Who sparked the global cooling myth?
on the Short Sharp Science blog
Highlights of the lows
corals, seagrasses and more! A roundup of recent shore activities on the singapore celebrates our reefs blog
A short visit to Singapore
on Chai's Marine Life Blog
Comical worm on Changi
on the colourful clouds blog
Bukit Timah Hill with Clementi Town Sec
on the Urban Forest blog
Semakau CEO Run
on the manta blog
“Willie” the wagtail
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Imelda Saad, Channel NewsAsia 21 Oct 08;
SINGAPORE: Deputy Prime Minister S Jayakumar says climate change has made it necessary for Singapore to think out of the box to anticipate future problems in sustainable living.
One way researchers here are harnessing technology lies in a real-time monitoring system that can detect the health of high-rise buildings, bridges and roads. Led by the A*Star Institute for Infocomm Research, the Fibre Bragg Grating technology will be used in Sengkang HDB estate.
"With this technology, we will be offered some degree of comfort and a sense of security in the future that the buildings we live in, the bridges we cross, and the roads we travel on, will not collapse on us unawares even as they age with time - provided, of course, that the people monitoring the sensors remain vigilant and dedicated to their job," said Professor Jayakumar.
Also being studied - a 3D urban planning software that can simulate airflow in urban areas. The programme is able to analyse how dangerous contaminants in the air are dispersed in an urban environment.
Professor Jayakumar said: "This technology, developed by the researchers at the A*STAR Institute of High-Performance Computing, can be leveraged on to enhance security in the cities, and will also go far in assisting countries and cities in their defence planning in this time of uncertainty where threats of global terrorism are ever-present."
Professor Jayakumar, who is also Coordinating Minister for National Security, was speaking at Futuropolis 2058, a conference on urban planning.
Wong Siew Ying, Channel NewsAsia 21 Oct 08;
SINGAPORE: Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry, S Iswaran, said the recent 21 per cent increase in electricity tariffs, despite falling oil prices, is not arbitrary.
He told Members of Parliament that the tariffs had been pegged to a 3-month forward oil price, which provides more certainty to consumers.
Distributing a chart in parliament, he said this formula had kept tariffs lower than if the country had pegged tariffs to the daily oil price or spot price instead.
Explaining further, he said the 3-month forward fuel price used in the formula had been lower than the spot fuel oil price in all but five of the 16 quarters since 2004.
He also cautioned against making arbitrary changes to this formula as it would increase regulatory risks, adversely affect investor sentiment and confidence, and ultimately do more harm than good to consumers and businesses.
Mr Iswaran added that the government has introduced measures to help lower income families cope with the rise in electricity prices by offering rebates.
About 80 per cent of electricity in Singapore is generated from natural gas, which is purchased through long term contracts tied to fuel oil prices.
Electricity taxes not pegged to spot oil prices
Valarie Tan, Channel NewsAsia 21 Oct 08;
SINGAPORE: Electricity taxes in Singapore are not likely go down despite the drop in oil prices.
That's because power rates are not pegged to fluctuating oil prices but to what fuel would cost when delivered every three months.
To provide more certainty, the Trade and Industry Ministry has decided, since 2004, to peg electricity taxes to a three-month forward fuel price formula.
That means power rates do not fall immediately if oil prices drop but will instead follow the the market price of oil delivered in the next quarter.
"This time lag works both ways - that is electricity tariffs move up more slowly when fuel oil prices are rising and move down more slowly when fuel oil prices are falling," said Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry S Iswaran.
Mr Iswaran was responding to questions in Parliament.
He also said regulations are in place to prevent the power supplier from overcharging consumers.
But he said the government cannot make it compulsory for companies to transfer more of their profits to consumers as that would discourage them from investing more in improving electricity supply in Singapore.
- CNA/ir
Looking for a cheaper way to power up
Neo Chai Chin, Today Online 22 Oct 08;
HAS the time come for anindependent body to oversee electricity tariffs, to ensure that retailers do not short-change Singaporeans? Is there a better way of pricing electricity to benefit low-income users?
Seven MPs posed such hard questions to Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry S Iswaran yesterday, in the wake of a 21-per-cent electricity price hike for households from this month to December.
An independent council monitoring how tariffs are set could provide reassurance to consumers, suggested MP Ho Geok Choo. It could be modelled after the Public Transport Council, which has a price-cap formula for bus and train fare increases. Currently, the Energy Market Authority approves SP Services’ electricity tariff rates.
In response to the suggestion by Mdm Ho (West Coast GRC), Mr Iswaran said we should not “overreact and set up new mechanisms and regulatory channels” as this would affect the perception of regulatory risk here. “If there’s more regulatory risk, you must expect that electricity-generating companies here will expect a higher rate of return than what they currently have,” he said.
Singapore Power — the parent company of SP Services — is regulated so that it does not earn a “supernormal rate of return”, Mr Iswaran said.
The company’s profit after taxation was $1.086 billion in the last financial year, and MP Lee Bee Wah (Ang Mo Kio GRC) questioned how one could ensure profits benefited not just investors, but also consumers.
The EMA — a statutory board under the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) — uses international industry benchmarks to ensure companies earn a “reasonable rate of return compared to international standards”.
Singapore Power has to invest $5 billion over the next five years to enhance grid infrastructure, and “if they don’t earn what is considered a fair rate of return by industry standards ... they will be tempted to cut back on the investment because it is not in the shareholders’ interests and therefore not in the company’s interest,” Mr Iswaran said.
He added that the EMA is studying ways to improve the current formula for tariff-setting, and will also put up more information on price-setting on its website.
Non-Constituency MP Sylvia Lim asked if full details of the formula could be published,to which Mr Iswaran replied that “subject to any commercial confidentiality issue, I’m sure EMA will be happy to oblige”.
Ms Lim also asked if Singapore could adopt Hong Kong’s “more affordable” method of tiered pricing where higher prices are charged for electricity that households use over and above the average consumption levels.
Mr Iswaran pointed out that Singapore’s industry is broken into contestable and non-contestable segments, unlike Hong Kong’s integrated structure where electricity retailers are also grid operators and generating companies. Both systems have their pros and cons, he said, but Singapore’s approach is to reduce volatility for consumers.
Despite a 300 per cent rise in fuel oil prices since 2001, electricity prices here have risen by about 50 per cent. Asian countries index natural gas prices to fuel oil prices as there is no distinct market for natural gas like in the United States. Because three-month forward fuel oil pricing is used, high oil prices in July have led to a delayed increase in electricity tariffs, said Mr Iswaran.
On Nominated MP Gautam Banerjee’s concern that divestment of energy companies to foreign players could harm Singapore’s long-term interests, Mr Iswaran said Singapore promotes competition, and that the recent announcement that Senoko Power – bought over by a Japanese-French consortium – would power its plants with cleaner natural gas instead of oil was a good sign.
“We can expect market competition to continue exerting downward pressure on electricity prices without compromising the reliability and security of our energy supply,” he said.
Cheaper power in January?
Electricity tariffs could fall if oil prices slide further
Goh Chin Lian, Straits Times 22 Oct 08;
ELECTRICITY tariffs could fall in January if fuel oil prices continue to slide in the last three months of this year.
Senior Minister of State (Trade and Industry) S. Iswaran also said yesterday that despite the 21 per cent hike in this quarter's tariffs, households are paying less for electricity under the current pricing policy than if another formula had been used.
Mr Iswaran was replying to five MPs who had questioned the need to raise power prices by 21 per cent and had asked for the pricing formula.
MPs Ellen Lee (Sembawang GRC) and Ho Geok Choo (West Coast GRC) reflected a common ground sentiment when they asked why electricity rates had gone up at a time when oil prices had come down.
Mr Iswaran linked it to a three-month time lag in the current formula, which pegs tariffs to the price of fuel oil for delivery in three months' time.
'If the current lower fuel oil prices are sustained, the benefits will flow through with the same time lag to electricity tariffs in the next quarter,' he said.
He also distributed a chart to show that this way of pricing is less volatile, and costs households less, than a formula based on the price paid for immediate delivery of fuel oil, or spot price.
The three-month forward price has been lower than the spot price in all but five of 16 quarters since 2004, he noted.
Even so, the regulator, the Energy Market Authority (EMA), is studying whether the formula can be improved further, he said.
But he rejected Non-Constituency MP Sylvia Lim's suggestion that the formula was not sustainable.
He warned against making arbitrary changes that will dent investor confidence.
Mr Iswaran also did not think a direct comparison could be made with Hong Kong. Ms Lim had said it had more affordable tariffs by having varied pricing tiers.
He pointed out that Hong Kong generates power using mostly coal, a cheaper but dirtier fuel, while Singapore relies on natural gas. Also, in Hong Kong, the same company produces and sells the electricity and runs the power grid, while the industry here is split up with different players in charge.
However, MP Lee Bee Wah (Ang Mo Kio GRC) and Nominated MP Gautam Banerjee were worried that energy companies here reaped excessive returns, and the sale of power companies to foreigners would not be in Singaporeans' interests.
Mr Iswaran said the EMA ensures Singapore Power earns a rate of return that is reasonable by international standards.
He also expects Temasek Holdings' sale of its power companies to add competition, keep a lid on electricity prices and promote innovation. Two were sold this year, one to a China company and the other to a Japanese-French consortium.
On calls by MPs Sam Tan (Tanjong Pagar GRC) and Irene Ng (Tampines GRC) for the Government to act against price increases, Mr Iswaran said the markets will be left to work freely, but the Government will step in to help the needy.
Singapore Government committed to growing energy sector
Ronnie Lim, Business Times 22 Oct 08;
THE energy industry is entering unchartered territory and the rules are constantly changing, S Iswaran, Senior Minister of State (Trade & Industry), said, adding that 'the current financial turmoil certainly has not helped'.
He was addressing oil industry executives at a Platts' Asian energy companies' ranking awards dinner here yesterday, as oil prices cooled to around US$72 a barrel - or half July's peak of over US$147 - on worries that global oil demand will plummet as economies go into recession.
Mr Iswaran said the tumultuous financial events 'have caught many by surprise and have exposed the true uncertainty we face in this complex, interconnected world'.
While governments and policymakers will move quickly and decisively to address these issues, the volatility in financial markets is expected to persist for some time to come, he warned.
'More than ever, we must keep the faith in the markets and ensure that they work well - for continued flows of information, transparency and price discovery.'
This is where energy information organisations like Platts play a vital role, he said, as its clarity and independent benchmarking and analysis are key to the workings of global, competitive energy markets.
Singapore, he said, has had an over 20-year relationship with Platts, whose pricing platform had helped attract many oil trading companies here.
Today, the Republic has grown to become one of the world's premier bunker ports and the oil product pricing hub for the Asia-Pacific, with over US$300 billion in physical oil and US$600 billion in oil derivatives traded here last year.
Mr Iswaran said that while the global demand for oil may soften in the near term, the backdrop for global energy resources will remain one of tightening supply and rising demand.
Going forward, Singapore will face increasing competition as new refining capacity in China, India and the Middle East comes on stream over the next few years, he said.
But the government remains committed to growing this sector and its value-add through greater complexity, he stressed. This will be achieved 'by leveraging on our strengths across the value chain in petrochemicals, logistics, distribution and trading. Our fundamentals are strong and this will ensure that we remain competitive'.
In this year's Platts awards, Chinese oil giant Petrochina again topped its Asia top 250 rankings with a 30 per cent jump in revenues and a one-third rise in asset value. Second was China's Sinopec, and third India's Reliance Industries.
Another Chinese company, China Resources Power Holdings, was ranked No 1 among Asia's fastest-growing companies.
Jakarta will also honour its existing contracts: minister
Ronnie Lim, Business Times 22 Oct 08;
'If it's from Sumatra, we cannot sell that, as we need it for domestic use. But if it's from the stranded gas fields in the South China Sea, that's another matter.'
Singapore's concerns about future availability of piped gas supplies from both Indonesia and Malaysia led the Republic to proceed with its plans to build a US$1 billion LNG terminal here which will enable it to import LNG from anywhere in the world.
INDONESIA is prepared to sell more natural gas to Singapore from smaller, isolated gas pockets, or so-called 'stranded fields', in the South China Sea, Purnomo Yusgiantaro, the country's Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources, said yesterday.
It is also committed to fulfilling its current contracts for piped gas supplies to the Republic, he said, although he warned that 'additional volumes (beyond that) may not be available'. Mr Purnomo disclosed this on the sidelines of a conference on liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies for Asia being held here.
Responding to BT queries on concerns here about future availability of Indonesian piped gas to Singapore beyond the existing gas contracts, he stressed that the country 'will honour its (existing) contracts' with Singapore.
But he said that additional volumes may not be available as Indonesia needs gas for its own growing domestic use, including for fertiliser plants, refineries and for town gas.
'There are, however, some negotiations regarding supply of stranded gas from the South China Sea to Singapore,' he disclosed, although he was not able to specify the volumes available. The gas from these isolated fields can be easily piped through smaller pipelines to connect with the existing, main Indonesia-Singapore gas pipelines, he added, when asked if such stranded gas supplies will be costlier.
Currently, Indonesia has three gas supply agreements (GSAs) with the Republic, with the latest struck in April this year when Sembcorp Gas signed a US$5.5 billion deal to buy an additional 86 million standard cubic feet of gas daily (mscfd) for seven to 10 years, with the gas scheduled to start arriving between 2010 and 2011.
The latest GSA will add about 26 per cent to the 325-340 mscfd of Indonesian gas which Sembcorp currently imports - under a 1998 deal - via a 700km Natuna-Singapore pipeline.
Another importer, Gas Supply, is bringing in 350 mscfd of Indonesian gas via pipeline from Sumatra.
Indonesia in October last year cancelled a GSA for 110 mscfd with Island Power - which is planning a US$1 billion power station here - as the latter was unable to gain access to the Singapore portion of the Sumatra-Singapore pipeline to bring in the gas. This was due to unresolved commercial issues with the pipeline incumbents. Island, BT understands, is trying to renegotiate a new gas deal with Indonesia.
When asked about this, Mr Purnomo said it all depends where Island is hoping to secure the gas from. 'If it's from Sumatra, we cannot sell that, as we need it for domestic use. But if it's from the stranded gas fields in the South China Sea, that's another matter.'
Singapore's concerns about future availability of piped gas supplies from both Indonesia and Malaysia led the Republic to proceed with its plans to build a US$1 billion LNG terminal here which will enable it to import LNG from anywhere in the world.
The three million tonnes per annum terminal is expected to be ready by 2012 in time for the first expected deliveries of LNG. Asked if Singapore, through its appointed LNG buyer BG Group, had sounded out Indonesia for some LNG supplies, Mr Purnomo said no.
Earlier in his keynote address at the conference organised by Conference Connection, Mr Purnomo said Indonesia is trying to develop new fields to boost its LNG production, although strong domestic demand for gas means that 45 per cent of its natural gas is now needed at home.
The remainder is exported to countries such as Japan and Korea, and new markets like China and the US West Coast. Some of its gas is also piped to Malaysia and Singapore.
Improving the taste of waste
Oh Boon Ping, Business Times 21 Oct 08;
JUST think about this: someone out there is doing well for themselves - and the environment - by recycling waste at Singapore's hawker centres.
Step forward IUT Global Pte Ltd: a Singapore-based niche environmental waste management company which recently set up a bio-methanisation plant to convert food waste into biogas for electricity production, and compost for landscaping.
The firm told BT it saw an opportunity in food waste recycling as there was no such recycling facility in Singapore and they have the technology and expertise, while the National Environment Agency (NEA) has also been encouraging businesses to seize new opportunities in the growing and vibrant environment sector.
Said CEO Edwin Khew: 'With the global concern about climate change and the rapid increase in population, I saw an opportunity in anaerobic digestion and generation of renewable energy and production of bio-compost.'
So in September last year, Mr Khew approached NEA with a project to access and segregate the organic waste from its 110 market/hawker centres.
The government agency found this a win-win proposal since the waste generated, including organic discard from food preparation and items from the fresh produce stalls, were then incinerated right after disposal.
To facilitate IUT's launch of a pilot project at the Chinatown market centre late last year, NEA linked the firm up with the key players - the public waste collector for the centre, Altvater Jakob Pte Ltd (now renamed Veolia ES Singapore Pte Ltd), and the Chinatown Hawkers Association and their contract cleaners - so that details of the waste segregation for recycling could be worked out.
Also, NEA organised a briefing for the hawkers and market stallholders on the importance of recycling and sought their cooperation to segregate food waste in their stalls for disposal into designated recycling bins.
The table cleaners were also requested to play their part by setting aside food waste for separate disposal into the recycling bins instead of placing all the food waste into the compactor for disposal at the incineration plant.
Since then, another four market/hawker centres have started segregation of food waste for recycling. They are Tekka temporary market, Bukit Timah Market & Food Centre, Taman Jurong Market and Food Centre, and Yuhua Village Market and Food Centre.
IUT's plant is now in operation and receives some 4.6 tonnes of food waste generated at the five NEA hawker centres and markets for recycling.
It contributes to the firm's business sustainability and promotes environmental sustainability through greater resource conservation.
The firm is also grateful to NEA for its help in facilitating the process, saying this 'will help improve the overall waste recycling rate and achieve the Singapore Green Plan targets.
'The technology that we are demonstrating is also unique and required as a solution to many cities in Asia. Singapore wants to be a Clean Energy solutions hub for Asia and the IUT technology is one of the many sustainable energy solutions that Singapore can provide to the region.'
Indeed, Mr Khew is upbeat about the prospects in this business, saying a lot of cities face major problems in treatment and management of organics, particularly food waste going into landfills.
Plus, 'we see our business not just as waste management, but as environment management-cum-renewable energy. As you know, besides treating and recycling the organic waste as bio-fertiliser, we also generate some renewable electricity for our own consumption and a little residual to the power grid in Singapore,' Mr Khew said.
Veolia ES general manager Harald Kloeden is supportive of food waste recycling here, but felt that the price of incineration could be raised to encourage more people to recycle the waste.
With the successful pilot, IUT is now working with NEA to extend this food waste recycling to other suitable market/hawker centres.
Said an NEA spokesman: 'Waste is really misplaced resource and we should minimise waste generation first and strive to recycle as much as we can so that only those waste products that cannot be avoided or recycled need to be disposed of. Food waste is a significant portion of our waste, and we would like the food and beverage industry to seriously look into reducing food waste and segregating food waste for recycling.'
Businesses that wish to make a suggestion to the Pro-Enterprise Panel on how to cut red tape can do so at www.pep.gov.sg
The Pro-Enterprise Panel was set up in 2000 to solicit feedback from businesses on how government rules and regulations can be improved to create a more pro-enterprise environment. The PEP is chaired by Civil Service Head Peter Ho and consists of mainly private-sector business leaders.
David Fogarty, PlanetArk 22 Oct 08;
SINGAPORE - Putting a price on nature by creating tradable credits can the limit the loss of forests, wetlands and rivers from the expansion of agriculture, the head of an international forestry investment firm said on Monday.
Carbon, water and biodiversity were emerging as the three main environmental market forces this century, said David Brand, managing director of New Forests, and his company was developing projects in all three areas to yield saleable credits.
"If the remaining ecosystems aren't priced then they are basically traded as free input to the expansion of agriculture," Brand said from Sydney.
"So the objective here is to give them a price that slows that process and makes alternatives to conversion more economically attractive."
Earlier this year, Sydney-headquartered New Forests signed a deal with the government of Indonesia's Papua province and Indonesia-based Emerald Planet, which advises and invests in green projects.
The aim of the Papua project is to save two tracts of forest from development in return for carbon credits estimated between US$4 and $10 a tonne per year.
The two areas, each about 100,000 ha (250,000 acres) in Mamberamo and Mimika regencies and largely in pristine state, had been previously surveyed for oil palm, cassava and sago palm plantations and about half in total had been slated for clearing over the next 10 years.
By preventing that, Brand said, initial estimates showed the project could save between 20 million and 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide being emitted over 15 to 20 years.
A major portion of money from the sale of the credits would go to the local community to be managed through an independent, perpetual endowment fund.
MONEY FROM WATER, ENDANGERED SPECIES
Brand said the project was in the process of applying for licences and then validation under the internationally recognised Voluntary Carbon Standard before emissions offsets would be available for sale, possibly by early 2010.
New Forests, which says it manages $200 million in assets throughout Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the Asian region, has also helped develop the Malua BioBank in Malaysia's Sabah state on the island of Borneo.
The project involves the protection and restoration of 34,000 hectares (80,000 acres) of orangutan and clouded leopard habitat for 50 years.
The scheme has generated 1.36 million of biodiversity credits, a new class of environment product for sale by emissions markets, and each credit covers 100 square metres of forest.
So far, 21,500 credits have been sold at US$10 each to Malaysian firms and Brand said his company was in negotiations with a few large firms to sell sizeable blocks of Malua credits.
"We see forests as having an intersection with the three major environmental issues of the 21st century, which are climate change and the carbon cycle, biodiversity and conservation and fresh water," he said.
"We're trying to create a set of initial deals that demonstrate the monetisation of carbon, water and biodiversity."
He said New Forests was working on a couple of water deals and expected to make an announcement early next year.
Rather than spend billions on secondary water treatment, it was better to clean up catchment areas fouled by excessive fertiliser use or salt or silt through deforestation, he said.
In particular, Brand pointed to rampant fertiliser use from booming corn ethanol developments along the Mississippi River that was creating a vast dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Australia's Great Barrier Reef was also being damaged by silt run-off from nearby rivers draining sugar and other plantations.
One idea was to figure out the cost of such damage and, if possible, create a trading scheme that encouraged farmers reduce fertilizer use or soil loss.
"We can act as the intermediary bringing capital to aggregators who will build pools of these nitrogen or phosphate reductions, and pay them and we can sell them in bulk," said Brand, but declined to give details on water deals under discussion.
(Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
LiveScience.com 21 Oct 08;
Earth may be in the midst of the sixth great mass extinction, scientists have said. The current decimation in species could mean nearly 50 percent of plants and animals will disappear.
Rather than try to save them all, biologists are now trying to figure out which ones are most crucial. Those are the ones with the greatest genetic diversity, the researchers report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Given that we are losing species from ecosystems around the world, we need to know which species matter the most -- and which we should pour our resources into protecting," said researcher Marc W. Cadotte of the at UC Santa Barbara.
"The current extinction event is due to human activity, paving the planet, creating pollution, many of the things that we are doing today," said co-author Bradley J. Cardinale, assistant professor of ecology, evolution and marine biology (EEMB) at UC Santa Barbara. "The Earth might well lose half of its species in our lifetime. We want to know which ones deserve the highest priority for conservation."
The researchers believe that the last extinction as bad as this one came 65 million years ago, when an asteroid - and probably other events - wiped out the large dinosaurs and many other species, including many plants.
The researchers reviewed 40 other studies on grassland ecosystems around the world. They reconstructed the evolutionary history among 177 flowering plants used in these studies by comparing the genetic makeup of the plants. They found that some species are more critical than others in preserving the functions of ecosystems and that these species tend to be those that are genetically unique.
"Losing a very unique species may be worse than losing one with a close relative in the community," said fellow researcher Todd Oakley. "The more evolutionary history that is represented in a plant community, the more productive it is."
Henry Fountain, New York Times 20 Oct 08;
In recent years, the worldwide decline in pollinators has been big news in agriculture. The collapse of honeybee populations, which is still poorly understood, has gotten the most press, but more broadly there is evidence of declines among other pollinators.
Since many fruits, seeds and vegetables depend to varying extents upon pollination by insects or birds, agricultural experts have become concerned that a decline in pollinators may lead to a decrease in crop yields.
For those experts, there’s good news and bad news in a study by Marcelo A. Aizen of the National University of Comahue in Argentina and colleagues.
On a global scale, the researchers report in Current Biology, pollinator shortages are not affecting crop yields. But there could be problems in the future because, the researchers say, the amount of acreage being devoted to pollinator-dependent crops is increasing.
The researchers analyzed 45 years of Food and Agricultural Organization data for pollinator-dependent crops like fruits, nuts and seeds and nondependent crops like many grains and root vegetables. Over all since 1961, yields have increased consistently by about 1.5 percent a year, and in looking at trends over time, the researchers found little difference between pollinator-dependent and nondependent crops in either the developed or developing worlds.
They did find that the proportion of pollinator-dependent crops increased greatly over the decades — to 23 percent of total agricultural production in 2006 from 14 percent in 1961. So if pollinators keep declining, the shortage may eventually have an impact.
Chris Lefkow Yahoo News 21 Oct 08;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – EBay announced a ban on all ivory sales as a conservation group released a report on Tuesday accusing the Internet auction house of contributing to the trade in endangered wildlife products.
Just hours before the release of the report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), eBay said that it would institute a global ban on the sale of elephant ivory products by January 1, 2009.
EBay's announcement, made by its in-house blogger Richard Brewer-Hay, said the move followed consultations with the IFAW, the World Wildlife Fund, Humane Society of the United States and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Ebay banned cross-border sales of ivory last year.
"However, given the complexities of the global ivory trade, and the distinct and unique characteristics of the eBay Marketplace, the sale of any ivory on our site continued to be a concern within the company," Brewer-Hay wrote.
"So, to protect our buyers and sellers, as well as animals in danger of extinction, eBay has decided to institute a global ban on the sale of all types of ivory," he added.
Jack Christin, an eBay lawyer, added that the auction house "will allow some antique (pre-1900) items that contain a small amount of ivory, such as a table with a small ivory inlay or an antique piano with ivory keys.
"Items which contain a significant amount of ivory, regardless of the age, such as chess sets, ivory broaches and ivory jewelry are not permitted under the new policy," he added.
The IFAW report, "Killing with Keystrokes: An Investigation of the Illegal Wildlife Trade on the World Wide Web," found that eBay was responsible for almost two-thirds of the online trade in wildlife products worldwide.
The report followed a six-week investigation that tracked more than 7,000 wildlife product listings on 183 Web sites in 11 countries.
More than 70 percent of all endangered species' products listed for sale on the Internet occur in the United States, the report said.
The amount of trade tracked in the United States was nearly 10 times that of the next two leading countries, Britain and China.
Elephant ivory comprised 73 percent of all product listings tracked.
Exotic birds were second, accounting for nearly 20 percent, the report said, adding that primates, big cats and other animals are also falling victim to the e-trade in live animals and wildlife products.
IFAW campaigns manager Barbara Cartwright welcomed eBay's move. "IFAW congratulates eBay on this very important step to protect elephants," she said.
"With these findings and eBay's leadership, there is no doubt left that all Internet dealers need to take responsibility for their impact on endangered species by enacting and enforcing a ban on all online wildlife trade.
The IFAW said more than 4,000 elephant ivory listings were uncovered during the investigation, with most of the sales taking place on eBay's US site.
In one instance, a user purchased a pair of elephant tusks off eBay for more than 21,000 dollars, it said.
"With a few limited exceptions, selling ivory has been illegal since 1989," said Jeff Flocken, director of the IFAW's Washington office. "However, Web sites are still teeming with ivory trinkets, bracelets, and even whole tusks for sale."
The IFAW said international trade in wildlife is estimated at billions of dollars annually -- "a black market rivaling the size of the international trade in illegal drugs and weapons."
More than 20,000 elephants are illegally slaughtered in Africa and Asia to meet demand for ivory products, it said.
African and Asian elephants are protected under international Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
Yahoo News 21 Oct 08;
JAKARTA (AFP) – Key tuna species are under threat from overfishing in Asia's diverse Coral Triange region and a drastic rethink is needed to stave off collapse, environmental group WWF said Tuesday.
Tuna species in the triangle, including heavily overfished bluefin and bigeye tuna, are under increasing pressure as fleets move in from depleted fishing grounds in other parts of the world, WWF researcher Lida Pet Soede said.
The Coral Triangle -- which is bounded by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and East Timor -- contains spawning and nursery grounds as well as migratory routes for up to 89 percent of the world's tuna catch, according to the WWF.
The triangle is one of the most biologically diverse areas on earth.
"The larger context of the Coral Triangle, where there still are very important spawning grounds for a number of very valuable tuna species is critical," Soede said.
A decision last week by Spain, Japan and other countries to close down bluefin tuna fishing in the Mediterranean will mean more fishing ships will move into the triangle, Soede said
"Regional collaboration around management of this global commodity is pretty obvious. If you can't agree on managing this commodity together, everybody is going to get hurt," she said.
Representatives from the six Coral Triangle nations, fishing companies and WWF are meeting in the Indonesian capital until Thursday to discuss ways of curbing overfishing in the area.
Discussions are set to include the creation of a carbon-trading style system to pay countries with large spawning grounds such as Indonesia in return for reducing fishing of tuna, Soede said.
Saut Hutagalung, a senior official in the Indonesian fisheries ministry, said the country was struggling to regulate tuna fishing by a fleet of mostly small, unlicensed boats.
Indonesia has no effective quota system for species apart from the lucrative bluefin tuna, prized for sushi and sashimi, Hutagalung said.
The archipelago nation produced 700,000 tons of tuna in 2007, he said.
Yahoo News 21 Oct 08;
SEOUL (AFP) – South Korea on Tuesday announced an amended 18.9 trillion won (14.2 billion dollar) plan for developing a vast wetland area on its southwest coast, fuelling fears of environmental damage.
The tidal area around Saemangeum estuary was dammed in 2006 following a long fight between the government and environmentalists, who said the reclamation project would deprive migratory birds of a key habitat and pose water pollution risks.
A new plan approved by the cabinet will see more of the reclamation developed and less used for farmland than was originally envisaged. It is also twice as expensive as the original plan.
The new plan calls for 30 percent of the 18,410 hectare (45,473 acre) site to be used for non-agricultural purposes, 39 percent for farming and the rest unspecified to provide flexibility in the future.
The old plan would have seen development of 70 percent of the land for farming. Agriculture in South Korea has become less competitive in recent years because of the small amount of available arable land and high production costs.
The new plan envisions a two-stage approach that would permit the building of factories, power plants, tourism and resort zones by 2020.
A further 9,890 hectares of reclaimed land will be developed from 2021.
Of the total budget, 12.1 trillion won will be used to prepare land, 4.4 trillion for building infrastructure such as roads, railways and port facilities, and 2.4 trillion won for environmental projects.
Lee Bong-Ho, head of the agriculture ministry's farmland development division, said 7.8 trillion won would come from the central government, 10.6 trillion won from the private sector and 500 billion from local government.
Saemangeum estuary sits at the mouths of two rivers, the Mangyeong and Dongjin. The completion of the 33-kilometre (21 mile) seawall in April 2006 has interrupted the flows of the rivers, which critics say has increased pollution risks.
Activists charge the amended project is worse than the original.
"The central government and the provincial governments have spent a lot of tax money for purifying the two rivers but there is no sign of any progress," the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement said in a statement.
"Under these circumstances, water pollution will only get worse if industrial facilities and commuter towns, instead of farmland, pop up on a large scale."
South Korea Land Grab Killing Migratory Birds - Study
Jon Herskovitz PlanetArk 27 Oct 08;
SEOUL - A huge South Korean land reclamation project has destroyed wetlands, killed migratory birds and pushed endangered species toward extinction, a report obtained at the weekend said.
The Saemangeum land reclamation, completed in 2006 on the west coast and covering about 400 square kms (155 sq miles) -- about seven times larger than Manhattan -- has removed one of the largest feeding grounds on the Yellow Sea for hundreds of thousands of migratory birds who pass by each year, it said.
"Within Saemangeum, (we) recorded a decline of 137,000 shorebirds, and declines in 19 of the most numerous species, from 2006 to 2008," according to the study by conservation groups Birds Korea and Australasian Wader Studies Group that will be released at an international Ramsar convention on wetlands this week in South Korea.
Migratory birds travelling between Russia and Alaska in the north to New Zealand and Australia in the south congregate for often their only refuelling stop at Yellow Sea tidal flats to feast on shellfish and other food.
South Korea, now one of the world's largest economies, launched its reclamation project decades ago to increase its farm land when it was trying to rise from the ashes of the 1950-1953 Korean War and now says it will use the land for factories and recreation sites.
The study indicated that the critically endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper and the endangered Spotted Greenshank were being pushed to extinction by the loss of wetlands.
"There have been large declines and some of this is irreversible," said Nial Moores, a British-born conservationist and director of Birds Korea. "We anticipate the declines will not only continue but become more obvious in other species."
South Korean environmental officials have said they thought there would be no major harm done to migratory birds because they would be able to find food at nearby wetlands in the country.
"The evidence very strongly indicates that most shorebird populations are declining in the Republic of Korea (South Korea), the study said.
The study said the loss of wetlands at Saemangeum has decreased water quality on the coast, which has led to a loss of marine life and puts other areas at risk.
The conservation groups who conducted the study through bird counts for three years are calling on the South Korean government to restore the tidal flow in the area by opening and enlarging the sluice gates.
(Editing by David Fox)
Patrick Worsnip Yahoo News 21 Oct 08;
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – International efforts have pushed back the spread of bird flu this year, but the risk of a global influenza pandemic killing millions is as great as ever, the United Nations and World Bank reported on Tuesday.
Most countries now have plans to combat a pandemic, but many of the plans are defective, said the report, issued ahead of a bird flu conference due to be attended by ministers from some 60 countries in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, from October 24-26.
The report, fourth in a series since a bird flu scare swept the globe three years ago, followed a new World Bank estimate that a severe flu pandemic could cost $3 trillion and result in a drop of nearly 5 percent in world gross domestic product.
The highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus is endemic in poultry in parts of Asia, but experts fear it will mutate into a form that is easily passed from human to human, sparking a pandemic similar to three others in the past century.
The U.N.-World Bank report said that in the first nine months of this year no countries were newly infected with highly pathogenic bird flu, compared with four in the first half of 2007. Just 20 countries had experienced outbreaks so far this year, compared with 25 last year.
Since late 2003 there have been 387 cases of humans catching the disease from birds, of whom 245 have died in Asia, Africa and Europe. But of these there have been only 36 human cases this year, of which 28 proved fatal.
"This particular virus, H5N1, is a much milder threat now than it was in September 2005," U.N. influenza coordinator David Nabarro told a news conference.
PANDEMIC THREAT UNCHANGED
But the report said H5N1 was still "actively circulating among poultry in a number of hotspots" and was entrenched in Indonesia and Egypt. It called for continued vigilance and investment worldwide to combat the disease, saying, "The threat of an influenza pandemic remains unchanged."
Nearly all the 148 countries that provided data for the report have contingency plans in place to deal with a pandemic, the authors said.
But many plans were "not legally or logistically feasible" and lessons from simulations had not been drawn on to revise plans, they said. Authorities in rich countries were better prepared than in poor countries, they added.
"We worry that many of those plans have still not been adequately tested to see whether or not they will be valid when the pandemic actually starts," Nabarro said.
"It's not enough just to have written a plan and have everybody signing off on it, you also have to check it, test it and make sure that it works."
Nabarro also said while the focus had been on H5N1, "any influenza virus could cause a pandemic and we just can't say for certain when the next pandemic will come."
The World Bank has estimated that more than 70 million people could die worldwide in a severe pandemic. According to a Stanford University Web site, some 20-40 million people died in the so-called Spanish Flu influenza pandemic in 1918-1919.
In its latest study, a September update of a report first published two years ago, the World Bank raised the cost of such a pandemic from $1.5-$2 trillion to more than $3 trillion and said world GDP could drop by 4.8 percent.
A spectre is haunting American environmentalism, says James Gustave Speth, the spectre of failure.
environment360 part of the Guardian Environmental Network
guardian.co.uk 21 Oct 08;
The US environmental movement is failing – by any measure, the state of the earth has never been more dire. What's needed, a leading environmentalist writes, is a new, inclusive green politics that challenges basic assumptions about consumerism and unlimited growth.
All of us who have been part of the environmental movement in the United States must now face up to a deeply troubling paradox: Our environmental organizations have grown in strength and sophistication, but the environment has continued to go downhill, to the point that the prospect of a ruined planet is now very real. How could this have happened?
Before addressing this question and what can be done to correct it, two points must be made. First, one shudders to think what the world would look like today without the efforts of environmental groups and their hard-won victories in recent decades. However serious our environmental challenges, they would be much more so had not these people taken a stand in countless ways. And second, despite their limitations, the approaches of modern-day environmentalism remain essential: Right now, they are the tools readily at hand with which to address many pressing problems, including global warming and climate disruption. Despite the critique of American environmentalism that follows, these points remain valid.
Lost ground
The need for appraisal would not be so urgent if environmental conditions were not so dire. The mounting threats point to an emerging environmental tragedy of unprecedented proportions.
Half the world's tropical and temperate forests are now gone. The rate of deforestation in the tropics continues at about an acre a second, and has for decades. Half the planet's wetlands are gone. An estimated 90 percent of the large predator fish are gone, and 75 percent of marine fisheries are now overfished or fished to capacity. Almost half of the corals are gone or are seriously threatened. Species are disappearing at rates about 1,000 times faster than normal. The planet has not seen such a spasm of extinction in 65 million years, since the dinosaurs disappeared. Desertification claims a Nebraska-sized area of productive capacity each year globally. Persistent toxic chemicals can now be found by the dozens in essentially each and every one of us.
The earth's stratospheric ozone layer was severely depleted before its loss was discovered. Human activities have pushed atmospheric carbon dioxide up by more than a third and have started in earnest the most dangerous change of all — planetary warming and climate disruption. Everywhere, earth's ice fields are melting. Industrial processes are fixing nitrogen, making it biologically active, at a rate equal to nature's; one result is the development of hundreds of documented dead zones in the oceans due to overfertilization. Freshwater withdrawals are now over half of accessible runoff, and water shortages are multiplying here and abroad.
The United States, of course, is deeply complicit in these global trends, including our responsibility for about 30 percent of the carbon dioxide added thus far to the atmosphere. But even within the United States itself, four decades of environmental effort have not stemmed the tide of environmental decline. The country is losing 6,000 acres of open space every day, and 100,000 acres of wetlands every year. About a third of U.S. plant and animal species are threatened with extinction. Half of U.S. lakes and a third of its rivers still fail to meet the standards that by law should have been met by 1983. And we have done little to curb our wasteful energy habits or our huge population growth.
Here is one measure of the problem: All we have to do to destroy the planet's climate and biota and leave a ruined world to our children and grandchildren is to keep doing exactly what we are doing today, with no growth in human population or the world economy. Just continue to generate greenhouse gases at current rates, just continue to impoverish ecosystems and release toxic chemicals at current rates, and the world in the latter part of this century won't be fit to live in. But human activities are not holding at current levels – they are accelerating, dramatically.
The size of the world economy has more than quadrupled since 1960 and is projected to quadruple again by mid-century. It took all of human history to grow the $7 trillion world economy of 1950. We now grow by that amount in a decade.
The escalating processes of climate disruption, biotic impoverishment, and toxification, which continue despite decades of warnings and earnest effort, constitute a severe indictment of the system of political economy in which we live and work. The pillars of today's capitalism, as they are now constituted, work together to produce an economic and political reality that is highly destructive environmentally.
Powerful corporate interests whose overriding objective is to grow by generating profit (including profit from avoiding the environmental costs their companies create, amassing deep subsidies and benefits from government, and continued deployment of technologies originally designed with little or no regard for the environment); markets that systematically fail to recognize environmental costs unless corrected by government; government that is subservient to corporate interests and the growth imperative; rampant consumerism spurred by sophisticated advertising and marketing; economic activity now so large in scale that its impacts alter the fundamental biophysical operations of the planet — all combine to deliver an ever-growing world economy that is undermining the ability of the earth to sustain life.
Are environmentalists to blame?
In assigning responsibility for environmental failure, there are many places to lay blame: the rise of the modern, anti-government right in American politics; a negligent media; the deadening complexity of today's environmental issues and programs, to mention the most notable. But a number of observers have placed much of the blame for failure on the leading environmental organizations themselves.
For example, Mark Dowie in his 1995 book Losing Ground notes that the national environmental organizations crafted an agenda and pursued a strategy based on the civil authority and good faith of the federal government. "Therein," he believes, "lies the inherent weakness and vulnerability of the environmental movement. Civil authority and good faith regarding the environment have proven to be chimeras in Washington." Dowie argues that the national environmental groups also "misread and underestimate[d] the fury of their antagonists."
The mainstream environmental organizations were challenged again in 2004 in the now-famous The Death of Environmentalism. In it, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus write that America's mainstream environmentalists are not "articulating a vision of the future commensurate with the magnitude of the crisis. Instead they are promoting technical policy fixes like pollution controls and higher vehicle mileage standards — proposals that provide neither the popular inspiration nor the political alliances the community needs to deal with the problem."
Shellenberger and Nordhaus believe environmentalists don't recognize that they are in a culture war — a war over core values and a vision for the future.
These criticisms and others stem from the fundamental decision of today's environmentalism to work within the system. This core decision grew out of the successes of the environmental community in the 1970s, which seemed to confirm the correctness of that approach. Our failure to execute a dramatic mid-course correction when circumstances changed can be seen in hindsight as a major blunder.
Here is what I mean by working within the system. When today's environmentalism recognizes a problem, it believes it can solve that problem by calling public attention to it, framing policy and program responses for government and industry, lobbying for those actions, and litigating for their enforcement. It believes in the efficacy of environmental advocacy and government action. It believes that good-faith compliance with the law will be the norm, and that corporations can be made to behave and will increasingly weave environmental objectives into their business strategies.
Today's environmentalism tends to be pragmatic and incrementalist — its actions are aimed at solving problems and often doing so one at a time. It is more comfortable proposing innovative policy solutions than framing inspirational messages. These characteristics are closely allied to a tendency to deal with effects rather than underlying causes. Most of our major environmental laws and treaties, for example, address the resulting environmental ills much more than their causes. In the end, environmentalism accepts compromises as part of the process. It takes what it can get.
Today's environmentalism also believes that problems can be solved at acceptable economic costs — and often with net economic benefit — without significant lifestyle changes or threats to economic growth. It will not hesitate to strike out at an environmentally damaging facility or development, but it sees itself, on balance, as a positive economic force.
Environmentalists see solutions coming largely from within the environmental sector. They may worry about the flaws in and corruption of our politics, for example, but that is not their professional concern. That's what Common Cause or other groups do. Similarly, environmentalists know that the prices for many things need to be higher, and they are aware that environmentally honest prices would create a huge burden on the half of American families that just get by. But universal health care and other government action needed to address America's gaping economic injustices are not seen as part of the environmental agenda.
Today's environmentalism is also not focused strongly on political activity or organizing a grassroots movement. Electoral politics and mobilizing a green political movement have played second fiddle to lobbying, litigating, and working with government agencies and corporations.
A central precept, in short, is that the system can be made to work for the environment. In this frame of action, scant attention is paid to the corporate dominance of economic and political life, to transcending our growth fetish, to promoting major lifestyle changes and challenging the materialistic values that dominate our society, to addressing the constraints on environmental action stemming from America's vast social insecurity and hobbled democracy, to framing a new American story, or to building a new environmental politics.
Not everything, of course, fits within these patterns. There have been exceptions from the start, and recent trends reflect a broadening in approaches. Greenpeace has certainly worked outside the system, the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club have had a sustained political presence, groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund have developed effective networks of activists around the country, the World Resources Institute has augmented its policy work with on-the-ground sustainable development projects, and environmental justice concerns and the emerging climate crisis have spurred the proliferation of grassroots efforts, student organizing, and community and state initiatives.
But organizations that were built to litigate and lobby for environmental causes or to do sophisticated policy studies are not necessarily the best ones to mobilize a grassroots movement or build a force for electoral politics or motivate the public with social marketing campaigns. These things need to be done, and to get them done it may be necessary to launch new organizations and initiatives with special strengths in these areas.
The methods and style of today's environmentalism are not wrongheaded, just far, far too restricted as an overall approach. The problem has been the absence of a huge, complementary investment of time, energy, and money in other, deeper approaches to change. And here, the leading environmental organizations must be faulted for not doing nearly enough to ensure these investments were made.
America has run a 40-year experiment on whether this mainstream environmentalism can succeed, and the results are now in. The full burden of managing accumulating environmental threats has fallen to the environmental community, both those in government and outside. But that burden is too great. The system of modern capitalism as it operates today will continue to grow in size and complexity and will generate ever-larger environmental consequences, outstripping efforts to cope with them. Indeed, the system will seek to undermine those efforts and constrain them within narrow limits. Working only within the system will, in the end, not succeed — what is needed is transformative change in the system itself.
Environmental protection requires a new politics
This new politics must, first of all, ensure that environmental concern and advocacy extend to the full range of relevant issues. The environmental agenda should expand to embrace a profound challenge to consumerism and commercialism and the lifestyles they offer, a healthy skepticism of growthmania and a redefinition of what society should be striving to grow, a challenge to corporate dominance and a redefinition of the corporation and its goals, a commitment to deep change in both the functioning and the reach of the market, and a powerful assault on the anthropocentric and contempocentric values that currently dominate.
Environmentalists must also join with social progressives in addressing the crisis of inequality now unraveling America's social fabric and undermining its democracy. It is a crisis of soaring executive pay, huge incomes, and increasingly concentrated wealth for a small minority, occurring simultaneously with poverty near a 30-year high, stagnant wages despite rising productivity, declining social mobility and opportunity, record levels of people without health insurance, failing schools, increased job insecurity, swelling jails, shrinking safety nets, and the longest work hours among the rich countries. In an America with such vast social insecurity, economic arguments, even misleading ones, will routinely trump environmental goals.
Similarly, environmentalists must join with those seeking to reform politics and strengthen democracy. What we are seeing in the United States is the emergence of a vicious circle: income disparities and influence to wealthy constituencies and large businesses, which further imperils the potential of the democratic process to act to correct the growing income disparities. Corporations have been the principal economic actors for a long time; now they are the principal political actors as well. Neither environment nor society fares well under corporatocracy. Environmentalists need to embrace public financing of elections, regulation of lobbying, nonpartisan Congressional redistricting, and other political reform measures as core to their agenda. Today's politics will never deliver environmental sustainability.
The current financial crisis and, at this writing, the response to it, reveal a system of political economy that is profoundly committed to profits and growth and profoundly indifferent to people and society. This system is at least as indifferent to its impacts on nature. Left uncorrected, it is inherently ruthless and rapacious, and it is up to citizens, acting mainly through government, to inject values of fairness and sustainability into the system. But this effort commonly fails because progressive politics are too enfeebled and Washington is increasingly in the hands of powerful corporate interests and concentrations of great wealth. The best hope for real change in America is a fusion of those concerned about environment, social justice, and strong democracy into one powerful progressive force.
The new environmentalism must work with this progressive coalition to build a mighty force in electoral politics. This will require major efforts at grassroots organizing; strengthening groups working at the state and community levels; and developing motivational messages and appeals — indeed, writing a new American story, as Bill Moyers has urged. Our environmental discourse has thus far been dominated by lawyers, scientists, and economists. Now, we need to hear a lot more from the poets, preachers, philosophers, and psychologists.
James Gustave Speth is author of The Bridge at the End of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability and dean of the Yale University School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. He co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1970, served as chair of the Council on Environmental Quality in the Carter Administration, and in 1982 founded the World Resources Institute, where he served as president until 1992.
Pete Harrison, PlanetArk 22 Oct 08;
LUXEMBOURG - Britain must remove bottlenecks holding back wind farms and other renewable energy projects as part of a drive that will create new jobs in green technologies, climate minister Ed Miliband said on Monday.
Britain is trying to work out how to meet its EU target of getting 15 percent of UK energy from renewable sources such as the wind and sun by 2020, compared to just 1.3 percent in 2005.
But dozens of windpower projects are stuck in the country's outdated and cumbersome planning pipeline, or awaiting connection to the electricity grid.
"We are clear we need to do more in terms of renewable energy," Miliband told Reuters at a meeting of environment ministers in Luxembourg. "That's an important source of potential employment, and we will only see renewables grow."
Miliband said Britain would promote renewables by trying to resolve problems with connecting wind farms to the grid, overhaul the planning system and improve methods of funding renewables by using a banded system of incentives.
"By acting on those three issues, as we'll be doing over the coming period, is one of the ways of increasing renewable energy," he said.
In an effort to circumvent local planning objections to unsightly wind turbines on land, the UK is looking at building more at sea. Last month it said it was considering plans to install 15,000 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind power by 2020 compared to 600 MW now.
"We're about to overtake Denmark this week in terms of gigawatts of offshore wind," he added.
AMBITIOUS TARGETS
Europe hopes to lead the world in battling climate change, with ambitious targets of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by a fifth by 2020, but the financial crisis has pushed the issue down the agenda and prompted calls for softer goals.
Italy shocked a summit of EU leaders last week by threatening to veto the plans if its industries were not protected, and a coalition of Eastern European states renewed complaints the plan will push up electricity prices.
But Miliband said fighting climate change could go hand in hand with boosting economic growth.
"Some people say we can't meet both economic issues and the climate change targets," he said. "I think that's wrong. There are ways these two can come together -- employment in new green technology being one example."
He said growth could also come from new technology to allow power stations to trap climate warming gases from coal -- known as carbon capture and storage (CCS) -- and from work to insulate British homes.
The UK plans to fund a demonstration project for the untested CCS technology, which captures CO2 and buries it underground, for example in depleted gas fields.
UK initiatives with industry contribute about 1.3 billion pounds a year to energy efficiency and home insulation projects.
"It's important, but a lot more work needs to be done on how Britain and Europe can lead on green technology," said Miliband. There's rich potential here."
(Editing by James Jukwey)
Elliot Morley, BBC Green Room 21 Oct 08;
The low-carbon economy is an integral part of economic recovery, not a luxurious extra, says Elliot Morley, president of GLOBE International. In this week's Green Room, he sets out the reasons why the current financial crisis offers a unique opportunity for us to clean up our act.
The world's focus is rightly on the turmoil in the financial markets and the global economic slowdown.
Some commentators, indeed some politicians, have used the deteriorating economic circumstances to argue that tackling climate change through the transition to a low-carbon economy is a luxury item; saying it is too expensive, could damage competitiveness, and should be a secondary political objective.
This is an understandable view but, in my opinion, it is short-sighted.
The global economy and the climate system are linked and the current slowdown represents a unique opportunity to use public sector investment to kick-start the economy and build the low-carbon infrastructure we need for our long-term prosperity.
The low-carbon economy is an integral part of economic recovery, not an optional bolt on.
'Unique opportunity'
Some economists are arguing that in order to kick-start the economy, governments will need to invest in major infrastructure projects to help stimulate demand in the economy, increase investment and create jobs.
This presents us with a unique opportunity to create the low-carbon infrastructure we need for our future prosperity, such as more renewable energy generation, better public transport networks, smarter and more flexible electricity grids, "retrofitting" buildings to increase energy efficiency, and a network of pipelines to carry captured CO2 from fossil fuel power plants to storage sites under the North Sea.
This investment in infrastructure, together with policies to structure financial and industrial markets to deliver social and environmental goods, would help reignite the economy, reduce our dependence on imported fossil fuels and improve energy and climate security.
The political will has been found to stabilise the banking crisis. Now we need that same political will to tackle the economic slowdown to tackle the twin challenges of climate and energy security.
So, what are the building blocks required to generate the political support to drive economic investment into a low-carbon future?
Firstly, we need a global political agreement on how to tackle climate change beyond 2012. Most eyes are focusing on the UN meeting in Copenhagen in 2009 for a settlement.
However, if negotiations are to be successful, the political conditions must be created beforehand. The Italian G8 Summit next July is a key milestone.
Prime Minister Berlusconi has a chance to demonstrate real leadership by urging world leaders to agree the shape of a post-2012 deal and to do so against a backdrop of challenging economic conditions.
And it is crucial that the major emerging economies of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa are given an equal seat at the negotiating table.
Emerging economies will only be persuaded to take part in the transition to a low-carbon economy if we begin the discussion by recognising their new position in the world.
EU leadership is critical and it was heartening last week to see the EU Council reaffirm its determination to meet its self-imposed ambitious emissions reduction targets, and the UK's new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change commit the UK to 80% emissions cuts from 1990 levels by 2050.
When I was in Beijing earlier this year, the members of the National People's Congress I met told me that the EU's targets had significant influence on Chinese decision-makers. This ambition must not be allowed to slip if we are to be successful in Copenhagen.
Secondly, we need a global carbon market. Having a significant price on carbon is the single most efficient way of driving CO2 out of the economy.
The EU's Emission Trading Scheme is the foundation for this. We now need to link this to markets emerging in the US, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
And, as recommended by GLOBE's working group on market mechanisms, in the context of the financial turmoil and the focus on market regulation, we must ensure that the global carbon market is regulated by an independent body with the authority and transparency to build confidence and ensure integrity.
Thirdly, the price on carbon must be backed with regulation and innovative financing to drive global investment into clean technology.
By setting ambitious efficiency standards on new appliances, buildings and technology, we can use the clout of the world's biggest markets to drive innovation around the world.
These actions do not just reduce emissions. They have huge economic benefits. By driving investment into clean technology and diversifying our energy resources we can help reduce the inflationary pressures and price volatility of oil, while creating jobs in all sectors from design and manufacturing, to engineering, IT and consultancy.
The benefits would not simply be felt in the developed world. Developing countries have a lot to gain too. As host nations for emissions reduction projects in the carbon market they can attract inward investment into clean energy, along with technology and skills transfer from developed countries.
Fresh thinking
As manufacturing centres for the clean technologies needed around the world, developing countries can create the jobs and wealth needed to develop their economies along a low-carbon path.
China is an obvious example. It is already the global manufacturing centre for wind turbines, a vast number of which are deployed in wind farms on its own soil. It is here we can begin to see some links between the environmental and financial crises.
It is the world's biggest carbon emitter, it holds vast reserves of wealth but, although so far it has been shielded from the financial turmoil, orders for its various manufacturing centres are set to fall as a result of the slowing demand from the industrialised nations.
This means that China too is likely to feel the downturn, but herein lies the opportunity.
China, and other countries with reserves of sovereign wealth, could invest in low-carbon as a way of reinvigorating the global economy which, in turn, will reinvigorate their own.
We have recently seen a smaller scale example with Abu Dhabi investing in a 20% share in the Thames Array wind farm. This is a sensible move from oil producing countries, diversifying their investments into the future global energy infrastructure and contributing to lower emissions.
It is an example other oil producers should follow and demonstrates that a post-2012 treaty is an opportunity for oil producers, not a threat as some currently perceive.
To help create the right political conditions for success in Copenhagen, GLOBE is launching an International Commission on Climate and Energy Security.
The Commission will comprise of senior legislators from G8 countries and the major emerging economies of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa to identify the most difficult domestic obstacles, and to explore in-depth, as well as politically test, the specific outcomes required from the G8 summit.
The work of these legislators gives me great hope that G8 leaders will rise to the challenge in Italy next year and help prepare the ground for an ambitious and effective post-2012 agreement to tackle climate change.
Such an agreement is not just necessary to protect our climate but also to provide a framework within which we can kick-start our economies, create jobs and secure our future prosperity.
Elliot Morley is president of GLOBE International and was the UK prime minister's special representative to the G8's Gleneagles Dialogue
The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website
Yahoo News 21 Oct 08;
GENEVA (AFP) – The financial and climate change crises facing the world are interlinked and businesses can only tackle them through concerted, coordinated and coherent action, environmental experts said Tuesday.
"They can't be separated, they're two sides of the (same) coin and therefore the solutions have to be coordinated too," said Erik Rasmussen, head of a Danish think tank and member of the Copenhagen Climate Council.
Rasmussen was speaking in Geneva as representatives from over 150 companies, civil society groups, governments and aid agencies gathered for a meeting of the UN Global Compact, a body set up by former UN chief Kofi Annan to boost ties between business and international bodies.
The focus of the current meeting is climate change, and what businesses can do to develop a framework for environmental policy once the Kyoto Protocols expire in 2012.
Rasmussen and other participants acknowledged that the current global economic crisis will have an impact on the climate change debate, but stressed the long-term nature of the problem could not be solved by short-term solutions.
"We have to reframe the whole climate debate issue because the global landscape has changed in the past weeks and months and will do so even more," Rasmussen said.
Georg Kell, executive director of the Global Compact, told journalists that many companies were indeed cutting back on so-called "philanthropic investments" as hard times bite.
The International Labour Organization warned on Monday that the financial crisis could lead to an extra 20 million jobs being lost by the end of next year.
But Kell stressed that for many corporations, a sustainable environmental policy was now core to their business model and would not be jettisoned.
"A growing number of businesses is making a choice that tells us that a sustainable future and business competitiveness can complement each other," he said.
Posts
visitors since Nov 07