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Straits Times Forum 1 Sep 10;
I REFER to the article ('Helping errant zoos do better'; Aug 23), which stated that 'the zoo, though, stopped short of granting the non-governmental organisation's request for the polar exhibit to be phased out'.
Ms Fanny Lai, chief executive officer of Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS), explained that 'one reason we keep polar bears is as an insurance in case something happens in the wild. We can't foresee the future, but it doesn't look positive for polar bears'.
In 2007, Singapore Zoo confirmed in a number of media articles that it will not bring any more polar bears into the country. Is the zoo reversing its decision again?
Disappointingly, WRS had already reversed a September 2006 decision to relocate Inuka the polar bear to a more temperate and appropriate climate.
Studies have shown that polar bears are poor candidates for captivity and Singapore's tropical climate is totally unsuitable for polar bears.
The Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres) congratulates the zoo for building a larger and climate-controlled enclosure for the polar bears. Is this, however, contradictory to the zoo's message with regard to fighting global warming?
On the one hand, the zoo is creating awareness about the need to cut our carbon emissions to save the polar bear's habitat. But on the other, a large climate-controlled enclosure for the polar bears, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, will undoubtedly contribute to global warming and to the demise of wild polar bears.
Acres hopes that WRS will indeed phase out the keeping of polar bears and focus on being a tropical zoo.
Louis Ng
Executive Director
Acres (Animal Concerns Research and Education Society)
Cooler home for zoo's polar bears
New enclosure will look and feel more like the Arctic
Jennani Durai 28 Aug 10;
THE Singapore Zoo's two resident polar bears will be ditching their tropical-environment enclosure for one that looks and feels more like the cold Arctic.
And the mother-and-son pair, Sheba and Inuka, will do this while staying put in sunny Singapore.
Their new home in the upcoming wildlife theme park River Safari will be climate-controlled to mimic the temperatures of the frozen north.
The $7 million enclosure, at 1,400 sq m, will be 31/2 times bigger than their current one.
'Ice rocks', blocks of ice to be made by a large freezer unit in the enclosure, will be stacked there for them to rest on. The bears will also have an ice cave to retreat to, while the soil surfaces, trees, pools and streams will be just like in the Arctic.
The bears will be the highlight of the Frozen Tundra exhibit in the $180 million River Safari theme park, which is due to open in 2012 on 12ha of land between the zoo and the Night Safari.
The exhibit will be designed to educate the public on the environmental threats facing glaciers and semi-frozen fresh-water ecosystems.
Visitors will be able to view Sheba, 33, and Inuka, 19, at three heights, including an underwater view provided by 'windows' cut through rock.
To help with the building of the new enclosure, which will be near the bears' current enclosure, the zoo's polar bear exhibit will close on Monday.
Mr Biswajit Guha, the director of zoology, said sound-proofing will be installed so the bears will be unaffected by the din from the rotary piling used in the construction.
These changes come not a day too soon for animal welfare group Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres) which has, since 2007, raised concerns about the polar bears' living environment being too small and too tropical - unlike the natural environment the pair of bred-in-captivity bears were meant to live in.
Back in 2007, Acres' executive director Louis Ng had urged the zoo to 'consider drastically improving the living conditions and raising them to meet international standards'.
The bears' current enclosure has an air-conditioned den out of public view, but a part of it, including the pool, is open-air so visitors can see them.
Mr Ng told The Straits Times yesterday: 'It must be crazy for the polar bears. I'm not used to the heat in Singapore, let alone those arctic animals.'
Acres also pointed out that the enclosure lacked material that the bears could gather to make day beds or dry their fur on, and private areas where they could take a break from gawking visitors.
The bears were showing signs of heat stress and were pacing and swimming in circles, which Acres said were behaviours linked to poor living conditions.
Mr Ng agreed that the new habitat addressed the concerns raised, but it is still his hope that the zoo will do away with the polar bear exhibit.
Claire Huang Channel NewsAsia 31 Aug 10;
SINGAPORE : The number of dengue, chikungunya and malaria cases in Singapore is falling.
The National Environment Agency (NEA) said this is due to the Integrated Vector Management system (IVM), introduced by the World Health Organisation.
The system helps stakeholders decide how to allocate their resources like manpower and collaborate with other agencies to control the disease.
Preventing mosquitoes from multiplying is the key to keeping dengue cases down. And with the IVM approach, NEA said it can also keep malaria and chikungunya at bay.
Tai Ji Chong, Head of NEA's Operations Environmental Health Department, elaborated: "For the case of dengue, the trend has been going down. In the past we have seen cyclical trends of dengue where it peaks every six or seven years, but from 2006 till today, we do not see that kind of trend anymore.
"In fact, for the last two years, the trend has been going down. With the IVM system in place for dengue, we apply the same system for chikungunya when it comes in, and as a result, chikungunya did not become endemic in Singapore."
And the strategy works. Dengue fever cases have gone down from 7,000 in 2008 to 4,500 in 2009.
Similarly, the number of chikungunya cases has gone down from 720 in 2008 to 340 cases in 2009.
NEA said the downward trend has continued this year, with a total of 22 local and imported chikungunya cases so far.
Malaria cases here also went down from 29 last year to just nine cases in the first 33 weeks of this year.
But NEA cautioned that the declining trend also means that the community has a lower immunity to that particular infectious disease.
Mr Tai said: "Like all infectious diseases, whenever it is very well-controlled, the more well-controlled it is, the more susceptible the population because they have no exposure."
This is why the public has to continue to play their part in keeping dengue and other infectious diseases at bay.
The success of the IVM approach in some countries is why the World Health Organisation (WHO) hopes it can get more governments to implement the system. And WHO hopes to convince them at the 2nd Asia-Pacific Dengue Workshop, which is taking place in Singapore.
However, Dr Raman Velayudhan, a scientist from the Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases at WHO, said it will be a challenge.
He said: "We are working with member countries to really advocate for IVM, what IVM is all about. It is basically an integration of vector control methods and for judicious use of the tools.
"Essentially how we are doing it is WHO works with member countries. We have regional committees which are now adopting IVM resolutions and at a later date, we hope that we would have had some of the resolution, maybe in a couple of years' time, looking at more and more evidences as they come in about IVM.
"Financially, the problems are there. The problem is how to scale up our implementation, how are we going to go about our training, at the regional level and at the country level and making sure that IVM is really adopted at the local level, because we need the planning, the implementation to work at communities. So communities have to make the decision and how we go about capacity building."
Dr Raman added that dengue is affecting 125 countries worldwide and this year alone, there have been outbreaks in close to 50 countries.
Close to 60 experts on dengue from more than 20 countries will share concepts and strategies for dengue control and management at the nine-day workshop. - CNA/ms
Dengue outbreak cycle broken: NEA
Number of cases falling since 2007, but disease still endemic to region
Grace Chua Straits Times 1 Sep 10;
THE six- to seven-year cycle of dengue outbreaks has been broken, and chikungunya and malaria have also been brought under control, the National Environment Agency (NEA) announced yesterday.
With dengue, the number of cases typically rises over a period of six years or so, and then climaxes in a major outbreak, explained Mr Tai Ji Choong, who heads operations at NEA's environmental health department.
Since the last major outbreak in 2005, the number of dengue cases has gone into a long decline - from 8,826 cases in 2007 to 7,031 in 2008, to 4,497 last year.
If the dengue cycle was playing to form, these numbers should have been rising instead of falling, Mr Tai said.
In the first 33 weeks of this year - and with the May-to-October dengue breeding season almost done - the number of cases stood at 3,015, lower than last year's total for the same period.
He attributed the year-on-year decline to the NEA's disease management approach, which involves public environment and health agencies working closely with water agency PUB, the Housing Board and other public and private groups.
Called 'integrated vector management', the approach also involves reducing the use of fogging chemicals so the dengue-carrying Aedes mosquito does not become resistant to them, and designing buildings and bus stops so that possible mosquito-breeding spots such as gutters and bamboo-pole holders are not a part of their design, Mr Tai said.
He was speaking on the sidelines of the second Asia-Pacific Dengue Workshop, organised by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the NEA and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The workshop, attended by 58 participants from 23 countries, aims to promote integrated vector management in the region and train participants in better field and clinical surveillance. It began yesterday and ends next Wednesday.
By WHO statistics, 2.5 billion people are at risk of dengue; the Asia-Pacific region alone sees between 200,000 and 500,000 cases every year and more than 2,000 deaths from the disease.
But many developing countries lack the manpower and funds to deal with the complex disease, for which no vaccines or anti-viral drugs exist.
NEA chief executive Andrew Tan said, also on the sidelines of the workshop, that despite Singapore's disease control successes, it should not be complacent.
Dengue is endemic to the region, and changes to the environment here, such as the planting of trees and rooftop gardens, can inadvertently create new mosquito-breeding spots, for example.
Another challenge is that current methods of hunting down and destroying breeding spots are labour-intensive, he added.
To improve dengue control, the NEA is refining its risk-assessment maps and predictions, and studying ways to detect and kill mosquito larva more efficiently. It will also look at whether climate change shortens mosquitoes' breeding cycles.
At the dengue workshop, France's Pasteur Institute medical entomologist Paul Reiter suggested that releasing mosquitoes rendered genetically sterile could control the mosquito population and thus, dengue and other mosquito-borne diseases.
Mr Tan, when asked, said Singapore would be cautious about using such radical technology.
Two other diseases under control
Straits Times 1 Sep 10;
# CHIKUNGUNYA
Singapore's National Environment Agency (NEA) yesterday declared that the painful mosquito-borne disease chikungunya was not endemic here. But there had been cause for concern earlier because the viral illness, which first cropped up here through three imported cases in 2006, hit 718 people in 2008, partly as a result of a local outbreak.
Mosquito-control measures reduced the number to 341 last year, including 66 imported cases. This year, there have so far been seven local and 15 imported cases.
The NEA's integrated vector management programme controls both dengue and chikungunya, as it targets the same two species of mosquito, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus.
# MALARIA
A malaria task force is reviewing and upgrading drains following malaria outbreaks in Sungei Kadut and elsewhere last year, when 29 people fell ill. In all, there were 168 cases, of which 29 were local.
So far this year, malaria cases have returned to normal levels, with nine local and 109 imported cases.
The malaria task force involves many public agencies, including the Ministry of Defence, the National Parks Board, the Ministry of Health and the Singapore Land Authority.
The Star 31 Aug 10;
PETALING JAYA: The Natural Resources and Environment Ministry wants to beef up its enforcement to prevent endangered wildlife from being smuggled out of the country.
Minister Datuk Seri Douglas Uggah Embas said the ministry had a top management meeting yesterday to discuss the recent attempt by international wildlife trader Anson Wong to smuggle over 90 snakes of various species and ways to prevent similar incidents.
On Aug 26, Wong was detained at the KL International Airport following the seizure of 95 boa constrictors, two rhinoceros vipers and a mata-mata turtle.
Selangor police chief Datuk Khalid Abu Bakar confirmed that Wong was picked up at 8.50pm by airport security for allegedly trying to smuggle the snakes to another country. It is learnt he was on transit from Penang to Jakarta.
Wong has been remanded until today to facilitate investigations.
The boa constrictor is listed in Appendix II of the International Trade in Endangered Species Act 2008 and Wong could be fined up to RM100,000 for each animal or imprisoned up to seven years or both if charged and convicted.
Wong has a record for wildlife trafficking and was jailed in the United States for 71 months in 2000.
Probe officer who let Wong carry snakes
The Star 31 Aug 10;
I REFER to “International Wildlife Smuggler held at KLIA” (The Star, Aug 28). Kudos to the enforcement authorities at the airport for their vigilance that led to the arrest of convicted wildlife trader Anson Wong.
Apart from my appeal to the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan) to prosecute Wong to the maximum extent under the International Trade of Endangered Species Act 2008, my question is: who is the officer at Penang International Airport who enabled Anson to check in his bag of snakes?
Any case against Wong must include prosecuting the officer involved as an accomplice and putting innocent flight passengers in danger.
AZRINA ABDULLAH,
Petaling Jaya.
Photo album tells story of wildlife decline
Wildlife Conservation Society EurekAlert 31 Aug 10;
NEW YORK (August 30, 2010) – With a simple click of the camera, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Zoological Society of London have developed a new way to accurately monitor long-term trends in rare and vanishing species over large landscapes.
Called the "Wildlife Picture Index," (WPI) the methodology collects images from remote "camera traps," which automatically photograph anything that lopes, waddles, or slinks past. These virtual photo albums – sometimes containing thousands of photos of dozens of species – are then run through a statistical analysis to produce metrics for diversity and distribution of a broad range of wildlife.
Though camera traps are already used by conservationists to track individual species or to survey wildlife in small protected areas, this study marks the first time they have been used to scientifically measure long-term trends of multiple species on a landscape-wide scale.
The study appears in the August, 2010 issue of the journal Animal Conservation. Authors include: Tim O'Brien and Linda Krueger of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Jonathan Baille of the Zoological Society of London, and Melissa Cuke of the University of British Columbia.
The WPI was designed to meet the future needs of the Convention of Biological Diversity, (CBD) a treaty signed by 188 countries to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss.
"The Wildlife Picture Index is an effective tool in monitoring trends in wildlife diversity that previously could only be roughly estimated," said the study's lead author, Tim O'Brien of the Wildlife Conservation Society. "This new methodology will help conservationists determine where to focus their efforts to help stem the tide of biodiversity loss over broad landscapes."
The authors used the WPI to track changes in wildlife diversity over a 10-year period in Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in southwest Sumatra, Indonesia. The 1,377 square-mile park contains the last remaining tracts of protected lowland forest in Sumatra – important habitat for large mammals including Sumatran tigers, rhinoceros, and Asian elephants. It is also threatened by poaching, illegal logging, and agriculture.
After running the statistical analysis of some 5,450 images of 25 mammals and one terrestrial bird species photographed throughout the park, the Wildlife Picture Index showed a net decline of 36 percent of the park's biodiversity. In addition, the analysis revealed that wildlife loss outpaced the rate of deforestation; and that large, commercially valuable wildlife such as tigers, rhinos, and elephants declined faster than small primates and deer, which are only hunted only as crop raiders or for subsistence.
The authors not only believe the WPI can be used to assess biodiversity in large ecosystems throughout the world, it can also help redefine how camera traps have been used for wildlife conservation.
"The Wildlife Picture Index will allow conservationists to accurately measure biodiversity in areas that previously have been either too expensive, or logistically prohibitive," said John Robinson, WCS Executive Vice President for Conservation and Science. "We believe that this new methodology will be able to fill critical gaps in knowledge of wildlife diversity while providing much-needed baseline data to assess success or failure in places where we work."
"We expect that the Wildlife Picture Index can be implemented and maintained as a relatively low cost per species monitored and provide important insights into the fate of rainforest and savannah biodiversity," O'Brien said.
###
The Wildlife Conservation Society saves wildlife and wild places worldwide. We do so through science, global conservation, education and the management of the world's largest system of urban wildlife parks, led by the flagship Bronx Zoo. Together these activities change attitudes toward nature and help people imagine wildlife and humans living in harmony. WCS is committed to this mission because it is essential to the integrity of life on Earth. Visit: www.wcs.org
Fadli, The Jakarta Post 31 Aug 10;
The recent case of illegal fishing in Riau waters, Malaysia’s response to which triggered protests in Indonesia, is just the tip of the iceberg, a government official says.
The true number of poaching cases involving foreign fishermen in the Riau Islands was much larger than those reported, Batam Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Agency Yulisbar chief said.
Inadequate facilities and the authorities’ lack of commitment to preventing fish poaching were the main reason for the continued rampant thefts by foreign fishermen in the province, he said.
Malaysian Marine Police arrested three Batam Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Agency (KKP) officers — Asriadi, Selvo Wewengkang and Erwan — and detained them at Kota Tinggi prison in Johore Baru, Malaysia, from Aug. 13 to Aug. 17, after Indonesian officials had caught Malaysian fishermen accused of fishing illegally in Indonesian waters.
Fish thefts in Riau Islands by foreign fishermen are regarded as commonplace.
Fishermen from neighboring Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines have often been caught red-handed in the area, especially in Natuna and Anambas regencies.
According to Yulisbar, the Batam KKP has only eight personnel and a patrol boat to oversee 715 square kilometers of territory.
“Ideally, sea patrols should be conducted four times a month, but we don’t have the means for that,” Yulisbar said.
He added that foreign fishing boats, particularly from Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia, usually caught fish in the open sea, in Natuna and Anambas, for example.
The low competence of local fishermen was another reason for continued thefts, Yulisbar said.
Between January and July this year, 10 foreign fishing boats were detained by Indonesian authorities. The total number of impounded illegal fishing vessels this year is expected to exceed that of last year.
Earlier, Batam Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Agency raised its concerns over the presence of foreign fishermen working in the local fishing industry because of limited skills of local fishermen.
Agency supervisory affairs chief Dasril Talani said the volume of fish caught within four nautical miles of the coast had less economic value than that caught beyond 12 nautical miles.
However, most of the vessels fishing 12 miles off the coast of the Riau Islands were foreign, since local fishermen only went out up to 4 miles, he said.
The chief of the Riau chapter of the Indonesian Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Institute (LKPI), Andi Zulkarnain, said the recent arrests of Malaysian fishermen by KKP officers showed the low bargaining power of Indonesia compared to that of its neighbor.
Yahoo News 31 Aug 10;
BEIJING (AFP) – China will spend billions of dollars treating sewage and planting forests to arrest massive environmental degradation along the Yangtze river and its Three Gorges reservoir, officials said Tuesday.
"Generally speaking, the ecological state (of the river) is still far from what the Communist Party and people are demanding," forestry minister Jia Zhibang told journalists.
"For numerous reasons, the forests on both sides of the river have been seriously degraded, leading to bare mountains and hills that have led to repeated natural disasters" such as landslides.
The new plans call for an increase in forest coverage along the 600-kilometre-long (370-mile-long) reservoir to 65 percent from the current 22 percent, Chongqing city mayor Huang Qifan said at the same news briefing.
More than 10 billion yuan (1.5 billion dollars) will be invested in the forestry campaign.
Meanwhile, Chongqing, a mega-city of more than 30 million people upriver from the reservoir, will invest heavily in treatment of urban wastewater, officials said.
Critics of the 22.5-billion-dollar Three Gorges Dam hydro-electric project -- the world's largest -- which created the vast reservoir have long complained about its huge human and environmental toll.
Critics have said it is causing erosion along the banks and preventing the river from flushing out pollution.
Officials had said previously that 1.4 million people were forced to relocate to make way for the reservoir, but earlier this year China said an additional 300,000 people would be relocated.
The new relocations were aimed at curbing pollution and protecting residents from frequent landslides blamed on the rising reservoir.
Recent torrential rains have once again spotlighted the environmental problems, with massive quantities of trash and other debris washed into the river, threatening to jam up the dam, state media have reported.
The garbage was so thick in places that people could walk across it, the China Daily newspaper said.
To help curb worsening water pollution, Chongqing, which has invested 50 billion yuan on sewage treatment facilities in recent years, will invest another 28 billion yuan in the coming three years, Huang said.
* Combined environmental factors creating risk
* Analysts says global weather patterns a catalyst
* Calls for tighter river management
Rebecca Conway Reuters AlertNet 31 Aug 10;
ISLAMABAD, Aug 31 (Reuters) - Global warming might be one explanation for Pakistan's devastating floods, but scientists believe poor land management, outdated irrigation systems and logging are at least as much to blame.
Flooding has battered Pakistan since the onset of heavy monsoon rains a month ago, affecting a wide central belt.
More than 1,600 people have died and more than 6 million are homeless, according to the U.N. The total population affected is at least 17 million.
Water covers a fifth of the country -- an area the size of Italy -- much of which is agricultural. At least 3.2 million hectares (7.9 million acres) -- about 14 percent of Pakistan's entire cultivated land, have been damaged.
A major factor that led to the massive flooding is illegal logging in the northwest province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, experts said.
Jamshed Ali, Secretary-General of Sarhad Awami Forestry Ittehad (SAFI), an organisation meant to protect forests in the province, said in parts of Malakand district more than 70 per cent of forests had been felled by a well-connected "timber mafia" that was difficult to stop.
In the militant-infested Swat region, the Taliban were behind much of the illegal logging, he said.
The lack of trees leads to soil erosion and exhaustion because tree roots help bind soil, naturally retaining water.
Over-grazing by livestock -- common in rural Pakistan -- can also remove layers of topsoil and stunt plant growth, reducing the soil's ability to hold water, said Asad Jarwar Qureshi of the International Water Management Institute.
Abdul Qadir Rafiq of the United Nations Development Programme says without vital topsoil, flash-flooding in northern, mountainous areas can result, sending silt downstream which then reduces the amount of water the river channel can hold.
Diverting the Indus through irrigation channels to increase land for agriculture, may have further contributed to the human toll because it encouraged people to build closer to or even in the river channel.
"We need to clear the river channels of silt every four to five years and stop people living within a kilometre of the river channel. There are irrigation channels built using techniques from the 18th century. We need to react to the present-day," Qureshi said.
UNUSUAL WEATHER PATTERNS
Extreme weather patterns may also have played a part, another expert said.
Just ahead of the floods, warm temperatures normally experienced across the Middle East were felt over Russia, Ghassem Asra, director of the World Climate Research Programm, said. To the east, heavy monsoon rains overwhelmed the ground's ability to absorb them.
Asrar said warming over the Indian Ocean may have increased evaporation rates and water in the air, encouraging a period of more intense rainfall.
"Climate change is almost always a factor - but one in a number", said journalist Stephan Faris, author of "Forecast: The Surprising - and Immediate Consequences - of Climate Change."
"The United Kingdom, which saw heavy flooding last year, has the reserves to react - a country like Pakistan does not. The areas flooded have factors that make it more difficult to deal with something like this."
(Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Chris Allbritton and Sanjeev Miglani)
Exclusive 'Sceptical environmentalist' and critic of climate scientists to declare global warming a chief concern facing world
Juliette Jowit, guardian.co.uk 30 Aug 10;
The world's most high-profile climate change sceptic is to declare that global warming is "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and "a challenge humanity must confront", in an apparent U-turn that will give a huge boost to the embattled environmental lobby.
Bjørn Lomborg, the self-styled "sceptical environmentalist" once compared to Adolf Hitler by the UN's climate chief, is famous for attacking climate scientists, campaigners, the media and others for exaggerating the rate of global warming and its effects on humans, and the costly waste of policies to stop the problem.
But in a new book to be published next month, Lomborg will call for tens of billions of dollars a year to be invested in tackling climate change. "Investing $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century," the book concludes.
Examining eight methods to reduce or stop global warming, Lomborg and his fellow economists recommend pouring money into researching and developing clean energy sources such as wind, wave, solar and nuclear power, and more work on climate engineering ideas such as "cloud whitening" to reflect the sun's heat back into the outer atmosphere.
In a Guardian interview, he said he would finance investment through a tax on carbon emissions that would also raise $50bn to mitigate the effect of climate change, for example by building better sea defences, and $100bn for global healthcare.
His declaration about the importance of action on climate change comes at a crucial point in the debate, with international efforts to agree a global deal on emissions stalled amid a resurgence in scepticism caused by rows over the reliability of the scientific evidence for global warming.
The fallout from those rows continued yesterday when Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, came under new pressure to step down after an independent review of the panel's work called for tighter term limits for its senior executives and greater transparency in its workings. The IPCC has come under fire in recent months following revelations of inaccuracies in the last assessment of global warming, provided to governments in 2007 – for which it won the Nobel peace prize with former the US vice-president Al Gore. The mistakes, including a claim that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035, prompted a review of the IPCC's processes and procedures by the InterAcademy Council (IAC), an organisation of world science bodies.
The IAC said the IPCC needed to be as transparent as possible in how it worked, how it selected people to participate in assessments and its choice of scientific information to assess.
Although Pachauri once compared Lomborg to Hitler, he has now given an unlikely endorsement to the new book, Smart Solutions to Climate Change. In a quote for the launch, Pachauri said: "This book provides not only a reservoir of information on the reality of human-induced climate change, but raises vital questions and examines viable options on what can be done."
Lomborg denies he has performed a volte face, pointing out that even in his first book he accepted the existence of man-made global warming. "The point I've always been making is it's not the end of the world," he told the Guardian. "That's why we should be measuring up to what everybody else says, which is we should be spending our money well."
But he said the crucial turning point in his argument was the Copenhagen Consensus project, in which a group of economists were asked to consider how best to spend $50bn. The first results, in 2004, put global warming near the bottom of the list, arguing instead for policies such as fighting malaria and HIV/Aids. But a repeat analysis in 2008 included new ideas for reducing the temperature rise, some of which emerged about halfway up the ranking. Lomborg said he then decided to consider a much wider variety of policies to reduce global warming, "so it wouldn't end up at the bottom".
The difference was made by examining not just the dominant international policy to cut carbon emissions, but also seven other "solutions" including more investment in technology, climate engineering, and planting more trees and reducing soot and methane, also significant contributors to climate change, said Lomborg.
"If the world is going to spend hundreds of millions to treat climate, where could you get the most bang for your buck?" was the question posed, he added.After the analyses, five economists were asked to rank the 15 possible policies which emerged. Current policies to cut carbon emissions through taxes - of which Lomborg has long been critical - were ranked largely at the bottom of four of the lists. At the top were more direct public investment in research and development rather than spending money on low carbon energy now, and climate engineering.
Lomborg acknowledged trust was a problem when committing to long term R&D, but said politicians were already reneging on promises to cut emissions, and spending on R&D would be easier to monitor. Although many believe private companies are better at R&D than governments, Lomborg said low carbon energy was a special case comparable to massive public investment in computers from the 1950s, which later precpitated the commercial IT revolution.
Lomborg also admitted climate engineering could cause "really bad stuff" to happen, but argued if it could be a cheap and quick way to reduce the worst impacts of climate change and thus there was an "obligation to at least look at it".
He added: "This is not about 'we have all got to live with less, wear hair-shirts and cut our carbon emissions'. It's about technologies, about realising there's a vast array of solutions."
Despite his change of tack, however, Lomborg is likely to continue to have trenchant critics. Writing for today's Guardian, Howard Friel, author of the book The Lomborg Deception, said: "If Lomborg were really looking for smart solutions, he would push for an end to perpetual and brutal war, which diverts scarce resources from nearly everything that Lomborg legitimately says needs more money."
Green groups cautiously welcome Bjørn Lomborg's call for $100bn climate fund
'Sceptical environmentalist' previously argued that countering climate change should be a low priority for governments
John Vidal, guardian.co.uk 31 Aug 10;
Self-styled "sceptical environmentalist" Bjørn Lomborg's call for a $100bn a year global fund for research into climate change solutions was today given a cautious welcome by some leading green groups and thinktanks, but was dismissed by others as politically naive.
A Greenpeace spokesperson welcomed the conversion but said it had come two decades too late for Lomborg to be taken seriously. "At least it confirms the happy maxim that nobody's wrong all the time, apart from Melanie Phillips at the Daily Mail," the spokesperson added.
"It appears that the self-styled sceptical environmentalist is beginning to become less sceptical as he enters middle-age," said Friends of the Earth climate campaigner Mike Childs, adding that Lomborg's volte face would come as a "blow to some in the climate sceptics community".
The controversial Danish statistician, who has never denied man's role in global warming but who has provided an intellectual cover for hard-line climate sceptics, has previously argued that countering climate change should be a low priority for governments. But in his new book Smart Solutions to Climate Change he argues that it should now be addressed "as a priority".
"Lomborg has acknowledged the need for public spending on man-made climate change. He is right that wind, wave and solar are the energy industries in the future and need much greater support from governments. A carbon tax to raise funds is undoubtedly part of the solution, but regulation and public spending also have their place," said Childs.
"But he is still dangerously attracted to pursuing the cheapest, more risky geo-engineering solutions, is putting too much faith in future technologies and R&D, and is not giving enough support to the urgent need to reduce current emissions through rapid deployment of existing solutions and behavioural changes."
Instead of being near the bottom of actions governments should take, as Lomborg argued in 2004, his new book proposes a global carbon tax to raise around $250bn a year to fight the effects of rising temperatures and sea levels. The money would be divided between clean energy research and development ($100bn); low cost geo-engineering solutions such as reflecting solar energy back into space ($1bn); and adaptation to the effects of climate change ($50bn). He further suggests $99bn of the $250bn should be held back to spend on traditional development activities such as clean water and better healthcare in poor countries.
Benny Peiser, director of the free market climate change thinktank Global Warming Policy Foundation said his proposals were more sensible than what those being negotiated at the ongoing UN climate talks which are expected to continue into 2011. "I am not surprised. He's been saying more or less the same for years. The [UN] process is not working at all. This is better and more realistic. His proposals are much more sensible than any attempts to convince China and India to stop emitting," he said.
Lomborg's proposals are surprisingly close to those favoured by the governments of industrialised countries who have accepted that $100bn a year should be made available to poor countries to adapt and that there should be a heavy emphasis on research into clean energy. However, the idea of a carbon tax has proved politically unacceptable for many years partly because it is thought to penalise poor countries which depend more on carbon-intensive goods.
"We would agree that at least $250bn should be raised a year to counter climate change," said one developing country analyst who asked not to be named. "But Lomborg seems to be saying that proportionately less money should go to developing countries and more to develop western technology. This looks like being totally unacceptable to most of the world."
Sceptical green urges smart billions to fight warming
Slim Allagui Yahoo News 5 Sep 10;
COPENHAGEN (AFP) – Bjoern Lomborg, the bad boy of the climate debate who has rejected for years "alarmist" prophecies from environmentalists, stresses in a new book the need to invest billions to fight global warming.
In "Smart Solutions to Climate Change," Lomborg lashes out at current policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions but also highlights the need to spend 100 billion dollars a year on intelligent research and green technologies.
By spending billions in a smart way, the world could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century, insists Lomborg, who edited the new book containing proposals from 28 economists -- including three Nobel laureates -- gathered ahead of last year's climate summit in Copenhagen.
This may seem like an about-turn by the self-proclaimed sceptical environmentalist who had earlier said reducing greenhouse gas emissions should not be a priority as long as there are problems like poverty and famine.
But the 45-year-old Dane, with his mop of blond hair and boyish grin, insists he has not shifted positions.
"I am saying what I have always said: that the climate is a real and important, man-made problem, but that we are handling it badly," he told AFP.
Lomborg insists he has never been opposed to fighting climate change, but only to narrowly focused, inefficient projects aimed at lowering carbon dioxide emissions.
So why the sudden increased emphasis on the need for investment?
"Now that the international community has decided to invest massive amounts of money in the fight against climate change -- much more than in the past. I have to take a position in this new situation," he says.
"The international community has decided to spend huge amounts to fight global warming, but with very little hope of actually cooling down the planet," he charges, pointing out that "this is why I suggest using the money in a smarter way to protect the environment."
The author of the 2001 book "The Sceptical Environmentalist," who has figured on Time Magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people, maintains he is still a sceptic "towards current solutions aimed at reducing CO2 emissions, and sceptical of those who exaggerate the threat and create a wind of panic."
The preferred "green" policies of today's world leaders, he laments, are like "slashing a sword in the water."
The European Union for instance "dedicates 250 billion dollars (209 billion euros) each year" towards cutting its member states' CO2 output by 20 percent over the next decade.
The result however, Lombor estimates, will only be "a temperature reduction of 0.05 degrees (Celsius) by the end of the century."
Another example of misused funds, according to the Dane, can be found in Germany, which "has invested enormous amounts in solar energy -- some 75 billion dollars -- which is more than any other country."
This, he says, "will slow global warming by a mere seven hours by the end of the 20th century."
"It would be more prudent to spend these funds on development of more powerful solar panels that are less expensive to use than fossil fuels," he insists.
Research and development are pet themes for Lomborg, who is also set to present a new documentary at the Toronto Film Festival this month: "Cool It."
The film, he says, is a kind of sequel to Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," involving a lot of travel around the globe to meet people working on new, innovative green energy projects.
Instead of just focusing on reducing emissions, the world should "invest in research and development of green technologies aimed at making them less expensive and accessible to all, and thereby replace (polluting) fossil fuels," he says.
The answer to the planet's woes, Lomborg insists, is to find creative and efficient solutions, like a proposal supported by most of the economists in his new book for a carbon tax that "corresponds to the damages (the gas) causes to the climate: five euros per tonne of CO2."
Doing so, he claims, "would be enough to raise 250 billion dollars around the world to finance research and development of new technologies, and to solve the world's other problems like famine, poverty and third world diseases."
In any case, Lomborg points out that the problem of climate change cannot be "solved until the big CO2 emitting countries, headed by the United States, China and India, transition from oil and coal to renewable energy."
"And this will not happen until we have developed much more efficient solutions at the disposal of everyone because they are less expensive," he says.
* U.N. widens climate cost studies if not all take part
* "More realistic" than 2007 report-Edenhofer
Alister Doyle, Reuters AlertNet 31 Aug 10;
OSLO, Aug 31 (Reuters) - The U.N. panel of climate scientists will look at the costs of "second best" ways of fighting global warming amid doubts that all countries will sign up to U.N.-led action, a leading expert said on Tuesday.
Ottmar Edenhofer, co-chair of the U.N. working group looking at the economics of global warming, said the last U.N. report in 2007 had assumed that all countries would take part and that new technologies for curbing greenhouse gases would be available.
The next reports in 2013-14 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is facing calls for an overhaul of its management and better fact-checking after errors in the 2007 assessment, will include other options.
"We intend to carry out 'second best' scenarios, where we assume we have a fragmented climate regime, where we have limited availability of technologies, to describe a much more realistic policy space," Edenhofer told Reuters by telephone.
The U.N.'s Copenhagen summit in December 2009 agreed only a non-binding deal among about 120 nations -- of a possible total of 194 -- aimed at limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) above pre-industrial times.
The United States, the number two greenhouse gas emitter after China, has not followed other industrialised nations in setting a cap on its greenhouse gas emissions despite pleas by President Barack Obama.
Edenhofer, who is also chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, declined to estimate the likely costs of such "second best" scenarios.
SLOW GDP
The 2007 report said a strong fight against global warming would slow world gross domestic product (GDP) by less than 0.12 percent a year, curbing world GDP by a total of less than 3 percent in 2030.
Most of the costs are billions of dollars to shift from fossil fuels to clean energies such as wind or solar power. In some renewable energies, Edenhofer said there had been more technological progress than expected in the 2007 report.
He also said that new report would look at possible side-effects of combating global warming. Even harmless-sounding strategies, such as planting trees that soak up greenhouse gases, might have side-effects by displacing cropland.
"This is not a risk-less operation...The use of biomass (plants) would probably have severe impacts on food production, on food security, which is a very crucial issue here," he said.
An independent review group urged reforms to the IPCC on Monday after mistakes in the 2007 report such as exaggerating the thaw of the Himalayas.
Edenhofer said he welcomed the proposed reforms by the InterAcademy Council. The review urged the IPCC to ensure that a full range of "thoughtful scientific views" were heard.
(Editing by Peter Graff)
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