Scaly-breasted Munia eating Axonopus compressus seeds
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Thing that goes 'tock' at night
from The annotated budak
Geocaching
from Ubin.sgkopi
Are you Green Drinking?
from EcoWalkthetalk
Saving Sungai Pulai: SOS report 2008-09
from wild shores of singapore
Sebana Hornbills
a new blog about helping hornbills the natural way, a collaboration between The Green Volunteers and Sebana Cove
Demand spurred by government push for eco-friendly buildings
Tessa Wong, Straits Times 10 Feb 10;
THE manufacture of green products is taking root in Singapore with more companies eager to add Green Label certification to their wares.
But eco-conscious altruism is not the key driving force behind the growth.
Government initiatives which result in cost savings for developers of green buildings have led to high demand for such products, and companies are jumping on the bandwagon.
The Singapore Environment Council (SEC) saw applications for its Green Label certification jump by 30 per cent last year, compared to the year before.
The increase is part of an accelerating trend of companies taking up the green cause. The number of applications has quadrupled in the past 10 years, from 20 in 1999 to 80 last year.
The products run the gamut from dishwashing liquid to paper.
The SEC said a significant part of the increase comes from companies which manufacture construction materials, such as wall coverings and carpeting.
In 2005, the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) launched its Green Mark programme, which certifies environmentally friendly buildings. The following year, the Government announced a $20 million fund for developers to build Green Mark-certified buildings, and a $50 million fund for research and development in green technology.
Developers can draw cash incentives of up to $3 million per project.
One criterion for the Green Mark is the use of building materials bearing the SEC's Green Label.
With the number of green buildings rising from 17 in 2005 to 200 currently, business has been booming for companies making green building materials.
The local office of Bona, a Swedish company which makes adhesives and surface coatings, among other products, received the Green Label for two of its adhesive products last year.
Since then, it has seen sales increase by up to 80 per cent, said technical sales officer Justine Te.
More foreign companies are also using the Green Label as a mark of assurance in neighbouring countries.
Mr Howard Shaw, executive director of the SEC, said the number of applications from such companies has risen by 30 per cent in the past year.
Among the companies is Greenlam, which makes laminates and wall coverings. Ms Banita Mishra, Greenlam's deputy general manager, said: 'The mark is seen as quite prestigious in the region as Singapore follows strict regulations.'
She said the Indian company's products bearing the mark are especially popular in countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.
Mr Shaw said home owners looking to build green homes benefit from this increase, with a wider range of certified building materials to choose from.
Joyce Hooi, Business Times 10 Feb 10;
(SINGAPORE) The people behind Singapore's first liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal were sanguine yesterday at the fifth LNG Supplies for Asian Markets 2010 conference.
With the main building contractor for the terminal on Jurong Island finally appointed, Singapore can now begin carving itself a slice of the region's growing LNG pie.
'Today, Asia accounts for about two-thirds of the world's LNG imports. The centre of gravity of LNG markets will shift towards this region,' said Lawrence Wong, chief executive of Singapore's Energy Market Authority (EMA). Mr Wong was speaking at the conference for LNG buyers and suppliers yesterday.
Currently, the 30-hectare Jurong Island facility has an initial capacity of 3.5 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) and it is expected to eventually ramp up to six mtpa or more.
Over the next few weeks, BG Group - the appointed LNG aggregator or sole buyer - expects to secure 1.5 mtpa of sales to end-users, which is half its franchise supply quota.
'We might have unutilised storage capacity in the terminal which we would like to use for LNG trading, which will serve LNG producers with storage constraints at their liquefaction plants,' said Mr Wong.
Singapore's aspirations in the liquid gas market, however, are not limited to LNG.
'We could also look into the storage and trading of liquid petroleum gas (LPG),' Mr Wong said.
The LNG terminal, which will be ready in 2013, will be given some lead time to get on its feet through a moratorium on further piped natural gas imports until LNG imports reach 3.3 mtpa or 2018, whichever comes earlier.
Currently, Indonesia's West Natuna gas field is contracted to supply piped gas to Jurong Island until 2023.
Naturally, the moratorium was welcomed by BG Group's general manager, Dan Werner, who also pointed out yesterday that such reserves from Indonesia and Malaysia could deplete any time before 2023.
'The policy is a very thoughtful decision to ensure that LNG can enter the market in time, instead of later at a time when conditions might not be as conducive,' Mr Werner said.
Even so, this will be Singapore's first foray into the LNG terminal business.
The LNG trading idea, a relatively new one in the region, was described as a 'leap of faith' at the conference yesterday by Neil McGregor, executive director of Singapore LNG Corporation - the entity set up by the EMA to spearhead the terminal project.
While it may be a leap of faith, it appears to also be a leap in the right direction for Singapore. 'Geographically, Singapore is located halfway between demand and supply,' Mr McGregor said. 'Lots of companies here have been asking us if they can have space in the terminal.'
Yeng Ai Chun, The Star 10 Feb 10;
PETALING JAYA: Many middlemen are using orang asli to hunt for wildlife, including tigers, for their parts, said World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Malaysia.
Its chief executive Datuk Dr Dionysius Sharma said the authorities needed to step up their enforcement to protect the wildlife and to prevent orang asli from being exploited by these middlemen.
“The middlemen or syndicates find people to trap and kill for them because there is a demand for wildlife parts,” he said in response to an incident where a tiger was shot and left to die in a snare in Perak last week.
Cruel death: The tiger lying dead with gunshot and blow pipe wounds within 100m from where it attacked the orang asli at the Bukit Tapah Forest Reserve in Sungkai. Its detached left forelimb was still caught in the snare.
“We need to invest in more equipment and people. Our forests and reserve areas are very large and they are easily accessible due to logging roads and porous borders.
“If we don’t protect our tigers, who will?” he said.
In last week’s incident, an orang asli, Yok Meneh had claimed that he was attacked by the tiger while on his way to gather petai at the Bukit Tapah Forest Reserve last Saturday.
However, it was later found that he had been attacked while trying to kill the tiger which he had caught in a snare.
The animal carcass was later found by the Perak Wildlife and National Parks Department officers a day after the attack.
Malaysian Conservation Alliance for Tigers (Mycat) programme coordinator Loretta Ann Shepherd urged the authorities to come down hard on those responsible for the incident.
She said the death of the tiger must be investigated further so that not only those responsible in snaring and shooting it were brought to book, but also those who had ordered the killing.
She said that if the orang asli were truly involved in setting up the trap and killing the wildlife, they must be prosecuted.
“This would serve as a lesson for them and a deterrent to others. It is not the kind of news to start the Year of the Tiger.
“The law gives allowances to the orang asli to hunt animals but the tiger is not one of them. The orang asli know that it is illegal to kill tigers and they are not amateurs as it was also reported that they had captured and killed other protected animals,” she said.
The Star 10 Feb 10;
IPOH: A female elephant that had been on a rampage near Grik was finally captured by the Perak Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan).
Department director Shabrina Shariff said the elephant was part of a herd of 15 to 20 elephants that had destroyed crops of villagers around Kampung Chepor in Lenggong, near Gerik.
Also captured during the operation that began on Sunday was the elephant’s male calf.
The elephants, she added, were believed to be from the Piah Forest Reserve near the village.
Officers were dispatched on Sunday following complaints of wild elephants being sighted.
Relating the department’s operation, Shabrina said her officers managed to tranquilise the female elephant at 12.30pm yesterday and had it chained.
“The calf was found loitering around the female elephant,” she said, adding that her officers managed to tranquilise it at 10.45am.
“The two elephants will be relocated to the Piah Forest Reserve soon with help from the Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary officials,” she added.
Made Arya Kencana, Jakarta Globe 9 Feb 10;
Denpasar. After last year’s failed attempt to ship in Komodo dragons, Bali now is looking at getting elephants from Sumatra to attract more tourists.
Four conservation institutions in Bali on Tuesday requested 59 elephants from Way Kambas National Park in Lampung: 10 for the Elephant Safari Park in Taro, Gianyar district; 14 for Bali Zoo Park, also in Gianyar; 15 for Kasian in Badung; and 20 for Bakas Zoo in Klungkung district.
The request was made at a meeting in Sanur, Bali, on elephants and other wild animals in conservation institutions.
“We hope that this could be a new breakthrough for Bali tourism,” said Anak Agung Gede Putra, an official with Bali Zoo Park, explaining that the elephants would be used as ride attractions.
Nyoman Suweta, a representative from Bakas Zoo, said the elephants would not disrupt the environment as the province had about 402,000 hectares of idle land, some of which could be used to boost tourism.
“We don’t think that there is going to be a conflict between elephants and humans, because the elephants have been domesticated,” Nyoman said.
Hari Santosa, the director of forest protection and nature conservation at the Ministry of Forestry, said they would not disturb the balance of nature and would prove beneficial. “Thailand and India, which are considered to be elephant countries, don’t have this kind of idea,” Hari said.
Not everyone supports the proposal. Made Gunaja, deputy chief of the Bali Forestry Office, said the governor had recommended that no more elephants be brought to Bali as it could increase conflict between animals and humans.
Bali’s regional secretary, Nyoman Yasa, agreed, saying: “I think that the governor has made his decision very clear.”
Conservation institutions in Bali already have 93 elephants, including 33 at Taman Safari Indonesia, while the Elephant Safari Park in Taro has 32, Kasiana has 18 and Bakas Zoo has 10.
There are about 200 wild elephants in Way Kambas National Park, and 61 more in the park’s elephant training center.
The Sumatran elephant is an endangered species. A 2000 survey estimated at most 2,700 living in the wild. The biggest threat to the elephant is habitat loss due to forest conversion.
Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 9 Feb 10;
The ambitious plan to set up a large-scaled food production system in Merauke, Papua province, remained unclear as Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan insisted Monday he would not issue licenses to convert conservation and protected forests.
“I will not issue licenses to convert conservation and protected forests, even if for the food estate, if there are lot of trees there.”
The planned food estate, which would span 1.6 million hectares, is part of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s 100-day programs to promote national food sustainability.
Yudhoyono was slated to launch the project this month.
The Agriculture Ministry, which took the lead in the program, was criticized for failing to meet the target to complete the project’s preparation in 100 days.
The ministry claimed that failure had been due to the Forestry Ministry refusing to issue the necessary licence.
However, Hasan claimed his office had not received any proposals to convert the forest for food estate in Merauke.
Deputy Minister of Agriculture Bayu Krisnamurthi said the government would start developing the project in 500,000 hectares with the first harvest expected in 2012.
The project, which was opened to local and foreign investors, would require Rp 50-60 trillion of investment.
It was reported foreign investors including from China, Korea and Singapore have expressed their readiness to invest in the projects to cultivate including paddy to supply for domestic demand.
Hasan office said that the projects could utilize idle forest land in Merauke.
Environmentalists have expressed worries the projects would add to massive deforestation that and harm efforts to cut emissions in dealing with the climate change.
Since regional autonomy, the development of infrastructure has resulted in continuing forest exploitation.
Papua’s intact forest is 31.5 million hectares, while 5 million hectares were categorized as critical areas from 1973 to 2003.
The government has designated a 4,825,786-hectare forested area in Papua as a conservation forest, or natural preserve.
However, for the past several years it has received pressure in the form of conversion into farmland, settlement and infrastructure development including illegal logging.
Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 9 Feb 10;
The government on Monday defended its ambitious plan to plant 1 billion trees this year to check carbon emissions, saying the program would comply with international standards in which all trees must be verified on the ground.
Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan said his office would allocate 500,000 hectares of land to plant about 500 million trees using the state budget. Each hectare will be planted with 100 trees.
“The remaining target will be shared between members of the industrial forest concessions [HTI].
But all the planted trees must be measured, reported and verified [MRV],” he told reporters on Monday.
He admitted that the much promoted tree-planting movement in previous years could not be verified because most trees were planted by the public in their own area.
“This year’s target for 1 billion trees is different with the previous campaigns, since in the past we don’t know where the trees were planted,” he said.
Tree planting is part of mitigation programs promised by the government to combat climate change.
The UN climate body requires any emmissions cut strategies should meet the MRV system to ensure the countries are serious in fighting the climate change.
The MRV was one of thorniest issues in recent Copenhagen climate talks, as many developing countries objected the system out of fear that it could violate their national sovereignty.
Under the MRV system, international inspectors would conduct ground checks to verify on whether the emission cuts reported by the country are in line with the real condition in the field.
Indonesia, which accepted the MRV system, said it would use local auditors to check emission reductions in the field because the projects were funded by local budget.
It is not yet clear where the planned 1 billion trees will be planted and the program’s total cost to the state budget.
“Planting trees is also aimed to restore critical forested land in the country,” said Minister Zulkifli.
The reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD plus) scheme recognizes the planting of new trees as part of carbon projects of which carbon emitters, including HTI companies, could receive financial incentives based on the total carbon offset by the trees.
Activists, however, have doubted whether the government has the ability to fulfill its pledge to plant a billion trees.
They have also warned that tree-planting could speed up forest conversion by plantation firms in Indonesia, which would then harm the country’s plan to cut emissions.
Greenpeace Indonesia said the tree planting could be a way to hide conversion activities by HTI companies.
Indonesia has bound itself to a 26 percent cut in emissions by 2020 by allocating some Rp 83 trillion of the state budget.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono tasked the Forestry Ministry office to cut 14 percent of the emissions through reducing deforestation, combating illegal logging and stopping forest fires.
Minister Zulkifli argued that two important keys in combating illegal logging were to enforce the law and improve the welfare of local communities; which was the responsibility of other departments.
“We are not the only [office] that is responsible for combating illegal logging. We urge the courts and police officers to enforce the law,” he said.
Hasan also claimed that most of fires are outside forested areas.
“About 70 to 80 percent of the fires are outside the forest, it could be in agriculture land. It is not our responsibility,” he said.
A lack of coordination between departments has seen illegal logging and forest fires go unchecked for years, despite repeated promises from the government.
Fidelis E Satriastanti & Budi Otmansyah, Jakarta Globe 9 Feb 10;
Stung by a respected tribal leader’s attempt to return a prestigious environmental award, the State Ministry for the Environment on Tuesday promised to launch an investigation into allegations that palm oil companies had illegally converted 8,000 hectares of protected forest where his tribe lives.
Patih Laman, head of the Talang Mamak tribe, an ethnic group from Indragiri Hulu district in Riau, was presented with the Kalpataru Award in 2003, by then-President Megawati Sukarnoputri, for efforts to conserve the forest in which the tribe lived. He made headlines again last year for complaining that since 2008 alone, 1,800 hectares of tribal forest had been illegally felled.
Fed up by the lack of response from the government, the 90-year-old Patih last week made a 300-kilometer journey to the provincial capital, Pekanbaru, but his attempts to meet with Riau Governor Rusli Zaenal to return the award have so far been rebuffed.
Henry Bastaman, deputy for communication and people’s empowerment at the state ministry, said they had informally been told last year about the tribe’s intention to return the award because they could not defend the forest.
“They had tried to hang on to the forest, but were helpless to stop it dwindling from 11,000 hectares to 3,000 hectares,” Henry said. “To reach a win-win solution, we will persuade them not to return the Kalpataru Award, and promise in return that they can keep the remaining forest.”
He acknowledged that the ministry had no specific knowledge about what was happening to the forest in the area.
“We still need to send an investigation team down there, because we need to asses how many hectares have been cut down illegally,” Henry said. “We have received reports that they used to have 11,000 hectares and are now left with just 3,000, but we’re not really sure yet.”
Henry said that although indigenous groups had played an important role in protecting forests, individual groups could not be legally recognized as guardians of the forest.
“I think a local regulation would be an alternative to protect and give legal status to tribal forests,” Henry said, adding that the 2009 Environmental Protection and Management Law could also guarantee the rights of tribes.
Officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have not responded to a UN report critical of Jakarta’s handling of the rights of indigenous peoples, saying they were under no obligation to do so.
The ministry has also argued that there is no such thing as an indigenous person, as every Indonesian citizen is equal under the Constitution.
In a letter to Indonesia’s Permanent Mission in Geneva last year, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, said it was “concerned” about the Indonesian government’s failure to respect the rights of indigenous peoples in their own forests and the increasing conflict between local peoples and palm oil plantations.
Related article
Dismayed Indonesian tribal leader to relinquish green award Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 9 Feb 10;
Sir David King, BBC News 9 Feb 10;
Copenhagen's failure to deliver a legally binding deal has created an opportunity for individuals to fill the void left by politicians, says Sir David King. In this week's Green Room, he explains how small-scale projects can move the world towards a low carbon future.
Copenhagen didn't get us the legally binding global carbon emission reduction agreement we so wanted.
To many it was a disappointment, a vindication of their fears that world leaders would fail to seize the moment and rise above national self-interest to secure an historic climate treaty.
But I see it more as an opportunity for others to step in and fill the leadership void left by politicians; a chance for businesses, local communities and individuals to drive forward the low carbon agenda despite the lack of international political consensus.
Over the past two years, the UK government has concentrated on agreeing and setting out the legislation for action; now it must focus on practical ways in which the UK can meet its targets, which are reducing carbon emissions by a third by the year 2020 and by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050.
So far, ministers have largely concentrated resources on large-scale infrastructure projects, such as the development of clean technology, investing millions in an attempt to unearth the key to a new energy era.
A new generation of nuclear power stations will also be important in helping the country make the transition to a low carbon economy.
While these are a vital component of any government's climate change strategy, they will not be sufficient on their own to meet stringent carbon reduction commitments.
To do this, it will be important to mobilise all parts of society, both business and one of the most powerful agents of change: communities.
Changing times
Many innovative companies are already changing the way they work, judging that if not now, legislation will eventually drive them to reduce carbon, so they might as well stay ahead of the game.
Others are being forced by regulations, such as the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme to cut emissions.
However, the truly exciting possibilities for transformative change lie within communities.
Small, locally-owned initiatives replicated by groups across countries and nations can deliver substantial emissions reductions. At the same time, they can drive the mass shift in attitude and behaviour that is needed to tackle climate change.
The key is to use incentives to engage people to become a part of both the economic and practical solutions that are needed.
Small scale, low-tech solutions like these already exist throughout the world, not least in developing countries that are often seen as part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
CRERAL is a co-operative in south Brazil that supplies electricity via the grid to 6,300 mainly rural customers in the area.
To increase the capacity and improve the reliability of its supply, it has built two river-based, low-tech, low-cost mini-hydro plants (0.72 and 1.0 MW capacity) that produce about 5.5 GWh of electricity a year, or 25% of overall demand.
In northern Tanzania, the Mwanza Rural Housing Programme (MRHP) trains villagers to set up enterprises making high-quality bricks from local clay, fired with agricultural residues rather than wood.
Not only has this reduced deforestation, the bricks have been used in more than 100,000 homes in 70 villages, providing improved comfort and durability.
Bottoms up
The key to the success of these initiatives has been the buy-in of the local community, a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach.
Too often in the UK, climate change initiatives seem to be foisted on local communities, dislocating the projects from the very people whose support is required.
Energy companies find it hard to get wind farms through the UK planning system, as they are often challenged by residents who feel aggrieved about their lack of control over projects that will affect but may not benefit them.
Denmark uses a very different model: community groups own half of its private wind farms and 85% of the nation's wind generation capacity is made up of small clusters of turbines rather than large developments.
Backed by a planning system sympathetic to turbine installation and the guarantee of a stable, premium price for energy sold back to the grid, people are encouraged to join forces to create their own renewable energy supply. Similar schemes have also sprung up in the Netherlands and Germany.
Last week, Nesta - the UK's national authority on innovation - announced the winners of its Big Green Challenge, a £1m prize fund to encourage community-led carbon emission reductions.
It developed the prize in 2007 because policymakers focused more on targeting consumers and industry and overlooked the role of communities in reducing carbon emissions.
The four community winners of the Big Green Challenge — The Green Valleys based in Brecon Beacons in Wales, Household Energy Service based in Ludlow, Shropshire, and Isle of Eigg in Scotland and a runner-up, Low Carbon West Oxford, managed to reduce carbon emissions by between 10-32%.
In one year alone, these initiatives have almost met the remaining 2020 CO2 reduction targets, and in the future their emission reductions are expected to treble.
Again, these projects worked because the local communities came up with them, and often benefited directly — a reduction in winter fuel bill costs, for example.
All are cost-effective and could be replicated across the nation and around the globe.
The lessons that can be learned are simple: set an objective, incentivise and empower people, offer support and resources, and practical, local climate change solutions will follow.
By supporting more grassroots initiatives, and by allowing innovation, ingenuity and local ownership to flourish as a complement to larger infrastructure projects, the UK government could go a long way to achieving its 2050 emissions reduction target — at a fraction of the cost.
While big global deals are being sought, it's local communities that are getting on with the task at hand.
Sir David King is the director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford, and a National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) visiting Fellow
The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website
Public Service UK 9 Feb 10
Dr Robert Bloomfield, co-ordinator, International Year of Biodiversity UK, outlines why the loss of habitats is causing a ecological, but also a financial disaster that is orders of magnitude greater than the current crisis
The celebration of the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species on 24th November 2009 offers a most poignant time to also reflect on the future of species.
We can trace our understanding of biodiversity to the Entangled Bank Darwin describes so poignantly in Origins and to his term the Economy of Nature. It was inspired by Malthus, whose essay on human populations growing to outstrip their food and material resources, leading to starvation and war, provided the vital clue for Darwin's realisation of the role of natural selection in driving evolution.
Later, Haeckel referred to Darwin's study of 'all those complex interrelations' to define the science of ecology, using the same Greek 'House' – 'Oikos', that provides the eco in economics. With this etymology in mind, the International Year of Biodiversity has to be about getting our house in order.
Key to this will be moving the perception that biodiversity loss is not just about saving remote, exotic and cuddly species, to the realisation that it is about the vital preservation of our natural capital. It was Darwin who introduced us to what we now call Ecosystem Services – how natural communities of organisms provide key functions to sustain life. In his essay on the crucial role of earthworms in soil formation, he concluded with the understated: 'Worms have played a more important part in the history of the world than most persons would at first suppose.' Today the economic cost that would be incurred in losing the ability of natural systems to provide services is providing a vital focus. The ability to store and clean water, retain soil for agriculture, provide nurseries for fish stocks, protection against natural disasters such as floods, drought and tidal surges are being quantified. The scale is enormous – on a global scale, current loss in financial terms is orders of magnitude greater than the cost of the current global financial crisis.
One barrier to communication is that messages on sustainability are often fragmented, but at the heart of what must be sustained is biodiversity. We need a clear narrative that joins biodiversity loss, climate change and sustainable economic development. They are intimately interlinked and need to be addressed together. For example, why are we looking at expensive technical mechanisms for carbon capture when preserving and replacing lost rainforest, peat bog and other natural systems is a proven, inexpensive mechanism for carbon storage that also provides resources for the wellbeing and food security of local people? Developing our carbon currency for biodiversity protection makes huge global and local sense.
Issues of this scale require bold responses; the first is that we need to re-contextualise the problem. While science helps us measure, and helps address the response, the problem is not so much a scientific or environmental question but a human, social one. It is driven by human impact; it affects everyone and we all contribute to the problem. It is about ethics and what we value, what we want now, and at what cost the loss of these irreplaceable resources will mean for our grandchildren and future generations. It's about choices that humans have to make, and this is the debate that we urgently need. For the International Year to be successful, the debate must spill out from the statutory bodies and conservation focused trusts that deal with conservation. Biodiversity is about how we engage in commerce, understand wealth, growth and sustainability. It is about the values of our society and culture, our artistic and spiritual values, and how we want to measure our heath and wellbeing. This is indeed a challenge, but there are ways forward. In the UK,
the International Year of Biodiversity partnership (www.biodiversityislife.net) aims to bring together diverse partner organisations from many sectors, sharing similar concerns and identity, to encourage a wide and nuanced debate that will reach large-scale public audiences. This need for wider awareness is crucial, not least because politicians, local and international, need both the support of and pressure from an informed electorate to leverage the prioritisation of biodiversity preservation.
It's also about learning the lessons of nature. The Malthusian economics of Boom and Bust have re-emerged in the global economic meltdown, but looking through Darwin's eyes, we see that rich ecosystems are inherently stabilising; they tend to produce higher yields, retain maximum resources, and buffer rapid fluctuations; they are intrinsically more resilient in their complexity. Humans not only have to understand and protect this resilience in an otherwise rapidly changing world – we also need to align our values and our practices to this lesson from nature. Humans in evolutionary terms have been a success story, a species whose major advantage has been adaptability to modify environments and respond to change. It is this success that now makes our impact so dominant and places the future of species and of people at a crossroad. The challenge for the year is seeking to redirect our innate ability to innovate towards working in harmony with, rather than against, natural ecosystems and the services they provide. Despite our ingenuity, we are still a part of nature. We should also be heartened that we can all make a difference; there are many real success stories that can show the way. Companies in India that are managing invasive alien trees are turning a devastating pest plant into a valuable source of bio-fuel; the provision of efficient wood-burning ovens in rural Mexico is helping to sustain local forests, while local women gain health benefits from not inhaling wood smoke. When the Large Blue Butterflies went locally extinct in the UK, it took real people to develop a reintroduction programme, and now the UK has the largest population of this species in Western Europe. In our homes, efforts to live on 'Green principles' have a real effect in reducing our individual ecological footprints and reducing biodiversity loss. The message for the year is 'Biodiversity is life, Biodiversity is our life, and together we can all do something to make a difference'.
Conservationists want to turn archipelago into a giant sea-life reserve. But what about the exiled population whose hopes of going home would be dashed forever?
Michael McCarthy, The Independent 10 Feb 10;
A major conservation row is developing over proposals for Britain to establish the biggest and most unspoiled marine nature reserve in the world. The issue of the Chagos Islands raises the increasingly difficult question of how to weigh up the protection of the best remaining parts of nature, in a rapidly degrading world, against the needs and rights of people.
It concerns the Chagos Archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean, a group of isolated coral islands teeming with wildlife which is considered to be among the least polluted marine locations on Earth. Its seawater is the cleanest ever tested; its coral reefs are completely unspoiled; its whole ecosystem, with its countless seabirds, turtles, coconut-cracking crabs (the world's largest), dolphins, sharks and nearly 1,000 other species of fish, is pristine.
Officially British Indian Ocean Territory, the islands are the subject of an ambitious plan by conservationists – backed by the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband – to keep them the way they are, by creating a marine protected area, where fishing and all other exploitation would be banned, of 210,000 square miles – more than twice the land surface of Great Britain. In an age when the oceans and their biodiversity are being ever more despoiled, it would be a supreme example of marine conservation and one of the wildlife wonders of the world – in effect, Britain's Great Barrier Reef, or Britain's Galapagos.
The plan excites many wildlife enthusiasts and has the formal support of several of Britain's major conservation bodies, from the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew and the Zoological Society of London to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. The backing of the Foreign Office and the Foreign Secretary is significant. A public consultation on the plan ends on Friday.
But there is a notable omission from the plan. It takes no account of the wishes of the original inhabitants, the Chagossians – the 1,500 people living on the islands who, between 1967 and 1973, were deported wholesale by Britain, so that the largest island, Diego Garcia, could be used by the US as an airbase for strategic nuclear bombers.
When, in the 1990s, details emerged of the Chagossians' enforced exile, which left them in poverty and unhappiness on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, it was widely seen as a substantial natural injustice; and in 2000 the then-Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, gave them permission to return.
However, after 9/11, Diego Garcia assumed a new strategic importance for the US – it is used as a base for bombing missions over Afghanistan (and has also been used for the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" flights taking captives around the world for interrogation).
As a result, in 2004 the British Government reversed Cook's decision to let the islanders return, using the Royal Prerogative and bypassing Parliament. The islanders, some of whom are still in Mauritius and some of whom are now in Britain, challenged this decision, and in three judgments in successively higher courts, ending with the Court of Appeal, had it reversed, and won back their right of return.
But in 2008 the Government made a final appeal to the House of Lords, citing American security concerns and the potential cost of returning the islanders, and in October that year the law lords, by a majority of three to two, upheld the Government's stance. The Chagossians, who now number about 4,000, have taken their case to the European Court of Human Rights, which is expected to rule on the matter in the summer.
In the meantime, the plan to make their former homeland a strictly protected area, where any sort of economic activity, from fishing to tourism, might be ruled out – thus rendering the Chagossians' return impossible – is being keenly promoted and is gaining more and more support.
The plan has been put forward by the Chagos Conservation Trust (CCT), a charity established in 1992 to protect the islands' wildlife from the commercial exploitation, pollution and overfishing that are wrecking so many of the world's coral islands. It has the backing of the Pew Environment Group, an American conservation charity which campaigns for ocean protection and helped persuade George W Bush to declare the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands a marine reserve in 2006. (At 140,000 square miles it is currently the biggest in the world, but would be dwarfed by Chagos.)
The CCT and Pew have mounted an impressive campaign, bringing nine major conservation bodies into the Chagos Environment Network to press the case on the public and the Government. Mr Miliband sounds as if he is already persuaded, writing: "This is a remarkable opportunity for the UK to create one of the world's largest marine protected areas and double the global coverage of the world's oceans benefiting from full protection." The options the consultation paper presents are about the level of protection necessary, from a full no-take marine reserve, to some fishing allowed, to one just protecting the coral reefs. It would in principle be possible for Mr Miliband to sanction a marine protected area quite soon, before this year's general election; it would not need primary legislation but would be declared by the British Indian Ocean Territory commissioner under British Indian Ocean Territory law. The Foreign Office has been talking to the Americans and it is thought that US concerns about the Diego Garcia base are unlikely to prove a stumbling block. The reserve might be declared before the result of the islanders' case in the European Court of Human Rights.
There is no doubt that the case for full protection is a formidable one. The Chagos Islands alone contain around half of the healthy coral reefs remaining in the Indian Ocean (including the largest coral atoll in the world, the Great Chagos Bank), and an untouched plethora of marine life which almost everywhere else is suffering massive losses from over-exploitation, pollution and bycatch. With full protection, the archipelago could provide the Indian Ocean with an "oasis" for marine and island species.
Yet the Chagossians contend that the case for protection – which in general terms they accept – is flawed because it does not take in to account their wishes. The marine reserve proposal stresses the advantage of the islands being "uninhabited" and mentions the former residents only briefly and obliquely, saying that any decision would be "without prejudice" to the current court case in Europe, and adds: "This means that should circumstances change, all the options for a marine protected area may need to be reconsidered."
Among those leading the criticism is a retired senior diplomat, David Snoxell, who is the co-ordinator of the Chagos Islands All-Party Parliamentary Group. "The consultation is extremely unfair to the Chagossians," says Mr Snoxell. "It deliberately ignores them. People are running this campaign with the idea of keeping the islands uninhabited for time immemorial." The Chagossians themselves would very much welcome a marine protected area, but they need to be part of it, Mr Snoxell says.
"We will support the project only if we are physically involved in it all the way, and our right of return to the Chagos Archipelago is not compromised," said Roch Evenor, a spokesman for the islanders and secretary of the UK Chagos Support Association. "With the Chagossians living on Chagos we will be able to help the marine protected area, as our presence will be a deterrent factor for illegal fishermen who are fishing the sea cucumbers and sharks. We can co-exist – the Chagos archipelago could be something great if we all put our heads together and collaborate."
Chagos Islands: UK's barrier reef
The Chagos Islands possess a wealth of wildlife, and are special above all for their coral; they contain some of the world's healthiest surviving coral reefs, which hold at least 220 coral species and up to 1,000 species of fish. The islands are a refuge and breeding ground for large and important populations of sharks, dolphins, marine turtles, rare crabs, birds and other vulnerable ocean and island species.
In marine terms, British Indian Ocean Territory is by far the most wildlife-rich part of the UK and all its overseas territories; the archipelago is isolated and at the very centre of the Indian Ocean where it acts as an "oasis" for species which are in decline or under pressure elsewhere in the region, from the effects of population growth and development. The fact that 54 of the 55 islands are uninhabited (the exception being Diego Garcia with its US base) is undoubtedly a major reason why the ecosystem has remained so unspoiled. Highlights include:
Coconut crab (Birgus latro)
The world's largest land arthropod, with a leg span of over 3ft and a weight of up to 9lb, this crab can climb trees and even crack a coconut with its massive claws. It is now rare in most of the tropical areas where it is found, but the Chagos population is undisturbed and healthy.
Hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata)
This turtle is the principal source of tortoiseshell material; it has been over-hunted all around the world and is critically endangered. But the atolls of the Chagos are perfect breeding and nursery sites for it, and local populations are flourishing.
Grey reef shark (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos)
In the Indian Ocean, shark numbers are down about 90 per cent over the last 30 years because of overfishing (especially for shark fin soup), and such a decline is also evident in Chagos waters. Conservationists think that making the islands a no-fishing zone could help them recover.
Emperor angelfish (Pomacanthus imperator)
The coral reefs of the Chagos archipelago hold up to 1,000 fish species, many of them dazzlingly coloured, including clownfish, triggerfish and several species of angelfish.
Masked booby (Sula dactylatra)
The islands are an enormously important seabird refuge, with 17 species nesting there, often in large colonies, ranging from the masked booby to the red-tailed tropic bird, and from the great frigatebird to the sooty tern.
Phil Hazlewood (AFP) Google News 9 Feb 10;
MUMBAI — As China prepares to usher in the Year of the Tiger next week, a massive publicity drive has begun in neighbouring India, where the big cat is the national animal, to save it from extinction.
Conservation group WWF-India has enlisted the support of sports stars and celebrities to raise awareness of the threat, citing government estimates that there are just over 1,400 tigers left in the wild.
The campaign, fronted by India cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and top footballer Bhaichung Bhutia, was launched at the end of January and has so far seen more than 75,000 people pledge their support on www.saveourtigers.com.
"Stripey", a cute tiger cub who features in the print, online and television advertisements, also has more than 70,000 fans on the Internet social networking site Facebook and over 2,500 followers on micro-blogging site Twitter.
"Just 1,411 left. You can make a difference," the ad says, urging people to lobby politicians to do more to protect the animal, which once roamed freely across India and the sub-continent.
Diwakar Sharma, associate director for species conservation at WWF-India, said they had been delighted with the response which they hoped would push the issue up the political agenda.
"Public opinion is a must for this," he told AFP. "Public-private partnership can change things... What we can do is try to influence this public opinion."
Feared and worshipped in equal measure, the tiger -- one of the world's largest predators -- holds a special place for Indians and has become an icon of the country's cultural and natural heritage.
But despite conservation efforts over a number of years, Sharma said the situation was now "critical" and conservationists cannot do the work alone.
WWF-India has been working since 1973 to protect tigers, leading to the creation of special reserves and protected areas in national parks and wildlife sanctuaries.
The global wild tiger population is thought to be at an all-time low of 3,200, down from about 20,000 in the 1980s and 100,000 a century ago. At the turn of the 20th century, there were an estimated 40,000 tigers in India.
As elsewhere across Southeast Asia, tiger numbers are threatened by population growth, with a loss of natural habitat to agriculture and available prey leading them to encroach on human settlements in search of food.
Hunting for sport -- now banned worldwide but once seen as a status symbol, particularly during British colonial times -- and poaching, particularly for traditional Chinese medicine, have had devastating effects on numbers.
A British-based organisation, the Environmental Investigation Agency, said last year China -- which is believed to have fewer than 50 wild tigers -- was turning a blind eye to the lucrative illegal trade in tiger parts and pelts.
Many of the body parts, like claws and bones, used for their supposed medicinal properties and as aphrodisiacs, are smuggled to China from India via Nepal.
New Delhi recently asked Beijing for its help to control trafficking but no official agreement was reached.
Poachers killed 32 tigers last year and three already this year, according to the Wildlife Protection Society of India.
There have also been criticisms that government initiatives to crack down on poaching and wildlife crime are failing, due to a bloated bureaucracy and a lack of awareness.
Forestry officials say Maoist rebels, active in seven of India's 38 tiger reserves, are also hindering conservation efforts.
"State governments are certainly not fully aware of (the situation)," said Sharma. "The Indian federal structure allows states to be independent from central government. However policies are not implemented.
"The environment is for all of our well-being, not only for tigers. We know that wherever tigers have gone, the forests are totally degraded with an effect on air and water quality."
India Celebrities Add Glitz To Tiger Conservation
Matthias Williams, PlanetArk 12 Feb 10;
NEW DELHI - 1,411 -- that's the number on the lips of Indian celebrities fronting a new campaign to save tigers which was launched ahead of the Chinese lunar Year of the Tiger -- a time some conservationists fear will lead to a spike in demand for the endangered animal's body parts.
"Just 1,411 left. You can make a difference," is the message being broadcast on everything from TV adverts, Facebook and YouTube, in what organisers say is India's biggest ever campaign to conserve the dwindling numbers of its national animal.
Since January, the environmental group WWF India has spearheaded a public awareness campaign, led by the Indian cricket and football captains, which has received close to 100,000 pledges of support on its website.
Poaching and loss of habitat have caused tiger numbers to plunge from around 40,000 at the turn of the 20th century in India, a country with patchy environmental awareness and uneven local governance needed for an effective crackdown on poachers.
Conservation has not hitherto been seen as a big vote winner in India, where hundreds of millions live below the poverty line.
"The response has been overwhelming," Diwakar Sharma, Associate Director of the Species Conservation Programme at WWF India, told Reuters.
"I hope some of this could be transferred into votes, and politicians realise that the public now wants tiger conservation across India, and the tiger conservation gets more focus throughout India."
India is a key player in efforts to boost the global tiger population, which numbers just a few thousand and some wildlife experts say could be extinct in 20 years.
"All these things have been tried before," Belinda Wright, director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, said of the multimedia campaign. "I think the difference with this particular campaign is that it has brought all the elements together ... the coverage has been fantastic."
"They're not telling anybody anything new. But what they're doing is creating a constituency which will then create political will," she added.
India's Environment Minister said at the end of last year that Indian tigers were in a "very, very precarious" state and could be wiped out in nearly half the country's tiger reserves.
Conservationists say the trade in skin and bones is booming to countries such as China, which has banned the use of tiger parts in medicine but where everything from fur to whiskers to eyeballs to bones, are still used.
WWF's Sharma said the campaign was timely ahead of China's Year of the Tiger, which begins on Sunday and which India fears will spur poachers and smugglers operating in its forests to capitalise on increased demand for tiger parts during the lunar new year.
Tiger skins sell as rugs and cloaks on the black market, and can fetch up to $20,000 in countries like China.
New Delhi has been a vocal critic of the Chinese use of tiger parts in medicine, and wants its neighbour to phase out tiger farms it says violate international agreements.
(Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Miral Fahmy)
Michele Kambas, PlanetArk 10 Feb 10;
NICOSIA - Anglers are being brought in to help rescue a critically endangered Cyprus water snake that has lived on the island for thousands of years, but now faces a major threat from a snappy fish with a big appetite.
This month, anglers will be allowed to fish again in a picturesque reservoir which has been overrun by largemouth bass, an invasive fish species which gobbles up virtually everything that moves in the murky depths.
That includes frogs, a staple in the diet of the demure snake, Natrix natrix cypriaca, which breeds on the banks of the Xyliatos Reservoir.
"The primary source of food for the snake is being threatened by this alien species," an official from Cyprus's Department of Fisheries and Marine Research told Reuters.
Largemouth bass feed in shallow waters near the banks of reservoirs, the same breeding ground used by the Natrix natrix cypriaca.
Cyprus lists the snake as critically endangered. The snake is harmless, and will not poison or bite. If threatened, it will either emit a foul-smelling fluid which it attempts to smear on its predator -- or plays dead.
"They turn themselves upside down ... with the mouth open and the tongue hanging out," the Fisheries Department said on its website.
Remains of Natrix natrix cypriaca have been discovered at Aetokremmos, the oldest prehistoric site on Cyprus, dating back some 12,000 years.
Xyliatos, nestled in the foothills of Troodos, the central mountain range of the Mediterranean island, is one of the very few areas where it still lives.
The anglers had originally been banned from the area to stop them trampling over the banks and inadvertently destroying the snake's habitat.
Now the threat from the bass has become too great.
The reservoir has traditionally been stocked with trout, a fish notoriously difficult to catch and sensitive to the slightest detail, down to the color of an angler's attire.
The bass, a larger and more aggressive fish, has made its appearance in recent years, put there, authorities suspect, by illicit anglers who find it easier to catch.
(Editing by Steve Addison)
Yahoo News 10 Feb 10;
PARIS (AFP) – A ban on fishing around a colony of threatened penguins in South Africa has brought swift benefits to the beleaguered birds, marine biologists reported on Wednesday.
The population of the African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) fell by 60 percent between 2001 and 2009, driven by a plunge in anchovies and sardines, with climate change and purse-seine trawling fingered as the main culprits.
Of the 26,000 surviving pairs, the biggest colony is on St. Croix Island in Algoa Bay, on the eastern coast of South Africa.
There, experts tagged adult birds and monitored them before and after a ban on purse-seine fishing that took effect in a 20-kilometre (12-mile) radius from January 2009.
Before the ban, 75 percent of the penguins had to venture beyond 20 kilometres to find food, they found.
Three months after trawling was stopped, 70 percent of the birds were feeding within the 20-km zone, tucking into fish that now became available.
Fifty kilometers away at Bird Island, there is also a large colony of African penguins, but fishing there is still permitted. The birds are still doing long-haul swims to find food, the investigators found.
The finding is important because the St. Croix birds have decreased their daily energy expenditure by 40 percent, "enabling them to invest energy in reproduction," said David Gremillet of France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).
It is too early to say whether the penguins will have more chicks and how many of the youngsters will survive until adulthood.
"It's something that has to be studied over the long term," Gremillet told AFP. The species is likely to be classified as "endangered" this month because of the sharp decline in the last decade.
The study, published by Britain's Royal Society in the journal Biology Letters, provides the first evidence about how quickly a threatened species can rebound when it is given a little help.
"A marine protected area closed to fisheries can have immediate benefits for an endangered marine top predator," say the authors.
Purse-seine fishing entails dropping a balloon-shaped net, or purse, to a certain depth and then raising it underneath shoals of fish that swim near the surface. The technique prevents the fish from swimming down to avoid capture.
Yasmeen Mohiuddin Yahoo News 9 Feb 10;
NEW DELHI (AFP) – India refused to grant permission Wednesday for the commercial cultivation of its first genetically modified (GM) food crop, citing problems of public trust and "inadequate" science.
Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said he was imposing a moratorium on the introduction of an aubergine modified with a gene toxic to pests that regularly devastate crops across India.
"It is my duty to adopt a cautious, precautionary, principle-based approach and impose a moratorium on the release," until scientific tests can guarantee the safety of the product, said Ramesh.
However, he added there was still no agreement among scientists on what constitutes "an adequate protocol of tests".
Ramesh said the moratorium was effective immediately and it would last "for as long as it is needed to establish public trust and confidence."
"I cannot go against science but in this case science is inadequate," he added. "I have to be sensitive to public concerns."
Indian regulators had approved the new aubergine back in October and its introduction would have made it the first GM foodstuff to be grown in India.
But the decision roused huge opposition and a broad spectrum of voices, including farmers, environmentalists and politicians of all stripes had urged the government to prevent its cultivation.
Ramesh spent the months since the decision travelling across the country holding public consultations with citizens.
Backers of the genetically modified aubergine said the product would boost yields by up to 50 percent, while reducing dependence on pesticides.
But critics pointed to possible long-term health problems, and warned it would open the doors to a flood of other GM food crops.
Mathura Rai, the Indian scientist who led the group that came up with the modified aubergine, declined to comment directly on the moratorium, but insisted that GM crops had a crucial role to play.
"We need a technology for increasing the quality production of vegetable crops," Rai, head of the Indian Institute of Vegetable Research, told AFP from his headquarters in Varanasi city.
"In certain areas where traditional methods of breeding is not possible to improve the production or productivity, biotechnology can play a vital role," he said.
"So this is the best option for increasing the production of quality aubergine in the country," he added.
The government's decision on Tuesday came at a sensitive time with growing public frustration over soaring food prices, following a particularly poor 2009 monsoon.
But Ramesh said there was "no overriding food security argument" for the introduction of GM aubergines.
He said he had considered the views of different interest groups in making his decision but denied he had been pressured by members of his cabinet or by companies producing genetically modified crops.
"My conscience is clear. This is my decision and my decision alone," he said.
India is one of the largest aubergine producers globally.
The seeds had been developed by local scientists but would have been marketed by an Indian company partly owned by the US multinational Monsanto.
India already allows the use of genetically modified cotton and supporters say it has sharply improved yields.
India Delays GM Vegetable Start For Further Tests
Bappa Majumdar, PlanetArk 9 Feb 10;
"The moratorium will be in place until all tests are carried out to the satisfaction of everyone ... If that means no start of production, so be it," Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told reporters on Tuesday.
Until the tests are done, the country should build a broad consensus to use GM technology in agriculture in a safe and sustainable manner, he said.
The decision is seen as boosting the Congress party among its main farming vote base, much of which is fearful of GM use, and comes despite pressure from Farm Minister Sharad Pawar who supported introduction of genetically modified "BT Brinjal," or eggplant.
It also signals Congress's leading position within the ruling coalition made up of difficult allies such as Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party. The Congress and Pawar, who also controls the food portfolio, are currently involved in a blame game over rising food prices.
"The Congress has taken one step back in the hope of taking two steps forward later," political commentator Amulya Ganguli told Reuters.
"The government has been sensitive to public opinion and they have defused an upsurge among its farmer voters by this decision. It has more to do with politics, not any scientific reason."
The move also marks a personal victory for Ramesh, a rising reformist minister who played a crucial role in nuancing India's climate change stand and brokering a political accord in the December Copenhagen conference on global warming.
Ramesh conducted public debates across the country to test the support for GM foodcrop. Most of those meetings saw strident opposition to the idea. Most non-Congress-ruled state governments, including the major eggplant-growing areas, were opposed.
"They killed three birds with one shot. They have defused the public sentiment against them, number two is the political opposition was neutralized and three they prevailed over Sharad Pawar," said N. Bhaskara Rao of the Center for Media Studies.
A government panel last year supported introduction of genetically modified eggplant, but the government said it would consult experts and farmers before accepting the recommendations.
"It is my duty to adopt a cautious, precautionary, principle-based approach," Ramesh said.
BLOW TO MONSANTO?
The decision could come as a blow to seed producers such as Monsanto Co looking to enter India's huge market in GM food crops and where the company has substantial investment, including for research and development.
"Very serious fears have been raised in many quarters on the possibility of Monsanto controlling our food chain if (GM eggplant) is approved," Ramesh said.
Advocates of genetically modified crops argue such varieties can easily increase food supply for India's 1.2 billion people and protect farmers as GM crops can withstand adverse weather and increase output significantly.
"Nearly 1.4 million (eggplant) farmers will be deprived from (GM) technology," said Bhagirath Choudhary of the South Asia office of International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), a GM advocacy group.
"This would amount to a net loss of $330 million per year to Indian brinjal farmers."
But opponents say GM seeds can be a hazard for the environment and public health, and must be tested thoroughly before they are commercially used.
India allowed the use of genetically modified seeds for cotton in 2002, and crop productivity has increased sharply as it is now grown in 80 percent of India's cotton area.
(Editing by Krittivas Mukherjee and Jerry Norton)
India defers first GM food crop
BBC News 9 Feb 10;
India has deferred the commercial cultivation of what would have been its first genetically modified (GM) vegetable crop due to safety concerns.
Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said more studies were needed to ensure genetically modified aubergines were safe for consumers and the environment.
The GM vegetable has undergone field trials since 2008 and received approval from government scientists in 2009.
But there has been a heated public row over the cultivation of the GM crop.
The BBC's Geeta Pandey, who was at the news conference in Delhi, says Mr Ramesh's decision has put any cultivation of GM vegetables in India on hold indefinitely.
'Difficult decision'
"Public sentiment is negative. It is my duty to adopt a cautious, precautionary, principle-based approach," Mr Ramesh said.
He said the moratorium on growing BT brinjal - as the variety of aubergine is known in India - would remain in place until tests were carried out "to the satisfaction of both the public and professionals".
The minister said "independent scientific studies" were needed to establish "the safety of the product from the point of view of its long-term impact on human health and environment".
Mr Ramesh said it was "a difficult decision to make" since he had to "balance science and society".
"The decision is responsible to science and responsive to society," he said.
India is the largest producer of aubergines in the world and grows more than 4,000 varieties.
Laura Vinha Yahoo News 9 Feb 10;
HELSINKI (AFP) – Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and other leaders from around the Baltic Sea hold a summit in Helsinki on Wednesday under growing pressure to clean up one of the world's most polluted seas.
Over-fished, surrounded by dirty industry and uncared for, the brackish sea is so toxic that pregnant women should not to eat the fish that are caught in the Baltic, according to Greenpeace.
The marine life is being decimated, researchers say. One hundred years ago there were about 100,000 grey seals in the Baltic but but by the 1980s the population had fallen to 2-3,000 because of hunting and pollution that made females infertile.
Putin and his counterparts from Estonia, Denmark and Norway, the presidents of Latvia and Lithuania, and Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf will discuss how to save the sick sea at the meeting hosted by Finland's President Tarja Halonen, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen and the Baltic Sea Action Group (BSAG).
Environmentalists are disappointed that neither Germany nor Poland are sending a top leader to the summit, but they also insist that those who do attend must put into action already agreed plans.
"We know exactly what needs to be done," Sampsa Vilhunen, head of Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Finland's marine programme, told AFP. "Let's now start implementing what's already been agreed. After that, we can evaluate whether or not that's enough."
Organisers of the Helsinki summit say a range of companies, foundations and individuals have already made more than 130 promises of action to save the Baltic. Businesses have promised innovations to recycle nutrients from waste-water and technology to improve communications between vessels and local authorities to enhance safety.
Some 90 million people live around the Baltic Sea. Eutrophication -- the overconcentration of nutrients caused by sewage effluent and agricultural run-off carrying fertilizers into the sea -- over-fishing and the increasing marine traffic are the main threats to be tackled.
The shallow, semi-enclosed sea takes far longer than many other large bodies of water to flush out harmful substances and this has increased the toxic concentrations in fish, according to the Greenpeace group.
But there are also opportunities and sustainable industrial development could help protect the Baltic, said Mari Walls who heads the marine research centre at the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE).
"The Baltic Sea has a lot to offer when it comes to developing environmentally sustainable technology," she said, citing the potential of algae, a product of eutrophication, as a base for biodiesel.
The European Union and the nine countries with a Baltic Sea coastline -- Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany -- already cooperate to protect the marine environment through the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM).
But critics say the body's good intentions have been slow to translate into concrete measures, and its action plan, aimed at restoring the sea to a good state by 2021, is lagging.
"There is a lack of real results. We haven't seen the action needed to meet those ambitions that have been presented within the Baltic Sea strategy," said Greenpeace ocean campaigner Jan Isakson.
Environmentalists say countries need to set aside national agendas in favour of the best interests of the Baltic Sea.
"What has been obvious over the years is that practically no country speaks with the voice of the Baltic Sea; they all speak with the voice of their own country and national interests," said WWF's Vilhunen.
Russia is currently the chair of HELCOM. The next test of international commitment to the Baltic comes in May when it holds a ministerial meeting in Moscow.
Baltic Sea States Seek Clean-Up; Russia Expands Oil
Brett Young, PlanetArk 10 Feb 10;
HELSINKI - Political and business leaders meet in Helsinki on Wednesday to spur efforts to clean up the Baltic sea, which has suffered from decades of pollution and is a focus of Russia's oil and gas expansion plans.
The Baltic, which organizers call the most polluted sea in the world, remains for adjacent countries a major destination for untreated sewage and many chemical pollutants, including agricultural waste that causes blooms of algae that choke marine life.
It is also facing rising sea traffic. The Russian port of Ust Luga is being expanded and will eventually handle almost one-fifth of Russia's total petroleum products exports as the country seeks more European business.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will be among the participants in Helsinki.
Organizers said they had received close to 140 commitments from companies, NGOs and individuals ahead of the Baltic Sea Action Summit (BSAS), and were focused on getting a strong political will to follow through on past promises.
"To really make it happen at the ministerial level and at every other level we need this kind of joint push so it gets critical mass," said Saara Kankaanrinta, secretary general of the Baltic Sea Action Group foundation, one of the summit's organizers.
Kankaanrinta said organizers were not seeking cash donations from business participants but rather pro bono work or contributions. She cited as an example work done by IBM on improving navigation technology for Baltic sea traffic.
Political interest in the Baltic has grown of late as the start of construction nears for the Nord Stream pipeline, which will transport 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Russia to Germany when completed in 2012.
The pipeline has all necessary government approvals and needs only the blessing of Finnish environmental authorities for construction to proceed. The decision is expected later this week.
ACTIONS, NOT WORDS
The one-day summit is hosted by Finland and gathers a number of national leaders along with heads of businesses and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
It builds on a 2007 meeting of the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM), whose mandate is to protect the Baltic marine environment, where regional countries agreed to cut pollution and restore the Baltic's "good ecological status" by 2021.
Environmental group WWF said it was a good sign that the meeting had reached such a high political level, and the focus should be on enacting past promises rather than making new ones. "We have never been happy on the same day that something has been written or agreed, only when the implementation starts," said Sampsa Vilhunen, marine program head at WWF Finland.
"It will probably take 25 or 30 years for the marine basin to get better. People also have to realize that we are not going to reach a pristine environment ever again, because there's nearly 90 million people living on Baltic sea," he added.
Vilhunen said a test of the summit's effectiveness would the results of the next HELCOM ministerial meeting in Moscow in May, which will report on progress made in the 2007 plan.
(Editing by Ralph Boulton)
Emma Graham-Harrison, PlanetArk 10 Feb 10;
BEIJING - A new Chinese government survey of the country's environmental problems has shown water pollution levels in 2007 were more than twice the government's official estimate, largely because agricultural waste was ignored.
The data, presented by Vice Environment Protection Minister Zhang Lijun, revives persistent questions about the quality of Chinese official statistics and the effectiveness of a government push for cleaner growth after decades of unbridled expansion.
The first national census on pollution sources found that discharge of "chemical oxygen demand" (COD) -- a measure of water pollution -- in wastewater was 30.3 million metric tons, Zhang said.
The government had said in an official paper published two years ago that 2007 was the first year it managed to reduce water pollution, with COD falling 3 percent to 13.8 million metric tons.
The census has been years in the making, in part because it was extremely comprehensive, but possibly also because the contents include painful revelations like this one.
Zhang played down the difference between the totals. He said it was explained by the survey's expanded scope, the inclusion of agricultural sources of wastewater -- which contributed some 13.2 million metric tons -- and different calculation methods.
"The scope of the data was different, this time it included a survey of agricultural sources," Zhang told a news conference.
A more detailed survey of industrial and household emissions, and a different statistical approach also contributed to the leap. When these were accounted for, COD was only around 5 percent above the original 2007 figure, he said.
Figures for other pollutants did not suggest widespread fiddling of data. Acid-rain-causing sulfur dioxide emissions for example, were pegged at 23.2 million metric tons by the census and had been estimated at 24.7 million metric tons in the earlier data.
But whether the omission of agricultural pollutants was intentional or not, the fact that the government managed to overlook a major contributor to one of its benchmark pollution indicators is bound to raise concern.
MORE DATA NOT RELEASED
There may also be other serious problems that Beijing is reluctant to reveal. Activists who welcomed the effort to collect a more comprehensive picture of the country's pollution problem, also called for access to detailed results.
"It appears that the comprehensive pollution data from the census has not been made accessible to the public," Greenpeace Campaign Director Sze Pang Cheung said.
"We urge the government to immediately establish a strong platform through which the public could easily access a wide range of pollution data."
Zhang said the survey had given China a better handle on its challenges and the country in future would hope to increase the range of pollutants it monitored and controlled.
It was a sign of China's commitment to shifting its economic model, he added, which should allow it to cap pollution growth at an earlier stage of development than western nations.
"Because China has taken a different development path than other advanced nations, it is very likely that the peak of our pollution will come (earlier)," he said.
But he added that the government would not change the baseline or survey methods for a target of cutting wastewater pollution 10 percent by 2010 from 2005 levels.
"The emission reduction base was determined on the basis of 2005 environmental data, and so the targets...have to remain the same," he said.
Chinese farms cause more pollution than factories, says official survey
Groundbreaking government survey pinpoints fertilisers and pesticides as greater source of water contamination
Jonathan Watts, guardian.co.uk 9 Feb 10;
Farmers' fields are a bigger source of water contamination in China than factory effluent, the Chinese government revealed today in its first census on pollution.
Senior officials said the disclosure, after a two-year study involving 570,000 people, would require a partial realignment of environmental policy from smoke stacks to chicken coops, cow sheds and fruit orchards.
Despite the sharp upward revision of figures on rural contamination, the government suggested the country's pollution problem may be close to - or even past - a peak. That claim is likely to prompt scepticism among environmental groups.
The release of the groundbreaking report was reportedly delayed by resistance from the agriculture ministry, which had previously insisted that farms contributed only a tiny fraction of pollution in China.
The census disproves these claims completely. According to the study, agriculture is responsible for 43.7% of the nation's chemical oxygen demand (the main measure of organic compounds in water), 67% of phosphorus and 57% of nitrogen discharges.
At the launch of the paper, Wang Yangliang of the ministry of agriculture recognised the fall-out from intensive farming methods.
"Fertilisers and pesticides have played an important role in enhancing productivity but in certain areas improper use has had a grave impact on the environment," he said. "The fast development of livestock breeding and aquaculture has produced a lot of food but they are also major sources of pollution in our lives."
He said the ministry would introduce measures to improve the efficiency of pesticide and fertiliser use, to expand biogas generation from animal waste, and to change agricultural lifestyles to protect the environment.
While the high figure for rural pollution is partly explained by the immense size of China's agricultural sector, it also reflects the country's massive dependency on artificial farm inputs such as fertilisers.
The government says this is necessary because China uses only 7% of the world's land to feed 22% of the global population. An industrial lobby is pushing for even greater use of chemicals. It includes the huge power company CNOOC, which runs the country's largest nitrogen fertiliser factory in Hainan's Dongfang City.
But the returns on this chemical investment are poor. According to a recent Greenpeace report, the country consumes 35% of the world's nitrogen fertiliser, which wastes energy and other resources, while adding to water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
"Agricultural pollution has become one of China's gravest environmental crises," said Greenpeace campaign director Sze Pangcheung. "China needs to step up the fight against the overuse of fertilisers and pesticides and promote ecological agriculture which has obvious advantages for human heath, the environment, and sustainable development of agriculture."
Wen Tiejun, dean of the school of agriculture and rural development at Renmin university, said the survey should be used as a turning point. His research suggested that Chinese farmers used almost twice as much fertiliser as they needed.
"For almost all of China's 5,000-year history, agriculture had given our country a carbon-absorbing economy but in the past 40 years, agriculture has become one of the top pollution sources," he said. "Experience shows that we don't have to rely on chemical farming to resolve the food security issue. The government needs to foster low-pollution agriculture."
But in what appears to be a statistical sleight of hand, the government said the new agricultural data and other figures from the census would not be used to evaluate the success of its five-year plan to reduce pollution by 10%.
Zhang Lijun, the environmental protection vice-minister, claimed China was cleaning up its pollution problem far faster than other countries during their dirty stage of development.
"Because China follows a different pattern of development, it is very likely that pollution will peak when per capita income reaches US$3,000," he said, comparing this with the $8,000 he said was the norm in other nations.
If true, it would suggest the worst of China's pollution problems may already be over. According to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, per capita incomes in China have already passed this point. If exchange rates and a low cost of living are factored in, Chinese incomes may be equivalent to more than $6,000.
But Zhang's claim is contestable. As countless pollution scandals have revealed, many industries and local governments routinely under-report emissions and waste.
Many harmful or controversial forms of pollution are either not measured - as is the case for carbon dioxide and small particle emissions - or the data is not made public, as is the case for ozone.
Zheng said the government would expand its monitoring system in the next five-year plan.
Extracts from China's first pollution report (for 2007):
• Sulphur dioxide emissions 23.2 million tonnes (91.3% from industry)
• Nitrogen oxide emissions: 18 million tonnes (30% from vehicles)
• Chemical oxygen demand discharges: 30.3 billion tonnes (44% from agriculture)
• Soot: 11.7 million tonnes.
• Solid waste: 3.8 billion tonnes (of which 45.7m tonnes is hazardous)
• Heavy metal discharges: 900 tonnes
• Livestock faeces: 243 million tonnes.
• Livestock urine: 163 million tonnes
• Plastic film on cropfields: 121,000 tonnes (80.3% recycled)
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