27 Feb (Sat): Screening of "End of the Line" and get the WWF Singapore Seafood Guide from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity!
A Juvenile Wagler's Pit Viper
from Life's Indulgences
Awesome Ophiuroids: Brittle star talk at St. John's Island
from wild shores of singapore
News Alert - "Galaxea"
from Psychedelic Nature
苍鹭--新加坡体型最大的鸟 Grey Heron@Singapore
from PurpleMangrove
Courtship feeding in Asian Koel
from Bird Ecology Study Group
71 bush fires in first 2 weeks as rainfall set to be lowest ever for Feb
Victoria Vaughan & Sujin Thomas, Straits Times 19 Feb 10;
AN UNUSUALLY high number of bush fires has been raging for the second year in a row, as Singapore heads towards what could be the driest February on record.
With rainfall less than half what it was this time last year, 71 bush fires have been recorded in the first two weeks of the month, and they may continue until it rains, said climate experts.
Last year, the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) fought 159 bush fires in February and 182 in January, the highest figure for that month in the past decade.
This year, 36 bush fires were recorded in January. The huge jump seen in the first two weeks of this month could continue if the weather stays dry.
Rainfall up to Tuesday was just 4.6mm, compared with 11.5mm in the same period last year. Average monthly rainfall for February is usually about 100mm.
According to the National Environment Agency (NEA), it will continue to be dry for at least the next two weeks, with only shortlived showers expected on three or four afternoons.
The SCDF has identified three hot spots, all in the eastern part of the island, which has seen the highest number of fires reported recently. The three are: Fort Road, with three fires; Bedok Road, with four; and along the Tampines Expressway (TPE) towards Changi after the Jalan Kayu exit, which had four cases.
Other areas which had fires included Punggol, Hougang and Pasir Ris.
The fires occurred in vacant grasslands or open fields and were generally not near homes or commercial areas. At the TPE, they raged in the brush just next to the expressway.
The fires are started in different ways, exacerbated by the dry season, such as cigarette butts being thrown carelessly, or from candles that are lit at makeshift altars.
The SCDF, which chairs the Wildfire Task Force Committee, said it is working on preventive measures with related agencies such as the Housing Board and the Singapore Land Authority.
These include increased patrols, trimming vegetation and creating fire-break buffers to prevent the spread of fire.
There were no reports of injuries from the fires last year.
A Straits Times check of the affected stretches of the TPE and Punggol found areas of charred grass and burnt trees ranging in size from smaller than a basketball court to as big as a football field.
Residents in the vicinity largely seemed to be unaware of what was happening.
An SCDF spokesman said its officers patrol the hot spots up to three times a week. Fire hydrants are also inspected during the checks.
National University of Singapore's climate expert Matthias Roth, 49, said that El Nino, a recurring weather phenomenon, could be to blame for the current dry weather.
'A moderate El Nino is in place which is predicted to last into spring. The impact includes drier-than-average conditions which could help to explain why Singapore is experiencing a dry spell,' he said.
He noted that both January and February had below average rainfall.
'This has contributed to dry conditions of the soil and vegetation, therefore increasing the susceptibility to bush fires,' said the climatologist.
The lowest recorded rainfall for February was 8.4mm in the years 1968 and 2005.
An NEA spokesman said it was too soon to tell if this could become the driest February on record, but if rainfall continues at the same rate, then it could well be.
Singapore is currently experiencing the north-east monsoon season, which brings heavy rainfall through December and January. The dry phase of the monsoon occurs between February and early March.
HOTSPOTS
# Fort Road: Three fires
# Bedok Road: Four fires
# Along the Tampines Expressway towards Changi after the Jalan Kayu exit: Four fires
It'll account for 2% of peak electricity demand by 2014, against 5% proposed
Ronnie Lim, Business Times 19 Feb 10;
POWER projects using renewable fuels (such as palm kernel for Tuas Power's latest clean coal/ biomass plant) - and if taken to broadly include waste-to-energy facilities - will account for about 2 per cent of Singapore's peak electricity demand by 2014, going by current projects and others underway here.
This falls short of the Economic Strategies Committee's (ESC) recommendation that 5 per cent of peak electricity be supplied from renewables by 2020, although solar energy could enter the picture here once the technology improves, industry officials said. They said that the ESC recommendation was definitely a step in the right direction, but 'a challenging one'.
The move towards energy alternatives - renewables in the interim, and nuclear energy in the longer term - is critical, they add, given the generating companies' current reliance on piped natural gas from Indonesia and Malaysia.
'Natural gas accounts for as much as 85 per cent of the gencos' fuel, with the remainder being fuel oil. But recently, with some Indonesian gas supply problems, natural gas use here fell to as much as 70 per cent, with more oil used as a back-up,' one genco official said.
Liquefied natural gas supplies which will be available from mid-2013 will help, although it will initially be more expensive than piped gas, he added.
One genco source said that peak electricity demand here currently ranges from 5,800 MW to 5,900 MW, and even at a conservative 6,000 MW, the ESC target suggests that at least 300 MW should be supplied from renewable fuels by that date.
(The Energy Market Authority projects electricity demand to grow by 2.5-3 per cent annually between 2009 and 2018.)
Right now, the only known projects incorporating renewables includes Tuas Power's $2 billion clean coal/biomass plant being built on Jurong Island. Tropical biomass, comprising palm kernel shell, will make up 20 per cent of its fuel mix.
Apart from steam and cooling water, the plant, when fully completed in 2014, will produce 160 MW of electricity - which means that roughly 32 MW will be generated from renewables.
Singapore's Biofuel Industries had also tied up with Indonesia's Medco Energi to build a $55 million, 24.8 MW cogeneration plant fuelled by horticultural and industrial wood waste, and is scheduled to start selling about 20 MW to the power grid here once the project is completed by the middle of this year.
Currently, there are also several waste-to-energy plants here - such as Senoko Waste-to-Energy (generating 55MW), Keppel Seghers Tuas Waste-to-Energy (24 MW) and IUT Singapore's bio-methanisation plant which creates energy from food waste (2.13 MW). Another power player, Sembcorp, is also continuing pilot trials on refuse-derived fuels (RDF) for its planned second cogeneration plant on Jurong Island, but has so far found RDF to be costly and not energy-efficient. In the UK, it has a 30 MW plant which uses entirely biomass including willow crops, to produce electricity, and gets 'green' incentives such as carbon credits from the UK government for this.
If RFD is added to the 'renewables' equation, then all the current and on-going projects here will add up to about 133 MW by 2014 - or just 40 per cent of the ESC's 300 MW-plus target by 2020.
John Ng, CEO of PowerSeraya, disclosed that the genco is also looking at producing power from waste, but declined to go into project details at this time.
The genco, now owned by Malaysia's YTL Group, is also studying how it can participate in Singapore's electric vehicle network, as well as in small-scale solar projects for customers, he added. 'We are not discounting solar as the technology is evolving and a lot of things can change in 10 years time,' said Mr Ng.
Another industry source cited the example of pharmaceuticals manufacturer Pfizer which has apparently employed solar panels to meet its energy needs, in addition to having an in-house tri-generation plant which produces steam and 4.8 MW of electricity.
'But solar is not sufficiently efficient nor cost effective at this stage to justify the investment involved, and government incentives will be needed to promote its use,' the source added.
Computer program helps planners to identify potential hot spots
Grace Chua, Straits Times 19 Feb 10;
INDUSTRIAL estates could well become cooler and more comfortable to work in.
Less heat will be trapped between their buildings, which will also use less energy to cool them down.
This comes courtesy of a computer program which enables town planners to map out potential hot spots and so design industrial estates or improve existing ones to have fewer of these.
The program, the brainchild of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and planners from the industrial real estate firm JTC Corporation, guides planners on how to site buildings, plant trees or place ponds, among other measures to dissipate heat.
Similar mapping tools have been developed in the West, but are inapplicable to tropical climates, said associate professor Wong Nyuk Hien, a design and environment researcher at NUS.
And in Singapore, where temperatures can be broiling, such a mapping tool can make a difference.
Lowering the outside air temperature by a mere 1 deg C can cut a building's energy consumption by 5 per cent, previous NUS research has found.
To develop the program, Dr Wong's team collected data from JTC's 200ha one-north industrial zone in Buona Vista - information on the temperature and solar radiation at different times of day, and even the amount and type of greenery there. The zone houses Biopolis, Fusionopolis, Ayer Rajah Industrial Estate, and residential and mixed-use areas.
It is the first time a tool has been developed to study climate in industrial estates here, and a first in South-east Asia too, although Japan is coming up with a similar tool, said Dr Wong.
He and his colleagues will also use the program to study temperatures in Punggol residential estate, in a separate project with the Housing Board.
The presence of hot spots in built-up areas is not unique to Singapore, said JTC planners, but it is especially pronounced here because Singapore is land-scarce and densely populated.
This leads invariably to high - and expensive - energy needs for cooling.
JTC engineering planning director Koh Chwee said that since there was no way around the need to develop complex industrial areas, the computer program would help lower ambient temperature and slash energy bills.
The first phase of the two-part study, which cost JTC $150,000, found that on a hot afternoon, the hottest and coolest parts of one-north could have a temperature difference of as much as 2 deg C.
The second phase will involve fine-tuning the program and checking its accuracy by running it in other JTC estates such as the Seletar Aerospace Park.
Already, JTC is using the software to come up with guidelines for other developers who build on its sites.
Besides one-north, JTC has 6,600ha of projects across Singapore, from Jurong Island to Changi Business Park.
Dr Wong said the program should work for other parts of Singapore, as the climate is the same across the island.
High time for lower temperatures
Joyce Hooi, Business Times 19 Feb 10;
(SINGAPORE) Selecting the desired temperature for an entire industrial estate may soon be almost as easy as playing the simulation computer game SimCity.
JTC Corporation and the National University of Singapore (NUS) yesterday unveiled an air temperature prediction model tool that will allow urban planners to do just that.
The model tool, called the Screening Tool for Estate Environment Evaluation (STEVE), will let users simulate different temperature ranges by changing certain variables like the amount of trees in the area, height of buildings and the quantity of paved surface area.
With STEVE and a web-based temperature calculator, urban planners will be able to ascertain the types and quantity of greenery needed to reduce the area's temperature by a certain number of degrees.
'We are very excited about this development, because now planners won't have to wait years to see if the outcome is what was expected,' said Koh Chwee, director of JTC's engineering planning division.
A climate map that can be generated from the calculator will display various areas marked with different colour indicators according to their temperatures.
'This makes it easier to identify temperature hotspots for mitigation,' said Steve Kardinal Jusuf, the eponymous researcher of the project and a research fellow at NUS's School of Design & Environment.
The lowering of outdoor temperatures will create meaningful differences for building owners in these areas.
Research findings cited by JTC and NUS state that every 1C reduction in outdoor air temperature results in a 5 per cent reduction in building energy consumption.
Phase 1 of the project - which featured primarily data collection and was funded by JTC for $150,000 - was started in October 2007 and completed in September last year.
Having run the model on the one-north development as a test, JTC and NUS will be moving on to Phase 2 later this year, which will involve validating the model at other test sites like Seletar Aerospace Park and Paya Lebar Industrial Park.
The costs associated with the two-year Phase 2 of the project have not yet been finalised.
'Once the prediction model is up, it can be applied to any estate,' said Wong Nyuk Hien, principal investigator of the project and an associate professor at NUS's School of Design & Environment.
JTC's Mr Koh also did not rule out introducing this model to the private sector. 'In time to come, when the toolset is mature enough, extending it to the private sector is possible,' he said.
Straits Times 19 Feb 10;
SHIPPING emissions are attracting greater attention in the climate change agenda as they are responsible for about 3 per cent of total global emissions - 1 per cent higher than the airline industry's carbon footprint.
As one of the busiest ports in the world, along with Shanghai and Rotterdam, Singapore has a part to play in the greening of the shipping industry.
Last year, more than 130,000 ships docked here, so it is about time that Singapore begins its first research centre for seafaring energy.
At its opening yesterday, the Centre for Maritime Energy Research (CMER) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) launched a programme offering a total of $15 million for research into cleaner shipping technologies.
A memorandum of understanding for the programme was also signed by Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) chief executive Lam Yi Young and NTU Provost Bertil Andersson yesterday.
'The MPA hopes the fund will help it develop greener shipping and port management,' said an MPA spokesman.
Research areas include the probing of nuclear and fuel cell power for ships at sea, carbon capturing of emissions and electrification of ships.
Six projects will be chosen next month and will receive between $500,000 and $1 million in funding.
Funding for the programme will come from the MPA's Maritime Innovation and Technology Fund ($8 million) and NTU ($2 million), over the next five years. They will also seek an additional $5 million from the industry.
Six industry partners have since signed up with NTU to collaborate with CMER. They are the American Bureau of Shipping, APL, DNV, Keppel Offshore and Marine Technology Centre, Sembcorp Marine and Rolls-Royce Singapore.
VICTORIA VAUGHAN
Platform to develop green shipping solutions
Business Times 19 Feb 10;
THE Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) yesterday jointly launched the $15 million Maritime Clean Energy Research Programme (MCERP) to focus on research platforms that promote green, carbon-neutral, energy management solutions.
Co-funded by MPA's Maritime Innovation and Technology Fund and NTU, research grants of up to $8 million and $2 million will be contributed by MPA and NTU respectively over a five-year period.
MPA and NTU will also work towards securing industry co-funding of up to $5 million.
The research will be conducted through the Centre for Maritime Energy Research (CMER), a new centre under the Energy Research Institute at NTU. The programme aims to develop green shipping and port solutions and will work with other centres at the institute.
The first Call for Proposals for research grants opened yesterday. The evaluation panel will constitute members from NTU, MPA and the maritime industry.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) launching the programme was yesterday signed by MPA chief executive Lam Yi Young and NTU Provost Bertil Andersson.
In conjunction with the MCERP, Mr Lam and Prof Andersson also witnessed the signing of an MOU with the American Bureau of Shipping, APL, DNV, Keppel Offshore and Marine Technology Centre and Sembcorp Marine and a Letter of Intent with Rolls-Royce Singapore which are all interested to explore collaborations with CMER.
MPA, NTU launch Maritime Clean Energy Research Programme
Channel NewsAsia 18 Feb 10;
SINGAPORE: Research funding of up to S$15 million will be available over five years under a newly launched "Maritime Clean Energy Research Programme".
The programme, jointly launched by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU), aims to help the development of green technologies in shipping and port management.
Research will be conducted through the Centre for Maritime Energy Research, a new centre under the Energy Research Institute at NTU.
The first Call for proposals for the research grant opened on Thursday.
- CNA/sc
May Wong, Channel NewsAsia 18 Feb 10;
SINGAPORE: Singaporeans can soon learn more about climate change through a roving interactive exhibition.
The Singapore Environment Council hopes the initiative will get the young thinking about what they can do to save the earth.
The S$70,000 project is a collaboration between the Singapore Environment Council, Club 21 and Toshiba.
From January next year, schools and organisations can loan the mobile Earth Stations for a two-week period through this website: http://www.climatechange.sg
"It's really to provide outreach and to make learning a bit more fun and less dry for our young," said Howard Shaw, executive director of the Singapore Environment Council.
"We find that they are so much more receptive to the content when it's something that they think is cool, it's fun to play with, and there's an element of competition in it too."
The interactive exhibit has a database of information ranging from pollution to the global warming process, and even the solar system.
The roving exhibition hopes to engage children about climate change issues through games and quizzes.
"Educating our young is really the foundation for a greener society and it's a long term investment," said Shaw.
"We noticed that education is there these days but perhaps the young are getting a bit jaded because they hear it too many times... they're maybe even a bit bored of hearing. So it's a matter of repackaging your education programme and bringing it up another notch to a level where they regain their interest."
The exhibition, in the form of an Earth Station, is aimed at educating students aged between six and 16 by using simple explanations and interesting graphics.
For a start, the stations will be loaned to schools, but organisers also plan to place them temporarily at community clubs and shopping malls in the future.
The stations will soon be available in Chinese.
Singapore's roving eco exhibition: Fun, games and competition
It's the fun, fact-filled interactive way for kids to learn about climate change
Larry Loh CNN GO 22 Feb 10;
The S$70,000 project is a collaboration between the Singapore Environment Council, Club 21 and Toshiba.
It's the roving interactive exhibition with a green message -- climate change is important. Mobile Earth Stations will be making their rounds around Singapore as part of a nationwide initiative to get the young thinking about what they can do to save the earth.
With fun facts ranging from pollution to the global warming process and even the solar system, the climate change exhibition aims to engage children about climate change issues through games and quizzes, as well as using simple explanations and interesting graphics.
"Educating our young is really the foundation for a greener society and it's a long-term investment," said Howard Shaw, executive director of the Singapore Environment Council, to Channel NewsAsia. "[The exhibition is] really to provide outreach and to make learning a bit more fun and less dry for our young. We find that they are so much more receptive to the content when it's something that they think is cool, it's fun to play with, and there's an element of competition in it too."
For a start, the stations will be loaned to schools, but organizers also plan to place them temporarily at community clubs and shopping malls in the future. If you're interested in borrowing the mobile Earth Station for a two-week period, take a look at www.climatechange.sg.
Mustafa Shafawi, Channel NewsAsia 18 Feb 10;
SINGAPORE: Singaporeans polled by the government feedback channel, REACH, have given high marks to the key recommendations by the Economic Strategies Committee (ESC).
The telephone poll of some 8,000 Singaporeans found 70 per cent agreeing with the recommendations.
REACH said the sentiments also largely reflected the feedback received through other online channels.
Respondents to the telephone survey were most supportive of the ESC recommendations to upskill workers at all levels through an enhanced Continuing Education and Training (CET) system (94%), strengthen support for low-wage workers through enhanced Workfare Income Supplement scheme (93%), and provide multiple skills-based progression pathways to complement academic routes (89%).
Three recommendations received less support and relatively more disagreement.
Sixty-five per cent of respondents agreed to raising the quality of the foreign workforce and encouraging employers to retain skilled foreign workers by increasing the skilled levy differential, while 22 per cent disagreed.
Fifty-eight per cent of respondents agreed to diversifying energy sources by exploring the feasibility of nuclear energy for the long term, while 25 per cent disagreed.
Fifty-two per cent of respondents agreed to raising foreign worker levies in a gradual and phased manner in order to manage Singapore's dependence on the foreign workforce, while 31 per cent disagreed.
A few contributors argued that this change should not be applied across the board as some jobs were shunned by locals, and businesses in those sectors depended heavily on foreign workers to remain viable.
While a handful of contributors who gave their feedback online welcomed the move to explore the feasibility of studying nuclear energy as a possible source of energy, others argued over the risks and costs involved in developing a nuclear plant.
They hoped that the government would consider this decision very carefully, and explore other means to generate alternative sources of energy.
On anchoring Singapore as a Global-Asia hub, contributors felt that there was an ongoing need to identify, develop and retain talents across all sectors, including developing world class companies such as Singapore Airlines and Creative Technologies.
Commenting on the feedback, REACH Chairman Dr Amy Khor said it shows Singaporeans broadly agree with and are supportive of the ESC's strategies to grow the economy to achieve sustained and inclusive growth.
She said the results should help to give the government a better idea of ground sentiments on these issues.
- CNA/yb
Yahoo News 18 Feb 10;
JAKARTA (AFP) – Conservationists Thursday hailed a breakthrough in efforts to save the critically endangered Sumatran rhino after a female called Ratu became pregnant in captivity.
Tests on Tuesday revealed that eight-year-old Ratu was carrying a calf after mating with Andalas, the first of only three Sumatran rhinos born in captivity over the past 112 years, experts said.
"We're really happy to see the ultrasound has spotted the foetus and umbilical cord in Ratu's uterus," said Widodo Ramono of the Rhino Foundation of Indonesia, which is conducting the breeding programme in conjunction with the International Rhino Foundation (IRF) and Cincinnati Zoo.
"This is very, very good news... It will be the first Sumatran rhino born in captivity in Indonesia."
If everything goes well, Ratu will give birth in May next year to only the fourth Sumatran rhino born in captivity.
The two-horned, hairy, forest-dwelling Sumatran rhinoceros is one of the most endangered mammals in the world, with only about 200 remaining in the wild, up to 180 in Indonesia and the rest in Malaysia, Ramono said.
Solitary and aggressive, they are rarely sighted in the wild and avoid even other members of their species except when females are ready to mate.
Andalas was born on September 13, 2001 in Cincinnati Zoo, while Ratu was rescued in 2005 after she was chased from a forest on Sumatra by villagers who reportedly mistook her for a mythical monster and tried to kill her.
They met last year in a sanctuary in Way Kambas national park in Lampung, South Sumatra province, two years after Andalas was brought from the United States to participate in the programme.
"At the beginning, we were quite pessimistic as Andalas was aggressive and unfriendly towards the female rhinos," Ramono said.
"He chased and fought Ratu and the other females and suffered quite serious wounds that needed at least a month to heal.
"But suddenly on November 16, Andalas softened his attitude towards Ratu and he tried to mate with her for the first time, but he didn't do it properly."
The pair finally got it right on their fourth attempt on January 13, when Ratu conceived, he said.
Poaching is one of the biggest killers of Sumatran rhinos, whose numbers have dropped more than 50 percent over the last 15 years. Their horns are reputed to have medicinal properties.
The Way Kambas sanctuary has two male and three females rhinos. The other male, Torgamba, proved to be infertile, so Andalas is carrying all the responsibility to make the breeding programme a success.
Veterinary surgeon Dedi Chandra told AFP that Ratu was in prime condition for motherhood and so far she was dealing with pregnancy well.
"Our approach now is more psychological. We're just trying to make her enjoy her pregnancy," he said.
"We haven't detected anything abnormal. Like humans, the early stages of pregnancy should be closely monitored. She has to be free from disturbances, have good food and drink and a good place to live."
IRF executive director Susie Ellis said that while captive breeding was not a substitute for protecting the species in the wild, it was a "critical part" of the strategy for the rhino's recovery.
"Every individual counts and the captive population represents not only an 'insurance policy' for the wild population, but also a means to study the basic biology of the species, which we must understand in order to save them," she said in a statement.
Mum-to-Be Helps Sumatran Rhinos Take Step Back from Extinction
Jakarta Globe 18 Feb 10;
The survival of the critically endangered Sumatran rhinoceros has received a much-needed boost with an announcement on Thursday from the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Lampung that a baby rhino was on the way.
The calf is expected to be born in May 2011 at the sanctuary, which is located in the Way Kambas National Park, and will be the second Sumatran rhino born and bred in captivity since 1889. But good fortune seems to run in the family, with the expecting father, Andalas, being the last Sumatran rhino born away from its natural environment.
Ratu, the expectant mother, was brought to the sanctuary in 2006 after wandering into a village near the Way Kambas National Park. “The pregnancy seems to be progressing well, and we believe the pregnancy is now about 36 days and Ratu is doing very well,” Susie Ellis, executive director of the International Rhino Foundation, said in an e-mail.
“We believe this is her first pregnancy. Remember, she walked out of the forest and so what happened to her before she came to the sanctuary, we can’t be certain.”
Widodo Ramono, executive director of the Indonesian Rhino Foundation (YABI), said Ratu was fortunate to get pregnant so quickly because Andalas had been acting aggressively toward female rhinos.
“Rhinos are very, very difficult to breed because they are very solitary, so they become very aggressive towards the opposite sex,” he said. “The female only ovulates for 20 to 24 days each month and it will be 15 months before giving birth, so this should give a clear massage to illegal poachers that producing one calf is not that easy.”
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, there are only around 200 Sumatran rhinos left in the world, 170 of which are scattered across Way Kambas National Park, Bukit Barisan National Park and the Gunung Leuser ecosystem on Sumatra.
The remainder are found in Sabah, in Malaysian Borneo.
The Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary currently has three female and two male rhinos.
Associated Press
Rare Sumatra rhino expecting calf
BBC News 18 Feb 10;
Conservationists in Indonesia have announced a breakthrough in their efforts to save the critically endangered Sumatran rhino.
They say an eight-year-old female in a Sumatra wildlife reserve is due to give birth to a calf in May.
The calf will be the fourth Sumatran rhino to be born in captivity, and the first in Indonesia.
The number of Sumatran rhinos has halved in the past 15 years. There are now an estimated 200 in the wild.
Widodo Ramono, of the Rhino Foundation of Indonesia, said it had been "very, very good news" when an ultrasound scan had revealed Ratu was carrying a calf.
Ratu's mate, Andalas, was born in Cincinnati Zoo in the US in 2001 and moved to the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary at the age of six.
Solitary animals
It is believed that when the two first met, Andalas chased Ratu, who was born in the wild, and fought with her, leaving her with serious injuries.
The smallest of the world's five rhinoceros species, the two-horned, hairy, forest dwelling Sumatran rhinos are solitary animals, often only approaching each other to mate.
The BBC's Karishma Vaswani in Jakarta says the rhinos have long been the target of poachers who seem them as valuable prizes.
There is a long-held belief their horns have medicinal properties, especially in traditional Asian medicine, says our correspondent.
Chan Li Leen, The Star 19 Feb 10;
IPOH: A Perak orang asli leader believes that a tiger caught in a snare set up by the orang asli in Sungkai two weeks ago may have been trapped by mistake.
Perak Orang Asli Foundation chairman Suki Mee said that the Semai would not trap a tiger because they regard tigers as their ancestors.
“According to the shaman, tigers are the reincarnation of our ancestors and guardians. They are like our grandfathers.
“Bad luck and illness will befall the person and the entire village if a Semai kills a tiger,” said Suki Mee, himself a Semai.
Orang asli Yok Meneh, also of the Semai tribe, claimed last Saturday that he was attacked by the tiger while on his way to gather petai at the Bukit Tapah Forest Reserve.
However, it was later found that he had been attacked while trying to kill the tiger, which was caught in a snare and left to die by other orang asli.
The Perak Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) has since initiated investigations. It is learnt that it will be referring the matter to the Deputy Public Prosecutor.
Suki Mee said he believed that the snare in which the four-year-old male tiger was caught had been set up to trap other animals like wild boars.
“In all my 46 years, I have never heard of orang asli hunting tigers to sell. I don’t believe any orang asli would hunt or eat tigers. No one eats tiger within the Semai tribe.
“It’s not our way,” he insisted.
Suki Mee came to the defence of Yok after World Wide Fund for Nature Malaysia chief executive officer Datuk Dr Dionysius Sharma was quoted as saying that many middlemen were using orang asli to hunt for wildlife, including tigers, for their parts.
Dr Dionysius’ comment has also earned the ire of Perhilitan director Shabrina Shariff.
“It is a sweeping statement to say that the orang asli are poaching wildlife as we know most of the perpetrators are foreigners and other Malaysians.
“You have to put forth the evidence,” she said.
When contacted, Dr Dionysius said there could be more to the story than mere hunting of wildlife by the orang asli for food.
“It could be argued that the tiger is a revered animal amongst the orang asli but then there may be some who are into the trade for the money,” he added.
156ha of peat fires still burning in Johor and Sabah
The Star 19 Feb 10;
PENGGERANG: Scores of firemen are still battling several peat soil and forest fires spanning over 156ha in Johor and Sabah. The fires broke out earlier in the month.
Fire and Rescue Department assistant director-general (operations) Amer Yusof said the peat soil fires in Johor involved an area of 130ha while 26ha of forest and bush fires had been detected in Sabah.
The affected areas in Johor are:
* 108ha in Kg Seri Paya in Tanjung Sedili, Kota Tinggi, which has been burning since Feb 4;
* 15ha in Kg Baru Punggai in Teluk Ramunia, Penggerang, affected since Feb 12; and
* 10ha in Kebun Felcra Kg Lepau
In Sabah, 22.6ha in Jalan Sepanggar, 2ha in Taman Putera Jaya and 1.6ha behind Hotel Berjaya Palace are affected.
Most of the fires in Johor and Sabah have been put out with only 7.6ha still burning, Amer said.
“Nevertheless, we are still monitoring areas that have been doused to prevent any recur-rence,’’ he said, adding that a total of 222 firemen were involved in fighting the fires.He said in Johor, the department was using two of its MI17 helicopters to conduct water bombings to douse the three major peat fires in the area.
He said firemen were also being assisted by 51 other agencies, with additional manpower deployed from Negri Sembilan, Malacca and Pahang.
Johor Fire and Rescue Depart-ment director Abdul Ghani Daud said the fires were caused by farmers who were clearing their land.
Tricky fight to put out landfill blaze
The Star 19 Feb 10;
A FIRE raged for about six hours at the Jelutong landfill on Penang island on Tuesday night. Sixteen firemen in two fire engines from the Perak Road fire station reached the landfill within minutes after receiving the call at 8.49pm.
But they faced difficulties in reaching the site of the fire, which was about 2km from the entrance.
Only fire engines which had water tanks could be used as the fire was too deep inside the landfill.
The fire engines had to go back and forth to a hydrant not far from the entrance to the landfill several times to refill their water tanks.
Firemen managed to douse the flames after 1am but there was still smoke for an hour after that.
Several volunteer fire-fighting teams, including one from Paya Terubong, also rushed to the scene.
Sungai Pinang assemblyman Koid Teng Guan said he was told about the fire at 7pm and rushed to the scene where he remained until 2am.
Koid said this was the fourth fire at the landfill since he was elected assemblyman in March 2008.
“The other three were small fires. This one was big,” he said.
The Fire and Rescue Services Department is still investigating the cause of the fire.
It will be scorching until April
Jaswinder Kaur, New Straits Times 17 Feb 10;
KOTA KINABALU: It's scorching hot in Sabah, with trees and grass turning brown and this is expected to last another two months.
State Meteorological Department director Abdul Malek Tusin said the El Nino phenomenon started in the middle of last year and was predicted to last until April.
"Some are saying we are experiencing El Nino when in actual fact, it started last year. We are actually in the middle of it.
"It is a moderate El Nino, so there is no drought. It is also normally dry at this time of the year as we are at the end of the northeast monsoon," he said yesterday.
Malek added that the current El Nino was not bringing a prolonged drought like what the state experienced in 1983 and 1997.
He said rainfall was below normal but things would improve in a couple of months.
Malek was commenting on a warning by the state Forestry Department last week of an impending "severe drought".
The department had said there were signs of the El Nino phenomenon, which was responsible for destroying forests in 1983.
The department's deputy director, Fidelis Edwin Bajau, had said forest fires were reported in Sipitang, and that shifting cultivation and illegal poaching, which could lead to brush and peat fires, had to be stopped.
"Companies which are forest concessionaires are reminded to take precautions in their areas by carrying out more patrols.
"They must ensure that firefighting equipment is operational."
Yahoo News 18 Feb 10;
MANILA (AFP) – The Philippines said Thursday that its farming industry could lose about 433 million dollars this year due a drought caused by the El Nino atmospheric phenomenon.
The damage estimates range from eight to 20 billion pesos (173 to 433 million dollars), depending on whether El Nino will cause a prolonged dry spell or a short one, said agricultural undersecretary Joel Rudinas.
Local governments have already reported that as much as a billion pesos in rice and about 1.4 billion pesos in corn may have been lost due to the drought that is scorching farms across the Southeast Asian archipelago, he said.
"We are still evaluating if the crops cannot be saved or if the yield will just be lower," he told AFP.
El Nino is an occasional seasonal warming of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean that upsets normal weather patterns from the western seaboard of Latin America to east Africa, and has caused droughts in the Philippines before.
The government is trying to alleviate the effects of the drought by helping farmers switch to crops that are less dependent on water than rice, such as vegetables and fruits.
It is also providing 6,000 water pumps to help farmers draw on more distant sources of water such as rivers, lakes or even underground water, Rudinas said.
The department is carrying out other schemes such as trying to re-use water in the drainage systems, inter-connecting irrigation systems and controlling the release of water from hydroelectric plants, he added.
President Gloria Arroyo on Thursday also issued various orders aimed at ensuring Filipinos conserve water, including the creation of "water marshals" to ensure government agencies cut down on wastage.
She also ordered a reduction in the amount of water to be released by Angat, the country's main dam on Luzon island, a crackdown on pilferage from pipes and a campaign to inform people about the importance of saving water.
Antara 19 Feb 10;
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Five non-governmental organizations have called on the government to temporarily stop issuing licenses for the exploitation of natural resources due to the destruction it has so far caused.
The NGOs demanding the moratorium on license issuance are the Indonesia Environment Forum (WALHI), the Mining Advocacy Network (JATAM), the Women`s Solidarity, the People`s Coalition for Fishery Justice (KIARA) and the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL).
"The government must declare a moratorium on natural resource licences be they for mining or forest conversion. The licenses already issued meanwhile must be reviewed," Walhi`s executive director Berry Nahdian Furqon said at a press conference at the JATAM office here on Thursday.
The NGOs had demanded moratoruim on licences for mining, natural forest conversion into industrial forests and construction development in catchment areas or green belts.
Berry said natural resource exploitation would bring a bad impact on the community such as increasing floods and areas affected by them.
According to Walhi floods occured in 34 districts and cities in the country in January to February this year leaving 55 people dead.
In 2009 a total of 179 floods were recorded in the country, claiming 225 lives.
Jatam`s national coordinator Siti Maemunah meanwhile said in Kalimantan that produces more than 200 million tons of coal a year had continued to suffer environmental quality degradation.
She said coal mining licenses in the region reach more than 2,000, causing poverty, environmental disasters, conflicts, health problems, accute corruption that have strengthened gender inequality.
Every year she said more than 200,000 food producing lands change into coal mining areas to worsen food reliance of the local people.
Licenses for oilpalm plantations and logging meanwhile reached 8.4 million hectares of the planned 26 million hectares according to Sawit Watch, she said.
She said the activities had caused minimaly 576 conflicts one of them from the destruction of traditional forests by PT Ledo Lestari in Semunying Jaya in the subdistrict of Jagoi, Babang, Bengkayand district in West Kalimantan.
The House Commission III in a meeting with the ministries of the environment, forestry, and energy and mineral resources on Tuesday had called on the ministry of energy and mineral resoruces and the ministry of forestry to conduct synchronization with regard to the draft government regulation on protection and management of the environment to maintain sustainability of natural resources in the country.
The synchronization includes among others exploitation and/or reservation of natural resources including determination of mining areas and authorities with regard to natural resource inventories and environment licenses as well as environmental risk analysis.(*)
`Stop new business permits' for the sake of the environment
Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 20 Feb 10;
A group of activists have urged the government to stop issuing new business permits to exploit natural resources due to poor regulation and the high number of overlapping permits.
They also called on the government to review licenses that had been given to companies that were yet to start operation.
The calls for a moratorium were made by the Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam), the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL), the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) and the Women's Solidarity and People's Coalition for Justice in Fishery (Kiara).
They said that a temporary moratorium on business permits was urgent in order to allow time for the government to settle the policies needed to manage natural resources for the benefit of the people.
Jatam chairwoman Siti Maimunah said that in some provinces, the total number of business licenses awarded to companies to exploit natural resources far exceeded the entire land mass of the province.
"They *local authorities* no longer use common sense when issuing permits," Maimunah told a press conference on Thursday. Most of the permits were for mining and plantations, she added.
In East Kalimantan, she said, the total number of overlapping licenses awarded to mining and plantations had reached 21.7 million hectares, but the province's total area of land was only 19.8 million hectares.
"We are not against mining or plantation activities as long as they comply with the regulations. But now, selling permits has become a lucrative business for local authorities," she said.
The coalition said that despite the operation of big companies, the people of Kalimantan, which produced more than 200 million tons of coal per year, remained in poverty.
"Ecological disasters, social conflicts and health problems coupled with a high rate of poverty are still common in provinces that are rich in natural resources," she said.
The Environment Ministry found that most small-scale coal mining firms in East and South Kalimantan failed to produce environmental impact analysis (Amdal) documents, with a number of big companies failing to reclaim their former mining pits.
Executive director of the ICEL Rhino Subagyo, said the ministry was slow to act to protect the environment.
"The office of the environment ministry remains unmoved although it has the authority to act under the 2009 Environmental Law," he said.
The law requires the government to set an inventory on environment to map the capacity and the availability of natural resources.
The inventory is designed to be the basis for policy makers to determine strategic plans on environmental protection and management.
The law also obliges local administrations to formulate strategic environmental assessments to evaluate impacts that could harm the environment.
Under the law, each company should have environmental permits before starting operations.
"We are disappointed with the lack of willingness to impose the environmental law," Rhino said.
The House of Representative's Commissions VII overseeing environmental affairs has summoned the relevant ministries to discuss the issue.
Karin Zeitvogel Yahoo News 18 Feb 10;
SAN DIEGO, California (AFP) – Sea lions with epilepsy, a car that earns money for its driver, dolphins and climate change: all are on the agenda Thursday as scientists kick off a major meeting that aims to take science to the people.
"The conference is like the science Olympics," said Peter Agre, head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which is hosting the meeting in California as the Winter Olympics were in full swing in Vancouver, Canada.
"We've got the science equivalent of luge, of paired ice skating, of ski jumping. San Diego is a mecca for hot science," he said.
Scientists from around the world were expected to attend the meeting in California, which is the 176th annual conference of the AAAS. But they won't be locked in scientific debate among themselves.
"I feel that science owes the public an explanation about what it has done with public funds, and this conference gives that explanation," Agre, a Nobel chemistry laureate, told AFP before the conference.
"This conference is not about dumbing-down science but neither is it a place for subspecialists to talk only to other subspecialists in a niche," he said.
On Thursday, the first day of the five-day science talkfest, which has the theme "bridging science and society," marine scientists will share the speaker's dais with mechanical engineers, a high seas policy advisor, university professors and nuclear safety experts.
While details of the discussions will remain under wraps until the symposia begin, just looking at the range of speakers is an indication that they cover a broad array of topics.
One of the symposia will deal with sea lions who are developing epilepsy.
Another will cover a new make of car that can be a source of income, rather than the usual financial drain.
Yet another will ponder the worrisome question of nuclear verification, and one will offer a sneak peek at the final report of a 10-year census of marine life, which has discovered "unusual creatures" in the ocean, including a tubeworm that drills for oil and a crab with hairy legs.
Later in the week, symposia will cover eclectic subjects -- such as how dust in the atmosphere could counteract climate change -- and touch on current topics of hot conversation, such as countries striving to develop their nuclear capability or the debate over whether global warming really exists.
Medicine will be center-stage at many of the symposia, including the one on chemicals that affect the risk of developing breast cancer or another on the projected benefits of testing everyone for HIV/AIDS and immediately treating those found to be infected with the virus.
"The conference is science from soup to nuts," said Agre, using an American expression that originally referred to a multi-course meal and means "from beginning to end."
Most of the symposia-leaders will be from US universities, although professors and scientists from Australian, Austrian, Belgian, British, Canadian, German, Italian, Polish, South African and Swiss institutions will be among international presenters at the conference, which runs until Monday.
According to Agre, around a fifth of people who registered to attend the conference are from outside the United States.
At the weekend, part of the San Diego conference center will be turned into a giant, hands-on science fair for families, and, separately, the head of the World Federation of Science Journalists will officially launch a three-year mentoring program for science reporters in Africa and the Arab world.
ScienceDaily 18 Feb 10;
"Dolphins are sophisticated, self-aware, highly intelligent beings with individual personalities, autonomy and an inner life. They are vulnerable to tremendous suffering and psychological trauma." The growing industry of capturing and confining dolphins to perform in marine parks or to swim with tourists at resorts needs to be reconsidered.
Emory University neuroscientist Lori Marino will speak on the anatomical basis of dolphin intelligence at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference (AAAS) in San Diego, on Feb. 21, 2010.
"Many modern dolphin brains are significantly larger than our own and second in mass to the human brain when corrected for body size," Marino says.
A leading expert in the neuroanatomy of dolphins and whales, Marino will appear as part of a panel discussing these findings and their ethical and policy implications.
Some dolphin brains exhibit features correlated with complex intelligence, she says, including a large expanse of neocortical volume that is more convoluted than our own, extensive insular and cingulated regions, and highly differentiated cellular regions.
"Dolphins are sophisticated, self-aware, highly intelligent beings with individual personalities, autonomy and an inner life. They are vulnerable to tremendous suffering and psychological trauma," Marino says.
The growing industry of capturing and confining dolphins to perform in marine parks or to swim with tourists at resorts needs to be reconsidered, she says.
"Our current knowledge of dolphin brain complexity and intelligence suggests that these practices are potentially psychologically harmful to dolphins and present a misinformed picture of their natural intellectual capacities," Marino says.
Marino worked on a 2001 study that showed that dolphins can recognize themselves in a mirror -- a finding that indicates self-awareness similar to that seen in higher primates and elephants.
Yahoo News 18 Feb 10;
SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia's vile and poisonous plague of cane toads may finally have met its match -- and it comes in a tin of cat food.
After years spent trying to batter, gas, run over and even freeze the toxic toads out of existence, scientists say just a dollop of Whiskas could stop the warty horde.
The cat food attracts Australia's carnivorous meat ants, which swarm over and munch on baby toads killing 70 percent of them.
"It's not exactly rocket science. We went out and put out a little bit of cat food right beside the area where the baby toads were coming out of the ponds," University of Sydney professor Rick Shine told public broadcaster ABC.
"The ants rapidly discovered the cat food and thought it tasted great.
"The worker ants then leave trails back to the nest encouraging other ants to come out there and forage in that area, and within a very short period of time we got lots of ants in the same area as the toads are."
Australia is beset by millions of cane toads after they were introduced from Hawaii in 1935 to control scarab beetles.
The toads, which are prolific maters, eat anything and are incredibly tough, secrete poison that kills pets and wildlife and injure humans, prompting several -- unsuccessful -- campaigns to wipe them out.
"Even the ones that don't die immediately, die within a day or so of being attacked," Shine said, adding that native frogs were able to dodge the hungry ants.
"It's a simple, low-risk way of reducing the number of baby toads coming out of those ponds."
Meat ants devour cane toads
University of Sydney, Science Alert 19 Feb 10;
With cat food as bait, scientists from The University of Sydney's School of Biological Sciences have succeeded in showing that native meat ants can assist in controlling the spread of cane toads.
In March last year Professor Rick Shine and colleagues Georgia Ward-Fear and Greg Brown found encouraging evidence of the deadly effect of native meat ants on young cane toads.
Now they have further proven their thesis by luring ants to cane toads with cat food.
Professor Shine and his colleagues observed ant-toad interactions on the Adelaide River floodplain 60km east of Darwin, Northern Territory, in the Australian wet-dry tropics during last year's dry season.
Ant densities and toad mortalities increased "more than fourfold" with the addition of cat food baits.
"We can look at an interaction that's already happening, meat ants are already killing millions of cane toads," Professor Shine explains. "We're just looking to make it a bit easier for them."
The research, funded by the Australian Research Council and published in the February edition of the Journal of Applied Ecology, reveals that meat ants can be used with low risk of collateral damage to native wildlife. The approach is also logistically feasible, low technology and inexpensive.
Unlike many previous efforts at pest control in Australia, like the cane toad itself, the use of meat ants promises to be "a useful component of a broadly-based ecological approach," says Professor Shine.
"If we understand the vulnerability of the cane toad we can develop a number of combined tactics to combat this deadly invader," he says.
The team observed the effect of native meat ants on cane toad metamorphs (the first stage of the toad's terrestrial development) near bodies of water, and explored the cane toad's vulnerability to the native predator as a potential means of controlling cane toad numbers.
When cat food was introduced as bait, ant numbers grew and cane toad numbers declined more quickly.
"The end result," the study explains, "is that higher ant densities kill more toads, and kill toads of a wider range of body sizes."
The research continues from a study published by the team last year, which revealed an ecological and behavioural 'mismatch' between cane toads and meat ants. While meat ants posed little enduring threat to native frog and toad species, cane toads were found to be poorly-equipped to escape them.
Cane toads are easy targets for meat ants because unlike their native counterparts they do not try to avoid them at great speed. In addition, cane toads are likely to use the ineffective tactic of crypsis, or immobility, instead of more active escape tactics.
The study found 98 per cent of metamorph toads were encountered by meat ants and 84 per cent were attacked within a very brief (two minute) period. Over 50 per cent of attacks were immediately fatal, while 88 per cent of 'escapee' toads died within 24 hours.
It is hoped the technology will form part of a multi-pronged attack on cane toads.
"No single control will be a silver bullet to eradicate the cane toad from the Australian landscape," says Professor Shine.
However, "if we understand the biology of cane toads and their interactions with Australian fauna we'll be in a much better position to control them."
Rob Taylor, Reuters 19 Feb 10;
CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has set Japan a November deadline to stop Southern Ocean whaling or face an international legal challenge to its yearly cull, launched by his government.
Australia preferred to find a diplomatic solution to its standoff with Tokyo over the annual whale cull near Antarctica, Rudd said, but was serious about a threat made two years ago to challenge the hunt in an international court.
"If that fails, then we will initiate court action before the commencement of the whaling season in November 2010. That's the bottom line and we're very clear to the Japanese, that's what we intend to do," he told Australian television Friday.
Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada arrives in Australia this weekend for talks with his Australian counterpart, Stephen Smith, on whaling, security and stalled free trade pact negotiations with Canberra.
Environmentalists have accused Rudd of backpedalling on threats of an International Court of Justice whaling challenge to avoid damaging Australia's $58 billion trade relationship with Japan and so-far glacial progress on the free trade deal.
Some legal experts believe the cull is in breach of international laws including the Antarctic Treaty System and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. A court challenge would lead to so-called provisional orders for Japan to immediately halt whaling ahead of a full hearing.
Japan is reportedly considering a compromise which would allow it to drastically scale back or abandon its yearly Antarctic hunt provided it is allowed to whale commercially in Japanese coastal waters.
Tokyo will present the proposal before the 85-nation International Whaling Commission at its annual meeting in Morocco in June, despite a similar plan being rejected last year, a Japanese fisheries official said this week.
Japan's government-backed whaling fleet aims to harpoon up to 935 minke whales and 50 fin whales, classified as endangered, in the Southern Ocean during the current Southern Hemisphere summer.
Commercial whaling was banned under a 1986 moratorium, but Japan still culls whales saying it is for research purposes.
Tokyo has lodged a protest with New Zealand's government over a collision last month between an anti-whaling protest boat and a Japanese whaler which caused the activist vessel to sink.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society skipper is being held on board a whaling ship and may face charges in Japan after boarding it at sea to lodge a protest on February 15.
Japan's government-backed Institute of Cetacean Research posted a video on its website this week showing more clashes between activists and the Japanese fleet, with paint and butyric acid bombs seen being thrown at the whaling ship Nisshin Maru.
(Editing by Sugita Katyal)
Joanna Jolly BBC News 18 Feb 10;
One of the world's highest number of wild cat species has been recorded in India's Eastern Himalayan rainforest.
The cats were spotted in a remote area of rainforest in north-east India.
Seven species of wild cats were photographed by remote cameras equipped with motion sensors - one of the highest in the world, officials say.
The study was conducted by wildlife biologist Kashmira Kakati over two years in more than 500 sq km (5,380 sq ft) of forestry in Assam state.
All the cats were photographed in the Jeypore-Dehing lowland forests.
'Encouraging sign'
They include the rare and elusive clouded leopard, four species of tiger, the marbled cat and the golden cat.
Wildlife experts say the discovery is an encouraging sign despite the ongoing threat to animal life in the Eastern Himalayas.
Deforestation, poaching and major engineering projects, such as hydro-electric dams, threaten the long-term survival of wildlife habitats.
Crude oil extraction and coal mining are also taking their toll.
Wildlife Conservation Society-India spokesman Ravi Chellam said that rainforests were important for preserving biodiversity and creating a livelihood for local communities.
"The entire forest here should be protected as a single conservation landscape, free of disturbance and connected by wildlife corridors," he said.
Explosion of unlicensed accommodation edges park's black rhino population closer to brink
Daniel Howden The Independent 19 Feb 10;
The riverine forest on the banks of the Olkeju Ronkai, close to where it meets the waters of its sister river the Mara, has long been a sanctuary for critically endangered black rhinos. Two-thirds of Kenya's remaining population of these shy leviathans were until recently living among the fever trees in what was the largest intact forest of its kind in the Masai Mara wildlife reserve.
Today, the rhino sanctuary has been transformed into a building site, the tranquillity has been shattered and trucks deliver concrete into what is becoming one of the largest lodges in the Mara.
An alliance of conservationists, park wardens and eco-tourism experts are fighting stop the construction of the Olkeju Ronkai lodge which has already displaced the rhinos from their natural habitat. The development is being financed by a British family, the Sofats who trade in the UK as Somak Holidays, registered in Harrow, Middlesex.
"Black rhinos are extremely shy and sensitive, and they need the shade and seclusion of riverine forest to calve," said Samson Lenjirr, an experienced warden and former head of the Masai Mara's rhino programme. "Where this camp is situated is the single largest such forested area in the reserve. These rhinos can't put up with permanent human settlement there, with generators running all day, tourist vans coming and going."
The last-ditch battle to stop the new lodge is emblematic of the wider struggle to save Kenya's best-known tourist attraction which, scientists warn, is in danger of ecological collapse thanks to runaway development.
An unpublished Kenyan government audit, seen by The Independent, reveals that the Greater Mara ecosystem is now weighed down by 108 camps and lodges, with more than 4,000 beds. Most of these units are flouting the law, failing to compensate local communities and not paying tax, the confidential report concludes. Nearly eight out of 10 of the camps surveyed have not carried out the required Environmental Impact Assessment while only 29 per cent of the camps are operating legally.
The apparent free-for-all in the Mara has worried the influential International Federation of Tour Operators (IFTO) sufficiently that the UK office wrote to the Kenyan government two weeks ago demanding a list of the illegal camps.
"You will appreciate this matter has caused our members concern," Nikki White from the UK federation of tour operators wrote to Kenya's tourism ministry. "They need information to be able to anticipate any potential business implications."
So far there has been no response.
The exploitation of the Mara has already been felt by the spectacular mega-fauna. Populations of wild grazing animals – including giraffes, hartebeest, impala, and warthogs – have "decreased substantially" in only 15 years as they compete for survival with a growing concentration of human settlements, according to a study last year in the British Journal of Zoology.
Unlike many of Kenya's reserves, the Masai Mara is not a national park, the area has been divided between two regional councils – Narok and the Trans-Mara. In 2001, the Trans-Mara handed over the running of its section to a private management company, the Mara Conservancy. Since then, the reserve has developed a split personality with one side becoming a model for eco-system management while the Narok side has degenerated into a destructive race to cash in on tourism.
The Olkeju Ronkai development, which will become a fenced lodge covering 13.5 hectares of riverine forest, is set to accelerate this process dangerously, experts warn. Jonathan Scott, presenter of the BBC's Big Cat Diary has joined the campaign to stop the project: "A company of this standing should be prepared to play its part in halting the rash of development threatening the Masai Mara."
There are less than 40 surviving black rhinos in the Mara – down from 150 in the 1960s – and wardens estimate that as many as 22 have already been driven out of the area of the lodge, many over the border into Tanzania's Serengeti.
The lodge is leased to Ashnil Hotels Ltd, which is owned by two of Somak Holiday's directors, Suresh Sofat and his wife. No-one at the company was available for comment yesterday.
Construction of the lodge was approved in 2006 despite its location but serious questions have now been raised over the chief warden's report in favour of the building. The Environmental Impact Assessment Report was found to have been an exact copy of the report submitted by Ashnil Hotels for their Samburu property in Northern Kenya. The name of the reserve had been changed but the rest remained the same, including the names of animal species that do not even exist in the Mara.
"At the end of the day if you have enough money you can do what you want," said an experienced Mara warden, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Samson Lenjirr who as the longest serving rhino warden in the reserve had personally named and tagged many of the animals who have been driven away said "short term greed" was in danger of destroying the backbone of Kenya's tourism industry.
Putting a price on nature becomes meaningless if we treat the ecosystems upon which we depend as mere commodities with a price for trading
Andrew Simms, guardian.co.uk 18 Feb 10;
The economy is no stranger to creating its own fantasy world with little or no relation to the real one. We witnessed the damage that can cause when the banks thought they had stumbled on financial alchemy and could transform bad debt into good – economic base metal into gold.
Now it's possible that a much bigger error is coming to light. The rise and rise of global corporations lifted on a wave of apparent productivity gains may have been little more than a mask for the reckless liquidation of natural capital. It's as if we've been so distracted by our impressive speed of economic travel that we forgot to look at the fuel gauge or the cloud of smog left in our wake.
A new UN report estimates that accounting for the environmental damage of the world's 3,000 biggest companies would wipe out one-third of their profits. Any precise figure, however, is a matter of how risk is quantified and of where you draw the line. In 2006, for example, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), of which I am the policy director, looked at the oil companies BP and Shell, who together had recently reported profits of £25bn. By applying the Treasury's own estimates of the social and environmental cost of carbon emissions, we calculated that the total bill for those costs would reach £46.5bn, massively outweighing profits and plunging the companies into the red.
Yet in exercises like this, we quickly hit the paradox of environmental economics. By putting a price on nature, hopefully it makes it less likely that we will treat the world, and its natural resources, as if it were a business in liquidation. Yet there is a point when it becomes meaningless to treat the ecosystems upon which we depend as mere commodities with a price for trading. For example, what price would you put on the additional tonne of carbon which, when burned, triggers irreversible, catastrophic climate change? Who would have the right to even consider selling off the climate upon which civilisation depends? The avoidance of such damage is literally priceless.
If that sounds dramatic, consider that last September a large, international group of scientists published a paper in the journal Nature which identified nine key planetary boundaries for key biological systems upon which we depend. They found that we had already transgressed three of those, and were on the cusp of several others. All are potential points of no return as such complex systems begin interacting.
The huge advantage of the UN work is that it attempts to improve the feedback system between the economy and its ultimate parent company, the biosphere. Better risk assessment and value measurement is essential to help prevent what happened to banks happening to the planet.
The concept of a balanced budget, so loved by conservatives in relation to finance and spending, seems to be an alien concept when the consumption of natural resources and the production of waste is concerned. Yet it is far more important to achieve a balanced environmental budget than an economic one. You can always print more money, but you can't print more planet. As John Ruskin put it, "There is no wealth but life."
• Andrew Simms is policy director of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and author of Ecological Debt
Report for the UN into the activities of the world's 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment
Juliette Jowit, guardian.co.uk 18 Feb 10;
The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world's biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found.
The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils.
Later this year, another huge UN study - dubbed the "Stern for nature" after the influential report on the economics of climate change by Sir Nicholas Stern - will attempt to put a price on such global environmental damage, and suggest ways to prevent it. The report, led by economist Pavan Sukhdev, is likely to argue for abolition of billions of dollars of subsidies to harmful industries like agriculture, energy and transport, tougher regulations and more taxes on companies that cause the damage.
Ahead of changes which would have a profound effect - not just on companies' profits but also their customers and pension funds and other investors - the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment initiative and the United Nations Environment Programme jointly ordered a report into the activities of the 3,000 biggest public companies in the world, which includes household names from the UK's FTSE 100 and other major stockmarkets.
The study, conducted by London-based consultancy Trucost and due to be published this summer, found the estimated combined damage was worth US$2.2 trillion (£1.4tn) in 2008 - a figure bigger than the national economies of all but seven countries in the world that year.
The figure equates to 6-7% of the companies' combined turnover, or an average of one-third of their profits, though some businesses would be much harder hit than others.
"What we're talking about is a completely new paradigm," said Richard Mattison, Trucost's chief operating officer and leader of the report team. "Externalities of this scale and nature pose a major risk to the global economy and markets are not fully aware of these risks, nor do they know how to deal with them."
The biggest single impact on the $2.2tn estimate, accounting for more than half of the total, was emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change. Other major "costs" were local air pollution such as particulates, and the damage caused by the over-use and pollution of freshwater.
The true figure is likely to be even higher because the $2.2tn does not include damage caused by household and government consumption of goods and services, such as energy used to power appliances or waste; the "social impacts" such as the migration of people driven out of affected areas, or the long-term effects of any damage other than that from climate change. The final report will also include a higher total estimate which includes those long-term effects of problems such as toxic waste.
Trucost did not want to comment before the final report on which sectors incurred the highest "costs" of environmental damage, but they are likely to include power companies and heavy energy users like aluminium producers because of the greenhouse gases that result from burning fossil fuels. Heavy water users like food, drink and clothing companies are also likely to feature high up on the list.
Sukhdev said the heads of the major companies at this year's annual economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, were increasingly concerned about the impact on their business if they were stopped or forced to pay for the damage.
"It can make the difference between profit and loss," Sukhdev told the annual Earthwatch Oxford lecture last week. "That sense of foreboding is there with many, many [chief executives], and that potential is a good thing because it leads to solutions."
The aim of the study is to encourage and help investors lobby companies to reduce their environmental impact before concerned governments act to restrict them through taxes or regulations, said Mattison.
"It's going to be a significant proportion of a lot of companies' profit margins," Mattison told the Guardian. "Whether they actually have to pay for these costs will be determined by the appetite for policy makers to enforce the 'polluter pays' principle. We should be seeking ways to fix the system, rather than waiting for the economy to adapt. Continued inefficient use of natural resources will cause significant impacts on [national economies] overall, and a massive problem for governments to fix."
Another major concern is the risk that companies simply run out of resources they need to operate, said Andrea Moffat, of the US-based investor lobby group Ceres, whose members include more than 80 funds with assets worth more than US$8tn. An example was the estimated loss of 20,000 jobs and $1bn last year for agricultural companies because of water shortages in California, said Moffat.
Yahoo News 18 Feb 10;
ROME (AFP) – Small livestock farmers face "marginalisation" because they cannot compete with agribusiness, the head of the UN food agency said Thursday.
"The transformation of the (livestock) sector has led to a widening gap between small livestock keepers and large commercial enterprises," FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf told a news conference.
"Traditional pastoralists and smallholder producers risk marginalisation," he said, calling for "robust institutions and governance mechanisms that reflect the diversity within the sector."
Livestock represents 40 percent of agricultural production and supports the livelihood of more than one billion people, he said as the agency presented its annual report, the "State of Food and Agriculture."
The report said rising incomes are driving demand for meat to "record levels" in developing countries, with world production expected to double by 2050.
"To meet rising demand, global annual meat production is expected to expand from 228 million tonnes currently to 463 million tonnes by 2050," the FAO said.
Svetlana Kovalyova, PlanetArk 19 Feb 10;
ROME - Resumed demand for agricultural commodities for food and energy use and higher input costs on the back of rising oil prices may fuel a new food price surge, the United Nations' food agency said on Thursday.
Food prices fell from 2008 highs due to the global economic downturn, but remained above pre-peak levels and were set to stay high at least in the medium term, the Food and Agriculture Organization said, confirming earlier forecasts.
"At the same time, various currently latent underlying factors may cause a return to even higher food prices," the Rome-based FAO said in its key report on the State of Food and Agriculture, stopping short of more precise forecasts.
Renewed income growth in developing countries would power demand recovery and drive commodities and food prices higher, threatening food security, especially for poor people, FAO said.
Growing biofuels demand spurred by mandatory targets and incentives in some countries "irrespective of market conditions" would boost prices of maize and vegetable oils used as feedstock for biodiesel and bioethanol and, in turn, of food commodities.
Higher oil prices would translate into increased production costs for farmers as input prices for chemicals and fertilizers as well as higher transport costs would rise.
FAO Food Price Index, which measures monthly price changes for a food basket composed of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar, stood at a 15-month high in January and December but about 20 percent below the peak in June 2008.
The FAO said agricultural output is expected to rise 12 percent in industrialized countries in the next 10 years compared with 2000, while Latin America, Asia and the former Soviet states would grow by 75, 53 and 58 percent respectively.
As agricultural productivity growth declines in many countries, boosting output would require higher costs per unit, the FAO said.
Protectionist measures, including export curbs introduced by some countries during the latest food crisis, would destabilize markets and drive international food prices higher and make them more volatile, the agency warned.
Even stock building by countries, companies and individual producers may trigger commodity price spikes, even though in the longer term higher stock levels would help cut prices, it said.
MORE INVESTMENTS NEEDED
As the global economic crisis pushed the number of hungry people in the world above one billion last year, governments and international organizations should boost efforts to create safety nets and social programs to protect the poor and hungry, FAO said.
But increased investments are needed to boost agricultural output to ensure food security, it said.
FAO has said the world needed to invest $83 billion a year in agriculture in developing world and raise overall output by 70 percent over the next 40 years to feed over 9 billion people in 2050.
With agriculture accounting for a lion's share of economies in poor countries, investments in farming would boost economy there and help eradicate poverty, the agency said.
National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (UK) EurekAlert 18 Feb 10;
Pumping nutrient-rich water up from the deep ocean to boost algal growth in sunlit surface waters and draw carbon dioxide down from the atmosphere has been touted as a way of ameliorating global warming. However, a new study led by Professor Andreas Oschlies of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) in Kiel, Germany, pours cold water on the idea.
"Computer simulations show that climatic benefits of the proposed geo-engineering scheme would be modest, with the potential to exacerbate global warming should it fail," said study co-author Dr Andrew Yool of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS).
If international governmental policies fail to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide to levels needed to keep the impacts of human-induced climate change within acceptable limits it may necessary to move to 'Plan B'. This could involve the implementation of one or more large-scale geo-engineering schemes proposed for reducing the carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere.
One possible approach is to engineer the oceans to facilitate the long-term sequestration of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It has been suggested that this could be done by pumping of nutrient-rich water from a depth of several hundred metres to fertilize the growth of phytoplankton, the tiny marine algae that dominate biological production in surface waters.
The aim would be to mimic the effects of natural ocean upwelling and increase drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide by phytoplankton through the process of photosynthesis. Some of the sequestered carbon would be exported to the deep ocean when phytoplankton die and sink, effectively removing it from the system for hundreds or thousands of years.
A previous study, of which Yool was lead author, used an ocean general circulation model to conclude that literally hundreds of millions of pipes would be required to make a significant impact on global warming. But even if the technical and logistical difficulties of deploying the vast numbers of pipes could be overcome, exactly how much carbon dioxide could in principle be sequestered, and at what risk?
In the new study, the researchers address such questions using a more integrated model of the whole Earth system. The simulations show that, under most optimistic assumptions, three gigatons of carbon dioxide per year could be captured. This is under a tenth of the annual anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, which currently stand at 36 gigatons per year. A gigaton is a million million kilograms.
One surprising feature of the simulations was that the main effect occurred on land rather than the ocean. Cold water pumped to the surface cooled the atmosphere and the land surface, slowing the decomposition of organic material in soil, and ultimately resulting in about 80 per cent of the carbon dioxide sequestered being stored on land. "This remote and distributed carbon sequestration would make monitoring and verification particularly challenging," write the researchers.
More significantly, when the simulated pumps were turned off, the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and surface temperatures rose rapidly to levels even higher than in the control simulation without artificial pumps. This finding suggests that there would be extra environmental costs to the scheme should it ever need to be turned off for unanticipated reasons.
"All models make assumptions and there remain many uncertainties, but based on our findings it is hard to see the use of artificial pumps to boost surface production as being a viable way of tackling global warming," said Yool.
###
Original publication: Oschlies, A., Pahlow, M., Yool, A. & Matear, R. J. Climate engineering by artificial ocean upwelling – channelling the sorcerer's apprentice. Geophys. Res. Lett. 37, L04701 (2010).
DOI:10.1029/2009GL041961.
Richard Ingham Yahoo News 18 Feb 10;
PARIS (AFP) – The head of the UN's climate convention said Thursday that he is resigning, in a surprise announcement barely two months after the fiercely-contested Copenhagen summit on tackling global warming.
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), will resign as of July 1.
He will join the consultancy group KPMG as global advisor on climate and sustainability and work with a number of universities, the UNFCCC said in Bonn, Germany.
No regrets, says UN climate chief after resignation announcement
De Boer had come under fire for the outcome of the December 7-19 UNFCCC negotiations in Copenhagen, which ended in near-chaos as world leaders scrambled to find a face-saving deal.
But as recently as January 20, the UNFCCC had said de Boer would stay in the job and expected his term to be renewed later this year.
In a statement, de Boer said it had been a "difficult decision" to step down.
"I believe the time is ripe for me to take on a new challenge, working on climate and sustainability with the private sector and academia," he said.
"Copenhagen did not provide us with a clear agreement in legal terms, but the political commitment and sense of direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming.
"This calls for new partnerships with the business sector and I now have the chance to help make this happen."
In New York, a UN statement said de Boer informed UN chief Ban Ki-moon in advance of his decision to step down from July 1 and added that the secretary general "with regret, respected his decision."
Janos Pasztor, a senior UN official dealing with climate change, said de Boer gave his resignation "in a way that allows the secretary general to appoint a new executive secretary well in time to make sure that the negotiation process is not perturbed in any major way.
"We don't know how long this will take but it will certainly take a few months and the secretary general is prepared to get the recruitment process going as soon as possible and in fact he's already started today," he added.
De Boer, a quiet-spoken British-educated 55-year-old Dutch national, was appointed to lead the UNFCCC in September 2006 and immediately carved out a highly visible role.
He championed hopes for a new treaty on climate change that would take effect after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol's current pledges expire.
The drumbeat of expectations reached a peak in Copenhagen, which was attended by more than 120 heads of state and government, making it the biggest top-level meeting in the UN's history.
Despite two years' preparation, the summit yielded just a vague agreement, hastily put together by the world's major carbon emitters, and which failed even to get the backing of a plenary session.
Supporters of the accord admit it fell short of expectations, while its many critics describe it as a failure or betrayal.
Despite the controversy, De Boer had persistently said he would remain in the job.
His "contract runs out in September, but he certainly has no intention of leaving and expects it to be renewed," a member of the UNFCCC said in an email to AFP on January 20.
Climate change: UN process now in limbo
"His resignation is partly a sign that it's a very difficult job," Wendel Trio, head of Greenpeace International's political and business unit, told AFP.
"Everything that happened in Copenhagen, with 128 heads of state coming to the meeting, created high expectations on the executive secretary of the UNFCCC to get an outcome," said Trio.
After Thursday's announcement, some negotiators privately criticised de Boer for lacking the easy charm and diplomatic skills needed to soothe wounded national pride and building consensus.
Others, though, praised him for his hard work and belief in equity, in arguing that a climate deal could only be acceptable globally if it addressed the problems facing poor countries.
US special envoy for climate change Todd Stern praised de Boer as an "enormously dedicated leader in the fight against global climate change."
"We appreciate his commitment, his wisdom and his determination to move the world in the right direction," Stern said in a statement.
"Throughout the negotiation process, Mr. de Boer continuously worked to provide a platform for both rich and poor nations and tried to give them equal opportunities to express their views and speak out for their rights," said Kim Carstensen of WWF.
World leaders "could learn much from de Boer's perseverance, as well as his uncompromising commitment to do what's necessary -- not just what's easy," said Antonio Hill of Oxfam.
The UNFCCC, an offshoot of the 1992 Rio summit, gathers 194 nations in the search for combatting the causes of man-made climate change and easing its effects.
Its key achievement is the Kyoto Protocol, the only international treaty that requires curbs in heat-stoking greenhouse gases blamed for disrupting the climate system.
U.N. Cimate Chief De Boer To Quit In July
Gerard Wynn and Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 19 Feb 10;
LONDON/OSLO - U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said Thursday he will step down in July to join a consultancy group, saying a new era of diplomacy was starting after the Copenhagen summit fell short of agreeing a new treaty.
Analysts said the departure of the energetic and often sharp-tongued de Boer was unlikely to dent U.N.-led climate talks meant to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol but stalled over sharing the cost of cutting carbon emissions.
The Dutch former environment official, who has run the Secretariat since 2006, will join KPMG in London. He was also considering part-time work at universities -- Yale in the United States and Maatstricht and Utrecht in the Netherlands.
"I've found this job incredibly challenging," he told Reuters in a telephone interview. "It was a very exciting place to be but it also takes a huge toll on you personally."
"I feel that Copenhagen has put a new era of climate policy on the tracks and that offers me an opportunity to come at this from a new direction," he said of his shift to focus on business involvement in combating climate change.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon would decide on a replacement in coming months to head the Bonn-based Secretariat of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). De Boer's two predecessors were from the Netherlands and Malta.
Janos Pasztor, Director of Ban's Climate Change Support Team, said: "There is no prescription about where the new executive secretary should come from, whether it should be from a developing or developed country."
COPENHAGEN
The Copenhagen meeting in December missed de Boer's own benchmarks for success, neither specifying exact emissions limits for developed nations nor a timeframe to agree a pact.
But it was applauded for harnessing pledges from both rich and poor to curb their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. And as part of a Copenhagen Accord, rich nations agreed to provide $10 billion a year from 2010-12, with a goal of $100 billion a year from 2020, to help poor nations deal with climate change.
De Boer said that meant the Secretariat would have to shift to help implement the national plans as part of efforts to help slow droughts, floods and rising sea levels.
A successor would have to be "someone sensitive to the concerns of developing countries," he said. The shift did not mean giving up on securing more ambitious pledges to cut greenhouse gases.
De Boer's departure "won't have any effect on the carbon market," said Seb Walhain, head of environmental markets at Fortis Netherlands. Carbon markets depend on the U.N. talks to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol from 2013.
U.N. rules require consensus among all 194 countries, partly hampering climate talks and leading some analysts to call for a new approach, for example through G20 world leaders.
"We must quickly find a suitable successor who can oversee the negotiations and reform the UNFCCC to ensure it is up to the massive task," said British Energy and Climate Change minister Ed Miliband.
De Boer said "it remains to be seen" if the next annual meeting in Mexico in November and December would agree a full treaty. He said there seemed to be support for an extra set of U.N. talks in April, perhaps in Germany or France.
"Yvo de Boer has been an enormously dedicated leader in the fight against climate change and has made a major contribution in advancing that effort," U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern said.
"I have always greatly appreciated Yvo de Boer; his engagement and his sharp tongue," EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said. She said he was "not always the perfect diplomat" but communicated the urgency of climate change.
De Boer, born in 1954, is known for his quips -- he compared his own large ears to those of Dr. Spock in the TV series "Star Trek" and compared the drawn-out process at the Copenhagen summit to cooking a Christmas turkey or baking a cake.
(Editing by Janet Lawrence)
UN climate chief quits, leaves talks hanging
Arthur Max, Associated Press Yahoo News 18 Feb 10;
AMSTERDAM – The sharp-tongued U.N. official who shepherded troubled climate talks for nearly four years announced his resignation Thursday, leaving an uncertain path to a new treaty on global warming.
Exhausted and frustrated by unrelenting bickering between rich and poor countries, Yvo de Boer said he will step down July 1 to work in business and academia.
With no obvious successor in sight, fears were voiced that whoever follows will be far less forceful than the skilled former civil servant from the Netherlands.
His departure takes effect five months before 193 nations reconvene in Cancun, Mexico, for another attempt to reach a worldwide legal agreement on controlling greenhouse gas emissions, blamed for the gradual heating of the Earth that scientists predict will worsen weather-related disasters.
The resignation "comes at the worst time in the climate change negotiations," said Agus Purnomo, Indonesia's special presidential assistant on climate change. "His decision will ultimately add to the difficulties we already have in reaching a successful outcome in Mexico."
Others believed the talks would move ahead unhindered, and could even be a window for shifting course.
"There's certainly no reason his resignation should slow progress," said Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. "The key to progress remains with the major countries."
"A change of leadership ... provides a fresh opportunity to re-energize international negotiations ahead of the U.N. climate summit in Mexico," said Steve Howard of British-based The Climate Group.
De Boer agreed. "I hope my successor will rebuild confidence in the process," he told The Associated Press.
De Boer made the announcement just two months after a disappointing summit in Copenhagen that ended with a nonbinding accord brokered by President Barack Obama promising emissions cuts and immediate financing for poor countries — but even that failed to win consensus agreement.
In an AP interview last month, de Boer acknowledged that the summit left him deeply disheartened. "After Copenhagen I was very depressed. I was depressed for a few weeks," he said.
But within days he was holding private talks to patch over bitter accusations between Britain and China, and was publicly calling on all sides to stop slinging mud about responsibility for Copenhagen's breakdown.
De Boer's successor will be named by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has put climate change on the top of his own and the U.N.'s priorities. He is likely to look for a candidate from the developing countries.
De Boer spoke to Ban on Wednesday. "I know he wants to move quickly on this," he said.
The U.N. chief accepted the resignation "with regret," U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said. Ban said de Boer "will be difficult to replace."
Okabe said Ban will consult with the 11-member "bureau," a rotating body of national delegates that deals with administrative issues and represents the major regions and negotiating blocs in the climate talks.
Among its members are several who are unlikely to want a strong-willed diplomat in de Boer's vacated chair.
They include the chief delegate from Sudan and spokesman for the developing countries, Lumumba Di-Aping, who rocked the Copenhagen conference when he accused wealthy countries of imposing a deal that would condemn the poor countries of Africa to a genocide comparable to the Holocaust. Another member of the bureau is Mohammad Salim al-Sabban, a counselor of Saudi Arabia's petroleum ministry.
Despite de Boer's frenetic diplomacy talks on a successor accord to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set emissions targets for industrial countries, have been bogged down in mutual recriminations and arguments over sharing the burden of fighting climate change.
De Boer told AP he believed climate talks should be conducted differently, relying less on formal negotiations among thousands of delegates from nearly 200 countries and instead seeking agreement among smaller groups to lay the groundwork of a deal.
"At the moment, it tends to be very much a stop-and-start affair with everything concentrated in the formal negotiations, where I think a much more continuous engagement ... is needed," he said.
Though he said Copenhagen "wasn't what I had hoped it would be," he said the frustration over the summit was not responsible for his decision to quit. Rather, it was time to seek new challenges. "I took this job to see the launch of negotiations on a global response to climate change," he said in an interview. "I feel that's happened. ... I think things are on track."
De Boer won wide praise Thursday for raising the profile of climate change on the international agenda.
"I have always greatly appreciated Yvo de Boer; his engagement and his sharp tongue. Not always a perfect diplomat," said Connie Hedegaard, the European Union's commissioner for climate action.
Todd Stern, Obama's special climate envoy, praised de Boer as "an enormously dedicated leader" who made a major contribution to fighting climate change.
De Boer's job was not supposed to involve him directly in the negotiations, yet he lobbied, prodded, formulated tasks and goals, and frequently chided governments for moving too slowly and being too obstinate. He described his role as "the conscience of the process."
Often accused of overstepping the bounds of his office, he didn't disagree.
"They are absolutely right. I did that because I felt the process needed that extra push," he told the AP on Thursday.
He recalled that when he was picked for the job by Kofi Annan in 2006, he told the then-U.N. Secretary General: "If you want someone to sit in Bonn and keep his mouth shut then I'm not the right person for the job."
Asked about his greatest satisfaction, he noted the plan adopted in 2007 in Bali, Indonesia, when developing countries agreed to join in efforts to contain global warming in return for financial and technical help from the wealthy nations.
The Bali meeting was so intense that during its final meeting, when he was accused of mishandling negotiating arrangements, he walked off the podium in tears. He came back later to an ovation from the thousands of delegates.
___
Associated Press Writers Robert Wielaard in Brussels, Seth Borenstein in Washington and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.
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