Lots MORE new posts
from Ecological observations in Singapore
Job offer: Education Officer at the Raffles Museum (deadline 7th May 2010) from The Biodiversity crew @ NUS
Getting There
from Ubin.sgkopi
Saving a living dinosaur in Singapore
from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity!
Jungle myna feeding on maggots from a dead snake
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Choosy Singaporeans mean less-than-perfect produce is thrown out
Ong Dai Lin, Today Online 16 Apr 10;
SINGAPORE - Some people press and squeeze fruits when choosing what to buy, while some food retailers keep food solely for display, and throw them out at closing time.
These are some practices that result in good food going to waste in Singapore, according to an eight-month investigative study by a group of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) students.
And in a country that imports more than 95 per cent of its food, the conclusion is that more can be done to minimise such wastage.
The students, who focussed on business practices, discovered that supermarkets and vegetable sellers at Pasir Panjang Wholesale Market, for example, practice "cosmetic filtering". This means that less than perfect-looking produce is culled or thrown away. Customers also contribute to the amount of spoilt produce by handling fruits, and by expecting only the best fresh produce.
In response to MediaCorp's queries, supermarkets said that their practices are in accordance with consumer behaviour.
Cold Storage said it is "the usual practice for produce sellers to ensure that they sell only fresh fruits and vegetables as this is expected by the consumers" and its staff try to minimise wastage when they cull defective produce.
NTUC FairPrice, which complies with international food safety and management standards, said the measures taken "may result in a small proportion of products being discarded".
Added its food safety and quality director, Ms Chong Nyet Chin, said: "We strive as far as possible to minimise this amount through proper shipping, storage and handling, without compromising the interests of our customers, whose safety will always come first."
Mr Samuel Tan, course manager of retail management at Temasek Polytechnic, agreed that the logistics process was an important area to look at to minimise wastage.
Supermarkets also put defective fruits to good use. At Carrefour, apples and oranges are used to make juice, while bananas are used to make in-store cakes. Other supermarkets, such as Sheng Siong and Giant, clear the fruits by selling them at reduced prices.
The NTU students also reported that food and beverage businesses waste food when staff do not maximise the use of ingredients and over-produce because they want to ensure there is a good variety for selection near closing time.
They observed that the display shelves of most bakeries and cafes are still fully stocked an hour before closing time and that the unsold food is thrown away after closing.
They also quoted a waiter from an outlet of The Coffee Club as saying that his manager told him that the cake fridge cannot look "empty" as presentation is important.
While some bakeries donate their leftover bread to the needy, others, such as Breadtalk, do not. It prefers to bake fresh bread for the needy, according to the report. Breadtalk and The Coffee Club did not reply to MediaCorp's queries.
While the students felt that food was wasted when F&B staff are not allowed to take leftovers home, a spokeswoman for Crystal Jade My Bread said this was meant to prevent pilfering and bad habits, such as selling the leftovers elsewhere or keeping the best food products to take home. She said that a staff member had once set aside a cake to bring home after the restaurant closed, for his son's birthday.
And Singaporeans are not recycling as fast as they are producing food waste. An NEA spokeswoman told MediaCorp that about 606 million kg of food waste was generated in Singapore last year - about7 per cent more than 2008. But only 13 per cent of the waste was recycled, compared to 12 per cent in 2008.
Mr Tan suggested companies can set a minimal wastage level in their sales target to motivate staff.
Food Waste Republic http://foodwasterepublic.com/
Mike Melia, Associated Press Yahoo News 15 Apr 10;
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Researchers are warning of a new blight at sea: a swirl of confetti-like plastic debris stretching over a remote expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.
The floating garbage — hard to spot from the surface and spun together by a vortex of currents — was documented by two groups of scientists who trawled the sea between scenic Bermuda and Portugal's mid-Atlantic Azores islands.
The studies describe a soup of micro-particles similar to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a phenomenon discovered a decade ago between Hawaii and California that researchers say is likely to exist in other places around the globe.
"We found the great Atlantic garbage patch," said Anna Cummins, who collected plastic samples on a sailing voyage in February.
The debris is harmful for fish, sea mammals — and at the top of the food chain, potentially humans — even though much of the plastic has broken into such tiny pieces they are nearly invisible.
Since there is no realistic way of cleaning the oceans, advocates say the key is to keep more plastic out by raising awareness and, wherever possible, challenging a throwaway culture that uses non-biodegradable materials for disposable products.
"Our job now is to let people know that plastic ocean pollution is a global problem — it unfortunately is not confined to a single patch," Cummins said.
The research teams presented their findings in February at the 2010 Oceans Sciences Meeting in Portland, Oregon. While scientists have reported finding plastic in parts of the Atlantic since the 1970s, the researchers say they have taken important steps toward mapping the extent of the pollution.
Cummins and her husband, Marcus Eriksen, of Santa Monica, California, sailed across the Atlantic for their research project. They plan similar studies in the South Atlantic in November and the South Pacific next spring.
On the voyage from Bermuda to the Azores, they crossed the Sargasso Sea, an area bounded by ocean currents including the Gulf Stream. They took samples every 100 miles (160 kilometers) with one interruption caused by a major storm. Each time they pulled up the trawl, it was full of plastic.
A separate study by undergraduates with the Woods Hole, Massachusetts-based Sea Education Association collected more than 6,000 samples on trips between Canada and the Caribbean over two decades. The lead investigator, Kara Lavendar Law, said they found the highest concentrations of plastics between 22 and 38 degrees north latitude, an offshore patch equivalent to the area between roughly Cuba and Washington, D.C.
Long trails of seaweed, mixed with bottles, crates and other flotsam, drift in the still waters of the area, known as the North Atlantic Subtropical Convergence Zone. Cummins' team even netted a Trigger fish trapped alive inside a plastic bucket.
But the most nettlesome trash is nearly invisible: countless specks of plastic, often smaller than pencil erasers, suspended near the surface of the deep blue Atlantic.
"It's shocking to see it firsthand," Cummins said. "Nothing compares to being out there. We've managed to leave our footprint really everywhere."
Still more data are needed to assess the dimensions of the North Atlantic patch.
Charles Moore, an ocean researcher credited with discovering the Pacific garbage patch in 1997, said the Atlantic undoubtedly has comparable amounts of plastic. The east coast of the United States has more people and more rivers to funnel garbage into the sea. But since the Atlantic is stormier, debris there likely is more diffuse, he said.
Whatever the difference between the two regions, plastics are devastating the environment across the world, said Moore, whose Algalita Marine Research Foundation based in Long Beach, California, was among the sponsors for Cummins and Eriksen.
"Humanity's plastic footprint is probably more dangerous than its carbon footprint," he said.
Plastics have entangled birds and turned up in the bellies of fish: A paper cited by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says as many as 100,000 marine mammals could die trash-related deaths each year.
The plastic bits, which can be impossible for fish to distinguish from plankton, are dangerous in part because they sponge up potentially harmful chemicals that are also circulating in the ocean, said Jacqueline Savitz, a marine scientist at Oceana, an ocean conservation group based in Washington.
As much as 80 percent of marine debris comes from land, according to the United Nations Environmental Program.
The U.S. government is concerned the pollution could hurt its vital interests.
"That plastic has the potential to impact our resources and impact our economy," said Lisa DiPinto, acting director of NOAA's marine debris program. "It's great to raise awareness so the public can see the plastics we use can eventually land in the ocean."
DiPinto said the federal agency is co-sponsoring a new voyage this summer by the Sea Education Association to measure plastic pollution southeast of Bermuda. NOAA is also involved in research on the Pacific patch.
"Unfortunately, the kinds of things we use plastic for are the kinds of things we don't dispose of carefully," Savitz said. "We've got to use less of it, and if we're going to use it, we have to make sure we dispose of it well."
Sim Bak Heng, New Straits Times 16 Apr 10;
JOHOR BARU: The increasing demand for snake skins by Thailand's leather industry and live snakes in China's exotic food sector have led to a flourishing trade of a different kind in Malaysian jungles.
For years, thousands of snakes, including pythons, have been trapped by poachers, who included Thais, who came and camped in the jungles.
After they had caught enough snakes, the reptiles are sent back through illegal means and sold to agents. Pythons are hunted for their skins to make, among others, handbags, wallets and belts.
Other types of snakes, such as cobras and kraits, are hunted for their gall bladders which are dried and used as an ingredient in traditional medicinal preparations.
Live snakes are usually exported to China as some people there believe that consuming the reptiles' blood could clean their own blood and that snake gall bladder has detoxification properties.
Malaysia Nature Society (Johor branch) adviser Vincent Chow said snakes were reducing in numbers due to poaching.
"With the increasing use of snakes for the leather industry and exotic food sector, the reptile is now very much sought after in the jungle."
Checks show that snake skins are sold for between RM15 and RM20 for a quarter metre while the meat is sold at about RM25 per kg.
WWF 15 Apr 10;
Mario Malomo is excited and anxious as he joins more than a dozen of his committee members who have taken up positions around the Tembe Piste community fishpond.
As head of the local committee that manages the newly created fishpond, his arrival signals the beginning of business. This is going to be the first harvest, and a crowd of about 100 villagers has gathered, some with baskets, ready to buy.
How many fish will be found beneath the murky water? Is the quantity going to be worth the trouble? Excitement reaches a fever pitch as five women open the pond outlet to let the water flow.
The first catch of the day is a 2kg tilapia. Two hours later, about 350kg of fish have been caught. This is the first time such a massive quantity of fresh fish is available for the roughly 300 people of the forest dependent village. Many agree the next harvest will be even more fruitful.
More than 50 people involved in the fish pond project went home with part of the harvest, while the rest was sold for about $400 and the money set aside for future investments in their village infrastructure, such as for a corn mill, a well for drinking water, and a first aid center.
The Tembe village fishpond is part of a WWF initiative that gives local communities and the indigenous Baka people that live around three national parks in Southeast Cameroon a new source of protein and revenue.
The project will produce at least 10 tons of fish per year by creating several new ponds, similar to the one in Tembe.
WWF hopes the new fishponds also will help quell the poaching crisis that is rampant in most of the Congo Basin to supply the bushmeat trade. Attempts have been made to deal with the issue at the source –anti-poaching patrols around protected areas and logging concessions, for example – and at the consumer level through education and awareness campaigns. But additional strategies are needed.
“Experience shows that improved law enforcement can drive the hunting and trade further underground if local people have no available alternative sources of protein,” says Louis Ngono, WWF Community Officer for the Jengi Programme. “Similarly, if no alternative is found, awareness campaigns may have limited impact, especially when targeting the rural poor,” he adds.
Hunters kill at least 36 species of animals around the Lobeke National Park alone, which is one of the three parks that encompass the WWF pond initiative. WWF is working to put in place longer-term, sustainable and innovative solutions that will reduce the consumption and trade in meat from wild species without compromising the health and livelihoods of forest communities.
The project is a joint effort with Cameroon’s Ministry of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Husbandry and other local organizations. Not only will this initiative meet the protein needs of local residents, but sales are expected to generate income that will fulfill key social needs for the communities.
Julia Tier, World Watch Institute 15 Apr 10;
Washington, D.C.-Worldwide, the equivalent of almost 270,000 trees is either flushed or dumped in landfills every day and roughly 10 percent of that total is attributable to toilet paper. Meanwhile, growing populations, adoption of Western lifestyles, and sanitation improvements in developing countries are driving the increased use of toilet paper. According to the latest issue of World Watch magazine, the result is that forests in both the global North and South are under assault by paper companies competing to fill consumer demand.
"Steadily increasing demand for toilet paper in developing countries is a critical factor in the impact that toilet paper manufacturer have on forests around the world," says author Noelle Robbins. "And with the increasing pressure to reduce and discontinue the use of old growth forests, the move is on to tree plantations."
But according to Robbins, this cure could be worse than the disease. While the paper industry often touts plantations as the solution to creating an ongoing supply of virgin pulp and fiber, these monocultures often displace indigenous plant and animal life, require tremendous amounts of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and soak up large quantities of water.
While some toilet paper manufacturers rely on forests, others turn to trash cans for their raw materials. Advocates of recycled toilet paper point out that converting virgin pulp to toilet paper requires more water than recycled paper and makes use of the tons of already used paper that fills landfills. Various estimates place the quantity of waste paper tossed into U.S. dumps and landfills at 35-40 percent of total landfilled mass.
"Toilet tissue, whether manufactured from virgin pulp or recycled paper, will continue to be an important part of daily life in Western countries and in developing countries emphasizing improved sanitation to mitigate health concerns," says Robbins. "Education of consumers; improvements in quality, pricing, and marketing recycled products; and willingness to consider toilet paper alternatives such as water for cleansing must be pursued to meet the needs of a growing global population."
Yahoo News 15 Apr 10;
LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AFP) – Greenpeace campaigners abseiled into Nestle's annual shareholders meeting on Thursday to urge the food giant to stop using palm oil harvested from rainforest destruction.
An AFP photographer saw the two activists break through the roof and abseil into the hall with mountaineering gear.
They hung a banner with the slogan "Nestle, Give the orangutans a break!" -- in a play on a Nestle marketing slogan -- and remained dangling about 20 metres (66 feet) above the shareholders' heads as the meeting continued.
More activists dressed as orangutans handed out leaflets outside the assembly hall in the western city of Lausanne.
The environmental group claims Nestle is still using palm oil harvested by clearing swathes of Asian rainforests in some of the chocolate bars it makes.
"We are here today to tell Nestle to change its KitKatastrophic policies," said Greenpeace?s International Head of Forest Campaigns, Pat Venditti, in a statement.
"We are urging shareholders to use their influence to ensure Nestle?s products are completely free from Sinar Mas palm oil and paper products," said Venditti.
Nestle announced last month that it was dropping the Indonesian firm, the world's largest palm oil producer, as a supplier following protests, three months after Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever severed ties.
However, Greenpeace said Thursday that the Swiss food group was now buying indirectly from Sinar Mas through suppliers such as US agricultural commodities giant Cargill.
Nestle chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe retorted during the meeting that the food group was cutting palm oils, and called for a moratorium on tropical deforestation.
"Your know very well that it's not Nestle's 350,000 tonnes of palm oil that brought about deforestation in Indonesia but a political decision to use food as a source for biofuels," he said, addressing the protestors.
Brabeck compared that amount to "500,000 tonnes of palmoil" he said was used in Britain and Germany alone for lower emissions biofuels for cars.
Brabeck explained in an open letter to Greenpeace dated April 13 that all purchasing through Sinar Mas was halted "as long as there is verifiable evidence of rainforest destruction by that company."
"We have made it clear in writing to our suppliers of blended palm oil, including Cargill, that we will not tolerate the presence of oil from non-sustainable sources in what they sell us," he added.
Cargill has in turn demanded that Sinar Mas respond to claims it is devastating forests rich in carbon and wildlife and sought an investigation by an industry body, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).
Cargill said it expected answers from the company by the end of April.
Sinar Mas rejects claims of environmental vandalism but has been hit hard by the image conscious withdrawals by top clients.
Clearing for palm oil plantations is contributing to the rapid destruction of vast tracts of Indonesian jungle, making the country one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world.
The Jakarta Post 15 Apr 10;
Mounting market pressure on Indonesia’s palm oil industry has forced producers to unite and consolidate efforts to combat what they deem an incomplete assessment by environmentalists.
Government representatives, members of the Association of Indonesian Palm Oil Producers (Gapki) and company CEOs gathered in Jakarta on Wednesday to draft guidelines on how to convince global consumers of the sustainability of palm oil development in Indonesia.
Swiss food and beverage company Nestle SA announced last month of it would drop an Indonesian palm oil supplier, PT Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology (SMART), over concerns about the company’s environmental record.
Previously Unilever and Kraft had stopped buying palm oil from Sinar Mas for the same reason.
In a report widely publicized in 2008, Greenpeace states that CPO producers had converted peat lands, natural forests and habitats of Indonesia’s indigenous orangutan into oil palm plantations. The report was later supported by field investigations and satellite data.
After the Wednesday meeting Gapki secretary-general Joko Supriyono said a joint endeavor had been established between the association, the Agriculture Ministry and the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) to provide “a more accurate analysis” of the palm oil industry, particularly in terms of carbon emissions generated compared to other commodities used for biofuel such as cassava and corn.
Musdhalifah Machmud, assistant to the deputy coordinating economic minister for plantation and horticulture, admitted there were plantation companies that abused their permits and carried out illegal logging.
However, she said, plantation firms currently operated on 7.2 million hectares of land or 5.5 percent of the 188 million hectares of forests available in Indonesia.
Most of the forest destruction was carried out by other parties, she said.
Musdhalifah said the government had made a significant improvement in fighting illegal logging, imprisoning many company officials, several regents and governors involved with the crime.
She also said palm oil was among the strategic commodities chosen by the government for its export value and ability to provide jobs.
“The negative campaign waged by the NGO is no longer attacking us producers but the state and its people,” Joko said.
Indonesia is the biggest producer of palm oil, contributing 44.5 percent to the world’s total output of 42.9 million tons in 2008.
Also present at the meeting was Alan Oxley, the chairman and founder of World Growth, an NGO focusing on sustainable development in developing countries.
Several foreign NGOs including Greenpeace and WWF had strong connections with the European Commission, he said, claiming that up to 60 percent of WWF’s revenue came from the commission.
“It suited these NGOs to maintain the European perspective on developing countries ... Europe can prioritize environmental issues over economic growth because they are already wealthy,” Oxley said.
Sunanda Creagh, PlanetArk 16 Apr 10;
Indonesia will rewrite rules on how developers of forest preservation projects that earn valuable carbon credits must share their profits with the government and local communities, a finance ministry official said on Thursday.
Under a U.N.-backed scheme called reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD), developing countries can be paid not to chop down trees, which absorb planet-warming carbon dioxide as they grow.
Large-scale efforts to curb or halt deforestation have the potential to slow the pace of climate change.
A REDD market could eventually be worth billions of dollars a year to developing nations, particularly for major forest nations such as Indonesia and Brazil, which have large tracts of tropical forests.
Indonesia has several pilot REDD projects that aim to demonstrate how REDD would work if the scheme and trading of forest carbon credits is formally agreed as part of a broader U.N. climate pact to expand or replace the Kyoto Protocol.
Indonesia's Forestry Ministry released a decree last year under which REDD project developers would have to share between 20 and 70 percent of profits with local communities, depending on the type of forest, while between 10 and 50 percent of profits would be shared with the government.
"We have asked for this decree to be revised because some articles in it should be discussed more intensively between the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Forestry," said Noeroso L. Wahyudi, a senior Finance Ministry official. "We need to justify this formula so it can be implemented properly."
Analysts and industry players expressed surprise when the Forestry Ministry released the decree last year as many had expected revenue sharing to fall under the purview of the Finance Ministry.
Wahyudi said it was possible the percentages in the formula could change but could not say how.
"At the latest, the review should be finished by the end of the year," he said.
A source in the REDD development industry, who asked not to be named, said the government should also clarify whether carbon rights should be taxed as a commodity or a service and who exactly holds the rights to carbon stored in a forest.
"The benefit sharing has to be equitable for everyone," said the source, adding he could accept keeping only 60 percent of profits. "What we are looking for is certainty."
The Forestry Ministry announced in March it was reviewing three REDD decrees in an attempt to remove overlapping rules.
(Editing by David Fogarty)
Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 15 Apr 10;
The government is drafting a regulation on peatland protection that would allow businesses to utilize the areas despite mounting calls for a moratorium to conserve the areas to prevent the release of emissions.
Article 16 of the draft regulation stipulates peatland areas could be used for at least 10 purposes including, pastures, plantations, fisheries, residential, mining and transmigration areas.
It says any people operating businesses in peatland areas should manage a minimum water level to prevent fires that would lead to the huge release of emissions into the atmosphere.
“The regulation aims to minimize damage to peatland ecosystems,” Masnellyarti Hilman, deputy minister for environmental damage control at the Environment Ministry told reporters on Wednesday.
“It would be wrong if we were prohibited to utilize peatland.”
The draft, which has been submitted to the ministry’s legal and human rights affairs, says peat domes with thickness of more than 3 meters would be categorized as protected areas and would be restricted.
It also stipulates that businesspeople should set aside 30 percent of its peatland area to be restored.
Currently, the government has no specific regulation on peatlands, which are believed to contain huge stocks of greenhouse gas.
The ministry predicted Indonesia has 30 million hectares of peatland mostly in Sumatra, Papua and Kalimantan.
A number of plantations currently operate on peatland.
A study by the the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) last year recommended a moratorium on peatland conversion to meet pledged emissions cuts to tackle climate change.
Bappenas predicted damaged peatlands contributed to about 1 billion tons of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per year, half of the country’s total emissions.
Indonesia has pledged to cut emissions by 26 percent by 2020 to help slow the effects of climate change.
Activists said opening peatlands risked the release of huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Wetlands International asked the government to review the draft on fears it would only encourage people to open business on peatland.
“It is not in line with the government’s commitment to cut emissions,” I Nyoman Suriyadiputra from Wetlands International said.
A study from Wetlands said that Kalimantan, with 5.8 million hectares of peatland could store some 40 gigatons of CO2.
It said that Central Kalimantan alone, with 3 million hectares of peatland in Kapuas, Ketingan and Kahayan Hilir regencies, has the capacity to store 22 gigatons of emissions.
“One effective way to reduce emissions in Central Kalimantan is by blocking canals to prevent fires,” he said.
The Greenpeace earlier protested the destruction of peatlands in Riau, which they say stored around 2
gigatons of carbon, with peat layers of more than 15 meters.
Reuters 14 Apr 10;
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is leading an effort that could result in an agreement in coming weeks to limit and ultimately end whale hunting by Japan, Norway and Iceland, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
Citing people involved with the negotiations, the newspaper said the compromise deal -- which has sparked controversy within the 88-nation International Whaling Commission -- would allow the three countries to keep hunting whales for the next 10 years in reduced numbers.
In exchange, the whaling nations would agree to stricter monitoring of their operations, including tracking devices and international monitors on all whaling ships and participation in a whale DNA registry to track global trade in whale products.
The newspaper said officials involved in the talks were hopeful they could reach agreement in coming weeks, although ratification by the overall group is uncertain.
"This is one of the toughest negotiations I've been involved in 38 years," The Times quoted Cristian Maquieira, the Chilean chairman of the commission, as saying. "If this initiative fails now, it means going back to years of acrimony."
Last month, diplomats involved in the talks said during a meeting in Florida that they were in the middle of a "diplomatic crisis" over differences in the commission regarding whaling.
Japan, Norway and Iceland are the only countries that now hunt whales.
Australia, New Zealand and other countries want to ban all whaling. The compromise of reduced hunting for 10 more years is a hard one to get the commission members to agree on.
Anti-whaling activists have called for a ban on all whaling within a short amount of time and have urged an end to the hunting of threatened whale species.
The commission's annual meeting is scheduled for June in Morocco.
The Times said representatives to the whaling commission from more than a dozen countries including the three whaling countries and others backing a compromise deal are in Washington this week to negotiate terms of the agreement.
(Writing by Deborah Charles; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Michel Comte Yahoo News 15 Apr 10;
OTTAWA (AFP) – A lack of sea ice in one of the warmest Canadian winters on record and a European boycott have ruined what was to be a banner seal hunt off Canada's Atlantic coast this month, according to officials and sealers.
Canada's Fisheries Minister Gail Shea last month increased by 50,000 the allowable catch of harp seals this season to 330,000, in defiance of a ban on seal products by the European Union.
But most of Canada's 6,000 sealers stayed home, unable to find buyers for their catch or stymied by a lack of ice floes for the first time in 60 years on the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, which usually host hordes of seals birthing pups.
"The European boycott was devastating to the industry this year, as was the lack of ice on the Gulf of Saint Lawrence due to an exceptionally warm winter," Jean Richard, Canadian fisheries department conservation chief for the Quebec coastal region, told AFP.
"The hunt, as a result of reduced market demand, has been scaled back substantially," added Larry Yetman, fisheries resource management officer for the Newfoundland and Labrador coastal region.
Fewer than 50 sealing ships launched from Newfoundland ports, down from 500 in past years. Others would have eagerly set out to reap this year's higher pelt prices -- at 21 dollars, nearly double last year's prices.
But there was now only one local buyer, NuTan Furs, which said upfront it would buy less than 15,000 pelts from a dedicated group of sealers this year.
"Every sealer in Newfoundland would have considered going out on the ice for that price, but there aren't any buyers," Yetman said.
He lamented that sealing conditions were otherwise ripe for a bountiful harvest along the Labrador coast: "The ice is close to shore, not heavy, and easily penetrated by sealing vessels."
"Unfortunately, we expect market demand to be satisfied in a couple of days, and then we would talk about closing the hunt," likely after less than 15 percent of the quota has been reached, he said.
To the south, a solitary ship set off with 10 crew onboard last week from the Magdalen Islands, where former Beatle Paul McCartney led a seal hunt protest in 2006, in search of prey for Quebec eateries.
The rest of the island's fleet remained docked, each ship too small to venture far beyond the Saint Lawrence seaway.
Denis Longuepee, president of the Magdalen Islands seal hunters association, said the steel-hulled 65-foot vessel Jean-Mathieu had already returned from Labrador coastal waters after nine days, with 2,200 seal carcasses.
Rejean Vigneau, a sealer and owner of a Magdalen Island butcher shop that specializes in seal meat, said their harvest was disappointing -- half of what he had hoped for.
"Normally, we never go hunting for seal meat," he commented. "We hunt for pelts and also bring back the meat. But there's no market for seal pelts this year."
Except for NuTan, all of Canada's seasonal seal processing companies have been shuttered, forcing the Jean-Mathieu crew to "throw pelts back in the water."
"It's a disaster, really unthinkable," Vigneau said. "It's the first time ever that this has happened."
Longuepee told AFP that there remained "a lot of demand for seal meat" as a delicacy, triple what it was last year and growing, but fisheries officials insist the market for the meat is still relatively small.
To try to boost demand, Canada's Fur Institute is expected to soon launch a seal cookbook originally published by the European Union, ironically three years before EU states voted in 2009 to ban the marketing of seal products from 2010 onwards.
In Ottawa, efforts are now underway to try to open up new markets for seal pelts in Asia while the EU ban -- called for by animal rights groups -- is being challenged at the World Trade Organization.
Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 16 Apr 10;
A vast cloud from an intensifying volcanic eruption in Iceland is too small so far to slow global warming as happened in 1991 with the explosion of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, experts say.
Cataclysmic eruptions, led by Pinatubo and Mount Chichon in Mexico in 1982 in the 20th century, spewed so much debris into the upper atmosphere that they cooled the planet for months, briefly offsetting the effect of industrial heat-trapping gases.
"This is not like Pinatubo. So far the scale is not big enough to have a global effect," said Hans Olav Hygen, a climate researcher at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute.
The eruption under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier -- 10 times more powerful than another nearby last month -- threw up a 6 km (3.7 mile) cloud of ash and closed down air traffic across northern Europe.
"At the moment this is a relatively small eruption, not as big as some in the past from Iceland," said Colin Macpherson, a geologist at the University of Durham in England. Experts were monitoring to see possible impacts of ash on health.
A poison cloud from the eruption of Iceland's Laki volcano in 1783-84 killed thousands of people across Europe and undermined farm output by spewing an estimated 120 million metric tons of sulfur dioxide into the air, he said.
That amount of sulfur dioxide was three times European industrial output in 2006, he said.
STRATOSPHERE
Volcanic sulfur gases ejected high into the stratosphere and swept around the globe in the jetstream can linger for 12-14 months and dim sunlight, according to the U.N. panel of climate scientists.
Heavier ash generally falls back to Earth -- where it can cause respiratory problems -- within 3 months.
Some experts advocate the deliberate injection of sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere in a "geo-engineering" short cut to slow global warming and offset more floods, heatwaves, droughts, and rising sea levels.
That option has become attractive for some after a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen in December failed to produce a binding global deal to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. Others say the risks are too big -- ranging from disruptions of weather patterns to acid rain.
"Pinatubo was the last major event. The levels of aerosols in the upper atmosphere have been fairly low of late," said Geoff Dollard, practice leader on air quality at the AEA consultancy which advises the British government.
"Generally there's a cooling effect from aerosols," he said. This is a lightish dust. We are keeping an eye on it" for possible threats to health. Dust in the air is nothing new -- storms from the Sahara can bring an orange-ish dust to northern Europe.
On an index of climate change since 1980 run by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program, conditions got worse every year except 1982, 1992 and 1996. It links the dips to volcanic fallout from Chichon, Pinatubo and Monserrat in 1996.
Factbox: Volcanoes and ash clouds
Reuters 15 Apr 10;
(Reuters) - A huge cloud of ash from a volcano in Iceland turned the skies of northern Europe into a no-fly zone on Thursday, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded.
The eruption under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier -- 10 times more powerful than another one nearby last month -- showed no sign of abating after more than 24 hours of activity.
Here are a few facts on volcanic eruptions:
THE DANGERS:
* VOLCANIC GASES - The most dangerous gases released during an eruption are sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen fluoride. High concentrations of sulphur dioxide injected into the atmosphere by large explosions can result in lung ailments, acid rain, lower surface temperatures and depletion of the earth's protective ozone layer. When carbon dioxide, which is heavier than air, settles in low-lying areas or collects in the soil, it can be lethal to people and animals.
* ERUPTION COLUMNS - Billowing clouds of gas and debris can reach more than 12 miles above a volcano, posing a serious threat to aviation. Some commercial jets have nearly crashed after flying into clouds of ash. Large rock fragments falling to the ground can kill people and destroy property.
* ASH FALL - Large volumes of ash can settle on buildings, resulting in their collapse. High levels of ash particles can cause increased coughing and irritate the eyes and skin and sometimes result in serious lung conditions. When the acid coating on ash is removed by rain, it can pollute local water supplies and damage vegetation. On the other hand, ash deposits can be beneficial by improving the fertility of soil.
* PYROCLASTIC FLOWS - An avalanche of hot ash, rock fragments and gas can flow down the side of a volcano at speeds of up to 150 miles an hour during explosive eruptions, burning everything in its path. People on the margins of the flows can suffer serious injury or even death from burns and inhalation of hot ash and gases.
THE RING OF FIRE:
* Of the world's 1,500 active volcanoes, almost 90 percent are in the Ring of Fire, a horseshoe-shaped band of volcanoes and fault lines circling the edges of the Pacific Ocean. It runs from Chile, northwards along the South American coast through Central America, Mexico, the west coast of the U.S. and the southern part of Alaska, through the Aleutian Islands to Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia before curving back to New Guinea, the southwest Pacific islands and New Zealand.
VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS IN HISTORY:
* Pompeii was buried under a deep layer of ash in an eruption of the Vesuvius volcano, which towers over the Bay of Naples in southern Italy, in AD 79.
* In 1815 the Tambora volcano eruption in Indonesia killed an estimated 92,000 people. It has been claimed that volcanic ashes swept all the way to Europe blanketing the continent in a veil and turning 1816 into a "year without summer."
* In 1883 Krakatoa erupted in Indonesia killing 36,000. The impact of the eruption spewed molten rock and sulphate aerosols into the atmosphere. The debris in the atmosphere created vivid red twilights in Europe from November 1883 through February 1884 - a fact reflected by painters of the period.
* An earthquake measuring 9.5 struck the coast of central Chile in May 1960, triggering tidal waves and volcanic eruptions. Some 5,000 people were killed and 2 million made homeless.
* Mount Pinatubo, 80 km (50 miles) north of Manila, has one of the 20th century's three largest eruptions. The June 1991 eruption killed more than 700 and 200,000 buildings are destroyed.
* The Mount St. Helens volcano in the U.S. state of Washington erupted in May 1980, creating a cloud of ash 2,500 miles long and 1,000 miles wide. The eruption was triggered by a 5.1 magnitude earthquake. 57 died.
* In June, 2006, eruptions at Mount Sakurajima, on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, spews volcanic gases 2,000 meters (6,600 ft) into the air.
* An explosion from the 1,500-meter (5,000-ft) summit of Bulusan volcano in June 2006 in the Philippines sends ash and steam 1,000 meters (3,300 ft) into the air and showers ash on surrounding villages.
* In April 2010 an eruption from below the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland hurled a plume of ash six to 11 kilometers (3.8 to 7 miles) into the atmosphere.
(Writing by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit; Editing by Dominic Evans)
Ratnajyoti Dutta, PlanetArk 16 Apr 10;
Monsoon rains in south Asia are expected to be normal this year, helped by weakening El Nino weather phenomenon, a senior Indian weather official said on Thursday.
"El Nino conditions have started weakening and we expect the south Asia summer monsoon to be within the normal range," A.K. Srivastava, director of the Indian Meteorological Department, told reporters on the sidelines of South Asia Climate Outlook Forum.
Last month, the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said the El Nino had peaked, but was expected to influence climate patterns up to mid-year before dying out.
India's annual June-September monsoon rains, which delivers 75-90 percent of total rainfall, were the weakest in 37 years in 2009, ravaging rice and oilseed crops.
Lower output hit food supplies in the domestic market and triggered a sharp rise in prices. The food price index rose an annual 17.22 percent in the 12 months to early April.
(Editing by Ranjit Gangadharan)
Yahoo News 15 Apr 10;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Global temperatures fueled by El Nino seasonal warming last month chalked up the hottest March on record, US weather monitors reported Thursday.
"Warmer-than-normal conditions dominated the globe, especially in northern Africa, South Asia and Canada," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement.
Combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for March 2010 was the warmest on record at 13.5 degrees Celsius (56.3 degrees Fahrenheit), which is 0.77 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average of 12.7 C, it said.
Average ocean temperatures were the hottest for any March since record-keeping began in 1880, while the global land surface was the fourth warmest for any March on record, NOAA said, citing analysis from the National Climate Data Center.
It added that the January-March period was the planet's fourth warmest on record.
The US agency cited two Asian examples of high March mercury: Tibet had its second warmest March since records began in 1951, it said citing the Beijing Climate Center, while Delhi, India had its own second warmest March since 1901 record-keeping, according to the India Meteorological Department.
NOAA stressed that while El Nino, the weather anomaly which wreaks havoc on normal weather patterns from the western seaboard of Latin America to east Africa, weakened to a moderate strength in March, "it contributed significantly to the warmth in the tropical belt and the overall ocean temperature."
El Nino was expected to maintain its influence in the northern hemisphere "at least through the spring," NOAA said.
The record March temperatures are likely to give further ammunition to those who believe climate change is an urgent crisis which must be addressed at the global level.
The United Nations and several countries have called for a legally-binding agreement on climate change, but at a summit in Copenhagen in December states failed to agree on a deadline to reduce carbon emissions that cause global warming.
David Fogarty, Reuters 15 Apr 10;
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - China should step up its drive to a low-carbon growth model to maintain economic development and preserve achievements that have made it the world's third largest economy, a United Nations report says.
The report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released on Thursday says China's current growth model will be hard to sustain as the nation becomes more urbanised and the economy keeps expanding, consuming ever more amounts of energy.
China is already the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases from power plants, industry and transport blamed for heating up the planet and is under international pressure to curb the growth of its emissions. Coal is, and will remain, a major source of energy.
The country is also the world's most populous with 1.3 billion people and the number is expected to keep growing in coming decades. Hundreds of millions expect to migrate to the cities, threatening a massive spike in carbon emissions.
"The shift to a low-carbon development pathway is imperative as China balances further economic development with environmental sustainability and the need to respond to the threat of climate change," Khalid Malik, UNDP Resident Representative in China, said in a statement.
The report, "China and a sustainable future, toward a low carbon economy and society" and written in partnership with Renmin University of China, links economic growth, carbon emissions and human development in China.
It takes into account the numerous policy initiatives the government has launched that have driven rapid investment in renewable energy, cut energy intensity for industry and boosted environmental protection and cut pollution.
For example, China has committed to reducing carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP in 2020 by 40 percent to 45 percent compared with 2005 levels. And rapid growth of renewable energy such as wind and solar has created a sector already worth $17 billion and employing close to one million people.
STRATEGIC CHOICE
But more was needed in a nation vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and which was already experiencing greater extremes of weather, threatening livelihoods and the economy.
"If climate change impacts are not adequately addressed in China, there is a danger that three decades of achievements may be reversed. China's most strategic choice is therefore to embark on a low-carbon development path that will preserve and increase its human development achievements in the years to come," says the report.
It said it was crucial to balance maintaining job growth and the needs of millions of poor people to prevent social unrest.
Since China launched economic reforms in the late 1970s, more than 500 million people have been lifted out of poverty, it says. But more than 100 million still live below the poverty line.
China's total greenhouse gas emissions have also grown rapidly. From 1970 to 2007, the total amount rose over seven times, the report says.
If the government makes only some efforts to reduce carbon pollution, energy-related CO2 emissions will increase rapidly to 11.4 billion tonnes in 2020, 13.9 billion tonnes in 2030 and 16.2 billion tonnes in 2050, and will not peak before 2050.
Much stronger action meant there was potential for emissions reduction after 2030 but that this would be difficult without a large number of support measures and major investment.
The report concludes that energy efficiency, carbon capture and storage, renewables and nuclear power were crucial investment areas to achieving a low-carbon future. It says that over the next 20 years, nearly 350 million Chinese are expected to migrate to urban areas -- more than the current population of the United States.
"Since urbanization generally increases emissions, China will face enormous pressures to reduce emissions while economic development and urbanization move forward," it says.
Accelerated urbanization fed on energy-intensive raw materials such as steel products, cement and chemical materials.
To cope with urbanization, China would need to construct an estimated 50,000 new high-rise buildings and 170 new mass transportation systems. Rapid freight growth and more highways, railways and ports would also be needed.
(Editing by David Fox)
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