[Kabar-indonesia] 5 Forestry Reports: Less Than 100 Years to Live [+Stolen RI Timber; Orangutans]

[JoyoNews at aol.com]

5 Reports:

- Forecast Puts Earth's Future Under a Cloud 
  [3C increase would bring fires, floods and famine;
  Climate prediction most comprehensive so far
  World's forests may have less than 100 years 
  to live]

- Environmentalists say European firms
  using stolen Indonesian wood

- China denies plundering world's rain forests

- Indonesian orangutans given rare second
  chance at forest life

- Online Dating Is Planned for Orangutans

The Guardian (UK)
Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Forecast Puts Earth's Future Under a Cloud 

3C increase would bring fires, floods and famine;
Climate prediction most comprehensive so far 

by Alok Jha, science correspondent

More than half of the world's major forests will be lost if global 
temperatures rise by an average of 3C or more by the end of the century, it was claimed 
yesterday. The prediction comes from the most comprehensive analysis yet of 
the potential effects of human-made global warming.

Extreme floods, forest fires and droughts will also become more common over 
the next 200 years as global temperatures rise owing to climate change, 
according to Marko Scholze of Bristol University. Dr Scholze took 52 simulations of 
the world's climate over the next century, based on 16 different climate 
models, grouping the results according to varying amounts of global warming they 
predicted by 2100: less than 2C on average, 2C-3C and more than 3C. He then used 
the simulations to work out how the world's plants would be affected over the 
next few hundred years. The results were published yesterday in the 
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Alan O'Neill, science director for the National Centre for Earth Observation, 
said: "Some work in this area has been done before looking at the 
meteorological forecasts for climate change and feeding those into vegetation models ... 
this is a much more comprehensive study."

He added that Dr Scholze's results would give climate scientists the most 
accurate scientific projection yet of the future effects of global warming.

Dr Scholze said the effects of a 2C category were inevitable. This is the 
temperature rise that will happen, on average, even if the world immediately 
stopped emitting greenhouse gases. This scenario predicts that Europe, Asia, 
Canada, central America and Amazonia could lose up to 30% of its forests.

A rise of 2C-3C will mean less fresh water available in parts of west Africa, 
central America, southern Europe and the eastern US, raising the probability 
of drought in these areas. In contrast, the tropical parts of Africa and South 
America will be at greater risk of flooding as trees are lost. Dr Scholze 
says a global temperature rise of more than 3C will mean even less fresh water. 
Loss of forest in Amazonia and Europe, Asia, Canada and central America could 
reach 60%.

A 3C warming could also present a yet more dangerous scenario where the 
temperatures induce plants to become net producers of carbon dioxide. "As 
temperatures go up, plants like it better and they start to grow more vigorously and 
start to take up more carbon dioxide from the air," Dr O'Neill said. "But there 
comes a point where the take-up is saturated for a given vegetation cover, 
then the ecosystem starts to respire more than it's taking up."

Dr Scholze's work shows that this so-called "tipping point" could arrive by 
the middle of this century. His scenarios echo research from the UK's Hadley 
Centre, a world leader in climate change modelling. In a report published last 
year called Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, scientists at the centre 
predicted that a 3C rise in average temperatures would cause a worldwide drop in 
cereal crops of between 20m and 400m tonnes, put 400 million more people at risk 
of hunger, and put up to 3 billion people at risk of flooding and without 
access to fresh water supplies.

In May, David King, the government's chief scientific adviser, warned that 
the world's temperature would rise by 3C, causing catastrophic damage around the 
world, unless governments took urgent action to reduce carbon emissions.

Dr Scholze said his work could help to define the concept of dangerous 
climate change for policymakers. "Dangerous is very objective. We tried to define a 
dangerous level and see what the risks are," he said. In his definition, 
climate change becomes dangerous when an event - such as extreme flooding or 
heatwaves - that only happened once every 100 years becomes one that happens every 
10 years.

He added that a rise of 3C was not inevitable. "We can't just do what we do 
at the moment, what we call business as usual. We have a few decades - we have 
to do something before 2040."

Burning issue

At the rate we are burning fossil fuels, global temperatures could easily 
increase by more than the 3C rise that Marko Scholze's research warns could 
increase flooding, forest fires and droughts. A 2001 report by the 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said an increase of between 1.4 and 5.8C by 2100 
would be caused if current carbon emissions continue.

Global sea levels would rise by between 0.09 and 0.88 metres as a result. 
Scientists at the UK Climate Impacts Programme predict that a 3C rise or above 
would reduce rain on the south coast to half of current levels, by more than 40% 
across the rest of England and 30% in Scotland.

Sea levels could be 70cm higher in the south and there would be a 17-fold 
increase in flooding on the east coast. London could face a £25bn clean-up bill 
after a storm surge that would overwhelm the Thames barrier.

-------------------------------------

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
August 15, 2006

Environmentalists say European firms using stolen Indonesian wood

Jakarta -- A coalition of environmental groups on Tuesday accused
leading European flooring manufacturers of using wood stolen from
Indonesia's last remaining rainforests.

The London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and its
Indonesian partner Telapak had previously released evidence claiming
that much of the merbau timber sold as flooring by several European
and North American flooring manufacturers had come from Indonesia's
strife-torn Papua province, where illegal logging is rampant.

The groups said that although many British and American flooring
retailers moved immediately to remove the products from sale, three
European manufacturers refused to do so. The groups identified the
manufacturers as Tarkett of Germany, Kahrs of Sweden, and Junkers of
Denmark.

"While we applaud the swift response of the large retail chains, we
are appalled by the failure of major flooring brands to take similar
decisive action," Sam Lawson, a senior investigator with EIA, said in
a joint-statement with Telapak. "These companies are clearly
more concerned with supplying the demands of consumers for cheap and
fashionable flooring than they are with keeping their hands free of
contraband wood."

The statement said Junkers had made "considerable effort" to
investigate the groups' findings but continues to use Indonesian
merbau, while the other two manufacturers have not responded to EIA
and Telapak's investigation.

Papua, one of the world's most remote areas, lies on the eastern end
of the Indonesian archipelago and is home to some of the last
significant tracts of virgin tropical forest in Asia.

Rampant illegal logging, in many cases protected by Indonesian
security forces, has enabled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of
prime timber to be smuggled out of the province and shipped abroad.

Around 60 million hectares of pristine forest across Indonesia has
vanished in the last 20 years because of over-cutting, illegal
logging, land conversion, natural disasters and forest fires,
according to The Jakarta Post newspaper. According to EIA, Indonesia
was the largest source of illegal timber and wood products to the
European Union in 2004.

----------------------------------------------------------------

China denies plundering world's rain forests

BEIJING, August 15 (Reuters) - China on Tuesday denied accusations of
plundering the world's rain forests to meet booming demand for wood.

Environment groups say China is at the heart of a global trade for
lumber it sells to markets in the United States and Europe and that
much of its plywood exports comes from illegal logging.

Domestic demand from a fast-growing economy only adds to the problem, they 
say.

"As for the question that China's large demand for timber assists
illegal logging and smuggling from Asia, this statement has no
basis,"State Forestry Administration spokesman Cao Qingyao told a news
conference.

"The Chinese government consistently upholds and puts in practice
collective international responsibility, opposing and cracking down on
illegal logging in illegal wood imports," Cao said. "We have very
strict import controls."

Global Witness, a British-based non-governmental organisation, said
last year China imported timber from Myanmar alone worth an estimated
$350 million, almost all of it illegal.

But the group conducted an investigation in May that showed Chinese
checkpoints had been sealed to log transports from the former Burma,
where years of military rule and ethnic unrest in remote mountain
areas have lead to widescale forest clearances.

A report issued in March by the Centre for International Forestry
Research and other groups found about 70 percent of all timber
imported into China, now the largest consumer of wood from tropical
developing countries, was converted into furniture, plywood and other
processed products for export.

China accounted for over half the log exports from Papua New Guinea,
Myanmar and Indonesia, the report said.

Cao said that over the next few years China's timber trade would be
stable, with exports not exceeding imports, though that for certain
products, like paper, there was still a lack of domestically sourced
wood.

"But at the same time, we export a large amount of wood, and in 2005
our exports exceeded imports," he said.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Indonesian orangutans given rare second chance at forest life

JAKARTA, August 15 (AFP) -- Indonesian orangutans which used to
perform at a seaside park in the capital were flown to Borneo Tuesday
where they will prepare to resume jungle life, animal workers said.

They said the rare voluntary handover of 13 orangutans set a good
precedent for other Indonesian parks, many of which hold conservation
licenses. Due to vague laws, this permits them to make the endangered
primates perform.

"This is important because it sets a very good example for other
institutions which have a licence and keep orangutans," Irma
Hermawati, the director of Indonesia's Animal Advocacy Institute, told
AFP.

The saffron-haired animals were handed over by Ancol recreational park
to the forestry department on Tuesday, after the institute lodged
complaints with the park.

The primates had been given to the park by individuals who could no
longer keep them as pets, said Wahyu Wigati, a spokesperson for the
Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation.

Indonesia's forestry department handed custody of the animals to the
foundation, which runs a rehabilitation centre in jungle-clad East
Kalimantan on Borneo island where animals are taught how to live in
the wild.

Three left Tuesday and four more of the group were to leave on
Thursday, but the remainder needed medical treatment or observation in
the capital for now, Wigati told AFP.

Training involves a gradual process of introducing them to other
orangutans, adapting their diet and allowing them to learn to use
forest items, before moving them to a halfway house and then finally
the jungle.

The process can take up to five years.

The centre last month accepted two smuggled orangutans which were
repatriated from Vietnam.

Parmitha Ananda, a manager from the centre, said an ongoing issue was
finding locations to release rehabilitated apes.

"There is not a lot of forest any more in Kalimantan, in Borneo. We
work very hard, together with the forestry department, to find new
release sites," she told AFP.

Orangutans, the only great ape to be found outside of Africa, are
native to the island of Sumatra in Indonesia and to Borneo.

Experts say only about 27,000 remain in the wild and populations are
fast declining due to deforestation and trafficking.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Online Dating Is Planned for Orangutans

By MIKE CORDER, Associated Press Writer

THE HAGUE Netherlands, August 15 (AP) -- Single male (red hair, long
arms, interests include hanging in trees and grooming) seeks female
for long-distance relationship and possibility of meeting up in future
to help save species.

Zookeepers in the Netherlands are planning to hook up Dutch and
Indonesian orangutans over the Internet and believe the link could at
some stage be used as an online dating service where apes could get to
know one another and keepers could work out whether they would be
compatible mates.

First things first: A romantic dinner for two.

"We are going to set up an Internet connection between Indonesia and
Apeldoorn so that the apes can see each other and, by means of
pressing a button, be able to give one another food, for example,"
said Anouk Ballot, a spokeswoman for the Apenheul ape park in the
central Dutch city of Apeldoorn.

She said the chance of two orangutans actually mating as a result of
the online interaction was small due to the problem of transporting
them between the Netherlands and Indonesia. "But I wouldn't rule it
out completely," she told The Associated Press.

Ballot said the primary aim of the computer link between Apenheul and
an orangutan center on the Indonesian part of Borneo was to raise
public awareness of the apes and their plight. Activists say that the
spread of palm oil plantations, coupled with logging, especially on
Malaysian and Indonesian territories on Borneo island, is threatening
animals such as wild orangutans with extinction by chewing up their
native jungle habitat.

Ballot said that, in the past, captive orangutans separated by a wall
have communicated with one another via a mirror placed in front of the
two enclosures. Using Web cams and computer screens is an extension of
that, she said.

She stressed that only orangutans who show a natural interest and
aptitude will take part. The Apenheul park has 13 orangutans among its
collection of apes.

There is still work to be done to set up the Internet connection. "We
need to find ape-proof cables and screens," Ballot said, adding that
the zoo hopes to have the orangutans online by the end of this year or
early 2007.

So next time you run into someone in a chatroom and think "what a
baboon," think twice: it just might be.

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