Best of our wild blogs: 21 Aug 09

New East Coast shore = New surprises
from wonderful creation and wild shores of singapore

Mynas as pets
from Bird Ecology Study Group

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Singapore ranked second most expensive city in Asia, after Tokyo

Channel NewsAsia 20 Aug 09;

SINGAPORE : Singapore has been ranked the second most expensive city in Asia, after Tokyo, with Hong Kong taking the third position.

In UBS' Prices and Earnings 2009 study released on Thursday, Singapore is ranked 24th globally, in a comparison of living costs in 73 cities around the world. The study was based on data collected between March and April this year.

It found Oslo, Zurich, Copenhagen, Geneva, Tokyo and New York to be the world's priciest cities based on a standardised basket of 122 goods and services. Mumbai, Delhi, Manila and Kuala Lumpur are cities with the lowest price levels.

The study said: "Asia is home to some of the world's priciest cities and nowhere is the spread between most expensive and cheapest more pronounced."

Employees in Copenhagen, Zurich, Geneva and New York have the highest gross wages, but Zurich and Geneva top the rankings in the international comparison of net wages.

In Asia, employees in Tokyo earn the highest wages, and are ranked 18th globally. Their salaries are about two times higher than those in Singapore, which came in at 40th globally. Manila, Jakarta and Mumbai are at the bottom of the table.

As for working hours, people work the longest hours in Asia and the Middle East, and the shortest in France. People work an average of 1,902 hours a year in the surveyed cities, but those in Asian and Middle Eastern cities work an average of 2,119 and 2,063 hours a year respectively.

Overall, Cairo employees work the longest hours, averaging 2,373 hours a year, followed by Seoul with 2,312 hours. In comparison, people in Lyon and Paris spend the least amount of time at work - putting in about 1,582 and 1,594 hours a year respectively.

- CNA/al

Singapore most expensive Asian city after Tokyo: Survey
Hong Kong No. 3 as rent was excluded; Singapore moves up to 24th globally
Francis Chan, Straits Times 21 Aug 09;

SINGAPORE is the No.2 most expensive Asian city to live in, with only famously pricey Tokyo ahead in the rankings, according to a study by Swiss bank UBS.

UBS assessed the purchasing power of residents in 73 cities and compared prices of a standardised basket of 122 goods and services, excluding rents.

The Asian top three were no surprise although Hong Kong usually emerges as more expensive in such surveys; but not this time as UBS discounted rent.

Rent is traditionally higher in Hong Kong and would have been enough to send the city into second spot in Asia.

On the global league table, Tokyo was the fifth most expensive city while Singapore was 24th - up from the 32nd spot in 2006, the last time UBS conducted a similar study.

Kuala Lumpur, Manila, New Delhi and Mumbai propped up the table as cities with the lowest prices.

Scandinavian cities like Oslo, Zurich, Copenhagen, Geneva and traditional wallet-buster New York came in tops as the world's most expensive cities.

Employees in Tokyo earn the highest wages in Asia, making almost double the amount their counterparts earn here. Workers in Manila, Jakarta and Mumbai earn the lowest wages.

However, Asia remains home to some of the world's priciest cities and nowhere is the spread between most expensive and cheapest more pronounced, said UBS.

To make the study more relevant, the bank compared the prices of specific and highly uniform products that are available everywhere and calculated how long an employee would have to work to be able to afford them in each city.

It found that on a global average, employees have to work 37 minutes to earn enough to buy a McDonald's Big Mac, 22 minutes for a kg of rice and 25 minutes for a kg of bread.

'An average wage-earner in Zurich and New York can buy (an iPod) nano from an Apple store after nine hours of work,' said UBS. 'But at the other end of the spectrum, workers in Mumbai need to work 20 nine-hour days - roughly the equivalent of one month's salary - to purchase an iPod nano.'

The study also found that people worked an average of 1,902 hours a year in the cities surveyed. Workers in Asian and Middle Eastern cities slogged for the longest hours, averaging 2,119 and 2,063 hours each year respectively.

The lucky people in the French cities of Lyon and Paris spend the least amount of time at work a year: just 1,582 and 1,594 hours respectively.

In another survey released last month, Singapore jumped three spots to become the 10th most expensive city in the world for expatriates.

However, that survey - conducted by Mercer, which also studied items such as food, housing, transport and entertainment costs - suggested that Singapore had not become more expensive; instead, other cities had become cheaper places to live in.

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Carbon trading in Singapore to go full steam ahead in 2011

Jessica Cheam, Straits Times 20 Aug 09;

SINGAPORE'S ambition to become Asia's carbon trading centre will take some time to be realised, even as the nascent industry expands and global momentum gathers to restrict pollution.

The Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore chairman Edwin Khew said yesterday carbon trading here could take till 2011 to kick off in a big way, when the first phase of Singapore's 55ha Cleantech Park is completed.

Carbon trading aims to curb emissions which add to global warming by placing a price on carbon, and allowing emission permits to be traded between firms.

The Cleantech Park will provide companies with a ready testing ground for their technologies, and set standards for users in carbon emissions, energy use, and water and waste management.

'I think the park will be where the industry will revolve,' said Mr Khew, pointing out that Singapore's position as Asia's financial centre will help in fulfilling its carbon trading ambition.

The Republic is home to foreign banks such as Fortis, HSBC and Standard Chartered which provide financing for renewable energy projects. It has also attracted the big boys such as Danish wind power firm Vestas and Norwegian solar giant Renewable Energy Corp, he said.

As global momentum gathers for carbon trading schemes to be set up, such as in the United States and Australia, trading activity will also spike and Singapore is well poised to tap on this, said chief executive Henry Derwent of the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA).

New exchanges such as the Singapore Mercantile Exchange - a commodities futures exchange that will be operational by the end of the year - could see some carbon trading activity when this happens, said Mr Khew.

Both men were speaking at an event that was a curtain-raiser for the two-day Carbon Forum Asia in October, organised by IETA and German firm Koelnmesse.

The carbon market doubled from US$63 billion (S$91 billion) in 2007 to US$126 billion last year, according to the latest World Bank data.

Asia still commands the lion's share - 92 per cent - of carbon credit projects, said Mr Derwent.

The speed of its development will depend on negotiations in Copenhagen in December, when a global deal is set to be brokered.

These talks and the future of the carbon industry will top the agenda at the upcoming conference, which brings together policymakers and businesses from 24 countries in the region.

For the first time, it will be held in conjunction with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change DNA Forum, which brings together regulators from countries that are allowed to generate carbon credits for trading.

Also known as Designated National Authorities (DNA), these governmental representatives regulate the carbon credit projects in their home countries on behalf of the UN.

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Malayan Nature Society no to oil pipeline in forest

Meena L. Ramadas, The Sun Daily 20 Aug 09;

KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 20, 2009): The Malaysian Nature Society (MNS) is opposing a proposed oil pipeline project which it says will threaten the Belum-Temenggor area’s biodiversity.

The project, previously proposed to the government as the trans-peninsula pipeline, will span from Yan, Kedah to Bachok in Kelantan and is estimated to be worth RM23 billion.

“The survival of the forested landscape and its wildlife will be jeopardised should the proposed 300km pipeline proceed without safeguards for the forests,” said MNS executive director Dr Loh Chi Leong.

MNS is also calling for an environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the project on the forest area which is yet to be conducted.

It said the Environmental Quality (Prescribed Activities) (Environmental Impact Assessment) Order 1987 states that construction of pipelines in excess of 50 km in length requires that an EIA be conducted.

The East-West Highway already dissects the Belum-Temenggor Area and is used by large animals such as elephants to migrate between the two forest blocks.

“With the highway in place and the many other proposed linear developments along the East-West highway, the pipeline will create further physical barriers along the highway,” said Loh.

The pipeline could have an impact on local villages as it would further obstruct migration routes, causing animals to tread into village areas.

The wildlife displacement could endanger villagers as it will increase human-wildlife conflicts.

According to MNS, the pipeline could impede efforts to promote the Belum-Temenggor area as a nature tourist attraction because the area is an important buffer zone and habitat for various wildlife.

The Belum-Temenggor Forest complex is home to 100 mammal and 274 bird species and is recognised by the Malaysian government as an environmentally sensitive area.

The area also boasts the Royal Belum State Park and the Temenggor Forest Reserve. Perak Chief Minister Datuk Seri Dr. Zambry bin Abd. Kadir reportedly said the Temenggor Forest Reserve will be reviewed to be gazetted as a non-logging area.

“If these areas are destroyed, the protected areas often become ecologically isolated,” said Loh.

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Indonesia says it can handle forest fires alone

Ary Hermawan, The Jakarta Post 20 Aug 09;

Indonesian officials denied Thursday they were ignoring international offers to help combat increasing haze problems from forest fires in the region, claiming they would welcome any form of assistance other than manpower to tackle widespread blazes in the eastern part of the archipelago.

Masnellyarti Hilman, deputy for environmental damage control at the State Ministry for the Environment, said Indonesia was still capable of tackling the forest fires on its own.

“If we can deal with it on our own, why do we need to seek help from others?” she said.

Reuters reported Wednesday that Indonesia, home to the world’s second-largest area of rainforest, had ‘appeared to bat away’ offers from Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei to help deal with the haze problem.

Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar, who held a press conference after attending a ministerial meeting in Singapore, seeming to evade questions from journalists on the matter.

He did not pick up his mobile phone when contacted for comment Thursday.

Masnelliyarti said Indonesia had asked its neighboring countries to provide water-bombing facilities, not fire-fighters, to help with the blazes.

Haze prompts airport closure in Palembang
The Jakarta Post 21 Aug 09;

Authorities at the Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin II Airport in Palembang, South Sumatra, have been forced to temporarily terminate operations due to a thick haze that blankets the area.

Dani, an air traffic controller at the airport, told tempointeraktif.com that visibility has dropped to under 200 meters in the surrounding area.

“We had to cancel two flights set to depart this morning for Jakarta,” he said.

Several temporary airport closures have occurred on Sumatra island in the past few months as a result of haze, which is largely triggered by land and forest fires.

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El Nino`s impact becoming more real in Indonesia

Fardah, Antara 21 Aug 09;

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - While people in other parts of Indonesia are sound asleep, South Sulawesi villagers have to queue in the dark of night to get clean water from natural springs.

Residents of Mattirotasi and Lainungan villages in Watang Pulu sub district, Sidenreng Rappang (Sidrap) Didstrict, South Sulawesi Province, have been facing a water crisis due to the ongoing El-Nino-induced drought over the past one month.

"Every evening, these villagers have to queue to collect clean water in several water springs in the village, because at noon, there is no water in the springs," Amin, a local resident, said.

In fact, the drought have affected the villages since the past four months, he said. But, the condition has gotten worse since last months as they could not get clean water for cooking purposes, he said.

To anticipate drought caused by the ongoing El Nino phenomenon, the public works ministry has planned to drill more water wells and provide more water pumps for regions outside Java Island.

"The public works ministry`s programs include provision of new deep wells to anticipate El Nino. In 2009, we add some more deep wells and buy new water pumps," Public Works Minister Djoko Kirmanto said in Jakarta on Wednesday (Aug. 19).

Minister Kirmanto, however, quoted information from the meteorological, climatology and geophysics (BMKG) office saying El Nino would not affect Indonesia strongly because this year`s drought would be quite wet.

"We must prepare ourselves for the worst. I have checked all dams, and in fact our dams on Java Island are having better water stock than before," he said.

On the contrary to the ministry`s statement on wet drought this year, the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)`s National Weather Service forecast El Nino would continue to strengthen.

"Expected El Nino impacts during August-October 2009 include enhanced precipitation over the central and west-central Pacific Ocean and the continuation of drier than average conditions over Indonesia," the NOAA statement said in its statement received by ANTARA via e-mail on Aug. 13, 2009.

While there was disagreement on the eventual strength of El Nino, nearly all of the dynamical models predict a moderate-to-strong El Nino during the Northern Hemisphere Winter 2009-2010, NOAA said.

The Indonesian government has made preparations to face the El-Nino causing drought in some parts of Indonesia.

"In order not to disrupt food security, we have therefore adopted, and will continue to adopt measures to anticipate and overcome the impact of El-Nino," President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in his state-of-the-nation address at an extraordinary plenary session of the House of Representatives (DPR) in Jakarta, early August this year.

According to the president, the anticipation was made by way of among other things, securing sufficient rice stock from the stock of the Logistics Agency (Bulog) with minimum of 1.5 million tons.

The government is preparing reserve funds of Rp1 trillion to Rp2 trillion for efforts to anticipate the impact of El Nino on the country`s agriculture in 2010.

The president said the government would also see to it that dams and dikes would function well.

"To anticipate the drought that may possible cause forest fire, I have instructed the regional governments to anticipate and prevent the fire from spreading," the president said.

Indeed, the local Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) in Pekanbaru, Riau Province, said the arrival of El Nino would worsen forest fires.
"El Nino can worsen the land and forest fires in Riau province," Marzuki, analyst of the BMKG for Pekanbaru office, said recently.

He said that these weeks forest fires had taken place very often in various districts in Riau province due to the high drought degree and fire raze potential index.

Besides the Indonesian government, Indonesia`s neighboring countries are also worried about the impacts of El Nino on forest fires as the fires` haze disregards countries` border lines.

A ministerial meeting on haze pollution in Southeast Asia, which was held in Singapore on Wednesday (Aug. 19), agreed to ban all open burning in the region, in anticipation of the El Nino hot weather condition exacerbating in the last quarter of the year.

The Sub-Regional Ministerial Steering Committee (MSC) on Transboundary Haze Pollution also agreed to suspend permits for prescribed burning activities in fire-prone areas such as in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Singapore`s Environment and Water Resources Minister Dr Yaacob Ibrahim told a media conference after the half-day meeting that MSC was concerned after the Asean Specialized Meteorological Centre reported that the prevailing weak El Nino phenomenon was forecast to intensify to a moderate to strong condition by the end of this year.

Saying the El Nino was likely to worsen and prolong the current dry spell in the region till October, he said the MSC expected there would be continued increase in hotspot activities in the fire-prone areas in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sarawak over the next few months.

The MSC noted that this was likely to lead to more incidences of transboundary smoke haze pollution in the region, the minister said.

For years, Indonesia had faced criticism from its neighbors for not doing enough to fight the fires set by locals and plantation companies.

Indonesia`s neighbors would give any assistance needed, but it had to take the lead, said the Singapore minister, who had criticized Jakarta`s response to the current haze.

Indonesia`s Environmental Affairs Minister told the MSC it had taken several new and stricter actions in dealing with the haze pollution which included empowering its authorities to prosecute offenders, issuing warning letters to local governments and companies in fire-prone provinces, carrying cloud-seeding operations and banning open burning in Central Kalimantan since early this month.

Replying to questions by the media, Rachmat said, with a vast territory and millions of farmers - many of whom still practice the slash-and-burn method of farming - Indonesia would need longer time to reduce the hotspots and curb the haze pollution.

Since the MSC was established (in 2006) and Indonesia became a member, there has been a lot of improvement in the haze situation in the region, the Indonesian minister said.

However, Indonesian environmental groups said the government of President-elect Yudhoyono should put forest protection at the top of its agenda, ahead of a international meeting in Copenhagen in December to agree action against climate change.

"Every day more precious forest and peatland is being destroyed, burned and cleared by climate and forest criminals ... leading to an exponential increase in greenhouse gas emissions that is causing climate change," Greenpeace said in a statement as quoted by Reuters.

According to Asean HazeAction online, the forest fire in 1997-1998 which affected Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, was among the most damaging in recorded history. Those countries are members of Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations).

More than 9 million hectares of land were burnt, 6.5 million of which were forested areas. The damage was estimated at more than US$ 9 billion in terms of economic, social and environmental losses, including the release of an estimated 1-2 billion tonnes of carbon. The land and forest fires in 1997-1998, 2002 and 2005 in Southeast Asia have destroyed more than 3 million hectares of peatlands.(*)

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WWF celebrates saving of Himalayan forest and not so Common Leopard

WWF 21 Aug 09;

Lahore, Pakistan: An initiative by Pakistan’s Supreme Court and a media and legal campaign has ended a proposed large tourism development in one of the best remaining representative areas of Himalayan forest in the Punjab.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court this month not only formalised the new government’s recent dissolution of the New Murree Development Project (NMDP), but ruled out any similar projects for the area in future.

“We are very happy with this outcome and want to thank the other groups that fought it with us and the judges who took the initiative to have it examined,” said Hammad Naqi Khan, WWF-Pakistan director for freshwater, climate and toxics.

“This project has been a threat to this relatively pristine area which has been a reserve for more than a century and to the water reservoirs supplying Islamabad and Rawalpindi since 2004.”

The new Punjab government dissolved the New Murree Development Authority in June, following Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry used his authority in September 2005 to halt the project pending a judicial review of the proposal to turn the 1,663 hectare Patriata Reserved Forest near Murree in Rawalpindi District into a ‘tourist city of international standards’..

WWF became a party to the case and, with other local individuals launched a well-supported media and public campaign against the government-backed proposal and the authority formed to carry out the development.

The envisioned the construction of hotels, restaurants, golf courses, shopping centres etc. right in the middle of a healthy reserve forest which is important habitat for the (now very uncommon in the area) Common Leopard as well as 14 other mammal species, 200 plant species, 146 bird species including rare pheasants and the Paradise Flycatcher, 22 reptiles and six amphibians.

“Most significantly however, this area was a key part of one of the best remaining Himalayan temperate forest areas in Punjab” said Khan. “The forest guaranteed better quality water with lower levels of sediments and pollutants for Simlay and Mangla reservoirs.

“The environmental and economic significance of the forests for a country like Pakistan with a looming water crisis and an agriculture intensive developing economy far outweighed the benefits of what started out as mostly real estate speculation.

“We are also encouraged that the court and ultimately government looked sensitively and sensibly at the issues.”

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BirdLife International scours globe in search of long-lost birds

BirdLife International in bid to discover whether 'missing' species are in fact extinct
Emily Beament, The Independent 21 Aug 09;

The hunt is on for 47 "long-lost" species of bird in an attempt to discover if they have escaped extinction.

BirdLife International is launching a global attempt today to try to confirm the existence of the critically endangered birds which, in some cases, have not been seen for more than 180 years.

The list of birds which could have become extinct includes the slender-billed curlew, one of the last verified sightings of which was in the UK a decade ago.

Other species being targeted by the international coalition of bird conservation groups include birds found in remote forests or islands, in parts of the US and Europe and in the Himalayas.

Some may be difficult to track down, such as the Archer's lark which is found in the war zones of Somalia, while some have not been seen for generations, including the hooded seedeater of South America, which has not been recorded since 1823.

If scientists are unable to find many of those on the list it could mean the extinction crisis is worse than feared. A failure to confirm the continued existence of the lost birds would increase the number which have gone the way of the dodo – currently estimated at some 133 species since 1500.

But conservationists are hopeful that some of the birds could be rediscovered, such as the Cebu flowerpecker, which was found again "at the eleventh hour" before its last remaining Philippines forest home was destroyed.

Marco Lambertini, BirdLife International's chief executive, said: "History has shown us that we shouldn't give up on species that are feared to have gone to their graves, because some have been rediscovered long after they were feared extinct. The extinction crisis is gathering momentum, but that's no excuse for humanity to allow even more strands of the web of life to disappear, especially without giving them a final chance."

Rediscoveries could allow scientists to study their needs and threats and establish conservation efforts to save them and their habitats. The quest to find lost species is being announced at the 21st British Birdwatching Fair at Rutland Water, which is set to attract more than 20,000 British bird watchers. Money raised there will help fund the searches.

Bird watchers hunt for 47 'long lost' species
Conservationists are urging the public to look out for 47 'long-lost' species of birds, some of which have not been seen for almost 200 years.

Louise Gray, The Telegraph 21 Aug 09;

A global attempt has been launched to try to confirm the existence of the critically-endangered birds, among them the slender-billed curlew, which was last seen in the UK a decade ago, and the hooded seed-eater which was last spotted in Brazil in 1823.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Bird life International set out the plans at the British Birdwatching Fair at Rutland Water. Funds of up to £250,000 from the fair will be used to fund scientific projects to remote jungles or islands where the lost species may be found.

But travellers are also being asked to be on the look out when abroad. Only the slender-billed curlew is found in Europe, with the rest of the birds from around the world with many in North America including the ivory-billed woodpecker, which was officially last seen in 1944 although there have been recent reports of sightings in the Deep South.

Ornithologists ask for a photograph or a specimen such as a feather but even a reported sighting can be considered if it is from an experienced source.

Some of the birds may be difficult to track down - such as the Archer's lark which is found in the war zones of Somalia.

Some 133 species of bird have gone extinct since 1600 including the dodo and passenger pigeon.

However birds that were believed to be extinct have also been found, such as the Cebu flowerpecker which was rediscovered in the Philippines in 1992 just in time to save the rainforests where it lives.

Grahame Madge, of the RSPB, said it was imperative to give the birds a last chance before they were "written off".

"We need to find if they still exist and bring in conservation measures to try and save them," he said.

"We're hopeful many of these species still exist, although some may well have gone."

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Lemurs butchered in Madagascar

Jody Bourton, BBC News 20 Aug 09;

Shocking pictures of slaughtered lemurs killed for bush meat have been released by Conservation International.

A breakdown in law and order due to the recent coup in Madagascar has resulted in poachers killing lemurs for profit.

The dead lemurs are sold to restaurant owners seeking to serve new delicacies, says the conservation group.

It fears this upsurge in the bush meat trade may have been triggered by the suspension of conservation aid by international bodies during the coup.



The graphic pictures taken by local non-government organisation Fanamby and released by Conservation International show hoards of crowned lemurs ( Eulemur coronatus ) and the golden crowned sifaka, ( Propithecus tattersalli ) that have been trapped and killed.

The crowned lemurs are considered a threatened species, while the golden crowned sifaka is even rarer, being considered endangered.

The lemurs affected are from the Daraina area, a new protected region in the far north of Madagascar.

Shot then smoked

Conservation International reports that Madagascar's unique wildlife is being targeted by gangs who are taking advantage of the lack of law and order due to the recent coup.

Since March 2009 there have been many instances of environmental crimes in one of the world's most important biodiversity hotspots.

Illegal logging in protected parks and the collection of animals for the pet trade has been reported.

Now the first evidence has emerged since the coup of the hunting and sale of lemurs for bush meat.

Poachers use traps and slingshots to catch and kill the animals, which they then smoke for easy transport.

Authorities on the island have already arrested 15 people in connection with hunting lemurs.

"What is happening to the biodiversity of Madagascar is truly appalling, and the slaughter of these delightful, gentle and unique animals is simply unacceptable," says Dr Russ Mittermeier, the president of Conservation International and one of the world's foremost lemur experts.

"Given the very limited ranges, the sifaka could easily be eliminated by such poaching," he says.

Dr Mittermeier also voiced concern about the wider impact such activities may have.

"The poaching of lemurs can increase the 'taste' for lemurs and result in an increase of the illegal hunting of this animal, especially if the market for them grows," he explains.

"More than anything else these poachers are killing the goose that laid the golden egg, wiping out the very animals that people most want to see, and undercutting the country and especially local communities by robbing them of future ecotourism revenue."

Conservation plea

After the recent coup earlier this year many international bodies including the World Bank and the US government suspended conservation and development aid to the island.

Conservation International believes that this has weakened environmental governance in the country and provided the right conditions for these types of incidences to occur.

Dr Mittermeier calls for the international community to review their policy and help the conservation efforts in Madagascar as soon as possible.

"The problem of illegal killing of lemurs in Madagascar will only be solved when authorities act and are empowered. Also, the big donor agencies, the United States and Europe need to reinstate funding for conservation activities there immediately, or the advances of the past 25 years will forever be lost."

Bushmeat trade threatens Madagascar's rare lemurs
Richard Lough, Reuters 21 Aug 09;

ANTANANARIVO (Reuters) - Endangered lemur species found only in Madagascar are being slaughtered and served up in local restaurants as poachers take advantage of a security vacuum on the island after a coup earlier this year.

Pictures of the blackened remains of scores of crowned lemurs and golden crowned sifakas, smoked in preparation for transport, have been released by the environmental protection group Conservation International.

James Mackinnon, technical director at the group's Madagascar office, said gangs were pillaging the forests of precious hardwoods and trapping rare animals for Asia's pet market, unwinding hard-fought conservation gains on the island.

"Lemurs have always been hunted on a small, subsistence scale. This is bigger, more organized and systematic and it's typical of what we've been seeing with the breakdown in law and order," he told Reuters on Friday.

Conservationists say biodiversity on the world's fourth largest island is being wiped out on a shocking scale.

Foreign donors, who provided the bulk of funding for the country's national parks and environmental programs, suspended aid after Andry Rajoelina toppled the island's president with the help of renegade troops in March.

Operating on a shoestring budget, the authorities have been unable to control the surge in criminal activity.

The Indian Ocean island, isolated from other land masses for more than 160 million years, is a biodiversity "hotspot" home to hundreds of exotic species found nowhere else in the world.

ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE

Poachers are using slingshots and traps to hunt the lemurs in Daraina, a newly-protected region in the far north of Madagascar. Only 8,000 golden crowned sifaka, found only in Daraina, remain in the wild and risk being wiped out in weeks.

"More than anything else, these poachers are killing the goose that laid the golden egg," said Russ Mittermeier, president of Conservation International.

"(They are) wiping out the very animals that people most want to see and undercutting the country and especially local communities by robbing them of future eco-tourism revenue."

The island's wildlife was popularized in the 2005 DreamWorks animated movie Madagascar and its 2008 sequel, voiced by stars including Ben Stiller and Sacha Baron Cohen as the lemur king.

Eco-tourism is the backbone of Madagascar's $390 million-a-year tourism industry, which has been wrecked by months of political turmoil.

Decades of logging, mining and slash-and-burn farming have destroyed up to 90 percent of the island's natural ecology.

Ousted leader Marc Ravalomanana was credited by conservationists with increasing the number of national parks and protected areas, backed by donors including the World Bank and the United States.

Conservation International described the move to cut environmental aid as a "knee-jerk reaction." To deny conservation funding was counter-productive, it said, as it simply encouraged poor governance of natural resources.

Mackinnon warned of impending environmental catastrophe, saying there was a real danger parks would be forced to lay off rangers and cease to function before the end of the year.

"It's very hard to turn the clock back once criminal activities have become ingrained," he said.

(Editing by Daniel Wallis and Janet Lawrence)

Lemurs Hunted, Eaten Amid Civil Unrest, Group Says
Brian Handwerk, National Geographic News 21 Aug 09;

Rare lemurs are being hunted as an exotic delicacy in the midst of Madagascar's political unrest, conservationists say.

Since a March coup d'etat in the island country, long-nurtured conservation measures have quickly fallen by the wayside—making lemurs the targets of hunting gangs.

The criminals are fueling demand for a new bush-meat delicacy in the country's upscale restaurants, according to the nonprofit Conservation International.

No one knows how many lemurs have been killed, but species such as the golden crowned sifaka—considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature—are being targeted.

The poor nation relies on aid from foreign sources—such as the World Bank and the U.S. government—to run agencies that keep its national parks going.

But since the ousting of President Marc Ravalomanana, outside funding has been cut off and a power struggle has gripped the capital.

"With the political unrest, for the past four months or so, no [conservationists have] really worked," said Serge Rajaobelina, president of Fanamby, a Malagasy nonprofit environmental organization.

"There was no government, no police, and people took advantage of that situation" to kill lemurs, Rajaobelina, said yesterday from the field, where he is helping officials arrest poachers.

Squandered Success?

Less than a year ago Madagascar—home to the highest number of plant and animal species found nowhere else on Earth—was a different place.

The country "was on the verge of becoming a success story," said lemur expert Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International.

There were vast increases in protected areas and ecotourism under the nation's now deposed leaders, Mittermeier said.

But valuable hardwoods, once protected by law in national parklands, began falling to the blades of illegal loggers earlier this year—further denuding a landscape that has already seen staggering deforestation.

Now lemurs are being targeted for the table.

"It's really scary to think of an Africa-type bush-meat trade getting started in Madagascar," said Charlie Welch, conservation manager at the Duke University Lemur Center.

"That's something that hasn't really existed in Madagascar up till now. The bottom line is that an opportunity exists now that wasn't there before."

Ecotourism Sabotage

Conservation International's Mittermeier stressed that the few hunters making money on the lemur trade are sabotaging a growing ecotourism industry that may be the country's greatest competitive advantage.

"People go to Madagascar first and foremost to see lemurs," he said.

If the poachers "are shooting them to make a few bucks, they are undercutting the future of the country as a whole."

Mittermeier also said that international donors trying to punish a few politicians involved in a power grab are doing serious damage to Madagascar's irreplaceable resources.

"If you pull the funding for these agencies, they have no way to patrol or control [areas like national parks]," he said.

"These guys benefiting from the breakdown of law and order do have some money, and they can pay illegal loggers or pay hunters to kill lemurs."

Community Backing

But Rajaobelina, the Malagasy nonprofit director, said that the domestic situation may be improving.

He's working with the new government, which has already fired several environmental and forestry officials in response to the crisis.

"They have reacted to what we've been saying and have really become involved in conservation efforts. We have seen some changes," he said.

Rajaobelina said that local villagers who had benefited from an ecotourism economy oppose poachers plundering their forests.

"People in the communities were scared [of violence against them]," he said.

"But since we arrested a few [poachers] some of the [local people] have started to talk. These communities are really committed to stopping people from outside coming in and killing the animals.

"It's a little bit dangerous," Rajaobelina admits of his current anti-poaching efforts.

But "as long as we have the communities behind us, we're actually more protected by them than by the police."

Read more!

Wealthy world at risk from water woes elsewhere

WWF 20 Aug 09;

Stockholm, Sweden: A study of the water footprint of Germany emphasises how the developed world needs to care for developing world river basins supplying vast quantities of “virtual water” embedded in imported products and commodities, WWF told World Water Week delegates today.

While German households use 124 litres of water a day directly, individual Germans use 5288 litres of water a day when the water requirements of producing their food, clothes and other consumption items are included.

The report calculated Germany’s water footprint at 159.5 cubic kilometres of water annually, with only half coming from German rain and rivers.

The water embedded in coffee, soy and beef imports makes Brazil Germany’s largest water trading partner, followed by the Ivory Coast (cocoa, coffee, bananas and cotton), neighbours France and the Netherlands, the US and Indonesia (oilseeds, coffee, coconuts, cotton and cocoa).

Other countries carrying a significant water footprint from Germany include Ghana, India, Argentina and Nigeria and the increasingly drier Mediterranean lands of Spain, Italy and Turkey.

“Germany is a relatively water rich country but its reliance on water sourced from some of the drier areas of the world still makes it very vulnerable to the degradation of river catchments and groundwater supplies and water related impacts of climate change elsewhere,” said Martin Geiger, Head of Freshwater at WWF-Germany.

“National water footprints are underlining just how dependant the developed world is on water from areas where water management is relatively poor,” said Dr Stuart Orr, WWF International water policy officer.

“It therefore pays for wealthy nations to support the protection and better management of the river basins and aquifers of the developing world.”

Germany is to be commended for having already taken one of the most significant steps to caring for the sources of its water in being the only G8 nation to sign up to an international treaty designed to reduce conflict and promote appropriate water management on waters forming or crossing borders.

However, more than a decade since an overwhelming great majority of the world’s nations approved the UN Watercourses Convention, it still lacks enough signatories to come into effect although three quarters of the world’s countries share waters and 40 per cent of world population are in border catchments.

“Other major economies would do well to follow Germany’s example in signing up to the UN Watercourses Convention to provide a global framework for minimising the risks of disruption to the water supplies they depend on,” said Flavia Loures, who leads a WWF-initiated global campaign to have the convention brought into effect by 2011.

Read more!

'Green palm oil' claims land Cadbury's in sticky chocolate mess

Confectioner has made progress on Fairtrade, but a GreenPalm logo won't keep orang-utans safe in their rainforest habitats
Fred Pearce, guardian.co.uk 20 Aug 09;

They are breaking open the chocolate bars at Auckland zoo in New Zealand this week. The keepers have been running a campaign to get Cadbury to remove palm oil from its chocolate. It's been headline news down there, since Cadbury's recently added the palm oil to make local Dairy Milk "softer".

Zoo staff simply refused to consume or sell bars made with oil grown on former rainforest once occupied by endangered orang-utans in Borneo and Sumatra. On Monday, Cadbury gave in. They grovelled. "We got it wrong... we hope Kiwis will forgive us. I'm really sorry," said local managing director Matthew Oldham. They were going back to cocoa butter, he said.

Of course, this about-face doesn't affect the brand in countries such as Britain, where palm oil is a long-standing ingredient. So Cadbury still looks like a soft target for campaigners.

But there was something else buried in this PR own goal. A continuing greenwash that should have Cadbury hauled over the coals at the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a corporate initiative to promote the sustainable production of the world's most ubiquitous food ingredient, of which Cadbury is a founder member.

On Monday, Oldham told New Zealanders that despite the debacle "Cadbury is a responsible business and we purchase certified sustainable palm oil." The company has "independent GreenPalm certification for the palm oil purchased for its Dairy Milk range".

The implication was that the zookeepers were wrong to fuss about Cadbury's palm oil because they bought the right stuff. So who is right?

GreenPalm is a certification system used by the RSPO to encourage the production of sustainable palm oil. But even on the face of it only a small fraction of Cadbury's global chocolate production is so certified. The GreenPalm website this week showed it had obtained certification for 2,800 tonnes of palm oil in the past 11 months out of a total annual consumption of 40,000 tonnes.

But it is much worse than that. Those certificates do not actually mean that any of the palm oil Cadbury buys comes from sustainable sources.

It works like this. If the RSPO's auditors certify a particular palm oil plantation as a sustainable operation, its owners are given certificates equal to the number of tonnes of palm oil being produced there.

The plantation company can then sell the certificates. To anyone. You could buy one if you wanted. The going rate is about $10. Mostly, they are bought by companies that also buy palm oil. So they can publicise the fact.

But the "green" palm oil is not generally kept separate. It usually goes in the same tanker as the oil obtained by destroying orang-utan habitat. So the actual palm oil a certificated company like Cadbury buys could be the same as the stuff everyone else buys.

GreenPalm boss Bob Norman says this arrangement provides an incentive for farmers to grow sustainable palm oil without all the cost of running a separate supply system. So far, 53,000 GreenPalm certificates have been sold, at a profit to the plantation owners of a million dollars.

Fair enough. But, as he admits, what it does not do is ensure that when you or I buy a chocolate bar, or anything else bearing the GreenPalm logo, it contains sustainably produced palm oil. It usually won't.

Some retailers, not surprisingly, avoid the GreenPalm initiative as a potential PR timebomb. But Cadbury is in deeper than that. It makes the link that cannot be made. It told the people of New Zealand that "we purchase certified sustainable palm oil". But they don't. They purchase certificates. Pieces of paper. If their chocolate contains any sustainably produced palm oil it is by chance.

Making such a claim is not just greenwash; it is against the RSPO and Green Palm rules. These state that companies can claim that buying Green Palm certificates "supports the production of RSPO certified sustainable palm oil". But they must not claim their products contain the stuff. Because they can't be sure.

Cadbury came clean to Greenwash on Tuesday. "There was no intention to mislead; we were trying to make it simple to understand," its UK office said. It promised it won't happen again.

This is all a bit of a shame. Cadbury has been doing some good things this year, like turning their top brand Dairy Milk into a Fairtrade product in Britain and Ireland (with more countries to follow, they promise).

I applaud them for that. But sadly it is only the cocoa that is fairly traded. And some of the rest of the gunk in that bar has a long way to go before we can buy it with an easy conscience.

Read more!

Mangroves barriers reduce damage from increasingly frequent and intense typhoons

CARE Reuters ReliefWeb 20 Aug 09;

With 3200 km of coastline, Vietnam will be among the top five countries affected by rising sea levels. CARE is working with coastal villages to reduce their vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.

In November 2005, Typhoon Damarey hit the coast of Vietnam hard. The coastal commune Da Loc was at the centre of the typhoon and its disastrous effects: six villages were flooded, twenty-six houses collapsed and nine hundred and sixty houses lost their roofs. Two hundred and fifty hectares of land were salinated. Losses amounted to roughly 4.5 million U.S. dollars in this commune alone.

Typhoons are common in Vietnam, but the local authorities in Da Loc were taken by surprise.

"It's the first time we have had a typhoon with the strength of Damarey. It was serious beyond our expectations," says Mr. Tran Thang Canh from the District People's Committee.

All the dykes broke in the heavy waves of the typhoon - except for the 500 meters of dyke protected behind mangrove forests re-established with support from CARE and the International Federation of the Red Cross.

Typhoons in this past of South East Asia are expected to become increasingly frequent and intense as a results of climate change. In response, CARE began in August 2006 to help Da Loc commune re-establish mangrove forests as 'living storm barriers.' Mangroves provide important shoreline protection. According to the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), wave energy may be reduced by 75 per cent during a wave's passage through 200 metres of mangrove forest.

As a response to the destructive typhoon and in the light of coming climate change, Da Loc commune started to replant the mangrove forest with the help of CARE in August 2006. They had learned an important lesson: All the dykes broke in the heavy waves of the typhoon – except for the 500 meters of dyke behind a mangrove forest that had remained untouched.

"We understand the benefits of the mangroves to protect the village and the dyke. Because we understand how important it is, we are all very interested in participating in the activities that CARE can help us with," says Mrs. Bui Thi Din from the local Women's Union.

Apart from protecting coastal villages, mangrove forests provide important shelter for growing fish, mussels, oysters, shrimp and crabs. Mangrove forests also filter coastal pollution and provide timber and other construction materials to local people.

Community participation for change

To take care of the mangrove forest, CARE helped to set up a management system. A Community Based Mangrove Management Board was elected by the local people in 2006. In each of the other villages, a board of 20 members was democratically elected. Each household had one vote and the candidates were farmers as well as representatives of different organisations and the village authorities. Democracy is not yet common practise in Vietnam. This has proven to be a chance for the villagers to take their own future by the hand and become responsible for the protection of their land.

The villagers joined forces to plant and maintain 200 ha of mangrove forest with the support from CARE. Unlike many other mangrove projects in Vietnam this project was successful, because of strong participation of the villagers. They participated with valuable ideas and solutions on how to plant and care for the mangroves. They worked hard to remove by hand barnacles, small shells, which kill the mangrove trees. These barnacles cannot be done away with by chemicals, although a number of other projects tried this approach.

"The survival rate of the trees is about 80%. This is very encouraging and because we have learned to protect and maintain the forest in the right way, we have been successful this time," says Mrs. Tran Thi Hue from the Women's Union.

The villagers also learned more about the different kinds of mangrove trees. They first planted the Kandelia mangrove trees that like to live on wet land and with its roots make the mud firmer. After one year they planted seedlings of another species of mangrove, the Sonneratia, which the villagers prepared in their own nursery. The Sonneratia needs to have more solid ground when it is young and cannot be planted directly on the sand.

After their success was known, Da Loc village and its mangrove forest was visited by several research and disaster management institutions. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development invited the manager of the Mangroves Project from CARE to share experiences and lessons learnt for 400 staff on how to successfully plant and manage a mangrove forest.

But the project does not stop there. The management board has been on a disaster reduction training course to be ready for another typhoon, including logistics, health care unit, clarification of responsibility and preparation of water tanks and food.

117 households are part of a group for improved livelihoods. Because the fields have become less fertile after the flooding, alternative incomes have been piloted like raising pigs and farming oysters. CARE has also helped to build a fresh water canal that flushes the fields destroyed by salt water with water from the river based on the community approach.

"Previously, at the village meeting only the leaders would meet and make the decisions without asking the households. I would keep silent," Mrs. Vu Thi Hanh from the nursery groups explains. "The community based approach changed the way to make the decisions in our village and the people also changed their way to give more feedback to the leaders. Now we are confident enough to object to decision from leaders if we find them inappropriate and to make sure that the decision makes benefit for the whole community."

This system has been improved day by day, meeting to meeting. It started with the government's approval of the grass roots democracy in 2003. Mrs. Vu Thi Hanh knows that there is a slogan for the grass roots democracy: People know, people discuss, people do, people monitor.

However, the implementation of this policy was not easy. When the CARE project came to Da Loc, the manager could guide the authorities on how to democratically set up a management board with the participation of the people in the commune and transparency of decisions and budgets.

The villagers have no official rights to the common land. Now they have gathered to make a contract with the authorities to lease the land for five years. If they do well, the contract will be extended and they can profit from the mangrove forest and make sure it will keep protecting their villages in the future.

Read more!

NASA researcher nets first measure of Africa's coastal forests

NASA 20 Aug 09;

Impoverished fishermen along the coast of tropical African countries like Mozambique and Madagascar may have only a few more years to eke out a profit from one of their nations’ biggest agricultural exports. Within a few decades, they may no longer have a livelihood at all.

That's because swampy mangrove forests – essential breeding grounds for fish and shellfish in these countries – are being destroyed by worsening pollution, encroaching real estate development, and deforestation necessary to sustain large-scale commercial shrimp farming.

The decline of these forests threatens much of Africa’s coastal food supply and economy. The destruction of mangroves -- one of Earth’s richest natural resources – also has implications for everything from climate change to biodiversity to the quality of life on Earth. Growing up in Cotonou, Benin, environmental scientist Lola Fatoyinbo of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) passed polluted mangroves daily. Inspired to help save the forests, she began a mission as a graduate student in the United States to gain more insight about African mangroves.

Her studies have brought her back to Africa, where she has journeyed along the coastlines to test a new satellite technique for measuring the area, height, and biomass of mangrove forests. She developed and employed a method that can be used across the continent, overcoming expensive, ad hoc, and inconsistent modes of ground-based measurement. Fatoyinbo’s approach recently produced what she believes is the first full assessment of the continent’s mangrove forests.

“We’ve lost more than 50 percent of the world’s mangrove forests in a little over half a century; a third of them have disappeared in the last 20 years alone," said Fatoyinbo, whose earlier study of Mozambique’s coastal forests laid the groundwork for the continent-wide study. "Hopefully this technique will offer scientists and officials a method of estimating change in this special type of forest.”

An Ecosystem Apart

Mangroves are the most common ecosystem in coastal areas of the tropics and sub-tropics. The swampy forests are essential -- especially in densely-populated developing countries -- for rice farming, fishing and aquaculture (freshwater and saltwater farming), timber, and firewood. Some governments also increasingly depend on them for eco-tourism.

The large, dense root systems are a natural obstacle that helps protect shorelines against debris and erosion. Mangroves are often the first line of defense against severe storms, tempering the impact of strong winds and floods.

These coastal woodlands also have a direct link to climate, sequestering carbon from the atmosphere at a rate of about 100 pounds per acre per day – comparable to the per acre intake by tropical rainforests (though rainforests cover more of Earth’s surface).

“To my knowledge, this study is the first complete mapping of Africa’s mangroves, a comprehensive, historic baseline enabling us to truly begin monitoring the welfare of these forests,” said Assaf Anyamba, a University of Maryland-Baltimore County expert on vegetation mapping, based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Climbing the Right Tree

Fatoyinbo’s research combines multiple satellite observations of tree height and land cover, mathematical formulas, and “ground-truthing” data from the field to measure the full expanse and makeup of the coastal forests.

Her measurements yielded three new kinds of maps of mangroves: continental maps of how much land the mangroves cover; a three-dimensional map of the height of forest canopies across the continent; and biomass maps that allow researchers to assess how much carbon the forests store.

“Beyond density or geographical size of the forests, the measurements get to the heart of the structure, or type, of mangroves," explained Fatoyinbo. "It’s that trait – forest type – that drives which forests land managers target for agriculture, conservation, and habitat suitability for animals and people.”

Fatoyinbo and colleague Marc Simard of JPL used satellite images from the NASA-built Landsat and a complex software-based color classification system to distinguish areas of coastal forests from other types of forests, urban areas or agricultural fields. They also integrated data from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) to create relief maps of the height of the forest canopy. Finally, they merged the broad radar maps with high-accuracy observations from a light detection and ranging (commonly called lidar) instrument aboard NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) to obtain accurate height estimates.

Fatoyinbo double-checked the accuracy of her satellite measurements at the ground level in the only way possible: She went to Africa to measure tree heights and trunk diameters in person. Using a hand-held instrument called a clinometer and a simple trigonometry formula, Fatoyinbo visited Mozambique, measured the trees, and found she indeed had very accurate measurements of the forests.

Preserving the Forest for the Trees

Mangroves are hardy and adaptable forests that can thrive under extreme heat, very high salt levels, and swampy soil. Rampant clearing for agriculture and construction, soil toxicity, and long-term oil and sewage pollution, however, are increasingly threatening their survival and more than 1,300 animal species in ways that nature cannot.

“The United States’ largest mangrove forests, Florida’s Everglades, are largely protected now and recognized as an endangered natural resource,” explained Fatoyinbo. “But in many other places, resource managers lack solid monitoring capabilities to counter mangrove exploitation. Better mangrove monitoring will, I hope, mean better management and preservation.”

Free satellite data can help ease the problems of money, logistics, and political instability that can prevent mangrove preservation. For that reason, Anyamba and Fatoyinbo are working to convince the United Nations Environment Program and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to include the study’s data in their environmental assessments.

The new technique also distinguishes itself, added Anyamba, “as an excellent example of how we can use different remote sensing technologies together to address science questions and global social issues.”

Read more!

Mekong Delta may be inundated by rising sea : study

Reuters 20 Aug 09;

HANOI, Aug 20 (Reuters) - More than a third of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, where nearly half of the country's rice is grown, will be submerged if sea levels rise by 1 metre (39 inches), an environment ministry scenario predicted.

A sea level increase of that magnitude would also inundate a quarter of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's biggest city and home to more than 6 million people, according to the extreme scenario, outlined in the newspaper Tuoi Tre on Thursday.

Environmental scientists have long listed Vietnam, with its lengthy coastline and vast swathes of low-lying ground, as one of the most vulnerable countries on earth to climate change.

Vietnam is the world's second-biggest rice exporter after Thailand. This year it could ship a record volume of 7 million tonnes. [ID:nSP371656]

The inundation scenario was part of a report based on greenhouse gas and sulphur dioxide emission projections that the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment forwarded this week to a deputy prime minister for approval as the basis for planning to reduce the effects of climate change, another newspaper said.

It laid out three scenarios outlining the possible impact of climate change on Vietnam, and would use the middle scenario as the base line for planning, Thanh Nien Daily said.

According to that scenario, sea levels could rise by 30 cm (12 inches) compared with the 1980-1999 period by the middle of this century and reach 75 cm (30 inches) by 2100, a brief report on the ministry's website said.

A 75 cm rise in sea levels would swamp 20 percent of the Mekong Delta and 10 percent of Ho Chi Minh City, it said.

Temperature increases would also potentially damage agriculture and forestry, in the coffee-growing Central Highlands, for example, the newspaper said, quoting Tran Thuc, director of the ministry's Institute for Meteorology, Hydrology and Environment.

Vietnam is the world's largest exporter of robusta beans. (Reporting by John Ruwitch; Editing by Alan Raybould)

Vietnam temperatures, rainfall, seas to rise: study
Thanhniennews.com 20 Aug 09;

More rain will fall and surface air temperatures in Vietnam are predicted to rise by 2.3 degrees Celsius from the average temperature during the 1980-1999 period, according to a government study.

Tran Thuc, director of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment’s Institute of Meteorology, Hydrology and Environment said the study to be officially released today predicted a temperature increase of between 1.6- 2.8 degrees Celsius with the northern region experiencing higher temperatures than the south.

Earlier this week, the Government Office forwarded a document by Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai allowing the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment to use the paper as the basis for measures to reduce the impact of climate change.

Concerned agencies and localities will prepare their own plans to cope with climate change and rising sea levels based on the information in the paper, he said.

Thuc said the ministry’s researchers had prepared three scenarios on climate change and rising sea levels based on different projections for greenhouse gas and sulfur dioxide emissions, adding that the middle scenario was the one that the government would refer to for planning.

He said the scenario was scheduled to be modified next year and in 2015 following updated information on green house gas emission and other factors affecting climate change.

Picture of the future

According to the scenario, the country’s annual rainfall will rise by the end of the 21st century, especially in rainy seasons. However, rainfall during the dry season will decrease in the south.

The total rainfall will rise by 5 percent over the 1980-1999 period, Thuc cited without mentioning the figure for 1980-1999.

The sea level could rise by 30 centimeters in the mid-21st century and to 75 centimeters by 2100.

Phuc said around 128 square kilometers of land in Ho Chi Minh City would be permanently inundated if the sea level rose by 65 centimeters. Up to 10 percent of the city area, or 204 sq km, would be flooded if the sea level rose 75 centimeters.

No official estimation of flooded areas and socio-economical damages for each region in Vietnam had been made yet, he said

In the Mekong Delta, a 75- centimeter rise would flood 7,580 sq km of land, equal to 20 percent of the Delta’s area.

Recommendations

Thuc said coastal provinces in the central region should avoid constructing houses and other structures near the coastline while road planners should factor in the sea level rise.

The Central Highlands, which could escape consequences from rising sea levels, would have to make plans to cope with higher temperatures.

He said higher temperatures could have harmful impacts on agriculture and forestry because they aid the spread of insects and diseases on plants and animals.

The localities would have to prepare for mass migration from inundated areas to higher lands, he said.

In the Mekong Delta, Thuc advised local authorities to adopt an adaptive plan by focusing on plants that could thrive in flooded areas and salt water.

He also warned of unpredictable weather with typhoons with complicated paths.

Between 1958 and 2007, the average temperature in Vietnam has increased by between 0.5-0.7 degree Celsius while the average rainfall decreased by 2 percent.

The number of cold spells has reduced drastically over the past two decades but they were colder, while typhoons occurred more often in the southern East Sea, he said.

Reported by Quang Duan

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Nile Delta: 'We are going underwater. The sea will conquer our lands'

The Nile Delta is under threat from rising sea levels. Without the food it produces, Egypt faces catastrophe
Jack Shenker, The Guardian 21 Aug 09;

Maged Shamdy's ancestors arrived on the shores of Lake Burrulus in the mid-19th century. In the dusty heat of Cairo at the time, French industrialists were rounding up forced labour squads to help build the Suez Canal, back-breaking labour from which thousands did not return. Like countless other Egyptians, the Shamdys abandoned their family home and fled north into the Nile Delta, where they could hide within the marshy swamplands that fanned out from the great river's edge.

As the years passed, colonial rulers came and went. But the Shamdys stayed, carving out a new life as farmers and fishermen on one of the most fertile tracts of land in the world. A century and a half later, Maged is still farming his family's fields. In between taking up the rice harvest and dredging his irrigation canals, however, he must contemplate a new threat to his family and livelihood, one that may well prove more deadly than any of Egypt's previous invaders. "We are going underwater," the 34-year-old says simply. "It's like an occupation: the rising sea will conquer our lands."

Maged understands better than most the menace of coastal erosion, which is steadily ingesting the edge of Egypt in some places at an astonishing rate of almost 100m a year. Just a few miles from his home lies Lake Burrulus itself, where Nile flower spreads all the way out to trees on the horizon. Those trunks used to be on land; now they stand knee-deep in water.

Maged's imperial imagery may sound overblown, but travel around Egypt's vast, overcrowded Delta region and you hear the same terms used time and again to describe the impact climate change is having on these ancient lands. Egypt's breadbasket is littered with the remnants of old colonisers, from the Romans to the Germans, and today its 50 million inhabitants jostle for space among the crumbling forts and cemeteries of those who sought to subjugate them in the past.

On the Delta's eastern border, in Port Said, an empty stone plinth is all that remains of a statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man who built the Suez Canal; somewhere along the Delta's westernmost reaches, the long-lost tomb of Cleopatra lies buried. With such a rich history of foreign rule, it's only natural that the latest hostile force knocking at the gates should be couched in the language of occupation.

"Egypt is a graveyard for occupiers," observes Ramadan el-Atr, a fruit farmer near the antiquated town of Rosetta, where authorities have contracted a Chinese company to build a huge wall of concrete blocks in the ocean to try to save any more land from melting away. "Just like the others, the sea will come and go – but we will always survive."

Scientists aren't so sure. Two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change declared Egypt's Nile Delta to be among the top three areas on the planet most vulnerable to a rise in sea levels, and even the most optimistic predictions of global temperature increase will still displace millions of Egyptians from one of the most densely populated regions on earth.

The Delta spills out from the northern stretches of the capital into 10,000 square miles of farmland fed by the Nile's branches. It is home to two-thirds of the country's rapidly growing population, and responsible for more than 60% of its food supply: Egypt relies unconditionally on it for survival. But with its 270km of coastline lying at a dangerously low elevation (large parts are between zero and 1m above sea level, with some areas lying below it), any melting of the polar ice caps could see its farmland and cities – including the historical port of Alexandria – transformed into an ocean floor. A 1m rise in the sea level, which many experts think likely within the next 100 years, will cause 20% of the Delta to go underwater. At the other extreme, the 14m rise that would result from the disappearance of Greenland and western Antarctica would leave the Mediterranean lapping at the northern suburbs of Cairo, with practically all of the Delta underwater.

Already, a series of environmental crises are parking themselves on the banks of the Nile. Some are subtle, like the river's quiet vanishing act in the Delta's northern fields; others, like the dramatic collapse of coastal lands into the ocean, are more striking. Major flooding is yet to become a reality but, from industrial pollution to soil salinity, a whole new set of interconnected green concerns is now forcing its way into Egyptian public discourse for the first time.

"The Delta is a kind of Bangladesh story," says Dr Rick Tutwiler, director of the American University in Cairo's Desert Development Centre. "You've got a massive population, overcrowding, a threat to all natural resources from the pressure of all the people, production, pollution, cars and agricultural chemicals. And on top of all that, there's the rising sea. It's the perfect storm."

Follow the Nile north out of Cairo on the old agricultural road, and you find it hard to pinpoint where the city ends and the lotus-shaped Delta begins. Carpeted with redbrick apartment blocks and spliced with streets in every direction, the lush greenery of the Nile's splintered arteries is almost impossible to appreciate in isolation. This is where the urban and the rural get lost in each other, with livestock living in doorways and workers camping out in fields. In the past, literary giants venerated the Delta's wild marshlands; today, any clear-cut divisions between the metropolis and the countryside have long faded away.

Urban encroachment – the steady chipping away at arable land through unauthorised construction – haunts the Delta everywhere you look. Despite a web of legislation outlawing illegal building practices and theoretically "fencing off" agricultural land, in every direction the sweeping vista of wheat fields and rice paddies always ends abruptly in a cluster of half-built homes. There are more than 4,000 people per square mile in the Delta; it's hard to think of any other place where humans and the environment around them are more closely intertwined. With Egypt's present-day population of 83 million set to increase to more than 110 million in the next two decades, the seemingly unstoppable spread of bricks and mortar over the soil is both the most visible symptom of the country's demographic time-bomb and an inevitable response to it.

More people in the Delta means more cars, more pollution and less land to feed them all on, just at a time when increased crop production is needed most. Yet the desertification of land through human habitation is, worryingly, only the beginning of the problem. Although few in the Delta have noticed it yet, the freshwater of the Nile – which has enabled Egypt to survive as a unified state longer than any other territory on earth – is creaking under the strain of this population boom. The world's most famous river has provided the backdrop to all manner of dramas throughout history, real and fictional. Now, around its northernmost branches where the minarets and pylons thin out and the landscape becomes more windswept, another is playing out to devastating effect.

The villain is salinity. I visit one of the worst-affected regions, Kafr el-Sheikh, on a Friday morning when the fields have emptied out for the noon prayer. The streets are eerily silent; with its people gone, the area takes on the appearance of one of Italo Calvino's fantastical string cities, chock-a-block with the shells of human habitation but no living souls remaining. The exception is Maged, who owns six feddan (about six acres) of land near the village of el-Hadadi.

Maged is halfway down a hole when I approach his house. Clambering out apologetically, he explains that German experts visited this area last year and declared that the fresh water being pumped to local villages "wasn't fit for a dog to drink". After months of phone calls to the national water company, none of which were answered, Maged decided to lay down a new set of pipes himself in the hope it would improve the quality of drinking water for his two young daughters. It's hot, exhausting work, which he fits in between his farming duties and a new part-time job as an accountant in a local alfalfa plant. "We don't have much time on our hands at the moment," Maged says, dusting himself off and gulping down some fresh melon juice. "Nobody can make a living solely off the land any more."

On a tour of his fields, I see why. The rich brown soil has greyed out in recent years, leaving a barren salt-encrustation on the surface. The cause is underground saltwater intrusion from the nearby coast, which pushes up through the soil and kills off roots. Coastal farmland has always been threatened by saltwater, but salinity has traditionally been kept at bay by plentiful supplies of fresh water gushing over the soil and flushing out the salt. It used to happen naturally with the Nile's seasonal floods; after the construction of Egypt's High Dam in the 70s (one of the most ambitious engineering projects on earth), these seasonal floods came to an end, but a vast network of irrigation canals continued to bring gallons of fresh water to the people who worked the land, the fellahin, ensuring salinity levels remained low.

Today, however, Nile water barely reaches this corner of the Delta. Population growth has sapped its energy upstream, and what "freshwater" does make it downriver is increasingly awash with toxins and other impurities. Farmers such as Maged now essentially rely on waste water – a mix of agricultural drainage and sewage – from the nearby town of Sidi Salim.

The result is plummeting fertility; local farmers say that whereas their fathers spent just a handful of Egyptian pounds on chemicals to keep the harvests bountiful, they now have to put aside between 25 and 80% of their profits for fertilisers just to keep their crops alive.

"We can see with our own eyes that the water is no good, it's less and less pure," Maged says. He points out huge swaths of neighbouring land that once glimmered with rice paddies; recently they have been dug up and replaced by fish farms, the ground too barren for crop cultivation. Further out, in the village of Damru, the green fields of 10 years ago are cracked and brown, now put into service as informal football pitches and rubbish dumps.

Experts believe the problem is only going to get worse. "We currently have a major water deficit in Egypt, with only 700 cubic metres of freshwater per person," explains Professor Salah Soliman of Alexandria University. "That's already short of the 1,000 cubic metres per person the UN believes is the minimum needed for water security. Now, with the population increase, it will drop to 450 cubic metres per person – and this is all before we take into account the impact of climate change."

That impact is likely to be a 70% drop in the amount of Nile water reaching the Delta over the next 50 years, due to increased evaporation and heavier demands on water use upstream. The consequences of all these ecological changes on food production are staggering: experts at Egypt's Soils, Water and Environment Research Institute predict that wheat and maize yields could be down 40% and 50% respectively in the next 30 years, and that farmers who make a living off the land will lose around $1,000 per hectare for each degree rise in the average temperature.

The farmers here feel abandoned by the state; there are regular dismissive references to the "New Age", a euphemism for the much-hated regime of President Hosni Mubarak, whose neoliberal reform programmes and widespread corruption scandals have provoked a wave of popular discontent across the country. This disconnect between the state and its people has led to distrust of government scientists who think coastal erosion, rather than freshwater scarcity, is the main reason for the farmers' problems. And, in a worrying twist for Egypt's creaking economy, the erosion isn't only affecting farmers. "Unfortunately, most of our industry and investment has been built on sites very close to the shore," says Soliman. "There's only so much water we can hold back."

Ras el-Bar is a small holiday resort at the mouth of the Nile's Damietta branch. This was the summer paradise that Nobel prizewinning novelist Naguib Mahfouz's well-heeled characters would escape to when the heat of the capital became unbearable; today its squat pink lighthouse and endless boulevards of deserted, low-rise holiday homes have the faded feel of a 50s Disneyland.

Although still popular in July and August, Ras el-Bar has been overtaken as a seaside destination by the brash consumerism of a new generation of towns: Sharm el-Sheikh, Marina, Hurghada. In place of tourists, however, new factories have arrived here in abundance, including some that nearby residents believe are poisoning the air. The arrival of one industrial plant in Damietta, which coincided with the ministry of environment's last-minute decision not to designate the area a protected nature reserve, is a familiar story of shady backdoor deals, public outrage and the studious disregard of local opinions. In this case, the locals managed to postpone the factory's construction, but other plants remain. "In the morning here you can see nothing but smoke," says Mohammed Fawzia, who is fishing in a canal down by the side of an industrial complex run by the state-owned Mopco company. "Take photos of it for us so we can show who is killing our children. We want the factories gone."

Many Cairo-based experts, however, insist that the task of coping with the dramatic ecological changes faced by the Delta is made harder by the ignorance of people such as Mohammed. They claim the fellahin are too uneducated to change their ways. But they are wrong: while farmers in the southern Delta, where Nile water is still relatively plentiful, have little knowledge of climate change, those in the north are painfully aware of the science behind the death of their land. However, they also have little time to listen to the harrying of a government which is widely seen to preach green rhetoric on the one hand but is only too willing to sell out the environment on the other, along with the local people.

Money talks in Egypt, and sustainable development is forgotten when the interests of the rich and powerful – such as the industrial plants in Damietta or the influential Badrawi clan in Daqahliyah – are at stake. The repression and self-interest of Mubarak's inner circle have left them bereft of any moral authority on environmental issues.

And while scientists, academics and community organisers are making a concerted effort to educate Egyptians about the dangers of climate change, there is confusion over whether the focus of all these programmes should be on promoting ways to combat climate change, or on accepting climate change as inevitable and instead encouraging new forms of adaptation to the nation's uncertain ecological future.

Efforts are further hampered by a popular feeling that this is a crisis made by the west. "We're not responsible for climate change," says Soliman, pointing out that Egypt's contribution to global carbon emissions is an underwhelming 0.5%, nine times less per capita than the US. "But unfortunately the consequence of climate change is no respecter of national borders."

The scale of the crisis – more people, less land, less water, less food – is overwhelming, and has infected discussion of climate change with a toxic combination of cynicism and fatalism at every level. There are senior environmental officials in top scientific jobs here who do not believe climate change is real; others are convinced the problem is so great that human intervention is useless. "It's down to God," one environmental officer for a major Delta town tells me. "If the Delta goes we'll find new places to live. If Egypt was big enough for Mary and Joseph, then it will be big enough for all of us."

Of course, if sea levels do rise significantly, "then the debate is over," says Dr Tutwiler. "The land will be underwater and crop production will be over."

As a result, many now believe that Egypt's future lies far away from the Delta, in land newly reclaimed from the desert. Since the time of the pharaohs, when the Delta was first farmed, Egypt's political leaders have rested their legitimacy on their ability to feed it by taming the Nile. Mohammed Ali, Lord Cromer and Gamal Abdel Nasser all launched major projects to control and harness the river's seasonal floods; now Mubarak is following in their footsteps – not by saving the Delta, but by creating a bewildering array of canals and pumping stations that draw water out from the Nile into sandy valleys to the east and west, where the desert is slowly being turned green.

You can see evidence of these new lands on the Delta's fringes; mile upon mile of agri-business-owned fields peeking out behind the advertising billboards of the Cairo-Alexandria desert road. The billboards depict gated compounds and luxury second homes, escapist dreams for the Egyptian upper-middle class.

The new lands behind them are another sort of escape, this time for the whole country. Their very water-intensive existence is, though, only hastening the demise of the Delta; once the glittering jewel of Egypt and bedrock of its survival, but now a region whose death warrant may already have been signed.

Invasion of the Nile: The Delta's troubled history

• 4,000 – 3,000 BC approx – The Delta is populated by migrants from the Sahara and intensive farming begins in the region

• 1,300 BC approx – According to the Bible, the Delta is home to the Israelites, and miraculously survives God's plague of hail

• 343 BC – The Persians kill Egypt's last native pharaoh, ushering in more than 2,000 years of foreign rule over the Delta

• 332 BC – Alexander the Great invades and founds Alexandria at the tip of the Delta

• 30 BC – Cleopatra and Marc Anthony kill themselves

• 639 AD – Muslim Arabs sweep into the Delta, forcing out the Byzantine rulers

• 1517 AD – The Delta is absorbed into the Ottoman Empire and ruled from Turkey

• 1798 AD – Napoleon Bonaparte begins a three-year French occupation

• 1805 AD – The Albanian pasha Muhammad Ali seizes power but his dynasty falls under the control of the British Empire

• 1952 AD – Gamal Abdel Nasser restores Egyptian rule for the first time in two millennia

• 1970 AD – The Aswan Dam is completed, ending seasonal flooding in the Delta

• 2007 AD – Delta declared among top three areas vulnerable to rising sea levels

Alexandria: An ancient city under threat

Alexandria has been through several reincarnations: as a small Pharaonic town in the 4th century BC, as the capital of Egypt for 1,000 years, and as a cosmopolitan melting-ground in the early 20th century. While most of its former glories are already lying on the seabed, scientists now fear the city's outer fringes could be among the first victims of any rise in sea levels.

A rise of only 1m will leave the city centre cut off from the mainland. If it does disappear, its literary chroniclers may provide some comfort. Lawrence Durrell called it "the capital of memory", a city where recollections stay "clinging to the minds of old men like traces of perfume upon a sleeve". The Greek poet Constantine Cavafy shared Durrell's sense of being trapped by history. In what may prove a remarkable piece of foresight, he wrote in The City:

You'll find no new places, you won't find other shores.
The city will follow you. The streets in which you pace
will be the same, you'll haunt the same familiar places,
and inside those same houses you'll grow old.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't bother to hope
for a ship.

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Climate change threatens Central American coffee

Sarah Grainger, Reuters 20 Aug 09;

CERRO DE ORO, Guatemala (Reuters) - Scientists expect climate change to dramatically affect coffee production in Central America in the coming decades, but some lowland farmers in Guatemala say they are already feeling the effects.

The United Nations forecasts temperatures will rise one to six degrees over the next century, which will make some lower-lying coffee producing areas enviable, forcing farmers to move to higher altitudes.

Academics conducting a four-year study of the effects of climate change on small coffee growers in Guatemala have found that many in lowland areas are struggling to continue.

"In the eastern department of Santa Rosa, the problem is the dryness and farmers there are complaining about a lack of water, particularly this year," said Edwin Castellanos, the scientist leading the study.

Guatemalan coffee exports have been largely consistent over the last five years, hovering between 3.3 million and 3.8 million 60-kg bags per season and never varying by more than 10 percent a year because farmers in higher altitude microclimates have been less affected.

"If we see a percentage change over 10 percent, then we would start to worry," said Christian Rasch, head of Guatemala's coffee producers association.

Even farmers in more humid areas are struggling with extremes of weather. Some experts say climate change is a factor in the recent increase in unpredictable weather.

Coffee growers in Cerro de Oro, a village nestled in the volcanic mountains overlooking crystalline Lake Atitlan, have been hit by torrential rains as well as harsh droughts in recent years.

"There's not much we can do to counter the effects on our crops because we can't predict what the weather will be like," said coffee grower Carlos Sitean.

GOVERNMENT HELP NEEDED

In nearby Nicaragua, much of the low-lying land devoted to coffee production is likely to become unsuitable for the crop as temperatures rise. Unlike Guatemala, coffee growers there have no higher ground to move to so its farmers will have to give up on coffee altogether.

Those farming at higher altitudes in Central America may also be tempted to diversify into other crops or even quit farming as unpredictable weather makes growing coffee an increasingly risky investment since an entire harvest can be destroyed by hurricane or drought.

"I'm thinking now that I'm going to have to sell my land because its not giving me results," said Nasario Guoz, who has been farming coffee in Cerro de Oro for over 30 years.

Ideas to help coffee farmers cope with climate change include zoning schemes where farmers get access to cheap credit in return for planting crops recommended by agricultural models and developing more resistant crop varieties.

But experts warn that the efforts of nongovernmental organizations and the private sector will not be enough to cope with the challenge.

"Governments have to strategically look at where coffee could be grown in the next 30 or 40 years and other areas where clearly its going to die out quickly," said Dr Peter Baker, an expert on commodities at the Center for Agriculture and Bioscience International, a UK-based think tank.

Some help for coffee growers could come if a new global climate change treaty can be agreed this year.

Developing nations want industrialized countries to commit to helping poorer countries with financing and technology as part of the new treaty that will replace the Kyoto Protocol.

A group of 80 poor nations argued at a UN climate negotiations in Germany that rich countries should provide $100 billion a year to help them adapt to climate change. The new treaty is due to be signed in Copenhagen this December.

(Editing by Robert Campbell)

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Cattle, crop losses mount in Texas drought

Ed Stoddard, Reuters 20 Aug 09;

DALLAS (Reuters) - A vast swathe of Texas remains in the grip of a scorching drought, which has cost billions of dollars and is cleaving America's largest beef cattle herd.

One county has seen its entire cotton harvest wiped out and losses for cattle, crops and the state's fast growing game farming industry are seen mounting with no relief in sight. Texas is second only to California in U.S. farm production and the sector's sales for the state topped $21 billion in 2007.

The drought-stricken area straddles the central Texas hill country, near the capitol Austin, and stretches south through San Antonio to the Rio Grande Valley on the U.S./Mexico border, which is a key citrus and cattle region.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor here, much of this area is experiencing exceptional drought conditions. That is the worst possible ranking and it is the only part of the country that currently falls into this category.

Other areas of south/central Texas are suffering extreme conditions. In most of the affected counties the rains began to taper off sharply around September of 2007. In at least nine counties, the drought is the worst on record.

According to the Climate Prediction Center, the outlook for the next three months over the region in question shows equal chances for above, normal or below average rainfall.

"But there is a good chance of higher than normal temperatures and so the drought will not likely abate soon," said John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas State climatologist.

Texas AgriLife Extension Service, which is linked to Texas A&M University, said in July that it estimated that the losses to Texas agriculture since November of 2008 amount to $3.6 billion and counting. Almost a $1 billion of those losses were in livestock with the remainder in crops.

"If it doesn't rain soon, we expect this year to eclipse 2006, when we estimate drought losses were $4.1 billion," David Anderson, a professor at Texas AgriLife, told Reuters.

SHRINKING CATTLE HERD

Anderson said that in January 2009, United States Department of Agriculture surveys showed there were two million beef cows in the drought-stricken area, or 40 percent of the Texas herd and six percent of the U.S. total.

That number is expected to drop sharply this year as farmers are forced to sell or cull cattle in the face of soaring costs for supplemental feed needed just to keep meat on their ribs.

"In the most severe areas, I would say that anywhere from 12 to 18 percent of the cattle have been sold," said Dave Scott, president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association.

He said it just was not economical to maintain normal herd numbers when there was virtually no grass for grazing and the price of supplements like hay were going through the roof.

"All the hay is being shipped in from out of the state and the northern part of the state. It's not really economical. It's about $80 for a 1,200 pound (545 kgs) roll of hay. In normal times, it is somewhere around $30 to $35," he said.

The drought is also impacting on the state's exotic game industry, which one 2007 study Texas AgriLife estimated to be worth $1.3 billion. The study also found it to be the fastest growing sector of the state's farming industry.

Many of the state's exotic game ranches cater to the big game hunting industry and along with leases for native white-tailed deer is a huge supplement to the income of livestock farmers. Like cattle, such herds are also reeling from drought and ranchers need to provide them with additional feed.

"If things don't reverse, I don't know how exotic ranchers can keep holding out," said Charly Seale, Executive Director of the Exotic Wildlife Association.

Less exotic sectors have also been badly hit.

"For the first time in over a century ... drought has claimed the entire cotton production of Kleberg County," Texas AgriLife said last week.

In the Lower Rio Grande Valley, it said this week that irrigated crops had managed to weather the drought but dryland crop losses in the area for cotton, corn and grain sorghum could top $25 million this year.

The weather has been uneven across Texas. Other parts of the state have been under either mild drought conditions or have received ample rainfall.

(Editing by Marguerita Choy)

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U.S. prohibits expansion of commercial fishing in the Arctic

Commerce secretary approves Arctic fisheries plan
Mary Pemberton, Associated Press Yahoo News 20 Aug 09;

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – The nation's secretary of commerce has approved a plan that would prohibit an expansion of commercial fishing in the Arctic, at least until more is known about the area.

Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke on Thursday approved the Arctic Fishery Management Plan, which was prompted by changes in the Arctic that have come with global warming and the loss of sea ice.

Locke said the goal now is to come up with a sustainable fishing plan that will not harm the overall health of the fragile Arctic ecosystem.

"As Arctic sea ice recedes due to climate change, there is increasing interest in commercial fishing in Arctic waters," Locke said in a statement. "This plan takes a precautionary approach to any development of commercial fishing in an area where there has been none in the past."

A report released in April predicted that within 30 years the area covered by summer sea ice will decline from about 2.8 million square miles to 620,000 square miles.

Locke's decision came a day before Obama administration officials are scheduled to conduct a public hearing in Anchorage on the nation's ocean policy. A task force is developing a recommendation for a policy that officials say ensures protection, maintenance and restoration of oceans, coasts and the Great Lakes.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which oversees the management of fish in federal waters, adopted the Arctic Fishery Management Plan in February. The plan then underwent public review before Locke's approval.

The plan has been hailed by environmentalists and industry representatives alike.

Fishermen want to avoid what happened in the mid-1980s when it was every nation for itself and the pollock stocks were overfished in the Bering Sea and collapsed, said Dave Benton, executive director of the Marine Conservation Alliance, an industry group that represents the seafood, groundfish and crab industries in Alaska.

The plan will help the United States work more cooperatively with the Canadians and the Russians on a joint decision about fishing in the Arctic, Benton said.

"This time we want to get ahead of the curve," he said.

The plan would prohibit industrial fishing in nearly 200,000 square miles of U.S. waters in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas until researchers can gather sufficient information on fish and the Arctic marine environment. It identifies Arctic cod, saffron cod and snow crab as species that likely would be targeted by commercial fishermen.

The plan would govern all commercial fishing for all stocks of finfish and shellfish in federal waters in Arctic waters off Alaska, except Pacific salmon and Pacific halibut because they are managed under other authorities. It would not affect fisheries for salmon, whitefish and shellfish in Alaskan waters near the Arctic coastline. The proposed plan would not affect Arctic subsistence fishing or hunting.

The plan also outlines rules for any new Arctic fisheries that could be approved in the future. Among them is a provision that fishermen will be required to keep records to help determine catch, production, price and other information necessary for conservation and management.

Also under the plan, fishermen may be required to carry fisheries observers on board to verify catch and discard numbers, among other requirements.

Locke said the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Service will establish procedures before approving any future fisheries.

Chris Krenz, arctic project manager for the conservation group Oceana, said this is the first time a management plan has been put in place before fishing has been allowed in an area. The approach comes, he said, with the realization that fisheries have an impact.

"This is the type of approach that will lead to sustainability," he said.

Krenz said he expects the plan to be in place and enforceable by late this year or early next year.

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On the Net:

http://alaskafisheries.noaa.gov/sustainablefisheries/arctic/

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