Give me back my dollar!
from wonderful creation
Common Moorhen
from Mendis' World
Grey Heron in confrontation
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Sea level rise in Singapore: what effects?
from wild shores of singapore
Where have all the rhinos gone?
from Rhinomania
Straits Times 9 Mar 10;
SINGAPORE will become hotter, sea levels could rise by more than half a metre, and there could be more extreme weather events such as floods over the next century, a study on the long-term effects of climate change here has revealed.
The three-year study, which was conducted by researchers from the Tropical Marine Science Institute at the National University of Singapore (NUS), measured three variables linked to the effects of global warming - temperature, rising sea levels and rainfall patterns.
Global warming is the term coined for the gradual increase in global temperature linked to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that is a result of man-made industrial activity.
The study showed that the average daily temperature here could increase by between 2.7 and 4.4 deg C from the present average of 26.8 deg C by 2100. In the same time-frame, sea levels could rise by between 24 and 65 cm.
On the third factor, it pointed to no discernible trend in rainfall patterns over the next century.
The findings of the study, which was peer reviewed by a team of international experts, were revealed in Parliament yesterday by Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim.
He was responding to MP Ang Mong Seng (Hong Kah GRC), who had asked about how Singapore - which as a low-lying island is vulnerable to the threat of flooding and coastal inundation - was going to cope with climate change.
Dr Yaacob said many of the adaptation measures to cope with the anticipated effects based on the study were already in place. These include, for example, a requirement since the early 90s for reclaimed land to be built at a height of 125cm above the highest measured tidal level, as a buffer against rising sea levels.
To cope with floods, the minister said Singapore would expand its network of water sensors and redesign drainage systems to cope with freak weather events.
Dr Yaacob also said that the study was not the last word on the climate change debate, which was complex and constantly evolving. 'We will improve our understanding as more information and data become available and climate change models become more robust,' he said.
One area of uncertainty is the threat posed by melting ice sheets from the Himalayan mountains and Greenland, with scientists around the world in dispute as to the exact extent to which it will contribute to rising sea levels globally.
Several MPs asked for an update on Singapore's position on the Copenhagen agreement, in the wake of the failure to craft a legally binding successor to the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012.
Ms Ellen Lee MP (Sembawang GRC) called it an 'end product of a high-powered and internationally charged event, that ended up as a mere report which was promulgated as a compromise by a small number of countries behind closed doors.'
Ms Fatimah Lateef MP (Marine Parade GRC) asked if Singapore's stated commitment to reduce emissions by 16 per cent in 10 years' time would stretch resources to the limit.
Dr Yaacob said Singapore would support the accord as a 'good basis' to negotiate a binding agreement in the next climate change conference in Mexico later this year. He added that while developed countries should lead the agenda by pledging emission cuts, developing countries also had a role to play.
While specific targets were still being worked on, the minister assured the House that measures would be phased in gradually.
'The government will help to cushion the impact and lighten the burden on households and businesses.'
AMRESH GUNASINGHAM
Daily Temperature In Singapore Could Rise By Four Degrees Celcius By 2100
Bernama 9 Mar 10;
SINGAPORE, March 9 (Bernama) -- Last month, Singapore experienced the driest month in 140 years, and a new climate study projects that the city state's average daily temperature could jump by more than four degrees Celsius by 2100.
Citing to Channel NewsAsia reports on Monday night, China's Xinhua news agency reported that the new climate study, which was commissioned by Singapore's National Environment Agency (NEA), projects that the temperature in the country could rise by between 2.7 to 4.2 degrees Celsius from the current average of 26.8 degrees Celsius.
And the sea level around the city state could increase by 24 to 65 centimeters by 2100.
Singapore's Minister for Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim said in the Parliament that the findings, which are within the range of his ministry's expectations, are also consistent with global projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Singapore also has some measures in place to deal with the potential impacts of climate change, he said, adding that the NEA has also embarked on a second study to investigate in detail the impacts of climate change on public health, urban temperature and biodiversity.
February this year was the driest month in 140 years for Singapore, which had a rainfall of 6.3 millimeters in the month.
The NEA said that this February saw the hottest day so far this year when the mercury hit 35 degrees Celsius on Feb. 26.
Climate researcher in the country said that the city state may face dry and warm conditions for the next few months as the El Nino effect is expected to last till May this year.
-- BERNAMA
Grace Chua, Straits Times 9 Mar 10;
DESPITE the searing heat and lack of rain, Singapore's reservoirs are not running low - thanks to Newater and desalinated water.
But that is only part of the picture as the country confronts its driest period in 140 years. The other: People need to not waste water.
Environment and Water Resources Minister Yaacob Ibrahim made this call yesterday when he assured the House that Singapore has enough alternative sources of water.
The current dry spell had worried Senior Parliamentary Secretary Masagos Zulkifli (Tampines GRC), who asked whether Singapore had enough water.
Dr Yaacob, in his reply, also disclosed that national water agency PUB is taking steps to further reduce people's water consumption. It is doing a study on people's attitudes towards the use of water.
A survey done as part of the study indicated that most people held water conservation as important.
In fact, the per capita domestic water use has been declining, from 165 litres per day in 2003 to 155 last year.
The target is 140 in 2030, which the study will help achieve. When completed next year, its findings will be used to come up with new ways for people to further conserve water, said the minister.
Meanwhile, the PUB is building two new reservoirs to further boost water supply. They are derived from Singapore's last two natural rivers, Sungei Punggol and Sungei Serangoon.
Dammed at a cost of $156 million last year, these bodies of water will be Singapore's 16th and 17th reservoirs.
When ready next year, they will supply 5 per cent of the national water demand.
This is on top of the supply from the Changi Newater plant, which will be completed later this year. Newater in total will then meet 30 per cent of Singapore's water needs.
Using 8 litres less water a day, by 2020
Esther Ng, Today Online 9 Mar 10;
SINGAPORE - The recent hot weather got some parliamentarians wondering if Singapore's water supply was sufficient and if we had the resources to cope with climate change.
Noting that the current hot and dry spell has Singaporeans using more water, Minister for Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim however assured that "we have managed to keep our reservoir levels high by tapping our NEWater and desalination capacity".
Still, he urged Singaporeans to use water wisely.
One parliamentarian, Ho Geok Choo (West Coast GRC) also highlighted the need for innovative water-saving solutions.
"We see maids spray-hosing our cars and gardens - we should find alternative ways to encourage re-use of rice water and fish water for the plants at home," said Madam Ho, adding that she has gone "water-less" by using paper wipes to clean the floors of her house.
"It cost only about 6 cents per sheet and one sheet can do about 500 square feet," she said, adding, "this alternative cleaning has been lighter on my water bill".
Last year, Singaporean households used 155 litres a day, compared to 165 litres a day in 2003.
With new targets for water consumption - 147 litres per day by 2020, and 140 litres a day by 2030 - Singaporeans will have to find new ways of minimising water consumption.
To help non-domestic consumers such as industries, hotels and schools to better manage water use, PUB will work with them to prepare Water Efficiency Management Plans.
These will include an analysis of current water use, identify potential water saving measures and an implementation timeline.
They could also tap on the existing Water Efficiency Fund to implement these measures if they meet the funding criteria. To date, 20 companies have submitted their plans with water saving targets of up to 10 per cent, said Dr Yaacob. Esther Ng
Straits Times 9 Mar 10;
BY 2013, Singapore will make energy- hungry companies monitor usage, appoint energy managers and draw up plans to improve efficiency.
The requirements were announced by Environment and Water Resources Minister Yaacob Ibrahim yesterday along with other steps to improve efficiency. They will apply to firms that consume more than 15 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of energy a year - enough to power 3,000 to 4,000 HDB four-room flats for the same period. Some 130 firms fall into this category.
The new energy-efficiency rule will be contained in a proposed Energy Conservation Act, which will spell out energy management requirements for industry and other sectors.
While energy labelling and standards currently exist or will soon come into force for cars, buildings and appliances, the new legislation - to be introduced later and targeted to take effect in 2013 - will be among the first energy-efficiency legislation to cut across all sectors here.
Firms like GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which uses about 65 GWh a year, will be subject to the new rules.
Its engineering services director Lim Hock Heng said the first improvements in energy efficiency would be easy, but subsequent improvements would cost more.
Said Mr Lim in an e-mail: 'To sustain continuous reduction in energy usage, we foresee that significant capital outlay will be required.' GSK's current energy- saving measures include using solar panels on its buildings in Jurong.
To help firms build the necessary capabilities, the National Environment Agency (NEA) will introduce a new partnership scheme in April, on top of existing energy-efficiency grants and schemes.
Under the scheme, NEA will help firms learn how to manage their energy use, and get them to share energy-management knowledge with each other.
The public sector will also play its part in saving energy. Dr Yaacob told the House: 'From Fiscal Year 2011, all ministries will set energy-efficiency targets.'
GRACE CHUA
Large companies have to put in energy management plans by 2013 under new law
Hoe Yeen Nie, Channel NewsAsia 8 Mar 10;
SINGAPORE: From 2013, a new law will require large industrial energy users to regularly review their energy usage levels.
The Environment Ministry will introduce this Energy Conservation Act, as part of efforts to bring Singapore's 2005 energy usage levels down by 35 per cent by 2030. This was the target laid out by 2009's Sustainable Blueprint.
The cooling of water for GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) manufacturing processes used to take up 20 percent of the company's energy bill.
But since 2004, the switch to hydrocarbon refrigerants and the addition of a mist-cooling system have helped to save the company over S$1 million on utilities a year.
Besides these, GSK also uses solar panels on the rooftops of its warehouses to generate electricity.
GSK said that the push to go green came in 2002, following plans to boost production by 40 per cent.
Lim Hock Heng, director of Engineering Services, GlaxoSmithKline, said: "If we do nothing, it means your operating expenditure would be increased by the equivalent amount. And that adds cost into our products. So by keeping energy usage constant, basically you indirectly increase your profits and increase your productivities."
Currently, standards of energy management vary widely across the different industries and the government feels that it's time to impose some minimal standards.
So from 2013, the new Energy Conservation Act will require large users to appoint a trained energy manager. Companies will also have to submit energy improvement plans as well as to make periodic reports to the National Environment Agency.
According to the NEA, large energy users are defined as those that use 15 GWh of energy a year. There are about 130 companies that fall within this category.
In Parliament, the Environment Minister said the initial focus is to help the 130 affected companies to get ready for the new law.
And from April, they can get help from the NEA to train their energy management teams.
The Energy Efficiency National Partnership, first announced by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong last November, will also create opportunities for the sharing of best practices, and recognise efforts through an awards scheme.
Environment and Water Resources Minister Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, said: "Studies indicate that a company can expect to reduce energy consumption by at least 10 to 15 per cent with many companies able to achieve larger reductions.
"We will also be reviewing our incentive schemes and exploring long term energy efficiency financing options to cater to the needs of companies."
The ministry is still consulting with industry, including on possible penalties.
GlaxoSmithKline said the funding will come in handy as the return on investment on energy projects are typically low.
On its own, it has set up a fund to support its energy efficiency projects.
Mr Lim added: "They range from three years payback up to seven years payback. Imagine that if you have limited resources, to get the capital funding to support and implement these projects, you'll be competing with other projects as well." - CNA/vm
Energy guzzlers must appoint a manager
Esther Ng, Today Online 9 Mar 10;
SINGAPORE - The Copenhagen Conference on climate change may not have produced legally binding targets on carbon emission, but the prospect of Singapore having to adopt an international agreement at some point in the near future was not lost on some Members of Parliament (MPs).
"The earlier we can get our industry to adapt, the more we can mitigate the changes that will be upon us," urged MP for West Coast GRC Cedric Foo in Parliament yesterday.
Mr Foo was among MPs like Ms Ellen Lee, Ms Fatimah Lateef and Mr Seah Kian Peng who wanted to know how such targets can be achieved.
Responding during the debate on his ministry's budget, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources (MEWR) Yaacob Ibrahim announced that from 2013, large energy users - defined as those that use 15 GWh of energy a year - will have to regularly review their energy usage levels.
Under a new Energy Conservation Act, they'll have to appoint an energy manager, monitor and report energy use to the National Environment Agency (NEA), and develop and submit energy efficiency improvement plans to the NEA when the Act kicks in.
There are about 130 companies in this category, among them pharmaceuticals, oil refineries, wafer fabs and petrochemical companies.
"The Act allows for a co-ordinated approach to standards-setting for energy efficiency across all sectors," said Dr Yaacob.
NEA will introduce the Energy Efficiency National Partnership next month to help companies build up the necessary capabilities before the mandatory energy management practices come into effect.
This will help Singapore achieve its target by 2030 of an improvement in energy efficiency by 35 per cent from the level of 2005.
Dr Yaacob noted that industrial facilities in Japan are required to adopt energy management practices and energy-intensive firms in Denmark have to pay higher energy taxes unless they have energy management systems in place.
In Singapore, some companies like Merck Sharp and Dohme have set a target of reducing energy use by 7 per cent this year as part of its green plans. "Such practices ought to be the norm," said Dr Yaacob.
New measures to reduce noise and save energy
JOyce Hooi, Business Times 9 Mar 10;
THE National Environment Agency (NEA) will soon start prohibiting construction activities from 10pm on the night before a Sunday or a public holiday to 10am on the day itself. This new prohibition will apply to construction sites within 150 metres of residential areas and noise-sensitive developments that start work from Sept 1 this year.
'We will implement the changes progressively to give the construction industry sufficient time to adjust,' said Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, while announcing the ministry's latest measures in Parliament yesterday. 'NEA will extend this prohibition to the rest of the day on Sundays and public holidays for sites starting work from Sept 1, 2011,' Dr Yaacob added.
According to the minister, NEA received 14,000 and 12,000 complaints about construction noise in 2008 and 2009 respectively, compared to 9,000 and 6,000 such complaints in 2007 and 2006 respectively.
This change in policy will create a need for construction firms to rejig their work schedules, CSC Holdings Ltd CEO See Yen Tarn noted.
'There are certain activities that have to be carried out continuously, one process after another. You cannot excavate something and then let it sit there for 24 hours, for example,' said Mr See.
Tan Wey Pin, executive director of Lum Chang Building Contractors, also noted that almost all construction sites in Singapore will be situated within 150 metres of a residential area. Currently, his firm's workers end work any time between 7pm and midnight on Saturday and work from 8am to 5pm on Sunday, excluding overtime.
NEA will also tighten noise standards for new and in-use vehicles, from Oct 1, 2010 and April 1, 2011, respectively. The new-vehicle standards will be based on those currently used in Japan and the European Union.
On the industrial front, there will be a mandatory requirement for companies in the industry sector using more than 15 gigawatt- hours of energy each year to appoint an energy manager that will monitor and report energy use to NEA from 2013, as part of the Energy Conservation Act that will come into force in the same year.
'NEA will introduce the Energy Efficiency National Partnership, or EENP, in April to help companies build up the necessary capabilities before the mandatory energy management practices come into effect,' said Dr Yaacob.
Several companies that fall in this category appear to be ahead of the curve.
'We do more than an energy manager's job. We have monitored the consumption of energy from Day 1,' said CV Jagadish, CEO of Systems on Silicon Manufacturing Co Pte Ltd. This year, the company aims to reduce energy usage by almost 4 million kilowatt-hours.
STMicroelectronics will also have no trouble complying with the requirement. 'Our site electrical manager is our resident Energy Conservation Champion, who constantly drives energy reduction opportunities at our wafer fab,' said Renato Sirtori, group vice-president and chief financial officer of Asia STMicroelectronics.
Robin Chan, Straits Times 9 Mar 10;
SOLAR and nuclear power are among Singapore's best options for electricity generation in the long term. The two are part of the range of options to meet the challenges of the future, said Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry S. Iswaran.
He told Parliament yesterday that the nation remains exposed to the 'vicissitudes of global energy markets' because it imports almost all of its energy. This means it will be affected by price volatility even as energy prices continue to rise over the long term. Singapore is also affected by competition for energy supplies and carbon constraints as part of a global climate change deal.
'Our strategy to meet the global energy challenges rests on two key thrusts: diversification to maintain a range of energy options; and competitive energy markets,' he said.
Solar energy has been touted as the best option for Singapore given the climate, although there are obstacles as the cost of solar-generated electricity is still about twice that of grid electricity and heavy cloud cover means it is unreliable.
Mr Iswaran again reiterated that solar energy is 'one of the most promising in our context for electricity generation' of available renewable sources.
He expects the price of solar energy will be on par with the electricity generated through the grid in the medium term but more infrastructure needs to be developed and improved 'for efficient installation and integration of solar panels... (and) to cope with... fluctuations in weather conditions'.
The idea for studying the feasibility of nuclear energy was raised by the Economic Strategies Committee and backed by the Government, but it has generated some public concern.
Dr Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim (Marine Parade GRC) and Mr Liang Eng Hwa (Holland-Bukit Timah GRC) were among those who asked about the associated risks. Mr Iswaran said the Government is considering the nuclear option now because it meets all three of its energy policy objectives: enhancing energy security, reducing carbon emissions and mitigating the impact of volatile oil and gas prices.
Other developed countries like France, Switzerland and Japan have used nuclear energy for a long time. 'These are all developed nations with high standards of living and exacting safety regulations.'
The Ministry of Trade and Industry will lead a multi-agency effort to undertake the feasibility study, which will commence later this year.
Mr Iswaran also said electricity imports could help the country gain access to alternative energy sources such as hydropower and so free up valuable land.
Non-Constituency MP Sylvia Lim asked which countries would be considered and whether there would be added political risks on top of the danger of unreliable, irregular supplies.
Mr Iswaran replied that 'there is no fixed idea of where Singapore can import its electricity from' but that 'to some extent with the limits of technology and infrastructure, (it) would suggest that the most obvious sources would be in our neighbourhood'. Singapore already imports natural gas from its immediate neighbours and 'if we were not importing gas, but electricity from our neighbour, the overall risk to us as a system, in my view, remains the same'.
Study on nuclear energy to begin this year
Today Online 9 Mar 10;
Commencing later this year: A feasibility study by a multi-agency group of whether nuclear energy can be a long-term option for Singapore.
The effort will be led by the Ministry of Trade and Industry, announced its Senior Minister of State S Iswaran yesterday, and it will aim to "ensure that we fully understand, and objectively evaluate from all perspectives, the opportunities, challenges and risks involved with nuclear energy".
Public concerns have been surfaced about the risks considering Singapore's size and population density.
"Indeed, these were some of the reasons for not considering the option before," acknowledged Mr Iswaran.
"But new technologies are being developed to address some of the key concerns associated with nuclear energy, and to make nuclear reactors smaller and safer, at a lower cost and with less high-level waste.
"Some of these technologies are in the early stages of commercialisation and we need to study if they could be feasible in our context."
Mr Iswaran made several arguments for mulling the nuclear option. It could "potentially enhance energy security, reduce carbon emissions, and mitigate the impact of volatile oil and gas prices".
Then, there are small states like Switzerland and island-nations like Japan that have made great strides in nuclear energy in the last four decades.
There is also "merit in building up our knowledge and expertise in nuclear science which has applications in diagnostic medicine and cancer treatment" - it could yield therapeutic and economic benefits, he added.
Tiered pricing of electricity won't work here
Straits Times 9 Mar 10;
A TIERED system of pricing electricity is unlikely to work, said Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry S. Iswaran.
Mr Iswaran was responding to a comment from Non-Constituency MP Sylvia Lim that such a system could help small consumers and lower overall electricity consumption.
Tiered pricing works by placing a higher tariff on consumers who use more electricity. This tariff can then be used to subsidise consumers in the lower tiers.
'Many places, including New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong and the United States, implement variations of this idea to protect small consumers. Some governments require electricity retailers by law to provide a low tariff charge for small consumers,' Ms Lim said.
But Mr Iswaran said that establishing the tiers would be a problem.
'The most fundamental question we've got to ask ourselves is if the Government were minded to establish tiered levies for electricity consumption, how does the Government go about determining what are justifiable, reasonable tiers?'
This is because households vary in how they consume electricity, he said.
'No two households are alike, and even if you take your HDB-type households, the three-room flats, the consumption can vary quite a bit and that is why the problem is inherently egregious and it is superior to have a clean system but with targeted subsidies.'
ROBIN CHAN
Ronnie Lim, Business Times 9 Mar 10;
(SINGAPORE) Singapore is looking at putting safeguards in place after traces of mercury, a toxic metal, were found in Indonesian natural gas imported from West Natuna last June.
While that was apparently an isolated incident with the low mercury levels detected posing no real danger to public health, the authorities are taking no chances given that gas is a leading energy fuel here.
The Energy Market Authority (EMA) is getting a consultant to assess the impact, if any, the toxic metal has on pipeline operators as well as end-users like the power stations and petrochemical plants and also the public (which uses town gas for cooking and heating purposes). It also wants the consultant to identify measures, if needed, to mitigate this.
This is because mercury, which is found organically-bound in natural gas from the gasfield, can potentially damage plant and equipment like heat exchangers, or affect workers exposed to it during maintenance operations.
BT understands, however, that the mercury found in the Natuna gas piped in by Sembcorp last June was low-level and was reported by its upstream gas supplier.
Gas Supply Pte Ltd (GSPL), the other Indonesian gas importer which sources its gas from South Sumatra, said that it has so far not encountered any mercury issues.
'But it's not an uncommon problem as, for instance, the Arun gasfield at the end period also had a lot of mercury coming out,' said GSPL's CEO Tan Chin Tung.
The mercury, common in natural gas production, can potentially damage plant and equipment, although it is normally filtered out at the gasfield, he said.
The June incident also doesn't have an impact on towngas supplied to homes and businesses here, as City Gas (the towngas supplier) gets its natural gas supplies from GSPL, and converts this into towngas, which is essentially hydrogen and carbon monoxide, added Mr Tan.
Nevertheless, EMA is not taking any chances.
With natural gas coming in from both Indonesia's West Natuna and South Sumatra, and also Malaysia, it wants the consultant to study the gas system here to identify the locations where mercury can accumulate. Besides, liquefied natural gas supplies will also start being shipped in here, starting mid-2013.
EMA also wants the consultant to assess the existing government regulations here (from the Manpower Ministry, National Environment Agency and Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority) regarding exposure to mercury by workers during operations and maintenance.
The consultant will also look at potential contamination of food or food-related products arising from gas usage, and physical damage to gas network components that may be vulnerable.
Another area covers flue gas emission arising from end-users' operations and mercury content released to the ambient environment due to gas leak or pipeline damage.
'The consultant shall recommend, with a cost-benefit analysis, a safe limit for the mercury content of gas that can be introduced into the Singapore gas system and any mitigating measures which need to be taken,' EMA said of the eight-month study.
JTC invites consultants to study impact of cavern at Tanjung Kling site
Ronnie Lim, Business Times 9 Mar 10;
(SINGAPORE) No stone is being left unturned in Singapore's underground push. Even the birds at Jurong Bird Park will not be ignored as the impact of construction and cavern operation on them will also be taken into account under a full-scale feasibility study called last Friday for an underground warehousing/logistics and data centre in Jurong.
The three-phased comprehensive study of the Tanjung Kling site - from preliminary geological assessment and market research to concept development - is expected to take up to two years in all, and follows a five-month 'geological investigation and ground characterisation' study called last November.
JTC Corporation on Friday invited consultants to undertake the latest study for what will be its third mega underground facility - following the start of construction recently of its $1 billion first-phase Jurong Rock Cavern to store oil, and its on-going 14-month feasibility study for an underground science city (USC) at Kent Ridge.
Both the USC and underground warehousing and data centre could be undertaken concurrently if the studies prove feasible, JTC earlier told BT.
Even the Economic Strategies Committee in its report last month recommended that Singapore's push underground - given the limited surface land available here - be supported by a national geology office which should, among other things, develop a subterranean land rights system and determine how underground areas can be priced.
For JTC's latest study, the appointed consultant will need to assess the technical requirements of warehousing and logistics players and developers and data centre operators, in order to develop the facility's conceptual design.
The site comprises Tanjung Kling and Jurong Hill and is bounded by four roads - Jalan Ahmad Ibrahim, Jurong Pier Road, Jalan Buroh and Pioneer Road. It can potentially provide cavern space of over 1.1 million square metres and free up 45 hectares of surface land for other uses.
The consultant will also engage specialists, including environmental consultants and ornithologists, to 'study the impact of the underground development, during both the construction phase and the operational phase, to existing surface developments, traffic, environment, population working in the area and birds residing in the Jurong Bird Park,' the JTC tender said.
'Of particular concern will be the impact of construction noise and vibration... to the behaviour of birds in the Bird Park. The consultant shall engage with Jurong Bird Park to address their concerns on such impact to their bird population as well as to their operations,' it stressed.
The preliminary geological assessment - expected to take five months - will include the consultant's take on the total cavern space and volume that can be constructed.
Next will be the preliminary concepts, with the consultant recommending - from a list of usage possibilities like general cargo and chemical logistics to container depot - on what will be viable for siting in the underground cavern.
Finally, the study's concept development phase will include its design, method of excavation and will even explore the feasibility of locating a district cooling system in the cavern complex.
The Tanjung Kling area was chosen for the underground ware- housing/data centre facility after earlier studies of geological conditions, JTC said. By going underground, the facility will enjoy advantages like shielding from heat and temperature humidity, have low background radiation and have less disturbance from vibration.
Straits Times 9 Mar 10;
IN ITS urban planning blueprints, the Ministry for National Development (MND) won't miss the forest for the trees. Instead, it takes a well-rounded approach when drawing up its development concept plans, taking into account existing infrastructure and consulting MPs and other agencies.
This was National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan's assurance to the House yesterday. 'When we do make changes, they will be taken as a whole. It's not just development for its own sake,' he said.
'On an overall basis, the whole planning process takes into account the whole gamut of requirements, ranging from housing, to roads, to schools, to nature areas, even right down to things like markets, places of worship and so on.'
Earlier, Mr Lim Biow Chuan (Marine Parade GRC) had asked about the Government's planning methods. Were new projects drawn up in isolation, or was the total 'ecosystem' of the area taken into account?
He was particularly concerned about the growing density of the Amber and Katong areas. After the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) approved the construction of new residences in the area, a clutch of condominiums had sprung up. With more such estates on the way, traffic congestion, overcrowding and rising social pressure are becoming a definite possibility, Mr Lim said.
Mr Mah said the URA's integrated approach to planning would mitigate such problems. In fact, the development of the Amber and Katong districts was precisely an example of such consultation bearing fruit.
'The master plan takes into account what the increased density in the area means for traffic congestion and discussions were held with the relevant agencies, such as the Land Transport Authority.'
This helped the URA pre-empt overcrowding, he explained. The MRT network will be extended into the area and the Marina Coastal Expressway will take pressure off the existing East Coast Parkway.
'I think this is one of the strengths of the Singapore planning system: That when we plan, we plan it on a holistic level, taking everything into consideration,' he said.
RACHEL LIN
Buildability score, energy efficiency certification being revised upwards
Uma Shankari, Business Times 9 Mar 10;
THE Building & Construction Authority (BCA) is set to make changes to some of its regulations to push the construction industry towards green building and greater productivity.
The mandatory minimum energy efficiency standard that must be met before a new building can receive a Green Mark certification will be raised by 10 per cent from today's standard. The energy efficiency standards for other Green Mark levels - Gold, GoldPlus, and Platinum - will also be upped.
BCA will also increase the regulated minimum buildability score so that firms will have to use labour-efficient construction technologies. The industry regulator said that it has not yet decided on the new minimum score, which now stands at 75 - a significant climb from 61 in 2001.
'The industry can seek government funding to build capability in areas such as prefabrication, precast technology and other construction technology to meet the new buildability requirements,' said Grace Fu, Senior Minister of State at the Ministry of National Development. She announced the changes in Parliament yesterday.
During the Budget announcement on Feb 22, the government said that it will set aside $250 million to steer the construction sector towards higher productivity. This followed the Economic Strategies Committee last month highlighting the need for strong measures to boost Singapore's productivity level.
Giving more details yesterday, BCA said that the funds will be used to cover three broad aspects: to co-fund manpower development; to provide funding support to encourage companies to adopt technology and equipment that could lead to significant productivity improvement; and to provide financial support to builders to help them develop capability in more complicated civil engineering projects and building projects.
BCA hopes to get the construction sector to raise the quality of its workforce, design buildings that are easier to construct and adopt more advanced construction technologies. The government has said that it will raise its foreign worker levies from July this year. Yesterday, Ms Fu said that it is estimated that the higher levies could result in 1-2 per cent rise in construction costs for the industry - although the actual cost impact will vary from firm to firm. On the other hand, the $250 million fund will work as a carrot and support the construction firms as they try to adopt productivity improvement measures.
Further upstream, developers and architects will have to design for greater buildability. BCA also wants to raise the energy efficiency standard for new buildings by 10 per cent - which means that the power consumption for new buildings that are Green Mark-certified will be about 10 per cent lower as compared to their older counterparts.
Developers said that they welcomed the move and added that the new target is within reach.
'The revised standards will definitely improve the long-term sustainability of Singapore and contribute towards our overall energy efficiency goal of 35 per cent savings by 2030,' said Tan Swee Yiow, Keppel Land's chief executive for its Singapore commercial business unit.
Added a City Developments spokesman: 'While the development of green buildings may cost more, by adopting the low-energy passive facade design, we do not foresee the need to increase our present green building investment of between 2 per cent and 5 per cent of our construction cost.'
Three species thought extinct, including a caddisfly and yellow-spotted bell frog, have been sighted in the UK and Australia
Juliette Jowit, guardian.co.uk 8 Mar 10;
Three species thought to be extinct have been found again, to the delight of conservationists.
In the UK, the rare ghost orchid, declared extinct in this country just last year, has been found in England, and a caddisfly – a small flying insect – last seen more than a century ago has been discovered again in Scotland. On the global stage the yellow-spotted bell frog, presumed "possibly extinct" by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, has been seen on a creek-bed in Australia.
The good news stories follow a warning by a leading IUCN expert that humans are now driving plants and animals to extinction faster than new species can evolve.
Simon Stuart, the IUCN expert who chairs the Species Survival Commission which declares species endangered or extinct, said that although roughly one "possibly extinct" species each year was re-discovered, many more plants and animals were added to the list.
There will also be continuing concern for species that are re-discovered in very small numbers. For example only a single 5cm high ghost orchid was found by the botanists who revealed it is still alive in the UK. The sighting of the caddisfly by a PhD student beside a river in north-west Scotland – 350 miles north of the previous record, according to the conservation charity Buglife – could further suggest the influence of climate change in driving species out of their traditional habitats, something some plants and animals will be able to adapt to better than others.
"The whole point of the 'possibly extinct' list is they can come in and out," said Stuart. "But we're adding species on to the 'possibly extinct' list much faster than we're taking them off it."
The IUCN has much stricter rules about declaring a species fully extinct, including that it must have been actively searched for by teams of experts in the field. However in 2008 the Switzerland-based organisation did have to move the Miles' robber frog (Craugastor milesi) from the extinct to critically endangered list after a single specimen was found in Honduras.
Among the reasons conservationists dislike a species being declared extinct are that it is no longer possible to get money to research and preserve its habitat. The locations of the orchid and the Australian frog are both being kept secret to protect them, however one of the bell frogs and a tadpole have been taken to Taronga zoo in Sydney for a captive breeding programme.
BBC News 8 Mar 10;
Two tiger cubs have been found dead in mysterious circumstances at the Ranthambhore national park in the north-west Indian state of Rajasthan.
Wildlife officials say it appears the cubs had been poisoned. An inquiry has been ordered.
The bodies of the cubs have been sent for post mortems.
Poaching and loss of habitat in India have decimated tiger numbers which are estimated to have fallen from 40,000 to about 1,400 in the past 100 years.
A major awareness campaign has been launched to halt the steep decline in tiger numbers in India.
'Revenge'
Ranthambore covers several hundred square kilometres of dry deciduous forests sprawling over undulating terrain.
According to a 2009 census, there were about 40 tigers in and around the park, which is in Sawaimadhopur district of Rajasthan.
Nearly 100 villages surround the park, and the more the tiger population grows the more they are likely to come into conflict with humans, observers say.
Chief wildlife warden RN Mehrotra told the BBC the deaths of the tiger cubs could be a case of "revenge killing".
"It appears that the tigers poached a goat. The carcass of the goat was found nearby. It seems to be a case of revenge. Someone took revenge for killing their animal," he said.
Ranthambhore is a major tourist attraction, drawing about 200,000 people from India and abroad every year.
With some conservationists claiming only 800 tigers still live in the wild, radical steps are needed if the species isn't to disappear from India within five years
Gethin Chamberlain, The Observer 7 Mar 10;
The poachers perch on the rough platforms they have built in the trees about 15 feet above the forest floor, waiting patiently for the tiger to come. They have been searching the forests of India's Ranthambhore reserve for days, following the pug marks and other tell-tale signs. When they found the fresh kill, they knew it would only be a matter of time before the tiger returned to eat. Working quickly, they placed their traps on the path, scattering small stones across the dry sandy soil, knowing that tigers hate to walk on them and will pick their way around if they can.
The tiger pads forward, guided by the stones into the trap, which springs shut with a snap. The poachers have fashioned the device from old car suspension plates; there are no teeth, because a damaged pelt will fetch less money. In pain and desperate to free itself, the tiger thrashes around. Another foot catches in another trap, then a third.
The poachers watch to make sure it cannot free itself, then edge down to the ground, still cautious, because a male Bengal tiger can weigh up to 500lb (227kg) and a female 300lb (136kg) and a single blow from those claws could kill a man. One man carries a bamboo stick into which he has poured molten lead to give it more weight. The other has a spear on the end of a 10ft pole. As the tiger opens its mouth, the poacher with the spear lunges forward, stabbing between its open jaws. As the blood starts to flow, he stabs again and again. His colleague smashes the tiger over the head with the stick.
When it is over, they draw their heavy iron knives and set to work to skin it. They leave the paws intact; they are too fiddly to waste time on out in the open. Half an hour later, they are gone, melting away unchallenged into the jungle, once more eluding the forest guards.
It is always the same, says Dharmendra Khandal, toying with a heavy iron skinning knife as he recounts the story. Khandal is sitting in the offices of Tiger Watch on the edge of the national park, one of the most popular tiger reserves in India. He spreads his palms in frustration. The government's forestry department is always the last to act, he says, though it is its job to protect the tigers.
Tiger Watch was established in Rajasthan 12 years ago as an independent, privately funded organisation trying to stem the decline of the wildlife population in the Ranthambhore reserve. In the last five years, it has helped police arrest 47 alleged poachers from the Moghiya tribe, many in possession of tiger skins and other body parts, guns and traps. By their own admission, the poachers have killed more than 20 tigers. Yet in the same period, the authorities in the park did not record a single incidence of poaching. Something does not add up.
At the turn of the last century, there were an estimated 45,000 tigers living wild in India's forests. By the time hunting was banned in 1972, their numbers were down to 2,000. In January, the World Wildlife Fund placed the animal in its list of 10 key creatures facing extinction, warning that while counting tigers is notoriously difficult, there might only be 3,200 left in the wild worldwide. The WWF has just launched a Year of the Tiger campaign to coincide with the start of the Chinese year of the tiger. The organisation is working with world leaders towards the goal of doubling wild tiger numbers by 2022 and there will be a summit in Vladivostok in September attended by the heads of government from the tiger range countries. Nowhere will the challenge be greater than in India, home to that symbol of the country, the royal Bengal tiger.
The Indian government claims 1,411 tigers are still alive inside its borders. Few experts believe this figure. When a tiger skin can sell for $20,000 in neighbouring China, poaching remains a serious problem. Last year was the worst since 2002 for tiger deaths and even India's Ministry of Environment and Forests concedes that its way of counting tigers is so vague that there may be as few as 1,165. Environment minister Jairam Ramesh now admits the figure of 1,411 was "an exaggeration". Either deliberately, to hide the true scale of the animal's decline, or accidentally, through flawed methodology, it is now clear that the numbers are wrong. Some conservationists believe the true number of tigers left in India may be little more than half the official tally and that at the present rate of decline, the tiger will cease to be a viable wild species in India within as little as five years. If poaching and habitat loss continue unabated, those reserves that still have tigers will be little more than open-air zoos. According to the ministry, there are 16 reserves (just under half the total) where there may be no tigers at all or where the tiger is in danger of becoming extinct. Part of the problem is that the presence of tigers is a matter of pride, both for states and individual reserves. No one wants to admit that their tigers have been poached. And still the forests are vanishing as India's burgeoning population places increasing demands on limited space.
Ranthambhore is one of the better parks, one of the few places visitors have a realistic chance of seeing a tiger in the wild. Even here, the number of tigers left is in dispute.
According to Khandal, Tiger Watch's field biologist, there are two schools of poachers: the professionals who tend to come in from Haryana and use only leg traps and the local Moghiya tribe who fire on the tiger from close range with homemade guns. "The Moghiyas are criminals," says Khandal. "They are one of the most brutal communities in India. A month ago, some of them cut off a woman's feet just to steal her ankle ornaments. She bled to death."
In an attempt to stem the tide, Tiger Watch has started working with the Moghiya, hiring informants for 3,500 rupees (£50) a month, while setting some of the women to work producing handicrafts and providing education for their children.
"It's a risky job," says Khandal. "We have four regular paid informants from this community and we give them money in return for information. The community knows who the informants are. Some of them are resisting but there are cracks in the society now. Some of them are asking why they should live in such a primitive state."
Kesra, 45, is one of the former Moghiya poachers who have been turned. By his own admission, he has killed at least five tigers. He describes roaming the forests looking for pug marks and then taking up position in the trees to wait for the tiger to come, working at night and returning in the morning to skin the tigers. He says they never had any trouble with the forest guards, a common refrain. He was arrested as a result of a Tiger Watch raid and is awaiting trial. He insists he is now reformed. "I never had much education. My forefathers were doing hunting, but now times have changed. We are different people," he says.
His wife, Sanwali, also 45, earns about 3,000 rupees a month from making baskets for Tiger Watch. They have five sons and two daughters to support. She says that, like the tigers, they have become the hunted.
"We are not willing to live in an atmosphere where the police are always coming after us," she says. "We had to move from here to there. Our forefathers were involved in poaching, but we don't want to be involved in this trade any more."
It is a view echoed by 26-year-old Asanti. Her family are notorious tiger poachers and she is married to a former small-time poacher, Deshraj, 30. The couple, who married when Asanti was 10, have an eight-year-old daughter, Puja, and say they don't want her to grow up like they did, shunned by the rest of society. They provide information on what is happening in the tribe and in return receive money and a chance to start afresh.
"We want our children to be educated. We want to learn more. We want a regular source of income," says Asanti. "Hunting is not a regular source of income. Times have changed and our community is scattered. Now we want to live respectably."
Tiger Watch's approach is clearly having an effect, but that has not been enough to save it from the wrath of the authorities whose indolence it has exposed. Not long after the group revealed that poaching had reduced tiger numbers in Ranthambhore to just 18 in 2004, officials turned up at the office of its founder, Fateh Singh Rathore, and demolished it. His daughter's shop and their restaurant were also flattened, ostensibly for operating without the correct permissions, though others in a similar situation were left untouched. It was a warning.
Fateh Singh is now 75. He was the government's field director at Ranthambhore from 1977 to 1996 and is regarded as one of India's foremost tiger experts. Sitting in his rebuilt office, he picks up a newspaper and stares at the large WWF advert on the front page, with its warning that there are only 1,411 tigers left in India. He shakes his head; the true figure is probably closer to 800, he says. "They are always saying that the numbers are on the increase, but there is no proper scientific research. They are lying to save their skins. If they have a problem they should declare it. The authorities like only praise."
He doubts there are more than 20 tigers left in Ranthambhore.
"The field directors are responsible. They are not trying. They are too busy showing VIPs around to spend time on protection. All the popular parks are suffering from the same disease. They know they are posted for two years and then they will go somewhere else. No one is being punished for the tigers that are being lost."
Still, he says, while there are still some tigers, there is a chance. "I am still optimistic because I feel the tiger has a lust for life. It can survive if it gets protection, but you have to be very strict if you want to protect the tiger."
The system, however, is simply not geared up to deter the hunters. There were 72 arrests for tiger poaching in India last year, but the only two convictions were for cases dating back more than 10 years.
It is hardly a deterrent. Tiger poaching is a lucrative business for some – though not necessarily the poachers, who may have to share the 100,000 rupees (£1,450) they will get for one tiger between 10 gang members – and there are plenty of people with an interest in turning a blind eye.
When Tiger Watch and the Rajasthan police went after one of the biggest poachers in the region, Devi Singh, they had to sneak across the state border into Madhya Pradesh to snatch him from his village without alerting the local authorities because, Khandal explains, had they revealed their true intentions, someone would have tipped Singh off. When they got him back to Rajasthan, Singh confessed to killing five tigers in the park, in a period when no poaching was officially recorded.
The last full tiger census in India – which claimed 3,642 tigers – was carried out in 2001, based largely on pug marks, a hopelessly unreliable method of counting. Satya Prakash Yadav, deputy inspector general of the National Tiger Conservation Authority in Delhi, admits it was "seriously flawed" and "not scientifically correct". For the latest study, he says, officials switched methods, using a mixture of camera trap results and a survey of the habitat and prey base to produce an estimate of how many tigers might conceivably have survived. But he admits that problems remain. (Yadav did not have any figures for the number of tigers actually recorded in the camera traps. There are no data for this in the latest report and repeated requests for the vital statistic drew a blank.)
Many of those reserves are already on the brink. The greatest threat to the safety of the park officials comes from the Naxalites, Maoist guerrillas who have been described as the greatest threat to India's internal security. They have seized control of vast swaths of the country, ostensibly in the name of tribal peoples who they claim have been oppressed. They have a particular loathing for forestry officials, who they regard as the stick with which the state beats the tribals, extracting money and goods from them in return for the use of the forests on which they rely for their livelihoods. At least six of the parks are overrun by Naxalites and are inaccessible to the forest department. There is simply no way of knowing how many tigers remain there and certainly no way to install camera traps.
It is hardly surprising that the latest update lists 16 of the 37 reserves as being in a "poor" state. It is possible, Yadav concedes, that there are no tigers there.
"We have classified some reserves as poor where there is no population of tiger or where the tiger may go extinct. Despite our various milestone initiatives, the situation may go out of control in certain tiger reserves."
Simlipal reserve, in Orissa – the fourth largest in India – provides an insight into just how problematic the official figures are. A 2004 report, based on pug marks, claimed that there were 101 tigers in the reserve. Last year, India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, conceded that 40 tigers had been poached from the reserve over the previous five years, but insisted there were still 61 tigers alive and well in Simlipal alone. Yet the government's own figures claim that there are only 45 tigers in the whole of Orissa state, which also includes those in the Satkosia reserve. Again, something does not add up.
Then there is Panna. The latest report claimed that there were approximately 24 tigers in the 974sq km reserve. Last year, it was found that there were none. And this was three years after the government had announced a complete overhaul of the system, after the Sariska reserve was also found to be empty.
Luckily for the tiger, complacency is not endemic. In the Periyar tiger reserve in Kerala, a small group of women has been mounting their own fightback. Every day, members of the Vasanta Sena (Green Army) venture unpaid and unarmed into the forest, in search of poachers. There are 76 of them, living around the edges of the park, mostly from poor families, each taking one day a week off from jobs and looking after their homes to seek out intruders. One aim is to stop the destruction of the tigers' habitat, the forest itself. The sandalwoods are prized by illegal loggers for their oil, which is used in medicines and cosmetics. One kilogram of the wood can fetch 5,000 rupees.
The forest is lush and green, a gentle breeze rustling the leaves of the sandalwoods and the swaying stands of giant bamboos arcing overhead. A small stream runs beneath a roughly made wooden bridge. The women pick their way among the trees. At the front is Gracykutty, 39. She is married to a mason and has two daughters. She has been doing this for seven years.
"Here we breathe the best air in the world and we are dedicated to protecting it," she says. "I think if there is only one tiger left in the world in the end, it will be here."
Her colleague Jiji, 35, says they know that if the forest goes, so too will the tiger, destroying the tourist industry on which their economy depends.
"We keep a look out for trees that have been cut or signs that people have been in the forest. It is important because if the forest is cut then there is less space for the animals and if the forest goes and the tigers go then it will be terrible for everyone who lives around here. We understand this and that is why we are doing this. It is not just for ourselves, it is for our children too, so they can enjoy the forest like we do."
How many tigers remain in Periyar is a matter of conjecture. Sanjayan, the range officer, says the park has about 34 tigers, maybe 36. He says camera traps have identified 24 and the rest have been calculated using the unreliable pug mark method. But his boss, Bastian Joseph, the assistant field director, cites the official figure of 46 tigers.
Many conservationists fear that without drastic action, the only place the tiger will soon be found in India is in its zoos.
Inside the royal Bengal tiger pen at the Arignar Anna Zoological Park in Chennai, Nagammal, the woman who looks after the tigers, spins a metal wheel on the wall to slide open the internal cage door. Padma, the zoo's 15-year-old female, has been growing increasingly restless. Now she pads through the open door, lets out a roar and launches herself at the thick metal grille with a shuddering crash. She lands and turns away, pacing around the cage before repeating her assault several times, roaring her displeasure. Eventually, she settles on the floor and sits watching warily, emitting a low growl. Up close, it is easy to understand why the poachers are so keen to make sure their prey is securely trapped before they approach.
The zoo's director, PL Ananthasamy, argues that the answer to the tiger's decline lies in a captive breeding programme. "The basic game is conservation and in due course of time to take these species back to their home and release them," he says.
Tigers breed well in captivity, but releasing them into the wild is another matter entirely and most experts agree that it is fraught with difficulties, which may explain why there do not appear to be any examples of successful reintroduction of tigers.
Ananthasamy disagrees: "It is possible to release captive bred animals. We must do it gradually and ensure that the animal can survive by itself. We have not yet reached the stage where the tiger cannot breed in the wild, but the pressure is such around the sanctuaries that the numbers are coming down. There is enough prey base for the animals to survive, but the problem is the encroachers and poaching."
Aditya Singh, 43, conservationist and tiger expert, worries that time is running out. Singh runs a lodge on the edge of the Ranthambhore reserve park and spends much of his time inside the park. "I think the numbers have gone down. I think there are about 1,000 now," he says.
What will finish off the tiger as a viable species, he says, is the final destruction of the remaining corridors of forest that link the parks together. "There are still connections between the reserves, but in five years they won't be there. I think the tigers have five years. They will stay in isolated pockets, but they will have reached an evolutionary dead end.
"There is a view here that the forest belongs to the foreigners. For an average villager living outside the park they don't see it as an asset. They used to be able to go in for wood, but now they cannot. The problems for the tiger are poverty, illiteracy and overpopulation. The big problems that India has are the problems the tiger has."
Isabel Reynolds and Scilla Alecci, PlanetArk 9 Mar 10;
The mayor of a Japanese town which conducts an annual dolphin hunt protested on Monday against the Academy Award given to "The Cove," a documentary film about the grisly slaughter.
The film, which picked up an Oscar for best documentary feature in addition to a series of other awards, follows a group of activists who struggle with Japanese police and fishermen to gain access to a secluded cove in Taiji, southern Japan, where dolphins are hunted.
It features shocking footage of the slaughter.
"I think it is regrettable that the film presents as fact material that is not backed up by scientific proof," Taiji mayor Kazutaka Sangen said in a faxed statement. He emphasized that the hunt was legal in Japan and urged respect for the tradition.
"There are a variety of customs relating to food, within this country and abroad," he said.
"An attitude of mutual respect is necessary, based on understanding of the years-old traditions arising from these customs and the circumstances surrounding them."
The film, directed by former National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos and featuring a former dolphin trainer from the "Flipper" television series, is little known in Japan, where the government says the hunting of dolphins and whales is an important cultural tradition.
Hans Peter Roth, co-author of the book version of the film, said the Oscar would help shed light on the subject in Japan, but lamented that the hunts may not stop in the near future.
"I strongly believe that this international upsurge really puts quite a bit of pressure on this town," he told Reuters from the area where much of the "The Cove" was filmed.
"And I am afraid they are not going to stop the dolphin hunt within the next few years, regarding it being lucrative to sell live dolphins to dolphin areas."
A Japanese distributor said last week a slightly modified version of "The Cove" was set for release in major cities across Japan from May or June this year.
The faces of the fishermen will be blurred out and the distributor will add a note saying that there is disagreement about mercury levels in dolphin meat, which is sold as food and served for lunch at schools in the area.
Many in Japan said the film was exaggerated.
"Of course I feel pity for the dolphins but it's also true that from ancient times mankind has been living by eating animals and plants," said Masaaki Kibe, a 24-year-old college student.
"But I also agree that such a probe is also necessary so it's very difficult to give a firm opinion."
(Editing by Paul Tait)
Dolphin cull film 'lies', says Japan
David McNeil, The Independent 9 Mar 10;
Pro-whaling officials have reacted angrily to news that a documentary about a gruesome annual dolphin cull in a remote Japanese fishing town has bagged an Academy Award.
The Cove, directed by photographer Louie Psihoyos, won Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars on Sunday after winning acclaim from around the world – except from Japan.
"That movie is so full of lies that it is an insult," said Hideki Moronuki, a former spokesman with Japan's Fisheries Agency who was interviewed by the documentary crew. The movie claims that Mr Moronuki and thousands of others have been poisoned from eating dolphin meat containing high levels of mercury and later resigned from his post, both of which he denies.
Filmed secretly over several months in the whaling town of Taiji, the documentary used hidden cameras and microphones to depict the annual slaughter of about 2,000 dolphins, which are herded into a secluded cove and hacked to death.
The film-makers say the town is poisoning its citizens with the mercury-tainted meat and covering it up, a claim denied by its mayor Kazutaka Sangen. "I think it is regrettable that the film presents as fact material that is not backed up by scientific proof," he said yesterday in a faxed statement.
After receiving his Oscar, Mr Psihoyos said: "The Japanese press likes to present this movie without seeing it as about Japan-bashing," he said. "To me, this movie is a love letter to people in Japan."
"Cove" Movie Assails Dolphin Hunt, Gets Oscar Boost
Patrick Walters, National Geographic magazine 8 Mar 10;
With The Cove movie winning the 2010 Oscar for best documentary Sunday night, residents of the fishing village made famous in the movie are voicing their disappointment, calling the film inaccurate and intolerant of other cultures.
The Cove's makers and distributors counter that the movie won the Oscar because it was well made and worth seeing, and that the Oscar nod highlights people's concerns about the controversial practice at the heart of the movie—dolphin hunting.
Every year on the first of September, at a cove in a small town called Taiji on the southeast coast of Japan's Honshu Island, a new fishing season begins: the dolphin season.
Twenty-six fishermen in 13 boats corral a few dozen dolphins into the small cove, where they kill the animals by stabbing them repeatedly with long harpoons and knives. The 50-square-foot (4.6-square-meter) inlet turns crimson, as if filled only with blood.
In the course of a six-month season, fishermen kill roughly 2,000 dolphins and sell the meat to local supermarkets for about U.S. $500 a dolphin. The fishermen supplement their income by taking about a hundred dolphins alive and selling them for tens of thousands of dollars each to aquariums in Japan, China, South Korea, Iran, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
Cove Movie Reopened Wounds
International media have not been kind to Taiji in the past, and the Oscar-winning movie The Cove, which was released nationwide in the United States in August, has reopened old wounds. The movie follows an international team of photographers, divers, and activists on their mission to document the dolphin hunt, facing opposition from Taiji town officials, police, and fishermen.
The activists are led by Ric O'Barry, who trained the bottlenose dolphins featured in the popular 1960s TV series Flipper. After the show ended in 1967, O'Barry became one of the world's most radical activists against keeping dolphins in captivity. For the past several years he's been trying to stop the hunt in Taiji, one of Japan's iconic whaling towns.
Others have also been outspoken: Blue Voice, a collaboration between filmmaker Hardy Jones and actor Ted Danson, has opposed the Taiji hunt for years. So has a Japanese environmental organization, Elsa Nature Conservancy. Heroes star Hayden Panettiere protested in the Taiji cove in 2007.
Many scientists are also opposed to the hunt. Since 2005, Hunter College animal behaviorist Diana Reiss—famous for discovering that dolphins can recognize themselves in mirrors—has been collecting signatures from hundreds of scientists around the world for a petition she plans to present to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"This [hunt] is an extreme case of animal cruelty," said Reiss, who receives funding from National Geographic's Committee for Research and Exploration. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)
Reiss, The Cove's filmmakers, and other activists working in Taiji all have a clear mission: Stop this dolphin hunt. But dolphin hunting is a complex issue, and focusing solely on ending it leaves some important questions unanswered: How widespread is dolphin hunting? When and why did it start, and why does it persist? And what effect, if any, is the hunt having on the health of dolphins globally?
The Cove Movie Captures an Age-Old Local Tradition
People in Japan have hunted dolphins and their larger cetacean relatives, whales, for hundreds if not thousands of years. Glacial melting made Japan an island chain 10,000 years ago, and as its population grew, the country became highly dependent on the sea.
"Pretty much any edible sea creature has been exploited for food," said Harvard University anthropologist and Japanese fishing-culture expert Theodore Bestor. Whales and dolphins became ingrained in Japanese food, culture, and religion. The animals were the subjects of celebrations, rituals, and art. Ancient tombs and memorials for whales and dolphins can be found across the country.
Unlike whaling—which became a large-scale commercial industry in the 20th century, before a 1986 international moratorium—dolphin hunting has always been primarily a local activity, said University of Oslo anthropologist Arne Kalland. Traditionally dolphin hunts have been isolated to a handful of small fishing towns, where dolphin meat is well liked.
Ironically, a Japanese town where dolphin wasn't popular became the first to draw international attention to drive hunting, the practice of corralling the dolphins into a cove. In the late 1970s fishermen in Iki, a small town on an island west of Taiji, had come to believe that dolphins were depleting stocks of a popular fish called yellowtail, though there's no data to suggest dolphins have ever significantly reduced yellowtail stocks. In April 1979 National Geographic magazine published a picture of Iki's bloody cove, showing bottlenose dolphins strewn on the beach.
The following year Hardy Jones visited Iki and filmed the slaughter. He sent his tape to CBS, and after the network ran the footage, more than 200 reporters from all over the world showed up to cover the story. Iki hasn't had a dolphin hunt since.
By the mid-1980s, Jones said, most other towns with drive hunts also gave up the practice. Some stopped because they ran out of dolphins, which were overfished, scared off, or both—but most were driven to quit by all the negative attention. The drive hunts weren't worth the trouble.
Still, Taiji refused to stop: In 1980, fishermen killed 11,017 dolphins in drive hunts.
Dolphin Hunts Like Those in The Cove Persist Outside Japan
Over the past 25 years, Taiji (population 3,600) has become a flashpoint for animal-rights activists. But it's not the only place where fishermen kill dolphins. It's not even the only place with a blood-drenched cove.
Every year, fishermen in the Faroe Islands, an autonomous province of Denmark, also corral and kill hundreds of dolphins in small coves. Just as in Taiji, the water runs red.
So why hasn't the Faroese hunt attracted the same kind of negative international attention? For starters, it's only half the size of Taiji's and sometimes smaller. In addition, the fishermen kill pilot whales, which are technically dolphins but aren't as recognizable as their bottlenose cousins. The hunt is also less commercial. The meat is divided evenly among local families instead of being sold to supermarkets, and no animals are sold to aquariums.
What's more, the Faroe Islands respect a worldwide commercial whaling ban, though Denmark wants it lifted. So does Japan, and Tokyo's outspoken opposition to the ban has made Japan a lightning rod for anti-whaling activists—and, by extension, dolphin activists.
Even within Japan, the Taiji hunt is small compared to one that happens in the north, where harpooners kill more than 10,000 Dall's porpoises every year for food—five times the recent annual take in Taiji. But because the hunt happens out at sea, it's hard to photograph and has received far less attention than Taiji's bloody cove.
Dolphin hunts also take place at a small subsistence level in the Caribbean and the Arctic. Fishermen kill dolphins frequently in Peru—where it's illegal—but data on how many are killed is hard to come by.
Solomon Islands Hunt "Completely Unsustainable"
In the Solomon Islands, dolphins are regularly killed for their meat and their teeth, which are used decoratively. As in Taiji, fishermen sell a small number of dolphins to aquariums.
The Solomon Islands hunt is one of the smallest in the world—less than a hundred are killed every year, and about a dozen are sold into captivity—but it presents an urgent problem for conservationists since the local dolphin population may number only in the hundreds.
"It's completely unsustainable," said Natural Resources Defense Council staff attorney Taryn Kiekow. Former Flipper trainer Ric O'Barry and the Earth Island Institute have lobbied officials in the Solomon Islands to end the hunt.
Globally, most dolphin populations are safe. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, there are likely more than six million dolphins worldwide. A few species are at risk of extinction, but most number in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
"Anybody who tells you these animals are going to go extinct because of these hunts, there's no data to support that," said NRDC marine mammal scientist Liz Alter. Still, she cautions that it's possible that the Dall's porpoise hunt in Japan may harm subpopulations of that animal, which numbers more than a million worldwide.
One Critic: "We Never Say 'Don't Eat a Cheeseburger'"
Shigeki Takaya, assistant director of the Far Seas Fisheries Division of Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries in Tokyo, which oversees dolphin hunting, said he hasn't seen The Cove movie yet—just the trailer. But Takaya knows what the filmmakers want, and he says they should give up.
"What difference is there between a cow, a pig, and a dolphin?" he said. "There's no difference. There is a market for dolphin in Japan. It's not a major market, but it's a market. Dolphin is a resource, and people have to respect each other's cultures. In other countries they eat cow. But we never say to Americans, 'Don't eat a cheeseburger.' We never, ever say that."
Hunter College's Reiss counters that the Taiji hunt must stop simply because it's inhumane. Dolphins are extremely intelligent creatures that experience pain and suffering, she emphasizes. She has listened to underwater recordings from the Taiji drive hunt and says the dolphins issue sophisticated distress calls.
"Science has got to transcend cultural borders," she said.
The Switzerland-based World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) has forbidden its members from taking dolphins from the Taiji hunt. The Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums is a WAZA member, but most Japanese aquariums don't belong to the national association.
WAZA director Gerald Dick has visited several Japanese aquarium directors and said it's hard to convince them to stop buying dolphins from Taiji when doing so costs so much less than breeding them in captivity.
"They don't regard [the hunt] as particularly cruel," he said. "They've been doing it for years."
The makers of The Cove movie argue that if Japanese aquarium-goers knew where the aquariums were getting their dolphins, people might stop visiting. The Taiji drive hunt is not widely publicized in Japan, the filmmakers say, but they are seeking a Japanese distributor for the documentary.
Could Mercury Fears End The Cove Hunts?
Like most forms of fishing, dolphin hunting isn't regulated by any international organization.
The International Whaling Commission has for years debated whether it should limit the hunting of small cetaceans like dolphins, but it's been deadlocked. The commission was created in 1946 to control the market for whale oil and later took on the duty of protecting whales from being hunted to extinction. But global dolphin populations are healthy.
In the end, it might be Japanese consumers who stop the Taiji hunt. Activists, scientists, and the Japanese press have documented high levels of mercury contamination in Japan's dolphins. The Cove features Oregon State University marine biologist Scott Baker, a past National Geographic Society grantee who tested Japanese striped dolphin meat and reported in 2005 it had nearly a hundred times the amount of mercury permitted by Japanese regulations.
But mercury poisoning doesn't show its effects immediately, and although the Japanese government has warned pregnant women to limit their consumption of dolphin meat, it would probably take awhile for people to give up completely a food tied so closely to their history and culture.
So far, Japan—home to the world's largest dolphin hunt—has done nothing to suggest it will stop this age-old practice.
Felicity Thompson, Reuters 8 Mar 10;
FOBO, Sierra Leone (Reuters) - Salt is precious in poverty-stricken coastal West Africa, but conservation experts say efforts to extract it are laying waste to mangrove swamps, causing erosion and ravaging fish stocks.
In Sierra Leone, one of Africa's poorest nations still recovering from a 1991-2002 civil war, lawmakers are preparing a bill to join a seven-nation charter to protect the region's mangrove forests.
Conservation group Wetlands International says the initiative is essential for West Africa to save the 800,000 hectares (2 million acres) of mangrove swamps it has left, less than a third of the 3 million hectares it started with.
The mangroves are falling prey to the artisanal salt industry because they are most readily available source of wood for fires used to boil up seawater and salt dust -- the preferred method of making salt.
Environmental groups are trying to encourage salt producers to use other methods, including solar drying, to reduce the strain on mangroves.
"If the mangroves disappear, fishing will be in crisis," said Wetlands' West Africa coordinator Richard Dacosta. "The saltwater tide will invade river estuaries and coastal areas. Local communities on the coast will have to move."
The region's mangrove forests also suck up thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide, and so could be a way for West Africa to get a foothold in the $136 billion carbon market.
"Mangroves sequester large amounts of carbon and so reduce greenhouse gas emissions," Dacosta said.
"NO WOOD LEFT"
Mangroves swamps are the amongst the most diverse ecosystems on earth, scientists say. A barrier between the land and sea, they are the nurseries of the ocean, where many species of fish and shrimps breed and their young thrive. Birds roost, snakes seek out prey, monkeys scavenge in them.
They are also a buffer against coastal erosion in a region where much of the population lives in low-lying areas.
On the outskirts of the village of Fobo, 50km (30 miles) south of Freetown, a crab scuttles across mud in the mangrove forest while oysters cling to its roots. Vast areas have already been cleared to make way for rice fields in the nutrient-rich soil.
But the local salt industry is by far the biggest threat.
For generations, villagers have scraped "salt dust" from the soil, added seawater, and boiled it over wood stoves.
Marie Kano, head of the salt producers association, said many of the mangrove trees used for fuel have already gone.
"We don't have any wood left now," she said. "My children, sister and father ... all used to cook salt. But because there is no wood anymore, they all left and went to town."
Access to wood has become a luxury for those with canoes. A small canoe-full of wood costs up to 70,000 leones ($17.50) and is enough to make 10kg (22 lbs) of salt, worth about the same amount of money. Salt panners are barely breaking even.
The West African Mangrove Initiative aims to help nations coordinate efforts to rehabilitate the mangroves, said Mohamed Mansaray of Sierra Leone's forestry department, by replanting trees and providing alternatives to wood.
Following a pilot project in neighboring Guinea, the initiative plans to introduce solar powered salt extractors.
Pouring saltwater onto a flat, open tarpaulin to about 1 cm deep, the salt crystals are then left to dry out in the sun.
"I would definitely use this method, as it doesn't use costly wood," said Kano, after seeing a demonstration.
(Writing by Tim Cocks; editing by Richard Valdmanis)
Aloysius Bhui, PlanetArk 8 Mar 10;
A move by Unilever to stop buying palm oil from Indonesia's top supplier Sinar Mas and to blacklist another supplier PT Duta Palma was "unfair," Indonesian Agriculture Minister Suswono said on Friday.
Green campaigners and consumers have turned up the heat on European firms such as Unilever, saying these companies' palm oil suppliers are responsible for deforestation and peatland clearence that can speed up climate change.
"If there is a dispute we should ask an independent to judge objectively what was the weakness. A unilateral decision by Unilever I think is unfair," the minister told reporters.
Unilever, the world's top palm oil buyer, blacklisted Duta Palma last month, after previously halting a $33 million supply contract with Sinar Mas unit PT SMART.
"We have to prove if the accusations are right so going forward there will not be misunderstanding," added Suswono, who uses one name like many Indonesians.
The move by Unilever, and other campaigns by NGOs, has prompted palm planters in Indonesia and Malaysia to set up a forum to cooperate in promoting sustainable practices and to be united in the face of pressures from buyers.
"There have been accusations that palm oil expansion has caused deforestation, destroyed biodiversity, the natural home of orangutan and peat land," said a joint statement between Indonesian and Malaysia palm oil groups.
The palm oil industry, which has come under fire from green groups and Western consumers, set up the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2004 to develop an ethical certification system that includes commitments to preserve rainforests and wildlife.
However, there have been rifts between members with consumer giant Unilever stopping buying crude palm oil from the two Indonesian producers, both of which are fellow members of RSPO.
"Without Indonesia and Malaysia, RSPO could collapse," said Datuk Mohammad Saleh, chairman of the Malaysian Palm Oil Association (MPOA).
(Additional reporting by Yayat Supriatna; Editing by Ed Davies)
Yahoo News 9 Mar 10;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Wealthy and developing nations should be able to seal an agreement this year on deforestation, unlocking a key part of the next treaty on global warming, Indonesian negotiators said Monday.
At December's Copenhagen climate summit, six nations pledged a total of 3.5 billion dollars to help developing countries fight the loss of forests, seen as a leading cause of global warming along with industrial pollution.
Basah Hernowo, a senior official in Indonesia's forestry ministry, said he hoped that a system would be finalized by the next climate summit at the end of this year in Mexico.
"I think everybody sees a convergence compared with other sectors. So we are optimistic. Hopefully in Mexico we can complete it," Hernowo told AFP on a visit to Washington.
The Copenhagen summit, attended by more than 120 leaders, ended with a vague agreement that saved the talks from collapse but triggered criticism from all sides.
Wandojo Siswanto, Indonesia's climate negotiator handling forest issues, said that key players in Copenhagen agreed on deforestation but lacked details.
"We were not far away from each other. We were already there, but we didn't want to push more otherwise it would break," Siswanto said.
"Many people would just say okay, there's the money. But we don't know how to access it or how to distribute it," he said.
Siswanto and Hernowo are holding talks this week in Washington to flesh out the plan. They said Indonesia also recently invited officials from Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo to coordinate strategy on tropical forests.
Due to forest destruction, Indonesia is the world's third largest carbon emitter after the United States and China, with Brazil coming fourth.
Brazil signed an agreement last week with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on US support for the Amazon forests. But Brazil and Indonesia insist that wealthy nations also set ambitious targets to lower their own emissions.
Indonesia -- the host of a major 2007 climate conference in Bali -- has been among the most ambitious developing nations, saying it will curb emissions by 26 percent by 2020 compared with the level if it did nothing.
In one key project, Indonesia plans to protect at least 800,000 hectares (3,000 square miles) of its Berau forest in Borneo by 2015.
Pete Harrison, Reuters 8 Mar 10;
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Four environmental groups have sued the European Union's executive for withholding documents they say will add to a growing dossier of evidence that biofuels harm the environment and push up food prices.
The lawsuit, lodged with the EU's General Court, the bloc's second highest court, alleges several violations of European laws on transparency and democracy.
The suit was filed on Monday by ClientEarth, Transport & Environment, the European Environmental Bureau, and BirdLife International.
"That the Commission should choose to deny our rights on such a critical issue as the science underpinning our climate policies is astounding," said Tim Grabiel, staff attorney at ClientEarth.
At stake is the EU's commitment to its goal of getting a tenth of its road fuels from renewable sources such as biofuels by 2020 -- a target that has spawned an EU industry worth around 5 billion euros ($6.8 billion) a year and a big market for imports from Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia.
The four groups first sought access to the documents on October 15, and said the European Commission missed a legal deadline to release them under freedom of information laws on February 9. Some reports have been released, but not all.
A similar request by Reuters has led to the release of 118 reports and e-mails, which reveal worries within the Commission that the EU set its 10 percent goal before fully assessing the impact of biofuel targets.
MAKING MATTERS WORSE
Some of the documents raise the prospect of higher EU farm incomes, but cite concerns that plant-based biofuels could create food shortages for the world's poorest.
Others suggest biofuels can drive up demand for land, encouraging farmers in tropical areas to expand cropland into sensitive areas such as wetlands and rainforests -- which would have a detrimental environmental impact.
Burning forests can release so much CO2 as to cancel out any benefits sought from the biofuels.
One leaked email says that taking account of biofuels' full carbon footprint could "kill" their role in the EU.
"Current EU biofuels policy guarantees that Europe will use lots of biofuels, but it doesn't guarantee reductions in greenhouse gas emissions -- in fact it seems likely it will make things worse," said Nusa Urbancic of transport campaign group T&E.
"The first step to fixing this broken policy must be full transparency about what the true impacts are," she said.
The Commission was not immediately available to comment, but has previously said it is working very seriously to understand the indirect impacts of biofuels.
The case is not the Commission's only wrangle with environment groups over access to environmental documents.
The EU's own watchdog, ombudsman P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, recently criticized the Commission for not releasing three letters that German car company Porsche had sent to former industry commissioner Guenther Verheugen.
The case originated with a complaint from Friends of the Earth Europe, which was trying to get hold of the documents as part of the debate over legislation to curb carbon emissions from cars.
(Reporting by Pete Harrison; Editing by Jon Boyle)
Andrea Thompson, livescience.com Yahoo News 8 Mar 10;
The United States and other developed countries are effectively "outsourcing" their greenhouse gas pollution to developing countries. One-third of carbon dioxide emissions associated with the goods and services consumed in First World countries is actually being emitted outside the borders of those nations, mostly in the developing world, a new study finds.
The study, detailed in the March 8 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, marks the first look at the "importing" and "exporting" of greenhouse gas emissions and could provide a useful means of surmounting stumbling blocks to international agreements on climate change, the authors of the study say.
Growth in carbon dioxide emissions accelerated over the last decade, much of which has been attributed to the explosion of industry in developing countries, particularly India and China, and the use of less clean technologies in those places as compared to much of the First World.
But this picture of greenhouse gas emissions growth isn't as straightforward as it might appear, Carnegie Institution scientists Ken Caldeira and Steven Davis say, because a good chunk of those developing-country emissions come from the production of goods (anything from cars to clothes to rubber and plastic) that are actually consumed in First World countries, such as the United States, Japan and the states of the European Union.
Effectively, this situation results in the importing and exporting of carbon dioxide emissions between countries
To see just how much carbon dioxide was being imported and exported, Davis and Caldeira looked at 2004 global economic data (the most recent year with complete information) from 113 countries, or regions, and 57 sectors of industry.
"Instead of looking at carbon dioxide emissions only in terms of what is released inside our borders, we also looked at the amount of carbon dioxide released during production of the things that we consume," Caldeira said.
Here's what they found:
* In 2004, 23 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions - or 6.8 billion tons (6.2 billion metric tonnes) of carbon dioxide - were traded internationally, mostly exported from emerging markets and imported to developed countries.
* In some wealthy countries, such as Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, the United Kingdom and France, more than 30 percent of emissions from goods and services consumed there were made elsewhere and imported. Net imports per person for many Europeans were equal to more than 4 tons of carbon dioxide in 2004.
* In the United States, 10.8 percent of consumption-based emissions were imported, working out to around 2.4 tons of carbon dioxide per person.
* On the other side of the equation, 22.5 percent of the emissions produced in China in 2004 were exported elsewhere.
* China is the largest exporter of emissions, followed by Russia, the Middle East, South Africa, Ukraine and India.
* The primary importers of emissions are the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy.
While the location of carbon dioxide makes no difference to the global climate system, the findings could help to answer the question of who is responsible for lowering emissions to combat climate change.
Many developing countries, including China and India, have resisted global agreements on reducing emissions on the grounds that First World countries got to where they are through two centuries of fossil fuel burning. And forcing developing nations to curtail their industry would prevent them from growing and reaching First World standards, they've argued.
By looking at emissions in terms of imports and exports, and placing the burden of reduction on the people ultimately responsible for them - the first world consumers of all those goods and services made elsewhere - the debate over who should be reducing emissions could be reframed, Caldeira and Davis suggest.
"To the extent that constraints on developing countries' emissions are the major impediment to effective international climate policy, allocating responsibility for some portion of these emissions to final consumers elsewhere may represent an opportunity for compromise," Davis said.
Carbon emissions 'outsourced' to developing countries
Carnegie Institution, EurekAlert 8 Mar 10;
Palo Alto, CA— A new study by scientists at the Carnegie Institution finds that over a third of carbon dioxide emissions associated with consumption of goods and services in many developed countries are actually emitted outside their borders. Some countries, such as Switzerland, "outsource" over half of their carbon dioxide emissions, primarily to developing countries. The study finds that, per person, about 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide are consumed in the U.S. but produced somewhere else. For Europeans, the figure can exceed four tons per person. Most of these emissions are outsourced to developing countries, especially China.
"Instead of looking at carbon dioxide emissions only in terms of what is released inside our borders, we also looked at the amount of carbon dioxide released during the production of the things that we consume," says co-author Ken Caldeira, a researcher in the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology.
Caldeira and lead author Steven Davis, also at Carnegie, used published trade data from 2004 to create a global model of the flow of products across 57 industry sectors and 113 countries or regions. By allocating carbon emissions to particular products and sources, the researchers were able to calculate the net emissions "imported" or "exported" by specific countries.
"Just like the electricity that you use in your home probably causes CO2 emissions at a coal-burning power plant somewhere else, we found that the products imported by the developed countries of western Europe, Japan, and the United States cause substantial emissions in other countries, especially China," says Davis. "On the flip side, nearly a quarter of the emissions produced in China are ultimately exported."
Over a third of the carbon dioxide emissions linked to good and services consumed in many European countries actually occurred elsewhere, the researchers found. In Switzerland and several other small countries, outsourced emissions exceeded the amount of carbon dioxide emitted within national borders.
The United States is both a major importer and a major exporter of emissions embodied in trade. The net result is that the U.S. outsources about 11% of total consumption-based emissions, primarily to the developing world.
The researchers point out that regional climate policy needs to take into account emissions embodied in trade, not just domestic emissions.
"Our analysis of the carbon dioxide emissions associated with consumption in each country just states the facts," says Caldeira. "This could be taken into consideration when developing emissions targets for these countries, but that's a decision for policy-makers. One implication of emissions outsourcing is that a lot of the consumer products that we think of as being relatively carbon-free may in fact be associated with significant carbon dioxide emissions."
"Where CO2 emissions occur doesn't matter to the climate system," adds Davis. "Effective policy must have global scope. To the extent that constraints on developing countries' emissions are the major impediment to effective international climate policy, allocating responsibility for some portion of these emissions to final consumers elsewhere may represent an opportunity for compromise."
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The report is published online in the March 1, 2010 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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