Environmental non-governmental organisation Greenpeace recently found that while coal investment in the Guangdong province has dropped, investment in fossil fuel projects has risen by a fifth. 

This is despite places like Guangdong being an economic powerhouse, which should mean the availability of more resources to innovate and experiment with transitioning to a cleaner energy system, said Ms Qiu Chengcheng, a climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace East Asia.

She added it seems Guangdong is looking to fossil gas as a “late-stage transition fuel”, as it wants to ensure its energy security even as it has pledged to cut coal.

“It will be a vicious cycle if you’re just going to put on more fossil fuels exacerbating climate change,” she said.

The increased investment in fossil fuel projects was also seen in other places in China, going up by 5 per cent annually since 2020 in Zhejiang province, and 19.9 per cent annually in Shanghai. 

WEATHER WOES

China’s pursuit of its clean energy targets has also been hampered by extreme weather this year, with a historic drought and heatwave drying up rivers and affecting hydropower output in the country’s southwest.

Desertification – where land degrades, becomes arid and loses its fertility – is now affecting more than 76 per cent of Mongolia’s total land territory. Climate change and human activity are both to blame and the situation has serious implications for the lives of nomadic herders as well as the nation’s food and water security.

Earlier this year, the country’s president Ukhnaa Khurelsukh officially launched the One Billion Tree movement, an ambitious plan to reverse the relentless spread of the Gobi. 

Mongolia aims to achieve the target by 2030, as part of its commitments to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Various incentives will encourage more people, as well as mining companies and corporations, to be involved.

The province of Ömnögovi has pledged to plant 70 million trees and provide financial packages to individuals for maintaining new trees in the area. Specialists there have designated 900,000 ha of land for forestation.

According to climate scientists, the idea has strong merits. In a special summary by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released in 2019, it was reported that “native and other climate resilient tree species with low water needs, can reduce sand storms, avert wind erosion, and contribute to carbon sinks, while improving micro-climates, soil nutrients and water retention”.

“In the Gobi, it is difficult to be a herder. No rain, with too many mines. For the last three years, we haven’t had any rainfall and we are just moving with our animals,” Nergui said.

“I left my camels because you need more people to herd the animals, it is a lot of work. I visited them this year and cut their fur in the spring.

“My camels aren’t doing well, they’ve gotten really weak. Maybe there are no plants they can eat and no water either. It’s quite bad,” he said.

Their new location in Ömnögovi does not offer a stable future either. The pasture is parched. There are too many animals scouring for the little greenery peeking out of the crusted soil. Yet another move is on the cards.

“We will move from here. We don’t have winter lodging and it is someone else’s homeland. If we move to the north, we are just afraid of the cold. In my homeland, it is warm and doesn’t get much snowfall. That is what I am afraid of,” Nergui said.

The family will look to the more plentiful grasslands, knowing they will be unwelcome there too and that the desert will be pursuing them like a shadow.

“If it rains, we will go back. If it doesn’t, there is no way for us to go back. Desertification is everywhere.”

PIGEON EGG SIZE DIAMOND DISCOVERY

Cempaka mine is one of the largest diamond mines in Indonesia.

In August 1965, the mine was in the headlines when miners reportedly found a 166.75-carat diamond. Its size was almost as big as a pigeon’s egg. 

The diamond was brought to Jakarta in early September. Then Indonesian president Soekarno named it Trisakti, meaning thrice sacred in Sanskrit.

It is estimated that the diamond was worth trillions of rupiah at that time. 

Hence, the government promised to reward the 24 miners who found the diamond. At that time, it was reported that the miners would be sent on a haj pilgrimage and their future generations would be taken care of.

But on Sep 30, an attempted coup d’etat took place. In 1966, Soekarno was forced to hand emergency powers to Soeharto who later became the country’s second president.

Eventually, the authorities lost track of the whereabouts of the diamond, according to the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy. But they did keep their promise of sending the miners on a pilgrimage. 

Trisakti is not the only big stone discovered in Cempaka. 

In 1850, a 106.7-carat diamond was found there. Four years earlier, a 20-carat diamond was also discovered. 

Given these past events, the history of the mine will be an integral part of the new tourist park, said Yani.

“We will educate people that in 1965, miners found a diamond as big as a (pigeon’s) egg there,” said Yani.

Another interesting facet of mining in Cempaka is how the locals have their own taboos, said Noor Purbani, a senior official with Banjarbaru’s tourism agency. 

For instance, It is frowned upon to say the word diamond if they find it. Instead, the miners must call it “galuh”, meaning girl in the local language.

According to Purbani, the miners believe that the stone might disappear if they call it a diamond.

SHANGHAI: Nearly a third of China’s land is now off-limits to development under a scheme known as the “ecological protection red line”, a senior official said at a news briefing on Monday (Sep 19), bringing the country in accord with global biodiversity targets.

China first proposed its “red line” scheme in 2011 to put an end to decades of “irrational development” that had encroached on forests, wetlands and other precious ecosystems.

The establishment of national parks and the restoration of ecosystems have now helped bring the total area under protection to more than 30 per cent of China’s territory, said Zhuang Shaoqin, China’s vice-national resources minister.

The figure is in line with a target recommended by the United Nations and supported by more than 100 countries to protect at least 30 per cent of the earth’s land and ocean areas by 2030. China has not yet formally agreed to the target.

The target will be discussed during talks on a new global biodiversity pact set to take place in Montreal in December, which China will lead.

Waters along the Manila Bay, famous for its idyllic sunsets, are heavily polluted by oil, grease and trash from nearby residential areas and ports.

The Philippines is rich in marine resources, with nearly 36,300km of coastline in the archipelago of more than 7,600 islands.

But it is the world’s top polluter when it comes to releasing plastic waste into the ocean, accounting for roughly a third of the total, according to an April 2022 report by the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data, a scientific online publication.

“We need to do these (cleanup drives) for our environment and to discourage people from throwing trash on the seaside,” Janet Panganiban, a 36-year-old volunteer, told Reuters.

Critics say laws regulating solid waste are inadequate and poorly enforced, leaving governments and communities struggling to address the pollution crisis.

The International Coastal Cleanup Day is held every third Saturday of September to raise awareness of the growing garbage problems affecting coastlines around the world.

LAKSHADWEEP, India: There is a treasure in the ocean so valuable that mafias from Mexico to Africa to Japan are turning their attention to poaching rather than drugs.

It is the humble sea cucumber.

This marine animal, with leathery skin and an elongated body, had a global supply worth around US$270 million (S$376 million) in 2020. Mainland China and Hong Kong are its largest buyers.

“(What) really opened my eyes were news stories (about) organised crime syndicates like the Yakuza in Japan making more money (from) sea cucumber smuggling … than they did (from) methamphetamine sales,” conservationist Teale Phelps Bondaroff told the programme Undercover Asia.

India and Sri Lanka are wildlife-crime hot spots, and the sea cucumbers around India’s Lakshadweep islands are now under threat of large-scale poaching, said Bondaroff, the director of research in conservation organisation OceansAsia.

Between 2015 and 2020, Indian and Sri Lankan authorities seized nearly 65,000 kilogrammes of sea cucumbers.

Over 70 per cent of tropical sea cucumber fisheries had been considered depleted, fully exploited or over-exploited before then, according to a 2013 study published in the journal Fish and Fisheries.

This is a threat to ocean health — and the survival of corals, which are already suffering from rising temperatures and ocean acidification due to human activity.

Sea cucumbers ingest sand and filter ocean debris, then expel clean sand in a process known as nutrient cycling. Their faecal matter lowers seawater acidity and releases calcium carbonate, a key component for coral growth. Corals, in turn, provide food and habitat for about 25 per cent of the world’s fishes.

A study of just one coral reef in Australia found that its sea cucumbers excreted poo that amounted to five Eiffel Towers in weight each year.

“There’s a saying that every grain of sand in the ocean has passed through a sea cucumber,” said Bondaroff.

“If you remove sea cucumbers … it’s going to have a dramatic effect on (that ecosystem). It’s going to hurt other populations. It’s going to hurt the stability of the ecosystem.”

The effects are unfurling on the 36 islands of Lakshadweep, which are formed out of corals.

“Suppose all the corals die — then nothing will be there to add (to the structure), and slowly these islands will start disintegrating. They might go underwater also,” said Damodhar A T, the islands’ chief wildlife warden.

INCREASING DEMAND

As with shark’s fin and abalone, sea cucumber is a so-called treasure of Chinese cuisine and is commonly served at banquets.

Besides in mainland China and Hong Kong, it is popular among the Chinese diaspora worldwide, from Singapore to Vietnam to the United States.

In Hong Kong, 600 grammes of it can cost HK$1,480 (S$260); the most valuable species can fetch up to HK$27,500 per kg. These usually end up in the top gourmet restaurants.

In China, this ingredient was once exclusive to the very rich but has become popular among its growing middle class. Their appetite for seafood, which Bondaroff said is close to seven times the consumption in the 1970s, has driven up prices further.

Food writer and restaurateur Lau Chun, who runs Kin’s Kitchen in Hong Kong, noted that the price of sea cucumber has doubled over the past decade.

The COVID-19 pandemic has also driven up demand for sea cucumbers, which is valued in traditional Chinese medicine for its perceived immunity-boosting and infection-prevention benefits.

As practitioner Ng Ching Chuen noted, some studies have found sea cucumbers to have “a great regrowth rate”. They can push their innards out to immobilise a predator and grow new ones within a couple of weeks.

“We make use of these advantages to maintain our health, for example in post-illness care … diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and hepatitis,” said Ng.

Since the 1980s, however, sea cucumber populations across the world have been devastated by overfishing, so much so that 24 countries have since imposed temporary bans on sea cucumber fishing.

In India, the collection of and trade in sea cucumbers have been banned since 2001. Under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, the marine animal is listed alongside mammals like rhinoceros and tiger.

But the illegal trade in it has only intensified.

LEGAL TRADE EXPLOITED

Four hours away by boat, in Sri Lanka, fisherman can fish for sea cucumbers if they have a licence for fishing, diving and transport.

In 2016, after the country’s sea cucumber population had declined, the government reduced the number of permits issued by 25 per cent, instead of imposing a ban.

But the profits are so good that a local fisherman, who goes by the name of Maduranga, is also fishing at night despite already having a proper licence to fish. Sea cucumber fishing at night is banned in Sri Lanka.

Maduranga said his 20-strong crew each can make up to 2.3 million Sri Lankan rupees (S$9,000) a month if they get a good haul of sandfish, a high-value species of sea cucumber.

It can go for 47,000 Sri Lankan rupees per kg, compared with the disco sea cucumber species at 27,000 Sri Lankan rupees per kg, he said.

When processed into the prized delicacy called beche-de-mer, this dried sea cucumber product can fetch up to US$1,000 per kg.

To cash in on the lucrative business, some fishermen in Sri Lanka have even taken to “fish laundering”: They take advantage of the country’s legal trade to acquire stock from India, where sea cucumber fishing and exports are banned.

“You’ll have a sea cucumber that’s illegally caught in Indian waters smuggled into Sri Lanka to enter markets in Southeast Asia legally,” said Bondaroff.

“It’s now seemingly a legal product because it’s been laundered through the Sri Lankan sea cucumber legal fishery.”

A LIVELIHOOD, AND A CRIME

In the Gulf of Mannar, located between Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu in India, organised crime is taking place “increasingly”, said B Jabez, a forest ranger officer of Ramanathapuram district in the Indian state.

And the district’s fishermen have become poachers because of the ban, said one of them who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We’ve been fishing for sea cucumbers for many years,” he said. “This is our only livelihood.”

Today, if they fish day and night, they can catch anything from 10 kg to 300 kg. For 300 kg, he can get 3,000 to 4,000 rupees ($52 to $69 SGD), added the poacher.

“We know we are going against nature. But there are many obstacles for us in every season… We struggle during rainy and stormy weather. No one from the government comes to see how we are suffering.”

The illegal activities do not end with him. A trader buys over the poacher’s catch and sends them to Sri Lanka.

“When we go from here, at a distance of three kilometres, we change boats. Then, after another four kilometres, another boat. Then, after another eight kilometres, another boat. We have to keep changing again and again,” said a trader who was tracked down by the Undercover Asia team.

The trader claims he’s just a middleman in a complex and hierarchical crime chain. His role is to hand his haul of sea cucumbers over to a bigger agent who collects from small-time traders like him.

Overseeing the entire process, are local criminal gangs, he added.

“They have the full support of some policemen. They pay bribes to them to get things done.

They have political support, so you can’t do anything to them,” he said.

These kingpins are often not physically involved in the operations, said Tamil Nadu forest ranger officer Sathish Sundaram.

“So, in many cases we know the kingpin is involved but we couldn’t mention his name in the cases actually,” said Sundaram.

In fact, the operations have become more sophisticated and elusive. According to Bondaroff, there have been cases where getaway drivers are being used to transport the haul. Some also consolidate catches in stockpiles by burying their catch underground until they’ve amassed enough.

When bringing the haul across waters, they’d attach a tracking device and drop the load into the ocean for it to be picked up by another vessel.

The catch often ends up 4,000 miles away in Hong Kong, which has a free trade status. That means duties or tariffs on imports of most products, including foods, are not imposed, allowing illegal trade to thrive unchecked.

63 per cent of sea cucumbers in the world, at least, are traded through Hong Kong, said Bondaroff.

FIGHTING BACK

With sea cucumber population dwindling across the coastal Tamil Nadu region, the mafia are coming for the Lakshadweep islands, which for millenia, have seen a thriving population of the marine animal.

“Kingpins from the mainland use our fishermen. They lured them and got them into the job,” said Damodhar, the chief wildlife warden there.

In 2020, he set up a sea cucumber protection task force comprising officials from the local coast guard, police, fisheries department and the forest department. Together with around 200 marine protection watchers, they monitor three anti-poaching areas in the region round the clock.

The results are telling. Since the task force was set up, Damodhar and his team busted an international smuggling racket and seized 800 kg of sea cucumbers worth almost a million US dollars.

It was one of the largest seizures of illegally caught sea cucumbers in the world.

“Helicopters were used to shift the offender. That was the first of its kind… Subsequently, four major cases which we have registered were handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation, New Delhi,” said Damodhar.

“Till now we have seized around 2,500 kg or more than 2.5 tons of sea cucumber in terms of quantity. It’s around 45 to 50 crores (S$784,000 to S$872,000).”

But that is perhaps only 1 or 2 per cent of the actual total offences that occurred on the islands, he added.

The Lakshadweep authorities have also set up a “community-based conservation reserve”, said Damodhar, where sea cucumbers are actively protected. While their numbers have already risen dramatically, he added, it has also lured poachers to the pristine island.

To address peoples’ livelihoods, the Sri Lankan government is trying to introduce aquaculture, or sea cucumber farms, to local fisherman. But the drawback is that it takes eight to ten months for the sea cucumber to grow from a juvenile to an adult of marketable size.

In the meantime, fishermen still rely on illegal fishing, despite its dangers.

Perhaps the best way forward is in reducing the sky-high demand for sea cucumber.

“It involves educating consumers about the products that they consume and the impact that that has on the environment,” said Bondaroff.

“Reframe these so-called luxury seafood items as gutter food, show people that their food that they eat at a fancy wedding, at a banquet to show off to their family, at one point in the supply chain is handled by criminals.”

BANJARMASIN: With a huge nose and reddish-brown skin, the proboscis monkey is not everyone’s favourite animal.

But Indonesian Amalia Rezeki, conservationist and founder of the friends of proboscis monkey voluntary group, has made it her mission to save the endemic species.

The proboscis monkey is native to Borneo and scattered throughout all five of Indonesia’s provinces on the island it calls Kalimantan.

However, it is in South Kalimantan, whose provincial mascot is the proboscis monkey, where the animals could in the past be found in large numbers. They thrived around the mangroves, swamps and coastal forests.

While there are several conservation centres for endangered animals in South Kalimantan, they mostly take care of other animals like orangutans, said Rezeki.

“That is why we are focusing on the proboscis monkeys, and also because I am a native of South Kalimantan,” she told CNA.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species, the proboscis monkey is classified as endangered. 

Its population has decreased by more than 50 per cent in the past 50 years due to ongoing habitat loss and hunting. 

It is estimated there are less than 20,000 proboscis monkeys in the world, surviving mainly on leaves, mangroves and seeds.

According to Rezeki, there were only about 3,200 proboscis monkeys in South Kalimantan two years ago, compared to about 5,000 in 2013.

Concerned with the monkey’s declining numbers, she founded the volunteer group Sahabat Bekantan Indonesia (SBI) in 2013 while studying biology for her master’s degree. 

Sahabat Bekantan means friends of proboscis monkeys. Bekantan is the Indonesian name for the primate. 

SBI’s goal is to save proboscis monkeys from going extinct. 

“It is our responsibility as citizens. We know there are many foreigners in NGOs (Non-governmental organisations helping in the conservation efforts). 

However, it is our (Indonesia’s) biodiversity, so we should do something,” said Rezeki.