Policy against environmental damage needs to be firm: NGO

Antara 6 Jun 10;

Banjarbaru, S Kalimantan (ANTARA News) - The local government policy on environmental vandalism must be forceful, said an NGO activist.

"Measures taken by the local government on environmental vandalism committed by an individual or company were still not firm enough," South Kalimantan Walhi (Indonesian Environmental Forum) Executive Director Hegar Wahyu Hidayat said here Sunday.

He said that firmness of the local government and relevant bodies was needed to uphold policies against those who damaged the environment.

Environmental pollution was caused by mining activities in Tapin district and iron ore mining in Kotabaru district.

"Environmental pollution which has been continuing in those districts remain untouched by the law," he said.

Those who are proven to have damaged and polluted the environment must receive legal sanctions, he said.

On the other hand, the government`s stance on the environment which benefits the society must take precedence over providing benefits for individuals and companies in their environmental damaging and ecosystem disruption activities.

"We see that the local government still provides land clearing permits for coal mining and oil palm plantation expansion that show the fact that the society and the environment alignment is still low," he said.

Hopefully, under the newly elected South Kalimantan governor and deputy governor, who asked for partisanship in the society, the people`s welfare would be raised without fearing natural disasters.

"As long as the environment is damaged and not maintained, natural disasters such as floods and landslides might occur, and by the new leader`s policy on the environment the disasters would still increase," he said. (A050/S012)

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Ensuring Redd is not mere pulp fiction

Michael Richardson, for the Straits Times 7 Jun 10;

RECENT developments in curbing high levels of forest loss around the world are promising. They are significant because deforestation, including the clearing of trees from peat swamps in South-east Asia, is the biggest source of global warming emissions from human activity, after fossil fuel burning.

Indonesia has the eighth largest forest area on the planet and half the global total of tropical peatland. It is the world's leading emitter of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from deforestation.

So Indonesia's announcement last month that, starting next January, it will place a two-year moratorium on new permits to clear forests and peatlands is a potentially important advance in a programme to help developing countries protect forests. In fact, advocates of the United Nations-backed forest preservation scheme, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (Redd), argue that it is the fastest and cheapest way to cut greenhouse emissions.

Indonesian officials say they will honour existing forest concessions but use the moratorium to get plantation companies to expand on six million hectares of degraded land that was once covered by trees but is now unproductive.

In return for Indonesia's suspension of forest-clearing permits and other reforms to improve land management, Norway announced that it would provide US$1 billion (S$1.4 billion) to fund the programme. This will mirror similar schemes in Brazil and other major tropical forest nations in South America, Africa, Asia and the South Pacific. A group of developed nations, including Australia, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Norway, Sweden and the United States, have separately pledged more than US$4 billion to pay for Redd.

All this sounds good on paper. But implementing forest conservation schemes poses many challenges. Indonesia illustrates the scale of the challenge.

For a start, how do you ensure that the money paid to cut emissions actually does so and that the benefits flow down to local communities and small farmers, the intended beneficiaries of the scheme?

Some Indonesian officials would like the deal with Norway to be expanded from payments of a fixed sum per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions verifiably reduced through forest preservation, to rewards for efforts to expand forest cover by tree planting.

In January, Indonesia announced that it planned to plant 21 million hectares with trees. This would help achieve President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's commitment to reduce greenhouse emissions by 26 per cent relative to business-as-usual levels by 2020, or as much as 41 per cent with the help of international partners.

Environmentalists have expressed concern that enlarging forest cover in Indonesia would focus on planting commercial timber and oil palm plantations, which they blame for much of the primary forest burning and peatland drainage that have already taken place.

Peatland is formed as plants rot in water-saturated areas. By some measures, it stores nearly 450 billion tonnes of carbon worldwide, substantially more than the 290 billion tonnes held in forests.

Apart from the power of vested commercial interests, widespread corruption and the increasing decentralisation in Indonesia pose challenges. Just last month, Indonesia's anti-graft commission announced that it was investigating corruption in the forestry sector that had cost the state more than US$100 billion. A forestry ministry official explained that a 'big percentage' of companies given permission to use forest resources had broken laws designed to limit damage to the environment and protect Indonesia's rich biodiversity.

Still, the rate of deforestation in Indonesia has reportedly slowed in recent years although it is still expected to reach nearly 1.2 million hectares this year. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in March that Asia had moved from having a net loss of forest cover in the 1990s to having a net gain in the five years to 2005, primarily due to large-scale tree planting in China. However, the FAO found that global deforestation, driven mainly by conversion of forests to agricultural land, continued at 'an alarmingly high rate' of about 13 million hectares per year.

Several months earlier, a group of specialists scaled back the commonly used estimate of deforestation's contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. They said it was now about 15 per cent, including peat degradation, not 20 per cent. But they cautioned that this was a relative decline due to fossil fuel emissions rising faster than deforestation emissions.

Whether Redd programmes can overcome serious obstacles and bring tree loss under control in the primary forests of Indonesia and other tropical forest-rich nations will be a key test of governance reform.

The writer is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

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Biodiversity: The E.U.'s Next Challenge

James Kanter, The New York Times 6 Jun 10;

BRUSSELS — Even as nations struggle to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, the European Union is taking on a potentially more complicated environmental challenge: preserving the world’s biodiversity.

Last week, the European Commission put biodiversity at the center of its annual Green Week conference in Brussels after E.U. environment ministers warned in March against “going beyond the limits of nature,” and after heads of state and government endorsed the ministers’ pledge to halt biodiversity loss in the Union by 2020 and step up efforts to avert such losses globally.

The conference brought together corporate executives, bankers and government ministers to discuss the benefits of healthy soils, fresh water supplies and plentiful forests, and to explore ways to create a framework to maintain them worldwide.

“There is such a thing as finite resources,” Norbert Röttgen, the German environment minister, warned delegates.

“It’s the same as in the case of climate change,” he said, noting that Europeans “need international agreements for biodiversity.”

An ambitious policy on biodiversity represents a new opportunity for the Union to renew a bid for international leadership on environmental issues before a global conference on biodiversity in Nagoya, Japan, in October.

That conference should mark the high point of what the United Nations has dubbed the International Year of Biodiversity, and the Union will be pushing hard for globally binding targets to reverse the loss of plant and animal species.

But there are important strategic considerations for Europe too.

A study called “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity,” financed mainly by the European Commission and Germany, concluded in 2008 that losses of plant life and other organisms could be equivalent to 7 percent of global consumption — representing several trillion dollars annually — by midcentury if current trends are maintained.

The potential costs of inaction are high because societies would have to pay for expensive new equipment like filtration plants to compensate for losses of fresh water. Reduced numbers of insects like bees to pollinate crops and instances of more diseases in humans would put additional strains on the agricultural and medical sectors.

Those phenomena concern Europe because the bloc relies heavily on healthy ecosystems in other parts of the world to develop supplies of new medicines and produce food and feeds.

Within Europe, large numbers of jobs would be at risk if invasive pests made it harder to maintain a successful domestic farming sector, and if tourism declined because of damage to plants and bird life or floods ruined heritage sites.

A key question is what role environmental markets should play in controlling the rush for resources and other forms of environmental damage, and whether other nations would be likely to adopt similar mechanisms if the European Union took the lead.

The Union already has adopted some of the toughest targets for reducing greenhouse gases of any major economy globally. But it remains to be seen whether its main tool to meet those targets, carbon trading, will be effective and catch on more widely.

One popular view — that carbon trading is just another kind of financial chicanery — has further dimmed the prospects for such systems.

But some financiers said the urgency of the problem meant that those concerns should not prevent Europe from spearheading development of new market-based instruments.

“We’ve got brokers comfortable with carbon credits, but they could easily shift their attention to biodiversity credits,” Peter Carter, an associate director of the European Investment Bank, told the conference.

“We’ve learned very many lessons from the carbon market, and we must make sure we build those lessons into any future bio-market,” Mr. Carter said.

Other groups at the conference promoted systems to encourage investments in projects that would restore a site or enhance its ecology in return for tradable credits.

Such systems would work in much the same way that an existing U.N. system awards globally traded carbon credits to investors in projects to cut greenhouse gases.

Another mechanism called habitat banking would create new business opportunities for landowners in Europe to undertake projects to compensate for damage done elsewhere by industries.

As with carbon trading, the inspiration for offsetting damage to nature originally came from the United States, where wetland banking emerged from the 1972 Clean Water Act.

The U.S. act established strict guidelines for projects developed in wetland areas. Those rules eventually gave way to a system that allowed limited wetland development as long as developers purchased offset credits generated by wetland restoration projects, or new projects, elsewhere.

While many of those projects were successes, others failed to attract displaced wildlife species or contribute effectively to water flow management.

The American experience underlined that, unlike greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity often needs protection at the precise locations where it is under threat, and European officials acknowledged that biodiversity trading would be even more problematic than carbon trading.

“When we are talking about the carbon market, we know what we’re targeting,” Karl Falkenberg, the director general for the environment at the European Commission, told the conference.

But converting biodiversity “into one price, into one indicator, into one size of a tradable market, I think that still is a big challenge,” he said.

Even so, the Union still “should work in that direction,” said Mr. Falkenberg, who was referring to market-based systems.

The author of the study from 2008 on the economics of biodiversity, Pavan Sukhdev, took an even more cautious approach.

Mr. Sukhdev, a former chief operating officer for global emerging markets at Deutsche Bank and now a special adviser to the U.N. Environment Program, underlined his view that failure to take measures now to stop depletion of plants, animals and micro-organisms would create even higher costs in the future.

But he appeared to warn against relying on market-based systems or seeking solutions that would permit current behavior to continue, and he called for a fundamental shift in the way citizens and business leaders interacted with nature.

“Will it change when we create some kind of fictitious marketplace?” asked Mr. Sukhdev, referring to trading credits to combat biodiversity loss. Instead, societies needed to cease putting “private wealth above public wealth” to tackle the problem effectively, he said.

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More dugongs found dead in nets in Australia

Kristy Sexton-McGrath ABC 7 Jun 10;

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) says it is investigating the death of two more dugongs in nets off the far north Queensland coast.

A GBRMPA patrol found the dead dugongs in the nets off Yarrabah, south of Cairns.

The incident comes nearly two months after three dugongs were found dead in nets off Cairns.

Animal activist Colin Riddell is campaigning to overturn traditional hunting laws and says a moratorium on dugong killings is needed.

"There needs to be clear guidelines on what humanely [killing] is," he said.

"There needs to be a moratorium placed immediately to ensure sustainable numbers and there needs to be a comprehensive permit system set up so that when they are hunted - it's controlled.

"We [need to] know how many are killed, we know where they are killed, and we know what's left."

Yarrabah patrol uncovers dead dugongs in nets
Ben Blomfield The Cairns Post 7 Jun 10;

THE death of two dugongs found in illegal nets has prompted calls for more rangers to be deployed to catch poachers

The incident near Yarrabah last Thursday comes less than two months after three dugongs were found dead in nets about 3.5 nautical miles off Cairns.

The State and Federal governments are facing increasing pressure to scrap laws which allow traditional land owners to hunt dugongs and turtles using nets with a permit.

Aboriginal elders say the practice is an insult to traditional hunting heritage and that it fuels an
illegal meat trade where dugong can fetch $150 a kilo.

Commercial gains from hunting the animal breaches Commonwealth law.

The incident has sparked fresh calls for more rangers with greater powers to be deployed in areas prone to poaching.

Yarrabah Mayor Percy Neal said his council had rejected requests from dugong hunters to support the use of netting .

"Our people need to hunt the traditional way using 14ft (4.2m)wooden boats with special spears, it’s fair game then," he said.

"It’s not traditional hunting and it shouldn’t be tolerated … but we can’t do anything about it because people have permits from the State Government."

Federal Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt said rangers should be given more power to prosecute poachers while the Government needed to regulate the practice.

"Immediately, we need additional resources for indigenous rangers and more support for inspectors of the illegal dugong and turtle meat trade and their ability to prosecute," Mr Hunt said.

"The slaughtering of dugongs is out of control because of poachers. There is an epidemic of poaching."

Animal activist Colin Riddell, who is heading a campaign to overturn hunting laws, said a moratorium on dugong killing had to be introduced so the numbers could be monitored.

"No one knows how the dugong population has been affected by this," he said.

"Most of these hunters don’t have permits, it’s just open slather."

A spokesman for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, which is investigating the latest dugong deaths, confirmed the
incident.

"The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority found a set net as part of a patrol of the Yarrabah area which had two dead dugongs in it," he said.

Aborigines plead for dugong hunting say
Jessica Mawer ABC 8 Jun 10;

An Aboriginal spokesman is calling for Indigenous people to have greater input into how dugong hunting is managed in far north Queensland.

Five dugongs have been found dead in nets off the far north Queensland coast over the past two months, including two found off Yarrabah, south of Cairns, last week.

Animal activists are calling for a moratorium on dugong hunting.

But Kuku Yalanji people's spokesman at Mossman, Linc Walker, says hunting is an important part of Aboriginal culture.

"It's not an activity that is to be taken lightly. It's a pretty dangerous activity," he said.

"People don't just go out there for fun - it's not a fun activity - you can get seriously injured hunting. You actually have to put up with a lot of emotional scarring as well as the physical scarring that could happen to you."

Mr Walker says people at Mossman say Indigenous people have a right to hunt dugongs and should be given more of a say on how the practice is managed.

"They have the right to hunt in their country, other people don't," he said.

"So when it comes down to it, those people have to be empowered to manage the resources from their country and then the problems with the over-hunting and the people hunting in other places should cease."

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Brazilian Water Protection a $100 Million Market?

Theresa Bradley National Geographic News 4 Jun 10;

This story is part of a special series that explores the global water crisis. For more visit National Geographic's Freshwater website.

Helga Hissa used to get soaked to promote better water management. In presentations to groups of Brazilian small farmers, she’d stand tall as her boss dumped a cup of water on her head, pointing as her wild, curly hair soaked it up. He’d then pour some on a bald volunteer, watching it roll off the man’s scalp and down his back.

The same happens when rain hits deforested land, Hissa’s team at the state agriculture ministry argues. Without vegetation to absorb it, more rain rolls off soil, speeding erosion, polluting water with sediments, and preventing the speedy recharge of reservoirs that supply Brazil’s biggest cities. Hissa and her colleagues want farmers to plant trees to prevent that.

Across Brazil, efforts are under way to recruit and reward rural residents to safeguard water sources and forests that normally retain water. Basically, they are paid to protect and plant trees.

Freshwater is one of Brazil’s most plentiful resources, with the country holding about 15 percent of Earth’s supply. But pollution and potential shortages are jeopardizing the farms and factories that drive the nation’s booming economy. Paying for protection may be the cheapest way to both preserve and naturally purify water, without extra—and expensive—treatment.

Cash incentives also give farmers a reason to cooperate with conservationists and have the potential to jump-start a broader “environmental services” market that could generate more than $100 million (U.S.) a year to fund conservation projects in Brazilian water basins.

The country’s biggest states and the national legislature are considering legislation to regulate such payments, while a dozen pilot programs are already spending tax revenues, environmental fines and water-use fees to encourage conservation.

”There are a lot of environmental problems that people aren’t aware of, but they can see water pollution, they can see erosion; they’re conscious that they have to do something,” said Hissa, now technical coordinator at Rio de Janeiro state’s program for sustainable rural development.

Valuing the Land’s Environmental Contributions

Interest in “payments for environmental services,” or PES, is growing worldwide, pushing landowners to protect forests not only by penalizing illegal cuts, but also by paying for their properties’ positive environmental contributions, including carbon sequestration, biodiversity preservation, and water filtration. Trees planted as buffers along streams, rivers, and lakes can significantly enhance water quality.

Carbon credits, one of the best-known PES vehicles, allow landowners to cash in on the carbon dioxide emissions that their trees absorb from the air, relieving the atmosphere of a portion of global warming gasses. Charging for erosion control or natural water filtration offers a comparatively concrete transaction, as local groups charge water utilities or municipal governments to preserve nearby basins, tapping what the UN calls a $2-billion-a-year (U.S.) market for global watershed services.

“You need to combine the carrot and the stick,” said Marcelo Morgado, environmental adviser to the head of Brazil’s biggest water utility, Sabesp. “A farmer won’t just lie in his hammock and say, ‘Oh, my trees are so beautiful, let me keep them.’ You need to support people to do the right thing.”

New York City pioneered watershed payments in the 1990s, when it avoided building a $4 billion (U.S.) water treatment plant by instead spending less than $2 billion (U.S.) to expand, and help upstate farmers protect, 2,000 square miles (5180 square kilometers) of land, lakes, and reservoirs that naturally filter water for 8 million city dwellers.

Brazilian officials are studying New York’s model and soliciting advice from current and former Empire State officials. The architect of the New York plan, former New York City Department of Environmental Protection commissioner Albert Appleton, insists that paying for conservation rather than cleanup can save any city money—and create revenue for surrounding rural areas.

“Brazilians are beginning to realize that the environment can actually be good for the economy,” Appleton said, recalling talks he had in 2009 with water officials in São Paulo.

Rise of Brazil’s Water Committees

Brazil holds more water than any nation and 2.5 times the U.S. supply, according to the California-based Pacific Institute research center. But those resources are unevenly distributed, with three-quarters in the Amazon—home to just 4 percent of Brazilians—and one twelfth along the southeastern coast, where 47 percent of the population lives, Brazil’s National Water Agency says.

In São Paulo state, an industrial hub of 40 million people, pollution and sediment have caused water treatment costs to quadruple since 1996, utility Sabesp reports, while 30 percent of water is lost each year to leaks and theft in sprawling favela slums, where residents puncture passing pipes to siphon supply, according to state data.

Federal water policy initially ignored such problems, focusing instead on hydropower, which provides 85 percent of Brazil’s electricity. But a 1997 law finally gave water economic value, creating a network of more than 80 local watershed committees empowered to charge and spend “water-use” fees levied on consumers.

Brazilians now pay less than 80 cents (U.S.) per cubic meter (35 cubic feet) of water, according to Ronaldo Seroa, an environmental specialist at Brazil’s Institute for Applied Economic Research—slightly less than New Yorkers. Still, studies suggest that São Paulo’s 22 watershed committees will together collect at least 140 million reals ($75 million U.S.) a year by 2011, which they could spend on preservation, said Renato Armelin, a technical manager at the state’s Environment Ministry.

A bill now before Brazil’s congress would promote that sort of spending, creating a PES registry and funneling part of the nation’s swelling oil income to farmers who conserve forests. A vote is expected after general elections in October 2010. São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are drafting similar laws, while Espirito Santo, a top oil-producing state, already sends 3 percent of oil royalties to a water fund that rewards conservation. National Water Agency programs also provide about $28 (U.S.) per year per acre of land preserved.

Environmental economists suggest using water fees to protect public property, too. Researchers found it would cost affected consumers an extra 41 cents (U.S.) per year—about 0.0001 percent of Brazil’s minimum annual wage—to preserve Tres Picos, Rio’s largest state park.

Such costs are too small to hurt individual water users, but in sum offer water stewards a real incentive. That combination of affordability and impact could make watershed services a key building block for the larger environmental services market, drawing unlikely partners to preservation, said Fernando Veiga, environmental services manager at The Nature Conservancy in Curitiba.

“Now there’s common ground for agricultural and environmental guys to move beyond their old disputes about the environment versus development,” Veiga said. “This kind of watershed approach can actually bring us together.”

Theresa Bradley reported from Brazil as a fellow for the International Reporting Project.

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UN warns climate change could trigger 'mega-disasters'

Madeleine Coorey Yahoo News 7 Jun 10;

SYDNEY (AFP) – Weather-related catastrophes brought about by climate change are increasing, the top UN humanitarian official said Sunday as he warned of the possibility of "mega-disasters".

John Holmes, the UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, said one of the biggest challenges facing the aid community was the problems stemming from changing weather patterns.

"When it comes meteorological disasters, weather-related disasters, then there is a trend upwards connected with climate change," Holmes, who is in Australia for high-level talks on humanitarian aid, told AFP.

"The trend is there is terms of floods, and cyclones, and droughts."

Holmes, who is the UN's emergency relief coordinator, said it had been a tough year due to January's devastating earthquake in Haiti, which killed more than 250,000 people.

He said while earthquakes, such as the 7.0-magnitude quake which levelled the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, were random, weather-related natural disasters were increasing in number and scale.

"It's partly the very obvious things like the number of cyclones and the intensity of the cyclones, and the amount of flooding," he said.

"But is also in slightly more invisible ways -- in Africa with drought spreading, desertification spreading."

Holmes said officials were particularly concerned about places where a combination of factors -- such as large populations, or likelihood of earthquake, or susceptibility to rising sea levels -- made them more vulnerable.

"One of things we worry about is mega cities could produce, at some point, a mega disaster," he said.

"Cities like Kathmandu for example, which sits on two earthquake faults, where a large earthquake will come along... and the results could be catastrophic."

Holmes said while some countries were well-prepared for disaster -- such as Chile which was hit with a massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake in February which left 520 people dead -- others such as Haiti were less able to manage.

"That's one of the reasons we want to focus on not just how we respond to disaster, we need to do that, but how you reduce the impact of those disasters before they happen," Holmes said.

In Haiti, the situation remained serious, he said, with some 1.5 million people living in makeshift shelters and little prospect of this changing soon.

"There are real concerns about how vulnerable people still are, despite all the efforts that have been made," he said.

Holmes said the need for humanitarian aid was rising faster than resources were available, particularly given the long-running conflicts in areas such as Sudan's Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

At the same time, climate change would likely set in chain migration due to drought or rising sea levels or conflicts due to a scarcity of water or arable land in coming years and these would place more pressure on funds.

"So all these things are going to create more problems for us, and we're really just coming to grips with what the consequences might be," Holmes said.

"And you can construct some extremely scary scenarios for yourself without too much trouble.

"For example, about what the effect might be of glaciers melting in the Himalayas. Now we don't quite know whether that's happening, or will happen, or not. But if it did, what would the effect be on the major river systems of southern Asia?"

Holmes said while a decade ago, climate change was not on officials' radars, "now it's on everybody's agenda."

"Climate change for us is not some future indeterminate threat, it's happening in front of our eyes," he said. "We can see it."

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Best of our wild blogs: 6 Jun 10

World Environment Day - Coastal Cleanup - Marine threats
from Psychedelic Nature

World Environment Day @ Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve
from colourful clouds

Life History of the Striped Albatross
from Butterflies of Singapore

Two Common Blues @ Toa Payoh Town Park
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora

Ghostly encounters and a little fisher
from ashira

A less common feeding behaviour of the Paddyfield Pipit
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Raffles Museum Treasures: Hawksbill turtle
from Lazy Lizard's Tales

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Oil-smeared Pengerang beaches cleaned up

The Star 6 Jun 10;

JOHOR BARU: The beaches in Pengerang, Kota Tinggi, affected by an oil spill following a collision between the MT Bunga Kelana 3 and MV Waily vessels two weeks ago have been cleaned up.

According to a statement from the Department of Environment, the clean-up operations were now focused on Sungai Bongkok and Sungai Haji Ahmad that still had traces of oil.

"A total of 19,860 bags containing contaminated sand and 37,391 litres of oil were collected in the operation," said the statement, adding that 105 people were involved in the clean-up.

Meanwhile, oil spill monitoring operations have ended as no new patches of oil were detected.

The public can report oil patches to the department by contacting 1-800-88-2727. - Bernama

37,000 litres of oil spill sludge cleaned up
The Star 6 Jun 10;

PENGERANG: The Department of Environment (DOE) has collected 37,391 litres of sludge off Pengerang since the clean-up operation of an oil spill started about a week ago.

DOE director-general Datuk Ros-nani Ibarahim said the operation ended on Wednesday but there were still remnants of the oil slick on boulders.

“Some of the oil, which is stuck on the boulders, has to be removed manually.

“We can’t use the dispersant system as it might harm the marine life there,” she said yesterday.

Rosnani said the DOE would transport some of the 19,860 bags of sludge to recycling companies and those which could not be salvaged would be disposed of.

“Our operation now is more towards cleaning up small areas with remnants of the oil slick.

“We are confident it can be done within a few days,” she said, adding that the work was focused only on Sungai Bongkok and Sungai Haji Ahmad.

The oil spill occurred after the MT Bunga Kelana 3 collided with MV Waily in the Singapore Strait on May 25.

Rosnani expressed her gratitude to the 300 people including volunteers who helped in the clean-up operation.

She urged anyone who spotted patches of oil in their area to contact DOE hotline at 1-800-88-2727.

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Weekend crowds flock back to Singapore beaches

Surekha A Yadav Channel NewsAsia 5 Jun 10;

SINGAPORE : It is business as usual at the beaches that were hit by an oil spill off Singapore's shores on May 25.

At East Coast beach, many hit the water, after having stayed away during the cleanup work.

The weekend crowd returned after the National Environment Agency gave the all-clear and declared the water safe for beach-goers.

Many found the beach clean.

Even though the authorities had said some tar balls could wash up on the shoreline, no one appeared to have come across any.

One person said: "It is quite safe. You can see for yourself. The last few days, no people came here. But, now it is okay."

Another commented: "I believe it is safe...definitely. I believe the authorities will handle the situation quite well - as long as it is clear, I believe it is okay to swim."

A third noted: "It looks okay, but you never know. I am not taking the risk. My children are only playing on the sand." - CNA/ms

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Farm resort promise is fading

Jamie Ee Wen Wei Straits Times 6 Jun 10;

Life in the countryside has not been good for 17 farm operators.

They have uprooted from D'Kranji Farm Resort, Singapore's first agri-tainment centre, from last December, citing poor yields and profits.

One business knock came when they were stopped from selling their produce to visitors.

The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) had informed the management of the resort that it had exceeded the maximum retail space allowed - by more than six times.

Only four farm operators remain, drawing grumbles from visitors about the closed shops and lack of activity.

The $10 million lifestyle- cum-agriculture resort was launched in September 2008, promising a countryside living experience in the city.

The 5ha Lim Chu Kang resort, developed by mainboard-listed HLH Group, also houses 21 villas, a wellness spa and a seafood restaurant.

The farm operators pay a monthly management fee of $500 to use the facility, which includes a 24 sq m sheltered kiosk and a 670.4 sq m or 791.61 sq m plot for farming.

Mr Alvin Tan, a farm operator who left last December, said they were left in limbo when the management stopped them from selling produce at the retail kiosk.

The 34-year-old, who grew fruits and vegetables, sold fruit juices to supplement his income.

'Before I came, they told me I could sell things. If we don't, how are we going to cover the rent? I didn't even draw a salary for that year,' said Mr Tan.

Another kiosk operator Johnny Tan, 48, said the resort did not live up to its promise. He used to run the seafood restaurant too - another tenant now runs it - but pulled out in March. He lost more than $500,000.

'People are not coming. There's nothing to do. There were so many promises but nothing materialised.'

He grew vegetables to supply his restaurant but said the yield was poor and the plants kept dying.

The URA said it found out last year that the resort had exceeded the maximum space allowed for food and beverage or retail (F&B/retail).

Its spokesman said it had no issues with any kiosks or structures set up for retail but they had to keep within the 200 sq m allocated for F&B/retail. The total commercial space is 1,000 sq m.

Dr Johnny Ong, deputy chairman of HLH Group, said the management had appealed to the URA to increase the F&B/retail space, but without success.

'We are not asking for more commercial space but more flexibility in the use of space to ensure commercial viability,' he said.

Currently, the firm has to allocate about 500 sq m for conference facilities but he said this is not viable.

'Who will come to the countryside for business? They would rather go to town.'

He added that the current space allocated for F&B/retail is not enough to meet visitor needs and make the place commercially viable. 'Singaporeans want a one-stop shop where they can sightsee, eat and shop.'

Dr Ong said the management had expected the land use to be reviewed so they were disappointed when their request was not approved. The company has lost $1 million so far.

Told about the farm operators' unhappiness, he said the company had done its best to apply for the necessary licences, but it was unsuccessful.

He added: 'The contract says clearly that the farmers can produce for export. If the authorities give them the approval to sell, we will support them, but they did not.'

The URA said it could not approve any further requests to increase the F&B/retail space as that would compromise the rustic character of the area.

'All the tenderers were fully aware of the conditions when they bid for the site,' its spokesman added.

Dr Ong said the firm is looking for overseas players to take over the existing kiosks and is moving into organic farming. The resort is also undergoing a revamp to draw more visitors.

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What's the fuss about littering?

NEA study shows nonchalant attitudes, launches campaign targeted at S'poreans
Irene Tham Straits Times 6 Jun 10;

Throw my rubbish into a bin? Depends on whether there is one nearby.

At least one in three Singaporeans says he would bin rubbish only when it is convenient to do so, shows a study commissioned by the National Environment Agency (NEA).

And if there is no bin nearby, he would have no qualms littering.

The survey also found that many consider drains, lifts, toilets, areas near lift landings and rubbish chutes, and the side of roads 'legitimate' dumping grounds.

The NEA hopes to change such attitudes and misconceptions with its new anti-littering campaign, which will be launched today.

The campaign is a follow-on to the one targeted at foreign workers from India and China which ran from October last year to March.

This time round, the NEA is tailoring its new campaign for Singaporeans.

The findings from the recent study helped NEA understand why people litter, allowing it to design appropriate advertisements.

The survey polled more than 4,400 Singaporeans in the first quarter of this year.

The sample included heads of households, teenagers and secondary school students, and the study was headed by sociology Associate Professor Paulin Straughan from the National University of Singapore (NUS).

It also found that more than 60 per cent of Singaporeans would not litter regardless of the circumstance, and only about 1.2 per cent are 'hardcore litterbugs'.

From May to August last year, NUS sociology Professor Narayanan Ganapathy also interviewed 90 Singaporeans aged between 15 and 59 for another study.

He found that many people do not give much thought to littering and regard littering as harmless as 'no one is hurt, not like murder or theft'.

Other excuses range from apologetic ones - 'I am too old to change my ways' - to rebuffs like 'What's the fuss about littering anyway?'.

'How they explain away their action is similar for locals and foreigners - akin to how criminals rationalise their behaviour,' said Prof Ganapathy, who specialises in criminology.

Littering is a perennial problem but recent enforcement figures suggest efforts to curb it might be working.

In the first four months of the year, more than 10,500 Singaporeans and foreigners were caught for littering. Of this, about 7,300 were Singaporeans and around 3,100 were foreigners.

In the same period last year, about 14,500 people were caught - 10,000 Singaporeans and close to 4,500 foreigners.

The NEA said the drop was partly a result of education, penalties and more bins, especially in areas foreigners congregate.

For the whole of last year, close to 41,400 litterbugs were caught - 70 per cent of them Singaporeans and the rest foreigners.

First-time adult offenders are fined $300 while students from 12 to below 18 years old can be fined $50.

Repeat offenders must appear in court and could get a Corrective Work Order and a fine of up to $1,000 for the first conviction. They can be fined up to $2,000 for the second conviction and up to $5,000 for subsequent ones.

Foreigners do so in areas that feel like home
Goh Chin Lian Straits Times 6 Jun 10;

You are in Little India. You spot a foreign worker blithely tossing his drink can on the ground.

The reason for his act, according to a study, is that the area feels like home to him. He is among familiar people, no one is going to disapprove, and leaving behind rubbish is not littering anyway, he thinks.

After all, it is normal behaviour back home. Almost everyone does it, and laws against it, if any, are not strictly enforced.

The study of littering behaviour among foreigners and Singaporeans, commissioned by the National Environment Agency (NEA), found such a mindset among foreign workers.

They made up three in 10 litterbugs caught last year.

Of the total, 11,059 were foreigners and 27,572 were Singaporeans.

Sociology professor Narayanan Ganapathy from the National University of Singapore and his team interviewed 30 foreign workers for the survey from May to August last year.

The men and women were from Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. They included construction workers, cleaners, waiters and mechanics. Some had been caught for littering.

A summary of the findings released to The Sunday Times identified the 'feel at home' factor as unique to foreign workers.

Other reasons given by them, like convenience or unforeseen circumstances such as having to chase the last bus, were no different from those offered by Singaporeans.

Among Indian nationals and Bangladeshis, the crowd, shops and activities in Little India made them feel at home. 'If we see others littering, we won't care because it's normal. We feel comfortable littering as well,' said one interviewee.

The same dynamic is at work in the dormitories and worksites. In the company of fellow countrymen, they feel no embarrassment or guilt when they do not bin their refuse.

At the root of such behaviour is a belief that the act is the norm and a habit that does not need to be changed here.

One worker from China told the interviewers: 'We grew up learning how to litter from adults, and we continue this bad habit when we get older.'

Hence, the foreign workers said they were shocked to be stopped by officials, and told that the fine for a first-time offender was $300.

What constitutes littering is also contested due to a difference in culture here and back home, noted Prof Ganapathy.

To the foreign worker, it is not littering to leave rubbish behind after a gathering. 'Littering, to them, is to drop something on the ground,' he said.

But outside their comfort zone, the majority said they were afraid to litter, say, in shopping centres. They were worried that Singaporeans might stigmatise them as unhygienic.

Mr Jolovan Wham, a social worker with foreign worker advocacy group Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics, agreed with the findings.

He has seen foreign workers litter and spit in Little India, and reckoned they felt more comfortable there and had let their guard down.

But they are more likely to curb their impulses in malls, he noted, citing the behaviour of Filipinos in Lucky Plaza and Myanmar nationals in Peninsula Plaza.

Prof Ganapathy said anti-littering outreach programmes could be more targeted at specific groups of foreign workers. Having visible enforcement in places where they feel at home could serve both as a reminder not to litter as well as a deterrent.

The study also found that foreign workers were not aware of the $300 fine for first-time offenders.

Educational efforts need to be sustained for a longer term but getting results remains a challenge, given that many workers are transient, he added.

The NEA said it had acted on some findings. It launched a series of TV commercials against littering and spitting in November last year and February this year, targeted at Chinese and Indian foreign workers. The commercials emphasised the $300 fine.

The NEA has also put in more bins where foreign workers gather.

Dorms: Bins here, there, everywhere
Straits Times 6 Jun 10;

When it comes to licking the littering problem, foreign workers' dormitories have 'bin' here and done that.

Their current modus operandi is the subtle approach: Put more bins in more places, and remove bin covers so that the workers can dispose of their rubbish without soiling their hands.

Foreign workers are known to leave behind plastic bags, drink cans and fliers on their dormitory grounds.

Tough measures like a $100 fine are used as a deterrent but are rarely, if ever, imposed, dormitory operators told The Sunday Times.

'The workers are also our customers,' said Mr Jimmy Wee, property manager of Kaki Bukit Hostel, which houses about 3,000 workers, mostly from India and Bangladesh. 'If we are stringent, no one will want to stay here.'

Employers currently pay an average of $160 to $180 a month to house a worker in a dormitory.

Operators also invite National Environment Agency officials to give anti-littering talks. However, these have at best a temporary effect of a few days, after which the workers forget and slip back to their old ways, said Mr Wee.

What works is the proliferation of bins, placed outside their rooms, in the toilets and at every point of their route between the bunk and the front gate.

Mr Stephen Goh is the general manager of 5 Star Dormitory, which houses 6,000 workers from India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Myanmar, China and Malaysia at its Kaki Bukit premises.

He said a couple of years ago, it doubled the number of bins placed at the corners, staircases and common areas.

It also found a cheaper way to increase the number of bins by installing a metal bracket on a low wall and slipping trashbags over it.

'We made sure the trash bags were right in front of their rooms and within their reach,' said Mr Goh.

Dormitory manager Ramesh Regupathy and his team also introduced uncovered bins a year ago after receiving workers' complaints that litter was being thrown on bin covers.

He runs Murai Lodge II, an 8,000-worker dormitory off Lim Chu Kang Road. The occupants are mainly construction workers from India and Bangladesh.

Twenty-three cleaners work two shifts to keep the dormitory spick and span. About $40,000 was spent on landscaping to beautify the premises.

'When the environment is nice, they will feel bad about littering,' said Mr Ramesh.

Bigger bins are also being used in Little India, where the crowd can swell to more than 50,000 on weekends.

Other measures include evening patrols by auxiliary police officers, and the requirement for telcos that distribute fliers to clean up at the end of the day.

Mr Rajakumar Chandra, chairman of the Little India Shopkeepers and Heritage Association, is satisfied that the cleanliness of the area is better managed these days, with contractors doing a major clean-up on Sunday nights into the wee hours of Monday.

Goh Chin Lian

When is throwing something littering?
Straits Times 6 Jun 10;

# Sweet wrappers, cigarette butts, parking coupon tabs

These are considered 'minor' litter. First-time offenders are fined $300. Repeat offenders must appear in court after which they may be given a Corrective Work Order and a fine of up to $1,000.

# Plastic bags, food wrappers, drink cups, tissue paper

These are 'serious' litter as they can contribute to mosquito breeding or rodent infestation.

First-time offenders go to court where they may be slapped with a Corrective Work Order and a fine of up to $1,000.

# Bulky waste in public places like the void decks of HDB flats

First-time offenders can be fined $500.

# Pet faecal matter

This is an offence under the environmental public health (public cleansing) regulations and not the regulations governing littering. First-, second- and third-time offenders will be fined $150, $200 and $250 respectively.

# Flicking ash from a cigarette

This is not considered littering.

# Rubber band (for tying food boxes), newspapers, pen

You can be fined for leaving the items behind or throwing them onto the floor.

# Brushing off dandruff flakes, cutting finger/toe nails, flicking ear wax, using a pumice stone to rub dead skin on feet in public places

NEA officers who come across these acts will ask people to refrain from such anti-social behaviour.

# Cutting hair in public places

If the cut hair is not collected from the ground, it is littering and considered 'serious' litter.

# Emptying of drinks from drink cans/bottles and soup on the floor or the grass verges outside coffee shops

This is considered 'serious' littering as it will encourage pest infestation.

# Emptying plain water from water bottles and tossing out ice-cubes from cups

This is not considered littering, but the NEA says the public should throw unwanted water and ice-cubes into sinks or toilet bowls.

Irene Tham

Read more!

NGOs launch postcard campaign to stop coal power plant in Sabah

The Star 6 Jun 10;

KOTA KINABALU: Postcards to the Prime Minister campaigning for a stop to a coal-fired power plant on the shores of a marine rich sea will soon make their way to Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s office in Putrajaya, Selangor.

The postcards show sceneries of Dent peninsula, where Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) wants to build a 300 megawatt coal-fired plant, and tranquil waters that are part of the globally important Coral Triangle.

An innovative way of sending a strong message to the Prime Minister, the postcards were a hit at a booth set up by Green SURF (Sabah Re-Unite to Power the Future) at the Kadazandusun Cultural Association (KDCA) compound during the Harvest Festival holiday.

Staff from WWF-Malaysia’s Sabah office, along with coalition members Land Empowerment Animals People (LEAP), Sabah Environmental Protection Association (Sepa), Malaysian Nature Society (Sabah) and Partners of Community Organisations (Pacos) spent two days explaining the issue to visitors at the festival.

Visitors asked a number of questions about the plant and many willingly signed the postcards, which are also available for download.

Local celebrity Atama dropped by and shared his views with fans on the perils of a coal plant.

The project called “Postcards2PM” is the brainchild of Sabah-born visual artist Yee I-Lann, who wanted to do her part as a citizen concerned about the impact of a coal plant on communities and the environment.

Yee took photographs of the site three years ago during a road trip, not knowing that her pictures would one day land on the Prime Minister’s desk.

“The Postcards2PM project was done in a spur of the moment as a way to reach out to the Prime Minister.

“I hope that if he sees the place that will be ruined, he may understand and put a stop to the coal plant.

“The Prime Minister is the only person who can stop this,” said Yee.

She said the area chosen for the plant was along the most pristine coastline in Malaysia, and 100km away (by ocean current) is world-renowned diving site, Sipadan island.

She also pointed out that Darvel Bay, which would be impacted by pollution from the plant, was in the heartland of the fisheries industry which exported a bulk of the catch.

Yee said it was the duty of Malaysians to care about the project, as the site was also close to the Tabin Wildlife Reserve, a refuge for endangered species such as Sumatran rhinos.

She said she had been keeping tabs on statements made by the nation’s leaders on renewable energy and green technology.

She cited as example Najib’s recent announcement that a Malaysian Renewable Energy Bill was being drafted and the Prime Minister was quoted as saying that more had to be done to develop alternative energy sources.

Yee hopes that main players such as Tenaga Nasional Berhad, independent power producers, oil palm companies, environmental groups and renewable energy organisations will sit together to come up with an acceptable solution.

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