Clouded Monitor Lizard
from Ubin.sgkopi
Feeding Spotted Dove: 2. Feeding behaviour
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Massive reclamation near Labrador continues until Dec 2010
from wild shores of singapore and Dredging at East Coast National Sailing Centre until 26 Jul 10
In the midst of marine collapse will we save our last ocean?
from Mongabay.com news
Nature’s bounty
Michael Goe Guang Jian The Star 6 Jul 10;
Echoes of Life: Sungai Pulai And Beyond
Author: Vincent K.K. Chow
Publisher: MPH Group Publishing, 212 pages
IF you want to know more about one of the most beautiful natural places in Malaysia, then Echoes of Life is the book for you.
The author Vincent K.K. Chow reveals the natural wonders of Sungai Pulai Forest Reserve, Pulau Merambong and Merambong seagrass meadow, all found in south-west Johor. With the book, a collaboration between the Port of Tanjung Pelepas and Malaysian Nature Society Johor, the author aims to educate people about the importance of conserving the natural environment of these places.
Echoes Of Life reveals some of the amazing and unusual flora and fauna found in these habitats – from the many species of crabs and mudskippers that scurry through the mudflats to the endangered seahorse that makes its home in the seagrass bed, and diverse mangrove flora ranging from great mangrove trees to smaller plants like ferns.
On the island of Merambong, you will learn about how rocks on the island’s coasts were formed and about sealife living at the fringes of the island, such as seaweeds, marine worms, starfish and sea cucumbers. Offshore, there’s the wondrous seagrass meadow, an expansive underwater forest that brims with life, including seahorses, pipefish and seaweeds.
The book also gives us insight into the lifestyle of the Seletar people, or sea gypsies, who depend on the mangrove forest for food and other resources; sadly, modernisation is threatening their livelihood. Charcoal is produced from the mangrove timber but its production is declining because of dwindling forests.
The sea gypsies have several methods of finding food in the mangroves. These include ibau picking and empangan (dam) fishing. The picking of ibau shellfish involves looking for the breathing holes of the bivalve which lives deep in the soft mud. The collector then digs through the holes in order to get to the ibau, before washing it and checking if it is broken (for fear of contamination).
The people resort to empangan fishing when other fishing methods yield low catches. A net is set up in an inlet during high tide. Fish and crustaceans that swim through the inlet are trapped by the net at low tide. Small sections of the inlet are blocked, one length at a time, before the water is stirred, forcing the marine life to surface for air. They are then hand-picked from the water.
The book contains few words but makes up for it with many beautiful pictures; they are breathtakingly real, such as the photos of the endangered mangrove pitta and flat-headed cat.
This book presents plenty of interesting facts about mangroves and seagrass meadows, and reminds us that the first step in conservation is learning about the environment that we wish to conserve. From this book, I learn to better appreciate mangroves. We must all conserve our natural environments because they provide safe havens for many endangered species and for migratory species like terns and ospreys. They also provide resources for the local people, like food, charcoal and building supplies, which will all decrease if the environment is degraded.
The information in this book is well presented. All in all, a great book to read, especially if you are a nature lover.
Tilak K. Doshi, For The Straits Times 6 Jul 10;
CAN renewable energy significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions? More importantly, can it be done at a reasonable cost, within the boundaries of the politically feasible?
In the deluge of discussion concerning fossil fuels and global warming, the more extreme environmentalists predict resource wars and cataclysmic changes in the global climate, while those more hopeful envisage a saved 'Gaia', with nations getting together to promote cleaner, renewable energy in time to escape the consequences of global warming.
In the real world - replete with heightened risks as the global economy recovers from the worst downturn since the Great Depression, deep budget deficits in the advanced economies, and faint hope of a global climate agreement at the Cancun summit later this year - policymakers face difficult issues in transitioning to 'sustainable' models of energy use.
Choices in energy technology investments have to be made in the context of competing policy priorities. A policy-maker ignores these competing interests at his peril. At the root of Mr Kevin Rudd's sudden ouster as Australian prime minister was his government's missteps over climate change policies.
For small city-states like Singapore that are 'alternative energy-disadvantaged', the quest for cleaner energy is an even greater challenge. Given the island's geographical constraints, many renewable energy sources such as hydro, wind and geothermal are not viable options. Solar photovoltaics, biofuels and nuclear power are discussed as promising technologies for the future. To support the development of renewable energy sources, policymakers need to continually assess the costs and benefits of various options.
The risks of premature transitions in energy use patterns and an ineffective use of taxpayer dollars are well illustrated by the example of Spain. To encourage investments in wind and solar energy, governments in Germany, France, Spain and more recently Britain, have introduced feed-in tariffs (FITs). FITs reward households and businesses that produce renewable energy with guaranteed higher rates.
Spain's generous FITs led to a flood of investments, accounting for more than 40 per cent of the world's total solar installations in 2008. The fiscal burden swiftly became unbearable and the Spanish government was forced to revise its subsidies. The debacle led to a crash in the solar market, and the country's solar industry shed some 20,000 jobs.
Solar photovoltaic power is an expensive proposition, more than five times as expensive as power generated by gas turbines. In land-scarce Singapore, the mass deployment of current solar technology is not an option.
Furthermore, intermittent sources such as solar irradiation and wind require backup power. The current power grid has capacity to accept intermittent power supply of up to about 3 per cent of peak power demand. One can improve grid resilience for intermittent power supply, but this would require substantial investments.
Granting FITs for solar panel installations in Singapore could also have a regressive impact on public financing. Landed property owners who can afford to install solar panels would benefit from differential electricity tariffs but the majority living in HDB flats would not have a similar solar power option.
Supporters of renewable energy list its multiple benefits, ranging from the diversification of energy sources and reduction in carbon emissions to the development of 'green' industries and jobs. But the reality of renewable energy is less impressive than the claims.
According to the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook, the share of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) in global energy demand would fall marginally from 81 per cent in 2007 to 80 per cent in 2030. Newer renewable energy tech-nologies, excluding hydro, will account for just over 2 per cent of energy demand by 2030.
Despite the large investments and subsidies that have been channelled into wind and solar technologies in particular, their tiny share in power generation means they will remain minor sources of energy supply in the foreseeable future.
A growing body of research suggests there are cheaper ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These involve improving the energy efficiency of existing technologies and 'nudging' and modifying consumer behaviour in energy use.
Biofuels, wind and solar energy remain at the expensive end of carbon emission abatement options.
Given the uncertainties in renewable technology evolution and the choices among competing alternatives, it is unlikely there will be a silver bullet. The success of future energy technologies will turn on creative innovation and commercial competitiveness. There is little reason to believe government largesse will play a determining role in market outcomes.
The writer is the chief economist at the Energy Studies Institute, National University of Singapore.
Don't give up on renewable energy options
Straits Times Forum 12 Jul 10;
I REFER to by Mr Tilak K. Doshi's article on Tuesday ("Renewable energy, at what price?").
He argues that feed-in tariffs would have a regressive impact on public financing in land-scarce Singapore. On the contrary, with the abundance of public housing, solar panels could be installed on the rooftops of HDB flats, where the power generated from it can be shared among HDB unit dwellers.
This is an ideal solution for an island nation with abundant sunshine and where a majority of residents dwell in high-rise buildings.
He argues that "a growing body of research suggests there are cheaper ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions". However, his solution requires continued consumption of fossil fuels, albeit on a lower trajectory - that is, gas versus coal.
This is not to say we can do away with fossil fuels any time soon. In fact, 20 years from now, we will still be generating the bulk of our power needs from fossil fuels, but the point is if we do not start doing anything now and continue with business as usual, we are going to pay an even heavier price in terms of climate change.
There is incontrovertible evidence of rising global temperatures, retreating polar icecaps and glaciers, with concomitant rising sea levels and increasing frequencies of extreme weather conditions like flooding and droughts. The author fails to take into account that there is a price on carbon.
He argues that government largesse in promoting renewable energy is ineffective by quoting the example of Spain. He fails to mention that while mistakes have been made in government attempts to create a regulatory environment and to provide fiscal incentives that promote the development of sustainable energy, some of the lessons learnt from these nascent steps are being fine-tuned elsewhere.
In addition, a growing number of countries are starting to realise the long-term economic benefits of developing indigenous renewable energy industries.
This will take time and persistence, and giving up at this juncture could lead to potential long-term devastating consequences, with a far higher economic toll from unmitigated climate-change disasters.
Clarence Andre
Catherine Wong Mei Ling, For The Straits Times 7 Jul 10;
AS POLICYMAKERS and industry players gathered last week at the 2010 World Cities Summit in Singapore to discuss making the world's cities eco-friendly, one question is becoming more apparent: Is the green city a project by the elite, for the elite?
In the attempt to adjust to the impact of climate change, have we allowed environmental sustainability to eclipse social sustainability? And what checks do we have in place to ensure that the new green city will not be an exclusive prerogative of the urban rich and new green-collar workers?
Cities today are already characterised by stark inequalities: The richest 20 per cent of the population in developing countries control more than 80 per cent of the resources, while the poorest fifth control less than 1.4 per cent.
The latest United Nations Habitat 2010 report estimates that the world's slum population will grow by six million a year to hit 889 million by 2020. South-east Asia's slum population of 88.9 million may seem small compared to East Asia's 189.6 million, but the share of South-east Asia's urban population living in slums is higher than that of East Asia: 31 per cent compared to East Asia's 28.2 per cent.
Many of Asia's largest cities stand to be severely affected by climate change. This is in part due to their location near coastal areas. Naturally, the most vulnerable segment among Asia's urban population to the consequences of climate change is its urban poor.
The mortality rate of children under five in urbanised South Asia is 120 per 1,000 children, compared to 50 per 1,000 children in urbanised industrialised countries. The death rates from infectious diseases such as diarrhoea, measles and tuberculosis among urban poor children in developing countries can be up to 100 times higher than those in industrialised countries.
Yet most green city plans are targeted at the urban, white-collar rich who are willing and able to pay a premium for ecological infrastructure, energy-saving utilities and green landscaping. While it is a positive change that urban planning today is giving greater credence to the environment, it is also important that these new green city models do not result in greater spatial and economic exclusion of the urban poor.
Many of the new eco-city proposals - from the Light Water Front development in Penang, Malaysia, to the Nanhu Eco-city project in China - highlight the lifestyle benefits, complete with high-end residential apartments, boutique malls, retail services and integrated transport systems all tailored to the upper segment of urbanites.
Job creation in such urban projects as the Tianjin Eco-city also focuses on 'high-quality', green-collar jobs to attract skilled, educated and higher income residents who can then afford the equally high-priced apartments.
Eco-cities also tend to be located in areas that are already well developed, wealthy and resilient to the impact of climate change. Tianjin, where the Sino-Singapore Eco-city development is located, was ranked sixth in China in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) last year. Compared to the other top five Chinese cities - Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Suzhou - Tianjin had the highest GDP growth at 16.5 per cent. A more recent eco-city development, in Tangshan, also boasts one of China's highest per capita incomes.
Meanwhile, poorer cities in the central and northern parts of China are neglected. Likewise, many of South-east Asia's most vulnerable and polluted cities like Jakarta and Manila have yet to attract investments to develop eco-cities amid their urban sprawl.
Considering the immense resources and expensive green technology involved in developing an eco-city, the cost of living in one is, needless to say, also quite high. The price of a residential unit in the Tangshan development, for example, will be about 20 per cent higher than the average apartment there.
The creation of green cities led overwhelmingly by business interests will not be the answer to a sustainable future. A development that is environmentally sustainable but socially exclusive will still not be sustainable.
The role of the government in such projects is therefore crucial to ensure the green cities do not become a project by the urban elite, for the urban elite. Governments should ensure the spatial segregation of the urban poor is not exacerbated in the process of re-modelling cities. Governments need to consider the interests of all stakeholders, not just the private sector.
Environmental sustainability that does not support social sustainability will only fuel instability, which can do greater and more immediate damage than climate change.
The writer is a research associate at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Straits Times 6 Jul 10;
A section of the Changi Water Reclamation Plant where reverse osmosis occurs. Many nations are seeking ways to meet their water needs. -- ST PHOTO: SAMUEL HE
THE deals flooded in for local and global companies at last week's Singapore International Water Week, with almost $3 billion worth of agreements inked.
Adding up all the projects awarded, tenders won, investments made and memoranda of understanding (MOUs) signed, the third Water Week drew $2.8 billion in deals, up 27 per cent from last year's $2.2 billion.
A record number of people also turned up, said the organisers yesterday, with more than 14,000 participants from 85 countries attending the event held in conjunction with the World Cities Summit at the Suntec convention centre.
Of these, about 380 were high-level delegates, including the Prince of Orange from the Netherlands, the President of the Republic of Maldives, the vice-president of the World Bank, and water and environment ministers from Cambodia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
'Despite the uncertain global economic recovery, water remains a key focus area for governments and industries as cities around the world continue to grow at an unprecedented rate with rapid urbanisation,' said Mr Michael Toh, the managing director of Water Week.
'Many countries continue to seek clean and affordable solutions to meet their respective needs and use the Water Week as a platform for learning, exchange and networking.'
Among the deals struck last week were home-grown water company Moya Dayen's $69 million contract to build water treatment facilities in Cambodia. The project will produce 130,000 cubic metres of potable water a day to serve the population of Greater Phnom Penh.
A Singapore unit of Boustead, a global infrastructure engineering firm, won a $21 million contract for the first new water recycling plant in the UAE.
Meanwhile, local energy, water and marine group Sembcorp signed an MOU last week worth $280 million to construct a new desalination plant in the UAE. It also announced plans to develop a new wastewater treatment facility in the Tembusu District of Jurong Island.
The Water Expo, a water trade show at Water Week, also enjoyed a stellar turnout, with more than 500 companies from nearly 40 countries participating. At its Innovation Corner, 26 new products and technologies made their debuts.
Preparations are already under way for next year's Water Week, which will focus on efficient and cost-effective solutions for a changing urban environment, said the event's organisers.
FIONA CHAN
International Water Week deals done rise 27% to $2.8b
Jaslene Pang Business Times 6 Jul 10;
SINGAPORE International Water Week (SIWW) 2010 ended on a high note last week for many local and international water companies.
The total value of announcements for projects awarded, tenders, investments into Singapore and R&D MOUs exceeded $2.8 billion - up 27 per cent from last year's $2.2 billion.
Michael Toh, MD of SIWW, said: 'Many countries continue to seek clean and affordable solutions to meet their respective needs and use the Water Week as a platform for learning, exchange and networking. We are delighted with the significant increase in the total value of announcements during the week.'
During the water week, local companies flew their flags high.
One of them was homegrown energy, water and marine group Sembcorp, which signed a memorandum of understanding worth $280 million to expand seawater desalination capacity in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The company also announced that it would develop a new integrated wastewater treatment facility in Jurong Island's Tembusu district.
Another significant deal closed last week was the combined $69 million contract clinched by homegrown water company Moya Dayen Ltd from the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority in Cambodia for Phase 1 of the Niroth Water Production Facilities Project.
The SIWW, which was held together with the World Cities Summit this year, also saw a record increase in the number of trade attendees to over 14,000 from 85 countries and regions.
In all, 26 new products and technologies made their regional and international debut at the Water Expo's Innovation Corner.
Apart from these, the number of co-located events increased nearly 60 per cent to 120 events, including the inaugural Asia-Pacific Water Ministers' Forum; the 14th Meeting of the UN Secretary- General's Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation; and the first-ever River Basin & Delta Management Workshop.
Mr Toh said: 'We have already begun working on the 2011 event and will continue to work on the many ideas and solutions developed and discussed at the Water Week 2010. Water Week 2011 will focus on efficient and cost-effective solutions for a changing urban environment.'
S$2.8b in deals sealed at Singapore International Water Week
Mustafa Shafawi Channel NewsAsia 5 Jul 10;
SINGAPORE : The recently-concluded Singapore International Water Week ended on a high note for many local and international water companies.
The organiser said the total value of projects, tenders, investments into Singapore and R&D MOUs announced exceeded S$2.8 billion, up 27 per cent compared to last year.
The event, which was held together with the World Cities Summit this year, also saw a record increase in the number of trade attendees to over 14,000 from 85 countries/regions.
In all, 26 new products and technologies made their regional and international debut at the Water Expo's Innovation Corner, signalling a strong endorsement of the Water Week as an important platform for such global and regional launches.
Work has begun on the 2011 event, which will focus on efficient and cost-effective solutions for a changing urban environment.
- CNA/al
Sakina Mohamed Benama 6 Jul 10;
This is the last of the two part series on Malaysia's Ramsar sites
KUALA LUMPUR, July 6 (Bernama) -- If you think that our wetlands have little to do with our survival, think again.
Our wetlands act as the natural treatment plant for natural and man-made pollutants. Not only that, it can even extract the nutrients from polluted water or air.
So, what does this have to do with humans? Well, in filtering dirty air and water, it ensures that humankind gets sustainable fresh water supply and breathe in clean air.
Therefore, the destruction to our wetlands will definitely affect the well-being and finance of the country.
Conservation of wetland ecosystems is essential not only for sustainable fresh water supply but also for preserving biodiversity.
WHAT ARE WETLANDS?
Environmental scientist Dr Nather Khan Ibrahim says the term wetlands cover mainly inland, coastal and marine natural habitats of permanent or temporary water bodies or wet areas.
In Malaysia, the wetlands are mainly freshwater swamp forests, peat swamp forests, coastal and estuarine mangroves, natural rivers and lakes, flood plains (estuary), and coastal areas, says Dr Nather Khan, the former Malaysian and Southeast Asian Coordinator for the then Asian Wetland Bureau.
The more recognisable uses for wetlands are for water transport, recreation, tourism and fish breeding. However, Dr Nather Khan says the wetlands have hundreds of other uses, values and functions.
"Each wetland has soil, water, plants and animals that are unique to it. Each one can be classified into three, based on its products, functions and attributes," he said in an interview with Bernama.
Wetlands classified under products produce forest resources such as timber, medicine, resins, honey and fruits. They also provide wildlife resources such as food, biodiversity, shelter and even for aesthetic purposes. Some provide fish breeding grounds, while others provide forage resources, agricultural resources and water supply.
VITAL FOR LIVELIHOOD
Meanwhile, those classified under functions are vital for our livelihood. "These wetlands help in groundwater recharge and discharge, for flood control, shoreline stabilization and erosion control."
Many would also be amazed to know that our wetlands play a big role in protecting us from the adverse effects of climate change. They provide storm protection, protect us from tsunamis, serve as windbreakers and even help in microclimate stabilisation.
Wetlands classified for their attributes are those that play a role in biological diversity, and are the habitats for rare plants and animals and is unique to our culture and national heritage.
Tigers, tapirs and crocodiles can mostly be found in wetlands, like certain species of flora that cannot be found elsewhere.
Therefore wetland affects every aspect of human life, including quality of life, natural resources, food and water supply.
"It can also adversely affect our climate and even rainfall," says Dr Nather Khan.
CHALLENGES IN PRESERVING OUR WETLANDS
There are six Ramsar sites in Malaysia with the largest one in Sabah, covering 78,000 hectares. The rest are the Kuching Wetlands National Park (Sarawak), Pulau Kukup (Johor), Sungai Pulai (Johor), Tanjung Piai (Johor), and Tasek Bera (Pahang).
Dr Nather Khan, who was part of the team that helped initiate and mobilise all the necessary groundwork to designate and declare Tasek Bera as Malaysia's first Ramsar Site, says there are several challenges to protecting our wetlands.
Encroachment and illegal clearance by local settlers and communities and poor enforcement by government agencies have been some of the issues, he revealed.
However, he says two of the biggest problems in preserving our wetlands are land clearance for plantations and aquaculture.
The plantations in question are mostly oil palm estates and mills. Clearance of land for such purposes almost always produce massive amounts of pollution from agricultural and chemical wastes.
"Constant discharge of oil palm mill effluents, which have high amount of BOD (biochemical oxygen demand), COD (chemical oxygen demand), ammonia and nutrient components affects water quality and soil characteristics of the wetlands," says Dr Nather Khan.
Although wetlands in general can tolerate natural pollutants, it can only accommodate a certain level of human interference.
"However, pollutants discharged en masse from oil palm mills can cause the eutrophication of wetland water bodies," he says.
Eutrophication means an increase of mineral and organic nutrients that promote proliferation of plant life, especially those like algae, which reduce dissolved oxygen content and often cause the extinction of other organisms.
POLLUTION FROM OIL PALM ESTATES
The domino effect to this would be an alteration of the entire natural wetland into a new type of habitat that is devoid of all its previous uses, products, functions and attributes.
Dr Nather Khan says oil palm mills should not simply discharge any amount of effluents to the Ramsar site or any other wetlands, as it is supposed to be free from any human intervention and pollutants.
"But the companies involved may try to justify their actions by saying that that the pollutants are treated up to the level that is approved by the Department of Environment."
Given the important role it plays to our livelihood, Malaysia must pay greater heed to how much development it allows at wetlands areas. Is it worth it to destroy truly sophisticated, valuable resources that have been part of our heritage for thousands of years, in the name of short-term gain? The question shouldn't be a difficult one to answer.
-- BERNAMA
Oil Palm Estates Major Threat To Ramsar Site
Sakina Mohamed Bernama 5 Jul 10;
This is the first of a two part series on Malaysis's Ramsar sites
SANDAKAN, July 5 (Bernama) -- Malaysia has internationally-recognised wetlands, and the largest one is the 78,000-hectare Ramsar Site in Sabah.
Ramsar sites are wetlands of international importance, designated under the Ramsar Convention, an international agreement signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971. It provides for the conservation and good use of wetlands.
The Ramsar site in Sabah covers the Trusan Kinabatangan, Kuala Segama-Maruap Mangrove Forest Reserve and the Kulamba Wildlife Forest Reserve located at the lower Kinabatangan-Segama, accounting nearly 60 percent of the remaining mangrove forests in Malaysia.
Malaysia has employed the help of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in protecting the site, which is part of the efforts under the Bornean Biodiversity and Ecosystems Conservation (BBEC) Programme in Sabah. The programme is now in Phase II.
JICA helps by providing technical expertise and advice in implementing good conservation activities. However, BBEC II Chief Advisor Motohiro Hasegawa tells Bernama that a few challenges need to be sorted out or the maintenance of Sabah's biodiversity-rich Ramsar Site will be an uphill task.
POLLUTION FROM OIL PALM ESTATES
The major threat to the Sabah Ramsar Site is clearly the pollution from oil palm plantations, says Hasegawa. Other threats, he says, are limited. The Ramsar site is mostly situated at lower part of a large river basin, he says, so unless good conservation activities are imposed in the upper area of this river basin, the site will be threatened.
He says that the upper areas of the Ramsar site is the Maliau Basin and Imbak Canyon which are pristine, untouched, forests. However, oil palm mills and plantations clutter the middle part. And where there are plantations and mills there are industrial and agricultural wastes, two of the hardest effluents to treat. None of which bodes well for the protection of our largest wetland.
"There aren't too many pristine forests in Sabah like those in the upper area of the site, so that part is well-protected.
"But the middle part is completely covered by oil palm plantations. Since our wetlands are internationally-recognised, we have to conduct awareness programmes so that oil palm plantations direct their operations toward conservation," he says.
"Public awareness on the issue is very important."
He says all river basins are now considered conservation areas, so there is good reason to insist that the oil palm mills located in the middle part of the basins shift their operation towards conservation.
"We plan to hold the first oil palm plantation conservation workshop in July," says Hasegawa. "We'll invite them and introduce the latest technology to treat effluents from oil palm mills, techniques to reduce sediments and so on." He says control of effluents from mills is probably one of the most difficult challenges, but if not tackled will result in a bleak future for the Ramsar site.
"We have an idea to promote the RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) certification, which we plan to introduce to all plantation and mills within 10 years," he said.
COOPERATIVE GOVERNANCE IS THE KEY
A typical problem in the governance of forests and conservation areas is multiple agencies being in charge without cooperation in governance.
Hasegawa says part of the problem is power imbalance, where some agencies are given more governing authority than others.
"There are powerful institutions like the Forestry Department in Sabah, and then there is the Sabah Wildlife Department, which is rather weak.
"If you have strong and weak guys, it's hard to have cooperative governance," he says.
However, Hasegawa says 20 years of experience tells him that it was a very common problem not only in Malaysia but in many other countries.
So, what do we need to do? Conservation governance, he says.
Currently, the Forest Department is in charge of an aspect while the Wildlife Department controls another.
"These actions are fragmented. We have to develop a mechanism to link up many agencies and together work on a consolidated conservation effort or else efforts might be wasted and we don't want that.
"We need to link up these efforts and work towards integrated conservation," he says.
A closed sector approach is also very important, he says.
"In doing this, third party intervention is very efficient and useful.
"JICA, being outside of the Sabah and Malaysian bureaucracy, has been using this approach since Phase I of BBEC in 2002. It really helps in linking up the agencies towards a common purpose," says Hasegawa.
The Sabah Biodiversity Enactment 2000 has helped towards the purpose by providing a legal path to establish a sole body to oversee and coordinate state-wide biodiversity conservation.
The body in question is the Biodiversity Council and its secretariat, the Sabah Biodiversity Centre (SBC), in which JICA has deployed its volunteers to help with as well.
JICA'S ROLE
The conservation system employed by JICA in BBEC I and II under the Convention of Biodiversity, is the ecosystem approach. This means they look at the environment holistically and use adaptive management to operate it.
Hasegawa says: "What it does is a systematic and cyclic process that identifies environmental problems based on data. Based on the problems we create counter measures, we implement them and then monitor how they work. "If that doesn't work, we come up with different counter measure."
JICA's presence in Malaysia is through official request by the Malaysian government, and its role in BBEC is to provide technical assistance to Malaysia by sending Japanese professionals to work full-time with local counterparts.
Hasegawa reminds that JICA's role in BBEC II is to support the Sabah Biodiversity Enactment and to facilitate integrated conservation, so much credit is goes to the effort of the relevant agencies in the state.
"We are merely supporting SBC to link up the seemingly fragmented conservation efforts of various agencies, in addition to providing as much technical assistance as we can towards conservation efforts," he says.
JICA is an independent administrative institute, which implements Official Development Assistance projects of Japan. It acts as a bridging agent between the people of Japan and developing countries, advancing international cooperation through sharing of knowledge and experience.
JICA also contributes to international interests and goals such as eradication of poverty and hunger, education, gender equality, reduction of child mortality and ensuring environmental sustainability.
The Ramsar Convention is the informal name of the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat. The Convention is an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable utilization of wetlands. Malaysia ratified the Convention on 10 March 1995 and its national focal point agency is the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. The other 5 Ramsar sites in Malaysia are the Kuching Wetlands National Park (Sarawak), Pulau Kukup (Johor), Sungai Pulai (Johor), Tanjung Piai (Johor), and Tasek Bera (Pahang).
-- BERNAMA
Sabah wetlands face pollution effects from oil palm estates
The Star 9 Jul 10;
SANDAKAN: Malaysia has internationally-recognised wetlands, and the largest one is the 78,000ha Ramsar Site in Sabah.
Ramsar sites are wetlands of international importance, designated under the Ramsar Convention, an international agreement signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971. It provides for the conservation and good use of wetlands.
The Ramsar site in Sabah covers the Trusan Kinabatangan, Kuala Segama-Maruap Mangrove Forest Reserve and the Kulamba Wildlife Forest Reserve located at the lower Kinabatangan-Segama, accounting for nearly 60% of the remaining mangrove forests in Malaysia.
Malaysia has employed the help of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in protecting the site, which is part of the efforts under the Bornean Biodiversity and Ecosystems Conservation (BBEC) Programme in Sabah.
The programme is now in Phase II.
JICA helps by providing technical expertise and advice in implementing good conservation activities.
However, BBEC II chief advisor Motohiro Hasegawa told Bernama that a few challenges needed to be sorted out or the maintenance of Sabah’s biodiversity-rich Ramsar Site would be an uphill task.
Hasegawa said the major threat to the Sabah Ramsar Site was the pollution from oil palm plantations.
Other threats, he said, were limited.
The Ramsar site was mostly situated at the lower part of a large river basin, he said, so unless good conservation activities were imposed in the upper area of this river basin, the site would be threatened.
He said the upper areas of the Ramsar site was the Maliau Basin and Imbak Canyon which were pristine, untouched, forests. However, oil palm mills and plantations clutter the middle part.
“And where there are plantations and mills, there are industrial and agricultural wastes, two of the hardest effluents to treat. None of which bodes well for the protection of our largest wetland,” he said.
“There aren’t too many pristine forests in Sabah like those in the upper area of the site, so that part is well-protected.
“But the middle part is completely covered by oil palm plantations. Since our wetlands are internationally-recognised, we have to conduct awareness programmes so that oil palm plantations direct their operations toward conservation,” he said.
“We plan to hold the first oil palm plantation conservation workshop in July.
“We will introduce the latest technology to treat effluents from oil palm mills, techniques to reduce sediments and so on,” said Hasegawa.
He said control of effluents from mills was probably one of the most difficult challenges, but if not tackled would result in a bleak future for the Ramsar site.
“We have an idea to promote the RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) certification, which we plan to introduce to all plantation and mills within 10 years,” he said.
A typical problem in the governance of forests and conservation areas is multiple agencies being in charge without cooperation in governance.
Hasegawa said part of the problem was power imbalance, where some agencies were given more governing authority than others. “There are powerful institutions like the Forestry Department in Sabah, and then there is the Sabah Wildlife Department, which is rather weak.
“If you have strong and weak guys, it’s hard to have cooperative governance,” he said.
However, Hasegawa said it was a very common problem not only in Malaysia but in many other countries.
So, what do we need to do? Conservation governance, hesaid.
Currently, the Forestry Department is in charge of an aspect while the Wildlife Department controls another.
“These actions are fragmented. We have to develop a mechanism to link up many agencies and together work on a consolidated conservation effort or else efforts might be wasted and we don’t want that.
“We need to link up these efforts and work towards integrated conservation,” he said.
A closed sector approach is also very important, he says.
“In doing this, third party intervention is very efficient and useful.
“JICA, being outside of the Sabah and Malaysian bureaucracy, has been using this approach since Phase I of BBEC in 2002. It really helps in linking up the agencies towards a common purpose,” said Hasegawa.
The Sabah Biodiversity Enactment 2000 has helped towards the purpose by providing a legal path to establish a sole body to oversee and coordinate state-wide biodiversity conservation.
The body in question is the Biodiversity Council and its secretariat, the Sabah Biodiversity Centre (SBC), in which JICA has deployed its volunteers to help with as well.
The conservation system employed by JICA in BBEC I and II under the Convention of Biodiversity, is the ecosystem approach. This means they look at the environment holistically and use adaptive management to operate it.
Hasegawa said: “What it does is a systematic and cyclic process that identifies environmental problems based on data. Based on the problems we create counter measures, we implement them and then monitor how they work. “If that doesn’t work, we come up with different counter measures.”
JICA’s presence in Malaysia is through official request by the Malaysian government, and its role in BBEC is to provide technical assistance to Malaysia by sending Japanese professionals to work full-time with local counterparts.
Hasegawa reminded that JICA’s role in BBEC II was to support the Sabah Biodiversity Enactment and to facilitate integrated conservation, so much credit goes to the effort of the relevant agencies in the state.
“We are merely supporting SBC to link up the seemingly fragmented conservation efforts of various agencies, in addition to providing as much technical assistance as we can towards conservation efforts,” he said.
JICA is an independent administrative institute, which implements Official Development Assistance projects of Japan. It acts as a bridging agent between the people of Japan and developing countries, advancing international cooperation through sharing of knowledge and experience.
JICA also contributes to international interests and goals such as eradication of poverty and hunger, education, gender equality, reduction of child mortality and ensuring environmental sustainability.
The Ramsar Convention is the informal name of the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat. The Convention is an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable utilization of wetlands. Malaysia ratified the Convention on March 10, 1995 and its national focal point agency is the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. The other five Ramsar sites in Malaysia are the Kuching Wetlands National Park (Sarawak), Pulau Kukup (Johor), Sungai Pulai (Johor), Tanjung Piai (Johor), and Tasek Bera (Pahang). — Bernama
Rosslyn Beeby The Canberra Times 6 Jul 10;
Australia's national parks are failing to save native wildlife, with mammal extinction rates of almost 50 per cent occurring in some NSW protected areas, a CSIRO scientist says.
Speaking at a national wildlife conference in Canberra yesterday, CSIRO zoologist Fred Ford said Australia's south-eastern forests had suffered one of the worst mammal declines, with up to 11 regional extinctions recorded in recent years.
"We have this great gleaming reserve system, but it's not protecting mammals as much as we'd like it to," Dr Ford told the Australian Mammal Society Science Symposium.
In some areas, such as the Liverpool Plains in the north-west region of NSW, so much smaller fauna particularly native mice species had disappeared in recent years that it was like "a modern mammal black hole". Dr Ford said many national reserves were designed to protect "the visual appeal" of ecosystems rather than securing critical habitat for threatened species such as small mammals.
"The focus is mainly on plants. It's as if mammals especially the smaller species are a conservation after-thought."
Dr Ford said there had been "a long decline and degradation of ecosystems" in many protected areas, including problems with invasive weeds and feral animals.
"It's not just a question of needing more funding. We also need a better baseline understanding of what's needed to reinvigorate Australia's reserve system," he said.
One of Australia's leading taxonomists, Australian National Wildlife Collection research scientist Ken Aplin, told the conference there had been a historical "lack of national effort" to study and formally describe native fauna specimens.
"Our fauna is very poorly documented," Dr Aplin said.
Despite public perception that Australia's wildlife "was done and discovered a long time ago", around 65 per cent of native reptiles and frogs were discovered in the past 35 years.
Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 5 Jul 10;
Activists renewed calls Saturday for the government to stop issuing fishing permits to large vessels, because fish numbers in many Indonesian bodies of water have reached critical levels due to overfishing.
The Peoples Coalition for Justice in Fisheries (Kiara) warned the government that failure to restrict fishing in the country’s waters would result in a major fish shortage by 2015.
The coalition proposed a five-year moratorium on permits for big fishing vessels — foreign-or domestic-owned — of 30 deadweight tons or more.
“Our finding shows overfishing has occurred in most of the country’s waters,” Kiara’s secretary-general Riza Damanik told The Jakarta Post.
He said that several countries, including China, Japan and European states had implemented moratoriums in their own waters to allow time for fish to replenish.
Indonesia is one of the 10 biggest fish producing countries in the world.
Quoting statistics from the National Commission on Fish Resource Assessment, Riza said fish numbers in six Indonesian bodies of waters had become critical since 2006.
The six areas are the Malacca straits, the South China Sea, the Java Sea, the Flores Sea, the Makassar Strait, the Pacific Ocean and the Sulawesi Sea.
“The areas have been over-exploited but the government has not moved to protect the sea resources,” he said.
Many trawlers still operate in bodies of water where trawling is illegal, including off the coast of northern East Kalimantan. The government banned trawling in Indonesian waters in 1980.
“The Presidential Decree [which bans trawling] is still in place but trawling continues in East Kalimantan. We have found trawlers operating in waters off Tarakan where traditional fishermen have been complaining about decreasing catches,” he said.
“Where trawlers operate, fish stocks dwindle, coral reefs are damaged and social divides among fishers are triggered,” he said.
About 15 million people work as traditional fishermen in the country.
The government has repeatedly acknowledged that illegal fishing is rampant in Indonesian waters, often involving foreign vessels.
Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Fadel Muhammad has accused foreign vessels of illegal fishing in Indonesian waters. Many of those had no fishing permits or instead carried fake documents.
Data from the ministry showed the country impounded 186 foreign vessels for illegal fishing in Indonesia in 2008, compared to 184 the previous year.
The coalition has said Indonesia’s fisheries potential is slashed by 30 to 50 percent every year due to illegal fishing.
Nana Rukmana, The Jakarta Post 5 Jul 10;
Cirebon Police on Monday disbanded an environmental campaign hosted by Greenpeace, which they said lacked a permit, questioning fifteen international and local environmentalists about the activity.
“We’ve been questioned for about five hours so far. There are 13 international activists, including from Thailand and China, and two locals,” said Greenpeace Southeast Asia campaigner Arif Fiyanto.
At the time of writing, the activists were still in detention.
Arif said he was disappointed at the police, saying the reaction had been an “exaggeration”.
“The officers act beyond common sense. We are here to educate local people and fishermen regarding to a construction of a coal-fired power plant in Kanci. They have lost their jobs since the power plant was built.
“We did not commit any crimes,” he said.
Cirebon Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Edi Mardianto confirmed the investigation, but declined to comment further.
Greenpeace was scheduled to hold campaigns against the usage of coal, from Saturday to Monday in Cirebon.
Aubrey Belford The New York Times 5 Jul 10;
JAKARTA, Indonesia — The environmental group Greenpeace has accused one of the world’s largest pulp, paper and palm oil companies of aggressively clearing Indonesian rain forests and throwing into doubt a landmark billion-dollar deal that aims to fight climate change by curbing deforestation.
In a report released Monday, Greenpeace accused a subsidiary of the Indonesian family conglomerate Sinar Mas of secretly planning a massive expansion of pulp mills and cutting down essential forests, including habitats for endangered tigers.
An executive with the subsidiary, Asia Pulp and Paper, denied the charges.
The Greenpeace report says that an internal 2007 document shows that Asia Pulp drew up plans to significantly increase its pulp mill capacity to 17.5 million tons a year from 2.6 million tons.
The report also said that Asia Pulp had sought more than a million hectares in new concessions to meet this demand. In the Sumatran provinces of Riau and Jambi alone, the company sought 900,000 hectares, or 2.2 million acres, more than half of which was granted, Greenpeace says.
“What is actually happening in the field is they keep expanding because their timber concessions are not enough to supply their mills,” said Bustar Maitar, Greenpeace’s lead forest campaigner in Indonesia.
Asia Pulp’s sustainability chief, Aida Greenbury, denied that the company had confidentially made any such expansion plans.
“To support production of 15 million tons of pulp a year is just impossible,” Mrs. Greenbury said, because the company would not be able to harvest enough wood to feed the mills. “I don’t know how they came up with 15 million tons.”
She added, “It’s impossible to plan expansion of pulp mills secretly because we need to get approval from the local government, the central government, everything else.”
Greenpeace also charges that much of the land set aside and cleared overlaps with endangered-species habitats.
Mrs. Greenbury said that Asia Pulp did not use wood from forests it deemed to be of “high conservation value,” which included deep peat and major endangered-species habitats. The company takes around 85 percent of its wood from plantations, she said, with the rest coming from degraded land or lower-value forests.
Greenpeace also charges that Asia Pulp has cleared peatlands more than three meters, or about 10 feet, in depth. In Indonesia, the clearing of such deep peatland is illegal because the land, which is made up of semidecomposed vegetation, releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases when burned or drained.
Hadi Daryanto, the Forestry Ministry’s director general of forestry management, said he could not comment on the report because he had not yet seen a copy of it. He added that he had heard no reports of Asia Pulp clearing peatland more than three meters deep.
The Greenpeace report also criticizes several multinational companies, including Wal-Mart, Hewlett Packard, Carrefour and KFC, for buying from Sinar Mas and urges them to suspend dealings with the company.
The accusations of wrongdoing are particularly sensitive in Indonesia because President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has staked much of his global prestige on acting against climate change. Large-scale deforestation has made the country the world’s third-largest emitter of climate-change-causing gases, behind China and the United States, according to some estimates.
The country signed a $1 billion deal with Norway in May that imposes a two-year moratorium on new permits to clear virgin forest and peatland.
The deal is part of an approach to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, which is widely seen as one of the few areas of progress that came out of the collapsed climate change talks in Copenhagen last year.
But Greenpeace’s accusations — and Sinar Mas’s denials — hint at what critics say are major hurdles in the plan. Bureaucratic dysfunction, corruption and Indonesia’s sheer size create confusion over what is happening in the field. At the same time, environmentalists, companies and governments frequently disagree on what constitutes environmentally sensitive land and what does not.
“This is a big question mark for the government of what forest protection will look like,” Mr. Maitar of Greenpeace said. “If the big companies like A.P.P. or Sinar Mas as a group are still doing business as usual, still doing forest clearing, so what’s the meaning of the moratorium?”
New Straits Times 6 Jul 10;
PASIR MAS: A wild elephant which wandered into Repek, a village about 3km from here, caused much excitement among the villagers yesterday.
The bull elephant was finally captured in an orchard by state wildlife officers, who shot it with a tranquilliser dart about 11am.
Villager Ramlan Awang Kecik, 48, said his son Raizudin, 20, was awakened by loud noises close to their house about 4.15am.
"He went out to see what was going on and was shocked to see an elephant.
"We informed the village security team and they surrounded the elephant from a distance to ensure it could not escape.
"We then called the police and officers from the Wildlife Department arrived about 7am. By then, the elephant had moved into the orchard."
State Wildlife Department director Pazil Abdul Fatah said the elephant was believed to have wandered into the village from the Jedok forest reserve in Tanah Merah, about 30km away.
"We believe the elephant wandered into the area due to the fruits that are in season now. We have reports of it being sighted in Kemahang three days ago and later at Banggol Petai.
"It is good that nobody was injured. According to village elders, no elephant has been sighted in the area for more than 50 years," said Pazil.
He said 20 officers from Kota Baru, Jeli, Kuala Krai and Gua Musang were deployed to the scene.
"A team from the Kuala Gandah conservation centre in Pahang will arrive soon to secure the elephant. It is expected to be released into Taman Negara," he said.
Pazil said it was the fourth elephant captured this year. Two others were caught in Gua Musang and another in Jeli.
Serge Daniel Yahoo News 4 Jul 10;
BANZENA, Mali (AFP) – Ali Ag Rhissa, a young Touareg nomad, sits in his tent, his gun ready, on the frontline of one of Mali's battles -- protecting its majestic but dwindling herds of desert elephants.
Faced with the dual threat of drought and poachers, the elephant population has almost halved in recent decades.
But help is at hand from local people in northern Mali, who have started to form conservation brigades to ward off poachers and protect the animal from extinction.
Between 1972 and 1974 there were 550 elephants in the Gourma region, now there are no more than 354. In June alone, severe drought killed 21 of the animals.
The elephants of the Gourma are the biggest in Africa and are tempting quarry for poachers, both for their ivory tusks and their meat, which is popular in neighbouring countries.
"When we hear the sound of a vehicle, we get ready to make sure the poachers can't settle here and kill our elephants," said Rhissa, who lives in a tent with his wife and three children in Banzena, near Timbuktu.
"We take precautionary measures. In this no elephants have been victims of poaching since we organised our protection brigades," said Bakary Kame, a water and forestry ranger.
"But you can never be too careful," added Kame, who had a rifle slung across his back.
According to official statistics, 50 percent of the elephants in the Gourma are adult females, with 11 per cent male adults, 26 percent young and 11 percent "very old".
Gourma elephants are the only nomadic elephants in the world and the only ones that live in the desert apart from a group in Namibia.
Every year, they migrate hundreds of kilometres (miles) along the southern edge of the Sahara towards the border with Burkina Faso and back again in search of food and water.
Each one consumes up to 250 kilograms (500 pounds) of vegetation per day, and can suck up 10 litres in every trunkful of water.
They leave huge footprints close to a metre (three feet) deep when they trek across the barren landscape.
"To protect them from poachers, we have placed GPS chips in collars around the necks of some of the elephants. This way, we know where they are all the time," said Biramou Sissoko, the national coordinator for the government programme to conserve the elephants and biodiversity in the Gourma.
The government of Mali is taking steps to protect the elephants. Efforts are being made to educate local people about the plight of the animals, while legislation is also being drawn up to combat poaching.
The conservation action plan has been launched to protect the elephants' ecosystem, and "biodiversity co-ordinators" are being appointed under Sissoko.
"Our role is to educate, and raise awareness of the damage done by poachers and the destruction of the environment," said Amadou Bore, one of the co-ordinators.
"Whoever comes here to take the tusks of elephants will find instead our own tusks -- our rifles," he said.
Keith Bradsher The New York Times 4 Jul 10;
GUANGZHOU, China — Premier Wen Jiabao has promised to use an “iron hand” this summer to make his nation more energy efficient. The central government has ordered cities to close inefficient factories by September, like the vast Guangzhou Steel mill here, where most of the 6,000 workers will be laid off or pushed into early retirement.
Already, in the last three years, China has shut down more than a thousand older coal-fired power plants that used technology of the sort still common in the United States. China has also surpassed the rest of the world as the biggest investor in wind turbines and other clean energy technology. And it has dictated tough new energy standards for lighting and gas mileage for cars.
But even as Beijing imposes the world’s most rigorous national energy campaign, the effort is being overwhelmed by the billionfold demands of Chinese consumers.
Chinese and Western energy experts worry that China’s energy challenge could become the world’s problem — possibly dooming any international efforts to place meaningful limits on global warming.
If China cannot meet its own energy-efficiency targets, the chances of avoiding widespread environmental damage from rising temperatures “are very close to zero,” said Fatih Birol, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency in Paris.
Aspiring to a more Western standard of living, in many cases with the government’s encouragement, China’s population, 1.3 billion strong, is clamoring for more and bigger cars, for electricity-dependent home appliances and for more creature comforts like air-conditioned shopping malls.
As a result, China is actually becoming even less energy efficient. And because most of its energy is still produced by burning fossil fuels, China’s emission of carbon dioxide — a so-called greenhouse gas — is growing worse. This past winter and spring showed the largest six-month increase in tonnage ever by a single country.
Until recently, projections by both the International Energy Agency and the Energy Information Administration in Washington had assumed that, even without an international energy agreement to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, China would achieve rapid improvements in energy efficiency through 2020.
But now China is struggling to limit emissions even to the “business as usual” levels that climate models assume if the world does little to address global warming.
“We really have an arduous task” even to reach China’s existing energy-efficiency goals, said Gao Shixian, an energy official at the National Development and Reform Commission, in a speech at the Clean Energy Expo China in late June in Beijing.
China’s goal has been to reduce energy consumption per unit of economic output by 20 percent this year compared with 2005, and to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases per unit of economic output by 40 to 45 percent in 2020 compared with 2005.
But even if China can make the promised improvements, the International Energy Agency now projects that China’s emissions of energy-related greenhouse gases will grow more than the rest of the world’s combined increase by 2020. China, with one-fifth of the world’s population, is now on track to represent more than a quarter of humanity’s energy-related greenhouse-gas emissions.
Industry by industry, energy demand in China is increasing so fast that the broader efficiency targets are becoming harder to hit.
¶Although China has passed the United States in the average efficiency of its coal-fired power plants, demand for electricity is so voracious that China last year built new coal-fired plants with a total capacity greater than all existing power plants in New York State.
¶While China has imposed lighting efficiency standards on new buildings and is drafting similar standards for household appliances, construction of apartment and office buildings proceeds at a frenzied pace. And rural sales of refrigerators, washing machines and other large household appliances more than doubled in the past year in response to government subsidies aimed at helping 700 million peasants afford modern amenities.
¶As the economy becomes more reliant on domestic demand instead of exports, growth is shifting toward energy-hungry steel and cement production and away from light industries like toys and apparel.
¶Chinese cars get 40 percent better gas mileage on average than American cars because they tend to be much smaller and have weaker engines. And China is drafting regulations that would require cars within each size category to improve their mileage by 18 percent over the next five years. But China’s auto market soared 48 percent in 2009, surpassing the American market for the first time, and car sales are rising almost as rapidly again this year.
One of the newest factors in China’s energy use has emerged beyond the planning purview of policy makers in Beijing, in the form of labor unrest at factories across the country.
An older generation of low-wage migrant workers accepted hot dormitories and factories with barely a fan to keep them cool, one of many reasons Chinese emissions per person are still a third of American emissions per person. Besides higher pay, young Chinese are now demanding their own 100-square-foot studio apartments, with air-conditioning at home and in factories. Indeed, one of the demands by workers who went on strike in May at a Honda transmission factory in Foshan was that the air-conditioning thermostats be set lower.
Chinese regulations still mandate that the air-conditioning in most places be set no cooler than 79 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. But upscale shopping malls have long been exempt from the thermostat controls and have maintained much cooler temperatures through the summers. Now, as the consumer economy takes root, those malls are proliferating in cities across China.
Premier Wen acknowledged in a statement after a cabinet meeting in May that the efficiency gains had started to reverse and actually deteriorated by 3.2 percent in the first quarter of this year. He cited a lack of controls on energy-intensive industries, although the economic rebound from the global financial crisis may have also played a role.
Global climate discussions, in pinning hopes on China’s ability to vastly improve its efficient use of energy, have tended to cite International Energy Agency data showing that China uses twice as much energy per dollar of output as the United States and three times as much as the European Union. The implicit assumption is that China can greatly improve efficiency because it must still be relying mainly on wasteful, aging boilers and outmoded power plants.
But David Fridley, a longtime specialist in China’s energy at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said that the comparison to the United States and the European Union was misleading.
Manufacturing makes up three times as much of the Chinese economy as it does the American economy, and it is energy-intensive. If the United States had much more manufacturing, Mr. Fridley said, it would also use considerably more energy per dollar of output.
“China has been trying to grab the low-lying fruit — to find those opportunities where increased efficiency can save money and reduce carbon-dioxide emissions,” said Ken Caldeira, a climate change specialist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, Calif. “It is starting to look like it might not be that easy to find and grab this fruit.”
Studies predict major extinctions and collapse of Greenland ice sheet with temperatures rising well above UN targets
Juliette Jowit and Christine Ottery guardian.co.uk 5 Jul 10;
The world is heading for an average temperature rise of nearly 4C (7F), according to analysis of national pledges from around the globe. Such a rise would bring a high risk of major extinctions, threats to food supplies and the near-total collapse of the huge Greenland ice sheet.
More than 100 heads of state agreed in Copenhagen last December to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C-2C (2.7-3.6F) above the long-term average before the industrial revolution, which kickstarted a massive global increase in the greenhouse gases blamed for warming the planet and triggering climate change.
But six months on, a major international effort to monitor the emissions reductions targets of more than 60 countries, including all the major economies, the Climate Interactive Scoreboard, calculates that the world is on course for a rise of nearly double the stated goal by 2100.
Another study by Climate Analytics, at the Potsdam Institute in Germany, suggests there is "virtually no chance" world governments will keep the temperature rise to below 2C, and the rise is likely to be 3.5C (6.3F) by the end of the century.
In both analyses the current commitments suggest a much better outcome than the estimated business-as-usual temperature rise of 4.8C (8.6F), but are well above the 2C maximum the UN hoped would be agreed at the next major meeting this December in Cancún, Mexico – and even further from the 1.5C target many developing nations argue is needed to stop the worst impacts of climate change in their countries.
In its last assessment of the problem in 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecasts that a rise of more than 2C would lead to potential increases in food production, but an increasingly high risk of extinction for 20-30% of species, more severe droughts and floods, and a unstoppable "widespread to near total" loss of the Greenland ice sheet over very long time periods. However, at 4C it predicted global food production was "very likely" to decrease, "major extinctions around the globe", and near-total loss of Greenland's ice, precipitating 2-7m of sea-level rise in the long term. As temperatures rose, the severity of floods, erosion, water pollution, heatwaves, droughts and health problems such as malnutrition and diarrhoea diseases would also increase, said the IPCC.
"We're looking at a level which is much more extreme and profoundly dangerous," said Ruth Davis, chief policy adviser for Greenpeace. "It's arguable the UN process has become dangerously cut adrift from the science of climate change."
The Department of Energy and Climate Change said that, based on national offers of emissions reductions made in Copenhagen, the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) and other bodies had calculated that it was possible to meet the 2C target, although this would depend on the targets set beyond 2020.
"There's more work to do if we're going to avoid a 2C temperature rise which is why we're pushing the EU to cut its emissions by 30%," said a DECC spokesman. "Keeping below 2C is still possible from the high end Copenhagen accord offers, but will require steeper action after 2020."
However, many experts said the much higher temperature-rise estimates were a cause for serious concern that emissions cuts proposed for Cancún were too low and not enough was being done to prepare for further cuts beyond 2020, even though there are still nearly six months of negotiations before the talks.
"We've made progress but we're clearly not headed where we need to be," said Andrew Jones, co-director of Climate Interactive, which is backed by several universities including MIT. "No one is talking about changing any of the 2020 proposals, so we should be worried." Climate Interactive's model is also backed by a panel of experts including Prof Bob Watson, chief scientific advisor to the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and a former head of the IPCC.
The Climate Interactive Scoreboard, for which researchers check daily for updates in emissions or other targets which would reduce pollution such as reductions in energy intensity or increases in renewable energy, makes a medium-range prediction of a 3.9C increase in temperatures, with a range of 2.3-6.2C (4.2-11.1F), based on committed targets, and a more encouraging 2.9C (5.2F) average, with a range of 1.7-4.6C (3.1-8.5F) based on "potential" commitments suggested but not enacted by many nations.
One of the major barriers to setting higher emissions cuts was a great many countries, including Canada and the EU, have said they do not want to increase their targets until the US sets significant reductions, which is proving hard for President Obama to achieve, said Davis.
Climate Analytics and Ecofys, under the banner of Climate Action Tracker, estimate a range of 2.8-4.3C.
The principal differences between the two calculations are that they use different models, and made different assumptions about what countries will do after their current targets expire, said Jones.
In both cases, there has been no improvement to the forecast outcome since the experts assessed the prospects immediately after the Copenhagen conference.
The predictions will be particularly worrying for many watchers because the 2C target was based on research which suggested that at that level there was only a low to medium risk of key changes to the conditions in which humans survive; however an update of the "burning embers diagram" by the authors, published last year by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the US, suggested that at 2C there greater risk in all categories, including a significant to high risk to unique and threatened ecosystems, of extreme weather events and a global distribution of the worst threats.
Dutch government finds minor inaccuracies in contested paper, but reasserts that 'climate change poses "substantial risks" to most parts of the world'
Juliette Jowit guardian.co.uk 5 Jul 10;
The first major independent review of criticisms of the global assessment of climate change led by the United Nations declared today that it found "no errors that would undermine the main conclusions" of the panel of international scientists that climate change will have serious consequences around the world.
However the Dutch panel of experts claims it found 12 errors - from a criticism of the number of people in Africa at risk of water shortages to mistakes in references or typing. It also suggested the summary version of the report had portrayed an over-dramatic picture by putting the emphasis on negative impacts of climate change, and it failed to explain some of the threats were not only driven by climate change.
Among several recommendations, it said the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, paid for by governments including the UK and Netherlands, should in future pay researchers to review the report in more detail.
The report was officially welcomed by the IPCC and scientists who worked on the last assessment report, published in 2007, however only a small number of the "errors" have been corrected. The remaining errors were not accepted by the scientists, said Professor Martin Parry, who was co-chair of the section of the report that was under scrutiny.
"The conclusions are not undermined by any errors, and we'd like that to be the message the world will take," said Parry. "[They found] a very small number of near-trivial errors in about 500 pages [and] probably 100,000 statements. I would say that's pretty good going."
The scientists also rejected the potentially more damaging complaint that the IPCC's Summary for Policy Makers report, which condenses eight chapters on regional impacts to a single page of 32 statements, ignored positive impacts such as the ability to grow new crops in some parts of the world, or opening of shorter Arctic sea routes.
The summary, vetted "line by line" by governments, highlights the biggest impacts on humans and the environment which need political attention, said Parry. Positive benefits tended to be local and relatively small, said Professor David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey, a lead coordinating author of the next IPCC assessment.
The agency was asked to examine eight chapters about the regions in the 500-page section on global impacts put together by Working Group II, which itself formed half of the full 1,000-page IPCC assessment.
One "minor inaccuracy" the Dutch panel said it found was an estimate of people in Africa who could be exposed to water stress, which they said should be narrowed from 75m-250m to 90m-220m. However Professor Nigel Arnell, the source of the data, said although the underlying models could have been added differently, to recalculate the total would be to "over-interpret" the data by suggesting a level of accuracy the IPCC does not claim.
As well as the 12 errors, the Dutch reviewers made 23 criticisms of the "quality" of statements. These ranged from failure to explain that forecast water stress and heat deaths also had other causes such as population growth, to pointing out a link to underlying research did not work. Arnell said the IPCC report "repeatedly stresses" its estimates of numbers are a comparison to what would happen if forecast climate change did not happen.
Despite rejecting many criticisms in the Dutch report, the IPCC has employed more reviewers for the fifth assessment, and should consider other changes, including paying scientists to make sure every line of the report is scrutinised before it is published, said Parry.
The Dutch government asked the environment agency to investigate the IPCC report after international controversy about two mistakes in the 2007 assessment: the date by which Himalaya glaciers were expected to melt, and a claim that 55% of the Netherlands is below the sea level. The agency report admits this mistake was based on information it provided and says the real figure was 29%.
Dutch agency admits mistake in UN climate report
Arthur Max, Associated Press Yahoo News 5 Jul 10;
THE HAGUE, Netherlands – A leading Dutch environmental agency, taking the blame for one of the glaring errors that undermined the credibility of a seminal U.N. report on climate change, said Monday it has discovered more small mistakes and urged the panel to be more careful.
But the review by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency claimed that none of the errors effected the fundamental conclusion by U.N. panel of scientists: that global warming caused by humans already is happening and is threatening the lives and well-being of millions of people.
Mistakes discovered in the 3,000-page report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year fed into an atmosphere of skepticism over the reliability of climate scientists who have been warning for many years that human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases could have catastrophic consequences, including rising sea levels, drought and the extinction of nearly one-third of the Earth's species.
The errors put scientists on the defensive in the months before a major summit on climate change in Copenhagen in December, which met with only limited success on agreeing how to limit carbon emissions and contain the worst effects of global warming.
The underlying IPCC conclusions remain valid, said Maarten Hajer, the Dutch agency's director. The IPCC report is not a house of cards that collapses with one error, but is more like a puzzle with many pieces that need to fit together. "So the errors do not affect the whole construction," he said at a news conference.
But he said the boiled-down version of the full IPCC report, a synthesis meant as a guideline for policymakers, included conclusions drawn from "expert judgments" that were not always clearly sourced or transparent.
With some conclusions, "we can't say it's plainly wrong. We don't know," and can't tell from the supporting text, Hajer said. The IPCC should "be careful making generalizations."
The IPCC, in a statement from its Geneva headquarters, welcomed the agency's findings, which it said confirmed the IPCC's conclusion that "continued climate change will pose serious challenges to human well-being and sustainable development."
It said it will "pay close attention" to the agency's recommendations to tighten up review procedures.
The Dutch agency accepted responsibility for one mistake by the IPCC when it reported in 2005 that 55 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level, when only 26 percent is. The report should have said 55 percent is prone to flooding, including river flooding.
The mistake happened when a long report was compressed into a short one, and two figures were meshed into one. "Something was lost, and it wasn't spotted," said Hajer.
"The incorrect wording in the IPCC report does not affect the message of the conclusion," that the Netherlands is highly susceptible to sea level rise, the agency's report said. "The lesson to be learned for an assessment agency such as ours is that quality control is needed at the primary level."
The second previously reported error claimed the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, which the Dutch agency partly traced to a report on the likely shrinking of glaciers by the year 2350.
The review, which lasted five months, also found several other errors in the IPCC report on regional impacts of climate change — one of four separate IPCC reports in 2007 — although it said they were inconsequential.
The original report said global warming will put 75 million to 250 million Africans at risk of severe water shortages in the next 10 years, but a recalculation showed that range should be 90 million to 220 million, the agency said.
Another error it found involved the effect of wind turbulence on anchovy fisheries on Africa's west coast.
The Dutch agency said it examined 32 conclusions in the summary for policy makers on the impact of climate change in eight regions.
"Our findings do not contradict the main conclusions of the IPCC," the report said. "There is ample observational evidence of natural systems being influenced by climate change ... (that) pose substantial risks to most parts of the world."
It said future IPCC reports should have a more robust review process and should look more closely at where information comes from. It also recommended more investment in monitoring global warming in developing countries.
Dutch review backs UN climate panel report
Environment correspondent, BBC News Flooding in Holland in 1953 The IPCC erred over data on flooding in the Netherlands, the inquiry says
Richard Black BBC News 5 Jul 10;
A Dutch inquiry into the UN's climate science panel has found "no errors that would undermine the main conclusions" on probable impacts of climate change.
However, it says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should be more transparent in its workings.
The Dutch parliament asked for the inquiry after two mistakes were identified in the IPCC's 2007 report.
The inquiry is the latest in a series that have largely backed "mainstream" climate science against detractors.
The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) does not give the panel a completely clean bill of health, however.
Whereas the IPCC's landmark Fourth Assessment (AR4) from 2007 "conclusively shows" that impacts of human-induced climate change are already tangible in many places around the world and will become more serious as temperatures increase, PBL also says the foundation for some of the specific projections "could have been made more transparent".
The Netherlands inquiry adds that the IPCC's summaries tended to emphasise "worst-case scenarios".
However, this was disputed by scientists who had played a leading role in AR4.
"The net impacts of climate change are not beneficial," said David Vaughan, science leader at the British Antarctic Survey, who co-ordinated the AR4 chapter on polar impacts.
Martin Parry, visiting professor at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change Research at Imperial College London who co-chaired AR4 Working Group 2 on climate impacts, welcomed the PBL report.
"We welcome the conclusion of this report, which is esentially that our conclusions are safe, sound and reliable," he said.
"The IPCC is about to venture into the next assessment; so it's important that we learn from these issues, and it's important not to be defensive, and I think that's how the IPCC is approaching things now."
Flood issues
PBL's central remit was to look at how accurately the IPCC's chapters on regional projections of climate impacts reflected the science available, and whether those chapters were adequately distilled into the summary that was given to government representatives for signing off.
The panel has already admitted making a mistake over the projected date for disappearance of glaciers in the Himalayas.
It projected that glaciers could largely disappear by 2035, which the IPCC acknowledges (and the PBL inquiry confirms) is highly unlikely.
A furore erupted in the Netherlands over a different claim in AR4, namely that 55% of the country was vulnerable to flooding because it was situated below sea level.
The source of the claim was a report from PBL itself, which said that 55% of the Netherlands was prone to flooding.
But that report said only 26% of the country was at risk because it lies below sea level, with the remainder affected by river flooding.
PBL now accepts the blame for the mistake lies within its own doors.
"We acknowledge that this error was not the fault of the IPCC... the error was made by a contributing author from the PBL, and the (co-ordinating) lead authors (of AR4 chapters) are not to blame for relying on Dutch information provided by a Dutch agency," it said.
PBL also says it has uncovered another minor error in AR4's summary.
The IPCC said that by the year 2020, between 75 million and 250 million Africans would be at risk of "water stress" (ie not having enough water). PBL says that based on the science available, the figures should be 90-220 million - but that the IPCC projections fit within the "range of uncertainty" in the science.
However, Nigel Arnell, head of the Walker Centre at the University of Reading who led the water chapter in AR4, disputed the PBL assessment.
"The figures are based on a series of assumptions and calculations," he said.
"I think the way in which it was projected with a wide range encapsulated the huge uncertainties, and we think that (narrowing it to) 90-220 million is an over-interpretation of the information that the chapter authors had at the time."
Overall, there were 35 instances where PBL cited errors or made other comments. The vast majority were minor, such as typographical errors or the mis-labelling of a graph; Professor Parry and other IPCC authors accept 12, and have noted them as errata on the IPCC website.
PBL closes its investigation with a number of recommendations for the IPCC, including setting up a public website for the submission of information on possible errors, additional funding for staff to assist with quality control, and taking care with public statements that "could be perceived... as heightening the projected impacts of climate change".
Testing sequence
This is the latest in a series of reviews and inquiries that have endorsed the central conclusions of mainstream climate science, while finding issues of concern in how it is practiced.
Two reviews into issues arising from the emails hacked from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) late last year have concluded there was no evidence of scientific malpractice or manipulation of data.
However, they asked for greater openness, compliance with Freedom of Information law and better collaboration with professional statisticians.
The third review into the CRU issue will be published on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the Sunday Times was recently forced to apologise for claiming that IPCC projections on die-back of the Amazon rainforest were unsubstantiated.
The main international review of the IPCC - conducted by the InterAcademy Council, a network of national science academies such as the UK's Royal Society - is ongoing, with formal publication due in October.
Chris Buckley PlanetArk 6 Jul 10;
China will host an extra round of international negotiations in October aimed at fostering agreement over a new climate treaty, the United Nations' top environment official said in remarks published on Monday.
Achim Steiner, a U.N. Under-Secretary General who is director of the U.N. Environment Program, told the China Daily the extra round of negotiations would take place in the north Chinese port city of Tianjin, which is close to Beijing.
"China will introduce some new ideas and opportunities to move the negotiation forward," said Steiner, who has been visiting China.
Governments are hoping to strike agreement on a new binding climate change treaty after a summit in Copenhagen late last year ended with a weak and non-binding accord.
The newly added Tianjin talks will come in the build-up to the next major ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico, from November 29-December 10, when climate officials hope to agree on the key elements of a new treaty, if not the details.
China is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from human activities, having outpaced the United States, and its position on controlling emissions will be crucial in efforts to build a new pact on fighting global warming.
But officials from China and other countries have voiced doubts that Cancun can clinch a binding climate treaty. That was more likely to occur during major climate talks in South Africa at the end of 2011.
In May, Xie Zhenhua, who led China's delegation to the stormy negotiations in Copenhagen, said the only target for the gathering in Cancun was a "positive result."
(Editing by David Fogarty)
China to host new round of climate talks: report
Yahoo News 5 Jul 10;
SHANGHAI (AFP) – China will host an extra round of climate talks in October before a UN summit in Cancun at year's end as nations attempt to devise a post-2012 treaty, state media said Monday, quoting a UN official.
United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director Achim Steiner told the China Daily that the world body was working with Beijing to organise the meeting in the eastern port city of Tianjin.
"China will introduce some ideas and opportunities to move the negotiation forward," Steiner was quoted as telling the newspaper during a visit to the World Expo in Shanghai on Sunday.
The dates have not yet been finalised for the Tianjin meeting, the report said. The next UN climate convention meeting will take place in Cancun from November 29 to December 10. Preparatory talks were held in Bonn last month.
"China's gesture is quite positive" and can make a "great difference" in laying the groundwork for the Cancun meeting, Steiner said, but stressed the Tianjin meeting did not mean Beijing alone would set the agenda.
"By hosting a UN meeting it doesn't mean China, as host government, will determine the negotiation results," he said.
Nations are seeking to overcome the acrimonious divisions that surfaced at the Copenhagen summit on global warming last year to agree on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
He Jiankun, vice-chairman of China's experts panel on climate change, said the Tianjin meeting was being organised because all sides saw a need for more preparation before Cancun, the report said.
"The extra session was added as all believe more preparatory talks would help nations reach more agreements during the year-end negotiations on which great hope (rests)," he was quoted as saying.
Yu Qingtai, Beijing's top climate negotiator, indicated over the weekend that China, the world's number one carbon polluter, would maintain its argument of "differentiated responsibility" for developing countries at climate talks.
"No progress can be achieved if we deviate from such a principle," Yu was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
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