October Octopusday: Celebrating Cephalopods
on the wild shores of singapore blog and on the brand new umirakuennotabibito blog a wild offshoot of the ashira blog
New Google layer for marine protected areas
but the location of Labrador is wrong, on the wild shores of singapore blog
Pink-necked Green Pigeon eating seeds of yellow simpoh
from Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Save your favorite seafood, FishVote08
on blogfish
Emmanuelle Landais, Gulf news 9 Oct 08;
Dubai: Laws surrounding the legality of the captured whale shark are unclear as different authorities are shifting responsibility to each other.
Environmentalists however are unanimous on the subject - the juvenile female animal placed in the aquarium at Atlantis on The Palm Jumeirah one month ago should be released.
The Environment Agency of Abu Dhabi referred Gulf News' enquiries to the Convention on International Trade for Endangered Species (CITES), whilst the Ministry of Environment and Water said such permits should be granted by the Dubai Municipality.
"We are investigating the situation, the facts are not clear," said Mohammad Abdul Rahman Hassan, head of the marine environment and sanctuaries unit at Dubai Municipality.
Atlantis hotel has still not commented.
An environmental adviser from the Ministry of Environment and Water, Sa'ad Al Numairy, speaking at a sustainable development conference on Wednesday, highlighted the role of the Ministry citing federal law 23 of the year 1999 to protect the exploitation of marine species, however declined to comment regarding Sammy the whale shark.
According to CITES, permission is needed to keep animals such as whale sharks.
The Emirates Wildlife Society (EWS-WWF) issued a statement to Gulf News saying the whale shark should be released back into the wild as quickly as possible.
Question of feeding
"Placing a whale shark in an unnatural environment where it is unable to feed in its normal patterns and has a limited area in which to move can have deadly consequences as has been the case with whale sharks in captivity in other countries," the statement reads.
"According to the Atlantis, the whale shark is there for medical care and observation and will be released. EWS-WWF recommends that the management of Atlantis consider their rationale for keeping the creature longer than necessary, and release it back into its natural habitat without delay ... national regulations, however, are encouraged until international co-operation is in place."
Rita Bento, a marine biologist from the Emirates Diving Association, expressed concern at how the whale shark, which is a filter feeder that eats minuscule zooplankton, is being fed in the hotel aquarium.
"The fact it is also a female is quite a worry," said Bento. "Keeping a female in captivity is reducing the chances of her procreating and increasing the population. So little is known about these animals that a fully-fledged research centre would be more beneficial," she added.
Saif Al Ghais, Director of the Environmental Protection and Development Authority, said the whale shark should be released before it is found dead in the aquarium. "They swim long distances and are migratory fish. Keeping it the tank is going to be quite tricky, they do not do well in captivity," he told Gulf News.
Protection of threatened species
The whale shark (Rhincodon typus) is on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) red list of threatened species, listed as vulnerable.
This does in fact indicate that the whale shark is a threatened species said Emirates Wildlife Society, EWS-WWF:
"Whale sharks may live up to 100 years in the wild and are highly migratory, traversing thousands of kilometres to different feeding grounds, encompassing the waters of several countries. This makes regulation at the national level limited in its conservation impact, emphasising the need for international co-operation in the protection and sustainable management of this species."
Cruel beyond belief, readers say
Sanya Nayeem and Mohammad Jihad, Gulf news 9 Oct 08;
Dubai: When it stumbled into the shallow waters off Atlantis hotel, little did "Sammy the Shark" know that trespassing would land it into a glass-walled cage. But is it time for amnesty?
Gulf News readers think so. They demand so. Each of them who spoke to the newspaper said the same thing: "Free Sammy!"
Residents around the UAE are pressurising Atlantis hotel to release the whale shark from the aquarium in which it was placed recently.
Originally held back for medical care and observation, Sammy is now undergoing 24-hour monitoring by the hotel authorities, to gather data on swim patterns, feeding and behaviour.
However, such news did not go down well with most Gulf News readers.
Michele Al Khatib, an active diver and Sharjah resident, said in her Web post on www.gulfnews.com that the hotel's objectives seemed contradictory.
She said: "The whale shark is being kept in an artificial tank, so what data could be gathered on swim patterns and feeding behaviour?"
Phil, a Dubai resident, wrote in with a similar reservation. He said the behaviour of "such gentle creatures" could not be ascertained "if they are not monitored in their natural habitat".
Cathy Pickering, a Gulf News reader said: "To keep such a giant creature in a tank is cruel beyond belief."
According to Pickering, no amount of ready food supply or medical care can replace "the open waters of its natural habitat".
The fact that the whale shark is listed under "vulnerable" species by the World Conservation Union, adds to the urgent need for Sammy to be returned to the ocean.
For Gulf News reader Adel Khatib, the co-owner of Arabian Diver, a scuba diving and sailing excursions organisation based in Ras Al Khaimah, the issue was clear-cut.
He said: "Unlike domestic pets, whale sharks cannot be conditioned to remain in such an artificial environment." As a regular diver, he added he was against keeping marine animals in captivity for longer than necessary.
With petitions springing up on social networking Web sites such as Facebook, residents around the UAE are joining the protest against the continued captivity of Sammy the Shark.
Chindhu Ravindran, an Indian expatriate, said he would join such petitions if it would help ensure the freedom of innocent animals.
Growing awareness
Two community groups have been formed on the social networking website Facebook to support the release of "Sammy the Shark", who was captured in UAE waters and placed in the Atlantis hotel aquarium, initially, for medical care.
The two groups are "Free the Palm Atlantis Whale Shark!" and "Set the Whale Shark free from the Atlantis aquarium Dubai".
Together, they comprise more than 600 members, with new voices from within the UAE and the international community adding their support by the hour. The groups are hosting forums to find solutions to free the four-metre-long juvenile whale shark.
"We need to have this magnificent baby female whale shark released so that it could live and breed in its natural habitat," one of the group members said. A petition is also being planned by the groups to create awareness among people across the UAE.
Starbucks, Spinelli plan to continue system till alternative is found
Amelia Tan, Straits Times 9 Oct 08;
OFFICERS from the national water agency PUB yesterday inspected several outlets of two coffee chains - Starbucks and Spinelli - that use a controversial system of using continuously running water to clean utensils.
Officers asked staff about the cleaning technique, which came under fire from environmentalists around the world earlier this week for wasting water. Starbucks, in particular, was heavily criticised for employing it, despite projecting itself as a green company.
During yesterday's visits, at least one Spinelli outlet was warned by PUB officers that it risked being fined if staff kept using the system.
When contacted, Starbucks Singapore marketing manager Ruth Yam said a PUB officer informed her of the checks at the stores and asked why the basin well system was used. She said the officer did not mention that the stores could be fined in their phone conversation. The PUB also declined to comment on the inspections.
The checks came on the same day The Straits Times reported that Starbucks and Spinelli used a so-called dipper well. The set-up sees utensils bathed in a constant supply of fresh water.
According to one estimate, reported in the British newspaper The Sun, the practice wastes over 23 million litres of water daily at Starbucks locations worldwide.
Starbucks has 57 stores in Singapore and Spinelli has 28. The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, which has 45 stores in Singapore and 692 stores worldwide, confirmed yesterday that it also uses the dipper well.
Both Starbucks and Spinelli said they will continue to use the system until they can find an alternative, adding that it is the most hygienic way to clean off milk residue.
'We choose to use basin wells because there is a constant supply of fresh water,' said Spinelli chief operating officer Freddy Ong.
'How would customers feel if they see utensils soaked in milky water in our stores?'
Under the Public Utilities Act, a person can be fined up to $50,000 and jailed up to three years for wasting water. The law, however, does not specify the definition of 'waste'. For second offences and beyond, fines can hit $1,000 per day.
Ms Yam said the company has tried other ways of cleaning utensils - including sticking them in ice-filled containers - but the trials proved unsuccessful.
But Australian coffee chain Gloria Jean's uses ice baths to clean utensils in its nearly 900 stores worldwide, including seven in Singapore. The cold of the ice prevents bacteria from breeding.
Gloria Jean's Singapore managing director James Donald said the company's lone outlet using a dipping well shelved the system this month because it uses too much water.
'The dipping well system does save some time...but it uses too much water,' he said.
Straits Times 9 Oct 08;
Ice baths
An ice bath is a one-litre stainless steel container filled with ice and water, in which utensils are soaked. The cold water prevents bacteria from breeding.
The contents of the ice bath are changed every half-hour.
The advantage of an ice bath is that it uses less water than a dipper well.
In the 14 hours that a coffee outlet is open, it would use 28 litres of water for its ice bath.
Its disadvantage is that the milk residue from utensils does not dissolve as easily because the water is already chalky from utensils soaking there from earlier.
Dipper wells
A dipper well is a basin into which clean tap water flows constantly to provide a fresh supply of water for soaking utensils. The run-off goes down the drain.
The advantage is that the water in the basin is always fresh. Milk residue dissolves more easily in clear water.
The downside of dipper wells is that a litre of water is used every three minutes.
In the hours that the outlet is open, that would work out to 280 litres of water every day.
Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 9 Oct 08;
BARCELONA, Spain - The world's burgeoning cities must do more to safeguard animals and plants by increasing parkland, planting trees and recycling resources, the UN's top biodiversity official said on Wednesday.
"The battle for life on earth will be won or lost in cities," Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, told Reuters.
Cities cover just two percent of the planet's land area but dictate 75 percent of the use of the world's natural resources, he said. City dwellers have an impact far into the countryside, with rising demand for water and food.
"This growth of cities is not in developed countries, but in developing countries where there is still biodiversity. We want to make sure that this growth is not at the expense of biodiversity," he said.
"Cities are not incompatible with the environment," he added during an Oct. 5-14 International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) congress in Barcelona. The IUCN said this week that a quarter of the world's mammals are at risk of extinction.
Djoghlaf urged more cities to join a 2007 plan launched in Brazil when 34 mayors agreed to protect biodiversity, for instance by setting aside more land in parks, planting trees, shifting to renewable fuels and improving recycling.
MUNICH BIRDS
That would make them better places, both for people and wildlife. A reforestation drive in the Japanese city of Nagoya, for instance, helped cut peak daytime temperatures by up to 4 degrees Celsius (7 Fahrenheit).
UN statistics show that half the world's population now lives in urban areas and the proportion is likely to rise to two-thirds by 2050. Djoghlaf said 150 new cities would reach the size of New York by mid-century.
Many creatures and plants can paradoxically thrive in cities.
"We often tend to believe that cities are just stones," he said. But he said Germany's Munich "has more birds than other parts of the countryside -- intensive use of agriculture means biodiversity is finding refuge in cities."
Wild boars were living in some urban areas in France while foxes thrive in London.
"The idea is to engage people," he said. "The battle for life on earth will not be won only by bureaucrats...We are over-consuming, the footprint is exceeding the capacity of the planet." (Editing by Ralph Boulton)
Yahoo News 9 Oct 08;
Hundreds of new marine species and previously uncharted undersea mountains and canyons have been discovered in the depths of the Southern Ocean, Australian scientists said Wednesday.
A total of 274 species of fish, ancient corals, molluscs, crustaceans and sponges new to science were found in icy waters up to 3,000 metres (9,800 feet) deep among extinct volcanoes, they said.
The scientists mapped undersea mountains up to 500 metres high and canyons larger than the Grand Canyon for the first time, the government's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) said.
The finds were made in marine reserves 100 nautical miles south of the Australian island of Tasmania during two CSIRO voyages in November 2006 and April 2007 using new sonar and video technology as well as seafloor sampling.
Announcing the discoveries in the Tasmanian capital Hobart, CSIRO scientist Kate Wilson said more was known about the surface of Mars than the depths of the world's oceans.
"In Australian waters, for example, more than 40 percent of the creatures brought to the surface by our scientists on a voyage of discovery have never been seen before," she said.
A total of 123 underwater mountains were found, said CSIRO specialist Nic Bax, noting they were home to thousands of deep-sea animals.
"They're really what we call the rainforests of the deep, they provide an area where we get a very wide range of species collected and that's really unique in the deep sea environment," he said.
In the cold depths of the Southern Ocean "things grow quite slowly so when you're looking at a coral which is maybe two metres high, it may also be 300 years old or more," said Bax.
"So you end up seeing some very old things down there. You can see corals which probably existed 2,000 years ago down there."
Scientists said that only a tiny proportion of Australia's oceans had been explored in such a way and they could only speculate on the biodiversity hidden under the water.
"We have no idea how many species there are, and most of the species we get we only catch once," Bax said.
Environment Minister Peter Garrett described the results as "an amazing day for Australian science".
"It's extraordinary to think that we've put someone on the moon and we're very familiar with lots of parts of the planet, we've got Google Earth and yet here we are, we've got parts of the planet that have never been sighted or explored before," he told national radio.
The minister said the research would help the effort to conserve Australia's ocean biodiversity.
"It'll greatly inform scientists as they deepen their understanding about likely climate change impacts, water currents, and impacts of water temperature on the diversity of species," Garrett said.
New life revealed in rainforests of the deep
Sophie Tedmanson in Sydney and Julia Belluz, Times Online 9 Oct 08;
A rare species of stingray, a 2,000-year-old coral and extinct underwater volcanoes are among hundreds of discoveries found under the ocean by a scientific expedition off the coast of Australia.
Marine experts say that the discoveries shine a new light on what they say are some of the most biologically important oceanic habitats in the world.
In the icy waters of a Southern Ocean marine park, 100 nautical miles off the coast of Tasmania, scientists found more than 270 new marine species — including fish, crustaceans, molluscs, sponges and corals — and 80 previously unknown seamounts or underwater mountains.
The undersea mountains, which measured half a mile high and 15 miles (25km) wide, form “rainforests of the deep”. For the first time scientists also laid eyes upon underwater canyons larger than the Grand Canyon in Arizona.
The £600,000 scientific expedition was led by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the national science agency.
Announcing the discoveries in the Tasmanian capital, Hobart, the CSIRO scientist Kate Wilson said that the oceans remain a mystery — more is known about the surface of Mars.
“In Australian waters, for example, more than 40 per cent of the creatures brought to the surface by our scientists on a voyage of discovery have never been seen before,” she said.
Scientists said that only a tiny proportion of Australia’s oceans had been explored in such a way and that they could only speculate on the biodiversity hidden under the water.
The discoveries were made during two voyages in November 2006 and April 2007. The expedition focused on reserves in the Southeast Commonwealth Marine Reserve Network, which covers 226,000 sq km (87,300 sq miles) of the Southern Ocean.
Scientists used special sonar equipment and video technology on board the vessels to create a map of the seabed and detected the 80 previously unknown underwater mountains and 145 new undersea canyons.
Nic Bax, the CSIRO marine resource management expert,said that some of the oldest discoveries included 2,000-year-old living black coral, bamboo coral more than 300 years old, and fish about 200 years old. Carbon dating was used to determine the age of the deep-sea treasures. In total 123 underwater mountains were also revealed.
Of the discoveries about 70 per cent had never been seen by humans before. “We have no idea how many species there are, and most of the species we get we only catch once,” Dr Bax said. “So who knows how many more are down there,” he added.
In the cold depths of the Southern Ocean “things grow quite slowly so when you’re looking at a coral which is maybe two metres high, it may also be 300 years old or more,” said Dr Bax. “These findings indicate how little we know about marine species around Australia and the deep sea.”
A live stingray, from a species of which only one dead specimen had ever been found in Australian waters, was also captured, and a glass sponge, so delicate that it could not be brought to the surface without breaking it.
More links
Natural healing
Conservation is as much about protecting people's lives as plant diversity, according to a new global strategy at Kew Gardens
Juliette Jowit, The Guardian 8 Oct 08;
With one in five people in South Africa living with HIV and Aids, and most of them poor, by custom and necessity many have turned to traditional medicines, putting intolerable strain on the once bountiful supply of plants. These include the cancer bush, the daisy-like wild cineraria, and the sore eye flower, whose monstrous black bulbs were once used by bushmen to poison their arrows but are also used to stop bleeding and to heal wounds.
The looming loss of plantlife has led to a partnership between traditional healers in urban townships around Grahamstown and the genteel calm of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, west London. The result is Africulture, a pilot project to encourage healers to cultivate the 30 most important plants they use, rather than harvest them in the wild. And so far it's working, says Stephen Hopper, Kew's director. "It alleviates the pressure on the wild services and gives people a way to help themselves."
The scheme embodies the priorities of a new 10-year strategy, the Breathing Planet programme, just published by the world-famous botanical gardens: protection and restoration of habitats, a stronger focus than ever on the threat of climate change, and a clearer emphasis on the fact that ultimately their work is to protect people who are dependent on the plants.
This is less a radical new direction, more a natural evolution of Kew's founding principles in 1759, says Hopper. "Now we're less focused on bringing in the world's plants to Kew and developing economic advantage from that, [and more on] forming partnerships with people throughout the world and working collaboratively with them on the science of plants."
Hopper, a plant biologist from Western Australia, who has "described" for science more than 300 species, has that vaguely teasing knack some scientists have of outlining profoundly exciting ideas with the calm of somebody checking catalogue references. He says: " If you look at your meals today, there's a strong possibility that half of what you consumed was plants. If you look at the medicines, there's a reasonable prospect one-third or up to half are derived from plants.
"The fact that we have got not only clean air to breathe but productive soil and clean water to drink we owe to the services plants provide," he adds.
The questions are: "Will one plant do? Do we need the diversity?" continues Hopper rhetorically. Different species are adapted to different habitats; humans cannot know what species will be important in future.
The twin themes of people and environmental threats are introduced from the very first words of Kew's Breathing Planet programme: "People everywhere strive to improve their quality of life. But we are all living on borrowed time, putting far too much pressure on the natural resources on which we depend." The destruction of forests which absorb carbon dioxide and provide food and oxygen to support living creatures and moderate the climate is now one of the world's biggest environmental disasters, it continues.
Faced with such an entrenched, amorphous global problem it's hard to see how Kew can help, but Hopper insists it can contribute to both mitigating the problem by reducing the build-up of greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to change.
The first three sections of the Breathing Planet programme are about mitigation. Nearly one-fifth of the build-up of CO² emissions comes from deforestation, so the starting point is supporting conservation programmes. Recent successes included Madagascar, where the government committed to trebling protected national parks, and Cameroon, where scientists realised what was thought to be insignificant rainforest is the richest for plantlife in Africa, prompting the government to pledge new nature parks there .
The second part of the strategy is about adaptation: starting with an ambitious pledge to extend the work of the Millennium Seed Bank to collect examples of one in four of the 220,000-430,000 plant species in the world by 2020. There is also more emphasis on growing "locally appropriate species" whether that's reintroducing traditional crops or the Africulture scheme, run jointly with local organisations Garden Africa and Umthathi.
For the final strand of the strategy Kew had an envious look at its more gregarious cousin, the Eden Project in Cornwall, and wants to become visitor friendly for its 1.5m annual guests, recruiting an "army" of several hundred volunteer guides.
"It's difficult for a lay person to break through all the science jargon and understand the excitement and interesting connections and uses, and the fundamental role plants play in our lives, so there has to be an interpretation of the science ... in an engaging way."
Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 8 Oct 08;
More than one in three birds, half of amphibians and almost three-quarters of reef-building corals are at risk from climate change, a new study has revealed.
They display some of the biological traits that make them susceptible to climate change, according to the first results of a study by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
The study reveals:
* 3,438 of the world's 9,856 bird species have at least one out of 11 traits that could make them susceptible to climate change.
* 3,217 of the 6,222 amphibians in the world are likely to be susceptible.
* 566 of 799 warm-water reef-building coral species are likely to be susceptible.
Species which rely on specific habitats, such as polar regions or tropical forest, those that are vulnerable to changes in temperature, and those which rely on climate triggers such as rainfall to breed or migrate, will be most at risk.
Predators which rely on other species for food and those unable to move on to new habitats when their own becomes unsuitable will also be most affected.
Among birds Albatross, penguin, petrel and shearwater are all likely to be susceptible while heron and egret families, and osprey, kite, hawk and eagle families are among those least likely to be affected.
In amphibians three salamander families could be particularly susceptible, while 80-100 per cent of Seychelles frogs and Indian Burrowing Frogs, Australian ground frogs, horned toads and glass frog families were assessed as susceptible.
Specialised habitat requirements, such as species with water-dependant larvae, and those unable to disperse due to barriers such as large water bodies or human-transformed habitats are most at risk.
Among corals the Acroporidae family, including staghorn corals, had particularly high numbers of susceptible species, while the Fungiidae family, including mushroom corals, and the Mussidae family, including some brain corals, possess relatively few.
Coral species qualified due to their sensitivity to increases in temperature, sedimentation and physical damage from storms and cyclones. Poor dispersal ability and colonisation potential were used as a further important indicators.
In all the IUCN study identified more than 90 biological traits which puts species at risk.
Wendy Foden, of IUCN's Species Programme, said: "This is the first time that a systematic assessments of species' susceptibility to climate change has been attempted.
"Climate change is already happening, but conservation decision makers currently have very little guidance on which species are going to be the worst affected."
According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, 32 per cent of amphibians are threatened with extinction. Of these, 75 per cent are susceptible to climate change while 41 per cent of non-threatened species are susceptible to climate change.
For birds, the overall percentage of those threatened with extinction is lower - 12 per cent. However, 80 per cent are susceptible to climate change.
Jean-Christophe Vie, deputy head of the IUCN Species Programme, said: "Climate change may cause a sharp rise in the risk and rate of extinction of currently threatened species.
"But we also want to highlight species which are currently not threatened but are more likely to become so as climate change impacts intensify. By doing this we hope to promote pre-emptive and more effective conservation action."
Richard Black, BBC News website 8 Oct 08;
The world's fishing fleets are losing billions of dollars each year through depleted stocks and poor management, according to a UN report.
The World Bank and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) calculate the losses at $50bn per year.
Half the world's fishing fleet could be scrapped with no change in catch.
The report was launched at World Bank headquarters in New York and has been debated here at the World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
Entitled The Sunken Billions: Economic Justification for Fisheries Reform, it argues that reforming the way fisheries are managed could restore stocks and build profits.
"There are two reasons why we are experiencing the huge loss," said Rolf Willman, a senior fisheries planning officer at FAO and one of the report's authors.
"One is that global fish stocks are much lower than they could be, so it is harder to catch the amount of fish that we could.
"If stocks were higher we could catch the same amount at lower cost.
"The second reason is that where fishing is poorly regulated, we have much greater harvesting capacity than we need," he told BBC News.
In fact, he said, the world's fleets could catch the same amount of fish with half the capacity, which would increase profits as well as putting less pressure on fragile stocks.
The UN agency puts the current value of the global fisheries industry at about $80bn per year.
Net loss
Nearly one-third of the world's fisheries are severely depleted, and there have been several high-profile examples of complete collapse, such as the Grand Banks cod stocks off Canada's eastern coast.
A recent study estimated that if current trends continued, there would be no commercially viable marine fisheries left within half a century.
All this may be bad news for fish, but it is also bad news for fishermen, says the report.
Fleets are spending ever more effort, but catches are not rising - they have been roughly stable at about 80 million tonnes annually for a decade.
And it is not becoming any more profitable. There is less to catch, the fish available are generally of lower economic value, and costs are rising.
Other academics have pointed the finger at subsidies that they say drive the irrational expansion of fleets.
A 2006 study put the extent of subsidies globally at about $30bn.
The new report identifies some countries where good management is conserving stocks and leading to a profitable industry, including Iceland, New Zealand and parts of Australia and the US - but even here, improvements could be made, it concludes.
The challenge now, it says, is to spread reforms into other fisheries where overcapacity is fast depleting stocks.
"Sustainable fisheries require political will to replace incentives for overfishing with incentives for responsible stewardship," said Kieran Kelleher, the World Bank's fisheries team leader.
"It is not just about boats and fish. This report provides decision-makers with the economic arguments for the reforms needed."
Marlowe Hood, Yahoo News 8 Oct 08;
Indigenous leaders in five Amazonian nations, Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia on Wednesday demanded a larger say on how best to manage tropical forests to fight climate change.
More than a billion poor people who depend on forest ecosystems risk economic and cultural devastation if efforts favored by rich nations to reduce greenhouse gases fail to respect their rights and needs, they said at the World Conservation Congress in Barcelona.
The clearing of rainforests by developers for mining, slash-and-burn agriculture, cash crops and livestock have all severely reduced the ability of tropical forests to absorb the atmospheric carbon dioxide that drives global warming.
Many governments, scientists and green groups favour an international carbon trading scheme that would compensate developing countries for curbing their exploitation of their forests.
"Conservationists want to prevent us from using our forest lands for economic purposes, and businesses have government concessions to extract ore, water and biofuel from lands that have been ours for generations," said Tony James of Guyana, president of the Amerindian Peoples Association.
"We have been hearing more and more about the carbon trade, but indigenous people are not being included in the discussions. We want to know: who will own the carbon, and what will be the impact on us?"
Native groups should play a key role in crafting any financing scheme for forests that might be included in a broader UN climate change agreement on how to curb greenhouse gases, James said.
Without their input, he added, this so-called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation mechanism, or REDD, would undermine the land rights of forest communities throughout the tropical world.
"We need to solve the topic of property and the issue of autonomy," said Jorge Furagaro of the Witoto people in Colombia. Local leaders in so-called protected areas "have no real authority to negotiate, so too often we lose out."
During the Barcelona congress, members of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), composed of more than 200 governments and 800 NGOs, will vote on whether to recommend that forest communities be granted a decisive role in negotiations.
But previous attempts to pass such non-binding declarations have failed, noted Marcus Colchester, director of the Forest People's Programme, based in Britain.
"As land pressures mount and new rules are developed for mitigating climate change, recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples to 'free, prior and informed consent' is essential," he said.
"But we see more rhetoric than we see real defence of the territories and rights," he added, pointing out that these principles are set forth in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Forest leaders at the congress detailed ways in which their communities were buffeted by both conservation and development forces.
Even as flooding caused by mining is destroying crops and disrupting fishing in Guyana, government agencies continue to expand mining licences in forest areas, they claimed.
Efforts by conservationists to stake out forest areas for parks and preserves in Colombia and Bolivia have restricted how indigenous people use their own land, they say.
And in Indonesia, the Dayak peoples of West Kalimantan are seeking to curb widespread logging and the expansion of palm oil plantations.
"We are the ones best placed to protect the world's most vulnerable tropical forests," said Juan Carlos Juntiach, a Shuar leader from Ecuador and leader of the Amazon Alliance.
"But this will not happen by following the old path of negotiations between governments and conservation agencies."
The IUCN meeting brings together more than 8,000 ministers, UN officials, NGOs, scientists and business chiefs to brainstorm for 10 days on how to brake species loss and steer the world onto a path of sustainable development. It runs until October 14.
Consensus takes form on forests and climate change
Marlowe Hood, Yahoo News 8 Oct 08;
An elusive consensus on the best way to reduce forest carbon emissions took shape Wednesday with the release of a joint statement by forestry companies, green organisations and indigenous peoples.
All these groups have clashed in the past, sometimes violently, on how to exploit the resources of tropical forests, which provide a livelihood for more than a billion of the world's poorest people -- or whether to exploit them at all.
The Forest Dialogue Initiative on Forests and Climate Change is the first initiative to produce a common platform endorsed by all the actors with a stake in rainforests in Amazonia, central Africa, and Asia, especially Indonesia.
It was unveiled at the World Conservation Congress in Barcelona.
"Forest leaders, business representatives, donors, and community groups not only agreed on the pivotal role that forests can play in mitigating climate change, but also mapped out a consensus action plant on concrete steps," said Steward Maginnis of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which organised Congress.
The six key points elaborated in the initiative leave room for disagreement.
But those behind it say they want it to serve as a guideline for United Nations climate change negotiations on a global agreement, slated for completion by December 2009.
"One of our hopes is that by giving more unified message we can encourage governments to go further than they might have in dealing with the link between climate change and forests," said Maginnis.
One point of consensus was that protecting the carbon storing capacity of forests "must be one of the world's highest priorities."
The clearing or destruction of rainforests for mining, slash-and-burn agriculture, cash crops and livestock has severely reduced their ability to absorb the atmospheric carbon dioxide that drives global warming.
Nearly 20 percent of atmospheric CO2 is absorbed by forests in a carbon cycle that helps keep the planet cool.
At any given time, the world's vegetation -- especially in the tropics -- houses five times the amount of carbon in the air.
Among the large forestry companies that endorsed the statement were Weyerhaeuser in the United States and Aracruz Celulose in Brazil, said Gary Dunning, Executive Director of The Forest Dialogue, based at Yale University in Connecticut.
Another key point addresses, if only obliquely, the role of governments in managing forest ecosystems and the rights of indigenous people.
"For forests to fully achieve their potential to address climate change their governance must be improved and processes established to empower disenfranchised people," it reads.
Warren Evans, head of the World Bank's environment department, endorsed the effort, but said that tackling corruption was the key. "We need to address the drivers of deforestation," he said.
The IUCN meeting brings together more than 8,000 ministers, UN officials, NGOs, scientists and business chiefs to brainstorm for 10 days on how to brake species loss and steer the world onto a path of sustainable development. It runs until October 14.
Forest CO2 Storage Plans Should Aid Poor - Alliance
Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 9 Oct 08;
BARCELONA, Spain - Forest protection can help fight climate change but any UN-led projects must also ease poverty and safeguard rights of indigenous peoples, an international alliance said on Wednesday.
The group, spanning 250 representatives of business, trade unions, forestry companies, governments and local and indigenous peoples, laid down guidelines for an international drive to tap forests to help soak up heat-trapping carbon dioxide.
Deforestation, with trees burnt to clear land for farming from the Amazon to the Congo, accounts for 20 percent of world emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. Trees store carbon dioxide as they grow and release it when they die.
"Forests have a unique ability to simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions, capture carbon and lessen the vulnerability of people and ecosystems to climate change," the declaration by the Forest Dialogue alliance said.
They said projects should aim to curb poverty, strengthen land rights, safeguard indigenous peoples, improve forest management and should not be a substitute for deep cuts in industrial emissions of greenhouse gases by rich nations.
"This is a step forward for us," Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, head of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, told Reuters.
Many indigenous peoples from Brazil to Indonesia fear forests will be bought up by rich investors and deprive them of access to forests for food, clothing or building materials.
Under UN plans as part of a new climate treaty to avert everything from heatwaves to rising seas, tropical nations could get tradeable credits for slowing the rate of deforestation or restoring forest land.
Such a scheme might generate billions of dollars in credits a year and soak up huge amounts of greenhouse gases.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), hosting an Oct. 5-14 congress in Barcelona, said the declaration was an attempt to guide 190 nations who are due to agree a new long-term climate treaty by the end of 2009.
"We now ask the world to work with us in putting these guiding principles into action," Stewart Maginnis, head of the IUCN's Forest Conservation Programme, told a news conference.
Warren Evans of the World Bank's environment department, involved in the alliance, said protection could help improve livelihoods of people in developing nations and protect animals and plants. He said the principles laid down by the alliance were "already making a difference" to the World Bank's planning.
Backers said the global financial crisis, sapping donor nations' budgets, should not distract from the plans. By some estimates, destruction of the natural world represents losses of a staggering US$2-$5 trillion a year, Maginnis said.
"A few billion dollars is a very good buy. The costs are marginal compared to the benefits," he said. (Editing by Janet Lawrence)
PlanetArk 9 Oct 08;
JAKARTA - Indonesia must do more to save pristine rainforests in Papua from destruction, particularly with plans to open up huge tracts of land to develop palm oil plantations, environmentalists said on Wednesday.
The rapidly expanding palm oil industry in Southeast Asia has come under attack by green groups for destroying rainforests and wildlife, as well the emission of greenhouse gases.
"Although the deforestation rate in Papua is still low, the threat is very high, for instance, with palm oil plantation expansion," Bustar Maitar of Greenpeace said.
He was speaking by telephone from aboard a ship the group is using to tour Indonesia's easternmost province to raise awareness on forests and climate change.
Indonesia's administration in Papua has said it is opening up to 15 million acres (6 million hectares) of land for palm oil, despite earlier pledges to save Indonesia's last forest frontier by tapping carbon trading projects.
Alex Hesegem, Papua's deputy governor, said at least 93,000 hectares of land had been opened for palm oil plantations, but that was being done following environmental principles and government regulations.
"Some regencies have signed a contract with the government and private companies for this palm oil plantation and some more will sign a contract in the near future," Hesegem told Reuters.
Activists said they suspected some companies aimed to use the licences for logging.
"In my estimation, the maximum they can open is 200-300 thousand hectares because the contour of the area is mountainous," said Jefri Saragih of Sawit Watch, a pressure group that monitors the impact of palm oil on forests.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in a report that Indonesia was suffering the fastest forest loss in the world at almost 1.9 million hectares per year. Indonesia, the world's biggest palm oil producer, produced 17.18 million tonnes of crude palm oil in 2007, and production is expected to rise to 18.6 million tonnes this year. (Reporting by Olivia Rondonuwu and John Pakage, editing by Ed Davies and Jerry Norton)
PlanetArk 9 Oct 08;
JAKARTA - Indonesia may consume 1 million to 1.2 million tonnes of biodiesel using palm oil as feed stock in 2009, following the introduction of a mandatory biofuel policy, a government official said on Wednesday.
The resource-rich nation has been pushing for the use of biofuels to cut the use of costly petroleum products and to help ensure the survival of its fledgling biodiesel industry.
Last month, the government issued a ministerial decree that makes the use of biofuel mandatory from 2009.
"That will need crude palm oil supply of about 1.2 to 1.5 million tonnes," Bayu Krisnamurthi, deputy to the chief economic minister, told reporters. He said biodiesel use in 2010 may double the amount consumed in 2009 due to the increase in the mandatory blend.
Krisnamurthi also said the biodiesel use may reduce the portion of the country's palm oil production destined for export, starting from next year.
Indonesia's combined capacity for biofuel using palm oil as a feedstock is 2 million kilolitres per year, but it is running at 20 percent of capacity, data from the national biofuel development team shows.
For biodiesel, the decree states the transport sector must use a blend of 1 percent palm-based biodiesel and 99 percent diesel oil, while industry and power plants must use a blend of 2.5 percent and 0.25 percent palm-based biodiesel respectively.
By 2010, the palm biodiesel content will be increased to between 2.5 percent and 3 percent for transportation, 5 percent for industry, and 1 percent for power plants.
For bioethanol, the use of a 1-5 percent blend of bioethanol and 99-95 percent of gasoline for transportation will become mandatory in 2009.
Industry will have to use a 5 percent blend of bioethanol -- which is made from cane molasses and cassava feedstock -- and 95 percent gasoline next year, increasing to 7 percent by 2010.
With the introduction of the mandatory policy, biodiesel capacity would rise to 5 million kilolitres a year by 2010, the government said recently, although it could also push up the price of palm oil.
Palm oil futures have tumbled around 40 percent since the start of the year, and have fallen more than half since hitting a record high of 4,486 ringgit a tonne in March.
Indonesia produced 17.18 million tonnes of crude palm oil in 2007, of which 3.8 million tonnes was used in the domestic market, mostly for food. Production this year is expected to rise to 18.6 million tonnes.
The grain and oilseed-based biofuel sector has come under attack from green groups for accelerating the destruction of forests, while some analysts blame it for contributing to soaring world food prices by diverting crops that could be used for food, but biofuel industry officials deny this. (Reporting by Yayat Supriatna; Writing by Aloysius Bhui; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
Michael Schirber, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 8 Oct 08;
Editor's Note: Each Wednesday LiveScience examines the viability of emerging energy technologies - the power of the future.
Fossil fuels don't all come from fossils. Scientists now are developing gasoline that is synthesized from plants that are not so old.
This so-called green gasoline is chemically derived from sugars in corn and other grains or from cellulose found in the tough, woody parts of plants. Unlike the most common biofuel, ethanol, this new fuel requires no tweaks to a car's engine.
"It is virtually the same as gasoline from crude oil," said John Regalbuto, director of the Catalysis and Biocatalysis Program at the National Science Foundation (NSF). "It is a drop-in replacement for what you get at the pump."
The NSF has funded several projects to develop green gasoline. One of these converts sugar into gasoline, diesel or jet fuel and is being commercialized by Virent Energy Systems in collaboration with the oil company Shell.
A slightly different process discovered by researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst can brew up gasoline components from wood chips and other plant refuse.
All this new work involves chemical agents called catalysts, which reformulate plant sugars into the energy-packed molecules (called hydrocarbons) that fuel our cars, trains and planes.
Catalytic conversions
The catalysts are tiny metal particles usually embedded in a porous material. Chemical reactions occur on the metal surfaces at a much faster rate than they would in a liquid.
Creating gasoline with catalysts is not new. Before World War II, the Germans developed a method to chemically derive synthetic fuel (or synfuel) from coal. The same process was resurrected when the oil crisis hit America in the 1970s, but the synfuel market collapsed when crude oil became cheap again in the 1980s.
"No one had the foresight to keep up research and development in these catalytic processes," Regalbuto told LiveScience.
When oil prices started to climb in recent years, many researchers instead looked to ethanol.
"People have made ethanol for millennia, so that was the first wave of ideas," Regalbuto said.
Ethanol is fermented from plants in a process that uses enzymes to drive the reactions, not catalysts. The advantage of enzymes is that they are very selective: they will target one type of molecule. Catalysts are more generic, so chemists have to be careful that unwanted reactions are not occurring on the catalyst surface.
However, catalysts can work at high temperatures that would typically destroy enzymes. This allows the reactions to run much faster - more than a million times what they would at room temperature. Catalysts can also be used over and over, unlike enzymes.
Paradigm shift
Regalbuto thinks it's time for a paradigm shift in the biofuel market from "ethanol with enzymes" to "hydrocarbons with catalysts."
The main reason is that hydrocarbon fuels, such as gasoline, diesel and propane, pack a lot of energy. Gasoline supplies 50 percent more energy per gallon than ethanol (and surprisingly 15 times more energy per mass than TNT). This is why cars running on ethanol get lower gas mileage than when they run on gasoline.
Making hydrocarbons from plant materials is also more efficient than making ethanol. The primary reason for this, Regalbuto explains, is that removing unwanted water from ethanol production requires energy-intensive distillation, whereas hydrocarbons separate automatically from water.
This efficiency could translate into lower costs. Virent estimates that a gallon of their green gasoline could be around 20 percent cheaper than a gallon of ethanol made from corn.
Regalbuto predicts that green gasoline of some sort will be at the pump within the next few years. He realizes that further down the road people may start abandoning gasoline-powered cars for electric vehicles, but the market for hydrocarbons is unlikely to dry up.
"We will still need diesel for big things like trains, planes and boats," he said.
Malcom Ritter, Associated Press Yahoo News 9 Oct 08;
Three U.S.-based scientists won a Nobel Prize on Wednesday for turning a glowing green protein from jellyfish into a revolutionary way to watch the tiniest details of life within cells and living creatures.
Osamu Shimomura, a Japanese citizen who works in the United States, and Americans Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien shared the chemistry prize for discovering and developing green fluorescent protein, or GFP.
When exposed to ultraviolet light, the protein glows green. It can act as a marker on otherwise invisible proteins within cells to trace them as they go about their business. It can tag individual cells in tissue. And it can show when and where particular genes turn on and off.
Researchers worldwide now use GFP to track development of brain cells, the growth of tumors and the spread of cancer cells. It has let them study nerve cell damage from Alzheimer's disease and see how insulin-producing beta cells arise in the pancreas of a growing embryo, for example.
In awarding the prize, the Royal Swedish Academy compared the impact of GFP on science to the invention of the microscope. For the past decade, the academy said, the protein has been "a guiding star " for scientists.
GFP's chemical cousins produce other colors, which let scientists follow multiple cells or proteins simultaneously.
"This is a technology that has literally transformed medical research," said Dr. John Frangioni, an associate professor of medicine and radiology at Harvard Medical School. "For the first time, scientists could study both genes and proteins in living cells and in living animals."
Last year, in what the Nobel citation called a "spectacular experiment," Harvard researchers announced that they had tagged brain cells in mice with some 90 colors. The technique is called "Brainbow."
GFP was first discovered by Shimomura at Princeton University. He'd been seeking the protein that lets a certain kind of jellyfish glow green around its edge. In the summer of 1961, he and a colleague processed tissue from about 10,000 jellyfish they'd collected near the island town of Friday Harbor, Wash. The next year, they reported the finding of GFP.
Some 30 years later, Chalfie showed that the GFP gene could make individual nerve cells in a tiny worm glow bright green.
Tsien's work provided GFP-like proteins that extended the scientific palette to a variety of colors. Tsien "really made it a tool that was extremely useful to lots of people," Chalfie told reporters.
Shimomura, 80, now works at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., and the Boston University Medical School. Chalfie, 61, is a professor at Columbia University in New York, while Tsien, 56, is a professor at the University of California, San Diego, and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
The trio will split the $1.4 million award.
Chalfie said he slept through the Nobel committee's phone calls early Wednesday because he'd accidentally adjusted his telephone to ring very softly. He found out about the prize only when he checked the Nobel Web site to see who had won.
"It's not something out of the blue, but you never know when it's going to come or if it's going to come, so it's always a big surprise when it actually happens," Chalfie said.
Shimomura told reporters that he, too, was surprised.
"My accomplishment was just the discovery of a protein. ... But I am happy," he said.
Speaking to reporters by telephone, Tsien thanked scientists worldwide. When they do "good things with GFP and its progeny," Tsien said he can "bask in the warmth of that glow a little bit too."
Gunnar von Heijne, the chairman of the chemistry prize committee, demonstrated the award-winning research to reporters by shining ultraviolet light on a tube with E. coli bacteria containing GFP. The tube glowed green.
Von Heijne said that kind of result "gets scientists' hearts beating three times faster than normal."
The winners of the Nobel Prizes in medicine and physics were presented earlier this week. The prizes for literature, peace and economics are due to be announced Thursday, Friday and Monday.
Three Americans, three Japanese, two French and one German researcher have won Nobel Prizes so far this year.
The awards include the money, a diploma and an invitation to the prize ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.
Associated Press writers Karl Ritter, Matt Moore and Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Online Video Reporter Ted Shaffrey in New York, Mark Pratt in Boston and Alicia Chang in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Glowing praise: Nobel awarded for fluorescent jellyfish protein
Nina Larson Yahoo News 8 Oct 08;
Osamu Shimomura of Japan and US duo Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien on Wednesday won the Nobel Chemistry Prize for a fluorescent protein derived from a jellyfish that has become a vital lab tool.
Green fluorescent protein (GFP) has revolutionised research in medicine and biology, enabling scientists to get a visual fix on how organs function, on the spread of disease and the response of infected cells to treatment, the Nobel jury said.
"GFP has functioned in the past decade as a guiding star for biochemists, biologists, medical scientists and other researchers," it said.
"This protein has become one of the most important tools used in contemporary bioscience."
The gene to make GFP is inserted into the DNA of lab animals, bacteria or other cells, where it is "switched on" by other genes. The glow becomes apparent under ultraviolet light.
The telltale protein gives researchers an instant way of monitoring processes that were previously invisible.
By tagging nerve cells, scientists can for instance follow the destruction caused by Alzheimer's disease. Tumour progression can be followed by adding GFP to cancer cells. By adding GFP to a growing mouse embryo, they can see how the pancreas generates insulin-producing beta cells.
In one spectacular experiment, researchers made a "brainbow," in which they tagged different nerve cells in the brain of a mouse with a kaleidoscope of colours.
Shimomura , born in 1928 and now a professor emeritus at Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and Boston University, pioneered this tool with a study of the jellyfish Aequorea victoria in the 1960s.
He isolated a few precious grams of luminescent liquid from 10,000 jellyfish, which led to the discovery that its source was GFP, a so-called chromophore -- a chemical group that absorbs and emits light.
Shimomoura was the third Japanese citizen to win a Nobel this year, after Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa won the Physics Prize Tuesday along with Japanese-born American Yoichiro Nambu for groundbreaking theoretical work in fundamental particles.
"Honestly, I am surprised to see so many as four Japanese win in one year," Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso told reporters. "It's really good."
Chalfie, born in 1947 and a biology professor at Columbia University, followed up on Shimomura's research.
He helped identify the gene that controls GFP and found ways of inserting it into a common lab tool, the millimetre-long roundworm called Caenorhabditis elegans.
His idea was that by connecting the gene for GFP with various gene switches, or promoters, he would be able to see where different proteins were produced. "The green light would act as a beacon for various events."
Tsien, born in 1952 and a professor at the University of California, completed the final step, developing new variants of GFP that shine more strongly and in different colours, allowing researchers to mark different proteins in different colours to see their interactions.
"Today, GFP is a standard tool for thousands of researchers all over the world," the Nobel panel said.
"When scientists develop methods to help them see things that were once invisible, research always takes a great leap forward," it added.
GFP inserted in bacteria has also been adapted to make sensors that glow in the presence of arsenic -- a major problem in groundwater in Bangladesh -- and TNT.
Tsien, who was woken up by a call from the Nobel panel just before 3:00 am in California, said he was surprised to have won the prize.
"There have been rumours, but I was a little surprised anyway," he told Swedish news agency TT.
Bruce Bursten, president of the American Chemical Society, hailed the choice of this year's laureates, saying it "showcases chemistry's critical but often-invisible role in fostering advances in biology and medicine."
He added: "This is chemistry at its very best, improving people's lives."
The Nobel medicine and physics prizes were announced earlier this week, while the Literature Prize was due on Thursday and the Peace Prize on Friday.
The Economics Prize would wrap up the awards on October 13.
Laureates receive a gold medal, a diploma and 10 million Swedish kronor (1.42 million dollars, 1.02 million euros), which can be split between up to three winners per prize.
The formal prize ceremonies will be held in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10.
Nobel Prize for Chemistry
Posts
visitors since Nov 07