Author: Neville

Japanese gov’t passes 5-year basic plan on ocean policy

English.news.cn 2013-04-26 10:14:25

TOKYO, April 26 (Xinhua) — The Japanese government has passed during a cabinet meeting on Friday a five-year basic plan on ocean policy, which aims at promoting undersea resources development and enhancing surveillance capacity around its waters.

According to the plan, Japan will promote its investigation on reserves of undersea resources such as seabed methane hydrate and rare earth in the coming three years and develop technology for commercial production of methane gas from methane hydrate starting in 2018.

The plan also seeks to enhance Japan’s maritime surveillance capability in its surrounding waters by reorganizing and outfitting planes and ships for Japanese Coast Guard and Self- Defense Forces and realizing information sharing between the two forces.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in an overall oceanic policy meeting that Japan is eager to develop the undersea resources but its maritime security situation is getting worse and stressed the importance of coordination between different government organs so as to better carry out the policies.

Japan revises its oceanic policy every five years, according to the country’s Basic Act on Ocean Policy that took effect in July 2007. The current ocean policy plan was compiled in 2008.

Editor: Zhu Ningzhu

Denial is difficult when the ocean is at your door

Meredith Burgmann
The Daily Telegraph
April 26, 2013 12:00AM

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AS you fly over the tiny central Pacific nation of Kiribati you realise immediately why climate change has created such a tragic outcome for the Kiribati people.

The main population centre of South Tarawa is just a very long coral reef with a road down the middle. At high tide large waves can crash from one side of the island to the other. Even a tiny rise in seawater levels will spell ultimate destruction.

This nation of far flung coral atolls came to international attention as the first country on Earth to see the dawn of the third millennium.

Ironically it will also be the first to cop the full force of climate change. Its 105,000 inhabitants produce the tiniest of carbon footprints (0.06 per cent for the whole Pacific) but will be hugely affected by a rising sea level, changed rainfall patterns, ocean acidification and extreme weather events because of the carbon addiction of their larger developed neighbours such as Australia.

When climate deniers urge them to simply move to higher ground, the locals take delight in showing visitors the highest point in the land. It is 3m above sea level.

In the outer islands periodic inundation is worse and has led to an influx of these residents on to South Tarava which has created even greater pressure on the rapidly polluting water “lenses” which make up their groundwater.

Every politician, church leader and environmental activist we met mentioned water as their main issue.

I accidently made coffee with their drinking water and it tasted terrible.

The political leadership of Kiribati have been very active in the international lobbying effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

President Anote Tong is generally referred to as the “climate change” president. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has visited and reported: “My room had life jackets for me and my wife – for good reason. A high tide and a storm surge would have washed us away.”

Bob Carr was there late last year and promised to fix the road which is Tarava’s lifeblood but which is constantly degraded by seawater flooding. Will it be called the Carr Road after our famously non-driving Foreign Minister?

Despite the fact inundation is staring them in the face, the Kiribati people are behaving like good global citizens. They practise “mitigation” (reducing their own carbon footprint) as well as “adaptation” (protecting their land from the sea).

Australia could learn from our tiny neighbour.

MEREDITH BURGMANN IS PRESIDENT OF THE AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Countdown to Anzac centenary as record crowds predicted

DateApril 25, 2013 – 12:05PM 91 reading now

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Lisa Davies

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Former defence force chief Peter Cosgrove has predicted “immense” crowds of up to 100,000 in Sydney’s CBD for the 2015 Anzac Day centenary, revealing plans for an entire day of activities in the city’s centre are well under way.

Mr Cosgrove is the NSW Centenary of Anzac Advisory Council Chair, and after Thursday’s dawn service he and NSW RSL President Don Rowe both said the 20,000 who turned out for the 98th anniversary of the battle of Gallipoli are likely to increase five-fold in the next two years.

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An estimated crowd of 15,000 gathers around the Cenotaph for the Anzac Day dawn service in Sydney’s Martin Place.
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“We need to create not just the space here for as many people as can safely assemble but we need to have other spaces close into the city which will be used to broadcast what happens here [at the Cenotaph] and to link all the events,” Mr Cosgrove said.

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“We see people on Anzac Day 2015 staying in the CBD for the whole day, we see activities planned to bridge between solemn moments like the dawn service and the march and we see the broadcast out of the dawn service in Gallipoli coming into the city and people staying around near giant screens to watch that. We can understand that there might be a lot more people wanting to make a day of it in 2015.”

That said, he also noted that next year’s 99th anniversary would be hugely important.

‘The 100 years is a very evocative anniversary’: Peter Cosgrove, centre,at this year’s Anzac Day dawn service at Martin Place.
‘The 100 years is a very evocative anniversary’: Peter Cosgrove, centre, at this year’s Anzac Day dawn service at Martin Place. Photo: Kate Geraghty

“Well of course next year will be looking down the barrel of the start of World War I, which for Australia in August 1914, people passed through the streets of Sydney, jumped onto troop ships and went up to Rabaul to fight the German forces there … we’ll probably be seeing the numbers ramp up a bit next year, but 2015 will be the next big step,” he said.

“The 100 years is a very evocative anniversary and we’re going to find that throughout the four years of the World War I centenary period, that we have a lot of remembrances about things which were significant.”

Mr Rowe, who is also on Mr Cosgrove’s advisory council, said the dawn service crowds continued to increase and the bursting Martin Place venue would be likely dwarfed by the turnout in 2015.

Crowds gather during the 98th Anzac dawn service at the Martin Place war memorial, Sydney. Click for more photos

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Crowds gather during the 98th Anzac dawn service at the Martin Place war memorial, Sydney. Photo: Kate Geraghty
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Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/countdown-to-anzac-centenary-as-record-crowds-predicted-20130425-2igbe.html#ixzz2RRSiNOrF

Councils urged to merge in radical restructure

DateApril 25, 2013 133 reading now

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Nicole Hasham, Leesha McKenny

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New “global city”: The City of Sydney will stretch from the CBD east to the coast, and south to Botany Bay. Photo: Supplied

Sydney would be collapsed into 15 “super councils” serving up to 800,000 residents each in a plan to bolster council balance sheets and stop them sliding into irrelevance.

Councils would be offered financial incentives to merge under sweeping changes proposed by an independent review of the state’s 152 councils.

The report by the Independent Local Government Review Panel reveals for the first time the extent to which Sydney councils could be asked to merge. It is the strongest indication yet of the likely shape of recommendations due to be handed to the state government in September.

The panel’s chairman, Graham Sansom, said resistance to the once-in-a-generation changes would mean “the quality and relevance of local government in NSW will inevitably decline and the state will be the poorer for it”.

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But some councils warn the government has a fight on its hands, claiming that services will be cut and communities denied a voice.

Three metropolitan councils – Sydney, Parramatta and Liverpool – would be expanded to cover up to 800,000 people each. The City of Sydney would be expanded to create a new “global city”, stretching from the CBD east to the coast and south to Botany Bay. It would swallow Randwick, Waverley, Woollahra and Botany Bay councils and might also include Leichhardt and Marrickville.

The panel proposes a “tidying up” of fragmented councils in the suburbs. It would merge Hurstville, Kogarah and Rockdale councils in the south; Hunters Hill, Lane Cove, Mosman, North Sydney and Willoughby in the north; Ashfield, Burwood, Canada Bay and Strathfield councils in the inner west; and Auburn, Holroyd, Parramatta and Ryde in the west. The panel also recommends merging Manly and Pittwater with Warringah, as well as councils in the lower Hunter Valley and central coast.

Forced amalgamations are not on the cards. However, councils would be offered ”carrot and stick” incentives, including a higher level of financial and professional support to ”early movers” committing to a merger by July 2014.

Twenty new-look ”county councils” would be created to cover regional centres. They would replace regional organisations and encourage co-operation between councils and other levels of government.

Elected ”local boards” would provide representation and deliver

services in small communities, possibly replacing some councils or ensuring local identity and representation in large urban councils.

The report said inner and eastern Sydney was characterised by a large number of small councils that often duplicated services and struggled to present a united view on behalf of their communities.

The panel said it was “unconvinced” by arguments that mergers would destroy local identity, insisting it would create “high capacity” councils that could better represent and serve residents.

The report also recommended measures to boost parlous council finances, such as increasing rates and charges. It also called for elected officials to receive better pay and training.

Local Government Minister Don Page reiterated the government’s promise of no forced amalgamations. But the report warned it was unlikely that voluntary mergers would occur on the scale and pattern required, especially in metropolitan areas.

The Labor local government spokeswoman Sophie Cotsis denounced the plan as ”a recipe for monster councils – and monster rate rises”.

Chief executive of the Committee for Sydney Tim Williams supported the push towards fewer councils, saying the existing system was unable to manage the city’s growth.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/councils-urged-to-merge-in-radical-restructure-20130424-2ifan.html#ixzz2RQFqcYaZ

Asian Monsoon Is Getting Predictable: Strong Correlation Between Summer Monsoon and Preceding Climate Pattern

Apr. 23, 2013 — For much of Asia, the pace of life is tuned to rhythms of monsoons.

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The summer rainy season is especially important for securing the water and food supplies for more than a billion people. Its variations can mean the difference between drought and flood. Now a Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego-led study reports on a crucial connection that could drastically improve the ability of forecasters to reliably predict the monsoon a few months in advance.

Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie from Scripps and colleagues from NOAA found that a winter appearance of the climate phenomenon called El Niño in the Pacific Ocean can leave its mark on monsoon formation in the Indian Ocean a full six months later. In between is an atmospheric phenomenon called the Pacific-Japan pattern that provides the teleconnection between the two ocean basins and further poleward to East Asia.

“It has long been a mystery that climate anomalies in the region correlate better with El Niño in the preceding winter than with the one developing in the concurrent summer,” said Xie, a climate scientist and inaugural holder of the Scripps Roger Revelle Chair in Environmental Science. “The new paper shows that Indian Ocean temperature and atmospheric anomalies in the western Pacific are physically coupled, and their interactions amplify each other. We demonstrated that this new mode of coupled ocean-atmospheric anomalies is predictable a season ahead. Such predictions have tremendous benefits to society.”

The National Science Foundation-funded study, “Origin of seasonal predictability for summer climate over the Northwestern Pacific,” appears online on April 22 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Ngar-Cheung Lau and Gabriel Vecchi of NOAA are also co-authors.

El Niño is a climate phenomenon coupling the ocean and atmosphere that includes a shift in the distribution of warm water in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. El Niño years are characterized by unusual weather and storm activity globally.

The summer after a major El Niño features above-average sea-surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean. El Niño exerts its influence via the Pacific-Japan pattern, which can bring to East Asia cool, wet weather in the subsequent summer, while La Niña leads to dry, hot weather.

The violent storm activity associated with El Niño takes place in the eastern Pacific Ocean, but the chain of events the researchers describe ultimately ends up being detected in the western Pacific Ocean. Xie likened it to an echo effect, saying that El Niño serves to pull clouds and convection eastward toward the International Date Line, which means those clouds are not available over the western Pacific to keep ocean surface temperatures cool. It also weakens winds in the northern Indian Ocean and the effects of those weakened winds travel back eastward to the Pacific Ocean.

“The last sound El Niño makes is in the western Pacific Ocean,” Kosaka said, “because the positive feedback between the Indian Ocean and Pacific-Japan pattern we found amplifies climate anomalies in this region.”

The last echoes of El Niño have devastating consequences to the region.

Extremes in the East Asian summer monsoon have been behind some of the largest natural and economic disasters to hit the region in the last 20 years. The authors note that excessive rains and cool temperature in Japan in 1993 caused a widespread failure of that country’s rice crop that opened it to imports from other countries. Dry monsoon phases led to widespread heat waves and drought in several East Asian countries in 2004.

Kosaka cautioned, however, that there is much more work to be done to make prediction of the Asian monsoon reliable. El Niño is just one factor; other regional patterns complicate the sequence that ultimately produces monsoon rains, Kosaka said.

But the paper does establish that El Niño influences the monsoon and describes the means by which it does so, she said.

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Sydney Councils should be merged into one super council, according the Independent Local Government Review

Vikki Campion •
The Daily Telegraph •
April 24, 2013 1:38PM

SYDNEY’S councils should be merged, with one super council from the eastern beaches to Botany, the Independent Local Government Review has found.

Among it’s wish list, the panel wants mergers of councils in the inner west, north shore, northern beaches and south.

It ruled out forced amalgamations, but offers the ability to hike rates as a financial incentive.

It proposes 20 county councils for the regions, as well as mergers of Gosford and Wyong, and Newscastle and Lake Macquarie.

Panel chair Graham Sansom said the super Sydney council encompassing the coast, CBD and Botany would create a “global city”.

It seeks to expand Parramatta and Liverpool to give them more clout, while merging the inner west councils, north shore and northern beaches councils.

Mr Sansom said many of the boundaries were out of date and did not prepare for the future, let alone cope with the $7.6 billion infrastructure backlog and maintenance gap.

The panel will now visit 29 regional cities and towns, and eight metropolitan areas for consultation and community hearings.

It seeks to group Manly, Pittwater and Warringah, merge Hornsby and Kurringgai, take Sydney, Woollahra, Waverely, Randwick and Botany Bay as one.

Canada Bay would be merged with Strathfield, Burwood, and Ashfield, with Leichhardt to join either the Sydney group or the inner west group.

Marrickville can join the Sydney councils, or merge with Canterbury. Canterbury can merge with Bankstown or a new proposed St George group, or can be split between the two.

The larger councils in Sydney’s fringe are largely unchanged but for boundary reviews. It will reduce the number of Sydney councils to 15, with Sydney, Liverpool and Parramatta expanded to have populations between 600,000 to 800,000.

Under the plan, ‘early movers’ to amalgamation will be given higher levels of support to encourage amalgamations. It seeks to stream line rate pegging, allowing councils to increase rates 3 per cent above IPART recommendations, and redistribute grant funding to give more assistance to rural and remote councils.

To implement the reform, the panel seeks to set up a new development board, and also looks to strengthen local government in the NSW constitution.

It also seeks to set up a special council financing agency to bring down interest costs and allow councils to make better use of borrowings.

Councils with the most severe financial problems will get more attention, with a new fund to be set up to address crumbling roads and rotting bridges.

Mayors will have strengthened authority, and “round-robin” mayors will be banned, with all councils with a population of 20,000 forced to be popularly elected.

Local boards will be brought in to ensure ‘local identity’ in very large urban councils.

It seeks to amalgamate small rural councils to improve their sustainability, and convert councils with a population under 5000 to local boards.

A western region authority will be set up for struggling rural councils, based on a partnership between local, State, Federal and Aboriginal communities.

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