Ivan Polunin, 12 Dec 1920 - 21 Dec 2010, RIP
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Changi's rocky and seagrass shore
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Little Grebe struggling with a large fish
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Chestnut avenue area
from Singapore Nature
National Library Board to archive the late Ivan Polunin's photos and films in digital format
Boon Chan, Straits Times 23 Dec 10;
THE late British-born Dr Ivan Polunin had amassed a unique archive of colour images of Singapore from the 1950s to 1960s. This collection will now be digitised and preserved by the National Library Board (NLB).
Dr Polunin died peacefully at home on Tuesday at age 90 after a heart-related illness.
In March, he and his daughters, radiologist Nadya Polunin and artist Olga Polunin, signed a memorandum of understanding with the NLB.
Under the agreement, the library would digitise the collection of more than 500 film reels and audiotapes recording the social and natural history of Singapore and South-east Asia in the 1950s and 1960s.
An NLB spokesman said: 'As the collection contains important heritage material of Singapore and South-east Asia, the National Library Board is digitising the collection to preserve and make it accessible. Time is needed for this process, and we will inform the public in due time about its availability.'
Dr Polunin shot almost 100 hours of colour film footage showing scenes as diverse as New Year sea sports events held at Collyer Quay to scenes of everyday life in Chinatown to the way of life of the Muruts of North Borneo.
Ms Olga Polunin said: 'When he was making these colour films, there wasn't even colour television in Singapore.'
She said that she had wanted the material to be made available while her father was still alive so that people could appreciate what he did.
The film archive had been kept in what Dr Polunin called his 'toy room' at his bungalow home in the western part of Singapore. There was a dehumidifier to protect the film reels, audiotapes of tribal music and four filing cabinets containing 30,000 photographic slides.
Ms Olga Polunin said: 'My priority was the film, to preserve and digitise it and make it accessible to the public and to professionals. In its current state, it can't be seen.'
The film reels will have to be cleaned before they can be digitised.
But even the toy room could not contain all of his hobbies and interests.
As his granddaughter Farrah Isaac, a 22-year-old student, observed: 'He squeezed several lifetimes' worth of experience into one lifetime.'
He was featured in film-maker Tan Pin Pin's documentary Invisible City (2007), about the people who chronicle different aspects of Singapore's history.
Dr Polunin's tenure as a medical lecturer at the then University of Malaya started in 1952, and he retired as an associate professor in 1980.
Former student Rexon Ngim, a plastic surgeon in his 50s, recalled: 'During the 1970s, he would take medical students to kampungs in Johor, and to Pulau Tekong and Ubin, so students could study the social aspects of public health.
'We got to see how worm infestation was transmitted. As a lecturer, he wasn't the strict sort.'
Dr Polunin was also a great lover of nature, and he wrote the authoritative guide Plants And Flowers Of Singapore (1987) and a Malaysia edition about the same topic.
Dr Shawn Lum, 47, current president of Nature Society (Singapore), said: 'He had a phenomenal recollection about botany. He was one of those who inspired me.
'It was wonderful to see people who were so driven, and he had a ferocious capacity to learn.'
While Dr Polunin's interests varied, there was one constant in his life, his wife Fam Siew Yin, 87.
She made the nets for him to catch fireflies, made the suit when he dressed up as Santa Claus to bring cheer to the Singapore Convalescent Home and did the packing when he went on his many trips and expeditions.
Madam Fam, cousin of the late war heroine Elizabeth Choy, said of her husband: 'He lived long and was very curious.'
Ms Olga Polunin added: 'She was the facilitator for his dreams. They were very devoted to each other, and daddy used to say, 'The best thing I did in my life was to marry that woman.''
As a father, he encouraged his daughters' creativity.
Ms Nadya Polunin recalled that they used to draw on the bathroom walls as children, but he did not scold them.
'Instead, he would take photos of the tiles and send them out as Christmas cards,' she said.
Ms Olga Polunin recalled fondly: 'He didn't do things by half measure. When he did something, he went all the way. Everything was done with a lot of passion and love.'
Additional reporting by Tay Suan Chiang
Joanne Chan Channel NewsAsia 22 Dec 10;
SINGAPORE : Liat Towers has installed and tested a new anti-flood system, in time for the wetter weather ahead.
This is to prevent another episode of flooding, which caused severe damages to its basement shops in June.
So the building's management has installed a S$200,000 flood barrier system.
Liat Towers receives heavy rain warnings from PUB through SMS alerts. A security officer will then do a visual check to determine if flood waters are threatening the building and if the barriers are needed.
"To activate the flood barriers, they only need to turn a key switch. Once the key switch is turned, a horn will sound an alarm. At the same time an audio warning system will be activated to tell people to move away," said Jwee Quek, project manager at Parafoil.
And 19 panels will spring from the ground to surround the building. This will act as a barrier against a possible flood.
Each panel can hold up to 260 gallons of water, and once the weather clears up, the water will be discharged into an underground canal.
A similar anti-flood system is currently being installed in a condominium along Bukit Timah - an area which is prone to flooding.
The Orchard Road area was badly hit by flash floods in June and July this year, causing serious damage to some retail stores in the area.
- CNA /ls
New pop-up anti-flood system for Liat Towers
Joanne Chan Today Online 23 Dec 10;
SINGAPORE - Liat Towers has installed and tested a new anti-flood system, in time for the wetter weather ahead.
This is to prevent flooding, which caused severe damage to its basement shops in June.
The building's management has taken steps to ensure such a catastrophe will not happen again. They are hoping a $200,000 barrier system (picture), which literally, "pops up" from the ground, will keep the water out. During dry weather, the barrier lies flat on the ground.
When Liat Towers receives heavy rain warnings from PUB through SMS alerts, a security officer will perform a visual check to determine if flood waters are indeed threatening the building. The barriers are then activated if the situation calls for it.
The product manager of Parafoil, the manufacturers of the barrier system, Mr Jwee Quek, said all that is needed to activate the system is to turn a key switch.
"Once that is done, an alarm - the sound of a horn - will go off to warn people to move away from the area," he said.
A total of 19 panels will be released from the ground, forming a 54m long barrier against rising waters, in just 15 seconds. The height of each panel is 80cm.
"Rain water will be collected by the panels, each of which can hold up to 260 gallons. When the weather clears, a plug is pulled and the water will be discharged into an underground canal," said Mr Quek.
And once the water levels have receded, Liat Towers can let shoppers and pedestrians gain access to the basement shops, by lowering a couple of the panels.
Mr Quek said that his company's anti-flood system is also being installed in a condominium along Bukit Timah - an area which is also prone to flooding.
After the prime Orchard Road shopping belt was hit by flash floods in June and July this year, national water agency PUB announced plans to raise Orchard Road by 30cm.
The $26 million flood alleviation project is expected to be completed in six months' time.
Anti-flooding moves: Works to raise Orchard Road under way
Amresh Gunasingham Straits Times 23 Dec 10;
ROADWORKS to raise a 1.4km stretch of Orchard Road from Orchard Parade Hotel to Cairnhill are under way, a move the authorities hope will prevent a repeat of damaging floods in the area in June.
The $26 million project, which was announced in October, is being done in phases to minimise inconvenience to motorists and pedestrians.
The first area of focus was a 500m stretch of roadside kerbs between Tang Plaza and Delfi Orchard shopping centre. This was raised earlier this month by up to 50cm as a precursor to raising the roads along the same stretch, said national water agency PUB.
The rest of the project, which will involve raising the roads by up to 30cm, will be completed by the end of next year, said a PUB spokesman in response to queries.
Engineers have been working through the night, between midnight and 5am, when there is less traffic.
By raising the road, the PUB hopes to prevent a repeat of floods in the area in June, when heavy rain caused water to gush into drains, which then overflowed and flooded the surrounding buildings.
One of the worst affected places then was the Liat Towers building.
Yesterday, the management of the building tested a $200,000 barrier it had installed as part of anti-flooding measures.
Earlier this year, four basement-level shops there were inundated with flood waters after a heavy downpour caused the adjoining Stamford Canal to overflow. It caused an estimated $10 million in damage along the premier shopping belt.
The flood barrier, which is made up of 19 slabs of aluminium and stainless steel, is 90cm high and stretches more than 40m around the building, forming a seemingly impermeable barrier should flood waters gush in from the main road.
The barrier pops up at the push of a button. It will be activated if the PUB sends out a warning, via SMS, once sensors installed along drains in the area detect a water level high enough to flood the building's basement carpark.
Architect Wu Chee Yiun, who was consulted on the project, said a cheaper alternative would have involved workers installing metal rods and sheets to form a similar barrier when it floods.
But this was ruled out as it would require too much manpower.
Environment News Service 21 Dec 10;
NEW DELHI, India, December 21, 2010 (ENS) - India's National Tiger Conservation Authority has granted approval "in-principle" for four tiger reserves across the country and has requested proposals for four additional reserves to protect the endangered big cats.
Jairam Ramesh, minister for environment and forests, confirmed the four reserves and the request for proposals in a written reply to a question in the upper house of Parliament last week.
The new level of approval was given to four tiger reserves set aside in September 2008:
* Biligiri Ranganatha Swamy Temple Sanctuary in Karnataka state, which shelters at least 17 tigers
* Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh, a forested area on the India-Nepal border with an estimated 36 tigers
* Ratapani in the teak forests of Madhya Pradesh state, which contains an estimated 22 tigers
* Sunabeda, in the densest forest in Orissa state, with about 32 tigers.
In addition, three states have been advised to send proposals for declaring four more areas as tiger reserves: the areas of Bor and Nagzira-Navegaon in Maharashtra state, the Suhelwa area in Uttar Pradesh, and Satyamangalam in the state of Tamil Nadu.
The establishment of tiger reserves does not guarantee protection for India's tigers as poaching the endangered animals is still rampant both within and outside reserves.
A tiger that was found dead in Sariska Tiger Reserve last month had been poisoned, said Rajasthan Forest Minister Ram Lal Jaat.
Today, police launched a manhunt after the headless carcass of a tiger was found in a forested district of Chhattisgarh state in central India.
Minister Ramesh said India now has an estimated population of 1,411 wild tigers, according to the latest nationwide assessment, conducted in 2008.
That census shows there could be as many as 1,657 tigers and as few as 1,165, Ramesh said. Worldwide, there are an estimated 3,200 tigers remining in the wild.
A countrywide assessment using "refined methodology" is done once in every four years on the status of tigers, co-predators, prey animals and their habitat, the minister explained.
The 2008 tiger population assessment is based on determining spatial occupancy of tigers throughout potential tiger forests and sampling these forests using camera traps in a statistical framework.
This assessment is not comparable to an earlier count using pugmarks, or footprints, due to what Minister Ramesh called "shortcomings" in the pugmark study.
The tiger population in India at the turn of the 19th century was estimated at 45,000 animals. The first ever all-India tiger census, conducted in 1972, found only 1,827 tigers, and they are still disappearing due to poaching and habitat encroachment.
In 1973, the government-sponsored Project Tiger was launched with the creation of Palamau Tiger Reserve in Bihar state, India's first tiger reserve. The reserve, which had 42 tigers in 2003, has just six left now, according to the 2009 tiger census.
The 2009 tiger census was not conducted in the core area of the Palamau reserve due to difficult terrain and the presence of Maoists, field director P. Upadhaya told the Indo-Asian News Service in November. He said that could account for the low number of tigers counted.
Before the creation of Palamau Tiger Reserve, the management of these forests was commercial. The entire forest area was ravaged by fires every year. Poaching was rampant and the area was open to grazing.
Today some of these problems persist. Villagers graze nearly 100,000 head of cattle all over the reserve, but they are traditionally allowed to graze their cattle only in the buffer zone.
The total human population in villages surrounding the reserve has been projected at over 110,000 out of which 39,000 people live within the reserve boundary.
On average, 5.3 percent of the reserve is affected every year by fires, many set by humans, degrading natural forests and hampering regeneration.
India now has 38 tiger reserves in 17 states, each created based on a what the National Tiger Conservation Authority calls a "core-buffer" strategy.
For each tiger reserve, management plans are based on the elimination of all forms of human exploitation and biotic disturbance from the core area and rationalization of activities in the buffer zone.
Under Project Tiger, funding assistance is provided to states for relocation of villages from the core of critical tiger habitats. Minister Ramesh said in response to another question that this year India has provided 3533 lakh rupees (US$7.8 million) for relocating villages from five tiger reserves in five different states.
Jakarta Globe 22 Dec 10;
Bengkulu. A leading Indonesian environmental group has protested a plan to build a road through Kerinci Seblat National Park, the biggest reserve on Sumatra Island.
The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) has denounced the project as possibly paving the way for illegal logging and deforestation in the park.
“The plan to build a road goes against the preservation of the environment in the Kerinci Seblat National Park, which must be protected,” Barlian, a board member of the forum’s Bengkulu branch, said on Monday.
The nature reserve straddles the provinces of Jambi, Bengkulu, South Sumatra and West Sumatra, and covers 13,791 square kilometers.
The proposed 40-km road would link the districts of Mukomuko, Bengkulu, to Kerinci, Jambi, and was first proposed by the district administrations in 2007.
The Forestry Ministry rejected the proposal at the time. Recently, the administrations have begun airing the idea once again, although they still require approval from the ministry.
Barlian said that one of the major problems of the road was that it would make it easier for illegal loggers to fell and remove trees.
He also said it would allow people to clear more forest land for agriculture.
Barlian argued that any economic benefit that the road was expected to bring to the people of Mukomuko and Kerinci would be far outweighed by the damage it would cause to the environment.
“Moreover, the geographic landscapes of the two districts are also different,” he said.
“Kerinci district is a highland region, a producer of food crops, whereas Mukomuko is primarily a rubber and palm oil producer. So the argument that the road will improve their economies is not a sound one.”
Barlian added that when the plan was revived by the regional administrations, it prompted people living close to the proposed route to begin clearing forest land for agriculture inside the national park.
Authorities in both districts have already formed a special committee to supervise the road construction project.
Badri Rusli, a member of the committee, said the road would be a much shorter route between the two districts because the current road was 100 km long.
The park is home to more than 4,000 plant species, including the world’s largest flower, the Rafflesia arnoldii, also known as the corpse flower.
It also hosts considerable populations of Sumatran tigers, rhinos and elephants, as well as Bornean clouded leopard and 370 bird species.
The park also boasts Mount Kerinci, at 3,805 meters the highest peak in Sumatra.
Antara
Monica Heger LiveScience.com Yahoo News 22 Dec 10;
"It reminds me of going to a family funeral," said Charles Fisher, a biology professor at Penn State University, and chief scientist on a recent mission to study the impact of the Gulf oil spill on coral in the area.
Just like seeing extended family, "it's always fun to go into the deep sea, and we saw a lot of life," he said. "But, on the other hand the reason you're there is not a happy reason. Some corals have been severely slimed. Some are dead or dying."
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass., led a nine-day mission this month to study the effects of the oil spill on life at the bottom of the sea. A team of scientists set out on a research vessel, spending just over a week in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.
Equipped with both an autonomous submarine called Sentry, as well as a submersible called Alvin, the scientists photographed, mapped and collected samples from the Gulf nearly 24 hours a day. They completed six dives on Alvin, and set up a camera near the site of a dying coral reef, which will snap photos every hour for the next two months monitoring the coral's heath.
Typical Gulf day
A typical day on the ship actually began the night before, Fisher told OurAmazingPlanet. The scientists would program and launch the robot Sentry, which would scout the area, returning sometime between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. After collecting Sentry, the scientists would then go through the data collected, and make the final preparations for the human dive in Alvin.
Around 8 a.m., Alvin's pilot and two scientists would climb aboard the 6-foot-wide (1.8 meters) sphere within the submersible and begin their hour-and-a-half-long descent to the seafloor.
The next six or so hours were spent on the seafloor collecting samples and taking photos, and then the scientists would surface around 5 p.m., just in time to begin the night's work.
A smoking gun
The expedition follows on the heels of an earlier cruise in which many of the same scientists found dozens of coral species 7 miles (11 kilometers) from the spill site that appeared to be dead or dying. The scientists revisited that same site, looked for other coral reefs, and took photos and samples from both the sick coral as well as another colony of reefs that appeared healthy.
"I probably had the happiest experience on the cruise," said Chris German, chief scientist for deep submergence at Woods Hole. "I got to see the healthy coral."
More disheartening were the damaged and dying corals coated with a brown gooey substance. While German said the team was refraining from making any conclusions about the source of the brown goo before the analysis was complete, he said, "it doesn't look like it's part of the natural system."
The coral were "covered in brown goop that we haven't seen anywhere else," German said, describing the site as a "smoking gun" that may be representative of other impacted coral communities.
German said that the coral coated in brown goop was about 7 miles southwest of the spill site. Based on the ocean currents and the dynamics of the gushing oil, scientists were able to predict where the oil plume was likely to spread. The dying coral was found in that area, while the healthy coral - discovered about 15 miles (24 km) southeast of where the rig exploded - was likely out of range of the plume, German said.
The next step is to analyze both the dying and healthy coral and determine definitively whether the brown goop covering the dying coral is in fact oil from the spill. Scientists will be doing molecular, chemical and genetic analyses to try and determine whether there are unseen impacts as well, such as from the chemical oil dispersant Corexit. And in two months, the researchers will collect the camera monitoring the dying coral to see how the organisms have changed.
Fisher said the team will also continue to look for other coral communities. "We don't know what's in the most of the Gulf," he said. "Just in this one area, the corals we found, the impact was severe. We saw a lot of completely dead corals. A few were doing well, but most were severely impacted."
Joshua Howat Berger Yahoo News 22 Dec 10;
JOHANNESBURG (AFP) – A booming black-market demand for rhinoceros horns is driving a lucrative new wave of high-tech poaching that threatens the fight to save the world's rhino populations from extinction.
The epicentre of the crisis is South Africa, which has lost nearly one rhinoceros a day to poaching this year.
But conservationists fear the problem could spill over into other regions, pushed by a surge in demand for rhino horn in Asia, notably in Vietnam, where it is used as a traditional medicine and sells for tens of thousands of dollars per horn.
South Africa, which is home to more than 70 percent of the world's remaining rhinos, has lost 316 of the animals to poaching this year, up from 122 last year, and a jump from less than 10 each year two decades ago, according to Joseph Okori, African rhino coordinator for the World Wildlife Fund.
"It has been a disastrous year for rhino conservation," Okori told AFP.
He blamed the surge in poaching on "well-organised syndicates" that use helicopters, night-vision equipment, veterinary tranquilisers and silencers to hunt their prey at night.
"The criminal syndicates in South Africa operate on very high-tech. They are very well-coordinated," Okori said. "This is not normal poaching."
Conservationists estimate there are around 25,000 rhinos left globally, with three species in Asia and two in Africa.
Asia's rhino populations have already been pushed to the brink of extinction by hunting and deforestation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists both Javan and Sumatran rhinos as critically endangered and Indian rhinos as vulnerable to extinction.
In Africa, conservationists have fought to restore the continent's black and white rhino species, both decimated by hunting in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Thanks to the large-scale creation of national parks and efforts to combat poaching, the southern white rhino, once thought to be extinct, now numbers 17,500 and growing.
Black rhino numbers are also rising and stand at 4,200 -- though this is a fraction of the hundreds of thousands thought to have roamed the continent in 1900, the IUCN says.
But that resurgence now faces a setback as a new wave of poaching hits the continent.
While the rhino horn trade is banned under the 175-member Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the use of rhino horn in Asian traditional medicine has continued to feed demand. In one recent case, a rhino horn sold for 70,000 dollars, according to CITES.
The wildlife monitoring group Traffic, which has studied the medicinal use of rhino horn powder, says the substance is used as a fever-reducer in traditional Chinese medicine.
More recently, researchers say, a belief that rhino horn can cure cancer has emerged in Vietnam.
Tom Milliken, Traffic's director for east and southern Africa, said that belief -- together with Vietnam's recent economic boom -- is helping drive the current surge in poaching.
"Vietnam suddenly emerged in the mid-2000s as a new market," he told AFP.
"In my view it is the largest rhino horn market in the world today and really stands behind this trade."
Milliken led a delegation of South African officials to Vietnam in October to meet with his contemporaries there on measures to curb the trade, but no agreements have been reached.
South African officials are meanwhile targeting the supply side.
The government launched a National Wildlife Crime Investigation Unit in October to crack down on poachers.
Parks and game reserves have also begun a range of inventive anti-poaching programmes, including dying the horns, tracking them with micro-chips and cutting them off before poachers can get to them.
But Milliken fears the crackdown in South Africa will only displace the problem to other regions.
"That's the whole history of the rhino horn trade to Asia," Milliken said.
"There's unlimited consumer demand driving this, and if it's not contained at source, it historically has swept from one country to another."
Rhino poaching on the rise in Kenya
Herve Bar Yahoo News 22 Dec 10;
LEWA CONSERVANCY, Kenya (AFP) – Melita's bloody, stripped carcass still lies in a dip between two hillocks, a once stately black rhino slain by poachers in early December in Kenya's Lewa private wildlife reserve.
The two-tonne mammal is now reduced to its hindquarters, a horribly mutilated head and a spinal column stripped bare by scavengers.
Melita, who was 22, is the latest victim of a worrying surge in poaching which has hit the whole of this region of hills and high plateaux, a wildlife paradise on the flanks of majestic Mount Kenya.
And her killing followed hard on that of Stumpy, a female black rhino of 41 who was the oldest of her species in the reserve until she was gunned down in recent weeks.
Melita's killers, three men armed with kalashnikovs, struck at nightfall at the northern perimetre of the park.
"They must have been hidden since the previous day at a look-out point to spot their prey," ranger Steve Kisio recounted, seemingly impervious to the putrid smell rising from the carcass.
"Our teams heard shots fired around 6:30 pm. After a brief exchange of fire with our men, the poachers were able to escape under cover of darkness."
One of the three was arrested shortly afterwards thanks to an informer in the nearby town of Isiolo. The poacher was caught as he was about to flee towards the Somali border.
"This time they didn't have time to carry off the horns, but park officials had to cut them off," Kisio explained, saying he is saddened by this latest loss.
Some 225 kilometres (140 miles) north of Nairobi, the Lewa private wildlife conservancy is one of the last rhino sanctuaries in Kenya and is home to 117 of the herbivorous mammals: 64 black rhinos and 53 white rhinos>.
Kenya's total rhino population is around 600. Lewa's rhinos roam freely over 25,000 hectares (62,000 acres), along with buffaloes and elephants.
Lewa, where Britain's Prince William recently got engaged, is famous for its rhino protection work and is often quoted as a model conservancy in wildlife protection circles.
The site was created in 1995 by a family of white Kenyans but "this is the first time we have seen such a rise in poaching," said John Pameri, head of security and chief ranger at the reserve.
"We've never seen anything on this scale."
Four rhinos have been killed by poachers in the past 12 months, among them Stumpy and Melita since the end of October. The phenomenon has hit the whole of the region where 15 elephants have been killed for their ivory in the past two weeks," Pameri told AFP.
"We feel there is a real escalation, prompted by an increasing and strong demand from the Far East, and China in particular (...)," the manager of Lewa conservancy Jonathan Moss said.
The price per kilo (2.2 pounds) has risen to the order of 600,000 shillings (6,000 euros), which "is astronomical in a community where typically someone will earn 200 shillings a day (2.5 dollars/1.8 euros)."
"So the temptation to engage in feeding that illicit demand is massive," Moss underlined.
Some rangers make a direct link with the increased presence of Chinese nationals in the country, and in particular with the installation of Chinese companies working on large-scale road-building projects.
Pameri, for his part, was more prudent. "Obviously something is happening. There is a strong demand that we didn't have previously," he said.
Somalis or Kenyans of Somali origin are also said to be involved in the trade as intermediaries or brokers.
In the face of the threat, Lewa reserve has put in place a programme of night patrols, surveillance of rhinos on a daily basis, air surveillance, networks of informers and above all the involvement of local communities, described by Moss as the cornerstone of any poaching strategy.
"We can do and be sure we will do everything here in Africa to cut off the chain of supply," said Lewa's director.
"But at the end of the day, the only solution is to address the demand in Far East".
Brian Ellsworth PlanetArk 23 Dec 10;
Brazil plans to expand a crackdown on companies that patent products made from rare plants and animals without adequately compensating the South American country or its indigenous communities.
The fight against "biopiracy" has won the support of indigenous communities and defenders of the Amazon rain forest who say corporations unfairly benefit from medicine and other products derived from Brazil's exotic plants, poisonous snakes or brightly colored frogs.
But the effort has sparked criticism that it slows crucial scientific research and arbitrarily targets entrepreneurs that could develop environmentally sustainable businesses.
Brazil has levied more than 100 million reais ($59 million) in fines since July on companies charged with not paying fair compensation for the use of genetic material native to Brazil, said Bruno Barbosa, who heads inspection for the environmental oversight agency Ibama.
Next year, officials will begin pursuing companies that did not notify the government of their use of local species to create products such as pharmaceuticals, as required by law, meaning fines will likely go up.
"Given that (fighting biopiracy) is a new process and that Brazil has one of the biggest reserves of biodiversity in the world, I think most of this activity is illegal, and we're going to find those people," he said.
Barbosa says examples of biopiracy abound, such as the development in the 1970s of the hypertension medication captopril from a snake venom that indigenous groups used on arrowhead tips.
Pharmaceuticals companies also used the yellow-and-green Kambo frog, found in Brazil's Amazon state of Acre, to create anti-inflammatory drugs without distributing benefits to local residents, he said. Many of these incidents came before a 2001 decree that created the current rules governing species use.
The government this year stepped up the anti-biopiracy effort with a campaign known as "Operation New Direction" that aims to crack down on what it calls profiteering.
Fines in 2011 may rise to $29 million each and companies face possible cancellation of patents in Brazil if inspectors find they did not register the use of local species.
One of the biggest fines levied so far was on Brazil's largest cosmetics maker Natura, Barbosa said. He declined to give details on the amount or the infraction because the process is ongoing.
SLOWING RESEARCH
Critics say Brazil's often aggressive efforts to prevent biopiracy threaten to slow crucial scientific research that could provide new cancer treatments or remedies for diseases suffered by local populations.
They said it treats anyone interested in commercial use of rare species as possibly criminal, complicating government goals of developing research facilities near where the species are found to create jobs in those communities.
The government should make the rules clearer because the current system ends up penalizing those that make the most effort to be transparent about their use of genetic material, said Raul Telles do Valle who works with ISA, a think tank on social and environmental issues.
"The current law is very vague on a lot of points, it ends up classifying everybody as illegitimate," he said. "Just passing out fines under the existing framework isn't going to solve the problem."
The law should reflect the difficulty of determining how to compensate local populations from collective knowledge passed down over generations, he said.
Barbosa insists the government's legislation is suitable and that expanding the fight against biopiracy could help reduce the destruction of sensitive environments.
"This is going to enable concrete alternatives that substitute destruction of the ecosystem for new economic mechanisms," he said.
(Editing by Eric Beech)
Fidelis E. Satriastanti Jakarta Globe 22 Dec 10;
Although developed nations had pledged $30 billion for a climate change fund established at the 2009 Copenhagen summit, it remains unclear how big of a share Indonesia stands to receive.
“We’d like to ask for the public’s patience concerning the Green Climate Fund,” Rachmat Witoelar, Indonesia’s special envoy for climate change, said on Monday.
“I’m sure everyone would like to know how much Indonesia will get or how the mechanism works. However, there’s a glitch in the discussions. We’re still trying to define what ‘vulnerability’ means.”
The pledge for fast-track funding for 2010-12 was made by developed nations at the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009, aimed at financing emerging world adaptation and mitigation efforts.
The most vulnerable countries — including small island states and African countries — would be prioritized for funding.
Developed countries have also agreed to provide poorer states with $100 billion annually by 2020 to help them reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions.
The pledge was further bolstered at the recent Cancun climate change talks, where advanced economies agreed to submit their information on the resources they committed to provide in the Copenhagen Accord.
They also listed which developing countries could access these resources in the next three years.
The Cancun talks also saw parties agree to the establishment of a Green Climate Fund to allocate the $30 billion in aid. The mechanism would be governed by a board of 24 members representing both developed and developing nations.
However, Rachmat said the debate over who should be entitled to such funding rages on.
“It’s like opening a Pandora’s box,” he said. “If you define vulnerable countries as including all small island states, then Singapore would qualify for that category.”
“This is why we’re waiting for the debate to be decided at next year’s Durban [South Africa] climate talks, where [parties could] elaborate the definition of vulnerable countries, whether it should be based on per-capita income, geographical profile, location or some other factor.”
But Giorgio Budi Indarto, coordinator of the Civil Society Forum for Climate Justice, said the people should not worry about the money not being released or the Green Climate Fund not being set up, because the countries would be held accountable for the pledges they already made.
“However, in Indonesia’s case, we’re not a priority country for funding for adaptation efforts because the target countries fall into three categories: least-developed countries, small island states and African countries,” he said.
“We’re not a least-developed country. We also didn’t take part in the climate talks with other small island states, but as part of the G-77 countries. So if we want to fight to get the funding, it will still be a long way off for us.”
As for funding mitigation efforts, however, Giorgio said there were plenty of countries more than willing to help.
He cited Norway, which this year made a $1 billion agreement with Indonesia on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD Plus).
As part of that agreement, Indonesia has pledged a two-year moratorium — effective next month— on issuing new logging permits in peat and high conservation-value forests.
“If Indonesia really wants to lead, then we should really be serious about leading,” Giorgio said.
“We need to show other countries that we have what it takes — as a vulnerable country, we have it all here: we have forest issues, we have problems with coastal areas, we also have poor people.
“If our negotiators could point out those vulnerable positions of our country, then we would get all the help that we need.”
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