Evidence for climate extremes, costs, gets more local

Alister Doyle | Reuters Yahoo News 27 Jul 12

OSLO (Reuters) - Scientists are finding evidence that man-made climate change has raised the risks of individual weather events, such as floods or heatwaves, marking a big step towards pinpointing local costs and ways to adapt to freak conditions.

"We're seeing a great deal of progress in attributing a human fingerprint to the probability of particular events or series of events," said Christopher Field, co-chairman of a U.N. report due in 2014 about the impacts of climate change.

Experts have long blamed a build-up of greenhouse gas emissions for raising worldwide temperatures and causing desertification, floods, droughts, heatwaves, more powerful storms and rising sea levels.

But until recently they have said that naturally very hot, wet, cold, dry or windy weather might explain any single extreme event, like the current drought in the United States or a rare melt of ice in Greenland in July.

But for some extremes, that is now changing.

A study this month, for instance, showed that greenhouse gas emissions had raised the chances of the severe heatwave in Texas in 2011 and unusual heat in Britain in late 2011. Other studies of extremes are under way.

Growing evidence that the dice are loaded towards ever more severe local weather may make it easier for experts to explain global warming to the public, pin down costs and guide investments in everything from roads to flood defenses.

"One of the ironies of climate change is that we have more papers published on the costs of climate change in 2100 than we have published on the costs today. I think that is ridiculous," said Myles Allen, head of climate research at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute.

"We can't (work out current costs) without being able to make the link to extreme weather," he said. "And once you've worked out how much it costs that raises the question of who is going to pay."

Industrialized nations agree they should take the lead in cutting emissions since they have burnt fossil fuels, which release greenhouse gases, since the Industrial Revolution. But they oppose the idea of liability for damage.

Almost 200 nations have agreed to work out a new deal by the end of 2015 to combat climate change, after repeated setbacks. China, the United States and India are now the top national emitters of greenhouse gases.

Field, Professor of Biology and Environmental Earth System Science at the University of Stanford, said that the goal was to carry out studies of extreme weather events almost immediately after they happen, helping expose the risks.

"Everybody who needs to make decisions about the future - things like building codes, infrastructure planning, insurance - can take advantage of the fact that the risks are changing but we have a lot of influence over what those risks are."

FLOODS

Another report last year indicated that floods 12 years ago in Britain - among the countries most easily studied because of it has long records - were made more likely by warming. And climate shifts also reduced the risks of flooding in 2001.

Previously, the European heatwave of 2003 that killed perhaps 70,000 people was the only extreme where scientists had discerned a human fingerprint. In 2004, they said that global warming had at least doubled the risks of such unusual heat.

The new statistical reviews are difficult because they have to tease out the impact of greenhouse gases from natural variations, such as periodic El Nino warmings of the Pacific, sun-dimming volcanic dust or shifts in the sun's output.

So far, extreme heat is the easiest to link to global warming after a research initiative led by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British Meteorological Office.

"Heatwaves are easier to attribute than heavy rainfall, and drought is very difficult given evidence for large droughts in the past," said Gabriele Hegerl of the University of Edinburgh.

Scientists often liken climate change to loading dice to get more sixes, or a baseball player on steroids who hits more home runs. That is now going to the local from the global scale.

Field said climate science would always include doubt since weather is chaotic. It is not as certain as physics, where scientists could this month express 99.999 percent certainty they had detected the Higgs boson elementary particle.

"This new attribution science is showing the power of our understanding, but it also illustrates where the limits are," he said.

A report by Field's U.N. group last year showed that more weather extremes that can be linked to greenhouse warming, such as the number of high temperature extremes and the fact that the rising fraction of rainfall falls in downpours.

But scientists warn against going too far in blaming climate change for extreme events.

Unprecedented floods in Thailand last year, for instance, that caused $45 billion in damage according to a World Bank estimate, were caused by people hemming in rivers and raising water levels rather than by climate change, a study showed.

"We have to be a bit cautious about blaming it all on climate change," Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office's Hadley Centre, said of extremes in 2012.

Taken together, many extremes are a sign of overall change.

"If you look all over the world, we have a great disastrous drought in North America ... you have the same situation in the Mediterranean... If you look at all the extremes together you can say that these are indicators of global warming," said Friedrich-Wilhelm Gerstengabe, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

(Additional reporting by Sara Ledwith in London; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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Best of our wild blogs: 27 Jul 12

Cuttlefish Laying Eggs
from Pulau Hantu

Algae Quest: Semakau and Jong Island
from Pulau Hantu

Bivalves Surreal and Real: Bivalve Workshop Day 3
from wild shores of singapore

Little tern hovering
from Bird Ecology Study Group

A few wires less
from the annotated budak

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Doing more about climate change

This primer is the 10th instalment of a 12-part series in the Opinion pages, in the lead-up to The Straits Times-Ministry of Education National Current Affairs Quiz.
Grace Chua Straits Times 27 Jul 12;

Should Singapore do more about climate change?

CLIMATE change, which threatens to cause rising temperatures, intense storms and rising sea levels, is a global issue that Singapore can't escape.

So should the island state do more about climate change? The answer: It depends.

Clearly, it is vulnerable to rising oceans and drastic changes in rainfall that result when excess carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere. But it is also a small country with a relatively small absolute carbon footprint - it produces just 0.2 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases that cause warming.

Given that China produces a whopping 29 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and the United States produces 16 per cent, Singapore's tiny contribution might cause some to think that nothing the Republic does will make even a dent in the global picture of climate change.

Yet the Republic has pledged to cut its emissions by 16 per cent from the business-as-usual scenario by 2020 if the world reaches an agreement on climate change, and from 7 per cent to 11 per cent if there is no global agreement.

Without measures to slash emissions, Singapore's emissions in 2020 are projected to reach 77.2 million tonnes. That is the amount the entire world currently emits in a single day.

Its emissions targets may seem smaller than other nations' - for example, Germany has a domestic programme that aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020.

But other countries have a greater capacity to switch their energy sources from coal or fuel oil to natural gas or renewable energy. Singapore's choices are more limited.

Singapore began switching its fuel mix more than a decade ago. In 2000, 19 per cent of its power came from natural gas. By 2010, it was 78.7 per cent.

But barring a technological miracle, it has little space for sprawling rooftop solar panels or wind turbines.

That does not mean it is fiddling while the world burns.

A national climate change strategy report published last month outlined a number of steps Singapore has taken in recent years. For one thing, it is promoting energy efficiency. An Energy Conservation Act that takes effect next year mandates that large consumers of energy, such as industries, appoint energy managers and submit improvement plans.

Industries contributed 54 per cent of Singapore's carbon emissions in 2005, and are projected to contribute 60.3 per cent in 2020 in a business-as-usual scenario.

Singapore's emissions are expected to grow at 4.3 per cent a year till 2020. Much of its economic growth until that period comes from relatively high-emitting industries such as petroleum refining and chemicals. And power generation can no longer easily switch from fuel oil to natural gas as it had in years past.

In the long term, Singapore will have to decide what it wants its economy to be built on. Should it reconsider its industry mix to shift towards less energy-intensive industries?

At the same time, it must do this without outsourcing or shunting that same work to countries that might be less energy efficient, which might reduce Singapore's emissions but result in higher overall global emissions.

And it must balance emissions control with other needs such as energy security, which means using other forms of energy with less severe impact on the environment.

Meanwhile, Singapore is taking other steps to stem its carbon emissions. Transport in 2005 produced 19 per cent of the country's emissions. But new rail lines and more trains by 2016 may convert some motorists to public transport with lower emissions. And new buildings are subject to the Green Mark certification scheme, which imposes minimum standards on energy and water efficiency.

Yet for all its concrete policies, Singapore should not neglect the intangible aspects of climate change action.

In international negotiations, some small nations feel they have more standing to bargain with high-emitting countries if they have already taken the clean lead. For instance, the Maldives and Samoa, both small island states at risk from sea-level rises, have pledged to go carbon-neutral - having its emissions be equal to the amount it takes in or offsets - by cutting fossil fuel consumption and installing more renewable power. Singapore may opt to adopt such a negotiating stance.

Developing countries and cities look to Singapore as an example of a sustainable city. But in fact, if everyone in the world consumed at the rate the average Singaporean does, 3.5 earths would be needed to generate the resources for such a level of consumption, according to a World Wide Fund for Nature report last month. Much of what is consumed is not produced here, so that carbon emissions are outsourced to other countries.

So there is room to change people's mindsets so that every individual feels that he can contribute more to stemming climate change - say, by consuming or wasting less.

Just as psychological defence is one of Singapore's five pillars of total defence, Singapore could foster its people's psychological engagement with this global challenge.

Background story

Developing countries and cities look to Singapore as an example of a sustainable city. But in fact, if everyone in the world consumed at the rate the average Singaporean does, 3.5 earths would be needed to generate the resources for such a level of consumption, according to a World Wide Fund for Nature report last month.

Global problem, bleak outlook
Straits Times 27 Jul 12;

If climate change is such a pressing global problem, why is it so hard to deal with?

AT THE first Rio Earth Summit, held in Brazil in 1992, leaders from all over the world produced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the landmark agreement to stabilise the production of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to prevent runaway, man-made climate change.

The treaty sowed the seeds of the Kyoto Protocol, which outlines limits and targets for greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide trap the sun's heat in the atmosphere, causing it to warm up. They result both naturally and from human activities, but man-made sources such as burning fossil fuels are putting too much of these into the atmosphere.

But since then, progress on climate change has been incremental.

In part, that's because the nations of the world still disagree on a critical issue: Who does what and who pays?

Under the Kyoto Protocol, wealthy countries were to help less-developed ones with technology and funding to pay for emission reductions.

At the latest climate change meeting in Durban last year, participants agreed to set up a Green Climate Fund to channel US$100 billion (S$125 billion) towards poorer countries, but plans for a sustainable income stream have not yet been formed.

Developing countries such as China and India argue that their per capita emissions are much lower than those of developed countries' and therefore they should get to catch up economically before they start cutting back.

But that argument will not hold for much longer: an International Energy Agency analysis last year found that China's per capita emissions will outstrip the European Union's in the next four years.

Developing nations also say that even as they try to help themselves, it is developed nations like those in Europe which should bear responsibility for the climate change crisis today, because the latter grew their economies by emitting greenhouse gases.

But the world's balance of economic power has shifted in the years since 1992.

Today, China's total emissions far outstrip those of any European economy. Europe's economies, mired in debt, are less able to finance efforts by developing countries.

What is more, not all countries have signed on to the Kyoto Protocol.

Last year, Canada - an energy producer that is now exploiting its wealth of fossil fuels in the form of tar sands - withdrew from it.

That underscores yet another challenge.

Even as many countries suffer the ill effects of climate change, such as drought and loss of agricultural productivity, some countries will benefit directly from climate change, if their growing season lengthens with warmer weather.

Others, such as Canada, will benefit from simply ignoring it.

GRACE CHUA

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Singapore government seeks feedback on population issue

It lays out demographic challenges in paper, launches site to collect views
Phua Mei Pin Straits Times 27 Jul 12;

THE Government is ramping up its drive to engage the public on population, a current hot-button issue that it says has far-reaching implications for Singaporeans' opportunities and quality of life.

Yesterday, it released a comprehensive paper laying out Singapore's demographic challenges and dilemmas, and launched a website to collect feedback.

Among the questions posed by the paper are: how to raise birth rates, what immigration to have, and how to ensure a good living environment.

At the heart of the debate is the need to manage population growth, immigration and integration while trying to raise productivity to keep the economy going.

The ultimate aim, said the paper, is to come up with a policy that 'strengthens our social cohesion, provides a good living environment for our people, and maintains our economic vitality'.

The Government is expected to release a White Paper on population by the end of the year which is expected to incorporate the feedback collected.

The population puzzle has become a complex issue, going beyond birth rates to the topic of how many immigrants and foreign workers should be taken in.

The National Population and Talent Division's paper - titled Our Population, Our Future - follows a flurry of research papers in recent months and is the first document to set out Singapore's demographic challenges in full.

In particular, policymakers are concerned about the potential impact of low birth rates, a shrinking working population and a drop in the old-age support ratio.

The paper notes that while immigration can help supplement the shortfall in births, 'we recognise that we cannot grow our foreigner population indefinitely'.

'The issues we have to deal with are closely inter-related and complex, with long-term implications for Singapore and far-reaching effects,' it adds.

The paper was mentioned by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong last night on Facebook. Responding to calls for him to address the issue at the National Day Rally, he said the population issue was 'an important and difficult problem'.

The chairman of the Government's feedback arm, Dr Amy Khor, said she hoped engagement would 'bring about greater appreciation of Singapore's complex demographic challenges'.

The Behavioural Sciences Institute director David Chan said the move will give the Government a chance to understand citizens' concerns, but added that it should take the feedback seriously.

'There should also be a genuine discussion on the validity and implications of the various basic assumptions underlying the economic and population models that frame the issues,' he said.

Some Singaporeans were keen to respond. Human resource consultant Martin Gabriel, 45, said he would send ideas on parenthood, adding: 'There must also be some system that can bring people together so they can exchange their experiences. Singles and married people can learn from each other about family life, not just read from a paper or the Internet.'

Views on birth rates, foreign inflows sought
Public input will go towards White Paper to formulate policy for future
Phua Mei Pin Straits Times 27 Jul 12;

SINGAPOREANS' opinions are being sought on various aspects of the population puzzle, with the Government looking to tap the public's ideas as it works on coming up with a policy for the future.

Over the next three months, they are being invited to send their thoughts on issues from raising birth rates and strengthening cohesion to managing foreign worker inflows and getting more Singaporeans into the workforce.

In a paper titled Our Population, Our Future released yesterday, the National Population and Talent Division (NPTD) sets out Singapore's demographic challenges, and proceeds to ask the public to submit input on some 15 questions.

Taken together, they reveal the dilemmas that policymakers face when addressing different aspects of the population puzzle.

For example, one notes that the Government has cut the inflow of immigrants since 2009, and asks: 'Should we reduce the inflow further even if it means that our citizen population will age and shrink, and foreign spouses may find it more difficult to become permanent residents or Singapore citizens?'

Another asks: 'If the foreign worker inflow is to be tightened, which group should be targeted - construction workers, maids, professionals, Singaporeans' foreign spouses, or others?'

The feedback will go towards a government White Paper on population expected to be ready at the end of the year, said the NPTD.

Members of the public have until Oct 31 to send in their views at www.population.sg

The division has met close to 200 people including students and those from the community sector, businesses and unions to get their input, and will continue to do this through dialogues.

Political observers say the latest move to collect feedback is a sign that the Government understands the importance of population issues to Singaporeans - especially with immigration being a hot-button topic.

Institute of Policy Studies research fellow Carol Soon said: 'The Government could consolidate key suggestions and constructive criticisms and publish them on the website, as well as the Government's responses to these feedback.'

Nee Soon GRC MP Lee Bee Wah, who has already circulated the call for feedback on her Facebook page, believes that Singaporeans would welcome being asked for their views.

'Once the Government has decided which ideas it is going to adopt, it should acknowledge them so that residents feel good about participating and don't think they're writing into a black hole,' she said.

Agreeing, student Murugiah Komala, 24, said: 'It gets people interested and as people talk, more ideas are bound to get bounced around.'

Govt seeks public views on population issues
Tan Qiuyi Channel NewsAsia 26 Jul 12;

SINGAPORE: The National Population and Talent Division (NPTD) has released an Issues Paper to ramp up its public engagement on Singapore's population challenges going forward.

The paper, which is available online, aims to help Singaporeans understand the choices and trade-offs the country has to make.

NPTD said it's important that Singaporeans develop a shared understanding of these issues, which can go towards finding the right balance to build a sustainable population.

Director of Policy & Planning at National Population & Talent Division, Ngiam Siew Ying, said: "We are engaging the public extensively this year to hear their views, because we think it's an important issue that affects all of us. We have to look at the issue comprehensively, to achieve a population that is strong and cohesive, living in a good quality environment, with an economy that provides for good jobs and opportunities for all of us."

Labour economist Associate Professor Randolph Tan, head of UniSIM Business Programme, said the release of the Issues Paper is timely.

"It's good that we're getting this process of public consultation about population policy started now. But I don't think the public should be hasty in trying to come to a determination on what policies we should fix, until we have actually gone through a whole process of analysing the different possible scenarios. That could be a few years down the road, but it's not too early to start now," he said.

The paper is part of an ongoing consultation as NPTD prepares a White Paper on Population, scheduled for release at the end of the year.

The NPTD paper, entitled "Our Population, Our Future", lays out Singapore's demographic challenges in the face of declining birth rates, a shrinking workforce, and an ageing population.

As at December 2011, Singapore had 3.27 million Singapore citizens (SCs), and 0.54 million Permanent Residents (PRs). Together, they made up the resident population of 3.81 million.

Singapore also had a non-resident population of 1.46 million who are working, studying or living in Singapore on a non-permanent basis.

Singapore's total population was 5.26 million as at December 2011.

Of the non-resident population, the majority (46 per cent) are work permit holders (excluding foreign domestic workers) and 14 per cent are foreign domestic workers.

The others are: dependants of citizens and PRs as well as work pass holders (15 per cent); students (6 per cent); Employment Pass holders (12 per cent); S Pass holders (8 per cent).

The majority 43 per cent of foreign manpower work in services while 30 per cent work in construction.

Manufacturing takes 27 per cent and a minority 0.4 per cent work in other sectors.

The paper spells out the future implications of a shrinking and ageing workforce - fewer working people to support every elderly person; a less vibrant, less innovative economy; and eventually, a hollowing out of the population as young people leave for more exciting cities.

Associate Professor Randolph Tan said: "One of the things that we've learnt about demographic projections this far into the future is that they're notoriously unreliable. In fact over the last 15 years or so, Singapore and Hong Kong have had a remarkably similar experience in this regard. Total fertility rate has actually gone up in times of economic downturns, and has gone down when there is strong economic revival.

"You can't actually say that this is stylised fact that you can apply to all countries, but on a case-by-case basis, economists have actually observed that there is a counter-cyclical attribute between the total fertility rate and the economic growth cycle."

It's also possible that high immigration is depressing the fertility rate, Professor Tan said, so future population studies could look at the relationship between the two.

Authorities are reviewing existing policies to encourage more Singaporeans to get married and have children.

The authorities are also looking at the number of new citizens Singapore takes in, as well as the make-up of its non-resident workforce to support its needs.

Experts said there is a key difference between meeting short-term economic needs like manpower and answering Singapore's demographic challenges.

Professor Tan said: "Short-term economic priorities have to do with, for instance, the manpower shortages that we meet at a time when we need to take advantage of certain growth opportunities.

"Long-term demographic challenges have to do with whether you are actually setting up families that could give rise to a nurturing environment, so that you don't necessarily get a productive workforce out of it immediately, but at least you get a healthy, happy nation out of it."

The discussion continues as Singapore reaches a demographic turning point. More than 900,000 post-war baby boomers will hit 65 - the retirement age - from this year onward. That's over a quarter of the current citizen population.

NPTD is seeking public feedback through its newly launched population website at www.population.sg.

The public can also send their feedback by email: nptd_contact@nptd.gov.sg, fax: 6325-3240, or post.

The mailing address is:
The National Population and Talent Division,
Prime Minister's Office, 5 Maxwell Road #13-00
Tower Block MND Complex, Singapore 069110

The consultation runs till 31 October 2012.

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China: Elusive Sneezing Monkeys Photographed in a First

Jeanna Bryner LiveScience.com Yahoo News 26 Jul 12;


A female snub-nosed monkey, whose photo was snapped by a local forest ranger Liu Pu in a patch of evergreen broadleaf forest near Pianma in China's Yunnan province.

A group of monkeys whose nostrils are so upturned they are said to sneeze audibly when it rains has been discovered in China, say researchers, who have now snapped the first photographic evidence of the snub-nosed monkeys there.

The monkey species, Rhinopithecus strykeri, was first reported to exist in October 2010. With no photographic evidence of a live specimen that year, the researchers made a Photoshop reconstruction of it based on a Yunnan snub-nosed monkey and a carcass of the newly discovered species.

At the time, scientists thought the species was limited to the Kachin state of northeastern Myanmar.

The new discovery of the monkey, called "mey nwoah" in local dialects (or "monkey with an upturned face"), suggests its range extends into China. [See Photos of Snub-Nosed Monkeys]

"Our finding of a population of black snub-nosed monkeys was widely celebrated in China," the researchers write in the American Journal of Primatology.

Monkey sneezes

The snub-nosed monkeys are about 21 inches (55 centimeters) long from nose to rump, with tails extending some 30 inches (78 cm). Their fur is black with white ear tufts and white moustaches sitting on their bare-pink faces.

According to local hunters, the monkeys, Rhinopithecus Strykeri, sit with their heads tucked between their knees on drizzly days to keep from inhaling water. When the water gets caught in their noses, they sneeze, locals say.

Researchers were alerted to this hidden group of monkeys after Liu Pu, a forest guard for Gaoligongshan National Nature Reser, snapped photos of them in a forest near Pianma, in Yunann's Lushui County. To check it out, Yongcheng Long from the Nature Conservancy China Program led a team there.

Pinning down monkey numbers

The scientists photographed and filmed the monkeys in March 2012, estimating fewer than 100 snub-nosed monkeys there.

"However, while we now know the home range to be far greater than previously believed, we still do not yet know the true population number or the extent of their home range as the monkeys are shy and very hard to access," Long said in a statement.

Even so, the species is still considered critically endangered, the scientists warned.

"This monkey group was actually found in an area designated as a nature reserve 30 years ago, and while local people have been hunting the species for ages, local managers knew nothing about it," Long said. "This highlights the need to improve wildlife management in China, as it is likely quite a few new species of plants and animals may be discovered in the border areas between China and Myanmar."

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Best of our wild blogs: 26 Jul 12

Algae Quest
from Pulau Hantu

Chlorophyll
from The annotated budak

Bivalve Workshop at Kranji with horseshoe crab rescue
from wild shores of singapore

NSS Kids’ Birding Fun at Lorong Halus
from Fun with Nature and NSS Kids' Fun at the Butterfly Trail @ Orchard and Fun with Bukit Brown’s Natural and Cultural Heritage

Assembly talk – 400 Nanyang Primary students learn about marine life in Singapore! from News from the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore

Clean Coast Index Report 2011 - Part 3
from MNS Marine Group, Selangor Branch

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Anti-flood tank design tried and tested

Upcoming tank at Botanic Gardens similar to smaller version near Siglap
Feng Zengkun Straits Times 26 Jul 12;

A NEW water detention tank to be built near the Botanic Gardens by 2015 to help prevent floods in the area is not the first in Singapore.

It is likely to be similar to a smaller version built in Opera Estate near Siglap in 2001 to reduce the risk of floods there, according to plans unveiled by national water agency PUB last week.

The tank was built under a school field and cost $31 million when it was completed in 2001. The new tank, which will be under a new carpark for coach buses at the Botanic Gardens, is expected to be 11/2 times larger.

PUB declined to say how much it will cost.

Independent engineers told The Straits Times that the process of building the underground tank, if done properly, will not affect the safety of the ground and buildings nearby.

The rainwater from the new tank could also be used to irrigate the greenery in the Botanic Gardens and nearby Dempsey area, they said.

The Gardens tank is expected to be 15m - or about four housing block storeys - deep, and have a 38,000 cubic metre capacity, about the volume of 15 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

It will hold rainwater temporarily during storms and pump the water back into the drainage system after the storm ends.

It is one of PUB's two new infrastructure projects to keep the Orchard Road and surrounding areas dry.

The other major project is a canal to be completed by 2017, which will divert rainwater from the over-stressed Stamford Canal to the Singapore River.

PUB will call for tenders for both projects by the year end.

Mr Kevin Kho, 51, an engineer with more than 20 years' experience, said the larger size of the new tank is not likely to make its construction more difficult.

He said that there are several tried and tested ways to make sure construction of the tank does not affect the surrounding area.

One is to pipe in a mix of cement and sand to harden the soil before excavating it. This prevents cave-ins of soil which may weaken the ground nearby.

Another method is to drill lines of deep holes 1m to 2m-wide and fill them with concrete. These are called caisson piles and are used to create walls which can be braced to prevent soil slips.

After the ground is excavated, a frame of pillars is used to hold up the new roof, said Mr Kho.

'This is very old technology used in basements and underground carparks throughout Singapore. It's nothing very risky,' he said.

A PUB spokesman said last week that contractors for the new detention tank will have to show that its roof can withstand the weight of the coach buses in the new carpark.

Since the Opera Estate underground detention tank was built, floods in the area have been reduced from four to six times a year to almost none.

The construction company which built the tank has since folded.

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Indonesia: Illegal Logging the Cause of Padang Flash Floods

Jakarta Globe 25 Jul 12;

Padang Mayor Fauzi Bahar blamed illegal logging for Tuesday's widespread flooding that inundated five sub-districts of the West Sumatra capital.

Eight people remained missing on Wednesday as search and rescue crews converged on the flood-hit region. Heavy rains caused the Lubuk Linggau and Batang Kuranji rivers to overflow on Tuesday, forcing hundreds of families to flee their homes for safety.

Fauzi pointed to the large logs send downstream in the flood as evidence of the impact of illegal logging.

“The city administration has not issued any logging licenses for the protected forest around the city,” he said.

But more than 20 percent of the 12,000 hectares of protected forest within city limits have been felled by illegal loggers, Fauzi said.

The mayor asked local villagers to report instances of illegal logging to the police.

Batu Busuk village remained isolated by flood waters Wednesday morning after a bridge leading to the village collapsed in the floods.

Padang’s city administration have sent emergency aid to help villagers until the bridge is rebuilt.

Antara

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Protected tropical forests' biodiversity 'declining'

Mark Kinver BBC News 25 Jul 12;

Despite having protected status, the biodiversity in a large number of tropical forests is still continuing to decline, a study has suggested.

The authors said the findings should cause concern because the areas have been seen as a final refuge for a number of threatened species.

Habitat disruption, hunting and timber exploitation have been seen as signs of future decline, they added.

The findings have been published online by the science journal Nature.

"The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon," the international team of research wrote.

"Many protected areas in the tropics are themselves vulnerable to human encroachment and other environmental stresses."

Tropical forests are considered to be the biologically richest areas on the planet.

In order to assess the state of the world's protected areas, the team considered data from 60 areas, based on "262 detailed interviews, focusing on veteran field biologists and environmental scientists, who averaged more than two decades of experience".

"Our study was motivated by three broad issues: whether tropical reserves will function as 'arks' for biodiversity and natural ecosystem processes," the team wrote.

They added: "Whether observed changes are mainly concordant or idiosyncratic among different protect areas; and what are the principal predictors of reserve success or failure."

The study covered 36 nations across the tropics in Africa, Asia and South America.

The findings suggested that "protecting biodiversity involved more than jut safeguarding the reserves themselves".

"In many cases, the landscapes and habitats surrounding the reserves are under imminent threat," they observed.

"For example, 85% of [the observed] reserves suffered declines in surrounding forest cover in the [past] 20 to 30 years, whereas only 2% gained surrounding forest."

The team reported that the data showed that forest disruption, over-exploitation of wildlife and forest resources had the greatest "direct negative impact".

They also observed that "air and water pollution, increase in human population densities and climatic change" had a weaker or more indirect impact.

The team - headed by Prof William Laurance from James Cook University, Australia - concluded that the activities outside the protected areas had an impact on the resilience of the biodiversity within the protected areas.

"It is not enough to [protect] interiors while ignoring surrounding landscapes, which are being rapidly deforested, degraded and over-hunted," they observed.

"A failure to limit inter-related internal and external threats could predispose reserves to ecological decay, including taxonomically and functionally array in species communities and an erosion of fundamental ecosystem processes."

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Thai villagers to fight Lao Mekong dam in court

Thin Lei Win AlertNet 25 Jul 12;

CHIANG RAI, Thailand (AlertNet) - The inhabitants of Ban Pak Ing Tai, a leafy village in Thailand’s far north nestled between the mighty Mekong River and one of its tributaries, know only too well what dams can do.

This used to be a fishing village but nowadays local men are more likely to be found toiling away in corn fields or working as labourers than out on their boats.

They say vital sources of their food, water and livelihoods - from fish and riverweeds to seasonal wetlands for agriculture - are fast disappearing due to Chinese dams on the Mekong, which flows through six countries.

As a result, they vehemently oppose plans for big hydropower projects that would involve building dams on the Mekong in Laos, largely aimed at selling electricity to Thailand.

Village headman Phoomi Boonthom, 54, only fishes in his spare time now. Despite more than four decades of experience, he catches less than a kilo of fish after two sessions on the river on a hot June afternoon in peak season.

“This year’s been the worst in terms of catch. In the past, I used to get 10 kilos per round,” he told AlertNet, displaying a small box with some ice and fish.

The water level is too low and fluctuates too sharply for the fish to migrate, he said, putting the blame firmly on China.

“They built dams and blocked the water,” he said. “I also saw news on TV that if (Laos) finishes the Xayaburi and Pak Beng dams, there will be lots of problems, from here all the way down to Vietnam.”

The Mekong, flowing from the Tibetan plateau to the South China Sea through China, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, is the world’s 12th largest river.

The Mekong River Commission says its fisheries have an estimated value of $5.6 to $9.4 billion a year, and provide food and livelihoods for some 60 million people living along its banks.

Experts say fish and other aquatic animals provide 40 to 80 percent of animal protein in local diets. And more than 80 percent of the populations of Cambodia and Laos, as well as communities in large areas of Thailand and Vietnam, meet their water needs from the Mekong basin’s rivers.

FIRST LAWSUIT OF ITS KIND

Much is at stake – and that is why, in an unprecedented action, Thai villagers from eight Mekong provinces are planning to take the government to court over the controversial $3.5 billion, 1,260-megawatt Xayaburi hydropower project in neighbouring Laos, which plans to export 95 percent of the power it produces to Thailand.

The dam is to be part-financed by Thai banks and its main developer is Thailand's second-biggest construction firm, Ch Karnchang Pcl.

The plaintiffs accuse the state-run Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) of agreeing to purchase energy generated by the Lao scheme without an adequate assessment or public consultation, as required by Thai law.

“This is the only way we can fight (these powerful interests),” said Niwat Roikeaw, director of the Chiang Khong Conservation Group in northern Thailand’s Chiang Rai province, upstream of the planned dam. “We used reason and tried to present everything that could happen (because of the dam) but they didn’t listen.”

Niwat, representing Chiang Rai – and villagers like Phoomi – is part of the Thai’s People Network of Eight Mekong Provinces which is threatening to file a lawsuit on August 7 unless the agreement to purchase power from Xayaburi is cancelled.

“This is the first regional legal case on a transboundary project involving overseas investment,” said Pianporn Deetes, campaign director for environmental group International Rivers in Thailand.

“We hope it will set a new ‘standard’ for overseas investment from Thailand and the Mekong hydropower… for social and environmental responsibility,” she added.

The EGAT declined to comment on the lawsuit, and Ch Karnchang - which has a 57 percent share in the Xayaburi project - did not respond when contacted by AlertNet.

POLITICAL RISKS

Xayaburi is the first of a dozen dams planned by landlocked, impoverished Laos, which has ambitions to become the “battery of Southeast Asia” by exporting most of the power generated by its hydro projects.

But critics say Xayaburi’s Thai developer has not properly assessed the dam’s social and environmental impacts, which could include damage to fish migration routes, farm land, food security and local livelihoods.

A report by the U.S.-based Stimson Center, Mekong Turning Point, said the company’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) identified the area for study as extending only 10 km downstream, when the impacts would clearly reach much further.

“(Xayaburi) is not only about water flows and destroying migratory fish population, but also upstream dams holding nutrient-rich silt that (Vietnam’s) Mekong delta needs,” said the report’s author Richard Cronin, a senior associate with the Stimson Center.

“Cambodia is worried about the Tonle Sap Lake and millions of Cambodians who depend on the fisheries for food and livelihood. You’re talking about people already living on $1 or $2 a day losing everything,” he added.

Cronin said such cross-border consequences mean the debate over Xayaburi and other Mekong dams goes far beyond basic trade-offs involving water and food.

“Laos has the sovereign right to go ahead, but it’s a question of what’s the cost going to be, particularly in terms of relations with your neighbours and regional stability?” he said.

Xayaburi has already angered Cambodia's government and upset Laos's biggest ally, Vietnam, over its possible downstream effects.

In December, under pressure from neighbouring countries, Laos agreed to put the project on hold, pending further studies led by Japan.

Nonetheless, International Rivers said in June it had witnessed Ch Karnchang resettling villagers, building a large retaining wall, and undertaking dredging to deepen and widen the riverbed – a claim denied by official media in Laos.

In mid-July, Laos declared publicly for the first time that work on the dam had been halted.

The Mekong River Commission has recommended a 10-year moratorium, but it is unclear how long Laos is prepared to wait.

“WATER GRABBING”

For the communities who rely on the Mekong’s water, ecosystems and biodiversity for survival, preserving those natural assets is paramount.

But for investors and energy-hungry governments, the electricity that could be produced by harnessing the river’s waters in hydro schemes is an opportunity to generate profits and economic growth.

Nathanial Matthews, a researcher with London’s King’s College, said hydropower development in the Mekong region amounts to “water grabbing”, which he defines as “when powerful actors take control of water resources for their own benefit”.

The benefits are rarely shared with local people, he told AlertNet. They tend to be ethnic minorities and vulnerable people relying on the river’s resources who are more likely to experience any negative effects.

China, for example, has been accused of changing the Mekong’s natural hydrology and causing the devastating 2008 floods in northern Thailand by releasing water from upstream dams and destroying rapids to facilitate dam construction and boost trade.

Some activists and academics also say Thailand’s electriticy authority is overestimating future demand and emphasising the need for new capacity rather than efficiency gains.

The 12 dams planned for Laos would meet only around 6 percent of Thailand’s total energy demand by 2020 – an amount the southeast Asian nation could save through reasonable energy efficiency measures, according to the Stimson Center’s Cronin.

"If dams are going to be built, which I think is inevitable to an extent, we need to make sure the costs don't outweigh the benefits," Matthews said. “It's not about being anti-dams. It’s about better dams.”

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Maps spark concern over corporate water grab

Astrid Zweynert PlanetArk 25 Jul 12;

As competition for clean water grows, some of the world's biggest companies have joined forces to create unprecedented maps of the precious resource that flows beneath our feet.

The Aqueduct Alliance, which allows users to create maps by combining hydrological data with geographically specific details, gives companies and investors unprecedented detail of water availability in some of the world's largest river basins.

The promoters say the data should help companies use water more responsibly while helping them to manage their exposure to risk.

But critics fear the data could be used to cash in on an increasingly scarce natural resource - two thirds of people are expected to face water shortages by 2025.

The maps, which are powered by previously proprietary Coca-Cola data collected over years of research in locations wherever the world's biggest soft drinks firm had manufacturing sites, are now publicly available for free on the Internet (here).

They allow users to create detailed high-resolution maps by aggregating and weighing indicators that drive water risk, much of it physical data but also local regulatory structures and media coverage of the issue.

Promoters and experts say communities will also be able to exploit the maps and contribute data and local knowledge so that practical solutions can be devised about how to use water sustainably at a local level.

"This goes beyond just looking at how much water is being used to produce something," said Betsy Otto, director of the alliance, launched last year by U.S.-based think-tank the World Resources Institute (WRI) in cooperation with GE, Goldman Sachs, Dow, Bloomberg and Talisman Energy.

"Our tool allows a look at the local context, to see how scarce water is in the region, what is the quality, how much competition there is for water resources," she told AlertNet.

ZOOMING IN ON RIVER BASINS

From just one map at the start, the alliance has ambitious plans to map more than 20 river basins that provide water for irrigation and industry use as well as food production.

So far it has created detailed maps of China's Yellow River and the Orange-Senqu basin, which runs through Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa.

By the end of this year it aims to have added the Colorado River in the United States, which has suffered years of drought, and the Yangtze River in China, where at least 1.3 million people were displaced by the Three Gorges dam.

Maps will also go live by year-end of the Mekong River basin in southeast Asia, which is threatened by ambitious dam-building projects, and the Murray Darling, a river at the centre of Australia's controversial water rights purchasing market.

The risk of water shortages can be projected as far ahead as 2095 by measuring 14 indicators grouped into physical, quality and regulatory/reputational categories.

Working with a Taiwan-based computer screen manufacturer, for example, Otto said Aqueduct was able to predict water scarcity by 2025 in some of the key locations used by the firm.

SUSTAINABILITY KEY

For millions of people water scarcity can have a devastating impact on livelihoods, which is why sustainable water use has become an important driver of development policy.

Some are concerned that tools such as Aqueduct's maps will simply enable companies and investors to make more money without taking local people's needs into account.

"The risk is that the concerns of local people are left behind in the rush to secure access to water and reduce risk for companies," said Lori Pottinger, Africa campaigner at International Rivers, an organization that works to protect rivers.

But experts say with more input from local communities, the risk atlas could contribute to sustainability by giving companies a different perspective on how their water use affects people living in a river basin.

A small community could use the tool to include data based on its own knowledge of local water challenges, an approach aid agencies and governments have used in participatory mapping projects with local people in many developing countries.

"This is a tool that needs to develop into something more in tune with the reality of local communities," said Vibhu Nayar, founder of the Centre of Excellence for Change in Chennai, India, which works on mitigating climate change-related water and food crises.

"If you give communities tools to draw their own maps, you will get more realistic results," said Nayar, a senior civil servant who has worked on collaborative water management with local people in Tamil Nadu in southern India.

Local community mapping projects have sprung up all over the world. Techniques range from simple hand-drawn maps to using global positioning systems (GPS), geographic information systems (GIS) and other digital technologies.

Residents of Kibera, a slum in Kenya's capital Nairobi, for example, are using GPS and open-source mapping tools to map water access points and toilets, combining valuable and unique local knowledge with technology.

Coca-Cola learned the hard way the importance of engaging with local communities.

The company had to close its plant in the Indian state of Kerala after a drought sparked criticism that it was sucking the water table dry. Coke denied the allegation but its image was still hurt.

Greg Koch, managing director of Coca-Cola's Global Water Stewardship, said it was in the company's business interest to share its water data.

In fact, one of the reasons why the Aqueduct Alliance developed the risk atlas was to help companies become more aware of the environment they operate in rather than just focusing on how they can save water, Otto said.

"We have a very robust water risk management and mapping program but when the Aqueduct Alliance came around...we realized our efforts are never going to be enough...and that you need all users in a watershed, all stakeholders, to understand the issues and then work together to try and mitigate those risks and those stresses," Koch told AlertNet.

(This story is part of a special multimedia report on water produced by AlertNet, a global humanitarian news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation. Visit water.trust.org)

(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

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Loss of Arctic sea ice '70% man-made'

Study finds only 30% of radical loss of summer sea ice is due to natural variability in Atlantic – and it will probably get worse
Alok Jha The Guardian 26 Jul 12;

The radical decline in sea ice around the Arctic is at least 70% due to human-induced climate change, according to a new study, and may even be up to 95% down to humans – rather higher than scientists had previously thought.

The loss of ice around the Arctic has adverse effects on wildlife and also opens up new northern sea routes and opportunities to drill for oil and gas under the newly accessible sea bed.

The reduction has been accelerating since the 1990s and many scientists believe the Arctic may become ice-free in the summers later this century, possibly as early as the late 2020s.

"Since the 1970s, there's been a 40% decrease in the summer sea ice extent," said Jonny Day, a climate scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading, who led the latest study.

"We were trying to determine how much of this was due to natural variability and therefore imply what aspect is due to man-made climate change as well."

To test the ideas, Day carried out several computer-based simulations of how the climate around the Arctic might have fluctuated since 1979 without the input of greenhouse gases from human activity.

He found that a climate system called the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation (AMO) was a dominant source of variability in ice extent. The AMO is a cycle of warming and cooling in the North Atlantic that repeats every 65 to 80 years – it has been in a warming phase since the mid-1970s.

Comparing the models with actual observations, Day was able to work out what contribution the natural systems had made to what researchers have observed from satellite data.

"We could only attribute as much as 30% [of the Arctic ice loss] to the AMO," he said. "Which implies that the rest is due to something else, and this is most likely going to be man-made global change."

Previous studies had indicated that around half of the loss was due to man-made climate change and that the other half was due to natural variability.

Looking across all his simulations, Day found that the 30% figure was an upper limit – the AMO could have contributed as little as 5% to the overall loss of Arctic ice in recent decades.

The research is published online in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

Day said that there are a number of feedback effects that could see the Arctic ice loss continue in the coming years, as the Earth warms up.

"[There is] something called the ice-albedo feedback, which means that when you have less ice, it means there's more open water and therefore the ocean absorbs more radiation and will continue to warm," he said.

"It's unclear what will happen – it definitely seems like it's going in that direction."

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