New "Carbon Revolution" Urged to Slow Warming

Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 27 Jun 08;

OSLO - The world needs a shift as radical as the Industrial Revolution to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 while safeguarding economic growth, the McKinsey Global Institute said on Thursday.

It said in a study that a modern "carbon revolution" to curb global warming would require a tenfold rise by 2050 in the level of economic output for every tonne of greenhouse gases emitted, mainly by burning fossil fuels.

"This is comparable in magnitude to the labour productivity increases of the Industrial Revolution," a 48-page report said. The institute is the economic research arm of consultants McKinsey & Co.

It estimated that the world needed to produce US$7,300 of gross domestic product (GDP) for every tonne of carbon dioxide emitted by 2050, up from a carbon productivity rate of US$740 now.

"Increasing carbon productivity tenfold in less than 50 years will be one of the greatest tests humankind has ever faced. But both history and economics give us confidence it can be done," it said.

Most technologies were already available, ranging from better building insulation to cleaner coal generation, to axe world emissions of greenhouse gases by 64 percent by 2050, or to 20 billion tonnes a year from 55 billion in 2008, it said.

Such cuts are far stiffer than those considered by most nations.

The Group of Eight leading industrial countries, which will meet in Japan next month, are considering a goal of a 50 percent cut in world emissions by 2050. The United States and Russia have opposed such a goal in the past.

COSTS 'MANAGEABLE'

The study estimated that the costs of a "carbon revolution" were likely to be "manageable", at about 0.6 to 1.4 percent of global GDP by 2030. Large amounts of the costs could be raised by borrowing, muting any impact on growth.

The cost estimates are in line with those by the UN Climate Panel last year, which said rising temperatures would spawn ever more heatwaves, more powerful storms, droughts, a spread of deserts and rising sea levels.

But the McKinsey study said that the pace of change would have to be faster than during the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

It noted that labour productivity rose tenfold in the United States between 1830 and 1955. "The tenfold increase in labour productivity was achieved over 125 years; the carbon revolution needs to be achieved in only 42," it said.

It said that the world could make big savings in energy use with measures such as improving insulation of buildings.

And new technologies, such as ways to bury carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants in countries from China to the United States, could help clean up emissions.

It said that the world should also invest more in research and development, perhaps up to US$80 billion a year by 2050.

And it said the attitudes of both managers and consumers had to change, partly by sharing new clean technology. India and China, for instance, now use about 20 percent more energy to produce a tonne of steel than the European Union or Japan.

Among other recommendations were to slow deforestation and plant more trees -- plants soak up carbon dioxide as they grow.
(Editing by Diana Abdallah)

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Plastic recycling comes full circle

Christine Jeavans, BBC News 26 Jun 08;

It has long been seen as the emblem of a throwaway society but the ordinary plastic bottle is about to take on an unlikely role as recycling paragon, with the launch on Thursday of a new reprocessing facility in east London.

On a previously derelict site on the outskirts of Dagenham, sandwiched between the roaring A13 and the Thames, the final components are being placed into giant machines which will soon form the cutting edge of recycling in Britain.

The Closed Loop recycling plant claims to be the first in the world to take both milk bottles and clear drinks bottles and turn them back into food-grade plastic.

Once it is up and running, the £13m facility aims to help create a continuous cycle by enabling manufacturers to use recycled plastic from the UK in their food and drink packaging.

"Essentially the consumer buys their product, say, a bottle of Coca Cola. If they do the right thing with that bottle and place it in the recycling it will have every chance of ending up at our plant and eventually being turned back into another Coke bottle," says Closed Loop London's managing director, Chris Dow.

It sounds simple but such are the difficulties involved in collecting, sorting and decontaminating plastics, that as recently as four years ago, many people in the industry were sceptical it could be done.

Bottle to bottle

But bottle to bottle recycling, as it is known, could go some way towards answering growing consumer ire about packaging.

The stringent processes used at the Dagenham plant will strip out any bacteria or toxins, says Mr Dow. He adds that Closed Loop aims to deal with 35,000 tonnes of used plastic a year.

The processing begins when grimy half-tonne bales of compacted plastic bottles arrive from council recycling schemes.

They contain two sorts of plastic: polyethylene terephthalate (PET) - which are the clear bottles most commonly used for water and fizzy drinks - and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) - the cloudy plastic used for milk bottles.

First, the bales are broken and a three metre wide spinning sieve called a trommel "shakes and breaks" the bottles to throw off the loosest dirt.

The bottles are then sorted, shredded, washed and decontaminated in a 200C kiln and sorted again by laser before ending up as pure flakes of PET and pellets of HDPE, ready to be supplied to customers who will mix them with virgin plastic to create new bottles.

Mr Dow says it is an achievable goal to aim for 50% recycled plastic in new bottles, any more would risk compromising the strength of the product.

Marks and Spencer is one customer which has already signed up for a third of Closed Loop's output and the retailer has been pivotal in developing the market for food grade recycled plastic.

Dr Helene Roberts, head of packaging at M&S says the company has been using increasing amounts of recycled PET in drinks bottles, salad bowls and fruit punnets since 2004 but has had to source it abroad.

"We've not had access to a more local source of food grade recycled material so we are incredibly happy that they're opening the first UK plant," says Ms Roberts.

"At the moment 75% of UK plastics are sent off-shore for recycling in other countries. Yet we are desperate to get hold of more and more recycled material."

M&S began using recycled material in its milk bottles in 2006 when it ran trials with bottles containing 10% recycled HDPE in its organic range.

The experiment went down well with customers and Ms Roberts says she aims to increase this to 50% recycled content across the entire range of milk in the stores, taking plastic both from Closed Loop and the UK's other milk bottle reprocessing plant run by Greenstar WES in Redcar.

Packaging giant Nampak who supplies Dairy Crest has also ordered 6,000 tonnes of food grade HDPE from each plant.

Collection problems

Demand, then, is high for the recycled product but the infrastructure to supply the raw material - used bottles - could be an issue.

Huge variations in council collection policies mean that although it is easy for some householders to put all their plastics out for collection along with paper, glass and cans, people living in other local authorities have to separate their plastics out or can only recycle certain types of plastic.

However, the situation is improving rapidly, according to Paul Davidson, Plastics Technology Manager at the government-backed Waste & Resources Action Programme (Wrap).

"There has been a big improvement in the performance of local authorities who have had to really scale up the amount of plastic bottles they are collecting.

"Households have also responded very positively to this opportunity and have increased recycling as a result."

Figures gathered by Recoup, the UK's leading authority on plastics recycling, put the amount of plastic bottles collected by councils in 2007 at 182,000 tonnes or 4.5 billion bottles - a rise of 68% on the previous year.

This suggests some 35% of the 13.1 billion plastic bottles used by British households now end up in recycling - compared with just 3% in 2001.

If the trend continues, that figure could hit 50% this year, says Wrap.

Waste reduction

But environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth warns that improved recycling should not be seen as a magic bullet.

"Essentially we want to get to the situation where we are recycling as much as possible, but we want to reduce waste in the first place," says Michael Warhurst, Senior resources and waste campaigner at FoE.

"A classic example is bottled water which is fine when you are out and about but buying bottled water for the home when tap water is available is incredibly wasteful.

"Recycling is a good thing but if you can manage not to use something in the first place you save resources."

Chris Dow of Closed Loop London agrees that consumer attitudes need to change - and are doing so - but adds: "we're dealing with the here and now".

He says plans for a second plant are already on the drawing board and he wants to open five eventually.

"This is part of the urgently needed infrastructure in the UK that every nation in the future is going to have to address - this whole idea of sending your waste overseas for someone else to deal with has a short life."

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Rising Temperatures Force Many Plants Higher - Study

PlanetArk 27 Jun 08;

LONDON - Rising temperatures have forced many plants to creep to higher elevations to survive, researchers reported on Thursday.

More than two-thirds of the plants studied along six West European mountain ranges climbed an average of 29 metres in altitude in each decade since 1905 to better conditions on higher ground, the researchers reported in the journal Science.

"This is the first time it is shown that climate change has applied a significant effect on a large set of forest plant species," said Jonathan Lenoir, a forest ecologist at AgroParisTech in France, who led the study.

"It helps us understand how ecosystems respond to temperature changes."

Earlier this week, US researchers warned warming temperatures could turn many of California's native plants into "plant refugees" looking for more suitable habitats.

They concluded that a warming climate and rainfall changes would force many of the US state's native plants to range north or to higher elevations or possibly even go extinct in the next 100 years.

The French team's findings suggest plants at high altitudes face the same or greater impacts from rising temperatures, Lenoir said in a telephone interview.

"Plant species move where it is optimal for them to grow," Lenoir said. "If you change these optimal conditions, species will move to recover the same conditions."

Using database on plant species found at specific locations and elevations stretching back to 1905, the researchers showed many plants have steadily crept higher to conditions best suited for survival and growth.

Plants move higher by dispersing their seeds in the wind, which blows them to higher elevations and cooler temperatures similar to their former location, Lenoir said.

The researchers tracked 171 forest plant species during two periods -- between 1905 and 1985, and from 1986 to 2005 -- along the entire elevation range from sea level to 2,600 metres.

They found that two-thirds of the plants responded to warming temperatures over that time by shifting to higher altitudes.

Plants at higher altitudes also appear most sensitive to warmer conditions because slight temperature changes at higher altitudes have a bigger impact, he added. (Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Maggie Fox and Ibon Villelabeitia)


Story by Michael Kahn
Global warming causing plant migration in Europe: study
Yahoo News 26 Jun 08;

Global warming has caused numerous European plant species to migrate to higher elevations over the decades, according to new research published Thursday.

The research appears in the June 27 edition of the journal Science, and has potentially "important ecological and evolutionary consequences," the study's authors wrote.

A team of international scientists working in mountainous regions of Western Europe compared the natural elevation range of 171 forest plant species between 1905 and 1985, and again between 1986 and 2005.

"Along the entire elevation range, 0 to 2,600 meters (8,500 feet) above sea level ... we show that climate warming has resulted in a significant upward shift in species optimum elevation averaging 29 meters (95 feet) per decade," the researchers wrote.

The lead author of the study was Jonathan Lenoir of AgroParisTech in Nancy, France.

The report, compiled with data from the French National Climatic Network, was conducted in six mountainous regions throughout Europe.

They include the Northern Pyrenees, the Massif Central, the Western Jura, the Vosges, the Corsican range and the alpine regions, where average temperature increases have approached one degree Celsius since the start of the 1980s, researchers said.

Plants "Climbing" Mountains Due to Global Warming
Mason Inman, National Geographic News 26 Jun 08;

Like people vacationing in the mountains to escape summer heat, plants are "climbing" to higher elevations to cope with global warming, a new study shows.

Previous research has suggested that many plant and animal species have been shifting their ranges toward the Poles as the planet warms.

Now scientists have found evidence that plants have also been slowly moving into higher elevations to stay within ideal temperature zones.

Each year this "escalator effect" is pushing plants upward by about ten feet (three meters).

"When we started to look at this, I was not expecting such a strong message," said study leader Jonathan Lenoir, a forest ecologist at AgroParisTech, a research institute in France.

If global warming continues over the coming decades—as researchers predict it will—the plants will continue to climb.

But since some species move faster than others, this shift could tear established ecosystems apart, the researchers report in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science.

Moving on Up

For more than a century naturalists all over the world have been recording exactly where they found various plant species in the mountains.

"Botanists used to wander in mountain ecosystems … to look for and study specific mountain plant communities, to locate rare and endangered plant communities … or even simply to enjoy the landscape within mountains," Lenoir said.

In the mountains climate conditions change dramatically with altitude, making it is easier to detect when certain species shift to higher elevations.

"Mountains are [therefore] amazing places to observe vegetation changes in response to climate warming," Lenoir added.

The new study drew on nearly 8,000 historical surveys of the mountains in and around France, some stretching back to 1905.

Temperatures in these mountains—which include the Western Alps, Pyrenees, and Massif Central—crossed a threshold around 1985, the researchers say.

Before that year the region shows no clear trend in climate changes. But since then the mountains have been warming, and plants began moving in sync with rising temperatures.

The scientists looked at the movements of 171 species in forests on the lower slopes, from sea level up to 8,500 feet (2,600 meters).

While earlier studies had focused on plants in high altitudes that are known to be more sensitive to temperature changes, the new work found that even common plants at lower elevations are feeling the heat.

The team also discovered that different types of plants are moving at different rates.

"Long-lived plants like trees or shrubs did not show a significant shift, whereas short-lived species like herbs showed a strong upward shift in elevation," Lenoir said.

"This may imply profound changes in the composition and the structure of plant communities and on the animal species they interact with," he added. "It may disrupt ecosystems."

Out of Room

Steven Running is an ecologist at the University of Montana in Missoula who was not involved in the new study.

"Theory would predict that warming temperatures will allow plant distributions to expand into cooler, higher mountain elevations," he said.

"This paper confirms the theory. With a large population analysis, [it is] the best evidence published so far that plant distributions are rising [in altitude]."

The shifts in elevations of some plants and not others "shows very much that the ecosystems are already evolving away from the ecosystems as we know them," added Cynthia Rosenzweig of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.

With shorter-lived species, "we're seeing this rapid response" to warming, Rosenzweig said.

While it shows these plants are adapting to the changes, she noted, "they're going to have to keep moving up and up—and eventually run out of room."

And the longer-lived species that aren't moving may also be headed for trouble, she said.

"There's concern that they aren't adapting and may not have spread their seeds far enough" to shift their ranges to cope with continued warming.

Study: Global warming chases plants uphill
Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press Yahoo News 27 Jun 08;

Faced with global warming, plants are heading for the hills. A study of 171 forest species in Western Europe shows that most of them are shifting their favored locations to higher, cooler spots.

For the first time, research can show the "fingerprints of climate change" in the distribution of plants by altitude, and not only in sensitive ecosystems, said Jonathan Lenoir of AgroParisTech in Nancy, France.

His team found "a significant upward shift of species optimum elevation, the altitude where species are the most likely to be found over their whole elevation range."

Indeed, comparing the distribution of species between 1905 and 1985 with their distribution between 1986 and 2005 showed a shift upward of 95 feet per decade, researchers led by Lenoir report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

The team studied the preferred location of plants from sea level up to more than 8,500 feet in six regions in France. AgroParisTech is the agricultural branch of the Paris Institute of Technology.

This shows that the effects of climate change are being felt in all areas, not just mountain summits and polar regions, explained co-author Pablo Marquet of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

Unlike animals, of course, plants can't just pick up and move in search of a better home.

But plant species do move, as seeds that are spread tend to grow better in one place than another — in this case at higher elevations in preference to lower ones.

Quickest to relocate, not surprisingly, were plants such as herbs, ferns and mosses with shorter life spans and faster reproduction cycles, the researchers said. Not so fleet were large woody plants that reproduce more slowly.

In fact, long-lived plants like trees that reproduce slowly are more threatened by climate change because they can't quickly relocate, Lenoir said.

Herbs, by having a short life cycle, have had several generations while trees have had just one, noted co-author Jean-Claude Gegout of AgroParisTech.

The plants studied tended to be the most common ones in the mountain forests of France, Lenoir said, allowing the researchers to collect the largest possible amount of information.

Of the 171 species studied, 118 moved uphill and 53 edged downward, the researchers said.

"Individual species behave differently, but as a whole the set of species we studied shows a clear and significant response associated to a shift in their distribution upwards," Lenoir said in an interview via e-mail.

There are a number of possible local reasons for some plants to shift downhill, he said, but the aim of the study was to look at large-scale change and not specific plant species.

"The most important result of our study is that among our 171 species, most are shifting upward," Lenoir said.

To calculate the upward advance of 95 feet per decade the team compared optimum plant locations in 1993 and 1971. The average location of plants from 1905 to 1985 occurred in 1971, while 1993 marked the average locations between 1986 and 2005.

Linda Mearns, a senior scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, called the study "an important contribution to the growing literature documenting the effects of climate change."

"The fact that the authors are looking at the shift in the spatial core of the range, and not only the shifts at the boundaries of the ranges, makes the research particularly valuable," said Mearns, who was not part of the research team.

In a separate paper, Jeremy Collie of the University of Rhode Island reports that there has been a shift over nearly 50 years in the fish present in Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island Sound.

"While we're catching more fish now, we're also catching smaller fish," said Collie, "and that corresponds with how the preferred temperatures of the fish here have changed. The fish community now is dominated by warm-water adapted species compared with what we started with."

Water temperature in the bay is up about three degrees Fahrenheit since 1959, and the preferred temperature of the fish caught in the trawls has also increased by that amount, he said.

"That seems to be direct evidence of global warming," he said. "It's hard to explain any other way."

His findings appear in the July issue of the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

___

On the Net:

Science: http://www.sciencemag.org

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences:

http://pubs.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/rp-ps/journalDetail.jsp?jcodecjfas&langeng

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Cost of tackling global climate change has doubled, warns Stern

Author of landmark report says 2% of GDP is needed
Inaction would mean far greater economic damage

Juliette Jowit and Patrick Wintour, The Guardian 26 Jun 08;

The author of an influential British government report arguing the world needed to spend just 1% of its wealth tackling climate change has warned that the cost of averting disaster has now doubled.

Lord Stern of Brentford made headlines in 2006 with a report that said countries needed to spend 1% of their GDP to stop greenhouse gases rising to dangerous levels. Failure to do this would lead to damage costing much more, the report warned - at least 5% and perhaps more than 20% of global GDP.

But speaking yesterday in London, Stern said evidence that climate change was happening faster than had been previously thought meant that emissions needed to be reduced even more sharply.

This meant the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would have to be kept below 500 parts per million, said Stern. In 2006, he set a figure of 450-550ppm. "I now think the appropriate thing would be in the middle of that range," he said. "To get below 500ppm ... would cost around 2% of GDP."

In a recent report for the London School of Economics, Stern acknowledged that even 1% of GDP was "not a trivial amount". For the UK it is equivalent to £14bn a year. But he argue that it was a fraction of annual economic growth, and much less than the 8-14% that was spent, for example, on health by industrialised countries.

His reassessment of the cost of battling climate change comes at a sensitive time, the day before Gordon Brown makes a major speech setting out a £100bn strategy for ensuring that 15% of all energy used in the UK will come from renewable sources by 2020. The government has come under pressure from the Tories, whose statements on the environment include effectively banning new coal power stations and opposing a third runway at Heathrow.

Ministers are already under political pressure to row back on environmental taxes, such as increases in fuel duty and vehicle excise duty. Downing Street aides admit government policy is ahead of public opinion and that its proposals are on the margins of what the electorate will tolerate at a time of escalating oil prices and falling house prices. Brown will highlight that as many as 160,000 green jobs will be created by his climate change measures.

Speaking yesterday at the launch of the Carbon Rating Agency, the world's first ratings agency for carbon offsetting projects, Stern warned that the 2% estimate required governments to act quickly. "All this depends on good policy and well functioning [carbon] markets. There are many ways to mess this up, many ways of acting to make it more costly," he said.

The Stern review in October 2006 called for global emissions to be cut by a quarter by 2050 and to be stopped from rising above the equivalent of 550ppm of CO2, a measure that combines the effect of all the greenhouse gases. The current level is 430ppm, and is rising by 2ppm a year.

Yesterday, Stern, a former World Bank chief economist and head of the UK government economic service, said he now believed the limit should be 500ppm. This would reduce the risk from a 50% chance to a 3% chance that the global average temperature would rise by 5C above pre-industrial levels, he said, pointing out that the last time this happened, 35-55m years ago, alligators lived near the north pole. "These kind of temperature changes transform the word," he said.

His new comments follow a speech in April in which he said that the latest research showed climate change was more of a threat, and called for global emissions to halve by 2050, including cuts of 80% in the UK and 90% in the US.

The Department for Environment said the case for cutting global emissions was still strong: "We cannot afford inaction on climate change. Even at the upper range of the estimates, the cost of avoiding dangerous climate change is much lower than even the most conservative estimates of inaction."

The Confederation of British Industry said Stern's latest figures should add to pressure for government and businesses to act quickly to avoid the costs rising further.

"This only reaffirms the need to tackle climate change as an immediate priority and highlights both the benefits of early action and the cost of inaction," said Neil Bentley, CBI Director of Business Environment.

Caroline Lucas, the Green Party's principal speaker and an MEP, said during a recession concerted action to invest in efficiency and clean energy could "kick-start" the economy in a similar way to the New Deal in the US in the 1930s.

"What we need is a similar injection of capital but into green technology," said Lucas. "For example the aspiration of making every home energy efficient: that will cost money but at the same time provide a huge number of jobs and save people money on their fuel bills."

On Wednesday, a report from HSBC also showed shares in companies taking action to reduce emissions and develop products and services to cut pollution were outperforming the market.

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Wrong names for fish seen complicating conservation

Alister Doyle Reuters 26 Jun 08;

OSLO (Reuters) - About a third of all types of fish and other marine life have been wrongly named by scientists, complicating efforts to conserve what could be a million marine species, experts said on Wednesday.

Inaugurating a World Register of Marine Species (www.marinespecies.org), they said the breadcrumb sponge, found in the North Atlantic in many shapes and colors, held the record for misleading synonyms with 56 Latin names.

"Convincing warnings about declining fish and other marine species must rest on a valid census," Mark Costello of the University of Auckland, co-founder of the register, said in a statement.

The register, trying to sort out a tangle of multiple Latin names for marine organisms from whales to plankton, has validated names of 122,500 species after eliminating 56,400 aliases, or 32 percent of all names reviewed.

"For 250 years scientists have been describing species in the oceans but there is no complete list," Ward Appeltans of the Flanders Marine Institute and data manager of the register told Reuters. "We are now creating that list."

Experts at the register estimate that 230,000 species are known to science and that three times more are yet to be found, giving a final total that could exceed a million. The register hopes to give an overview of known species by October 2010.

New species get a two-word Latin name as their formal identity. But scientists often wrongly believe they have found a new species and give a new name.

The oldest name usually takes precedence, as with the breadcrumb sponge's name Halichondrea panicea given in 1766. Later names for the same sponge include Alcyonium manusdiaboli in 1794 or Trachyopsilla glaberrima in 1931.

OVER-FISHING

Getting names right is a condition for managing resources in the seas, where many species are facing threats from over-fishing, pollution and climate change. Current high food prices could put more pressure on fish stocks.

"If fish are transported it's very important that customs know exactly what's in the boxes," Appeltans said. "If you want to protect endangered species you need to...be able to identify the species."

A type of marine snail once used in the cosmetics industry, for instance, was found to be the same as one listed under another name as endangered, he said.

Among species with misleading names, the basking shark, the world's second largest fish after the whale shark, has 39 aliases in Latin, Appeltans said.

"The register...will change the way people think about biodiversity and naming species," Ron O'Dor, senior scientist of the Census of Marine Life, told Reuters.

The register is linked to the census, a 10-year effort to map life in the oceans. So far the census has added 110 validated species to the list and expects to add thousands more.

In remote parts of the oceans, such as off Antarctica, more than 80 percent of organisms caught are unknown to science especially smaller creatures such as worms, molluscs or crustaceans.

(Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Catalogue of marine life reaches 122,500
Yahoo News 26 Jun 08;

Scientists have identified some 122,500 species of marine life in the oceans and have managed to clear up some 56,000 cases of double-identity as part of a global research project.

"Convincing warnings about declining fish and other marine species must rest on a valid census," said Mark Costello of the University of Auckland in a statement Wednesday.

"This project will improve information vital to researchers investigating fisheries, invasive species, threatened species and marine ecosystem functioning, as well as to educators."

The new World Register of Marine Species (www.marinespecies.org) now contains about 122,500 validated marine species names, and has cleared up the aliases given to thousands of species.

"It will eliminate the misinterpretation of names, confusion over Latin spellings, redundancies and a host of other problems that sow confusion and slow scientific progress," Costello said.

Researchers aim to finish the project by October 2010.

"It adds difficulties to project like the census where we have to integrate data from different sources into one data base, because of different names to the same thing," said Edward Vanden Berghe, from the Ocean Biographic Information System at Rutgers University.

Since the middle of the 18th century when scientists first began to set up a system to name and classify plant and animal life, several different species have inadvertently been given different names.

The Breadcrumb Sponge, known by its Latin name of Halichondria panicea, was the champion of Latin aliases, collecting some 56 synonyms since its first description in 1766.

The animal which has no fixed abode and likes to float along or attach itself to rocks, smells like exploded gun-powder and is known to change its appearance.

"Animals on land or on the sea don't walk around with their names on their face," said Philippe Bouchet, professor at the Natural History Museum in Paris.

"The history of science is full of approximations, of intuitions and of errors," he told AFP.

Launched in 2000, the census aims to classify and identify all marine life, and involves some 100 scientists working in 80 countries. The census should contain an estimated 230,000 species once it is complete in 2010.

But Bouchet said the work completed so far represents just "the tip of the iceberg, given all the species that remain to be discovered and are continually being discovered."

Before the cataloguing is done, he said, researchers could uncover "five times as many marine species" as those currently known.

There are also several other ongoing projects aiming to catalogue the Earth's biodiversity and classify the 1.8 million species of plant and animal life on the planet.

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Best of our wild blogs: 26 Jun 08

Singapore is getting greener: now for a bluer Singapore
on the wildfilms blog

The sea bottom off Pulau Sudong is being measured
from an MPA notice on the wildfilms blog

Life history of the Great Helen
on the butterflies of singapore blog

Seagrass Succession
a new seagrass team on labrador on the labrador blog

Pong pong and the cockatoo
a toxic snack? on the urban forest blog

Blue-winged Minla catching a moth
from Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Sorting out names of marine life forms
on the wildfilms blog

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Another major shipyard accident

Burnt worker is 23rd person to be killed or injured this month
Teh Joo Lin, Straits Times 26 Jun 08;

A WORKER was badly burnt yesterday during a fire onboard a boat in a Tuas shipyard, the second major accident at the same facility in the last 10 days.

The 54-year-old man, believed to be the ship's engineer and a New Zealander, also became the 23rd person either injured or killed in shipyard accidents this month.

He was rushed to hospital where he was warded with second-degree burns. He was said to be in a stable condition.

The blaze was the second accident since June 17 at Drydocks World Singapore - part of an international ship-repair firm - and the latest in a rash of accidents that have rocked the shipping industry.

This month, shipyard accidents have claimed the lives of five workers and injured 18 others.

That tally includes two workers who recently died after being badly burnt in an explosion earlier this month.

Yesterday's fire came just a week after safety officials urged shipyards to call an unprecedented 'time-out' from work to review safety procedures. So far, at least 26 out of the 89 shipyards here have responded to the call.

Drydocks was said to have conducted a time-out last Friday. The fire yesterday happened onboard the Pacific Sentinel, a supply vessel that docked at the Drydocks yard earlier in the week, according to workers there.

The blaze apparently began in a compartment near the engine room. The Straits Times understands the engineer was doing repair work there.

At the same shipyard last Tuesday, two Indian nationals died and five others were injured while working below deck on another ship. It appeared to be a case of gas poisoning.

A Manpower Ministry spokesman said all work at Drydocks had been stopped.

In a separate accident on Sunday in Pasir Panjang, four crewmen onboard a container vessel were scalded by steam and hot water.

The run of deaths and injuries comes at a time when the shipping sector is enjoying a boom in business.

Last year, the marine and offshore industry - largely the ship-repair and offshore sectors - rang in $13.05billion in total output - a 33per cent jump from 2006.

Madam Halimah Yacob, a member of the Government Parliamentary Committee for Manpower, said the flurry of work creates tight deadlines, but worker safety should be the top priority.

'Workers must internalise the safety ethos and be conscious of safety all the time... or complacency can set in. That is when it becomes very dangerous.'

Meanwhile, inspectors this week began checks which focus on the safety protocols at shipyards.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JERMYN CHOW

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Asian cities need help to avoid urbanisation problems

Channel NewsAsia 25 Jun 08;

SINGAPORE : Asian cities need help to cope with an unprecedented period of urbanisation, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Wednesday, stressing that their future prosperity is at stake.

Providing adequate water supplies and infrastructure are among the key issues facing urban planners and policymakers, ADB president Haruhiko Kuroda said, noting few Asian cities have successfully dealt with rapid expansion.

"Asia's rapid urbanisation is unprecedented," Kuroda said in a speech to the World Cities Summit in Singapore, noting an estimated 1.1 billion Asians are expected to migrate to cities in search of better lives over the next 20 years.

"Improving the livelihood and quality of life for so many city dwellers is an urban management task of a magnitude never before attempted by humanity.

"Clearly, Asian cities need assistance in coping with the physical impact of past and current urban growth."

The Tokyo-Yokohoma area and Shanghai are rare urban success stories in Asia, Kuroda said.

"Some Asian mega-cities have been enormously successful... unfortunately such successes are not the norm but the exception," he said.

In most parts of Asia, investments in infrastructure have failed to keep up with economic growth, and where there are new investments, the benefits have not been distributed equally, he said.

Aside from the need to invest in infrastructure, the region needs technical assistance critical to sustain growth, he said.

To this end, the ADB has launched a water financing initiative that aims to provide 200 million Asians with access to safe drinking water, said Kuroda.

"Water is central to the larger development agenda... water quality management is an area which has been sadly neglected in much of the region," said Kuroda.

Thousands of delegates from around the world are in Singapore for a series of inter-related conferences and events related to sustainable development. - AFP/jk

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Going green: Many cities get red marks for poor planning

Arti Mulchand, Straits Times 26 Jun 08;

TOO many cities are built for cars, not people.

They rely too heavily on fossil fuels, leading to high emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

Bad planning on how to use land adds to the litany of environmental sins.

The result: These icons of urbanisation fare rather badly on their climate-change report cards.

Giving this assessment was Mr Jeremy Harris, a former mayor of the city and county of Honolulu.

He was speaking at a discussion on environmental sustainability and climate change at the World Cities Summit, which ended yesterday.

'The challenge we face is monumental... We can't develop the new cities of the future by using the failed paradigms of the past,' he said.

His four-pronged strategy as mayor of Honolulu for over a decade included building cities with people in mind, being smart in growth design and preserving agricultural land and open spaces.

The transport system, for one thing, is designed to minimise car use and promote the extensive use of bicycles. City buses are even equipped with bike racks so residents can take their bikes with them when they travel around the city.

Residential, work and community spaces are planned so people do not have to travel too far to work, or even to shop, he said.

The city also has an extensive recycling programme, turning glass into asphalt and green waste into compost, among other things. It also reprocesses cooking oil as fuel for city vehicles.

Technology has also been aggressively harnessed to allow for integrated planning and to boost efficiency.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS), for example, provide a three-dimensional view of the entire city - all its buildings, transport systems, topography, demographics and even sewers.

Even the maintenance and repair of the island's water infrastructure is GIS-based - every storm-drain manhole cover has a barcode so that field workers, equipped with handheld computers, know exactly what needs to be done.

The measures are backed, too, with strong buy-in from the community, as well as the 'expertise and enthusiasm of civil society', he added.

All that, while the city budget stayed flat.

'A lot of people said we could not afford to do it. But we could not afford not to,' he said.

Some of his fellow speakers also pointed to examples of sustainability at work, and measures that supply solutions instead of adding problems to the climate-change issue.

In Mexico City, for example, an improved bus-based rapid transit system has not only sped up travelling time, but led to reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions of 35,000 tons a year, said Mr Robert Bradley, director of International Climate Policy from the World Resources Institute.

The impact of global warming would also be dire, Mr Harris said, flashing a photograph of a water-inundated neighbourhood of Waikiki should sea levels rise by a metre.

'When you live in a coastal city, this is real,' he added.

Singapore's National Environment Agency chief executive Lee Yuan Hee, who also spoke at the session, agreed.

'We have no hinterland to turn to. We do not have a second chance,' he said.

To that end, Singapore has commissioned its first long-term climate-change impact study, which will be ready early next year.

What cities really need to do is to reflect the true economic cost of a business-as-usual approach, concluded Mr Harris, using the subsidised price of petrol as an illustration.

If its true price is reflected, solar energy, for one thing, would surface as far more cost-competitive than many think it is.

'We can no longer afford, as a civilisation, to operate under this fraudulent book-keeping,' he said.

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Singapore to facilitate network of East Asian cities to tackle challenges

Hasnita Majid, Channel NewsAsia 25 Jun 08;

SINGAPORE: A network linking cities in East Asia will be set up to tackle challenges such as climate change, and Singapore will facilitate the activities of the network, according to National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan.

Mr Mah said: "Although we come from different cities, we face common challenges of how we can grow our city but at the same time make it liveable. So that is something that we all agreed upon. There is a sense of crisis and there is a strong political will to do something with all the different cities."

He added that the Centre for Liveable Cities, which has just been set up in Singapore, can be a platform to sustain the activities for the network.

During the roundtable discussion on the second day of the East Asia Summit Conference on Liveable Cities, participants learned about how some challenges faced by cities like Melbourne and Jakarta have been tackled.

The Governor of Jakarta, Dr Ing Fauzi Bowo, for instance, said that the key challenge for the Indonesian capital is change - not only in bureaucracy but also in the people's mindset.

"Poor people used to throw (away) trash because they think this is not their responsibility. We are now engaging their mind, and we try to encourage them, and we try to convince them that there is an economic value in their waste," he said.

Following the summit, a report highlighting the key points of the conference as well as the possible areas of cooperation will be drawn up. The report will then be submitted to the East Asia Leaders Summit at their next meeting in December. - CNA/ac

East Asia leaders resolve to keep liveable cities dialogue alive
New policy institute can be a platform to facilitate sharing of experiences: Mah
Lee U-Wen, Today Online 25 Jun 08;

THE first-ever East Asia Summit conference on liveable cities might have ended yesterday, but the journey for all 16 countries in the bloc is only just beginning.

Singapore, which hosted the two-day event, will set up an informal network of like-minded cities to create more opportunities to meet and share knowledge on energy security, climate change and sustainable development, said National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan.

This after the participants - which included ministers, mayors and governors - made a renewed call for stronger political will for their countries to develop cities in a sustainable manner.

The countries that will be part of this new network include those from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), together with Australia, New Zealand, China, India, Japan and South Korea.

Mr Mah, who was also the conference's chairman, said at a plenary session yesterday afternoon: 'There is a sense of urgency or, as one speaker put it, a sense of crisis at the moment. Although we all come from different cities, we face common challenges on how we can grow our city but at the same time make it liveable.'

Ensuring the discussions and ideas arising from the conference are kept alive will be one of the first tasks of the Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC), a new policy institute set up by the National Development and Environment and Water Resources ministries.

'We have decided that we should not let this dialogue end here. We can continue our talks through e-mail, joint projects, studies, research, host visits. And in this respect, the CLC can be one of the platforms to facilitate this sharing of experiences,' said Mr Mah.

Among the many East Asian policymakers who shared their city's plans at the plenary session was Jakarta governor Fauzi Bowo, who called for bureaucratic change in the Indonesian capital's provincial government.

'There also has to be a mindset change among our citizens. A shift in thinking will result in better cooperation and synergy among stakeholders. The more prosperous the community, the better educated they will be - which itself will bring a better understanding of the importance of sustainable development,' he said.

For Melbourne mayor John So, the greatest challenge facing the Australian city at present is how to reduce emissions created by buildings. He shared how energy use in residential and commercial buildings accounts for 95 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions from the municipality.

While recognising that cities are different in structure, culture, economics, geography and climate, Mr Mah said that it was time to find the most viable solution for each city.

'Singapore can be a showcase of many different experiences - not just the positive ones; cities can also learn from our negative experiences and the mistakes that we have made. Through this informal network, all of us will be the better for it,' he said.

All the new ideas and suggestions arising from these events will be compiled and submitted to the East Asian leaders at their next summit in Bangkok this December.

Regional hub to train urban planners
Water experts and city planners from around the world unveiled three new initiatives and ideas at the Singapore International Water Week and World Cities Summit yesterday
Jessica Cheam, Straits Times 26 Jun 08;

SINGAPORE could soon add one more hub to its already impressive list - as a regional centre to train urban planners, designers and architects.

The idea was raised yesterday by the World Bank, which is in talks with the Government about setting up such a facility, believed to be the first in Asia.

Siting such a hub here is no accident. The country is seen as an example of Asia's forward-looking attitude to urbanisation and such a centre would 'draw on and share Singapore's phenomenal knowledge and experience', said Mr James Adams, the bank's vice-president for the East Asia and Pacific region.

Mr Adams' comments on the last day of the World Cities Summit came a day after Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced a new Centre for Liveable Cities.

This centre will bring together the expertise Singapore has built up in government, industry and academia on sustainable urban development.

Industry experts told The Straits Times the recent moves are timely, given that 54 per cent - 2.6 billion - of Asia's population is expected to live in cities by 2030.

'The need for good urban planners has never been greater and we need to train them up quickly,' said principal architect John Ting of Singapore's AIM & Associates.

'Without well-trained urban planners, cities will face big problems in the face of overwhelming demand on resources,' said Mr Ting, who is also a former president of the Singapore Institute of Architects.

Talks on the World Bank's proposed centre here are in the preliminary stage and details will be released later, possibly at year-end, when World Bank president Robert Zoellick is scheduled to visit.

In his speech, Mr Adams noted that the 'old thinking' that urbanisation was a 'bad thing' has given way to the idea that it is an important driver of economic growth.

'No country has grown to high income without vibrant cities,' he said. This should be achieved, as Singapore has done, through a combination of innovative policies, investments in education and infrastructure, and a big push to attract foreign capital and talent.

Informal network of 16 countries formed to share ideas and expertise
Shefali Rekhi, Straits Times 26 Jun 08;

SIXTEEN countries have formed an informal network to share ideas and expertise to promote environmentally sustainable development, National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan disclosed yesterday.

Members of this new group will interact regularly to discuss issues, host visits and undertake projects, Mr Mah said, after chairing a session of the inaugural East Asia Summit (EAS) Conference on Liveable Cities.

More than 30 mayors and governors participated in the meeting that was held together with the World Cities Summit at the Suntec convention centre.

Mr Mah said, although the officials came from different cities, there was a sense that they face common challenges. There is also a sense of urgency and strong political will for change. It would be useful to share these experiences and not let this dialogue end here.

Cities in Asean and its six dialogue partners - China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand - will be members of the new network. This informal alliance will connect with other networks, Mr Mah told the media.

The EAS conference was proposed by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during the EAS in Singapore last year. A report on yesterday's proceedings will be submitted to its next meeting in Bangkok later this year.

Yesterday's discussion saw the officials exchanging views on how best to promote development which was both economically and environmentally sound.

Melbourne Lord Mayor John So told the conference that Australia's second largest city has set a target of 'zero net emissions' by 2020.

To achieve this, the city council is increasingly buying 'green power' produced from renewable sources for its buildings. Energy-efficiency rating systems have been embedded into planning and building regulations, he said.

A Malaysian official suggested a star-based rating system, similar to the one for hotels, be introduced for cities. This would encourage city councils to do more for sustainable development.

Noting that this was an interesting idea, Mr Mah said the new Centre for Liveable Cities, which was unveiled by PM Lee on Tuesday, would be a 'useful platform' to further these discussions.

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‘Liveable’ cities: All things to all people

Dr Ooi Giok Ling, Today Online 26 Jun 08;

LIVEABILITY might seem to be yet another measure added to the range that are already in place for comparing cities.

Other measures of cities as places to live, work and play include the quality of life, sustainability, costs, competitiveness and even the ease of doing business.

There has been speculation as to why Singapore fell off the list of the top 20 most liveable cities in a recent poll by Monocle magazine.

However, there have been few questions about how “liveability” is conceived and from whose point of view. Would liveability mean the same to the poor as well as the rich, the young and old, those with families and single professionals or locals and visitors?

Cities are now so diverse and disparities so evident, particularly in ones that are thriving, and changing fast, in terms of employment patterns, social networks and urban living, generally.

Furthermore, city governments, businesses and, often, citizens themselves have generally forgotten the raison d’etre for living in cities — most of us have migrated to cities to live a better lives.

By 2025, close to two-thirds of the world will be living in cities because, to many, cities continue to hold the promise of greater economic opportunity and the good life.

Much of the work done to study liveability in cities has centred around lifestyles and social networks, the well-being of the urban population and environment. Not surprisingly, the recent accounts of what liveability means for people have been highly personal and personalised.

For the researchers concerned about liveability, the key areas have been processes such as civic participation and the space allowed for citizens to shape the cities in which they live. Sceptics may point to the highly varied ways the dimensions of liveability can be translated to what we see on the ground.

However, cities may be highly liveable for young families but too staid for swinging professionals. Even swinging professionals with young families may think of liveability differently.

Liveability as a concept for assessing life in cities suggests that they have to be practically all things to all the people living in them.

In other words, rich or poor, families or single professionals, young or old, swinging or otherwise, cities are liveable where they provide the spaces and places for people as well as options that make life pleasant, convenient and largely hassle-free in their everyday lives, work and social engagements.

People living in some of the sprawling cities of South-east Asia — where mobility is dominated by private transport and its travails — are likely to adjust their social networking when faced with the prospect of traffic jams and spiralling fuel prices. This has an impact on social life and, hence, liveability.

Urban neighbourhoods with character are important in determining liveability. This underscores the processes that researchers consider to be important — urban residents having a say in how they like their neighbourhoods.

Cities like Vancouver fare particularly well in terms of civic participation to determine the kind of developments in their neighbourhoods. Cities listed as highly liveable are also relatively cosmopolitan; people of different cultural backgrounds appear to be able to feel at home, whilst expatriates and tourists feel at home away from home.

In a world of growing diversity, particularly in our cities, the accommodation of differences and divergent needs will be a challenge. Not addressing these growing needs generally implies widening disparities, particularly between urbanites who can manage on their own and those who cannot.

A check of the list of “liveable” cities will show that many have good infrastructure — public transport, public spaces such as parks, libraries and art galleries, among others — that help to level up and address the disparities in costs and standards of living.

Common goods — such as air and water — of good quality add to liveability, regardless of where one lives or works in the city. Topping it would be sound environmental infrastructure that ensures high standards of public health.

At the same time, there is likely to be low crime because of attention to security and safety in the city — yet another levelling-up process to ensure that disparities do not grow as cities change.

The writer is a humanities and social studies professor at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. The views expressed are her own.

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Singapore, Mideast collaborate on environment, water issues

Rachel Kelly, Channel NewsAsia 25 Jun 08;

SINGAPORE : Singapore has signed three Memoranda of Understandings (MOU) with the Middle East to enhance water development. Two MOUs were sealed with Bahrain and one with the United Arab Emirates.

These are expected to pave the way for Singapore companies to take part in water projects in the Middle East.

The potential for the water industry is huge in the Middle East, given its dry climate, and Singapore could well offer its expertise in water treatment.

Singapore's national water agency PUB signed the two MOUs with Bahrain's Ministry of Electricity and Water Authority, and its Works Ministry.

Fahmi Bin Ali Al Jowder, Ministry of Works, and Electricity & Water Authority in Bahrain, said: "In Bahrain now, with the increase demand of our water resources, we are trying to put up a better plan to conserve water usage and have a better management.

"Bahrain... is considered a very dry region. We are highly dependant on desalination for our potable water uses and we are trying now to embark on re-using treated sewage."

The collaboration will see Singapore sharing knowledge with Bahrain in three key areas - operation and maintenance design, construction of sewage and sanitary systems, as well as consultation on planning and development in used water systems.

Singapore has also signed one MOU with the United Arab Emirates to collaborate on environmental protection and sustainable development. A joint committee from the two countries will meet at least once a year to look at specific projects to be undertaken.

While it is still too early to ascertain the monetary value of potential projects, Singapore said it will pave the way for local water firms.

"We are trying to encourage more private sector companies, but we can only do so when we have identified the projects clearly so they'll know what is involved and what is at stake. Whether or not desalination of water will be one of those things is still being discussed," said Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister of Environment & Water Resources.

Singapore, which has no natural resources, has been developing its capabilities in water management over the last 40 years and created a thriving water industry. - CNA /ls

5 MOUs signed to improve water ties
Straits Times 26 Jun 08;

AMID all the talking, delegates also made time to sign deals and agreements on the sidelines of the Singapore International Water Week.

Five memorandums Of understanding (MOUs) were signed to facilitate the export of homegrown water technologies and expertise to water-strapped nations around the world.

The tie-ups highlighted Singapore's leading role as experts in the water industry, said Environment and Water Resources Minister Yaacob Ibrahim at one of the signings.

# Singapore will work with the United Arab Emirates to develop technologies and capabilities in environmental protection and water management.

# National water agency PUB and the Electricity and Water Authority of Bahrain will work together to improve water distribution and conservation in the Middle Eastern nation.

# Under a second MOU with Bahrain's Ministry of Works, the PUB will offer consultation and training in the area of sanitation.

# Sembcorp Industries and the Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute signed a research agreement to develop and apply cutting- edge technologies for water and waste-water treatment.

# The International Desalination Association and Singapore Water Alliance signed an agreement to encourage greater networking, and to facilitate the exchange of research and ideas between member organisations.

TANIA TAN

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