The Trials & Tribulations of Binjai Stream
from You run, we GEOG
Fauna Show @ USR Part 1 (Butterfly Species)
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature
Burnt out at Punggol
from Urban Forest
Oh deer, I need to poo
from The annotated budak
Black-naped Tern’s unsuccessful attempt at copulation
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Reclamation at Tuas, extended until Dec 09
from wild shores of singapore
The Jakarta Post 19 Jun 09;
It’s easy to forget the annual haze during this month of presidential campaigning. The noxious haze is back in our country, affecting the region and polluting our skies.
Schools in Riau province, Sumatra, had to close for several days in recent weeks, and its Pekanbaru airport had to be temporarily closed due to poor visibility. Dozens of hotspots, or large fires sparked by illegal fires to clear land, have been spotted in the province.
In the nearby province of Jambi, 200 hotspots have been detected in the last six months. The Jambi case is a worrying sign, since forest fires usually occur during the dry season from June to October.
The line between the dry and rainy season has blurred and forest fires are now occurring throughout the year.
The haze has caused great losses to Indonesia and also to Southeast Asia, ever since the big forest fires of 1982. Yet it seems easier for the three presidential candidates to attack a rival candidate than to attack a scourge that has called for a redress for nearly 30 years.
In the 1997-1998 fires, the region suffered US$9 billion in lost business and other costs, according to the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. Almost 10 million hectares of forest in Sumatra, Kalimantan, Java, Sulawesi and Papua went up in smoke, affecting the health and economy of 70 million people across Southeast Asia.
Malaysian authorities have reported a fall in air quality in recent days. Its Environment Ministry says more than 1,100 hotspots have been detected in Sumatra and Kalimantan, two of the islands most vulnerable to forest fires.
In recent years, Indonesia’s forest fires have expanded to also affect islands in the Pacific, as well as Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei and Thailand. It is not without reason the haze has been dubbed Indonesia’s biggest export to the region.
Halfway into the presidential campaign, not a single candidate has touched on this issue, nor has anyone put it in their working program. Their rhetoric so far has been full of promises but lacking in substance. Otherwise, they compete in crediting themselves for having done big things in the past, a sign of political infantilism.
If they want to talk about the economy, here is a drain of a trillion rupiah a year in health and environment costs and for losses accrued from disruptions to shipping and aviation. Indonesia has earned a bad reputation for its failure to put its house in order.
Its efforts to stem forest fires have been inadequate. The 1994 ban on the burning of forests and grasslands needs stronger enforcement. Education of smallholders needs to be continued and expanded. Big plantation companies should equip themselves with forest fire management.
The government should also ensure cooperation between all stakeholders, including farmers, plantation companies and NGOs.
And it is time for the government to ratify the ASEAN agreement to eradicate trans-border fire haze and smoke pollution. This will force the government, the only one in ASEAN that has not signed the treaty, to be proactive in tackling haze pollution from land and forest fires across the country.
Straits Times Forum 19 Jun 09;
WE AT WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) would like to thank Miss Lau Ying Shan for her letter, 'Walk the talk and consume ethically' (June 10). We are grateful that she raised the environmental challenges the Coral Triangle is facing.
The recent WWF-University of Queensland report, The Coral Triangle And Climate Change: Ecosystems, People And Societies At Risk, highlights the impact of climate change on marine ecosystems in that geographical region, and is a call for action to everyone to take concrete steps to avoid the most disastrous consequences.
If the world does not take effective action on climate change, coral reefs will disappear from the Coral Triangle by the end of the century, the ability of the region's coastal environments to feed people will decline by 80 per cent, and the livelihoods of around 100 million people will have been lost or severely impacted.
However, the report also shows there is an opportunity to avoid a worst-case scenario in the region and instead build a resilient and robust Coral Triangle in which economic growth, food security and the natural environment are maintained. This is if significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are backed up by international investment in strengthening the region's natural environments.
Over-exploitation of the reefs is also driving endangered species to the brink of extinction. It is not just a biodiversity problem but also a human and social problem for the 120 million people who depend on the Coral Triangle for their livelihoods and the millions of other who are sourcing their fish protein from the Coral Triangle region - including us in Singapore.
Sustainable consumption of seafood will safeguard the fish resources of this magnificent region and food security. Early next year, WWF will launch a seafood guide to address the issue of sustainable seafood consumption. The guide will inform consumers and retailers about the sustainability of seafood types in the wild, so they can make better choices in the seafood they buy and the seafood they offer for sale. Indirectly, their decisions will have a positive influence on protecting biodiversity in the Coral Triangle.
Amy Ho (Ms)
Managing Director
WWF Singapore
Victoria Vaughan, Straits Times 19 Jun 09;
ONE of the world's largest water-reclaiming facilities will begin providing Singapore with water from next month.
Believed to be second in size only to Kuwait's Sulaibiya facility, the factory will double the supply of reclaimed water -
Newater - providing 30 per cent of the country's water needs by next year.
Built by Sembcorp at a cost of $180 million, the Newater factory will sell the water to Singapore's water authority PUB at 30 cents per cu m for a year.
Newater is one of the nation's 'four taps' for its water supply, with rain water capture, importation of raw water from Malaysia and desalination being the other three.
Sembcorp's executive vice-president of group business development Tan Cheng Guan explained that producing Newater is more energy-efficient than desalination, as a lot more goes into the sourcing of seawater than waste water.
The new factory sits atop the Changi Water Reclamation Plant (CWRP), which makes waste water readily available.
Mr Tan explained that developing countries such as China and those in the Middle East which are short of fresh water are realising that their costs of sourcing for fresh water sources will shoot up if they use their water only once.
'The market for recycled water is definitely booming,' he said, adding, 'Using a single drop of water multiple times is key.'
From next month, the plant will be working at 30 per cent capacity. When the factory is completed and goes into full flow, it will produce 228,000 cu m a day - enough to fill 91 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Although the factory is scheduled to be completed by the end of next May, Mr Gerry O'Toole, the regional director of Black & Veatch Water Asia Pacific, the firm which designed the factory, predicts it will be ready by Christmas.
The CWRP treats waste water to the point where it is clean enough to be pumped out to sea. Some of the water will then be piped to the Newater factory.
It then goes through three processes to filter out impurities and is also zapped with ultraviolet rays to kill any remaining contaminates. The Newater is then pumped into five storage tanks for PUB to use.
This is the fifth Newater plant in Singapore. The others - in Bedok, Kranji, Seletar and Ulu Pandan - can provide 15 per cent of Singapore's water.
Sembcorp Changi NEWater Plant to start operations in July
Vincent Wee, Business Times 18 Jun 09;
SEMBCORP'S showcase $180 million Sembcorp Changi NEWater Plant (SCNP) is about to come onstream with an initial capacity of 15 million gallons (69,000 cu m) of reclaimed water per day, ramping up to designed capacity of 50 million gallons (228,000 cu m) per day by June 2010.
Singapore's fifth and biggest NEWater project will start delivering its first flow of NEWater to PUB, Singapore's national water agency, by next month.
The four existing NEWater plants together meet about 15 per cent of Singapore's water needs. The new SCNP will add another 15 per cent, doubling this to 30 per cent when it reaches full capacity in 2010.
The 25-year design, build, own and operate (DBOO) project was won in 2008 with Sembcorp's competitive bid to deliver NEWater at 30 cents per cu m in the first year. The price is subject to adjustment in subsequent years under a formula.
It is believed SCNP's production cost is about 22 to 23 cents per cu m. However, the quantity of NEWater that PUB will require SCNP to produce is determined by PUB.
While unable to disclose specific details, sources said SCNP has an agreed formula with PUB that will ensure its production costs do not rise above the sale price.
SCNP's main operating costs are energy costs, making up just under a third of overall running costs. The plant is designed to reduce these energy costs as much as possible.
For example, its reverse osmosis process has an energy recovery system that helps to save about 10 per cent in energy.
This was a 'fairly expensive plant because PUB obviously wants to have high standards', said Sembcorp executive vice-president Tan Cheng Guan.
But some building costs were saved because certain components like the foundation for the plant was provided by PUB, since it was planned from the beginning that the plant would be put on the roof of PUB's Changi Water Reclamation Plant. Foundation costs typically make up 15 to 20 per cent of building costs.
However, Sembcorp is using the plant as a showcase for its waste water recycling expertise where it hopes to achieve 50 per cent growth in five years to managing water and waste water facilities capable of producing and treating six million cu m of water a day, from the four million cu m a day it handles now.
'We are further deepening our core competencies in the water business through strategic projects such as the Sembcorp Changi NEWater Plant and aim to replicate our track record in key target markets,' said group president and CEO Tang Kin Fei.
GE partners NUS to develop safe drinking water systems across Asia
Lee U-Wen, Business Times 19 Jun 09;
A $150 million research and development centre that aims to develop safe drinking water systems across Asia will open here next Monday.
The opening of NUS-GE Singapore Water Technology Centre - within the school of engineering at the National University of Singapore - coincides with the start of the second annual Singapore International Water Week, on June 22-26.
Already, the first scientists, engineers and researchers have started work at the centre, with all equipment and facilities expected to be in place by the first quarter of next year.
GE has hired 37 people and there are plans to ramp up manpower to about 100, Kevin Cassidy, general manager (Asia-Pacific) of GE Water & Process Technologies, said yesterday.
Mr Cassidy and other senior GE Water and NUS staff were speaking to reporters during a tour of the 2,700 square metre centre, which occupies a building at the engineering faculty and some space in the Temasek Engineering Building.
The centre will be officially opened by National Research Foundation chairman Tony Tan, NUS president Tan Chorh Chuan and GE Water & Process Technologies chief executive and president Heiner Markhoff.
GE's partnership with NUS is its first with a university in the Asia-Pacific.
Michael Saunders, director of the NUS Environmental Research Institute, said that the centre would go a long way towards supporting Singapore's strategy of becoming a global water technology hub.
Mr Cassidy said that the centre would actively engage government agencies as part of an inclusive working relationship. 'The Public Utilities Board is a customer of ours, and what we can offer is a place for them to test some new technologies.'
On the reason for basing the centre here, he said that Singapore was 'one of the most progressive countries in addressing water issues'.
The opening of the centre could not have come at a more opportune time.
Worldwide demand for water last year came to 313 billion cubic metres - a figure that is expected to surge to 870 billion cubic metres by 2030.
Today, the World Health Organization estimates that about 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water.
And by 2025, some 2.8 billion people will be living in water scarce areas.
Recent studies have shown that about 95 per cent of the world's cities still dump raw sewage into their water, underscoring the need for more modern treatment systems in industrialised and developing countries.
NUS, GE set up water research facility
$150m centre will study ways to make potable water that is economical to produce
Amresh Gunasingham, Straits Times 19 Jun 09;
WATER-TECHNOLOGY developer GE Water has twinned itself with the National University of Singapore (NUS) to come up with ways to make water safe to drink and economical to produce.
The two sides will do research in a new $150 million centre located in NUS' engineering faculty. The NUS-GE Singapore Water Technology Centre, to be officially opened next Monday, is GE Water's first collaboration with an Asia-Pacific university.
This puts the 2,700 sq m facility smack within a region where up to 90 per cent of countries do not have adequate technology to provide safe, drinkable water, according to Professor Michael Saunders, the director of the NUS Environmental Research Institute.
The water technology resulting from the research has 'exceptional' market potential regionally, he said.
Parts of China for example, have access only to extremely contaminated water, he noted. 'That's a market, that's a critical need. But we have to look at making these systems much cheaper.'
The pool of 37 scientists and engineers of the centre will eventually be expanded to about 100.
Researchers will seek up to $70 million in government funding for their work, said Professor Barry Halliwell, deputy president (Research and Technology) NUS.
Research will focus on designing seawater desalination systems that do not need large amounts of energy to run or which use solar or other sources of power; they will also research methods of purifying and reusing water.
GE Water's general manager for the Asia-Pacific, Mr Kevin Cassidy, said state-of-the-art desalination systems require a relatively large amount of energy to run - roughly 3 kilowatt-hour for each cubic metre - which many countries can ill afford.
He offered this as an indication of the level of efficiency being sought after: 'If we put 100 litres of water through a high-pressure system, currently, we may get 95 litres of clean water. We want to find ways to get 98 or even 99 litres of clean water.'
Prof Saunders said having an industry-university partnership was critical for universities to be successful in the next decade or two.
It allows universities to do more and gives their students research opportunities that put them 'closer to the real world', he added.
Decomposing bags sound environmentally friendly but they require a lot of energy to make, won't degrade in landfills and may leave toxic leftovers
Fred Pearce, guardian.co.uk 18 Jun 09;
Biodegradable plastic bags – as handed out by Tesco, the Co-op and even the Soil Association – must be good, surely? They have a magic ingredient that means they self-destruct after a few months, breaking up into tiny pieces made of simple molecules that bugs and fungi can happily munch up. Dozens of major corporations use them, including Pizza Hut, KFC, News international, Walmart and Marriott hotels.
But last week, the European Plastics Recyclers Association warned that they "have the potential to do more harm to the environment than good."
Technically what we are talking about here is "oxo-degradable" plastics. These are plastics made to degrade in the presence of oxygen and sunlight, thanks to the addition of tiny amounts of metals like cobalt, iron or manganese.
British manufacturers – headed by Symphony Technologies of Borehamwood – are at the sharp end of a revolution that could banish bag-strewn beauty spots and back alleys alike.
But the criticisms are twofold. First, some research suggests that the bags don't degrade as well as claimed. And second, priming plastic bags for destruction is itself an ecological crime.
So, do they really biodegrade away to nothing? Symphony, which supplies the Co-op and Tesco, says its bags are "able to degrade completely within about three years, compared to standard bags which take 100 years or longer". Tesco reckons they all decompose within 18 months "without leaving anything that could harm the environment".
But whether it actually happens seems to depend a lot on where the "biodegradable" plastic ends up. If it gets buried in a landfill it probably won't degrade at all because there is no light or oxygen. But what about elsewhere?
Studies of one brand in the US, commissioned by the Biodegradable Products Institute, found that breakdown is very dependent on temperature and humidity. It goes slow in cold weather. And high humidity virtually stops the process, making long, wet winters sound like bad news.
You might think a compost heap full of biodegrading bugs would be ideal. But a recent Swedish study found that polyethylene containing manganese additive stops breaking down when put in compost, probably due to the influence of ammonia or other gases generated by microorganisms in the compost.
And, while most manufacturers say that to put only tiny amounts of metals into the plastic, the US study found that one brand contained "very high levels of lead and cobalt", raising questions about the toxicity of the leftovers. Neither of these studies relates specifically to Symphony's products. But they raise questions.
The European Plastics Recyclers Association last week argued that biodegradable bags are not the right environmental option anyway. Plastic bags take a lot of energy and oil to make so why waste them by creating bags that self-destruct? "It is an economic and environmental nonsense to destroy this value," the recyclers' trade association concluded.
Of course, we consumers can reuse or recycle biodegradable bags as easily as any other kind. Symphony and other manufacturers stress making bags biodegradable is just an insurance policy for those that don't get recycled or reused. But surely we are less likely to bother if we are told the bags are eco-bags that biodegrade.
This European backlash against oxo-biodegradable plastics follows similar rumblings in the US. In March, the New York Times announced it would not be wrapping its paper in bags made of the stuff because claims that the plastic was "100% biodegradable" did not stand up. This followed a ruling last December by an advertising industry watchdog, part of the US Council of Better Business Bureaus, that makers should stop calling the bags "eco-friendly".
(In marked contrast, the UK Periodical Publishers Association two years ago recommended that all its members use oxo-biodegradable film to wrap their magazines)
Industry websites, including Symphony's, do proudly proclaim one green endorsement – that the organic trade body the Soil Association buys their bags. But Clio Turton at the Soil Association told me: "We've had problems with people making these claims. We have asked for them to be removed. It's very frustrating."
Plastic bags are not the biggest environmental issue on the planet, as George Monbiot explained in a blog here recently.
But most of us probably make "bag choices" several times a day. Brits get through 8bn plastic bags a year. For that reason, they are one of the choices that tend to show if we care about the environment or not. And we should be clear. Re-using bags is best. Recycling is second best. Throwing them away in the hope that a magic formula will guarantee their rapid disappearance is laziness, not environmental care. And anybody who tries to persuade us otherwise is guilty of Greenwash.
Kate Ravilious, New Scientist 18 Jun 09;
Tree-lined avenues and flower-filled central reservations are pretty, but they could be damaging your health. A new study shows that some plants can increase the rate of ozone production by up to 50 times.
Certain plants, such as rosemary, juniper and pine trees, emit chemical compounds known as terpenes, thought to help deter insect predators, or protect the plant from other stresses like high temperatures.
However, when terpenes mix with pollutants (particularly nitrogen oxides from industry and traffic) they react to produce ozone – a key ingredient of photochemical smogs, and a health hazard that can cause breathing difficulties and may cause cancer.
Scientists have long known that terpenes from forests can cause a significant rise in ozone levels when they mix with air pollution. But could smaller clusters of plants in urban environments be damaging too?
Mark Potosnak, from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, and his colleagues measured terpene emissions from plants lining the sidewalks of Las Vegas. They also studied air quality – including levels of nitrogen oxides and ozone – in a number of central and suburban regions.
Planted perils
In all cases, ozone levels exceeded the US Environmental Protection Agency safe standard (an average of 75 parts per billion over an eight-hour period) and in the worst case reached 107ppb.
Modelling the data revealed that the mix of terpenes and pollutants was responsible for a significant rise in ozone levels – boosting production rates by up to 50 times – particularly downwind of the plants, in suburban neighbourhoods. "It's surprising because Las Vegas has relatively little urban vegetation," says Potosnak.
All over the world hot cities are likely to have similar problems, Potosnak thinks. But the situation can be easily remedied by choosing plants carefully. "Some plant species are very low emitters. Shoestring acacia is a great plant: low water use and low terpene emissions," says Potosnak.
Journal reference: Atmospheric Environment (in press)
David Fogarty, Reuters 19 Jun 09;
* Local community backing key to saving forests
* Australia backs deforestation project in Borneo
* Peat forests contain vast amount of carbons
SINGAPORE, June 19 (Reuters) - Within a vast deforested area on Borneo island, Australia and Indonesia hope to turn an ecological disaster into a global lesson on how to help local communities save tropical forests and fight climate change.
Borneo, like the Amazon, is at the centre of efforts to fight deforestation that is a major contributor to global warming and many governments are trying to build on a U.N.-backed scheme that aims to reward developing nations for preserving their forests.
Billion of dollars in annual revenues are potentially in the offing but getting the support of local communities is crucial if forests are to remain standing and the scheme is to succeed.
"The major challenge is to change the behaviour of the community. That's the main problem," said Ben Tular of CARE Indonesia.
The NGO is among a number of groups helping Australia and Indonesia develop the Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership (KFCP) which aims to preserve and rehabilitate 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of carbon-rich peat land in Central Kalimantan.
Half the area has been cleared and half is still forested but under threat unless alternative livelihoods are found for the 20,000 people living in and around the project area. Australia has pledged A$30 million to fund the project until 2012 and a full field team will be on the ground from July.
Tular, CARE's programme manager for the project, said there had been an sharp increase in deforestation in the KFCP area because revenues from rubber, the main source of income for many villagers, had plunged because of the global financial crisis.
"Most of them have tried to developing farming there," he said of the cleared area of 50,000 ha.
"But maybe about 90 percent of activities have failed because the land is very acid. Most of the crops are dead."
WIDER PROBLEM
KFCP, though, is part of a much wider problem. It represents a fraction of an area of forest cleared in the 1990s on the orders of former president Suharto on the mistaken hopes of growing vast crops of rice.
About one million hectares of forest were cleared, much of it sitting on carbon-rich peat swamps, and more than 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) of drainage canals were dug.
Observers who've seen the failed site from the air, say the former mega rice project area looks like a giant scar on the land, and during the dry season it is vulnerable to burning.
But where many see disaster, others see opportunity in the vast amount of carbon locked away in the peat soils.
The sale of carbon credits from stopping the peat land from burning and replanting the denuded areas could provide the incentive to slow the rate of deforestation, particularly in Borneo, which has already lost about half its forests.
Tropical rainforests and particularly peatland forests, soak up vast amounts of carbon-dioxide, locking away carbon in the wood and soil. Peat forests can release more than 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per ha when drained and burned as well as large amounts of methane, a far more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.
"Degradation of peat is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Indonesia," said Sam Zappia, AusAID's Acting Senior Representative in Indonesia.
AusAID, the Australian government's aid arm, and the Department of Climate Change in Canberra are helping develop the KFCP programme along with the Indonesian government and the Central Kalimantan provincial administration.
REWARDS
The programme is one of the first large-scale demonstration projects under the U.N.-backed forest carbon scheme. Called reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD), the project aims to use carbon credits from saving forests to reward developing nations.
The United Nations hopes REDD will become part of a broader climate pact to be negotiated at the end of the year and be ready by 2013 once issues such as ensuring protected forests remain standing are worked out.
Zappia said field teams were now collecting socio-economic details in local communities, such as wealth, sources of income, while a panel of experts were developing a way to estimate greenhouse gas emissions from peat in the KFCP site.
"This work will be scaled up from July, leading towards the damming of a network of drainage canals that is driving the process of degradation. Measures to prevent fire will also be put in place," he told Reuters from Jakarta.
He said the team will trial a system of incentive payments for activities at the site that support REDD, such as sustainable land use and forest protection.
"Payments would be funded through KFCP funds (grant aid), not through the sale of carbon credits," he said, since the programme was meant as a learning exercise at this stage.
Payments could, for example, initially be tied to indicators such as a reduced incidence of fire, and later could be tied to measured reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to model market-based approaches to REDD, he said.
Both governments hope to take the lessons learned to help design future REDD projects elsewhere and have already agreed to develop a second site involving a different soil type in Indonesia but have not yet decided on the location.
In the meantime, the Kalimantan partnership aims to tackle the very causes of deforestation.
"There's no point going in to do rehabilitation work if you're not looking at the broad drivers of deforestation," said Clare Walsh of the Department of Climate Change in Canberra.
These drivers included subsistence farming, logging or other uses of the forests and it was crucial to focus on economic development opportunities to tackle them.
Alternative schemes could include fish farming, growing alternative cash crops, such as fruit, as well as sustainable forestry by planting valuable timber species for harvesting. CARE has already introduced some of these into communities elsewhere in the mega-rice area.
Walsh said it was also crucial to help countries build up technical expertise on REDD, with the Australian government funding a separate programme to help Indonesia develop a national carbon accounting system.
"What you to do is get countries to the level that is required to participate in the compliance arrangements, whether it be a market or a fund," said Walsh, Assistant Secretary of the International Negotiations (Forest and Adaptation) Branch.
For now, Zappia and Tular said communities in the KFCP site welcomed the programme.
"Villagers are very enthusiastic," said Tular, adding that building dams across the canals and replanting cleared areas are among the projects that could provide employment.
But a crucial step was to try to get locals to understand the implications of their farming practices and how these might be in conflict with the conservation principles of the programme. (Editing by Megan Goldin)
WWF 19 Jun 09;
Gland, Switzerland: The governments of Norway and Japan are using taxpayer money to subsidize their unprofitable whaling industries, according to a first-time analysis of the economics of whaling.
Economics and Subsidies to Whaling found that Norway and Japan provide commercial whalers with huge government subsidies—even though killing whales is unlikely to ever be profitable without taxpayer support.
“In this time of global economic crisis, the use of valuable tax dollars to prop up what is basically an economically unviable industry, is neither strategic, sustainable, nor an appropriate use of limited government funds,” said Dr Susan Lieberman, Species Programme Director, WWF International.
The analysis considers a range of direct and indirect costs associated with whaling and the processing and marketing of whale products, such as whale meat. Researchers conclude that these costs, combined with declining demand for whale meat and the risk of negative impacts such as trade or tourism boycotts, make commercial whaling unlikely to produce benefits for either country’s economies or taxpayers.
In Norway, for example, the government since 1992 has spent more than US$4.9 million on public information, public relations, and lobbying campaigns to garner support for its whaling and seal hunting industries, according to the report. In addition, government subsidies for the whaling industry have equalled almost half of the gross value of all whale meat landings made through the Rafisklaget, the Norwegian Fishermen’s Sales Organisation.
The report notes similar use of taxpayer funds by Japan. During the 2008-09 season, the Japanese whaling industry, for example, needed US$12 million in taxpayer money just to break even. Overall, Japanese subsidies for whaling amount to US$164 million since 1988.
Other major findings in the report include:
• Wholesale prices of whale meat per kg in Japan have been falling since 1994, starting at just over $30/kg in 1994, and declining to $16.40 in 2006.
• Norway has spent an additional US$10.5 million covering the costs of an inspection programme from 1993 until 2006, when it was scrapped due to the losses it was causing the country’s whalers.
Japan and Norway, in defiance of the International Whaling Commission’s moratorium on commercial whaling, kill up to 2,000 whales a year, exploiting loopholes in the IWC’s founding treaty that allow whaling under ‘objection’ to management decisions (Norway) and “scientific” whaling for research purposes (Japan).
Ahead of the 61st IWC meeting next week, researchers point out that killing more whales likely would hurt whale-watching and tourism, trade, and the international image of Norway and Japan – impacts which would far outweigh any economic benefits of whaling.
“It is clear that whaling is heavily subsidised at present,” the report states. “In both Japan and Norway, substantial funds are made available to prop up an operation which would otherwise be commercially marginal at best, and most likely loss making.”
“Norway and Japan are hurting tourism, a potential growth industry in both countries in order to spend millions of dollars obtaining whale meat, the sale of which makes no profit,” said Sue Fisher, WDCS US Policy Director. “How much longer are they going to keep wasting their taxpayer’s money?”
The analysis was conducted by independent economists eftec and commissioned by WWF and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.
IWC 61 is being held in Madeira, Portugal, from 22-26 June.
Japan, Norway subsidizing unprofitable whaling: WWF
Shrikesh Laxmidas, Reuters 18 Jun 09;
LISBON (Reuters) - Japan and Norway are giving large subsidies to their whaling industries, which have become unprofitable due to rising costs and declining demand for whale meat, the WWF said Friday.
Conservation group the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said a report it commissioned on the economics of whaling shows Japan has spent $164 million supporting its whaling industry since 1988 and Norway's subsidies add up to more than $15 million since 1992.
"In this time of global economic crisis, the use of valuable tax dollars to prop up what is basically an economically unviable industry is neither strategic, sustainable, nor an appropriate use of limited government funds," said Susan Lieberman, WWF's Species Director Program.
Lieberman's comments come just days ahead of the International Whaling Commission's (IWC) annual meeting in Madeira next week, where Japan and Norway are likely to come under pressure from anti-whaling nations including Britain and the United States to end their hunts.
Japan officially observes a 1986 global moratorium on whaling -- unlike Norway and Iceland, which ignore it and carry out commercial whaling -- but still catches about 900 whales a year in Antarctic waters for what it calls research purposes.
Most of the meat from the scientific catches ends up on the dinner table, angering animal welfare groups around the world who argue that many species face extinction and that explosive harpoons used by whalers can cause horrific suffering.
The report commissioned by the WWF said the Japanese whaling industry needed $12 million to break even in the 2009-season and that whale meat vendors have had to cut their margins due to waning demand.
Margins are also tight in the Norwegian whaling industry with low fixed prices and falling meat demand, a situation illustrated by the fact that the country has only taken around 70 percent of its self-assigned 885-whale quota in recent years.
The Norwegian government supports its whaling sector through fuel, transport and storage cost subsidies, as well as financing information campaigns, it added.
(Editing by Axel Bugge and Jon Hemming)
New Straits Times 19 Jun 09;
Reaching out to the people through God is such a winning formula in Terengganu that WWF is planning to introduce it in Kelantan.
THE sea of faithful Muslims from Ma'Daerah listened keenly as a small wiry ulama with wispy grey beard preached about saving turtles.
Across the South China Sea, an Anglican pastor in Kota Kinabalu urged followers to be more respectful of nature and its resources.
These two men are just some of the holy leaders who are spreading environmental awareness through God's words.
While celebrities have always fronted environment campaigns, lately, it seems religion has found its role in the green movement worldwide.
For British scientist Dr Bernard d'Abrera, "faith is the evidence for things unseen".
"As custodians of the Earth, we have the moral obligation to take care of it in its original form for as long as possible.
"God didn't create Earth as a trap, but a home for us."
Even English environmentalist Sir David Attenborough declared recently that "there should be a morality about living".
Environmentalism has always relied on science, but d'Abrera stressed that "science must be subjected to morality".
"Spirituality is a force for moral good to rule good behaviour."
Langkawi-based conservationist Irshad Mobarak agreed, saying all religions taught respect for nature.
"All religions have many good things to say about man's relationship with his Creator and His creations ... and our position as stewards of nature.
"We must treat Earth with deference."
Irshad described Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Malaysia's move to highlight the endangered turtles' plight through sermons in Terengganu as a "good approach" to make people understand that everything was finite.
"You tell them 'hey listen. You're accountable for how you treat the planet. You can escape men's law but not God's punishment'."
Editor of the Herald, a Roman Catholic publication, Father Lawrence Andrew, said that every life needed to be protected.
"The Christian principle of loving thy neighbour also includes animals and plants."
Roman Catholic Churches in Malaysia, he said, include green topics from time to time in the sermons, especially when the occasion calls for it, such as Earth Hour.
"And now with the haze, we encourage people not to conduct open burning," he said.
Reaching out to the people through the new medium is such a winning formula in Terengganu that WWF is planning to introduce it in Kelantan.
"We have tried other ways from education to holding public talks.
"The religion approach is new but it seems to be working," WWF Species Conservation Programme (Peninsular Malaysia) communications officer Sara Sukor said.
The NGO is currently working with the Islamic Understanding Institute of Malaysia to publish a book on spirituality and environmental stewardship.
The compilation of Quranic verses, hadith (collections of sayings and acts of Muhammad and the first Muslims) and sirah (stories of prophets) is expected to be out by December.
EurekAlert 18 Jun 09; and WWF 18 Jun 09;
Bangkok, Thailand— Legal loopholes and insufficient law enforcement mean that Thailand continues to harbour the largest illegal ivory market in Asia, says a new report from the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC.
The report also raises concerns that legal provisions governing trade in domesticated elephants are providing cover for illegal trade in wild-caught, highly-endangered Asian elephants from both Thailand and neighbouring Myanmar.
TRAFFIC's survey documented over 26,000 worked ivory products for sale in local markets, with many more retail outlets dealing in ivory products than were observed during market surveys carried out in 2001.
Market surveys found 50 more retail outlets offering ivory items in Bangkok and Chiang Mai in 2008 than the previous year. However, overall there was less worked ivory openly on sale than in 2001.
"Thailand has consistently been identified as one of the world's top five countries most heavily implicated in the illicit ivory trade, but shows little sign of addressing outstanding issues," said Tom Milliken, of TRAFFIC, which oversees a global monitoring programme, the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS), for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
"Thailand needs to reassess its policy for controlling its local ivory markets as currently it is not implementing international requirements to the ongoing detriment of both African and Asian Elephant populations," said Milliken.
"Since 2004, the Thai government has only reported two ivory seizure cases totaling 1.2 tonnes of raw ivory."
Thailand's capital, Bangkok, a major tourist destination, has emerged as the main hub for illegal ivory activities, accounting for over 70 percent of the retail outlets in Thailand offering ivory items for sale.
The report includes new information on ivory workshops—eight in Uthai Thani, one each in Chai Nat and Payuha Kiri, and three in Bangkok—between them employing dozens of carvers in the production of ivory jewelry, belt buckles and knife-handles. Much of the ivory being worked is illegally imported from Africa.
Some workshop owners boasted close ties with European knife makers, while others reported sending ivory, steel and silver items to the US for sale in gun shops.
"The Thai Government needs to crack down on this serious illegal activity and stop allowing people to abuse the law," said Dr Colman O'Criodain, WWF International's analyst on wildlife trade issues.
"A good first step would be to put in place a comprehensive registration system for all ivory in trade and for live elephants".
The study also uncovered reports of traders buying wild-caught elephant calves for use in Bangkok as "beggars" on the streets in major tourist centres, or selling them to elephant camps and entertainment parks.
Hundreds of live elephants are known to have been illegally imported from Myanmar in recent years, to be sold to elephant trekking companies catering to adventure tourism in Thailand. The capture of wild elephants has been banned in Thailand since the 1970s, but such trade usually goes undetected because domesticated elephants do not have to be registered legally until they are eight years of age.
The study also found that over a quarter of all live elephant exports from Thailand between 1980 and 2005 could have been illegal due to incomplete and inaccurate declarations made on the documentation required under CITES.
"There must be greater scrutiny of the live elephant trade if enforcement efforts are to have any impact at all," said Chris R. Shepherd, TRAFFIC Southeast Asia's Acting Director.
"Thailand and Myanmar should work together, and with urgency, to address cross-border trade problems," he added.
Thailand said Asia's biggest illegal ivory market
Reuters 19 Jun 09;
* Big Thai ivory trade despite promises to crack down
* "Elephant-sized loopholes" in laws - Traffic
OSLO, June 19 (Reuters) - Thailand still has Asia's biggest illegal elephant ivory market despite promises to crack down, the wildlife trade monitoring group Traffic said on Friday.
The report said Bangkok should close "elephant-sized loopholes" in its wildlife protection laws that enable sellers to pass off illegal ivory as coming from a legal source of domesticated animals.
"The illegal trade in live elephants and ivory still flourishes in Thailand," according to Traffic's 73-page study.
It said the number of worked ivory pieces seen on sale during its latest survey had fallen substantially but was still high at 26,000 pieces compared to 88,000 noted in a previous report in 2001.
But it said there were more retail outlets dealing in ivory products than counted in 2001. "Thailand's capital, Bangkok, a major tourist destination, has emerged as the main hub for illegal ivory activities," it said.
"Thailand has consistently been identified as one of the world's top five countries most heavily implicated in the illicit ivory trade, but shows little sign of addressing outstanding issues," said Tom Milliken of Traffic.
The latest data was based on surveys in 2006/07 and a follow-up in 2008. Traffic is run by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the WWF conservation group. The IUCN groups governments, scientists and environmental organisations.
Traffic urged Bangkok to tighten law enforcement. It also questioned exports, saying that nine elephants had been sent to Australia and five to Germany since a 2006 proclamation prohibited such sales.
And it said Thailand illegally imported elephants for tourism from Myanmar.
Traffic urged Thailand to set up a computer database, using genetic material, to track ivory from domesticated elephants to try to shut illegal ivory out of the market.
Under a 1939 law, possession and sale of ivory from domesticated Thai elephants is legal -- the law treats them as working animals such as cows or water buffalo. But a 1992 law bans trade in wild Thai elephants and products, and elephants from abroad.
Bernama 18 Jun 09;
PORT KLANG, June 18 (Bernama) -- Science, Technology and Innovation minister Datuk Dr Maximus Ongkili today said the National Ocean Policy (NOP)being drafted by the ministry is expected to be ready in six months.
"The cabinet had agreed for the preparation of the draft and once ready, it will be tabled in the cabinet," he said after launching the Premier Scientific Exploration Expedition at National Hydrographic Centre (NHC) in Pulau Indah here Thursday.
Dr Ongkili said the NOP would comprise components of the country's maritime realm, including social, economic, environmental and biological components, development of marine-related activities and to regulate the functions of the respective agencies involved.
The drafting of the policy is being headed by the National Oceanography Directorate, an agency under the ministry, he said.
He said it was his wish to see people living in the coastal areas to enjoy a similar lifestyle like those in countries like Australia, especially fishermen who are among the rich in the country.
Dr Ongkili added that one of the objective of the expedition was to gather and compile data and information that can be used as a guideline to draft the NOP.
"Information gathered will be analysed to identify the marine resources, flora and Fiona, marine life, climate change, sediments and tide," he said.
The maiden expedition to the Sulu and Sulawesi Sea is expected to bring about a new dimension in exploration to the country's Oceanography.
The expedition launched today would involve 54 explorers from agencies under the ministry, Prime Minister's Department, Marine Department, Fisheries Department, Department of Environment and Marine Park, Mineralogy and Geosciences Departments.
Apart from the department's representatives from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Universiti Malaya, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Universiti Industri Selangor, Universiti Malaysia Sabah and Universiti Malaysia Terengganu are also part of the 52-day expedition, he said.
-- BERNAMA
Reuters 18 Jun 09;
TOKYO (Reuters) - Pacific Bio-Fields Holdings Plc said it has received approval to use 400,000 hectares of land to plant coconut trees in the Philippines to make alternative auto fuel, which it aims to sell to Japanese users in five years.
The company, which plans to list on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market (AIM) later this year, said on Thursday the agreement allows it exclusively to cultivate unused public land on the northern main island of Luzon for free for up to 50 years.
The project will provide local jobs and involve the construction of local refinery infrastructure.
"It is the first time the Philippines' government has allowed any local or foreign company to use land for a coconut oil-made biodiesel project," Yuji Taniguchi, head of the U.K.-based holding company with its main operations in Japan and the Philippines, told a group of reporters.
In the Philippines, the world's biggest coconut oil exporter, local biodiesel producers have increasingly been using coconut oil as feedstock now that a 2 percent mixture of plant-origin fuel in diesel for auto use is mandatory.
Coconut and coconut oil production have been centered in the southern part of the Southeast Asian island nation.
Coconut oil is traditionally used in food and cosmetics.
Competition with food is not an issue for this project, whose location is in the northern part of Luzon, where fields are largely abandoned after once-dominant tobacco production receded, Taniguchi said.
Also, coconut trees do not require particularly fertile land, like palm trees do, he said.
"Coconut trees can grow on wasteland, and we rely on DENR where to plant them," he said, referring to the role of Department of Environment and Natural Resources of the Philippines, which gives approval of areas to plant after environmental assessment by another government agency.
The IPO in the second half of 2009, arranged by Arbuthnot Securities of Britain, is set to raise an estimated 5 billion yen ($52 million), the proceeds to be used for investment in coconut tree planting.
The company, now with capital of 30 million yen, plans to start operations at its first crushing plant with capacity of 2,000 metric tons of oil per month in northern Luzon by August, with oil initially for sales to local biodiesel makers.
By 2014, the company plans to build five other crushing plants with similar capacity each as well as a refinery plant to turn the feedstock into 300,000 metric tons of biodiesel a year, part of which is targeted at exports to Japan, Taniguchi said.
The project of building these facilities and needed infrastructure is partly financed by loans from government-backed Japan Bank for International Cooperation, he added.
($1=95.73 Yen)
(Reporting by Risa Maeda; Editing by Keiron Henderson)
Rivandra Royono, Jakarta Globe 18 Jun 09;
This decade has witnessed the advent of what some refer to as the third wave of outsourcing. Following manufacture and information technology, many countries — those that are richer yet short on fertile land — are beginning to subcontract farmland abroad.
Britain, the United States, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are already renting farmland in Africa, Latin America and Russia. Rich or populous Asian countries like China, India and South Korea have also relied on rented foreign land to ensure their food supply.
The International Food Policy Research Institute, a Washington-based think tank, estimates that an area of 15 million to 20 million hectares of farmland in poor countries have been in transactions or associated with talks with foreign investors since 2006. The value of such investment is estimated at up to $30 billion.
As one of the most fertile agricultural lands in the world, Indonesia is naturally on investors’ radars. As a matter of fact, Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Binladin Group nearly signed a $4 billion deal to grow rice on 500,000 hectares of land here.
The project is currently on hold, but the deferred investment may not necessarily be a bad thing for Indonesia. Large-scale agricultural investment, as lucrative as it may seem at the moment, carries serious risk. For one, it certainly has environmental consequences.
What we need to understand is that farmland is not only about land; it’s also very much about water. Truth be told, water shortage is the main reason why countries are renting farmland abroad.
Saudi Arabia was able achieve self-sufficiency for a time by investing massive amounts of money to grow crops in the desert. The water needed for plantations was pumped out of aquifers below the Arabian sand. But that water source was non-replenishable, and it was little surprise when farmers sucked out the water from under their feet to a point of environmental disaster.
Even countries like China and South Korea, which are not usually associated with water shortages, have pretty much drained their water sources with their aggressive agricultural expansion.
The environmental consequences don’t stop at water use. Massive use of pesticides may disrupt the ecological balance and poison wildlife. Fertilize the land too much and you can ruin it. Farmland has also been known to build up silt in the riverbeds, leading further to numerous environmental problems. True, these risks apply to all farmland, but the massive scale of foreign farmland investment and the lure of big cash would very conceivably exacerbate them.
Land concession is another problem. A factory complex covers only several hectares, while farmland — the kind that the investors are interested in — would cover hundreds of thousands. Land concessions of that scale are prone to be unfair. Host governments may claim that the lands up for lease are state-owned or vacant. However, such “vacant” lands may easily support families who have been using them for generations as farms or grazing areas. Such customary rights are unlikely to be recognized by law, especially when foreign investment is in the picture.
Having said all that, we should note that leasing farmlands to foreign investors also carries huge benefits. Most obviously, it can reverse the decline of public investment in agriculture in developing countries like ours. Research and development in the sector can be boosted, new technologies can be introduced and new jobs would be created. The country’s agricultural sector could be revitalized.
Furthermore, typical deals usually involve some fringe benefits. Investors in Africa have pledged schools, clinics and roads — things that the investors themselves also need. Such facilities and infrastructure would most definitely be appreciated by locals.
If Indonesia decides to go ahead with leasing farmland, it should do so with caution, keeping an eye on both the risks and the opportunities. We need to understand that we have a very strong bargaining position: Other types of foreign investment are still available, and agricultural reform can still be carried out without having foreigners plowing our lands. In other words, Indonesia is not in desperate need of this particular type of investment, while investors like China or the Gulf states may be.
In many host countries, farmland deals involve mainly the land, while the right to withdraw the water comes automatically. Water, perhaps the most essential part of the deal, ironically comes as a freebie. Indonesia would do well to make sure that water use enters the investment’s equation.
Customary rights must be respected, and this would be consistent with Indonesia’s commitment to recognize traditional community laws. Contracts must include stipulation for investors to share benefits with and recruit locals as workers. Insurance must be embedded in the agreement; for instance, investors can only export back to their countries if the crop yield is above a certain threshold, thus ensuring domestic food production. Cooperation with national research agencies and individual researchers in agriculture R&D must be carried out, ensuring transfer of knowledge and technology.
The postponed Saudi investment is a good thing not because Indonesia should not enter international farmland investment deals, but because it gives us time to better prepare. We have ample time to learn from existing practices and develop carefully drafted contracts and codes of conduct. Good practice in this form of foreign investment may well lead to large revenue, revitalization of the agricultural sector and empowerment of local communities at a manageable risk. We should not rush, but we would do well to press forward.
Rivandra Royono is executive director of the Jakarta-based Association for Critical Thinking and a consultant for the World Bank’s education division.
New Straits Times 18 Jun 09;
PUTRAJAYA, Thurs: THE haze currently experienced in the country can worsen if the open burning in the country and abroad is left unchecked, according to an environmental expert.
Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) Environmental Sciences Department head Assoc Prof Dr Ahmad Makmom Abdullah said the haze would return occasionally until September due to the El Nino phenomenon.
As such, he said immediate action to monitor and control open burning activities, as stipulated in the Regional Haze Action Plan ratified by Asean member countries, should be implemented to prevent the situation from worsening to that in 1997, he told reporters here today.
Dr Ahmad Makmom said that apart from affecting health, the haze had also incurred losses for the government, especially in the tourism, agriculture and livestock-breeding sectors.
He said that according to a study, the country lost RM420 million in palm oil production and another RM40 million in the fish-breeding sector during the three-month haze in 1997.
The total loss suffered by Southeast Asian countries during the 1997 haze was estimated at US$9 billon (US$1 = RM3.53), he said.
Meanwhile, UPM Environment Management Department chief Assoc Prof Dr Mohd Bakri Ishak said Asean member countries should sit together to find a more systematic approach to ensure that the haze did not recur.
He said that though a treaty on cross-border haze pollution had been signed in 2002, it had failed to avert a recurrence of the problem.
"If we look at the treaty, the country which causes the haze is not held responsible to the country which suffers the consequences. If, for example, Malaysia wants to tackle the haze which originates from open burning activities in Sumatra, Indonesia, we will have to get their permission first.
"This will surely create a conflict or a polemic as time-consuming meetings would have to be convened," he said.
Dr Mohd Bakri also said that Malaysia could actually take legal action against the country which causes the haze but it would go against the Malaysian principle of good neighbourliness as well as the Asean partnership concept. - Bernama
Yahoo News 18 Jun 09;
SYDNEY (AFP) – Indonesia's devastating 'mud volcano' could keep spewing for the next 30 years, filling the equivalent of 50 Olympic-size swimming pools every day, a top Australian expert warned.
Curtin University of Technology's doctor Mark Tingay, who has just returned from the disaster site in East Java, said about 100,000 people remained under threat from subsidence three years after the volcano first erupted.
"In effect, the whole region around the vent hole is sinking by about two to five centimetres each day due to the rising mud level, causing more damage to suburban villages and triggering frequent bursts of flammable gas around homes," he said, according to a Geological Society of Australia statement.
Tingay added that damage caused by the mud, which has been devouring land and homes in Sidoarjo district since May 2, 2006, was estimated at about 4.9 billion dollars.
The volcano has buried 12 villages, killed 13 people, displaced more than 42,000 residents and wiped out 800 hectares (1,977 acres) of densely populated farming and industrial land.
He said the volcano could produce enough scalding mud to fill Sydney Harbour twice over in the next 30 years but admitted the time-scale was only an estimate.
"The high flow-rate may only continue for two to three years, or it might continue for hundreds of years," Tingay said.
"And like other mud volcanoes, Lusi will probably be in existence for thousands of years, even if its flow-rate subsides," he added.
Australian oil and gas giant Santos, which was drilling in the area when the volcano erupted, by September had declared previsions of just 88.5 million dollars to cover the clean-up cost.
In December, Santos exited the project and said it would pay an Indonesian firm 22.5 million US dollars "to support long-term mud management efforts" at the site.
ScienceDaily 18 Jun 09;
University of Michigan aquatic ecologist Donald Scavia and his colleagues say this year's Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" could be one of the largest on record, continuing a decades-long trend that threatens the health of a half-billion-dollar fishery.
The scientists' latest forecast, released June 18, calls for a Gulf dead zone of between 7,450 and 8,456 square miles—an area about the size of New Jersey.
Most likely, this summer's Gulf dead zone will blanket about 7,980 square miles, roughly the same size as last year's zone, Scavia said. That would put the years 2009, 2008 and 2001 in a virtual tie for second place on the list of the largest Gulf dead zones.
It would also mean that the five largest Gulf dead zones on record have occurred since 2001. The biggest of these oxygen-starved, or hypoxic, regions developed in 2002 and measured 8,484 square miles.
"The growth of these dead zones is an ecological time bomb," said Scavia, a professor at the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment and director of the U-M Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute.
"Without determined local, regional and national efforts to control them, we are putting major fisheries at risk," said Scavia, who also produces annual dead-zone forecasts for the Chesapeake Bay.
The Gulf dead zone forms each spring and summer off the Louisiana and Texas coast when oxygen levels drop too low to support most life in bottom and near-bottom waters.
The Gulf hypoxia research team is supported by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research and includes scientists from Louisiana State University and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.
The forecast for a large 2009 Gulf hypoxic zone is based on above-normal flows in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers this spring, which delivered large amounts of the nutrient nitrogen. In April and May, flows in the two rivers were 11 percent above average.
Additional flooding of the Mississippi since May could result in a dead zone that exceeds the upper limit of the forecast, the scientists said.
"The high water-volume flows, coupled with nearly triple the nitrogen concentrations in these rivers over the past 50 years from human activities, has led to a dramatic increase in the size of the dead zone," said Gene Turner, a lead forecast modeler at Louisiana State University.
Northeast of the Gulf, low water flows into the Chesapeake Bay shaped Scavia's 2009 forecast for that hypoxia zone.
The Bay's oxygen-starved zone is expected to shrink to between 0.7 and 1.8 cubic miles, with a "most likely" volume of 1.2 cubic miles—the lowest level since 2001 and third-lowest on record. The drop is largely due to a regional dry spell that lasted from January through April, Scavia said. Continued high flows in June, beyond the period used for the forecasts, suggest the actual size may be near the higher end of the forecast range.
"While it's encouraging to see that this year's Chesapeake Bay forecast calls for a significant drop in the extent of the dead zone, we must keep in mind that the anticipated reduction is due mainly to decreased precipitation and water runoff into the Bay," he said.
"The predicted 2009 dead-zone decline does not result from cutbacks in the use of nitrogen, which remains one of the key drivers of hypoxia in the Bay."
Farmland runoff containing fertilizers and livestock waste—some of it from as far away as the Corn Belt—is the main source of the nitrogen and phosphorus that cause the Gulf of Mexico dead zone.
Each year in late spring and summer, these nutrients make their way down the Mississippi River and into the Gulf, fueling explosive algae blooms there. When the algae die and sink, bottom-dwelling bacteria decompose the organic matter, consuming oxygen in the process. The result is an oxygen-starved region in bottom and near-bottom waters: the dead zone.
The same process occurs in the Chesapeake Bay, where nutrients in the Susquehanna River trigger the event. In both the Gulf and the Bay, fish, shrimp and crabs are forced to leave the hypoxic zone. Animals that cannot move perish.
The annual hypoxia forecasts helps coastal managers, policy makers, and the public better understand what causes dead zones. The models that generate the forecasts have been used to determine the nutrient-reduction targets required to reduce the size of the dead zone.
"As with weather forecasts, the Gulf forecast uses multiple models to predict the range of the expected size of the dead zone. The strong track record of these models reinforces our confidence in the link between excess nutrients from the Mississippi River and the dead zone," said Robert Magnien, director of NOAA's Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research.
U.S. Geological Survey data on spring river flow and nutrient concentrations inform the computer models that produce the hypoxia forecasts.
The official size of the 2009 hypoxic zone will be announced following a NOAA-supported monitoring survey led by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium on July 18-26. In addition, NOAA's Southeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program's (SEAMAP) is currently providing near real-time data on the hypoxic zone during a five-week summer fish survey in the northern Gulf of Mexico.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Michigan.
UNEP 18 Jun 09;
Geneva, 18 June 2009 - Sustainable management of ecosystems, as an integral part of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction plans, must be at the centre of all development activity, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), WWF-International, IUCN and ISDR.
Speaking at the second Global Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction (GP09) Geneva, Switzerland, UNEP's Director of Division of Environmental Policy Implementation and chair of the session, Ibrahim Thiaw, called for greater integration of ecosystem management in climate change adaptation and disaster preparations and response.
"At the local, national, regional and international, political commitment is urgently needed to raise the profile of ecosystems," he said.
Richard Munang, UNEP's Deputy programme manager for climate change. described ecosystems management as a moral imperative and social responsibility calling for a new vision and approach to development. "The world lacks neither the financial resources nor the technological capabilities to act, - what is missing is a sense of urgency, human solidarity and collective interest based on shared values and a shared interest," he said.
Patterns of disaster risk are changing and the critical ecosystems that support community resilience are being lost at an alarming rate due to human mismanagement of natural resources.
Speaking at the panel, EU Parliamentarian Anders Wijkman, said: "Although our well-being depends entirely on the services of nature, in the majority these goods have no markets and consequently no prices. We ought to be aware, however, that by destroying these natural resources, life-supporting systems could collapse. It is time that we grasped the consequences of our actions and start acting today. Everyone from all walks of life needs to be a player in addressing this challenge. Closing the gap between science-policy and advocating action is imperative."
Jim Leape, the Director General WWF-International, underlined the importance of different ministries in all countries to develop good communication with stakeholders. "Maintaining healthy ecosystems generates multiple returns. Well managed forests and wetlands, for instance, mitigate carbon emissions by acting as carbon sinks and enhance community resilience by providing natural defence barriers against hazards and supporting local livelihoods," he said.
Both Neville Ash (IUCN Ecosystems Manager) and Prof. Sam Hettiarachi (Head of Delegation, Government of Sri Lanka) said the importance of ecosystems needs to be recognised and greater research capacity is need to integrate across scientific disciplines to understand how ecosystems function. "Ecosystems are difficult to repair/restore so recognising a problem too late means that it will be extremely costly (socially and economically) to achieve sustainable ecosystem resource after damage has occurred," they said.
In response to the discussions, participants called for increased financial investment for integrating ecosystems with risk reduction, climate change, food security and poverty alleviation priorities. Indeed, the poor are among the most vulnerable to disaster impacts and will be the first to benefit from investment in an ecosystems-based disaster risk reduction strategy.
Ecosystems services are the benefits that we derive from nature for free, from timber and food to water regulation and climate regulation. As the world's leaders work towards a new international climate change agenda, it is clear that without a deep and decisive post-2012 agreement and major concerted effort to reduce disaster risk, the Millennium Development Goals will remain elusive. A concerted political commitment at the highest level will be needed to raise the profile of ecosystems on the global risk reduction agenda.
In its issues paper, UNEP strongly recommended that adequate financial, technological and knowledge resources be allocated correspondingly for integrating ecosystem management in the climate change and disaster risk reduction portfolios, including in national policy-setting and awareness raising, capacity building, planning and practices, particularly in developing countries vulnerable to climate change impacts and increased risks of climate-related disasters.
ScienceDaily 18 Jun 09;
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released reports documenting the status of polar bears and Pacific walrus in Alaska. The reports confirm that polar bears in Alaska are declining and that Pacific walrus are under threat. Both species are imperiled due to the loss of their sea-ice habitat due to global warming, oil and gas development, and unsustainable harvest.
“Polar bears and walrus are under severe threat, and unless we act rapidly to reduce greenhouse pollution and protect their habitat from oil development, we stand to lose both of these icons of the Arctic,” said Brendan Cumming, oceans program director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
The reports, issued pursuant to the Marine Mammal Protection Act, summarize information on population abundance and trends of polar bears and walrus, threats to the species, and include calculations of human-caused mortality and whether that mortality is sustainable.
There are two polar bear populations in Alaska: a Southern Beaufort Sea stock, which is shared with Canada, and a Chukchi/Bering Sea stock which is shared with Russia. The Pacific walrus occurs in the Bering and Chukchi seas and is shared with Russia.
For the Southern Beaufort Sea polar bear stock, the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated a minimum population of 1,397 bears and an annual human-caused mortality of 54 animals, well above the calculated sustainable rate of 22 animals per year. The stock assessment states that “the Southern Beaufort Sea population is now declining.”
For the Chukchi/Bering Sea polar bear stock, the Service estimated a minimum population of 2,000 bears and an annual human-caused mortality of 37 animals from Alaska and between 150-250 bears killed per year in Russia. The calculated sustainable rate of harvest is 30 animals per year. The stock assessment states that “the population is believed to be declining” and is “reduced based on harvest levels that were demonstrated to be unsustainable.”
For the Pacific walrus, the Service estimated a minimum population of 15,164 animals and an annual human-caused mortality of between 4,963 and 5,460 animals. The calculated sustainable rate of harvest is 607 animals per year.
Of the three population estimates, only the estimate for the well-studied Beaufort Sea polar bears is considered reliable. The Chukchi/Bering Sea polar bear population is based on incomplete data and could be an overestimate, while the walrus estimate is an underestimate as it only represents surveys in about half of the walrus habitat and does not account for walrus not counted because they were in the water rather than hauled out on ice.
“These reports publicly confirm what scientists have known for several years: Polar bear and walrus populations in Alaska are in trouble,” added Cummings. “And even if the population numbers are not precise, we know that without their sea-ice habitat they are likely doomed.”
The Marine Mammal Protection Act requires that the secretary of the interior and the secretary of commerce prepare stock assessments for marine mammals. The assessments are meant to be used as the basis for management decisions such as permitting the killing or harassment of the animals from commercial fisheries, oil and gas exploration, boating and shipping, and military exercises.
To ensure that decision-makers have the most accurate information, stock assessments are supposed to be revised every year for endangered marine mammals and every three years for other species. While the National Marine Fisheries Service – the agency responsible for whales, dolphins, and seals – has largely complied with this requirement, the Fish and Wildlife Service, responsible for polar bears, walrus, sea otters, and manatees, had completely ignored it.
In 2007 the Center sued the Wildlife Service and obtained a court order requiring the release of updated reports. Stock assessments for the Florida manatee were released last week, while sea otter reports were issued last year.
The polar bear is currently listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act as a result of a petition and litigation by the Center for Biological Diversity. The Fish and Wildlife Service is under court order to make a finding on the Center’s petition to protect the Pacific walrus under the Endangered Species Act by September 10, 2009.
A copy of the stock assessments released June 18 can be found at http://alaska.fws.gov/fisheries/mmm/reports.htm
Adapted from materials provided by Center for Biological Diversity.
Reuters 18 Jun 09;
KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda's oil finds in the Albertine Graben, involving Britain's Tullow Oil, threaten biodiversity there, an environmental body said.
Foreign companies continue to make hydrocarbon finds in western Uganda on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, with estimated reserves of two billion barrels and $500 million invested by the end of 2008.
There are four companies exploring for crude in the area with four blocs still open.
"Although environment impact assessments have been undertaken, and mitigation measures proposed, the current activities are already having impact on wildlife, the ecosystem and the human environment," the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) said in its 2008 annual report published on Thursday.
The Albertine Graben has mountain gorillas and monkeys, the golden monkey and 42 bird species as well as Murchison Falls, Queen Elizabeth, Rwenzori Mountains and other national parks, the semi-autonomous body said.
In March, NEMA approved an early production scheme by Tullow Oil after moving the proposed site 2 km (1.2 miles) from the Kabwoya Wildlife Reserve.
Early production of crude has been a bone of contention between the government and oil explorers, observers say. Uganda has said it wants to build a large refinery and use the oil domestically before considering exports.
Analysts say a refinery would cost billions of dollars and take years to construct. Any export of Uganda's waxy crude would also require a heated pipeline, they say.
(Reporting by Jack Kimball; Editing by William Hardy)
Yahoo News 18 Jun 09;
PARIS, France (AFP) – An experimental reactor that could harness nuclear fusion, the power that fuels the Sun, will begin operation in southern France in 2018, the project's governing body announced Thursday.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) should be fully operational in 2026, the ITER Council said in a communique after a meeting in Japan.
The seven-nation council endorsed a "phased" completion of the multi-billion-dollar reactor, with a target date for "first plasma" by the end of 2018.
ITER is designed to produce 500 megawatts of power for extended periods, 10 times the energy needed to keep the energy-generating plasma -- a form of radioactive gas -- at extremely high temperatures.
It will also test a number of key technologies for fusion including the heating, control and remote maintenance that will be needed for a full-scale fusion power station.
Preliminary trials would use only hydrogen. Key experiments using tritium and deuterium that can validate fusion as a producer of large amounts of power would not take place until 2026.
Launched in 2006 after years of debate, the pilot project at Cadarache, near Marseille, has seven backers: the European Union (EU), China, India, South Korea, Japan, Russia and the United States. Kazakhstan is poised to become the eighth member.
Nuclear fusion entails forcing together the nuclei of light atomic elements in a super-heated plasma, held in a doughnut-shaped chamber called a tokamak, so that they make heavier elements and in so doing release energy.
The process, used by the Sun and other stars, would be safe and have negligible problems of waste, say its defenders.
In contrast, nuclear fission, which entails splitting the nucleus of an atom to release energy, remains dogged by concerns about safety and dangerously radioactive long-term waste.
Four years ago, ITER was priced at around 10 billion euros (13.8 billion dollars today), spread among its stakeholders, led by the EU, which has a 45-percent share.
Five billion euros (6.9 billion dollars) would go to constructing the tokamak and other facilities, and five billion euros to the 20-year operations phase.
Last month, the British science journal Nature said construction costs "are likely to double" and the cost of operations "may also rise."
"We are in the process of calculating the final cost of the project," ITER spokesman Neil Calder told AFP. "The financing plan will be presented in November at the next meeting of the council."
If ITER is a success, the next step would be to build a commercial reactor, a goal likely to be further decades away.
Fusion falters under soaring costs
Matt McGrath, BBC World Service 17 Jun 09;
An international plan to build a nuclear fusion reactor is being threatened by rising costs, delays and technical challenges.
Emails leaked to the BBC indicate that construction costs for the experimental fusion project called Iter have more than doubled.
Some scientists also believe that the technical hurdles to fusion have become more difficult to overcome and that the development of fusion as a commercial power source is still at least 100 years away.
At a meeting in Japan on Wednesday, members of the governing Iter council reviewed the plans and may agree to scale back the project.
'Size of a battleship'
On a windy construction site in the south of France, the lofty scientific goal of developing nuclear fusion as a power source is starting to take on a more substantial form.
Covering an area of more than 400,000 square metres, workers have built a one-kilometre-long earthen platform on which the experimental reactor will sit.
"This is going to be the world's biggest science experiment," says Neil Calder, Iter's head of communications.
"This is a vast global project to show the scientific feasibility of fusion as a limitless source of energy.
"On top of this platform we are going to build 130 buildings. The main building will contain the Iter machine itself.
"It will be huge - the size of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris - and it'll weigh about the same as a battleship - 36,000 tonnes of metal and instrumentation."
Controlling fusion
Iter was formally launched in 2006 as collaboration between the European Union, the United States, Russia, Japan, China, India and South Korea. The plan was to build the world's most advanced fusion experiment within 10 years for a budget of $6bn (£3.6bn).
But the grand scheme has been dogged by soaring costs caused by more expensive raw materials and increases in staff numbers. Emails seen by the BBC indicate that the total price of constructing the experiment is now expected to be in excess of $16bn (£10bn).
Professor Sebastien Balibar is research director for the French national research laboratory in Paris. He says that if the rising price of Iter is met by cutting back other research programmes that would be a disaster for science.
"If Iter is built on money having to do with energy or oil, that is perfectly good, I hope it works and in one hundred years I hope we know how to control a fusion reaction. But if it is taken from the public support of research in physics or biology then I would be very upset," says Professor Balibar.
'Different road'
Costs are not the only problem; Iter is also beset by huge technical challenges.
Fusion takes place when a superheated gas called a plasma reaches a stage called ignition, where hydrogen atoms start to fuse with each other and release large amounts of energy. Iter aims to achieve this but only for a few minutes at a time.
MIT professor Bruno Coppi has been working on fusion research in Italy and the United States for many decades. He believes that Iter is the wrong experiment; it is too costly, will take too long and may not deliver fusion. He says we should be looking at other options.
"We are pressed for time, the climate situation is worse. I think we should go with a faster line of experiments. Iter should admit its limitations and it will give a limited contribution to fusion, but to get to ignition you need to follow a different road," he says.
Another huge hurdle is how to contain gases that are 10 times hotter than the Sun. The materials required simply haven't been invented yet.
Professor Balibar explained: "The most difficult problem is the problem of materials. Some time ago I declared that fusion is like trying to put the Sun in a box - but we don't know how to make the box.
"The walls of the box, which need to be leak tight, are bombarded by these neutrons which can make stainless steel boil. Some people say it is just a question of inventing a stainless steel which is porous to let these particles through; personally I would have started by inventing this material."
Failure a possibility
In Provence, the scientists working on Iter say they have faith that the project will deliver the most effective path to fusion.
Dr Norbert Holtkamp is the man tasked with building the machine.
"Iter is a step that will demonstrate whether fusion is viable. But whether it is easy then depends on the cost of energy at that time on the cost of oil, but certainly Iter has the potential.
Dr Holtkamp recognises that Iter is a scientific experiment - and as such it has the possibility of failure.
"Any project can fail, especially if it's one of a kind or the first of its kind. It would be irresponsible for any scientist or project manager to say that in a science project it cannot fail."
Long-term plan
The rising costs of construction and technical challenges are to be reviewed at a meeting of the Iter council in Japan on Wednesday and Thursday. It is possible that by the end of this year, a new scaled-down version of Iter will be agreed.
Dr Holtkamp says the view that the project is to be scaled down is wrong.
"Fusion is not going to be the alternative in the next 20, 30 or 40 years, that is correct. But there needs to a long term plan; 40 years is little more than a generation. We need to think about the next generation and the many after that."
Professor Balibar says that the end result of the ballooning costs and increasing technical challenges will be a further slowing of the path to fusion.
"The consequence of all these difficulties is that it's not going to be tomorrow that one succeeds with fusion. But the energy problem and the climate problem are urgent," he says.
"The global warming is now - one needs to find a solution immediately, one cannot wait 100 years. The solution to the climate and energy problem is not Iter, (it) is not fusion."
While fusion offers a long-term hope of securing energy supplies, the changing climate and the pressing need for greener energy may ensure that renewables get greater political support in the short to medium term.
Ultimately fusion may be a technological dream that is just too hard to turn into reality. And Iter, in a beautiful setting in the south of France, may become the graveyard of a good but impossible idea.
Maggie Koerth-Baker, National Geographic News 18 Jun 09;
What happens when carbon dioxide levels skyrocket? Most climate scientists think they know the answer: global warming.
But to determine just how high temperatures may climb and how climate patterns may shift, researchers may need to pinpoint, for comparison, a time in our planet's past when a similar carbon dioxide jump happened.
Doing that may have just gotten a lot tougher—a new study says atmospheric carbon dioxide levels haven't been this high in more than two million years.
Fuzzy But Far-Reaching New View
Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is a naturally occurring greenhouse gas that is also released into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels, for example in cars and power plants (causes of global warming).
"We really don't know how high CO2 has been in the geologic past. Thus we don't know how sensitive the surface temperature of the Earth is to CO2," said Don DePaolo, head of the Earth Sciences Division at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in California.
Most global warming predictions are based on fluctuations in CO2 levels and temperature that happened between a relatively recent series of ice ages, said DePaolo, who was not involved in the new study, which will appear in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science.
Chemicals in ice cores, for example, can show how CO2 levels have changed over time, down to five-year intervals.
But ice core records only go back about 800,000 years.
By studying chemicals in long-dead, single-celled plankton called foraminifera, though, the team behind the new study was able to extend the climate record back 2.1 million years (prehistoric time line).
The method doesn't provide as much detail, but it does give a pretty clear picture of what was going on at roughly thousand-year intervals.
Though he'd like to see the study results replicated for good measure, DePaolo is impressed by the report. For dates where the ice-core and plankton data overlap, the CO2 levels match, which suggests the new data for older time periods is accurate too.
Ice Age Theory Debunked?
The study team, led by geochemist Bärbel Hönisch, found evidence disproving the theory that the longer, stronger ice ages that kicked in about 850,000 years ago were caused by a steady, ongoing drop in CO2. Instead, CO2 levels seesawed over the 2.1 million years, dropping during ice ages then bouncing back.
What's more, the average CO2 level during warm periods was 38 percent lower than the average we see today.
That's significant, because it means that scientists will have to look back even further in time to find global warming answers.
Hönisch's next goal is to do just that.
"We know from the geologic record that, around 55 million years ago, the deep-sea temperature suddenly rose by 8 degrees C [14 degrees F]," said Hönisch, of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York.
"It's a time that we would like to study, because it's probably the closest thing we'll find to what's happening today. And that's the best way to make estimates for our future."
Alister Doyle, Reuters 18 Jun 09;
OSLO (Reuters) - Air pollution, dust and other tiny particles that can bounce sunlight back into space are braking global warming less than previously believed, a Norwegian study said.
The report, which helps understand how climate change works, said scientific estimates of light-reflecting airborne particles had underestimated a fast build-up of black airborne soot, which has the opposite effect by soaking up heat.
"The black carbon, or soot, emissions have increased fastest," said Gunnar Myhre of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research, Oslo (Cicero) of the report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
Soot comes from burning vegetation, such as forest fires to clear farmland from the Amazon to Indonesia, and from burning fossil fuels.
Adjusting for soot and other smaller factors, airborne particles dim sunlight by about 0.3 watts per square meter, less than 0.5 watts estimated by a U.N. panel of climate scientists in a 2007 overview.
That offsets roughly a tenth of the heat-trapping impact of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, of about 2.7 watts per square meter, Myhre told Reuters.
The main sunlight-reflecting particles from human activities include sulphates emitted by burning fossil fuels in factories, power plants or cars.
Myhre said that tougher pollution laws might lead to cleaner air and so accelerate warming that the U.N. panel says will cause more floods, droughts, rising sea levels, heatwaves and extinctions of plant and animal species.
COOLING
"The direct aerosol effect may have contributed to a cooling in the mid 20th century and may have masked a considerable degree of current global warming," he wrote.
That could potentially lead "to more rapid warming in the future owing to stricter controls on aerosol emissions."
More than 190 governments have agreed to work out a new U.N. pact to fight global warming at a meeting in Copenhagen in December, mainly by cutting use of fossil fuels.
Myhre said his study reconciled big differences between satellite data and estimates based on computer models. Satellites, for instance, were not good at gauging dimming over bright surfaces such as deserts. Clouds also block sunlight.
"This reduces the range of uncertainty ... about the scattering of solar light," Myhre said.
Human-caused aerosols add to natural particles including dust from volcanic eruptions, sandstorms from the Sahara desert or salt from sea spray that dominated before widespread use of fossil fuels began in the 18th century.
Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 18 Jun 09;
PARIS (AFP) – The world faces a growing risk of "abrupt and irreversible climatic shifts" as fallout from global warming hits faster than expected, according to research by international scientists released Thursday.
Global surface and ocean temperatures, sea levels, extreme climate events, and the retreat of Arctic sea ice have all significantly picked up more pace than experts predicted only a couple of years ago, they said.
The stark warning comes less than six months before an international conference aiming to seal a treaty to save the planet from the worst ravages of global warming.
A 36-page document summarized more than 1,400 studies presented at a climate conference in March in Copenhagen, where a United Nations meeting will be held in December to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Kyoto expires in 2012.
The report said greenhouse gas emissions and other climate indicators are at or near the upper boundaries forecast by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose 2007 report has been the scientific benchmark for the troubled UN talks.
There is also new evidence that the planet itself has begun to contribute to global warming through fall out from human activity.
Huge stores of gases such as methane -- an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide -- trapped for millennia in the Arctic permafrost may be starting to leak into the atmosphere, speeding up the warming process.
The natural capacity of the oceans and forests to absorb CO2 created by the burning of fossil fuels has also been compromised, research has shown.
The new report, written and reviewed by many of the scientists who compiled the IPCC document, calls on policy makers to take urgent steps to keep average global temperatures from increasing more than two degrees Centigrade (3.6 degree Fahrenheit), compared to pre-industrial levels.
"Rapid, sustained, and effective mitigation ... is required to avoid 'dangerous climate change' regardless of how it is defined," it said.
"Temperature rises above 2 C will be difficult for contemporary societies to cope with, and are likely to cause major societal and environmental disruptions through the rest of the century and beyond."
The IPCC has said that achieving this goal would require industrialised nations to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 25-40 percent compared to 1990 levels.
The new report suggested that deep and early emissions cuts -- one of the most contentious issues on the table in the UN talks -- are essential.
"Weaker targets for 2020 increase the risk of serious impacts, including the crossing of tipping points" beyond which natural forces begin to push up temperatures even faster.
Many scientists agree that if those boundaries are crossed, it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to reverse the process.
The new synthesis does not carry the same weight as the IPCC report, which is based on an even wider range of studies and -- most importantly -- is a consensus document, which means even conservative scientific viewpoints are taken into account.
But the IPCC data is at least four or five years old, and a welter of new research suggests the global warming impacts could be even worse, and will arrive sooner rather than later.
Climate modelers at MIT, for example, recently calculated that unless huge efforts are made to slash carbon pollution, Earth's surface temperatures will jump 5.2 C (9.4 F) by 2100, more than twice as high as their own predictions in 2003.
The Copenhagen report will be presented to Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen on Thursday during a European Union summit in Brussels.
Rasmussen, who will host the UN conference in December, has called on scientists to provide "concrete advice" to policy makers.
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