Search for Pemphis acidula
from Urban Forest
Artistic Tails of a Butterfly
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature
On how to deal with a hooked White-breasted Waterhen
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Biodiversity 100: Actions for Asia
from The Guardian
Advice for Scientists-turned-Wikipedians
from The Biology Refugia
Monday Morgue: 4th October 2010
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales
Straits Times 4 Oct 10;
THE article ('Dolphin Lagoon is too small: SPCA'; Sept 10) highlighted the concerns of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals over the small-size pools that the dolphins are now housed in at Underwater World in Sentosa.
The same report quoted the Underwater World as saying that the main pool area for its six dolphins exceeds international guidelines and safety standards - and is approved by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority.
While we appreciate that there are studies currently being carried out to assess the dolphins' behaviour, and that if new information becomes available, the necessary steps will be taken to redesign the pool and the activities, stress factors may not always be evident or clear-cut.
Aside from the pool size, the question one must ask is, how have these animals benefited from:
# being taken from their natural environment and deprived of their natural behaviour, which includes hunting for their prey;
# confinement in captivity;
# being subjected to questionable training methods and forced to perform; and
# getting up close and personal with humans for photos or swimming sessions.
All of these have definitely compromised the welfare of the dolphins, including their emotional well-being.
The sooner we can empathise with the animals, and move away from the outmoded concept of capturing them for entertainment purposes, the sooner a respect can be fostered for these intelligent, sensitive and emotional creatures that are certainly deserving of a better quality of life.
The SPCA looks forward to the day when no more wild animal shows are held here.
Deirdre Moss (Ms)
Executive Director
Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals
17 cases of animal abuse this year, nearly double last year's total
Kimberly Spykerman & Grace Chua Straits Times 4 Oct 10;
ANIMAL abuse in Singapore has hit a startling high, with the number of cases so far this year far surpassing last year's total.
The Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority (AVA) said there were 17 cases of animal abuse in the first eight months of this year, almost double the nine cases reported for the whole of last year. Most of these cases involved dogs, cats and rabbits.
In 2007 and 2008, there were seven and 11 cases respectively.
The AVA attributed the large number of cases to growing awareness of abuse and credible witnesses coming forward more frequently. Both help provide the AVA with more teeth to pursue animal abusers.
Said AVA spokesman Goh Shih Yong: 'If there is sufficient evidence or witness accounts to show that cruelty was committed, AVA will not hesitate to take action.'
It added that in less serious cases, such as the ones that result from ignorance, offenders will be offered a composition fine up to a maximum of $1,000. But more serious abusers can expect AVA to prosecute them in court and push for a deterrent sentence.
Penalties for animal cruelty have been tightened over the years.
In 2002, Singapore passed laws which raised maximum fines and jail terms for animal cruelty offences from $500 and six months to $10,000 and 12 months respectively.
Animal activists, however, say that punishments meted out so far are more like 'slaps on the wrist'.
The president of Action for Singapore Dogs (ASD), Mr Ricky Yeo, said that although there are tougher penalties for animal abuse, the full extent of the law has yet to be felt.
In 2007, a man was fined $3,500 for flinging his dog to the ground in a fit of rage following a quarrel with his girlfriend. The dog ended up with a fractured leg.
Mr Yeo also brought up recent cases in the news of a groomer and a dog breeder, who were jailed two and six weeks respectively for animal cruelty even though the maximum jail term is one year. 'There's still not enough emphasis on animal welfare,' he said.
A lack of empathy for animals may be one of the reasons there is still little information being shared about an incident earlier this year involving a pomeranian that was brutally bashed against a wall until it died. Singapore animal groups and vets said it was one of the worst cases of abuse seen here. The assailant has yet to be nabbed.
For their part, animal welfare groups like the Cat Welfare Society (CWS) and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) have set out guidelines for the public to report cases of animal abuse.
CWS vice-president Veron Lau explained that while the society was receiving complaints about abuse from the public, the lack of proper documentation makes it nearly impossible to prosecute an abuser.
So it put up guidelines on its website, encouraging those who witness animal abuse to document the goings-on, take photos if possible, prepare a statement for the authorities and be willing to testify.
'If people feel so strongly about abuse, they should do something constructive and find out how to do something about it,' Ms Lau said.
As for those who abuse animals, the law may not be the only thing to worry about.
In an October 2005 paper that appeared in the United States-published Journal of Community Health, a team of researchers conducting a study over seven years in 11 metropolitan areas determined that pet abuse was one of five factors that predicted who would begin other abusive behaviours.
National University of Singapore cognitive psychologist John Elliott, who studies child abuse and neglect, said that while not all animal abusers go on to other crimes, such abusers may be wired differently: 'To contemplate abuse of another living thing, you need a certain sort of indifference to suffering, a sort of psychopathology.'
The Star 4 Oct 10;
JOHOR BARU: The people here must learn from the recent flood in Singapore and discard the use of plastic bags because these items choke up the waterways when it rains, said Johor Baru MP Datuk Abdul Shahrir Samad.
“If this (flood) happened in the middle of Johor Baru such as at Jalan Yahya Awal, people would remark that it is normal and that the irrigation plan in the city is bad.
“But this happened in the middle of Singapore, which is known to have the best development plan,” he said when launching the “No Plastic Bag Every Saturday” campaign by Aeon Co (M) Bhd at the Aeon City Tebrau mall on Saturday.
Shahrir warned that if such a thing could happen in Singapore, the people in Johor Baru would have to be more vigilant and not clog drainage systems with rubbish.
He proposed that the use of plastic bags be made illegal as a step to reduce pollution.
Shahrir said plastic bags were the main pollutants, especially in the city centre, as users would usually just chuck these at the roadside.
“This is a common sight, especially in Sungai Tebrau,” he said, adding that global warming had made it worse by increasing rainfall.
Aeon human resources and administration senior general manager Isao Yamaguchi said the campaign at its Tebrau mall marked the fourth phase of its nationwide drive at Jusco stores, covering Johor, Negri Sembilan, Malacca and Perak.
The world's oceans are teeming with far greater diversity of life than was previously thought, according to the first Census of Marine Life which has been 10 years in the making.
Richard Gray, The Telegraph 3 Oct 10;
Giant sea spiders the size of dinner plates. Wriggly creatures nicknamed "Squidworms" because of their strange-looking tentacles. A blind lobster whose Latin name means "terrible claw".
These are among the new types of animal discovered in the most ambitious-ever survey of the world's oceans, which concludes tomorrow with the publication of the first Census of Marine Life.
The report marks the first attempt to provide a definitive record of all the species of plants and animals living in the sea.
It will reveal that almost 250,000 have now been identified, while predicting there may be at least another 750,000 still waiting to be discovered beneath the waves.
The Census has been 10 years in the making, and during the project scientists from around the world have identified more than 6,000 new species.
Yet despite this great diversity of life, the report will warn that humans are having a devastating impact on the numbers of many species through fishing and pollution.
"Marine scientists are at present unable to provide good estimates of the total number of species that flourish in the ocean," it will say.
"It will probably take at least another decade of the Census before we can defensibly estimate the total number of marine species.
"The deep-sea floor is no longer considered a desert, characterised by a paltry diversity of species.
"Over exploitation, habitat loss and pollution have depleted many fisheries that previously provided food and employment."
More than 2,700 scientists have helped to compile the Census, with more than 540 expeditions to visit all of the world's oceans.
Among the new species discovered are Dinochelus ausubeli, the blind lobster with a long, spiny, pincer, which was found 330 yards (300 metres) below the surface in the Philippine Sea.
British scientists have made huge numbers of finds in the cold and inhospitable ocean around Antarctica. In these conditions, marine life grows larger than anywhere else in the world.
Sea spiders, a family of eight-legged creatures which rarely grow bigger than a fingernail in UK waters, have been discovered up to nine inches (23cm) across in Antarctic seas.
The deep sea floor, previously thought to be an almost lifeless desert due to the huge pressure, pitch black conditions and cold water found at depths greater than 6,000 feet (1.8km), has provided some of the biggest surprises.
Researchers have discovered huge communities of different species scattered across the ocean floor, living at the mouth of thermal vents and rifts that seep nutrients into the ocean.
Other species on the sea bed, away from vents, feed off the life that falls into the depths from the water above.
The "Squidworm", a new species of worm, was found living in the deep water of the Celebes Sea in south east Asia.
A furry crab, named the Yeti Crab or Kiwa hirsuta, was also among the discoveries when it was found beside a vent in the deep sea off Easter Island in the south Pacific. Not only was it a new species but part of a new family previously unknown to science.
Recently scientists have discovered a different member of the same family on the ocean floor off Costa Rica where cold fluid enriched with methane has been found seeping through the sea bed, sustaining colonies of animal life.
Dr Maria Baker, a researcher at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton and a project manager on the Census, said: "Life is much more widespread on the ocean floor than was thought.
"We still don't know how it spreads from vent to vent, but there could be stepping stones all over the place provided by food that falls from the water above.
"The Census provides us with a baseline to measure the effects that humans are having, but it is also opening people's eyes to what are in our oceans. It is showing us that we still have no idea of exactly what we are sharing our planet with."
Genetic testing now allows scientists to work out whether newly-discovered creatures are new species or just differently-coloured or shaped varients of those already known.
One new species of crustacean, which looks like a pale shrimp, was identified in this way. The all-white creature was initially thought to be a variety of Epimeria georgiana, which has orange specks, but turned out to be new when scientists looked at its DNA.
The number of plant and animal species is also dwarfed by the possible number of different types of microbes found in the seas - up to a billion, according to the Census.
Dr Huw Griffiths, a marine scientist at the British Antarctic Survey who has gone on some of the Census expeditions, said: "About 80 per cent of the species in the Antarctic live on the sea floor. It is incredibly rich and varied there.
"They are the sort of creatures that a palaeontologist might be more likely to recognise than a marine biologist because they seem to be communities we normally see in the fossil record than in modern oceans elsewhere."
Census shows exotic sea life; helps study BP spill
* Thousands of new marine species found in 10-year census
* Benchmark to help assess climate change, BP oil spill
* Many fish, other marine species, dodge census takers
Alister Doyle, Reuters 4 Oct 10;
OSLO, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Scientists completed a 10-year census of marine life on Monday after finding thousands of exotic new species in a project that will help assess threats to the oceans ranging from climate change to BP's (BP.L: Quote) oil spill.
The $650 million international census, by 2,700 experts in 80 nations, discovered creatures such as a hairy-clawed "yeti crab", luminous fish in the sunless depths, a shrimp thought extinct in Jurassic times and a 7-metre (23 ft) long squid.
But the project (www.coml.org), which reckoned most types of creatures dodged the census and were still to be found, also documented overfishing of cod or tuna, hazards from oil and other pollution and impacts of global warming.
"The news about the oceans is both very good and very bad," said Paul Snelgrove, of Memorial University in Canada, who compiled the final report of a census that found more life than expected from the Arctic Ocean to volcanic vents on the seabed.
It raised the estimate of known marine animals and plants bigger than microbes, from worms to blue whales, to nearly 250,000 from 230,000. And it estimated that far more, or 750,000 other species, were still to be found.
Scientists said the biggest gaps were in still unexplored tracts of the Arctic, Antarctic and eastern Pacific oceans. And much of the deep ocean floor had barely been sampled.
"There is an enormous opportunity," said Jesse Ausubel, a co-founder of the census and program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. "There are three species out there to be discovered for every one we know."
The census itself found more than 6,000 potentially new species, led in numbers by crustaceans and molluscs, and made formal descriptions of more than 1,200 of them.
AGE, DISTANCE, SPEED
Among extremes, scientists found a metre-long tube worm an estimated 600 years old, tracked a sooty shearwater bird flying 64,000 km (40,000 miles) in the longest known annual migration and recorded a sailfish swimming at 110 kph (69 mph).
Among spinoffs, a 2009 review of the Gulf of Mexico found 8,332 species from fish to mammals in the area hit by BP's deep water blowout in April 2010, the worst spill in U.S. history.
"It's become one of the most valuable potential contributions of the census," Ausubel said of the Gulf survey. Checking the state of the Gulf against the public database would help understand damage -- and costs of BP's cleanup.
Two members of a five-strong commission named by U.S. President Barack Obama to investigate the spill - Terry Garcia and Donald Boesch -- had worked on the census.
In the longer term, monitoring the seas may help understand threats such as climate change and a related acidification of the oceans. Examination of the makeup of some of the creatures and plants might yield medical breakthroughs.
A related project had created a "barcode of life", inspired by the black and white lines on products in supermarkets, that allows scientists to identify species with a quick genetic test.
That has already exposed mislabelling of sushi in New York City and could have wide economic impact in tracking fraud in fish exports.
And the scientists said the census had successfully focused public attention on the beauty and variety of marine life and could help rally efforts to safeguard the seas.
Artists have been inspired by some creatures -- images of the yeti crab, found off Easter Island, has even been emblazoned on skateboards, Snelgrove said. "These critters are tremendous ambassadors for us," he added. (Editing by Ralph Boulton)
Global marine life census charts vast world beneath the seas
Beatrice Debut Yahoo News 5 Oct 10;
LONDON (AFP) – Results of the first ever global marine life census were unveiled Monday, revealing a startling overview after a decade-long trawl through the murky depths.
The Census of Marine Life estimated there are more than one million species in the oceans, with at least three-quarters of them yet to be discovered.
The 650-million-dollar (470-million-euro) international study discovered more than 6,000 potentially new species, and found some species considered rare were actually common.
The study said it offered "an unprecedented picture of the diversity, distribution and abundance of all kinds of marine life in Planet Ocean -- from microbes to whales, from the icy poles to the warm tropics, from the tidal near shores to the deepest dark depths."
The census establishes a baseline against which 21st-century changes can be monitored.
New species were discovered, marine highways and rest stops mapped and changes in species abundance were documented.
The research involved more than 2,700 scientists, 670 institutions, more than 540 expeditions and around 9,000 days at sea. Nearly 30 million observations of 120,000 species were made.
The census was formally launched in London, with more than 300 figures involved gathering to share the results and consider their implications.
"The census has far exceeded any dream that I had. We felt like the people who created the first dictionary and encylopedia 250 years ago," said Jesse Ausubel, a scientist who co-founded the study.
"The most surprising thing was beauty. Our eyes pumped out of our head in front of this beauty."
The survey set out to find out what used to live in the oceans, what lives there now and what might live there in the future.
The census said 16,764 species of fish had so far been described, but an estimated 5,000 more were yet to be discovered.
Scientists found some species thought extinct 50 million years ago, while other finds were less encouraging.
Around 40 percent of plankton, at the bottom of the ocean food chain, has disappeared in the last 30 years, which was put down to a rise in ocean temperatures.
Sharks have disappeared from 99 percent of some areas.
Australian Ian Poiner, chair of the census steering committee, said the researchers "systematically defined for the first time both the known and the vast unknown, unexplored ocean".
"All surface life depends on life inside and beneath the oceans. Sea life provides half of our oxygen and a lot of our food and regulates climate. We are all citizens of the sea," he said.
"While much remains unknown, including at least 750,000 undiscovered species and their roles, we are better acquainted now with our fellow travellers and their vast habitat on this globe."
The census documented a changing marine world, richer in diversity, more connected through distribution and movements, more impacted by humans and less explored than was expected.
The researchers used sound, satellites and electronics to track migratory routes.
They got down to 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) below the sea in the western Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench.
They affirmed that by weight up to 90 percent of marine life is microbial -- with the equivalent of 35 elephants for every living person.
Scientific steering committee vice-chair Myriam Sibuet of France, said: "The census enlarged the known world. Life astonished us everywhere we looked.
"In the deep sea we found luxuriant communities despite extreme conditions. The discoveries of new species and habitats both advanced science and inspired artists with their extraordinary beauty."
Much of the marine world remains to be explored, so vast are the seas.
The census shows where explorers have not yet looked. For more than 20 percent of the oceans' volume, the database has no records at all, and for large areas very few.
The findings are partially available on the www.iobis.org website.
Census shows connectedness of world's marine life
Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Yahoo News 4 Oct 10;
WASHINGTON – The world's oceans may be vast and deep, but a decade-long count of marine animals finds sea life so interconnected that it seems to shrink the watery world. An international effort to create a Census of Marine Life was completed Monday with maps and three books, increasing the number of counted and validated species to 201,206.
A decade ago the question of how many species are out there couldn't be answered. It also could have led to a lot of arguments among scientists. Some species were counted several or even dozens of times, said Jesse Ausubel of the Alfred Sloan Foundation, the co-founder of the effort that involved 2,700 scientists.
The $650 million project got money and help from more than 600 groups, including various governments, private foundations, corporations, non-profits, universities, and even five high schools. The Sloan foundation is the founding sponsor, contributing $75 million.
But what scientists learned was more than a number or a count. It was a sense of how closely life connects from one place to another and one species to another, Ausubel said.
Take the bizarre and minuscule shrimp-like creature called Ceratonotus steiningeri. It has several spikes and claws and looks intimidating — if it weren't a mere two-hundredths of an inch long. Five years ago this critter had never been seen before. No one knew of its existence.
Then, off the Atlantic coast of Africa as part of the census, it was found at a depth of more than three miles below the surface. It was one of 800 species found in that research trip, said discoverer Pedro Martinez Arbizu, a department head at the German Centre for Marine Biodiversity Research.
He was astonished to find that the tiny creature also was within the cataloging he'd made earlier 8,000 miles away in the central Pacific.
There was that critter again. Same shrimpy creature, different ocean.
"We were really very, very surprised about that," Arbizu said in an interview. "We think this species has a very broad distribution area."
In that way, Ceratonotus steiningeri exemplifies what the census found.
"We didn't know so much about the deep sea...," Arbizu said. "We believe now that the deep sea is more connected, also the different oceans, than we previously thought."
The census also describes a species of strange large squid that was only recently found in waters more than 3,000 feet deep. The 23-foot-long squid has large fins with arms and tentacles that have elbow-like bends. Scientists had seen it in larvae form before, but not in its full-blown glory until it was filmed at depth.
The census also highlighted marine life that makes commutes that put a suburban worker's daily grind to shame. Before the census started, the migration of the Pacific bluefin tuna had not been monitored much. But by tagging a 33-pound tuna, scientists found that it crossed the Pacific three times in just 600 days, according to Stanford University's Barbara Block. A different species of tuna, the Atlantic bluefin, migrates about 3,700 miles between North America and Europe. Humpback whales do a nearly 5,000 mile north-south migration.
Still, that's nothing compared to the sea bird that Ian Poiner of Australia studies.
He studied puffins that make a nearly 40,000-mile circle every year from New Zealand to Japan, Russia, Alaska, Chile and back in what the census calls the "longest-ever electronically recorded migration."
Other species, such as plankton and even seals, travel great lengths, but stay in the same part of the ocean. They travel thousands of feet between the surface into the depths of the oceans. The scientists measured elephant seals that dived about 1.5 miles, Ausubel said.
The census found another more basic connection in the genetic blueprint of life. Just as chimps and humans share more than 95 percent of their DNA, the species of the oceans have most of their DNA in common, too. Among fish in general, the snippets of genetic code that scientists have analyzed suggest only about a 2 to 15 percent difference, said Dirk Steinke, lead scientist for marine barcoding at the University of Guelph in Canada.
"Although these are really old species of fish, there's not much that separates them," Steinke said.
Related links
Photos from the census on the National Geographic website.
Ethirajan Anbarasan BBC News 1 Oct 10;
Tigers prowling the famous mangrove forests of Bangladesh are nearly half the weight of other wild Bengal tigers in South Asia, a study has found.
The average weight of female tigers in the Sundarbans forests was 76.7kg (170lb), according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service research.
But other wild Bengal tigers in the region tipped the scales at 138.2 kg on average.
Researchers said this could be because Sundarbans tigers ate smaller deer.
The team believes the big cats found in the mangrove forest, which stretches from Bangladesh to India, could be among the world's smallest tigers.
They belong to one of nine sub-species of Bengal tiger in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan.
Smaller dinner
Researchers from the University of Minnesota and the Bangladesh Forest Department - who carried out the study for the US Fish and Wildlife Service - weighed three Sundarbans tigers.
Two of the animals were captured and sedated, but the other one had been killed by villagers.
Adam Barlow, one of the authors of the research, said they do not know why the Sundarbans tigers are so small.
"This could be related to the small size of deer available to tigers in the Sundarbans, compared to the larger deer and other prey available to tigers in other parts," he said.
It is estimated that between 300 and 500 Bengal tigers live in the Bangladesh side of the Sundarbans alone.
They are isolated from the next tiger population by a distance of up to 300km (190 miles).
Tigers are an endangered species. There are only about 3,500 left in the wild worldwide - less than one third of them breeding females.
Yereth Rosen Reuters AlertNet 3 Oct 10;
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Move over, polar bear. The Pacific walrus may be the new icon of global warming.
Like polar bears, walruses are dependent on floating sea ice to rest, forage for food and nurture their young.
Like polar bears, walruses are suffering because of a scarcity of summer and fall sea ice in Arctic waters that scientists attribute to climate change.
And like polar bears, which were listed as threatened in 2008, protections under the Endangered Species Act may be granted to walruses, even though it is hard to get an accurate count of their population.
"You don't have to know how many passengers are on the Titanic to know it's in trouble when it hits an iceberg," said Rebecca Noblin, staff attorney for The Center for Biological Diversity, which sued to obtain Endangered Species Act safeguards for the walrus.
For the lumbering, long-tusked marine mammals, problems caused by scarce ice are showing up on beaches in northwestern Alaska and across the Bering Strait in northeastern Siberia.
For the third time in four years, large crowds of walruses have congregated this summer on shorelines of the Chukchi Sea instead of spreading over chunks of floating ice.
That ice has largely disappeared. This year, summer sea ice levels reached their third-lowest point since satellite measurements started in 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.
As many as 15,000 walruses began crowding the shore near Point Lay, Alaska, in August and are just starting to disperse as ice forms in chilly fall weather, federal biologists said.
CROWDED BEACHES
Such congregations place walruses far from the best sources of clams and other food they pluck from the icy waters and, if they are young and small, at risk of sudden and grisly death.
Last year, at another Alaska shore site where a few thousand walruses had converged, biologists found the carcasses of 131 calves, apparently trampled to death in a stampede.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was to announce last month its recommendation for an Endangered Species Act listing. The deadline was extended to Jan. 31 to give the agency time to evaluate two new studies.
Both reports warn of a grim future. One predicts that the Chukchi Sea will be ice-free for three months a year by mid-century and up to five months by the end of the century, and that ice-free periods in the Bering Sea also will expand.
The other study calculates that the ice-dependent walruses have a 40 percent chance of being extinct or in danger of extinction by century's end.
A LONGER 'COMMUTE?'
The latest estimate of the total Pacific walrus population is 129,000, said Joel Garlich-Miller, a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist. That figure is based on incomplete aerial surveys conducted by U.S. and Russian scientists and is probably on the low end, he said.
Another key question is whether walruses stuck on shore are spending significantly more energy searching for food than they would if they could forage from floating ice.
"There's this commute that's new to them, and it costs them," said Anthony Fischbach, a biologist and walrus specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
He also suspects there may be fewer calves than there should be.
"It's certainly shocking to see over 100 dead calves that were apparently healthy. But it's hard to put it in context," said Fischbach, one of the biologists who documented the carnage.
"Are these the strong ones that come ashore, whereas the ones that are weaker couldn't make the 150-mile swim to shore?"
To try to find answers, he and his colleagues have embarked on studies to count the adult-calf ratio within herds and use radio tracking to pin down their travels for food.
Advocates of Chukchi Sea oil drilling and other development are expected to oppose any Pacific walrus listing.
The state of Alaska, which supports oil drilling in walrus habitat, already has sued to overturn the listing of polar bears and formally opposed new protections considered by the government for ice-dependent Arctic seals. The state also objected to habitat protections proposed for polar bear and endangered Steller sea lions. (Editing by Steve Gorman and Greg McCune)
Laurie Goering Reuters AlertNet 30 Sep 10;
How quickly could climate change worsen hunger? According to a new report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), expected changes in temperature, rainfall and storms could put an additional 49 million people in Asia at risk of hunger by 2020. That's just 10 years away.
By 2020, the report says, crop yields in some areas of Asia will be down by 10 percent, even as population growth continues to rise. Demand for meat and milk - products that will take an increasing share of agricultural crop production - is also expected to grow.
"This should set off warning alarms across the region," Hiroyuki Konuma, the FAO's assistant director-general for Asia and the Pacific, told listeners at a regional FAO conference in South Korea this week.
While some temperate areas of Asia may see production increase as conditions warm, tropical and sub-tropical areas will see crop declines, he warned, with farmers facing everything from attacks by new pest varieties to worsening droughts or floods.
South and Southeast Asia and small Pacific Island nations are expected to be the hardest hit, he said.
The longer term trajectory of crop production in the region is even more worrying. By 2050, crop production in some parts of Asia is expected to fall by 30 percent, leaving 132 million more people at risk of hunger.
What can be done? Adaptive farming - including shifts to more tolerant crop varieties - can help, as well as better use of water resources. Protecting forests, coastal areas and fragile arid and mountain ecosystems, including grazing land, could help stem weather variability and loss of water resources, and protect crop and animal production. And making sure disaster risk management is part of other planning efforts will be key, the FAO report says.
* Talks seek to generate progress towards treaty pact
* Negotiations focus on funding, technology, measurement
* Observers worry distrust will drag down progress
Chris Buckley Reuters AlertNet 3 Oct 10;
TIANJIN, China, Oct 3 (Reuters) - The world's top greenhouse polluter hosts week-long U.N. climate talks from Monday aimed at sealing a broader pact to fight global warming and helping poorer nations with money and clean-energy technology.
The meeting in the northern port city of Tianjin will be the first time China has hosted the tortuous U.N. talks over what succeeds the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the key treaty on climate change, which expires in late 2012.
The United Nations says rich and poor countries need to agree on a tougher pact that curbs fossil fuel emissions blamed for heating up the planet.
Scientists say the world is on track for temperatures to rise well beyond 2 degrees Celsius, risking greater weather extremes like this year's floods in Pakistan and drought in Russia.
"There is much at stake going into next week's Tianjin meeting and later in the year," wrote Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute, a U.S. environmental group.
"Many people are wondering how governments are going to overcome their differences and ensure that progress is made in 2010," Morgan wrote in a commentary on Tianjin.
Negotiators from nearly 200 governments failed to agree last year on a new legally binding treaty. A meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009 ended in rancour between rich and developing countries, especially China, and produced a non-binding political accord with many gaps.
Officials in Tianjin hope to foster stronger agreement on specifics. These include pledges to curb emissions and how to measure such actions internationally, transfers of adaptation funds and green technology to poorer countries, and over support for carbon-absorbing forests in Brazil, Indonesia and elsewhere.
More broadly, they hope to dispel some of the distrust that hobbled talks in 2009 and festered after Copenhagen.
TRUST
If governments fail to score even modest advances, that will cloud chances of solid progress at the next big U.N. climate meeting, in Cancun, Mexico, late this year, and that would make reaching a legally binding treaty in 2011 all the more difficult.
That would leave less time for the world to figure out how to rein in greenhouse gas emissions and would add to uncertainties weighing on companies unsure where climate policy and carbon markets are headed after 2012.
"The expectations going into Tianjin are to lay a foundation for Cancun, to create an atmosphere of trust," Jake Schmidt of the Natural Resources Defence Council, a U.S.-based group, said in a conference call with reporters this week.
A key worry is the United States, which never ratified Kyoto, will not follow through on the Obama administration's emissions cut pledge after Congress failed to pass a climate bill.
"We hope that Tianjin will further advance some consensus on these issues so that the Cancun meeting can reach a preliminary summary that is settled on," said Yang Fuqiang, WWF director of Global Climate Solutions.
"If we have such long negotiations and can't advance even one small step, I fear that the gulf of distrust between developed and developing countries will be even bigger," Yang, a former energy official, told Reuters.
Although China will be hosting the conference, it does not set the agenda in Tianjin, where negotiators will be focused on a draft treaty put together by the U.N. climate change body.
But China is a crucial presence at the negotiating table, as both the biggest developing economy and the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from human activity. Its emissions have more than doubled since 2000 and have outstripped the United States'.
China's emissions grew to 7.5 billion tonnes of CO2 in 2009, according to data from BP. [ID:nLDE65813J]
But China maintains that it and other poorer countries must be given more space to grow their economies and, inevitably, their total emissions for years to come.
Beijing has instead vowed to reduce "carbon intensity" -- the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each dollar of economic activity -- by 40-45 percent by 2020 compared to 2005.
The United States, European Union and other governments want China, India and other big emerging economies to take on firmer commitments to control and eventually cut emissions, and to subject them to more international monitoring.
China and like-minded governments say wealthy economies need to give firmer commitments for economic and technological help against global warming, and to commit to bigger emissions cuts. (Additional reporting by Maxim Duncan; Editing by David Fogarty and Benjamin Kang Lim)
Stalled UN climate talks to resume in China
Karl Malakunas Yahoo News 4 Oct 10;
TIANJIN, China (AFP) – Thousands of environment experts were set to gather in China on Monday in a bid to kick-start stalled UN talks on climate change, amid warnings that time was running out to broker a deal.
The six days of talks in the northern port city of Tianjin, due to begin at 10:00 am (0200 GMT), are part of long-running efforts through the United Nations to secure a post-2012 treaty on tackling global warming.
The talks are the first time China has hosted a major international climate change conference or a UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting.
Little progress has been made since world leaders failed to broker a deal in Copenhagen last year and the talks are being seen as crucial in rebuilding trust ahead of another UN climate summit in Cancun, Mexico next month.
"Tianjin must be the moment when countries begin clearing the fog," Jennifer Morgan, climate and energy programme director for the World Resources Institute, said in a briefing paper on this week's conference.
"They need to demonstrate their deep willingness to find solutions and move forward in a productive manner. This will go a long way to providing clarity for people around the world that Cancun -- and the UN process itself -- can be a success."
The final goal of the process is a treaty aimed at curbing the greenhouse gases that scientists say cause global warming, which in turn could have catastrophic consequences on the world's climate system.
The treaty would then potentially be clinched late next year at a UN summit in South Africa, in time to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires at the end of 2012.
However, after the Copenhagen failure and the continuing battles between developed and developing countries over who should shoulder responsibilities for curbing greenhouse gases, expectations have been lowered.
The UN's climate change chief, Christiana Figueres, warned last week that progress in negotiations at Tianjin, Cancun and beyond were going to be very slow.
Speaking in the United States, Figueres said that no "big bang" deal on tackling climate change was possible, only slow, incremental steps.
"Now this progressive approach is probably a sane approach, but it is in stark contrast to the urgency of the matter," said Figueres, executive secretary of the 194-member UNFCCC.
"That's the problem -- that we can only go in incremental steps but the matter is really very urgent."
Devastating floods in Pakistan and China this year, as well as fires in Russia, are just a taste of the extreme weather that scientists say humans will suffer through if world leaders do not curb greenhouse gas emissions soon.
The phenomenal economic growth of China has seen it overtake the United States as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in recent years, and its efforts to limit emissions will be under the spotlight this week.
After being blamed by many in the developed world for derailing the Copenhagen talks, analysts say China is holding the event partly to demonstrate its commitment to the UN process and clean energy.
Nevertheless, China is expected to hold firm on many of the key disputes with the United States and other developed nations that have led to the current gridlock.
One is its insistence that developing nations should not have to commit to binding targets on cutting emissions.
In Tianjin, the roughly 3,000 delegates from governments, industry groups, non-government organisations and research institutions are expected to focus on preparing potential deals on specific issues so they can be signed in Cancun.
One key issue is whether negotiators can make progress on a promised fund that would eventually be worth 100 billion dollars a year to help developing countries cope with climate change.
Nina Chestney Reuters 1 Oct 10;
LONDON (Reuters) - The International Maritime Organization (IMO) failed to reach agreement on proposals to cut carbon emissions from new ships, delegates said on Friday, adding that further talks would be held in March.
The shipping sector accounts for nearly 3 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.
Shipping is not covered by the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol and a new global climate treaty is still under debate, meaning the industry does not currently have any mandatory emissions laws.
As this week's IMO marine environment protection committee meeting drew to a close on Friday, delegates said there was little consensus on proposals for technical and operational measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from ships.
The committee will hold another meeting from March 28 to April 1 next year to discuss a market-based mechanism for lowering emissions.
"Progress is slow but I would absolutely reject that the shipping industry is not taking this seriously," John Aitken, secretary general of industry group SEAaT, whose members include BP's and Royal Dutch Shell's shipping units, told Reuters.
Talks this week have focused on a proposal for an Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) to make new vessels environmentally friendly -- put forward by Japan, Norway and the United States -- as well as a mandatory market-based mechanism.
"The worst outcome for a global industry like shipping would be to have differing emissions reductions schemes being imposed in different places - but that is the future shipping nations are courting by failing to reach agreement in their own forum," said Simon Walmsley, marine manager at environmental group WWF.
The meeting exposed rifts between developed and developing countries, with some refusing to acknowledge that shipping should have mandatory measures to reduce global emissions.
However, the fact that governments and industry delegates were debating the proposals and not dismissing them was seen as a good sign.
"Governments have given a promising signal this week that they're beginning to take the shipping industry's important role in tackling climate change seriously," said Tim Gore, Oxfam's EU climate change policy adviser.
(Editing by Marguerita Choy)
Shipping nations risk loss of control over greenhouse gas regulation
WWF 1 Oct 10;
London, UK: Shipping nations are risking losing their control over maritime greenhouse gas reduction standards, global environment organisation WWF warned today in the wake of another failure to reach specific agreement on curbing maritime carbon emissions.
The key environmental sub-group of the UN-linked International Maritime Organisation (IMO) concluded a week long meeting today possibly further away than ever from agreement on efficiency and technology initiatives and market based mechanisms to cut shipping emissions.
Under existing UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreements, the shipping and aviation sectors have been charged with coming up with mechanisms to cut emissions.
At its last meeting in March, the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee (IMO MEPC) had endorsed a package of efficiency measures, specifically a mandatory energy efficiency design index (EEDI) and ships energy efficiency management plan (SEEMP). But the week-long meeting concluding tonight has failed to reach any consensus on implementing these measures.
“Like the aviation industry, the world’s maritime nations either need to find an emissions reductions solution within the IMO framework or face the possibility of less sympathetic regulation from elsewhere,” said Dr Simon Walmsley, WWF’s observer to the IMO talks.
“The worst outcome for a global industry like shipping would be to have differing emissions reductions schemes being imposed in different places – but that is the future shipping nations are courting by failing to reach agreement in their own forum.”
The world’s shipping industry accounts for over 2.7 % of total carbon emissions, and plays an important role in the global economy, transporting over 90% of global trade.
The meeting exposed further rifts between developed and developing maritime nations and was marked by a blunt refusal by some nations to acknowledge that shipping needs to contribute substantially to the global emissions reductions needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.
All shipping flag states are treated equally under IMO rules, while in other forums such as the UNFCCC concessions are made to the needs of developing states.
“Drawing such distinctions between developing and developed countries in shipping is not that simple,” said Dr Walmsley. “Shipping owners may be from a developed country, but their ships could be built, flagged and crewed in developing countries.
“Shipping states can either find creative ways to slash emissions together or see additional costs imposed on world trade as some trading blocks, states or even just ports bring shipping into their own regional schemes for reducing greenhouse gases.”
No rules required for one solution
Ironically, some leading shipping companies are steaming ahead with an option which dramatically reduces emissions with “no rules, regulations, investments or even research needed”.
Writing to mark World Maritime Day, traditionally held during the last week of September, Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL) CEO Arild Iversen and WWF International Director General James Leape noted that just a four knot reduction in sailing speed could reduce daily emissions by nearly 40 percent.
But with surveys showing goods in transit spend lengthy periods just waiting for connections, “slowing vessels down would not mean slowing up trade” the two leaders wrote.
”By planning more precisely, goods and cargo could actually travel slower, yet arrive to consumers sooner, while reducing emissions, cost and port congestion at the same time.
“We appreciate that manufacturers have capital invested in cargo, and sitting cargo is sitting capital, but a better balance between time and emissions can be reached.”
WWL, the world’s largest provider of Ro-Ro ocean transportation, has long been a key partner in WWF’s high seas conservation work and has a vision of largely emissions free shipping by 2040.
Cutting shipping emissions could raise billions to help fight climate change says Oxfam
Oxfam GB - UK Reuters AlertNet 28 Sep 10;
The shipping industry can do more to tackle climate change and raise billions of dollars to help poor countries cope with its devastating impact said international agency Oxfam ahead of a major meeting of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) starting in London today.
Oxfam is calling for government officials and shipping experts of the IMO - the international shipping regulators - to consider measures to reduce uncapped and rising shipping emissions, while at the same time raising more than $10bn per year in new climate cash through the auctioning of emission permits. Progress here would bring the world closer to raising the $100bn per year pledged by rich countries at last year’s UN climate talks to help poor countries protect themselves from the impacts of climate change and develop in a low carbon way.
Tim Gore, Oxfam’s EU climate change policy advisor said, “This is a unique opportunity for shipping to become less of a source and more of a solution to the climate crisis. The industry could give vulnerable communities a significant helping hand in the fight against climate change by both controlling a rising source of global greenhouse gas emissions and generating desperately needed cash so they can cope with its devastating effects.
 ”Shipping plays a vital role in keeping the wheels of global trade moving. The International Maritime Organisation could implement a fair scheme to control emissions, that won’t penalise trade from developing countries and will provide some of the vital resources needed to tackle climate change.”
The IMO is meeting just ahead of the next round of UN climate talks in China (4th-9th October) and the last gathering of the Advisory Group on Finance (AGF), which was established to identify ways to raise the $100bn pledged at Copenhagen. The group’s recommendations are due to be published in October.
Gore said: “Despite the continuing global recession rich governments can raise the billions required to help poor countries cope with climate change without dipping into their cash strapped budgets. The shipping industry can’t do it alone, but it can be part of a package of innovative finance-raising measures including those addressing uncapped emissions from international shipping and aviation, a Robin Hood Tax on financial transactions and re-direction of rich-country fossil fuel subsidies.
“No stone should be left unturned in the search for new climate cash and the shipping industry must play its part to raise tens of billions for a new UN climate fund ensuring poor communities get the resources they need.”
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