Funding Becoming Harder To Get For Green Startups

Nichola Groom PlanetArk 27 Oct 08;

LOS ANGELES - Saving the planet is looking a lot less profitable than it was a few months ago, and investors once enamoured with finding the next high-flying alternative energy startup are retrenching.

Venture capitalists poured a record number of dollars into alternative energy companies as oil prices peaked at $147 in the third quarter, but some say that investment has trailed off substantially as crude prices declined and the global economy has slipped toward recession.

Not only are venture firms demanding lower valuations for what they call "cleantech" companies, they are also shying away from those with riskier technologies and startups whose business plans will require large amounts of capital.

"Our standard of investment has always been high, but it's even higher now," said Bryant Tong, managing director with San Francisco-based Nth Power, a venture capital firm that invests in energy technology startups. "Investors are hesitant to make investments... so it is harder across the board to raise capital for these companies."

Alternative energy in the last few years has become a major focus for venture capitalists, who saw there was money to be made from investing in technology to create cheaper solar panels, clean transportation fuels and green building products at a time of increased concerns about global warming and soaring fossil fuel prices.

Venture investments in alternative energy companies reached a record $2.6 billion in North America, Europe, China and India in the third quarter, according to industry research firm The Cleantech Group, which expects a much different picture in the current economic climate.

"We expect fourth-quarter venture investment numbers to be down significantly from the third quarter," said Brian Fan, senior director of research with The Cleantech Group, who estimated that fourth-quarter venture investment in the sector would be somewhere between $1 billion and $1.5 billion.

"And we expect that to continue into next year as well," Fan added.


THE VAULT IS CLOSED

The most visible recent sign of venture capitalists' new found caution toward cleantech was Tesla Motors announcement last week that it would delay the launch of its battery-powered sedan and cut jobs because of a lack of funds.

The electric car startup had been on the cusp of securing another round of venture funding when that was scuttled by the financial market turmoil, Tesla Senior Director John Thomas said on Wednesday.

"The vault was closed to us," Thomas said.

Tesla is now waiting until it can secure low-cost taxpayer backed loans before re-starting work on the "Model S."

For many investors in early-stage companies, the 50 percent drop in oil prices in three months has been a big deterrent to making new investments in alternative energy.

"The biggest question on people's minds has to do with the price of crude oil, which is now hovering at $70 a barrel," said Glen Schwaber, general partner at Israeli venture capital firm Israel Cleantech Ventures. "From that perspective it can be a concerning time to be a clean tech investor."

Cleantech investment in early stage companies should fall off at the end of the current quarter, Schwaber added.

In the near term, companies seeking their first round of venture funding will have the toughest time because a frozen market for initial public offerings has made it virtually impossible for venture capital firms to take public their later-stage companies, according to US trade group the National Venture Capital Association.

"If you can't get companies out through the IPO market, you have less time and less money to devote to new investments," said NVCA Vice President of Strategic Affairs Emily Mendell, who added that she expected cleantech to keep rising as a percentage of overall venture capital investment.

"I would be surprised if investment fell sharply in this area," she said.

The good news, according to many venture capitalists, is that with fewer dollars chasing the next big solar company or energy efficiency technology, there are good deals to be had.

"With the dollars that you put in now, you will own a greater percentage of the company," said Nth Power's Tong. "It's really a buying opportunity right now."

Once the downturn is over, many noted, the fundamental reasons for investing in clean energy will not have changed.

"There is an increase in urbanization, a population explosion, and a reliance on fossil fuels which are warming the planet," Schwaber said. "None of these have changed because of the subprime meltdown."

Indeed, The Cleantech Group's Fan said venture firms that committed to the sector before it was hot, such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Khosla Ventures and VantagePoint Venture Partners, were unlikely to pull back now, though they may focus on less capital-intensive businesses.

"It's the second-tier VC firms, the fringe players, the newcomers that are getting scared off," Fan said.

(Additional reporting by Tova Cohen in Tel Aviv and Kevin Krolicki in Detroit; Editing by Carol Bishopric)

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Future of green is not so black, say some

Richard Ingham Yahoo News 26 Oct 08;

PARIS (AFP) – The deepening economic crisis may appear to be the perfect storm for environmentalism, but many in and around the green movement contend the opposite, seeing in it a time of opportunity.

The conventional view is this: willingness to protect the environment is wedded to prosperity.

When times get tough, people tighten their belts -- so their eagerness to switch to renewable energy, buy a more fuel-efficient car or promote forest conservation melts faster than organic ice cream in the Sahara.

Environmentalists and observers of green issues are not deaf to this argument. Indeed, many fear backtracking on a colossal scale at the upcoming UN talks on global warming, unfolding in Poznan, Poland, in December.

But these voices also say that conventional wisdom is flawed in many ways, sometimes unexpectedly so.

For instance, a worsening economy causes less greenhouse-gas emissions in the short term, as it lowers consumption of dirty coal, oil and gas by factories, homes, planes and cars.

"In one month, the crisis has done more for the environment than all the environmental summits in the world," is the ironic conclusion of Marc Fiorentino, president of EuroLand Finance, a French finance company that specialises in investment for small companies.

Others argue that tighter budgets and a lower oil price will not wipe out solar, wind and other clean sources that have enjoyed a surge in investment in recent years.

In the 1980s, a fall in the price of crude ended the first dawn of green energy, as the big economies, led by the United States, returned to their dependence on oil.

Bjorn Stigson, president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development in Geneva, said corporations today believed that oil prices, while volatile, "will jump up and down at a high level," with demand sustained by a burgeoning world population and limited supplies of crude.

This leads to a happy conjunction of interests, he said. High prices encourage less use of energy and thus lead to less greenhouse-gas emissions.

"The measures that you need to tackle energy efficiency are the same that you will need to tackle climate change," said Stigson. "About 40 percent of the action needed to reduce CO2 [carbon dioxide] levels in the world will come from energy efficiency."

Another long-term factor to buoy the green cause is geopolitics, he said.

The United States was branded by memories of a dollar price for oil that zoomed into the triple figures. This trauma would be an enduring boost to locally-produced energy, including renewables and "clean" coal technology, said Stigson.

"The same issues that you have to address if you want to reduce dependence on imported oil, and create a higher degree of energy security, are the same issues that you must address from a climate perspective," he argued.

Other voices suggest that September-October 2008 may be remembered as a watershed in economic doctrine.

The frenzied worship of the lightly-regulated market place could be replaced by a humbler, wiser approach, of linking economic growth to natural resources, social needs and smarter technology, they hope.

Tim Jackson, a professor of sustainable development at Britain's University of Surrey, said the obsession with short-term profits and consumer-driven growth was now proven to be unstable as well as environmentally destructive.

"The old way of thinking about economy is up for negotiation, and the opportunities to build economies that incorporate both financial and environmental prudence are there to be taken," he said.

"What's needed is political leadership that understands this link and is prepared to act on it."

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Best of our wild blogs: 26 Oct 08

Dialogue Session on Sustainable Singapore
upcoming session on the AsiaIsGreen and wild shores of singapore blog

Eurasian Curlew at Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve
and how it uses its massive bill on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Upcoming Singapore Energy Conference
on AsiaIsGreen

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Singaporean filmmaker showcases Lim Chu Kang in documentaries

Lynda Hong, Channel NewsAsia 26 Oct 08;

SINGAPORE: Singaporean filmmaker Eng Yee Peng has spent nearly a hundred thousand dollars on a documentary close to her heart.

Eng, who used to stay in Lim Chu Kang, felt compelled to preserve the rural landscape's history by making not one, but two documentaries, aptly titled "Diminishing Memories".

"For Part One of the film, I felt that I have something to improve. But Part Two of the film, there's nothing else better I can do already, based on my limited time, resources and budget," said Eng.

Audiences, especially the last surviving farmers from Lim Chu Kang, were moved to tears when the film was screened in Singapore recently.

Tickets for the initial six screenings at The Arts House were snapped up within a week. Due to the overwhelming response, another 10 more screenings of the film have been scheduled.

Part One of the documentaries has been shown at international festivals and on television in Australia and South Korea.

Part Two was later made but went 200 per cent above budget at US$60,000 – all from the director's savings. She also took a year, working 15 hours each day to complete the 49-minute film.

Eng said: "I need to stop filmmaking for a few years. I am not sure if I can continue. If you want to continue this journey in the long run, do not exploit yourself. Get enough funding and do not be afraid to justify enough funding for your project."

The director, who is a former MediaCorp producer for current affairs programmes, said she is taking on video-editing jobs for now before deciding on her next big project.

Related links

Diminishing memories website http://diminishingmemories.spaces.live.com/ with details of screening dates.

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Chemical regulations 'a turning point' for Barrier Reef

ABC News 25 Oct 08;

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) says the Queensland Government's plan to introduce mandatory regulations on the use of chemicals in agriculture is a turning point for the Great Barrier Reef.

At the Reef Water Quality Summit in Brisbane yesterday, Premier Anna Bligh admitted a voluntary approach to saving the reef had failed.

WWF spokesperson Nick Heath says the Government's decision to get tough on chemical run-off could be the key to the reef's survival.

"I think if we can cut these pesticides, cut these fertilisers, save farmers money we'll save the reef," he said.

"It'll be more resilient before climate change comes through. But then I'm an optimist and I'll be working very hard with the farmers and with WWF and the scientists to try and make that happen."

Mr Heath says although the restrictions are a good start, the Government must follow it through with adequate funding.

"We still need the details to come out. We like what we're hearing but we want to see some money," he said.

"If these regulations are going to work, we need a very strong and long, significant financial commitment to implementing these regulations."

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Researchers: Seven orcas missing from Puget Sound

Phuong Le, Associated Press Yahoo News 25 Oct 08;

SEATTLE – Seven Puget Sound killer whales are missing and presumed dead in what could be the biggest decline among the sound's orcas in nearly a decade, say scientists who carefully track the endangered animals.

"This is a disaster," Ken Balcomb, a senior scientist at the Center for Whale Research on San Juan Island, said Friday. "The population drop is worse than the stock market."

While the official census won't be completed until December, the total number of live "southern resident" orcas now stands at 83.

Among those missing since last year's count are the nearly century-old leader of one of the three southern resident pods, and two young females who recently bore calves. The loss of the seven whales, Balcomb said, would be the biggest decline among the Puget Sound orcas since 1999, when the center also tracked a decline of seven whales.

Low numbers of chinook salmon, a prime food for these whales, may be a factor in the unusual number of deaths this year, Balcomb said.

"It was a bad salmon year and that's not good for the whales," he said. "Everybody considers these wonderful creatures, but we really have to pay attention to the food supply."

The three pods, or families, that frequent western Washington's inland marine waters — the J, K, and L pods — are genetically and behaviorally distinct from other killer whales. The sounds they make are considered a unique dialect, they mate only among themselves, eat salmon rather than marine mammals and show a unique attachment to the region.

The population reached 140 or more in the last century, but their numbers have fluctuated in recent decades. They were listed as endangered in 2005.

"We may be in the beginning of another decline in the population," said Howard Garrett, director of the Orca Network, a nonprofit education and advocacy group.

He said the whales seem to be having a harder time finding chinook salmon.

The whales recently have been traveling over greater distances than usual, suggesting they may be ranging farther for food, said Brad Hanson, a wildlife biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Lack of food may be a concern, but it's too early to know the reason for the unusual number of presumed deaths, he said.

Pollution and a decline in prey are believed to be the whales' biggest threats, although stress from whale-watching tour boats and underwater sonar tests by the Navy also have been concerns. In the late 1960s and early '70s, the population fell as dozens were captured for marine parks.

The whales were making an apparentg comeback in recent years, reaching 90 in number in 2005, "but it's been a downhill trend now for three years," Balcomb said.

Among those missing are two female whales of reproductive age, both of which recently produced calves. One of those calves, L-111, is missing, while the other, J-39, is not.

It's not unusual to lose older or younger whales, but losing two females in reproductive prime is "a bit of a concern" since they typically have a high survival rate, Hanson said.

One female whale, known to scientists as L-67, had the potential for two or three more calves, Hanson said.

She was the mother of "Luna," a juvenile killer whale from Washington waters that made headlines in 2001 when he became separated from his pod and turned up in Nootka Sound, off the west coast of Canada's Vancouver Island. A killer whale believed to be Luna died in Nootka Sound in 2006 when it was hit by the propeller of a large tugboat.

L-67 showed clear signs of emaciation — a depression behind her blow hole — before she disappeared in September, Hanson said.

"It definitely shows that she was not eating," he said, but it's unclear why. Researchers are performing tests on samples they collected from her weeks before she disappeared.

Others missing, according to the center, include K-7, the 98-year-old matriarch of K-pod, and L-101, a 6-year-old male who is a brother of "Luna."

The count also includes a calf, J-43, that was born in November but is believed to have not survived the winter.

The whale census may increase if baby orcas are born this fall. And there's a slim chance the whales may reappear elsewhere, as "Luna" did, Hanson said.

But Balcomb said: "We've been monitoring. They're just gone."

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Marianas leaders oppose Bush plans for huge marine reserve

Yahoo News 24 Oct 08;

SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands (AFP) – Political leaders in the US-administered Northern Mariana Islands have publicly rebuffed attempts by Washington to persuade them to support a huge marine sanctuary in their waters.

A US official said during a visit to the western Pacific territory this week that President George Bush wanted to establish the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument before he leaves office in January.

Supporters of the 115,000 square mile (297,850 square kilometre) reserve said it would be an important part of Bush's legacy as he leaves office.

"To be as blunt as possible, we do not feel... that stealing our birthright to curry favour with posterity is appropriate," Northern Mariana leaders said in a joint letter published Thursday.

Northern Marianas Governor Benigno R. Fitial, the Senate president and the House of Representatives speaker wrote to Bush's senior advisor on environment and energy James Connaughton, who led a trip to the territory earlier this week to promote the sanctuary.

Local leaders oppose the reserve because they say it would remove resources from local control, banning fishing and any future mining in the area.

The sanctuary would surround the territory's uninhabited northern islands of Maug, Asuncion and Uracus, and include parts of the Mariana Trench, the deepest ocean waters in the world.

Connaughton told legislators on Monday the waters around the three islands were chosen because they have the "greatest marine diversity on the face of the earth and all (the) corals are intact."

But local politicians said they felt they were being railroaded into supporting the plan.

"We certainly do not appreciate the rush to judgment that necessarily must take place, and possibly has already taken place, to secure the designation prior to January 2009," the letter added.

"Even though this was ostensibly the beginning of discussions, many present were left with the feeling that the result was pre-ordained and the discussion was more pretence than substance."

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China's threatened elephants turn into killers

Local people believe the animals are getting angry as the country's runaway development destroys ever more of their habitat

Dinah Gardner, The Independent 26 Oct 08;

There are fewer than 300 wild elephants left in China, so when Jeremy McGill, an American tourist, stumbled across a group of adults earlier this year in a nature reserve in Yunnan province, near the border with Laos, he whipped out his camera and started taking pictures. It almost cost him his life.

"I was alone when I came across the four elephants," he said. "One scooped me up into his mouth and bit me. My body was folded in half, my head between my knees, and then the elephant spat me out and stomped on me. Suddenly they stopped and walked away. I was found about an hour later, just lying there with my intestines hanging out of my body."

A few weeks later, a Chinese migrant worker returning to his home village was stamped to death by an elephant. In Wild Elephant Valley, the same reserve where Mr McGill was attacked, a woman selling food was killed in June. Elephants will get aggressive if they feel threatened, but so many attacks in the space of six months is unusual, according to Grace Gabriel, Asia regional director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), who has worked on elephant conservation projects in China for a decade.

Humans and elephants are coming into contact increasingly frequently as Yunnan's development sees forests cut down to make way for rubber and paper plantations, new highways, dam projects and factories. China's elephant population is split into nine groups in isolated pockets of jungle that are becoming ever smaller, but Ms Gabriel thinks this is not the only cause of fatal encounters. Like local people, she believes the elephants are angry.

In recent years, she points out, several baby elephants have been caught in traps set by poachers for other animals. But when they are rescued by the local nature conservation authority, they are not released back into the wild, and she says at least two have died in captivity. Jin Yanfei, an ecology student from Beijing Normal University who studies the elephants in Wild Elephant Valley, said local officials wanted to breed elephants to perform tricks for tourists and to sell on to zoos.

Two young elephants are being kept at Wild Elephant Valley's "propagation centre". The youngest, Yongyong, was rescued last year when he was a few months old – in the wild, elephants normally stay with their mothers until they are least eight years old. We found him alone in a bare concrete yard, pacing agitatedly as far as the chain on his front leg would allow. I was told that Yongyong was kept like this 24 hours a day; after a few minutes, an official from the centre ushered us away.

Zhang Jun, a taxi driver in nearby Jinghong, the regional capital, spelled out the local view. "The park took in an injured elephant a few years ago, and the family came looking for her," he said. "That's why they've been attacking people. Everyone knows the elephants are angry."

Local farmers are also angry about loss of their crops to marauding elephants. Over the past three years the provincial government has paid out an average of about 5m yuan (£460,000) a year in compensation, but this covers only 30 per cent of the damage at most. Although poaching for ivory is a problem in Laos and Vietnam, Chinese farmers have not so far tried to harm or kill the elephants. Apart from the fact that guns are illegal, killing elephants, which are a protected species, carries a possible death penalty.

Ms Gabriel is campaigning for forest corridors to join up the patches of jungle where China's remaining elephants live. "These elephants have nowhere to go," she said. "If these habitats are not linked, if corridors are not built, China may not have wild elephants 100 years from now."

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Caution and Enthusiasm for Fish Farming in Argentina

Marcela Valente, IPS 25 Oct 08;

From the environmental impact perspective, it is essential to differentiate between community and industrial aquaculture.

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 25 (Tierramérica) - Fish farming is expanding in Latin America, fuelled by the demands of a global market that is facing the stagnation of commercial fishing. But some people are warning about the limits of industrial production of fish and the environmental and social risks.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 45 percent of the fish consumed in the world comes from fish farms. Today that means 48 million tonnes, but by 2030 that volume would have to be doubled because of the decline in commercial fishing and the increasing demands of a growing population.

In Mexico, aquaculture dates back to the pre-Hispanic era. Historians say that several species were raised in ponds and that the Maya Indians controlled fish reproduction in natural pools known as "cenotes".

Currently, fish farms in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru produce volumes that are the envy of Argentine producers. But in Argentina, the continent's southernmost country, the climate and topographic conditions are not conducive to developing large-scale fish farming, say some experts and activists.

Environmentalists here point out that the social and environmental harm that can arise from aquaculture do not justify industrial-level promotion, and recommend instead fomenting responsible fishing in seas and rivers that still have a rich biodiversity.

With an output of 710,000 tonnes annually, Chile is the region's leading aquaculture producer and one of the top 10 in the world, alongside China and India. It is also the world's second leading producer of farmed salmon and trout (both of the Salmonidae family), after Norway. But the sector is not without its risks.

In 2007, the outbreak of infectious anaemia in salmon closed down many fish farms in Chile. One thousand of 55,000 jobs were lost, according to the government, though the unions say the layoffs affected 3,000 workers.

Argentina has its potential, "but it is not Chile or Brazil," Laura Luchini, national director of aquaculture, told Tierramérica.

"Some provincial governments are promoting this sector, but our job is to make sure people keep their feet on the ground," she said.

Along Chile's long, southern Pacific coast, there are many fjords, making it "very favourable for this activity," said Luchini.

In contrast, Argentina's southern Atlantic coastline does not have any fjords, which provide protection, except in Tierra del Fuego, the country's southern-most province, where mussels are farmed.

Fish farming in this country is being developed on a small scale, with trout, Patagonian flounder and mussels. But production amounts to no more than 3,000 tonnes per year -- an insignificant volume when compared to fishing, which produces between 850,000 and 1.1 million tonnes of fish and shellfish.

"Nor can our country compare to Brazil, which has tropical waters," said Luchini. South America’s giant produces 250,000 tonnes annually of fish and shrimp in freshwater and on its Atlantic coast, in an inlet near the southeastern city of Florianópolis.

The aquaculture official believes that the enthusiasm of Argentine producers, who see enormous potential in fish farming, is a response to the pace of the sector's growth worldwide. "While fishing production has slowed and beef production is growing at a rate of 2.5 percent, aquaculture has grown 8.5 percent annually for the last eight years," she said.

Aquaculture has become a booming activity due to the higher global demand for food and the possibility of tracing the history, location and path of a product along the entire supply chain.

By 2045, FAO estimates that fishing and fish farm production will become homologous. Producers in Argentina believe that with credits, subsidies and better technology, they will be able to make the most of the opportunity to do good business, said Luchini.

But there are no magic solutions. Claudio Baigún, a biologist who is an expert in freshwater fish resources, agrees that the expectations of the producers do not take into account Argentina's limitations.

"They take Chile or Brazil as a guide, but Argentina is different. There are projects to raise pacú (Piaractus mesopotamicus) in Rosario (in the eastern province of Santa Fe). But while in Bolivia or Brazil, with their warm waters, the species matures in eight months, in Argentina it takes 18," Baigún told Tierramérica.

"Argentina is at the limit in South America for raising warm water species," he added. In any case, he warned that aquaculture is not a panacea. There are fish diseases, high costs of energy and fish food, and also the risks associated with the lack of genetic variation among the fish raised in pools.

"We want to believe that fish farming will resolve everything, but we have to preserve what we have, promote responsible management of the fish stocks and not believe that aquaculture is a life-preserver that's going to save us," said Baigún, a researcher at the Technological Institute of Chascomús.

From the environmental perspective, Jorge Cappato, director of the Proteger (Protect) Foundation, maintains that it is essential to differentiate between community and industrial aquaculture, because the latter could have greater negative social and ecological impacts.

In a conversation with Tierramérica, Cappato, whose foundation works to preserve biodiversity and promote sustainable fishing, remarked that "the chemical products used in fish farming -- antibiotics, pesticides, fertilisers -- have negative effects on the water.

"Local communities of artisanal fisherfolk then lose access to sufficient fish stocks and run the risk of being turned into fish farmers," he added.

Colombia produces 70,000 tonnes of farmed fish per year, according to 2006 data from the Colombian Agriculture Institute. With the disappearance of the "bocachico" (Prochilodus magdalenae), the principal freshwater fish species, local small-scale fishermen were turned into fish farmers, Cappato said.

"They earn less, are poorer and have less nutritious diets," said the Argentine foundation director, who visited the fish-raising ponds along the Sinú River, in the northern Colombian department (province) of Córdoba.

Cappato also mentioned the case of Ecuador, where the intensive production of lobster has been promoted in coastal areas of mangrove forests. The companies "destroyed 60 percent of the mangroves, left jobless the women who caught shrimp, and when a virus appeared they left, leaving behind empty concrete tanks."

The destruction of mangroves is also a problem in Mexico, which in 2007 produced 261,000 tonnes of farmed seafood, with shrimp in first place.

The shrimp industry is responsible for a large part of the disappearance of these important ecosystems, according to the Mangrove Ecology Group. In 2007, according to an official inventory, there was a 27 percent decline of mangrove forests since 2000 along Mexico's Pacific, Gulf and Caribbean coastlines.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.) (END/2008)

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Best of our wild blogs: 25 Oct 08

Flood warning issued for East Johor: will Chek Jawa be affected?
on the wild shores of singapore blog

Malayan Water Monitor catching catfish
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Pompelon marginata
and other moths on the Moth Mania blog

Asian Youth Energy Summit 2008
on AsiaIsGreen

Seafood is the scariest food
on blogfish

Consume less!
on the flying fish friends blog

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After weeks in Dubai hotel, Sammy the shark is allowed to check out

Sonia Verma, The Times 25 Oct 08;

The Government’s decision comes before the resort’s gala opening next month, billed as the most expensive private party yet staged. Some suspect that the decision to free Sammy has been prompted by fears that the negative publicity could overshadow the festivities.

A 13ft whale shark that has spent weeks as the star attraction in a huge tank in the lobby of a luxury hotel is to be freed after a campaign that included protest songs and the setting up of a “Free Sammy” page on Facebook.

Since the £950 million Atlantis hotel opened in Dubai last month, visitors have been greeted by the sight of Sammy and tens of thousands of other fish swimming about in a giant aquarium.

The whale shark is a juvenile and a protected species. Environmentalists were appalled by the display and began a fight against the hotel’s state-owned developers to have Sammy removed.

The surprise order to liberate her from the hotel, on the giant, man-made Palm Jumeirah development, was issued by the Government of the United Arab Emirates this week.

Such battles between environmentalists and wealthy developers are common in the West but are new to Dubai, where any opposition to its trillion-dollar building boom is rare, and victory against influential, state-owned developers is more elusive still.

“The whale shark should be freed,” Rashid Ahmad bin Fahad, Minister of Environment and Water, told The Times. “There is no decision yet on the timing, but definitely it will be freed.”

The campaigners have demanded that the speckled grey whale shark — the world’s largest fish species — be returned to the sea. She was caught in the shallows off the Gulf coast in August.

Sammy’s plight has dominated local news headlines. Dubai’s main daily, The Gulf News, led a “Free Sammy” campaign, decrying the confinement of the whale shark as “cruel beyond belief”. Children donned “Free Sammy” badges, activists waved placards and supporters put bumper stickers on their cars.

DJs at Dubai 92, a local radio station, played their own Free Sammy song, to the tune of Michael Jackson’s Free the World: “Free the whale shark, Make it a better place, For all the small fish who are scared they might be eaten,” the remix ran. “There are frogs and dolphins who are scared they might be dinner.”

Dubai residents also launched a Facebook campaign, signed by more than 8,000 people.

Sammy was swimming in an open-air aquarium with 65,000 fish, stingrays and other sea creatures. Environmentalists, wildlife activists and scientists condemned its cramped living conditions as life-threatening for her.

The whale shark is harmless to people, feeding on plankton and small fish. In the wild it can live to 100 and roams across thousands of miles.

Environmentalists say that the owners of the Atlantis hotel have disregarded international permit laws, holding her illegally and using her as a ploy to attract tourists. The captivity of whale sharks in the United States and Japan has provoked controversy in the past.

The Atlantis — developed by Sol Kerzner, a South African property tycoon, and Nakheel, a government-owned developer — refused to comment on the row or the government order. However, previous statements have argued that the shark was “under duress” at the time of its capture and claimed that the hotel’s vets were nursing it back to health and studying it for scientific purposes.

The decision to release Sammy came as a surprise to even her staunchest supporters, highlighting how local sensibilities in the UAE are changing, in part because Dubai is attracting growing numbers of expats concerned about the environment.

With its chilled swimming pools, desert snow domes and man-made islands, the UAE has one of the world’s highest per capita carbon footprints. But the Government has embarked on several big green projects in an effort to shed that reputation, including Masdar, the world’s first carbon-neutral city being built in Abu Dhabi.

Azzedine Downes, of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said that the decision to free Sammy set an important precedent against excess at any cost. “It offers us a snapshot of a much bigger problem: the losing battle that wildlife faces.”

The Government’s decision comes before the resort’s gala opening next month, billed as the most expensive private party yet staged. Some suspect that the decision to free Sammy has been prompted by fears that the negative publicity could overshadow the festivities.

Larger than life

— The largest accurately measured whale shark was a 40ft male caught in Bombay in 1983. Its mouth was over 4ft wide and its fins were more than 6ft long

— An adult male can reach 40 tonnes and live as long as 100 years

— They have been tracked travelling distances up to 8,078 miles, from California to the western Pacific

— Whale sharks are filter feeders, sucking up plankton, squid and small fish as they swim

— They have several thousand 3mm teeth in 11 or 12 rows

Sources: www.sharks.org; Times Archive

Free Sammy
A whale shark's place is in the wild
The Times 25 Oct 08;

“Moby-Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!” Thus urges Starbuck, the first mate, to Captain Ahab to desist from his pursuit of the leviathan of Herman Melville's novel. A less dramatic and thereby more poignant drama of human fascination with creatures of the deep is being played out in a hotel in Dubai, as we report on page 4. The Atlantis hotel has captured not a whale, but a whale shark - so a fish, rather than a mammal. And what a fish.The largest variety in the ocean, a whale shark can grow as long as 40 feet.

The hotel claims to have “rescued” the young shark that it now holds. The shark, which has been nicknamed Sammy, was allegedly in distress. It has been held in captivity - specific- ally, the hotel's aquarium - since early September. There is no indication that the hotel intends to release the shark, whose presence is clearly being marketed as a tourist attraction.

The hotel should reconsider the treatment of Sammy. There are some animals for whom captivity is an aid to conservation of the species. The whale shark is not one of them.

Whale sharks are migratory creatures. They may live for decades in the wild, but their life span in captivity is known to be much shorter. They are protected creatures under international convention. The hotel should therefore accede to public pressure and set Sammy free. He would then have to find his way through the man-made archipelagos off the Dubai coast to reach truly open water, and he might need help. Keiko the killer whale, star of the Free Willy films, certainly did. Either way, he deserves the chance to show the world what makes Sammy swim.

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Is Singapore trying to excel in too many areas?

WHY aspire to be a second Boston or second London and not a first-rate Singapore?
Business Times 25 Oct 08;

It's time - particularly during a global crisis - for Singapore to rethink its economic model and employ niche targeting right where it has unique strengths to become a world leader, rather than stay a follower in various sectors, an economist suggests.

While highly successful so far, Singapore's growth model - built on wooing multinationals to drive key sectors here - may not be sustainable in the changing environment, says Linda Lim, professor of strategy at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business and director of its Center for South-east Asian Studies.

A Singaporean academic who has been in the US for some four decades, she was a speaker at the Singapore Economic Policy Conference yesterday.

In her view, the Singapore growth model has both tried to do too much - going against what theories such as comparative advantage and diminishing returns propose - and achieved too little in terms of delivering returns for Singaporeans relative to foreigners and foreign firms.

'Singapore cannot be internationally competitive and a world leader in semiconductors, life sciences, healthcare, education, financial services, creative industries and casino tourism, all at the same time,' she says in her paper for the conference.

Speaking to BT, Prof Lim said: 'Of course you can make an argument for doing 10 sectors instead of three; you say diversify. But if we do all, everyone becomes uncompetitive; all face rising costs as they compete with each other for scarce land and talent.'

Outlining her alternative strategic vision, she says that the starting point is to take stock of 'what you have, including your geographic location'.

Then look for a strategy of differentiation: 'What do you have, what can you do that nobody else can do? You want to develop a blockbuster drug? Any number of places in the world can do it. You have to look at what is specific about you.

'Perhaps it may be that if we want to have financial services, then we cannot have life sciences, integrated resorts. You have to make a choice, you cannot have everything. You choose the thing you can do better than anybody else.'

And one indicator of a 'market advantage', she says, is whether a country needs to provide 'inducements, or investment incentives, otherwise known as subsidies' to attract talent.

'If people are naturally coming here, that's fine.'

And not least, 'let the private sector do it', she says, suggesting that capital and talent be released to local entrepreneurs, to be allocated according to market forces. When and if private enterprise fails, it will take only small parts, rather than big chunks, of the economy down with it, she argues.

Singapore is particularly well-placed for a whole cluster of economic activities 'from finance to forestry and fisheries', Prof Lim says.

'Where are we? We're next to the biggest forests in the world. Why not be a carbon finance centre? People are doing this in San Francisco! They are doing Indonesian . . . avoiding deforestation . . . out of San Francisco! Why can't we do it from here?

'Why do we want to be a second Boston or second London? We want to be a first Singapore. There are already second, third and fourth Singapores all over the world - people are copying our strategy.'

Singapore could also be a centre of expertise in creative fields such as traditional and modern Asian arts and culture. Already, Singapore is the best place in the world to do South-east Asian studies, Prof Lim says.

Economic growth here has focussed on quantitative targets, but it may be time to look at the qualitative aspects such as its 'purpose' and nature.

'I'm saying, look at net value creation for citizens. 'People for growth' - growth as an end in itself - is not the same as 'growth for people', growth as a means toward greater welfare for people.'

Rethink Singapore economic growth model, says don
Straits Times 25 Oct 08;

SINGAPORE should relook its economic growth model in an era of tighter government regulation and multilateral oversight that could evolve in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

Professor Linda Lim from the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, told the Singapore Economic Policy Conference yesterday that the growth model that has served Singapore may be out of place in a changed environment.

Prof Lim said the growth strategy - the 'EDB (Economic Development Board) model of give them a tax break and they will come' - has both tried to do too much and achieved too little in terms of delivering high and secure incomes and living standards.

'We've 40 years of savings and repressed consumption, so do we throw it at UBS and Citigroup and lose 60 per cent of the value, or do we use it for ourselves?' said Prof Lim, a Singaporean and a frequent contributor to The Straits Times.

Instead of letting the state make big bets on a few major, capital-intensive, projects dependent on foreign capital, labour and skills in which they have no intrinsic comparative advantage, it might be worthwhile to consider releasing capital and talent to local entrepreneurs, she said.

These people can innovate and create value in smaller but nimbler locally rooted enterprises, she added.

Prof Lim said that a national government, for example, should not use domestic savings to create employment disproportionately for foreigners simply in order to claim success in establishing a particular sector of its choosing that may not be validated by underlying market forces.

Singapore, she said, can become a 'global model' for environmentally-friendly buildings and lifestyle.

Other clusters of 'regionally integrated' economic activities might be in the creative fields of traditional and modern Asian and Western arts and culture.

Another cluster is social and health services in, for example, developing policies, systems, products and services for an ageing population, Prof Lim said.

'Don't think of yourself as an outpost of a declining empire, or a second Shanghai or a second Boston. Why not be a first Singapore?' she told the audience of economists and academics.

GABRIEL CHEN

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