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Straits Times 8 Aug 10;
Space for new townships could open up in the north-east and west. But will hometowns still look the same? TessaWong talks to experts to find out
More unique flats with creative details
# Grace Fu, Minister of State for National Development
I think (in the future) the economy will be more differentiated. I think that aspirations are higher and we are looking for uniqueness (in housing design) now.
I think the Government will create that kind of identity through some differentiation in the aesthetics, because I think increasingly that's going to be important.
For example, in Europe, I've seen pictures of (new) photovoltaic cells. You know photo cells, they look quite boring, grey and flat. But I've seen what's being researched now - you have coloured photovoltaic, almost like a film, which you can lay on any facade and make it part of your design feature.
So you can have a very colourful (housing) block full of photovoltaic cells. We have to achieve this kind of distinction in design while containing the costs as much as we can.
Putting underground space to more uses
# Hwang Yu-Ning, group director of physical planning, Urban Redevelopment Authority
To expand our space supply, we will continue to explore greater use of our underground space - beyond the MRT, basement shopping malls and underground pedestrian networks such as those in Orchard Road and Marina Bay.
For example, we could study whether certain industrial, utilities, commercial and other suitable uses could be built underground in basements or caverns. The central and western parts of Singapore are potential areas where more caverns could be built as the geology is favourable.
As for the Southern Islands, they are envisaged more for recreational purposes, so there is not much residential development at this point. The islands are largely undeveloped and have a rustic character, providing a different kind of recreational experience from what is available on the mainland.
Under the Master Plan 2008, we are developing areas like Kallang Riverside and Paya Lebar Central now, over a period of 10 to 15 years.
At Kallang Riverside, we will see waterfront homes with a beachfront setting developed on the west side of the river, while the east side will have quality office space with hotels, entertainment and retail offerings.
Some of the old airport buildings in Kallang will be conserved and developed as a lifestyle spot. By the end of next year, we should have put together its development plans.
At Paya Lebar Central, we will see more offices and educational institutes. A new civic centre will also be developed that could include a community centre and a public square.
Closer, shorter blocks - for sustainable growth
# Vikas Gore, director at architectural firm DP Architects
There's been a set of objections that's been around for a long time - that the way we do high-rise housing is not particularly sustainable from an energy and resource-consumption standpoint.
High-rise is extremely expensive to build and maintain. You need lifts and a lot of electricity to keep all the elevators running. Water has to be pumped to the top too.
If we do more low-rise housing, like four or five storeys, where we need lifts mainly for the elderly, we could probably build larger apartments and still have high densities. We would occupy more of the land than we do at present.
The typical HDB estate would have buildings much closer than they are now, yet feel greener - because everyone would have a little green patch in front of their apartment, and would need to walk only two levels down to the ground, or walk up two floors to the roof garden.
Doing housing that is, say, four storeys high instead of 20 doesn't mean you can get only a fifth of high-rise density. You can get close to 60 per cent to 70 per cent.
Truly green town within reach
# Peter Head, director at engineering firm Arup who leads its global planning business
Singapore is presenting leadership in eco-city development in China and has the skills to showcase this at home. Also, an eco-community could encourage new businesses in green products, with Singapore's brilliant young product designers.
Our experience from China suggests that a low-carbon, resource-efficient and low ecological-footprint community could be planned and built starting now. There are investors and developers who would be interested in creating this.
There is already good public transport access - MRT stations are within a short walking distance.
But more could be done, such as mixed-use villages catering to about 20,000 people - with social services, and good public transport access within.
An eco-town should be highly accessible with local jobs. It would be best if it were close to the city, instead of being on outlying islands.
Buildings could be designed to capture breezes without unnecessary exposure to traffic noise and pollution. Natural ventilation could predominate building design, with some cooling potential using energy from waste.
Freight deliveries could be made from a consolidation centre using electric vehicles. The community could be the first to be offered use of electric cars on a large scale. Power for this could come from energy produced by waste plants.
Jamie Ee Wen Wei Straits Times 8 Aug 10;
Ms Tan says some of the museum's turtles and tortoises grew up in aquarium tanks, and will not survive well in a different environment. -- ST PHOTO: CHEW SENG KIM
Her father had a soft spot for turtles and tortoises. For more than 30 years, she grew up nurturing them too, including abandoned ones.
Their Yunnan Gardens home came to be crowded with more of the reptiles.
Nine years ago, Ms Connie Tan and her father Danny Tan opened the first and only turtle and tortoise museum in Singapore.
Located at the Chinese Garden in Jurong, the Live Turtle and Tortoise Museum now houses more than 1,600 of the chelonians - the scientific term for these marine and land shelled reptiles.
But some visitors came away upset after seeing what seemed to be confined spaces.
One of them, Mr Russell Eley, wrote to The Straits Times.
His letter on July 31 said tortoises were displayed alone in 'very confined spaces on bare concrete floors without access to food or water'.
Turtles were also 'cruelly displayed in stark tanks without space to swim', he wrote.
But the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), which did a check, did not find any overcrowding or ill-treatment.
The smaller reptiles are kept in more than 75 glass aquarium tanks, while the bigger ones live in 10 ponds.
The museum said all its ponds and tanks are large, with sufficient space for the chelonians to move about. The enclosures are cleaned and maintained every day and the animals are fed daily too.
Ms Tan, 40, said there have been previous complaints by visitors, mainly tourists.
'Some walk in and the moment they see the tanks, they storm out and give my staff a tongue-lashing without hearing them out,' she said.
Ms Tan, who is also a manager of an events company, said some tourists felt that some of the animals, which are endangered species, should be placed in natural enclosures, not knowing that many were actually her pets from as far back as 1978.
This was before Singapore joined an international convention in 1986 to ban the import and export of endangered species.
'They grew up in aquarium tanks. If we put them in a different environment, they won't know how to get to their food.'
The AVA said many of the museum's animals are captive-bred and would be vulnerable if returned to the wild. It has asked the museum to increase the size of the tanks accordingly as the chelonians grow.
Many species in the museum's live collection are rare, including the alligator snapping turtle and the pig-nosed turtle.
The museum also has more than 5,000 turtle and tortoise artefacts - the world's largest collection - which earned it a spot in the Guinness World Records in 2005.
These artefacts include a 40kg crystal turtle from Venice costing $12,800.
The museum has full-time staff who clean and maintain the tanks and ponds daily. The tank dwellers are taken out a few times a week for sunlight and to roam around the museum's garden.
Weekends see volunteers coming to give the turtles and tortoises a back scrub.
Over the years, the Tans have built ponds in the museum to accommodate the bigger tortoises. Those that are separated had shown signs of aggression or were attacked by others, Ms Tan said.
The family has spent at least $1.5 million to run the museum, which receives as many as 100 visitors a day.
The entry fees are $5 for adults, and $3 for senior citizens and children under six.
'Only a few people know about the effort and passion we put in. They support us and make donations. But we also get criticisms... it can get very disappointing,' Ms Tan said.
Deepika Shetty Straits Times 8 Aug 10;
Sunny days help Changi Airport's Budget Terminal save money, to the tune of more than $60,000 annually. Up on the rooftop of the terminal's departure hall is a large array of solar panels covering 2,500sqm. They convert sunlight into electricity - about 346,750 kilowatt hours each year.
Apart from sunlight being free, solar energy is green too. It is, hence, clean energy.
Completed in March, the Budget Terminal project is not just an effort to make Changi Airport more environmentally friendly but also part of a national clean technology push by the Economic Development Board (EDB).
Clean technology, or 'cleantech', refers broadly to eco-friendly technologies and solutions such as clean energy, and environmental and water technology. The EDB's Clean Energy Programme was launched in August 2007. Under it, $350 million has been earmarked for clean energy initiatives. About 60 per cent of the money has been allocated.
EDB's director for cleantech, Mr Goh Chee Kiong, called 2007 'a turning point' in the push into clean energy.
'We managed to attract quite a few international companies such as Bosch, which has set up a solar energy research and development centre here; and 3M, which is making films for solar panels,' he said.
The outlook is sunny. By the end of next year, the first building at Singapore's CleanTech Park, next to Nanyang Technological University, is expected to be up, at a cost of $90 million.
The park will be a testbed for innovative green solutions for tropical, urban settings like Singapore. Apart from solar panels, it will include sky gardens, rainwater harvesting and sky trellises.
Mr Christophe Inglin is managing director of Singapore-based solar systems integrator Phoenix Solar.
The firm specialises in photovoltaic systems, using solar panels which tap the energy of the sun's rays, to provide electricity for industry and for homes. He has seen demand here grow in the past three years.
Said Mr Inglin: 'In the initial years, we did not even consider Singapore a market. But attitudes have changed. What has also helped is a drop in the hardware cost.'
At his semi-detached home in Siglap, he uses the sun's heat to generate energy to power all electrical appliances, including air-conditioners, fans, water heaters and refrigerators. The 90 panels on the roof, installed in 2008, cost $105,000 with a 30-year payback at current tariff rates.
'If I were to install them today, it would cost me about $65,000 as costs have fallen,' he said.
More developers, businesses and individuals are into this sustainable technology. For instance, City Developments has solar-powered eco-roofs in many of its award-winning residential and commercial projects, such as Oceanfront@Sentosa Cove, City Square Mall and Republic Plaza. Developers can also apply for a government grant of up to $1 million per project to defray the cost of their investments in solar energy features by at least a third.
Meanwhile, over 5,000 solar-powered lights are already illuminating public places such as streets, parks and hawker centres. Water heaters powered by the sun are installed in more than 7,000 landed homes.
The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) has used solar power to promote sustainable urban practices. There are more than 100 solar-powered carpark signs at places such as Tras Street and Joo Chiat Road. At the Marina Bay Promenade, opened on July 18, the URA has installed three solar-powered breeze shelters, for the comfort of pedestrians.
Last month, the Housing Board announced its green initiative for six precincts.
In the fourth quarter of this year, 30 blocks in Jurong, Aljunied, Telok Blangah, Bishan, Ang Mo Kio and Jalan Besar will have solar panels mounted on them. Worth about $2.3 million, these are expected to save $40,000 per year per precinct.
Professor Joachim Luther, chief executive of the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore, said: 'Singapore has started to apply solar technology and it is doing it in a very dedicated way.
'Generating electricity through the use of solar energy is a perfectly proven technology and Singapore has made a good start. The next step will be seeing more individuals and corporates embracing this technology.'
Apart from lighting, Professor Luther foresees the use of solar technology in hotels, in resorts and in homes, powering everything from air-conditioners and refrigerators to water heaters.
This is something the Singapore Environment Council strongly supports.
Said its executive director, Mr Howard Shaw: 'Over the past decade, solar energy did not quite catch on here due to the cost of the technology. Things have changed now; the technology is more affordable and the Government's effort to promote its use is something we strongly applaud.'
Rachel Lin Straits Times 8 Aug 10;
The Southern Islands have not always been a destination for day-trippers seeking seaside tranquillity.
They were home to villagers until the 1970s and even formed a hotly contested constituency in the 1963 General Election.
Now, they are touted as eco-tourism destinations and only a handful of caretakers still live there.
They include Mr Supar Saman, 61, and Mr Seet Seng Huat, 62. These stalwarts do more than keep the place looking spruce - they are part of the Southern Islands' history.
Mr Supar's memories of St John's Island, where he now lives six days a week, date back to 1955 when he and his family moved there from Johor.
After he finished his studies at a Malay school on nearby Lazarus Island, taking a job on St John's at the Quarantine Station was a convenient option.
'Immigrants from China and India would come here for quarantine,' he recalls. 'There was also an opium treatment centre for addicts. The hills here were covered with living quarters. Many people were working here.'
When the running of the island was transferred to Sentosa Development Corporation in 1972, he was given the option of working in a hospital or staying on as a caretaker.
He chose to stay. 'There have been a lot of changes since 1955 but I like this island a lot. It's very quiet and there's lots of fresh air. You won't get sick here.'
Today, he keeps the place clean, monitors the craft arriving at the jetty, does minor repairs in the holiday bungalows, collects entry fees from private boats and reminds visitors when the ferry leaves.
In between, he fishes and lays traps for crabs. He says: 'I catch sea bass, mullet and sometimes golden snapper. After that, I can cook curry.'
Home is a pastel-coloured hut he shares with his cats and a mynah bird.
His wife Hawiyah, 64, and his 27-year- old daughter live on the mainland in Chai Chee. His wife visits him from Thursdays to Sundays. He awaits her arrival eagerly as she is a good cook.
His colleague on Kusu Island, Mr Seet, also has historic ties to this turf. He is a third-generation caretaker of the Da Bo Gong Temple, after his father and grandfather.
'I've been living in this temple for 20 years,' he says. 'When my father was working here, I came during the school holidays. I went swimming and fishing. I'm very familiar with the island.'
He is busiest during the ninth month of the lunar calendar (usually in October or November) when thousands of worshippers throng the Chinese temple to pray.
His wife Utumporn, 53, and their 12-year-old daughter live in Telok Blangah and visit him every weekend.
The late Mr Wee Kim Wee, Singapore's fourth president, used to visit the temple, Mr Seet recalls. 'Back when my mother was alive, we welcomed him as a family.'
Both caretakers are adamant that island life trumps being on the mainland.
'I go back maybe once or twice a month,' Mr Seet says. 'Then I go to the same places: Orchard Road and People's Park. I don't really miss anything, apart from the hawker food.'
Then there is the matter of saving on transport costs. Mr Supar adds: 'No need to keep topping up bus cards and all that.'
Bernama 7 Aug 10;
REDANG ISLAND, Aug 7 (Bernama) -- The Department of Marine Parks is studying the extent of coral bleaching at three more dive sites in the Pulau Redang Marine Park to determine whether they should be closed temporarily to save the corals.
Its director-general, Abdul Jamal Mydin, said on Saturday the dive sites would be closed if the damage to the corals, caused by global warming, was more than 60 per cent.
Water recreation activities such as snorkelling and scuba diving are prohibited at the Teluk Bakau dive site which has been closed temporarily due to coral bleaching. The Pulau Redang Marine Park has 18 dive sites.
"We will not close the dive sites if the damage to the corals is less than 60 per cent, like in the case of the marine parks in Johor," he said to reporters after launching the Merdeka Conservation Dive 2010, here.
The Redang Island Resort Operators Association monitored several areas in the marine park recently and recommended the temporary closure of the Pulau Ekor Tebu, Pulau Che Isa and Tanjung Lebam dive sites.
Global warming due to the El Nino phenomenon had raised the temperature of sea water from 28 to 31 degrees Celcius and triggered the damage to the corals.
"The temperature has dropped to 29 degrees now," said Abdul Jamal.
On the conservation dive programme, he said it was to create awareness among students and the public on the importance of rehabilitation of marine biodiversity.
-- BERNAMA
Antara 7 Aug 10;
Jambi, Sumatra (ANTARA News) - Greenpeace activists unfurled a giant banner with text reading "APP-Stop destroying Tiger Forests" to protest alleged forest destruction by pulp giant Asia Pulp&Paper (APP).
The banner was put up in an area of active clearing by PT. Tebo Multi Agro (TMA), an affiliate of APP, in the southern part of the Bukit Tigapuluh landscape last Thurday (Aug 5), according to a press statement of Greenpeace Southeast Asia in its official website.
"Greenpeace and KKI Warsi, a Sumatra based NGO, urged the Indonesian government to take immediate action to stop further destruction of this valuable forest that is currently being logged for the expansion of the pulp and paper industry," it said.
The Bukit Tigapuluh landscape is recognized as one of the last refuges for the critically endangered Sumatran Tiger and hosts incredible biodiversity including 660 plant species, 200 species of birds and 60 mammal species, including the highly endangered clouded leopard, Malayan tapir, Sumatran elephant and the Orang utan.
The area is also home to the indigenous peoples of the Orang Rimba and Talang Mamak tribes.
"Greenpeace is here today to expose APP`s false claims that it only develops `least valuable degraded forests and denuded wasteland`. This is precious forest that houses rich biodiversity, carbon stocks and is the home to the Orang Rimba and Talang Mamak peoples. It should not be destroyed for copy paper and glossy magazines," said Zulfahmi, forest campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia.
"APP and its parent company Sinar Mas are not only undermining President Yudhoyono`s international commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation but are also driving endangered species like the Sumatran tiger towards extinction and making indigenous communities homeless," he added.
Last week Greenpeace launched its latest investigative report into the operations of Sinar Mas.
Greenpeace gathered new photographic evidence from aerial monitoring, backed up by field analysis, to detail how the Sinar Mas group continues to clear rainforest containing priceless biodiversity and carbon-rich peatlands, despite public promises it has made to clean up its act.
"Our recent survey shows that currently about 500 Orang Rimba live in Bukit Tigapuluh forests. But now they are in danger as the forests which they depend on for their livelihoods is already destroyed. In order to protect the biodiversity and the interests of our forest communities, deforestation must end immediately," said Robert Aritonang of Warsi.
Greenpeace is calling upon the Indonesian government to extend the recently announced moratorium on `new concessions on conversion of natural forests and peatlands into plantations` to include a halt to all clearing of forested areas within existing concessions.
(Tx.F001/HAJM/P003)
LiveScience.com Yahoo News 7 Aug 10;
What could be the world's rarest coral has been discovered in the remote North Pacific Ocean.
The Pacific elkhorn coral (Acropora rotumana) - with branches like an elk's antlers - was found during an underwater survey of the Arno atoll in the Marshall Islands.
The Pacific elkhorn coral at Arno Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Photo: Dean Jacobson on LiveScience.com
Corals are tiny creatures that live in skeleton-covered colonies, creating the illusion that a coral community is one single organism. This newfound coral colony may be the first time this species has been spotted in more than 100 years, according to researchers at the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) in Queensland, Australia.
"When I first saw it, I was absolutely stunned," said research team leader Zoe Richards of CoECRS.
The huge coral colonies were 16 feet (5 meters) across and nearly 7 feet (2 m) high and "were like nothing I'd seen before in the Pacific Ocean," Richards said.
The coral colony looks like the critically endangered elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata) of the Atlantic Ocean, but genetic analysis has shown that the Atlantic and Pacific varieties are different species.
The Pacific elkhorn is of the Acropora genus, the dominant genus of reef-building corals, the researchers said, so learning how the Pacific version lives will provide clues about these exotic marine creatures and will help determine their conservation status.
"So far I have only found this new population of coral to occur along a small stretch of reef at a single atoll in the Marshalls group," Richards said. "It grows in relatively shallow water along the exposed reef front and, so far, fewer than 200 colonies are known from that small area."
The Pacific elkhorn coral colonies are the largest of all the Acropora colonies observed at Arno Atoll, indicating that these are relatively old, Richards said.
The Pacific elkhorn coral colony was a rare find, but it may not be an entirely new species. Corals fitting the description of the Pacific elkhorn were first described in 1898 near Fiji in the South Pacific, but scientists don't have enough genetic information from this earlier find to say if the corals are a match, Richards said.
The Atlantic relative, A. palmata is regarded by most marine researchers as the outstanding symbol of the plight of Caribbean corals. It is rated as critically endangered after vanishing from most of its Caribbean reef habitat in recent decades.
"When Zoe showed me pictures of the Pacific elkhorn, I was shocked," said coral geneticist David Miller of CoECRS and James Cook University, also in Queensland. "The colonies look just like the critically endangered Caribbean species A. palmata, one of the most distinctive of all corals. The fact that these colonies might represent a species that has not been seen for over a hundred years (A. rotumana) says something about how much we know about the remote reefs of the North Pacific," Miller said.
The newfound coral colony is detailed in the June 2 edition of the journal Systematics and Biodiversity.
Yahoo News 7 Aug 10;
VANCOUVER, Canada (AFP) – At least one fish species can adapt in just three generations to survive a sharp change in temperature, researchers said in a study on the fastest rate of evolution ever recorded in wild animals.
"Our study is the first to experimentally show that certain species in the wild could adapt to climate change very rapidly," said Friday lead researcher Rowan Barrett.
However, the University of British Columbia evolutionary geneticist warned, the evolutionary jump carries a deadly price tag: a high mortality rate.
In their research, scientists from Canada and Europe removed marine stickleback fish from the ocean, put them into ponds with gradually dropping temperatures, and studied them for three years.
Over three generations, one per year, the fish evolved to survive water 2.5 degrees Celsius below the limit for their great grandparents, said the study released online and to be published in the September 7 issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The findings suggest at least some animals may be able to change quickly enough to survive predicted climate change.
Virtually all climate research in peer-reviewed science journals predicts global temperatures will gradually rise by several degrees in coming decades, accompanied by swings of extreme cold and heat.
"But just because we've seen a large evolutionary response, that doesn't mean a natural population can adapt to climate change with no consequences," Barrett told AFP Thursday.
About 95 per cent of the fish population died during the three-year study, with only five per cent developing a tolerance for cold," he said.
"The consequences of losing 95 per cent might be catastrophic, because the remaining five per cent might not be able to sustain the population," said Barrett.
He added: "We don't know the genetic basis of this trait."
Barrett, who is moving to Harvard after completing a PhD at UBC, said more research is needed to determine whether such rapid evolution can occur in other species and -- most critically -- to warming instead of cooling.
He said such research may also hold clues for how humans will cope with climate change.
The rapid evolution by the marine fish in the study mirrored the 10,000-year-long evolution of freshwater stickleback in British Columbia - descendants of marine fish trapped inland at the end of the last Ice Age, who evolved to live in extreme cold.
Barrett noted that humans also evolved over some 10,000 generations, since their first migration from Africa, raising the question of how many generations it might take for northern peoples to evolve genes that could cope with warmer climates experienced by their African ancestors.
"You can start to draw a parallel in evolutionary rates," said Barrett.
But he warned that, as shown by the 95 per cent mortality rate in the stickleback, such rapid evolution "can make the population extremely vulnerable... there are always consequences."
* Canal keeps forest fire away from nuclear arms facility
* Moscow's pollution level soars over six times normal
* Russian premier league football matches postponed
Reuters AlertNet 7 Aug 10;
MOSCOW, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Russian troops dug a 8-km (5-mile) long canal to keep fires caused by a record heatwave away from a nuclear arms site, local media said on Saturday as air pollution from the crisis rose to more than six times above normal.
Forest and peat fires by the highest temperatures ever registered in Russia have killed at least 52 people, made more than 4,000 homeless, diverted many flights and forced Muscovites to wear surgical masks to filter out foul air.
"The fire situation in the Moscow region is still tense, but there is no danger either for residential areas or for economic sites," an Emergencies Ministry spokesman said.
Weather forecasts said the smoke, which has reached even underground metro stations, would persist until Wednesday.
Echo Moskvy radio station said army troops excavated the canal to prevent the flames from advancing into the Sarov nuclear arms facility, ringed by forest in the Niznhy Novgorod region around 350 kilometres (220 miles) east of Moscow.
The Emergencies Ministry said the situation in Sarov had "stabilised". Sarov is a closed town whose nuclear site produced the first Soviet atomic bomb in 1949 and remains the main nuclear design and production facility in Russia.
On Thursday, Russia's nuclear chief assured President Dmitry Medvedev that all explosive and radioactive material had been removed from the nuclear site as a precautionary measure.
Air pollution surged to more than six fold over the normal reading in Moscow, a city of 10.5 million, the highest sustained contamination since Russia's worst heatwave in over a century began a month ago, Moscow's pollution monitoring agency said.
Many people on the streets of Moscow were wearing masks to ward off the heavy smog, while suffering from sweltering heat as the temperature climbed to 36 Celsius (96.8 Fahrenheit), verging on the record high for the day.
Officials have urged Muscovites to stay indoors because of hazardous levels of carbon monoxide and fine particles in the air.
With visibility low, local media said air traffic was being diverted to Sheremetyevo airport, north of Moscow, where smog was not so dense as in other parts of the capital. Some flights have been rerouted as far away as Ukraine from Moscow.
Planes and helicopters involved in firefighting were temporarily grounded by the thick smoke.
The Russian Football Premier League postponed two scheduled weekend soccer matches in Moscow due to high air pollution. A friendly soccer match between Russia and Bulgaria scheduled for Aug. 11 was switched from Moscow to smoke-free St Petersburg.
One of the world's top grains producers, Russia has announced a temporary ban on exports after crops were ravaged by the dry weather. The news sent world wheat prices soaring.
(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; editing by Mark Heinrich)
Antara 7 Aug 10;
Ambon, Maluku (ANTARA News) - The results of the International Symposium On Small Islands and Coral Reefs as contained in the Ambon Statement will be disseminated to the world, the chief organizer said.
"We hope that this document would not be kept only but be disseminated to the world in order to arouse the awareness of various sides regarding the importance of the management of small islands," the symposium committee chairman Prof. Jamaludin Jompa said here.
The dissemination of the `Ambon Statement 2010` is also expected to benefit Indonesia`s island provinces, including Maluku, which is also an island province.
The International symposium on small islands and coral reefs was held in Ambon`s SwissBell Hotel on August 4 - 5, 2010 and was held as part of `Sail Banda 2010` activities being held in Maluku from July 12 to August 17, 2010.
The symposium presented speakers and experts from overseas and from home who were concerned with matters relating to small islands and coral reefs, such as those from Australia, the Philippines, the United States and Germany.
The Indonesian government itself was in the symposium represented by officials the ministry of maritime and fisheries affairs and from various provinces` maritime and fisheries services, including those coming from Maluku province.
Jamaluddin Jompa expressed hope that the presence of the government representatives in the symposium would contribute science and technology to the development of small islands and coral reefs so that efforts would not merely focus on infrastructre development.
He said that he appreciated the seriousness of the Maluku regional government as reflected in the Ambon Statement 2010 which was read by Deputy Governor Said Assegaf at the end of the symposium.
The Ambon statement contains seven points which in principle stressed the importance of specific policy on the development of small islands and coral reefs, local cultures, impact of climate change, participation of customary society, partnership of all stakeholders, international dialogs and the need to arrange an initiative on adaptation and mitigation in an effort to reduce carbon emissions.
(Uu.A014/P003)
Yahoo News 7 Aug 10;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A massive ice island four times the size of Manhattan has broken off an iceberg in north-western Greenland, a researcher at a US university said.
Andreas Muenchow at the University of Delaware said in a statement Friday that the last time the Arctic lost such a large chunk of ice was in 1962.
Muenchow's research focuses on the Nares Strait, a region between far north-eastern Canada and northwestern Greenland, about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) south of the North Pole.
Early on August 5, "an ice island four times the size of Manhattan was born in northern Greenland," said Muenchow.
The freshwater stored in the ice island could "keep all US public tap water flowing for 120 days," Muenchow said.
Satellite images of the area show that the Petermann Glacier lost about one-quarter of its 70 kilometer (43-mile) long floating ice-shelf.
The Petermann glacier is one of Greenland's two largest glaciers that end in floating shelves, and connects Greenland's ice sheet directly with the ocean.
Muenchow credits Trudy Wohlleben of the Canadian Ice Service with detecting the ice island early Thursday, hours after raw data from a NASA satellite was downloaded, processed, and analyzed at the university.
The ice island will enter Nares Strait, between northern Greenland and Canada, where it will run into small islands.
"The newly born ice-island may become land-fast, block the channel, or it may break into smaller pieces as it is propelled south by the prevailing ocean currents," said Muenchow.
The ice island could then head along the Canadian coast and reach the Atlantic within the next two years, he said.
Huge ice sheet breaks from Greenland glacier
BBC News 7 Aug 10;
A giant sheet of ice measuring 260 sq km (100 sq miles) has broken off a glacier in Greenland, according to researchers at a US university.
The block of ice separated from the Petermann Glacier, on the north-west coast of Greenland.
It is the largest Arctic iceberg to calve since 1962, said Prof Andreas Muenchow of the University of Delaware.
The ice could become frozen in place over winter or escape into the waters between Greenland and Canada.
If the iceberg moves south, it could interfere with shipping, Prof Muenchow said.
Cracks in the Petermann Glacier had been observed last year and it was expected that an iceberg would calve from it soon.
The glacier is 1,000 km (620 miles) south of the North Pole.
A researcher at the Canadian Ice Service detected the calving from Nasa satellite images taken early on Thursday, the professor said.
The images showed that Petermann Glacier lost about one-quarter of its 70km-long (43-mile) floating ice shelf.
There was enough fresh water locked up in the ice island to "keep all US public tap water flowing for 120 days," said Prof Muenchow.
He said it was not clear if the event was due to global warming.
Patrick Lockerby, a UK engineer with a background in material science, told the BBC he had predicted the calve on 22 July, posting images on the science2.0 website.
"I was watching the floating ice tongue wedged between two walls of a fjord for three quarters if its length with the last part at the outlet end wedged by sea ice. I thought once the sea ice was gone, the pressure would be too great and the tongue would calve."
He said there could be a beneficial outcome if the calving drifts to block the Nares Strait and effectively prevents the loss of more ice from the Lincoln Sea.
The first six months of 2010 have been the hottest on record globally, scientists have said.
The global dominance of industrial interests dependant on cheap energy sourced from coal mean climate change is inevitable
Daniel Gros guardian.co.uk 6 Aug 10;
Sometimes the most important news is what is not happening. This summer has given us one such example: the climate-change bill, for which President Barack Obama had pushed so hard, will not even be presented to the US Senate, because it stands no chance of passage.
This means that the US is about to repeat its "Kyoto experience". Twenty years ago, in 1990, the US participated (at least initially) in the first global talks aimed at achieving a global accord to reduce CO2 emissions. At the time, the EU and the US were by far the greatest emitters, so it seemed appropriate to exempt the world's emerging economies from any commitment. Over time, it became apparent that the US would not live up to its commitment, owing, as now, to opposition in the Senate. The EU then went ahead on its own, introducing its path-breaking European Emission Trading System in the hope that Europe could lead by example.
Without the American climate-change package, the promises made by the US administration only seven months ago at the Copenhagen summit have become worthless. The European strategy is in tatters – and not only on the transatlantic front.
China's commitment to increase the CO2 efficiency of its economy by about 3% per year is of no help, because annual GDP growth rates of close to 10% mean that the country's emissions will soar during this decade. Indeed, by 2020, Chinese emissions could be more than triple those of Europe and even surpass those of the US and Europe combined. Exempting emerging markets from any commitments, as the Kyoto protocol sought to do, no longer makes sense.
Why has every attempt to set prices for global carbon emissions failed? The answer can be found in one word: coal – or, rather, the fact that coal is cheap and abundant.
Burning hydrocarbons (natural gas and petrol) yields both water and CO2. By contrast, burning coal yields only C02. Moreover, compared to natural gas and crude oil, coal is much cheaper per ton of CO2 released. This implies that any tax on carbon has a much higher impact on coal than on crude oil (or gas). Owners of coal mines and their clients are, therefore, strongly opposed to any tax on carbon. They constitute a small but well-organised group that wields immense lobbying power to block efforts to limit CO2 emissions by putting a price on them, as the planned US cap-and-trade system would have done.
In Europe, indigenous coal production no longer plays an important economic role. It is thus not surprising that Europe could enact a cap-and-trade system that imposes a carbon price on a large part of its industry. Indeed, the tax seems to fall mostly on foreign suppliers of coal (and to a lesser extend on foreign suppliers of hydrocarbons in the Middle East and Russia). By contrast, opposition by US states whose economies rely significantly on coal production proved decisive for the fate of Obama's climate-change bill.
The US experience has wider implications. If it proved impossible to introduce a moderate carbon tax in a rich economy, it is certain that no commitment will be forthcoming for the next generation from China, which remains much poorer and depends even more on indigenous coal than the US. And, after China, India looms as the next emerging coal-based industrial superpower.
Without any significant commitment from the US, the Copenhagen accord, so laboriously achieved last year, has become meaningless. Business will now continue as usual, both in terms of climate-change diplomacy, with its travelling circus of big international meetings, and in terms of rapidly increasing emissions.
The meetings are aimed at creating the impression that the world's leaders are still working on a solution to the problem. But rising CO2 emissions constitute what is really happening on the ground: a rapidly growing industrial base in emerging markets is being hard-wired to intensive use of coal. This will make it exceedingly difficult to reverse the trend in the future.
A planet composed of nation-states that in turn are dominated by special interest groups does not seem capable of solving this problem. Unfortunately, there is enough cheap coal around to power ever-higher emissions for at least another century. The world will thus certainly become much warmer. The only uncertainty is how much warmer that will be.
Determined action at the global level will become possible only when climate change is no longer some scientific prediction, but a reality that people feel. But, at that point, it will be too late to reverse the impact of decades of excessive emissions. A world incapable of preventing climate change will have to live with it.
• Daniel Gros is director of the Centre for European Policy Studies.
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