Uganda forests rapidly disappearing: study

Yahoo News 19 Jun 09;

KAMPALA (AFP) – Uganda has lost nearly a third of its forest cover since 1990 due to expanding farmlands, a rapidly growing human population and increased urbanisation, a government report said on Friday.

In 1990, the east African nation had more than five million hectares of forest cover but by 2005 only 3.5 million hectares (8.6 million acres) remained, the report, published by Ugandan's National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), said.

If deforestation continues at the present rate Uganda will have lost all its forested land by 2050, it warned.

On average 10 percent of the population of Uganda has access to electricity, while the rest make do with firewood for cooking.

"Because 89 percent of rural Ugandans rely on burning firewood for cooking, deforestation is occurring at an alarming rate," NEMA said.

Compounding the problem is that Uganda, an east African country of roughly 31 million people, has one of the world's highest population growth rates.

Recent government estimates put the figure at more than seven live births per adult female.

This growth rate has resulted in the expansion of built-up areas in urban areas, particularly around the capital Kampala.

Three districts surrounding Kampala lost more than 78 percent of their forestland since 1990, as people have migrated out of the increasingly crowded city into neighbouring regions, according to the report.

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U.N. seeks to avert half of natural disaster deaths

Laura MacInnis, Reuters 19 Jun 09;

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations called on Friday for more aid funds to help countries prepare for -- instead of respond to -- natural disasters, saying simple steps could halve the number of deaths they cause.

John Holmes, the U.N.'s emergency relief coordinator, said that 10 percent of humanitarian aid and 30 percent of climate change response money should be used to help fortify schools and hospitals and teach people how to survive crises.

"You can't stop the disasters happening but you can make an enormous difference to whether they kill people and, to some extent at least, have their livelihoods destroyed," he told a news conference in Geneva.

Speaking at the end of a week-long U.N. disaster response meeting, Holmes said that smarter spending of foreign assistance could go a long way to shield lives in countries that are highly exposed to storms, earthquakes and cyclones.

Last year, natural disasters killed nearly 236,000 people and caused $181 billion in economic damage, mainly in China, according to U.N. estimates.

Bangladesh and China are considered most at risk from deaths from floods, landslides and other hazards that are expected to increase in frequency alongside global warming.

While death rates swing wildly from year to year depending on the storms that occur -- in 2008, Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar and China experienced the big Sichuan earthquake -- Holmes said that preparation measures could bring down the long-term toll.

Among the recommended measures endorsed at the U.N. meeting were plans to review the structural soundness of all schools and hospitals in disaster-prone areas, and to ensure building and land-use codes better reflect natural hazard risks.

About $3 billion a year of aid funds should be used to lower disaster risks, Holmes said, noting that Australia, Sweden, the United States, Britain and Germany already in principle allocate 10 percent of humanitarian aid to such efforts.

Some life-saving measures can be accomplished at very low cost, so long as governments keep natural hazard preparedness high on their agendas, the U.N. official said.

"It can be extremely low-tech. It's people on bicycles and bullhorns," he said, describing successful steps undertaken in flood-prone Bangladesh to inform people about how and when to seek shelter from rising waters. "That is not something that requires huge financial outlay."

(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

(For a table of the most and least risky places for natural disasters, see the interactive map at: www.preventionweb.net/english/maps/?pid:34&pih:2)

(For more information about humanitarian emergencies and natural disasters, see: www.alertnet.org)

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New York 'carbon counter' sign shows greenhouse gases in real time

Adam Vaughan, guardian.co.uk 18 Jun 09;

New Yorkers leaving Penn station and the tenor Andrea Bocelli's concert at Madison Square Garden stadium were confronted with an unusual advert yesterday – a huge sign showing greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.
Updated in real time, using projections from monthly measurements of CO2 and other greenhouse gases by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Carbon Counter is designed to get everyone to reduce their emissions.

Kevin Parker, the global head of Deutsche Bank's asset management division, which put up the 21-metre sign, said: "Carbon in the atmosphere has reached an 800,000-year high. We can't see greenhouse gases, so it is easy to forget that they are accumulating rapidly."

Yesterday the counter, which uses 40,960 low-energy LEDs and carbon-offsets its electricity usage, gave a figure of 3.64tn tonnes.

At current rates, the counter's figures are expected to rise by 2bn tonnes a month. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stands at about 387 parts per million (ppm), up by more than a third on pre-industrial revolution levels of about 280ppm.

Ronald Prinn, professor of atmospheric science at MIT, explained the data behind the sign: "The number on the counter is based on global measurements. It shows the total estimated tonnage of greenhouse gases expressed as their equivalent amounts of carbon dioxide, with seasonal and other natural cyclical variations removed to more clearly reveal the underlying long-term trends driven by human and other activity."

The carbon counter will be updated online at www.know-the-number.com.

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How aerosols mask climate change

Victoria Gill, BBC News 19 Jun 09;

A Norwegian scientist says he has shown how much aerosols influence climate.

Aerosol particles scatter and reflect the Sun's rays - an effect that "masks" global warming.

This study aimed to bring together models and observations of this "direct aerosol effect", to accurately estimate the magnitude of this cooling.

Reporting in the journal Science, climate scientist Gunnar Myhre has found that the effect is weaker than previous studies have estimated.

Dr Myhre, from the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, said this clarifies just how much humans have changed the climate so far.

The pollution particles he studied include industrial aerosols such as sulphates, nitrates found in smoke from burning agricultural waste and black carbon (soot) from diesel engines and other forms of combustion.

"Global models of the emission of these aerosols suggest the cooling effect they have cancels out approximately 10% of the global warming caused by greenhouse gases," explained Jim Haywood, an aerosol researcher from the UK Met Office, who was not involved in this study.

"But satellite methods that detect the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere suggest a cooling effect that cancels out about 20%."

By identifying the source of this discrepancy, Dr Myhre was able to reconcile the two approaches and come up with a more precise estimate - closer to 10%.

This suggests the effect is weaker than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has estimated.



"Sulphate and organic carbon scatter solar radiation, whereas black carbon, to a large degree, absorbs it," he explained.

"The models take into account that black carbon [emissions] have increased more than the other types of aerosol.

"But this has been difficult to take into account in the observational-based method since we have only observations of the current situation, and not before human activity started."

Dr Haywood praised the research. "Until the publication of this paper, us aerosol researchers have been scratching our heads trying to understand the difference between model-based and observational-based assessments," he said.

"This will have an impact on future climate predictions."

Engineering clouds

But aerosols have not yet revealed all of their climate-influencing secrets.

The particles also modify clouds, increasing the concentration of droplets, and therefore cloud-cover.

Dr Myhre said there was "still a lot of uncertainty about the masking or cooling" caused by this "indirect aerosol effect".

Dr Haywood agreed. "The effect of aerosols on clouds gives us a big headache," he told BBC News. "It creates a big hole in our data-gathering."

He and and his colleagues at the Met Office have already started investigating whether aerosols could be employed to deliberately mask global warming.

In a recent study, he used a climate model to find out what effect the deliberate brightening of clouds, by adding sea-salt particles to increase their reflectivity, would have on global temperatures.

The research team, led by fellow Met Office scientist Dr Andy Jones, found that global warming could be slowed by up to 25 years, but they also found the approach could also have some very detrimental effects.

The most serious of these, they say, is a sharp decrease in rainfall over South America, which would likely accelerate the die-back of the Amazon rainforest, and contribute to the loss of one of the world's major carbon sinks.

"You would have to be very careful about which clouds you choose with this approach," said Dr Haywood.

Dr Myhre stated that the impact of aerosols on the climate would eventually become insignificant, compared to greenhouse gases.

"Aerosols have a very short lifetime and the greenhouse gases have a very long lifetime - more than 100 years for carbon dioxide," he said.

"In the future it's really the greenhouse gases that are the big issue for warming. They will dominate more and more."

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Solar sleuths tackle mystery of quiet sun

Kelly Beatty, SkyandTelescope.com, New Scientist 19 Jun 09;

For the past couple of years, our sun has been at the minimum of its 11-year activity cycle. Its face has been virtually spotless for months on end, and there've been no dire alerts of titanic solar storms about to slam into Earth.

The problem is that this "quiet sun" has continued far too long – two years ago, a special task force predicted that the transition from the just-ended Cycle 23 to the upcoming Cycle 24 would come around March 2008. It didn't. (To be fair, there was sharp disagreement within the group at that time.)

Much fanfare accompanied the appearance of a tiny high-latitude sunspot in early 2008, supposedly heralding Cycle 24's arrival. Yet for months and months afterward the sun's face remained spotless.

Knowing when the upturn in solar activity begins and, more importantly, how strong it will get at maximum has grown in importance over the years. When the sun gets agitated, it buffets our planet with huge "storms" of high-speed plasma (ionised gas), punctuated by threatening flares of relativistic protons (see Space storm alert: 90 seconds from catastropheMovie Camera).
Rhythmic pulsations

But despite centuries-long records of sunspot counts and 50 years of mapping the sun's magnetic fields, scientists still don't understand what makes one cycle strong and another weak. The same task force that was bullish on Cycle 24 two years ago now believes the forthcoming activity could be the weakest in a century.

This week, two groups of researchers offered hope that we're finally understanding the sun's complex workings a little better.

The first comes from Rachel Howe and Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory, who now believe that sunspots are linked to slow, eastward-moving "jet streams" about 7000 kilometres below the sun's visible surface, or photosphere. They've analysed 15 years of observations made using helioseismology, which monitors rhythmic pulsations at the surface created by pressure waves bouncing around the solar interior.

"Think of the sun as a musical instrument," Hill explains. "A piano has 88 keys, but the sun has five million 'notes' or modes of oscillation."
Deep-seated currents

Howe and Hill find that a pair of deep-seated currents migrate from the solar poles toward the equator during each cycle, and that the migration has been unusually sluggish of late.

They took three years to shift 10° towards the equator, and only now have they reached a solar latitude of 22°, the point at which activity perks up and sunspots start to appear. They can't yet tell whether the flow somehow causes sunspots, only that the two phenomena appear to be related.

"Had this analysis been available two years ago, we'd have seen the delayed onset of Cycle 24 coming," notes solar physicist Dean Pernell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

The new findings were presented this week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Solar Physics Division, which had a special session on Cycle 24.
Sunspot model

The second announcement concerns sunspots themselves and the arrangement of the intense magnetic tangles within them. Writing in Science Express, Matthias Rempel of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and three colleagues used a supercomputer grinding out 76 trillion calculations per second to create the first comprehensive, 3D model of these mysterious dark patches' inner workings.

The simulations reveal in detail how superheated gas streams along magnetic filaments from a spot's dark, central umbra to the lighter penumbra surrounding it.

Solar physicists first recognised this outward flow about 100 years ago. But, as Rempel's team notes, "The onset of these flows is closely related to the magnetic field inclination" and that outflows occur whenever the magnetic field is inclined more than 45° from vertical.

The hope is that a better understanding of sunspots will allow scientists to predict their behaviour more accurately and, in particular, to identify the ones most likely to trigger dangerous solar flares.

Courtesy of Sky and Telescope magazine

Sunspot Delay Due to Sluggish Solar "Jet Stream"?
Anne Minard, National Geographic News 19 Jun 09;

A sluggish, jet stream-like flow deep inside the sun could be to blame for the delay in increased solar activity that has been stumping astronomers.

The jet stream, which is actually a plasma current called a torsional oscillation, has been migrating more slowly than usual through the star's interior, according to a team led by Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.

Every 11 years the sun generates new jet streams near its poles. These streams slowly shift from east to west toward the solar equator over a period of 17 years.

When the stream reaches a certain latitude, the sun starts producing new sunspots—relatively cool, dark regions on the sun that mark areas of magnetic disturbance.

But the stream associated with the current cycle of solar activity has been moving even slower than normal, Hill said.

Obvious in Hindsight?

Based on new data from sun-tracking instruments known as the Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG) and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), Hill and colleagues saw that it took an extra year for the stream to cross a distance of 10 degrees latitude, compared with previous solar cycles.

The new measurements also show that the stream has finally reached the critical latitude linked to sunspot production, which could explain why solar activity finally seems to be picking up.

"It's not clear whether this [slower jet stream] is a cause or a consequence" of the mysterious solar quiet, Hill said. "But the fact that we see it a couple of years in advance [of the sun's extended quiet] makes me think it's a cause."

Jesper Schou, an astrophysicist at Stanford University who works on SOHO, said that, since the stream's sluggish motion had shown up in previous data, in hindsight the solar quiet might have been predicted.

But both GONG and SOHO, right now the best instruments for monitoring the sun's interior, have been in operation for only 14 years. That's a relatively short period for scientists to get comfortable with the type of data being returned. By contrast, sunspots have been tracked as a measure of solar activity for hundreds of years.

"You need some amount of confidence" with the data before recognizing any discrepancies, Schou said. "After a while it's like, Oh, it looks very obvious."

Findings presented this week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society Solar Physics Division in Boulder, Colorado.

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Best of our wild blogs: 19 Jun 09

The Trials & Tribulations of Binjai Stream
from You run, we GEOG

Fauna Show @ USR Part 1 (Butterfly Species)
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature

Burnt out at Punggol
from Urban Forest

Oh deer, I need to poo
from The annotated budak

Black-naped Tern’s unsuccessful attempt at copulation
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Reclamation at Tuas, extended until Dec 09
from wild shores of singapore

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Curbing the haze

The Jakarta Post 19 Jun 09;

It’s easy to forget the annual haze during this month of presidential campaigning. The noxious haze is back in our country, affecting the region and polluting our skies.

Schools in Riau province, Sumatra, had to close for several days in recent weeks, and its Pekanbaru airport had to be temporarily closed due to poor visibility. Dozens of hotspots, or large fires sparked by illegal fires to clear land, have been spotted in the province.

In the nearby province of Jambi, 200 hotspots have been detected in the last six months. The Jambi case is a worrying sign, since forest fires usually occur during the dry season from June to October.

The line between the dry and rainy season has blurred and forest fires are now occurring throughout the year.

The haze has caused great losses to Indonesia and also to Southeast Asia, ever since the big forest fires of 1982. Yet it seems easier for the three presidential candidates to attack a rival candidate than to attack a scourge that has called for a redress for nearly 30 years.

In the 1997-1998 fires, the region suffered US$9 billion in lost business and other costs, according to the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. Almost 10 million hectares of forest in Sumatra, Kalimantan, Java, Sulawesi and Papua went up in smoke, affecting the health and economy of 70 million people across Southeast Asia.

Malaysian authorities have reported a fall in air quality in recent days. Its Environment Ministry says more than 1,100 hotspots have been detected in Sumatra and Kalimantan, two of the islands most vulnerable to forest fires.

In recent years, Indonesia’s forest fires have expanded to also affect islands in the Pacific, as well as Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei and Thailand. It is not without reason the haze has been dubbed Indonesia’s biggest export to the region.

Halfway into the presidential campaign, not a single candidate has touched on this issue, nor has anyone put it in their working program. Their rhetoric so far has been full of promises but lacking in substance. Otherwise, they compete in crediting themselves for having done big things in the past, a sign of political infantilism.

If they want to talk about the economy, here is a drain of a trillion rupiah a year in health and environment costs and for losses accrued from disruptions to shipping and aviation. Indonesia has earned a bad reputation for its failure to put its house in order.

Its efforts to stem forest fires have been inadequate. The 1994 ban on the burning of forests and grasslands needs stronger enforcement. Education of smallholders needs to be continued and expanded. Big plantation companies should equip themselves with forest fire management.

The government should also ensure cooperation between all stakeholders, including farmers, plantation companies and NGOs.

And it is time for the government to ratify the ASEAN agreement to eradicate trans-border fire haze and smoke pollution. This will force the government, the only one in ASEAN that has not signed the treaty, to be proactive in tackling haze pollution from land and forest fires across the country.

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Coral Triangle: Act now to prevent disaster

Straits Times Forum 19 Jun 09;

WE AT WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) would like to thank Miss Lau Ying Shan for her letter, 'Walk the talk and consume ethically' (June 10). We are grateful that she raised the environmental challenges the Coral Triangle is facing.

The recent WWF-University of Queensland report, The Coral Triangle And Climate Change: Ecosystems, People And Societies At Risk, highlights the impact of climate change on marine ecosystems in that geographical region, and is a call for action to everyone to take concrete steps to avoid the most disastrous consequences.

If the world does not take effective action on climate change, coral reefs will disappear from the Coral Triangle by the end of the century, the ability of the region's coastal environments to feed people will decline by 80 per cent, and the livelihoods of around 100 million people will have been lost or severely impacted.

However, the report also shows there is an opportunity to avoid a worst-case scenario in the region and instead build a resilient and robust Coral Triangle in which economic growth, food security and the natural environment are maintained. This is if significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are backed up by international investment in strengthening the region's natural environments.

Over-exploitation of the reefs is also driving endangered species to the brink of extinction. It is not just a biodiversity problem but also a human and social problem for the 120 million people who depend on the Coral Triangle for their livelihoods and the millions of other who are sourcing their fish protein from the Coral Triangle region - including us in Singapore.

Sustainable consumption of seafood will safeguard the fish resources of this magnificent region and food security. Early next year, WWF will launch a seafood guide to address the issue of sustainable seafood consumption. The guide will inform consumers and retailers about the sustainability of seafood types in the wild, so they can make better choices in the seafood they buy and the seafood they offer for sale. Indirectly, their decisions will have a positive influence on protecting biodiversity in the Coral Triangle.

Amy Ho (Ms)
Managing Director
WWF Singapore

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Turning on the taps at Newater facility

Victoria Vaughan, Straits Times 19 Jun 09;

ONE of the world's largest water-reclaiming facilities will begin providing Singapore with water from next month.

Believed to be second in size only to Kuwait's Sulaibiya facility, the factory will double the supply of reclaimed water -

Newater - providing 30 per cent of the country's water needs by next year.

Built by Sembcorp at a cost of $180 million, the Newater factory will sell the water to Singapore's water authority PUB at 30 cents per cu m for a year.

Newater is one of the nation's 'four taps' for its water supply, with rain water capture, importation of raw water from Malaysia and desalination being the other three.

Sembcorp's executive vice-president of group business development Tan Cheng Guan explained that producing Newater is more energy-efficient than desalination, as a lot more goes into the sourcing of seawater than waste water.

The new factory sits atop the Changi Water Reclamation Plant (CWRP), which makes waste water readily available.

Mr Tan explained that developing countries such as China and those in the Middle East which are short of fresh water are realising that their costs of sourcing for fresh water sources will shoot up if they use their water only once.

'The market for recycled water is definitely booming,' he said, adding, 'Using a single drop of water multiple times is key.'

From next month, the plant will be working at 30 per cent capacity. When the factory is completed and goes into full flow, it will produce 228,000 cu m a day - enough to fill 91 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Although the factory is scheduled to be completed by the end of next May, Mr Gerry O'Toole, the regional director of Black & Veatch Water Asia Pacific, the firm which designed the factory, predicts it will be ready by Christmas.

The CWRP treats waste water to the point where it is clean enough to be pumped out to sea. Some of the water will then be piped to the Newater factory.

It then goes through three processes to filter out impurities and is also zapped with ultraviolet rays to kill any remaining contaminates. The Newater is then pumped into five storage tanks for PUB to use.

This is the fifth Newater plant in Singapore. The others - in Bedok, Kranji, Seletar and Ulu Pandan - can provide 15 per cent of Singapore's water.

Sembcorp Changi NEWater Plant to start operations in July
Vincent Wee, Business Times 18 Jun 09;

SEMBCORP'S showcase $180 million Sembcorp Changi NEWater Plant (SCNP) is about to come onstream with an initial capacity of 15 million gallons (69,000 cu m) of reclaimed water per day, ramping up to designed capacity of 50 million gallons (228,000 cu m) per day by June 2010.

Singapore's fifth and biggest NEWater project will start delivering its first flow of NEWater to PUB, Singapore's national water agency, by next month.

The four existing NEWater plants together meet about 15 per cent of Singapore's water needs. The new SCNP will add another 15 per cent, doubling this to 30 per cent when it reaches full capacity in 2010.

The 25-year design, build, own and operate (DBOO) project was won in 2008 with Sembcorp's competitive bid to deliver NEWater at 30 cents per cu m in the first year. The price is subject to adjustment in subsequent years under a formula.

It is believed SCNP's production cost is about 22 to 23 cents per cu m. However, the quantity of NEWater that PUB will require SCNP to produce is determined by PUB.

While unable to disclose specific details, sources said SCNP has an agreed formula with PUB that will ensure its production costs do not rise above the sale price.

SCNP's main operating costs are energy costs, making up just under a third of overall running costs. The plant is designed to reduce these energy costs as much as possible.

For example, its reverse osmosis process has an energy recovery system that helps to save about 10 per cent in energy.

This was a 'fairly expensive plant because PUB obviously wants to have high standards', said Sembcorp executive vice-president Tan Cheng Guan.

But some building costs were saved because certain components like the foundation for the plant was provided by PUB, since it was planned from the beginning that the plant would be put on the roof of PUB's Changi Water Reclamation Plant. Foundation costs typically make up 15 to 20 per cent of building costs.

However, Sembcorp is using the plant as a showcase for its waste water recycling expertise where it hopes to achieve 50 per cent growth in five years to managing water and waste water facilities capable of producing and treating six million cu m of water a day, from the four million cu m a day it handles now.

'We are further deepening our core competencies in the water business through strategic projects such as the Sembcorp Changi NEWater Plant and aim to replicate our track record in key target markets,' said group president and CEO Tang Kin Fei.

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Water technology R&D centre to open next week

GE partners NUS to develop safe drinking water systems across Asia
Lee U-Wen, Business Times 19 Jun 09;

A $150 million research and development centre that aims to develop safe drinking water systems across Asia will open here next Monday.

The opening of NUS-GE Singapore Water Technology Centre - within the school of engineering at the National University of Singapore - coincides with the start of the second annual Singapore International Water Week, on June 22-26.

Already, the first scientists, engineers and researchers have started work at the centre, with all equipment and facilities expected to be in place by the first quarter of next year.

GE has hired 37 people and there are plans to ramp up manpower to about 100, Kevin Cassidy, general manager (Asia-Pacific) of GE Water & Process Technologies, said yesterday.

Mr Cassidy and other senior GE Water and NUS staff were speaking to reporters during a tour of the 2,700 square metre centre, which occupies a building at the engineering faculty and some space in the Temasek Engineering Building.

The centre will be officially opened by National Research Foundation chairman Tony Tan, NUS president Tan Chorh Chuan and GE Water & Process Technologies chief executive and president Heiner Markhoff.

GE's partnership with NUS is its first with a university in the Asia-Pacific.

Michael Saunders, director of the NUS Environmental Research Institute, said that the centre would go a long way towards supporting Singapore's strategy of becoming a global water technology hub.

Mr Cassidy said that the centre would actively engage government agencies as part of an inclusive working relationship. 'The Public Utilities Board is a customer of ours, and what we can offer is a place for them to test some new technologies.'

On the reason for basing the centre here, he said that Singapore was 'one of the most progressive countries in addressing water issues'.

The opening of the centre could not have come at a more opportune time.

Worldwide demand for water last year came to 313 billion cubic metres - a figure that is expected to surge to 870 billion cubic metres by 2030.

Today, the World Health Organization estimates that about 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water.

And by 2025, some 2.8 billion people will be living in water scarce areas.

Recent studies have shown that about 95 per cent of the world's cities still dump raw sewage into their water, underscoring the need for more modern treatment systems in industrialised and developing countries.

NUS, GE set up water research facility
$150m centre will study ways to make potable water that is economical to produce
Amresh Gunasingham, Straits Times 19 Jun 09;

WATER-TECHNOLOGY developer GE Water has twinned itself with the National University of Singapore (NUS) to come up with ways to make water safe to drink and economical to produce.

The two sides will do research in a new $150 million centre located in NUS' engineering faculty. The NUS-GE Singapore Water Technology Centre, to be officially opened next Monday, is GE Water's first collaboration with an Asia-Pacific university.

This puts the 2,700 sq m facility smack within a region where up to 90 per cent of countries do not have adequate technology to provide safe, drinkable water, according to Professor Michael Saunders, the director of the NUS Environmental Research Institute.

The water technology resulting from the research has 'exceptional' market potential regionally, he said.

Parts of China for example, have access only to extremely contaminated water, he noted. 'That's a market, that's a critical need. But we have to look at making these systems much cheaper.'

The pool of 37 scientists and engineers of the centre will eventually be expanded to about 100.

Researchers will seek up to $70 million in government funding for their work, said Professor Barry Halliwell, deputy president (Research and Technology) NUS.

Research will focus on designing seawater desalination systems that do not need large amounts of energy to run or which use solar or other sources of power; they will also research methods of purifying and reusing water.

GE Water's general manager for the Asia-Pacific, Mr Kevin Cassidy, said state-of-the-art desalination systems require a relatively large amount of energy to run - roughly 3 kilowatt-hour for each cubic metre - which many countries can ill afford.

He offered this as an indication of the level of efficiency being sought after: 'If we put 100 litres of water through a high-pressure system, currently, we may get 95 litres of clean water. We want to find ways to get 98 or even 99 litres of clean water.'

Prof Saunders said having an industry-university partnership was critical for universities to be successful in the next decade or two.

It allows universities to do more and gives their students research opportunities that put them 'closer to the real world', he added.

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Biodegradable plastic bags carry more ecological harm than good

Decomposing bags sound environmentally friendly but they require a lot of energy to make, won't degrade in landfills and may leave toxic leftovers
Fred Pearce, guardian.co.uk 18 Jun 09;

Biodegradable plastic bags – as handed out by Tesco, the Co-op and even the Soil Association – must be good, surely? They have a magic ingredient that means they self-destruct after a few months, breaking up into tiny pieces made of simple molecules that bugs and fungi can happily munch up. Dozens of major corporations use them, including Pizza Hut, KFC, News international, Walmart and Marriott hotels.

But last week, the European Plastics Recyclers Association warned that they "have the potential to do more harm to the environment than good."

Technically what we are talking about here is "oxo-degradable" plastics. These are plastics made to degrade in the presence of oxygen and sunlight, thanks to the addition of tiny amounts of metals like cobalt, iron or manganese.

British manufacturers – headed by Symphony Technologies of Borehamwood – are at the sharp end of a revolution that could banish bag-strewn beauty spots and back alleys alike.

But the criticisms are twofold. First, some research suggests that the bags don't degrade as well as claimed. And second, priming plastic bags for destruction is itself an ecological crime.

So, do they really biodegrade away to nothing? Symphony, which supplies the Co-op and Tesco, says its bags are "able to degrade completely within about three years, compared to standard bags which take 100 years or longer". Tesco reckons they all decompose within 18 months "without leaving anything that could harm the environment".

But whether it actually happens seems to depend a lot on where the "biodegradable" plastic ends up. If it gets buried in a landfill it probably won't degrade at all because there is no light or oxygen. But what about elsewhere?

Studies of one brand in the US, commissioned by the Biodegradable Products Institute, found that breakdown is very dependent on temperature and humidity. It goes slow in cold weather. And high humidity virtually stops the process, making long, wet winters sound like bad news.

You might think a compost heap full of biodegrading bugs would be ideal. But a recent Swedish study found that polyethylene containing manganese additive stops breaking down when put in compost, probably due to the influence of ammonia or other gases generated by microorganisms in the compost.

And, while most manufacturers say that to put only tiny amounts of metals into the plastic, the US study found that one brand contained "very high levels of lead and cobalt", raising questions about the toxicity of the leftovers. Neither of these studies relates specifically to Symphony's products. But they raise questions.

The European Plastics Recyclers Association last week argued that biodegradable bags are not the right environmental option anyway. Plastic bags take a lot of energy and oil to make so why waste them by creating bags that self-destruct? "It is an economic and environmental nonsense to destroy this value," the recyclers' trade association concluded.

Of course, we consumers can reuse or recycle biodegradable bags as easily as any other kind. Symphony and other manufacturers stress making bags biodegradable is just an insurance policy for those that don't get recycled or reused. But surely we are less likely to bother if we are told the bags are eco-bags that biodegrade.

This European backlash against oxo-biodegradable plastics follows similar rumblings in the US. In March, the New York Times announced it would not be wrapping its paper in bags made of the stuff because claims that the plastic was "100% biodegradable" did not stand up. This followed a ruling last December by an advertising industry watchdog, part of the US Council of Better Business Bureaus, that makers should stop calling the bags "eco-friendly".

(In marked contrast, the UK Periodical Publishers Association two years ago recommended that all its members use oxo-biodegradable film to wrap their magazines)

Industry websites, including Symphony's, do proudly proclaim one green endorsement – that the organic trade body the Soil Association buys their bags. But Clio Turton at the Soil Association told me: "We've had problems with people making these claims. We have asked for them to be removed. It's very frustrating."

Plastic bags are not the biggest environmental issue on the planet, as George Monbiot explained in a blog here recently.

But most of us probably make "bag choices" several times a day. Brits get through 8bn plastic bags a year. For that reason, they are one of the choices that tend to show if we care about the environment or not. And we should be clear. Re-using bags is best. Recycling is second best. Throwing them away in the hope that a magic formula will guarantee their rapid disappearance is laziness, not environmental care. And anybody who tries to persuade us otherwise is guilty of Greenwash.

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Leafing Las Vegas: Health dangers of city plants revealed

Kate Ravilious, New Scientist 18 Jun 09;

Tree-lined avenues and flower-filled central reservations are pretty, but they could be damaging your health. A new study shows that some plants can increase the rate of ozone production by up to 50 times.

Certain plants, such as rosemary, juniper and pine trees, emit chemical compounds known as terpenes, thought to help deter insect predators, or protect the plant from other stresses like high temperatures.

However, when terpenes mix with pollutants (particularly nitrogen oxides from industry and traffic) they react to produce ozone – a key ingredient of photochemical smogs, and a health hazard that can cause breathing difficulties and may cause cancer.

Scientists have long known that terpenes from forests can cause a significant rise in ozone levels when they mix with air pollution. But could smaller clusters of plants in urban environments be damaging too?

Mark Potosnak, from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, and his colleagues measured terpene emissions from plants lining the sidewalks of Las Vegas. They also studied air quality – including levels of nitrogen oxides and ozone – in a number of central and suburban regions.
Planted perils

In all cases, ozone levels exceeded the US Environmental Protection Agency safe standard (an average of 75 parts per billion over an eight-hour period) and in the worst case reached 107ppb.

Modelling the data revealed that the mix of terpenes and pollutants was responsible for a significant rise in ozone levels – boosting production rates by up to 50 times – particularly downwind of the plants, in suburban neighbourhoods. "It's surprising because Las Vegas has relatively little urban vegetation," says Potosnak.

All over the world hot cities are likely to have similar problems, Potosnak thinks. But the situation can be easily remedied by choosing plants carefully. "Some plant species are very low emitters. Shoestring acacia is a great plant: low water use and low terpene emissions," says Potosnak.

Journal reference: Atmospheric Environment (in press)

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