Map reveals extent of deforestation in tropical countries

Ian Sample, The Guardian 1 Jul 08;

A map of the world's tropical forests has revealed that millions of hectares of trees were cut back to make way for crops in recent years.

Created from high-resolution satellite images, the map shows the extent of deforestation in the tropics with unprecedented accuracy.

Between 2000 and 2005, at least 27.2m hectares (68m acres) of tropical forests were cleared to make way for farming. Almost half of the deforested land was in Brazil, nearly four times more than the next most deforested country, Indonesia, which accounted for 12.8% of cleared land.

Scientists led by Matthew Hansen at South Dakota State University created the map to help inform conservationists and politicians about the state of the world's forests. While figures on deforestation are already compiled by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, they are based on unverified estimates submitted by individual countries, and rarely describe where in a country forests are being cleared.

Recent estimates by the UN suggest that around 13m hectares of the world's forests are lost to deforestation each year, with South America alone losing more than 4m hectares a year.

"We wanted to be able to pinpoint exactly where deforestation was happening, because that gives you much more information for policy makers to act upon," said Fred Stolle at Conservation International in Washington DC.

The scientists collected images taken between 2000 and 2005 by Nasa's Modis satellite network, which photographs the surface of the Earth every one to two days in 500m-wide snapshots.

The researchers used the images to identify deforestation "hotspots" in the tropics, and then created a detailed map using a second satellite network called Landsat, which is accurate to within 30m.

According to the map, over the five-year period, Brazil lost 3.6% of its forest cover, Indonesia 3.4%, Latin America 1.2%, the rest of Asia 2.7% and Africa 0.8%. The study appears in the US journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The map showed that deforestation in Indonesia was largely concentrated in just two regions, and that much of it was peatland. "The peatlands are essentially all carbon, so if you clear it and fire it, an enormous amount of carbon will be emitted into the atmosphere," said Stolle. "Without a precise map, we would not know that level of detail."

The researchers hope to produce annual updates of the map to show trends in deforestation.

The map is a conservative estimate of deforestation because it only shows where forests have been cut down and not replaced. It does not take into account selective logging, areas where forests have been replanted, or general degradation of forests.

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Kenya greenlights sugar power project

Yahoo News 1 Jul 08;

Kenya has given the green light to a project where sugar will be grown to generate power in coastal wetlands, despite objections by environmentalists, its government said Tuesday.

The 24-billion-shilling (369.3-million-dollar or 235-million-euro) Tana Integrated Sugar Project will mill 8,000 tonnes of sugar cane daily, generate 34 megawatts of electricity and produce 23 million litres of ethanol a year.

Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Nature Kenya has opposed the project, which is to cover more than 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres) of the Tana River Delta, saying it would damage the fragile ecosystem.

"This is an important project that is being implemented with full government support for the benefit of the local people," Regional Development Minister Fred Gumo told reporters.

"We have a lot of people who import sugar in this country and they are the ones who don't want this project to take off."

Mumias Sugar Company owns 51 percent of the project, to be sited about 120 kilometres (75 miles) north of the port city of Mombasa, while the rest is owned by state-run Tana and Athi River Development Authorities and local residents.

Conservationists have warned that loss of grazing and crops caused by the project would incur serious land damage in the protected aera.

Aside from inflation and steep oil prices, demand for biofuels has also been blamed as a contributory factor towards the global food crisis that has sparked riots in many poor nations, including Kenya.

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Carbon capture: pipe dream or climate change weapon?

Adam Plowright Yahoo News 1 Jul 08;

Carbon capture and storage (CSS) is fast becoming the oil industry's favourite solution to the climate crisis but the seductive simplicity of the idea masks a series of doubts about its viability.

In its simplest form, CSS consists of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) as it is released into the atmosphere, compressing it and then pumping it back into depleted oil and gas fields or other safe underground chambers.

Its attraction for the industry resides in its ability to reduce the harmful consequence of burning fossil fuels -- greenhouse gases -- with energy bosses at this week's World Petroleum Congress (WPC) keen to promote it as a solution.

"Capturing and storing CO2 is the only realistic way of reducing emissions while delivering the energy that the world needs to prosper," the chief executive of British-Dutch oil group Shell, Jeroen van der Veer, said.

But ask an expert when the technique could be deployed on a large enough commercial scale to make a significant reduction in global CO2 emissions and the response is often less than confident.

"That's a very difficult question," said Olav Kaarstad, a leading expert and special advisor to front-running Norwegian energy group StatoilHydro.

He told AFP that the technology exists, with the capture part being the most expensive and underdeveloped. Statoil buries about a million tonnes of CO2 a year at a site in the North Sea that has been operating for 11 years.

"It's the mother of all CCS projects," he said, referring to the Sleipner project where CO2 extracted during the processing of natural gas is pumped back underground.

Its status as a world leader has little competition, however, with only three other CSS projects elsewhere on the planet. Statoil is involved in three -- two in Norway and a third in Algeria -- with a fourth underway in Canada.

For such an underdeveloped technique, there is a lot riding on the success of CSS: it is routinely factored into projections of future world CO2 emissions and is considered an essential part of reducing them.

"CCS is probably one of the most important key technologies to cope with CO2 emission reduction," the head of the International Energy Agency, Nobuo Tanaka, told AFP at the WPC, which runs until Thursday.

"Without this technology we cannot reduce CO2 emissions substantially," he added.

But the hurdles and barriers that must be overcome are daunting, requiring international cooperation, innovation, vast investment programmes and public acceptance -- and all this in a race against global warming.

Firstly, the cost of capturing the CO2 during the production of fossil fuels or energy, at a power station, for example, is extremely expensive and requires the use of solvents that are themselves an environmental danger.

Secondly, sufficient burial spots must be identified from where the CO2 cannot leak and infrastructure including tankers or pipelines must be built to transport the CO2 to these locations.

Thirdly, there is no incentive yet for polluting companies to invest in CCS technology because of the cost. A study by US university MIT last year put this at about 30 dollars (19 euros) per tonne of CSS-treated CO2.

This requires either carbon taxes, a pollution permit trading system like the one operating in Europe that raises the cost of emissions, or massive state subsidies.

In a globalised world, an international agreement to put a price on CO2 emissions is likely to be needed to prevent unfairly penalising industries in areas where emissions have a cost, experts say.

Fourthly, there is likely to be public opposition to on-land rather than at-sea storage while earthquakes or other geological events risk releasing back into the atmosphere a potentially giant dose of greenhouse gases.

Kaarstad says the best place to start is to take the easiest opportunities to demonstrate CCS first.

Natural gas refineries and ammonia and hydrogen plants already separate out CO2 as part of their industrial processes, so the capturing is already being done. The next step is to bury it.

"What I try to say to people is 'let's get on with the more affordable, the more easily set up projects so we can learn a lot'," Kaastad said.

"Today we are seeing too much focus on hugely costly coal-fired power station projects. We should look at lower cost, 'low hanging fruit' which would make it possible for more countries to have their own projects."

The coal-fired power station ideal is that CO2 could be scrubbed out of emissions at the plant rather than being released into the atmosphere.

"There are still technical and economic constraints," says Neil Wildgust from the IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme, a public and private-funded research centre that investigates technological solutions to climate change.

"Storage of CO2 has been done and while there are issues to be understood, effectively it is a proven technology.

"The capture side is the barrier. The cost of capturing is high. For power companies to capture there has to be come sort of incentive."

As to when CCS be scaled up to become a series response to the climate change challenge? 2015 to 2020, experts say. Maybe.

Read more!

Renewable Energy is "Green Gold Rush" - UN Report

Michael Szabo, PlanetArk 2 Jul 08;

LONDON - In what is being called a "green gold rush," global investment in renewable energy surged some 60 percent to US$148 billion in 2007, a UN agency said on Tuesday.

Buoyed by soaring fossil-fuel prices and concerns over the carbon dioxide emissions that fuel global warming, investment in clean energy from sources like wind, solar and biofuels last year rose three times faster then predicted by the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP).

"Just as thousands were drawn to California and the Klondike in the late 1800s, the green energy gold rush is attracting legions of modern day prospectors in all parts of the globe," said Achim Steiner, head of UNEP.

"Clean energy in one of the strongest sectors in the world in terms of investment activity," said New Energy Finance CEO Michael Liebreich, one of the authors of the report.

Wind power attracted the most capital last year at US$50.2 billion, or a third of all clean energy investment, UNEP's Global Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment 2008 report said.

In March 2008, global installed wind capacity exceeded 100 gigawatts, or enough to power around 75 million homes.

Investment in solar energy soared by 254 percent to US$28.6 billion last year, while the biofuel sector foundered with funds falling nearly one third to US$2.1 billion, the report said.

Overall, clean energy accounted for 23 percent of all new installed capacity in 2007.

Public investment in renewable energy via the markets more than doubled to USU$23.4 billion, up from US$10.6 billion in 2006, the report said.

The S&P Custom/ABN AMRO Renewable Energy Index gained 70 percent in 2007, but has since fallen 14 percent on weakness in the global economy.

Most new money flowed into renewable energy leaders the European Union and the US, though China, India and Brazil attracted a sizable US$26 billion last year, up 14 times from US$1.8 billion in 2004.

The three developing countries now account for 22 percent of all new renewables investment, UNEP said.

Investment in Africa's clean energy sector grew fivefold to US1.3 billion in 2007, reversing a gradual decline that started in 2004.

"Sub-Saharan Africa, arguably the region that has the most to gain from renewable energy, remains largely unexploited," the report said.


A NEW DEAL

The renewable energy sector is expected to grow to US$450 billion in 2012, and up to US$600 billion by 2020, UNEP said.

"We have a significant economic signal here, that goes well beyond what, 10 years ago, energy thinktanks or international financial institutions thought would happen," Steiner said on a call.

Developing nations like China, which recently surpassed the US as the world's top emitter, are being encouraged by rich countries to embrace renewable energy and adopt binding emissions targets under a new international climate pact.

The Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period expires in 2012, and governments are now racing to negotiate a new agreement that they hope to have in place by the UN's climate talks next year.

"The (report's) findings should empower governments - both North and South - to reach a deep and meaningful new agreement by the crucial climate convention meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009," Steiner said.

In the US, as public acceptance shifts to cleaner energy, the government is being called on to lead a "carbon revolution" by passing domestic climate legislation and agreeing to at least halve emissions by 2050 at next week's Group of Eight rich nations summit in Japan.

Both candidates in the US presidential election in November have said they support deep cuts and experts are confident either one will make progress on a US climate bill in the first six months of their presidency.

"A new administration in 2009 is expected to make renewable energy a priority while recent uncertainly (over possible emissions regulations) has put a number of coal-fired generation plants on hold," the report said.

On Monday, a Georgia state court invalidated a permit to build a 1,200-megawatt coal power plant, citing the developers' failure to limit emissions of carbon dioxide.

For additional analysis on the renewable energy market, go to http://www.reutersinteractive.com

(Reporting by Michael Szabo; Editing by James Jukwey)


UN agency hails green energy 'gold rush'
Bogonko Bosire Yahoo News 1 Jul 08;

The world is enjoying a "green energy gold rush", the UN's environmental agency said Tuesday as it published a report outlining a 60 percent hike in investment in renewable energy in 2007.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) study, published in Nairobi, said more than 148 billion dollars (93 billion euros) of new funds were ploughed into the quest for cleaner energy last year.

The massive demand for solar, wind and biofuel energy was being powered by prevailing climate change worries, growing support from world governments and rising crude oil prices, the UN agency said.

"Just as thousands were drawn to California and the Klondike in the late 1800s, the green energy gold rush is attracting legions of modern-day prospectors in all parts of the globe," UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said in a statement.

"What is unfolding is nothing less than a fundamental transformation of the world's energy infrastructure."

The UNEP report said wind energy had attracted the highest investment, raking in 50.2 billion dollars in 2007. As of March 2008 its production capacity was more than 100 gigabytes, it added.

Solar power grew most rapidly, attracting some 28.6 billion dollars in new capital and growing at an average annual rate of 254 percent since 2004.

Biofuel investment declined by one-third to 2.1 billion in 2007 with new investment shifting from the US to the growth economies of Brazil, India and China.

Much of the new cash flowed into Europe and the US, but China, India and Brazil were drawing increasing interest with investment in the three nations up from 12 percent in 2004 to 22 percent last year -- an increase from 1.8 billion dollars to 26 billion.

Effectively, China, India and Brazil accounted for nearly a quarter of the new investment in clean energy.

Sustainable energy accounted for 23 percent of new power capacity added globally in 2007, about 10 times that of nuclear, the report added.

"Investment in the sustainable energy sectors must continue to grow strongly if targets for greenhouse gas reductions and renewables and efficiency increases are to be met," according to the report.

"Investment between now and 2030 is expected to reach 450 billion dollars a year by 2012, rising to more than 600 billion dollars a year from 2020."

The report added that energy from biomass and geothermal power were being lined up as the next growth industries as the world strives to end its dependency on fossil fuels blamed for contributing to global warming.

Developing nations like China, which has already surpassed the US as the world's largest carbon polluter, are under pressure to take quick measures aimed at curbing its greenhouse gas emissions.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged the world most populous nation on Tuesday to accept its global responsibilities on climate change.

"China is a global power with a global responsibility and global interests," he said in an address at Beijing's Foreign Affairs University.

"Major emitters from the developing world must also increase their contributions to reduce carbon emissions."

Steiner said transition to cleaner energy sources had become inevitable in the modern world.

"With world temperatures and fossil fuel prices climbing higher, it is increasingly obvious to the public and investors alike that the transition to a low-carbon society is both a global imperative and an inevitability.

"This is attracting an enormous inflow of capital, talent and technology. But it is only inevitable if creative market mechanisms and public policy continue to evolve to liberate rather than frustrate this clean energy dawn."

Although Africa continues to lag other regions in terms of sustainable energy investment, financing in the clean energy sector climbed to 1.3 billion dollars in 2007.

This was five times the level of the previous year and reversed a gradual decline since 2004, the report added.

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Bird flu 'still a major threat'

Fergus Walsh, BBC News 28 Jun 08;

The world is still at risk from a new pandemic strain of flu according to leading scientists.

The H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus has been out of the headlines for some time but experts say it still poses a potential threat.

I have been taking part in a vaccine trial against the virus and have just received my latest jab. It is two years since I volunteered for a clinical trial in Oxford for a vaccine against H5N1.

In 2006 bird flu was a major news story in the UK following the discovery of a dead swan with H5N1 in Scotland. In January that year there had been the first human deaths in Turkey and the threat to Western Europe seemed palpable.

Since then, although there have been further outbreaks among poultry in the UK, there have been no human fatalities in Western Europe.

The level of media interest in bird flu has subsided - but has the threat disappeared? Not really.

Still killing people

It is very hard for humans to be infected by H5N1 - it requires very close contact with the virus.



The virus is endemic in poultry and bird stocks in south-east Asia - and 241 people have died after being infected, 24 so far this year.

However, bird flu, as the name suggests, still poses its biggest threat to poultry.

Earlier this month there was an outbreak of H7N7 bird flu at a farm 30 miles north of Oxford, forcing the slaughter of 25,000 chickens.

Pandemic inevitable

Robert Newbery, poultry adviser at the National Farmers' Union, said avian flu was still a serious economic and animal welfare concern - but the level of risk was quite different compared to that in countries like Indonesia and Vietnam.

"The systems in which poultry are kept in south-east Asia are completely unrecognisable compared to the UK," he said.



But he went on: "Having said that, while the theoretical risk to human health exists, we as a farming community and the government will continue to take the disease very seriously."

The threat may be theoretical at present - but all of the infectious disease experts I have spoken to over recent years agree that it is not a matter of if but of when the next flu pandemic will occur.

H5N1 might not eventually be the virus responsible but the pandemic will almost certainly start in animals and then mutate into an infectious human disease.

We simply don't know when that will happen - which makes it hard for the media to maintain interest.

Millions at risk

Nick White is a leading expert on infectious disease and professor of tropical medicine at Mahidol University in Bangkok and Oxford University.

He spends most of the year in Thailand where there have been 17 deaths from H5N1 but was in Oxford the day I had my third jab.

"We did not overreact to the threat from bird flu and we should still be worried," he said.

"It is fortunate that nothing has happened so far but a flu pandemic could be cataclysmic for the human race.

"If it became as infectious as Spanish flu in 1918-9 it could kill hundreds of millions of people."

Dr Alan Hay, director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre at the National Centre for Medical Research in the UK, says no-one is writing off the threat from H5N1.

"We are in a state of stasis. There are plenty of infections in birds and there have been isolated human cases in Africa which is worrying.

"Thankfully, H5N1 does not readily infect people but when it does it can have disastrous consequences."

Currently, for every 10 people who get infected, six will die.

No regrets

I have no regrets about volunteering for the vaccine trial.

Just because bird flu is not on the front pages any more doesn't mean that the potential threat has gone.

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

BBC correspondent takes part in a vaccine trial

As for the injection itself, some people expressed surprise that I volunteered for the trial and concern for my well-being.

In fact the technology used to create the prototype vaccine is very well-established and any threat to my health was vanishingly small.

I have had no ill-effects from any of the three doses I received.

The first two contained a vaccine against the Vietnam strain of bird flu and the most recent was against the Indonesian strain.

So if and when the next pandemic happens, will I and the other trial volunteers be better off than everyone else? That is a difficult question to answer.

It is possible that H5N1 pre-pandemic vaccines may offer some protection but no one can be sure until it happens.

The real point of the trial is to help scientists understand the best way of creating a vaccine when a pandemic occurs.

Only when scientists know the exact pandemic strain will they be able to tailor-make a vaccine against it and know what the right dose should be.

Let's hope that day is a long way off.

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Eco-tourism: Carbon 'offsets', a good idea that's not working

Brigitte Hagemann, Yahoo News 1 Jul 08;

Top airlines and tour operators keen to shore up their green credentials nowadays offer customers carbon "offsets" to compensate holiday pollution.

The problem is that few tourists seem eager to write off their green guilt.

The idea is simple enough: "offsets" are schemes by which a tourist when paying his ticket can also buy into a project elsewhere that will compensate for the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) resulting from his trip.

But calculating the size of that carbon footprint apparently is not so simple.

A Paris-New York return flight, for example, might emit between one and three tonnes of CO2, depending on the different calculators used by companies and environmental groups.

That means the price of an "offset" can vary by a factor of five, from 15 to 75 euros (25 to 125 dollars).

One of the first to introduce offsets in France, in January last year, was high-end tour operator Voyageurs du Monde. "Voluntary compensations have been a total failure," said company chairman Jean-Francois Rial.

"Only one percent of our clients really paid the cost of the CO2 emitted by his trip," he said.

Now his company simply taxes travellers without first asking their opinion, adding 10 euros to a ticket for a long-haul flight, tantamount to the price for a half-tonne of CO2.

Rial attributed the failure of the system in part to the complications of putting it into place. "Clients have to pay twice," he said, first paying the tour operator for the holiday, then having to agree to pay for the "offset" on an environmental site on the Internet.

Low-cost air companies Easyjet and Atlas Blue believe they have the solution. "Customers just tick a box when they're buying the ticket, the same way they would opt for travel insurance or not, it's must simpler," said Matthieu Tiberghien, who is in charge of a programme called "Action Carbone".

According to a survey for French rail, 65 percent of travellers on the country's trains claimed to be ready to fork out five percent of the price of the trip to compensate for their carbon emissions.

But the percentage who actually put their hands in their pockets was far less.

A year after the national SNCF railways introduced "offsets", a mere 3,000 people have bought into the system out of a total 5.5 million travellers.

"It may be a modest result, but it does highlight a growing consciousness among the public," said Christophe Leon, marketing manager for the SNCF Internet site Voyages-sncf.com.

The site therefore has doubled the stakes by pledging to make its own matching donation to a good cause -- through partner association Goodplanet -- each time a traveller buys an "offset."

Air France, which initially blasted the none too air-friendly SNCF carbon emission calculator, has since last October also been urging its customers to "compensate" by sending donations to the same green group.

While Air France remains mum on the results of its green-friendly campaign, Goodplanet said that up until now, barely 1,000 Air France customers had sent in donations.

British Airways, the first airline to introduce carbon "offsets" in March 2006, is equally discreet about the outcome, as is German flag carrier Lufthansa, who launched its offsets in September 2007.

But TUIfly, a subsidiary of Europe's top tourism firm TUI, said seven percent of its clients had bought carbon "offsets" since last November, to the tune of 250,000 euros.

Though rail travel is less harmful to the environment than air travel, since last November Eurostar too has joined the green bandwagon.

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Canary in a tux? Penguin woes signal sea problems

Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Yahoo News 1 Jul 08;

The dwindling march of the penguins is signaling that the world's oceans are in trouble, scientists now say. Penguins may be the tuxedo-clad version of a canary in the coal mine, with generally ailing populations from a combination of global warming, ocean oil pollution, depleted fisheries, and tourism and development, according to a new scientific review paper.

A University of Washington biologist detailed specific problems around the world with remote penguin populations, linking their decline to the overall health of southern oceans.

"Now we're seeing effects (of human caused warming and pollution) in the most faraway places in the world," said conservation biologist P. Dee Boersma, author of the paper published in the July edition of the journal Bioscience. "Many penguins we thought would be safe because they are not that close to people. And that's not true."

Scientists figure there are between 16 to 19 species of penguins. About a dozen are in some form of trouble, Boersma wrote. A few, such as the king penguin found in islands north of Antarctica, are improving in numbers, she said.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists three penguin species as endangered, seven as vulnerable, which means they are "facing a high risk of extinction in the wild," and two more as "near threatened." About 15 years ago only five to seven penguin species were considered vulnerable, experts said.

And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has already listed one penguin species on its endangered list, is studying whether it needs to add 10 more.

The largest Patagonian penguin colony in the world is at Punta Tumbo, Argentina, but the number of breeding pairs there dropped in half from about 400,000 in the late 1960s to about 200,000 in October 2006, Boersma reported. Over a century, African penguins have decreased from 1.5 million breeding pairs to 63,000.

The decline overall isn't caused by one factor, but several.

For the ice-loving Adelie penguins, global warming in the western Antarctica peninsula is a problem, making it harder for them to find food, said Phil Trathan, head of conservation biology at the British Antarctic Survey, a top penguin scientist who had no role in the new report.

For penguins that live on the Galapagos island, El Nino weather patterns are a problem because the warmer water makes penguins travel farther for food, at times abandoning their chicks, Boersma said. At the end of the 1998 record El Nino, female penguins were only 80 percent of their normal body weight. Scientists have tied climate change to stronger El Ninos.

Oil spills regularly taint the water where penguins live off Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil and have contributed to the Punta Tumbo declines, Boersma said.

The problems may be different from place to place, but looking at the numbers for the species overall, "they do give you a clear message," Trathan said.

And this isn't just about the fate of penguins.

"What happens to penguins, a few years down the road can happen to a lot of other species and possibly humans," said longtime penguin expert Susie Ellis, now executive director of the International Rhino Foundation.

Penguin Population Plunge Points to Climate Havoc
Will Dunham, PlanetArk 3 Jul 08;

WASHINGTON - Penguin populations have plummeted at a key breeding colony in Argentina, mirroring declines in many species of the marine flightless birds due to climate change, pollution and other factors, a study shows.

Dee Boersma, a University of Washington professor who led the research, said the plight of the penguins is an indicator of big changes in the world's oceans due to human activities.

"Penguins are in trouble," Boersma, whose study appears in the journal BioScience, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. "They certainly are canaries in the coal mine."

For the past 25 years, Boersma has tracked the world's largest breeding colony of Magellanic penguins located at Punta Tombo on Argentina's Atlantic coast. She said that since 1987 she has observed a 22 percent decrease in the population of these penguins at the site.

Boersma said the decline appears to have begun in the early 1980s after the population at the site peaked probably at about 400,000 breeding pairs of Magellanic penguins between the late 1960s and mid-1970s. Today's total is half of that.

The world's warming climate is only one of the causes of the penguins' problems, she said. They also are threatened by oil pollution, depletion of fisheries, becoming entangled in fishing nets, and coastal development that eliminates breeding habitats, according to Boersma.

"Penguins are sentinels of the marine environment, and by observing and studying them, researchers can learn about the rate and nature of changes occurring in the southern oceans. As ocean samplers, penguins provide insights into patterns of regional ocean productivity and long-term climate variation," Boersma wrote in the study.

Most scientists recognize 17 species of penguins, and they live in Earth's southern hemisphere. Penguins are beautifully adapted to life in the ocean, residing in places as different as the warm Galapagos islands and icy Antarctica.

While a bit ungainly on land, they gracefully knife through the water, feeding on fish and other sea delicacies.

But many species have been experiencing population declines in Antarctica, Africa, South America, Australia, New Zealand and the Falkland Islands, Boersma said.

The number of Galapagos penguins, the only species with a range that inches into the northern hemisphere, has slipped to around 2,500 birds, about a quarter of its total in the 1970s.

Anton Seimon of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which backed Boersma's work, said the findings illustrate the disruption that people have caused to penguins' ecosystems.

"These disruptions introduce instability into what had been somewhat stable populations. That instability means we don't really know what's going to be happening in the future. In many instances it does signify declines that may result, in the most drastic case, in extinctions," Seimon said. (Editing by Julie Steenhuysen and Eric Walsh)

Read more!

Appetite for Arctic oil rises in line with crude prices

Daniel Silva, Yahoo News 1 Jul 08;

The appetite for Arctic oil has surged in line with rocketing crude prices but environmental concerns and a diplomatic stalemate stand in the way of exploration, experts say.

At a time when supplies are struggling to keep pace with surging demand from developing countries, the industry is increasingly looking to new frontiers in its search for new reserves, with the Arctic clearly in the sights.

"There is lots of oil under the North Pole," said geologist Donald Gautier of the US Geological Survey at the World Petroleum Congress this week. He estimated that the Arctic holds 100 billion barrels of oil.

But while extracting the oil from the harsh Arctic environment poses unprecedented technical challenges, the biggest barrier to exploration is the disputed ownership of the region which makes it difficult to get permission to drill, he added.

"Technology is critical on the one hand but the real issue in access to those continental shelves," said Gautier.

Five countries that border the Arctic Ocean -- Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States -- dispute the sovereignty of the region's waters and they have become more vocal in their claims as interest in the region's resources rises.

Last year Canada announced it would build eight Arctic patrol vessels to reassert the country's northern sovereignty.

"Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty in the Arctic; either we use it or we lose it. And make no mistake this government intends to use it," Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said at the time.

Shortly after, Russian explorers placed a rust-proof titanium Russian flag on the seabed below the North Pole in what was seen as a bid to further Moscow's claims to the Arctic.

The North Pole is not currently regarded as part of any single country's territory and is therefore administered by the International Seabed Authority.

Environmental concerns also put the brakes on oil exploration in regions like the Arctic that are opening up to oil development thanks to technological developments, said David Boone, the president of Canada's Escavar Energy, an oil and gas producer.

"Even as space age technology opens up new areas, environmental concerns can shut them down just as quickly," he said.

The danger of oil spills in such a sensitive environment, where the cold means crude breaks down at especially slow speed, and the risk of disruption to local ecosystems figure as the two biggest concerns.

Industry leaders and analysts agree though that with oil prices at record highs, oil firms are not short on the cash that would be needed to open up new areas to oil exploration.

"Anyone who suggests that the oil industry does not have the money to invest with oil at 140 dollars a barrel is being facetious," said StatoilHydro vice president for business development Robert Skinner.

Earlier this month BP, ConocoPhillips and MGM Energy Corp were awarded exploration rights by the Canadian government for three offshore blocks in the petroleum-rich Arctic region in a lease sale.

The World Petroleum Congress, a gathering of executives from major oil companies and ministers from top oil producing nations held every three years, wraps up on Thursday. It is one of the industry's biggest events.

Read more!

Best of our wild blogs: 1 Jul 08

Chek Jawa - what visitors say
on the adventures with the naked hermit crabs blog

Reflection on the Pearl Izumi Zero-Carbon Family Aquathon @ South West by Taooftri on the Champions of the Environment blog

NParks webpage revamped
on the Habitatnews blog

Attitudes towards biological conservation
paper published on Singaporean Attitudes to Biological Conservation blog

Brown-capped Woodpecker nesting
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Scientific names for sale
on the wildfilms blog

Read more!

Summits to Save the Planet: Organisers should walk the talk

Arti Mulchand, Straits Times 1 Jul 08;

SOME 8,500 policymakers, industry leaders, experts and trade visitors gathered in Singapore last week to discuss the world's water woes, the state of cities as well as sustainable ways of using the Earth's limited resources.

But even as attendees of the Singapore International Water Week, World Cities Summit and East Asia Summit Conference on Liveable Cities shared ideas and mooted solutions, they added to the problem itself.

Over the week, conference delegates emitted tonnes of carbon dioxide just getting here to attend the conferences and returning home. Little appeared to be in place to offset or minimise their carbon footprint.

To be fair, one of the organisers - managing director of Singapore Airshow and Events Jimmy Lau - pointed to 'little green plans': Badges for the water expo were recycled and drivers of cars for hosted delegates were told not to leave engines running while waiting.

Contractors were asked to try and reuse their materials. And there were token recycling bins around the Suntec City Convention Centre, where the summits were held.

But the devil, really, was in the details, and in the little gestures that could have been made, but were not.

The event used 39 conference rooms, a ballroom and five exhibition halls in Suntec City. Air-conditioning thermostats were set at an average of 23.5 deg C, according to organisers, lower than the National Environment Agency's recommended 25 deg C.

A physical check of some rooms showed that some thermostats clocked in at even lower temperatures.

Reams of paper were used to print documents, which could have been made available electronically instead. Many of those print- outs were not on recycled paper, and some were printed on just one side.

While canisters of water and glasses were made available in most rooms, plastic bottles of Newater were also given out at most of the events.

And while it would have been just as easy - and probably cheaper - to place milk jugs and sugar bowls beside coffee and tea dispensers, individual sachets were used.

Those were just the small things.

There was also no formal offsetting plan in place for things like energy use or travel for the more than 4,000 delegates who flew here, though a few said they had offset their flights on their own initiative.

When asked about it, Mr Chan Heng Kee, dean and chief executive of the Civil Service College - which co- organised the event - said there were some efforts to 'try and conserve'. But he did not think a formal plan was needed.

'Being sustainable does not mean you swing to the other end of the spectrum,' he said.

But this is not about being extreme. Numerous - particularly environmental - events have gone much further in ensuring that conference delegates do not further destroy the planet they seek to protect.

The inaugural Global Business Summit for the Environment, held here last year, followed some simple recommendations in the US-based Convention Industry Council's 2004 Green Meetings Report.

VIPs were picked up in taxis running on compressed natural gas, and bottled water, disposable straws, paper coasters and cup covers were not used.

All food and drinks served were organically, sustainably or locally farmed. Surplus pastries and dry food were donated to a local charity.

And in a grander gesture, $10,000 was donated towards reforestation and renewable energy projects.

Similarly, when leaders met in Bali for the United Nations climate change talks last December, Indonesia pledged to protect some 4,300ha of forests to offset the emissions of delegates travelling to and attending the 12 days of meetings.

Another tree-planting exercise is ongoing at the Sustainability Weeks in Hokkaido, Japan, where more than 30 symposiums and events are being held until July 11, with expected emissions of 330 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Perhaps, as one participant at the Singapore events put it, zooming in on 'symbolic gestures' may not be the right approach.

After all, much was accomplished over the week. Ideas that might go some way towards solving pressing water and urban development problems were shared.

Still, minimising waste does not take a Herculean effort. Offsetting, if nothing else, is an acknowledgement that everyday things have an impact on the planet's well-being. It is also a good short term means of channelling investment to green technology.

Singapore aspires to play a leadership role in the region's green cause. It is at such events that sustainable strategies can be first put into practice.

Through them the country can show that it really does walk the talk.

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Are you a mozzie magnet?

These blood-sucking insects can be picky about ‘food’, say experts
Eveline Gan, Today Online 1 Jul 08;

BLOOD-SUCKING mosquitoes can’t seem to get enough of18-year-old Aza Wee.

A self-professed mosquito magnet, the Serangoon Junior College student said that she tends to be bitten by mosquitoes more frequently than others.

“Wherever I go, I always get bitten,” said Aza.

“If I open the windows, I’ll get bitten almost immediately.My younger sister sleeps in the same room, but she doesn’t have this problem.”

Is Aza’s problem a figment of her imagination? Apparently not.

Like fussy eaters, mosquitoes do display dining preferences,according to experts. This explains why some unfortunate people, such as Aza, may get bitten more frequently than others.

Your natural body odour could be responsible for that barrage of mosquito bites.

“Some people may attract more mosquitoes than others based on how they ‘smell’ to a mosquito,” said Associate Professor Annelies Wilder-Smith, an associate consultant at the National University Hospital’s department of medicine, division of infectious diseases.

“Body odours such as 1-octen-3-ol seem to attract mosquitoes ... but nobody knows how to influence or reduce the amount of this chemical in our body,” she said.

A National Environment Agency (NEA) spokesman told Today that human body odours are “distinctive and specific, and varies from person to person”.

He added: “These differences are believed to be responsible for the uneven biting rates.”

Sweaty people may also get targeted more often by mosquitoes. “Human sweat contains volatiles such as lactic acid and ammonia, which attract mosquitoes. The number of sweat glands present in a person’s body varies, which is why some people tend to perspire more and thus, are more attractive to mosquitoes,” said the spokesman.

He said a higher body mass and higher body temperature may also make a person more attractive to mosquitoes. Being in a place with high humidity also increases the chance of being bitten.

And it’s not all about body chemistry. What you wear may also cause you to look more delicious to some mosquitoes which bite in the day (Aedes mosquitoes are day-feeders with a peak biting period at dusk and dawn).

“People who wear dark-coloured clothes tend to attract more diurnal mosquitoes than those wearing light-coloured ones because these species have been found to respond to visual cues as well,” he said. Diurnal mosquitoes refer to those that feed in the day.

According to Assoc Prof Wilder-Smith, mosquitoes can track potential prey from “tens of metres” away.

“Mosquitoes hunt by detecting carbon dioxide being breathed out from a distance. When they get closer, they can also pick up on the infrared heat being emitted, which identifies the host as a warm-blooded animal,” she explained.

For some people, the problem may stem from their reactions to the bites rather than their attractiveness to mosquitoes, said Assoc Prof Wilder-Smith.

People who are hyper-sensitive to mosquito bites may notice them more and think they get bitten more often, she explained.

“People have a variety of reactions to mosquito bites, and the symptoms change over time, depending on the amount of bites a person has received. These reactions tend to decrease in frequency after one has been bitten by mosquitoes over many years,” said Assoc Prof Wilder-Smith.

“Some adults can become desensitised to mosquitoes and have little or no reaction to their bites, while others can become hyper-sensitive with bites causing blistering, bruising and large inflammatory reactions.”

If you’re one of those unfortunate mosquito magnets, you can minimise bites with a few measures.

Chemical-based repellents have been shown to be superior over natural repellents, said Assoc Prof Wilder-Smith.

Other less commonly used natural mosquito repellents include catnip oil extract, citronella, and eucalyptus oil extract.

The NEA spokesman recommended wearing long-sleeved clothing and pants, and sleeping under a mosquito net.

“In places within your control, such as your home, mosquito breeding should be avoided by removing any potential breeding habitat,” he added.

the Aedes are day-hunters

The mosquitoes responsible for dengue, the Aedes aegypti and the Aedes albopictus, are typically early-morning and early-evening feeders.

“During the heat of the day, the mosquitoes rest in a cool place and wait for evening. They may still bite if they’re disturbed though. On cloudy days, they can feed through the day,” said Assoc Prof Wilder-Smith.

According to the NEA, these two mosquito breeds can also transmit the chikungunya virus, which surfaced here earlier this year. Similar to dengue, its symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, muscle ache, rash and joint pain.

Over 2,700 dengue cases have been recorded this year.

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$367m in deals at Water Week

PUB, local companies get their share of the pie, securing projects at inaugural event
Arti Mulchand & Liaw Wy-Cin, Straits Times 1 Jul 08;

GOVERNMENTS, utility providers and water companies inked over $367 million in deals during the recent Singapore International Water Week (SIWW).

Announcing this and giving his report card on the SIWW yesterday, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim said it was 'encouraging', especially for an inaugural event.

National water agency PUB's chief executive Khoo Teng Chye would not be drawn into comparing the figure with those from similar conferences, but said that with Asia growing so rapidly, the figure was only 'the tip of the iceberg'.

Among the deals struck for water-related projects, the three-year one between Singapore-based water and wastewater treatment company Ayser-Technische Corporation and Acuatico was the biggest, worth $272 million.

The two signed a Memorandum of Understanding to set up a joint venture, which will, among other things, design, build and run private water infrastructure projects in Indonesia.

Local companies had their share of the pie. Home-grown tech start-up AridTec found distributors in more than 10 countries for its patent-pending technology, which extracts water from thin air. It expects to earn $16 million in the first year from this.

A Singapore consortium comprising PUB Consultants, CPG Consultants and Pico Art International also secured a deal to design the King Abdullah Water Centre in Saudi Arabia.

The PUB's Mr Khoo said that the key to the event's success lay in its providing a forum for policymakers and providers of technical solutions to come together.

More than 8,500 people attended SIWW and two other conferences held concurrently - the World Cities Summit and the East Asia Summit Conference on Liveable Cities.

SIWW, to be run on the theme 'Sustainable Water Solutions for Cities' till 2011, will be held here every year.

Beyond money changing hands, the event promises other tangible gains for the host country and the participants, said Dr Yaacob.

Singapore could reap new technology solutions going forward, including how to lower the cost of desalination. It could also look into bringing together private- and public-sector money and young people with ideas, he said.

There was also 'no harm' in looking at how the private sector can be more involved in managing the water supply here, he added, pointing to countries where the private sector played a much larger role in the provision of utilities.

Singapore's model of water management was a key take-away for foreign participants, Dr Yaacob said. Newater, now a source of potable water for industry, showed how reliability in water supply could be achieved, he added.

Proceedings from the Water Leaders Summit will be presented at the World Water Week in Stockholm next month and at the World Water Forum in Turkey in March next year.

Dr Yaacob admitted that an overpacked programme was among the teething problems faced in this maiden conference, but added that these would be ironed out by the next SIWW.

Echoing Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's words during a summit dialogue, he said: 'Forty years ago, we climbed on other people's backs. We have achieved something that we can be proud of.

'Perhaps now it's time for others to climb on our backs, to learn from us.'

Water Week nets $367m in deals, shows S’pore’s expertise in water management
Loh Chee Kong, Today Online 1 Jul 08;

THE recently-concluded Singapore International Water Week (SIWW) might have been flushwith $367 million worth of deals — including a $272-million joint venture between two Singapore companies to develop infrastructure in Indonesia — but the opportunity to showcase the Republic’s water management expertise was priceless.

Noting that the inaugural event was “obviously in line with our overall vision to grow Singapore into a global hydro hub”, Environment and Water Resources Minister Yaacob Ibrahim told the media yesterday that the SIWW was conceived as a platform “for top leaders and practitioners to gather and discuss a whole series of issues across the entire value chain”.

Alluding to Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s point last week on how Singapore has managed to meet its own water needs,Dr Yaacob added: “Forty years ago, we climbed on other people’s back ... perhaps now it’s time for others to climb on our back, to learn from us.”

And the delegates were impressed — not least by the event itself, which was described by a “top business leader” as the “best event ever” for its extensive networking opportunities across all levels of the industry, including policymakers and technology experts, according to Dr Yaacob.

He added: “For some of the people who have never been to Singapore, they were surprised that we’ve been able to close the loop between used water and potable water.”

But the flow of ideas and knowledge was not all a one-way street. “Certainly, on the technological front, we’ve learned a lot ... we are now looking very closely at some of the papers and ideas,” saidDr Yaacob, citing how Singapore could tap private sector funding to incubate water technologies.

On a personal note, the Minister was particularly intrigued by the robust discussion on the roles of the public and private sectors in the management of water, ahighly politicised resource that some argue would be better distributed by private companies.

In Singapore’s case, PUB, the national water agency, has been delivering water “efficiently and reliably” while outsourcing some of its projects to “build up the private sector capability”.

“We have managed the right balance, but there’s no harm in thinking it through again,” said Dr Yaacob.

Apart from thought-provoking discussions, the SIWW saw the conclusion of several notable deals, including a $24-million contract for United States-based Mormon Water to build a manufacturing plant here.

Following its successful maiden outing, SIWW will focus on infrastructure and technology next year, Dr Yaacob revealed.

While it will no longer beheld concurrently with the high-profile World Cities Summit, next year’s event will be organised alongside the Asia-Pacific Infrastructure Ministerial Forum and the International Water Association’s Leading Edge Technologies Conference.

US$270m worth of deals sealed in International Water Week
Channel NewsAsia 30 Jun 08;

SINGAPORE: More than US$270 million worth of deals were signed during the first Singapore International Water Week, which ended on June 27.

There were 27 agreements in all, between governments, utilities providers and water companies.

Describing the figures as encouraging, Environment and Water Resources Minister Yaacob Ibrahim said the aim is to grow the meeting into a platform for global water solutions.

The meeting last week saw several firsts, among them the launch of a water fund to attract US$320 million in investments for Asian water projects.

This is expected to be boosted by the Asian Development Bank, which has pledged to help regional states boost investments in water security to US$20 billion.

Singapore water companies also won significant contracts. A consortium comprising PUB and CPG Consultants as well as Pico Art International secured a contract to design the King Abdullah Water Centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Dr Yaacob said interest in the inaugural meeting had been better than expected.

"We're holding this for the first time. Hopefully, more will realise that there's value in coming to Singapore. We were pleasantly surprised that more companies wanted to come on board for the exhibition... they see there is a scope for making business deals," he said.

For Singapore, the lessons gleaned from the conference were immeasurable.

Dr Yaacob said: "Going forward, we are looking for new technological solutions... how can we lower some of the energy costs in terms of desalination? We will mine the papers that have been presented and see whether there are new ideas of achieving some of these water solutions."

As it turned out, Singapore's NeWater technology was a talking point among overseas delegates.

The minister said: "I spoke to some of the ministers from the Middle East. Recycling is now on the top of their mind. For them, water is the new oil... They all ask about recycling.

"'How do you do it?' they asked. We told them briefly that you need an ecosystem, you need a demand, you need a technical system to help you recycle water. They are keen.

"So, for the average Singaporean, I think you have to feel proud that Singapore has been able to achieve something that we can share with the rest of the world."

All in, the five-day meeting attracted some 8,500 delegates and trade visitors.

The Singapore International Water Week will be an annual event. Work is underway to prepare for next year's meeting which will focus on the importance of infrastructure in water management and supply as well as environmental sustainability. - CNA/ir

International Water Week sees $367m of deals signed
Chew Xiang, Business Times 30 Jun 08;

ABOUT $367 million of deals were signed at the close of the first Singapore International Water Week last Friday, Environment and Water Resources Minister Yaacob Ibrahim said yesterday.

Dr Yaacob called the event a success, saying that it had done its job of bringing companies and water authorities from around the world together in Singapore where they could share the country's water expertise.

About 27 deals were signed during the event. Dr Yaacob said that the important thing was to organise an event that people were willing to attend.

Michael Toh, general manager of Singapore International Water Week, said that the event was 'self-sustaining' - receipts from sponsorship and sale of exhibition space covered organising costs, though the numbers have not yet been tabulated.

Dr Yaacob said that the organisers received multiple requests for sponsorship and had to open extra exhibition space to meet high demand, which proved to be a 'happy problem'.

Some of the sessions conflicted, so scheduling is something that the organisers would look into, he said.

His ministry has learnt a lot from the cutting-edge technology exhibited during the week, he said. At the same time, Singapore's response to water scarcity went down well with foreign visitors keen to learn more about NEWater and Singapore's ability to reduce leakage.

Officials will now examine the information and papers produced for the event, Dr Yaacob said. 'If there is a good idea out there, we must learn from it definitely.'

Next year's event will focus on infrastructure and technology, he revealed, in conjunction with a leading edge conference on water and wastewater technology.

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