Best of our wild blogs: 10 Aug 10

Black-naped Oriole – plumage difference
from Bird Ecology Study Group

a different horseshoe crab experience
from isn't it a wonder, how life came to be

Zzz trip... at Cyrene
from Psychedelic Nature

Read more!

Shark's fin gaffe: Citibank and beyond

Offers ended early but some continue promotions
Letter from Jennifer Lee Today Online 10 Aug 10;

ABOUT two weeks ago, a concerned Hong Kong citizen saw a Citibank (Hong Kong) promotion advertising discounted shark's fins.

He started a Facebook group page demanding Citibank HK cease all promotions related to the sale of shark's fins.

Within a week, the group had gained 1,000 supporters and Citibank HK, to its credit, reacted almost immediately, ending the promotion early.

Then, the spotlight was turned on Citibank (Singapore), as people around the world found out about its promotion with a restaurant selling shark's fins here. Likewise, Citibank ended the promotion, which was set to run until Dec 31.

Citibank's efficient, "no-excuses" recovery from the environmental gaffe is admirable. However, there are still a number of well-known companies in Singapore that continue to harm the world's shark population, such as other banks running joint promotions boosting the sales of shark's fins, firms hosting business lunches with shark's fin on the menu, or giving shark's fin as gifts to corporate partners.

The Citibank saga can be a good learning point for all image-conscious companies seeking to be socially and environmentally responsible, that it is never too late to do the right thing.

Of the 100 million sharks killed annually, 73 million are killed for only their fins. This figure excludes unreported and illegal fishing. More often than not, the fins are removed while the shark is alive and the finless body is thrown back into the ocean. The bleeding shark suffers a slow death, unable to feed or breathe. It can sit on the seabed for days before finally dying from blood loss and suffocation.

Singapore, despite its size, is currently among the world's largest entrepot ports for the fin trade, as well as high on the list of consumers.

Sharks' real nemesis: Longlines
Denouncing shark's fin soup won't stop problem
Letter from Tan Keng Tat Today Online 16 Aug 10;

I REFER to the letter "Shark's fin gaffe" (Aug 10) by Ms Jennifer Lee. Trying to stop a culinary practice going back over a thousand years, especially when sharks are not an endangered species, is not only culturally insensitive, but it is also bound to fail.

It is like asking the Japanese to give up their tuna sashimi or the Frenchmen, their frog's legs and snails, or the Englishmen, their fish and chips, or socialites at glitzy cocktail parties around the world their caviar canapés.

Ms Lee alleges that 100 million sharks are killed annually. The United Nations estimates about 10 million sharks killed in 2006.

The main threats to the shark are the pelagic fisheries in the developed countries, using many kilometers of longlines with thousands of hooks to target the more valuable blue fin tuna and swordfish, but unintentionally catch an appalling number of sharks instead.

Anecdotal evidence shows that a majority of the sharks are dead when hauled on board or are humanely culled before their fins are harvested, as live sharks can injure the crew.

And when a 45kg shark fetches less than US$50 ($68) in Hawaii and a giant blue fin tuna for ¥3.2 million ($50,000) recently at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, fisheries will go out of business if they keep the sharks and discard the tuna.

According to the Shark Alliance, the major players in the global production and trade of sharks in the developed countries are Spain, United States, Japan, United Kingdom and New Zealand.

The truth is that sharks will continue to be caught unintentionally in longlines and killed on an unprecedented scale by well-organised fishing nations. Excoriating shark's fin soup will not stop their deadly bycatch.

The morally right thing to do is to campaign for longlines to be banned or regulated globally and only then will the deplorable killing of sharks subside.

Ms Lee's crusade to save the sharks is commendable, though the timing is a little troubling coming so soon after the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cities) declared at its recent biennial meeting in Doha that sharks are not an endangered species.

No, sharks' real nemesis is man
Letter from David Chen Today Online 19 Aug 10;

I REFER to the letter "Sharks' real nemesis: Longlines" (Aug 16).

The writer, Mr Tan Keng Tat, states that the United Nations estimates about 10 million sharks were killed in 2006. But that is just the official number of sharks reported to have been caught; many more are killed off the official radar. At last year's Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) talks, fisheries scientists estimated the figure at closer to 73 million.

It is also not true that no sharks are on the Cites endangered species list. First, some, like the great white and whale sharks, are indeed on the list. Second, many species do not make the list for political reasons, with finning-friendly countries lobbying against their inclusion.

Further, it is a logical fallacy to argue that shark finning is all right because long-line fishing is killing off more sharks. If this were true, then it's all the more reason to stop eating shark fins to protect the dwindling population.

Finally, it is not cultural insensitivity to campaign against shark finning. Many "traditional" practices have fallen, thankfully, by the wayside in recent years: Foot-binding and bear gall consumption, to name but two. Few would argue that these practices have a place in the modern world. This applies, too, to the unsustainable consumption of shark fins.

Read more!

Global warming threatens Asian rice production: study

Yahoo News 9 Aug 10;

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Even modest rises in global temperatures will drive down rice production in Asia, the world's biggest grower of the cereal grain that millions of poor people depend on as a staple food, a study published Monday warned.

Researchers from the United States, the Philippines and the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) looked at the impact of rising daily minimum and maximum temperatures on irrigated rice production between 1994-1999 in 227 fields in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

They found that the main culprit in cutting rice yields was higher daily minimum temperatures.

"As the daily minimum temperature increases, or as nights get hotter, rice yields drop," said Jarrod Welch of the University of California, San Diego, and lead author of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.

"Up to a point, higher daytime temperatures can increase rice yield but future yield losses caused by higher night-time temperatures will likely outweigh any such gains because temperatures are rising faster at night," Welch said.

Rising temperatures in the past 25 years have already cut rice yields at several key growing locations by 10-20 percent.

The loss in production is expected to get worse as temperatures rise further towards the middle of the century, said Welch.

"If daytime temperatures get too high, they also start to restrict rice yields, causing an additional loss in production," he said.

Rice is a key global crop, eaten by around three billion people a day. In Asia, it is a staple food to some 600 million people who are among the world's one billion poorest inhabitants, the study and FAO data show.

A decline in rice production will mean more people will slip into poverty and hunger, the authors of the study warned.

"If we cannot change our rice production methods or develop new rice strains that can withstand higher temperatures, there will be a loss in rice production over the next few decades as days and nights get hotter," said Welch.

Rice yields falling under global warming
Richard Black BBC News 9 Aug 10;

Global warming is cutting rice yields in many parts of Asia, according to research, with more declines to come.

Yields have fallen by 10-20% over the last 25 years in some locations.

The group of mainly US-based scientists studied records from 227 farms in six important rice-producing countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, India and China.

This is the latest in a line of studies to suggest that climate change will make it harder to feed the world's growing population by cutting yields.

In 2004, other researchers found that rice yields in the Philippines were dropping by 10% for every 1C increase in night-time temperature.

That finding, like others, came from experiments on a research station.

The latest data, by contrast, comes from working, fully-irrigated farms that grow "green revolution" crops, and span the rice-growing lands of Asia from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu to the outskirts of Shanghai.

Describing the findings, which are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), lead researcher Jarrod Welch said:

"We found that as the daily minimum temperature increases, or as nights get hotter, rice yields drop."

The mechanism involved is not clear but may involve rice plants having to respire more during warm nights, so expending more energy, without being able to photosynthesise.

By contrast, higher temperatures during the day were related to higher yields; but the effect was less than the yield-reducing impact of warmer nights.

However, if temperatures continue to rise as computer models of climate project, Mr Welch says hotter days will eventually begin to bring yields down.

"We see a benefit of [higher] daytime temperatures principally because we haven't seen a scenario where daytime temperatures cross over a threshold where they'd stop benefiting yields and start reducing them," he told BBC News.

"There have been some recent studies on US crops, in particular corn, that showed the drop-off after that threshold is substantial," said the University of California at San Diego researcher.

The 2007 assessment of climate impacts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that although a modest temperature rise could increase crop yields in some regions, for "temperature increases more than 3C, average impacts are stressful to all crops assessed and to all regions".

A study published at the begining of last year concluded that half of the world's population could face a climate-induced food crisis by 2100, with the most extreme summers of the last century becoming routine towards the end of this century.

Hotter nights threaten food security - rice at risk
Climate change temperature increases will affect rice yields
FAO 9 Aug 10;

9 August, 2010 - Production of rice — the world's most important crop for ensuring food security and addressing poverty — will be thwarted as temperatures increase in rice-growing areas with continued climate change, according to a new study by an international team of scientists.

The research team found evidence that the net impact of projected temperature increases will be to slow the growth of rice production in Asia. Rising temperatures during the past 25 years have already cut the yield growth rate by 10-20% in several locations.

Published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) — a peer-reviewed, scientific journal from the United States — the report analyzed 6 years of data from 227 irrigated rice farms in six major rice-growing countries in Asia, which produces more than 90% of the world's rice.

"We found that as the daily minimum temperature increases, or as nights get hotter, rice yields drop," said Mr. Jarrod Welch, lead author of the report and graduate student of economics at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD).

This is the first study to assess the impact of both daily maximum and minimum temperatures on irrigated rice production in farmer-managed rice fields in tropical and subtropical regions of Asia.

"Our study is unique because it uses data collected in farmers' fields, under real-world conditions," said Mr. Welch. "This is an important addition to what we already know from controlled experiments."

"Farmers can be expected to adapt to changing conditions, so real-world circumstances, and therefore outcomes, might differ from those in controlled experimental settings," he added.

Around three billion people eat rice every day, and more than 60% of the world's one billion poorest and undernourished people who live in Asia depend on rice as their staple food. A decline in rice production will mean more people will slip into poverty and hunger, the researchers said.

"Up to a point, higher day-time temperatures can increase rice yield, but future yield losses caused by higher night-time temperatures will likely outweigh any such gains because temperatures are rising faster at night," said Mr. Welch. "And if day-time temperatures get too high, they too start to restrict rice yields, causing an additional loss in production."

"If we cannot change our rice production methods or develop new rice strains that can withstand higher temperatures, there will be a loss in rice production over the next few decades as days and nights get hotter. This will get increasingly worse as temperatures rise further towards the middle of the century," he added.

In addition to Welch, other members of the research team are Professors Jeffrey Vincent of Duke University and Maximilian Auffhammer of the University of California at Berkeley; Ms. Piedad Moya and Dr. Achim Dobermann of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI); and Dr. David Dawe of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.

Read more!

Indonesia-US team discovers 52 new marine species in Sangihe Talaud expedition

Gracey Wakary, The Jakarta Post 10 Aug 10;

Sangihe Talaud, the two-month long deep-sea exploration project led by scientists from Indonesia and the US, officially ended Monday at Bitung Port in North Sulawesi.

Gellwyn Jusuf, the Indonesian representative of the Sangihe Talaud expedition, which was also called Index Satal, said he hoped the bilateral cooperation behind the team effort could be continued.

“This is ourfirst deep-sea research with the NOAA Okeanos and supported by every relevant agency here in Indonesia,” said Jusuf, who is also head of the Maritime Research and Fisheries Agency (BRKP).

“The maritime affairs and fishery minister hopes that this cooperative effort can put Indonesian researchers on par with international researchers. We hope this cooperation can be further sustained,” he added.

The 2010 Index Satal, which lasted for two months, was a bilateral Indonesian-US research expedition intended to explore the fields of maritime biology, geology, oceanography, deep sea exploration technology and maritime information technology.

The expedition was expected to advance understanding of undersea ecosystems, particularly those associated with submarine volcanoes and hydrothermal vents.

The geographical area of operation for the research expedition was entirely within the Coral Triangle Region, the global heart of shallow-water marine biodiversity.

Scientists used a remotely operated vehicle to get a glimpse of deepwater biodiversity in the waters of Sangihe-Talaud region.

At the end of the expedition, 52 new species of were discovered 300-2,000 meters beneath the ocean’s surface, including fish, shrimp, coral and shells.

Researchers also identified six sea mounts near North Siau Island and two sea mounts near Bunaken.

“We found the sea mounts 700-1,600 meters below the sea,” said Indonesian deep sea research team leader Sugiarta Wirasantoso.

Secretary to the coordinating public welfare minister Indroyono Soesilo said the bilateral cooperation was of great advantage to Indonesia, especially in research and development and in exploring available natural marine resources.

“The deep-sea research expedition involving the research ship Baruna Jaya and the US’ NOAA Okeanos Explorer is the Indonesian people’s investment in exploring the diverse potential of the available undersea life which could be used for the sake of humanity,” said Soesilo.

Kristen Bauer, the US Consul General in Surabaya, also attended the closing ceremonies of the expedition, which is expected to be followed by another deep sea research voyage called Index Halmahera.

Scientists find 52 deep-sea biota species in Sangihe-Talaud
Antara 9 Aug 10;

Manado, N Sulawesi (ANTARA News) - A team of scientists aboard the Indonesian research vessel, Baruna Jaya IV, has discovered 52 marine biota species during a two-month exploration in the deep sea in Sangihe-Talaud Islands, North Sulawesi.

"The marine biota species were found 300 meters to 1,000 meters beneath the sea level," Iwan Eka, one of the researchers, said on Sunday.

The marine biota species taken using a trawl mostly belonged to the families of fish and coral, he said.

Several of the marine biota species were kept at the research vessel`s wet laboratory as samples for further research, he said.

"Among the unique marine biota species are corals which can live without sun ray and get their food by way of "kemosintesa," he said.

The discovery of 52 marine biota species was tandem exploration to promote marine science and technology in the deep sea in Sangihe-Talaud Islands under the Indonesia-US Expedition Sangihe-Talaud 2010 mission, he said.

"We conducted the tandem exploration aboard the Okeanos Explorer and the Indonesian research vessel Baruna Jaya IV for two months from June 24 to August 7, 2010," he said.

"The Okeanos Explorer conducted exploration at a depth of more than 2,000 meters and Baruna Java IV at a depth of up to 2,000 meters," he said.(*)

Read more!

Filipino government cracks down on sea turtle poachers

WWF 10 Aug 10;

Puerto Princesa, Philippines - Two years after their arrests, 13 Vietnamese poachers caught with the corpses of 101 endangered hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) near El Nido, northern Palawan, in the Philippines, have been sentenced to jail time and fines.

On June 22, Puerto Princesa’s Regional Trial Court, Branch 50, ruled that the poachers should face jail time ranging from six to 18 months, and fines in connection with the incident.

Since the poachers have been in jail since Sept. 2 2008, the court also ruled that they now will only pay the fines.

The Vietnamese boat carrying the poachers was apprehended by two Filipino gunboats five miles east of Cabaluan Island near El Nido on Aug. 29, 2008. The 13-man crew attempted to scuttle the craft by flooding the holds, which was prevented by law enforcement officers. Found drowned in the vessel’s cargo holds were 101 Hawksbill Turtles, classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as critically-endangered - the highest risk rating for a living animal.

Under Philippine and international law, it is illegal to capture and kill sea turtles and to trade in sea turtle by-products.

The presence of sea turtles preserves the sea’s natural processes. Green Sea Turtles, continually browse on sea grass, which then is naturally pruned to grow denser, allowing the plants to spread more rapidly on the sea floor. Thousands of species of fish and invertebrates seek shelter within these submerged meadows, which also serve to store excess atmospheric carbon dioxide to slow down global warming. In addition, Hawksbill Turtles eat stinging jellyfish, preventing climate-induced blooms which would negatively affect tourism.

WWF commended Puerto Princesa Regional Trial Court Branch 50 for upholding the law and punishing the poachers.

WWF-Philippines Palawan Project Manager RJ dela Calzada, who also serves as an Auxiliary Commander for the Philippine Coast Guard, said: “Let this serve as a precedent for future cases, and as a strong warning to all those who continue to encroach upon Philippine waters to plunder our dwindling marine resources.” WWF also congratulated the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Local Government of El Nido and the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development for overseeing the case.

In the last decade more than a thousand foreigners have been arrested and charged for poaching in the waters of Palawan. Sentences historically have been rare, under fear of damaging international relations with neighboring countries.

Other incidents included: In September 2007, 126 endangered green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) and 10,000 turtle eggs were found aboard Chinese fishing vessel F/V 01087 in Sulu. In April 2008, a 23-man Vietnamese poaching detail aboard the M/V Quang Mei was arrested in Balabac, Southern Palawan. Retrieved from the craft were assorted fish and a sea turtle. In July 2008, four Vietnamese aboard F/V Q.ng 95986 were arrested for alleged poaching off Guntao Isle, El Nido. Four other fishing boats, believed to be Vietnamese, escaped.

In April 2009, seven Chinese poachers aboard an unmarked speedboat were arrested near Cauayan Isle in El Nido. Thirteen dead and one still-living green sea turtle greeted authorities. It was quickly tagged and released.

Says WWF-Philippines Vice-Chair and CEO Lory Tan: “This is a good example of enforcement meted out to a logical and just end. Laws are enacted to create that level playing field designed to protect the public and serve the greater good. There can be no exceptions. Whether Vietnamese, Chinese or Filipino - environmental criminals must be held fully accountable for destroying the legacy we all hope to leave behind for future generations."

Read more!

Malaysia: Two islands identified for proposed nuclear plant

June Ramlee New Straits Times 10 Aug 10;

KUALA LUMPUR: The government has identified several sites, including one or two currently uninhabited islands, to locate Malaysia's nuclear power plant should the plan be given the go-ahead.

The sites are undergoing pre-feasibility studies to determine their suitability, said Malaysia Nuclear Agency director-general Datuk Dr Daud Mohamad.

He said the task to find a suitable location had been given to Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB) while the agency was doing the study on the technical aspects, the ultimate aim of which is to turn the selected site into a nuclear power plant in 10 years' time.


"They (the sites) are all within the peninsula. We are also looking at some uninhabited islands," he said after presenting a paper at the 2010 Energy Forum here yesterday.

He said the government had set aside RM25 million for the pre-feasibility studies, which also include a study tour by members of parliament to existing nuclear plants in Korea, Japan, China, France and the US.

"We haven't decided on where to go (for the study tour) but it will be done soon."


Daud said the locations for the nuclear plant must be in accordance with the criteria set by guidelines.

"The surrounding area has to have granite or hard rock.

"The soil cannot be soft and the water table cannot be low.


"It's good to have water, like a big lake, surrounding the plant so that it can be used for the cooling system.

"Although there is no definite decision to set up the nuclear plant, we have decided to identify the sites earlier to unable us to book the places in advance so that they are not taken up by another party for other types of development."

Daud said once the exact site was identified, the state government of the chosen site would be approached to develop the plant together.

"A definite decision on the nuclear plant will be made in 2012. Although that is two years from now, we have to carry out all the necessary preparations, which include a roadshow on educating the public at large and the policy makers, including those from the opposition parties, on the importance of having a nuclear plant."

On construction of the nuclear plant, Daud said the government would outsource the main components of the plant from a reputable country to gain the public's confidence.

"But just like the automotive industry, we want to develop our own nuclear industry and we will use as much local content as possible when we construct our first nuclear plant."

Daud said the current price to construct a nuclear plant from scratch was around RM12 billion.

Read more!

Indonesian government to set aside 30 million ha for rare species

Jakarta Post 10 Aug 10;

The government plans to set aside 30 million hectares of protected forests for habitats for endangered species in order to prevent their extinction.

Forestry Ministry Zulkifli Hasan warned that the shrinking number of rare species, such as the Sumatran tiger, the Javanese rhinoceros and the orangutan was due to habitat infringement by private companies and local communities.

The minister said the government would also allocate 43 million hectares of primary forest for the rare species.

“Primary forests cannot be converted; they should be declared a buffer area,” Zulkifli said as quoted by Antara news network on Monday.

He said that in 2005, the government had established 535 forest and marine conservation areas.

“But, the management of nine of the conservation areas has been handed over to the Marine Affairs and Fisheries Ministry,” he said.

Indonesia is home to a vastly diverse collection of flora and fauna, many of which are found in Indonesia’s tropical forests.

Indonesian loses more than 1 million hectares of forest per year to deforestation, which is the primary threat facing the country’s endangered species.

Minister Zulkifli said conflict of interests over forest usage had damaged biodiversity protection efforts.

Speaking at a workshop on national nature conservation day, Zulkifli said that the Sumatran tiger now numbered around 400, down from 800 in 2005 and that the Javan tiger was extinct.

Indonesia previously had three sub-species of tiger, two of which — the Bali and Javan tigers — were declared extinct in the 1940s and 1980s, respectively.

The ministry earlier said that Indonesia needed at least US$175 million to double the population of wild Sumatran tigers to 800 by 2022.

The money would be used to address the main threats to the tigers from habitat destruction, lack of prey and poaching to the illegal trade of tiger products.

The number of wild tigers worldwide is now 3,200, down from an estimated 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century.

Of the nine tiger sub-species that once roamed the Earth, only six still remain: the Sumatran, Bengal, Amur, Indochinese, South China and Malayan tigers.

Several conservation organizations have declared 2010 the Year of the Tiger.

The population of Sumatran elephants in Indonesia has plummeted to about 2,000 from around 8,000 in 2000, Zulkifli continued.

Another threatened species is the orangutan, of which an estimated 1,000 were killed in 2006 by massive forest fires and habitat loss.

The government said that in the last 35 years, about 50,000 orangutans have died due to deforestation and habitat loss.

About 90 percent of orangutans live on Borneo and Sumatra.

It is estimated there are 6,667 orangutans in Sumatra, mostly in the Leuser ecosystem, and 54,567 in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo.

The remaining 10 percent are in Sabah and Sarawak, Malaysia.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature said the orangutan species native to Kalimantan was endangered. Orangutans in Sumatra are critically endangered.

Read more!

Losing ground to rubber estates: Malaysia's forest reserves

Tan Cheng Li, The Star 10 Aug 10;

Rubber plantations are gnawing away at our natural forests.

MALAYSIA’S practice of transforming forest reserves into rubberwood plantations has drawn the ire of the international forestry fraternity.

The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) has adopted a resolution “opposing conversion of Malaysian native forests to non-native rubberwood plantations,” warning that the practice threatens indigenous plants and wildlife, releases greenhouse gas emissions, leads to downstream flooding and degrades important ecosystem services.

The ATBC is the world’s largest scientific body for the study of tropical ecosystems and has 1,100 members from over 100 countries.

Several members of the association who have had long-term forestry experience in Malaysia and South-East Asia had initiated the resolution titled The Conversion of Malaysian Native Forests, and the document was adopted at the group’s annual meeting held late last month in Bali, Indonesia.

Dr William F. Laurance, research professor at the School of Marine and Tropical Biology at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, says the resolution draws attention to the loss of large expanses of native forests in Malaysia.

“I was in Peninsular Malaysia a few months ago and was struck by the rapid expansion of rubberwood trees. When I learned that these areas were still being classified as forest reserves, I knew we needed to highlight this issue,” he says via e-mail.

In the resolution, the group of international scientists warned that Permanent Reserved Forests designated for rubberwood plantations has expanded rapidly, from 1,626ha in 2006 to 44,148ha last year.

The boom in these plantations is driven by the Malaysian Government’s move to expand timber plantations, especially that of genetically modified rubber trees, known as latex timber clones. These trees will be tapped for latex for 15 years before being logged for timber.

Last year, StarTwo had reported that several forest reserves which were water catchments and important wildlife habitats, had been cleared for latex timber clone estates. Affected PRFs include Lebir and Relai forests in Kelantan which are important buffers for Taman Negara, and Sungai Mas forest in Johor which is adjacent to the Endau-Rompin National Park.

Laurance, who is co-chair of the ATBC conservation committee and a former president of the association, voices the fears of the scientists: “Although rubberwood plantations are suitable for establishment on degraded lands, their widespread expansion into natural forests is of great concern. Apart from diminishing forest biodiversity, the expansion of plantation monocultures might lead to losses of important ecosystem services and increased human-wildlife conflict.”

In the resolution, the scientists faulted the National Forestry Act 1984 as it does not stipulate the need for Permanent Reserved Forests (PRF) to consist entirely of natural forests. This loophole allows large tracts of PRF (including those that have been selectively logged) to be legally replaced by monoculture plantations so long as these are designated for “timber production under sustained yield.”

The scientists state that the forest conversion contradicts Malaysia’s policies of keeping at least half of its land under permanent forest cover and conserving biodiversity. To halt further losses of rainforests, they urged for: a moratorium on the conversion; legislative amendments to ensure that forest reserves are not converted to plantations unless the public has been consulted; and for timber plantations to be classified as such and not as Permanent Reserved Forests.

Laurance explains the reasoning: “The rubber tree areas are no longer forests. They are essentially agricultural lands. Rubber plantations have almost zero value for conserving endangered biodiversity. Therefore, to classify them as ‘forests’ is ridiculous biologically and scientifically. They are completely artificial – plantations of a single, exotic species. They should be classified as exotic plantations or as a form of human agriculture, not as native forests or production forests.”

He says national data on forest cover should distinguish between natural forests (including selectively logged forests) and those converted into plantations. He adds that the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation should also revise its current definition of “forest” to exclude plantations of rubber and other monocultures. “Otherwise, large reserves of natural forest could be replaced by greatly simplified monocultures like rubberwood.”

To clarify their concerns, Laurance says the ATBC has published a technical article and would welcome a dialogue with the Malaysian Government or Forestry Department.

■ To read the resolution, go to www.tropicalbio.org. To petition against the conversion of forest reserves into rubberwood plantations, go to www.ipetitions.com/petition/save-peninsular-malaysia-rainforest/.

Read more!

Indonesia may let palm oil growers collect CO2 credits

Sunanda Creagh Reuters AlertNet 9 Aug 10;

JAKARTA, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Indonesia may propose palm oil plantations be eligible to earn carbon credits under a U.N.-backed scheme aimed at preserving forests, a forestry ministry official said on Monday.

Such a move could potentially create a new line of revenue for the palm oil industry and listed firms like Wilmar and PT Astra Agro Lestari, but is likely to anger green groups who accuse planters of deforestation.

Indonesia was the first country to develop a national framework for a U.N-backed forest preservation scheme called reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD).

The scheme would allow forested developing countries like Indonesia to be paid potentially billions of dollars from rich nations not to chop down their trees.

Countries began developing domestic legal frameworks for REDD in anticipation of a global agreement on the scheme at climate talks held in Copenhagen last year, which will be continued in Mexico in December.

"If there is agreement on REDD, we could put palm oil plantations to be eligible for that," said Wandojo Siswanto, a special adviser to the forestry minister and one of Indonesia's lead negotiators at global climate talks.

Siswanto said the forestry ministry was working with the national planning agency, Bappenas, on the feasibility of including palm oil in Indonesia's national strategy on REDD.

"I think it would be good if we just say that palm oil plantations could also mitigate climate change through carbon sequestration through the nature of the trees," he said, adding that both existing plantations and future plantations developed on degraded land could be eligible.

Monoculture forests trap climate warming greenhouse gases but not nearly as much as natural heterogeneous forests.

Moray McLeish, of the Washington-based environment think tank World Resources Institute, said clear definitions of what constituted a forest were needed.

"If a plantation is regarded as a forest, then you can cut down a virgin forest and replace it with a plantation and on paper you have no change," he said.

"On the ground you have massive carbon emissions, massive loss of biodiversity, loss of ecosystem system services and loss of livelihoods for local people.

OBSTACLES

The UN has yet to formulate its definition of forest for the purposes of REDD but has already developed a set of safeguards to prevent planters from clearing natural forest and then being rewarded with carbon credits.

Tim Boyle, the Bangkok-based regional coordinator for the U.N. REDD programme, warned that the global climate talks on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol may end up adopting a definition of forest that specifically excluded palm oil from REDD.

"It would be strange if it was assumed that palm oil was going to be counted as forest. That would seem risky to me," he said.

(Editing by Neil Chatterjee and Jonathan Thatcher)

Read more!

Mangroves offer win-win opportunity

Mark Huxham BBC Green Room 9 Aug 10;

Healthy mangrove forests provide a huge range of environmental benefits and need to be protected, says Mark Huxham. In this week's Green Room, he argues that schemes such as Redd offer a vital lifeline to the important ecosystems.

Like smoke from a bushfire, a pall of black pessimism permeates news from tropical forests.

Every year millions of hectares are lost; usually between 1-2% of global forest coverage.

But in recent years, new units of destruction have appeared measuring mass, not area.

In 2008, we saw 12 billion tonnes of carbon disappear - this is equal to the mass of about 100 million blue whales.

This shift in measurement reflects a change in international priorities.

Whilst the negative impacts of deforestation on biodiversity and indigenous people remain as serious as ever, it is climate change, and units of carbon, that have come to dominate discussions around forestry.

Redd wedge

Approximately 17% of all global greenhouse gas emissions come from the destruction of tropical forests. This is more than the total from all forms of transport combined.

So conserving and restoring these forests must form part of a comprehensive climate change deal; reducing emissions from the developed world is essential, but is not enough.

International negotiations have developed a mechanism to achieve forest conservation, known as Redd (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation).

The idea is that tropical nations will be able to apply for funds either to slow the rate of destruction of existing forests or to increase the area of new ones.

Given that the international carbon market is worth in excess of $100bn per year - more than 100 times what is spent on international conservation - Redd holds the potential of injecting large sums into saving tropical forests and of finally reversing the decline.

Mangroves, forests that grow in intertidal areas in the tropics and sub-tropics, and the people that depend upon them could really benefit from Redd-related carbon payments.

Mangroves account for only around 0.4% of all forests; but the multiple services - such as coastal protection, nursery habitat for fish and filtration of pollution and sediments - that they provide, and the rapid rate of their destruction, make them a conservation priority.

They are also highly effective natural sinks for carbon, capturing up to six times more carbon per hectare than undisturbed rainforests.

Community credits

We have been working with conservation charities Earthwatch Institute and Plan Vivo, along with the Kenyan government, to develop a demonstration community mangrove conservation project at Gazi Bay in southern Kenya.

There are many good reasons to carry out this work, and money from carbon credits might just make it possible - not only in Kenya, but in other communities throughout the tropics.

So why don't we seize the chance?

Critics of the carbon market highlight a number of reasons.

First, the carbon accounting approach to forestry may fail to see the woods for the carbon; the best ways of maximising carbon revenue may not be the best ways of maintaining healthy ecosystems.

For example, plantations of fast growing exotic species - such as eucalypts - can rapidly capture carbon but may be a disaster for native wildlife and ecosystems.

But the temptation to do this will usually not arise for mangroves, which are highly specialised and grow in areas that other trees cannot tolerate.

Second, there is the threat that Redd and similar systems will be used by governments to evict "inefficient" local people from forests made suddenly valuable by carbon money.

The recent People's Climate Conference, held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, came out against Redd on these grounds.

But this is an argument for bottom-up projects, which are led by local people from the start. While the Redd process is still flexible and evolving, an opportunity exists to model future projects on community-based principles.

In the case of mangroves, governments already own most forests around the world, with local people having no formal rights to their use or powers to protect them. Redd presents an opportunity to design and test new systems of community tenure-ship.

The third argument heard against investing in forests for carbon is that of "permanence": how can we know that carbon locked in forests today will not be released following fires or clear-felling tomorrow?

Such an argument could be made against most low-carbon developments. There is no guarantee that the wind turbine built today will not be struck by lightning tomorrow, and anyhow it will "die" at the end of its operating life of 30 years.

However, mangroves are capable of storing carbon for many thousands of years in the form of peat in their sediments, and much of this carbon may remain in place even if the forests themselves are destroyed.

One UK newspaper columnist compares carbon offsetting to the indulgences paid by the pious in the Middle Ages - a device to absolve your conscience without changing your actions.

This is the "moral hazard" argument - that offsetting carbon is a trick that will excuse business-as-usual and will be counterproductive.

But we no longer have a choice between protecting forests and changing lifestyles. Both are necessary.

Money from offsetting can form a useful bridging mechanism as we move towards reducing emissions and enhancing and protecting sinks. But we do need to make sure that both happen, and that cash generated from offsetting is only a part, and a diminishing one, of the funding required.

And what can be said of the final argument, that pricing ecosystem services such as sequestration is a final capitulation to the market-driven, growth-obsessed logic that has got us into our current mess?

I agree that we need a revolutionary change in our ethical outlook so that ecological sustainability becomes our central concern, but I don't see it happening in time to save the forests.

(Lord) Nicholas Stern, in his landmark review into the economics of climate change, identified climate change as a massive "market failure".

By using the language of economics, his report influenced thinking from governments to tabloid newsrooms, even though it contained no new science.

We should learn from this and use the tools of economics to help correct "market failures" such as the destruction of valuable mangroves for short-term gain.

Meanwhile, the bad news from the tropics continues to drift in.

But for the first time in many years there is an emerging opportunity to clear the smoke, and community-based conservation of mangroves is a good place to start.

Dr Mark Huxham is an Earthwatch researcher based at Napier University, Scotland

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website

Read more!

$88m Grant to Indonesia Tackle Climate Change

Fidelis E Satriastanti Jakarta Globe 9 Aug 10;

Indonesia. Indonesia has received $88 million from an international fund to help it fight climate change.

The grant from the Global Environment Facility, a partnership that backs environmental programs, will be allocated between now and July 2014.

“The GEF priorities are actually biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation and persistent organic pollutants, but Indonesia will allocate most of its share to climate change mitigation, in accordance with national policy priorities,” said Wahyu Marjaka, head of multilateral cooperation at the State Ministry for the Environment.

“This year, the government plans to allocate $48 million toward climate change mitigation and $24 million towards biodiversity, with the rest going to other programs.”

Wahyu said the ministry had already received 10 proposals worth a combined $23 million.

“Those eligible to apply for the fund include universities, NGOs, communities and even those in the private sector,” he said. “Their proposals will be assessed by the government before getting approval from the GEF’s Washington office.”

One of the projects vying for funding is a $10 million joint venture to generate electricity from tidal movements, proposed by the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry, the Energy Ministry’s Directorate of Electricity and Energy Use, and the Agency for Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT).

“It’s aimed at harnessing renewable energy in coastal areas in the east of the country,” Wahyu said.

“It’s supposed to generate around 5 megawatts per district, and if there’s if a surplus, then smaller villages will get the electricity for free.”

Meanwhile, Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta said there was a worrying lack of proposals for projects to tackle forest fires, which are blamed for playing a part in making Indonesia the world’s third-biggest carbon emitter.

“In the meantime, we hope for more such funding from the GEF and others to make up for the lack of significant progress on climate change negotiations,” Gusti said.

The fund had previously given the nation $40 million for a four-year program to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

However, $17 million of the money was never used because no major programs, which were eligible for more than $1 million each, were proposed.

The rest was used for 23 small projects, each eligible for at least $50,000.

Read more!

Pakistan floods, Russia heat fit climate trend

* Extreme weather events become more frequent
* Impossible to blame warming for individual events
* 2010 on track to be warmest year since records began
Alister Doyle, Reuters AlertNet 9 Aug 10;

OSLO, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Devastating floods in Pakistan and Russia's heatwave match predictions of extremes caused by global warming even though it is impossible to blame mankind for single severe weather events, scientists say.

This year is on track to be the warmest since reliable temperature records began in the mid-19th century, beating 1998, mainly due to a build-up of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, according to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

"We will always have climate extremes. But it looks like climate change is exacerbating the intensity of the extremes," said Omar Baddour, chief of climate data management applications at WMO headquarters in Geneva.

"It is too early to point to a human fingerprint" behind individual weather events, he said.

Recent extremes include mudslides in China and heat records from Finland to Kuwait -- adding to evidence of a changing climate even as U.N. negotiations on a new global treaty for costly cuts in greenhouse gas emissions have stalled.

Reinsurer Munich Re said a natural catastrophe database it runs "shows that the number of extreme weather events like windstorm and floods has tripled since 1980, and the trend is expected to persist".

The worst floods in Pakistan in 80 years have killed more than 1,600 people and left 2 million homeless.

"Global warming is one reason" for the rare spate of weather extremes, said Friedrich-Wilhelm Gerstengarbe, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

DOWNPOURS

He pointed to the heatwave and related forest fires in Russia, floods in Pakistan, rains in China and downpours in countries including Germany and Poland. "We have four such extremes in the last few weeks. This is very seldom," he said.

The weather extremes, and the chance of a record-warm 2010, undercut a view of sceptics that the world is merely witnessing natural swings perhaps caused by variations in the sun's output.

Russia's worst drought in decades has led to fires that have almost doubled death rates in Moscow to around 700 per day, an official said. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced a grain export ban from Aug. 15 to Dec. 31.

Nearly 1,500 people have died in landslides and flooding caused by months of torrential rains across China, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said.

Baddour said one cause of a shift in monsoon rains in Asia seemed to be a knock-on effect of La Nina, a natural cooling of the Pacific region.

Scientists say it is impossible to pin the blame for individual events from hurricanes to sandstorms solely on human activities led by burning of fossil fuels that release heat-trapping carbon dioxide.

Still, one study concluded that global warming had doubled the chances of heatwaves similar to a scorching 2003 summer in Europe, in which 35,000 people died. Those temperatures could not convincingly be explained by natural variations.

"It may be possible to use climate models to determine whether human influences have changed the likelihood of certain types of extreme events," the U.N. panel of climate scientists said in its latest 2007 report.

That report said it was at least 90 percent likely that most warming in the past 50 years was caused by mankind, a finding questioned by sceptics who have pointed to errors in the report such as an exaggeration of the melt of Himalayan glaciers.

"Warming of the climate is likely to bring more events of this sort," said Henning Rodhe, professor emeritus of chemical meteorology at Stockholm University, of the Russian heatwave.

"But you can't draw the conclusion that this is caused by global warming."

Most countries agreed at a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen last year to limit a rise in average world temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, a tough goal since temperatures already rose 0.7C in the 20th century.

The latest round of U.N. climate talks in Bonn, from Aug. 2-6, ended with growing doubts that a global climate treaty could still be agreed as hoped by some nations in 2010 despite deep splits about sharing the burden of curbs on emissions.

U.S. Senate majority leader Harry Reid has all but abandoned climate change legislation this year. The United States, the number two greenhouse gas emitter behind China, is the only major industrialised nation with no law to cut emissions.

Extreme weather fuels debate over global warming
Anne Chaon Anne Chaon Yahoo News 9 Aug 10;

PARIS (AFP) – As Russia battles wildfires triggered by an unprecedented heatwave, flood waters surge across a drenched Pakistan leaving millions of people homeless, and questions are asked about global warming.

Extreme weather has been a feature of the summer of 2010, with floods in Pakistan, China and Eastern Europe seemingly matched by heatwaves in Western Europe and Russia.

However, experts interviewed by AFP Monday were cautious over offering the events as proof of a changing climate, saying that while they fit with climatic projections in a warming planet, one extremely dry -- or wet -- summer isn't sufficient evidence in isolation.

"One cannot conclude 100 percent that nothing like this has happened in the past 200 years, but the suspicion is there. Even if it's only a suspicion," said Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-president of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has tracked the impact of human activity on climate for the past 20 years.

"These are events which reproduce and intensify in a climate disturbed by greenhouse gas pollution," he said.

"Extreme events are one of the ways in which climatic changes become dramatically visible."

The planet has never been as hot as it has been in the first half of this year, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a July report.

According to the IPCC, droughts and heatwaves likes those affecting Russia and 18 US states become longer and more intense in a warming planet.

"Whether in frequency or intensity, virtually every year has broken records, and sometimes several times in a week," said Omar Baddour, who tracks climate change for the World Meteorological Organisation.

"In Russia, the record temperature in Moscow (38.2 degrees Celsius, 100.8 degrees Farenheit in late July) -- which had not been seen since records began 130 years ago -- was broken again at the start of August. In Pakistan, the magnitude of the floods is unheard of," he said.

"In both cases, it is an unprecedented situation. The succession of extremes and the acceleration of records conform with IPCC projections. But one must observe the extremes over many years to draw conclusions in terms of climate," he said.

The floods in Pakistan could be caused by La Nina -- the inverse of the El Nino phenomenon, which it generally follows -- namely the cooling of surface temperatures in the Pacific ocean, Baddour said.

"In general, El Nino leads to drought in the Indian subcontinent and the Sahel. With La Nina, it is the opposite," said Baddour.

According to British climatologist Professor Andrew Watson, the high temperatures this summer are linked to last year's El Nino.

"We know that in a period following El Nino you got a very hot year globally and that is certainly occuring this year," he said.

Nevertheless, Watson said the extreme events are "fairly consistent with the IPCC reports and what 99 percent of the scientists believe to be happening."

Watson, who is from the University of East Anglia which was at the centre of last year's "climategate" scandal over faked data, was reluctant to leap to any conclusions.

"I'm quite sure that the increased frequency of these kind of summers over the last few decades is linked to climate change," he said

"But you cannot say a single event or a single summer is unequivocally due to climate change -- by definition it's weather, and not climate."

Long, hot summer of fire, floods fits predictions
Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press Yahoo News 13 Aug 10;

NEW YORK – Floods, fires, melting ice and feverish heat: From smoke-choked Moscow to water-soaked Iowa and the High Arctic, the planet seems to be having a midsummer breakdown. It's not just a portent of things to come, scientists say, but a sign of troubling climate change already under way.

The weather-related cataclysms of July and August fit patterns predicted by climate scientists, the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization says — although those scientists always shy from tying individual disasters directly to global warming.

The experts now see an urgent need for better ways to forecast extreme events like Russia's heat wave and wildfires and the record deluge devastating Pakistan. They'll discuss such tools in meetings this month and next in Europe and America, under United Nations, U.S. and British government sponsorship.

"There is no time to waste," because societies must be equipped to deal with global warming, says British government climatologist Peter Stott.

He said modelers of climate systems are "very keen" to develop supercomputer modeling that would enable more detailed linking of cause and effect as a warming world shifts jet streams and other atmospheric currents. Those changes can wreak weather havoc.

The U.N.'s network of climate scientists — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — has long predicted that rising global temperatures would produce more frequent and intense heat waves, and more intense rainfalls. In its latest assessment, in 2007, the Nobel Prize-winning panel went beyond that. It said these trends "have already been observed," in an increase in heat waves since 1950, for example.

Still, climatologists generally refrain from blaming warming for this drought or that flood, since so many other factors also affect the day's weather.

Stott and NASA's Gavin Schmidt, at the Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, said it's better to think in terms of odds: Warming might double the chances for heat waves, for example. "That is exactly what's happening," Schmidt said, "a lot more warm extremes and less cold extremes."

The WMO pointed out that this summer's events fit the international scientists' projections of "more frequent and more intense extreme weather events due to global warming."

In fact, in key cases they're a perfect fit:

RUSSIA

It's been the hottest summer ever recorded in Russia, with Moscow temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees C) for the first time. Russia's drought has sparked hundreds of wildfires in forests and dried peat bogs, blanketing Moscow with a toxic smog that finally lifted Thursday after six days. The Russian capital's death rate doubled to 700 people a day at one point. The drought reduced the wheat harvest by more than one-third.

The 2007 IPCC report predicted a doubling of disastrous droughts in Russia this century and cited studies foreseeing catastrophic fires during dry years. It also said Russia would suffer large crop losses.

PAKISTAN

The heaviest monsoon rains on record — 12 inches (300 millimeters) in one 36-hour period — have sent rivers rampaging over huge swaths of countryside, flooding thousands of villages. It has left 14 million Pakistanis homeless or otherwise affected, and killed 1,500. The government calls it the worst natural disaster in the nation's history.

A warmer atmosphere can hold — and discharge — more water. The 2007 IPCC report said rains have grown heavier for 40 years over north Pakistan and predicted greater flooding this century in south Asia's monsoon region.

CHINA

China is witnessing its worst floods in decades, the WMO says, particularly in the northwest province of Gansu. There, floods and landslides last weekend killed at least 1,100 people and left more than 600 missing, feared swept away or buried beneath mud and debris.

The IPCC reported in 2007 that rains had increased in northwest China by up to 33 percent since 1961, and floods nationwide had increased sevenfold since the 1950s. It predicted still more frequent flooding this century.

UNITED STATES

In Iowa, soaked by its wettest 36-month period in 127 years of recordkeeping, floodwaters from three nights of rain this week forced hundreds from their homes and killed a 16-year-old girl.

The international climate panel projected increased U.S. precipitation this century — except for the Southwest — and more extreme rain events causing flooding.

ARCTIC

Researchers last week spotted a 100-square-mile (260-square-kilometer) chunk of ice calved off from the great Petermann Glacier in Greenland's far northwest. It was the most massive ice island to break away in the Arctic in a half-century of observation.

The huge iceberg appeared just five months after an international scientific team published a report saying ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet is expanding up its northwest coast from the south.

Changes in the ice sheet "are happening fast, and we are definitely losing more ice mass than we had anticipated," said one of the scientists, NASA's Isabella Velicogna.

In the Arctic Ocean itself, the summer melt of the vast ice cap has reached unprecedented proportions in recent years. Satellite data show the ocean area covered by ice last month was the second-lowest ever recorded for July.

The melting of land ice into the oceans is causing about 60 percent of the accelerating rise in sea levels worldwide, with thermal expansion from warming waters causing the rest. The WMO'S World Climate Research Program says seas are rising by 1.34 inches (34 millimeters) per decade, about twice the 20th century's average.

Worldwide temperature readings, meanwhile, show that this January-June was the hottest first half of a year since recordkeeping began in the mid-19th century. Meteorologists say 17 nations have recorded all-time-high temperatures in 2010, more than in any other year.

Scientists blame the warming on carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases pouring into the atmosphere from power plants, cars and trucks, furnaces and other fossil fuel-burning industrial and residential sources.

Experts are growing ever more vocal in urging sharp cutbacks in emissions, to protect the climate that has nurtured modern civilization.

"Reducing emissions is something everyone is capable of," Nanjing-based climatologist Tao Li told an academic journal in China, now the world's No. 1 emitter, ahead of the U.S.

But not everyone is willing to act.

The U.S. remains the only major industrialized nation not to have legislated caps on carbon emissions, after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last week withdrew climate legislation in the face of resistance from Republicans and some Democrats.

The U.S. inaction, dating back to the 1990s, is a key reason global talks have bogged down for a pact to succeed the expiring Kyoto Protocol. That is the relatively weak accord on emissions cuts adhered to by all other industrialized states.

Governments around the world, especially in poorer nations that will be hard-hit, are scrambling to find ways and money to adapt to shifts in climate and rising seas.

The meetings of climatologists in the coming weeks in Paris, Britain and Colorado will be one step toward adaptation, seeking ways to identify trends in extreme events and better means of forecasting them.

A U.N. specialist in natural disasters says much more needs to be done.

Salvano Briceno of the U.N.'s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction pointed to aggravating factors in the latest climate catastrophes: China's failure to stem deforestation, contributing to its deadly mudslides; Russia's poor forest management, feeding fires; and the settling of poor Pakistanis on flood plains and dry riverbeds in the densely populated country, squatters' turf that suddenly turned into torrents.

"The IPCC has already identified the influence of climate change in these disasters. That's clear," Briceno said. "But the main trend we need to look at is increasing vulnerability, the fact we have more people living in the wrong places, doing the wrong things."

___

AP Correspondents Michael J. Crumb in Des Moines, Iowa, and Christopher Bodeen in Beijing contributed to this report.

Read more!

Mudslides Devastate A Town In North West China

Chris Buckley PlanetArk 10 Aug 10;

Mudslides engulfed a town in northwest China on Sunday, killing at least 127 people and leaving nearly 1,300 residents missing as rescue teams dug out crushed homes and tried to blast away debris clogging a river.

The mass of flood water, mud and rock hit Zhouqu County in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu province, a region dominated by steep and barren hills, after torrential rains late on Saturday, Xinhua news agency said, citing local officials.

Runoff from the downpour built up behind a landslide on the Bailong River, which runs through the main town in Zhouqu.

The clogged river in the narrow valley then spilled over its banks and caused flooding and mudslides that struck the town after midnight, smashed a small hydro station, and left at least 127 dead, according to Xinhua.

More heavy rain is forecast on the river on Tuesday.

"Many single-storey homes have been wiped out and now we're waiting to see how many people got out," one resident of Zhouqu, a merchant called Han Jiangping, told Reuters by phone. "We've had landslides before, but never anything this bad. People are trying to find their families and waiting for more rescuers."

The disaster follows flooding in Pakistan which has killed more than 1,600 people and in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Flash floods have also killed at least 132 people in the Himalayan region of Ladakh.

China's death toll could rise sharply and Premier Wen Jiabao rushed to the scene. There were 1,294 people missing, Xinhua reported late on Sunday, and it was unclear how many of them had fled and survived. That count was lower than an earlier estimate that nearly 2,000 were missing.

One village with 300 homes was "buried," said official news reports.

"It's very hard to locate the people washed away by floods. It's hard to say what their chances of survival are," He Youxin, a People's Armed Police officer organizing rescue efforts, told Xinhua. "Since excavators can't reach the site. We can only use spades and our hands to rescue the buried."

At one point, the flooding covered about half of the Zhouqu county seat, which has about 40,000 residents. The flood water reached up to three storeys high on some buildings, enveloping them in mud unlikely to yield many survivors.

About 2,800 troops and 100 medical workers rushed to help and 5,000 tents were being sent to the town, Xinhua said.

"Now the sludge has become the biggest problem to rescue operations. It's too thick to walk or drive through," said the head of the county, Diemujiangteng, according to Xinhua.

China's ruling Communist Party has become adept at showing its strength by mobilizing troops, aid and propaganda in the face of natural calamities, such as a massive earthquake in 2008. Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen told officials to "spare no efforts to save lives," said Xinhua.

HOMES HIT AS FAMILIES SLEPT

More than 1,400 people have been killed this year in floods that have devastated areas of central and southern China, according to the national disaster relief authority.

Pictures from Zhouqu showed mud and water covering town streets, motor vehicles being swept downstream and troops frantically digging through debris to hunt for victims, including a boy pulled from a shattered house. Xinhua said the mud dumped on the streets was up to two meters deep.

"There was thunder and huge rain, and then the landslides started coming down," said a resident of Zhouqu contacted by Reuters. He gave only his surname, Bai. "That was about midnight, so some people must have been in their homes, asleep and didn't know what was happening."

Many residents of Gannan are ethnic Tibetan herders and farmers and the rough terrain may hamper rescue efforts. Zhouqu County has 135,000 residents, about a third of them ethnic Tibetans, according to the county government.

Residents had rescued about 680 people by midday, and the water level in the town was falling, said Xinhua.

Troops prepared explosives to blast away the mud and rocks that have choked up the river and created a backlog of water 3 km (2 miles) long and 100 meters across, Xinhua said.

Wen, a geologist, told officials to develop a plan as soon as possible to unblock the river safely. About 19,000 people living in two town below the blockage were moved away, the reports said.

The Gannan meteorological bureau forecast heavy rains on the Bailong River from Tuesday.

(Editing by Nick Macfie/David Stamp)

What Causes Mudslides?
Remy Melina, LiveScience.com 9 Aug 10;

Heavy rains in China set off mudslides that washed away part of the town of Zhouqu, in the province of Gansu, and left more than 330 people dead and many more missing.

But heavy rains aren't the only thing that can trigger a mudslide, according to experts.

A sub-category of landslides, mudslides are rivers of rock, earth and other debris that are saturated with water, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Mudslides can be slow- or fast- moving, though they tend to grow in size and momentum as they pick up trees, boulders, cars and other materials.

Mudslides can occur at any time of the year, regardless of weather conditions, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). And they can strike without any prior warning signs, making for a dangerous phenomenon.

"Mudslides occur in all 50 U.S. states and can happen at any time - with or without rainfall," said Lynn Highland, a geographer at the USGS National Landslide Center.

Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, changes in groundwater levels, alternate freezing and thawing, and the steepening of slopes by erosion all contribute to mudslides.

Construction and reckless modification of land - such as not draining an area properly before building on or near it - can also create the conditions ripe for a mudslide, Highland said.

She added, prolonged, intense precipitation and run-off can contribute to landslides, as can wildfires. Fires lead to mudslides because burning can kills the plants' roots. Roots hold soil together, stabilizing the land and making it less likely to be swept away, according to Highland. In this way, overgrazing can also contribute to mudslides.

Because different areas of land have different soil compositions, as well as varying slopes and geographic characteristics, it is difficult to determine how prone a place is to mudslides and therefore near impossible to predict when one will hit - although they are known to occur in areas previously hit by mudslides, according to the USGS.

"The West Coast is especially susceptible to mudslides because of the earthquakes, rainfall and wildfires that happen in that region," Highland told Life's Little Mysteries. "In California, there is a 'mudslide season' lasting from December to April, during which time the rainfall is fairly predictable."

Because California wildfires leave behind charred slopes, the region is especially susceptible to mudslides during and immediately after major rainstorms. However, sometimes damage caused by a mudslide can take days or even weeks to surface.

An example of this 'delayed triggering' of deeper landslides occurred in Los Angeles, Calif., in 1998, when mudslides forced the evacuation of more than 100 people and destroyed several houses five days after the rain had stopped, according to the California Geological Survey (CGS).

More than 100 Californians have been killed by land and mud slides during the last 25 years, according to the CGS. Most of these deaths were due to people being buried by debris flows as they slept in lower-floor bedrooms that were near hazardous slopes.

Read more!

Moscow deaths double in Russia's 'worst ever' heat

Anna Smolchenko Yahoo News 9 Aug 10;

MOSCOW (AFP) – The daily mortality rate in Moscow has doubled and morgues are overflowing amid an acrid smog caused by the worst heatwave in Russia's thousand-year history, officials said Monday.

The smog from the peat and forest fires burning in the countryside around 100 kilometres (60 miles) outside the city has choked Moscow for days, seeping into apartments, offices and even the metro, and causing thousands to flee.

"In usual times 360-380 people are dying each day. Now it is around 700," the head of Moscow's health department, Andrei Seltsovsky, said in televised remarks, acknowledging that city morgues were filled almost to capacity.

The number of people who called for medical aid due to fire-induced problems grew over the weekend by 60 percent, officials quoted by RIA Novosti said.

Emergency services meanwhile reported about 557 wildfires were burning over 174,000 hectares (430,000 acres) in central Russia and the Moscow region, with flames also raging close to a nuclear reprocessing site in the Urals.

And Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that record drought would slash the grain harvest in the leading wheat producer by about 10 million tonnes.

Television reports said the smoke reached Russia's second city of Saint Petersburg and the Urals' main city of Yekaterinburg was also veiled in smog.

Russia's top meteorological official, Alexander Frolov, said the heatwave was the most severe in the country's millennium-long history.

"No similar heatwave has been observed neither by ourselves nor by our ancestors," he told a televised news conference. "This is a completely unique phenomenon."

More than 104,000 people -- a record number for the current year -- flew out of Moscow on Sunday, a spokesman for Russian state aviation agency Rosaviatsia, Sergei Izvolsky, told AFP.

The figure for the same day a year ago stood at around 70,000 people, he said.

Officials at Moscow airports assured that reduced visibility would not impact flights, saying that "enough was visible near the airports to ensure we could receive and send off airplanes," ITAR-TASS reported.

Many of those who stayed pulled white and blue gauze masks over their faces to protect themselves from the haze, while national media accused authorities of covering up the true scale of the environmental disaster and related deaths.

State air pollution monitoring service Mosekomonitoring said Monday's carbon monoxide levels in the Moscow air were 2.2 times higher than acceptable levels. They had been 3.1 times worse on Sunday and 6.6 times worse on Saturday.

With the German embassy already closed indefinitely, the US State Department said it was studying a request to fly out of Moscow children and other family members of its embassy staff.

Many Muscovites laid the blame for the catastrophe on the government, saying it was not doing enough to shield them from the smog, and bloggers shared survival tips ranging from producing oxygen at home to sleeping on the balcony.

Russian authorities declared a state of emergency in the Urals town of Ozersk, site of a major nuclear reprocessing plant Mayak, due to wildfires.

They have also been working to put out fires close to Snezhinsk, another town in the Urals and home to of one of Russia's centres for its nuclear research programme. Officials said this fire had been contained.

Meanwhile, leader of opposition Yabloko party Sergei Mitrokhin called for evacuating prisons in the Mordovia region, where 15,000 prisoners may be threatened by fire and have no means of ground transport since the local railroad was dismantled in 2006, Yabloko said in a statement.

Putin last week shocked international markets by announcing that from August 15 Russia would ban exports to keep prices down at home and ensure there was enough feed grain for its cattle herd.

He also said Russia's grain harvest for 2010 would be 60-65 million tonnes, Russian news agencies reported. Only last week it had been forecast at 70-75 million tonnes.

Russia has seen 10 million hectares of land destroyed in the drought and the new figure represents a massive fall compared with its 2009 harvest of 97 million tonnes.

Read more!

Pakistan floods cause "major" harm to economy-IMF

* Flood will have implications for Pakistan budget
* Unclear how IMF program will be affected (Adds details, quotes)
Lesley Wroughton Reuters Alertnet 9 Aug 10;

WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Pakistan's floods, the worst to hit the country in 80 years, will cause "major harm to the economy," the International Monetary Fund said on Monday as donors' and investors' concerns grew over the disaster's impact on an already fragile economy.

The floods "are very likely to cause major harm to the economy in terms of loss of output and budgetary consequences," an IMF spokesman told Reuters. "In these circumstances, support from the international community will be critical."

The spokesman did not say whether the economic impact could affect Pakistan's $11.3 billion IMF program, but he said IMF officials were in touch with the authorities to assess the situation.

Pakistan turned to the IMF for emergency financing in November 2008 to avert a balance of payments crisis and shore up reserves.

While economic growth has picked up, Pakistan has struggled to meet some of the targets under the program, especially on increasing tax revenue to allowing for greater government spending.

The country was set to receive a disbursement of about $1.1 billion under the program following a performance review scheduled by the IMF this month.

The spokesman said IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn had told Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari the fund stands ready to discuss how to help Pakistan manage the economic impact of the floods.

"Fund staff have been in touch with their Pakistani counterparts to assess the situation and discuss ways to help," the spokesman added.

More than 1,600 people have died and about two million left homeless by the flooding, which began 10 days ago after heavy monsoon rains over the upper reaches of the Indus River basin wreaked havoc from northern Pakistan to the southern province of Sindh. For details, see [ID:nSGE67803O]

Read more!

Flash Floods Inundate Central Europe

Rob Strybel PlanetArk 9 Aug 10;

Rescue workers sought to clear flood-borne debris including damaged cars and evacuate victims after heavy rains and stormy winds across central Europe killed at least 15 people over the weekend.

Heavy downpours on Saturday caused rivers to overflow their banks and a dam to burst, submerging Bogatynia and other towns in the southwest corner of Poland and killing at least three people, Polish officials said on Sunday.

One woman drowned in Bogatynia on Saturday. The body of another woman and a 55-year-old rescuer swept away by a dam burst on Saturday were found on Sunday, Fire Brigade spokesman Pawel Fratczak told Reuters by telephone.

Flood damage and deaths also were reported in neighboring countries. The death toll in the Czech Republic grew to five on Sunday and another three were missing and feared drowned, the Polish PAP news agency said.

On Saturday, three people died in the German town of Neukirchen, near the Czech border.

In neighboring Lithuania, falling trees and structures killed four and injured several, with thousands being left without electricity after storm winds hit the country on Sunday, the rescue service said.

A 22-year-old woman died while camping in southern Lithuania when a tree fell on her tent, the daily Lietuvos Rytas newspaper reported on its website.

The army, police and fire-service rescuers were using amphibious vehicles, helicopters and heavy earth-moving equipment to evacuate flood victims and clear debris including damaged cars blocking narrow streets.

News channel TVN24 reported Prime Minister Donald Tusk pledging financial aid to the flood victims identical to that offered to those who suffered during this May and June floods.

The victims are to get a one-off allowance of 6,000 zlotys $2,000) for current emergency needs and up to 100,000 zlotys (more than $33,000) for home repairs.

Weather officials told TVN24 that the violent downpour caused the Miedzianka to overflow its banks.

BURST DAM

The waters submerged most of Bogatynia before flowing into the Nysa, the border river between Poland and Germany, swelling further because of a burst reservoir dam.

Meteorologists in Poland do not forecast further heavy downpours.

The weekend deluge followed major spring and summer flooding across Poland which caused widespread property damage and claimed some two dozen lives.

In Germany, authorities at the weekend evacuated some 1,400 people around the town of Goerlitz, on the border with Poland, where they expected the flooding level to rise after topping 7 meters (23 feet).

Television footage showed water gushing along a main road in Goerlitz. Elsewhere in eastern Germany, flood levels eased.

In the Czech Republic, extra rescue personnel and soldiers were called in to help with evacuation from some of the worst affected towns in the north of the country, and helicopters were used to reach villages cut off by the swollen rivers.

Thousands of residents in northern Czech Republic remained without electricity and gas on Sunday.

President Vaclav Klaus is expected to visit the region later on Sunday and the government will meet on Monday to discuss releasing emergency funds to help in clean-up efforts.

While the rains had eased by early Sunday afternoon and river levels were falling, many Czech villages were cut off, trains were not running and the muddy conditions made it difficult to get trucks and rescue personnel to the hardest-hit areas to deliver assistance.

Storms and high winds left several regions in eastern Slovakia with no electricity on Saturday, but no major damage, casualties or injuries were reported.

(Editing by Michael Roddy)

Read more!

U.N. Chief Says Cancun Climate Meet May Not Get Deal

Patrick Worsnip PlanetArk 10 Aug 10;

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged on Monday that a key U.N. conference on climate change in Mexico at the end of this year might not produce the definitive agreement the world body is seeking.

The admission brings Ban, who ultimately is responsible for global climate change negotiations, in line with the view of many national negotiators and some of his own officials.

Attention has focused on the November 29-December 10 meeting in Cancun, Mexico, since a U.N. summit in Copenhagen last December fell short of a legally binding deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

"We need to be practical and realistic," Ban told a questioner at a monthly news conference at U.N. headquarters on Monday. "It may be the case that we may not be able to have that comprehensive binding agreement in Cancun."

Ban's comment followed a climate meeting in Bonn, Germany, last week where delegates said the talks on pledges to cut greenhouse gases had moved backward rather than forward.

U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres said at that meeting that goals at Cancun should include a mandate to move toward an all-embracing agreement, "which would take more time." Another focus should be getting countries to deliver on past promises on climate aid and protecting forests, she has said.

Ban said negotiations had made "real progress" in some areas, such as financing poor countries to tackle climate change, developing technology to adapt to it, and reforestation.

"On the basis of these sectoral areas, we will try to build so that we will be able to move ahead in a more comprehensive way," the U.N. chief said. "First and foremost we must bridge the gap of trust between developed and developing countries."

NEW TARGETS

Rich and poor countries are divided over who should bear the brunt of emissions cuts.

The existing agreement caps the carbon dioxide emissions of almost 40 developed countries up to 2012. However, new targets need the agreement of at least 143 countries -- or three quarters of the pact's parties.

At Copenhagen, where Ban had urged the world to "seal the deal" on climate change, most countries signed up for an accord meant to limit a rise in temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), but it did not spell out how.

Many rich nations and some major emerging countries such as China, India and Brazil reckon that a legally binding deal may have to wait, perhaps until a further meeting in 2011 in South Africa.

At the request of parties to the Kyoto Protocol, the U.N. climate agency last month detailed contingency plans if the world cannot agree to a successor treaty. These include cutting the number of countries required to approve any new targets or extending existing caps until 2013 or 2014.

Ban on Monday also announced the launch of what he called a high-level panel on global sustainability, to be co-chaired by Finnish President Tarja Halonen and South African President Jacob Zuma and including former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and U.S. envoy to the United Nations Susan Rice.

He said the panel would study how to lift people out of poverty while respecting and preserving the climate, and would report by the end of next year.

(Editing by Eric Beech)

Read more!