Amazon dieback 'overstated'

James Painter, BBC News 16 Feb 09;

A study by a group of UK-based scientists suggests that the Amazon rainforest may be less vulnerable to severe drying as a result of global warming than previously thought.

However, the scientists warn that the rapid degradation of the rainforest known as "dieback" caused by human-induced climate change remains a "distinct possibility" this century.

For the first time, the scientists compared the simulations of 19 global climate models with real-life climate observations. Their work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal.

Their main conclusions are that:

• almost all the climate models underestimated the current amount of Amazonian rainfall, because they are unable to capture the peculiarity of the geography of South America.

• sections of rainforest in the eastern part of the Amazon, which is currently wet all year round, are likely to become "seasonal forests" which have a wet and a dry season.

• but there will probably still be enough rainfall during the year not to turn it into savannah (dry, flat grassland).

• the Western part of Amazonia is likely to keep a climate and pattern of rainfall conductive to maintaining a rainforest, although the drier margins in the north and south may not.

Other projections, including those of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have suggested that the eastern part of the Amazon could gradually be replaced by savannah.

This new study warns that even though these seasonal forests may be more resilient to occasional drought, they will be more vulnerable to fires.

Parts of the eastern region of rainforest will become tinderboxes, the study says, if deforestation, logging and the widespread use of fire is not controlled.

Last year, the dieback of the Amazonian rainforest was described by a group of international scientists as one of the nine potential "tipping points" in the Earth's climate system that lead to changes that can be sudden and dramatic rather than gradual.

This new study warns that the best way of minimising the risk of Amazon dieback was to control global greenhouse gas emissions. But it adds that government action is also needed.

"Forest protection within this area could play a major role in minimising the prospects of major dieback, whilst also contributing to tackling global climate change," said lead author Professor Yadvinder Malhi from the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford.

"Forest cover can help to maintain local rainfall in the dry season, limit the spread of fires and stop surface temperatures rising too high."

Conserving tropical rainforests is seen by many as a promising way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Deforestation is estimated to be responsible for nearly 20% of such emissions every year.

Last August the Brazilian government launched an international fund to protect the rainforest and help to combat climate change, which intends to raise more than US$20bn (£14bn) by 2021.

The government also aims to reduce deforestation by 70% over the next 10 years.

"Even with sufficient funds and will power, the implementation of biosphere management on such a scale will be a substantial challenge," say the authors of the new study.

"Understanding the social, political and economic context will be critically important."

Read more!

Hamburgers are the Hummers of food in global warming: scientists

Mira Oberman Yahoo News 16 Feb 09;

CHICAGO (AFP) – When it comes to global warming, hamburgers are the Hummers of food, scientists say.

Simply switching from steak to salad could cut as much carbon as leaving the car at home a couple days a week.

That's because beef is such an incredibly inefficient food to produce and cows release so much harmful methane into the atmosphere, said Nathan Pelletier of Dalhousie University in Canada.

Pelletier is one of a growing number of scientists studying the environmental costs of food from field to plate.

By looking at everything from how much grain a cow eats before it is ready for slaughter to the emissions released by manure, they are getting a clearer idea of the true costs of food.

The livestock sector is estimated to account for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and beef is the biggest culprit.

Even though beef only accounts for 30 percent of meat consumption in the developed world it's responsible for 78 percent of the emissions, Pelletier said Sunday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

That's because a single kilogram of beef produces 16 kilograms carbon dioxide equivalent emissions: four times higher than pork and more than ten times as much as a kilogram of poultry, Pelletier said.

If people were to simply switch from beef to chicken, emissions would be cut by 70 percent, Pelletier said.

Another part of the problem is people are eating far more meat than they need to.

"Meat once was a luxury in our diet," Pelletier said. "We used to eat it once a week. Now we eat it every day."

If meat consumption in the developed world was cut from the current level of about 90 kilograms a year to the recommended level of 53 kilograms a year, livestock related emissions would fall by 44 percent.

"Given the projected doubling of (global) meat production by 2050, we're going to have to cut our emissions by half just to maintain current levels," Pelletier said.

"Technical improvements are not going to get us there."

That's why changing the kinds of food people eat is so important, said Chris Weber, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania.

Food is the third largest contributor to the average US household's carbon footprint after driving and utilities, and in Europe - where people drive less and have smaller homes - it has an even greater impact.

"Food is of particular importance to a consumer's impact because it's a daily choice that is, at least in theory, easy to change," Weber said.

"You make your choice every day about what to eat, but once you have a house and a car you're locked into that for a while."

The average US household contributes about five tons of carbon dioxide a year by driving and about 3.5 tons of equivalent emissions with what they eat, he said.

"Switching to no red meat and no dairy products is the equivalent of (cutting out) 8,100 miles driven in a car ... that gets 25 miles to the gallon," Weber said in an interview following the symposium.

Buying local meat and produce will not have nearly the same effect, he cautioned.

That's because only five percent of the emissions related to food come from transporting food to market.

"You can have a much bigger impact by shifting just one day a week from meat and dairy to anything else than going local every day of the year," Weber said.

For more information on how to eat a low carbon diet, visit www.eatlowcarbon.org.

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Eco concerns slowly turning Asia's textiles green

Claire Rosemberg Yahoo News 16 Feb 09;

PARIS (AFP) – Green-friendly fabrics may be expensive, but increasing consumer demand for the environmentally-correct now is forcing Asia's textile giants to go the extra mile to produce clean cloth.

In a sign of the times, at Paris' twice-yearly Texworld textile trade fair this week, around 60 of the 660 firms exhibiting from around the world flew the green flag, a sharp increase on previous sessions, organisers said.

In China, Bangladesh and India, the world's top textile producers, as well as in Pakistan, South Korea and Taiwan, natural fibres, organic yarns, fair trade practices and clean processing are creeping into an industry often chided for polluting soils, wasting water and employing child labour.

"We will be starting organic and fair trade by next year," said Sajedur Rahman Talukder, a marketing manager for Bangladesh's biggest textile-maker, Norman Group of Industries, whose tens of thousands of workers supply western firms such as Ikea.

"It is a market demand."

Eco-friendly fabrics, added South Korean firm Ludia, might currently be a niche product around 15 percent more expensive than run-of-the-mill textile, "but in two or three years the consumers will pay the difference."

"Eco-friendly is our key item, the market has changed," said a company manager.

2009 is being branded UN "International Year of Natural Fibres" to give a shot in the arm to the 40-billion-euro global annual business in cotton, linen, sisal, hemp, alpaca, jute, wool, angora, cashmere, and the like ... much of it grown by small farmers in poor nations.

"Some 30 million tonnes of natural fibres are produced annually," 25 million of them cotton, the UN's food and agricultural agency FAO said last month. "Since the 1960s, the use of synthetic fibres has increased and natural fibres have lost a lot of their market share."

But 15 years ago, Chinese entrepreneur H.L. Ding already had his sights set on homegrown hemp, a 4,000-year-old fibre used in sails for old ships that he describes as the "fabric of the future."

Strong, resistant, in need of little water or care, and no fertilisers, "it is a very special plant, the strongest of the natural fibres, even better than linen."

Five years ago, said the head of Hemp Fortex, based in Qingdao with a design studio in Seattle in the United States, almost nobody had heard of hemp. Now Nike uses the breathable, anti-bacteria, anti-UV fabric for its shoes.

"We believe organic cotton and hemp will be the main direction in the future," said Ding, whose turnover has grown from 400,000 to 10 million dollars a year selling to Walmart stores and labels such as Banana Republic and Patagonia.

Taiwan's Chia Her, a 30-year-old textile-maker, said it turned to eco-friendly textiles three years ago "because it was popular in Europe." Sales of green fabrics since have grown 100-fold.

India's Vardhman Fabrics, a firm founded 40 years ago that says it is the country's top yarn producer, also tip-toed down the green path four years ago "because everyone's asking for eco-friendly to save nature from global warming."

But going green is no easy business. And the first hurdle is winning the right to tag products as being environmentally-correct.

A guide to eco-textile labelling published by the organisers of the Texworld fair lists around 30 eco labels variously issued in Japan, Europe and the US, that all set standards for organic textiles and yarns as well as environmental and fair trade certifications.

"It's very expensive and very difficult to get the certifications," said Syed Adeel Haider, deputy marketing manager for Pakistan firm US Denim Mills, one of the big players on the jeans front, supplying to Levi's and Esprit.

Bringing in consultants, ensuring supplies such as yarns and chemicals met all the right standards, and re-adapting the manufacturing process called for sizeable investment, he said.

"We don't want to harm the environment, the soil or the crops, which are a livelihood for our people," he said. "So being green-friendly is a social attitude, but it's also business.

"Organic materials are in high demand and stores such as Marks and Spencers for example won't buy anything unless we're clean from the environmental point of view."

Two years ago, he said, when the firm began offering green-friendly products, there was no interest. "Now we have enquiries every day."

Even in China, world textile leader with a workforce of 20 million and turnover last year at 400 billion euros, green fabrics are gaining a toe-hold.

"China is receiving increasing orders for eco-friendly textiles, with European customers handing you a thick book like a dictionary with standards and certifications, from the raw material to the finished product," said Yan York, the Chinese representative for Texworld.

"And in China too wealthy people are demanding green," he added. "They want trendy and fashionable clothes that also respect the environment."

Read more!

Can geo-engineering rebuild the planet?

As global warming worsens, the idea of vast projects to alter the Earth's environment is moving from fantasy to necessity.
Sanjida O'Connell, The Telegraph 16 Feb 09;

In the 1960s, two Russian scientists set out ambitious plans to reshape the world around us: to reverse the flow of rivers, shoot tiny white particles into space to illuminate the night sky, and melt the Arctic to water fields of Soviet wheat. "If we want to improve our planet and make it more suitable for life," wrote NP Rusin and L Flit, "we must alter its climate."

Four decades later, we have done plenty to alter the climate, but not for the better. And as we grapple with the problems of global warming, the standard prescription – cutting greenhouse gas emissions – is proving problematic.

"I cannot see that we will be able to keep carbon levels low enough to prevent catastrophe," says Professor Brian Launder, of the University of Manchester. "Over the past five years, emissions have gone up, not down."

Which means that "geo-engineering" – using technology on an almost unimaginable scale to tinker with the environment and correct our mistakes – could move from fantasy to necessity. Professor James Lovelock, who came up with the "Gaia" hypothesis, in which the Earth is thought to behave rather like a living, self-regulating organism, thinks we have exceeded the planet's natural capacity to counteract the changes we have made, and are rapidly heading towards a situation that will be calamitous for our species.

"Whatever we do is likely to lead to death on a scale that makes all previous wars, famines and disasters small," he says. "To continue business as usual will probably kill most of us during the century."

Even those of a less alarmist bent are worried enough to be taking geo-engineering seriously. Last September, Prof Launder co-edited a special edition of a Royal Society journal which examined various proposals, such as injecting sulphur into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight back into space.

Most of the schemes suggested, there and elsewhere, involve dramatic alterations to the Earth's weather systems, whether by deflecting the Sun's rays, removing carbon from the atmosphere or cooling the oceans. Prof Lovelock has come up with one of the most ambitious: he and Professor Chris Rapley, from the Science Museum, would like a system of pipes to be held vertically below the ocean's surface. These tubes, each 100 metres long, would draw cold water from below; wave action would then mix four tons of cooler water per second into the ocean at the surface. Cooler oceans mean a cooler planet, while the nutrient-rich water brought up from the bottom could encourage algal blooms, which use carbon to grow and thereby remove it from the atmosphere.

Supporters of another approach, known as Oceanic Iron Fertilisation, believe that promoting the growth of algae should be our main objective, rather than just a side effect. According to Dr Victor Smetacek, of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, the theory is that adding iron to the oceans will encourage algal blooms. When the algae die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean, locking away their cargo of carbon.

There are plans to test this proposal off the island of South Georgia in the Atlantic. At the very least, Dr Smetacek hopes that large blooms of algae will act as food for krill, helping resurrect declining populations of squid and even some whales.

A third oceanic idea has been suggested by Professor Stephen Salter, from Edinburgh University's School of Engineering: a wind-driven fleet of Flettner ships. Originally designed by German engineer Anton Flettner, these vessels have no sails and are powered by rotors; the first one sailed across the Atlantic in 1926.

The ships would drag propeller-like turbines behind them to generate electricity, and pump out a very fine spray of seawater into the air. These tiny drops would join low clouds, with the salt making them whiter and better at reflecting sunlight back into the atmosphere, thus cooling the oceans. The beauty of this system is that it uses natural materials – seawater – and is powered by a renewable source of energy.

Finally, instead of reflecting sunlight using sea-level contraptions, some scientists have suggested shading the Earth from space. The most recent idea was put forward by Dr Roger Angel at the University of Arizona: to launch into space trillions of thin transparent discs, each about 60cm across. This cloud of 100,000 lenses would reflect sunlight back into space, shielding us from 1.8 per cent of the Sun's radiation.

But as intoxicating as such ideas are – and as tempting as a "quick fix" to the climate would be – they are not the finished article. Not only would the costs be enormous, but in a recent paper in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, Dr Tim Lenton of the University of East Anglia compared the possible effectiveness of 17 different geo-engineering techniques, and found severe problems with many of them. The Lovelock/Rapley plan to cool the oceans would, he says, be ineffective at reducing carbon on a global scale, and he is similarly sceptical about the algal blooms.

"There's huge disagreement in the scientific community about ocean fertilisation," agrees Prof Launder. "The ocean is very complex – elsewhere, perhaps thousands of miles away, you might be causing an adverse effect." Scientists from Britain's National Oceanography Centre, writing in the journal Nature, have demonstrated that adding iron to the ocean does boost algae growth rates by up to three times, and lock away carbon on the sea floor. But they added that geo-engineers overestimated the amount of carbon removed by between 15 and 50 times.

Prof Salter's Flettner ships have also sailed into stormy waters. Dr Lenton has calculated that they could cope with half the projected carbon emissions during the coming century, but Professor Stephen Schneider, from Stanford University, says that oceanic currents and winds might distribute the cooling effect unevenly, resulting in even greater climatic change.

As for Dr Angel's sun shield, Dr Lenton believes it would do the most to compensate for carbon emissions – but there is a downside, in that the sunshades would need to be launched in stacks of 800,000 units every five minutes for 10 years. "They might well work," says Prof Launder, "but this system wouldn't be ready soon enough."

So instead of alleviating global warming by trying to cool the planet or creating giant algal blooms, why not simply remove the carbon? Trees are pretty good at doing this naturally – but according to Prof Lovelock, we do not have enough forested regions left and could not plant enough trees to save us.

Instead, Dr Klaus Lackner, of Columbia University in New York, has come up with the idea of an artificial tree that directly "scrubs" carbon from the sky. Each one would be around the size of a shipping container and would, he estimates, be able to capture a ton of carbon dioxide a day. Of course, the carbon dioxide still has to be disposed of; Dr Lackner suggests pumping it into greenhouses to be absorbed by crop plants.

"In a way, this sort of scheme is the most desirable," says Prof Launder, "because it doesn't just reflect sunlight, it grabs carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Sadly, I don't think these 'trees' can sequester anything like the amount of carbon required."

The grim conclusion is that while some of these schemes have potential, there is no magic answer. "Geo-engineering is not a solution," says Prof Launder, "but it could give the world a chance to come to its senses. In 50 years we'll have carbon-free energy schemes in place, but we need a solution that can be put into place shortly, and will gain us breathing space."

Yet even if any of these schemes could be made to work, a global scheme requires global co-operation. Given how hard that has proved over the financial crisis, it is difficult to imagine world leaders reaching an agreement over a radical – and expensive – alteration to the environment.

Read more!

UN Urges G20 Leaders To Back "Green New Deal"

Daniel Wallis, PlanetArk 17 Feb 09;

NAIROBI - World leaders meeting in London in April should kick-start a "Green New Deal" to fight climate change and revive the crippled global economy on a sustainable basis, a major UN environment meeting was told on Monday.

High on the agenda for more than 100 environment ministers gathered in Kenya this week will be how to draw attention to "green" issues amid job losses and worldwide financial turmoil.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) says political efforts to curb pollution, protect forests and avert global warming have failed, and the world needs to learn from US President Franklin Roosevelt's response to the Great Depression.

"We face the unprecedented reality that climate change may very well be the more important economic development than what happens on Wall Street or the financial markets, or in our industries," UNEP executive director Achim Steiner told the start of the Feb. 16-20 meeting.

"The question truly is, can the environment afford to be put on the waiting line, or is it indeed part of the solution?"

A UN report presented on Monday at the conference in Nairobi called on G20 leaders to consider proposals for a "Green New Deal", and develop framework ideas towards securing a global climate change agreement at talks in Copenhagen in December.

UN climate scientists says rising greenhouse gas concentrations -- which are up by about a third since the Industrial Revolution -- are stoking warming likely to cause floods, droughts, heatwaves, rising seas and extinctions.

More than 190 nations have agreed to negotiate a new global deal by the end of 2009 to succeed the UN's Kyoto Protocol, which sets carbon dioxide limits for 37 industrialised nations.

Steiner said huge banking bailouts had been mobilised in weeks, but the response to climate change had been lethargic.

"We must ensure that trillions of dollars are not spent by this generation to save its economy of today, without any answers as to what the next generation, that has to repay the debt ... will do in terms of jobs for tomorrow," he said.

In a speech read on his behalf, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the world was reeling from multiple crises, and people were worried about food security, jobs and their savings. An "environmental thread" ran through the story, he said.

Soaring food prices last year had brought intense focus not just on agriculture and trade issues, but on the inflationary role of biofuel production, Ban said.

"Wildly fluctuating crude oil costs illustrated once again our dependence on the fossil fuels that are causing climate change and the short-sighted economic vision that has precipitated the current financial turmoil," he said.

(Editing by David Clarke)

Urgent need for 'Global Green New Deal': UN
Yahoo News 16 Feb 09;

NAIROBI (AFP) – The United Nations called Monday on rich nations to forge a "Global Green New Deal" that puts the environment, climate change and poverty reduction at the heart of efforts to reboot the world economy.

Leaders from the Group of 20 nations, meeting in April, should commit at least one percent of gross domestic product over the next two years to slashing carbon emissions, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a report released at the opening of its world forum in Nairobi.

"Reviving the world economy is essential, but measures that focus solely on this objective will not achieve lasting success," the UNEP cautioned, invoking the US New Deal launched by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s.

"Unless new policy initiatives also address other global challenges -- reducing carbon dependency, protecting ecosystems and water resources, alleviating poverty -- their impact on averting future crises will be short-lived."

The world's most developed economies must take the lead by adopting national plans to slash their use of the fossil fuels -- oil, gas and coal -- that drive global warming, the report says.

Measures could include the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and the development of carbon pricing, either through taxes or cap-and-trade schemes.

The G20's rapidly emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Turkey "should aim, as far as possible" for the same one percent of GDP targets, the UNEP urged.

Poorer and developing nations cannot be expected to make the same carbon-cutting commitments, but should spend at least one percent of GDP on expanded access to clean water and sanitation for the poor, it said.

Twenty percent of people in the developing world lack sufficient clean water, and about half -- some 2.6 billion -- do not have basic sanitation.

UNEP Year Book 2009 Makes the Green Economy Case
UNEP website 17 Feb 09;

25th Session of UNEP's Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum 16-20 February

Nairobi, 16 February 2009 - The importance of realizing a Global Green New Deal and the urgent need for a transition to a low carbon and resource efficient Green Economy are spotlighted in the UNEP Year Book 2009, launched today at an international gathering of environment ministers.

The Year Book, compiled at the request of the UNEP Governing Council, presents the hard facts and worrying trends while also underlining some of the transformational and innovative ideas already being piloted in both the developed and developing world.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said:" The Year Book serves as a reminder to the international community as to why a Green Economy is so urgently needed from the bubbling up of methane gas in the Arctic to the shrinking availability of croplands".

"But it is also about optimism and the power of positive policies: from the way a building in Africa passively cools itself by mimicking termite mounds to the way some countries and cities are pioneering industrial symbiosis-co-locating businesses and factories to recycle and re-use wastes as raw material inputs, saving finite natural resources, millions of dollars and the planet too," he added.

Highlights

Waste

- Over two billion tones of waste are being generated throughout the world annually with someone in a developed economy throwing away around 1.4 kg of solid waste refuse daily.

- This is however leveling off perhaps as a result of waste minimization and recycling measures.

- Developing nations, in particular rapidly developing economies are producing more waste with China expected to produce 500 million tones of solid waste a year, and India about 250 million tonnes by 2030 based on current trends.

Construction and Buildings

There are some positive developments in particular in the building and construction sector, not least in energy efficiency improvements aimed at cutting the estimated 30 to 40 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions linked with the built environment.

- A world-wide survey conducted by McGraw-Hill Construction Analytics found that one third of industry professionals believe more than 10 per cent of domestic construction is already moving to higher resource efficiency.

- A further 50 plus per cent said principles of resource efficiency will be applied to 60 per cent of their projects in the next five years.

- Canada, France and the United Kingdom are among several countries that have launched programmes to make buildings energy neutral-the buildings generate via technologies such as solar and combined heat and power systems as much energy as they consume

- The United Kingdom for example has launched a voluntary industry agreement aimed at cutting by half (12.5 million tones) in 2012 the amount of construction waste going to landfill. It could recover materials worth an estimated $1 billion.

The Year Book highlights how copying nature-so called biomimicry-can offer intriguing solutions. The Eastgate building in Harare, Zimbabwe has passive, self-cooling systems modeled on termite mounds.

The building, a mixture of offices, shops and car parking, uses an average of 90 per cent less energy than a comparable structure saving more than $3.5 million since opening in the 1990s.

'Materials substitution' is another emerging field with researchers around the world in a race to produce cement and concrete that can be made at temperatures lower than the current 1,000 degrees C.

- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology are currently looking at using magnesium compounds-a waste material of many other industrial processes-as a substitute for conventional concrete's calcium-silicate-hydrate particles.

- Others are looking at using substitutes based on silicon and aluminum harvested from waste by-products such as coal ash and iron slag. They have the potential to cut C02 emissions from cement industry by an estimated 20 per cent, while utilizing an industrial waste and producing a final product less prone to weathering-the kind of multiple economic and environmental benefits at the heart of the Green Economy initiative.

Dematerialization is another term in the emerging area of industrial ecology. At its simplest it can be captured in consumers demanding less packaging for example on products. A producer of unbleached cotton, who uses fewer resources, might also be able to charge a higher price and certainly achieve higher profit margins.

Industrial symbiosis, or what is known in China as the Circular Economy, is an off-shoot of this concept. The idea is to co-locate businesses and facilities in such a way that their wastes are raw materials for other nearby ones.

- Pioneering Industrial Symbiosis Network in Kalundborg Denmark, now has more than 25 industrial waste management processes integrated in one system.

- The United Kingdom's Industrial Symbiosis Programme involves more than 8,000 participant companies.

- It has diverted more than four million tones of business waste from landfills.

- Eliminated over 350,000 tonnes of hazardous waste from the environment.

- Saved over nine million tones of water, avoided the use of 6.3 million tones of virgin raw materials and reduced carbon emissions by over 4.5 million tonnes.

- Generated $208 million in new sales for members and saved them nearly $170 million.

- Chicago in the United States and Shanghai in China have adopted similar symbiosis projects.

China's Circular Economy initiative is also looking at labeling products for their resource consumption backed up by tough penalties for companies who use processes, materials and techniques on a so called 'eliminated' list.

- If items on the eliminated list are used, the government can confiscate the equipment, materials or product; impose fines of up to $30,000 or shut the enterprise down.

- Imported items on the 'eliminated' list must be returned and a fine of up to $150,000 can be imposed under the plan.

- If the importer cannot be identified, then the carrier can be made responsible for returning the items or paying for their disposal.

· Banks or other financial institutions are also banned from supporting enterprises that manufacture, import or distribute items on the 'eliminated' list.

Transport

Transport accounts for over 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. In 2005 there were an estimated 650 million vehicles on the road with that number expected to double by 2030.

The Indian city of Chennai is working with the Sustainable Mobility and Accessibility Research and Transformation initiative (SMART) at the University of Michigan in the United States in order to tackle the twin economic and environmental challenges of congestion and pollution.

· Railway and bus systems are to be kitted with wireless technology so that thousands of computer and software industry commuters can work en route.

· At the stop closest to work, the commuters can choose from privately-run, low-polluting shuttle buses; taxis; rental cycles or walking paths.

· The system uses the commuters' mobile phones to forecast anticipated transport and traffic conditions and needs. Eventually commuters will be able to use their phones to check up on the transport networks and choose the most efficient mode based on prevailing conditions.

Industrial Water

Currently close to 880 million people lack adequate access to clean water and 2.5 billion are without improved sanitation in their homes. By 2030, close to four billion people could be living in areas suffering severe water stress mostly in South Asia and China.

Industry uses 10 per cent of water in low and middle-income countries and up to close to 60 per cent in high-income ones.

· A Finnish paper mill has switched from chemical to thermo-mechanically treated pulp and installed a biological wastewater treatment facility-water savings of 90 per cent have been achieved.

· An Indian textile manufacturer has switched from using aluminum to zinc in synthetic fabrics-water consumption has been cut by 80 per cent with the cleaner waste water produced suitable for irrigation uses on nearby farms.

· By separating process water from sewage water, a Mexican sugar cane company has cut water use by 90 per cent.

· A Spanish company, managing 300km of highways in Sao Paulo state, Brazil has designed the roads to funnel rainwater into 250 containment dams with a capacity of 2 million cubic metres. The system allows the rainwater to seep slowly into the ground, assisting in replenishing the Guarani aquifer while saving money in terms of reduced road maintenance.

While some progress is being made, the Year Book underlines the scale of the challenge facing the world towards the end of the first decade of the 21st century.

Climate Change

2008 had the second smallest area of Arctic sea-ice left following the summer thaw since satellite monitoring began in 1979. The National Snow and Ice Center in the United States found that the minimum sea-ice cover, which occurred on 12 September, was somewhere over 4.52 million square kilometers.

"While 2008 saw 10 per cent more ice cover than in 2007, the lowest figure on record, it was still more than 30 per cent below the average for the past three decades. Taken together, the two summers have no parallel," says the Year Book.

· For the second year in a row, there was an ice-free channel in the Northwest Passage through the islands of northern Canada.

· 2008 also witnessed the opening of the Northern Sea Route along the Arctic Siberian coast-the two passages have probably not been open simultaneously since before the last ice age some 100,000 years ago.

· The Greenland ice sheet, which could raise sea levels by six metres if it melted away, is currently losing more than 100 cubic km a year-faster than can be explained by natural melting.

· Losses from the West Antarctic ice sheet have increased by 60 per cent between 1996 and 2006.

· Losses from the Antarctic Peninsula increased by 140 per cent.

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated that sea levels might rise by between 18cm and 59cm in the coming century. But many researchers now believe the rise even higher in part as a result of new assessments of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

· One study estimates a sea level rise of between 0.8 and 1.5 metres, while another suggests a sea level rise of two metres in the coming century from outflows of ice from Greenland alone.

· A one metre rise in sea levels world-wide would displace millions of people. Around 100 million people in Asia, mostly Bangladesh, eastern China and Vietnam; 14 million in Europe and eight million each in Africa and South America.

The Year Book argues that urgent action is needed to curb greenhouse gas emissions, not least because some of the natural carbon storage systems or 'sinks' may be losing their absorption capacity raising the spectre of a runaway greenhouse effect.

· Studies in 2008 indicates that one key 'sink'-the oceans-are now soaking up 10 million tones less C02.


The Year Book also flags up increasing concern among scientists about releases of greenhouse gases such as methane from the Arctic as ice melts and permafrost thaws in part as a result of new studies indicating that the western Arctic is warming 3.5 times more than the rest of the globe. This concern has taken on even greater importance as a result of two recently published studies.

· A study focusing on North America suggests that upwards of 60 per cent more carbon could be stored in the permafrost than previously supposed.

· An international study has now doubled the amount of soil-carbon in the permafrost across the entire Arctic.

· Marine researchers have discovered more than 250 plumes of methane bubbling up along the edge of the Continental shelf northwest of Svalbard.

· The International Siberian Shelf Study has found higher concentrations of methane offshore from the Lena River delta.

· Researchers calculate that, once underway, thawing of the east Siberian permafrost-thought to contain 500 billion tones of carbon-would be irreversible and that over a century 250 billion tones could be released.

Monitoring of methane levels in the atmosphere indicate that concentrations rose in 2007 and 2008 after nearly a decade of stability. Intriguingly higher concentrations were detected in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

Meanwhile, the Year Book raises concerns over another carbon sink-forests. Rising temperatures may be stressing trees leading to photosynthesis and thus carbon sequestration halting sooner in summer months. Stressed forests may also be more vulnerable to pollution, disease and pests, again undermining their carbon storage potential.

The Year Book also focuses on new research from the Amazon.

· A doubling of C02 could warm the oceans to such a point that rainfall in the Amazon could decline by 40 per cent.

· Overall an estimated 53 per cent decline in vegetation growth could occur.

· Forest loss on this scale could in turn raise temperature 'locally' by up to eight degrees C triggering further droughts and putting pressure on the Amazon River, the world's largest river that carries one fifth of the world's river water.

The melting of the world's icy regions, including mountain glaciers is also triggering other hazards above and beyond the very serious threats to water supplies if glaciers melt away: nearly a billion people in South Asia rely on seasonal melt waters from the Himalaya-HinduKush mountain system for example.

· Hazardous substances, deposited from the atmosphere and locked away in glaciers, are now being re-released.

· The pesticide DDT is turning up in unanticipated amounts in Adelie penguins that live in parts of the Antarctic coastline.

· Organic pollutants are being carried back into the environment from melting glaciers in the Rocky Mountains of North America.

· Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) can be found downstream of European glaciers.

Disasters and Conflicts

The Year Book also discusses the links between natural disasters, environmental degradation, conflicts and human or social vulnerability as well as the importance of disaster preparedness-issues becoming of increasing concern in a climate-constrained world.

· While geological disasters such as earthquakes and volcanoes have remained fairly constant over the past century, hydro-meteorological disasters such as storms, floods and droughts have increased dramatically since 1950.

· The frequency of these events has increased by an average of 8.4 per cent a year between 2000 and 2007.

· Another new assessment says that the total number of disasters has increased from about 100 events per decade in the period 1900-1940 to almost 3,000 per decade by the 1990s.

· A further study puts the total number of disasters between 2000 and 2005 at 4,850 and links this to both 'technological disasters' such as train wrecks and building failures as well as weather events.

The Year Book spotlights Cyclone Nargis that struck Myanmar with a peak wind speed intensities of 215km per hour on 2 May 2008 leaving more than 140,000 people dead or missing and 2.4 million people homeless and 'catastrophically affected'.

· As with the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the loss of 'environmental infrastructure' made coastal communities more vulnerable.

· In the early 20th century, mangrove forests covered an estimated more than 242,000 hectares in the Irrawaddy River Basin, but by the end of the century just over 48,500 hectares remained with the loss linked to clearance for charcoal and latterly for agriculture and shrimp farms.


Ecosystems

The 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment concluded that 60 per cent of the Earth's ecosystems-from forests and soils to coral reefs and grasslands-are damaged or being degraded.

The Year Book underlines that this trend is continuing through 2008.

Increasing demand for food and agricultural production is, under current systems and economic models, triggering a dramatic increase in land under the hoe and the plough.

Today farmland covers nearly a quarter of the planet's surface.

· Entire forest systems have effectively disappeared in at least 25 countries and have declined by 90 per cent in another 29 countries.

Marine fisheries are in a state of stagnation and have been that way for nearly a decade.

· Since the onset of industrial fisheries in the 1960s, the total biomass of large, commercially-targeted marine fish species has declined by a 'staggering' 90 per cent says the Year Book.

· Annual economic losses as a result of over-exploitation and near depletion of the most valuable fish stocks are estimated in 2008 at $50 billion.

Biofuels and their impacts on food production, poverty and ecosystems can trigger polarized views with opportunities for income diversification and a way of reducing pressures on cropland possible in small-scale rural models.

At industrial scales, different crops can have different impacts. A new study has assessed the impact on water use in 2030 based on growing industrial-scale energy crops under current trends.

· An estimated 50 billion litres of maize-based biofuel produced in North America would require 20 per cent of the region's irrigated water supplies

· Producing just under 34 billion litres of sugar-cane derived biofuel in Brazil would require eight per cent of irrigated water supplies.

· Rapeseed-derived biofuel made in the European Union has perhaps the lowest potential water footprint. Producing just over 20 billion litres of fuel would require just one per cent of the EU's irrigated water.

The Year Book points out that it is the poor, and especially the rural poor who depend on healthy and functioning ecosystems.

· An estimated 90 per cent of rural poor depend on forests for at least a portion of their income.

· In rural Africa, small-scale agriculture is the principal source of income for some 90 per cent of people.

· Nature-based income accounts for more than half of the total income stream for the world's rural poor.

Better and more intelligent management of ecosystems and their goods and services will become increasingly critical as the century unfolds and the population climbs to over nine billion by 2050.

· On current projections the availability of cropland per person is set to drop to 0.1 hectares requiring a rise in agricultural production "unattainable through conventional means".

Soil degradation, linked with intensification, has now and already affected all but 16 per cent of the world's croplands-healthy croplands are now confined to temperate areas of the midwestern United States, central western Canada, Russia, central Argentina, Uruguay, southern Brazil, northern India and northeast China with a scattering across the Tropics.


· One possibility is to manage land and landscapes as 'mosaics' in which food production is one of several central ecosystem services.

So called eco-management as it is now being termed can date back in some cases millennia from the grasslands of Europe to the indigenous peoples of the Americas who managed woodlands to create meadows for deer grazing.

· The Terra Preta soils of central Amazonia have three times more soil organic matter, nitrogen and phosphorous and 70 per cent more charcoal when compared with adjacent soils-the soils were generated by pre-Columbian native populations by adding "charred residues, organic wastes, excrement and bones" to the soils.

Market mechanisms and financial instruments have a role to play including payment for ecosystem services.

Clearing of forests continues at some 13 million hectares annually, equal to an area half the size of the United Kingdom. Tropical forest loss accounts for an estimated 17 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.

· Countries are currently assessing the inclusion of funding for forests in the UN climate change arrangements to be agreed in Copenhagen later this year under the term Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation.

Granting fishing communities and fishers rights and responsibilities in a fishery may also be a way forward.

· Surveys of various rights-based catch shares for example in Canada, Chile, New Zealand, Mexico and the United States, indicates that they reduce the risk of fishery ecosystem collapse while boosting livelihoods.

Harmful Substances and Hazardous Waste

2008 has been a year of food and product-contamination crises.

· In March Italy was rocked by incidents involving dioxin-contaminated mozzarella cheese. Dioxins, substances linked with cancer, are by-products from a range of industrial processes including combustion.

· The cases, centering on the region of Calabria, were tracked by authorities to suspected contamination of pastureland.

· In September, China was involved in incidents where milk including baby formulas was found to be contaminated with the toxic chemical melamine.

· In Japan in October two major companies recalled noodle products after discovering insecticide contamination.

· Days later the country's largest meat processor recalled products after discovering that underground water used at a plant near Tokyo contained levels of cyanide compounds.

· Meanwhile in December in Ireland, the authorities recalled pork products again after dioxin contamination via tainted feed.

Over the past two decades, arsenic contamination has been detected in a growing number of countries in South Asia, says the Year Book.

· About 30 per cent of private wells in Bangladesh show high levels of arsenic, at over 0.5 milligrams per liter, and more than half of the country's administrative units are affected by contaminated drinking water.

· The Year Book indicates that deforestation is aggravating the situation in the Amazon. Here forest soils naturally contain up to three times more mercury than pastureland with deforestation releasing mercury to the air and to rivers.

Notes to Editors

The UNEP Year Book 2009 can be found at http://www.unep.org/geo/yearbook/yb2009

It can be purchased at Earthprint http://www.earthprint.com

To read previous UNEP and GEO Year Books, visit http://www.unep.org/geo/yearbook/

The 25th Session of the UNEP Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum takes place in Nairobi on 16-20 February 2009
http://www.unep.org/gc/gc25/

For more information on UNEP's Green Economy Initiative, visit http://www.unep.org/greeneconomy/

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Best of our wild blogs: 16 Feb 09

Tanimbar Corella eating cassia fruit
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Monday Morgue: 16th February 2009
on the Lazy Lizard's Tales blog

Coastal fish farms: where does the fish waste go?
on the wild shores of singapore blog

Seen on STOMP: Honeybee swarms near SGH
on the Lazy Lizard's Tales blog and Bukit Batok bushfire

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Divers threaten to boycott Sabah over shark finning

Julia Chan, The New Straits Times 16 Feb 09;

KOTA KINABALU: Sipadan conjures up an image of a serene, protected underwater world -- one of the world's top dive spots.

But just a half-hour boat ride away off Pulau Mabul, the blood of magnificent sharks, crudely finned and gutted by the boatload stains the sea red.

Shark finning has been going on here for several years, and the stark contrast between Sipadan and Mabul has caused an uproar in the international diving community, with some threatening to boycott Sabah entirely.

Finning is the inhumane practice of hacking off the shark's fins and throwing its still living body back into the sea.

A diver said: "Why should we contribute to the decline of a beautiful area by supporting a place which does not protect its own resources?
"We strongly urge the resorts to lobby Sabah Parks to prohibit shark finning in the Ligitan island group area.

"If the area is not protected, we will choose to dive in other areas of Southeast Asia where the marine life is protected with the money collected," the diver said.

Fisheries Department director Rayner Stuel Galid said shark finning was not illegal in Sabah.

He said those with a valid fishing licence had the right to fish in the area, provided they didn't encroach on protected areas.

"This includes fishing for sharks," said Galid, adding that the only protected species of shark under current law was the whale shark.

He said local and foreign fishermen were fishing in the territorial waters of Indonesia and the Philippines so they were out of the jurisdiction of the department.

"Sipadan and the waters around Sipadan are off limits to fishermen, and we will work with all enforcement agencies responsible to ensure no fishing is done in these waters," said Galid.

Asked to comment, Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun said: "My ministry will relay our concern to the Fisheries Department and the Semporna district officer.

"We need to be sensitive to global views to protect our tourism.

"A small mistake or inaction could have major repercussions for the industry.

"Nature lovers and the global conservation community are fast becoming an influential lobbying group who could hurt the state tourism industry if they decide to boycott Sabah in protest against such activities."

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Singapore bush fires hit record high

Average number for Jan over last decade was 26, but 182 this Jan
Tan May Ping, The New Paper 16 Feb 09;

WHILE a lot of the news recently focused on Australia's worst-ever bush fires, Singapore has been quietly setting a record of its own.

Last month, the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) recorded 182 bush fires - the highest figure for the month of January in the past decade.

The average number for January over the last 10 years has been 26 cases, said SCDF public affairs director Lieutenant-Colonel N Subhas.

February could well set another record as firemen have already put out 106 bush fires as of Friday.

This brings the total so far this year to 288, or two-thirds the 426 cases over the whole of last year.

LTC Subhas attributed the spike in numbers to the prolonged dry weather.

'The large numbers of vegetation fires reported so far this year due to the dry spell is unprecedented,' he said.

'The tinder dry nature of the vegetation makes it easily susceptible to fires.'

According to the National Environment Agency website, the North-east monsoon brought dry and occasionally windy conditions in January, and rainfall was substantially below average.

Northern areas around Seletar recorded less than 10mm in January. This is between 96 and 98 per cent below average.

Even the wetter areas in the eastern part of the island around Changi recorded between 32mm and 40mm of rain.

There appeared to be a breather on Wednesday and Thursday as the number of bush fires plunged to only three and one respectively.

Fires near urban areas

But on Friday, it went back up to 14.

'The three cases reported on Wednesday was the lowest figure in 29 days,' said LTC Subhas.

He added that in January, the largest bush fires occurred at Punggol Marina and Ponggol Seventeenth Avenue on 20 Jan and 26 Jan respectively.

Both fires covered an area of about three football fields each.

The record number of bush fires took marketing communications executive Edmund Sng by surprise even though he recently came across one.

Mr Sng, 27, said he was driving along Upper Serangoon Road on Monday when he saw a bush fire at a forested area next to Serangoon Secondary School.

The afternoon fire was raging and destroyed vegetation the size of about three-quarters of a football field, he said.

Said Mr Sng: 'The fire was spreading quite fast. I was afraid it would spread to the school next door, although the students had already evacuated by then.'

Mr Sng said the trees in the affected area were burnt to the ground, and the area now looks bare and charred.

'I know it's been quite dry lately. But I wonder if there is anything that can be done to prevent such fires,' he added.

LTC Subhas said the SCDF has fought bush fires with the help of the Tracked Fire-Fighting Vehicle since 2005.

'This is an all-terrain firefighting vehicle designed to negotiate through rough undulating terrains with dense shrubs and undergrowth, and is especially useful during large-scale deep-seated forested fires,' said LTC Subhas.

It is equipped with a 1,700l water tank, a portable pump, and a high-pressured water mist gun.

The SCDF has also been working with related agencies to come up with measures to contain bush fires.

For instance, dry hydrant systems have been installed at 'hot spots' such as Tampines Avenue 12 and Fort Road to provide easier and swifter access to water supply.

Other preventive measures include patrols by SCDF ground units, and grass trimming and ground wetting by various agencies.

Prevent fires

# Do not throw lighted cigarette butts or matches onto grass patches/fields and rubbish dumps.

# Do not dispose rubbish or unwanted items at grass areas or vacant lands. Rubbish dumps provide additional sources of fuel to sustain fires.

# Home owners with grass compounds should keep grass trimmed and watered. Dead leaves should be properly disposed of.

# Incense papers should be burnt in incense burners. These burners should be placed on flat open ground at a safe distance from combustible materials.

# After the prayer session, one should check around for smouldering incense in the vicinity and ensure that it is completely extinguished with water.

Dry spell causes bush fires to surge to record numbers
Cheryl Frois, Channel NewsAsia 16 February 2009;

SINGAPORE: Singapore has recorded the highest number of vegetation fires in decades due to the dry spell.

In the first two weeks of this month, 106 fires have been recorded. This follows a record 182 in January, well above the average of 26 cases for the month over the past decade.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) has described this as unprecedented and said it is installing dry hydrant systems to provide water supply in areas with dry vegetation like Tampines and Fort Road.

Smoke from these vegetation fires has contributed to the particle build-up in the air, resulting in Singapore experiencing slightly hazy conditions since last Friday.

The weak winds have also contributed to the bleary conditions, as they are unable to blow the smoke particles away.

The National Environment Agency said Singapore's 24-hour Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) crept up to the "moderate" range of between 53 and 57 over the weekend, rising from the "good" range the week before.

The haze is leaving many Singaporeans hot under the collar.

"Even at night, it's really hot, even turning on the air-con doesn't help," said a member of the public.

"Exercise is out of the question, movements out in the open are restricted," said another.

"I couldn't breathe. I've been coughing, because I'm quite allergic to the haze," said a third.

"Even the poor doggies at home" are feeling the heat, said a fourth.

The haziness and hot weather is expected to persist over the next three days, as wind conditions continue to be light.

- CNA/ir

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The grim face of global warming

Michael Richardson, Straits Times 16 Feb 09;

THE devastating bush fires in Australia, severe drought in China and the spread of haze over Indonesia's Riau province are linked by a common underlying trend - temperature rise in the Asia-Pacific region and other parts of the world.

They are an unwelcome reminder to policy makers preoccupied with the global financial and economic crisis that climate change is striking now and will strike much harder in future if not tackled effectively by the international community.

Australians, who live on the driest inhabited continent on the planet, are already counting the cost of the extreme heat and prolonged lack of rain that set the scene for the raging fires in the state of Victoria. The final death toll is expected to rise to around 300 as more bodies are discovered. Damage to property and livestock, and the cost of treating the injured, could exceed A$2 billion (S$2 billion).

In China, the world's most populous nation, drought has spread to 12 provinces across central and northern China that produce the bulk of the country's wheat. The China Meteorological Administration has said that average temperatures are at 30-year highs in some areas and 50-year highs in others.

Last week, thick haze from forest fires blanketed large areas of Riau as farmers and plantations took advantage of dry conditions to burn forest and clear land cheaply. This practice, although illegal, has proved difficult to stop. It causes acrid smoke to drift over Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia when the wind blows in their direction.

No one is suggesting that above-average temperatures alone are responsible for these events. The Australian fires were fanned by wild winds and police suspect some were lit by arsonists. However, temperature rise is an important factor. It increases susceptibility to disaster, whether caused by nature or humans.

On Jan 5, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said that last year was the 14th warmest in the country since records began in 1910 and 0.41 deg C above the 1961-1990 average. It noted that Australia had warmed by about 0.9 deg C over the last century.

The panel of international scientists advising the United Nations (UN) on climate change warned in its most recent report two years ago that fires in Australia were 'virtually certain to increase in intensity and frequency'.

It also gave examples of the impact of global warming on Asia. It said that by the 2050s, freshwater availability in Central, South, East and South-east Asia, particularly in large river basins, was projected to decrease. Coastal areas, especially heavily populated mega-delta regions in South, East and South-east Asia, would be at greatest risk due to increased flooding from the sea and, in some mega-deltas, flooding from rivers as glaciers on China's Qinghai-Tibetan plateau and in the Himalayan mountain chain melted.

The panel also said that death and illness from diseases associated with floods and droughts were expected to rise in East, South and South-east Asia.

According to the World Meteorological Organisation, the global combined sea-surface and land-surface air temperature for last year is estimated to be 0.31 deg C above the 1961-1990 annual average of 14 deg C. This makes 2008 the 10th warmest year since 1850. It is now 23 years since the world has had a cooler-than-average year.

The warmest year on record was 1998, when vast swathes of Indonesia's forest and underlying peat bogs dried out and burned, casting a pall of toxic haze over much of South-east Asia.

The UN climate panel says that emissions of greenhouse gases from human activity, mainly from burning fossil fuels and forests, are blanketing the planet, making it warmer.

Last week, the Norwegian Polar Institute reported that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, were hitting new highs, with no sign yet that the global economic slump was curbing emissions. Levels of carbon dioxide rose to 392 parts per million (ppm), a rise of over 2 ppm from a year earlier. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are now about the highest in 800,000 years, and up by about one-third since the industrial revolution began in the 19th century.

Even if they fall because of the economic slump, it will only be temporary. As growth picks up again, emissions will increase. Moreover, once carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere, it stays for a very long time.

We are seeing in Australia's bush fires and China's drought the grim face of the future as the temperature rises. Curbing global warming emissions and adapting to climate change will be costly. But failing to do so will be even more expensive and painful.

The writer is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies.

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Reward drivers who opt for 'green' cars

Straits Times Forum 16 Feb 09;

I REFER to last Thursday's commentary, 'Do CNG cars have a future?'

I assume that the question of compressed natural gas (CNG) cars being 'viable' relates mainly to their economic feasibility. This is understandable, especially with the recession in full swing. However, does that mean we should 'forget' about our moral obligations to Mother Earth until our economic woes are resolved? I hope not. In fact, there is no better time than now.

The most sensible option is to intermesh economics and the environment together (where they belong): Incorporate environmental benefits from greener vehicles - or costs from polluting vehicles - into the economic costs that consumers bear.

Thus, I see no reason for the current 40 per cent green vehicle tax cut to be discontinued from 2012. Drivers brave enough to make the transition should be rewarded. Nevertheless, to be fair, if taxation is chosen, payments should be re-channelled into green investments or research.

Another important move would be to make CNG or liquefied petroleum gas pumps more accessible. Having a few at regular petrol stations would spare would-be users inconvenience and snaking queues. With other countries allowing drivers to refill at home (as the gas is used for cooking too), we still have a long way to go.

On a similar issue, I find it puzzling why cars have to run on petrol when diesel is a more environmentally friendly option, emitting less carbon dioxide and most other pollutants, as well as being cheaper.

Although diesel was once more polluting, current technologies are far better than the '20-year-old engines' in many vehicles. Is it then not time to upgrade these engines, and give drivers a choice?

Ideally, reduction in demand should be the way. Even in the current situation, perpetual traffic jams make it impossible for drivers to adopt good driving habits, as idling cars generate greenhouse gases. It is ironic that most commuters need to travel in private vehicles in a tiny, well-connected land of 707 sq km.

Fewer fossil fuel-guzzling vehicles (public transport included) would do wonders for the environment. If roads could be safer and friendlier for cyclists and pedestrians, we might see an improvement in traffic, environment and health. After all, how expensive is a pair of walking shoes?

Chen Jinwen (Miss)

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Elephants under threat as illegal ivory price soars in Viet Nam

WWF 16 Feb 09;

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - Indochina’s few surviving elephants are under increasing threat from booming illegal ivory prices in Viet Nam, according to a new market analysis released today by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network.

An assessment of the illegal ivory trade in Viet Nam said Vietnamese illegal ivory prices could be the highest in the world, with reports of tusks selling for up to USD1500/kg and small, cut pieces selling for up to USD1863/kg.

Most of the raw ivory was said to originate from the Lao Peoples’ Democratic Republic, with small amounts from Viet Nam and Cambodia.

“This is a worrying trend that indicates even more pressure is being put on already fragile Asian Elephant populations,” said Azrina Abdullah. Director of TRAFFIC Southeast Asia.

According to IUCN figures, no more than 1,000 elephants are believed to survive in Lao PDR, while in Viet Nam, fewer than 150 are believed to exist. In December 2008, TRAFFIC released a report that found evidence of widespread smuggling of live Asian Elephants and their ivory from Myanmar.

Mammoth ivory from Russia was also used in small quantities, but no African raw ivory was found, although it was still being illegally imported into Viet Nam up to at least 2004.

Trade in ivory was outlawed in Viet Nam in 1992, but a major loophole in the legislation exists because shops can still sell ivory in stock dating from the prohibition. This allows some shop owners to restock illegally with recently-made carved ivory.

In 2008, TRAFFIC surveyed 669 retail outlets across Viet Nam and found 73 (11%) selling a total of 2,444 ivory items. Whilst the scale of the ivory market was smaller than in previous surveys, there were signs of increasing demand and overall numbers of craftsmen had increased since 2001. Ho Chi Minh City had the most retail outlets (49) and ivory items (1,776), but Ha Noi, with only 10 outlets, had the highest number of craftsmen.

“Although fewer ivory items were seen in 2008 than in 2001, worked ivory is increasingly being sold directly to buyers through middlemen or on the Internet, bypassing retail outlets,” said Abdullah,

“Continued demand for illegal ivory is driving the prices so high,” explained Abdullah.

Recent seizures in and outside Viet Nam also suggest that most raw ivory is being supplied to China.

The main buyers of ivory were from China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan) and Thailand, local Vietnamese, American-Vietnamese and Europeans, in that order.

“This insidious illegal trade is further threatening the highly endangered elephants of Asia and must be stopped,” said Dr. Susan Lieberman, Director of the Species Programme for WWF-International.

The report recommends that Viet Nam should comply with its obligations under CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), particularly regarding the reporting of ivory seizures, that national regulations and their enforcement should be tightened and offenders prosecuted, and that ivory for sale in retail outlets should be confiscated by the government and destroyed.

The report also recommends better training for wildlife law enforcement officers and continued participation in the ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network (ASEAN-WEN) and similar initiatives that aim to control the illicit trafficking of ivory and other wildlife products in the region.

The investigation into ivory trade in Viet Nam was supported by WWF-Netherlands, and the publication of the report, An assessment of the illegal ivory trade in Viet Nam, was supported by the Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation.

Elephants under threat as illegal ivory price soars in Viet Nam
IUCN Press Release 16 Feb 09;

Indochina’s few surviving elephants are under increasing threat from booming illegal ivory prices in Viet Nam, according to a new market analysis released today by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network and joint programme between IUCN and WWF.

An assessment of the illegal ivory trade in Viet Nam said Vietnamese illegal ivory prices could be the highest in the world, with reports of tusks selling for up to USD1500/kg and small, cut pieces selling for up to USD1863/kg.

Most of the raw ivory was said to originate from the Lao Peoples’ Democratic Republic, with small amounts from Viet Nam and Cambodia.

“This is a worrying trend that indicates even more pressure is being put on already fragile Asian Elephant populations,” said Azrina Abdullah. Director of TRAFFIC Southeast Asia.

According to IUCN figures, no more than 1,000 elephants are believed to survive in Lao PDR, while in Viet Nam, fewer than 150 are believed to exist. In December 2008, TRAFFIC released a report that found evidence of widespread smuggling of live Asian Elephants and their ivory from Myanmar.

Mammoth ivory from Russia was also used in small quantities, but no African raw ivory was found, although it was still being illegally imported into Viet Nam up to at least 2004.

Trade in ivory was outlawed in Viet Nam in 1992, but a major loophole in the legislation exists because shops can still sell ivory in stock dating from the prohibition. This allows some shop owners to restock illegally with recently-made carved ivory.

In 2008, TRAFFIC surveyed 669 retail outlets across Viet Nam and found 73 (11%) selling a total of 2,444 ivory items. Whilst the scale of the ivory market was smaller than in previous surveys, there were signs of increasing demand and overall numbers of craftsmen had increased since 2001. Ho Chi Minh City had the most retail outlets (49) and ivory items (1,776), but Ha Noi, with only 10 outlets, had the highest number of craftsmen.

“Although fewer ivory items were seen in 2008 than in 2001, worked ivory is increasingly being sold directly to buyers through middlemen or on the Internet, bypassing retail outlets,” said Abdullah. “Continued demand for illegal ivory is driving the prices so high."

Recent seizures in and outside Viet Nam also suggest that most raw ivory is being supplied to China.

The main buyers of ivory were from China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan) and Thailand, local Vietnamese, American-Vietnamese and Europeans, in that order.

“This insidious illegal trade is further threatening the highly endangered elephants of Asia and must be stopped,” said Dr. Susan Lieberman, Director of the Species Programme for WWF-International.

The report recommends that Viet Nam should comply with its obligations under CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), particularly regarding the reporting of ivory seizures, that national regulations and their enforcement should be tightened and offenders prosecuted, and that ivory for sale in retail outlets should be confiscated by the government and destroyed.

The report also recommends better training for wildlife law enforcement officers and continued participation in the ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network (ASEAN-WEN) and similar initiatives that aim to control the illicit trafficking of ivory and other wildlife products in the region.

The investigation into ivory trade in Viet Nam was supported by WWF-Netherlands, and the publication of the report, An assessment of the illegal ivory trade in Viet Nam was supported by the Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation.

For further information:

* Elizabeth John, Senior Communications Officer, TRAFFIC Southeast Asia, Tel: (603) 7880 3940, E-mail: jlizzjohn@yahoo.com
* Richard Thomas, Global Communications Co-ordinator, TRAFFIC International, Tel: +44 1223 279068, Email: richard.thomas@traffic.org

Rising Ivory Demand Threatens Asia Elephants - Study
PlanetArk 17 Feb 09;

SINGAPORE - Rising prices and strong demand for illegal ivory threaten the survival of Indochina's remaining elephants, according to a study by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network.

In the report, released on Monday, the group said they had surveyed 669 shops in Vietnam and found 11 percent selling nearly 2,500 ivory items.

Much of the raw ivory was said to have originated from neighbouring Laos, with the remainder from Vietnam and Cambodia. No raw African ivory was found.

"This is a worrying trend that indicates even more pressure is being put on already fragile Asian elephant populations," Azrina Abdullah, director of TRAFFIC Southeast Asia, said in a statement.

According to figures from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, there are at most 1,000 elephants in Laos and about 150 in Vietnam.

An earlier TRAFFIC report found evidence of widespread smuggling of live Asian elephants and their ivory from Myanmar.

The latest TRAFFIC study found that Vietnamese illegal ivory prices could be the highest in the world, with reports of tusks selling for up to US$1,500 per kilogram and small, cut pieces selling for up to $1,863 a kg.

"Continued demand for illegal ivory is driving the prices so high," Abdullah said.

The report said the main buyers were from China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), Thailand, local Vietnamese, American-Vietnamese and Europeans.

"Trade in ivory was outlawed in Vietnam in 1992, but a major loophole in the legislation exists because shops can still sell ivory in stock dating from the prohibition," said TRAFFIC in the statement.

"This allows some shop owners to restock illegally with recently made carved ivory," it said.

The report said there were fewer ivory items seen in shops in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi in 2008 than in 2001 during a similar survey. But it said worked ivory was increasingly being sold directly to buyers through middlemen or on the Internet, bypassing retail outlets.

It said Vietnam acceded to the UN convention that governs trade in endangered species and called on the government to close any loopholes that allowed the illegal ivory trade to flourish.

(Reporting by David Fogarty; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

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Same Species Found at Both Ends of Earth

livescience.com Yahoo News 15 Feb 09;

Scientists have determined that at least 235 species live in both polar seas despite the 8,000 miles (13,000 km) between the ends of the Earth.How some of the creatures wound up at the top and bottom of the planet is a mystery. Distance and habitat divisions - such as warm water between the two regions - are among the things that can separate creatures and lead to new species. A DNA analysis is underway to confirm if the like species are in fact identical, the researchers announced today.

The researchers also found evidence that cold water species are moving toward the poles to escape rising ocean temperatures. The project has also returned dramatic photos of species as wide-ranging as ice-loving sand fleas and an antifreeze Antarctic fish that can withstand temperatures that would freeze other fish.

Among the beasts that call both polar seas home are marathon migrators such as grey whales and birds. But the researchers, working on the ongoing Census of Marine Life, also found bipolar worms, crustaceans, and angelic snail-like pteropods.

"The polar seas, far from being biological deserts, teem with an amazing quantity and variety of life," said Ian Poiner, chair of the Census Scientific Steering Committee for the project.

Biologists from several nations have for the past two years worked on the census, at times braving 48-foot (16-meter) waves and frigid conditions.

"Only through the cooperation of 500 people from more than 25 countries could the daunting environmental challenges be overcome to produce research of such unprecedented scale and importance," Poiner said. "And humanity is only starting to understand the nature of these regions."

The team estimates there are 7,500 animals in the Antarctic and 5,500 in the Arctic, and the total number of marine life species known globally is about 250,000. That number may eventually rise to about a million, scientists say. In general, other scientists have said they do not know how many species exist on Earth. The National Science Foundation estimates there could be anywhere from 5 million to 100 million species of life on the planet, but science has only identified about 2 million.

One result of the sea-life census: Researchers are beginning to understand how the polar seas act as incubators for life that sometimes ventures away from the poles as sea temperatures rise and fall over the eons. Last year they discovered that several octopus types have repeatedly colonized the deep sea, each migration coinciding with retreating Antarctic ice over 30 million years.

The scientists now theorize that the Antarctic regularly refreshes the world's oceans with many new creatures, including different varieties of sea spiders, isopods (crustaceans related to shrimp and crabs), and more. They believe the new species evolve when expansions of ice cloister around the south polar region; when the ice retreats, creatures radiate northward along the same pathways followed by the octopuses.

Meanwhile, the census finds smaller marine species are replacing larger ones in some Arctic waters. The reasons are unclear but the implications for the Arctic food web may be profound, the scientists said.

More photos: Rich Life Under the Sea

Study: 'Astonishing richness' in polar sea species
Michael Casey, Associated Press 16 Feb 09;

BANGKOK, Thailand – The polar oceans are not biological deserts after all.

A marine census released Monday documented 7,500 species in the Antarctic and 5,500 in the Arctic, including several hundred that researchers believe could be new to science.

"The textbooks have said there is less diversity at the poles than the tropics, but we found astonishing richness of marine life in the Antarctic and Arctic oceans," said Victoria Wadley, a researcher from the Australian Antarctic Division who took part in the Antarctic survey. "We are rewriting the textbooks."

In one of the biggest surprises, researchers said they discovered dozens of species common to both polar seas — separated by nearly 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometers). Now they have to figure out how they separated.

"We probably know more about deep space than we do about the deep polar oceans in our own backyard," said Gilly Llewellyn, leader of the oceans program for the environmental group WWF-Australia. She did not take part in the survey. "This critical research is helping reveal the amazing biodiversity of the polar regions."

Most of the new discoveries were simpler life forms known as invertebrates, or animals without backbones.

Researchers found scores of sea spider species that were as big as a human hand, and tiny, shrimp-like crustaceans in the Arctic basin that live at a depth of 9,850 feet (3,000 meters).

The survey is one of several projects of the Census of Marine Life, an international effort to catalog all life in the oceans. The 10-year census, scheduled for final publication in 2010, is supported by governments, divisions of the United Nations and private conservation organizations.

The survey — which included over 500 polar researchers from 25 countries — took place during International Polar Year which ran in 2007-2008.

Researchers endured up to 48-foot (16-meter) waves on their trip to the Antarctic, while their colleagues in the Arctic worked under the watchful eye of a security guard hired to protect them from polar bears.

New technology also helped make the expeditions more efficient and productive than in the past. Researchers used cell-phone-like tracking devices to record the Arctic migration of narwhals, a whale with a long twisted tooth, and remotely operated submersibles to reach several miles (kilometers) down into the oceans to study delicate marine animals that are impossible to collect.

As many as 235 species were found in both polar seas, including five whale species, six sea birds and nearly 100 species of crustaceans.

"We think of the Arctic and Antarctic as similar habitats but they are separated by great distances," said University of Alaska Fairbanks plankton ecologist Russ Hopcroft, who took part in the Arctic survey.

"So finding species at both ends of the Earth — some of which don't have a known connection in between — raises a whole bunch of evolutionary questions," he said.

Hopcroft and other polar researchers will now try to determine how long these species have been separated and whether they have drifted apart genetically.

David Barnes, of the British Antarctic Survey, said there a number of possibilities to explain how similar species live so far apart.

Some may have traveled along the deep-sea currents that link the poles or may have thrived during the height of the last ice age about 20,000 years ago when the polar environment was expanded and the two habitats were closer.

Hopcroft and Barnes cautioned that more work needs to be done to confirm whether the 235 species are indeed the same or differ genetically.

"Painstaking work by geneticists investigating both nuclear and mitochondrial genes will only be able to confirm this," Barnes said in an e-mail interview. "It may be they separated sometime ago but similar selective pressures have meant they have not changed much."

Creatures in both Arctic, Antarctic puzzle experts
Alister Doyle, Reuters 15 Feb 09;

OSLO (Reuters) - At least 235 types of cold-loving creatures thrive in both Arctic and Antarctic seas, puzzling scientists about how they got to both ends of the earth, a study showed on Sunday.

Until now, the warm tropics have been seen as a barrier keeping polar bears in the Arctic separate from penguins in the Antarctic. Only a few creatures have been known from both polar regions, such as long-migrating grey whales or Arctic terns.

"At least 235 species live in both polar seas despite an 11,000-km (6,835 miles) distance in between," according to the Census of Marine Life, a decade-long international project to map the world's oceans with results due in October 2010.

Species living at both poles include cold-water worms, crustaceans, sea cucumbers and snail-like pteropods. They make up two percent of the 7,500 Antarctic and 5,500 Arctic animals known to date, out of a global total estimated at up to 250,000.

"The Arctic and Antarctic are much more alike than we thought," Ron O'Dor, senior scientist of the census, told Reuters. Genetic studies were being carried out to confirm that the 235 species were identical.

The findings, along with a discovery that the frigid seas teem with life, raise questions about where common polar species "originated and how they wound up at both ends of the earth," the census said in a statement.

Among theories were that larvae of some species could be swept northwards from Antarctica by chill currents along the deep floor of the Atlantic Ocean -- away from warm surface waters in the tropics that would kill them.

GO NORTH

"Animals can be dispersed over such long distances at the deep sea floor," Julian Gutt of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, a senior member of the census, told Reuters. "The most likely direction is from the Antarctic."

He said, however, that he knew of no finds of cold-loving species in the depths near the equator to back up the theory.

Ice Ages may have helped species disperse.

During Ice Ages, Antarctica's ice smothered surrounding seas and caused new northbound currents that could have carried species such as sea spiders or crustaceans known as isopods. Genetic studies have traced many types of octopus to an Antarctic ancestor.

Among other findings, researchers said smaller marine species of copepods, a sort of crustacean, were replacing larger ones in some Arctic waters, perhaps because of shifts linked to global warming.

"A change in these few species might impact the whole food system," Rolf Gradinger of the University of Alaska said. The larger copepods were key food for creatures such as whales and seabirds.

Among bizarre creatures, one of the Antarctic ice fish known as Chionodraco hamatus can withstand temperatures that would freeze the blood of other fish.

The census is seeking to lay down a benchmark for judging long-term shifts in the oceans. The U.N. General Assembly has asked for regular assessments of the oceans to gauge the impact of pollution, over-fishing and climate change.

(Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Ice oceans 'are not poles apart'
Mark Kinver, BBC News 15 Feb 09;

At least 235 marine species are living in both polar regions, despite being 12,000km apart, a census has found.

Scientists were surprised to find the same species of "swimming snails" at both poles, raising questions about how they evolved and became so dispersed.

The census, involving 500 researchers from more than 25 nations, was carried out during International Polar Year.

The findings form part of the global Census of Marine Life (CoML) report, which will be published in 2010.

"Some of the more obvious species like birds and whales migrate between the poles on an annual basis," explained Ron O'Dor, CoML's co-senior scientist.

But he added the presence of smaller creatures, such as worms living in mud, sea cucumbers and "swimming snails", at both locations had particularly interested researchers on the project.

'Conveyor belt'

One of the swimming snails, or sea butterflies, found in the icy waters of both the Arctic and Antarctic was Cliona limacina .

The creature feeds on Limacina helicina , which is another swimming snail found in the waters of both poles.

Dr O'Dor said that although there was 12,000km separating the two habitats, it did not create a huge barrier for marine wildlife, as a mountain range does for terrestrial species.

"The oceans are a mixing ground," he told BBC News. "There are all kinds of currents that allow things to move around."

He also added that the temperature differences in the oceans did not vary enough to act as a thermal barrier.

"The deep ocean at the poles falls as low as -1C (30F), but the deep ocean at the equator might not get above 4C (39F).

"There is continuity in the ocean as a result of the major current systems, which we call the 'conveyor belt'; a lot of these animals have egg and larvae stages that can get transferred in this water."

'Barcode of life'

Dr O'Dor said that part of the CoML's work included examining organisms' genetic information, which would help the scientists to identify any differences between the seemingly identical species.

"The traditional approach was to describe an organism's physical features, so if these organisms lived in very similar habitats, did very similar jobs and ate similar food, then they often looked very alike even if they came from different origins.

"So we are also working very closely with the Barcode of Life team at the University of Guelph (Canada), and we hope that by 2010 that we will have about 90% of marine species barcoded."

The project aims to develop DNA barcoding as a global standard for identifying species using key genetic markers - much like a shop barcode uniquely identifies a retail product.

"It's a new way to mark or classify things," Dr O'Dor observed.

"Even though organisms look exactly the same and have been identified as being the same type by traditional methods, genetic information can reveal them to be a sub-species or different populations."

COML, which began back in 2000, carried out 17 regional censuses involving more than 2,000 scientists from 82 nations.

Currently, the census teams are collating and examining the data collected by the various surveys, ahead of the publication in October 2010 of the first global Census of Marine Life.


Global warming 'changing balance' of marine life in polar seas

Scientists involved in the most comprehensive study of life in the oceans ever conducted have documented changes in species distribution in the polar regions as warmer oceans spur migration

Jessica Aldred, guardian.co.uk 15 Feb 09;

Global warming is changing the distribution, abundance and diversity of marine life in the polar seas with "profound" implications for creatures further up the food chain, according to scientists involved in the most comprehensive study of life in the oceans ever conducted.

Researchers from the Arctic Ocean Diversity (Arcod) project have documented rising numbers of warm-water crustaceans in the seas around Norway's Svalbard Islands. Arcod is part of the Census of Marine Life, a huge 10-year project involving researchers in more than 80 nations that aims to chart the diversity, distribution and abundance of life in the oceans.

They say an increasing number of these species are extending their range towards the poles as previously cold waters between Norway and the North Pole become warmer and more hospitable.

The team, led by Dr Rolf Gradinger, from the University of Alaska, also collected evidence from the polar Chukchi Sea, between Russia and Alaska, which showed that at least three species have extended their range northwards by up to 500km. The most notable is the snow crab, which has crossed the Bering Strait and is occurring in the Chukchi Sea for the first time.

"This is an example of a general trend we are observing where water is warming further north and making this region more suitable for southerly species," Gradinger said.

The Census is a huge 10-year project involving researchers in more than 80 nations that aims to chart the diversity, distribution and abundance of life in the oceans.

The team also found that smaller species are replacing larger ones in some Arctic waters, a shift which could have profound implications further up the food chain.

"We are finding two smaller species of plankton. This difference in size is big enough to cause a problem for the breeding populations of birds and whales as they will be forced to eat smaller species that has less energy content."

Gradinger's team of scientists from the University of Alaska and the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology in Moscow has collected its findings over five years. Their research has been released in conjunction with another survey from the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML) following a series of expeditions during International Polar Year 2007-08. Both projects will contribute data on polar regions to the global Census of Marine Life, which is due to be released in 2010.

"In oceanographical terms these [Arctic] changes are huge," said Gradinger. "A change in temperature of just a few degrees will see the loss of sea ice cover and with it the sea ice algae, small animals and crustaceans which depend on it. By 2050 the arctic oceans may be ice free, we will lose these animals and that will have implications further up the food chain."

"From an Arctic perspective it's not only about an increase in temperature, it's a complete change in the ecosystem - salinity, ice melt, flow, currents - all of these together will have an impact."

The Antarctic team also reported evidence that some species of pteropods - snail-like species also known as sea butterflies - are moving further towards the pole. "It is similar to the Arctic – animals adapted to cold water environments are having to head to the poles to keep to colder climes as northern waters warm," said Dr Julian Gutt of the CAML.

By comparing notes, Arcod and CAML scientists found that at least 235 species live in both polar regions despite being 6,800 miles (11,000km) apart. Marine life that both poles share includes grey whales, birds, worms, crustaceans and pteropods. Scientists say the discovery opens a host of future research questions over where they originated and how they ended up at opposite ends of the earth.

Another major finding from the 18 research expeditions conducted by CAML during 2007-08 has revealed that life on the seafloor around the Antarctic continent forms a single bioregion - not separate ecosystems, as previously thought. Sampling from 1m locations around the 5,300 miles (8,500km) of Antarctic seafloor - or benthos - has also confirmed that the system is united by a single high-speed current.

"These findings are a major part of new information because so little was really known historically about these regions," said Ron O'Dor, the chief scientist of the census.

Gradinger added: "It's extremely difficult to get information from polar seas because we don't have good historical data. But we must collect data now to evaluate the impact of climate change and the use of the seas for tourism, fishing and shipping. With the warming of Arctic commercial exploitation might increase and therefore it's important to document what species are occurring currently."

Scientists from around the world have been involved in 17 different marine projects that will inform the census, a 10-year project that will provide a snapshot of life in the world's oceans.

The Earth's ice oceans have already revealed some secrets that have excited scientists. Last year at team of British Antarctic Survey scientists working on the census found that seas surrounding an archipelago near the tip of the Antarctic peninsula are richer in animal life than the Galapagos Islands, challenging the notion that warm seas in tropical zones are higher in biodiversity.

In February last year, giant sea creatures, including sea spiders the size of dinner plates and jellyfish with six-metre long tentacles, were found by Australian scientists working on a census project in the deep waters around Antarctica.

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