Endangered Saimaa seal threatened by fishing, climate change

Terhi Kinnunen Yahoo News 28 Oct 08;

HELSINKI (AFP) – The rare Saimaa ringed seal, which lives only in Finland and whose population is estimated at just 260, is increasingly threatened by fishermen's nets and the melting of its icy habitat due to climate change, experts say.

The seal lives only in Finland's biggest lake, Lake Saimaa, in the eastern part of the country. It is a subspecies of the ringed seal that became a fresh water mammal some 9,500 years ago when ice melted after the ice age and it became trapped in the lake.

It has suffered from man's actions, in the form of pollution in the 1960s and the 1970s, and more recently from warmer winters and fishing.

Calving seals use snow to build a protective lair on the ice for their pups, which are born at the end of February or in early March.

"During the last three winters the ice and snow have come late or the snow has melted early, so seals have not been able to build lairs and the pups have remained without the protection of a lair," Jari Luukkonen, conservation director at WWF Finland, told AFP.

This has resulted in many cubs dying soon after birth and the population has started to fall.

Nets from sports fishermen are another death trap for the young cubs as they learn to catch their own food.

Statistics by state agency Metsaehallitus show the seal population increased from 189 in 1990 to 280 in 2005, but it has gradually fallen to around 260 in the past few years, a declining trend that has conservationists concerned.

According to stock estimates, some 50 to 60 pups are born annually, but up to 30 percent of them die during the first year.

"Getting entangled in fishing nets is the biggest single cause of death brought on by man. If we get rid of that, the Saimaa seal could probably survive the climate change," Luukkonen said.

A temporary law on fishing restrictions in Lake Saimaa is due to be renewed in May 2009 and a working group set up by the ministry of agriculture and forestry is currently discussing how the legislation should be tweaked.

"When we were reviewing the law last time it became clear that nature conservationists considered the restrictions insufficient, while fishermen said they were too harsh," said Roni Selen, a senior officer at the ministry of agriculture and forestry.

But he added that there was pressure to tighten restrictions because it was likely the European Union would look more closely at Finland's measures to protect its endangered seal.

"If that happens, we might get more pressure and sanctions from Brussels."

Landowners bordering the lake also own part of the waters by law, and although there are large conservation areas in Lake Saimaa, not all private landowners want to change their fishing habits for the sake of the seal.

WWF has since 1979 raised awareness about Saimaa seal conservation and last spring the organisation, together with the government and fishing associations, urged people to avoid using fishing nets from mid-April to mid-June when the young pups are learning to swim, dive, catch fish and survive on their own.

Meanwhile, the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation has offered fishermen the possibility to swap nets for fish traps, which are safer for the seals.

But biologist Tero Sipilae said land and water owners were not willing to increase the seal protection areas in the lake.

"The regions where the seal pups are born should be fishing net free by law," insisted Sipilae, who works for Metsaehallitus, a state agency that administers state-owned land and water areas.

He said reducing the deaths of seal pups would boost the stocks as there would be more fertile seals.

"With the current half-way measures, the Saimaa seal will slowly become extinct," Sipilae noted.

However, it is not professional fishers who use nets, but local or summer residents who put their nets in the seals' waters.

"We prefer voluntary means instead of restrictions by law. Net fishing continues to decrease as those who use that method are getting old," Vesa Karttunen from the Federation of Finnish Fisheries Association said.

But professional fisherman Niko Ovaska from Savonlinna said efforts to protect the Saimaa seal had not impacted his profession. And he said he liked the seals, which he sees almost every time he goes trawling.

"Of course it is two-sided affair, if fishing is restricted. But we have to remember the seal will become extinct if we don't do something."

"We have to weigh which is more important, protecting the seal from extinction or people's leisure time fishing," Ovaska said.

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Low ivory prices at first legal auction in 9 years

Alister Doyle, Reuters 28 Oct 08;

OSLO (Reuters) - The first U.N.-approved auction of elephant ivory in almost a decade gave lower-than-expected prices in Namibia on Tuesday but wildlife experts disagreed over whether that would discourage poachers.

The Namibian government sold 7.2 tonnes of stockpiled ivory for $1.2 million, or an average price of $164 a kilo, to Chinese and Japanese bidders in the first of four auctions by southern African countries to be spread over two weeks.

Most experts had predicted far higher prices in the rare sale, the first since 1999 when the average price was $110 a kilo in an auction limited to Japanese buyers.

"The reason was probably that the Namibian ivory was not the best quality ... some of it is weathered and cracked," said Willem Wijnstekers, head of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) who is overseeing the sales.

Wijnstekers told Reuters by telephone that the prices might be a sign that Asian ivory carvers had moved into different businesses since a 1989 global ban on exports, or perhaps that financial turmoil was denting Asian demand even for exotic commodities.

And he said that lower prices might help curb poaching.

"The higher the price the higher the incentive" for poachers, he said. Low prices "make it much more risky."

But the International Fund for Animal Welfare -- which has estimated that black market ivory sells in Asia for $880 a kilo -- said the legal sales will stoke poaching by making it hard to identify legal or illegal goods.

"What's important for poachers is to know that there is a market," Michael Wamithi, elephant program director at IFAW, told Reuters.

And the Environmental Investigation Agency, which seeks to expose wildlife crimes, said in a statement that the sales "could open the floodgates to illegal poaching."

One expert said Namibia had been expecting $300 per kilo from the sale, from which proceeds go to elephant conservation. The ivory was sold from stocks and from killings of 'problem elephants', for instance that trample crops.

Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa will also hold auctions in the next two weeks, totaling almost 100 tonnes, in exemptions from a 1989 U.N. export ban. They argue that elephant numbers have risen in recent years due to conservation.

Elephants, the world's largest land mammals, are under pressure in many parts of Africa from poaching, loss of habitats to farms and towns, pollution and climate change. Numbers have fallen to 470,000-685,000 against millions decades ago.

Wijnstekers said it was hard to predict prices at the other auctions. "Some buyers may be holding back," he said. Still, he said he had hoped competition between Japanese and Chinese buyers would do more to bolster prices.

Last week the Internet auctioneer eBay Inc. said it would institute a global ban on the sale of ivory products after a conservation group found 4,000 illegal elephant ivory listings on its site.

(Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Ivory sale earns $1.1m from China, Japan
Brigitte Weidlich Yahoo News 28 Oct 08;

WINDHOEK (AFP) – Namibia sold more than seven tonnes of ivory for 1.1 million dollars on Tuesday, in the first legal auction of elephant tusks in nearly a decade -- exclusively for Chinese and Japanese buyers.

The sale kicked off two weeks of auctions across southern Africa that will put 108 tonnes of tusks on the block, in a one-off sale to the Asian powers.

Four African countries have been authorised by CITES, the international convention that regulates trade in endangered species, to hold the sales only to China and Japan.

The Asian giants are among the world's largest markets for ivory, which is used for families' traditional seals to stamp documents as well as handicrafts.

Namibia's deputy environment minister Leon Jooste said three buyers from Japan and three from China bought 7.2 tonnes for a total of 1.18 million dollars (940,370 euros) during the closed-door auction.

"We had nine tonnes on offer, but the remaining 1.8 tonnes will be utilised by local jewellers and carvers," he told reporters.

Willem Wijnstekers, secretary general of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), monitored the sale and called the event a success.

"The auction was very succesful and we are confident the buyers will adhere to all CITES stipulatons," designed to prevent illegal ivory trade and to discourage poaching, he said.

The auctions, which are closed to the public and to media, are selling off tusks from government stocks -- mainly from elephants who died of natural causes or from culling of herds to prevent overpopulation.

But some conservationists fear that the sudden arrival of so much legal ivory in China and Japan could provide a way for poachers to slip their ill-gotten wares past the eyes of regulators.

Michael Wamithi, head of the elephant programme at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said both nations are among the top destinations for illegal ivory taken from poached elephants.

"Several multiple-tonne seizures have been made at Chinese ports in recent years. The lack of enforcement for the registration systems in both countries also provides a convenient loophole for illegal traders," he said.

The wildlife trade watchdog Traffic said it has confidence in the auctions, which after Namibia will move every three days through Botswana, Zimbabwe and finally South Africa.

"As far as we're concerned, it's a well-managed process," Traffic's national representative David Newton said in Johannesburg.

Despite concerns about China's enforcement efforts, Newton said Beijing had made real efforts to comply with international rules on ivory trade.

"They are taking this a lot more seriously," he said.

"We're always urging caution, and the ivory trade needs to be very strictly managed," he said. "For the one-off trade, we're confident that the monitoring mechanisms are in place."

CITES says it agreed to the sales only in African countries where elephant populations are judged to be healthy and growing. More than 312,000 elephants are living in the four nations.

Under CITES rules, profits from the sales must go towards elephant conservation projects, or towards programmes aimed at developing communities who live around elephant ranges.

The ivory can be exported only to China and Japan, which then must track it to prevent it from being resold overseas.

The international ivory trade was banned in 1989, but since 1997 CITES has authorised the four African countries to carry out occasional sales.

The last sale in 1999 earned five million dollars (four million euros). The four countries agreed not to hold a new sale for at least another nine years.

South Africa will hold the biggest sale, with 51 tonnes on the block, followed by Botswana with 44 tonnes and four tonnes in Zimbabwe.

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Rising CO2 accelerates coral bleaching: study

Michael Perry, Reuters 28 Oct 08;

SYDNEY (Reuters) -Rising carbon dioxide levels in the world's oceans due to climate change, combined with rising sea temperatures, could accelerate coral bleaching, destroying some reefs before 2050, says a new Australian study.

The study says earlier research may have significantly understated the likely damage to the world's reefs caused by man-made change to the Earth's atmosphere.

"Previous predictions of coral bleaching have been far too conservative, because they didn't factor in the effect of acidification on the bleaching process and how the two interact," said Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg from the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and Queensland University.

The Australian scientists erected 30 large aquaria in the waters off Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef to study the combined effects of ocean warming, acidification due to rising CO2, and sunlight on a large range of reef organisms.

Using CO2 and temperatures predicted for the middle and end of the century, the scientists found ocean acidification from CO2, which reduces coral calcification, had the potential to worsen the impact of bleaching and the death of reef-building organisms.

The study found that coralline algae, which glue the reef together and help coral larvae settle successfully, were highly sensitive to increased CO2.

"These may die on reefs such as those in the southern Great Barrier Reef before year 2050," study leader Ken Anthony said in a statement released on Tuesday.

Some coral species were able to cope with higher levels of ocean acidification by enhancing their rates of photosynthesis, but if CO2 levels became too high "the coral-algal system crashes and the corals die," said the study.

"The implications of this finding are massive as it means that our current bleaching models, which are based on temperature only, severely underestimate the amount of coral bleaching we will see in the future," said Anthony.

"These results highlight the urgency of reducing CO2 emissions globally. Without political will and commitment to abatement, entire reef systems such as the Great Barrier Reef will be severely threatened in coming decades."

(Editing by Roger Crabb.)

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Arctic ice thickness 'plummets'

Mark Kinver, BBC News 28 Oct 08;

The thickness of Arctic sea ice "plummeted" last winter, thinning by as much as 49 centimetres (1.6ft) in some regions, satellite data has revealed.

A study by UK researchers showed that the ice thickness had been fairly constant for the previous five winters.

The team from University College London added that the results provided the first definitive proof that the overall volume of Arctic ice was decreasing.

The findings have been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

"The ice thickness was fairly constant for the five winters before this, but it plummeted in the winter after the 2007 minimum," lead author Katharine Giles told BBC News.

Sea ice in the Arctic shrank to its smallest size on record in September 2007, when it extended across an area of just 4.13 million sq km (1.59 million sq miles), beating the previous record low of 5.32 million sq km, measured in 2005.

The team from the university's Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling - part of the UK's National Centre for Earth Observation - found that last winter the ice had thinned by an average of 26cm (0.9ft) below the 2002-2008 winter average.

Dr Giles added that the data also showed the western Arctic experienced the greatest impact, where the ice thinned by up to 49cm (1.6ft).

Melting point

The recent record losses of ice cover in the Arctic has led to suggestions that the region could have reached a "tipping point" but some uncertainty over the causes had remained, explained co-author Seymour Laxon.

"The extent can change because the ice can be redistributed, increasing the amount of open water," he told BBC News. "But this does not reduce the overall amount of ice."


"To determine whether the reduction in sea ice extent is the result of ice being piled up against the coast or whether it is the result of melting, you need to measure the thickness."

"I think this is the first time that we can definitively say that the bulk overall volume of ice has decreased," observed Dr Laxon.

"So this means melting; it doesn't mean that the ice has just been pushed up against the coastline."

Dr Giles explained that the measurements gathered by satellite provided a continuous data-set and had a number of advantages over other methods.

"Drilling, submarines or aircraft; all of these techniques can be limited by time and space," she said.

"You can only sample relatively small areas, and you cannot have a continuous time series - it's a very harsh environment, so field experiments in winter are logistically difficult."

"We have been using satellite data, which means we get coverage all across the Arctic Ocean (apart from the very centre) and we get it continuously, so we have great coverage both in terms of time and area."

The measurements were recorded via a radar altimeter onboard the European Space Agency's (Esa) Envisat satellite.

The altimeter fires pulses of electromagnetic waves down on to the ice, which reflects them back up to a receiver on the satellite.

The time taken for the waves to complete this journey is recorded, and it is a fairly straightforward calculation to work out the height of the ice above sea level.

As one tenth of the ice sits above the water, it is then possible to work out the overall volume and thickness of ice in that location.

Dr Laxon said the project's findings are being used to help climate modellers refine their projections of what is going to happen in the future.

"The time when Arctic sea ice is going to disappear is open to a lot of debate," he said.

"About five years ago, the average projection for the sea ice disappearing was about 2080.

"But the ice minimums, and this evidence of melting, suggests that we should favour the models that suggest the sea ice will disappear by 2030-2040, but there is still a lot of uncertainty."

The researchers hope to keep the data series, funded by the EU and the Natural Environmental Research Council (Nerc), running for as long as satellite-based measurements are available.

Big decline in depth of Arctic winter sea ice
Juliette Jowit, The Guardian 28 Oct 08;

The thickness of sea ice in the Arctic dramatically declined last winter for the first time since records began in the early 1990s. The research by British scientists shows a significant loss in the thickness of the northern ice cap after the record loss of ice in the summer of 2007, although the weather was not abnormally warm.

The findings, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, raise the possibility that the loss of the Arctic sea ice could accelerate, because as the ice recedes the water temperature rises. This summer the sea ice recorded its second-lowest extent after the record low of 2007, again despite relatively cool air temperatures.

However, Katharine Giles of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at University College London, who led the study, said it was too soon to say whether the downward trend would continue and lead to summer sea ice disappearing even faster than forecast. "It's dangerous to extrapolate out because colder weather would mean the ice could recover again," said Giles. "This data will help climate modellers to validate their models and make them more accurate."

The study, part-funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and the European Union, found the thickness of sea ice in the Arctic was almost unchanged in the five winters from 2002-6, but then declined 10%, or 26cm, last winter. In parts of the western Arctic, where the greatest loss was recorded the previous summer, the loss was nearly double the average.

But Vicky Pope, the Met Office's leading adviser to the government on climate change, warned: "There's clearly a decline over the last 30 years and we can detect a human signal in that, but the change in the last couple of years could be due to natural fluctuations in the weather."

Other causes of sea ice changes could include ocean currents and wind piling up ice, making it important to measure both thickness and extent to calculate total volume, said Giles.

Arctic ice thickness drops by up to 19 per cent
Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 28 Oct 08;

The thickness of ice in large parts of the Arctic dropped by as much as 19 per cent last winter, according to scientists.

The average thickness fell by almost half a metre in some areas compared to the previous five winters.

After a slow downward trend since 2002 the rate suddenly increased after summer 2007 when the amount of ice dropped to its lowest level since records began.

Following the record low, the amount of sea ice has recovered after cooler summer temperatures so the thinner ice cannot be blamed entirely on warmer Arctic conditions.

Researchers from the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at University College London - part of the National Centre for Earth Observation - used satellite technology to measure sea ice thickness over the Arctic from 2002 to 2008.

On average the winter sea ice in the Arctic is two and half metres thick. Its depth is calculated from the time it takes a radar pulse to travel from a satellite to the surface of the ice and back again.

The team was the first to measure ice thickness throughout the Arctic winter, from October to March, over more than half of the Arctic, using the European Space Agency's Envisat satellite.

Their research, reported in Geophysical Research Letters, showed that last winter the average thickness of sea ice over the whole Arctic fell by 26cm (10 per cent) compared with the average thickness of the previous five winters, but sea ice in the western Arctic lost around 49cm of thickness.

This region of the Arctic saw the North-West passage in the summer of 2007 become ice free and open to shipping for the first time in 30 years.

Dr Katharine Giles, who led the study said: "This summer's low ice extent doesn't seem to have been driven by warm weather, so the question is, was last winter's thinning behind it?

"The western Arctic in the summer of 2007 saw the biggest changes in the amount of ice and this is where we saw the biggest changes in the thickness of the ice so it is hard to imagine that they are not connected.

"We saw an average decrease of 10 per cent which is pretty dramatic."

She said the loss of ice would reduce the Arctic's capacity to deflect sunlight and would lead to a larger areas of water which would absorb heat and produce warmer temperatures - leading to more ice melting.

Dr Seymour Laxon, who also took part in the study, said: "Ice can simply melt and disappear or if the wind changes it can move and be piled up against the shore when you would expect it to become thicker but we saw no evidence of this and rather than getting thicker, the ice was thinner."

Before this latest study, Christian Haas of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, had discovered thinner ice in a small region around the North Pole but this is the first time scientists have been able to show that the ice thinning was widespread and occurred in areas of both young and old ice.

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Best of our wild blogs: 28 Oct 08

Hantu Dive with new nudis, fishies and more
photos and stories on the hantu blog

7 Nov (Fri): Workhop for nature guides - Echinoderms
on the wild shores of singapore blog

Ethics for Underwater Photographers
on the Gill Divers Blog

Pulau Jong Reef Check
on HBing's memories

Kusu Island Reefwalk
on the Blue Water Volunteers blog

Babbler feeding Drongo Cuckoo fledgling
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

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NEA volunteers energising green movement

Tania Tan, Strait Times 28 Oct 08;

ARMY regular Ong Chee Siang spends many sleepless nights mentoring young environmentalists, educating people about climate change and organising green events.

While burning the midnight oil can be exhausting, the 26-year-old said the effort is worth it.

'It's tiring, yes. But if I can help make a difference in some way, what's a little lost sleep?'

Mr Ong is part of a growing number of National Environment Agency (NEA) volunteers who are spreading message of conservation and sustainability to the masses.

Survey results released by the agency showed the number of volunteers jumped by a third in the last year to more than 11,400. Volunteer-driven activities are also on the upswing; over 5,770 were organised this year, up almost a third from last year.

'I'm very busy but it's a nice problem to have,' said Mr Ong. 'It shows that people are becoming more aware about the environment.'

The sustained public appeal has helped foster a growing awareness of the environment. Almost 85 per cent of 1,500 Singaporeans surveyed felt the need to be good to the planet, compared to just under half in 2004.

'It's heartening to see that green awareness is starting to take root,' said the NEA.

Volunteers do more than just wave the anti-

littering flag. They promote recycling, help residents improve energy efficiency, and educate Singaporeans about climate change.

Constituencies, in particular, are experiencing a flurry of activity as more grassroots organisations help households save power and shrink their electricity bills. For example, the Radin Mas constituency already has 1,500 households involved in its home energy audit programme, which sees some 100 volunteers go door-to-door to teach households how to conserve energy.

The year-long Clean and Green Singapore campaign has been key to boosting volunteer activity, said the NEA. Launched last year, it was expanded after many said green activities should be a sustained affair, instead of a week-long blitz.

This year's campaign - called Every Little Step Counts, Let's Make A Difference - will kick off on Friday with a three-day carnival at the Marina Barrage. The complex will be transformed into an eco-friendly town to show how everyday activities, like shopping, eating and working, can be greener.

NEA youth volunteer Teo Shuli, 18, believes the campaign will spawn greater awareness of the environment.

'It provides a larger platform for green issues to be brought to the masses,' said Shuli, who is unable to volunteer this year, as he will be sitting for his A-levels in November.

'But I'll definitely visit,' he said.

For more information, go to www.cgs.org.sg

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Electricity in Singapore: More tariff revision explanations

Tariff revision no benefit to power generation companies
Letter from Jenny Teo
Director, Corporate Communications
Energy Market Authority
Today Online 28 Oct 08;

In “Is this the best deal?” (Oct 20) Mr Conrad Raj suggested that the increase in electricity tariffs had benefitted power generation companies (gencos) and Singapore Power (SP) at the expense of consumers. But he has confused the issues and painted a distorted picture.

SP’s electricity infrastructure subsidiaries in Singapore are regulated by the Energy Market Authority and earn a Return on Total Assets (Rota) of about 6 per cent. This is a reasonable return to finance the investments needed to expand and maintain our electricity grid infrastructure. In comparison, the Rota earned by other infrastructure companies overseas varies between 6 per cent and 15 per cent.

The regulatory framework is also designed to promote system efficiencies, so that the savings generated can be passed on to consumers. For example, SP has announced a reduction of 8 to 11 per cent in the charges for transporting electricity from Oct 1, 2008.

As for the gencos, they are subject to competitive pressures in an open market environment. Investors are free to build new plants and compete in the electricity market, as companies like Keppel Merlimau Cogen and Sembcorp Cogen have done in recent years.

The gencos have every incentive to innovate and provide electricity at competitive prices. The divestment of the gencos will attract new players into the industry and continue to keep a downward pressure on price. There is therefore no basis to link the divestment with the tariff revision.

Mr Raj’s suggestion that the gencos purchase their fuel at “the same time and (at) exactly the same price” is inaccurate. The gencos negotiate their own commercial contracts for natural gas with the gas suppliers. Every contract is different, but they follow the industry practice of indexing the price of gas to the price of fuel oil.

Changes in this fuel oil cost are reflected in the electricity tariff every quarter. As the tariff is set in advance using the forward fuel oil price, there is a three-month time lag between the oil price movement and the actual tariff revision. Alternatively, if we had used the spot oil price to compute the tariff, it would have been higher in 11 of the 16 quarters since 2004. Hence, under the present formula, households have generally paid less for their electricity.

For this quarter, the forward fuel oil price had risen sharply by 38 per cent. All of the increase in the tariff goes into paying for this higher cost of fuel. The tariff revision does not benefit either the gencos or SP.


We are a power service provider
Role is to transport energy from power generation companies to the end user
Letter from Ho Lai Fung
Director, Corporate Communications
Singapore Power Ltd
Today Online 28 Oct 08

We refer to the article by Mr Conrad Raj “Is this the best deal” (Oct 20) and would like to put things in perspective.

Following the liberalisation of the electricity market, Singapore Power (SP) is no longer in the business of generating electricity. Electricity generation is undertaken by five generation companies (gencos), namely Senoko Power, PowerSeraya, Tuas Power, SembCorp Cogen and Keppel Merlimau Cogen. SP does not own any of the gencos.

The role of the SP Group in Singapore is confined to:

• The transportation of electricity from gencos to end-users through the transmission and distribution network by SP PowerGrid;

• The provision of market support services to the electricity market, viz meter-reading, billing and payment collection, by SP Services. Regulated by the Energy Market Authority, SP Services purchases electricity from the gencos and then sells the electricity at cost (with no mark-up) to small businesses and households.

For providing these services, SP receives 5.17 cents (17 per cent) of the 30.45 cents per kilowatt hour tariff applicable to households today. This fee of 5.17 cents per kilowatt hour does not fluctuate with the changes in the price of fuel. Over the last six years, SP has reduced its share of the average tariff by 24 per cent. This reduction is made possible because SP has achieved operational and financial efficiencies, and shared the savings from these efficiency gains with all consumers.

The increase in the tariff this quarter is used to meet the higher cost of fuel needed to generate electricity. Neither SP nor any of its subsidiaries benefit from the tariff increase.

With regard to Mr Raj’s comment that SP Group made a “whopping” profit of $1.09 billion, we would like to clarify that this profit included the results of our international operations and the sale of investments. For SP’s regulated electricity business, the after-tax profit was $423 million, which represents a return of about 6 per cent on our total Singapore assets of about $9.7 billion. On the strength of this performance, SP will have to secure financing to invest another $5 billion in the Singapore electricity grid over the next 5 years.

Such investments are required not for the sake of “surpassing our peers” or winning international accolades, as Mr Raj suggests. Rather, these investments are needed to meet growing electricity demand and to replace ageing equipment. Ultimately, this will help to support our economy and to ensure that all Singaporeans can enjoy peace of mind with a reliable supply of electricity to their homes.

Pricier power? Life goes on
How low-incomefamilies are coping withelectricity price hikes
Neo Chai Chin, Today Online 28 Oct 08;

TOA Payoh resident Mdm Noorhayati used to top up her electricity account with $10 every five days, but now she does it every three to four days.

The dressmaker and her four children, aged 12 to 27, live in a two-room rental flat, and have been on the Pay-As-You-Use (Payu) electricity metering scheme for the last “two to three years” after falling into arrears with SP Services.

When electricity prices rose by 21 per cent on Oct 1, Mdm Noorhayati, 51, was caught off-guard. “I said, ‘How come (the top-ups get used up) so fast?’ and my son told me, ‘Mum, it’s because electricity prices have been raised’,” she said.

But the price hike has not led to worse times for Mdm Noorhayati and other Payu households so far, social workers and the Community Development Councils (CDCs) told Today.

This is mainly due to increased Government rebates and subsidies for the poor.

“We do not expect a surge in applications over this month or the next because of the tariff rise,” said a spokesperson from South West CDC. “Residents who apply for financial assistance usually face multiple issues such as loss of employment, loss of breadwinner, unstable income, arrears in HDB instalments and so on.”

Said senior social worker Frances Lee: “Theoretically speaking, yes, there should be an increase in Payu households. But my observation is that their problems don’t happen all of a sudden, and with the Government’s rebates, the end cost to them might not be as great as it’s said to be.”

Electricity tariffs have risen every quarter since April last year, from 18.88 cents per kilowatt hour to 30.45 cents per kilowatt hour now. But the number of Payu households has dropped slightly, from 13,627 in December last year to 13,401 in August, according to SP Services.

Payu is for households whose electricity supply has been cut and are unable to pay the minimum sum required for re-connection. It is also for those who default on their instalment plans. With a 50 per cent increase in the Government’s Utilities-Save rebates this year, households will receive between $120 and $330, depending on their flat types. For one- to three-room flat households, the rebates exceed their estimated bill increases.

The attractiveness of the Payu scheme is that it allows households to top up accounts in small amounts from as low as $10, 20 per cent of which goes towards settling their debts.

“We are better off with Payu, because now we won’t overuse. When my sons play too much computer games, I will ask them if they can afford what they are using,” said Mdm Noorhayati.

Dishwasher Mdm K F Leong, 63, often checks the credit left in her Payu account and cuts electricity usage by turning the lights off at 8pm when her two grandchildren go to sleep. But she sometimes has to borrow $100 to $200 from friends for top-ups, repaying them when she gets her salary.

“We do hear of clients who say friends and relatives are more willing to lend money for something concrete — to top up electricity accounts,” said Ms Lee, a senior social worker with Care Corner Family Service Centre (Toa Payoh).

Frequent Payu top-ups, however, are a problem for those with mobility problems. For such households, Care Corner either appeals to SP Services for standard meters or arranges for Giro payments, said Ms Lee.

Besides rebates from the Government, low-income households also get utilities vouchers from the North West and South West CDCs, while Central Singapore CDC holds budgeting and power-saving workshops.

Central Singapore CDC’s workshops, which include financial literacy programmes, have been held for 4,000 households earning less than $1,500 since April last year. Three in five households have seen a reduction in household expenditure, including on utilities, after attending the workshops, said its general manager Agnes Kwek.

Read more!

Climate deal may be too late to save coral reefs, scientists warn

David Adam, guardian.co.uk 27 Oct 08;

A new global deal on climate change will come too late to save most of the world's coral reefs, according to a US study that suggests major ecological damage to the oceans is now inevitable.

Emissions of carbon dioxide are making seawater so acidic that reefs including the Great Barrier Reef off Australia could begin to break up within a few decades, research by the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University in California suggests.

Even ambitious targets to stabilise greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, as championed by Britain and Europe to stave off dangerous climate change, still place more than 90% of coral reefs in jeopardy.

Oceanographers Long Cao and Ken Caldeira looked at how carbon dioxide dissolves in the sea as human emissions increase. About a third of carbon pollution is soaked up in this way, where it reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid. Experts say human activity over the last two centuries has produced enough acid to lower the average pH of global ocean surface waters by about 0.1 units.

Such acidification spells problems for coral reefs, which rely on calcium minerals called aragonite to build and maintain their exoskeletons.

"We can't say for sure that [the reefs] will disappear but ... the likelihood they will be able to persist is pretty small," said Caldeira.

The new study was prompted by questions by a US congressional committee on how possible carbon stabilisation targets would affect coral loss.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million (ppm) before the industrial revolution to more than 380ppm now. Campaigners and politicians in Europe and the UK say a new global climate deal, which is expected to be agreed next year, must aim to limit CO2 to 450ppm, though scientists say that is unlikely and the world is heading for 550ppm or even 650ppm.

The research suggests that stabilising world carbon levels at 450ppm would still dump so much carbon dioxide in the oceans that only 8% of coral reefs would be surrounded by water with enough aragonite to maintain their structure. Some 7% of the ocean below 60 degrees south will see a shortage of aragonite, while parts of the high latitude ocean could see a pH drop of 0.2 units.

At 550ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, no coral reef would have access to enough of the mineral. Even stabilising CO2 at current levels would still leave some 60% of coral bathed in seawater with low aragonite levels.

The increased amounts of carbon dioxide going into the ocean will also affect other marine life, such as shellfish, that need the calcium mineral to build carbonate shells.

Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists say the risk posed by carbon pollution to coral and marine life could justify a carbon stabilisation goal "lower than what might be chosen based on climate considerations alone".

The UK's Royal Society is preparing to issue a warning to policymakers on the issue, together with dozens of other international science academies.

Caldeira said the affected reefs would not disappear straight away, but that the change in water chemistry would leave them vulnerable to attack, bleaching or disease.

He said: "We're losing the Arctic ice, it looks like we're going to lose the coral reefs and we could lose much of the rainforest. I find it disconcerting that these ecosystems that have been around on Earth for a long, long time are no longer able to survive."

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Rare Sale Of Ivory To Be Held Under UN Auspices

PlanetArk 28 Oct 08;

GENEVA - A rare sale of African ivory will be held under United Nations auspices over the next two weeks, with proceeds to be used for conservation purposes, officials said on Monday.

The sales will take place in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, with only China and Japan permitted to buy.

Africa's elephants are protected species and cross-border trade in their ivory tusks is generally prohibited.

But signatories of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) last year gave the four southern African states special permission to sell a combined total of 108 tonnes of raw ivory from elephants that died of natural causes or were killed in population-management programmes.

CITES Secretary-General Willem Wijnstekers will be on the spot to "supervise closely" the closed-door transactions.

The first sale will take place in Namibia on Tuesday, with the second in Botswana on Oct. 31, CITES said. Dates for the South African and Zimbabwean sales, not open to reporters or the public, will be announced later.

The two Asian nations, traditional users of ivory, were approved to buy after showing they could fight illegal domestic trade in the material used mainly in jewellery and carvings.

Wijnstekers will hold talks on the margins of the auctions with officials from both countries about how CITES will monitor trade controls "to ensure that unscrupulous traders do not take this opportunity to sell ivory of illegal origin".

Cash raised in the one-off auctions must be used to fund programmes for nature conservation and community development projects in the areas the four countries say rising elephant populations have caused problems for local farmers.

Last week the Internet auctioneer eBay Inc said it would institute a global ban on the sale of ivory products after a conservation group found 4,000 illegal elephant ivory listings on its site. The company already prohibits cross-border sales of ivory and items made from other endangered or protected species.

(Editing by Michael Roddy)

Controversial ivory sale to open
Richard Black, BBC News 28 Oct 08;

The first officially sanctioned sale of ivory in southern Africa for almost a decade opens on Tuesday.

Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe will auction more than 100 tonnes of ivory from stockpiles to buyers from China and Japan.

The money raised will go into elephant conservation projects.

Some environment groups say the sales encourage poachers elsewhere in Africa to kill elephants for ivory that can be fed into the illegal trade.

However, data collected by the wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic shows that seizures of illegal ivory fell in the years following the last legal sale in 1999.

The secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the UN body that sanctioned the sale, says it will monitor trade in China and Japan to make sure companies are not mixing illegally sourced ivory with these legal shipments.

The ivory trade was banned globally in 1989 because poaching was decimating elephant populations. This and the 1999 sale are the only exceptions.

Last week, the internet site eBay banned virtually all products containing ivory after lobbying from animal welfare groups.

Continental divide

The sale was approved in principle in 2002; and at last year's CITES meeting in The Hague, delegates agreed that enough precautions had been taken that the auction could go ahead, with Japan as the sole validated buyer.

Earlier this year, CITES decided that China had acted against the illegal trade with enough vigour that Chinese companies could also bid for a share of the stockpiled ivory.

This was contested by some environment groups, which argued that Chinese controls remained lax - a judgement re-iterated this week on the eve of the Namibian auction.

"We are deeply concerned that these sales will open the floodgates to additional illegal trade," said Will Travers, CEO of the Born Free Foundation.

"For some inexplicable reason some people think that all elephant populations are adequately protected and thriving. Nothing could be further from the truth."

The issue starkly illustrates the divided fortunes of elephants across Africa.

In some range states, particularly those in central and west Africa affected by civil unrest, populations are believed to be declining, partly because of poaching.

But in southern Africa, decades of protection and management have seen numbers rising by about 4% per year. South Africa has recently approved in principle the use of culling to control populations.

HAVE YOUR SAY It is a very good idea to sell ivory stockpiles. It will reduce the market value and make it less profitable to poach Fasahath Husain, Chennai, India
In this region, conservation groups argue that elephants are safer if local communities benefit financially from looking after them, whether through eco-tourism or the sale of ivory from animals dying naturally.

The 1999 auction raised about $5m for conservation and community projects. But with Chinese buyers also involved, a total bounty of $30m is said to be possible this time around.

Namibia will auction its stockpile of nine tonnes on Tuesday, followed by Botswana's much larger disposal of 44 tonnes on Friday. The South African and Zimbabwean sales take place next week.

The 1997 CITES meeting that approved this sale also declared there should be no more for 10 years.

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EU Moves To Crack Down On Illegal Logging Trade

PlanetArk 28 Oct 08;

LUXEMBOURG - EU farm ministers on Monday broadly welcomed plans to crack down on the lucrative illegal timber trade by making exporters obtain licences to prove their wood does not come from endangered rainforests.

Ministers will negotiate the proposals in detail over the next few months, after a discussion in which some voiced concern over the plan's costs for business and others said the scheme was long overdue.

The proposals, drafted by the EU's executive Commission, would oblige importers to check the legality of the timber products, to prevent shipments of wood that had been illegally harvested. It would also apply to domestically produced timber.

The European Union is an important market for both legally and illegally harvested timber -- it is the largest importer of plywood and sawnwood from Africa, the second largest from Asia, and a key market for Russia.

Environmental groups say European imports of illegally felled timber are worth 1.2 billion euros ($1.49 billion) a year and the trade can lead to more forest fires and poaching.

Many of the ministers who took the floor at the monthly meeting said the EU plan for action against illegal logging was welcome but long overdue. Britain said its success would depend largely on the degree of enforcement. Several countries, notably Austria, Latvia, Romania and Slovenia, voiced concern about the possible extra costs the scheme would impose on their timber industries and importers.

"What we fear is that companies would have to provide lots of documents, small companies in particular. The burden could be considerable," said Walter Grahammer, Austria's deputy permanent representative to the European Union.

"It's also a question of stopping suppliers from supplying illegal timber," Dutch Agriculture Minister Gerda Verburg said. "But the burden must not be so great that we discourage people from making the effort (to comply)," she said.

Illegal logging costs governments of timber-producing states between 10 and 15 billion euros a year, the Commission says.

It estimates about 19 percent of the timber products used in the EU pulp and paper sector are of illegal origin.

(Reporting by Jeremy Smith; editing by Tim Pearce)

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Climate link to amphibian decline

Paul Rincon, BBC News 27 Oct 08;

Amphibian populations at Yellowstone - the world's oldest national park - are in steep decline, a major study shows.

The authors link this to the drying out of wetlands where the animals live and breed, which is in turn being driven by long-term climate change.

The results, reported in the journal PNAS, suggest that climate warming has already disrupted one of the best-protected ecosystems on Earth.

The park covers some 9,000 sq km (3,500 sq miles) in the western United States.

It lies mostly within the state of Wyoming, but spills over into Montana and Idaho. The area has been protected for more than a century; US congress granted Yellowstone national park status on 1 March 1872.

Visitors flock there to see its geysers, hot springs and bubbling mud pots, fuelled by ongoing volcanism. The park's vast forests and grasslands are also home to grizzly bears, wolves and bison.

But it is to much less conspicuous inhabitants - frogs, toads and salamanders - that scientists look for early indications of environment degradation.

Four amphibian species are native to the park: the blotched tiger salamander ( Ambystoma tigrinum melanostictum ), the boreal chorus frog ( Pseudacris triseriata maculata ), the Columbia spotted frog ( Rana luteiventris ) and the boreal toad ( Bufo boreas boreas ).

The lower Lamar Valley in northern Yellowstone harbours countless small, fishless ponds - ideal for amphibian breeding and larval development.

Downward trend

Between 1992 and 1993, researchers surveyed 46 of these "kettle" ponds, which are re-filled in spring by groundwater and snow melt running down from the hills.

When a team from Stanford University in California repeated this survey between 2006 and 2008, the number of permanently dry ponds had increased four-fold.

Of the ponds that remained, the proportion supporting amphibians had declined significantly.

In addition, three of the four native amphibian species had suffered major declines in numbers. The number of species found in each location had also dropped off markedly.

Amphibians lay jelly-coated eggs that are unsuited to development on land, so they must return to water in order to spawn.

"They go through an aquatic period and a terrestrial period during their lives so they are very susceptible to changes in both types of environment," said co-author Sarah McMenamin, from the department of ecology and evolution at Stanford.

Changing landscape

The scientists saw no change in numbers of the boreal toad - which the IUCN conservation body lists as threatened. But this species was rare in 1992, as it is now, making it difficult to extract population trends.

Ms McMenamin and her colleagues also analysed monthly temperature and precipitation data from Yellowstone, as well as satellite images of the park taken between 1988 and 2008.

These data revealed that decreasing rainfall and increasing temperatures during the warmest months of the year have significantly altered the landscape.

Drought is now more common and more severe than at any time in the past century, the researchers say.

"There is a pretty substantial signal of climate change in this region," Ms McMenamin told BBC News.

""Snow pack during the winter is decreasing - which other studies have documented - and the regional aquifer is drying up as a result of these large-scale climate changes.

"These ponds are changing, the environment is changing, the landscape is drying up and the amphibians no longer have a place to breed. It's disturbing."

Amphibian populations are in crisis worldwide: pollution, diseases such as chytrid fungus and rana virus, invasive species, UV radiation and habitat destruction all contribute to the problem.

Climate change might affect amphibian populations in numerous ways. In addition to drying out aquatic breeding habitats - preventing spawning - it could also make the land environment inhospitable to them.

Evidence suggests that a warming climate could also predispose amphibians to infection, particularly to chytrid fungus.

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Supermarkets come in from cold as part of low carbon revolution

Rising energy prices and green campaigns persuade firms to open ecostores

Juliette Jowit, The Guardian 25 Oct 08;

It was a small but chilling symbol of 20th century consumerism. Obsessed with choice and convenience at any cost, supermarkets for years refused to put doors on fridges because they might get in the way of customers reaching in.

Now a small but very 21st century revolution is under way. On Monday Asda will open what it claims is Britain's first superstore with doors on every freezer, fridge and chill cabinet. The initiative is part of a £27m new "low carbon" store in Bootle, Liverpool, and this one measure alone is expected to save 8% of the building's electricity bill - and emissions.

Asda is not alone. With electricity bills rising fast and campaigners and regulators turning up the heat on companies to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, supermarkets are opening ecostores to test a hotchpotch of improvements, from renewable energy to recycling plastic bags into kerbstones, animal-friendly products, and seeking out the green pound of more environmentally-friendly shoppers.

With tens of millions of shoppers a week and £85 out of every £100 spent on food in the UK, the supermarket chains could be a force for transforming the way people shop and encouraging suppliers around the world to reduce energy use, waste and exploitation of people and land. "It's a healthy competition which is moving us all faster and faster," said Katherine Symonds, Tesco's sustainability manager.

Others claim the very notion of an "ecosuperstore" is a contradiction in terms. "While green technology can improve the environmental footprint of a building, this is a small part of a supermarket's impact, which includes emissions from food freight and customer travel to stores," said Helen Rimmer, campaigner for Friends of the Earth.

Walking around the huge (recycled) brick and (sustainable) wood Bootle store, Bob Simpson, Asda's head of project development, pointed out two geothermal pumps to bring up hot water from underground aquifers and a wood pellet-burning boiler to help heat the store.

Passing through wafts of warm bread from the bakery test on to a shopfloor busy with shelf stockers, Simpson showed off ventilators recycling "ambient air", sun pipes in the roof, and translucent bricks to bring in natural light but keep out the heat of the sun - and, of course, the omnipresent fridge doors.

The fridge doors are, admitted Simpson, a leap of faith. At one store the electricity bill fell 14%, but in two sales dipped. "I think here it will be slightly different, and that's why we've not changed them; also it's a bit late [to change] because we open on Monday," he said.

The mantle of Britain's greenest supermarket changes almost monthly: in August Sainsbury's opened what it claimed was the greenest store in Dartmouth, Devon, promising to reduce emissions by 40%; Asda says Bootle will cut energy use and emissions by up to half; but Tesco claims to have already trumped that, with a 60% cut at Shrewsbury.

Nor is carbon the only battleground: all the supermarkets have targets to cut the distance goods travel, emissions from vehicles, waste and a range of other unpopular byproducts of their business.

One key driver has been rising electricity bills, which account for about 40% of store costs and 60% of the companies' direct emissions. "We have seen a dramatic upturn in price that's changed the energy environment in the UK ... that's driving a totally different set of behaviours than even was the case two years ago," said John Ashford, head of engineering for Sainsbury's.

The other is customers, though evidence that shoppers are lobbying for greener goods is hard to find, especially since the threat of recession.

But supermarkets see green values as a way of winning or at least retaining customer loyalty, said Ronan Hegarty, news editor of The Grocer industry magazine: "It's a bit of a trump card to say 'who's the greenest'."

At the same time, retail bosses see the opportunity to use the cost savings to win more customers by bringing down prices, said Julian Walker-Palin, head of corporate policy for sustainability and ethics for Asda. "Anything a supermarket does, we do for our customers.

"For 17 million people who shop [in Asda] each week, the majority don't understand climate change or carbon, and they don't want to. But they understand there's this issue we need to do something about; they very much [say to] their supermarket 'you have the experts, I want you to help me do the right thing'," she said.

The tension between sustainability and price-profit ethos has raised serious doubts about how much supermarket greening is greenwash. Critics point out there is only a handful of ecostores although all chains have less ambitious group-wide energy and emissions reduction targets.

Fairtrade and organic products and local supplier deals make up a tiny fraction of total product lines and contracts.

A host of other accusations are also levelled at supermarkets: bullying of suppliers, vast, oil-dependent freight networks, ruination of high street shops, millions of car miles driven by shoppers to out of town stores, promotion of unhealthy food, and the whole notion of trying to sell as many disposable consumer goods as possible.

In what could be a turning point, Wal-Mart's chief executive, Lee Scott, this week said that on occasions the company might pay more for more sustainable products. "We don't want to rule that out," said Walker-Palin. At the same time, Simpson admitted that if the fridge doors do act as a barrier to sales, some might be removed: "It's about being brave, not stupid."

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