The Big Question: Should Africa be generating much of Europe's power?

Daniel Howden, The Independent 25 Aug 09;

Why are we asking this now?

Two hugely ambitious power-generating schemes have been launched in recent weeks, one offering to create the world's largest solar farm and the other to create the biggest hydroelectric dam on the planet.

In both cases the location for the mega-projects is Africa: the solar-power scheme envisages harnessing the sun in the Moroccan and/or Algerian Sahara; while the hydroelectric plan centres on damming the mighty Congo River.

What the two projects have in common is that they seek to export the majority of the power they intend to generate from impoverished countries to more developed economies.

In the case of the Sahara to Southern Europe and in the case of Congo to South Africa, foreign mining interests inside the Democratic Republic of Congo and again, Europe. Even in the best-case scenario neither project will be up and running for 15 years.

How would it work?

Planners behind the Desertec scheme point out that the solar energy that falls on the Sahara in six hours would power Europe for one year. Although the difficulty in harnessing, storing and transferring that electricity means that the eventual aim is to supply 15 per cent of Europe's power needs. The Inga Dam project in DRC aims to generate 40,000MW, meaning twice the capacity of the giant Three Gorges dam in China, which would be more than the output of South Africa's entire troubled national power industry. In terms of how it works, however sophisticated power stations become, they all do broadly the same thing as a bicycle dynamo – they either boil water or harness moving water to turn turbines that generate resistance and charge. In the Sahara it would be done by a new concentrated solar power (CSP) technology which is in effect a vast field of mirrors which collect heat, boil water and turn turbines. The electricity generated would be channelled through direct current cables under the Mediterranean and into Europe. In the case of the Congo it would involve absorbing the extraordinary power of the Inga Falls to power the turbines. The same cables would then transfer that electricity as far afield as South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and southern Europe.

What would the cost be?

The Desertec plan has been costed at €400bn, while the Grand Inga Dam would weigh in at $80bn, always assuming that the projects are delivered on budget. The main backers of the Sahara scheme are a dozen finance and industrial firms, mainly from Germany, including household names such as Siemens. One of the biggest cost factors will be the direct current cables which will cost as much as $1bn each, even to cross from the Sahara to Southern Europe and at least 20 of them are needed. There are a host of risk factors involved in both that stretch from political and regional instability in the Maghreb to prolonged conflict in the DRC. Add to these Saharan sandstorms and the costs of providing the water necessary to clean solar panels and cool turbines in a desert.

Why are developed economies shopping for power in the third world?

The simplest answer is that there are no equivalents of the Saharan solar power or the roaring waters of the Inga Falls in southern England, or anywhere else in crowded Europe. But another aspect is the difficulty that governments and private investors have had in establishing large renewable energy projects in Europe. Some, such as Portugal, have forged ahead with widespread windfarms but others, such as the UK, have met with organised, local resistance to big projects that would transform the environment. By contrast, the Sahara offers proximity to Europe, a tiny population and intense sunlight.

How will Europe benefit?

In Europe the energy question is a strategic one. Most governments are looking for ways to reduce their reliance on Russian gas which some would argue has given too much power to Moscow. Many administrations are pursuing the nuclear option but often without being honest about the timescale involved in launching next-generation civilian reactors – at least 20 years from now in most cases. All of this is happening while the long-term goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent below 1995 levels before 2050. In any case, many EU countries are behind on their commitments to switch at least 15 per cent of their energy needs to renewable resources by 2015.

How will Africa benefit?

According to the World Bank, The Grand Inga project has the potential to bring electricity to 500 million homes in Africa. It would solve at a stroke the electricity crisis in South Africa which has seen the continent's biggest economy plunged into darkness for days at a time. However, there are two previous Inga dams, which were costly and corrupt failures. If it worked, it could also deal with the energy needs of DRC's mining sector in Katanga, power Namibia and fill the shortfall in Nigeria's generating capacity. A quick look at satellite images of the Earth at night are sufficient to show that Africa remains in an electrical dark age. Fewer than 30 per cent of African households have access to electricity and that number plunges to one in 10 in many countries.

So why the controversy?

A new report by Usaid this week estimated that there are now one billion people living in Africa. Despite urbanisation, the majority of them live outside cities, or without access to basic services. Exporting African electricity to Europe's businesses and consumers strikes some as grotesquely wrong. Many development agencies favour a patchwork of smaller projects using existing solar technology – photovoltaic – which is cheaper and more suited to a dispersed population. In contrast, an open energy market would see Africans competing with far richer Europeans for electricity generated from their natural resources. Considering the scant benefits that have accrued to ordinary people from other natural boons such as oil and minerals, these projects can be seen as a power grab. Then there is climate change, to which Africa contributes least and suffers the worst consequences. In Kenya climate change is contributing to a drought that has crippled the hydropower the country relies on. A similar crisis in Uganda means the country is running on generators. Rich industrial nations are already committed to setting up global-warming adaptation funds and technology transfer through the UN climate talks. Critics of the mega-projects believe the billions would be better spent there than in indirect subsidies to Western multinationals under the guise of helping Africa.

Should Europe be allowed to continue its power-generating schemes in Africa?

Yes...

*Europe needs renewable energy and Africa needs massive investment, it's a win-win situation

*The Sahara is empty and barraged with more solar power every morning than Europe needs in a year

*A new grand dam on the Congo River would power up to 500 million African homes

No...

*These mega-schemes are huge indirect subsidies from rich nations to multinationals seeking mega-profits

*The centralised grand designs don't meet Africa's dispersed power needs and are a huge distraction

*Africa is full of Western-funded white elephants, two of them already on the Congo River

Read more!

Africa wants $67 billion a year to fight climate change

Tsegaye Tadesse, Reuters 24 Aug 09;

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - African leaders will ask rich nations for $67 billion per year to mitigate the impact of global warming on the world's poorest continent, according to a draft resolution seen by Reuters on Monday.

Ten leaders are holding talks at African Union (AU) headquarters in the Ethiopian capital to try to agree a common stance ahead of a U.N. summit on climate change in Copenhagen in December.

Experts say Africa contributes little to the pollution blamed for warming, but is likely to be hit hardest by the droughts, floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels forecast if climate change is not checked.

The draft resolution, which must still be approved by the 10 leaders, called for rich countries to pay $67 billion annually to counter the impact of global warming in Africa.

It said there had been serious limitations on Africa's ability to negotiate in the past because of a lack of a coherent stance on global warming by African governments.

"The negotiating team need to be backed with the political weight at the highest level in the continent to ensure that the African voice on climate change negotiations is taken with the seriousness it deserves," the document said.

CALLS FOR COMPENSATION

Earlier this year, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi called on rich countries to compensate Africa for warming, arguing that pollution in the northern hemisphere may have caused his country's ruinous famines in the 1980s.

A study commissioned by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum that was released in May said poor nations bear more than nine-tenths of the human and economic burden of climate change.

The 50 poorest countries, however, contribute less than 1 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions that scientists say are threatening the planet, the report said.

Africa is the region most at risk from warming and is home to 15 of the 20 most vulnerable countries, it said. Other areas also facing the highest level of threat include South Asia and small island developing states.

Developing nations accuse the rich of failing to take the lead in setting deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, and say they are trying to get the poor to shoulder more of the burden of emission curbs without providing aid and technology.

A new climate treaty is due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December. But a senior U.N. official has warned the discussions risk failure if they are accelerated.

Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said only "selective progress" had been made toward trimming a 200-page draft treaty text in Bonn earlier this month, one of a series of talks meant to end with a U.N. deal in Denmark.

(Writing by Jeremy Clarke; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

Africa seeks climate change cash
BBC News 24 Aug 09;

Ministers from 10 African countries are meeting in Ethiopia to try to agree a common position on climate change, months before a crucial UN meeting.

They are expected to renew demands for billions of dollars in compensation for Africa because of damage caused by global warming.

And they are likely to ask rich nations to cut emissions by 40% by 2012.

African nations are among the lightest polluters but analysts say they will suffer the most from climate change.

BBC science reporter Matt McGrath says the move to agree a common negotiating platform for Africa recognises the continent's failure to make its voice heard on the debate.

'Dismal co-ordination'

Kenya's environment secretary, Alice Kaudia, told the BBC that the continent had to learn from other countries' mistakes.

"One single country will not solve its environmental problems on its own, it will need partners, and that's why it's very important that there's that unified common position," she said.

"The development of Africa should not go alongside the same mistakes that the developed world already made - to have these high emissions that are now affecting the whole world."

One of the documents prepared for the meeting refers to the "dismal co-ordination" of the African negotiation process.

So far, delegations from individual countries have had limited success in making the case that Africa needs special help to cope with climate change.

The "representatives and experts" of African Union (AU) leaders - who include environment and agriculture ministers from the 10 countries - are meeting in Addis Ababa under Libyan chairmanship in an attempt to change this.

Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, said all African leaders should support the AU's efforts to form a clear message.

But she said Africa too had its responsibilities.

"We are all hoping we will develop and attain a higher quality of life, so there has to be a very serious commitment on the part of Africa that we will not be opting for development patterns that will reverse whatever other countries are trying to do," she said.

Kyoto replacement

Delegates from powerhouses South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya are among those attending the AU conference.

They will discuss a suggestion that developed countries should cut emissions by at least 40% by 2020, and that richer nations should provide $67bn (£40bn) a year to help the least well-off cope with rising temperatures.

They will also attempt to agree a set of key ideas in order to help national delegations to the UN negotiations in Copenhagen this December to present a co-ordinated position.

The Copenhagen conference will try to negotiate a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, elements of which expire in 2012.

Correspondents say the US, China, India and the EU will have the greatest sway at the UN conference.

But African leaders will be hoping that by speaking with one voice at Copenhagen, their negotiating position can be significantly enhanced.

Read more!

Best of our wild blogs: 24 Aug 09

Owl and heron strangled
from Bird Ecology Study Group

NBGY is Still Safe @ Punggol
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature

Visit by the Department of Wildlife and Nature Parks, Peninsular Malaysia from Raffles Museum News

Sentosa's last resort
from teamseagrass and You Run, We Geog

Chek Jawa (23 Aug 09)
from teamseagrass and isn't it a wonder, how life came to be

How's Chek Jawa so far?
from Chek Jawa Mortality and Recruitment Project

Mangroves of Chek Jawa: where is the silt?
from wild shores of singapore

Splendours of Small Sister's Island
from Nature's Wonders

Semakau Walk
from Manta Blog and where discovery begins

Pleasantly Surprised
from Life's Indulgences

A rare coastal fern: new on Nature in Singapore
from wild shores of singapore

Monday Morgue: 24th August 2009
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales

Read more!

More years for landfill with more recycling

Semakau dumping ground can last another 5 years if 70% target met
Amresh Gunasingham, Straits Times 24 Aug 09;

THE initial 40-year lifespan of Semakau Landfill, the sole dumping ground for Singapore's waste, will be extended by five years if new recycling targets are met.

The National Environment Agency (NEA) revealed this in response to queries, following calls by Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim for efforts to be stepped up so that 70 per cent of all rubbish generated here will be recycled by 2030.

The overall recycling rate of 40 per cent, which has been stagnant since the mid-90s, increased to 56 per cent last year. The new 70 per cent target was a benchmark set as part of a sustainability report announced earlier this year, which aims to make Singapore greener and more energy-efficient over the next 20 years.

The $610 million Semakau Landfill, situated among the southern islands of Pulau Semakau and Pulau Sakeng, is built over an area of 350ha, with a capacity of 63 million cubic metres. Opened in 1999, it had been estimated to last till 2040. To date, 12 per cent has already been filled.

Speaking at a ceremony earlier this month to mark the official closure of the Ulu Pandan Incineration Plant, Dr Yaacob said the 70 per cent recycling target was needed to stem the amount of rubbish being disposed here. 'It has to come because if we continue at this rate...we are going to have a big problem.'

Refuse disposal has increased six-fold since the 1970s due to factors such as population and economic expansion. At this rate, Singapore will need a new 350-ha landfill every 25 to 30 years, an NEA study noted.

'But there is simply no more suitable land left,' said Mr Low Fong Hon, director of the NEA's waste management department. With a population density of 6,520 per square metre, Singapore is one of the most densely populated countries in the world.

To alleviate the issue, measures such as ramping up recycling and waste-to-energy incineration, which is the burning of waste into ash, have kept the amount of rubbish dumped at Semakau within 'manageable levels', said Dr Yaacob.

In 2007, just 7 per cent - comprising non-incinerable waste and ash - of the 2.57 million tonnes of waste generated ended up at Semakau.

And the 'throw-away' mentality shows little sign of abating, said Mr Low.

Last year, more than 7,200 tonnes of rubbish were tossed here every day - enough to fill almost 2-1/2 football fields to a height of 1.7m. This roughly equates to each individual throwing almost 1kg of rubbish a day - a 25 per cent increase since 1971.

Dr Yaacob said that to meet the new recycling target, a solution has to be found to improve the present low recycling rates for food waste and plastics. Last year, they accounted for more than 40 per cent of the 2.63 million tonnes of rubbish disposed.

The authorities are studying proposals to adopt new technology that allows for the sorting of different types of waste at source, from both households and industry, to boost these targets.

This will at least delay the inevitable conundrum of where to find a site to store the Republic's rubbish.

Read more!

NEA says heavy showers not uncommon in Singapore

Cheryl Lim, Channel NewsAsia 23 Aug 09;

SINGAPORE: Heavy showers with thunder and gusty winds were reported over many parts of Singapore on Sunday morning.

Singapore's Meteorological Services had issued a heavy rain warning on Saturday.

The Public Utilities Board had also warned flash floods might occur in low-lying areas.

Several areas in Singapore were affected by the storm, including Upper Paya Lebar Road.

Residents in the area told Channel NewsAsia they had experienced floods of up to 0.6 metres, while some residents had some damage to their property like broken flower pots. Other residents said their rubbish bins had floated away.

The National Environment Agency (NEA) said it is not uncommon for Singapore to experience heavy rainfall from a Sumatra squall.

It also said some 70.6 mm of rainfall was collected in Jurong at about midnight with about 69 mm collected at Toa Payoh at about 2.30 am.

- CNA/yt

Read more!

Prevention of Forest Fires a Regional Issue, Minister Says

Fidelis E. Satriastanti, The Jakarta Globe 23 Aug 09;

Despite the huge amount of money needed to prevent forest fires from spreading in Indonesia, the government has refrained from asking for financial assistance from other countries, State Minister for the Environment Rachmat Witoelar said on Saturday.

On Aug. 18, ministers and senior officials from Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand and Malaysia held a one-day conference in Singapore to discuss joint efforts in handling forest fires in the region, particularly those in Indonesia. The region is expected to be hit by a prolonged drought brought about by El Nino, a climate phenomena that is expected to start in December.

“We will be grateful if there are offers [from other countries] to help us finance efforts to prevent forest fires. However, we won’t ask for money from other countries in order to deal with this issue. We weren’t [at the meeting] to beg for money,” Rachmat said, adding that the other countries had offered help without elaborating on the form of the aid.

Rachmat said the meeting had produced some outlines about how to prevent forest fires from spreading and how to deal with the current fires.

“In principle, all countries agreed that the problems are a collective issue, which means one country cannot deal with the problem single-handedly. [The five countries] have to join together to battle the forest fires,” he said.

“There were also no protests against Indonesia [concerning its forest fires and haze] at the meeting because each country has the same issues, except Singapore.”

He said that Indonesia’s forest fires are difficult to put out because most of them started in peatland forests, which were more flammable. Forest fires in Riau and several provinces in Kalimantan have spread rapidly, forcing provincial authorities to suspend airport operations. The resultant smoke has spread to neighboring countries, including Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei.

The meeting, however, was heavily criticized by local media because all five countries involved have weak track records in combating fires and the widespread haze, despite the fact that they have all agreed to ban the use of open burning methods to clear land and to suspend permits for burning in fire-prone areas.

Meanwhile, Bustar Maistar, a forest campaigner for Greenpeace, said Indonesia did not need help from other countries to deal with the fires as long as there was a strong commitment from the government to upholds regulations already put in place.

“Indonesia can solve this issue by itself if the government strictly enforces the use of fires to open up land for plantations, stops burning in peatlands and applies a moratorium on forest clearing,” Bustar said.

He said agreements on combatting forest fires have already been ratified by countries in the region, however, Indonesia must play a key role.

“Because most of the fires are in Indonesia, the new administration must stay committed to all of the agreements it has made in the past,” he said.

Read more!

Asian Agriculture: Water down the drain

Michael Richardson, Straits Times 24 Aug 09;

SINGAPORE has done an excellent job in stretching its limited fresh water supplies by recycling. But improved urban water management can for now contribute in only a small way to alleviating Asia's looming water crisis, although the advanced techniques being pioneered here for distributing water and controlling its consumption in cities will become more important as the continent urbanises.

In terms of water consumption, the dominant force in Asia is agriculture. Of the estimated 319 billion cubic metres of water used in South-east Asia each year, 86 per cent goes to agriculture, 8 per cent to industry and just 6 per cent to towns and cities. Agriculture's share is even higher in South Asia (90 per cent) and Central Asia (95 per cent). It is a bit lower (69 per cent) in North-east Asia.

The world's demand for water, chiefly to grow food, has been rising sharply for over a century as the population increases and material living standards improve. In 2000, half a billion people lived in countries that were chronically short of water, out of a global population of around six billion. By 2050, the number of people living in conditions of water shortage is projected to grow to four billion, in a population of about nine billion.

To continue to thrive - or perhaps just to survive - as the demand for water intensifies while climate change brings erratic rainfall, Asia and its farmers will have to use less water to produce more food. This is a major challenge.

Irrigated agriculture and other improvements in farm productivity since the Green Revolution of the 1960s have boosted food output and cut poverty, providing a basis for political order and economic modernisation. Indeed, rural resilience has been the foundation of Asia's growth. This is often forgotten today. Instead, there is massive under-investment in agriculture.

Though only 17 per cent of the world's arable land is irrigated, it produces over one-third of the world's food supply. A reliable supply of water allows farmers to grow two or even three crops a year.

As a recent report by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) shows, Asia is the heartland of global irrigation. It contains 70 per cent of the world's 277 million hectares of irrigated land. While accounting for only 34 per cent of Asian arable land, the irrigated zone produces 60 per cent of the continent's rice, wheat and other staple food grains.

However, there is a dangerous downside. As currently practised, irrigated farming is water-intensive, especially for growing rice. Asia uses some 73 per cent of the 2,664 cubic kilometres of water the world uses annually for agriculture.

There is massive wastage of water. Many of the canals, channels and other parts of the irrigation system are old and inefficient. So millions of small-holders have bought pumps and drilled bore holes to extract water from rivers, lakes, underground aquifers and their own storage ponds whenever they choose.

Surface water is being sucked dry in major river basins in India, China and Indonesia. Recent surveys show that water tables and aquifer levels below ground are also falling, as water is being withdrawn faster than it can be replenished.

Yet the demand for food, and the water to grow it, is rising as more and more Asians migrate from the countryside to cities. By 2025, 52 per cent of South-east and North-east Asians are predicted to be living in urban centres. For South and Central Asia, the ratio is expected to be 45 per cent.

As people join the urban middle classes and become richer, they tend to eat less cereal. Instead, they will consume more fruit, vegetables, milk and meat. Meat consumption in China has more than doubled in the past 20 years and is expected to double again by 2030.

For Asian farmers on irrigated land, these trends have generally been good. However, growing more profitable niche crops (including food for animals) to satisfy urban consumers, especially those on increasingly meat-based diets, often takes much more water.

A kilogram of potatoes requires just 500 litres of water to produce. The same amount of rice needs 1,900 litres. But 1kg of poultry absorbs 3,500 litres, while beef gulps 15,000 litres.

An estimated five billion people will live in Asia by 2050, 1.5 billion more than now. The continent has three broad options to meet its food needs: Import large quantities of cereals from abroad, improve and expand rain-fed agriculture, or focus on irrigated farmlands.

Many governments attach a high priority to food security. So there is an understandable reluctance to rely on foreign supplies. Of course, small countries like Singapore will continue to depend on imports for the bulk of their food.

However, South-east Asia as a whole is better placed than other parts of Asia to expand irrigated land. There is a large gap between the potential area of 44 million hectares of land considered suitable for irrigation and the currently irrigated area of 17 million hectares.

For the rest of Asia, the IWMI-FAO report suggests that the main thrust of future investment in agriculture should be directed towards improving irrigation systems.

The writer is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

Read more!

Water project adds to Ma's typhoon woes

Angry survivors blame tunnel works for killer mudslides
Straits Times 24 Aug 09;

TAIPEI: As Taiwan began its three-day mourning for victims of Typhoon Morakot, a new front in the political storm facing the island's leader has emerged.

When President Ma Ying-jeou visited the southern village of Hsiao Lin - a symbol of Morakot's devastation - to comfort survivors, he was confronted by angry villagers who blamed a massive government water project for mudslides which killed hundreds of people.

Mr Ma vowed to investigate claims that dynamite blasting carried out to build a 15km channel from the Laonung River to the Tsengwen Dam had led to soil erosion that endangered the village.

An official probe into the project was launched almost two weeks after the typhoon hit on Aug 8, and the head of the Water Resources Agency has offered to resign in response to the villagers' outcry.

'The rocks had come loose after the mountains were bombed for years, day and night. Previously, we had never had such a disaster. Therefore we've good reason to believe that is to blame,' Mr Aliao, chief of the nearby Mintzu village, said.

'We had protested from the very beginning, but they just didn't listen.'

Television footage showed survivors confronting Mr Ma last week when he visited Hsiao Lin, where about 400 people are missing and feared dead. The pictu-resque village is now buried in mud five storeys deep.

'Wrong policies are even more terrible than corruption,' one villager shouted at Mr Ma, in an apparent reference to Mr Ma's predecessor Chen Shui-bian, who has been detained on graft charges.

On Saturday, the first day of the mourning period, flags across the country were flown at half-mast.

Mr Ma revisited the hardest-hit area in Kaohsiung to attend memorial services. He was accompanied by Premier Liu Chao-shiuan, Parliamentary Speaker Wang Jin-pyng and other Cabinet ministers.

'We will thoroughly investigate the matter even though the project didn't start in my term,' the President told a group of protesters outside a memorial service in Hsiao Lin.

'President Ma, you must stop the project,' a protester pleaded, while others held banners that read: 'Water project ruins homeland.'

Public prosecutors last Thursday began examining the site at Hsiao Lin, interviewing local government and river affairs officials and collecting before-and-after aerial photos of the area.

'After such a grave disaster, it's our duty to find out the truth and return due justice to the dead,' prosecutor Chuang Jung-sung told reporters.

But observers say it will not be easy to determine who was at fault.

'The project was initiated by previous governments but Mr Ma's government was accused of speeding it up, so it is more complicated...to determine who's responsible,' said Professor Hsu Yung-ming, a political analyst at Soochow University.

Work on the NT$21.2 billion (S$930 million) project started in 2005 under Chen's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and is scheduled to be completed by 2012. The objective of the project is to divert water from the Laonung River into the Tsengwen reservoir before it flows into the ocean.

Mr Chen Shen-hsien, head of the Water Resources Agency, has insisted that work on the channel had nothing to do with the deadly mudslides triggered by Typhoon Morakot.

'The allegation that the project is responsible for the huge loss of hundreds of lives is too much for us,' he said, adding that the project, a tunnel cutting through several mountains, was 11km away from Hsiao Lin.

Mr Ma, whose approval rating has sunk to a record low amid widespread anger over his government's slow response to the typhoon crisis, has promised to have the disaster areas rebuilt in three years.

At least three senior officials - Vice- Foreign Minister Andrew Hsia, Defence Minister Chen Chao-min and Cabinet Secretary-General Hsieh Hsiang-chuan - have offered to resign, but Premier Liu has said he will consider the resignations in a Cabinet reshuffle early next month.

There have been mounting calls by ruling Kuomintang (KMT) lawmakers for a thorough reshuffle of the Cabinet with the appointment of a new premier.

Leaving Premier Liu in place despite his abysmal poll ratings would harm the KMT in local elections scheduled for December, legislators said.

The main opposition DPP has threatened a motion of no confidence against the Cabinet and even an impeachment campaign against President Ma.

But DPP chairman Tsai Ing-wen herself faced criticism for allegedly staying at Kaohsiung's top luxury hotel during her recent tour of the disaster area, according to a report yesterday on the Taiwan News website.

The death toll from Typhoon Morakot was raised to at least 650 yesterday, with 160 confirmed dead and another 490 listed as missing and presumed dead.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Read more!

Encyclopedia of Life grows; clues on ageing, pests

Alister Doyle, Reuters 23 Aug 09;

OSLO (Reuters) - An online encyclopedia aiming to describe every type of animal and plant on the planet has reached 170,000 entries and is helping research into aging, climate change and even the spread of insect pests.

The "Encyclopedia of Life" (www.eol.org), a project likely to cost $100 million launched in 2007, says it wants to describe all the 1.8 million known species from apples to zebras within a decade.

"We're picking up speed," James Edwards, EOL Executive Director based at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, said Sunday of the 170,000 entries with content in a common format vetted by experts. A year ago, it had 30,000 entries.

He said everyone from scientists to schoolchildren could use the EOL as a "field guide" or contribute a photograph or an observation of an animal in an area where it was not found before, in some cases a sign of a changing climate.

The Encyclopedia was aiding scientists who look at human aging, for instance, by examining the widely differing lifespans of related species.

A Latin American bat, Tadarida brasiliensis, lives far longer than mice relatives of a similar size, perhaps because its body has a mechanism that limits damage to protein in its cells. And some butterflies that feed on fruit live longer than related species.

"It's working really nicely, the community of scientists working on aging have adopted the EOL," Edwards told Reuters.

And the Encyclopedia was seeking to help combat pests such as moth from the Balkans that has spread fast across Europe in the past two decades. It attacks the leaves of horse chestnut trees and makes them brown by mid-summer.

MOTH PEST

The moth, Cameraria ohridella, "is now more or less throughout Europe and poses a threat to ecosystems in Southeast Asia, North America and elsewhere - wherever the beautiful horse chestnut trees occur," said David Lees of the Natural History Museum in London and French agricultural research group INRA.

The EOL said it would help "public recognition and awareness of such invasive species through detailed descriptions and maps, helping to slow their global spread and enable more rapid and effective remedial measures."

And the EOL was trying to help researchers find out how global warming may affect species, such as by making them move to cooler habitats.

A problem for many biologists is that they often study just one species so do not know if their findings apply more widely, said James Hanken, director of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and chair of the EOL Steering Committee.

"There are often studies of individual species -- insects or frogs or bird -- but people don't have access to information about other species in the same area," he told Reuters. "This holds back studies of climate change on biodiversity."

Among other projects, the encyclopedia was aiming to expand with fossil species. And it was working on regional versions focused on life in Australia, the Netherlands or China.

The EOL said it won extra funding of $12.5 million from two private foundations that have contributed in the past. Edwards said the project still needed more funds.

One problem is that 20,000 new species are described every year -- and estimates of the number of species on the planet range up to 100 million.

(Editing by Matthew Jones)

Cool new tools let public contribute to massive interactive online biodiversity encyclopedia
EurekAlert 23 Aug 09;

Growing community of citizen scientists donate over 30,000 images; Now 150,000+ pages with expert-vetted content

Over 30,000 still images and video, as well as local information about changing biodiversity, have been uploaded to the Encyclopedia of Life via new tools that let the public contribute as never before to a global online science collaboration of unprecedented scale.

Experts and citizen scientists alike have fuelled explosive growth of the interactive encyclopedia, which dedicates a Web page to each known species and will eventually contain 1.8 million pages.

More than 150,000 species pages populated with expert-verified text and/or images are now available at EOL.org, a fast-growing inventory expected to shed new light on everything from conservation strategies for endangered species to climate change and the movements of disease-bearing or invasive pests. Some experts believe it may one day even help advance human longevity.

As the 10-year project marks its 2nd anniversary, EOL officials say pages with vetted information cover 150,000 species likely to be of greatest public interest. They also announced completion of over 75% of the encyclopedia's architecture, with 1.4 million placeholder pages now in place.

To build on the progress to date, an additional grant of $10 million was announced today by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which was one of the project's earliest supporters, providing an initial grant of $10 million in 2007.

And the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, also a founding sponsor, announced $2.5 million in additional funding.

EOL is an online environment for presenting authoritative, well-organized species information, including DNA barcodes and other genetic sequences, from diverse global sources (content providers are listed at www.eol.org/content/partners), dramatically expanding its free availability to users everywhere.

To better serve non-English speaking users, EOL partners are creating regional versions, with information and digitized literature in local languages about local plants, animals and microorganisms. The first regional EOLs have been initiated in the Netherlands, Australia and China, with discussions underway in Central America, the Arab world, Indonesia and South Africa;

Contributors and users of what will be the ultimate online field guide are professional and citizen scientists, teachers, students, media, environmental managers, families and artists. Since its unveiling in early 2008, the site has attracted 1.8 million unique visitors from more than 200 countries.

With EOL now fully open to receive information from both specialists and the public, some 250 experts, including taxonomists, conservation biologists, graduate students and others, along with more than 1,200 citizen scientists, have already stepped forward to volunteer images, share data, or to write or curate pages.

EOL accounts are freely available and registered users can add comments or observations to a page or tag a species and search for its relatives.

Information submitted by the public, as well as images (via the photo sharing site Flickr www.flickr.com/groups/encyclopedia_of_life), appear with a yellow background until authenticated by experts. Almost 40% of the 31,000 images so far have come from five photographers - from Portugal, Australia (2), Spain and Austria. The best of the lot, including winners of regular EOL photo contests, are showcased at http://www.flickr.com/groups/1056008@N20.

Among other newly-added interactive features: an online widget that automatically inserts links to EOL species pages into a digitized document. EOL's "NameLink" tool (http://labs.eol.org/?q=node/10/) identifies species names in a document and inserts an icon next to each that will take the reader to the relevant EOL species page.

EOL's Biodiversity Informatics Group, meanwhile, is beta testing "LifeDesks" (http://lifedesks.org) - independent online environments to facilitate communication and collaboration between scientists or organized groups of amateurs as they assemble and edit images, text, source references and other species information for EOL pages.

Under an initiative of the EOL Education Group, undergraduates at four universities - Harvard, Oregon State, the University of California-Berkeley, and the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse - are creating species pages. Under their professors' supervision, students at these institutions have prepared more than 100 fungi species pages, vetted by experts at MushroomObserver.org. Undergraduate student contributions to content partners Amphibia Web and Animal Diversity Web are also being served on EOL.

EOL has also launched a Fellows Program, oriented to postdoctoral students, graduate students and others who will contribute content from their own research and catalyze contributions from others in their scientific communities.

And at WhyReef (www.whyville.net/smmk/top/gates?source=reef), students can discover the marine life that lives in a virtual coral reef. Each species is linked to an EOL page with photos and descriptions of, for example, what eats what and other threats each may face. Students can also interact with scientists to ask questions.

"Creating a single portal to access a web page for each of the 1.8 million known species will provide a powerful tool to assist researchers and policymakers in better understanding biodiversity and discerning patterns of plant and animal behavior," says Arthur Sussman, MacArthur Vice President. "By integrating and consolidating information on species, EOL also has the potential to accelerate scientific discovery and serve as an infrastructure for life sciences research."

Says Jesse Ausubel, Vice-President, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation: "The idea of an Encyclopedia of Life now seems so natural that people cannot believe that the EOL does not already fully exist. Even with the magic of the Internet, lots of blood, sweat and tears stand between the more than 150,000 well-represented species and the future when 1.8 million species will gaze out at us from www.eol.org. The work of growing EOL is gratifying, and the progress is visible week to week."

"With new content and tools in place, EOL is open for business as never before. And we intend to harness the eyes and collective brainpower of hundreds of thousands of users to spot intriguing new information, share observations, and enhance EOL's role as a leading provider of accurate and relevant biodiversity information," says EOL Executive Director James Edwards, based at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

"Collecting all of Earth's species together in one place is an extremely ambitious undertaking, as only Noah knows," adds Dr. Edwards. There are literally thousands of websites dedicated to individual aspects of biodiversity - to amphibians, plants or ants, for example, or to specific geographic areas. This unique collaboration between more than 100 leading international organizations is making vast amounts of information available in a common format, allowing users to more readily identify new species across different taxa and regions."

Milestones in recent months:


* EOL partner The Biodiversity Heritage Library has now digitized more than 15 million pages of world biodiversity literature. Links let users access these references directly from an EOL species page. The BHL is also developing search algorithms to automatically find and extract information from digitized pages;

* In celebration of the 10-year Census of Marine Life project, which concludes in 2010, EOL is focusing on building up marine content with the goal of completing pages for 90% of known marine biodiversity - 215,000 species - by 2013;

* On May 15-16, EOL co-sponsored the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore "BioBlitz" with the National Geographic Society and the U.S. National Park service. Over 2,000 students, along with teachers and volunteers, combed the area to record all the plants and animals observed (more than 1,700 species), with EOL-sponsored experts on hand to help participants identify, organize and catalogue their findings via LifeDesks and upload them to the online encyclopedia;

* EOL's Biodiversity Synthesis Group has conducted 18 meetings involving hundreds of scientists from 35 countries in an effort to broaden the EOL's international reach and develop tools tailored to specific scientific interests and needs;

* A brilliant new "Preferences" feature in development will let users filter the entire EOL into a smaller version for any domain for which an index exists, such as all marine species or all the flora of Britain. This will be extremely powerful for personalizing EOL - simply paste in an index filter and with one click the user has a customized EOL with the subset of species of interest.

Early warnings of invasive species

The latest species page, published to mark the 25th anniversary of its arrival in Macedonia from the Balkans, describes an invasive moth, Cameraria ohridella (see http://eol.org/pages/306084), which devastates the white-flowering ornamental horse chestnut trees popular in parks and gardens throughout Europe, leaving their leaves brown by midsummer.

Generations of children in many countries, especially Britain, associate the tree with "conkers," a game in which stringed chestnuts are hit by those of competitors to determine whose is toughest.

Though the damage to leaves does not kill the tree, the moths' dramatically quick migration through Europe is touching off alarms in North America and Asia, where the insect could easily thrive once introduced.

Experts say the moth may also be evolving, in some places now infesting sycamore as well as horse chestnut trees.

"Like the opening of Pandora's box, this moth, first discovered in Macedonia in 1984, has spread like wildfire after a probable accidental release near Vienna in 1989," says page author and curator David Lees of the Natural History Museum, London and INRA, Paris. "It is now more or less throughout Europe and poses a threat to ecosystems in Southeast Asia, North America and elsewhere - wherever the beautiful horse chestnut trees occur."

"An important ornamental tree is being devastated, one all too obvious in parks at this time of year," says Dr. Lees.

Like the "most wanted" posters in post offices, EOL will facilitate public recognition and awareness of such invasive species through detailed descriptions and maps, helping to slow their global spread and enable more rapid and effective remedial measures.

It is also expected to help map the present locations and movements of human disease vectors such as crows and mosquitoes and the shifting ranges of species due to climate change.

Unraveling secrets of long life

Scientists are equipping EOL for use in finding patterns within biodiversity lifespan and other life history data that could help explain, for example, why certain species, even those within the same family, live longer than others, opening promising new avenues of research into human aging.

Holly Miller, who leads the Biology of Aging Portal (www.biologyofaging.org) informatics research group in the Library at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, says work is underway to relate EOL species information to medically relevant concepts – eventually allowing researchers to cluster and extract valuable aging-related insights.

Funded by the Ellison Medical Foundation, the effort will dramatically expand the number and kinds of organisms traditionally examined in aging research.

The benefit of using diverse species for such research can be seen in a recent report that certain butterflies that feed on fruit live longer than related species, leading to new investigations into the role played by genes, amino acids and food sources in the aging process.

Meanwhile, the lifespan of a Latin American bat (Tadarida brasiliensis, www.eol.org/pages/327954), curiously long compared to mice relatives of a similar size, may be the result of its body's ability to maintain a more stable physiological condition that mitigates cellular protein damage (see report at www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/abstract/23/7/2317).

"Most species have not been studied in a medically-relevant way," Dr. Miller says. "EOL is simplifying such research by creating a handy reference for the scientific and common names of species, body size, age of reproduction, habitat, geographic location and temperature and more, all of which could be relevant to unraveling longevity's secrets."

Says James Hanken, Director, Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and chair of the EOL Steering Committee: "The Encyclopedia of Life is one of the most vital and ambitious human endeavors ever undertaken. By enabling researchers from around the world to communicate and share research data, the EOL will make a lasting contribution to our fundamental understanding of life on earth."

###

Background

The EOL Steering Committee is comprised of senior authorities from Harvard University, Smithsonian Institution, the Field Museum of Chicago, the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, the Biodiversity Heritage Library consortium, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the MacArthur and Sloan Foundations.

The EOL Institutional Council contains more than 25 institutions from around the world and provides EOL with global perspectives and outreach capabilities. The Distinguished Advisory Board consists of 13 global leaders from the scientific and policy communities.

Technology giants, including Adobe, Microsoft and the Wikimedia Foundation, are providing active support.

Says Dr. Edwards: "EOL works with hundreds of content partners, all of which rely on the world's taxonomists, the scientists who study and name species. It is only through their heroic efforts that a resource like the EOL could even be contemplated."

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (www.macfound.org)

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. In 2007, MacArthur was one of the earliest supporters of EOL, providing an initial grant of $10 million.

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (www.sloan.org)

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation makes grants in science, technology and the quality of American life. Sloan's support for the Encyclopedia of Life melds its interests in environmental science with its interest in universal access to recorded knowledge.

Read more!

Oil slick not threatening Australian coast: minister

Reuters 23 Aug 09;

SYDNEY (AFP) – An oil and gas leak that forced the evacuation of a drilling rig off Australia's northwest coast was evaporating naturally and not threatening the coast, Resources Minister Martin Ferguson said Sunday.

Ferguson said the spill was not as big as first feared and international experts are working out how to cap the leaking oil well as quickly as possible.

"There's no threat to the Australian coast," he told Channel Ten television.

"It is evaporating naturally and the work of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) will merely assist in that evaporation."

The spill, about eight nautical miles long and 30 metres wide, began just before dawn Friday at the West Atlas drilling rig, 250 kilometres (155 miles) from the Australian mainland.

The 69 workers on board the rig were evacuated to Darwin soon after the leak was detected.

AMSA spokeswoman Tracey Jiggins said a Hercules military aircraft flew over the slick on Sunday morning to drop a chemical dispersant.

"The application of dispersant this morning appears to have been successful," Jiggins told national news agency AAP.

"We've been able to visually see the oil dispersing into the water, which is very positive."

Jiggins said the Bangkok-based company that operates the rig, PTTEP Australasia, had promised to pay for the clean-up operation.

"It's impossible to gauge at this stage," she said of the cost of the clean-up, before adding: "But it will run into the millions."

Read more!

A Farm on Every Floor

Dickson D. Despommier, The New York Times 23 Aug 09;

IF climate change and population growth progress at their current pace, in roughly 50 years farming as we know it will no longer exist. This means that the majority of people could soon be without enough food or water. But there is a solution that is surprisingly within reach: Move most farming into cities, and grow crops in tall, specially constructed buildings. It’s called vertical farming.

The floods and droughts that have come with climate change are wreaking havoc on traditional farmland. Three recent floods (in 1993, 2007 and 2008) cost the United States billions of dollars in lost crops, with even more devastating losses in topsoil. Changes in rain patterns and temperature could diminish India’s agricultural output by 30 percent by the end of the century.

What’s more, population increases will soon cause our farmers to run out of land. The amount of arable land per person decreased from about an acre in 1970 to roughly half an acre in 2000 and is projected to decline to about a third of an acre by 2050, according to the United Nations. With billions more people on the way, before we know it the traditional soil-based farming model developed over the last 12,000 years will no longer be a sustainable option.

Irrigation now claims some 70 percent of the fresh water that we use. After applying this water to crops, the excess agricultural runoff, contaminated with silt, pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, is unfit for reuse. The developed world must find new agricultural approaches before the world’s hungriest come knocking on its door for a glass of clean water and a plate of disease-free rice and beans.

Imagine a farm right in the middle of a major city. Food production would take advantage of hydroponic and aeroponic technologies. Both methods are soil-free. Hydroponics allows us to grow plants in a water-and-nutrient solution, while aeroponics grows them in a nutrient-laden mist. These methods use far less water than conventional cultivation techniques, in some cases as much as 90 percent less.

Now apply the vertical farm concept to countries that are water-challenged — the Middle East readily comes to mind — and suddenly things look less hopeless. For this reason the world’s very first vertical farm may be established there, although the idea has garnered considerable interest from architects and governments all over the world.

Vertical farms are now feasible, in large part because of a robust global greenhouse initiative that has enjoyed considerable commercial success over the last 10 years. (Disclosure: I’ve started a business to build vertical farms.) There is a rising consumer demand for locally grown vegetables and fruits, as well as intense urban-farming activity in cities throughout the United States. Vertical farms would not only revolutionize and improve urban life but also revitalize land that was damaged by traditional farming. For every indoor acre farmed, some 10 to 20 outdoor acres of farmland could be allowed to return to their original ecological state (mostly hardwood forest). Abandoned farms do this free of charge, with no human help required.

A vertical farm would behave like a functional ecosystem, in which waste was recycled and the water used in hydroponics and aeroponics was recaptured by dehumidification and used over and over again. The technologies needed to create a vertical farm are currently being used in controlled-environment agriculture facilities but have not been integrated into a seamless source of food production in urban high-rise buildings.

Such buildings, by the way, are not the only structures that could house vertical farms. Farms of various dimensions and crop yields could be built into a variety of urban settings — from schools, restaurants and hospitals to the upper floors of apartment complexes. By supplying a continuous quantity of fresh vegetables and fruits to city dwellers, these farms would help combat health problems, like Type II diabetes and obesity, that arise in part from the lack of quality produce in our diet.

The list of benefits is long. Vertical farms would produce crops year-round that contain no agro-chemicals. Fish and poultry could also be raised indoors. The farms would greatly reduce fossil-fuel use and greenhouse-gas emissions, since they would eliminate the need for heavy farm machinery and trucks that deliver food from farm to fork. (Wouldn’t it be great if everything on your plate came from around the corner, rather than from hundreds to thousands of miles away?)

Vertical farming could finally put an end to agricultural runoff, a major source of water pollution. Crops would never again be destroyed by floods or droughts. New employment opportunities for vertical farm managers and workers would abound, and abandoned city properties would become productive once again.

Vertical farms would also make cities more pleasant places to live. The structures themselves would be things of beauty and grace. In order to allow plants to capture passive sunlight, walls and ceilings would be completely transparent. So from a distance, it would look as if there were gardens suspended in space.

City dwellers would also be able to breathe easier — quite literally. Vertical farms would bring a great concentration of plants into cities. These plants would absorb carbon dioxide produced by automobile emissions and give off oxygen in return. So imagine you wanted to build the first vertical farm and put it in New York City. What would it take? We have the technology — now we need money, political will and, of course, proof that this concept can work. That’s why a prototype would be a good place to start. I estimate that constructing a five-story farm, taking up one-eighth of a square city block, would cost $20 million to $30 million. Part of the financing should come from the city government, as a vertical farm would go a long way toward achieving Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s goal of a green New York City by 2030. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has already expressed interest in having a vertical farm in the city. City officials should be interested. If a farm is located where the public can easily visit it, the iconic building could generate significant tourist dollars, on top of revenue from the sales of its produce.

But most of the financing should come from private sources, including groups controlling venture-capital funds. The real money would flow once entrepreneurs and clean-tech investors realize how much profit there is to be made in urban farming. Imagine a farm in which crop production is not limited by seasons or adverse weather events. Sales could be made in advance because crop-production levels could be guaranteed, thanks to the predictable nature of indoor agriculture. An actual indoor farm developed at Cornell University growing hydroponic lettuce was able to produce as many as 68 heads per square foot per year. At a retail price in New York of up to $2.50 a head for hydroponic lettuce, you can easily do the math and project profitability for other similar crops.

When people ask me why the world still does not have a single vertical farm, I just raise my eyebrows and shrug my shoulders. Perhaps people just need to see proof that farms can grow several stories high. As soon as the first city takes that leap of faith, the world’s first vertical farm could be less than a year away from coming to the aid of a hungry, thirsty world. Not a moment too soon.

Dickson D. Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, is writing a book about vertical farms.

Read more!

Tree cover far bigger than expected on farms: study

Alister Doyle, Reuters 23 Aug 09;

OSLO (Reuters) - Almost half of the world's farmland has at least 10 percent tree cover, according to a study on Monday indicating that farmers are far less destructive to carbon-storing forests than previously believed.

"The area revealed in this study is twice the size of the Amazon, and shows that farmers are protecting and planting trees spontaneously," Dennis Garrity, Director General of the World Agroforestry Center in Nairobi, said in a statement.

The Centre's report, based on satellite images and the first to estimate tree cover on the world's farms, showed tree canopies exceeded 10 percent on farmland of 10 million square kms (3.9 million sq miles) -- 46 percent of all agricultural land and an area the size of Canada or China.

By one yardstick used by the U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organization, a "forest" is an area in which tree canopies cover at least 10 percent of an area. The definition excludes, however, farmland or urban areas.

The report said that farmers keep or plant trees for uses such as production of fruit, nuts, medicines, fuel, building materials, gums or resins. Trees also provide shade for crops, work as windbreaks, boundary markers or to help avert erosion.

And trees are often hardier than crops or livestock so can be a backup for farmers on marginal land in hard times.

Previous estimates of the area of farmland used in agroforestry had ranged up to only about 3 million sq kms.

Farms are often portrayed as enemies of forests -- homes to a wide diversity of animals and plants. Forests are also giant stores of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

SURPRISE

"We're pleasantly surprised -- it quantifies an under-appreciated resource," Tony Simons, deputy director general of the World Agroforestry Center, told Reuters.

The report found that trees were integral to agricultural landscapes in all parts of the world, with the exceptions of arid North Africa and West Asia.

Simons said the report indicated a new front for fighting climate change. Farmers would do more to preserve trees if they got credits under a new U.N. climate pact due to be agreed at a meeting in Copenhagen in December.

Negotiators are looking at ways to slow deforestation in developing nations -- deforestation accounts for 20 percent of all emissions of greenhouse gases from human sources.

"This study offers convincing evidence that farms and forests are in now way mutually exclusive," said Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmentalist who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for a tree-planting campaign across Africa.

At the end of the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, natural forests covered about 70 percent of the world's land area. They now cover only about 26 percent.

Net deforestation rates, according to the FAO, slowed to 7.3 million hectares per year from 2000-05, an area the size of Sierra Leone or Panama, from 8.9 million in 1990-2000.

(Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Read more!