Best of our wild blogs: 17 Nov 09

Macaranga bancana and bulbuls
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Sentosa!
from Nature's Wonders

Flooding kills marinelife
from wild shores of singapore

Smarter policies needed?
Bjorn Lomborg speaks from eco-business.com

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NEA warns of flash floods in Singapore

Today Online 17 Nov 09;

SINGAPORE - Don't put away your umbrella just yet. It's been rainy, but more rainfall is expected now that the North-east Monsoon is upon us, said the National Environment Agency's (NEA) Meteorological Services Division yesterday.

The rainy season is expected to last until January next year. There will be periods of moderate to heavy rain, with high tides ranging from 3 to 3.2 metres in the same period.

Because of this, there might be localised flash floods in low-lying areas such as Lorong Buangkok, Jalan Seaview, Meyer Road, Lorong 101 to Lorong 106 Changi and Everitt North Road. Residents and shopowners have been warned and motorists travelling along roads in these areas are advised to exercise caution during flash floods.

Flash floods might also occur in low lying city areas such as Chinatown, Boat Quay, Geylang and Jalan Besar.

The public can obtain the latest weather reports, including heavy rain warnings, by tuning in to radio broadcasts, calling NEA's weather forecast hotline at 6542 7788, visiting www.nea.gov.sg or accessing NEA's mobile weather service Weather@SG (weather.nea.gov.sg).

The public can also call PUB's 24-hour Call Centre at 1800-284 6600 to report obstructions in drains or to check the flood situation.

PUB gives monsoon period updates
Channel NewsAsia 16 Nov 09;

SINGAPORE: The PUB has completed several projects that will help alleviate flooding in flood-prone areas as the monsoon season draws near. Some of the areas include Cuscaden Road, Commonwealth Avenue and Bedok North Ave 3.

According to the National Environment Agency (NEA) on Monday, the monsoon season is expected to set in shortly and last till January next year. Heavy rain, coinciding with high tides, could lead to localised flash floods in low-lying areas.

PUB, the national water agency, had in October sent advisories to residents and shop-owners in flood-prone areas to warn them of the possibility of flash floods.

They have also been advised to take the necessary precautions to protect their belongings by storing them on higher ground or placing sandbags to block floodwaters.

PUB has also stepped up the monitoring of some 60 hotspots islandwide to ensure that the drainage system is not blocked.

In addition, checks on construction sites have been intensified to ensure that contractors keep the drains around their sites smooth-flowing and free of debris.

Motorists are advised to exercise caution when travelling along roads in the flood-prone areas. NEA said it will issue warnings through the media when heavy rain or prolonged monsoon rain is expected.

Wet spell could trigger flash floods
Low-lying areas may be affected, with heavy rain expected till January
Amresh Gunasingham, Straits Times 17 Nov 09;

HOLD on to your umbrella - the wet weather is set to stay till January, at least.

Singapore's weatherman has forecast that the wet spell will linger till then, with the possible risk of floods affecting low-lying parts of the island till the end of the year.

PUB, the national water agency, said yesterday that heavy rain brought on by the north-east monsoon could coincide with 3m- to 3.2m-high tides, triggering flash floods over the next few months.

Some 50 PUB officers have their eyes peeled on 58 'hot spots' around the island to ensure rubbish or debris, such as at construction sites, does not block drains and outlets.

Flood-prone areas include Chinatown, the Central Business District, Geylang, Lorong Buangkok and Tanjong Katong.

'Motorists travelling along roads in these areas are advised to exercise caution in the event of flash floods,' the agency said.

The National Environment Agency said that in the first two weeks of this month, rain was above the national average across many parts of Singapore. Areas such as Jurong and Kranji saw as much as 210mm of rain dumped, more than three times the average, although it was below that in the same period for the previous two years.

Dr Wolfgang Grabs, head of hydrological forecasting and water resources at the World Meteorological Organisation, told The Straits Times that rainfall in the region will be below average over the wet months but it would be more intense when it rains.

This is attributed, in part, to warming global temperatures, meaning more moisture is trapped in the atmosphere. 'The higher water content in the atmosphere means rain is more intense than before.'

To quell the effects of the stormy spell, PUB has invested $59 million over the last 12 months to widen and deepen drainage networks, as well as raise the roads in 10 low-lying areas such as Cuscaden Road, Mountbatten Road and Commonwealth Avenue.

Since last month, the agency has advised 204 residents and businesses to store belongings on elevated ground and place sandbags at entrances to block flooding.

Mr Eric Wong, 50, who owns three shophouses along Trengganu Street in Chinatown, has spent more than $5,000 over the past few years to protect his grocery stores from the annual downpour.

'The flooding is not as bad now, compared to a few years ago, when construction work was done to complete the Chinatown MRT station nearby,' he said. 'The water then could reach knee deep.'

Food supplies in Mr Wong's shops are now stacked on 30cm-high wooden platforms. A canopy was also installed recently to protect the stores from the elements.

The flooding situation in the city area has also improved since the completion of the Marina Barrage. To prevent floods, it has seven pumps - each with a capacity of 40 cu m per second - to flush excess storm water into the sea.

The barrage also has nine 30m gates to separate sea water from the reservoir and keep out high tides.

To date, the highest amount of rainfall to drench the island was in December 2006, when 366mm of rain fell over a 24-hour period, the wettest on record in 137 years of recorded history.

Some 50 PUB officers have their eyes peeled on 58 'hot spots' around the island to ensure rubbish or debris, such as at construction sites, does not block drains and outlets. Flood-prone areas include Chinatown, the Central Business District, Geylang, Lorong Buangkok and Tanjong Katong.

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Prices for vegetable, egg imports from Malaysia rise due to rainy weather

Ng Lian Cheong/Evelyn Choo, Channel NewsAsia 16 Nov 09;

SINGAPORE: Continuous rainfalls have caused egg and vegetable imports from Malaysia to increase in price.

Egg prices have jumped four times since October but the rate of imports from Malaysia stays at three million eggs per day. This accounts for 75 per cent of the local supply of fresh eggs. Currently, a batch of ten eggs cost between S$1.30 and S$2.

The rain has also led to poor vegetable harvests in Malaysia, causing prices to escalate by ten per cent.

Most of these are leafy vegetables, including Chinese cabbage and Chinese spinach, which come mainly from Johor, Kulai, and Kota Tinggi.

A merchant at the Pasir Panjang Wholesale Centre said this year's wet season came about a month earlier. As a result, supplies from Malaysia dropped by about 20 to 30 per cent.

In order to ensure a stable supply, vegetable suppliers have looked to other countries like China and Thailand for imports. - CNA/vm


Vegetable prices up in Little India due to heavy rains in India & Malaysia
Channel NewsAsia 19 Nov 09;

SINGAPORE: Heavy rains in vegetable exporting countries, such as India and Malaysia, have caused a price hike in shops at Little India.

Onions, an important ingredient in Indian cooking, now cost double - at S$2 per kilogramme, compared to a dollar previously.

Lady's finger, brinjal and other vegetables, imported from India and Malaysia, have seen a 30 per cent price increase.

Vegetables sellers said prices will go higher if the rains continue.

- CNA/sc

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Singapore sets up an energy policy framework

Aligning local to global standards
Singapore sets up an energy policy framework, with govt agencies roped in to encourage the sustainable use of energy, reports FELDA CHAY
Business Times 17 Nov 09;

NEED some light? Flick the switch. Feel like watching TV? Hit the 'on' button. Energy in Singapore comes so easily that it is hard to remember we do not own a single drop of oil in this country, and that in recent years the world has been facing several challenges on the energy front.

This has prompted Singapore to set up its own energy policy framework, with various government organisations and ministries roped in to study the sustainable use of energy and promote the use of alternative fuels.

One such body is the Standards Council, which formulates the strategies for Singapore's national standardisation programme.

It seeks to align Singapore with international standards in energy use, and make it more competitive through greater transparency in such standards.

With Singapore promoting emerging energy and sustainable development, the council has sought to establish standards and conformance (S&C) infrastructure in these new areas.

Council chairman Edwin Khew shares with The Business Times the importance of establishing standards in the emerging energy sector, and what Singapore has achieved in the area.

Question: What exactly is the emerging energy sector? And how will it help Singaporeans use energy efficiently?

Answer: The emerging energy sector refers to the myriad of alternative energy-related services and products such as bio-gas, bio-diesel and ethanol. Each of these products requires systems and components necessary to support its deployment.

The emerging energy sector will see increasing emphasis on energy conservation, and the institution of energy efficiency policies and initiatives which impact not only businesses but also the man on the street.

Most importantly, the more efficient the use of energy per head of population, the lower the carbon footprint of a community and therefore the lower is its contribution to the effects of climate change.

Q: Why is it important to establish recognised S&C infrastructure with regards to the emerging energy sector, and sustainable development?

A: There are six reasons that I can think of:

1. S&C infrastructure provides the necessary building blocks needed to ensure the quality and reliability of products and services;

2. For emerging areas, it is even more critical as it helps to build national and international confidence in new innovative solutions, be it products, services or technologies that are developed;

3. It provides the fundamentals to define, implement and monitor policy metrics in emerging sectors;

4. It provides the consensus necessary to enable and accelerate the adoption of enhancements and innovation by integrating stakeholder needs;

5. It provides the basis for measuring and quantifying data which can be verified to provide credibility and assurance;

6. It supports public policies.

Q: What benefits does the Standards Council hope to achieve by pushing for such standards? How is it expected to benefit Singapore as a whole?

A: Standards play an important role in setting the benchmark for energy-related products, services, processes and systems to be applied by companies in the energy and its supporting industries and also other products and services. These standards will facilitate market access of their products and services to overseas markets.

Standards also provide the basis for the development of new and innovative clean energy and sustainable energy technologies and solutions that would be acceptable around the world, given the international alignment of standards. This will help grow Singapore into a leading provider of such technologies and solutions.

This should open up huge markets globally for Singapore enterprises as sustainable energy technology and solutions are still nascent and growing in demand regionally and globally. Last but not least, standards also provide a technical basis to support public policies on energy-related matters.

Q: When did Singapore start to realise the importance of, and establish such standards?

A: Singapore has been promoting alternative energy and energy efficiency for more than 10 years under the National Energy Efficiency Committee within the National Environment Agency (NEA). This committee is now known as the National Climate Change Committee (N3C) and chaired by Dr Amy Khor, Senior Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources.

NEA has also set up an Energy Efficiency Programme Office (E2PO) to further drive such initiatives in Singapore.

Singapore has been involved in the development of energy related national standards for close to 20 years. The first energy efficiency standard - Singapore Standard on Mechanical Ventilation and Air-Conditioning in Buildings - was introduced in 1980. This standard establishes minimum requirements in design, construction, installation, testing and commissioning, operation and maintenance of mechanical ventilation and air-conditioning systems. It helps companies to attain acceptable indoor thermal environment in an energy efficient manner with general consideration for the indoor air quality, and maintainability of the equipment.

Q: What sort of standards and conformance measures has been put in place for the local government and industry players when it comes to energy and sustainability?

A: Our various government agencies have been working with industry to enhance the standards and conformance infrastructure. This includes the reduction of our reliance on conventional energy sources by leveraging on solar power and electric vehicles, and the development of green data centres and energy efficiency measures for buildings to reduce energy consumption.

An example of a completed standard is the SS 530:2006 Code of Practice for Energy Efficiency Standard for Building Services and Equipment. This standard provides minimum energy efficiency requirements for new installation and replacements of systems and equipment. It is used by the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) as a reference standard in its Building Control Regulations for air-conditioning systems which exceed 30kW cooling capacity and the maximum lighting power budget.

The use of SS 530 can help businesses reduce energy consumption by 10-30 per cent. This translates into significant savings in utilities, which increases cost competitiveness for companies.

Q: How has the adoption of such standards been in general? Do local firms recognise the importance of adopting S&C to develop sustainably?

A: More and more companies around the world are recognising the importance of standards for energy efficiency and sustainable development as it is a global problem, particularly when it affects climate change. This will also be discussed at the Conference of Parties (COP 15) held in Copenhagen in December.

More local companies are adopting standards to fulfil their social responsibility and manage their energy usage to help lower their operational costs. One example is the success of the BCA Green Mark for Buildings Scheme which refers to the SS 530 : 2006 Code of Practice for energy efficiency standard for building services and equipment. There has been a significant increase in the number of building projects receiving the Green Mark Award.

Q: Has the economic crisis been a setback in the setting up of S&C infrastructure here? If yes, how so? If no, why, given that the logical assumption would be for firms to be less inclined to spend?

A: There has been an increase in interest as industry is keen to look into the business opportunities and jobs that energy and environmental issues can bring and standards play an important part to help make this happen in the marketplace.

Demand for standards has in fact increased during this period of economic crisis as enterprises seek to improve their efficiency through standards.

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More on Singapore's magnificent trees

Straits Times Forum 17 Nov 09;

I REFER to last Saturday's graphic, 'Trees in the city'.

Thank you for raising the interest in wayside trees. The flowers of the rain tree and tembusu did little justice to these two magnificent trees. More of their woody forms should be shown.

Many swings could hang from the bough of the rain tree and its broad crown gives shade on a hot day. Its tiny compound pinnate leaves go to sleep in the evening or when it rains. Malays called it Pukul Lima (five o'clock).

The tembusu has no significant bough but branches that reach for the sky, wriggling upward, defying gravity while carrying its fine leaves of light and dark green away from its dark, ribbed trunk. The road divider along Paterson Hill has two fine specimens, although the larger one has lost its crowning glory.

As for the mahogany tree, the third common one was not presented: African mahogany (Khaya grandifoliola). This huge tree gives the most shade and is a fast-growing wayside tree.

Of course, any mention of the mahogany tree compels me to highlight the finest specimen - the Honduras or broad-leaved mahogany found in Singapore. You cannot miss the magnificent twin-boled mahogany tree near the Merlion in Sentosa.

That tree should be registered as a national dendrological monument.

Chen Sen Lenn

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Organisers ensure materials used are recycled in post-APEC cleanup

Zhao Quan Yin/Evelyn Choo, Channel NewsAsia 16 Nov 09;

SINGAPORE: The APEC has come to an end, and cleanup operations are in full swing at the three venues - The Istana, Suntec Convention Centre, and the Esplanade.

The event organisers are ensuring that the materials used will not go to waste.

About 600 workers at the Suntec Convention Centre have been busy dismantling the setup since Monday morning.

The doors used at the event can be reused up to 30 times. Moreover, 20 banners will be donated to charities to produce environmentally-friendly bags.

Some interesting remnants of the APEC are the 42 seats, which the 21 APEC leaders and their spouses sat on during the Singapore Evening. These will be stored aside in special crates and reused for future conventions.

The mass cleanup is expected to end on Tuesday.

Lim Kian Meng, general manager, Pico Art International, said: "We have 250 newly-fabricated doors, just for this event. These will be recycled for other mega events, as well as the modular panels. These modular panels are our existing stock, we will also recycle for other events."

- CNA/sc

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Oily beaches and one 'dead' plant at Johor

New Straits Times 16 Nov 09;

KOTA TINGGI: Sacks and plastic bags full of sludge strewn across the beaches of Pengerang bear testament to dumping by the crew of ships anchored off the coast.

Such a crime against the environment should not have occurred because there is a local sludge processing facility at Teluk Kelok, about 7km from Sungai Rengit town.

Locals, however, said it was not functioning as it should.

Checks revealed that the facility is owned and operated by a company registered as a scheduled waste contractor in the Department of Environment website.

Since the facility was permitted to process sludge from ships, it should have been a hive of activity due to the ships anchored off the coast.

Cases of sludge dumping and illegal tank cleaning by ships in Pengerang are being reported regularly in the media. The latest occurrence was reported by all major dailies yesterday.

Hidden from the main road by craggy, barren hills, the sludge processing facility is unknown to many.

When the New Straits Times went to the facility, the front gate was locked with nobody at the guardhouse.

A long trek through the hills led to the beach and from there, the whole processing plant could be viewed clearly.

There was not even a single person around and the only thing that could be heard was the sound of waves crashing onto the casuarina-lined shore.

Piles of oil-covered sacks lay under a large shed while a tall chimney stood forlornly nearby, with no trace of smoke coming out of it.

There was no activity in the facility and a lone dog sauntered lazily in the afternoon sun between two huge steel tanks, one of which had a large dent on its side.

A Pengerang resident, who wanted to be identified as Ahmad, questioned the function of the facility.

He said it was ironic for the Pengerang people to suffer from sludge dumping activities when there was a processing plant right next to the polluted beaches.

"The signboard leading to the front gate indicates that it is a sludge processing facility and yet, our beaches are badly polluted by the very sludge that the facility is supposed to process," he said.

Another resident, who only wanted to be known as Ramzan, 56, said the authorities should know the best way to use available facilities to prevent sludge contaminating the sea and destroying marine life.

"We just want the pollution to stop. Aren't there special government departments to tackle that?" he asked.

Calls to the telephone numbers listed on the company's signboard went unanswered.

Read more!

Another Trapped Sumatran Tiger Dies in Aceh

Nurdin Hasan Jakarta Globe 16 Nov 09;

Atwo-year-old female Sumatran tiger was killed by villagers after it tried to break into a chicken coop belonging to a resident of Silolo village in South Aceh.

Syafwan, the head of South Aceh’s Natural Resources Conservation Agency, said the tiger, measuring a meter in length, tried to enter a chicken coop behind the house of Muhammad Rajab, 45, at 8:30 p.m. local time on Sunday.

“According to local residents, they wanted to capture the tiger alive,” Syafwan told the Jakarta Globe by telephone. “But since the plastic rope used to snare it was too big, the tiger suffocated and died on Monday at dawn.”

He said local residents only reported the capture and subsequent death of the tiger to conservation officials later on Monday morning.

“If only they had reported it to us sooner, perhaps the animal could have survived,” he said, adding that the tiger was then buried in accordance with local tradition.

The villagers wrapped the body in a white shroud and prayed over it with the hope that other tigers would not disturb the village.

“The funeral was conducted by local people to avoid unwanted things in the future. It was the villagers way of paying their respects to the dead tiger,” Syafwan said, adding that he and several other officials were on hand to witness the funeral.

Syafwan said that at the same time the animal was being trapped by villagers, another tiger was spotted near the house.

“But when the young tiger became ensnared by the rope, the second tiger fled into the jungle,” he said.

He said there had been a rise in the number of reports of tigers entering villages as the animals’ natural habitat was destroyed.

“Tigers are entering villages in their search for food because they are being forced from their traditional hunting grounds,” Syafwan said.

Asked if the local residents who ensnared the tiger would be reported to the police, Syafwan said conservation officials would prioritize cooperating with local communities and accommodating their traditional wisdom.

“We will continue educating the people in small ways, like not to use snares that could threaten the tiger’s life,” he said.

“We will also encourage them to report tiger activity to us,” Syafwan added.

In October, a five-year old Sumatran tiger that was injured after being ensnared in a trap set by villagers in Aceh, died a few days later as veterinarians prepared to amputate one of the animal’s legs.

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Indonesia targeting position of world's biggest fish producer

Antara 16 Nov 09;

Gorontalo (ANTARA News) - The Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DKP) has set a target to make Indonesia a world biggest fish producer in 2012, a cabinet minister said.

DKP Minister Fadel Muhammad said here on Monday that the plan to make Indonesia a world biggest fish producer was part of the DKP targets in its coming years` work programs.

"Indonesia should become a center of fish production so that it could control the world`s fish trade," the minister said.

He said that Indonesia had the marine and fresh water potentials which were not possessed by all countries. Thus, it would not face significant barriers to achieve the target.
"Facilities at fish auction markets, access roads and fishermen`s fuel tanks to meet the need for fishing activities must also be improved and be made complete," the minister said.

Besides, he said, his ministry was also adopting a special program called `minapolitan`, a program which combines agriculture and fisheries aimed at raising the income of farmers and fishermen.

The minapolitan scheme could be carried out, among others, with a `mina padi` program where fields were planted with rice while at the same time were also sowed with fish seeds so that the fields could yield rice and fish at the same time.(*)

Indonesia stepping up efforts to fight illegal fishing
Antara 17 Nov 09;

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry (DKP) is working closely with the coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs to fight illegal, unregulated, unreported (IUU) fishing practices in the country, a cabinet minister said.

"I have met with the coordinating minister. He promised to consult the president over the efforts to combat IUU fishing practices," DKP Minister Fadel Muhammad said.

Fadel said that with a close cooperation in cracking down on IUU fishing practices with the coordinating minister, the arrests of poachers in Indonesian waters or in Indonesia`s exclusive economic zones could be made by the navy officers or by the water police.

He hoped that civilian investigators (PPNS) of the DKP would concentrate on supervising marine resources such as fish and coral reefs.

"But it would all depend on the president. We will wait and see its developments later. What I want is that our supervision should be directed on this so that I can focus on handling the welfare of fishermen," he added.

He said that the problem of restricted supervision facilities to crack down on IUU fishing practices would be resolved together with the coordinating minister.

The Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DKP) under its new chief, Fadel Muhammad, has come up with an ambitious plan to raise fish production by over 300 percent and `transform` the country into the world`s biggest fish production center in the coming five years.

"Indonesia should become a center of fish production so that it could control the world`s fish trade," the minister said on Monday. (*)

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Setiu shrimp farm not green

Dato’ Dr Dionysius S.K. Sharma, Executive Director/CEO WWF Malaysia 16 Nov 09;

WWF-Malaysia would like to respond to the article “Green Shrimp Farm” which appeared in the Star online on 4 November 2009 [below].

In WWF-Malaysia’s opinion, the iSHARP (Integrated Shrimp Aquaculture Park) project cannot be considered as a ‘green’ project. WWF-Malaysia was consulted by the project developer and we used this opportunity to raise many of our concerns about the project.

The project developer was required to submit a Detailed Environmental Impact Assessment (DEIA), and by virtue of being a member of the DEIA Technical Review Panel, we provided extensive comments on the DEIA regarding adverse environmental impacts of the project. Severely concerned with the adverse environmental impacts of the project, we issued a letter to the Minister of Natural Resources and Environment in order to bring the issues related to the project to his attention.

There are a number of reasons why WWF-Malaysia cannot disagree more on the claim by the developer that the project is ‘green’. A foremost criterion for ‘green’ or responsible aquaculture is to NOT locate aquaculture farms within environmentally sensitive areas.

The iSHARP project has clearly not met these criteria; as nearly 700ha of Gelam forest is set to be cleared to accommodate the project. The Gelam forest is one of the most severely threatened freshwater ecosystems in Malaysia. By sitting the project in the area, the project has not conformed to land-use plans, namely the National Physical Plan and the Setiu Local Plan (2003-2015). Both plans categorise wetlands as Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA). Additionally, the Setiu Local Plan states that only recreational activities are allowed in this area.

WWF-Malaysia is gravely concerned with the proposal by the developer to discharge effluent from the shrimp pond to Sungai Chaluk, an important habitat for the critically endangered river terrapins. As the project will be utilising pure sea water for its operations, the pond effluent will be high in salt content. In WWF-Malaysia’s estimation, the project could potentially discharge up to an equivalent of 50,000 kilogram’s of salt into the river every hour, when operating at full capacity. It is doubtful that Sungai Chaluk will have the capacity to dilute this volume of salt especially during the dry seasons. This will have a devastating impact on the river ecosystem and the river terrapins.

Apart from this, the effluent could be contaminated by viruses. Releasing contaminated effluent to Sungai Chaluk would have an adverse impact on the existing aquaculture activities downstream of the river in the Setiu Lagoon, affecting the livelihood of the local aquaculture producers. The expected impacts of the project will also compromise the integrity of the proposed Setiu State Park. WWF-Malaysia along with other concerned parties recommended that the effluent be channelled back into the sea instead and not into Sungai Chaluk. Regrettably, the developer rejected this alternative and even more regrettably, the authorities have approved the discharge of the effluent into the river. Such a discharge will have a devastating impact on the river terrapins, and drive them to local extinction, notwithstanding proposals by the developer to have monitoring programmes in place.

WWF-Malaysia reiterates that it does not consider the project to be environmentally friendly nor ‘green’ for the above reasons.

Thank you.

-END-

‘Green’ shrimp farm
Chew Wan Ying, The Star 4 Nov 09;

SETIU: The 1,000ha shrimp farm project in Terengganu will not affect the environment and wildlife, claims Blue Archipelago Bhd, which is in charge of the project.

The project, known as the Integrated Shrimp Aquaculture Park (iSHARP), is located in Penarik, near here. Setiu is a breeding ground for the endangered river terrapins.

In an interview with The Star in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, chief executive officer Dr Shahridan Faiez addressed the concerns raised by environmentalists and Setiu residents regarding the environmental impact of the project.

The company had gone the extra mile in making sure that the project was environment-friendly, he said, adding that those who were against the project were misinformed.

“We have taken a proactive stance. We are the first aquaculture farm in the country to conduct a detailed environmental impact assessment (EIA) for our project,” he said.

One of the major concerns raised is the discharge of salt water — an essential component in breeding shrimps — into Sungai Caluk, the river adjacent to the project site.

Critics believe that this would affect the river’s salinity and its ecological system.

“When we were designing the farm, we had considered various options. We opted for Sungai Caluk because it is a river where sea water comes in and goes out, as it has two openings into South China Sea (one at Setiu and the second one at Merang).

“On that basis, we do not think the discharge of salt water will contribute a significant impact on the environment,” he said.

He added that 24%, or 243ha, of the project site would be allocated as a green lung, while two hectares of land would be allocated for the River Terrapin Conservation Centre.

“The 243ha equals 500 football fields. You will never find this in any other shrimp farm,” said Dr Shahridan.

A buffer zone of between 120m and a kilometre, which is above the legal requirement of 50m, had been established at Sungai Caluk to protect the riparian vegetation along the river, he added. The vegetation is a primary food for the terrapins.

“Prior to this, we conducted extensive public consultation and workshops, and met with WWF-Malaysia, non-governmental organisations and key stakeholders.

“We went down to the ground and interviewed families staying within 5km radius from the project site,” Dr Shahridan said.

He said Blue Archipelago was also working with the Environment Department to come up with an intensive environment monitoring programme for iSHARP.

“We are marketing our products to the international market, where there are many powerful environmental groups, especially in Europe.

“We would be shooting ourselves in the foot if the project causes damage to the environment in any way,” he pointed out.

Financially, iSHARP will give Setiu a new lease of life, said Dr Shahridan.

“It is one of the poorest regions. The average household income among those staying around the project site is RM500.

“There are all kinds of problems pertaining to education attainment and employment,” he said, adding that iSharp would create 1,500 jobs.

“Job opportunities will be provided in all aspects of the supply chain, from the hatchery, grow-up farm and feed-mill to the processing plant. The plant especially needs women workers and this will help the single mothers,” added Dr Shahridan.

He said the shrimp farming industry was facing the challenges of fluctuating product price and a new global trend where the requirement for food safety was higher than ever before.

He hopes that iSHARP will attract local shrimp farmers and be a platform for them to upgrade their skills and market their products to the world.

“In Malaysia, the aquaculture sector is not growing as well as in Thailand and Indonesia.

“Most local shrimp farmers can’t sustain their businesses, financially and ecologically. Most of them are unable to invest in infrastructure and the know-how.

“By joining iSHARP, they will be able to do so. This will help the local industry grow,” he said.

Dr Shahridan estimates an annual revenue of RM100mil from the project, which is slated to begin operation in June next year.

Related article
1,000ha shrimp farm at Setiu, Kuala Terengganu Aug 3 deadline for objections on the proposed shrimp project The Star 29 Jul 09;

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U.N. forest plan could threaten species-scientists

Peter Griffiths, Reuters 16 Nov 09;

LONDON (Reuters) - A United Nations plan to protect the world's tropical forests to fight climate change could threaten more animals and plants with extinction, scientists said on Monday.

The U.N. scheme, to be discussed at climate talks in Copenhagen next month, could save some species, while inadvertently endangering many others, according to the team of international researchers.

Under the plan, called REDD, or reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation, poor countries will be paid to protect their trees to try to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Funded by a carbon market, it will let rich nations cut their emissions more cheaply. [ID:nSP409319]

In a paper published in Current Biology magazine, the scientists warned that the market may target forests that are cheap to protect and rich in carbon and neglect those that have less carbon but more endangered animals and plants.

"We are concerned that governments will focus on cutting deforestation in the most carbon-rich forests, only for clearance pressures to shift to other high biodiversity forests which are not given priority for protection," said the team's joint leader, Alan Grainger, of the University of Leeds.

Clearing forests for timber and farmland emits nearly a fifth of the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change, according to U.N. estimates. Deforestation has threatened species such as the mountain gorillas of Africa and the giant pandas of Asia.

The scientists, from Britain, the United States, Germany, Switzerland and Singapore, said concentrations of carbon and biodiversity in tropical forests only partially overlap.

They said up to 95 percent of damage to REDD-protected forests could be displaced to nearby unprotected forests.

Their report cited the example of the Peruvian Amazon, where the creation of forest reserves contributed to a 300 to 470 percent rise in damage to forests in adjacent areas.

State workers and public money may be switched to REDD forests, leaving unprotected areas at risk, the paper said.

The scientists also fear that REDD could, perversely, lead countries to delay forest protection measures that they might otherwise have taken anyway, as they await the new agreement and the rewards it might bring.

They urged countries meeting in Denmark to add rules on safeguarding biodiversity to the text of any deal and consider giving incentives to poor nations that address the issue.

"Despite the best of intentions, mistakes can easily happen because of poor design," Grainger added. "A well designed REDD can save many species."

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Sudan's White Nile marshes threatened by oil pollution

Herve Bar Yahoo News 16 Nov 09;

THAR JATH, Sudan (AFP) – Oil production in Sudan's Unity state is contaminating water, spreading disease to humans and cattle and threatening the world's largest inland wetlands, according to a survey released Monday.

Oil represents 95 percent of Sudan's exports and is both a source of huge tension between between Khartoum and the semi-autonomous south and the last thing forcing the former civil war foes to work together.

In the central Unity state, one of southern Sudan's main oil-producing regions, the German NGO Sign of Hope has led a fact-finding mission which revealed alarming pollution levels.

"Oil exploration and exploitation in the oilfields of Mala and Thar Jath pose serious threats to human beings, livestock and the environment," Klaus Stieglitz told AFP.

Pointing to the Thar Jath central processing facility (CPF), the NGO's vice chairman explained water flowing off the huge installation is a major source of contamination.

"Waters found in drilling pits at oil wells are another major source of contamination. Contaminants of both sources have already reached the drinking water layers," he explained.

Stieglitz cited the case of Rier, a village in Unity state close to the CPF, where concentrations of salts and contaminants like cyanides, lead, nickel, cadmium and arsenic had reached critical levels.

"The contamination has got a serious impact on the daily life of the local population. In the village of Rier the inhabitants do not use the water coming from their boreholes," he explained.

"Locals who drink this kind of water can get diarrhea and a subsequent dehydration of the body which might lead to death if untreated," Stieglitz said.

"The heavy metal concentrations of these waters will have negative impact on the health situation of the some 300,000 inhabitants of the affected area which covers 4,000 square kilometres (1,500 square miles)," he added.

Stieglitz urged the facility's operator WNPOC, a subsidiary of Malaysian giant Petronas, to treat the plant's water adequately and prevent seepage.

"To secure public health the government must also improve the quality of drinking water dramatically and at the same time prevent an ecological catastrophe," he added.

The pollution caused by the oil industry is also threatening the Sudd tropical wetlands, which cover an area of 30,000 kilometres (11,500 square miles).

The swamps, flood plains and grasslands support a rich animal diversity including hundreds of thousands of migratory birds and are inhabited by the Nuer, one of southern Sudan's two main tribes.

More than two decades of north-south civil conflict had incidentally protected the site through isolation but the intensification of oil activities since the 2005 peace deal is now a threat.

In 2006, the Sudd wetlands were certified of international importance under the Ramsar convention.

Many in southern Sudan, one of the most remote and impenetrable regions on the continent, feel that the oil riches discovered in the early 70s never turned out as the blessing it promised to be.

Sudan's oil is mostly found in the south and sold by the north, leaving many southerners feeling that they got the rough end of the stick.

"I see nothing coming out of the oil," said Reverend Roko Taban Mousa, an influential cleric in the oil-producing regions of Unity, Upper Nile and Jonglei.

"In the north, where the oil is going and the refineries are, there is an economic boom. But the production areas which should have benefited first have no services, no development. There is nothing and on the contrary, things have got worse," he told AFP.

"Oil could have been a blessing for southern Sudan had it been used properly, first for the development of the area where petrol is produced, and then the rest of the country, but it's exactly the contrary that is happening."

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Poachers kill 65 elephants, 30 rhinos in Zimbabwe: official

Yahoo News 16 Nov 09;

HARARE (AFP) – An international crime syndicate is behind an escalation in poaching in Zimbabwe which has slaughtered 65 elephants and 30 rhinos this year, a wildlife official said Monday.

"From January to October this year we have lost 65 elephants through poaching," Vitalis Chadenga, operations director of the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority told journalists.

"In the same period we have lost 24 black and six white rhinos. It is true that we have witnessed an escalation of poaching nationwide, particularly on private farms."

The black rhino is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the white rhino is categorised as "near threatened."

"We do have a group of international gangsters, who are funding poachers around this part of the world and taking away many horns and it is a major problem," Chadenga said.

He could not provide numbers from last year, but said poaching was on the rise.

"We have arrested 2,500 poachers in the same period, ten poachers have been shot dead since the beginning of this year," Chadenga said.

Zimbabwe has a population of nearly 100,000 elephants, which Chadenga said has been growing over recent years, and is banned from international ivory trade.

The southern African nation has 26 tonnes of ivory in its stocks and four tonnes of rhino horns.

Last year, Zimbabwe auctioned four tonnes of ivory to buyers from Japan and China getting 487,162 dollars (380,268 euros). During the same period, Namibia, Botswana and South Africa sold a total of 102 tonnes of tusks.

The four countries are home to 312,000 elephants, and their government stocks of tusks came from natural deaths or the culling of herds to keep the population under control.

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In praise of real darkness

Sarah Bell, BBC News 16 Nov 09;

A spot in Scotland has picked up an international award, confirming it as one of the best places for stargazing in the world. But what is the importance of being able to see the stars?

The harsh orange glow of sodium street lights and blinking of lights on 747s are about the only sights in the night-time sky for the average town-dweller in Britain.

The urban spread is such these days that even in the countryside, the dark delights of shooting stars and sprawling galaxies are muted by light pollution from towns and cities.

But those deprived of real darkness now have at least one destination in the UK to head for - Galloway Forest Park. The 300sq mile Forestry Commission site has been commended for its dark skies and named one of the best places in the world for stargazing.



Some may question why anyone would want to plunge themselves into a black abyss, with only the speckled flecks of brightness from thousands of light years away to feast their eyes on. But for others, a glimpse of what dwells in pitch-black sky goes some way to unlocking the mysteries of life itself.

In short, gazing upwards can prompt some profound inward gazing too.

"I saw dark skies and was totally hooked at a very young age," says Steve Owens, who is UK coordinator for the Unesco International Year of Astronomy.

"It's something quite primitive in human nature. Humans are inquisitive creatures, they like to ask questions and it makes you think about your place in the universe," says Mr Owens, speaking from Galloway Forest Park.

"It can seem like problems on Earth are big, but when you come here, you realise your place in the world is quite small. It does provoke deeper thoughts, it inspires people to be more introspective."

'Wow' moment

It is estimated about 7,000 stars can be spotted from the Galloway park, compared with a paltry few hundred, at most, in Britain's towns and cities.

From the prime location of the park, the Milky Way and the nearest galaxy to our own, Andromeda, can be glimpsed with the naked eye. It also provides ring-side seats for spectacular meteor showers.

This sky there is "as dark as anything you will ever see" says Mr Owens.

"Even if you drive half-an-hour outside a city you can't see as much. When you bring someone to see a sky as dark as this you get a real 'wow' moment. People get hooked on astronomy after just one experience out here.

"The only limit to what you can see is how good your eyes are. When you've been outside for half-an-hour and your eyes become used to the light, more and more will appear."

But the spread of artificial light - and the way it has eroded our sense of real darkness - means most people don't give a split second of thought to stars in the sky, says Mr Owens, "whereas it was a big part of people's lives just a couple of hundred years ago".

The issue of light pollution has become a rallying cause for environmentalists in recent years, with the British Astronomical Society running a Campaign for Dark Skies. But in just seven years between 1993 and 2000, light pollution in England increased by 24% while the amount of "truly dark night sky" fell from 15% to 11%, according to the Council for the Protection of Rural England.

But it's not just a pretty view of the night sky that light pollution is interfering with. Some scientists think the 24/7 glow that many of us live with gives rise to health and environmental problems.

Unceasing light is thought to disrupt the body's natural internal clock, its circadian rhythms of sleep and wakefulness.

"Research seems to suggest this has a detrimental affect," Mr Owen says.

And it's not just humans who are experiencing the side effects. From turtles and terrapins in the Caribbean, whose breeding patterns have been shown to be disrupted, to nocturnal creatures such as bats, light can affect where the insects they feed upon gather. It can also make it easier for predators to prey upon them.

"We're only beginning to understand the impact this can have on animals."

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RICE: Scientists focus on varieties resistant to drought and flooding

Fears over food price increases
Alastair McIndoe, Philippines Correspondent Straits Times 17 Nov 09;

MANILA: The latest advances in rice research can, in the long term, lessen the threats to global food security posed by climate change and rising populations, scientists said yesterday.

Several hundred delegates gathered at the 6th International Rice Genetics Symposium in Manila yesterday to share the latest research on developing rice varieties resistant to drought, floods and other threats to global food security, some linked to climate change.

The meeting of scientists from all over the world comes amid fears that rice prices could rise further in the coming months amid supply strains caused by drought in India and cyclones in the Philippines, the world's biggest importer of the grain.

'There have been unprecedented scientific advances in this field since the last symposium was held four years ago,' said Mr Duncan Macintosh, development director for the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

The focus of the four-day event - attended by over 700 scientists working for governments, universities and corporations from 20 countries - is to share research on rice genetics. It will showcase, among other things, the latest developments on mapping and cloning of rice genes, said Dr Julia Bailey-Serres, a plant genetics expert at the University of California-Riverside.

Organisers stressed the hot-button issue of genetically modified rice, which uses genes from other species, is not a talking point at the conference.

Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand, who opened the conference, expressed concerns that food production globally may not keep pace with population growth.

The IRRI estimates that by 2050, rice production must rise by 50 per cent in Asia, going by the region's current trend of population growth and rice output.

The topics at the symposium were densely scientific, but linked by a common thread: inside a grain of rice is the genetic potential to develop higher yields; and the capacity to grow rice in harsh conditions, including environments affected by climate change.

The next agricultural revolution will be driven by rice genetics to develop varieties resistant to drought, flooding, salinity and rice diseases, said Dr Robert Ziegler, director-general of the IRRI, which spurred the 1960s 'green revolution' in Asia.

Flood-tolerant rice that took the IRRI 15 years and millions of dollars to develop is now being used in the Philippines, Indonesia and Bangladesh. Still, not enough was planted in the Philippines to prevent severe flood damage to padi fields on the main island of Luzon from unusually heavy storms in September and last month.

Last week, the country put out a record tender for 600,000 tons of rice, and said yesterday that it would hold a tender next month for the same volume.

'Prices are at a nine-month high and seem to be climbing towards the levels of last year's rice crisis,' said Mr Macintosh. At that time, Thailand's export benchmark price hit a record high of US$1,083 (S$1,500) a ton in May last year; it is currently around half that level.

'There is a strong possibility we'll see a rice crisis next year as India faces drought, and Indonesia may feel the pinch of El Nino weather,' Mr Sarunyu Jeamsinkul, deputy managing director of Asia Golden Rice of Thailand - the world's biggest rice exporter - told Bloomberg.

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Climate deal key to fight "devastating" hunger: U.N.

Silvia Aloisi and Daniel Flynn, Reuters 16 Nov 09;

ROME (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Monday that agreeing a climate change deal in Copenhagen next month is crucial to fighting global hunger, which Brazil's president described as "the most devastating weapon of mass destruction."

Government leaders and officials met in Rome for a three-day U.N. summit on how to help developing countries feed themselves, but anti-poverty campaigners and even some participants were already writing off the event as a missed opportunity.

The sense of skepticism deepened at the weekend, when U.S. President Barack Obama and other leaders supported delaying a legally binding climate pact until 2010 or even later, though European negotiators said the move did not imply weaker action.

"There can be no food security without climate security," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the summit.

"Next month in Copenhagen, we need a comprehensive agreement that will provide a firm foundation for a legally binding treaty on climate change," he said.

Africa, Asia and Latin America could see a decline of between 20 and 40 percent in agricultural productivity if temperatures rise more than 2 degrees Celsius, the U.N. says.

Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to be the hardest hit from global warming as its agriculture is almost entirely rain-fed.

The number of hungry people in the world topped 1 billion for the first time this year due to the combined impact of the global recession and high food prices in poor countries. A child dies of malnutrition every six seconds.

"Hunger is the most devastating weapon of mass destruction on our planet, it doesn't kill soldiers, it kills innocent children who are not even one-year old," said Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization called the summit in the hope leaders would commit to raising the share of official aid spent on agriculture to 17 percent of the total -- its 1980 level -- from 5 percent now.

That would amount to $44 billion a year against $7.9 billion now. Farmers in rich countries receive $365 billion of support every year.

WHERE'S THE MONEY?

But the summit declaration adopted on Monday included only a general promise to pour more money into agricultural aid, with no target or timeframe for action.

Leaders reaffirmed their commitment to a U.N. Millennium Development Goal to halve the number of hungry people by 2015 -- a deadline which most experts say is certain to be missed. They vowed to eradicate hunger "at the earliest possible date."

Last year's spike in the price of food staples such as rice and wheat sparked riots in as many as 60 countries.

Rich food importers have since rushed to buy foreign farmland, pushing food shortages up the political agenda -- but also raising fears of a new colonialism in poor countries.

"We should fight against this new feudalism, we should put an end to this land grab in African countries," Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said at the summit.

Food prices have fallen back since their 2008 record highs but remain well above pre-crisis levels in poor countries. The FAO says sudden price rises are still very likely.

Group of Eight leading powers in July pledged $20 billion over three years in farm aid, in a big policy shift toward long-term strategies and away from emergency food assistance.

But FAO Director General Jacques Diouf said those were "still promises that need to materialize."

Apart from Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, G8 leaders skipped the summit, which looked more like a gathering of Latin American and African heads of state.

"At each summit we leave with our bellies full of promises," was the downbeat comment by President Amadou Toumani Toure of Mali, one of the world's poorest countries.

Gaddafi asks food summit to stop Africa "landgrab"
Reuters 16 Nov 09;

ROME (Reuters) - Libya's Muammar Gaddafi called for an end to the purchase of African farmland by food-importing nations at a U.N. hunger summit on Monday, describing it as "new feudalism" which could spread to Latin America as well.

"Rich countries are now buying the land in Africa. They are cheating African people out of their rights. This is also going to happen in Latin America ... ," he told the summit, which was mostly attended by African and Latin American leaders.

"Small farmers are being bereft of their own land thanks to new feudal powers coming from outside of Africa and buying up land very cheaply," Gaddafi told the meeting at the headquarters of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome.

"We should fight against this new feudalism, we should put an end to this land grab in African countries," he said.

High food prices which sparked a food supply scare in 2008 prompted countries like Saudi Arabia, China and South Korea to seek farmland abroad.

The FAO plans to draw up guidelines to try to safeguard the sometimes conflicting interests of local farmers and investors for the governance of land and other natural resources, and is consulting companies, farmers and independent experts.

French Farm Minister Bruno Le Maire said on the sidelines of the U.N. summit that "predatory" farmland acquisitions in poor countries should be halted.

But U.N. officials said investments in land could also benefit small farmers in the developing world.

"It is a wrong language to call them land grabs. Those are investments in farmland like investments in oil exploration," said Kanayo Nwanze, who heads the U.N. International Fund for Agricultural Development. "We can have win-win situations."

Earlier this year the International Food Policy Research Institute, a Washington-based think-tank, said that since 2006 15-20 million hectares of land in poor countries had been sold or were under negotiations for sale to foreign buyers.

Supporters of such deals say they provide new seeds, technology and money for agriculture in economies that have suffered from under-investment for decades.

FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf told the summit "private investment should be encouraged," both domestic and foreign, but rules were required "preferably within the spirit of a code of conduct on agricultural investment in developing countries."

(Reporting by Stephen Brown and Svetlana Kovalyova; editing by James Jukwey)

UN chief urges unity over hunger
BBC News 16 Nov 09;

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for a "single global vision" from world leaders to address the problems of world hunger and pollution.

Mr Ban's comments came at the start of a UN conference in Rome aimed at stabilising world food prices.

He said the summit needed to co-ordinate closely with the UN climate meeting at Copenhagen in December.

The UN says one billion people are hungry and that food production must increase to feed a growing population.

The World Summit on Food Security comes a year after major rises in food prices caused chaos in many countries.

Mr Ban said both the Rome and Copenhagen summits "must craft a single global vision to produce real results for people in real need".

He called for a more co-ordinated approach to the issues, saying there "can be no food security without climate security".

"The food crisis of today is a wake-up call for tomorrow," said Mr Ban.

"By 2050, our planet may be the home of 9.1 billion people. By 2050 we know we will need to grow 70% more food, yet weather is becoming more extreme and more unpredictable," AFP news agency quoted him as saying.

"We must make significant changes to feed ourselves, and most especially to safeguard the poorest and most vulnerable."

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned that if more land is not used for food production now, 370 million people could be facing famine by 2050.

'End greed'

FAO head Jacques Diouf told the summit that developing countries had made some progress in reversing the decline in investment in agriculture since prices hit record highs at the end of 2007.

But he said much of the money had not yet materialised and that amounts promised were not at the level needed.

Mr Diouf said the $44bn (£26.4bn) required for developing countries was far less that the $365bn (£219bn) that developed countries spend each year on subsidising their farmers.

He recommended that developing countries dedicate 10% of their expenditure to agriculture.

Pope Benedict XVI also addressed the opening of the summit, calling for an end to the "greed" of financial speculation on food prices.

He said hunger in the poorest countries should not be considered "a matter of resigned regret" and criticised unsustainable food production methods and aid practises which damage agriculture.

Critics say the summit may fail to set ambitious goals and have questioned whether it will be effective, as most of the leaders of the world's richest nations are not attending.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is the only leader from one of the G8 leading industrialised countries to take part.

Francisco Sarmento, of campaign group ActionAid, told AFP that the absence of other G8 leaders "doesn't signal they are serious about finding global solutions to hunger".

The BBC's David Loyn in Rome says the leaders attending the summit will try to keep the world focused on the consequences of the massive rise in food prices last year, which hit the poor hardest.

However, he says the summit is likely to be big on rhetoric but small on concrete actions.

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Clean-growth opportunity for Southeast Asia

The region still lags far behind China and India in terms of registered Clean Development Mechanism projects
Catherine Wong Mei Ling, Business Times 17 Nov 09;

SOUTH-EAST Asia must seize rising appetite for new Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) markets, but make it work for its developmental needs.

As the CDM markets in China and India become saturated, attention is turning to South-east Asia for new CDM opportunities as investors seek first-mover advantages in new markets.

(CDM allows industrialised countries to invest in projects that reduce carbon emissions in developing countries in order to meet their emissions reduction targets.)

In a CDM investment climate index released in April 2009 by DEG, a member of KfW Bankengruppe, Malaysia and Thailand were ranked first and third respectively, above China, while Indonesia and the Philippines ranked sixth and seventh respectively, trailing India only by small margins.

But South-east Asia still lags far behind China and India in terms of registered CDM projects. Based on the latest figures from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the international governing body for CDM projects, China and India together account for close to 60 per cent of all CDM projects registered. Malaysia has a minuscule 3.5 per cent share while the Philippines and Indonesia managed to scrape 2.1 per cent and 1.8 per cent respectively.

Several endogenous factors account for this. The region lacks strong and reliable reporting regimes, which translates into the poor availability of good-quality data needed by validators to register a project. This contributes to problems of defining project additionality, baseline determination and assessing CER (carbon credit) delivery risk.

Local entrepreneurs looking to develop green projects are also frustrated by poor language skills and technical know-how. They are further disadvantaged by their inexperience with international standards of project monitoring and reporting. This affects their ability to get projects approved and starves good ideas from the funding needed to help them take off.

Furthermore, local financial institutions are unsure of how to treat Emission Reduction Purchase Agreement and prospective carbon revenue streams in their evaluation of loan applications. They also do not accept carbon credits as collateral.

But where there are deficiencies, there also are opportunities. A host of international CDM developers and Designated Operation Entities (DOEs) - organisations accredited by the UNFCCC to validate projects - have set up shop in the region to provide these services. For example, Tricorona, the second most active buyer of carbon credits worldwide, and CVDT Consulting, the seventh largest CDM developer globally, have opened branches in Singapore recently.

DOEs such as Det Norske Veritas Certification AS and TÜV NORD CERT GmbH now have offices in Malaysia, indicating the growth of CDM market potential in the region.

The presence of these third-party service providers alone, however, is not enough to propel growth of the CDM industry and ensure that the developmental needs of the region are met through it.

While individual South-east Asian countries need to find their own feet, regional groupings such as Asean could potentially facilitate the process. At the recent 11th Asean Ministerial Meeting on the Environment, the Asean environment ministers announced the formation of a working group to address threats posed by global warming to eco-systems, coastal communities and marine environments.

These issues are pertinent, but the function of such a group could be enhanced if the agenda is expanded to include CDM as an instrument to address these issues.

In line with Asean's triple bottom-line principle of profitability, social responsibility and environmental protection, such working groups should aim to match problems with viable solutions and funding. They could help identify new areas for project development, precipitate the flow of funds through CDM financing and promote public-private partnerships.

Aid funding alone will not be sufficient to meet the mitigation and adaptation needs of the region. The latest World Development Report 2010 shows that even with CDM finance, funding available (up to 2012) for climate mitigation efforts amount to US$8 billion a year as opposed to the annual US$400 billion needed by developing countries. The private sector therefore must be included in discussions.

Reduction of carbon emissions and economic growth are not mutually exclusive. In fact, by helping the region's small-medium enterprises tap on this emerging market, Asean will be one step closer to its new growth model of greater emphasis on domestic and intra-regional markets.

Waiting on technology and knowledge transfers from the developed world will take too long, and may not be suited to the local context. More developed Asean countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand can offer their knowledge, expertise and services to its less developed member countries to produce projects and build institutions that meet local needs. Given their greater familiarity with the socio-political and economic fabric of the region, Asean countries are better placed to navigate the local politics and help one another formulate localised solutions.

Left to free market forces, CDM may not deliver the type of technologies needed to address the country-specific vulnerabilities and mitigation needs - out of over 2,000 CDM projects registered with the UNFCCC, 1,383 are in the energy sector and only two are in transportation even though the sector is projected to be the largest contributor to fuel emissions growth worldwide, 80 per cent of which will come from developing Asia, according to the latest Asian Development Bank Report 2009.

Therefore to make CDM work for the development needs of the country, governments should target particular CDM sectors - particularly transportation, waste management and agriculture - and design policies that will make investments in these areas conducive and attractive.

It is evident that the region has a lot to catch up on. Ironically though, with next month's Copenhagen meeting unlikely to produce any concrete agreement and the US climate bill (the Kerry-Boxer bill) still stalled by the Senate, these delays will buy the region some time to set up the necessary conditions for CDM growth. But these momentary intermissions will not last long and South-east Asia's governments must act now.

The writer is a research associate with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

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The two faces of China's giant coal industry

Jonathan Watts reports from a boom area where the industry's past and future are on show
Jonathan Watts guardian.co.uk 15 Nov 09;

The world's newest carbon citadel rises up between the blasted deserts of Inner Mongolia and the coal-black lands of Shaanxi province.

Ordos is a city that few outside China know. But the future of global emissions, and global warming looks increasingly more likely to be set in industrial powerhouses like this than in the negotiating halls of Copenhagen.

While the world's countries struggle to reach a treaty to defeat climate change, Chinese miners and scientists here are ramping up production and finding new ways to burn and bury carbon that will shape the policies of the world's biggest polluting nation.

Ordos is the new face of coal in China. It is home to the world's biggest coal company and an industrial-scale experiment to turn coal into diesel that could create a major new source of greenhouse gases. At the same time, it hosts the planet's most efficient mine and one of China's biggest carbon capture and storage projects, which buries the gases blamed for global warming.

What to do about China's emissions will be high on the agenda when China's president, Hu Jintao, meets Barack Obama tomorrow. The summit brings together the two countries that together account for 40% of the world's greenhouse gases – most of which derives from this dirtiest of fossil fuels.

China is the world's biggest coal producer, the US is second.

China is trying to use science to clean up and expand coal production, which is good news for the local environment but potentially disastrous for the planet's climate. Both trends are apparent at Ordos. The discovery of extensive coal and gas deposits has turned this arid, northernoutpost into a boom town. The local economy has grown eightfold over the past five years, while the population has swollen almost 20 per cent.

The past and future of coal are apparent at the district's southern border. On one side of the Huojitu river is the traditional mining region of Shaanxi province. Dirty, inefficient and dangerous, this is the face of Chinese coal that the outside world has grown used to.

At the small Bandingliang colliery, the pit has been dug so far into the hillside that truck drivers take 30 minutes to reach the coalface, fill up and return with their load.

The tunnels are filled with exhaust emissions, coal dust and the roar of blasting.

"We drill holes," said Zhao Zhaoguo, a migrant from Henan province on his way down the shaft. "We stuff explosive inside, then a detonator. We set it off, and then, 'voom' – there's a big bang."

Such techniques have made China's mines the deadliest and most inefficient in the world, But they are changing.

Prompted by President Hu Jintao's drive for "scientific development", the government is on a drive to reduce waste, improve safety and boost productivity. Many small private collieries in the area have been shut down. Managers at Bandingliang say they have been given a choice of modernisation or closure. Next door, work is under way on a new mine that will have new equipment and more than twice the production capacity.

The technology is becoming more and more advanced," said Zhao. "In the futureit will be fully electrified and mechanised. all we will have to do is press a button, and the coal will just come up by itself," said Zhao.

That vision is closest to coming true just a few kilometres away in Inner Mongolia, now the number one region for coal production in China. Heavy industry has followed the fuel. That trend and the low population density has given Inner Mongolia the highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions in China.

While the country's average is just a fifth of that of the US, in this area the 16 tonnes per person per year are almost twice the level in the UK.

But much of the industry here is more modern, efficient and "clean" than that of China's old rustbelt cities. Shenhua, the world's biggest coal company, runs several mega-mines in the region, the most advanced of which is the fully automated Shangwan pit, which produces more than 1m tonnes of coal a month with just 300 workers. On the outside at least, the state-owned company's pit resembles a garden more than a mine.

The Communist party mine secretary, Wang Tianliang, is proud of its efficiency and safety. "In this mechanised working face, this single shaft and single face ranks No 1 in China … in the world we are No 1," he says. "In more than 3,000 days of operation, we have not had a deadly accident."

We drive 10 kilometres in a comfortable minibus to the pit face, 355 metres below the surface. The tunnel is wider and cleaner than the London Underground. There are just a handful of miners at our destination. They work with remote control devices that change the direction, position and speed of a German-made cutting machine that slices back and forth along a 300-metre-wide coal face. Giant Hydraulic supports keep the tunnel stable until the cutters have moved on. This hydraulic system is 100 per cent made in China," says Wang proudly.

New technology like this has boosted the nation's annual coal production to 2.2 billion tonnes. The Shangwan mine plans to almost double its output by 2015. In the control room, Wang shows me a bank of computers that run the operation displayed on a wall of CCTV images. One screen tracks the position of every worker in the mine. Another shows the rail depot, where a long line of carriages is filled automatically from conveyors at the rate of a tonne a second.

Before being loaded the coal is broken, filtered and scrubbed. The station is one of 17 washing and loading centres owned by the company. Here too, the story is one of expansion. According to the depot's deputy manager, Yuan Jun, the capacity has increased sixfold since 2002.The Carriages from Shangwan – each containing 60 to 80 tonnes of coal – are hauled off by powerful engines towards other mines, where more cargo is added. At peak times, snakes of 200-carriage trains pass every 10 minutes on single rails through northern China, en route to ports and major power plants on the wealthy eastern seaboard.

At the end of the line, the way coal is burned is changing too. Dirty old steel factories are being upgraded or relocated. To reduce smog, the low chimneys of small thermal power generators are being replaced by the towering smokestacks of more efficient "supercritical" plants. Although China is notoriously building one a new coal-fired plant each week, most of them are more efficient than similar facilities in the UK. They are also better equipped to remove sulphur dioxide and other noxious gases.

But almost none of them remove carbon dioxide. The result is that local air pollution is finally easing in many places but emissions of greenhouse gases into the planet's atmosphere are increasing.

The pattern could change again, but not necessarily for the better. Beijing's leaders acknowledge the need to tackle climate change, but their priority is energy security. With oil prices high, China's policymakers are hedging their bets by investing in one of the world's most controversial fuels: coal diesel.

Shenhua is once again at the forefront of development. Last year, the company launched a pilot that uses an advanced technique on a scale never seen before in the world. In its first 12 months, the experimental liquefaction facility in Ordos expects to produce more than a million tonnes of vehicle fuel.

Coal-to-liquid technology has a long history. It was developed in Nazi Germany and enhanced by apartheid-era South Africa to get around fuel embargoes. Japan, the US and several other nations also launched small-scale trials after the oil price shock of the early 1970s. Most experiments were abandoned due to environmental and cost concerns.

But China has launched two major coal-to-liquid projects. One, in Ningxia, is a tie-up with SASOL that uses the South African firm's gasification methods. The Guardian is the first western media organisation to visit the other facility, in Ordos, which pioneers a direct liquefaction technique that "cracks" carbon with hydrogen extracted from water to produce clear diesel.

In the future, Shenhua hopes to expand production fivefold, largely using coal from the nearby Shangwan mine. The main driver is cost. Shu Geping, the chief engineer at the plant, says the price of liquid coal is competitive when the cost of oil is over $40 a barrel. In the future, as production increases and the technology is improved, it will become even cheaper.

Environmental concerns will weigh against these economic benefits. On the surface, the plant is impressively clean. There is no smell and in the glow of an Inner Mongolian sunset, white and pink smoke billows from its pipes.

But for each tonne of the liquid, six and a half tonnes of water must be piped from an aquifer more than 70 kilometres away and more than three tonnes of carbon dioxide are released into the air. These are major concerns for a country that is already desperately short of water and increasingly criticised as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.

Government researchers have been cautious about adopting this technology nationwide because liquid coal results in 50% to 100% more emissions than a comparable amount of oil.

The prospect of millions of petrol tanks being filled with such a fuel has alarmed environmentalist groups. "Developing this technology on a big scale will lock China up even further in its unsustainable reliance on coal, which is the biggest cause of climate change," said Yang Ailun, of Greenpeace.

Last year, the government blocked several new proposals for coal liquefaction facilities. But this may be to ensure the monopoly of the state firm. According to Shu, Shenhua plans to build another facility near Xinjiang's largely unexploited coal deposits.In the long term strategic concerns may ensure a future for liquefaction.

"To make the most of our energy strengths, producing oil from coal is of great strategic significance," he said. "I've read that if the output of coal-to-liquid plants could reach 50 million tonnes a year, then China's energy problems would be solved."

Shu insists his new facility can be good for the environment because it is equipped to capture and condense carbon dioxide for possible storage. Next year, the facility will begin one of China's most ambitious carbon capture and sequestration research programmes. In a US-backed project, it will store 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually in a nearby saline aquifer.

Its small beer compared to the 3 million tonnes of emissions from the plant, but A successful pilot project could pave the way for a wider scale adoption of the technology that many believe is of global importance. Ahead of Barack Obama's visit to Beijing this week, two US groups - the Natural Resources Defense Council and Asia Society - issued reports urging the two governments to promote carbon capture and sequestration projects in China.

Beijing's policymakers are doubtful. They believe dumping carbon underground is expensive and risky for local environments. But under foreign pressure, they have identified more than 100 sites for potential storage.

Ordos will lead the way, but it remains to be seen whether its scientists will be as successful with carbon storage as they have been with coal liquefaction.

Additional reporting by Cui Zheng

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The trouble with coal

Dr Michael Borgas, Science Alert 16 Nov 09;

The CSIRO Staff Association represents more than 3000 scientists and staff in CSIRO and we support the freedom and independence of science, and the charter that governs our comment on political policy. We hope to debate issues and inform but not instruct the public on major issues in society.

Coal policy and freedom of speech is a vexed problem for CSIR(O), and the politics of energy are often controversial, which the recent organisational angst on gagging shows. But this is nothing new.

In the 1920’s Stanley Bruce, later Lord Bruce of Melbourne, was instrumental in establishing CSIR and exploiting coal was prominent in its fuel research portfolio.

Industrial relations heavy handedness was another hallmark of Bruce. He enacted legislation in 1925 under the Crimes Act to deal with ‘industrial extremists,’ largely directed at coal-industry activism.

In the U.K., coal-industry troubles sparked the famous 1926 general strike, and invigorated science trade union activism, with the Association of Scientific Workers established in 1927, including links to many Australians.

Economic, political and coal-industry events in 1929 terminated Bruce’s leadership (and seat in Parliament), but CSIR, still a political cleanskin, powered on. Around the world, left wing political activism aligned more and more with progressive science hoping for a better planned world.

The Australian Association of Scientific Workers formed in 1939 and growing numbers of Australian scientists participated in political activism throughout the 1930s. The AASW was active and influential in planning the economy during the second-world war.

Stanley Bruce received an FRS (Fellow Royal Society, London) in 1944 for service to science, particularly for linking science to global programmes for food production, development of global aviation and securing Australian uranium supplies.

In CSIR, a Staff Association had been mooted from as early as 1929, but it was Bruce’s protégé Richard Casey’s rejection of a re-classification scheme in 1939 that began industrial organisation in CSIR.

Coal and nuclear energy were political issues post war, with the famous sacking of a CSIR scientist, Tom Kaiser. He was observed in London publicly protesting at the gaoling in Australia of striking coal miners, which stoked fears of communist influence in Australian science.

Right wing politicians riven with conspiracy theories attacked CSIR and its chairman Sir David Rivett. His defence of scientific independence and freedom was tarred as treachery and CSIR was reorganised in 1949.

Lord Casey, again Minister in charge of CSIRO, combined his duties with being head of ASIO and national security (and he was later on the executive of CSIRO too). The boom times of the 1950’s were not times for public comment in Australian science.

As we switch to today, the policy and science issues resonate with the past. Right wing conspiracy theories abound from parliament, scientists have much to say about planning for sustainability, and organisation of world affairs is on the minds of policy makers. As in the past, coal is at the heart of the issue.

History shows that Australia is prone to gross over reaction in such situations. Tom Kaiser, forced from Australia, eventually had a productive career in the U.K., including a Gold Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society in 1994, although one suspects that some sceptics may still have issues with astronomers. Sir David Rivett (FRS awarded in 1941) is of course iconic in Australian science and he will be honoured again with a named lecture in CSIRO early in 2010.

CSIRO still has people speaking out, these days with a charter to guide us rather than secret Machiavellian control. Overall, there seems to be more pressure from society to be more open even in our inherently conservative society. Rivett’s calls for scientific freedom are still relevant and we all still have to work towards this goal.

The affinity of both physical and social scientists to want to contribute to world affairs is long standing. In fact the post second-world war ‘contract’ with science for disinterested pursuit of the endless frontiers of knowledge, was simply a reaction to cold war sensitivities. It is widely acknowledged that this contract has run its course and new modes of science and innovation are on the rise, although we are yet to have a clear new ‘contract’ for science in society.

The climate debate is a broad metaphor for all aspects of an interconnected and finite world, and a scientific approach to help the organisation of the planet is overdue.

The dialogue in Australia remains at a very primitive level. The world-government conspiracy fear promoted by Lord Monckton, and remarkably uncritically accepted by even the wisest so-called sceptic, is a hallmark of those frozen in time. Lady Thatcher, a former U.K. Prime Minister, was once advised by Lord Monckton. However, she was also once a member of the Association of Scientific Workers, and an early supporter of global warming, at least when it suited the political debate vilifying coal workers. The Lady was for turning some of the time.

It just goes to show that advice to government is an important thing, no less than when it is science. It is perhaps always useful to have some scepticism about received wisdom, but even better to have more about mad conspiracies.

Dr Michael Borgas is the president of the CSIRO Staff Association.

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Australian sea-level rise report not watertight

Peter Ker, The Age 17 Nov 09;

THE Victorian Government has questioned the reliability of a Federal Government report on rising sea levels, declaring the state would soon release work that was "20 times" more accurate.

Responding to claims that up to 45,000 homes in Victoria - worth more than $10 billion - would be threatened by rising sea levels by 2100, State Environment Minister Gavin Jennings said the report had taken a "broad brush" approach to the issue and did not involve the best analytical science available.

The warning of sea-level damage was made in a Federal report released by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong on Saturday, ahead of this week's debate on emissions trading in Federal Parliament.

The Victorian Government has its own sea-level rise document due for release early next year, and Mr Jennings said he could not yet corroborate the sort of predictions released by Senator Wong.

"The reason I'm not jumping into providing numbers immediately is that we think we need a finer grain of detail," he said. "The difference between our work and the Commonwealth's is that it's at least 20 times more accurate …"

Mr Jennings also released two new CSIRO reports on predicted sea-level rises.

Under the most modest scenario considered in the CSIRO reports, sea levels during storms are likely to be about 15 centimetres higher in 2030 than they are during storms today.

The documents show Stony Point in Western Port is likely to face some of the biggest inundation problems in Victoria.

Within Melbourne, the bayside suburb of Elwood was named as one of the suburbs most likely to suffer inundation.

By 2070, the most modest sea-level rise considered by the reports would have inundated "a significant area of Elwood".

Altona, Queenscliff and Port Fairy were also forecast to suffer from sea-level rises and storm activity.

The report to be released by Victoria next year will consider three sea-level rise scenarios by 2100: rises of 80 centimetres, 110 centimetres and 140 centimetres.

Victorian planning regulations tell builders to expect an 80-centimetre rise by the end of the century, but Friends of the Earth spokesman Damien Lawson said that estimate should now be revised upwards.

"We should be making planning decisions based on worst-case scenarios," he said.

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Binding climate treaty may slip far into 2010

Alister Doyle, Reuters 16 Nov 09;

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A binding international treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions will slip to mid-2010 or beyond and a summit in Copenhagen next month will fall short of its ambitions, the United Nations and Denmark said on Monday.

The United Nations' top climate official said a treaty could be wrapped up at talks in Bonn by mid-2010. Denmark, host of next month's meeting, said it might take longer - until Mexico in December. Negotiations on a deal, initially due to be reached at the December 7-18 summit in Copenhagen, have stalled.

U.S. President Barack Obama and some other Asia Pacific leaders embraced a proposal by Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen on Sunday that next month's summit should aim for political agreements but delay a legally binding treaty.

A prominent member of the U.S. Congress also acknowledged it could be months before the Senate gets around to passing a domestic climate bill.

Senator John Kerry, who is leading Senate negotiations on a compromise U.S. measure to tackle global warming, said he and other Democrats were working toward "trying to see if we can get this to the (Senate) floor sometime in the early spring, as early as possible."

Denmark still wants the summit to agree emissions cuts by each developed country, actions by developing nations to slow their rising emissions, and new funds and technology to help the poor.

Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said he favored at most a six-month delay for a legally binding deal -- until a meeting in Bonn in mid-2010. That would give time for the U.S. Senate to pass carbon-capping laws, he said.

"It's like metal, you've got to beat it when it's hot," he told Reuters at two days of talks involving 40 environment ministers. They are trying to end rich-poor splits blocking even a political deal for sharing out greenhouse gas curbs.

"If we get clarity on (emission) targets, developing country engagement and finance in Copenhagen, which I'm confident we will, then you can nail that down in a treaty form six months later."

MEXICAN TREATY?

Danish Climate and Energy Minister Connie Hedegaard also said the December summit should end with a clear deadline.

"Maybe a realistic deadline would be Mexico but it depends on how far parties go on crunch issues," she told reporters. Ministerial talks are scheduled for Mexico in December 2010.

Denmark wants world leaders to sign up to a 5-8 page "political agreement" next month, backed up by annexes outlining commitments by each nation.

At a U.N. food summit in Rome, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said: "I remain positive about Copenhagen. There is no cause for alarm."

He also said a climate deal was crucial to fighting global hunger because climate change hurts farm output in poor countries.

"There can be no food security without climate security," he said. "Next month in Copenhagen, we need a comprehensive agreement that will provide a firm foundation for a legally binding treaty on climate change."

China, which is under pressure to restrict its emissions growth even though its industrial expansion is very recent, said it was "studying" the Danish proposal for a political deal. China has overtaken the United States as top emitter.

It made clear it is keen to tie down points that have been agreed in principle on transfers of technology and funding from long-industrialized nations to the developing world.

India's Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh said:

"It seems like the inability of the U.S. to come forward with a meaningful emissions cut by the year 2020 has led to such a situation ... I am hoping that we can get a full agreement but it looks increasingly unlikely."

STILL HOPING

Poor nations insisted that a binding treaty was still possible next month, even though Obama and most other leaders reckon it has slipped out of reach, not least because the U.S. Senate is unlikely to pass carbon-capping laws by December.

"We believe that an internationally legally binding agreement is still possible," Michael Church, the environment minister of Grenada who chairs the 42-nation Alliance of Small Island States, told Reuters.

Developing nations say they are most at risk from heatwaves, droughts, floods, disease and rising sea levels, and so are pressing for action most urgently.

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan in Washington)

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