
More than 8,000 ministers, UN officials, NGOs, scientists and business chiefs began brainstorming Sunday for 10 days in the Spanish city of Barcelona on how to brake this loss and steer the world onto a path of sustainable development.
More links from the IUCN website
Habitat Loss, Hunting Put Mammals at Risk
PlanetArk 7 Oct 08;
A quarter of the world's mammals are at risk of extinction because of threats from mankind, according to an international survey by 1,700 experts on Monday.
Following are key findings of the annual "Red List" report, issued during an International Union for Conservation of Nature congress in Barcelona from Oct. 5-14:
-- There are 5,487 species of mammals in the world. Of the 4,651 species for which enough data is available, 1,139 or one in four are in danger of extinction. At least 76 mammals have gone extinct since 1500. The last survey of mammals was in 1996 and findings and categories are not directly comparable.
-- 188 mammals are in the worst category before extinction, or "critically endangered". Twenty-nine of these may already be extinct, such as the baiji or Yangtze dolphin in China.
-- One in two mammal species are declining in number. Threats have worsened for species such as the Tasmanian Devil, an Australian marsupial, the Caspian seal or the fishing cat, found in Asia.
-- Main threats are loss of habitat and hunting by humans. Other risks include climate change and disease.
-- Some species are recovering. China's Pere David deer is extinct in the wild but captive populations have risen and could lead to re-introduction in the wild. The African elephant has been moved to "near threatened", a lesser level of risk than its previous category as "vulnerable" because of rising numbers.
-- Species' ranges vary from a few hundred square metres (yards) for the Bramble Cay melomys, an Australian rat, to all the world's oceans for the orca or killer whale. Most land species occupy an area smaller than Britain.
-- Worldwide, the Red List comprises 44,838 species, of which 16,928 are considered threatened, or 38 percent. Groups such as amphibians are far worse off than mammals. A year ago, the Red List comprised 41,415 species, of which 16,306 were rated as threatened.
Red List of endangered species - summary of the IUCN report
The Telegraph 6 Oct 08;
* Of the 5,487 mammals on Earth 1,141 are known to be facing extinction.
* The survival of one in four of the world's land mammal species and one in three marine mammal species is threatened by extinction.
* There are now 1,983 species of amphibians (32 per cent) either threatened or extinct.
* A representative sample of reptiles shows that over one in five face extinction.
* The main threat to land animals is loss of habitat, dispersal of species and hunting.
* The side effects of fishing poses the biggest threat to marine mammals.
* Climate change could become the biggest cause of extinctions.
* Regions with most diversity tend to be the most threatened.
* At least 76 mammals have become extinct since 1500.
* 29 species have been flagged as Critically Endangered Possibly Extinct.
* 188 mammals are in the highest threat category of Critically Endangered.
* Nearly 450 mammals have been listed as Endangered.
* Overall, the IUCN Red List now includes 44,838 species, of which 16,928 are threatened with extinction (38 per cent).Of these, 3,246 are in the highest category of threat, Critically Endangered, 4,770 are Endangered and 8,912 are Vulnerable to extinction.
Red List of endangered species - most threatened and recovering animals
The Telegraph 6 Oct 08;
Some of the most threatened creatures who feature on the IUCN 2008 Red List:
Iberian Lynx (Lynx pardinus), which has a population of just 84-143 adults and has continued to decline due to a shortage of its primary prey, the European Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus).
China's Père David's Deer (Elaphurus davidianus), has declined from Critically Endangered to Extinct in the Wild. The captive population has increased in recent years and it is possible that free-ranging populations could be re-established soon.
Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus harrisii), which moved from Least Concern to Endangered after the global population declined by more than 60 percent in the last 10 years due to a fatal infectious facial cancer.
The Fishing Cat (Prionailurus viverrinus), found in Southeast Asia, moved from Vulnerable to Endangered due to habitat loss in wetlands.
The Caspian Seal (Pusa caspica) moved from Vulnerable to Endangered. Its population has declined by 90 percent in the last 100 years due to unsustainable hunting and habitat degradation and is still decreasing.
The Grey-faced Sengi or Elephant-shrew (Rhynchocyon udzungwensis) is only known from two forests in the Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania, both of which are fully protected but vulnerable to fires. The species was first described this year and has been placed in the Vulnerable category.
Some animals whose numbers have recovered:
The Black-footed Ferret (Mustela nigripes) moved from Extinct in the Wild to Endangered after a successful reintroduction by the US Fish and Wildlife Service into eight western states and Mexico from 1991-2008.
The Wild Horse (Equus ferus) moved from Extinct in the Wild in 1996 to Critically Endangered this year after successful reintroductions started in Mongolia in the early 1990s.
The African Elephant (Loxodonta africana) moved from Vulnerable to Near Threatened, although its status varies considerably across its range. The move reflects the recent and ongoing population increases in major populations in Southern and Eastern Africa. These increases are big enough to outweigh any decreases that may be taking place elsewhere.
New species appearing on the Red List for the first time:
Indian tarantulas, highly prized by collectors and threatened by the international pet trade, have made their first appearance on the IUCN Red List. They face habitat loss due to new roads and settlements.
The Rameshwaram Parachute Spider (Poecilotheria hanumavilasumica) has been listed as Critically Endangered as its natural habitat has been almost completely destroyed.
For the first time, all 161 grouper species have been assessed, of which 20 are threatened with extinction.
The Squaretail Coral Grouper (Plectropomus areolatus) from the coral reefs of the Indo-Pacific is newly listed as Vulnerable.
Amphibians:
In Costa Rica, Holdridge's Toad (Incilius holdridgei), an endemic species, moved from Critically Endangered to Extinct as it has not been seen since 1986 despite intensive surveys.
Reptiles:
New reptiles assessed this year include the La Palma Giant Lizard (Gallotia auaritae). Found on the Canary Island of La Palma and thought to have become extinct in the last 500 years, it was rediscovered last year and is now listed as Critically Endangered.
The Cuban Crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer) is another Critically Endangered reptile, moved from Endangered because of population declines caused by illicit hunting for its meat and its skin, which is used in clothing.
New Straits Times 7 Oct 08;
KUALA LUMPUR: As the Earth's temperature continues to rise and the North Pole becomes a permanent island, mangrove swamps on the west coast of the peninsula may just get the break they sorely need.
Malaysian Nature Society communications head Andrew Sebastian said there would be less pollution in the Straits of Malacca, if some of the ship traffic from the narrow waterway between the peninsula and Sumatra was diverted to the Northeast Passage, a water route that extends from Europe's North Sea, along the Arctic coast of Asia, and through the Bering Sea to the Pacific Ocean.
"There will be less discharge from ships, less chance of collisions, fewer chances of oil spills and a smaller chance of ships running aground.
"There will also be less soil erosion along our coastline if there is a reduction in the number of ships plying our waters.
"Wave action plays an important role, especially in the narrower areas towards the south of the straits where ships passing through cause damage to coastal areas."
He said the mangrove ecosystems along the coasts were exhausted and needed a lot of help to recover.
"Soil erosion eats into land areas and coastal ecosystems have to work harder to protect them.
"A lot of them have been cleared for development so anything that lessens the existing swamps' burden is good."
He added that ecological hazards originating in the sea can cause a chain reaction inland.
"For example, if mangroves in Kuala Selangor disappear, the water in the river will get more saline and this will affect the firefly population there. One thing leads to another.
"As we are killing the mangroves from the inside, they are also being attacked from the outside."
Sebastian said the reduced ship traffic in the straits was the only silver lining amid the reality of melting Arctic ice.
Warmer temperatures will cause sea levels to rise and our mangroves will play an even more important role as a buffer against the rising waters.
Universiti Malaya geography department head professor Datuk Dr Azizan Abu Samah said climate change was definitely occurring around the globe.
But, he said the effects of global warming on small countries like Malaysia was difficult to predict as there were too many uncertainties.
"There are many uncertainties. Some models predict less rain, while others predict there'll be more rain. And there are more than 20 models."
"Change will happen, but when and how they will happen is anybody's guess."
Jonathan Adams, International Herald Tribune 6 Oct 08;
KENTING NATIONAL PARK, Taiwan: At this seaside resort on Taiwan's southern tip, annual typhoons blast sludge and sediment onto fragile, shallow-water coral reefs. Hotels and villages sprinkle the reefs with sewage. A nuclear power plant boils them with discharged reactor-cooling water. Snorkelers and scuba divers trample on the reefs, sometimes breaking off chunks of coral as souvenirs.
And in 2001 a huge cargo ship sank off Kenting, destroying the coral it landed on and spewing more than 1,000 tons of fuel oil down the coastline.
As if all that were not enough, rising sea temperatures have increased the frequency of "coral bleaching," which can be fatal if it lasts much more than two to three weeks.
Yet in an age when such environmental stresses are killing off coral reefs worldwide, Kenting's reefs are doing surprisingly well. One scientist here said Taiwan may even turn out to be a "Noah's Ark" for corals.
"This is the era of global temperature change and ocean warming is a big problem for coral reefs," said Fan Tung-yung, a coral expert at Taiwan's National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium, in a telephone interview. "But Kenting is a refuge."
A research paper by John Bruno and Elizabeth Selig, published last year in the scientific journal PLoS One, comparing reefs throughout the Pacific and Indian oceans found that average coral cover (the amount of sea floor covered by live coral) was about 22 percent, whereas Fan said coverage off Kenting was 40 percent. Last year, when a coral bleaching spell wiped out many other reefs in the Asia-Pacific region, Kenting's survived - and bounced back quickly.
The reef's relative stamina has drawn interest from marine biologists worldwide. Now, American and Taiwan scientists hope to make Kenting part of a U.S.-led global "early warning system" for coral reef monitoring.
Such a system would help Taiwan's scientists and officials better protect their reefs. It would also allow scientists to gather data to explain why some reefs - like Kenting's - are so robust, while others are languishing.
"The reefs of Kenting are very impressive in terms of their overall coral cover and coral diversity," Peter Edmunds, a coral expert at California State University at Northridge who has inspected Taiwan's reefs, wrote in an e-mail. "They offer a unique and very important opportunity to understand the reasons why some reefs seem to be surviving better than others throughout the world."
Scientists already have several hypotheses. Kenting's reefs are fortunate to be replenished by a steady supply of what scientists call "recruits" - new coral, in this case brought north from waters near the Philippines. That means that even when some coral is destroyed, new coral rushes in to take its place.
More important, though, are the tide-driven currents that regularly push up deeper, colder water to the shallow waters off Taiwan's southern tip. This type of "upwelling," says Fan, is very rare.
Edmunds and Fan believe the Kenting reefs' tenacity is related to their natural exposure to sharp variations in seawater temperature (as much as 9 degrees Celsius, or 48 Fahrenheit, over a single day) caused by these tidal patterns.
"It's possible that such thermal stresses somehow provide the corals with the ability to resist subsequent stress," said Edmunds. Toughened by the daily battering of such temperature swings, Kenting's reefs may simply shrug off hotter ocean waters that are so damaging to other reefs.
Oddly, the nuclear power plant may have also helped toughen the reefs, says Fan. The coral reefs in the area have had 30 years to adapt to higher temperatures (2 to 4 degrees Celsius higher) close to the outflow of cooling water from Taiwan's Third Nuclear Power Plant on Nanwan Bay - which also happens to be the site of a popular recreational beach.
To be sure, Kenting's reefs are faring well only in comparison with others around the world.
Dai Chang-feng, a coral expert at National Taiwan University's Institute of Oceanography, said in an interview that three decades ago, Kenting's coral reef coverage was as high as 75 percent to 80 percent, almost twice what it is now.
Models predict that by 2050, "most of the coral species in Kenting will disappear," Dai said. Specifically, his models predict that fewer than 50 of Kenting's 300 species will survive by 2050, with few or none left alive by 2100.
To help them avoid that fate, scientists and government officials first need better data on what exactly kills off corals and why some like Kenting's are hardier.
Enter the U.S.-led Integrated Coral Observing Network. Scientists in Taiwan and officials of Kenting National Park (which has jurisdiction over the reefs) have been meeting with U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists to discuss Taiwan's inclusion in the network. Kenting could be incorporated next year, said Fan and others involved in the project.
The network is an ambitious project to provide a global picture of the health of coral reefs, both for research purposes and as an "early warning system" when coral reefs are threatened. Already active in the Bahamas, it uses underwater sensors that gather water temperature and other data and beam it to satellites. That data is then linked to a network that allows for real-time monitoring of reefs worldwide.
"The purpose of the sensors is to study how global warming affects corals and to know what to watch for," said Keryea Soong, a coral expert at National Sun Yat-sen University's Institute of Marine Biology in the southern port city of Kaohsiung. "We can design experiments to better understand 'bleaching.' Satellites can give you a picture of a wider area, but with the sensors, we can know the temperatures on a much smaller scale, such as in Kenting."
Bleaching, one of the key threats to coral reefs, occurs when coral loses its symbiotic algae due to stresses such as high water temperatures. That removes reefs' coloration and their main source of nutrients.
When the monitoring network's sensors show a reef under threat, scientists and Kenting National Park officials will be able to take immediate steps - for example, temporarily banning water activities such as snorkeling or boating in the area.
"The whole world is worried about the health of coral reefs, said Shih Chin-fang, former director of Kenting National Park, in an interview. "So a group of experts is working very hard all over the world to link up this monitoring system to the Internet."
Ultimately, those are stopgap measures, which do not address the long-term threat to Earth's coral reefs posed by global warming. Edmunds worries that Kenting's reefs, while appearing tough, may just be "lagging" deteriorating reefs elsewhere - and that their decline is "just around the corner."
Said Edmunds: "I've seen similar effects in the Caribbean - one reef that was doing great for 20 years, while others around it were declining, in 2005 suddenly started to die off at an alarming rate."
For now, he and other scientists are hoping that Kenting's reefs really are exceptional. And soon they hope to know why.
PUB project will make water cheaper to treat in the reservoirs
Tania Tan, Straits Times 7 Oct 08;
TUCKED away in the heart of industrial MacPherson is a small garden that does more than look pretty.
When it rains, this patch of green becomes a natural filter, catching soil contaminants from surface runoff, thus producing cleaner water which will be cheaper to treat when the water reaches the reservoirs later.
Called a 'rain garden' by its creator, the national water agency PUB, the 0.6ha plot has 14 plant species growing in a blend of coarse sand and fine gravel.
You could say hope grows in this pilot garden: It is PUB's hope that one day, green filters like this will dot the island's carparks, housing estates and private homes, soaking up pollutants and filtering out particles. They would be the first natural step in transforming dirty runoff into drinking water.
PUB senior manager Ong Geok Suat, who is on the project's team, said rainwater at the outset of a rain shower is extremely dirty from having washed the dirt off carparks, rooftops and small drains. Also called 'first flush', it often contains contaminants like petrol, particles and minerals.
'It's like when you scrub the floors. The first rinse is always the dirtiest,' she said.
The dirt in the runoff clogs up and destroys the costly membranes used in treating drinking water, making it necessary for them to be replaced every few years.
The idea of using rain gardens did not come up earlier because most of Singapore's soil is lumpy, non-porous clay, which does not make a good filter, she added.
Water that filters through the man-made rain garden is several times cleaner than normal surface runoff, she said.
The garden also acts like a sponge, holding water and releasing it slowly into the canals, reducing the chance of flooding during heavy rain.
Next June, when the pilot rain garden is a year old, it will be handed over to the Marine Parade Town Council which will take over its maintenance.
Ms Ong described the garden as a marriage of 'form and function', in that it looks good and is useful.
Researchers from the Singapore-Delft Water Alliance (SDWA) - a body funded by the National University of Singapore and the Dutch water institute Delft Hydraulics - are now studying various combinations of local species of plants and soil types to determine which pairings work best to absorb minerals and chemical pollutants.
Local plants such as cattails and umbrella sedge are some plants which work with the soil to play a filtering role.
SDWA research fellow Umid Man Joshi said: 'Ultimately, contaminants go into our water supplies, which can be costly to remove. If we can use plants to remove them, then it's a cheap, green way of doing things.'
Larger scale tests will be conducted at the group's Aquatic Science Centre in Ulu Pandan when it opens next year.
Straits Times 7 Oct 08;
THE concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has made only modest inroads with local firms, with just four out of 10 familiar with the process.
Larger enterprises are also twice as likely to be aware of it compared with small and medium-sized enterprises, according to a survey commissioned by the Trade and Industry Ministry.
More than 500 companies responded to the survey conducted by the Singapore Compact for CSR, which wanted to gauge how firms perceive the concept, how important they regard it, the state of CSR activity as well as future plans and challenges.
There are varying definitions of CSR but it usually describes the culture of companies giving back to society and the environment in which they operate and make their profits.
'CSR is still a new initiative in Singapore compared to other advanced economies,' said Singapore Business Federation chief executive Teng Theng Dar.
Of the 40 per cent who are aware of CSR, about two-thirds have activities in sustainable development, fair employment and philanthropy. They said their main motivation was to foster corporate culture and enhance branding and reputation.
Those who knew of the concept but did not implement it felt it was irrelevant to their business or they lacked the necessary resources.
CSR has been receiving increasing attention worldwide as companies position themselves for greater transparency and accountability on their performance on society and environmental issues - in addition to financial performance - to gain the trust of stakeholders.
YANG HUIWEN
Letter from Wong Weng Fai, Straits Times Forum 7 Oct 08;
I REFER to last Saturday's letter, 'EMA explains spike'.
To the question on why, even though 80 per cent of our electricity is powered by natural gas, electricity prices are pegged to oil prices, the Energy Market Authority (EMA) replied that, because there is no Asian benchmark for gas prices, oil prices are used instead. In other words, it is not the actual cost of raw material (gas) that is used in computing electricity prices.
Surely the power generation companies know exactly how much they pay for natural gas. Is it not possible to determine electricity prices more accurately, rather than stick to 'this is what we have been doing all along since 2004, so we will continue to do it'?
Another issue this price increase has brought up is transparency. I was unable to find anywhere the formula to determine these prices. Perhaps the power companies should be required to publish their raw material prices, overheads and margins on their websites, so the public are kept up to date.
With privatisation of electricity, is there still a need for a 'one price for all' approach? Let the power companies figure out how best to obtain the lowest-priced raw material (using spot, one-month or three-month futures, or private agreements with gas producers) and reflect it immediately in monthly bills. This will allow competition to increase efficiency. EMA should play the role of moderator to ensure there is no cheating or collusion.
Like most Singaporeans, I am not asking for subsidies for utilities. I am just asking for fair and transparent pricing.
Power shock: Bring retail competition sooner
Straits Times 7 Oct 08;
ANY way one looks at it, the increase of 21 per cent in electricity charges that took effect last week was a shocker. The size of the quarterly jump, the biggest in eight years, will burden the majority of middle-income home users although the poorest households in HDB housing are insulated with adequate government rebates.
The beef is with the timing - despite consumer acceptance that state fuel subsidies are not a habit with this Government and the fact that electricity price adjustments work to a formula that tracks the world oil price.
In the face of financial failures in the West, inflation tendencies seem almost like yesterday's news to many people, though prices have demonstrably not stopped biting. Singaporeans are even more apprehensive now about income and job uncertainties associated with the fallout from the banking crash in America and Europe and the consequent liquidity crisis that is working its way through the global economy.
In the circumstances, might the Energy Market Authority (EMA) have made an exception of this instance and held prices at the current level? (Price adjustments are made quarterly.) The gesture would have been appreciated. As it is, EMA thinks the next quarterly adjustment in January could see a tariff reduction as crude oil prices, which determine the cost of the fuel oil used in power generation, have lately been dipping again in tandem with the financial disruptions.
A question arises as to whether the adjustment formula based on the forward fuel oil price, as opposed to the spot price, could be refined so as to bring the cost charged to consumers closer to the world oil price, with minimal time lag.
Home consumers are still subjected to the rigidities of an imperfect market as the supply of power to the 1.2 million households, which account surprisingly for only 25 per cent of the electricity market, has not been liberalised as quickly as the industrial-use sector which is far bigger.
Price relief will come only in three or four years when the home-use sector is opened to competition, which will give consumers a choice of retailers to buy their power from. EMA calculates that industrial users which enjoy full competition have seen their prices fall by 3 per cent to 8 per cent. Comparable reductions cannot come soon enough for households.
If an experiment next month, with electricity vending meters in 1,000 volunteer households in Marine Parade and West Coast, demonstrates that the technology and conservation monitoring methods are feasible, EMA should bring full implementation sooner than the planned schedule of around 2012.
Rujun Shen, PlanetArk 7 Oct 08;
SHANGHAI - Shanghai, China's most populous city and an aspiring global financial centre, is also among the world's most vulnerable urban areas to a rise in sea levels as global warming melts polar ice.
Its location on a low-lying alluvial plain near the mouth of Asia's longest river, the Yangtze, had already left it prone, but researchers warn that forests of skyscrapers sprouting across the ambitious metropolis could compound the threat by causing its marshy ground to sink.
"Shanghai came from the ocean, and has been facing the threat of rising sea levels," said Wang Pingxian, a member of the prestigious China Academy of Sciences and professor of ocean geology at Tongji University in Shanghai.
"The rising sea level is a worldwide problem, caused by global warming, but Shanghai and Tianjin, among China's coastal cities, face the biggest challenge, mainly because of land subsidence," Wang said as part of the Reuters Global Environment Summit.
Sinking ground levels have long been a headache for Shanghai, although the culprit has traditionally been the pumping of ground water to support its rapid growth and industrialisation.
The dyke along Shanghai's riverfront Bund, which protects a mile of historic granite buildings from the waters of the Huangpu River, has been raised three times -- by nearly 2 metres (about 7 feet) -- over the past four decades.
Shanghai drilled its first deep well on the Bund in 1860, and as industrial development and ground water use accelerated, the city sank 1.76 metres between 1921 and 1965, or an average of about 4 centimetres a year.
As early as the 1960s, the Shanghai government began addressing the problem by pumping some of its treated water supply, which is now taken largely from the Huangpu River rather than from ground water, back below the surface.
THAT SINKING FEELING
Land subsidence eased substantially and ground levels even began rising in the 1970s when the government was particularly active in pumping water back, but sinking set in once more in the 1990s as the city set out on a frantic building boom.
The city has further tightened its restrictions on ground water use since 2006 and plans to ban use of ground water entirely for non-drinking purposes by 2010, when it expects to be pumping 50 million cubic metres of water (1.8 billion cubic feet) per year underground.
That compares with the 17.3 million cubic metres of water it pumped underground in 2007, when it pulled out 43.8 million cubic metres of ground water. At its peak, the city pumped out 200 million cubic metres of ground water a year.
As a result of strict regulation of ground water usage, Shanghai sank only 6.8 millimetres in 2007, or 0.5 millimetre less than a year earlier, a government report said.
But while the city moves to stop the ground from being pulled down as ground water is sucked out, researchers now worry that the ground is being pushed down as masses of skyscrapers are plopped down across the urban landscape.
"(Land subsidence) is more serious in areas where groundwater is heavily used, or highrise density is high," said Xu Shiyuan, a professor of geology at East China Normal University.
There are about 10,000 buildings with more than 10 floors in Shanghai, of which 80 percent have been built in the past 10 years, according to Emporis, one of the world's leading providers of building information.
"Land subsidence caused by construction of highrises and underground projects will be a key issue in the future," said a professor at a research institute affiliated to the government in Shanghai, who declined to be named because his institute does not allow researchers to talk to the media.
He said that, although a single highrise building could only cause ground in adjacent areas to subside marginally, dense blocks of highrises could press the soil in sand layers underneath, and contribute to ground sinking over a large area.
"It's a very difficult problem, and we haven't found any effective solutions", he said.
PILING ON THE PRESSURE?
Some researchers said, however, that highrise construction would cause only minor land subsidence and could be limited by technical innovations, although worries would remain that uneven subsidence could damage bridges and tunnels.
"One can't generalise the situation and say highrises are going to have a more significant impact on land subsidence. It's rather a case-by-case scenario," said Xu of East China Normal University.
David Scott, chairman of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, and a principal with engineering firm Arup's New York operations, added: "The weight of big buildings is generally not a big problem". Deep basements can help to offset the weight of large buildings, he said.
Arrays of piles can also mitigate pressure from the weight of buildings.
The developer of the 492-metre (1,614-ft) Shanghai World Financial Centre, which at its opening in late August surpassed the neighbouring Jin Mao Tower as China's tallest building, said it was not contributing to the land subsidence problem.
"Our building is not causing land to sink," said Michiho Kishi, a spokesman for Mori Building.
The clay layer -- firmer ground more than 100 metres underneath the building -- has sunk nearly 120 millimetres (five inches) since construction started, far less than the limit of 250 millimetres set by the government's construction code, Kishi said.
The city itself seems unfazed, with plans to build the 632-metre Shanghai Centre, next to the other two towers. (Editing by Edmund Klamann and David Fogarty)
Yahoo News 6 Oct 08;
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Vietnam on Monday signed a 196-million-dollar loan for a hydropower plant, the country's first major dam project to be backed by a multilateral development agency.
The 156-megawatt Song Bung 4 Hydropower Project will be built in the Vu Gia-Thu Bon river basin of central Quang Nam province, a remote and poor area home mainly to the indigenous Co Tu minority, the ADB said in a statement.
"Rapid economic growth and socio-economic development require reliable supply of electricity in both economically and environmentally sustainable manner," said ADB country director Ayumi Konishi at the signing ceremony.
"We are very pleased to work with the government and (Electricity of Vietnam) EVN to develop hydropower potentials, particularly paying close attention to environmental and social aspects."
The Vietnam Development Bank had lent another 22.3 million dollars and state-owned EVN would contribute 49 million dollars, said the ADB.
Konishi pledged the project would "set an example for environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive hydropower development" while helping to meet national power demand expected to grow by 16 percent a year through 2010.
The ADB said the project's designers had conducted environmental and social impact assessments and promised mitigation measures for residents and for impacts on the region's Song Thanh Nature Reserve near the Laos border.
The Manila-based bank in its statement promised the "restoration and improvement of lost livelihoods in a culturally-appropriate manner for project-affected persons, provision of social infrastructure and conservation offset to compensate for adverse impacts on the Song Thanh Nature Reserve."
Mel Gunasekera, Yahoo News 5 Oct 08;
Asian elephants are renowned as highly social animals and the reservoir meetings demonstrate their complex group dynamics in action.
As evening falls, a female elephant and her pink-skinned baby emerge from the jungle for a leafy snack around an ancient artificial lake in Sri Lanka.
They are just two of hundreds of wild elephants that gather each evening along the banks of the Minneriya reservoir for food, water, shelter -- and match-making.
From July to October, "The Gathering" -- as it is known -- gives humans the chance to observe the elephants feasting and frolicking on the water's edge.
Mothers encourage their off-spring towards the water, making sure that no calf is left stranded. Young males use their trunks to wrestle each other, while adult bulls sniff the air to scent fertile females.
Tucked away in the island's north central province, Minneriya provides an ideal venue for hungry elephants during the dry season when waterholes in the forests evaporate into cracked mud patches.
A shade-loving animal, the Asian elephant is not blessed with as good a cooling system as its bigger African cousin, which has large ears.
So it is only in the cool of dusk that the elephants emerge from the scrub to relax by the lake.
During the season, 300 elephants can be found along the Minneriya reservoir, built by Sri Lankan King Mahasen in the third century.
The reservoir fills during the north-east monsoon and gradually shrinks when the dry season sets in.
But instead of running dry, the receding water leaves behind a fertile, moist soil from which lush, nutritious grass quickly sprouts, said conservationist Srilal Miththapala.
The reservoir is also surrounded by scrub jungle which provides good cover to elephants to retreat into quickly if needed, he said.
"The atmosphere gives an ideal setting for a world phenomenon, where a high concentration of Asian elephants can be found in one small area," explained Chandra Jayawardene, a naturalist at Hotel Vil Uyana.
Sri Lankan wildlife defies conventional wisdom, said Gehan Wijeyeratne, who heads the country's Jetwing Eco Holidays.
"Small islands like ours are not supposed to have large animals," Wijeyeratne told AFP. "The gathering is one of the largest concentration of Asian elephants on Earth."
Local hoteliers are trying to cash in on the spectacle, as they struggle to fill hotel rooms amid an escalation in the war between government troops and separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.
The tropical island was expecting 600,000 visitors this year, up 20 percent from 2007, to boost tourism receipts to 550 million dollars.
But Sri Lankan Tourism said such targets would be missed as earnings for January to July 2008 were a disappointing 200 million dollars.
"Several bomb blasts around the country have played a major role in the reduction of tourist arrivals," said tourism ministry secretary George Michael.
Jayawardene said an increase in the number of foreign visitors would provide much-needed support for the local economy, but the balance between human activity and wildlife has proved hard to achieve.
Asian elephants, which live until about the age of 70, are increasingly straying into human settlement in search of food, as people encroach on their territory.
And some elephants are thought to have fled their habitats to avoid artillery duels between troops and rebels in the north and east.
According to Sri Lanka's wildlife department, 193 elephants died in 2007 and 171 died in 2006. Most of them were either shot, poisoned or electrocuted.
The population has now shrunk to 4,500 from 12,000 a century ago.
"You can't completely stop the human against elephant conflict," said Jayawardene, who worked for 30 years at the government's wildlife department.
"But, with education and money coming into local hands through elephant safaris, we can minimise the damage. Locals will treat the elephants with respect and learn to live alongside them," he said.
Nigel Hunt, PlanetArk 7 Oct 08;
LONDON - Crops must be bred to resist insects and drought rather than relying heavily on pesticides and irrigation, Britain's chief scientist said on Monday.
This will become increasingly important in order to counter the effects of climate change, John Beddington told Reuters.
"I think the role of genomics is enormous whether it is the GM (genetically modified) type or other genomic techniques which improve things. We need to do it," he said in an interview.
Speaking after attending a conference on food security in London, Beddington said demand for food was expected to grow by about 50 percent by 2030 due to both a rising global population and changing diets in developing countries.
A needed expansion in production, however, would have to be achieved with less land, less water and less energy while not increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, he said.
"The green revolution 30, 40 years ago was built on much more fertiliser, much more pesticides, very extensive irrigation and seed improvements. Those were the major planks," he said.
"I don't believe we can solve our current problems in the way we did in the original revolution so we need a new and greener one. The new greener revolution is needing to be a tad more sophisticated," Beddington added.
He said that pests and disease currently resulted in losses of about 40 percent in certain crops and climate change would pose new threats.
"The losses due to pest and disease are very substantial and climate change has the potential to exacerbate that as some plants and indeed animal diseases are taking advantage of an altered climate to expand their range," he said.
Beddington said that crop breeding had the potential to generate improved resistance to some of the key pests and diseases.
Climate change could also reduce the amount of land suitable for agriculture and would mean care would have to be taken if land in areas such as the former Soviet Union is brought back into active production.
"There is definitely extra land which could be put into agricultural production but the question is what does that land look like. For example, if it is permanent grassland it has the potential to release greenhouse gases," he said.
Huge swathes of farm land in Russia have been left fallow since the fall of communism.
Beddington said if meat and dairy prices were to rise then it could curtail demand growth.
"To the extent that happens in the developed world that is probably OK. To the extent it happens in the developing world you've got real issues of malnutrition and hunger," he said. (Editing by Michael Roddy)
BBC News 6 Oct 08;
"Greener" because it works with ecosystems, not against them. A revolution that is "pro-poor and pro-environment"
From the begging bowl to the bread basket: in just two years, Malawi has gone from famine to food surplus - a minor agricultural miracle.
By applying a mixture of crop breeding, soil management, irrigation and diversification, agro-science experts are helping subsistence farmers to cope with climate change and buck the trend in neighbouring African countries.
BBC science and environment reporter James Morgan has gone into the field to meet the families who are sowing the seeds of a uniquely African green revolution - one which is as kind to the environment as it is to the economy.
"If [environmentalists] lived for just one month among the misery of the developing world, as I have for 50 years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertiliser and irrigation canals."
So said Norman Borlaug, one of the founding fathers of the original Green Revolution - credited with wiping out starvation in Asia.
But can technology really be the saviour of Africa's struggling farmers? It has become a terribly unfashionable opinion in the UK, where "green" campaigners are no longer content to denounce GM crop trials. They simply rip them up.
"Responsible biotechnology is not the enemy," said Borlaug. "Starvation is."
I have decided to take Norm up on his wager, by coming to Malawi to see for myself.
Because no matter how many UN reports I've ploughed through, grasping the root cause of the current "food crisis" in Africa is anything but straightforward.
And neither is my journey to Malawi - a sweaty overnight haul which takes me via Kenya, Zambia, and several re-runs of Indiana Jones films. But for heroic inspiration, I look instead to a speech by Kofi Annan, the new chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) - a $200m, pan-African programme, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller foundations.
"Let us generate a uniquely African Green revolution," says Annan, cutting a heroic pose on my crumpled transcript. "There is nothing more important than this."
It is difficult to argue. Over the last 50 years, African farmers have laboured in the heat, while countries like Mexico, India and the Philippines have undergone a green revolution - applying novel fertilisers and pesticides to churn out bumper harvests of new high-yield varieties of wheat and rice.
Empowering farmers
Meanwhile, Africa has been cultivating greater and greater poverty statistics.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where per capita food production has steadily declined.
One third of Africans are malnourished. Soils are among the most depleted on Earth. Farmers do not have access to productive seed varieties and those that do have neither the knowledge nor the tools to reap the harvest. Slash and burn still reigns.
Climate change is forecasting ever more variable rainfalls, and more frequent droughts. Add in soaring fuel prices and the scourge of HIV/Aids, and the average African finds himself surrounded in the kind of perilous predicament which from which even Harrison Ford would struggle to escape.
But it is this very challenge that has drawn the world's crop scientists and agro-economists to Malawi. They hope to pioneer novel farming systems that propel Africa towards a new era of food security.
It has already been dubbed by members of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as "a greener revolution".
"Greener" because it works with ecosystems, not against them. A revolution that is "pro-poor and pro-environment", in the words of Mr Annan.
The talk around the conference tables is of "empowering" subsistence farmers to find their own, local solutions - farming techniques which are sustainable, affordable and tailored to local soils, markets and eating preferences.
Over the next week, I'll be taking a look at these projects first hand - catching fish in the desert, planting strange trees in the middle of maize crops.
I'm wondering how women and men, who have been sowing the same maize seeds for generations, really feel about the new hybrid varieties of seeds which are more nutritious, but also more hungry for expensive pesticide and fertiliser.
'Against the grain'
Most of all, I'm curious to find out whether the "miracle" we have read about here in Malawi is bona fide or illusory. Is the revolution underway, or a simple matter of better rainfall?
The facts are these. During the last decade, Malawi suffered six successive years of food shortage, culminating in 2005. One third of the population - 4.5million people - went hungry.
Step forward two years, and Malawi is exporting more than one million metric tonnes of maize, its staple crop.
The government, against the advice of the IMF and the World Bank, has handed out vouchers to 1.5m of the country's poorest farmers, enabling them to buy "inputs" - seeds, fertiliser and pesticides. Meanwhile, yields have mushroomed. Malawians are selling maize to Kenya and giving food aid to Zimbabwe.
The success was hailed last year with Oxfam's Malcolm Fleming describing to the BBC how Malawi was going against the grain of African agriculture.
So when I bump into Malcolm, a well-kent face in my native Scotland, on the flight to Lilongwe, I don't hesitate to offer a warm handshake of congratulations.
"I'm afraid that things have moved on since then," he sighs. "The harvests have been great, but still the food prices in Malawi are still rocketing."
Why? "That's the question," he continues. "The closer I look, the more complicated it becomes. But from what I gather, the maize is being sold abroad at greater prices, and that keeps the prices up in Malawi."
Malcolm is here doing research in the lead up to World Food Day on 16 October. Helping him to raise awareness is another familiar Scottish face, but I'm afraid I am sworn to secrecy. All will be revealed in due course.
"Rising food prices might not be much of a problem for me or you," says Mr Fleming, "but if you spend 80% of your household income on food, and then the price doubles..."
It is a welcome serving of realism pie to chew on as I step out of Lilongwe airport.
The pavements are covered in a blanket of purple blossom - it looks like a fairytale. And the boys cartwheeling down the red dirt roads seem full of beans. But the lumps in their bellies tell a different story.
Sustainable use of resources and environment will give 2bn of world's poor greatest chance of surviving extreme change
John Vidal, guardian.co.uk 7 Oct 08;
Rural communities which protect nature and exploit forests, wetlands and wildlife sustainably will be the best equipped to cope with the droughts and floods that will increasingly hit Africa, Asia and Latin America with climate change, says a new UN-backed report.
Nature-based enterprise, says the report from the World Resources Institute in Washington DC, offers the world's 2 billion rural poor key survival tools to weather the extreme changes that are expected. It argues that communities must be given secure rights to access, manage and profit from, the natural resources they depend on daily and calls on governments and development agencies to scale up such approaches.
Supported by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Bank, the report, called Roots of resilience, urges immediate action.
"Poverty will never be made history unless we invest in more intelligent management of the world's nature-based assets," said Achim Steiner, UNEP under-secretary general and executive director, at the report's launch in Barcelona. "Mainstreaming [such] models is now a matter of great urgency in a world challenged by climate change, in a world where we are pushing, if not pushing past, the regenerative limits of the planet's life support systems."
To support its case, the report highlights successful, groundbreaking examples of nature-based livelihoods around the world. In famine-prone Niger, one of the world's five poorest nations, it reports, low-cost farmer-led efforts to regenerate tree stumps has led to a dramatic re-planting of the semi-desert Sahel region, increasing both rural incomes and food supplies.
In Bangladesh, where 70 million people depend on floodplains for food and income, communities have achieved similarly spectacular results in reviving polluted and over-exploited wetlands. After the government awarded 110 villages joint control, along with local authorities, to manage sustainably the fisheries on the doorsteps, fish harvests rose by 140% and household incomes by a third.
Scaling up such successful enterprise models, according to Roots of resilience, requires governments and donors to engage communities in sustainably managing drylands, wetlands, watersheds, and forests so that they provide a reliable, renewable source of food and income. In the process, the report argues, poor households will also develop the resilience needed to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
The report's blueprint for making this happen includes: transferring legal authority over local ecosystems to communities; building community capacity both to manage natural resources and establish successful nature-based enterprises; and helping local nature-based enterprises link into mainstream business markets.
"Local communities clearly have an interest to sustain the ecosystems on which they depend," said Manish Bapna, executive vice president of the World Resources Institute, in Barcelona. "But today, all too often, they face a disabling, not an enabling environment."
Jasmin Malik Chua, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 6 Oct 08;
As utility costs mount ever higher, Americans now have real options to take home energy matters into their own hands with "green" systems that can pay for themselves in as little as a few years.
Among the choices: wind, solar, geothermal and a "microhydro" option that is potentially cheaper than a year's tuition at many state colleges.
Choosing the do-it-yourself route can offer the freedom of going partially or totally off the grid. And, if the energy generated exceeds your actual usage, you can even sell the excess juice to your utility company. But none of this is free. Here's how much change you should expect to kick in:
Solar power
The economics of a small photovoltaic system depend not only on the cost of designing and installing the system, which can vary considerably, but also the expense of maintaining and operating the system over the course of its serviceable lifetime, which usually spans between 25 to 30 years. The cost-effectiveness of such a system also depends on how much sun you get where you live, your electricity usage, and the size of your system.
If you're an average American household that uses FindSolar.com, an online calculator sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, the American Solar Energy Society, and the Solar Electric Power Association.
You can probably shave off a few thousand dollars once state and federal rebates come into play.
Assuming a property value appreciation of $14,000 to $27,000, as well as average annual utility savings of $1,000 to $2,000, you can potentially recoup your investment in three to 14 years.
Wind power
At $3,000 and $5,000 per kilowatt of wind-generating capacity, or around $40,000 for a 10kW system, according to the MyWattsEstimator to find out what the wind potential in your area is.) With the right state and federal incentives applied, however, well-located wind turbines can pay for themselves within 15 years, or half their useful life.
There are also a few upfront fees with wind power, because wind turbines are tall structures that require building-related permits. You may require a conditional-use permit, zoning variance, or structural plan drafted by an engineer before you begin work, says the AWEA. Fees for permits and plot plans can go anywhere from $400 to $1,600, while public notifications, hearings, and environmental-impact studies may necessitate another few hundred to several thousands dollars.
Hydroelectric power
Large hydropower projects that interrupt the natural flow of a river and damage downstream ecosystems have a bad rep among environmentalists, but small-scale hydroelectric systems (also known as "microhydro") that operate "run of river" have little environmental impact because no large dams or reservoirs are built.
Although arguably the most cost-effective way to generate renewable energy, microhydro requires very specific conditions: at least 2 gallons per minute of flowing water, living on or near an active stream or river, and a decent amount of drop. You'll also need to shelter your water turbine from inclement weather, which means building a small shed or waterproof vault.
Many microhydro systems can generate 75 to 350 kWh per month, according to Scott Davis, author of Microhydro: Clean Power from Water (New Society Publishers, 2003). Unlike solar and wind, microhydro runs 24/7 and therefore requires much less battery storage than the aforementioned technologies. Plus, it can supply 10 to 100 times more power than photovoltaic panels or turbines for the same amount of capital invested, says Energy Alternatives Ltd.
Depending on where it's situated, the average system will cost about a few thousand dollars - $10,000 for really large systems - but installation, permits and piping costs can quickly add up the further the water or electricity needs to travel from the generator to your home, especially if the terrain makes pipelines difficult to install. The break-even period? As little as a couple of years, depending on your energy usage.
Geothermal power
A geothermal heat pump system costs roughly $2,500 per ton of capacity, according to the California Energy Commission, so an average-size home using a 3-ton unit would end up paying $7,500 or so. Of course, you'll also have to include the cost of drilling to your tab; how much exactly depends on how your system will be positioned, whether it'll be wedged vertically deep underground or horizontally a shorter distance below ground. Drilling costs can fall anywhere between $10,000 and $30,000.
While a geothermal system costs more than a conventional oil- or natural-gas-dependent system, the cost of running heat pumps is actually 30 to 40 percent less than a conventional system that runs fossil fuel, meaning you'll be able to save enough on reduced heating and cooling bills to break even in two to 10 years.
Durable and almost maintenance-free because their components are sheltered underground away from the elements, geothermal heat pumps are guaranteed to last 25 to 50 years.
What else you got?
Let's say that you have no savings for a new home energy system or prefer the reliability of the utility company, you still have green options to reduce dependency on non-renewable, highly polluting energy sources such as coal, oil and natural gas.
Many consumers can exercise an option with their power supplier to switch over to electricity generated from renewable sources, either from their utility or through the purchase of renewable energy certificates. (Visit the U.S. Department of Energy's Web site to find out if you can purchase green energy in your state. http://www.eere.energy.gov/greenpower/buying/buying_power.shtml) Rules vary state-by-state.
This option comes at only a small premium, say an extra $10 monthly, but obviously, you're still tethered to the energy grid.
Global financial turmoil must not block creation of low-carbon economy, warns leading economist
Juliette Jowit, guardian.co.uk 7 Oct 08;
Lord Stern of Brentford, author of the government's influential report on climate change, has warned against the "danger" of letting the world economic turmoil block action to build a low-carbon economy.
But he also said the current situation "could be used well" to promote investment in efficiency and clean energy to help the UK and other countries boost their economies.
Speaking to the Guardian ahead of a speech to launch a new climate change economics centre at the London School of Economics, Stern said there were "two kinds of danger" because of the current fears of recession. "One [is] people can only concentrate on a limited number of things at the same time, and the second is people will be sensitive to cost increases, and those will have to be managed carefully," he said. "There's a danger: it needs leadership."
Instead, he argued, the current problems could help boost investment in tackling climate change because they have highlighted the dangers of not tackling global risks early enough, and could create much more international cooperation.
There were also more incentives to invest in energy efficiency during a recession and high oil prices, and spending on renewable and other low-carbon industries could help stimulate the economy, said Stern.
"We're going to have to grow out of this and have to create growth opportunities for long-term sustainable investment, and this is an area which looks as though it could well grow strongly and with the right support could be one of the major engines of growth," he said.
Stern's comments will be echoed today by the government's Technology Strategy Board, which will warn businesses it would be a "terrible mistake" to cut investment in new technology during the downturn.
"We will come out of this downturn and when we do it will be the businesses which held their nerve and continued to invest that will come out of the downturn first [and] emerge stronger and better equipped to face the challenges of the future," Iain Gray, the board's chief executive, will say.
Launching the Grantham Institute and the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, Stern also outlined his global plan for action on greenhouse gas emissions, including a cut of 80%-95% in emissions for developed nations and a "commitment to commit" to cuts by the biggest developing countries like China and India, possibly as soon as 2020.
By 2050, average global emissions needed to be equivalent to 2 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person to try to avoid dangerous climate change, compared to 10-12 tonnes in the biggest economies, 5 tonnes in China and 1.5-2 tonnes in India, said Stern.
"The developing countries average emissions will have to be 2 tonnes by 2050 if the world average is 2 tonnes because they'll have 8 billion of the 9 billion [people]," he said.
But despite the big changes a clean energy revolution would herald, Stern predicted the impacts on people's lives would be less than the information technology revolution, for example: "We'll still move around, we'll heat our homes - homes will be more efficient and close to zero-carbon electricity. But at the same time it will be cleaner, quieter, more biodiverse, all those things. It will actually be much nicer."
Stern's report for the Treasury in 2006 famously described climate change as the world's greatest "market failure". But he dismissed suggestions the current economic crisis would prompt wholesale economic reform: "We're talking about fixing a market failure and achieving growth of a different kind: low carbon growth."
Andrea Thompson, LiveScience.com 6 Oct 08;
The Arctic has become more stormy in the past 50 years due to the warming climate, which in turn has quickened the pace of drifting sea ice, a new NASA study finds.
Based on model results, climate scientists had long predicted that a warming climate would increase the frequency and intensity of Arctic storms as ocean waters became progressively warmer.
Now, a team of climate scientists has analyzed 56 years on data of the paths that storms took, as well as annual data on general storm activity, which confirmed an accelerating trend in Arctic storm activity 1950 to 2006.
They also looked at data on ice drift in the Arctic collected during the same 56-year period and found that the pace of sea ice movement along the Arctic Ocean's Transpolar Drift Stream from Siberia to the Atlantic Ocean also accelerated.
Because wind at the ocean surface is known to be the driving force behind the movement of sea ice, the researchers concluded that the increase in Arctic storminess and the sea ice drift speeds are linked. The finding, detailed in the Oct. 3 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, could reinforce the critical role that changes in the Arctic Ocean play in global ocean circulation and climate change.
"Gradually warming waters have driven storm tracks - the ocean paths in the Atlantic and Pacific along which most cyclones travel - northward. We speculate that sea ice serves as the 'middleman' in a scenario where increased storm activity yields increased stirring winds that will speed up the Arctic's transition into a body of turbulently mixing warm and cool layers with greater potential for deep convection that will alter climate further," said study team member Sirpa Hakkinen of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Progressively stronger storms over the Transpolar Drift Stream forced sea ice to drift increasingly faster in a matter of hours after the onset of storms, Hakkinen and her colleagues found. They saw an increase over 56 years in maximum summer sea ice speeds from about 8 inches per second (20 centimeters per second) to more than 24 inches per second (60 centimeters per second), and wintertime speeds from about 6 inches per second (15 centimeters per second) to about 20 inches per second (50 centimeters per second).
The moving sea ice forces the ocean to move, which then sets off significantly more mixing of the upper layers of the ocean than would occur without the "push" from the ice. The increased mixing of the ocean layer forces increased ocean convection, which could create a counteracting force to climate warming, as it could help the ocean absorb more of the carbon dioxide accumulating in Earth's atmosphere.
"Although it remains to be seen how this may ultimately play out in the future, the likelihood this increasing trend and link between storminess and ice drift could expand the Arctic's role as a sink for extracting fossil fuel-generated carbon dioxide from the air is simply fascinating," Hakkinen said. "If it unfolds in the way we suppose, this scenario could, of course, affect the whole climate system and its evolution."
Robin McKie, The Observer 5 Oct 08;
The Bay of Naples is renowned for its breathtaking beauty and glittering clear waters. For centuries, tourists have flocked to the region to experience its glories.
But beneath the waves, scientists have uncovered an alarming secret. They have found streams of gas bubbling up from the seabed around the island of Ischia. 'The waters are like a Jacuzzi - there is so much carbon dioxide fizzing up from the seabed,' said Dr Jason Hall-Spencer, of Plymouth University. 'Millions of litres of gas bubble up every day.'
The gas streams have turned Ischia's waters into acid, and this has had a major impact on sea life and aquatic plants. Now marine biologists fear that the world's seas could follow suit.
'Every day the oceans absorb more than 25m tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,' said Hall-Spencer. 'If it were not for the oceans, levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would be far higher than they are today and the impact of climate change would be far worse. However, there is a downside: it is called ocean acidification.'
Scientists calculate that the seas are absorbing so much carbon dioxide that they are 30 per cent more acidic than they were at the start of the Industrial Revolution. The change is three times greater and has happened 100 times faster than at any other time during the past 20 million years.
Tomorrow hundreds of scientists will gather in Monaco for the 'Second International Symposium on the Ocean in a High CO2 World'. One focus of debate is likely to be the Plymouth study. The seas off Ischia - which are affected by carbon dioxide from volcanic activity - offer a first-class opportunity to investigate what might happen in the next few decades.
Scientists found that in Ischia's highly acidic water:
• Biodiversity of plants and fish has dropped by 30 per cent
• Algae vital for binding coral reefs have been wiped out
• Invasive 'alien' species, such as sea-grasses, are thriving
• Coral and sea urchins have been destroyed, while mussels and clams are failing to grow shells.
The conference will also tackle the dangers posed to fish larvae, which are sensitive to high levels of acid, as well as the threat to commercial fish stocks.
'Many developing countries have seafood as their prime source of food,' said Dr Carol Turley, of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory. 'If they lose that, the result could be famine.'
Gerard Wynn and Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 7 Oct 08;
LONDON/BARCELONA - The struggle against climate change must not follow world trade talks into limbo as risks mount that the credit crisis will sap commitment to the fight, the UN climate chief said on Monday. Yvo de Boer said he was worried about the impact of the credit crisis on international action to fight climate change, as US and European governments pour cash into keeping commercial banks afloat.
"You can only spend a dollar or a euro once," he said.
"I certainly think it's a worrying development. It's more a matter of the past couple of days than the past couple of weeks," de Boer told Reuters, referring to a call over the weekend by European automakers for money to help them cope with emissions curbs.
"There's growing pressure ... from the point of view of competitiveness," he said.
De Boer said that UN negotiations were still on track but, in the worst case, there were risks of failing to meet an internationally agreed deadline for a new UN climate treaty by the end of 2009 in Copenhagen.
"For me there is no Plan B," he said. "I have the sense that it's a huge and daunting task but we're still on track, there's still commitment to reach an agreement in Copenhagen."
"One alternative would be that we don't manage to meet a deadline in Copenhagen and that we slide into a WTO-like process that goes on without a clearly agreed deadline, or perhaps even worse that you get a highly fragmented approach to climate change," he said.
In climate talks so far rich nations had failed to flesh out their promises to give technology and financing help to poorer countries, China's climate change ambassador Yu Qingtai told Reuters in an interview on Monday.
Yu was pessimistic about the prospect for agreement on a new global climate treaty meant to avert more droughts, floods, extinctions of species and rising sea levels.
That split between rich and poor nations resonates with a collapse in July of the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) Doha round of free trade talks -- partly following a dispute between the United States and emerging economies.
FIGHT AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE
China wants the West to do more to finance the fight against climate change, but financial commitment from the United States and Europe may be diverted by bailouts of the banking sector.
"There's a risk that less public money will be available in the North for cooperation with the South on technology and capacity building," said de Boer. "Taken together there's a risk that short-term concerns will prevail."
"I hope that this doesn't result in people in the South waiting for (climate change) adaption money having to wait for mortgages and credit card debts to be paid off in the North."
In a "Super Tuesday" vote this week, key European Parliament lawmakers will vote on whether to back ambitious, unilateral goals for the European Union to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
While they are expected to back the overall target to cut greenhouse gases, they are under intense lobby pressure to cut the costs of meeting those goals for industry.
Poland said on Monday that it was assembling a minority of member states sufficient to block cost impacts on coal-fired electricity generation from EU energy and climate proposals -- in growing signs final agreement may be delayed.
"I certainly hope the EU manages to finalise its climate and energy package by the end of the year," said de Boer.
Additional reporting by Nina Chestney and Michael Szabo in London
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