DR Congo needs clear logging policies: Greenpeace

Yahoo News 28 Jul 09;

KINSHASA (AFP) – Greenpeace has urged authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo to clarify reforms bringing transparency to the logging sector in the world's second biggest rainforest after the Amazon.

The "objective is still far from being reached," the global environment campaign group said in a letter to the minister of the environment, a copy of which was given to AFP on Tuesday.

"It is urgent to have clarifications of the current situation, marked by irregularities."

Since 2002, the Congolese government has obtained World Bank support in a plan to convert existing logging rights into concessions and impose a temporary freeze on further concessions. The aim was to bring order to the sector and cut down the illegal logging of precious timber.

Greenpeace said that reforms "seem to be only a fig leaf that can barely hide the anarchy in the exploitation of lumber, both industrially and by artisans, in the forested provinces."

It said there have been serious abuses, and that it was worried about "the opacity surrounding implementation" of the reforms.

The Congolese government should "not miss out on the opportunities presented by international attention to the exceptional wealth of Congolese forests," Greenpeace said in the letter.

Among "serious irregularities," Greenpeace cited a difference of 2.9 million hectares of forest where logging was allowed between the 9.7 million hectares officially announced at the beginning of 2009 and the 12.6 million shown on a ministry of the environment map.

"The government has now committed to a legal review of the logging industry and we are calling on them to maintain and enforce the moratorium - withdrawing any illegal concessions," Greenpeace said in a separate statement on its website.

"Currently the review is characterised by secrecy and sloppiness so we?re demanding the international community and the DRC Government ensure this review process is completely transparent, the moratorium is maintained and enforced and that a participatory land use plan is put in place," it said.

The organisation also protested at special exemptions granted to concession holders whose rights were invalid and the failure of the government to publish a list of logging companies currently authorised to work in the vast central African country.

There is also concern for the well-being of the estimated 500,000 Pygmies living in the rainforest.

"The communities see the loggers come to cut and take away wood. Their role is reduced to that of helpless witnesses of the degradation of their forests and their means of subsistence," Greenpeace said in the letter.

"It is time to save the primary forests still intact in the DR Congo and to support models of management that are genuinely sustainable and of local development that benefit the Congolese."

After the Amazon in Brazil, Congo has the second largest rainforest on the planet at 86 million hectares (212 million acres), of which nearly 60 million hectares (148 million acres) are exploitable.

It also constitutes about 60 percent of all forests in the Congo basin.

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Colorado river running on empty by 2050

There is a one-in-two chance of fully depleting reservoir storage by 2050, says University of Colorado study. From the Ecologist, part of the Guardian Environment Network
The Ecologist, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk 28 Jul 09;

The lifeblood of the American west, the Coloradoc river, is running dry under current usage, according to a study from the University of Colorado.

Travelling almost 1,500 miles, the river supplies drinking and irrigation water for about 30 million people from Colorado to the Gulf of California.

The study looked at how water supplies would be affected by climate fluctuations and water demand.

Reservoirs low

In 2000 reservoirs fed by the river were at 95 per cent of capacity. In 2009 they had dropped to 59 per cent of capacity.

If climate change results in a 10 per cent reduction in the Colorado River's average stream flows, as some recent studies predict, the chances of fully depleting reservoir storage will exceed 25 per cent by 2057.

If climate change results in a 20 per cent reduction, the chances of fully depleting reservoir storage will exceed 50 per cent by 2057, said the study.

Depleting supplies

'On average, drying caused by climate change would increase the risk of fully depleting reservoir storage by nearly ten times more than the risk we expect from population pressures alone,' said study author Balaji Rajagopalan.

'By mid-century this risk translates into a 50 percent chance in any given year of empty reservoirs, an enormous risk and a huge water management challenge,' he said.

Researchers warned against being 'lulled into a false sense of security' by the current high water capacity of the Colorado River system.

'This study, along with others that predict future flow reductions in the Colorado River Basin, suggests that water managers should begin to re-think current water management practices during the next few years before the more serious effects of climate change appear,' said Rajagopalan.

• This article appeared on the Ecologist, part of the Guardian Environment Network

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US green technology stifled by funding woes: experts

Jasmin Melvin, Reuters 28 Jul 09;

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American innovation needed to reduce the greenhouse gases that cause climate change could be squelched if the government drags its heels in providing incentives and funding for developers, company executives told lawmakers on Tuesday.

Officials of companies involved in solar and carbon capture technologies told the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming that their biggest challenge to creating new green technologies was financing, not the science.

"Using proven technology available today, we can produce electricity along with other basic commodities at market prices while sequestering 90 percent of our CO2 (carbon dioxide)," said Frank Smith, chief executive of PurGen One.

His plant chemically converts coal into a synthetic gas and then removes the pollutants and 90 percent of the carbon from the gas, leaving nearly pure hydrogen. The hydrogen is used to produce energy while demand is high, but can alternately be used to produce urea fertilizer, which is sold and adds to profits when electricity demand is minimal.

"The new technology here is in the business model," Smith said. "Everything else is off-the-shelf, proven technology."

But the huge capital costs, coupled with the lack of an established track record, make finding debt financing for new facilities nearly impossible, Smith said.

"Big power plants are hard to finance in the best of times," he added.

Tessera Solar is embarking on a form of solar technology that uses heat from the sun to create energy that's converted into electricity. The company's method emits no greenhouse gases, uses less water than other solar technologies and has high electric efficiency.

But its vice president of marketing and regulatory affairs, Sean Gallagher, said financing could halt deploying this technology.

"It's been six months already since the stimulus package was passed, and we still don't have the loan guarantee guidelines," Gallagher said of the Energy Department's program to fund clean energy projects.

Gallagher urged the department to issue regulations consistent with commercial banking practices and move swiftly to start the next round of solicitations for the program.

Loan guarantees and other financial impetus from the federal government will be critical to getting new green technology projects off the ground, given the current financial situation, panelists said.

"If it weren't for the financial crisis, that would be of less emphasis," Smith said.

First movers, or those first to commit to a new technology, are now facing bankers more afraid of suffering losses, and that fear is making investment from the private sector scant.

Smith told lawmakers reliance on federal funds will not always be necessary. "We're talking about how to get started," he said.

(Editing by Walter Bagley)

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UK pins climate race hopes on carbon capture pilot

Nina Chestney, Reuters 28 Jul 09;

RENFREW, Scotland (Reuters) - A pilot project in Scotland has begun testing a method of cutting the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, which Britain hopes will be a leap forward in the fight against climate change.

Doosan Babcock Energy switched on its OxyFuel combustion burner, Britain's largest demonstration project for carbon capture and storage (CCS), on Friday.

More than 100 people from industry, the media and the regional and national governments were invited to witness the event, just outside the city of Glasgow.

"We will supply this technology as soon as the market allows. We are 100 percent confident the demo will work," Iain Miller, chief executive of Doosan Babcock Energy, told guests.

CCS captures CO2 from power stations and stores it underground to prevent it from entering the atmosphere. It should help European countries meet their joint target of a 20-percent cut in CO2 emissions by 2020 while safeguarding continued operations of coal-to-power industries.

CCS could cut emissions by 90 percent. Several technologies are being tested but none have been proved on a commercial scale yet.

The OxyFuel method burns coal with pure oxygen rather than air, making almost pure CO2 gas and water vapor. This is compressed to trap the CO2, leaving only residual latent gases to be released into the atmosphere.

Doosan Babcock led the 7.5-million-pound ($12 million) project, backed by the British government, Scottish and Southern Energy, and sponsors including Drax, EDF, E.ON, ScottishPower and Vattenfall.

Vattenfall has operated a 30-megawatt test facility attached to a power plant in Schwarze Pumpe in Germany since 2008.

Relatively small at 17 meters (56 feet) long, 5.5 meters (18 feet) wide and 5.5 meters (18 feet) tall, the 40-megawatt burner will undergo 20 days' testing until December at a cost of 10,000 pounds a day. If it works, the technology will be fitted to new or existing coal plants to reduce their emissions.

SCALING UP

Britain wants to take the lead on the technology to create green jobs and profit from global business potentially worth 2 billion to 4 billion pounds by 2030. It could also make up ground lost to its European neighbors in renewable energy deployment.

"CCS is our priority. The alternatives are far less attractive," Joan Ruddock, minister of state for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, told Reuters at the launch.

Big questions remain over how the technology will be paid for on a commercial scale and how carbon dioxide will be transported and stored. CCS is expected to add about $1 billion to the cost of a power station.

To speed up the race to prove CCS, the European Union this year unveiled a 1.05-billion-euro ($1.50 billion) package to support up to seven large-scale projects or parts of between 10 and 12 schemes.

While welcoming the Doosan Babcock project, Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, told Reuters the European Union's goal would be a challenge and demonstration projects required "significant scaling up."

Britain has done more than any other European country to get CCS off the ground. New coal plants in Britain will have to fit CCS within five years of 2020. The government promised support for up to four 300-to-400 megawatt schemes, with the first operational by 2014.

Experts say the technology can and must be deployed earlier to reap the industrial and environmental benefits.

"I would like to see the government accelerate its time frame and bring forward deployment well before 2020. It can be done," Miller told Reuters.

Doosan Babcock aims to have a 250-megawatt unit running by 2015 and 1,000-megawatt units by 2020, he added.

COMMERCIAL-SCALE PLANT

E.ON's CCS project at Kingsnorth, the potential site for a new coal plant, is in the running to win up to 90 million pounds from the government in a competition for a commercial-scale plant. An additional 15 million pounds is available for pilot schemes, from which the Doosan Babcock project received 2.5 million.

Some argue this is not enough, with industry lobbying for subsidies like those given to wind power.

"It is unrealistic to get to 2014 from where we are now. To step up to 300 megawatts requires a different order of magnitude in terms of funding," said Hannah Chalmers, CCS expert at London's Imperial College.

The government is pinning its hopes on the recovery of carbon prices in the EU's emissions trading scheme to drive the technology eventually.

Environmentalists are concerned that CCS will be used to justify the construction of more coal plants, diverting money away from energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy.

There is the problem of transporting and storing the carbon dioxide. The Doosan Babcock burner will not attempt to store CO2 but release it in a diluted, less harmful, form into the atmosphere.

Britain has enough storage capacity for decades in its depleted oil and gas fields and saline aquifers. Countries such as Japan and India have little capacity and would have to export liquid CO2 for burial elsewhere.

For Britain, keeping up the momentum of pilots is key to getting the technology proved.

"The UK would be barmy to lose this opportunity. Slipping behind is just not acceptable," said Jeff Chapman, chief executive of the CCS Association.

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China energy firms must take action on climate: Greenpeace

Yahoo News 28 Jul 09;

BEIJING (AFP) – China's energy firms must do more to combat climate change and reduce dependence on coal, environmental group Greenpeace said on Tuesday, warning of a rise in "extreme" weather.

"China is suffering the pains of extreme weather events such as droughts, heatwaves, typhoons and floods, worsened by climate change," Greenpeace China's climate campaigner Yang Ailun said as he unveiled a new report.

"These power companies can and must help China to prevent climate disaster by rapidly increasing efficiency and the share of renewable energy such as wind and solar."

The new Greenpeace China report urged China's top 10 power companies to take the lead in addressing global warming and cutting greenhouse gas emissions as they are the biggest emitters.

"To ensure energy security, environmental protection and healthy economic and societal development, the electricity sector... must play a strong role in tackling climate change and reducing China's reliance on coal," the report said.

For every one kilowatt hour of energy produced, China emits 1.8 times more carbon dioxide than the average in Japan's electricity sector and significantly more than in Germany and the United States, it said.

The report urged the government to drive the nation's energy companies towards renewable energy by implementing environmental and energy taxes on coal burning.

China should also double its national renewable energy target for 2020 to 30 percent of total energy production, it said.

China's power companies must quicken the pace of shutting down or converting inefficient power plants and should be made to publish detailed strategies on addressing climate change and reducing carbon emissions, it said.

China is adding energy capacity at a rapid speed, but power generated by coal continues to account for about 70 percent of the overall mix, the report said.

In 2008, China's biggest three power companies China Huaneng, China Datang and China Guodian emitted more greenhouse gases than all the United Kingdom, it added.

Emissions of 3 big China power firms exceed UK: report
Reuters 28 Jul 09;

BEIJING (Reuters) - Greenhouse gas emissions from the three biggest Chinese power firms in 2008 were higher than those of the entire United Kingdom, activist group Greenpeace said on Tuesday in a report that called for an environmental tax on coal.

The emissions-intensive fuel provides China with well over two-thirds of its electricity, and years of booming energy demand have had a massive impact on the Asian giant's carbon footprint.

China's 10 biggest power generators burned through a combined 600 million tons of coal last year alone, or around one fifth of the country's entire output, the report said.

They are reliant on the dirty fuel because it is cheap and the country has vast reserves that can meet most domestic demand.

"By burning 20 percent of China's coal in 2008, the (10 power) companies emitted an equivalent of 1.44 billion tons of carbon dioxide," the report said.

The country's three largest firms by installed generating capacity -- China Huaneng Group, China Datang Corp and China Guodian Corp -- were responsible for more than half of those greenhouse gases, or 769 million tons, the report said.

Greenpeace calculated emissions estimates by using fuel data combined with Chinese government figures on the amount of carbon dioxide produced when coal is burned in China's power stations.

In contrast, the provisional estimate for total 2008 emissions in the United Kingdom -- which has power generating capacity barely one-tenth of China's -- is 623.8 million tons.

The need to fuel rapid economic growth and worries about compromising energy security mean China will not turn away from coal in the short-term.

China is the world's biggest annual emitter of greenhouse gasses but on a per capita basis and over the course of history it is far outpaced by Western nations that have smaller populations and have enjoyed decades of emissions intensive growth.

But Greenpeace said it wanted Beijing to curb output of greenhouse gasses by putting an environmental tax on coal prices and set tighter efficiency and renewable energy targets.

The report also underlined China's progress in shutting down its least efficient, small power stations.

Generating capacity equivalent to more than all of Australia's installed capacity, or some 54 gigawatts (GW), has been taken offline over the past three and a half years.

This has helped cut the coal used to generate each unit of power to 350 grams per kilowatt hour or less at the big firms. Another 31 GW are scheduled to go by the end of 2012.

China says it is already working hard to curb growth in emissions, but should not be asked to take any steps that would undermine economic growth when it still has millions of citizens living in poverty.

Beijing wants rich nations to offer more technical and financial support to developing nations seeking greener growth.

(Reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison, Editing by Dean Yates)

China's three biggest power firms emit more carbon than Britain, says report
Greenpeace report names top three polluters and calls for tax on coal to improve efficiency and encourage switch to renewables
Tania Branigan, guardian.co.uk 28 Jul 09;

China's three biggest power firms produced more greenhouse gas emissions last year than the whole of Britain, according to a Greenpeace report published today.

The group warned that inefficient plants and the country's heavy reliance on coal are hindering efforts to tackle climate change. While China's emissions per capita remain far below those of developed countries, the country as a whole has surpassed the United States to become the world's largest emitter.

Greenpeace said the top 10 companies, which provided almost 60% of China's total electricity last year, burned 20% of China's coal — 590m tonnes — and emitted the equivalent of 1.44 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.

The efficiency of Chinese power generation compares unfavourably with other countries. In Japan, 418 grams of carbon dioxide are emitted per kilowatt hour and in the US, the equivalent figure is 625 grams. But most of the top 10 firms in China produce 752 grams of CO2.

"China is suffering the pains of extreme weather events such as droughts, heat waves, typhoons and floods, worsened by climate change. These power companies can and must help China to prevent climate disaster by rapidly increasing efficiency and the share of renewable energy such as wind and solar," said Yang Ailun, Greenpeace's climate campaign manager, at the launch in Beijing of the Greenpeace report, Polluting Power: Ranking China's Biggest Power Companies.

The report says that in 2008, Huaneng, Datang and Guodian — the top three firms — emitted more greenhouse gases than the whole of the United Kingdom.

But Yang added: "China is ideally placed to…[become] the world's superpower in terms of smart energy and renewable energy."

The group said China closed down 54.07 gigawatt of the least efficient coal-fired plants over the last three and a half years — more than the total electricity installed capacity of Australia.

It urged power firms to phase out all inefficient coal-fired plants under 100 megawatt by 2012, saving 90m tonnes of coal consumption and 220m tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.

Firms are already turning to renewable energy and by the end of last year Guodian had installed 2.88 gigawatt of wind power; almost 24% of China's total and enough to make it the biggest wind energy firm in Asia.

But Greenpeace said only three of the top 10 produced 10% or more of their energy from renewable sources. The vast majority relied heavily on hydropower — with eight of the firms not even halfway to their legal obligation to produce 3% of energy from other renewable sources by 2010.

Greenpeace urged the Chinese government to impose energy and environment taxes on coal, encouraging increased efficiency and a move to renewable sources.

It also called for a doubling of the national renewable energy target to 30% by 2020 and for stricter efficiency standards for coal-fired power stations.

The State Council, China's cabinet, is currently drawing up plans for a massive "new energy" programme to cut emissions and ensure energy security. Reports in the domestic media and from foreign diplomats suggest the next decade could see between 1.4 trillion (US$200 bn) and 4.5 trillion yuan (US$600bn) investment in projects ranging from nuclear power, low carbon transport and clean coal technology to super-efficient electric grids.

This huge expansion is already causing problems. Manufacturing capacity is outstripping supply and the country's under-invested power grid networks were not ready for large-scale wind power input. Some wind farms have been unable to start operating because of a lack of grid connection or were operating at levels lower than planned.

But experts warn that de-carbonising the energy supply must happen fast, given the massive toll on China's environment. State news agency Xinhua reported yesterday that the country's largest desert lake could vanish in decades due to climate change and human activities.

"Just 10 years ago, one couldn't see the other bank of the Hongjiannao even through a telescope. Today, it's visible with the naked eye," said He Fenqi, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The Hongjiannao, sandwiched between the Muus Desert in Shaanxi Province and the Erdos Plateau in Inner Mongolia, has shrunk by at least 30% in the past two decades, Xinhua reported. It now covers 4,600 hectares and its water level is declining by 20 centimetres annually.

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Shell works to fix Gulf of Mexico pipeline leak

Bruce Nichols and Joshua Schneyer, Reuters 28 Jul 09;

HOUSTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shell and the U.S. Coast Guard rushed Tuesday to contain 1,400 barrels of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from a leaking Shell-operated pipeline, fighting back an oil slick with skimmer ships and airplanes.

Shell discovered the leak Saturday on its 173,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) capacity Eugene Island oil pipeline, 30 miles from Louisiana's coastline and 60 miles southwest of Houma, Louisiana.

The pipeline has been shut down, halting daily supplies of 100,000 barrels a day of Eugene Island oil. The Eugene Island line also was carrying new oil from Chevron's Tahiti platform which began flowing in May.

The pipeline is still leaking a "small amount" as it drains, a Shell spokesman said.

Shell had no estimate on repairs or a target date for restart of the 20-inch diameter pipeline, but people knowledgeable about operations said fixing it in 60-foot-deep water could take a day if the problem is small to weeks if it is big. Restart requires government approval.

"At this time, we cannot forecast when restart will occur. Our top priorities during the response and restart phases are safety and the environment," a company spokesman said.

The oil spill was among the largest in recent years in U.S. waters, officials said. Helicopters and airplanes that flew over the spill viewed a 16-by-3-mile "rainbow-like" oil sheen, Coast Guard Petty Officer Tom Atkeson said.

The slick is unlikely to reach land because the oil will evaporate and decompose if it is not picked up before reaching shore, Atkeson added.

Two skimming vessels by Tuesday had cleaned up 1,500 gallons of oil and water mixture of the 58,000 gallons believed to have spilled, Atkeson said. Some of the oil also has been dispersed by chemicals dropped from airplanes.

The cause of the leak awaited investigation. Shell said divers would inspect the source of the leak when they arrived on the scene late Tuesday, and planning of repairs could begin as soon as Wednesday.

As pipeline operator, Shell owns a 23 percent stake in the line. Other stakeholders include ExxonMobil, Marathon, Chevron and ConocoPhillips.

Saturday's oil spill was equivalent in volume to a November 2007 bunker fuel spill into the San Francisco Bay that drew ire from environmental groups. That spill reached local beaches.

Officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation, which regulates the pipeline, the Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service, all said they would investigate and help determine when the pipeline may restart.

In addition to repairs, Shell may consider rerouting some of the Eugene Island offshore crude through other offshore pipelines, a spokesman said. Rerouting helped keep flows steady to refineries following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The futures market shrugged off the news, with U.S. light sweet crude for September delivery falling $1.08 to $67.28 a barrel on Tuesday. In the cash crude market, traders saw no deals for Eugene Island, but a similar grade, Bonito, was offered at up to $2.40 a barrel above West Texas Intermediate, a rare premium, traders said.

Bonito last dealt publicly for 35 cents above WTI, on July 22.

(Editing by Christian Wiessner)

U.S. Gulf oil spill nearly cleaned up, pipe waits fix
By Bruce Nichols and Joshua Schneyer, Reuters 31 Jul 09;

HOUSTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The mess caused by the Eugene Island pipeline leak last weekend - in the Gulf of Mexico and the U.S. cash crude market - appeared nearly cleaned up Friday.

It was unclear how long it would take to fix the line, in which divers found a crack 33 miles offshore after it was shut down last Saturday. The damage has not been described in detail, and no repair plan had been announced as of Friday.

But Shell Pipeline Co and the Coast Guard issued a joint news release declaring impending victory over the 1,500 barrels of oil spilled. A spokesman predicted they would pick up the last remnants this weekend before it reaches shore.

Traders and brokers in the U.S. cash crude market, who had bid prices up sharply after the leak was disclosed late Monday, sent them back down in thin trading Friday after Shell said it had restored most of the affected oil flow.

"Overflights this morning revealed that skimming had reduced the remaining oil to several six-foot-(1.8-meter)-wide streamers approximately a quarter-mile long," a news release said. "Skimming will continue until the streams are collected ... and should conclude this weekend."

In the crude market, Heavy Louisiana Sweet fell $1.15 a barrel to $2.50 a barrel over West Texas Intermediate. Light Louisiana Sweet slid 60 cents to a $4.30-premium. Traders still assessed Eugene Island crude bids at WTI plus $2.00 against plus $2.50 offered, rare strength, but no sales were reported.

At its peak, the spill was described by officials on scene as "a nine-mile sheen with several streamers of darker oil," and had it moved to within 12 miles of the coast Thursday. On Friday, what was left was 15 miles from shore.

Shell said Friday the pipeline was still shut down but that it had managed to reroute 80,000 barrels per day (bpd) of the 100,000 bpd that was flowing through the pipeline when the leak was discovered.

It remained unclear exactly how much delivery of oil was impeded after Shell said the line was shutdown to control the leak. Chevron Corp said its Tahiti platform, which sends oil through the line, never stopped flowing.

Shell did not elaborate. All a Chevron spokeswoman would say is there are alternative pipeline routes that can be used.

(Editing by Marguerita Choy)

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Best of our wild blogs: 28 Jul 09

A Morning Walk - In the Forest
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature

Seagrasses and TeamSeagrass on YouTube
from teamseagrass

Tanah Merah: life behind the seawall
from wonderful creation

Professor Daphne Fautin
from Raffles Museum News

Anemone Army: The Last Foray
from wild shores of singapore and Singapore Nature

Topside tentacles
from The annotated budak and redhead alert and matching shades

SE Asia pushes sustainable fishing pact
from Pulau Hantu

Eco-Friendly Wet Cleaning by Green N Clean Laundry
from AsiaIsGreen

Wrinkled Hornbill at Panti forest, Johor
from Bird Ecology Study Group

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World Needs More Taxonomists: Malayan Nature Society President

Bernama 28 Jul 09;

KOTA KINABALU, July 28 (Bernama) -- The world needs more taxonomists to identify and name new species of plants and animals, said Malaysian Nature Society (MNS) President Tan Sri Dr Salleh Mohd Noor.

He said the naming (nomenclature) and classification of new plants and organisms were vital in managing the forests.

"Malaysia, considered one of 12 mega-biodiversities in the world, has many plants and organisms yet to be named.

"Until we name the plants or animals, we cannot proceed to study our ecosystem in greater detail," he said at the Merdeka Award Lecture at University Malaysia Sabah here Tuesday.

Salleh was presenting his 2008 award-winning lecture, 'Sharing the Environment: Global Problems, Local Solutions'.

Noting that taxonomy was a boring subject, he said it was, nevertheless, important for the public to understand the different lives of other species that shared the ecosystem with the human race.

Therefore, Salleh called upon universities to ensure that taxonomy was taught not only as a subject, but its importance infused in all scientific courses.

"The variability of genetic diversity is nature’s way of protecting itself.

"The biodiversity of animals, plants and the race of human beings not only adds colour to the world, but also provides protection against diseases and epidemics," he noted.

Salleh also said the people should be patriotic towards the country as a basis to looking after the environment.

"Patriotism is a foundation for us to love our country and when we love our country, we will want to take care of it.

"We, as custodians of biodiversity, must ensure its protection and survival," he added.

-- BERNAMA

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Need for more environmental activitism in Malaysia

Ruben Sario, The Star 28 Jul 09;

KOTA KINABALU: More environmental activism is needed in Malaysia to ensure elected leaders are more conscious of environmental concerns.

Malaysian Nature Society president Tan Sri Dr Salleh Mohd Nor said elected leaders needed to made more concerned about the environment and promote such issues in Parliament.

“We have a senator who speaks for the diabled but there is no one representing the environment,” he said in response to a question following a lecture on environmental issues at the Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) here Tuesday.

Dr Salleh said environmental activitism could come in various forms including the setting up of a “green party,” which he said he was not promoting.

“But what I’m promoting is the need for all our wakil rakyat (elected representatives) to be more environmentally concerned,” he added.

Dr Salleh said among the pressing environmental issues in the country was the loss of its biodiversity partly due to the clearing of forests and wetlands for plantations.

He said in his term as director-general of the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia from 1977-95, a species of tree became extinct as a result of wetlands being cleared for oil palm plantations.

“We have denied our future generations the opportunity to explore the potential of that particular tree,” Dr Salleh said, adding that it was saddening that this was happening in a country considered to be one of the world biodiversity hotspots.

He said the state of Sabah in the Borneo island had been subjected to “excessive logging” for many years, leaving only “pockets of pristine rainforests” in conservation areas such as the Danum Valley and the Maliau Basin.

Noting that large tracts of forested areas had been converted to tree plantations, Dr Salleh said there was still insufficient research on the impact of such large scale conversions on the environment.

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Don't take water for granted

It's time we started managing water as the precious resource that it is
Foong Sew Bun, Business Times 28 Jul 09;

WATER flows through everything - the air, the land, our bodies and the global economy.

In fact, every time a thing or a service is bought or sold, there is a virtual exchange of water. It takes 700 gallons of water to make a cotton T-shirt, 2,000 gallons of water to make one gallon of milk and 39,000 gallons of water to make a car.

We use water to process raw materials, manufacture products, generate electricity and transport people and goods. We desalinate water to build cities in the desert. Is it any wonder then that in the last 100 years, global water usage has increased at twice the rate of population growth?

In Singapore, the shortage of water is no secret. The second Singapore International Water Week in June attracted over 10,000 attendees from more than 85 countries and saw S$2.2 billion worth of ideas signed.

Today, Singapore's NEWater - high-grade reclaimed water which has passed more than 30,000 tests for purity and safety - meets 15 per cent of the country's total water needs. With the opening of a new water plant in 2010, NEWater will meet 30 per cent of Singapore's total water demand by 2010.

Every time we interact with water, we change its direction, chemistry, usefulness or availability. Because of this daunting complexity, water is poorly understood and often mismanaged. For example, global agriculture wastes an estimated 60 per cent of the 2,500 trillion litres it uses each year. Municipalities lose as much as 50 per cent of their water supply through leaky infrastructure.

Amid this inefficiency, one in five people still lacks access to clean, safe drinking water, and the United Nations predicts that nearly half the world's population will experience critical water shortages by the year 2080.

But we can do better. Today's technology can monitor, measure and analyse entire water ecosystems, from rivers and reservoirs to the pumps and pipes in our homes. We can give all the organisations, businesses, communities and nations dependent on a continuing supply of freshwater - that is, all of us - a single, reliable, up-to-the-minute and actionable view of water use.

Already, we are using sophisticated sensor networks to collect and analyse the tremendous amounts of data generated in complex water systems. In the United States, a data platform is being created to support instrumentation of the entire length of the 500km Hudson River for a real-time view of a river system that supplies both industry and individuals.

In the Netherlands, smarter levees are built to monitor changing flood conditions and respond accordingly. And sensors are revolutionising agriculture, and providing detailed information on air quality, soil moisture content and temperature to calculate optimal irrigation schedules.

Smart metering can give individuals and businesses timely insight into their own water use, raising awareness, locating inefficiencies and decreasing demand.

Finally, we can apply advanced computing and analytics to move beyond 'real time' to prediction, supporting better-informed policy and management decisions. A collaborative research initiative with the Marine Institute in Ireland aims to turn Galway Bay into a living laboratory - instrumenting the bay to gather data on water temperature, currents, wave strength, salinity and marine life, and applying algorithms that can forecast everything from wave patterns over 24 hours to the right time to harvest mussels.

The flow of clean, plentiful water is as essential to our economy and society as it is to our planet. Let's stop taking it for granted and start managing it as the precious resource that it is.

The writer is IBM distinguished engineer, chief technology officer, IBM Singapore

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When diamonds aren't a man's best friend

Cheong Suk-Wai, Straits Times 28 Jul 09;

NOBEL laureate Bertrand Russell once said that a person was happiest if he flowed with 'the stream of life', instead of being as hard and separate from it as a billiard ball.

Shanghai-born psychologist Christopher Hsee has refined that idea further by distinguishing between stream-of-life happenings that compare social standings and so drive unhappy wedges among people, and events that don't.

His work has been highlighted in scholarly journals and mainstream media. In 2002, Nobel laureate in economics Daniel Kahneman cited Prof Hsee's work at some length in his lecture.

Prof Hsee holds the Theodore O Yntema chair at the Booth Business School of the University of Chicago. He earned a PhD in psychology at Yale University in 1993.

The son of an engineer and a doctor, he is also legally blind from a congenital eye defect that can be little corrected.

It is ironic that the married father of two is now credited as being among the first to introduce the science of happiness to China, as none of its colleges would admit him as an undergraduate because of his blindness. His family eventually migrated to Hawaii and he went to college there.

In town recently to teach at the Booth campus along Penang Road, Prof Hsee told me why joy is elusive:

# Are the materialistic less happy?

It's very difficult to show a causal relationship between materialism and happiness. We don't know whether people who believe in materialism are less happy or that people who are less happy tend to believe in materialism.

# Why?

To do so, you would need to have some people believe in materialism and have some others not believe in it, and then test their happiness. But this is difficult to do. It is also very difficult for us to understand which causes which.

# So it's a chicken and egg thing.

That's right. It is possible that happy people tend to make more money because they're more optimistic, more motivated and, eventually, they are more liked and can get higher paying positions. In any case, increasing wealth can increase one's happiness but it very much depends on what you want.

# When is wealth no longer contentment but contention instead?

Many have debated about whether happiness is relative or absolute. What I have found is that it depends on whether it is what I call a Type A or Type B event.

A Type A event is that which people have an absolute standard as to what's good and bad. For example, loneliness makes us unhappy.

Type B events are based on social comparisons, like how big your diamond is. The distinction is important because if we spend a lot of resources to improve Type B goods, it will largely be a zero sum game.

# Why is that?

If everyone wears large diamonds, our average happiness will be the same as when everyone wears small diamonds. On the other hand, working to improve Type A goods can absolutely improve people's happiness. In hindsight, this may seem quite obvious, but it can help governments and companies invest their resources better.

# So why does human nature have us believe that things can make us happy?

Well, there are two reasons. The first is that people have to survive before they can pursue happiness. Even the US Declaration of Independence talks about three inalienable rights - and life goes before the pursuit of happiness.

The dilemma today is that people who are no longer concerned about basic survival needs still pursue material goods. That's because of inertia. Money used to be so scarce that, even with money now, people still feel they have to pursue it.

# Why is finding joy in things bad?

The problem is that it has a cost, because the fact that you have a bigger diamond makes others who don't less happy. So the pursuit of Type B (happiness) is worse than a zero sum game because to afford a bigger diamond than what others have, you will have to work harder and longer to make more money. And the mining companies will have to find more diamonds, at great cost to the environment.

# Is joy borne of struggle greater than joy borne of a silver spoon existence?

I know many wealthy people in China who are in their 50s and are happy now because they were very poor as kids. They're rich through their own efforts and have also benefited from reforms over the last few decades. Yet I'm not sure their kids, who get to stay in five-star hotels, are as happy as their parents. They won't have as much upward improvement as their parents had.

# How much does living in an increasingly uncertain world hobble our happiness?

I'm not sure we face more uncertainty than our ancestors who had the uncertainty of survival. Uncertainty is not always bad. One of the obstacles to happiness is, in fact, certainty. Suppose someone could live in heaven where there's all peace and certainty. He may be very happy at the beginning, but in the long run, people who adapt too much get bored.

# So being less able to adapt is good?

The point is that to increase or maintain happiness we should pursue events which are resistant to adaptation. For example, if you have a very expensive granite countertop in your kitchen, you will adapt to the joy you get from it after a while.

But if you have a puppy which is dynamic and variable, you cannot adapt to it easily and so it can give you pleasure for a longer time. Most social events are less prone to adaptation, so having pets or enjoying the arts gives us greater joy in the long run.

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WWF-Malaysia Shocked Melaka To Develop Pulau Upeh

Bernama 27 Jul 09;

KUALA LUMPUR, JULY 27 (Bernama) -- WWF- Malaysia has expressed shock at Melaka Chief Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Ali Rustam's recent announcement the state government planned to develop Pulau Upeh, the primary nesting beach for the hawksbill turtle.

Its executive director/chief executive officer Datuk Dr Dionysius S. K. Sharma said, what was even more alarming was that the plan surfaced in the wake of WWF-Malaysia's meeting with the chief minister last month, over the importance of Pulau Upeh and other prime nesting beaches for the turtle.

WWF-Malaysia stressed at the meeting that legal protection of all prime nesting beaches, including Pulau Upeh, was needed, he said in a statement Monday.

Further to legal protection, WWF-Malaysia also stressed that only low-impact turtle-based ecotourism was feasible on the island whilst providing the state with valuable tourism income, as well as ensure the survival of the hawksbill.

Dr Dionysius said, proceeding with the development without considering the feasibility and the impact of the impending development on the turtle population, would have a catastrophic effect on the nesting habitat.

He said currently, the nesting beaches in Melaka, including Pulau Upeh, were not legally protected.

The viability of Pulau Upeh for hawksbill conservation is dependent on legal protection of the whole island.

-- BERNAMA

Press Statement : Development Spells Doom For Pulau Upeh's Turtles
WWF Malaysia 30 Jul 09;

WWF-Malaysia is shocked at the recent announcement by Melaka’s Chief Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Ali Rustam to develop Pulau Upeh, the primary nesting beach for the hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) with 20% of nestings for the whole of Peninsular Malaysia.

What is even more alarming is that these plans have surfaced in the wake of WWF-Malaysia’s meeting with the Chief Minister last month about the crucial importance of Pulau Upeh and other prime nesting beaches for the hawksbill turtles.

WWF-Malaysia had stressed at the meeting that legal protection of all prime nesting beaches (including the whole of Pulau Upeh) is needed and it would be in accordance with the State Government’s Action Plan towards achieving developed city status by 2010.

Further to legal protection, WWF-Malaysia also stressed that only low-impact turtle-based ecotourism is feasible on the island whilst providing the State with valuable tourism income, as well as to ensure the survival of the hawksbills. The CM’s plans for the tourism facilities on Pulau Upeh are thereby not a form of low-impact ecotourism.

WWF-Malaysia is of the opinion that any development on the island should include studies on the environmental sustainability, the feasibility and the impacts of the impending development on the turtles and their habitats. Proceeding with development without these considerations will have a catastrophic effect on the nesting habitat.

WWF-Malaysia has been monitoring the turtle population and the nesting beach of Pulau Upeh since 2006. The organisation wishes to highlight our concerns with the above announcement:

1. The plan to upgrade and build 200 units of chalets on the 1.8ha island

The island does not have 120 chalets existing, nor the capacity for more chalets to be built without compromising the nesting beach. Accompanying activities generated from this volume of tourists on the island will negatively impact the nesting behaviour and ecology of the turtles.

Furthermore, in order to accommodate the planned development, the State should not resort to reclaiming on or near the island. Any such reclamation will have devastating impacts on the turtles. There is already extensive reclamation along the coastline of Klebang, opposite Pulau Upeh.

2. To turn Pulau Upeh into a centre for hawksbill conservation

The plan to turn Pulau Upeh into a centre for hawksbill conservation while being a positive idea, should not compromise the protection of the turtles nor their habitats. Currently, the nesting beaches in Melaka, including Pulau Upeh, are NOT legally protected. The viability of Pulau Upeh for hawksbill conservation is dependent on legal protection of the whole island. In addition, the viability of turtle based ecotourism hinges on turtles returning to Pulau Upeh to nest annually. Rantau Abang is a classic example of turtle based tourism gone wrong.

3. Development works to commence in August

In view of the fact that the works are commencing in a mere two weeks, it is unlikely that any long-term planning for the proper management of turtles and their habitats have been taken into consideration. WWF-Malaysia is of the strong opinion that such studies and planning must be carried out with extensive consultation with all stakeholders, scientific community as well as technical agencies.

WWF-Malaysia calls for a complete halt to the works due to commence in August until an extensive consultation with all stakeholders, the scientific community as well as technical agencies is undertaken. This must include studies and consequent plans pertaining to sustainable low-impact turtle-based ecotourism, proper guidelines, adequate resources and a comprehensive management plan prepared by the State.

Last but not least WWF-Malaysia calls for complete transparency by the State Government in all its plans with regard to all forms of development on and near the island.


by Dato’ Dr Dionysius S.K. Sharma, Executive Director/CEO

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