Johora singaporensis mating
on the johora singaporensis blog
4 Feb (Mon): "Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on Climate Change: Economics and Business" a seminar on the champions of the environment blog
Art from recycling
art workshops for adults and kids on the postcards from seletar blog
Global Warming & Rising Sea Levels: Videos of New York, Boston, Miami on The Daily Galaxy blog
Clarissa Oon, Straits Times 22 Jan 08;
IT IS early days yet for international talks on a post-2012 climate change deal, but Singapore is not sitting idly by, Deputy Prime Minister S. Jayakumar said yesterday.
It has laid out guiding principles, one of which is to support plans to fight smoke haze and reduce emissions from the razing of forests, said Professor Jayakumar, who heads a ministerial committee to tackle climate change.
Preliminary agreements on forest conservation proposed by Indonesia were reached at last month's United Nations climate change talks in Bali.
Singapore, a victim of the annual haze that blankets the region's skies, will adopt a 'principled and forward-looking stance as a responsible member of the global community while preserving our core national interests', said Prof Jayakumar.
The key principles that he spelt out were, firstly, that Singapore would participate actively in negotiations, but that any new framework should consider the national circumstances of each country.
Secondly, emission reduction targets should not be at the expense of a country's economic growth, particularly for developing countries.
Thirdly, the green technologies that are deployed should be 'pragmatic and cost-effective'.
Finally, he highlighted the need to protect the world's carbon sinks, calling for a stop to slash-and-burn practices and the large-scale burning of peatlands. Such activities release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
The minister warned of a long road ahead for international talks because of the sheer number of countries and interests involved.
He was responding to a question by Nominated Member of Parliament Edwin Khew on Singapore's climate change strategy following the Bali talks.
Marked by fractious debates among developed and developing countries alike, the Bali conference launched two more years of formal negotiations on a deal to replace the current Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
The United States, for one, has not ratified the protocol. The protocol also does not bind fast-growing developing countries such as China and Brazil to emission reduction targets.
At home, Prof Jayakumar urged businesses to improve on their energy efficiency and called for non-governmental organisations to promote energy-saving measures here.
A survey conducted in 2006 by the National Environment Agency showed that only 63 per cent of the public are aware of the occurrence of global warming and climate change.
Andy Mukherjee, Business Times 22 Jan 08;
The bigger risk is the absence of an international order that has legal authority over both recalcitrant nation states and profiteering drugmakers
'Chikungunya what?' asked a newspaper headline in Singapore last week. Chikungunya fever, a cousin of dengue fever, is caused by a mosquito-borne virus that may have originated in Africa, or at least it was named there.
Since its re-emergence in India in 2005, the disease, which causes fever and acute joint pain, has afflicted 200,000 people there, and reached Italy last summer.
Yet, in Singapore, barely three hours by flight from some of the worst-affected cities in southern India, the virus has hardly been a health scare. Sure, there were 10 cases last year. But they were all introduced by infected foreign travellers. That changed last week.
A day after the newspaper headline, Singapore's health ministry said it suspected a local outbreak of Chikungunya fever: The 27-year-old who contracted the bug hadn't been abroad for several months.
Meanwhile, India is grappling with bird flu, an imported disease that it didn't know much about until recently.
In the developed world, the discontent with freer cross-border movement of goods, services and people centres on job losses and declining competitiveness of the subsidised sectors of the economy, especially agriculture.
In low- and middle-income countries, the most common complaint about globalisation concerns the loss of monetary-policy autonomy in the face of fickle-minded inflows of overseas capital and excessive exchange- rate volatility.
Adequate attention isn't being given to the other big risk associated with increased international economic integration: a global pandemic.
The threat, as the 2003 outbreak of Sars, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, demonstrated in so chilling a manner, is real enough.
At about one billion journeys a year, international travel has made the world 'tightly coupled', said Lonnie King, who directs the fight against pathogens that are transmitted from animals to humans at the Atlanta-based Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. An intertwined world is, in turn, a source of 'unprecedented vulnerability' for global health, Mr King said in an October presentation to the World Bank in Washington.
And travel is just one element of globalisation. Research has even linked imported used-car tyres - which often carry mosquito eggs - to dengue fever outbreaks.
But trade and travel have always been known to spread malady alongside prosperity. So why should we be alarmed now? Science today is much more advanced than in the late 19th century when Roland Ross proved the link between mosquitoes and malaria in his lab in India. Public healthcare systems are much more robust and better-funded than at the previous peak of globalisation a century ago.
If as many as 25 people are now crossing national borders every second, then information about diseases and knowledge of remedies, too, are getting disseminated faster than before. The real challenge lies in the realm of international law.
That became apparent in a most bizarre manner in late 2006 when Indonesia refused to share samples of the avian-flu virus with the World Health Organization. The country claimed a sovereign right to the samples under the Convention on Biological Diversity, an international legal treaty.
A lethal disease that threatens humanity can't reasonably be viewed as any nation's sovereign property.
Indonesia took recourse in this argument to make a point. Its position was this: Why should pharmaceutical companies get their samples from developing countries, develop patented products based on them and then price them out of reach of poor nations, including the original providers of vital information?
'The incident involving Indonesia's actions with virus samples illustrates both the importance and the limitations of international law in global health diplomacy,' says David Fidler, a law professor at Indiana University in Bloomington.
As long as the legal position remains unsettled, other developing countries may adopt a stance similar to Indonesia's to negotiate better terms for the drugs they need to combat pandemics. And pharmaceutical companies won't be able to shirk the bargaining.
'When possession is cloaked in the principle of sovereignty, those who require access to the property have to come to terms with the need to bargain for it,' Mr Fidler noted in a recent study.
More than the increased speed at which diseases can spread in a shrinking world, the bigger risk is the absence of an international order that has legal authority over both recalcitrant nation states and profiteering drugmakers.
Just as there's no global institution to either regulate the quality of cross- border capital flows or judge the fairness of currency manipulation by central banks, the job of apportioning responsibilities for cross-border disease prevention, too, currently isn't being done by anyone.
By initially suppressing information about the outbreak of Sars in Guangdong province, local Chinese officials eventually presented the world - and their own country - with a bigger problem than there would have been if stricter rules on international information-sharing, and penalties for flouting them, had existed.
Five years later, the world is even more interconnected and there still isn't enough in the law to assure us of sincere and swift global cooperation the next time there's an outbreak as deadly as Sars.
Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own
Nine probable cases of chikungunya fever detected as of Jan 20
Channel NewsAsia 21 Jan 08;
SINGAPORE: Nine probable cases of chikungunya fever have been detected as of Sunday.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) and the National Environment Agency (NEA) said all nine were assessed at the Communicable Disease Centre at Tan Tock Seng Hospital and five of them remain in the hospital for isolation and management.
Eight of the probable cases are from the same section of Clive Street, while the ninth is from the nearby vicinity of Dickson Road.
The MOH said more than 800 people in the Clive Street area have been screened since the first case was detected on 14 January.
The NEA inspected more than 2,500 premises in Little India, and a total of 33 indoor breeding and 10 outdoor breeding sites were detected and destroyed.
Residents and premise owners have been advised to check their premises daily to remove any stagnant water that may breed mosquitoes.
Persons infected with chikungunya fever should stay indoors to reduce the risk of further transmission of the virus.
Those who have been in the Clive Street area recently and have developed a fever are advised to consult their doctors. - CNA/ac
CHIKUNGUNYA OUTBREAK
One more found with disease, NEA steps up mosquito control efforts
Lee Hui Chieh, Straits Times 22 Jan 08;
ONE more individual has been found to be infected with chikungunya, the mosquito-borne, dengue-like disease, bringing the total number infected so far to nine.
Five are in the Communicable Disease Centre (CDC). The others have recovered.
The latest patient to be diagnosed lodged in Dickson Road, off Clive Street, where all the other cases originated.
All nine patients are foreign nationals, mostly from Bangladesh and India.
Like dengue, chikungunya is spread by the Aedes mosquito and causes similar symptoms such as fever, joint pains and nausea, but is rarely fatal.
The CDC's clinical director, Associate Professor Leo Yee Sin, told The Straits Times yesterdaythat as the number of infected patients is low, there is probably not a large 'human reservoir' of virus which can be spread to mosquitoes, and then to more humans.
She added: 'Coupled with good mosquito control, it is hopeful that this outbreak is under control.'
A Health Ministry spokesman noted that infections have been limited to the Clive Street area.
But the outbreak will be considered over only when no new cases have been found within 24 days of the previous one, she said.
Since health officers were first notified of a case by a general practitioner last Monday, they have taken blood samples from 822 people living or working within a 150m radius of the patient.
Over the past week, the National Environment Agency has intensified mosquito control efforts.
It has checked 2,514 premises, destroyed 43 breeding sites - 33 indoor, and 10 outdoor - and fined 27 people for having breeding sites on their properties.
It has also fogged the Clive Street vicinity repeatedly.
Many patients were from the same shophouse in Clive Street. Another, a male tourist from India, lodged in a shophouse opposite.
An assistant in a wine shop on the ground floor of the second shophouse, Mr Dhasan Munusamy, 40, said the shop gets about 20 customers a day now, down from about 30 before.
He said: 'Families are scared. We try to take care of our customers by spraying insecticide, and checking for stagnant water twice a day.'
Straits Times 22 Jan 08;
KOLKATA - VILLAGERS in eastern India are continuing to eat chickens killed by bird flu, prompting fears that the country's worst outbreak of the virus could spread.
West Bengal's Animal Resources Development Minister Anisur Rahman yesterday described the situation in the affected areas as 'horrible', and said the authorities needed to accelerate a cull of hundreds of thousands of chickens and ducks.
'The ignorance of villagers is one of the main hurdles. They are carrying the dead chickens without any protective gear,' he said.
'Most villagers are not aware of the disease. They are eating the dead chickens. Their children are playing with the infected chickens in the courtyards. It's horrible.'
Six districts in West Bengal state have reported outbreaks of avian flu among poultry.
The minister said there were fears that the disease could be spreading further afield in the state. Suspect poultry have been spotted in the hill resort of Darjeeling on the border with Nepal, and in several villages in Coochbehar bordering Bangladesh, which is also fighting a bird flu outbreak.
'Blood samples of the dead poultry have been sent for tests. We are awaiting the report,' said Mr Rahman.
He also said the authorities had so far killed 200,000 birds and were planning to cull 500,000 more in the next three to four days.
The outbreak is the third in India since 2006 and the worst so far because it is more widespread, according to the World Health Organisation.
Officials are having trouble containing the outbreak because it has largely struck poultry living in tens of thousands of homes rather than at farms, said Mr Rahman.
'Here you have to deal with poultry birds in backyards. In many places, the villagers consider the poultry as part of their family and do not want to part with them,' he said.
Many villagers have refused to give up their chickens, claiming government compensation was inadequate.
The state government said yesterday that it was allotting extra funds to compensate villagers.
On Sunday, police arrested 12 farmers in Birbhum, one of the worst-affected areas, who attacked five officials after health workers slaughtered their chickens, said a local government official.
No human cases of infection have been reported in India so far.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Business Times 22 Jan 08;
(BERLIN) Oil at more than US$90 a barrel is concentrating minds in the shipping industry. Higher fuel costs and mounting pressure to curb emissions are leading modern merchant fleets to rediscover the ancient power of the sail.
The world's first commercial ship powered partly by a giant kite sets off on a maiden voyage from Bremen to Venezuela today, in an experiment which inventor Stephan Wrage hopes can wipe 20 per cent, or US$1,600, from the ship's daily fuel bill.
'We aim to prove it pays to protect the environment,' Mr Wrage told Reuters. 'Showing that ecology and economics are not contradictions motivates us all.'
The 10,000-tonne MS Beluga SkySails - which will use a computer- guided kite to harness powerful ocean winds far above the surface and support the engine - combines modern technology with know-how that has been in use for millennia.
But if Skysails is a relatively elaborate solution, another development shows that the march of progress is not always linear: shipping companies seeking immediate answers to soaring fuel prices and the need to cut emissions are simply slowing down.
The world's 50,000 merchant ships, which carry 90 per cent of traded goods from oil, gas, coal and grains to electronic goods, emit 800 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. That is about 5 per cent of the world's total. Also, their fuel costs rose by as much as 70 per cent last year.
That dramatic increase has ship owners clambering onto a bandwagon to reduce speed as a way to save fuel and cut the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, said Hermann Klein, an executive at Germanischer Lloyd classification society.
'The number of shipping lines reducing speed to cut fuel costs has been growing steadily,' Mr Klein, whose organisation runs safety surveys on more than 6,000 ships worldwide, told Reuters.
'Slowing down by 10 per cent can lead to a 25 per cent reduction in fuel use. Just last week, a big Japanese container liner gave notice of its intention to slow down,' he added.
Shipping was excluded from the UN's Kyoto Protocol to slow climate change, and many nations want the industry to be made accountable for its impact on the climate in the successor to Kyoto, which runs to 2012.
In Hamburg, the Hapag-Lloyd shipping company is not waiting for 2012. It reacted to rising fuel prices by cutting the throttle on its 140 container ships travelling the world's oceans, ordering its captains to slow down.
The company in the second half of last year reduced the standard speed of its ships to 20 knots from from 23.5 knots, and said that it saved a 'substantial amount' of fuel.
The calculation used in shipping is complex: longer voyages mean extra operating costs, charter costs, interest costs and other monetary losses. But Hapag-Lloyd said that slowing down still paid off handsomely.
'We've saved so much fuel that we added a ship to the route and still saved costs,' said Klaus Heims, press spokesman at the world's fifth largest container shipping line. 'Why didn't we do this before?'
Climate change was an additional motivating factor. 'It had the added effect of cutting carbon dioxide emissions immediately,' Mr Heims said. 'Before, ships would speed up to 25 knots from the standard 23.5 to make up if time was lost in crowded ports. We calculated that five knots slower saves up to 50 per cent in fuel.'
Slowing down has not involved a decrease in capacity for the company. For container ships carrying mainly consumer goods from Hamburg to ports in the Far East, the round-trip at 20 knots now takes 63 days instead of 56, but to make up for this, it added a vessel to the route to bring the total to nine.
Hapag-Lloyd board member Adolf Adrion told a news conference in London on Jan 10 that speeds are now being cut further, to 16 knots from 20, for journeys across the Atlantic. 'It makes sense environmentally and economically,' he said.
The world's largest container shipping operator, Danish group AP Moller-Maersk, is also going slower to cut emissions although Eivind Kolding, chief executive of the group's container arm, told the January event that this would mean a delay to clients of 1.5 days. He added he believed that was a price customers were willing to pay for the sake of the environment.
'We reduce speeds where it makes sense,' said Thomas Grondorf, Moller-Maersk spokesman in Copenhagen. 'It entails careful planning and is only appropriate on certain routes.'
Not only are giant ocean-going vessels slowing down, the trend is also catching on among ferry services.
Norway's Color Line ferry between Oslo and Baltic destinations said in early January that it would add 30 minutes to the 20-hour trip from Oslo to Kiel: 'It's good for the environment and it's good for us economically,' said Color Line spokesman Helge Otto Mathisen in Oslo.
Color Line CEO Manfred Jansen has said that the company will save 1.4 million litres of fuel per year by sailing slower.
But if fuel prices keep rising, innovations like the kite powered Beluga SkySails could also pay off. German-based Beluga Shipping has already ordered two more vessels and Mr Wrage's company has a total of five orders in hand.
If the maiden voyage is a success, Mr Wrage, the company's chief executive, hopes to double the size of its kites to 320 sq m, and expand them again to 600 sq m in 2009. The company hopes to fit 1,500 ships by 2015.
At Germanischer Lloyd, Mr Klein said that the classification body has urged ship owners to explore other simple ways to save fuel, including using weather forecasts to pick optimum routes for vessel performance, regularly cleaning their vessels' hull and propeller to remove sediments that cause resistance, and using fuel additives to improve combustion efficiency.
'Ship efficiency is of paramount importance considering a fuel bill for a big container ship over a 25-year lifespan adds up to nearly US$900 million,' he said.
He also saw scope for designers to create slower speed engines with better fuel effiency rather than just having ship owners operate fast-propulsion engines at reduced speeds. -- Reuters
Jasper Copping, The Telegraph 20 Jan 08;
Honeybees will die out in Britain within a decade as virulent diseases and parasites spread through the nation's hives, experts have warned.
Whole colonies of bees are already being wiped out, with current methods of pest control unable to stop the problem.
The British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) said that if the crisis continued, honeybees would disappear completely from Britain by 2018, causing "calamitous" economic and environmental problems.
It called on the Government to restart shelved research programmes and to fund new ones to try to save the insects.
Tim Lovett, the association's president, said: "The situation has become insupportable and the Government is unwilling to take steps to avoid disaster.
"We're increasingly unable to cope with threats as they arise. No bees means a huge cost to agriculture, without touching on the ecological and environmental issues. We're facing calamitous results."
Last year, more than 11 per cent of all beehives inspected were wiped out, although losses were higher in some areas.
In London, about 4,000 hives - two-thirds of the bee colonies in the capital - were estimated to have died over last winter. Of the eight colonies inspected so far this year, all have been wiped out.
The losses are being blamed on Colony Collapse Disorder, a disease that has severely affected bee populations in America and Europe, and a resistant form of Varroa destructor, a parasitic mite that affects bees.
The decline in honeybees is risking the sustainability of home-grown food. They pollinate more than 90 of the flowering crops we rely on for food. They are estimated to contribute more than £1 billion a year to the national economy yet the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), spends an average of only £200,000 a year on research to protect them.
The BBKA will this week launch a campaign aimed at forcing ministers to take the plight of the bee more seriously, and to spend the £8 million over the next five years which it believes is essential to guarantee its survival.
At their annual meeting held earlier this month, the association's 11,200 members voted unanimously to condemn the Government's position.
At a showdown meeting, between Lord Rooker, the farming minister, and the BBKA last month, the minister refused to increase the spending, even though in November, he appeared to admit the severity of the threat, when he said: "If we do not do anything, the chances are that in 10 years' time we will not have any honeybees."
Mr Lovett added: "Defra has been alerted, but chooses to take no action. If nothing happens, we may not even have to wait 10 years."
Professor Francis Ratniek, a bee expert at Sheffield University, said: "If there was to be a bee collapse the effect on Britain would be huge.
"In Britain we haven't had our fair share of bee research funds and research into bee disease has decreased just as the threat to colonies is increasing. A complete die-off is a worst case scenario."
Charles Clover, The Telegraph 20 Jan 08;
Most carnivores bred in captivity and released back into the wild fail to cope and die, according to a study published on Monday.
Researchers are calling for a complete rethink of such reintroductions before others are carried out, including the suggested release of animals such as the lynx, wildcat and wolf into Scotland.
The study looked at reintroductions involving such carnivores as lynx, Amur tiger, cheetah, brown bear and otter, and found only one in three captive-bred animals released into their natural habitat survived.
Most of the deaths were caused by human activities, suggested the captive-bred animals were too trusting of humans, and some starved to death because they did not know how to hunt.
Kirsten Jule, lead author of the paper, said: "Animals in captivity do not usually have the natural behaviours needed for success in the wild. Their lack of hunting skills and their lack of fear towards humans are major disadvantages.
"We have suspected for some time that captive-born animals fared less well than wild animals, but here it is finally quantified, and the extent of the problem is critical."
The scientists from Exeter University looked at 45 reintroductions, involving 17 carnivore species. It found that over half the animals were killed by humans, generally in shootings and car accidents.
For example, of 46 captive-bred lynx released into Switzerland, only 15 survived.
Five wolves released into Yellowstone national park in the United States were shot by ranchers bordering the park.
The study, published online in the journal Biological Conservation, also found captive animals were more susceptible to starvation and disease than their wild counterparts and less able to form successful social groups.
Despite the problems raised in the research, Miss Jule still believes reintroduction projects are vital to conservation.
They need, however, to be reassessed to prepare animals better for living in their natural environment.
This could mean reducing contact with humans, creating opportunities for hunting while in captivity and encouraging the formation of natural social groups.
The study also points out the importance of talking to local communities and winning their support before any reintroductions are carried out, since most extinctions originally came about as a result of conflict with humans.
Miss Jule added: "If we are to try to redress the balance, it is important for us to help provide captive-born animals with the opportunity to gain the skills that they will need for survival in the wild. The next step is for scientists, conservationists and animal welfare groups to develop guidelines to help captive animals prepare for a new life in the wild."
James Regan and Fayen Wong, PlanetArk 22 Jan 08;
SYDNEY - Flooding across large tracts of eastern Australia was giving long-sought drought relief to farmers while forcing coal mines to curtail operations.
"Finally, some good rains," said Ron Storey of Australian Crop Forecasters, which upped its sorghum crop forecast by 17 percent to nearly 2 million tonnes on Monday.
The deluge that has caused rivers to overflow, forcing residents in rural towns to evacuate to higher ground, was set to provide long-absent water for irrigation and long-term benefits worth around A$1 billion (US$877 million), AgForce Queensland chief executive Brett De Hayr said.
However, farmers whose sorghum crops are nearly ready for harvest may see the tallest crops severely damaged and unable to stand up again once the flooding recedes.
"A lot of crops are physically washed away and there's a lot of mold and that will certainly have an impact," De Hayr said.
The Bureau of Meteorology has issued flood warnings for 13 rivers and creeks and a strong wind warning for coastal waters.
Xstrata Plc, Rio Tinto Ltd, BHP Billiton Ltd and Macarthur Coal Ltd all said their operations had been hampered by the deluge.
"The news will definitely spook the market and spot coal prices could potentially go through the roof," said Andrew Pedler, a resource analyst at Wilson HTM.
Mid-size producer Ensham Resources Pty Ltd, which had to use helicopters to evacuate workers stranded at the mine, said on Monday it has declared force majeure at its Ensham coal project, which has a production rate of about 8.4 million tonnes a year.
Queensland's rail operator was forced to halt coal transport on Friday after rail tracks were cut by flooding.
The state's emergency services department has dropped food by helicopter to isolated areas and brought in sandbags to construct temporary levees.
Xstrata, the world's largest exporter of thermal coal, said flooding at its Newlands and Collinsville mines had made it difficult to get to its mines and reduced output.
Xstrata spokesman James Rickards said it was too early to assess the damage and the impact on production.
Newlands produces about 10 million tonnes of thermal coal a year, most sold to Japanese utilities. The Collinsville mine produces a combined total of 5 million tonnes of coking and thermal coal annually.
Rio said workers at its 3.7 million-tonnes-a-year Kestrel coking and thermal coal mine were being advised to stay home.
"In the interest of safety across the business we have limited production at our operations to varying degrees," said BHP spokeswoman Emma Meade.
Coal mining in Queensland directly employs almost 23,000 people, according to Queensland Resources Council.
While output from collieries has been hurt, some companies were drawing on stockpiled coal to keep shipments moving, Greg Smith, general manager of the Dalrymple Bay coal terminal, said. (US$1=A$1.14) (Editing by Michael Urquhart)
Yahoo News 22 Jan 08;
The international Red Cross said on Monday it will refocus its budget and aid appeals for the coming year to better meet the growing threat of climate change and associated natural disasters.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) launched an appeal for 326 million Swiss francs (292 million dollars, 198 million euros) for 2008, saying that some three quarters of this aid will go towards health operations and disaster management.
The aid agency expects to launch another appeal for the same amount of money for 2009.
"For many people, climate change tends to be seen as more of an environmental, scientific or political issue," IFRC policy and communications head Encho Gospodinov told journalists.
"We believe it must also be seen as a humanitarian issue, first and foremost, an issue that is already impacting on the lives of millions of vulnerable people around the world," he added.
IFRC secretary general Markku Niskala said that the number of weather-related natural disasters, such as droughts and floods, has risen to around 400 each year in the last two years, from an average of 200 per year in the last decade.
"Climate change is also having a very real and very worrisome impact on water supplies, on food production and even on health crises," he said.
The IFRC said that changing weather patterns and melting glaciers are already threatening water resources, while changes in temperature and rainfall are expected to seriously damage agriculture in future years.
"The impact of climate change on disasters, on health crises -- on vulnerability in general -- emphasises the importance of making communities stronger and more resilient," Niskala said.
Arctic Oil Activity Seen Up, Eco-Risks Loom - Report
PlanetArk 22 Jan 08;
OSLO - Exploitation of the Arctic's huge oil and gas wealth poses a growing danger to an icy wilderness that can recover only slowly from heavy oil spills, a report by the eight-nation Arctic Council said on Monday.
"Oil spills can kill large numbers of animals by covering them in oil, and create long-term contamination that can affect populations and ecosystems for decades," an overview report by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), an Arctic Council body, said.
According to some estimates, as much as a quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas may lie in the Arctic,.
"With rising global demand, oil and gas activity in the region is expected to increase," the report said.
The Arctic already produces about a tenth of the world's crude oil and a quarter of its gas, with about 80 percent of the oil and 99 percent of the region's gas coming from Russia, the report said.
"The Arctic is generally considered to be vulnerable to oil spills due to slow recovery of cold, highly seasonal ecosystems, and the difficulty of clean up in remote, cold regions, especially in waters where sea ice is present," it said.
Around 100 scientists have been working on the report "Arctic Oil and Gas 2007" since 2002.
The report was delayed until this year from 2007, and sources familiar with the process said that the United States and Sweden had blocked publication of policy recommendations.
The difficulty stemmed partly from the identification of vulnerable areas in the Arctic, an official said. The report mentioned the Barents Sea and Bering Sea as two such areas.
The Arctic Council's member states are Canada, Denmark, -- including Greenland and the Faroe Islands -- Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States.
EXXON VALDEZ
AMAP was established in 1991 to implement parts of an Arctic environmental protection strategy, to provide information on risks to the environment and to advise governments on preventive and remedial actions to deal with them.
"While routine oil and gas activities have produced relatively little hydrocarbon contamination, accidents such as oil spills are a different story," the AMAP report said.
The report noted some big spills on land, including one caused by a ruptured pipeline in 1994 in Russia's Komi Republic, but it said: "To date there have been no large oil spills in the Arctic marine environment from oil and gas activities."
It said, however, that the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill off southern Alaska and spills in the North Sea -- neither of which are in the Arctic proper -- "give some indication of the likely impacts should such a spill occur."
Natural seepage is a bigger source of oil contamination into the Arctic environment than human sources, the report said. "Routine oil and gas operations currently contribute a very small fraction of the total input," it said.
Where spillages occur, though, their local intensity means they inflict greater damage. (Reporting by John Acher, editing by Ralph Boulton)
Simon Webb, Yahoo News 21 Jan 08;
Bodman earlier repeated his call for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to boost output at its February 1 meeting.
The world's largest energy consumer the United States on Monday called for a global push for increased energy efficiency to help meet rising demand and alleviate the impact of high prices on economic growth.
The U.S. consumes about 21 million barrels per day of oil, around a quarter of the world's supply. Record oil prices have cooled U.S. appetite for gas guzzling cars and, along with increasing environmental concerns, leant weight to calls for more sparing use of energy.
The country last month passed a bill requiring increased fuel efficiency in vehicles for the first time in over 30 years.
"We must promote increased energy efficiency," U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said in a speech to a green energy conference. "The biggest source of immediately available 'new' energy is the energy that we waste every day."
Energy efficiency measures "will not only take some pressure off demand, but also improve the health of our shared environment," he said.
The challenge of meeting growing energy demand was global and required huge investment in both conventional and alternative energy sources in the developed and developing world alike, he said. New technology needed to be rapidly deployed to diversify the global energy supplies.
"The world needs safe, reliable, clean, affordable and diverse energy supplies - and in considerably greater numbers than it now has... to do that we need a global response... and, by that I mean all nations, including those that produce our world's oil supply."
Bodman earlier repeated his call for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to boost output at its February 1 meeting.
To encourage investment in clean and efficient oil and gas production, Bodman called for an end to "market interventions," without specifically mentioning OPEC.
"It is time to stop doing the things that we know will not help," he said. "We know that purposeful market distortions - such as rationing supply, cutting production, or creating price floors and ceilings - do not work."
Bodman was on the third stop of a trip to the Middle East taking in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Egypt.
(Reporting by Simon Webb; editing by James Jukwey)
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