Pulau Hantu Featured on theasiamag.com
from Pulau Hantu
Feeding Spotted Dove: 15. Courtship
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Monday Morgue: 13th December 2010
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales
Monkeys and mudskippers at Admiralty Park
from wild shores of singapore
It calls tender for study on interaction between water seepage and oil
Ronnie Lim Business Times 13 Dec 10;
A YEAR into construction of the $940 million phase one of the Jurong Rock Cavern (JRC), JTC Corporation is carrying out studies on the effect of seepage water on crude oil and oil products that will be stored there from mid-2013.
Forming part of its on-going studies on underground oil storage, JTC's latest investigation covers normal groundwater seepage - which is salty in nature - from the rock walls into the caverns.
JTC had earlier carried out environmental impact studies as far back as 2006, after it found the JRC to be economically and technically viable.
A part of the JRC - located at the Banyan LogisPark portion of Jurong Island - will be beneath the Banyan Basin sea channel there, with earlier reports indicating that excavation work will be done 130 metres below the seabed.
Water pressure will keep the oil contained within the generally unlined rock caves, JTC said earlier.
The corporation, which has just called a tender for an experimental study on the interaction between water seepage and oil, explained in a background note that 'part of the water will have free contact with the stored product (for example, crude oil) ... such as water droplets falling from the cavern roof, and water that will percolate from the cavern walls and cavern bottom'.
'Water can be emulsified in the product and can accumulate at the cavern bottom forming a water bed,' it added.
The purpose of the JTC study, which includes several chemical tests, is to analyse the salt and sulphur content in both the oil and seepage water and 'the evolution of the water content in the crude oil'.
JTC wants the appointed consultant to prepare a 'test cell' where seepage water will be continuously injected at the cell top as fine droplets, which will then fall freely to the cell bottom where they accumulate as a layer. The water will then be discharged from the cell bottom.
Energy consultant Ong Eng Tong told BT there are generally no technical issues regarding water mixing with oil, as oil is lighter and the water will eventually settle down and can be easily drained off.
'Ethanol, which is mixed with gasoline to produce 'green' gasoline, is the only oil product which will be affected as its microscopic properties attract water,' he said. 'As for salt, this affects fuel oil as the salt won't settle.'
The latest JTC study comes a year after South Korea's Hyundai Engineering & Construction embarked on phase one of the JRC - with the first two caverns providing 480,000 cubic metres of oil storage expected to be ready in the first half of 2013.
The entire phase one will involve eight kilometres of tunnels, with five caverns made up of two storage galleries, with each gallery being 340m long, 20m wide and 27m high. About nine-storeys high, each gallery is large enough to contain water from 64 Olympic-size pools.
JRC's first confirmed customer is the Jurong Aromatics Corporation (JAC) consortium, which is set to start building a US$2.4 billion petrochemicals complex on Jurong Island next year.
The JAC facility is slated to come on-stream in 2014, soon after JRC's completion.
Straits Times 13 Dec 10;
NAIROBI: Two Singaporeans were arrested in Kenya after they were suspected of smuggling raw elephant ivory out of the country.
John Yap Chan Seng, 48, and Nah Choon Quee, 47, were checking in at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi on Friday night for a midnight Kenya Airways flight headed for Bangkok, when they were reportedly found with 92kg of illegal ivory.
The duo were detained by the Kenya Wildlife Service, but one of them was released on Saturday, reported CNN. It is not clear which of the two was released.
Yap, who lives with his family in a flat in Redhill, is said to have been jobless for a few weeks before this.
His eldest brother, Desmond, told The Straits Times that his brother told the family he was going to Thailand and left Singapore last Monday.
He added that his brother had been working in casinos in Malaysia and Macau, but lost his job a while ago.
His elderly parents still do not know about their son's arrest.
Kenya Wildlife Service's corporate communications manager, Mr Paul Udoto, said the authorities made the arrest after sniffer dogs found ivory in four suitcases.
Mr Udoto added on Saturday that Yap and Nah had travelled from Lilongwe, Malawi, and stayed in Kenya for two days.
The man still being held is expected to be arraigned before the Makadara Law Courts in Nairobi on Tuesday.
Kenya has long been trying to clamp down on the poaching and trafficking of rhino horn and elephant ivory, which have risen in recent months. The high demand for ivory has decimated elephant populations in Africa.
Estimates by nature conservation body WWF suggest that the population of African elephants in the 1930s and 1940s - some three million to five million - has dropped as a result of the ivory trade. The elephant population in Kenya alone is believed to have plummeted by 85 per cent between 1973 and 1989.
'Globally there is an increased demand, so there is a strong motivation for people to kill elephants and rhino,' Mr Udoto was quoted as saying by CNN.
Anti-poaching efforts have helped to slow down the trend, although demand for elephant ivory and rhino horn - especially in Asia - continues to threaten animal populations in Africa.
Kenya's canine unit has chalked up several high-profile ivory confiscations and arrests in recent months.
'We need to be more aggressive with poachers and traffickers to stop this problem,' Mr Udoto told CNN.
XINHUA
Additional reporting by Ben Nadarajan
Genetic analysis will determine whether a new species of fork-marked lemur has been discovered in Madagascar
Shanta Barley The Guardian 13 Dec 10;
Scientists believe they have discovered a new species of lemur in the forests of Madagascar.
The animal's unique, feathery structure under its tongue – that may be used to gather nectar – distinguishes it as a new species, researchers say. They are waiting for the results of a genetic analysis to confirm the claim.
Primatologist Russ Mittermeier, who is now the president of Conservation International, first glimpsed the lemur in 1995 in Daraina, a forest in north-east Madagascar. It had a black stripe on its back that forked on its face, suggesting to Mittermeier that it was a fork-marked lemur belonging to the genus phaner.
"I was surprised to see a fork-marked lemur there, since this animal had not yet been recorded from the region," he said. "I immediately knew that it was likely a new species to science."
It was not until October this year, however, that Mittermeier returned to Daraina, along with a film crew from the BBC's Natural History Unit, to investigate. After hearing the distinctive calls of a fork-marked lemur, the team tracked it through the forest and shot it with a tranquiliser gun. They took blood samples from the lemur for genetic analysis and returned it to the wild when it regained consciousness.
Footage of the lemur will air tomorrow on the BBC programme, Decades of Discovery, in which filmmaker Chris Packham goes in search of his top 10 favourite new species of the last decade.
Although the results from the genetic analysis have not yet been revealed, Mittermeier is convinced that the creature is a new species of fork-marked lemur that is uniquely adapted to the forests of Dairana. Sandwiched between its toothcomb and tongue is a "strange structure" that has never been seen before in species belonging to the phaner genus, according to Mittermeier. White and feathery, the structure flicks upwards when the lemur's tongue is extended. He believes that it helps the lemur to capture nectar.
Apart from the strange structure in its mouth, the lemur is otherwise very similar in appearance to other species of fork-crowned lemur. It has a "toothcomb" – a mesh of incisors that it uses to scrape tree sap off bark – and a long, spindly tongue that it uses to eat nectar and tree sap. It also sounds a loud, high-pitched call just after sunset and leaps between branches without pausing.
There are four known species of phaner – or fork-marked – lemur: the Amber mountain fork-marked dwarf lemur, the eastern fork-marked dwarf lemur, the western fork-crowned dwarf lemur and the Sambirano fork-crowned dwarf lemur. Although 42 species of lemur have been discovered in Madagascar since 2000, not a single new species belonging to the phaner genus has been found. "This would be the first, and that's very exciting," Mittermeier said.
"This is yet another remarkable discovery from the island of Madagascar, the world's highest priority biodiversity hotspot and one of the most extraordinary places in our planet," Mittermeier said. "It is particularly remarkable that we continue to find new species of lemurs and many other plants and animals in this heavily impacted country, which has already lost 90% or more of its original vegetation."
Linn Groeneveld, a primatologist based at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, is sceptical of Mittermeier's claims, however. "A great number of new lemur species have been described in the last decades and I think people have rightly so expressed concern about the validity of some of these species. I believe that we should use an integrative approach to species delimitation, which relies on multiple lines of evidence."
According to Groeneveld, conservationists are sometimes too hasty to declare the discovery of new species, because it helps them to protect threatened ecosystems. "Every new - especially primate - species can serve as an extra argument for the much needed protection of remaining forest," she said. But not everyone agrees. According to Christopher Golden, who researches Madagascan conservation at the University of California in Berkeley, even the discovery of a new species of lemur will not be enough to protect Madagascar's forests.
"Discoveries of new species have historically altered the fate of threatened ecosystems during the era of the Durban Vision, but since the change in political regime, the hope for illuminating hidden biodiversity to enhance incentives for conservation has been lost amid political strife," said Golden. The Durban Vision was a promise made by former president Marc Ravalomanana to triple the area of the country's national parks. It was sidetracked in March 2009, when a violent coup overturned the government, according to Golden.
In addition to footage of the potentially new species of lemur, the BBC programme will include exclusive footage of a host of other unusual, recently discovered species. On the list is the pygmy three-toed sloth, the sengi; Chan's megastick – the world's longest insect, and the bamboo shark, which walks along the sea bed on fins.
Also featured in the documentary is the barreleye, a deep sea fish with a transparent head that protects its tubular, green eyes from the stinging tentacles of the jellyfish that it eats. In 2009, footage of the fish captured by remotely operated vehicles at a depth of 700m revealed that the eyes point upwards when the fish is looking for food, and swivel forwards when it is feeding.
• Decade of Discovery will be shown on BBC2 at 8pm on Tuesday 14 December
New species of lemur discovered in Madagascar
BBC News 13 Dec 10;
A species of fork-marked lemur believed to be new to science has been found in the forests of Madagascar.
The find is revealed on the BBC documentary Decade of Discovery.
Primate expert and president of Conservation International, Russ Mittermeier, first spotted the lemur during an expedition in 1995, but has confirmed its existence whilst filming the documentary this year, when he and his colleagues captured and took blood samples from the small primate before returning it to its forest home.
Genetic testing of these samples should confirm whether the animal is indeed a new species.
Dr Mittermeier, however, is already convinced that it is.
Forked-marked lemurs belong to the genus, or group of species, called Phaner. If confirmed as a new species, this would be only the fifth member of that group.
Following the call
Dr Mittermeier first saw the squirrel-sized creature in Daraina, a protected area in the northeast of Madagascar.
He was there in search of another lemur - the golden-crowned Tattersall's sifaka (Propithecus tattersali), a much larger species only discovered in 1988.
"I was surprised to see a fork-marked lemur there, since this animal had not yet been recorded from the region," he recalled.
"I immediately knew that it was likely a new species to science, but didn't have the time to follow up until now."
So in October of this year, the researcher led an expedition - including geneticist Ed Louis from the Omaha Zoo and a film crew from the BBC's Natural History Unit - to the same area, where they managed to track down the animal.
The team set out just after sunset, which is when fork-marked lemurs are most vocal.
They heard one calling close to camp at the top of a tree and ran through the forest following its calls.
The researchers eventually caught sight of the animal in the torchlight, and fired a tranquiliser dart.
A team member then climbed the tree to bring the sleepy little lemur safely down to the ground, where they could examine it.
The shape of the lemur's markings, the size of its limbs and its long, nectar-slurping tongue are familiar facets of all Phaner lemurs.
But this one has a slightly different colour pattern. It also displayed an unusual head-bobbing behaviour that the scientists had not seen in other fork-marked lemurs.
A strange structure under the lemur's tongue could also distinguish it from its closest relatives.
"The genetics will tell the real story," said Dr Mittermeier.
If confirmed as a new species, Dr Louis and Dr Mittermeier would like the animal to be named after Fanamby, the conservation organisation that has been instrumental in protecting the forest of Daraina.
"This is yet another remarkable discovery from the island of Madagascar, the world's highest priority biodiversity hotspot and one of the most extraordinary places in our planet," Dr Mittermeier said.
"It is particularly remarkable that we continue to find new species of lemurs and many other plants and animals in this heavily impacted country, which has already lost 90% or more of its original vegetation."
And because of its very restricted range, it is likely that this will turn out to be an endangered or critically endangered species.
Decade of Discovery, a collaboration between Conservation International and the BBC's Natural History Unit, will be broadcast at 20.00BST on Tuesday 14 December on BBC Two.
New Straits Times 13 Dec 10;
IT'S not called the black gold of the forest for nothing.
Gaharu, the fragrant resin which resides deep within the heartwood of certain tree species, is one of Malaysia's most prized natural resources.
First traded globally 2,000 years ago, the aromatic treasure is today feeding an industry worth millions in US dollars.
Malaysia, together with Indonesia, form the biggest suppliers to markets like the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia.
Most of our exports are wild agarwood or gaharu, as it is locally known. This highly-scented resin is formed naturally when a "sick" tree, usually of the karas species, heals from a fungal infection.
Some claim that the infection sets in after lightning strikes the karas, or Aquilaria tree.
Others say it's the doing of animals -- the clawing of tigers, pecking of birds, or nesting of ants inside the trunk. Whatever the circumstances, it remains one of the world's greatest mysteries.
Prized the world over for centuries, gaharu has had its usages recorded far and wide since the days of the Pharaohs.
Today, hundreds of tonnes of gaharu are traded each year, involving at least 18 countries. It is used as medicine, fragrance, food flavouring and gifts, and also in cosmetics and religious rituals.
It could fetch anything from RM80 to over RM20,000 a kilogramme, depending on the grade.
The country has never experienced a "gaharu craze" as intense as in the last few years, says Datuk Dahlan Taha, president of a local gaharu traders association called Pengharum.
"Gaharu incense became extremely popular in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong five years ago because of its natural properties. And over the years, demand from the UAE has been escalating.
"That was when Malaysian traders stepped up their production to meet those demands."
In fact, half of the declared volume in international trade in 2005 came from Malaysia, says a report by wildlife trade monitoring group, TRAFFIC.
Our official export figure stood at RM56 million last year, but traders could well be making many times the amount due to the high price gaharu fetches when it goes out into the international market.
World export in 2007 was after all, valued at a staggering RM650 million.
This good run, however, could be short-lived.
Experts have warned that the country's status as a sustainable forest management advocate could be severely challenged if Malaysia failed to address mounting threats undermining its wild gaharu population.
TRAFFIC's report Wood for the trees: A review of the Agarwood trade in Malaysia has revealed that illegal harvesting and a lack of effective management of much of the legal harvest are major causes for concern.
Soaring demand has led to rapidly diminishing stocks in the wild, rising prices and concerns over future supplies.
Today, seven out of 18 agarwood-producing tree species found in Malaysia are at risk of global extinction.
Even though the trade is regulated through a system of permits by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and with Malaysia capping its export quota at no more than 200,000kg a year since 2007, it is believed that more of the aromatic wood is leaving the country through illegal means.
Illegal harvesters entering protected Malaysian forests operate in a highly-organised manner, giving rise to speculations that it's not the work of mere individuals, says Noo rainie Awang Anak, co-author of the report.
"These collectors roam the jungle for up to six months, felling and killing karas trees and poaching wildlife.
"Every 30 days or so, they will meet a middleman at a specific location to trade their catch with daily supplies.
"It hints at a syndicate-operated business."
Despite almost 200 arrests between 1992 and 2005, there appears to have been no decline in the level of illegal harvest in Malaysia, the report says.
Just four months ago, enforcement agencies raided a jetty in Pulau Banding, Perak, and seized 2,000kg of gaharu which was one of the biggest seizures coming out from the Belum-Temenggor forests.
Loss for Forestry Department, too
New Straits Times 13 Dec 10;
ILLEGAL harvesting has done more than hurt the image of the country.
The Forestry Department, which collects a 10 per cent royalty from genuine gaharu collectors, is losing a handsome income.
Smuggling can also shrink our natural resources to a critical point after which continued trading becomes unsustainable.
This could prompt the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) management authority to elevate gaharu from its current listing in Appendix II to Appendix I, marking the end of wild gaharu trading.
It's only a matter of time before that happens, says Datuk Dahlan Taha, president of Pengharum, a gaharu traders association, adding that Malaysia has a lot of catching up to do because karas plantations are still in their infancy here. There are about 1,500ha of karas plantations in the country.
Although the quality of yield has not been satisfactory, gaharu from plantations can still be made into oils for sale, says Forest Research Institute of Malaysia deputy director-general Datuk Dr Abdul Rashid Ab Malik.
French perfume companies are using gaharu as its base because of its long-lasting properties and as a substitute for alcohol.
While getting gaharu from plantations can relieve stress on the wild population, TRAFFIC senior communications officer Elizabeth John warns that indiscriminate clearing of forests should not happen.
"The last thing we want is for forests to be cleared to make way for karas plantations."
The Star 13 Dec 10;
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah environmental groups are concerned about a move by the state Forestry Department to allow limited logging and hunting activities at selected forest reserves in interior districts.
Sabah Environmental Protection Association president Wong Tack said the department should not allow any form of hunting until they had determined the number of wildlife in the area.
He reminded the state government that there was a dearth of wildlife in forests near settlements.
“The animals have been illegally hunted for a long time. Now, the authorities want to legalise hunting. It is beyond comprehension. Have they determined the actual wildlife stock and what does the term limited hunting mean? Will it mean only certain species or certain numbers?
“If they are allowing the hunting of deer, how many animals can a hunter bag? And who is going to enforce the rules when the Forestry and Wildlife Departments have acknowledged they don’t have enough enforcement personnel?” he asked.
Wong also questioned the Forestry Department’s move of allowing logging of a 4,000ha of forest at Kaingarain in the interior Tambunan district.
“Our worry is that allowing logging in a forest will result in the area being degraded to an extent that the authorities will eventually convert it into another oil palm plantation.
“We have seen it again and again in Sabah. Enough is enough. We should be preserving what little forests we have left,” he added.
Department deputy director Rahim Sulaiman had disclosed that limited hunting would be allowed in mid-2011 at Ulu Rompon and Monsok covering a total area of 12,000ha.
He said on Saturday that the move was aimed at addressing the locals’ craving for hunting while there were ample game for limited hunt.
On logging in Kaingaran, Rahim said the department had appointed three trustees – the Tambunan District Officer, Tambunan Forest Office and the areas Native Chief – to issue permits for the area.
He said those who want to log the area would be required to replant the area with trees once they had completed their operations.
Conservationists hail breakthrough in regional co-operation to fight illegal traffic in ivory, parrots, skins and live animals
Charlotte Wilkins Yaoundé The Observer 12 Dec 10;
Sting operations by wildlife activists in central Africa have broken up highly organised smuggling rings sending endangered species abroad, leading to the arrest of key dealers and the recovery of hundreds of kilos of ivory, turtle shells and animal skins.
The clampdown took place across four neighbouring countries: Cameroon, Gabon, the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo.Observers said the arrests last week, co-ordinated by the Last Great Ape Organisation (Laga), a wildlife law-enforcement NGO, in Cameroon, Gabon, the Central African Republic and Congo-Brazzaville, marked a big step towards regional enforcement of the laws protecting endangered species.
In Gabon, undercover agents posing as smugglers picked up 16 dealers in possession of 150kg of illegal polished ivory. The haul, estimated to be worth about £90,000 on the international market and probably destined for China, the world's leading market for "white gold", was going via Nigeria, one of the main smuggling routes. All 16 were remanded in custody, having been refused bail following the operation, which focused on a hotel, a local market and a sculptor's studio following a long investigation.
Luc Mathot, of the agency AALF (appui à l'Application de la Loi sur la Faune), who proposed the project to the government, said it was the first time ivory dealers in the country had been put in jail. "This shows that the Gabonese authorities are now prepared to monitor, hunt down, condemn and imprison ivory dealers – that the law on ivory dealing in Gabon is finally being enforced," he said.
In Cameroon, three dealers trading 17 turtle shells were arrested. A cargo of 1,000 African grey parrots worth an estimated £65,000 was intercepted being smuggled into Nigeria and a policeman was arrested on suspicion of accepting a £2,000 bribe to release it and allow it on its way.
The operation in the Central African Republic recovered seven leopard skins, two lion skins and two tusks concealed beneath a pile of cowhides in a dealer's truck. He was arrested. The skins were thought to be destined for Europe or the US to decorate wealthy homes. On the same day, wildlife activists in Ouesso in the north of Congo-Brazzaville found a further 30kg of ivory.
Ofir Drori, the founder of Laga, said the co-ordinated campaign was a breakthrough in a region where countries often sign up to global protections for animals but poor legislation and weak enforcement mean they fail.
"This is the first time we have experienced such a regional crackdown. African governments have started realising international trafficking has to be fought internationally," he said. "These co-ordinated arrests in four neighbouring countries are a warning to the international trafficking rings – no longer can you hide on the other side of a border.
"Traffickers are untouchable and often enjoy complicity with government officials. Conservation in central Africa is a massive failure hiding behind so-called success stories. We would never claim to be a success story – the smugglers still have the upper hand and we are just at the beginning of our fight.' Drori said that the slaughter of animals for the trade was driven by demand from overseas. An ivory baron in China or a trophy hunter in America would place an order that would then trickle down through the criminal network to central Africa.
The smugglers were not lone operators but part of a sophisticated mafia which had grown over the past couple of decades. "Wildlife extinction doesn't start with poachers, it starts with wealthy white-collar criminals who have been operating in central Africa for over 20 years," he said. One of the major obstacles facing wildlife law enforcement is tackling the corruption endemic within central Africa. Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Cameroon and the Central African Republic are persistently ranked by Transparency International as some of the most corrupt countries in the world.
Revenue generated from the illegal wildlife trade, the single greatest threat to some species' survival, is estimated to be in the region of $10bn to $20bn, just behind illegal drug and firearm sales, according to the UN Congress on Crime. Sometimes drugs and wildlife trafficking work hand in hand. One chimpanzee was found sandwiched between 50kg of cocaine and marijuana when a trafficker was arrested in Cameroon en route to Nigeria four years ago.
Often the illegal trade in animals is not even remotely clandestine. In 2008, a baby male hippopotamus was put on an Ethiopian airlines flight from Douala, Cameroon's economic capital, and flown to Lahore zoo in Pakistan. Three traffickers, currently under investigation, reportedly paid $80,000 for the hippo and smuggled it out using forged government documents. Further proof that conservationists are failing to protect endangered species is the disappearance of the West African black rhino, which was last seen in northern Cameroon in 2008. At the end of 2009, Sierra Leone announced it feared it had lost the last of its elephants to poachers, while fewer than 10 elephants remain in Senegal.
Jerome Rivet AFP Yahoo News 13 Dec 10;
Indonesia is one of the world's biggest producers -- and consumers -- of rice, but in the interests of public health and food sustainability the government has launched an ambitious drive to wean people off their beloved staple.
For ordinary Indonesians like Andi Santoso, a 23-year-old student, the thought of going without rice for a day, as the government is proposing, is almost unthinkable.
"I eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner," he said, a little bemused. "If I don't eat rice, I feel like I haven't eaten. What else can I eat?"
Welfare Ministry secretary-general Indroyono Soesilo says the answer is simple, even if it sounds crazy to a nation that produces more than 40 million tonnes of rice a year and consumes around 33 million tonnes.
He likens the push to alternative sources of nutrition to asking a smoker to give up cigarettes.
"We urge Indonesians to kick their habit of eating rice. We need to diversify our diets. Many Indonesians still think that if they don't eat rice, they don't eat well," he said.
"Indonesia produces 66 kinds of other carbohydrates, such as corn, sago, cassava, sweet potato, potato and others. These all can replace rice for two out of three meals a day, for example.
"We urge Indonesians to diversify their eating habits from childhood."
With 240 million hungry mouths to feed, Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country. The average Indonesian consumes more than 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of rice a year, more than the Japanese and Chinese.
Improving farming techniques and a post-colonial food security drive have seen the country go from being the world's biggest rice importer in the 1960s to being self-sufficient now.
But while rice is plentiful and cheap, the government is worried that the nation is becoming too dependent on a single crop.
The grain that springs from paddy fields across Indonesia is vulnerable to shifting global weather patterns, such as this year's unseasonal rains linked to cooler sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific, known as the La Nina effect.
Other concerns include population growth and the shrinking availability of arable land due to factors like urbanisation and rising sea levels from global warming, which the government fears could slash Indonesia's rice production.
But for millions of poor Indonesians, rice is not just a food staple, it's a livelihood that sustains life and deserves worship as a gift from the gods.
"Rice is life. It gives jobs and food," explained Djati Kusuma, the "king" of Cigugur, a village in the middle of Java island where the annual Seren Taun festival celebrates Dewi Sri, the goddess of rice.
For three days the villagers gather "to ask for her protection in order to avert disaster and to get an abundant harvest", he told AFP at the festival last month.
No one in Cigugur appears to be thinking of growing anything different on the verdant green paddy fields that flourish in the rich volcanic soil around the village.
The people in Java's rice-growing villages see the grain as something noble, occupying an elevated seat in the agricultural hierarchy compared to roots like cassava, which is associated with poverty.
Industrial growers however are rapidly seeing the potential of crops like cassava and sago for their dual uses as food and biofuel.
A September report by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the US-based Asia Society said Asian countries need to sharply increase and better manage rice stocks to improve food security in a region where 65 percent of the world's hungry live.
Asia's rice-producing areas are home to nearly 560 million extremely poor people, who live on less than 1.25 dollars a day. About 90 percent of rice is grown in the region, on more than 200 million farms.
Rice is the staple food for more than three billion people, about half the world's population.
Yahoo News 12 Dec 10;
TOKYO (AFP) – Fishing nations have agreed to hold their catches of young bluefin tuna in the central and western Pacific in 2011 and 2012 below the 2002-2004 annual averages, press reports said Sunday.
The agreement was reached at an annual meeting of the 25-member Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, which ended in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Saturday Japan time, the reports said.
It was the first international agreement on cuts in bluefin catches in the Pacific, following moves to reduce catch limits in the Atlantic.
The commission, including Japan, China, Samoa, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States, determines resource management measures on fish such as tuna, bonito and swordfish in the central and western Pacific.
The deal will obligate Japan to slash its annual catches of bluefin tuna aged three years or less by about 26 percent from the present level of 6,100 tonnes, the Asahi Shimbun said.
Japan's annual catch of young bluefin tuna averaged 4,500 tonnes between 2002 and 2004, the daily added.
But an official at Japan's fishery agency in Tokyo said the reduction "will not have a large impact on consumption in Japan" as the margin of reduction is equivalent to around one percent of the country's sashimi tuna supply, Jiji Press said.
South Korea has resisted the deal but agreed to "take necessary measures to restrict its catch of young bluefin tuna", the Asahi said.
Japanese and South Korean fishing boats have been catching large quantities of young bluefin tuna in the Pacific with large net fishing boats, and critics say the practice threatens to deplete the bluefin tuna stock in the waters, Kyodo news agency said.
Arthur Max, Associated Press Yahoo News 12 Dec 10;
CANCUN, Mexico – Walmart is going green in its Chinese factories. George Soros is exploring investments in the restoration of drained peatlands in Indonesia. Denmark is joining South Korea in a new fund to transform developing economies.
As delegates to the latest U.N. climate talks struggled to come up with a modest pair of global warming accords, governments, businesses and individuals working behind the scenes forged ahead with their own projects to cut emissions.
"Regardless of what happens in these negotiations, we shouldn't be waiting. We should be doing practical things on the ground," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said in an interview before the talks wound up Saturday.
Nearly 200 governments have been working for 20 years toward an all-encompassing treaty to constrain human influence on the climate through industrial pollution, vehicles and agriculture.
The Cancun Agreements, adopted to cheers and ovations early Saturday after two tortuous weeks of talks, created a Green Climate Fund to manage and disburse tens of billions of dollars a year, starting in 2020, for green development in poor countries.
The fund also will help developing nations adapt to climate change that already has occurred, through such methods as shifting to drought-resistant crops or building sea walls against rising ocean levels and storm surges.
The accords also create a new mechanism for giving green technology to developing states and set guidelines to compensate countries that are preserving their forests.
The ideal global treaty — the one on which governments have not been able to agree during two decades of talks — would set targets and create incentives for countries and industries to reduce emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases and invest in green economic growth.
Officials in both the public and private arena have decided not to wait for such a global agreement, instead taking the initiative on their own.
The sidelines of the Cancun conference provided a convenient platform to discuss old projects they were already working on as well as to unveil new ones, most of them valued at just a few million dollars.
There were actually "two summits" in Cancun, said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program, referring to both the official negotiations and project discussions outside the main conference.
"Individually, they may not sound like a lot ... but the reality is, on the ground there is a tremendous groundswell of activity on climate change," he told reporters.
While the conference was under way, Zoellick announced a new $100 million World Bank fund to help countries set up carbon-trading programs.
China, India, Chile and Mexico are among countries that have expressed an interest in drawing on the fund, he told The Associated Press.
"People get lost in the negotiating part of this," he said. The fund is an example "of an ongoing innovation that doesn't depend on treaty text."
Three miles (seven kilometers) from the climate talks' principal negotiating venue, Walmart chairman Rob Walton attended a function that addressed using everything from cattle in Brazil to palm oil in Indonesia as sustainable sourcing for the giant retailer founded by his father.
Walmart says it plans to reduce its carbon footprint over five years to what would be the equivalent of taking 3.8 million cars off the road. Much of that will come by reducing the energy used by suppliers in China, where most of its nonfood products come from.
"People are spending less time on the negotiations and shifting more focus on concrete action," said Stephen Cochran, vice president of the New York-based nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, which works with Walmart in China and in the U.S.
That doesn't mean there isn't still a need for a global accord, however, Cochran added.
Such an agreement would set common rules and firm up guarantees that green investment pays.
Financier George Soros discussed a private rescue plan for depleted Indonesian peatlands. The former jungle areas, which were cleared for rice paddies or palm oil, release huge amounts of stored carbon as they dry out and burn.
Marcel Silvius of Wetlands International, who accompanied Soros to Indonesia earlier this year, said several billionaires were applying to Jakarta for concessions for degraded land. By blocking drainage channels and allowing the peatlands to re-flood, natural forests may regenerate, and local communities could be enlisted to manage the new growth.
Investors can make returns on carbon credits under the forestry strategy outlined in the Cancun Agreements. But some people, including Soros, see it as philanthropy from which they expect no return, Silvius said. He said 6 million to 7.5 million acres (2.5 million to 3 million hectares) of land, an area the size of the Netherlands, could be restored in Indonesia.
For its part, Denmark announced that it will donate $15 million over three years to the Global Green Growth Initiative, founded six months ago by South Korea to help countries develop eco-friendly technologies. Seoul kicked in $30 million, or $10 million a year.
The fund already has projects in Ethiopia and Cambodia, with more in the pipeline in Indonesia and the Philippines, said Rae-kwon Chung, a director of the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.
The initiative "is the machinery for promoting green growth," and is designed to promote a lifestyle totally different from the fossil-fuel economies of the West — "a paradigm shift," Chung said.
"This is more meaningful than what's happening here," said Chung, a former South Korean climate negotiator, nodding toward the negotiating rooms.
In the U.S., statewide trading strategies are in place and expanding internationally, even as Congress fails to act on climate legislation.
California reached agreements this year with the southern Mexican state of Chiapas and Brazil's Acre province for pilot projects on forest preservation in exchange for carbon credits. Emissions trading was a pillar of California's 2006 climate bill, which called for reducing pollution to 1990 levels by 2020.
Cancún agreement rescues UN credibility but falls short of saving planet
• $100bn climate fund likely to come from private sector
• Limited successes include aid for preventing deforestation
Suzanne Goldenberg The Guardian 12 Dec 10;
The modest deal wrangled out by the 200 countries meeting at the Mexican resort of Cancún may have done more to save a dysfunctional UN negotiating process from collapse than protect the planet against climate change, analysts said today.
"The UN climate talks are off the life-support machine," said Tim Gore of Oxfam. "The agreement falls short of the emissions cuts that are needed, but it lays out a path to move towards them."
The agreement produced in the early hours of Saturday reinforces the promise made by rich countries last year to mobilise billions for a green climate fund to help poor countries defend themselves against climate damage.
It was not clear how the funds would be raised. At Copenhagen last year, rich countries agreed to raise $100bn (£63bn) a year by 2020 for the fund. However, US officials said at the weekend that most of this would come from the private sector.
Cancún also produced a victory for forest campaigners who were looking to the talks to produce a system of incentives to prevent the destruction of tropical rainforests in countries such as Brazil, Congo and Indonesia.
Under the deal, developing countries will receive aid for not burning or logging forests. Deforestation produces about 15% of the world's carbon emissions.
But with a widening divide between rich and poor countries over the architecture of a global agreement, Patricia Espinosa, the Mexican foreign minister credited with preventing a collapse of the two-week talks, told negotiators the result was "the best we could achieve at this point in a long process".
Negotiators, clean-energy business associations and campaign groups warned that Cancún's most significant result was putting off the tough decisions until next year's UN summit in South Africa.
"The outcome wasn't enough to save the planet," said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "But it did restore the credibility of the United Nations as a forum where progress can be made."
The Global Wind Energy Council said Cancún was only counted a success because of the extremely low expectations going into the talks. "None of the fundamental political, legal and architectural issues that still must be resolved in order to establish an effective global climate regime have been solved," it said.
Michael Levi, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, warned that the failure to resolve difficult issues at Cancún – especially over the future of the Kyoto protocol – makes the risks even higher next year.
He wrote on his blog: "The Cancún result punts the dispute to next year's talks. But that solution will not be available again: the current Kyoto commitments expire at the end of 2012, making the next UN conference the last practical opportunity to seal a new set of Kyoto pledges."
But negotiators did not have many options. After the failure of the Copenhagen summit last year, a breakdown at Cancún would have condemned the 20-year climate negotiations, Connie Hedegaard, the European Union's climate commissioner, told reporters on Saturday.
In the runup to Cancún, negotiators acknowledged there was no prospect of reaching a new treaty. They hoped instead for progress on the "building blocks" to a deal, such as detailed agreements on climate finance, preventing deforestation, enabling technology transfer and accounting for emissions cuts by emerging economies such as China and India.
However, even those modest ambitions were put in jeopardy when Japan and then Russia announced they would not sign on to a second term of the Kyoto protocol unless the world's big emitters, China and the US, were also legally bound to action.
Campaign groups such as Greenpeace also blamed the US for taking a hard line at the talks – partly for fear of being accused of giving up too much to China by Republicans at home.
Despite those tensions, however, America and China avoided the mood of confrontation that undermined the talks at Copenhagen last year.
Planting the seeds of hope
Cancun represents a stepping stone to a deal, but it is a breakthrough
Jessica Cheam Straits Times 13 Dec 10;
CANCUN: Before arriving in Mexico, I did not know what to expect, half dreading that precious days would be wasted at a conference that would end just as Copenhagen had last year - in disappointment.
But if there is one word I would use to sum up the United Nations climate talks, it would be this: hope.
And I do not just mean hope for a better future with the approved deal, which shows some progress has been made in international cooperation on climate change. I mean hope in humanity and the spirit of unity that nations can demonstrate when the right conditions are in place.
For some time now, critics have doubted whether the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was the best way to advance climate talks, wondering if another forum, such as the Group of 20 or Apec summit, would be better equipped to effect progress. The greatest issue was the UNFCCC's consensus rule, which requires every country to be on board before any deal can be approved.
There has been talk of moving to a majority vote system to facilitate speedier decisions, but as one senior government official pointed out to me, such a framework would present its own problems because a global treaty on climate change needs universality to work. Unless every country comes on board, it would be difficult to implement an equitable system whereby the rules could be applied across the board to all economies.
As the week ended, hope was restored in this multilateral process - and the meaning of consensus redefined forever.
Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa, the conference chairman, finally issued fresh texts - now known as the Cancun Agreements - setting out some decisions that seemed to have struck a chord with all parties.
When world leaders met for an informal plenary session to give their feedback, there was a palpable sense of optimism in the air that the summit - for the first time, after three years of inaction - had made a breakthrough.
The Cancun Agreements are far from perfect and need plenty of work still. But they contain language that eliminates many of the square brackets and options in the legalese that encumbered previous versions and made negotiation tedious.
Furthermore, they now contain crucial elements such as an annual US$100 billion (S$131 billion) fund to help developing countries tackle climate change, a limit on global temperature increases, funding for forest protection and mechanisms for technology transfer from rich to poor nations.
For the first time, voluntary pledges to cut emissions by developing nations, first noted in last year's Copenhagen Accord, were captured in an official UN document.
The language was diplomatically crafted to appease the majority - and it worked. Major countries such as the United States and China, Europe, the African bloc, small island states and the least developed countries all gave their support. They commended Mrs Espinosa for her dextrous handling of relations and her leadership in drafting the text.
I was in the room when she received a thunderous standing ovation from the delegates, many of whom cheered and shouted words of encouragement. The air was highly charged with a force that swept over everyone and made my hair stand.
It was a force so mighty that when Bolivia stood in its path, bent on wrecking the deal, the objection was swept aside. Cuba, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia were among those that had initially expressed reservations about adopting the text, but eventually, even they said they would not stand in the way.
As Mrs Espinosa put it: 'Consensus does not mean that one nation can choose to apply a veto to a process that other nations have been working on for years. I cannot ignore the opinion of another 193 states that are parties.'
And so the Cancun Agreements came to pass, and the world's nations showed they could work together to get something done.
Now, the larger question is: So what?
Already, some people are slamming the deal for not being ambitious enough.
Clearly, the real work is just beginning. The end-goal - to legally bind nations to cut emissions - has not been forged into the agreement and commitments are merely being postponed. Many more details have to be worked into the text before the final, comprehensive agreement can be reached.
But it is all too easy for observers to sit back in their armchairs and criticise, especially those who have not been to the meetings and have not witnessed the back-breaking process of managing negotiations between 193 nations.
It would be unfair to overlook Cancun's achievements, which have unlocked a flow of funds from richer nations to those that are vulnerable to climate change and which have laid out guidelines on aspects of climate change cooperation in the boldest form seen so far.
It is not easy for 193 nations to just sort things out when so many wildly differing interests are at play.
Furthermore, the international laws and mechanisms involved in implementing such a global deal are highly technical and require a long time to fine-tune. I think few truly appreciate this aspect. Many expect the participants to sort it out overnight, or else give up the process.
It is easy to be discouraged, and I myself have had doubts about whether this process is the best way to tackle climate change. But the process hardly benefits from having people belittle every step taken in the right direction.
At Cancun, I witnessed what the unity of countries could achieve. Coming so swiftly after the disastrous climate talks in Copenhagen, when trust foundered and no one could agree on anything, this triumph is nothing short of a miracle.
The challenge now is to seize hold of this hard-won momentum and goodwill in the process before the world wearies of it again and relegates climate change back to the back-burner.
However, to move forward, the leaders must have everyone's support.
The Cancun Agreements represent a stepping stone - a significant one. Now, it is even more imperative that the world build on the momentum generated to make that last dash to the holy grail: a legally binding international framework that will change the course of the future.
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