Bee-eating Chinese hornets spread through France

Reuters 18 Aug 09;

PARIS (Reuters) - France is facing an invasion of bee-eating Chinese hornets which could hasten the mysterious decline in the honey-bee population and threaten bee-keepers' livelihoods, researchers said on Tuesday.

Colonies of Asian hornets, or Vespa velutina, have spread rapidly in southwestern France, a region popular with tourists, and are likely to reach other European countries soon.

"More and more of them are coming and they're colonizing France," Quentin Rome, a researcher at the National History Museum in Paris, told Reuters.

The three centimeter-long insects, recognizable by their orange heads and yellow feet, probably arrived in France on a boat carrying ceramic goods from China, researchers believe.

The first hornets were observed in France in 2004, and the most recent study recorded 1,100 nests across the country. The hornet is now firmly established near Bordeaux and has advanced as far north as parts of Brittany in northwestern France.

"They multiply quite quickly, and they settle in a new department every year," Rome said.

The hornet is not yet present in other European countries, but will probably spread across the continent, he added.

Last week six people were hospitalized after being stung near a nest in the Lot-et-Garonne department in southwest France, prompting local authorities to warn allergy sufferers to be on their guard.

Although the hornets are not more aggressive or dangerous for humans than their European cousins, the size of the colonies, inhabiting nests measuring up to one meter in height, means the risk of attacks is higher, Rome said.

Bee-keeper Francoise Romanzin said there had been a marked rise in attacks by Asian hornets on beehives in August.

"It's going to get worse until mid-September," she said: "In three or fours years they'll be everywhere in France -- it's an invasion."

Three or four hornets can wipe out an entire beehive in 48 hours, but bee-keeping associations do not yet know how serious a threat the hornets pose for their industry, which is already facing a mysterious decline in bee numbers worldwide.

"When bee-keepers find nests nearby, their hives are destined for destruction," General Secretary of the National union of Bee-keepers Yves Vedrenne said. "We don't have the means to get rid of them."

"We don't know what kind of problems they could cause," Vedrenne said. "The problem of the Asian hornets is not the worst problem for bee populations but it adds to the difficulties bee populations are already facing," Romanzin said.

Scientists have already expressed alarm at the mysterious and rapid decline in the number of bees, which could seriously harm agriculture because of the reduction in pollination of numerous crops.

(Reporting by Joseph Tandy, editing by Tim Pearce)

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Ruling on Longline Fishing Aids Turtles

Cornelia Dean, The New York Times 19 Aug 09;

When a federal panel that regulates fishing in the Gulf of Mexico voted last week to limit the use of longlines to catch grouper because the lines can snag and drown threatened loggerhead sea turtles, no one was completely satisfied with the decision.

But some people close to the issue say the dissatisfaction is a positive sign, an indicator of the growing efforts among fishermen, conservationists and regulators to seek consensus and abandon the rancor that for decades has marked their interactions.

“Nobody got exactly what they wanted,” said Roy Crabtree, Southeast regional administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the panel, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council. “But everyone felt we had come up with a reasonable compromise.”

Longlines are miles of metal cable strung with thousands of baited hooks, which fishermen deploy along the ocean bottom, including on coral reefs and rocky “hardbottoms” where red and black grouper forage. Loggerhead sea turtles forage there, too, and if they are snagged on the hooks, they may drown before the lines are hauled back to the surface.

The council, which regulates fishing in federal waters from Texas to the west coast of Florida, voted to close some areas to longlining, and only about half of the approximately 125 boats now using the gear will be allowed to continue. Fishermen will be allowed to catch grouper using vertical lines, which are dropped overboard.

In general, experts say, fishermen bring in bigger catches using longline gear, and some add that it is somewhat easier to use at sea.

Glen Brooks, president of the Gulf Fishermen’s Association and a participant in the rule making, said the process was “stressful.” But, Mr. Brooks said, “years ago the commercial fishermen did not talk to the environmentalists, we did not talk to the recreational fishermen and the council members kind of looked down on us. Now we have a pretty good relationship with the environmental groups, the recreational sectors, and we have a pretty good rapport with the council members.”

Dave Allison, who manages turtle conservation efforts for Oceana, an environmental group that also participated in the rule making, called the new ruling “probably the best that the sea turtles could have hoped for from an organization called the fishery management council.” But “it’s a good start,” Mr. Allison said. According to Dr. Crabtree, recent research suggests that the lines snag far more loggerhead sea turtles than had been thought, perhaps 600 a year, and that most of them die. Conservationists say longline gear also damages corals and other important habitat on the sea bottom, threatening both the turtles and the fish.

Dr. Crabtree said that turtles sometimes snagged on vertical line hooks, too, but that because those lines were usually hauled up relatively quickly few of them died as a result. Loggerhead turtles can stay underwater for up to an hour.

The Gulf of Mexico supplies much of the grouper served on American tables. Dr. Crabtree said it was too soon to know if the rule change would significantly affect prices for the fish.

Adult loggerheads typically have shells about three feet long — “bigger than a wheelbarrow but smaller than a Volkswagen,” as Mr. Allison put it. Though females may lay 100 eggs or more on the region’s sandy beaches, scientists estimate that fewer than one in 1,000 of the tiny turtles who hatch and crawl into the waves live to age 30 or 35, when they are ready to reproduce. NOAA scientists are studying whether still more restrictions may be needed to protect loggerhead sea turtles, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Though he is among those who think more must be done to safeguard the turtles, Mr. Allison praised council members, who, he said, “showed a great deal of courage” in pushing for fishing restrictions sure to be unpopular in some quarters.

In a way, Mr. Brooks said the same thing.

The ruling “has its pros and it’s got its cons,” he said. “We did not get everything we wanted; the environmental groups, the agency, they did not get everything they wanted. But we all walked away with something.”

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Giant Robotic Cages to Roam Seas as Future Fish Farms?

Brian Handwerk, National Geographic News 18 Aug 09;

In the future, giant, autonomous fish farms may whir through the open ocean, mimicking the movements of wild schools or even allowing fish to forage "free range" before capturing them once again. Already scientists have constructed working remote control cages.

Such motorized cages could help produce greener, healthier, and more numerous fish, just when we need them most.

The world's growing population is devouring seafood as quickly as it can be caught and has seriously depleted the world's wild fish stocks, experts warn.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization says 70 percent of all the worlds' fisheries are exploited—that is, barely able to replenish themselves at current catch rates—overexploited, or depleted. (Learn more about sustainable agriculture.)

Aquaculture, or fish farming, currently produces about half of the fish eaten worldwide and seems destined to play an even bigger future role. The UN organization estimates world seafood demand will spike 40 percent by 2030.

"We've got doctors and nutritionists asking us to eat more seafood because of the healthy benefits," said Michael Rubino, manager of the Aquaculture Program at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

"We're doing a better job of ending overfishing of our wild stocks," Rubino said. "But most people agree that even if we can do that, most of the increase in consumption is going to have to come from aquaculture."

Free-Floating Farms on Horizon?

Traditional fish farms typically consist of cages submerged in shallow, calm waters near shore, where they are protected from the weather and easily accessible for feeding and maintenance.

But raising fish in such close quarters can contribute to the spread of disease among the animals, and wastes may foul the waters. Cages must be moved to keep the waters clean and the fish healthy.

Deepwater cages offer cleaner, more freely circulating ocean water and natural food, which can yield tastier fish. But the deep-sea cages must be built to withstand the rigors of the deep ocean. And because they are harder for humans to access, "smarter," self-sufficient cages could be key.

That's one reason that Cliff Goudey, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Offshore Aquaculture Engineering Center, is building cages that can move under their own power.

Goudey has equipped an Aquapod cage, produced by Maine-based Ocean Farm Technologies, with a pair of 2.4-meter [8-foot] diameter propellers, which can be steered easily by controllers on a boat to which the cage is tethered.

Aquapods are composed of triangular panels covered with vinyl-coated, galvanized steel netting and come in sizes from 8 to 28 meters in diameter (26 to 92 feet in diameter).

Goudey's technology gives fish farmers a way to rotate cage locations without towing cages behind boats.

Fish Farming 2.0

Someday such automated cages could herald an entirely new form of fish farming.

They might be turned loose to mimic natural systems by following carefully chosen ocean currents. The robotic fish farms could help lead to larger, healthier crops of farmed fish far from crowded coastal areas, where farmed fish both suffer from poor water quality and, by producing waste, add to water woes.

Cages might even generate their own electricity by harnessing solar energy, wave energy, or other forms of renewable power.

"Why don't we just go with the flow and behave more like the way a large school of fish behaves?" Goudey asked. "I think most people would agree that would have a far less negative impact on the environment."

"I think the idea of mobile operations will be a natural evolution."

Goudey currently uses a small boat to carry a generator that powers the cage's propulsion, but the power source could easily be made smaller and placed in a buoy for more automated operation.

"The idea of a cage towing a buoy, with the buoy in radio contact with the shore, is quite feasible," he said. "It's a little futuristic for today's industry, but we could have a sensor on the cage which gives its heading and a GPS system to report its effective speed over the ground.

"From those two pieces of information, we could control it without actually being there."

Closer to Market

Brian O'Hanlon, founder of Snapperfarm, Inc., and Open Blue Sea Farms, saw Goudey's cage in use last year at his offshore aquaculture operation in Culebra, Puerto Rico.

"My long-term vision is to be farming off the coast of major markets," he said. "The idea is to bring the farms closer to market, and offshore technology with automated systems is one of the ways we can do that."

O'Hanlon explains that—given crowded coastal waters, environmental concerns, and high operating costs—it's not practical to create large-scale farms near many major markets—but the answer could lie with locations just over the horizon.

Not incidentally, the concept could produce a far better quality of fish for consumption.

"The further we go with cage technology, the deeper and further offshore we can go," he explained, "and that opens up areas with untapped resources.

"Every part of the ocean has variables, and every species has their ideal conditions. With mobile pens it's feasible to keep the fish in the most optimal conditions throughout their growth cycle," O'Hanlon said.

"I don't think anyone is putting out a mobile farm tomorrow, but I think we need to keep working on this."

Fishing With 'Dinner Bells'

Scott Lindell of the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory is exploring a different technology, creating a cage that could actually coax fish to "catch themselves."

Last summer Lindell's team installed half of an Aquapod sphere, an "Aquadome," on the floor of Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts. Some 4,200 quarter-pound (hundred-gram) black sea bass were placed in the cage and trained over five weeks to gather whenever a "dinner bell" sound was played through a speaker.

Previously, aquarium-based tests had proven that the fish not only associated the sound with food, they also remembered that association for up to four weeks.

Later, with the seafloor dome left open, the fish became "free range" animals. They could hide and forage in nearby natural habitat, but they still returned to the cage after the dinner bell had rung.

"The first week we had a successful demonstration that fish were able to swim in and out of the cage and still responded to the acoustic feeding stimuli," Lindell explained.

Trouble soon arrived, however, in the form of schooling 8- to 10-pound (3.6- to 5.4-kilogram) bluefish. The voracious predators quickly discovered the dome and circled it day and night to feast on Lindell's subjects.

The bass took the hint and went into hiding.

"We quickly reached a point where no enticement with the sound or the release of food would induce them to risk their lives to come back to the cage," he said. "They would stay out of harm's way."

Despite the setback, however, Lindell believes the dinner-bell concept holds promise. He notes that other, less vulnerable species like flounder or cobia might fare better. If so, the technology could provide fish farmers with a valuable tool to help satisfy the world's growing seafood appetite.

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Electric car industry boost as leading developer plans production of tens of thousands of vehicles a year

Carmaker developing three models with Renault for sale in Denmark and Israel, with plans to expand scheme further
Gwladys Fouché, guardian.co.uk 18 Aug 09;

The electric car industry received a boost yesterday after a leading developer of low-emission vehicles said it would produce of tens of thousands vehicles a year from 2011. Better Place, which will run the scheme with Renault, plans to market them initially in Denmark and Israel.

The French carmaker is developing three models: a saloon, a compact city car and a van. In Denmark, a car will cost up to 200,000 kroner (£23,080).

"We expect the production of electric vehicles to be in the tens of thousands per year for the Danish market from 2011," said Jens Moberg, chief executive of Better Place Denmark, the Danish subsidiary of the transport company developing the lithium batteries fitted in the vehicles.

Electric car drivers will need to sign up for a monthly subscription with Better Place to get access to the batteries. "It will be like signing up for a mobile phone contract," said Moberg.

He declined to say how much a subscription would cost but said the battery would cost €8,000 (£6,900) to manufacture in 2011-12. "I expect the cost to come down afterwards as production expands," he said.

Drivers can recharge the batteries at home, which would take several hours, or switch batteries at a "swap station", taking three to five minutes – less time than it takes to fill a petrol tank.

In Denmark, close to 100 battery swap stations will be available around the country, with plans to expand further.

Drivers will also be able to top up their batteries at charge spots installed at car parks and on the streets. Copenhagen is working to install up to 60 by the time of the UN climate change summit in December, when world leaders will attempt to broker a worldwide deal to reduce carbon emissions.

A number of electric Renault cars will also be available to drive during the conference. Those trying out the cars will not have to worry about parking, as it is already free to park an electric car anywhere in Copenhagen.

Moberg said Better Place was in discussion with a number of European countries, including France, about expanding the scheme further from Israel and Denmark.

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How to turn seawater into jet fuel

Kurt Kleiner, New Scientist 18 Aug 09;

Faced with global warming and potential oil shortages, the US navy is experimenting with making jet fuel from seawater.

Navy chemists have processed seawater into unsaturated short-chain hydrocarbons that with further refining could be made into kerosene-based jet fuel. But they will have to find a clean energy source to power the reactions if the end product is to be carbon neutral.

The process involves extracting carbon dioxide dissolved in the water and combining it with hydrogen – obtained by splitting water molecules using electricity – to make a hydrocarbon fuel.
Syngas process

It uses a variant of a chemical reaction called the Fischer-Tropsch process, which is used commercially to produce a gasoline-like hydrocarbon fuel from syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen often derived from coal.

Robert Dorner, a Naval Research Laboratory chemist in Washington DC and first author of a new paper on the technique, says that CO2 is rarely used in the Fischer-Tropsch process because of its chemical stability.

But CO2's abundance, combined with concerns about global warming, make it an attractive potential feedstock, Dorner says. Although the gas forms only a small proportion of air – around 0.04 per cent – ocean water contains about 140 times that concentration, he says.
Iron catalyst

The navy team have been experimenting to find out how to steer the CO2-producing process away from producing unwanted methane to produce more of the hydrocarbons wanted.

In the conventional Fischer-Tropsch process, carbon monoxide and hydrogen are heated in the presence of a catalyst to initiate a complex chain of reactions that produce a mixture of methane, waxes and liquid fuel compounds.

Dorner and colleagues found that using the usual cobalt-based catalyst on seawater-derived CO2 produced almost entirely methane gas. Switching to an iron catalyst resulted in only 30 per cent methane being produced, with the remainder short-chain hydrocarbons that could be refined into jet fuel.

Heather Willauer, the navy chemist leading the project, says the efficiency needs to be much improved, perhaps by finding a different catalyst.
Appealing source

"The idea of using CO2 as a carbon source is appealing," says Philip Jessop, a chemist at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

But to make a jet fuel that is properly "green", the energy-intensive electrolysis that produces the hydrogen will need to use a carbon-neutral energy source; and the complex multi-step process will always consume significantly more energy than the fuel it produces could yield. In addition, each step in the process is likely to add cost and problems.

"It's a lot more complicated than it at first looks," Jessop says.

A paper on the navy research was presented at the American Chemical Society annual meeting in Washington DC on Sunday.

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Sunlight Not the Solution for Clean Water -- New Study

Ker Than, National Geographic News 18 Aug 09;

A popular method of disinfecting water with sunlight, used in more than 30 countries worldwide, may be far less effective in real-world settings than it is in the lab, a new study finds.

An estimated 1.8 million people die every year from diarrheal diseases, mainly by drinking or coming into contact with dirty water. The majority of those nearly two million people are children under the age of five living in developing countries.

Household solar drinking water disinfection, or SODIS, is a simple, low-cost method that involves filling clear plastic bottles, such as old soda bottles, with water containing diarrhea-causing microbes and exposing them to direct sunlight for several hours.

Ultraviolet radiation from the sun and a temperature increase inside the bottles inactivate pathogens, making it safe to drink.

SODIS is currently promoted worldwide by various public health agencies and organizations.

The new study, which appears online this month in the journal PLoS Medicine, suggests that introducing SODIS into communities did not significantly reduce diarrhea rates in rural villages in Bolivia.

Until additional real-world studies of the effectiveness of SODIS are conducted, agencies should "hold off" on new promotion campaigns for the method, said study leader Daniel Mausezahl, a senior health advisor at the Swiss Tropical Institute in Basel, Switzerland.

Clean Water Solutions

Mausezahl and colleagues found that children in families that used the SODIS method had on average 3.6 episodes of diarrhea per year, compared with 4.3 annual episodes in the control group.

The result is not statistically significant enough to show that the small reduction was due to the SODIS method, the authors say.

The problem is not SODIS, which undoubtedly works, Mausezahl said.

"SODIS is effective," he said. "If you are in dire straits, you can take a SODIS bottle and put river water in it, expose it to the sun for at least six hours, and you can drink it."

Rather, the issue appears to be compliance—getting people to consistently use the SODIS method.

The authors note, for example, that while nearly 80 percent of the households reported diligent SODIS use, field-worker observations suggested that only about a third of them actually did so.

There are several reasons why people might slack on SODIS use, Mausezahl said.

For one, they may be too busy. Mausezahl also said he suspects there is a stigma associated with its use.

"People do not want to put a SODIS bottle that is basically reused wastewater on their roofs. It's a signal to everyone else in the community that you don't have money for proper chlorination or a proper water supply."

Nurturing Habits

Meierhofer Regula, a scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology who was not involved in the study, noted that compliance is a problem common to all intervention programs that aim to change human behavior, such as hand washing or condom use.

Instead of scaling back, SODIS promotion should be ramped up, said Regula, so that people become more familiar and comfortable with it.

Kevin McGuignan, the coordinator of the European Union research project SODISWATER, also thinks global SODIS promotion should not be curbed.

"Further research is urgently required in order to gain a clearer picture of why compliance is so low and how it can be improved," he said.

Study author Mausezahl thinks the current global rollout of SODIS is a prime opportunity to conduct exactly this type of research.

"The moment SODIS goes out of the lab something goes wrong. Either we do not communicate properly about it or were applying it in the wrong setting," he said.

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Water policies suffer sinking feeling

Brian Richter, BBC Green Room 18 Aug 09;

Rising populations, improving lifestyles and changes to the global climate are all increasing the pressure on the planet's water resources, says conservation expert Brian Richter. In this week's Green Room, he explains why there is an urgent need for the world to embrace new ways in which it uses water.

More than one billion people lack access to safe, clean drinking water and more than half of the hospital beds in the world are occupied by people afflicted with water-borne diseases.

More than 800 million are malnourished, primarily because there isn't enough water to grow their food.

Fish and other freshwater species are among the most imperiled on the planet, in large part because of the ways that we have polluted and exploited their habitats.

The theme of this year's World Water Week, currently underway in Stockholm, is therefore quite fitting: Responding to Global Changes: Accessing Water for the Common Good.

What global changes, you might ask? Let us start with our global population, expected to rise from nearly seven billion to nine billion in just a few decades. That is why more than half the world's population will be living in areas of high water stress by 2030.

At the same time, in populous nations such as China and India, improvements in living standards and personal incomes are linked to greater consumption of clothing, meat, and water.

It takes 140 litres of water to produce one cup of coffee; 3,000 litres to make a hamburger; and 8,000 litres to create a pair of leather shoes. All of these processes require a vast amount of water to grow crops, feed cows, or produce leather.

On top of that, climate change will bring less rain to many regions, and cause it to evaporate more quickly almost everywhere.

Accordingly, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that "the proportion of the planet in extreme drought at any time will likely increase".

These are the nightmares that keep me awake at night.

Just the tonic

These global forecasts wouldn't look so daunting if we were doing a great job of managing water today. But over-extraction of water for farms and cities is already causing even large rivers such as the Yellow, the Ganges and the Rio Grande to repeatedly run completely dry.

Remarkably, we also continue to foul our preciously scarce water supplies with too much human waste. More than 200 million tonnes of it each year go directly into our rivers and lakes without treatment.

So yes, the challenges we face are vast, but there's something brewing in Stockholm that is helping me sleep a little better.

While most governments have proven themselves incapable or unwilling to manage water sustainably, a group of non-governmental and professional water organisations is stepping up to lead the way.

You may have heard of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) that certifies sustainably-harvested wood products, or the Fair Trade movement for consumer products, yet no such scheme yet exists for water.

At World Water Week, a group of leading business, social development and conservation organisations will gather as the "Alliance for Water Stewardship" to advance a new voluntary global water certification program that will recognize and reward responsible corporations, farming operations, cities, and other water users for their sustainable use of water resources.

By developing best practice standards for managing water in a way that enables economic development in an environmentally friendly and socially responsible manner, the Alliance aims to certify "water users" who are taking major steps to minimise their water footprint and protect healthy watersheds.

Participants, otherwise known as "water users", can range from large international companies to local water utilities to agricultural industries.

The Alliance will bring together the largest water players from around the world in Stockholm to launch a "global water roundtable", a two-year dialogue among global water interests to seek agreement about the problems created by unsustainable water use, and to build consensus around the best-practice standards that will underpin the certification programme.

It is a huge undertaking, but the water crisis is urgent, and we desperately need a new, transparent rulebook for managing our water resources more sustainably.

So why would a large company or city to want to play by these new rules? A rapidly growing number of consumers are buying goods from companies with environmental and social credentials, giving certified products ranging from produce to beverages to clothing a competitive edge in the marketplace.

In this increasingly water-scarce world, companies are also becoming painfully aware of their vulnerabilities to water shortages, not just in their own business operations but throughout their supply chains. If barley farmers in northern China run out of water, breweries and beer drinkers throughout Asia will feel the pain.

Many companies are realising that if they can save water in their manufacturing or growing processes, they can save a lot of money, making them more profitable.

Similarly, cities save costs for water treatment when the watersheds that supply their residents are maintained in a healthy condition.

Interestingly, investors are increasingly screening loan requests from cities and companies on the basis of their sustainability scores, because behaving in an environmentally and socially responsible manner translates into reduced investment risk.

Perhaps most importantly, though, is the simple fact that we have no other choice but to move toward a new paradigm for water.

The maths simply do not add up any other way. We have only the same amount of water on this planet now as when life began. We cannot support seven billion, let alone nine billion, if we continue to waste and foul such a substantial portion of what we have.

Certification isn't likely to solve all the world's water problems, but it very well could set us onto a sustainability trajectory that could give my nightmare a happy ending.

Brian Richter is director of the Global Freshwater Program at The Nature Conservancy, a US non-governmental organisation

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website

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Global warming benefits to Tibet: Chinese official

Yahoo News 18 Aug 09;

BEIJING (AFP) – Global warming could prove devastating for the Tibetan plateau, the world's third-largest store of ice, but it helps farming and tourism, Chinese state media said Tuesday, citing a leading expert.

Qin Dahe, the former head of the China Meteorological Administration, made the comment in an otherwise gloomy assessment of the impact that rising temperatures will have on Tibet, according to the China Daily newspaper.

"Warming is good for agriculture and tourism. It has increased the growing season of crops," said Qin, now a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

China is banking on tourism to help fund development in Tibet, one of its poorest regions, hoping that a railway to the region's capital Lhasa will boost visitor numbers.

From January to July this year, more than 2.7 million tourists visited Tibet, nearly triple the number in the same period of 2008, the Tibet Daily said recently.

While agriculture and tourism stand to benefit, Qin underlined a series of negative consequences that global warming will have in Tibet and surrounding areas.

Temperatures are rising four times faster than elsewhere in China, and the Tibetan glaciers are retreating at a higher speed than in any other part of the world, he told the paper.

"In the short term, this will cause lakes to expand and bring floods and mudflows," Qin told the paper.

"In the long run, the glaciers are vital lifelines for Asian rivers, including the Indus and the Ganges. Once they vanish, water supplies in those regions will be in peril."

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India must tread 'greener' path to growth: PM

Yahoo News 18 Aug 09;

NEW DELHI (AFP) – Prime Minister Manmohan Singh acknowledged India must tread a greener path on Tuesday, even as he blamed rich nations for expecting developing countries to pay for decades of environmental neglect.

"Our growth strategy can be and should be innovative and different," Singh told a meeting of state environment ministers in New Delhi.

"We can and we must walk a different road, an environment-friendly road."

India requires new technology to offset "multiple environmental crises," including drought, water shortages and pollution, he added.

India's carbon emissions are among the world's highest and it has been criticised for refusing to accept binding emission cuts as part of a new international climate treaty to replace the Kyoto protocol.

India argues that its per capita emissions are very low -- the average Indian produces one tonne of carbon dioxide per year to the average American's 20 tonnes.

It also insists that it is unfair for developing countries to be penalised for centuries of polluting industrial activity by wealthier nations.

"In dealing with the challenge of climate change and environmental degradation we face the unfair burden of past mistakes not of our making," Singh said.

"But, as we go forward in the march of development we have the opportunity not to repeat those past mistakes."

India and fellow emerging market heavyweight China have consistently opposed binding carbon emission reductions, arguing that countries such as the United States should first present sufficient targets of their own.

India Must Invest In Green Technology: PM Singh
Krittivas Mukherjee, PlanetArk 19 Aug 09;

NEW DELHI - India's prime minister said on Tuesday the country must invest in its own environmentally friendly technologies, the latest in myriad pledges from one of the world's biggest polluters to fight climate change.

Manmohan Singh's comments underlined how India was seeking to undercut demands by rich nations for it to do more to curb carbon emissions. New Delhi has constantly resisted emissions targets, saying it will take its own unilateral action to cut pollution.

Global negotiations for a new U.N. agreement on climate change are stuck on the question of how much cash or technology rich nations will provide the poorer countries.

Singh's comments also signaled that India, the world's fourth-largest polluter, was willing to put in money to develop expensive clean technologies to supplement what it might get from rich countries.

"Our growth strategy can be different. It must be different," the prime minister said, referring to the western world's decades of industrialization that is blamed for climate change.

He said India's energy use will rise sharply in the coming decades as it tries to lift a multitude out of poverty, but stressed a different development path must be walked.

"For this we need access to new technologies that are already available with developed countries. We must also make our own investments in new environment-friendly technologies," he told a national conference on environment and forests in New Delhi.

India has already announced several steps to fight global warming, such as ramping up solar power investment, expanding forest cover and bringing in domestic energy efficiency trading.

"In dealing with the challenge of climate change and environmental degradation we face the unfair burden of past mistakes not of our making," Singh said.

"However, as we go forward in the march of development we have the opportunity not to repeat those mistakes."

With about 500 million people, or about half the population lacking access to electricity and relying on dirty coal to expand the power grid, India's booming economy has huge potential to leap-frog to a low-carbon future.

But it says it needs a little hand-holding by rich countries to keep it on the right path.

(Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Alex Richardson)

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El Nino development slows: Australia

Reuters 19 Aug 09;

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The development of a potentially damaging El Nino weather pattern has not intensified in the past two weeks, though the odds remain in favor of 2009 being an El Nino year, Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said on Wednesday.

In its fortnightly review, the bureau said the coupling between the ocean and atmosphere which amplifies and maintains El Nino events has so far failed to eventuate.

The bureau had said on Tuesday that the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) for the 30 days to Aug 15 was minus 4, down from minus 2 the previous week and pointing to a strengthening El Nino weather pattern.

The SOI is a major indicator of an El Nino. A consistently negative SOI points to the development of an El Nino weather pattern which can bring drought conditions to Australia and weaken Asian monsoons, damaging crop and livestock production.

The SOI measures the pressure difference between the Pacific island of Tahiti and the Australian city of Darwin.

For the bureau's full report see: www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/

(Reporting by Jonathan Standing; Editing by Michael Perry)

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Best of our wild blogs: 18 Aug 09

The River In Between
from the brand new blog of a brand new group Fish, Respect And Protect working on reaching out to local fishermen on more environmentally friendly fishing.

Reuben Clements asks “Is there hope for rhinos, elephants and tigers in Malaysia?” a talk on Fri 18 Sep 2009: 7pm @ NUS DBS Conference Room from The Biodiversity crew @ NUS

Wildfacts updates: shared sightings updated
from wild shores of singapore

Pulau Ubin - Lontong
from Singapore Nature

Baya Weaver, acacia and pennisetum grass
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Red Shanks are here!
from Biodiversity Singapore

Spikey
from The annotated budak

HortPark - GardenTech
from Singapore Nature

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First solar-powered charging station in Singapore

Judith Tan, Straits Times 18 Aug 09;

SINGAPORE'S green industry has been given another boost.

The first electric vehicle (EV) charging station that harnesses energy solely from the sun was launched yesterday.

It traps sunlight using four roof-mounted panels to generate an average of of 3.15kwh a day - enough to charge four electric scooters a day.

Located at the Singapore Polytechnic, the $30,000 standalone station is an expansion of Greenlots, a network of charging spots for EVs being built here by Singapore-based green energy company Zeco Systems.

There are currently four Greenlots: at Ikea's outlets in Tampines and Alexandra Road, at the Insead campus and at the Swiss Club. But these tap into Singapore's main power grid.

While Singapore is keen to embark on viable green technologies, the enthusiasm for EVs seems to be taking a long time to transform into reality.

Only three electric scooters, each costing about $8,000, have been sold since they were launched here in January.

'Consumers are not buying EVs because of the lack of places to charge them,' said Mr Jan Croeni, managing director of Zeco Systems.

'Infrastructure is also not being set up because of the low demand for EVs,' he added, calling it a 'chicken-and-egg issue'.

Agreeing, chairman of the Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore (SEAS) Edwin Khew cited the example of cars using compressed natural gas (CNG).

'CNG is cheaper but the problem was a lack of infrastructure. There were only two filling stations until the new one opened at Old Toh Tuck Road near Jurong East recently. Before it did, the lines of cars waiting to fill up were long,' he said.

There are currently about 4,200 CNG vehicles here.

Mr Croeni said his company hoped to launch more Greenlots as part of Singapore's Green Plan 2012.

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