IUCN welcomes 'Forests 2011' - International Year of Forests

IUCN 3 Jan 11;

The world’s forests are essential to life in all its diversity and to attaining humanity’s biggest goals such as reducing poverty, curbing climate change and achieving sustainable development. Throughout 2011 IUCN will work towards making sure that forests deliver their maximum potential for human well-being and biodiversity conservation.

'Forests 2011’ will be an international celebration of the central role of people in the management, conservation and sustainable development of our world’s forests,” says Julia Marton-Lefèvre, IUCN Director General. “The air we breathe, the food, water and medicines we need to survive, the variety of life on earth, the climate that shapes our present and future—they all depend on forests. 2011 must be the year when the world recognizes the vital importance of healthy forests to life on earth – for all people and biodiversity.”

As a member of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests, IUCN will play a key role in increasing public awareness of the centrality of the world’s forests to human and natural well-being. Over the course of the year, IUCN will be highlighting new findings from its innovative Livelihoods and Landscapes Strategy, announcing bold new initiatives in its forest landscape restoration work and building upon recent successes of the international 2010 REDD-plus (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest degradation) agenda.

Forests 2011 comes right after the International Year of Biodiversity, which culminated in a global plan to save and restore nature and a turning point in international climate negotiations reached at the Cancun climate talks last December.

Forests 2011 picks up where 2010 left off – with an increased international awareness about the role of healthy ecosystems in combating climate change and reversing biodiversity loss.

Home to 80% of world’s biodiversity and 300 million people, forests provide for the livelihoods of 1.6 billion people, almost a quarter of humanity.

Forests cover 31% of the total land area and store more carbon than the amount currently present in the Earth’s atmosphere. They offer the quickest, most cost effective and largest means of curbing global emissions. Halving these emissions between 2010 and 2200 would save an estimated US$ 3.7 trillion.

All these facts and many more show how important forests are for the survival and well-being of current and future generations. The International Year of Forests aims to increase public awareness about the multiple benefits of healthy forests and the ways to keep them standing and healthy.

Notes

* Forests 2011 will be formally launched at the UN Forum on Forests (UNFF) meeting on 24 January, in New York.
* IUCN’s web portal will focus on Forests 2011 throughout the year and will be live from 24 January 2011. It will be found here: www.iucn.org/iyf
* For more information on UNFF and Forests 2011, please go to: http://www.un.org/en/events/iyof2011/

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Five crazy and new genetically modified foods

Samantha, selected from Planet Yahoo News 3 Jan 11;

Who would have known 20 years ago that so many of the foods that we eat would be produced in a lab rather than nature? Scientifically designed seeds are becoming a larger than ever portion of our diet and for the most part, it's difficult for the consumer to even realize it because of a lack of labeling.

According to Sustainable Table, about 200 million acres of farmland worldwide are now used to grow genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The most common GMO crops are soybeans, which represent 63 percent of all GMO crops, corn at 19 percent, cotton at 13 percent, and canola at 5 percent.

The list of seeds, and later foods, that have already been modified also include alfalfa, tomatoes, chicory, flax, papaya, potato, rice, sugar beets, and squash. The future of our global food supply is laden with seeds, and most recently animals, modified for human consumption. You may be surprised to see what's on the horizon.

None of these have been approved yet by the FDA, but with what we've seen so far, who's to say that they won't be in the future.

1. Super Chicken Eggs

New biotechnology is being used to develop genetically modified chickens that produce compounds that can be harvested from the eggs. The compounds in the eggs can be used to fight a range of diseases from diabetes, to viruses to tooth decay, according to Jacqueline Jacob and Richard Miles - Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

According to the BBC, U.K. scientists have developed genetically modified chickens capable of laying eggs containing proteins needed to make cancer-fighting drugs.

While these additives may be beneficial on their own, I think most of us would prefer to know what medications and drugs we were taking, rather than getting them in the form of an egg. Let alone all the side effects from feeding people all these extra additives.

2. Non-Browning Apples

According to Food Safety News, Okanagan Specialty Fruits of Summerland, British Columbia, a biotechnology company, has submitted an application to the U.S Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service for market approval for a GMO apple that doesn't brown after being sliced.

The apple doesn't brown because the gene that produces the enzyme polyphenol oxidase (what actually turns the apple brown) is silenced. The apples still brown but just not as quickly. What's next, avocados that never go bad and pears that never get brown spots? Crazy stuff.

3. Fast-Growing Salmon

Unless you've been hibernating for the past few months, you've heard about this one and with good reason because salmon would be the first GMO animal approved by the FDA for human consumption.

According to Ars Technica:

These genetically modified Atlantic salmon have two foreign DNA sequences inserted into their genomes. One encodes a growth hormone from Chinook salmon. The other is the on-switch used by an antifreeze gene from ocean pout, an eel-like fish found in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. When placed alongside the growth hormone, this on-switch makes the salmon produce the growth hormone in cold weather when they otherwise wouldn't. Importantly, the GM salmon do not grow larger than regular salmon; they just achieve their size in sixteen to eighteen months rather than three years.

The FDA isn't evaluating the environmental concerns including pollution, waste, mating, and concentration of disease that go along with Aqua Bounty's approval, just whether it's safe for human consumption and it's way too early to know that either.

4. Hyper-Producing Seeds

Scientists are working to manipulate DNA to create hyper-producing seeds, specifically plum tomato seeds that increase the yield by half.

Zachary Lippman and his team at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, produced a strain of hyper-productive tomato seeds by altering the command gene that tells plants when and how many flowers to generate, according to the New York Times. He's also thinking about the modification in melons and soybeans.

5. Enviro-Pigs

Christine over at TreeHugger wrote that Canada has approved limited production of animals dubbed "enviropigs," pigs that are modified to produce 65 percent less phosphorous in their poop and urine.

Pig farms are notorious for producing a world of waste, three times more excrement than human beings do. Lloyd wrote about a Rolling Stone article entitled "Pork's Dirty Little Secret" which reported that an estimated 500,000 pigs at a subsidiary of pork giant Smithfield generate more fecal matter each year than the 1.5 million inhabitants of Manhattan. The stream of waste is loaded with phosphorus which causes the growth of excessive algae in lakes and streams which in turn, sucks the oxygen out of water and kills off all life.

But even still, scientifically altering a pig so that it's less polluting seems counterintuitive to me.

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China says it can reprocess spent nuclear fuel

Yahoo News 3 Jan 11;

BEIJING (AFP) – Chinese scientists say they have developed nuclear fuel reprocessing technology that could effectively end uranium supply concerns, state media said Monday, as Beijing strives for energy security.

The technology, developed by state-run China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC) in the remote northwestern province of Gansu, enables the country to re-use irradiated nuclear fuel, China Central Television said.

"China's proven uranium sources will last only 50 to 70 years, but this now changes to 3,000 years," said the report, which provided scant details on what it described as a "breakthrough."

Other countries have already developed technology to reprocess spent fuel, which is extremely costly.

"Globally, within the nuclear fuel industry, we're one of a minority of countries that can do the nuclear fuel cycle," Sun Qin, general manager of CNNC, was quoted as saying in the report.

The development would be an important step forward in China's plans to increase the share of alternative power sources in its energy mix to reduce pollution and achieve energy security.

It has stepped up investment in nuclear power in an effort to slash carbon emissions and scale down the nation's heavy reliance on polluting coal, which accounts for 70 percent of its power needs.

China, now the world's second-largest economy after surpassing Japan in 2010, aims to get 15 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2020.

It aims to increase nuclear power capacity to 70-80 gigawatts by 2020, accounting for about five percent of the country's total installed power capacity, state press reports have said.

The government said previously the target was 40 gigawatts.

China, which currently has 13 nuclear reactors in operation, produces around 750 tonnes of uranium a year but annual demand could rise to 20,000 tonnes a year by 2020, the China Daily newspaper has said.

China Boasts Breakthrough In Nuclear Technology
Zhou Xin and Benjamin Kang Lim PlanetArk 4 Jan 11;

Chinese scientists have made a breakthrough in spent fuel reprocessing technology that could potentially solve China's uranium supply problem, state television reported on Monday.

The technology, developed and tested at the No.404 Factory of China National Nuclear Corp in the Gobi desert in remote Gansu province, enables the re-use of irradiated fuel and is able to boost the usage rate of uranium materials at nuclear plants by 60 folds.

"With the new technology, China's existing detected uranium resources can be used for 3,000 years," Chinese Central Television reported.

China, as well as France, the United Kingdom and Russia, actively supports reprocessing as a means for the management of highly radioactive spent fuel and as a source of fissile material for future nuclear fuel supply.

But independent scientists argued that commercial application of nuclear fuel reprocessing has always been hindered by cost, technology, proliferation risk and safety challenges.

China has 171,400 tons of proven uranium resources spread mainly in eight provinces -- Jiangxi, Guangdong, Hunan, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Liaoning and Yunnan.

China is planning a massive push into nuclear power in an effort to wean itself off coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. It now has 12 working reactors with 10.15 gigawatt of total generating capacity.

China has set an official target of 40 gigawatts (GW) of installed nuclear generating capacity by 2020, but the government indicated it could double the goal to about 80 GW as faster expansion was one of the more feasible solutions for achieving emissions reduction goals.

As such, China will need to source more than 60 percent of the uranium needed for its nuclear power plants from overseas by 2020, even if the country moves forward with a modest nuclear expansion plan, Chinese researchers say.

(Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

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Natural disasters 'killed 295,000 in 2010'

Yahoo News 3 Jan 11;

FRANKFURT (AFP) – The Haiti earthquake and floods in Pakistan and China helped make 2010 an exceptional year for natural disasters, killing 295,000 and costing $130 billion, the world's top reinsurer said Monday.

"The high number of weather-related natural catastrophes and record temperatures both globally and in different regions of the world provide further indications of advancing climate change," said Munich Re in a report.

The last time so many people died in natural disasters was in 1983, when 300,000 people died, mainly due to famine in Ethiopia, spokesman Gerd Henghuber told AFP.

A total of 950 natural disasters were recorded last year, making 2010 the second worst year since 1980. The average number of events over the past 10 years was 785.

And in terms of economic cost, insured losses amounted to approximately $37 billion, putting 2010 among the six most loss-intensive years for the insurance industry since 1980.

"2010 showed the major risks we have to cope with. There were a number of severe earthquakes. The hurricane season was also eventful," said Torsten Jeworrek, the firm's chief executive.

The earthquake in Haiti in January was by far the worst disaster in terms of human cost, killing 222,570 people, Munich Re said. Some 56,000 died in a combination of heatwaves and forest fires in Russia, it said.

The other most destructive events were an earthquake in China in April that killed 2,700, floods in Pakistan between July and September that cost 1,760 lives and August floods in China in which 1,470 perished.

Although the Haiti earthquake resulted in human devastation on a "staggering scale", it cost the industry very little as very few people in the poverty-stricken country can afford insurance.

However, an earthquake in Chile that hit over a month later was the world's most expensive natural disaster last year, with overall losses of 30 billion dollars and insured losses of eight billion dollars.

The second most expensive disaster for the insurance industry was a series of earthquakes that rattled New Zealand, which cost an estimated 3.3 billion dollars but caused no deaths.

The global distribution of natural catastrophes in 2010 was however "comparable to that of previous years," Munich Re said.

The American continent suffered the most disasters -- 365 in total -- with 310 in Asia. A total of 120 natural disasters were recorded in Europe, 90 in Africa and 65 in Australia and Oceania.

In 2009, considered a "benign" year due to the absence of major catastrophes and a less severe than usual hurricane season in the North Atlantic, there were 900 "destructive natural hazard events", costing some 60 billion dollars.

Around 11,000 people lost their lives in natural disasters in 2009, well below the average of 77,000.

Last month, another major reinsurer, Swiss Re, reported that man-made and natural disasters generated worldwide economic losses of 222 billion dollars in 2010, more than three times the figure for the previous year.

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Best of our wild blogs: 3 Jan 11

Job opportunity: Laboratory Officer @ TMSI, 1-year contract
from The Biodiversity crew @ NUS

Starting off 2011 with Seagrass Monitoring at Chek Jawa!
from Diary of a Boy wandering through Our Little Urban Eden

Sweltering hot at Chek Jawa
from Psychedelic Nature

TeamSeagrass at Chek Jawa
from teamseagrass

Monkey Walks!
from Crystal and Bryan in Singapore

Mangroves at Chek Jawa
from wild shores of singapore

Blog Log: 19 December 2010
from Pulau Hantu

Agrionoptera insignis , Agrionoptera sexlineata
from Creatures Big & Small

First Semakau Walk in 2011: Nice fiddler crabs
from PurpleMangrove

Christmas Eve on Big Sister's Island
from Nature's Wonders

100102 Mesida?
from Singapore Nature

Monday Morgue: 3rd January 2011
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales

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Singapore: 6.5m people, more or less?

We should, like Hong Kong, have an official population projection
Letter from Ng Ya Ken Today Online 3 Jan 11;

THE Government has yet to announce any official population projection for the next few decades, although it has been using a 6.5 million population parameter for physical planning for the next 30 to 40 years. It has repeatedly said that the 6.5 million figure is not a target.

In contrast, Hong Kong's Census and Statistical Office frequently updates its population forecast, with the latest one made in July last year, showing that its 7 million population in 2009 would expand to 8.89 million by 2039.

Why does Hong Kong - with a fertility rate lower than ours - want to tell the world that its population will expand by 27 per cent over the next 30 years?

One of the purposes is to convince the world that it has an expanding workforce to meet the need of economic growth for the next three decades - as a tool for boosting business confidence and attracting foreign investments in a territory where local the population is declining.

It also shows that the Hong Kong authorities are not avoiding the hard questions on immigration issues, since future population growth will have to rely solely on immigration. It also serves as a reminder to the locals to face up to the unavoidable reality of having to work and live with more immigrants in future years.

The Hong Kong release, which shows forecasts at five-year intervals till 2039, can be used for not only urban planning but also for planning in education, health and other social services.

Businesses can also use it to plan their investments, especially those that depend on the mass market or take longer to fully reap the profits.

Should we not do the same as Hong Kong, so that a common population forecast and its accompanying assumptions can be used for planning purposes among the various ministries in the Government?

In projecting long-term population figures, we are forced to take a harder look at factors and possible scenarios affecting not only population growth but also economic growth and other aspects of our future.

Population projection can be a very profound, deep-thinking and forward-looking process, from which we as a nation can learn many valuable things.

The Government should not be unduly concerned about how the people will react to the projection as long as it is conducted with the nation's best interests being placed as the ultimate goal.

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Malaysia: Stop killing the crocodile, plead wildlife activists

Nigel Edgar and Sharin Shaik The Star 3 Jan 11;

KUCHING: Villagers have vowed to continue their hunt for a crocodile that killed and devoured a man here, even if they have to kill “each and every last one” in the Batang Samarahan River.

Their pledge, however, has earned them the wrath of environmentalists and wildlife groups.

Malaysian Nature Society chairman Asso Prof Maketab Mohamed said although human life was sacred, it did not mean that it was all right to kill crocodiles “as if their lives were worthless”.

The villagers have so far caught and disembowelled three crocodiles since Sidi Samad, 66, was seen eaten alive on Dec 18.

Prof Maketab urged the authorities not to go “hunting blindly” unless they were sure that they had found the killer crocodile.

Environmentalist Anthony Sebastian said the killings should stop because it was not the crocodile’s fault.

“When humans live close to nature, there is bound to be conflict with wildlife.

“So, it is only natural for the animals to fend for themselves, and in this case, for the crocodile to kill,” he said.

Anthony advised the authorities to stop the killings but appease the villagers at the same time.

“It is a tough job for the authorities but they should be responsible,” he said.

Village head Awang Kanong Awang Alim said the man-eater must be found and killed because it had committed a “sin” against the people by taking Sidi’s life.

He realised that wildlife authorities might not be pleased with them for killing the protected reptile but he said the villagers had no choice but to find the killer crocodile.

“We have been living near this river for a long time. The river is where we earn our living,” he said.

The hunt will stop when the villagers find evidence of Sidi’s remains in the belly of a crocodile.

However, not all the villagers agree with the killings.

One of them, who wanted to be known only as Mohai, said: “They cannot kill every crocodile in the river. It’s a protected reptile.”

Mohai said the authorities should catch crocodiles living near populated areas and relocate them to a habitat far from people.

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Indonesia: Forest Concessions to Be Granted in Logged Land

Elisabeth Oktofani Jakarta Globe 2 Jan 11;

The Forestry Ministry has announced that 500,000 hectares of land concessions will be granted this year in previously logged areas as part of a wider plan to keep virgin forests intact and slow the rate of carbon dioxide emissions.

Hadi Daryanto, the ministry’s director general of forestry management, said on Thursday that opening these concessions in so-called degraded forests would ensure that natural and peat forests remained untouched.

“Indonesia has 35.4 million hectares of degraded forest that we can designate as agricultural and forest concessions,” he said.

“By using degraded forests instead of virgin forests, we can develop more concessions and keep emissions low, as well as providing jobs in the forestry sector.”

The government sells permits each year to use publicly owned land for specific purposes such as agriculture, logging and mining. Prices for such concessions vary depending on the land’s location and intended use. The concessions are handed out throughout the year.

Last year, 487,744 hectares of such concessions came from degraded forests, surpassing the Forestry Ministry’s target of 450,000 hectares.

Hadi said reusing previously logged land was part of the government’s plan to suspend the issuance of new concessions in peat and primary natural forests.

The moratorium is part of a bilateral deal with Norway that went into effect on Saturday, the first day of 2011. In return for the moratorium, Norway will provide $1 billion in funding for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD-Plus) schemes.

“Besides implementing the Indonesia-Norway agreement, we can also use this to attain our national emissions reduction target of 26 percent by 2020,” Hadi said. “At the same time, it gives the ministry a role in helping to achieve the GDP growth target of 7 percent by 2014.”

He said the target for new concessions this year was up from 2010 because of an increased demand for wood pulp.

“Even though there’s rising demand for wood pulp, and hence for forest concessions, we’ve already mapped out the projected concessions so there’s no possibility of clearing natural or peat forests,” he said.

Hadi also said that because the issuance of land concessions was a lucrative business, the government was concerned about parties posing as brokers for investors seeking permits.

“We need a monitoring team to supervise the implementation of the moratorium on new concessions in peat and natural forests,” he said.

Mas Achmad Santosa, an environmental law expert, said the effective implementation of the moratorium could only be ensured with firm legal support.

“It will take some time before the government issues a policy as the legal instrument to back the moratorium,” he said.

“Therefore it’d be better if the president issued a decree on implementing the moratorium.”

Mas said that besides the lack of a legal foundation, the moratorium was threatened by the prospect of regional administrations not acting in line with the central government’s logging policy.

“One thing we need to be concerned about is the possibility of regional administrations issuing their own concessions in natural and peat forests,” he said.

“With regional autonomy now in place, regional administrations are under pressure to raise their own income.”

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South Korea clamps down on illegal whale-hunting

Yahoo News 2 Jan 11;

SEOUL (AFP) – South Korea said Sunday it will tighten rules on whaling and the processing of whale meat amid international pressure to curb illegal hunting of the endangered giant mammals.

The agriculture ministry said the new rules, to take effect on Monday, will require fishermen to report to police immediately discoveries of whales trapped in their nets or washed ashore.

Those who claim to have caught dead whales will be required by law to process and sell them only at state-designated facilities, and only those with state permits will be allowed to trade whale meat.

DNA samples of dead whales should be submitted to authorities as demanded by the International Whaling Commission (IWC), so that the government can trace origins of the animals, the ministry said.

The new law is aimed at helping to curb a "growing amount of illegal whale hunting" around the country, it said.

South Korea has banned whaling for commercial sale since 1986 but allows trading of those accidentally caught dead in fishing nets on washed up dead onshore.

But the incidence of accidental fishing of whales has surged in recent years, drawing suspicion from IWC member nations, the ministry said.

Some fishermen illegally catch whales and process the meat onboard before arriving at the port in an attempt to dodge government the clampdown, local media have reported.

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A Diet for an Invaded Planet: Invasive Species

James Gorman New York Times 31 Dec 10;

There’s a new shift in the politics of food, not quite a movement yet, more of an eco-culinary frisson. But it may have staying power; the signs and portents are there. Vegans, freegans, locavores — meet the invasivores.

Some divers in the Florida Keys recently held a lionfish derby, the idea being to kill and eat lionfish, an invasive species. Local chefs cooperated by promoting the lionfish as a tasty entree. The idea drew editorial support from Andrew Revkin in a post on The Times’s Dot Earth blog in which he also mentioned an attempt by some fisheries biologists to rename the invading Asian carp “Kentucky tuna” to make it more appealing to diners. And the Utne Reader recently ran an article about Chicago chefs turning their attention to the same invasive fish.

The rumblings go further back, of course, as rumblings always do. The idea of eating kudzu and the recipes for it have been around for decades. More recently, at the beginning of 2009, a San Francisco blogger on matters ecological, animal and political, Rachel Kesel, posted a nicely turned argument for the “invasive species diet.”

Ms. Kesel, who grew up with a father who hunted deer, is now a vegetarian, but she included animals as well as plants in her proposed diet. She said in an interview that she was studying in London when she wrote the post, which grew out of conversations about diet and ecology. “If you really want to get down on conservation you should eat weeds,” she decided. And so she blogged.

She now works for the parks department of San Francisco and said she did indeed pursue the vegetable side of the diet she proposed. “I’m really looking forward to some of our spring weeds here,” she said, notably Brassica rapa, also known as field mustard or turnip mustard.

Ms. Kesel has a flair for the kind of rhetoric that any movement needs. “I’m almost serious here,” she concluded her diet post. “Eat for the environment. Eat locally. Eat wild meat. Eat for habitat. Eat invasive.”

Jackson Landers, unlike Ms. Kesel, is completely serious. As the Locavore Hunter, based in Virginia, he teaches urbanites how to hunt and butcher deer. He has branched out from the locavore life to invasives, and lionfish are one target. But as he has pushed the envelope of the invasivore approach, he has hunted and eaten feral pigs, two species of iguana, armadillos, starlings, pigeons and resident Canada geese. He says that all of these activities will be chronicled in a book, “Eating Aliens,” and perhaps a television show as well.

Mr. Landers, who grew up in a vegetarian household, taught himself to hunt. He believes that eating invasives can have a real effect. “When human beings decide that something tastes good, we can take them down pretty quickly,” he said. Our taste for passenger pigeon wiped that species out, he said. What if we developed a similar taste for starlings?

I was pleased to see Canada geese and pigeons included in his list, because in the Northeast, neophyte invasivores face some unappetizing possibilities, like the zebra mussel (too little meat and too much salmonella) and the unpleasant and unwanted freshwater algae, Didymosphenia geminata, commonly called didymo, or, with absolutely no trace of affection, rock snot.

I don’t see the beginning of a menu there. But if we broaden the definition of invasives to include the things that invade the average suburbanite’s yard and golf course, a world of possibilities open up — deer, raccoons, opossums, squirrels, skunks, rabbits and woodchucks.

You do have to find a way to kill them before you eat them, but perhaps you have, as I do, a woodchuck-killing dog. Then it’s just a question of not wasting perfectly good meat. I even found a good woodchuck recipe that can also be used for rabbit. Naturally, it was invented by a gardener. As for vegetables, I suggest Japanese knotweed. I have an endless supply, if you’re having company over and find yourself a bit short.

The movement will, of course, need the support of cooks and eaters as well as hunters and environmentalists, but I see that happening already. Witness the request for a good python recipe on Chowhound. Among the comments, some downright disrespectful, was this, which I take to be a sign that Mr. Landers and Ms. Kesel are on the right track: “We usually cook alligator and snake in an étouffée.”

Why, of course.

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Best of our wild blogs: 2 Jan 11

Re-Discovery of the Detached Dart
from Butterflies of Singapore

Magnificent Monitors
from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity! and Busting Myths about Monitors

The Spider Temple
from Macro Photography in Singapore

Happy 2011 from Venus Drive
from wonderful creation

Stork-billed kingfisher @ Japanese garden鹳嘴翠鸟
from PurpleMangrove

More mangroves at Kranji in the New Year
from wild shores of singapore

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Transit towards a greener, more accessible system

Grace Chua Straits Times 2 Jan 11;

Singapore's transport successes are well known, but its transport system could be greener, with easier access for the old and infirm.

A new study of urban transport in 15 cities, conducted by consulting firm Accenture, came to that conclusion about Singapore and what it terms as fellow 'laboratory' cities, such as Seoul in South Korea.

Such cities already use effective solutions, such as congestion charges and car-pooling incentives, but they can go even further, said Accenture managing partner Lee Won Joon.

He oversaw the Asian segment of the study, which looked at a wide range of cities picked for their different sizes, stages of development and locations.

The study will be used for Accenture projects on urbanisation and intelligent cities - urban centres which use technology to cut energy consumption, become more sustainable and respond faster to residents' needs.

Mr Lee pointed out Singapore's successes in using congestion charges and cutting down the car population with quota schemes, and acknowledged its attempts to beef up its public transport network.

But Singapore's population is burgeoning and commuters' expectations are higher, he said.

The popular sentiment is that roads are crowded with too many cars, while buses are too slow and trains too crowded or infrequent.

Last year, customer satisfaction with public transport fell, according to the annual Customer Satisfaction Index by Singapore Management University's Institute of Service Excellence.

Also, transport should be made more environmentally friendly - not just by cutting back on the number of private cars, but also by improving on public transport.

In Mr Lee's native Seoul, for example, most public buses run on natural gas, whereas many here run on diesel.

National University of Singapore transport researcher Lee Der Horng supported the use of clean-energy public transport, and suggested that Singapore aim for large scale shared-access electric vehicle (EV) schemes rather than personal EVs.

The MRT Circle Line has already received a Green Mark for Rapid Transit Systems, for its use of braking systems which reuse energy and other measures.

The Green Mark framework will assess the environmental friendliness of MRT lines such as the Downtown Line, the first stage of which is set to open in 2013.

Researchers also felt that transport measures must be properly integrated with urban planning.

For example, the Accenture report noted that parking restrictions in the city centre sometimes cause businesses to move out to the suburbs.

Sometimes this is done as part of a deliberate strategy to develop or rejuvenate an area. For example, the National Development and the Environment and Water Resources ministries will move to the Jurong Gateway area by 2015, along with the agencies under them.

As for park-and-ride schemes, an Asian Development Bank (ADB) report in November last year on Asian cities' parking policies pointed out that such facilities were often built in high-density places 'where park-and-ride is unlikely to be a cost-effective use of high-value space near mass transit'.

But in Singapore, many park-and-ride carparks are in residential areas, where they share space with residential carparks that would otherwise be empty in the daytime, the ADB report said.

However, Accenture's Mr Lee suggested that Singapore faces a 'last mile' problem with both commuters and delivery services, exacerbated by its climate.

For example, due to the hot climate, commuters are far more willing to use the MRT train if they do not have to walk too far to the station. Those who live 800m from a station take half of their trips by car on average, whereas those who live less than 200m from the MRT travel by car only a quarter of the time.

But even if transport gets greener and more convenient, said Mr Lee, the question remains: who pays?

Whether the Government finances public transport, or operators bear the cost or pass it on to consumers, there is no easy answer.

Professor Lee from NUS is in favour of government help or incentives for newer or greener buses, such as hybrid buses.

'The Government should take the lead and compose a mechanism to help or subsidise the operators,' he said.

In Hong Kong, the MTR metro network has a novel financing model: it has the rights for developing land next to train stations.

The revenue that it gets from property activities helps to fund its rail infrastructure projects, so the costs are not borne by taxpayers or commuters alone.

Such transit-oriented models should be a key part of urban planning, said researchers like Prof Lee.

When it comes to planning and improving infrastructure, 'public transport should undoubtedly enjoy the highest and clearest priority compared to private modes', he said.

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