Up the Creek at Changi
from wild shores of singapore blog and asam tree
Sundial Snail @ Pulau Hantu
video clip on the sgbeachbum blog
Colourful bird is a Fischer's Lovebird: Bird Park
on the Lazy Lizard's Tales blog and native parrots of singapore
Common Flameback’s mirror confrontation
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Monday Morgue: 20th April 2009
on the Lazy Lizard's Tales blog
Melati Mohd Ariff, Bernama 20 Apr 09;
KUALA LUMPUR, April 20 (Bernama) -- Billions of ringgit would be spent to clean up the 120km-long Klang River!
This hefty sum is reportedly part of the RM10 billion ringgit allocated by the Selangor state government to redevelop Klang, Petaling Jaya and Kajang.
The Selangor state government said that it wanted to emulate Singapore's success in cleaning up the Singapore River, a programme which took about 10 years for completion.
The proposed project, which is said would make the river reserve a valuable real estate is slated to commence this year and expected to be completed within five years.
Besides preserving one of Mother Nature's greatest endowments to mankind for future generations, Klang River could provide an alternative mode of transportation, specifically for the people of Klang as envisaged by Selangor Menteri Besar Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim.
WHAT MAKES A HEALTHY RIVER?
It goes without saying that a healthy river or stream depends very much on its surrounding catchments or watersheds. But how many of us would appreciate that simple fact or we simply choose to ignore it?
More importantly, the surrounding areas of rivers are "forests" in its natural state.
"These riverine forests intercept a large amount of rainfall, the vegetation absorbs it and the remainder infiltrates into the soil to recharge the soil moisture. Together with the soil, the water that is released in forest streams in its natural state is Class 1 (safe to drink straight from source).
"Some then flows downstream as groundwater flow. Hence forests regulate river flows. During the wet season, it acts like a 'sponge' by soaking up a significant portion of rain water, and this reduces the volume of water entering rivers but during the dry season the forest slowly releases water to the river from the ground via gravity," explained Dr Chan Ngai Weng, Professor of Geography Section, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM).
CONCRETE JUNGLES
According to Dr Chan, through transpiration, an average-sized tree loses more than 200 litres of water per hour on a hot day.
This translated into a huge amount of transpiration that goes up into the atmosphere and form clouds, eventually producing rain.
Citing Penang Island as an example, he said, it has lost this transpiration source as most of its forests have given way to 'concrete jungles'.
"It is the same for Kuala Lumpur. If concrete forests replace riverine forests, flash floods will become more frequent due to the inability to retain rainwater.
"Without forests, water will be more polluted as there is no natural filtration," said the Dr Chan who is also the president of Water Watch Penang (WWP).
WWP is a non-profit organisation set up in November 1997 as part of the Sustainable Penang Initiative under the auspices of the Socio-economic & Environmental Research Institute (SERI) of Penang.
NO IMPROVEMENT
Dr Chan also told Bernama that Penang rivers in general are still very dirty.
"Based on results from the Department of Environment (DOE) and our own assessment, the quality of Penang rivers have not improved. It has deteriorated over the years because of public apathy of throwing garbage into rivers," he explained.
He also gave other factors that contribute to the sad state of the rivers that include ineffective enforcement of pollution by factories, businesses and agriculture besides the poor quality effluents of wastewater treatment plants.
According to Dr Chan, Penang people are not very concerned about rivers as they are about economy or politics.
He said Water Watch Penang is working hard to change that attitude via water education and awareness.
Dr Chan also said environmental issues were also regarded as secondary and unimportant.
"It is extremely difficult to change their attitudes. There are not enough funds spent on education, public awareness and inserting environmental education into school curriculum.
"The Penang Government needs to spend much more fund on these aspects. It is futile spending millions to clean up dirty rivers when not a sen is spent on education. What is the use of digging out one tonne of garbage per day when people keep throwing in two or more tonnes daily? Surely, education is the key.
"The State Government has set up a committee on the Management of Sungai Pinang, but most of what is being addressed by this committee is still focused on structural measures, while very little emphasis is on using non-structural measures such as education, awareness and stricter enforcement, " said Dr Chan.
WIN-WIN SITUATION
Making a river a dumpster will eventually kill the river's ecosystem but keeping it clean is a win-win situation, said Piarapakaran Subramaniam, the Programme Manager (Environment Desk) of the Federation of Malaysian Consumers Association (Fomca).
"If we keep it clean, it becomes a source of water and also provides us with aquatic beings as food source for us.
"However, we should not also over-exploit it. Too much extraction of resources from a river can give negative impact, equivalent to polluting it," said Piarapakaran.
"The public needs to understand one basic thing which is whatever we throw into the river ends up in our food chain either by drinking water or food resources. This applies to all water resources," he stressed.
BUKIT LARUT
Piarapakaran who is also the secretary-general of Malaysian Water Forum (MWF) told Bernama, there were not many 'very clean water catchments' left in Malaysia.
Citing Bukit Larut, Perak as one the few left, he said littering resulting from increasing tourism activities is impacting the catchment area to a worrisome level.
"Littering will directly pollute the clean water source. It is noticeable that many who go for a walk in Bukit Larut hills also drink the water directly.
"We do not advice this due to littering in the area and many other sources of pollution that are taking place there," he said.
He said there were seven rivers that were contributing to direct drinking water source around the range of hills in Bukit Larut area.
"The primary water catchment area is 21.53 sq km and obviously the secondary catchment area will be much bigger.
"Due to increasing human activity and the proposed cable car project at Bukit Larut, the hill risk of losing everything. Even now individual septic tanks are put up in the hill resort and the wastewater (sewerage effluent) flows directly to the waterfalls," said Piarapakaran.
LEAN UP OPERATIONS
More than 30 bags of garbage were collected in a one-day clean up operation organised by MWF last March 22 in conjunction with the World Water Day on the same day.
"We managed to clean up half way down the hill. We collected rubbish wherever we could, as some parts were too dangerous and life threatening to access.
"The rubbish we collected consist of polystyrene, plastic bottles and candy wrappers among others. It is sad to think that all these will end up in our drinking water," said Piarapakaran who led the clean-up operations with 12 volunteers from Taiping.
In view of the importance of Bukit Larut hills as a catchment area, Piarapakaran said the clean up activity would be continued every third Saturday of the month, adding that he would not be short of volunteers.
As water catchment is also source for groundwater, MWF, said Piarapakaran calls on all state governments to permanently gazette water catchment areas and prevent all types of development.
"This is the correct move as responsible governments, they need to make decisions not only for today, but also for the future.
"Profit can be made in many ways but not at the expense of lives of our future generations. Their lives are in your hands," he said.
BAD MANAGEMENT
According to Associate Professor Dr Maketab Mohamed of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia's (UTM) Institute of Environmental and Water Resource Management (IPASA), the watershed management in Malaysia, despite all the technical knowledge, is relatively bad when compared to developed countries.
He said in the Environment Quality Act (EQA) 1974, Act 127, the discharge of any effluent upstream of a water intake is more stringent than on the downstream part, but local authorities and the Department of Environment (DOE) still allow industries and housing estates to be built upstream of any water intake.
"The cumulative impacts were not considered. To build one may be okay but how about numerous housing and a couple of industrial estates all upstream? "A classic example is Sungai Skudai which is now under the Public Utilities Board (PUB) of Singapore but will be handed back to the state of Johor.
"The watershed has numerous townships upstream (Senai, Saleng, Kulai, Kulaijaya) and many industries. During the rainy season, the water is turbid, while during the dry season, the intake has to be closed so many times due to the high ammoniacal nitrogen (indicator of sewage/organic pollution)," he told Bernama.
Dr Maketab said in some states in the United States including New York and also in Scandinavian countries, development is restricted in critical watersheds.
"Even farms are not allowed to operate upstream of important watersheds. In Japan, with limited land area, development within important watershed is controlled with (regulations on) effluent discharge being very stringent.
"For example, Lake Biwa which supplies water to Kyoto and Osaka and even most of the Kansai Plains, has very stringent effluent discharge requirements," he said.
WATERSHEDS OF CAMERON HIGHLANDS
In early 2008, Dr Maketab conducted a sanitary survey on the water supply in Cameron Highlands that include Sungai Terla, one of the three important watersheds of the highlands.
The other two vital watersheds are Ulu Sungai Bertam and Sungai Burung.
He said the Sungai Terla water treatment plant provides around 80 per cent of the potable water for Cameron Highlands, thus making it more critical to protect the watershed.
According to Dr Maketab, besides existing farms upstream of the Sungai Terla water treatment plant, there are also new farms allowed to be established resulting in the clearing of forests upstream of the water intake.
The farms are now a major threat to the quality of raw water especially in the form of total suspended solids (TSS) and both fecal and total coliforms due to the presence of human activities and usage or organic fertilizers from animal sources such as chicken droppings.
Dr Maketab said the availability of roads linking Simpang Pulai to Cameron Highlands and Gua Musang has made the upper catchment of Sungai Terla more easily accessible.
"In line with the general practice of watershed management for the purpose of drinking water supply, there should not be any farms or human habitation within the Sungai Terla watershed.
"The safety of the raw water of Sungai Terla can no longer be compromised. The old or the new farms need to be closed immediately for the benefits of the people of Cameron Highlands and tourists visiting the highlands," he stressed, adding that the relevant authorities have been given copies of his study.
-- BERNAMA
Volunteer trips are just a start; think long term to effect real change
Cassandra Chew, Straits Times 20 Apr 09;
I HAVE a cause.
I believe children should not be exploited, especially in a sexual way, and have been educating myself on how I can help prevent this.
I have found that a lot of it comes down to 'making poverty history', as the global campaign goes, though I have no illusions of seeing this happen in my lifetime.
Still, it does not stop busloads of young hopefuls like myself from believing we can make someone else's life better. So we venture to neighbouring countries like Cambodia to do some good, or so we think.
Last month, I visited anti-child trafficking organisation Riverkids just when a group of international school students were there to volunteer for a few days.
Riverkids provides social and educational support for slum families in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, in the hope that the children will not be sold or drop out of school to find work.
The volunteering students were a sweet group, genuinely interested in making the children happy by playing games, going on outings and taking pictures with them. But I was painfully conscious of the poverty that surrounded me and could not help but wonder:
What happens after they leave?
Overseas service learning projects, or 'voluntourism', have become increasingly popular among secondary school and junior college students.
School groups generally visit sites in nearby countries to build homes, dig wells, paint murals and interact with the people - activities that make for the 'real' way to see a country, as some put it.
I have no doubt the work these volunteers do in the few days does make a difference to lives of the people there.
But I am also aware poverty is a result of systemic problems in a country, like corruption and weak governance; something a happy mural will not change.
Voluntourism can be a starting point for us to taste and see what life outside of our wealthy bubble is like, but if we truly want to help, we cannot let such short trips abroad be our end point.
Rather, we should think of these 'sampler' trips as launch pads for thought and action in the long term about what we can do to effect positive change.
One model I have come across is a small Singaporean-owned social enterprise called Changiville, a guesthouse in Phnom Penh where girls from Riverkids learn hospitality through a vocational skills programme. This enables them to find steady jobs that pay at least US$65 (S$98) a month after they graduate.
Having job skills means they do not need to turn to prostitution for a living.
Efforts like these are part of a slow and long process. While Changiville's programmes do not sound as glamorous as roughing it out in slums and brothels for months, they address the gaps that desperately need to be filled.
In some ways, Changiville's strategic use of resources and understanding of the community's needs can bring about change more effectively than any short trip to an orphanage would.
The difference is in their end goal: to make the community self-sufficient.
All I ask is that on your next voluntourist trip, consider your volunteer site's long-term goals and find out how you can be an effective part of them.
Stuffed toys and tubs of Play-Doh are fun for a while, but when the dust settles, would you have left behind a legacy?
'Voluntourism' projects must help recipients in long term
Straits Times Forum 24 Apr 09;
I READ with interest Monday's report, 'Making a difference beyond 'voluntourism''.
I agree that any do-good project must be long term. Otherwise, it will just become a visit without substance, and leave nothing but an afterglow for the volunteers to talk about.
First, we need to consider if such projects make the recipients self-sufficient. This may be a tall order, but nothing worth doing comes easy.
No doubt, schoolchildren cannot get away for months or a whole year, but the project must be such that many groups can sustain it for long periods. Otherwise, it can end up as a 'hit-and-run' operation that achieves nothing.
Second, we must guard against raising recipients' expectations, which can do more harm than good. It may even give rise to resentment against the volunteers.
Some visits end up spoiling the recipients in poor countries. The visitors give them sweets - and ruin their teeth. I heard that one group of dentists went to a poor country armed with Oral-B toothbrushes and Sensodyne toothpaste. I wonder what would happen when these items run out.
Instead, they could have promoted oral hygiene on a shoestring budget, using probably local methods, but teaching the people how to care for their teeth.
Finally, students going overseas on mercy missions should have served in local homes for at least a year. They would then have proved that they are interested in helping the needy.
Murali Sharma
Natura Loft is easy on the environment and good on the eyes
Kelvin Chan, The New Paper 20 Apr 09;
IF YOU would like to do a little more for Mother Earth apart from recycling, you might want to consider an eco-friendly home the next time you move.
Such homes are often designed using eco-friendly materials and include features that help you reduce energy consumption.
For example, some residential developments here feature solar-powered lights in corridors, rainwater-recycling systems for watering plants and washing common areas, and sensors that automatically turn off appliances like fans.
One project that features such eco-friendly features is Natura Loft on Bishan Street 24.
Developed by QingJian Group, it is the first Design, Build and Sell development with the Green Mark status from the Building and Construction Authority (BCA).
The Green Mark is a rating system to evaluate a building for its environmental impact and performance. Buildings are awarded the BCA Green Mark based on five criteria - energy efficiency, water efficiency, project development and management, indoor environmental quality and innovation.
One innovation of the project is the creation of a natural wind tunnel. The three 40-storey towers at Natura Loft are positioned to create wind tunnels that provide natural ventilation through common areas.
Units also feature bamboo-strip flooring that lasts longer than regular parquet - a first for public housing - and energy-conserving air-conditioners.
Mr Li Jun, deputy general manager of QingJian Realty, said that the developer has taken extra care to ensure that while the project is designed to be eco-friendly, it will still be luxurious.
For example, the four units on each floor, one at each corner in a point-block design, are served by three lifts. This ensures that residents get maximum exclusivity.
There are a total of 480 four and five-room apartments in the development. The four-room flats have an estimated floor area of about 95sqm and the five-room flats are about 120sqm in size.
Prices for the five-room flats range from $590,000 to $739,000, or between $456 and $572 per square foot.
According to a report from QingJian Realty, the project is now about 70 per cent sold.
Nearly all the four-room flats have been taken up, and about half of the five-room flats remain unsold.
Mr Li attributed the sales to the attractive location of Natura Loft.
He said: 'With only 480 four and five-room flats surrounded by private and landed properties, and being close to both Bishan and Marymount MRT stations, it is an... exclusive development that will have a better resale value in the future.'
Fidelis E. Satriastanti, Jakarta Globe 20 Apr 09;
Six nations, including Indonesia, plan to finance a permanent coral reef management regime in the region from a common independent fund, an Indonesian representative of the group said on Sunday.
The Coral Triangle Initiative, or CTI, countries — Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Solomon Islands — have currently earmarked a total of Rp 2.66 trillion ($250 million) for coral reef preservation but these funds remain under the control of each individual nation.
Eko Rudianto, the executive secretary of the Regional CTI Interim Committee, said it was hoped that the regional meeting in Manado, North Sulawesi Province, next month would lead to an independent and sustainable financing mechanism.
“For Indonesia, we encourage the idea that we want the financing to be an independent mechanism that would not be dependent solely on grants,” said Eko, who is also an official with the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries.
“For instance, we could establish an endowment fund to which all the [CTI group] countries would contribute. It’s a very long process to get there but we are all agreed on pushing for a more sustainable financing mechanism instead of counting on grants.”
The so-called Coral Triangle region is home to 53 percent of the world’s coral reefs and boasts an abundant variety of sea life, with more than 600 coral species and 3,000 fish species.
“The financing mechanism between the six countries would take a bit more time [to decide] because there is still much more to discuss, since every country has different points of view on the mechanism,” Eko said.
Maritime Affairs Minister Freddy Numberi had previously expressed an eagerness to include oceans and coastal areas under the United Nations Climate Change Conference’s international funding mechanism.
The CTI is an Indonesian initiative introduced by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the APEC leaders meeting in September 2007.
The leaders of the six CTI countries will attend the CTI Summit in Manado on May 15 to focus on coral reefs, fisheries and food security.
In principle, the countries also share a common view to develop sustainable fishing in the region.
Eko said the official agenda for the summit covered five major areas for discussion: setting up regional priorities for conservation; fisheries management based on conservation, including alternative livelihoods; marine protected areas; adaptation efforts to combat climate change in coastal areas; and maintaining populations of endangered marine species.
Rili Djohani, Indonesian director of the Nature Conservancy environmental conservation group, said that coral reefs played a significant role in tackling climate change but also held a number of other important social roles.
“They are the source of food security for almost 15 million people, a resilient system for climate change, especially on sea temperature rise, and they also hold an important role for tourism,” Rili said.
Khaleej Times 19 Apr 09;
ABU DHABI - A carcass of a nine-metre-long whale was recovered by a team of Environment Agency Abu Dhabi (EAD) and Critical National Infrastructure Authority personnel, nearly four nautical miles west of Umm Al Dalkh oil field on Friday.
The whale is commonly referred to as Bryde’s whale and is identified as belonging to Balaenoptera edeni species.
Director of Biodiversity Sector — Marine Environment at EAD, Thabit Al Abdessalaam, said the carcass was partially decomposed when found, indicating that it may have died at least four to five weeks ago.
“Upon closer examination, the fluke (or tail) was found to be lacerated probably by the propeller of a large boat and may have caused the animal’s death,” he said.
Some taxonomists think that there may be three-four distinctive forms of Bryde’s whale populations. In the waters off the Arabian Gulf, Gulf of Oman and Northern Arabian Sea, two forms or subspecies — an offshore and a coastal form are thought to exist. The coastal, inshore type is perhaps entirely a resident one.
This species, which is a baleen whale, belongs to the family Balaenopteridae, which includes the Humpback whale and Blue whale. Also known as Tropical whale, reflecting its preference for tropical waters and warm, temperate waters, it was given the common name of Bryde’s whale in honour of Norwegian consul Johan Bryde, who built the first whaling factory in Durban, South Africa.
Although the species is included in IUCN Red List under the group of threatened species, its global population appears to be relatively stable.
Current estimates put their population around 90,000. There is, however, a deficiency in terms of available data about the species at the local level in the UAE.
Bryde’s whale attains a maximum length of 15.6 meters and weighs 20.3 tons with females being slightly larger than males. Females become sexually mature at eight to ten years of age.
Males attain sexual maturity at the age of nine to thirteen years.
The species probably mate throughout the year with females giving birth less than once every two years. Gestation lasts about one year.
Size of the animal at birth is four metres and the newborn weighs about one ton. Calves are weaned at about six months and approximately measure 7.1 metres at the time. The species as calves about six-metres-long have been spotted.
Coastal development, accidents and waste have emerged as a serious cause of deaths among marine wildlife. A critically endangered Hawksbill Turtle was found dead on the coast of Delma during a clean-up in November last year.
“Plastics in particular are a menace to the marine life, as decades of trash lands up in the sea bed. Besides killing wildlife, plastics can hinder their swimming, harm commercial and local fisheries and human health, Thabit Al Abdessalaam said.
He had called on fishermen and beach-goers to be more responsible because most of the plastic trash came from discarded fishing gear like nylon ropes and nets, while the rest came from land or is thrown into the sea by ships passing by.
Yahoo News 19 Apr 09;
SHANGHAI (AFP) – China's endangered Yangtze alligator population is expected to more than double to 300 in the wild within five to 10 years, state media reported Sunday.
Currently there are more than 120 alligators breeding in a wider area than five years ago, Wang Chaolin of the Chinese Alligators Protection Nature Reserve, in eastern Anhui Province, told Xinhua news agency.
"We have for the first time found wild baby alligators. Normally their survival rate is only two percent," Wang was quoted as saying. "The finding of the infants indicates the number of the species is increasing."
Wang said measures such as the protection of baby alligators and the releasing of captive-bred alligators into to the wild were helping bring the species back from the brink of extinction, the report said.
The Yangtze alligator, also known as the Chinese alligator, was once plentiful, particularly along China's eastern seaboard, Xinhua said.
But pollution, a warming climate and human activity have made it one of the world's most endangered creatures in the wild, it added.
"I'm confident the number will reach 300 in the future," Wang said. "But humans are still the biggest threat to the animal."
China has put the Chinese alligator at the top level of its list of protected species.
The Chinese Alligator Breeding Research Centre was set up in Anhui 30 years ago. Since then, the number of captive alligators at the centre has risen from about 200 to more than 10,000.
Yahoo News 19 Apr 09;
SHANGHAI (AFP) – China will start building a new giant panda breeding centre as early as next month after last year's 8.0-magnitude earthquake destroyed much of their habitat, according to state media.
The new centre in the Wolong nature reserve will replace a destroyed base in southwestern Sichuan province where most of China's captive pandas were kept before the earthquake, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Huang Jianhua, the reserve's Communist party chief said a new location about 10 kilometres (six miles) from the old site was chosen "because the environment, water, weather and geological situations here are the best".
"The pandas will be comfortable living here as it is not far from the former base," Huang was quoted as saying. "Safety is the priority."
The new centre will cost 1.6 billion yuan (230 million dollars) with most of the funding coming from Hong Kong, Huang said, according to Xinhua.
Five Wolong staff and one panda were killed in the May 12 earthquake, while two pandas were injured and one is still missing.
Most of the reserve's pandas were moved after the quake to a nearby breeding centre in Ya'an City and zoos around the country. Six 18-month-old pandas stayed in prefabricated houses on the reserve, the report said.
Wolong was built in 1980, as the world's largest breeding centre for the endangered species and was home to 142 captive pandas, about 60 percent of the world's total, the report said.
There are about 1,590 pandas living in the wild around the country, mostly in Sichuan and the northern Shaanxi and northwestern Gansu provinces. A total of 180 are being bred in captivity, Xinhua reported.
Victoria Gill, BBC News 19 Apr 09;
A campaigner who was jailed during his battle to save the rainforest in Gabon has received a top international award.
Marc Ona Essangui was honoured for his fight to stop what he describes as a destructive mining project in the Ivindo National Park.
He is one of seven people from six continental regions to be awarded an equal share of the $900,000 (£600,000) 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize. It has been described as "the Nobel Prize for grassroots environmentalism".
Mr Ona has campaigned for three years against the Belinga mine project - a deal between the government in Gabon and the Chinese mining and engineering company, CMEC, to extract iron ore.
The project includes the construction of a large hydroelectric dam, which is already underway, to provide power for the mine.
The dam is being built on the Ivindo River, near the Kongou Falls, Gabon's highest waterfall.
Mr Ona, who described the falls as "the most beautiful in central Africa", said that Gabon's government had failed to consult the local population and had not assessed the impact of the development on the environment before it gave permission for construction to begin.
He told BBC News that he hoped his receipt of the Goldman Prize would "draw international attention to just how precious this area is".
Political protest
Mr Ona, who uses a wheelchair, dedicated his early career to improving education and communication infrastructure in Gabon, including working with the United Nations Development Programme. He later turned his attention to environmental issues.
He eventually decided to focus his efforts full time on the work of his own environmental NGO, Brainforest, which aims to protect the rainforest for the benefit local of communities.
"The government established 13 national parks here, and I became interested in all the activities within them," he said.
"In 2006, my colleagues and I noticed that roads were being built within Ivindo."
When Mr Ona investigated, he discovered that there had been no environmental impact studies carried out before the road building started.
On its website, the Gabonese government describes the national parks as having been "classified for the conservation of Gabon's rich biodiversity".
The key goals of the national park scheme, it says, are preservation of "the wealth of the ecosystem… for current and future generations" and stimulating "the development of ecotourism as an economic alternative to the exploitation of natural resources".
Mr Ona said: "All of this construction was carried out illegally and against the code of the national parks."
He also unearthed and leaked a copy of the Belinga mine project agreement between the government and CMEC, revealing that CMEC had been offered a 25-year tax break as part of the deal.
"When we really started to look into the deal, we noticed that it was China, not Gabon, that was the major beneficiary," he said.
Under pressure
He and his colleagues embarked on their campaign, working with other environmental NGOs, holding news conferences and meeting with local communities.
"The government even motivated some protests against the NGOs involved," he recalled.
"They alleged that we were working [on behalf of] Western powers, and we received a lot of pressure to stop the campaign."
This culminated in Mr Ona being arrested and charged with "incitement to rebellion".
He was jailed by the Gabonese judicial police on 31 December 2008; but following an internationally co-ordinated campaign for his release, he was freed on 12 January 2009.
Since June 2006, however, he has been banned from travelling outside the country.
His passport was returned to him only 24 hours before he was due to travel to San Francisco for the Goldman award ceremony.
There has been no construction in Ivindo for almost a year, but Mr Ona says this has more to do with the economic crisis and the price of iron ore than with the Gabonese government backing down.
He has no plans to give up his quest.
"Some of the money from this award will go to the functioning of Brainforest, and the rest will be allocated to setting up small- and medium-sized businesses for local communities," he said.
"I want to set up a clinic near Ivindo where the local people can be treated using traditional medicine. Some of the money will serve to establish this health centre for all of those communities."
No fear
The organisers of the Goldman Prize describe the six winners as "a group of fearless grassroots leaders, taking on government and corporate interests and working to improve the environment for people in their communities".
Among the other 2009 recipients are Maria Gunnoe from West Virginia, US, who has faced death threats for her outspoken activism to stop destruction of the Appalachia by the coal industry.
Also rewarded are Russian scientist Olga Speranskaya, who connected NGOs across Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region to identify and safely remove toxic chemical stockpiles, and Rizwana Hasan, Bangladesh's leading environmental attorney, whose legal advocacy led to tighter regulations on the ship-breaking industry.
Dave Smith, Associated Press Star Bulletin 19 Apr 09;
HILO, A surge in new nesting Hawaiian hawksbill sea turtles over the past several years might be evidence that a 20-year-old protection effort is finally producing new baby turtles.
An intensive program has been under way since 1989 to protect the nests of the endangered turtles on more than a dozen remote Big Island beaches.
The local population of the species was seriously in need of help, said Larry Katahira, a Hawaii Volcanoes National Park resource management specialist who ran the program until retiring three years ago. Katahira said fishermen who frequented the coast told him that prior to the program's start, few hatchlings made it to the ocean.
Several dozen volunteers now spend several months each year working to improve those chances. From June to December a crew of mostly college students treks along the windy, sun-baked coast of southern Puna and Kau. Camping at known nesting beaches, they trap and kill mongooses, rats and feral cats that prey on the defenseless hatchlings as they leave the nest.
The volunteers also stay up most of the night watching for females to crawl up from the ocean. The turtle drags itself up above the high-tide mark, digs a nest into which it lays about 150 eggs and then covers it with sand.
But before the turtle can crawl back to her watery home, she is intercepted by the waiting volunteers, who check her flippers for a numbered metal tag that indicates she had been found nesting in the past. If one is present, they record the identifying number. If not, she receives a new tag.
When they reach sexual maturity, hawksbill turtles usually return to the beach of their birth to lay eggs. Although it is not known for sure how long it takes for a hawksbill, or honuea, to mature, it is believed to be around 20 years.
Will Seitz, who took over from Katahira as head of the Hawaii Island Hawksbill Turtle Recovery Project, said there is no way to know for sure whether the jump in numbers of newly tagged females is the result of hatchlings helped by the program returning to nest at the beach of their birth.
"We'd like to think that," Seitz said, "but scientifically we don't have proof."
He said there are other possible explanations for the increase in untagged turtles, including the chance that the volunteers might have previously missed some new nesters. However, the volunteers are now covering more beaches and have more knowledge about potential nesting sites than ever before.
The condition of the newly tagged ones is a hopeful indication.
"A lot of the newly tagged turtles have shells that are not damaged," Seitz said, adding that would likely indicate those turtles are younger, as many of the ones previously tagged have shells showing damage and wear.
The time period seems about right when compared with the green sea turtle, which also is believed to take about 20 years to reach sexual maturity, said veteran researcher George Balazs, a sea turtle biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Honolulu.
Balazs said hawksbills in Hawaii have always been difficult to study because of their low numbers. He credited the efforts of Katahira, Seitz, the volunteers and others for their efforts to reverse that.
"They were the right people to come along for the right species," he said.
The program was honored in 2007 with a Living Reef Award by the Coral Reef Outreach Network.
Hawksbills, which are found in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, are protected in U.S. waters under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and under a variety of international treaties elsewhere.
Worldwide, hawksbill populations have dropped by 80 percent during the past century and continue to decline.
The threats include harvesting of the turtles and their eggs, degradation of coral reefs that provide food and habitat, and the presence of artificial lighting that can deter females from nesting and disorient hatchlings. They have also long suffered from commercial exploitation for such as combs made from their shell, which has been incorrectly called "tortoise shell" and also described as "the first plastic."
Little was known about hawksbills in Hawaii prior to the beginning of the tagging program in 1991, including their numbers. So far 89 have been tagged on Big Island beaches, although three of those are known to have died. That leaves about 100 known nesting females in the state, with the remainder tagged on beaches on Maui, Molokai and Oahu.
Satellite tracking has shown that when they are not nesting along the Big Island's southeastern coast, hawksbills spend most of their time foraging for sponges off the island's Hamakua coast.
According to Seitz, the Big Island program has helped an estimated 75,000 hatchlings to successfully reach the ocean over the past 20 years. Baby turtles hatch after incubating under the sand for about two months, then dig their way out to crawl to the sea. Nearly all the nesting, and most of the hatching, occurs at night.
But even if it makes it to the water, a baby turtle's life is a perilous one. Birds, sharks and other ocean predators take a huge toll on hatchlings, and it is thought that perhaps only one in a thousand might survive to reproduce.
Seitz said intensive monitoring needs to continue in order to better understand Hawaiian hawksbills. He said it is difficult to assess the current population because of the wide range of variables involved in nesting from year to year.
For example, while females often nest every three or four years, the period between nesting can range up to eight years.
The number of nests laid by each turtle during a season also varies from one to five or more.
Such fluctuations have resulted in the number of known nesting turtles in any given year ranging from four to 17, and the number of nests varying from less than 20 to more than 60.
By the numbers
» Volunteers on the Big Island began tagging Hawaiian hawksbill sea turtles in 1991 as a way of keeping track of which turtles were nesting and where.
» Over the next 15 years, the number of newly nesting turtles tagged each year averaged about four.
» Four years ago that number began to grow. In 2005 there were six newly tagged turtles, and then eight each in 2006, 2007 and 2008.
WWF 20 Apr 09;
Gland, Switzerland - BP and Exxon continue to ignore requests to join consultations with an international scientific panel to work to protect the world’s most endangered whales, threatened by oil and gas development around Sakhalin island in Far East Russia.
The Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel (WGWAP), along with 11 prominent international scientists, has been in consultation with Shell and Gazprom subsidiary Sakhalin Energy over developments that may impact upon gray whales.
However, BP, Exxon and Rosneft, another Russian petroleum giant, did not respond to requests to participate.
“The continuing refusal of BP, Exxon and Rosneft to even consider joining other parties on the gray whale advisory panel is hampering conservation efforts and the flow of information--with potentially disastrous consequences for the whales,” said Dr Susan Lieberman, WWF International Species Director.
“On the one hand, we have Shell and Gazprom at least looking at their plans to see if impacts on whales can be reduced and on the other hand we have BP, Exxon and Rosneft not even telling scientists what their plans are.”
The panel, convened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in February called for a moratorium on oil and gas development after “exceptionally low” counts for North Western Pacific (Russian) gray whales in a crucial feeding zone.
Even before the latest counts raised alarm bells, a total of only about 130 Russian gray whales and just 25 breeding females were thought to remain, with the species listed as critically endangered both in Russia and on the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species.
The listing in Russia imposes obligations for the special protection of such species and their habitats by minimizing activities that could lead to population decline or habitat destruction.
The WGWAP said in its report published in February that “This scarcity (of gray whales) may have been related to underwater noise produced during onshore pile driving activities undertaken by Exxon Neftegas Limited (ENL) on the northern Piltun barrier split adjacent to the Odoptu block”.
The Panel had previously noted in a letter to Prime Minister Putin that they “have been hampered by the unwillingness of ENL to allow open consideration of gray whale data collected under its partnership arrangement with Sakhalin Energy.”
Last year also saw the Elvary joint venture between Rosneft & BP conducting seismic surveys immediately to the north of the whale feeding area. The company chose to ignore recommendations from the panel, failing to conduct any real "noise monitoring" of their activities.
Yet another call for BP, Exxon and Rosneft to cooperate with the advisory panel is expected tomorrow, when the panel meets in Geneva to review the latest data on the whales.
A proposal to create a Sakhalin Marine Federal Wildlife Reserve for key gray whale habitat along the Piltun Spit is currently under review by Russian authorities, with WWF-Russia last year lodging the required environmental and economic justifications, and this year conducting public consultations.
The reserve would also protect Piltun Bay’s shallow waters critical not just to the nutrition of gray whales but also to sustaining rich fishing grounds. Adjacent coastal areas are important for migratory birds and are in the “shadow list” of the Ramsar international convention on wetlands.
However, oil and gas development and associated shipping and pipeline infrastructure is already threatening to fragment the proposed reserve. The environmental policies proposed by Sakhalin project development partners have been judged inadequate by the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
A number of NGOs including WWF-Russia last month wrote to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, requesting a moratorium on all oil and gas project construction and surveying activities in the area that may negatively impact the dwindling gray whale population until a committee has investigated the scale of the impacts on the whales.
Svetlana Kovalyova, Reuters 19 Apr 09;
CISON DI VALMARINO, Italy (Reuters) - Rich nations buying farmland in less developed countries to boost own food supplies should also contribute to improving agriculture overseas, heads of two United Nations' food agencies said.
Food supply scare after last year's food riots has pushed several countries, such as China, Saudi Arabia and South Korea, to buy or lease farmland overseas to feed their own people.
Quickly nicknamed "land-grabbing," this phenomenon has drawn sharp criticism for ignoring interests of local population. A leader of major international farmer group, IFAP, has said there was a risk of "second-generation colonialism" in such deals.
But heads of the UN agencies, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) said cross-border farmland deals can be mutually beneficial and help boost global food security.
"I would not call it "land-grabbing" ... There is a potential for win-win situations there," IFAD President Kanayo F. Nwanze told Reuters in an interview at the first meeting of farm ministers from the Group of Eight countries.
Nwanza said there was a risk of depriving poor farmers from access to farmland in their own countries when foreign investors move in.
But when such deals take into account interests of both parties they help increase agricultural production in developing countries, provide jobs, boost export and bring in new technologies to improve farm efficiency there, Nwanze said.
Private investment in developing agriculture in poorer countries is urgently needed if the world wants to double food output by 2050 and stamp out hunger which affects about 1 billion people, FAO's Director-General Jacques Diouf said.
Diouf told Reuters joint ventures could be the way to ensure a balance between the interests of investors and recipient countries.
But Germany's Agriculture and Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner struck a cautious note.
"We're a bit careful on that. We believe that every country should own their land to make sure they can feed their own people," she told Reuters.
Both Diouf and Nwanze called on the G8 farm ministers to come up with concrete measures to boost investment in agriculture in developing countries where there is an urgent need to boost fertilizer use, improve irrigation and infrastructure.
The G8 farm ministers' meeting to which ministers from Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa, Argentina, Australia and Egypt are invited runs in northern Italy until Monday.
Jeff Donn, Martha Mendoza And Justin Pritchard, Associated Press
Yahoo News 20 Apr 09;
U.S. manufacturers, including major drugmakers, have legally released at least 271 million pounds of pharmaceuticals into waterways that often provide drinking water — contamination the federal government has consistently overlooked, according to an Associated Press investigation.
Hundreds of active pharmaceutical ingredients are used in a variety of manufacturing, including drugmaking: For example, lithium is used to make ceramics and treat bipolar disorder; nitroglycerin is a heart drug and also used in explosives; copper shows up in everything from pipes to contraceptives.
Federal and industry officials say they don't know the extent to which pharmaceuticals are released by U.S. manufacturers because no one tracks them — as drugs. But a close analysis of 20 years of federal records found that, in fact, the government unintentionally keeps data on a few, allowing a glimpse of the pharmaceuticals coming from factories.
As part of its ongoing PharmaWater investigation about trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals in drinking water, AP identified 22 compounds that show up on two lists: the EPA monitors them as industrial chemicals that are released into rivers, lakes and other bodies of water under federal pollution laws, while the Food and Drug Administration classifies them as active pharmaceutical ingredients.
The data don't show precisely how much of the 271 million pounds comes from drugmakers versus other manufacturers; also, the figure is a massive undercount because of the limited federal government tracking.
To date, drugmakers have dismissed the suggestion that their manufacturing contributes significantly to what's being found in water. Federal drug and water regulators agree.
But some researchers say the lack of required testing amounts to a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy about whether drugmakers are contributing to water pollution.
"It doesn't pass the straight-face test to say pharmaceutical manufacturers are not emitting any of the compounds they're creating," said Kyla Bennett, who spent 10 years as an EPA enforcement officer before becoming an ecologist and environmental attorney.
Pilot studies in the U.S. and abroad are now confirming those doubts.
Last year, the AP reported that trace amounts of a wide range of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in American drinking water supplies. Including recent findings in Dallas, Cleveland and Maryland's Prince George's and Montgomery counties, pharmaceuticals have been detected in the drinking water of at least 51 million Americans.
Most cities and water providers still do not test. Some scientists say that wherever researchers look, they will find pharma-tainted water.
Consumers are considered the biggest contributors to the contamination. We consume drugs, then excrete what our bodies don't absorb. Other times, we flush unused drugs down toilets. The AP also found that an estimated 250 million pounds of pharmaceuticals and contaminated packaging are thrown away each year by hospitals and long-term care facilities.
Researchers have found that even extremely diluted concentrations of drugs harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species. Also, researchers report that human cells fail to grow normally in the laboratory when exposed to trace concentrations of certain drugs. Some scientists say they are increasingly concerned that the consumption of combinations of many drugs, even in small amounts, could harm humans over decades.
Utilities say the water is safe. Scientists, doctors and the EPA say there are no confirmed human risks associated with consuming minute concentrations of drugs. But those experts also agree that dangers cannot be ruled out, especially given the emerging research.
___
Two common industrial chemicals that are also pharmaceuticals — the antiseptics phenol and hydrogen peroxide — account for 92 percent of the 271 million pounds identified as coming from drugmakers and other manufacturers. Both can be toxic and both are considered to be ubiquitous in the environment.
However, the list of 22 includes other troubling releases of chemicals that can be used to make drugs and other products: 8 million pounds of the skin bleaching cream hydroquinone, 3 million pounds of nicotine compounds that can be used in quit-smoking patches, 10,000 pounds of the antibiotic tetracycline hydrochloride. Others include treatments for head lice and worms.
Residues are often released into the environment when manufacturing equipment is cleaned.
A small fraction of pharmaceuticals also leach out of landfills where they are dumped. Pharmaceuticals released onto land include the chemo agent fluorouracil, the epilepsy medicine phenytoin and the sedative pentobarbital sodium. The overall amount may be considerable, given the volume of what has been buried — 572 million pounds of the 22 monitored drugs since 1988.
In one case, government data shows that in Columbus, Ohio, pharmaceutical maker Boehringer Ingelheim Roxane Inc. discharged an estimated 2,285 pounds of lithium carbonate — which is considered slightly toxic to aquatic invertebrates and freshwater fish — to a local wastewater treatment plant between 1995 and 2006. Company spokeswoman Marybeth C. McGuire said the pharmaceutical plant, which uses lithium to make drugs for bipolar disorder, has violated no laws or regulations. McGuire said all the lithium discharged, an annual average of 190 pounds, was lost when residues stuck to mixing equipment were washed down the drain.
___
Pharmaceutical company officials point out that active ingredients represent profits, so there's a huge incentive not to let any escape. They also say extremely strict manufacturing regulations — albeit aimed at other chemicals — help prevent leakage, and that whatever traces may get away are handled by onsite wastewater treatment.
"Manufacturers have to be in compliance with all relevant environmental laws," said Alan Goldhammer, a scientist and vice president at the industry trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
Goldhammer conceded some drug residues could be released in wastewater, but stressed "it would not cause any environmental issues because it was not a toxic substance at the level that it was being released at."
Several big drugmakers were asked this simple question: Have you tested wastewater from your plants to find out whether any active pharmaceuticals are escaping, and if so what have you found?
No drugmaker answered directly.
"Based on research that we have reviewed from the past 20 years, pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities are not a significant source of pharmaceuticals that contribute to environmental risk," GlaxoSmithKline said in a statement.
AstraZeneca spokeswoman Kate Klemas said the company's manufacturing processes "are designed to avoid, or otherwise minimize the loss of product to the environment" and thus "ensure that any residual losses of pharmaceuticals to the environment that do occur are at levels that would be unlikely to pose a threat to human health or the environment."
One major manufacturer, Pfizer Inc., acknowledged that it tested some of its wastewater — but outside the United States.
The company's director of hazard communication and environmental toxicology, Frank Mastrocco, said Pfizer has sampled effluent from some of its foreign drug factories. Without disclosing details, he said the results left Pfizer "confident that the current controls and processes in place at these facilities are adequately protective of human health and the environment."
It's not just the industry that isn't testing.
FDA spokesman Christopher Kelly noted that his agency is not responsible for what comes out on the waste end of drug factories. At the EPA, acting assistant administrator for water Mike Shapiro — whose agency's Web site says pharmaceutical releases from manufacturing are "well defined and controlled" — did not mention factories as a source of pharmaceutical pollution when asked by the AP how drugs get into drinking water.
"Pharmaceuticals get into water in many ways," he said in a written statement. "It's commonly believed the majority come from human and animal excretion. A portion also comes from flushing unused drugs down the toilet or drain; a practice EPA generally discourages."
His position echoes that of a line of federal drug and water regulators as well as drugmakers, who concluded in the 1990s — before highly sensitive tests now used had been developed — that manufacturing is not a meaningful source of pharmaceuticals in the environment.
Pharmaceutical makers typically are excused from having to submit an environmental review for new products, and the FDA has never rejected a drug application based on potential environmental impact. Also at play are pressures not to delay potentially lifesaving drugs. What's more, because the EPA hasn't concluded at what level, if any, pharmaceuticals are bad for the environment or harmful to people, drugmakers almost never have to report the release of pharmaceuticals they produce.
"The government could get a national snapshot of the water if they chose to," said Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, "and it seems logical that we would want to find out what's coming out of these plants."
Ajit Ghorpade, an environmental engineer who worked for several major pharmaceutical companies before his current job helping run a wastewater treatment plant, said drugmakers have no impetus to take measurements that the government doesn't require.
"Obviously nobody wants to spend the time or their dime to prove this," he said. "It's like asking me why I don't drive a hybrid car? Why should I? It's not required."
___
After contacting the nation's leading drugmakers and filing public records requests, the AP found two federal agencies that have tested.
Both the EPA and the U.S. Geological Survey have studies under way comparing sewage at treatment plants that receive wastewater from drugmaking factories against sewage at treatment plants that do not.
Preliminary USGS results, slated for publication later this year, show that treated wastewater from sewage plants serving drug factories had significantly more medicine residues. Data from the EPA study show a disproportionate concentration in wastewater of an antibiotic that a major Michigan factory was producing at the time the samples were taken.
Meanwhile, other researchers recorded concentrations of codeine in the southern reaches of the Delaware River that were at least 10 times higher than the rest of the river.
The scientists from the Delaware River Basin Commission won't have to look far when they try to track down potential sources later this year. One mile from the sampling site, just off shore of Pennsville, N.J., there's a pipe that spits out treated wastewater from a municipal plant. The plant accepts sewage from a pharmaceutical factory owned by Siegfried Ltd. The factory makes codeine.
"We have implemented programs to not only reduce the volume of waste materials generated but to minimize the amount of pharmaceutical ingredients in the water," said Siegfried spokeswoman Rita van Eck.
Another codeine plant, run by Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Noramco Inc., is about seven miles away. A Noramco spokesman acknowledged that the Wilmington, Del., factory had voluntarily tested its wastewater and found codeine in trace concentrations thousands of times greater than what was found in the Delaware River. "The amounts of codeine we measured in the wastewater, prior to releasing it to the City of Wilmington, are not considered to be hazardous to the environment," said a company spokesman.
In another instance, equipment-cleaning water sent down the drain of an Upsher-Smith Laboratories, Inc. factory in Denver consistently contains traces of warfarin, a blood thinner, according to results obtained under a public records act request. Officials at the company and the Denver Metro Wastewater Reclamation District said they believe the concentrations are safe.
Warfarin, which also is a common rat poison and pesticide, is so effective at inhibiting growth of aquatic plants and animals it's actually deliberately introduced to clean plants and tiny aquatic animals from ballast water of ships.
"With regard to wastewater management we are subject to a variety of federal, state and local regulation and oversight," said Joel Green, Upsher-Smith's vice president and general counsel. "And we work hard to maintain systems to promote compliance."
Baylor University professor Bryan Brooks, who has published more than a dozen studies related to pharmaceuticals in the environment, said assurances that drugmakers run clean shops are not enough.
"I have no reason to believe them or not believe them," he said. "We don't have peer-reviewed studies to support or not support their claims."
___
Associated Press Writer Don Mitchell in Denver contributed to this report.
Deborah Zabarenko Reuters 20 Apr 09;
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Alaskan Inuits, Australian aborigines and Pygmies from Cameroon have a message for a warming world: native traditions can be a potent weapon against climate change.
At a summit starting Monday in Anchorage, Alaska, some 400 indigenous people from 80 nations are gathering to hone this message in the hope that it can be a key part of international climate negotiations.
"We don't want to be seen just as the powerless victims of climate change," said Patricia Cochran, an Inupiat native of Nome, Alaska, who is chairing the Indigenous Peoples' Global Summit on Climate Change.
"Our conference is really stirred by our wanting to become leaders ... on climate change because we have the ability to bring information from our communities to the rest of the world," Cochran said in a telephone interview from Anchorage.
Indigenous traditions are hardly static, she said, noting that native people have always adapted to their changing and often harsh environments.
For instance, Cochran said, Inuit people in Alaska are reverting to traditional dogsleds instead of modern snow machines as the icy region warms.
"People go out on their snow machines, fall through the ice and are never seen again," she said. "But our sled dogs will tell you when the ice is not safe ... and they're a lot easier to feed than (to pay) the gas prices that we have, $10 a gallon in many of our villages."
The summit is taking place about 500 miles from the Alaskan village of Newtok, where intensifying river flow and melting permafrost are forcing 320 residents to resettle on a higher site some 9 miles away in a new consequence of climate change, known as climigration.
Newtok is the first official Arctic casualty of climate change. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study indicates 26 other Alaskan villages are in immediate danger, with an additional 60 considered under threat in the next decade, Cochran said.
USING FIRE TO CUT GREENHOUSE EMISSIONS
Climigration is also threatening the Carteret Islands in the South Pacific, where rising seas are forcing 3,000 islanders to relocate to Papua-New Guinea, said Sam Johnson of United Nations University, a summit co-sponsor.
While indigenous people are expected to feel the impact of climate change first and hardest, and have contributed the least to it, they have traditional knowledge that helps them cope with the change, Johnston said by telephone from Melbourne, Australia.
In Western Arnhem Land in Australia's Northern Territory, aborigines have used traditional fire control practices -- setting small fires throughout the year rather than letting huge stocks of fuel for bush fires build up -- reducing greenhouse gas emissions as a result.
This has enabled them to sell $17 million worth of carbon credits to industry, Johnston said.
In Africa, Baka Pygmies of Cameroon and Bambendzele of Congo have developed new fishing and hunting techniques to adapt to decreased rainfall and more forest fires.
Because indigenous people are often on the front lines of climate change, they are expected to report to the summit on changes affecting them now.
For example, Dayak villagers in Borneo see climate change in observations of bird species, rising water levels and the loss of plants traditionally used for medicine.
In the Andes, temperature changes have hit farming and health hard, with more respiratory illnesses and a shortened growing season.
The summit ends Friday, and participants plan to craft a declaration that will call for world governments to include indigenous people -- as many as 350 million people, or about 6 percent of the world's population -- in any new international climate pact.
Climate negotiators are gathering in Copenhagen in December to forge a new agreement to succeed the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol.
More information about the summit is available online at www.indigenoussummit.com.
(Editing by Todd Eastham)
Dina Cappiello, Associated Press Yahoo News 19 Apr 09;
WASHINGTON – The last time Congress passed major environmental laws, acid rain was destroying lakes and forests, polluted rivers were on fire and smog was choking people in some cities.
The fallout from global warming, while subtle now, could eventually be more dire. That prospect has Democrats pushing legislation that rivals in scope the nation's landmark anti-pollution laws.
Lawmakers this coming week begin hearings on an energy and global warming bill that could revolutionize how the country produces and uses energy. It also could reduce, for the first time, the pollution responsible for heating up the planet.
If Congress balks, the Obama administration has signaled a willingness to use decades-old clean air laws to impose tough new regulations for motor vehicles and many industrial plants to limit their release of climate-changing pollution.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday said rising sea levels, increased flooding and more intense heat waves and storms that come with climate change are a threat to public health and safety. The agency predicted that warming will worsen other pollution problems such as smog.
"The EPA concluded that our health and our planet are in danger. Now it is time for Congress to create a clean energy cure," said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., one of the sponsors of the American Clean Energy and Security Act.
If passed, it would be the first major environmental protection law in almost two decades. In addition to attempting to solve a complex environmental problem associated with global warming, the bill also seeks to wean the nation off foreign oil imports and to create a new clean-energy economy.
"It's a big undertaking," said the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Waxman and Markey presented their 648-page bill last month.
From 1969 to 1980, Congress passed more than a dozen environmental bills tackling everything from air and water pollution and garbage, as well as protections for fisheries, marine mammals and endangered species. In 1990, the Clean Air Act was overhauled to address the problem of acid rain created by the sulfur dioxide released from coal-burning power plants.
"We had two decades of extraordinary legislation and almost two decades of nothing," said Richard Lazarus, a Georgetown University law professor and author of "The Making of Environmental Law." "If this one passes, it will certainly be an outburst."
There are many reasons why Congress' chances to succeed in passing global warming legislation are improved this year, but by no means assured.
After President George W. Bush did little about global warming in his two terms, there is "a lot pent up demand" for action on climate, said William Ruckelshaus, the first administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Both the Democratic-controlled Congress and President Barack Obama agree that legislation is needed to limit emissions of greenhouse gases and radically alter the nation's energy sources. They want to pass a bill by the end of the year.
"For the first time ever, we have got the political actors all aligned," said Lazarus. "That is not enough to get a law passed, but that is a huge start. We haven't been close to that before."
Unlike the 1970s, when the first environmental laws passed nearly unanimously, Republicans are opposed. They question whether industry and taxpayers can afford to take on global warming during an economic recession.
Then there is the question whether the public will have the appetite to accept higher energy prices for a benefit that will not be seen for many years. Climate change ranks low on many voters' priority lists.
Every year since 2001 has been among the 10 warmest years on record. Sea ice in the Arctic and glaciers worldwide are melting.
But the problems are not as apparent as they were in the 1970s, or even the early 1990s, when Congress addressed acid rain and depletion of the ozone layer.
"If carbon dioxide were brown, we wouldn't have the same problem," said Gus Speth, who organized the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1970. "But it's a subtle issue. ... The problems are chronic not acute, and it is largely invisible to people unless they're reading the newspaper or checking the glaciers or going to the South Pole."
In 1969, oil and debris in the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland burst into flames, an incident that led to the passage of the Clean Water Act. That same year, a blowout at an offshore oil platform off Santa Barbara, Calif., spilled millions of gallons of oil onto beaches. And long before that, a smog episode in Donora, Pa., in 1948 killed 20, sparking a crusade against air pollution.
"There was so much evidence — sort of smell, touch and feel kind of evidence — that the environment was really in trouble," said Ruckelshaus. "We had real problems, real pollution problems that people could see on the way to work. And there were rivers catching on fire and terrible smog events."
With climate, "you are asking people to worry about their grandchildren or their children," he said. "That is why it will be so tough to get something like this through."
Nuclear energy officials look to grow past financial crisis
Chris Buckley, Reuters 19 Apr 09;
BEIJING (Reuters) - The global financial crisis is unlikely to deter growing long-term demand for new nuclear power plants, international atomic agency officials said on Sunday, ahead of a conference to discuss the future of atomic power.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials and national and international energy representatives are gathering in Beijing to discuss prospects for atomic power during a global slowdown, climate change and energy worries, and tensions over the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran.
Thierry Dujardin, a deputy director of the OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency, said that although the financial crisis was making it more difficult to fund some proposed nuclear power plants, longer-term worries about energy security and global warming were likely to buffer the impact of the crisis on the sector.
"In the short term, it's obvious that it will be more difficult to find the funding for new investments, heavy investment, in energy infrastructure, such as nuclear power plants," Dujardin told a news conference.
"There is a chance that nuclear energy as such will not be so strongly impacted by the current economic crisis, because the need for energy will be there."
Dong Batong, of the China's atomic energy industry association, said his country was committed to dramatically expanding nuclear power, despite the slowdown in growth.
"We've made nuclear power an important measure for stimulating domestic demand," Dong told the news conference, noting that dozens of new nuclear units are being built or planned across the country.
Nuclear power provides 14 percent of global electricity supplies, according to the Vienna-based IAEA, and that proportion is set to grow as nations seek to contain fuel bills and the greenhouse gas emissions dangerously warming the planet.
Much of the expected expansion is in Asia.
As of the end of August 2008, China topped the list of countries with nuclear power plants under construction, with 5,220 megawatts (MW), followed by India at 2,910 MW and South Korea at 2,880 MW, according to the International Energy Agency.
But the ambitious plans for nuclear power growth across the developing world also risk straining safety standards and safeguards against weapons proliferation.
Yuri Sokolov, deputy director-general of the IAEA, said governments looking to expand nuclear energy had to ensure regulators were backed by effective legislation and properly trained staff.
But even North Korea, facing international censure for recently launching a long-range rocket and abandoning nuclear disarmament talks, has the right to nuclear power stations, said Sokolov.
"Each country is entitled to have a civilian nuclear program," he said, calling North Korea a "difficult situation."
"If it's ready to cooperate with the international community, I think that the international community will be able to provide the support for civil nuclear power development in North Korea."
North Korea renounced its membership of the IAEA years ago, and last week expelled IAEA officials who had been invited back to monitor a shuttered nuclear complex that Pyongyang has said it will restart.
The director-general of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, will give an opening speech to the nuclear energy meeting on Monday.
(Additional reporting by Sylvia Westall in Vienna; Editing by Ken Wills)
Yahoo News 19 Apr 09;
BERLIN (AFP) – Leading automotive and energy companies have reached agreement on a common "plug" to recharge electric cars, a spokeswoman for German energy company RWE said Sunday.
The three-point, 400-volt plug, which will allow electric cars to be recharged anywhere in a matter of minutes, is set to be unveiled Monday at the world's biggest industrial technology fair in Hanover, northern Germany.
"A car must be able to be recharged in Italy in exactly the same way as in Denmark, Germany or France," an RWE spokeswoman, Caroline Reichert, was quoted as saying in an edition of Die Welt to appear Monday.
She gave no timeframe for the introduction of the plug, saying that talks between the companies were ongoing.
The agreement on a common standard for the plug comprises several major automakers, including Volkswagen, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Fiat, Toyota and Mitsubishi.
Energy firms signed up to the accord include Eon, Vattenfall, EDF, Npower, Endesa and Enel.
Berlin hopes that one million electric cars will be on the road by 2020. RWE and Daimler launched a pilot project in Berlin in September.
The development of a common plug is a major step towards the mass production of electric cars, Reichert told Die Welt.
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