Climate change to hit water-scarce Arab world hard

Dina Zayed, Reuters 25 Nov 09;

CAIRO (Reuters) - Climate change is likely to hit the water-starved Arab world harder than many other parts of the globe and threatens to slash agricultural output in the area, U.N. and Arab League officials said.

Arab governments have shown more awareness of the issue but need to cooperate further to improve research and policies to protect vulnerable groups, including women who could bear the burden of adapting to increased water scarcity, they said.

"Climate change will be critical for the Arab world because this region in particular already suffers from poverty, widespread aridity, water scarcity and social marginalization," said Sima Bahous, Deputy Secretary General for Social Development in the Arab League.

Fifteen percent of people in the Arab world already have limited or no access to potable water, the officials said, speaking on Tuesday at the launch in Cairo of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) report on climate change.

The report was released worldwide on November 18, ahead of U.N. climate change talks in Copenhagen in December.

UNFPA Regional Director for Arab States Hafedh Chekir said that, while 80 percent of Arab world water consumption was for agriculture, climate change induced scarcity was expected to cut food production by half in the region.

Henrietta Aswad, regional communication adviser for UNFPA, said more cooperation between the Arab League, UNFPA, and Arab non-governmental entities was needed to help governments draw up appropriate policies.

"Awareness in the Arab region is getting better at this point and governments are aware of the impact of climate change," she said.

"Yet more studies and data need to be conducted to basically have a better assessment of the real impact especially on vulnerable groups in the region," she added.

The UNFPA report did not outline specific policies for the region but said policies should focus on women, children and the elderly because these groups were likely to carry a bigger burden of adapting to water scarcity and climate change.

It said the disproportionate burden on women can create "a cycle of deprivation, poverty and inequality."

Chekir said Egypt, where most of the 77 million population are crammed into Nile Valley and low lying Delta, could be one of the world's countries worst effected by climate change.

A previous U.N. study said 8 million people could be displaced by a one meter rise in sea levels flooding the Delta, a major agricultural production area. Egypt is already the world's biggest wheat importer.

"We want to integrate the human element into environmental policy making," Chekir said.

The report said slower population growth would help build social resilience to the impact of climate change and would help reduce green-house gas emissions in future.

(Editing by Edmund Blair)

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New Zealand Passes Carbon Trade Laws, Australia Edges Closer

Gyles Beckford and James Grubel, PlanetArk 26 Nov 09;

WELLINGTON/CANBERRA - New Zealand's revised emissions trading plan passed into law on Wednesday, while neighboring Australia moved a step closer to ending a deadlock stalling its carbon-trade legislation ahead of a vote this week.

Australia and New Zealand are not big greenhouse gas emitters in total, but passage of their carbon reduction schemes will give U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen in December a boost.

"It is a critical and important first step in our nation's effort to do our fair share in combating climate change," New Zealand Climate Change Minister Nick Smith told parliament after the carbon-trade scheme became law.

The scheme is only the second to pass into law after Europe's began in 2005. It will start in July 2010, but for a two-and-half-year period industry will only have to meet 50 percent of their targets with a slow phase-out of assistance after that.

In Australia, the Senate rejected a move to delay a vote on the government's carbon-trade scheme, suggesting the once defeated legislation should gain final approval this week.

The scheme is scheduled to start in July 2011, covering 1,000 of Australia's biggest polluters and become the world's most comprehensive outside of the European scheme. It aims to put a price on every tonne of carbon dioxide emissions, giving industry an incentive to become more efficient.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who will play a key negotiating role at Copenhagen, says passage of his carbon-trade laws will send a message to world leaders to curb greenhouse gases which are driving climate change.

"No country needs to send the message more than Australia," Treasurer Wayne Swan told parliament, echoing Rudd's stance. "We are one of the hottest and driest continents. We are hit hardest, and we are hit fastest by dangerous climate change."

The United States, the world's number two emitter of greenhouse gases after China, will be eyeing developments in both nations as its lawmakers make slow progress on a climate bill in the Senate.

NZ, AUSTRALIA COMPENSATE POLLUTERS

Australia's carbon-trade plan aims to cut emissions by at least 5 percent from 2000 levels by 2020, or up to 25 percent if nations agree on an ambitious climate pact during U.N. negotiations.

New Zealand has a reduction target of between 10 and 20 percent by 2020 on 1990 levels, depending on the outcome from Copenhagen.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that sets a 17 percent reduction target for emissions by 2020 from 2005 levels. A Senate version is shooting for a 20 percent cut.

Big emitters such as China are watching Washington for its position.

In a boost to the Copenhagen meeting, the United States said this week it will propose an emissions reduction target with an eye toward winning support from U.S. lawmakers who must agree to put it into law.

New Zealand and Australia have had to substantially increase compensation to big emitters, coal companies and electricity generators to gain backing for their schemes.

Australia will give its coal industry A$1.5 billion in compensation over five years, while its electricity sector will receive A$7.3 billion. The country is the world's biggest coal exporter and coal generates about 84 percent of its electricity.

New Zealand said it increased compensation to big emitters as it wanted its scheme to be closely aligned to Australia's.

Both nations are major agricultural exporters. Canberra has excluded the sector from its scheme, while Wellington has delayed the entry of agriculture, which accounts for about half of its emissions, until 2015.

Green groups and carbon market experts are critical of both schemes, saying they give too much compensation to big polluters and would do little to reduce emissions.

"It's a very poor mechanism to reduce emissions and ensuring a price on carbon. Why are we handing over billions of dollars to industry? It's just another form of subsidy," said Paul Winn, forest and climate campaigner for Greenpeace Australia, referring to the changes to the Australian scheme.

An independent adviser on environmental issues to the New Zealand parliament said the changes to that country's scheme gave too many free carbon permits and removed incentive to move to low-carbon technology.

"It's virtually certain our emissions will grow and the burden on the taxpayer will be uncurbed," Jan Wright told Radio NZ on Wednesday.

Wayne King of advisory firm Carbon Market Solutions agreed the amended NZ scheme would not do much to reduce emissions initially, but said it would give certainty to business.

He also expected it would take some time for a liquid carbon trading market to evolve in New Zealand given the large amount of free carbon pollution permits being given to industry.

In Australia, groups critical of the carbon-trade scheme urged for its passage into law, hoping that once in place the government might be persuaded to increase reduction targets.

"Now is the time to move on and ensure this legislation is a springboard for ambitious global action," said John Connor, CEO of independent think-tank The Climate Institute.

(Editing by David Fogarty)

New Zealand passes climate change emissions law
Yahoo News 25 Nov 09;

WELLINGTON (AFP) – New Zealand's parliament Wednesday approved a scheme aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, but critics immediately said it did not go far enough in the fight against global warming.

The trading scheme, which allocates credits to polluters and allows them to be bought and sold, is a watered down version of one proposed by the previous government.

"It is an important first step for New Zealand in doing our fair share on climate change after 15 years of debate," Climate Change Issues Minister Nick Smith said.

Critics say the centre-right National Party-led government's reduction of the costs to businesses and the exclusion of agriculture from the scheme until 2015 means there will be little incentive for polluting industries to cut carbon dioxide and methane emissions.

"We have revised the scheme start up to take into account the recession as we do not wish to snuff out the fragile recovery," Smith said.

A transitional phase to 2013 will see the government subsidise polluters with credits to halve their costs under the scheme.

Prime Minister John Key's government has pledged New Zealand will cut its emissions by 10 percent if other developed nations sign a comprehensive treaty and by up to 20 percent depending on the form of the final treaty, which was set to be hammered out in Copenhagen next month.

However, there is widespread scepticism about the prospects for success at the United Nations climate change conference.

Key's government garnered the votes to pass the law Wednesday after gaining the support of the small indigenous Maori Party in parliament.

In return Key agreed to compensate some Maori tribes whose forestry businesses would have been hurt by the emissions scheme.

The Opposition Labour Party said the legislation was "environmentally counter-productive and fiscally unsustainable".

The emissions trading scheme fails to put a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and was too generous in allocating free carbon credits, a party spokesman said.

Read more!

Best of our wild blogs: 25 Nov 09

Hantu Island an experimental site for costal protection design
from Pulau Hantu

Rich Biodiversity @ Temasek Junior College Part 2
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature

Jurong Sec bags two top video awards with green documentary
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales

Tanjong Piai - Largest Ramsar Site in the World
from Mountain and Sea

Week of Poo
from Rhino by WWF-Vietnam

Three New Additions to the Best Marine Invertebrate Blog Post
from Southern Fried Science

A sad encounter with migratory Amur Falcons in Nagaland
from Bird Ecology Study Group

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Electric car an electric dream in Singapore

Tony Ng, My Paper, Asia One 25 Nov 09;

BY SEPTEMBER next year, electric cars will hit our shores in a big way.

Japanese carmaker Mitsubishi will bring in electric cars for a three-year infrastructure study that will cost the Government $20 million.

Electric cars offer many advantages: By 2020, we stand to reduce our land-transport sector's carbon emissions by up to 4 per cent, even if only 2 per cent of our vehicle population is made up of electric cars.

But will these vehicles take off here?

After all, it appears costly and difficult to get Singaporeans to adopt the Japanese penchant for recycling - the most basic thing we can do to be environmentally friendly.

Past experience has shown that Singaporeans are not really keen on green and are more likely to adopt eco-friendly habits based on price and practicality.

For instance, compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles have failed to take off despite feasibility studies in the 1990s.

The inadequate number of CNG fuelling stations makes it impractical to own such cars. The gas tank also takes up a lot of space in the boot.

Even though there was a boom in CNG car sales last year, it occurred partly because of sky-high petrol prices. Once petrol prices went down, the CNG spike died off.

Clean-diesel cars aren't going anywhere either. As of the end of last month, there were only 36 clean-diesel cars on the road, up from four such cars in 2007.

Then there's the price tag to consider. The $160,000 i-MiEV - the electric car that Mitsubishi will bring in next year - is priced well out of the majority's reach.

Its petrol variant, in contrast, costs less than $60,000.

Meanwhile, carmakers have yet to reveal the carbon footprint of an electric car.

We may take pride in reducing our carbon emissions, but could we be indirectly contributing to emissions instead?

We have not, for example, taken into consideration the manufacturing processes involved in producing and transporting these vehicles.

Reportedly, the health and environmental costs of making electric cars can be 20 per cent higher than those of conventional cars.

What's more, the materials in electric-car batteries are hard to produce. Some of the carbon emission-friendly hybrids on our roads today use metals that are already becoming rarer as the demand for hybrids and electric cars takes off.

Neodymium is one such metal.

Already, there are predictions that the supply of this material will not meet worldwide demand in a few years.

Also, are drivers here willing to adapt to electric cars?

On an island where the most popular type of car is the large multi-purpose vehicle, can the tiny i-MiEV take off?

Carmakers will have to address the concerns over passenger space by adopting different body styles for electric vehicles.

Finally, let's not forget that electric cars are silent - they may cut back noise pollution, but it will take time for drivers to give up the addictive roar of a petrol engine.

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$20m for upgrading Bukit Timah diversion canal: PUB

Felda Chay, Business Times 25 Nov 09;

ABOUT $20 million will be spent on the first stage of widening and deepening the Bukit Timah diversion canal to prevent a repeat of last Thursday's floods, national water agency PUB said yesterday.

Upgrading works on the stretch of the canal running from Wilby Road to the junction of Sixth Avenue will start in the third quarter of next year and will be completed in two years.

PUB will also install a water level sensor next week to give early warning of rising water levels in the Bukit Timah Canal near Blackmore Drive, said the director of its catchment and waterways department Tan Nguan Sen. PUB will notify traffic police and nearby condominiums if the water rises 'above a certain level'.

A second phase of upgrading works is also on the cards to expand the remaining stretch of the canal. This phase is set to start in 2011. When completed, the width of the canal, now 11 metres on average, will be expanded to 26m. It will be able to hold about twice the amount of water it can carry now. The three kilometre canal, stretching from Sixth Avenue to Sungei Ulu Pandan, overflowed last Thursday. Floodwater was knee-high in some places, and underground carparks in three buildings were flooded.

PUB is also working with Holland-Bukit Timah GRC to encourage the management of condos such as Corona Ville, where the basement carpark was flooded, to build physical crests to prevent water flowing in.

Mr Tan said that the flooding was caused by 'heavy and intense' rainfall over the Bukit Timah area, with 110 millimetres of rain - equivalent to about 115 Olympic-size pools of water.

The canal was built in 1972 as part of the Bukit Timah Flood Alleviation Scheme - a government project to divert water away from Bukit Timah, a low-lying area with a history of flooding.

Upgrading the canal is part of long-term planning for the area and has been planned even before the recent flood, Mr Tan said. This is in anticipation of increased storm water run-off - caused by a drop in grass-covered areas as a result of new developments in the area over the next 10 to 15 years.

Work to expand canals next year
Capacity of Bukit Timah Canal will be doubled from Wilby Road to Sixth Avenue
Amresh Gunasingham, Straits Times 25 Nov 09;

A DIVERSION canal which overflowed last Thursday and flooded parts of Bukit Timah Road will be expanded over two phases in the next three years, said the national water agency yesterday.

The tender has closed for the first phase, which will be a $20 million facelift to double the capacity of the main Bukit Timah Canal at its juncture with the diversion canal. This is the portion stretching from Wilby Road to Sixth Avenue.

A floodgate located at the Sixth Avenue junction to divert water from the main canal into the three-decade-old diversion was unable to contain rising water levels from 92mm of rain being dumped over half an hour. The rainfall is the second-biggest in the last two decades over the same period, following the 96mm in November 1995.

This caused water levels in the main canal to rise and breach the low-lying stretch from Third Avenue to Coronation Road.

PUB said construction would probably start in the third quarter of next year, and take two years.

The second phase will see the 3km diversion canal, stretching from Sixth Avenue to Sungei Ulu Pandan, widened in parts from 11m to more than 20m. It will also be deepened from the present 4m. Work on this phase is expected to start in two years.

The PUB will also install a sensor system along the Bukit Timah Canal near Blackmore Drive next week, to provide early warning to police and nearby developments if the canal's water level is rising.

Last Thursday, at the flood's height - between 1pm and 2pm - the floodwater was knee-deep, throwing traffic in Bukit Timah into chaos.

Property and cars were damaged as three underground carparks were partially submerged.

The diversion canal was built in 1972 and sized according to how much development there was in the area as well as economic considerations, said Mr Tan Nguan Sen, director of catchment and waterways at PUB, yesterday.

'We did not want to build oversized canals that would not be used to their full capacity.'

Since then, housing and infrastructure developments have burgeoned on the road, a key factor in the volume of water flowing over the surface.

Land scarcity limits the size of drainage systems so they cannot cater to every extreme event, said Mr Tan.

To cope with last week's volume of rainfall, the diversion canal would have to be 30m wide.

The buildings which had their basement carparks submerged are hoping to avoid a similar occurrence in future.

Corona Ville condominium, one of the three, has a drainage system linked directly to the diversion canal which overflowed.

PUB is in discussions with its management to install pump systems in the carpark. It is also talking to the Holland-Bukit Timah GRC about installing physical barriers such as sandbags to prevent water flowing into other developments.

The flood comes three years after one of Singapore's worst floodings in recent history. In December 2006, 345mm of rain fell over a 20-hour period, the third-highest in the last 75 years. Parts of the island from Thomson Road to Yio Chu Kang were submerged and landslides were triggered in Mandai Road and Bukit Batok West Avenue 2.

PUB to install water level sensors at affected flood areas at Bt Timah
Hoe Yeen Nie, Channel NewsAsia 24 Nov 09;

SINGAPORE : As a result of the massive flood along Bukit Timah Road last Thursday, PUB, the national water agency will install water level sensors next week to warn of potential floods.

PUB has also started widening canals along Bukit Timah Road.

On the November 19, a freak downpour dumped 92 millimetres of rain on the Bukit Timah area in 30 minutes, about half the amount Singapore sees in the entire month alone.

On regular days, a diversion canal off the main Bukit Timah canal helps to channel water into Sungei Ulu Pandan.

But last Thursday, PUB said the intensity of the storm meant that the diversion canal could not drain water away quickly enough, resulting in massive flooding along Bukit Timah Road.

PUB stressed that the problem does not lie with the canal system as floodwaters drained away within an hour.

Due to the rainy season, PUB had increased inspections of flood-prone areas. But Bukit Timah was not one of them.

PUB said that is because two diversion canals built in the last 30 years had been effective in draining water away from the low-lying areas. However, following the flood, PUB will install a water level sensor at the main canal near Blackmore Drive.

PUB will be alerted when the canal is 50 per cent full. It will then warn residents and traffic police of potential flooding.

It said the sensor "is enough" to alert residents of further floods, and comes on top of on-the-ground monitoring when there are heavy rains in the area.

PUB added that it will soon widen the diversion canal, from its current 11 metres on average to 26 metres. This will allow the diversion canal to cope with more intense downpours.

"We noticed that over the past few years, there have been a lot of new condominiums developed. This has changed the land surface type from grass areas to concrete surfaces. Because of that, the amount of run-off has increased," explained Tan Nguan Sen, director of Catchment and Waterways, PUB.

Upgrading works also include widening the stretch of the main canal between Wilby Road and Maple Avenue. Work will begin late next year and will be completed in 2012.

PUB said there are only about 80 hectares, or 160 football fields, of flood-prone areas in Singapore. This is down from over 3,000 hectares in the 1970s, after authorities carried out extensive works to improve drainage systems. - CNA /ls

Developers must bear cost of flood prevention steps
Straits Times Forum 25 Nov 09;

MR CHRISTOPHER de Souza, the MP overseeing Bukit Timah, was reported stating that he would be looking into getting the management of private buildings in the area to enhance measures to prevent flooding in their basement carparks ('Working on flood controls', Monday).

I am surprised that the residents and officials accompanying Mr de Souza did not discuss what could be done to eliminate the flooding problem to existing and future developments in the area.

Why must owners in these private buildings enhance measures? Should it not be the responsibility of the developers?

Developments alongside the Bukit Timah Canal are susceptible to flash floods judging from historical evidence. I am baffled that professional builders and developers did not take this fundamental problem into account when they started work on the projects. If they had done their due diligence, residents would not have been so unpleasantly affected by last Thursday's deluge.

We are told that widening of the canals has been ongoing for many years. Yet, the flooding problem has not stopped.

Ultimately, the people responsible for flood safety are the developers and their professional consultants. It is they, and not the residents, who should bear the cost of repairs and preventive measures.

Michael Yeo

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Shark feeding at Underwater World Sentosa

Go on, feed the sharks, they're babes
Straits Times 25 Nov 09;


Woodlands Primary pupil Abigail Lee (third from left) offering a slice of raw fish to a nurse shark, one of 20 baby sharks belonging to five species that are on display at the Underwater World Singapore in Sentosa. -- ST PHOTO: STEPHANIE YEOW

TWENTY baby sharks have been put together in a pool for display at the Underwater World Singapore (UWS) - to help change the frightening image of these much-maligned creatures of the deep.

Visitors can use a stick to feed fish to five different species of sharks - leopard, bamboo, white tip, black tip and nurse. Bamboo sharks can grow up to 90cm while nurse sharks can reach 5m.

The 20 sharks are all part of the UWS' shark-breeding programme which started when the aquarium opened in May 1991.

Professor Leo Tan, director of special projects at the National University of Singapore's science faculty, was the guest of honour at yesterday's launch, where children from St Hilda's and Woodlands primary schools fed the sharks and took part in workshops.

Prof Tan said it is important that children who grow up in the city are not divorced from nature.

Sharks, he said, play a vital role in the ocean's eco-system. 'Man eating sharks is more dangerous than man-eating sharks,' he said in reference to shark's fin soup, a popular dish in many Chinese restaurants here and in Asia.

'They are the doctors of the sea. Their role in the food chain is not to keep us out of the water but to ensure all the fish we eat are healthy as they eat only fish which cannot swim fast enough,' he said.

Marine biologist Anthony Chang, the curator at UWS, hopes the exhibit will help visitors see sharks as fellow occupants of the planet and not as something to be feared. 'They will look at the baby sharks and see how fragile they are.'

He pointed out that while the sharks in the nursery are known to be mild, black tip and white tip sharks have been known to bite - but only when provoked or when there is blood in the water.

When the 20 sharks become too big for the nursery, they will be moved to larger tanks or exchanged for other fishes with aquariums or zoos around the world.

Feeding times for the sharks are at 11.30am and 4.30pm daily.

The UWS yesterday also pledged its support for the United Nations' International Year of Biodiversity 2010. For more information, go to www.underwaterworld.com.sg/conservation.htm

VICTORIA VAUGHAN

Sharks Nursery at Underwater World to allow visitors to feed sharks
Dylan Loh, Channel NewsAsia 24 Nov 09;

SINGAPORE : If you are visiting Singapore's Underwater World, you can now try your hand at feeding sharks.

A new attraction - the Sharks Nursery - aims to raise awareness about the endangered animals.

The fearsome-looking creatures have garnered a bad reputation as man-eating predators due to popular culture. But they are often the ones preyed on by humans, who hunt them for their fins.

The Sharks Nursery hopes to clear their reputation by educating the public on facts about the animals. For example, sharks are important for maintaining the ocean's ecosystem by controlling fish populations. - CNA /ls

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Dirt 'can be good for children'

BBC News 23 Nov 09;

Children should be allowed to get dirty, according to scientists who have found being too clean can impair the skin's ability to heal.

Normal bacteria living on the skin trigger a pathway that helps prevent inflammation when we get hurt, the US team discovered.

The bugs dampen down overactive immune responses that can cause cuts and grazes to swell, they say.

Their work is published in the online edition of Nature Medicine.

Experts said the findings provided an explanation for the "hygiene hypothesis", which holds that exposure to germs during early childhood primes the body against allergies.

Many believe our obsession with cleanliness is to blame for the recent boom in allergies in developed countries.

'Good' bacteria

Researchers from the School of Medicine at University of California, San Diego, found a common bacterial species, known as Staphylococci , blocked a vital step in a cascade of events that led to inflammation.

By studying mice and human cells, they found the harmless bacteria did this by making a molecule called lipoteichoic acid or LTA, which acted on keratinocytes - the main cell types found in the outer layer of the skin.

The LTA keeps the keratinocytes in check, stopping them from mounting an aggressive inflammatory response.

Head of the research Professor Richard Gallo said: "The exciting implication of the work is that it provides a molecular basis to understand the hygiene hypothesis and has uncovered elements of the wound repair response that were previously unknown.

"This may help us devise new therapeutic approaches for inflammatory skin diseases."

The lobby group Parents Outloud said the work offered scientific support for its campaign to stop children being mollycoddled and over-sanitised.

A spokeswoman for Allergy UK said there was a growing body of evidence that exposure to germs was a good thing.

But she said more research was needed.

"Rates of allergy have tripled in the UK in the last decade. One in three people now has some kind of allergy.

"Some of this might be that people are better informed. But a lot of it is genetic as well as down to our environment," she said.

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Orang utans reintroduced to the wild with transmitter implants

Orang utan with implants
Muguntan Vanar, The Star 24 Nov 09;

KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Wildlife Department marked a milestone with its orang utan rehabilitation when it became the first in the world to use transmitter implants to monitor progress of the primates reintroduced into the wild.

The transmitter, the size of a 50-sen coin, developed by Austrian university professors would help orang utan conservationists to keep track of rehabilitated primates when they are released.

“Over the years, we have been actively releasing a small number of orang utan back into the forest, however we have had no way of monitoring them after release,” said state Wildlife Department director Laurentius Ambu.

“Being primates with hands like ours, placing a radio-tracking collar on the orang utan was impossible as they could easily take it off.”

To address this issue, the department, which worked with Dr Christian Waltzer and Dr Thierry Petit of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Austria, carried out the first field trial with orang-utan from the Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre late September.

Before coming to Sabah, Dr Waltzer and Dr Petit had tested the method on captive orang utan in France on March 18 this year, to see whether there were any harmful effects on the orang utan, said Laurentius.

He said following the success in France, the department then proceeded with their assistance to implant three orang utan in Sepilok in late September.

According to the department’s Chief Field Veterinarian, Dr Senthilvel Nathan, the three orang utan chosen were doing well and rangers in Sepilok were monitoring them daily.

“After the surgery to place the implants, we have been watching them closely and our rangers have had time to practise with the tracking equipment within the jungle of Sepilok, we are confident about using this method,” he said.

He added that the transmitter was placed in the neck area where the skin was thick and had fat deposits.

The device can also be switched on or off by using a magnet without any surgery.

Malaysia tracks orangutans with implants
Yahoo News 24 Nov 09;

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) – Malaysian wildlife authorities are using electronic implants to keep track of orangutans in a bid to protect the endangered apes after they are freed into the wild, an official said Tuesday.

Laurentius Ambu, wildlife department head in Sabah state on Borneo island, said three orangutans had coin-sized transmitters implanted in their necks in September.

"These are rescued orangutans. Eventually they will be reintroduced into the wild and we would like to monitor their movement, to know how they are doing in the forests," he told AFP.

"We would like to ensure the orangutans are safe."

The three chosen orangutans now live in a sanctuary in Sabah that houses about 250 orangutans in all.

Laurentius said the department aims to gradually install the transmitter on more orangutans in the state, which has about 11,000 of the primates.

Experts say there are about 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans left in the wild, 80 percent of them in Indonesia and the rest in Malaysian's eastern states of Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo island.

A 2007 assessment by the United Nations Environment Program warned that orangutans would be virtually eliminated in the wild within two decades if current rates of deforestation continue.

Orangutan habitats in Malaysia and Indonesia are disappearing as their jungle homes are cleared for logging and to make way for plantations.

Read more!

Elephant moved to Tasik Kenyir

New Straits Times 24 Nov 09;

JERANTUT: Residents of two Felda schemes and a village can now live in peace following the capture of a bull elephant which had been damaging their crops of late.

The 15-year-old animal was relocated to Tasik Kenyir yesterday in an operation using two trained elephants.

Twenty staff from the Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) were involved in the operation to bring the two-tonne animal from the oil palm plantation in Felda Kota Gelanggi 2 to a lorry.

It took them three hours to guide the elephant on to the lorry.

Perhilitan's Kuala Gandah Elephant Unit head Nasaruddin Othman said in the past three months, the elephant had been damaging oil palm and banana trees in Felda Kota Gelanggi Dua, Felda Tekam Utara and Kampung Perak here.

He said the lone animal could have been separated from its herd.

"We had difficulties bringing out the animal as the oil palm plantation was muddy due to heavy rain in the past few days."

The elephant was caught on Saturday after a Perhilitan team tracked it for several days.

Also present during the relocation process were Pulau Tawar assemblyman Datuk Dr Ahmad Shukri Ismail and state Perhilitan director Khairiah Mohd Shariff.

Khairiah said Perhilitan would continue to monitor the movement of the elephant herds in the area to ensure that they did not pose any threat to the villagers.

Khairiah, however, said an animal would only be captured if the threat was serious or if the animal refused to leave areas that were too close to human settlements.

She said various factors had to be taken into consideration before an elephant could be relocated as each process could cost up to RM45,000.

Read more!

Dugong died in Sydney shark nets

Dead dugong caught in Coogee nets
Malcolm Holland, The Daily Telegraph 25 Nov 09;

A DUGONG has been found dead, entangled in the shark nets at Coogee Beach.

It is understood the gentle marine mammal, an extremely rare visitor to Sydney waters, was discovered when the boat which sets the nets checked them this morning.

Dugongs normally inhabit tropical waters but can travel along the east coast in summer with warm south flowing currents.

A spokesman for Industry and Investment NSW confirmed a dugong had been found dead at Coogee.

A Coogee council lifeguard said he understood the dugong had drowned when caught in the nets but could not comment further.

The dugong was to be taken to Taronga Zoo for an autopsy to determine the cause of death, the Industry and Investment NSW spokesman said.

It is understood the last time dugongs, a gentle creature which feeds on seagrasses, were found in Sydney sharks nets was at Bondi and Tamarama in the early 1950s.

NSW Department of Primary Industries statistics reveal five dugongs died in NSW shark nets between 1950 and 1993.

Some conservation groups have attacked the State government's shark netting program because of the numbers of other marine life which can die when caught in the nets.

Earlier this year the state government announced changes to the netting program which would see them checked more often to help marine life like whales, dolphins, sea turtles and stingrays caught in the nets.

They grow up to 3.5m long and 420kg, feed on seagrasses and can live for more than 70 years.

Read more!

Mankind using Earth's resources at alarming rate

Yahoo News 24 Nov 09;

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Humanity would need five Earths to produce the resources needed if everyone lived as profligately as Americans, according to a report issued Tuesday.

As it is, humanity each year uses resources equivalent to nearly one-and-a-half Earths to meet its needs, said the report by Global Footprint Network, an international think tank.

"We are demanding nature's services -- using resources and creating CO2 emissions -- at a rate 44 percent faster than what nature can regenerate and reabsorb," the document said.

"That means it takes the Earth just under 18 months to produce the ecological services humanity needs in one year," it said.

And if humankind continues to use natural resources and produce waste at the current rate, "we will require the resources of two planets to meet our demands by the early 2030s," a gluttonous level of ecological spending that may cause major ecosystem collapse, the report said.

Global Footprint Network calculated the ecological footprint -- the amount of land and sea needed to produce the resources a population consumes and absorb its carbon dioxide emissions -- of more than 100 countries and of the entire globe.

The think-tank worked out how many resources the planet has, how much humans use, and who is using what.

Back in 1961, the entire planet used just over slightly more than half of Earth's biocapacity.

Today, 80 percent of countries use more biocapacity than is available within their borders. They import resources from abroad, deplete their own stocks and fill "waste sinks," such as the atmosphere and ocean, with carbon dioxide.

The average American has an ecological footprint of nine global hectares (23 acres), or the equivalent of 17 US football fields.

The average European's footprint is half that size, but still too big to be sustainable in the long term.

At the other end of the scale are impoverished countries like Malawi, Haiti, Nepal or Bangladesh, where the footprints are around half a global hectare, or 1.25 acres -- often not even enough to provide for basic food, shelter and sanitation, the report said.

But there are relatively easy measures that can be taken to slow the rot.

"In most high-income, industrialized countries like the US and European countries, the biggest part of the ecological footprint is the carbon footprint," Nicole Freeling, a spokeswoman for the Global Footprint Network, told AFP.

"One of the biggest things such a country can do to reduce its ecological footprint is to manage energy more efficiently and effectively -- for example, by investing in renewable energy and clean tech on the one hand, and resource-efficient infrastructure and compact urban development on the other," she said.

Changing consumption habits can also reduce the global footprint.

"While people living at or below subsistence levels may need to increase their consumption to move out of poverty, more affluent people can reduce consumption and still improve their quality of life," Freeling said.

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Indonesia asked to draw up national strategy for UN-REDD

Antara 24 Nov 09;

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - As a tropical-forested country, Indonesia has been asked by the United Nations to draw up a national strategy to reduce emissions from deforestation.

Indonesia and other countries with tropical rain forests are stepping up the fight to combat climate change by taking new initiatives called the UN Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (UN-REDD) program.

Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hassan at a national discussion on climate change here on Monday signed a document on government participation in the UN collaboration program in the UN-REDD program.

The UN-REDD program, to be carried out in a collaboration with the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), was unveiled by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Prime Minister of Norway Jens Stoltenberg in New York last September.

The Indonesian province of Aceh, with its vast forests and willingness to work on REDD issues, will naturally be a focus of the UN-REDD.

In the national discussion, the UNDP Director for Indonesia, Hakan Bjorkman, said the program was intended to assist the developing countries to arrange a REDD scheme.

Norwegian Environment Minister Erik Solheim who was also present in the discussion said his government was financing the initial phase of the UN-REDD program in Indonesia and in other developing countries.

Indonesia and eight other developing countries namely Bolivia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Tanzania, Viet Nam, and Zambia have already expressed formal interest in assistance under the UN-REDD program.

The UN-REDD program will support these countries as part of an international move to include REDD in new and more comprehensive UN climate change arrangements to kick-in post 2012.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the cutting down of forests is now contributing close to 20 per cent of the overall greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere.

The program is aimed at tipping the economic balance in favor of sustainable management of forests so that their formidable economic, environmental and social goods and services benefit countries, communities and forest users while also contributing to important reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Indonesian Environment Minister Muhammad Hatta said he would make coordination with related institutions to make the arrangement of emission reduction scheme from deforestation a success.

"UN-REDD is an inter-sectoral issue and therefore, with other related ministers we will make every effort to make the program a success," Muhammad Hatta said.(*)

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