Best of our wild blogs: 7 Jun 10

Oil spill spread and clean up: a summary
from wild shores of singapore and Effects on people and What long term effects on our marine life? and Can it happen again?

Shore lovers check up on Chek Jawa after the oil spill
from wild shores of singapore

Oil Spill Impact Site: the "Lost Coast"
from encounters with nature

Coastal Clean Up @ Tanah Merah
from Nature's Wonders and Adventure on Pulau Jong and Corals of Kusu Island

Open for booking: Chek Jawa intertidal walks Jul-Dec 2010
from wild shores of singapore

NIE field trip to Sungei Buloh
from wonderful creation

Purple pose
from The annotated budak

Butterflies vs. Moths & Bukit Timah Hill
from NaturallYours

Upper Seletar
from Singapore Nature

Monday Morgue: 7th June 2010
from Lazy Lizard's Tales

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Stiffer penalties and more visible punishments for litterbugs

Jeremy Koh Channel NewsAsia 6 Jun 10;

SINGAPORE : Singapore may be clean and green. But its streets are not free of litter.

Between 2005 and 2009, the number of offenders increased more than ten-fold - to over 41,000, in part due to increased enforcement. Seven in ten of those caught are locals.

Tougher penalties, like stiffer fines and greater public shaming, are being introduced to keep offenders at bay.

The National Environment Agency (NEA) is also stepping up public engagement efforts, while making it easier for people to bin their trash.

This year's anti-littering campaign is based on the findings of a new survey, and its key objective is to fight littering, by tackling social habits.

Environment and Water Resources Minister Dr Yaacob Ibrahim said: "The study shows that some people see occasional littering as alright. The message we want to tell them is, there's no such thing as occasional littering. A litter is litter, whether it's at your home, at your park, in the drain, it will affect all of us."

About 48 per cent of people surveyed also quoted "difficulty in locating bins" as the main reason for littering. Also, many litterbugs think they can get away.

A majority feel that Corrective Work Order (CWO) is effective.

That is why NEA has increased fines for first-time offenders - from $200 to $300.

Those on CWO will have to sweep town centres, so that the punishment is more visible.

Litter bins will be placed in areas where there's a greater need, while smoking areas will have bins with ash trays.

NEA also wants to ensure zero tolerance of litter.

Andrew Tan, CEO, National Environment Agency, said: "I cannot imagine how NEA on its part can be deploying double the number of people, triple the number of people, quadruple the number of people if the community itself does not now step in to say we do want to take action against litterbugs."

Besides training more volunteers to be Litter-Free Ambassadors, it's also launching an anti-littering publicity campaign.

The aim is to reduce litter in public places by 20 per cent and cut the number of litterbugs - from four in ten of the population - to three in ten by 2015. - CNA/jy

Tougher now for litterbugs to escape
Acting on poll, NEA increases patrols and adds more bins
Amresh Gunasingham Straits Times 7 Jun 10;

YEARS of effort against littering have not stamped out the problem, so the authorities embarked on a survey to find out why, and to help them formulate intensive new measures.

Based on the poll of 4,500 people, there will now be more uniformed officers prowling the streets for litterbugs, more bins with ashtrays and heightened public shaming of inveterate offenders.

Most respondents to the year-long sociological study by the National Environment Agency (NEA) suggested the greatest deterrent to littering would be if they knew they were being watched by uniformed officers, said sociologist and Nominated Member of Parliament Paulin Straughan, who led the study.

Almost half said there were not enough bins in public places, and one in three agreed that corrective work orders (CWOs) in places with higher traffic would be unpleasant and embarrassing.

The most significant changes to anti-littering laws in a decade come as the befouling of Singapore's streets and waterways has grown worse in recent years, exacerbated by an influx of foreign residents bringing with them different social norms.

Since 2005, the number of littering offenders caught has increased 10-fold to 41,400 last year. Some 2,537 CWOs were issued last year.

The study exposed worrying trends in people's attitudes to littering, noted Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim.

It found that though one in four people recognised it was an anti-social act, they would still litter if, for instance, there was no bin nearby, or out of laziness or habit.

This suggests it is not enough just to raise awareness about littering, but that the message must be twinned with stronger enforcement and better facilities, said the minister.

'I do not think a single measure approach will work as there are genuine problems on the ground,' Dr Yaacob told reporters on the sidelines of the launch of this year's anti-littering campaign yesterday.

So the 101 uniformed officers who roam the streets will now make the rounds twice weekly, up from once at present.

From today, repeat offenders will also no longer serve out a CWO in the anonymity of a sleepy housing estate, but amid a bustling shopping mall, town centre or bus stop where they will be seen by many.

Smokers, long lamenting a lack of ashtrays, will get more of those in public spaces such as malls, bus stops and town centres. Busy areas will also get larger bins.

Some $12 million will be invested over the next few years to bring these plans to fruition.

The study sought to understand why a normal, well-educated person could be driven to commit an anti-social act, said Associate Professor Straughan.

'If we do not understand the socio-environmental factors, that is, what motivates people not to bin, we will just be broadcasting messages blindly and hoping that somewhere, we have hit the right spot,' she said.

To deter littering, fines were introduced in the early 70s, and CWOs in 1992.

The NEA will work with town councils, and the PUB and National Parks Board, which look after waterways and parks respectively, to align their penalties for litterbugs as well as make sure bins are placed in the right areas.

First-time offenders caught for minor litter can be fined $300, while repeat offenders can be fined up to $5,000 while also serving a CWO.

NEA has not ruled out raising these penalties in future.

Teacher Joseph Yin, 35, suggested that the authorities could make better use of new media tools such as Facebook and Twitter to reach out to youth, of whom nearly a quarter surveyed in the study said nothing would stop them from littering.

Mums and wives influence litterbugs
Straits Times 7 Jun 10;

WHETHER a person litters is influenced to a large extent by whether a close family member or friend either approves of littering or commits the act themselves, the National Environment Agency's (NEA) sociological study showed.

The study found, for example, that a person was 2.4 times more likely to litter if they had a relative who was also a litterbug.

Mothers and wives were found to bear the greatest influence on what their children and husbands did.

Among the youth, a problem group where as many as seven in 10 out of 1,500 interviewed admitted to littering, around 45 per cent said their mothers were a strong influence in shaping their attitudes towards littering. For men, the same proportion listed their wives.

Among the general public, 33 per cent said mothers were the strongest influence on their children's likelihood to litter.

The findings showed the importance of social support networks and the role of women as 'important facilitators' in shaping the values and actions of their families, said Associate Professor Paulin Straughan, who led the year-long study.

The NEA is working with organisations such as the People's Association's women's executive council to organise anti-littering campaigns, while it also aims to get more women to sign up to its own litter-free ambassadors programme.

While mothers and wives were seen to play a significant role, male figures such as fathers and husbands could also influence such values among children, said NUS sociology professor Narayanan Ganapathy, who was also involved in the study.

Prof Straughan added: 'By and large, Singaporeans are aware of the importance of keeping the country clean and are also aware of the public efforts in place to ensure we continue to live in a clean and green city.' She noted that almost 95 per cent of the people surveyed said they knew it was wrong to do so.

The key to going forward is to achieve a 'new social norm', like that seen in other cities such as Tokyo, where individuals are willing to hold on to their litter when a bin is not easily accessible, she added.

AMRESH GUNASINGHAM

Littering: A fine mess
Stiffer penalties, more enforcement to curb unsightly problem
Ong Dai Lin Today Online 7 Jun 10;

SINGAPORE - The next time you litter or throw a cigarette butt, you will be twice as likely to be spotted by an enforcement officer and will face a tougher Corrective Work Order (CWO) regime.

From today, the National Environment Agency (NEA) will increase uniformed patrols at littering hotspots such as bus-stops from one day to two days a week.

A one-year study commissioned by NEA, carried out from April last year, on the behavioural and sociological factors behind littering found that uniformed enforcement is effective in encouraging people not to litter.

NEA said the findings also showed that the CWO is an effective deterrent and "many CWO offenders felt that it's very embarrassing, and they recounted the process of attending court as unpleasant".

So NEA will now conduct more CWOs at badly-littered hotspots, such as the barbecue pits at East Coast Park. It will also make CWOs more visible by holding them in public areas with heavy human traffic such as neighbourhood centres and bus interchanges.

The month the study began, NEA increased the fine for first-time offenders who failed to properly dispose of small items - such as cigarette butts, sweet wrappers and parking coupon tabs - from $200 to $300. Besides serving a CWO, repeat offenders can be hit with fines of up to $5,000.

NEA will now increase penalties for first-time offenders if necessary. It is also working with the National Parks Board (NParks) and the Public Utilities Board (PUB) for them to follow the same penalty regime.

PUB imposes a $200 composite fine for first offenders, while repeat offenders will be hauled to court; NParks' penalty is a $300 fine for first or subsequent offences.

At the launch of the new anti-littering campaign yesterday, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim said: "Strict enforcement will send a clear message to those who persist in littering - that littering isn't acceptable."

To give would-be litterbugs fewer excuses, NEA will increase the number and size of bins at areas with heavy human traffic as well as improve bin design to make it easier for smokers to dispose of their butts.

For instance, it will place both wall-mounted and freestanding canisters in Clarke Quay, Plaza Singapura and Raffles City as a pilot project.

"So on our part, we continue to make it convenient for people to bin their litter. But ... it's a social habit as to whether or not you make a conscious effort to try and gather whatever litter you have and find the nearest bin," said Dr Yaccob.

To increase public education, NEA has also introduced the Litter-Free Ambassador programme, in which students, youth and grassroots leaders educate the public through house-to-house visits and community events.

As he emphasised the importance of a clean city, Dr Yaacob shared how a man threw a cigarette pack wrapper out of a car, in front of him.

"He may think it's a small (piece of) plastic, but that plastic will fly, go into the drain, accumulate with other litter; it'll clog up our drains - then you get dengue fever," he said.

There is thus the need to "task people to begin to think of the consequences of their actions".

Sociologist Paulin Straughan, who completed a survey for NEA's study, feels that the new measures will be effective in the short run.

The next step is whether active citizenry will work.

"If it works, we'll have evolved as a society where people care about the environment. And NEA will just need to sustain their efforts," she told MediaCorp.

Nurse Zhuo Shuling, 25, said: "Most people know you aren't supposed to litter only because you'll be fined. It's not good to use fines to control the littering problem."

As such, 26-year-old copywriter Dunstan Lee suggested reinforcing the merits of living in a clean country.

Read more!

Biofuel gets hotter as green choice in Singapore

A second company will start plant here to make fuel out of waste oil
Lester Kok Straits Times 7 Jun 10;

DEMAND for the cheaper and more environmentally friendly biodiesel is picking up both overseas and in Singapore, as companies strive to go green.

A second company is set to start operations here with another plant, which converts waste oils to biodiesel, to be built by September.

Only one company supplies domestic market demand for biofuel now. Alpha Biofuels, a start-up formed six years ago, expects demand to reach two million litres this year, up 30 per cent from last year. Its plant in West Coast can produce 2.4 million litres of biofuel in a year.

Alpha now has 15 companies such as Smart Taxis, SingTel and Starbucks using biodiesel, compared to 10 in December last year. The company also said more vehicles are pumping biodiesel at its eight refuelling stations across the island.

The new biodiesel plant, built by local company Fuelogical, will produce about 17 million litres a year and will sell to the domestic and international markets.

Its managing director Sive Sivandran said the company is confident it has enough feedstock to supply the biodiesel to its clients.

Alpha already has about 200 business partners regularly contributing waste cooking oils for conversion to usable fuel, but it is not enough. Its chief executive Allan Lim said it aims to have 200 more partners as Singapore uses about two million litres of cooking oil per month.

Biofuels are better for the environment in many ways: Made from vegetable oils, they are a renewable resource. Waste cooking oil can also be recycled as bio-diesel. The resulting fuel burns more cleanly than fossil fuels, and has much less harmful emissions such as carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and both sulphur oxides and sulphates, which are major components of acid rain.

Currently, it is also cheaper than commercial diesel, going at $1.07 per litre compared with diesel at about $1.30 and petrol at about $1.80.

A pioneer in this area, Biofuel Research, a subsidiary of Singapore company Oakwell Engineering, said worldwide demand for biodiesel has also increased by at least 50 per cent, especially from the European markets.

The company supplies to countries like Denmark and India, using waste cooking oil and waste by-products from Malaysian palm refineries to make its biodiesel.

With Singapore exploring alternative forms of clean energy such as solar power and electric batteries, industry players say the market for renewable fuel is promising, as any diesel vehicle or power generator can use biodiesel.

Alpha's Mr Lim said biodiesel is an easy way for firms looking to enhance their green image. 'It all starts with recycling. The more (waste cooking oil) we can recycle, the lower the cost of the biodiesel, the more Singapore will benefit.'

Persuading companies to switch to biofuels is an uphill task.

For one thing, buying diesel in bulk is still about 20 per cent cheaper than buying biodiesel.

Convincing companies to donate their waste cooking oil is also difficult as they can sell waste oil to third-party oil collectors to be exported to other countries and re-used as lower grade cooking oil.

Industry players say what would help is a policy that encourages the use of renewable energy, such as tax exemptions for companies using renewable fuel.

Mr Kom Mam Sun, director of Biofuel Research, argued that companies producing renewable energy and environmental technology should get a foot in the door because of their additional eco benefits.

Neste Oil, a Finnish oil refining company, also plans to complete its €550 million (S$930 million) plant in Tuas by the end of the year.

However, unlike the other two companies, Neste plans to use fresh palm oil as its main feedstock, which will drive the prices of its biodiesel up.

Its global president and chief executive Matti Lievonen declined to reveal its biodiesel price, but said it will be priced at a premium compared to traditional bio-diesel, because of its quality.

'The Singapore plant will require approximately one million tonnes per year of feedstock. Collecting used cooking oil would be difficult due to the volume requirements,' he said.

From its plant in Singapore, Neste will churn out about one billion litres of bio-diesel per year, bound mostly for European markets, and in the future, American markets.

Associate Professor Lu Wen Feng from the National University of Singapore's mechanical engineering department said switching fuel sources is a good first step for companies which want to go green, but there are still issues like costs and availability to consider.

'I do not think there is enough waste cooking oil around to feed our vehicles,' he said. 'Since a majority of biodiesels are produced from biological ingredients, mass production of biodiesel may bring out the issue of food shortage.'

DIY alternative coming soon
Straits Times 7 Jun 10;

ALPHA Biofuels will soon allow customers to produce their own biodiesel, using a machine the size of a long dining table.

The micro-refinery is being used on the construction site of Asia Square, an upcoming hotel-cum-office complex in Marina Bay, producing 1,000 litres of biodiesel a week for the building's temporary power generator.

When the first tower of the building is ready next year, the machine will be used to convert waste cooking oil from the restaurants located in the building to produce biodiesel which will be used by the hotel's shuttle buses and local charitable organisations.

Alpha has also set up micro- refineries in other countries, including Cambodia, where waste cooking oil collected from hotels in Siem Reap is converted to 2,000 litres of biodiesel a week.

The fuel is then used by generators at the Angkor Hospital for Children, to provide electricity during peak hours and ensure that operations are not affected by intermittent electricity.

Likewise in Kuala Lumpur, Alpha is making a micro-refinery for a client who wishes to convert waste cooking oil collected from the city's various fast food restaurants into usable fuel.

Alpha chief executive Allan Lim says the Malaysian effort is a pilot project, and the company hopes to expand into other major cities in Malaysia.

Apart from building micro-refineries, Alpha continues to seek more companies to donate their waste cooking oil, and more customers to use biodiesel.

Alpha's current partners include Smart Taxis, which uses 1,000 litres of biodiesel a week in some of its cabs, and SingTel, which has just finished a trial using the biofuel in seven of its vehicles.

A SingTel spokesman said the company is currently evaluating results of the trial, taking into consideration the cost, location of refuelling points and mode of payment, before deciding whether to implement it across its fleet of vans.

Ikea Singapore, part of the Swedish furniture giant, has also recently begun to contribute waste cooking oil and is in talks with its providers of delivery trucks and shuttle buses about switching to biodiesel.

Mr Lionel Lim, director of Bedok Transport, which has been using biodiesel in 15 of its 70 buses since last year, said bulk diesel is still more cost effective than biodiesel.

But the company chooses to use biodiesel in some of its fleet to cut down on carbon emissions.

'If I can, I'll try to keep using biodiesel, but it all boils down to cost constraints,' said the 30-year-old. 'Biodiesel is still affordable now, but if the price goes up, then maybe not.'

LESTER KOK

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Green Mark making waves abroad as well

Emilyn Yap Business Times 7 Jun 10;

(SINGAPORE) Officials assessing the eco-friendliness of buildings need to get used to a jet-setting lifestyle. Besides visiting sites in Singapore, they now have to go overseas to inspect architectural features and compute energy savings.

As Singapore's Green Mark certification gains recognition abroad, more developers are trying to win this stamp of approval for their projects overseas. According to the Building and Construction Authority (BCA), there have been 74 such applications since 2006.

The Green Mark rating 'has gained popularity in the region because it is developed specially for the tropical climate', BCA told BT. When developers want properties abroad certified, BCA officers have to go there.

Other industry players have also noticed growing foreign interest in the Green Mark rating. RSP Architects Planners & Engineers director Vivien Heng said that several developers have enquired about getting overseas projects assessed.

BCA launched the Green Mark scheme in 2005. Buildings that meet set standards in areas such as energy efficiency and indoor environment quality qualify for the rating. The rating system is one of 21 recognised by the World Green Building Council.

BCA has been receiving applications from developers - local and foreign - for overseas projects since 2006. These properties are in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, China, India and the Middle East.

There is confidence in Singapore's Green Mark brand, Ms Heng said, explaining why developers abroad have shown interest. And sometimes, 'the foreign country's own green building rating system may not be so well established yet'.

Several Malaysian developers, such as Ken Property, Sunway City and Sime Darby Property, have subscribed to the Green Mark scheme.

Ken Property has obtained a Green Mark stamp for three projects. It turned to the scheme because there was no alternative in its country at the time. 'The Malaysian Green Building Index (GBI) had not yet been launched, so we went ahead with the BCA rating first,' said the company's executive director, Sam Tan.

One of these projects, a 15-storey residential building in Kuala Lumpur called Ken Bangsar, saves an estimated 640,000 kilowatt hours of energy a year and recently won a Green Mark Gold Plus award. When Malaysia launched its own green building scheme, Ken Bangsar had another assessment and got a GBI Gold award.

Mr Tan said that buildings that meet Green Mark standards can cost 3-20 per cent more to build - but there are benefits. 'All things being equal, a green building will have the edge' because of better features and increased comfort for occupants.

Sunway City has five properties with Green Mark ratings and plans to continue getting projects certified. The scheme is well established and suitable for the tropics, it said.

It is no surprise to see Singapore developers getting their overseas projects assessed by BCA too. Many of them have already obtained Green Mark ratings for projects here.

Local names eyeing a Green Mark rating for buildings abroad include Keppel Land and CapitaLand. Keppel aims to attain at least a Green Mark Gold rating or its equivalent for all of its developments. It invests up to 4 per cent of a building's construction cost in green features.

Keppel has seven properties in Vietnam and China that passed the Green Mark test. For instance, The Estella in Vietnam - designed to yield energy and water savings worth over $850,000 annually - won a Gold award.

Is there potential for the Green Mark scheme - and the Singapore brand - to go further overseas? Asked if it plans to promote the scheme abroad, BCA said that it is open to providing services overseas that help develop quality built environments. 'Green Mark certification is one of the most popular services requested,' it said.

Establishing Singapore's reputation as a regional centre for the development of eco-friendly buildings 'paves the way for our local industry to export their green building expertise'.

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Conservation International council to energise the green drive in Singapore

Businesses can look to it for practical tips on responsible growth
Victoria Vaughan Straits Times 7 Jun 10;

GREEN group Conservation International has set up a council for businesses in the Asia-Pacific to discuss how to be more environmentally friendly.

Known as the Asia-Pacific Business and Sustainability Council, it aims to give companies practical tips on how to continue making money without doing so at the expense of the environment. It will also suggest ways for them to use less water and energy and reduce waste.

Its members are established firms such as agricultural heavyweights Wilmar International and Monsanto, Indonesian energy firm Medco Group, retail giant Wal-Mart Asia and tyre-maker Giti Tire. Coffee chain Starbucks was the sixth and latest big name to join the council last month.

To join the council, a company must be a leader in its field and have shown a commitment to sustainability.

'Companies need to realise they have to look beyond their finances to the ecosystem that supports them with fresh air and water,' said Conservation International's global vice-president for corporate relations Andy Wilson, who is based at its headquarters in Virginia in the United States. The group, a think-tank which focuses on science, policy, communications and marketing, recently opened a base in Singapore.

The council first met in Singapore in March and set South-east Asia's haze situation as a key priority.

A sub-committee to address this problem, which has plagued the region for years, was set up and is led by Medco and Singapore's Wilmar. Companies with oil palm and paper plantations have been accused of indirectly causing the haze as workers use fire to clear land.

The sub-committee will look at how to prevent the cutting down of virgin rainforests in Sumatra and the use of fire to clear land for farming. The latter has been the spark for much of the haze that engulfs the region at least twice a year.

Wilmar's head of corporate social responsibility, Mr Jeremy Goon, said: 'Haze affects our business too. Not only is our employee productivity reduced due to health reasons, the haze also slows down our operations due to low visibility, which makes work in the plantations almost impossible.'

Wilmar is the largest global processor of palm and lauric oils and has businesses in fire-prone areas such as Central Kalimantan. It has more than 230,000ha of oil palm plantations, the majority of which are in Indonesia.

'We believe our familiarity with the landscape there, as well as our experience in firefighting, will be useful in helping to fight the cause,' said Mr Goon.

Other issues raised by the council were green buildings, employee engagement and fresh water management.

Mr Wilson said he expects the membership of the council to grow to 25 in the next two to three years. Although big businesses are part of the problem when it comes to the environment, they are also part of the solution, he said.

Mr Wilson added that while there is a cost associated with being sustainable, green efforts can help boost profits.

'Yes, it costs money to invest in sustainability but if you are saving on energy, water and waste then it will have a positive impact on the bottom line,' he said, noting that Wal-Mart saved billions by encouraging its suppliers to use less packaging, thus reducing shipping costs.

The new Asia-Pacific council will meet again in Shanghai in September. There will be two meetings a year, which member companies will host.

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Weather causes 30% drop in durian output in Johor

Moh Farhaan Shah, The Star 7 Jun 10;

JOHOR BARU: The weather has caused a 30% drop in durian output in the state, the Federal Agricultural Marketing Authority (Fama) said.

Fama southern region marketing officer Mohd Shapiee Ismail said the drop was due to unpredictable weather which affected the fruiting season.

“Despite the drop, Johor is still the biggest durian producer in the country,” he told reporters after launching Naza Talyya Johor Baru durian promotion.

He said Fama and the Agricultural Department would carry out checks at orchards to ensure the durians were of good quality.

He said Muar was the biggest supplier, producing 2,668 tonnes followed by Pontian (1,820), Kluang (870), Kota Tinggi (690), Segamat (630), Johor Baru (240) and Mersing (220).

He said the state produced a total of 8,000 metric tonnes of durian annually.

“Many of our popular durian grades such as D24 and 101 are exported to Singapore and Hong Kong.

“We also export frozen durian to Australia, where the demand is getting higher,” he added.

Mohd Shapiee said local demand was always higher at the start of the durian season.

“To meet this demand, we have urged farmers to plant more of the popular consumer choices such as D24 and 101. Many of the farmers prefer to plant durian kampung.

“The price for durian kampung is between RM4 to RM5 per kilogramme while D24 and 101 are priced between RM10 and RM15,” he said.

On the Naza Talyya durian promotion, he said it was a good way to promote the king of fruits among hotel guests as many hotels usually had a strict rule on durians.

Naza Talyya Johor Baru hotel manager Mohd Shaufi said the promotion was unique and the hotel was the first in Malaysia to hold such a promotion.

“The package of RM180 nett consists of one night stay with breakfast and all the durian the guest can eat at our alfresco café,” he said.

He added that the promotion was held in conjunction with Cuti-Cuti 1Malaysia and the World Cup.

Read more!

Adding firepower to the fight for our forests

How helping Indonesia cut emissions will benefit Singapore - and you
Today Online 5 Jun 10;

The deal between Norway and Indonesia to save Indonesian forests is a game-changer in more ways than one.

For Indonesia, it means a greener future and lower carbon emissions. Much less noticed is that it means cleaner air and sharply reduced costs here in Singapore.

The ground-breaking agreement between Indonesia and Norway, signed at a ceremony in Oslo on May 26, is designed to stop the conversion of Indonesian forests and peat lands into plantations.

Norway said it will give Indonesia up to US$1 billion ($1.4 billion) for emissions reductions resulting from forest preservation. Indonesia said it is "prepared to suspend for two years new concessions for the conversion of peat and natural forest lands" starting as early as January next year.

Mr Agus Purnomo, secretariat head at Indonesia's National Climate Change Council, said afterward that Indonesia is likely to cancel some existing concessions as well.

"Donors have been supporting improved forest management in Indonesia for decades," according to Mr Lou Verchot, a scientist with the Centre for International Forestry Research (Cifor).

"But never before has a prospective contribution been this significant in terms of both size and ambition, and never before so clearly tied to performance."

The agreement leverages the United Nations' Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (Redd) programme, which was launched in September 2008, to assist developing countries implement plans to save their forests.

So far, Redd has provided about US$42 million for pilots in eight countries around the world. This new programme gives a massive jump-start to Redd initiatives. Currently ranked as the third worst emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, Indonesia has an opportunity to become a role model for emissions reduction instead.

Some organisations do see the agreement as not going far enough. Redd-Monitor, for example, laments that the agreement only starts forest preservation next year, contains "nothing whatsoever in the Letter of Intent about the rights of indigenous peoples", only applies to new development concessions, and contains no commitment to continue the suspension beyond two years.

All may be valid concerns. Since so little has actually happened for so long despite ongoing negotiations, though, implementing this solution seems far better than waiting for something absolutely perfect.

HOW IT BENEFITS SINGAPORE

Beyond Norway's large financial contribution, reductions in the costs of the pollution from the burning can bring enormous additional economic benefits. Researchers David Glover and Timothy Jessup estimated the region-wide costs of the severe haze in 1997 at US$4.5 billion, for example.

Even in 2006, when the haze was not as severe, Professor Euston Quah of the Nanyang Technological University estimated the costs to be at least $50 million in Singapore alone. Reduced emissions can mean substantial savings in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and beyond.

Even without being a party to the agreement, Singapore stands to benefit in more ways than one.

Once the burning stops, the skies here that have so often been spoiled by pollution from burning forests should be far clearer. Singaporeans and tourists alike can look forward to cleaner air and better health.

And as air pollution continues to become a more important factor when people choose where to live, Singapore can become an even more competitive destination for top talent.

Clearer skies will also bring major economic savings. The annual loss of tens of millions of dollars from higher health costs, fewer tourists, lower corporate productivity and other expenses resulting from the haze would drop tremendously. Long-term health benefits from less pollution, though hard to calculate, will likely be substantial too.

There are still some uncertainties about the deal. This year is the preparation phase, when the strategy will be developed. The transformation phase that's targeted to stop the burning only begins next year, and is dependent on the preparations this year.

With all the advantages the agreement brings, and with some of the timing potentially uncertain, the surrounding countries would benefit from doing everything they can to support implementation.

While change is obviously most dependent on work by Indonesia and Norway, anything Singapore can do to assist - whether it's technical expertise, assistance with monitoring or other assistance - could have major benefits for all the parties.

The net results of the agreement and forest preservation are manifold, as we can look forward to reduced emissions, clearer skies and even financial benefits. Faster implementation is to the benefit of all.

The writer is a consultant who has lived in Singapore since 1992.

Not quite yet a breakthrough
Letter from Kwan Jin Yao Today Online 7 Jun 10;

MR RICHARD Hartung's commentary, "Adding firepower to the fight for our forests" (June 5-6), gives a brief summary of the "groundbreaking" agreement between Indonesia and Norway to place a two-year moratorium on new logging concessions.

Indeed, other than the direct financial benefits for the Indonesian administration if the commitment is adhered to, serious environmental challenges such as air pollution, desertification and deforestation would be simultaneously tackled as well.

The two-pronged approach - enhancing technology and tracking systems, as well as addressing institutional challenges such as under-development and corruption -would appear to many observers as a significant breakthrough for Indonesia.

However, the fact is that the United Nations and the Association of South-east Asian Nations have been working in the past decades to achieve the aforementioned - albeit not of such scale and publicity - to little or no avail.

Considerable sums of money and resources have been pumped into the region - with the active harmonisation of national, regional and international policies - but the ends do not justify the means. There is little reason to think that the current letter of intent would be any different. Even if any short-term success is achieved, the sustainability of the policies would be in question given that the moratorium only grants delays and temporary suspensions.

The problem at hand is a structural one. Geographically, the practices of deforestation, logging and primitive "slash-and-burn" are hard to track and control because of the sheer number of individual islands and forest cover.

Having developed the wood-processing industries as a key driver of its economic growth, Indonesia has no choice but to maintain its production capacity for fiscal development. The assortment of conservation efforts have failed miserably because they have ignored the composition of the Indonesian system, mistakenly adopting generalised plans and ignoring the root of the challenges.

Enforcement measures on collective, small-time farmers consistently backfire because they have little choice but to resort to primitive methods to efficiently clear land for plantations. Even with subsidies, they simply cannot afford new technology, and see no incentives to do so. Rather, the administration should bring the involved stakeholders together at grassroots level to comprehend their concerns and sensitively address issues of concern.

For the corporations that exploit the resources and farmers, the authorities should step up efforts to curb their expansion, and ensure that they adhere to the respective legislations. Stem corruption and strengthen initiatives to get rid of officials who selfishly decide to do otherwise. Transmigration should also be better managed.

It goes beyond the haze and air pollution: Indonesia currently is the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. If the status quo is allowed to manifest, our future generations might no longer have an Earth to safely inhabit.

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North Maluku "Angel Bird" on brink of extinction

Antara 6 Jun 10;

Ternate, N Maluku (ANTARA News) - Due to the worsening forest condition in North Maluku, Angel bird (Semioptera Wallacii) in the province is on the brink of extinction.

Image from avianweb.com.

"The bird`s habitats deteriorate due to forest encroachment and illegal logging activities," Djafar, an activist, said here, Sunday.

Besides, some parts of the province`s forest area have been converted into plantation areas, transmigration sites, forest concession (HPH) areas and mining sites, he said.

Djafar said that mining and forest concession played a major role in the bird`s extinction, as the birds lost their habitat, which is the local forest where they usually take shelter and find food in big trees.

"Ironically, licenses for both forest harmful activities are easily issued by the local officials who are supposedly responsible for the preservation effort," he said.

Most of the Angel bird`s habitats in Halmahera, North Halmahera, and central Halmahera districts have been converted into mining areas.

Djafar urged all parties to be aware and serious in preserving the birds, as North Maluku is their native origin.

North Maluku authorities must turn the forest into conservation area in order to preserve the Angel bird.

To raise local people`s awareness on the importance of the Angel bird preservation, local schools must help educate the children about the endangered birds.

A special study on the Angel Bird population has not been done yet, but it is certain that it has declined since the 1980s due to the continued deforestation.(*)

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Policy against environmental damage needs to be firm: NGO

Antara 6 Jun 10;

Banjarbaru, S Kalimantan (ANTARA News) - The local government policy on environmental vandalism must be forceful, said an NGO activist.

"Measures taken by the local government on environmental vandalism committed by an individual or company were still not firm enough," South Kalimantan Walhi (Indonesian Environmental Forum) Executive Director Hegar Wahyu Hidayat said here Sunday.

He said that firmness of the local government and relevant bodies was needed to uphold policies against those who damaged the environment.

Environmental pollution was caused by mining activities in Tapin district and iron ore mining in Kotabaru district.

"Environmental pollution which has been continuing in those districts remain untouched by the law," he said.

Those who are proven to have damaged and polluted the environment must receive legal sanctions, he said.

On the other hand, the government`s stance on the environment which benefits the society must take precedence over providing benefits for individuals and companies in their environmental damaging and ecosystem disruption activities.

"We see that the local government still provides land clearing permits for coal mining and oil palm plantation expansion that show the fact that the society and the environment alignment is still low," he said.

Hopefully, under the newly elected South Kalimantan governor and deputy governor, who asked for partisanship in the society, the people`s welfare would be raised without fearing natural disasters.

"As long as the environment is damaged and not maintained, natural disasters such as floods and landslides might occur, and by the new leader`s policy on the environment the disasters would still increase," he said. (A050/S012)

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Ensuring Redd is not mere pulp fiction

Michael Richardson, for the Straits Times 7 Jun 10;

RECENT developments in curbing high levels of forest loss around the world are promising. They are significant because deforestation, including the clearing of trees from peat swamps in South-east Asia, is the biggest source of global warming emissions from human activity, after fossil fuel burning.

Indonesia has the eighth largest forest area on the planet and half the global total of tropical peatland. It is the world's leading emitter of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from deforestation.

So Indonesia's announcement last month that, starting next January, it will place a two-year moratorium on new permits to clear forests and peatlands is a potentially important advance in a programme to help developing countries protect forests. In fact, advocates of the United Nations-backed forest preservation scheme, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (Redd), argue that it is the fastest and cheapest way to cut greenhouse emissions.

Indonesian officials say they will honour existing forest concessions but use the moratorium to get plantation companies to expand on six million hectares of degraded land that was once covered by trees but is now unproductive.

In return for Indonesia's suspension of forest-clearing permits and other reforms to improve land management, Norway announced that it would provide US$1 billion (S$1.4 billion) to fund the programme. This will mirror similar schemes in Brazil and other major tropical forest nations in South America, Africa, Asia and the South Pacific. A group of developed nations, including Australia, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Norway, Sweden and the United States, have separately pledged more than US$4 billion to pay for Redd.

All this sounds good on paper. But implementing forest conservation schemes poses many challenges. Indonesia illustrates the scale of the challenge.

For a start, how do you ensure that the money paid to cut emissions actually does so and that the benefits flow down to local communities and small farmers, the intended beneficiaries of the scheme?

Some Indonesian officials would like the deal with Norway to be expanded from payments of a fixed sum per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions verifiably reduced through forest preservation, to rewards for efforts to expand forest cover by tree planting.

In January, Indonesia announced that it planned to plant 21 million hectares with trees. This would help achieve President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's commitment to reduce greenhouse emissions by 26 per cent relative to business-as-usual levels by 2020, or as much as 41 per cent with the help of international partners.

Environmentalists have expressed concern that enlarging forest cover in Indonesia would focus on planting commercial timber and oil palm plantations, which they blame for much of the primary forest burning and peatland drainage that have already taken place.

Peatland is formed as plants rot in water-saturated areas. By some measures, it stores nearly 450 billion tonnes of carbon worldwide, substantially more than the 290 billion tonnes held in forests.

Apart from the power of vested commercial interests, widespread corruption and the increasing decentralisation in Indonesia pose challenges. Just last month, Indonesia's anti-graft commission announced that it was investigating corruption in the forestry sector that had cost the state more than US$100 billion. A forestry ministry official explained that a 'big percentage' of companies given permission to use forest resources had broken laws designed to limit damage to the environment and protect Indonesia's rich biodiversity.

Still, the rate of deforestation in Indonesia has reportedly slowed in recent years although it is still expected to reach nearly 1.2 million hectares this year. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in March that Asia had moved from having a net loss of forest cover in the 1990s to having a net gain in the five years to 2005, primarily due to large-scale tree planting in China. However, the FAO found that global deforestation, driven mainly by conversion of forests to agricultural land, continued at 'an alarmingly high rate' of about 13 million hectares per year.

Several months earlier, a group of specialists scaled back the commonly used estimate of deforestation's contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. They said it was now about 15 per cent, including peat degradation, not 20 per cent. But they cautioned that this was a relative decline due to fossil fuel emissions rising faster than deforestation emissions.

Whether Redd programmes can overcome serious obstacles and bring tree loss under control in the primary forests of Indonesia and other tropical forest-rich nations will be a key test of governance reform.

The writer is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

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Biodiversity: The E.U.'s Next Challenge

James Kanter, The New York Times 6 Jun 10;

BRUSSELS — Even as nations struggle to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, the European Union is taking on a potentially more complicated environmental challenge: preserving the world’s biodiversity.

Last week, the European Commission put biodiversity at the center of its annual Green Week conference in Brussels after E.U. environment ministers warned in March against “going beyond the limits of nature,” and after heads of state and government endorsed the ministers’ pledge to halt biodiversity loss in the Union by 2020 and step up efforts to avert such losses globally.

The conference brought together corporate executives, bankers and government ministers to discuss the benefits of healthy soils, fresh water supplies and plentiful forests, and to explore ways to create a framework to maintain them worldwide.

“There is such a thing as finite resources,” Norbert Röttgen, the German environment minister, warned delegates.

“It’s the same as in the case of climate change,” he said, noting that Europeans “need international agreements for biodiversity.”

An ambitious policy on biodiversity represents a new opportunity for the Union to renew a bid for international leadership on environmental issues before a global conference on biodiversity in Nagoya, Japan, in October.

That conference should mark the high point of what the United Nations has dubbed the International Year of Biodiversity, and the Union will be pushing hard for globally binding targets to reverse the loss of plant and animal species.

But there are important strategic considerations for Europe too.

A study called “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity,” financed mainly by the European Commission and Germany, concluded in 2008 that losses of plant life and other organisms could be equivalent to 7 percent of global consumption — representing several trillion dollars annually — by midcentury if current trends are maintained.

The potential costs of inaction are high because societies would have to pay for expensive new equipment like filtration plants to compensate for losses of fresh water. Reduced numbers of insects like bees to pollinate crops and instances of more diseases in humans would put additional strains on the agricultural and medical sectors.

Those phenomena concern Europe because the bloc relies heavily on healthy ecosystems in other parts of the world to develop supplies of new medicines and produce food and feeds.

Within Europe, large numbers of jobs would be at risk if invasive pests made it harder to maintain a successful domestic farming sector, and if tourism declined because of damage to plants and bird life or floods ruined heritage sites.

A key question is what role environmental markets should play in controlling the rush for resources and other forms of environmental damage, and whether other nations would be likely to adopt similar mechanisms if the European Union took the lead.

The Union already has adopted some of the toughest targets for reducing greenhouse gases of any major economy globally. But it remains to be seen whether its main tool to meet those targets, carbon trading, will be effective and catch on more widely.

One popular view — that carbon trading is just another kind of financial chicanery — has further dimmed the prospects for such systems.

But some financiers said the urgency of the problem meant that those concerns should not prevent Europe from spearheading development of new market-based instruments.

“We’ve got brokers comfortable with carbon credits, but they could easily shift their attention to biodiversity credits,” Peter Carter, an associate director of the European Investment Bank, told the conference.

“We’ve learned very many lessons from the carbon market, and we must make sure we build those lessons into any future bio-market,” Mr. Carter said.

Other groups at the conference promoted systems to encourage investments in projects that would restore a site or enhance its ecology in return for tradable credits.

Such systems would work in much the same way that an existing U.N. system awards globally traded carbon credits to investors in projects to cut greenhouse gases.

Another mechanism called habitat banking would create new business opportunities for landowners in Europe to undertake projects to compensate for damage done elsewhere by industries.

As with carbon trading, the inspiration for offsetting damage to nature originally came from the United States, where wetland banking emerged from the 1972 Clean Water Act.

The U.S. act established strict guidelines for projects developed in wetland areas. Those rules eventually gave way to a system that allowed limited wetland development as long as developers purchased offset credits generated by wetland restoration projects, or new projects, elsewhere.

While many of those projects were successes, others failed to attract displaced wildlife species or contribute effectively to water flow management.

The American experience underlined that, unlike greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity often needs protection at the precise locations where it is under threat, and European officials acknowledged that biodiversity trading would be even more problematic than carbon trading.

“When we are talking about the carbon market, we know what we’re targeting,” Karl Falkenberg, the director general for the environment at the European Commission, told the conference.

But converting biodiversity “into one price, into one indicator, into one size of a tradable market, I think that still is a big challenge,” he said.

Even so, the Union still “should work in that direction,” said Mr. Falkenberg, who was referring to market-based systems.

The author of the study from 2008 on the economics of biodiversity, Pavan Sukhdev, took an even more cautious approach.

Mr. Sukhdev, a former chief operating officer for global emerging markets at Deutsche Bank and now a special adviser to the U.N. Environment Program, underlined his view that failure to take measures now to stop depletion of plants, animals and micro-organisms would create even higher costs in the future.

But he appeared to warn against relying on market-based systems or seeking solutions that would permit current behavior to continue, and he called for a fundamental shift in the way citizens and business leaders interacted with nature.

“Will it change when we create some kind of fictitious marketplace?” asked Mr. Sukhdev, referring to trading credits to combat biodiversity loss. Instead, societies needed to cease putting “private wealth above public wealth” to tackle the problem effectively, he said.

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More dugongs found dead in nets in Australia

Kristy Sexton-McGrath ABC 7 Jun 10;

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) says it is investigating the death of two more dugongs in nets off the far north Queensland coast.

A GBRMPA patrol found the dead dugongs in the nets off Yarrabah, south of Cairns.

The incident comes nearly two months after three dugongs were found dead in nets off Cairns.

Animal activist Colin Riddell is campaigning to overturn traditional hunting laws and says a moratorium on dugong killings is needed.

"There needs to be clear guidelines on what humanely [killing] is," he said.

"There needs to be a moratorium placed immediately to ensure sustainable numbers and there needs to be a comprehensive permit system set up so that when they are hunted - it's controlled.

"We [need to] know how many are killed, we know where they are killed, and we know what's left."

Yarrabah patrol uncovers dead dugongs in nets
Ben Blomfield The Cairns Post 7 Jun 10;

THE death of two dugongs found in illegal nets has prompted calls for more rangers to be deployed to catch poachers

The incident near Yarrabah last Thursday comes less than two months after three dugongs were found dead in nets about 3.5 nautical miles off Cairns.

The State and Federal governments are facing increasing pressure to scrap laws which allow traditional land owners to hunt dugongs and turtles using nets with a permit.

Aboriginal elders say the practice is an insult to traditional hunting heritage and that it fuels an
illegal meat trade where dugong can fetch $150 a kilo.

Commercial gains from hunting the animal breaches Commonwealth law.

The incident has sparked fresh calls for more rangers with greater powers to be deployed in areas prone to poaching.

Yarrabah Mayor Percy Neal said his council had rejected requests from dugong hunters to support the use of netting .

"Our people need to hunt the traditional way using 14ft (4.2m)wooden boats with special spears, it’s fair game then," he said.

"It’s not traditional hunting and it shouldn’t be tolerated … but we can’t do anything about it because people have permits from the State Government."

Federal Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt said rangers should be given more power to prosecute poachers while the Government needed to regulate the practice.

"Immediately, we need additional resources for indigenous rangers and more support for inspectors of the illegal dugong and turtle meat trade and their ability to prosecute," Mr Hunt said.

"The slaughtering of dugongs is out of control because of poachers. There is an epidemic of poaching."

Animal activist Colin Riddell, who is heading a campaign to overturn hunting laws, said a moratorium on dugong killing had to be introduced so the numbers could be monitored.

"No one knows how the dugong population has been affected by this," he said.

"Most of these hunters don’t have permits, it’s just open slather."

A spokesman for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, which is investigating the latest dugong deaths, confirmed the
incident.

"The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority found a set net as part of a patrol of the Yarrabah area which had two dead dugongs in it," he said.

Aborigines plead for dugong hunting say
Jessica Mawer ABC 8 Jun 10;

An Aboriginal spokesman is calling for Indigenous people to have greater input into how dugong hunting is managed in far north Queensland.

Five dugongs have been found dead in nets off the far north Queensland coast over the past two months, including two found off Yarrabah, south of Cairns, last week.

Animal activists are calling for a moratorium on dugong hunting.

But Kuku Yalanji people's spokesman at Mossman, Linc Walker, says hunting is an important part of Aboriginal culture.

"It's not an activity that is to be taken lightly. It's a pretty dangerous activity," he said.

"People don't just go out there for fun - it's not a fun activity - you can get seriously injured hunting. You actually have to put up with a lot of emotional scarring as well as the physical scarring that could happen to you."

Mr Walker says people at Mossman say Indigenous people have a right to hunt dugongs and should be given more of a say on how the practice is managed.

"They have the right to hunt in their country, other people don't," he said.

"So when it comes down to it, those people have to be empowered to manage the resources from their country and then the problems with the over-hunting and the people hunting in other places should cease."

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Brazilian Water Protection a $100 Million Market?

Theresa Bradley National Geographic News 4 Jun 10;

This story is part of a special series that explores the global water crisis. For more visit National Geographic's Freshwater website.

Helga Hissa used to get soaked to promote better water management. In presentations to groups of Brazilian small farmers, she’d stand tall as her boss dumped a cup of water on her head, pointing as her wild, curly hair soaked it up. He’d then pour some on a bald volunteer, watching it roll off the man’s scalp and down his back.

The same happens when rain hits deforested land, Hissa’s team at the state agriculture ministry argues. Without vegetation to absorb it, more rain rolls off soil, speeding erosion, polluting water with sediments, and preventing the speedy recharge of reservoirs that supply Brazil’s biggest cities. Hissa and her colleagues want farmers to plant trees to prevent that.

Across Brazil, efforts are under way to recruit and reward rural residents to safeguard water sources and forests that normally retain water. Basically, they are paid to protect and plant trees.

Freshwater is one of Brazil’s most plentiful resources, with the country holding about 15 percent of Earth’s supply. But pollution and potential shortages are jeopardizing the farms and factories that drive the nation’s booming economy. Paying for protection may be the cheapest way to both preserve and naturally purify water, without extra—and expensive—treatment.

Cash incentives also give farmers a reason to cooperate with conservationists and have the potential to jump-start a broader “environmental services” market that could generate more than $100 million (U.S.) a year to fund conservation projects in Brazilian water basins.

The country’s biggest states and the national legislature are considering legislation to regulate such payments, while a dozen pilot programs are already spending tax revenues, environmental fines and water-use fees to encourage conservation.

”There are a lot of environmental problems that people aren’t aware of, but they can see water pollution, they can see erosion; they’re conscious that they have to do something,” said Hissa, now technical coordinator at Rio de Janeiro state’s program for sustainable rural development.

Valuing the Land’s Environmental Contributions

Interest in “payments for environmental services,” or PES, is growing worldwide, pushing landowners to protect forests not only by penalizing illegal cuts, but also by paying for their properties’ positive environmental contributions, including carbon sequestration, biodiversity preservation, and water filtration. Trees planted as buffers along streams, rivers, and lakes can significantly enhance water quality.

Carbon credits, one of the best-known PES vehicles, allow landowners to cash in on the carbon dioxide emissions that their trees absorb from the air, relieving the atmosphere of a portion of global warming gasses. Charging for erosion control or natural water filtration offers a comparatively concrete transaction, as local groups charge water utilities or municipal governments to preserve nearby basins, tapping what the UN calls a $2-billion-a-year (U.S.) market for global watershed services.

“You need to combine the carrot and the stick,” said Marcelo Morgado, environmental adviser to the head of Brazil’s biggest water utility, Sabesp. “A farmer won’t just lie in his hammock and say, ‘Oh, my trees are so beautiful, let me keep them.’ You need to support people to do the right thing.”

New York City pioneered watershed payments in the 1990s, when it avoided building a $4 billion (U.S.) water treatment plant by instead spending less than $2 billion (U.S.) to expand, and help upstate farmers protect, 2,000 square miles (5180 square kilometers) of land, lakes, and reservoirs that naturally filter water for 8 million city dwellers.

Brazilian officials are studying New York’s model and soliciting advice from current and former Empire State officials. The architect of the New York plan, former New York City Department of Environmental Protection commissioner Albert Appleton, insists that paying for conservation rather than cleanup can save any city money—and create revenue for surrounding rural areas.

“Brazilians are beginning to realize that the environment can actually be good for the economy,” Appleton said, recalling talks he had in 2009 with water officials in São Paulo.

Rise of Brazil’s Water Committees

Brazil holds more water than any nation and 2.5 times the U.S. supply, according to the California-based Pacific Institute research center. But those resources are unevenly distributed, with three-quarters in the Amazon—home to just 4 percent of Brazilians—and one twelfth along the southeastern coast, where 47 percent of the population lives, Brazil’s National Water Agency says.

In São Paulo state, an industrial hub of 40 million people, pollution and sediment have caused water treatment costs to quadruple since 1996, utility Sabesp reports, while 30 percent of water is lost each year to leaks and theft in sprawling favela slums, where residents puncture passing pipes to siphon supply, according to state data.

Federal water policy initially ignored such problems, focusing instead on hydropower, which provides 85 percent of Brazil’s electricity. But a 1997 law finally gave water economic value, creating a network of more than 80 local watershed committees empowered to charge and spend “water-use” fees levied on consumers.

Brazilians now pay less than 80 cents (U.S.) per cubic meter (35 cubic feet) of water, according to Ronaldo Seroa, an environmental specialist at Brazil’s Institute for Applied Economic Research—slightly less than New Yorkers. Still, studies suggest that São Paulo’s 22 watershed committees will together collect at least 140 million reals ($75 million U.S.) a year by 2011, which they could spend on preservation, said Renato Armelin, a technical manager at the state’s Environment Ministry.

A bill now before Brazil’s congress would promote that sort of spending, creating a PES registry and funneling part of the nation’s swelling oil income to farmers who conserve forests. A vote is expected after general elections in October 2010. São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are drafting similar laws, while Espirito Santo, a top oil-producing state, already sends 3 percent of oil royalties to a water fund that rewards conservation. National Water Agency programs also provide about $28 (U.S.) per year per acre of land preserved.

Environmental economists suggest using water fees to protect public property, too. Researchers found it would cost affected consumers an extra 41 cents (U.S.) per year—about 0.0001 percent of Brazil’s minimum annual wage—to preserve Tres Picos, Rio’s largest state park.

Such costs are too small to hurt individual water users, but in sum offer water stewards a real incentive. That combination of affordability and impact could make watershed services a key building block for the larger environmental services market, drawing unlikely partners to preservation, said Fernando Veiga, environmental services manager at The Nature Conservancy in Curitiba.

“Now there’s common ground for agricultural and environmental guys to move beyond their old disputes about the environment versus development,” Veiga said. “This kind of watershed approach can actually bring us together.”

Theresa Bradley reported from Brazil as a fellow for the International Reporting Project.

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UN warns climate change could trigger 'mega-disasters'

Madeleine Coorey Yahoo News 7 Jun 10;

SYDNEY (AFP) – Weather-related catastrophes brought about by climate change are increasing, the top UN humanitarian official said Sunday as he warned of the possibility of "mega-disasters".

John Holmes, the UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, said one of the biggest challenges facing the aid community was the problems stemming from changing weather patterns.

"When it comes meteorological disasters, weather-related disasters, then there is a trend upwards connected with climate change," Holmes, who is in Australia for high-level talks on humanitarian aid, told AFP.

"The trend is there is terms of floods, and cyclones, and droughts."

Holmes, who is the UN's emergency relief coordinator, said it had been a tough year due to January's devastating earthquake in Haiti, which killed more than 250,000 people.

He said while earthquakes, such as the 7.0-magnitude quake which levelled the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, were random, weather-related natural disasters were increasing in number and scale.

"It's partly the very obvious things like the number of cyclones and the intensity of the cyclones, and the amount of flooding," he said.

"But is also in slightly more invisible ways -- in Africa with drought spreading, desertification spreading."

Holmes said officials were particularly concerned about places where a combination of factors -- such as large populations, or likelihood of earthquake, or susceptibility to rising sea levels -- made them more vulnerable.

"One of things we worry about is mega cities could produce, at some point, a mega disaster," he said.

"Cities like Kathmandu for example, which sits on two earthquake faults, where a large earthquake will come along... and the results could be catastrophic."

Holmes said while some countries were well-prepared for disaster -- such as Chile which was hit with a massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake in February which left 520 people dead -- others such as Haiti were less able to manage.

"That's one of the reasons we want to focus on not just how we respond to disaster, we need to do that, but how you reduce the impact of those disasters before they happen," Holmes said.

In Haiti, the situation remained serious, he said, with some 1.5 million people living in makeshift shelters and little prospect of this changing soon.

"There are real concerns about how vulnerable people still are, despite all the efforts that have been made," he said.

Holmes said the need for humanitarian aid was rising faster than resources were available, particularly given the long-running conflicts in areas such as Sudan's Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

At the same time, climate change would likely set in chain migration due to drought or rising sea levels or conflicts due to a scarcity of water or arable land in coming years and these would place more pressure on funds.

"So all these things are going to create more problems for us, and we're really just coming to grips with what the consequences might be," Holmes said.

"And you can construct some extremely scary scenarios for yourself without too much trouble.

"For example, about what the effect might be of glaciers melting in the Himalayas. Now we don't quite know whether that's happening, or will happen, or not. But if it did, what would the effect be on the major river systems of southern Asia?"

Holmes said while a decade ago, climate change was not on officials' radars, "now it's on everybody's agenda."

"Climate change for us is not some future indeterminate threat, it's happening in front of our eyes," he said. "We can see it."

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