A new mangrove record: Ceriops zippeliana
from wild shores of singapore
The Trees are on Fire and she's fixing her hair: Tampines Wildfire
from You run, we GEOG
裕华园的冠斑犀鸟 Oriental Pied Hornbill in Chinese garden
from PurpleMangrove
Glossy Swiftlet steals nest materials from Baya Weaver II
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Leap of faith
from The annotated budak
Karen Zainal & Zeslene Mao, Straits Times 18 Mar 10;
BRITISH children aged above eight can recognise more Pokemon characters than local wildlife, a 2002 British study found.
And the average American child can identify over 1,000 corporate logos, but only a handful can name more than a few of the plants or birds in their neighbourhoods, said another essay by writer Pamela Michael.
So how would young Singaporeans fare? While there has been no study either way, Raffles Institution (RI) principal Lim Lai Cheng thinks they would be no different. She feels Singaporean youngsters are just as disconnected from their communities.
'When we are tired, we go to the shops for retail therapy. I think as Singaporeans growing up in an urban setting, this is what we have become.'
That is why 150 participants, mostly educators from various primary and secondary schools as well as tertiary institutions, gathered yesterday for the inaugural Place-Based Education (PBE) Seminar, organised by RI, to look at ways in which students can learn from the environment around them.
PBE is a learning pedagogy - first introduced in the United States - that emphasises learning through real-world experiences, with the local community and environment as a starting point.
It is now a feature of some schools. For instance, Pei Hwa Secondary students have designed a heritage trail where they serve as tour guides, taking primary school pupils around the Sengkang neighbourhood.
The Jalan Kayu Heritage Trail, incorporating nature, food, history and even mathematics, is an avenue for inculcating in the younger generation an appreciation of the community near their school.
Also aimed at engaging students with their surroundings is the St Andrew's River Project, by St Andrew's Secondary School, a living lesson about riverine ecosystems and water quality.
Ms Grace Fu, Senior Minister of State for Education and National Development, who opened the seminar, commended these schools for their initiatives. She said: 'Because of the rich experiences and interactivity these projects offer, students have developed a greater interest in their environment and community, in addition to becoming more enthusiastic in their studies.'
Educators accept that the idea of learning outside the classroom is not new, but RI hopes to convince teachers that 'it should be a pedagogy, and not just a one-off event', said Mrs Lim.
'We are proposing a schoolwide approach,' she added.
Mr Yap Wai Meng, head of department of humanities at Xinmin Secondary School, felt that PBE could be a key to producing more well-rounded students.
'What struck me at today's seminar was that PBE connects with the senses. If academic and non-academic departments can cooperate, it will allow students to develop in a holistic manner.'
Place-based education to get students motivated, caring & rooted
Jeremy Koh & Sharon See Channel NewsAsia 17 Mar 10;
SINGAPORE : Getting Singaporeans to be caring, motivated and rooted to their country is one objective set out by educators at the inaugural Place-based Education Seminar held at Raffles Institution on Wednesday morning.
Place-based education is way of teaching that emphasises hands-on and real-world learning experiences.
Through this method, educators hope to open opportunities for students to connect with one another, their school and community through deep, meaningful engagements and projects.
Senior Minister of State for Education and National Development Grace Fu said genuine growth and learning are only possible by connecting school activity with everyday experiences.
She said: "With its aim to establish the connections between youth, the school and the community, the pedagogy not only enables the delivery of the academic curriculum, it also facilitates holistic student development.
"It inculcates in our students a sense of belonging to the community and nation. Most importantly, it can make learning fun and effective."
- CNA/al
Sharon See Channel NewsAsia 17 Mar 10;
SINGAPORE: Make the switch to liquid and powdered eggs is what Singapore's food watchdog is trying to persuade consumers to do.
The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) is doing this through a public education programme.
It roped in a famous chef Pung Lu Tin to cook up creative dishes to show that liquid and powdered eggs taste just as good as shell eggs.
Over the next four weeks, AVA will carry out cooking and sampling sessions at supermarkets.
Samples of liquid and powdered eggs will also be given to consumers so they can try these products at home.
Liquid and powdered eggs are not catching on fast enough and account for less than one per cent of egg consumption in Singapore.
They were introduced here six years ago and are used mainly by the food industry.
Singapore consumes about four million eggs a day and more than three-quarters of eggs are imported from Malaysia.
Senior Minister of State for National Development Grace Fu explains why it makes sense to try different types of eggs.
She said: “It is important for us to have resilience in our food supply. If we over-rely on a single source for eggs, we will be vulnerable to outbreak of diseases. We want to create alternatives so that we have many supplies that could help us build up our food resilience.” -CNA/vm
Care for liquid or dry eggs?
AVA hatches ways to get Singaporeans to try alternative egg sources
Jessica Lim, Straits Times 18 Mar 10;
Eggs in liquid form being packed at a factory. Liquid eggs are often the main source of scrambled eggs at fast-food restaurants and found in products like egg noodles, cakes and ice-cream. -- ST PHOTO: DESMOND LIM
SINGAPOREANS love their eggs, consuming four million daily. But not so when the eggs come in powder or liquid form - even though they may have a longer shelf life and are safer.
It is a notion that the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) is hoping to change as it embarks on its second drive in six years to get Singaporeans to warm up to alternative sources of eggs.
Moving away from the shell variety is vital to Singapore's goal of ensuring diversity in food sources, said the AVA.
But a survey of 601 consumers conducted by the AVA last year found that only a third of the respondents knew of these egg alternatives.
This, despite the fact that liquid eggs are often the main source of scrambled eggs at fast-food restaurants and are in everyday products such as egg noodles, cakes and ice-cream.
Liquid and powdered eggs are also made from fresh eggs and are 'safer' because they undergo a pasteurisation process, which kills bacteria and possible virus particles. They also have a longer shelf life.
Yet only about 40,000 eggs are consumed or used in liquid or powdered form daily - mostly by restaurants and manufacturers - making up less than 1 per cent of the four million eggs consumed here.
Regular eggs are mostly imported, with Malaysia accounting for 77 per cent, while a small proportion comes from countries like New Zealand. The rest are supplied by local farms.
'Retailers are not selling these products because of lack of demand from consumers, and consumers are not buying them because of a lack of awareness,' said AVA spokesman Goh Shih Yong.
The government agency first hatched its alternative egg drive - aimed at industry players like food manufacturers - in 2004, just after the bird flu scare in Malaysia led to curtailed imports, a five-fold increase in prices here and a shortage at supermarkets.
But waiting till disaster strikes before securing alternative supplies is often too late.
In a speech at the launch of the campaign yesterday at the Temasek Culinary Academy, Ms Grace Fu, Senior Minister of State for National Development and Education, said the bird flu pandemic highlighted the nation's vulnerability to sudden supply disruptions and the need for greater food supply resilience. 'We should not take this constant egg supply for granted,' she said.
The campaign, aimed at consumers, will start on Saturday. It will run for at least six months and include cooking demonstrations at supermarkets as well as distribution of sample packs and information booklets at supermarket chains.
The main drawback, however, is that liquid eggs cost about 25 per cent more than whole eggs, while the powdered form can cost twice as much.
But to consumers like IT manager Susan Lim, 53, it is the taste that matters.
'One is egg from a shell, the other is in powder form or out of a packet. How can it taste the same?' said the mother of two, though she agreed to try it.
Nutritionist Louisa Zhang noted that nutritionally there is no difference, and may just be a matter of preparation. Also, taste-wise, not many people can tell apart one from the other.
Supermarkets chains like NTUC FairPrice and Sheng Siong are working closely with the AVA and suppliers to introduce the products to consumers.
'It will be on Sheng Siong's shelves in two or three months if demand is good,' said the supermarket's managing director Lim Hock Chee. 'It might take some time for consumers to catch on, but it is important for us as well that we have alternatives on our shelves in times of shortage.'
Different types of eggs
REGULAR EGGS
# Unit price: About 15 cents
# Shelf life: Three weeks
# Imported from: Mostly Malaysia - and 1 per cent from Japan, New Zealand, the United States and Australia.
# Journey to the market: They are either trucked in from Malaysia or shipped from the other countries, then packed and transported to stores.
LIQUID EGGS
# Unit price: About 20 cents
# Shelf life: Three to 12 weeks
# Imported from: Australia, Japan, China, France and the US.
# Journey to the market: Regular eggs are washed, broken, mixed in tanks, pasteurised, packed and stored at below-freezing temperatures.
POWDERED EGGS
# Unit price: About 30 cents
# Shelf life: Up to a year
# Imported from: Belgium, the US, China, France and Denmark.
# Journey to the market: Regular eggs are washed, broken, mixed in tanks and pasteurised. The mixture is then spray-dried for three minutes at 170 deg C, cooled and packaged.
More demolition waste could potentially be used in erecting structures
Tan Hui Yee, Straits Times 18 Mar 10;
A STEEL mesh sunshaded box of a building in the dusty industrial estate of Kranji Crescent has been hosting a steady stream of visitors from China, Mongolia, Israel and France over the past four months.
Mostly engineers, contractors and academics, they come to gawk, snap pictures and peer at the high-tech gadgets at the Eco-Green Building.
The three-storey property built by civil engineering and building material company Samwoh Corporation boasts an entire level with fully recycled aggregate - or loose granite - in its concrete structure. It is the first such building in South-east Asia.
The visitors are keen to find out what kind of research was done on the material and how the building was constructed.
Concrete is made from granite aggregate, sand, cement, and water. While cement itself cannot be recycled, there has been increasing interest in recycling aggregate because of the environmental costs of mining the material and shrinking landfill space.
Currently, recycled aggregate is mainly used to line the bottom of roads and cast into road kerbs, rather than used in building structures, due to concerns about its strength.
To date, recycled aggregate has been used in relatively small quantities in landmark projects like Melbourne's Council House 2, a 10-storey office block; D�bendorf's Forum Chriesbach, the office of the Swiss aquatic research institute Eawag; and Singapore's 11 Tampines Concourse, an office building here by City Developments.
But it is not known if anyone has tried building an entire floor, including all its load-bearing structures, with concrete containing fully recycled aggregate. Samwoh, the Enterprise 50 winner last year, is among the first - if not the first - in the world to have done so.
Sustainable building expert Holger Wallbaum from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, when contacted by The Straits Times, said: 'This initiative is quite important to demonstrate the feasibility of such an approach, not only on the national level but also on the global scale as a lighthouse project.'
Indeed, the building is now being used by Samwoh to test and showcase new construction recycling technology. Fibre optic sensors embedded in its recycled concrete columns transmit live data about how much the material is being compressed from the weight of the building. It can show - in real time - whether the structure is functioning or failing.
But the latter is far from Samwoh's mind, which has conducted at least three years of research on this material, says Samwoh's technical director Ho Nyok Yong. The building now houses offices for two of Samwoh's directors, and about 50 staff from its research and development, technical and operations divisions. It also has a construction recycling gallery that is open to the public from 9am to 5pm on weekdays by appointment.
The building, together with its new asphalt recycling plant and concrete production plant, will be officially opened on Monday by Senior Minister of State for National Development Grace Fu.
The venture represents the biggest leap of faith that any building owner here has taken with regards to the use of recycled concrete.
It also gives the beleaguered construction industry something to crow about, after weeks of being slammed for dragging down national productivity statistics and being slow to undertake research and development.
The Building and Construction Authority (BCA) wants demolition waste to go 'upcycle' so that they are used back in buildings rather than low-value material like kerbs. The Ministry of National Development helped fund Samwoh's $4 million project with a $750,000 grant. About 2 million tonnes of construction and demolition waste are generated every year. The BCA estimates that about 1 million tonne of demolition waste - which yields about 600,000 tonnes of recycled aggregate - is recycled.
Samwoh shaved 10 per cent off the cost of concrete by using recycled aggregate in its Eco-Green building. But the bigger draw of recycling aggregate is how it could help Singapore hedge against supply disruptions like the one witnessed in 2007 after Indonesia abruptly banned the export of sand and detained ships carrying granite to Singapore.
Associate Professor Gary Ong from the National University of Singapore's Department of Civil Engineering, says: 'There is big demand for construction material and increasing concern of the environmental impact of quarrying. I can see material prices going only up.'
Concrete facts
# Concrete is the second-most consumed material after water. In 2006, an estimated 21 billion to 31 billion tonnes of concrete were used around the world.
# China and India produce and use over 50 per cent of the world's concrete.
# Countries like the Netherlands and Japan recycle nearly all their waste concrete. In the Netherlands, landfill of concrete waste is banned.
SOURCE: WORLD BUSINESS COUN
Starting small, going big
Straits Times 18 Mar 10;
SAMWOH started small. The first level of its Eco-Green Building was made with concrete containing aggregate - or loose granite - with 30 per cent recycled content.
But emboldened by success, it built the second level with 50 per cent recycled aggregate. Growing in confidence, its top level used 100 per cent recycled aggregate.
Working with the Building and Construction Authority, it went beyond the limits of Singapore's building code, which allows only up to 20 per cent of aggregate in concrete to be replaced with its recycled equivalent.
Samwoh had initially obtained a Ministry of National Development grant of $750,000 and help from Nanyang Technological University to build the $4 million building with 30 per cent recycled aggregate in its concrete. But test results - which came in halfway during construction - showed that it could go further than imagined.
Samwoh's technical director Ho Nyok Yong, who has a doctorate in the efficient use of waste materials in structural concrete, says: 'We wanted to see how far we could go. It's just like being an athlete, you want to see how fast you can run. You want to push yourself to the limit.'
According to sustainable building expert Holger Wallbaum from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, production of cement - which cannot be recycled - is responsible for the bulk of carbon emitted during concrete production.
Latest studies have shown that since a greater amount of cementitious materials need to be added to recycled aggregate to make concrete, using recycled concrete aggregates could result in a higher carbon footprint.
He says: 'That means in some cases, we are facing a trade-off between the protection of natural resources (gravel) and the contribution to global warming.'
Opening of petrochem facilities timely, as global markets recover
Jessica Cheam, Straits Times 18 Mar 10;
LONDON: Energy giant Royal Dutch Shell will officially open its highly anticipated multibillion-dollar petrochemical complex in Pulau Bukom on May 4 - a project almost five years in the making.
Chief executive Peter Voser told The Straits Times that the timing of the opening of the complex - estimated to have cost US$3 billion (S$4.2 billion) - was ideal, given the recent recovery of global markets.
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will be the guest of honour, he said.
Mr Voser shrugged off concerns of a supply overhang with new petrochemical complexes also firing up in Thailand, China and the Middle East.
He said he was confident the market would be able to absorb the plant's output of various widely used chemicals as demand for such products is picking up.
One key competitive advantage of the new Shell Eastern Petrochemicals Complex (SEPC) is its proximity to Shell's Bukom refinery, which is highly integrated into the new complex, said Mr Voser. This will give SEPC the flexibility to use different feedstock as demand changes.
The new complex will be Shell's largest integrated refinery and petrochemical hub globally, employing up to 200 permanent highly skilled workers.
Its annual production capacities include 800,000 tonnes of ethylene and 750,000 tonnes of monoethylene glycol, among others. These are used in a wide range of everyday products.
Looking ahead, Mr Voser said that Shell 'will look forward and see if we can do more'. If further opportunities arise, the company would be 'happy to invest in Singapore'.
Speaking at a media roundtable in London on Tuesday, Mr Voser also said that Asia is a key region in terms of Shell's overall investment strategy.
The firm is working with PetroChina and Qatar Petroleum International to jointly develop a refinery and petrochemical manufacturing complex in China.
On China in particular, the group's chief financial officer Simon Henry said that one key strategy is maximising exposure to the Chinese markets while helping Chinese companies go international and developing business together.
One example is Shell and PetroChina's A$3.3 billion (S$4.2 billion) bid for Australian firm Arrow Energy, he said.
This will help the firms 'develop a gas business together... and in time, deliver more gas back into China,' he said.
But even as it expands in the East, Shell is axing another 1,000 jobs worldwide to make itself leaner.
Mr Voser said when he took over the reins last July, the 'organisation of the company was working against us. Shell had become too complicated, and slower than I'd like'.
He said the cuts would involve down- stream and corporate positions. Countries like Singapore and Malaysia where there are good prospects for growth are unlikely to be affected much by the cuts.
The latest round of cuts brings to 7,000 the number of job losses that will occur between last year and 2012. The move will save the company some US$3 billion in costs in total, estimated Mr Voser.
Shell's company culture 'is being changed as we speak', he added. He has set the tone with a few objectives for employees: competitiveness, performance, accountability, speed and transparency.
'And then you walk the talk. You give accountability to people to drive it.'
Refining capacity has been reduced 18 per cent since 2002 and Shell is in talks over divestments in New Zealand and Europe which could see a further 15 per cent drop in refining capacity.
Although oil companies have been cushioned by production cuts by oil producing nations during the recent recession, Shell has been disadvantaged recently due to higher exposure to refining and natural gas, where margins are hard-wired to the economy, he said.
Many of Shell's projects - in Qatar, North America and the Asia-Pacific region - that devoured cash are also finally going into production, said Mr Voser.
As a result, the company's cash flow is expected to rise 50 per cent by 2012, assuming the oil price is US$60 a barrel, and 80 per cent if it rises to US$80 a barrel.
Mr Voser said the firm expects oil prices to average in the US$50 to US$90 a barrel range for this year, with short-term peaks and troughs.
'We have come a long way, but there is much more to do at Shell, and I am very energised around that.'
Shell, which employs more than 2,400 people here, will mark its 120th anniversary in Singapore next year.
jcheam@sph.com.sg
ON CLIMATE CHANGE
'Shell, in all its projects, has included a price for CO2 in our calculations because we saw this coming. Over time, this will happen. Maybe in a fragmented way, but the long-term direction is very clear.'
Shell chief executive Peter Voser
ON RENEWABLE ENERGY'S GROWTH
'Up to 2050, demand will double and energy supply will double. We believe that a third of energy demand by 2050 will be supplied by alternative energies. That means an enormous growth rate for alternative energies.'
Ravichandran D.J Paul, Bernama 18 Mar 10;
KUALA LUMPUR, March 18 (Bernama) -- The year 2010 is designated as the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB2010) to celebrate life on earth with nations and regions taking their commitment further in conserving their genetic resources.
Closer to home, Asean has declared 2011 as the Asean Biodiversity Year which is timely looking at the region's fast depleting genetic resources due to rapid development, and excessive and inefficient consumption.
Though the Asean region only occupies three percent of the earth's surface, it is the home for 20 percent of all known flora and fauna. The mountains, jungles, rivers, lakes and seas of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam represent among the biggest biodiversity pools in the world.
Asean's rich biodiversity helps to sustain its half billion population and thus it is time the region take stock of its genetic resources and start utilising them in a sustainable manner.
But this is not going to be an easy task as biodiversity has no face and human avarice has no limit. This is where conservationists are seeking more engaging approaches for stakeholders that promise a win-win situation for the owner and user of genetic resources.
BIODIVERSITY MANKIND'S TREASURE TROVE
In seeking a long term solution for preserving biodiversity, Asean should reflect deeply on the third objective of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)that emphasizes on Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS).
During a workshop in Jakarta, prelude to IYB2010, conducted by the Philippine based Asean Centre for Biodiversity and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (SCBD), Suhel Al-Janabi expounded on ABS.
Al-Janabi of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fUr Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) in Germany started by providing some interesting examples of the ABS capacity development initiatives in Africa.
The examples illustrate how traditional know-how on genetic resources not only commercialised but preserved through mutual owner-consumer initiatives.
An interesting example is the gelatin free cereal known as Teff. For more than 5000 years the people of Ethiopia and Eritrea have been planting and consuming Teff that is easy to digest and rich in calcium. Teff is now widely used in the West to make special diet bread.
Thus farmers in Africa are the owners of this genetic resource and West is the consumer of this resource. The West not only has access to the resource but also shares the benefits from the resource with owners say through transfer of technology in cultivation or in capacity building. This in turn not only helps to preserve the genetic resource but also in enhancing them.
There are other similar examples. The San people in Southern Africa consume a succulent cactus - Hoodia Cordonii - indigenous to the region that suppresses hunger and thirst while they went on long hunting trips. Today compounds from the plant are widely used as appetite suppressant in weight loss formulas.
In Malaysia, researchers have isolated a compound from the latex of a tree (Calophyllum lanigerum var.auslrocoriaceum) that is used in treating the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1).
The Chinese, said Al-Janabi have long been using the Artemisia plant that is used today to make anti-malarial drug.
SHARING GENETIC RESOURCES
While the above examples illustrate how important it is for mankind to preserve biodiversity, both providers and genetic resource users play a vital role here.
Valerie Normad of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity noted that while the convention recognises the sovereignty of every state over their genetic resources, fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of their utilization is part of the equation.
Provider and users, she said, should not only consider monetary returns but also the non-monetary benefits - training of local scientist and capacity building, provision of infrastructure support and technologies, manufacturing facilities in the provider country, royalties shared by the provider and user and joint ownership of intellectual property rights.
She added that in meeting the objectives, local laws had to be enabled to complement ABS along with capacity building and technology transfer.
HEREOS OF BIODIVERSITY
Meanwhile, in roping in the participation of people from all walks of life the Asean Centre for Biodiversity is seeking biodiversity advocates - modern day heroes who can bring biodiversity closer to everyone.
The cadre of champions, maybe individuals, corporations or organisations will play the role of ambassadors of goodwill for biodiversity.
The centre seeks direct participation because mankind has the ability to influence the outcome of environmental and sustainable issues.
Their roles will be benchmarked in terms of the contribution to the human wellbeing, poverty reduction and as the basis for achievement of the Millennium Development Goal.
So are you ready to take up the challenge as Asean's ambassador of goodwill for biodiversity?
-- BERNAMA
The Sun Daily 18 Mar 10;
IF you ever sail or ride on a boat along the coastline of Kedah or Penang, chances are you would be able to spot, even from a great distance, huge fishing trawlers lying on the waters, apparently remaining perfectly still.
Do not let the picturesque stillness fool you. Equipped with gigantic nets that can stretch up to hundreds of metres in length, these trawlers are often lined together across vast distances as they sweep the deep seas – raking in everything that comes along their paths.
While this sort of commercial activity using long nets has been going on for years, the situation has become increasingly worrying of late, with the seemingly unregulated and unrestricted manner in which such large-scale fishing operations are carried out.
As it is, more than 60% of the fish fry or spawn in the seas along the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia are being reportedly killed or trapped by these nets, which are also said to contribute to pollution.
The use of nets like the seine net, the apollo net and the push-net, all of which are designed to envelope and trap hundreds of thousands of marine lives at one go, is a source of great alarm for environmentalists and inshore fishermen.
And the concern is by no means unfounded. The use of such fishing devices has been attributed to bring about the extinction of over 30 species of sea creatures along the eastern coastline.
Sounding the panic button, the Consumers’ Association of Penang (CAP) recently called on the Kedah Fisheries Department to take stern action to control the hundreds of trawlers. For the problem does not only affect the aquatic life in the Kedah coast but is also damaging the livelihood of a few thousand inshore fishermen in Kedah, Penang and Perak.
What most people do not realise is that trawlers are not allowed to fish within five-nautical miles from the shoreline, as this zone is legally designated for inshore fishermen who use smaller nets.
In spite of that, trawler operators have been reported to be openly flouting the law even during the day to catch marine animals within the sensitive zone meant only for the inshore fishermen. In the process, countless precious species have been said to be wiped out from our waters by the unscrupulous act that has been going on for decades.
What makes the situation even more frustrating is that the illegal activities have been reported to the relevant authorities, but little action seems to have been taken. The Penang Inshore Fishermen’s Welfare Association has been urging the Fisheries Department for ages to take action against the rampant incursions but to little avail.
Tragically enough, what makes the situation particularly sinister and ironic is that there is a law, in the form of the Fisheries Act 1985, which provides for over-fishing and the related tools that can cause depletion of the seas and oceans to be banned.
The government has also been urged to review the effects of dragnets used by trawlers on marine species along the country’s coastlines.
In December, more than 1,000 inshore fishermen in Balik Pulau complained that they were affected by depleting marine harvests even as the seas become devoid of marine life, especially with the restricted fishing zones being encroached upon by the trawlers.
All this is happening along the very coastline where a prestigious World Fish Centre – whose scientific research is intended to promote preservation of sea species and foster sustainable conditions for marine life-forms to thrive – has had its international headquarters sited on the southeast side of Penang island.
The authorities must take this matter seriously before it turns into a massive environmental crisis.
Himanshu is theSun’s Penang bureau chief.
The Jakarta Post 17 Mar 10;
Large foreign fishing fleets in Indonesian waters, some illegally flying the Indonesian flag, are forcing local traditional fishermen to seek catches in the waters of neighboring countries, a discussion concluded.
Regulations stipulate that local fishermen should make up 70 percent of the crew on an Indonesian-flagged fishing vessel, while foreign vessels violate this by having more foreign crew members.
“Illegal fishing practices and overfishing are seriously depleting fish stocks in Indonesian waters,” Purwanto from the Research Center for Capture Fisheries said Monday. He was speaking at a meeting on developing cooperation between Indonesian and Australian officials.
To minimize illegal fishing practices in Indonesian waters, the Indonesian government in 2002 began beefing up surveillance and law enforcement and has also improved fishery management.
These steps have led to the decline of catch losses in Arafura, Papua and other regions. The catch losses in demersal (organisms living close to the seabed) fishing also dropped from 32.6 percent to 3.3 percent in 2008. Shrimp fishery catch losses have declined more than 10 percent since 2003.
Indonesia and Australia signed an MoU in 1974 giving Indonesian traditional fishermen permission to fish 12 miles off Ashmore Reef, Cartier Islet, Scott Reef, Seringapatam Reef and Browse Islet in Australian waters.
Traditional fishermen are defined as fishermen who have harvest fish and sedentary organisms such as coral in Australian waters using methods that have become tradition over time.
Indonesian traditional fishermen come predominantly from Bajo in North Sulawesi, Makassar in South Sulawesi, Probolinggo in East Java, and Alor in East Nusa Tenggara.
“This definition by method rather than by identity has been misused by some fishermen who are cannot be classified as traditional fishermen,” James Fox from the Australian National University said at the meeting.
Another official said that some Indonesian fishermen breached the agreement by fishing for sedentary organisms in Australian waters.
“They also use nontraditional vessels and equipment. Some even fish for sharks in Australian waters, catch birds and sea turtles, or take their eggs,” he said.
A 2009 meeting in Indonesia discussing ways to prevent violations of the MoU, as well as managing traditional fishermen, suggested the identification and registration of traditional fishermen, the standardization of equipment used in the fishing, and the specific locations allowed for fishing. The meeting also suggested that Indonesia provide navigation and communication systems to help control traditional fishermen.
Fidelis E Satriastanti, Jakarta Globe 17 Mar 10;
With tigers living in ever-closer proximity to humans due to the continued destruction of their forest habitat, the number of reported attacks involving the big cats has risen steadily in recent years.
Last year alone, conflicts between humans and tigers in Sumatra claimed nine lives, with four tigers being slaughtered to help protect villagers. With the Sumatran tiger on the brink of extinction, with only some 300 left in the wild, it is a trend that worries wildlife experts.
“The conflict has escalated because people and tigers can’t live in harmony, meaning that either people have entered the tigers’ territory or the tigers have left their areas and roamed into nearby villages,” said Ligaya Tumbelaka, a veterinarian at Taman Safari Indonesia who monitors Sumatran tiger numbers in the wild.
She said tigers were not man-eaters and would only attack humans for two reasons: because they felt threatened by people trespassing in their territory, or they were too old to hunt for prey and instead wandered into a village in search of food.
Hadi S Alikodra, a wildlife expert at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), said tigers were solitary and nomadic animals, and their movements were not limited by human boundaries.
“Mostly they can be found in peatland areas and national parks, but they also roam outside those areas, which have now been turned into palm oil plantations, industrial forests or even villages,” said Hadi, who is also director of species conservation at WWF Indonesia.
“Tigers have their own home ranges, which unfortunately have in many cases been developed for other uses. So when their home ranges have been taken over by humans, conflicts between them are inevitable.”
Can There Be Peace?
Hadi said he believed human-tiger conflicts would continue to escalate because the country still had few pro-conservation policies to protect the natural habitat of the big cats.
“Our policies still focus on economic benefits,” he said.
“Forests keep being developed in areas that are supposed to be tiger corridors, people keep on building their houses in areas with tiger populations and deforestation continues at a high rate. These tigers are facing pressure from all sides — not to mention from illegal poachers.”
Hadi said if this situation continued, the Sumatran tiger would soon face the same fate as Indonesia’s two other tiger species, the Balinese and Javan tigers, which were driven to extinction in the 1930s and 1980s, respectively.
The Sumatran tiger is one of only five remaining tiger species in the world, and is also the most endangered.
But the Ministry of Forestry’s director general for forest protection and nature conservation said the government had made significant progress in securing the Sumatran tiger population.
Darori said special enclaves designated for tiger populations had been established in six national parks across Sumatra in order to separate the animals from humans.
“So don’t go roaming around there. That’s their area, people should respect that,” he said, citing an incident last week at a national park in Jambi where a tiger attacked a villager. “If you trespass, you will get attacked. Don’t blame it on the tigers.”
The special tiger enclaves at Tesso Nilo, Bukit Barisan Selatan, Way Kambas, Gunung Leuser, Kerinci Seblat and Bukit Tiga Puluh national parks are off-limits to people.
Finding a Way Forward
Ligaya, from Taman Safari, said humans were largely responsible for the Sumatran tigers’ decline, and should now take responsibility to ensure its survival.
“Human interests are important but these tigers should also be given the space to live,” she said.
Hadi said in light of recent tiger attacks, security should be stepped up at national parks in order to ensure tiger habitats were not encroached upon and tigers did not roam into areas settled by humans.
“The central government needs to be more aggressive in approaching local governments to help them, especially in trying to implement best management practices in conservation areas,” he said.
He added that conflict-management measures, such as financial compensation for tiger attacks, should also be brought in to placate villagers and stop them from hunting tigers.
Catherine Hornby, Reuters 17 Mar 10;
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Nestle, the world's biggest food group, said it had stopped buying palm oil from Indonesia's Sinar Mas due to concerns about rainforest destruction, following a similar move by consumer goods firm Unilever.
Nestle's announcement came after Greenpeace released a report on Wednesday which looked into how the company was sourcing palm oil.
Switzerland's Nestle, which uses the edible oil in its food products such as KitKat bars, said it had replaced Sinar Mas with another supplier for further shipments after conducting its own investigations into its palm oil supply chain.
"We will continue to pressure our suppliers to eliminate any sources of palm oil which are related to rainforest destruction and to provide valid guarantees of traceability as quickly as possible," Nestle said in a statement.
It added that it had only bought from Sinar Mas for manufacturing in Indonesia, and no palm oil bought from Sinar Mas had been used by Nestle for manufacturing in any other country.
Environmentalist group Greenpeace highlighted the practices of Nestle's suppliers' and their impact on rainforests, peatlands and the habitat of endangered orangutans in their report on Wednesday.
Anglo-Dutch Unilever, the world's largest user of palm oil, said in December it had suspended purchases from Sinar Mas on similar concerns.
Greenpeace alleges that Sinar Mas, Indonesia's biggest palm oil producer and the second biggest in the world, has been responsible for widespread deforestation and peatland clearance, practices which release vast amounts of carbon dioxide.
Sinar Mas was not immediately available for comment on Wednesday. It has previously denied that its activities are damaging for the environment and in December it invited Unilever to inspect its operations.
Nestle has said it aims to only use palm oil that is certified as sustainable by 2015.
(Reporting by Catherine Hornby; editing by James Jukwey)
Nestle drops Indonesian company after Greenpeace demos
Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo Yahoo News 18 Mar 10;
JAKARTA (AFP) – Indonesian palm oil giant Sinar Mas rejected claims of environmental vandalism Thursday after Nestle, the world's biggest food company, dropped it as a supplier following protests by Greenpeace.
It was the second embarrassing blow to Sinar Mas in three months after Anglo-Dutch company Unilever severed ties with it in response to Greenpeace claims it is destroying rainforests.
Greenpeace activists held protests Wednesday at Nestle?s headquarters and factories in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, linking the company's Kit Kat confectionery to the destruction of orangutan habitats.
"Considering its size and influence, it should be setting an example for the industry and ensuring its palm oil is destruction free," Greenpeace said in a statement.
"Instead, Nestle continues to buy from companies, like Sinar Mas, that are destroying Indonesia?s rainforests and peatlands."
Rampant deforestation in Indonesia makes it one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world and threatens habitats of endangered species like orangutans, tigers and rhinos.
Nestle responded immediately to the protests, dropping Sinar Mas and repeating its commitment to using only Certified Sustainable Palm Oil by 2015, "when sufficient quantities should be available".
"Nestle has replaced the Indonesian company Sinar Mas as a supplier of palm oil with another supplier for further shipments," it said.
"We confirm that Nestle has only bought from Sinar Mas for manufacturing in Indonesia, and no palm oil bought from Sinar Mas has been used by Nestle for manufacturing in any other country."
Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology (SMART) president director Daud Dharsono denied that its palm oil plantations were damaging the environment.
"We are committed to applying responsible land clearing and best practices in our plantations. We've been implementing best practices since the early 1980s," he told AFP.
"We're ready to have a dialogue with Greenpeace to clarify their report. However, we haven't received any official notification from Nestle that it has dropped us as their supplier of palm oil," he added.
Greenpeace Southeast Asia campaigner Bustar Maitar said Nestle must also stop buying Sinar Mas's palmoil from third parties.
"Despite their announcement cancelling their direct orders with Sinar Mas, Nestle will still be using palm oil from Sinar Mas in Kit Kats because they?ll still be getting it from their other suppliers," he said.
"The Greenpeace campaign will continue until Nestle cuts the Sinar Mas group from its supply chain completely."
Indonesia is the world's biggest producer of palm oil, which is used in the manufacture of products including margarine, soups, ice-cream, chocolates and beauty products.
Indonesian officials have said they aim to more than double the country's crude palm oil output to 40 million tonnes by 2020 through increased yields and more plantations.
The plans have been opposed by environmental groups, who say the nation's forests are vital carbon sinks in the fight against climate change and an irreplaceable source of biodiversity.
Of the 45 million tonnes of annual, global crude-palm-oil output, only 2.3 million tonnes has been certified by the palm oil watchgroup Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil as having been produced through sustainable methods.
Of the 2.3 million tonnes, Indonesia accounts for only 400 tonnes.
Bagus BT Saragih, The Jakarta Post 17 Mar 10;
The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has been slow to investigate corruption in the forestry sector, despite it being declared a priority, say officials from Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW).
“The KPK has made tackling graft a priority in four sectors: education, health, mining and forestry. Therefore, we urge them to implement concrete plans rather than just engage in lip service,” Febri Diansyah, a legal researcher from ICW, said Tuesday.
ICW, along with the Sawit Watch and the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), released an estimate of potential state losses from illegal logging, which they said had reached Rp 14.13 trillion (US$1.54 billion).
“The actual state losses, however, may be as high as Rp 30 trillion. Our simple calculation is based only on official data from the Forestry Ministry, which may not reflect the actual condition,” Febri said.
ICW’s calculation was based on the estimated number of logs cut from converted forest areas, multiplied with the average price of timber, which stood at Rp 200,000 per cubic meter, Febri added.
Since 2003, converted forest areas reached 700,000 hectares, while timber potential per hectare reached 100.9 cubic meters, said the NGOs.
Febri said that former forestry minister Malem Sambat Kaban, had once estimated that potential state losses were as high as Rp 30 trillion.
The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and its Indonesian partner, Telapak, said that state losses from illegal logging might have reached Rp 40 trillion per year.
“A higher amount is also possible as potential losses should be calculated not only from the price of timber, but also from the Provision for Forest Resources [PSDH] and the Reforestation Fund [DR],”
Febri said.
The NGOs recorded nine high-profile cases in the forestry sector that they urged the KPK to
investigate.
The cases occurred in Riau, Central Kalimantan, South Sumatra, and North Sumatra. The NGOs claimed the cases might have caused Rp 6.66 trillion in state losses.
Since its establishment in 2003, the KPK has so far completed investigations of three graft cases in
the sector.
The cases included illegal forest conversion in East Kalimantan in 2006, which saw former governor Suwarna Abdul Fatah sent to jail, and illegal logging in Pelelawan regency, Riau, in 2007, which saw
regent Tengku Azmun Jaafar sent to prison.
Joniston Bangkuai, The New Straits Times 17 Mar 10;
RANAU: Just a year after a group of villagers cleared rubbish from a river, several types of fish started breeding again, making their home in a waterway once used as a dumping ground.
Eight years on, Sungai Moroli has healed itself, and is now a tourist destination, drawing locals and foreigners who flock to Kampung Luanti Baru, about 130km from Kota Kinabalu.
Fish like pelian approach visitors who wade into shallow parts of the river, giving them a "massage" by nibbling the skin.
The effort, which is part of the community-driven "tagal" system created to keep the environment pristine, is also providing jobs for 22 villagers.
Through tagal, villagers are only allowed to harvest fish at certain times of the year and only in some parts of the river.
Jeffren Majangki, who is the chairman of the tagal programme, said a portion of income from fees collected from visitors, was used to pay expenses for schoolchildren.
"This river was a rubbish dump. Villagers threw rubbish into it, and motorists travelling along the main road did the same.
"Some even poisoned the river to harvest fish. Although I faced some resistance from villagers when I first came up with the idea of cleaning the river, I never gave up.
"I bought chicken wings and held a barbeque to attract youths to help clean the river and eventually, it was done. Within a year, fish returned to this river," Jeffren said.
He said this when briefing members of the Sabah Environmental Education Network (SEEN) who wanted to see for themselves what the village was doing to preserve nature.
SEEN is made up of 34 members, including government agencies, educational institutions and non-governmental organisations.
Jeffren said villagers have also gained from the homestay programme, jungle trekking and other tourism-related activities linked to a clean river.
"For me, the financial part is secondary. What I am hoping is that visitors find out what we are doing here and will do something to protect rivers and forests.
"We need to leave a clean and healthy environment for our children and their children. We must not destroy nature. If we fail, our children will blame us."
Nibbling fishes lure visitors to revived river
The Star 20 Mar 10;
KOTA KINABALU: After a group of villagers cleared rubbish from a river, several types of fish started breeding in it and made their home in the waterway which was once a dumping ground.
Eight years on, the Moroli River has been revived, and is now an tourist destination drawing locals and foreigners to Kampung Luanti Baru, about 130km from Kota Kinabalu.
Fish like pelian approach visitors walking in the river’s shallow parts, and give them a massage by nibbling on their skin.
The effort, part of the tagal system created to keep the environment pristine, is providing jobs for 22 villagers.
Dry spell may last until May
Florence A. Samy, The Star 18 May 10;
PETALING JAYA: The current weather that has caused rivers and canals in the northern part of Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah to dry up is expected to continue until May, according to the weatherman.
This is because the El Nino phenomenon, which brings about drier than normal weather, is expected to last until then.
The Malaysian Meteorological Department said rain was not expected to fall in Perlis, Penang, Kelantan and Terengganu as well as Sabah over the next week.
In Sabah, the department said Kudat, Sandakan and Tawau divisions were under drought alert.
Chief Minister Datuk Seri Musa Aman had earlier announced that the state might have to carry out water rationing because of dwindling water levels at dams.
Water rationing is already under way in some areas in Negri Sembilan and Johor.
According to the Drainage and Irrigation Department’s (DID) website, three dams are at the alert level.
The Bekok dam in Johor is almost dried up, reportedly having only 0.96% of water storage left. Low water storage volumes were also recorded at Johor’s Machap dam (23.43%) and the Klang Gates dam (47.89%).
DID, however, does not monitor dams in Sabah or Sarawak.
The website also reported dangerously low water levels at several rivers in Perlis, Johor, Kedah and Pahang.
According to the Meteorological Department, the weather in February and March were generally hotter and drier in the northern states of the peninsula and Sabah compared with other months.
“The primary causes of this are the position of the sun, which is directly over the Equator, and low cloud cover.
“The situation has become more severe because of the moderate El Nino phenomenon, which is expected to continue until May.
“The people are advised to conserve water and not carry out open burning,” it said in a statement.
The Meteorological Department said that for the first 10 days of March, 29 out of 34 main meteorological stations recorded zero to 48mm of rain, which was between 0% and 66.3% of the average amount.
It added that rainfall was expected to increase from this week over the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia, with the amount returning to normal from next month.
The department’s Fire Rating System showed that there was a “very high probability” of fires starting in Sabah and the northern part of the peninsula.
The Fire and Rescue Department operations centre yesterday said 81 forest, peat and bush fires were recorded on Tuesday.
In Johor alone, fire-fighters were working round the clock to put out the remaining 147.5ha of the 305ha of land that was on fire.
“There have been a lot of forest, bush, peat and lallang fires of late.
“Some fires in Johor take time to put out as they involve forest reserves which are difficult to access,” an officer said yesterday.
He added that the lack of water sources had also hampered operations.
The Star 18 Mar 10;
PETALING JAYA: Dams, rivers and canals are drying up in Johor and the northern states of Peninsular Malaysia as well as Sabah due to the El Nino phenomenon which brings about less rainfall than usual.
The Malaysian Meteorological Department said the situation is expected to last until next month for the peninsula while Sabah is expected to experience dry weather till May.
Among the worrying developments:
> No rain is expected to fall in Perlis, Penang, Kelantan, Terengganu and Sabah over the next week.
> Kudat, Sandakan and Tawau divisions in Sabah placed under drought alert; water rationing expected to start at any time.
> The department’s Fire Rating System showed a very high probability of fires starting in Sabah and the northern part of the peninsula.
Sabah folk feeling the heat
Ruben Sario, The Star 18 Mar 10;
KOTA KINABALU: Rural communities here have seen their crops wither and are being forced to do their household washing and bathing in rivers that are off-limits for conservation purposes, following the two-month dry spell.
The taps have run dry in villages such as Kampung Babagon in the Penampang district, where water is channelled from hillside streams through a gravity-feed system.
Farmers at the village can only watch helplessly as their crops, such as the renowned honey pineapples and bananas, wither under the relentless sun.
“There is no water in the taps until about 1am, so we have to wait till then to collect water for our cooking and drinking,” said villager Russel Raphael, 22.
For washing and bathing, his family and other residents head to the nearby river where the water, usually about 1m deep, is now only up to ankle height in most places.
“We are not supposed to be washing and bathing here because this is part of the tagal (river conservation) system. But where else can we wash?” asked Russel.
Under the system, villagers are supposed to preserve the river by not fishing or carrying out activities that can harm the waterway or marine life.
Meanwhile, in the interior Nabawan district, schools such as Sekolah Kebangsaan Tatagas have not had piped water for nearly a month.
Nabawan People’s Development Leader Jubilin Kilan said the water from Sungai Panawan was just enough for the town area and government quarters.
He said families in outlying areas had been receiving water from Public Works Department tankers but the supply lasted each family just three days.
“The situation will be critical if there is no rain in the next few weeks,” Jubilin added.
On Tuesday, Chief Minister Datuk Musa Aman ordered rationing in areas facing acute water shortage, amid the dry spell that was expected to persist until April.
Marwaan Macan-Markar, IPS News 17 Mar 10;
BANGKOK, Mar 17, 2010 (IPS) - As the water level in the Mekong River dips to a record 50-year low, a familiar pattern of fault-finding has risen to the surface. China, the regional giant through which parts of South-east Asia’s largest waterway flows through, is again at the receiving end of verbal salvoes from its neighbours.
Environmentalists and sections of the regional media are blaming the Chinese dams being built or operating on the upper reaches of the Mekong for contributing to the dramatic drop in water levels that are affecting communities in Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, the lower Mekong countries.
"Changes to the Mekong River’s daily hydrology and sediment load since the early 1990s have already been linked to the operation of the (Chinese) dam cascade by academics," states the Save the Mekong Coalition, a Bangkok-based network of activists and grassroots groups. "Communities downstream in northern Thailand, Burma and Laos have suffered loss of fish and aquatic plant resources impacting local economies and livelihoods."
Newspapers in Thailand, which are freer and feistier than those in other countries across the region, have been more blunt. "China is fast failing the good-neighbour test in the current Mekong River crisis," argued the English- language daily ‘Bangkok Post’ in a recent editorial. "The trouble is China’s unilateral decision to harness the Mekong with eight hydroelectric dams."
Stung by this latest barrage of criticism, China has taken the unusual step of breaking its silence to mount its own defence, placing the blame for the drop in the Mekong River’s levels to the unusually harsh drought across this region.
As part of this shift in diplomacy to engage with the lower Mekong countries, one of Beijing’s envoys reminded critics that the water from China’s portion of the Mekong, which it calls the Lancang, accounts for less than a fifth of the volume of water in the river.
Therefore, his argument goes, what China does upstream cannot have such a big impact on water levels downstream.
"The average annual runoff volume of the Lancang River at the outbound point (of China) is approximately 64 billion cubic metres, accounting for only 13.5 percent of Mekong’s runoff volume at the (South China) sea outlet," Chen Dehai of the Chinese embassy in Bangkok said at a press conference.
Chen’s defence came days after Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue told Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva during a visit to Bangkok that the upstream dams were not the reason for drop in water levels. "China would not do anything to damage mutual interest with neighbouring countries in the Mekong," Hu was reported to have said, according to the Thai media.
Beijing’s attribution of low water levels to the drought, instead of its dams, has been endorsed by the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an inter- governmental body that manages the river basin. "At this point we have no direct evidence that the drop in water levels is caused by the Chinese dams," said Damian Kean, communications adviser to the MRC.
"There was very low rainfall during the wet season, which ended four weeks earlier than normal, in October," Kean added during a telephone interview from Vientiane, the Lao capital, where the MRC is based. "MRC analysis has concluded that the current dry period and subsequent low water levels in the Mekong Basin were caused by some of the lowest rainfall in the region in over 50 years."
But this does not wash with environmentalists like Carl Middleton, who argue that China’s lack of transparency about the volume of water it lets flow south has fed the suspicion that its dams are making current crisis worse. "If the dams are not contributing to loss of water level in the Mekong, then China should publicly release information of water level flows," he told IPS.
"The Chinese have not disclosed information about the operations of its dams on the Mekong," added Middleton, the Mekong programme coordinator of International Rivers, a U.S.-based environmental lobby. "You need proper information and data to manage a river basin."
Although China does not supply information to the MRC about dry-season water flows, it has, after years of silence, been more forthcoming about hydrological information during the wet season, when there are floods. This followed the first agreement Beijing signed with the MRC in 2002.
China’s reluctance to cooperate with the MRC stems from it being an observer, rather than a member of the body, and therefore not bound by its agreements. Military-ruled Burma, or Myanmar, is the other observer in the commission, which groups Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.
The 4,660-kilometre long Mekong river flows from the Tibetan plateau, through southern China’s Yunnan province, and passes Burma before journeying through the Mekong Basin shared by the four MRC members to empty out into the South China Sea in southern Vietnam. Nearly 80 percent of the water that reaches the basin flows from tributaries in the lower Mekong.
China has already completed four of a cascade of eight dams, with the Xiaowan Dam, whose reservoir began harnessing the Mekong’s waters in October 2009, being described as "the world’s highest arch dam."
But disquiet about the dams and their impact on the Mekong River’s ecosystem and fish catch has been rising since the first of these dams, the Manwan, came on line in 1992. Fishing is the main source of livelihood for the 60 million people living in the Mekong Basin, and the annual income from fisheries in the lower Mekong is between two to three billion U.S. dollars.
The year the Manwan dam began operations also saw a severe drought and drop in the Mekong’s water level, giving rise to the argument local communities and activists have held on to for nearly two decades – that China’s dams are linked to dramatic and erratic dips in the river’s water levels.
"The local communities along the river banks in northern Thailand believe that the change in the water levels began after the Chinese dams," says Montree Chantavong of Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance, a Bangkok-based environmental lobby. "It has impacted their fisheries activity."
Anne Chaon Yahoo News 17 Mar 10;
DOHA (AFP) – From ivory trinkets to live parrots, the Internet has become a virtual supermarket in imperilled species that is hard to track and even harder to crack, say experts.
With a quarter of humanity coming online over the last 15 years, the scale of the problem has caught global wildlife police offguard, according to the 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), meeting through March 25 in Doha.
"Contemporary international law has fallen behind in its consideration of wildlife trade conducted via the Internet," CITES admits.
With few resources of its own, CITES has delegated the task of assessing the scope of illicit e-commerce to non-governmental organisations.
An ambitious, 11-nation investigation carried out by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), released in Doha, has uncovered a flourishing traffic in live animals, including primates, rare reptiles and exotic birds.
It also found thousands of products -- supposed culinary delicacies and health potions to jewellery -- extracted from big cats, rhinos, elephants and bears.
All the contraband came from flora and fauna listed on CITES Appendix I, which bans international commerce.
Specimens and items spotted during a six-week survey in mid-2008 had an advertised value of nearly four million dollars (three million euros).
"Overall, the results show a high volume of wildlife trade conducted via the Internet, with thousands of CITES-listed specimens offered for sale on the Internet every week," according to a report of the probe.
Seventy percent of the trade was based in the United States, with China and Britain each accounting for about eight percent.
Among live species, exotic birds dominated, while ivory was by far the top category among derived products.
"It is rarely whole tusks. Usually is it small items," said Celine Sissler-Bienvenue, IFAW's senior elephant expert.
Grace Ge Gabriel, who heads the organisation's China operations, has seen a boom in online sales of tiger wine, a combination of rice wine and tiger bones that has been typically aged three, six or nine years.
"Online, these ads are mainly targeting the Chinese diaspora," she said.
Likewise potions containing bear bile, used in traditional Chinese medicines to treat ailments ranging from liver disorders to haemorrhoids to hepatitis.
The fluid is extracted over months or years from live bears through a drip tube surgically inserted through the animal's abdomen.
"The Chinese market is saturated, but Canadian and US customs are constantly seizing shipments," Ge Gabriel said.
In some cases, Internet sales may be driving species not yet listed under the Convention toward extinction.
In Doha, CITES officials highlighted the plight of a small cousin of the salamander called Kaiser's spotted newt (Neurergus kaiser), native to Iran, which has submitted a proposal for Appendix I status to be voted next week.
Only 1,000 specimens remain in the wild, experts estimate, but a 2006 Internet survey found several sites advertising the colourful creatures for 300 dollars (220 euros) a piece.
"One Ukrainian company said they had sold more than 200 -- all caught in the wild -- in one year," said Ernie Cooper, an investigator in Canada for an environmental NGO called TRAFFIC.
Most wildlife sales on the Internet are small-scale, the surveys showed. "The large crime syndicates have much better ways to sell their merchandise, even in shops," said Ge Gabriel.
Since 2007, major online auction sites -- including eBay and Chinese giant taobao.com -- have prohibited trade in ivory and live species.
But even as law enforcement has begun to crack down, online vendors have become more wily, obfuscating their wares with descriptions such as "made from the teeth of the world's largest land mammal."
And even if police can trace an offer to a fixed address, products have often been sold within a matter of hours, officials say.
Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Yahoo News 18 Mar 10;
WASHINGTON – The overall number of animals in the Arctic has increased over the past 40 years ago, according to a new international study. But critters who live closest to the North Pole are disappearing.
The report by the United Nations and other groups released Wednesday at a conference in Miami concludes that birds, mammals and fish have increased by about 16 percent since 1970. That's mostly because of decades-old hunting restrictions. The number of geese have about doubled. Marine mammals, such as certain whales, are also rebounding.
The biggest improvement was in the lower regions of the Artic, where the number of animals, especially those that live in the water, are up about 46 percent.
However, scientists aren't celebrating the increase. Species in what is called the High Arctic dropped by a quarter between 1970 and 2004. North American caribou are down about one-third.
"What we're seeing is that there's winners and losers with rapid changes in the Arctic," said Mike Gill, a Canadian government researcher and study co-author. He's chairman of the international Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program, which organized the study.
Study author Louise McRae, a conservation biologist at the Zoological Society of London, said the drop in the High Arctic was most worrisome. That's because that region is the area where global warming occurs fastest and is projected to worsen, so the pressure on species will only increase, she added.
There's not enough evidence yet to blame global warming for the loss of species, but what is happening, is "largely in line with what would be predicted with climate change," Gill said.
The area with the biggest losses also has sea ice shrinking faster than predicted, and species like polar bears and whales called narwhals are dependent on sea ice, the report said.
The study compared how species were doing in the Arctic parts of three oceans. Species living in the Arctic portion of the Pacific Ocean were doing far better than they used to, while those in the northern parts of the Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean were not changed much over time, the report said.
Animals doing better include bowhead whales, white-tailed eagles, and the Atlantic Puffin. Those doing worse include the Atlantic cod, lemmings, the brown bear and the polar bear in the western Hudson Bay. The data on polar bears elsewhere isn't good enough to make any conclusions.
The Arctic Species Trend Index: http://www.asti.is/images/stories/asti%20report.pdf
High Arctic Species on Thin Ice
ScienceDaily 17 Mar 10;
A new assessment of the Arctic's biodiversity reports a 26 per cent decline in species populations in the high Arctic.
Populations of lemmings, caribou and red knot are some of the species that have experienced declines over the past 34 years, according to the first report from The Arctic Species Trend Index (ASTI), which provides crucial information on how the Arctic's ecosystems and wildlife are responding to environmental change.
While some of these declines may be part of a natural cycle, there is concern that pressures such as climate change may be exacerbating natural cyclic declines.
In contrast, population levels of species living in the sub-Arctic and low Arctic are relatively stable and in some cases, increasing. Populations of marine mammals, including bowhead whales found in the low Arctic, may have benefited from the recent tightening of hunting laws. Some fish species have also experienced population increases in response to rising sea temperatures.
"Rapid changes to the Arctic's ecosystems will have consequences for the Arctic that will be felt globally. The Arctic is host to abundant and diverse wildlife populations, many of which migrate annually from all regions of the globe. This region acts as a critical component in the Earth's physical, chemical, and biological regulatory system," says lead-author Louise McRae from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).
Data collected on migratory Arctic shorebirds show that their numbers have also decreased. Further research is now needed to determine whether this is the result of changes in the Arctic or at other stopover sites on their migration.
Louise McRae adds: "Migratory Arctic species such as brent goose, dunlin and turnstone are regular visitors to the UK's shores. We need to sit up and take notice of what's happening in other parts of the world if we want to continue to experience a diversity of wildlife on our own doorstep."
The ASTI includes almost 1,000 datasets on Arctic species population trends, including representation from 35 per cent of all known vertebrate species found in the Arctic.
Co-author Christoph Zöckler from the UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre says: "The establishment of these results comes at a crucial time for finding accurate indicators to monitor global biodiversity as governments strive to meet their targets of reducing biodiversity loss."
The findings of the first ASTI report will be presented at the 'State of the Arctic' Conference in Miami, USA. The full report will be available to download from http://www.asti.is on Wednesday 17th March, 2010.
Yahoo News 17 Mar 10;
PARIS (AFP) – Nearly a quarter of a billion people escaped slums in the past decade, but the housing effort was outstripped by population growth and rural exodus to the cities, the United Nations said.
A total of 227 million people rose out of slum conditions from 2000 to 2010, thanks especially to hard work in China and India, according to the UN Human Settlements Programme, also called UN-Habitat.
It means that the United Nations has already scored a rare success in its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Under MDG 7, Target 11, UN members pledged to "achieve significant improvement" in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.
The bad news is that from 2000-2010, the absolute numbers of slum dwellers increased from 776.7 million to 827.6 million.
"Cities are growing faster than the slum improvement rate," said Gora Mboup, a Senegalese who co-authored the report, State of the World Cities 2010/11: Bridging the Urban Divide, issued on Thursday.
Half of the increase of 55 million extra slum dwellers came from population growth in existing slum homes; a quarter by rural flight to the cities; and a quarter by people living on the edge of cities whose homes became engulfed by urban expansion.
UN-Habitat warned: "Short of drastic action, the world slum population will probably grow by six million each year, or another 61 million people, to hit a total of 889 million by 2020."
These were among the document's highlights:
-- sub-Saharan Africa has the largest slum population, totalling 199.5 million people, or 61.7 percent of its urban population.
It is followed by South Asia (190.7 million people, 35 percent of urban population) and East Asia (189.6 million, 28.2 percent).
-- China and India are lauded for making "giant strides" to improve the life of slum dwellers.
China made improvements to the daily conditions of 65.3 million urban residents without shelter. The proportion of urban Chinese living in slums fell from 37.3 percent in 2000 to 28.2 percent in 2010. India, meanwhile, lifted 59.7 million out of slum conditions last decade. Slum prevalence now stands at 28.1 percent.
-- the world's three most "unequal cities" in terms of disparity of wealth among its inhabitants are all in South Africa: Buffalo City, Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni. The "most equal" cities are Chittagong and Dhaka in Bangladesh, which are also blighted by poverty.
-- urban sprawl, once associated only with cities in North America, is fast engulfing many developing countries as property developers promote life in the spacious suburbs.
Sprawl causes transport problems because of the usual over-reliance on cars, can pose a threat to the environment if housing encroaches on sensitive zones and also adds to social segregation, says the report.
More than half of the world's population -- 3.49 billion people, or 50.6 percent of the total -- now live in urban areas, it notes.
Investigators determined that housing was a slum if it lacked at least one of out of these five amenities: it had a permanent structure; had less than three people sharing a room; access to water that was sufficient, affordable and could be obtained without extreme effort; a private toilet or a public one shared with a reasonable number of people; and secure tenure.
Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 18 Mar 10;
A new report by environmental activists warns that after decades of deforestation from widespread illegal logging, Kalimantan now faces a bigger environmental threat: large-scale coal mining is severely damaging the island’s ecology.
Deadly Coal in Kalimantan, a report from the Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam) and Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), assessed the coal mining industry from 2007 to 2009 in East and South Kalimantan, the provinces with the richest coal deposits.
“What is happening in both East and Southern Kalimantan will be easily replicated in Southeast and Western Kalimantan unless the government immediately stops issuing new licenses to mining firms,” Jatam coordinator Siti Maimunnah said.
“However, a moratorium seems unlikely as the government still favors economic development,”
she said.
The report said that in 1980s, East Kalimantan loggers produced 11 tons of timber, most of which was sent to China, Korea, Malaysia, Japan and Europe.
“The logging businesses have readapted to massively exploit coal deposits. Coal production reaches 120 million tons per year,” the report said.
“In a sense, East Kalimantan has gone from the frying pan into the fire.”
The report showed there were 1,212 permits issued to small-scale coal mining companies in the last six years, with 33 licenses granted to large companies in East Kalimantan.
“With 70 percent of the country’s coal production coming from the province, East Kalimantan is an ATM for the central government,” it said.
Business licenses for small-scale mining firms are issued by the governor, regent or mayor. Business permits for large coal mine operators are issued by the central government.
Siti said the plethora of natural resources benefited only a small group of people, mostly investors who exported the coal.
She said that as of March 2007, 324,000 people, or 10 percent of the province’s population, still lived below the poverty line.
The report went on to say that as of 2008 in South Kalimantan, 280 licenses for small-scale companies were issued to mine coal deposits in a 553,814-hectare area.
“However, many local community have no access to electricity and poverty levels are still high,”
Siti said.
Analysts from the School of Democratic Economics said that the government had no right to boast of its plans to cut carbon emissions from the energy sector until the practices in Kalimantan were resolved.
Coal has been blamed as a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
Indonesia plans to cut emissions by 26 percent by 2020.
Jatam and Walhi also called on the government to announce the findings from its investigation into coal mining in Kalimantan.
Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta made an unscheduled inspection to South Kalimantan coal mines last month.
Gusti, originally from Kalimantan, admitted that small-scale coal mines failed to comply with environmental regulations.
Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan has also threatened to revoke the business permits of mining firms who failed to rehabilitate abandoned pits.
Julian Cribb, Science Alert 18 Mar 10;
“Black carbon”, the soot from billions of domestic fires across the poorer regions of the world, is a powerful, but little-publicized driver of climate change. Scientists now consider it provides around half the global warming potential of CO2.
In a unique marriage of high and low technologies Philippino engineer Alexis Belonio and US physicist Steve Garrett have come up with a way to improve the health of poor people, beat a major global waste problem and develop a fast-track technology to counter global warming.
Belonio is the inventor of the world’s most efficient gas cooker fuelled by waste rice husks, Garrett the genius behind the world’s first truly clean refrigerator, which is cooled using sound waves.
Between them, however, they have hatched an idea that could see the Third World outstrip developed nations in the race to devise rapid solutions to global warming
“Black carbon – which is basically the soot from billions of domestic cooking fires - is about 600 or 700 times more potent than CO2 as a climate warmer: It absorbs more heat because it is black,” Garrett explains. “But it only lasts about 10 days in the atmosphere, so this is a problem you can actually fix quite quickly – as opposed to CO2, which hangs around for centuries.”
If the smoky cooking fires of the developing world could be replaced with low-cost stoves like Belonio’s, which converts rice husks or other biomass to a clean gas, it would start to cut humanity’s carbon emissions within days. Developing countries would become world leaders in combating climate change.
The challenge is to develop a stove cheap and simple enough to go into a billion homes.
Belonio’s stove, now in its third generation, already fulfils most of the criteria. Fuelled by unwanted waste – the 150 million tonnes of husks discarded in rice-growing regions each year – his US$20 cooker turns this free, low-energy fuel into a greenhouse-neutral gas that burns with a clear blue flame. This can save a poor family up to one-tenth of their income every year, as they no longer need to buy gas or kerosene for cooking. Because it burns cleanly, the stove is much healthier to use: the World Health Organization estimates that indoor air pollution caused by smoky fires kills about 1.6 million women and children every year.
Key to the efficiency of the stove is a small electric fan that drives a stream of air through the smouldering rice husks. This produces the gas mixture which the stove then burns, just like a normal gas cooker. The catch is that you need electricity to drive the fan – and half the developing world still lacks this essential energy source.
Enter Steve Garrett of the Pennsylvania State University, who had been working as Scientific Adviser to the U.S. State Department’s South-East Asia bureau. “We were looking for technologies that would assist development, clean up the environment, address global warming and improve health,” he explains. It turned out the Philippino engineer and American physicist had a strong link – both were Laureates of the Rolex Awards for Enterprise. Steve, who became a Laureate in 1993, learned of Belonio’s work when the latter won his award in 2008.
The stroke of genius was the realisation by Garrett that he had a way to turn the heat from Belonio’s stove into sound waves that could in turn be used to produce enough electricity to run the fan. This meant the stove could be used anywhere on Earth where there was a suitable biomass fuel supply – and act as its own electrical power source.
Steven Garrett, 60, specializes in the science of thermo-acoustics. The winner of several major prizes for environmental technology and the holder of over 20 patents for his inventions, he has developed sound-driven refrigerators for the U.S. space program, U.S. Navy and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, with a view to one day replacing the billions of ‘dirty’ refrigerators and air conditioners worldwide which use either ozone-destroying CFCs or planet-warming HCFCs as coolants . His research group now works on commercial chillers and freezers, including appropriate technology for developing countries. These use electricity to make high-intensity sound waves to compress a clean, inert gas, to initiate the cooling cycle used in refrigeration.
Alexis Belonio, 49, is animated by the ideal of sharing his stove with anyone in the world who wants it. “It is God’s calling,” he says simply. “I have received the knowledge of this stove from God for free, and I must give it for free also.” So far, more than 40 companies, non-governmental organizations, aid agencies and local groups in a dozen countries have adopted his design. With his Rolex Award funding, he has published a technical manual, distributed information via the Internet and run the first of a series of workshops in the Philippines to train the trainers who will distribute his technology far and wide. Belonio himself works with Minang Jordanindo Approtech in Indonesia, who are making 80 stoves a week, and plans to assist similar operations in Vietnam and Cambodia, in addition to his native Philippines. Inquiries are pouring in from countries such as India and China, as well as South-East Asia.
Belonio is now working on his Phase 3 model stove. In this model, a container of rice husks is loaded into the stove and burned until used up, then exchanged for another, like swapping the bottles on a gas barbecue. The aim, he explains, is to make the rice cooker available in towns and villages where rice is not produced locally. This will create jobs for workers in rice areas who will gather the unwanted rice husks and pack them into fuel containers. It will also greatly increase the places the stove can be used – and provide a new, low-cost cooking fuel for urban families. The ash from the burned husks can be mixed into the soil, where its ability to hold moisture results in crop yields 10 to 20 per cent higher.
But what could spread the stove worldwide would be the addition of its own power source. Garrett points out: “Take a look on the internet at the dark areas of the planet at night. These are the places where there is no electricity, where people burn biomass to cook or warm their homes. That is where most of the black carbon comes from. In Asia, unlike the developed world, one half of the global warming potential is due to black carbon and other products of incomplete combustion such as methane, carbon monoxide and ozone precursors.
“It is also a big deal using a simple stove to put electricity into people’s lives in areas that may never be on the grid. They can also use it to charge a battery to light their home, or to power a cell phone.”
Working from the meticulous detail that Belonio has publicized, Garrett says it is possible to convert heat to sound, and sound to electricity, in essence reversing the process used in his acoustically-powered fridge. “All you need is 2-3 watts to run the stove’s fan and a few watts more to run other devices. We would like to use the stove’s heat to generate sound waves and use that sound in a linear alternator - a sort of highly efficient microphone - to make electricity.”
There are other ways to turn stove heat into electricity, he adds – using thermoelectric methods or co-generation of steam to run a micro-turbine. They all need to be explored.
Belonio is apprehensive about the possible cost of the upgraded stove. He has struggled for years to design the cheapest, most practical stove possible, which can be made in an ordinary village workshop from scrap metal and is affordable to the poorest of the poor. He has got the price down to $20-$25 a unit, and is worried about the added cost that a high-tech power source might involve. “I’m dealing with the household sector,” he says. “They want to save their money.”
Garrett adds that it is possible to produce electricity thermoacoustically with inexpensive components. If it can be shown to work successfully and also fixes the black carbon issue, governments and aid agencies will be very interested in providing funding to make the stove affordable for worldwide distribution, possibly offsetting part of the additional cost with carbon credits. He is offering the state-of-the art instrumentation of his lab at Penn State to assist Belonio in designing the most efficient and cost-effective small-scale electrical generator possible that will work with his stove.
The teeming mind of Alexis Belonio never rests. He is well advanced in the design of a super-burner that produces a far hotter flame by injecting steam. This could be used to provide boilers and dryers for small industry, fire kilns and bakery ovens or generate electricity from waste on a scale ranging from a single household to one megawatt.
Garrett adds: “The world needs technologies that will help economic development, improve people’s health, clean up the environment, and address global warming. This partnership looks to us like a win-win-win-win situation. That’s the upside.
“The big challenge is, you need to do it a billion times,” he admits. “We have to get this technology out to 3 billion people who are burning biomass, more than half of whom have no access to electricity. The challenges of low-cost manufacturing, distribution, adoption, and marketing seem more daunting to me than the technological challenges.” He is already drawing up a technology roadmap to persuade governments to get behind the plan to put to put clean, self-powered, fuel-efficient stoves in hundreds of millions of homes.
The two Laureates met to discuss their new concept at a conference in Bangkok in mid-November 2009, where tests on seven low-polluting stoves found that Belonio’s stove had the lowest black carbon emissions of all.
If it works as well as they hope, the combination of Belonio’s simple but elegantly efficient stove and Garrett’s brilliant thermoacoustic technology could begin to help cool the planet by removing a major warming agent – black carbon – within a decade.
Yahoo News 17 Mar 10;
HELSINKI (AFP) – The climate change debate should be reframed in economic and security terms ahead of a year-end UN summit in Mexico seeking a binding climate deal, the president of the Maldives said Wednesday.
A price tag needs to be put on "the extent to which we destroy the atmosphere, the extent to which we pollute the atmosphere," President Mohamed Nasheed said at a climate change seminar in Helsinki.
Climate change was not about "hugging trees", he said, insisting that beyond the environmental aspects it was central to future security policies, sustainable economics and human rights.
"If we can have a discourse on the feasibility of renewable energy ... I think that would make such a substantial impact on the policy," he said, adding that switching to non-fossil-fuel-based energy sources like wind and solar power made "good economic sense".
His own, low-lying country is one of the most vulnerable to the rising sea levels anticipated as a result of global warming, and in a bid to lead by example the Maldives has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2020.
A climate change summit in Copenhagen last December failed to yield a hoped-for treaty on tackling the carbon emissions blamed for disrupting the climate system, and sparked a fierce international row about who was to blame.
Nasheed said the time for "pointing fingers" was over, stressing that both developing and developed countries needed to act together to regain the momentum lost in the climate change debate since Copenhagen.
"Before we go to Mexico, there has to be more trust built between developing and developed countries," he said, adding the climate change discussion had "no other motive than the survival of our species."
There was "no argument" to support the demands of some developing countries for their emissions not to be limited, he said, adding that reducing emissions was economically responsible and would not stop development.
"We have planetary boundaries, and we cannot go beyond that. We have to find alternative sources of energy," he insisted.
The so-called Copenhagen Accord sets a goal of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) but does not detail when or how this goal should be achieved, nor does it commit its signatories to binding pledges.
The next UN summit aimed at hashing out a binding deal will be held in the beach resort of Cancun, Mexico, from November 29 to December 10.
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