Environment news Sptember 2007

 

 

 

 

Item 01: Japan: Meat Is Murder on the Environment

(Daniele Fanelli, NewScientist.com, 18 July 2007) A kilogram of beef is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution than driving for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on back home.

This is among the conclusions of a study by Akifumi Ogino of the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Tsukuba, Japan, and colleagues, which has assessed the effects of beef production on global warming, water acidification and eutrophication, and energy consumption. The team looked at calf production, focusing on animal management and the effects of producing and transporting feed. By combining this information with data from their earlier studies on the impact of beef fattening systems, the researchers were able to calculate the total environmental load of a portion of beef.

Their analysis showed that producing a kilogram of beef leads to the emission of greenhouse gases with a warming potential equivalent to 36.4 kilograms of carbon dioxide. It also releases fertilising compounds equivalent to 340 grams of sulphur dioxide and 59 grams of phosphate, and consumes 169 megajoules of energy (Animal Science Journal DOI:.10.1111/j.1740-0929.2007.00457.x).

In other words, a kilogram of beef is responsible for the equivalent of the amount of CO2 emitted by the average European car every 250 kilometres, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

The calculations, which are based on standard industrial methods of meat production in Japan, did not include the impact of managing farm infrastructure and transporting the meat, so the total environmental load is higher than the study suggests.

Most of the greenhouse gas emissions are in the form of methane released from the animals' digestive systems, while the acid and fertilising substances come primarily from their waste. Over two-thirds of the energy goes towards producing and transporting the animals' feed.

Possible interventions, the authors suggest, include better waste management and shortening the interval between calving by one month. This latter measure could reduce the total environmental load by nearly 6 per cent. A Swedish study in 2003 suggested that organic beef, raised on grass rather than concentrated feed, emits 40 per cent less greenhouse gases and consumes 85 per cent less energy.

"Methane emissions from beef cattle are declining, thanks to innovations in feeding practices," says Karen Batra of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association in Centennial, Colorado. "Everybody is trying to come up with different ways to reduce carbon footprints," says Su Taylor of the Vegetarian Society in the UK: "But one of the easiest things you can do is to stop eating meat."

From issue 2613 of New Scientist magazine, 18 July 2007, page 15

 

 

Item 02: The Mirage of Nuclear Power: We've heard all this before

(Paul Josephson, Los Angeles Times, 01 August, 2007) In the last two weeks, the Chinese signed a deal with Westinghouse to build four nuclear power plants; a U.S. utility joined the French national nuclear juggernaut - with 60 reactors under its belt - to build stations throughout the United States; and the Russians neared the launch of the first of a dozen nuclear power stations that float on water, with sales promised to Morocco and Namibia.

Two sworn opponents - environmentalists and President Bush - tout nuclear energy as a panacea for the nation's dependence on oil and a solution to global warming. They've been joined by all the presidential candidates from both parties, with the exception of John Edwards. And none of them is talking about the recent nuclear accident in Japan caused by an earthquake.

These surprising bedfellows base their sanguine assessment of nuclear power on an underestimation of its huge financial costs, on a failure to consider unresolved problems involving all nuclear power stations and on a willingness to overlook this industry's history of offering far-fetched dreams, failing to deliver and the occasional accident.

Since the 1950s, the nuclear industry has promised energy ''too cheap to meter,'' inherently safe reactors and immediate clean-up and storage of hazardous waste. But nuclear power is hardly cheap - and far more dangerous than wind, solar and other forms of power generation. Recent French experience shows a reactor will top $3 billion to build. Standard construction techniques have not stemmed rising costs or shortened lead time.

Industry spokespeople insist they can erect components in assembly-line fashion a la Henry Ford to hold prices down. But the one effort to achieve this end, the Russian ''Atommash'' reactor factory, literally collapsed into the muck.

The industry has also underestimated how expensive it will be to operate stations safely against terrorist threat and accident. New reactors will require vast exclusion zones, doubly reinforced containment structures, the employment of large armed private security forces and fail-safe electronic safeguards. How will all of these and other costs be paid and by whom?

To ensure public safety, stations must be built far from population centers and electricity demand, which means higher transmission costs than the industry admits. In the past, regulators approved the siting of reactors near major cities based on the assumption that untested evacuation plans would work. Thankfully, after public protests, Washington, D.C. did not approve Consolidated Edison's 1962 request to build a reactor in Queens, N.Y., three miles from the United Nations. But it subsequently approved licensing of units within 50 miles of New York, Boston, Chicago and Washington. New Orleans had three days of warning before Hurricane Katrina hit and was not successfully evacuated. A nuclear accident might give us only 20 minutes to respond; this indicates that reactors should be built only in sparsely populated regions. Finally, what of the spent fuel and other nuclear waste? More than 70,000 tons of spent fuel at nuclear power stations are stored temporarily in basins of water or above ground in concrete casks. The Bush administration held back release of a 2005 National Research Council study, only excerpts of which have been published, because its findings, unsympathetic to nuclear power, indicated that this fuel remains an inviting target for terrorists.

And more than 150 million Americans live within 75 miles of nuclear waste, according to the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. A storage facility that was supposed to open at Yucca Mountain, Nev., in 1989 still faces legal and scientific hurdles. And if Yucca Mountain opens, how will we transport all of the waste safely to Nevada, and through whose towns and neighborhoods?

Industry representatives, government regulators and nuclear engineers now promise to secure the nation's energy independence through inherently safe reactors. This is the same industry that gave the world nuclear aircraft and satellites - three of the 30 satellites launched have plummeted to Earth - and Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and a series of lesser-known accidents.

Let's see them solve the problems of exorbitant capital costs, safe disposition of nuclear waste, realistic measures to deal with the threats of terrorism, workable evacuation plans and siting far from population centers before they build one more station. In early July, Bush spoke glowingly about nuclear power at an Alabama reactor recently brought out of mothballs; but it has shut down several times since it reopened because of operational glitches. What clearer indication do we need that nuclear power's time has not yet come?

* PAUL JOSEPHSON writes about nuclear power and teaches history at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

 

 

Item 03: Japan: Editorial: Global Warming

(Editorial, The Asahi Shimbun, 22 July, 2007) Global warming is among the main issues in the July 29 Upper House election campaign. No one now doubts the importance of curbing global warming. However, the manifestoes of the political parties and candidates present widely differing stances. It is up to voters to elect politicians who will work to curb global warming.

Three major challenges are posed by global warming.

First, Japan must fulfill its pledge under the Kyoto Protocol, which requires that developed countries cut emissions of all greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2). Between next year and 2012, Japan needs to cut emissions by 6 percent from its 1990 levels. However, at the current rate of change, Japan will not meet that criteria.

Second, Japan must develop its "environmental diplomacy" prior to the Group of Eight summit to be held next year in Toyako, Hokkaido.

The problem with the Kyoto Protocol framework is that the United States refused to ratify it, and that major greenhouse gas emitters like China and India are not bound by it. Japan must help lay down the foundation for an emissions-control framework that extends beyond 2013, one that will oblige countries like the United States, China and India to each bear an appropriate burden.

And in the long run, the world needs a blueprint of how to change its industrial and daily lives into a decarbonized society. The third challenge facing us is how to shape a framework to fulfill this crucial goal. The candidates who are elected in July 29 vote must make workable plans toward becoming a decarbonized economy.

In June, at the Heiligendamm summit in Germany, the G-8 countries agreed to seriously consider a target of halving global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Japan's environmental policies must adhere to this aim.

Yet do any of the manifestoes presented for review in this Upper House election offer voters a clear blueprint for a decarbonized society?

Looking at the Liberal Democratic Party's argument, several points concern us. For one thing, the party stresses the importance of a "national public movement" toward curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

It is true that CO2 emissions from homes and offices are rising rapidly. Cutting back this trend will require a strong change in lifestyles with emphasis on energy-efficient home appliances and "cool biz" attitudes--such as men wearing comfortable summer fashions and leaving off their ties and jackets in hot summer weather.

Even more importantly, politicians must look several decades ahead and create policies to force industry down a greener path. Japan must cut factory emissions of CO2, and promote production of environmentally friendly goods. The LDP manifesto talks about this, but does not show a tangible time schedule.

In contrast, the Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) manifesto is full of numerical targets. According to the party's figures, Japan's greenhouse gas emission levels can be cut to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and perhaps even be halved before 2050, if their policies are implemented. The party also aims to raise Japan's use of renewable energies like wind, solar and biomass to about 10 percent of all energy sources by 2020.

Minshuto also proposes creating a domestic emissions trading market and an anti-global warming tax. While these ideas will work as incentives for manufacturers, they alone won't be enough to reach the targets. A plan to reshape the country's industrial production is still needed.

None of the parties, it seems, is yet prepared to offer strong action plans for dealing with the reality of global warming.

So what should voters do? In addition to scrutinizing all parties' environmental policies, they must also elect as many environmentally conscious candidates as possible.

 

 

Item 04: Taiji Officials: Dolphin Meat 'Toxic Waste' : Assembly pair break taboo, warn of acute mercury risk in school lunches

(Boyd Harnell, The Japan Times, 01 August, 2007) For what is believed to be the first time anywhere in Japan, elected officials have openly condemned the consumption of dolphin meat, especially in school lunches, on grounds that it is dangerously contaminated with mercury.

In an exclusive interview with The Japan Times held in Kii Katsuura, Wakayama Prefecture, on July 19, Assemblymen Junichiro Yamashita, 59, and Hisato Ryono, 51, from the nearby whaling city of Taiji said they had found extremely high mercury and methylmercury levels in samples of meat from pilot whales killed inshore by Taiji hunters and put on sale in that locality.

The pilot whale, or "gondo" (Globicephala macrorhynchus), is the largest of the dolphin family of small cetaceans. This species is among some 2,300 dolphins slaughtered annually in Taiji, after the mammals are herded in "drive fisheries" into small coves, where they are speared and hacked to death. Similar hunts elsewhere in Japan are estimated to account for at least another 20,000 small cetaceans annually.

The Taiji assemblymen, who are both independents, also condemned the growing practice of feeding this meat to children in their school lunches — describing it as no less than "toxic waste."

The random samples tested by the two assemblymen were bought at supermarkets in Taiji and nearby Shingu, and were similarly sourced to the meat served to children in whale-meat lunches at Taiji schools. Such lunches may also have been served in schools in other prefectures, the Taiji officials said.

Yamashita and Ryono defied the code of silence traditionally shrouding sensitive issues, especially one that could threaten the economy of their small, isolated fishing town on the scenic Kii Peninsula.

Asked why, they said local people were getting very anxious about food safety in Japan. Recent reports of contaminated products from China have heightened their concerns, they said.

Yamashita explained, "We're not against traditional whaling, but we heard claims that pilot whales are poisoned with mercury, and we discovered that some of this meat from a (drive fishery) was fed to kids in school lunches."

He said that although they had doubted the pilot whales were contaminated with mercury, they decided to have certified lab tests carried out nonetheless.

"We tested some samples — purchased at the Gyokyo supermarket in Taiji and Super Center Okuwa in the nearby city of Shingu," Yamashita said, adding they were "shocked" by the results.

One dolphin sample had a mercury content 10 times above the health ministry's advisory level of 0.4 parts per million, with a methylmercury readout 10.33 times over the ministry's own advisory level of 0.3 ppm.

Another dolphin sample tested 15.97 times and 12 times above advisory levels of total mercury and methylmercury, respectively.

The results prompted the two officials to describe dolphin meat as "toxic waste."

In fact, the dolphin levels were higher than some of the mercury-tainted seafood tested during the tragic Minamata mercury-pollution disaster of the 1950s, according to Dr. Shigeo Ekino of Kumamoto Medical Science University in Kyushu. In that episode, thousands were sickened, disabled or died in the toxic chemical disaster.

Ekino is famous for his breakthrough study of brain specimens from deceased Minamata disease victims that reveals how even low levels of methylmercury can damage or destroy neurons.

After they received the test results, the Taiji lawmakers, anxious about the possible toxic effects of pilot-whale meat consumed by local schoolchildren, quickly contacted Masahiko Tamaki, an official of the Wakayama pre-fectural health section, and showed him the test results from their samples.

Yamashita said, "He (Tamaki) seems to think he has to do something, but doesn't know how to do it."

Tamaki was hesitant to confront the mercury issue due to possible repercussions, and offered no solutions, Yamashita said, adding, "The Wakayama health section simply told me they didn't want to upset Taiji people."

But Yamashita said: "According to the high mercury result, if they continue, the people will be harmed — this harm, spread through school lunches, is terrible because children will be forced to eat mercury-tainted dolphin."

Despite the Taiji pair's urgent health concerns, however, Taiji Mayor Kazutaka Sangen plans to build a new slaughterhouse for processing meat from pilot whales and other dolphins caught during globally condemned drive fisheries there.

He also wants to expand the provision of school lunches containing pilot whale meat.

Ryono said, "We may not be able to prevent the building of a new slaughterhouse, but we will continue to appeal to Taiji people not to use dolphin for school lunches."

Meanwhile, concern over 12 dolphins currently in "capture pens" in Taiji is mounting as the mammals await imminent shipment to a dolphin aquarium in the Dominican Republic. This has prompted Yamashita and Ryono to write an urgent letter to Max Puig, environmental minister of the Dominican Republic, protesting importation of the dolphins, saying his environmentally friendly island state would be accepting "toxic waste."

Top researchers in Japan's medical community have also voiced concern about the high levels of mercury found in small-cetacean food products.

Ekino told The Japan Times: "Everyone should avoid eating dolphin meat. If people continue to eat dolphin, there's a high probability of them having damage to their brains. . . . No government agency is studying the problem — no scientists in Japan want to study the subject; it's very political."

Award-winning U.S. neurologist David Perlmutter echoed Ekino's sentiments in a telephone interview, saying, "I totally agree with Dr. Ekino when he said everyone should avoid eating dolphin meat — the consumption of dolphin meat is a profound health risk for humans."

Referring to Japan's health advisories warning pregnant women that consuming dolphin meat "can be harmful to the fetus and to young children," Perlmutter, who has a private practice at his clinic in Naples, Fla., said, "If it's a risk for pregnant women and children, why is it safe for anyone else?"

Tetsuya Endo, a professor and researcher at Hokkaido Health Science University's faculty of pharmaceutical sciences, affirmed the other doctors' condemnation of small-cetacean food products.

In a terse e-mail sent to this correspondent, Endo said, in reference to dolphin meat, "It's not food!" In 2005, Endo published the results of a three-year study on random samples of cetacean food products sold throughout Japan, and concluded all of it was unhealthy because of high levels of mercury and methylmercury.

However, Hideki Moronuki, deputy director of the government's Far Seas Fisheries Division of the Resources Management Department, in an interview with The Japan Times, maligned Endo's study, calling it "misleading information." When pressed, though, he failed to substantiate his accusation.

Endo, however, responded to The Japan Times in an e-mail, saying, "If he (Moronuki) has any basis for his comments, he has the responsibility to show it because it is deeply related to human health."

Moronuki was specifically asked if there was a mercury problem with dolphins. His response: "No."

He acknowledged that doctors' reports (of high mercury levels) may be correct, but claimed, "I don't think it causes a problem with consumers."

When asked if he thought consuming dolphin meat was dangerous, he said, "No."

But he conceded that eating too much dolphin meat could be "dangerous."

Moronuki was also asked if he felt responsible for the poisoning of his own people. He replied: "No. I am responsible for the management of the dolphin fishery, that's it."

This bureaucrat's attitude flies in the face of certified copies of six test reports commissioned and paid for over the past year, each showing high mercury levels in the meat put on sale from all dolphin species tested. That data have been made freely available by The Japan Times to the appropriate Japanese government agencies and officials.

Despite this hard data, government authorities have consistently displayed a sense of apathy toward these matters, and what many informed commentators regard as dangerously cavalier attitudes in dealing with urgent health issues affecting their citizens.

Makoto Tanaka, assistant director of the health ministry's inspection and safety division in the Food Safety Department, would only say that he is seeking an international standard for establishing a new advisory level for consumers of mercury-tainted food products.

The health ministry has been aware of the mercury problem in small cetaceans (not to mention in the meat from great whales) for many years, but so far it has refused to ban the sale of such food products.

In particular — despite unequivocal scientific test results — it has failed to require the posting of warning labels for consumers of dolphin meat.

This approach continues despite an advisory order, Kan Nyu Dai 99 Ban, established July 23, 1973, under which a warning was issued to prefectural and local governments by the then director of the environmental and health agency, stating that mercury in seafood must not exceed the advisory level of 0.4 ppm.

Although still in effect, enforcement of the advisory order by governors and mayors has been lax and unchallenged.

But the reaction around the killing coves of Taiji was swift in confronting the two assemblymen's health concerns.

On the one hand, Gyokyo, the leading local supermarket, pulled pilot whale meat off its shelves, and will not resume its sale, according to Takuya Kondo, assistant director of the health ministry's Department of Food Safety's Standards and Evaluation Division.

Kondo said, "The (Taiji) government has to comply with . . . provisional regulations. . . . They are not supposed to sell (dolphin meat) if it is over the advisory level of 0.4 ppm for mercury."

Yamashita and Ryono believe many people in Japan are unaware of the (health) problems related to consuming dolphin meat, and they say they want to educate people through an Internet blog currently posted by the Save Japan Dolphins coalition, an international conservation group.

But it would be a lot more straightforward if this issue was addressed in a more open and accountable way by officials.

Instead, a pervasive sense of paranoia seems to loom over any investigation of the mercury contamination of foodstuff in Japan.

On this reporter's initial visit to the test lab, my sample of dolphin meat was at first rejected for testing by lab officials, who greeted me with a file of my articles on the barbaric dolphin slaughter in Taiji, and the toxicity of cetacean meat sold in Japan.

One lab official said: "Sometimes happens big problem, I must confirm your purpose. . . . We cannot stand in opposite position of Fishery Agency. . . . If you publish our report, we'll have to close the lab."

The lab later conducted the test after learning the test-sample result would determine whether a potentially dangerous public-health hazard existed.

Also, during the dolphin drives and the animals' subsequent slaughter in Taiji, I was stalked nonstop by shady-looking characters just a few meters behind me wherever I went. Police also attempted to question me several times and, to my considerable consternation, all seemed to know my name exactly as written on my driver's license — even though only my hotel had a copy of my license.

It was very unsettling.

Perhaps the two courageous assemblymen may have sounded the final death knell to Japan's dolphin slaughter by focusing the spotlight on the toxic products of this butchery.

But how many Japanese may already be adversely affected, so many years after the danger of this cruel trade has been known?

 

 

Item 05: China: Police Seize Snow Leopard Pelts

(Xinhua News Agency, 06 August, 2007) Chinese police have seized more than 100 furs from rare wild animals, including 27 snow leopard pelts, in northwest China's Gansu Province, a spokesman with the local police said on Monday.

Forestry police in Xining, capital of northwest China's Qinghai Province, received word that the illegal trade of snow leopards furs was being carried out in central Gansu during a related investigation on the illegal transportation of snow leopard samples, the spokesman said.

The police followed the new tip and found that a resident surnamed Ma in Linxia had purchased furs of protected animals in a very large quantity.

On July 28, police raided Ma's home and his rented apartment, and seized 104 furs of rare wild animals, including bears, snow leopards, clouded leopards, and lynxes. They also found skeletons of these endangered animals.

Ma confessed that he had been buying the furs and bones from Qinghai and Tibet since last November and made a profit of 4,000 yuan (US$520) by selling two snow leopards furs.

The spokesman said this has been the largest number of snow leopard furs that have been seized in China since 1949, and Ma is under further investigation.

 

 

Item 06: Chinese Sturgeons Dying Off?

(Huang Shan, China.org.cn, 06 August, 2007) Swaying its gray body, a three-meter long Chinese sturgeon circles the pool quietly. "It feels much better than when it just arrived here, since it can swim continuously," murmured Liu Jian, staring at the fish in the pool.

Liu, deputy director of the Department of the Shanghai Yangtze Estuarine Nature Reserve for Management of Chinese Sturgeon, has been taking care of this sturgeon. Fishermen who caught it by mistake near Hangzhou Bay sent him the huge fish.

This is the fourth adult sturgeon meeting with a mishap at the Yangtze estuary in a mere six months. The first rashly headed into an eel seedling net on January 18 and was rushed to Liu's department for treatment. On May 2 and 26, two more bodies weighing over 200 kilos were discovered in a row. One of them was cut into two halves by screw propellers.

"There have been no accidental catches or deaths recorded regarding adult Chinese sturgeons in this water area in the past two decades," said Liu, expressing anxiety about recent high accident rates.

The Chinese sturgeon, one of the oldest vertebrates in the world, has existed for more than 200 million years. Adult Chinese sturgeons usually migrate to Yangtze River from the sea during July and August, and swim upstream to spawning grounds the following October.

According to this timetable, adult Chinese sturgeons are usually spotted between July and August or even from October to the beginning of the next year. "It was rare for us to discover two dead sturgeons in May," explained Liu.

"There have been 10 mishaps with adult Chinese sturgeons since last November. Only one survived."

The death toll continues to rise. Two large Chinese sturgeons were found dead in Xiangshan in June and another one in the Yellow Sea water area near Nantong of Jiangsu Province in July.

While Liu is busy tending the injured fish, the plummeting numbers of baby Chinese sturgeons has sounded another alarm.

The number of sturgeon hatchlings spotted at Chongming Base of Yangtze Estuary Conservation Area dropped from 600 in 2006 to 15 this year.

In June 2005, 117 baby sturgeons were monitored, accounting for 78 percent of the annual total. Numbers dropped to 499 in June 2006, accounting for 83.2 percent of the annual total. But no sturgeon fry have been spotted this June.

Although more than 100,000 artificially raised Chinese sturgeons were released into the Yangtze River earlier this year, few of them have been spotted at the conservation base. Meanwhile, the numbers of other aquatic species fry: eel, saury (a sharp beaked fish) and anchovy are also declining.

"We fear the declining population may be a bad omen for the ecological environment of the Yangtze," said Liu.

This June, experts gathered to probe into the declining fish population. Huge ships are the top killer, with six out of 14 casualties being killed by propellers.

The construction of the Gezhouba Dam on the river is also believed to have decimated sturgeon numbers. The dam project, which began in 1981, has cut the spawning area from 600 kilometers to just seven kilometers. Wastewater directly discharged into spawning area has made the hatching environment even worse.

Pollution has impacted and degenerated aquatic life in the wild. In fact, the sperm survival times of wild Chinese sturgeon has dropped from a range of 10 to 30 minutes to a range of three to five minutes. Research also revealed a gender imbalance of 18 females to one male sturgeon.

Nothing specific has caused the decline in Chinese sturgeon. "We need to carry out extensive research, a three year project at least, in order to reach an accurate conclusion," said Professor Zhuang Ping, vice president of East China Sea Fisheries Research Institute.

 

 

Item 07: More Sharks in Hong Kong Waters (??)

(IOL, 05 August, 2007) Hong Kong - Cleaner waters and a more plentiful supply of fish could be luring more sharks to the territory than at any time in the last 10 years, a media report said on Sunday.

The main beach at Stanley, on the south side of Hong Kong Island, was closed after the carcass of a juvenile blacktip reef shark was found entangled in a shark-prevention net, the South China Morning Post said.

The government also reported more than 20 shark sightings in July with two so far this month in a marine park near Sai Kung along the east coast of Hong Kong's New Territories.

"Water quality has steadily improved over the years. In addition, the artificial reefs deployed in the eastern waters have successfully attracted fish, the small sharks' main diet," said Suzanne Gendron, head of zoological operations at the Ocean Park.

"The small sharks sighted within Hong Kong waters may have been attracted by the increasing numbers of fish."

The sightings have led the government to temporary close some beaches and advise people to keep out of the water, leading to suggestions that officials had overreacted.

"These small sharks are primarily fish and invertebrate feeders and only show aggression when cornered," Gendron said.

WWF conservation director Andy Cornish, agreed. "It should not be necessary to close a beach with a shark net, providing the shark net is properly maintained and any shark seen is outside the net," he said.

Cornish speculated that the sharks may have been lured by the exceptionally hot weather. July was the warmest month recorded in Hong Kong since 1967. - Sapa-dpa

 

 

Item 08: New Concerns Raised Over Japan's 'Scientific Whaling'

(CDNN, 06 August, 2007) AUSTRALIA -- The targeting of pregnant minke whales has raised new concerns over the plans by Japan to kill 50 humpback whales in the Antarctic in late 2007.

Associate Professor Peter Harrison, director of the Southern Cross University Whale Research Centre and director of Marine Studies in the School of Environmental Science and Management, said small, isolated humpback populations were most at risk from Japanese whaling.

Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research announced this week that of 286 mature female minke whales that were killed in the Antarctic last summer, 262 (91.6%) were pregnant. It claims that the minke whale population had increased to more than the pre-commercial whaling era, making an annual commercial quota sustainable.

"The fact that so many minke whales were pregnant is good," Professor Harrison said. "But the fact that they have been killed is a double blow, and certainly not something that the Japanese whalers should be proud of. In fact they should be deeply embarrassed by this admission because not only have they targeted breeding females, they have killed part of the next generation of whales," Professor Harrison said.

"While the minke whale population is relatively strong, the Japanese themselves have admitted that their initial population estimate of 760,000 is completely wrong and is likely to be only about half that size. This reinforces the fact that their pseudo-scientific research program is really commercial-scale whaling masquerading as science."

Professor Harrison said that of even greater concern was the fact that this coming summer, Japan planned to kill 50 Australian humpback whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in Australian territorial waters south of Australia.

"These are Australian humpback whales that are born and bred in tropical Australian waters including the Great Barrier Reef. Japan should immediately agree to cease these whaling practices, as requested by the majority of member nations of the International Whaling Commission," he said.

"The IWC has consistently stated that it does not require the information that the Japanese claim to be gaining as a result of their 'special permit' whaling, and there have been more than 40 resolutions requesting them to cease operations, but these have again been ignored by Japan."

Professor Harrison said if female humpbacks were targeted later this year it would reduce the rate of recovery of Australian populations and could have a devastating impact on smaller, South Pacific populations.

"Some South Pacific populations of humpback whales are very small and have not recovered from commercial whaling last century. If the Japanese kill the breeding females that would have a major impact on their recovery and threaten the viability of these small populations," he said.

"There are no scientifically valid reasons for killing these whales and there are very few credible research papers published as a result of the previous Japanese 'scientific' whaling program, so there is no excuse for hunting humpback whales in the Whale Sanctuary."

Trish and Wally Franklin, PhD researchers with the Southern Cross University Whale Research Centre and directors of The Oceania Project (Hervey Bay), say that the proposed whaling will impact on the whale watching industry along Australia's East Coast.

"Our research shows that a significant cohort of humpbacks that have been bringing delight to whale watchers in Hervey Bay for the last 20 years are the breeding females who return to the Bay annually and are now under threat. The Australian whale watching industry is worth more than $300 million to the Australian economy each year," Trish Franklin said.

Source: Southern Cross University

 

 

Item 09: China: Rare River Dolphin 'Now Extinct'

(BBC, 08 August 2007) A freshwater dolphin found only in China is now "likely to be extinct", a team of scientists has concluded.

The researchers failed to spot any Yangtze river dolphins, also known as baijis, during an extensive six-week survey of the mammals' habitat.

The team, writing in Biology Letters journal, blamed unregulated fishing as the main reason behind their demise.

If confirmed, it would be the first extinction of a large vertebrate for over 50 years.

The World Conservation Union's Red List of Threaten Species currently classifies the creature as "critically endangered".

Sam Turvey of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), one of the paper's co-authors, described the findings as a "shocking tragedy".

"The Yangtze river dolphin was a remarkable mammal that separated from all other species over 20 million years ago," Dr Turvey explained.

"This extinction represents the disappearance of a complete branch of the evolutionary tree of life and emphasises that we have yet to take full responsibility in our role as guardians of the planet."

If confirmed, it would be the first extinction of a large vertebrate for over 50 years.

'Incidental impact'

The species (Lipotes vexillifer) was the only remaining member of the Lipotidae, an ancient mammal family that is understood to have separated from other marine mammals, including whales, dolphins and porpoises, about 40-20 million years ago.

The white, freshwater dolphin had a long, narrow beak and low dorsal fin; lived in groups of three or four and fed on fish.

The team carried out six-week visual and acoustic survey, using two research vessels, in November and December 2006.

"While it is conceivable that a couple of surviving individuals were missed by the survey teams," the team wrote, "our inability to detect any baiji despite this intensive search effort indicates that the prospect of finding and translocating them to a [reserve] has all but vanished."

The scientists added that there were a number of human activities that caused baiji numbers to decline, including construction of dams and boat collisions.

"However, the primary factor was probably unsustainable by-catch in local fisheries, which used rolling hooks, nets and electrofishing," they suggested.

"Unlike most historical-era extinctions of large bodied animals, the baiji was the victim not of active persecution but incidental mortality resulting from massive-scale human environmental impacts - primarily uncontrolled and unselective fishing," the researchers concluded.

 

 

Item 10: Overcoming the Politics of Dishonesty and Apathy: Column by Cho Guk, professor, Seoul National University College of Law

(Hankyoreh, 07 August, 2007) The main opposition Grand National Party is bustling with activity related to its candidate-selection process, while progressives are noisily putting together their new united party. The GNP settled on its overall platform of growth or development early on, and so the internal debate is largely about the ability and character of each candidate.

Lee Myung-bak is currently leading in opinion polls. He calls all criticism aimed at him a conspiracy on the part of the current government. When it is alleged that he owns land in Seoul's Dogok-dong in someone else's name, he says that he “doesn't have to answer to that because it's not my property.” The fact that the land in question is owned by a member of his family and that they happened to buy land near a development project in Seoul's Cheonho-dong was just “accidental luck.”

Someone who wants to be president ‘should' be the one who asks that his and his relatives' ‘jumin deungnok chobon' (resident registration abstract, a legal document of personal and family history held by all Korean citizens) and documentation on all of the real estate in his ownership be made public and available for review. Lee should be able to stand naked before waiting to be stripped bare. He should be the one making us believe that he is that “rich candidate” instead of that “corrupt candidate.” Unless he does so, the questions about how he got rich and whether his relatives would keep on getting “lucky” if he were elected are not going to go away.

Park Geun-hye, Lee's main rival for the GNP presidential nomination, gets upset when anyone mentions former President Park Chung-hee, her father, Rev. Choi Tae-min, a man with a most curious personal history, and Choi's family. She still calls the coup d'etat in which her father took power a “revolution to save the nation.” In response to a report by the former Korean Central Intelligence Agency written after it looked into suspicions that Choi was engaging in corruption, and in response to eyewitness allegations about corruption relating directly to the younger Park, she says “prosecutors never found anything.” And she still insists on defending Choi, calling him someone to whom she is “grateful.”

Lee is someone who reaped economic benefit under the former authoritarian system. At the same time, Park enjoyed political authority while performing the role of first lady during her father's Yusin regime, after her mother died in the assassination attempt on her father. If she had no idea about corruption on the part of her aides or others around her, she was either incompetent or is at least responsible for negligent oversight. If she fails to come out from within the shadow of her father she will find people still calling her the “princess of the Yusin regime” and she will not be the right person to bring the country together. Predictions that she will protect former faithful servants of the regime and her aides, despite their irregularities, are going to continue as well, as long as she goes on associating with people who were associated with Choi.

Meanwhile, the progressives have created a new party, and in Korean at least its name is so long it is hard to get through in a single reading. There is no way around feeling like it has been hastily put together for the purpose of the presidential election. Who knows what this new party's key promises are going to be, the ones that can respond to the relatively specific proposals being set forth by Lee and Park. Participants in the new party are busy deciding which faction gets more say in the party, and they have yet to produce even a draft of what their platform is going to be. Who can say for sure that there is not going to be yet another outbreak of the policy divisions that were never resolved when they were organized under the Uri Party. Now that the country has political democracy, there is no hope in trying to win another government with the passive vision of being a “grand democratic union of anti-old establishment forces.”

It is hardly a party based on ideology, so it is inevitable that they will have to compromise on their internal policy differences. However, there is not the same kind of dedication and passion as is found in supporters of the leading two GNP candidates, so the new party's future is not bright. The roots of the political legitimacy shared by the progressives are in the democracy movement and the campaign against the dictatorship. They need to abandon the “political engineering” and reclaim the authenticity of the “movement.” They need to be able to demonstrate that they have the right to inherit the policies of previous democratic governments while showing the country a bold hope for the future, and then they need to ally themselves with the elements that can make it happen. Only by true dedication to this will their new party be able to survive.

I would hope to see all of the candidates and all of their parties engage in the kind of honest and straightforward competition that moves voters' hearts and gives them hope. Only candidates who frankly admit their past wrongs and mistakes and who work hard to present the country with a clear vision and policy for our society's future will be able to win the hearts of voters.

 

 

Item 11: “Protect Mother Nature!”

(Dong-A, 04 August, 2007) It's almost clichιd, but there is one thing we're not aware of. Human beings are not able to protect nature. If anything, over thousands of years, the Earth has been the guardian of humanity. Man is one of millions of species nature has been taking care of. For Mother Nature, humans are a “mischievous offspring” that seem to offer nothing but harm.

The earth, however, can no longer afford to indulge human beings. It is sick and aged. “The good life,” American eco-activist Helen Nearing has been in pursuit of, has collapsed. Belatedly, Adam started caring for his mother. But what is really needed is not protection but forgiveness and awakening. In this respect, “Zoro`s Field: My Life In The Appalachian Woods,” by Thomas Rain Crowe, and “Climate change begins at home: life on the two-way street of global warming,” by Dave Reay, are nothing less than memoirs. Both authors are asking for nature's forgiveness. One retired into himself and headed for woods as if he had inflicted punishment on himself. The other gives an admonition to us. Between inspiration and preaching, which one is more effective in protecting nature? Yet regardless of the answer, both make us ashamed of ourselves.

The message “Zoro`s Field: My Life In The Appalachian Woods” conveys is straightforward: desert civilization and go back to Mother Nature. He forgoes electricity, tapped water, and even a watch. He is living tending a small mountain garden. The book chronicles in 1978-1982, when he lived alone deep in the North Carolina woods.

But simplicity doesn't guarantee comfort. He suffered from loneliness. “When loneliness strikes to my bones, I realize I am not ready to be alone.” For the author struggling to survive by himself, Henry David Thoreau's essay, “Walden,” was like a ray of sunshine. Thoreau wrote that one should be used to talking to himself, be indifferent to time, and learn how to unite with nature like deer, doves, flowers, and trees. The essay was not only his bible but also a must for his survival. Then he wrote, “I enjoy being alone. I've never met a friend gayer than solitude.” Solitude in the woods is not isolation. It's part of making friends with something bigger, Mother Nature. Though Crowe's memoir doesn't carry illustrations, it portrays a much deeper and wider world. It lets us know it's not just science or an expedition that brings great discoveries. Read between the lines, and you will encounter the all-embracing Mother Nature.

“Climate change begins at home: life on the two-way street of global warming” presents explicit messages. It points out in a forthright language that human beings' comfortable lives are choking the Earth. It argues that small changes can prolong the life of humanity and the Earth. “Rather than throwing away the effigy of George W. Bush, who abandoned the Kyoto Protocol, to the dogs, I am determined to reduce the greenhouse gases I emit. I will do my share and take responsibility.”

The author invented a typical American middle-class family of four, the Carbones, and examined how much greenhouse gas they emit. Mr. Carbone's car produces 12 tons of CO2 per year, and Mrs. Carbone, 4 tons while shopping at discount stores. An additional 13 tons came from heating and cooling of their family home. Even walking the dog emits 3 tons of greenhouse gases a year.

Dave Reay, a research fellow at Edinburgh University, is well aware of the danger of global warming. He obsessively delves into things that are related to greenhouse gas emissions. He made a resonant argument that we should go to great lengths to prevent the Earth, once called a “pale blue spot” in “Cosmos” by Carl Sagan, from becoming a “burning red spot.”

It's time for us to make a decision. Are you going to pass down the responsibility to our descendants? No way! Protecting the Earth is the responsibility of the present generation. Global warming is not the only problem facing the Antarctic. Summer is getting hotter and spring and fall are getting shorter. Do you want to repent in the woods? If not, you'd better change your attitude toward life before nature collapses and takes you with it.

 

 

Item 12: Korea to Raise Energy Self Sufficiency Rate by 30%

(Chosun Ilbo/ Arirang News, 08 August, 2007) Korea aims to lower its dependency on imported energy by boosting its stakes in overseas oil and gas fields.

The Commerce, Industry and Energy Ministry said on Tuesday Korea plans to supply 28 percent of its energy needs by 2016.

The country's energy self sufficiency rate last year stood at 3.2 percent.

The ministry says it will expand the budget for natural resource development to about W1 trillion (US$1=W923).

Seoul will also set aside another W500 billion to create a so-called "Energy Fund" to attract more investment in overseas energy fields.

 

 

Item 13: Seoul: Nearly 4 Million Subway Users per Day

(Chosun Ilbo, 08 August, 2007) A daily average of 3.986 million people used subway lines nos.1 to 4 in the first six months of the year, according to transport statistics released by subway corporation Seoul Metro on Tuesday. February saw the fewest number of passengers on the four lines, at 3.812 million people per day, because of the fewer days in that month and also because the Lunar New Year holidays fell in February. The month of May saw the most passengers with 4.097 million a day.

Subway trains were most packed with passengers on Fridays (4.561 million), while about half the usual passengers used the subway on Sundays (2.5 million). Among stops on line No.1 to 4, Gangnam station attracted the most passengers (123,000 a day,) followed by Samseong, Jamsil, Sillim and Express Bus Terminal stations.

 

 

Item 14: Korea: Gov't Ups the Ante in Press Crackdown

(Chosun Ilbo, 08 August, 2007) The Government Information Agency has started closing government newsrooms under a new policy critics say aims to gag the press. The GIA is now working out a prime ministerial directive to take disciplinary action against journalists and their employers who fail to abide by news embargoes set by government offices. In strong protest on Tuesday, a journalists organization called for the entire policy to be scrapped.

In a statement, the Korea News Editor's Association said, "The government should immediately give up its attempt to control the media in the way of the Fifth Republic" - a reference to the putschist government of Chun Doo-hwan. "We understand that the government is working out a prime ministerial directive which will set up a new government office to decide on giving off-the-record briefings and setting news embargoes, and which will ban journalists who fail to attend at least one of five news briefings a week hosted by a ministry from visiting the government office,” it noted.

"This means the government will bring journalists and their employers under control one by one if they violate the government's guidelines in addition to banning media access to government offices,” it added. "A news embargo is purely a gentleman's agreement based on mutual trust between news sources and reporters. But the government wishes to decide on this arbitrarily and take disciplinary action against journalists and their companies unless they abide by government guidelines. This is an autocratic idea aimed at determining when media companies should report specific issues."

The government is attempting to legalize such media control by the expedient of a prime ministerial directive. This, the association argued, was “an anti-democratic outrage no democratic government in the world has ever attempted.” It called on the government to abandon its attempt to ban media access to information sources.

The opposition Grand National Party also urged the government to drop its press policy, which it said "clearly shows the government's new attempt to rein in the media." GNP spokeswoman Na Kyung-won echoed the association, saying it should be “up to journalists whether to embargo news in case government offices ask for it.” She warned there was a danger that the press policy “may be abused as a means to control the media,” citing the precedent of press guidelines under past authoritarian governments.

In the face of the protests, the GIA said, "We will make sure that no government offices set news embargoes arbitrarily. To assure fairness, it will not be individual government offices but a council of government offices, consisting of public relations officers from each government office who will discuss what disadvantages individual journalists and their companies should face as a result of the news embargo. ” It also promised to give journalists and their employers an opportunity to explain themselves.

 

 

Item 15: Air Pollution Severe at 22% of Public Facilties

(Bae Ji-sook, Korea Times, 08 August, 2007) Air pollution levels in several public facilities, including wedding halls and private educational institutes, have exceeded governmental standards, Seoul city government said Tuesday.

Many places were polluted with Formaldehyde, a government designated cancer-causing material, and were found with high-density carbon dioxide. In wedding halls, 60 percent had excessive levels of both carbon dioxide and Formaldehyde. About 54.2 percent of educational institutes and 40 percent of concert halls experienced the same problem. The official government-set standard for Formaldehyde is 120 microgram per cubic meter and 1,000 parts per million (ppm) for carbon dioxide.

A researcher said that certain areas where many people gather or where high levels of construction take place are highly susceptible to bad air quality.

However, indoor sports facilities, hospitals and underground stores had less pollution. Only around 10 percent were found to experience excessive pollution.

 

 

Item 16: China: Call to Abandon Wooden Chopsticks

(Shan Juan, China Daily, 10 August, 2007) Restaurant owners and patrons should abandon the use of disposable chopsticks for the good of their health and the environment, an official with the China Cuisine Association (CCA), has said.

Bian Jiang, its secretary-general, recently called on restaurant operators to phase out one-use cutlery, especially wooden chopsticks, in preparation for next year's green Olympics. The country produces and discards more than 45 billion pairs of wooden chopsticks every year, at a cost to the environment of about 25 million trees, Bian said.

"That's a heavy blow to the country's dwindling forests," he said.

"On the run-up to the Olympics, the catering industry should not ignore the green call from the organizing committee for no disposable tableware to be used during the grand feast of national pride."

In a bid to discourage the use of wooden chopsticks and protect timber resources, the government imposed a 5 percent consumption tax on them in April.

"I think most restaurants will be willing to do their part," Bian said.

The use of disposable chopsticks has been debated for years.

Both restaurant owners and consumers prefer them, their supporters say, and an industry has grown up around their manufacture.

"I would be happy to stop using wooden chopsticks for environmental concerns, but some diners prefer them for hygiene reasons." Wang Yucheng, who runs a restaurant in Beijing, said.

To help restaurants become more environmentally friendly and energy efficient, the Ministry of Commerce recently issued a range of provisions relating to the catering industry, which discourage the use of wooden chopsticks.

Though not mandatory, the provisions, slated for implementation on December 1, are the first to include the strong suggestion to get rid of disposable chopsticks, Bian said.

Besides its domestic consumption, China is also a major exporter of chopsticks, with Japan its largest trading partner. Despite boasting the world's highest forest coverage at 69 percent, Japan imports all 25 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks it consumes every year.

AND LAST YEAR IN CHOPSTICKS:

Shortage of Chopsticks Worries Japan as China Goes Ecological

(AP, 15 May, 2006) Walk into any Japanese noodle shop or restaurant and chances are you'll be eating with a pair of disposable wooden chopsticks from China. But not for long.

In a move that has cheered environmentalists but worried restaurant owners, China has slapped a 5 percent tax on the chopsticks over concerns of deforestation.

The move is hitting hard at the Japanese, who consume a tremendous 25 billion sets of wooden chopsticks a year ‘ͺ about 200 pairs per person. Some 97 percent of them come from China.

Chinese chopstick exporters have responded to the tax increase and a rise in other costs by slapping a 30 percent hike on chopstick prices ‘ͺ with a planned additional 20 percent increase pending.

The price hike has sent Japanese restaurants scrambling to find alternative sources for chopsticks, called "waribashi" in Japanese.

"We're not in an emergency situation yet, but there has been some impact," said Ichiro Fukuoka, director of Japan Chopsticks Import Association.

A pair of waribashi that used to cost a little over 1 yen ‘ͺ less than 1 cent ‘ͺ now goes for 1.5 to 1.7 yen. The rising costs of raw wood and transportation because of higher oil prices have also contributed to the rise, industry officials said.

But pretty soon, some fear Japan won't even be able to get expensive chopsticks from China: Japanese newspapers Mainichi and Nihon Keizai reported that China is expected to stop waribashi exports to Japan as early as 2008.

To minimize the impact, Japanese importers now buy more bamboo chopsticks and are considering new suppliers, including Vietnam, Indonesia and Russia, said Fukuoka.

Convenience store operators are trying to cushion the impact through cost-cutting in distribution.

"We provide chopsticks only to customers who ask for them," said Mayumi Ito, a spokeswoman for Seven & I Holdings Co., owner of 7-Eleven convenience stores. "We're closely watching the development."

Until the 1980s, about half the disposable chopsticks used in Japan were produced by Japanese companies. But that changed with the introduction of far cheaper Chinese-produced ones.

Supporters of environmental causes see the new Chinese tax as a chance to get rid of disposable chopsticks, which have been linked to deforestation and a wasteful lifestyle.

An Osaka-based restaurant chain operator, Marche Corp., switched to reusable plastic chopsticks in February at its 760 outlets after testing various materials over six months, said company spokesman Michihiro Ajioka.

The chain still keeps waribashi in stock in case customers have trouble snaring noodles with plastic chopsticks, he said. Customers who bring their own chopsticks also get a small discount.

A pair of plastic chopsticks costs about $1.17 and can be reused some 130 times ‘ͺ a cost-per-use that matches a pair of waribashi, Ajioka said.

"So far, we haven't received any complaints," he said. "The amount of garbage has decreased significantly, which is definitely better for the environment."

Japan is China's largest export destination, while China is the third-largest market for Japanese goods, according to government figures.

Japan's trade with China rose 12.7 percent in 2005 to $189.4 billion in its seventh straight year of growth, according to the Japan External Trade Organization.

However, ties between the two countries have become increasingly strained amid a dispute over the ownership of undersea gas fields claimed by both.

Other territorial tiffs and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to a Tokyo war shrine that Beijing considers a glorification of militarism have also put a strain on ties. The shrine honors Japan's 2.5 million war dead, including several executed World War II war criminals. China has strongly protested the visits and boycotted summits with Koizumi until he pledges to stop going.

 

 

Item 17: Illegal Wildlife Trade Booming in Asia, Group Warns

(Agence France Presse, 10 August, 2007) HANOI - An environmental group in Vietnam Friday warned that the illegal wildlife trade in Asia is "almost out of control," ahead of its opening of the first animal rescue center in the country's south next week.

The non-profit group Wildlife At Risk (WAR) and the Ho Chi Minh City forest protection department plan to open the Cu Chi Wildlife Rescue Centre north of the city next Friday, to care for recovered animals and to educate the public.

Southern Vietnam's first multi-species veterinary and holding centre will provide care for wild species rescued by officials in the communist country, which is a major transit point and consumer market for endangered animals.

Wildlife already being held at the centre includes sun bears, several primates, monitor lizards, water dragons, pythons and several turtle species.

"Buying and selling wild animals is big business, not only in Vietnam and other countries in Asia, but also throughout the rest of the world," said WAR in a statement. "The illegal wildlife trade in Asia is almost out of control."

WAR, based in the city formerly called Saigon, said wild animals are being killed or captured on a massive scale for the trade in exotic meat, animal skins and traditional medicine, as well as for the international pet trade.

"Some of these animals are dangerously close to extinction. Others are becoming increasingly rare," said the group. "If the slaughter continues at the present rate, Vietnam's forests, rivers and seas will soon be empty."

 

 

Item 18: For Last Two Years, Natural Forces Offset Global Warming: study

(AFP, 09 August, 2007) CHICAGO (AFP) - Natural weather variations have offset the effects of global warming for the past couple of years and will continue to keep temperatures flat through 2008, a study released Thursday said.

Natural forces offset global warming last two years: study

But global warming will begin in earnest in 2009, and a couple of the years between 2009 and 2014 will eclipse 1998, the warmest year on record to date, in the heat stakes, British meteorologists said.

Existing global climate computer models tend to underestimate the effects of natural forces on climate change, so for this analysis, Met Office experts tweaked their model to better reflect the impact of weather systems such as La Nina, or fluctuations in ocean heat and circulation.

Instead of using approximations, they used real data on the state of the ocean and the atmosphere to generate forecasts of climate change for the decade beginning in 2005 and running through 2014.

The projections suggested that while man-made greenhouse gases would raise temperatures over the long run, cooler water in the tropical Pacific and a resistance to warming in the Southern Ocean would counteract the effect of global warming in the early years of the decade.

The findings fit with the weather patterns seen so far, said Doug Smith, a research scientist at the UK's national weather service, the Met Office, in Exeter, Devon.

To test the accuracy of their new and improved computer model, Smith and his colleagues decided to run a series of "hindcasts," or forecasts for the years 1982-2001.

The new model yielded far more accurate "projections" for global surface temperatures than the previous model, Smith said.

The paper appears in the journal Science.

 

 

Item 19: Prepare for Another Ten Scorching Years

(Jim Giles, New Scientist, 09 August, 2007) Temperature records will be repeatedly shattered over the next few years, say researchers behind the first rigorous look at how global climate will change during the next decade.

The prediction comes from an innovative technique that combines the approaches used by weather forecasters, who typically look a few days ahead, and climate modellers, who produce projections that run up to the end of the century. The result is a model that can project as far as 2015, filling in a long-standing gap in climate predictions.

Although average global temperatures have been relatively flat in recent years, the model says they will start rising again next year. At least half of the years between 2009 and 2015 will exceed the current warmest year on record. By 2015, global temperatures will be 0.5 °C above the average value for the last 30 years.

“This is a very important paper,” says Rong Zhang, an oceanographer at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey, who is using similar techniques to study the Atlantic Ocean. “This is just the beginning for this approach.”

Buoys network

The forecast is only possible because better figures are available on the state of the world's oceans, says Doug Smith, a climate modeller who developed the predictions with colleagues at the Hadley Cebtre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter, UK.

A network of automated ocean-going devices, now numbering around 3,000, has been deployed around the planet since 1999. The devices, known as Argo floats, provide updates on ocean temperature and salinity - factors that are critical in determining global climate patterns.

Armed with the Argo results, Smith was able to create a climate model that started with an accurate representation of the world's oceans. Without access to such data, traditional models had ignored the fine details of current climate. That meant the predictions they produced were only reliable for periods decades in the future, at which point the influence of variations in factors like ocean temperature will have been swamped by more powerful forces, such as greenhouse warming.

Temperature plateau

Smith's approach seems to be working. Some of the figures published this week come from a trial of the model that was run in 2005. Comparisons with subsequent observations show that the model captured the recent plateau in global temperatures.

Such lulls could be used by climate change sceptics to argue that the world is not warming as predicted and that plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions are unnecessary, says Smith, so it is useful to be able to spot a brief pause in what is expected to be a steady increase. “There would be pressure not to mitigate emissions if we couldn't predict a flattening,” he says.

Policy makers are also likely to benefit in other ways, says Zhang, since the approach used by Smith will soon be applied to regional climate models. That could eventually lead to better predictions of droughts and floods, events that are hard to predict even a few months in advance.

Electricity generators could use the model to predict demand, since energy use increases during very hot or cold spells. Smith says one UK electricity company is already buying his data and the results will also be considered by the project's sponsors, the UK government's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Journal reference: (Science, vol 317, p 796)

 

 

Item 20: Korea: Raw Material Prices Soar to Record

(The Korea Herald, 11 August, 2007) Imported raw material prices rose to another record-high this month, said the Korea Importers Association yesterday.

The KOIMA index, which measures the import price of some 30 raw materials, soared to a record-setting 261.53 in July, up 7.59 points from the previous month, the association said. The price index has continued its upward pattern for six straight months since January, it said in a statement.

Price hikes were prominent in non-steel, steel and agricultural products whereas the price of minerals and fibers fell. Lead prices, in particular, soared 26 percent from the previous month upon reduction of Chinese lead exports and consumers' purchasing on margin.

Crude oil prices rose 6 percent from the previous month on the possible undersupply caused by a production stoppage in the North Sea. Wheat and soybean prices also rose over 5 percent on short global supply, the KOIMA said.

 

 

Item 21: China: Death of the Last White Fin Dolphin

(Clifford Coonan, New Zealand Herald, 08 August, 2007) BEIJING: When the last white-fin dolphin, or baiji, died, so too did a piece of China's soul.

This peaceful mammal was known as the Goddess of the Yangtze and for millions of years, she ruled the waters of China's longest river.

But breakneck development, over-fishing and a massive increase in shipping traffic led to the animal's extinction within a few short years.

The almost-blind, long beaked animal, one of the oldest mammals on the planet at around 20 million years old, now officially becomes the first big aquatic mammal to disappear since hunters killed off the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s.

Measuring up to 8'2" in length, the baiji is, or at least was, a relative of other freshwater dolphins found in the Mekong, Indus, Ganges and Amazon rivers.

Local legend has it that the baiji is the reincarnation of a princess who refused to marry a man she did not love and was drowned by her father for shaming the family.

The baiji had no natural predators, except for man.

The white-fin dolphin shared its habitat on the rushing waters of the Yangtze with huge river cruise ships, tugboats and fishing boats.

Too often, the almost-blind beasts crashed into ship's propellers, as fishing boats played havoc with the sonar systems they used to chart their course along the river.

Fishermen using explosives or catching them in their nets illegally also devastated the baiji population.

The lack of oxygen in the Yangtze due to breakneck industrialisation contributed to the mammal's demise.

Despite a growing list of adversities, there were still 400 white-fin dolphins or lipotes vexillifer alive during the 1980's, but that number dropped significantly, and alarmingly, to less than 150 in the last decade.

A survey in 1997 listed just 13 sightings, with the last confirmed sighting in 2004.

The final baiji in captivity, Qi Qi, died in2002.

It was declared "functionally extinct" after an expedition last year.

To understand how devastating the extinction of the white-fin dolphin, you need to understand the importance of the Yangtze river to the Chinese national psyche.

The Chinese call it simply chang jiang, or long river, and as well as having a huge symbolic value, it is an essential shipping route, is economically vital to a whole region and also waters one of the most densely populated areas on Earth.

The Yangtze runs 6,300 kilometres through nine provinces from western China's Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to the East China Sea.

Yangtze is mostly a name used by foreigners to describe it.

Recent reports have shown that nearly 30 per cent of the river's major tributaries, including the Minjiang, Tuojiang, Xiangjiang and Huangpu rivers, are now seriously polluted.

Mindful of the white-fin dolphin's crucial symbolic importance, and keen to replicate its success at breeding endangered species that it had with giant pandas, the Chinese government set up a reserve in a lake in central Hubei province to look after baiji in capitivity.

But they were too late - there were no dolphins left to start an artificial propagation programme.

The extinction of the white-fin dolphin is not the end of the story.

China's other indigenous cetaceans are in trouble, facing threats from pollution and expansion.

The expedition that searched for the baiji also exposed the threat to other species.

They spotted about 300 of another endangered freshwater mammal, the Yangtze finless porpoise, far fewer than expected.

The mammal lived only in the Yangtze and was described by marine biologists as a living fossil because it remained essentially unchanged over the 20 million years since it first entered the river.

The river regularly bursts its banks and floods the surrounding areas with spectacular results - one of the main reasons for building the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest water storage facility, was to regulate the river's level.

The flooding is liable to get worse, according to some experts.

And now there is no longer a Goddess of the River to bring good luck to the currents of the Yangtze.

 

 

Item 22: Endangering the Public's Right to Know

(Editorial, Hankyoreh, 08 August, 2007) The government's “Proposed Standards on Supporting Coverage of the News,” something that is intended as followup on its restructuring of briefing rooms, is coming under fire because it includes the use of news embargoes and sanctions against media that break them. If the government decides to issue embargoes however it pleases, there can be no question that the people's legal “right to know” is being threatened.

News embargoes are arrangements in which the media is given information about something but postpones running stories on it out of consideration for particular circumstances. Usually they are requested by government sources who demand that a reporter or news organization sit on a story in exchange for giving a heads up on certain information; the final decision on whether or not this is granted takes place in the form of a gentlemen's agreement between the person providing the information and the news outlet. In principle, news embargoes are not desirable, but sometimes they are somewhat necessary when it comes to sensitive issues, like those that pertain to foreign policy, for example. The general rule is that they are agreed on between a government agency and its press corps. Action against a news outlet that breaks the agreement is enacted within the press corps. Because of the way they work, news embargoes have rarely led to discord between the media and the government.

It is somewhat inevitable that this issue is leading to controversy right now, since the government's proposal for restructuring briefing rooms does not recognize the press corps and the need for cooperation between the media and the government are clashing with each other. Since there is no one to make a gentlemen's agreement with once you get rid of the press corps that covers a given government agency, what you have instead is a proposal in which the government gets to decide news embargoes on its own.

It does not stop at just being a problem of who agrees to what. The problem is that since there is nothing keeping government decisions on this in check, the government could very well decide when things get reported. There is reason to worry that the people's right to know is being infringed upon, because time is no less important than a story itself. The government's proposal includes a regulation that news embargoes cannot be invoked merely to make things easier for government functionaries, but that is not enough to ease concerns.

The idea of having the government enact measures against a media outlet that violates an embargo is going to lead to criticism about government infringement on press freedom. In terms of the principle at stake, the truth is more important than the national interest, because making the truth known is ultimately in the nation's best interests. Measures taken by the government in this context lose legitimacy if they are going to collide with this principle of the news media.

The basic reason this is a complicated problem lies in the government's thinking when it rejects the media as a group, as represented by the press corps at a given government office or agency. No one can deny that problems exist with the press corps and briefing rooms. But when there are problems, solutions should be found, rather than rejecting the very existence of something. The criticism and controversy is going to continue as long as the government refuses to change its thinking.

 

 

Item 23: No More American Beef Without a Change in American Attitudes

(Editorial, Hankyoreh, 13 August, 2007) The very day after Korea found a banned, partial vertebral column in a shipment of American beef and decided to ban all further imports, the United States once again asked that Korea revise its meat quarantine guidelines. The right thing to do would be for the United States to apologize for failing to maintain guidelines that represent a commitment between the two countries, and to take action to prevent further cases. It is a one-sided attitude to demand further talks without first following through on that, but is to be expected since the United States gives no thought to opposing positions and attempts to achieve only its own interests. It will also lead to a considerable amount of ill-feeling among the Korean people, if you think of how Korea will be unable to reject the request because of the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement.

The U.S. demand, based on the World Organization for Animal Health's (OIE) assessment that the country has its mad cow threat under control, is that Korea import its beef regardless of the age of its beef cows and whether or not the beef contains bone fragments and specified risk materials that could cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. It is a demonstration of America's arrogant approach to beef negotiations when, in response to the discovery of a vertebral column, it says there is no safety problem, except for the fact the cow was younger than 30 months old.

Whatever happens with the negotiations, the current quarantine guidelines should be strictly maintained. In other words, when it comes to this vertebral column episode, the first thing that needs to happen is for the United States to take some persuasive action. If the U.S. government thinks that Korea has a lot of beef with guidelines that are going to be changed anyway, or that it might as well take this opportunity to get all the problematic beef parts included in the list of imports, then it needs to reexamine the very approach it takes on the issue at hand.

The Korean government, for its part, needs to take this opportunity to adopt a firm stance on specified risk materials. OIE standards are just recommendations, and Korea is not obligated to adopt them all. We Koreans cook and eat bones, too, so it is only a matter of course that we need far more stringent guidelines, and our government has the authority to decide what the quarantine guidelines are going to be. The U.S. attitude, in which it pushes demands that it justifies with OIE standards, is an inappropriate one even when it comes to international practices.

Considering the problems that have become apparent in the U.S. quarantine system and how hard it is to weed out specified risk materials once you permit bone fragments, the conclusion is relatively clear. At the very least, the standard for “boneless lean meat under 30 months of age” must be maintained. Naturally Korea should not allow the importation of risk materials without regard to age. The country cannot guarantee the safety of imported beef by touring a few related sites in the United States and going over a few documents given to us by American exporters.

 

 

Item 24: China Jails Environment Activist, Cuts Dissident's Term

(Benjamin Kang Lim, Reuters, 13 August, 2007) BEIJING - A Chinese environmental activist, once hailed a hero for protecting China's third-largest lake, has been sentenced to three years in prison for fraud and extortion, but his wife said she was convinced the charges were trumped up.

Separately, a Chinese court reduced the jail sentence on a dissident by 17 months and he could be paroled before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a rights group said.

A Beijing worker was released after serving 18 years for his role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, another group said.

China's human rights record has come under fire from international press and rights watchdogs this month in the run-up to the one-year countdown for the Olympics.

Environment activist Wu Lihong, 39, a candidate in a 2005 national campaign to name 10 people who "moved China" with their service to society, pleaded not guilty to fraud and extortion and will appeal against the verdict meted out by the Yixing People's Court on Friday.

"The court did not summon any witnesses and ignored the defence's argument," his wife Xu Jiehua told Reuters on Saturday.

Wu was accused of extorting 15,000 yuan ($1,900) from a businesswoman, but he argued the money was a commission for selling anti-pollution facilities to factories, his wife said.

Wu was arrested in April after reporting worsening pollution at Taihu lake, which has an area of 2,420 square km (934 square miles) and a shoreline of 400 km (250 miles). It straddles the border of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and is home to more than 60 kinds of fish.

In late May and early June, the lake was covered in a thick foul-smelling canopy of green algae that left tap water undrinkable for more than 2.3 million residents of Wuxi city in Jiangsu province and prompted a run on bottled water for days.

Tap water in Wuxi has been back to normal after the government took out 6,000 tonnes of algae, closed some chemical factories and diverted water from the Yangtze river, but experts said it did not solve key problems.

The court put off Wu's trial in June to investigate accusations interrogators tortured him to extract a confession.

"Wu Lihong told the court he was physically tormented for five days and five nights... He showed scars from cigarette burns on his hands," his wife said.

But the court ruled there was no evidence of torture.

Wu's wife has sued the cabinet's State Environmental Protection Administration for naming Yixing a model city, but the court refused to take up the case.

PAROLE

The San Francisco-based watchdog Dui Hua Foundation said in an e-mailed statement Hu Shigen, sentenced in 1995 to 20 years in prison for subversion, was given a 17-month sentence reduction this year and may be released before the 2008 Olympics.

Hu was convicted of setting up an opposition party in defiance of a ban, establishing an independent labour union and commemorating the Tiananmen massacre. His sentence was reduced by seven months in 2005.

The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said in a faxed statement Xi Haoliang, a Beijing worker convicted of arson, was released from prison on Aug. 7 after his sentence was commuted.

Xi was originally meted a death sentence suspended for two years for trying to stop troops tanks from entering the capital at the height of the 1989 Tiananmen protests.

 

 

Item 25: Up to 300,000 May Be Homeless in North Korea

(Jon Herskovitz, Reuters, 16 August, 2007) SEOUL - North Korean authorities have indicated flooding may have left up to 300,000 people homeless, a UN aid agency spokesman said on Wednesday, while the communist state warned of a poor harvest this year due to the heavy rain.

North Korea, which has suffered chronic food shortages for years, said hundreds were dead or missing after flooding over the past several days that washed away thousands of structures and ruined cropland in the country's agricultural bread basket.

The North's official KCNA news agency quoted an agricultural ministry official as saying on Wednesday the damage to farm crops was heavier than in previous floods, with more than 11 percent of paddy and maize fields submerged, buried or swept away.

"Unprecedented torrential rains have poured down in the DPRK for days in succession from Aug. 7, throwing a shadow over (the) prospect of the agricultural production," the agency said. DPRK is North Korea's official name.

"It is hard to expect a high grain output owing to the uninterrupted rainstorms at the most important time for the growth of crops in the country."

Paul Risley, Asia spokesman for the UN World Food Programme, said a UN assessment team has visited one flood-hit area near Pyongyang, and added that North Korea was seeking international help.

"There was great concern that because these floods occurred during the period of pollination, that it is likely that these floods will have a very significant impact on the quantity of harvest," Risley said by telephone from Bangkok.

North Korean officials who met the assessment team said they believed that 200,000 to 300,000 people have been dislocated by the floods and are in dire need of shelter and food, Risley said.

More UN assessment teams will visit other flood-ravaged areas in the coming days, he said.

"The primary need will be for emergency food rations, shelter material and medicine," Risley said.

KCNA said North Hwanghae Province, south of its capital, was hit the hardest, with pumping stations, agricultural structures and waterways destroyed. It added its government was taking measures against the flood damage.

US CONSIDERING AID

In New York on Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a South Korean, promised at a meeting with North Korean Ambassador Pak Gil Yon that the world body would do all it could to help.

The South Korean government has said it was ready to aid its neighbour, but has yet to receive a request. The United States was also considering aid.

South Korea's Unification Ministry said it expected damage to be worse than last year, when three big storms hit North Korea. A pro-Pyongyang newspaper reported that more than 800 people were killed or went missing in the resulting floods.

The ministry said it does not believe the flooding will delay a planned summit of the leaders of the two Koreas set for Aug. 28-30 in Pyongyang.

In a late Tuesday dispatch, the North's official KCNA news agency said the floods "are causing an enormous damage to the various sectors of the national economy".

It said landslides have wrecked railway lines and roads while electric lines have snapped in a country which does not generate enough power to keep street lights on at night in most places.

Official news broadcasts in the secretive state showed images of collapsed bridges and civilians digging with shovels and their hands for material to build embankments. The broadcasts were monitored in Seoul.

North Korea's infrastructure outside of showcase projects in Pyongyang is mostly in shambles. North Korea has few funds for building and still uses power and rail lines built during Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule.

Even with a good harvest, North Korea still falls about 1 million tonnes short of the food it needs to feed its 23 million people, experts have said.

The flooding has hit most of the southern half of North Korea and includes the capital and some of its most productive agricultural regions. More rain is forecast for those areas over the next few days.

(Additional reporting by Kim Yeon-hee in Seoul and Patrick Worsnip at the United Nations) END ARTICLE

 

 

Item 26: Chernobyl 'Not a Wildlife Haven'

(Mark Kinver, BBC, 14 August, 2007) The idea that the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has created a wildlife haven is not scientifically justified, a study says. \

Recent studies said rare species had thrived despite raised radiation levels as a result of no human activity.

But scientists who assessed the 1986 disaster's impact on birds said the ecological effects were "considerably greater than previously assumed".

The findings appear in the Royal Society's journal, Biology Letters.

In April 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded.

After the accident, traces of radioactive deposits were found in nearly every country in the northern hemisphere.

The paper's authors, Anders Moller of University Pierre and Marie Curie, France, and Tim Mousseau from the University of South Carolina, US, said their research did not support the idea that low-level radiation was not affecting animals.

"Recent conclusions from the UN Chernobyl Forum and reports in the popular media concerning the effects of radiation from Chernobyl has left the impression that the exclusion zone is a thriving ecosystem, filled with an increasing number of rare species," they wrote.

Instead, they added: "Species richness, abundance and population density of breeding birds decreased with increasing levels of radiation."

The study, which recorded 1,570 birds from 57 species, found that the number of birds in the most contaminated areas declined by 66% compared with sites that had normal background radiation levels.

It also reported a decline of more than 50% in the range of species as radiation levels increase.

The findings build on a previous study of barn swallows in the affected area, which showed that the number of the birds declined sharply in contaminated areas.

The birds' decline was probably the result of depressed levels of antioxidants after its long migration back to the area, making it more vulnerable to the low-level radiation, the researchers concluded.

"It suggests to us that barn swallows are not alone; there are many other species that appear to be affected in a similar way," Professor Mousseau told BBC News.

"This paper also suggests that birds feeding on insects that are living in the upper surface of the soil, where contaminates are highest, seem to be most likely to be missing or depressed."

He added that they were currently carrying out research to find out whether the decline was a result of the birds eating contaminated insects, or whether it was a result of fewer insects living in affected areas.

"We are also looking for funding to expand the range of ecological studies to include invertebrates, as well as plants and animals."

Radioactive retreat

A recent paper published in the American Scientist magazine suggested that plants and animals were better off in the exclusion zone than specimens outside the 30km radius surrounding the site of the destroyed nuclear reactor.

One of the paper's co-authors, Robert Baker from the Texas Tech University, said that the benefits for wildlife from the lack of human activity outweighed the risks of low-level radiation.

Writing on his university web page, Professor Baker said: "The elimination of human activities such as farming, ranching, hunting and logging are the greatest benefits.

"It can be said that the world's worst nuclear power plant disaster is not as destructive to wildlife populations as are normal human activities."

Professor Mousseau acknowledged Professor Baker's description: "It is true that the Chernobyl region gives the appearance of a thriving ecosystem because of its protection from other human activities.

"However, when you do controlled ecological studies, what we see is a very clear signature of negative effects of contamination on diversity and abundance of organisms.

"We clearly need to be applying scientific method to ecological studies before we can conclude, based on anecdotal observations, that there are no consequences."

 

 

Item 27: World's Birds on Death Row: Race against time to save 189 species from extinction

(David Randall, The Independent, 12 August, 2007) The world's most ambitious bird conservation project will be launched this week amid evidence that hunting and loss of habitat has caused species to disappear at an unprecedented rate.

The biggest and most wide-ranging bird conservation programme the world has ever seen will be launched next week with the aim of saving every one of the planet's critically endangered species from extinction.

The task is urgent. There are now no fewer than 189 birds in this most precipitous category – 51 more than there were just seven years ago. Scientists say that if no action is taken then all of them could be gone within the next 10 years; 15 are already classified as "possibly extinct ".

The death of bird species is now happening faster than at any time in history. Without human interference, the natural rate of loss would be one bird each century. But extinctions are accelerating and running at 50 times that rate. In the past 30 years alone, 21 have gone – three of them since 2000.

BirdLife International, which acts as a scientific and conservation " United Nations" for bird organisations worldwide, now aims to stop the rot. So next week at Birdfair, the three-day festival for British enthusiasts co-organised by the RSPB and the Wildlife Trusts, Birdlife will launch a project to pull each and every one of the 189 species back from the brink.

This danger list includes six owls, three albatrosses, 16 birds of prey, 10 hummingbirds, 17 parrots, four woodpeckers, six ducks and umpteen pigeons, plovers, wrens, warblers, finches, curlews and larks.

Their names are some of the most evocative in the bird world: the gorgeted wood-quail, sapphire-bellied hummingbird, Alagoas foliage-gleaner, Pernambuco pygmy-owl and Iquitos gnatcatcher (some of which have never been photographed), Bulo Burti boubou (a shrike, discovered in Somalia in 1988), the kakapo (the world's only flightless, nocturnal parrot), and the turquoise-throated puffleg, a hummingbird so rare no one has seen it since 1850. There are, happily, no British birds on the list.

BirdLife's project, called "Preventing Extinctions: Saving the World's Most Threatened Birds", will launch what are in effect 189 different races against time.

For each bird there will be a "species guardian", a local body that will work with BirdLife to carry out the conservation. And, for each of the 189 at risk, BirdLife is also seeking a "species champion" – a company, organisation or institution that will "adopt" a threatened bird and provide regular funding.

Donations from individuals are also, of course, very welcome. Some £20,000 is needed to kick-start a protection project for each species of bird, and, to save all 189, BirdLife calculates it will need to raise at least £19m over the next five years.

Dr Mike Rands, chief executive of BirdLife International, told The Independent on Sunday: "Through this innovative approach every single critically endangered bird can be saved from extinction. We know the priority conservation actions needed for each species – what we need now is the support of companies, organisations or even individuals. This is an enormous challenge, but one that we are fully committed to achieving."

TV's Springwatch presenter and wildlife film-maker Simon King said: " This is a exciting and ambitious project and deserves to be supported by every nature lover in the country."

Birdfair, which he, Bill Oddie and tens of thousands of other enthusiasts will attend at Rutland Water next weekend, has singled out four of the most pressing cases as the focus of its fund-raising. The birds' plight illustrates the desperately urgent work that needs to be done. There is the Bengal florican, the world's rarest bustard, now down to fewer than 1,000 in south-east Asia through loss of its wet grassland habitat; the Restinga antwren – a mere 10 square kilometres of its Brazilian beach-scrub habitat remains, and even that's under threat; Belding's yellowthroat, a warbler of Mexican wetlands, now confined through development to just a few marshes; and the Djibouti francolin, which is blighted by habitat loss, climate change and hunting.

Other emergency projects will try to save the long-billed apalis (a warbler of central east Africa suffering through destruction of woodland); the dwarf olive ibis (a forest dweller endemic to the west African island of Sγo Tomι, suffering from tree-clearance); the Puerto Rican nightjar (confined to the south-west of the island, under pressure from development and feral cats); the Mindoro bleeding heart (a ground-living pigeon endemic to one Philippine island, it was once common but now nearly all of its wooded habitat is gone); and the white-shouldered ibis (a wetland species of south-east Asia, whose habitat has been wrecked through logging and intensive agriculture).

Some of the birds on the list, such as the black stilt, are now down to just a handful of individuals, while others, including the red-headed vulture, still number in the thousands but have lost nearly 90 per cent of their population in the past 10 years.

There is concern, too, about some long-lived species, such as the three albatrosses on the list and the Philippine eagle, whose young are not surviving to replace the adults who will die out in the next decade or so.

The task is to stop these birds following into oblivion the 72 species that were lost in the 20th century, the most costly era for extinctions in recorded history. Those that will fly no more include the slender-billed grackle, a songbird endemic to Mexico not seen since 1910; the thick-billed ground-dove (1927); robust white-eye (small Australian songbird, 1928); the Hawaiian oo (one of four honey-eaters that became extinct after Europeans arrived, 1934); the red-moustached fruit-dove (1950); laughing owl (1970); the Alaotra grebe (killed off in Madagascan waters by fishing and an introduced carnivorous fish, 1988); and the po'o-uli (a honeycreeper, presumed extinct in Hawaii through habitat destruction and disease-carrying mosquitoes, 2004).

What gives BirdLife hope is some recent successes. In the 10 years between 1994 and 2004, 16 species were saved from extinction, all as a result of targeted conservation. They include the Norfolk Island green parrot, which in the Nineties was down to just four females of breeding age, but which now can boast 200-300 and is rapidly increasing; the Bali starling, which poaching eradicated in the wild but which thanks to captive breeding is now thriving once more; and the Chatham Island taiko, a seabird from the petrel family – it was reduced to just four pairs in 1994 but control of predators has seen it start to recover, with 11 chicks hatching in 2006.

And, in a demonstration of how apparently insuperable obstacles can be overcome, only last week Timor-Leste, formerly the deeply troubled land of East Timor, announced its first national park just five years after gaining independence.

The Nino Konis Santana National Park covers 304,000 acres and includes the territory of the yellow-crested cockatoo, one of the species on BirdLife's list. It continues to be severely threatened by illegal trapping for the exotic bird trade, but the safeguarding of its home is a good omen for the work ahead with the other 188 critically endangered birds.

Additional reporting by Rachel Wolff

SOS: species on the BirdLife International list

White-winged guan Ώ Trinidad piping-guan Ώ blue-billed curassow Ώ gorgeted wood-quail Ώ Djibouti francolin Ώ Himalayan quail Ώ crested shelduck Ώ Laysan duck Ώ Campbell Islands teal Ώ pink-headed duck Ώ Madagascar pochard Ώ Brazilian merganser Ώ Amsterdam albatross Ώ waved albatross Ώ Chatham albatross Ώ Galapagos petrel Ώ Jamaica petrel Ώ magenta petrel Ώ Chatham petrel Ώ Fiji petrel Ώ Beck's petrel Ώ Mascarene petrel Ώ Balearic shearwater Ώ Townsend's shearwater Ώ New Zealand storm-petrel Ώ Guadalupe storm-petrel Ώ Alaotra grebe Ώ Junin grebe Ώ white-bellied heron Ώ white-shouldered ibis Ώ giant ibis Ώ northern bald ibis Ώ dwarf olive ibis Ώ Christmas frigatebird Ώ Chatham Islands shag Ώ California condor Ώ white-collared kite Ώ Cuban kite Ώ Madagascar fish-eagle Ώ white-rumped vulture Ώ Indian vulture Ώ slender-billed vulture Ώ red-headed vulture Ώ Ridgway's hawk Ώ Philippine eagle Ώ Bengal florican Ώ New Caledonian rail Ώ Samoan moorhen Ώ Makira moorhen Ώ Siberian crane Ώ black stilt Ώ Javan lapwing Ώ sociable lapwing Ώ St Helena plover Ώ Eskimo curlew Ώ slender-billed curlew Ώ Jerdon's courser Ώ Chinese crested tern Ώ Kittlitz's murrelet Ώ silvery wood-pigeon Ώ blue-eyed ground-dove Ώ purple-winged ground-dove Ώ Grenada dove Ώ Mindoro bleeding-heart Ώ Negros bleeding-heart Ώ Sulu bleeding-heart Ώ Polynesian ground-dove Ώ Negros fruit-dove Ώ Marquesan imperial-pigeon Ώ kakapo Ώ yellow-crested cockatoo Ώ Philippine cockatoo Ώ blue-fronted lorikeet Ώ New Caledonian lorikeet Ώ red-throated lorikeet Ώ Malherbe's parakeet Ώ orange-bellied parrot Ώ night parrot Ώ Lear's macaw Ώ glaucous macaw Ώ spix's macaw Ώ blue-throated macaw Ώ yellow-eared parrot Ώ grey-breasted parakeet Ώ indigo-winged parrot Ώ Puerto Rican amazon Ώ Sumatran ground-cuckoo Ώ black-hooded coucal Ώ Siau scops-owl Ώ Anjouan scops-owl Ώ Moheli scops-owl Ώ Grand Comoro scops-owl Ώ Pernambuco pygmy-owl Ώ forest owlet Ώ Jamaican pauraque Ώ Puerto Rican nightjar Ώ New Caledonian owlet-nightjar Ώ short-crested coquette Ώ sapphire-bellied hummingbird Ώ Honduran emerald Ώ chestnut-bellied hummingbird Ώ purple-backed sunbeam Ώ dusky starfrontlet Ώ Juan Fernandez firecrown Ώ black breasted puffleg Ώ turquoise-throated puffleg Ώ colourful puffleg Ώ Tuamotu kingfisher Ώ Sulu hornbill Ώ rufous-headed hornbill Ώ Okinawa woodpecker Ώ imperial woodpecker Ώ ivory-billed woodpecker Ώ Kaempfer's woodpecker Ώ Gurney's pitta Ώ Araripe manakin Ώ Kinglet calyptura Ώ Minas Gerais tyrannulet Ώ Kaempfer's tody-tyrant Ώ Rondonia bushbird Ώ Rio de Janeiro antwren Ώ Alagoas antwren Ώ Restinga antwren Ώ Stresemann's bristlefront Ώ Bahia tapaculo Ώ Royal cinclodes Ώ Masafuera rayadito Ώ Alagoas foliage-gleaner Ώ Uluguru bush-shrike Ώ Bulo Burti boubou Ώ Sao Tome fiscal Ώ Isabela oriole Ώ Sangihe shrike-thrush Ώ caerulean paradise-flycatcher Ώ Seychelles paradise-flycatcher Ώ Tahiti monarch Ώ Fatuhiva monarch Ώ black-chinned monarch Ώ Banggai crow Ώ white-eyed river-martin Ώ Archer's lark Ώ Raso lark Ώ Taita apalis Ώ long-billed apalis Ώ Liberian greenbul Ώ millerbird Ώ blue-crowned laughingthrush Ώ Mauritius olive white-eye Ώ Rota bridled white-eye Ώ Sangihe white-eye Ώ white-chested white-eye Ώ Faichuk white-eye Ώ golden white-eye Ώ Niceforo's wren Ώ Munchique wood-wren Ώ Iquitos gnatcatcher Ώ Socorro mockingbird Ώ Cozumel rhrasher Ώ Pohnpei starling Ώ Bali starling Ώ olomao Ώ puaiohi Ώ Somali thrush Ώ Taita thrush Ώ Rueck's blue-flycatcher Ώ Cebu flowerpecker Ώ Mauritius fody Ώ Sao Tome grosbeak Ώ Azores bullfinch Ώ Nihoa finch Ώ ou Ώ Maui parrotbill Ώ nukupuu Ώ akikiki Ώ Oahu alauahio Ώ akohekohe Ώ po'o-uli Ώ Bachman's warbler Ώ Belding's yellowthroat Ώ Semper's warbler Ώ Montserrat oriole Ώ Guadalupe junco Ώ hooded seedeater Ώ Entre Rios seedeater Ώ Carrizal blue-black seedeater Ώ mangrove finch Ώ pale-headed brush-finch Ώ cone-billed tanager Ώ cherry-throated tanager How 'IoS' readers can help

We are asking every reader to support BirdLife's Preventing Extinctions project in its efforts to protect endangered species. For full details, and to make a donation, visit: www.birdlife.org

 

 

Item 28: Korea: Birthrate Is Up 5.1 Percent: The year of the golden pig presides over a little baby boom

(Hankyoreh, 17 August, 2007) The number of newborn babies has increased during the first half of this year. The figure, which has been on a downward trend since 2000, is expected to rise for the next two years.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare estimated on August 14 that there were 238,817 babies born and registered by the government in the first half of this year, representing an increase of 5.1 percent, or 11,522, from last year's 227,295.

If the upward trend continues, the ministry expects the number of newborn babies to reach approximately 468,000 this year, about 23,000 more than last year.

The figure increased for a short period in 2000 due to the so-called “millennium baby boom” and has subsequently drawn a downward curve owning to the declining birthrate. The number of newborns was 644,863 in 2000. The lowest figure recorded was 435,155 in 2005.

Many experts connect the recent increase of the birthrate to the temporary increase in the marriage rate. Many people who postponed their marriages due to job shortages and financial difficulties following the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s have recently married. This year's designation as “the year of the golden pig,” mythically known as a year bringing great fortune to newly born children, may also have contributed to the rise. The marriage rate had been on the decline since 1997 but has reversed such a tendency from 2004. The number of marriages last year, in particular, was 332,800, an increase of 16,400, or 5.2 percent, from last year.

Yoo Gye-sook, a professor at Kyung Hee University and a researcher at the Presidential Committee on the Aging Society and Population Policy, said, “The upward trend in the number of newborn children, due to the increase in the marriage rate, may be temporary. The low birthrate can be eased only when couples bearing an only child bring forth two. However, the government policy on the low birthrate is still in an early stage of development, so we should watch the situation for the next five years.” As most married people are double-income couples, owing to the current social and economic structure, the low fertility rate could be eased by changes in the male-oriented occupational culture.

The government plans to take measures to maintain the current upward trend. Kim Seo-jung, an official of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, said, “It is meaningful that the number of newborn babies have risen for two consecutive years. The social atmosphere has changed a little through policies countering the low birthrate and the government will make an effort to change the low birthrate through various additional policies.”

 

 

Item 29: Seoul: Foreign Cicadas Irritate Residents

(Kim Rahn, The Korea Times, 17 August, 2007) A new kind of bug continues to irritate people living in the northern Seoul and Gyeonggi Province.

Hills, roads and cars there are covered with insects, and residents have posted pictures of the bugs on the Internet, inquiring as to its name and widespread existence.

The insect is Lycorma Delictula White, a type of cicada. It is suspected of having come from China.

Scarlet in color, the cicada is about 5 centimeters long. They used to inhabit southern China before migrating to Beijing. The Korea Forest Research Institute recognized their existence in Korea for the first time last year, according to Shin Sang-chul, staff member of the institute's Forest Insect, Pests and Disease Division, said.

The insects have been greatly multiplying throughout the summer here.

They have been turning up mainly in Eunpyeong-gu of northern Seoul, Gimpo and Seongnam of Gyeonggi Province and Cheongju of North Chungcheong Province.

The forest agency issued a warning against the insect on July 25.

The cicada feeds on tree sap. ``As trees are the host, they do not attack animals, including humans. However, people fear them because there are so many of them in residential areas and they are kind of creepy,'' Shin said.

There are no natural enemies of the cicadas because they are a new species, so they are breeding freely, according to Shin.

``Natural enemies may exist here. However, it will take time for them to emerge,'' he said.

The institute has recommended some pesticides, however, it is testing to find one that will directly exterminate this specific kind of cicada.

 

 

Item 30: Sakhalin Environmental Watch Ensures Pristine Environment is Protected! Vostochny Wildlife Refuge is back!

(Pacific Environment, August 15th, 2007) Adoption of this decree opens a new stage in the fight for protecting the most beautiful and unique undisturbed corners of Sakhalin's natural environment. The watersheds of the large spawning rivers Pursh-Pursh and Bengeri, located in the western part of Smirnykhovsky region are now protected by the creation of the Vostochny Wildlife Refuge. Originating from the highest mountain tops of the island, these rivers carry crystal-clear water to sea of Okhotsk through pristine forests of virgin dark coniferous taiga, which remain free of mines, roads, logging, and fires.

Sakhalin scientists, who established necessity for the refuge, have discovered incredible biodiversity in the region – as well as some rare and disappearing species. They proved that spawning stocks of salmon have a very significant value since they serve as a standard of natural wild salmon unaffected by any anthropogenic influence, including commercial fishing.

According to the provisions approved by the Governor, Vostochny Wildlife Refuge is 66,115 hectares of the Pervamaisky Forestry Agency and includes the watersheds of Pursh-Pursh and Vengeri rivers – stretching from the Nabilsky mountain ridge to the coast of the Okhotsk Sea. The reserve also includes all small islands, surface rocks and ice ramparts in an adjoining 2 kilometer sea strip, which is also home to the northern sea lion.

The reserve will be under state control, administered by the regional Department of Forests and Specially-Protected Natural Reserves through their branch in Smirnykhovsky region. Vostochny's funding will come from the regional budget as well as other legal sources.

The special protected status of the preserve is directed toward maximum preservation of the unique natural habitats and landscapes in their pristine condition. Nearly all economic activity, except for limited controlled tourism and scientific research, is forbidden within its territory. A provision on the prohibition of commercial fishing, which bars even the setting of trap nets at any point along the coast of the preserve, is spelled out in great detail.

Those who wish to visit the refuge for tourist or educational purposes can do so with special permission issued by the Department of Forests and Protected Territories. Automobile transportation will not be allowed. According to the plan, two huntsmen from Smirnykhovsky forestry, who have the right to carry service weapons, detain infringers, and withdraw fishing instruments and vehicles, will be directly responsible for observing the refuge territories. According to the provisions of the refuge, environmental organizations that sign special agreements with the Department of Forests can participate in refuge protection efforts. The only organization that currently has this agreement is Sakhalin Environmental Watch.

The official Decree on the creation of the Vostochny Wildlife refuge and its provisions will be published in the official press of the regional administration.

History of the Vostochny Wildlife Refuge.

Scientific expedition and rational for creating the refuge were first presented in 1996 by a group of biologists from the Institute of Maritime Geology and Geophysics under the leadership of R. Sabirov.

In 1998, a two year public campaign finally stopped massive logging approaching to the unique forest from both north and south.

A year later, Governor Farkhutdinov signed a decree to create the Vostochny Wildlife Refuge in the watersheds of rivers Pursh-Pursh and Vengeri with the unprecedented ban for any type of business activity including logging and commercial fishing. Simultaneously, a long-settled commercial fishing company “Laguna” was evicted from the estuary of Vengeri river. During several subsequent years Sakhalin Environmental Watch, in partnership with fishery regulatory agencies, managed to put an end to illegal poaching.

In 2003 “Laguna”renewed its struggle for the right to commercial fishing of salmon on the refuge's rivers. In 2004 the company appealed through court and canceled the official status of the refuge due to formal procedural infringements during its creation in 1999. Nevertheless, with help from the efforts of B. Gorkunov , the first vice-governor at the time, the decision was made in favor of restoring the Vostochny Wildlife Refuge.

It took three years to pass these numerous procedures, including the elaboration of the development plans of the protected territories, reservation of the land lot for the future reserve, preparation of new scientific validation, conducting public hearings and the state's environmental impact assessment.

The only time that “Laguna,” with the support of various regional officials, could organize fishing in the reserve during the salmon's spawning season was in 2005. However, in 2007, thanks to the public protests and with support from the Sakhalin Fishing Council and Governor Malakhov, “Laguna” could not obtain quotes for salmon fishing on the reserve's territory and thus has committed to permanently leaving the reserve's territory.

Additional information, including copy of the decree by the regional administration on creation on the Vostochny Wildlife Refuge and its provisions, can be obtained at Sakhalin Environmental Watch at tel./fax (4242) 74-75-18, 27-00-76 attn: Dmitry Lisitsyn. www.sakhalin.environment.ru END ARTICLE

 

 

Item 31: N. Korea: Floods Destroyed Tenth of Farmland

(AP, 15 August, 2007) SEOUL (AP) — North Korea detailed a picture of massive devastation Wednesday from some of the country's heaviest rains that official media said wiped out more than a 10th of the impoverished country's farmland during peak planting season.

If confirmed, the destruction so far to the country's agriculture would amount to about a quarter of the damage the North claimed it suffered in 1995. That disaster exacerbated a famine spawned by mismanagement of the economy and the loss of Pyongyang's Soviet benefactor after the fall of communism that eventually left as many as 2 million dead.

In this month's floods, as many as 300,000 people have been left homeless since the storms began, the North told the U.N.'s food agency. North Korea has said "hundreds" were killed or missing, but an aid agency working in the country has said it was told the casualties numbered at least 200.

The vivid portrait of damage painted in a series of reports from the North's state-run media appeared to be a cry for help from a desperate regime that maintains strict secrecy of its internal affairs and where few outsiders are allowed.

However, the North has also previously exaggerated the extent of disasters to obtain aid and cover up its own ineptitude in providing for its people due to its decrepit centrally controlled economy.

The official Korean Central News Agency reported Wednesday that downpours along some areas of the Taedong River were the "largest ever in the history" of measurements taken by the country's weather agency.

"It is hard to expect a high-grain output owing to the uninterrupted rainstorms at the most important time for the growth of crops," KCNA said.

The rains have submerged, buried or washed away more than 11% of rice and corn fields in the country, KCNA reported citing Agriculture Ministry official Ri Jae Hyon, who said the crop damage from floods was "heavier than the previous" disasters in the North.

The rain was worse than downpours that battered the country 40 years ago, KCNA said, noting the total rain from Aug. 7 through Saturday averaged 20.6 inches, 2.1 inches more than in the previous disaster in that same month in 1967.

Citizens worked to rebuild roads, clear debris and shore up sandbags along rivers Wednesday in flood-affected areas outside Pyongyang, APTN television reported from North Korea. Video footage showed a farmhouse that appeared to have been swept down a hillside by the rain.

A local official appealed for help and said the storms had caused "great damage."

"What is badly needed first is rice, cement, daily necessities and medicine," Tong Chang Son, vice chairman of a government committee in South Phyongan province, told APTN. "I would be grateful if there is international aid, for there is great damage on a nationwide scale."

The North is especially vulnerable to the annual heavy summer rains that soak the Korean peninsula because of a vicious cycle where people strip hillsides of natural vegetation to create more arable land to grow food — increasing the risk of floods.

The U.N. World Food Program estimated that the amount of damage the North Koreans claimed to its fields would result in losses of about 450,000 tons of crops — nearly half of the 1 million ton annual shortage the country already faces.

The amount is less than the total 2 million tons the North said were lost in 1995 floods at the start of its famine, said WFP spokesman Paul Risley.

"Nonetheless, this would be an extremely serious reduction in the amount of the harvest," he said.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said Washington was considering how it could help the North Koreans.

"It's a serious humanitarian issue, and we would like to be part of the effort to assist, so we need to evaluate the situation and see what we can do to help," he told reporters in China before the start of talks on the North's nuclear program.

An expert on famine in North Korea urged caution over the official damage estimates due to past overstatements from Pyongyang.

"There is a history of the North Koreans exaggerating the extent of natural disasters in order to obtain aid," said Marcus Noland, senior fellow at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics.

"Releasing such a precise figure so early on simply serves to raise flags and raises concerns about what's really going on," he said, stressing nonetheless that the disaster was still a tragic situation for North Koreans.

In 1995, the North said floods had displaced of 5.4 million people, but international aid agencies instead found 500,000 homeless — a large crisis, but still only a tenth of what Pyongyang had claimed, Noland said.

Noland also noted that the disaster reports come ahead of this month's summit between leaders of the two Koreas.

The liberal Seoul government has been criticized by conservatives at home and abroad for its engagement policies that have given unconditional aid to Pyongyang even as it was locked in an international standoff over its nuclear weapons ambitions.

Aid was already expected to be a key topic of discussion, and Noland said the latest disaster gives Seoul justification to provide greatly expanded assistance to its neighbor.

 

 

Item 32: Bank pulls Sakhalin-2 Funding

(Earth Times.org, August 15th, 2007) WASHINGTON - The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development has decided to pull its funding for the $20-plus billion Sakhalin-2 liquefied natural gas project, located in Russia's Far East, following Gazprom's entrance into the Sakhalin Energy Investment consortium.

Since January, EBRD and the Sakhalin Energy shareholders -- Gazprom, Royal Dutch Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi -- have held talks over the project's finance. EBRD cut off discussions in favor of financing other projects, such as those that promote sustainable energy, the bank said.

Sakhalin Energy is developing oil and gas resources in two fields off the eastern Russia island and hopes to commence LNG exports in 2008.

Late last year Shell and its partners sold a controlling stake in the project to Russian gas giant Gazprom. The project facilities include three offshore production platforms, two island-long pipelines, an oil tanker terminal and a liquefied natural gas plant.

This changed the structure of the operating company and its agreements with financial institutions.

"It has become clear that in the light of the timetable envisaged by the shareholders, the financing from ERBD is not feasible," the ERBD said. "Gazprom and the other shareholders have reached an advanced stage in the negotiations for the financing of Sakhalin II and now expect to reach financial closure in the next few months."

Some of the other potential lenders, including Britain's Export Credit Guarantee Department and the U.S. Export-Import Bank, are still awaiting a report from environmental consultants.

 

 

Item 33: USA: Congress Likely to Support Korea-US FTA (so what else is new?)

(Yonhap, 26 August, 2007) WASHINGTON, The U.S. Congress is likely to support the free trade agreement (FTA), not because of expectations of economic benefits but rather because of its political importance, an American analyst said.

Jeffrey Schott, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Studies, said other FTAs debated by the Congress, including the North American FTA (NAFTA), have been sold on foreign policy grounds.

"Increased trade and investment generated by a bilateral pact, even with a major trading partner, is not that important for the US$13 trillion U.S. economy," he said in his August policy brief for the institute.

The NAFTA was headed for defeat in the Congress until then Gen.

Colin Powell convincingly argued that the deal would promote stability throughout Central America and thus greater border security with Mexico, Schott said.

"I expect a similar dynamic to drive the ratification debate on the KORUS (Korea-U.S.) FTA," he said.

"Ultimately, however, the Congress will likely support the KORUS FTA because of its strategic importance -- in particular the durability of the U.S.-Korea alliance over the past half century and our mutual interest in reinforcing it, our common objectives in promoting peace and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula, and the breadth of the U.S. commitment in the East Asian region."

The trade agreement, signed in June, removes tariff and non-tariff barriers for goods and services flowing between the two countries and is expected to boost bilateral trade by up to $29 billion. For the U.S. side, it is the largest such pact since NAFTA and the first with an Asian nation.

South Korean farmers strongly oppose the deal they say will bring in a flood of cheap agricultural products and threaten their livelihoods. In the U.S., some legislators, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other senior Democrats, criticize it for not guaranteeing South Korea's fair and full auto market opening.

Schott argued, however, that solving the U.S. auto industry's financial problems should be through domestic reforms, not from increased access to the Korean market.

Democratic critique of the auto provisions is not convincing, he said, but the George W. Bush administration does need to take action for competitiveness of the American auto industry.

"For example, federal programs could assist the companies in complying with new fuel economy standards and financing their 'legacy' pension and healthcare costs," Schott wrote.

 

 

Item 34: The Color of Lee Myung-bak's Economic Policies

(Column by Yoo Jong-il, Professor KDI School of Public Policy and Management in the Hankyoreh, 24 August, 2007) Former mayor of Seoul Lee Myung-bak has been chosen as the Grand National Party's presidential candidate. How will Lee lead the country if he wins? A former businessman, he has tried to plant in voters' minds the image of himself as the “business-minded president.” Experts in election politics say this was an important factor in his winning the GNP primary. However, aside from his proposal for a canal connecting the Korean peninsula, little is known about his ideas on economic policy - from what his philosophy of economics is to what his campaign promises are - because policy got left behind in the controversy over his ethical standing. Policy proposals are no less in need of examination than morals and leadership.

Lee says he is going to reform the GNP. He says he is going to change its “color,” and this seems to mean he is going to trade in its hard-line conservative tendencies and turn the GNP into a pragmatist and centrist party. That is truly something to be welcomed. Surely the part about helping North Koreans suffering from recent flooding in his acceptance speech is a reflection of this! I earnestly hope that there is some degree of directional change in his approach to economics as well. So far, however, whenever Lee has talked about economics he has exposed his poverty of imagination and philosophy, and some of it has even been dangerous.

Put simply, Lee's philosophy has been that growth is everything. Economic growth is the goal with the highest priority, and when it comes to key economic concerns such as solving socioeconomic disparity and the problem of irregular workers, he says he is going to solve them with a higher growth rate. You do not see him talking about setting the messed-up structure of the country's economy right or making the market function more rationally.

Though he wants to use growth to solve everything, he has set extremely unreasonable goals for this, namely the “7-4-7” pledge, in which the country would maintain 7 percent growth for the next 10 years and by doing so bring per capital national income to US$40,000, placing Korea among the top 7 economic powerhouses. This is a truly unrealistic, “empty” promise, when economic growth potential for the next decade is expected to be within 5 percent. There are reasons why Korea and Japan both enjoyed double-digit growth and then saw that growth slow down, and why China has double digit growth while growth rates in Europe and the United States are always at 2 or 3 percent. The more advanced a nation you are, the less you are able to get out of labor and the effects of investment on the growth decrease, while opportunities for copying advanced technology to make easy technological progress also gradually disappear. When President Roh Moo-hyun was a candidate he promised 7 percent growth and a lot of people said that was unreasonable, so it is doubly unreasonable to say you are going to have 7 percent growth all the way until 2017.

The ideas that Lee talks about for achieving that unreasonable growth rate are also cause for concern. Forget the controversy about how environmentally destructive his plans about the canal and other land development would be, they are also outdated as far as growth policies go. Civil engineering and construction occupies a bigger place in Korea than it does even in the country that is known for it - Japan. What Korea actually needs is for the government to encourage restructuring in the construction industry and have a lot of what is invested in construction, invested in people instead.

Lee also says he is going to ease corporate regulations and lower taxes to create the world's best business environment and thereby encourage investment, but getting rid of regulations on cross-investment between conglomerate subsidiaries or on the separation between financial and corporate capital would have serious negative side effects. He has talked about lowering taxes, including the corporate tax, but he has not come up with ways to make up the difference. Most people like it when you say you are going to relax regulations and lower taxes, and that is why most politicians make a habit of saying that is what they want to do. Lee, however, is not just any politician. At this moment, it is overwhelmingly likely that he will be the next president. I hope he changes the “color” of his economic proposals to one that is more responsible, more practical and more 21st century in its thinking.

 

 

Item 35: The Cost of Lost Wetlands: USA: A Big Uneasy as Threat of New Disaster Looms Over New Orleans

(Joel K. Bourne, Jr., New York Post, 26 August, 2007) Katrina, the costliest natural disaster in United States history, was also a warning shot. Right after the tragedy, many people expressed a defiant resolve to rebuild the city. But among engineers and experts, that resolve is giving way to a growing awareness that another such disaster is inevitable, and nothing short of a massive and endless national commitment can prevent it.

Located in one of the lowest spots in the United States, the Big Easy is already as much as 17 feet below sea level in places, and it continues to sink, by up to an inch a year.

Upstream dams and levees built to tame Mississippi River floods and ease shipping have starved the delta downstream of sediments and nutrients, causing wetlands that once buffered the city against storm-driven seas to sink beneath the waves.

Louisiana has lost 1,900 square miles of coastal lands since the 1930s; Katrina and Hurricane Rita together took out 217 square miles, putting the city that much closer to the open Gulf. Most ominous of all, global warming is raising the Gulf faster than at any time since the last ice age thawed.

Despite having spent a billion dollars already, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers now estimates it will take until after 2010 to strengthen the levee system enough to withstand a 1-in-100-year storm, roughly the size of Category 3 Katrina.

For now, even a modest, Category 2 storm could reflood the city.

But history, politics and love of home are powerful forces in the old river town. Instead of rebuilding smarter or surrendering, New Orleans is doing what it has always done after such disasters: bumping up the levees just a little higher, rebuilding the same flood-prone houses back in the same low spots, and praying that hurricanes hit elsewhere.

Some former New Orleanians may have had enough. More than a third of the city's pre-Katrina population has yet to return. Those who have face deserted neighborhoods, surging crime, skyrocketing insurance, and a tangle of red tape - simply to rebuild in harm's way.

If Paris, as Hemingway said, is a movable feast, then New Orleans has always been a floating one. Born amid willow and cypress swamps atop squishy delta soils, the city originally perched on the high ground formed by overwash deposits from annual river floods. Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, actually had to wait for the water to recede before he could plant the French flag in 1718.

A flood destroyed the village the year after he founded it, and hurricanes wiped it off the map in 1722 and again a year later. In its 289-year history, major hurricanes or river floods have put the city under 27 times, about once every 11 years. Each time, the fractious French, Spanish, blacks, Creoles and Cajuns raised the levees and rebuilt.

Over the coming decades, the federal government erected a vast network of levees and spillways along the river and around the city, while giant new dams along the Missouri - the Mississippi's longest tributary - ponded water all the way to South Dakota. The system was billed as a triumph of engineering over nature.

Yet Gilbert F. White, considered the "father of floodplain management," came to a far different conclusion, one that Katrina drove home with a vengeance.

White and his colleagues argued that dams, levees and other flood protections may actually increase flood losses because they spur new development in the floodplain, which incurs catastrophic losses when man-made flood protections fail. The phenomenon came to be known as the "levee effect."

Nowhere was White's advice more gleefully flouted than in the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project - the 125-mile-long system of levees and gates built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to protect the city after Hurricane Betsy ravaged it in 1965.

City planners and developers applauded as the corps not only strengthened existing levees around the city but also threw new levees far and wide, enclosing thousands of acres of undeveloped wetlands lining the new I-10 corridor.

What was supposed to be built in 13 years for 85 million dollars became a never-ending $740 million project that was still 10 years from completion when Katrina hit. The Government Accountability Office - the watchdog of Congress - had a field day, regularly criticizing the corps for cost overruns and delays.

Early on, experts warned about serious flaws in the system.

The corps rejected these warnings.

The corps also dismissed another, longer-range threat, summed up in a graph made by John S. Hoffman of the Environmental Protection Agency: rising sea level because of global warming.

The floodwalls along the city's major drainage canals were a classic example of the shortcomings.

The corps didn't want to build most of them. Initially it planned to block storm surge with giant barriers across the eastern inlets of Lake Pontchartrain, beef up the levees along the southern lakeshore, and erect massive floodgates to keep high water out of the canals. Environmental groups, concerned about impacts on the lake and its wetlands, blocked the plan in court.

The corps dropped the barriers and switched to a system that would rely on higher lake levees and floodgates.

State and local officials - who were required to pick up nearly a third of the ballooning tab - balked at the cost of the gates. They also feared that closing the gates could actually cause flooding, as rainwater piled up in the canals.

The groups remained at loggerheads until 1992, when Congress passed a water resources act that forced the corps to do it the city's way.

Foundation problems plagued the levees and floodwalls from Day One.

Katrina, alas, exposed these weak underpinnings.

Taller, stronger floodwalls now glisten in the breaches, their clean, white concrete contrasting starkly with the still ruined neighborhoods behind them, while massive new black floodgates are poised to close the canals at the lakefront.

The rebuilt hurricane protection system gives returning New Orleanians some sense of security.

But the corps has yet to fix what many see as the weakest link in the system, the 76-mile ship channel called the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet - "Mr. Go" to the locals - which the corps dug east of town in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

On a steamy summer afternoon with squalls in the offing, coastal scientists Paul Kemp of Louisiana State University and John Lopez of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation set out by boat to inspect the "funnel," formed east of town by the levees lining the MRGO and another channel that converges with it, the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.

One lesson of Katrina is simple, says Lopez: Close MRGO.

The corps says it now intends to do so.

But when or how the channel might be shut down is anyone's guess. Congress has yet to give a green light. "If we don't close MRGO," says Lopez, "it might be time to do what my wife says and move to Kansas."

The die-hard refusal to give up on home persists in the Lower Ninth Ward, where many houses had been in families for decades.

Caught by a pincer of tidal waves coming from the blown-out levees to the east and the blown-out floodwalls of the Industrial Canal to the west, the black working-class neighborhood stewed in floodwaters for four weeks.

Residents were not allowed to move back for another two months, to the utter dismay of Tanya Harris, an organizer for the community-rights group ACORN. Harris' family had lived for 60 years in the hardest-hit section, north of Claiborne Avenue, what she calls "way back-a-town."

"My neighborhood was an extension of the inside of my house," she says, driving over the rusty drawbridge over the Industrial Canal. "When I turned off Claiborne Avenue after work, it would take me 20 minutes to drive the last 10 blocks home because I've got to wave to Aunt May and 20 other people. I'd complain about it, but I loved it."

Aunt May left after the storm, as did the kids who once played in the streets.

The last 10 blocks to Harris' home remain the same blur of destruction that blazed over television screens across the nation, with most houses abandoned or destroyed. Her house survived, a one-story yellow-brick affair with red shutters.

The reality remains daunting for those trying to rebuild, or trying to decide whether to come back at all. The risk of catastrophic flooding is rising year by year, with no end in sight - in no small part because the city is sinking.

Sinking is only part of the city's elevation challenge.

James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, notes new data from satellites showing accelerated melting of the vast ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica. "If we go down the business-as-usual path," he says, "we will get sea level rise measured in meters this century."

The impact on New Orleans?

A meter of sea level rise would be enough to turn New Orleans into the new Big Easy Reef - or a new Amsterdam, behind massive dikes. That's assuming that big hurricanes don't come more often; chances are they will.

 

 

Item 36: Shanghai's First Wetland Park to Charge Admission Fee

(Shanghai Daily, 27 August, 2007) Shanghai's first wetland park has scrapped its free entry policy and will begin to charge visitors starting from September 1, a local newspaper reported today. The Wusong Battery Wetland Forest Park in Baoshan District, where the Yangtze River empties into the sea, will start to charge a five yuan (66 US cents) entry fee for adults, the Shanghai Morning Post reported today.

Tickets for students will cost four yuan while soldiers, the disabled, retired senior military officers, people over the age of 70 and children shorter than1.2 meters tall will still enjoy free admittance to the park, the report said citing the Baoshan Greenery Administrative Bureau.

The admission fees are aimed at strengthening the management of the park and keeping out beggars and thieves, an unnamed official told the newspaper.

The park opened free to the public in May's golden week this year after a one-year renovation that has enlarged and renovated the park.

Wusongkou, which means the mouth of the Wusong River, has played an important role in Shanghai both historically and militarily. During the several resistance wars, it contributed significantly to the defense of the city.

 

 

Item 37: India: Ship Stray Dogs to Korea, says New Delhi Councillor

(Times of India, 16 August, 2007) NEW DELHI: New Delhi's stray dogs lead a difficult life. But if it was up to one city councillor, they would find themselves in more hot water soup to be precise.

Shipping the thousands of strays to Korea, where dog meat is widely consumed in soup, was one of the more outlandish ideas proposed at a city council meeting to deal with the problem, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

None of the ideas - from the aforementioned Korean plan to drug the canines so they sleep through the day - are likely to be implemented anytime soon. Instead, the council chairman asked the presumably more responsible veterinary department to come up with a workable plan.

Tens of thousands of strays live in New Delhi. Many are often cared for by people in the areas they live, but some become aggressive, and bites and rabies are a problem. Efforts to sterilize them have been largely unsuccessful.

City councillor Mohan Prashad Bharadwaj said he had read that Koreans are fond of dog meat and "maybe we can send all the stray dogs of Delhi there," the paper quoted him as saying.

A soup with dog meat called boshintang is popular in Korea, especially on the three hot "dog days" of summer on the lunar calendar. The traditional belief is that dog meat helps boost stamina and virility, but activists regularly criticize the practice and call for bans on eating dog meat.

City officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

 

 

Item 38: As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Level

(Joseph Kahn, Jim Yardley, NYT, 25 August, 2007) BEIJING — No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo.

But just as the speed and scale of China's rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has shattered all precedents. Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut.

Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China's leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.

Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country's 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics.

Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.

China is choking on its own success. The economy is on a historic run, posting a succession of double-digit growth rates. But the growth derives, now more than at any time in the recent past, from a staggering expansion of heavy industry and urbanization that requires colossal inputs of energy, almost all from coal, the most readily available, and dirtiest, source.

“It is a very awkward situation for the country because our greatest achievement is also our biggest burden,” says Wang Jinnan, one of China's leading environmental researchers. “There is pressure for change, but many people refuse to accept that we need a new approach so soon.”

China's problem has become the world's problem. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides spewed by China's coal-fired power plants fall as acid rain on Seoul, South Korea, and Tokyo. Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China, according to the Journal of Geophysical Research.

More pressing still, China has entered the most robust stage of its industrial revolution, even as much of the outside world has become preoccupied with global warming.

Experts once thought China might overtake the United States as the world's leading producer of greenhouse gases by 2010, possibly later. Now, the International Energy Agency has said China could become the emissions leader by the end of this year, and the Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency said China had already passed that level.

For the Communist Party, the political calculus is daunting. Reining in economic growth to alleviate pollution may seem logical, but the country's authoritarian system is addicted to fast growth. Delivering prosperity placates the public, provides spoils for well-connected officials and forestalls demands for political change. A major slowdown could incite social unrest, alienate business interests and threaten the party's rule.

But pollution poses its own threat. Officials blame fetid air and water for thousands of episodes of social unrest. Health care costs have climbed sharply. Severe water shortages could turn more farmland into desert. And the unconstrained expansion of energy-intensive industries creates greater dependence on imported oil and dirty coal, meaning that environmental problems get harder and more expensive to address the longer they are unresolved.

China's leaders recognize that they must change course. They are vowing to overhaul the growth-first philosophy of the Deng Xiaoping era and embrace a new model that allows for steady growth while protecting the environment. In his equivalent of a State of the Union address this year, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao made 48 references to “environment,” “pollution” or “environmental protection.”

The government has numerical targets for reducing emissions and conserving energy. Export subsidies for polluting industries have been phased out. Different campaigns have been started to close illegal coal mines and shutter some heavily polluting factories. Major initiatives are under way to develop clean energy sources like solar and wind power. And environmental regulation in Beijing, Shanghai and other leading cities has been tightened ahead of the 2008 Olympics.

Yet most of the government's targets for energy efficiency, as well as improving air and water quality, have gone unmet. And there are ample signs that the leadership is either unwilling or unable to make fundamental changes.

Land, water, electricity, oil and bank loans remain relatively inexpensive, even for heavy polluters. Beijing has declined to use the kind of tax policies and market-oriented incentives for conservation that have worked well in Japan and many European countries.

Provincial officials, who enjoy substantial autonomy, often ignore environmental edicts, helping to reopen mines or factories closed by central authorities. Over all, enforcement is often tinged with corruption. This spring, officials in Yunnan Province in southern China beautified Laoshou Mountain, which had been used as a quarry, by spraying green paint over acres of rock.

President Hu Jintao's most ambitious attempt to change the culture of fast-growth collapsed this year. The project, known as “Green G.D.P.,” was an effort to create an environmental yardstick for evaluating the performance of every official in China. It recalculated gross domestic product, or G.D.P., to reflect the cost of pollution.

But the early results were so sobering — in some provinces the pollution-adjusted growth rates were reduced almost to zero — that the project was banished to China's ivory tower this spring and stripped of official influence.

Chinese leaders argue that the outside world is a partner in degrading the country's environment. Chinese manufacturers that dump waste into rivers or pump smoke into the sky make the cheap products that fill stores in the United States and Europe. Often, these manufacturers subcontract for foreign companies — or are owned by them. In fact, foreign investment continues to rise as multinational corporations build more factories in China. Beijing also insists that it will accept no mandatory limits on its carbon dioxide emissions, which would almost certainly reduce its industrial growth. It argues that rich countries caused global warming and should find a way to solve it without impinging on China's development.

Indeed, Britain, the United States and Japan polluted their way to prosperity and worried about environmental damage only after their economies matured and their urban middle classes demanded blue skies and safe drinking water.

But China is more like a teenage smoker with emphysema. The costs of pollution have mounted well before it is ready to curtail economic development. But the price of business as usual — including the predicted effects of global warming on China itself — strikes many of its own experts and some senior officials as intolerably high.

“Typically, industrial countries deal with green problems when they are rich,” said Ren Yong, a climate expert at the Center for Environment and Economy in Beijing. “We have to deal with them while we are still poor. There is no model for us to follow.”

In the face of past challenges, the Communist Party has usually responded with sweeping edicts from Beijing. Some environmentalists say they hope the top leadership has now made pollution control such a high priority that lower level officials will have no choice but to go along, just as Deng Xiaoping once forced China's sluggish bureaucracy to fixate on growth.

But the environment may end up posing a different political challenge. A command-and-control political culture accustomed to issuing thundering directives is now under pressure, even from people in the ruling party, to submit to oversight from the public, for which pollution has become a daily — and increasingly deadly — reality.

Perpetual Haze

During the three decades since Deng set China on a course toward market-style growth, rapid industrialization and urbanization have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty and made the country the world's largest producer of consumer goods. But there is little question that growth came at the expense of the country's air, land and water, much of it already degraded by decades of Stalinist economic planning that emphasized the development of heavy industries in urban areas.

For air quality, a major culprit is coal, on which China relies for about two-thirds of its energy needs. It has abundant supplies of coal and already burns more of it than the United States, Europe and Japan combined. But even many of its newest coal-fired power plants and industrial furnaces operate inefficiently and use pollution controls considered inadequate in the West.

Expanding car ownership, heavy traffic and low-grade gasoline have made autos the leading source of air pollution in major Chinese cities. Only 1 percent of China's urban population of 560 million now breathes air considered safe by the European Union, according to a World Bank study of Chinese pollution published this year. One major pollutant contributing to China's bad air is particulate matter, which includes concentrations of fine dust, soot and aerosol particles less than 10 microns in diameter (known as PM 10).

The level of such particulates is measured in micrograms per cubic meter of air. The European Union stipulates that any reading above 40 micrograms is unsafe. The United States allows 50. In 2006, Beijing's average PM 10 level was 141, according to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics. Only Cairo, among world capitals, had worse air quality as measured by particulates, according to the World Bank.

Emissions of sulfur dioxide from coal and fuel oil, which can cause respiratory and cardiovascular diseases as well as acid rain, are increasing even faster than China's economic growth. In 2005, China became the leading source of sulfur dioxide pollution globally, the State Environmental Protection Administration, or SEPA, reported last year.

Other major air pollutants, including ozone, an important component of smog, and smaller particulate matter, called PM 2.5, emitted when gasoline is burned, are not widely monitored in China. Medical experts in China and in the West have argued that PM 2.5 causes more chronic diseases of the lung and heart than the more widely watched PM 10.

Perhaps an even more acute challenge is water. China has only one-fifth as much water per capita as the United States. But while southern China is relatively wet, the north, home to about half of China's population, is an immense, parched region that now threatens to become the world's biggest desert.

Farmers in the north once used shovels to dig their wells. Now, many aquifers have been so depleted that some wells in Beijing and Hebei must extend more than half a mile before they reach fresh water. Industry and agriculture use nearly all of the flow of the Yellow River, before it reaches the Bohai Sea.

In response, Chinese leaders have undertaken one of the most ambitious engineering projects in world history, a $60 billion network of canals, rivers and lakes to transport water from the flood-prone Yangtze River to the silt-choked Yellow River. But that effort, if successful, will still leave the north chronically thirsty.

This scarcity has not yet created a culture of conservation. Water remains inexpensive by global standards, and Chinese industry uses 4 to 10 times more water per unit of production than the average in industrialized nations, according to the World Bank.

In many parts of China, factories and farms dump waste into surface water with few repercussions. China's environmental monitors say that one-third of all river water, and vast sections of China's great lakes, the Tai, Chao and Dianchi, have water rated Grade V, the most degraded level, rendering it unfit for industrial or agricultural use.

Grim Statistics

The toll this pollution has taken on human health remains a delicate topic in China. The leadership has banned publication of data on the subject for fear of inciting social unrest, said scholars involved in the research. But the results of some research provide alarming evidence that the environment has become one of the biggest causes of death.

An internal, unpublicized report by the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning in 2003 estimated that 300,000 people die each year from ambient air pollution, mostly of heart disease and lung cancer. An additional 110,000 deaths could be attributed to indoor air pollution caused by poorly ventilated coal and wood stoves or toxic fumes from shoddy construction materials, said a person involved in that study.

Another report, prepared in 2005 by Chinese environmental experts, estimated that annual premature deaths attributable to outdoor air pollution were likely to reach 380,000 in 2010 and 550,000 in 2020.

This spring, a World Bank study done with SEPA, the national environmental agency, concluded that outdoor air pollution was already causing 350,000 to 400,000 premature deaths a year. Indoor pollution contributed to the deaths of an additional 300,000 people, while 60,000 died from diarrhea, bladder and stomach cancer and other diseases that can be caused by water-borne pollution.

China's environmental agency insisted that the health statistics be removed from the published version of the report, citing the possible impact on “social stability,” World Bank officials said.

But other international organizations with access to Chinese data have published similar results. For example, the World Health Organization found that China suffered more deaths from water-related pollutants and fewer from bad air, but agreed with the World Bank that the total death toll had reached 750,000 a year. In comparison, 4,700 people died last year in China's notoriously unsafe mines, and 89,000 people were killed in road accidents, the highest number of automobile-related deaths in the world. The Ministry of Health estimates that cigarette smoking takes a million Chinese lives each year.

Studies of Chinese environmental health mostly use statistical models developed in the United States and Europe and apply them to China, which has done little long-term research on the matter domestically. The results are more like plausible suppositions than conclusive findings.

But Chinese experts say that, if anything, the Western models probably understate the problems.

“China's pollution is worse, the density of its population is greater and people do not protect themselves as well,” said Jin Yinlong, the director general of the Institute for Environmental Health and Related Product Safety in Beijing. “So the studies are not definitive. My assumption is that they will turn out to be conservative.”

Growth Run Amok

As gloomy as China's pollution picture looks today, it is set to get significantly worse, because China has come to rely mainly on energy-intensive heavy industry and urbanization to fuel economic growth. In 2000, a team of economists and energy specialists at the Development Research Center, part of the State Council, set out to gauge how much energy China would need over the ensuing 20 years to achieve the leadership's goal of quadrupling the size of the economy.

They based their projections on China's experience during the first 20 years of economic reform, from 1980 to 2000. In that period, China relied mainly on light industry and small-scale private enterprise to spur growth. It made big improvements in energy efficiency even as the economy expanded rapidly. Gross domestic product quadrupled, while energy use only doubled.

The team projected that such efficiency gains would probably continue. But the experts also offered what they called a worst-case situation in which the most energy-hungry parts of the economy grew faster and efficiency gains fell short.

That worst-case situation now looks wildly optimistic. Last year, China burned the energy equivalent of 2.7 billion tons of coal, three-quarters of what the experts had said would be the maximum required in 2020. To put it another way, China now seems likely to need as much energy in 2010 as it thought it would need in 2020 under the most pessimistic assumptions.

“No one really knew what was driving the economy, which is why the predictions were so wrong,” said Yang Fuqiang, a former Chinese energy planner who is now the chief China representative of the Energy Foundation, an American group that supports energy-related research. “What I fear is that the trend is now basically irreversible.”

The ravenous appetite for fossil fuels traces partly to an economic stimulus program in 1997. The leadership, worried that China's economy would fall into a steep recession as its East Asian neighbors had, provided generous state financing and tax incentives to support industrialization on a grand scale.

It worked well, possibly too well. In 1996, China and the United States each accounted for 13 percent of global steel production. By 2005, the United States share had dropped to 8 percent, while China's share had risen to 35 percent, according to a study by Daniel H. Rosen and Trevor Houser of China Strategic Advisory, a group that analyzes the Chinese economy.

Similarly, China now makes half of the world's cement and flat glass, and about a third of its aluminum. In 2006, China overtook Japan as the second-largest producer of cars and trucks after the United States.

Its energy needs are compounded because even some of its newest heavy industry plants do not operate as efficiently, or control pollution as effectively, as factories in other parts of the world, a recent World Bank report said.

Chinese steel makers, on average, use one-fifth more energy per ton than the international average. Cement manufacturers need 45 percent more power, and ethylene producers need 70 percent more than producers elsewhere, the World Bank says.

China's aluminum industry alone consumes as much energy as the country's commercial sector — all the hotels, restaurants, banks and shopping malls combined, Mr. Rosen and Mr. Houser reported.

Moreover, the boom is not limited to heavy industry. Each year for the past few years, China has built about 7.5 billion square feet of commercial and residential space, more than the combined floor space of all the malls and strip malls in the United States, according to data collected by the United States Energy Information Administration.

Chinese buildings rarely have thermal insulation. They require, on average, twice as much energy to heat and cool as those in similar climates in the United States and Europe, according to the World Bank. A vast majority of new buildings — 95 percent, the bank says — do not meet China's own codes for energy efficiency.

All these new buildings require China to build power plants, which it has been doing prodigiously. In 2005 alone, China added 66 gigawatts of electricity to its power grid, about as much power as Britain generates in a year. Last year, it added an additional 102 gigawatts, as much as France.

That increase has come almost entirely from small- and medium-size coal-fired power plants that were built quickly and inexpensively. Only a few of them use modern, combined-cycle turbines, which increase efficiency, said Noureddine Berrah, an energy expert at the World Bank. He said Beijing had so far declined to use the most advanced type of combined-cycle turbines despite having completed a successful pilot project nearly a decade ago.

While over the long term, combined-cycle plants save money and reduce pollution, Mr. Berrah said, they cost more and take longer to build. For that reason, he said, central and provincial government officials prefer older technology.

“China is making decisions today that will affect its energy use for the next 30 or 40 years,” he said. “Unfortunately, in some parts of the government the thinking is much more shortsighted.”

The Politics of Pollution

Since Hu Jintao became the Communist Party chief in 2002 and Wen Jiabao became prime minister the next spring, China's leadership has struck consistent themes. The economy must grow at a more sustainable, less bubbly pace. Environmental abuse has reached intolerable levels. Officials who ignore these principles will be called to account.

Five years later, it seems clear that these senior leaders are either too timid to enforce their orders, or the fast-growth political culture they preside over is too entrenched to heed them.

In the second quarter of this year, the economy expanded at a neck-snapping pace of 11.9 percent, its fastest in a decade. State-driven investment projects, state-backed heavy industry and a thriving export sector led the way. China burned 18 percent more coal than it did the year before.

China's authoritarian system has repeatedly proved its ability to suppress political threats to Communist Party rule. But its failure to realize its avowed goals of balancing economic growth and environmental protection is a sign that the country's environmental problems are at least partly systemic, many experts and some government officials say. China cannot go green, in other words, without political change.

In their efforts to free China of its socialist shackles in the 1980s and early 90s, Deng and his supporters gave lower-level officials the leeway, and the obligation, to increase economic growth.

Local party bosses gained broad powers over state bank lending, taxes, regulation and land use. In return, the party leadership graded them, first and foremost, on how much they expanded the economy in their domains.

To judge by its original goals — stimulating the economy, creating jobs and keeping the Communist Party in power — the system Deng put in place has few equals. But his approach eroded Beijing's ability to fine-tune the economy. Today, a culture of collusion between government and business has made all but the most pro-growth government policies hard to enforce.

“The main reason behind the continued deterioration of the environment is a mistaken view of what counts as political achievement,” said Pan Yue, the deputy minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration. “The crazy expansion of high-polluting, high-energy industries has spawned special interests. Protected by local governments, some businesses treat the natural resources that belong to all the people as their own private property.”

Mr. Hu has tried to change the system. In an internal address in 2004, he endorsed “comprehensive environmental and economic accounting” — otherwise known as “Green G.D.P.” He said the “pioneering endeavor” would produce a new performance test for government and party officials that better reflected the leadership's environmental priorities.

The Green G.D.P. team sought to calculate the yearly damage to the environment and human health in each province. Their first report, released last year, estimated that pollution in 2004 cost just over 3 percent of the gross domestic product, meaning that the pollution-adjusted growth rate that year would drop to about 7 percent from 10 percent. Officials said at the time that their formula used low estimates of environmental damage to health and did not assess the impact on China's ecology. They would produce a more decisive formula, they said, the next year.

That did not happen. Mr. Hu's plan died amid intense squabbling, people involved in the effort said. The Green G.D.P. group's second report, originally scheduled for release in March, never materialized.

The official explanation was that the science behind the green index was immature. Wang Jinnan, the leading academic researcher on the Green G.D.P. team, said provincial leaders killed the project. “Officials do not like to be lined up and told how they are not meeting the leadership's goals,” he said. “They found it difficult to accept this.”

Conflicting Pressures

Despite the demise of Green G.D.P., party leaders insist that they intend to restrain runaway energy use and emissions. The government last year mandated that the country use 20 percent less energy to achieve the same level of economic activity in 2010 compared with 2005. It also required that total emissions of mercury, sulfur dioxide and other pollutants decline by 10 percent in the same period.

The program is a domestic imperative. But it has also become China's main response to growing international pressure to combat global warming. Chinese leaders reject mandatory emissions caps, and they say the energy efficiency plan will slow growth in carbon dioxide emissions.

Even with the heavy pressure, though, the efficiency goals have been hard to achieve. In the first full year since the targets were set, emissions increased. Energy use for every dollar of economic output fell but by much less than the 4 percent interim goal.

In a public relations sense, the party's commitment to conservation seems steadfast. Mr. Hu shunned his usual coat and tie at a meeting of the Central Committee this summer. State news media said the temperature in the Great Hall of the People was set at a balmy 79 degrees Fahrenheit to save energy, and officials have encouraged others to set thermostats at the same level.

By other measures, though, the leadership has moved slowly to address environmental and energy concerns.

The government rarely uses market-oriented incentives to reduce pollution. Officials have rejected proposals to introduce surcharges on electricity and coal to reflect the true cost to the environment. The state still controls the price of fuel oil, including gasoline, subsidizing the cost of driving.

Energy and environmental officials have little influence in the bureaucracy. The environmental agency still has only about 200 full-time employees, compared with 18,000 at the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States.

China has no Energy Ministry. The Energy Bureau of the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's central planning agency, has 100 full-time staff members. The Energy Department of the United States has 110,000 employees.

China does have an army of amateur regulators. Environmentalists expose pollution and press local government officials to enforce environmental laws. But private individuals and nongovernment organizations cannot cross the line between advocacy and political agitation without risking arrest.

At least two leading environmental organizers have been prosecuted in recent weeks, and several others have received sharp warnings to tone down their criticism of local officials. One reason the authorities have cited: the need for social stability before the 2008 Olympics, once viewed as an opportunity for China to improve the environment.

 

 

Item 39: Coastal Development Anyone? Will Oceans Surge 59 Centimetres this Century - or 25 Metres? The new climate: a controversial study suggests rapid polar meltdown and rising sea levels

(Zoe Cormier, Globe and Mail, 25 August, 2007) LONDON -- When Al Gore predicted that climate change could lead to a 20-foot rise in sea levels, critics called him alarmist. After all, the International Panel on Climate Change, which receives input from top scientists, estimates surges of only 18 to 59 centimetres in the next century.

But a study led by James Hansen, the head of the climate science program at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and a professor at Columbia University, suggests that current estimates for how high the seas could rise are way off the mark - and that in the next 100 years melting ice could sink cities in the United States to Bangladesh.

"If we follow 'business-as-usual' growth of greenhouse gas emissions," he writes in an e-mail interview, "I think that we will lock in a guaranteed sea-level rise of several metres, which, frankly, means that all hell is going to break loose."

The scientific basis for this idea - which Prof. Hansen and five co-authors gleaned from geological records, ice core samples and analysis of the sea floor - is outlined in a recent paper published by the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

In stark contrast to estimates put forward by the IPCC, Prof. Hansen and his colleagues argue that rapidly melting ice caps in Antarctica and Greenland could cause oceans to swell several metres by 2100 - or maybe even as much as 25 metres, which is how much higher the oceans sat about three million years ago.

Their argument goes like this: As the atmosphere warms and the ice caps melt, they will not melt in a consistent, gradual fashion. Rather, they will start to melt faster and faster as the century progresses, quickly reaching a point where they could disappear altogether. This is because of "positive feedback" effects - factors that create a loop of exacerbated melting and global warming.

For example, snow and ice reflect sunlight and reduce global warming. But as the temperature of the planet increases and the polar caps melt (as scientists are already observing at both poles), there is less ice to reflect sunlight and more water to absorb it, thus making the planet warmer and increasing ice cap melting further.

Likewise, the mass release of methane from thawing permafrost (happening now in the Canadian Arctic) means that natural greenhouse-gas emissions could be added to man-made emissions - potentially speeding up climate change. And as meltwater from polar caps lubricates the contact points between the ice and the bedrock below it (evidenced by an increase in "ice quakes" in Greenland), ice sheets could be further destabilized and result in increased melting.

So why the radical discrepancies between Prof. Hansen's predictions and those of the IPCC? Certain positive feedback effects, as well as recent data on the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, were not included in the IPCC's report. "Because of the cumbersome IPCC review process, they exclude recent information," Prof. Hansen says, "so they are very handicapped."

Richard Peltier agrees. A University of Toronto physicist and the director of the Centre for Global Change Science, he works on mathematical models to explain the melting and freezing dynamics of the Greenland ice sheet and has contributed to the IPCC publications - but even he agrees that their assumptions tend to be "extremely conservative."

"[Prof. Hansen's] basic thesis is undeniable, because the mathematical models, which we have developed to describe the evolution of ice sheets, do not include certain processes that control how quickly an ice sheet could respond to climate warming," he says. "You need a model that incorporates all physical processes - and no such model exists."

However, Prof. Peltier does not think that the ice caps are likely to melt as quickly as Prof. Hansen suggests. "We really don't know what the future has in store. I am incapable of predicting how fast the ice sheets will melt, and so is he. But I don't think we are going to hell in a handbasket."

Others are even less convinced of the catastrophic predictions put forward by Prof. Hansen. Andrew Weaver, a physicist at the University of Victoria who works on the dynamics of the polar ice caps and also contributes to the IPCC reports, says he thinks the "upper bound for sea-level rise this century is a metre.

"I don't disagree with the seriousness of the issue or the importance of these positive feedback effects," he says, "but runaway feedbacks have extraordinarily low probabilities, which is why they are not given much attention by the IPCC."

He adds that the Greenland ice sheet will almost certainly melt away completely, but the IPCC predicts that this will take 1,700 years - not a century. "The complete disintegration of the ice sheets cannot happen in 100 years," he says.

Moreover, although he calls Prof. Hansen his "hero" for speaking out about global warming in the 1980s "when nobody was listening," he criticizes the tone of his recent paper and the use of words such as "cataclysm," which he believes move "dangerously away from scientific discourse to advocacy."

And at any rate, Prof. Weaver says, we have enough to worry about, regardless of what the future holds: The disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers threatens the source of fresh water for about one billion people and climate change is causing severe weather ranging from the droughts in Darfur to the flooding seen in Britain this summer.

Still, Prof. Hansen insists that his predictions are on target - and that the conservative take on climate change put forward by the IPCC and others could result in catastrophe.

"I believe there is pressure on scientists to be conservative. Caveats are essential to science. They are born in skepticism, and skepticism is at the heart of the scientific method and discovery," he wrote in New Scientist magazine last month. "However, in a case such as ice-sheet instability and sea-level rise, excessive caution also holds dangers. 'Scientific reticence' can hinder communication with the public about the dangers of global warming. We may rue reticence if it means no action is taken until it is too late to prevent future disasters."

Instead, Prof. Hansen urges a swift curb on greenhouse-gas emissions. The last time sea levels rose by almost 25 metres, he points out, was when the greenhouse-gas levels in the atmosphere were on par with what may happen if fossil-fuel emissions continue unchecked. He believes we should keep the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere below 450 parts per million. Right now, it stands at about 385 ppm.

"The first step should be a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants until technology is available to capture and store the carbon dioxide," he says, "and a gradually rising tax on carbon emissions."

Zoe Cormier is a science and environment writer based in London.

 

 

Item 40: Seoul to Decide on US Beef Import Resumption This Week: Sources

(Asia Pulse, 20 August, 2007) South Korea will decide whether to resume inspections of U.S. beef within this week, sources said Monday. In early August, the government halted quarantine inspection on U.S. beef, citing the discovery of a prohibited vertebral column in a U.S. shipment of 18.7 tons of beef.

"We received the U.S. government's explanation on the cause of the incident and its future precautions last Thursday," an official at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry said.

After reviewing the U.S. explanation, the government plans to decide whether to resume the inspection within this week, the official said.

U.S. beef exporters have regained partial access to the Asian market through a deal made in January 2006, but imports have frequently been suspended due to shipments of banned bone parts.

Under the January deal with Washington, Seoul agreed to accept imports of U.S. beef, but only boneless beef from animals under 30 months of age.

In May, June and July this year, the South Korean government suspended imports from certain U.S. meat processing facilities after discovering banned bone fragments.

The South Korean government put an initial ban on U.S. beef in late 2003 after a case of mad cow disease was reported in a U.S. ranch.

The U.S. government wants Seoul to fully reopen its beef market to U.S. exporters. South Korea, which just signed a free trade deal with the U.S. in June, had once been the third-largest buyer of U.S. beef.

 

 

Item 41: Chicken Processor Plans to Open Poultry Farms in NK

(The Korea Times, 24 August, 2007) Maniker Co., a South Korean food maker, said Friday its executives will visit North Korea next month to finalize the company's project to set up chicken farms there.

Maniker, one of the nation's leading chicken-processing companies, has explored ways to build chicken farms in North Korea since 2002 to take advantage of the North's cheap labor.

During the visit in mid-September, Maniker executives and North Korean officials will choose the location of the chicken farms between Sariwon, south of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and Samilpo near Mt. Geumgang on the east coast, the company said in a statement.

North Korea has showed "positive" response to the project, Maniker said.

If the project is successful, Maniker will be the first direct investment by a South Korean company outside an inter-Korean industrial complex in the North Korean border city of Kaesong.

"At this time, we expect the North Korean business project to produce a visible result," said a Maniker official on condition of anonymity.

At the Kaesong industrial zone, located just 70 kilometers north of Seoul, 26 South Korean companies employ about 16,000 North Korean workers who produce garments, kitchenware and a number of other goods.

Though the two Koreas are still technically at war, the two sides have had significant economic cooperation since 2000, when then-South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il held a historic summit.

The Kaesong complex is one of prominent symbols in inter-Korean rapprochement.

If the industrial zone becomes fully operational by 2012, more than 350,000 North Korean workers will work there, according to the South's unification ministry.

Optimism has been also building over progress in resolving the North's nuclear standoff.

North Korea has shut down its key nuclear facilities at Yongbyon under a February agreement, which was also signed by South Korea, the U.S., Japan, China and Russia.

It now has to disable the Yongbyon facilities and declare all of its nuclear programs in exchange for 950,000 tons of heavy fuel oil or equivalent aid.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun is scheduled to meet the North Korean leader Kim in Pyongyang in early October for their second-ever summit.

 

 

Item 42: N.Korea Floods Left 600 People Dead or Missing

(Jon Herskovitz, Reuters, 25 August, 2007) SEOUL- Some of the worst flooding to hit North Korea in decades has killed at least 600 people, double the previous known toll, the official news agency said at the weekend.

The reclusive North had earlier told international aid agencies, and reported in its official media, that 300 people had been killed or were missing after floods and landslides brought about by weeks of heavy rain this month.

"The unusual heavy rain caused huge material losses to the DPRK, creating unprecedented difficulties in people's living and economic construction," the official KCNA news agency said. The North's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"According to the information available from the Central Statistics Bureau, torrential rain, strong winds and landslides left at least 600 people dead or missing and thousands of people wounded," KCNA said in a late Saturday report.

Flooding in the southern half of the country destroyed thousands of buildings, left more than 300,000 homeless, and wiped out more than 11 percent of the land for grains and maize in a country that already battles chronic food shortages, it has said.

KCNA said on Saturday the floods snapped hundreds of electric polls, caused enormous damage to coal mines and destroyed large sections of its few highways.

Apart from a few showcase spots in the capital Pyongyang, much of the North's infrastructure is a shambles, with the communist state still using rail lines and power systems built during Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the peninsula.

A South Korean specialist in North Korean agriculture said the country will by hit hard by crop losses, but it is not likely to soon slip back into famine because of increased grain production over the last decade.

As much as 10 percent of North Korea's 23 million people were killed in a famine in the mid-to-late 1990s, brought about by flooding, drought and years of mismanagement in the farm sector.

The United Nations will launch an appeal early next week for North Korean flood aid of around $15-20 million, a senior U.N. official said on Friday. The World Food Program has already started distributing emergency food rations.

South Korea will send building material and equipment worth 37.4 billion won ($39.73 million) to help rebuild houses and roads. Last week, it started shipping 7.1 billion won worth of food, medicine and other supplies.

The flooding caused the two Koreas to postpone what would be only the second meeting of the leaders of the two countries, from late August to early October.

 

 

Item 43: Japan: Whale Harpooned, Hauled in by Japanese Boat in Front of Whale-Watching Tourists

(Mainichi, 25 August, 2007) SAPPORO -- Eco-tourists on a whale-watching vessel, looking forward to observing the mighty creatures in their natural habitat, were instead greeted by the sight of a harpooned whale being dragged in by a Japanese whaling vessel on Friday.

At about 10:44 a.m. on Friday, a whale was spotted spraying water from its blowhole near a whaling boat, about 3.5 kilometers away from the whale-watching vessel off the coast of Hokkaido's Shiretoko Peninsula. But when the vessel approached, the passengers on board found that the whalers had harpooned the Baird's beaked whale, and it was hauled in by the whaling boat about 20 minutes later.

About 20 passengers on the whale-watching vessel looked on, voicing their pity as the whale was captured. A French woman who was on the vessel with her husband reportedly said the experience made her feel ill.

There were two other whale-watching boats nearby, but one of them left after a child started crying.

The 46-year-old captain of the passenger vessel was disappointed by the incident, which took place about 14 kilometers east of Rausu Port in Hokkaido.

"It's my job to show people whales and it's the whalers' job to catch them, but I wonder how this can be avoided," he said.

One of the two whaling companies operating the whaling ship, meanwhile, filed a protest against the whale watching vessel with the Rausu town government.

"The passenger boat approached us, which was extremely dangerous. We think this could be considered dangerous sailing, and we want you to issue a warning," the protest said. (Mainichi)

 

 

Item 44: North Korea Flooding is the Worst in History: Over 600 are dead or missing, 400,000 are homeless and 1 million tons of food will be lost

(The Korea Times, 27 August, 2007) New reports from North Korea show that the country has suffered the most serious flood disaster in its history. As of August 26, more than 600 people are either dead or missing and over 400,000 residents are homeless. Damage to farmland was also severe, causing a loss of approximately 1 million tons of this year's harvest.

In a report made based on data collected by the North Korean authorities and international organizations, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs stated that due to heavy rains on August 7-18, at least 454 people have died, another 156 persons are missing and 4,351 persons have been injured.

North Korea's statistics office announced through its official Korean Central News Agency that about 600 were dead or missing and thousands of people had been injured due to the latest flood disaster. According to an earlier announcement, 221 persons died and about 80 were missing.

Damage to houses was also extensive. According to the OCHA data: “Six provinces or cities and 92 counties were damaged by the recent heavy rains. Over 436,000 North Koreans suffered losses from the flood and 169,561 people have lost their homes.” More than 40,000 houses were completely destroyed and over 67,000 were partially destroyed. Another 133,700 houses were submerged.

In addition, 223,381 hectares of farmlands were flooded. Up to 20 percent of rice paddies and 15 percent of corn fields were either lost or submerged. The OCHA estimates that North Korea will lose one million tons out of its anticipated harvest. According to previous estimates by the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, the North's loss was to have reached 200,000-300,000 tons.

South Korea's Unification Ministry said on August 26 that during a huge flood in 1995 and a flood disaster in 2006, North Korean casualties amounted to 69 and approximately 150, respectively. About 240,000 houses were washed away this year, compared to 96,000 houses in 1995 and 36,000 in 2006. Damage to farmlands was less than 360,000 hectares in 1995, but about 10 times more than the 27,000 hectares damaged last year.

 

 

Item 45: $1.43 Billion Restoration of 36,000 Acres of Bay Wetlands Floated in Report

(Jane Kay, San Francisco Chronicle, 29 August, 2007) (08-28) 14:45 PDT San Francisco - -- The Bay Area needs a bold plan to generate enough money to restore the bay's wetlands and rebuild an ecosystem necessary for a healthy estuary, according to a new report from an environmental group.

Spending $1.43 billion over half a century would restore about 36,000 acres of once-diked wetlands and double the amount of tidal marsh ringing San Francisco Bay, states the report released Tuesday by Save the Bay, an Oakland nonprofit organization founded 45 years ago.

The report recommends initiating a unified effort by nine Bay Area counties and obtaining funds through congressional bills, state and local bonds and even new taxes. The $1.43 billion goal could be met if every Bay Area resident gave $4 a year over 50 years, the report said.

In a campaign to expand space for wildlife, boost recreational opportunities and improve flood control, state and federal agencies over the past decade have spent nearly $370.5 million to buy and start restoration of 36,176 acres. That land can be found on a total of 13 sites, including Bair Island near Redwood City, Hamilton Field and Bel Marin Keys near Novato and some of the former Cargill salt ponds in the South Bay.

But a great deal of work still needs to be done and cannot be accomplished without a plan backed by public funds, the report said. With such money, government agencies would be able to complete the restoration work on land already acquired, according to the group.

Tidal marshes are the foundation of a healthy estuary, scientists agree. The soggy ecosystems help control floodwaters, including those caused by rising seas. Marshes also catch pollutants and act as a rich nursery for mussels, oysters, worms and crustaceans at the base of the bay's web of aquatic life. Without a functioning tidal marsh, there's not much for young Dungeness crab, salmon and steelhead to eat.

Over the past 200 years, the growing Bay Area population has built towns, roads and other development on top of filled tidal marsh, cutting the bay's original ring of 190,000 acres to 40,000 acres - an 80 percent loss.

Local officials in 2000 set a goal of restoring wetlands to 100,000 acres. Adding 36,176 acres identified by Save the Bay to the 40,000 acres of existing salt marsh would bring the bay's total to about 76,176 acres. Government agencies involved in the restoration effort haven't identified the rest of the land that could be used to meet the 100,000-acre goal.

Much of the money spent to bring back the wetlands - most of which were diked for farms, cities and salt ponds - has come from bonds and private foundations. But a lack of consistent funding is hampering recovery efforts, and there is a shortfall of money in government budgets to pay for staff, engineering work and construction, the Save the Bay report said.

With the purchase of some Cargill salt ponds in 2003, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acquired 9,600 acres for the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, making the agency responsible for 70 miles of levees and other structures. Yet during that time, refuge budgets were shrinking or staying the same, often forcing officials to do more with less. Also in 2003, the state Fish and Game Department acquired 6,900 acres of salt pond land. However, only one Fish and Game Department scientist is dedicated to protecting wildlife in three counties as well as looking after more than 6,000 acres of the department's property, the report said.

Save the Bay was founded in 1962 as part of a movement to halt the filling of the bay and put an end to garbage dumps and filthy sewage plants that threaten the bay's water quality. It's the oldest group dedicated to preserving the bay's natural resources. Tuesday's report contends that local residents care even more deeply about the bay now than they did then and are willing to pay to save it.

A poll conducted by EMC Research on behalf of the environmental group indicates that Bay Area voters would agree to "pay modest taxes for bay wetland restoration." Eighty-three percent of residents polled said they would pay $10 a year in taxes or fees to restore wetlands that would result in cleaner bay water, provide flood control benefits, enlarge the San Francisco Bay refuge and increase shoreline access for the public.

"The bay is an ecosystem that touches nine counties and millions of people and ignores municipal borders," the report said. The environmental groups said advocating for the bay with "one regionwide voice is essential to success in securing needed state and federal funds."

The group compiled cost figures by estimating yet-to-be-done restoration, 10 years of monitoring and operation and maintenance for 50 years at 13 sites.

The sites include the 1,564-acre Cullinan Ranch owned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on San Pablo Bay; the 418-acre Bahia site owned by the Marin Audubon Society; 722-acre Eden Landing near Hayward owned by the state Department of Fish and Game; and the 970-acre Sears Point wetland owned by the Sonoma Land Trust.

Raising public funds for wetlands restoration is something businesses are likely to support, said John Grubb, a spokesman for the Bay Area Council. The council is made up of CEOs from the region's 275 largest employers.

"We believe in targeted investments that provide a return on quality of life, and this would seem to pass that test," he said. "We're in a global competition for talent, and one of the ways you convince people to move to our region and work for our companies is by offering them a great place to live. Environmental protection and restoration are essential to a good quality of life."

 

 

Item 46: U.K.: Wetland the Size of a City to Be Reconstructed Out of Farmland

(Lewis Smith, The Times, U.K., 03 August, 2007) One of the biggest habitat restoration schemes in Europe is under way in Cambridgeshire to create a vast fenland the size of a city.

An £8.9 million lottery grant, the biggest ever for restoring a natural wildlife sanctuary, has been agreed for the Great Fen Project.

Thousands of species of animals and plants will benefit from the project, which is intended to turn more than 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of farmland into fenland.

It is hoped that it will be one of the most popular visitor attractions in Britain and boost the regional economy.

The money from the Heritage Lottery Fund will enable the Wildlife Trust to purchase 1,452 hectares of farmland and begin restoring it.

Work has already started to prevent water draining away from parts of the project area, which will allow reclamation to fenland of fields now used to grow wheat, onions, potatoes, carrots and sugar beet.

Fenland plants and animals are able to begin re-establishing themselves as soon as the ground conditions are wet enough and can be fully restored within three to five years.

The total area to be returned to fen, just beyond the southern end of Peterborough, covers 3,700 hectares and the lottery grant will mean that about half the land eventually expected to be included within the Great Fen is secured for restoration.

Conservationists expect the northern part of the Great Fen to be almost completely restored by about 2025 and are confident that the rest of the project will be achieved by 2050.

The project area included Woodwalton Fen, a small existing fen from which it is hoped that more than 400 species of plants will spread out to reclaim flooded fields. Among the plants that will benefit from the scheme are fen violets, which are found at Woodwalton Fen and only two other places in Britain. Fen wood-rush and the fen ragwort should also thrive.

Animals that will find a haven in the Great Fen are otters, which have returned after an absence of several years, and water voles, one of the fastest-declining creatures in Britain.

The wetland will be home to at least 170 species of birds, including nightingales and long-eared owls, and it is hoped that the restored landscape will encourage bitterns, spoonbills, purple herons and cranes to join them.

Invertebrates will also benefit. An estimated 400 types of beetle are already found at Woodwalton Fen and more could follow, while creatures such as the scarce chaser dragon-fly should increase in number.

Fewer than 1 per cent of the fens in Britain 400 years ago still exist. The restoration of the Cambridgeshire site will provide a large flood-relief area where water can be stored. Carole Souter, the director of the Heritage Lottery Fund, said: “We are particularly committed to supporting projects like Great Fen, which will not only restore and conserve an important stretch of land but also enable local people to be actively involved in its future maintenance.

“Fenlands have a particularly important role to play in protecting wildlife and helping us to cope with climate change. It is essential that they are safeguarded.”

Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, commented: “Our natural environment is fragile, has to be looked after and it is up to us all to improve and protect it. And that is exactly what this grant will do.”

Nick Hammond, of the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and Peterborough, said that the Great Fen will be big enough for visitors to be able to walk around it all day and still feel that there is more to see.

 

 

Item 47: “China Reports Sighting of “Extinct” Dolphin” (but it takes food, clean water, habitat, and more than one dolphin to stave off extinction)

(Reuters, August 30, 2007) BEIJING - A Chinese man has videotaped a large white animal swimming in the Yangtze river, which experts say is a dolphin species unique to China and feared extinct, the official Xinhua agency reported on Wednesday.

The last confirmed sighting of the long-beaked, nearly blind baiji was in 2004. After an international team failed to find a single dolphin on a six-week expedition last year the species was classified as critically endangered and possibly extinct.

But the video from central Anhui province may renew slender hopes for the survival of the creatures also known as white-flag dolphins and traditionally considered a deity by local people.

"I never saw such a big thing in the water before, so I filmed it," dolphin-spotter Zeng Yujiang told Xinhua. "It was about 1,000 meters (yards) away and jumped out of water several times."

Wang Kexiong, of the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said experts at the institute had confirmed the footage was of a baiji.

The report did not say if there were any plans to try and locate the dolphin again, or try and protect it from the river hazards -- ranging from pollution and aggressive fishing to heavy shipping traffic -- that originally decimated the species.

In the late 1970s, scientists believed several hundred baiji were still alive, but by 1997 a survey listed just 13 sightings. Found only in the Yangtze river, it is related to freshwater species found in the Mekong, Indus, Ganges and Amazon rivers.

The government has set up a reserve in a lake in central Hubei province but failed to find any baiji to put in it. The last captive dolphin, Qi Qi, died in 2002.

 

 

Item 48: Swallows Return from South 16 Days Earlier

(Dong-A, 30 August, 2007) Migratory birds seem to be changing their migration habits because of climate changes from global warming.

The Korea National Park (KNP) announced on August 5 that its survey of 82 kinds of migratory birds that depart southeastern parts of China, such as Shanghai, Fuzhou and Hong Kong in spring and that fly back to Hongdo in Tadohae National Park showed that 13, including swallows and whistle birds, had migrating periods that came 16 days earlier.

The swallows that returned to Hongdo on March 20 last year were seen for the first time on March 4, 2007, 16 days earlier. A dusky thrush was also seen on March 5 this year, 13 days earlier than last year's March 18 sighting.

A kingfisher (36 days earlier), night heron (32 days earlier), white-rumped swift (31 days earlier), and whistle bird (28 days earlier) were all seen approximately a month earlier. In contrast, a Daurian redstart and a mountain finch were seen about an average of 11 days later than the previous migratory span.

The KNP noted that the lowest temperature in Hongdo of Korea and southeastern parts of China went up 0.5 to 2.0 degrees this year compared to March 2006. The KNP also added that some migratory birds' migrating spans were late because climate changes affect different kinds of birds differently.

Chae Hee-young, an expert from the migratory birds survey center at the KNP, said, “Advanced countries have already started to research climate change by surveying migratory birds decades ago.” He noted, “Korea also should conduct related research by realizing that migratory birds are indicator species (species that signal specific environmental conditions) of climate change.”

 

 

Item 49: Jaws Fear Grips Russian Region

(IOL, 20 August, 2007) Moscow - Residents in Russia's far east have been warned to use caution in the sea after the capture of a great white shark like that made famous in the 1975 horror film Jaws, a newspaper said on Monday.

"Great White sharks have appeared off southern Sakhalin" island, the popular daily Novye Izvestiya said in a report from the far eastern port city of Vladivostok.

"Fishermen and holidaymakers have been advised to watch the sea carefully and to run out of the water on the appearance of large, triangular fins above the surface," the front-page article said.

The story carried a photograph of a dead great white shark - mostly black in colour - of around five metres lying on the beach that it said had become ensnared in fishing nets off the Sakhalin coast.

It claimed that at least two other great white sharks of larger size had also been spotted and photographed near the shores of Sakhalin island.

Although Jaws depicted the great white shark as a vengeful monster relentlessly on the hunt for a meal of human flesh, experts say this portrayal has wrongly maligned the animal, now considered an endangered species.

The newspaper story did quote one scientist, Anatoly Velikanov, as saying that the giant sharks usually do not go after humans. But he added: "Unfortunately, sometimes people become 'fodder' for Great Whites".

It did not say when the shark was caught, but one report late last month said fishermen off Sakhalin had "for the first time" caught a great white in the area.

Great white are known to inhabit cold waters in northern and southern latitudes, but are also occasionally spotted in warmer tropical areas.

Experts however had previously treated reported sightings of great white sharks off Sakhalin with scepticism, Novye Izvestiya said.

 

 

Item 50: China Buys into Myth of Sustainable Ancient Forest Logging

(Glen Barry, Ecological Internet, 30 August, 2007) China's government has belatedly issued rules to its foreign logging ventures, a too little too late response to being identified as the heart of a global trade for timber from illegal logging it sells to markets in the United States and Europe. Efforts to date by the Chinese government to address their role in providing the market for much of the illegally logged ancient forest timbers are inadequate because they do not address the purchase of timbers from companies of other nationalities -- and Malaysian and Indonesian logging companies do much of the dirty work of actually ruthlessly stealing logs for the Chinese market.

Even more troublingly is that along with WWF, Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network and the World Bank; the Chinese government falsely contends that industrially harvesting ancient forests can be done in a responsible, sustainable manner. Ancient forests cannot be preserved and sustainably logged at the same time. Industrial forest management destroys permanently forest function, structure, composition and dynamics. Yet all these forest power brokers insist we can log our ancient forests and protect them too. The World Bank is even set to suggest that logging ancient forests has carbon benefits -- NOT! It is a tragic, deadly myth that if only done correctly and responsibly, millions of years old ancient rainforests can and should be logged in an ecologically acceptable manner.

It is time to take off the kid gloves with China and, calling a spade a spade, acknowledge this dangerous, totalitarian, human rights abusing regime is the greatest threat ever to global ecological sustainability and the recent history of hard earned democratic human rights. Ecological Internet will call increasingly be calling to task the Chinese government's growing role in liquidating the world's forests, climate and water for a few percentage points of illusory economic growth -- to provide dalliances for fat ass Americans and Europeans. You may recall our campaign some two years ago to draw attention to illegal tropical timber use in Olympic construction. Measures are in place to ensure this will be verified during the games. It may be too late to save those rainforests perhaps, but not too late to highlight the Orwellian, lying, abusive and ecocidal Chinese communist regime.