Comet, City Mangroves and other surprises
a roundup of recent reef and shore activities on the singapore celebrates our reefs blog
Common Kingfisher in comfort behaviour
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Another nudi IDed
on the colourful clouds blog
A cutie at Buloh
on the colourful clouds blog
Yet more Singaporeans turn to bottled water, thinking it is healthier
Tessa Wong, Straits Times 3 Nov 08;
IT IS cheap, clean and convenient. Why settle for plain tap water when bottled is better?
So Singaporeans must believe, as the country has nearly doubled its consumption of still bottled water in the last 10 years, outstripping population growth in the same period, which was 25 per cent.
Supermarket shelves are stocked with bottled water from as far away as Fiji and Serbia and costing up to three times more than common brands from Malaysia and Indonesia.
According to research company Euro-
monitor International, Singapore spent $98.3 million on still bottled water last year, a jump of nearly 30 per cent from five years ago.
While the 64.4 million litres of bottled water we glugged last year is but a small percentage of what we actually drink annually - experts estimate that volume at 4.19 billion litres - the amount has grown steadily over the last decade.
We now drink 80.7 per cent more bottled still water than we did in 1997.
Why the thirst? Analysts point to an increasingly mature market that is becoming more aware of bottled water's plus points, such as its convenience.
'It's easy to bring around, and seen as a cheaper alternative to soft drinks. Tap water is still not widely available in water coolers and dispensers in public areas, and nobody really wants to drink water from sinks in public toilets,' said Euromonitor's Asia-Pacific research manager, Mr Kelvin Chan.
US journalist Elizabeth Royte, who recently published a book on the bottled water industry, argues that the global trend is to drink bottled water, which is marketed as safer and healthier.
'People are responding to the idea that bottled water is somehow purer, or more natural,' said Ms Royte, who is the author of Bottlemania: How Water Went On Sale And Why We Bought It.
A case in point is university student Ian Ow, 21, who says he drinks only Evian water from France. He spends about $150 a month downing at least one 1.5-litre bottle a day.
'I know our water is relatively clean, but still, part of it is recycled water from the toilet bowl. I'm just not thrilled about that,' he said.
What he may not know is that bottled water may not exactly be that clean either.
Beverage companies have come under fire recently for dubious sources and water quality. Last month, the US non-profit Environmental Working Group found that 10 major brands of bottled water in the United States contained 39 pollutants, such as disinfection by-products, fertiliser residue and pain medication.
In the last five years, the Consumers Association of Singapore and the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority received 17 complaints from the public about bottled water sold here. These included discomfort experienced after drinking the water, particles found floating in the water and unusual taste. One consumer even found a mosquito in a bottle of water.
Safety aside, there is no real need for people to drink bottled water for health reasons, said one expert.
Toxicologist Ong Choon Nam of the National University of Singapore said that while major brands do appear to have high amounts of minerals, Singapore's fortified tap water already contains 'acceptable' levels of minerals such as calcium and magnesium.
'Based on international studies, ideally we should consume at least 50mg to 60mg for calcium and 5mg to 10mg of magnesium per litre of water,' said Professor Ong, who is a member of the World Health Organisation's (WHO's) drinking water quality committee.
He pointed out that many bottled water brands on supermarket shelves in fact contained distilled water, which has little or no mineral content at all.
Plastic not so fantastic
BUT the big reason that environmental groups in the West have campaigned against bottled water of late is its carbon footprint.
The debate has centred on the resources used to produce, transport and refrigerate the bottles.
Why transport Fiji Water thousands of kilometres into supermarkets on the other side of the world when water is readily available at one's doorstep, activists have questioned.
Then there is the environmental impact of throwing away plastic bottles. According to the Earth Policy Institute, Americans dispose of more than 60 million plastic bottles per day, which require 1.5 million barrels of oil per year to manufacture.
Plastic bottles formed part of the 659,800 tonnes of plastic waste that Singapore generated last year, including industrial plastic waste generated by factories. Only 11 per cent was recycled.
There have been fledgling efforts to change this. Environmentalist group Eco Singapore recently launched an online campaign to reduce plastic wastage. It has collected 1,000 pledges from the public since the start of this year.
'Singaporeans should care (about this issue) because prices of water consumption, issues of proper waste management and sustainable resource usage will impede our daily lifestyle, both in our pockets and health, in time to come,' said Mr Wilson Ang, head of Eco Singapore.
There are also growing concerns about the ethics of bottled water.
'Part of the backlash in the United States against bottled water is moral, that something so essential to life shouldn't be bottled up and sold for enormous profit,' said Ms Royte.
In terms of safety and environmental impact, it seems that tap water does as good or a better job than bottled.
Said Mr Harry Seah, director of PUB's technology and water quality office: 'Our water is well within the WHO drinking water guidelines and it is safe to drink from the tap.'
It is a familiar message the public has heard countless times from the national water agency over the past two decades.
Still, judging from the bottled water sector's continued growth - Euromonitor projects that it will grow at 15.9 per cent from now till 2012 - such assurances may be increasingly falling on deaf ears.
Said church worker Katherine Chan, 38, who buys bottled water at least once a week: 'I still think to a large extent that bottled water's healthier than tap. Sometimes you're not sure if the taps are clean, but at least bottled water's got minerals and it's processed.'
Sales of water filters, purifiers on the rise
Straits Times 3 Nov 08;
ANOTHER sign that Singaporeans are becoming less willing to drink water straight from the tap: the burgeoning popularity of water filters.
Hardware stores and importers said consumers have been buying more filters and purifiers, which can cost anything from $40 to nearly $1,700.
Do-it-yourself chain Home-Fix, for instance, has seen a 30 per cent increase in sales between September last year and June this year, compared to a similar period the year before.
Rival chain Self-Fix has seen a 20 per cent increase in the last five years.
Both shops sell the low-end filters.
Importers of popular brands of filters such as Brita and Advante, as well as local company Osim, declined
to give figures, but said sales have been 'healthy' and are experiencing 'strong growth'.
Filters and purifiers currently available on the market are jug filters, tap attachments, refillable dispensers, and sink systems that give you drinking water from a separate tap. They employ various technologies, from carbon particles and natural mineral stones to reverse osmosis and electrolysis.
Even condominiums are jumping on the bandwagon. For instance, a new development called Lakeshore in Jurong features a water filter attached to each unit's kitchen sink.
But water expert and National University of Singapore toxicologist Ong Choon Nam, a member of the World Health Organisation's drinking water quality expert panel, says filters are unnecessary.
'Our tap water already exceeds international standards. If psychologically, people feel a filter makes their water better, then they could go ahead. But scientifically, I don't think it's going to add any additional benefit.'
He said that if not used appropriately, filters may end up contaminating water. For instance, pathogens and algae may grow on a filter if it is not maintained or used regularly.
'It doesn't really improve on the already high quality of our tap water, and you could end up with higher chances of contamination,' added Professor Ong.
May Wong, Channel NewsAsia 2 Nov 08;
SINGAPORE: Singapore's top leaders were out on Sunday to mark the Clean and Green Singapore programme with tree plantings and carnivals.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong planted one of over 250 trees at Sengkang Riverside Park in the northeast of Singapore, paving the way for some 1,600 Singaporeans to do the same, with fruit trees like guava and mangosteen.
Such activities aim to encourage Singaporeans to care for the environment. Mr Lee also toured a fruit carnival and viewed students' environmental projects at the event.
Trees were also planted over at Braddell Heights in Serangoon Central, led by Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong who had just returned to Singapore from an official visit to South Korea.
Zhen Ming, New Paper 3 Nov 08;
I'M staring at my SP Services bill for October and it's not good.
Below the total current charges (inclusive of GST), I am reminded, with effect from 1Oct, electricity tariff is 30.45 cents/ kWh - up 21.5 per cent from previously.
My only consolation is that this electricity tariff rate rise is not permanent.
In fact, it's quite likely that my monthly utilities bill will fall back by 2009.
That's because the outlook for oil is weak.
Oil fell again on Halloween (freaky Friday?) - the last trading day of October - as the global economic crisis put crude on track for the biggest monthly drop ever.
US crude fell US$1.82 ($2.70), or almost 3per cent, to US$64.14 a barrel by mid-day Friday. It is now down by around 35 per cent for October - its steepest monthly decline to date as demand worldwide slows. This, despite an OPEC output cut.
Simply put, oil prices are now at well below half the level of their July all-time high of US$147.27.
What's more, oil prices could soon test the US$50 level again.
Quite amazing, I'm sure you'll agree, when you look back at 2007 when oil prices rose from just above US$50 in January to near US$100 at year's end. (Back then, the crude oil spot price in the US actually averaged US$72 for the whole year.)
Good news
Good news, I suppose, for all heads of household who have to pick up the tab for the monthly utilities bill. And don't forget the Singapore motorist, too.
If I'm not sounding overly enthusiastic about this financial reprieve, it's because I'm also worried about the longer-term implications.
While it's good news to know that global demand for oil is shrinking (85.7 million barrels a day in 2007), it's bad news to learn that the world is having a hard time expanding oil supply fast enough to keep up with this demand.
Energy companies must therefore continue to invest despite the downturn to avoid another spike in oil prices once the economy recovers, the chief executive of the French oil company Total said Wednesday.
'Supply will remain short, and if we don't pay attention, the recovery will come and supply will be less and the price will climb again,' Christophe de Margerie said during a speech at last week's Oil & Money 2008 conference in London.
Mr de Margerie's comments echo warnings by others that the tightening of credit might lead energy companies to abandon or postpone necessary oil projects, which could threaten supply in the future.
Output from the world's oilfields is already declining faster than previously thought, the first authoritative public study of the biggest fields shows.
Without extra investment to raise production, the natural annual rate of output decline is 9.1 per cent, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says in a draft of its forthcoming annual report, the World Energy Outlook.
More investments needed
Further investments are therefore needed to make up for the natural decline of output at existing oil fields, including those in the North Sea, Russia and Alaska.
'The future rate of decline in output from producing oilfields as they mature is the single most important determinant of the amount of new capacity that will need to be built globally to meet demand,' the IEA says.
Simply put, the oil industry is now running faster and faster, just to stand still.
The good news? This decline will not necessarily be felt in the next few years because demand is slowing down. But with the expected slowdown in investment, the eventual effect will be magnified in later years, oil executives warn.
The bad news? The IEA expects oil consumption in 2030 to reach 106.4 million barrels a day. All this increase in oil demand will come from emerging countries.
All in all, the world will need US$45 trillion - roughly three times the size of the US economy - in new energy investments.
Take it from me, one way or another, we'll all have to pay for this global effort.
# Zhen Ming, a Harvard-trained economist based in Singapore, is a freelance contributor.
Controversial crocodile dies
ABC News 2 Nov 08;
The crocodile that was at the centre of a debate over relocation programs has died in captivity after being transferred from Magnetic Island to Townsville in north Queensland.
The reptile was relocated from Cape York to the Burdekin in April and was caught by rangers after it had been seen on tourist beaches on Magnetic Island.
The Queensland Government has been criticised for moving the crocodile near Townsville and the relocation program is now being reviewed.
Queensland Parks and Wildlife executive director Alan Feely says the crocodile died at a holding facility in Townsville yesterday after eating a large number of plastic bags.
"The crocodile dying from ingesting plastic bags is unrelated to that [relocation] program," he said.
"But we need to have a hard look at how we got to where we were. But separately to that we need to make some good of the death of the crocodile in terms of people being aware of the dangers of littering."
Croc's plastic bags death surprises reef chief
ABC News 3 Nov 08;
The chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) says he is surprised to hear a crocodile swallowed enough plastic bags to kill it.
The crocodile had been relocated from Cape York in far north Queensland and was captured last week after menacing residents in waters around Magnetic Island, off Townsville.
GBRMPA chairman Russell Reicheldt says plastic is one of the biggest pollution problems facing the world's oceans.
"I didn't know it was a problem for crocodiles specifically, you tend to hear it more as a problem for turtles," he said.
"But it ... reinforces our general view that the amount of marine debris in the ocean is too much and it's damaging wildlife."
Plastic bags kill croc found in Australian tourist zone
Yahoo News 3 Nov 08;
SYDNEY (AFP) – A crocodile which was captured after menacing tourist beaches near Australia's World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef has died from eating too many plastic bags, officials said.
Queensland's Environmental Protection Agency announced Sunday that the crocodile died a day after it was captured near Magnetic Island, close to the world famous coral reef which runs along Australia's northeastern coast.
The agency said 25 plastic shopping and garbage bags had been found inside the animal, along with a plastic wine cooler bag and a rubber float.
"Because the material had compacted solidly in its stomach it was unable to digest food," it said in a statement, adding that no animal would have survived with that much plastic compressed into its gut.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said it was surprised that the 3.5 metre (11.5 foot) crocodile had swallowed enough plastic bags, apparently over a long period of time, to kill it.
"I didn't know it was a problem for crocodiles specifically, you tend to hear it more as a problem for turtles," the authority's chairman Russell Reicheldt told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Monday.
"But it... reinforces our general view that the amount of marine debris in the ocean is too much and it's damaging wildlife."
The crocodile was originally transferred from remote Cape York, near the northernmost point of Australia's east coast, some 1,000 kilometres south to near the populated area of Townsville in a satellite tracking programme.
But the giant reptile swam north and was seen around Magnetic Island, a tourist haven, where local dive operators complained it drove away business.
The relocation programme is now under review.
Wissam Keyrouz Yahoo News 2 Nov 08;
DUBAI (AFP) – Dubai's beautiful beaches have been making headlines because of a couple who allegedly had sex by the sea, but a more pervasive nuisance from washed up sewage threatens to deter tourists.
For several weeks some of the emirate's fabled beaches have been covered with the stinking contents of septic tanks as Dubai suffers the consequences of its frantic and poorly controlled development.
The foul effluent, which threatens to damage Dubai's image, highlights one of the paradoxes of the emirates -- it can build the world's tallest tower and six-star hotels but has not constructed the sewage works it needs.
Dubai officially had 1.3 million inhabitants at the end of 2006 but its population is ballooning.
New apartment blocks and neighbourhoods are rising everywhere at a record pace, but infrastructure is dragging behind.
For example, the city still has no main drainage system, hence the need for tankers to collect the contents of septic tanks and transport the waste to the emirate's only sewage treatment works at Al-Awir, out in open desert.
A second plant is under construction but will not be in use until next year.
For the moment, the existing site is operating at full capacity and the queue of tankers awaiting their turn to unload snakes out of site amid a miasma of nauseating fumes.
"The wait can be more than 10 hours. It is hard to bear, especially when it is hot," Ijaz Mohammed, a tanker driver from Pakistan, told AFP.
Drivers are paid by the journey and in September some of them got fed up with the long queues and started offloading into the ditches intended as run-offs for the rare showers of rain.
The dumped effluent first runs into the sea, then drifts onto beaches, in particular those of the fashionable Jumeirah district, home to some of Dubai's swankiest hotels.
"This pollution is accidental and results from the practices of certain drivers," Mohammed Abdelrahmane Hasan, held of the city council's environmental services department, told AFP.
Punishment is heavy for illegal offloading of waste, with the employer of any driver caught in the act being liable for a fine of up to 100,000 dirhams (27,200 dollars). The vehicle can also be impounded.
The local authority has decided to encourage informers after 55 drivers in one week were spotted while dumping their loads.
It has set up a public freephone number with the incentive of a 2,000 dirham (about 545 dollars) reward if the offence is confirmed.
However, the illegal unloading goes on, and not just into watercourses leading to the sea.
A British man driving a 4X4 vehicle in sand near the port of Jebel Ali, west of Dubai, was surprised to come across a lake of excrement, local newspapers reported.
Doctors have warned of a heightened risk of catching diseases such as typhoid or hepatitis but adults and children continue to bathe in the sea.
The situation is starting to worry some tourists, such as "Anna", a young Russian encountered outside a grand hotel.
"Yes, I've heard about that and it worries me. I am going to spend more time shopping, at the pool and sunbathing," she told AFP.
Tourism is the motor of the local economy and the problem could have serious consequences if it starts to affect Dubai's image as a clean city, something it prides itself on.
This is why the city council tries to be reassuring.
"Pollution is only affecting an area of beach and all tests prove that bathing is risk free," insists Hasan, the environment chief.
It's the world's most precious commodity, yet many of us take it for granted. But that's all about to change... Special report by Juliette Jowit
Juliette Jowit, The Observer, The Guardian 2 Nov 08;
It's hard to imagine why humans would have chosen the achingly arid stone desert of Wadi Faynan for their first settlement. But water would have been one important reason, says archaeologist Steven Mithen. When Neolithic men and women arrived 11,500 years ago, things were very different: the climate was cooler and wetter; the landscape was covered in vegetation including wild figs, legumes and cereals, and there would have been wild goats and ibex for meat.
Initially WF16, as it's now called, would have been a seasonal camp. But Mithen, professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading, and his fellow archaeologist Bill Finlayson believe that, gradually, people stayed longer.
Sifting evidence from so long ago, the archaeologists can't be sure, but remains of food from different seasons and the scale of 'rubbish' piles suggest that about 10,000 years ago the inhabitants stopped moving altogether. If they are right, it would make this one of the oldest sites ever found where humans made a permanent settlement, learned to farm, and changed the course of human civilisation. But the tiny community drawn to water, which attracted successive waves of settlements, would eventually all but destroy the resource which made life possible. It is a pattern that's been repeated for millennia, around the world, and it now threatens us on a global scale.
First people cut trees for shelter and fuel, until rains swept away the soil instead of seeping into shallow aquifers, and the springs dried up. At least as long ago as the Bronze Age, farmers began mankind's obsession with diverting water for crops to feed the growing population. Meanwhile, the moist, cool climate which encouraged the first settlement was naturally becoming drier and hotter.
At least twice, historians believe, Wadi Faynan was abandoned. The first time possibly because of a sharp change in the climate, and later because it became too polluted. Today, Bedouin who survive in the valley have laid pipes down the dry stream bed to suck what is left of the spring in order to irrigate fields of tomatoes they have scratched out of the dry soil. But it's getting harder. According to local water lore, good rains now come in less than every other year.
The farmers in Wadi Faynan are not alone. Like communities around the world, they are paying the price for thousands of years of exploitation of our environment. Already, 1bn people do not have enough clean water to drink, and at least 2bn cannot rely on adequate water to drink, clean and eat - let alone have enough left for nature. Lack of water is blamed for many of the world's most distressing crises: millions of deaths each year from disease and malnutrition, chronic hunger, keeping children away from schools which offer hope of a better life. Mostly it is the poor who suffer, but increasingly rich nations are struggling, too. Australia has endured so many dry years that a leading climatologist has said it's time to stop saying 'gripped by drought' and accept that the lack of rain is permanent.
In parts of the US supplies are so vulnerable that last autumn the Red Cross delivered water parcels to the town of Orme in Tennessee. 'I thought, "That can't be the Red Cross. We're Americans!"' resident Susan Anderson told a reporter. In California, some farmers abandoned their crops this year as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared the first state-wide drought for 17 years. Meanwhile Barcelona was so desperate that it began importing tankers of water from cities along the coast. Even in the notoriously wet UK, water has become such a problem in the crowded southeast that one company plans to build a desalination plant, the sort of desperate measure associated with oil-rich desert states.
The Stockholm International Water Institute talks about 'an acute and devastating humanitarian crisis'; the founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, warns of a 'perfect storm'; Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations Secretary General, has raised the spectre of 'water wars'. And, as the population keeps growing and getting richer, and global warming changes the climate, experts are warning that unless something is done, billions more will suffer lack of water - precipitating hunger, disease, migration and ultimately conflict.
In a bid to avert this catastrophe, politicians, economists and engineers are pressing for dramatic changes to the way water is managed, from tree planting and simple storage wells, to multibillion dollar schemes to replumb the planet with dams and pipes, or manufacture freshwater from sewers and the sea.
The water crisis is an expression of the environmental catastrophe of human over-exploitation. This is the age the Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen has called 'the Anthropocene', because the natural system has been so fundamentally altered by human activity. And it all began when people settled down and began to chop wood and farm.
'The start of sedentary communities is the start of the need to manage fresh water supplies,' says Steven Mithen. 'This is a starting point for our whole modern dilemma. It's gone from the concerns of individual settlements, to cities, to nations, and it's now a global issue.'
There is, in theory, plenty of water on the earth to sustain its 6.5bn people. More than 97 per cent of all the water on the planet is salt water, and most of the freshwater is locked up in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. But that still leaves 10m cubic kilometres (km3) of usable water, circulating in cycles of evaporation and precipitation between the atmosphere and earth, where it appears in underground aquifers, lakes and rivers, glaciers, snowpacks, wetlands, permafrost and soil. Each km3 is equivalent to 1,000bn litres, or 1bn tonnes, of water - about the remaining annual flow of the River Nile.
On the other side of the equation, the UN says individuals need five litres of water a day simply to survive in a moderate climate, and at least 50 litres a day for drinking and cooking, bathing and sanitation. Industry accounts for about double the average domestic use. But agriculture needs much, much more - in fact, 90 per cent of all water used by humans. The water is not 'lost' from earth, but over-abstraction by irrigators means it is often moved from where it is needed. Tony Allan, of King's College London, estimates that, together, 6.5bn people need 8,000km3 of water each year - a fraction of what is theoretically available. 'There's certainly enough water for every person on the planet, but too often it's in the wrong places at the wrong times in the wrong amounts,' says Marq de Villiers, author of the 2001 book Water Wars
Three hours north of Wadi Faynan is the much greener Wadi Esseir, where Salah Al-Mherat and his family are one of millions of households in Jordan who feel the daily effects of inhabiting one of the driest countries on earth. Once a week, Al-Mherat gets water from the local irrigation co-operative for his fig, lemon, olive and grenadine trees and vegetables. For the rest he relies on rain. But since the Nineties the springs have been drying, sapped by demand from the nearby capital, Amman, and rain has been declining.
On a hot morning in April, Al-Mherat comes in from picking petits-pois, hitches up his smock and settles on to a pile of cushions. Fidgeting with a pot of scented tea he explains that the crops now barely cover their costs; he has to work as a security guard to supplement his income. 'When I started it was very good compared to now,' he says. 'The first impact was that the size of the irrigated area became reduced. People also changed what they irrigated, so the water now goes mainly to the trees - some farmers stopped completely from doing vegetables.' Al-Mherat says he keeps hoping things will improve, because he will pass the land to his sons. 'It's my life,' he says. 'But even if I'm positive, the reality is it's like the wish of the devil to go to paradise.'
Global population, economic development and a growing appetite for meat, dairy and fish protein have raised human water demand sixfold in 50 years. Meanwhile, supplies have been diminished in several ways: an estimated 845,000 dams block most of the world's rivers, depriving downstream communities of water and sediment, and increasing evaporation; up to half of water is lost in leakage; another 1bn people simply have no proper infrastructure; and the water left is often polluted by chemicals and heavy metals from farms and industry, blamed by the UN for poisoning more than 100m people. And still the rains are getting less reliable in many areas.
Underlying these problems is a paradox. Because water, and the movement of water, is essential for life, and central to many religions, it is traditionally regarded as a 'common' good. But no individuals are responsible for it. From Wadi Esseir to the arid American Midwest, farmers either do not pay for water or pay a fraction of what homeowners pay, so they have less incentive to conserve it and might deprive suppliers of funds to improve infrastructure.
The UN defines 'water scarcity' as fewer than 1,000m3 of renewable clean water for each person every year to drink, clean, grow food and run industry. By this measure half the world's population lives in countries suffering water scarcity. Jordan is one of the most water-scarce countries on earth, averaging just 160m3 of renewable water per person per year.
The result is that it is not just farmers who are rationed. The Al-Mherat family, like the rest of greater Amman, only get water to their house one day a week. A city of more than 2m people runs to the rhythm of 'water day', says Dr Khadija Darmame, who is part of a £1.25m project organised by Mithen and sponsored by Britain's Leverhulme Trust to study links between 'water, life and civilisation' in Jordan, from the earliest settlements to modern day.
Poor supplies and stagnant tanks occasionally lead to infections. But for most, the problem is drudgery. 'The first thing is to do the maximum laundry and then clean the house,' says Darmame. Children and men take a shower, 'and the last thing is for the women to take a shower, and then you need a few hours to fill the tanks,' stacked on every roof.
For millions of others, bad supplies are a question of life and death. Lack of clean drinking water and sanitation are largely blamed for the death of 11m children under five each year from disease and malnutrition; for nearly 1bn people who are chronically hungry; for 2bn who suffer what the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization calls 'food insecurity', because they do not have adequate food and nutrition for an 'active and healthy life'; and for keeping more than 60m girls out of school. These people then get caught in a water and poverty trap: two-thirds of the people who lack enough water for even the most basic needs live on less than $2 a day. 'Variability of water availability is strongly and negatively related to per capita income,' says Professor Jeffrey Sachs, author of Common Wealth: Economics For a Crowded Planet, and a special adviser to the UN Secretary General. Poor health, lack of education and hunger make it hard to escape.
Ultimately, lack of water is seen as a threat to peace. From genocide in Darfur to rows between states in India and the US, Ban Ki-Moon is one of several global leaders who have warned of further legal and armed disputes over water. Intuitively it is obvious people will fight over their most precious resource, but so far few conflicts have broken out. The idea of 'water wars' seized the public imagination in 2001 when Marq de Villiers's book of that name was published in the UK, but the author disagreed with the publisher's choice of title. De Villiers agrees that water is often an underlying cause of tension, but has only identified one water 'war', between Egypt and Sudan. 'You cannot do without water, so when shortages pinch, states do co-operate and compromise,' he says.
But if half the world's population lives in water-stressed countries, how do so many, from the breadbaskets of Asia to the sprawling cities in the arid American west, keep watering fields and running taps?
One reason is that water flows uphill to money, as the saying goes. Thus people in oil-rich Kuwait enjoy expensive desalination, while Palestinians suffer daily hardship; tourists in Amman can turn on the tap at any time, while those in the poorest areas of the city have access to water for a few hours each week. As Tony Allan says: 'Water shortages don't pose serious problems to gardeners in Hampshire or California homeowners with pools to fill.'
Another answer to the conundrum was identified by Allan, who in the Sixties became curious about why Middle Eastern countries without abundant water supplies were not suffering from a more obvious water crisis. The answer, he realised, was trade: by buying food, water-poor societies were 'buying' what he dubbed 'virtual water'. They were helped by farmers dumping grain into the world market once subsidies created massive over-supply. 'This potential tragedy was motoring on and hit the calm waters of the Americans and Europeans providing food [for the world market] at half cost, and the water contained in that food [was water] they didn't have to find.'
The other answer is that communities around the world have been forced to tap rivers and lakes and aquifers, sometimes millions of years old, far beyond the limit at which they can replenish themselves. Above ground, lakes are shrinking and rivers are being reduced to pathetic flows, or drying up altogether. Below ground, a largely invisible crisis is unfolding as millions of wells have been sunk into aquifers - 4m in Bangladesh alone. Many aquifers are replenishable, but not all, and many that can be recharged don't get enough rain to match demand. Sometimes the empty cavities simply collapse, putting them beyond use forever. In his recent book, Plan B 3.0, Lester Brown catalogues the results. In the breadbaskets of China, India, the US, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Israel and Mexico, water tables are falling, sometimes by many metres a year. Pumps are being drilled a kilometre or more to find water, thousands more wells have dried up altogether and agricultural yields are shrinking. These countries contain more than half the world's people and produce most of its grain, warns Brown. Meanwhile, almost forgotten amid the human suffering are the terrible consequences for the natural world: freshwater fish populations fell by half between 1970 and 2000, says the UN.
All these dams and irrigation channels and pumps and pipes allow billions of people to run up a gigantic global water overdraft. What worries experts is that there is no sign of humans withdrawing less water.
Two years ago, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) published a report by 700 experts warning that one in three people were 'enduring one form or another of water scarcity'. 'Scarcity for me is when women work hard to get water, [or] you want to allocate more but can't,' says David Molden, deputy director of the Sri Lanka-based organisation.
Molden warns that the situation is becoming 'a little bit more critical', because of continuing rising demand for food, the recent boom in biofuels and climate change. To that can also be added another, poignant 'demand': the long-overdue realisation that nature also needs water, which in Europe and other countries has led to laws to ensure 'minimum environmental flows' remain in place.
For food alone, the World Bank estimates that demand for water will rise 50 per cent by 2030, and the IWMI fears it could nearly double by 2050. Whether these crops require rain or irrigation depends on where they are grown, and how much rain there is.
Like a great river fed by many tributaries, water is a conduit for the various effects of global warming: more variable rainfall, more floods, more droughts, the melting of glaciers on which 1bn people depend for summer river flows, and rising sea levels, threatening to inundate not just coastal communities but also their freshwater aquifers, river deltas and wetlands.
From the headline figures, climate change should be good news. Crudely, scientists estimate for every 1C rise in the average global temperature, precipitation will increase one per cent, as warmer air absorbs more moisture. The world's total volume would not change, but it would be recycled more quickly, affecting the majority of the world's agriculture which depends on the volume and timing of rainfall.
Balancing all these impacts, Nigel Arnell, director of Reading University's Walker Institute for Climate Change, calculates that the number of people living in water basins exposed to water stress will rise from 1.4bn to 2.9-3.3bn by 2025 and to 3.4-5.6bn by 2055. In fact, the greatest impact in Arnell's modelling is from rising populations, particularly in China and India, and, globally, climate change is actually reducing exposure to shortages. This may be good news for some, but masks huge disruption, as some regions fear too much water, while hundreds of millions of people start to run out.
It is impossible to attribute one farm's difficulties or one year's rainfall to climate change. But if climate is the statistics of weather, then the rain gauge this year on the farm of Sameeh Al-Nuimat, northwest of Amman, is typical of what the experts forecast. Al-Nuimat had noticed a gradual decline in rainfall for years, but this year it dropped off steeply and there was no rain at all in March, a critical time for summer crops. 'My father told me he'd never seen such a year,' he says.
Such dramatic events have injected urgency into discussions about Jordan's precarious water supplies, says Al-Nuimat, who is also an irrigation engineer at the Ministry of Agriculture. 'Before, when water was available, no one worried about it. But now there's interest - every night people speaking, every night debating, at every level, from the farmer to the planner to the politician. As a farmer I'd like to see drought-resistant crops; from a civil engineering point of view we should look for mega projects; and, if you're thinking about global planning, there should be acceptance of people moving from water-scarce regions to where water is available.'
Around the world the same debates are under way. Rich countries can make significant gains from domestic efficiency, but most of the world's population does not have power showers and swimming pools, or waste great quantities of food. Instead the main focus is on reducing water in agriculture, through more efficient irrigation, by engineering seeds to grow in more arid and salty conditions, and even shifting crops. 'If the world were my farm, I'd grow things in different places,' says David Molden. But even benign-sounding conservation is often unpopular. There is widespread resistance to raising prices for water (or energy for pumping) to increase efficiency, suspicion of genetic modification, and a reluctance among farmers to abandon water-hungry but lucrative crops when they are struggling to feed their family. 'It's a socioeconomic dilemma,' says Al-Nuimat. 'You can't stop now: it's the source of their life.'
Faced with public apathy and even resistance, responses have tended to focus on increasing supply. For decades the scale of ambition has been like a game of global engineering one-upmanship: rivers have been diverted across countries, pumps sunk kilometres into fossil aquifers, and bigger plants commissioned to recycle or desalinate water. And there is no sign of a let-up. As shortages become more desperate and costs and energy use fall, Global Water Intelligence forecasts that desalination capacity will more than double by 2015, and the potential to increase wastewater recycling is enormous, being only 2 per cent of volume.
But huge costs, environmental concerns and public distaste for drinking their 'waste' has forced many communities to reconsider simpler, traditional methods, too. Some of the ideas the earliest farmers would have recognised: tree replanting, ripping out thirsty non-native plants, stone walls to hold back erosion, and rain harvesting with simple ponds and tanks. Some have even urged a return to more vegetarian diets, which at their extreme demand only half the water of a typical American meat-eater's. This is, according to Lord Haskins, the former chairman of Britain's Northern Foods group and a government adviser, 'the most virtuous and responsible step of all'.
And when all options are exhausted at home, countries have another option: to import water in food and even industrial goods. Political meddling with subsidies makes trade a controversial 'solution', but by favouring regions with a 'competitive advantage' in water it can work. Globally the IWMI estimates irrigation demand would be 11 per cent higher without trade, and quotes a projection that imports can cut future irrigation by another 19-38 per cent by 2025. Saudi Arabia has gone further than most, announcing in February that it would stop all wheat production in a few years, though other countries might now be deterred by higher food prices.
Ultimately governments are being forced down several paths at once: to raise prices to reflect the true value of water to humans and the environment, invest in technology to improve efficiency and supplies, engage in more trade, and make peace with neighbours that can hold up incoming water or food. These will only be possible, though, if people can be lifted out of poverty, to afford higher prices, capital spending and imports. 'When you diversify your economy you solve your problems,' says Allan.
Looking back at the history of mankind's struggle for enough water, experience suggests the initiative which enabled humans to settle, farm and dominate the planet will provide many solutions. But sometimes we might have to accept defeat. 'On the one hand you can see this amazing technological ingenuity of humans, which throughout prehistory and history continually invented new ways to manage water supply,' says Mithen. 'On the other, the story of the past tells us that sometimes, however brilliant your technological inventions, they are just not good enough, and you get periods of abandonment of landscapes. We have got to be prepared to invest in technology, but also to recognise in some parts of the world there are going to be areas where we're going to have to say "enough's enough".'
A person uses about 50 litres of water a day; industry accounts for double that. But agriculture needs much more - in fact, 90 per cent of all water used by humans.
Jeremy Page, Times Online3 Nov 08;
The dawn mist was still clinging to the mangroves when the maneater struck. Mohammed Rasul Hussain, 45, had left his hut in southwestern Bangladesh at sunrise three weeks ago and, with his younger brother, Sheraz, paddled across the river and into the vast Sundarbans forest.
They moored their boat and set off on foot to search for crab, wild honey and firewood in the world's largest mangrove swamp, which straddles Bangladesh's border with India.
Armed with only a machete, Mohammed did not stand a chance when the tiger leapt from the undergrowth, knocked him to the ground and sank its teeth into his neck. Sheraz could only scream in horror — and run.
They buried Mohammed that evening, minus his left leg.
“He knew the dangers of the forest, but he couldn't do anything else to survive,” said Fatima, 30, his widow and the mother of their three children. “It would be better if there were no tigers here.” Like Mohammed, villagers here have always understood the risks of entering the Sundarbans, one of the last refuges of the endangered Bengal tiger.
Spread across 3,700 square miles (9,583sq km) in the Ganges delta, the Sundarbans is home to 440 tigers, according to a joint Indian and Bangladeshi survey done in 2004.
Maneaters have long been a problem here. Almost every village has its “tiger widows” and a shrine to Bon Bibi — the forest goddess who wards off the big cat.
Since a hurricane last November, the conflict between tiger and human has escalated to a new pitch — highlighting the environmental threats to this unique habitat.
Tigers have killed twenty people in the Bangladeshi Sundarbans so far this year, compared with six in 2007 and seven in 2006, according to forestry officials.
Even more worryingly, tigers have started straying into villages on the forest's fringes.
“The situation is quite negative,” says Rajesh Chakma, the head forest ranger in Munshiganj, the worst affected district with 18 fatal attacks this year. “We could see many more attacks before the year's end, as it's mating season now and tigers become more aggressive.”
In the village of Horinagar no one goes out after dark anymore, even to use the lavatory.
On June 20 a tiger swam across the river from the Sundarbans and killed three people before villagers surrounded it, threw a noose around its neck and beat it to death with sticks. They summoned the forestry officials, as is required by law, but those who arrived could not provide help as they had no tranquillisers.
“The tigers never used to come into the villages, never in my lifetime,” says Shri Poti Mundal, 40, whose father and sister-in-law were killed by the tiger. “If they had captured it and released it, it might have come back.”
Other villages in the area have started lighting fires at night or using loudspeakers from the local mosque to scare off any approaching tigers.
Experts on tiger behaviour are unsure exactly what caused the rise in the attacks as they have not had time to do the necessary research. Most of them suspect that one central factor was Hurricane Sidr, which killed 4,000 people and destroyed 20 per cent of the Sundarbans in November 2007. “Tigers have been displaced to this area - and they are territorial,” Mr Chakma said.
Many also blame a “perfect storm” of environmental problems — rising sea levels, the silting up of rivers, annual floods and salination of fresh water supplies.
“The Sundarbans is dying,” said Ainun Nishat, the head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Bangladesh office and an expert on the Sundarbans. “The forest is getting degraded, so that means less prey,” he said. “And you must remember that this is not the tigers' natural habitat.”
The Sundarbans — a Unesco World Heritage Site —- is simply the only space left for the tigers in a country slightly bigger than England with a population of 150 million people.
Remarkably, tigers which normally inhabit inland jungle have adapted by learning to swim, catch fish and drink salty water. As fast as the animals have adapted, however, the forest has shrunk further and the human population around it has multiplied to 2.5 million.
Thousands of people now enter the forest every day — many of them former rice farmers whose land was flooded with seawater — pushing ever deeper into the tigers' domain.
It is a struggle for survival that man and beast are both doomed to lose. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted last year that rising sea levels could submerge 17 per cent of Bangladesh by 2050, creating 20 million “environmental refugees”.
A 45cm (17.7in) rise in sea levels would destroy 75 per cent of the Sundarbans, according to Unesco, and subsidence means that net water levels are already rising 3.1mm a year in parts of the forest.
Villagers are mostly unaware of such official forecasts but they know their fate is intertwined with that of the tigers.
“The Sundarbans is our national treasure — and our livelihood,” said Athar Rahman Malik, 40, who survived a tiger attack last year and still bears the scars on his head and arms. “If the Sundarbans is alive, then we are alive.”
ENDANGERED KILLER
— The Sundarbans is a Unesco World Heritage Site spread across 3,700 square miles in the Ganges river delta, straddling the border between India and Bangladesh. It is home to an estimated 440 tigers
— Bengal tigers kill by overpowering their victim and either severing the spinal cord or applying a suffocating bite to the throat. The tiger will usually drag its kill to a safe place to eat, away from other predators
— Most tigers avoid all contact with humans - those that become maneaters are often sick or injured and unable to hunt normally, or live in an area where their traditional prey has disappeared
— In 1900 there were an estimated 40,000 tigers in British India, but over the next century their numbers were devastated — first by hunting, and then by poaching and human encroachment on their habitat
— The World Wildlife Fund estimates that there are just 2,000 Bengal tigers left in the wild in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Burma and China. Of those, an estimated 200-250 are in Bangladesh
Valentine Low, Times Online 2 Nov 08;
The Prince of Wales yields to noone in his love of rainforests, but sometimes it is a love that is hard won. Yesterday he made an epic journey through the storm-lashed tropics, along dirt roads made all but impassable by the rain, to visit a camp that he believes could represent the saving of the world’s rainforests.
It is a subject close to his heart; and nothing was going to stop him getting there. The Harapan rainforest is on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where illegal loggers have cut vast swaths out of the forest over the years. Three times the size of the Isle of Wight - more than 100,000 hectares - it is now being turned around by a consortium determined to show that rainforests can, in the Prince’s words, be “worth more alive than dead”.
Saving the rainforest is one thing: getting there is another. Harapan is three hours’ drive from the nearest town, a difficult journey at the best of times. At the start of the rainy season, when dirt tracks have been turned into mudbaths, it is one only embarked upon by the brave.
As the Prince’s convoy set out from the regional capital of Jambi, the short stretch of tarmac soon gave way to a forest road pitted with ruts and craters where the only way across the numerous rivers that criss-cross the landscape was by rickety wooden bridges that looked as if they would scarcely bear the weight of the large 4x4s carrying the Prince and his party — now lacking the Duchess of Cornwall, who has returned to Britain.
The 4x4s might have been able to cope with the road - the police water cannon truck could not. Quite what protests the police were expecting that they felt it necessary to send a water cannon into the jungle was unclear, but once it had crashed into a ditch it was not going to be much use in a riot. For 20 minutes it also looked as if it was going to prevent the convoy reaching its destination, until a tow truck appeared to drag it out of the way.
If the journey to the forest was less than straightforward, the Prince - not a man who appreciates delay - did not seem unduly concerned; according to one of his party, he found it all “just hilarious”. More pertinently, he no doubt thought it a price worth paying for reaching a place which highlights perfectly the problems faced by the world’s rainforests. Twenty years ago, Harapan - home to 10 per cent of the world’s surviving Sumatran tigers - was twice the size it is today, but loggers and the palm oil industry have caused serious deforestation.
The resulting damage is about more than the loss of trees. At the Harapan Base Camp, a small community of wooden huts on stilts run by the RSPB and Birdlife, the Prince heard an impassioned plea from a local villager who, like so many others in the area, was forced off his land by the palm growers.
“All we want to do is grow our rice,” said Hasan Bada, 51, who has to support a family of 12 on an income of £2 a day. “Our community is very poor. I find it very difficult to feed my family.” The consortium is trying to help by creating jobs - as forest rangers, or in the nursery where trees are raised before being planted out - and researching better methods for growing crops such as fruit trees.
In the future, they hope to raise money by encouraging eco-tourism.
At the end of his tour the Prince, who was wearing chinos, suede boots and a safari jacket, planted a tree, giving the trowelful of compost an appreciate sniff before he put it in the hole, then stamping it down with his boot. He must have planted hundreds of trees in his time, but that must have been one of the most remote.
What with the tree planting and tramping round the forest, the time he had finished at Harapan the normally sartorially fastidious Prince found himself with a pair of trousers that were proof that the rainforest in the wet season can be a very muddy place. But once again the Prince did not seem to mind; he was muddy, but happy.
WWF website 31 Oct 08;
Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam: A visit to Brunei by HRH the Prince of Wales and HRH the Duchess of Cornwall is focussing attention on the small sultanate’s disproportionate share of pristine peatlands and forests.
“To many people, peat swamps are inhospitable places that are only of interest to nature lovers,” said Dato Hamdillah Wahab, Chairman of the Brunei Heart of Borneo Council and Deputy Minister of Industry & Primary Resources, “But if the Badas peat swamps stop supplying water to Brunei Liquid Natural Gas, the company would stop operating within 24 hrs."
“You cannot produce liquid natural gas without water and what we have in our rivers would be unmanageable and too expensive to clean up without the filtration and slow release that the peat gives us for free,” he added, “ We could not invent a better, more cost-effective system, yet we tend to take it for granted.”
Dato Hamdillah was speaking prior to the royal visit to the Badas peat swamps in the Heart of Borneo conservation area a tri-country (Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia and Malaysia) initiative which aims to preserve one of the world's most important centres of biological diversity, approximately 220,000 square kilometres of equatorial forests, or almost a third of Borneo.
Brunei’s swamps, which include the best preserved peat domes with their vast stores of carbon, are vital to absorbing and regulating water flows and avoiding floods and potential dry season issues such as saline intrusion into rivers. However, when these waterlogged peat areas are drained, they become very susceptible to fire, as well as releasing huge quantities of their stored CO2 into the atmosphere.
This is of major concern – it has been calculated that, in the last few years, the CO2 emissions from drained and fire-affected peatlands in Indonesia amount to some 2,000 million tonnes, putting Indonesia third in the CO2 emissions league behind the USA and China, and ahead of Russia and India.
Fires from the degraded peatland areas have been occurring more and more frequently over the past two or three decades, resulting in haze and smoke that envelope the Southeast Asia region. This causes serious health problems, particularly respiratory diseases, and disrupts normal life and the economies of the countries affected. During the 1997 and 1998 haze episodes, it was estimated that US$ 9 million worth of damage was caused.
“About 60% of Brunei’s peat swamps are still relatively pristine, compared to only a fraction of that elsewhere in Borneo,” said Dato’ Dr Mikaail Kavanagh, WWF’s Special Advisor to the Heart of Borneo Programme, "Brunei has laid out a roadmap of priority work to be done to implement the Heart of Borneo nationally, and peatlands management is one of the top issues. It is vital to manage these areas for their water, for fire prevention, and for their carbon storage and biological diversity.”
“We should also note,” he added, “that attempts to convert peatlands into other land-uses, such as large-scale agricultural schemes, have generally ended up as expensive failures. Because of the nature of the peat itself and the water management that has to be done, it is a lot better to manage these areas in harmony with nature.”
The project is receiving support from the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Standard Chartered Bank, among others.
"Since climate change is a major global concern, it is fitting that the international community is assisting Brunei in the wise management of its peatlands," said Adam Tomasek, Leader of WWF International's Heart of Borneo Initiative.
Nizam Ahmed, Reuters 2 Nov 08;
DHAKA (Reuters) - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon urged developed countries not to neglect climate change as they tend to a global economic slowdown and called on rich nations to help poor countries prone to global warming.
"The leaders of the developed countries should not neglect the issue of global warming," he told a news conference at the end of his two-day visit to Bangladesh on Sunday.
"A one-meter rise in sea levels would displace 30 million Bangladeshis and deal a catastrophic blow to economic growth and development," Ban said.
Experts say climate change will hit Bangladesh's nearly 150 million people from all sides over the next 50 years with sea levels rising in the south, droughts in the north, river erosion as glaciers melt and disease risk growing with greater humidity.
Ban said Bangladesh had been at the forefront of disaster prevention, and was a good example of how a vulnerable developing country can strengthen its resilience against catastrophic events such as super cyclone Sidr.
Cyclone Sidr ravaged southern Bangladesh killing some 3,500 people and displacing some two million on November 15 last year, following twin floods that killed some 1,500 people and damaged about 2 million tonnes of food.
Aid organization Oxfam said urgent help and a comprehensive climate deal were crucial to Bangladesh where production of staple foods is forecast to drop steeply by 2050 due to accelerated melting of Himalayan glaciers from global warming.
Ban also visited a disaster management project run by the U.N. and the Bangladesh government, at a river island near Sirajganj district 150 km (94 miles) northwest of the capital Dhaka, on Sunday.
Referring to the upcoming December 18 election, he said, "The opposition must engage constructively with the new government to consolidate the reform begun by the current caretaker government -- particularly those dedicated to fighting corruption."
Ban arrived in Dhaka on Saturday to assess preparations for the election under the guidance of the army-backed interim government.
"... the U.N. will dispatch a small team of highly capable and prominent individuals who will visit in the coming weeks to assess the conduct of the election and report to me," Ban said.
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