NEWRI brings researchers closer to water and environment industry in Singapore

Channel NewsAsia 19 Mar 08;

SINGAPORE : Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is expanding its research efforts in environmental and water technologies.

To do this, it is getting researchers to work even more closely with industry partners. And this is the role of the new Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI).

Tests carried out in the labs have a big impact on Singapore's long-term needs, when it comes to how the country manages its environmental and water resources. That is why NTU has decided to set up an institute to coordinate the efforts of various research groups.

NEWRI will facilitate and present the latest technologies in the environment and water industry.

It also hopes to encourage more partnerships between NTU and the industry.

Professor Ng Wun Jern, Executive Director, Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute, said, "R&D does not happen naturally, you need the translation to come in so that the results of the research can be understood by the people who are working out in the industry. And then they can do the developmental work."

NEWRI also aims to expand its partnerships to the region and the other parts of the world.

It has already established links with organisations in Japan and the United States.

Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, Environment and Water Resources Minister, said, "Singapore is ready to take on a leading role in the environmental and water technology sector. Our investments in research and technology over the past few decades have given rise to significant local capabilities in this field. In the last two years, we have also seen the industry and R&D eco-system continue to evolve and grow."

NEWRI also plans to promote collaborations between researchers and industry players, beyond the environment and water industry. - CNA/ms

New hub to turn green ideas into reality
Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute to oversee 2 water research centres
Tania Tan, Straits Times 20 Mar 08;
A NEW institute was launched yesterday that promises to pump money and brain power into green research here.

The Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute (Newri) will focus on turning ideas - from managing trash to detecting pollution - into reality, officials said.

Located at the Nanyang Technological University, the institute was part of three initiatives launched yesterday by the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim.

Dr Yaacob also opened two centres dedicated to environment and water research and awarded three scholarships.

The Government has earmarked research into green solutions as a pillar of economic growth, said Dr Yaacob. By tapping into a 'wellspring of ideas for research', the institute is an added boost to Singapore's burgeoning water-related industry, he said.

In the last two years, international water companies, which do everything from treatment to consultancy, have set up shop here.

The firms, which include Siemens and CH2MHill, have helped to spur the demand for water-related research, including purification.

'We function as an ecosystem, with different entities working together to pursue a common vision of environmental research,' said Newri's executive director, Professor Ng Wun Jern.

'Our mission is to meet industry demand.'

Two new centres under the Newri banner - the Singapore Membrane Technology Centre (SMTC) and the DHI-NTU Water & Environment Research Centre and Education Hub (DHI-NTU Centre) - were also launched yesterday.

Helmed by Professor Anthony Fane, the SMTC will focus its research on the use of thin films, called membranes, that act as super filters separating contaminants from water.

'We hope to build on the existing success of Singapore's water technology,' said the former director of the United Nations' Centre for Membrane Science.

The two centres, along with six others under Newri's purview, will focus on environmental and water research, including urban water and garbage management.

Also high on the agenda is building on the existing pool of PhD students through training and education programmes, said Prof Ng.

The two centres hope to produce some 30 PhD students over a five-year period.

As Singapore aims to woo more research and development companies, PhD researchers are becoming an increasingly important commodity.

For example, the environmental arm of the National Research Foundation - NRF (Environmental and Water Technologies) - has committed $30 million over five years to postgraduate scholarships.

'Young talent is critical in driving our research,' said Prof Ng.

Already on their way to doctoral degrees are Mr Winson Lay and Mr Shi Jing Sheng. They received PhD scholarships yesterday at the Newri opening ceremony.

They were joined by Miss Sri Hernani, who was awarded a scholarship to pursue a master's in environmental engineering.

'Getting this scholarship is like opening a gateway to water research,' said Mr Lay, who will be pursuing his degree at the SMTC.

Miss Hernani's scholarship is funded by NRF (EWT) and United States-based water company Black & Veatch.

Read more!

Consulting firm looking for Singapore's Happiest Person

Channel NewsAsia 19 Mar 08;

SINGAPORE : A local consulting firm is looking for Singapore's happiest person. It is part of an effort to organise a well-being conference, which will be held in April.

A number one airport, and one of the busiest ports in the world - Singapore tops the charts in various rankings.

But when it comes to happiness, a recent survey found that nine in 10 Singaporeans are stressed out.

So it looks like leadership-consulting firm Global Leadership Academy has a daunting task.

The Singapore-based company is embarking on an inaugural search for Singapore's Happiest Person.

This is part of its "The New Science of Happiness and Well-Being Conference", to be held in April.

Philip Merry, Founder, Global Leadership Academy, said, "I want people to just look at (the fact) that happiness is all around you, but most of all it's inside, and we don't spend enough time just counting our blessings and realising just how fortunate we are."

To find that person who suits the bill, the firm will choose from a pool of people who are above 18, in a two-week campaign, which started on March 16.

Anyone can nominate a Singapore citizen by email (happiest@simply-happy.com), to be included in the pool.

The "chosen one" will be judged on their smile, ability to bring happiness to others and how he or she remains positive.

A strong sense of belonging and community is also a prerequisite.

But do these qualify as the attributes of Singapore's Happiest Person?

Some of the attributes cited by people Channel NewsAsia spoke to include "being successful", "money", "security and love", and "family support and friends".

Organisers will reveal the identity of Singapore's Happiest Person on April 4. - CNA/ms

Hunt for the happiest person in Singapore
Straits Times 20 Mar 08;

RECENT surveys may have found that nine in 10 Singaporeans out there feel that life is stressful and they need more fun.

But it is not deterring one man's search for the elusive 'one' who is happy.

Led by the appropriately named Mr Philip Merry, chief executive officer and founder of Global Leadership Academy (GLA), the hunt for Singapore's Happiest Person began on Sunday and will continue till March 30.

Singaporeans can nominate anyone they know, but that person has to be above the age of 18, with a smiley disposition and a strong sense of belonging.

He or she also must contribute to society and be happy 'no matter what life throws at them', said Mr Merry, a 58-year-old trainer.

The effort is part of a well-being conference to be held in the middle of next month - the New Science of Happiness and Well-Being Conference.

But Mr Merry's mission might be a daunting one - the 2006 Happy Planet Index report ranked Singapore a low 131 among 178 countries surveyed.

Those results were echoed

in the advertising and marketing firm Grey Group's Eye On Asia 16-nation survey last year, which found 90 per cent of Singaporeans are less than happy.

Mr Merry, who has been based in Singapore since 1990, admits that Singaporeans do consider themselves less happy than many despite material wealth and economic success.

There is a difference between being successful and being happy, he noted.

'Success is getting what you want. But happiness is wanting what you get,' he said.

Still, Mr Merry is confident that there are people out there 'infecting others with his or her sunny disposition'.

He happily declares that he has already got three candidates since Sunday.

He concluded: 'Everyone searches for happiness - be it in success in career, in relationships, or in life. Some people may have already found it...

' They are the people who are with ready smiles no matter what, and with whom others want to be around.'

The top three candidates will be revealed on April 4 and Singapore's Happiest Person will be revealed at the conference.

Nominations for the happiest Singaporeans should be sent to happiest@simply-happy.com or mailed to 'Singapore's Happiest Person', GLA, Level 31, Six Battery Road, Singapore 049909

Read more!

Nature's Answers to the Sanitation Challenge

UNEP website 20 Mar 08;
Message from Achim Steiner, UN Under-secretary General and UNEP Executive Director on the Occasion of World Water Day 2008

At a prison on the East coast of Africa, in-mates are pioneering a sanitation project that is working with nature to neutralize human wastes.

The initiative, involving the development of a wetland to purify sewage, is expected to cost a fraction of the price of high-tech treatments while also triggering scores of environmental, economic and social benefits.

Apart from wastewater management, the project is to assess using the wetland- filtered water for irrigation and fish farming giving prisoners a new source of protein or sold to local markets, alternative livelihoods.

Part of the so-called 'black wastewater' with high concentrations of human waste will also be used for the production of biogas.

The biogas can be used as a fuel for cooking, heating and lighting thereby cutting electricity bills, saving the prison service money and cutting emissions from the 4,000-strong jail, including staff and in-mates, to the atmosphere.

News of the project, financed by the government of Norway and the Global Environment Facility with support from a wide range of partners including Kenya's Coast Development Authority and National Environment Management Authority supported by the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and the University of Wageningen, the Free University of Amsterdam and the NGO 'Aqua-4-All' in the Netherlands, comes as the globe marks World Water Day 2008 in the UN International Year of Sanitation.

The day and the year are aimed at raising awareness and galvanizing action to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015. These include halving the proportion of people with no access to sanitation from the current 40 per cent of the global population or an estimated 2.6 billion people.

Sewage pollution, a great deal of which ends up in coastal waters, is estimated to cause four million lost 'man-years' annually in terms of human ill-health—equal to an economic loss of $16 billion a year.

In many developed countries, part of the answer over the past half century has been found in ever more sophisticated, multi-million dollar water treatment works.

But as the new project at the Shimo la Tewa jail in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa highlights there are other, less costly ways of addressing the same problem with important spin-offs.

The sewerage collection and wetland purification system, plus labour and construction costs and including upgrading of sanitary facilities inside the prison amount to some $110,000 or $25 per person served—something of a bargain.

These do not include benefits likely to accrue as a result of diminished economic costs to the wider environment - reductions of solids that can choke coral reefs and nutrients that can increase risk of de-oxygenated 'dead zones' alongside cuts in bacterial pollution that can contaminate shellfish and ruin someone's holiday in a locale where tourism income is important to the local economy.

Meanwhile the project is likely to have benefits for wildlife including birds and marine organisms.

Thus, in its own modest way, it can play a part in assisting to achieve the global target of reducing the rate of loss of biodiversity by 2010.

The scheme is among a raft of projects being undertaken under the Addressing Land-Based activities in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO-LaB) initiative which forms part of the UNEP-brokered Nairobi Convention treaty—a regional seas agreement.

It is hoped the lessons learnt can be applied to other parts of the world so that the multiple challenges of sanitation and pollution can in part be viewed through a nature-based lens.

The project is among others also working with the coastal Ndlame communities in Port Alfred South Africa using ponds of natural algae to treat wastewaters including sewage.

The algae, a freshwater or marine organism, assist in de-toxifying the pollutants and is then harvested as a commercial fertilizer and protein-rich animal feed.

The total project cost here is around $188,000 with economic benefits from utilizing treated wastewater and fertilizer production offsetting the price by $50,000 a year.

Similar creative and nature-based projects are being pioneered on Pemba Island, Tanzania and in Dar es Salaam.

The sustainability challenges of the 21st century, including those that relate to water and sanitation, demand more intelligent and creative solutions than perhaps have been deployed in the past.

Working with nature rather than against it is part of that intelligent decision-making that may prove a faster, more cost effective and more economically attractive way of achieving local and international health and poverty goals. w

Read more!

Let's just learn to save water

Teh Jen Lee, The New Paper 20 Mar 08;

NO matter what fancy technology scientists come up with, you and I still hold the key to solving water problems.

So said Dr Andrew Benedek, the man who will be receiving $300,000 for being the first winner of the Lee Kuan Yew Water prize.

Dr Benedek, 64, pioneered the use of low-pressure membranes to make drinking water from highly-polluted water.

Singapore's NEWater is produced from sewage water using his membranes, which are made from petrochemicals.

The Canadian researcher and water techno-entrepreneur, who is based in San Diego, California, beat 39 other nominations from 15 countries after a rigorous selection process.

But in accepting the coveted prize, his advice about the best way to tackle the world's water woes was: 'Saving water is always the most cost-effective way.'

In particular, he encouraged people to install toilets and showers that are designed for low-water use.

In a video press conference yesterday announcing him as the winner, Dr Benedek said the Lee Kuan Yew Water prize is 'the most important honour that anyone in the water field can get'.

Mr Tan Gee Paw, chairman of the nominating committee, said: 'Through Dr Benedek's significant research and development contribution and commercialisation efforts, a superior low-cost technology for water treatment is now available for large-scale use.'

Low-pressure membranes require less energy, cost less and are easier to use compared to other conventional water purification technologies.

Such membranes can be used during the pre-treatment stage of desalination, making it cheaper and more viable for countries to make drinking water out of sea water.

The nominees were evaluated on how good the technology, policy or programme is, how widely used it is and how it benefits people.

The award is the highlight of the first Singapore International Water Week, which will be held at Suntec City Convention Centre from 23 to 27 June.

Read more!

A thirsty planet looks for solutions to water shortage

Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 19 Mar 08;

A world without fresh water would be a world bereft of humans, and yet one in five people lacks regular access to this most basic of life-sustaining substances.

By 2025, fully a third of the planet's growing population could find itself scavenging for safe drinking water, the United Nations has warned ahead of World Water Day on Saturday.

More than two million people in developing countries -- the vast majority children -- die every year from diseases associated with unsanitary water.

There are a number of interlocking causes for this scourge.

Global economic growth, population pressures and the rise of mega-cities have all driven water use to record levels.

Mexico City, Jakarta and Bangkok, to name a few, have underground water sources -- some of them nonrenewable -- depleting at alarming rates.

In Beijing, home to 16 million, aquifers have fallen by more than a dozen metres (40 feet) in 30 years, forcing the government to earmark tens of billions of dollars for a scheme to ferry water from the Yangzte River in the south to the country's parched north.

Aggravating the shortages are pathogen and chemical pollution, which have transformed many primary sources of water in the developing world into toxic repositories of disease.

Desperation forces people to consume these contaminated waters.

"In the coming decades, water scarcity may be a watchword that prompts action ranging from wholesale population migration to war, unless new ways to supply clean water are found," comment a team of researchers in a review of water purification technology published Thursday in the British journal Nature.

But even as scientists and governments look for ways to satisfy a thirsty world, another threat looms on the horizon: global warming.

Rising sea levels are already forcing salt water into aquifers beneath megadeltas that are home to tens of millions, and changing weather patterns are set to intensify droughts in large swathes of Africa, southern Europe and Asia, according to UN's Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC).

Experts and policy makers point to three broad categories of initiatives to ease the shortage of clean, drinkable water, especially in the world's poorest regions: sanitation, purification, and water management.

"Poor sanitation combines with a lack of safe drinking water and inadequate hygiene to contribute to the terrible global death toll," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said earlier this month.

"Every 20 seconds, a child dies as a result of the abysmal sanitation conditions endured by some 2.6 billion people globally," he said in launching the International Year of Sanitation.

Less than half the households in major Asian cities are connected to sewers, which means that tonnes of raw sewage runs into rivers and oceans, according to the UN.

In Latin America and Africa that figure drops to 40 and 20 percent, respectively.

While governments attempt to improve sanitation infrastructure, scientists are developing new technology to purify the water available, said Mark Shannon, a professor at the University of Illinois and Director of the US government funded Center of Advanced Materials for the Purification of Water with Systems.

"Desalination with reverse osmosis is already the largest single growth area in terms of new water supplies," he told AFP in an interview.

New techniques of reverse osmosis use membranes with nanometer-size pores to filter out salt and other contaminants from water, and could for the first time pave the way for industrial-scale use.

Micro-filters are also used to decontaminate bodies of water increasingly laced with pesticides, arsenic, heavy metals, nitrates and pharmaceutical derivatives.

Current methods of decontamination, however, remain "challenging, expensive and unreliable," said Shannon, and will take years to perfect.

A third method of purification -- and the one most relevant to the poor nations -- is removing or killing bacteria, viruses and other pathogens through disinfection.

"Pathogens are still the biggest problem in the world today in terms of safe water," Shannon said.

With worldwide food production set to expand 50 percent by 2030, scientists are also developing genetically modified grain plants that consume less water and can withstand harsh conditions.

Researchers in the US, for example, have developed genetically engineered rice with a higher tolerance for drought, salt and low temperatures, the three main causes of crop failure.

Read more!

Investors warm to water as shortages mount

Gerard Wynn, Reuters 19 Mar 08;

LONDON (Reuters) - As liquidity is drained from credit and money markets and pours into oil and gold, another asset class that could offer long-term returns to the discerning investor is water.

Water shortages are on the rise -- stemming from soaring demand, growing populations, rising living standards and changing diets. A lack of supply is compounded by pollution and climate change.

Investors are mobilizing funds to buy the assets that control water and improve supplies, especially in developing countries such as China where urban populations are booming, further tightening supply.

"Many of these cities have tripled in size in the last 10 years so there's just an unaddressed need, there's an enormous opportunity for investment," said Kimberly Tara, chief executive of commodities investor FourWinds Capital Management.

FourWinds will this year start raising global funds initially of up to 3 billion euros ($4.68 billion) to invest in water, Tara said.

Water shortage is already a serious problem in many regions of the world, as underlined in a December report from Zurich-based Sustainable Asset Management (SAM), which manages about 8.5 billion Swiss francs in assets.

These include southern Spain, the Maghreb, the Middle East, Central Asia, Pakistan, southern India and northern China. In the Americas, the U.S. mid-west, Mexico and the Andes are the worst-hit areas. Eastern Australia is also badly affected.

China is a particularly strong example. It has a fifth of the world's population but just 7 percent of the water.

Most of the length of the country's five main rivers is unsafe for direct human contact, and the country will have to build 1,000 wastewater treatment plants between 2006 and 2010 to meet national pollution targets, Citigroup analysts say.

But not everyone will benefit. While some Chinese cities are now investment hotspots, rural areas are being by-passed, underscoring a trend of under-funding in poorer regions and countries most vulnerable to shortages.

Large equipment suppliers for sourcing water and treating waste will not operate in parts of the developing world, said Merrill Lynch analyst Robert Miller-Bakewell.

"They're pretty selective about where they go. That means a lot of this need will not necessarily be addressed in the near-term," he said.

"The technologies exist. You and I and the World Bank and everyone else can identify the need. The big problem all along is about who's going to pay for it all."

Parts of Africa are especially dry -- both of clean water and cash -- at a time when prices are rising for the steel and concrete raw materials for treatment plants.

A combination of unsafe water and poor sanitation kills about 1.8 million children annually, a Merrill report estimates.

TREATMENT, NOT WATER

The FourWinds Capital Management investment approach is to go after projects in water treatment and desalination and companies which make meters, pipes and pumps.

Little money stands to be made from owning and charging customers for water itself, because governments subsidize this to ensure the vital asset is most under-priced when in greatest need.

"It's very intuitive -- you (the government) must have the water, and so you'll pay anything to anyone who will get that water to you, but the water itself you have to control. So the price of the water is not the place to invest," said Tara.

"We've been researching water for about two and a half years now, looking at different ways to invest," she added.

A warming world is expected to play havoc with the world's rainfall patterns -- with less rain in heavier bursts -- and is likely to melt mountain glaciers on which hundreds of millions of people in Asia and South America depend.

Some governments fret that the attention paid to fighting the causes of climate change, especially greenhouse gas emissions, has been at the expense of coping with the damage it is already wreaking, or that is around the corner.

A collapse of the Indian summer monsoon from as early as next year is one of the world's most immediate, serious climate risks according to research posted by Britain's University of East Anglia last month.

Drought is perhaps the most immediate of climate change threats, but even without global warming the aspirations of new middle-classes in Asia are a challenge.

An average European uses 150-400 liters of water daily for their personal requirements, the SAM report said. Consumption in the United States is almost twice as high but in China, the figure is only 90 liters per day on average, while in many developing countries it is below the 50 liters a day "critical threshold" set by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

CLEANTECH

Where there are customers who can afford them, new technologies may offer a profitable solution to excessive water extraction, for example by agriculture which is the biggest user by sector, mainly for irrigation.

The production of one kg of beef requires 16,000 liters of water, according to www.waterfootprint.org, a Web site run by the Dutch University of Twente and the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education. That compares with 1,500 liters for a kg of grain.

Like FourWinds Capital, agriculture firm Monsanto has been swotting up on climate change, said its head of technology strategy and development David Fischhoff.

Along with other agriculture companies such as AGCO Corp, Monsanto's share price has risen recently on the back of spiraling grain prices and resulting higher farmer incomes, partly caused by droughts in Australia and south-east Europe.

Over the past 12 months it has tasked its top 20 experts to digest how the latest climate science will affect the company.

"Drought is our leading example of a problem to solve," Fischhoff said.

The recent discovery of new genes and other scientific advances have aided the first deliberate biotech targeting of drought-tolerance with new crops now in the pipeline, he said.

"The most advanced of these is now a drought-tolerant corn product ... commercializable within several years. We expect this to be the first generation of an ongoing stream."

Monsanto is currently trading at nearly 39 times its forecast earnings for the year to August 2008: almost double the valuation for an emblem of growth in another sector, Google, according to data from Reuters Estimates.

In industry, another major water user, innovation in water-recycling is exciting former dotcom entrepreneurs, in a trend mirroring Silicon Valley's recent enthusiasm for alternative energy to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

British-based entrepreneur Daniel Ishag made money as founder of e-Spotting, which prospered from selling Web search links to advertisers: he now sees an opportunity to clean up on waste water.

The key contribution of his new company Bluewater Bio, he says, is to keep alive and grow bacteria which munch their way through the waste that comes out of factories, homes and landfill sites, saving on chemicals and micro-organisms.

He compared the state of water-processing technology to driving an antique car: "There are better pumps and pipes but the process is the same. It's about continued access to water, and not a lot of money is going into technology to do that."

(Reporting by Gerard Wynn; Editing by Sara Ledwith)

Read more!

Water everywhere, but not clean enough to drink

Reuters 19 Mar 08;

(Reuters) - Following are some facts about strains on the world's freshwater supplies:

OVERVIEW:

* Seventy percent of the world's surface is covered by water but 97.5 percent of that is salt water. Of the remaining 2.5 percent that is freshwater, 68.7 percent is frozen in ice caps and glaciers. Less than one percent is available for human use.

* More than 1.2 billion people, about a fifth of humanity, lack access to safe drinking water, according to U.N. data. About 2.6 billion, or 40 percent, have no access to sanitation. About 71 percent have no connection to a public sewerage system.

* Forty-four percent of the world's population live in areas affected by high water stress and the figure is likely to rise to 47 percent by 2030 because of factors including global warming and a rising population.

* Agriculture absorbs 74 percent of all water taken by humans from rivers, lakes, aquifers and wetlands against 18 percent for industry and 8 percent for municipalities.

DRINK AND HEALTH:

* Governments set a Millennium Goal in 2000 of halving the proportion of people with no access to safe drinking water by 2015. The goal is within reach, according to a 2007 U.N. review, but the world is lagging in a linked goal of halving the proportion with no access to sanitation.

* Diarrhea and malaria are the main water-related diseases, with most deaths among young children. Every 20 seconds a child dies because of poor sanitation -- or 1.5 million a year. Every year more than 200 million tons of human waste go uncollected.

* Achieving the twin 2015 drinking water and sanitation goals will require spending of $11.5 billion extra a year. Every dollar spent on sanitation brings an average benefit of $7, mainly because of better health.

AGRICULTURE/INDUSTRY

* The amount of water needed for crop production will rise 60-90 percent by 2050.

* A calorie of food needs about a liter of water to produce -- typical food consumption is 3,000 calories a day per person, or 3,000 liters of water. A kilo of grain takes 500-4,000 liters, a kilo of industrially produced meat 10,000 liters.

* Rising production of biofuels -- from crops such as maize, soybeans or sugarcane -- could complicate efforts to feed the world and may add strains to irrigation.

* Industry can often cut its water demand by 40-90 percent, given proper incentives, according to U.N. data.

CLIMATE CHANGE

* The U.N. Climate Panel says global warming, stoked by human use of fossil fuels and accelerating the thaw of the Himalayas, will disrupt farming from China to India. In Africa, up to 250 million people may suffer more water stress by 2020.

* World sea levels are projected to rise by between 18 and 59 cms (7-24 inches) by 2100, partly because of runoff from melting ice caps.

Sources: U.N. Climate Panel (www.ipcc.ch); OECD (www.oecd.org); International Water Management Institute (www.iwmi.cgiar.org); U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (www.fao.org); UNESCO (www.unesco.org/water/wwap/facts_figures/mdgs.shtml);

(Writing by Alister Doyle, Additional reporting by Nagesh Narayana)

-- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on:

http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/

Read more!

British scientist's 'virtual water' a winning concept

Straits Times 20 Mar 08;

He gets Stockholm prize for devising way to compute how much water is used in production

STOCKHOLM - A BRITISH scientist who developed a way to calculate how much water is used in the production of anything from a cup of coffee to a hamburger was awarded the 2008 Stockholm Water Prize yesterday.

Professor John Anthony Allan, 71, of the University of London in Britain won the award for introducing the concept of 'virtual water', a calculation method that has changed the nature of trade policy and research.

The Stockholm International Water Institute said this idea is now imbedded in the production of food and industrial products.

'People do not only consume water when they drink it or take a shower,' the institute said. 'Behind that morning cup of coffee, there are 140 litres of water that were consumed to grow, produce, package and ship the beans.'

That is about as much water as a person in England uses on average for all daily drinking and household needs.

'For a single hamburger, an estimated 2,400 litres of water are needed. In the US, the average person consumes nearly 7,000 litres of virtual water every day.'

Prof Allan will receive the US$150,000 (S$207,000) cash award and a symbolic glass sculpture at a ceremony in Stockholm on Aug 21.

The Stockholm Water Prize is awarded annually to individuals and institutions for making a substantial contribution to the preservation, enhancement or availability of the world's water resources.

First awarded in 1991, the prize was founded by several companies, including Fujitsu Siemens, General Motors Corp, Swedish Railways and the Water Environment Federation.

The UN Climate Panel has said the world faces strains on fresh water supplies linked to global warming.

In a report last year, it projected that 250 million people in Africa could suffer greater water shortages by 2020, while faster thawing of Himalayan glaciers could disrupt flows on which millions of people in Asia depend.

Taking the issue of water very seriously is Singapore, which on Tuesday named Canadian researcher Andrew Benedek as the inaugural recipient of the S$300,000 Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize, to be awarded during the Singapore International Water Week in June.

Dr Benedek, 64, pioneered the use of low-pressure membranes to make drinking water from highly polluted water.

REUTERS, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Read more!

Step up fight against Great Lakes invaders: groups

Andrew Stern, Reuters 19 Mar 08;

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Government inaction threatens to undermine the multibillion-dollar fight against non-native species that threaten the Great Lakes, environmental groups said on Wednesday.

Utilities and municipalities reliant on the five lakes that collectively make up the world's largest surface body of fresh water already spend an estimated $1.3 billion a year clearing zebra mussels from intake pipes and filters, they said.

The mussel, first discovered in the lakes 20 years ago, along with its cousin the quagga mussel, the round goby and other invaders, pose serious threats to the lakes' ecosystem by crowding out other species and filtering out food vital to fish.

The mussels' proficiency at filtering lake water have led to algae blooms that spoil beaches, prompted botulism outbreaks that have caused fish and bird die-offs, created "dead zones" in the lakes and triggered episodes of smelly drinking water.

The total cost of invasive species in the Great Lakes, which provide drinking water to 40 million people, is an estimated $5 billion a year, said Andy Buchsbaum of the National Wildlife Federation.

The groups called on Canada and the United States to tighten regulations on how ships plying the lakes through the St. Lawrence Seaway deal with their ballast water, which is thought to be the main source of invasive species.

Current rules require ships to flush ballast tanks with ocean water but are not closely enforced, and are inadequate to kill hardy species, the environmentalists said. Ship-board technologies that kill anything living inside ballast tanks are available.

"Each year the Seaway reopens without adequate protections risks new invasive species," said Jennifer Nalbone of Great Lakes United. "Our federal governments are inviting another catastrophe."

Meanwhile, the invading mussels have continued to spread, turning up as far east as the Hudson River and as far west as California reservoirs and Lake Mead.

(Editing by Xavier Briand)

Read more!

Soaring rice prices 'could sow unrest'

Straits Times 20 Mar 08;

Spectre of riots by hungry people looms over poor countries, rice expert warns

LOS BANOS (THE PHILIPPINES) - AS THE price of rice hovers near record levels, many poor countries face the spectre of riots by hungry people, according to one of the world's leading rice experts.

Key producers India and Vietnam have curtailed exports, sending some of the world's largest rice importers, including the Philippines, scrambling to procure supplies for their people.

The spot price - the price that is quoted for immediate payment and delivery of a commodity - recently hit more than US$700 (S$970) a tonne, more than three times the price five years a go.

Industry officials in Thailand, the world's top exporter, have warned that the price of rice could rise to US$1,000 a tonne.

Vietnam, the world's thirdlargest exporter of the grain, also faces the prospect of a return of the deadly crop disease that affected its crop yield badly last year.

These are just some of the problems that keep Mr Robert Zeigler, head of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), up late at night.

Located at Los Banos, a university town south of Manila, Irri is regarded as the one of the world's premier centres for rice research.

Looking out across padi fields from his office, Mr Zeigler quoted a Latin American saying: 'When the price of rice rises, governments fall.'

'If people don't have enough to eat and they don't have enough money to buy enough to eat, that translates frequently into social unrest,' he told AFP in an interview.

The US-born expert said the Bangladesh cyclone, flooding in Java, a plague of pests and virus in Vietnam, and surging demand from explosive economic growth in China and India, the world's principal rice producers and consumers, have drained global stocks.

'I worry about Indonesia because it has been trying to source rice,' he said.

'I'm concerned about just about every country in Africa, because they're all major rice importers and rice has become a staple. A few years ago, rice was a luxury for them.'

New Delhi raised its export price recently to US$750 a tonne while Vietnam has been 'slow to release licences for export' after blocking exports in the middle of last year, Mr Zeigler said.

He said there was a real threat of social unrest in Bangladesh as floods had virtually wiped out its entire rice harvest. And he warned: 'It's not in India's national security and interest to have instability in Bangladesh.'

He said that when IRRI was established in 1960, it developed high-yielding, short-stemmed rice varieties which heralded the so-called Green Revolution, boosting global output, cutting food prices and lifting hundreds of millions of rice-eating Asians out of poverty.

But now there are two billion more people to feed on essentially the same area of farmland, he said. Government investments in farm research and infrastructure, including irrigation, have plunged to 'well under half' of pre-Green Revolution levels, he added.

Yield growth has also flattened out as populations have soared, and policymakers were blind-sided by the rise of the biofuels industry that took away more farmland, and grains themselves, from the food chain.

'Now we're paying the price of complacency,' he said.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Read more!

New Zealand drought costing farmers over $1b

Today Online 20 Mar 08;

WELLINGTON — The drought gripping many parts of New Zealand is expected to cost the country's farmers NZ$1.24 billion ($1.38 billion) in the year to June, the government said yesterday.

Little rain has fallen through many parts of the country during the southern hemisphere summer, cutting output in the key export industries of dairy, beef and sheep farming, Agriculture Minister Jim Anderton said.

"There can be no question that the impacts of this drought on farming families, rural communities and the rest of New Zealand are severe and will be felt for several years to come," Mr Anderson said.

A boom in world dairy prices is cushioning the impact on dairy farmers, despite production being cut by NZ$894 million in the current financial year to June, according to Ministry of Agriculture figures.

Sheep and beef farmers are expected to lose NZ$345 million and the drought could not have come at a worse time for them because they had been receiving relatively poor returns, Mr Anderton said. — AFP

Read more!

Scientists: Sea Rabbits May Save The Great Barrier Reef

Underwatertimes.com News Service 18 Mar 08;

Townsville, Australia (Mar 18, 2008 15:15 EST) While rabbits continue to ravage Australia's native landscapes, rabbit fish may help save large areas of the Great Barrier Reef from destruction.

The reason, say scientists, is the same in both cases - both rabbits and rabbit fish are efficient herbivores, capable of stripping an area of vegetation. However, in the case of the Reef, it is the vegetation that is the problem - and the rabbit fish, the answer.

"When a coral reef is weakened or damaged through human activity such as climate change or pollution or by a natural disaster like a cyclone, the coral will usually recover provided it is not choked by fast-growing marine algae," explains Professor David Bellwood of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.

"The problem is that over the years we have fished down the populations of fish that normally feed on the young weed to such a degree that the weed is no longer kept in check, it can now smother the young corals and take over. This is called a phase-shift, and the chances of corals re-establishing afterwards are usually poor. If the weed takes over, you've lost your reef."

Prof. Bellwood and fellow researcher Rebecca Fox have spent recent years running live experiments to see what happens when a reef turns to weed - and which fish, if any, are of help in restoring the coral.

"To our surprise and disappointment, the fish that usually 'mow' the reef - parrot fishes and surgeon fish - were of little help when it came to suppressing well established weedy growth. Most herbivores simply avoided the big weeds.

"Then, to our even greater surprise a fish we had never seen in this area before was observed grazing on the weed. The rabbit fish (Siganus canaliculatus), came out of nowhere and began to clear-fell the weed on the reef crest."

The rabbit fish were caught on underwater videocams, in schools of up to 15 fish, grazing the crest, slopes and outer flats of the reef, and chomping away at more than ten times the rate of other weed-eaters.

"The rabbit fish is not a fish you tend to take a lot of notice of," Prof. Bellwood explains. "Like its terrestrial counterpart, it is brown, bland and easily overlooked - but it could be very important when it comes to protecting the GBR."

"We hadn't seen it previously at this site despite conducting over 100 visual censuses. This made its appearance in numbers sufficient to check the weedy growth all the more remarkable."

However the team noticed the rabbit fish concentrated their weed-removal efforts on the crest of the reef and were less effective on the slopes and flats - a feeding preference that is yet to be explained.

In a previous study, an overgrown reef had been cleaned up by another unexpected intruder, a striped batfish.

Ms. Fox explained that the recovery of damaged reefs may depend on several different 'guilds' of fishes, with different feeding preferences, that will focus on particular parts of the reef and stages of the weed infestation.

For such an approach to work, however, all the various species have to be kept intact in the reef environment, ready to play their part in a salvage operation when it becomes necessary.

"In Australia these herbivore fish populations are still in fairly good shape, but around the world as the big predators are fished out, local fishermen are targetting the herbivores. In Hawaii, the Caribbean, Indonesia, Micronesia and French Polynesia there are reports of serious declines in herbivore numbers of up to 90 per cent.

"By killing them, we may be unwittingly eliminating the very thing which enables coral reefs to bounce back from the sort of shocks which human activity exposes them to."

Prof. Bellwood says that one of the lessons from the video study is that obscure fish species may play a critical role in the survival and maintenance of coral ecosystems, and should not be overlooked. They are a key part of the resilience of the whole reef system.

"On land the rabbit is a major headache, but in the sea the rabbit fish may be an important factor in helping to keep the world's number one tourist attraction in good shape," he says.

Read more!