Brazil forecasts record ethanol production in 2008

Brazilian officials forecast on Tuesday record sugar cane crops and record ethanol production for 2008 that will boost exports of ethanol by more than 23 percent.

The Agriculture Ministry forecast that Brazil is expected to produce between 15 and 19 percent more ethanol than in 2007, or up to 27,400 million liters.

Of that, ethanol exports are forecast to reach 4,200 million liters, up from the current 3,400 million liters a year.

Sugar cane production will also set historic records, expected to increase between nine and 13 percent over last year's production.

Brazil is the world's leading ethanol producer, with the bulk of its production going to the internal market as fuel or additive for gasoline.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva dismissed as an "absurd distortion" on Tuesday talk that the global food crisis is due to the boom in crops dedicated to ethanol production.

According to the agriculture ministry, a mere 2.8 percent of Brazil's agricultural land is dedicated to sugar cane production, mainly destined for ethanol.

US pressed to put wolves back on endangered species list

Several environmental groups said they filed a legal complaint Monday to force the federal government to put the wolf back on the list of endangered species, claiming some states were allowing indiscriminate killing of the animal.

The US government early last year removed the wolf from the list of endangered species in six US states, after successful recovery and reintroduction programs brought the animal back from the brink of extinction.

Since the protective measure was lifted, management of local wolf populations has reverted to state governments on condition they ensure the species' survival.

However, 12 environmental groups went to federal court in Missoula, Montana, asking that the protective measure be restored in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, where northern Rockies gray wolves "remain threatened by biased, inadequate state management plans."

Defenders of Wildlife said in a statement that Wyoming and Idaho authorities had given their residents a blank check for the "senseless and indiscriminate killing of wolves."

"For example, on the very day delisting took effect -- March 28, 2008 -- Idaho Governor Butch Otter signed into law a new Idaho law allowing Idaho citizens to kill wolves without a permit whenever wolves are annoying, disturbing or 'worrying' livestock or domestic animals," the environmental groups said in another statement.

They added that Wyoming, in turn, "has implemented its 'kill on sight' predator law in nearly 90 percent of the state.

"Not surprisingly, these hostile state laws have resulted in a wave of wolf killings."

Wolves in 1974 almost disappeared as a species in 48 US states -- excluding Alaska and Hawaii -- except for some isolated packs in Minnesota and Michigan.

In 1995, 66 wolves were released by the government in Idaho and in the nearby Yellowstone National Park with the hope they would propagate and multiply.

The program was successful. Currently, an estimated 1,200 wolves roam Idaho, Montana and Wyoming and, to tourists' delight, in Yellowstone's 8,900 square kilometers (3,440 square miles) of parkland.

However, influential farmers in the region opposed to the reintroduction of the predator argue strongly about the financial drain caused by wolf attacks on livestock.

Narwhals more at risk to Arctic warming than polar bears

The polar bear has become an icon of global warming vulnerability, but a new study found an Arctic mammal that may be even more at risk to climate change: the narwhal.

The narwhal, a whale with a long spiral tusk that inspired the myth of the unicorn, edged out the polar bear for the ranking of most potentially vulnerable in a climate change risk analysis of Arctic marine mammals.

The study was published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Ecological Applications. Polar bears are considered marine mammals because they are dependent on the water and are included as a species in the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Scientists from three countries quantified the vulnerabilities that 11 year-round Arctic sea mammals have as the world warms. After the narwhal — which is also known as the "corpse whale" — and polar bear, the most at risk were the hooded seal, bowhead whale and walrus. The ringed seal and bearded seal were least at risk.

"What we wanted to do was look at the whole picture because there's been a lot of attention on polar bears," said study co-author Ian Stirling, a polar bear and seal specialist for the Canadian government. "We're talking about a whole ecosystem. We're talking about several different species that use ice extensively and are very vulnerable."

The study looked at nine different variables that help determine ability to withstand future climate changes. Those factors included population size, habitat uniqueness, diet diversity and ability to cope with sea ice changes.

This doesn't mean the narwhal — with a current population of 50,000 to 80,000 — will die off first; polar bear counts are closer to 20,000 and they are directly harmed by melting ice, scientists said.

But it does mean the potential for harm is slightly greater for the less-studied narwhal, said study lead author Kristin Laidre, a research scientist at the University of Washington.

Stanford University biologist Terry Root, who wasn't part of the study, said the analysis reinforces her concern that the narwhal "is going to be one of the first to go extinct" from global warming despite their population size.

"There could a bazillion of them, but if the habitat or the things that they need are not going to be around, they're not going to make it," Root said.

Polar bears can adapt a bit to the changing Arctic climate, narwhals can't, she said.

While polar bears are "good-looking fluffy white creatures," Laidre said narwhals, which are medium-sized whales, are "not that cute."

The narwhal, which dives about 6,000 feet to feed on Greenland halibut, is the ultimate specialist, evolved specifically to live in small cracks in parts of the Arctic where it's 99 percent heavy ice, Laidre said. As the ice melts, not only is the narwhal habitat changed, predators such as killer whales will likely intrude more often.

"Since it's so restricted to the migration routes it takes, it's restricted to what it eats, it makes it more vulnerable to the loss of those things," Laidre said in a telephone interview from Greenland, where she is studying narwhals by airplane.

The paper is the talk of Arctic scientists said Bob Corell, the head of an international team of scientists who wrote a massive assessment of risk in the Arctic in 2004 but wasn't part of this study. He called it "surprising because the polar bear gets a lot of attention."

Inuit natives of Greenland were telling scientists last year that it seemed that the narwhal population was in trouble, Corell said.

Canadian panel: Climate change is threat to polar bears

A scientific committee that advises Canada's government on endangered species said Friday that climate change is a threat to the survival of the polar bear, but the species does not face extinction.

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada determined that the polar bear was a "special concern species" because evidence wasn't strong enough to recommend elevating the polar bear's status to threatened or endangered.

"That's not to say that it's not in trouble," said committee chairman Jeff Hutchings. "A special concern species is a species at risk in Canada."

Hutchings said that the committee is not recommending changing the status because it's difficult to calculate how melting summer sea ice — the polar bear's habitat — correlates with declining numbers of the species.

"Does a 10 percent reduction in sea ice result in a 10 percent reduction in polar bears? There's lots of models, lots of predictions, lots of projections, and the committee felt that there is still sufficient uncertainty...to determine how precisely polar bears might be affected by reductions in sea ice."

However, Pete Ewins of the World Wildlife Fund pointed out that seven of Canada's 13 populations are either in decline or showing signs of stress such as reduced body weight due to climate change.

Ewins called the committee's recommendation not to change the polar bear's status "an easy way out."

Along with the reduction of sea ice, a consequence of increasing temperatures, Hutchings also noted that over-harvesting in the northern part of the polar bears' range puts the bears at risk of survival.

If Environment Minister John Baird accepts the group's findings, Canada would need to address threats to the animal's survival, including climate change.

"Our government believes that the polar bear is an iconic symbol of Canada. As such, we also believe we have a responsibility to ensure its population is strong and its future is certain," said Baird in a statement Friday.

In Ottawa, Baird said the government will begin consulting environmentalists, scientists and wildlife managers on how to proceed after he receives the committee's report in August. But a management plan wouldn't be required until 2014 — a date by which some scientists believe the Arctic could be completely free of summer sea ice.

If the polar bear had been placed in the "threatened" status, Canada would have required prohibitions like bans on hunting and destruction of habitat for the country's estimated 15,500 polar bears, roughly two-thirds of the global population.

The Canadian discussion on the polar bear's status mirrors a similar debate in the United States, where the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is deciding whether to declare the animals endangered.

Last September, the US Geological Survey said that two-thirds of the world's polar bears could be gone by mid-century if predictions of melting sea ice hold true.

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada examined 31 various species and concluded the ferruginous hawk was upgraded to threatened from special concern, while two populations of the eastern foxsnake in Ontario are now considered endangered.

Artificially cooling Earth may prove perilous: study

Radical proposals to inject sulfur particles into the Earth's stratosphere to cool it down and battle global warming could instead badly damage the ozone layer, a study warned Thursday.

"Our research indicates that trying to artificially cool off the planet could have perilous side effects," said researcher Simone Tilmes from the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

"While climate change is a major threat, more research is required before society attempts global geoengineering solutions."

The study, published Thursday in Science Express, warns that injecting sulfate particles into the air at an altitude of some 10 to 50 kilometers (six to 30 miles), could lead to a loss of ozone above the Arctic and delay the recovery of the hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica by decades.

In the past few years, scientists have been studying "geoengineering" ways to combat global warming rather than by just reducing emissions of greenhouse gases alone.

One of the ideas put forward and studied by Nobel Chemistry laureate Paul Crutzen draws on the lessons learnt from volcanic explosions, when vast amounts of sulfur particles are unleashed into the air.

The sulfur, which blocks the sun's rays, has in the past led to a cooling of surface temperatures around the volcano site.

Researchers, led by Tilmes, studied what would happen if regular, large amounts of sulfate particles were artificially injected into the atmosphere with the aim of cooling the surface temperatures.

But in fact the team found that over the next few decades, such large amounts of sulfates would likely destroy between about 25 to 75 percent of the ozone layer above the Arctic.

This could have a devastating effect on the northern hemisphere, computer simulations showed. The expected recovery of the hole over the Antarctic would also be delayed by 30 to 70 years.

Researchers found that such large amounts of sulfates would enable chlorine gases found in the cold layers of the stratosphere above the two Poles to become active, triggering a chemical reaction harmful to ozone.

Ozone is an unusual molecule. Ground-level ozone produced by pollution, mostly from cars, is harmful to the health. But in the stratosphere, where is it produced naturally, it screens out the sun's dangerous ultra-violet rays, which can cause such things as skin cancer.

"This study highlights another connection between global warming and ozone depletion," said co-author Ross Salawitch of the University of Maryland.

"These traditionally had been thought of as separate problems but are now increasingly recognized to be coupled in subtle, yet profoundly important, manners."

The damaging effects of such sulfate treatments would be lessened in the second half of the century, when international accords on banning the production of ozone-depleting chemicals are due to be fully felt, the study added.

U.S. environment scientists report political meddling

Nearly 900 scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency have experienced political interference in their work in the last five years, the Union of Concerned Scientists reported on Wednesday.

The nonprofit environmental organization said its investigation of EPA was in line with previous probes of other U.S. agencies which found "significant administration manipulation of federal science."

A government spokesman denied this, and said scientific findings were balanced with policy concerns.

"Our investigation found an agency in crisis," said Francesca Grifo of the Union of Concerned Scientists, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency. "Distorting science to accommodate a narrow political agenda threatens our environment, our health and our democracy itself."

The report included interviews with current and former staff members, analysis of government documents and a questionnaire sent to 5,419 EPA scientists, which generated 1,586 responses.

Of those responses, 889 scientists or 60 percent, said they had personally experienced at least one instance of political interference in the last five years; 394 said they experienced frequent or occasional "statements by EPA officials that misrepresent scientists' findings."

More than one-fifth, or 285, said they had experienced "selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome," the report said.

Nearly 100 scientists said the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was the main offender.

"OMB and the White House have, in some cases, compromised the integrity of EPA rules and policies; their influence, largely hidden from the public and driven by industry lobbying, has decreased the stringency of proposed regulations for nonscientific, political reasons," one scientist wrote in response to the investigation.

A spokesman for EPA, Jonathan Shradar, denied these allegations.

"Certainly OMB plays a policy role," Shradar said by telephone. "It's important that there is inter-agency cooperation. There's not interference against the scientific work that they're doing, that's still highly respected and taken into account."

U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who chairs the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, called on EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson to respond to questions about the report at a committee hearing in May.

The EPA has come under fire recently for its standard for ground-level ozone, which critics claim is too high. The agency is also in a court fight with 18 U.S. states over its failure to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and trucks, more than a year after the Supreme Court ruled EPA had the power to do so.

(Editing by David Wiessler)

Scientists study Arctic haze for clues to rapid melting

Visitors to Alaska often marvel at the crisp, clear air. But the truth is, the skies above the Arctic Circle work like a giant lint trap during late winter and early spring, catching all sorts of pollutants swirling around the globe.

In recent weeks, scientists have been going up in government research planes and taking samples of the Arctic haze in hopes of solving a mystery: Are the floating particles accelerating the unprecedented warming going on in the far north?

While carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that trap the Earth's heat are believed to be the chief cause of global warming, scientists suspect that airborne particles known as aerosols are also contributing to the Arctic meltdown.

To prove their suspicions, they are analyzing the haze, using mass spectroscopy and other technology to identify what is in it, where it came from and how it interacts with the clouds, the sunlight and the snow cover.

Their air samples have been found to contain dust from Asian deserts, salts that swell up moisture, particles from incomplete burning of organic material from forest and cooking fires, and all manner of nasties emitted by automobile tailpipes, factory smokestacks and power plants.

Collectively, they are a United Nations of pollution. Through chemical analysis, the particles can be traced to their sources throughout Asia, Europe and North America.

"The Arctic is a melting pot for mid-latitude pollution," said Daniel Jacob, a Harvard scientist taking part in the research. "We have signatures of just about everything you can imagine flying around in the Arctic."

The research is being conducted separately by NASA, the Department of Energy and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, and involves about 275 scientists and support staff and five aircraft.

The researchers are building on the work of a University of Alaska Fairbanks atmospheric scientist who arrived 35 years ago. Glenn Shaw took a light meter to Barrow, America's northernmost community, figuring he could document the clearest skies on the globe and perhaps get a mention in a scientific journal.

"I was expecting to set a record," he said, "because at the northern tip of Alaska, there's no industry, and the idea was that this must be the cleanest place, essentially, almost, on planet Earth."

He was wrong. Shaw detected a phenomenon later dubbed Arctic Haze that indicated the skies above Barrow and all the way to the North Pole collect pollutants.

"The important thing was, and is, this is aerosol material that is traveling over three or four thousand miles, which was unprecedented at the time," he said.

The focus on greenhouse gases has made it difficult to bring other possible agents of climate change into the discussion, Jacob said. But last summer's startling melt-off of Arctic sea ice has lent new urgency to the research blitz now under way.

It is well-established that soot that has fallen on snow can absorb heat from the sun and cause melting. But the researchers are also interested in what the soot does while it is still airborne.

Among other things, they want to know how the size and density of the particles alter the type and longevity of clouds, said Greg McFarquhar of the University of Illinois. Also, they want to find out whether the airborne particles reflect heat back into space or absorb it.

In most of the world, particles lead to cooling by reflecting light before it reaches the Earth's surface, partially offsetting the warming effect of greenhouse gases.

But A.R. Ravishankara of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory said he suspects that's not the case in the Arctic, where ice and snow already reflect much of the light. Some particles may absorb the sun's energy and give off their own radiant heat, like blacktop on a summer day, he said.

"How much of this aerosol is there?" Ravishankara asked, summarizing some of things scientists hope to find out. "Do they absorb light? Do they scatter light? Do they make clouds brighter or dimmer? Are they getting to the ice surface? Because if you add these absorbing particles to the ice surface, it could actually enhance the melting."

If aerosols prove to be a major factor in warming, Ravishankara said, removing them could yield relatively fast benefits for the environment.

"It lasts only for a few days, and then it's removed from the atmosphere, unlike carbon dioxide, which stays with us for hundreds of years," he said. "Aerosols can be a way to do something very quickly."

___

On the Net:

NASA Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites: http://www.espo.nasa.gov/arctas/logos.php

NOAA Aerosol, Radiation, and Cloud Processes affecting Arctic Climate: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/arcpac/

DOE Indirect and Semi-Direct Aerosol Campaign: http://acrf-campaign.arm.gov/isdac/

UN, World Bank to spearhead Mediterranean anti-pollution project

The United Nations' environment arm and the World Bank will work on a programme worth over 250 million dollars (158 million euros) to reduce pollution in the Mediterranean, the UN agency said Monday.

The five-year project will focus on boosting reforms and investment in various countries that border the Mediterranean to safeguard biodiversity and stop habitat degradation, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said.

The countries eligible for funding include Albania, Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Montenegro, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey, while the Palestinian Authority will also participate, the Athens-based organisation said.

"Apart from the World Bank, the partnership involves other relevant UN agencies, international financial institutions and bilateral and multilateral donors, making it the largest partnership ever for pollution reduction in the Mediterranean," UNEP coordinator Paul Mifsud said in a statement.

Marine biologists note that rising temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea due to pollution-related causes have led to the migration of a number of species from warmer waters.

Last June, fishermen in Greece were warned to avoid a torpedo-shaped puffer fish from the Red Sea, Lagocephalus scleratus, that can be lethal for humans.

Climate projects prevented 135 million tonnes of CO2: agency

Projects to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in developing countries have prevented 135 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from entering Earth's atmosphere so far, the Norwegian classification group Det Norske Veritas (DNV) said on Monday.

The projects, known as Clean Development Mechanisms (CDMs) and defined in the Kyoto Protocol, allow industrialised countries and their companies to finance projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gases in developing countries.

In return the investors are credited with emission rights.

The 1,000th project has just been certified in India, said Det Norske Veritas, one of the world's leading classification agencies.

"CDM projects have so far generated more than 135 million certified emission reductions (CERs, each unit of which is equivalent to one tonne of CO2)," it said.

"The mechanism is currently anticipated to generate more than 2.7 billion CERs in the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period" that runs from 2008 to 2012, it added.

By comparison, Norway emitted 53.7 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent last year.

CDM projects, which have primarily benefitted China and India so far, are not free from controversy.

Critics argue that some dam projects in China have been officially certified as CDMs even though they were partially constructed before being given the certification -- suggesting they would actually be used outside the CDM framework.

"There's always a chance that mistakes are made. But the criteria have been gradually tightened. It's typically a case of learning by doing," Det Norske Veritas's global director of climate change services Luc Larmuseau told AFP.

Australia's brightest brain-storm for progress

Inscribing Aboriginal rights into Australia's constitution, abolishing states and a fresh push for a republic led ideas at a summit of the nation's top minds on Saturday, bringing Hollywood together with corporate chiefs.

"Today we are throwing open the windows of our democracy to let a little bit of fresh air in," Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told the gathering of 1,000 scientists, unionists and central bankers, as well as actors Cate Blanchett and Hugh Jackman.

Aborigines with didgeridoos and wearing loin cloths opened the two-day brainstorming session, which Rudd has asked to throw up at least 10 big ideas to improve Australia's future by 2020.

Critics have panned the meeting as a unwieldy talk-fest.

At the end of the first day, ideas raised included abolishing the country's six states to streamline government, having a treaty between Aborigines and other Australians, a fairer tax system and corporate-sponsored schools.

Delegates also reignited Australia's push to become a republic and sever historic ties to Britain's monarchy, after voters rejected the idea in 1999.

Power participants included the chief executive of mining giant BHP Billiton, Marius Kloppers, and Australia's richest man and Fortescue Metals mining head Andrew Forrest.

Other issues included combating drought, how to spend billions of dollars from the country's China-driven resource export boom and keep economic growth at near 3.9 percent a year.

"We need to anticipate change ahead or else we'll be swamped by it," Rudd said, pointing to the rise of China and India fast re-shaping the world's future, before appearing to doze off in one televised session on climate change.

Climate ideas included an independent greenhouse regulator, personal carbon footprint limits, and a levy on coal exports -- the world's largest -- to pay for development of cleaner coal technologies.

Treasurer Wayne Swan told economic thinkers, including Reserve Bank chief Glenn Stevens, they had "a hunting license for new ideas" on dealing with an ageing population, inflation touching 3.6 percent and not squandering the resource boom.

"Our terms of trade are likely to increase more in the coming year than they have in any year since the boom began," Swan said, just weeks from an austere May 13 Budget delivering a expected surplus of around A$20 billion to combat rising inflation.

'MAD, BAD -- OR BOTH'

Aboriginal Ngambri tribe elder Matilda House-Williams, wearing a cape of possum fur, opened the summit with a challenge to improve the lives of indigenous people, who often live in remote settlements with poor access to health and education.

"I want to see our people healthy, living in this lucky country. That's a target," House-Williams said, urging Rudd and others to be open to ideas "mad or bad, or both."

Rudd, whose centre-left Labor government ended almost 12 years of conservative rule in November, said ideas must be affordable and he would respond by the end of the year.

"I say it's worth having a go through this summit, even if we fail. What is there to be lost from trying?" Rudd said.

Oscar-winning actress Blanchett, chairing a creativity brainstorming panel, brought her third son Ignatius, born only six days earlier.

"It is a measure of my belief in the weekend that I am here at all, as you could imagine I would rather be in bed," she said.

($1=A$1.07)

(Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

Australia's brightest brain-storm for progress

Inscribing Aboriginal rights into Australia's constitution, abolishing states and a fresh push for a republic led ideas at a summit of the nation's top minds on Saturday, bringing Hollywood together with corporate chiefs.

"Today we are throwing open the windows of our democracy to let a little bit of fresh air in," Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told the gathering of 1,000 scientists, unionists and central bankers, as well as actors Cate Blanchett and Hugh Jackman.

Aborigines with didgeridoos and wearing loin cloths opened the two-day brainstorming session, which Rudd has asked to throw up at least 10 big ideas to improve Australia's future by 2020.

Critics have panned the meeting as a unwieldy talk-fest.

At the end of the first day, ideas raised included abolishing the country's six states to streamline government, having a treaty between Aborigines and other Australians, a fairer tax system and corporate-sponsored schools.

Delegates also reignited Australia's push to become a republic and sever historic ties to Britain's monarchy, after voters rejected the idea in 1999.

Power participants included the chief executive of mining giant BHP Billiton, Marius Kloppers, and Australia's richest man and Fortescue Metals mining head Andrew Forrest.

Other issues included combating drought, how to spend billions of dollars from the country's China-driven resource export boom and keep economic growth at near 3.9 percent a year.

"We need to anticipate change ahead or else we'll be swamped by it," Rudd said, pointing to the rise of China and India fast re-shaping the world's future, before appearing to doze off in one televised session on climate change.

Climate ideas included an independent greenhouse regulator, personal carbon footprint limits, and a levy on coal exports -- the world's largest -- to pay for development of cleaner coal technologies.

Treasurer Wayne Swan told economic thinkers, including Reserve Bank chief Glenn Stevens, they had "a hunting license for new ideas" on dealing with an ageing population, inflation touching 3.6 percent and not squandering the resource boom.

"Our terms of trade are likely to increase more in the coming year than they have in any year since the boom began," Swan said, just weeks from an austere May 13 Budget delivering a expected surplus of around A$20 billion to combat rising inflation.

'MAD, BAD -- OR BOTH'

Aboriginal Ngambri tribe elder Matilda House-Williams, wearing a cape of possum fur, opened the summit with a challenge to improve the lives of indigenous people, who often live in remote settlements with poor access to health and education.

"I want to see our people healthy, living in this lucky country. That's a target," House-Williams said, urging Rudd and others to be open to ideas "mad or bad, or both."

Rudd, whose centre-left Labor government ended almost 12 years of conservative rule in November, said ideas must be affordable and he would respond by the end of the year.

"I say it's worth having a go through this summit, even if we fail. What is there to be lost from trying?" Rudd said.

Oscar-winning actress Blanchett, chairing a creativity brainstorming panel, brought her third son Ignatius, born only six days earlier.

"It is a measure of my belief in the weekend that I am here at all, as you could imagine I would rather be in bed," she said.

($1=A$1.07)

(Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

Texas wildfire burns at least 5 homes; 150 more evacuated

A wildfire burned at least five homes Thursday in west Texas and forced the evacuation of about 150 residences, the Texas Forest Service said.

The fire has consumed about 50 acres, the agency said. At least one person was treated for breathing problems, city officials said.

"There are still multiple structure fires," said Andrea Goodson, a spokeswoman for the city of Odessa. "It started as a grassfire and we are experiencing 25 mph winds. This is one big fire."

Firefighters were also battling blazes in Colorado and New Mexico.

Snow blanketed the foothills and grasslands on a southern Colorado Army post Thursday where a fast-moving wildfire claimed the life of a firefighting pilot earlier in the week. The fire had forced as many as 800 people were forced to leave their homes.

The blaze, which burned across 15 square miles of Fort Carson, was 50 percent contained. Two other fires in the state this week were fully contained Wednesday, including one that killed two firefighters.

The National Weather Service could not say how much snow fell on the Fort Carson fire, but 2 inches had fallen in nearby Colorado Springs, about 60 miles south of Denver.

The fire in Ordway, a farming community about 120 miles southeast of Denver, destroyed at least eight homes and prompted authorities to order all 1,200 residents to evacuate. Two volunteer firefighters died when their fire truck plunged into a ravine while trying to cross a bridge.

A blaze near Carbondale in the western Colorado mountains, about 120 miles west of Denver, damaged two buildings and slightly injured a fisherman. That fire started after high winds exposed an ember from a property owner's controlled burn, the Garfield County Sheriff's Department said.

Carbondale Fire Chief Ron Leach said his department had not issued any burn permits — required for controlled burns — that day. The investigation was continuing, and no one had been charged.

The causes of the other Colorado fires were still under investigation.

Elsewhere, crews took advantage of precipitation and lower temperatures Thursday to establish fire lines around a blaze that has burned an estimated 650 acres in rugged, steep terrain of the Manzano Mountains in central New Mexico. The fire was 16 percent contained, the U.S. Forest Service said.

Borneo pygmy elephants may be extinction survivors: WWF

Borneo's mysterious pygmy elephants may be the last survivors of Javan elephants thought to have become extinct centuries ago, the environmental group WWF said Thursday.

Researchers believe the pygmy elephants, which are much smaller and more docile than their cousins found elsewhere in Asia, were brought to Borneo by royalty long ago, and then abandoned in the jungle.

"It's exciting to consider that the forest-dwelling Borneo elephants may be the last vestiges of a subspecies that went extinct on its native Java Island, in Indonesia, centuries ago," said retired Malaysian forester Shim Phyau Soon.

"Elephants were shipped from place to place across Asia many hundreds of years ago, usually as gifts between rulers," said Shim, whose ideas on the origins of the elephants WWF said had inspired the latest research.

Scientists have long wondered about the origins of the pygmy elephant, and why they are found only in a section of Borneo. There are perhaps just 1,000 of them in the wild, mostly in the Malaysian state of Sabah.

WWF said the new study found no archaeological evidence of a long-term elephant presence on Borneo, reinforcing the theory that they were brought there centuries ago by the Sultan of Sulu, which is now in the Philippines.

"Just one fertile female and one fertile male elephant, if left undisturbed in enough good habitat, could in theory end up as a population of 2,000 elephants within less than 300 years," said WWF's Junaidi Payne who co-authored the paper.

"And that may be what happened in practice here."

The pygmy elephant has an appealing rounded appearance, and males stand only about 2.5 metres tall, compared to about 3.0 metres for mainland Asian elephants.

Their faces are smaller and squarer, their tails are longer, reaching almost to the ground, and their tusks are straighter.

Another major difference is their good temperament, calmer even than the Asian elephant which is famously cooperative and hardworking compared to the larger, more aggressive African subspecies which is rarely tamed.

It was only in 2003 that the pygmy elephants were identified as a new subspecies after DNA testing found they were genetically distinct.

WWF said satellite tracking has shown the animals prefer the same lowland habitat that is being increasingly cleared for timber rubber and palm oil plantations.

"If they came from Java, this fascinating story demonstrates the value of efforts to save even small populations of certain species, often thought to be doomed," said Christy Williams, coordinator of its Asian elephant and rhino programme.

"It gives us the courage to propose such undertakings with the small remaining populations of critically endangered Sumatran rhinos and Javan rhinos, by translocating a few to better habitats to increase their numbers.

"It has worked for Africa's southern white rhinos and Indian rhinos, and now we have seen it may have worked for the Javan elephant, too."

Chevron denies 16.5-billion-dollar pollution damage in Ecuador

US oil giant Chevron on Monday rejected a court report holding it liable for 16.5 billion dollars in alleged environmental damage in Ecuador between 1964-1990, saying it owes the Ecuadoran government exactly "nothing."

"What we'll do is challenge it point by point ... and insist that the report is absurd and illegal," Chevron's Ecuador representative Rodrigo Perez told reporters after the government-commissioned report became known.

Quito has sued Chevron for widespread contamination its Texaco subsidiary's oil drilling operations allegedly caused in Amazon territories in the 26 years before it was sold to Ecuador's state-run oil company Petroecuador.

Several indigenous communities also filed a class-action lawsuit against Chevron in 2003, seeking compensation for soil pollution in their Amazon homelands.

A New York court in 1990 ordered Texaco to stand trial in Ecuador on environmental charges, the first time a US oil company was told to answer to charges in a foreign country.

However, Perez said his company "owes nothing for many reasons," including a 1995-1998 cleanup it did in the territories it had previously exploited that was approved by the Ecuadoran government.

"Any pollution you find now cannot reasonably have been caused by Texaco," he added.

Chevron, Perez said, "owes not a single penny" in Ecuador and "is not willing to give in," calling the Supreme Court-commissioned report "illegal and unfair."

The Quito-based Amazon Defense Coalition said Chevron had nobody to blame but itself for the legal mess it is in, since most of the evidence compiled in the official report came from the company's own field reports in the areas it exploited.

Even though Chevron analyzed soil samples from areas where it thought there was no contamination, the coalition said in a statement, "the lab results ... produced devastating numbers" of heavy metal contamination 200-630 times the US norms.

The expert report prepared by 15 scientists supervised by Ecuador's environmental department, the coalition added, "concluded ... that approximately 428 excess deaths from cancer could be attributed to the contamination left by oil field operations."

Dental offices may be source of mercury pollution

Dental practices may be a source of a dangerous form of mercury contamination in the water supply, a small study suggests.

In tests of wastewater from two dental practices, researchers at the University of Illinois found high levels of methylated mercury -- a chemically altered form of the metal that is toxic to the brain and nervous system.

Mercury is part of the silver dental fillings that have long been used to treat cavities; in this form, mercury is believed to be safe.

However, when dentists use drills to remove these fillings, the tiny mercury particles that end up in dental wastewater are exposed to sulfate-reducing bacteria that convert the particles into methyl mercury.

The new findings, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, raise the concern that dental offices may be an important source of methyl mercury in the public water supply.

"We found the highest levels of methyl mercury ever reported in any environmental water sample," researcher Dr. Karl J. Rockne, of the University of Illinois at Chicago, said in a statement.

He and his colleagues estimate that up to 11 pounds of methyl mercury from dental wastewater may enter the U.S. public water supply each year. The amount sounds small, but they note that minute amounts of this form of mercury can be toxic.

The findings are, however, based on tests from only two dental practices -- one "single-chair" office and one 12-chair clinic.

More research is still needed to confirm the results, Rockne said.

In the U.S., public drinking water supplies are monitored for mercury, and if a system's levels are consistently above a certain threshold, steps must be taken to reduce them to acceptable levels.

Mercury that gets into the water can also be consumed by fish and work its way into the food supply.

Dental offices are far from the most significant source of environmental mercury pollution in the U.S. Coal-fired power plants emit about 50 tons of mercury into the air each year.

However, the problem of mercury in dental wastewater can be fixed. Devices called amalgam separators can help remove mercury particles from wastewater, and are a "good first step," Rockne said.

But additional measures may be necessary, he added.

"We have to take more steps to prevent the problem from occurring in the first place," Rockne said. "We're dealing with a pipe -- a control point. As an engineer, I see this as a problem that is tractable -- something we can definitely do something about."

SOURCE: Environmental Science & Technology, online March 12.

Financing crucial to next climate change pact: U.N.

The global fight against climate change after the Kyoto pact expires will fail unless rich countries can come up with creative ways to finance clean development by poorer nations, a U.N. official said on Saturday.

"We are not going to see that major developing country engagement unless significant financial resources and technology flows begin to be mobilized," Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said in a media briefing.

De Boer and Katherine Sierra, World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development, said they were studying a long list of financing schemes and proposals and were hopeful of meeting an end-2009 deadline.

But they were acutely aware of critics who have expressed fears the World Bank will "hijack" billions of dollars of development aid to tackle climate change.

"The overriding concern of developing countries is economic growth and poverty eradication and you cannot expect developing countries to engage on the question of climate change and harm those overriding objectives," De Boer said.

"At the heart of this is intelligent financial engineering," he said.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick said in a speech on Thursday that "addressing climate change won't work if it is simply seen as a rich man's club."

The first formal talks to draw up a replacement to the Kyoto climate change pact, which ends in 2012, took place in Bangkok earlier this month with plans for another seven rounds of negotiations culminating in Copenhagen at the end of 2009.

U.N. climate experts want the new treaty to go beyond Kyoto by getting all countries to agree to curbs on emissions of the greenhouse gases that are fueling global warming.

Under Kyoto, only 37 rich nations are bound to cut emissions by an average of five percent from 1990 levels by 2012.

But developing countries want firm commitments of aid to meet the new targets that will eventually be set out.

The international carbon market is one source of funding but it is not enough, said De Boer who said he was very interested in a German proposal to auction emission rights and use the proceeds for international aid.

"That is a very interesting way of mobilizing new financial resources that are not related to official development assistance," he said.

The World Bank is developing a new strategy on climate change that includes embedding climate change into its existing programs to help countries boost their economies and combat poverty, said Sierra.

She said the bank would meet with donors over the next several days to discuss its proposals, including a $5-10 billion Clean Technology Fund, a $500 million "adaptation" fund and possibly a third fund dealing with forestry.

Zoellick said the needs of developing nations in climate change will be the subject of a Sunday meeting of World Bank officials and ministers from rich and poor countries.

(Reporting by Louise Egan, Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Greenpeace complains to EU over Slovak nuclear plans

The environmental group Greenpeace filed an official complaint with the European Commission on Friday, alleging illegal Slovakian state aid for a "pre-Chernobyl" nuclear power plant project.

The complaint claims that the Slovak authorities used "market-distorting measures" to push through "what would otherwise have been an unviable and unattractive project".

"What this case highlights is pretty simple: when you take dirty tricks out of the equation, nuclear power is expensive, unreliable and underperforming," said Greenpeace EU dirty-energy campaigner Jan Haverkamp in a statement.

A spokeswoman for the commission made no comment on the matter, saying only that the European competition watchdog had not yet received such a complaint.

Slovakia's biggest electricity producer, Slovenske Elektrarne plans to build two reactors at an existing nuclear power plant at Mochovce in the west of the country.

The company, which Italian power giant ENEL has a 66-percent stake with the remaining shares owned by the state, decided last year to complete work on the two mothballed blocs by 2013 with investment expected to total around 1.81-1.84 billion euros (2.37-2.41 billion dollars).

The work had stopped 16 years ago, shortly after the collapse of the former communist regime and ahead of Slovakia's independence in 1993 following the split of Czechoslovakia.

Haverkamp said "the pre-Chernobyl 1970s design of the new reactors raise serious security and environmental questions.

"The evidence gathered by Greenpeace clearly points towards illegal competition practices. We call on the commission to put an end to the nuclear protectionism of Slovakia," he added.

ENEL will be able to operate Mochovce at artificially lowered costs and decommissioning funds in Slovakia "will not be sufficient to fully cover the future decommissioning and waste disposal costs," Greenpeace said.

The green activists claim that Slovakia manipulated the figures by artificially lowering and capping levies paid towards decommissioning and waste funds.

On top of this, the group claims, the Slovak state "plans to massively increase contributions by all electricity consumers towards the so-called historic deficit' for decommissioning and waste management.

The planned new nuclear capacity forms a fundamental part of the Slovak government's plans to boost electricity production to power its booming economy with the country facing the prospect of becoming a net electricity importer from next year.

Costa Rica aims to be 'carbon neutral' by 2021

Costa Rica plans to balance out carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to become "carbon neutral" by 2021, through a joint government-private enterprise effort, without foresaking economic growth, the environment minister said Thursday.

Roberto Dobles outlined the ambitious plan that includes substituting petroleum and its derivatives with biofuels, thrifty and efficient use of energy and reducing agricultural burn-offs, at the two-day National Meeting for Carbon Neutrality.

With Britain and Spain participating, Dobles said the gathering of around 60 business leaders, academics, non-governmental organizations and environmental activists will share experiences in the field and help Costa Rica focus on its goal.

He said that besides reducing and compensating CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases emissions by coordinating government policy with the private sector, the plan will also continue a tree replanting campaign that last year surpassed the five million goalpost.

"For 2008, we've set the target at seven million trees in rural and urban areas, surpassing the target set by France, a country with 64 million people (Costa Rica has 4.2 million)," Dobles said.

Philippines to make climate change part of school curriculum

The Philippine government will make climate change part of the national school curriculum, officials said Wednesday.

The department of education, other state agencies and the private sector will prepare lesson guides on global environmental issues for public school teachers in elementary and secondary schools.

"Our children will inherit the earth from us," said Education Secretary Jesli Lapus. "We must make sure that this inheritance is in great shape for them to cherish."

Lapus emphasised the importance of "intergovernmental cooperation" in reducing the effects of climate change.

Experts have said the Philippines will suffer from greater incidence of diseases like dengue and lower levels of fresh water due to global warming.

Last Friday in Bangkok, climate brokers from more than 160 nations agreed on a work plan for negotiations leading to a new pact on cutting greenhouse gas emissions -- blamed for the warming -- when current commitments end in 2012.

Rich and poor countries are sharply divided on how to tackle global warming, despite growing fears that rising temperatures could put millions of people at risk by the end of the century.

Westinghouse strikes deal to build US nuclear power plants

Westinghouse Electric, a unit of the Japanese Toshiba Corp., said Tuesday it had struck a deal with Georgia Power to build two nuclear power plants in the southern United States, the first such projects in 30 years.

The announcement that two Westinghouse AP1000 power plants would be built at a site near Augusta, Georgia which already had two existing nuclear reactors, came days after the 29th anniversary of a major US nuclear accident at Three Mile Island.

Westinghouse chief executive Steve Tritch described the deal as evidence that the "nuclear renaissance has moved beyond the planning stage" and said it would "ensure that the United States will have the power it will need to support long-term economic growth."

The Shaw Group said the nuclear division of its Power Group and Westinghouse Electric Company had been awarded an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract by Georgia Power Company to build the reactors at the existing Vogtle Electric Generating Plant site near Augusta, Georgia.

The two reactors will have an electric generating capacity of 1,100 megawatts and are expected to be built by 2016 and 2017 respectively.

"Nuclear energy is vital for the future of our nation's electricity supply system as the demand for clean, reliable and cost-effective power continues to soar," said J.M. Bernhard, Shaw's chairman, president and chief executive officer.

The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

No nuclear power plants have been built in the United States since 1978, and the accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear facility in March 1979 effectively put a halt to the country's civilian nuclear energy program.

A malfunction in the cooling unit of the nuclear power plant caused the reactor's core to overheat, raising concerns of a massive radiation spill. No deaths were caused by the incident, which nevertheless sparked stricter federal controls.

The nuclear scare turned the country's attention toward cheaper yet more polluting sources of energy, such as natural gas and coal, which are blamed for high levels of greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change and are falling out of favor as the country becomes more environmentally aware.

Around half the energy used for electricity in the United States comes from coal, compared to about 20 percent from nuclear power.

Westinghouse built the first commercial reactor in the United States in 1957, and its AP1000 technology has been projected for use in 14 more planned reactors.

Westinghouse and Shaw signed in July 2007 a contract to build four AP1000 reactors in China.

Around 30 nuclear reactor projects have yet to get off the ground in the United States, according to the French group Areva which is among the companies in the running to help lead what is believed to be an approaching nuclear renaissance in the United States.

Until now, choices in technology have been decided upon but no complete reactors have been built.

Before construction can begin on the Westinghouse-Georgia Power project, the plans have to pass through a series of administrative steps, including a review on May 1 by Georgia state authorities who must rubberstamp the project.

WHO: Climate change threatens millions

Millions of people could face poverty, disease and hunger as a result of rising temperatures and changing rainfall expected to hit poor countries the hardest, the World Health Organization warned Monday.

Malaria, diarrhea, malnutrition and floods cause an estimated 150,000 deaths annually, with Asia accounting for more than half, said regional WHO Director Shigeru Omi.

Malaria-carrying mosquitoes represent the clearest sign that global warming has begun to impact human health, he said, adding they are now found in cooler climates such as South Korea and the highlands of Papua New Guinea.

Warmer weather means that mosquitoes' breeding cycles are shortening, allowing them to multiply at a much faster rate, posing an even greater threat of disease, he told reporters in Manila.

The exceptionally high number cases in Asia of dengue fever, which is also spread by mosquitoes, could be due to rising temperatures and rainfall, but Omi said more study is needed to establish the connection between climate change and that disease.

"Without urgent action through changes in human lifestyle, the effects of this phenomenon on the global climate system could be abrupt or even irreversible, sparing no country and causing more frequent and more intense heat waves, rain storms, tropical cyclones and surges in sea level," he said.

In the Marshall Islands and South Pacific island nations, rising sea levels have already penetrated low-lying areas, submerging arable land and causing migrations to New Zealand or Australia, he said.

Omi said poorer countries with meager resources and weak health systems will be hit hardest because malnutrition is already widespread, with the young, women and the elderly at particular risk.

He said unusual, unexpected climate patterns — too much rain or too little — will have an impact on food production, especially irrigated crops such as rice, and can cause unemployment, economic upheavals and political unrest.

Dr. John Ehrenberg, WHO adviser on malaria and other parasitic diseases, said unchecked human development has contributed to the problem. That includes deforestation and an unprecedented level of human migration. As people move, so do diseases.

Omi said governments need to strengthen current systems providing clean water, immunizations, disease surveillance, mosquito control and disaster preparedness.

Examples of eco-friendly measures in Swedish town of Vaexjoe

The southern Swedish town of Vaexjoe is a world leader in environmental protection, with many international delegations visiting the town to see the measures it has implemented.

The following are some examples of the initiatives Vaexjoe has introduced to help fight climate change:

- New apartment buildings constructed entirely out of wood:

On the shores of Lake Vaexjoe, a residential neighbourhood of apartment buildings made entirely out of wood is being constructed. Two eight-storey buildings are already completed, and a third is under construction. The entire project, called Vaelle Broar and comprising a total of 1,200 apartments, is expected to be finished within 10 to 15 years.

Project officials hope to show that wood, a vast resource in Sweden, is the construction material of the future, and is good for the environment since no energy is needed to produce wood as opposed to energy-consuming materials like concrete or steel.

"It's the only renewable material we have," says Hans Andren, one of the architects, adding that wood absorbs carbon dioxide, which conrete does not.

The floors, walls, ceilings, everything including the elevator is made of wood in Vaelle Broar. To combat the risk of fires, the apartments have been equipped with extensive sprinkler systems.

- Biofuels used to heat homes:

Across the lake the smokestacks from the heating plant rise up from the ground, heating the homes of 50,000 of the 80,000 residents. The plant runs 98.7 percent on wood products.

"These are wood chips from the forest or sawmills, from bark and branches," explains Lars Ehrlen, an official at the plant's energy department.

Until 1979, the Sandvik plant was run exclusively on oil. But in 1980, after the second international oil crisis showed how important it was to develop an independent energy source, biofuels were introduced and have gained ground since.

- Research on second-generation biofuels:

At Vaexjoe University, in northern Europe's biggest wood building, research is underway on the second generation of biofuels.

As part of a European cooperation project, researchers are working to develop DME (dimethyl ether, a colourless gaseous ether).

Made from biomass, or logging residue in the forest such as branches, tops and stumps, this biofuel is "the most efficient alternative when using logging residues as raw material," according to professor Anders Baudin.

Baudin says it will be possible to produce DME on a large scale (400,000 tonnes per year) within 10 years. He hopes that by then, Vaexjoe's entire public transport system will run on DME and all private cars will be electric.

DME "is not the solution, but it's part of it," he says.

Fukuda calls for people's effort to fight global warming

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on Saturday urged the Japanese people to join his government's initiative in fighting climate change.

He sent the message as he attended a meeting of business leaders and government officials to discuss measures to stop global warming.

"Efforts by only the government and the industry are not good enough for measures against global warming," he said after the meeting in Toyako, a mountain resort on the northern island of Hokkaido, where the next Group of Eight rich nations summit will be held in July.

"We want all the people to participate. We want them to seek a change in lifestyle," he added.

Climate change is expected to be high on the agenda for the July 7-9 summit, which will draw leaders from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.

Japan is a champion of the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming, but it is far behind in meeting its own obligations as it recovers from a recession in the 1990s.

Nations take first step to climate deal

More than 160 nations agreed late Friday on the first step to drafting an ambitious new treaty on global warming after hours of haggling between rich and poor countries.

The five-day conference in Bangkok also looked for the first time to consider regulating emissions from airplanes and ships, a rapidly growing source of the pollution blamed for heating up the planet.

But rich and poor countries are sharply divided on how to tackle global warming, despite growing fears that rising temperatures could put millions of people at risk by the end of the century.

The talks set a work plan of four meetings next year to complete a pact by the end of 2009 which would follow the landmark Kyoto Protocol, which requires rich nations to slash gas emissions blamed for warming.

The Bangkok conference ended past midnight on the final day, hours after the scheduled close, with bickering over a Japanese proposal to hold talks soon on the so-called "sectoral approach," in which each industry is judged separately on eco-friendliness.

"There were differences of opinion on different topics," UN climate chief Yvo de Boer told AFP.

"It takes time to find a way out and they did."

Poor nations fear the sectoral approach makes greenhouse gas cuts easier for rich countries because they have cleaner technology, and that it could be a backdoor way to legally require them for the first time to cut emissions.

"I think it needs to be explained better," de Boer said of the Japanese proposal.

"There was at one stage the perception that Japan was trying to replace national commitments by sectoral approaches and that freaked everyone out," he said.

"But that view has since been corrected, so I think things have simmered down," he added.

Japan's chief delegate, Kyoji Komachi, said that the talks "went very well on the whole."

"I think we have seen more understanding, but we need to do more," Komachi told AFP of the sectoral approach.

Japan, which is behind in meeting its Kyoto obligations as its economy recovers from a recession, wanted talks on the sectoral approach to come before it hosts a Group of Eight summit of rich nations in July.

But it is unlikely to get its way, with the sectoral talks expected to come in August, along with talks on deforestation, a key concern for developing economies.

Daniel Mittler, climate and energy adviser for Greenpeace International, said that the Japanese proposal had been "the main stumbling block."

"This meeting should be about saving the planet, not the G8 summit," Mittler said.

A separate statement approved here by countries in the Kyoto treaty said they would look at how to "limit or reduce emissions" in aviation and shipping.

The air and marine transport industries account for about three percent of greenhouse gas emissions. But the Kyoto treaty did not cover the two sectors, which are by nature hard to classify under individual nations.

Delegates and environmentalists said there was an effort to water down the text by countries that are transport hubs, such as Singapore, or remotely located, such as Australia.

The statement also gave a vote of confidence to carbon trading, in which rich countries and companies trade credits for slashing carbon output, raising the chances that such a system will be included in a post-Kyoto deal.

The United States shunned the Kyoto Protocol, saying it is unfair by imposing no requirements on fast-growing emitters such as China and India.

But the United States and developing nations all committed at a major conference in December in Bali, Indonesia, to be part of negotiations for another deal that covers the period after 2012 when Kyoto's obligations end.

De Boer has said that the toughest issue -- how much to slash gas emissions after 2012 -- will likely have to wait until after the United States has a new president in January.

All three major candidates seeking to succeed Bush have pledged tougher action on global warming.

"If we took all these hours to agree on a work plan, one can only imagine what will happen when the real negotiations take place," said Marcelo Furtado of Greenpeace Brazil.

"It is a worrisome indication of how these negotiations will develop."

Nations inch towards new climate deal

More than 160 nations were working Friday to clear the initial hurdle in drafting an ambitious new treaty on global warming, expected for the first time to consider rising emissions from planes and ships.

The five-day talks in Bangkok were winding up with negotiators setting a plan for how to reach a UN-backed goal of clinching a new deal by the end of 2009 to follow the Kyoto Protocol.

Major rich and poor nations are sharply divided on what action to take, despite growing global fears that climate change could cause the extinction of plants and animals within the century and put millions of people at risk.

"What is lacking here is a sense of urgency. We are all victims of climate change," said Marcelo Furtado of Greenpeace Brazil.

According to a draft statement obtained by AFP, countries agree to study how rich nations can reduce emissions from aviation and shipping -- a rapidly growing source of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

The Kyoto Protocol required rich countries to slash emissions by an average of five percent by 2012 from 1990 levels but exempted aviation and shipping, as by nature they are difficult to classify as individual nations' responsibility.

In late-night negotiations, delegates agreed to toughen language from earlier text suggesting that industry could regulate itself, delegates said.

The European Union and Norway led the way to strengthen the language, facing opposition from countries with strong travel industries or remote locations, such as Australia, Canada, Japan, Panama and Singapore, according to environmentalists monitoring the talks.

The Bangkok meeting is the first since a major conference in December in Bali, Indonesia, that set negotiations on what to do after rich countries' commitments under the Kyoto Protocol end in 2012.

It is officially tasked simply with setting a work plan to meet the Bali goal. A draft text sets four meetings next year until a final deal is reached in late 2009 in Copenhagen.

"The text is aimed at being palatable to all parties," said Alden Meyer, strategy director for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a US pressure group, and a veteran watcher of environmental negotiations.

He said each side was staking out its position in Bangkok.

"They're setting the table for a meal and they haven't really digged in," he said. "That means there's no food fight, but that will come down the road when it gets serious."

Developing nations are pressing rich nations to commit to major funding to help them cope with climate change.

Nearly all delegates agree that the toughest issue -- how much to slash gas emissions after 2012 -- will have to wait until after the United States has a new president in January.

All three major candidates for the presidency have pledged tougher action on global warming than President George W. Bush. He backed out of Kyoto as one of his first acts in office, arguing it was too costly for the world's largest economy.

"I think people are feeling optimistic that the next administration is going to engage in a different way than Bush has," Meyer said.

The European Union has proposed that rich nations slash gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels.

The United States has not backed a clear figure and has insisted along with several allies that developing countries make clear commitments in the next phase.

Chief US negotiator Harlan Watson also said that calls for major aid handouts were unrealistic and the private sector was better suited to help.

Another potential point of contention is the so-called "sectoral approach."

Japan, which is far behind in meeting its Kyoto obligations, pressed in late-night negotiations for language on the approach, in which industrial sectors are judged separately on eco-friendliness.

Developing nations counter that this simply makes Kyoto goals easier for rich countries to meet.

African activists urge 1 pct GDP to fight global warming

African activists, saying the continent is getting a "raw deal" in climate talks, called Thursday for major polluters to commit one percent of GDP to fight the ravages of global warming.

The bloody Darfur conflict has been termed the world's first war triggered by climate change but campaigners here said few of the internationally funded projects to curb gas emissions have gone to Africa.

"The African continent will suffer the most from the impact of climate change and that's why we're getting very worried," said Grace Akumu, head of the Nairobi-based environmental group Climate Network Africa.

"We believe that Africa is getting a raw deal in these negotiations once more," she said.

Akumu called for major emitters to commit one percent of gross domestic product (GDP) each year for Africa to combat climate change, in addition to existing development aid.

"We feel that profit must not be put ahead of human lives," she said.

Akumu said she was speaking on behalf of African civil society groups at talks in Bangkok.

More than 160 countries are taking part in the negotiations aimed at laying the groundwork for a deal covering the period after 2012 when the Kyoto Protocol's obligations to slash emissions run out.

"Basically every country is putting forward their positions and some of the developing countries are asking for more support," chief US negotiator Harlan Watson told AFP.

But he said that the growing fears of a global recession could eventually impact the talks.

"I don't think that people have raised that idea now, but it will certainly have an impact on the process later down the road," Watson said.

The United States has rejected the Kyoto Protocol, arguing that it is too costly and unfair by making no demands of fast-growing emitters such as China and India.

Akumu, in turn, argued that nations such as China have benefited under the Kyoto Protocol while Africa has been ignored.

The treaty allows rich nations to earn credits in curbing their own emissions by funding green technology in the developing world -- the so-called "Clean Development Mechanism" (CDM).

Of the total 979 projects which have been registered, 611 have been in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly China, and only 25 have been in Africa, according to figures of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

A major conference in December in Bali, Indonesia, set a deadline of the end of 2009 to come up with a deal on how to fight climate change after Kyoto.

Akumu said the one percent GDP contributed by rich countries should be part of a special African fund for "adaptation" -- or measures to cope with the effects of climate change.

The Bali conference agreed to set up a global adaptation fund for climate change, managed by the World Bank and backed by a levy on CDM projects. It held its first meeting last week in Germany.

Critics voice concern that the fund is grossly underfunded and that its legitimacy is undermined by other initiatives from rich countries.

The United States, Britain and Japan discussed at a February meeting of global finance chiefs in Tokyo the idea of setting up a multilateral lending body on climate change akin to the World Bank.

Antonio Hill, the senior policy adviser for British aid group Oxfam, was also alarmed that rich countries most responsible for climate change plan to lend money to poor countries rather than give handouts.

"As far as we're concerned this is the moral equivalent of having someone drive a car into your house and offering you a loan to pay for the damages," Hill said.

Green hotels and resorts reach out to eco-conscious travellers

As climate change guilt among tourists grows, hotels and resorts are finding they need to do more to please the green consumer than simply ask them to re-use their towels.

Under-sea air cooling systems, intelligent lighting, organically-fertilised herb gardens and spas constructed entirely from mud are all being employed to woo tourists concerned about their carbon footprint.

Businesses are also realising that environmentally-friendly policies are not only good for their conscience, but their wallets and reputations too.

"Now the environment is very important for people," says Nantiya Tulyanond, owner of the Old Bangkok Inn, a small hotel in the Thai capital with an impressive range of energy-saving technologies.

"I think it is very important, not to save the world, but to save the money as well."

At the Six Senses Hideaway just south of the Thai seaside resort town of Hua Hin, staff in airy pyjama-like uniforms zip around the 30-acre (12-hectare) resort on bicycles under the shade of palms and banana plants.

Guests relax in private villas built from locally-sourced materials. Hardly anything in the room is plastic, and a leaflet encouraging guests to offset the harmful gases emitted by their flights sits by the bedside.

Srichan Monrakkharom, the resort's social and environment manager, enthuses about the mushroom farm, mud spa, herb gardens, solar water heating, and air conditioning systems which switch off if guests leave their doors open.

"European people, they feel guilty that they have to fly a long way and generate a lot of carbon emissions," says the environmental science graduate.

A United Nations report last year found that tourism, in particular air travel, accounted for about six percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide -- the main greenhouse gas that traps the sun's heat and fuels global warming.

And with the number of global travellers predicted to double by 2020, emissions also look set to increase.

Six Senses guests Will and Lyn Swayne, both in their early 30s, work in advertising in Hong Kong and try to research a resort's environmental credentials before booking in.

"What we are trying to do at the moment is cut down the amount of travel that we do, going on less holidays," says Will Swayne.

Many guests, however, say they simply do not know how to research a resort's eco-policies.

"It's always hard to judge when you are far away from the place -- you have the marketing materials but you wouldn't always know what was going on," says Geoff Thompson, 34, a computer programmer from New Zealand.

A search engine request for "eco-resort Thailand" comes up with about 34,000 results, with the "eco" prefix sometimes meaning just that the resort is built on a pristine stretch of beach or offers adventure travel.

There are resources for eco-conscious travellers such as the website EnvironmentallyFriendlyHotels.com and the private Green Globe 21 certification given to resorts that meat certain criteria.

But Oliver Martin, an associate director at industry body the Pacific Asia Travel Association, says there are so many different "green" standards on the market right now that tourists are left scratching their heads.

"Consumers will want to know more and they will want to know that the dollars that they are spending are actually making a difference, but right now it is the Wild West," he tells AFP.

European travellers in particular are demanding more from hotels than token efforts toward the environment, he says, meaning the travel industry needs to adapt and grow in a sustainable way.

Michael Kwee, social responsibility manger for the upmarket Banyan Tree Hotels and Resorts, says the Singapore-based chain is on the verge of announcing a company-wide water management and energy efficiency policy.

Six Senses even toyed with the idea of cooling their new Thai resort by piping cold air from under the sea -- only to find that the nearby waters were not deep enough for the innovative green technology.

Back at the cosy 10-room Old Bangkok Inn, Nantiya enthuses about the little things modest hotels can do to help save the environment.

Low flush toilets, energy-saving appliances, sky lights making use of Thailand's abundant sunshine and furniture made from salvaged wood all help her hotel go green while cutting the energy bills in the long run.

"We love to be with nature, we love flowers, we love trees, we love animals -- and I think all the green things go together with this," she says.

Poor nations fear being left in cold on global warming

Outraged poor nations bearing the brunt of global warming have become increasingly bold in UN-led climate talks, but some worry that recent trysts of large countries are leaving them out in the cold.

A grouping of 192 countries under the United Nations is leading the way in negotiating a groundbreaking climate change treaty, and most of its members are currently in Bangkok to try to hammer out a two-year work plan.

The meeting comes soon after the United States chaired a meeting of 16 nations most responsible for global warming, and ahead of a special climate summit on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit of rich nations.

"We haven't been invited to either of those processes," said Espen Ronneberg, a Samoa-based climate change advisor to the Association of Small Island States, on the sidelines of the Bangkok talks.

"We need to have a global consensus on climate change, so to have a separate process that is not completely inclusive is not that helpful."

While major developing nations such as China and India are part of the big initiatives, the Group of 77, a bloc of developing nations, said it has not been invited.

"The balance has to come from everybody, all the representative groups, being around the table. Not specialised specific groups which have almost the same purpose -- that's a problem," said Byron Blake, deputy representative to the United Nations of current Group of 77 chair Antigua and Barbuda.

The world has until 2009 to draft a new pact on battling global warming, which should come into force by 2012, when current Kyoto Protocol targets for rich nations to slash greenhouse gas emissions expire.

A report by the world's leading climate scientists last year warned that drought, floods and storms will increase as global temperatures rise, putting the health of millions at risk and hitting the poor countries hardest.

As they see climate change begin to effect their environments and economies, impoverished nations are becoming more confident and vocal, said Antonio Hill, policy adviser to development group Oxfam.

"There is a very dramatic difference between this year and last year in the negotiations versus 10 years ago or even five years ago," he said.

Developing countries want the rich world to commit to the most ambitious cuts in greenhouse gas emissions -- which trap the sun's heat and cause global warming -- and pledge to transfer 'green' technologies and fund climate change-battling initiatives in poorer countries.

Many rich nations led by the United States, however, are pressing for developing countries also to commit to slashing emissions. They argue that the lines have blurred between rich and poor nations, with China expected soon to be the world's top emitter.

US President George W. Bush launched his own climate initiative gathering 16 large nations responsible for 80 percent of harmful emissions, which met two months ago in Hawaii.

Japan, meanwhile, will hold separate talks on the sidelines of the G8 meeting in July, and has invited Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Korea and South Africa to join the G8 nations.

In mid-March, Japan hosted to a 20-nation climate meeting in suburban Tokyo.

The UN's climate chief Yvo de Boer told AFP that the new initiatives could be very constructive, so long as they feed back into the UN-led efforts.

"The (US-led) major economies process and the outcome of the G8 meeting last year very clearly recognises that there is only one place where the real negotiations happen and that's the (UN) Convention on Climate Change," he said.

Blake urged big polluters to listen to all of the voices from the developing world, rather than focus on exclusive sideline initiatives.

"It is almost a defensive move by a club of people who have been the cause of the major problems," Blake told AFP.

"Naturally they are going to see how to create a so-called solution which will have least impact on themselves, where they have to make the least contribution," he added.