Cyclone rips through the price of rice

Today 8 May 08;

Rice surged for a fourth day on speculation that Myanmar may be transformed from a exporter to a buyer on the international market after last weekend's cyclone damaged crops and left about 60,000 people dead and missing.

Rice for July delivery rose as much as 2.4 per cent to US$21.60 ($29.50) per 100 pounds (45.4 kg) on the Chicago Board of Trade.

The staple food for half the world has almost doubled over the past year, reaching a record S$25.07 last month after China, Vietnam and India curbed shipments and demand rose.

Soaring prices are stoking social unrest, poverty and hunger.

"The cyclone damage in Myanmar will further tighten Asian rice supplies," said an analyst at Tokyo-based commodity broker Okachi & Co. "This may drive importers to rush for supplies as the cyclone has made the rice exporter rely on food aid".

Before the storm, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation had estimated that Myanmar may have exported 600,000 metric tons of rice this year, with shipments set for Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

That compares with estimated global exports this year of 29.9 million tons, according to FAO.

Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta region, where Cyclone Nargis hit, "is the country's main rice-growing region,'' said a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. "Roughly 24 million people live there".

Myanmar's rice-output estimate may be cut because of the crop damage, according to Ms Concepcion Calpe, a senior economist at the Food and Agriculture Organisation. A drop in exports from Myanmar, or increased imports to it, would lead to "further tightening" of the world rice market, she said.

The damage from the cyclone was "huge" and Myanmar may be forced to seek imports of rice, said Mr Chookiat Ophaswongse, the president of the Thai Rice Exporters Association.

— Bloomberg

Read more!

Georgia Aquarium flips for a new exhibit — dolphins

Mark Davis, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 6 May 08;

The Georgia Aquarium, never a small place, is about to get bigger.

Starting this summer, and for the next two years, crews will be at the downtown fishtank, adding a salt-water wing where its newest residents will splash and roll.

Those residents? Dolphins. Aquarium officials say they will build a $110 million dolphin exhibit where people can watch the creatures — swim with them, too.

The addition should open in November 2010, five years after the world's largest aquarium debuted to standing-room-only crowds.

"This has always been in our plans," said aquarium founder Bernie Marcus, who announced the expansion Tuesday amid a shower of silver confetti. "Keeping the aquarium fresh is very, very important to us."

The aquarium also announced a $1.5 million gift to help build a marine animal rescue, care and research facility near Marineland, outside St. Augustine. Marcus held up a surfboard-sized check to underscore the donation.

The dolphin exhibit will add two football fields' worth of space to the aquarium, which already encompasses more than a half-million square feet. The unnamed exhibit will comprise 84,000 square feet — a 30-home subdivision, more or less.

The wing will contain 1.3 million gallons of water. Artist depictions show a multi-storied building dotted with skylights, following Luckie Street's curve near the western edge of Centennial Olympic Park. Coca-Cola donated the land, officials said.

That should be enough space for a dozen or more Tursiops truncatus, the bottlenose dolphin. The exhibit will open with four, coming from the Dolphin Conservation Center at Marineland. The Florida facility will be a partner in dolphin research and breeding, according to officials from both facilities.

"The dolphins are all excited, especially the lucky ones going to Atlanta," said Marineland owner Jim Jacoby, who spoke from the Florida park in a simulcast appearance. In a holding pen behind him, a dorsal fin rose in a long, leisurely arc. It looked like a gray knife slicing blue paper.

The dolphins' arrival signals the departure of another warm-blooded species. A handful of sea lions, whose yelps echo outside the aquarium, will be sent to other facilities, officials said. The dolphin exhibit will be built on the site where the sea lions now bask and dive.

The dolphins also will be joining other cetaceans at the aquarium. The fishtank is home to Cold Water Quest, where three beluga whales twist in chilled waters.

Adding dolphins to the aquarium's mix of creatures — they range from whale sharks the size of speedboats to sea urchins that could ride in toy boats— is part of a long-range "wow" plan, Marcus said.

"This is the largest ... and best aquarium in the world," he said. "We think this will be a great addition to the aquarium."

Courtney Vail, a U.S. campaign officer for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, disagreed.

"I'm very disappointed with the Georgia Aquarium, but I can't say I'm surprised, said Vail, a biologist. "Dolphins are money-makers."

'Wonderful show'

Dolphins, according to a 2005 poll, are a hit. Four in 10 adult aquarium-goers named them their favorite swimming display, said Marilee Menard, executive director of the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums. The association's members, whose ranks include the Georgia Aquarium, account for nearly all the dolphins in captivity in America — almost 400, from Florida to California. More than 25 U.S. facilities have them on display.

"They are very charismatic animals,:" said Menard. "People love them."

They're also protected by federal law. The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 statute forbids their capture from national waters without a permit.

Worldwide, some species of dolphin are in trouble. The Red List, an international inventory of how well some creatures are faring, considers the Ganges River dolphin endangered, for example. The list does not address bottlenose dolphins' status in the wild.

Bottlenose dolphins should not be put on display, nor should people be allowed to swim with them, said former dolphin trainer Russ Rector. A resident of Fort Lauderdale, he is a fierce, frequent critic of marine mammal displays.

"If God had wanted dolphins in Atlanta, they'd be there, dude," said Rector. "They'll [aquarium] kill an animal quickly."

The aquarium has cetacean experts, and will add more to tend to the dolphin display, said Jeff Swanagan, the aquarium's president and executive director.

The display also will add to the appeal of downtown, said Spurgeon Richardson, president of the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau.

"It will give people a major, huge reason to come back to the Georgia Aquarium," said Richardson, on hand for the announcement. "This is not a small thing."

Nothing about the aquarium is small, said Marcus, a cofounder of Home Depot. He bankrolled a quarter-billion dollars on the aquarium, transforming an under-used tract near Marietta Street into a display that has hosted more than 7 million visitors. The dolphins, he said, should continue bolstering attendance figures.

The aquarium will let people swim with the cetaceans, just as it does with Swim With the Gentle Giants, a program in which people can paddle alongside whale sharks. That initiative debuted earlier this year.

"I think it will be exciting," said Marcus. "I think it will be a wonderful show."

==

By the numbers:

Square footage: 84,000

Cost: $110 million

Volume:1.3 million gallons. This raise the aquarium total to 9.5 million gallons.

Location: Luckie Street

Estimated opening: November 2010

Cost: General admission ($xx, currently) allows you to see the dolphins. A dolphin show, for which the price has not been set, would be extra through an all-aquarium pass.

Dolphin encounters: The aquarium also will offer a swim-with-the-dolphins program; the price has not been set.

Number of visitors to date: 7.25 million

Read more!

Cod fall may speed 'toxic tide'

Richard Black, BBC News 7 May 08;

Declining fish stocks could be partly responsible for algal blooms in the oceans, researchers have found.

Scientists found that the fall in cod stocks in the Baltic Sea in recent decades increased numbers of the tiny marine plants that produce the blooms.

Algal blooms - sometimes known as "toxic tides" - can be poisonous to people, fish and other wildlife, and may be on the increase worldwide.

The research is reported in the Royal Society's journal Proceedings B.

"In recent years, the frequency of intense blooms (in the Baltic Sea) seems to have increased, and the level in summer has also been increasing," said Michele Casini from the Swedish Board of Fisheries in Lysekil, lead scientist on the new research.

Low on oxygen

The main cause of the blooms has been thought to be increasing levels of nutrients in the sea, with a second factor being sea temperatures driven higher by climate change.

Nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus wash into the seas from agricultural land, and are also produced by some types of industry - a particular problem in largely enclosed waters such as the Baltic.

These nutrients stimulate the growth of types of phytoplankton - varieties of algae - that can form blooms.

As well as the toxins they produce, the process takes oxygen out of the water.

The scientific team - which also involved researchers from Germany and Latvia - assessed three decades of data on the Baltic Sea food web.

Basically, zooplankton (tiny marine animals) eat phytoplankton, and sprat (small fish) eat zooplankton. Finally, cod eat the sprat.

"Right now, in the last 30 years, cod have been the top predators in the Baltic, after populations of seals and other marine mammals declined because of hunting," explained Dr Casini.

The data showed a simple correlation. As the cod population declined sharply from the early 1980s, the sprat population rose; zooplankton declined, and phytoplankton increased.

Wider horizons

Many other factors could have been involved; cod do not exclusively eat sprat, and sprat are also fished.

But these do not appear to have had an impact - a statistical analysis ruled out, for example, the possibility that changing herring stocks (which are also eaten by cod) were playing a role.

Instead, the influence of the cod population (which decreased by about three-quarters in a decade) emerged as the dominant factor.

The relative importance of over-fishing to algal blooms outside the Baltic is another issue. Food webs in other parts of the oceans are more complex, and data less available; so even doing the research would prove problematic.

Nevertheless, the idea that changes in top predators percolate down through the food web is well accepted.

It is simply that here, the percolation appears to have an impact at the very lowest level that is significant, visible and potentially problematic.

Read more!

Palm oil wiping out key orangutan habitat: activists

Yahoo News 7 May 08;

One of the biggest populations of wild orangutans on Borneo will be extinct in three years without drastic measures to stop the expansion of palm oil plantations, conservationists said Wednesday.

"For Central Kalimantan, the species will be gone as soon as three years from now," Centre for Orangutan Protection director Hardi Bhaktiantoro told a press conference.

More than 30,000 wild orangutans live in the forests of Indonesia's Central Kalimantan province, or more than half the entire orangutan population of Borneo island which is shared between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.

Experts believe the overall extinction rate of Borneo orangutans is nine percent per year, but in Central Kalimantan they are disappearing even faster due to unchecked expansion of palm oil plantations.

"The expansion of palm oil plantations is wiping out entire habitats and unless the government takes drastic measures to protect these orangutan sanctuaries there is no way to reverse the trend," Bhaktiantoro said.

He showed pictures taken in November of dead orangutans being carried out of new plantations in Central Kalimantan, where they are hunted as pests to prevent them eating palm seedlings.

Orangutans are found only on Borneo and Sumatra and are listed as endangered by the Swiss-based World Conservation Union, the paramount scientific authority on imperilled species.

It says numbers of the ape have fallen by well over 50 percent in the past 60 years as a result of habitat loss, poaching and the pet trade.

Indonesia has already lost 72 percent of its 123 million hectares (304 million acres) of ancient rain forest due to frenzied logging and burning of peatland for agriculture, according to Greenpeace figures.

But the recent growth in demand for palm oil from food, cosmetic and biofuel companies is putting more pressure on orangutan habitats, swathes of which lie outside conversation areas.

"The deforestation rate in the area (Central Kalimantan), especially for conversion to palm oil plantation is extremely high," Bhaktiantoro said.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was keen to trumpet his government's efforts to save the orange apes as Indonesia hosted the UN-sponsored world climate conference in December.

He used the occasion to unveil a scheme called the Orangutan Action Plan designed to stabilise orangutan populations and habitat by 2017 and promote sustainable forest management.

Read more!

Australia's koalas threatened by global warming: study

Yahoo News 7 May 08;

Australia's koalas are threatened by global warming because higher temperatures and increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could cripple their food supply, new research showed Wednesday.

Koalas, furry marsupials which spend most of their time sleeping in tree branches, are notoriously fussy eaters and live only on eucalyptus leaves.

Already being pushed out of their habitat by drought and development, the big-eyed animal unique to Australia now faces the prospect of falling nutrient levels in eucalyptus leaves, new research led by Professor Ian Hume shows.

Laboratory tests done by Hume and students at Sydney University show that increased carbon dioxide in the air increases the level of anti-nutrients, toxins and other unhelpful ingredients in eucalyptus leaves.

Hume said any significant further rise in carbon dioxide concentrations would strip enough of the nutrients from the leaves to force the animal out of its habitat and towards an uncertain future.

"What currently may be good koala habitat may well become, over a period of not so many years at the rate that carbon dioxide concentrations are rising, very marginal habitat...," he said.

"I'm sure we'll see koalas disappearing from their current range even though we don't see any change in tree species or structure of the forests."

He said it was unlikely there would be enough time for koalas to adapt their diet to the changed nutrient level of the leaves.

"I don't think they've got enough time to do that, nowhere near enough time to do that," he said.

Higher levels of carbon dioxide in the air, caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, create the so-called "greenhouse effect" by trapping heat in the atmosphere and are the main cause of global warming.

Hume, who presented his findings at an Academy of Science conference in Canberra on Wednesday, said higher temperatures could also affect the trees.

Australia's Koalas at risk from climate change
Rod McGuirk, Associated Press Yahoo News 7 May 08;

Koalas are threatened by the rising level of carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere because it saps nutrients from the eucalyptus leaves they feed on, a researcher said Wednesday.

Ian Hume, emeritus professor of biology at Sydney University, said he and his researchers also found that the amount of toxicity in the leaves of eucalyptus saplings rose when the level of carbon dioxide within a greenhouse was increased.

Hume presented his research on the effects of carbon dioxide on eucalyptus leaves to the Australian Academy of Science in Canberra on Wednesday.

The researchers found that carbon dioxide in eucalyptus leaves affects the balance of nutrients and "anti-nutrients" — substances that are either toxic or interfere with the digestion of nutrients.

An increase in carbon dioxide favors the trees' production of carbon-based anti-nutrients over nutrients, so leaves can become toxic to koalas, Hume said.

Some eucalyptus species may have high protein content, but anti-nutrients such as tannins bind the protein so it cannot be digested by koalas.

Hume estimated that current levels of global carbon dioxide emissions would result in a noticeable reduction in Australia's koala population in 50 years due to a lack of palatable leaves.

Out of more than 600 eucalyptus species in Australia, koalas will only eat the leaves of about 25, Hume said. Changing the toxicity levels in the trees could further reduce the varieties that koalas find palatable, he said.

"Koalas produce one young each year under optimal conditions, but if you drop the nutritional value of the leaves, it might become one young every three or four years," Hume said.

Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe, a marsupial physiologist, described Hume's predictions of declining koala numbers as speculative but credible.

Eucalyptus leaves already have little nutritional value, he said, and koalas have adapted to their poor diet by sleeping to conserve energy.

"It's a very precarious existence," Tyndale-Biscoe said. "They basically sleep for 20 hours a day and then they've got four hours to do everything else — occasionally eat a leaf and maybe once a year go after another koala" to mate.

Tyndale-Biscoe said koalas had already disappeared from parts of Australia but remained plentiful in others and were unlikely to be wiped out by climate change. They already have been displaced from the most nutritious trees on the most fertile land by the spread of farms and suburbs, he said.

Read more!

India tightens security to fight rhino poachers

Biswajyoti Das, Reuters 7 May 08;

KAZIRANGA NATIONAL PARK, India (Reuters) - Authorities in India's remote northeast said they were increasing security in the world's biggest reserve for the endangered great one-horned rhinoceros to save them from poachers.

Poachers have killed at least 10 rhinos in two national parks in Assam state since January, eight of them at the Kaziranga National Park.

"We are increasing the number of guards in Kaziranga because of a recent increase in poaching, and a probe has also been ordered," Rockybul Hussain, Assam's forest minister told Reuters on Wednesday.

Last year, two dozen animals lost their horns to poachers in Assam, for their medicinal value in the international black market.

Horns fetch up to $10,000 (400,000 rupees) and demand is soaring in China and Southeast Asian countries, wildlife experts say.

After failing to check poachers for years, officials at Kaziranga have asked the national police's Central Bureau of Investigation to investigate.

But conservationists now say the new steps will be meaningless unless the government improves the working conditions of the existing guards.

"The guards do not have proper training, face harassment from senior forest officials and are blamed when things go wrong," said Soumyadeep Datta, director of Nature's Beckon, a conservation group working for protection of rhinos in the region.

BAREFOOT PATROL

The thick-skinned, one-horned Indian rhinoceros is one of the five surviving rhino species in the world.

The global conservation group WWF estimates there are less than 3,000 animals left in the world. They are found mostly in northeastern India, with a few hundred in neighboring Nepal.

Inside Kaziranga, 1,800 of them live in swamps, forests and tall thickets of elephant grass, where poachers hide before trapping them with poison or just shooting them dead.

Morale among forest guards, often engaged in a lonely battle against poachers, is low.

"There is no coordination between the foresters and police," Hare Krishna Deka, a former police chief in Assam said.

Forest guards are poorly paid and often forced to patrol barefoot without raincoats.

They have old rifles and asked to counter poachers who have modern automatic weapons, some officials and conservationists said.

As a result, it has become easier for poachers to sneak into the park without worrying much about the guards.

(Editing by Bappa Majumdar and Sanjeev Miglani)

Read more!

Survey shows US honey bee deaths increased over last year

Juliana Barbassa, Associated Press 7 May 08;

A survey of bee health released Tuesday revealed a grim picture, with 36.1 percent of the nation's commercially managed hives lost since last year.

Last year's survey commissioned by the Apiary Inspectors of America found losses of about 32 percent.

As beekeepers travel with their hives this spring to pollinate crops around the country, it's clear the insects are buckling under the weight of new diseases, pesticide drift and old enemies like the parasitic varroa mite, said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, president of the group.

This is the second year the association has measured colony deaths across the country. This means there aren't enough numbers to show a trend, but clearly bees are dying at unsustainable levels and the situation is not improving, said vanEngelsdorp, also a bee expert with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

"For two years in a row, we've sustained a substantial loss," he said. "That's an astonishing number. Imagine if one out of every three cows, or one out of every three chickens, were dying. That would raise a lot of alarm."

The survey included 327 operators who account for 19 percent of the country's approximately 2.44 million commercially managed bee hives. The data is being prepared for submission to a journal.

About 29 percent of the deaths were due to Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious disease that causes adult bees to abandon their hives. Beekeepers who saw CCD in their hives were much more likely to have major losses than those who didn't.

"What's frightening about CCD is that it's not predictable or understood," vanEngelsdorp said.

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania's Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff announced that the state would pour an additional $20,400 into research at Pennsylvania State University looking for the causes of CCD. This raises emergency funds dedicated to investigating the disease to $86,000.

The issue also has attracted federal grants and funding from companies that depend on honey bees, including ice-cream maker Haagen-Dazs.

Because the berries, fruits and nuts that give about 28 of Haagen-Daazs' varieties flavor depend on honey bees for pollination, the company is donating up to $250,000 to CCD and sustainable pollination research at Penn State and the University of California, Davis.

Read more!

Carbon-free diet attracts support

Kevin Keane, BBC News 6 May 08;

A project based on a "carbon-neutral" diet has attracted hundreds of supporters, the man behind it has said.

It is six months since the start of the Fife Diet, which aims to reduce the food coming into the country by air. It is low in meat, to reduce the amount of harmful gases produced by cattle, and involves eating only locally grown fruit and vegetables.

Mike Small said the 200 people who were following the plan were contributing to reducing climate change.

He told the BBC Scotland news website: "The problem's not been finding food in Fife all year round, that's relatively easy, but the time you spend preparing a meal from scratch every day.

"It gives us a bit of an insight into why we eat convenience food because we're all running around like dafties working too hard and don't have any time to cook a decent meal."

Changing habits

The project has relied heavily on people going back to eating food only when it is in season.

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

Mike Small on the pros and cons of the 'Fife diet'

That has also meant many foods, like bananas and oranges, are completely off the menu to cut down on the carbon emissions produced by the aeroplanes which transport them to the UK.

People instead are directed towards farm shops and farmers markets.

Jacqui Alexander, of Bellfield Organics in Newburgh, said: "To go back to having their root vegetables in the winter and to make their soups and stews, people tend to come away from those areas.

"It is difficult but then a lot of people are interested in it, you can see that at farmers markets that people are interested in the different things we grow at different times of year."

After six months, the Fife Diet is moving into a new phase with land having been secured for a community garden in Falkland.

Mike Small is hoping volunteers will help maintain the patch as a vegetable garden which, he hopes, will encourage more people to exchange foods.

The eating project has attracted the support of Friends of the Earth Scotland.

Chief executive Duncan McLaren said: "Food accounts for about a quarter of household gas emissions. Most of that comes from the methane of animal production. So, a diet like this which is quite low in meat is definitely good for the environment."

Read more!

Best of our wild blogs: 7 May 08

Leapfrogging the U.S. - Is Singapore Emerging as the World's Leading Green City? on the Daily Galaxy blog

Next time you eat sharks' fins think of Sherman
on the leafmonkey blog and on the ashira blog

Changi: a many splendoured shore
on the wildfilms blog and career breaker's blog and the budak blog and more sea bunnies and food on the flat on the budak blog

Eastern Coastal Park Connector Network with Jungle Fowls
on the Toddycats blog

Singapore maps, 1819 - 1954
on the habitatnews blog

Test of urchin
a bit about urchin id on the wildfilms blog

Iora and caterpillar
on the bird ecology blog

Excitement around a Collared Owlet
on the bird ecology blog

Read more!

Singapore water makes global waves

Jorn Madslien, BBC News 6 May 08;

Water shortages are making waves all over the world, with supplies increasingly seen as an issue of national security. In Singapore, they have boiled it down to economics.

Singapore's water shortages have always posed a major challenge.

"Although we're on the equator and we've got lots of rain, we have nowhere to naturally store water," explains Khoo Teng Chye, chief executive of the city-state's Public Utilities Board, or PUB. "We have no groundwater."

For years, water has been imported through three pipelines from neighbouring Malaysia - an expensive and geopolitically troublesome solution that has long irked the Singaporean government.

The issue is becoming increasingly acute ahead of the expiry of two long-term supply deals that guarantee deliveries of Malaysian water for less than one cent per 1,000 gallons - some until 2011, some until 2061.

"The main Malaysian demand has been for a much higher price of water, which has varied from 15 to 20 times the current price," observes Cecilia Tortajada in her report Water Management in Singapore*.

Technological breakthrough

So Singapore has set out to find alternative ways to provide its 4.4 million people with 1.36 billion litres of clean water a day.



As a first step, a string of massive reservoirs are being constructed to "harvest as much rain as possible", so that eventually, some two-thirds of the island's land surface will be under water, up from about half today, Mr Khoo explains.

In addition, desalination plants that turn salt water into drinking water provide 10% of Singapore's current needs.

But the real breakthrough has come from what Mr Khoo describes as NEWater, produced in water reclamation plants from so-called "used" water.

"We use the terminology 'used water' rather than sewage to create the understanding that water is a resource," says Mr Khoo with a grin.

The plants use advanced microfiltration or ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis membranes and ultraviolet technology to produce water that is almost as clean as the distilled variety, according to Mr Khoo.

Water for industrial use is transported in a separate pipe from Singapore's drinking water. The rest is mixed in with rainwater in the reservoirs.

"Singapore has successfully managed to find the right balances between water quantity and water quality considerations; water supply and water demand management... [and] strategic national interest and economic efficiency," according to Ms Tortajada.

Cheaper water

Five years ago, it cost up to three Singapore dollars ($2.20; £1.10) to produce a cubic metre of water in the existing desalination systems, Mr Khoo says.

Three years ago, the introduction of new technology on a vast scale reduced the cost to under a dollar. NEWater technology pushes costs much lower, so that now the cost of one cubic metre of water has been pushed down to 30 cents, which makes it all much more cost-effective.

Singapore's NEWater is produced in four plants that currently provide 15% of Singapore's needs.

A fifth plant is under construction. In three or four years, when they are all scaled up, they should provide 30% of the water needed in Singapore, Mr Khoo predicts.

Currently, each drop of water is used twice, which Mr Khoo refers to as "50% efficiency", though the target is 70%.

To achieve this, Singapore is using universally available technology, along with a rather big bundle of money.

Some $3.5bn (£1.75bn) has been invested in the last five years, and a further $3.5bn will be invested in the next five years.

"As we've built bigger and bigger plants, the cost per unit has come down dramatically," Mr Khoo says - partly thanks to economies of scale, but also because more clever ways of employing technology have been discovered.

"Our investment in water has created an industry in Singapore," Mr Khoo says. "It's a knowledge industry. We hire people from all over the world."

Global solutions

Last month, Singapore won the Environmental Contribution of the Year prize at the Global Water Awards 2008.

"Singapore has led the world in water re-use," according to Christopher Gasson, publisher of the journal Global Water Intelligence.

"Other countries will surely follow its footprints."

"Water re-use and desalination are two key solutions for cities looking to manage their water supply in a sustainable way," observes Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, praising Singapore's efforts.

Next month, Singapore International Water Week aims to bring together water industry officials and policymakers to make the search for solutions a global effort.

"We have solved our problems," insists Mr Khoo.

"Now we want to create a platform where people from all over the world can share the solutions."

* Water Management in Singapore, International Journal of Water Resources Development, June 2006.

Read more!

Green movement forgets its politics in climate change effort

Viewpoint, Ann Pettifor BBC Green Room 6 May 08;

Organisations campaigning on climate change need to learn the lessons of the anti-slavery and anti-apartheid movements, says Ann Pettifor. By focusing on individuals rather than governments, initiatives such as the recent Energy Saving Day are bound to fail in their bid to reduce emissions, she argues.

Climate change is the issue of the day.

Scientists finally agree on the threat to the planet posed by rising temperatures. Books on the subject proliferate.

Campaigners, like those at Plane Stupid, do amazing things to bring it to public attention.

Big business frets too. The world's giant investment funds join green groups in demanding drastic action.

Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest - How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being, writes that "there are over one - maybe even two - million organisations (worldwide) working toward ecological sustainability and social justice".

And yet... and yet... there is no real climate change movement.

There is no organised effort leading society towards a legislative framework that would urgently drive down greenhouse gas emissions across the board, and begin to sequester carbon dioxide.

Not in the UK, or in the US, or internationally. The "movement" that Hawken refers to is, he notes, "atomised" and "largely ignored".



Yet in September 2007, a public opinion survey from Yale University (in conjunction with Gallup) found that "nearly half of Americans now believe that global warming is either already having dangerous impacts on people around the world or will in the next 10 years".

The authors noted that this was "a 20-percentage-point increase since 2004", representing "a sea change in public opinion... and a growing sense of urgency".

If there is a "growing sense of urgency", why isn't there a climate change movement in the US?

Low level lighting

The reason is that green organisations focus on individual ("change your lightbulbs") or community ("recycle, reuse, reduce, localise") action.

They fail to highlight the need for the kind of structural change that can only be brought about by governmental action.

Governments helpfully collude in this atomisation and fragmentation of action and reaction.

Throughout history, social movements have focused on the need for government action.

The anti-slavery movement sought to change laws that permitted slavery.

The suffragette movement only ensured votes for women once discriminatory laws had been displaced; the anti-apartheid movement was only successful once apartheid laws had been removed.

In the US, the black civil rights movement campaigned from 1947 until the introduction of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act to end discrimination in certain spheres.

Today, as the UK government's hesitancy in dealing with Northern Rock reveals, governmental action is unpopular and out of fashion.

Not just with big business and neo-liberal economists, but also with anarchists and many green campaigners. Minimal government is now ideologically dominant.

The failure of anti-war demonstrations to halt the Iraq war is often cited as evidence of the failure of governments to respond to such popular pressure.

However, as the civil rights movement demonstrated, a successful campaign does not stop at one defeat. It moves forward inexorably over time, in pursuit of its legislative goal.

Fair shares

The population at large instinctively understands that they alone, or even in community, cannot deal with the threat of climate change.

They are acutely aware that while individuals may take action, others may become "freeriders".

They know a fair legislative framework is required to share the burden of adjusting to climate change equitably between rich and poor.

Burden-sharing has several dimensions; between those who live in Bangladesh and those who live in Zurich, those who drive 4x4s and those who cycle, those who take foreign holidays and those who do not.

In the UK, Ipsos Mori polled public attitudes to climate change in July 2007.

Seventy percent "strongly agreed" or "tended to agree" that "the government should take the lead in combating climate change, even if it means using the law to change people's behaviour".

Green organisations in the UK support the government's very cautious climate change bill by lobbying for a stronger legal framework - but not much stronger.

The call by UK NGOs for 80% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 - now accepted by government - lacks ambition, and underestimates the urgency.

Furthermore, the call for action by 2050 is so distant that the government feels under no pressure.

Switching off

Growing scientific evidence of accelerating greenhouse gas emissions, melting icecaps and the shrinking capacity of "sinks" to absorb emissions means we need bold, urgent action by government to drive down emissions to zero.

Britain's only Christian campaign dedicated exclusively to climate change, Operation Noah, pressures government to take much more radical action - to cut emissions by 90% by 2030, not 2050.

We may not have got it right, but we are trying to pressure government to act urgently, and to mobilise society in the way that Jubilee 2000 mobilised millions of people to cancel third world debt.

In other words, we are pressing for governmental action by a deadline.

To succeed, climate change campaigns first need first to unite - at both national and international levels.

Secondly, they must unite behind a radical goal that requires structural change, regulation and enforcement that will urgently drive down emissions and sequester carbon dioxide.

Thirdly, they need to exercise leadership by mobilising society in a concerted way behind this goal. This will intensify pressure on politicians and governments.

It ain't easy, but it has been done before; witness the Jubilee 2000 global campaign.

As things stand, the movement remains disparate, atomised and marginalised.

This frees politicians to expand airports and increase road capacity.

Parliaments fiddle while the planet burns, and individuals are pressured to take responsibility for global climate change by "switching off at the wall".

And so, inevitably, the Titanic's deck chairs are rearranged - and energy use goes up, rather than down, on Energy Saving Day.

Ann Pettifor is executive director of Advocacy International and campaigns adviser to Operation Noah

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website

Read more!

Risk $3k fine for feeding monkeys

Selina Lum, Straits Times 7 May 08;

FEED a monkey and you stand to be fined $3,000. A High Court judge yesterday said this amount would be the new benchmark punishment for such offences.

Judge of Appeal V.K. Rajah made it clear that the figure was just a starting point - the fines could go higher or lower, depending on the circumstances of each case.

For example, the judge said, someone who purposely drives to a nature reserve to feed monkeys will have the book thrown at him.

But someone who does it 'casually' may get a lower fine. He did not elaborate.

This benchmark applies to offences after last December, when the problems caused by monkey feeding were highlighted in the media.

Justice Rajah laid down the sentencing guidelines after he slashed the fine handed down to a 45-year-old cook for feeding monkeys at a Mandai sanctuary near Old Upper Thomson Road.

In January, Mr Panneerselvam Arunasalam was ordered to pay a $4,000 fine after he admitted feeding bread to the animals in the Central Catchment Nature Reserve on Aug 5 last year. It was the steepest fine ever imposed for the offence.

Mr Panneerselvam paid $2,000 before he appealed to the High Court to reduce the fine on account of his financial situation.

He claimed he had not intended to feed the animals but was surrounded by monkeys which snatched his lunch. However, a park ranger saw him throwing bread to the primates out of his lorry.

Yesterday, Justice Rajah said there was a need to send a clear message that feeding monkeys increases the risk of them behaving aggressively. But this was not the appropriate case to do so.

One reason was that Mr Panneerselvam's offence was committed before heightened coverage in the newspapers last December about the ills of feeding monkeys.

Justice Rajah noted that the district judge who fined Mr Panneerselvam had also relied on the wrong precedent. Then, prosecutors cited a case that attracted a $2,000 fine. But it emerged at the appeal that the past case involved someone who fed monkeys to trap them. That was altogether a more serious offence.

Justice Rajah reduced the fine to $1,000.

Mr Panneerselvam, who did not have a lawyer, told reporters he was happy with the verdict. He had to borrow from relatives to pay the fine.

Following reports of monkeys attacking people, the authorities have warned that feeding them makes the primates bolder in approaching people. When food is plentiful, the monkeys multiply. And instead of foraging for their own food, they tend to stray into residential areas.

Last year, 157 people were caught feeding monkeys, up from 142 in 2006. Eighteen people were convicted over this period while the rest paid $250 composition fines. In February, the National Parks Board doubled the composition fine to $500.

Monkey feeder's fine slashed to $1,000
Ansley Ng, Straits Times 7 May 08;

THE man who was fined $4,000 for feeding monkeys in a nature reserve — the steepest penalty ever imposed for the offence — got a reprieve after the High Court reduced it to $1,000.

In slashing the fine, Justice V K Rajah, however, added that the benchmark penalty for such an offence would now be $3,000. He said the actual fine imposed could differ depending on the circumstances of the offence or the culpability of the offender.

Panneerselvam Arunasalam, a cook, had pleaded guilty in January to feeding monkeys in the Central Catchment Nature Reserve in August last year. A park ranger had spotted Panneerselvam, 46, giving out bread to monkeys in the reserve near Old Upper Thomson Road, despite signs in the area warning against doing so.

The National Parks Board (NParks) says feeding monkeys adversely alters their behaviour as they stop foraging for food and rely on humans instead. They may also behave more aggressively against humans.

Such feeding also results in the unhealthy growth of the wild monkey population, and monkeys straying outside of nature reserves into residential areas. They often have to be culled for this reason, NParks said.

Panneerselvam was fined $4,000 by a district court for flouting the Parks and Trees Act. He paid $2,000 and arranged to pay the balance in monthly installments of $500, which he subsequently defaulted on.

Yesterday, Justice Rajah reduced the fine, saying Panneerselvam's case was not the "appropriate" one to send a message to the public since he committed the offence before the media highlighted the problem of monkey feeding last December.

Following his case, there was heightened media coverage about wild monkeys and the threat they pose when they become too dependent on humans for food.

Panneerselvam could have been fined up to $50,000 and jailed for up to six months. Panneerselvam said he managed to pay half of the initial fine by borrowing from relatives.

Saying that the initial penalty of $4,000 was "ridiculous", he told Today: "I am thankful to the court for reducing the fine."

Read more!