Asian Development Bank promises food relief

Channel NewsAsia 3 Apr 08;

MADRID - The Asian Development Bank on Saturday promised financial help for nations fighting the global food price crisis and attacked plans for a rice cartel.

Loans will help countries subsidise the price of food staples for the poor, ADB president Haruhiko Kuroda said on the first day of the banks four-day annual general meeting in Madrid.

"The amount depends on the requests from the affected countries," he told a news conference. "Possible total lending could be sizeable but not enormous."

The multinational lender will also provide two billion dollars (1.3 billion euros) in loans in 2008 and 2009 to finance agriculture infrastructure projects such as rural roads and irrigation systems to help boost farm output.

"Asia has a huge population with limited land for farming and a limited water supply so agriculture yields must be increased over time," Kuroda said.

Prices for the benchmark Thai variety of rice, a food stable across much of Asia, are at about 1,000 dollars a tonne, up threefold from the last ADB annual meeting in Japan one year ago.

The jump in food prices is fuelling inflation globally and the ADB predicted it would hit 5.1 percent across Asia this year, its highest level since the Asian financial crisis a decade ago and is raising concerns of popular unrest.

Asian nations will see their fiscal deficits worsen because of the need to provide subsidies to offset rising food and energy costs for the poor, the ADB said in a report issued at the gathering.

The problem will be more severe in countries that already have a large deficit like Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, it said.

Global food prices have nearly doubled in three years, sparking riots last month in Egypt and Haiti, protests in other countries and restrictions on food exports in Brazil, Vietnam, India and Egypt.

Rising use of biofuels, trade restrictions, increased demand from Asia to serve changing diets, poor harvests and increasing transport costs have all been blamed for the price rise.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick has estimated that high food prices affect some two billion people across the world and threaten to push 100 million poor people further into poverty.

Karuda said the jump in prices for staples like rice was leading people to hoard food items, causing a vicious circle that leads to even higher prices.

"There is a kind of panic buying," he said.

Some major Asian rice exporters, such as India and Vietnam, have imposed restrictions on exports in a bid to secure domestic supplies which "affects prices elsewhere", he added.

Kuroda criticised plans by Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia to set up an OPEC-style rice cartel.

"Agricultural markets should be market oriented. It would not be good for exporters and it certainly would not be good for importers," the ADB president said.

"What is most important is that we increase agricultural productivity in the medium and long term," he added.

Thailand's Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej said Wednesday the five countries had agreed in principle to form a rice price-fixing group which would be called the Organisation of Rice Exporting Countries (OREC).

On the eve of the meeting, donors pledged 11.3 billion dollars to the bank's Asian Development Fund, its key poverty alleviation mechanism, for the 2009-2012, a 60 percent increase over the last four-year period.

Last year entire ADB approved 10.1 billion dollars in loans.

Pakistan was the largest recipient of ADB aid last year followed by Vietnam, India, China and Indonesia.

Established in 1966, the ADB is owned by its 67 member countries -- 48 from the Asia-Pacific region, and 19 from elsewhere around the world.

Some 3,000 people -- business and government leaders, academics and representatives of non-governmental organisations -- are taking part in the ADB's annual meeting. - AFP/ir

Food security a major concern at ADB meet
Participants warn of hunger risks to large numbers in Asia
Anthony Rowley, Business Times 5 May 08;

THE Asian Development Bank was urged yesterday to make food security a top priority in order to prevent what Indian finance minister Palaniappan Chidam- baram said was the danger of 'one hundred million people in Asia being forced back into poverty' by the current crisis in supplies and prices.

Food security was the major issue dominating a governors' seminar where the ADB's new long-term strategic framework was presented at the bank's annual meeting in Madrid

ADB president Haruhiko Kuroda acknowledged that food and agriculture issues were not specifically-stated priorities in the bank's new strategic plan for the next 12 years. But he claimed that the ADB would address these issues through provision of rural infrastructure provision and via various forms of financial assistance.

Unctad secretary general Supatchai Panitchpakdi, head of an eminent persons group whose report guided the ADB's new Strategy 2020, said the bank would tackle food issues through its mandate to bring about 'inclusive growth' in Asia. 'We are trying to re-engage the Green Revolution in Asia,' he said, while calling for stepped up investment in agriculture.

China's vice-finance minister Li Yong called agriculture a 'top priority' for China. 'We have to think of how to feed 1.3 billion people,' he said. There is 'deep concern' about food security and what is happening to agriculture in Asia, said Rajendara Pachauri, chairman of the inter-governmental panel on climate change. Climate change is damaging grain production, adding to other problems that create food shortages, he added.

Expected good harvests for rice in Asia could send prices tumbling later this year and shift policy-makers' attention away from the current crisis, ADB chief economist Ifzal Ali said in an interview. But that would be a mistake, he emphasised, because the underlying problem of high food prices 'is here to stay and we had better learn to live with it', he said.

The food price issue, as a humanitarian problem and a major factor behind the high inflation now plaguing Asian countries, dominated debate at the annual meeting. What is riveting policymakers' attention is the dramatic - in some cases 100 per cent - surge in prices so far this year, but that is only the 'cyclical' side of the story, said Mr Ali.

Good harvests can take care of at least part of that but unless the underlying structural problems are dealt with, there will be recurring crises, Mr Ali warned. The ADB published a special report in the weekend (Food Prices and Inflation in Developing Asia) explaining the long and short-term factors involved.

In the case of rice, 'my expectation is that a new crop will be harvested in Indonesia over the next two months, and the prognosis is good,' said Mr Ali. 'In Vietnam the prognosis is also good. If the monsoon is normal in South Asia we will have a good supply response. Under this scenario, by September, the food price situation will improve considerably.'

But he added, 'Even if by September things really ease in terms of rice prices dropping back from their peaks of US$1000 (per metric tonne) they will not go back to US$200 but will stay at US$400 to US$500. This is an issue that has to be tackled over the next five to ten years. If not, we will have periodic episodes of this kind of volatility.'

The recent spike in food prices 'and the short-sighted policy responses that accentuate volatility in prices threaten to push large numbers of people back below the poverty line', the ADB special report said. 'Structural forces augmented by adverse cyclical events have put food prices on an upward trajectory that will not end soon.'

Asia fears rising poverty, social unrest from soaring food prices
Channel NewsAsia 5 May 08;


MADRID : Soaring food prices could push millions of people in Asia back into poverty and lead to social unrest, regional leaders warned Sunday at the Asian Development Bank's annual meeting in Spain.

"The recent hike in the price of rice will hit Asian countries particularly hard. The ones who are most affected are the poorest segment of the population including the urban poor," Japanese Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga said.

"It will have a negative impact on the living standards and also affect their nutrition. Such a situation may lead to social distrust and unrest and therefore safety nets addressing the immediate needs of the poorest are needed," he added.

Prices for the benchmark Thai variety of rice, a food stable across much of Asia, are at about 1,000 dollars a tonne, up threefold from the last ADB annual meeting held in Japan one year ago.

Meat prices have risen by 60 percent in Bangladesh in the year ending in March, and by 45 percent in Cambodia and 30 percent in the Philippines, according to a report issued Saturday by the ADB.

The rise in global food prices has sparked riots last month in Egypt and Haiti, protests in other countries and restrictions on food exports in Brazil, Vietnam, India and Egypt.

Indian Finance Secretary Subba Rao said a 20 percent rise in food prices could force 100 million people into extreme poverty.

"In many countries, including in Asia, that will mean the undoing of gains in poverty reduction achieved during the past years of growth," he said.

The Indian government, which is facing a general election by May 2009, has implemented a raft of measures, such as banning the export of staple foods like rice and lentils and cutting customs duties on other items, to try to ease price pressures.

It spends the equivalent of about 2.0 percent of gross domestic product per year on subsidies for food, fertilizer and energy to help offset the impact of rising prices on the poor, Rao said.

But Nukaga warned that export restrictions lead to higher prices while food subsidies to help the poor deal with surging prices could place a tremendous burden on state budgets.

"Export restrictions will not only distort the proper functioning of markets in price formation but further exacerbate the price hikes in international markets," he said.

"Subsidies that are intended to keep food prices under control have the risk of becoming a significant burden to budgets and are not sustainable over time," he added.

Food subsidies in Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations in Asia, are estimated to double in the current fiscal year and reach over 1.5 billion dollars (973 million euros) in the current fiscal year.

The ADB estimates one billion people in Asia are seriously affected by soaring food prices.

It announced Saturday on the opening day of its four-day annual meeting in Madrid that it would provide a sizeable amount in soft loans to help Asian countries subsidise the price of food staples for the poor.

It will also provide two billion dollars in 2008 and 2009 in loans to finance agriculture infrastructure projects such as irrigation systems and rural roads aimed at boosting farm output in the region.

Rising use of biofuels, trade restrictions, increased demand from Asia to serve changing diets, poor harvests and increasing transport costs have all been blamed for the price rise.

- AFP /ls

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Philippine senators worried about proposed SEA rice cartel

Channel NewsAsia 3 May 08;

MANILA : Senior Philippine officials expressed concern Saturday about a plan for a Southeast Asian rice cartel, saying it would cause greater problems than it would solve in the midst of a global food crisis.

The so-called Organization of Rice Exporting Countries (OREC) was "anti-poor and will only exacerbate hunger and poverty rather than ease it," Senate majority leader Francis Pangilinan said in a statement.

Modelled on the OPEC oil cartel, OREC would comprise Mekong countries and rice producers Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.

Pangilinan appealed to them to "think twice for humanitarian reasons".

The proposed OREC members are also members of ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, along with the Philippines which is one of the world's biggest rice importers.

Pangilinan called on the Mekong countries to reconsider the cartel plan.

Senator Manuel Roxas, chairman of the trade and commerce committee, called on the Department of Foreign Affairs to formally propose an ASEAN Leaders' Summit on Rice and Food Security in light of the OREC proposal.

Roxas said in a statement that failure by ASEAN members to unite in efforts to build food security would "raise doubts in the minds of other world leaders on ASEAN's determination to pursue economic integration".

He said: "Before OREC is institutionalized, the ASEAN community must weigh in as a regional bloc to obtain trade privileges with its fellow members in keeping with the ASEAN spirit."

World rice prices have soared this year, a trend blamed on higher energy and fertiliser costs, greater global demand, drought, the loss of rice farmland to biofuel plantations, and price speculation.

The benchmark Thai variety was priced last Wednesday at 998 dollars per tonne for export, up from 512 dollars a tonne in January this year, the Thai Rice Exporters Association said in a price survey.

- AFP/ir

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Multinationals make billions in profit out of growing global food crisis

Speculators blamed for driving up price of basic foods as 100 million face severe hunger
Geoffrey Lean, The Independent 4 May 08;

Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry.

The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world's poor – who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food – into hunger and destitution.

The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world's richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12bn. Its profits increased from $1.44bn to $2.22bn.

Cargill's net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030bn over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world's largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m.

Similarly, the Mosaic Company, one of the world's largest fertiliser companies, saw its income for the three months ending 29 February rise more than 12-fold, from $42.2m to $520.8m, on the back of a shortage of fertiliser. The prices of some kinds of fertiliser have more than tripled over the past year as demand has outstripped supply. As a result, plans to increase harvests in developing countries have been hit hard.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation reports that 37 developing countries are in urgent need of food. And food riots are breaking out across the globe from Bangladesh to Burkina Faso, from China to Cameroon, and from Uzbekistan to the United Arab Emirates.

Benedict Southworth, director of the World Development Movement, called the escalating earnings and profits "immoral" late last week. He said that the benefits of the food price increases were being kept by the big companies, and were not finding their way down to farmers in the developing world.

The soaring prices of food and fertilisers mainly come from increased demand. This has partly been caused by the boom in biofuels, which require vast amounts of grain, but even more by increasing appetites for meat, especially in India and China; producing 1lb of beef in a feedlot, for example, takes 7lbs of grain.

World food stocks at record lows, export bans and a drought in Australia have contributed to the crisis, but experts are also fingering food speculation. Professor Bob Watson – chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who led the giant International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development – last week identified it as a factor.

Index-fund investment in grain and meat has increased almost fivefold to over $47bn in the past year, concludes AgResource Co, a Chicago-based research firm. And the official US Commodity Futures Trading Commission held special hearings in Washington two weeks ago to examine how much speculators were helping to push up food prices.

Cargill says that its results "reflect the cumulative effect of having invested more than $18bn in fixed and working capital over the past seven years to expand our physical facilities, service capabilities, and knowledge around the world".

The revelations are bound to increase outrage over multinational companies following last week's disclosure that Shell and BP between them recorded profits of £14bn in the first three months of the year – or £3m an hour – on the back of rising oil prices. Shell promptly attracted even greater condemnation by announcing that it was pulling out of plans to build the world's biggest wind farm off the Kent coast.

World leaders are to meet next month at a special summit on the food crisis, and it will be high on the agenda of the G8 summit of the world's richest countries in Hokkaido, Japan, in July.

Additional research by Vandna Synghal

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High petrol prices see Americans ditch SUVs

Leonard Doyle, The Independent 3 May 08;

America's love affair with sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and pick-up trucks is finally over.

The gas-guzzlers that ply the country's freeways and clog its city streets and parking lots are falling victim to ever-rising petrol prices, rather than concern about the country's oversized carbon footprint. The fall-off in sales is dramatic however.

Even offers like that from a Denver showroom of a year's free petrol with each new SUV isn't shifting the pick-ups and 4x4s quickly enough to stave off financial ruin for the country's car manufacturers.

With petrol now selling for almost $4 (£2) a gallon, consumers are trading in their Humvees and Ford Explorers so fast that for the first time, one in five cars sold in the US is now a compact or subcompact. In another first, sales of six-cylinder vehicles were bypassed by smaller four-cylinder, mostly Japanese, cars in April.

In some cities sales of hybrid cars outnumber the lumbering vehicles that are still pouring off the assembly lines at Ford and General Motors in Detroit. The occasional Smart car can even be seen nipping through the traffic. "The era of the truck-based large SUVs is over," said Michael Jackson, boss of the country's largest car retailer Autonation. Another car executive called it the most dramatic shift in the market in 30 years.

There has been a gradual shift by car-buyers to smaller, European-style vehicles over the past few years, but high petrol prices have turned what was a trickle of buyers into a stampede. "It's really a great thing that's happening but four out of five cars sold are still too big," said Katie Alvord, the author of Divorce Your Car! Ending the Love Affair with the Automobile. "It's like the country is stuck in a bad marriage and needs to change."

The biggest victim of the changing times is the petrol-swilling Hummer, the civilian version of the military's transport vehicle which became a status symbol in America's suburbs in the 1990s. Hummer sales collapsed by more than a fifth last year to fewer than 56,000 vehicles and fell by more than 30 per cent in the first three months of 2008.

The switch to smaller cars comes as the ever-rising price of petrol has become a hot political issue during the presidential primary season with two of the hopefuls, the Democrat Hillary Clinton and the Republican John McCain seeking to appeal to voters by offering a petrol tax holiday over the summer months when Americans do most of their driving. Mrs Clinton's rival Barack Obama has refused to join them, saying the plan is pandering to voters. Instead he has proposed a windfall profits tax on the oil industry.

According to George Pipas, of Ford, sales of passenger cars have exceeded trucks and SUVs for the first time in at least 20 years and pick-ups are now on the list of the top 10 vehicles being traded in for every small car in the industry.

Large cars and SUVs have long been status symbols for Americans, but as economic reality bites, car showrooms are being turned over to fuel-efficient vehicles. The tiny Toyota Yaris has jumped in sales by 46 per cent, while the equally small Honda Fit is racing out of the showrooms as customers look for a vehicle that gets more than 30 miles to the gallon.

Dave Strom, who sold Chevrolets for 40 years, recently picked up a Smart which gets him 45 miles to the gallon. "I had to smile the other day when I filled my tank for $18 and change while the guy next to me was up to $80 and still clicking as he filled his Ford Explorer," he said.

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Best of our wild blogs: 3 May 08

Cyrene Star is in the news!
on the singapore celebrates our reefs blog

The last of the Chek Jawa Guidebooks
should there be a new guidebook? on the wildfilms blog

Labrador Seagrass project comes to an end
and a new beginning as a new team takes over, while the seniors join TeamSeagrass on the labrador park blog

Coral spawning
more sexy coral photos on the urban forest blog

May Day outreach
on the art in the wetlands blog

Sunbird and spider
on the bird ecology blog

Encounter with a Collared Scops Owl
on the bird ecology blog

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A new star for Singapore: discovery of sea star

Discovery of large five-rayed sea star adds to marine biodiversity here
David J.W. Lane , Robin Ngiam & Ivan Tan, Straits Times 3 May 08;

SINGAPORE has a new star to call its own.

This large five-rayed sea star is not new to science, but it is a new and spectacular addition to Singapore's already substantial inventory of living stars.

Lacking a common name but known in the marine science world as Pentaceraster mammillatus, it is in the same family as the more familiar cushion star and the knobbly sea star, which are still quite common on Singapore's remaining reefs.
The 'mammillatus' part of the name refers to the rows of nipple-like protuberances that cover the surface of the animal and give it a studded or armoured appearance.

The sea star was first sighted early last month on a seagrass monitoring trip at Cyrene reef, run by volunteer group TeamSeagrass and staff from the National Biodiversity Reference Centre of the National Parks Board (NParks).

The specimen baffled those who found it, all of whom had their own version of what to name the new find - which was at once familiar, yet strangely alien.

Names like 'Darth Vader star' and 'knobbly-wannabe' were bandied about as the group debated what it could possibly be.

Fast forward to a week ago: Armed with a permit, an enthusiastic search party made up of staff and students from the National University of Singapore's Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research, NParks and others - including visiting regional echinoderm specialist David Lane - set out for a dawn low-tide walk on Cyrene reef. (Echinoderms are marine animals that exhibit five-fold radial symmetry at some stage of life.)

Right at the end of the trip, as the tide was rising and time was running out, the object of the mission was located, almost hidden in a dense field of seagrass.

A rare and exciting find

THE discovery of this attractive species, one of about a dozen of its kind in the Indo-Pacific, is in some respects a remarkable surprise, given its large size and the fact that sea stars and their relatives had been intensively surveyed and studied throughout the 1990s by a team of NUS and Belgian marine scientists.

Another surprise is that this star was previously known to exist only in the western Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, so its presence in Singapore waters represents a considerable range increase.

It must be stated, however, that the taxonomy of this group has some uncertainties, with gradations between species, possible hybrids and a closely related form living in the Philippines region.

Nevertheless, the find is an important one in biodiversity terms.

The latest individual discovered, at 27cm in diameter, is smaller than the one seen previously, so a small population may exist in the dense seagrass of Cyrene, and possibly elsewhere locally.

Cyrene reef: Rich in marine life

SITTING in the midst of intensive port activities, not far from the huge container terminal of Pasir Panjang, this patch reef stands like a marine oasis - a trove of biodiversity in the midst of the nation's economic pulse.

This sandy reef, swept clean of silt by strong currents when the tide is in, is as rich now biologically, if not richer, than in the 1990s.

Recent and earlier treasure hunts have unearthed numerous species of sea stars, sand dollars, sea urchins and sea cucumbers, in addition to many other invertebrate species.

That all this marine life exists in the middle of one of the busiest port zones in the world attests to the cleanliness of the seawater environment. Marine life thrives where water currents are sufficient to prevent smothering by sedimentation.

Singapore owes its rich marine biodiversity heritage to the fact that it is equatorial, that it is close to the edge of the 'coral triangle' biodiversity hot spot of the Indo-Malay archipelago, and also to overlapping ranges of Pacific and Indian Ocean faunas.

The Republic is clearly at the centre of things in many ways.

Why is the continued existence of this kind of marine life in Singapore so important?

There is a host of reasons, many of which have to do with the quality of the marine environment and, directly or indirectly, with the quality of human life and the growing environmental awareness in crowded Singapore.

A rich diversity of marine life is often cited as a potential source of new medicinals or of target species for cultivation. An equally important value is that the continued existence - or otherwise - of rich and diverse marine communities provides an overall measure for monitoring the ecosystem and environmental health status.

Additionally, the recreational and educational value of natural resources and the environment will undoubtedly continue to grow in Singapore, as these resources become more and more scarce.

Unique to Cyrene is the fact that there are three different habitats - sea grass, coral reef and sand - amalgamated on one reef.

Other exotics, such as sea horses recently sighted there, are perhaps additional indicators of the conservation value of this reef formation.

An important objective in relation to this conservation issue would be an urgent survey programme for this new star, and other rarities, on the remaining untouched and relatively unexplored reef flats in the Southern Islands.

Dr Lane is a senior lecturer and marine scientist with Universiti Brunei Darussalam. Formerly with NUS, he continues to work closely with its Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research, the region's premier natural history museum. Mr Ngiam is a project officer with NParks, while Mr Tan is an education and public relations officer with the Raffles Museum.

Scanned from the print copy...
Learn more about Cyrene Reef!

• Come for Ria's talk today at 2pm on the "Secret Shores of Singapore" featuring Cyrene Reef
  
• Cyrene Reef: a special reef in Singapore's port on the singapore celebrates our reefs blog
• Join the "I want to go Cyrene!" facebook group
• Check out the Cyrene Blogging Carnival and the recent blog posts on Cyrene

Learn more about Singapore's sea stars

• Stars of Singapore on the singapore celebrates our reefs blog

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Does Singapore really need more people?

A city's size alone does not seem to result in economic growth or leadership
Richard Hartung, Today Online 3 May 08;

SINGAPORE'S population is too small to compete globally!

This constant refrain, tied to the concept that Singapore needs a rapidly growing population to sustain economic growth, seems to lie at the heart of the argument for increasing the population by millions.

The size of many cities at the forefront of innovation and economic growth in other locations, however, belies this need for a large population. Indeed, bringing in small numbers of the right people rather than just lots more workers, and focusing on creating the right environment for growth, may be more important.

Think about innovative cities around the world. In the United States, Silicon Valley immediately comes to mind. Not too far away, Seattle is the birthplace of Amazon, Microsoft and Starbucks. Around the world, top centres of innovation include cities such as Bangalore, Helsinki, Stockholm and Dublin.

It's true that the seven-million population in the Bay Area around Silicon Valley is larger than Singapore's, even though the population of the Valley itself is only about 2.5 million. Yet the populations of other centres of innovation and entrepreneurship are actually surprisingly small.

Seattle is at 3.4 million, Stockholm 1.9 million, Helsinki 1.3 million and Dublin 1.6 million. Bangalore's population of 5 to 6 million is admittedly larger than Singapore's, though not by much. Even when they are part of a larger country such as the US or India, economic development in these cities is local, and having a large population available in places such as Kansas or Kashmir doesn't enable innovation or growth in these cities.

One driver of growth is that these cities attract top talent from around the world. In Silicon Valley, about 35 per cent of the population is foreign-born and 17 per cent of Seattle's population is imported. In Bangalore, about half the population has migrated in from other cities in population-heavy India. Even Helsinki has the largest percentage of immigrants of any area in Finland. And it is not just numbers, as immigrants are usually more highly educated that the average population.

On the other hand, many of the world's largest cities certainly aren't recognised as centres of innovation and leaders in the competitive economy. The five largest cities in the world — Tokyo, Mumbai, Mexico City, Sao Paulo and New York — have populations between 17 and 28 million.

While it's true that Tokyo is known for adapting new technology well and New York is a financial capital, Mexico City or Sao Paulo may not top the global list for growth and innovation. Size alone therefore does not seem to result in economic growth or leadership.

If population size is not the key, then, what makes these cities thrive?

Mr Steve Poloz of Export Development Canada summarises the thoughts of many when he says that "today, the prime determinant for growth is whether a city is a catalyst for innovation. A city's rise or fall depends on how well it attracts the players — business, institutions, individuals — to interact, create and innovate."

What results in innovation? Leading author Richard Florida says in The Flight of the Creative Class that the drivers of innovation are the three Ts — talent, technology and tolerance. A nation that nurtures talent through education, develops technology with research funding and tolerates diversity such as women's rights or democracy or gays, he says, has a higher likelihood of attracting the human capital that will drive innovation and growth.

A city with the 3 Ts can have more innovation and higher growth than a city that just attracts lots of people.

Instead of size, then, developing a welcoming environment that nurtures talent and enables it to flourish seems more likely to drive growth than just population increases.

Two issues loom large for Singapore: First, Singapore may need to re-examine whether it has the right environment to attract talent, and how its environment is presented. A bourgeoning arts scene, allowing in same-sex partners and pouring money into research centres may help pave the road to success.

Yet, it is anecdotes such as censors banning movies and limited media freedom that attract attention. The image of the environment for one T — tolerance — could need improvement.

Second, attracting the right type of immigrants may be more important than sheer population growth alone. However, the people arriving to support the sectors currently driving growth here may not reflect the purported focus on talent development.

Even as research funding focuses on key strategic sectors, such as biotechnology and environment research, that epitomise talent development, the real engines of job growth are reported to be tourism, construction and marine engineering. Saying that high-end technology is central when lower-skilled jobs drive growth may make a second T — talent — seem suspect.

The successes of smaller, innovative cities indicate that population can be less important than other factors for driving economic growth. Instead, having all three Ts seems more central to success. Research funding initiatives show that technology in Singapore is here or on the way.

Enhancing the other two Ts — talent development for jobs that matter and a tolerant environment — to attract more talented people may be more important than sheer population numbers in driving growth higher.

The writer is a consultant who has lived in Singapore since 1992.

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Farming in Singapore: Best of everything possible

Reply from SLA and URA, Straits Times Forum 3 May 08;

WE REFER to the letter 'Capitalise on limited farmland' by Mr Anthony Leong Chee-Hong (April 22). As the writer correctly pointed out, Singapore cannot be entirely self-sufficient in food supply due to our limited land resources. Currently, local production accounts for 7 per cent of our leafy vegetable consumption, 15 per cent of our fish consumption and 30 per cent of our egg consumption.

This is achieved through the use of modern intensive farming technologies to maximise production and optimise land use. The Government will continue to allow farming as long as land is available and the private sector finds it commercially viable.

While our main objective is to make sure that identified agriculture uses are met, we also recognise that our farms can offer an additional recreational, food and beverage and educational experience to visitors, and at the same time supplement the farmers' income.

Opening up of farms to visitors should not be done at the expense of our limited farm land. Hence, public visitor amenities allowed within farms today are kept small scale so that they do not displace the primary agricultural functions of these farms.

In considering such proposals, we also ensure that they would not compromise food safety and animal and plant health. This approach allows us to optimise the use of our limited land resource and at the same time capitalise on the recreational and educational potential of farming activities.

Teo Jing Kok
Deputy Director, Lease Management & Sales
Land Operations Group
Singapore Land Authority


Lim Eng Hwee
Director (Physical Planning)
Urban Redevelopment Authority

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Saving rainforests: The bats have it, can we wing it?

Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times Straits Times 3 May 08;

THE AMAZON JUNGLE (ECUADOR) - VAMPIRE bats are remarkably well-adapted to the rainforest. They come out at night and use heat sensors to find a goat, child or other mammal, which they feed upon only after determining from its breathing that it is asleep.

If the prey is an animal with fur, vampire bats use special teeth to shave the skin, with their incisors cutting the skin almost painlessly, while the saliva prevents clotting. They then lap up the blood.

So the question is: Can we humans adapt as effectively to the rainforest as vampire bats have?

It doesn't seem so. Instead of living in harmony with the rainforest - or only as parasitically as, say, a vampire bat - we're destroying the jungle in ways that contribute hugely to global warming.

Somewhere in the world, we humans cut down an area of jungle the size of a football field every second of every day, and deforestation now contributes as much to global warming as all the carbon emitted by the United States. By one calculation, four years of deforestation have the same carbon footprint as all flights in the history of aviation up until the year 2025.

That's the challenge that Mr Douglas McMeekin and Mr Juan Kunchikuy are trying to address. As I noted in my last column, they make an unusual pair: Mr McMeekin, 65, is an American businessman who came to Ecuador after going bankrupt at home in Kentucky, while Mr Kunchikuy, 30, is a naturalist and guide from an indigenous tribe who grew up in the rainforest with his blowgun and never wore shoes or knew electricity until he was 17.

They have joined forces to protect the rainforest by working with the locals, trying to create incentives for them to leave trees standing - while raising local living standards. 'Save the Rainforest' bumper stickers don't sustain local families, who earn an average of only US$300 (S$410) per year and see trees as a way to boost their incomes.

'People have to make a living,' Mr McMeekin said. 'But they can chop down 50 acres (20ha) of forest for a pasture, or they can earn the same income by chopping down five acres and planting cacao.'

So his organisation, Yachana Foundation, is distributing high-quality cacao seedlings to encourage farmers to manage small plots that leave most of the jungle intact. Yachana also operates a factory that buys the cacao and turns it into mail-order chocolate.

Yachana encourages family planning - to reduce population pressures that lead to deforestation - and runs a new private high school to train young people from throughout the Ecuadorian Amazon. The 120 students in the school get a superb education with English taught by American volunteers; the first graduation will be in July.

One aim is to build a core of indigenous leaders who can represent local views internationally and serve as agents of change within the region. Mr Kunchikuy - who speaks fluent English and serves on the board of Yachana Foundation - is a prototype. After all, there aren't many board members as comfortable with a microphone as with a blowgun (and who have scars on their noses from vampire bats).

The school focuses on practical skills, such as how to graft cacao or fruit-tree saplings, or how to operate fish ponds. The idea is to earn significant incomes without large clear-cuts.

Many students work part- time in the foundation's neighbouring eco-lodge, Yachana, which has 18 rooms catering to American tourists (and generates part of the cash to pay for the school).

As I walk through the jungle paths here, serenaded by the twittering of birds and monkeys above, or the splashing of turtles in the river, I marvel at this land. The Amazon is grand for putting us humans in our place - until you reach a clear-cut, and the spell breaks and you realise maybe we're not so puny after all.

One way to save the rainforests is to pay poor countries to preserve them. Research suggests that by paying these countries US$27.25 per tonne of carbon not emitted by destroying forests, the world could avoid US$85 in damage per tonne from the carbon.

But these can't just be deals with governments; too often we lose sight of the inhabitants of the forests. In a remote part of Central African Republic, I once found teams of Western volunteers dedicated to preserving gorillas - but there were no volunteers helping local Pygmies who were dying of malaria.

With Yachana, this partnership of a bankrupt American businessman and an Amazonian hunter, we have a model of how to help the forest by helping the people who live in it. Preserving the rainforest should be a priority, if we have a bat's brains.

NEW YORK TIMES

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Greenpeace welcomes move to save Indonesia's forests

Yahoo News 2 May 08;

Environment group Greenpeace on Friday welcomed Unilever's backing of a moratorium on palm oil deforestation in Indonesia, saying the move will help save forests in the sprawling archipelago.

The Anglo-Dutch food and consumer goods company announced Thursday it would aim to use only palm oil from fully traceable sources by 2015 in an effort to reduce the rapid despoiling of Indonesia's carbon-rich forests and peatlands.

"The writing is on the wall -- the pressure from the market will only increase as companies join this call for a moratorium on deforestation," Greenpeace advisor Arief Wicaksono said in a statement.

The multibillion-dollar company's support could also help put pressure on Indonesian authorities to place a moratorium on logging and the clearing of forests to make way for plantations.

High global prices for palm oil, which is used in goods from soap to biscuits and biodiesel, spurred deforestation in Indonesia, the world's largest crude palm oil producer.

Indonesia is the world's third-highest emitter of greenhouse gases, after the United States and China, mostly due to deforestation.

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China struggles to contain viral epidemic of HFMD

Channel NewsAsia 2 May 08;

BEIJING: Doctors in China struggled to contain the spread of an intestinal virus that has infected more than 3,300 children, killing 21 of them so far, state press reported Friday.

The latest death occurred in the city of Fuyang in Anhui province, the epicentre of the epidemic with 2,946 children infected there as of Friday, Xinhua news agency reported, citing local health officials.

The number of children in Anhui infected with the enterovirus 71, known as EV71, has risen by nearly 500 since Wednesday, the report said.

Up to 340 children have been infected in central Hubei province and five others are sick in the city of Hangzhou in eastern Zhejiang province, Xinhua reported.

Sixteen children have also fallen ill in Henan province, which borders Anhui.

EV71, which causes hand, foot and mouth disease, is highly contagious and is spread through direct contact with the mucus, saliva, or faeces of an infected person. Young children are most susceptible because of lower immune systems.

The disease begins with fever, blisters, mouth ulcers and rashes, and has spread in Anhui since early March, amid accusations by the Chinese media of a government-led cover-up of the epidemic.

Most of those stricken are under the age of six, with 879 children currently being treated in Fuyang hospitals, nine of whom are in critical condition, the report said. Forty others were in serious condition.

News of the epidemic only surfaced on Monday, when it was reported that 19 children had died.

State television showed video footage of parents from rural areas of Anhui bringing their toddlers to overcrowded hospitals in Fuyang.

Health officials warned that although older people may not show symptoms of the disease, they could be carriers of the virus and could possibly infect others, the report said.

"Fuyang city is strengthening medical emergency treatment and prevention and control measures in every way possible," Xinhua said, noting that treatment facilities would be expanded.

The World Health Organisation earlier this week expressed concern over the epidemic, which in serious cases can lead to brain, heart and lung damage.

It said in a statement Wednesday that while enteroviruses are found across the world, "the situation (in Anhui) is still of concern especially because of the current high reported case fatality rate compared to previous years."

China's health ministry has tried to calm fears, saying early discovery of the disease and better treatment has lowered the mortality rate, but has warned that the disease was likely to spread.

"We estimate that the hand, foot and mouth disease (caused by EV71) in Fuyang city will still continue for some time, the number of cases will continue to increase, and serious and fatal cases might still continue to happen," the ministry said Wednesday.

- AFP/ms

More HFMD cases in next few months
Close schools to check spread of virus that has killed 21 children: WHO
Straits Times 3 May 08;

BEIJING - CASES of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) are likely to increase until next month or July, said the World Health Organisation (WHO) as China reported one more death from the disease.

The latest death occurred in the city of Fuyang in eastern Anhui province, which has been the epicentre of an outbreak that has infected nearly 3,000 and killed at least 21 children, reported state media.

They were infected by a potentially deadly strain of intestinal virus known as Enterovirus 71, or EV71.

EV71, said the WHO, spreads more easily in the summer and autumn months in temperate climates such as eastern China.

The fatality rate from the outbreak in China declined to 0.2 per cent in the April 17-29 period, from 11 per cent between March 10 and 31, the WHO said in its statement.

EV71 can cause ulcers on the tongue and gums, and blisters on the palms, soles and buttocks.

Most children recover within four to six days, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.

In severe cases, it can lead to fatal swelling of the brain, or encephalitis.

General hygiene measures such as hand-washing can help prevent the spread of the disease for which there is no vaccine.

'It may be advisable to close childcare facilities and schools to reduce the intensity of transmission,' the WHO said, adding that travel or trade restrictions are unnecessary.

Kindergartens in Anhui's Fuyang city closed two days early for the May 1 holiday in China.

Officials have said that almost all of those infected were children under the age of six and most were under two.

Some 738 children have recovered and 702 are still hospitalised, 36 of them in serious condition, Xinhua said. It said that 1,017 children were being treated as outpatients.

Some children have been diagnosed with brain, heart and lung damage, the report said.

China's Hubei province, which borders Anhui, yesterday reported 340 HFMD cases this year, of which at least five were caused by EV71. There were no casualties in Hubei.

Singapore, which is also experiencing an HFMD outbreak, has reported more than 9,000 cases and closed dozens of pre-schools and child-care centres.

EV71 is responsible for one in five of the HFMD cases in Singapore.

The most serious outbreak of HFMD from EV71 occurred in Taiwan in 1998 when 78 children died and 405 others had severe neurological complications, the CDC said.

Taiwan reported 39 cases of severe EV71 infection up to March 7, compared with three cases in the same period last year, according to Hong Kong's Sunday Morning Post.

Vietnam also has seen a sharp increase in EV71 but no details were available, said WHO Western Pacific spokesman Peter Cordingley.

'It is not a notifiable disease and it happens in large parts of Asia. Normally it goes under our radar, but the China outbreak caught our attention because at least 20 children had died,' he told the Post.

BLOOMBERG

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Singapore and the grand challenges of engineering

Shobana Kesava, Straits Times 3 May 08;

Cheap solar power

It is clean, free and will never run out. Even the tiny fraction of the sun's rays which strike the earth provides 10,000 times as much power as all the commercial energy humans use on the planet.

But less than 1 per cent of energy needs are met by solar power, which is six times more expensive than conventional energy sources.

Solutions: Overcoming the barriers to widespread solar power generation will require engineering innovations in several arenas - in capturing the sun's energy, converting it to useful forms and storing it for use when the sun itself is obscured.

In Singapore: Norway's Renewable Energy Cooperation will build the world's largest solar manufacturing facility here. The National University of Singapore (NUS) has projects to use new materials like selenium or diamond to make efficient, cheaper solar cells. A Nanyang Technological University (NTU) team is finding ways to use the sun's rays to split water cheaply to produce hydrogen, a clean source of fuel. Another is trying to produce fuel by duplicating the plant's way of using sunlight to produce food.

Clean water

Lack of clean water is responsible for more deaths globally than wars. Nearly 5,000 children die from related diseases daily.

Solutions: Inexpensive ways to remove salt from seawater. Desalination is costly and consumes a lot of energy. A new approach might be to filter out salt with tiny tubes of carbon.

In Singapore: NUS is working with China's Beijing University and Britain's Oxford University to develop purification systems that use sunlight and microbes.

PUB is working with commercial enterprises to test new technologies at its facilities. NTU has just opened the Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute to boost research.

A*Star's Institute of Microelectronics has developed a small electronic chip with biological markers to test and analyse water quality.

Understanding the brain

Specific skills like playing chess may have been mastered by thinking machines, but general-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) remains elusive. Engineers think understanding living brains may change the way artificial ones are made.

Solutions: AI is already behind speech, voice and vision recognition software.

Progress is being made in developing artificial retinas - light-sensitive chips that could restore vision - and neural prostheses - artificial aids to the nervous system that treat hearing loss and stimulate electrodes to treat Parkinson's disease. Implants to read the thoughts of immobilised patients could send signals to an external computer.

In Singapore: A*Star's Institute for Infocomm Research has developed a brain-computer interface (below) to build a direct channel between the two, by implanting an electrode in the brain to capture nerve signals.

Greenhouse gases

The issue of carbon dioxide (CO2) as the primary cause of global warming cannot be swept under the rug but could be vacuumed deep underground or within the ocean. Sequestration captures the gas and stores it safely away from the atmosphere, where it warms the earth's surface.

Already plentiful, but little known compared to CO2, is poisonous nitrous oxide (N2O), whose release has been escalated by human activity. This greenhouse gas is 200 times more of a heat trap than CO2. Agricultural fertiliser is the major source of N2O which reduces the earth's protective ozone layer, adds to smog, contributes to acid rain and contaminates drinking water.

Solutions: Industrial smokestacks could be replaced with absorption towers that isolate CO2 and return it to plants for re-use, or pipe it away for storage in depleted oil fields or use it to help pump up the remaining fuel.

Engineers need to find ways to trap CO2 deep enough underground, where pressure will compact it and keep it from diffusing back up, or send it into the ocean to combine chemically with calcium, locking it away as rock.

Instead of letting nitrogen leak into the atmosphere as dangerous N2O, it should be plugged and converted back into nitrogen, which can be trapped in plants as a protein-rich food source. This must be done cheaply so food costs do not rise.

Better medicines

Personalised medicine for individuals.

Solutions: Tools to rapidly assess a patient's genetic profile, trace the tiniest amount of chemical or virus in the body, and collect and manage massive amounts of data on individuals.

Also, therapies that treat drug-resistant infections by identifying the precise bacterium or virus causing an infection, instead of using general antibiotics.

In Singapore: Researchers in the billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry and Biopolis are working feverishly on solutions. Scientists at the Genome Institute of Singapore are studying the genetic underpinnings of cancer. NUS has scientists finding out how the building blocks of fats can protect cells.

Enhancing virtual reality

Virtual reality attempts to recreate the actual experience of activities such as flying a plane or conducting surgery.

Solutions: Precision in the virtual world, which falls short most when it comes to the sensation of touch. Surgeons cutting through vital tissue should feel different degrees of resistance to the motion of a scalpel at different places along the tissue. Virtual tourism of real places could be possible as sites like Google Earth merge with reality games such as Second Life.

In Singapore:
Firms have come up with systems that work well in the virtual world. First Meta, for example, has created a credit-line facility for the online community.

Securing cyberspace

Electronic information flow is embedded in networks of nearly every aspect of modern life. Cyberspace disruptions could cripple everything from traffic lights and aeroplane routes to cellphones and e-mail.

Solutions: Methods to monitor and quickly detect any security breach and prevent diversion or alteration. New programming languages and better approaches are needed to authenticate hardware, software and data in computer systems and verify user identities. Biometric technologies like fingerprint readers could be used.

In Singapore: Government, universities and commercial enterprises are racing to raise and redefine online security levels.

Technology of the future to be more personalised
That's common theme of 14 top engineering challenges listed by international panel
Shobana Kesava, Straits Times 3 May 08;

IN THE 21st century, health care, travel and information will be made personal.

People could have individualised power and water sources, and medicines could be tailor-made according to each individual's genetic code, for example.

This is the common theme of the 14 top engineering challenges of the century, set out this year by a team of international leaders, comprising scientists, entrepreneurs and thinkers.

Those on the team include leaders from the American National Academy of Engineering and American Academy of Science, technopreneur Ray Kurzweil, biologist Craig Venter, inventor Dean Kamen and Google co-founder Larry Page.

One of only two Asians in the group of 18 is the head of the Institute of Bio-engineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore, Professor Jackie Ying.

'We have a world today which a century ago was unimaginable,' she said.

Planes and spacecraft were once made for flights of fancy, while just 20 years ago, Singaporeans would not have foreseen the reliance placed on cellphones and e-mail.

Prof Ying said engineering genius will take sufficient brainpower and funding.

'What we want to do now is catch the imagination of young people.'

She said the group's choices fell under four themes essential for humanity to flourish: sustainability, health, reducing vulnerability and the joy of living.

To Prof Ying, the most urgent need is carbon sequestration - trapping and storing carbon dioxide, a major cause of global warming.

'All we need is a global change of two to four degrees and we could all be gone,' she said. 'Policy makers have to jump in on this.'

At her institute, leaps are being made in the field of personalised medicine.

However, work must be done to change the mentality of how the world views medicine: It must be seen as worth the investment to study highly effective treatments which may not work across the board, but help only small groups.

Visitors to the site www.engineeringchallenges.org can vote for challenges they feel should be prioritised.

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