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  Today Online 3 Nov 06
Economic growth not at expense of marine world
Letter from Maryanne Maes

IT WAS ghastly to learn of firms taking the lead in raping the seabeds where "no man has probed before" ("Pumping profits from the seabed", Oct 31).

And the timing is ironic--Al Gore's film documentary about saving our planet, The Inconvenient Truth, is now in cinemas, his while Britain is shaking us awake on global warming.

As it is, 27 per cent of the world's corals have been lost and cannot be brought back. In the next 30 years, another 30 per cent will go.

Corals live on seabeds and are considered the rainforests of the seas and oceans, providing life and sustainability to the marine community. Any major disturbance to the seabed will result in huge amounts of silt being deposited on corals, which suffocates them to death.

The ramifications will be devastating.

What these companies are doing, ultimately, is also robbing every human's right to the limited resource of marine foodstock, already depleting at an alarming rate.

Singapore is known to always honour the treaties it commits to.

One of them is the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. At least a million marine species that call the corals home.

And hasn't Singapore committed to use clean energy alternatives instead of fossil fuel following its ratification of the Kyoto Protocol?

Economic growth is vital to Singapore, but we should not achieve it at the expense of our wildlife.

If other multi-national corporations are practising this in seabeds, Singapore should have the wisdom not to tread in that unsustainable path.
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