Singapore to buy 2.6m doses of bird flu vaccine

It will have enough for 1.3m people; those at high risk, kids to get priority
Salma Khalik, Straits Times 17 Feb 09;

SINGAPORE is stepping up its defences against a possible bird flu pandemic with the purchase of enough vaccines for 1.3 million people.

Vaccines give the best protection against the flu, but the one for H5N1 or bird flu became available only in 2007.

The original defence against a bird flu pandemic was to give the more than 50,000 'essential' people, such as doctors and policemen, six weeks' supply of Tamiflu, an antiviral drug that reduces the effects of the illness by preventing the bug from multiplying.

But there has been growing resistance to the drug recently, which could mean it might be less effective in the event of a bird flu pandemic.

This past winter, the northern hemisphere has thrown up a 15 per cent resistance to the medicine in another flu strain - the H1N1 - up from 1 per cent the previous winter.

The vaccine Singapore will be spending tens of millions of dollars to buy is targeted at the H5N1 or bird flu virus. It is not effective against other strains of flu. So if the next pandemic is not the H5N1, the vaccines would be useless.

This is why Singapore is also increasing its stockpile of Tamiflu, an antiviral drug that works for all flu strains.

By the end of this year, Singapore will have 1.7 million courses, up from the original 1.05 million courses. Each course consists of 10 capsules which are taken over five days. It also has 50,000 courses of Relenza, another antiviral.

The United States has stockpiled about 26 million doses of the H5N1 vaccine. Countries like Switzerland and Ireland have enough for their entire population. Singapore expects to get its 2.6 million doses within six months.

For the vaccine to be effective, people need to get two doses three weeks apart.

The plan is to start vaccinating the moment the World Health Organisation declares an increase in human-to-human transmission.

For the moment, these transmissions remain rare.

A Ministry of Health spokesman said the vaccines will be given to essential staff, as well as children and people at high risk, such as transplant patients.

She added: 'A person who is vaccinated may still suffer from flu-like illness as the vaccine is not 100 per cent protective. Such a person will then be given Tamiflu as treatment.'

Infectious disease experts say it is just a matter of time before another deadly influenza or flu pandemic sweeps the world. More than 40 million people died in the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918.

The pandemics of 1957 and 1968 spanned the globe in just six months, killing two million and over one million people respectively.

Should the next pandemic be caused by the H5N1 or bird flu virus, the results could be lethal.

More than half the 407 people who have been hit by bird flu so far have died of it.

salma@sph.com.sg


Should the next pandemic be caused by the H5N1 or bird flu virus, the results could be lethal. More than half the 407 people who have been hit by bird flu so far have died of it.

# The vaccine Singapore is stockpiling is targeted at the H5N1 or bird flu virus.

# For it to be effective, people need two doses three weeks apart.

Read more!

Give Sipadan your vote for 'wonder 7' list

Jaswinder Kaur New Straits Times 17 Feb 09;

Pulau Sipadan is one of 261 nominees in the New7Wonders of Nature online campaign, alongside Ko Phi Phi in Thailand, the Maldives, the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls on the Canada-United States border and Australia's Great Barrier Reef. A panel of experts will reduce the list to 21 on July 21. To vote for Sipadan, log on to www.new7wonders.com/nature

A QUARTER of a century ago, Pulau Sipadan was a sleepy island shaded by coconut trees. Very few divers had ventured into its blue-green waters in the Celebes Sea to discover the wonders of its marine life.

Sipadan found itself on the world stage when renowned ocean adventurer Jacques Cousteau showcased what it had to offer in a film entitled Ghost of the Sea Turtles, describing it as an "untouched piece of art".

By 1990, small wooden resorts began appearing on the beaches of Sipadan, which is about the size of 30 football fields.

Just a 90-minute speedboat ride from Sabah's east coast town of Semporna, divers found themselves swimming with fish in almost every imaginable colour, and exploring a diversity of corals only seen at top dive sites.
Stories started appearing in special interest magazines around the world, highlighting another interesting fact -- shaped something like a mushroom, Sipadan is an oceanic island formed by corals that grew on top of an extinct undersea volcano rising 600 metres from the sea bed.

Gazetted as a bird sanctuary under the Land Ordinance during British rule in 1933, it was pushed once again into the world's focus nine years ago. But this time for the wrong reasons.

Gunmen kidnapped 21 people, Malaysians and foreign tourists, and took them to the southern Philippines. All were released in stages within a year.

Despite the setback, divers continued to come and Sabah received the best news ever two years later when the International Court of Justice at the Hague ruled that Sipadan and nearby Ligitan belonged to Malaysia, in a 16-1 majority verdict over Indonesia.

By September 2003, a joint state and federal committee on the management and supervision of Sipadan and Ligitan was established. This was followed with a directive to the five dive operators to vacate the island by Dec 31, 2004.

The move was made not only for security reasons, but also to protect the island's barracudas, large schools of trevally, turtles, coral gardens and macro-life such as mantis shrimps.

In the last four years, a maximum of 120 day-trippers have been allowed to dive at Sipadan each day.

Almost three years ago, a barge laden with construction material scraped a portion of corals, leading to a huge outcry in the diving fraternity.

Though the headlines then were alarming, with one screaming "Sipadan reefs probably lost forever", scientist Dr Elizabeth Wood, who first visited the island in its pre-diving era, said Storm Greg in 1996 damaged some shallow water reefs while the increase in water temperature had contributed to coral bleaching.

An officer from the British-based Marine Conservation Society said reefs close to the jetty had suffered from years of pressure from divers and boats, while Marine Research Foundation director Dr Nicolas Pilcher said reports on the "barge incident" were exaggerated, pointing out that schools of bumphead parrotfish that roam over reefs do similar damage.

Despite some bumps on the road, Sipadan is today still on the "must-do" list for divers.

Read more!

Shrimp fisheries under scrutiny

FAO 16 Feb 09;

Overfishing, bycatch and discards need to be urgently addressed - FAO calls for more comprehensive management of fisheries

16 February 2009, Rome - Reducing fishing capacity and limiting access to shrimp fisheries, is likely to mitigate overfishing, bycatch and seabed destruction, some of the major economic and environmental side-effects of shrimp fishing, according to a new report FAO published today.

The Global study of shrimp fisheries reviews current problems and solutions of shrimp fishing in ten selected countries: Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Kuwait, Madagascar, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Trinidad and Tobago and the United States.

"For millions of poor vulnerable households, shrimp fishing is an important source of cash and employment," said Jeremy Turner, Chief of the FAO Fishing Technology Service.

"But shrimp fishing is also associated with overfishing, capture of juveniles of ecologically important and economically valuable species, coastal habitat degradation, illegal trawling, the destruction of seagrass beds and conflicts between artisanal and industrial fisheries," Turner said.

"With a precautionary and ecosystem approach, many of the problems caused by shrimp fishing can be mitigated - shrimp fishing, including shrimp trawling, is certainly manageable. Promoting sustainable shrimp fishing management schemes, reducing fishing capacity and addressing the issue of open access are crucial to offer shrimp fisheries a secure future. In restricted access regimes with secure tenure, there is a long-term relationship between fishers and the fishery resource, hence a powerful incentive for conserving shrimp resources for the future."

The report cites Australia's prawn fisheries and some cold-water shrimp fisheries as some of the best managed fisheries in the world, based on fishers' participation, managed bycatch, reduced discards and the use of property rights in management.

Shrimp fishing

Shrimps and prawns are one of the most important internationally traded fishery products, with a value of $10 billion, or 16 percent of global fishery exports. Shrimp fisheries generate substantial economic benefits, especially for many developing countries.

But the economic importance of shrimp needs to be reconciled with the considerable concern about the environmental impacts of shrimp fishing, the report stresses. Overfishing, for example, is rampant, although resources have not yet collapsed despite heavy fishing pressure.

Bycatch

Shrimp fishing, especially trawling in tropical regions, produces large amounts of bycatch that is either discarded or kept on board. Bycatch can become a serious problem when living resources are wasted, populations of endangered and rare species are threatened and fish stocks that are already heavily exploited are further impacted. Bycatch often includes the catch of juveniles of important commercial fish species (cod, rockfish, red snapper, croaker, king mackerel, Spanish mackerel and weakfish) as well as sea turtles.

FAO estimates that shrimp trawl fisheries are the single greatest source of discards.

While reducing bycatch in small-scale shrimp fisheries is extremely difficult, future bycatch reduction should focus largely on medium and large-scale shrimp fisheries, where some remarkable reductions have already been achieved, applying modifications to fishing gear, catch quotas, discard bans and improvements in bycatch handling and marketing, the report says.

Fisheries management

In many countries, weak agencies dealing with fisheries, lack of political will and an inadequate legal foundation cause failures in management, the report says. "These factors, which can be encountered in all fisheries across the world, are largely responsible for the lack of success, rather than any inherent unmanageable qualities of shrimp fishing gear or practices."

The report urges countries to make agencies more effective and provide legislation to support rights-based and dedicated access-systems.

The upcoming edition of FAO's biennial report The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, set to be released on 2 March 2009, contains a special chapter that looks at shrimp fisheries

Read more!

Call for international fishing law grows louder

WWF 16 Feb 09;

Vancouver, Canada - More than 40 per cent of world fish production is unsustainable according to a new study, which finds that the 53 countries that account for 96 per cent of the global catch are evading the international fishing code to some degree.

The report, carried out by WWF in conjunction with the University of British Columbia, Canada, and the Federal University of Rio Grande, Brazil, found that 28 of those countries accounting for 40 per cent of the global catch completely fail to follow the United Nations Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries.

The code is a non-binding scheme developed in 1995 to fight the intensive exploitation of fish resources. Among the recommendations of the new report is to transform this voluntary code into a new international legal regulation covering all aspects of fisheries management.

The report evaluated intentions to comply with the code as well as the effectiveness of day-to-day compliance. No country achieved a “good” score. The best compliance of 60 per cent was found in Norway, followed closely by the United States, Canada, Australia and Iceland. North Korea was ranked lowest, complying with just 10 per cent of the code.

The questions on which countries scored worst concerned introducing ecosystem-based management, controlling illegal fishing, reducing excess fishing capacity and minimizing by-catch and destructive fishing practices.

Although Europe had some of the highest scores, disappointing scores from some European Union nations with the undoubted resources and know-how to implement the code reinforced the impression of a low priority given to improving fisheries management.

Compliance scores from developed nations were on average twice as high as those from developing nations, although some developing countries such as Malaysia and Namibia did score well. Another of the report’s recommendations is to provide aid for developing countries to address specific problems.

Read more!

US, Others Call On Iceland To Drop Whaling Plan

Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 17 Feb 09;

OSLO - The United States and five other nations have called on Iceland's new government to drop a plan to step up whale hunts that whalers say would create jobs in the shattered economy, diplomats said on Monday.

The letter expressed "extreme disappointment" in a decision by the former government, which quit down last month over the island's financial collapse, to permit annual catches of 150 fin and 100 minke whales.

"We call on Iceland to reconsider this decision and focus on the advancement of the (International Whaling) Commission, and the long-term rather than the short-term interests of the whaling industry," it said.

The letter, seen by Reuters, was signed in Reykjavik, by senior diplomats of the United States, Germany, Britain, France, Finland and Sweden. An international moratorium on whaling has been in force since 1986.

The new government of Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, which took office this month, has said it will review the decision to resume whaling.

Iceland ended a 20-year ban on commercial whaling in August 2006, issuing quotas that ran through August 2007. After a temporary halt, the country resumed whaling in May last year, despite protests by environmentalists.

As one of its last acts before it resigned over the economic crisis, the centre-right administration of Prime Minister Geir Haarde announced in January that Reykjavik would set five-year quotas for fin and minke whales.

Whalers have placed advertisements in Icelandic newspapers this year saying the hunts could bolster the economy by creating jobs for exporting whale meat to Japan.

"Whaling belongs to the past," said Martin Norman of environmental group Greenpeace. "There's no real market for the meat in Japan. This won't create jobs."

Fin whales are rated as endangered by the international Union for Conservation of Nature, which groups governments, scientists and conservation groups. Minkes are not among threatened species and are plentiful in the Atlantic.

(Editing by Jon Boyle)

Seven countries urge Iceland to reconsider whaling quota
Yahoo News 17 Feb 09;

REYKJAVIK (AFP) – Seven countries including Britain, Germany and the United States have urged Iceland to reconsider a decision to increase its whaling quota sixfold, a copy of a letter obtained by AFP Tuesday showed.

Iceland's former government announced the increase in late January as one of its last moves, but a new left-wing interim government that came to power just days later said it would reconsider the increase.

"We are writing to you today to express our governments' extreme disappointment in the decision of your predecessor to issue a quota for 150 fin and 100 minke whales to be harvested in Icelandic waters," ambassadors and charge d'affaires from the seven countries wrote in the letter to Icelandic Fisheries Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson.

"We applaud your interest in re-evaluating this decision," they said in the letter dated February 12, adding: "We call on Iceland to reconsider this decision."

The other countries that signed the letter were Finland, France, the Netherlands and Sweden.

Prior to the recent announcement, Iceland, which pulled out of an international whaling moratorium in 2006 after 16 years, had a quota of just nine fin whales and 40 minke whales per year.

"It is critical that the continuation or expansion of Iceland's commercial harvest or international trade in whale meat does not undermine goodwill or hamper progress in resolving issues pending before the (International Whaling) Commission," the letter said.

Iceland and Norway are the only two countries in the world that authorise commercial whaling. Japan officially hunts whales for scientific purposes, although the whale meat is sold for consumption.

Read more!

Honeybees under attack on all fronts

Debora MacKenzie, New Scientist 16 Feb 09;

THE world's honeybees appear to be dying off in horrifying numbers, and now consensus is starting to emerge on the reason why: it seems there is no one cause. Infections, lack of food, pesticides and breeding - none catastrophic on their own - are having a synergistic effect, pushing bee survival to a lethal tipping point. A somewhat anti-climactic conclusion it may be, but appreciating this complexity - and realising there will be no magic bullet - may be the key to saving the insects.

A third of our food relies on bees for pollination. Both the US and UK report losing a third of their bees last year. Other European countries have seen major die-offs too: Italy, for example, said it lost nearly half its bees last year. The deaths are now spreading to Asia, with reports in India and suspected cases in China.

But while individual "sub-lethal stresses" such as infections are implicated, we know little about how they add together. The situation should become clearer in the next few years as the US government, the EU and others are pouring money into bee research. The UK, for example, has doubled its annual research budget, allocating £400,000 a year for the next five years.

On top of that, the UK National Bee Unit will get £2.3 million to map the problem. This money is urgently needed, says Peter Neumann of the Swiss Bee Research Centre in Berne, who runs COLLOSS, a network of researchers studying colony loss in 36 countries. "We don't have the data to assess the situation in Europe, never mind the world," he says.

The main stress facing bees is the varroa mite, a parasite from Siberia that has now spread everywhere but Australia. Mite infestations steeply reduce bees' resistance to viral infection. Worryingly, the mites are developing resistance to the pesticides used to control them, forcing beekeepers to use methods that are often less effective.

French and German beekeepers blame their losses on insecticides called neonicotinoids - but France banned them 10 years ago and its bees are still dying. Neumann suspects a wider problem, citing experiments showing that agricultural chemicals that are safe for bees when used alone are lethal in combination. "Farmers increasingly combine sprays," he says. They also leave few flowering weeds, depriving bees of essential nutrients from different kinds of pollen, he adds.

Meanwhile viruses may cause a syndrome dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) in the US, in which adult bees abandon their hive, leaving the healthy queen and young bees to die. Diana Cox-Foster of Penn State University in University Park, where the syndrome was first identified, says viruses, including one called IAPV, duplicate the symptoms of CCD in her greenhouse studies. There is no IAPV or CCD in the UK, says Mike Brown of the National Bee Unit, yet bees are still dying.

At the root of the vulnerability to these stresses could be the way breeding has affected the bees' genetic make-up. By being highly selected for calmness and honey production, honeybees have lost other useful characteristics, says Francis Ratnieks of the University of Sussex, UK. In research to be published in the journal Heredity, he describes a way to breed for "hygienic" bees that, unlike most commercial bees, clear out infected young and can resist varroa mites.

Read more!

Saving Jaguars, Tigers Can Prevent Human Diseases?

Ker Than, National Geographic News 16 Feb 09;

Jaguars and other big cats can protect humans from the rise of future pandemics akin to HIV and bird flu.

That's the message freshly trained "doctor conservationists" will be taking into the field as part of a new collaboration between a wildlife-protection nonprofit and a teaching hospital.

In Central and South America, jaguars are often labeled as "cattle killers" and are slaughtered on sight. The species is also at risk of declining genetic health as its habitat contracts and populations are cut off from each other.

"If the animals are forced to stay instead of travel, that can lead to a loss of fitness and create a cascade down the health ladder," said Alan Rabinowitz, president and CEO of the big-cat conservation group Panthera.

"Once that cascade has been set off, it has been shown through data to directly link to increases in disease among neighboring human populations."

Curing and Educating

A decline in top-level predators such as the jaguar can lead to a boom in prey populations that encourages the spread of disease.

Some of those diseases can then become zoonotic, jumping from animals to humans. (Read related news about decoding deadly variants of the bird flu virus.)

HIV, West Nile virus, and avian influenza, for example, are "reemerging diseases which have always been in the environment, but [until recently] they've been kept in check and didn't bleed over into human populations," Rabinowitz said.

As part of its broader efforts to protect big cats, New York-based Panthera has partnered with the Mount Sinai Medical Center to train doctors in the human-health benefits of saving the animals.

"The program is being formulated now, but we have high hopes for it," said Paul Klotman, chair of Mount Sinai's Samuel Bronfman Department of Medicine.

Cat experts from Panthera will teach at the hospital, and medical students will have opportunities to administer health care in parts of the world where humans and wildlife often live under an uneasy truce.

A major goal of the new program is to give students a deeper understanding about the links between animal and human diseases, said Mary Klotman, director of Mount Sinais Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute.

"I think what we're doing is to try and introduce the concept more broadly into medical education," Klotman said, "so that it's not just the high-level investigators that understand this interaction."

Jaguar Network

Armed with this unique training, the program's doctor-conservationists will be providing an incentive for local people to tolerate jaguars, Panthera's Rabinowitz said.

"Almost all of the local communities that we interview and ask, What do you need?, two of the top answers have been, Better education for my children and better health for my family," he said.

"The affiliation with Mount Sinai helps with the health part."

The work should boost efforts to establish so-called genetic corridors, paths of sheltered habitat that cross through human-populated areas to connect existing wildlife preserves. (Read more about creating safe passage for jaguars in National Geographic magazine.)

Panthera's Jaguar Corridor Initiative would link approximately 90 distinct jaguar populations through a network of paths in Central and South America.

The organizations Tiger Corridor Initiative will attempt to do the same thing in Southeast Asia.

"A genetic corridor can look like a complete human landscape," Rabinowitz said.

"But if one jaguar or tiger can make it through that landscape to the next viable population, that single animal is enough to maintain the genetic diversity of the species as a whole."

Read more!

Rise in Malaria Rates, Drug Resistance Tied to Climate

At AAAS, a researcher describes how treating more people for the mosquito-borne parasite could lead to more resistance to drugs

Andrew McGlashen, Scientific American 16 Feb 09;

CHICAGO – Warmer temperatures are at least partly to blame for a surge in malaria in East Africa and the increase in drug-resistant strains of the disease, according to a University of Michigan researcher.

The malaria parasite is highly sensitive to changes in temperature, and even subtle warming can dramatically increase populations of the mosquitoes that transmit the disease, said ecologist Mercedes Pascual.

Some scientists have argued that climate is not involved in the increasing highland epidemics. Instead, they say, adaptations in the parasite that make it resistant to anti-malarial drugs are the key drivers.

But Pascual said that this "either-or" view is misguided and improperly lets global warming off the hook.

"I think that’s a useless discussion," she said.

More likely, Pascual said, the two work in tandem to an effect greater than the sum of their parts, with rising temperatures leading to faster development of drug resistance.

"The literature has this controversy of 'Is it climate or is it drug resistance?' and drug resistance is taken as evidence that we don’t need to invoke climate change," she added.

No research has shown this synergy, but Pascual said it makes theoretical sense.

By making conditions favorable for mosquitoes, "warmer temperatures increase transmission, so you’re going to increase the number of people you treat," she said. And past research has shown a threshold at which treating more cases leads to a higher incidence of drug resistance, making the disease difficult to treat and contain.

Malaria kills 3,000 people each day in Africa, and outbreaks on the continent aren't limited to the eastern highlands. Climate change will cause the disease to migrate away from low latitudes, scientists say. That could rid some areas of outbreaks, but could cause others in regions whose inhabitants haven't developed any immunity.

The specifics of how malaria's climate-forced migration will affect outbreaks are largely unknown, but it's already underway, said Christopher Thomas of Aberystwyth University in the U.K.

"It’s now," he said. "The change isn’t coming at the end of the century – it's happening right now."

Douglas Fischer is editor of the Daily Climate. This article originally appeared at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.

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No Suspects Yet in Riau Forest Fires

Fidelis E. Satriastanti, Jakarta Globe 17 Feb 09;

The State Ministry for the Environment said on Monday that it still had no suspects in connection with the fires that have ravaged forests in Riau Province, despite allegations that the fires were deliberately set by private forestry firms.

Massive forest fires have been burning in industrial timber estates in the districts of Indragiri Hulu, Indragiri Hilir, Siak and Pelalawan since January, and the local government’s efforts to contain the flames have so far failed.

“We are still questioning a number of people,” said Ilyas Asaad, the deputy minister for environmental compliance. “But we do not have any suspects yet.”

Ilyas refused to name the people being questioned, but claimed that investigations were on the right track.

“We have been conducting field investigations and we have come to the conclusion that the fires were caused by human activities,” he said.

Local forestry firms are known to use fires to reduce forest cover in order to expand the area available for palm oil, wood pulp and rubber plantations.

According to the 1997 Law on Environmental Management, a party that deliberately causes environmental damage could face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a Rp 500 million ($42,500) fine.

However, Johny Mundung, executive director of the Riau branch of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, or Walhi, said that the government had never been serious about dealing with the annual forest fires that cause heavy smoke pollution on Sumatra Island and in neighboring Malaysia and Singapore.

“The truth is the local government has not taken any significant legal approach to settle this matter once and for all,” he said.

Johny also criticized the local government for setting aside part of its yearly budget to combat the fires.

“It is ridiculous that they even allocate a budget for that every year,” he said. “That means they see the forest fires as some sort of annual project that they can look forward to.”

Johny said that more than 42,000 hectares of land, mostly peatland and rubber plantations, were affected by the fires this week, up from 32,000 hectares last week.

“The districts are affected by forest fires every year because they are dominated by peatland and rubber plantation areas,” he said.

“The investigators should investigate the companies that manage the land if they want to learn who started the fires.”

Johny also refuted a district head’s claim that the fires were not man-made.

“There is no way that the fires were induced by natural causes,” he said.

He said the haze from the forest fires was causing health problems among residents, many of whom have complained of vision-related problems and breathing difficulties.

According to the Pekanbaru office of the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency, or BMG, 29 areas in Riau Province are at risk of being overrun by the flames.

The at-risk areas are also known as “hot spots.”

Meanwhile, the state-run Antara news agency reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite showed that there were 34 hot spots in the province.

Read more!

Indonesia To End Freeze On Peatlands For Plantations

PlanetArk 17 Feb 09;

JAKARTA - Indonesia will open up peatland forests for plantation crops such as palm oil after freezing new permits for more than a year, an agriculture ministry official said on Monday, in a move that has alarmed green groups.

Achmad Mangga Barani, director general for plantations at the ministry, said that the government was lifting the moratorium brought in December, 2007, after a study in order to boost the welfare of local people.

"In principle, we will allow the use of peatlands for plantations under a stricter criteria and a very limited scale," he said.

Green groups had urged the government to maintain a freeze of oil palm plantations in peatlands to combat climate change.

Indonesia's remaining peatland forests are one of the world's largest stores of carbon, holding around 37.8 billion tonnes, according to Greenpeace.

A report sponsored by the World Bank and Britain's Department for International Development says up to 84 percent of Indonesia's carbon emissions come from deforestation, forest fires and peatland degradation.

Barani said the government had discussed the new decree with environmental groups.

"We think it is a crazy proposal," Martin Baker, communications manager at Greenpeace International in Asia, said.

Bustar Maitar, forest campaigner for Greenpeace, said the decree appeared to be setting stricter criteria after the study, but he said the results had not been shared with the group.

"We understand that there was a study and the government promised to discuss with us the result of the study but we have never seen the result," said Maitar.

Barani said details of the new ministerial decree were due to be released on Tuesday.

Indonesia, the world's biggest producer of crude palm oil, expects palm oil output to rise about 5 percent to 19.7 million tonnes this year, against 18.7 million tonnes in 2008.

(Reporting by Aloysius Bhui; Editing by Ed Davies)

Govt to allow peatland plantations
Adianto P. Simamora Jakarta Post 13 Feb 09;

The Agriculture Ministry will issue a decree to allow businesses to dig up the country’s millions of hectares of peatland for oil palm plantations.

Gatot Irianto, the ministry’s head of research and development, said his office was currently drafting a ministerial decree that would explain in detail the mechanism to turn the peatland areas into oil palm plantations, a move that many say will further damage the country’s environment.

“We still need land for oil palm plantations. We must be honest: the sector has been the main driver for the people’s economy,” he said Thursday on the sidelines of a discussion about adaptation in agriculture, organized by the National Commission on Climate Change.

The draft decree is expected to go into force this year.

“We’ve discussed the draft with stakeholders, including hard-line activists, to convince them that converting peatland is safe,” he said.

“We promise to promote eco-friendly management to ward off complaints from overseas buyers and international communities.”

Indonesia is currently the world’s largest crude palm oil (CPO) producer, and is expected to produce about 19.5 million tons this year.

Overseas buyers, however, have complained about Indonesia’s CPO products, saying they are produced at the expense of the environment.

Activists point to the massive expansions of plantations, including in peatlands, for the deaths of large numbers of orangutans in Kalimantan and Sumatra and for releasing huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

Indonesia has about 20 million hectares of dense, black tropical peat swamps — formed when vegetation rots — that are natural carbon storage sinks.

A hectare of peatland can store between 3,400 and 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), but emits a much larger amount when burned.

Asked about the contribution to global warming, Gatot said trees planted in peatlands would absorb greenhouse gas emissions.

“The peatland will produce emissions only in the opening of the land, but this will be reabsorbed after new trees are planted,” he said.

However, a World Bank report from 2007 showed Indonesia was the world’s third biggest carbon emitter after the US and China, thanks mainly to the burning of peatlands.

A Wetlands International report from 2006 said Indonesia’s peatlands emitted around 2 billion
tons of CO2 a year, far higher than the country’s emissions from energy, agriculture and waste,
which together amount to only 451 million tons.

The country would have ranked 20th in the global carbon emitter list if emissions from peatlands were not counted.

The ministerial decree is being drafted at a time when President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is still preparing a decree on peatland management in an effort to help combat global warming.

The draft of the presidential decree, drawn up in 2007, calls for tightened supervision on the use of peatlands across the country.

Activists denounce plan to allow palm oil firms in peatlands
Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 16 Feb 09;

Environmental activists have mounted a challenge against the government’s plan to allow palm oil companies to set up plantations in the country’s remaining peatlands.

Greenpeace Southeast Asia says the plan runs counter to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s promise to halve emissions from the forestry sector by 2009. The President made the pledge during the climate change conference in Bali in 2007 and at the G7 summit in Hokkaido, Japan, last year.

“Opening up peatlands would cause huge carbon emissions into the atmosphere that can’t be compensated for, including by oil palm trees,” Greenpeace forest campaigner Yuyun Indradi told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

He called on Yudhoyono to take action to halt the conversion of peatlands, or risk the failure of efforts to tackle climate change.

“The government needs to protect the remaining peatlands and forests if we are to slow down climate change and protect the livelihoods of forest-dependent communities and biodiversity,” he said.

The government has promised to cut emissions, including from the forestry sector, by 50 percent in 2009, 75 percent in 2012, and 95 percent in 2025.

The National Action Plan on mitigation and adaptation on climate change revealed the country’s agriculture sector contributed up to 96.42 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2005.

The Agriculture Ministry said it would issue a decree this year allowing businesses to open up peatlands for oil palm plantations, as part of efforts to boost the country’s crude palm oil (CPO) production.

Ecosys, a European-based institute dealing with energy, carbon and biofuel issues, estimates that peatlands planted with oil palms would emit about 0.46 kilograms of CO2 per megajoule (MJ).

Indonesia has about 20 million hectares of dense, black tropical peat swamps that are natural carbon storage sinks.

Fitrian Ardiansyah, head of WWF Indonesia’s climate change and energy program, said the government should prioritize exploiting millions of hectares of idle land if it wanted to expand the CPO business.

“We currently have more than 7 million hectares of idle land. Why does the government not utilize this before opening up forests or peatlands?” he said.

Demand for CPO has risen globally, spurred on by the development of the biofuel industry.
However, scientists warn the use of crop-based biofuels could speed up rather than slow down global warming, by fueling the destruction of rainforests.

Once heralded as the answer to oil, biofuels have become increasingly controversial because of their impact on food prices and the amount of energy it takes to produce them.

They may also be responsible for pumping far more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than they could possibly save as a replacement for fossil fuels, according to a study released Saturday.

“If we run our cars on biofuels produced in the tropics, chances will be good that we are effectively burning rainforests in our gas tanks,” Holly Gibbs, of Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment, was quoted as saying by AFP.

Gibbs studied satellite photos of the tropics from 1980 to 2000, and found that half of new farmland came from intact rainforests, with another 30 percent from disturbed forests.

“When trees are cut down to make room for new farmland, they are usually burned, sending their stored carbon into the atmosphere as CO2,” Gibbs said.

For high-yield crops like sugarcane, it would take 40 to 120 years to pay back this carbon debt.

For lower yield crops like corn or soybeans, it would take 300 to 1,500 years, she told reporters at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“Biofuels have caused alarm because of how quickly production has been growing: global ethanol production increased by four times and biodiesel by 10 times between 2000 and 2007,” she said.

“Moreover, agricultural subsidies in Indonesia and in the United States are providing added incentives to increase production of these crops.”

Gibbs estimated that anywhere from a third to two-thirds of recent deforestation could be as a result of the increased demand for biofuels, but added an increased demand for food and feed also played a major role.

Much of the expansion of cropland in response to growing demand and rising prices is occurring in the tropics, where there is an abundance of arable land and an ideal growing climate for biofuel crops like sugarcane, soybeans and oil palms.

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IUCN statement on Australian fires

IUCN website 13 Feb 09;

It is tempting to jump to the conclusion that the disastrous fires are linked to climate change.

IUCN extends its sympathies to those who have suffered from the extreme fires in south-eastern Australia, especially to those who have lost family, friends and their homes.

South-eastern Australia ranks with southern France and southern California (USA) as being the areas most prone areas to severe risk of harmful fires. Fires are part of the Australian environment and have been a key factor in forming many of the unique ecosystems of the country. At the same time, fires that occur during periods of extreme weather can have devastating impact on human communities, such as those witnessed in Victoria in the past few days.

The death toll of the fires in Victoria, Australia is expected to exceed 200. More than 3,000 km2 has been burnt and over 900 houses destroyed. Immense damage to farmland and natural areas will escalate the damage bill and take years to restore. Fires are part of the Australian landscape and Victoria has one of the world’s best organized and equipped fire fighting forces. The long period of exceptionally high temperatures and wind combine to create conditions where extreme fires overwhelm fire-fighting capacity.
Understanding the direct and underlying causes of fires, their relationship to how ecosystems are managed and their associated societal and economic costs is essential to addressing fire risks in a systematic fashion.

It is tempting to jump to the conclusion that the disastrous fires are linked to climate change. Recent reports from the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) suggest that global warming is likely to increase the frequency and intensity of fire-weather, which in turn would alter the distribution and composition of ecosystems, change water yields from catchments, increase damage to property and the risk of injury and death to humans, amongst other impacts. However, whether or not climate change is a factor in the recent fires is less important than supporting the efforts of the government and local communities to manage local ecosystems and plan land use and fire management in a way that anticipates severe fires as a fact of life.

IUCN encourages its members and Commission members to support the efforts of the Victorian government to assist the communities devastated by the fires to rebuild their lives and restore damaged property and ecosystems.

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World's Largest Wetland Threatened In Brazil

Raymond Colitt, PlanetArk 17 Feb 09;

CORUMBA - Jaguars still roam the world's largest wetland and endangered Hyacinth Macaws nest in its trees but advancing farms and industries are destroying Brazil's Pantanal region at an alarming rate.

The degradation of the landlocked river delta on the upper Paraguay River which straddles Brazil's borders with Bolivia and Paraguay is a reminder of how economic progress can cause large-scale environmental damage.

"It's a type of Noah's Ark but it risks running aground," biologist and tourist guide Elder Brandao de Oliveira says of the Pantanal.

Brazil's exports of beef, iron and to a lesser extent soy -- the main products from the Pantanal -- have rocketed in recent years, driven largely by global demand.

Less well-known than the Amazon rain forest, the Pantanal is larger than England and harbors a huge fresh water reserve and extraordinary wildlife, ranging from 220-pound (100-kg) jaguars to giant otters that mingle in water holes packed with nine-foot (3-metre) caimans.

The world's largest freshwater wetland, it is almost 10 times the size of Florida's Everglades.

Of the Pantanal's 650 bird species, the largest has a wingspan of nearly 3 metres and the smallest weighs only 2 grams (0.07 ounce).

During the rainy season the water level rises by as much as five metres, creating a mosaic of dark-brown swamps with islands of shrubs and tall standing tropical trees. When the water first hits dry soil it loses oxygen and kills schools of fish as part of a nose-wrenching natural life cycle.

A melting pot for various ecosystems, the Pantanal has the greatest concentration of fauna in the Americas, according to The Nature Conservancy, a global environmental advocacy group.

But some species are in danger of disappearing, including the long-snouted giant anteater, which claws into anthills and flicks its two-foot tongue up to 160 times per minute to quickly gobble up stinging ants.

The giant armadillo and maned wolf are also on the list of endangered species because of their falling numbers.

Visitors to the Pantanal marvel at the idyllic scenery and the proximity and abundance of wildlife.

"I hadn't heard about it before, it's a bird-lovers' paradise," said Alkis Ieromonachou, a Cypriot tourist, eyeing a group of giant Jabiru storks from the deck of a bungalow.

The impact of modern farming is obvious even in the tourist resort, however, as a large herd of cattle wanders through the swamp, squashing floating lily pads.

Cattle ranchers cut trees on higher elevations and sow pasture in the lowlands, which are flooded for months. Many say they have been here for decades and can't be expected to abandon the land and their livelihood.

"True, deforestation is a problem but 50 years ago when it began nobody thought of these things," said Ademar Silva, head of the local association of farmers and cattle ranchers. "The government needs not only to punish bad behaviour but promote new technology with financial incentives."

ECONOMIC PRESSURES

Brazil's beef exports have more than tripled in five years to $5 billion in 2008, with pasture often replacing forests. Experts say improving productivity, from currently around one head of cattle per hectare (2.5 acres), could prevent much deforestation.

"We're using our natural resources fast and inefficiently," said environmental economist Andre Carvalho at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, or FGV.

The environmental group Conservation International says 63 percent of the forest in elevated regions of the Pantanal and 17 percent in lowland regions have been destroyed.

Under a federal law dating back to 1965, ranchers can clear up to 80 percent of the forest on their property. Parks and protected areas make up only a small fraction of the Pantanal, and the rest is largely unprotected.

Demand for charcoal from Brazilian pig iron smelters has accelerated deforestation, environmentalists say.

"We set up shop precisely to use wood from the advancing agricultural frontier," said Vitor Feitosa, operations director for MMX, a smelter located in the Pantanal town Corumba and owned by Brazilian billionaire Ike Batista.

Brazil's pig iron exports have grown sixfold to $3.14 billion since 2003. Around 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of native forest are lost annually in Mato Grosso do Sul state, home to much of the Pantanal, an FGV study showed.

Marcos Brito, head of a charcoal manufacturers group with 15,000 employees in the state, claims most producers use wood cut and discarded by ranchers. But Alessandro Menezes, an activist with the environmental group ECOA, says they clear forests in exchange for the wood.

After being fined several times, MMX agreed not to buy Pantanal charcoal, but most smelters in the state still do.

Erosion resulting from deforestation has created large sandbanks on tributaries to the Paraguay river, such as the Taquari and Rio Negro, making them partially unnavigable.

"Rivers will change course, lakes appear or disappear -- the size and shape of the Pantanal will change," said Sandro Menezes, manager of Conservation International's Pantanal project. "It's very probable that local flora and fauna will become extinct."

Already, there are signs that runoff water from nearby farms is altering the ecosystem's delicate balance.

"We see trees flower and birds breed earlier -- we believe it's because of fertilizers in the water," said de Oliveira.

The global financial crisis has hit demand for steel and beef and temporarily eased pressure on the Pantanal as smelters and farmers put expansion plans on halt. But most environmentalists agree the next commodity boom could cause irreversible damage.

"Now is the time for stricter laws, environmental education and corporate citizenship," said Ricardo Melo, environmental public prosecutor in Corumba. "Economic development here is inevitable; we need to make it sustainable."

(Editing by Kieran Murray and Alan Elsner)

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