Thailand: Dugong carcass sent for autopsy to know cause of death

Achara Wisetsri The Nation 30 Aug 17;

The carcass of a female dugong that weighed 200 kilograms has been sent for autopsy to determine the cause of its death, Eastern Gulf Fisheries Research and Development Centre (Rayong) veterinarian Weerapong Laowetprasit said on Wednesday.

The carcass was found floating in the sea near Koh Samet, about five nautical miles off the Muang Rayong coast, on Tuesday afternoon. The three-metre-long dugong had a wound in the abdomen area and was suspected to have died less than seven days before the discovery of the carcass.

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Floods paralyse Mumbai as India and region are hit by heaviest rains in years

More than 1,200 people have been killed in India, Nepal and Bangladesh and millions forced from their homes
Haroon Siddique and agencies The Guardian 30 Aug 17;

Heavy monsoon rains have brought Mumbai to a halt for a second day as the worst floods to strike south Asia in years continued to exact a deadly toll.

More than 1,200 people have died across India, Bangladesh and Nepal as a result of flooding. At least six people, including two toddlers, were among the victims in and around India’s financial capital.

On Wednesday, police said a 45-year-old woman and a one-year-old child, members of the same family, had died after their home in the north-eastern suburb of Vikhroli crumbled late on Tuesday, and a two-year-old girl had died in a wall collapse.

They said another three people had died after being swept away in the neighbouring city of Thane.

The rains have led to flooding in a broad arc stretching across the Himalayan foothills in Bangladesh, Nepal and India, causing landslides, damaging roads and electric towers and washing away tens of thousands of homes and vast swaths of farmland.

The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) says the fourth significant floods this year have affected more than 7.4 million people in Bangladesh, damaging or destroying more than 697,000 houses.

They have killed 514 in India’s eastern state of Bihar, where 17.1 million have been affected, disaster management officials have been quoted as saying. In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, about 2.5 million have been affected and the death toll stood at 109 on Tuesday, according to the Straits Times. The IFRC said landslides in Nepal had killed more than 100 people.

The IFRC – working with the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society and the Nepal Red Cross – has launched appeals to support almost 200,000 vulnerable people with immediate relief and long-term help with water and sanitation, health and shelter.

Streets in Mumbai have turned into rivers and people waded through waist-deep waters. On Tuesday, the city received about 12.7cm (5ins) of rain, paralysing public transport and leaving thousands of commuters stranded in their offices overnight.

Poor visibility and flooding also forced airport authorities to divert some flights while most were delayed by up to an hour.

The National Disaster Response Force has launched a rescue mission with police to evacuate people from low-lying areas but operations were thwarted by the continuous rain.

“The heavy rains, flooding, are delaying our rescue work. Even we are stranded,” said Amitesh Kumar, the joint police commissioner in Mumbai.

Images and video posted on social media showed the extent of the flooding.

Rainwater swamped the King Edward Memorial hospital in central Mumbai, forcing doctors to vacate the paediatric ward.

“We are worried about infections … the rain water is circulating rubbish that is now entering parts of the emergency ward,” said Ashutosh Desai, a doctor in the 1,800-bed hospital.

Although Mumbai is trying to build itself into a global financial hub, parts of the city struggle to cope during annual monsoon rains.

Floods in 2005 killed more than 500 people in the city. The majority of deaths occurred in shanty town slums, home to more than half of Mumbai’s population.

The meteorological department warned that the rains would continue for the next 24 hours.

Unabated construction on flood plains and coastal areas, as well as storm-water drains and waterways clogged by plastic garbage, have made the city increasingly vulnerable to storms.

Snehal Tagade, a senior official in Mumbai’s disaster management unit, said 150 teams were being deployed to help the population in low-lying residential areas.

Low-lying parts of the city with a population of more than 20 million people experience flooding almost every year but large-scale flooding of this magnitude has not been seen in recent years.

“We are mapping all the flooding zones to launch a project to build emergency shelters to make evacuation easy,” said Tagade.

Many businesses asked employees to leave early in expectation of worsening traffic jams. Rains and a high tide in the western coastal city threaten to overload an ageing drainage system.

Several companies have arranged for food and resting facilities for employees stuck in offices. Temples and other Ganesh pandals have been offering food and water to people stranded on streets.

People on social media have been offering help to strangers who have been stuck at various locations.

The education minister has asked all schools and colleges in the city to remain shut on Wednesday.

The flooding led to some power outages in parts of the city and the municipal corporation warned of more such cuts if water levels continued to rise.

A spokeswoman for Mumbai international airport said flights in and out of the airport, India’s second busiest, were delayed while some had had to be diverted.


Severe Flooding in South Asia Has Caused More Than 1,200 Deaths This Summer
Kevin Lui Time 30 Aug 17;

Severe flooding across South Asia has caused at least 1,200 deaths this summer, aid workers say, with huge swaths of the region still inundated as monsoon rains continue.

The death toll continues to rise amid concerns that disease and food insecurity could claim even more lives, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Most recorded deaths were in India, but many also died in neighboring Bangladesh and Nepal.

A spokesperson for the IFRC tells TIME that nearly a million houses have been damaged or destroyed in the three most affected countries. The U.N. estimates that more than 41 million people have been affected by the downpour. The monsoon season typically lasts from June to September.

Poor areas of Nepal have been particularly hard-hit; more than 210,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed by floods or landslides, and 143 people have died. In Bangladesh, roughly 8.6 million were affected, 142 died and enormous areas of farmland suffered damage, the IFRC said.

About a third of the country has been submerged by this year’s rains, according to the New York Times.

In India, the flooding has affected more than 30 million people, while the financial capital Mumbai is reportedly paralyzed by the waters. The Times reports that schools were shut Tuesday and transportation ground to a near standstill.

IFRC spokesperson Antony Balmain tells TIME that the flooding has heightened the risk of diarrhea, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis and other diseases.

Monsoon season regularly ravishes the Indian subcontinent. In 2014, hundreds died when the coastal Indian city of Chennai saw its heaviest rains in a century. This summer has brought more rain to Mumbai than any other year since 2005, the Times reports, when it was devastated by downpour that killed more than 1,000 people across the state of Maharashtra.

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Satellite photos reveal how Mumbai killed its rivers and mangrove forests to risk epic floods

Devjyot Ghoshal Quartz India 30 Aug 17;

It’s almost a ritual: At least on one day every year, the heavens above Mumbai open up, and the metropolis of some 20 million below is inundated.

The resultant outrage, inconvenience, and suffering are something of a tradition, with successive governments getting pilloried for their lack of preparedness despite the regularity with which the monsoon paralyses India’s financial capital. Some things never change.

The latest act was on Aug. 29, when Mumbai ground to a near-complete halt once again after parts of the city received 298 mm of rain within a nine-hour period. Five people have died so far, and more rain is expected.

The city’s inability to weather such downpours is a result of a combination of the failure to improve its drainage system and the unbridled development that has stymied the region’s natural capacity to absorb heavy rainfall.

The latter, in particular, has mostly been overlooked. As journalist Darryl D’Monte noted in Scroll.in:
Mumbai’s major nullahs form a vein-like network that can extend for an astounding 300 km. These could have functioned effectively to drain water out of the city. But this is a natural legacy that the city authorities have abused, with the reckless sanctioning of building after building, in brazen collusion with builders and venal bureaucrats. By indiscriminately dumping waste in open drains, citizens have also contributed to choking them.

To better understand the impact of the decades of haphazard development, Quartz pulled out some satellite maps of Mumbai from 1988 and 2017:

Mumbai is essentially a peninsula jutting into the Arabian Sea. Since the 1980s, when a little over eight million called it home, the city’s population has more than doubled. That’s led to rapid urbanisation of the surrounding areas, as well as encroachment of the mangroves on the city’s edges.

A close examination of mangroves around the Thane (the finger of water on the right) and Malad creeks (the green patch on the left) reveal how the city has expanded. Mangrove forests, found at the intersection of land and sea, are natural and vital flood barriers, especially as storms become more erratic and severe due to climate change.

More proof of their destruction is available further north of Mumbai, where the area around the Manori creek (on the left) has been massively encroached upon. Mangroves at the mouth of the Desai Khadi river (bottom, right), too, have met with a similar fate, with areas being extensively built upon in the last 30 years.

Then, there’s the Mithi river, the thread of blue at the centre of the image, right under the X-shaped runways of the Mumbai airport. It originates in the hills around the Sanjay Gandhi National Park and travels nearly 18 kilometres to drain into the sea. Mithi is Mumbai’s natural storm drain, particularly during heavy rains. Over the years, though, it has become a veritable sewer, choked with domestic and industrial waste. The wetlands along the river (immediately south of the airport), too, have disappeared since the late 1980s.

It’s a story of maximum destruction in the Maximum City.

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Jackie Chan joins fight to save endangered pangolin

BBC 30 Aug 17;

Martial arts superstar Jackie Chan is taking part in a campaign against consuming endangered pangolins, as Malaysia takes steps to ban the hunting of the animal.

The Rush Hour star appears in a video where he trains a trio of pangolins to use kung fu to defend themselves, while urging viewers against eating pangolin meat or using their scales for traditional medicine, Taiwan News reports.

The "Kung Fu Pangolin" campaign, headed by the WildAid organisation, will also appear on billboards in China and Vietnam, the two largest pangolin consuming nations in the Asia region.

Pointing out how previous campaigns against shark fins and rhino horn have been successful, WildAid chief Peter Knights had high hopes for the pangolin campaign. "Jackie reaches a vast audience across Asia and there are clear signs these campaigns have had an impact and attitudes are changing," he said.

Crackdown on poaching

The new campaign arrives as one Malaysian state takes urgent moves to outlaw the hunting of the animal.
The government of Sabah, on the northern part of Borneo, is to rush through moves to make pangolins a "totally protected" species, The Malay Mail newspaper says.

Once approved by the state's Cabinet, hunting the animal will carry a mandatory prison sentence of up to five years. Last month, officials seized eight tonnes of pangolin scales at a port in Sabah.

The move comes after warnings that continued poaching poses an existential threat not only to pangolins, but to the biodiversity of the region, the Clean Malaysia environmental news website says.

"If these illegal hunting activities are not checked, the population of the protected and endangered wildlife species in the state will shrink in no time," Rahimatsah Amat of the Sabah Environmental Trust said.

Pangolins are the most trafficked mammals in the world, and over a million have been poached from the wild in the last ten years, WildAid says. The meat is considered a delicacy, while the scales are thought to have properties in traditional Chinese medicine.

When attacked, the animals roll into a ball and use their scales for defence. While this might be fine against natural predators, it makes it easy for poachers to catch these shy, nocturnal animals.

Reporting by Alistair Coleman

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Murky data on water pollution puts health at risk in Asia - researchers

Thin Lei Win Reuters 30 Aug 17;

BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - In Mongolia, herders living outside the capital Ulaanbaatar, near the Tuul River, fear deteriorating water quality is making their livestock sick.

In Indonesia, shrimp farmers in Serang who rely on the Ciujung River have seen their catches fall, and some have developed skin problems.

In south-central Thailand, villagers near the Map Ta Phut Industrial Estate, home to petrochemical plants, oil refineries and coal-fired power stations, worry that their water is heavily polluted.

Concerned about their health, these communities sought clarification and information from their governments about pollutants being released into the environment, overall water quality, the risks of using such water, and information on the companies thought to be responsible.

In each case, they were thwarted, despite their countries having extensive legislation on citizens’ right to information, including environmental data, said a new report by the World Resources Institute (WRI), a U.S.-based think tank.

Villagers faced obstacles - from having to pay to access documents, to lacking an internet connection for online information, and needing to understand and use freedom of information laws, the report said.

Sometimes, the data was unavailable publicly or presented in a language communities could not understand.

When information was released, it was often poor, technical and did not meet local people’s demands, said the report issued on Wednesday.

“Access to information is really the foundation for any kind of meaningful public participation or accountability in environmental decision-making,” Elizabeth Moses, the report’s co-author, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In Thailand and Mongolia, people who request information are asked to come to the environment ministry to pick it up, even though some live hours away and do not have the money or time to travel, added the WRI specialist in water governance.

Thai agencies may also refuse to release environmental information that is classified as secret.

As a result, millions of people in Indonesia, Mongolia and Thailand could be drinking unsafe water with long-term repercussions for their health and livelihoods, Moses said.

These problems reflect the struggles experienced by rural communities across the developing world who want information regarding clean water, she added.

INFORMATION TO SAVE LIVES

Globally, over 80 percent of all wastewater is discharged without treatment and contaminated water is a root cause of death, disease and disability, particularly in developing countries, according to the United Nations.

“For the world’s poorest people, access to clean water means fewer outbreaks of deadly diseases, less time spent away from the classroom by children collecting water, and greater economic opportunities for women,” said the WRI report.

Pollution also hampers economic progress. Inaction to tackle air and water pollution costs some countries the equivalent of 4 percent of GDP or more a year, the World Bank has said.

While all three countries the WRI report focuses on have comprehensive laws to disclose information, many do not indicate how information is to be made available or comprehensible to affected communities, the report said.

The Indonesian and Thai environment ministries did not respond to Thomson Reuters Foundation requests for comment.

Erdenebulgan Luvsandorj, director of the water resources division at Mongolia’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism, said anyone who wished to obtain water pollution data from the ministry or its laboratory was free to do so.

The ministry will soon seek parliamentary approval for amendments to tighten up implementation of a 2012 law on fees for water pollution, he added. Local media say regulation has been too vague to effectively punish polluters.

The WRI report urged the three governments to set up national systems to collect and publish environmental information.

“Until local communities have the ability and the means to access the information they need, then these lofty goals around transparency are really not being fulfilled,” said Moses.

There have been some improvements, she noted.

For example, Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry adopted a regulation in 2015 to expand the number of environmental documents it would proactively disclose, but it has yet to be fully implemented, she said.

Reporting by Thin Lei Win, Editing by Megan Rowling; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org

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Best of our wild blogs: 30 Aug 17

Abandoned nets at Pulau Ubin (26 Aug 2017)
Project Driftnet

RUMbles in July and August
Restore Ubin Mangroves (R.U.M.) Initiative

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LTA, URA release land previously safeguarded for underground road system

Channel NewsAsia 29 Aug 17;

SINGAPORE: Land which was previously safeguarded for the Singapore Underground Road System (SURS) has been released as there is no more need for the arterial road, said the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) on Tuesday (Aug 29).

Enhancements to Singapore's public transport network and changes in land use policies have removed the need for the SURS, the 15km-long underground arterial ring road system around the fringe of the city that was to cater to traffic growth into and out of the city centre, the agencies said in a joint press release.

The SURS was conceptualised in the 1980s and the land along the SURS alignment was safeguarded in 1993.

LTA and URA said the city centre is already well-served by a comprehensive public transport system.

With the Downtown Line fully opening on Oct 21, the agencies said this will "further improve public transport connectivity", especially for commuters from the north-western and eastern regions of the island travelling to the Central Business District (CBD) and Marina Bay areas.

The completion of the Thomson-East Coast Line in 2024 "will also connect commuters from the northern and eastern parts of Singapore to the central areas, while Circle Line Stage 6 will close the Circle Line loop by around 2025".

By 2030, Singapore's rail network will be 360km long with 90 per cent of CBD developments within a five-minute walk to an MRT station, the agencies said.

With the release of the safeguarded SURS land, previously affected land owners will now have greater flexibility in their development plans, they added.


Scrapping of underground road network to give more urban planning options: Experts
WONG PEI TING Today Online 30 Aug 17;

SINGAPORE — Scrapping plans to build a 30km underground road network will not only give urban planners and landowners more flexibility to build “higher or lower”. It will also reduce the inconvenience and costs for developers since they will no longer have to take the network alignment into consideration in their planning, property and transport experts said on Tuesday (Aug 29).

Still, the impact of the Government’s decision to “de-safeguard” land preserved for the 30km-Singapore Underground Road System (SURS) will not be felt immediately, they told TODAY.

Noting that the announcement on the SURS’ fate is “no windfall for anybody”, Mr Colin Tan, director of research and consultancy at Suntec Real Estate Consultants, said that the lifting of restrictions means that urban planners can designate areas to have a “higher plot ratio”, which refers to the density of a building on any piece of land.

“There are more options to relocate or locate some amenities and developments. If you want to intensify or build higher, then this will allow the planners to lift the plot ratio,” he added.

In the long term, Mr Tan felt the move opens up the potential to develop the northern side of the SURS’ loop — namely the parts running across Balestier Road and Kallang — the only areas left that are not as densely built up as the city centre, or running along the existing arterial road network.

International Property Advisor chief executive officer Ku Swee Yong said the restrictions under the SURS affected a very niche group of landowners, who might be thinking of creating a subterranean structure or high-rise condominiums which might require more piling work for foundation.

He added that if the Government had gone ahead with the S$5 billion SURS plan, “about 30 to 40 per cent of the built-up areas, such as Havelock, Maxwell and Orchard” will have to put up with the inconveniences arising from the construction.

“There is no financial impact, except that we save some trouble for ourselves,” Mr Ku added.

Mr Nicholas Mak, executive director of real estate firm ZACD Group, said significant stretches of alignment run beneath lands with no development potential, such as the Central Expressway or the Marina Coastal Expressway or the Gardens by the Bay. Hence, there is limited impact on property developers.

He added that it is “incrementally more expensive to build deeper down”, with the price for going two to three levels underground costing about three times more.

“You will need more foundation work, more robust engineering work to keep the walls from collapsing on the sides as there is more pressure there,” Mr Mak added.

Transport experts felt that it was a wise move to scrap the underground road network as it was an obsolete idea conceived in the 1980s, at a time when plans for the country’s MRT network was still at its infancy.

The provisions made for the underground roads were also “too extensive” to be adapted for alternative uses, such as building pedestrian walkways or underground shopping malls to further support the car-lite vision, they noted.

"For me, de-safeguarding could have happened earlier. The moment they have planned for more MRT lines, then it becomes quite clear that we do not need to have those car roads tunneling through underground,” said Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) urban transport planner Park Byung Joon.

When asked whether the planned underground network could be adapted to fit the car-lite vision — for example, using it for cycling paths — Dr Park said that standards are vastly different when it comes to planning for different types of amenities. For example, the total walking distance for an underground pedestrian walk could only go no more than 2km — “this is what driving can cover in one to two minutes”.

While recognising the importance of “unlocking the value of the land along the corridor if the Government does not intend to use it”, SUSS economist Dr Walter Theseira felt that the authorities could have taken a more phased approach in “de-safeguarding” the land meant for SURS.

Pointing to the vision of having more autonomous vehicles on the roads in the future, Dr Theseira said the “heavy adoption” of this might increase road-usage in the prime areas as it could make this form of commuting “more convenient than taking mass public transport”.

Since the short-term impact of “de-safeguarding” is limited, the move could result in “us restricting ourselves unnecessarily”, Dr Theseira said.

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NUS launches event to promote environmental sustainability

Jose Hong Straits Times 29 Aug 17;

SINGAPORE - The National University of Singapore (NUS) took new steps in the name of being green on Tuesday (Aug 29).

It organised the first sustainABLE NUS Showcase, a two-day exhibition and carnival at NUS University Town.

With its 28 booths, the event aims to present the university's initiatives to transform itself into a greener campus - achieving sustainability in its operations, its research and education, its community engagement and through partnerships with outside organisations.

The event also tries to showcase how NUS' research and teaching tackle the sustainability challenges of today and the future.

For example, a booth showed off technology that would make solar power measurements at least 50 per cent more precise than what is currently available on the market.

Presented by Dr Martin Reed from the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (Seris), it uses drones to scan buildings in Singapore and then recreates three-dimensional models of them. The technology then uses local weather data to calculate how much sunshine - and hence solar power - each specific surface of the building would get.

Dr Reed said that this would allow building owners to accurately know where to place what type of solar panels to maximise the solar power generated and the energy saved.

His team is already looking for clients to sell this service to. "I'm excited about the use of this technology as it is scalable to solve solar power problems at the national level, and I enjoy working hands on in the development and implementation of such solutions that will benefit Singapore," he said.

Another booth at the event showcased a NUS Environmental Research Institute team is presenting an approach to turn food waste into soil called NUSoil.

Visiting the Seris exhibitions was first-year mechanical engineering student Lee Dongyu. He said he came down because he was interested in the clean energy sector.

"I want to find out about the depth of research they're doing here in the field of solar energy research," said Mr Lee, 21.

He said he found the exhibits he visited quite good and interactive, and he appreciated the opportunities to find out more about the areas he is interested in outside of his curriculum.

NUS president, Professor Tan Chorh Chuan, said in his opening address that the sustainABLE NUS Showcase was one of the ways the institution could show support for the Sustainable Singapore Blueprint, which outlines the Republic's plans to become more liveable and sustainable.

Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Masagos Zulkifli was the guest of honour at the event.

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Malaysia: Sabah on fast-track to make pangolin a totally protected species

RUBEN SARIO The Star 29 Aug 17;

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah is speeding up the process of making pangolins a totally protected species amid the increasing number of cases of trafficking and hunting.

“There is a real urgency to give it full protection,” state Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun said after unveiling the Negaraku Livery on a MASwings ATR 72-500 aircraft here on Tuesday.

He said the Wildlife Department was preparing the necessary documents to upgrade the protection status of pangolins to be submitted to the Sabah Cabinet.

Sunda pangolins are the only species found in Sabah and are protected under Part 1 Schedule 2 of the Sabah Wildlife Conservation Enactment, allowing for them to be hunted with permits.

The upgrade would see pangolins being listed under Schedule 1 of the Enactment that would ban their hunting altogether.

In the International Union Conservation of Nature red list of threatened species, Sunda pangolins are on the critically endangered list.

Masidi said that upgrading the protection status of pangolins would send a strong message to poachers and wildlife traffickers that Sabah was not making light of the animal being hunted illegally or its parts being traded.

Last month, Sabah Customs Department officers seized eight tonnes of pangolin scales at the Sepanggar port here.

The pangolin scales were believed to have been bound for China, although their origin has yet to be determined.


Sabah looking at making pangolins a completely protected species
KRISTY INUS New Straits Times 28 AUg 17;

KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Wildlife Department is looking at upgrading the status of Pangolin to a completely protected species.

The department is in the midst of preparing a paper on the matter to upgrade the status of the mammalian from Schedule 2 to Schedule 2 of the Wildlife Conservation Enactment 1997.

State Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun said he had ordered the department which falls under his ministry, to undertake the matter as soon as possible.

“They have always been planning to do this but now enough is enough. While it is impossible for a complete stop of pangolin or wildlife trade, but what is important is that we sends a strong message to all citizens on the need for all of us to work together in protecting them,” he said.

Masidi said this when asked about the recent case of an attempt to smuggle in RM103 million worth of pangolin scales weighing 8,000 kilogrammes via Sepanggar Port here.

In Sabah, Schedule 2 of the Enactment permits the hunting of the listed animals with a permit.

Masidi hoped that the stronger legislation via the status upgrading will help cut off illegal wildlife trade.

On the scales confiscated on July 29, Sabah Customs Department believes the scales were sourced from some 16,000 pangolins.

Asked whether the state government is pursuing to verify where they came from, Masidi said it is up to the Wildlife Department but there is obviously ‘a need to do so’.

State Tourism, Culture and Environment deputy ministerDatuk Pang Yuk Ming had previously stated that Sabah was likely to be a transshipment point in this case, as there was ‘no way a pangolin population of that size can come from Sabah’.

Customs director-general Datuk T. Subromaniam at a function here yesterday, said investigations involving the 43-year-old suspect in the pangolin scales case are almost complete and he is expected to be charged in court soon.

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Malaysia not the only transit point for wildlife smuggling

MUGUNTAN VANAR The Star 28 Aug 17;

KOTA KINABALU: Malaysia is not the only transit point in South-East Asia being used by international syndicates to smuggle wildlife, says Customs Department director-general Datuk Seri Subromaniam Tholasy (pix).

He said the perception that Malaysian ports were key transit points for wildlife smuggling was not true, but rather, this indicated Customs' many successes against smugglers here.

"We know that smugglers are using other ports in neighbouring countries. I do not want to name but they are not taking the action that we are taking," he told reporters after witnessing the handing over of duties from retiring Sabah Customs director Datuk Janathan Kondok to his successor Datuk Hamzah Sundang, the current Kuala Lumpur International Airport director.

Subromaniam was referring to the successes by Customs in Sabah, which seized some 8,000 tonnes of pangolin scales on transit at the Sepangar port here and also the seizure of ivory through KLIA in July.

He stressed that the smugglers were not only using Malaysian ports, but also those in neighbouring countries, which go undetected.

On the seizure of RM100mil worth of pangolin scales, he confirmed that the scales were on transit to China but declined to reveal the country of origin.

"We are still investigating. I can't reveal much," he said, adding that they expect to charge a 43-year-old local suspect for smuggling banned goods.

However, he said that the Sabah Wildlife Department was also free to take action against the suspect under the state's wildlife conservation laws.

"We will act under Customs laws. The Wildlife Department can also act against him using protection laws. These are two separate offences so we have no problem with them taking action against the suspect," he added.

The Customs' seizures of elephant tusks and pangolin scales had raised concerns that Malaysia had become a transit point for wildlife parts that fetch high value in China and Indo-China countries.

Tusks and other body parts of elephants are prized for decoration as talismans and for use in traditional medicine, while pangolin scales were considered aphrodisiacs.

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Sea Shepherd says it will abandon pursuit of Japanese whalers

Captain Paul Watson accuses ‘hostile governments’ in the US, Australia and New Zealand of being in league with Tokyo
Ben Doherty The Guardian 29 Aug 17;

The anti-whaling organisation Sea Shepherd will not contest the Southern Ocean against Japanese whalers this season, Captain Paul Watson has announced, accusing “hostile governments” in the US, Australia and New Zealand of acting “in league with Japan” against the protest vessel.

Sea Shepherd has been obstructing Japanese whaling vessels in the Southern Ocean each year since 2005, but Watson said the cost of sending vessels south, Japan’s increased use of military technology to track them, and new anti-terrorism laws passed specifically to thwart Sea Shepherd’s activities made physically tracking the ships impossible.

Australia took Japan to the international court of justice over its Southern Ocean whaling program in 2014, winning a judgment that condemned Japan’s whaling programs as being in breach of the International Whaling Commission’s ban on commercial whaling. The court rejected Japan’s argument that its whaling was for “scientific” purposes.

Watson said his volunteer organisation could not compete with Japanese military satellite technology, which tracked Sea Shepherd in the ocean. Japan has also passed anti-terrorism laws that make protest ships’ presence near whalers a terrorist offence.

“We’re just a group of volunteers trying to do the impossible, trying to do the job Australia and New Zealand and the United States and all these others countries should be doing but they’re too busy appeasing Japan.”

In a statement on Monday, Watson said the Japanese whaling companies “not only have all the resources and subsidies their government can provide, they also have the powerful political backing of a major economic superpower. Sea Shepherd however is limited in resources and we have hostile governments against us in Australia, New Zealand and the United States.”

Speaking on radio in Australia, Watson accused the Australian government of acting in league with Japan, indirectly supporting whaling by obstructing Sea Shepherd’s activities.

“Australia is definitely in league with Japan,” he said. “When our ships come in we’re harassed, we’re investigated, we’re searched, when our crew come in from other countries they have problems getting visas. We’ve been applying for charity status for 10 years – they won’t give it to us. This has been extremely hostile.

“Really what it’s all about is appeasing Japan. Trade deals take priority over conservation law.”

He said countries opposed to Japan’s whaling should have ships in the southern waters to monitor and deter whaling. “[They should] uphold their own laws, under US laws it’s illegal. Australia and New Zealand should be down there protecting their waters from poachers.”

Japan’s whaling in the Southern Ocean is illegal under international law. The US, Australia and New Zealand have all publicly, diplomatically and legally challenged Japan’s whaling program.

Aside from the ICJ challenge, Australia also pursued Japan in the Australian federal court in 2015, which fined the Japanese whaling company Kyodo $1m – a penalty that has not yet been paid.

Last month the New Zealand foreign affairs minister, Gerry Brownlee, said he was “extremely disappointed” Japan had passed new legislation to subsidise its whaling fleet and said he was concerned about Japan’s continued efforts to overturn the longstanding global moratorium on commercial whaling.

The US, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands were signatories to a joint statement in 2016, which accused the Japanese governments of flouting the ICJ order, and said: “Our governments remain resolutely opposed to commercial whaling.”

But that statement also warned anti-whaling activists against “dangerous, reckless or unlawful behaviour”.

The Sea Shepherd’s pursuit of whaling vessels has also attracted criticism. The Japanese government has described Sea Shepherd as “eco-terrorists” and sought to have Watson placed on an Interpol watch-list.

Security experts have criticised Sea Shepherd’s tactics at sea, saying they endanger lives.

And Sea Shepherd was fined for contempt of a US court for breaching an injunction not to physically attack or harass Japanese whalers.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, Watson said Sea Shepherd’s 12 years of action against Japan’s whalers had been successful, having seen 6,500 whales saved, not a single humpback killed, and only 10 endangered fin whales killed.

Japan’s whaling quota has been reduced from more than 1,000 whales a season to 333 a year.

Watson said Sea Shepherd would “never abandon the whales” but would formulate a new plan for contesting Japan’s whaling.

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Hurricane Harvey: The link to climate change

Matt McGrath BBC 30 Aug 17;

When it comes to the causes of Hurricane Harvey, climate change is not a smoking gun.

However, there are a few spent cartridge cases marked global warming in the immediate vicinity.

Hurricanes are complex, naturally occurring beasts - extremely difficult to predict, with or without the backdrop of rising global temperatures.

The scientific reality of attributing a role to climate change in worsening the impact of hurricanes is also hard to tease out simply because these are fairly rare events and there is not a huge amount of historical data.

But there are some things that we can say with a good deal of certainty.

There's a well-established physical law, the Clausius-Clapeyron equation, that says that a hotter atmosphere holds more moisture.

For every extra degree Celsius in warming, the atmosphere can hold 7% more water. This tends to make rainfall events even more extreme when they occur.

Another element that we can mention with some confidence is the temperature of the seas.

"The waters of the Gulf of Mexico are about 1.5 degrees warmer above what they were from 1980-2010," Sir Brian Hoskins from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"That is very significant because it means the potential for a stronger storm is there, and the contribution of global warming to the warmer waters in the Gulf, it's almost inevitable that there was a contribution to that."

Researchers are also quite confident in linking the intensity of the rainfall that is still falling in the Houston area to climate change.

"This is the type of event, in terms of the extreme rainfall, that we would expect to see more of in a warming climate," Dr Friederike Otto from the University of Oxford told BBC News.

Environmental lawyers are questioning whether events like Harvey should still be referred to as "Acts of God" or "Natural Disasters" as they are made worse by emissions from fossil fuels.

In a comment paper in the journal Nature Geoscience, they say legal action may be taken against countries that don't contribute to the global effort to cut emissions.

Lawsuits seeking to apportion responsibility for climatic events have generally failed in the past.

But lawyers from the firms Client Earth in London and Earth and Water Law in Washington say that's likely to change.

They believe a new branch of knowledge called attribution science will allow the courts to decide with reasonable confidence that individual events have been exacerbated by manmade climate change.

They believe in future governments and firms risk being successfully sued if they don't cut their emissions.
"For the intensity of the rainfall (over Houston), it is very reasonable to assume there is a signal from climate change in that intensity."

One big question, though, is the persistence of the storm over the Texas area. This has been key to the scale of the downpour and the amount of flooding that has been seen so far.

Some researchers believe that climate is playing a role here too.

Prof Stefan Rahmstorf from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research says that a general slowdown in atmospheric circulation in mid-latitudes is a possible follow-on from a changing climate elsewhere in the world.
"This is a consequence of the disproportionally strong warming in the Arctic; it can make weather systems move less and stay longer in a given location - which can significantly enhance the impacts of rainfall extremes, just like we're sadly witnessing in Houston."

However, slow-moving storms over Texas have appeared before. Tropical storms Claudette in 1979 and Allison in 2001 had huge rainfall impacts as they settled in place over the state for long periods. Other scientists think that attributing the slowly meandering nature of this storm to climate change is a step too far.

"I don't think we should speculate on these more difficult and complex links like melting in the Arctic without looking into these effects in a dedicated study," said Dr Otto.

Experts say that in looking at a storm like Harvey, the impact of climate change is not simply about higher temperatures in the atmosphere and in the seas - it is also linked to changes in atmospheric circulation patterns.

Sometimes, the temperature and circulation changes brought about by warming can cancel each other out. Other times they can make the impacts worse. Understanding the full picture will be difficult and expensive.

"For hurricanes, we would ask the question as to what are the possible hurricane developments in the world we live in and compare that to the possible hurricane developments in a world without climate change," said Dr Otto.

"These high-resolution models are very expensive to run over and over again so that you can simulate possible weather rather than tracks of hurricanes."

Other researchers say that we are looking at the issue entirely the wrong way.

Regardless of the human impact on climate change, indirectly making Harvey worse - they believe the real human contribution to the catastrophe is far more simple and straightforward.

"The hurricane is just a storm, it is not the disaster," said Dr Ilan Kelman, at the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction and Institute for Global Health at University College London.

"The disaster is the fact that Houston population has increased by 40% since 1990. The disaster is the fact that many people were too poor to afford insurance or evacuate.

"Climate change did not make people build along a vulnerable coastline so the disaster itself is our choice and is not linked to climate change."

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