The Big Question: Is an agreement on climate change in Copenhagen still on the cards?

Michael McCarthy, The Independent 20 Oct 09;

Why are we asking this now?

Yesterday Gordon Brown, at a meeting of ministers from 17 "major economies" held in London to discuss the talks, warned that countries were not moving fast enough to reach an agreement.

What is at stake?

A global deal to cut the carbon dioxide emissions from power generation, industry, transport and deforestation which, all governments now accept, are causing the atmosphere to heat up, with potentially disastrous consequences for all of us.

That seems like a no-brainer. Why shouldn't all countries agree to that?

While all countries now recognise the problem – a no-brainer is right – they have very differing views about what their role in the solution should be. Cutting CO2 and other greenhouse gases can be done, but not with the wave of a wand. It means redesigning whole economies on a low-carbon model, which involves a lot of effort and a lot of expense; among much else, you have to close down your coal-fired power stations or fit them with costly equipment to capture their CO2 and bury it underground. And the argument at Copenhagen will essentially be about how the effort and the expense should be shared out between nations. If that can be agreed, a deal will be done. If it can't, the world is in for trouble.

So who's arguing?

In the simplest terms, two sides have to come together to do a deal: the rich, mainly western countries of the developed world, such as the US and Britain, and the poorer (but rapidly growing) nations of the developing world, led by China and India. The argument is about responsibility and fairness, and it turns on the fact that most of the CO2 that is in the atmosphere now (and it remains for a century or more) has been put there by the rich countries, who have been pumping the stuff out since the industrial revolution 200 years ago; but most of the extra CO2 that will go into the atmosphere in the future will be put there by the developing nations, who are now embarked on a period of unprecedented, explosive economic growth, much of it powered by burning coal, with the principal purpose of drawing their peoples out of poverty.

Throughout the 20th- century the US was the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world; but in the last two years China has overtaken it, having doubled its carbon emissions from 3bn to 6bn tonnes in a mere decade, and they will continue to grow. So you might say that China, with India, Brazil, Indonesia and their fellow developing economies, are now making the problem worse – and they are; but that the US, with Britain, and Germany and France and the other rich countries, started the problem in the first place – and we did. (And we too are worsening the problem every day, of course, with our own carbon emissions.)

What are the implications for responsibility and fairness?

The principal one is that the rich West has to lead the way in cutting carbon, and this has been recognised by all sides since the first global warming treaty, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. The treaty said that the international community had "common but differentiated responsibilities" with regard to the climate, and this principle was put into effect in the Kyoto Protocol to the treaty, signed in 1997.

Under Kyoto, the rich industrialised countries agreed to cut their carbon emissions by fixed amounts by 2012, but the developing nations were not required to make any cuts at all. They were allowed to carry on with business as usual.

Has anything changed since then?

Yes. First, although most of the rich countries, including Britain, accepted Kyoto, the US Congress would not ratify the treaty, as many US politicians felt it was giving a free ride to countries such as China who were economic competitors; George Bush withdrew the US from Kyoto in 2001. Second, the carbon emissions of China and India and their fellows have mushroomed in a way that no one imagined possible in 1997, and they will represent 90 per cent of all future emissions growth; if unchecked, they will derail all other efforts to control climate change. So the point is, the Chinas and Indias now have to make emissions cuts themselves, or first, the US will not join in a new treaty, and second, the fight to limit atmospheric CO2, and thus future temperature rises, will be lost. But China and India have always argued that they are only growing in the way the West did, and that is true; and now they find the western nations saying: 'don't do what we did, do what we say', which is clearly unfair. The deal at Copenhagen is essentially about what the West can offer to make that unfairness acceptable, and what carbon-cutting actions the Chinese and Indians and other developing countries can take, which will in turn be acceptable to the West.

What might be the offers?

The rich countries have to make clear commitments to cut their own CO2 significantly by 2020, and will have to agree massive financial help – billions and billions of dollars – for the poorer nations to continue their growth in a low-carbon way. For their part, the developing nations will have to agree some sort of numerical targets to cut their own CO2 – something which was once anathema to them, as they saw the imposition of targets on them as a ruse by western competitors to hold back their growth. All sides now have to do things which are demanding.

Then why might the talks fail?

The European Union is signed up to tough emissions cuts and backs a big financial help package; even nations such as Japan and Australia, formerly laggards, have started setting serious CO2 targets. It is the position of the US which is crucial. President Barack Obama has to take something substantial to the table in Copenhagen in December in terms of US domestic action, but the Bill which will define US climate policy is stuck in the Senate, and will not go through until Mr Obama's healthcare package is dealt with, which may not be in time. Can Mr Obama offer something to China and its fellows which Congress will ratify? Maybe. The British Government is optimistic that he will. But if he can't, there will be no deal.

Is that the only threat?

That's the major threat, but it's by no means the only one. This is a treaty whose initial text was 200 pages long and contained 2,000 "square brackets" – points of disagreement. It has to be agreed line by line by 192 countries whose representatives are all playing to different domestic agendas and who might have difficulty agreeing on the colour of an orange. If anybody tells you this is a simple matter, don't listen. It's true we have the technology to solve global warming, but this is not about technology. This is about politics, about the art of the possible. And it's the most difficult piece of politics the world has ever seen.

Could the Copenhagen climate meeting end in failure?

Yes

*The US may fail to come to the table with an adequately serious offer on climate.

*Citing the needs of their people, China and India may make offers of action that the US find inadequate.

*The huge financial agreement that is proposed may unravel because of the differing needs of each nation.

No

*When the time comes, President Obama's US will almost certainly try to offer what is needed.

*China and India are already recognising that they need to act themselves.

*All sides realise that the financial package is an essential part of any finally agreed deal.

Hopes Fade for Comprehensive Climate Treaty
John M. Broder, The New York Times 20 Oct 09;

WASHINGTON — With the clock running out and deep differences unresolved, it now appears that there is little chance that international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December will produce a comprehensive and binding new treaty on global warming.

The United States and many other major pollutant-emitting countries have concluded that it is more useful to take incremental but important steps toward a global agreement rather than to try to jam through a treaty that is either too weak to address the problem or too onerous to be ratified and enforced.

Instead, representatives at the Copenhagen meeting are likely to announce a number of interim steps and agree to keep talking next year.

“There isn’t sufficient time to get the whole thing done,” Yvo De Boer, the Dutch diplomat who leads the United Nations climate secretariat and oversees the negotiations, said late last week. “But I hope it will go well beyond simply a declaration of principles. The form I would like it to take is the groundwork for a ratifiable agreement next year.”

Negotiators have accepted as all but inevitable that representatives of the 192 nations in the talks will not resolve the outstanding issues in the time remaining before the Copenhagen conference opens in December. The gulf between rich and poor nations, and even among the wealthiest nations, is just too wide.

Representatives of the 16 largest emitting countries and the European Union, who concluded a meeting in London on Monday, said that they had made progress on the level of aid needed to help poor countries adapt to climate change and adopt less-polluting energy technology.

They also said they had settled some questions on the “architecture” of any agreement reached in Copenhagen, while acknowledging that it would fall short of a binding treaty.

Yet expectations remain high for a meeting that carries important weight not just for the environment but for a broad range of international issues, including trade, security, economic development, energy production, technology sharing and the survival of some vulnerable island nations.

So officials are now narrowing expectations and defining the areas where there is agreement, such as the need to halt and then reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, although how and by which nations remain the subjects of intense dispute. Negotiators are also discussing what form any declaration that emerges from Copenhagen might take and how to ensure that any promises made there are kept.

Among the chief barriers to a comprehensive deal in Copenhagen is Congress’s inability to enact climate and energy legislation that sets binding targets on greenhouse gases in the United States. Without such a commitment, other nations are loath to make their own pledges.

The chief American climate negotiator, Todd Stern, has said that he will not go beyond what Congress is willing to endorse. His deputy, Jonathan Pershing, affirmed this last week at a negotiators’ meeting in Bangkok. “We are not going to be part of an agreement we cannot meet,” Mr. Pershing said.

Administration officials and Congressional leaders have said that final legislative action on a climate bill would not occur before the first half of next year.

European officials have been pressing hardest for some form of binding treaty modeled on the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, which the United States refused to ratify because, American officials said, it imposed emissions limits on developed nations while demanding nothing of rapidly growing economies like China and India.

American officials have said that no agreement in Copenhagen is better than a bad deal that cannot be ratified or enforced. And they note that it took four years after the initial negotiation of the Kyoto accord to complete it.

There is general agreement among international negotiators and knowledgeable observers that the parties to the Copenhagen talks, held under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, will agree to continue discussions next year, and perhaps set a deadline for reaching a final agreement by midyear or December 2010 at the latest.

The rest of the outcome, even the form it may take, remains uncertain. The world’s biggest economies agreed at a meeting last summer in L’Aquila, Italy, on a goal of limiting global temperature increases to about 2 degrees Fahrenheit above current levels, though they did not agree on the means to get there or on how to enforce it. Such a goal is expected to be part of any declaration from Copenhagen.

Also likely to be included is a statement that wealthy nations should cut their emissions below certain benchmarks and that emerging economies should reduce their rate of emissions growth below a business-as-usual curve. No numbers were attached to either of these pledges, and that remains the stickiest of issues.

Another unresolved issue is the financial structure of any international climate accord. The wealthy nations have agreed in principle to support low-carbon growth in the developing world and to help those countries hardest hit by climate change to adapt. But the amounts of money, the programs and the countries that would qualify for that support and for cost-sharing among donor nations are highly contentious issues unlikely to be settled in Copenhagen.

There will probably also be a promise to create an international system to monitor, report and verify emissions reductions, although there is no consensus yet on who would perform these tasks and what penalties would be assessed for failure to comply.

There is also likely to be a commitment by most nations to produce and publish economic growth plans based on lower carbon emissions and an agreement by advanced nations to share clean new energy technology with developing countries.

“The most likely form any agreement will take will be a political declaration,” said Nigel Purvis, a former State Department climate negotiator in the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

“It could be a statement by senior leaders, or it could be adopted by the parties as a formal decision,” he said. “That does not make it legally binding, but it sends a signal to the world of the direction the negotiations are going and give guidance to negotiators as they continue their work.”

U.N.'s de Boer sees no new treaty at Copenhagen: report
Reuters 19 Oct 09;

LONDON (Reuters) - The Copenhagen climate change conference will set out the political framework for cutting greenhouse gases, but will not result in a new international treaty, the Financial Times newspaper said on Monday, citing a top UN official.

"A fully fledged new international treaty under the convention - I do not think that is going to happen," Yvo de Boer, the head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told the paper in an interview.

"If you look at the limited amount of time that remains to Copenhagen, we have to focus on what can realistically be done and how that can realistically be framed," he added.

De Boer said the conference needed to reach an "overarching decision" that sets out individual targets for industrialized countries.

In addition, it needed to decide "how major developing countries intend to engage 2020, and hopefully that puts that in the context of a long-term goal."

(Reporting by Simon Jessop)

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Best of our wild blogs: 20 Oct 09

Begin from Home: a new nature blog!
Featuring shore trips by Mich.

Hot hot afternoon at Pasir Ris
from wonderful creation and wild shores of singapore and Singapore Nature

Blossom-headed Parakeet sighted
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Scaly-breasted Munia eating casuarina seeds
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Catching Up With A Diminuitive Kingfisher
from Life's Indulgences

Semakau Inter Tidal walk on 18 Oct 2009
from Where Discovery Begins

Breaking the Tradition
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales

William Cho’s Photography Showcase
from AsiaIsGreen

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Beauty is all around in Singapore

Former MP and artist Ho Kah Leong says inspiration for his paintings is close to home
akshita nanda, Straits Times 20 Oct 09;

Veteran artist Ho Kah Leong enjoys painting scenes of natural beauty and says he will never run out of material in Singapore.

'You can find natural beauty in every corner in Singapore,' says the former Member of Parliament, who has been exhibiting his landscapes for more than 20 years and is proud to claim that the island city is his main source of inspiration.

'Beauty is not just grand mountains and huge, spectacular scenes. You can find beauty in smaller things as well,' he says. His latest solo exhibition is on display at the Tembusu Art Gallery in Hill Street until Oct 29 and is titled Splendour Of Lakes And Hills. The 20 artworks capture views in natural parks around Singapore, such as the lake at West Coast Park and Bukit Timah Hill.

Dr Ho is donating 30 per cent of the proceeds from the sale of his artworks to the Make A Wish Foundation, a charity that grants the wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses. Thirteen of his paintings are produced in a calendar, 300 pieces of which will also be donated to the foundation.

Fund raising for charity is a habit from his 30 years in politics, says the 72-year-old artist, who stepped down as MP for Jurong in 1996.

Some proceeds from his exhibition of scenes of Pulau Ubin last year went to the charity B'Well in Geylang East, which caters to the health-care needs of senior citizens.

Pulau Ubin is one of his favourite places to paint because many corners remain rustic in spite of the resort that has been developed there.

He packs his painting materials and visits the islet whenever he can on weekends. 'It's sometimes hard to carry all the painting materials and jump on the bumboat but I'm used to it,' says the artist, who swims three times a week and is a strong advocate of regular exercise.

He first began studying painting while studying at Chung Cheng High. He says he is greatly inspired by Impressionists such as Claude Monet, as well as pioneer artists such as Chen Wen Hsi.

His paintings pay homage to the Nanyang school of art, which captures the flavour of life in the tropics, and has been influenced by Western art.

'Singapore is a tropical country. We should try to capture its light and colour and paint the subject matter of South-east Asia,' says Dr Ho, who was principal of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts from 1997 to 2003. He was also senior parliamentary secretary from 1984 to 1997.

He does not paint with a brush. Instead, for 'freer expression', he coils up a piece of rice paper, which he then dips in acrylic or oil paint. 'I think the effect is quite good,' he says, pointing at a painting of a lotus pond in Kampung Java Park that is reminiscent of Monet's Water Lilies.

He thinks his strokes have 'become bolder and more colourful' and is eager to hear feedback on his work.

'I will accept not just the positive but also the negative. Right now, I receive very few negative comments, which is not good for an artist who wants to go further,' he says.

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Resident and NParks torn over fate of tree

Straits Times Forum 10 Oct 09;

OUT of concern for the safety of my family and the residents in my neighbourhood, I engaged an arborist, at my own cost, to check on a roadside tree just outside my house compound.

He found the tree to be structurally weak and recommended felling due to probable tree branch failure. This was communicated to the National Parks Board (NParks) for permission to fell the tree, but the request was rejected on the grounds that the tree was worth conserving.

Tree branches have fallen on several occasions. On April 23, one of the main trunks fell into my compound, damaging my landscaped garden. NParks was notified to fell the tree for the safety of the residents in the neighbourhood and to compensate for the damage to my garden.

NParks' reply was: "In our opinion, we believe that strong gusty winds caused the failure of the co-dominant tree trunk. Based on the foregoing, the incident was totally unforeseeable and beyond the control of NParks. There was no negligence on the part of NParks."

Where is the consideration for the safety of the property and people living around this tree or the disregard for the opinion of an independent professional arborist?

Dr Lawrence Soh

NParks will replace tree of contention
Straits Times Forum 20 Oct 09;

I REFER to the Forum Online letter, "Resident and NParks torn over fate of tree" (Oct 10), by Dr Lawrence Soh.

In May 2006, Dr Soh's arborist recommended that the tree outside his house be removed. NParks inspected the tree and concluded that it could be rejuvenated through careful pruning. The tree responded well to treatment. It flowered in October last year, and was healthy.

In April, strong winds and rain during a Sumatran squall damaged the tree. This being a relatively large specimen for this species, we monitored it to see whether it would recover after the storm. Since it is not recovering well, we have decided to replace it.

Ng Cheow Kheng
Assistant Director,
Streetscape Projects
National Parks Board

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Animals objectified in Art

Serene Ong, channelnewsasia.com 19 Oct 09;

SINGAPORE: Animal lovers and naturalists should be making a beeline to 2902 Gallery for an unusual visual interpretation on the relationship between Man and Animal. Presented by three rising photographers, the ANIMAL exhibition explores the role of Man as both an intimate observer and a detached voyeur in the natural kingdom.

Lending a scientific slant to the showcase is award-winning photographer Zhao Renhui. The 26-year-old, who graduated with first class honours from London's Camberwell College of Arts, has won a number of accolades for his work, ranging from the AOP Student Photographer of the Year Award to the United Overseas Bank POY Art Award.

Explaining the zoological element in his art form, Zhao said: "I am interested in the cultural roles that animals have to play in our contemporary society. What I investigate with my art is the relationship that humans have with animals. These investigations often lead me into studying the behaviours which we have towards animals, the structures which govern our understanding towards animals and how society has classified and objectified the animal form.

"I am showing two series of works in this exhibition. One series is on the portraits of stuffed animals in the museum and the other tells a story of an expedition into the wild. Both of these works question the animal form being objectified in our contemporary society. They contemplate the animal form as a shell without a soul. Some of the expedition images are rather ambiguous, showing only traces of an animal."

By juxtaposing lifelike taxidermied animals and wildlife images, his collection challenges the idea of 'natural' and rouses further reflection on the concept of 'a living thing', re-labelling the mundane and encouraging critical viewpoints.

Zhao, whose fascination with animals and photography started from a young age, has also been involved in wildlife conservation projects that shape his understanding of Man's contemporary relationship with animals.

"In 2007, I visited the tiger farms in China as part of my research. I was awarded a grant from my university to do a research on animal establishments. The photography project was not about saving tigers but rather, on our ironic relationship with tigers. I was shocked and excited when I first learnt about these farms in China. The primary concern at first was the ethics involved in tiger-farming, but it shifted after an actual visit to the farms.

"For example, I found out that there were more tigers in captivity in the United States than all the wild tigers in the world. A lot of conservation money is being spent on the conservation of tigers when a lot of aesthetically insignificant species are left to die.

"The problem here was that as an animal, the tiger seemingly enjoys an attractive aesthetic appeal in our society, therefore the amount of time and finances spent on the conservation of the tiger outweighs that of the last two toads struggling to survive in the Amazon basin... I decided at one point of time to look into how we react to animals in our society, rather than comment on how animals are in society," he said.

His artistic pieces, along with thought-provoking works by photographers Serena Teo and Derrick Choo, are on display at the 2902 Gallery, The Old School at Mount Sophia, till October 21.

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Cost of creating recycling culture in Singapore high: MM

Straits Times 20 Oct 09;

IT WILL cost Singapore an arm and a leg to create a recycling culture in public housing estates, the way the Japanese have done in their homes, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew believes.

He was responding to a Singapore Management University student, who noted that Singapore fell behind other Asian countries like Japan, Taiwan and South Korea in recycling and energy efficiency.

Ms Ng Yi Qi, a first-year arts and social sciences student at the university, asked how Singapore could do more to mitigate against climate change.

'I do not believe we can ever equal the Japanese. They are most thorough, the most disciplined, the most cohesive nation,' MM Lee replied.

'When they decide to do something, they do it. I remember one energy crisis, and they said: 'No hotel, no room anywhere should be lower than 25 deg C'. And, well, I just sweated away.'

He said Singapore is studying Japanese innovations in energy efficiency, just as it learned about productivity from them.

On recycling, the main problem is that the single rubbish chute in every Housing and Development Board flat encourages residents to throw everything into it, instead of separating their recyclables from food waste as the Japanese, Taiwanese and South Koreans commonly do.

'We have thought about this very carefully, but just restructuring the buildings to make the lift stop on every floor...may cost nearly $100,000 per flat. You start putting two or three chutes into every flat, where do you find the space and what will it cost?' he asked.

He also did not believe that a global deal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions could be found at December's international summit in Copenhagen. This is because major countries like the United States and China are all waiting for each other to move before committing to specific targets.

Singapore is also preparing to rebut the likes of Japan and Australia, which believe that Singapore should be subjected to firm targets because of its high per capita emissions from its industries.

Such targets would slow down Singapore's growth. He felt the imposition would be unfair because half or three-quarters of Singapore's manufacturing goods are for export or goods consumed elsewhere.

CLARISSA OON

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Recycling Goes From Less Waste to Zero Waste

Leslie Kaufman, The New York Times 19 Oct 09;

At Yellowstone National Park, the clear soda cups and white utensils are not your typical cafe-counter garbage. Made of plant-based plastics, they dissolve magically when heated for more than a few minutes.

At Ecco, a popular restaurant in Atlanta, waiters no longer scrape food scraps into the trash bin. Uneaten morsels are dumped into five-gallon pails and taken to a compost heap out back.

And at eight of its North American plants, Honda is recycling so diligently that the factories have gotten rid of their trash Dumpsters altogether.

Across the nation, an antigarbage strategy known as “zero waste” is moving from the fringes to the mainstream, taking hold in school cafeterias, national parks, restaurants, stadiums and corporations.

The movement is simple in concept if not always in execution: Produce less waste. Shun polystyrene foam containers or any other packaging that is not biodegradable. Recycle or compost whatever you can.

Though born of idealism, the zero-waste philosophy is now propelled by sobering realities, like the growing difficulty of securing permits for new landfills and an awareness that organic decay in landfills releases methane that helps warm the earth’s atmosphere.

“Nobody wants a landfill sited anywhere near them, including in rural areas,” said Jon D. Johnston, a materials management branch chief for the Environmental Protection Agency who is helping to lead the zero-waste movement in the Southeast. “We’ve come to this realization that landfill is valuable and we can’t bury things that don’t need to be buried.”

Americans are still the undisputed champions of trash, dumping 4.6 pounds per person per day, according to the E.P.A.’s most recent figures. More than half of that ends up in landfills or is incinerated.

But places like the island resort community of Nantucket offer a glimpse of the future. Running out of landfill space and worried about the cost of shipping trash 30 miles to the mainland, it moved to a strict trash policy more than a decade ago, said Jeffrey Willett, director of public works on the island.

The town, with the blessing of residents concerned about tax increases, mandates the recycling not only of commonly reprocessed items like aluminum, glass and paper but also of tires, batteries and household appliances.

Jim Lentowski, executive director of the nonprofit Nantucket Conservation Foundation and a year-round resident since 1971, said that sorting trash and delivering it to the local recycling and disposal complex had become a matter of course for most residents.

The complex also has a garagelike structure where residents can drop off books and clothing and other reusable items for others to take home.

The 100-car parking lot at the landfill is a lively meeting place for locals, Mr. Lentowski added. “Saturday morning during election season, politicians hang out there and hand out campaign buttons,” he said. “If you want to get a pulse on the community, that is a great spot to go.”

Mr. Willett said that while the amount of trash that island residents carted to the dump had remained steady, the proportion going into the landfill had plummeted to 8 percent.

By contrast, Massachusetts residents send an average of 66 percent of their trash to a landfill or incinerator. Although Mr. Willett has lectured about the Nantucket model around the country, most communities still lack the infrastructure to set a zero-waste target.

Aside from the difficulty of persuading residents and businesses to divide their trash, many towns and municipalities have been unwilling to make the significant capital investments in machines like composters that can process food and yard waste. Yet attitudes are shifting, and cities like San Francisco and Seattle are at the forefront of the changeover. Both have adopted plans for a shift to zero-waste practices and are collecting organic waste curbside in residential areas for composting.

Food waste, which the E.P.A. says accounts for about 13 percent of total trash nationally — and much more when recyclables are factored out of the total — is viewed as the next big frontier.

When apple cores, stale bread and last week’s leftovers go to landfills, they do not return the nutrients they pulled from the soil while growing. What is more, when sealed in landfills without oxygen, organic materials release methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as they decompose. If composted, however, the food can be broken down and returned to the earth as a nonchemical fertilizer with no methane by-product.

Green Foodservice Alliance, a division of the Georgia Restaurant Association, has been adding restaurants throughout Atlanta and its suburbs to its so-called zero-waste zones. And companies are springing up to meet the growth in demand from restaurants for recycling and compost haulers.

Steve Simon, a partner in Fifth Group, a company that owns Ecco and four other restaurants in the Atlanta area, said that the hardest part of participating in the alliance’s zero-waste-zone program was not training his staff but finding reliable haulers.

“There are now two in town, and neither is a year old, so it is a very tentative situation,” he said.

Still, Mr. Simon said he had little doubt that the hauling sector would grow and that all five of the restaurants would eventually be waste-free.

Packaging is also quickly evolving as part of the zero-waste movement. Bioplastics like the forks at Yellowstone, made from plant materials like cornstarch that mimic plastic, are used to manufacture a growing number of items that are compostable.

Steve Mojo, executive director of the Biodegradable Products Institute, a nonprofit organization that certifies such products, said that the number of companies making compostable products for food service providers had doubled since 2006 and that many had moved on to items like shopping bags and food packaging.

The transition to zero waste has its pitfalls, however.

Josephine Miller, an environmental official for the city of Santa Monica, Calif., which bans the use of polystyrene foam containers, said that some citizens had unwittingly put the plant-based alternatives into cans for recycling, where they had melted and had gummed up the works. Yellowstone and some other institutions have asked manufacturers to mark some biodegradable items with a brown or green stripe.

Yet even with these clearer design cues, customers will have to be taught to think about the destination of every throwaway if the zero-waste philosophy is to prevail, environmental officials say.

“Technology exists, but a lot of education still needs to be done,” said Mr. Johnston of the E.P.A. He expects private companies and businesses to move faster than private citizens because momentum can be driven by one person at the top.

“It will take a lot longer to get average Americans to compost,” he said. “Reaching down to my household and yours is the greatest challenge.”

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Blogging to help save sea turtles in Malaysia

New Straits Times Asia One 20 Oct 09;

KUALA TERENGGANU: Conservationists Prof Chan Eng Heng, 59, Chen Pelf Nyok, 28, and Chang Kew Fong, 25, plan to stay awake for 24 hours on Sunday, just so they can blog.

But it is not because the trio want to set a personal record of how much they can write before hitting the sack.

They are doing it for the turtles as they hope the blogathon will help raise funds for the newly-established Turtle Conservation Centre in Setiu.

The centre aims to restore the depleted wild population of fresh water, terrestrial and marine turtles in the country, especially in northern Terengganu.

The blogathon will begin at 9pm.

"We will be publishing a blog post every hour about freshwater and marine turtles.

"If there are things that you'd like to know about marine and freshwater turtles but never knew who to ask, this is your chance.

"You have until Sunday to submit the questions and we will post the answers," said Chan, who is also the centre's co-founder.

For Chen, this will be her third run at blogging for 24 hours.

She had participated in two blogathons in 2006 and 2007 previously.

"My third blogathon should be easier as I have Prof Chan and Fong for company.

"And we are not taking shifts either.

"We don't have a strategy as yet on staying awake for the whole day but we won't be brewing coffee," she said, adding that there would be three guest bloggers.

Blogathon nets funds for turtle sanctuary
New Straits Times 29 Oct 09;

KUALA TERENGGANU: They may have had a pot of coffee ready but it was adrenaline that kept conservationists Prof Chan Eng Heng, Pelf Chen Nyok and Chang Kew Fong blogging around the clock.

It paid off well as they raised RM4,500 for the newly-established Turtle Conservation Centre (TCC) in Setiu.

The blogathon was part of efforts to raise funds for the RM2.5 million complex aimed at conserving the species and to provide a site for research and outreach programmes.

TCC also aims to restore the depleted wild population of fresh water, terrestrial and marine turtles in the country, especially in the northern part of the state.

The blogathon, which started at 9pm on Sunday, recorded 700 hits.

"More importantly, we managed to generate interest among the public about turtles. We even had kids as young as 9-years-old participating," Chan, who is also TCC's co-founder, told the New Straits Times.

Chan said Max Gen Sdn Bhd, a vacation incentive service provider sponsored a four-night stay for two at a hotel in either Bali, Indonesia or Pattaya or Phuket in Thailand as well as a two-night stay for two at a hotel in either Langkawi, Genting Highlands, Pulau Perhentian, Penang, Port Dickson or Kuantan.

The winners will be announced today on the www.turtleconservationcentre.org

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Start planning for Pacific warming refugees: scientist

Yahoo News 18 Oct 09;

MAJURO (AFP) – Many Pacific islands in danger of being obliterated by rising sea levels should seek relocation aid at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, a Fiji-based scientist said.

"By 2100, I don't see how many islands will be habitable," professor Patrick Nunn, a climate change researcher at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji said at the weekend.

Nunn is chairing the Pacific Climate Change Roundtable meeting in the Marshall Islands capital Majuro opening Monday where 14 Pacific countries and territories are devising their strategy for the December conference.

New scientific projections show the pace of sea level is faster than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected in its 2007 report, Nunn said.

"We're now looking at a more than one metre (three feet) sea level rise by the end of the century," he said.

For low-lying coral atoll nations such as the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and Tuvalu habitation will become impossible.

"The biggest challenge is getting policy makers to understand the need for a profound change in the way Pacific people live," he said.

"Relocation is one of the most difficult things to talk about and to convince people that the home they've lived in for centuries is no longer a viable option," said Nunn, who has researched climate change for 24 years from his Fiji base.

Mitigation and adaptation projects were being proposed for low-lying areas to withstand sea level rise, but Nunn said "there are no real options in Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and other atolls other than to move people."

He added the problem was not restricted to atolls.

"In most larger islands in the Pacific, there is much less concern for sea level rise because they have a hinterland to move to. It's not as easy as it sounds."

There were three times the Tuvalu population of around 12,000 living in the low-lying Rewa Delta region on Fiji's main island of Viti Levu who would also be affected by sea level rise, he said.

The professor said it was urgent that political leaders of countries with low-lying areas start planning for relocation.

"If relocation is to happen by 2050, then by 2020 a plan must be in place," he said.

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Rising seas threaten Shanghai

Global warming and melting glaciers are raising sea levels, leaving people in coastal areas vulnerable to flooding
Elaine Kurtenbach, Business Times 20 Oct 09;

This city of 20 million rose from the sea and grew into a modern showcase, with skyscrapers piercing the clouds, atop tidal flats fed by the mighty Yangtze River. Now Shanghai's future depends on finding ways to prevent the same waters from reclaiming it.

Global warming and melting glaciers and polar ice sheets are raising sea levels worldwide, leaving tens of millions of people in coastal areas and on low-lying islands vulnerable to flooding and other weather-related catastrophes.

Shanghai, altitude roughly three metres above sea level, is among dozens of great world cities - including London, Miami, New York, New Orleans, Mumbai, Cairo, Amsterdam and Tokyo - threatened by sea levels that now are rising twice as fast as projected just a few years ago, expanding from warmth and meltwater. Estimates of the scale and timing vary, but Stefan Rahmstorf, a respected scientist at Germany's Potsdam Institute, expects a one-metre rise in this century and up to five metres over the next 300 years.

Chinese cities are among the largest and most threatened. Their huge populations - the Yangtze River Delta region alone has about 80 million people - and their rapid growth into giant industrial, financial and shipping centres could mean massive losses from rising sea levels, researchers say.

The sea is steadily advancing on Shanghai, tainting its freshwater supplies as it turns coastal land and groundwater salty, slowing drainage of the area's heavily polluted flood basin and eating away at the precious delta soils that form the city's foundations.

Problem area

Planners are slow in addressing the threat, in the apparent belief they have time. Instead, Shanghai has thrown its energies into constructing billions of dollars worth of new infrastructure: new ports, bridges, airports, industrial zones, right on the coast.

'By no means will Shanghai be under the sea 50 years from now. It won't be like the Day After Tomorrow scenario,' says Zheng Hongbo, a geologist who heads the School of Earth Science and Engineering at Nanjing University.

'Scientifically, though, this is a problem whether we like it or not,' says Mr Zheng, pointing to areas along Shanghai's coast thought to be shrinking due to erosion caused by rising water levels.

Chinese legend credits Emperor Yu the Great with taming floods in Neolithic times by dredging new river channels to absorb excess water. In modern times, the city has been sinking for decades, thanks to pumping of groundwater and the construction of thousands of high-rise buildings.

Today, Shanghai's engineers are reinforcing flood gates and levees to contain rivers rising due to heavy silting and subsidence.

'We used to play on the river banks and swim in the water when I was growing up. But the river is higher now,' says Ma Shikang, an engineer overseeing Shanghai's main flood gate, pointing to homes below water level near the city's famed riverfront Bund.

Twice daily, the 100-metre barrier, where the city's Suzhou Creek empties into the Huangpu River, is raised and lowered in tandem with the tides and weather, regulating the city's vast labyrinth of canals and creeks.

The 5.86-metre high flood gate is built to withstand a one-in-1,000 years tidal surge; the highest modern Shanghai has faced so far was 5.72 metres, during a 1997 typhoon.

Levees along the Bund and other major waterways are 6.9 metres high, providing better protection than in Miami, New York and many other cities. But they still would be swamped if hit by a surge like Hurricane Katrina's 8.5-metre onslaught.

Shanghai is considering building still bigger barriers - such as those in London, Venice and the Netherlands - to fend off potentially disastrous storm surges, most likely at the point 30 kilometres downstream where the deep, muddy Huangpu empties into the Yangtze.

Sang Baoliang, deputy director of the Shanghai Flood Control Headquarters, has been to see the Thames Barrier, which protects London, and the Deltaworks series of storm barriers and dams in the Netherlands, where two-thirds of the population lives on land below sea level, much of it reclaimed from the sea.

Like many Chinese officials, some of whom deem the topic too sensitive to discuss, Mr Sang is cautious about what China might do.

'We are studying this, but it is extremely complicated,' said Mr Sang, as shots from surveillance cameras at dozens of flood gates flashed on a full-wall screen.

'If the research determines that indeed the sea level will rise further, then we will need to build the walls higher. But this is still under research,' he said.

Such projects usually require several decades of planning and construction, and with sea levels rising, they likely will have to be adjusted, given the unknowns of climate change.

'Nobody - no municipal or provincial government, and no central government agency - is preparing adaptation plans for Shanghai or the Yangtze Delta,' says Edward Leman, whose Ottawa-based consultancy Chreod Ltd has published research on the issue. 'They must begin now, as investments and decisions made today will have a major impact in the coming years.'

Nearly a quarter of mankind lives in low-lying coastal areas, and urbanisation is drawing still more people into them.

'The tendency of coastal and port locations to become playgrounds for architects and developers has become a global phenomenon in recent decades,' says Gordon McGranahan, director of the human settlements group at the International Institute for Environment and Development, an independent think tank in London.

Mr McGranahan helped author a 2007 report by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development that put the number of people living in areas vulnerable to such flooding at 40 million people, with trillions of dollars of homes and other assets at risk. By the 2070s, the number could rise to nearly 150 million, it says.

Precarious situation

Extreme weather will aggravate the already precarious situation for many: in September, Tropical Storm Kestana left 80 per cent of the Philippine capital, Manila, under water. Newspaper photos showed much of Haikou, on China's southern coast, flooded, as Vietnam evacuated more than 350,000 people from the storm's path.

In years to come, some Pacific islands, such as tiny Tuvalu, are expecting complete inundation. Vietnam's environment ministry estimates that more than a third of the Mekong Delta, where nearly half the country's rice is grown, will be submerged if sea levels rise by one metre.

Impoverished Bangladesh is spending billions of dollars on dikes and storm shelters, while seeking international aid to help it adapt to flooding that could force up to 35 million of its people to relocate by 2050.

Though much of its land is arid, China likewise has millions of people living in densely populated tidal flats and coastal valleys who already must be evacuated during typhoons. Many of the country's biggest cities are threatened, the OECD report says.

'What has been specific to China has been the enormous coastward migration, unfortunately just at a time when it would have been better not to settle in low-elevation coastal areas,' Mr McGranahan said.

Traces of former sea walls show that much of today's Shanghai, which sits between a flood basin and the sea, was under water or marshland until the seventh or eighth century AD. Over thousands of years, ancient settlements expanded and withdrew as water levels ebbed and rose.

In the future, communities unable to move may instead end up adapting buildings and infrastructure to accommodate higher water levels, says Hui-Li Lee, a landscape architect who is working on several projects in the region.

'There are many things we cannot account for, but if we know an area is going to flood, then we have to plan for that,' Mr Lee said.

'When we look at a map, we have to think that 30 years later or 50 years later everything will be below sea level.' - AP

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Indonesia to promote forest, ocean at international climate conference in Bali

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 19 Oct 09;

Indonesia will promote the roles of forests and oceans to absorb emissions to tackle human-induced climate change during an international conference on climate change in Bali next week.

About 600 scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will gather in Bali from Oct. 26 to Oct. 29 to finalize its fifth assessment report on climate change matters.

“Our delegates will demonstrate the ability of forest and ocean to absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions,” head of climate change and air pollution at the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) Advin Aldrian said Sunday.

He predicted that Indonesia’s total emissions would shrink significantly if the CO2 absorbed in forests and oceans were counted.

“We will seek clarification from the IPCC on putting Indonesia as the world’s third largest emitter (after the US and China),” he said.

The IPCC, a world body on climate science matters, was set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

Advin said that Indonesia would send 29 delegates to the conference, including the BMKG’s chairwoman Sri Woro Harijono, environmental expert Emil Salim, members of the National Council on Climate Change (DNPI) Agus Purnomo and Amanda Katili Niode, and senior official from the state ministry for the environment, Masnellyarti Hilman, and ocean expert Agus Supangat.

Indonesia, the world’s third largest forest nation with 120 million hectares of rainforest, has long been linked to poor forest management.

Massive forest fires since 1997 have been blamed as the main cause for Indonesia’s position as the third largest emitter in the world.

A study by DNPI shows Indonesia’s emissions were about 2.3 gigatons in 2005 of which 80 percent were from the forestry sector. This could jump to 3.6 gigatons by 2030.

The Guinness Book of World Records also claimed the deforestation rate in Indonesia was the global highest, equivalent to three soccer fields cleared every hour.

Indonesia, however, took the lead in promoting the role of the ocean in dealing with climate change to international forums by hosting the World Ocean Conference (WOC) in Manado in May.

Indonesia covers 5.8 million square kilometers including land and oceans, with more than 81,000 kilometers of coastline and millions of people living in coastal areas.

Advin said that Indonesian delegation would reveal a series of research results dealing with ability of forests and oceans to absorb CO2 emissions.

“We will also ask the rich nations to assist developing nations by providing technology assistance and capacity building to calculate emissions absorbed in forests and oceans.

The IPPC has warned that the world needs massive emissions cuts to reduce the CO2 concentration to prevent average global temperatures from rising by an additional 2 degrees Celsius.

It is predicted that climate change will increase average global temperatures and bring about changes in weather patterns, causing sea levels to rise, and increasing frequency of extreme weather events such as storms, floods and drought.

A study by the Asian Development Bank predicted average temperatures could rise by up to 4.8 degrees Celsius by 2100, which could cause sea levels to rise by up to 70 centimeters.

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Open ocean 'needs protecting'

ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
Science Alert 19 Oct 09;

An international team of scientists has called for the creation of marine protected areas in the open oceans to protect the world’s sea life from growing damage and loss caused by overexploitation, pollution and other human impacts.

The open oceans make up 99 per cent of the total region inhabited by life on Earth – yet are currently among our least-protected ecosystems, the researchers say in an opinion article in the world’s leading ecology journal.

They argue that pelagic ecosystems – the high seas – are in as urgent need of protection as the coastal areas where marine protected areas (MPAs) have already been declared, or areas that fall within national maritime boundaries.

“Pelagic ecosystems now face a multitude of threats including overfishing, pollution, climate change, eutrophication, mining and species introductions,” the researchers warn in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution (TREE). These threats can act together to cause far greater damage to marine food chains, fish stocks and ecosystems.

“Mobile pelagic species also suffer from the cumulative impact of sublethal stressors. Chronic exposure to chemical and acoustic pollution from shipping, military activities or oil and gas exploration and exploitation can lead to immunosuppression and reproductive failure in marine mammals ,” they add.

The high seas provide almost 80 per cent of humanity’s fish supplies, carry out half the photosynthesis (conversion of solar energy to sustain life) that takes place on the planet and, through their ability to absorb CO2, are a dominant influence over the speed and extent of climate change.

“It is clear from declines in many species that there is inadequate protection for pelagic biodiversity and ecosystems,” the researchers from Australia, South Africa and Poland say.

“Fewer protected areas exist in the open ocean than in any other major ecosystem on Earth,” explains Professor Bob Pressey of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, a co-author of the article.

“Although there is growing support for the idea of marine protected areas in the open oceans, critics have argued they would be difficult and costly to enforce and manage in the ever-changing ocean environment.

“However my colleagues and I consider that recent advances in conservation science, oceanography and fisheries science can provide the necessary evidence, tools and information to operate these ‘ocean parks’ for the conservation of marine species that live in the high seas.

“But, to be frank, we won’t know how difficult it is until we try,” he adds.

The scientists argue ocean protected areas should be seen as simply another form of MPA, except that they will extend in three dimensions – across the surface and deep into the water itself.

They note that on the high seas, there is no single global body with the authority to establish protected areas or to regulate access to and use of an area for more than one purpose.

However they say progress can be made through Regional Fisheries Management Organizations, the International Maritime Organisation and by individual countries doing more to protect the outer parts of their 200 mile sovereign territories.

They point out that establishing the Pelagos Marine Sanctuary in the Mediterranean had the effect of encouraging countries such as Italy to tighten controls over the discharge of industrial
pollution into the sea.

By reducing the cumulative impact of human activities on the world’s oceans, MPAs can help to mitigate the severity of particular threats that cannot be directly controlled: “For example, if pelagic systems of the Black Sea had not suffered severe pollution and overfishing, they would have been less vulnerable to invasive species,” the say.

“Despite the challenges highlighted here, there are also enormous opportunities for MPAs in the pelagic ocean: weak private property rights, limited habitat transformation and potentially lower costs of protected area management,” the researchers say.

“We believe that pelagic MPAs have now come of age as an important tool in the planet’s last frontier of conservation management.”

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