$10m gift for natural history museum
from Raffles Museum News
A morning of action at SBWR
from The Simplicities in Life
Return to the Lost Changi shore
from wild shores of singapore and Remarkable Rhu
Rich Biodiversity @ Temasek Junior College Part 3
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature
A choking Blue-winged Pitta
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Monday Morgue: 25th January 2010
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales
Amresh Gunasingham Straits Times 25 Jan 10;
SINGAPORE'S clean reputation is coming under threat as the Garden City's pristine green spaces, especially its parks and beaches, are turned into giant litter bins.
An average of 700 tickets were issued every month last year to park visitors for dumping their trash, The Straits Times discovered.
For the whole of last year, more than 8,300 tickets were issued by enforcement officers from the National Parks Board, which manages 320 public parks occupying an area of 2,500ha.
'Littering remains a cause for concern in our parks despite many years of public education,' said Mr Kong Yit San, NParks' director of parks, adding that more waste is dumped over the weekends and public holidays.
Parks, beaches and mangrove swamps and popular hiking trails such as Chek Jawa in Pulau Ubin appear to be hot spots for mounds of trash.
Favourite dumping grounds are the 185ha East Coast Park (ECP) and the 73ha Pasir Ris Park. From the ECP, more than 200 tonnes of litter are picked up by cleaners every month, an NParks spokesman said. The rubbish turns the weekend getaway into an eyesore.
The National Environment Agency (NEA), which is in charge of cleaning beaches, spends about $1.4 million every year, employing cleaners to pick up the mess.
Most of the rubbish is made up of cigarette butts, plastic bags, tissue paper, bottles and drink cans.
Not only are they unsightly but they could also choke flora and threaten marine life if they got into the run-off.
Last September, in a two-day islandwide sweep, volunteers from the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore collected 1,500 bags - about 13,000kg - of trash from mangrove swamps and beaches that extended to nearby conservation sites such as Pulau Semakau and St John's Island.
NParks said the number of litterbugs caught last year increased from previous years, partly because more officers have had their eyes peeled for the antisocial behaviour since June 2008.
Last year's littering figures were 10 per cent more than the previous year's. Each ticket issued carries a fine of $300.
Housewife Sharon Chong, 36, who takes her three children to the ECP every weekend, said: 'It can be quite an eyesore to see plastic bags, bottles and straws strewn all over, particularly when sometimes they are thrown right next to a dustbin. Some objects that are sharp can also be dangerous for kids walking around barefoot.'
Retiree Ken Ho, 69, said leftover food attracted stray dogs and cats to the area.
He said the problem could be worse if not for the army of cleaners that throng the area.
'Every day, I see cleaners walking around picking up rubbish left by people. Imagine if the park was not cleaned for a week, how much rubbish are we going to find?'
Mr Kong said the onus of keeping public parks clean was not just the duty of cleaners. 'Everyone has a social responsibility to ensure our parks are beautiful and
litter-free, so that they remain places where all users can enjoy and relax.'
The decades-old littering issue has come to the fore in the last few years, partly owing to an expanding foreign workforce that brings with it different social habits.
NEA said the number of litterbugs caught rose to 27,600 last year, up from 20,500 in 2008. Almost one in three caught last year were foreigners.
Anti-littering campaigns held over the years, as well as fines and corrective work orders as deterrents, appear to have had little lasting effect, environmentalists argued.
Mr Wilson Ang, the founder of Environmental Challenge Organisation Singapore, felt such measures did not address the nub of the issue.
He said there should be more emphasis on campaigns that address how littering affects the individual, in terms of the health hazards it posed, as well as its unpleasant effects on a community's image. 'This will get things close to people's hearts and motivate them to play their part.'
Today Online 25 Jan 10;
TO complement the national goal of cutting carbon emission by up to 11 per cent, the South West Community Development Council has launched several green goals with the help of energy firm Chevron.
They launched the South West CarbonBuster Roadmap yesterday. It spells out environmentally-friendly practices and residents, businesses and community organisations in the area will be given tips to go green, like taking public transport.
The initiative pledges to cut carbon emissions in the district by at least 7,000 tonnes this year or the equivalent of driving a car for more than 1,521 years.
In another programme, the Chevron-South West Energy Quest For Schools, 41 schools will adopt habits to cut their electricity bills. The amount saved between March to May will be matched dollar for dollar by Chevron and the CDC.
The money will be channelled to enrichment programmes for needy students. The programme aims to raise $135,000 to help subsidise 1,500 needy students.
South West District Mayor Amy Khor, who is also Senior Parliamentary Secretary (Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources), said: "In order to kickstart the programme and really get the students and schools involved and excited we are motivating them to implement energy saving practices and habits." WANG ENG ENG
The Star 25 Jan 10;
PETALING JAYA: Umno Youth has called for immediate action to be taken by the relevant authorities on the illegal sale of sand to Singapore.
Its chief Khairy Jamaluddin said the police, the Customs Department and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) should look into it as it also involved smuggling.
“The sale of sand to another country should be closely monitored because if there is an element of smuggling, it is a serious crime,” he told reporters after leading the Caring Youth Programme organised by the Petaling Jaya Selatan Umno Youth division here yesterday.
Khairy said Umno Youth was prepared to lodge a police report so that the matter could be investigated. The issue surfaced after former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad claimed on his blog that 700 lorries of sand were sold to Singapore daily.
On a separate issue, Khairy said Umno Youth, together with the Barisan Nasional, would reach out to the rakyat.
“Some party leaders in Selangor are selective when offering help to the needy here. I was told that they only help those who voted for them or who are registered members of their party and I think this is really unhealthy,” he said.
Khairy, along with at least 50 other Umno Youth members, rode on 30 motorcycles and combed through the housing areas to visit several homes at Medan Maju Jaya off Kampung Datuk Harun here.
The group also offered help to V. Balu, 50, and his sister V.Gageswari, 52, whose home was destroyed in a fire on Saturday.
New Straits Times 24 Jan 10;
KUALA LUMPUR: Like the tapir that has become its recognisable mascot, the Malaysian Nature Society has seen and been through it all.
Seventy years down the road, MNS continues to fight many green causes in the country.
During a briefing of its 70th anniversary celebration yesterday, president Tan Sri Dr Salleh Mohd Nor stressed that MNS strived to be the "voice of the people" as it belonged to everyone who wanted a green Malaysia.
With nature as the classroom and a little guidance from experts, MNS believed that anyone of all ages can go green -- a belief it has held since its inception in 1940.
"MNS is not for people who hug trees. It is for everyone.
"We're not extremists. We're not against the government. But we won't hesitate to be critical if something is wrong."
But Salleh lamented that MNS "could do better" than the current 3,800 members.
"If you become a member, we will help you express your concerns," he said.
With its tagline "70 years: Conserving Nature, Celebrating Life", this year's activities are focused on conserving nature for the present and future generations of Malaysians.
The New Straits Times 24 Jan 10;
Pygmy sea horses, a treasure beneath the azure waters of Sabah, are in danger and tangible solutions are needed to protect them, writes JASWINDER KAUR
BARELY the length of a finger-nail, a pygmy sea horse clings to the fan shaped coral it calls home deep below the surface of the sun-kissed blue sea in southeastern Sabah.
It is small and very difficult to spot given that it camouflages itself with branches that make up the sea fan, but most recreational divers don't mind straining their eyes to catch a glimpse of it.
They have no inkling, however, that constant flash photography may have a negative impact on pygmy sea horses.
Two of the nine known pygmy sea horse species are at the centre of a pioneering study that aims to not only gather information on its ecology, but also offer solutions to Sabah's diving industry which depends on the long term survival of iconic sea life.
The two -- hippocampus denise and hippocampus bargibanti -- along with other sea horses are listed as endangered and vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Their colours range from yellow to orange, and pinkish to red, and the shade that the two species take depends on the sea fan.
Universiti Malaysia Terengganu's student Yeong Yee Ling, who is doing her Master's, has done more than 100 dives in Semporna waters. Yeong says very little is known about the existing numbers, life-span, eating habits and threats to pygmy sea horses.
"Almost daily, pygmy sea horses are visited by hundreds of divers. Based on feedback, I am told irresponsible dive masters move the sea fans these two species live on, to shallower waters so that their customers can view them easily.
"The H. bargibanti lives on sea fans at a depth of 16 to 40 metres, and H. denise survive on sea fans at 13 to 90 metres below the surface of the sea, making it difficult for divers to remain long under water due to the depth.
"Flash photography is also a disturbance. I was told about a pygmy sea horse that fell off its sea fan after it was exposed to strong flashlights from cameras. The next day, the sea horse was no longer there," said Yeong, who chose to study the two species following a suggestion by her supervisor.
Last month, Yeong and her supervisor Choo Chee Kuang also from UMT, teamed up with Sabah Parks and WWF Malaysia to get views from dive masters at the many resorts in Semporna.
They spent two nights at Mabul island learning about the threats facing the two species.
The general consensus from about 50 dive masters was that pygmy sea horses are in danger, with reasons ranging from flash photography and divers touching sea fans, to "abduction" for the aquarium trade, and coral bleaching from rising global temperatures.
The dive masters agreed that lack of knowledge on the species, pollution from resorts and boats, and destructive fishing were some of the other threats that must be dealt with.
To manage the problem, they came up with some suggestions, including getting members of their fraternity to minimise the use of flash bulbs in photography, to stop touching the species with pointers, and to cancel a dive if anyone touched the sea fans.
Some groups said new divers "who are happy to see everything" should not be taken to see endangered species, while others wanted dive masters to assess the buoyancy skill levels of their customers.
Choo, who is also the leader of Save Our Sea Horses Project, said his team would work with Sabah Parks and WWF Malaysia to come up with guidelines for dive masters and divers.
"Dive masters themselves need to help, because the authorities cannot monitor what goes on underwater.
"Pygmy sea horses are a treasure for Semporna, and they are facing threats. We recognise that pygmy sea horses are a significant attraction for divers, and that is why we came here. We want to find tangible solutions," Choo said.
Sabah Parks marine conservation officer Nasrulhakim Maidin said: "Loss of pygmy sea horses equates loss of biodiversity which will bring a loss to tourism. The diving industry has to regulate itself as it will help them in the long run."
Nasrulhakim said Yeong's study had discovered pygmy sea horses in the Tun Sakaran Marine Park, apart from waters that are not gazetted as conservation areas.
"We need to identify diving sites where these species are found, and make sure divers who enter the park do not touch them," he said.
The study and workshop was made possible through the Shell Sustainable Development Grants Programme which helps non-governmental organisations, special interest groups and individuals involved in sustainable development activities.
Bangkok Post 25 Jan 10;
TRANG : The population of rare dugongs (sea cows) living in Trang waters has slightly dropped by 5-10 sea animals from last year, the latest aerial survey has found.
The population of rare dugongs, plural correct known as sea cows, in Trang waters has dropped slightly by between five and 10 from last year, allaying fears of a serious decline, a survey has revealed.
A team of Thai and foreign marine biologists conducted an aerial survey of the animals' population in the Andaman Sea near Libong and Muk islands. About 120 to 130 dugongs have been sighted were spotted during the 10-day survey, said marine biologist Kanchana Adulyanukosol of the Institute for Research and Development of Marine and Coastal Resources in Phuket.
The dugong population has slightly dropped by 5-10 from last year's survey. ''A drop in the population of these rare animals was not as worrying as feared,'' she said.
The two islands, rich in seagrass, are major habitats of dugongs. About 11 out of 12 species of seagrass have been found.
Ms Kanchana urged local fishermen not to use destructive fishing gear, especially push nets, as they pose a threat to dugongs and other sea creatures. In the past, dugongs and sea turtles have been found trapped in push nets which are used to catch prawns.
She said her institute planned to fit dugongs' tails with satellite transmitters to help marine biologists track their movements. The team also urged people to help conserve dugongs and other rare sea creatures.
On Friday, a four-year-old female dugong, weighing about 120kg, was found dead on a beach in Kantang district, Trang. The dugong, about 1m long, had severe wounds on its body believed to be caused by a push net. It is the first dugong reported to be killed in this way this year.
Ray Lilley, Associated Press Yahoo News 24 Jan 10;
WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Rescuers in New Zealand managed to coax 33 beached whales back out into deep waters Sunday, but another 15 of the pod died, a conservation official said.
The 48 pilot whales stranded Saturday at Port Levy on South Island, but scores of volunteers joined Department of Conservation workers to refloat them off the shallow, muddy inlet, said the department's community relations manager, Grant Campbell.
It was the third mass stranding on the New Zealand coast this summer. Some 125 pilot whales died in the two other beachings, while 43 were returned to the ocean.
Campbell said that in the latest incident, residents were quick to help after spotting the whales apparently feeding in the inlet before they stranded.
"It's a very, very shallow bay in Port Levy, very muddy, so whether they were chasing food and got caught in the shallows, we don't know," he told The Associated Press.
Whales in the pod were up to 17 feet (5 meters) -long, while a few calves were between 3 feet (1 meter) and 5 feet (a meter and a half) -long, Campbell said.
Local Ted Howden said the pod stranded twice. Residents helped the whales back out to open waters Saturday, but by Sunday morning they were all back on the beach, he told TV One News.
More than 80 people rallied to aid the mammals, and as the tide flowed in Sunday, "they began floating and we were able to push them out, and away they went," Howden said.
By later Sunday, the survivors had been shepherded into deeper waters by a couple of boats and were swimming away, Campbell said.
Specialists will carry out autopsies on two of the dead whales Monday, before the 15 dead mammals are buried high up the beach, he said.
Large numbers of whales become stranded on New Zealand's beaches each summer as they pass by from Antarctic waters on their way to breeding grounds. Scientists have been unable to explain why whales become stranded.
Michael Casey, Associated Press Yahoo News 24 Jan 10;
HUAI KHA KHEANG WILDLIFE SANCTUARY, Thailand – After trudging through the wilds of western Thailand for several hours, the forest rangers thought they were finally onto something: the distant sound of crunching leaves.
Automatic weapons drawn, the five Thais crept forward, hoping to catch a tiger poacher. It turned out to be a banteng, a wild cow, which disappeared into the woods.
But all in all, the absence of illegal hunters was good news, said ranger Sakchai Tessri. "When we passed before, we would always run into poachers." Now he felt their room for maneuver was narrowing.
"In the old days," he said, "they would spend many nights in the forest for poaching. Now they just come in, shoot, grab and go quickly."
The 6,400-square-kilometer (2,500-square-mile) Huai Kha Kheang and Thung Yai Wildlife Sanctuaries on the Myanmar border represent a rare success in the struggle to save the world's dwindling tiger population.
Funded by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, the increased patrols, armed with the latest technology, have scared off poachers and helped stabilize the tiger population of more than 100, along with animals such as the banteng which they prey on.
Elsewhere, tigers are in critical decline because of human encroachment, the loss of more than nine-tenths of their habitat and the growing trade in tiger skins and body parts. From an estimated 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century, the number today ranges between 3,200 to 3,600, most of them in Asia and Russia.
Now hopes are rising that 2010 will see a turning point.
Ministers from the 13 countries with tiger populations will hold a first-ever meeting Wednesday through Friday in Hua Hin, Thailand to write an action plan for a tiger summit in September in Russia, where Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been championing the survival of the tiger.
The purpose of this week's meeting is to elicit promises of more money for conservation and to persuade countries to set tiger population targets. It is being organized by the Global Tiger Initiative, a coalition formed in 2008 by the World Bank, the Smithsonian Institute and nearly 40 conservation groups. It aims to double tiger numbers by 2020.
"The bleeding continues," said the World Bank's Keshav Varma, the initiative's program director. "I'm not sure if these poachers are feeling the heat of regional and global and national action. They seem to be operating rather freely."
David Smith, a tiger expert at the University of Minnesota who will attend the meetin action "has got to be now. We are at that critical stage."
But at least one skeptical activist is skipping the meeting.
"All we have gotten from ministers and heads of state is rhetoric," said zoologist Alan Rabinowitz, president of Panthera, a New York City group that works to conserve the 36 species of cats. "Putin loves tigers but (Siberian) tiger numbers are plummeting in the Russian Far East."
The Wildlife Conservation Society estimates the number of Russian tigers in the wild at 300 — down from a 2005 estimate of 500.
Britain urged to oppose demands from Tanzania and Zambia to lift ban on tusk sales / Conservationists fear the move would intensify slaughter of elephants
Michael McCarthy, The Independent 25 Jan 10;
Two African countries are trying to open a new breach in the worldwide ivory trade ban, which conservationists fear could lead to more African elephants being slaughtered by poachers.
Environmental campaigners called on Britain to take a clear lead in opposing the proposals by Tanzania and Zambia to sell their ivory stocks, which will be voted on at the next meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Qatar in March.
Other African countries, led by Kenya and Mali, are strongly opposed to the idea, and are sending representatives to Brussels this week to urge the European Union not to support it. If it went ahead, the sale would be the third "one-off" auction of ivory since the world ban came into force, 20 years ago last week.
The ban was initially successful in halting the huge scale of elephant killing of the 1980s, when Africa's elephant population crashed from 1,300,000 to 625,000 in a mere decade. But following the most recent sale, in November 2008, of 100 tonnes of ivory owned by Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa – bought by dealers from China and Japan – there has been a notable upsurge in worldwide seizures of illegal ivory, and of elephant poaching. It is thought that the resumption of any trading creates a market into which illegal poached ivory can be laundered, thus boosting demand for it.
In some Central and West African countries this is now pushing elephant populations to extinction. Chad is thought to have only a few hundred elephants and Senegal and Liberia may have fewer than 10; Sierra Leone's last elephants were wiped out by poachers in November.
In Kenya, whose wildlife protection measures are among the strongest in Africa, the number of elephants killed by poachers rose from 47 in 2007, to 98 in 2008, and 214 in 2009. Reports suggest that at least 15 tonnes of African ivory tusks and pieces – the equivalent of up to 1,500 elephants – were seized in, or en route to, Asia in the past year.
Yet the British Government has declined to offer unequivocal opposition to a new one-off sale. "The global ban on international trade in ivory imposed in 1989 remains firmly in place and the UK strongly supports this," said the Wildlife minister, Huw Irranca-Davies. "CITES is assessing the likely effects of another one-off sale, but rigorous enforcement of protection for the planet's endangered species must be paramount, and be the driving force behind CITES' recommendations."
Conservationists say CITES' recommendations regarding the last two sales, in 1997 as well as 2008, were that they should go ahead, and in both cases, Britain, as part of the European Union voting block within the convention, did not oppose them.
"The African elephant population is in crisis, and it's not enough for the British government to take a 'wait and see approach'," Caroline Lucas, the MEP and leader of Britain's Green Party, said last night. "Instead of hiding behind advice from officials, ministers should show leadership by giving a clear guarantee now that they will oppose a further one-off sale."
Allan Thornton, head of the Environmental Investigation Agency, the Washington and London-based pressure group which provided much of the evidence of poaching which led to the original ban, said: "The present level of poaching as a result of the illegal ivory trade is already devastating and wiping out elephant populations across Africa. If this new sale went ahead it would be throwing fuel on the fire. Britain is represented on the standing committee of CITES and should take a lead role in opposing this."
Tanzania and Zambia want to sell their stocks of legally acquired ivory (from culling, or from elephants which have died naturally) which amount to 90 tonnes and 22 tonnes respectively, worth a total of $16m. They also want their elephant populations "downlisted" from CITES' Appendix 1 (which prohibits all trade in the species) to Appendix 2 (which allows trade if it is monitored).
When CITES sanctioned the last ivory auction in 2007, it was agreed that there would be no more such one-off sales for at least nine years, and Tanzania and Zambia are seen as having reneged on this. Their move has aroused resentment and anger among other African states which have elephant populations and wish to protect them. Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, have tabled a counter-proposal for the March meeting, calling for a 20-year moratorium on any such sales, from the date of the last one.
And delegates from the 23-government African Elephant Coalition (AEC) are in Brussels aiming to persuade the EU Commision, the European Parliament and EU member states, to oppose the new sale, with the Kenyan Forestry and Wildlife Minister, Noah Wekesa, giving a press conference to detail recent poaching.
"This is really the last call for elephants in Africa," said Bourama Niagate, director of parks and natural reserves in Mali. "The devastating poaching of the 1980s first controlled through CITES is now so prevalent that the African elephant is all but extinct in some countries. This is because limited legal sales were allowed in the recent past providing the perfect cover for illegal trade in poached ivory.
"If we do not let elephant populations recover over the next 20 years by stopping the trade entirely, there will be no more African elephants outside a few zoological specimens in reserves in southern parts of Africa. Europe needs to do the right thing and back our stance now because it is nearly too late."
Ivory ban: A sad history
*1989: Member states of CITES agree at their meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, to place the African elephant on CITES' Appendix One, meaning all all trade in elephant products, ivory, is banned around the world.
1990: The ban comes into force, halting the rapid crash of elephant populations caused by poaching. Poaching levels drop substantially across Africa.
1997: Led by Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, inset, four southern African states with substantial elephant populations – Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia and Botswana – get CITES to agree to a "one-off" sale of 50 tonnes of ivory. Britain goes along with it. Poaching rises.
2007-08: The same four African states get CITES to agree to another "one-off" sale, this time of 100 tonnes. Britain goes along, despite warnings that it will increase poaching. AndChina is allowed by CITES to become an official ivory buyer, in spite of harbouring the largest amount of illegal ivory. Britain goes along with it, despite warning this too will increase poaching, which soars.
2010: Tanzania and Zambia seek a third "one-off" sale. Will Britain go along with it? Time will tell.
livescience.com Yahoo News 24 Jan 10;
Lush green lawns may not be as good for the environment as you might think.
A new study suggests that, in certain parts of the country, total emissions would actually be lower if there weren't any lawns.
Previous studies have demonstrated that lawns comprised of turfgrass can potentially function as carbon sinks since they help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But the maintenance of lawns - fertilizer production, mowing, leaf blowing and other lawn management practices - may generate greenhouse gas emissions that ultimately exceed four times the carbon they end up storing, according to the study.
"Lawns look great - they're nice and green and healthy, and they're photosynthesizing a lot of organic carbon," said researcher Amy Townsend-Small,who co-authored the study. "But the carbon-storing benefits of lawns are counteracted by fuel consumption."
To reach their conclusion, the researchers sampled grass from four parks around Irvine, Calif. that contained either ornamental lawn turf or athletic field turf, which tended to be more trampled and required replanting and frequent aeration. Samples were taken from the soil and air above the turf, and analyzed to measure carbon sequestration and nitrous oxide emissions. The investigators then compared that data to the amount of carbon dioxide emissions that resulted from maintaining the turf, which included fuel consumption, irrigation and fertilizer production.
The results, detailed in the forthcoming issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, showed that nitrous oxide emissions from lawns were comparable to those found in agricultural farms, which are considered among the largest emitters of nitrous oxide globally. In ornamental lawns, nitrous oxide emissions from fertilization offset just 10 percent to 30 percent of the carbon that was sequestered. But day-to-day management required fossil fuel consumption that released about four times more carbon dioxide than the plots could take up.
Athletic fields fared even worse. They didn't trap nearly as much carbon as ornamental grass but required just as much emission-generating care.
"It's impossible for these lawns to be net greenhouse gas sinks because too much fuel is used to maintain them," Townsend-Small said.
Michael Richardson, For The Straits Times 25 Jan 10;
THE Pacific Sandpiper, a specially built cargo ship with safety features far in excess of those found on conventional vessels, left Britain's Barrow port bound for Japan last week.
The security surrounding its departure indicates that something out of the ordinary is aboard. The Pacific Sandpiper and several sister ships make no port calls on their voyages between Europe and Japan because they carry potentially lethal nuclear material.
In the Sandpiper's hold on this journey to Japan via the Panama Canal is only one item of cargo - a giant cylinder weighing more than 100 tonnes. Inside are 28 stainless steel containers, each nearly one-third of a metre thick. They are packed with 14 tonnes of highly radioactive waste that has been turned into solid glass form to make it safer and easier to handle.
It is the first of a series of such shipments planned for the next few years to Japan from Britain's Sellafield nuclear storage and reprocessing complex. Three years ago, a dozen similar shipments from France to Japan were completed.
Used fuel from nuclear power reactors that generate about one-third of Japan's electricity has been shipped to Europe for reprocessing since 1969, while vitrified waste has been sent back to Japan since 1995. There have been over 170 of these ocean shipments without any incident involving the release of radioactivity.
But the elaborate and costly arrangement casts light on two of the most problematic aspects of civilian nuclear power: how to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons material and know-how to terrorists and rogue states, and how to store nuclear waste safely for the long term.
With the number of power reactors expected to rise from today's 435 in 31 countries to nearly 570 in 42 countries by 2020, and with much of this expansion expected to take place in Asia and the Middle East, the need for safeguards on material that could be used to make nuclear weapons is obvious.
Recycling fuel from nuclear reactors under strict national and international regulations is one method being developed. When uranium oxide fuel has been used in a reactor for three or four years, it becomes less efficient and is replaced with fresh fuel.
The spent fuel can then be chemically treated to recover usable uranium, associated plutonium and radioactive waste, a system known as reprocessing. Although expensive, this cycle provides up to 25 per cent more energy from the original uranium. It also reduces the volume of high-level waste to about one-fifth of what it would otherwise be.
Eventually, advances in reprocessing and a new generation of fast reactors may be able to recover and reburn even more of the fissile and radioactive material from used fuel, further reducing waste and reducing the proliferation risk.
So far, about 90,000 tonnes of used fuel from commercial power reactors have been reprocessed, mainly in Britain, France and Russia. By 2030, another 400,000 tonnes of used fuel are likely to pile up, an average of 20,000 tonnes a year. At present, annual global reprocessing capacity is about 3,800 tonnes per year for normal uranium oxide fuel, and about 1,700 tonnes for other nuclear fuels, according to the World Nuclear Association.
Much of the spent fuel piled up by 2030 will be in Asia. Japan, India, China and South Korea aim to emulate the main reprocessing centres in Europe and Russia. They see the technology as the key to a lucrative nuclear service industry as well as being one that is vital to their own energy security.
Meanwhile, power reactors in most countries have been built without safe long-term underground storage arrangements being put in place, mainly because of the high cost involved and public resistance at potential sites.
In the United States, which generates 20 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power, opponents of a plan for a national repository beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada have stymied it for years.
A recent analysis by the US Government Accountability Office said it could cost US$67 billion (S$94 billion) to build the Yucca facility and operate it for 150 years.
High-level radioactive waste is accumulating at a rate of about 12,000 tonnes per year worldwide. When used fuel is removed from a reactor, it must cool for up to 50 years under water or in dry storage, where circulating air gradually removes the heat.
The level of both radioactivity and heat from spent fuel, or from the dangerous waste material extracted from the fuel during reprocessing, falls rapidly in these years down to about one-thousandth of the level when the fuel was removed from the reactor.
During this period, storage may be at one central place, as in Britain's Sellafield complex, or at the reactor site where the spent fuel was removed, as in the US. But either way, the time for permanent storage of the most toxic waste deep underground in geologically stable rock, salt or clay in countries that have been generating electricity from nuclear power for decades is fast approaching.
Without a long-term solution, the pile of radioactive 'rubbish' will become so big and so widely dispersed that it may be impossible to manage safely.
The writer is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Yahoo News 24 Jan 10;
SYDNEY (AFP) – Millions of people from Sydney to Sweden are set to switch off their lights on March 27, as part of the global 'Earth Hour' campaign to highlight climate change, organisers said Sunday.
Some 250 cities around the world have already signed up for the symbolic, energy saving exercise which in 2009 saw landmarks such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge and New York's Empire State Building plunged into darkness.
"The event will be held at 8:30 pm Saturday 27 March in cities and towns all over the world," conservation group WWF-Australia's Chief Executive Officer Greg Bourne said.
Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007 when 2.2 million people switched off the lights in their homes, offices and businesses for 60 minutes to make a point about electricity consumption and carbon pollution.
The campaign went global the following year and by 2009 some 3,929 cities, villages and localities across the globe elected to cut their lights in aid of the environment.
Organisers said numerous cities and towns in Australia would be joined by many in Canada, the United States, Singapore, Russia, Sweden, Belgium, Bolivia, South Korea, New Zealand, Switzerland and Turkey for the 2010 event.
Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Seoul, Manila, Singapore, Toronto, Hong Kong and Dallas are the latest to confirm their commitment but more cities are expected to join the campaign closer to the date, a spokeswoman said.
In its fourth year, Earth Hour is asking participants to do something more than the one hour of darkness -- which reduces the amount of fossil fuels burned to create electricity -- and think about their total carbon footprint.
"We're asking people to go beyond turning off lights and instead make an Earth Hour resolution to start something bigger," said Bourne.
"Switching off your lights is a great first step, but your true environmental impact is much bigger than just your energy bill."
Scientists have warned that global warming caused by burning fossil fuels on a massive scale could devastate the planet, hitting the poorest countries hardest with floods, droughts and disease.
Paul Handley Yahoo News 24 Jan 10;
RIYADH (AFP) – Global climate talks are biased against oil and pose a "scary" threat to Saudi Arabia's economy, a top official said on Sunday, defending Riyadh's stance on efforts to harness greenhouse gas emissions.
Mohammed al-Sabban, the country's top climate negotiator, said negotiations on emissions controls saw Saudi Arabia, for decades the world's leading oil exporter, effectively targeted by "certain" industrialised countries while letting their own subsidized coal, nuclear and biofuel industries off the hook.
He also said that after the watered-down resolutions at the December UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, climate negotiations were deadlocked.
"There was no real agreement in Copenhagen and I don't foresee any agreement in the near term," Sabban told AFP in an interview.
"No one has submitted a burden-sharing agreement" that treats various parties equitably, he said.
"We are facing the same deadlock as the Doha round of the WTO," the World Trade Organisation, he said of long-stuck global trade agreement negotiations.
Environmentalists at the Copenhagen summit last month labelled Saudi Arabia and China the culprits that prevented a strong agreement obliging countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Ahead of the conference, Sabban and Oil Minister Ali Naimi said that Saudi Arabia, which depends on oil revenues for about 75 percent of government spending, should be compensated for losses caused by any pact that forced a sharp reduction in global oil consumption.
Environmentalists mocked their argument, but it reflected deep Saudi concern over anti-oil bias in the proposed emissions controls, Sabban said on Sunday on the sidelines of the Global Competitiveness Forum in Riyadh.
He said the proposals did not equally address coal, nuclear, biofuel and other energy sources that also generate harmful emissions and other problems but were protected by their home countries.
"If any energy product should be hit hard, it should be coal," he said.
He also explained Riyadh's criticisms of energy independence drives in countries like the United States, which he labelled a "phobia."
Such programmes, together with strong controls on emissions from burning petroleum, would deal a devastating blow to the Saudi economy.
"If all countries take steps to reduce dependency, then definitely this will impact the demand for oil. That is very scary for us," he said.
Sabban cited research from the International Energy Agency, which forecast a loss of four trillion dollars in potential oil sales by OPEC countries during 2008-2030 if aggressive carbon emissions reduction targets were implemented.
But the same study still says that overall OPEC income will increase sharply over the previous 22-year period.
Economists say the Saudis are particularly worried about the mixed signals they are getting and how that relates to the need for long-term planning in oil and gas exploration and production.
Even now, said Sabban, Riyadh is being encouraged to sustain investment in oil to support the global economy.
"If there is a continued need for increasing investment, and at the same time they are saying 'we don't want your oil,' that's a contradiction," said the US-trained economist.
He admitted that climate change was already hurting his mostly parched, desert country as it was others -- with higher temperatures, falling water tables and a surge in violent sandstorms and flash floods.
Sabban said Riyadh supports an "equitable" climate pact, but not what had been laid out so far.
"We are going to be impacted by both climate change and the response measures," he said.
He said Saudi Arabia was investing heavily in solar energy, hoping eventually to tap its sunny skies and open desert to become a major exporter of sun-generated clean energy.
Rupam Jain Nair Yahoo News 24 Jan 10;
NEW DELHI (AFP) – Environment ministers from Brazil, South Africa, India and China said on Sunday that talks in New Delhi had further cemented their alliance following the Copenhagen climate change summit.
The four emerging economies -- a key bloc within troubled negotiations on how to tackle global warming -- lobbied successfully at the Copenhagen meeting in December against binding emissions caps.
Speaking after Sunday's talks, Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh said the group -- known by the acronym BASIC -- had pledged to strengthen its unified stance but added it "seeks consensus with developed countries."
"We will deepen our co-operation," Ramesh said, praising the "crucial role" the four countries had played in creating the widely criticised Copenhagen Accord.
The accord was a non-binding document crafted by a small group of countries, including the BASIC nations, on the final day of the talks as the meeting faced collapse.
Sunday's meeting came ahead of a January 31 deadline for countries to say if they intended to be "associated" with the Copenhagen outcome or what sort of measures they envisaged taking.
As recriminations continue over December's summit, the United Nations' climate change forum is due to resume shortly with a ministerial-level meeting planned in Mexico at the end of the year.
The four ministers meeting in Delhi also issued a joint statement calling for rapid distribution of the ten billion dollars that wealthy countries pledged for tackling climate change in the developing world during 2010.
The money must be made available at once "as proof of their commitment to urgently address the global challenge of climate change," the ministers said.
The Copenhagen Accord set a broad goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) but did not specify the staging points for achieving this goal or a year by which greenhouse gas emissions should peak.
Instead, countries are being urged to identify what actions they intend to take, either as binding curbs on emissions or voluntary action. Twenty-eight billion dollars in aid have been pledged by rich countries for 2010-2012.
Speaking at a press conference on Saturday, the head of the UN's climate science panel, R.K. Pachauri, expressed hope that the BASIC nations would soon offer some chance of a binding pact in the future.
Many emerging nations say they will not allow emissions targets to be imposed at the cost of economic development.
China-led climate group ups pressure on donors
Reuters 24 Jan 10;
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Four nations led by China pledged on Sunday to meet an end-month deadline to submit action plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions and challenged rich countries to come up with funding to help fight global warming.
Environment ministers and envoys from Brazil, South Africa, India and China met in New Delhi in a show of unity by countries whose greenhouse gas emissions are among the fastest rising in the world.
The bloc was key to brokering a political agreement at the Copenhagen talks in December and its meeting in India was designed in part to put pressure on richer nations to make good on funding commitments.
"We have sent a very powerful symbol to the world of our intentions," the Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said at a joint press conference after seven hours of talks.
The group discussed setting up a climate fund to help nations most vulnerable to the impact of global warming, which it said would act as a wakeup call for wealthier countries to meet their pledges on financial assistance and give $10 billion in 2010.
Rich countries have pledged $30 billion in climate change funding for the 2010-12 period and set a goal of $100 billion by 2020, far less than what developing countries had wanted.
The group in New Delhi said releasing $10 billion this year would send a signal of the rich countries' commitment. The four said they were in talks to set up an independent fund for the same purpose, but gave no timeline or figure.
"When we say we will be reinforcing technical support as well as funds to the most vulnerable countries, we are giving a slap in the face to the rich countries," Brazil's Environment Minister Carlos Minc said through a translator.
The non-binding accord worked out at the Copenhagen climate summit was described by many as a failure because it fell short of the conference's original goal of a more ambitious commitment to prevent more heatwaves, droughts and crop failures.
China is the world's top CO2 emitter, while India is number four. China was blamed by many countries at Copenhagen for obstructing a tougher deal and has refused to submit to outside scrutiny of its plans to brake greenhouse gas emissions.
China has pledged to cut the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each unit of economic growth by 40-45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels. For India, that figure is up to 25 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels.
Xie Zhenhua, deputy head of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission, said the world needed to take immediate action to fight climate change.
But in the wake of a controversial exaggeration by the U.N. climate panel on the threat of global warming to the Himalayan glaciers [ID:nSGE60M01C], he called for an "open attitude" to climate science.
"(There is a) point of view that the climate change or climate warming issue is caused by the cyclical element of the nature itself. I think we need to adopt an open attitude to the scientific research," he said through a translator.
"We want our views to be more scientific and more consistent."
(Editing by Michael Roddy)
Donors urged to pay climate cash
BBC News 24 Jan 10;
Brazil, China, India and South Africa have urged wealthy nations to hand over $10bn (£6bn) pledged to poor nations in 2010 to fight climate change.
The group - known as Basic - said the money must be available at once "as proof of their commitment" to address the global challenge.
The plea was issued after a meeting of the four nations in Delhi.
The funds were pledged in a non-binding deal agreed at last year's Copenhagen global climate conference.
The deal - the Copenhagen Accord - envisages that $30bn (£18.5bn) of aid will be delivered for developing nations over the next three years.
Basic members were instrumental in fashioning a political accord at the December climate summit.
The next round of negotiations is due to be held in December in Mexico.
'Soft' deadline
After the Delhi talks, environmental ministers from the four nations issued a joint statement calling for rapid distribution of $10bn that industrialised nations promised to the developing world to tackle climate change in 2010.
The first funds should go to the least developed countries, including small island states and African nations, China's top climate negotiator Xi Zhenhua said, the Associated Press reports.
The four nations also broadly endorsed the Copenhagen agreement, the BBC's Sanjoy Majumber in Delhi says.
And they said they would come up with some sort of action-plan on battling global warming, our correspondent adds.
This comes just a week ahead of a deadline for nations signing up to the accord to send figures on how much they will curb emissions.
But amid uncertainty over who is going to sign up, UN climate convention head Yvo de Boer said earlier this week the deadline was "soft".
He said the Copenhagen summit had not delivered the "agreement the world needs" to address climate change.
Yahoo News 24 Jan 10;
LONDON (AFP) – The UN climate panel is re-examining its claim that global warming is linked to worsening natural disasters after doubts were raised about the evidence, a British newspaper reported on Sunday.
The news brings fresh embarrassment to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which this week admitted errors in a forecast about melting Himalayan glaciers that was included in a landmark 2007 report.
That report -- which won the panel a Nobel Peace Prize and has become a benchmark in climate science -- also contained a claim that rapidly rising costs from events such as floods and hurricanes were linked to climate change.
According to The Sunday Times, however, the claim was based on an unpublished study that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny.
When the study was finally published in 2008, it included a caveat saying: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."
The IPCC included the claim despite doubts raised by at least two scientific reviewers at the time, and also failed to issue a clarification after the study was published, the Sunday Times said.
Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a climatologist at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and the vice-chairman of the IPCC, told the newspaper that he would be reviewing the evidence.
"We are reassessing the evidence and will publish a report on natural disasters and extreme weather with the latest findings. Despite recent events the IPCC process is still very rigorous and scientific," he said.
The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, published in 2007, was a 938-page opus whose warning that climate change was on the march spurred politicians around the world to vow action.
However, it had to admit last week that a forecast suggesting the glaciers in the Himalayas were likely to disappear by 2035 was "poorly substantiated".
UN panel defends climate change evidence
Yahoo News 26 Jan 10;
GENEVA (AFP) – The UN climate panel has rejected as "baseless and misleading" a newspaper report that raised doubts about the evidence behind a claim that global warming is linked to worsening natural disasters.
This weekend, the Sunday Times of London reported that a passage in one of the panel's reports, which suggested natural disasters including hurricanes and floods had increased in number and intensity, had been challenged.
The IPCC insisted in a statement released late on Monday that the targeted study was quoted alongside others in balanced manner exposing the range of evidence. It said the panel had weighed its conclusions.
"This section of the IPCC report is a balanced treatment of a complicated and important issue."
"It clearly makes the point that one study detected an increase in economic losses, corrected for values at risk, but that other studies have not detected such a trend," the statement added.
"The tone is balanced, and the section contains many important qualifiers."
The panel also underlined that it came to several conclusions about the role of climate change in extreme weather events and disasters in different sections of its reports, based on a "careful" assessment of past changes and projections of future trends.
The panel concluded that the newspaper "ran a misleading and baseless story attacking the way the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC handled an important question concerning recent trends in economic losses from climate-related disasters."
The Sunday Times had reported that the IPCC included the reference to the then unpublished study despite doubts raised by at least two scientific reviewers at the time.
Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a climatologist at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and the vice-chairman of the IPCC, was quoted by the newspaper as saying that the panel was reassessing the evidence.
It was the second time in recent weeks that doubt was cast on the scientific validity some of the evidence used in the UN panel's reports.
The IPCC last week admitted errors in a forecast about melting Himalayan glaciers that was included in a landmark 2007 report.
The ongoing series of reports compiled since 1999 are meant to reflect a global scientific consensus to guide official action against climate change.
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