Food retail prices set to rise as supplies cost more

Supply price index for food jumped 10% in October over last year
Erica Tay, Straits Times 3 Dec 07;

THE price of a meal out seems set to rise as food supply costs, especially for imports, soared for the second month in a row.

Many eateries have yet to pass on the higher charges to customers, but economists believe they will not be able to hold out much longer, given the severity of the cost hikes.

Official figures released last week showed that Singapore's domestic supply price index (DSPI) rose 4.9 per cent in October from a year ago, and its food component, 10.3 per cent. This followed a 10 per cent jump in September.

While its more famous cousin, the consumer price index (CPI), tracks price rises faced by end-consumers, the lesser-known DSPI tracks the prices of goods made locally or imported that are retained for use in the domestic economy.

This means that while the increase in the price of a bowl of noodles is reflected in the CPI, increases in the prices of the ingredients - such as flour, meat and condiments - are reflected in the DSPI.

The DSPI showed prices of live animals were 24.5 per cent higher in October than a year ago; of eggs and dairy produce, 41.6 per cent; of vegetables and fruit, 5 per cent. Fish prices fell 0.5 per cent.

DBS Bank economist Irvin Seah said the new data signals that faster rises in consumer food prices are probably just around the corner.

Food makes up the largest chunk of the CPI, which is used to calculate the headline inflation rate.

The average Singapore household saw its food bill go up by 4.3 per cent in October from a year ago.

'Consumer food prices usually follow supply prices with a lag, as retailers and food sellers tend to absorb cost hikes for some time,' Mr Seah said.

United Overseas Bank economist Ho Woei Chen expects food inflation to rise, saying: 'Suppliers will eventually have to pass on higher costs.'

She said rising rents, wages and food costs will force those in the catering sector to raise prices for consumers.

Restaurateur Nicholas Pang has seen ingredients rise 20 per cent in price in the past six months.

'Pork and poultry cost 15 per cent more, and cooking oil is up by 30 per cent,' said Mr Pang, who runs three Japanese restaurants and one fast-food outlet.

Still, he has not raised his menu prices. He said: 'It doesn't make sense to up your prices every time costs increase.'

He prefers to sign forward contracts with suppliers to lock in costs, and switch to alternatives when possible.

'But if food costs keep rising, we must at some point review our prices,' he noted.

Increasingly expensive imports - particularly of meat, live animals, dairy produce and eggs - are a major factor behind higher supply prices.

Fuelling the jump in farm produce prices is a global supply crunch caused by bad weather and by a shift in farm use towards growing crops for biofuels as rising crude oil prices make biofuels more viable, explained Ms Ho.

The food portion of the import price index also rose in October, by more than 10 per cent from a year ago.

Higher food inflation is a global issue, said Standard Chartered Bank economist Alvin Liew. He said: 'Agricultural produce prices have soared in countries such as China, from which Singapore imports a great deal.'

He predicted CPI food inflation will average 4 per cent next year.

Mr Seah was more pessimistic: 'We are looking at between 5 and 6 per cent.'

Low-income groups will be hit the hardest by higher food prices as a greater chunk of their income goes to food, he added. Thus, he argued, 'policy action is needed to cushion rising food costs'.

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No major fuss over Hanoi's huge dam project

Roger Mitton, Straits Times 3 Dec 07;

Interestingly, unlike similar projects in the region such as the Three Gorges dam Son La has evoked little international attention. Part of the reason is that Vietnam is building it without any outside funding or construction assistance. And doing so with quiet, almost clandestine, efficiency.

HANOI - SIX months ago, the people of Ta Sai, a tree-shaded village nestled by the majestic Black River in mountainous north-western Vietnam, were ordered to pack up and leave.

Trucks took the residents, mostly ethnic minority subsistence farmers and fishermen, up a hillside several kilometres away. They were left at a stony, treeless site with no water or electricity and told to carve out new lives.

'We were given money to build new homes, but if we wanted a decent place, it would cost a bit more than what the government gave us,' said Mr Luong Van Dieu, one of the village headmen.

Although many miss their leafy riverside village with its stilt houses, the Ta Sai people consider themselves lucky.

Mr Dieu, of the Tai minority, said: 'We only had to move a short distance, so we are still on our ancestral lands. Others have had to move far away. That is sad.'

Indeed, the Vietnamese authorities have moved some villagers up to 100km away and resettled them among unfamiliar new communities.

About 95,000 people in all are being evicted to clear the area for the construction of a massive 215m-high dam across the Black River near Son La, 340km north-west of Hanoi.

The hydroelectric plant will be South-east Asia's biggest and will generate 10.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, about a sixth of Vietnam's burgeoning energy needs.

Professor Pham Phu, a power expert at Ho Chi Minh City's University of Technology, said: 'Right now, we are importing electricity from China because we have a serious shortage. So, we need to build the Son La dam to satisfy our energy demands.'

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has taken a personal interest in making sure the project starts generating electricity on time in 2012. He has sealed a US$280 million (S$405 million) deal with France's Alstom Hydro to provide the turbines and generators.

Interestingly, unlike similar projects in the region such as the Three Gorges dam in China, Nam Theun 2 in Laos and Bakun in East Malaysia, Son La has evoked little international attention.

Part of the reason is that Vietnam is building it without any outside funding or construction assistance. And doing so with quiet, almost clandestine, efficiency.

Bothersome diplomats and snooping journalists are kept away from the remote river valley that is home to many of Vietnam's colourful ethnic minorities.

The Tai, Hmong, Kho Mu, Giay and Khan who live there have their own languages and cultural values.

Relocating them presented Vietnam with a thankless task that could easily spark global outrage if handled badly - just when a more outward-looking Hanoi wanted support for its bid to play a bigger international role by joining the World Trade Organisation and the United Nations Security Council.

But Vietnam has handled the task with remarkable aplomb.

Already, about 80,000 people have been resettled in a massive, but low-profile operation that has caused surprisingly few incidents.

Mr Nguyen Thai Hung, relocation director for Muong La district, near the dam site, said: 'We still have another 2,000 households to move, and we are trying to encourage them to go peacefully.'

The encouragement is practical: hard cash, new homes and the promise of better roads, schools, water, electricity and health care.

Most villagers concede, often grudgingly, that relocation has improved their living standards.

Many who lived in cramped areas by the river bank now reside in larger communities with better facilities, more convenient transportation and bigger houses.

Naturally, the fact that the first batches to move were largely satisfied had a ripple effect and made others relocate more willingly.

But, of course, there were gripes.

Mr Dieu's Ta Sai villagers nurse grievances over the way bureaucratic mismanagement led to their being moved before their new location was ready.

Even now, they have no running water or electricity. Their children have to travel 25km along a dirt track to school because the promised new road and school have not materialised.

With no public transportation, many children just stay home.

After being resettled on dry uplands where they cannot fish or grow rice, their parents do much the same as they await the day the lake fills up and Ta Sai is again a waterfront village.

In the meantime, they depend on handouts from the government, which promised them 20kg of rice every month for two years.

'Now, they say they can only give us 18kg because the price of rice has risen,' said Mr Dieu. 'So, we are unhappy at these broken promises.'

Resettlement officer Hung understands the concerns. He said: 'Our administrative procedures are cumbersome, and the compensation and relocation policies are not always consistent or transparent.'

Still, there have been nice gestures.

For example, the religious customs of many minorities forbid graves being dug up or submerged under water.

This sensitive predicament was resolved when local officials helped fund a special ritual that involved villagers giving offerings to the spirits of the dead for three days and nights.

So overall, Vietnam has managed the mass relocation better than expected.

Despite understandable complaints, most villagers now look forward to a brighter future.

Mr Dieu said: 'We are all hoping that when the dam is finished and we get water and electricity and a new road, our lives will be better.'

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Cyclone wipes out rice crops in Bangladesh

Business Times 3 Dec 07;

DHAKA - A CYCLONE that killed thousands of people in Bangladesh has destroyed at least 800,000 tonnes of rice in the fields.

This exacerbates a food shortage that the government was already grappling with, a government adviser said.

Cyclone Sidr last month wiped out 553,000ha of crops, causing losses totalling about 20 billion taka (S$420 million), said Mr C. S. Karim, agriculture adviser to Bangladesh's army-backed interim government.

'In the present situation, the country would need to import a total of 1.9 million tonnes of rice,' he added.

Meanwhile, New Delhi will allow Bangladesh to import half a million tonnes of rice from India, a visiting Indian minister said on Saturday, easing an export ban on the staple food.

The announcement by Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee came after neighbouring Bangladesh appealed for international help earlier in the week to prevent a food crisis in the impoverished nation following the Nov 15 storm.

Mr Mukherjee, who was on a one-day tour of cyclone-hit areas, said the 'magnitude of the natural calamity' prompted India to remove the ban on rice exports to Bangladesh.

India, the world's third largest rice exporter, clamped a ban on rice exports two months ago in a bid to reduce soaring domestic prices of the food staple that were causing anger among consumers.

Cyclone Sidr, the strongest since 1991 when another storm killed around 143,000 people along Bangladesh's coasts, came close on the heels of devastating floods from July to September that killed more than 1,000 people and washed away about 1 million tonnes of rice.

Mr Karim said the country would also need to import two million tonnes of wheat to meet the food shortfall.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS

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Global warming is pushing edges of tropics towards poles: study

Yahoo News 3 Dec 07;

The tropics appear to have already expanded by at least the same margin as models predict for this century

The greenhouse effect is causing Earth's zone of tropical climate to creep towards the poles, according to a study whose release on Sunday coincided with the eve of a major UN conference on climate change.

The poleward expansion of the tropics will have far-reaching impacts, notably in intensifying water scarcity in the Mediterranean and the US "Sun belt" as well as southern Africa and southern Australia, it warns.

The paper, appearing in a new journal, Nature Geoscience, is an overview of the latest published research into atmospheric systems at the tropics.

For cartographers, the tropical belt is defined quite simply by the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, at latitudes 23.5 degrees north and south of the equator.

For climatologists, though, where the tropics end is fuzzier because of the complexity of a powerful high-altitude wind pattern, known as the Hadley circulation.

These powerful jet streams are what determine precipitation patterns of the tropics, which is characterised by lots of rain in the central part of the belt near the Equator and by dryness at its fringes.

Some years ago, the first credible computer simulations predicted that, as the Earth warmed, the Hadley jet streams and their associated wind and rainfall patterns would move poleward.

Under the most extreme scenario, the tropics were on average predicted to expand by about two degrees latitude, equivalent to around 200 kilometres (120 miles) over the 21st century.

The new paper looks at a batch of recent studies based on five different types of measurement from 1979-2005.

It concludes that this change in the tropical jet streams has already happened -- and the worst-case scenario has already been surpassed.

"Remarkably, the tropics appear to have already expanded -- during only the last few decades of the 20th century -- by at least the same margin as models predict for this century," it says.

"The observed widening appears to have occurred faster than climate models predict in their projections of anthropogenic [man-made] climate change."

The five datasets variously find expansion ranging from two degrees to 4.8 degrees latitude over the 25 years, or 200-480 kms (120-300 miles).

Many worrisome questions arise from these findings, says the paper.

First and foremost is about the accuracy of climate models that drive scientific conclusions about the pace of global warming and, in turn, inform policymakers about how to address the problem.

Also unclear are the mechanisms that have caused the widening of the tropics, says the paper. Possible factors include the ozone hole, warming of the sea's surface and an increase in the tropopause, a boundary layer between the troposphere and the stratosphere.

In any case, a widening of the tropics carries "worldwide implications," according to the study.

"The edges of the tropical belt are the outer boundaries of the sub-tropical dry zones, and their poleward shift could lead to fundamental shifts in ecosystems and in human settlements.

"Shifts in precipitation would have obvious implications for agriculture and water resources and could present serious hardships in marginal areas."

It voices particular concern for semi-arid regions that are at the fringes of the sub-tropical dry zone, including the Mediterranean, the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, southern Australia, southern Africa and parts of South America.

"A poleward expansion of the tropics is likely to bring even drier conditions to these heavily populated regions, but may bring increase moisture to others," it warns.

The paper is lead-authored by Dian Seidel of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NOAA) Air Resources Laboratory at Silver Spring, Maryland.

Publication on Sunday came on the eve of a UN conference in Bali, Indonesia aimed at revamping efforts to tackle global warming.

Around 10,000 delegates are expected to attend the 11-day gathering, which is tasked with agreeing on a blueprint for two years of negotiations for a pact that will slash greenhouse-gas emissions from 2012 and beef up support for poor countries that will bear the brunt of climate change.

Expanding tropics could spur storms: study
Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters 3 Dec 07;

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Earth's tropical belt is expanding much faster than expected, and that could bring more storms to the temperate zone and drier weather to parts of the world that are already dry, climate scientists reported on Sunday.

"Remarkably, the tropics appear to have already expanded -- during only the last few decades of the 20th century -- by at least the same margin as models predict for this century," the scientists said in the current edition of Nature Geoscience.

Scientists forecast the tropic belt would spread by about 2 degrees of latitude north and south of the Equator by the end of the 21st century. That amount of tropical expansion has already occurred, and was confirmed by five independent ways of measuring it, the report found.

For mapmakers and astronomers, there is no question about where the tropic zone ends: it is at 23.5 degrees north and south of the Equator at the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer, boundaries determined by Earth's tilt on its axis. These tropical borders are the furthest point from the Equator where the sun shines directly overhead at the summer solstice.

But climate scientists define the tropic band by what happens on the land, in the water and in the air, and that is what is changing, the study said.

'SERIOUS HARDSHIPS'

Tropical temperatures are warm, and it rains a lot, with little seasonal or day-to-day change. The subtropics, by contrast, are generally dry. If the warm, wet tropical climate is spreading poleward, the dry subtropic climate may head for the poles too.

Those dry subtropical bands could include some of the most heavily populated places on Earth, the scientists said: the Mediterranean, the U.S. Southwest, northern Mexico, southern Australia, southern Africa and parts of South America.

"Shifts in precipitation patterns would have obvious implications for agriculture and water resources and could present serious hardships in marginal areas," the authors wrote.

For those who live in the middle latitudes, like most U.S., European and Asian residents, the change could affect the storm tracks that largely determines weather in these areas, said co-author Dian Seidel of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"Those storm tracks are linked with the position of the jet stream, which is one way we use to delineate the width of the tropics," Seidel said by telephone from NOAA's Air Resources Laboratory outside Washington. "The jet streams are moving poleward, and so, presumably, would the storm tracks."

This poleward migration of storm tracks is in line with predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This worldwide panel of scientists and policymakers is convening in Bali, Indonesia this week to determine how to deal with climate change.

(Editing by Vicki Allen)


Earth's tropics belt expands
Seth Borenstein, Associated Press, Yahoo News 2 Dec 07;

Earth's tropical belt seems to have expanded a couple hundred miles over the past quarter century, which could mean more arid weather for some already dry subtropical regions, new climate research shows.

Geographically, the tropical region is a wide swath around Earth's middle stretching from the Tropic of Cancer, just south of Miami, to the Tropic of Capricorn, which cuts Australia almost in half. It's about one-quarter of the globe and generally thought of as hot, steamy and damp, but it also has areas of brutal desert.

To meteorologists, however, the tropics region is defined by long-term climate and what's happening in the atmosphere. Recent studies show changes that indicate an expansion of the tropical atmosphere.

The newest study, published Sunday in the new scientific journal Nature Geoscience, shows that by using the weather definition, the tropics are expanding toward Earth's poles more than predicted. And that means more dry weather is moving to the edges of the tropics in places like the U.S. Southwest.

Independent teams using four different meteorological measurements found that the tropical atmospheric belt has grown by anywhere between 2 and 4.8 degrees latitude since 1979. That translates to a total north and south expansion of 140 to 330 miles.

One key determination of the tropical belt is called the Hadley circulation, which is essentially prevailing rivers of wind that move vertically as well as horizontally, carrying lots of moisture to rainy areas while drying out arid regions on the edges of the tropics. That wind is circulating over a larger area than a couple decades ago.

But that's not the only type of change meteorologists have found that shows an expansion of the tropics. They've seen more tropical conditions by measuring the amount of ozone in the atmosphere, measuring the depth of the lower atmosphere, and the level of dryness in the atmosphere at the edges of the tropics.

Climate scientists have long predicted a growing tropical belt toward the end of the 21st century because of man-made global warming. But what has happened in the past quarter century is larger and more puzzling than initially predicted, said Dian Seidel, a research meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lab in Silver Spring, Md. She is the author of the newest study.

"They are big changes," she said. "It's a little puzzling."

She said this expansion may only be temporary, but there's no way of knowing yet.

Seidel said she has not determined the cause of this tropical belt widening. While a leading suspect is global warming, other suspects include depletion in the ozone layer and changes in El Nino, the periodic weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean.

Other climate scientists are split on the meaning of the research because it shows such a dramatic change — beyond climate model predictions. Some scientists, such as Richard Seager at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, say changes in El Nino since the 1970s probably are a big factor and could make it hard to conclude there's a dramatic expansion of the tropical belt.

But climate scientists Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria and Richard Somerville of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography said Seidel's work makes sense and that computer models have consistently been underestimating the ill effects of global warming.

"Every time you look at what the world is doing it's always far more dramatic than what climate models predict," Weaver said.

Both Weaver and Seidel said the big concern is that dry areas on the edge of the tropics — such as the U.S. Southwest, parts of the Mediterranean and southern Australia — could get drier because of this.

"You're not expanding the tropical jungles, what you're expanding is the area of desertification," Weaver said.

Nature Geoscience http://www.nature.com/ngeo

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Developing countries to propose adaptation fund

Business Times 3 Dec 07;

(JAKARTA) Senior officials from the developing countries grouped under G-77 will propose setting up an adaptation fund mechanism that is transparent, accountable and easy to access, officials said in Bali.

The agreement on this was reached last Friday during a meeting ahead of today's UN Bali climate conference, the Jakarta Post daily reported on Saturday.

The officials also agreed on the principles of the fund mechanism and the formation of a two-layer management system, which comprises a governing body and a day-to-day management body.

Adaptation is one of the core issues to be discussed at the conference, besides mitigation, transfer of technology from developed to developing countries, and a financing scheme to curb the impacts of climate change.

Aree Wattana Tummakiri of Thailand said that the flexibility and accountability of the institution as well as access to the fund for developing countries were all that the G-77 members are demanding in the fund's management.

'We will establish a governing body, which consist of parties to the protocol, because we want to have a pro-developing countries institution to manage the fund. Currently, we have difficulties accessing the money and an explanation on how the fund is managed,' she said.

The Kyoto Protocol has ruled that the adaptation fund will be raised from a 2 per cent levy deducted from carbon credits given to the private sector both in developing and developed countries through clean development mechanism (CDM) projects.

The current size of the fund is estimated at US$100 million per year, but is expected to reach billions as the value of CDM projects increases.

According to the Climate Action Network, a group of international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), developing countries need at least US$50 billion per year to adapt to the impact of climate change.

Currently, the fund is managed by Global Environment Facility (GEF), a multilateral environmental financing mechanism set up under a 1994 international agreement, which is currently the only institution handling financial matters for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and other environmental agreements. -- Xinhua

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Carbon footprint fears for UN climate summit

Charles Clover, Telegraph 2 Dec 07;

The United Nations climate change conference that begins on the tropical island of Bali tomorrow is likely itself to be a significant contributor to global warming, despite attempts to “offset” its emissions.

The 15,000 politicians, civil servants, green and industry lobbyists and journalists who will fly in are estimated to emit the equivalent of more than 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to the annual emissions of the African state of Chad.

The UN organisers and Indonesian government will announce a plan to offset the emissions of the whole conference by planting millions of trees.

But tree planting is not a form of carbon offsetting accepted by the British government or the UN’s climate change experts for their own travel because it is difficult to calculate how much carbon trees take up or verify how many are cut down or decay, releasing carbon into the atmosphere, in subsequent years.

The delegation of three ministers and over 40 civil servants, including the treasury’s former chief economist, Sir Nicholas Stern, will offset their flights using the Government’s own, highly-rated fund which buys up emissions of industrial gases with global warming potential under an approved UN scheme.

The meeting, which runs from today to December 14, aims to create a framework for a post-2012 climate change treaty that would replace the Kyoto protocol.

However, the surge in climate change’s political importance and interest to new areas of business such as carbon trading, is expected to boost the number of delegates travelling to the resort of Nusa Dua, a palm-lined promontory on Bali’s south coast, from the 10,000 who had registered by today to 15,000 at least.

Among those expected to attend, some by private jet, include Arnold Schwarznegger, Governor of California, and Al Gore, the former US vice-president, and Leonardo, DiCaprio, the actor.

Peter Garrett, the former singer with the Midnight Oil rock band and now a member of Kevin Rudd’s new Labor government in Australia, is expected to attend.

Hotels, many of which fall into the bracket of some of the most luxurious in the world, have spotted the chance to charge accordingly, with many saying accommodation is only available now at around £400-to £500 a night for a small single room.

The hotel where British ministers will stay, the Westin Resort Nusa Dua, describes the experience of staying there as “sheer indulgence.”

Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, Phil Woolas, junior environment minister, and Gareth Thomas, the junior minister for international development will each have £330 a night suites around the hotel’s “free form” pool, with their own teak-floored bedroom, living room and dining room.

Government spokesmen justify the expense because ministers will need to hold private meetings at all hours.

The EU will be sending a delegation of 90 officials with the environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas.

It unclear, however, what 20 MEPs and 18 assistants, who have no formal part in the process, will be doing.

They will be staying, on expenses, at the Conrad Bali Resort and Spa, one of the Hilton Hotel chain’s luxury hotels.

Their itinerary includes a day trip to the fishing village of Serangan with time for surfing.

The green MEP, Caroline Lucas, is understood to have declined an invitation to attend.

Thousands of registrations are from groups campaigning for the environment or against poverty. WWF has the largest, with 32 at the meeting.

A spokesman for Friends of the Earth, which is sending 5, mainly from Indonesia, said “We don’t offset. We don’t think it is a realistic solution. We have decided that the minimum number should go, but it’s a vitally important meeting.”

John Hay, spokesman for the UN conference organisers in Bali, said: “The Indonesian government will be announcing its offsetting deal on Wednesday.

"It will involve tree-planting but how exactly, where and when will be announced then.

"We at the UN climate secretariat are offsetting by buying emission reductions under the Clean Development Mechanism.

"Then it is up to the individual delegates and journalists. The responsibility lies with them.”

Indonesia plants trees to offset Bali emissions
Reuters 3 Dec 07;

BALI, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesia has planted millions of trees to soak up an estimated 50,000 tons of greenhouse gases to be emitted during U.N.-led climate talks in Bali, Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said on Monday.

More than 10,000 politicians, officials, activists and journalists are expected to attend the December 3-14 talks on the tropical resort island. Delegates will discuss ways to widen a U.N.-led fight against global warming to all nations.

Pines, acacia, and meranti trees, a type of tropical hardwood, have been planted on about 4,500 hectares (11,000 acres) on the islands of Sumatra, Kalimantan and Java, Witoelar said.

Trees absorb carbon as they grow and those planted would eventually soak up about 900,000 tons of carbon dioxide, far more than the emissions from burning fossil fuels caused by delegates while staying in Bali and flying to and from the island, Witoelar said.

"The government of Indonesia is dedicating the carbon stock of the trees to offset the emissions produced by the U.N. meeting," Witoelar told a news conference.

"Apart from offsetting emissions, we'd like to make this a carbon positive event," he said. Delegates from 190 countries will seek in Bali to launch talks on a new deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the global pact to slow global warming.

Indonesia, the host, has also introduced a car-free zone on the Nusa Dua strip where meetings are held and is encouraging delegates to walk or cycle from one venue to another to help ease emissions during the talks.

(Reporting by Adhityani Arga, editing by Alex Richardson)

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Singapore reports: 'Focusing on wrong things' could derail climate talks

Leave tough task of setting emissions goals to later stage of negotiations, says UN official
Arti Mulchand, Straits Times 3 Dec 07;

BALI - THE climate talks that kick off in Bali today could run a risk of failure if delegates focus on the 'wrong things at the wrong time'.

That was the warning from United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Yvo de Boer.

He said zooming in on the contentious issue of legally binding greenhouse gas emissions targets early in the game could scuttle chances for a road map to the next global climate change agreement.

'It is a critical question, but a question that I, personally, would come to at the end of the discussion rather than at the beginning,' he told a news conference yesterday,

By yesterday evening, more than 10,000 delegates from close to 190 countries had arrived in closely guarded Nusa Dua. The number of delegates is expected to double over the next two weeks.

In that time, the delegates will try to kickstart negotiations for an international agreement to cut down on the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

A framework should be found by 2009 so that it can be ratified by various countries and kick in after 2012, when the first 'commitment period' of the current global emissions pact - the Kyoto Protocol - ends.

The 1997 Kyoto pact requires 36 industrialised nations to cut their emissions by 5 per cent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.

But that is just a fraction of the reduction that scientists say is needed.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last month 'unequivocally' warned of the 'abrupt or irreversible' impact of climate change.

The IPCC scientists say that if drastic climate change is to be avoided, global emissions cannot continue rising for more than the next 15 to 20 years, and must then be slashed to half of their current levels by the middle of this century.

Still, the 'toolbox' first needs to be filled with 'instruments' enabling the international community to work together before it can be determined how ambitious countries can be, and how much it will cost, said Mr de Boer.

Finding that common ground needs to take precedence, he added, because the world is already witnessing increased frequency of cyclones and killer heatwaves.

The world is also watching for a political response to scientists' dire warnings that worse is to come.

Based on initial interactions, the mood among delegates was 'optimistic', and many - including those from the United States - were sure that 2009 was an achievable target for the framework, a member of the 30-strong Singapore delegation told The Straits Times.

190 nations to meet in Bali over spectre of global warming
Arti Mulchand, Straits Times 3 Dec 07;

WHAT IT IS

REPRESENTATIVES of more than 190 countries start meetings today to discuss how best to combat global warming at the United Nations Climate Change conference in Bali, Indonesia. The conference will run until Dec 14.

Along the way, it is hoped that a road map for a new international climate-change agreement will be found.

The meetings will include high-level leaders not just on the environment, but on trade and finance as well.

Following a week of discussions about the most salient issues, trade ministers will come together in a dialogue on Saturday and Sunday.

Then, finance ministers will gather the following Monday and Tuesday to look at investments and funding for low-carbon technologies, among other things.

The final, and most crucial part of the meetings, will be the 'high-level' segment, which will be officially opened on Wednesday next week. That is when the talks will culminate in a global response to the grim and 'unequivocal' warnings by scientists that the Earth could face 'abrupt or irreversible' impact of climate change.

WHY IT MATTERS

Scientists say the world must act now to limit increases in surface temperature to under 2 deg C above its pre-industrial-age level by 2015. For that to happen, global greenhouse gas emissions have to be halved by 2050.

If all goes well, the climate conference will lay down a path for negotiations leading to a new global emissions agreement that can kick off in 2012, when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, the current binding global pact on emissions for developed countries, ends.

At the Bali talks, Singapore will field a delegation of about 30 representatives of the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Water Resources, Trade and Industry, and Finance ministries.

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UN: US key to any new climate pact

Michael Casey, Associated Press, Yahoo News 2 Dec 07;

"To design a long-term response to climate change that does not include the world's largest emitter and the world's largest economy just would not make any sense," he told reporters.

World powers meeting at a U.N. climate change conference in Indonesia this week won't be able to craft a meaningful plan to address global warming without cooperation from the United States, the top emitter of greenhouse gases, the U.N.'s climate chief said Sunday.

The United States refused to sign the last major international treaty on reducing greenhouse gases, undermining its effectiveness.

Delegates from 190 nations will gather on the resort island of Bali on Monday for one of the largest global warming conferences ever, bringing together about 10,000 people including Hollywood luminaries, former Vice President Al Gore, fishermen and drought-stricken farmers for two weeks of marathon discussions.

World leaders will attempt to launch negotiations that could lead to a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Among the most contentious issues will be whether emission cuts should be mandatory or voluntary and how to help the world's poorest countries adapt to a warmer climate.

Yvo de Boer, general secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, said the role of the United States "would be critical" in the discussions and that delegates must come up with a roadmap that's embraced by Washington.

"To design a long-term response to climate change that does not include the world's largest emitter and the world's largest economy just would not make any sense," he told reporters.

The United States, which along with Australia refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, said ahead of the Bali talks that it was eager to launch negotiations, but has been among industrialized nations leading a campaign against mandatory emission cuts.

But now the United States finds itself isolated at the conference, given that Australian Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd, whose party swept to power in general elections just one week ago, immediately put signing the Kyoto pact at the top of his international agenda.

President Bush, trying to fend off charges that America is not doing enough, said this week that a final Energy Department report showed American emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, declined by 1.5 percent last year while the U.S. economy grew.

"Energy security and climate change are two of the important challenges of our time. The United States takes these challenges seriously," he said.

The meeting on Bali comes after a Nobel Prize-winning U.N. network of scientists issued a report concluding the level of carbon and other heat-trapping "greenhouse gas" emissions must be stabilized by 2015 and decline from there to stave off the worst effects of climate change.

The solutions are within reach, they said, from investing in renewable energy to improving energy efficiency. Without action, temperatures will rise, resulting in droughts, severe weather, dying species and other consequences, they said.

"It is already affecting the livelihoods of people we work with," said Dr. Charles Ehrhart, Climate Change Coordinator for CARE International, citing concerns over food security and access to water. "It is contributing to tensions within and between communities."

The 1997 Kyoto pact required 36 industrial nations to reduce carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gasses but it set relatively low emissions reduction targets: about a 5 percent required drop in the levels recorded in 1990 by 2012.

A new agreement must be concluded within two years to ensure a smooth, uninterrupted transition.

De Boer said countries need to act now but acknowledged that anyone who expects the Bali meeting to result in specific targets or long-term solutions "will leave disappointed."

Industrialized nations, which have pumped the lion's share of greenhouses gases into the atmosphere to date, should take the lead in reducing emissions, he said. Developing countries like China, the world's second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, may not be required to cut their emissions immediately but should commit slowing the growth of carbon dioxide and other heat trapping gases.

At best, analysts believe, Bali could lead to an agreement in about two years time with the United States under a new administration, the Europeans and other industrial nations committing to deepening blanket emissions cuts. And they say major developing countries could agree to enshrine some national policies — China's auto emission standards, for example, or energy-efficiency targets for power plants — as international obligations.

Bali climate summit 'critical': UN
Yahoo News 3 Dec 07;

The UN-sponsored climate change conference offers a critical opportunity to provide political answers to the scientific warnings on global warming, summit head Yvo de Boer said Sunday.

"The scientific community has come with very clear messages to the politicians," said De Boer during a press conference.

"The message that addressing climate change is affordable and that concerted action now can avoid many of the catastrophic impacts" that could be ahead, he added, noting that "stronger political will" is necessary.

De Boer heads the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is holding a two-week conference in Bali starting Monday to discuss what governments can do after the Kyoto Protocol expires.

Other issues include tackling the greenhouse effect, and how the international community can prevent climate change.

Maintaining a focus on deforestation is one aspect of a long-term solution to climate change, De Boer said.

"We have to develop a better understanding of exactly how much carbon is captured in trees if you leave them standing, we have to develop a better understanding of how you can build safeguards to ensure that trees aren't cut down at a later moment in time," he said.

De Boer hoped that the conference would achieve two things, including the launch of a series of pilot projects to show how avoiding deforestation can be beneficial, and a working agreement on climate change.

The conference brings together more than 180 countries together with experts and non-governmental organisations. Some 1,500 journalists from around the world have been accredited for the conference, said De Boer.

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Yusof Ishak Secondary students head to Sungei Buloh Park for wireless learning

Channel NewsAsia 3 Dec 07;

SINGAPORE : The classroom has gone outdoors for a group of students from Yusof Ishak Secondary School.

Instead of having the usual type of lesson in a classroom, students are learning at Sungei Buloh Nature Reserve.

And at the Mangrove Boardwalk, students will embark on the Wireless Learning Journey - which is the first of its kind in the parks in Singapore.

Students will be using webcams installed on the Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) to access information on the wetland reserve.

They will also be prompted with questions on what they see along the trail.

At Route 1, students will be using data-loggers to investigate the conditions of the water and air at two locations.

On the idea of using IT in a nature reserve park, one student said: "It's kind of weird (but) interesting and fun because it's very convenient to get information. It's a different kind of experience."

As the world changes and technology moves forward, so does the way students learn.

Increasingly, lessons are conducted outside the traditional classroom, and this makes learning a fun experience for many.

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Indonesia hosting global warming talks

Michael Casey, Associated Press, Yahoo News 2 Dec 07;

At best, analysts believe, Bali could lead to a two-year negotiation in which the United States under a new administration, the Europeans and other industrial nations commit to deepening blanket emissions cuts.

Government leaders started arriving Sunday for what are expected to be lengthy and contentious negotiations on how to fight global warming, which could cause devastating sea level rises, send millions further into poverty and lead to the mass extinction of animals.

Delegates from more than 180 nations will attempt to jump-start talks during the Dec. 3-14 meeting on how to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. They also will consider whether cuts in carbon emissions should be mandatory or voluntary, how to reduce deforestation, and ways to help poor countries, which are expected to be hardest hit by worsening droughts, floods and violent storms.

"There is a very clear signal from the scientific community that we need to act on this issue," said Yvo de Boer, the general secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. "We have to turn the trend of global emissions in the next 10 to 15 years ... The political answer has to come now."

The Kyoto pact signed one decade ago required 36 industrial nations to reduce carbon dioxide and other the heat-trapping gasses emitted by power plants and other industrial, agricultural and transportation sources. It set relatively small target reductions averaging 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

A new agreement must be concluded within two years to give countries time to ratify it and to ensure a smooth, uninterrupted transition.

De Boer said industrialized nations, which have pumped the lion's share of greenhouses gases into the atmosphere to date, should take the lead in reducing emissions. So far the United States, the No. 1 offender, says it will refuse any deal that calls for mandatory reductions.

"Since developing countries are just beginning to grow their economies, it's not reasonable at this stage to ask them to reduce their emissions," he said, referring in part to China and India, which oppose caps and any other measures that will impinge on efforts to lift their people from poverty.

"They can be asked to limit their growth."

The European Union wants Kyoto's replacement to limit global temperature rises at 3.6 degrees above the levels of the preindustrial era. The EU, Canada and Japan have endorsed a 50 percent emissions reduction by 2050 to meet that goal and avoid the worst effects of global warming.

The United States, which along with Australia refused to sign Kyoto, said ahead of the Bali talks that it was eager to launch negotiations and sought to deflect criticism Washington was not doing enough.

President Bush said a final Energy Department report showed U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, declined by 1.5 percent last year while his economy grew.

"Energy security and climate change are two of the important challenges of our time. The United States takes these challenges seriously," Bush said in a statement. "This puts us well ahead of the goal I set in 2002."

Still, the United States will find itself isolated at the conference, given that Australian Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd, whose party swept to power in general elections just one week ago, immediately put signing the Kyoto pact at the top of his international agenda.

Last month in Spain, a Nobel Prize-winning U.N. network of scientists issued a capstone report after six years of study saying that carbon and other heat-trapping "greenhouse gas" emissions must stabilize by 2015 and then decline.

Without action, they said, temperatures will rise, changing the world.

The Arctic ice cap melted this year by the greatest extent on record. Scientists say oceans are losing some ability to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide, the chief industrial emission blamed for warming. And the world's power plants, cars and jetliners are spewing out carbon at an unprecedented rate.

At best, analysts believe, Bali could lead to a two-year negotiation in which the United States under a new administration, the Europeans and other industrial nations commit to deepening blanket emissions cuts. And they say major developing countries could agree to enshrine some national policies — China's auto emission standards, for example, or energy-efficiency targets for power plants — as international obligations.

Bali talks to seek global climate deal in 2009
Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn, Reuters 2 Dec 07;

BALI, Indonesia (Reuters) - Delegates from about 190 nations gathered in Bali on Sunday to try to build on a "fragile understanding" that the fight against global warming needs to be expanded to all countries with a deal in 2009.

The U.N.'s top climate change official told thousands of delegates that the eyes of the world would be on their Dec 3-14 talks in an Indonesian beach resort, saying time was running short to avert ever more droughts, heatwaves and rising seas.

"We're already seeing many of the impacts of climate change," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told a news conference on the eve of the meeting in the tightly guarded venue. "We are on a very dangerous path."

The Bali meeting, of senior officials with 130 environment ministers attending the final days, will try to launch formal negotiations ending with a new U.N. climate pact in 2009 that will include outsiders led by the United States and China.

So far, only 36 industrialized nations in the Kyoto Protocol have caps on greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, running to 2012. Most governments agree on a need for more action but disagree about how to share out the burden.

"More discussions will be needed to build on this fragile understanding and explore how it can be put into practice," according to a U.N. report to be submitted in Bali.

The report, summing up two years of talks about new ways to fight climate change, said some countries were willing to make deeper cuts in emissions, others said existing promises should be kept and still others wanted incentives to join in.

"We heard no dispute that developed countries need to keep taking the lead," wrote Howard Bamsey of Australia and Sandea De Wet of South Africa, the authors of the report.

OPENNESS, FLEXIBILITY

Prospects for a global deal have been boosted by a decision by President George W. Bush for the United States to take part beyond 2012. Bush opposes Kyoto as a threat to U.S. economic growth and said it unfairly excluded goals for poor nations.

"We'd like to see consensus on the launch of negotiations. We want to see a Bali roadmap," said Paula Dobriansky, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs.

"We will go to Bali with openness, flexibility."

The United Nations wants a new global pact to be agreed at U.N. talks in 2009 in Copenhagen, giving good time for governments to ratify before Kyoto's first period ends in 2012.

De Boer said Bali's goal was simply to agree to negotiate a successor to Kyoto, leaving details for later. "Millions of people around the world...will be focusing their attention on what is going to be the response of the politicians," he said.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a phone conversation on Sunday that China would adopt an "active, responsible and constructive" approach in Bali. But he urged rich nations to help.

"While taking the lead in greatly cutting emissions, developed nations should also help developing nations improve their ability to respond to climate change," the foreign ministry Web site paraphrased Wen as saying.

"Developing nations should adopt relevant policies in accordance with their capability, in order to make as much of a contribution as they can to combating climate change," it said.

Rich nations want developing nations at least to brake the rise of their emissions -- China is opening a new coal-fired power plant at the rate of more than one a week.

And developing countries will push for a new system of credits to help slow the rate of deforestation. Trees store carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, when they grow.

(Extra reporting by David Fogarty and Adhityani Arga, Chris Buckley and Emma Graham-Harrison and Jason Subler in Beijing, Editing by David Fogarty)

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India to tell West to shoulder climate change burden

Jonathan Allen, Reuters 2 Dec 07;

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India is likely to stick by its pledge to keep its carbon emissions per person lower than those of the rich world at next week's climate change talks in Indonesia, according to policy advisers.

It might seem like an easy promise to make for now: the average American emits 20 times more carbon than the average Indian, not least because more than 600 million Indians still live in homes without so much as a lightbulb, according to government data.

But the pledge is the closest India has come -- and is likely to come for now -- to agreeing to measurable targets, underlining its emphasis on the idea that polluting, industrialized nations must shoulder the greater burden in reducing emissions.

The absence of such targets for developing nations like India and China has long been a sticking point with the United States, and was one reason it remained outside the Kyoto Protocol, which binds 36 rich nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

India is expected to negotiate from this position as it meets with about 190 nations in Bali this month to begin a two year process to find a new agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

"The prime minister has said that we will make our development path in such a careful way that 20, 30 years down the line we still don't cross the per-capita emissions of the developed world," Jayant Mauskar, a senior environment ministry official, told Reuters.

India's widely awaited climate change strategy is yet to be published, but Mauskar said this idea remained the "bedrock" of India's position.

"It provides a challenge to the developed countries," said Rajendra Pachauri, an Indian scientist and member of the prime minister's climate change council.

"If they want India to reduce or limit its emissions, they need to ensure that they provide the bar that must never be crossed."

CHALLENGE FOR INDIA

Pachuari, who was jointly awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize as the head of the U.N. climate change panel, said it could prove a meaningful commitment in the long-term.

"If some countries are talking about emission cuts of up to 80 percent by 2050 then it really could become a challenge for India," he said.

Looked at from one angle, India is the world's fourth largest emitter of the greenhouse gases believed to be the cause of climate change. But India prefers to think of itself as representing about a sixth of humanity, yet responsible for only about a twentieth of global emissions.

Most other countries agree with this view, and accept that India must be allowed to burn more energy as it tries to lift hundreds of millions of its citizens out of poverty.

This gives India a strong position in Bali from which it can demand greater action from rich nations, environmentalists say.

India also deserves some praise for leading the developing world in introducing clean-development policies, said Shruti Shukla of environmental group WWF, even if the policies are sometimes slow in becoming ground realities.

Climate change is expected to have an especially disastrous impact on India. Exacerbated droughts and floods would hurt the two-thirds of Indians who depend on farming for a living.

"I don't know why everybody's hung up on mitigation," said the environment ministry's Mauskar. "Adaptation is the first thing we have to tackle."

He repeated India's claim that it is forced to spend around 2 percent of its gross national product -- or 12 percent of its annual budget -- on dealing with the effects of climate change.

But many people see these figures as over-inflated, as they include its spending on things like anti-malaria and anti-poverty programs, which India would have to deal with regardless of climate change.

(Editing by Krittivas Mukherjee and Jerry Norton)

Rich countries urged to come clean on climate change
Ingrid Melander, Reuters 2 Dec 07;

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Rich countries must clean their own act to convince developing countries to join the fight against climate change, Nobel Peace Prize winner Rajendra Pachauri said on the eve of the international Bali conference.

Delegates from about 190 nations are gathering in Bali on Monday for to try to launch new negotiations on a long-term agreement to fight climate change.

"The first thing that the rich countries should do is set their own house in order and start reducing emissions," Pachauri, the chairman of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told Reuters.

"Secondly they have to find means by which they can assist the developing countries ... there has to be a serious effort to transfer technology."

The Indian scientist, whose committee shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore this year, said developed countries needed to prove that they were ready to take up more responsibility than poorer ones on global warming.

"China and India are feeling that what the developed countries were supposed to do has not been done," he said. "At this point in time, given that China and India have much lower per capita emissions, they are certainly not going to agree to any restrictions."

Pachauri expected the United States -- which has not ratified the Kyoto protocol on emissions caps -- to take a constructive approach in Bali.

"I have a feeling that the Unites States will allow the negotiations to proceed smoothly, and this will be true of all the other countries as well," he side in the sidelines of a conference in Brussels, before heading to Bali.

Pachauri said the European Union was taking the lead in the fight against climate change and also commended Australia's prime minister elect Kevin Rudd's decision to ratify Kyoto.

The Bali meeting, with 130 environment ministers attending the final days, will try to launch formal negotiations ending with a new U.N. climate pact in 2009.

"The outcome would be satisfactory in my view if it comes up with the decision to negotiate an agreement and comes up with a timetable for the negotiations," Pachauri said.

(Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Bangladesh says needs aid to adapt to warmer world

Ruma Paul, Reuters 2 Dec 07;

DHAKA (Reuters) - Disaster-prone Bangladesh, battered just weeks ago by a cyclone that devastated its low-lying coast, needs aid from big polluting nations to help it adapt to powerful storms, floods and rising seas, a government adviser says.

The United Nations Development Programme in its latest report last month said Bangladesh is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change and could face water shortages and mass displacement of people.

"The life and livelihood of millions of people in Bangladesh are exposed to already visible and impending dangers of climate change," the government's adviser for the environment, C.S. Karim, told Reuters in an interview on Saturday.

"We will propose the installation of a centre here for wider research on adaptation and mitigation strategies."

Bangladesh has suffered a double blow in the past few months, first from devastating monsoon floods in July-Sept and then two weeks ago when the worst cyclone since 1991 killed about 3,500 people and displaced millions.

"We will call upon developed countries to help us in adapting to climate changes ... will also try to make them realize that it is for them we, the poor nations, are suffering and it is their moral duty to help us," Karim told Reuters.

Bangladesh's recommendations would be placed before United Nations climate talks being held in Bali, Indonesia, from Dec 3-14.

"The whole world must be prepared for the adverse impact of the climate changes. Countries like Bangladesh need support in the form of resources as well as technology to cope with the impacts," said Ainun Nishat, country representative of the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

"As of today, allocation of funds for adaptation is meager. And for that there should be equity in distribution of the resources available for adaptation," he told Reuters.

Environment specialist K.B. Sajjadur Rasheed said: "For encountering the enormous problem of sea level rise in Bangladesh, the country should receive adequate funds from global sources to take measures to protect the coastal population."

He said a sea-level rise of 40 cm (16 inches) in the Bay of Bengal would submerge 11 percent of the country's land area in the coastal zone and displace between 7 and 10 million people.

With only 15 percent of the world's population, rich countries account for nearly half of all global carbon dioxide emissions, with the United States leaving a carbon footprint that is more than 100 times larger than Bangladesh's.

"But the stark reality is that the country needs sufficient funds to respond to the crisis, and the developed countries, in addition to their reducing the carbon emissions content, could contribute towards that end," Rasheed, a former Dhaka University professor of geography and environment, told Reuters.

"Apart from coaxing the developed countries for reducing carbon emission, the two large developing countries -- India and China -- should also be persuaded to reduce their carbon emissions. Ironically both countries are reluctant to do so."

(Writing by Anis Ahmed, editing by David Fogarty)

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