Finally... some decent bugs in a pond
on the Water Quality in Singapore blog
The male Crimson-breasted Flowerpecker
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Naval aviation of Blue-tailed Bee-eaters
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
The beauty of young curls
on the annotated budak blog
FREE - SciAmEarth 3.0 issue
on the ashira blog
Straits Times 17 Dec 08;
Shobana Kesava tells of those who pick up trash voluntarily and not on a CWO.
OVER 2,500 people descending on Singapore shores in one day, not to enjoy the sun, sand and sea but to pull out other people’s rubbish sounds like a bad release of piled-up littering corrective work orders.
But no one was being forced to do it on Sep 20 this year.
And, the thousands doing the collecting weren’t just collecting rubbish but data which will be sent this week to the Washington-based Ocean Conservancy which organises the annual international coastal clean-up.
The Non-Governmental Organisation wants to understand what makes up the world’s shoreline litter to help change behaviours.
Singapore residents have been at it the last 17 years: Collecting other people’s trash as a voluntary activity. They feel part of a good cause - understanding what exactly constitutes Singapore’s trash on the shores.
What a dedicated bunch.
They get knee-deep in mangroves, pull out an old drink can, note it on a datasheet as a food container and carry it back to civilisation in full trash bags. The input goes online to the International Coastal Clean-up Singapore.
One group quite happy to get dirty in the name of cleaning up is The Raffles Museum ToddyCats. The group of 10 volunteers with the National University of Singapore all have full time jobs but still make time for their mission of coordinating the annual trash assessment.
Their website is a passive advertisement for those willing to organise themselves into groups and take part on Sep 20 every year.
Students, corporate citizens, civil servants and altruistic adults: Step forward.
Their motives for taking part may be varied but their committment to cleaning up is the same.
Some volunteers want to chalk up points for their community involvement programmes in school. Others hope to get the next generation of Singaporeans to avoid becoming another trash-producing generation. These days, some even say they want to offset their company’s carbon footprint.
This week, the results of their efforts will join the global data from other clean-ups around the world.
It seems wherever you are in the world rubbish is a pretty universal object.
Styrofoam, (really Dow Chemical’s trademarked name for polystyrene), plastic bags and cigarette butts always turn up. So do heavy items like truck tyres which are hauled up, rolled out one at a time and stacked up for disposal company Sembenviro to carry away.
Even dumped refrigerators and toilet cisterns possibly washed up from foreign shores and ships are carted out of mangroves.
Trash collected here and elsewhere is on the rise with eight pieces of trash picked up per metre of shoreline, compared to just three pieces, five years ago.
Blame it on enduring consumerism and poor disposal habits, but volunteers are undeterred and hope to make even the most incorrigible get the message:
- Garbage destroys wildlife which share the planet with us.
- It entangles or suffocates marine life. It fills their gut making them die a slow death from malnutrition.
And, if altruism doesn’t work there are other resons: It damages ecosystsems that provide food resources, traps fresh rainwater great for dengue-breeding and destroys our tranquil escape to sun, sand and sparkling sea.
For many who take on the task, it’s done in the hope that education and not punishments like corrective work orders will encourage other Singaporeans to quit littering.
WWF Website 19 Dec 08;
Sydney, Australia - A widespread and severe coral bleaching episode is predicted to cause immense damage to some of the world’s most important marine environments over the next few months.
A report from the US Government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts severe bleaching for parts of the Coral Sea, which lies adjacent to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and the Coral Triangle, a 5.4 million square kilometre expanse of ocean in the Indo-Pacific which is considered the centre of the world’s marine life.
“This forecast bleaching episode will be caused by increased water temperatures and is the kind of event we can expect on a regular basis if average global temperatures rise above 2 degrees,” said Richard Leck, Climate Change Strategy Leader for WWF’s Coral Triangle Program.
The bleaching, predicted to occur between now and February, could have a devastating impact on coral reef ecosystems, killing coral and destroying food chains. There would be severe impacts for communities in Australia and the region, who depend on the oceans for their livelihoods.
The Coral Triangle, stretching from the Philippines to Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, is home to 75 per cent of all known coral species. More than 120 million people rely on its marine resources.
“Regular bleaching episodes in this part of the world will have a massive impact on the region’s ability to sustain local communities,” said Leck. “In the Pacific many of the Small Island Developing States, such as the Solomon Islands, rely largely on the coast and coastal environments such as coral reefs for food supply. This is a region where alternative sources of income and food are limited.
“Time is crucial and Australia needs to step up to the plate. Following the government’s lack of resolve to seriously reduce future domestic carbon emissions, Australia has a huge role to play in assisting Coral Triangle countries and people to adapt to the changes in their climate.“
The Australian government this week announced a 2020 target for reducing its greenhouse gas pollution by 5 per cent, which WWF criticised as completely inadequate. Reductions of at least 25 per cent by 2020 are needed to set the world on a pathway to meaningful cuts in greenhouse pollution.
Australia’s Coral Sea, which will also be affected by coral bleaching and climate change, is a pristine marine wilderness covering almost 1,000,000 square kilometres and is extraordinarily rich in marine life, including sharks and turtles, with a series of spectacular reefs rising thousands of metres from the sea floor.
WWF is urging the Australian government to declare the Coral Sea a marine protected area, as well as working to establish a network of marine protected areas that will assist ocean environments to adapt to the changes caused by rising temperatures, and to absorb the impacts from human activity.
Jayakumar and Tommy Koh give behind-the-scenes account of 30-year saga
Zakir Hussain, Straits Times 20 Dec 08;
BACK in 1992, Singapore was so confident of its legal case on Pedra Branca that it handed over all its documents to Malaysia.
In his foreword to a new book on the 30-year dispute, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew disclosed he had instructed that the materials be shown to Malaysia, 'an unprecedented unilateral move'.
Yesterday, Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong took up the point in his keynote address at the launch of the book Pedra Branca: The Road To The World Court.
He said: 'I am not sure whether the International Court of Justice (ICJ) realised that most of the documents used by Malaysia in her arguments against Singapore were produced by us.
'So, you can imagine our deep disappointment when it was alleged that Singapore had withheld from the court a letter which Malaysia believed would damage our case.
He added: 'The truth is that we had gone round the world looking for it for some 30 years without success.'
This move and other previously undisclosed facts about the Pedra Branca case are contained in the 190-page book on how both countries managed the dispute, which the ICJ resolved in May this year.
Pedra Branca, a football field-sized island at the eastern entrance of the Singapore Strait, was first occupied in 1847 by the British, who built Horsburgh Lighthouse there. Singapore later took over, and Malaysia staked its claim in 1979.
In May, the ICJ ruled that Pedra Branca belonged to Singapore, and that nearby Middle Rocks belonged to Malaysia.
Who owns a third maritime feature, South Ledge, is being worked out by the two countries. The ICJ says it belongs to the country in whose waters it sits.
The long journey to the ICJ resolution was highlighted by Deputy Prime Minister S. Jayakumar, who co-wrote the book with Ambassador-at-Large Tommy Koh.
Speaking at its launch at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), he said: 'For both of us, working on the case for some 30 years was really a labour of love.'
In the book, both men noted how their involvement with the case began in 1978, when they were representing Singapore at the United Nations in Geneva. The MFA had sent them an urgent telex, asking Professor Jayakumar to go to London to locate certain documents on the island.
Both men went on to helm the team making Singapore's case for Pedra Branca before the ICJ in The Hague in November last year, with CJ Chan, who was Attorney-General from 1992 to 2006.
The book recounts the twists and turns in the dispute and the behind-the-scenes manoeuvres taken to resolve it.
At the launch, Prof Jayakumar recounted several anecdotes, including how he won 10 euros (S$20) from CJ Chan at the last stage of the hearing last year.
Prof Jayakumar had wagered that the judges would ask a question allowing Singapore to reply to a last-minute argument Malaysia had made when Singapore could no longer address the court.
'CJ was happy to lose that bet,' he said to laughter.
Prof Jayakumar also noted that both sides agreed to third-party dispute settlement, now a key tenet of Singapore's foreign policy in managing disputes.
Professor Koh said they decided to write the book to distil the lessons they had learnt from the case - Singapore's first at the ICJ - and share them with colleagues as well as the public.
CJ Chan, in his speech, noted that Pedra Branca was 'not an easy case by any standard'. The written pleadings alone of each side filled more than 2,600 pages.
'This is a case where history was part of the legal arguments, and law was part of the historical arguments,' he said.
'Ultimately, the majority of the court decided that Malaysia had history on its side, and Singapore had international law on its side, and this is expressed in the final disposition of the judgment.'
The authors will donate their royalties from the book sales to the proposed centre for international law at the National University of Singapore, which aims to nurture a new generation of Asian international lawyers.
Pedra Branca: Behind the scenes
Straits Times 20 Dec 08;
Pedra Branca was in the spotlight last year when the International Court of Justice in The Hague heard Singapore and Malaysia make their case for the island. A new book by Deputy Prime Minister S. Jayakumar and Ambassador-at-Large Tommy Koh, who played key roles in the case, sheds light on previously undisclosed facets of the case
By Zakir Hussain
THE first inkling that something was afoot came in 1977, when Singapore's Foreign Affairs Ministry (MFA) learnt that a Malaysian navy lieutenant commander had made inquiries about the status of Pedra Branca.
Then in April the following year, the then Counsellor at the Singapore High Commission in Kuala Lumpur, Mr Kishore Mahbubani, reported back on a conversation he had with a Malaysian Foreign Ministry official.
The Malaysians claimed to have completed a study showing that Horsburgh Lighthouse belonged to them.
The official said they would be writing to Singapore to claim sovereignty over Pedra Branca, where the lighthouse had stood since 1851, although no such communication was received.
In May 1978, Professor S. Jayakumar, dean of the National University of Singapore's Law Faculty, was in Geneva assisting the ministry for the third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (Unclos).
He received a telex from then MFA deputy secretary Tan Boon Seng asking him to head to London right away to search for colonial documents on Pedra Branca that could not be located in Singapore. After consulting Professor Tommy Koh, then Singapore's permanent representative to the United Nations, Prof Jayakumar spent a few days looking up documents at the India Office in London and the Public Record Office in Kew.
He returned with a microfilm of documents. But he could not unearth an 1844 letter that Straits Settlements Governor W.J. Butterworth wrote to the Johor rulers, apparently about the island. He did, however, find copies of Johor's replies referring to Peak Rock, another island.
While at both offices, Prof Jayakumar was asked if he was the person who had come two days earlier for similar documents.
He concluded that the Malaysians must be searching for the same material.
Not long after, in December 1979, Malaysia published a map that, for the first time, included Pedra Branca as Malaysian territory. The move drew a formal protest from the Singapore Government.
Attempts to settle
Prime ministers on both sides raised the matter when they met for bilateral talks or at international events.
In a foreword to the book, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, who was prime minister at the time, said that while Singapore was surprised by Malaysia's claim in 1979, 'I saw no need for this claim to trouble our bilateral relationship'.
'I went out of my way to persuade Malaysian PM Hussein Onn, under whose watch this claim was made, to settle the issue in an open and straightforward manner,' Mr Lee wrote. 'I found Hussein fair-minded when we discussed the Pedra Branca issue during his visit to Singapore in May 1980. He said both sides should search for documents to prove ownership of Pedra Branca.'
After Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad took over in 1981 and visited Singapore in December that year, he and Mr Lee agreed that both sides should exchange documents to establish the legitimacy of their respective claims.
Then in the late 1980s, in what was an unprecedented unilateral move, Mr Lee instructed then Attorney-General Tan Boon Teik to go to Kuala Lumpur and show Singapore's documentary evidence to his Malaysian counterpart.
'I was prepared to take that step to get the Malaysians to know that we had a powerful legal case,' he wrote.
'But I also understood that it was difficult for any leader to give up sovereignty claims unilaterally.' This was why he proposed to Dr Mahathir in 1989 that if the matter was not settled after a document exchange, the dispute should be referred to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The need to find a political solution to the dispute became more urgent as throughout the 1980s, Malaysian Marine Police boats began to make regular incursions into waters around Pedra Branca.
The Singapore navy was under strict instructions to avoid escalating matters, and both sides acted with restraint.
Dr Mahathir was aware of the need not to let the situation get out of control, the authors note in the book. In 1989, he made an unannounced boat trip to the vicinity of Pedra Branca to personally size up the situation.
Recounting his visit at a function in Kuala Lumpur last year, Dr Mahathir said his boat was immediately intercepted by two Singapore naval vessels. As he did not want to cause an international incident, he asked his own boat to leave.
In 1994, Malaysia agreed to refer the matter to the ICJ.
Prof Jayakumar and Prof Koh noted that after studying Singapore's documents, Malaysian officials indicated privately that Singapore had a strong case, and that their claim was weak.
Why did they persist in their claim? The authors say the issue had become politicised, and it would probably have been untenable for a Malaysian leader to be seen making a territorial concession.
Difficulties
Before the ICJ could decide the case, both sides had to sign a Special Agreement consenting to the court hearing the case and specifying the precise question on which the court was to decide.
This took three rounds of talks over four years, and eventually both sides agreed that the court would be asked to determine whether sovereignty over each of three close maritime features - Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh, Middle Rocks and South Ledge - belonged to Malaysia or to Singapore.
Inter-agency coordination
From early on, Singapore set up an inter-ministry committee on the case, bringing together officials from the Attorney-General's Chambers (AGC), MFA, the Defence and Law ministries and other relevant agencies.
A significant document they found was a 1953 letter from Johor's acting state secretary expressly disclaiming title over Pedra Branca - which the then Communications Ministry located in its archives in 1977.
Key members of the Singapore team, including the international counsel who would argue the case at the ICJ, visited Pedra Branca for a first-hand feel.
The book also reveals that Prof Jayakumar made his own boat trip to the island as early as 1988 with then Communications and Information Minister Yeo Ning Hong - and faced a storm so huge that the ropes securing their lifeboat snapped and the crockery on board was smashed.
Two men on a fishing boat they passed by earlier that day died in that storm.
Dilemmas
Once Malaysia agreed to a third party settlement before the ICJ in 1994, Prof Jayakumar asked Mr Sivakant Tiwari - then head of the civil division at the AGC - to list international lawyers who could help argue Singapore's case.
The team also decided to put forward Prof Koh as Singapore's judge ad hoc on the ICJ as he had wide international diplomatic experience.
A state can appoint such a judge when it appears before the ICJ and does not have its national on the bench.
But one of Singapore's counsel, Prof Alain Pellet, had reservations about Prof Koh being Singapore's judge ad hoc as this could attract objections because he was involved in preparing Singapore's case.
Prof Koh could have withdrawn from the team, but after weighing all the considerations, the Government decided to rule out Prof Koh as judge ad hoc as it was not worth running the risk of having Malaysia object to his appointment.
Singapore then decided on Judge P.S. Rao from India, who had been closely involved during negotiations on Unclos.
But another dilemma emerged when then Attorney-General Chan Sek Keong was appointed chief justice in 2006.
While he had been closely involved in steering Singapore's preparations, some in the team were concerned that his inclusion in the team could raise eyebrows. This was because it was unusual for the chief justice of any country to plead before the ICJ.
'Would it blur the distinctions between the executive and the judiciary? Would foreign critics who attack the independence of our judiciary use this as an additional argument?' the authors write.
After discussions, the team felt it was important that Singapore had the best talent to win the case. And so it was in Singapore's interest to have CJ Chan continue his work on the case.
The matter was discussed with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Cabinet colleagues, who had no doubts that CJ Chan would be an asset, and that there was nothing improper about him leading Singapore's team to The Hague.
It helped that CJ Chan, Prof Koh and Prof Jayakumar had known one another for a long time and were law school contemporaries. Then Attorney-General Chao Hick Tin was also a close friend.
Each of Singapore's three prime ministers also took a deep interest in the management of the dispute and preparations for the case. 'They showed full confidence in the team and did not attempt to micro-manage,' the authors said of Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Mr Goh Chok Tong and Mr Lee Hsien Loong.
Scouring the archives
As preparations for the case picked up pace, the team consulted local and foreign experts on international law and Malay history. Mr Tiwari chaired a committee to coordinate the effort systematically with MFA, the Ministry of Defence, the Maritime and Port Authority and National Archives.
From 2003 to 2006, the Archives deployed five full-time staff and 10 part-timers to locate archival records relating to Pedra Branca, piracy, the Malay concept of sovereignty and the status of the sultan of Johor, among others.
They spent over 20,000 research hours, identified more than 2,000 records, transcribed 650 historical manuscripts and acquired copies of records from Britain, India, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand.
During the oral hearing at The Hague last year, Archives staff were on standby here to assist the Singapore team.
Without their help, the AGC and international counsel would not have the materials with which to write their pleadings, the authors note.
Among the gems they uncovered was a letter written by the Dutch colonial authority in Indonesia acknowledging Pedra Branca as 'British territory', which Singapore used as evidence to back its case.
Preparing for the hearing
Prof Koh, Prof Jayakumar, CJ Chan and A-G Chao were to argue Singapore's case along with four international counsel - Queen's Counsel Ian Brownlie from England, Mr Rodman Bundy from the United States, Frenchman Alain Pellet and Italian Loretta Malintoppi. The team and counsel met several times to prepare written pleadings, counter-arguments and replies. Prof Jayakumar even approached Senior Counsel Davinder Singh for an independent and neutral view on the pleadings of both sides.
The team was encouraged by his response - that Singapore had the better argument.
At the hearings
Countries traditionally appear before the court in alphabetical order. But Malaysia's counsel Elihu Lauterpacht disagreed - presumably because he wanted Malaysia to have the last word. He suggested tossing a coin. But Singapore rejected this as being flippant, and both sides agreed to let the court decide. In September 2006, the registrar said the court drew lots: Singapore would go first.
While disappointed, Singapore took the development in its stride, going ahead on the basis that 'in starting first, we would be able to make a strong and lasting impression on the judges while their minds were still fresh'.
To prepare for the oral hearing, Prof Jayakumar, Prof Koh, CJ Chan and A-G Chao had a filmed rehearsal of their speeches at the MFA in October last year. A second rehearsal was held two weeks later, and a third at the Supreme Court, where CJ Chan and Prof Jayakumar made their case before Appeal Judges V.K. Rajah and Andrew Phang.
The mood of the team before it departed for The Hague was 'calm, confident and upbeat'.
'Although confident, we reminded ourselves not to be smug or underestimate the strength of the Malaysian legal team, which included several international legal luminaries. We knew they were going to give us a good fight.'
Both Prof Jayakumar and Prof Koh wrote that the Singapore and Malaysian media reported on the hearing in a balanced manner.
They said that 'when Malaysia was presenting its case, The Straits Times did such a good job reporting on Malaysia's arguments that we were told that some Singaporeans were betting 60:40 that Malaysia would win the case!'
'We did not know whether the punters had changed the odds after reading Singapore's presentations in the second round, but we were confident that we had answered all of Malaysia's points and left them with nothing substantial to say in their final speeches, except to spring a new argument on us,' they said.
Key factor for success
The authors note that while the legal arguments, well-written pleadings, persuasive oral arguments of team members and very good international counsel were all important to the successful outcome, the most important factor was that all agencies here worked closely together over three decades.
'The Pedra Branca story is an excellent illustration of the 'whole of government approach'.'
Although Singapore was awarded sovereignty over only Pedra Branca, MM Lee said in his foreword in the book that Singapore accepted the judgment without any qualification: 'Whichever way the judgment went, it is better for bilateral relations that a conclusive judgment has been made. This allows us to put aside this issue and move on to other areas of cooperation.'
Summing up, he said that Singapore must remain committed to upholding the rule of law in the relations between states.
If negotiations cannot resolve disputes, it is better to go to a third party than to allow the dispute to fester and sour ties. This was his approach, which his successors have also subscribed to.
About the case
THE dispute pitted Malaysia's claim of original title to Pedra Branca against Singapore's claim of taking lawful possession in 1847 and continuous exercise of sovereignty ever since.
The International Court of Justice was also asked to determine to whom nearby Middle Rocks and South Ledge belong.
Malaysia's arguments
Malaysia's legal case rested on its claim that the Sultanate of Johor had possessed title to the island since its establishment in 1512.
That original title was then transmitted to the State of Johor, and subsequently to the Federation of Malaya, which Johor joined in 1948.
To explain Singapore's presence on the island, Malaysia cited an 1844 letter that it claimed was a grant of permission by the Johor rulers to the British, for the latter to build and operate a lighthouse there.
Malaysia argued that the British and their successor, Singapore, were merely lighthouse operators and never exercised sovereignty over the island.
Singapore's arguments
Singapore said Pedra Branca was terra nullius, or no man's land, when the British took lawful possession of it in 1847.
Britain's conduct from 1847 to 1851, in financing and building Horsburgh Lighthouse, and building piers and rain channels on the island, showed its intention to take sovereign control of the island. Britain thus acquired title to the island through its peaceful occupation of it.
Subsequently, Britain and, later, Singapore, maintained that title through an open, continuous and effective display of state authority over the island from the 1850s up to the present.
In international law, such conduct is known as effectivites.
Singapore also noted that Malaysia never once protested against Singapore's exercise of sovereignty over the island.
Then, in 1979, Malaysia asserted a 'belated claim' by publishing a map that placed Pedra Branca within its territorial waters for the first time, it said.
Singapore also produced a 1953 letter from Johor's top civil servant at that time to the British authorities, in which the former wrote that 'Johore does not claim ownership of Pedra Branca'. That letter, Singapore argued, was a disclaimer of title by Johor that was binding on Malaysia.
The court's judgment
The court recognised that Johor had the original title to Pedra Branca, but ruled that by 1980, when the dispute over the island crystallised, sovereignty over Pedra Branca had passed to Singapore.
It found that the island remained in the sovereignty of Johor when the British made preparations in 1844 to build Horsburgh Lighthouse there.
But the court noted that sovereignty over territory might pass as a result of the failure of the state that has sovereignty to respond to concrete manifestations of the display of territorial sovereignty by the other state.
It noted that Johor's 1953 reply showed that as of then, Johor understood that it did not have sovereignty over Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh.
It found Singapore's activities since then - investigating shipwrecks, granting permission to Malaysian officials to visit and survey surrounding waters, installing military communications equipment, and proposing reclamation plans - a titre de souverain, that is, conduct that confers title on the party responsible.
It also noted the failure of Malaysia and its predecessors to respond to the conduct of Singapore or its predecessors, ruling that by 1980, sovereignty over Pedra Branca had passed to Singapore.
The court also found that the original title to Middle Rocks should remain with Malaysia as the successor to the Sultanate of Johor.
As for South Ledge, which falls within the overlapping territorial waters generated by both larger maritime features, the court ruled that it belongs to the state in whose territorial waters it is located.
Key dates
Straits Times 20 Dec 08;
1979
# Dec 21: Malaysia publishes a new map of its territorial waters and continental shelf, including Pedra Branca in its territory.
1980
# Feb 14: Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issues a diplomatic note rejecting Malaysia's new claim over Pedra Branca.
1981
# Dec 17: Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad agree to resolve the ownership of Pedra Branca through an exchange of documents.
1989
# June: Foreign Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng meets his Malaysian counterpart Abu Hassan Omar in Geneva and suggests adjudication by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). A formal note is dispatched to Malaysia.
1992
# Feb 15: Singapore sends its legal arguments and documents proving Singapore's ownership of Pedra Branca to Malaysia. Malaysia responds with its own documents in June.
# May 25: Malaysia protests for the first time against the presence of Singapore navy vessels in waters around Pedra Branca. Singapore rejects the Malaysian protest.
1993
# Feb 4-6: First Malaysia-Singapore Consultations on sovereignty dispute in Kuala Lumpur. Officials agree that negotiations should be completed within two years. It is during these talks that the ownership of two nearby rocky outcrops, Middle Rocks and South Ledge, is raised.
1994
# Sept 6: Prime ministers Goh Chok Tong and Mahathir meet in Langkawi and agree to submit the Pedra Branca case to the ICJ. Officials meet nine months later.
1998
# April 14: Third and final Malaysia-Singapore meeting on submitting the case to the ICJ. Officials complete the text of a Special Agreement for referral to the ICJ.
2002
# Nov 7: Malaysia's Foreign Ministry suggests several dates for signing the Special Agreement, coinciding with proposed water talks.
But the talks were never held as the two countries failed to agree on the talks' precise agenda.
2003
# Feb 6: Singapore and Malaysia sign pact to refer Pedra Branca dispute to ICJ.
2004
# March 25: Singapore and Malaysia submit their first set of written arguments on the Pedra Branca dispute to the ICJ.
2007
# Nov 6-23: A three-week-long hearing before 16 judges of the ICJ at The Hague in the Netherlands begins. Singapore and Malaysia put up their respective cases.
2008
# May 16: A Joint Technical Committee set up by Singapore and Malaysia to enforce the judgment meets for the first time.
# May 23: The ICJ delivers its ruling, awarding Pedra Branca to Singapore, Middle Rocks to Malaysia, and South Ledge to the state in whose territorial waters it is located.
Pedra Branca: Through storm and fire
Teo Xuanwei, Today Online 20 Dec 08;
ON WHAT was supposed to be an overnight trip to Pedra Branca in 1988, then Law and Home Affairs Minister S Jayakumar got caught in a furious storm, which took the lives of two fishermen in another boat from Punggol.
:The winds were so ferocious that the ropes securing the lifeboat to the “old but sturdy PSA vessel, the :Mata Ikan:” he was travelling in snapped, and the crockery on board was smashed.
:The next year, aware of the need to prevent the festering territorial spat with Singapore from spiralling outof control, former Malaysian PrimeMinister Dr Mahathir Mohamad made an unannounced boat trip to the vicinity of the islet to personally size up the situation.
He left after two Singapore naval vessels intercepted his boat.
These and other nuggets — some dramatic, some technical, others amusing — are recounted in Pedra Branca: The Road to the World Court, co-authored by Ambassador-at-Large Tommy Koh and Deputy Prime Minister Jayakumar, on the twists and turns of the long-standing dispute, as well as the :massive amount of behind-the-scenes work.
Both men, who worked on the legal tussle for three decades until its resolution in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on May 23, describe the experience as a “labour of love”.
At the book launch on Friday, Prof Koh said it was Singapore’s first case in the ICJ and it was “important” to write a book distilling the lessons from it “to share with our colleagues and our future generations”.
Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong, who headed the team of lawyers involved, said: “The Pedra Branca case is likely to be a unique event in the history of Singapore as it is unlikely that Singapore will ever again need to seek confirmation of her title to territory under international law.”
While the dispute only officially erupted in 1980 – after Singapore sent a protest note to Malaysia over their publication of a map – preparations for the Republic’s case had begun two years earlier. Prof Jayakumar, who was in Geneva for a United Nations conference, had received an urgent telex from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asking him to head for London to search for relevant historical documents.
The hunt for other historical letters took public officers to countries like India and Holland; staff from the National Archives of Singapore trawled through mountains of records for years.
Just before the hearing started, the lawyers rehearsed their speeches, videotaping their efforts and critiquing each other’s delivery. Prof Jayakumar and CJ Chan went further – they staged their speeches before two Court of Appeal Judges in the Supreme Court.
While the team was at the Hague, a fire broke out in their hotel. In their haste, some left their passports in their rooms – but everyone remembered to take their laptops.
Both Prof Koh and CJ Chan celebrated their birthdays during the eight days of oral pleadings at The Hague. When Malaysia raised a fresh argument in their final oral submission, the Singapore team was anxious as they had no chance to address the judges again.
Prof Jayakumar wagered 10 euros with CJ Chan that the judges would ask a question enabling Singapore to respond – and they did.
Prof Jayakumar quipped: “I think CJ was happy to lose that bet.”
Prof S Jayakumar, Tommy Koh document Pedra Branca case in a book
S.Ramesh, Channel NewsAsia 19 Dec 08;
SINGAPORE: Two law professors with an interest in public international law have documented Singapore's case on Pedra Branca into a book for the layman to understand.
The idea for the book - "Pedra Branca, The Road to the World Court" - was conceived by Deputy Prime Minister S Jayakumar and Ambassador-at-Large Tommy Koh during the public hearings at the International Court of Justice at The Hague in November last year.
The authors were kept busy by autograph hunters at the book launch on Friday. The launch was officiated by Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong, who was part of the Singapore team at the hearings.
He said Pedra Branca is unique to Singapore as it is unlikely the Republic will ever need to again seek confirmation of the territory under international law.
Chief Justice Chan said: "I am sure that the authors, like the rest of the Singapore team would have very much liked to title the book to be 'Pedra Branca - Three Came Home'.
"Alas that is not to be. One is lost, another is in limbo. But all the same, we must count our blessings that it is the one, the one that counted, that came home."
The book traces the origins of the Pedra Branca dispute, how Britain, and later Singapore, acquired sovereignty over the island and subsequently maintained and operated the Horsburgh Lighthouse on it since 1851.
It also documents how the dispute arose after Malaysia made its claim over Pedra Branca in 1979 and how the Republic managed the dispute over three decades before its final resolution on 23 May 2008 at the International Court of Justice.
Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew has written a foreword for the 195-page book.
In it, he said Singapore's Prime Minister must try to establish good, stable and equitable relations with the Malaysian government.
Mr Lee said what is important is how both sides can manage and amicably resolve issues that must crop up from time to time because of widespread interactions without souring the long-term overall bilateral relationship.
He said that the Pedra Branca issue was a story worth telling. He added that the court's judgement - awarding sovereignty over Pedra Branca to Singapore and sovereignty over Middle Rocks to Malaysia - was a partial vindication of Singapore's position.
Mr Lee said naturally, Singapore was disappointed, because the Republic's team believed, as did its foreign counsel, that any court would decide that sovereignty over all three features - Pedra Branca, Middle Rocks and South Ledge - went together.
But he wrote in his foreward that whichever way the judgement went, it was better for bilateral relations that a conclusive judgement had been made as this would allow both countries to put aside the issue and move on to other areas of co-operation.
The minister mentor stressed that Singapore must remain committed to upholding the rule of law in the relations between states. If a dispute cannot be resolved by negotiations, it was better to refer it to a third party dispute settlement mechanism than to allow it to fester and sour bilateral relations.
Mr Lee said this was his approach and subsequent Singapore prime ministers have continued to subscribe to it.
Also speaking at the launch was Professor Tommy Koh, co-author of the book. He said both Singapore and Malaysia have managed the dispute in a responsible manner.
He added: "When there was a danger that the escalation of confrontation between the two navies and marine police around Pedra Branca could lead to armed conflict, Singapore brought this to the attention of the Malaysian prime minister.
"And when the Youth Wing of the Malaysian Islamic Party or PAS threatened to invade Pedra Branca to plant a Malaysian flag, Dr Mahathir Mohamad stopped them and warned that it could lead to war."
The authors of the book, hoping it will reach as many people as possible, have kept the language in the book simple, avoiding legal jargon.
There are also some interesting snippets in the book which the public do not know about.
Deputy Prime Minister S Jayakumar said: "In 1989, Dr Mahathir made a quiet boat ride to the Pedra Branca vicinity to size up for himself the potentially tense situation on the ground.
"Our team's preparations included rehearsals of speeches. CJ and I even tried our speeches in the Supreme Court before two Court of Appeal Judges."
2,000 copies of the book are now on sale. - CNA/vm
Straits Times 20 Dec 08;
Singapore produces 71 million kg of waste glass each year, but only 9 per cent is recycled. The rest is incinerated with other waste. To boost recycling rates, Singapore Polytechnic's Centre for Applications in Environmental Technology has teamed up with glass collection facility P&R Resource Management to find ways of making recycling safer, quieter and more convenient.
Grace Chua takes a look at the current process.
1 Glass bottles, mainly from restaurants, coffee shops and other F&B establishments in Singapore are sent to collection facilities such as P&R Resource Management in Sungei Kadut, which handles about 500,000kg of glass each month. Most are beer bottles, and a faint smell of the brew lingers in the air. At the company's collection yard, a forklift breaks the bottles by lifting a trough of glass up and pouring it from a height. The crash and clang can reach an ear-splitting 130 decibels, louder than a jet engine.
2 P&R's parent company, silicate-sand mining firm PUM Group, has a recycling facility at Pasir Gudang in Johor, Malaysia. Bottles and glass chunks are trucked and shipped there from as far away as Thailand, Indonesia and New Zealand. They will eventually be crushed into smaller, finger-length glass shards and recycled into new bottles. Part of the process involves workers separating impurities such as paper and metal from the crushed glass chips.
3 Different coloured chips - green, amber and flint (colourless) - are separated by machine. At glass-bottle factory Malaya Glass, this machine, called the 'dog-house', sends the raw material - a mixture of recycled glass chips, soda ash, limestone and other ingredients - into the furnace to be heated at temperatures of up to 1,600 deg C for 24 hours.
4 After heating and mixing, gobs of molten glass are moulded into bottles and containers. New bottles, which contain up to 70 per cent recycled glass come off the line to begin life again as beer and drink containers.
Cheryl Frois, Channel NewsAsia 19 Dec 08;
SINGAPORE: After an almost five-year dry spell, the Underwater World Singapore's leopard shark breeding programme has found success.
Three adult female leopard sharks are kept in reef tanks while two male sharks are rotated between them and thereafter the breeders take a backseat and let nature take its course.
James Hong, diver, Underwater World Singapore, said: "We had a male with a couple of females and sometimes they breed and sometimes they don't. We get egg cases but none of them were viable as they're not fertilised.
"We brought in another male about a year and a half ago and that seemed to do the trick. We have viable egg cases. We have five babies."
Eggs being eaten by other fishes in the big reef tanks is another big hurdle for the breeding process.
Jeffrey Mahon, curatorial director, Underwater World Singapore, said: "When we see a female that's ready to breed, we have all our divers jump into the tank with nets and we try to scoop them up as soon as they're born.
"Over the past six to seven years, we've had about nine or ten babies that have been successfully recovered that way, but a few got lost."
Hong added: "The babies are like human infants. They're helpless in the shell, so what we can do is pick them up, put them in better tanks with better aeration, better water quality to ensure a higher survival rate of those juveniles."
The next challenge for the breeders is to ensure the little guys thrive until they're big enough to swim with the other fishes. - CNA/vm
David Adam, guardian.co.uk 19 Dec 08;
Environmental campaigners were divided this evening over plans announced by the European Commission to increase the amount of cod taken from the over-fished North Sea.
Greenpeace said the 30% increase in the North Sea cod quota for next year was a "farce" and could see the fishery face total collapse. But WWF welcomed new efforts to reduce the amount of fish caught and then dumped, and said the plans were a "step in the right direction".
The cod quota for the North Sea was announced today in Brussels, as part of a package of deals for fisheries across European waters.
As well as a 30% increase in North Sea cod quotas, the agreement allows UK fishermen to land 32% more mackerel, 13% more North Sea plaice and 8% more monkfish off the Scottish west coast.
Huw Irranca-Davies, fisheries minister, said: "This is a fair deal overall for the UK, balancing the needs of our fishermen to make a living with the need to protect fish stocks for the future and prevent huge amounts of what they catch having to be thrown back dead into the sea."
Giles Bartlett, fisheries policy officer at WWF-UK, said the deal made the first serious attempt to focus on the number of fish taken out of the sea, rather than the amount landed - what the quotas refer to. He said 2008 quotas allowed some 22,000 tonnes of North Sea cod to be landed, while closer to 38,000 tonnes of the fish were actually caught. Fish caught but not landed were dumped, dead, back into the sea.
Under the new deal, the total amount of North Sea cod killed is supposed to fall by a quarter. "There has never been any incentive to catch less fish," he said. "The onus will be on the fishing industry and governments to deliver this crucial reduction target."
More fish could be landed from fewer caught, he said, with more efficient methods such as nets that allow other species to escape, as well as a ban on discarding fish large enough to land. He said more observers could sail on fishing vessels to ensure crews comply with the new rules. In a pilot study next month five Scottish fishing boats will sail under CCTV surveillance to verify catch data.
Willie Mackenzie, fisheries campaigner with Greenpeace, said the cod quota increase was "disastrous for the fishing industry" and went against scientific advice to ban all fishing until stocks recover.
He said: "Much more needs to be done to allow Europe's decimated fisheries to recover, and that includes setting aside large areas, off-limits to commercial fishing, as marine reserves." He added: "If there is an increase in the amount of fish landed and the [discard limiting] steps aren't taken, then you're making the situation worse."
Elsewhere, yesterday's agreement sees cod quotas in other European waters mostly cut by 25%. Scotland avoided the closure of its prawn and white fish fishery on the west coast by agreeing strict rules on fishing tackle, and cuts in cod, herring, haddock and whiting.
A ban on anchovy fishing in the Bay of Biscay will remain until at least spring 2009 because there are few signs of a recovery in stock numbers.
UK secures right to catch more fish
Fishermen will be able to catch more cod, plaice and mackerel next year in return for cutting down on the millions of dead fish thrown overboard.
Louise Gray, The Telegraph 19 Dec 08;
Europe had wanted to impose cuts to allow threatened ecosystems and fish stocks to recover.
But in the annual wrangle in Brussels over quotas the UK managed to escape reductions on its lucrative prawn fisheries in Scotland and secure an increase in quotas for North sea cod, mackerel and plaice.
Huw Irranca-Davies, the fisheries minister, described it as a balanced deal which kept the industry afloat while cutting waste.
But conservationists said it was a disastrous decision that will lead to the eventual extinction of some species.
The outcome of talks is unlikely to affect consumer prices as fish supplies are part of a much bigger global market.
Prawn fisheries in Scotland and Northern Ireland, that were threatened with closure, will only have to cut the catch by five per cent. Following a recovery in numbers fishermen will be able to take 30 per cent more cod taking the UK's total to 11,000 tonnes, 32 per cent more mackerel, 13 per cent more plaice and 8 per cent more monkfish.
However fishermen will have to use improved technology, such as nets that allow smaller fish to escape, and keep to stricter limits on the timing and location of fishing in order to cut the amount of fish discarded. They also case increased penalties if vessels are caught dumping dead fish overboard.
An estimated one million tons of fish is dumped in the North Sea every year because it is over quota, the wrong species or too small.
Mr Irranca-Davies said: "This is a fair deal overall for the UK, balancing the needs of our fishermen to make a living with the need to protect fish stocks for the future and prevent huge amounts of what they catch having to be thrown back dead into the sea."
Earlier this week conservationists warned that consumers will be left eating jellyfish unless more is done to protect edible species in UK waters.
Willie Mackenzie, Greenpeace oceans campaigner, said the agreement was "disastrous" for the fishing industry.
"The EU's own scientists have again said that the North Sea cod quota must be reduced. But we're forced to witness the annual farce of bungling bureaucrats seriously jeopardising the future for cod and the UK fishing industry."
Yahoo News 19 Dec 08;
MANILA (AFP) – China is to get a 45 million-dollar loan from the Asian Development Bank to clean up vital coastal wetlands in the east, the Philippines-based lender said Friday.
The Jiaozhou Bay wetlands, the most important marine ecosystem in the Qingdao region, provide a breeding ground for many types of fish and shellfish, and is a way station for migratory birds.
However, as the coastal population and economy has grown rapidly, the wetland area has shrunk by an estimated 30 percent since the 1950s, an ADB statement said.
The loan would be used to build or upgrade wastewater, sewerage, and flood management facilities, with the city of Jiaozhou providing counterpart funds equivalent to 60.8 million dollars.
Loan terms were not disclosed. ADB will also provide a 750,000-dollar technical assistance grant.
Waste dumping into rivers that empty into the bay and poor drainage facilities have caused chronic flooding around Jiaozhou, and the contaminated water pose a serious public health hazard, the ADB said.
"The wetlands need to be protected as they play a key role in flood management and coastal protection which will be increasingly significant to coastal cities as sea levels continue to rise as a result of global warming," said ADB water resources engineer Zhang Qingfeng.
After 2008 started with panic over food prices, the world seemed to be waking up to global warming. But then the recession hit
John Vidal, The Guardian 17 Dec 08;
No one could have predicted quite how dramatically 2008 would have ended. Even as President Bush was slashing his way through US environmental protection laws, president-elect Obama appointed Nobel prize-winning physicist Steve Chu as the next US energy secretary. Chu is seen as the repudiation of everything that Bush stood for, and predicts temperatures will rise by a staggering 6.1C by the end of the century if nothing is done. Although it does not mean the oil age is over, if you want a sign that 2008 was a tipping point, it could not have been clearer.
But go back to the start of the year. Empty shelves in Caracas, riots in India and Mexico, and rice shortages in Dhaka, Manila, and Kathmandu. Traders in at least 12 sub-Saharan African countries were hoarding food, and soaring maize and rice prices were leading to political instability. Governments were being forced one after the other to step in to protect supplies and control the cost of bread and dairy products.
The problem, said the analysts, was a mix of climate change and extreme weather leading to poor harvests in major grain-growing countries such as Australia. But the blame was also laid on the many millions of acres of maize, wheat and other crops planted in the US and elsewhere in 2007 to provide biofuels for cars rather than food for people. Catastrophe loomed, said the UN.
It happened slowly and out of sight of the cameras, in the burgeoning cities that are becoming the new frontline of deep poverty. Proof came one week ago, when the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported that 2008 had seen the biggest increase in malnourished people in decades. According to its preliminary data, more than 960 million people - one in every six people in the world - now go to bed hungry, and 40 million suffered malnourishment in 2008 because of higher food prices.
This year will go down as the year of interlinked food shortages, climate change and the recession. But it was also the year when it may have dawned on governments that hell-for-leather, western fossil fuel-based, car-centred growth only ends in social and ecological disaster.
There was soaring air pollution, from transporting a record 622 million passengers, and near record loss of Amazon and other tropical forests. But climate change dominated the international agenda.
A flood of scientific papers showed Arctic ice melting faster than ever and the melting of the Greenland ice sheet close to becoming irreversible. Methane, one of the most damaging climate change gases, was found bubbling up from the tundra and the Arctic ocean. There were record temperatures and near-record hurricane seasons, and scientists and environment groups who believed only a year or two ago that it would be possible to just about hold global temperature to a 2C rise accepted privately that this could now be impossible.
But it also became clear in 2008 that climate change was disproportionately impacting on the poor. Subsistence farmers around the world reported a pattern of increasingly unpredictable seasons and social problems linked directly to water and higher temperatures.
In north-east Brazil, which has always been drought-prone but which has seen temperatures rise at least 1C in only 30 years, more than 1.5 million people now cannot access enough water, and must leave home to find work in the biofuel fields in the south of the country each year. In Bangladesh, Uganda, Niger, Malawi, Nepal and elsewhere people also said that temperatures were becoming hotter and rains less and less predictable.
Another trend became apparent. Rich countries, worried about fast rising global populations and dwindling food and fuel supplies, began buying up farmland in poor countries.
In the UK, environment secretary Hilary Benn said that Britain's food supplies, which come increasingly from abroad, were overdependent on oil - a situation, he said, that "must change".
But the most extreme admission of oncoming climate and food problems came from Mohamed Nasheed, the new president of the low-lying Maldives, who said he was looking for a new homeland, possibly in India, for the time when his country was swamped by rising seas.
The big, still unanswered question of 2008 was how far the financial, food and ecological crises were linked. The best evidence may come from a 1972 study. A group of economists and ecologists were commissioned to predict the consequences of a rapidly growing world population, rapid industrialisation in developing countries, and growing pollution. Their famous book, Limits to Growth, predicted widespread and growing hunger, oil shortages, and ecological and economic collapse by the mid-21st century if countries did not rethink economic growth.
Actually, for much of this year, it looked as if the rich world had begun to address sustainable development. Europe committed itself to generating 20% of all its energy from renewables by 2020, and banned incandescent light bulbs; Britain became the first country in the world to set itself a legal target of 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050; and more than 70 countries now have national goals for accelerating the use of renewable energy. Businesses, UN agencies, UK politicians and many individuals all genuinely tried to reduce emissions.
Led by Britain, pressure mounted for a global trading scheme, and Gordon Brown's forest adviser, financier Johan Eliasch, recommended that a multibillion-pound fund be set up to pay the owners of the world's rainforests not to cut them down. The irony was that a separate study by the Woodland Trust found that ancient woodland in Britain was being felled at a rate even faster than the Amazon rainforest.
Clean energy took off in 2008, and climate change mitigation became an industry, backed by the world's biggest companies. According to HSBC, companies in the climate mitigation business now generate $300bn (£201bn) in revenues each year. Last month, the International Energy Agency predicted that renewable energy would overtake natural gas to become the second largest source of power generation worldwide within two years, and that global wind and solar generating capacity would increase by more than 30%.
The energy revolution that had been predicted to start after 2015 appeared to be well under way. Architect Norman Foster designed Masdar, a car-free, solar- powered ecotopia for 40,000 people in the Arabian desert. Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi's ruler, was so impressed he ordered two, at $15bn each.
In mid-summer, with oil at over $130 a barrel and government-level talk of oil supplies "peaking", there was concern that the price could top $200 a barrel. As people rushed to buy smaller cars, fit better boilers and get into wind and solar power, it seemed possible that the constant rise of emissions might genuinely be reversed. Yet by this month, the global economy was crashing its gears, and oil had dropped to under $40 a barrel.
Whether the world weans itself off oil and fossil fuels will probably determine global sustainability over the next 20 years. Low oil prices traditionally push energy efficiency off the policy agenda. Economic recessions have punctured green economic bubbles in the past. When times are tight, the wisdom goes, no one invests in new or risky technologies, and countries stick to cheap and dirty energy.
Plummeting demand
That was happening in part by the end of 2008. Plummeting demand for recycled materials, especially in China, has drastically lowered prices for old paper, plastic and metals. US and European cities were forced to scale back recycling programmes. Meanwhile, South Africa decided this month that it could not afford "clean" nuclear power stations and plans to increase massively its cheaper but dirtier coal-burning stations. Britain, too, went ahead with plans for more opencast mines.
A more optimistic group of people say the recession may not only check unsustainable growth but also provide breathing space for the world to move to more sensible policies. Governments, said leading greens, have a historic opportunity to "climate proof" their economies in response to economic troubles. Obama and Gordon Brown both said that millions of jobs could be created in green building, wind power, solar thermal and other green technologies.
They were backed by energy gurus such as Amory Lovins, co-director of the Rocky Mountain Institute, and environmental analyst Lester Brown, who argued that the needs to deal with both climate change and energy security have set renewable energy on a path that cannot be reversed.
The consensus is that 2008 was volatile and dangerously unpredictable. But if governments don't change, it may come to be seen as a calm before the storm.
Yahoo News 19 Dec 08;
TOKYO (AFP) – The world's first cargo ship partly propelled by solar power took to the seas on Friday in Japan, aiming to cut fuel costs and carbon emissions when automakers export their products.
Auriga Leader, a freighter developed by shipping line Nippon Yusen K.K. and oil distributor Nippon Oil Corp., took off from a shipyard in the western city of Kobe, officials of the two firms said.
The huge freighter capable of carrying 6,400 automobiles is equipped with 328 solar panels at a cost of 150 million yen (1.68 million dollars), the officials said.
The ship will initially transport vehicles being sent for sale overseas by Japan's top automaker Toyota Motor Corp. The project was conceived before the global economic crisis, which has forced automakers to drastically cut production as sales dwindle.
Company officials said the 60,213-tonne, 200-metre (660-foot) long ship is the first large vessel in the world with a solar-based propulsion system. So far solar energy has been limited to supporting lighting and crew's living quarters.
The solar power system can generate 40 kilowatts, which would initially cover only 0.2 percent of the ship's energy consumption for propulsion, but company officials said they hoped to raise the ratio.
The shipping industry has come under growing pressure to take part in efforts to curb global warming, which is blamed on carbon emissions.
Estimates say maritime transport accounts for anything from 1.4 percent to 4.5 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. But the industry remains largely unregulated due to its international nature.
Nippon Yusen, Japan's largest shipping company, has set a goal of halving its fuel consumption and carbon-dioxide emissions by 2010.
Resource-poor Japan has been looking for ways to reduce its dependency on foreign oil.
Perks like tax breaks to boost self-sufficiency in the Philippines
Alastair McIndoe, Straits Times 20 Dec 08;
MANILA: The Philippines has passed legislation to boost investment in renewable energy via tax breaks and other credits. The move is aimed at both helping the country become more energy self-sufficient and at cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
President Gloria Arroyo said the Renewable Energy Act, which she signed into law this week, was the 'first and most comprehensive renewable energy law in South-east Asia'.
Green groups agreed, saying this was a 'landmark' for the region. It took almost 20 years to get the Bill passed.
Greenpeace energy expert Amalie Obusan said she hoped Asean would be able to formulate a 'shared vision' on renewable energy and emissions reductions for its leaders' summit, to be held in Thailand in February.
The package of measures to encourage the production and consumption of renewable energy in the Philippines includes a reduced corporate tax rate of 10per cent - a third of the normal level - for power producers using renewable energy.
The Philippines is the world's second largest producer of geothermal power after the United States.
Energy experts and environmentalists say it is among the countries in the region that have the highest potential for developing renewable energy on a large scale.
'It has a particularly high potential to develop wind and solar power, which currently makes up just 1per cent of the energy mix,' said Ms Obusan.
The new measures require utilities to source a certain amount of their electricity from renewable energy sources.
Mrs Arroyo said the incentives should enable the Philippines to capture a slice of the rising global investments in renewable energy, which totalled US$71 billion (S$103 billion) last year.
'With our Renewable Energy Act, we can move aggressively to develop these resources,' she said.
'This is also timely because it mitigates climate change. All of these efforts are working to improve the overall quality of life of the Filipino people,' she added.
Among Asean's larger economies, Vietnam and the Philippines are the bloc's biggest users of renewable energy, accounting for about 22 per cent of their energy mixes, according to a report by the Asian Institute of Technology, using data from 2000.
Next comes Malaysia with 7 per cent, followed by Indonesia at 5.9 per cent, Thailand at 2.8 per cent, and zero per cent for Singapore.
The Philippines still relies heavily on coal and oil - both imported - for power, which, in roughly equal measure, together account for nearly half of the country's energy mix.
Over the years, the country has managed to substantially reduce its oil imports by developing indigenous oil and gas sources off the western island of Palawan.
Even so, US$7.5billion was spent on oil shipments last year, representing about 5per cent of the country's gross domestic product.
Mrs Arroyo has set a target for the Philippines to become 60percent self-sufficient in energy by the time her terms ends in 2010.
The reported level in 2005 was 56.6 per cent.
Tion Kwa, Straits Times 20 Dec 08;
IF YOU drive, you'll like where oil prices are hanging out these days. You might even be thinking of cranking up the air-conditioner at home. So it might seem counter- intuitive to say that under US$40 a barrel is a bad place for oil prices to stay.
But it is. It's bad for everyone. Given where demand was just six months ago, today's oil prices reflect how badly and quickly economic growth has been pummelled into nothing. If you worry about the environment, low oil prices take away all the incentives from investing in expensive alternatives. And finally, if you're an oil producer, you're not making enough to look for new oil.
Honestly, it's a good thing barrels of oil might soon trade for more money. Or at least, we should hope they do.
But it won't happen because Opec says so. Which it tried to do this week, when it announced it was cutting production by 2.2 million barrels a day. No one believed the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries when it promised to raise production when prices were high; no one believes it now when prices are low. Actually, no one knows why there's still Opec at all: It can't control its members, it can't control supply and it has no influence over prices. But that's another story.
One reason oil should be rising is that the US dollar finally is losing steam. Well, you'd think that it should. After all, the pair are supposed to move inversely to each other. Now, after the flight to the safety of US assets - more specifically, Treasury bills - during October and into late November, demand for the dollar has been quickly easing.
Yet, something odd happened. In the past few weeks when the dollar weakened, oil didn't rise. So where's the correlation?
In fact, correlations don't always match. They can change dance partners.
Sure, because oil is priced in dollars, it should be pricier if the dollar falls. But details like these aren't what investors and traders are looking at right now.
For the moment, the focus is on something more elemental: How much economic gloom is there going to be? The longer the economic slide continues, the longer will the demand for oil be depressed. The more countries slip into recession and the longer they stay there, the less people will be inclined to spend and to drive.
Now, if markets were perfect, there would be an index for all this. But markets are made of people, and people are not perfect. Perhaps that's why, despite the fact that people all over the world buy and use oil, it's only US demand, stock and draw-down levels that affect prices for everyone. Actually, it's really because the United States is the only country that keeps precise data and releases it regularly every Wednesday. It's not a perfect way to judge supply and demand. But it's the only one we have.
For the same reason, oil is looking at the US stock market for clues. Sure, the US isn't the world. But it's the most important economy. And for that matter, Wall Street isn't the American economy, either - but it's the only daily gauge of that economy. So again, it's not perfect. But it'll do.
In recent weeks, oil has been marching in step with the Dow, instead of inversely tracking the dollar. And if sentiments coming out of Wall Street hold out - that stocks have been building a bottom - then we're likely also to soon see a floor in oil prices. As long as oil doesn't decide to change dance partner again, petroleum should rise too.
The second reason oil should rise comes in two parts. First, current prices are encouraging those who can afford it to build up stock.
Next, repeated interest rate cuts in the US have made dollar financing cheaper. This lowers the carrying cost of futures contracts. Thus, oil traders will be more interested in rolling over contracts when they expire, instead of releasing the oil into the spot market.
To the extent that this happens - it's still early and this needs to be watched - it keeps out oil from the immediate- demand market. Together with support for prices that comes from stock build-up activity, this should move prices higher.
Finally, the pace of the decline in demand is apparently shrinking. That's not to say that it's a trend yet. And even farther from saying that demand is rising again. But it just might be that the really bad time from October is behind us.
Indeed, the best sign we can have of better economic conditions and future prospects would be to see oil taking a healthy leap forward of a few more bucks. Sometimes, a little pain at the petrol pump isn't a bad thing.
Yahoo News 19 Dec 08;
LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Global warming is increasing the frequency of extremely high clouds in the Earth's tropics that cause severe storms and rainfall, according to a NASA study released Friday.
The space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said a study by its scientists "found a strong correlation between the frequency of these clouds and seasonal variations in the average sea surface temperature of the tropical oceans."
"For every degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in average ocean surface temperature, the team observed a 45-percent increase in the frequency of the very high clouds," according to the study, recently published in Geophysical Research Letters.
"At the present rate of global warming of 0.13 degrees Celsius (0.23 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade, the team inferred the frequency of these storms can be expected to increase by six percent per decade."
JPL Senior Research Scientist Hartmut Aumann headed the study on five years of data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA's Aqua spacecraft, an instrument that observes climate variations.
The link between global warming and the frequency and intensity of severe storms has long been a source of speculation for climate modelers, noted the Pasadena, California-based JPL.
Jonathan Amos, BBC News 19 Dec 08;
Swiss glaciers are melting away at an accelerating rate and many will vanish this century if climate projections are correct, two new studies suggest.
One assessment found that some 10 cubic km of ice have been lost from 1,500 glaciers over the past nine years.
The other study, based on a sample of 30 representative glaciers, indicates the group's members are now losing a metre of thickness every year.
Both pieces of work come out of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
"The trend is negative, but what we see is that the trend is also steepening," said Matthias Huss from the Zurich university's Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology.
"Glaciers are starting to lose mass increasingly fast," he told BBC News.
The retreat is being driven largely by longer melting seasons. The other key factor in glacier health - the amount of winter snowfall to replace ice melt - shows no long-term changes.
The two studies are being presented here at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, the world's largest annual gathering of Earth scientists.
They are not the first to assess the status of Swiss glaciers but few others can match their scope.
Summer heatwave
In one, Daniel Farinotti and his team tried to assess the total volume of ice in Swiss glaciers -1,500 of them, from the mighty Aletschgletscher (the largest glacier in the Alps) to small ice fields that cover less than three square km.
The research used direct measurements where available, and combined this with modelling to estimate ice volumes for areas that are data-deficient.
The assessment found a total ice volume present in the Swiss Alps of about 75 cubic km by the year 1999 (a baseline for the purpose of the study). It is a bigger figure than previously thought.
"However, 1999 is quite some time ago now, so what we did was try to calculate the volume lost since this baseline; and we estimate a figure of 13% - from 1999 to today," explained Mr Farinotti.
For 2003, remembered for its strong heatwave across Europe, the team estimates that 3-4% of the volume in Switzerland at that time was lost in that one year alone.
Mr Farinotti said his study highlighted the importance of the largest glaciers as ice reservoirs: more than 80% of the total ice volume is stored in the 50 largest glaciers.
"Aletschgletscher, for example, has about 12% of the area of Swiss glaciers but it contains about a quarter of all ice that is present in Switzerland," he told BBC News.
"What really matters is how much ice we have in the big glaciers, because the small ones will disappear; that seems clear. For them, it's just a matter of years. But in glaciers like Aletsch that have a lot of ice, they will be around for decades."
The study by Mr Huss and his team takes a slightly different approach. It considers just a key group of 30 glaciers, representing all sizes, types, and locations.
Again, using a mixture of direct data and modelling, the scientists analysed the mass trends from 1900 to 2007.
Over this period, there is a significant negative trend. It is not linear, however. There are two distinct phases when glaciers gained mass, and even a phase in the 1940s when the glaciers lost mass faster than they do now.
But in general, over the period, there is a retreat; and in the last 30-50 years, the shrinkage has accelerated.
Mr Huss has applied future climate projections to the 10km-long Rhone Glacier, which in Swiss terms is mid-sized.
"Rhone Glacier will have almost gone in 100 years," said Mr Huss.
"It first retreats not very fast, until about 2050. Then, it retreats really quite fast. It means that most glaciers, the smaller ones, will have disappeared by the end of this century."
Switzerland's glaciers are iconic but their shrinkage is more than just an issue for the tourists with their cameras; their loss would have profound ecosystem and economic consequences.
"Glaciers store the water in winter and release it in the summer when it is dry and warm when there is more need for water," added Mr Huss.
"And they can also store it in the wet and cold years and release it in the hot and warm years. That's an important reservoir.
"In the south-western part of Switzerland, almost all run-off water from glaciers is temporarily stored and used for electricity production. More than half the electricity consumed in Switzerland is produced from hydropower."
The Huss-led research builds on work published in the Journal of Geophysical Research this year. The Farinotti-led research has been submitted to the Journals of Glaciology, and the Journal of Global and Planetary Change.
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