Proposal to kill wild horses angers US activists

Laura Zuckerman, Yahoo News 30 Jul 08;

A proposal to kill thousands of mustangs roaming the western United States has angered animal welfare groups, which say horses are paying the price for years of bureaucratic mismanagement.

Around 33,000 wild horses are spread across 10 western states, while the US Bureau of Land Management, which floated its proposal in June, has said that the total needs to be reduced by around 6,000 horses. That is in addition to an estimated 33,000 excess horses in government-funded holding facilities.

It is the first time federal officials have proposed euthanizing wild horses since federal protections for the animals were introduced in 1971, when Congress described the animals as "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West."

Federal officials say downsizing the herd is necessary for the healthy management of public rangelands, sagebrush steppe and grasslands ravaged by drought and wildfires.

And they say a hefty portion of their budget for wild horses is now being funneled to pay for holding facilities, where costs have risen along with hay prices.

Authorities have also said the numbers of wild horses on public lands have increased because of fewer participants in the bureau's mustang adoption program, which has been hit by the sluggish US economy.

Soaring feed and fuel costs means fewer buyers of mustangs offered for adoption per year -- the majority at 125 dollars a head -- in a pattern that mimics the flagging domestic horse market.

But the prospect of killing mustangs or selling them for slaughter has angered animal rights campaigners, who say the move is unnecessary and could have been avoided.

Holly Hazard, officer with the Humane Society of the United States, said the bureau's suggestion it may have mustangs put down or sold for slaughter was "totally disturbing and completely unnecessary."

"This is a man-made management debacle," Hazard added.

Hazard said the agency has been slow to employ population-control strategies such as contraception even though animal advocates have for years endorsed the measure as a means of maintaining a stable wild horse population.

Fine art photographer Elissa Kline has been shooting the mustang herd in east central Idaho for almost five years and is among critics of the government's policy that places excess wild horses in holding facilities.

"It's heart-breaking," she said about a program that calls for organizing the animals by sex and age, often separating mares and their foals.

Heather Emmons, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada, home to an estimated 18,000 wild horses, said officials would prefer not to keep the animals in the holding facilities.

"It's not what we want to see," Emmons said. "In an ideal world, we'd love to see 33,000 people come forward (to adopt them)."

The ongoing crisis in Nevada, where officials say the mustang population is nearly 40 percent higher than the number land managers believe ideal for the environment, caused the BLM to call a temporary halt to other planned roundups such as the one scheduled this fall in Idaho.

Doug Busselman, executive vice president for the Nevada Farm Bureau, a powerful lobby for agriculture, faulted the BLM for its unwillingness in past years to aggressively control wild horse numbers.

He said ranchers must abide by government regulations concerning the timing and number of livestock released onto public lands for grazing, adding: "We're held accountable but the BLM is responsible for managing wild horses and they don't have the same accountability."

Tom Miles has been with the BLM for 32 years, serving the past five as head of the agency's wild horse program in Idaho.

Decades as a federal land manager has lent Miles perspective on what he characterizes as the government's no-win position.

"We're managing the land for multiple and often divergent uses, making it difficult to provide for all of them," he said. "Even when you come up with a good plan, trying to accommodate everybody without favoring one over another, someone is going to come away unhappy."

A decision on whether to proceed with the proposal to kill mustangs is expected later this year.

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Penguins wash up closer to equator in Brazil

Michael Astor, Associated Press Yahoo News 30 Jul 08;

Penguins from frigid waters near the bottom of the world are washing up closer to the equator than ever before, Brazilian wildlife authorities said Wednesday.

Adelson Cerqueira Silva of the federal environmental agency said that about 300 penguins have been found dead or alive in recent days along the coast of Bahia state, better known for sunbathers in bikinis than for seabirds native to Antarctica and Patagonia.

Its capital of Salvador is roughly 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) closer to the equator than Miami is and temperatures in the current Southern Hemisphere winter are in the mid-70s (low 20s centigrade).

"This is unheard of. There have even been reports of penguins washing up as far as Aracaju," Silva said, referring to a beachside state capital even closer to the equator.

Silva said biologists believe stronger-than-usual ocean currents have pulled the birds north. Others have suggested the increase might be due to overfishing near Patagonia and Antarctica that has forced the penguins to swim further in search of food.

Silva said the environmental authority was receiving hundreds of phone calls reporting penguin sightings.

"We're telling people if the penguins don't appear to be injured or sick to leave them alone so they can swim back," Silva said in telephone interview from the Bahia state capital of Salvador.

Rescued penguins have swamped a triage center for rescued birds, and Silva said about 90 of the birds found alive have since died.

Penguins have been sweeping up on Brazilian shores in ever greater numbers this year, for reasons that are not entirely clear.

While penguins commonly wash up as far north as Rio de Janeiro state in July and August — hundreds have done so this year. Bahia is roughly 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) northeast of Rio.

P. Dee Boersma, a conservation biologist at the University of Washington who works with penguins in Argentina, said that while she has heard of penguins occasionally washing up as far north as Bahia, the numbers washing up this year are extremely high.

"The last time that you got a lot of penguins was in 2000, mostly in Rio but some further north. That year the sea surface temperature was a degree lower than the 30 year average so the penguins just keep swimming in search of food without noticing where they're going," said Boersma in a telephone interview from Seattle.

She also said overfishing near Patagonia and Antarctica could be a factor. In the past decade, penguins have had to swim an average of 40 miles (60 kilometers) further north to find food, Boersma said.

The majority of penguins turning up are baby birds that have just left the nest and are least able to outswim the strong ocean currents.

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Japanese plan world's largest clean-up

Yahoo News 30 Jul 08;

An environmental group in Japan said Wednesday it is planning to hold what it hopes will be the world's largest clean-up, bringing 180,000 volunteers together to pick up trash.

U-Project, a private group based in Chiba prefecture east of Tokyo, said they were calling on citizens to join in the clean-up around Tokyo Bay on November 24.

"We are expecting at least 10 percent of the population of nine cities and towns in the prefecture in which we are calling for cooperation, which is about 180,000 people," said Ai Ueda, a staff member of U-Project.

"Our group started picking up trash on Sundays with just about 20 people, but now there are about 400 people who join our regular clean-up rally on Sundays," she said.

"We want to expand our movement to the whole prefecture," she added.

Guinness World Records currently lists the largest clean-up as a gathering in August 2005 in which more than 140,000 people took part in the southern Japanese prefecture of Oita.

"It's not about competition. It's about sharing goodwill, and it's about enjoying a nice feeling coming not only from picking up trash but also from working together and saying hello to passers-by," she said.

Links

For cleanup in Singapore, see International Coastal Cleanup Singapore

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UN goes green, orders drastic cut of air-conditioning use

Yahoo News 30 Jul 08;

The United Nations on Wednesday announced a drastic cut of air-conditioning usage at its New York headquarters for the month of August that will raise the temperature from a crisp 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 Celsius) to a balmy 77.

Under a directive from UN chief Ban Ki-moon, the air-conditioning in the 39-floor Secretariat building will be turned off on weekends.

Assuming the temperature change goes smoothly, the "Cool UN" initiative to cut down on energy costs and implement climate change solutions could be extended for a full year, saving the world body one million dollars and reducing the building's carbon dioxide emissions by 2,800 tonnes.

During the winter, the process would be reversed and the thermostat would be lowered by five degrees Fahrenheit.

"We have succeeded in moving climate change to the top of the international agenda for action, and this means that the UN must take action itself," Ban said in a statement. "We must lead by example and if we are to ask others to take action, we must do so as well."

As part of the initiative, Ban is encouraging staff, delegates and diplomats to relax clothing protocols and wear lighter attire or don their national dress rather than wear business suits as of August 1.

Asked whether the secretary general would be setting an example in this regard as well, Janos Pasztor, head of the the Secretary General Climate Support Team, told reporters: "He will be wearing lighter clothes as well, he has confirmed that."

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Bangladesh gaining land, not losing: scientists

Shafiq Alam, Yahoo News 30 Jul 08;

New data shows that Bangladesh's landmass is increasing, contradicting forecasts that the South Asian nation will be under the waves by the end of the century, experts say.

Scientists from the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) have studied 32 years of satellite images and say Bangladesh's landmass has increased by 20 square kilometres (eight square miles) annually.

Maminul Haque Sarker, head of the department at the government-owned centre that looks at boundary changes, told AFP sediment which travelled down the big Himalayan rivers -- the Ganges and the Brahmaputra -- had caused the landmass to increase.

The rivers, which meet in the centre of Bangladesh, carry more than a billion tonnes of sediment every year and most of it comes to rest on the southern coastline of the country in the Bay of Bengal where new territory is forming, he said in an interview on Tuesday.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted that impoverished Bangladesh, criss-crossed by a network of more than 200 rivers, will lose 17 percent of its land by 2050 because of rising sea levels due to global warming.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning panel says 20 million Bangladeshis will become environmental refugees by 2050 and the country will lose some 30 percent of its food production.

Director of the US-based NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, professor James Hansen, paints an even grimmer picture, predicting the entire country could be under water by the end of the century.

But Sarker said that while rising sea levels and river erosion were both claiming land in Bangladesh, many climate experts had failed to take into account new land being formed from the river sediment.

"Satellite images dating back to 1973 and old maps earlier than that show some 1,000 square kilometres of land have risen from the sea," Sarker said.

"A rise in sea level will offset this and slow the gains made by new territories, but there will still be an increase in land. We think that in the next 50 years we may get another 1,000 square kilometres of land."

Mahfuzur Rahman, head of Bangladesh Water Development Board's Coastal Study and Survey Department, has also been analysing the buildup of land on the coast.

He told AFP findings by the IPCC and other climate change scientists were too general and did not explore the benefits of land accretion.

"For almost a decade we have heard experts saying Bangladesh will be under water, but so far our data has shown nothing like this," he said.

"Natural accretion has been going on here for hundreds of years along the estuaries and all our models show it will go on for decades or centuries into the future."

Dams built along the country's southern coast in the 1950s and 1960s had helped reclaim a lot of land and he believed with the use of new technology, Bangladesh could speed up the accretion process, he said.

"The land Bangladesh has lost so far has been caused by river erosion, which has always happened in this country. Natural accretion due to sedimentation and dams have more than compensated this loss," Rahman said.

Bangladesh, a country of 140 million people, has built a series of dykes to prevent flooding.

"If we build more dams using superior technology, we may be able to reclaim 4,000 to 5,000 square kilometres in the near future," Rahman said.

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Birds fly north in climate change vanguard: study

Alister Doyle, Reuters 30 Jul 08;

OSLO (Reuters) - Birds have been moving north in Europe over the past 25 years because of climate change in the vanguard of likely huge shifts in the ranges of plants and animals, scientists said on Wednesday.

A study of 42 rare bird species in Britain showed that southern European bird species such as the Dartford warbler, Cirl bunting, little egret or Cetti's warbler had become more common in Britain from 1980-2004.

And species usually found in northern Europe, such as the fieldfare, redwing or Slavonian grebe, had become less frequent in Britain.

"The species are almost certainly responding to the changing climate," said Brian Huntley of Durham University in England of a report he wrote with researchers at Cambridge University and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

The study tried to filter out other factors that would affect counts of rare birds, including growing public interest that could mean more sightings. Shifts in farming, pollution, expansion of cities and conservation efforts have all affected wildlife.

Birds and butterflies are among the first to adapt to climate change because they can fly long distances to seek a cooler habitat. Other creatures and plants can take far longer if their traditional range gets too warm.

"It depends on the mobility of the species. Birds and butterflies are two of the groups where there is the best evidence that species are already showing responses to the changing climate," Huntley told Reuters of the study in Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

GREENHOUSE GASES

The shifts in the birds' ranges since 1980 were also consistent with scientists' expectations because of global warming, blamed by the U.N. Climate Panel on human use of fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars, he said.

The panel predicted last year that warming will bring desertification, floods, melt glaciers, raise world sea levels, bring big shifts in the ranges of species and extinctions.

"This gives us greater confidence in the climate models we use for other groups of species -- butterflies, plants, reptiles and amphibians," Huntley said.

"We rarely have the opportunity to test these kinds of models. We can only wait around for 50 years and wait to see if we were correct. It's better to have historic data" as a benchmark, he said.

(Editing by Stephen Weeks)

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Best of our wild blogs: 30 Jul 08

Reef Celebrations 9 Aug (Sat)
Everyone is invited to this National Day celebration of our reefs and shores. With lots of exciting talks, kids events and exhibits. More on the singapore celebrates our reefs blog

Sotong
on the singapore celebrates our reefs blog

Rehabilitated Cinereous Vulture shot in Myanmar
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

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Accidents in Singapore's port waters down 89.2% over last 10 years

Lynda Hong, Channel NewsAsia 30 Jul 08;

SINGAPORE : Despite more movements in Singapore's port waters, the number of piloted incidents dipped significantly over the past 10 years.

In 2007, there were only four such incidents, a decrease of 89.2 per cent from the 37 reported in 1998.

Between 1998 and 2007, the amount of movement in Singapore waters increased by 35 per cent - from 1998's 108,500 to 146,000 in 2007.

These figures were released by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore at its 6th Pilotage Incentive Award Ceremony.

Five pilots were commended for high safety and service standards at the awards ceremony.

Sam Goh Ek Kang, Hamzah Bin Ismail, Low Chong Lim, Jeremy Tan Hon Chai and Yap Kok Chua each received S$2,000 cash and a certificate of commendation. - CNA /ls

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Biotech firm finds fortune in prawn farming

Bionovar diversified its business to prove the worth of its product; its revenue last year was $1m - more than its original biotech sales
Chua Hian Hou, Straits Times 30 Jul 08;

BIONOVAR started out as a biotechnology firm four years ago, but customers for its microscopic organisms, which aid in chemical-free prawn farming, were hard to come by.

So the local start-up took a daring step: It diversified its business to become a major customer of its own product - by going into the prawn-farming business itself. And it has not looked back since.

The initial problem in attracting customers? The market was saturated with competitors touting similar products to jaded and sceptical customers.

To counter this, the firm reasoned that getting into prawn farming would allow it to demonstrate the worth of these microscopic organisms - and thereby attract customers.

The microbes that Bionovar has developed help prawn farmers keep their facilities clean and disease-free in an environmentally friendly manner.

The 2004 foray worked out so well that Bionovar has made prawn farming a business mainstay.

It now runs a 50ha prawn farm in Malaysia producing 600 tonnes of tiger and Pacific white prawns every year. It has more prawn farms in India and will be expanding into China soon. It has also started a farm for tilapia fish in Vietnam.

Earlier this year, it set up a distribution arm to sell its prawns to gourmet restaurants and households in Singapore.

Getting to this point, though, has been challenging.

For one thing, raising money to get off the ground was incredibly difficult.

While many Singapore investors were 'curious' about Bionovar, few plonked down their cash, said chief executive officer Chia Boon Tat.

This was probably because Singapore investors have little experience with agriculture, he added. Even the company's biotech billing cut no ice.

'Investors wanted to hear 'biohealth', not 'bioagriculture',' he said wryly.

In the end, though, the company managed to raise $1 million to conduct research into microbes. This sum came from the three founders' own pockets, along with some from the brothers of one of them, and more from investors.

Since then, Bionovar has raised another $5.7 million for its prawn farms.

Its founders, who come from varying backgrounds, are Dr Chia, 46, a telecommunications executive; microbiologist Angelito Abaoag, 39; and aerospace engineer Liaw Kok Eng, 39. The trio, who met in 2003, got together 'by chance', said Dr Chia.

Back then, all three had been leading comfortable lives working for multinational companies.

'But we were also at that age when we wanted to go out and do something on our own,' said Dr Chia.

Rather than just talking about how to 'make the world greener', they decided to put their words into action.

The plan: use a combination of microbes - nature's own rubbish collectors - and beneficial bacteria or probiotics to help farmers reduce their reliance on pesticides and antibiotics.

The heavy use of chemicals in agriculture, said Dr Chia, has been increasing the level of pollution. Meanwhile, over-reliance on antibiotics has created new strains of diseases increasingly resistant to the drugs.

This, he added, was one reason that the region's aqua-farming, already a 'high-risk' industry, was going into a 'downward spiral'.

For instance, the typical prawn farmer finds it increasingly difficult to rear bigger - and more profitable - prawns.

Today, most prawn farmers harvest the prawns after 120 days. Dr Chia said keeping prawns alive after this period is very difficult because of the build-up of sludge in the pond.

The sludge, a combination of prawn faecal matter, uneaten prawn food that has begun to rot and plankton, eventually causes the pond's ecology to crash - and the prawns perish.

Bionovar uses microbes to break down the sludge, said Dr Chia. Compared to using chemicals as an alternative, microbes are a 'non-intrusive way to nurse the pond back to its original healthy state', he added.

He said that when Bionovar first tried to sell its microbes, it found itself up against many more well-established companies, all peddling similar products.

Customers were sceptical of the company's claims, having been burnt once too often by competitors' unfulfilled promises.

In the end, Bionovar managed to sell only some 'tens of thousands' of dollars of biotech products.

The resulting move into prawn farming has produced good returns. He said last year's profits from selling the prawns has already surpassed its original biotech sales.

Last year's revenue was $1 million. This year's revenue is expected to be several times that amount.

The company's profit margins are fattened by probiotics - dietary supplements containing beneficial bacteria like those used in drinks like Yakult. They help boost the prawns' health and survival chances. Bigger prawns mean wider profit margins, said Dr Chia.

For instance, Pacific white prawns harvested after the typical 120-day cycle usually weigh 10g to 12g and retail at about $10 per kg. By comparison, the same prawns harvested after 180 days weigh about 35g and retail at $24 per kg, he added.

Bionovar, which believes its success in prawn farming is due to its biotech origins, continues to maintain a research facility at Nanyang Polytechnic to continue improving its microbes.

However, it no longer offers its products for sale. Instead, it keeps them for its own use and thereby maintains its competitive edge over other prawn farmers, But it does offer a profit-sharing scheme for those interested in working with the company.

Its early forays into prawn farming were not always successful, Dr Chia said.

While Bionovar's prawn-farming process, on paper, was sound, there were a few instances when the entire population of its prawn ponds died due to 'human error', he said.

Today, though, its 50 staff at its prawn farms are more reliable and such heart-stopping moments are a thing of the past, said Dr Chia. Bionovar has 15 more employees in Singapore doing research and development, sales and other functions.

Dangers that lie ahead include disease and industrial espionage, he added.

Disease has led to tiger prawns, previously the dominant species among cultivated prawns, being largely wiped out and replaced by the more disease-resistant Pacific white prawns, said Dr Chia.

He believes it is only a matter of time before a similar outbreak hits Pacific white prawns.

The company has already started working on anti-viral products aimed at suppressing such outbreaks among prawns, as well as improving their resistance to diseases.

And as for competitors looking to steal its biotech, Bionovar has put in place countermeasures to prevent them from reverse-engineering its products.

Any attempts to reproduce the biotech in large quantities will result in products with 'significantly reduced capability and potency', said Dr Chia.

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Green initiatives merely lip service?

Reader disappointed by government website
Today Online 30 Jul 08;

I REFER to “Sustainable if costs don’t tip the scales” (July 29).

Finally, the public can participate in the formulation of, and possibly even influence, policies surrounding the adoption of green living in Singapore.

I eagerly visited the site www.sustainablesingapore.gov.sg, but was dismayed at the small space provided for feedback. That says it all.

Either the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Sustainable Development is not expecting much feedback, or they are not expecting Singaporeans to think very deeply about this issue. I know of quite a few people who could probably write a thesis on the implementation of green living in Singapore and back it up with facts, figures, examples etc. How would such carefully thought through and well-researched opinions be submitted through this site?

I would also like to propose that such feedback be conducted via a forum platform, where the suggestions can be posted for all to see. Other members of the public can then also give their opinions on various suggestions. This format will allow the participants to exchange opinions and debate the merits of various suggestions, and in so doing, create a more vibrant and dynamic feedback process. It would also be a good step towards encouraging active citizen participation in issues that matter to them.

Public input for green plans
Straits Times 30 Jul 08;

HOW do you convince people to do the right thing? How do you change behaviour? Of course, there is the top-down approach, through legislation. But is it effective? The answer has to be, not always. For this reason, we welcome the approach the Government is taking in plans to build a more environmentally friendly Singapore: Find out from individuals, businesses and civic groups what they think, what they are passionate about and what their priorities are. Then, work with them. With such a 'buy-in', initiatives and plans will likely have greater support from the very start, as the public is involved in influencing the choice of programmes and of their design. In other words, the key is to determine the confluence between grassroots concerns and wants, and government intentions.

Towards this end, there will be opportunities through the Internet and forums for the public to share views and possible solutions to environmental challenges. For instance, feedback on home design for rubbish disposal and the habits might prove useful in designing ways that make it easier for households to recycle. And are there cycling groups out there, and what do they think it'll take to make the bike a commuting option? Enthusiastic public engagement with policy planners can lead to fresh ways of looking at old problems, and new insights from those closest to the issues, from consumers to small and big businesses and volunteer groups. The important thing is to get as many people involved as possible, so plans have the greatest resonance. This, however, is where difficulty might lie. Not all suggestions are workable, and they need to be sorted out without alienating people. This will take time and effort. Even before that, will the public respond in the number needed? While there is a good number of people who will relish the opportunity to have a say, there are also those who prefer to leave it to someone else. So getting people to become more involved will need some work.

It's one thing to seek responses to questions in a survey, and another to open up a dialogue with stakeholders. The former offers the possibility of crafting the best solution from a set of options. The latter, however, can offer solutions that hadn't even yet been considered. Whether it's energy conservation, recycling or reducing car use, changing entrenched habits isn't easy. But if the public is given a stake in how this might be reshaped, the bigger is the chance that it will stick.

Going green in Singapore
Business Times 30 Jul 08;

THE English economist, Thomas Malthus, famously if provocatively, asserted that world population growth would outrun food supply - and that this catastrophe would occur by the middle of the 19th century.

While his predictions fortunately didn't come to pass, the essence of his message did strike a chord - it still does today - and 'Malthusian' ideas and theories later proved highly influential in not only socioeconomics but even evolutionary science. Malthus laid bare the notion that human development, at the rate it was going even back in the 1800s, was unsustainable; mankind was living beyond its means.

Some 200 years on, the concept of sustainable development - now a rather loaded term that encompasses inter-related global issues such as environmental degradation, poverty and inequality - is a key UN priority, the subject of numerous global summits, and a policy initiative for many countries.

Singapore, as a near-mature First World economy in many respects, has now joined the global community in embracing the goal of sustainable development. It takes a straightforward approach: sustainable development for Singapore means 'being able to support future economic and population growth while maintaining a quality living environment that is clean, green and healthy', the government says. The motivations are both aspirational and plainly realist, driven as much by the Republic's vision to be an attractive, lively and liveable global city, as by the challenges of meeting growing resource demands amid severe constraints and rising fuel costs.

The committee of ministers leading the big drive has identified three main areas where 'green' initiatives will be focused - public transport, at the workplace, and where (or 'the way') Singaporeans 'live and play', which just about cover all bases. The ideas out of early feedback so far also hint at the costs and concerns involved in a subject that may still be a little foreign to most, both business and consumers. The Green Mark for property developers, for instance - which carries a cash grant of up to $3 million for green building and design features - has not seen widespread adoption. And already, the efforts to encourage greater use of public transport probably simply spells, for car owners here, ever-rising costs of driving, from ERP to parking charges.

Most interesting yet may well be the plans to promote cycling as a means of commuting, given the tweaks in road and footpath design - and pedestrian and driver attitudes - they entail. Indeed, the efforts on all fronts come down to, as the government notes, encouraging people and industries to adopt practices that are sustainable in the long term - a movement that calls for strong public education, and which, for the business sector, may well fail to gain ground in the face of more pressing priorities such as bottomline needs.

But both business and individuals must come around to the fact that going green in Singapore is no tree-hugging baloney; it is entirely in its own long-term best interests.

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These creepy crawlies can help recycle food waste

Have no fear, for the worms are odourless and will not escape from the containers
Ong Dai Lin, Today Online 30 Jul 08;

NOW apartment-dwellers can go green in more ways than one — by recycling their food waste and generating compost for their high-rise gardens. The formula? A can of worms.

Since its debut at the Singapore Garden Festival on July 25, some 300 Singaporeans have already indicated interest in having their own worm farms.

While the worms are already being bred by GreenBack Private Limited in Kranji, those eager to start their own worm fertiliser farms in their balconies or backyards face a six-to-eight-week wait before taking delivery of their special worm housings — called Can-O-Worms — as these have to be shipped in from Australia.

Ms Nancy Chong, a retiree, is one of those keen on the product. Said the 60-year-old: “I do grow some plants in my flat, so I thought this is a very good idea and I wanted to know more about the product. My friends in Australia are already using the system and they do their own composting.”

GreenBack director Enoch Chia said the system was ideal for home use.

“Consumers just have to feed the worms with leftover vegetables and the worms will produce worm casts that can be used as organic fertilisers for plants,” he said. “We hope that Can-O-Worms can encourage people to recycle their own food waste and be more environmentally friendly.”

The worm farm is also supposed to be odourless as the food waste is quickly eaten up by the worms.

There is also little danger of the crawlies escaping from their containers, assured fellow GreenBack director David Murphy.

“The worms will not escape since they have food to eat in the trays,” he said.

“They may only escape if there is overpopulation but that is not likely as the worms will regulate their own population.”

Asked about after-care service for the worm farm, Mr Chia said: “We do not anticipate any problems with the product as the system is supposed to be self-maintaining. But customers can always call us if they have any problems.”

He added that this is a good time to bring in the product because of the green movement.

“There is now greater awareness to recycle waste and the government is also encouraging people to go green.”

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Reflections on leading a Singapore social enterprise

Tan Suee Chieh, Business Times 30 Jul 08;

SOCIAL enterprises have existed for at least a century, but remain a relatively new concept to the man-in-the-street. Invariably, there will be some who confuse it with a charity, trade union or grassroots political organisation.

The key difference between a social enterprise and a commercial business is the social purpose of the former. This often revolves around providing essential goods and services for the masses, job creation for the socially disadvantaged or positive change in the environment.

While the distinction between the two is clear, the irony lost on many is that a social enterprise has to acquire many of the characteristics of a commercial business to thrive.

Throughout the world today, outstanding and successful social enterprises are run like any other commercial business, under sound and professional management practices, with a view to being sustainable for the long term.

There is a crucial difference between organisations with a social purpose and commercial businesses with a strong corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme. What basically separates the two is their core reason of existence, i.e. their purpose and philosophy.

Social enterprises put people at their heart of their decision making, with capital as an important and indispensable secondary. The reverse is true for businesses that count rewards for capital first - even for those with acclaimed achievements in CSR.

In other words, it is labour that hires capital at social enterprises, rather than a case of capital hiring labour for commercial enterprises.

Social enterprises trace their origin to philanthropic industrialists in the 19th century, who were called social entrepreneurs to acknowledge their genuine commitment to employees' welfare.

Over the years and over the world, technology, competition, globalisation, consolidation and heightened governance requirements have required social enterprises, especially those in the financial sector, to transform. Otherwise, they perish.

Notable examples such as Grameen Bank and British retailer John Lewis have stayed the course by adopting their respective industry best practices without compromising their social purpose.

The same cannot be said, however, for countless other ventures that floundered by downplaying the importance of sound management practices and capital management.

In his book Good to Great and the Social Sectors, Jim Collins used what he termed the Hedgehog Concept to explain how social enterprises could achieve the best long-term results. This is a model based on his research of the most successful social enterprises, premised on the notion that the best ones aligned themselves to what they were deeply passionate about, what they could be the best in the world at, and what drove their resource engine.

The latter comprises three basic components of time - how well the organisation can attract people, money, sustained cash flow, and brand, how well it can cultivate goodwill and support among its stakeholders.

These three attributes are reflected as three intersecting circles, whose point of intersection represents what social enterprises should ideally focus on.

The emphasis is not how much money the social enterprise can make, but how it can become sustainable to deliver superior performance relative to its social mission.

To succeed, Collins argues, social enterprises need to focus on their Hedgehog Concept. This would help them achieve superior results, which in turn would attract more resources and commitment they can use to build a stronger organisation. The latter would of course deliver even better results, creating the momentum for a self-perpetuating cycle of excellence.

The changes affecting many social enterprises around the world, as they transform and adapt to changing times, mirror those taking place at NTUC Income today.

As a homegrown social enterprise, we recognise the need to stay relevant and successful by modernising and professionalising the organisation, so that we can continue to attract both talent and customers. These measures include investing in professional systems and management tools for better decision-making, a more meritocratic career path for a more energised, motivated and professional workforce, and adopting more professional approaches and global best practices to strengthen our governance standards.

Our transformation is sometimes misunderstood as the commercialisation of NTUC Income and a betrayal of our social charter. The truth of the matter is that we remain ardently committed to place people, instead of capital, at the heart of our decision making. We just plan to do it more professionally, systematically and objectively.

Social enterprises that aspire to be truly great organisations need to have focus, discipline and the right processes in place.

But nothing can be more important than the values and purpose that guide them, and this will continue to be a key differentiating factor between social enterprises and their commercial counterparts.

The writer is the Chief Executive of NTUC Income

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