Best of our wild blogs: 13 Nov 08

Night Survey at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve
on the Garden Voices blog

Oriental Honey-buzzard mobbed
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

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ACRES Wildlife Rescue Centre: Reinvestigation needed into contractor

Who’s responsible?
Reinvestigation needed, says NEA prosecutor
Zul Othman, Today Online 13 Nov 08;

IT WAS meant to be a refuge for rescued animals when it opened two months ago. But more than half the Wildlife Rescue Centre site at Chua Chu Kang remains closed because of contamination.

Tonnes of woodchips and petrochemical were allegedly dumped into a backfill by the main contractor.

But the Subordinate Court yesterday gave ANA Contractors Pte Ltd a discharge not amounting to an acquittal after its lawyer argued that his client was not responsible for the dumping.

Defence lawyer Lee Kwok Weng pointed the fingers at the sub-contractors. However, neither the names of the individuals nor companies responsible — which were included in a letter given to prosecutors during the hearing — were released in open court.

In light of this development, National Environment Agency prosecutor Mr Abdul Ghani Abdullah said he had no other alternative but to “reinvestigate the matter”.

This had to be done, he said, because the contractor maintained that someone else was responsible.

However, Mr Abdul Ghani added that ANA could still be charged with the offence if investigators were to uncover evidence implicating the main contractor.

ANA had previously told the operator of the centre —— Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres) — that the woodchips have been “accidentally” dumped.

However, a subsequent soil test revealed that the illicit backfill went as deep as 12m in some areas. The backfill — used to level a slope at the site — had decayed, mixed into the soil and polluted the groundwater.

ANA director Mr Tan Boon Kwee, who was present at yesterday’s hearing, turned down all attempts for aninterview.

Under the Environment Protection and Management Act, the penalty for discharging toxic substances into inland waters is a fine not exceeding $20,000.

If the offence is repeated, a further fine not exceeding $1,000 for every day or part thereof will also be levied.

Meanwhile, Acres has also initiated a suit against ANA as the contractor has not removed the woodchips — estimated to cost at least $1 million.

Acres’ executive director Louis Ng told Today: “Several contractors responded to our appeal for help and came down to have a look at the site and the scope of work required.”

Unfortunately, none was able to commit to the work as the cost was deemed “too high”, he said.

Acres, he added, is currently assessing the losses incurred because of the contamination. It is also currently discussing other options with the Singapore Land Authority.

Mr Ng declined to disclose details.

Wildlife centre contractor granted discharge not amounting to acquittal
Imelda Saad, Channel NewsAsia 12 Nov 08;

SINGAPORE: The contractor accused of dumping woodchips onto the site of ACRES Wildlife Rescue Centre has been granted a discharge, not amounting to acquittal.

This means that A.N.A Contractor Pte Ltd could still be charged with the offence, depending on how investigations unfold.

Investigations by the National Environment Agency (NEA) revealed that the ACRES's contractor had used woodchips for the earth work at the site.

This resulted in a blackish, foul-smelling discharge flowing from the land into the watercourse linked to Kranji Reservoir. The discharge is now contained in a tank that has to be emptied weekly.

Channel NewsAsia understands that A.N.A Contractor is now pinning the blame on its sub-contractor, which means the prosecution will have to re-open its investigations.

If convicted under the Environmental Protection and Management Act, parties could be fined up to S$100,000 and jailed up to 12 months.

Separately, ACRES has filed a civil suit against A.N.A Contractor and its director Tan Boon Kwee, who was the Clerk of Works for the rescue centre project.

ACRES will be claiming damages and losses it has suffered as a result of the actions of A.N.A and Mr Tan.

The Wildlife Rescue Centre remains partially opened and the back portion of its land is still undeveloped.

ACRES' executive director, Louis Ng, said it would cost S$1.6 million to demolish the existing infrastructure and excavate the land to get rid of the buried woodchips.
- CNA/so

More about the Acres Wildlife Rescue Centre and how you can help to make a difference.


Dumped woodchips claim incorrect?
Today Online 19 Nov 08;

Letter from Lee Kwok Weng
M/s Lee Kwok Weng & Co

WE REFER to “Who’s responsible?” (Nov 13). We would like to clarify that our Mr Lee Kwok Weng pointed the fingers at the sub-contractors on the instructions of our client, ANA Contractors Pte Ltd, who had in fact informed the National Environment Agency in writing some months back.

Accordingly, we are instructed that the allegation that our client had previously told Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres) that the woodchips have been “accidentally” dumped is incorrect; if at all, this is a one-sided version and is not proven in court.

As regards the civil suit against our client, it must be pointed out that our client has already put up a very strong defence as well as mounted a counterclaim against Acres for the long outstanding payment that remained due and owing to our client.

Further, we are instructed that the alleged losses incurred were because of the contamination as alleged. According to our client’s experts, woodchips are inert and do not give rise to contamination.

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Raid nets RM3mil in exotic wildlife in Johor last week

Zani Salleh, The Star 13 Nov 08;

KUALA LUMPUR: More than RM3mil worth of live and dead animals were seized when the Wildlife and National Parks Department raided two locations in Johor last week.

Among the animals were 7,000 clouded monitor lizards, 1,000 owls, pangolins, crested serpent eagles, pythons, mousedeer, Malayan porcupine and wild pigs. Bear parts were also found in the raid.


A 49-year-old man was charged in a magistrate’s court in Tangkak on Nov 7 and is out on a RM19,000 bail.

Director-general Datuk Abd Rasid Samsudin said that this was the second time the man had been detained.

He was fined RM7,500 in 2004 for having 182 pangolins and 1.3kg of pangolin scales.

“The live and dead animal parts can be distributed for consumption as exotic meat,” Abd Rasid told a press conference yesterday.

He said such meat dishes, cooked with herbs, were widely popular among diners especially men and could be priced as much as RM300 per bowl.

The protected animals fetch high prices at restaurants in Vietnam, Hong Kong and China.

Abd Rasid said eight members of the Wildlife Crime Unit seized 13 species of protected wildlife at the man’s house during the first raid which was conducted in Muar on Nov 4 at about 8am,

The dead animals were in several freezers while the live animals were found in the backyard.

The team raided another location in Segamat three days later and found 7,093 live clouded monitor lizards in a holding pen.

The case is due for mention on Feb 20 next year.

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Scrap traders feel the crunch as prices dive

Karung guni men switch jobs as slump in demand cuts scrap prices by 50%
Jessica Lim, Straits Times 13 Nov 08;

FOR three years, Mr Chua Chuan Soon has been supporting his wife, three children and himself by collecting scrap metal.

The 55-year-old was making enough to buy his own truck, cover the rent on his modest flat and put his kids through school.

But the global financial turmoil has caused the price of scrap metal - along with used cardboard and newsprint - to plummet during the last three months.

That has made his rag-and-bone business a losing proposition.

'I am going to stop working soon if things go on like this,' said Mr Chua, as he unloaded pipes, lampshades and a shower rail at a Jurong recycling centre.

While being a karung guni man has never been a lucrative profession, hundreds of Singaporeans do it either as a full-time job or to supplement their income.

The trade, though, has been especially hammered in recent months. Demand for scrap metal and paper from factories in the United States and Europe - the ultimate destination for most of Singapore's recyclables - is falling.

These factories turn recyclable materials into everything from stereos to cardboard boxes. But fears of a recession have prompted consumer spending to drop, said Standard Chartered (Stanchart) economist Alvin Liew. 'People are spending less on electronic products themselves, and derived demand of packaging like cardboard boxes will also fall,' he said.

That has forced Singapore recycling companies to slash the amount of money they are willing to pay for raw materials. Karung guni men said the prices of cardboard and scrap metal have dropped by 50 per cent in the last three months.

In turn, the number of karung guni men has dwindled.

Scrap metal recycling company Lian Tian Trading now receives about 50kg of aluminium drink cans from about 12 such collectors daily. That is down from over 100kg from about 25 rag-and-bone men three months ago.

Singapore Recycle Centre, which used to accept old newspapers from about 25 rag-and-bone men a day, has seen none come in over the past two months.

'Many karung guni men have switched to doing something else. Every day fewer and fewer call us. They are waiting to get a good price, but no one knows when that will happen,' said manager Sophia Su.

The precipitous drop in demand has also lowered the rates collectors are willing to pay Singaporeans for their old newspapers and cans.

A kilo of paper will now put only about seven cents in your pocket, down from about 12 cents three months ago. The value of scrap metal, like aluminium cans, has dropped to about 60 cents per kg from about $1.30.

Karung guni men said it is just not worth their while to offer more.

Mr Koh Ah Leong now takes home $800 a month, down from $1,200 three months ago. To supplement his income, the 50- year-old has started looking into bins outside factories and food centres for cardboard and aluminium.

However, the dwindling supply is unlikely to worry recycling companies.

At Singapore Recycle Centre, monthly sales of recycled paper have fallen 90 per cent in the past three months, said Ms Su.

The factory grounds of Lian Tian in Jurong are piled high with surplus blocks of crushed metal.

'There is a lot of stock now; we just store it hoping for a better time,' said manager Tan Saw Hoon with a sigh.

Stanchart's Mr Liew expects the trend to persist until the end of next year, when 'we might see demand returning to key export markets'.

Scrap metal collectors lose business due to price drop
Agnes Winarti, The Jakarta Post 12 Nov 08;

Dozens of pushcarts, which are usually shoved by mobile junk vendors around housing complexes, were parked idly in front of a junk distributor near a traffic light on Jl. Letkol Sugiyono, East Jakarta recently.

Nineteen-year-old Erik Estrada, son of the junk distributor, was sitting in his shop as idly as his father's pushcarts.

"Only three of our 27 vendors are currently out there working to buy scrap metal and other junk in nearby housing complexes," Erik said.

"The rest prefer to stay in their kampung or hometowns to harvest their rice fields instead of working here because the price of junk metal has plunged over the last two months."

He said the price of metal waste had plummeted from Rp 58,000 (US$5.5) to Rp 35,000 per kilogram for copper waste; Rp 5,000 to Rp 2,200 per kilogram for scrap metal; Rp 15,000 to Rp 10,000 per kilogram for aluminum waste; and Rp 38,000 to Rp 18,000 per kilogram for brass waste.

Another junk distributor on Jl. Poncol, East Jakarta, Haki, said he had experienced a similar condition.

"The prices of all kinds of junk, from paper to plastic, but especially scrap metal, has dropped to half their normal prices," said Haki, who opened his junk shop 10 years ago.

Haki, who used to distribute two to three tons of scrap metal to five smelting factories in Cakung, East Jakarta, every day, said they could now only deliver the goods once every two or three days. He estimated that he had suffered losses of more than Rp 50 million over the past month.

Scrap metal is smelted in factories and turned into iron bars, which are then used for construction. The bars are exported and traded domestically.

"Today's economic crisis is worse than ever before," said Oji, 49, who has pushed pushcarts as a mobile junk vendor since 1980.

Oji came back to Jakarta from his kampung in Karawang after the recent Lebaran holidays with Rp 300,000 cash in his pocket only to find that life was financially more difficult.

After running out of cash, Oji said he had to give his identity card to his boss at the lapak (junk distributor) as collateral to receive Rp 60,000 in order to get by for a few days.

He said due to the plummeting price of scrap metal, people originally intending to sell junk canceled their transactions, deciding to wait until the price went up again.

Oji said many lapak had temporarily halted their business operations.

"My boss, for example, can only buy scrap metal now, but he does not sell it to the factories because the price is too low. If he ever stops buying from me, I will have to go home to Karawang where there is no work."

Similar conditions face scrap metal traders in Bekasi.

Saleh Lubis, a trader for 20 years, said he had accumulated more than 50 tons of scrap metal at his shop, adding that he had stopped buying metal from mobile junk vendors.

The price of scrap metal is set by the smelting factories.

Furthermore, there is no specific government regulation on the price of scrap metal.

The Association of Scrap Metal Traders chairman, Rizal M., said thousands of traders and tens of thousands of mobile junk vendors around Greater Jakarta were at risk of losing their jobs.

"The factories and scrap metal traders must reach an agreement on price," he said.

Rizal said scrap metal traders in Greater Jakarta supply 30 percent of the material needed by metal factories like PT Jakarta Cakratunggal Steel Mills, PT Gunung Garuda, PT Wahana, and PT Master Steel, while the remaining 70 percent was imported metal materials.

"If we stop supplying to factories, we fear the factories will increase their metal import volumes.

"Factories can also give the excuse that the market is determining the price," said Rizal, whose association was currently planning to protest at the factories and House of Representatives.

"In the meantime, we hope the trade and industry ministries assist us in finding the fairest solution to the price plunge."

Read more!

Credit squeeze takes toll on funding for green projects

Economic downturn could also hamper the Kyoto Protocol
Jamie Lee, Business Times 13 Nov 08;

THE credit crunch could delay carbon projects and threaten developed nations' need to meet the Kyoto Protocol's 2012 deadline, said a director of a Japanese non-profit organisation yesterday.

'These days, we are receiving urgent needs for finance from firms crying to us that they cannot implement their planned new projects because the prospects of funding them are poor,' said Fumio Hoshi, executive director of Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), at the Carbon Forum Asia 2008.

'Others state that their projects under construction are screeching to a halt because the credit crunch has frozen their funding,' adding that this is particularly so in East Europe, Asia and Russia.

With the 2012 deadline for the Kyoto Protocol drawing near, he said it was crucial for firms to secure medium- to long-term funding so as to provide enough carbon credits that developed nations can purchase to offset their carbon emissions.

Developed nations that signed the agreement must reduce their worldwide emissions of six greenhouse gases by an average of about 5 per cent below their 1990s level by 2012.

'If the financial crisis freezes the supply of funds, there's a risk of shortfall in supply of carbon credits over the medium term,' Mr Hoshi said.

But in the short-term, falling oil prices are likely to crimp demand for carbon credits against falling crude oil prices, he said.

Since April, JBIC has started to look into providing equity financing to give more direct support for projects, he added.

Earlier, Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry S Iswaran said that while China and India are the world's largest suppliers of certified emissions reductions (CERs), the rest of Asia has 'immense potential to explore CDM (clean development mechanism) projects'.

He pointed to projects in South-east Asia which include biofuel ventures in Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as hydroelectric projects in Vietnam.

'It is imperative that Asia succeeds in this endeavour,' he said, as the region is expected to contribute up to 45 per cent of the total worldwide emissions by 2050, while those from OECD countries would drop to half of Asia's.

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Testing solar panels for the tropics: Ngee Ann Polytechnic

Poly's new centre sets up solar test
Project to study which type of solar panel is best for tropics
Liaw Wy-Cin, Straits Times 13 Nov 08;

NGEE Ann Polytechnic has been fitted with some 100 solar panels of various forms and sizes to identify which type works best in the tropics.

These panels are part of a new million-dollar solar technology centre at the school's campus in Clementi Road which opened yesterday.

The centre, partly funded by the Economic Development Board, came under a $17 million programme to encourage research into technology that taps into renewable resources like the sun, wind and water.

The drive has already attracted at least four big-name global players in the solar energy field.

'Most of the data currently available are from studies done in places such as Europe, where humidity is low and the solar cells won't degrade so fast,' said the deputy director of the polytechnic's school of engineering, Ms Lim Geok Choo.

'The findings may not be the same here.'

One of the things the centre wants to study is how well solar cells made of a material known as thin film - considered cheap but not very efficient - will work in Singapore.

Said the engineering school's director Koh Wee Hiong: 'In half a year, we may find that thin film is the best material to use in Singapore, but no one has the evidence yet.

'So far, people know that thin film works best in an environment where there is no direct sunlight.'

Besides research and testing, the centre's solar panels also contribute a small amount of 'clean' energy to the national power grid, said Ms Lim. The 50 kilowatt-hours-a-day contribution is enough to power a household air-conditioner for two days.

About 20 per cent of the centre's energy needs can be powered by the sun as well.

The centre will also showcase projects by students in the school of engineering's new full-time diploma course in clean energy management.

The class is among six new courses the polytechnic is offering from next year. It is expected to meet the demand of the clean energy sector that is gaining ground here.

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Bakun hydroelectric project can be delayed, says Tenaga

Business Times 13 Nov 08;

This is due to slowing growth in power demand

(KUALA LUMPUR) Malaysia can afford to delay the Bakun hydroelectric project, the country's biggest, because of slower electricity consumption growth, said Leo Moggie, chairman of state-controlled utility Tenaga Nasional Bhd. 'We're beginning to see a slowdown in the growth of power demand,' Mr Moggie told reporters in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

'That gives us an opportunity to stretch the original target of getting transmission through.'

The 2,400-megawatt hydroelectric project, which will flood an area the size of Singapore in Malaysia's part of Borneo, is due for completion by 2010 while the submarine cable to transmit power from the island to Peninsular Malaysia is expected to be laid by 2013. Tenaga, in talks with the government and Sarawak Energy Bhd to acquire a stake in the project and to build the cable, said last year it needed Bakun to meet the nation's demand by 2013.

Slowing economic expansion amid a global financial crisis may limit electricity demand growth to 4 per cent in the year ending Aug 31 compared with 6.1 per cent a year earlier, the company said in October.

'The demand for power is not increasing as fast as it was two or three years ago,' Mr Moggie said.

Che Khalib Mohamad Noh, chief executive officer of Tenaga, wants to conclude talks with the government as soon as possible on the Bakun stake and purchase of power from the project. 'Metal prices have come down by almost half, copper prices came down over the last three months by almost 50 per cent, and construction prices will also come down because steel and cement prices are coming down,' Mr Che Khalib said\. \-- Bloomberg

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Rising seas: Maldives plans to relocate entire nation

Straits Times 13 Nov 08;

New leader wants to buy land overseas in case island state is submerged
MALE (Maldives): The Maldives - a group of atolls in the Indian Ocean whose existence is threatened by rising sea levels blamed on global warming - is considering setting up a sovereign wealth fund (SWF) to relocate the population.

It will divert cash from tourism to buy land in case rising sea levels submerge its low-lying coral islands.

'We will invest in land,' said newly-installed President Mohamed 'Anni' Nasheed, adding: 'We do not want to end up in refugee tents if the worst happens.'

Mr Nasheed's government has said that it has broached the idea with several countries and found them to be 'receptive'.

It could buy land in Sri Lanka and India, where the culture and climate are similar to those of the Maldives. Australia, which owns a vast amount of unoccupied land, is also being considered, a CNN report said.

Vice-President Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik said the new SWF, modelled on those in oil-rich Middle Eastern states, was 'part of our longer-term perspective'. It would be preceded by an overhaul of state finances in the tourism-dependent country.

Eighty per cent of the Maldives' 1,200 islands, of which 200 are inhabited, are less than 1m above sea level. Studies have said the country, which has 380,000 residents, could be submerged within 100 years.

The government of Mr Mohamed Nasheed was sworn in on Tuesday after the country's first democratic election, ending 30 years of authoritarian rule by former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.

Mr Gayoom had raised the link between climate change and the human rights of potentially displaced citizens in international forums.

Mr Scott Leckie, director of Displacement Solutions, a Swiss-based refugee consultancy, told the Financial Times that other states with low-lying land, such as Tuvalu and Papua New Guinea, had also begun to feel the effects of rising sea levels.

A formal request was made by Australia's Greens Party last month for the country to grant special visas to Tuvaluan climate change refugees but the request was denied.

'The question (of relocation) needs to be sorted out by all 50 territories that stand to be affected by rising sea levels,' Mr Leckie was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

He added that there were 'rumours Maldivian officials have already started to buy plots of land in Sri Lanka for the future'.

Mr Waheed said the new government would seek international help to strengthen the natural barriers of the Maldives' coral reefs, and create artificial sections of reef as a buffer against rising seas. It has also pledged to introduce solar power and seek foreign investment in other alternative energy technologies.

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West Java residents moved from landslide prone areas

Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post 12 Nov 08;

West Java Governor Ahmad Heryawan plans to relocate residents living in areas prone to landslides while at the same time ordering the replanting of some 223,000 hectares of critical land in the province.

"Relocation is badly needed so that residents can resume their daily lives," Heryawan said at the West Java provincial administration office compound, the Gedung Sate.

"The West Java administration and Garut regency administration will immediately relocate 307 residents in Pasirmuncang, Garut."

Heryawan said the provincial administration would provide Rp 1 million (US$88) in relocation funds per family while Garut regency would provide another Rp 500,000.

The province would also ask for funding from the Social Services Ministry which has allocated Rp 10 million per family.

"We want to replant the whole area after the residents move so that the environment can quickly recover," Heryawan said.

The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry's Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation has mapped all areas prone to landslides and has distributed the maps to provincial, municipal and regency administrations nationwide.

Based on the maps, priority areas will be settlements with a high risk of landslides.

The center recorded that since the beginning of the rainy season in late October, there have been at least eight landslides in West Java damaging hundreds of houses, leaving residents homeless.

Some residents were also forced to evacuate as cracks in the earth threatened their houses.

The first landslides happened in Bojonggambir and Sodonghilir in Tasikmalaya regency on Oct. 22, followed by three in Garut regency at Banjarwangi, Cilawu and Pasirmuncang between Oct. 27 and 29.

On Nov. 5 and 7 landslides occurred in Panjalu, Ciamis regency, and Subang, Kuningan regency, while the last recorded landslide was in Pakenjeng, Garut, on Nov. 10.

All landslides took place in steep areas with inclines of 20 to 40 degrees.

Pasirmuncang suffered the most with at least 10 hamlets affected by landslides burying 48.5 hectares of residential and farming areas.

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57 percent of Indonesia's shores vulnerable to tsunamis

Antara 12 Nov 08;

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Some 57 percent of Indonesia's coastline, or 46,170 km, of the total length of 81,000 km, are prone to a tsunami attack.

The data came from the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency during the inaguration of a Tsunami Early Warning System (TEWS) at the BMG office here Tuesday.

After an earthquake followed by a tsunami in Aceh on December 26, 2004, the need for an early warning system had become increasingly urgent.

Therefore, on November 11, 2008, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono launched a TEWS which was built under a cooperation between the Indonesian government and 18 state enterprises.

The financial and technological aspects of the project were taken care of by Germany, China, Japan, the US and France. (*)

Read more!

Malaysian mangrove restoration programme progressing well since 2005

Salina Khalid, The Star 13 Nov 08;

MORE than a million mangrove saplings have been planted as part of the conservation programme of the coastal forests throughout the country since 2005.

The Selangor Forestry De­­partment alone has planted more than 150,000 of these trees along the coastal area of the state.

The mangrove replanting programme is part of the effort to restore the rich bio-diversity of the forests to provide an ecosystem for fish, crabs, birds and other creatures and plants.

The tsunami disaster that hit the region in 2004 had shown that the mangroves could provide a natural buffer to protect the coastal areas from the massive waves.

Studies have also shown that the mangroves could protect coastal areas from rising tides, monsoon storms and natural erosion.

The trees have a high storage capacity for carbon, which helps to regulate the balance and quantity of carbon dioxide in the environment.

They function like carbon factories by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and converting them into organic material.

The organic materials are then absorbed into trees, mud­flats and nearby waterways, reducing the amount of greenhouse gases.

Since the tsunami disaster, the federal government and the various state governments have worked with various agencies and NGOs to replant the mangroves along the coastal areas nationwide.

According to Assoc Prof Sulong Ibrahim of Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, in addition to the government’s efforts, the involvement of the local community in any mangrove enhancement project is essential to ensure its success.

Sulong, an authority on mangrove ecology and management and a committee member of the national mangrove replanting programme, said this at the recent 6th Asia Pacific Ecotourism Conference (APeco) held at the Saujana KL.

About 200 delegates, including foreign participants, attended the two-day conference on Nov 6 and 7. Among the speakers were Malaysian Nature Society (MNS) field experts Dr Harinder Singh and Dr Loh Chi Leong and Japanese firefly scientist and tourism expert Dr Oba Nobuyoshi.

Sulong said the replanting and conservation programme would not succeed unless the local community played an active and constructive role.

He said people needed to develop an attachment to the trees which would motivate them to care for them.

“When we first told the residents in Kemaman that we are planting mangroves, they laughed at us because to them the mangroves would grow naturally and need not be planted,” Sulong said.

“But they started to appreciate and understand what we were doing after we explained how important it is to plant the trees so that we can protect and preserve the environment,” he said.

“The residents then joined us to help care for the trees, which will take nearly seven years to mature,” he said.

In Selangor, various measures have been taken as part of the regeneration and restoration programmes for the mangroves.

Among the biggest mangrove forests in the state are the Banjar Utara Forest Reserve and the Banjar Selatan Forest Reserve, both located in Kuala Selangor.

Over the years, the trees were chopped down mainly for fish and prawn farming and agriculture.

Mangroves are also known as a good source of charcoal briquettes.

According to Selangor tourism, consumer affairs and environment chairman Elizabeth Wong, the destruction is rampant along the beach and even at the Nature Park.

“The state government is doing all it can to save the forest from being totally destroyed,” she said.

Wong said the whole coastal area of Kuala Selangor which used to be covered with mangroves, had been left with only strips of the trees.

She said the fishermen in Kuala Selangor had also complained of reduced catch due to the destruction of the mangrove forest in the area.

Meanwhile, Thailand Wetlands International director Asae Sayaka said it was important to preserve the multi-functional mangrove forests, which was often misconstrued as being smelly and of no use.

He said destroying mangrove forests would significantly reduce marine life such as prawns and mud crabs and would affect the livelihood of mangrove fisherman.

“The mangroves also protect coastlines from erosion and serve as barriers for salt-water intrusion, which can affect agriculture,” Asae said.

“That means if the trees were chopped down then more money would be spent to build walls to prevent salt water from getting into the agricultural areas,” he said.

Read more!

Vietnam to restore mangroves

Coastal nations vulnerable to climate change, says UN
Vietnam News 12 Nov 08;

HCM CITY — Viet Nam and Bangladesh are among the countries worst affected by climate change because of rising sea levels near their coastlines, according to the UN’s inter-governmental committee on climate change.

Nguyen Hoang Nghia, director of Viet Nam’s Institute of Forestry Science, said the mangrove ecosystem in the country was undergoing severe damage.

In the last 50 years, the mangrove forests in Viet Nam have almost halved in size, shrinking to 209,740ha from 408,500ha in 1943, according to the institute.

Nghia spoke at a seminar that discussed the regeneration and development of the country’s mangrove ecosystem, held in HCM City last week.

Although the value of salt marsh forests is widely recognised, little is known about its role as a wall against devastating sea-generated weather phenomena such as typhoons, tsunamis and coastal erosion, according to experts.

Hurricane records in the past three years have proven that mangroves protect inhabited areas.

Solid concrete embankments were smashed in the absence of robust mangrove forests, leaving interior villages ravaged.

The forest acts as a shield which consumes much of the hurricanes’ energy, thus weakening them when they reach land.

In case of erosion, the plants’ interlocking roots stop riverborne sediment from drifting out to sea, and their trunks and branches can diminish the erosive power of waves.

In recent years, vast valuable tracts of mangroves, especially along the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta, have rapidly vanished.

The surviving groves have been severely degraded in almost all areas where they are found, resulting in poor economic and protective value, experts said.

Many local shrimp farmers have eyed the remaining mangrove marshes, whose vast stretches has been cleared to set up shrimp farms, without sufficient knowledge of why the forests should be saved, according to experts.

To counter the situation, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has set up a project to regenerate coastal mangrove forests until 2015.

The objective is to recover the lost protection belt, expand it by 2010, and increase the budget for the project to VND2.490 trillion (US$148,214,000).

It is estimated that 10.8 per cent of Viet Nam’s population is vulnerable to rising sea levels, with most of them living in vulnerable areas – Mekong Delta, the Hong (Red) River Delta or coastal areas. — VNS

Read more!

Last chance for the oceans? Marine protection zones

John Vidal, Guardian weekly 12 Nov 08;

Marine protection zones may be the only answer as climate change and factory fishing turn the world's seas into dead zones, warns John Vidal

It was summer 2002 when fishermen between the towns of Florence and Lincoln on the north-west Pacific coast of the US began hauling in their pots only to find them full of dead crabs. Tourists then reported finding dead fish and worms washed up on beaches, and divers found the sea bed littered with marine life.

It took a team of marine biologists, led by Professor Jane Lubchenco, from Oregon State University to identify giant algal "blooms" as the cause. The sea was full of minute phytoplankton algae that cause oxygen depletion. Quite simply, the water had too little oxygen to sustain life and nothing could survive in what was called "the dead zone".

"We saw a crab graveyard and no fish the entire day," Lubchenco said after observing the sea bed from a submersible. "Thousands and thousands of dead crabs were littering the ocean floor, many sea stars were dead, and the fish have either left the area or have died and been washed away… seeing so much carnage was shocking and depressing."

In the 1960s, fewer than 50 dead zones had been identified worldwide, according to Professor Robert Diaz of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. But by 2006, he says, there were at least 200, ranging from the Gulf of Mexico and the Pearl River estuary in China, to the Aegean Sea in the Mediterranean and the Mersey estuary in the UK. Last year, more than 400 were found in coastal waters. The phenomena usually last only a few months but they devastate marine life and there is evidence that many are growing and lasting longer.

But the Oregon dead zone was different. Like the others it has returned every year, but Lubchenco and her team of researchers say that it could not have been caused by the run-off of fertilisers from intensive farming like the others. Instead, she says, evidence is mounting that it is being caused by climate change affecting wind and ocean current patterns, dragging up nutrient-rich water from the deep that is low on oxygen. "The evidence is getting stronger," says Lubchenco. "It's a further signal that the oceans are under stress. We had never expected to find a dead zone off a coastline that is relatively healthy. It shows a fundamental shift in ocean conditions."

Dead zones are just the latest phenomenon now putting the planet's oceans under stress. They rank alongside overfishing, habitat loss, pollution, coral bleaching and climate change as major environmental problems that are transforming the seas and leading to the near collapse of marine systems.

It's a very far cry from about 100 years ago when the world's oceans were still, literally, teeming with fish and marine life and no one could believe that the seas could ever be depleted, let alone be taken to the brink of ecological meltdown. Contemporary accounts described breathtaking wildlife phenomena in all the oceans of the world. "Two centuries ago, vast shoals of herring that covered thousands of square kilometres [used to] approach the UK coast to spawn in spring each year," says Callum Roberts, professor of marine conservation at York University and author of The Unnatural History of the Sea. "We have come to accept the degraded condition of the sea as normal. People put most trust in what they have seen for themselves, which often leads them to dismiss as far-fetched tales of giant fish or seas bursting with life."

Roberts records the observations of the Irish writer and poet Oliver Goldsmith in the mid-18th century: "When the main body [of fish] is arrived, its breadth and depth is such as to alter the very appearance of the ocean. It is divided into distinct columns, of five or six miles [8-10km] in length, and three or four broad… The whole water seems alive; and is seen so black with them to a great distance, that the number seems inexhaustible," he wrote.

An early US colonist, William Byrd, tells of the shad and alewife, two fish that are barely seen today. "When they spawn, all the waters are completely filled and one might believe that there is as great a supply [of fish] as there is water. It is unbelievable… indeed indescribable as also incomprehensible what quantity is there," he reported.

Today, there are still healthy seas but the great majority are relatively quiet. Overfishing, says the UN's world food and agriculture organisation [FAO], has systematically decimated fish stocks in almost all seas to the point where most of the world's commercially important fish species have now been fished to capacity or are depleted.

Since 1900, North Atlantic populations of cod, haddock and halibut have fallen by 90%, says the UN. "The haddock, salmon, king crab, bluefin tuna, pollock and mackerel are all overfished, and illegal and unregulated fishing is now eliminating the last of the wild stocks of sharks, lobsters, sea cucumbers and the big fish. In many cases, numbers of some species are down to a mere 2% or 3% of what they were in 1850."

Last year the UN environment programme charted the alarming decline: "For thousands of years fishing was relatively inefficient, but the situation changed radically… thanks to major advances in the techniques used to catch and store fish. Catches totalled 20m tonnes in 1950, rising to 70m tonnes in 1970 then stabilising between 80m and 90m tonnes. The spectacular increase in 1950-70 was largely due to the development of industrial uses for fish, transforming it into by-products such as meal and oil for use in manufacturing pet food." In addition, some 20m tonnes of dead fish are believed to be thrown back into the sea every year because they cannot legally be sold, or because they are too small.

"The industry is dominated by fishing vessels that far outmatch nature's ability to replenish fish. Giant ships using state-of-the-art fish-finding sonar can pinpoint schools of fish quickly and accurately. The ships are fitted out like giant floating factories – containing fish processing and packing plants, huge freezing systems and powerful engines to drag fishing gear through the ocean. Put simply: the fish don't stand a chance," says Greenpeace.

Reports of population crashes occur frequently. In the past two months Canadian researchers have predicted the end of all fish caught in the wild by 2048, and the US National Marine Fisheries Service has reported that pollock biomass in US waters was down to 940,000 tonnes from 1.8m tonnes last year. The European Commission says that 88% of EU stocks are now overfished and the UK accepts that only eight of its 47 fisheries are in a healthy state. Other reports have warned that the state of our seas has changed so much over the past 25 years that it could result in fundamental ecological shifts.

The obvious – indeed only – answer, say conservation groups, academics, UN bodies and increasingly even governments, is to stop fishing in vulnerable areas and allow stocks to recover. But this is resented by the politically powerful fishing industries, which dispute the science and warn of unemployment and devastation to communities, and which have been allowed to operate a free-for-all across most of the world's seas. In addition, politicians have consistently not accepted scientific advice. "The only question is when stocks collapse," says Roberts.

Protection zones are the most popular alternative, he says. "They should be the ecological underpinning of sea management. One estimate from 2004 put the cost at $12-24bn a year to run a worldwide network of marine reserves covering 30% of all oceans and seas. It seems a lot but they would cost less than the $15-30bn we currently spend on subsidies that encourage excess fishing capacity and prop up exploitation."

As the situation deteriorates, countries are trying different approaches. The Japanese are giving responsibility to communities, while more radical ideas are coming from Iceland, New Zealand and Australia, says Christopher Costello, professor of environmental economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He and two others have published a study of the world's 11,000 fisheries and found that in all those operating a free-for-all system with normal quotas, fish catches were steadily declining. But in around 150 the fish populations were increasing. All were what are known as "catch-share" fisheries.

Here scientists set a total allowable catch and then individual fisheries are allowed to net a designated percentage of the total amount of a particular species. The total cap on each fish type is adjusted yearly by the government according to how well the species is doing and shares can be bought and sold, becoming more valuable as populations increase. That way the value of the fish rises and over-exploitation is eradicated.

"What we found is that where fisheries were managed with this system, the decline in stocks practically halted. It really brings science to the forefront of the debate," says Costello. "Under open access, you have a free-for-all race to fish, which ultimately leads to collapse. But when you allocate shares of the catch, then there is an incentive to protect the stock – which reduces collapse. We saw this across the globe.

"We still have time to reinvent the way we manage fisheries and [protect] life in the oceans. I am optimistic for the future. The creation of networks of marine protected areas could reverse this misfortune. But if today's generation do not grasp the opportunity, tomorrow's may not get the chance because so many of the species now in decline will have gone extinct."

Read more!

Ivory trade thriving in China but signs of decline: watchdog

Yahoo News 12 Nov 08;

BEIJING (AFP) – The illegal trade in elephant tusks is thriving in Chinese markets and upscale hotels although there are signs the problem could be on the decline, an environmental group said Wednesday.

Ivory continues to be smuggled into China despite a ban on imports that dates back to 1991, with the tusks mainly being sourced from Africa, according to the report released by TRAFFIC, a wildlife monitoring organisation.

Nevertheless, it said increased enforcement of regulations in China had led to some improvements, with surveys of markets showing that fewer illegal products were on sale.

"However, an illegal ivory trade continues to thrive at curio markets and in hotel shops," the report said.

"There is hope that this trade can be better controlled, however, since the market surveys show there may be a decrease in illegal ivory trade at these venues."

It said upscale hotels in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, had been found to be selling illegal ivory.

The report, entitled: "The State of Wildlife Trade in China", said the main factories for processing illegally-imported ivory were in the nation's southern and southeastern provinces of Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangsu.

China is one of the world's biggest markets for ivory, which is traditionally used to make family seals to stamp documents as well as decorative antiques.

Chinese traders were the biggest buyers at a controversial series of auctions in four southern African countries recently in which 102 tonnes of government-owned ivory stocks were sold for just over 15 million dollars.

The legal sale, the first since 1999, came from elephants who died of natural causes or were culled to control their population, and funds will be used for elephant conservation and community development projects.

As the African ivory sale, in late October and early this month, was conducted through legal channels, the tusks can be imported into China without violating the 1991 ban.

Read more!

Whales lose as top US court says Navy can keep sonar

Lucile Malandain, Yahoo News 13 Nov 08;

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Supreme Court Wednesday ruled the US Navy can continue to use long-range sonar in exercises off the California coast, dismissing arguments that the practice was harmful to whales.

"Even if the plaintiffs have shown irreparable injury from the navy's training exercises, any such injury is outweighed by the public interest and the navy's interest in effective, realistic training of its sailors," the court said in a opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts.

In a split decision, five of the nine Supreme Court judges agreed with the government that in the interests of national security President George W. Bush has the constitutional power to exempt the US Navy from environmental laws curbing the use of long-range sonar in the North Pacific.

"We do not discount the importance of the plaintiffs' ecological, scientific, and recreational interests in marine mammals," the opinion said.

"Those interests, however, are plainly outweighed by the Navy's need to conduct realistic training exercises to ensure that it is able to neutralize the threat posed by enemy submarines."

Secretary of the Navy, Donald Winter, welcomed the high court's decision, saying it would allow the Navy to "certify our crews 'combat ready' while continuing to be good stewards of the marine environment."

The navy uses sonar off California to look for hostile submarines lurking beneath the Pacific, but has battled with environmentalists for years in federal courts over its use.

Environmentalists say such sonars have potentially catastrophic consequences for marine life, arguing they confuse the animals and have caused mass deaths in the Bahamas and Canary islands.

In January, a court required the navy to take safety precautions off the California coast, which is inhabited by five species of endangered whales.

A few days later, Bush responded by granting the navy an exemption, arguing the use of sonars was vital for military preparedness exercises that were in the "paramount interest of the United States."

Environmentalists took their case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the lower court's decision in February.

But the government then petitioned the Supreme Court.

In Wednesday's ruling the Supreme Court found the lower court had exceeded its authority in telling the navy to reduce sonar levels.

However, environmentalists rejoiced that it did not rule on other measures such as the need to respect a protective zone off the California coast.

"The court did not upset the underlying determination that the Navy likely violated the law by failing to prepare an environmental impact statement," said Joel Reynolds, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

Two dissenting judges on Wednesday insisted that while there was "no doubt that the training exercises serve critical interests ... those interests do not authorize the navy to violate a statutory command."

Dissenting judge Ruth Ginsburg further said the navy had failed to obey the law by not supplying a full report on the environmental risks before beginning to use sonar, and just sticking to its preliminary report.

At the start of the Supreme Court hearing in October, government lawyer Gregory Carre acknowledged that a preliminary navy study found that sonar could disorient 170,000 marine mammals, and leave 8,000 whales temporarily deaf.

But he defended the sonar level used by the navy as being well below the danger level for marine life.

Read more!

Ban the Bulb: No time to dim efficiency ambitions

Matt Prescott, BBC Green Room 11 Nov 08;

Leaders of EU nations will vote in December on measures to phase out the use of traditional incandescent light bulbs, explains Matt Prescott. But, in this week's Green Room, he says lobbying by the lighting industry could result in the 27-nation bloc dimming its ambitions on energy efficiency.

When I first set up the Ban The Bulb energy efficiency campaign and proposed the phased banning of traditional incandescent light bulbs, even my friends thought I was crazy.

Now, almost four years later, 30 countries have announced plans to phase out the use of these old fashioned appliances; China has announced plans to phase out the production of most of the world's incandescent light bulbs, and the major light bulb manufacturers have accepted that change is inevitable.

However, behind the scenes, the details associated with these public pronouncements remain to be converted into legally binding action, and a lot hinges on the votes that European governments will cast in Brussels on 8 December.

The lighting industry has said that it wants to be allowed to sell improved incandescent light bulbs, which use 25% less electricity than their traditional equivalents and would cut Europe's annual electricity use by the equivalent of two-and-a-half large power stations.

In my view, allowing the lighting industry to decide how much they should improve the energy performance of their products is extremely unwise, bordering on scandalous. It is akin to asking the world's banks to regulate themselves.

Manufacturers have patents, factories, markets and profits to protect and cannot be expected to decide, in an impartial fashion, what is technologically feasible or economically justifiable for the EU's 27 member countries and 500 million citizens.

It is therefore essential that our leaders protect the interests of society and the environment by deciding where they want us to be in five years time and what is possible, rather than settling for what suits the short-term, narrow interests of big business.

Shining examples

Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) already offer energy savings of between 65% and 80%, and the best designs, in my opinion, need to form the basis for any minimum energy performance standard within the next three to five years for the majority of domestic light bulbs sold in the EU.

Using the best designs of CFLs available today would allow the EU to cut its annual electricity use by an amount equivalent to 10 large power stations.

By contrast, allowing the use of improved incandescent light bulbs being promoted by the manufacturers would result in the Europe's carbon dioxide emissions being up to 53 million tonnes higher each year than if the CFL benchmark was adopted.

Based on the recent price for carbon emissions, this outcome would impose an unnecessary annual emissions cost of one billion euros (£800m) on the continent's electricity bills.

Using wasteful light bulbs also requires countries to pay for large coal imports and to have extra power stations available to provide electricity during periods of peak electricity demand.

At the household level, energy saving light bulbs can help to slash electricity bills. It now costs about one euro (£0.80) to buy a good quality CFL in the UK.

On average, this can be expected to use 15 euros (£12) less electricity each year for its lifetime of six or more years.

Feeling the heat

During its manufacture, each CFL does require about four times as much energy as a single incandescent lamp.

However, it then lasts six times longer and uses 65% - 80% less electricity throughout its 6,000-hour lifetime.

As a result, the manufacturing, replacement, running and carbon costs accumulated over the lifetime of a single CFL are all significantly lower than those associated with using many shorter-lived incandescent light bulbs.

On the down side, each CFL contains about 4-6mg of mercury. However, this mercury content can be safely and fully recycled, and there is no need for energy saving lamps to pose a risk to health or the environment.

By comparison, burning the extra coal needed to keep an incandescent light bulb working releases roughly three times more mercury directly into the atmosphere and poses a genuine risk wherever it ends up.

My preferred solution would be for the mercury content of CFLs to be reduced to 1-2mg and for every EU nation to introduce robust methods for recycling all of the hazardous substances found in homes.

Torch bearing

I also feel that EU governments should introduce minimum performance standards for the illumination produced by CFLs and ensure that only the best designs, which produce a warm, bright light within five seconds and emit no ultraviolet light, are allowed on the market.

For the small proportion of household lamps that need to be used with dimmers, I would like to see light emitting diodes (LEDs) being brought into widespread and affordable use within five years.

LEDs offer energy savings of 90% and produce an instant bright illumination, contain no mercury and can be fully dimmed.

They also last for up to 50,000 hours, so do not need to be replaced for many, many years. Perhaps this is why there is reluctance among manufacturers to sell them.

I have not endorsed LEDs before, but they are now available as table and floor lamp substitutes for 40W, 60W and 100W incandescent bulbs, and I firmly believe that national governments should do everything in their power to create a massive market for LEDs.

Overall, I am delighted that EU leaders have decided to phase out traditional incandescent light bulbs.

However, I hope that our politicians will find the courage to do everything they can to bring into use the high end of the energy efficient products that are already available.

I am confident that much greater energy efficiency offers the most cost effective way to bring about a positive step change in our energy bills, carbon emissions and energy security.

Dr Matt Prescott is an environmental consultant and director of banthebulb.org, an online campaign encouraging greater energy efficiency, and founding co-ordinator of Energy Saving Day

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

Read more!

"Major de-carbonisation" of global fuel sources needed: IEA

After the credit crunch, the oil crunch: watchdog warns over falling supplies
• World needs to find 64m extra barrels a day by 2030
• Green revolution required to replace fuel sources

David Gow, guardian.co.uk 12 Nov 08;

The International Energy Agency is to call today for an energy revolution and a "major de-carbonisation" of global fuel sources as the world confronts tighter oil supplies caused by shrinking investment.

The energy watchdog is warning for the first time that oil output could pass its peak as power shifts from "super-majors" to national companies controlled by producer states. It highlights a potential oil-supply crunch.

The unprecedented wake-up call comes as the European commission says in a report due out tomorrow that while oilfields decline, the balance of supply and demand will become "increasingly tight, possibly critically so".

It adds: "The need to address climate change will require a massive switch to high-efficiency, low-carbon energy technologies."

The commission report warns that oil supplies are limited, with reserves and spare output capacity concentrated in a few hands. "Recent severe price rises and volatility on oil and gas markets reflect these changing trends", it says.

Both bodies express heightened anxieties that the west's energy requirements could be squeezed as emerging economies such as China consume more oil and conclude long-term deals with oil-rich states. This could be exacerbated by a restriction on investment by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) - possibly joined by Russia - to boost revenues. Opec will control 51% of output by 2030 compared with 44% in 2007.

Rising demand

The IEA's latest World Energy Outlook predicts that global energy demand will increase 45% between now and 2030 and oil prices will rise to $200 a barrel by then - or $120 at 2007 prices.

It says the recent surge in prices to just shy of $150 this summer has highlighted the "ultimately finite" nature of oil and gas reserves.

"The immediate risk to supply is not one of a lack of global resources, but rather a lack of investment," the report says. "Upstream investment has been rising rapidly in nominal terms but much of the increase is due to surging costs and the need to combat rising decline rates - especially in higher-cost provinces."

"Expanding production in the lowest-cost countries will be central to meeting the world's needs at reasonable cost."

The IEA was founded during the oil crisis of 1973-74 and acts as energy policy adviser to 28 countries including Britain.

Global oil demand and supply is projected to rise from 84m barrels a day to 106m in 2030, with all of this increase driven by emerging economies, but the IEA sees conventional oil output peaking before then. Most of the increased production will come from natural gas liquids and non-conventional technologies such as Canadian oil sands.

Adequate investment

The agency says there is enough oil to support rising demand and output, with proven reserves of up to 1.3tn barrels - or enough for 40 years - and potential reserves of as much as 3.5tn barrels. But it says the increased output "hinges on adequate and timely investment".

Up to 64m barrels a day of extra gross capacity - the equivalent to almost six times that of Saudi Arabia today - needs to come on stream between 2007 and 2030. Almost half of that is required by 2015, with an extra 7m barrels a day over current plans approved within the next two years "to avoid a fall in spare capacity towards the middle of the next decade".

The IEA warns bluntly: "There remains a real risk that under-investment will cause an oil-supply crunch in that timeframe."

It says a detailed analysis of 800 fields owned by 54 "super-giants" shows that the decline in production is likely to accelerate as oilfields become depleted. This means that the global decline rate of 6.7% for fields past their peak will increase to 8.6% in 2030 and may fall even faster, at 10.5%, without adequate investment.

The 50 largest oil companies, the IEA says, plan to invest $600bn (£380bn) in upstream oil and gas by 2012. But such companies often do not have access to the regions with the largest reserves. The national companies in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela will account for 80% of increased output by 2030.

"The dominance of national companies may make it less certain that the investment projected in this outlook will actually be made," it says, pointing to the lack of financial firepower and technical expertise of such firms.

Claude Turmes, a Green MEP and rapporteur on renewables for the European parliament, said: "IEA is talking about a huge disruption to the market between now and 2015 and in the long-run - without a huge investment in Saudi, Iraq and Iran which may not be in their interest."

Like the commission, the IEA calls for a dramatic shift towards "greener" energy to prevent global warming, saying that, on unchanged policies, the average temperature will rise 6°C by the end of the century. That is triple the maximum increase sought by the EU in its climate change policies.

It says that, on current trends, greenhouse gas emissions will rise by 45% to 41 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2030, with three-quarters of the increase coming from China, India and the Middle East as urbanisation there grows exponentially.

In its most ambitious scenario for cutting emissions and limiting the global temperature rise to 2°C, it says hundreds of millions of homes and businesses will have to change the way they use energy.

OECD countries will have to cut emissions by 40% from 2006 levels by 2030 while emerging economies will have to limit emissions growth to 20%.

Greenhouse gases could rise 45 per cent, IEA say
The world is on course for a 45 per cent increase in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned.


By Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 12 Nov 08;

This would lead to a temperature rise of 6ºC when scientists have warned that this must be kept below 2ºC to avoid catastrophic climate change.

The IEA's World Energy Outlook report says increasing demand and use of energy is unsustainable and has to be curbed.

It says use of low-carbon energy through hydropower, nuclear, biomass, and other renewables needs to expand from 19 per cent in 2006 to 26 per cent by 2030.

Coal and gas fired power plants will also have to be equipped with carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) to limit the average temperature rise to even 3ºC.

The switch to more low carbon energy will require extra investment of £2.7 trillion – equivalent to 0.2 per cent of GDP, – the IEA report said, with an average £11 spent per head worldwide on more efficient cars, appliances and buildings. The improved energy efficiency would deliver fuel-cost savings of almost £4.5 trillion.

Three-quarters of the projected rises in energy-related CO2 emissions will be accounted for by China, India and the Middle East.

IEA executive director Nobuo Tanaka said: "Current trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable – environmentally, economically and socially – they can and must be altered.

"Rising imports of oil and gas into Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) regions and developing Asia, together with the growing concentration of production in a small number of countries, would increase our susceptibility to supply disruptions and sharp price hikes.

"At the same time, greenhouse-gas emissions would be driven up inexorably, putting the world on track for an eventual global temperature increase of up to 6°C."

The report says that, assuming no new government policies, world energy demand will grow by 1.6 per cent per year on average between 2006 and 2030 – an increase of 45 per cent. This figure is lower than projected last year because the economic slowdown has reduced demand.

Demand for oil will rise from the current 85m barrels per day to 106m barrels by 2030. Demand for coal will rise more than any other fuel – despite the environmental damage it causes – accounting for more than a third of the increase in energy use.

The renewable energy industry will grow rapidly and will become the second-largest source of electricity soon after 2010.

The report claims oil will remain the world's main source of energy for many years to come even with the rapid development of alternative renewable energy technology but the amount of oil remaining, production costs and consumer price will remain unpredictable.

"One thing is certain", said Mr Tanaka, "while market imbalances will feed volatility, the era of cheap oil is over".

He said big international oil and gas companies would in the future have limited scope to increase reserves and production while in contrast national companies are projected to account for about 80 per cent of the increase of both oil and gas production to 2030.

But it was uncertain whether the companies will be willing to find the investment needed and increasing production in the lowest-cost countries – most of them in OPEC – will be central to meeting the world's oil needs at reasonable cost.

The report says measures to curb CO2 emissions will improve energy security by reducing global fossil-fuel energy use but this should not alarm the world's major oil producers.

"OPEC production will need to be 12m barrels per day higher in 2030 than today. It is clear that the energy sector will have to play the central role in tackling climate change," said Mr Tanaka.

Dr Keith Allott, head of climate change at WWF-UK agreed with the IEA than an energy revolution was needed but added:

"What concerns us is that, despite acknowledging the damaging effect of high carbon energy sources, the IEA fails to call for an end to 'business-as-usual' coal.

"Currently, even countries such as the UK, which has positioned itself as a leader on climate change, are considering plans to develop new unabated coal-fired power stations.

"This would lock us into a high carbon future, when globally, our focus should be placed on developing clean and renewable energy sources."

Energy body warns on oil prices
Sarah Mukherjee, BBC News 12 Nov 08;

One of the world's leading authorities on energy supply says the era of cheap oil is over and prices could soon be back up to $100 a barrel.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), in its World Energy Outlook for 2008, says prices could soar as high as $200 a barrel by 2030.

The immediate risk to supply, it says, is not one of a lack of global resources.

Instead, it points to a lack of investment where it is needed.

Rising costs

The world, the report's authors conclude, is not running out of oil just yet - indeed, there is enough of it to supply the world for more than 40 years at current rates of consumption.

But, they point out, field by field, declines in oil production are accelerating and more money will be needed in research and development to extract the oil there is.

While world oil supply will rise, the report's authors predict that massive investments in energy infrastructure will be needed - an eye-watering $26 trillion dollars up to 2030.

A significant amount of this money - $8.4 trillion - will need to be spent on oil and gas exploration and development.

In one scenario considered by the IEA, China and India will account for just over half of the increase in world primary energy demand between 2006 and 2030, and much of the increase in world oil demand.

But despite the agency's assessment of oil and gas reserves, the report contains a stark warning of the consequences of continuing to rely on fossil fuels.

The consequences for the global climate of policy inaction when it comes to decarbonising the world economy are "shocking", according to the report.

"Strong, co-ordinated action is needed urgently to curb the growth in greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting rise in global temperatures," it said.

Read more!

How Floating 'Energy Islands' Could Power the Future

Michael Schirber, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 13 Nov 08;

Editor's Note: Each Wednesday LiveScience examines the viability of emerging energy technologies - the power of the future.

The ocean harbors abundant energy in the form of wind, waves and sun. All of these could be sampled on something called an Energy Island: a floating rig that drills for renewables instead of petroleum.

The concept is the brainchild of inventor Dominic Michaelis. He was originally unsatisfied with the slow progress in developing ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), a process in which cold water is pumped up from the deep ocean to generate electricity.

"Nothing new was happening with OTEC, so I thought why not bring other marine energy technologies on board?" Michaelis said.

The Energy Island that he and his son have designed would have an OTEC plant at its center, but spread across the 2,000-foot-wide (600-meter-wide) platform would also be wind turbines and solar collectors. Additionally, wave energy converters and sea current turbines would capture energy from water moving around the structure.

One of these hexagonally-shaped islands could generate 250 megawatts (enough power for a small city), Michaelis said. Even more power is possible by mooring together several Energy Islands into a small archipelago that could include greenhouses for food, a small harbor for ships and a hotel for tourists.

To attract possible investors, the Energy Island team will present their concept this week at the U.S. China GreenTech Summit in Shanghai.

Running hot and cold

The principle reason to build an Energy Island is to harvest OTEC.

"The advantage of OTEC over other marine energy technologies is that it's constant, 24 hours a day and all year round," Michaelis told LiveScience.

This is because it is based not on the sun or the wind or the waves, but on the temperature difference between warm water at the sun-heated surface and cold water in the deep, dark ocean.

The biggest temperature differences can be found in tropical seas, where the surface water is around 80 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius).

This warm water is drawn in from around the Energy Island and used to evaporate a working fluid, which might be seawater or ammonia. The resulting vapor pushes a turbine that produces electricity.

To condense the vapor back to fluid, cold water at about 40 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) is pumped up from a half mile below the surface. This condensation creates a pressure drop that helps suck more vapor through the turbine blades.

The same basic process occurs in a coal-fired or nuclear power plant, but the temperature difference between water boilers and cooling towers is much greater than in an OTEC system.

Large overhead

The first OTEC plant was built in 1930 on a Cuban shoreline and produced 22 kilowatts of power. Only a handful of other facilities (both floating and land-based) have been constructed since, with the largest being a 250-kilowatt pilot plant in Hawaii. None are currently operating.

The main drawback has been the inherent inefficiency of converting a relatively small temperature difference into electricity. In fact, some of the early OTEC designs used more energy than they were able to produce.

An OTEC plant requires a lot of energy to circulate massive amounts of water. The Energy Island, for example, will need more than 100,000 gallons (400 cubic meters) of cold water pumped up per second.

This is why Michaelis incorporates other marine energy technologies to help "prime" the OTEC system.

Fringe benefits

The clean power generated by an Energy Island could be transmitted to shore by underwater cables. Or it could be used to make hydrogen from water, and this hydrogen fuel could be shipped to the mainland in order to produce electricity in fuel cells.

The exported electricity might run 9 to 13 cents per kilowatt-hour, depending on how the project is financed, Michaelis said. A single Energy Island has an estimated price tag of $600 million.

However, electricity is not the only thing these man-made isles can offer.

If seawater is used as the OTEC working fluid, it will be desalinated through the cycle of evaporation and condensation. For each megawatt of electricity produced, an OTEC plant can supply 300,000 gallons of fresh water per day, Michaelis said.

Moreover, the cold water pumped up from the ocean depths is full of nutrients that could support fish farms or some other form of aquaculture.

Read more!

Japan CO2 Hits Record, Risking Kyoto Failure

Risa Maeda, PlanetArk 13 Nov 08;

TOKYO - Japan's greenhouse gas emissions rose to a record high in the year to March, putting the world's fifth-largest carbon dioxide producer at risk of an embarrassing failure to achieve its Kyoto target over the next four years.

The increase of 2.3 percent last year, largely due to the closure of Japan's biggest nuclear power plant after an earthquake, will ratchet up the pressure for it to give up its efforts to control emissions through voluntary measures and adopt tougher limits on industry like the European Union and Australia.

With developing countries already questioning Tokyo's political will to rein in emissions and top CO2 polluters China, the United States and India free from Kyoto's 2008-2012 targets, Japan's actions will be seen as a milestone as governments struggle to agree on a successor to the protocol next year.

Emissions rose to 1.371 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent in the Japanese fiscal year through March, after a 1.3 percent decline the previous year, Ministry of the Environment data showed on Wednesday.

Analysts said immediate action was called for if Japan was to cut emissions by the estimated 13.5 percent needed to hit its 2008-2012 target under Kyoto of just under 1.2 billion tonnes, down 6 percent from 1990 levels.

"We immediately need a set of effective policies to drive a change towards a more climate-friendly society," Tetsunari Iida, executive director of Tokyo's Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies (ISEP), an environment policy NGO.

Unlike the European Union, Japan has been reluctant to set a mandatory cap or a carbon tax on companies' emissions. Steelmakers and other manufacturers resist such caps, saying they would hurt their products' worldwide competitiveness.

The task of cutting emissions may grow even harder with the world tilting toward what may be its worst recession in decades, one that may divert governments' focus away from climate change and the trillions of investment dollars required to stem it.

Although Japan is set to review next year its current measures, based on voluntary pledges on emission cuts across major industries, that could be too late, analysts said.


EXTRA CREDITS

A rise was widely expected after the world's biggest nuclear plant, run by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), had to suspend operations following a July 2007 earthquake, forcing utilities to meet demand by burning more coal, oil and natural gas, all of which emit far more greenhouse gases.

The plant is expected to remain shut until beyond next March.

While Japan's utilities have stepped up their buying of UN carbon offsets, Wednesday's data suggests they may have to buy more if Japan is to meet its global pledge, potentially driving up global carbon credit prices.

While Tokyo has worked hard to drive utilities toward cleaner forms of energy, it has also struggled to convince power companies facing tough times to hasten investments in new nuclear power stations with low emissions.

The government also faces public distrust about Japan's scandal-plagued nuclear industry, including safety fears over the numerous earthquakes the country suffers each year.

On Tuesday, J-Power said it had delayed the start of a major new nuclear unit by two years, the latest in a string of delays to new projects.

Yet long term strategies are key to resolving the problem, analysts say.

"There will be no reduction in carbon emissions until there are viable ways of replacing energy supply and energy growth with large-scale renewables," said climate change expert Barry Brook, of the University of Adelaide in Australia.

"That is where the focus of international action should now be."

Iida said the fact that two new coal plants were being built in Japan underscored the need for sterner government action.

The world's efforts to carve out a pact to follow Kyoto should intensify ahead of a key meeting in Copenhagen next December that negotiators have set as a deadline for establishing a post-2012 framework.

But the debate comes at a difficult time, with developed nations heading into recession, which may help curb emissions by reducing power demand, but also risks distracting from the longer-term task and fostering a return to cheaper carbon energy.

The world needs to invest $26 trillion in energy infrastructure by 2030 just to maintain fossil-based energy supply, the International Energy Agency said last week.


OUTLOOK UNCERTAIN

Tokyo has set companies and households a private-sector emissions target, to be met by voluntary steps, of 1.254 billion tonnes, which will be offset by a further 68 million tonnes a year by government spending on domestic forest conservation and credits from investing in clean technology in poorer countries.

The key to Japan's voluntary programme is the electric power industry, which has pledged to cut CO2 emissions to an average of 0.34 kg per kilowatt hour a year through to 2012.

But in the year to March that figure stood at 0.453 kg due to the closure of TEPCO's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant.

Even if the power industry met its voluntary target last year, Japan's emissions would still have exceeded its target, the environment ministry said.

(Additional reporting by Miho Yoshikawa and Osamu Tsukimori in Tokyo and David Fogarty in Singapore; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Japan's CO2 emissions hit record high: official
Yahoo News 12 Nov 08;

TOKYO (AFP) – Japan's carbon dioxide emissions hit a record high of 1.37 billion tons in the year to March 2008, well above the target set by the Kyoto Protocol, the environment ministry said Wednesday.

The figure, which marked a 2.3 percent rise from the previous fiscal year, was mainly the result of more polluting energy production following the closure of the world's biggest nuclear power plant after it was damaged in an earthquake that struck northern Japan.

"The greater use of thermal power plants due to reduced nuclear power operations significantly contributed to the increase," an environment ministry official said.

The data shows that Japan's CO2 emission rose 8.7 percent from the 1990 level.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, Japan is committed to reducing its emissions by six percent from the benchmark year in the period between 2008 and 2012. Japan relies on nuclear plants for nearly one-third of its power needs.

Leaders of the Group of Eight rich nations -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- called at a summit in Japan in July for global cuts in CO2 of at least 50 percent by 2050, without specifying the base year.

Negotiations are under way to draft a new environmental treaty covering the period after the Kyoto Protocol's obligations expire in 2012.

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Earth May Face Freeze Worse Than Ice Age - Study

Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 13 Nov 08;

OSLO - The planet could face a freeze worse than an Ice Age starting in as little as 10,000 years, giving future societies a headache the opposite of coping with global warming, scientists said on Wednesday.

The researchers, based in Britain and Canada, said that now-vilified greenhouse gases might help in future to avert a chill that could smother much of Canada and the United States, Europe and Russia in permanent ice.

They said the study, based on records of tiny marine fossils and the earth's shifting orbit, did not mean the world should stop fighting warming, stoked by human emissions of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels.

"We're saying: 'don't push the panic button'," said Thomas Crowley, an American scientist at Edinburgh University who shared authorship of the study in the journal Nature with a colleague at Toronto University.

"There's no excuse for saying 'we've got to keep pumping carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere", he told Reuters by telephone, adding that the cooling was projected to start in 10,000 to 100,000 years.

"Geologically it's tomorrow," he said. "But we have a lot of time to argue about the appropriate level of greenhouse gases."

The projected build-up of vast ice sheets across the Northern Hemisphere and over seas around Antarctica would also lower sea levels by perhaps 300 metres (980 ft) -- connecting Russia to Alaska by land.


FALLING, RISING

In the last Ice Age, sea levels fell about 130 metres and much of Russia escaped a big ice sheet. Scientists can build sea level records from fossils because ocean chemistry varies; salt, for instance, is more concentrated when there is less sea water.

"Presumably, future society could prevent this transition indefinitely with very modest adjustments to the atmospheric CO2 level," they wrote. Greenhouse gases are widely blamed as the main cause of current warming that may bring more heatwaves, droughts, food shortages and rising seas.

A shift to a bigger blanket of ice would mark the end of a period of warming that began 50 million years ago, when even Antarctica was almost ice-free.

The scientists said the recent swings between Ice Ages and warmer periods such as the present, over the past 900,000 years, were getting sharper. Models suggested that instability could herald a shift to a new, far colder and stable state.

A similar shift happened more than 34 million years ago when Antarctica was first covered by ice, the scientists said. A trigger could be a slight growth of polar ice sheets, with ice and snow reflecting more of the sun's heat back into space. That could accelerate a cooling.

"Historians of science hate to say 'this is a special time'," Crowley said.

"But when you go through the models, each step seems reasonable and you get to an astonishing conclusion that we are right at the end of a 50-million-year evolution".

Modern human societies might never have developed if such a freeze had happened slightly earlier. "Anatomically modern humans evolved only 150,000 years ago," he said.

Crowley said more tests of the projections were needed.

"It might not come for tens of thousands of years," he said. "I'm sure some headline writers will want to say 'CO2 good for the atmosphere', or 'CO2 is good for us'. That's not the case."

(Editing by Tim Pearce)

Earth would be heading to a freeze without CO2 emissions
Yahoo News 12 Nov 08;

PARIS (AFP) – Scheduled shifts in Earth's orbit should plunge the planet into an enduring Ice Age thousands of years from now but the event will probably be averted because of man-made greenhouse gases, scientists said Wednesday.

They cautioned, though, that this news is not an argument in favour of global warming, which is driving imminent and potentially far-reaching damage to the climate system.

Earth has experienced long periods of extreme cold over the billions of years of its history.

The big freezes are interspersed with "interglacial" periods of relative warmth, of the kind we have experienced since the end of the last Ice Age, around 11,000 years ago.

These climate swings have natural causes, believed to be rooted particularly in changes in Earth's orbit and axis that, while minute, have a powerful effect on how much solar heat falls on the planet.

Two researchers built a high-powered computer model to take a closer look at these intriguing phases of cooling and warmth.

In addition to the planetary shifts, they also factored in levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), found in tiny bubbles in ice cores, that provide an indicator of temperature spanning hundreds of thousands of years.

They found dramatic swings in climate, including changes when Earth flipped from one state to the other in a relatively short time, said one of the authors, geoscientist Thomas Crowley of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

These shifts, called "bifurcations," appear to happen in abrupt series, which is counter-intuitive to the idea that the planet cools or warms gradually.

"You had a big change about a million years ago, then a second change around 650,000 years ago, when you had bigger glaciations, then 450,000 years ago, when you started to get more repeated glaciations," Thomas told AFP.

"What's also interesting is that the inter-glaciations also became warmer."

According to the model, published in the British journal Nature by Crowley and physicist William Hyde of Toronto University, Canada, the next "bifurcation" would normally be due between 10,000 and 100,000 years from now.

The chill would induce a long, stable period of glaciation in the mid-latitudes, smothering Europe, Asia and North America to about 45-50 degrees latitude with a thick sheet of ice.

However, there is now so much CO2 in the air, as a result of fossil-fuel burning and deforestation, that this adds a heat-trapping greenhouse effect that will offset the cooling impacts of orbital shift, said Crowley.

"Even the level that we have there now is more than sufficient to reach that critical state seen in the model," he said. "If we cut back [on CO2] some, that would probably still be enough."

In September, a scientific research consortium called the Global Carbon Project (GCP) said that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 reached 383 parts per million (ppm) in 2007, or 37 percent above pre-industrial levels.

Present concentrations are "the highest during the last 650,000 years and probably during the last 20 million years," the report said.

Crowley cautioned those who would seize on the new study to say "'carbon dioxide is now good, it prevents us from walking the plank into this deep glaciation'."

"We don't want to give people that impression," he said. "(...) You can't use this argument to justify [man-made] global warming."

Last year, the UN's Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that greenhouse-gas emissions were already inflicting visible changes to the climate system, especially on ice and snow.

Left unchecked, climate change could inflict widespread drought and flooding by the end of the century, translating into hunger, homelessness and other stresses for millions of people.

New Ice Age Predicted -- But Averted by Global Warming?
Mason Inman, National Geographic News 12 Nov 08;

Deep ice sheets would cover much of the Northern Hemisphere thousands of years from now—if it weren't for us pesky humans, a new study says.

Emissions of greenhouse gases—such as the carbon dioxide, or CO2, that comes from power plants and cars—are heating the atmosphere to such an extent that the next ice age, predicted to be the deepest in millions of years, may be postponed indefinitely.

"Climate skeptics could look at this and say, CO2 is good for us," said study leader Thomas Crowley of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

But the idea that global warming may be staving off an ice age is "not cause for relaxing, because we're actually moving into a highly unusual climate state," Crowley added.

In about 10,000 to 100,000 years, the study suggests, Antarctic-like "permanent" ice sheets would shroud much of Canada, Europe, and Asia.

"I think the present [carbon dioxide] levels are probably sufficient to prevent that from ever happening," said Crowley, whose study will appear tomorrow in the journal Nature.

Permanent Ice Sheets?

For the past three million years, Earth's climate has wobbled through dozens of ice ages, with thick ice sheets growing from the poles and then shrinking back again.

These ice ages used to last roughly 41,000 years. But in the past half a million years, these big freezes each stretched to about a hundred thousand years long.

Meanwhile, the temperature swings during and between these ice ages became more extreme, soaring to new highs and lows.

These extreme climate swings don't appear to be easing anytime soon, according to evidence recorded in Earth's rocks, Crowley said. "The latest two glaciations were two of the biggest we've seen."

The increasing variability is a sign that Earth's climate will soon move into a new state, according to a computer model used by Crowley and a colleague, William Hyde of the University of Toronto in Canada. They had previously used the model to simulate past ice ages.

The researchers found that between 10,000 and 100,000 years from now, Earth would enter into a period of permanent ice sheets—more severe than any seen in millions of years.

In some ways the ice age would be like those in the past few hundred thousand years, with a thick ice sheet covering North America, the study predicted.

But in the model, Europe and Asia also succumbed to ice sheets up to 2 miles (3.5 kilometers) thick, stretching from England to Siberia—something never before seen in models of past ice ages.

"We were surprised," Crowley said. "There's no evidence for this in Asia" during ice ages in the past few million years.

Hard to Know

Though this extreme ice age would be unusual, so is the climate that people are creating by emitting huge amounts of greenhouse gases, Crowley said (global warming fast facts).

"It's hard to say what's going to happen," Crowley said. "The very fact that you have this nonglacial [warming] atmosphere with polar ice caps [still present], presents a bizarre scenario.

"I don't know that we have a comparable analogy for it in the geologic record."

Prehistoric-climate expert Lorraine Lisiecki said, "This is the only study of which I am aware that suggests the next ice age could be much more extreme than those of the previous one million years."

Many more tests are needed to see if the study's prediction seems correct, said Lisiecki, of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

But she agreed that we might never find out what would have happened naturally, due to human-caused global warming.

"Current greenhouse gas concentrations are probably similar to those that occurred three million years ago and are high enough to prevent an ice age for hundreds of thousands of years," she said.

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