More individuals, firms doing their part to save water

May Wong, Channel NewsAsia 28 Aug 08;

SINGAPORE: More are coming forward to do their part to save water. The national water agency PUB saw a 140 per cent jump in its "Friends of Water" membership in the last one year - from 750 members to 1,800.

The "Friends of Water" programme recognises those who help raise awareness about water and what it takes to sustain Singapore's supply.

And to recognise those who have gone the extra mile in water conservation, they are given the Watermark Award. There are six award winners this year, one of them being Commonwealth Secondary School.

Here, used water from bathrooms is channelled to wash common areas and water the plants in the school. The school even converted its pond into a treatment wetland. This allows students to conduct experiments and research on water recycling and urban agriculture.

Students also learn more about chemistry and biology beyond the classrooms.

Annie Seng, a teacher from the school, said: "This has helped to make learning exciting for them... the school will (also) be able to save a considerable amount in its water and electricity bills, because what we're doing is recycling used water. On top of that, what we want to advocate is to have our students have this practice of water conservation."

Another Watermark Award winner is Senoko Power. It built its own desalination plant to use sea water instead of potable water for its operations.

Roy Adair, president and CEO of Senoko Power, said: "Climate change is an issue on every agenda, be it political or corporate. We therefore have an obligation as a good neighbour within the Singapore community to ensure that not only do we produce competitively-priced electricity, we do so in the most environmentally-friendly manner possible."

The award attracted over 40 nominations this year.

Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, said:
"Ensuring Singapore's environmental and water sustainability is a national effort. This requires everyone to think and act - not just the government or public sector, but also the private sector, and most importantly, the people sector."

For the first time, the award ceremony was held at the Marina Barrage, as a recognition of Singapore's new icon that offers an additional source of water supply to the city-state.

With more people pledging to do their part in water conservation, it shows the growing commitment to build a more sustainable country for the future.

- CNA/ir

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Green fingers in demand

Shortage oftalent with boomin gardening,landscape projects
Lin Yanqin, Today Online 29 Aug 08;

THERE are plenty of creative ways to add green space in Singapore, such as roof gardens. But before Singapore grows in the space set aside for parks and gardens by a quarter, as announced in the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s Leisure Plan in May, more talent is needed to support such growth in the sector.

Behind Singapore’s Garden City reputation, some 19,000 professionals — ranging from landscape architects to horticulturists — are hard at work growing green spaces and keeping them thriving.

But that number is barely enough, say industry experts.

“Due to the expanding horticulture and landscape industries, there is a shortage of trained and skilled manpower in these areas. Many of our graduates are offered jobs before they graduate,” said Dr Hedy Goh, deputy director of Ngee Ann Polytechnic School of Life Sciences and Chemical Technology, which offers a diploma in Horticulture and Landscape Management.

Far Horizon Nursery and Landscape managing director John Gwee said that although manpower shortage has been always been a problem, the amping up of landscaping activities in Singapore recently — new condominiums, the integrated resorts, the planned Gardens by the Bay at Marina — means he now sees more work than he can handle.

“I specialise in private homes, but even if I wanted to take on bigger projects, I won’t be able to handle them because I don’t have enough workers,” said Mr Gwee, who is also president of Singapore’s Institute of Parks and Recreation.

At the national level, the plans are to grow Singapore’s park spaces from covering9 per cent of the island, to more than 11 per cent over the next 15 years.

To support the growth of the industry, the Workforce Development Agency developed the Landscape Workforce Skills Qualifications (WSQ) framework and set up the Centre for Urban Greenary and Ecology (Cuge) with the National Parks Board as the flagship institute for training landscape workers.

As of last month, the centre has certified more than 1,100 workers under the WSQ, close to about 12 per cent of the local workforce. “Cuge is on track to certify 20 per cent of the workforce by the end of 2009, as more employers recognise the benefits of staff training,” said centre director Teva Raj.

The challenge to training workers, he said, was getting employers to recognise the benefits. Also, workers may job-hop after companies invest in their training. Attracting talent to the industry is also an issue.

Mr Henry Steed, director of landscaping firm ICN Design International, agreed, saying: “It’s a job with a lot manual labour involved and there’s technique involved, so there’s a challenge in getting people interested.”

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New butterfly garden opens at Changi Airport Terminal 3

Satish Cheney, Channel NewsAsia 28 Aug 08;

SINGAPORE : Changi Airport Terminal 3 has opened a new Butterfly Garden.

Located at its Departure and Transit Mall, the two-storey garden also lets visitors observe the life cycle of the butterflies at close range.

There are about 47 varieties of them at the garden, and educational corners located within the garden enable visitors to gain a deeper understanding of butterflies.

There are also individual enclosures that allow visitors to witness the breeding and feeding of butterflies.

The airport said the new addition is part of its efforts to introduce novel facilities to its passengers. - CNA /ls

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Threatened Monkey Populations Surprisingly Large

LiveScience.com 28 Aug 08;

A new census in Cambodia reveals remarkably large populations of two monkey species that are threatened with extinction.

The monkey tally, announced today, represents the largest known populations of these species in the world.

Scientists with the Wildlife Conservation Society counted 42,000 black-shanked douc langurs and 2,500 yellow-cheeked crested gibbons in Cambodia's Seima Biodiversity Conservation Area, which is about the size of Yosemite National Park.

The WCS surveys were conducted with the Royal Government of Cambodia's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

The two primate species are found in much lower numbers at other sites in Cambodia and Vietnam. Before the recent discovery, Vietnam was thought to be home to the largest known populations of both species, with 600 black-shanked douc langurs and 200 yellow-cheeked crested gibbons.

Yellow-cheeked gibbons (Nomascus gabriellae) spend their time in the upper canopy of the forest where they eat fruits, leaves and insects. The other Cambodia resident, the black-shanked douc langur (Pygathix nemaeus nigripes) also lives in forests, eating mostly leaves but also some fruits and seeds.

The report comes in the same month as a WCS announcement of the discovery of 125,000 western lowland gorillas in northern Republic of Congo.

WCS scientists attribute the Cambodian boon in the two monkey species to several factors, including successful management of the area and cessation of local logging activities. The conservation area in Cambodia was once a logging area where the two monkey species were extensively poached. Then in 2002, the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries declared the region a conservation area and began working with the Wildlife Conservation Society for management of the site.

Other contributors, the researchers say, include a nation-wide gun confiscation program implemented in the 1990s as well as habitat within the conservation area that provides plenty of primate food.

The report doesn't deliver a completely stellar update.

"Despite this good news in Cambodia, the area still remains at risk from conversion to agro-industrial plantations for crops, including biofuels, and commercial mining," said Tom Clements, lead author of the WCS report.

He added that WCS scientists will continue to work with the Cambodian government to help to ensure the survival of the primate populations there.

The research was supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Great Apes Conservation Fund, MacArthur Foundation, Liz Claiborne Art Ortenberg Foundation, ADB Greater Mekong Subregion Core Environment Program and the Danish Government's Danida program.

New Rare Primate Groups Found in Cambodia
Sara Goudarzi, National Geographic News 3 Sep 08;

Two new populations of rare primate species, both numbering in the thousands, have been discovered in a Cambodia preserve.

A 2008 survey estimates 42,000 black-shanked doucs and 2,500 yellow-cheeked crested gibbons live in Cambodia's Seima Biodiversity Conservation Area.

"These Cambodian animals represent undoubtedly the largest [known] remaining global populations of either species," said lead report author Tom Clements, a researcher at the nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which led the survey.

Before this survey, the largest known populations of either species were 600 black-shanked doucs and 200 yellow-cheeked crested gibbons in neighboring Vietnam—the only other country where the two species are found. (See a photo of another rare primate group found recently in Vietnam.)

The primates are listed as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)'s Red List of Threatened Species.

They are among the more than 70 percent of Asia's primate species in sharp decline.

Animal Spotters

Sporting long white whiskers, the black-shanked douc lives high in the trees and feasts on leaves and fruit.

Yellow-cheeked crested gibbons are also tree dwellers, eating and sleeping in the upper canopy of evergreen forests.

Between 2005 and 2008, Clements and his team conducted annual surveys in a 300-square-mile (789-square-kilometer) area of Cambodia.

The surveys are the first known attempts to obtain accurate population estimates for the region's native wildlife.

"Although we expected to find a reasonable number of animals, based on the frequency of ad hoc sightings in previous years, we did not anticipate that both primate species would be present in such considerable numbers," Clements said.

Comparisons with other areas suggest that both species are at or near carrying capacity, the maximum number of animals that the habitat can support.

"This suggests that other adjacent areas, which have much lower densities, could support equivalent numbers of animals if successful conservation programs [such as those in Seima] were established," Clements said.

Conservation Success

Hunting and deforestation are among the greatest threats to the newfound primates, experts say.

The survey also highlights the success of establishing conservation programs like the Seima preserve.

"These animals have probably been maintained in Cambodia due to a combination of factors—principally the area's inaccessibility, successful protection of the habitat by the logging concessionaire in the 1990s, and more recently the government-backed conservation program," Clements said.

Patricia Wright is the director of the Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments at Stony Brook University in New York State.

She believes the find is an indication of the potential of biodiversity in the region, where resources should be safeguarded.

"This region where [the two species] were found is an unexplored area, filled with forests on steep karst [limestone] mountains," a habitat which these leaf-eating primates specialize in, said Wright, who was not involved with the study.

"There is much work ahead to make sure this habitat and these new populations of these rare primates are protected for the future."

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Palm oil producers in Indonesia reject moratorium on forest destruction

mongabay.com 28 Aug 08;

Palm oil companies operating in Indonesia have rejected a proposed moratorium on clearing forests and peatlands for oil palm plantations, reports the Jakarta Post.

The Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association (GAPKI) — a group with 250 palm oil producers — said that a ban on converting natural ecosystem for oil palm estates would hurt the economy, increasing unemployment and poverty.

"Indonesia does not need to apply a moratorium on its forest. GAPKI strongly rejects the forest conversion moratorium idea," GAPKI executive Derom Bangun was quoted as saying by the Jakarta Post at a Greenpeace-organized conference on palm oil in Semarang, Indonesia.

Derom's comments come three months after Didiek Hadjar Goenadi, executive director of GAPKI, said that palm oil companies would only develop "idle land" — including former forest concession areas, some of which include rainforests and peatlands. At the time Didiek estimated that Indonesia has some seven million hectares of idle land suitable for oil palm or rubber plantations.

Speaking at the Greenpeace meeting Tuesday, Derom also said that efforts to fight climate change by conserving forests are a way to let developed nations off the hook for their emissions.


"If we stop expanding our business, many rich nations will be happy because then they don't need to take action to tackle global warming. We don't want to be the good boy."

Instead, Derom said that palm oil producers are working voluntarily to reduce their impact when establishing new plantations by following guidelines set forth by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). The initiative, founded in 2003 by the palm oil industry and environmental groups as a way to "green" operations and reward members for compliance, was recently eviscerated by a Greenpeace report which uncovered evidence of "cheating" by members, including sub-contacting to unscrupulous operators. Since the report, RSPO has promised stricter rules.

In recent months palm oil has seen rising consumer backlash in the United States and Western Europe as a result of campaigns by environmental groups who say oil palm expansion in Indonesia — especially on the islands of Sumatra, Borneo (Kalimantan), and New Guinea (Papua) — is fueling deforestation and threatening endangered species like the orangutan. Earlier this month, the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network started tagging palm oil-containing goods in grocery stores with stickers warning the product "May contain rainforest destruction".

Indonesia is the world's largest palm oil producer, producing 17.2 million tons from 6.7 million hectares of plantations in 2007, but recent research indicates that its expansion has indeed come partly at the expense of natural forests. A study published in the journal Conservation Letters showed that more than half of oil palm expansion in Indonesia between 1990 and 2005 occurred on forest land.

Overall, Indonesia lost more than 1.8 million hectares (4.7 m acres) of forest annually between 2000 and 2005, giving it the second highest rate of forest loss after Brazil. Scientists say the clearing of forest and peatlands is also releasing large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. By some estimates, Indonesia is the third largest emitter of carbon dioxide globally, largely due to land degradation.

Indonesia's deforestation — and the fires associated with land-clearing — has sparked regional controversy in recent years. Tired of the choking haze that emerges from forest fires each dry season and causes wide-ranging health and economic impacts, Malaysia and Singapore have asked Indonesia to crack down on burning. While Indonesia is now collaborating on fire prevention and control strategies with its neighbors, the country notes that fires are often set by Singaporean and Malaysian oil palm firms operating on Indonesian soil.

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Israeli sturgeon farm to produce caviar - but is it kosher?

Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 28 Aug 08;

Israeli scientists have paved the way for a possible kosher caviar. After 15 years of research they have established a sturgeon farm where fish are bred to produce the eggs for caviar.

A company, Caviar Galilee, has been set up at Kibbutz Dan in northern Israel and expects the industry to be worth more than $7m per year by 2010.

The Caspian Sea close to the former USSR and Iran has traditionally provided most of the world's caviar but over-fishing and pollution brought the wild sturgeon to the brink of extinction.

Ten years ago CITES (Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna) warned of the extinction threat and since then there has been much tighter control and regulation of the caviar trade.

Despite warnings that beluga sturgeon stocks in the Caspian have declined by as much as 90 per cent CITES earlier this year allowed some permits to harvest the fish.

Prof Berta Levavi-Sivan of the Hebrew University's Robert H Smith Faculty of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Quality Sciences and Dr Avshalom Hurvitz began rearing the fish eight years ago when they brought fertilised sturgeon eggs to Israel from the Caspian.

It takes eight to 15 years for the female sturgeon to reach maturity and start producing eggs, while the male sturgeon matures after four or five years.

Before the age of four, it is impossible to tell the gender of the fish and an endoscopy is carried out on the fish annually.

Once the sex of the fish is determined, they are then separated. Male sturgeon will be sold as fish on the market, while the female sturgeon will be kept in order to produce caviar.

Dr Hurvitz, who is a member of Kibbutz Dan, said they had learned how to breed the fish artificially in ponds and had succeeded in bringing the female fish to maturity at a much younger age to produce the valuable black roe.

While there is significant demand for caviar in Israel among the country's Russian population, the company aims to expand markets in Europe and north America.

Sturgeon - and caviar - is not generally considered to be kosher, due to the fish's apparent lack of scales. Kosher fish must have both fins and scales in order to be deemed kosher.

But, Prof Levavi-Sivan, said "If you ask me, it's kosher! I can even prove it has scales," she said, insisting that the sturgeon does have tiny scales which can be seen using magnifed 3D images.

A number of Jewish sources - including the 13th century Jewish rabbi and scholar Moses Maimonides - approved the kashrut (dietary law) of a fish called the esturgeon but it has yet to be determined whether this is the same fish as the sturgeon.

Read more!

Changes to Endangered Species Act Called Bad Science

Andrea Thompson, LiveScience.com 28 Aug 08;

Changes that the Bush administration is proposing to make to Endangered Species Act regulations just aren't sound science, various scientists and conservation groups say.

They're concerned that the loss of scientific oversight resulting from the changes will leave some species vulnerable to federal projects that could damage habitats.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA), signed into law by President Nixon on Dec. 28, 1973, does more than just provide for the creation of the Endangered Species List. The act also requires that "recovery plans" be drawn up and implemented to protect and ultimately restore the populations of endangered species, and it charges the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service with detailing and enforcing these plans.

The ESA "is one of our bedrock environmental laws," said Melissa Waage, a campaign manager with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a non-profit advocacy group.

But the act also charges other federal agencies with "a special duty," as Michael Bean, an environmental lawyer with the Environmental Defense Fund puts it, not to jeopardize these plans by authorizing, funding or carrying out activities that would further endanger any listed species. It is this duty that the proposed changes would affect.

"These changes will affect any federal project that affects any endangered species," Bean told LiveScience. "It puts every endangered species at particular risk."

Conservation tool

In the 35 years since its inception, the ESA "has allowed for many important successful conservation efforts," said George Amato, a conservation biologist with the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

The proposed changes are "of grave, grave concern to conservationists," Amato said, adding that it wasn't just extreme environmental groups voicing their opposition, but "very, very mainstream efforts."

Some of the act's major successes at recovering populations of endangered animals include the bald eagle, grizzly bear, gray wolf, and American alligator. (Species covered under the act don't just include familiar charismatic birds and mammals, but also invertebrates and plants.)

Of the species that have been placed on the list, 99 percent are still with us, Waage said.

Several prominent creatures on the Endangered Species List are also on a Red List of Threatened Species put out by the International Union for Conservation of Nature that monitors endangered species all over the world. These species face an extremely high risk of extinction in the immediate future, the IUCN states.

Amato, who works on many international conservation efforts, said that the ESA is "the single most important tool in conserving endangered species," at least in the United States, and that it is held up as a model of the role that governments can play in conservation efforts all over the world.

Bean agrees with this sentiment and said that, in his opinion, the greatest accomplishment of the Endangered Species Act has been "in changing the behavior of other federal agencies" in relation to how their projects affect threatened wildlife.

It is precisely this accomplishment that the proposed changes threaten, conservationists say.

Bean also said the Fish and Wildlife scientists he has spoken with said they had no opportunity to weigh in on the changes, which were proposed by those in the service's senior political levels.

Oversight

Since the 1970s, the Fish and Wildlife Service has had regulations in place that govern how other federal agencies consult with them on proposed projects, such as building a dam or highway, but also including any privately-funded projects that would require a federal permit, Bean said.

When a federal agency, for example the National Park Service or the Army Corps of Engineers, proposes a project, they must first determine if any endangered species are present in the area. If so, they must carry out a biological assessment to determine what, if any, impact the project may have on the species.

If they determine there will be an impact, they report it to the FWS, which does a more detailed examination and issues a written opinion on the project. If, however, the agency determines their project won't have an impact on the species, they must still report to Fish and Wildlife, who must issue a letter agreeing with the agency's assessment before the project can proceed. This consultation with the FWS often results in changes to proposed projects.

Making the changes proposed by the Bush administration would be "significantly gutting that consultation provision," Waage said.

Best available science

The Interior Department, which houses the Fish and Wildlife Service, argues "that this is no big deal," Bean said. They point out that usually the FWS agrees with a federal agency when they determine that a certain project won't have any effect on an endangered species. Bean agrees that this is typically the case.

But, "the [FWS] doesn't always agree," Bean said. And it is the exceptions that he and others are worried about.

He cited a recent example where the Federal Emergency Management Agency argued that their practice of issuing flood insurance to new development in the Florida Keys did not hurt endangered species there. But the Fish and Wildlife Service argued that issuing flood insurance encouraged development in the Keys, and that development did threaten endangered species. A U.S Court of Appeals agreed with Fish and Wildlife and ruled against FEMA.

"If these changes had come into place, FEMA would have been able to make that decision," without any input from the FWS, Bean said.

The oversight provided by the Fish and Wildlife Service reviews is necessary "to ensure that decisions aren't being made for political reasons," Amato said.

An official at the Interior Department said the agency is not trying to remove any informal consultation between federal agencies and the FWS.

"What we're looking to do is remove some of the bureaucratic red tape ... on common-sense projects" where it is agreed that no harm will come to any endangered species as a result of the project," said Chris Paolino, a spokesman for the Interior Department.

"What this doesn't do is offer a federal agency a sort of 'get-out-of-jail-free card,'" Paolino said in a telephone interview. Any federal agency that did damage to an endangered species or its habitat would still be held responsible, he said.

The Interior Department has also argued that each federal agency has enough expertise now to determine whether their projects will harm endangered species. Bean said that while these agencies may have biologists, they are not necessarily as well-versed in evaluating conservation issues as FWS scientists are.

"They have an expertise that is unrivaled by any other agency," he said.

Waage agreed, saying that the act requires the use of the best available science, which lies with the wildlife experts at the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Public comment

According to an Associated Press report, the public comment period for the proposed changes is only 30 days (set to end mid-September), which some conservationists and lawmakers say is too short. Many, including Bean, have requested an extension to the comment period.

"We always consider requests for extensions," Paolino said. He added that no final decision has been made on whether to extend the comment period.

The Environmental Defense Fund and NRDC both plan to submit public comments criticizing the proposed changes; and Amato, Bean and Waage all said that they expect a very large, strong reaction to the changes from environmental groups, scientists and lawmakers alike.

Several senators, including Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, have sent a letter to Interior Department Secretary Dick Kempthorne, who will make the ultimate decision on whether or not to adopt the proposed changes, expressing their concern over the changes.

What impact the public comments will have is uncertain. Groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and NRDC that oppose the changes hope they will cause the administration to withdraw the proposal and leave the Endangered Species Act intact.

If the changes are enacted though, whether or not they stay will be up to the next administration, in which case, "this'll be decided in November," Amato said.

Read more!

Geothermal Company Set to Open First Plants

Nichola Groom, PlanetArk 29 Aug 08;

PROVO, Utah - Five years after going public, geothermal company Raser Technologies Inc is on the verge of a major milestone: earning real revenue.

Later this year, the renewable energy producer will open its first power plant in the Utah desert near the tiny town of Minersville. The plant will use hot water from deep underground to produce power for about 9,000 homes in Anaheim, California, the hometown of Disneyland.

Seven more plants will come online next year, and Raser expects to see positive cash flow at the beginning of 2009.

"After these first couple of plants come online I believe we will be cash flow positive," Cook said in an interview at Raser's Provo, Utah, headquarters on Wednesday. He would not say when the company expects to turn a profit.

Heat from below the earth's surface is seen by many to have the potential to be a massive contributor to the nation's electricity supplies because it is available around the clock.

Geothermal energy, however, has received less investment and attention than wind and solar power, which are less consistent producers but faster to deploy.

It hasn't been an easy road for Raser, which began as a developer of electric motor technology for the transportation industry earlier this decade. When Chief Executive Brent Cook joined Raser in 2005, the former CEO of synthetic fuels company Headwaters Inc said the company should continue its electric motor business but meanwhile added a new pursuit -- geothermal energy. The two have no common thread.

"In the case of geothermal... the execution of that plan is all in our hands," Cook said. "The licensing side of our business requires convincing some other company to take the technology and deploy it into their marketplace, and that's a lot harder to predict."

To get into the geothermal business, Raser tried to acquire geothermal company Amp Resources, his former employer, though that deal ultimately fell through. Amp is now owned by Italian power company Enel SpA


FROM THE GROUND UP

Not to be dissuaded, Cook resolved to build Raser's geothermal business from the ground up, and the company has spent nearly two years acquiring land leases throughout the Western US and lining up financing for its geothermal projects.

Merrill Lynch earlier this year agreed to finance up to 155 megawatts of Raser power plants, including a commitment of up to US$44 million for the first plant.

Raser also tapped United Technologies Corp to supply the geothermal generating units for its plants.

To speed its growth, Cook said Raser is focusing on small power plants that can be built in just a few months, about the same time it takes to build a wind farm.

"Geothermal usually takes much longer to be built. We've tried to go with an off-the-shelf type of plant design," Cook said, adding that plants could be expanded later if there are enough geothermal resources to do so.

"It's like Legos that come together," he said.

Raser says its technology is unique because it can build a plant where underground water temperatures are relatively low, or below the 212 degrees Fahrenheit needed to boil water. That's because the company uses the hot water from the ground to turn a second liquid with a lower steam point into the steam used to power the turbines.

"That allows us to exploit sites that frankly were passed over or thought to not be useful 25 or 30 years ago," Cook said. "We are going back through and tying up a lot of those opportunities."

Raser has more than 200,000 acres of geothermal interests in six Western US states.

Cook said utilities are becoming more concerned about rising prices of natural gas, used to generate much of utilities' so-called baseload power.

"We're seeing a lot of utilities recognize that geothermal is much more competitive than natural gas and has zero fuel risk exposure," Cook said.

Raser shares were down 3 cents at US$7.85 in afternoon trade on the NYSE Arca exchange. (Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

Read more!

Five Killed in Vietnam Floods, Thousands to Move

Ho Binh Minh, PlanetArk 29 Aug 08;

HANOI - Vietnam will spend nearly 2.4 trillion dong (US$145 million) between now and 2010 to build dykes and relocate thousands of rice farmers because of heavy seasonal flooding in its fertile Mekong river delta.

The programme, approved early this week, would help 33,000 families resettle in areas away from landslides and floods, the government said in a statement.

Meanwhile, flash floods triggered by heavy rain on Wednesday night killed at least five people and five others were missing in the northernmost province of Ha Giang, bordering China, the provincial authorities said in a disaster report on Thursday.

Three siblings aged from 1 year to 4 years were swept away in Ha Giang's remote district of Hoang Su Phi, the report said.

The flood-hit area lies about 1,400 km (870 miles) north of Vietnam's coffee belt in the Central Highlands. Ha Giang is also outside Vietnam's main rice growing regions, namely the Red River Delta in the north and the Mekong Delta in the country's south. About 20 percent of Vietnam's 86.5 million people live in the Cuu Long River Delta, the Vietnamese name for the Mekong river, which produces more than half of the country's paddy output and supplies more than 90 percent of its commercial rice.

Funding for the programme will come from the state budget, grants and soft loans from state-run Vietnam Development Bank. The funds would be used for building dykes as well as foundations for new villages to ensure farmers' homes stay above the Mekong floods' peak level in 2000, the statement said. Floods arrive between August and November each year in the Mekong delta, a large area of fertile soil in southern Vietnam where the Mekong river reaches the South China Sea after travelling more than 4,000 km (2,500 miles) from Tibet.

In 2000, the Mekong delta experienced the worst floods in four decades as waters rose to more than 5 metres, killing nearly 500 people, more than 300 of them children.

Early this month, the governments of Vietnam and Cambodia said rising Mekong water levels may cause landslides and heavy flooding, but the seasonal floodwaters would also bring Vietnam's southern farmers good crops of rice and fish. (US$1=16,496 dong) (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Read more!

Thousands Evacuated From Floods in Eastern India

PlanetArk 29 Aug 08;

PATNA, India - Indian army troops helped evacuate more than 120,000 people from floods in eastern India, but more bad weather raised fears that rivers would continue to overflow, officials said on Thursday.

The flooding, which officials say is the worst in 50 years, was caused after the Kosi river burst a dam in Nepal where it originates, unleashing huge waves of water that smashed mud embankments downstream in Bihar state.

Many villagers offered prayers and slaughtered goats to appease the Kosi, known as Bihar's "river of sorrow" for its regular floods and tendency to change course.

"We are praying to the river goddess and offering her blood since only she can help us", a village woman in the worst affected Supaul district told a local newspaper.

At least two million people have been forced from their homes and a quarter of a million houses destroyed. So far 55 deaths have been officially reported in Bihar, but activists and local media put the toll many times higher.

Stranded villagers complained of an unbearable stench from rotting carcasses and the United Nations warned of the spread of water-borne disease.

TV stations showed swirling flood waters pouring into homes through windows, submerging hundreds of villages and roads and railway tracks. Telephone and power lines snapped.


SOME BLAME GLOBAL WARMING

Torrential rains have killed more than 1,000 people in South Asia since the monsoon began in June, mainly in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where 725 people have lost their lives. Other deaths were reported from Nepal and Bangladesh.

Some experts blame the floods on heavier monsoon rains caused by global warming, while others say authorities have failed to take preventive measures and improve infrastructure.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress party, flew over devastated areas by helicopter on Thursday.

Singh later announced that more helicopters would be used to rescue thousands of villagers marooned in distant villages and assured more financial assistance.

The United States announced a US$100,000 flood-relief package for the victims. Aid agencies, including UNICEF are in Bihar distributing food, clothes and medicines.

State officials told Reuters more than 120,000 had been evacuated and kept in more than 100 temporary camps, but bad weather was hampering rescue and relief operations.

"We have the army, disaster management teams, police and other groups of rescuers making every effort to save the population," said R.K. Singh, a top disaster management official.

Officials said floods had destroyed more than 227,000 homes and damaged about 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of vegetables, wheat and paddy crops. (Writing by Krittivas Mukherjee; Editing by Bappa Majumdar and Tony Austin)

Read more!

Rich or Poor? New Faultline in UN Climate Talks

Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 29 Aug 08;

ACCRA - Rich countries are pushing developing nations with the strongest economies to do far more to combat climate change, opening a faultline between rich and poor in UN talks on global warming.

The European Union, for instance, says that some developing nations such as Singapore, Argentina and some OPEC states have grown richer than some developed nations which have to shoulder the burden of cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

"We want some of the developing nations to do more," said Brice Lalonde of France, who led the EU delegation at Aug. 21-27 talks among 160 nations on a broader new climate treaty to be agreed by the end of 2009.

"There needs to be more differentiation among developing nations," he said.

The current fight against climate change is led by 37 developed nations in the Kyoto Protocol who have agreed to cut emissions by five percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. Developing nations have no targets.

Many poor nations, which negotiate in a bloc at UN talks, strongly oppose any attempt by the rich to redefine the boundary between rich and poor, seeing it as a diversion from a need for the rich to make ever deeper cuts in emissions.

"The (1992 UN Climate) Convention did not provide for differentiation between developing countries," said Byron Blake of Antigua and Barbuda, chair of a group of more than 130 developing nations in Accra known as the G77 and China.

Any such talk would be a "diversion of effort", he told Reuters. Rich nations have to agree deeper cuts in greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, to slow impacts such as heatwaves, floods, desertification and rising seas.

The European Union, Japan and Australia are among nations that say it is unfair to expect the rich group from almost two decades ago to keep on taking the lead. Kyoto groups all rich nations except the United States, which rejected the pact.


NEW WORLD ORDER

Since the early 1990s, non-Kyoto countries such as Mexico and South Korea have joined the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, grouping rich nations.

Non-Kyoto nations such as Argentina or Qatar have higher per capita incomes than insiders Russia or some eastern EU members. And by some World Bank yardsticks of purchasing power, non-Kyoto Singapore has higher per capita income than the United States.

"Most developing countries are not in favour of differentiation," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, told Reuters. "I can't predict where that debate is going to go."

A new treaty will demand deeper cuts from developed nations by 2020 and only "actions" by developing nations to slow the rise of their emissions.

"It's a real chicken and egg situation," said Angela Anderson of the Washington-based Pew Environment Group, with both rich and poor wanting the other to promise more. "It is a big divide."

Developed nations say limited funds must focus on the poorest, such as in sub-Saharan Africa.

But Blake said rich nations should focus on keeping past promises to help the developing nations, which have contributed least to greenhouse gas emissions since the Industrial Revolution and now need to burn energy to end poverty.

"Nations with binding commitments have not, I repeat have not, delivered on those commitments," he said.

Some nations outside Kyoto are promising to do more. South Korea says, for instance, that it plans to set a binding target for emissions and wants to act as a bridge between the developing and developed nations.

And South Africa has laid out a scenario that could mean a peak in its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020-25.

Splitting up developing nations "is going to be an issue for further discussions," said Harlan Watson, head of the US delegation.

Developing nations are unanimous in saying they cannot be expected to do more when the United States has no goals. Both candidates to succed President George W. Bush, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, say they will do more.
(Editing by Diana Abdallah)

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Africa climate conference delegates not offsetting flights

Mike Pflanz, The Telegraph 28 Aug 08;

More than 1,700 delegates at two conferences on global warming being held in Kenya and Ghana have largely failed to carbon-offset their travel to the meetings, The Telegraph has learned.

Some 140 participants have flown from as far as Japan to Nairobi for a forum of scientists and African and European MPs to discuss the devastating impact of climate change on the world's poorest people.

But few have opted to pay for the greenhouse gases that their travel to Nairobi produced, which totals 2.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide for each return flight from Japan, for example.

That is almost nine times the per capita CO2 output for the average Kenyan.

A straw poll of 29 participants found only one, a British climate researcher, who had offset his flight. Ten members of the organising committee had also paid the surcharge.

"We were not told anything about that, and these flights are expensive enough already", said Adam Boni Tessi, an MP from Benin in West Africa, whose 5,300 mile round trip produced 0.9 tonnes of CO2.

Others from Germany, Uganda and Ivory Coast all admitted that they had not paid. One Ugandan delegate said the conference organisers should have told them about carbon offset schemes.

"Whether to fly carbon neutral was a decision which was left up to each of the delegates themselves," said Femke Brouwer from European Parliamentarians for Africa (Awepa), the organisers of the Nairobi forum.

"I think you will find that the vast majority will not have [paid], but we as Awepa are developing a policy which will allow our members to fly carbon neutral, which will be in place for the next meeting early next year."

A separate conference with 1,600 participants is being held at the same time in Ghana's capital, Accra, for the latest round of UN-backed talks linked to implementing the Kyoto Protocol.

Again, organisers could not confirm that air travel was carbon neutral because the decision whether to pay the green surcharge on each flight was left to each delegation.

"It's up to the parties to decide for themselves," said Caroline Keulemans, spokesman for the Accra conference.

"The UN is working towards a mechanism in which all emissions for UN conferences will be offset. For now it's up to the parties, but as the UN we would very much like that all of these conferences would be carbon neutral."

Ms Keulemans could not say when this scheme would be introduced.

The conference organisers had advised delegates not to wear jackets and ties, to allow "discussions in a more comfortable environment, as well as [to] limit the use of air conditioning and thereby reduce greenhouse gas emissions", its website said.

Indonesia paid to offset all greenhouse gases produced during last year's Bali climate conference by planting 79m trees, but it was not clear if Ghana had made plans to do anything similar.

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