Best of our wild blogs: 1 Nov 10

Singapore and Nagoya 2010
from wild shores of singapore

十月华语导游 Mandarin guide walk @SBWR,October
from PurpleMangrove


Monday Morgue: 1st November 2010
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales

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Green, green grass ... gone

Rate of conversion of green fields to buildings in Sengkang a source of concern
Letter from Ling Seow Kang Today Online 30 Oct 10;

I HAVE been living for the past six years in Sengkang, a new town with ample vacant land plots within it since it was built in the late 1990s.

The green open spaces have enhanced the well-being of the residents. Some of the fields have been used for kite-flying, while others have enabled residents to go on pleasant evening runs.

In recent month, however, there has been a sharp increase in the number of land sales in Sengkang and other towns in response to the demand for housing.

All of a sudden, the open fields around my estate have been boarded up for construction work or have had notices put up to indicate they are on sale.

I am alarmed by the scarcity of our land resources as well as the rate at which we are using them up. While the quality of urban life should be more than made up for by new parks and park connectors, thanks to our excellent urban planning, the rate of conversion of green fields to buildings is still a concern.

Firstly, even with adoption of the best green building features - like green roofs and solar panels, and environmentally-friendly construction - there is still going to be an increase in our carbon footprint due to the new buildings.

Secondly, the green fields might have been from cleared secondary forests or swamps and left idle, often for years, while awaiting development . This means there was already a loss in carbon sequestration potential and wildlife habitat of the original, more dense vegetation.

Thirdly, excavation during construction might mean the loss of top-soil, which could have been used for productive cultivation while the land was awaiting development.

I agree we have no choice in this case, given the needs of our people, and we are already trying to minimise the environmental impact of our development.

However, looking at our past success with the "Garden City" concept, one opportunity for us to do better might be to put the remaining vacant plots to productive interim use to meet important needs - for example, to grow food to raise our food supply resilience.

Or we can look into agriculture within parks or along park connectors as a way to partly compensate for the farmlands which have been lost to development over the years. Another possibility is to accelerate high-yield vertical farming here.

Since our land reserves will continue to dwindle, and environmental pressures will continue to increase, such options to optimise our land use might make good sense for our city-state.

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Tioman: Eco-paradise caught between development and the deep blue sea

Dan Rivers, CNN 1 Nov 10;

(CNN) -- Tioman is a verdant jewel of an island, with a near legendry status among divers. You might not have heard of it, but you might have seen it.

Tioman's beaches were used as a filming location for the 1958 classic movie "South Pacific". The grandfather of scuba Jacques Cousteau also came here, rating its reefs and in the 1970s Time Magazine voted it among the top ten most beautiful islands in the world.

But now Tioman has reached a critical crossroads, according to those who have devoted their life to preserving its unique marine and jungle habitat.

Katie Yewdall runs Blue Ventures on the island, an eco-tourism company that offers volunteers the chance to leave the island in a better condition than they found it.

"Tioman is part of the coral triangle which extends from the Philippines, down to Papua New Guinea and across to this coast of Malaysia, where the coral reefs are some of the most highly diverse in the world," she says.

"There's something like 700 genera of coral in this area. Tourism has been here for thirty years but it's definitely growing. It's kind of at the point now where it can go in two directions it can either go down the very commercial road and become very much like neighboring countries like Thailand or it can choose to take a different direction and go towards more responsible tourism."

You only have to visit an island like Koh Samui in Thailand to realize why environmentalists on Tioman are so worried. Samui has been heavily developed with shopping malls, hundreds of hotels, vacation homes and heavy traffic on its tiny roads.

In 2009, Samui had 650,000 visitors last year, compared to less than 200,000 last year on Tioman.

But now the Malaysian federal government and local developers want to build a new airport on Tioman, superseding the tiny airstrip that currently allows only small propeller planes to perform a hair-raising landing between the mountains and the sea.

The new airport would allow much bigger jets to land and would open up the possibility that budget carriers could open routes here.

Local leaders, like Kamarulzaman bin Ismail say it's vital for the economy, but they are convinced they can still preserve Tioman's unique environment. He knows the reason tourists come here is for the pristine environment; ruining that could deter future visitors.

Dan Pedraza is a volunteer with Blue Ventures and is convinced that tourism and environmentalism can co-exist. His own personal journey represents just the sort of change in thinking he feels is necessary on Tioman. Dan used to be a Formula 1 engineer but opted out of the "Rat Race" to lead a greener life.

"I think that it doesn't have to necessarily have a negative impact on a place and secondly tourists can actually bring something positive with them, so they don't necessarily have to come and take away but they can bring with them something," he says.

Tioman is actually a designated marine park, which should mean no building into the sea, no fishing within 2 km of the shore and tight controls on development. But the rules have failed to stop a controversial marina from being built.

Abdul Manap Abdullah from the Marine Park Department says: "For the environment we worry about it but we cannot do anything because this is on other authorities, if they allow it, we cannot do anything."

When I ask him how a marina was allowed when such strict rules prohibit building into the sea, he becomes cagey. He knows the federal and state governments and powerful local Royal family backed the scheme, despite its apparent incompatibility with the protection offered to the marine park.

But the rest of Tioman is barely touched, basking in the crystal waters of the South China Sea. The interior is mountainous and covered by impenetrable rainforest. It's rumored only four people on the island know how to climb to its highest peak, a trek that takes three days. Jungle giants tower on the steep hillsides, the sort of trees that were felled hundreds of years ago on other islands, but have survived here in part because, at times, this island has been depopulated by marauding pirates or disease.

Now the new challenge is tourism, which if it isn't managed carefully could irrevocably change this tropical Eden into a forgettable mass-market holiday destination.

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Malaysia: A heap of landfill woes

The Star 1 Nov 10;

KUALA LUMPUR: The long-standing landfill problem has affected almost everyone in the country.

Besides causing social and environmental problems, landfills are also economically detrimental.

Local councils are spending between 30% and 80% of their assessment collection for waste treatment. And, these councils do nothing more than make the garbage pile up into a seemingly endless problem.

The bad management of most landfills has resulted in several “time bombs”. One “exploded” in September when leachate from a landfill in Semenyih contaminated Sungai Kembong and Sungai Beranang, the intake points of the Sungai Semenyih water treatment plant.

The plant was forced to close down due to high levels of ammonia, causing a 14-hour water supply disruption, which resulted in about a million consumers in Petaling, Hulu Langat, Sepang, Kuala Langat and Putrajaya being affected by it.

Such problems, according to Association of Environmental Con­sultants and Contractors of Malaysia chairman Datuk Dr Abu Bakar Jaafar, were bound to happen.

“Virtually all landfills in Malaysia were established by designation instead of by design, except for the new sanitary landfills,” he said.

According to the Housing and Local Government Ministry, there are 176 operating landfill sites, another 114 end-of-life sites and only eight sanitary landfills in the country.

This means that only eight landfills were constructed according to specifications while the rest are polluting the environment and ruining public health in varying degrees.

And, then there are the illegal ones.

“When local authorities need to discard waste, they just find some place and dump everything there without any planning, engineering and even site selection to see if it is safe. When people start complaining about stench, pests and scavengers, they just bring lorries full of soil to cover them,” he said.

Dr Abu Bakar is the former director-general of the Department of Environment, where he had worked for about 20 years.

“I was kept busy by landfill fires that often broke out in the middle of the night. Some scavengers burned mattresses to retrieve metal parts, leading to landfills on fire,” he said.

Even the closure of landfills was done shoddily. “Often, closures did not meet standards and before you know it, low-cost flats and housing projects were built on these sites.”

“I would not be surprised if one day a house blows up all of a sudden as there is gas in these badly closed landfills.” he said.

Dr Abu Bakar said he was disappointed that the situation had not improved much after all these years. A waste management report submitted by Malaysia to the United Nations back in 1971 bore close resemblance to the current situation.

He said the Environmental Quality Act addressed mainly pollution caused by factories, while only the Local Government Act, and Street, Drainage and Building Act addressed wastes produced at home.

“Even so, the laws are ineffective and outdated,” he said.

Dr Abu Bakar proposed a comprehensive structure for the treatment of solid waste, covering three categories namely dry, perishable and toxic waste from home, and eventually be recycled or be used to regenerate energy.

“An effective structure for waste management requires the commitment of at least 11 ministries,” he said.

“If that can be in place, we won’t need landfills.”

Landfills pose environmental hazard and require time to rehabilitate
The Star 1 Nov 10;

KUALA LUMPUR: About 90% of landfills in the country are mere open dumpsites and only a handful are sanitary landfills that meet the rules set by the Housing and Local Government Ministry.

Of these landfills, the Government has identified 16 critical ones situated near water intake points or the sea.

It is learnt that these landfills were identified by the Japan International Cooperation Agency in 2004 and the Government ordered their closure in 2006.

(These sites are currently in various phases of “rehabilitation”.)

One is the landfill near Sungai Kembong that caused the Sungai Semenyih water treatment plant to be closed temporarily due to high levels of ammonia in September.

In fact, this landfill had caught national attention in 2006 when a similar incident happened, causing two million people to be without water supply.

However, it takes a long time to properly rehabilitate a landfill, waste management specialist Dr Theng Lee Chong said, adding that the land concerned should not be developed in 20 to 30 years.

The basic steps are to cover the open dump with soil, conduct vegetation, drill holes through the dump to release gas, build drainage for diversion of rainwater as well as piping for the release of leachate.

Gas released from the landfill can either be used for flares or recovered to generate electricity while leachate collected will need to be treated separately.

He explained that a sanitary landfill required a proper set-up – a carefully selected location and soil which is of clay-like texture that has minimum permeability to prevent underground water contamination.

The landfill should also be properly engineered in accordance with geological and hydrogeological requirements.

Other must-have features include a synthetic geomembrane as a lining to prevent leakage, leachate collection pipes connecting to leachate treatment plant as well as gas pipes.

It must be maintained well; waste should be spread in layers and compacted.

Daily soil covering is required to make the waste less accessible to pests and vermin.

There will be no room for scavengers as all recyclable items should be retrieved before the waste reaches a sanitary landfill.

Scavengers can be employed as staff at the recycling centres.

However, there are only eight sanitary landfills in the country compared with 176 operating landfill sites and numerous illegal dumpsites.

The sanitary landfills are located in Pahang (one), Selangor (three), Johor (one) and Sarawak (three).

“Waste management is a huge burden to the country while sorting the garbage from source is not often practised by the people here.

“The Government is spending a tremendous amount of money on waste management,” said Dr Theng.

The incinerator was a good option, he said, but added that many residents and NGOs were opposed to the idea of having an incinerator due to random, unproven information.

This is despite countries like Japan, Singapore and many European countries having used them for years.

It is learnt that there will be five mini incinerators in Malaysia – in Pulau Pangkor (construction completed, soon to be commissioned), Labuan (to be completed by year’s end but delayed), as well as Pulau Langkawi, Pulau Tioman and Cameron Highlands (all three should be ready next year).

Dr Theng said another problem was that there was little coordination between the ministries dealing with it.

According to him, solid waste management was under the purview of the Housing and Local Government Ministry, hazardous industrial waste under the Department of Environ­ment, agricultural waste under the Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Ministry and medical waste under the Health Ministry.

Dumps could become stinking time-bombs
The Star 1 Nov 10;

KUALA LUMPUR: It is a long-standing, stinking problem that will not go away. We have yet to find a safe way to dispose of the 19,000 tonnes or so of garbage that Malaysians produce each day.

All our trash now goes to 176 garbage tips all over the country – but only eight are sanitary landfills with pollution control features.

The others are more or less just open dumpsites which stink, pose health hazards, leak polluting liquids into groundwater and rivers, as well as emit combustible gases.

Yet another worry are the 114 closed landfills, almost all of them just open dumps. With no bottom linings to prevent noxious leachate from seeping out or piping system to vent gases, these are ticking time bombs.

With 16 landfills sitting near water intake points or the sea, another potential disaster lurks. We desperately need to clean up the mess.

Garbage disposal a heavy load for the authorities
The Star 1 Nov 10;

KUALA LUMPUR: Residents here produce 2,100 tonnes of garbage per day, 63,000 tonnes per month and 756,000 tonnes per year. The waste is sent to the Bukit Tagar landfill about 50km from the city.

Many do not know the amount of work and money that Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) and the Housing and Local Government Ministry puts into disposing the garbage.

The “journey” begins at 7am for Alam Flora Sdn Bhd workers as they collect waste from houses and designated bin points. It is then taken to the Taman Beringin transfer station in Kepong at about 11am.

At the station, the garbage is placed into huge trailers and taken to the Bukit Tagar landfill.

The landfill began operations in 2005 and is expected to last another 35 years. It has a capacity of 120 million tonnes of air space and occupies 1,700 acres. It was built after the closure of the Taman Beringin landfill.

Solid Waste Management Depart-ment director-general Datuk Dr Nadzri Yahya said RM35 per tonne is paid to the Taman Beringin transfer station and RM28.80 per tonne at the Bukit Tagar landfill.

“Collection and public cleansing by Alam Flora costs RM9.4mil for domestic and commercial wastes and the collection alone works up to RM5.3mil a month,” he added.

The task of maintaining a landfill is not easy.

At the end of each day, the waste has to be covered by soil while the gas produced has to be collected to produce electricity or flares.

The department is mulling other types of waste treatment facilities like the thermal treatment plant, which uses heat to treat waste.

Housing and Local Government Minister Datuk Chor Chee Heung said that if incinerators and modern technology on the management of solid waste were in place, the lifespan of the landfills could be extended by more than 20 years,”

“Sixteen of the 292 landfields in the country had been closed because they were full.”

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Pester Power: 'Daddy, where will the polar bears live?'

The Independent 1 Nov 10;

Some of the boldest eco-warriors are those with the most to lose – our children. Nick Duerden argues that when it comes to getting parents to go green, pester power is a force to be reckoned with

After her second day at school, my four-year-old daughter sat me down at the kitchen table for a conversation. She wanted me to explain exactly how I take her to school each morning.

"It's not by car, is it?" she said.

I confirmed to her that, no, it wasn't by car.

"We go by bicycle when daddy is running late; otherwise we walk," I told her.

"Good," she replied.

I asked why.

"Cars are bad."

I learned later that upon arrival at her reception class each day pupils have to tick a box on a piece of paper denoting how they journeyed to school that morning. Though they are never told in quite so many words that cars are actually bad, they are nevertheless steered, by their eco-aware teacher, towards the two former modes of transport – because cycling and walking are both environmentally friendly, and environmentally friendly, as my daughter appears already to know, is "good".

A week later, and we had a similar kind of conversation, this one about the fact that we currently grow no fruit or vegetables in our small garden. I informed her of the wonders of Ocado, but she insisted that self-sufficiency was better. At school, my daughter explained, they have an allotment where they grow tomatoes and strawberries, possibly potatoes and almost certainly marrows. She wants us now to do likewise.

Friends who have children older than my own have told me this is just the tip of an iceberg which (so long as the iceberg doesn't inconveniently melt due to global warming) will continue to grow as she does.

"Mine told me to turn off the hoover the other day," a father said to me, "because it used too much energy. She also stands by me while I brush my teeth, to make sure I have the tap turned off while I'm doing it."

This, I know now, is pester power in action. And in a world where we must all become more green aware, it is children who are at the very forefront of the movement, children who collectively soak up all the information like the sponges they are, before disseminating it in a manner that, rather winningly, brooks no argument.

In the UK today, more than 67 per cent of schools have now signed up to the Eco-Schools Programme.

A global award programme that guides schools onto a sustainable journey, it helps provide a framework to embed environmentally aware principles into the very heart of modern school life. Keep Britain Tidy, which administers the programme, hopes that the remaining 33 per cent of schools will follow shortly. There are 46 countries around the world already signed up, linking more than 40,000 schools to share with one another their initiatives and successes.

The programme was set in motion after the 1994 Rio Earth Summit, but took hold fully four years ago, as climate change increasingly became a staple of news bulletins. Eco-Schools essentially encourage pupils to account for energy and water waste in daily life, to collect litter, and grow their own food. It rewards all efforts too, and achievements are marked by bronze, silver and green flags.

"What we want is for schools to put sustainability at the very heart of everything they do," says Andrew Suter, education project manager at Keep Britain Tidy. "We'd like to help change the whole behavioural framework for schools, to encourage them to identify their own specific issues, and also to then create solutions for them."

This doesn't merely mean through solar panels and wind turbines, but also by simply observing good behaviour. The Switch Off Campaign, he explains, has proved particularly effective, largely because it is so easily implemented. Pupils now ensure that before they leave their desks and rooms all the computers are off, as are the lights.

It is good that they do. The UK Education Sector currently produces somewhere in the region of 10.8m tonnes of carbon a year, but through good behaviour alone the initiative is now helping to save more than 200,000 tonnes. "The aim," Suter says, "is that one day [schools] become 100 per cent carbon neutral. We also hope that, by targeting children so early on, they will take these messages forward in life."

The manner in which eco-awareness is first introduced to children is basic, but effective: the ice caps are melting and the polar bears have nowhere to live. Children, in the main, says Andrew Suter, very much want polar bears to have somewhere to live. From this spark, they begin to comprehend that the world is in peril, and they want to help.

Their first port of call is at home, where they educate their parents accordingly. Successfully, too. A 2008 poll of 1,500 parents showed that 24 per cent cited their children as a key green motivator. Only 2 per cent said they took their cue from politicians. And an increasing number of books targeted directly at children, are being published on the subject. How To Turn Your Parents Green by James Russell, for example, is a pocket-sized manifesto that encourages its youthful readership to monitor their parents' behaviour and punish them should they refuse to heed the eco-message.

And then there is television.

Somewhere within the labyrinth of BBC TV Centre, Clare Bradley, a producer for CBeebies, is explaining the thinking behind Green Balloon Club. The show's largely pre-teen cast, one dog and an appropriately coloured hand puppet (green) extol the many virtues of becoming environmentally aware.

Essentially, Bradley says, she wanted to make a children's version of Springwatch, the BBC show presented by Chris Packham and Kate Humble which observed the wonders of nature through night-vision glasses and open jaws.

"Springwatch was fiendishly popular in my house, my children dropping everything to watch it," she recounts. "It made sense, then, to want to do something similar – but this time specifically for, and presented by, younger people."

It was one of the few programmes she has produced that came with its own mission statement. "I had lofty objectives, I suppose. I wanted it to inform children about their world, [to encourage them] to care about it and to become the stewards for the next generation," she says. "An ambitious plan, I'll grant you, but one I felt sure would catch on."

She was right; it did. Many might expect kids to want to focus more on the cartoon world than on the real one, far less a real world that required of them an awful lot of grunt work (viewers are encouraged to get out into the mud and ramble, plant, dig and recycle). But Green Balloon Club ran for two series.

The first series even managed something no other CBeebies show had: to run once a week for a full year. This allowed it to fully chart the incremental changing of the seasons, as the young viewers watched planted seeds grew to fruition.

Green Balloon Club hasn't been commissioned for a third series, largely because CBeebies tends to repeat its programmes ad infinitum (children love repetition, and repeats are cheaper).

However the channel is planning several more green-flavoured shows, among them Mr Bloom's Nursery, which, from early next year, will encourage children to nurture their own homegrown produce. Bradley says that though CBeebies doesn't have a specific mandate from the BBC to enlighten its viewers on environmental matters, it wants keenly to reflect what is going on in the world.

"You should never underestimate children, because they really do care," she says. "Kids today have a far more global view than we ever did. When I was growing up I remember my father constantly reminding me to switch off the lights. Now it's my children who tell me to turn off the lights. They know all about wasted energy, and how to avoid it. The environment has become a big concern for them – as it should."

But pester power is not without its share of controversies. Not all -parents, after all, necessarily want their children at such a young age to get on such a high horse, not least when an increasing number of people are starting to feel that the purported realities of global warming have been exaggerated, perhaps for politically motivated reasons.

"Not all parents appreciate the message," Andrew Suter says, "and, yes, we do occasionally encounter scepticism. But our response to that is simply to say that all we are really doing is encouraging children to care about the world around them, and to do positive things in it. Nobody, surely, could have an issue with that."

He concludes, pointedly, by saying that children themselves have yet to question the veracity of climate change, "chiefly because they are children. They are not cynical yet."

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Better monitoring urged for ailing oceans by 2015

* New system could give warning of tsunamis, acidification
* Scientists to put plea to governments at Nov. 3-5 talks
* Say set-up $10-15 billion, $5 billion annual costs
Alister Doyle, Reuters AlertNet 31 Oct 10;

OSLO, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Ocean scientists urged governments on Sunday to invest billions of dollars by 2015 in a new system to monitor the seas and give alerts of everything from tsunamis to acidification linked to climate change.

They said better oversight would have huge economic benefits, helping to understand the impact of over-fishing or shifts in monsoons that can bring extreme weather such as the 2010 floods in Pakistan.

A scientific alliance, Oceans United, would present the plea to governments meeting in Beijing on Nov. 3-5 for talks about a goal set at a 2002 U.N. Earth Summit of setting up a new system to monitor the health of the planet.

"Most ocean experts believe the future ocean will be saltier, hotter, more acidic and less diverse," said Jesse Ausubel, a founder of the Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO), which leads the alliance and represents 38 major oceanographic institutions from 21 nations.

"It is past time to get serious about measuring what's happening to the seas around us," Ausubel said in a statement.

POGO said global ocean monitoring would cost $10 billion to $15 billion to set up, with $5 billion in annual operating costs.

Currently, one estimate is that between $1 and $3 billion are spent on monitoring the seas, said Tony Knap, director of the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences and a leader of POGO.

Knap said new cash sounded a lot at a time of austerity cuts by many governments, but could help avert bigger losses.

JAPAN TSUNAMI

Off Japan, officials estimate an existing $100 million system of subsea cables to monitor earthquakes and tsunamis, linked to an early warning system, will avert 7,500-10,000 of a projected 25,000 fatalities in the event of a huge subsea earthquake.

"It sounds a lot to install $100 million of cables but in terms of prevention of loss of life it begins to look trivial," Knap said.

New cash would help expand many existing projects, such as satellite monitoring of ocean temperatures, tags on dolphins, salmon or whales, or tsunami warning systems off some nations.

Ausubel told Reuters: "The Greeks 2,500 years ago realised that building lighthouses would have great benefits for mariners. Over the centuries, governments have invested in buoys and aids for navigation.

"This is the 21st century version of that," said Ausubel, who is also a vice-president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in the United States.

Among worrying signs, surface waters in the oceans have become 30 percent more acidic since 1800, a shift widely blamed on increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning of fossil fuels.

That could make it harder for animals such as lobsters, crabs, shellfish, corals or plankton to build protective shells, and would have knock-on effects on other marine life.

Scientists said it was hard to predict the effects of acidification. Colder water retains more carbon dioxide -- making the Arctic most at risk. Warmer water in the tropics could mean less retention of carbon dioxide.

Scientists: Big Brother Network for Ailing Oceans Overdue
livescience.com Yahoo News 31 Oct 10;

A Big Brother-style network for keeping an eye on the world's oceans is long overdue, a group of oceanographers says.

The world's oceans have changed dramatically over the past several hundred years. The ocean surface is 30 percent more acidic today than it was in 1800, with much of that increase occurring in the last 50 years - a rising trend that could both harm coral reefs and profoundly impact tiny shelled plankton at the base of the ocean food web, scientists warn.

Despite the seriousness of the impacts of such changes to the ocean's marine life patterns, water temperature, sea level and polar ice cover, the world's oceanographers have yet to come together to deploy their swarm of spy cams and sensors to monitor these ocean conditions that have a fundamental impact on life across the planet.

A team of major oceanographic institutions from around the world will urge government officials and ministers meeting in Beijing on Nov. 3 to help complete an ocean-wide monitoring network by 2015. The system could cost $15 billion up front, and $5 billion each year to operate. However, those backing the project say the value of such information would dwarf the investment required.

"Most ocean experts believe the future ocean will be saltier, hotter, more acidic and less diverse," said Jesse Ausubel, a founder of the oceanography group behind the monitoring push, Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO), and of the recently completed Census of Marine Life. "It is past time to get serious about measuring what's happening to the seas around us."

The average pH level (a logarithmic scale that measures a liquid's acidity) at the ocean surface has dropped from 8.2 to 8.1 units, "rendering the oceans more acidic than they have been for 20 million years," with expectations of continuing acidification due to high concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which dissolves into the world's oceans, the POGO scientists write in a recent report.

Because colder water retains more carbon dioxide, the acidity of surface waters may increase fastest at Earth's high latitudes where the zooplankton known as pteropods are particularly abundant. Pteropods are colorful, free-swimming sea snails and sea slugs on which many animals higher in the food chain depend.

"Ocean acidification could have a devastating effect on calcifying organisms, and perhaps marine ecosystems as a whole, and we need global monitoring to provide timely information on trends and fluxes from the tropics to the poles," said Peter Burkill, who is involved in the ocean monitoring push.

The U.S. and European Union governments have recently signaled support, said Kiyoshi Suyehiro, chairman of POGO. However, "international cooperation is desperately needed to complete a global ocean observation system that could continuously collect, synthesize and interpret data critical to a wide variety of human needs."

Read more!

Coral bleaching in the Andamans

Reef rip-off in Andaman
Tapa Chakraborty The Telegraph Calcutta 31 Oct 10;

Oct. 31: An unusually hot summer and a delayed monsoon have combined to play havoc with one of the Andamans’ biggest tourist attractions: the multi-coloured coral reefs.

Some 80 per cent of the reefs up to a depth of 5-10 feet — the part visible from the shores and tourist boats — have decayed beyond recovery, a study by the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) and the National Coral Reef Research Institute have found.

The reason is “bleaching” of the reefs by overheated seawater this summer — a process worsened by the rains’ late arrival.

Bleaching is a process in which reefs turn white or pale because the zooxanthellae — the symbiotic algae living within the corals’ tissues that give them their colour — are expelled owing to stress caused by a hostile environment.

Bleached coral can often recover over time, as the Andamans’ reefs themselves had recovered after a period of bleaching in 1998.

“But this time, between 60 per cent and 88 per cent of the coral reefs under five to ten feet of water are all gone. There is no chance of their revival now,” senior ZSI marine biologist C. Raghunathan told The Telegraph over the phone from Port Blair.

The Andamans are among the few spots that offer tourists both a tropical rainforest and coral reefs.

The reefs, often just 10-20 metres from the beach, are clearly visible from land, provide a habitat for thousands of marine species, and also protect the coast.

Their combined length around the islands in the region is about 14,700km, according to a United Nations estimate.

With the reefs bleached and dying, the colourful fishes swirling around them will be gone too. The healthier parts of the reefs are now under 15 feet of water — too far down for the tourists to see unless they dive in with scuba apparatus.

“The corals have lost their lustre and turned off-white and pale brownish. You can’t bear to look at them now,” said Raghunathan, who had been part of the survey by 20 ZSI scientists, conducted from August this year.

“Of the total 446 species of coral reefs in the Andamans, 120 have perished. Unfortunately, the largest reef formations in the Andaman Sea belong to these 120 species; they formed the largest segment.”

Scientists rued that the reefs, one of the richest marine ecosystems in South Asia, had survived the December 2004 tsunami only to fall prey to global warming.

Coral reefs survive well in a marine water temperature of 22 to 28 degrees Celsius. This summer, the temperatures had risen above 33 degrees and this had continued till June.

Growing water temperatures have been bleaching and threatening coral reefs at many places in the world, especially the region between the Andamans and northwestern Indonesia, for several years.

In May this year, P.M. Mohan, head of Pondicherry University’s department of ocean studies and marine biology, had sounded the alert about the coral bleaching in the Andaman Sea.

“We had initially thought the monsoon would halt the process of decay, but a delayed monsoon compounded the reefs’ plight,” Mohan said over the phone.

“The damage to the reefs under five-foot-deep water is there for everyone to see. The reefs look ghostly. If you go deeper, the gradations of decay is relatively less,” he added.

“All we can do is pray that the summer is not this blistering next year and that the monsoon arrives on time.”

The reefs have been affected across the Andaman Sea, those worst hit being located in northern Andaman and southern Nicobar, Mohan said. Reefs have been damaged also near the smaller islands such as Tarmugli, Jolly Buoy, Neil and Havlock Island and Red Skin Island, which form part of the Mahatma Gandhi Marine National Park and the Rani Jhansi Marine National Park.

Scientists now fear for the thousands of fish and other marine creatures that live in and around the coral reefs, using them as habitat and a place for hiding, feeding and reproduction.

Andrew Baird, an Australian reef expert from James Cook University, has noticed widespread coral decay in Thailand, Myanmar and Indonesia this summer.

Referring to this, Stuart Campbell, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Indonesia Marine Program, recently wrote: “It’s a disappointing development, particularly... (because) these same corals proved resilient to other disruptions to this ecosystem, including the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004.”
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Toxic dispersants allegedly used in Timor Sea oil spill

Australia contaminates Indonesia sea with toxic chemicals
Antara 31 Oct 10;

Kupang, E Nusa Tenggara (ANTARA News) - The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has sprayed the Timor Sea with dispersants containing highly toxic chemicals to sink the oil spill from the Montara oil field, a non-governmental organization said.

Ferdi Tanoni, director of the Kupang-based West Timor Care Foundation said on Sunday information on the matter came from reports of a meeting between the
Australian Senate and AMSA held in Canberra last week.

The chemicals that had been sprayed was said to be one of the world`s most dangerous chemicals, Tanoni added, and actually had already been banned.

After the incident, Tanoni said, the foundation has received reports on the death of eight people and 30 poisonous cases after the consumption of fish in the waters around the contaminated areas.

The foundation was the only Indonesian NGO that has filed a legal action with the Australian independent investigation commission after the oil spill caused by the explosion on the Montara oil rig in the West Atlas block that has contaminated the Timor Sea on August 21, 2009.

Tanoni said that the Australian Senate had asked the organization for comments on the use of the toxic dispersant for discussion in Canberra. The Green party of Australia had sent him a 20-page letter asking for comments on the incident.

"We have quickly answered the letter by sending evidence via electronic mail on Friday (Oct. 22) to the office of Green party in Canberra," he said.

Tanoni also hoped President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will raise the issue in his meeting with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard who is scheduled to visit Indonesia on November 1 and 2.

The foundation proposes the setting up of an independent investigation team to verify the case, Tanoni said.

The case was said to be serious both financially and physically to the people living close to the contaminated areas as many fish have disappeared while the remaining are poisonous.(*)

Australia See Eye-to-Eye on Timor Spill
Eras Poke, Fidelis E Satriastanti & Ismira Lutfia Jakarta Globe 3 Nov 10;

Jakarta. Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said on Tuesday that Indonesia and Australia shared the same position on the Timor Sea oil spill because both countries were claiming compensation from the operator of the oil well in question.

The spill was the result of a blowout at the Montara wellhead platform in the Timor Sea, off the northern coast of Australia, in August 2009.

The leak was plugged 74 days later and created a large oil slick that polluted Indonesian waters.

The well, located 690 kilometers west of Darwin, is operated by PTTEP Australasia, a subsidiary of Thailand’s PTT Exploration & Production.

The Indonesian government said the spill affected 78,000 square kilometers of Indonesian waters and was seeking Rp 22 trillion ($2.44 billion) in compensation from PTTEP.

Activists have also accused the operator of using highly toxic chemicals as dispersants to clear the oil.

Marty said that while the government was aware of the dispersants’ use, it had not been formally discussed during Tuesday’s meeting between President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

“However, during our informal talks, the Australian delegation reiterated that the dispersant met national standards and would not create new problems,” Marty said on the sidelines of a reception for the Australian leader.

He added that the Australian delegation was prepared to explain that the dispersants used would not pose a health or environmental risk.

Yudhoyono did not address the toxicity issue, saying only that his administration had pressed for greater cooperation on preventing environmental damage as a result of the spill and ensuring that compensation was awarded to “those entitled to it.”

Meanwhile, activists said the dispersants were highly toxic and had left eight people dead and at least 30 ill.

Ferdi Tanoni, director of the West Timor Care Foundation (YTPB), said a hearing between the Australian Senate and the Australian Maritime Safety Authority had revealed that the dispersants used on the spill were among “the world’s most dangerous chemicals.”

He said the AMSA acknowledged using 184,113 liters of chemicals dispersants, including Corexit, a known fetal toxin that breaks down blood cells and causes blood and kidney disorders.

This dispersant has already been banned by some nations, including the United Kingdom.

“This is a very serious human issue because since AMSA sprayed the oil with the dispersant, people consuming fish caught in the Timor Sea off East Nusa Tenggara have been falling sick, even dying,” Ferdi said on Sunday.

“Within 95 hours of spraying, fish died in large numbers.”

Separately, Masnellyarti Hilman, head of the government’s advocacy team seeking compensation, said they had already included the effects from the dispersant in their official claim to PTTEP.

“We’ve noted that their use of these chemicals has caused pollution and environmental destruction,” she said.

“We also have reports of dead fish in the area. However, we haven’t studied any fish samples [to prove they were poisoned by dispersants] or how it affects humans or causes deaths.”

She also said the team had not received reports from the local administration about deaths linked to the dispersants. “If there were, we’ll certainly follow up on the matter,” Masnellyarti said.

She added the two variants of Corexit used — Corexit EC9500 and Corexit EC9527A — were listed as dangerous chemicals by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

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Sustainable growth formula eludes many China cities

Reuters AlertNet 31 Oct 10;

BEIJING, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Some Chinese cities are failing to meet the challenge of sustainable development, posing a risk to Beijing's strategy of relying on mass urbanisation to drive economic growth, according to a study released on Sunday.

Sustaining urban growth without exhausting an already degraded environment is critical for China. More than 1 billion people are likely to be living in cities by 2030, compared with 600 million in 2008 and 380 million in 1990.

The Urban China Institute, a new think tank, found that a number of cities are making rapid progress in the right direction, but others are in serious danger of falling behind.

"Without strenuous efforts to improve performance, this gap will only grow, with serious implications for the country's overall living standards and the environment," its report said.

The institute examined data between 2004 and 2008 from 112 cities to assess their progress toward sustainable development according to 18 criteria, such as access to safe water, waste recycling and efficiency in using resources.

China's cities have made strides, especially in providing basic needs such as healthcare and education. But they are still well behind the developed world in areas where the tradeoffs between income and environment are starker.

The report described the cleanliness of China's environment as woefully behind the West's. Air pollution and sulphur dioxide emissions are far from meeting World Health Organisation norms.

Part of the policy conundrum is that economic history offers few models of sustainable development during the early and middle stages of urbanisation, according to the think tank.

The sheer pressure and pace of urban development make the task even harder in the case of China, said Jonathan Woetzel, a director at consultants McKinsey & Co in Shanghai.

"Each and every year there is a need to accommodate a new set of migrants and to demonstrate rapid economic progress," he said.

McKinsey is a founder of the Urban China Institute along with Columbia University's Global Center for East Asia and Tsinghua University's School of Public Policy, which are both in Beijing.

Planners, especially in smaller cities, often simply do not have the skills and resources to ensure sustainable development, Woetzel told Reuters.

On the positive side of the ledger, Chinese cities are relatively dense, which makes it more attractive for governments to invest in better public transport and smart grid technologies.

The study also found that three-quarters of the cities examined spent more on environmental protection from 2005-2008.

"The logic, which is well understood by government, is that it's a lot cheaper to fix these problems now than to deal with them later," Woetzel said.

The study paints a mixed picture, but he said it was encouraging that 33 out of the 112 cities had managed to grow faster than their peers while doing better on sustainability.

The report singled out Shenyang, Tianjin, Nanning and, especially, the eastern port city of Qingdao for diversifying their economies away from urban industry towards services, increasing energy and resource efficiency in the process.

"There will be companies and investors who choose to base themselves in those locations because of their superior quality of life," Woetzel said. (Reporting by Alan Wheatley, Global Economics Correspondent; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

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