 Water and Environmental Affairs Deputy Minister Rejoice Mabudafhasi on Thursday highlighted the importance of wetlands conservation,saying they were important for tourism and community livelihoods.
She marked World Wetlands Day at an event held at the Makuleke Wetlands in Limpopo. The Makuleke Wetlands site was declared a Ramsar site –a wetland of international importance –in 2007 and is the first Ramsar site owned and co-managed by the community not only in South Africa but worldwide. Mabudafhasi said the proposal for its designation received much publicity during the celebration of World Wetlands Day in 2002. “In that event,I highlighted the fact that should this site be designated as wetlands of international importance,it would be the first community-owned Ramsar site in the country,and as such,represented a new approach to wetland management,”she said. By designating these unique wetlands,South Africa was commended for its good work during the 10th meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Convention in Korea where the certificate for Makuleke Wetlands was granted. More than 800 wetlands are to be rehabilitated across the country,with about 40 people already benefiting from the Makuleke community where a rehabilitation project worth R1.8 million was undertaken. Mabudafhasi added that South Africa’s extraordinary ecological wealth gave the country a unique opportunity to capitalise on emerging green markets and help the country adapt to climate change. “The rehabilitation and proper management of our ecosystems will not only increase our competitive advantage,but help us adapt our economy to become more sustainable and resilient in changing global conditions.”  The coal industry has to increase its investment in clean coal technologies and research programmes,Minerals and Energy Minister Susan Shabangusaid on Thursday.
Although the industry had an important role to play in the economy,it had to remain “current and relevant”,Shabangu told the SA Coal Export Conference in Cape Town. “The industry needs to raise the level of investment in clean coal technologies research programmes. This is likely to present the country with opportunities to continue exploiting this vast resource without the risk of raising further the carbon intensity of its economy.” Shabangu said while South Africa had made clear its commitment to reduce its carbon footprint through various programmes,including diversification of its energy mix,coal still had a vital role to play in the country’s energy generation. She said advances in science were providing more accurate feedback on the environmental impact of fossil fuels. This information was starting to guide international and local industries on how to “mitigate”the negative impacts resulting from exploitation of coal,which contributed 90% to South Africa’s electricity and 30% to its liquid fuel requirements. The Council for Geosciences (CGS) was conducting research to quantify the extent of the acid mine drainage problem and was identifying possible rehabilitation measures. This,she said,would help ameliorate the impact of acid mine drainage in the sector,which produced 316 million tons of coal and earned R37bn from export sales in 2010. Acid mine draining is water that is rendered acidic from mining and which flows into rivers and dams. A study by the CGS on the country’s coal resources and reserves had also been completed and a report was being finalised. The results of the study,likely to be released in the first half of the year,would help inform the government’s long range planning on security of local supplies. The study could provide opportunities for the growth and expansion of the industry.  WATER and Environmental Affairs Minister on Wednesday welcomed the Phalaborwa Regional Court’s decision to sentence three rhino poachers to a maximum of 25 years’ imprisonment on various counts,while various non-governmental organisations said these were some of the toughest,if not the toughest,sentences handed down thus far for rhino poaching in South Africa.
The growth rate of the country’s rhino population is still positive,despite a 34% increase in poaching from the 333 rhinos lost in 2010 to 448 killed last year. There is concern among some that South Africa could suffer a species decline by mid-year. Ms Molewa said she believed the sentence would “send a strong message and hopefully act as a deterrent to poachers and would-be poachers. It is hoped that this sentence,coupled with anti-poaching activities that the government has embarked on with various law-enforcement agencies,will act as a deterrent to poachers.” The poachers,all Mozambican,were sentenced on Tuesday for illegally hunting rhinos in the Kruger National Park in 2010. The park,which has borne the brunt of the onslaught against rhinos,lost 252 of the pachyderms last year. Tom Milliken,East and Southern Africa director of Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce — better known as TRAFFIC — said:“It’s a very tough sentence and could be establishing a new record in South Africa. …We have now moved into serious deterrence territory,at last. But the proof in the pudding will be if those South African game-industry white guys who are involved in rhino crime get similar sentences. Then we’ll start to see things turned around.” One of these,suspected poaching kingpin Dawie Groenewald,and 10 others,arrested in 2010,are expected to appear in a Limpopo court in April to face almost 2000 charges,including money laundering,fraud,racketeering and the illegal trade of rhino horns. Richard Emslie,a rhino expert at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature,said if racketeering was proved,it carried a maximum sentence of imprisonment for life. In the Phalaborwa case,poachers Aselmo Baloyi,Jawaki Nkuna and Ismael Baloyi,were sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment (with an option of a R100000 fine) for illegally hunting a rhino,15 years for the possession of a prohibited firearm (automatic rifle),eight years for the illegal possession of a hunting rifle and 15 years for the illegal possession of ammunition,said Department of Environmental Affairs spokesman Albi Modise. The last three sentences will run concurrently,meaning an effective 25 years. “This must be one of the harshest sentences handed down yet. In general,conviction rates are quite low,but there is also a time lag in getting cases to court,”said Dr Emslie. He said the white rhino’s market capitalisation had lost more than R500m since 2008,because of the effect of poaching. There was also the opportunity cost in the loss of an animal that could,presumably,have bred. Ms Molewa said the government viewed the illegal killing of rhinos in a serious light and was determined to continue to prioritise its fight against such poaching,including efforts between South Africa and Mozambique to deal with cross-border law enforcement. The court sentence comes at a time when the government has started stepping up measures to combat the tide of rhino poaching. The measures include the return of the South African National Defence Force to monitor 350km of the national border in the Kruger National Park and the deployment of conservation specialists at ports. The Department of Environmental Affairs and South African National Parks are also beefing up patrols in the Kruger National Park,deploying an additional 150 rangers.  Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu and her director general Thibedi Ramontja will file an answering affidavit in response to a court application to get details on a fracking report.
“We are serving to the other party’s attorneys,not the media,”department spokesperson Zingaphi Jakuja said. “As far as I know,media are not applicants in the matter so we are under no obligation to furnish our affidavit to media.” In January,the High Court in Pretoria ordered Shabangu and Ramontja to respond by January 31 to an application by the Treasure Karoo Action Group (TKAG). The TKAG wants details on an inter-departmental task team studying the impact and viability of fracking,or hydraulic fracturing,in the Karoo to extract natural gas. TKAG chair Jonathan Deal said:“There is a whole lot of secrecy…we want to know who is involved,what are their qualifications,what is their brief,what scientific evidence are they using.” It was especially important to look at what evidence the team was looking at as fracking “had creeped (sic) into South Africa on the back of industry-based reports”. Fracking involves injecting,under high pressure,a mixture of chemicals and water into the earth,to free natural gas. The exploration programme,proposed by oil company Shell,has been criticised by environmental groups who claim it will harm the sensitive Karoo environment and poison underground water.  There is further evidence that coral reefs can cope with the rising sea temperatures associated with climate change.
Researchers working on the Great Barrier Reef have found that the assembly of 2 900 individual reefs stretching 2 600km down Australia’s east coast can adapt to warmer waters. Emily Howells,from James Cooke University in Townsville,Queensland,set out to see whether it was right to assume that corals that flourished in warmer waters had different energy-producing algal cells from those that lived in cooler waters. She found that the cells,called zooanthellae,had different rates of adaptability to rising temperature and that this held true across those from cooler waters and those from warmer waters. Tourism “Previously we knew that it was different types of zooanthellae that vary in their temperature tolerations,so if a coral was going to be thermally tolerant through its zooanthellae it would have to be able to host different types,”she said. “Now,in the research that I did,also within one type of zooanthellae there are different levels of thermal tolerance and that’s because different populations have adapted to different thermal environments.” Her research,published in the journal Nature Climate Change,showed that the adaptability of zooanthellae “may assist corals to increase their thermal tolerance and persist into the future”. Over recent years,the research on the Great Barrier Reef has shown corals are hardier than scientists previously thought. This is important to Australia:The reef has two million visitors a year and underpins tens of thousands of jobs in tourism. “Overall,it’s good news for coral,but we need to keep it in context,”Howells said. “The overarching question is whether they can adapt at the same rate that the ocean temperature is rising. “It’s better to do research to quantify rates of adaptation than to have a guessing game on whether they can’t adapt and they are all going to die or whether they can adapt –and adapt at the rate the ocean temperature is rising.”  Heavy rains in Limpopo in the past week have damaged infrastructure and affected the water supply in and around Hoedspruit,a local official said on Thursday.
“There is a serious shortage of water in the Hoedspruit area as all the water is contaminated and undrinkable,”Maruleng Municipality spokesperson John Seokoma said. “Water is very urgently needed. Over 220 households were directly affected and that is excluding the farm workers and damage to farms.” Seokoma said the municipality and SA Red Cross Society volunteers were training communities in the area in water purification. “We have an indication that people use 20 000 litres of water daily…Any donation of bottled water will be needed and appreciated.” The municipality and its partners had started a disaster relief account and people could go to its website to find out how to donate,Seokoma said. Initial estimates showed that R6m worth of crops –such as avocados,citrus,mangoes,and maize –had been destroyed. Infrastructural damage of R21m –to fences,irrigation equipment,dams,and store rooms –was recorded in the preliminary report. “Following the first phase assistance with the hygiene packs and food parcels,there is serious necessity for clean water in these affected areas,”Limpopo provincial official George Mamabolo said in a statement. Mamabolo urged corporate citizens and communities to assist people by donating bottled water to the affected communities.  Agriculture is part of the solution to the world’s environmental challenge and must play a key role at next June’s Rio summit on sustainable development,the Brazilian head of the UN food agency said here on Tuesday.
“Agriculture ministers from the entire world must be present at the Rio+20 meeting [in June] so that agriculture commits itself to helping clean up the planet,”Jose Graziano da Silva,the new boss of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO),said. “Agriculture contributes 30% of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming and we must raise the awareness of our farmers,”he added during an event organised by local authorities ahead of the opening of the World Social Forum (WSF) here later on Tuesday. The Rio+20 summit next June,the fourth major summit on sustainable development since 1972,will call on world leaders to commit themselves to creating a social and “green economy,”with priority being given to eradicating hunger. The WSF,which runs through Sunday,brings together tens of thousands of anti-capitalist militants opposed to the World Economic Forum,the annual gathering of the world’s economic and political elites being held at the same time in the Swiss resort of Davos. Forum participants are to mull alternative solutions to the global economic crisis and prepare the ground for a peoples’summit of social movements to be held in parallel to next June’s Rio+20 summit on sustainable development. “Agriculture is not just part of the problem,it is also part of the solution to the environment issue. It can contribute a lot to the planet’s sustainable development,by finding techniques less harmful to the environment,by helping with clean energy and with a better redistribution of production,”Graziano said. Graziano is a former Brazilian food security minister and the first Latin American to head FAO,a UN agency which battles hunger affecting over a billion people globally. Open doors He is internationally acclaimed for his role in designing and implementing Brazil’s “Zero Hunger”(“Fome Zero”) programme,which helped lift 24 million people out of extreme poverty. In his address,the 61-year-old professor,who was elected last June and took up his post early this month,pledged to open FAO doors to civil society. “FAO must open its doors to society. We are trying to create space for dialogue with society to break the monopoly of dialogue with governments,with some specific governments,as occurred over the past few years,”Graziano noted. Stressing that social movements were seeking reality,not utopia,he added:“Utopia is to think that solution exists on the margins of society,that there can be sustainable development without food security,that we can live in peace with nearly one billion starving people in the world.” He criticized what he called the “roulette”of world commodities prices. He said farm production would need to grow five times bigger and pointed out that 90% of this increase could be achieved with better productivity and not at the expense of the environment. And Graziano urged Brazil,now the world’s sixth largest economy,to “assume its international responsibility”in the fight against world hunger “with a new form of international co-operation”that respects developing countries.  A huge pool of fresh water in the Arctic Ocean is expanding and could lower the temperature of Europe by causing an ocean current to slow down,British scientists said on Sunday.
Using satellites to measure sea surface height from 1995 to 2010,scientists from University College London and Britain’s National Oceanography Centre found that the western Arctic’s sea surface has risen by about 150mm since 2002. The volume of fresh water has increased by at least 8 000km³,or about 10% of all the fresh water in the Arctic Ocean. The fresh water comes from melting ice and river run-off. The rise could be due to strong Arctic winds increasing an ocean current called the Beaufort Gyre,making the sea surface bulge upwards. The Beaufort Gyre is one of the least understood bodies of water on the planet. It is a slowly swirling body of ice and water north of Alaska,about 10 times bigger than Lake Michigan in the United States. Some scientists believe the natural rhythms of the gyre could be affected by global warming which could have serious implications for the ocean’s circulation and rising sea levels. Climate models have suggested that wind blowing on the surface of the sea has formed a raised dome in the middle of the Beaufort Gyre,but there have been few in-depth studies to confirm this. If the wind changes direction,which happened between the mid-1980s to mid-1990s,the pool of fresh water could spill out into the rest of the Arctic Ocean and even into the north Atlantic Ocean,the study said. This could cool Europe by slowing down an ocean current coming from the Gulf Stream,which keeps Europe relatively mild compared with countries at similar latitudes. “Our findings suggest that a reversal of the wind could result in the release of this fresh water to the rest of the Arctic Ocean and even beyond,”said Katharine Giles at UCL’s Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling and lead author of the study,published in the journal Nature Geoscience. The team plans to investigate further the relationship between sea-ice cover and wind changes.  A new technology that could potentially limit the impact of acid mine water has been invented in South Africa.
The CSIR has developed a new process to reclaim high-quality precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC) from calcium-rich industrial solid waste. High-quality calcium carbonate is useful for various specialised industrial applications such as gastric acid treatment,tablet filling in pharmaceuticals,plastics,paint,adhesives and in pulp and papermaking. This technology may offer a solution to acid mine water in Gauteng. “We also foresee an increase in demand for calcium carbonate for treating acid mine drainage,”said biochemical engineer Dr Mlawule Mashego,who developed the technology with Jean Mulopo. The research group is focused on recycling technologies that would make extraction of effluent cost-effective. The method appears to be effective with streamed water,but is unlikely to be effective where groundwater is contaminated. “Some utilities responsible for waste treatment and management are moving away from regulatory compliance toward increased economic incentives in the process of recognising the value of waste and wastewater as a resource. “Such an approach includes the recovery of energy,nutrients,metals and other chemicals as part of the wastewater treatment process. We also look at further beneficiation of recovered by-products to enhance waste utilisation,”said Mashego. The CSIR has filed a patent for the technology would could also be exported to developing countries where issues of water contamination affect local populations.  Geothermal energy developers plan to pump 91 million litres of water into the side of a dormant volcano in Oregon to demonstrate new technology they hope will give a boost to a green energy sector that has yet to live up to its promise.
They hope the water comes back to the surface fast enough and hot enough to create cheap,clean electricity that isn’t dependent on sunny skies or stiff breezes –without shaking the earth and rattling the nerves of nearby residents. Renewable energy has been held back by cheap natural gas,weak demand for power and waning political concern over global warming. Efforts to use the earth’s heat to generate power,known as geothermal energy,have been further hampered by technical problems and worries that tapping it can cause earthquakes. Even so,the federal government,Google and other investors are interested enough to bet $43m on the Oregon project. They are helping AltaRock Energy of Seattle and Davenport Newberry Holdings of Stamford,Connecticut,demonstrate whether the next level in geothermal power development can work on the flanks of Newberrry Volcano,located about 30km south of Bend,Oregon. Green energy “We know the heat is there,”said Susan Petty,president of AltaRock. “The big issue is can we circulate enough water through the system to make it economic.” The heat in the earth’s crust has been used to generate power for more than a century. Engineers gather hot water or steam that bubbles near the surface and use it to spin a turbine that creates electricity. Most of those areas have been exploited. To tap that heat –and grow geothermal energy from a tiny niche into an important source of green energy –engineers are working on a new technology called Enhanced Geothermal Systems. “To build geothermal in a big way beyond where it is now requires new technology,and that is where EGS comes in,”said Steve Hickman,a research geophysicist with the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park,California. Wells are drilled deep into the rock and water is pumped in,creating tiny fractures in the rock,a process known as hydroshearing. Cold water is pumped down production wells into the reservoir,and the steam is drawn out. Similar to fracking Hydroshearing is similar to the process known as hydraulic fracturing,used to free natural gas from shale formations. But fracking uses chemical-laden fluids,and creates huge fractures. Pumping fracking wastewater deep underground for disposal likely led to recent earthquakes in Arkansas and Ohio. Fears persist that cracking rock deep underground through hydroshearing can also lead to damaging quakes. EGS has other problems. It is hard to create a reservoir big enough to run a commercial power plant. Progress has been slow. Two small plants are online in France and Germany. A third in downtown Basel,Switzerland,was shut down over earthquake complaints. A project in Australia has had drilling problems. A new international protocol is coming out at the end of this month that urges EGS developers to keep projects out of urban areas,the so-called “sanity test”,said Ernie Majer,a seismologist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It also urges developers to be upfront with residents so they know exactly what is going on. | 
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