Best of our wild blogs: 25 Oct 09

Turtle Blogathon 2009
to raise funds, by the Malaysia Turtle Conservation Centre

Rich Biodiversity @ Temasek Junior College - Part 1
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature

A 'fan'tastic night!
from wild shores of singapore

Basking in the sun
from Otterman speaks

My First Time Posting about a Plant
from Creatures in the Wild

Dark-necked Tailorbird feeding juveniles
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Sub-adult Greater Coucal
from Bird Ecology Study Group

A Whole Bunch of Six-Legged Mini-Monsters
from Creatures in the Wild

Water For All
from Manta Blog

300 people come together to make giant 350 for International Day of Climate Change
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales

Read more!

8 parks fully connected in western Singapore

Channel NewsAsia 25 Oct 09;

SINGAPORE: A wide range of exciting recreational experiences awaits residents in western Singapore, following the completion of the Western Adventure Park Connector Network (PCN).

The 23km PCN joins eight parks in western Singapore, namely Choa Chu Kang Park, Villa Verde Park, Zhenghua Park, Dairy Farm Nature Park, Bukit Batok Nature Park, Bukit Batok Town Park, Limbang Park and Bukit Panjang Park.

Minister for Manpower Gan Kim Yong officially launched the Western Adventure PCN on Sunday as part of Clean and Green Singapore.

Mr Gan, who is also the MP for Chua Chu Kang, walked a 1.8km scenic stretch of Pang Sua Park Connector with 1,000 residents, accompanied by MPs for Hong Kah GRC, Dr Amy Khor and Mr Alvin Yeo.

The Western Adventure PCN caters to users ranging from the adventure-seekers to the nature lovers and families.

For the adventure-seekers, they can go mountain biking at Zhenghua Park and Dairy Farm Nature Park, rock climbing at Dairy Farm Quarry and hiking at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and Zhenghua Park.

For the nature lovers, the Western Adventure PCN offers them opportunities to spot butterflies and birds like the singing Zebra Dove, the Tiger Shrike (a winter visitor with tiger-like black bars pattern) and the Oriental White-eye which is characterised by a white ring around the eye. Over 10 species of butterflies and 50 species of birds have been sighted along the PCN.

The Western Adventure PCN is also home to a wide variety of flora and fauna, a result of the 550 species of trees which have been planted at various stretches along the PCN.

To promote awareness of the rich biodiversity of birds, NParks will work with Nature Society to conduct bird-watching activities at the PCN.

For the shutter bugs, there are scenic lookouts at the Bukit Batok Town Park, which is also known as 'Little Guilin', and Bukit Batok Nature Park.

Regional parks, such as Choa Chu Kang Park, offer family-oriented facilities such as playgrounds and fitness corners.

The Western Adventure PCN is the second loop of park connectors to be completed, after the Eastern Coastal PCN in December 2007.

Five more loops of park connectors are in the pipeline. Once completed, the park connectors will form a green matrix, connecting major parks and nature sites and providing users with a choice of landscapes and distances for recreation.

- CNA/ir


Eight Parks in western Singapore now fully connected - Western Adventure PCN is the 2nd loop of park connectors to be completed
NParks media release 25 Oct 09;

Singapore, 25 October 2009 - Residents in western Singapore can look forward to a wide array of exciting recreational experiences, with the completion of the Western Adventure Park Connector Network (PCN).

The 23km PCN joins eight parks in western Singapore, namely Choa Chu Kang Park, Villa Verde Park, Zhenghua Park, Dairy Farm Nature Park, Bukit Batok Nature Park, Bukit Batok Town Park, Limbang Park and Bukit Panjang Park.

It is the second loop of park connectors to be completed, after the Eastern Coastal PCN in December 2007. Five more loops of park connectors are in the pipeline. Once completed, the park connectors will form a green matrix, connecting major parks and nature sites and providing users with a choice of landscapes and distances for recreation.

Mr Gan Kim Yong, Minister for Manpower and MP for Chua Chu Kang SMC, officially launched the Western Adventure PCN today as part of Clean and Green Singapore. He walked a 1.8 km scenic stretch of Pang Sua Park Connector with 1,000 residents, accompanied by MPs for Hong Kah GRC, Dr Amy Khor and Mr Alvin Yeo.

Diverse range of adventures and experiences along PCN

The Western Adventure PCN offers a diverse range of recreational experiences, to cater to all types of users, from adventure-seekers to nature lovers and families. Some of the activities include:

For Adventure-Seekers
- Mountain biking at Zhenghua Park and Dairy Farm Nature Park
- Rock Climbing at Dairy Farm Quarry
- Hiking at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and Zhenghua Park

For Nature Enthusiasts & Photographers
- Scenic lookouts at Bukit Batok Town Park ('Little Guilin') and Bukit Batok Nature Park
- Bird Watching & photography along Bukit Panjang Park Connector, Zhenghua Park and Bukit Batok Nature Park.
- Butterfly spotting along Pang Sua Park Connector

For Families
- Regional parks, such as Choa Chu Kang Park, offer family-oriented facilities such as playgrounds and fitness corners
- Learning about a slice of Singapore's history along Hillview Park Connector (where the Ford Motor factory is a short distance away)
- Wallace Education Centre and nature trail at Dairy Farm Nature Park
- Leisure activities along Pang Sua Park Connector

Rich biodiversity along Western Adventure PCN

The Western Adventure PCN is home to a wide variety of flora and fauna, a result of the 550 species of butterfly and birds-attracting trees which have been planted at various stretches along the PCN. They include Pang Sua, Choa Chu Kang, Choa Chu Kang North and Bukit Panjang Park Connectors.

Over 10 species of butterflies and 50 species of birds have been sighted along the PCN. The birds include the singing Zebra Dove; the Tiger Shrike, a winter visitor with tiger-like black bars pattern; and the Oriental White-eye which is characterised by a white ring around the eye. To promote awareness of the rich biodiversity of birds, NParks will be working with Nature Society to conduct bird watching activities for Singapore residents at the PCN.

PCN Programme on Track

Implemented by NParks, the PCN is an island-wide network of linear open spaces around major residential areas, linking up parks and nature sites in Singapore. It brings people closer to parks and nature areas, enhancing recreational opportunities for all and is an important part of our plans to evolve Singapore into a "City in a Garden."

To date, over 110km of park connectors have been completed, with 63km currently in construction. The PCN implementation programme is on track. By 2015, NParks aims to develop a 300km island-wide network of green corridors around the island.

PCN Friends - Active Citizenry in Action

To keep PCN users updated and engaged on activities and latest happenings along our park connectors, NParks has formed a group in late 2008 called 'PCN Friends'. NParks has sought feedback from the group members on ensuring that there is sufficient signage along our park connectors. Selected group members were also invited to test-out selective stretches of the Western Adventure PCN earlier this year.

Since 2007, NParks has establishing a common identity for PCN to guide and inform users through standardised signboards, directional signs, PCN streetprints and destination markers.

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From selling burgers to saving rainforests

Self-made millionaire brokers carbon credit deals between farmers and big corporations
Tan Dawn Wei, Straits Times 25 Oct 09;

When Australian Dorjee Sun was just 18, he had his first taste of entrepreneurship when he discovered a niche he could plug at rock concerts.

There was never any vegetarian food available, and vegetarians are rock fans too, like his friends.

So he borrowed kitchen equipment from his parents, who ran a catering business, hired five of his prettiest friends to man a stall, and dished out vegetarian burgers and noodles.

On his first day, he made A$10,000 (S$13,000) - a far better deal than the A$11 an hour he was making as a waiter at DKNY in his hometown of Sydney.

Today, the 33-year-old is plugging a different kind of niche, although still vegetable-related in a way: He is the chief executive officer of Carbon Conservation, a company that brokers multimillion-dollar rainforest carbon credit deals between big-time corporations and small-town farmers.

It is a business - one that he incorporated in Singapore just a year ago - but Mr Sun sees a larger purpose to it than just raking in the big bucks.

After all, he is already a self-made millionaire from starting an Internet business for corporate recruitment, a remote-tutoring company and a creative agency doing animation and viral marketing.

His mission now is something money cannot buy: to save one rainforest at a time.

'What I tell my investors is, we want to be the amazon.com of the Amazon,' the charming and infectiously spirited man, who is of

Tibetan-Chinese extraction, said with a cheeky wink.

What makes his start-up interesting is that, while carbon trading is fairly well established globally, having reached US$126 billion (S$176 billion) last year, Mr Sun is selling carbon from rainforests, a relatively new 'currency'.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, 37 industrialised countries have committed to reducing the greenhouse gases they emit.

A market mechanism that has emerged to deal with the practical aspects of this mandatory reduction has been emissions trading, which allows for companies that pollute to buy credits from others with surpluses, so they meet the cap set by the authorities.

'Scientifically and morally, everyone knows the rainforest is this big factory that produces oxygen and absorbs carbon dioxide, but no one has ever put a financial value on it,' said the enthusiastic environmental entrepreneur.

'Our job is to put financial value, or carbon credits, on protecting rainforests. Right now, you get a value only when you turn it into paper or chopsticks. But it should have an inherent value because we now value climate change.'

And how does he determine what goes on the price tag of these green acres? By painstakingly measuring the size of the trees, the number of trunks, the amount of soil and translating that into carbon credits.

'One credit represents one ton of carbon dioxide that would have been released if the forest were razed or chopped down,' he explained.

Shocked by an article he read on how 5,000 orang utans were being burnt alive each year in man-made forest fires in Indonesia, the animal lover decided to put his business skills to good use.

He bought over The Carbon Pool, a company that sold carbon credits in Australia, then ventured into the forests of Aceh, Papua and West Papua to sweet-talk their governors into giving him the exclusive right to broker carbon credits internationally based on their land.

His business model is simple: Corporations that either need to, or want to, fulfil their greenhouse gas emission reduction promise should pay farmers to stop lighting the fires. The second-largest source of carbon emission in the world is from forest fires, and Indonesia has the ignominy of being the world's third-largest greenhouse gas emitter, thanks to its logging and burning. The United States and China are the world's biggest culprits.

With the blessings of the governors, he set off for the US and Britain, knocking on the doors of banks, corporations and investment funds to sell his carbon credits.

Getting them to understand this seemingly complex concept is one thing. The Kyoto Protocol does not include carbon trading from forestry as a legally permissible credit.

He got roundly rejected 206 times, 'more rejections than I get at Clarke Quay on a Saturday night', said the bachelor in jest.

His unstinting efforts were captured in an award-winning documentary narrated by Hugh Jackson, The Burning Season.

It was not until 11/2 years later that Merrill Lynch was persuaded into sinking US$9 million to save 770,000ha of tropical forests in Aceh - a world's first - with the promise that it could resell these credits for a profit.

'I cried. I wept tears of joy, in a masculine way,' recalled Mr Sun, named by Time magazine as one of its Heroes of the Environment this year.

His journey to Singapore

A good thing then that he did not heed his parents' wishes to become a dentist or a lawyer after graduating with double degrees in business and law from the University of New South Wales.

The son of illegal immigrants from Darjeeling, India, Mr Sun picked up enough Mandarin from having spent two years in Beijing on a scholarship to converse with his grandparents.

None of his siblings became a dentist either: His younger sister has a boutique creative, design and coding company while his younger brother is a professional stand-up comedian.

Being a corporate suit was just not his style - something he found out quickly after stints as an intern in a law firm and as a management consultant at business consultancy Bain International.

In 2000, he started a Web-based recruitment platform which was later sold to Reuters Thomson for an amount he cannot reveal, due to a confidentiality agreement he inked.

'Businesses are just about people. If you can't manage and find the best people, then you won't be able to build the business,' he said.

That is one of the reasons he chose Singapore as his base, besides the fact that he had always loved his holidays here as a child, and still has vivid memories of Haw Par Villa's gory displays and the old Hotel Equatorial's banana split.

'The quality of people in Singapore is great. People here are Western enough, well travelled and well educated, hard-working; we can do some really cool stuff here.'

He already has four Singaporean law graduates on his payroll and plans to hire more.

More than that, he feels Singapore can be an important centre for carbon transactions.

'Everyone feels comfortable with Singapore: British-based law, real clarity of governance, global hub for arbitration.'

Since receiving his employment pass in April this year, he has wasted no time in getting himself settled in, including meeting representatives of government agencies like the Economic Development Board and speaking at the Nanyang Technological University.

But what he wants more than anything else is the opportunity to meet Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, whom he hopes to get on his haze initiative which he is launching on the sidelines of the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum with the Asian Development Bank.

Next month, he is also moving his company into a 5,000 sq ft space at Orchard Boulevard which will house 10 staff members.

Besides putting in his own money, he has three Singapore-based investors, and has been doing additional investor rounds. For that reason, he declined to say how much has been pumped in.

The self-professed serial entrepreneur, who clocks 18-hour days, makes no apologies about his capitalistic approach to saving the environment.

Of the world's 100 biggest economic entities, 51 are corporations while the rest are countries, he pointed out.

'If you don't involve a trillion dollars of capital market, you're joking if you think you're going to change the world.'

This is the second in a series on foreign-born entrepreneurs who have created successful businesses in Singapore.

Read more!

Sharks don't scare tourists, they attract them: WWF

Brisbane Times 21 Oct 09;

Sharks are worth more alive than dead.

New research shows the ocean predators draw a healthy chunk of the tourist dollar.

WWF Australia spokesman Nick Heath says shark tourism is on the rise but shark numbers are declining, with estimates placing reef shark populations at three to 12 per cent of their original size in some parts of the Great Barrier Reef.

"We must do more to protect these top predators from disappearing on our watch, if not for the benefit of the environment, then at least for the benefit of the back pocket," Mr Heath said.

"A guaranteed shark sighting is worth its weight in gold to the tourism industry."

He said recent research by James Cook University found potential shark sightings were a major drawcard to the diving sector, with tourists willing to pay thousands of dollars to see a shark in the wild.

The researchers estimated up to 25 per cent or $1375 of each visitor's expenditure in Cairns and Port Douglas in far north Queensland went towards the opportunity to see a shark.

Divers mostly want to see hammerhead sharks followed by whale sharks and tiger sharks, the study found.

The group says more than 70,000 sharks are taken by fishermen each year in waters off north Queensland, many inside the Great Barrier Reef area.

Sharks thus come under particular threat because of slow growth rates, late sexual maturity, long gestation periods and birthing only a few young at a time.

AAP

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Turtles prefer the 'city life'

Jody Bourton, BBC News 21 Oct 09;

Urbanisation has long been at odds with wildlife.

However, scientists have found a turtle that does better in a suburban habitat than it does in nature reserves.

Eastern long-necked turtles living in the suburbs of Australia have larger home ranges and cope better with periods of drought.

The reptiles also appear to grow and survive better, suggesting suburban environments may sometimes be superior places to live than natural ones.

Scientists have published the findings in the journal Biological Conservation.

Eastern long-necked turtles (Chelodina longicollis) are common across much of south eastern Australia.

Found in many freshwater habitats in the wild and in towns and cities, they are carnivorous, feeding on fish, frogs and crayfish.

However, throughout the world urbanisation can be damaging to many animals, resulting in loss of habitat and the disappearance of species.

So the researchers examined how the long-necked turtle responds to urban living and drought.

They did this by comparing turtles that lived in the suburbs of Canberra, Australia to those in adjacent nature reserves.

What they found surprised them.

"We expected suburban turtles to move around less than those on the nature reserves in response to the many threats that suburban turtles could encounter, but we found the opposite," says Dr John Roe, a member of the research team from the Institute for Applied Ecology at the University of Canberra, Australia.

"Suburban turtles travelled longer distances and occupied home ranges nearly three times larger than turtles in the nature reserves," he says.

Long-necked commuter

The researchers attached miniature radio transmitters to the turtles in each habitat and followed their weekly movements over the course of a year.

Both turtle populations made long journeys of up to two and a half kilometres between bodies of water.

"Given their extensive movements, we expected that suburban turtles would have a high rate of encounters with vehicles on roads, and thus fewer would survive," Dr Roe says.

"Despite this, suburban turtles did not suffer appreciably higher mortality than their counterparts on reserve lands, only one of our 36 radio tracked turtles was hit by a vehicle," he told BBC News.

Vegetated drainage lines and drainage culverts running under roads in the suburbs of Canberra protected the turtles.

"The vegetated drainage lines and culverts allowed the turtles to move about and use the landscape in normal ways, which reduced their exposure to urban threats and allowed them to avoid suffering from excessive road mortality," Dr Roe explains.

Suburban oasis

The turtles' responses to drought also surprised the team.

Turtles in the nature reserves responded to the drying up of the wetlands by estivating, lying dormant buried under leaf litter.

However, suburban turtles did not need to.

"Water bodies are often incorporated into urban design for the purposes of storm water removal and retention," Dr Roe says.

So "suburban water bodies remain flooded, allowing turtles to maintain aquatic activities throughout the drought."

That means turtles living in towns and cities are immune to the worst effects of prolonged drought, which can deplete wild turtles' energy and water stores.

"It appears that the suburban landscapes, despite their many challenges, may be higher quality habitats than nature reserves for turtles during drought," Dr Roe says.

Life in the suburbs

Dr Roe also has evidence suggesting that suburban turtles outperform their counterparts on nature reserves in other aspects of their life history.

"We have additional data that demonstrates higher population abundances, growth rates, and evidence of at least equivalent recruitment from reproduction in suburban turtles," he says.

Dr Roe hopes to continue the research to see if this trend is represented over the turtles' entire life span.

He also hopes to monitor the turtles' response to the frequent droughts that are gripping much of Australia whilst exploring how suburban areas, road design and urban planning may effect them.

"It would be interesting to determine whether well-designed urban areas hold any promise as long term drought refuges for some turtle populations."

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Freezer to preserve threatened coral

Jonathan Leake, Times Online 25 Oct 09;

Corals from tropical oceans are to be placed in deep freeze at a British zoo to preserve them for posterity as they face destruction from rising greenhouse gas levels.

The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is planning the first global “coral cryobank”, where hundreds of samples from each species would be stored in liquid nitrogen.

The decision follows research showing that most coral reefs will be largely dead by 2040, wiped out by a combination of rising temperatures and increasing acidity in oceans. They include Australia’s 1,600-mile Great Barrier Reef, most Caribbean reefs and those in the “coral triangle” which spans Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and East Timor.

“Carbon dioxide emissions are rising fast and are already above the safe level for corals,” said Dr Alex Rogers, head of marine biodiversity at the ZSL.

“Some reefs are already beginning to fail and many will die within a few decades. We need a plan B, and freezing them is the best option.”

Whipsnade zoo in Bedfordshire has been earmarked for the new coral bank.

The desperate nature of the plan reflects the despair among scientists about rising CO2 levels, which have a dual effect on coral reefs.

At the heart of the problem is the 35 billion tons of CO2 generated annually by human activities — a level that is rising by 2%-3% each year.

In the atmosphere, CO2 traps solar energy and increases air and sea temperatures to a point that kills coral.

Half the emissions of CO2 also dissolve into the sea, raising acidity until it dissolves the calcium carbonate mineral from which reefs are built.

Coral reefs around the world are already showing the impacts. This year the Australian Institute of Marine Science found growth rates of corals on the Great Barrier Reef had fallen by 14% since 1990.

Another study, led by Dr Charlie Veron, a former chief scientist at the institute, warned that CO2 levels were already so high that corals were doomed.

“Atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 350 parts per million represented a threshold for the world’s reefs,” said Veron. “Beyond that, damaging heating becomes too frequent and the ecosystem starts to decline. We are already at 387ppm and reefs are beginning to fail.”

Today 120 legislators from 16 countries will attend talks in Copenhagen organised by Globe, a high-level inter- governmental organisation, to discuss the threat to coral reefs and how to preserve samples for the distant future.

The idea of setting up a coral bank arose from the success of projects such as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault which preserves thousands of plant seeds from around the world in a cooled cavern on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen.

It follows a breakthrough in regenerating coral from frozen samples. Craig Downs, of the Haereticus Environmental Laboratory, developed the technique and is now working with the ZSL. “We can take 1mm-2mm biopsies from coral, freeze them at -200C and thaw them out to regenerate back into a polyp,” he said. “We are proposing to do this for every species of coral on the planet.”

There are about 1,800 known tropical corals and another 3,350 cold-water species. Downs proposes keeping 1,000 samples of each in a small warehouse.

The Smithsonian Institution in Washington is discussing setting up a similar facility to mitigate against failure.

'Freezer plan' bid to save coral
Matt McGrath, BBC News 25 Oct 09;

The prospects of saving the world's coral reefs now appear so bleak that plans are being made to freeze samples to preserve them for the future.

A meeting in Denmark took evidence from researchers that most coral reefs will not survive even if tough regulations on greenhouse gases are put in place.

Scientists proposed storing samples of coral species in liquid nitrogen.

That will allow them to be reintroduced to the seas in the future if global temperatures can be stabilised.

Legislators from 16 major economies have been meeting in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, to try to agree the way forward on climate change.

The meeting has been organised by the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (Globe).

Losing the fight

One of the issues they have been considering is what to do with coral reefs, which make up less than a quarter of 1% of the ocean's floor.

Yet the reefs are a key source of food, income and coastal protection for around 500 million people worldwide.

At this meeting, politicians and scientists acknowledged that global emissions of carbon dioxide are rising so fast that we are losing the fight to save coral and the world must develop an alternative plan.

Freezing samples for the future may be a necessary option.

"Well it's the last ditch effort to save biodiversity from the reefs which are extremely diverse systems," said Simon Harding from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

"It would take other work to try and reconstruct the reef so that you can start the process of building up a reef again," he said.

"That is something that needs to be looked at in detail, but we can definitely store the species and save them in that way."

According to recent research, one of the world's most important concentrations of coral - the so-called Coral Triangle in South East Asia - could be destroyed by climate change before the end of this century with significant impacts on food security and livelihoods.

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Hong Kong air pollution equals record high

Yahoo News 24 Oct 09;

HONG KONG (AFP) – Hong Kong air pollution has equalled a record high registered in 2000, triggering a warning for people with heart or respiratory illnesses, according to the Environmental Protection Department.

A pall of smog hung over the city, restricting views across the world famous Victoria Harbour as pollutants built up due to a lack of wind.

Roadside air pollution readings reached a "very high" reading of 174 overnight in Central district, equalling a record set nine years ago.

When the index exceeds 101, "persons with existing heart or respiratory illnesses are advised to reduce physical exertion and outdoor activities", the department said.

Air pollution levels were forecast to remain very high Saturday.

The problem of air pollution in Hong Kong prompted Australia earlier this year to include a health alert in its advice to travellers to the southern Chinese city, warning that it could aggravate some medical conditions.

Pollution has in recent years become an increasing health and economic headache for the authorities in the city of seven million.

Emissions from the factory belt in southern China over Hong Kong's northern border combined with local emissions from power plants and transport to generate a thick haze over the city for large parts of last year.

The government has stepped up efforts to cut vehicle emissions, including offering tax concessions to users of environmentally-friendly hybrids.

The city's first locally-developed electric car debuted on Friday but the MyCar has only been approved for use on roads with a speed limit of up to 50 kilometres per hour (30mph), severely limiting its use, the South China Morning Post reported.

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Solar lantern lights up rural India's dark nights

Yasmeen Mohiuddin Yahoo News 24 Oct 09;

NEW DELHI (AFP) – For more than 100 Indian villages cut off from grid electricity, life no longer comes to an end after dark thanks to an innovative solar-powered lantern that offers hope to the nation's rural poor.

While cooking, farming and studying after sunset were once a struggle using inefficient kerosene or paraffin lamps, the solar lantern now provides a cheap and practical source of light.

The simple device, which is charged during the day from a communal rooftop solar panel, uses between five and seven watts of power and has a battery that lasts up to eight hours.

It also boasts a socket for charging mobile phones and a hand crank for topping up the power.

Villagers pay between three and six rupees (six to 13 US cents) a day to rent the lantern under the "Lighting a Billion Lives" (LaBL) scheme, which was launched last year to promote solar energy as the environmentally friendly answer to India's energy shortages.

"I keep my shop open as late as 9:00 pm. All my fish get sold by that time," a fish seller in Govindorampur district in West Bengal state who uses the lamp told researchers.

He is one of those whose lives have been transformed by the first wave of 5,000 lanterns distributed across nine states in India.

The LaBL scheme, run by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Delhi, plans to eventually put 200 million lamps into use.

Organisers say each lamp should work for ten years, saving between 500 and 600 litres of kerosene which would produce about 1.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Government figures show more than 10,000 impoverished Indian villages have no access to grid electricity, but the solar revolution could also change middle-class lives in urban India, where energy demands have soared.

Power cuts are common even in the smarter suburbs of New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata as residents soak up fragile supplies with air-conditioning units, freezers and washing machines.

While per capita electricity use in India -- 704 kilowatt hours in 2007-2008 -- is far lower than the 8,000 kilowatt hours per capita in many industrialised countries, there is no sign of consumption slowing.

"There is something like 30 percent overdemand. There's significant undergeneration as it is, even if you don't electrify any more," said Joel Slonetsky, a researcher with LaBL.

One "green" solution to the outages is a solar-charged inverter for backup electricity during cuts.

"People have started realising the scarcity of power," said Chandra Sekhar, CEO of Solar India Solutions, which sells the inverters in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. "They have become scared so they don't mind spending an extra little."

Sekhar said most of his clients belong to the "domestic middle-income group" and they choose to shell out between 3,000 to 6,000 dollars for the solar inverters that work as well as traditional ones.

"Right now the technology is at a stage where we can say that it stands side by side with conventional electricity," said Ajay Prakash Shrivastava, president of the Solar Energy Society of India.

Increased efficiency and new materials mean the price of solar-powered equipment has been coming down for years, although initial installation costs are steep, said Shrivastava.

While the long-term benefits may be an incentive for some, he acknowledged that most people who have opted to use solar energy have done so out of necessity rather than a desire to be environmentally friendly.

"There are certainly people thinking in that direction," said Shrivastava. "But that group is not very large."

Slonetsky said although the Indian solar industry is constantly evolving, the options for domestic solar power use are still somewhat limited.

"It may just be a lag both in terms of consumer awareness and supply here." he said.

It is certainly not for lack of sunshine -- India receives a high level of solar radiation, equivalent to more than 5,000 trillion kilowatts or up to 3,200 hours of sun a year, according to government statistics.

The government hopes to harness this potential into 20,000 megawatts of solar power by 2020 as part of its National Solar Mission to promote renewable energy.

The plan envisions railway signals and water pumps eventually running on solar technology, but for now, villagers are content with the portable lamps that have made daily tasks such as cooking and cleaning easier.

"The lanterns have changed our position in society," said Ayesha Begum from Sahsoul village in the eastern state of Bihar.

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Biofuel for commercial flights by 2010: IATA

Yahoo News 23 Oct 09;

NEW DELHI (AFP) – The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said Friday it would approve biofuels for commercial flights by 2010 in a bid to drastically reduce the industry's carbon footprint.

Paul Steele, who heads IATA's environmental initiatives, told reporters in New Delhi biofuel would be certified "by the end of next year".

Certification is widely regarded as a first technical step that could eliminate some of the investment uncertainties clouding the use of high quality biofuels in aviation.

"For the first time, air transport has the possibility of an alternative to traditional jet fuel," said IATA chief executive Giovanni Bisignani.

IATA estimates aviation biofuel could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent "on a full carbon life-cycle basis" and that it would save 600 kilogrammes (176 pounds) of emissions per flight on a Boeing 747-400 plane.

Steele said recent flight tests by carriers intended to "decouple traffic growth from emissions growth" had shown biofuel and traditional fuel could be successfully blended without changes to aircraft engines.

But airlines face the challenge of controlling costs and procuring biofuel without affecting the food chain, he added.

Biofuels are controversial as critics say widespread production could affect food crops, exacerbate global shortages and strain water supplies.

Bisignani said biofuel was only a part of IATA's strategy to achieve carbon-neutral growth and eventually zero carbon emissions.

He urged nations to treat the aviation sector as a separate entity ahead of international climate change talks in Copenhagen in December aimed at finding a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

"If not, we face the risk of uncoordinated competitive government taxation that won't reduce emissions but will be harmful to global economic development," said Bisignani.

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Toshiba, others developing small nuclear reactors: report

Yahoo News 23 Oct 09;

TOKYO (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp, Hitachi Ltd and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are looking to develop small nuclear reactors for use by developing nations, among others, the Nikkei business daily said on Saturday.

The move hopes to take advantage of a likely shift toward nuclear power in hopes of cutting CO2 production in a market previously dominated by larger, more expensive reactors.

Toshiba is developing a nuclear reactor with output of 10,000 kilowatts and hopes to seek approval for its plans from a United States regulatory board as early as the autumn of 2010, the Nikkei said. Mitsubishi Heavy has begun developing a reactor with output of around 350,000 kw, it said.

Hitachi is developing reactors with output of 400,000-600,000 kw in conjunction with General Electric, the paper said.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Paul Tait)

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Maldives' underwater cabinet meeting was a sorry stunt

A world expert on sea-levels wants to tell the people of the Maldives they are not in danger of being inundated, says Christopher Booker

Christopher Booker, Times Online 24 Oct 09;

In the avalanche of publicity stunts being staged in advance of December's Copenhagen conference on climate change, none was more bizarre than the meeting of the cabinet of the Maldives government 20 feet beneath the waves. President Mohammed Nasheed and his ministers sat before desks in scuba gear to discuss the forthcoming submergence of their country, due to global warming.

This prompted an open letter to President Nasheed from Dr Nils-Axel Morner, the former head of the international Inqua Commission on Sea Level Change. The Swedish geologist, who has been measuring sea-level change all over the world for over 30 years, reminded the president that his commission had visited the Maldives six times in the years since 2000, and that he himself had led three month-long investigations in every part of the coral archipelago. Their exhaustive studies had shown that from 1790 to 1970 sea-levels round the islands had averaged 20 centimetres higher than today; that the level, having fallen, has since remained stable; and that there is not the slightest sign of any rise. The most cautious forecast based on proper science (rather than computer model guesswork) shows that any rise in the next 100 years will be "small to negligible".

President Nasheed is well aware of this, because in 2001, Professor Morner offered to explain his team's findings on the local TV station, to reassure viewers that their homes were not about to disappear underwater as they had been told. The government refused to allow his film to be shown. Egged on by climate alarmists, successive Maldivan leaders since the 1980s have pleaded for vast sums of international aid to save them from rising sea levels.

"For Heaven's sake," writes Prof Morner in his open letter, "lift the terrible psychological burden you have placed on the shoulders of all people in the Maldives", who have been made to live with "a wholly false notion that is nothing but an armchair fiction artificially constructed by mere computer modelling consistently proved wrong by meticulous real-world observation".

If President Nasheed really believed his own propaganda, he would of course immediately ban all flights into his country and turn off the lights in all its hotels. But since this would put an end to the international tourism which is almost his country's only source of income, he would rather carry on staging his publicity stunts, while holding out the begging bowl which he hopes gullible world leaders such as Gordon Brown will soon fill with large quantities of Western taxpayers' cash.

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Thousands gather for worldwide climate protests

Yahoo News 24 Oct 09;

NEW YORK (AFP) – From Asia to the Americas via Europe and the Middle East, activists around the planet have protested in an effort to mobilize public opinion against global warming 50 days ahead of a crucial UN climate summit.

Many of the thousands that gathered on the steps of Sydney's iconic Opera House to kick off the event waved placards bearing the logo 350, a figure scientists believe is the maximum parts per million of CO2 that the atmosphere can bear to avoid runaway global warming.

In New York's Times Square, a crowd of demonstrators gathered as giant screens beamed in images from around the world. Organizers told the activists that events had taken place in "more than 180 countries" at 5,200 events.

In France, politicians received a "wake up" call from several hundred Parisians who chose clocks as their symbol.

Protesters who met in a central square in Paris had set their alarm clocks and mobile phones set to ring at 12:18 pm (1018 GMT) in reference to the closing date of the UN summit in Copenhagen, which lasts from December 7-18.

The summit is considered crucial as world leaders will try to thrash out a new treaty to curb greenhouse gas emissions in place of the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

But senior officials from the United States and China, the world's two largest polluters, have warned the talks may fail.

There is growing concern that a treaty deal in Copenhagen could be hampered by issues that include US domestic politics and the problems of securing agreement between developed and developing countries.

In Berlin, some 350 protesters wearing masks with the face of German Chancellor Angela Merkel came together in front of the Brandenburg Gate in the city center.

In London, more than 600 people gathered beneath the London Eye Ferris wheel by the River Thames to arrange themselves into the shape of the number five, according to organisers Campaign against Climate Change.

An aerial photograph of the event will be added to pictures of a giant "three" and "zero" from around the world.

"Hundreds of thousands of people are taking part (globally) and for us that's so important, to have people out on the streets," campaign activist Abi Edgar told AFP. "We want serious action on climate change and we want it now."

Across the Thames, some 100 musicians playing trumpets, trombones, saxophones and clarinets gathered outside parliament to play the same note -- an F, made by the frequency of 350 Hz -- for 350 seconds, organizers said.

In the Lebanese capital Beirut hundreds of activists, many wearing snorkels, held demonstrations in key archaeological sites.

They gathered around the Roman ruins in central Beirut, in the ancient eastern city of Baalbek and along the coast, carrying placards bearing the 350 logo.

"It's not the first time Beirut will have gone under water," Wael Hmaidan of the IndyACT group organizing Beirut's protests told AFP, explaining the goggle-wearing, "but this time it's going down because of climate change, and not earthquakes."

Environmental activists in the Turkish metropolis of Istanbul staged their protest in a boat, unfurling a banner reading "Sun, wind, right now!" under the main bridge linking Asia and Europe over the Bosphorus Strait, Anatolia news agency reported.

They then sailed to the ancient Maiden's Tower, which sits on a tiny islet in the Bosphorus, and unfurled another banner reading "Jobs, climate, justice," the report said.

Events in Asia included demonstrators in Dhaka riding bicycles to highlight one way of cutting emmissions.

In Jakarta, around 100 students from the London School of Public Relations gathered to form the symbolic number 350, coordinator Candy Tolosa said on Detik.com news website.

Australians kick off world climate change protest
Yahoo News 24 Oct 09;

SYDNEY (AFP) – Climate activists gathered on the steps of Sydney's iconic Opera House Saturday and along the city's beaches to kick off an international day of protest about global warming.

Along the famous sands of Bondi Beach and across the span of the Harbour Bridge protesters gathered with placards bearing the logo 350 to call for a cut in carbon emissions to 350 parts per million (ppm), organisers said.

Thousands of people gathered on the steps of the Opera House for an outdoor concert and formed a giant 350 with their bodies, one of more than 200 events to be staged across the continent, said spokeswoman Blair Palese.

Church bells at the city's largest cathedral sounded 350 times, while groups ranging from scuba divers to Frisbee players gathered to stage events Australia-wide.

Similar stunts were planned at some 4,000 locations in more than 170 countries across the globe, including the Eiffel Tower, Times Square and the Himalayas, said Palese.

The protest marks 50 days until world leaders meet in Copenhagen to thrash out a new climate change treaty.

"Our global emissions are now perilously high, at 387 ppm," Palese said.

"The majority of expert scientists now say this has to come down to 350 ppm to avoid dangerous climate change. 350.org is calling for our political leaders make this their target."

Australia has committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by up to 25 percent by 2020 compared to 2000 levels if an "ambitious" target is agreed in Copenhagen.

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Southeast Asia must push for 'climate action'

Yahoo News 24 Oct 09;

HUA HIN, Thailand (AFP) – Southeast Asian leaders meeting here must end deforestation and force rich nations into "deep and binding" emissions cuts at climate talks in Copenhagen, pressure group Greenpeace said Saturday.

The group pressed its demands by rolling two large balls into the venue of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Thailand, one with a campaigner inside, bearing the slogan "ASEAN leaders: U turn the Earth."

"It is critical that ASEAN member states, collectively and en bloc, support the completion of a strong climate deal in Copenhagen in December, and... announce zero deforestation," said Greenpeace's Southeast Asia campaign manager, Tara Buakamsri.

ASEAN leaders are expected this weekend to pledge support for the Copenhagen meeting, at which 192 nations will try to hammer out a successor to the soon-to-expire Kyoto protocol on climate change.

But Greenpeace said this was not enough.

"ASEAN citizens are already reeling under catastrophic impacts of climate change, as was made brutally clear by Typhoon Ketsana last month," said Buakamsri, referring to a storm that killed hundreds of people in the region.

"Yet, instead of recognising their enormous obligation to safeguard the region, ASEAN appears to still be in denial over these threats, expressing only token concern when catastrophe strikes."

Greenpeace estimates that 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation in countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, both members of the bloc.

The organisation is calling for industrialised countries to provide at least 40 billion dollars annually to support programmes aimed at halting deforestation.

The UN says less developed countries are likely to bear the brunt of global warming. Many developing nations say their richer counterparts bear a historical responsibility to lead the fight against global warming.

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who met ASEAN leaders on Saturday, urged the grouping to "work together to make (Copenhagen) a successful conference," a Japanese delegation spokesman said.

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African leaders emphasise plight of 'environmental refugees'

Yahoo News 23 Oct 09;

KAMPALA (AFP) – African leaders recognised climate change as a major cause of human displacement during a two-day summit on the plight of the continent's refugees which closed Friday in Kampala.

Several African nations adopted a document on the rights of the continent's 17 million internally-displaced persons (IDP), refugees and returnees.

"The important thing about this convention is that it applies to conflict and climate as causes of displacement," the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told reporters shortly after the signing.

"I am confident about the awareness of how seriously African countries will be affected by climate change," he said.

In 2008, there were 104 recognised natural disasters in Africa and 99 percent were climate related, John Holmes, United Nations Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, said at the Kampala Summit.

According to Holmes, a recorded 700,000 people on the continent were displaced by climate events in 2008, but he said he suspects the real number is much higher.

"I have been struck by the number of people, ministers of African countries who have told me how their lives are changing, the lives of their people is changing because the climate change," he said.

He argued the best way to limit the number of people displaced by climate events is to plan before the disaster occurs, by improving water management systems and emphasising the importance of drought resistant crops.

"What we fear is, what the scientists predict, is that this is simply going to get worse," he added.

"There is a problem here that we need to deal with because the problems that occur to people who are displaced by conflict also occur when people are displaced by natural disasters. They have the same problem of homelessness."

Tarsis Kabwegyere, Ugandan minister for Refugees and Disaster Preparedness, told AFP that people displaced by climate events were previously given less consideration.

"In Uganda it is already a serious matter. We are having very strange winds, landslides in areas where we didn't have them in my own lifetime. And now we are more concerned with dealing with that aspect of displacement," he said.

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Rich-poor divide could be Copenhagen climate 'deal-breaker'

Yahoo News 24 Oct 09;

STOCKHOLM (AFP) – World leaders could fail to reach a new climate deal at a UN summit in Copenhagen if rich countries refuse to financially help developing nations tackle climate change, government and NGO officials said at a development conference that wrapped up Saturday.

With less than 50 days to go before it starts, the Copenhagen summit was a central topic of debate and discussion at the annual EU development conference, held in Stockholm.

"We don't think they'll be a deal without the right funding package," Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International, told AFP, urging the European Union to agree on how to finance developing countries' switch to low-carbon strategies.

While most officials remained positive about a climate deal being reached at the December 7-18 summit, Hobbs' comments highlighted a growing concern that efforts to replace the Kyoto protocol could be hampered by the problems of securing agreement between developed and developing countries.

"Things are looking possible, but this is a potential spanner in the works," Hobbs said. "This could be a deal breaker."

Many leaders of developing countries at the conference pleaded for help to switch to cleaner energies, saying their countries were hardest hit by a crisis the developed world helped to create.

"We urgently need your support in helping us adapt to the negative effects of climate change," the presidents of Liberia and Sierra Leone, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Ernest Bai Koroma, said in a joint statement.

They stressed their West African nations were "disproportionately affected by the climate crisis," saying it was crisis for which they were the least prepared.

"Developing countries are of the opinion that they should not have to pay the bill for what industrialised countries have done," said Koos Richelle, the head of EuropeAid, adding that rich countries realised they had to take up a large part of the burden.

"How much exactly is a matter of negotiations, and that will only become clear in the end game, when we are in Copenhagen," saying the European Union would not divulge a common stance before the summit.

"That's hopeless," argued Hobbs, saying Europe had been a leader in terms of emission cuts targets and urging the 27-nation block to reach a common agreement on helping the developing world before the start of the summit.

"We don't think there is room for the European Union to go to Copenhagen without a clear position on how much money its going to put on the table," he said.

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