The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Study offers hope for survival of island nations as sea levels rise Posted: 22 Apr 2014 08:47 PM PDT Pacific island atolls might in fact be getting larger or remaining stable in their size as new gravel and sand is carried by waves from their coral reefs to shore, said Professor Paul Kench, head of the University of Auckland's School of Environment which is conducting the study. Tiny island nations, such as Tuvalu and Kiribati, had been thought to be among the most vulnerable to rising sea levels but the study has shown very few islands shrinking in size, Kench told Xinhua news agency yesterday. Researchers were building a dataset of changes over the past 50 years to 1,000 islands in the Pacific, and now had more than 500 examples. Most of them, like Tuvalu, had either remained stable or grown, while some had been moving on their reef surfaces. "We can't as yet determine whether some island groups are more susceptible or sensitive to change than others. However, this is something we believe we should be able to identify as the larger dataset develops," said Kench. Some of the islands could hold relatively large populations, such as the more densely populated islands including South Tarawa on Kiribati, where at least 20,000 people lived, and Fongafale, Tuvalu, which was home to about 5,000 people. "However, these are the urban capitals. There are many islands with small communities of 100 to 800 people. There are still many more islands with no one currently living on them," said the professor. The least populated and least developed islands were likely to be more robust against rising sea levels than the bigger population centres. "At some densely populated sites pollution may have reduced reef health and sediment production is diminished. The best mitigation measure that communities could engage in would be to maintain reef health," Kench said. "It is possible that some islands may eventually have to be abandoned. However, this should not mean all islands in a nation will disappear. "There are some large and uninhabited islands in most small nations that could be used to establish new settlements in the future. This infers that there may need to be some migration within a country," the professor said. Vegetation could colonise newly accreted land very quickly, but the Pacific had many examples of people living on islands with a lack of vegetation. However, urgent research is needed into whether water resources would change and communities would still be able to grow food crops such as taro. More research is also needed into ocean acidification, another side-effect of climate change, and the impact this would have on the ability of reefs to generate fresh sand and gravel to build islands. "It is possible that it might compromise the ability to generate fresh sand and gravel supplies from surrounding reefs," said Kench. "However, others suggest that weaker skeletons of corals and other organisms might lead to a pulse of new sediment available for island building. There simply hasn't been sufficient research undertaken to resolve this question," he added. – Bernama, April 23, 2014. |
| Cubans get Hollywood, football fix through ‘paquete’ Posted: 22 Apr 2014 05:38 PM PDT Hungry for the Internet and barred from access to satellite television, Cubans have regularly swapped entertainment stored on USB sticks or computer hard drives. The practice has now evolved to a sophisticated new level, however, with the rise of what is known locally as the "paquete". Each week, a new such paquete arrives, and Cubans guided by word of mouth hurry to fill USB keys with hours of high-end entertainment at prices ranging from less than a dollar to five dollars, depending on the content, which is available a la carte. It might be a pirated Hollywood movie or a chance to watch Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi in the latest action from Spain's La Liga football championship. Others favour the latest episodes of racy Brazilian or South Korean soap operas, hugely popular in Cuba. For the underground distributors of paquetes, these bundles of digital escapism are nothing more than harmless fun. "There's no politics, no pornography, nothing for the police to get worried about," says one distributor, Jose. Authorities in Cuba have so far largely turned a blind eye to the phenomenon. A notable exception, however, is former culture minister Abel Prieto, a special adviser to President Raul Castro, who recently decried the "trashcan of the paquete", which he said was a symptom of "Yankee culture invading us shamelessly". Addressing a meeting of intellectuals in mid-April, Prieto said it was time to "oppose, tear down and depreciate the paquete... so that people understand they are being fooled." But he pointedly failed to recommend an outright ban on the paquete. At the same meeting, meanwhile, an official commission acknowledged that Cuba's five state broadcast channels were "very distant from the cultural, informational and entertainment needs of our people". Until that situation changes, the paquete's popularity seems assured. Maria Teresa, a 48-year-old from Holguin, 750 kilometres south of Havana, buys four gigabytes worth of entertainment – television series in her case – for around 20 cents. "It's enough for the whole week," she said. Daniel, a 22-year-old law student, told a similar story. "In addition to films and TV series, I look for antivirus updates," he said. Graciela, a nurse from Las Tunas, 700 kilometres from Havana, said she turned to the paquete after getting fed up with domestic entertainment. "I watch some TV, but Cuban telenovelas are bad and the Brazilian ones take too long, it's painful. So I buy my little paquete for five pesos and I'm happy," she said. An Easter week paquete seen by AFP bore the hallmarks of increasingly sophisticated production techniques, including advertisements for professional photography studios and small restaurants. "I hope they don't try and ban or change them," said Marcos, a 50-year-old carpenter from Havana. "At the end of the day, all we are doing is watching peacefully at home. It's not hurting anyone." Yet change may be inevitable. The famous dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez plans to launch an online opposition newspaper this year. She has said that the paper will be distributed by mobile phone and email, as well as the preferred methods of file-sharing used by Cubans – USB sticks, hard drives, DVDs and CDs. "I hope it will appear in the paquete menus," Sanchez said. But Pro-Castro regime blogger Yohandry predicted Sanchez's paper may prove the death knell of the paquete. "I told my neighbours and friends to buy the paquete this week because it could be the last," Yohandry said. "Because everything Yoani touches rots." – AFP, April 23, 2014. |
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