Morning with NParks volunteers at the Wallace Education Centre
from wild shores of singapore
Bagging Barbets: Coppersmith
from Life's Indulgences
Mangrove Pitta breeding: 1. Who’s who
from Bird Ecology Study Group
SiReNT, coastal erosion and mangroves
from wild shores of singapore
Earth Hour Singapore 27 Mar (Sat)
from wild shores of singapore
A new world?: Social media protest against Nestle may have longstanding ramifications from Mongabay.com news
Many water projects in PUB masterplan are set to be completed this year
Sumita Sreedharan Straits Times 21 Mar 10;
It looks like Singapore the Garden City is on target to become a City of Waterways too.
With World Water Day falling tomorrow, PUB, the national water agency, is confident that its masterplan targets will be met.
The banks of the country's 32 rivers and 7,000km of canals and drains are being transformed, as are its 15 reservoirs which will teem with water activities.
A key element of PUB's Active, Beautiful, Clean Waters (ABC Waters) programme is the people factor: projects will involve residents so that they have ownership too.
The masterplan identified more than 100 locations where projects will be implemented in phases till 2030.
The PUB first identifies a waterway or reservoir for transformation by looking at such factors as demographics, surrounding facilities and upcoming developments.
It then sees how the ABC Waters project can complement the surroundings and add value to the area.
Grassroots groups, schools and residents are involved: Feedback, ideas and views are gathered from them. After all, they will participate in and organise activities around the completed projects.
Mr Yew Kai Lih, 54, senior constituency manager in the Kolam Ayer constituency office, says: 'Our waterway is now our trademark.'
Residents along the Kallang River/Kolam Ayer area now enjoy landscaped river banks and a floating deck.
Upgrading work to the waterways of Kolam Ayer, MacRitchie and Bedok have so far cost $23 million.
Mr Yew believes that the property prices in his constituency have gone up as the waterway now provides waterfront living amenities.
He feels that there is now a sense of ownership of the waterway. The constituency club organises activities such as gardening and performances on the floating deck.
Among the projects that are expected to be completed this year are: Sungei Punggol, Lower Seletar Reservoir, Pandan Reservoir and Jurong Lake. So too will Sungei Whampoa (St George's Lane), Sungei Kallang/Whampoa RC31, Kranji Reservoir, Pang Sua Diversion Canal and Alexandra Canal.
Kallang River-Bishan Park and the Serangoon Reservoir - Lorong Halus waterway will be completed next year.
A problem that currently plagues canals here is pollution, but 'pollution of the waterways has decreased over the years', said Mr Tan Nguan Sen, director, Catchment and Waterways, PUB.
Last year, an average of 14 tonnes of flotsam was collected daily from the waterways. This is a reduction from the daily average of 15 tonnes collected in 2008, despite a steady increase in Singapore's population.
Mr Eugene Heng, 60, chairman of the Waterways Watch Society, sees these changes to the waterways as a positive thing.
The society is a volunteer group that monitors, restores and protects the aesthetics of the waterways.
Mr Heng feels that 'allowing more water activities in select areas is something that the society believes will help the public enjoy and, at the same time, appreciate, understand and value our waters'.
Nature lovers are treated to a beautiful sight as the pink mempat tree blooms
Huang Lijie, Straits Times 21 Mar 10;
Sakuras are blooming in Japan this month - and so is Singapore's version of the sakura tree, the pink mempat tree.
Indigenous to this region, the pink mempat tree bears flowers with small pink petals and a yellow centre that resemble the Japanese sakura, or cherry blossom, hence its nickname, 'Singapore sakura'.
Like the Japanese sakura, the branches are almost bare before the tree flowers, so the crown of pink buds bursting into bloom is especially eye-catching.
Already, flowering pink mempat trees along Alexandra Road, Choa Chu Kang Drive and Joo Chiat Road, have stopped pedestrians and motorists in their tracks.
Retired teacher Angie Ng, 68, said: 'I stopped my car to take a picture of these trees because they are so beautiful.'
The blooms are expected to last for between one and two weeks.
Indeed, the sight is so stunning that an upcoming City Developments condominium project in West Coast Drive, Hundred Trees, plans to plant some 100 pink mempat trees to line a boulevard near its entrance.
Plant lovers whom The Sunday Times interviewed suggest that parks here should have an area dedicated to the trees.
This will allow the public to admire the flowers the same way the Japanese take part in hanami, or cherry-blossom viewing.
In Japan, people throng the gardens from late March to early April every year to picnic under sakura trees and enjoy the profusion of colour.
Mr Tee Swee Ping, assistant director of streetscape of the National Parks Board, said however that there are no plans to dedicate a park to flowering trees 'in hope of having them flower' at the same time.
The local climate does not encourage intense mass flowering periods, he added.
He explained that mass flowering of trees in Singapore's tropical climate is usually triggered by a long dry spell, followed by sudden heavy rain.
'But most of the time, the local climate is uniformly wet without prolonged dry spells, so intense mass flowering periods are few and far between,' he said.
The recent change in weather, from hot and dry to cool and wet, however, acted as a stimulus, causing some trees to bloom.
He added that such changes in weather usually occur between February and April and between July and August.
The pink mempat tree is also planted in clusters along Mandai Road, Ayer Rajah Expressway, Tampines Expressway, and in parks such as West Coast Park and the Singapore Botanic Gardens.
Besides the pink mempat tree, other flowering trees here include the trumpet tree, which bears white and pink trumpet-shaped flowers; and the yellow flame, with bunches of small, bright yellow flowers.
More companies are supporting Earth Hour this year by switching off lights and air-conditioners
Sandra Leong, Straits Times 21 Mar 10;
Some business owners might think an extended blackout would be bad for business. Not Willin Low, though.
This Saturday, the chef-owner of Mount Emily bar Wild Oats is turning off his lights from 8.30pm to closing time at 1am. That is three hours more than what he has committed to do on paper for Earth Hour, a global campaign led by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) that urges people to conserve energy by switching off their lights for 60 minutes one day a year.
'Everybody loved it last year,' says Mr Low. 'You could see only the silhouettes of people but the mood was very festive and everyone was laughing excitedly.'
To date, more than 3,000 individuals and 300 organisations have signed up for Earth Hour in Singapore this year, says project manager and WWF Singapore's director of corporate responsibility Carine Seror. More are expected to pledge their support this week. Others will also choose to commemorate the event on their own without necessarily recording their commitment with the WWF.
As it stands, non-essential lights at major tourist icons such as the Merlion Park, Singapore River and the Pit Building will be switched off, says the Singapore Tourism Board. More than 10 shopping centres in Orchard Road have also committed to turning off their facade lights.
Official sponsor SingTel will also be sending out 1.3 million text messages to encourage its subscribers to take part in Earth Hour.
Earth Hour, which began in Sydney, is in its fourth year globally but second year locally. Inferring from statistics from The Nielsen Company and the Energy Market Authority, the WWF estimates that 1.6 million Singaporeans took part in the inaugural event last year.
Support for Earth Hour is coming much earlier than last year, says Ms Seror. And many like Mr Low are going the extra carbon- friendly mile to spread the message of environmental consciousness. Also going on an extended, 10-hour lights-out is property group CapitaLand, which will turn off the facade lights of more than 190 of its properties worldwide from 8.30pm to 6.30am the next morning. Its shopping centre Ion Orchard will be throwing an Earth Hour Lights-Out Party featuring local musicians.
Next door, Wisma Atria will be organising a stargazing event on its rooftop from 8 to 10pm.
Other companies are roping staff into the cause. Apart from going dark at 34 stores and 'blacking out' its website, The Body Shop has also organised a staff walk from its Killiney Road office to The Esplanade to attend the WWF Earth Hour concert on Saturday. Performers include Jack&Rai and illusionist JC Sum & Magic Babe 'Ning'.
Its directors have also pledged to take public transport to work the day before.
Hotels under the Hong Leong Group, such as the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel and M Hotel, are going one step further by getting guests to pledge to sleep without air-conditioning on Saturday night. Its tongue-in-cheek campaign is called 'Sleep Naked 2' ('Sleep Naked' was last year).
Says a spokesman: 'We are planning to have our hotel general managers swop their suits for pyjamas and bathrobes during Earth Hour to encourage guests to join in the No Air-Con movement.'
Though Earth Hour here is clearly gaining momentum, drumming up awareness is still a big challenge.
Says WWF's Ms Seror: 'Industrialisation and development made us live in cities where everything is so convenient, easy and hassle-free. Water comes down straight to our pipes, we push a button to have light, we open the chute and our garbage disappears, and we walk into a shop to get ready-made clothes.
'It is magic but it made us forget where all this is coming from, how precious our resources are and that they are not endless.'
But will one hour a year really make a difference? Professor Hooman Peimani, principal fellow at the Energy Studies Institute at the National University of Singapore, says that though Earth Hour is a symbolic gesture and not a substitute for real change, it is still 'better than nothing'.
But Singapore, he points out, has some distance to go in terms of energy-saving. Public lighting is often switched on for unnecessarily long hours, people keep their appliances on stand-by power and recycling is not yet deep-rooted.
He says: 'Drops in the ocean may seem insignificant but all together, they create a huge reality.'
To this end, LifeStyle spends a day living without energy to find out what impact one person can make.
Sandra Leong Straits Times 21 Mar 10;
For the first time in a few hectic months, I'm sitting at my desk in the office, twiddling my thumbs in utter boredom. My laptop, my lifeline to the outside world, is clamped shut and lifeless. I feel it taunting me in that cold, cruel manner that inanimate objects are wont to do.
E-mail, Google, MSN, Facebook. That's work, information, friends, fun. All within sight but not within reach.
Worse still, I'm hungry (had a salad for lunch), tired (cycled and took the MRT instead of driving to work) and smell like unwashed socks (took a ridiculously short shower).
Welcome to the day I became an accidental environmentalist. The assignment: to reduce energy usage and minimise my carbon footprint as much as is humanly possible - all within 24 hours.
It sounds extreme but desperate times call for drastic measures. I've seen An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary about global warming. Even a late adopter like me knows that if most of us continue to be apathetic, greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide may heat up the planet by 4 deg C by 2100.
Worst-case scenario is the Earth becomes one gigantic wave pool and my children's children end up living like Kevin Costner and his gang of dreadlocked men in that doomsday flop, Waterworld (1995). I wouldn't wish that fate on anyone.
But first, how big a culprit am I in the impending destruction of Mother Earth? According to the Singapore Environment Council's Carbon Calculator (www.climatechange.sg), which tallies a household's carbon footprint based on its chosen modes of transport, usage of electrical appliances and recycling habits, I produce about 6,500kg of C02 a year.
In comparison, the carbon footprint of an average Singapore household is 9,200kg of C02 a year, with the global average being 1,300kg of CO2 a year. A fine, Earth-hugging lot we Singaporeans are.
The folks behind this year's Earth Hour are hammering home the point that going green should be a long-term commitment, rather than a symbolic lights-off once every 365 days. Everyday lifestyle changes must be made, they say.
So what can you change, how torturous will it be and will it really make a difference? I go cold turkey to find out.
Environmentalist Eugene Tay, editor of website Low Carbon SG, offers to help me along. Heeding his recommendations, I decide to say goodbye to all the major amenities in my urban existence - no car, no air-conditioning, no fan, no stove, no computer, no TV, no hot water and no washing machine.
Painfully, he also suggests I go vegetarian for the day. Meat consumption, and the production processes it involves, leaves a considerable carbon footprint, he explains.
To preserve my sanity, I make exceptions for work essentials such as my mobile and office phones (without them, this story would not have made the print deadline) and leave the refrigerator running so my food does not turn stale.
But 24 hours and a few sacrifices are nothing. New York writer Colin Beavan, his wife Michelle Conlin and their then two-year-old daughter Isabelle swore off all creature comforts for a year starting 2007. Called No Impact, the rules of his project included no automated transportation, no shopping, no paper and eating only local food.
Their experiences have now been documented in a blog (www.noimpactman. com), book and film.
Inspired, I roll out of bed an hour earlier to adapt to my new life of austerity. Any residual tiredness is shocked out of my system when I take my first cold - icy, rather - shower in years.
Thankfully, three minutes is all I'm allowed. I'm barely clean, but I need to ration water as energy is used to deliver it to our homes.
After using the toilet, I consider a suggestion I came across on the Internet: 'If it's brown, flush it down. If it's yellow, let it mellow.' I shudder, and choose the former.
I remember I have to wash some exercise gear for running practice the next day. The washing machine is out of the question. I end up hand-washing my clothes with a basin and soapy water. I have a strange image of myself running through padi fields while belting out a folk song. Too much TV, I think.
Not being able to cook, I pack a lunch of unappetising-looking greens. I end up cheating by boiling some eggs to go with my sad salad. Then, I turn off all the power switches I can see in my house, cast one last forlorn look at my car and bike to the train station, my wet hair streaming behind me.
Technology woes strike when I arrive at work. I become an unwilling Luddite. With my laptop banned, I try to be as productive as possible: conduct an interview by telephone and take notes in shorthand, read 50 Ways To Save Water & Energy by Sian Berry and walk around pestering my colleagues.
Lunch is a challenge. Says one unhelpful colleague: 'Don't you really want to eat foie gras, blue fin tuna and shark's fin?' I grudgingly finish my salad but am still famished.
Not knowing what else to do with my day, I nip into a bookstore in town to research my story the old-school way - by reading a book.
I have dinner - salad again - with friends who again think I've lost the plot. I beat a hasty retreat. Well, not so hasty. It's still a 40-minute train ride plus bike journey home.
I fall in bed, exhausted from a day of doing nothing. I'm about to switch on the TV when I see I had taped a big 'X' over it in the morning to remind myself that the Earth is more important than American Idol.
The windows are open, air-conditioner is off and there's a muggy stillness in the air. Sleep is fitful. I wake up drenched in perspiration and with three mosquito bites on my face.
In the morning, I'm eager to see how much energy I've saved. I'm pleasantly startled. If I were to repeat the last 24 hours over a year, I'll be looking at a carbon footprint of about 590kg of CO2 a year, a drastic reduction of about 10 times compared to the previous figure.
Yes, there are flaws in my little experiment. A complete abandonment of modernity is clearly impractical. And given that the calculations are based on every household, it means that theoretically speaking, I'll be expecting the rest of the family to make the same sacrifices to achieve such results.
But there is a point amid all the fantasy. If average Singaporeans like me took the time to better understand the nature of their own carbon footprints, they would perhaps realise that the difference they can make in proportionate figures is more than discernible.
Major energy-suckers such as my car (about 400kg of CO2 a year) and my air-conditioning (3,605kg of CO2 a year) can be done without if I put my mind to it. And surely, there is a case for gradual reductions of energy use, if drastic measures like mine seem highly unrealistic.
Still, I can identify with the inertia that people feel. It seems easy to be completely uncaring or at the other end of the spectrum, somebody like Beavan who has chosen to dedicate his whole life to the green message. But what about the rest of us in-betweeners who have to juggle real- life dependence on energy with environmental conscience? A housewife who wants to recycle but feels she shouldn't bother because she still needs a gas- guzzling MPV to ferry her kids to school?
I share my thoughts with Eugene, who confesses that at times, he too lapses into the 'old ways', like turning up his office air-conditioning on hot days and hailing a taxi when he is in a rush.
We're only human, we both concede. But that may be the very point. We're only human and we may not survive the onslaught of climate change. Maybe it's time for a salad.
Some savings according to the SEC Carbon Calculator
Before: 6,509kg CO2 a year
After: 590kg CO2 a year
Car: 400kg of CO2 a year
Bike/train: 22kg of CO2 a year
Air-conditioning: 3,605kg of CO2 a year
Fresh air: 0kg of CO2 a year
Hot shower: 110kg of CO2 a year
Cold shower: 0kg of CO2 a year (but some energy used to deliver water to the house)
Dylan Loh Channel NewsAsia 20 Mar 10;
SINGAPORE : Some 1,000 people participated in a run on Pulau Ubin on Saturday to raise environmental awareness.
It was flagged off by NTUC chief Lim Swee Say and NTUC's Assistant Secretary-General Josephine Teo.
Runners either took a five-kilometre or 10-kilometre route.
The event also raised funds for an environmental tree-planting programme.
Pulau Ubin is among a number of designated areas, including parks and nature reserves, where more trees will be planted.
Ms Teo said: "The key point that we want to communicate is that certainly, we do not have to wait for big, large-scale initiatives before we each do our part.
"So whilst it may seem very insignificant that each of us contributes to the planting of a tree, but the collective efforts of each one of us doing one small part can actually make a huge difference." - CNA/ms
New Straits Times 20 Mar 10;
PASIR PUTEH: An attempt by the crew of a deep sea trawler to save a whale shark found floating off the coast here proved futile after it died while being towed to a fish landing jetty in Tok Bali yesterday.
This whale shark proved to be a tough one to handle as fishermen tried hard to land it using a boat crane at Jetty 28, Tok Bali, Kelantan, yesterday. The two-tonne catch was found floating 21 nautical miles off Tok Bali but it could not be lifted out of the water as the crane was unable to bear its weight. — NST picture by Ramli Hussin
The whale shark, known by its scientific name Rhincodon typus, weighing about two tonnes and 10m long, was spotted by the crew about 38.9km off Tok Bali about 6am.
The fishermen, led by skipper Ek Suwan Chai Pong, 46, who is a Thai national, were sailing back to the jetty when they spotted the shark.
"We spotted the shark as it rose to the surface of the waters as if waving at us. We steered our vessel closer to the whale and some of our crewmen climbed overboard to check on it but the shark was already very weak."
He said the crew members decided to pull it back to the jetty with the trawler in the hope of saving it.
"But when we arrived at the jetty, the shark was already dead as we saw no movement at all. The four hours we took to reach the jetty must have tired it."
This whale shark proved to be a tough one to handle as fishermen tried hard to land it using a boat crane at Jetty 28, Tok Bali, Kelantan, yesterday. The two-tonne catch was found floating 21 nautical miles off Tok Bali but it could not be lifted out of the water as the crane was unable to bear its weight. — NST picture by Ramli Hussin
Meanwhile, state fisheries officer Mohd Azhar Jusoh said the department would take the shark onshore with a crane for investigation.
Rintos Mail, The Star 21 Mar 10;
KUCHING: The trade in wild game meat in the state is not rampant, Forest Director and Wildlife Controller Datuk Len Talif Salleh said.
He said the authorities realised there were still people, especially in the rural areas, who hunted and sold wild game meat to their fellow villagers and friends.
However, he said that was allowed as consumption of wild game meat was part and parcel of rural life but it was not widespread.
He pointed out that the authorities were more concerned about poaching and the commercial trade of such meat, especially of totally protected animals.
“Overall, commercial wild game meat trading in town centres is under control. Unlike before, you hardly see people selling wild animals or wild game meat in markets or restaurants these days,” he told The Star yesterday.
When told that there were people serving those meat in rural restaurants and food outlets, he warned that enforcement officers from the Forest Department and Sarawak Forestry Corporation were on the look out for them.
“Although it is not that rampant, our enforcement officers will continue to monitor and patrol the market areas and food outlets, including in the rural areas, to prevent the situation from getting worse.”
On the possibility that the wild game meat sold in rural restaurants and food outlets could have been smuggled from a neighbouring country, he said: “It has yet to be proven. We will monitor the activity and stern action will be taken against the culprits.”
Len said the situation in the towns had improved with more people now aware of the law to protect wildlife.
Apart from that, he said volunteers from the Kuching City South Council (MBKS), who had undergone courses with Sarawak Forestry, were also helping to monitor the situation in town markets.
Len hoped other local authorities would take the same initiative as MBKS by sending their volunteers for the courses.
In Sarawak, those who are found guilty of violating the Wildlife Protection Ordinance, 1998, can be fined between RM10,000 and RM50,000, and sentenced to one to five years imprisonment.
Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 30 Mar 10;
Research shows customary laws that were implemented by a number of local communities were far more effective than government policies to preserve forest in efforts to deal with climate change.
For local communities, obliging traditional laws means respecting their ancestors.
Preliminary research says communities of Baduy in Banten province, Kampung Kuta people in Ciamis, West Java province and Dayak people in Kalimantan are among local communities that issue unwritten laws to preserve environment and protect the forest.
“Though such agreement is not written, local communities comply more with traditional laws than governmental law,” Ali Akbar, University of Indonesia Faculty of Humanities researcher told a workshop on climate change Friday.
He said that communities implementing taboo regulations do not know about the government regulations about the forest.
“The government’s regulations are not efficiently implemented to preserve forests,” Ali added.
The philosophy of Baduy people among others are mountains and valleys cannot be destroyed; traditional law should not be broken and taboos must not change.
“Baduy’s sacred responsibility is to guard the environment and spiritual heritage of its ancestors from change. To maintain balance and harmony they must live a simple lifestyle, acting moderately,” he said.
There are currently about 8,000 Baduy living in two groups of which each village is led by a supreme leader locally known as Punn.
Ali said that the community in Kampung Kuta entering sacred forests was taboo.
“It is forbidden to take anything from the forest or even enter it, except on Monday and Friday,” he said.
Kampung Kuta won the Kalpataru trophy in 2002 for protecting the forest.
Donny Gahral Aldian, researcher from the philosophy department at the University of Indonesia,
said that Dayak culture was highly influenced by spiritual tradition called Kaharingan, a folk religion most Dayak people followed in Kalimantan.
Kaharingan sees humans and nature as an integrated spiritual whole.
“The followers believe that nature is an integral part of life and not just inorganic matter,” he told the workshop.
“The Dayak people’s culture is a good example on how risk prevention action is inspired by local wisdom and religion.”
The international conference discussed mitigation efforts needed to slow global warming, which caused climate change.
Experts said that protecting forest was crucial to tackle climate change since the sector contributed about 20 percent of global emissions.
In climate talks, customary community roles has been a crucial issue in protecting forests to prevent carbon leakage once deforestation and the forest degradation scheme to reduce emissions (REDD) takes place.
The Alliance of Archipelagic Indigenous People (AMAN) predicted indigenous people had traditionally occupied about 20 million hectares of land, of which most was natural forest.
Most indigenous people rely on the forest as a source of livelihood but conflict is on the rise as many forests became valued as business projects such as plantations and mine sites, it said.
To better protect the indigenous people’s rights to their customary land, AMAN has initiated a mapping project to determine boundaries of the organization’s members land.
Followers believe that nature is an integral part of life and not just inorganic matter.
Antara 21 Mar 10;
Medan, N Sumatra (ANTARA News) - Oil palm planters in 20 Indonesian provinces are ready to boycott Nestle products if the foreign company really stops buying crude palm oil (CPO) from national producers, a spokesman said.
"About 10 million oil palm farmers spread in 20 Indonesian provinces have stated their readiness to boycott Nestle products. Apkasindo (Association of Indonesian Oil Palm Farmers) is now preparing to draw up a list of Nestle products in the market," Apkasindo Secretary General Asmar Arsjad said here Saturday.
He said Apkasindo had so far only obtained oral statements of readiness from its regional chapters in the country but the association`s central executive board would on Monday (March 22) officially send letters to them to ask for their support for and participation in the boycott of Nestle products.
The boycott was meant to respond to Nestle`s decision to terminate its CPO purchasing contract with PT Sinar Mas which would have a devastating impact on the livelihood of Indonesian oil palm farmers, he said.
Nestle had reportedly decided to stop buying CPO from Indonesian producers as oil palm cultivation in the country was considered to be harming the environment.
Meanwhile, Laksamana Adiyaksa, treasurer of the North Sumatra chapter of the Indonesian Oil Palm Entrepreneurs Association (Gapki), said the oil palm planters` boycott threat "should be reacted to wisely by all stakeholders."
"It does not mean that we are afraid or very concerned about the threat but it should be discussed in a business-like way," he said.
The government should also be involved as a mediator in solving the problem caused by Nestle`s boycott of Indonesian CPO which had not happened for the first time, he said.
He said Indonesian CPO producers were increasingly paying attention to the environemntal aspects of their production processes under the Roundtable Sustainable on Palm Oil (RSPO) system."Nestle should not have acted unilaterally," he said.
Earlier, Irfan Mutyara, chairman of the North Sumatra chapter of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) had said Indonesia was one of the world`s major CPO producers and exporters and thus, if Nestle stopped buying Indonesian CPO, there would be other buyers.
"If a buyer boycotts a product, the producer can do likewise against the buyer`s product and ask domestic consumers to follow suit," he said. (*)
The Star 21 Mar 10;
KUALA LUMPUR: Petronas has discovered a huge tract of oil reserves that could significantly reduce oil prices, claimed former Petronas chairman Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.
“I was told it is the biggest oil field this part of the world, and enough to depress oil prices,’’ he told a forum titled “Oil Royalty: A Constitutional Right?” yesterday.
The forum was organised by the Bar Council to discuss the constitutional aspects of the oil royalty payment.
Razaleigh said it was the prerogative of the Prime Minister to give Petronas the green light to start extracting oil from the newly-discovered field.
He hoped part of the earnings would be channelled to a national heritage trust fund for the future generation and that Petronas would manage the resources well.
“We hope there is no ‘leakage’, and the money goes back to the people,’’ he added.
Razaleigh also hoped misunderstandings over the law pertaining to oil royalty payment to Kelantan would be resolved soon, adding the Government should be advised properly.
Meanwhile, another panellist, Datuk Dr Shad Saleem Faruqi, said parts of the Petroleum Development Act were unconstitutional.
“For example, if oil is found inland, it is unconstitutional for the federal government to stake claim on it. But according to the Act, it gets 5%, which is unconstitutional,” he said.
Antara 21 Mar 10;
Mataram, (ANTARA News) - The "Land with One Million Cows Program" (BSS) in West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) should have a tangible result at the end of this year, an official said.
"Such a program has been calculated in its funds and the number of cow population, and therefore it should have a tangible result at the end of this year," NTB provincial administration` public relations chief M Faozal said here on Saturday.
Seeing that the result of the program was still unclear, Governor Zainul Majdi had to suspend a working contract with around 45 Regional Forces Working Units (SKPD), including West Nusa Tenggara Animal Husbandry Service.
"The working contract with around 45 SKPD will be resumed until after all of them improve their performance at the end of this year on in December 1010," Governor Zainul Majdi said.
According to the governor, the BSS program was expected to be able to increase the population of cows in the province and income of cow breeders.
"The program was launched in December 2008 and ever since the cow population in the province increased significantly," the governor said.
Data from NTB Animal Husbandry Service indicated that the cow population in the province in 2008 increased by 546,114 and then rose to 683,347 in 2009, while in 2010 it is expected to rise by 780,772.
Therefore, the Land of One Million Cow program got a serious attention from the central government to be applied in the other provinces in Indonesia.
West Nusa Tenggara is known to have rice stock as well as livestock in abundance, and thus the province sends not less than 35,000 cows every year to Jakarta and West Java to meet the meat demand of the people.
In addition, the province also shipped at least 9,000 cows per year to Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Maluku, East Nusa Tenggara, Papua, and Sumatra.(*)
Kyoko Hasegawa Yahoo News 19 Mar 10;
TOKYO (AFP) – The Japanese government, sushi lovers and seafood traders at Tokyo's massive Tsukiji fish market on Friday cheered the defeat of a proposed ban on trade in endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna.
The proposal for a ban on trade in hauls from Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic was crushed Thursday by a UN wildlife meeting in a move described by the European Commission as threatening the survival of the ocean predator.
"It was good," said Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. "It means the import of bluefin tuna will continue for the time being and I think it's good that the price of bluefin tuna will not rise further."
But he added that Japan "should be on alert as we still don't know what will happen" until the end next week of the meeting in Doha of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
Atlantic bluefin tuna: the sushi king
A smiling Finance Minister Naoto Kan said he often enjoys "negi-toro", minced fatty tuna mixed with leek usually served on rice.
"It's good that I will be able to keep eating it," he said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano, the top government spokesman, said: "I am relieved that it was voted down last night. I am delighted about that.
"It is important to control natural resources as Japan has argued," he added in a regular news conference.
Environmental group Greenpeace warned the vote "sets the species on a pathway to extinction" although it is unclear exactly how long the worldwide bluefin population has left at current consumption rates.
Japan consumes three-quarters of all bluefin caught in the world's oceans, mainly raw as sushi and sashimi. A piece of "otoro" or fatty underbelly now costs 2,000 yen (22 dollars) at high-end Tokyo restaurants.
Decades of overfishing have seen stocks crash by more than two-thirds in the Mediterranean, from where giant freezer ships have long headed for Japan.
Fish traders and chefs at Tokyo's Tsukiji market, the world's biggest, were heartened that they will be able to keep importing the species, which arrives deep-frozen by the hundreds for daily pre-dawn auctions.
Tuna traders at Tsukiji, the size of more than 40 football pitches, last week staged a protest against the proposed trade ban on the fish, which has fetched as much as 175,000 dollars for a 232-kilogram (511-pound) specimen.
"It's really good that the proposal was voted down. Japanese people love tuna and salmon," said sushi chef Satoshi Suzuki, as he rolled out tuna for the lunchtime crowd at a restaurant on the edge of the market.
He said he recognised Japan should manage marine resources sustainably but added that ordinary people do not consume the prized fish in large quantities.
"People don't eat bluefin tuna every day unless they are rich," he said.
Japan had fought hard to block the trade ban proposal, arguing that the solution lies with enforcing existing quotas set by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.
Environmentalists complain that lax enforcement by ICCAT has already driven Atlantic bluefin tuna close to extinction.
Fisheries Minister Hirotaka Akamatsu said Japan would now exercise "leadership" in managing bluefin resources. "It's true that we now have the responsibility to do this," he said.
Not everyone in Japan was happy with the vote.
"We're disappointed by the decision," said Soyo Takahashi, a fisheries expert at the Japan office of Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network which cooperates with the CITES secretariat.
"We have not seen meaningful discussion on a recovery plan based on science for Atlantic bluefin tuna at the CITES meeting."
With bluefin and many other fish species in decline in the world's oceans, she said, "Japanese consumers of sushi need to rethink their lifestyle and choose seafood from sustainable fisheries."
Japan lands a death sentence for the bluefin
Charles Clover, Times Online 21 Mar 10;
It was a desperate defeat. The European Union and the United States had come to Doha to save the bluefin tuna, a fish so delicious as sushi and sashimi that large specimens fetch $100,000 on the Japanese market. As a consequence the species is as endangered as the white rhino. But, just like the tunas that return each year to the Mediterranean to spawn and find themselves in a labyrinth of nets, the conservationist nations have swum into a trap.
What followed was not pretty. Japan and the fishing nations inflicted a stunning defeat on the conservationist countries, which had wanted to ban international trade in bluefin tuna. Japan’s victory, against the weight of scientific opinion, not only raises the question of whether the bluefin can survive but also whether rationality can ever prevail in preventing endangered species from being obliterated.
Recriminations have already started among the losers in Doha, where the 175 parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) go on meeting until the end of the week. There is anger about the part played by the dithering Spanish presidency of the EU, about French compromises, mutterings about unimaginative British officials and amazement at the failures of EU and US diplomacy.
In theory, these two power blocs had a strong hand. No one could remember a better scientific case to support a temporary ban on trade in any species. Two scientific bodies, the scientific committee of the Atlantic tuna commission, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) and a special panel of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation agreed that the bluefin stock qualified for a ban because it had declined to less than 15% of its historical levels.
Old Cites hands say the mistake that the European Union and United States made is that they thought a robust scientific assessment alone could get a species listed on one of the appendices of Cites (appendix II means regulated trade under quotas; appendix I, a trade ban). That was once true. But Cites has got political. Over the past decade or so, winning has become a matter of building alliances and buying votes. It’s a dirty business and, as far as one can see, the conservation nations failed to get their hands dirty.
While Japan and its allies perceived a threat to their fishing interests from a listing under the Cites treaty six months ago, the EU and the US were preoccupied until a month ago with sorting out their internal divisions. They did not grasp the strength of the alliance ranged against them in Qatar.
Japan appointed as its head of delegation the charming and ruthless Masanori Miyahara, chief of the Fisheries Agency of Japan, a veteran of a successful campaign in 1992 to stop a ban on bluefin fishing.
Everyone knew that the 13 proposals to list marine species, led by sharks and bluefin tuna, were the most controversial this year. There was an early sign of trouble when we heard the Arab League was against all the marine proposals because of the economic impact on north African fishermen. On the morning of the bluefin debate, we learnt that Japan had entertained its allies to a banquet featuring bluefin tuna the night before. When she heard that, Sylvia Earle, one of the most distinguished ocean campaigners in the United States, muttered: “Neanderthals.”
The debate itself was an ambush. Monaco put forward the proposal for a ban, then the EU gave it qualified support. But the Spanish presidency droned on unconvincingly and too long. The EU’s conservation-minded countries — Britain, Germany and Sweden — had to remain silent under daft EU protocol.
Norway, Kenya and the United States spoke for a ban. Then it became open season on the conservationists by the fishing nations. Country after country — Canada, Indonesia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Chile and Senegal — said they wanted the Atlantic tuna commission, which has allowed the bluefin to get into its present plight, to carry on managing the fish. The conservationists had no riposte to the fears Japan had stirred up in poor countries that their economies would suffer from a trade ban.
It was clear where things were going long before a ranting Libyan delegate denounced the scientific assessments as “lies” and forced a vote. Monaco’s proposal was voted down by 68 to 20, with 30 abstentions, a defeat so dire that it is unlikely to be reopened this week. Monaco’s ambassador warned that ICCAT had “a very serious responsibility” to tackle the problem of illegal fishing and set scientific quotas.
This is a disaster for the credibility of Cites. On the plus side America and Europe now back a trade ban and the pressure is on ICCAT, a fishery management body with a lamentable record, to do a better job. But that organisation’s record has led to it being called the International Conspiracy to Catch All Tuna.
The question now is whether Japan can live up to its promise last week to crack down on illegal fishing and whether the bluefin can survive three more years until the conservation countries can organise a rematch. You have to say that the precedents are not encouraging.
Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 20 Mar 10;
DOHA (AFP) – Four rapidly dwindling shark species prized in Asia for fins and in Europe for meat will be swimming against the current at a UN wildlife trade meet days after an attempt to protect tuna was crushed.
Starting Sunday, the 175-nation Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), will consider separate proposals that would require cross-border trade in these open-water predators be tracked and reported.
The small island nation of Palau, dependent on scuba tourism, along with Sweden and the United States, have sponsored the measures, with backing from Egypt and Rwanda.
Japan, which led the successful drive to keep Atlantic bluefin in its sushi bars, has said they should be voted down.
Tokyo points to a lack of data, and argues that CITES, meeting in Doha through Thursday, is not the right tool to oversee high-value commercial fauna.
Scientists acknowledge a paucity of data.
At the top of the marine food chain, most of these fearsome predators roam the open seas, and there is no global system in place to monitor population levels.
Of the 139 nations that have reported shark catches to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) since 2000, less than half list species, "making it difficult to assess the impacts of fisheries," said Laurence Fauconnet, a shark expert at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.
But the studies that have been done paint a grim picture, indicating that each year some 70 million sharks of all types are harvested.
Sharks are especially vulnerable to overfishing because most species take many years to mature and have relatively few young.
The scalloped hammerhead, once common in coastal tropical waters, has declined by 75 to 90 percent in the Indian and Pacific Oceans over two decades, said Demian Chapman at the Institute for Ocean Conservation at Stonybrook University in New York.
Listed as "endangered" by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the fish is the top choice of gourmets for shark fin soup, a prestige food consumed by Chinese communities around the globe.
Four other "look-alike" species are covered in the proposal to prevent the scalloped hammerhead from being harvested by mistake.
Also sought for its fins is the oceanic white tip, listed by the IUCN as "critically endangered" in most of the Atlantic and "vulnerable" globally.
Its meat can sell for 100 dollars (74 euros) a kilo, making it one of the most expensive seafoods by weight.
The other two proposals would regulate international trade of the porbeagle, also fished for fins and meat, and the spiny dogfish, a staple of generic "fish fingers" and other prepared foods.
At the last CITES meeting in 2007, spiny dog and porbeagle failed to gain protection.
But delegates and conservationists in Doha point to two factors that could help one or more of the measures pass the CITES threshold of a two-thirds majority this time around.
Unlike the Atlantic bluefin bid for a so-called Appendix I ban on all international commerce, the shark proposals are seeking Appendix II status, which only requires tracking of exports and scientific assessments.
"The problem today is not there is serious mismanagement of trade in sharks, but that there is not management at all," said Sue Lieberman, policy director for the Pew Environment Group in Washington.
Also, the debate over bluefin pitted commercial interests against conservationists, and the result suggests it was a mismatched fight.
In the case of sharks, there is business on both sides of the issue: dozens small island nations, and some bigger ones, reap serious revenue from scuba-related tourism.
"It has been calculated that a live shark is worth 100 times more than dead one," said Ibrahim Didi, environment minister from the Maldives, in Doha as an observer.
Lieberman said: "If hammerheads are gone, people are not going to come to swim with the jellyfish."
All told, a third of the world's 64 species of pelagic, or open water, sharks face extinction, according to report issued last June by the IUCN's Shark Specialist Group.
Navin Singh Khadka, BBC News 19 Mar 10;
An invasive plant is emerging as a major problem in a Nepalese national park renowned for protecting endangered wildlife species, say scientists.
The Chitwan National Park is listed as a Unesco world heritage site and is a major tourist attraction.
It has been a huge conservation success story, with nearly 100 breeding adult tigers and more than 400 rhinos roaming within its territory.
But a quiet intruder has emerged as a possible threat to the park's ecosystem.
A native plant of Brazil, the weed Mikenia micrantha , has already covered 20% of the national park in southern Nepal.
Most of the affected areas are important to the tigers, rhinos and some endangered bird species - moist places and riversides that are conducive to the growth of the invasive creeper.
"Already 50% of the rhino's habitat is covered by this alien plant," says Naresh Subedi of Nepal's National Trust for Nature Conservation, which has carried out research in the Chitwan national park.
"If uncontrolled, it will spread over half of the park's entire area."
Suffocating creeper
Also known as "mile by a minute" because of its fast spreading rate, the weed can smother anything that gets in its way - from grasses to even large trees.
"As a result, we have seen some trees grow old quickly and die. And grasses [that many animals eat] have simply disappeared," says Narendra Man Babu Pradhan, chief warden of the park.
"We call this vegetation imposition."
Conservationists say that the impacts upon the park's animals.
"For example, there is this tree that bears fruits called 'rhino's apple' that is killed once it is covered by the [weed]. This means a food source for the rhinos becomes scarce," explains Mr Subedi.
Mr Pradhan says that different types of grasses, which form an essential part of the diets of small animals such as deer, are also disappearing from areas of the park invaded by the weed.
"Small animals need good quality food and these grasses are very important for them."
And if the deer are affected, this is likely to have a knock-on effect on the tigers' diet.
"There is a possibility that the food chain in the park is adversely affected," Mr Pradhan says.
Dr Richard Kock, a scientist with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) says that the weed reduces "suitable cover" for the tiger. He is trying to help park officials to tackle the problem.
"It forces animals to forage more widely and outside of the park in farmland. This increases conflict and the risk of death from poaching or revenge attacks [by farmers whose crops are eaten up by park animals]," he says.
Spreading invasion
Park officials say they have seen some rhinos that have begun to eat Mikenia micrantha because they have "no choice".
"As megaherbivores, they need plenty of food, so we can imagine why some of them have begun to eat this plant," says Mr Pradhan.
And the droppings of these rhinos, and other herbivores that eat the plant, will spread the invasive weed.
The park officials have started to look into how Mikenia micrantha is affecting the rhinos.
They have attached radio collars to two rhinos and they will track six more in the same way in order to monitor their foraging behaviour.
They hope to have the results from this study within two years, but the invasive plant is likely to have spread far more by then.
It has already crept out of the park and is advancing towards the west. Latest findings show it has reached the Dang area in western Nepal.
Conservationists fear that, at this rate, it will soon reach the nearby Bardiya National Park - another protected area that has successfully conserved several endangered species, including tigers.
Out of control
Scientists say that the plant was first seen in the eastern part of Nepal, where it did some ecological damage to the Koshi Tappu wildlife reserve - a bird watcher's paradise.
"The weed covered areas near wetlands, grassland and open places in the forest. [It has caused a reduction in] the number of endangered swamp francolin birds in Koshi Tappu," says Hem Sagar Baral, a noted ornithologist in Nepal.
"The creeper alters the vegetation to such an extent that birds do not get the right natural setting for nesting and laying eggs.
"Species like the reed warbler and some thrushes are also declining there."
Although there is no clear record, conservationists say the plant probably came from India, where it was said to have been imported during World War II.
"It is believed that it was brought into India to camouflage army camps during the war," says Mr Subedi.
Conservationists say that some national parks in the north-eastern part of India have also seen the spread of this invasive creeper.
Hands-on effort
Authorities have tried uprooting the plant from some sections of the Chitwan national park. Even Prime Minister Madhab Kumar Nepal rolled up his sleeves when he recently joined a "weeding" effort.
But this measure has so far proved unsuccessful because the plant has already covered wide areas. It continues to regrow, stimulated to spread by the movement of people and animals within the park.
Authorities do not want to use chemical or biological measures, which they fear could harm the park's ecosystem. So officials are left somewhat helpless.
Mikenia micrantha continues to grip this valuable natural site, stifling its vegetation and threatening its wildlife.
Press Statement on the Occasion of World Water Day 2010
Rodrigo U. Fuentes, Executive Director
ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity
22 March 2010
Water is life. But did you know that waterborne diseases are causing the death of more than 1.5 million children every year? Statistics from the United Nations are indeed alarming: Two million tons of sewage and other effluents are draining into the world’s waters every day. In developing countries, 70 percent of industrial wastes are dumped untreated into waters where they pollute the usable water supply. More than 894 million people do not have access to safe freshwater.
While the demand for water continues to grow, the supply is getting smaller. Human activities are largely to blame.
Years of abuse and poor management of the world’s natural resources have resulted in the degradation of the global water supply. Deforestation has destroyed watersheds and their capability to retain freshwater. Erosion and siltation have damaged the quality of lakes and rivers. Pesticides and mining residues pollute water sources and affect the health of fish, birds and other animals that drink from these areas. Dams and reservoirs have changed water flow. Industrial processes and domestic waste have polluted our waterways and oceans and threatened the lives of fish, corals, sea grasses and other organisms. These are worsened by the increasing impacts of climate change, which has caused extreme drought in many parts of the world.
As we celebrate World Water Day 2010 with the theme “Clean Water for a Healthy World,” we are reminded of the need for protect our precious water resources – the source of life for all of us.
For us at the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity, we see the crucial need to remind people about the critical link between water and biodiversity.
As we know, water is an integral aspect of agriculture and ecosystem. Food production is constrained when the availability of water is reduced, thus exacerbating hunger and poverty. Poor water quality also has serious affects on human health and biodiversity. Clean water is essential for healthy environments.
Some say that the next World War will be over water. Fighting, however, will not solve water scarcity. The key is for each one of us to contribute our share in conserving water.
Saving water is not just simply turning off the tap while brushing teeth, fixing leaks, or recycling water in the household. Governments, concerned communities and individuals need to protect water resources and biodiversity, which contributes to healthy wetland ecosystems.
Healthy forests retain both water and soil resources. When forests are plentiful, watersheds retain ample supply in water basins and prevent soil erosion that may cause siltation of water bodies. Healthy wetlands also recharge underground aquifers, providing ample drinking water to satisfy the needs of the world’s population.
Conserving biodiversity to support healthy wetlands ensures a richer biodiversity of species. Intact and viable wetlands filter water and make it safe for drinking. Clean lakes, rivers and estuaries ensure the survival and abundance of nursery areas of fish, encouraging higher fish production. Clean water encourages plant growth and support richer marine life, which benefit humans since many freshwater and marine plants are used for a variety of purposes ranging from handicrafts to animal fodder. Healthy wetlands ensure the survival of various animals, especially those in danger of extinction.
Water conservation is a global issue that needs urgent action. Conserve water at home, in school, at the office, and within your community. Prevent unnecessary water use. Encourage industries to recycle water. Conserve biodiversity, protect forests and watersheds, and prevent pollution of freshwater and marine ecosystems. Support action to protect water resources. Help efforts to prevent water scarcity and ensure a world with life-saving water.
Rodrigo U. Fuentes
Executive Director
ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity
The seductive power of Vedanta's development programmes in India is replacing centuries of self-sufficient, egalitarian society
Eric Randolph, guardian.co.uk 20 Mar 10;
An attack on Vedanta staff near its aluminium refinery in India shows us that the clash of capitalism and remote tribes is more complex than James Cameron would have us believe.
The incident happened last month in the state of Orissa. Exact details are unclear but a senior member of Vedanta Aluminium Ltd, the Indian subsidiary of the UK-based Vedanta Resources Plc, confirmed that members of its corporate social responsibility team were attacked by unidentified individuals who set their jeep on fire and hospitalised two employees. As a measure of how well your public relations team is doing, this is not a good sign.
Tensions are growing in the region. The Dongria Kondh tribe strongly oppose Vedanta's plan to mine for bauxite in the Niyamgiri Hills, which is home to their deity. A few days after the attack, they held a puja (religious ceremony) on Niyam Dongar hill in which they vowed to resist the project at all costs.
The initial reaction was therefore to blame the Dongria Kondh for the attack on the PR team. The truth, however, may be less straightforward. Mukesh Kumar, Vedanta's chief operating officer in the region, claims the attackers were men who had moved into the area looking for work, quarrelled with locals and been forced to leave. Evidently, they blamed Vedanta.
If true, this account suggests it is not just the mining itself that can generate anger – it also generates resentment among those who feel excluded from its perceived benefits.
The caricature of Vedanta is of a ruthless conglomerate driving a bulldozer through village communities in its ravenous search for valuable minerals. This caricature was given the three-dimensional technicolour treatment in James Cameron's Avatar, in which the unspoilt purity of the blue-skinned Na'vi tribe faces the rapacious greed of a US mining corporation.
Art seemed so closely to mirror reality that a campaigning group, Survival International, used the film's success to publicise the cause of the Dongria Kondh, with the tribe apparently writing a letter to Cameron asking for his assistance.
If the Dongria Kondh actually made it to their local Imax to watch the movie, one wonders how perturbed they would be at the solution it proposes: that local tribes should band together and have a gigantic, bloody battle against robot-suited humans and helicopter gunships. Perhaps if they believed the lesson of the film – that the fight could be over in a single afternoon after which the mining corporation would skulk off with its tail between its legs – then they might mount their flying dragons and have a go.
Sadly, the reality of capitalism's advance is far more insidious and much harder to resist. The fact is that many villagers in Orissa welcomed Vedanta's refinery when it was built in 2004, taking lucrative compensation packages in exchange for their land. Since then, Vedanta has poured huge amounts of money into a hearts-and-minds campaign, providing schools, medical care and infrastructure in its attempt to win over locals. Many of those who saw little value in free televisions and scooters nonetheless found it difficult to turn down the promise of better education and job opportunities for their children.
This is the true power of capitalism – not the muscle it can flex, but its ability to play on an individual's hopes and fears, often at the expense of the community as a whole.
One of the dangers is that there is no going back. Amnesty International claims many of those compensated in the refinery scheme did not fully understand the terms of the deal, for example thinking they would all get employment rather than just one member from each family. Few seemed to realise they would lose common farming land, forcing them to buy a lot of the food they once produced collectively. Nor did they realise the ecological impact that would result. But the deals are done, and the land is sold. Its findings received strong backing from the government this week, whose investigators decided Vedanta had violated human rights and forestry laws in its Orissa operations.
The subtler but more fundamental danger is what this model of development does to traditional social structures. Vedanta cannot provide development to the whole state. Somewhere the boundary has to end, somewhere a fence has to be erected, and with that comes a new existence of haves and have-nots, replacing centuries of basically self-sufficient and egalitarian society. Last month's attack on Vedanta's PR staff seems to reflect this danger, showing us the tensions that can accompany rapid, top-down development.
Through all this, it is important to remember that the villagers still have the right to choose Vedanta's model of development, as many did in 2004. We might hope they reject it, but we do so having already enjoyed many of the benefits of modern civilisation. It is certainly not wrong to want better opportunities for one's family.
But the key question is whether they make their decision fully appreciating the impact it will have on their community. We should also seriously question whether a mining company is really the best institution to lead people through such profound changes.
Corporate social responsibility couches itself in the positive-sounding watchwords of "progress" and "development", but ultimately it is the art of justifying capitalism's advance, putting a legitimate face on the destruction of older forms of social existence.
In the past fortnight, in another corner of India, a different tribe is winning its battle to shield its culture and society from the outside world. The Jarawa, who live on one of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, won a supreme court ruling to have tourism operations around their land shut down.
The Jarawa saw what development meant and rejected it. They fought a powerful tourism lobby without resorting to war. The Dongria Kondh appear to be making the same choice on the hills of Niyamgiri, but faced with the mining industry and the seductive power of its million-dollar development programmes, their final decision may not be their own.
The carbon credits scheme would make WWF and its partners much richer, but with no lowering of overall CO2 emissions, writes Christopher Booker .
Christopher Booker, The Telegraph 20 Mar 10;
If the world’s largest, richest environmental campaigning group, the WWF – formerly the World Wildlife Fund – announced that it was playing a leading role in a scheme to preserve an area of the Amazon rainforest twice the size of Switzerland, many people might applaud, thinking this was just the kind of cause the WWF was set up to promote.
Amazonia has long been near the top of the list of the world’s environmental cconcerns, not just because it includes easily the largest and most bio-diverse area of rainforest on the planet, but because its billions of trees contain the world’s largest land-based store of CO2 – so any serious threat to the forest can be portrayed as a major contributor to global warming.
If it then emerged, however, that a hidden agenda of the scheme to preserve this chunk of the forest was to allow the WWF and its partners to share the selling of carbon credits worth $60 billion, to enable firms in the industrial world to carry on emitting CO2 just as before, more than a few eyebrows might be raised. The idea is that credits representing the CO2 locked into this particular area of jungle – so remote that it is not under any threat – should be sold on the international market, allowing thousands of companies in the developed world to buy their way out of having to restrict their carbon emissions. The net effect would simply be to make the WWF and its partners much richer while making no contribution to lowering overall CO2 emissions.
WWF, which already earns £400 million yearly, much of it contributed by governments and taxpayers, has long been at the centre of efforts to talk up the threat to the Amazon rainforest – as shown recently by the furore over a much-publicised passage in the 2007 report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC’s claim that 40 per cent of the forest is threatened by global warming, it turned out, was not based on any scientific evidence, but simply on WWF propaganda, which had wholly distorted the findings of an earlier study on the threat posed to the forest, not by climate change but by logging.
This curious saga goes back to 1997, when the UN’s Kyoto treaty set up what is known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). This allowed businesses in the developing world that could claim to have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions to make billions of pounds by selling their resulting carbon credits to those firms in the developed world which, under the treaty, would be obliged to cut their emissions. In 2001 the parties to Kyoto agreed in principle that trees in the southern hemisphere could be counted as “carbon sinks” for the benefit of CO2 emitting firms in the northern hemisphere. In 2002, after lengthy negotiations with WWF and other NGOs, the Brazilian government set up its Amazon Region Protected Areas (Arpa) project, supported by nearly $80 million of funding. Of this, $18 million was given to the WWF by the US’s Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, $18 million to its Brazilian NGO partner by the Brazilian government, plus $30 million from the World Bank.
The aim was that the NGOs, led by the WWF, should administer chunks of the Brazilian rainforest to ensure either that they were left alone or managed “sustainably”. Added to them, as the largest area of all, was 31,000 square miles on Brazil’s all but inaccessible northern frontier; half designated as the Tumucumaque National Park, the world’s largest nature reserve, the other half to be left largely untouched but allowing for sustainable development. This is remote from any part of the Amazonian forest likely to be damaged by loggers, mining or agriculture.
So far all this might have seemed admirably idealistic. Despite the international agreement that forests could be counted as carbon sinks, there was as yet no system in place whereby the CO2 thus “saved” could be turned into a saleable commodity. In 2007, however, the WWF and its allies in the World Bank launched the Global Forest Alliance, with start-up funding of $250 million from the Bank, to work for what they called “avoided deforestation”. A conference in Bali, under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which administers the CDM, agreed to a scheme called REDD (reducing emissions for deforestation in developing countries). Hailed as “the big new idea to save the planet from runaway climate change”, this set up a global fund to save vast areas of rainforest from the deforestation which accounts for nearly a fifth of all man-made CO2 emissions.
But still there was no mechanism for turning all this “saved” CO2 into a money-making commodity. The WWF now, however, found a key ally in the Woods Hole Research Center, based in Massachusetts. Not to be confused with the nearby Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, a bona fide scientific body, this is in fact a global warming advocacy group, headed by a board which includes fund managers responsible for billions of dollars of private investments.
In 2008, funded by $7 million from the Moore Foundation and working in partnership with the WWF on the Tumucumaque project, Woods Hole came up with the formula required: a way of valuing all that carbon stored in Brazil’s protected rainforests, so that it could be traded under the CDM. The CO2 to be “saved” by the Arpa programme, it calculated, amounted to 5.1 billion tons. Based on the UNFCCC’s valuation of CO2 at $12.50 per ton, this valued the trees in Brazil’s protected areas at over $60 billion. Endorsed by the World Bank, this projection was presented to the UNFCCC.
But two more obstacles had still to be overcome. The first was that the scheme needed to be adopted as part of REDD by the UNFCCC’s 2009 Copenhagen conference, which was supposed to agree a new global treaty to follow Kyoto. This would allow all that “saved” Brazilian CO2 to be turned into hard cash under the CDM scheme.
The other was that the US should adopt a “cap and trade” scheme, imposing severe curbs on the CO2 emitted by US industry. This would boost the international carbon market, sending the price soaring as US firms flocked to buy the credits that would allow them to continue emitting the CO2 they needed to survive.
As we know, the story hasn’t turned out as planned. Amid the shambles at Copenhagen in December, all that could be saved of the REDD proposals was an agreement in principle, with the hope of reaching detailed agreement in Mexico later this year. Also lost in the scramble to save something from the wreckage was the small print that guaranteed the rights of indigenous peoples in rainforests, whose way of life – to the concern of groups such as Survival International and the Forest Peoples Programme – has already been severely damaged by REDD-inspired schemes elsewhere, such as in Kenya and Papua New Guinea.
Just as alarming to the WWF and its allies, who were hoping to make billions from Brazilian forests, has been the failure of the US Senate to approve the cap and trade bill championed by President Obama. Since the EU has excluded the rainforests from its own cap and trade scheme, bringing the US into the net is vital for the WWF’s hopes of finding “money growing on trees”. The price of carbon on the Chicago Climate Exchange has just plummeted to its lowest-ever level, 10 cents a ton.
The WWF’s dream has been thwarted – but the revelation that it could even be party to such a scheme may have considerable influence on the way this richest of all environmental campaigning groups is viewed by the world at large.
Yahoo News 20 Mar 10;
BEIJING (AFP) – Beijingers woke up Saturday to find the Chinese capital blanketed in yellow dust, as a sandstorm caused by a severe drought in the north and in Mongolia swept into the city.
The storm, which earlier buffeted parts of northeastern China, brought strong winds and cut visibility in the capital.
Authorities issued a rare level five pollution warning, signalling hazardous conditions, and urged residents to stay indoors.
Sandstorms frequently hit the arid north of China in the spring, when temperatures start to rise, stirring up clouds of dust that can travel across China, to South Korea and Japan and even as far as the United States.
Scientists blame a combination of deforestation and prolonged drought in northern China for the phenomenon.
Saturday's storm was expected to last until Monday, the meteorological agency said in a statement on its website.
"I was amazed to see the ground had turned yellow overnight," Beijing salesman Li Ming told the official Xinhua news agency. "It reminds me of the dirt road of my rural hometown."
Another resident said the storm was worse than those in recent years.
"Severe sandstorms like this happened very often in the 1980s and 1990s," Beijing retiree Song Xiurong told Xinhua. "It hasn't been that serious in the recent two or three years, as far as I remember."
Xinhua reported that the storm, which came after an unusually humid winter and numerous blizzards, caught residents of the capital by surprise.
"The snow has certainly curbed local dust from flowing but sandstorms cannot disappear altogether as long as their origins still exist," meteorological agency chief Guo Hu told the agency, adding that the vast deserts of China's Inner Mongolia region were just 800 kilometres (500 miles) from Beijing.
A sandstorm four years ago dumped at least 300,000 tonnes of sand on the capital.
China has 2.6 million square kilometres (one million square miles) of desert, an area nearly 2.5 times the country's total farmland, according to government statistics released at the time.
In the southwest of the country, drought has left 16 million people with a shortage of drinking water, according to a statement issued by the State Commission of Disaster Relief.
Since late last year, the provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou, have received only half their annual average rainfall, leaving water supplies severely depleted.
More than four million hectares (10 million acres) of land were affected and 4,000 troops have been deployed to help distribute emergency water supplies, Xinhua said.
South Korea warned residents of the capital Seoul as well as central and western regions to stay indoors, Yonhap news agency reported.
Yahoo News 19 Mar 10;
MONTREAL (AFP) – Canada jumps into spring after having recorded the mildest and driest winter on record, Environment Canada reported Friday.
The agency, which has compiled data from 1948, determined the average temperature throughout the country was four degrees Celsius (seven degrees Fahrenheit) above normal, said meteorologist Andre Cantin.
Cantin said the country also saw 20 percent less precipitation than normal, also a record.
El Nino, the climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean that influences global weather, was likely responsible for the freakish weather, according to Cantin, who noted that changes in climate may also have played a role.
The unusual winter wreaked havoc at the Winter Olympics at venues near Vancouver, where a shortage of snow delayed many events.
Some Arctic areas were warmer and the north of Quebec province was six degrees Celsius (10 Fahrenheit) above the norm.
Bolivia will host an international meeting on climate change next month because it is not prepared to 'betray its people'
Pablo Solón Romero, guardian.co.uk 19 Mar 10;
In the aftermath of the Copenhagen climate conference, those who defended the widely condemned outcome tended to talk about it as a "step in the right direction". This was always a tendentious argument, given that tackling climate change can not be addressed by half measures. We can't make compromises with nature.
Bolivia, however, believed that Copenhagen marked a backwards step, undoing the work built on since the climate talks in Kyoto. That is why, against strong pressure from industrialised countries, we and other developing nations refused to sign the Copenhagen accord and why we are hosting an international meeting on climate change next month. In the words of the Tuvalu negotiator, we were not prepared to "betray our people for 30 pieces of silver".
Our position was strongly criticised by several industrialised countries, who did their brazen best to blame the victims of climate change for their own unwillingness to act. However, recent communications by the European Commission have confirmed why we were right to oppose the Copenhagen accord.
In a report called International climate policy post-Copenhagen (pdf), the commission confirmed that the pledges by developed countries are equal to between 13.2% and 17.8% in emissions reductions by 2020 – far below the required 40%-plus reductions needed to keep global temperature rise to less than 2C degrees.
The situation is even worse once you take into account what are called "banking of surplus emission budgets" and "accounting rules for land use, land use change and forestry". The Copenhagen accord would actually allow for an increase in developed country emissions of 2.6% above 1990 levels. This is hardly a forward step.
This is not just about gravely inadequate commitments, it is also about process. Whereas before, under the Kyoto protocol, developed countries were legally bound to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a certain percentage, now countries can submit whatever targets they want without a binding commitment.
This dangerous approach to climate negotiations is like building a dam where everyone contributes as many bricks as they want regardless of whether it stops the river.
The Copenhagen accord opens the dam and condemns millions. Various estimates suggest that the commitments made under the accord would lead to increases of between three to four degrees celsius – a level that many scientists consider disastrous for human life and our ecosystems.
For Bolivia, the disastrous outcome of Copenhagen was further proof that climate change is not the central issue in negotiations. For rich countries, the key issues in negotiations were finance, carbon markets, competitiveness of countries and corporations, business opportunities along with discussions about the political makeup of the US Senate. There was surprisingly little focus on effective solutions for reducing carbon emissions.
President Evo Morales of Bolivia observed that the best way to put climate change solutions at the heart of the talks was to involve the people. In contrast to much of the official talks, the hundreds of civil society organisations, communities, scientists and faith leaders present in Copenhagen clearly prioritised the search for effective, just solutions to climate change against narrow economic interests.
To advance an agenda based on effective just solutions, Bolivia is therefore hosting a Peoples' Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth on 19-22 April, and inviting everyone to participate. Unlike Copenhagen, there will be no secret discussions behind closed doors. Moreover the debate and proposals will be led by communities on the frontlines of climate change and by organisations and individuals dedicated to tackling the climate crisis. All 192 governments in the UN have also been invited to attend and encouraged to listen to the voices of civil society and together develop common proposals.
We hope that this unique format will help shift power back to the people, which is where it needs to be on this critical issue for all humanity. We don't expect agreement on everything, but at least we can start to discuss openly and sincerely in a way that didn't happen in Copenhagen.
• Pablo Solón is Ambassador to the UN for the Plurinational State of Bolivia. He is a sociologist and economist, was active in Bolivia's social movements before entering government, and is an expert on issues of trade, integration, natural resources and water.
Yahoo News 20 Mar 10;
CANCUN, Mexico (AFP) – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has listened to and learned from recent criticism, but the threat of global warming is real and must be tackled, the group's head said Saturday.
Rajendra Pachauri, the embattled head of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning panel of experts, has been criticized for endorsing climate projections based on faulty or inaccurate evidence.
"There's been a lot of talking about climate change. It's an area under strict scrutiny," he acknowledged at a panel discussion at the annual meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank.
"We at the IPCC, we've listened, we've learnt, we've done something about it."
He defended the panel's much-criticized fourth assessment report, which he said "has a great deal of robust material and findings."
The report has been pilloried for claiming erroneously that the Himalayan glaciers were in imminent danger of melting and the group has also been forced onto the offensive by a series of email exchanges made public by a hacker that appear to show climate experts seeking to hide or misrepresent evidence.
Joining Pachauri was Yvo de Boer, the United Nations official who headed efforts to secure a new international agreement on climate change, but announced his resignation after a major summit on a new deal in Copenhagen last year.
De Boer urged progress in the follow-up summit to Copenhagen, to be held in Cancun in November.
He said funding for the fight against climate change would be a major hurdle to address, and warned that a proposed 100-billion-dollar fund to help developing nations tackle global warming would be difficult to fund solely through contributions from rich nations.
"There's a large perception, especially in the developing world, that the entire 100 billion, it's going to come from public financing. I think that extremely unlikely, I don't see industrialized countries... mobilizing another 100 billion a year for climate change," he said.
He also said the Cancun conference would need to address the challenge of managing and distributing funds.
"If in Mexico we can make a significant advance in terms of addressing the resources mobilization, the resources management and the resources disbursement challenges in a way that effectively blends public and private finance towards the development priorities of developing countries, we'll probably have resolved the most difficult issue in this entire process."
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