Best of our wild blogs: 10 Oct 09

Brown Shrike dismembers grasshopper
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Leopard print
from The annotated budak

Another feeding frenzy at Tanah Merah
from wild shores of singapore

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Singapore could help shape a climate deal

Straits Times 10 Oct 09;

In Copenhagen this December, nations will meet to thrash out a climate change mitigation plan. Amresh Gunasingham speaks to former National Environment Agency (NEA) chairman Simon Tay, who chairs the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, about the role Singapore can play in this effort.

# How do you assess the threats of climate change to Singapore and the region?

If you look at the recently released report on climate change from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), it noted that South-east Asia is likely to suffer more from climate change than elsewhere in the world.

Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand are especially at risk because they have large coastal populations vulnerable to rising sea levels and temperature increases. There is also the risk of higher levels of tropical diseases and declining rice yields resulting from global warming.

# What do you see happening at the upcoming Copenhagen summit? Is it realistic to expect a post-Kyoto treaty, with concrete measures to address global warming by limiting greenhouse gas emissions?

World leaders are meeting in Copenhagen, in December, where they are expected to negotiate a global deal to put a cap on pollution emitted into the atmosphere.

But frankly, I believe Copenhagen will not solve the issues and create a binding regime. We are way too late. The United States is not likely to have completed its legislation on cutting carbon dioxide emissions, although President Barack Obama supports this cause. The developing countries and large emitters like China and India will not commit until the US is on board.

I think Copenhagen can help with a general statement, with national plans being inked and broad mechanisms agreed upon. Leaders will try to meet the deadline, but I think they will have to work past the deadline for more concrete measures to be agreed on. We have to look to a post-Copenhagen scenario even as we hope for last-minute improvements.

# What role do you see Singapore adopting at the negotiations?

One thing I believe we need to think about is our position on the international stage. If we're talking about achieving a deal where the US, India, China and the South-east Asian countries need someone to bring these players together, Singapore could help shape a deal. We do not want the big countries to just make decisions and then pressure Singapore to take steps that we cannot.

# What do you think of Singapore's sustainability blueprint released earlier this year, which stresses national targets for pollution standards and energy efficiency over the next 20 years?

I think it is quite modest. People have the right to expect more from Singapore. We have management, good engineering and technology and even export some environmental services like water treatment and recycling. We have also always prided ourselves on our development despite a lack of natural resources.

But we need to realise that the green parameter is shifting - and there is an extra dimension that we should consider.

This boils down to emissions.

We should view carbon emissions as a constraint, like the shortage of water, land and clean air. Then we would find innovative ways to minimise such emissions. The world is moving towards being carbon neutral. Carbon markets are thriving in places like London and China. We should have our slice. After all, we are an energy trading hub, and one of the world's leading futures trading hubs.

# Given the constraints we face, what are our successes so far?

It is clear some countries can do more than others. With limited land and territorial sea, Singapore does not have space to deploy wind power and tidal turbines. It is also debatable how much we can get from solar energy using present technology, because of the excessive cloud cover here. Such technology is also too expensive now.

Energy efficiency has been the first attempt. If you look at water, it has been a success story. We are a technological leader, far beyond abstract technologies limited to the laboratory. Companies like Keppel and Hyflux are aggressively going out there to sell their technology in areas such as desalination and water filtration. We can do the same for energy-saving and low carbon technologies.

# How should Singapore conduct its own negotiations at the summit?

We need to be progressive but not automatically accept cuts to our own emissions. It has already been shown that when we voluntarily made the move from oil-based energy to gas, we cut our energy intensity by a third or more. In terms of energy use, we are already quite lean.

Yet at the same time, we have to show that we are trying our best in terms of the technology we can access, the financial resources at our disposal, and a full understanding of the gravity of the situation for us.

# How do you see Singapore addressing climate change going forward?

We could be at the start of something. Perhaps we have not done as much as some hoped because of a certain sense of realism, but the paradigm is changing as we learn more about the technologies and policies we need.

For example, a Norwegian company has put money into manufacturing solar panels here and this helps us understand solar energy. Our car pricing policy has had some green effects. But we need to watch technology, policy and really push in this direction. We can be optimistic. It could be in Copenhagen or in the wake of that that Singapore will take on more and more as we realise what we can do without harming our economy or making promises that we cannot realistically keep.

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Logging activities to be stopped: Selangor state government

Salina Khalid, The Star 9 Oct 09;

THE Selangor state government will no longer issue permits for logging on government land starting Jan 1 next year.

The blanket ruling will cover all logging activities for the inland and the mangrove forests in the state.

A source had informed The Star that the state government, in its exco meeting on July 22, had decided to stop all logging for the inland forest with immediate effect, while the ruling on the mangrove forest would be enforced on Jan 1.

It means all inland forest logging activities has stopped about two months ago while logging concessionaires holding the licence to log mangrove forest along the state’s coastal area could only do so until the end of the year.

Their licences will not be renewed upon its expiration on Dec 31.

The rule, however, does not cover the clearing of privately-owned land.

Selangor Forestry Department director Dr Yunus Zakaria said the department had not issued any new licence for logging concession this year.

He said any logging being carried out were done using the licence issued since 2006. It allows them to log until the licence expires.

He added that those concessionaires who were given the licence to log (from the previous government) were still allowed to continue until their concession expires or until their logging in the area was completed.

Asked whether they could apply to renew the licence next year, Dr Yunus said they could submit their application to them and they would forward it to the state government for approval.

“We have informed them about the expiry date of their licences,” he said.

The National Forest Council had set a quota of 1970ha of forest that could be logged for timber in Selangor.

The figure is the maximum area that could be harvested for timber every year.

However, Dr Yunus said the actual logging allowed through the licence approval was less than that of the quota by the National Forest Council.

When asked about the logging this year, he said it was much less and not even a quarter of the quoted figure allowed for harvesting.

“There are seven logging concessions for mangrove forests in Selangor,” said Dr Yunus.

“But only five of them are carrying out logging activities and sharing an area of 800ha in Pulau Ketam,” he said.

Article 74(2) of the Federal Constitution provides that land and natural resources are matters under the jurisdiction of the state governments.

It states that the state is empowered to enact laws and policies on forestry independently and a State Forestry Director is appointed to manage the administration and regulation of forest harvesting; revenue collection which includes premiums, royalties, deposits, cess and other charges, the management and development of forest resources as well as planning and coordination of the development of forest-based industry.

The states, through their respective Forestry Department, constitute permanent reserved forests and classify them for timber production and protection such as water catchment areas, wildlife reserves and bird sanctuaries, virgin jungle reserves, state parks and amenity forests.

All forest produce from these permanent reserved forests or state land remain the property of the state and all exploitation of forest produce must be licensed and administered by the state.

The state forestry directors have the power to arrest, search, seize and investigate forest-related offences, and impose fines and prosecute offenders.

In accordance with the requirement of National Forestry Act 1984, the State Forestry Departments are expected to submit annual reports to both the state authority as well as the Forestry Department of Peninsular Malaysia.

Malaysia’s forest policy has always emphasised the balance between protection and production. Regulations are in place with regard to forest management operations, which specify in detail harvesting guidelines, codes of best practices, forest inventory and construction of forest roads.

All harvesting and related operations are carried out by licensed contractors.

These licences stipulate intensity of extraction, harvesting sequence, tree size limitations, transport routes and standard of road.

Harvesting timber, for both inland and mangrove forest, is allowed in the country, with the logging licence issued by the relevant state Forestry Departments.

The licence for harvesting the trees is granted to the concessionaires under the selective management systems to ensure the sustainability of the forest.

It advocates the selection of a cutting regime based on diameter limits and species composition of the standing trees. It means the logging is permitted to zones that have met the maturity criteria of the trees.

Meanwhile, the chopping of mangrove trees in Selangor is only allowed on those that have reached a minimum of 30cm in diameter.

With the average growth of about 0.6 to 0.8cm per annum, it will need about 10 years for mangrove trees to reach the minimum diameter before they can be harvested.

According to the Malaysian Nature Society, only 1.8% of Malaysia’s land is covered in mangroves, with over 50% of these mangroves lost between 1950 and 1985.

Forestry Department statistics show that Peninsular Malaysia had 85,000ha of mangrove forest in 2003, down from 86,497ha in 2002.

The Selangor Forestry Department statistics show that in 2008, a total of 18,088ha of the coastal area in the state is covered with mangrove forest.

Those who are felling the trees that are smaller would be fined if they are caught.

Contractors who cut immature tree can be fined a maximum of RM50,000. At the same time, those who are carrying out illegal logging in the state have to pay a heavier fines.

Under Section 15 of the National Forestry Act, 1984 (Amendment 1993) those illegal loggers can be fined up to a maximum of RM500,000 and mandatory imprisonment of one year minimum and a maximum of 20 years.

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Almost half of Sabah's mangroves degraded

Daily Express 10 Oct 09;

Kota Kinabalu: About 40pc of the 320,000 hectares of forest mangroves in Sabah need to be rehabilitated, said Sabah Wetlands Conservation Society (SWCS) President Haji Zainie Abdul Aucasa.

He said these mangrove trees fell victim to development and irresponsible cutting by people for other purposes such as fuel and liquor-making.

"Based on Sabah Forestry Department 2008 statistics, a total of 320,521 hectares are covered by forest mangroves and estimates are that about 40 per cent have been degraded.

"The trees were uprooted because of development projects and some ignorant people cut down the tree bark to be used for liquor-making.

There was also a case where some villagers cut the mangrove trees to be sold to a factory a fuel to generate power," he said.

Hence, Zainie said it is imperative for all quarters to work hand-in-hand to rehabilitate the degraded mangrove swamps that is the habitat for wildlife, protecting coastlines and as breeding grounds for fish and prawns.

He said this during the signing ceremony of a new partnership between SWCS and a Japanese real estate company, Mullion Co. Incorporated, to restore degraded mangrove areas around Sabah. It was witnessed by Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun.

Zainie representing SWCS signed the partnership document while the Japanese company was represented by its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Keiji Fukuda.

The company made a commitment to support SWCS efforts for mangrove restoration in identified degraded areas by pledging to donate a minimum sum of RM150,000 to SWCS over a period of five years.

The two main objectives under the project are to replant a total of 25,000 mangrove seedlings within five years and to raise awareness on the importance of mangrove conservation and management for the local community and public.

According to Zainie, SWCS is targeting to plant 200,000 mangrove seedlings over the next two years in identified destruction areas that need to be rehabilitated like from Kuala Penyu to Sulaman and Tuaran, and in the East Coast of Sabah, especially in Lahad Datu.

"We have expanded our nurseries at the Kota Kinabalu Wetland Centre to plant more mangrove seedlings and hope to achieve our target of planting 200,000 seedlings in selected areas throughout Sabah.

"Initially, we are looking at Sulaman to plant 5,000 mangrove seedlings in the next few months as the area is in a sorry state where many of the mangrove trees were gone.

"At the moment, we have almost 10,000 seedlings by end of October and will use the seedling for such purpose including selling or supplying them to other tree planting projects, either carried out by government and NGOs," he said.

Hopefully, Zainie said the targeted 200,000 new mangrove trees to be planted on those degraded areas, will to certain extent, compensate for the loss of those mangroves cut in the name of development.

Thus, he said SWCS would never give up its effort to protect Sabah's mangrove swamps and forests.

On the new partnership with the Japan-based company, Zainie welcomed such support that must be encouraged to ensure sustainability of mangroves in the State, which brings much benefit to society.

Following this, Masidi said also called on big and rich corporate in private sector to emulate the Japanese company that is willing to donate a minimum RM150,000 to SWCS for reviving degraded mangrove areas in Sabah.

"I am very pleased that a company from Japan is coming all the way to Sabah to help us in restoring the degraded areas of mangrove swamps.

"Such noble move should open the eyes and mind of those huge companies and bodies in private sector to do the same," he said.

According to Masidi, 60 per cent of mangrove swamps in Malaysia is in Sabah and it should have been better. Nonetheless, he said, such situation is not hopeless as those degraded areas can still be rehabilitated provided there is support by concerned quarters.

Masidi said people can still make money out of mangroves as there is a new trend in tourism where people like to stay in resorts built within nature.

"Actually we have a choiceÉWe can still make money out of the mangrove forests by setting up resorts which can exist in harmony with the mangrove swamps.

"In fact, mangrove trees actually can be a very good money making project. Instead of cutting, we can look after them. Development per say is not wrong but I think it should be sustainable and add on the quality of life of the people and not degrade some people lives," he said.

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Noose tightens around tiger poachers in Malaysia

The Star 10 Oct 09;

IPOH: This year alone, the Perak Wildlife and National Parks Depart-ment (Perhilitan) uncovered and destroyed 47 tiger traps near the Royal Belum Rainforest Reserve.

State Perhilitan director Shabrina Shariff said the traps were found during the anti-poaching Ops Jerat that began early this year.

“The latest trap was the one that snared a tiger near the reserve on Saturday,” said Shabrina.

A five-year-old 120kg tiger had one of its limbs seriously injured by the wire trap and is being treated at the Malacca Zoo.

“There could be more traps that we have yet to find in the forest,” she said.

Shabrina said 24 Ops Jerat checks had been conducted along the East-West Highway near the rainforest.

“As of October, we arrested five people for possessing snares,” she said.

She said two men from Kelantan were also arrested early this year for buying tiger parts in Grik.

Shabrina said Perhilitan would continue to search and destroy the snares.

“We will also put up cameras at tiger hotspots and have officers going undercover to obtain more information on poachers,” she said.

There are currently between 30 to 40 tigers left in the Belum rainforest reserve.

Meanwhile, WWF species conservation manager Reuben Clements said the Federal Government needed to set up an anti-poaching task force to secure key tiger-populated areas in the long run.

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Rogue elephant in Malaysia finally caught

New Straits Times 10 Oct 09;

JERTIH: A rogue elephant that has been causing havoc in Pelagat for almost a week was finally captured by wildlife authorities on Wednesday.

The 12-year-old wild elephant walked into a trap set up three days ago by the state Wildlife Department with the help of the villagers.

For almost seven days before that, the elephant had caused havoc in three villages -- Pelagat, Paroh and Padang Tapung -- by destroying their crops.

The rampage took place especially at nights, causing widespread fear among villagers for their safety.


After successfully trapping it, the elephant was calmed down by two tamed elephants -- "Che Mek" and " Lokimala" -- from the Kuala Gandah sanctuary in Lanchang, Pahang. It was transported to the department's elephant sanctuary in Kampung Sungai Ketiar in Hulu Terengganu the next day.

The operation involved 21 members from Terengganu and Pahang Wildlife Departments, said Besut Perhilitan chief Edley A. Jailium.

The Pelagat area is notorious for rampages by wild elephants which come from the Terengganu-Kelantan border.

Villagers are constantly living in fear, and there have been reports of elephant herds roaming the plains where their crops are cultivated.

Wild jumbo caught and relocated
R. S. N. Murali, The Star 10 Oct 09;

BESUT: Game rangers of the State Wildlife and National Park Department caught a wild elephant, which was separated from its herd seven months ago, in an operation in Kampung Padang Tapong here.

Villagers called the department on Wed­nesday after they spotted the elephant.

Four officerss started looking for the elephant at 10am and managed to catch a glimpse of the animal two hours later.

The elephant, however, managed to evade the officers before it was sedated at about 5pm.

Department director Rozidan Md Yassin said the 1.7 tonne elephant, which was kept at an oil palm estate near the village earlier, was about ten to 12 years old.

Rozidan was at the site on Thursday to organise the relocation of the elephant.

The elephant was relocated yesterday to the Ketiar Elephant Sanctuary in Hulu Terengganu using two tame elephants named Chek Mek and Lokimala from the Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary.

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Thai resorts have joined efforts to conserve coral reefs, after once doing so much to destroy them

Former foes turn friendly
Bangkok Post 10 Oct 09;

Many remorseful business people who have realised coral reefs in the Gulf of Thailand are under threat from human activity have changed their ways and are now striving to save the environment they played a part in destroying.

Reefs at Koh Thalu in tambon Sai Thong in Prachuap Khiri Khan's Bang Saphan Noi district have been identified as being endangered.

Storms, climate change, coral bleachings, overfishing, blast fishing and pollution have been destructive to the coral reefs and other forms of marine life in the Gulf over the years.

However, there are environmentally-conscious people who are struggling to save the marine life resources.

Among them are people who once caused damage to the coral reefs but have regretted their mistakes.

They have now refocused their energy and resources to helping restore the coral reefs in Koh Thalu.

Many of them are owners and operators of resorts on the island who are trying to find a balance between striving for profit and preserving the natural environment.

Koh Thalu is home to spectacular and beautiful coral reefs in the Gulf of Thailand, attracting divers who are fascinated by the underlying marine beauty.

The coral reefs are no less beautiful than those in the Andaman sea.

Koh Thalu resort owner Preeda Charoenpak said chasing profits was not his primary concern.

"I want to do something to make up for the damage I did to the marine environment in the past," Mr Preeda said.

About 30 years ago, he was in the fishing business in Phetchaburi's Ban Laem district and owned more than 20 fishing trawlers.

He admitted that his fishing business and his trawlers had done harm to fishing stocks and coral reefs.

He later decided to give up fishing and spend the money he gained from selling his trawlers to invest in running a resort on Koh Thalu.

"But destruction of marine environment and overfishing is still there with blast fishing," he said.

After spending years trying to raise environmental awareness, his efforts have paid off.

Koh Thalu has been declared an area for the conservation and restoration of marine resources.

The island and its surrounding sea areas cover more than 150,000 rai and is declared off-limits to fishing of all types all year round.

Koh Thalu is regularly patrolled by officers from the navy and the Fishery Department and marine police units. It serves as a model for environmental conservation.

Phao-pipat Charoenpak, Mr Preeda's son, who manages the resort, said the project to grow coral reefs in the sea started in 1997.

He said coral reefs had been devastated by human activities such as dynamite fishing as well as natural phenomenon such as El Nino, global warming, climate change and coral bleachings and storms that ravaged the southern provinces such as Gay and Linda.

As a result, coral reefs around Koh Thalu had gradually died off. Mr Phao-pipat said it might be too late to wait for the coral reefs to regenerate on their own.

Residents and business operators on the island must step in to help coral reefs to recover.

He said he and his father had experimented by taking broken pieces of live coral reefs lying scattered on the beachfront and attaching them to the dead coral reefs. Before long, offshoots of coral on the dead reefs had begun to grow and branch out into fully grown reefs.

This has caught the attention of students from many schools who keep coming to the island to learn how to save and preserve the coral reefs.

Experts from the National Research Institute, and universities such as Kasetsart University and Mae Jo University in Chiang Mai also visited the island to study the coral reefs and the ecosystem around the island.

Mr Phao-pipat said a foundation on marine science and conservation had offered to help restore the coral reefs.

It has introduced a project to grow 80,000 coral offshoots using PVC pipes. The project had been sponsored by Vinythai Plc, the country's second largest polyvinyl chloride (PVC) producer.

Vikrom Poolpon, the foundation manager, said the project is a collaboration between the company, the navy, the natural resources department and the Ban Ma Koh Thalu resort. It started on Aug 26 last year. Mr Vikrom said the pieces of coral reefs are fitted on to PVC pipes, laid under the sea and fastened to the seabed.

Arunsri Namsup, a fourth-year student from Loei Rajabhat University, said she was glad to take part in Koh Thalu's coral reef activities which had opened up new vistas for students.

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Microbes used to clean Orissa oil spill

Thaindian News 9 Oct 09;

Bhubaneswar, Oct 9 (IANS) Microbes are being used to clear an oil spill caused by a ship that sank last month off the Paradip port in Orissa, a senior port official said Friday.

“The microbes are a kind of bacteria which live on oil. The microbes will clean up the spilled oil on the coast, as well as in the water. The work has started from today (Friday)” the official told IANS.

“On our request, The Energy & Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi and the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) sent us the microbes.”

The vessel, under a Mongolian flag, ran aground Sep 9 in the harbour area off the port in Jagatsinghpur district, some 100 km from here, with 924 tonnes of furnace oil and about 25,000 tonnes of iron ore fines.

Twenty-seven crew members were on board. All but a Ukrainian engineer, whose body was found 10 days later, were rescued.

The port authorities said that small quantities of oil have started oozing out of the ship since Sep 21, although out of the 924 tonnes of oil, 900 tonnes are inside a double-bottom tank fully secured.

The accident spot is close to the Gahirmatha marine sanctuary, one of the world’s few remaining nesting sites for the endangered Olive Ridley sea turtles.

US firm to pump out oil from sunk ship
The Times of India 9 Oct 09;

KENDRAPADA: Paradip Port Trust authorities on Friday said they had selected a US company to pump out oil from Mongolian vessel Black Rose, which
sank on September 9.

PPT chairman K Raghuramiah said the Florida-based Resolve Marine Group was shortlisted for the task after studying four tenders. "Two Indian and two foreign companies had filed tenders to pump out the oil. But we decided to entrust job to the Florida company because of their vast experience in salvaging fuel from sunken ships," he said.

"Paradip Port Trust will spend about Rs 17.5 crore to pump out oil from the sunken ship," Raghuramiah said. "The work will be completed within 10 days. We shall provide the drawings of the location of fuel tanks, vent pipes and sounding pipes," he added.

"The work will be executed observing all the safety and statutory requirements and the price offered must be inclusive of all taxes, duties, fees, cess, transport, insurance and all other incidental charges and must be a firm price. The work must be planned in consultation with the Deputy Conservator and Tug Engineer so as to avoid interruption in the operation," the PPT chairman said.

Earlier, PPT officials refused to pump out the oil from the sunken ship by claiming that it is not the responsibility of the port to pump out oils as the ship sank off in the sea not within the port area.

"As per the Merchant Shipping Act, port authorities are not responsible for sinking of a ship beyond the harbour area. But PPT decided to pump out 975 tonnes of furnace oil and diesel to prevent oil spill," Raghuramiah said.

The sunken ship has 924.4 tonnes of furnace oils and 48 tonnes of diesel. Fear of fuel oil spill from the sunken ship is the prime concern as the sunken ship area in the Bay of Bengal is situated near the Gahiramatha marine sanctuary, the world's largest rookery of the Olive Ridley turtles.

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For MNCs, it pays to be good

Chua Mui Hoong, Straits Times 10 Oct 09;

WHEN even Wal-Mart starts to talk and act green, you know the tipping point is near.

Wal-Mart chairman Rob Walton told the Global Social Innovators Forum in Singapore last week that the department store chain was serious in its commitment to sustainable development. Lest sceptics think he was just paying lip service, he said Wal-Mart had committed itself to very specific targets: 100 per cent renewable energy, zero waste, and selling products that help sustainable development.

These are difficult targets for the company, a colossus with a US$400 billion (S$560 billion) annual turnover. Wal-Mart estimated that its cutting packaging by just 5 per cent by 2013 would be equal to removing 213,000 trucks from the road, saving about 324,000 tons of coal and 67 million gallons of diesel fuel a year.

One way it is going to achieve its target is by working with its suppliers. Wal-Mart's 100,000 suppliers will answer a questionnaire on the products they supply. A consortium of universities will use the answers to devise a sustainability index. The information will be made public, so consumers will know the sustainability index of the products they buy.

Activists tout this as a pivotal measure that can change the retail sector significantly and nudge it along the green path, especially given Wal-Mart's pole position as America's biggest private sector employer and biggest Fortune 500 company in terms of revenue.

That Wal-Mart - once the bete noire of labour and environmental activists - considers it essential to turn green is telling. It launched its sustainable development push in 2005, about a year after the litany of complaints and lawsuits against it swelled.

Four years on, some of its harshest critics are changing their tune. Environmental groups like Treehugger have paid it a backhanded compliment by acknowledging that 'it's getting harder to hate Wal-Mart'.

Indeed, American multi-nationals seem to be falling over themselves to catch the green bug, and with good reason. At the same forum, another American company, Pepsi Co, shared a case study on a successful marketing campaign in China targeted at 'millennials' - youngsters born between 1977 and 1998 - which had an environmental theme.

Instead of a hard sell on Pepsi's products, the company opted for a series of informational ads by celebrities celebrating China's rivers and urging a water conservation message. Pepsi's Harry Hui, its chief marketing honcho in China, wanted a campaign that was 'credible, authentic, congruent' - and chose an environmentally conscious message because he figured it would appeal to this socially aware demographic.

The MIT Sloan Management Review devoted its Fall 2009 issue to sustainable businesses, highlighting some reasons why sustainability will change management.

# As consumers care about the issue, companies will face pressure to change. Wal-Mart, Nike and Rio Tinto were cited as examples.

# Sustainable companies are more productive. For example, GE saved US$100 million from energy-saving measures.

# Sustainability is the new proxy indicator by which consumers, regulators and activists gauge how good a company's management is. Just as safety was once used as a gauge of a company's dedication to quality, so a firm's sustainability policy will be used as a proxy for how disciplined, rigorous and ethical the management is.

MIT published results of experiments which asked consumers how much they would pay for coffee and T-shirts, together with stories of how the company concerned engaged in trading practices. People were willing to pay a premium for products perceived to be ethically produced and 'punished' unethical producers by paying a lower price.

The bottom line of the survey was that it pays to be good and that consumers increasingly want to support companies which are socially responsible and products which were not made by exploiting nature or people.

Within Singapore, there is some talk of corporate social responsibility, the view that companies must care for all stakeholders, not just shareholders and employees. Companies also talk of sustainable development, but mainly use this as a shorthand for energy-efficient production and reducing waste.

In fact, sustainable development goes beyond the environment. It is basically an approach to development that says you should not take away more than you add - to the world's resources and environment, as well as to the well-being of the people who work for you.

Say you set up a T-shirt sweatshop in Bangladesh. The community may end up with a higher employment rate and average wages. But it could also end up with a higher rate of illness and lower literacy as a result of your factory - with clear negative implications for future generations. This would be considered unsustainable.

Singapore has a compact promoting corporate social responsibility (CSR). At the simplest level, CSR could mean giving back to the community via philanthropic initiatives. But the CSR movement in Singapore can go much further, by educating companies here about the sustainability movement.

There is some urgency because by 2010, the Geneva-based International Standards Organisation (ISO) is expected to come up with guidelines for a new standard on social responsibility for businesses. The convenor of the task force assigned to draft the guidelines, Mr Jonathan Hanks, was in Singapore this week to conduct awareness seminars by Spring Singapore.

If you have not heard about ISO 26000, and your company has not been aligned to sustainability, now is not a bad time to get started - before the tipping point is reached and going green becomes a mass movement and you are left behind in the race to meet new global standards on social responsibility.

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African sun may soon power Europe

Amresh Gunasingham, Straits Times 10 Oct 09;

A DECADE from now, Africa could be Europe's powerhouse.

A €400 billion (S$825 billion) plan hopes to tap energy from the sun shining down on sub-Saharan Africa, to provide a sizeable chunk of power to places such as Britain, Germany and France, as well as countries in North Africa where the power plants will be located.

Called the Desertec project, it will be the most ambitious solar power effort to date, if it takes off. It will involve placing fields of mirrors in the deserts to gather solar rays to boil water.

The steam generated will churn turbines to provide electricity that can then be distributed via a network of pipes linking Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

Desertec's 13 partners, ranging from banks to utility providers and companies supplying green technology such as Siemens, believe the Sahara could one day deliver 15 per cent of Europe's electricity.

'The plan represents a vision to produce large amounts of energy needed in the world,' said Dr Peter Hoeppe, of Munich Re, the giant reinsurance firm that hosted the project's launch in Germany in July.

He was in Singapore last week to speak about the threats that climate change poses to economic infrastructure around the world.

The project is still in the planning stage, but Dr Hoeppe, who heads the company's Geo Risks Research department, expects the first round of investments in the next three years.

Officials have yet to draw up a business plan or specify how it will be funded, but there is great potential for harnessing the intense sunlight from the desert.

The deserts around the world receive, in six hours, about 20 million gigawatt-hour of energy, which is equivalent to the world's yearly electricity consumption.

A similar project in the barren terrains of China, India and Central Asia could also power countries in the region.

Dr Jiang Fan, from the Technology Centre for Clean Energy at Singapore Po-lytechnic, said the project showed potential.

'The desert is an area no one uses, as opposed to a city, where the land can be expensive. The intensity and distribution of solar radiation in the desert are also up to 50 per cent better.'

But Desertec has not been without its detractors. Critics point to the high capital costs needed to build solar plants as well as the substantial investment required to lay the pipes that will pump electricity from the African deserts to Europe.

A news report earlier this year pointed out that Desertec would need 20 or more efficient, direct-current cables, each costing up to US$1 billion (S$1.4 billion), to transmit electricity to the north beneath the Mediterranean.

Dr Hoeppe concedes that solar energy can be up to five times more expensive than power from coal-fired plants. But he believes giant strides in research mean that, within the next decade, electricity from solar power will cost between 4 and 5 US cents per kilowatt-hour - equivalent to the cost of electricity generated from coal.

Spiralling fuel prices also mean the world is rapidly reaching a 'break-even point' between the cost of solar power and traditional power sources.

'The advantage of renewable energy is that it is not dependent on global oil prices. The fuel is free...it just needs the first investment and the repairs are minimal, restricted to cleaning the mirrors occasionally,' said Dr Hoeppe.

Regardless of the potential effects of global warming, he believes an 'energy revolution' is inevitable.

'With or without climate change, we will have to have an energy revolution. There are differences in opinion over how long the supply of oil will last...but it is just a question of years before oil production goes down and prices soar...and then we will need new forms of energy.

'In the long term, we have to bank on wind, geothermal and solar energy.'

Read more!

What happened to global warming?

Paul Hudson, BBC News 9 Oct 09;

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.

They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?

During the last few decades of the 20th century, our planet did warm quickly.

Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun.

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.

The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.

And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.

He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.

He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.

Ocean cycles

What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth's great heat stores.

According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.

The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.

But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.

These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.

So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.

Professor Easterbrook says: "The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling."

So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along.

They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature.

But those scientists who are equally passionate about man's influence on global warming argue that their science is solid.

The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new.

In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors things that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models.

In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling.

What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.

To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.

Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers.

But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.

So what can we expect in the next few years?

Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.

It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).

Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say its hotting up.

Read more!

Climate change feared to blame as dead zones suffocate Pacific Ocean life

Frank Pope, Times Online 10 Oct 09;

When lobsters swarm up the beach and octopuses try to clamber up fishing lines to get out of the water, you know that something has gone badly wrong in the ocean.

Oxygen-starved dead zones have been appearing with increasing frequency around the world, with some 400 identified so far. While most are caused by sewage or fertiliser leaching into the ocean, a possible new driver has appeared in the northwest Pacific: climate change.

Just as land animals need oxygen in the air to breathe, those in the sea need the oxygen dissolved in seawater. Dead zones cover up to 20,000 sq miles each and their borders shift according to wind, current and tide, killing all animal life that cannot escape in time.

“Oregon is a little different,” said Jack Barth, of Oregon State University. “We have an open coastline, so the ability to flush the coast is high and there are no rivers carrying fertiliser. All nutrients appear to come from natural sources.”

But for the past four years Professor Barth has been using autonomous underwater robots to monitor worrying developments on a naturally occuring area of low oxygen off the northwest Pacific, on the border of Washington state and Oregon. “We’ve seen various degrees of oxygen deficiency,” he said. “We’ve seen zero oxygen, known as anoxia.”

Camera footage from remotely operated vehicles “showed us just piles of Dungeness crab, dead tube worms. None could flee”.

Off South Africa and Namibia, lobsters swarm to the beach when anoxic waters close in. Professor Barth cites reports that octopuses have tried to climb fishing lines to escape.

Low-oxygen areas occur naturally on the west coast of all continents, where nutrient-rich waters well up to the sunlit surface, causing heavy productivity. The upper waters are well mixed by wind and waves but deeper down there is less opportunity to replenish oxygen. When dead plankton drift into this zone in a marine snowfall, they cause a secondary bloom in microscopic animal life that strips away the oxygen.

If the oxygen-starved water does not reach the seabed, the effects are usually less severe. If it does, the animals there are usually unable to escape.

Usually winds push the de-oxygenated areas off Oregon out to sea but in recent years they have been coming ever closer to land and shallower water. Professor Barth said that climate-change models show coastal winds changing.

“The forecast is for stronger and less persistent winds and for deeper waters becoming less oxygenated as surface layers warm, isolating the deeper layers more. So it’s a double-whammy we’re seeing off Oregon.”

Although Professor Barth does not yet have enough records to prove that climate change is affecting the winds, he is confident that they are not altering as a result of any natural cycles, such as the warm current El Niño.

Read more!

Rising Sea Levels Are Increasing Risk Of Flooding Along South Coast Of England

ScienceDaily 10 Oct 09;

A new study by researchers at the University of Southampton has found that sea levels have been rising across the south coast of England over the past century, substantially increasing the risk of flooding during storms.

The team has conducted a major data collection exercise, bringing together computer and paper-based records from across the south of England, from the Scilly Isles to Sheerness, to form a single data set of south coast sea levels across the years.

Their work has added collectively about 150 years worth of historic data to the existing record of English Channel sea-level change and extended the data along the south coast. Their findings are published in the latest edition of the journal Continental Shelf Research.

The data shows that both average sea levels and extreme sea levels have been rising at a similar rate through the 20th Century. The rate of rise is in the range 1.2 to 2.2 mm per year, with 1.3 mm per year recorded at Southampton.

Coastal engineering expert Professor Robert Nicholls, of the University's School of Civil Engineering and the Environment, who conducted the study, comments: "While these changes seem small, over a century they accumulate and substantially increase the risk of flooding during storms, unless there have been corresponding upgrades to flood defences. A water level that had an average likelihood of occurring once every 100 years in 1900 now has an average likelihood of occurring on average every 10 to 25 years, depending on the site considered. As sea levels continue to rise and probably accelerate, this increase in the likelihood of flooding will continue."

The most significant extension to the records is that of sea level changes at Southampton where the record now begins in 1935.

Paper-based records at St Mary's on the Isles of Scilly, Weymouth, Southampton and Newhaven have been used to greatly extend existing computer-based records, while the records at Devonport and Portsmouth have both been extended and corrected for pervious errors of interpretation.

This new data is feeding into ongoing efforts to increase the understanding and management of flooding.

The work was conducted by Professor Robert Nicholls, Dr Neil Wells from the University's School of Ocean and Earth Science based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton and Dr Ivan Haigh, formerly of the University of Southampton and now at the University of Western Australia.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Southampton, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Read more!

Melting glaciers bring 1980s pollution revival

Jessica Hamzelou, New Scientist 9 Oct 09;

Bad hair and shoulder pads are not the only things from the 1980s that we'd rather not see again. Nasty chemicals banned in that decade are also on the list. Unfortunately, melting Alpine glaciers are generating a revival of toxic organic pollutants.

Christian Bogdal and colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich studied levels of pollution in sediment at the bottom of the Oberaar lake in Bern, Switzerland.

The flow of pollutants into the lake peaked in the 1970s, mainly due to the production of plastics, electronics, pesticides and fragrances. The levels declined during the 1980s and 1990s when people realised that these compounds were toxic and they were banned.

However, they found that banned chemicals, such as pesticides that have been linked with Parkinson's disease, have been pouring into the lake at an increasing rate since the 1990s.
Powerless observers

Bogdal reckons that a glacier feeding the lake has been storing these chemicals for decades, and is releasing them as it melts. This process could be dramatically sped up by global warming, he warns.

The problem isn't limited to Alpine glaciers. Since these chemicals would have been transported great distances via the atmosphere before they were frozen into ice, many other glaciers around the world may be contaminated. Toxic chemicals have previously been found in polar regions - putting arctic wildlife at risk.

There is little we can do about it, however. "Stopping global warming could slow the melting of glaciers, but the chemicals will still be released eventually," says Bogdal.

Many toxic chemicals are still used in plastics and electronic equipment, such as brominated flame retardants. Bogdal warns that these could represent the next generation's problem: "They are deposited on glaciers today and will reappear in our lakes in a few decades."

Journal reference: Environmental Science & Technology, DOI: 10.1021/es901628x

'Toxic legacy' seeps from melting Alpine glaciers
Yahoo News 14 Oct 09;

GENEVA (AFP) – Swiss researchers have found that Alpine glaciers melting under the impact of climate change are releasing highly toxic pollutants that had been absorbed by the ice for decades.

They warned in a study abstract published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology that it could have a "dire environmental impact" on "pristine mountain areas" as global warming accelerates.

Much of the pollution was dumped on Europe's biggest mountain range by atmospheric currents from further afield, according to the researchers at three Swiss scientific institutes.

Their study of layers of sediment from an Alpine lake formed by a hydroelectric dam built in central Switzerland in 1953 revealed "sharp" build-ups of now banned chemical compounds from industry and farming, including dioxins and pesticides like DDT.

"We can confirm with the help of these layers that, in the 1960s and 1970s, POPs (Persistant Organic Pollutants) were produced in great quantities and were also deposited in this Alpine lake," said one of the authors, Christian Bogdal, of the Swiss Federal Laboratory for Materials Testing and Research.

But while the concentration of POPs fell after the 1970s as many of those compounds were banned, the scientists found an unusual resurgence in more recent sediment from the past 10 to 15 years.

They concluded that the lake, the Oberaarsee, was largely fed by water from a nearby melting glacier that was releasing pollutants at a level comparable to when the compounds were still in use.

"At this stage our study indicates that accelerated glacier melting due to global warming may also account for enhanced release of legacy organic pollutants at historically high levels," according to the full study.

One of the scientists, Peter Schmid, told AFP on Wednesday that their findings were replicated at two other glacial lakes in the Swiss Alps.

But another lake that was not fed by glaciers did not show any increase in the compounds.

The authors said that that it was the first time that glaciers were demonstrated to be a secondary source of such pollution.

Production and use of POPs was banned or restricted under an international treaty in 2001, although several major industrialised nations such as the United States had started to outlaw them in preceding decades.

They are regarded as very durable and carcinogenic, and in some instances can be absorbed through the skin.

Their release in an Alpine setting could lead to "short but intense pulses" of pollution in spring and summer, the scientists concluded.

That could affect drinking water in Alpine huts, the food chain through fish from nearby lakes, irrigation facilities and even artificial snow on ski slopes.

The Alps are commonly known as the water tower of Europe, as the source of major rivers such as the Rhine and Rhone.

Schmid cautioned that more research was needed to determine the pathways of the POPs in the Alps and how much they retained their toxicity.

Read more!

Why the Ring of Fire is so angry

Fiona MacDonald, Science Alert 9 Oct 09;

For the past ten days the Ring of Fire has been releasing its fury on the Pacific Islands and the towns and cities of Sumatra, Indonesia.

There have been at least five major earthquakes in the notorious region in just a little over a week – one which caused a tsunami that obliterated entire towns on the islands of Samoa. Combined, these natural disasters have killed at least 1470 people, and the number is expected to rise as the search for survivors comes to an end and water shortages and disease affect the regions.

As the scale of the disasters magnify, it’s hard not to question why this has happened. What caused so many earthquakes to occur in the one region in such a short space of time - was it a coincidence, or a linked chain of events? And with all of our technology, why couldn’t we get the warning out in time?

The earthquakes all occured along the notorious Ring of Fire. The Ring roughly circles some of the world’s most picturesque islands and countries – like Samoa, Vanuatu, Tonga and Indonesia, but it is a far from stable location. Eighty per cent of the world’s largest earthquakes occur along the Pacific Ring of Fire, and on boxing day 2004 a massive plate movement on the Ring caused a tsunami that killed around 300,00 people.

Despite its bad reputation, the number of large earthquakes that have occurred in the region over the past ten days has shocked scientists and the media, and have caused them to question the link between the events.

Coincidence or connected?
The earthquakes off the coasts of Samoa and Sumatra, which occurred on the 29 and 30 of September, have been the most closely scrutinised. Despite the fact that they occurred within a few hours of each other, physically the earthquakes were very different.

Notably, the Samoan earthquake was close to the surface of the seabed and caused a tsunami, whereas the Sumatran earthquake was deeper and did its damage by violently shaking the Indonesian island.

Despite their differences, both earthquakes occurred on the Australian plate, and researchers from the University of Queensland have suggested that one may have triggered the other. However, many are sceptical. Samoa is 6,400 kilometres from Indonesia, and stress from Earthquakes usually only travels around 600 kilometres.

“There is no causal link that we know of between Sumatran earthquake and the Samoan earthquake although both are on (different) boundaries of the Australian Plate,” said Kevin McCue, President of the Australian Earthquake Engineering Society.

However, a study published in Nature on Thursday 1 September revealed that earthquakes can weaken faults a great distance away – the team from the USA suggested that the 2004 earthquake which caused the Boxing Day tsunami may have weakened the San Andreas Fault 8000 km away.

In light of this discovery, it is possible that the two quakes were linked - but McCue argues that it is far more likely that the Sumatran earthquake was triggered by the Boxing Day earthquake in 2004 rather than the Samoan one the night before.

“There is a strong link between the Sumatran earthquake and the December 2004 great earthquake on an adjacent segment of the same plate boundary. It is certainly within a fault length of the 2004 earthquake, the distance within which stresses have been affected by reworking of the faulted boundary,” said McCue.

That doesn’t mean that the Samoan earthquake, measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale, had no effect - it is likely that it triggered the three earthquakes on 8 October off the coast of Vanuatu, according to McCue.

These latest quakes caused a tsunami that had people fleeing the coast in New Zealand and Australia and Pacific island locals clambering for high ground, before the warnings were called off.

Is this the beginning of the end?
So what does it all mean? Are the multiple earthquakes a sign of the beginning of the end. And did our impact on the planet cause them?

After watching movies like The Day After Tomorrow it’s not hard to assume the worst, but McCue argues that, although tragic, the disasters of the past week aren’t unheard of in the history of the planet.

“The current levels of activity are unusual but not uncommon. Events of this frequency and magnitude (and worse) have occurred in the past and will continue to do so for millennia. The presence of humans has not changed the intensity and frequency of these large, catastrophic events. The surface of the earth will continue to move and change, and it will do so more dramatically and more often in the areas that are already known to us as highly active,” said McCue.

It is small comfort to know that this is one disaster we may not have brought upon ourselves; however it is devastating that we can now explore Mars and find water on the moon, but we still cannot protect ourselves from changes on our own planet.

Where will the next large earthquake hit?
Although we know a lot more about the movements of the Earth's tectonic plates and 'weak spots' than we did in the past, we still can’t predict when earthquakes will happen. We can look at which faults are weakened and expect movement in that region, but there is no knowing when this will occur. In the case of the earthquake that caused the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, scientists predicted that the surrounding faults would be weakened as a result, but it took five years before another large earthquake struck.

Further research may open up new ways for us to predict earthquakes, but the planet will always be out of our control, according to McCue. We must focus on developing early warning systems and educating residents in high-risk areas on when to find shelter, he adds.

Preparing for the worst
The Ring of Fire isn’t out of danger now by any means, says McCue. The floor of the Indian Ocean is being dragged down below Indonesia, and this is going to continue to cause jerks that can result in earthquakes and tsunamis.

“This sequence is not abnormal for a plate boundary, and whilst it is not possible to guess where earthquakes will happen in the near future, countries from Papua New Guinea to New Zealand would probably be wise to dust off their response plans.”

One thing that is clear from the events of the past week is that it is dangerous to wait for official warnings, according to McCue.

“How long before we can get this simple message to all inhabitants of and tourists to the south-west Pacific islands and south-east Asia? If you are near the sea and feel a large earthquake, then immediately make for a spot at least 10m above the high water mark and wait there for several hours. The earthquake shaking is the best tsunami warming you will get, no good waiting for the phone to ring or a warning to be issued on the radio,” said McCue.

“That education should start in the schools,” he added.

While we clean up after the damage unleashed by the earthquakes of the past ten days, the best that we can do is to understand that this disaster is not a random coincidence or a one off - on the timeline of the planet this is a normal event.

Although we will never stop earthquakes, we can’t be too cautious, according to McCue. People need to be prepared for the worst and know when to get to safety. As we have witnessed too many times over the past five years, waiting for a warning can be the difference between life and death.

Read more!

Africa wants $65 bln to meet climate change

Christophe Parayre Yahoo News 9 Oct 09;

OUAGADOUGOU (AFP) – Two months before a crucial UN climate summit African leaders on Friday said the continent needs 65 billion dollars (44 billion euros) to deal with the effects of global warming.

"We think 65 billion dollars are needed to deal with the effects of climate change on a continental scale. That is to say that our expectations are very high," Salifou Sawadogo, Burkina Faso's environment minister said at the opening of a special forum on climate change.

The seventh World Forum on Sustainable Development comes just two months before the UN climate summit in Copenhagen set to seal a planet-saving global deal.

Experts say Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the regions most affected by global warming. The World Bank estimates that the developing world will suffer about 80 percent of the damage of climate change despite accounting for only around one third of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

"We are all on the same planet so there is a duty of solidarity to help the most vulnerable countries, like we are, implement policies to adapt to climate change," Sawadogo said.

His comments come as crunch UN climate talks held in Bangkok drew to a close Friday with the rift between the rich and the poor countries still wide open.

A key point of contention remains how much money wealthy nations are willing to cough up to help developing ones deal with climate change.

"The Ethiopian prime minister (Meles Zenawi, one of the African representatives for the UN summit) was adamant. If nothing is done, Africa will leave the table" at the Copenhagen talks, the minister said.

The African continent is the world's poorest and least industrialised. Africans account for only 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions while the central Congo basin is considered one of the worlds 'green lungs' together with the Amazon rain forest.

Already climate change is reeking havoc in Africa with West Africa suffering from floods while east Africa is facing an historic drought. Experts say global warming is set to further affect the continent: agriculture here is almost exclusively dependent on rain for irrigation and the continuing spread of the Sahara desert is already changing migration patterns.

In Copenhagen "we need a have a reciprocal exchange", Youssouf Ouedraogo, the former prime minister of Burkina Faso and currently a special advisor to the African Development Bank (BAD) told AFP.

"Africa should not be made to feel that while it is the least polluting continent its views and demands are not heard. That would be dangerous," he said.

Still Western representatives at the Burkina Faso forum warned that Africa's demands for compensation could be hard to meet.

Because of the economic crisis "the resources of developed nations have contracted," Pierre-Andre Wilzer, a member of the French development agency AFD told AFP.

"You cannot think that all of a sudden we will be able to increase global development aid by 50 percent."

The three-day forum in Ouagadougou organised by the government of Burkina Faso together with the United Nations and the African Union continues in the weekend.

Read more!

Climate talks end with rich-poor rift wide open

Marlowe Hood Fri Yahoo News 9 Oct 09;

BANGKOK (AFP) – Two weeks of crucial UN climate talks concluded Friday after exposing huge rifts between rich and poor nations, just weeks ahead of the deadline for sealing a planet-saving global deal.

Only five negotiating days remain, in November, before 192 nations converge for a critical December showdown in Copenhagen, where they have pledged to conclude a treaty to tackle global warming.

Without rapid action, scientists say, the world faces catastrophe in the form of drought, flooding, famine and forced migration.

"My feeling is that the ball, immediately, is in the developed country court to make it clearer what they are looking for," said Malta's Michael Cutajar, co-chair of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks.

A few minutes later at a separate press conference, US negotiator Jonathan Pershing countered: "I think the ball is in the court of all countries."

He highlighted a key demand from rich countries that emerging giants such as China, India and Brazil commit to binding actions on climate.

"We are at a critical stage, with major issues unresolved," said Martin Khor, executive director of the South Centre, a Geneva-based think-tank aligned with developing countries.

"If there is no improvement in the divisions, the prospects are certainly not bright for an outcome in Copenhagen that is ambitious environmentally, and equitable from a social point of view," he said.

The key stumbling blocks are how to share out the job of slashing the heat-trapping greenhouse gases, and how much money wealthy nations will stump up to help developing ones fight climate change and cope with its consequences.

"At the end of the day, if you don't have ambitious (emissions) targets from rich nations, and if you don't have significant finance on the table, the whole thing falls apart," said Yvo de Boer, the UN's top climate official.

But even as Bangkok inched from procedure to substance, negotiators on both sides of the issues agreed the experts' dialogue will remain blocked without strong input from world leaders between now and December.

"This is not the only game in town," said de Boer, referring to the UNFCCC, of which he is executive secretary.

Expectations are high for a second world leaders' summit on climate before Copenhagen, following a September gathering at the UN in New York, but no dates have been announced.

De Boer said he hoped the awarding of the Nobel Peace prize to US President Barack Obama would be "an encouragement for him to bring a strong commitment to Copenhagen".

The looming question of how the United States will fit into any new agreement has dominated the Bangkok meeting, with Pershing making clear that Washington will never join the Kyoto Protocol.

Kyoto legally obliges 37 industrialised countries to cut greenhouse gas output by a total of more than five percent before 2012 compared to 1990 levels.

This raises the issue of whether to scrap Kyoto and fold some of its provisions into a new accord, or to expand its provisions for another five or seven years while cutting a separate deal for the United States.

"A single instrument is more coherent, and for that reason is preferable," said Elliot Diringer, vice president of the Washington-based Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

But developing nations expressed deep alarm at what they saw as a shift away from Kyoto towards a US proposal for a "bottom-up" approach, in which countries submit national plans to outside verification.

"The train to Copenhagen is in imminent peril. Please don't destroy the Kyoto Protocol track," China's top climate negotiator Su Wei pleaded in the closing plenary session.

"The European Union, which was the most loyal to the protocol up to now, seems to be wavering. If they jump ship, Kyoto will be an empty shell," said Khor.

Green groups lamented the lack of progress in Bangkok, and called on rich-nation leaders not to wait until the eleventh hour to act.

"If the industrialized countries don't put their cards on the table regarding finance, there isn't going to be a card game in Copenhagen," said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

UN climate talks split on treaty
Richard Black, BBC News 9 Oct 09;

The latest round of UN climate talks in Bangkok has ended with deep divisions over the shape of a new global treaty.

Developing countries want an extension of the Kyoto Protocol; but developed nations are arguing for a completely new agreement.

Poorer countries and environment groups accuse the west of lacking ambition.

There are now only five negotiating days left until the opening of the UN summit in Copenhagen in December that is supposed to finalise the new treaty.

"Just two months before Copenhagen, the Bangkok climate negotiations did little to move the ball forward," said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a leading light in the international climate campaign tcktcktck.

"Bold steps are clearly needed from the world's leaders to break the deadlock in the negotiations, and time is running short."

The fortnight of talks in Bangkok began with negotiators looking at about 200 pages of text with 2,000 items that had yet to be agreed.

Progress has been made during the session, said delegates, but fundamental divisions remained.

"This session has shown that it can be done," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN climate convention (UNFCCC).

"All of the ingredients for success are on the table, and what we must do now is to hold back from self interest and let the common interest prevail."

Three-way split

The proposed new treaty's legal form has emerged as a significant issue.

Three options were on the table, said Mr de Boer: a completely new document, an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, or a "series of decisions" made at the Copenhagen talks.

This is much more than a technical issue.

Developing countries insist on the Kyoto Protocol route because of the obligations it already contains on developed nations - to cut emissions further than their existing pledges (which run to 2012, the end of the "first commitment period") and to provide finance for poorer countries.

"We have been dismayed by the lack of willingness by several of our developed country partners to move in this direction," said Shyam Saran, leader of India's delegation.

"It is a matter of regret that several (developed) countries are unlikely to meet their emission reduction obligations for the first commitment period.

"And [it is] a matter of even deeper concern than there has been no progress on achieving the key objective of our negotiations - the announcement of second commitment period targets which must be of a scale equal to the challenge we face of global climate change."

Insistence on putting a new agreement inside the Kyoto Protocol framework could, though, prevent any chance of US involvement.

The US Senate did not ratify the Kyoto treaty and would be unlikely to ratify a new agreement built on its principles.

'Foot dragging'

Environment groups, too, had hoped that developed countries would come forward with stronger commitments on reducing emissions and on providing money to help poorer nations adapt to climate impacts.

Norway pledged to reduce its emissions by 40% from 1990 levels by 2020 - the strongest pledge by any country so far.

But campaigners accused others, notably the EU, of using the absence of a firm US commitment as an excuse for dragging their own feet.

Legislation mandating emission cuts has yet to pass through the US Senate, and may not go through before the Copenhagen talks.

"Other countries are using the US's position as an opportunity to try and avoid stringent legally binding emissions cuts which they should implement at home," said Meena Raman from Friends of the Earth Malaysia.

"So far it looks like the Copenhagen talks could deliver a toothless agreement based on vague pledges that cannot deliver the deep greenhouse cuts that science and justice demand of rich nations."

Delegates convene again in Barcelona at the beginning of November for a further week of negotiations - the final round before the Copenhagen summit.

Mr de Boer noted that at the UN special session on climate change held in New York last month, heads of government had given a "clear mandate" to reach a firm climate deal this year.

But, he said, this needed to be translated into stronger ambitions within the detailed negotiations.

Bangkok climate talks end in recrimination
Bitter delegates say no agreement on money or emissions cuts means a deal at Copenhagen will be weak at best
John Vidal, guardian.co.uk 9 Oct 09;

Global climate change talks came to an end in Bangkok today in an atmosphere of distrust and recrimination, with the rift between rich and poor countries seemingly wider than ever. After two weeks of negotiations there have been no breakthroughs on big issues such as money or emissions cuts.

With just five days of negotiating time now left before the concluding talks in Copenhagen in December, delegates said it appeared a weak deal was the most likely outcome, and no deal at all was a possibility.

However, President Obama's expected visit to Oslo to receive the Nobel peace prize in the middle of the climate talks raised hopes that he would make the short journey to Copenhagen to galvanise governments.

"World leadership is now vital if the talks are not to fail completely. It is inconceivable that Obama could now ignore the climate change talks," said one diplomat.

The citation for the prize specifically mentions the president "now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting".

However, China, India, Brazil and other major developing countries lined up with environment and development groups to condemn both the US and EU for demanding a brand-new climate agreement.

This would bring the US aboard an agreement but in the eyes of most countries would mean the effective end of the Kyoto protocol and possibly allow countries to set their own targets and timetables for cuts.

"It's irresponsible to even contemplate the idea of discarding the Kyoto protocol. It's the lifeblood of any future agreement. It is the only legally binding agreement that gives the certainty of moving rapidly to addressing the climate concerns of billions of people," said said Di-Aping Lumumba, Sudanese chair of the G77, a group of 130 developing countries.

"Developed countries have a massive leadership deficit. It's now up to their leaders to intervene and give a direction to the negotiations rather than waste everyone's time," he said.

Shyam Saran, Indian special envoy on climate change, said: "The EU must change its position. There have been inadmissible attempts to abandon the Kyoto protocol. This would mean rewriting the key principles. This is not what we agreed by consensus."

But the EU and UN brushed off concerns. "We are not killing Kyoto," said Anders Turesson, chair of the EU working group in the negotiations. "We want to preserve the contents [of the protocol]. The only way to do that is to find a new home for it in a new single legal instrument."

"This is trying to build something bigger and better than Kyoto. The fear is that there would be a race to the bottom. It is the opposite," he said.

Yvo de Boer, executive director of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted there were now "serious" problems. "The spirit remains constructive and we have seen advances in Bangkok, but there is a strong fear that there is an attempt to kill the Kyoto protocol. That is causing great dissatisfaction," he said.

Environment and development groups accused the EU and US of holding poor countries to ransom. "The rift between rich and poor has intensified because rich countries have not put serious money on the table to help poor countries adapt to escalating impacts of climate change," said Oxfam senior climate adviser Antonio Hill. "The US has been silent on the scale of finance it will commit to."

"Both the US and the EU have tried to shift the burden on to developing countries, arguing that they should even pay towards the costs of adapting to climate change despite their minimal contribution to the problem," said Tom Sharman, ActionAid's head of climate change. The only bright spot in the negotiations was Norway's decision to increase its emissions reduction target to 40% on 1990 levels by 2020, he said.

"The EU has only increased developing country mistrust and the US is trying to impose its own domestic limitations on the world. It's time for President Obama to be the climate leader he says he is," said Martin Kaiser, Greenpeace International climate policy adviser.

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Bangkok talks: less paper, more problems

WWF 9 Oct 09;

Bangkok - Delegates who just ended a long and difficult session of climate negotiations in Bangkok made some technical progress but lack of a political mandate and backing from their capitals prevented the kind of breakthrough needed to significantly advance an agreement.

According to WWF, negotiators worked hard to get through hundreds of pages of draft text, and they managed to cut it roughly in half. However, they could not move forward on most significant issues such as finance commitments and institutions, emission reduction targets and the legal nature of the actual outcome of the process.

“After this session the text is shorter, but not much sweeter”, said Kim Carstensen, the leader of WWFs Global Climate Initiative.

“We know more clearly where the political stumbling blocks are, and we know that leaders rather than negotiators need to fix them. We therefore call on Heads of State to meet again before the climate talks culminate in Copenhagen in December,” said Carstensen.

“With only five negotiation days left ahead of Copenhagen, we can’t afford to waste time on missing mandates. It is absolutely necessary that negotiators bring new and clear political instructions with them when they meet next month in Barcelona”

The crisis in Bangkok around the future of the Kyoto Protocol and perceived attempts by some developed nations to “kill” it require responsible political action from all sides.

“Suggestions that we can do without the Kyoto Protocol and replace it with an entirely new instrument are unproductive at this point. It will take too long, we have no way of knowing what we will get, and it is very likely that the process will just lead to a prolonged race to the bottom”, said Carstensen.

The Bangkok session has shown that while the lack of a bill from the United States Senate still remains a major obstacle to progress in the talks, we now see worrying signs of blocking from the European Union which has been unable to show leadership and clear ambition.

“The lack of a bill in the U.S. senate is certainly an elephant in the room. But, we no longer have just one elephant, we have several. Now we need to equip this herd with wings to make them fly”, said Carstensen.

“Without clear positions on finance and institutions, the EU can no longer be called the leader of the climate negotiations and its leading position is dropping from day to day. The European Council in late October presents the next obvious opportunity to rectify this.”

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UN Climate Change Negotiations result in more clarity

UN Climate Change Negotiations result in more clarity on 'bricks and mortar' of Copenhagen agreed outcome, but decisions on finance and mid-term targets remain outstanding
UNEP 9 Oct 09;

Bangkok, 09 October 2009 - The penultimate negotiating session before the historic UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December wrapped up Friday in the Thai capitol Bangkok with progress made on what needs to constitute the "bricks and mortar" of the Copenhagen agreed outcome, but a continuing lack of clarity on key deliverables to make a successful international climate change deal workable.

"A will has emerged in Bangkok to build the architecture to rapidly implement climate action," said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer, "but significant differences remain. In December, citizens everywhere in the world will have a right to know exactly what their governments will do to prevent dangerous climate change. It is time now to step back from self interest and let the common interest prevail," he added.

Parties made progress on the issues of adaptation, technology transfer and capacity building. They also reached agreement on technical issues such as forests, which according to UNEP's Science Compendium 2009 released in September, play a critical role in emissions reduction.

Whereas the parties made headway on how to assess the global warming potentials of new greenhouse gases and the number of options for strengthening the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism, there was little progress was made on the issue of mid-term emission reduction targets for industrialised countries. And clarity is lacking on the issue of finance that developing countries need to undertake additional actions to limit their emissions growth and adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change.

"A good example with regard to what industrialised countries can do to increase the level of their ambition in the context of an international agreement at Copenhagen is the minus 40% emissions reduction target announced by Norway today," the UN's top climate change official said.

The negotiations in Thailand will be followed by five days of pre-Copenhagen negotiations in Barcelona (2-6 November) before the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (7-18 December).

"Negotiators have three weeks back in their capitals to receive guidance from their political leaders to complete their work," said Yvo de Boer. "Bold leadership must open the roadblocks around the essentials of targets and finance that the negotiators can complete their journey," he added.

Heads of state and government meeting in New York in September identified five politically essential issues to a deliver a comprehensive, fair and effective Copenhagen agreement.

The climate change deal clinched in Copenhagen is to ensure enhanced action to assist the most vulnerable and the poorest to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Furthermore, world leaders have agreed that clarity must be provided on ambitious emission reduction targets of industrialised countries, as well as the need for nationally appropriate mitigation actions by developing countries with the necessary support.

A beacon to guide discussions is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's finding that an aggregate emission reduction by industrialised countries of between minus 25% and 40% over 1990 levels would be required by 2020, and that global emissions would need to be reduced by at least 50% by 2050, in order to stave off the worst effects of climate change.

The fourth essential identified by heads of state and government is that the Copenhagen agreed outcome needs to generate scaled-up financial and technological resources, with a mechanism put in place that would funds to be generated automatically over time.

Finally, they have agreed that the Copenhagen deal needs to create an equitable governance structure to manage funds for adaptation and mitigation that address the needs of developing countries.

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