Lunar New Year Day 1: St John's Island
from wonderful creation and Singapore Nature and wild shores of singapore
Special mangroves at St. John's Island
from wild shores of singapore
SBWR on World Wetlands Day
from isn't it a wonder, how life came to be
Oriental Pied Hornbill foraging like a woodpecker
from Bird Ecology Study Group
death everywhere
from into the wild
Joanna Chan Channel NewsAsia 3 Feb 11;
SINGAPORE: Singapore's latest national project - Gardens by the Bay - moves closer to its November completion date.
The large-scale green space just minutes from the city centre features 18 giant concrete trees and two special conservatories that showcase plants found outside this region.
Rising nine to 16 storeys above ground, the 18 giant concrete trees - named the "super trees" - are probably a familiar sight to those travelling along the East Coast Parkway.
The tallest tree will also be home to a restaurant, providing a panoramic view of its surroundings.
For a more natural feel, the structure is covered in living matter.
Andy Kwek, Assistant Director (Development), Gardens by the Bay, said: "The super trees are currently 40 per cent completed. We've got all the concrete cores erected and are currently putting in the steel "skins" that give the supertree its form. Thereafter, we will cover the skin with ferns, orchids and flowering climbers."
Construction for the two conservatories are also well underway.
The "Flower Dome", which features plants found in the Mediterranean and semi-arid subtropical regions, is scheduled to be completed by November.
More than 90 per cent of its glass panels have been fitted.
The other conservatory - "Cloud Forest" - which features plants from the Tropical Montane region, will be ready six months later.
Some of the plants that will be housed in the conservatory have already been brought into Singapore.
While the local weather is not conducive for their growth, they can look forward to moving into their special climate-controlled new home in April.
Another feature at the Gardens of the Bays will be the four heritage gardens which will be ready by November.
The gardens showcase the important role of plants in the different cultures of Singapore.
Once the billion-dollar first phase of Gardens by the Bay is completed, visitors can look forward to viewing the various features, as well as a series of horticulture themed events and concerts.
Bernama 3 Feb 11;
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 3 (Bernama) -- The situation in flood-stricken areas in the country continued to improve with more flood victims returning home but flood waters were said to be rising in certain areas in the Segamat district.
Rising flood waters caused Jalan Segamat-Kuantan to be closed to all traffic while other roads in the district were passable only to heavy vehicles at noon Thursday, said a Segamat traffic police spokesman.
However, Jalan Yong Peng-Labis is now passable to all traffic, he told Bernama.
He advised road users to avoid inundated roads and abide by the police order.
Meanwhile, about 500 people, including locals, who are celebrating the Chinese New year, were stranded at the Buloh Kasap bridge as the road ahead and Jalan Segamat-Muar at Kampung Batu Badak was flooded.
A trader, who wished to be known only as Lim, 42, said he and family were heading for Gemas to celebrate the Chinese New Year but had to cancel his trip as the road was impassable to traffic.
Meanwhile, the number of flood victims sheltered at evacuation centres in Johor dropped from 41,095 at 8am to 36,923 at noon Thursday.
Flood evacuees in Segamat, the worst affected district, dropped from 15,179 to 11,841 at noon Thursday.
Of 8,661 families housed at 180 evacuation centres, 1,930 families are sheltered in Muar, Batu Pahat (1,337), Segamat (2,863), Kluang (380) Pontian (125), Kota Tinggi (272), Mersing (42) and Ledang (1,712).
The Johor Baharu and Kulaijaya evacuation centres have been closed.
In PAHANG, the number of flood victims from the Rompin and Temerloh districts rose to 2,265 Thursday from 2,167 Thursday morning.
A state police operations room spokesman said Rompin recorded the most number of victims at 1,808 from 236 families from five villages -- Bukit Serok (1,514 people), Kampung Rekoh (168), Kampung Kurnia Tanjung Gemok (83), Kampung Aur (37) and Kampung Lubuk Batu (six).
In Temerloh, 457 victims were sheltered at Sekolah Kebangsaan (SK) Batu Kapor, SK Desa Bakti (82) and Sri Gading Hall (19), he added.
He said Jalan Kampung Baru Bukit Ibam, Jalan Kampung Inoi, Jalan Kempung Denai, Sungai Gayong Bridge, Kampung Lubuk Batu Kota Bahagia Bridge and Tanjung Kerayong Bridge, Mentakab were closed to all traffic.
Meanwhile the Meteorological Department has issued a warning of rough seas with waves up to 7.5 metres high and strong winds up to 70km per hour in Pahang waters which would be dangerous to shipping and coastal activities, including fishing.
In NEGERI SEMBILAN, the number of evacuees in the Tampin District dropped from 624 Wednesday to 563 at 3pm Thursday.
A state flood operations room spokesman said 556 of them were sheltered at Sekolah Tuanku, Gemas and seven more at the Kampung Tiong community hall.
He said the weather was fine while the Sungai Muar water level was receding.
-- BERNAMA
Svetlana Kovalyova and John Mair PlanetArk 4 Feb 11;
Record high global food prices showed no sign of relenting following a rash of catastrophic weather, highlighted by a major U.S. snowstorm and a cyclone in Australia, which could put yet more pressure on prices and spark further unrest around the world.
The closely watched U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization Food Price Index on Thursday touched its highest level since records began in 1990.
The index rose for the seventh month in a row to 231 in January, topping the peak of 224.1 in June 2008, when the world was last gripped in a food crisis.
"These high prices are likely to persist in the months to come," FAO economist and grains expert Abdolreza Abbassian said in a statement.
Surging food prices have helped fuel the discontent that toppled Tunisia's president in January and that has spilled over to Egypt and Jordan, raising expectations other countries in the region would secure grain stocks to reassure their populations.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick urged global leaders to "put food first" and wake up to the need to curb price volatility.
"We are going to be facing a broader trend of increasing commodity prices, including food commodity prices," he told Reuters in an interview.
SUPPLY THE KEY
Catastrophic storms and droughts have been battering the world's leading agriculture countries in recent months, including flooding and a massive cyclone in Australia and a powerful winter storm that swept across parts of the United States.
Dubbed "Stormageddon," one of the biggest snowstorm in decades dumped up to 20 inches of snow in some parts of the U.S. grain belt this week, paralyzing grain and livestock movement. Meanwhile, more cold weather in the U.S. Plains ignited concerns the region's winter wheat lacked adequate insulating moisture.
U.S. wheat prices surged to 2-1/2 year highs on Thursday before retreating slightly on profit taking, along with prices of the other big crops such as corn and soybeans. But traders said pressure remains on wheat prices with forecast for more cold in the U.S. Midwest.
Sugar prices also surged to three-decade highs on fears of damage Cyclone Yasi would bring to the Australian cane crop. Prices for Malaysian palm oil, a cooking staple in the developing world, hit 3-year highs on flooding.
Big companies have had to adjust to higher raw material costs. Kellogg Co, the world's largest breakfast cereal company, said on Thursday it has boosted prices on many of its products to offset rising costs for ingredients such as grains and sugar.
"Today's announcement by the Food and Agriculture Organization should ring alarm bells in capitals around the world," said Gawain Kripke, a policy and research director for Oxfam America, an international development group.
"Governments must avoid repeating the mistakes of the past when countries reacted to spiraling prices by banning exports and hoarding food. This will only make the situation worse and it is the world's poorest people who will pay the price," he said.
Janis Huebner, economist at Germany's DekaBank said inflation partly fueled by increasing food prices could in turn trigger interest rate rises in several countries this year.
"This could mean a slowing down of growth in the countries which raise their interest rates," he said. "This could involve Asian countries and other regions, this would somewhat brake growth but I do not expect a hard landing."
STOCK BUILDING
Some countries, particularly where food prices loom large in household budgets, have been building up food stocks to contain prices -- and to limit the political and social fallout.
During the last food price crisis, the World Bank estimated that some 870 million people in developing countries were hungry or malnourished. The FAO estimates that number has increased to 925 million.
"2008 should have been a wake-up call, but I'm not yet sure all the countries in the world that we need to support this have woken up to it," the World Bank's Zoellick said.
Indonesia, Southeast Asia's biggest economy, last week bought 820,000 metric tons of rice, lifting rice prices, while suspending import duties on rice, soybeans and wheat.
Algeria last week bought almost 1 million metric tons of wheat, bringing its purchases to at least 1.75 million since the start of January, and ordered a speeding up of grain imports.
On a day of bloody confrontation in Egypt, where protesters are demanding an end to the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak, the U.N. World Food Programme's executive director Josette Sheeran said the world was now in an era where it had to be very serious about food supply.
"If people don't have enough to eat they only have three options: they can revolt, they can migrate or they can die. We need a better action plan," she said.
(Additional reporting by Jonathan Saul in London, Martinne Geller in New York, Lesley Wroughton and Christopher Doering in Washington and Michael Hogan in Hamburg; editing by Jonathan Thatcher, Keiron Henderson, Russell Blinch and Xavier Briand)
World food prices reach record high
Dario Thuburn Yahoo News 3 Feb 11;
ROME (AFP) – World food prices reached their highest level ever in January, the UN food agency said on Thursday, as economists warned chaos in Egypt could push prices up further and foment more unrest in the region.
Rising food prices have been cited among the driving forces behind the recent popular revolts in north Africa, including the uprising in Egypt and the toppling of Tunisia's long-time president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
And in its latest survey, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said its index, which monitors monthly price changes for a variety of staples, averaged 231 points in January -- the highest since records began in 1990.
"The new figures clearly show that the upward pressure on world food prices is not abating. These high prices are likely to persist in the months to come," said Abdolreza Abbassian, an economist for FAO, which is based in Rome.
The Index rose by 3.4 percent from December -- with big increases in particular for dairy, cereal and oil prices. The rises were most significant in China, India, Indonesia and Russia, data from FAO's monthly report showed.
Capital Economics, a consultancy in London, blamed extreme weather conditions last year and added: "The resulting increases in food prices have contributed to social unrest in many countries, including in Egypt."
The consultancy warned of a vicious circle in which the crisis in Egypt could raise prices even further since other Arab governments were beginning to restrict exports and stockpile food supplies to prevent similar unrest.
"Even if the crisis in Egypt eases soon, the actions taken by governments elsewhere to prevent similar uprisings in their own countries will add to the upward pressure on global agricultural commodity prices," it added.
The FAO's Abbassian however said some countries had become better at managing price shocks after a series of food riots in 2007 and 2008.
"They have learnt from previous episodes," he said, adding: "There are a lot of factors that could spark turmoil in countries and food is one of them."
The FAO data showed that prices for dairy products rose by 6.2 percent from December, oils and fats gained 5.6 percent, while cereals went up by 3.0 percent because of lower global supply of wheat and maize.
"The increase in prices follows stronger export demand during the last month and concerns about tightening supplies of high quality wheat. The market was also supported by higher oil prices and a weaker US dollar," FAO said.
Meat prices remained broadly stable due to a fall in prices in Europe caused by last month's scare over dioxin poisoning in eggs and pork in Germany, compensated by a slight increase in export prices from Brazil and the United States.
Chris Leather, a policy adviser for international aid agency Oxfam said the news "should ring alarm bells in capitals around the world."
"High global food prices risk hunger for millions of people," he said, calling for concerted international action to prevent price volatility.
He also urged countries to "avoid repeating the mistakes of the past when countries reacted to spiralling prices by banning exports and hoarding food."
Oxfam blamed the price rises on reduced production due to bad weather, increased oil prices making fertilizer and transport more expensive, increased demand for biofuels, export restrictions and financial speculation.
The FAO data showed the Food Price Index averaged 200 points over the whole of 2008, at the height of the 2007/2008 food crisis. The index breached that level for the first time in October 2010 with 205 points and kept rising.
The report showed that Somalia and Uganda have been particularly hard hit in Africa and that the ongoing unrest in Ivory Coast has helped push up prices in West Africa as a whole because of its status as a key transport hub.
But the most dramatic rises were seen in Asia, with a surge in prices across the board in India due to "unseasonal rains" during the harvest season "which resulted in severe damage to the summer crop and supply shortages," FAO said.
World food prices reach new historic peak
3.4 percent surge in January - FAO updates Food Price Index
FAO 3 Feb 11;
3 February 2011, Rome - World food prices surged to a new historic peak in January, for the seventh consecutive month, according to the updated FAO Food Price Index, a commodity basket that regularly tracks monthly changes in global food prices.
The Index averaged 231 points in January and was up 3.4 percent from December 2010. This is the highest level (both in real and nominal terms) since FAO started measuring food prices in 1990. Prices of all monitored commodity groups registered strong gains in January, except for meat, which remained unchanged.
High prices
"The new figures clearly show that the upward pressure on world food prices is not abating," said FAO economist and grains expert Abdolreza Abbassian. "These high prices are likely to persist in the months to come. High food prices are of major concern especially for low-income food deficit countries that may face problems in financing food imports and for poor households which spend a large share of their income on food."
"The only encouraging factor so far stems from a number of countries, where - due to good harvests - domestic prices of some of the food staples remain low compared to world prices," Abbassian added.
FAO emphasized that the Food Price Index has been revised, largely reflecting adjustments to its meat price index. The revision, which is retroactive, has produced new figures for all the indices but the overall trends measured since 1990 remain unchanged.
The FAO Cereal Price Index averaged 245 points in January, up 3 percent from December and the highest since July 2008, but still 11 percent below its peak in April 2008. The increase in January mostly reflected continuing increases in international prices of wheat and maize, amid tightening supplies, while rice prices fell slightly, as the timing coincides with the harvesting of main crops in major exporting countries.
The Oils/Fats Price Index rose by 5.6 percent to 278 points, nearing the June 2008 record level, reflecting an increasingly tight supply and demand balance across the oilseeds complex.
The Dairy Price Index averaged 221 points in January, up 6.2 percent from December, but still 17 percent below its peak in November 2007. A firm global demand for dairy products, against the backdrop of a normal seasonal decline of production in the southern hemisphere, continued to underpin dairy prices.
The Sugar Price Index averaged 420 points in January, up 5.4 percent from December. International sugar prices remain high, driven by tight global supplies.
By contrast, the FAO Meat Price Index was steady at around 166 points, as declining meat prices in Europe, caused by a fall in consumer confidence following a feed contamination scandal, was compensated for by a slight increase in export prices from Brazil and the United States.
Yahoo News 3 Feb 11;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A survey of oyster habitats around the world has found that the succulent mollusks are disappearing fast and 85 percent of their reefs have been lost due to disease and over-harvesting.
Most of the remaining wild oysters in the world, or about 75 percent, can be found in five locations in North America, said the study published in BioScience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences.
An international team of researchers led by Michael Beck of the Nature Conservancy and the University of California, Santa Cruz, examined the condition of native oyster reefs in 40 ecoregions, including 144 bays.
"Oyster reefs are at less than 10 percent of their prior abundance in most bays (70 percent) and ecoregions (63 percent)," said the study.
"They are functionally extinct -- in that they lack any significant ecosystem role and remain at less than one percent of prior abundances in many bays (37 percent) and ecoregions (28 percent) -- particularly in North America, Australia and Europe."
By averaging the loss among all regions, the researchers came up with an estimate that 85 percent of oyster reef ecosystems have been lost, but said that figure was likely low because some areas lacked historical records for comparison.
The study also did not include oyster reefs in parts of South Africa, China, Japan, and North and South Korea.
Other studies and observations in those areas "suggest that wild oyster abundance was much higher in the past and that reefs have declined greatly in abundance or have disappeared altogether," the authors said.
The one bright spot in the oyster world was in the Gulf of Mexico, where native oyster catches are "the highest in the world despite significant declines in abundance and reefs," according to the study.
Five of the regions boasting the world's largest oyster catches are located in eastern North America, from the Virginia coast southward and also in the Gulf of Mexico.
Oysters are important to ecosystems because they filter impurities from water and provide food and employment for people living in coastal communities.
The decline in oyster population often begins when trawling or dredging destroys the structure of parts of the reef, leaving surviving oysters vulnerable to stresses in the environment.
In some cases, non-native species of oysters are introduced after a population decline, and they bring with them diseases that further kill off the native oysters.
The authors recommended that any reefs with less than 10 percent of their former abundance be closed to further harvesting until the oysters can build up their numbers again.
Oysters at Risk: Gastronomes' Delight Disappearing Globally
ScienceDaily 3 Feb 11;
A new, wide-ranging survey that compares the past and present condition of oyster reefs around the globe finds that more than 90 percent of former reefs have been lost in most of the "bays" and ecoregions where the prized molluscs were formerly abundant. In many places, such as the Wadden Sea in Europe and Narragansett Bay, oysters are rated "functionally extinct," with fewer than 1 percent of former reefs persisting.
The declines are in most cases a result of over-harvesting of wild populations and disease, often exacerbated by the introduction of non-native species.
Oysters have fueled coastal economies for centuries, and were once astoundingly abundant in favored areas. The new survey is published in the February issue of BioScience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. It was conducted by an international team led by Michael W. Beck of The Nature Conservancy and the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Beck's team examined oyster reefs across 144 bays and 44 ecoregions. It also studied historical records as well as national catch statistics. The survey suggests that about 85 percent of reefs worldwide have now been lost. The BioScience authors rate the condition of oysters as "poor" overall.
Most of the world's harvest of native oysters comes from just five ecoregions in North America, but even there, the condition of reefs is "poor" or worse, except in the Gulf of Mexico. Oyster fisheries there are "probably the last opportunity to achieve large-scale oyster reef conservation and sustainable fisheries," Beck and his coauthors write.
Oysters provide important ecosystem services, such as water filtration, as well as food for people. The survey team argues for improved mapping efforts and the removal of incentives to over-exploitation. It also recommends that harvesting and further reef destruction should not be allowed wherever oysters are at less than 10 percent of their former abundance, unless it can be shown that these activities do not substantially affect reef recovery.
ScienceDaily 2 Feb 11;
It may look like an over-grown slug, but scientists at Newcastle University believe the sea cucumber could play a vital role in the fight to save our seas -- and become an unusual addition to British gourmet food.
Not only is this salty Asian delicacy a rich source of nutrients, it is also an important part of the marine ecosystem. Much like worms working soil in a garden, sea cucumbers are responsible for cleaning up the sea bed -- moving, consuming and mixing marine sediments.
Used widely in Chinese medicine and cuisine, sea cucumbers are also a rich source of glucosamine and chondroitin which are used in a range of common food supplements.
As a result, natural stocks of sea cucumbers are now seriously depleted around the world but at Newcastle University, UK, a team led by Professor Selina Stead is investigating how we might be able to use sea cucumbers to develop a more sustainable way of farming in the sea.
Dr Matthew Slater, an expert in sea cucumbers and part of Professor Stead's team, said the aim was to investigate the sea cucumber's potential as a natural, organic cleaner on fish farms around the world -- including the UK -- as well as a source of food.
"We wanted to find a way to clean up waste produced by large-scale aquaculture so that farming activities in the sea have little or no impact on the ocean floor," explained Dr Slater.
"By growing sea cucumbers on waste from fish farms we are not only farming a valuable food product and giving the wild sea cucumber populations a chance to recover, we are also developing solutions to fish farming impacts."
The sea cucumber project is being unveiled as part of a marine conference being held at Newcastle University on February 4.
Marking the launch of marineNewcastle, the conference will bring together the university's world-leading expertise in marine science and technology to provide answers for dealing with key challenges facing the marine environment now and in the future.
Professor Tony Clare, Newcastle University's marineNewcastle co-ordinator explained: "This new network is about finding solutions to the major challenges facing our marine environment.
"By bringing together world-class scientists from a range of research disciplines, our goal is to find ways in which we can continue to use the seas as a source of food, energy and for transport, but use them responsibly and sustainably so we protect them now and for the future."
Until now, the team has carried out most of the work at Newcastle University's Dove Marine Laboratory. The next step will be to introduce the sea cucumbers to fish farms around the UK and farm them as both cleaners and food.
As well as looking at the potential for farming sea cucumbers in the UK, the team is also leading a major aquaculture project in Tanzania where animals are being grown in lagoon-based cages in a hatchery built for producing juveniles to support a growing industry.
Professor Selina Stead, former President of the European Aquaculture Society, said this important food export can provide a valuable income and a sustainable alternative for people living in the region.
"One of the key aims of the project is to find solutions for developing community-led aquaculture in East Africa as a way of tackling poverty," she explained.
"Sea cucumbers are fairly simple to farm, they just require clean water and plenty of food in the form of nutrient-rich waste.
"Man's impact on the sea has escalated in recent decades and it is vital we work quickly to try to reverse some of the problems we have caused. Key species of sea cucumbers are already dangerously close to extinction unless we pull back now and give them a chance to recover."
Unprecedented alliance of retailers and conservationists urges drastic reform to prevent fish stocks from passing point of no return
Fiona Harvey guardian.co.uk 3 Feb 11;
Europe's fishing practices must be drastically reformed in order to prevent dwindling fish stocks passing the point of no return, a coalition of British supermarkets and conservationists warned today.
The unprecedented alliance, which includes Sainsbury's, Marks & Spencer, members of the UK's Food and Drink Federation and WWF, is making the strongest statement from business to date on the failures of the European Union fishing policy.
It follows public anger at the practice of discarding fish that was highlighted in Channel 4's Fish Fight series, which has prompted hundreds of thousands of people to sign a petition calling for reform.
Fishermen should no longer be forced to discard large amounts of their catch, as they do under the current system of EU fishing quotas, the coalition said, and the quotas should be reviewed so that stocks can recover.
Discarding is a long-standing and wasteful practice, resulting in as much as two-thirds of the fish caught being thrown back in the water, usually dead. About 1m tonnes are estimated to be thrown back each year in the North Sea alone. Discarding is a consequence of the strict quotas on the amount of fish that boats may land – when fishermen exceed their quota, or catch species of fish for which they do not have a quota, they must discard the excess.
The coalition is putting forward their proposals for a reformed common fisheries policy in a meeting with Maria Damanaki, the EU commissioner for fisheries, in London today.
The commission is in the process of reviewing the CFP, with a view to introducing reforms in two years. The EU is the world's fourth biggest producer of fish, both wild and farmed.
The coalition criticised the practice of discarding as "the result of poor management and fishing practices that are not attuned to market and consumer needs", and said the CFP was not working.
The group, led by the green campaigning organisation WWF, said that fishermen would be better served by a different system, as the wasteful practice of discarding was a cost to fishing fleets.
Alternatives to discarding include allowing fishermen to land all the fish they catch, but restricting the days on which they are allowed to fish. Better technology can also help to ensure that fishermen are able to target particular species more closely.
The group called on governments to introduce long-term fishery management plans that would include fishermen, giving fleets a bigger role in "co-managing" stocks rather than simply being handed quotas, as under the current system.
Bangkok Post 4 Feb 11;
While the remove-or-not-remove the Cambodian flag is dominating the terrestrial sphere, the close-or-not-close diving sites is a hot topic in Thai waters.
Some Bangkok Post readers have sent letters expressing their doubts over the National Park, Wildlife and Plants Conservation Department's Jan 20 announcement on the temporary closure of 18 diving spots in seven marine national parks. The 14-month closure aims to allow coral reefs affected by bleaching to recover.
Diving ban sceptics think closing the sites will neither solve coral bleaching nor reduce sea temperature, which is believed to be the main cause of the bleaching. Such arguments are unsurprisingly similar to the outcries from divers and tourism operators who are disgruntled by the closure of the money-making dive sites. Global warming, not diving and tourism activities, should be blamed for the massive death of coral in Thai waters, they say.
Some operators have urged the authorities to go after fishing operators instead, because illegal fishing is "more destructive" than tourism.
There is no doubt that the death of corals and degradation of marine resources are caused by a combination of reasons - from global warming-triggered coral bleaching, illegal fishing and uncontrolled tourism, to weak law enforcement.
"Who's killing the corals?" is an interesting question, but in a time of coral crisis, the more important question should be "What must be done to rescue the corals?"
The blame game must stop now before we lose the corals and other marine resources forever. The temporary closure of diving sites is certainly not a solution to coral bleaching and won't stop the sea temperatures from rising. But it will reduce disturbances to the fragile marine ecology and give the corals an opportunity to survive.
Fewer tourists at diving destinations means less amount of wastewater, less garbage and less oil sludge seeping into the sea from tourist boats.
The closure of dive sites also has an indirect impact as it sounds a major alarm among the public and concerned parties that the situation is really serious.
Diving and tourism operators' argument that their businesses are not the cause of coral bleaching - thus they should not take any responsibility - is nothing but a shallow excuse to go ahead with business as usual.
A radio host who organises diving trips even proposed that the ban be lifted to "allow tourists to see for themselves what the coral bleaching phenomenon looks like". Some divers have denounced the ban as nonsense because divers are "nature lovers" who would never harm nature.
Such a claim might be true, but too many nature lovers visiting an ecologically-fragile site can still cause damage to the very nature they so love.
There are many good tourism operators and conservationist divers, but under the present circumstances tougher measures such as temporary closure of severely-damaged dive sites is needed.
The department's decision to close popular dive sites is laudable and courageous because we all know how powerful the "tourism revenue" is in this country. Any rules, policies, ideas that could lead to a drop in tourism revenues will face fierce obstruction and eventually die down.
However, closing diving sites is only the first small step towards better protection of the corals. The department must prove it is serious about safeguarding the corals by coming up with other measures to protect marine resources. These include banning snorkelling in shallow-water coral reefs which are prone to human damage, and regulating construction activities in coastal areas to prevent coral damage from soil and sediment.
Apart from issuing announcements and regulations, the department should also improve the marine conservation work and improve financial management to ensure the budget and park fees are used to safeguard natural resources, and are not going into someone's pockets.
Tarra Quismundo Philippine Daily Inquirer 4 Feb 11;
MANILA, Philippines — If the world worries about monster storms, floods and landslides, what the eyes don't usually see should concern them as much.
Top marine scientists from around the country have found indications of the "creeping effects" of climate change on marine life—a study aimed at shifting focus from changes in weather phenomena on land to those happening underwater.
Tagged ICE CREAM (Integrated Coastal Enhancement: Climate Research, Enhancement and Adaptive Management), the government-funded project has found rising water temperatures, coral bleaching and coastal erosion in several of its 28 project sites dotting the Philippine coastline.
The team shared its initial findings to the INQUIRER as it marked the start of its third year. The P98-million project, funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DoST), the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International involves more than a dozen marine science experts from across the country and separate staff at project sites.
“Something that is not visible is much more difficult to understand. It (the sea) is much more prone to being dismissed as being “no, there's still a lot of fish,” said Wilfredo Campos, a marine biologist from the University of the Philippines-Visayas.
“You don't really see what's happening. You see that there are mudslides, you see what's happening in the forest, but at sea, you really don't know what's happening. You look at the sea and feel that it (resources) is still finite, when actually, it's not,” Campos told the INQUIRER on Thursday.
Much debate still surrounds climate change, its causes and effects, but Porfirio Aliño, marine biologist from the UP Marine Science Institute, would rather look the at the bottomline.
“The climate is always changing, how you see it in relation to whether it's going to be more frequent or accelerated. But the bottomline is how do we respond to it, given that if we don't do anything, it will become accelerated,” he said.
“One question is that, climate has changed in evolutionary time. But the point is, during evolutionary time, there were no people yet. Now, climate change has a big effect on people,” he said.
Based on initial findings, the DoST climate change project found a 3-percent rise in shallow water temperature off Lian, Batangas in April to May of last year—an increase not observed even in intense summers.
“By May, it spiked to 31 degrees Celsius, while the normal range is 27 degrees to 29 degrees. For water, that's very high,” said Maricar Samson, an environmental scientist from the De La Salle University.
Such warm waters caused coral bleaching, which endangered an ecosystem that could buffer vulnerable coastlines from storm surges, the team said.
“If you take care of the reef, it will be able to compensate with sea level rise. But if of course it is in poor condition, it will not be able to buffer, for example, the storm surge. The increase in sea level will reach the shore,” he said.
Such rate of temperature rise, if observed every 5 years, would leave only 1 percent of the current coral reef population, Samson said. The same rise, if seen every 10 years, would leave only 11 percent.
In Botolan, Zambales, scientists found out that the coastline has receded significantly from 1977 to 2003.
“This has a big impact on the coast . Now, we're trying to do some projections in some parts of the Philippines on what will happen on their coastal stability,” Samson said.
Another study under ICE CREAM found a decrease in the productivity of fish species in coastal areas by roughly 20 percent, a “very fast rate” observed within two decades said Aliño.
“If we don't take care of our coral reefs, mangroves, sea grass and other habitats, obviously, the decline will be fast, we cannot cope with climate change. The other thing is, we are not as conscious about it unfortunately,” he said, adding that waters surrounding the archipelago were almost seven times bigger than its land area.
The team hopes to use data to influence policy-makers and stakeholders at the local and national levels: local government units could draft ordinances for better coastal protection while communities could practice more responsible use of marine resources.
“In the absence of scientists on the ground, the program hopes to give people tools where people can formulate their own [climate-change adaptation programs],” Samson said.
“These are site-specific. It's not possible that the whole Philippines will sink ... There will be different scenarios for [different parts of the] Philippines,” she added.
Stuart Grudgings PlanetArk 4 Feb 11;
A widespread drought in the Amazon rain forest last year was worse than the "once-in-a-century" dry spell in 2005 and may have a bigger impact on global warming than the United States does in a year, British and Brazilian scientists said on Thursday.
More frequent severe droughts like those in 2005 and 2010 risk turning the world's largest rain forest from a sponge that absorbs carbon emissions into a source of the gases, accelerating global warming, the report found.
Trees and other vegetation in the world's forests soak up heat-trapping carbon dioxide as they grow, helping cool the planet, but release it when they die and rot.
"If events like this happen more often, the Amazon rain forest would reach a point where it shifts from being a valuable carbon sink slowing climate change to a major source of greenhouse gases that could speed it up," said lead author Simon Lewis, an ecologist at the University of Leeds.
The study, published in the journal Science, found that last year's drought caused rainfall shortages over a 1.16 million square-mile (3 million square km) expanse of the forest, compared with 734,000 square miles (1.9 million square km) in the 2005 drought.
It was also more intense, causing higher tree mortality and having three major epicenters, whereas the 2005 drought was mainly focused in the southwestern Amazon.
As a result, the study predicted the Amazon forest would not absorb its usual 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in both 2010 and 2011. In addition, the dead and dying trees would release 5 billion metric tons of the gas in the coming years, making a total impact of about 8 billion metric tons, according to the study.
In comparison, the United States emitted 5.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel use in 2009.
The combined emissions caused by the two droughts were probably enough to have canceled out the carbon absorbed by the forest over the past 10 years, the study found.
GREATER WEATHER EXTREMES
The widespread drought last year dried up major rivers in the Amazon and isolated thousands of people who depend on boat transportation, shocking climate scientists who had billed the 2005 drought as a once-in-a-century event.
The two intense dry spells fit predictions by some climate models that the forest will face greater weather extremes this century, with more intense droughts making it more vulnerable to fires, which in turn could damage its ability to recover.
Under the more extreme scenarios, large parts of the forest could turn into a savannah-like ecosystem by the middle of the century with much lower levels of animal and plant biodiversity. Although human-caused deforestation in Brazil has fallen sharply in recent years, scientists say the forest is still vulnerable.
A crucial question is whether the droughts are being driven by higher levels of greenhouse gases or are an anomaly, Lewis said. If they are driven by global warming, a vicious cycle of warmer temperatures and droughts could conceivably lead to a large-scale transformation of the forest over a period of decades.
"You could quite rapidly move to a much drier Amazon with less forest there," Lewis told Reuters.
The research was a collaboration among scientists at the University of Leeds and the University of Sheffield in Britain and Brazil's Amazon Environmental Research Institute.
(Editing by Will Dunham)
Amazon's double dry spell worries scientists
Yahoo News 3 Feb 11;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A pair of unusually severe droughts have parched the Amazon in recent years, raising concern about the rainforest's future as a major absorber of carbon emissions, said a study on Thursday.
A rare drought in 2005 was billed as a once-in-a-hundred-years event, but then it was followed by another drought in 2010 that may have been even worse, said the team of British and Brazilian experts in the journal Science.
Since the droughts killed many trees, the scientists predict that the Amazon will not be able to absorb as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as usual in the years to come, removing an important global buffer against pollution.
Even worse, rotting trees may release into the atmosphere as much as five billion tons of C02 in the coming years, almost as much as the entire United States emitted from fossil fuel use in 2009, with 5.4 billion tonnes.
"Having two events of this magnitude in such close succession is extremely unusual, but is unfortunately consistent with those climate models that project a grim future for Amazonia," said lead author Simon Lewis of the University of Leeds.
Based on the impact of the dry spell on tree deaths in 2005, the team projected that "Amazon forests will not absorb their usual 1.5 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere in both 2010 and 2011," the study said.
In addition, "a further five billion tonnes of CO2 will be released to the atmosphere over the coming years once the trees that are killed by the new drought rot."
However, co-author Paulo Brando, a Brazilian scientist, said more research needs to be done to determine how many trees died, and what their impact will be.
"Our results should be seen as an initial estimate. The emissions estimates do not include those from forest fires, which spread over extensive areas of the Amazon during hot and dry years. These fires release large amounts of carbon to the atmosphere," he said.
"It could be that many of the drought-susceptible trees were killed off in 2005, which would reduce the number killed last year," said Brando, who hails from Brazil's Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM).
"On the other hand, the first drought may have weakened a large number of trees so increasing the number dying in the 2010 dry season."
Lewis said the main concern is that such events could be creating a vicious cycle.
"If greenhouse gas emissions contribute to Amazon droughts that in turn cause forests to release carbon, this feedback loop would be extremely concerning," he said.
"Two unusual and extreme droughts occurring within a decade may largely offset the carbon absorbed by intact Amazon forests during that time," he added.
"If events like this happen more often, the Amazon rainforest would reach a point where it shifts from being a valuable carbon sink slowing climate change, to a major source of greenhouse gases that could speed it up."
Amazon drought 'severe' in 2010, raising warming fears
Richard Black BBC News 3 Feb 11;
Last year's drought in the Amazon raises concerns about the region's capacity to continue absorbing carbon dioxide, scientists say.
Researchers report in the journal Science that the 2010 drought was more widespead than in 2005 - the last big one - with more trees probably lost.
The 2005 drought had been termed a "one in a century" event.
In drought years, the Amazon region changes from being a net absorber of carbon dioxide into a net emitter.
The scientists, from the UK and Brazil, suggest this is further evidence of the Amazon's vulnerability to rising global temperatures.
They also suggest the days of the Amazon forest curbing the impact of rising greenhouse gas emissions may be coming to an end.
The 2010 drought saw the Amazon River at its lowest levels for half a century, with several tributaries completely dry and more than 20 municipalities declaring a state of emergency.
Research leader Simon Lewis, from the University of Leeds, is the scientist who gained an apology from the Sunday Times newspaper last year over the so-called "AmazonGate" affair.
"It's difficult to detect patterns from just two observed droughts, but to have them close together is concerning," he told BBC News.
Both droughts were associated with unusually warm seas in the Atlantic Ocean off the Brazilian coast.
"If that turns out to be driven by escalating greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, it could imply that we'll see more drought years in the near future," said Dr Lewis.
"If events like this do happen more often, the Amazon rainforest would reach a point where it shifts from being a valuable carbon sink slowing climate change to a major source of greenhouse gases."
Some computer models of climate change - in particular, the one developed at the UK's Hadley Centre - project more droughts across the region as the planet warms, and a diminishing capacity to absorb CO2.
There are several ways in which warming can turn greenhouse gas-absorbing forests into emitters.
In the Amazon, the principal mechanism is simply that trees die and then rot; in addition, those trees are then not available to absorb CO2 from the air.
Eye in the sky
For this research, scientists used data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), a US/Japanese satellite that monitors rainfall in a belt extending either side of the Equator.
Its observation showed that whereas the 2005 drought covered an area of nearly two million sq km, in 2010 it stretched for three million sq km.
Following the 2005 drought, scientists were able to study the impact on trees and work out the relationship between the rainfall loss and the release of carbon.
In an average year, the basin absorbs about 1.5 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere.
By contrast, the impact of the 2005 drought, spread over a number of years, was calculated as a release of five billion tonnes.
The new paper calculates the figure for 2010 as about eight billion tonnes, as much as the annual emissions of China and Russia combined; but this, the researchers acknowledge, is a first estimate.
"It could be that many of the susceptible trees were killed off in 2005, which would reduce the number killed last year," said Paulo Brando from the Amazon Institute of Environmental Research (IPAM) in Belem, Brazil.
"On the other hand, the first drought may have weakened a large number of trees, so increasing the number dying in the 2010 dry season."
Leeds University is part of a research group that maintains about 130 land stations across the Amazon region.
If funds are forthcoming, the team will visit them all in the coming months to gather first-hand data on tree deaths.
This should provide for a more accurate estimate of the 2010 drought's contribution to global emissions.
Closing the gate
The likely fate of the Amazon under climate change came under focus early last year when, as one of a series of attacks on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Sunday Times newspaper accused the panel of having included an unsubstantiated claim that up to 40% of the forest could be affected by climate change in future.
It used quotes from Dr Lewis in support of its claim.
In fact, Dr Lewis was concerned about the region's vulnerability and had sent the newspaper a sheaf of scientific papers to back the case.
He told the newspaper that the IPCC had sourced its statement to a report from environmental group WWF, when it should have referenced the scientific papers WWF had used in its report.
"In fact, the IPCC's Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence," the Sunday Times acknowledged in its apology.
Commenting on that so-called "AmazonGate" episode from the perspective of the new research, Dr Lewis noted:
"The notion that the Amazon is potentially very vulnerable to droughts linked to climate change was reasonable and defensible at the time, and is consistent with the new findings.
"If greenhouse gas emissions contribute to Amazon droughts that in turn cause forests to release carbon, this feedback loop would be extremely concerning.
"Put more starkly, current emissions pathways risk playing Russian roulette with the world's largest rainforest."
Mass tree deaths prompt fears of Amazon 'climate tipping point'
Scientists fear billions of tree deaths caused by 2010 drought could see vast forest turn from carbon sink to carbon source
Damian Carrington guardian.co.uk 3 Feb 11;
Billions of trees died in the record drought that struck the Amazon in 2010, raising fears that the vast forest is on the verge of a tipping point, where it will stop absorbing greenhouse gas emissions and instead increase them.
The dense forests of the Amazon soak up more than one-quarter of the world's atmospheric carbon, making it a critically important buffer against global warming. But if the Amazon switches from a carbon sink to a carbon source that prompts further droughts and mass tree deaths, such a feedback loop could cause runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences.
"Put starkly, current emissions pathways risk playing Russian roulette with the world's largest forest," said tropical forest expert Simon Lewis, at the University of Leeds, and who led the research published today in the journal Science. Lewis was careful to note that significant scientific uncertainties remain and that the 2010 and 2005 drought – thought then to be of once-a-century severity – might yet be explained by natural climate variation.
"We can't just wait and see because there is no going back," he said. "We won't know we have passed the point where the Amazon turns from a sink to a source until afterwards, when it will be too late."
Alex Bowen, from the London School of Economics and Political Science's Grantham research institute on climate change, said huge emissions of carbon from the Amazon would make it even harder to keep global greenhouse gases at a low enough level to avoid dangerous climate change. "It therefore makes it even more important for there to be strong and urgent reductions in man-made emissions."
The revelation of mass tree deaths in the Amazon is a major blow to efforts to reduce the destruction of the world's forests by loggers, one of the biggest sources of global carbon emissions. The use of satellite imagery by Brazilian law enforcement teams has drastically cut deforestation rates and replanting in Asia had slowed the net loss. Financial deals to protect forests were one of the few areas on which some progress was made at the 2010 UN climate talks in Cancún.
The 2010 Amazonian drought led to the declaration of states-of-emergencies and the lowest ever level of the major tributary, the Rio Negro. Lewis, with colleagues in Brazil, examined satellite-derived rainfall measurements and found that the 2010 drought was even worse than the very severe 2005 drought, affecting a 60% wider area and with an even harsher dry season.
On the ground, the researchers have 126 one-hectare plots spread across the Amazon, in which every single tree is tagged and monitored. After 2005, they counted how many trees had died and worked out how much carbon would be pumped into the atmosphere as the wood rotted. In addition, the reduced growth of the water-stressed trees means the forest failed to absorb the 1.5bn tonnes of carbon that it would in a normal year.
Applying the same principles to the 2010 drought, they estimated that 8.5 billion tonnes of CO2 will be released - more than the entire 7.7bn tonnes emitted in 2009 by China, the biggest polluting nation in the world. This estimate does not include forest fires, which release carbon and increase in dry years.
"The Amazon is such a big area that even a small shift [in conditions] there can have a global impact," said Lewis.
Lewis said that two such severe droughts in the Amazon within five years was highly unusual, but that a natural variation in climate over decade-long periods cannot yet be ruled out. The driving factor of the annual weather patterns is the warmth of the sea in the Atlantic. He said increasing droughts in the Amazon are found in some climate models, including the sophisticated model used by the Hadley centre. This means the 2005 and 2010 droughts are consistent with the idea that global warming will cause more droughts in future, emit more carbon, and potentially lead to runaway climate change. "The greenhouse gases we have already emitted may mean there are several more droughts in the pipeline," he said.
Lewis said that the 2010 drought killed "in the low billions of trees", in addition to the roughly 4 billion trees that die on average in a normal year across the Amazon. The researchers are now trying to raise £500,000 in emergency funding to revisit the plots in the Amazon and gather further data.
Brazilian scientist Paulo Brando, from the Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (Amazon Environmental Research Institute), and co-leader of the research said: "We will not know exactly how many trees were killed until we can complete forest measurements on the ground. It could be that many of the drought-susceptible trees were killed off in 2005. Or the first drought may have weakened a large number of trees so increasing the number dying in 2010."
Brando added: "Our results should be seen as an initial estimate. The emissions estimates do not include those from forest fires, which spread over extensive areas of the Amazon during hot and dry years and release large amounts of carbon."
Climate tipping points
Scientists know from the geological record that the Earth's climate can change rapidly. They have identified a number of potential tipping points where relatively small amounts of global warming caused by human activities could cause large changes in climate. Some tipping points, like the losses to the Amazon forests, involve positive feedback loops and could lead to runaway climate change.
Arctic ice cap: The white ice cap is good at reflecting the Sun's warming light back into space. But when it melts, the dark ocean uncovered absorbs this heat. This leads to more melting, and so on.
Tundra: The high north is warming particularly fast, melting the permafrost that has locked up vast amounts of carbon in soils for thousands of years. Bacteria digesting the unfrozen soils generate methane, a potent greenhouse gas, leading to more warming.
Gas hydrates: Also involving methane, this tipping point involves huge reservoirs of methane frozen on or just below the ocean floor. The methane-water crystals are close to their melting point and highly unstable. A huge release could be triggered by a little warming.
West Antarctic ice sheet: Some scientists think this enormous ice sheet, much of which is below sea level, is vulnerable to small amounts of warming. If it all eventually melted, sea level would rise by six metres.
There is no question that supply of land is limited. We must find ways of using it wisely to protect the ecosystem services on which all economic activity depends
Victor Anderson for the Guardian Professional Network guardian.co.uk 3 Feb 11;
There have been many arguments about "peak oil" and the depletion of metals, but there is one resource that without doubt is limited in supply: land. Unlike most ordinary products, an increase in the price of land doesn't bring about an incentive to produce any more of it - because there can't be any more. The Dutch reclaimed land from the sea, but rising sea levels now mean we have less land.
Geopolitical competition for territory among major powers is well known. But there is another competition for territory taking place today which is potentially far more important for the future: the competition for land use; dividing up the finite amount of land which exists.
The competition is between three major uses: 'wild land', especially forest; agriculture; and urban uses, such as industry, housing and transport.
The ecosystems and biodiversity which underpin all economic activity depend largely on 'wild land' - very much a poor relation in the competition with agriculture and urbanisation, both of which have massive economic forces in their favour.
Agriculture is driven by the demand for food. This demand is growing because of the rising population and more demand for meat, which requires more land than crops. Urbanisation is backed by the economic power of manufacturing, and the influx of economic migrants from countryside to towns and cities.
Wild land has no such strong purchasing power to defend its position and, therefore, is set to decline, affecting biodiversity and ecosystems with disastrous consequences leading to reduction of tropical forest area, loss of species, and reduced capacity for absorbing carbon.
It is not essential for land to be left wild to be productive ecologically: agriculture and urban areas can be designed in ways which maintain ecosystems. But whether land is left wild or combined with other uses, the survival of the services ecosystems provide - such as genetic resources, good quality soil, available water, pollination - is an essential underpinning of the world economy and people's livelihoods. There are enormous risks to companies if this issue is not adequately addressed, but unfortunately most have not yet woken up to this fact, as McKinsey's found in a survey last August.
WWF will be publishing two reports this week which highlight key issues with important implications for the question of land use: one on food, 'The LiveWell Plate', showing how ecological and health objectives can be combined; and 'The Energy Report', a long-run global energy strategy.
Can we incentivise people to maintain the ecosystems we all depend on? This question has been addressed over the past few years by the The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) reports. It was billed as doing for biodiversity what the Stern Report did for climate change - that is, constructing an economic argument for why it matters, and providing economic policy proposals for how to address the problem.
TEEB produced useful reports, and there are currently discussions taking place about how the work can be continued. Its major points are clear and important. Ecosystem services are vital, must be maintained, and in a global economy based on money, that means they have to be paid for.
It is a sign of how much further climate change is up the political agenda relative to biodiversity that the first major international programme to conserve forests, REDD, has been arrived at through the climate change convention (where it is seen as a relatively cheap way of dealing with carbon) rather than through the biodiversity convention, where the emphasis would have been on extinctions and ecosystems.
Payment for ecosystem services is likely to find its way on to the agenda for the next UN conference on sustainability, Rio+20, to be held in Rio de Janeiro in May 2012, twenty years after the Rio conference where the climate and biodiversity conventions were signed.
Land use economics should be a key issue for the conference. There is a worldwide market for land in which ecosystems need to be able to compete but that will require even more money than suggested by TEEB authors.
Victor Anderson is 'One Planet Economy' leader at WWF
David Fogarty PlanetArk 3 Feb 11;
Australia has endured two of its deadliest summers on record, blamed in part on global warming, but record fires, floods and cyclones have not persuaded it to take strong action on climate change.
But some experts hope that Wednesday's arrival of giant Cyclone Yasi on the coast of Queensland, already hit by massive floods last month, will help bring more of a sense of urgency to the political debate over climate policy.
Environmentalists have despaired that one of the world's highest per-capita carbon polluters will ever embrace the need to cut emissions, given that most politicians and voters have not made a strong connection with disasters and manmade global warming.
They say they are baffled why weather-beaten Australians are not pushing for stronger policies to cut carbon emissions from power stations, mines, transport and refineries.
"If you want a picture of what a hostile and costly environment looks like, we've had it in spades over the past couple of years," said John Connor, CEO of the Climate Institute think tank.
"Most of our politicians and most of our major media outlets have been extremely hesitant in drawing any connection," he told Reuters, referring to a climate change link.
"It's a toxic blend of denial, media management and sheer lack of leadership," he added.
The government has pledged to put a price on carbon emissions this year as a key pillar of its climate change fight after failing to get sweeping emissions trading legislation through parliament and nearly losing elections in 2010.
At the heart of the issue is that emissions trading would affect all sectors of the economy through higher fuel and power prices. The government has rowed back by reviewing the issue, without saying how carbon emissions will be priced.
"It's right to price carbon, the most economically efficient way of reducing pollution," Prime Minister Julia Gillard said in a speech on Tuesday.
A few days earlier in a radio interview, Gillard said she recognized that climate change was real but did not want to connect it with the recent floods.
"I don't think you can look at one, a bit of the weather and say that equals climate change. I don't think it's as simple as that."
Australia has looked at trying to price carbon for over a decade but has faced fiercely opposing views, with lobbying from miners fearing higher costs and opposition scare campaigns over higher taxes and job losses.
Connor thought the recent floods and Cyclone Yasi could be a game changer by putting more pressure on the government to beef up its climate policies.
"People may look afresh at this once we're through managing the emergency and added up the costs," he said.
The Australian Greens, which give key support to the ruling Labor party, believe Australians would be willing to pay for steps to fight greenhouse gas emissions and want an initial carbon price followed by an emissions trading scheme.
IT'S NOT ALL CLIMATE CHANGE
Veteran climate scientist Neville Nicholls said a possible reason for lack of public action was the tendency for some people to try to link all Australian extreme weather and climate events to climate change.
"When a climate extreme of the opposite variety comes along, this makes it easy for those who want pretend that it is all just natural climate variability to paint all climate science as 'alarmist'," said Nicholls of Monash University in Melbourne.
Since 2006, Australia has suffered a string of disasters that have costs hundreds of lives, caused losses in the billions disrupted the crucial agriculture and mining sectors.
In March 2006, Cyclone Larry tore through the northern Queensland town of Innisfail, causing an estimated A$1.5 billion in damage to the area.
A combination of drought and a record-breaking heatwave February 2009 triggered the nation's deadliest fires around the southern city of Melbourne that killed 173 people and A$1 billion in insurance losses. Severe storms in Perth and Melbourne last year also caused losses of about A$1 billion.
Floods in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria since December have killed 35 people and become the nation's costliest natural disaster, swamping 30,000 homes and crippling Queensland's coal industry.
Australians were already paying for weather extremes through food price inflation and higher insurance premiums.
"The insurance industry knows the damage bill from these events is already on the rise," said Matthew England of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
"So we can't just continue to mop-up without thinking about how fossil fuel emissions are changing our climate," he added.
Australian disasters spark call for climate action
Reuters 4 Feb 11;
CANBERRA, Feb 4 (Reuters) - An architect of Australia's stalled climate-change policy has linked the nation's recent natural disasters with global warming and called for a new political push to cut carbon emissions.
Ross Garnaut, releasing updated advice to the government, said extreme weather events like massive Cyclone Yasi, which hit the northeast coast on Thursday, and recent floods were just a taste of what would come if climate change went unchecked.
"The greater energy in the atmosphere and the seas can intensify extreme events and I'm afraid that we're feeling some of that today, and we're feeling that at a time when global warming is in its early stages," he said in a speech late on Thursday.
Australia accounts for 1.5 percent of global emissions but is one of the world's top per-capita polluters because of its reliance on coal for around 80 percent of power generation.
Canberra has delayed plans to force polluters to pay for carbon-emission permits on an open market and has instead set up a committee to find the best way of putting a price on carbon.
Greens and independent MPs are involved in developing the new policy, with other options such as an interim carbon tax also being considered.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Monday reaffirmed a commitment to pricing carbon pollution, likening the move to key economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s and saying the move would lead to a new technological revolution in Australia.
The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper has said the government is moving towards the Greens idea of a hybrid carbon-trade plan, with an initial fixed price on carbon pollution until a full carbon market could be established.
The government's previous carbon-trade plan proposed an initial set price of around A$1 a tonne, before moving to a market price, and emission cuts of at least 5 percent of year 2000 levels by 2020. The Greens want cuts of 25 to 40 percent.
In Europe, the world's largest carbon market, prices have been trading around 14.50 euros ($19.70) per tonne.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet has previously played down the benefits of a carbon tax, saying a carbon trade scheme would give more certainty on cuts to emissions.
($1 = 0.735 Euros) (Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by Mark Bendeich)
Navin Singh Khadka BBC News 3 Feb 11;
A loan to be provided by multilateral banks to help Nepal fight the impacts of climate change has kicked off a controversy after it invited criticism from civil societies and non-government organisations.
They say it is not fair to burden an already climatically vulnerable country like Nepal with loans in the name of dealing with climatic changes.
There are also some supporters of the loan, mainly from few government ministries who argue that the money is good for the country in the long run.
But even within the government's administration, there are conflicting positions.
Climate loans have already been a controversial issue internationally with several environmental organisations opposing them for being against what they call climate justice.
And now similar voices are being heard in Nepal, particularly from organisations working at grass root levels.
"It is like you thrash someone and give him a loan to get himself treated in the hospital," said Krishna Lamsal who works for Local Initiatives for Biodiversity Research and Development, a non-government organisation based in Pokhara, western Nepal.
"How can they even think about giving a climate loan when they know that climate change is not a problem we created, and that it was the developed world?"
Loan 'burden'
Gehendra Gurung of Practical Action that has worked in remote areas of the country to help people adapt to the impacts of climate change thinks the same way.
"Personally, I think if it was something that we had created ourselves, then we would have no problem with loan," he said.
"We are already at the receiving end and on the top of that we cannot accept being burdened by loan."
The US$60m loan is a component of the Strategic Programme on Climate Resilience (SPCR) being agreed between the government and the donors that include the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation.
The remaining US$50m of the programme is a grant.
Critics say the entire amount either should have been given as a grant or Nepal should have taken only the grant component.
Many of these criticisms have appeared on an internet network of non-government organisations working in the area of climate change in Nepal.
"Currently, we have whims of climate change issues and the government tries to exploit it to bring more money for no use." Ranjeev Shrestha of the Integrated Effort for Development Nepal wrote in the network.
Ngamindra Dahal, a climate change expert, had a bit different take: "Asking questions such as why Nepal is accepting any climate funds (whether loans or grants) on what conditions, and; how these funds will mobilized to achieve what goals and objectives would help us understand the reality."
But Jagadish Baral, joint secretary at the forest ministry, who is on leave now wrote: "The United Nations climate convention is, anyway, going to earmark a substantial resource for climate change adaptation particularly for least developed countries like Nepal, we need to be hopeful for this."
Large response
Environment Ministry joint secretary Purushottam Ghimire who also heads the climate change division says he too has seen such e-mails.
"I have received nearly four hundred of them, but I have not responded to them yet.
"What people need to be clear about is it is a concessional loan that we will have to pay over a period of 40 years and what is most important is that we need not pay interest for it."
Ghimire said critics had the wrong impression that the loan was going for adaptation projects.
Nepal recently prepared a National Adaptation Programme of Action which needs funds to implement its projects aimed at helping people to cope with the immediate effects of climate change.
"The loan is not at all going for adaptation projects they are actually for climate resilience that include long term projects like, for instance, building bridges, embankments, development of resilient seeds in agriculture etc," he said.
While critics in the civil society are not convinced by the arguments, the government's own administration does not have a coherent position on the loan.
Just when the Environment Ministry has thrown its full weight behind the loan component of the SPCR, the finance ministry says it is not finalised yet.
"We gave a nod to an initial agreement after some other ministries supported the loan which we at first had resisted," said a source at the Finance Ministry.
"But that does not mean it has been finalised, it has not been yet."
The forest ministry officials, in the meantime, say they are not backing the loan.
"If the SPCR contains any loan for our ministry, we will reject it," Forest Minister Deepak Bohara told the BBC. "We have enough grants to implement our projects, we do not need loan."
The aid memoire prepared by the donors says the loan was the government's decision.
"The government of Nepal advised the mission of its plans to submit an SPCR proposal in the amount of 110 million dollars, requesting US$50m in grants and US$60m in loans….." it reads.
Despite repeated efforts, the project's lead donor, the World Bank could not be available for comment.
The donors are having a final round of meeting with the government in February.
Until then what shape the opposition takes remains to be seen.
If it grows, the question will be whether the climate action project will be able to weather the storm.
Camille Ebden BBC News 3 Feb 11;
The world population growth rate must slow down significantly to avoid reaching unsustainable levels, says a new UN report.
To have a reasonable chance of stabilising world population, fertility must drop to below "replacement level".
It must then be maintained at that level for an extended period, says the report.
This replacement level is the fertility level at which a population replaces itself from one generation to the next.
The world population is already poised to reach 7 billion later this year and this figure potentially could double to 14 billion by 2100 if action is not taken.
This is of particular concern for the least developed countries worldwide, which are growing at the fastest rate and are already the most vulnerable to famine.
The UN Population Division have produced six projections of potential future population change based on different changes to fertility level and other factors.
In the medium scenario, world population peaks at 9.4 billion in 2070 and then starts to decline.
However for this to happen, fertility needs to decline significantly in most developing countries.
No guarantee
In recent years, there has been widespread acceptance of the medium scenario as almost a certainty.
However Hania Zlotnik, the Director of the UN Population Division says there is "no guarantee that this scenario will become a reality because high-fertility countries may not reduce their fertility fast enough and countries with intermediate fertility levels may see them stagnate above replacement level".
"Even countries with intermediate fertility need to reduce it to replacement level or below if they wish to avert continuous population increases to unsustainable levels."
The high and low projections reveal how even relatively small deviations from replacement-level fertility can lead to dramatic changes in the size of the world population.
The high scenario, where fertility remains mostly between 2.2 and 2.3 children per woman, would lead to a world population of nearly 30 billion in 2300
The report says that "even with significant fertility reductions, Africa's population will likely increase by 150% by 2100 and many of its countries will see their populations increase four-fold or more".
It warns that although the reduction of fertility may be inevitable, considerable effort over the next few decades is required to make it a reality.
The "World Demographic Trends" report has been released by the UN Population Division today ahead of the UN Commission on Population and Development.
WWF 3 Feb 11;
Gland, Switzerland: All of the world’s energy needs could be provided cleanly, renewably and economically by 2050, according to a major new study by WWF.
Two years in preparation, The Energy Report breaks new ground with its global scope and its consideration of total energy needs including transport, and making adequate and safe energy available to all.
“If we continue to rely on fossil fuels, we face a future of increasing anxieties over energy costs, energy security and climate change impacts,” said WWF Director General Jim Leape. “We are offering an alternative scenario – far more promising and entirely achievable.
“The Energy Report shows that in four decades we can have a world of vibrant economies and societies powered entirely by clean, cheap and renewable energy and with a vastly improved quality of life.
“The report is more than a scenario – it’s a call for action. We can achieve a cleaner, renewable future, but we must start now.”
The two-part report contains a detailed analysis and scenario presented by respected energy consultancy Ecofys, an analysis by WWF, and a graphic narrative by OMA. It shows that by 2050, power, transport, industrial and domestic energy needs could be met with only isolated residual uses of fossil and nuclear fuels – vastly reducing anxieties over energy security, pollution and not least, catastrophic climate change.
Energy efficiency in buildings, vehicles and industry would be a key ingredient, along with an increase in the energy needs met through electric power, renewably generated and supplied through smart grids.
Under the Ecofys scenario, in 2050 total energy demand will be 15 percent lower than in 2005, despite increases in population, industrial output, freight and travel - and energy being made available to those currently not enjoying its benefits. The world no longer relies on coal, or nuclear fuels, while international rules and cooperation limit potential environmental damage from biofuel production and hydroelectricity development.
“In this report we are very deliberately not making extravagant assumptions about the benefits of technologies yet to come,” said Ecofys director Kees van der Leun. “This inherently means that this is a moderate estimate of the renewable energy future we could enjoy by 2050.”
“At Ecofys we know that solutions for the global energy challenge are at hand. There are numerous systems that use energy more efficiently, allowing us to manage current energy sources more carefully. Moreover, we understand the opportunities in using the vast amounts of sustainable energy that surround us.”
Providing reliable, affordable and clean energy on the scale required will need a global effort – similar to the global response to the world financial crisis. But the benefits would be much greater in the long term, with the savings from lower energy costs balancing total new investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency by 2040 and savings over a “Business-As-Usual” scenario amounting to around €4 trillion from lower energy costs alone by 2050.
Other benefits are savings from avoiding energy security conflicts, dirty spills and supply disruptions that are inherent in sourcing ever scarcer fossil fuels from more and more politically or environmentally challenging areas.
Importantly, The Energy Report scenario would see CO2 emissions from the world’s energy supply sector reduced by over 80 per cent by 2050 - providing a high level of confidence that the average global temperature rise will be limited to the less than the two degrees Celsius threshold identified as presenting unacceptable risks of catastrophic climate change.
“We will live differently, but we will live well,” said Jim Leape. “We must provide energy for all without imperiling our planet, and this report shows that we can.”
The Energy Report: http://www.panda.org/energyreport
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