Metamorphosis - the Birth of a New (Butterfly) Book
from Butterflies of Singapore
16 Oct (Sat): Talk on "Butterflies of Singapore"
from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity!
Birds at Buloh
from Trek through Paradise
Digging around at Pandan Reservoir
from Water Quality in Singapore
Red Junglefowl – eclipse adult male
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Huge compost heap from Punggol Way site fouls mood of residents; contractor working to clear the air
Amresh Gunasingham & Ted Chen Straits Times 8 Oct 10;
THE stench was unbearable. It was so smelly some people could not sleep. Others felt nauseous and dizzy. Two weeks after it was reported that a stink had enveloped pockets of the Sengkang estate in the north-east, the smell still lingers.
Residents have complained in droves, and the National Environment Agency (NEA) is now taking further action.
It had earlier pinned the blame for the smell on a 200-tonne mound of rotting food and woodchips dumped at a construction site in Punggol Way.
The NEA served a nuisance order under the Environmental Public Health Act on the contractor - construction giant Koh Brothers - to clear the mound immediately. But this warning was not heeded, and now the agency says it will fine the contractor - as much as $10,000, said an NEA spokesman yesterday.
Mr David Tay, group public relations manager of Koh Brothers, said lorries have been deployed since last Friday to cart away the excess compost, a week after the original report.
The NEA spokesman said the stench could have spread while the compost was being excavated. 'Removal work is ongoing and the contractor has since engaged more lorries to increase the number of trips made to the incineration plants.'
But Mr Tay said the stink cannot be helped. He said the source of the smell is compost, which is needed as fertiliser to turf the land.
In January last year, Koh Brothers was awarded two contracts worth about $200 million by the Housing Board (HDB) to develop the area into housing estates.
Compost is needed to fertilise land being developed for the upcoming Punggol Waterfront project, the company said.
It is understood that a large amount of compost is needed as the site has been zoned an eco-precinct by the HDB, meaning the environment will be replete with more greenery. Mr Tay said sub-contractors employed by Koh Brothers may have 'overestimated' the amount of compost needed.
But he admitted the mound may not have been properly covered in the evenings. And it certainly has raised a stink among residents in the area.
Over the past two weeks, some 169 complaints have been lodged with the NEA, with 49 of them made yesterday.
Residents have also aired their gripes online. The community forum on Sengkang.com shows more than 100 postings about the odour.
Student Sufiyan Hassan, 15, of Compassvale Secondary in Sengkang, said his entire school compound stank yesterday morning for several hours.
'We couldn't concentrate on work, and all of us had to cover our noses with our shirts,' said the student, whose school is about 1km from the site. 'Have you ever been to Mandai Zoo? That's what it smelt like.'
Madam Charinee Wongkat, 25, who lives in Sengkang East Way, 1.7km from the construction site, said the smell was at its worst last week. 'It was very smelly and we couldn't sleep. It lasted the whole night,' said the housewife, who had to resort to closing her flat's windows.
Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC MP Charles Chong told The Straits Times he received complaints as recently as last week, though none yesterday.
He intends to gather feedback from residents at today's Meet the People session about the latest occurrence and survey the site personally.
Professor Phillip Eng, a consultant respiratory physician at Mount Elizabeth Medical Centre, said the odour was unlikely to be harmful as it would take a cumulative inhalation of toxics over an extended period to cause any harm.
Koh Brothers said it will moderate the amount of compost used at the construction site and make sure the mound is covered properly.
Award soon of job to convert oil-fired steam plant into gas-firing ones
Ronnie Lim Business Times 8 Oct 10;
TO TAKE advantage of coming LNG supplies in early- 2013, China Huaneng Group will be spending an additional, estimated $800 million to 'repower' Tuas Power's two older oil-fired steam plants into more-efficient, gas-firing ones.
The company, which has already invested over $6 billion in Singapore, is set to award the first of the repowering EPC deals this month, BT has learnt.
The move comes as the generating companies (gencos) here are scheduled to sign letters of credit mid-month, confirming their earlier purchase agreements for an initial 1.5 million tonnes per annum of liquefied natural gas, with UK's BG Group, Singapore's appointed LNG aggregator.
PowerSeraya, for instance, is later this month inaugurating its $800 million repowering project - covering conversion of two earlier units into 800-megawatts of cogeneration combined cycle plant which is also aimed at using LNG.
Tuas Power (TP) president and CEO, Lim Kong Puay, told BT yesterday: 'We expect to award the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) deal for repowering of the first of the 600 MW steam plants in a couple of weeks time.' The 10-year old plant will be replaced by a 400-MW combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) expected to cost about $400 million.
'We've also started planning the repowering of our remaining, second steam plant,' he said, adding that while a decision on this will depend on market growth, this is likely to be taken by the middle of next year.
Construction of the first CCGT is expected to start this year-end, and will take about two and a half years to complete, said Mr Lim - tieing in with the scheduled first LNG supplies in 2013.
The repowering will help TP cater to growing demand, like its $1 billion- plus deal to supply utilities to Neste Oil's $1.2 billion biodiesel facility which is starting up shortly.
The latest $800 million repowering investment by China Huaneng - which bought the 2,670 MW TP, the third largest genco here, for $4.2 billion in 2008 - follows its $2 billion investment at end-2009 in the coal/biomass-firing Tuas Multi-Utilities Complex (TMUC) it is currently building on Jurong Island.
TMUC, coming on- stream in 2012, will supply utilities like steam and water, apart from power, to petrochemical companies there, like Germany's Lanxess with which it clinched a deal recently.
Meanwhile, the other gencos here are also in the midst of repowering or building new plants to make use of the LNG.
Senoko Energy is currently carrying out a $750 million repowering of three steam units into two 430-MW CCGTs, while newcomer Island Power will start building its $1.2 billion, 800-MW station in Q1 next year.
Sembcorp in August announced it was building a new $800 million multi-utilities facility, including a 400-MW plant, on Jurong Island, after clinching a supply deal with Jurong Aromatics Corporation; while the 500-MW Keppel Merlimau Cogen is planning a 900-MW expansion.
A KepCorp spokesman told BT last month: 'We are currently working on the tender and will be awarding it soon. Our plan is to commence construction thereafter. The Energy Market Authority is aware of our plans.'
Helen Lennard Producer, Costing the Earth BBC News 6 Oct 10;
Scientists are investigating ways of dealing with the millions of tonnes of floating plastic rubbish that is accumulating in our oceans.
They are a quirk of ocean currents - a naturally created vortex known as a gyre - where floating rubbish tends to accumulate.
The largest is in the North Pacific and covers an area twice the size of France. Others have since been discovered in the North Atlantic and most recently the South Atlantic.
Scientists now fear the same process is probably taking place in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean.
As well as damaging coasts and killing marine life who mistake the plastic for food, contaminants in the water, which attach to the plastic debris, are transporting waste chemicals across the world's oceans.
'Plastic munching'
At the UK's University of Sheffield, scientists are investigating how they could accelerate the speed at which the plastic breaks down by looking at micro-organisms already found in the sea that naturally feed on plastic.
Promising results have already been seen in finding out which microbes are attaching themselves to plastic in coastal waters around the UK.
The next stage will be to analyse how these enzymes work in the natural environment and how they might work in controlled environments where plastic would be the prominent carbon source.
But the researchers emphasise that even if they can narrow down the microbes and encourage their proliferation in an area like the plastic waste patch just found in the South Atlantic, this would be a very slow process.
"It's a bit like imagining how long it would take us to eat something the size of Canary Wharf," says the university's Dr Mark Osborn.
"If you have hundreds of thousands or millions of organisms colonising one piece of plastic then you can imagine the potential for scale up in terms of the rates of potential degradation."
Biological intervention to restore the ocean environment, otherwise known as bioremediation, is a relatively new field and would require careful assessment of any potential consequences.
And most current work is based on stopping plastic getting into the oceans in the first place.
'Diesel' plastic
In Ireland at a plastic fuel plant, Cynar, scientists are using waste plastic to make a synthetic fuel in a process known as plastic pyrolysis.
Plastic waste that would otherwise have ended up in landfill, is cleaned, dried and then heated to more than 300C (570F) in the absence of air.
The resulting molten liquid is turned into a gas which is then fractioned off to produce a diesel-like fuel.
"We do believe this is a terrific solution to a massive issue of landfill diversion as well as fossil fuel alternative," says Cynar's chief executive, Michael Murray.
Pyrolysis has the potential to be set up at waste disposal sites across Europe, with the fuel produced being used to power the waste disposal trucks and machinery.
But it costs money to establish the plants and burn the plastic, and this is only partly recovered by the cost of the fuel generated.
Much of the solution lies in more recycling says Murray, pointing out that only 50% of the 25m tonnes of plastic waste the EU produces every year is recycled.
Recycling and prevention
The challenge is to prevent it reaching landfill in the first place.
Our plastic lifestyle is at the heart of the problem according to Richard Thompson, professor of marine biology at the University of Plymouth.
Varying colours of plastic and different components such as sports caps which are made of different plastic types, make them harder to recycle compared to clear and strong plastic.
Despite campaigns to improve recycling, many plastics - such as food packaging packaging - are still not recyclable.
"The diversity of different polymers and different forms of packaging we use... is compromising the recyclability of the product," Professor Thompson explains.
"The best way to solve this problem is to close the loop, to turn a bottle back into a bottle," he says.
Eighty percent of the plastic in our seas has come from the land where it has either been flushed through drains or blown off landfill sites.
Until there is an effective alternative to dumping, the floating plastic in our oceans will continue to accumulate.
ScienceDaily 6 Oct 10;
There is still time to save the world's ailing coral reefs, if prompt and decisive action can be taken to improve their overall health, leading marine researchers say.
Writing in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, eminent marine scientists from Australia and the USA have called for an international effort to improve the resilience of coral reefs, so they can withstand the impacts of climate change and other human activities.
"The world's coral reefs are important economic, social and environmental assets, and they are in deep trouble. How much trouble, and why, are critical research questions that have obvious implications for formulating policy and improving the governance and management of these tropical maritime resources," explains Jeremy Jackson from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The key to saving the reefs lies in understanding why some reefs degenerate into a mass of weeds and never recover -- an event known as a 'phase shift' -- while on other reefs the corals manage to bounce back successfully, showing a quality known as resilience.
This underlines the importance of managing reefs in ways that promote their resilience, the researchers say.
They presented evidence that coral decline due to human activity has been going on for centuries, but has been particularly alarming in the past 50 years. In all some 125,000 square kilometres of the world's corals have disappeared so far.
The most recent global report card (2008) estimated that 19% of all reefs were effectively lost, another 15% were critical and likely to be lost in 10-20 years, and a further 20% are under threat from local human pressures (already experiencing 20-50% loss of corals). The remaining 46% of reefs were at low risk from direct human impacts, but were nevertheless vulnerable to climate change and ocean acidification.
"We have a very good scientific understanding of what causes reefs to decline -- what we now need is a clearer picture of how to help them back onto the reverse trajectory," says lead author Professor Terry Hughes from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University.
Taking an optimistic view, the researchers argue there is compelling evidence from sites in Hawaii, Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the Caribbean, Bahamas and Philippines that the degradation and disappearance of corals can be arrested and reversed with the right management:
* In Hawaii, where ending sewage discharges allowed corals in Kanehoe Bay to recover
* In Australia, where weed-eating fish played a decisive role in keeping seaweed down while the corals fought back
* In the Caribbean where recovering sea urchin populations are helping to keep down weed and allow corals to recover
* In the Bahamas and Philippines, where controls on over fishing for parrot fish and other weed-eaters, also helped to restore coral cover.
"The coral reef crisis is a crisis of governance," says co-author Peter Mumby from the University of Queensland.
The team has formulated the scientific lessons from resilient reefs into a set of management advice which governments can adopt to give coral reefs a fighting chance:
* Empower and educate local people to look after their own reefs
* Change land uses that cause damaging runoff and sediment
* Control not only fishing, but also fish markets to protect herbivorous fish
* Integrate resilience science with reef management and support for local communities in restoring their reefs
* Improve laws that protect coral reefs globally
* "Confront climate change as the single most important issue for coral reef management and conservation by sharply reducing greenhouse gas emissions."
On climate change they caution: "Without urgent action, unchecked global warming and ocean acidification promise to be the ultimate policy failures for coral reefs. Although it is possible to promote the recovery of reefs following bouts of bleaching via local actions such as improving water-quality and protecting herbivores, these interventions alone cannot climate-proof reefs."
"The clear message from our research, and that of other marine scientists, is that the world's coral reefs can still be saved… if we try harder," Prof. Hughes says.
Their article "Rising to the challenge of sustaining coral reef resilience" by Terry P. Hughes, Nicholas A.J. Graham, Jeremy B.C. Jackson, Peter J. Mumby and Robert S. Steneck appears in the latest issue of Trends in Ecology and Evolution (TREE).
The future of Australia's and the world's coral reefs is the focus of a major scientific symposium in Canberra on October 7 and 8, at the Australian Academy of Science's Shine Dome.
Journal Reference:
1. Terry P. Hughes, Nicholas A.J. Graham, Jeremy B.C. Jackson, Peter J. Mumby, Robert S. Steneck. Rising to the challenge of sustaining coral reef resilience. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2010.07.011
UN Conference adopts a new conservation strategy to protect the sea cow
UNEP 7 Oct 10;
Bonn/Abu Dhabi, 7 October 2010 - Dugongs are believed to have been at the origin of mermaid legends when spotted swimming in the water from a distance. Now the remaining populations of this seemingly clumsy sea mammal, commonly known as a sea cow, are at serious risk of becoming extinct within the next 40 years.
At an international meeting this week on dugongs convened by the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (UNEP/CMS) in Abu Dhabi, governments, International and Non-Governmental Organizations and experts discussed solutions to protect the world's only herbivorous mammal living in marine waters.
CMS Executive Secretary Elizabeth Maruma Mrema said: "Simple innovative tools and new incentives for local fishermen have been presented to the signatories to the CMS dugong agreement, which might prevent this rare species from becoming extinct."
A newly developed innovative toolbox to mitigate threats to dugongs includes incentives to replace harmful gillnets with alternative fishing gear to reduce bycatch and minimize the mortality rates.
According to an assessment undertaken in 2008, the dugong is now extinct in the Maldives, Mauritius and Taiwan, and declining in other waters in at least a third of the areas where it is found. However, at present, information on the dugongs is too limited to even assess completely the threats.
Manmade threats pose the greatest risk to the gentle sea cow. Illegal poaching, unsustainable hunting by local communities, severe injuries from ships and vanishing seagrass beds are accelerating a critical loss of habitat and threatening populations.
The use of gillnets has led to the incidental entanglement in fishing gear, which is also a major threat. As fisheries become increasingly commercialized, bycatch will become even more frequent and serious. The second largest threat is unsustainable direct consumption which can result once a dugong is caught in the nets. In addition, dugongs are also legally hunted by local communities in some countries for traditional consumption.
Risks from manmade threats are exacerbated by the dugong's low reproduction rates. Even the slightly reduced survival rate of adults as a result of habitat loss, disease, hunting or drowning in nets, can trigger a dramatic decline.
Initiating and enhancing regional cooperation among the countries that host dugong populations is essential to ensure the survival of this unique marine mammal.
Data from fishermen surveyed in 20 countries in the Pacific Islands, South Asia as well as the United Arab Emirates are now available and will be reviewed to assess the threat of fishing on the survival of the dugongs in parts of its migratory range. The data will be combined into a geographical information system to identify the trouble spots, provide crucial information on existing populations and map important habitat areas such as seagrass beds.
The data from the surveys will also help complete missing information on areas where threats to the dugong might be very high and enable local communities to preserve critical habitat. In 2011, the survey will be extended to countries in East Africa and the Western Indian Ocean Islands, Northwestern Indian Ocean as well as South Asian regions.
Other solutions that seek to protect valuable dugong habitat as well as breeding and feeding areas include establishing spatial closures as marine reserves and temporal constraints to fishing operations. Incentives, such as loans for buying new boats, for fishermen to use line-fishing gear were also discussed as were educational campaigns and measures to improve the livelihood of local communities as a way to complement conservation efforts.
The meeting concluded that the conservation strategy should address the need for greater protection of marine biodiversity by combining different conservation tools. These tools are also necessary for reducing the entanglement in fishing gear of other marine species such as whales and dolphins, turtles and coastal sharks.
Governments represented at the meeting will develop potential pilot projects to implement these new incentive based tools from which other marine species may benefit as well.
Addressing threats to dugongs requires a multidisciplinary approach. The conservation strategy agreed at this meeting requires expertise and guidance from scientists specializing in dugong biology, marine resource management, coastal development, sustainable development, social sciences, economics, law and other relevant fields.
At the meeting, Bahrain, Palau, Seychelles, Vanuatu and Yemen also signed the CMS Dugong agreement bringing the number of signatories to 18. More countries are likely to follow in the near future.
The agreement provides a platform for cooperation among governments and regions to develop and implement conservation measures to ensure the long term survival of this unique marine mammal.
Sea cow, origin of mythical mermaid, threatened with extinction, UN warns
UN News Centre 7 Oct 10;
7 October 2010 – Dugongs, or sea cows, believed to be the source of mermaid legends, are threatened with extinction within 40 years, and an arsenal of measures, from replacing fishing nets that trap them to setting up marine reserves, are vital for their survival, a United Nations-backed forum has warned.
“Man-made threats pose the greatest risk to the gentle sea cow,” the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said, summing up a meeting this week in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), of Governments, international and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) convened by the UN Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) on the seemingly clumsy animal, the world’s only herbivorous mammal living in marine waters.
“Illegal poaching, unsustainable hunting by local communities, severe injuries from ships and vanishing sea-grass beds are accelerating a critical loss of habitat and threatening populations,” it said, stressing that enhanced regional cooperation among countries hosting dugongs is essential to ensure the survival of the creature that sailors once took for a mermaid when spotted from afar.
A newly developed toolbox to mitigate threats includes incentives to replace harmful gillnets with alternative fishing gear to reduce so-called by-catch and minimize the mortality rates. Use of gillnets has led to incidental entanglement in fishing gear. As fisheries become increasingly commercialized, by-catch will become even more frequent and serious, UNEP warned.
The second largest threat is unsustainable direct consumption which can result once a dugong is caught in the nets. In addition, dugongs are also legally hunted by local communities in some countries for traditional consumption.
“Simple innovative tools and new incentives for local fishermen have been presented to the signatories to the CMS dugong agreement, which might prevent this rare species from becoming extinct,” CMS Executive Secretary Elizabeth Maruma Mrema told the gathering.
Steps include protecting breeding and feeding areas by setting up marine reserves, temporal limits on fishing, and loans to fishermen to buy new boats and use line-fishing gear.
According to an assessment undertaken in 2008, the dugong is now extinct in the Maldives, Mauritius and Taiwan, Province of China, and declining in other waters in at least a third of the areas where it is found. But current information is too limited to even assess completely the threats.
Man-made risks are exacerbated by the dugong’s low reproduction rates. Even a slightly reduced survival rate of adults from habitat loss, disease, hunting or drowning in nets can trigger a dramatic decline.
Data from fishermen in 20 countries in the Pacific Islands, South Asia, and the UAE to assess the threat of fishing on the dugong’s survival in parts of its migratory range will be combined into a geographical information system to identify the trouble spots, provide crucial information on existing populations and map important habitat areas such as sea-grass beds. In 2011, the survey will be extended to East Africa, the western and north-western Indian Ocean and South Asia.
Daniel Bateman The Cairns Post 7 Oct 10;
THE world's largest population of dugongs may soon be able to live a little bit longer as a new survey could see a 2744km sanctuary extended.
James Cook University has received more than $100,000 in federal funding to survey the waters of the Torres Strait to help authorities evaluate the potential of extending the boundaries of the 25-year-old dugong sanctuary.
Dugong hunting is banned in a large area of western Torres Strait, which was set aside as a 2744km sanctuary in 1985.
Scientists from the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences will conduct an aerial survey of the area to count dugong numbers and establish their range, with locals and latest data suggesting the population is over-harvested. JCU researcher Mark Hamann said aerial surveys had been carried out for several years.
"The survey will continue the work of estimating abundance and distribution of dugongs in the Torres Strait," Dr Hamann said.
"JCU has been doing surveys out there for 20 years or so and the problem is that the numbers fluctuate quite a lot and also the dugongs move around quite a lot.
"Those two things can place errors in the estimates."
Leichhardt MP Warren Entsch said hunting of the protected species was a major issue.
"There’s a lot of hunting up there," Mr Entsch said.
"It’s not only in the Torres Strait but it’s also Papua New Guineans taking dugong as well.
"I think the status of dugong is serious right across the range."
Cairns and Far North Environment Centre co-ordinator Steve Ryan said a large dugong sanctuary could provide a solid insurance policy for the sea mammals.
The Star 8 Oct 10;
PUTRAJAYA: The authorities are taking preventive and proactive measures to prevent further deaths of tapirs at the Sungai Dusun Wildlife Conservation Centre. Seven tapirs have died at the centre, the first on Sept 17 and the last on Sept 29.
The Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan) is prescribing antibiotics and medication for blood parasites to the six remaining tapirs at the conservation centre.
Veterinary officers are also conducting checks to prevent further deaths of the mammal.
Following a post-mortem conducted by veterinary teams from Perhilitan and Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) on Aug 17. it was found that the cause of death was due to the E.coli and Klebsiella pneumonia bacteria.
There are no signs of an epidemic but liming has been done to ensure there is no pathogenic bacteria prior to the release of the mammals into the enclosure.
The night stalls and paddocks are also being sanitised with Lysol, lime and chlorine and a tyre bath has been built at the entrance to ensure all vehicle tyres are washed before entering the centre.
The remaining six tapirs have been introduced into the 10 and 100-acres enclosures to prevent exposure to the bacteria and the tapirs in the 100-acres enclosures are fitted with radio transmitters to enable Perhilitan to locate their whereabouts.
The Sungai Dusun Wildlife Conservation Centre focuses on captive breeding as well as biodiversity educational programme and is a protected area management.
The first tapir was introduced at the centre in November 2004 under the tapir breeding programme.
The centre is closed to visitors and will be open to the public once all health and safety issues have been addressed. — Bernama
Steve Connor, The Independent 8 Oct 10;
The cause of the mysterious decline of the honey bee in the United States – and elsewhere in the world – may have been found in the form of a "double whammy" infection with both a virus and a fungus.
A unique collaboration between university researchers and military scientists in the US has found that a combination of a virus and a fungus in the gut of honey bees may result in the phenomenon known as colony-collapse disorder.
Over the past four years, bee keepers in the United States, Europe and Asia have reported dramatic declines of the key insect that is critical to the pollination of many valuable crops. Between 40 and 60 per cent of honeybee colonies have suffered a complete collapse in the US alone.
One of the difficulties of finding a cause is that the affected bees often fly off in different directions leaving behind, at most, a single queen and a few workers. This has made it almost impossible for entomologists to carry out post mortems on corpses of the missing bees.
Now a team of researchers led by Jerry Bromenshenk of the University of Montana in Missoula has completed an exhaustive survey of bees that bee keepers have managed to collect from collapsed colonies to see whether they are suffering from any unusual infections. Working with scientists at the US Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Centre in Maryland, who have developed expertise in detecting and analysing biological molecules, Professor Bromenshenk and his colleagues found that many of the bees were infected with both a virus, called invertebrate iridescent virus (IIV), and a fungus known as Nosema apis.
"These findings implicate co-infection by IIV and Nosema with honey bee colony decline, giving credence to older research pointing to IIV, interacting with Nosema and mites, as probable cause of bee losses in the USA, Europe and Asia," the researchers write in their study published in the journal PLoSOne. The scientists do not know how the combination of the two infections could be causing the disorder, but they point to the fact that both virus and fungus proliferate in cool, damp weather as well as infecting bees through the gut, indicating that insect nutrition may be involved.
"Colony collapse disorder continues to impact bee colonies in the US in 2010 at levels seemingly equal to, or exceeding that of 2007, when this unusual syndrome first received worldwide press coverage," the scientists said.
"The disorder is characterised by sudden losses of bees. This results in nearly empty beehives that, at best, may harbour a queen and a small worker bee population. A vexing aspect of the disorder is that there are ample resources left in the hive, and few or no dead bees in or near the hive. Bees seem to disappear without a trace," they said.
Many potential causes of the phenomenon have been suggested, ranging from pesticides to mobile phone radiation. However, several studies have pointed to viruses and other infectious agents that could somehow disorientate the bees by interfering with the complex navigation system they use to find their way to their colonies.
The scientists have yet to work out how the virus and fungus can interact, as neither seems to be particularly lethal on their own. However, together they seem to be 100 per cent fatal, the study suggests.
"It's a chicken and egg in a sense. We don't know which came first... They are co-factors, that's all we can say at the moment. They're both present in all these collapsed colonies," Dr Bromenshenk told The New York Times.
Earlier research by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, identified the fungus as a possible cause of the problem.
The US Army and Montana team were able to analyse the biological molecules present in dead bees to point to the link with the IIV virus – a technique developed to analyse potential biological and chemical weapons.
Report: Virus, fungus new suspects in bee disease
Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press 7 Oct 10;
WASHINGTON – Researchers have a pair of new suspects in the mysterious collapse of honey bee colonies across the country.
The widespread damage to the bees has caused concern because the insects are needed to pollinate scores of crops.
Researchers say samples collected from hives affected by the syndrome indicated the presence of a virus as well as a fungus. The two pathogens were not found in bee colonies not affected by the syndrome, called colony collapse disorder, the researchers reported in Wednesday's edition of the journal PLoS ONE.
"We truly don't know if these two pathogens cause CCD or whether the colonies with CCD are more likely to succumb to these two pathogens," Jerry J. Bromenshenk of the University of Montana said in a statement.
Previous studies have looked at the possibility of multiple viruses found in the bee colonies as well as the potential harm from pesticides, but researchers have yet to pin down an exact cause.
The new study said the suspect virus is insect iridescent virus, which is similar to a virus first reported in India 20 years ago, as well as a virus found in moths.
They said it affects the abdomens of bees, and the tissues may take on a bluish-green or purplish hue. The fungus is called Nosema ceranae, and this can sicken bees if they ingest the spores.
Robert Cramer, a pathologist at Montana State University in Bozeman said, "There seems to be a correlation between the presence of these two pathogens together. We envision the bee gets an infection from one or the other, and this causes the bees to become stressed, which then allows the second infection to come in and more effectively cause disease."
The analysis of the bees was done at the Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland.
British researchers set out the economic impact of species destruction - and their findings are changing world's approach to global warming
Matt Chorley, The Independent 3 Oct 10;
British scientific experts have made a major breakthrough in the fight to save the natural world from destruction, leading to an international effort to safeguard a global system worth at least $5 trillion a year to mankind.
Groundbreaking new research by a former banker, Pavan Sukhdev, to place a price tag on the worldwide network of environmental assets has triggered an international race to halt the destruction of rainforests, wetlands and coral reefs.
With experts warning that the battle to stem the loss of biodiversity is two decades behind the climate change agenda, the United Nations, the World Bank and ministers from almost every government insist no country can afford to believe it will be unaffected by the alarming rate at which species are disappearing. The Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan, later this month will shift from solely ecological concerns to a hard-headed assessment of the impact on global economic security.
The UK Government is championing a new system to identify the financial value of natural resources, and the potential hit to national economies if they are lost. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb) project has begun to calculate the global economic costs of biodiversity loss. Initial results paint a startling picture. The loss of biodiversity through deforestation alone will cost the global economy up to $4.5trn (£2.8trn) each year – $650 for every person on the planet, and just a fraction of the total damage being wrought by overdevelopment, intensive farming and climate change.
The annual economic value of the 63 million hectares of wetland worldwide is said to total $3.4bn. In the pharmaceutical trade, up to 50 per cent of all of the $640bn market comes from genetic resources. Anti-cancer agents from marine organisms alone are valued at up to $1bn a year.
Last week, a study by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the Natural History Museum in London and the International Union for Conservation of Nature suggested more than a fifth of the world's plant species are threatened with extinction. The coalition hopes that linking the disappearance of biodiversity to a threat to economic stability will act as a "wake-up call".
Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, believes the UK has a crucial role in bringing countries together to agree on action. In an exclusive interview with The Independent on Sunday, Mrs Spelman warned: "We are losing species hand over fist. I would be negligent if I didn't shout from the rooftops that we have a problem; that the loss of species will cost us money and it will undermine our resilience in the face of scientific and medical research. We are losing information that we cannot re-create that we may need to save lives and to save the planet as we know it."
The Government, working with Brazil, will use the 193-nation summit in Nagoya on 18 October to push for an agreement on sharing the benefits of biodiversity. They hope to thrash out an early draft of a deal which would ensure that regions rich in natural resources, including South America, Asia and Africa, receive the benefits enjoyed by developed countries. In many parts of the world, the survival of the natural environment is a matter of life and death for the people who live there. Forests contribute directly to the livelihoods of 90 per cent of the 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty. Half of the population of the developing world depends indirectly on forests.
But for many, the environmental and economic damage is already done. The collapse of the Newfoundland cod fishery in the 1990s is said to have cost $2bn and tens of thousands of jobs, while mangrove degradation in Pakistan caused tens of millions of dollars of damage to the fishing, farming and timber industries.
More than a quarter of the world's original natural biodiversity had gone by 2000, and a further 11 per cent of land biodiversity is expected to be lost by 2050. According to some estimates, the rate of extinction is up to 1,000 times that expected without human activity and, now, climate change.
"The way we are doing things is not sustainable," Mrs Spelman added. "Biodiversity is where climate change was 20 years ago – people are still trying to understand what it means and its significance. Things that we thought nature provides for free, actually if you lose them, cost money."
The scenario is already being played out in China, where the demise of its bees has led to workers climbing ladders to cross-pollinate plants. "We have to do everything we can to stop that happening here and elsewhere," said Mrs Spelman, who last month addressed the environmental event at the United Nations. Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, had demanded urgent action. "Too many people still fail to grasp the implications of this," he said. "We have all heard of the web of life. The way we live threatens to trap us in a web of death."
The breakthrough in the battle to persuade countries worldwide to sign up to the biodiversity agenda is the development of Teeb, part-funded by the British, German and Norwegian governments, which calculates the value of nature and the cost of its loss. Developed by Mr Sukhdev, an Indian banker turned environmental economist, its data will be broken down by countries and regions. "'We must all work towards making the meeting in Nagoya a decisive moment in history," Mr Sukhdev said.
Mrs Spelman was critical of the last government for its approach to the problem. She told the IoS: "Mistakes have been made, well-intended, about saying we are going to stop the loss of biodiversity within a decade. Scientists will tell you that's not possible."
From greenbacks to green issues: The banker who wants to save the Earth
Who better to put a value on global biodiversity than an international banker with environmental credentials? Pavan Sukhdev, who spent much of his career working in international finance, was first approached by the EU Commission and Germany in March 2008 when he was with Deutsche Bank in India, and asked to measure the economic cost of the global loss of biodiversity.
Latests findings of the study were presented at the United Nations last month. It was widely praised in environmental circles for its ability to model the impact of a loss of biodiversity on global rates of poverty and economic inequality.
Mr Sukhdev is leading a team of scientists in the project backed by the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, along with the German, Norwegian, Dutch and Swedish governments. Prominent figures include Defra's chief scientific advisor, Prof Bob Watson, who is a leading expert on biodiversity.
Mr Sukhdev was involved in environmental projects in his native India, including sitting on the board of the Bombay Environmental Action Group and working alongside the Indian States Trust to develop "green accounts" for businesses that also consider the environmental impact of economic development.
In 2008, he took a sabbatical from Deutsche Bank to become a special adviser to the United Nations Environment Programme, overseeing three programmes measuring the combined economic cost of global ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss.
In his spare time he manages a model rainforest restoration and ecotourism project in Queensland, Australia, and farming in southern India.
Joe Rowley
Rupam Jain Nair Google News 7 Oct 10;
NEW DELHI — Dengue fever, a mosquito-borne disease with no known treatment, is spreading in Asia, with cases in India at a 20-year high as the country hosts the Commonwealth Games.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that 2.5 billion people are at risk from one of the world's fastest-emerging infections, which has "grown dramatically in recent decades."
Officials at the WHO say Asia, home to 70 percent of the at-risk population, has seen a rise in dengue mainly because of higher temperatures due to climate change, rising populations and greater international travel.
The organisation says "a rapid rise in urban mosquito populations" is also bringing ever greater numbers of people into contact with the virus.
According to data collected by the UN body, the highest number of reported cases in Asia this year to August are in Indonesia (80,065) followed by Thailand (57,948) and Sri Lanka (27,142).
Dengue, transmitted to humans by the female Aedes mosquitoes, causes a severe flu-like illness for most victims that lasts about a week. There are four strains, one of which is a potentially lethal haemorrhagic type.
"The disease has spread fast. Dengue is appearing in new areas," said Yogesh Choudhri, an expert at the WHO on the Asia region, who said the disease had crossed new international borders and spread within countries.
It was found in the Himalayan countries of Bhutan and Nepal for the first time in 2004, and is endemic in most of Southeast and South Asia as well as Indonesia and East Timor.
In India, government hospitals in New Delhi are overflowing with dengue victims as the city hosts 7,000 foreign athletes and officials for the Commonwealth Games, which finish next Thursday.
A.C. Dhariwal, director of India's National Vector-Borne Disease Control Programme, told AFP that cases in India were at a 20-year high with 50 people dead and 12,000 reported infections.
The number of actual infections is likely to be far higher.
He blamed the delayed construction work for the Commonwealth Games for part of the problem in New Delhi, where monsoon rains have been at their strongest in years.
"Delays in Games construction and urban improvement projects are to blame for the severe dengue outbreak since mounds of rubble and puddles are strewn across the city," he said.
Last week an official with the Indian lawn bowls squad contracted dengue, the first person associated with the Games to to do so.
There is no known treatment for dengue, but several preventative steps can be taken.
The most important is to ensure there is no standing water near residential areas where mosquitoes breed.
Spraying insecticide, an approach taken by many city authorities, can also help, as does applying mosquito repellent and wearing long sleeves and trousers.
In Thailand, the government is worried about a South Korean-inspired fashion craze for black leggings which could be putting teenagers at risk.
"I'm worried about how people dress, especially teenagers," said Deputy Public Health Minister Phansiri Kulanartsiri, noting that the mosquitoes which transmit the disease are attracted by dark colours.
"The mosquitoes can bite through the leggings' thin fabric, so those who wear them are at greater risk of being infected with dengue."
In Sri Lanka, authorities have introduced heavy fines for people with standing water in their homes, and troops have been deployed to clean up public places.
Malaysia has reported a 53-percent rise in dengue-related deaths this year, but backed away from a controversial trial of releasing genetically modified mosquitoes to wipe out the disease.
In the first experiment of its kind in Asia, 2,000-3,000 modified male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes were to have been released in two Malaysian states in October or November.
The offspring of the mosquitoes would have died quickly, curbing the growth of the population in a technique researchers hope could eventually eradicate the dengue mosquito altogether.
But the government scrapped the idea after complaints from environmentalists.
Health authorities in Bangladesh said dengue prevalence was on the rise but fatalities were down.
Surveys conducted by the health ministry indicate that the dengue prevalence rate was 3.4 percent in 2006, rising to 5.25 percent in 2007, and by 2009 to 9.1 percent.
The number of dengue fever patients in South Korea and Japan remains small but is rising as more travel overseas, especially to Southeast Asia and Latin America.
Yahoo News 7 Oct 10;
TIANJIN, China (AFP) – The United Nations' climate change chief on Thursday urged people around the world to join in a "global work party" this weekend that is part of a growing grassroots movement to curb greenhouse gases.
More than 7,000 events to fight climate change will be held in at least 180 countries around the world on Sunday, with the day gaining massive support largely through 350.org, tcktcktck.org and other Internet-based groups.
"I congratulate you on your work and I want to offer my personal support to the... Global Work Party," UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said in a video message posted on tcktcktck.
"I urge you to continue your inspiring work. When citizens are inspired to take action, it is easier for governments to initiate real climate change action."
Figueres recorded the video message from the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, where a week of UN talks on trying to secure a global deal on tackling climate change remained in gridlock.
The talks, which are due to end on Saturday, are aimed at laying the foundations for progress at a UN climate change summit in Cancun, Mexico, next month.
But the conference has so far been unable to heal the deep rifts between developed and developing countries that led to the failure by world leaders to broker a binding deal in Copenhagen last year.
Figueres said the Global Work Party could help push governments into making compromises in their efforts to forge a treaty.
"That is exactly what governments need to rally around urgently," she said of the grassroots campaign.
"They need to be determined to arrive at compromises that move the world towards winning the battle against climate change."
Events on Sunday will include tree planting, installation of solar panels, bicycle riding and planting of organic vegetables.
Organisers are describing it as "the most widespread day of environmental action in the planet?s history".
As part of the event, Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed will install a set of solar panels on his roof.
In China and India, more than 300 universities will join in a student clean energy competition.
In Afghanistan, students will plant hundreds of trees in a valley outside Kabul.
Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 7 Oct 10;
Indonesia has asked Norway to postpone the disbursement of millions of dollars under a climate partnership deal because Jakarta has not completed necessary preparatory steps stipulated in the deal, a minister said.
It is not clear when the decision was made but the first disbursement of US$30 million of Norway’s pledged $1 billion was expected to take place this year.
“President [Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono] suggests that we not take the money now, and wait for preparations to be improved,” Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta told reporters at a meeting on biodiversity on Wednesday.
The statement comes as Indonesian officials, led by Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, arrived home after a study tour to Brazil to learn about implementation procedures there to pave the way for the implementation of a REDD plus agreement signed by Brazil and Norway that covers areas in the Amazon rainforest.
Kuntoro, who is now chief of the Presidential Work Unit for Development and Control (UKP4), could not be reached for the comment.
Before the study tour, Indonesia and Norway delegations held a meeting on the sidelines of the UN Assembly meeting in New York to discuss which international financial institution should serve as the banker for the deal.
Norway was expected to disburse $30 million this year, another $70 million in 2011 and $100 million in 2012. The remaining $800 million is to be distributed based on carbon emissions prevented through the protection of the forest.
Meanwhile, the President’s special assistant on climate change, Agus Purnomo, denied a decision had been made to postpone receiving money from the Norwegian government.
“The taskforce on REDD [plus] will decide which financial institutions will manage the first disbursement of the $30 million from Norway on Monday,” Agus, who is also a member of the REDD taskforce, told The Jakarta Post.
“The decision will be the President’s but the selection of financial institutions — whether the UN Development Program (UNDP) or the Asian Development Bank (ADB) — will be made by the REDD taskforce.”
Indonesia has said that the $30 million installment would be used to set up independent institutions on financing, REDD plus and the MRV system. The three institutions should be established by the end of this year, according to the pact.
The President has so far only issued a decree to set up a taskforce on REDD plus that would establish institutions needed to implement the Indonesia-Norway climate partnership.
Under the agreement, Indonesia should pick one province to host a pilot project this year. Officials have repeatedly said preparations will meet all targets on schedule.
Minister Gusti said Indonesia was making good progress in its preparations to pave the way for the partnership. “The disbursement of Norway’s money might be made in 2011,” he said.
* China says preparing to cope with delay in climate pact
* Envoy blames stalling by rich nations
* Talks shadowed by who cuts and counts emissions
Chris Buckley Reuters AlertNet 7 Oct 10;
TIANJIN, China, Oct 7 (Reuters) - China said on Thursday it will not bow to pressure to rethink a key climate change treaty and was preparing to cope with a "gap" in the pact after 2012 if rich nations fail to add new greenhouse gas goals in time.
Envoys from 177 governments are holding week-long talks in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin on the shape of a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, the U.N.'s main weapon in the fight against climate change.
Kyoto's first phase, which binds about 40 rich nations to meet emissions targets, expires in 2012 and it is not clear on what happens after that, worrying investors who want long-term certainty on climate policies and financing.
"Of course, now we're discussing the legal issues if it happens," said Su Wei, a senior Chinese climate change negotiator, referring to a possible gap in Kyoto.
"I think that from a practical angle that is necessary, but it seems a bit early, prejudging the negotiations," he added.
The United Nations has been stepping up efforts to convince countries to avoid a gap after 2012 and to ensure certainty for the U.N.'s $2.7 billion carbon market that is part of Kyoto.
This is a game of bargaining "chicken" between rich economies and emerging powers that could trouble a higher level meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in less than two months intended to lay the foundations for a new, legally binding climate deal.
Talks have snagged on distrust between rich and poorer nations, especially over how to share reducing emissions, called "mitigation", to avoid dangerous climate change, which could trigger more extreme weather, crop failures and rising seas.
"In order to square the circle, mitigation is still a key issue," said Vicente Paulo Yu, a development expert attending the talks for the Philippines.
"We have to get something from developed countries in terms of their commitments and something in terms of developing countries' actions."
Nearly all wealthy countries have signed up to legally binding emissions goals under Kyoto, with the big exception of the United States, which refused to become a party.
Developing nations, including the world's top carbon emitter China, are obliged to take voluntary steps to curb the growth of their emissions.
The United States and other rich nations want a new global pact to do away with that either-or division to reflect the surge in emissions from the developing world, now accounting for more than half of mankind's annual greenhouse gas emissions.
SHARING THE BURDEN
"It's about trust and about sharing the burden of emissions reductions," said Nina Jamal, a climate policy campaigner observing the talks in Tianjin.
"If we don't have progress on the mitigation agenda, there might be a risk that the other negotiation topics would be delayed."
Talks last year failed to agree on a binding treaty and climaxed in a bitter meeting in Copenhagen, which produced a non-binding accord that later recorded the emissions vows of participant countries.
The question now is whether those pledges are formalised under Kyoto or under a new treaty. Under a new deal, rich nations want China and other big emerging emitters to bring their domestic reduction efforts under firmer international vetting.
Su told Reuters his government would not bend to Western demands and was reluctantly thinking about how to handle the likelihood that the first phase of Kyoto could expire with no full legal extension to replace it.
Su said rich nations were to blame for failing to offer make greenhouse gas vows for Kyoto in time to ensure a seamless extension of the agreement from 2013.
"Even if Cancun makes no decision on the developed countries' emission targets in the second phase (of Kyoto), then after Cancun we'll accelerate the process. I think that at the most we can't delay it beyond a year." (Editing by David Fogarty AND Jonathan Thatcher)
Host China plugs its climate efforts at UN talks
Dan Martin Yahoo News 7 Oct 10;
TIANJIN, China (AFP) – China has seized on its hosting of UN climate talks this week to showcase its efforts to curb carbon emissions, and environmentalists say the top greenhouse gas polluter is making huge progress.
China's phenomenal economic growth has made it the biggest source of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, and those emissions will continue to soar due to its dependence on carbon-belching coal.
But amid US-led pressure to do more, China has outlined an array of measures to curb emissions that environmentalists say helps its bargaining position in United Nations negotiations on a global warming treaty.
And while China was blamed by some rich nations for the failure of a climate summit in Copenhagen last year, few are developing clean energies as aggressively, say experts at the week-long talks in the city of Tianjin.
"The Chinese are out of the starting blocks and the United States is still taking off its sweatsuit," said Jake Schmidt, global climate policy director for the US-based Natural Resources Defense Council.
China says in the past five years it has phased out obsolete and inefficient power plants equal to the power capacity of Britain.
It last year invested a world-leading 34.6 billion dollars in clean energy initiatives -- 30 percent of the global total and nearly double US spending.
The government has said another 738 billion dollars will be spent in the next decade.
Its ambitious renewable energy goals, backed with both incentives and mandatory targets, saw China become the leading manufacturer of wind turbines last year.
It became number three in the world in installed wind power capacity and is expected to pass the United States and Germany to take the top spot in 2010.
China also is on course to become a world leader in several other areas such as carbon capture.
On the macro-level, China has set a 2020 target to reduce carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product -- or carbon intensity -- by 40-45 percent from 2005 levels.
China has held a series of press events in Tianjin to highlight its clean energy efforts, the latest salvo in its decades-long dispute with rich nations in which each side insists the other should do more to fight global warming.
"Our efforts have been tremendous and so have the achievements," China's top climate official Xie Zhenhua told reporters in Tianjin on Monday.
If China can hit its target of improving its energy efficiency this year, it would have avoided emitting about 4.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from 2006-2010, according to the US-based Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
China's 2007 emissions were 6.5 billion tonnes.
The Tianjin event is a prelude to a UN summit starting next month in Mexico, where countries will again try to make progress on forging a global climate change treaty.
Yang Ailun, climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace China, said Beijing's clean energy efforts had given it a stronger hand in the negotiations.
"China has been doing a lot at home and this has given them more leverage, especially when the United States seems to be backtracking. China is in a rather comfortable position right now," she said.
China's clean energy policies however still attract criticism because its emissions will continue to rise for years as its expanding economy gobbles up energy, 70 percent of which comes from coal.
The United States and other developing nations also remain frustrated over China's refusal to commit through the UN process to emission reduction targets.
Nevertheless, merely continuing with the measures of the past five years would reduce China's carbon intensity 37 percent by 2020, said Barbara Finamore, the NRDC's China director.
She said Beijing was expected to announce further aggressive steps for the next five years in 2011.
Posts
visitors since Nov 07