U.S. coverage:

THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE NEWSTuesday, 25 May, 2010

Other Environment News

AP: UN fish stocks review opens with dire outlook Business Week (US): UN fish stocks review opens with dire outlook Journal Star (US): UN fish stocks review opens with dire outlook Mainichi Daily News (Japan): UN fish stocks review opens with dire outlook AFP: Oil spill off Singapore after vessels collide Los Angeles Times (US): BP told to cut back on toxic remedy Reuters: China wants energy goals reached before Cancun talks Reuters: 70 percent of firms will spend more on climate change Guardian (UK): Climate change concern declines in poll New York Times (US): Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons BBC: Polar bears face 'tipping point' due to climate change

Environmental News from the UNEP Regions

RONA ROWA

UNEP and the Executive Director in the News

UN Daily News: Conference on saving world’s fish stocks opens at UN Headquarters Inter Press Service (Italy): More Funds, Less Red Tape, NGOs Tell GEF Assembly Tehran Times (Iran): UN study backs economic changes to save natural world: report In Depth News (Germany): Remembering the Three Rio Conventions Market Watch (US): American Water CEO to Speak at World Environment Day 'Water

Matters Global Water Conference' Eco localizer (Blog): Why Biodiversity Matters and What You Can Do on World

Environment Day Today. Az (Azerbaijan): Baku is one of three European countries to celebrate World

Environment Day New Net Africa (Blog): source of growth for international emissions offset market, says

UNFCCC Vancouver Sun (Canada): Feds to put price on Canada's nature El Pais (Uruguay): Uruguay aspira a US$ 8 millones de Fondo para Medio Ambiente El Librepensador (Spain) :La biodiversidad se pierde a un ritmo acelerado La Tarde (Spain): Desaparece la riqueza natural Jornal De Santa Catarina (Brazil): Números no ar e no mar Discover.news (China): 联合国发文警告商业性捕渔业 40 年内崩溃

Other UN News

Environment News from the UN Daily News of May 24 th 2010 Environment News from the S.G.’s Spokesman Daily Press Briefing of May 25 th

2010 (None)

UNEP and the Executive Director in the News

UN Daily News: Conference on saving world’s fish stocks opens at UNHeadquarters

24th May 2010

A five-day conference on fish conservation opened at United NationsHeadquarters in New York today amid warnings that three quarters of the world’s fish stocks are in distress and nearing depletion while marine ecosystems continue to deteriorate.

The conference chairman David Balton, United States Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Fisheries in the Bureau of Oceans, cited over-fishing, the effect of fishing on the marine environment and the need for further assistance to developing countries as among the forum’s main issues.

The conference is reviewing implementation of the 1995 UN Fish Stocks Agreement that established a legal regime for long-term conservation and sustainable use of straddling and highly migratory fish stocks. It will provide an opportunity for countries to consider new measures to tighten implementation of the legal regime.

The agreement, which took effect in 2001 and has 77 States parties, covers highly migratory species that regularly travel long distances, such as tuna, swordfish and oceanic sharks, as well as straddling stocks that occur both within the exclusiveeconomic zone of coastal States – up to 200 nautical miles offshore – and areas beyond and adjacent to that zone, including cod, halibut, pollock, jack mackerel and squid.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that currently three quarters of all fish stocks are in distress and nearing depletion and that the majority of straddling fish stocks, highly migratory species and other high seas fish stocks

are either fully exploited or over-exploited.The conference, a resumption of the last review that was held in 2006, will “take a hard look at what is being done to give effect to the Fish Stocks Agreement,” Mr. Balton said. It will also consider progress made in the implementation of recommendations since 2006, many of which led to concerted action to improve fisheries. The conference is open all countries.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including many that raised concerns about the fate of Atlantic bluefin tuna and two species of sharks at the recent meeting of the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of WildFauna and Flora (CITES), are also participating.

Also kicking off today is a UN gathering of experts to discuss pollution in the Caribbean. The UN Environment Programme’s Caribbean arm, known as UNEP CEP, and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) have invited more than 50 pollution control specialists to a five-day meeting in Panama City.

Participants will focus on how to bolster the region’s commitment to ratify the Protocol Concerning Pollution from Land- Based Sources and Activities, or the LBS Protocol. That pact sets up regional guidelines and standards for reducing pollution’s impact on the coastal and marine environment, as well as on human health.

More than 80 per cent of the pollution of the Wider Caribbean’s marine environment is believed to be from land-based sources and activities. So far, only six countries – Panama, Belize, Saint Lucia, France, the United States and Trinidad and Tobago – have ratified the LBS Protocol.

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Inter Press Service (Italy): More Funds, Less Red Tape, NGOs Tell GEF Assembly

24th May 2010

Although they expressed appreciation for support received from the global fund, especially through the Small Grants Programme, representatives of the GEF NGO Network -- a partnership with more than 400 GEF-accredited non-governmental organisations worldwide -- participating in the five-day meeting in Punta del Este criticised the excessive bureaucracy bogging down the process of applying for project funds and the lack of cultural sensitivity towards indigenous communities.

Delegates from the NGOs also called for a greater voice in the design of national programmes financed by the GEF, which was created in 1991 by the World Bank but was restructured in 1994 and became a permanent, separate institution that currently brings together 181 countries.

More than 30 countries pledged 4.25 billion dollars in donations to finance the GEF over the next four years, 52 percent more than the total in the fourth replenishment of funds in 2006, GEF CEO Monique Barbut said.

But the civil society organisations were calling for 10 billion dollars.

The amount pledged by donors "will always be insufficient," María Liechner, head of the Fundación Ecos of Uruguay, which was founded in 1994 and forms part of the GEF NGO Network, told IPS.

The representatives of the GEF member countries, meeting this week in Punta del Este, on the Atlantic coast 140 km east of the Uruguayan capital, will decide on the environmental financing priorities for the 2010-2014 period.

Liechner said the NGOs want "to form part of the projects from the planning stage, and to be taken into account when it comes to decision-making. But this is not the case today."

The GEF, the world's largest environmental fund, is a partnership with the private sector, NGOs, and 10 international agencies: the U.N. Development Programme; the U.N. Environment Programme; the World Bank; the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation; the U.N. Industrial Development Organisation; the African Development Bank; the Asian Development Bank; the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; the Inter-American Development Bank; and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

It provides grants to developing countries and economies in transition for projects related to biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation, the ozone layer, and persistent organic pollutants.

"There' s a big issue of cultural understanding," Minnie Degawan, head of the Indigenous Peoples Network for Change (IPNC), told IPS. "The GEF looks at indigenous people as just a small sector and it treats them like it treats all the others. It does not recognise that indigenous people have different ways of doing things. So there's a lot of educating that needs to be done with the GEF."

The IPNC emerged to respond to the need for indigenous peoples to effectively participate in international processes that have a direct impact on their daily lives, with particular attention to the GEF and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), signed in 1992. The IPNC involves groups in Asia, Africa and the Americas.

Degawan said the GEF "want to just deal with biodiversity and they don't want to deal with climate change; they want to always keep them separate. But indigenous people do not look at it that way; we always see things as interconnected."

She also complained about the red tape involved in applying for GEF funds. "After three years of working on this project funded by the GEF, I think I have more white hair. They require so many things and sometimes it's just repeating itself, like you have to fill in this form, and you fill in this form, and it's basically the same."

In addition, she said the funds for projects involving indigenous communities are still insufficient.

"In the last period, GEF grants (for the Small Grants Programme) totalled 110 million dollars, and this time that amount was increased to 220 million dollars - in other words, there was a 100 percent increase," without counting the funds that each country can earmark from its national action plan, William Ehlers, GEF Team Leader for External Relations, told IPS.

One change projected for this four-year period is the release of funding for new countries interested in joining the global partnership, said Ehlers.

Indigenous activist Yolanda Contreras with the Asociación de Artesanas de Arbolso y Huaca de Barro, an NGO from northwestern Peru, told IPS that the funds that reach native communities through the Small Grants Programme are still insignificant.

Financing of the Small Grants Programme is less than one percent of the total GEF budget, which has allocated more than nine billion dollars to over 2,600 projects in 165 countries since it was created.

Contreras, whose project receives technical assistance from the GEF for growing and weaving native varieties of naturally coloured cotton, acknowledged the importance of that support, pointing out that "the tradition of our ancestors was being lost. We didn't have seeds to plant the cotton."

In the meeting with the civil society groups, Small Grants Programme Global Manager Delfin Ganapin recognised that there are many challenges in terms of facilitating access to funding by local communities, increasing the budget, improving training, and overcoming cultural and language barriers.

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Tehran Times (Iran): UN study backs economic changes to save natural world: report

24th May 2010

A key UN report on biodiversity will recommend massive economic changes like company fines to help save species and protect the natural world, The Guardian reported here on Saturday.

The study, which is due for publication in the summer, will argue that global action on the topic is more powerful than the argument for tackling climate change, according to the newspaper.

The report, entitled 'The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity' (TEEB), was launched by Brussels in 2007 with the support of the UN Environment Program, after G8 and major emerging economies called for a global study.

If nature is not factored into the global economic system then the environment will become more fragile and exposed to external shocks, placing human lives and the world economy in jeopardy, it will argue.

The TEEB report will also recommend that companies are fined and taxed for over-exploitation of the natural world, with strict limits imposed on what they can take from the environment, according to the paper.

Alongside financial results, businesses and governments should also be asked to provide accounts for their use of natural and human resources. And communities should be paid to preserve natural environments rather than deplete them.

The Guardian's report, published on the UN's International Day for Biological Diversity, added that the UN will also recommend reforming state subsidies for certain industries, like energy, farming, fishing and transport. The TEEB study will also warn that one-third of the world's natural habitats have been damaged by humans.

The total value of “natural goods and services” like pollination, medicines, fertile soil, clean air and water, will be around 10 and 100 times the cost of saving the species and natural habitats which provide them.

“We need a sea-change in human thinking and attitudes towards nature,” said Indian economist and report author Pavan Sukhdev, cited by The Guardian. Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Program's green economy initiative, also appealed for nature to be regarded “not as something to be vanquished, conquered, but rather something to be cherished and lived within”.

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In Depth News (Germany): Remembering the Three Rio Conventions

24th May 2010

The botched UN conference in Copenhagen may prove to be a blessing in disguise by way of correcting the imbalance that has favoured climate change but nearly ignored desertification and biodiversity that are two other centerpieces of the three ‘Rio Conventions’ emerging from the Earth Summit in June 1992.

A closer inter-action between the three Conventions may in fact liberate the new Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Christiana Figueres, from much of the pressure that apparently crushed Yvo de Boer and culminated in his decision to quit the job.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced the appointment of Fugueres, a Costa Rican national, on May 17, 2010, as the successor of de Boer who was the second Dutch to head the UNFCCC secretariat in Bonn.

Figueres has been a member of the Costa Rican climate change negotiating team since 1995. She represented Latin America and the Caribbean on the Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism in 2007, and was then elected Vice President of the Conference of the Parties 2008-2009.

She served as Director of International Cooperation in the Ministry of Planning in Costa Rica, and as Chief of Staff to the Minister of Agriculture. She was also the Director of Renewable Energy in the Americas (REIA) and is founder of the Center for Sustainable Development of the Americas (CSDA).

"As I take on my new responsibilities at the helm of the secretariat, I will have two immediate priorities: to work with the Secretary General to strengthen trust in the process, and to support the Danish and Mexican COP Presidencies as well as all other Parties in the preparation of a successful COP16 in Cancun," said Figures, 53, responding to her nomination.

2010 being the UN International Year of Biodiversity, a closer interaction between the UNFCCC and the UN Conventions on Biological Diversity (CBD) and to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) would help put into perspective the significance of the close linkage between the three Rio Conventions.

The UNCCD secretary Luc Gnacadja and CBD’s Ahmed Djoghlaf have already developed a joint programme of raising global awareness about this year of biodiversity. They will not only release a joint statement but have also been collaborating on a number of activities throughout the year.

“We are working to launch a Land Day at the CBD’s global conference (October 18-29, 2010) in Nagoya in Japan. After all, eight out of 25 global ‘biodiversity hotspots’ are in the drylands. That’s why we have carefully chosen and crafted our theme for awareness raising. Enhancing soils anywhere enhances life everywhere. This is at the core of the work on biodiversity,” Gnacadja said in an interview with IDN.

LINKAGES

Underlining the link between desertification and climate change, he said: “When there are a lot of voices calling for zero net forest degradation – in the context of climate change – it will be impossible to reach such a target if we don’t aim at having zero net land degradation. Because, where is the pressure on forest coming from? It is coming from land being degraded, and people looking for new land. Then they go for deforestation. So one is closely linked to the other. In other words, if we say that we want to preserve the forest we must make better use of the land under management and we must attach importance to reclaiming or rehabilitating the degraded land.”

Pointing to yet another connection, the UNCCD executive secretary said in an IDN interview in February: “Unfortunately – as in Copenhagen – whenever the potential that has now been clearly established by science, potential of the land and the soil not only to address adaptation but also to mitigate climate change, is brought up in the context of the REDD programme (on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) or NAMAs (Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions) there are a number of big players who bracket it. And I believe that the challenges in Copenhagen were mainly challenges of lack of trust between the players.”

Gnacadja made yet another important point when he said: “The human face of climate change is to be seen in the drylands. People are already dying due to the impact of climate change in drylands, because of prolonged droughts that are followed by sudden rain and flood. Because of severe degradation of land, some people are starving, some of them are dying, and others are migrating.”

In run up to a fresh round of climate change talks at the UNFCCC headquarters in Bonn, from May 31 to June 11, reports said that a United Nations study expected to be

published in July at a conference in London, would underline that the case for saving species is 'more powerful than climate change'.

The London Guardian newspaper recalled that the global public interest in climate change was triggered by the ‘Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change’, a 700-page report released for the British government on October 30, 2006 by economist Nicholas Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.

The Stern Review claimed that the cost of limiting climate change would be around 1%-2% of annual global wealth, but the longer-term economic benefits would be 5-20 times that figure.

“The UN's biodiversity report – dubbed the Stern for Nature – is expected to say that the value of saving ‘natural goods and services’, such as pollination, medicines, fertile soils, clean air and water, will be even higher – between 10 and 100 times the cost of saving the habitats and species which provide them,” reported the newspaper on May 17, 2010.

"We need a sea-change in human thinking and attitudes towards nature: not as something to be vanquished, conquered, but rather something to be cherished and lived within," the report's author, the Deutsche Bank economist Pavan Sukhdev, told the Guardian.

REPORTS TO COME

In fact, Sukhdev provided a glimpse of the new report in November in the ‘TEEB – The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for National and International Policy Makers – Summary: Responding to the Value of Nature 2009’.

Further two TEEB reports on for local policy makers and administrators and business respectively will be published in mid-2010, The final findings of the complete TEEB study will be presented in October 2010 at the CBD COP10 (10th conference of parties to the UN Convention for Biological Diversity), in Nagoya.

TEEB was launched in 2007 by Germany and the European Commission in response to a proposal by the G8+5 Environment Ministers (Potsdam, Germany) to develop a global study on the economics of biodiversity loss. This independent study, led by Sukhdev, is hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) with financial support from the European Commission, Germany and the UK, more recently joined by Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden.

In May 2008, the TEEB Interim Report was released at the Convention on Biological Diversity’s COP9. This paved the way for the series of further TEEB reports.

One of the key messages highlighted in that document was the inextricable link between poverty and the loss of ecosystems and biodiversity. It showed how several Millennium Development Goals were at risk due to neglect and deterioration of these aspects of our natural capital.

The second phase of TEEB work is divided into five interconnected strands. These include the Report on Ecological and Economic Foundations (parts of which were

published online in September 2009) and four targeted end-user reports that build on this baseline.

This group of reports offers tailored insights and advice for national and international policy makers, local and regional administrators, businesses and consumers and citizens.

The September 2009 report said: “Losses in the natural world have direct economic repercussions that we systematically underestimate. Making the value of our natural capital visible to economies and society creates an evidence base to pave the way for more targeted and cost-effective solutions.

BIODIVERSITY CRISIS

“We are facing a biodiversity crisis even though we are major beneficiaries of nature’s multiple and complex values.”

Examples are: Forests store carbon, provide timber and other valuable products and shelter species and people. Wetlands purify water and offer protection against floods. Mangroves protect coasts and their populations by reducing the damage caused by storms and tsunamis. Coral reefs provide breeding grounds for fish, leisure and learning for tourists and scientists.

The list of benefits provided by nature is vast, added the report. Yet species are still being lost and nearly two thirds of ecosystem services have been degraded in just fifty years (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) 2005).

“We have become only too familiar with the gradual loss of nature – this ‘death by a thousand cuts' of the natural world. Our natural capital is being run down without us even knowing its real worth,” the study noted.

It pointed out that the cost of these losses is felt on the ground but can go unnoticed at national and international level “because the true value of natural capital is missing from decisions, indicators, accounting systems and prices in the market”.

‘Ecosystem services’ – the benefits we derive from nature – are a useful concept to make these benefits more explicit. They form a key building block of the new approach we urgently need to manage natural resources, the document added.

The report makes a strong plea for investing in natural capital arguing that it supports a wide range of economic sectors and maintains and expands options for economic growth and sustainable development.

Such investments can be a cost effective response to the climate change crisis, offer value for money, support local economies, create jobs and maintain ecosystem benefits for the long term.

“Many more economic sectors than we realize depend on natural capital. We can all appreciate the importance of healthy biodiversity and ecosystems for primary production like agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Yet natural capital also contributes significantly to manufacturing and the service economy,” says the report.

A close look at the September 2009 reveals that the final UN report to be released in October 2010 will provide fresh impulses for treating the three Rio Conventions as complementary and mutually reinforcing – far-removed from competing with each other as the money-spinning FCCC, the poor ‘African’ CCD and the exotic CBD.

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Market Watch (US): American Water CEO to Speak at World Environment Day 'Water Matters Global Water Conference'

24th May 2010VOORHEES, N.J., May 24, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- American Water (AWK 20.05, -0.04, -0.20%) , the largest investor-owned U.S. water and wastewater utility company, today announced its president and chief executive officer Donald L. Correll is speaking as an industry expert during the United Nations' World Environment Day "Water Matters! Global Water Conference". The conference is being held on June 3 in Pittsburgh, Pa. as part of the North America celebration of World Environment Day 2010.

Correll will serve on a panel discussion, moderated by Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post, about water as an economic driver. He will discuss the critical need for water and wastewater infrastructure investment in the U.S. and how these projects help create jobs and stimulate the economy.

With more than 30 years of leadership experience in the water industry, Correll has served as president and CEO of American Water since 2006. He is the immediate past president of the National Association of Water Companies, and he serves on the boards of a variety of civic, professional and business organizations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Environmental Financial Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The United Nations Environment Programme appointed Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to be North America's Host for World Environment Day 2010. World Environment Day was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972 at the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.

Commemorated each year on June 5, World Environment Day is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action. With thousands of events in six global regions, namely, North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, West Asia and Europe, World Environment Day is considered one of the largest environmental events of its kind.

Founded in 1886, American Water is the largest investor-owned U.S. water and wastewater utility company. With headquarters in Voorhees, N.J., the company employs more than 7,000 dedicated professionals who provide drinking water, wastewater and other related services to approximately 16 million people in 35 states and Ontario and Manitoba, Canada.

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Eco localizer (Blog): Why Biodiversity Matters and What You Can Do on World Environment Day

24th May 2010

Fast is not always good. Species are becoming extinct at the fastest rate known in geological history, and most of these extinctions are tied to human activity. This year is the UN Year of Biodiversity and it seems as if in the blink of an eye, we are already half-way through it. This was a year that many of us had long looked forward to, perhaps with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.

This was the year we had set a collective alarm clock as the deadline to achieve a significant reduction in the rate of loss of biodiversity. Now it is ringing rather loudly. All assessments of progress indicate that we are far from reaching the goals we set in 2002.

UNEP’s most recent report assessing biodiversity on Earth warns that a massive further loss of biodiversity is increasingly likely, and with it, a severe reduction of many essential services to society as “tipping points” are approached.

That could mean terrifying scenarios – such as the dieback of large areas of the Amazon forest with consequences for the global climate, regional rainfall and widespread species extinctions. It may mean multiple collapses of coral reef ecosystems, due to a combination of ocean acidification, warmer waters and overfishing.

Rising global populations, a demand for more resources, finite oil supplies, increasing globalisation and massive species extinctions, all define an era that could be described as both a crisis and a wake-up call.

Every year the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) uses World Environment Day (WED) as a vehicle to raise worldwide awareness of important environmental issues with the aim of creating awareness and driving political action. This year’s WED will be held under the theme – Many Species. One Planet. One Future. This theme serves as a call to action to stop and reverse biodiversity loss.

UNEP is proud and pleased that Rwanda will be the host. Under the leadership of President Paul Kagame, Rwanda has developed a visionary strategy for sustainable development and environmental protection, with a spate of new policies and laws for environmental management. This is an opportunity to showcase the successes reached in Rwanda.

I have been to visit Rwanda in the run up to our WED events and am both impressed and awed. Rwanda, known affectionately as the “Land of a Thousand Hills” is located in Central Africa. Rwanda is a beautiful country and one that embodies the spirit of progressive political action to protect the environment. Here, environment is also a very important and sensitive factor in the socio-economic, political and cultural development of the country.

President Kagame has raised the environmental bar across the Continent and indeed the world by calling for a low carbon, resource efficient Green Economy. In doing so, he has

articulated a new direction for action on poverty alleviation by linking the future of Africa’s economy with investing in environmental sustainability.

In the run up to WED 2010, we’re also calling on individuals, groups, communities and organizations to do their bit to conserve the diversity of life on our planet. This is a partnership between us all. Tell us what you are doing to mark WED, no matter how small. For every activity registered on our website, we will donate $10 to Gorilla conservation in Rwanda. That means your efforts count twice!

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Today. Az (Azerbaijan): Baku is one of three European countries to celebrate World Environment Day

24th May 2010

Every year the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) announces main cities to celebrate the World Environment Day in Europe.

“This year, Baku has been elected one of the three central cities along with Swiss cities of Geneva and Italian city of Genoa,” the Azerbaijan Ecology and Natural Resources Ministry said.

“We assess this as successful result of the work done in environmental protection and also national environment programs as well as international organizations’ attaching great importance to Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus region.”

The UN General Assembly declared June 5 World Environment Day at its 27th session at December 16, 1972. On the same day, the General Assembly also founded the UN Environment Program.

The World Environment Day is usually marked by street rallies, bicycle racing, essay competition at schools, plating trees, cleaning of polluted areas and utilization of wasters

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New Net Africa (Blog): source of growth for international emissions offset market, says UNFCCC

24th May 2010

Despite Africa accounting for just under two per cent of the 2,060-plus registered clean development mechanism (CDM) projects worldwide, the continent has seen a strong growth trend in the past few years, according to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

There are now 122 CDM projects in Africa that are either registered or in the pipeline for validation or registration, it said, up from 116 in 2009, 75 in 2008 and 42 in 2007.

The offset project landscape is also changing in the continent, said the UNFCCC. It said that whereas raising capacity and awareness about the potential for offset projects in Africa used to be a challenge, it now sees a higher level of understanding and eagerness to participate in the region.

‘It’s obvious the capacity-building is paying off and the message is getting out,’ said John Kilani of the UNFCCC secretariat, on behalf of Nairobi Framework.

Five UN organisations and two multilateral development banks make up the Nairobi Framework, an initiative aimed at extending the benefits of the CDM, especially in Africa.Launched in November 2006 by then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Nairobi Framework’s partners now include the UN Development Programme, UN Environment Programme, the World Bank, UN Institute for Training and Research, UN Conference on Trade and Development, the African Development Bank and the UNFCCC secretariat.The UNFCCC also said there are a growing number of renewable energy projects in Africa and a growing number of countries hosting projects.

‘Some project developers are even prepared to pay a premium for offset credits originating from Africa, no doubt because they are confident in the long-term growth prospects for CDM on the continent,’ said Mr Kilani, director of the secretariat’s sustainable development mechanism programme.

Under the CDM, projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to sustainable development can earn saleable certified emission reduction credits, which can be used for compliance under the Kyoto Protocol.

‘Africa’s slow start in the CDM business seems now to have been more about finding the right ways to structure projects in the sectors that are Africa’s national specialities than about a fundamental incompatibility,’ said Henry Derwent, president and CEO of the International Emissions Trading Association.

‘Investors in compliance and voluntary markets alike are seriously interested in good quality African emissions reduction projects, to balance their portfolios and meet their climate change strategies. Africa Carbon Forum has helped them and project promoters alike,’ he added.

One of the new developments under the CDM is the option to establish so-called programmes of CDM activities, which allows for many individual project activities to be put together under a single programme, to reduce transaction costs and increase efficiency of implementation.

‘Programmatic CDM is clearly seen as a very attractive option by African countries and several programmes are under development in a handful of countries; but, it is also clear from the discussions that to make it a success there is a need for targeted capacity-building, both for designated national authorities and project developers,’ said John Christensen from the UN Environment Programme.

The CDM Designated National Authorities (DNAs) are responsible for, among other things, laying the policy groundwork for CDM in their countries and for attesting to the sustainable development benefits of each project prior to registration.

There are currently more than 2,060 registered CDM projects in 63 developing countries, and about another 2,200 projects in the project validation and registration pipeline. The projects registered to date are expected to generate more than 1.7 billion certified emission reductions by the time the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012, said the UNFCCC, which are each equivalent to one tonne of carbon dioxide.

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Vancouver Sun (Canada): Feds to put price on Canada's nature

24th May 2010

A unique research project at Environment Canada could soon offer a new perspective for Canadians on conservation and its economic value, says a director in the federal department.

Following a fall report released by the United Nations Environment Programme that concluded natural ecosystems around the world were worth trillions of dollars in the global economy, the Harper government is following up with the development of its own framework to evaluate the economic value of nature in Canada.

"I think that the public understands intuitively that the environment is of value," said Luis Leigh, a director in the Regulatory Analysis and Instrument Choice Division at Environment Canada. "They enjoy it but they don't have an awareness (that) their actions sometimes can have deleterious impacts on the environment and there's no sense of how much that might be worth."

He explained the framework could provide governments and businesses with balanced information in their decision-making process with the true costs of development or conservation. Environment Canada has recently wrapped up a pilot project studying Edehzhie, a remote protected area in the Northwest Territories, and are also doing a similar study in Lake Winnipeg and could use the results to demonstrate net economic benefits from conservation and environmental protection, he said.

"We've developed enough knowledge now where we know the kind of questions that we ought to be asking, but we haven't been doing all the measures that we ought to do," Leigh said. "I think governments in general are well-attuned to this and are making efforts to improve."

A separate division of Environment Canada is also leading a study on the "Value of Nature to Canadians in 2010" which would complement the work being done in developing the framework, Leigh explained. The department said the "Value-of-Nature" study would collect, analyze and synthesize data on the economic, social and ecological value of nature, in urban, rural and wilderness contexts.

Researchers have pointed to major urban areas such as New York, which evaluated the value of ecological services provided by the Catskill Mountains helped generate billions of dollars in savings that would have been otherwise spent on water filtration systems for drinking water.

Celeste Cote, a national water campaigner from the Sierra Club of Canada, said Environment Canada's research can help change harmful business practices.

"With climate change or things like the Gulf (of Mexico) oil spill, we're starting to see negative consequences of these typical ways of doing business," said Cote. "What this framework will show is that damage to the environment equals damage to the economy. . . . So I think that this framework has an opportunity to really bring these issues (forward) and stop them from being so polarized in people's minds."

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El Pais (Uruguay): Uruguay aspira a US$ 8 millones de Fondo para Medio Ambiente

25th May 2010

Uruguay propuso ayer incluir el combate a la pobreza en la agenda ambiental, en la jornada inaugural del Consejo del Fondo para el Medio Ambiente Mundial, conocido por sus siglas en inglés GEF, en Punta del Este.

En el caso de los países emergentes la adaptación al cambio climático es más importante que el combate a las causas que generan el denominado efecto invernadero, expresó la ministra de Vivienda, Ordenamiento Territorial y Medio Ambiente, Graciela Muslera.

"Para los países desarrollados la mitigación del efecto climático es un objetivo estratégico. Es en ellos donde se ha generado el problema en su mayor medida y es allí, por lo tanto, que se debe atacar prioritariamente. (...) Pero, desde nuestra óptica, desde la mirada de los países emergentes, la adaptación a los efectos del cambio climático es una urgencia, es un imperativo, es una obligación", afirmó Muslera.

Y agregó: "el circulo vicioso pobreza-contaminación-subdesarrollo no es sólo del ámbito ambiental, claro. Pero tiene una dimensión ambiental enorme, que el concierto de los países no está atendiendo como debería. El GEF debe asumir que sin mirar la pobreza de frente, a la cara, nunca terminaremos de reconciliarnos con nuestro medio ambiente"; enfatizó la ministra que hoy será designada como presidenta de la IV Asamblea del GEF, durante un acto del que también tomará parte el vicepresidente Danilo Astori.

Las afirmaciones de Muslera fueron efectuadas durante el acto de bienvenida a las autoridades del GEF que participan de la IV Asamblea del Fondo para el Medio Ambiente Mundial que se celebra desde la víspera en el hotel Conrad de Punta del Este.

Del encuentro, uno de los más importantes de los últimos 30 años, participan jerarcas de gobiernos y representantes de organizaciones no gubernamentales de 113 países.

Por su parte Monique Barbut, titular del Fondo para el Medio Ambiente Mundial, anunció que una treintena de países resolvió aumentar su apoyo en efectivo en un 52%.

El fondo quedará conformado por US$ 4.250 millones de los cuales Uruguay aspira a conseguir alrededor de US$ 8 millones para poder concretar varios proyectos en trámite.

Muslera y el canciller Luis Almagro participaron ayer de varias reuniones de trabajo con representantes de los principales programas de las Naciones Unidas, Achim Steiner (del Pnuma, Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente) y Rebeca Grynspan, administradora asociada del Programa de las Naciones Unidades para el Desarrollo (PNUD).

"Uruguay es un país piloto en la reforma de las Naciones Unidades, precisamente lo que se llama Unidos en Acción, el único de América Latina", su-brayó Grynspan a El País a la salida de su reunión con los ministros uruguayos. La funcionaria explicó que junto con Muslera y Almagro se analizó la presencia de Uruguay en el encuentro de los países miembros del plan piloto de la ONU, en Hanoi.

Durante el encuentro los ministros le propusieron a Grynspan la intención uruguaya de unir la agenda sectorial con la inclusión social. "Cómo unir la agenda del cambio climático con el tema energético, en el tema agropecuario con la inclusión social. La propia ministra de Vivienda destacó la necesidad de atender a los sectores más excluidos que viven en terrenos contaminados. La conversación giró mucho alrededor de las prioridades y de cómo unir la agenda social y la agenda del cambio climático", indicó. En el caso de Uruguay el plan de prioridades y de cooperación asciende a US$ 140 millones para los próximos 5 años. Asamblea definirá trabajo de 4 años

El Fondo para el Medio Ambiente Mundial (por su sigla en inglés, GEF) es el mecanismo de financiación de proyectos ambientales creado por los países destinados a la preservación del medio ambiente.

Fue creado en el año 1991 como programa experimental dentro del Banco Internacional de Reconstrucción y Fomento dentro del grupo del Banco Mundial.

Cada cuatro años la Asamblea se reúne para definir las prioridades para el nuevo período, así como los temas a respaldar y los montos con que apoyará a cada país.

El encuentro congrega a más de 1.500 especialistas provenientes de países de todo el mundo. Desde la década de 1990, Uruguay recibió más de US$ 30 millones de apoyo directo no reembolsable que, sumados a las contrapartidas nacionales llegaron a US$ 130 millones de inversión directa en proyectos ambientales.

En ese marco, se trabaja el Programa de Conservación de la Biodiversidad y Desarrollo Sustentable en los Humedales del Este (Probides), proyectos de mitigación y adaptación al cambio climático, iniciativas de mejora en la eficiencia energética y generación alternativa y renovable de energía, así como acciones de conservación de biodiversidad. En zafra

El congreso moviliza una gran cantidad de servicios y es rodeado por un gran operativo de seguridad. Los delegados del encuentro son más de 1.300 y se espera que la cantidad aumente con el paso de las horas. El encuentro tiene un efecto multiplicador

para la economía del balneario, en baja temporada. Los servicios de micrófonos, equipos de audio, interpretación simultánea y equipamiento audiovisual demandaron un gasto de US$ 214.080 más IVA. La empresa Plus Ultra SA cotizó a US$ 0,02 cada una de las 400.000 fotocopias blanco y negro y 5.000 a color: un máximo de U$S 143.177. A estas contrataciones especiales se suman los servicios de alojamiento, transporte, almuerzos, cenas, desayunos, paseos y compras de souvenirs por parte de los participantes del encuentro.

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El Librepensador (Spain) :La biodiversidad se pierde a un ritmo acelerado

25th May 2010

Desde 1994, el mundo celebra el Día Internacional de la Diversidad Biológica. En el Año Internacional de la Diversidad Biológica, el tema “La Diversidad Biológica para el Desarrollo y el Alivio a la Pobreza”, recuerda la contribución excepcional de la diversidad biológica para el logro de los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio y la mitigación de la pobreza. Con motivo del Día Internacional de la Diversidad Biológica, la Secretaría del Convenio sobre la Diversidad Biológica de las Naciones Unidas lanza un comunicado de alerta.

A pesar de la importancia de la diversidad biológica, no hay buenas noticias. La tercera edición de la Perspectiva Mundial sobre Diversidad Biológica publicada recientemente y basada en 120 informes nacionales recibidos de los gobiernos, demuestra que la diversidad biológica sigue perdiéndose a un ritmo sin precedentes, con proyecciones de que empeore, a pesar de los esfuerzos para alcanzar los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio (ODM).

Casi una sexta parte de la población mundial depende de las áreas protegidas para la obtención de un porcentaje importante de sus medios de subsistencia, Más de mil millones de personas en los países en desarrollo dependen del pescado como fuente alimenticia, y el 80% de la pesca mundial está plenamente explotada o sobreexplotada. Por ejemplo, los humedales del Delta de Okavango, generan 32 millones dólares al año para las familias locales de Botswana, principalmente a través del turismo. La producción económica total asciende a 145 millones dólares-el 2.6% del PNB de Botswana.

En reconocimiento a la importancia de la diversidad biológica, la meta de Johannesburgo de reducir sustancialmente el ritmo de pérdida de diversidad biológica para el año 2010 se integró al séptimo objetivo de los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio (ODM), sobre la sostenibilidad del medio ambiente.

En este contexto, las comunidades han reflexionado hoy sobre el papel que tiene la variedad de vida en nuestro planeta, ya que es lo que nos provee de riqueza, salud y bienestar para todo el planeta. Las celebraciones están previstas en todo el mundo, incluyendo una gran celebración sin precedentes en la sede en África de las Naciones Unidas, en Nairobi.

Por lo tanto, hacer marcha tras a la pérdida de la diversidad biológica es una dimensión clave de la agenda de los ODM contribuyendo a un ambiente sano, y también a todos los ODM, entre ellos el acabar con la pobreza extrema, el hambre, garantizar la salud y la educación para todos, y lograr la cooperación internacional.

Haciéndose eco del Día Internacional de la Diversidad Biológica, la Perspectiva también señala que no es posible ver la pérdida continua de diversidad biológica como una cuestión independiente de las preocupaciones fundamentales de la sociedad. El logro de los ODM de mejorar la salud, la riqueza y la seguridad de las generaciones presentes y futuras será más probable si se otorga la prioridad que se merece la diversidad biológica en los planes y programas de desarrollo.

Revisión de la situación una década después

La celebración de este tema es una contribución a la revisión de los 10 años de los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio, que se celebrará en Nueva York del 20 al 22 septiembre de 2010 con la participación de los jefes de Estado y de Gobierno.

Este tema también se ha sugerido para la primera cumbre de Jefes de Estado y de Gobierno sobre la diversidad biológica, que tendrá lugar también en Nueva York el 22 de septiembre de 2010 durante el sexagésimo período de sesiones de la Asamblea General de Naciones Unidas.

La Cumbre de la Diversidad Biológica de Nueva York ofrece una oportunidad única para que los líderes del mundo proporcionen liderazgo y una nueva visión de la diversidad biológica. Esta visión será traducida en un plan de acción estratégico para la próxima década en la Cumbre de Diversidad Biológica de Nagoya, que se celebrará en Japón en octubre.

Angela Cropper, Directora Ejecutiva Adjunta de las Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente, declara: “Es un honor para el PNUMA el acoger la celebración de este importante evento, el tema seleccionado es fundamental para su misión y el centro de todas nuestras actividades. Es una contribución muy importante para la celebración del Año Internacional de la Diversidad Biológica”.

Ahmed Djoghlaf, Secretario Ejecutivo del Convenio sobre la Diversidad Biológica, señala: “El mensaje de la tercera Perspectiva Mundial sobre la Diversidad Biológica es muy clara. Se necesita urgentemente una nueva visión sobre la diversidad biológica. El aceptar lo mismo de siempre es aceptar un futuro con disminución de diversidad biológica y el aumento de la pobreza y del hambre.”

“La diversidad biológica no sólo es de un valor estético, es el sostén de nuestra vida y nuestra economía. Es un componente fundamental del desarrollo sostenible para el futuro de una Economía Verde. Actuar para cambiar las tendencias actuales es el actuar para un futuro más verde y próspero para la humanidad”, añade Djoghlaf.

Según el experto, “África tiene mucho que perder, si las cosas siguen como de costumbre, pero tiene mucho que ganar si se actúa con decisión. Esta es la razón por lo que esta celebración mundial se está llevando a cabo en África con la ayuda del

Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente en la Oficina de las Naciones Unidas en Nairobi”.

Convenio sobre la Diversidad Biológica

El Convenio sobre la Diversidad Biológica (CDB) Abierto para firma en la Cumbre de la Tierra en Río de Janeiro en 1992, entró en vigor en diciembre de 1993, el Convenio sobre la Diversidad Biológica es un tratado internacional para la conservación de la diversidad biológica, el uso sostenible de los componentes de la diversidad biológica y la distribución equitativa de los beneficios derivados de la utilización de los recursos genéticos.

Con 193 Partes, el Convenio tiene participación casi universal entre los países. El Convenio trata de enfrentar todas las amenazas a la diversidad biológica y a los servicios de los ecosistemas, incluyendo las amenazas del cambio climático, a través de evaluaciones científicas, el desarrollo de instrumentos, incentivos y procesos, la transferencia de tecnologías, buenas prácticas y la participación plena y activa de las partes interesadas pertinentes, incluyendo las comunidades indígenas y locales, los jóvenes, las ONG, las mujeres y la comunidad empresarial.

El Protocolo de Cartagena sobr e Seguridad de la Biotecnología, un tratado complementario al Convenio, busca el proteger a la diversidad biológica de los riesgos potenciales que plantean los organismos vivos modificados resultantes de la biotecnología moderna. Hasta la fecha, 156 países y la Unión Europea son parte en el Protocolo. La Secretaría del Convenio y su Protocolo de Cartagena se encuentra en Montreal.

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La Tarde (Spain): Desaparece la riqueza natural

25th May 2010

El panorama de nuestro planeta, presentado por la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU) con ocasión del Día Mundial de la Biodiversidad, es desolador.

Pavan Sukhdev, el economista indio encargado del programa “Economía Verde” (que hace parte del Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente – PNUMA) dice en un informe publicado en la página de ese organismo, que la desaparición de 13 millones de hectáreas de bosque cada año pone en peligro la subsistencia de 1.600 millones de personas que viven de la madera y los productos forestales y que la reducción dramática de las especies marinas por la pesca descontrolada podría causar una hambruna sin precedentes entre los 1.000 millones de seres humanos que dependen del pescado para alimentarse.

Los científicos han identificado 1,9 millones de especies (animales, vegetales, microorganismos, virus y bacterias), pero se calcula que la tierra tiene en realidad entre 10 y 30 millones de especies. Sin embargo, al ritmo actual de pérdida, que es 100 veces más rápido que el de la extinción natural, en 50 años la mitad de esas especies estaría desaparecida.

Su variedad topográfica hace de Colombia un país privilegiado para la biodiversidad. Las tres cordilleras, la diversidad de climas y las múltiples clases de suelos definen grandes regiones naturales de Colombia como el Caribe, el Pacífico, la zona Andina, la Amazonía o la Orinoquia.

Esta recia personalidad geográfica que ha producido decenas de miles de especies animales y vegetales, unida a la enorme variedad antropológica, requiere que se pongan en marcha programas urgentes de protección, distintos para cada región, enmarcados en una política integral que tenga en cuenta la diversidad de grupos étnicos, las actividades económicas y su potencialidad en el futuro del planeta.

Es imperativo que se ponga en marcha un plan de preservación y de ordenamiento territorial que permita el desarrollo sustentable, sin arrasar con la riqueza natural.

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Jornal De Santa Catarina (Brazil): Números no ar e no mar

24th May 2010

Mais dinheiro, menos peixe

Mais capacidade pesqueira e menos peixes. A relação parece estranha, mas os dados são uma prévia do relatório Economia Verde feito pelo Programa das Nações Unidas para o Meio Ambiente (Pnuma).

O manejo inadequado, a baixa fiscalização e a política de subsídios são alguns dos motivos apontados para 30% dos estoques pesqueiros estarem próximos do colapso.

Gasta-se cada vez mais com um número elevado de navios e de produtividade por embarcação, enquanto se reduz o número de peixes capturados. O programa da ONU ainda garante que a pesca gera, de forma direta e indireta, 170 milhões de empregos.

Se os níveis de captura forem mantidos, o Pnuma acredita que quase todos os estoques pesqueiros comerciais serão extintos até 2050.

Ficou preocupado?

O Programa das Nações Unidas propõe investimentos de até US$ 320 bilhões para reformular o processo de pesca e permitir a recuperação dos espaços prejudicados. E garante, é preciso começar logo.

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Discover.news (China): 联合国发文警告商业性捕渔业 40年内崩溃

25th May 2010

海洋鱼类正在被掏空捞尽。联合国一份即将发布的文件列出一串形势严峻的数字：大约只有 25％的商业鱼类储量能维持、或相对维持健康水平；约 30％的鱼类储量被认定为萎缩，90％的大型食肉鱼类（比如，被寿司爱好者奉为珍品的蓝鳍金枪鱼）自 20 世纪中叶起已不多见；超过 60％的鱼类资源需要重新评估。照目前的趋势持续下去，几乎所有的商业性捕渔业将在本世纪中期崩溃。

联合国环境规划署执行主任阿奇姆·施泰纳（Achim Steiner）说：“全球渔业正以一种有违可持续发展的速率，掠夺和剥削现有资源。”

在某些方面，施泰纳的确应该提出停止“掠夺”（海洋资源），因为合法的商业性捕鱼已经对海洋造成太多破坏，而（渔业）非法贸易则可能给海洋带来灭顶之灾。合法的渔民，即那些每天以海为生农民，作出了保护海洋资源以及遵守法律的保证。但非法捕鱼者只遵循自己的规则：他们通常会在缺乏法规约束和捕捞限额宽松可以逃避惩罚的公海，或者缺乏反击能力的发展中国家沿海水域（从事非法渔业活动）。由皮尤环境集团（Pew

Environment Group）的斯特凡·弗洛特曼（Stefan Flothmann）领导的研究小组，5 月 20

日在《科学》杂志上发表的文章告诉我们，要制止非法捕鱼这场灾难是多么艰难。

许多因素推动着全球鱼类产品需求不断上升。全球人口的增长需要稳定的蛋白质来源，而鱼类这种公认的低脂肪，高营养食物自然成为不二之选。此外，寿司全球流行，世界各地的食客人数暴增，意味着以前那些不喜欢吃鱼的人，已经准备好来品尝这一美味了。全球海鲜消费量在过去 40 年间增长了一倍，而寿司热正赶上这股潮流。

但（渔业）也存在一个主要问题就是产能过剩，表现为渔民的人数过多，这得归功于全球每年对捕鱼业高达 270亿美元的补贴。在这些补贴的支持下，特别是数十亿对便宜柴油的补贴，使得在公海上进行工厂化的捕鱼成为可能，并且已经创造出一个超过海洋资源承载能力的产业。据联合国估计，小到仅能勉强维持生计的小船，大到巨型拖网渔船，全球的船队总规模超过 2000万艘。将它们的捕捞能力汇总起来，比海洋可持续承载能力还多1.8~2.8倍。税收是支付渔民开发海洋这座宝藏的主要经费来源。

削减补贴或限制船只可能使对问题的解决变得遥遥无期；但是如果（渔业）非法贸易得不到控制，每年出产 1100万至 2600万吨鱼（大约是已报告合法捕鱼量的五分之一）的非法捕鱼活动也无法控制。针对这一现象，（国际社会）已经采取了相关措施。2009 年 11 月，联合国粮食和农业组织（FAO）通过了港口国家行动协议（Port State Measurement

Agreement，PSMA），要求各国对从事非法违规捕鱼的船只关闭港口。道理很简单：如果非法渔船不能在贸易港卖出货物和补给燃料，渔业黑市就会歇业。

PSMA 的成效来自于弗洛特曼及其同事在论文中所做的调查，根据 2004 年至 2009 年各港口船只往来的数据，他们已经列出涉嫌非法捕鱼的可疑船只，并将其作为制裁的对象。对非法捕鱼船只的发现及制裁，并没有使违法者引以为戒。在六年研究中，对三分之一的可疑船只的动向的跟踪结果表明，港口记录漏洞百出。这些船只通过频繁改名来逃避监管，即使它们被抓个现行，受到港口所在国惩罚的比例也只有大约四分之一。当某港口所在地

区有计划地打击违法船只时，这些船只就马上转移到另一地区——成了漏网之鱼。 “这一现象说明如果只有地区性的港口（制裁）措施，非法捕鱼逃避制裁的问题将转向其他地区。”《科学》杂志的作者（注：应该是指斯特凡·弗洛特曼及其研究小组）写道。

弗洛特曼和他的同事们指出，要想遏制非法捕鱼，需要增加（船只行为的）透明度，也许可以着手建立覆盖合法船只的更强大的监控体系。例如，现在并不要求渔船获取国际海事组织（International Maritime Organization）的识别代码——这是船只唯一的全球识别代号。建立起渔船的全球识别系统，将有助于分辨合法与非法船只，而且这些信息是所有港口共享的。正如弗洛特曼所写的：“明确责任需要高透明度为前提。

他说的没错——但是他所做的也说明，为什么即使在最佳条件下，拯救野生鱼类仍将面临挑战！海洋范围广大，大部分海洋世界超越了单个国家的控制范围，因此海洋问题是关系全世界所有人的终极问题。我们仍然依赖于海洋的生产力。 “人类的健康和海洋世界的健康是息息相关的，”蒙特雷湾水族馆执行董事朱莉·派克说， “我们必须致力于拯救海洋及其资源。”让我们从传播保护海洋的意识开始，兑现保护海洋的承诺吧。

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Other Environment News

AP: UN fish stocks review opens with dire outlook

25th May 2010

Environmentalists and scientists warned of collapsing fish stocks and tiny Pacific nation Palau sounded the alarm for sharks as diplomats Monday launched a weeklong review of high seas fisheries.

The international conference will "take a hard look" at how to put some teeth in a 1995 United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement, according to conference chairman David Balton, a U.S. deputy assistant secretary for oceans and fisheries.

Palau's call for an international moratorium on shark finning came at the outset of a review held once every four years to address the declining numbers of fish stocks under the U.N. agreement, which took effect in 2001.

Palau's U.N. Ambassador Stuart Beck said the killing of 73 million sharks a year, just because people like the way their fins taste in soup, shows just how badly wrong things have gotten with ocean mismanagement.

"The slaughter of sharks for their fins to make soup is as needless and cruel as the killing of elephants for their tusks to make ornaments," he said. "The island nations are sounding the alarm: only concerted outrage can save the world's sharks from being slaughtered for the delectation of soup lovers."

Palau President Johnson Toribiong last year announced his nation was creating the world's first shark sanctuary to protect great hammerheads, leopard sharks, oceanic whitetip sharks and more than 130 other species fighting extinction in the Pacific Ocean.

Sharks are vulnerable to overfishing because of their low fertility rates and long life spans. But shark fishing has boomed since the 1980s fueled by demand from China and other nations for shark fin soup, a prized symbol of wealth.

The U.N. lists the top 10 nations with the biggest fisheries hauls as China, Peru, the United States, Indonesia, Japan, Chile, India, Russia, Thailand and the Philippines.

The U.N.'s legal framework, which extends among 77 parties including the European Union, is used to regulate tuna, swordfish and other migratory species that travel long distances. It also covers halibut, cod and other species that straddle the exclusive economic zones of coastal nations.

Susan Lieberman, international policy director for the Pew Environment Group, pointed to two independent, peer-reviewed studies saying governments have been ineffective at improving she called "the deplorable state of fisheries on the high seas." Both were published in journals online, one in Science, the other in Marine Policy, to coincide with this week's U.N. conference.

She also cited U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that three-quarters of the world's fish stocks on the high seas are overfished.

"The key is not to focus on the numbers so much as the fact that if we extrapolate these data the estimates are that global fisheries will crash, completely crash, by 2050, in little more than one generation," said Lieberman.

"We're talking about the very future of food security on our planet, and the very future of our oceans," she said. "And, in particular, this has tremendous impacts for coastal communities and developing countries."

Almost half the planet, or up to 3 billion people, depend on fish as the main source for protein in their diet.

A study of 18 regional fisheries management organizations that manage fishing on the high seas on average scored no higher than 57 percent for effectiveness, said University of British Columbia researcher Sarika Cullis-Suzuki, one of the co-authors, along with marine scientist Daniel Pauly, of the Marine Policy paper.

"Overwhelmingly, our main conclusion is that RFMOs are doing poorly, both on paper and in practice," she said. "And these management organizations are failing the high seas."

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Business Week (US): UN fish stocks review opens with dire outlook

24th May 2010

Environmentalists are issuing dire warnings about the health of marine life on the high seas as a U.N. review of global fisheries opened Monday.

The review, held once every four years, is meant to address the declining numbers of fish stocks under a 1995 United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement.

The legal framework among 77 nations that have joined is used to regulate tuna, swordfish and other migratory species that travel long distances. It also covers halibut, cod and other species that straddle the exclusive economic zones of coastal nations.

A Pew Environmental Group study found that governments have been ineffective at stopping illegal fishing. Pew international policy director Susan Lieberman cited "the deplorable state of fisheries on the high seas" based on U.N. figures showing three-quarters of the world's fish stocks are overfished and said global fisheries could "crash" by mid-century.

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Journal Star (US): UN fish stocks review opens with dire outlook

24th May 2010Environmentalists and scientists warned of collapsing fish stocks and tiny Pacific nation Palau sounded the alarm for sharks as diplomats Monday launched a weeklong review of high seas fisheries.




"The slaughter of sharks for their fins to make soup is as needless and cruel as the killing of elephants for their tusks to make ornaments," he said. "The island nations are sounding

the alarm: only concerted outrage can save the world's sharks from being slaughtered for the delectation of soup lovers."












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Mainichi Daily News (Japan): UN fish stocks review opens with dire outlook

25th May 2010

Environmentalists and scientists warned of collapsing fish stocks and tiny Pacific nation Palau sounded the alarm for sharks as diplomats Monday launched a weeklong review of high seas fisheries.




"The slaughter of sharks for their fins to make soup is as needless and cruel as the killing of elephants for their tusks to make ornaments," he said. "The island nations are sounding the alarm: only concerted outrage can save the world's sharks from being slaughtered for the delectation of soup lovers."












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AFP: Oil spill off Singapore after vessels collide

25th May 2010

Emergency teams were scrambling to contain 2,000 tonnes of crude oil that leaked Tuesday into the Singapore Strait after two vessels collided in the busy waterway, port officials said.

The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) said the Malaysian-registered tanker MT Bunga Kelana 3 was damaged in a collision with the MV Wally, a bulk carrier registered in St Vincent and the Grenadines.

One of the cargo tanks of the Malaysian vessel was damaged.

"Work is ongoing to contain and clean up the oil spill," the MPA said in a press release.

Four patrol and emergency response vessels and three private craft equipped with oil-spill equipment have been sent to the affected zone.

Nobody was injured and ship traffic was not affected by the incident, which took place 13 kilometres (eight miles) off Singapore in the Traffic Separation Scheme at 6:10 am Tuesday (2210 GMT Monday), the release said.

The Traffic Separation Scheme is a commercial channel running along the Straits of Malacca and Singapore.

Both vessels were anchored off Singapore after the accident, and neighbouring Malaysia and Indonesia have been notified, the MPA said.

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Los Angeles Times (US): BP told to cut back on toxic remedy

25th May 2010

In a sign of diminished confidence in BP's ability to manage the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, federal officials Monday said they intended to require the company to dramatically scale back its use of oil dispersants and would initiate their own tests on the chemicals' effect on sea life.

With an oil spill of epic proportions looming offshore, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson — along with angry chorus of lawmakers — chided BP for its lack of transparency. She said that BP's response to federal directives last week to find a less toxic dispersant was "insufficient."

Even though the company's test results show that the dispersant, Corexit, is effective and not a risk to aquatic life, Jackson wants its use cut by 50% to 75%. She said there is no way to know the long-term effects of the unprecedented amount of chemicals.

Adding to BP's woes, Jackson said that the company is liable for environmental fines and penalties now that oil has reached land. And the Commerce Department declared a "fisheries disaster" for the waters off Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, making the company responsible for compensating losses to the fishing industry.

BP's dressing down came on a day when a bipartisan cast of lawmakers and federal officials voiced unstinting criticism of the company as toxic oil washed up on nearly 75 miles of Louisiana marshland.

In refusing to rely on BP's data on the toxicity of dispersants, Jackson said, "I'd rather have my own scientists do their own analysis."

More than 800,000 gallons of dispersant have been used in an attempt to break up the oil and speed its decomposition before the slick reaches shore. That is more than has ever been used in U.S. waters, spurring concern that dispersants' widespread application is magnifying the toxic effect of oil on sea life from the gulf surface to its muddy floor.

Last week the EPA told the oil giant to find less toxic alternatives to the two types of dispersant released on the surface and, to a lesser extent in the ocean depths near the damaged wellhead. BP said it is unable to find a more benign dispersant available in the necessary volumes.

On Monday, Jackson and Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry used frank language to describe a Sunday night meeting with BP officials.

"We are not satisfied that BP has done extensive analysis of other dispersant options," Jackson said. "They were more interested in defending their original decisions than studying other options."

A federal lab in Florida will begin testing the dispersant's effectiveness and toxicity.

Jackson said the unprecedented release of dispersants at an ocean depth of 5,000 feet have been effective and would continue. But the surface applications, in particular, would be decreased.

BP is finishing preparations to stop the flow of the blown-out oil well that that has poured millions of gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico since the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that killed 11 workers.

Much is riding on the planned Wednesday morning "top kill" operation, which involves pumping heavy liquids into the wellhead to plug it. If the procedure works, the gush of oil from a broken pipe connected to the wellhead could end by Wednesday night.

If it doesn't, BP's badly tarnished reputation will dim further. And the Obama administration will run the risk of seeing the spill narrative shift from BP's failures to a questioning of the administration's competence in handling a growing environmental disaster.

"This is a BP mess. This is a horrible mess," declared Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at a Galliano, La. news conference, where he repeated his threat to put a "boot on the neck" of BP. Over the weekend, Salazar said the federal government was prepared to "push them [BP] out of the way appropriately'' if the company proved unable to stem the oil leak spreading across the gulf.

But in a Monday news briefing at the White House, Adm. Thad Allen, U.S. Coast Guard commandant, conceded that the federal government is in no position to take over the job of stopping the leak.

"I know that, to work down there right now, you need remotely operated vehicles," he said. "You need to do very technical work at 5,000 feet. You need equipment and expertise that's not generally within the … federal government, in terms of competency, capability or capacity.''

Asked about Salazar's tough stance toward BP, Allen said the Interior secretary was merely using "a metaphor.''

In Port Fourchon, La., BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward repeatedly said he was "devastated" by the destruction in the gulf. The shoreline of Port Fourchon — which bills itself as "The Gulf's Energy Connection" — was dripping with liquid that could have been mistaken for chocolate and cherry syrup, if not for the stomach-churning smell.

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Reuters: China wants energy goals reached before Cancun talks

25th May 2010

"We would lose the trust from the international community and be pressured during the global climate talks in Mexico at the end of this year if we could not fulfill the goals," Xie Zhenhua, who is also deputy head of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission, told a recent government meeting.

The comments from the May 19 meeting were published on the NDRC website on Monday.

Environmental ministers around the world are set to meet for the next U.N. climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, from November 29 to December 10 after the Copenhagen summit in December 2009 fell short of a binding deal.

China has vowed to cut energy intensity -- energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product -- by 20 percent by 2010 from the levels in 2005 and cut two key pollution measures, sulphur dioxide and chemical oxygen demand, by 10 percent during the same period.

It also pledged ahead of the Copenhagen summit that it would cut the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each unit of national income by 40-45 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels.

But energy intensity actually rose by an annual 3.2 percent in the first three months of this year after falling 14.38 percent in the previous four years, because of fast growth in energy intensive sectors including electricity, steel, non-ferrous metals, construction materials and petrochemicals and restarts of some outdated capacity.

Beijing was alarmed by the recent energy efficiency losses, and on May 5 Premier Wen Jiabao directed the government to step up efforts to ensure the 2010 goals would be met.

As part of the measures, China will shut down another 10 gigawatts of small and less efficient coal-fired power generators by the third quarter of this year after closing 60.06 GW in the past four years, ahead of an earlier plan of shuttering 50 GW's worth in the five years through 2010.

Beijing will raise power tariff surcharges for some energy intensive firms by 50 to 100 percent from June 1, reducing power price discounts to certain industries including aluminum, calcium carbide and ferroalloy and imposing punitive high power rates on inefficient firms, in renewed and hastened efforts to curb expansion in energy-guzzling and polluting industries.

China's central government will organize checks beginning in June to stop unauthorized power price discounts and to make sure its power pricing policies are being followed across the country.

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Reuters: 70 percent of firms will spend more on climate change

25th May 2010

Nearly half of the 300 corporate executives who responded to a survey conducted for the accounting and consulting giant Ernst & Young said their climate change investments will range from 0.5 percent to more than 5 percent of revenues by 2012.

More than four out of five respondents, or 82 percent, said they plan to invest in energy efficiency in the next 12 months, with 92 percent saying energy costs will be an important driver over that period.

Corporate executives were committed to taking action even though they said complying with regulations that vary from state to state or country to country would make that a challenge.

The fact that 70 percent of executives said they planned to spend more on climate change programs was "one of the more stunning findings" of the survey, according to Melanie Steiner of Ernst & Young.

Despite regulatory uncertainty on climate change, "companies are really taking action anyway, because they're seeing that this is a business issue and an opportunity to generate new revenue," Steiner said in a telephone interview.

While action to deal with the effects of climate change used to be a matter of public relations, it has now become an opportunity to make money through new services and products, save money through enhanced efficiency and limit risk, she said.

One sign of this change is that more than 90 percent of those surveyed said climate change governance rests with top executives or board members, with 36 percent saying that the CEO is the most senior person responsible on this issue.

High-level responsibility does not guarantee corporate-wide comprehension of the importance of climate change policies, one survey respondent said.

"I believe the main problem is that organizations do not necessarily recognize or understand the link between climate change-related issues and the future fitness of the organization," the anonymous respondent said. "At a very senior level it is given importance. However, at lower levels there is (a lack of knowledge) of the issue."

The survey, conducted by the independent analyst research firm Verdantix, followed an anonymous methodology, so no respondents were quoted by name.

Respondents were drawn from 16 countries: Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Japan, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

They included executives across 18 industry sectors from airlines to media to consumer products to real estate.

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Guardian (UK): Climate change concern declines in poll

23rd May 2010

Popular concern about climate change has declined significantly, following this year's harsh winter and rows over statistics on global warming, a survey has found.

The numbers of those interested in where Britain's electricity comes from have also slipped back, according to a survey commissioned by the energy company EDF, demonstrating what appears to be growing consumer complacency in an era of electric-powered gadgetry.

At the same time resistance to building new nuclear power stations appears to be slackening. The results of the YouGov poll, based on a sample of 4,300 adults questioned during the week after the general election, show that interest in climate change fell from 80% of respondents in 2006, to 71% last year and now stands at only 62%. Only 80% say they are interested in where electrical power is made, down from 82% the previous year.

Other recent polls have recorded a similar drop in public alarm about the imminence of climate-triggered disaster. The number of climate change agnostics – those unsure whether human activity is warming the planet – has risen from 25% in 2007 to 33% now.

There may be many reasons for the change. Failure to reach agreement on fresh emissions targets at the Copenhagen climate summit, the furore over the leaking of global warming data from the University of East Anglia and the recent cold weather may all have contributed to confusion around the issue.

The French-owned firm EDF, which commissioned the latest poll, owns British Energy, which runs eight nuclear power stations in the UK. EDF plans to build a new generation of nuclear plants, with the first in operation by 2017.

The survey says the "favourability rating" of nuclear power stations rose from +4 to + 16 between 2007 and this year.

Among Lib Dems – the coalition party explicitly opposed to new nuclear building – as many as 58% of supporters believe "nuclear energy has disadvantages, but the country needs it to be part of the energy balance", according to the survey. Slightly fewer, 47%, are in favour of the construction of new nuclear power stations; 32% are opposed.

Vincent de Rivaz, chief executive of EDF Energy, said the poll "recognises the scale of the energy challenges facing the UK and the need for a low-carbon, eco-friendly economy as outlined by the coalition government.

"We are pleased to see strong public support across voters from all three major political parties in favour of new nuclear build. We also note that opposition to new nuclear build has continued to fall. This strong public support is further reflected by the clear backing for planning reform to facilitate investment in low carbon technologies, including nuclear.

"We need urgent action if we are to meet the UK's carbon emissions targets and address the looming energy gap. We believe nuclear power is the lowest cost low-carbon solution and can be built in the UK without subsidy. Therefore, it must be part of an affordable, clean and secure generation mix."

EDF, he said, "remains resolute in its commitment to a truly sustainable economy".

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New York Times (US): Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons

24th May 2010

Last month hundreds of environmental activists crammed into an auditorium here to ponder an anguished question: If the scientific consensus on climate change has not changed, why have so many people turned away from the idea that human activity is warming the planet?

Nowhere has this shift in public opinion been more striking than in Britain, where climate

change was until this year such a popular priority that in 2008 Parliament enshrined

targets for emissions cuts as national law. But since then, the country has evolved into a

home base for a thriving group of climate skeptics who have dominated news reports in

recent months, apparently convincing many that the threat of warming is vastly

exaggerated.

A survey in February by the BBC found that only 26 percent of Britons believed that

“climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade,” down from 41

percent in November 2009. A poll conducted for the German magazine Der Spiegel found

that 42 percent of Germans feared global warming, down from 62 percent four years

earlier.

And London’s Science Museum recently announced that a permanent exhibit scheduled

to open later this year would be called the Climate Science Gallery — not the Climate

Change Gallery as had previously been planned.

“Before, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this climate change problem is just dreadful,’ ” said Jillian

Leddra, 50, a musician who was shopping in London on a recent lunch hour. “But now I

have my doubts, and I’m wondering if it’s been overhyped.”

Perhaps sensing that climate is now a political nonstarter, David Cameron, Britain’s new

Conservative prime minister, was “strangely muted” on the issue in a recent pre-election

debate, as The Daily Telegraph put it, though it had previously been one of his passions.

And a poll in January of the personal priorities of 141 Conservative Party candidates

deemed capable of victory in the recent election found that “reducing Britain’s carbon

footprint” was the least important of the 19 issues presented to them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/geoffrey-lean/7726032/David-Camerons-coalition-is-off-to-a-green-start.html

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Politicians and activists say such attitudes will make it harder to pass legislation like a fuel

tax increase and to persuade people to make sacrifices to reduce greenhouse gas

emissions.

“Legitimacy has shifted to the side of the climate skeptics, and that is a big, big problem,”

Ben Stewart, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said at the meeting of environmentalists here.

“This is happening in the context of overwhelming scientific agreement that climate change

is real and a threat. But the poll figures are going through the floor.”

The lack of fervor about climate change is also true of the United States, where action on

climate and emissions reduction is still very much a work in progress, and concern about

global warming was never as strong as in Europe. A March Gallup poll found that 48

percent of Americans believed that the seriousness of global warming was “generally

exaggerated,” up from 41 percent a year ago.

Here in Britain, the change has been driven by the news media’s intensive coverage of a

series of climate science controversies unearthed and highlighted by skeptics since

November. These include the unauthorized release of e-mail messages from prominent

British climate scientists at the University of East Anglia that skeptics cited as evidence

that researchers were overstating the evidence for global warming and the discovery of

errors in a United Nations climate report.

Two independent reviews later found no evidence that the East Anglia researchers had

actively distorted climate data, but heavy press coverage had already left an impression

that the scientists had schemed to repress data. Then there was the unusually cold winter

in Northern Europe and the United States, which may have reinforced a perception that

the Earth was not warming. (Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration, a United States agency, show that globally, this winter was the fifth

warmest in history.)

Asked about his views on global warming on a recent evening, Brian George, a 30-year-

old builder from southeast London, mused, “It was extremely cold in January, wasn’t it?”

In a telephone interview, Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist at the World Bank and

a climate change expert, said that the shift in opinion “hadn’t helped” efforts to come up

with strong policy in a number of countries. But he predicted that it would be overcome,

not least because the science was so clear on the warming trend.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/science/earth/15briefs-Britbrf.html

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“I don’t think it will be problematic in the long run,” he said, adding that in Britain, at least,

politicians “are ahead of the public anyway.” Indeed, once Mr. Cameron became prime

minister, he vowed to run “the greenest government in our history” and proposed projects

like a more efficient national electricity grid.

Scientists have meanwhile awakened to the public’s misgivings and are increasingly

fighting back. An editorial in the prestigious journal Nature said climate deniers were using

“every means at their disposal to undermine science and scientists” and urged scientists to

counterattack. Scientists in France, the Netherlands and the United States have signed

open letters affirming their trust in climate change evidence, including one published on

May 7 in the journal Science.

In March, Simon L. Lewis, an expert on rain forests at the University of Leeds in Britain,

filed a 30-page complaint with the nation’s Press Complaints Commission against The

Times of London, accusing it of publishing “inaccurate, misleading or distorted information”

about climate change, his own research and remarks he had made to a reporter.

“I was most annoyed that there seemed to be a pattern of pushing the idea that there were

a number of serious mistakes in the I.P.C.C. report, when most were fairly innocuous, or

not mistakes at all,” said Dr. Lewis, referring to the report by the United Nations

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Meanwhile, groups like the wildlife organization WWF have posted articles like “How to

Talk to a Climate Skeptic,” providing stock answers to doubting friends and relatives, on

their Web sites.

It is unclear whether such actions are enough to win back a segment of the public that has

eagerly consumed a series of revelations that were published prominently in right-leaning

newspapers like The Times of London and The Telegraph and then repeated around the

world.

In January, for example, The Times chastised the United Nations climate panel for an

errant and unsupported projection that glaciers in the Himalayas could disappear by 2035.

The United Nations ultimately apologized for including the estimate, which was mentioned

in passing within a 3,000-page report in 2007.

Then came articles contending that the 2007 report was inaccurate on a host of other

issues, including African drought, the portion of the Netherlands below sea level, and the

economic impact of severe storms. Officials from the climate panel said the articles’ claims

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either were false or reflected minor errors like faulty citations that in no way diluted the

evidence that climate change is real and caused by human activity.

Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research,

successfully demanded in February that some German newspapers remove misleading

articles from their Web sites. But such reports have become so common that he “wouldn’t

bother” to pursue most cases now, he added.

The public is left to struggle with the salvos between the two sides. “I’m still concerned

about climate change, but it’s become very confusing,” said Sandra Lawson, 32, as she

ran errands near Hyde Park.

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BBC: Polar bears face 'tipping point' due to climate change

25th May 2010

Climate change will trigger a dramatic and sudden decline in the number of polar bears, a new study has concluded.

The research is the first to directly model how changing climate will affect polar bear reproduction and survival.

Based on what is known of polar bear physiology, behaviour and ecology, it predicts pregnancy rates will fall and fewer bears will survive fasting during longer ice-free seasons.

These changes will happen suddenly as bears pass a 'tipping point'.

Details of the research are published in the journal Biological Conservation.

Educated guesses

Until now, most studies measuring polar bear survival have relied on a method called "mark and recapture".

This involves repeatedly catching polar bears in a population over several years, which is cost and time-intensive.

Because of that, the information scientists have gathered on polar bear populations varies greatly: for example, datasets span up to four decades in the best studied populations in Western Hudson Bay and Southern Beaufort Sea, but are almost non-existent for bears in some parts of Russia.

http://www.pik-potsdam.de/members/stefan/prof.-dr.-stefan-rahmstorf/?searchterm=Stefan%20Rahmstorf

Even more difficult is measuring how survival and reproduction might change under future climatic conditions.

"Some populations are expected to go extinct with climate warming, while others are expected to persist, albeit at a reduced population size," says Dr Péter Molnár of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

However, these projections are essentially educated guesses, based on experts judging or extrapolating how current population trends might continue as the climate changes.

"So we've looked at the underlying mechanisms of polar bear ecology to assist our understanding of what will happen in a warming world," Dr Molnár told the BBC.

Fasting and mating

Dr Molnár, Professor Andrew Derocher and colleagues from the University of Alberta and York University, Toronto focused on the physiology, behaviour and ecology of polar bears, and how these might change as temperatures increase.

"We developed a model for the mating ecology of polar bears. The model estimates how many females in a population will be able to find a mate during the mating season, and thus get impregnated."

Male polar bears find females by wandering the ice, sniffing bear tracks they come across. If the tracks have been made by a female in mating condition, the male follows the tracks to her.

The researchers modelled how this behaviour would change as warming temperatures fragment sea ice.

They also modelled the impact on the bears' survival.

Southern populations of polar bears fast in summer, forced ashore as the sea ice melts.

As these ice-free seasons lengthen, fewer bears are expected to have enough fat and protein stores to survive the fast.

By developing a physiological model that estimates how fast a bear uses up its fat and protein stores, the researchers could estimate how long it takes a bear to die of starvation.

"In both cases, the expected changes in reproduction and survival were non-linear," explains Dr Molnár.

"That is, as the climate warms, we may not see any substantial effect on polar bear reproduction and survival for a while, up until some threshold is passed, at which point reproduction and survival will decline dramatically and very rapidly."

The US Endangered Species Act lists the polar bear as "Threatened".

The latest US assessment of the conservation status of polar bears included the only two previous studies to assess the impact of climate change, but these extrapolated population trends, rather than directly modelling how the ecology of polar bears may alter.

The new study by Dr Molnár's team offers a way to improve these predictions, and suggests the potential for even faster declines than those found by the US assessment.

"Canada has about two-thirds of the world's polar bears, but their conservation assessment of polar bears didn't take climate change seriously," says Dr Molnár, a flaw noted by the IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group last year.

"Our view is that the Canadian assessment should be redone, properly accounting for climate change effects.

"The status of polar bears is likely much more dire than suggested by the Canadian report," he adds.

"For instance, for a while we will only see small changes in summer fasting season survival in Western Hudson Bay.

"[But] eventually mortality will dramatically increase when a certain threshold is passed; for example, while starvation mortality is currently negligible, up to one-half of the male population would starve if the fasting season in Western Hudson Bay was extended from currently four to about six months."Back to Menu _________________________________________________________________

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RONA MEDIA UPDATETHE ENVIRONMENT IN THE NEWS

Monday, 24 May, 2010

UNEP or UN in the News

U.S. coverage: The New York Times: Biodiversity in Peril, the U.N. Warns Discovery News: Protecting Biodiversity: The Cost of Inaction Time Magazine: Cracking Down on the Ocean's Pirate Fishermen

U.S. coverage:

Biodiversity in Peril, the U.N. Warns

The New York Times, 24 May 2010, By Jim Witkin http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/biodiversity-in-peril-the-u-n-warns/#more-51625

Biological diversity is declining faster than previously estimated, and the trend will eventually threaten “the livelihoods and food security of hundreds of millions of people” unless swift action is taken. That’s the conclusion of the third edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook, published by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

Humans are dependent on biological resources for their food supply, air quality, climate control, water purification, pollination, erosion prevention and medicines. Today some 25 percent of the medicines marketed are still derived from or modeled on plant or animal sources.

Because the species in an ecosystem depend on one another, any loss can leave the entire system less resilient. A decline in diversity can leave ecosystems and species “more vulnerable to sudden external pressures such as disease and climatic extremes,” the report says.

Still, all three measures of biodiversity — genes, species and ecosystems — show declines. Twenty-one percent of all known mammals, 30 percent of all known amphibians, and 12 percent of all known birds now face extinction, according to the Red List Index, a global inventory of plant and animal species cited in the report.

Among the causes of biodiversity loss are habitat changes like converting land to agricultural use; excess exploitation of resources, like overfishing; pollution from agricultural nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous; the arrival of invasive species; and climate change (shrinking Arctic ice and ocean acidification, for example).

“The projections are dire,” said Delfin Ganapin of the Global Environment Facility, a group that provides financing for the Convention on Biological Diversity. “This report is saying that we are reaching what’s called ‘tipping points,’ where irreversible damage is going to be done to the planet unless we act now.”

The report offers some good news. Almost 170 countries now have national biodiversity strategies, and some conservation measures are showing results. Mr. Ganapin cited the example of New York City, which he said spent $1 billion to rehabilitate and protect the Catskill-Delaware watershed. That initiative is estimated to be saving the city $4 billion to $6 billion for water treatment and transport, he said.

The data in the study is based on about 120 national reports submitted by members, as well as current scientific literature.

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The report was timed for release in proximity to International Day for Biological Diversity on Saturday.

Protecting Biodiversity: The Cost of InactionDiscovery News, 23 May 2010, By Kieran Mulvaney

http://news.discovery.com/earth/protecting-biodiversity-the-cost-of-inaction.html

The costs of protecting Earth's biodiversity and ecosystems are in many cases significantly less than the economic benefits derived from protecting them, a United Nations report is expected to conclude later this year.

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity study, commissioned by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is slated for publication at the Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Japan this October, in recognition of the UN's declaration of 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity. On Saturday, the Guardian newspaper in England quoted the report's author, Paven Sukhdev, as arguing that a major complicating factor in attempting to stem the loss of species and habitats is the failure to ascribe economic values to their preservation:

"We fail to recognise the extent to which we are dependent on natural ecosystems, and not just for goods and services, but also for the stability of the environment in which we survive - there's an element of resilience that's been built into our lives, the ability of our environment to withstand the shocks to which we expose it...the more we lose, the less resilience there is to these shocks, and therefore we increase the risk to society and risk to life and livelihoods and the economy."

According to the Guardian, Sukhdev is expected to make recommendations for how to use economic values for different parts of nature as ways for protecting them:

One of the most immediate changes could be reform of direct and indirect subsidies, such as tax exemptions, which encourage over-production even when there is clear destruction of the long-term ability of the environment to provide what is needed, and below-cost pricing which leads to wasteful use and poor understanding of the value of the products. "Particularly worrying" are about $300bn of subsidies to agriculture and fishing; subsidies of $500bn for energy, $238-$306bn for transport and $67bn for water companies are also singled out.

At a press conference last week to preview some sections of the report, UNEP focused particularly on the economics of the commercial fishing industry. At present, the fishing industry receives approximately $27 billion in subsidies every year, much of which is directed to maintaining or increasing the capacity of fishing fleets, even though current global capacity is between 1.8 and 2.8 times what is needed. Partly as a consequence, only around 25 percent of commercial stocks are considered to be in a healthy or relatively healthy state, and on current trends some researchers have predicted that virtually all commercial fish stocks will collapse by 2050.

UNEP claims that by phasing down or phasing out many of these subsidies, the excess capacity in the world's fishing fleets could be dramatically reduced, and some of the money saved could be redirected toward training and supporting fishworkers in

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alternative livelihoods. The result, the organization says, would be an increase in total catches, profits, and fishworkers' income, even as the pressure on vulnerable and depleted stocks would be eased.

Cracking Down on the Ocean's Pirate Fishermen Time Magazine, 22 May 2010, By Bryan Walsh

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The oceans are being emptied of fish. A forthcoming United Nations report lays out the stark numbers: only around 25% of commercial stocks are in a healthy or even reasonably healthy state. Some 30% of fish stocks are considered collapsed, and 90% of large predatory fish — like the bluefin tuna so prized by sushi aficionados — have disappeared since the middle of the 20th century. More than 60% of assessed fish stocks are in need of rebuilding, and some researchers estimate that if current trends hold, virtually all commercial fisheries will have collapsed by mid century.

"Fisheries across the world are being plundered, or exploited at unsustainable rates," said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme.

In some respects, Steiner could have stopped at "plundered," because as much damage as the legal, commercial fishing trade has wrought on the oceans, it's the illegal trade that could spell their doom. Legal fishermen — the everyday farmers of the seas — have licenses they must protect and laws they must obey. But illegal fishing — often done on the high seas where regulations are lax and catch limits can be exceeded with impunity, or in the coastal waters of developing nations, which lack the ability to fight back — abides by rules of its own. Now, a team led by Stefan Flothmann of the Pew Environment Group has published a study in the May 20 issue of Science showing just how hard stopping the illegal fishing scourge will be.

There are a lot of factors driving the rising global demand for fish. A growing global population needs ready sources of protein, and fish — generally low in fat and high in nutrients — is a natural. Plus, the worldwide explosion in the popularity of sushi means that even people who never liked fish before have developed a taste for it. Global seafood consumption has doubled over the past 40 years, and the sushi boom has tracked that trend.

But there's also a major problem with overcapacity — or the simple excess of fishermen — thanks to the $27 billion in subsidies given to the worldwide fishing industry each year. Those subsidies — especially the billions that go to cheap diesel fuel that makes factory fishing on the high seas possible at all--have created an industry bigger than the oceans can support. The U.N. estimates that the global fleet consists of more than 20 million boats, ranging from tiny subsistence outfits to massive trawlers. Together they have a fishing capacity 1.8 to 2.8 times larger than the oceans can sustainably support. Our tax money is essentially paying fishermen to strip mine the seas.

Cutting the subsidies or restricting the boats would go a long way toward solving the problem — but not if the illegal trade, which accounts for anything from 11 to 26 million

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tons of fish a year, or about one-fifth of the reported legal catch, can't also be brought under control. Steps in that direction have been taken. In November 2009, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) adopted the Port State Measurement Agreement (PSMA), which requires countries to close their ports to ships involved in illegal or unregulated fishing. The idea is simple: if illegal boats are denied ports where they can sell their catch and refuel, black market fishing should dry up.

The effectiveness of the PSMA is what Flothman and his colleagues investigated in their paper, crunching data on port visits by boats between 2004 and 2009 that had been listed as possibly involved in illegal fishing and that had been targeted for sanctions. What they found did not impress them. The ports' records were in woeful shape, tracking the movement of only one-third of those boats during the six-year research period. The vessels frequently changed their names to elude regulators, and even if they were caught, port states enacted sanctions only about one out of every four times. On those occasions that ports in one region did crack down in any systematic way, the boats just moved to another region — a phenomenon known as leakage. "This illustrates that if port measures remain regional, the problem will shift elsewhere," the Science authors write.

Flothmann and his colleagues argue that much greater transparency is needed if illegal fishing is going to be stopped, and that may begin with getting even greater control over the legal fleet. Right now, for example, fishing boats aren't required to have an identification code from the International Maritime Organization, the only globally recognized identifier for shipping. Establishing the requirement would help distinguish the good guys from the bad guys, particularly if the information is shared among all ports. "Accountability," Flothmann writes, "requires transparency."

He's right — but his work also shows why even in the best of situations, saving wild fish will be so challenging. The oceans present the ultimate problem of the commons — they're vast, and most of the marine world lies beyond the control of any one country. Yet we're all dependent on the productivity of the oceans. "The connection between our health and the health of the oceans is clear," says Julie Packard, the executive director of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. "We have to commit to saving them." And the commitment to save the oceans begins with a recognition that we all share them.

General Environment News

U.S. coverage: The New York Times: Louisiana Officials Threaten Action if Spill Response Proves

Inadequate The Ecologist: BP oil spill: can environmental crime ever be made to pay? The Seattle Times: BP says doing all it can, everyone's frustrated CBS News: As Oil Spreads Inland, U.S. Ups Pressure on BP Reuters: Oil Capture Rate Down To 2,200 Barrels At Leak: BP Los Angeles Times: Leaking gas may give clue to size of gulf oil spill The Washington Post: Nature Conservancy faces potential backlash from ties with

BP The New York Times: Despite Obama’s Moratorium, Drilling Projects Move Ahead The Washington Post: Gulf coast oil slick headed for Grand Isle, Louisiana The Washington Post: Rahall demands NOAA hand over environmental documents Los Angeles Times: More oyster areas closed ClimateWire: States refuse to back down on climate policy ClimateWire: Cutting carbon leads list of environmental concerns for business Reuters: U.S. Unveils New Push For More Efficient Cars, Trucks Reuters: Canada Plans New Emission Rules For Heavy Trucks ClimateWire: Enviros criticize Canada's new truck emission regs Environment and Energy Daily: Lawmakers ponder energy implications of man-

made DNA Environment and Energy Daily: Oil, energy, infrastructure tax extenders bill set to

move Reuters: SolarWorld Sees Chance To Expand In U.S.

Canada: The Toronto Star: Scharper: Precautionary tale in Gulf of Mexico The Toronto Star: Olive: Offshore drilling is safe if done right The Montreal Gazette: Offshore drilling moratorium stays: Prentice

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-nature-20100524,0,1664963.story

U.S. coverage:

Louisiana Officials Threaten Action if Spill Response Proves InadequateThe New York Times, 24 May 2010, By Cambell Robertson

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/us/24spill.html?ref=us

VENICE, La. — Louisiana state and local officials continued to hammer BP and the federal agencies responding to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on Sunday, repeatedly threatening to “take matters into our own hands” if the response fell short.

At a news conference at a marina here, Gov. Bobby Jindal recited a timeline of his requests to BP and the Coast Guard for containment boom, skimmers and other supplies, saying that the resources were still far from adequate weeks later.

Around 65 miles of Louisiana coastline had been “oiled,” he said, as local officials held aloft pictures of oil-coated pelicans and a porpoise.

Saying that promises of more supplies frequently fell through, Mr. Jindal said he was going to send members of the Louisiana National Guard and Wildlife and Fisheries agents to monitor the oil and even to locate boom and other response supplies, which he and other officials said were available but sitting unused.

Mr. Jindal also urged the Army Corps of Engineers to immediately approve a plan to build artificial barrier islands out of sand to hold back the oil, a plan widely praised by local parish officials but questioned by some experts. He said he would raise the issue with President Obama in a conference call on Monday.

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In response to increasing criticism that the White House has not acted aggressively enough on the spill, the Obama administration is sending Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano into the region on Monday at the head of a bipartisan Congressional delegation.

Lisa P. Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, was in the region on Sunday, meeting with frustrated Louisiana residents.

In a news conference on Sunday outside the BP headquarters in Houston, Mr. Salazar repeated the phrase that the government would keep its “boot on BP’s neck” for results. He also said the company had repeatedly missed deadlines and had not been open with the public.

Mr. Salazar added, “If we find they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’ll push them out of the way appropriately.”

That statement, however, conflicted with comments made only hours earlier by the Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Thad W. Allen, who said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program that the access BP has to the mile-deep well site meant that the government could not take over the lead in efforts to stop the leak.

“They are necessarily the modality by which this is going to get solved,” he said.

On Saturday, the tensions between BP and local authorities came to a boiling point in Jefferson Parish, when local officials declared they were going to commandeer 40 boats of fishermen who had signed up to help with the spill but had since remained idle. They had spotted oil moving past the shoreline beaches through passes into Barataria Bay, which is surrounded by wildlife-rich wetlands.

“BP was not acting quickly enough in getting the skimmers and the booming boats out,” said Thomas Capella, a Jefferson Parish councilman. “If they weren’t going to do it, we’re going to do it ourselves.”

As soon as the boats were prepared, BP stepped in and began working to send the boats out, Mr. Capella said. As of Sunday, there were about 50 boats in the area working to contain the oil and prevent more from seeping through the passes, he said.

But the sight of oil in the bay at this time of year, just as shrimp season has opened, is demoralizing.

“It is a worst-case scenario right now for fishing and shrimping,” Mr. Capella said.

Brian Knowlton contributed reporting from Washington.

BP oil spill: can environmental crime ever be made to pay?The Ecologist, 24 May 2010, By Tom Levitt

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Million dollar fines and compensation claims may dent the profits of BP and other companies admitting responsibility for ecological disasters but, on their own, are they enough of a deterrent?

The full cost of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to marine and coastal ecology along the US south east coastline, both now and in the future, is only just being realised.

BP has admitted 'full responsibility' for the spill, which occurred after an underwater explosion on its Deepwater Horizon oil rig. A blow-out prevention device that guards against such accidents was not working and an extra device fitted for emergencies was not present on the oil rig.

How much is enough?

In a damning statement, the US environmental group the Sierra Club said that BP, which makes more in profit in a week than it has spent on responding to the oil spill so far, should be liable for a limitless amount of costs. 'There is no limit on the damage done to wildlife. There is no limit on the damage done to coastal communities. There is no limit on the loss of jobs in fishing and tourism. There shouldn't be a limit on the amount that oil companies like BP are required to pay for cleanup,' a spokesperson said.

Already more than 19,000 compensation claims have been made, mostly from fishermen. However, the maximum oil companies like BP are liable to pay for such claims is $75 million. A bill aimed at increasing that liability cap to $10 billion has so far been blocked by lawmakers in the Senate who offer the excuse it could adversely impact on small oil drilling companies who can't afford the liability.

BP is still likely to have to pay for most of the clean-up costs associated with the spill, estimated to be as high as $20 billion. Some believe it should also be forced to pay to restore coastal wetlands and ensure the recovery of any wildlife that survive the disaster.

A hopeless deterrent

But are such costs alone likely to prevent future disasters? Not according to the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), which says BP has a history of big pay-outs. Only last year it paid a $87.43 million fine for health and safety mistakes that led to the death of 15 workers and injury to 170 in an explosion at its Texas City refinery in March 2005.

'That may sound like a lot,' says IPS director Daphne Wysham, 'but BP made $163 billion in profits between 2001 and 2009 and another $5.6 billion in the first three months of 2010. Along the way it paid fines for violating the law that totalled roughly $530 million, or one-third of 1 per cent of the company's profits over the same period.'

Polly Higgins, a campaigning environmental lawyer, says in the end fines were 'hopeless' at deterring companies from taking potentially devastating risks, particularly large multinationals like BP whose profits exceed the GDP of a small country.

'These companies already factor in the legal fine costs - its an externality that in the end

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the person buying their final product pays a bit extra to cover,' she says.

Shareholder pressure

However, others say BP's falling shareprice and likely drop in annual dividend payout could see shareholders start arguing for more stringent safety measures to prevent the risk of ecological disasters.

Ben Bundock, from legal activists ClientEarth, says BP's response so far to the outbreak is likely as much as about safeguarding against less tangible losses than anything else.

'This isn't just an environmental issue; its a business issue for BP because their reputation is also at stake. They have a relationship with the US authorities to maintain. There could also be a loss of access to new markets and not to mention the billions in share price value.

'When risks are this large, shareholders may start to become more proactive about pushing directors to take account of safety mechanisms to avoid such disasters,' says Bundock.

BP says doing all it can, everyone's frustrated The Seattle Times, 24 May 2010, By Greg Bluestein and Matthew Brown

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2011939656_apusgulfoilspill.html?syndication=

The executive in charge of fighting a Gulf of Mexico oil spill acknowledged Monday everyone is frustrated at BP's failure to plug the ocean gusher more than a month into a disaster that is spreading damage in Louisiana's wetlands, including miring pelican colonies.

Doug Suttles, chief operating officer at BP PLC, went on all three U.S. network morning talks shows with the same message: BP knows frustration is growing that it hasn't been able to halt the spill of millions of gallons of oil from a well that blew out after a rig explosion April 20 off the Lousiana coast.

"We are doing everything we can, everything I know," Suttles said on the NBC "Today" show.

The Obama administration questioned BP's competence Sunday, when Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar told reporters he was "not completely" confident that BP knows what it's doing.

"If we find they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately," Salazar said.

Asked about Salazar's criticism, Suttles said BP is working with experts from other oil companies and the government to find a solution.

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"What I do know is, everyone is frustrated. I think the people of the region are frustrated. I know we are, I know the government is," Suttles said on NBC. "The fact that it's taken this long is painful to everybody."

Suttles said on ABC's "Good Morning America" that BP's next shot at plugging the well this week stands a very good chance of success. But he said the global oil company has more plans in case the latest efforts fails, like several before it.

BP plans to use heavy mud and cement to stop the breach, a maneuver called a top kill. Suttles said on the CBS "Early Show" the effort should start Wednesday morning and they'll know the same day if it works.

The White House said Sunday the Justice Department has been gathering information about the oil spill. Press secretary Robert Gibbs didn't say whether the department has opened a criminal investigation. He would only tell CBS' "Face the Nation" that department representatives have been to the Gulf as part of the response to the oil leak.

Salazar and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano were to lead a Senate delegation to the region Monday to fly over affected areas.

BP said Monday its costs for responding to the spill had grown to about $760 million, including containment efforts, drilling a relief well to stop the leak permanently, grants to Gulf states for their response costs and paying damage claims. BP said it's too early to calculate other potential costs and liabilities.

Even if BP's top kill procedure works this week, the damage has been done.

On Sunday, some brown pelicans coated in oil couldn't fly away on Barataria Bay of the Louisiana coast. All they could do was hobble. Their usually brown and white feathers were jet black, and eggs were glazed with rust-colored gunk.

When wildlife officials tried to rescue one of the pelicans, the birds became spooked. Officials weren't sure whether they would try again, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Stacy Shelton said it is sometimes better to leave the animals alone than to disturb their colony.

Pelicans are especially vulnerable to oil because they dive into the water to feed. They could eat tainted fish and feed it to their young, or they could die of hypothermia or drown if their feathers become soaked in oil. Just six months ago, the birds had been removed from the federal endangered species list.

With oil pushing at least 12 miles into Louisiana's marshes and two major pelican rookeries now coated in crude, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said the state has begun work on a chain of berms, reinforced with containment booms, that would skirt the state's coastline.

"As we talk, a total of more than 65 miles of our shoreline now has been oiled," Jindal said.

Jindal, who visited one of the affected pelican nesting grounds Sunday, said the berms would close the door on oil still pouring from a mile-deep gusher about 50 miles out in the Gulf. The berms would be made with sandbags; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

also is considering a broader plan that would use dredging to build sand berms across more of the barrier islands.

At least 6 million gallons of crude have spewed into the Gulf, though some scientists have said they believe the spill already surpasses the 11 million-gallon 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska as the worst in U.S. history.

A mile-long tube operating for about a week has siphoned off more than half a million gallons in the past week, but it began sucking up oil at a slower rate over the weekend. Even at its best, the effort did not capture all the oil leaking.

The spill's impact now stretches across 150 miles, from Dauphin Island, Ala. to Grand Isle, La.

On Sunday, oil reached an 1,150-acre oyster ground leased by Belle Chasse, La., fisherman Dave Cvitanovich. He said cleanup crews were stringing lines of absorbent boom along the surrounding marshes, but that still left large clumps of rust-colored oil floating over his oyster beds. Mature oysters might eventually filter out the crude and become fit for sale, but this year's crop of spate, or young oysters, will perish.

"Those will die in the oil," Cvitanovich said. "It's inevitable."

As Oil Spreads Inland, U.S. Ups Pressure on BPCBS News, 24 May 2010

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(CBS/AP) The Gulf of Mexico oil spill seeped miles deeper into Louisiana's fragile marshes, making it tougher to clean up or to rescue wildlife like the brown pelican, as the federal government questioned whether BP will be able plug its blown-out well on the seabed.

With frustration mounting at the global oil giant and at the government, the Obama administration pressured BP PLC to fix the gusher finally after several failed ventures in the weeks since an April 20 oil rig explosion.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said Sunday he was "not completely" confident that BP knows what it's doing.

"If we find they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately," Salazar said.

Special Section: Disaster in the Gulf

The White House said the Justice Department has been gathering information about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Press secretary Robert Gibbs didn't say whether the department has opened a criminal investigation. He would only tell CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday that department representatives have been to the Gulf as part of the response to the BP oil leak.

Salazar and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano were to lead a Senate delegation to the region Monday to fly over affected areas.

From the beginning, the U.S. has insisted that BP was responsible for taking the lead role to stanch the spill.

"BP is the responsible party, they own the well, they're responsible for capping it," Gibbs told Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer Sunday.

But BP's chief operating officer Don Suttles said Monday that "the federal government does have ultimate control of this event."

"I think what we see is a huge a frustration. We share it. I share the secretary's frustration. I want this thing to stop. We want it stopped. The people who live here want it to stop. I'm doing everything we can. I don't know anything we could be doing that we aren't doing," he said on CBS' "The Early Show".

And there are local jurisdictions which complicate the efforts.

Rear Admiral Mary Landry told CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric that there are many different parties that need to be coordinated with.

For example, a local mayor told the coast guard they didn't want oil-soaking booms used around the beach because it would be unsightly for beachgoers, reports Couric. But Landry said they have to respect the wishes of local leaders.

BP is getting barges and other equipment ready to prepare for a risky procedure

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midweek that the company hopes will finally halt the gusher.

But the "top kill" maneuver, which shoots heavy mud and then cement into the blown well, has never been tried at 5,000 feet underwater and BP officials caution they are working on a range of backup plans.

Suttles said that officials would know "fairly quickly" if the "top kill" attempt is effective.

Even if it works, the damage has been done.

On Sunday, some brown pelicans coated in oil couldn't fly away on Barataria Bay of the Louisiana coast. All they could do was hobble. Their usually brown and white feathers were jet black, and eggs were glazed with rust-colored gunk.

When wildlife officials tried to rescue one of the pelicans, the birds became spooked. Officials weren't sure whether they would try again, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Stacy Shelton said it is sometimes better to leave the animals alone than to disturb their colony.

Capture Rate Down To 2,200 Barrels At Leak: BP Reuters, 24 May 2010, By Anna Driver

http://www.planetark.com/enviro-news/item/58134

BP Plc said the amount of crude oil it siphoned from the U.S. Gulf of Mexico leak fell to 2,200 barrels (92,400 gallons/350,000 liters) in the 24-hour period ended at midnight on Thursday.

"The flow changes, it's not constant," BP spokesman John Curry said on Friday.

The company had reported siphoning as much as 5,000 (210,000 gallons/795,000 liters) barrels per day from the ruptured well earlier on Thursday.

BP has inserted a tube into a riser, or pipe, that is leaking oil from the sea floor. The company is gathering the crude oil and siphoning it up to a drill ship for storage.

The company is under increasing pressure from the U.S. government to provide data on the flow rate of the well and contain the leak, which is causing a massive oil slick along a fragile coastline teeming with birds, animals and fish.

The Macondo well ruptured on April 20, causing the Deepwater Horizon rig to explode and sink two days later. The accident killed 11 workers.

BP shares fell 4 percent in London.

(Editing by Sandra Maler)

Leaking gas may give clue to size of gulf oil spillLos Angeles Times, 24 May 2010, By Jill Leovy


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A Santa Barbara scientist has proposed computing the size of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by measuring its cousin, natural gas, which is spewing into the gulf along with it.

In an article published in the British journal Nature this week, UC Santa Barbara geochemist David Valentine said that dragging gas sensors through the waters near the spill could provide data on how much methane was lurking in the ocean. From that figure, the volume of oil could be derived, he said.

The leaking oil has high concentrations of methane, perhaps as much as 40% by mass, he said. But unlike oil, methane dissolves in water and can be measured empirically, Valentine said. Once the level of methane is determined, the amount of oil can be calculated, he said.

"What it gives you is a very good lower limit" on how much oil is flowing, said Valentine, whose research focuses in part on how methane behaves in the ocean.

BP effectively admitted last week that its estimates of the oil spill were too low when the company announced that a siphon on the broken pipe was extracting 5,000 barrels of oil a day — and this was only a portion of the total oil gushing out of the pipe.

Earlier, officials had estimated the size of the entire gush at 5,000 barrels a day, but some scientists had said the amount may be much higher.

In his report, Valentine argues that merely observing the size of the surface slick or trying to estimate its size from video images of the busted pipe is unreliable. There is too much variation, he said.

By contrast, a measurement of methane trapped 300 feet or more underwater could yield a more accurate projection of the size of the leak, he said.

Scientists using real-time instruments to take samples could assess how much the oil spill has increased natural background levels of methane in the water. Once they have gathered sufficient data, they could essentially map methane plumes under the waves and track their movements.

Although small amounts of methane may be eaten by microbes or escape into the air, Valentine said the degree of this loss could be estimated.

The U.S. academic research fleet has vessels and equipment that could do the work, and the cost would probably be "a few million dollars or less," Valentine wrote. But he said the work needed to begin quickly before plumes disperse.

Valentine said that so far, he had floated his idea among officials involved with the spill and had received a favorable response. But he acknowledged that "nobody said they were going to do it yet." Nature Conservancy faces potential backlash from ties with BPThe Washington Post, 24 May 2010, By Joe Stephens

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In the days after the immensity of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico became clear, some Nature Conservancy supporters took to the organization's Web site to vent their anger.

"The first thing I did was sell my shares in BP, not wanting anything to do with a company that is so careless," wrote one. Another added: "I would like to force all the BP executives, the secretaries and the shareholders out to the shore to mop up oil and wash the birds." Reagan De Leon of Hawaii called for a boycott of "everything BP has their hands in."

What De Leon didn't know was that the Nature Conservancy lists BP as one of its business partners. The Conservancy also has given BP a seat on its International Leadership Council and has accepted nearly $10 million in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated corporations over the years.

"Oh, wow," De Leon said when told of the depth of the relationship between the nonprofit group she loves and the company she hates. "That's kind of disturbing."

The Conservancy, already scrambling to shield oyster beds from the spill, now faces a different problem: a potential backlash as its supporters learn that the giant oil company and the world's largest environmental organization long ago forged a relationship that has lent BP an Earth-friendly image and helped the Conservancy pursue causes it holds dear.

The crude emanating from BP's well threatens to befoul a number of alliances between energy conglomerates and environmental nonprofits. At least one group, Conservation International, acknowledges that it is reassessing its ties to the oil company, with an eye toward protecting its reputation.

"This is going to be a real test for charities such as the Nature Conservancy," said Dean Zerbe, a lawyer who investigated the Conservancy's relations with its donors when he worked for the Senate Finance Committee. "This not only stains BP, but, if they don't respond properly, it also stains those who have been benefiting from their money and their support."

Some purists believe environmental groups should keep a healthy distance from certain kinds of corporations, particularly those whose core mission poses risks to the environment. They argue that the BP spill shows the downside to what they view as deals with the devil.

On the other side are self-described pragmatists who, like the Conservancy, see partnering with global corporations as the best way to create large-scale change.

"Anyone serious about doing conservation in this region must engage these companies, so they are not just part of the problem but so they can be part of the effort to restore this incredible ecosystem," Conservancy chief executive Mark Tercek wrote on his group's Web site after criticism from a Conservancy supporter.

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The Arlington County-based Conservancy has made no secret of its relationship with BP, just one of many it has forged with multinational corporations. The Conservancy's Web site lists BP as a member of its International Leadership Council.

BP has been a major contributor to a Conservancy project aimed at protecting Bolivian forests. In 2006, BP gave the organization 655 acres in York County, Va., where a state wildlife management area is planned. In Colorado and Wyoming, the Conservancy has worked with BP to limit environmental damage from natural gas drilling.

Until recently, the Conservancy and other environmental groups worked alongside BP in a coalition that lobbied Congress on climate-change issues. And an employee of BP Exploration serves as an unpaid Conservancy trustee in Alaska.

"We are getting some important and very tangible outcomes as a result of our work with the company," said Conservancy spokesman Jim Petterson.

Reassessing ties

The Conservancy has long positioned itself as the leader of a nonconfrontational arm of the environmental movement, and that position has helped the charity attract tens of millions of dollars annually in contributions. A number have come from companies whose work takes a toll on the environment, including those engaged in logging, home building and power generation.

Conservancy officials say their approach has allowed them to change company practices from within, leverage the influence of the companies and protect ecosystems that are under the companies' control. They stress that contributions from BP and other corporations make up only a portion of the organization's total revenue, which exceeds half a billion dollars a year.

And the Conservancy is far from the only environmental nonprofit with ties to BP.

Conservation International has accepted $2 million in donations from BP over the years and partnered with the company on a number of projects, including one examining oil-extraction methods. From 2000 to 2006, John Browne, who was then BP's chief executive, sat on the nonprofit's board.

In response to the spill, the nonprofit plans to review its relationship with the company, said Justin Ward, a Conservation International vice president.

"Reputational risk is on our minds," Ward acknowledged.

The Environmental Defense Fund, which has a policy of not accepting corporate donations, joined with BP, Shell International and other major corporations to form the Partnership for Climate Action, which promotes "market-based mechanisms" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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And about 20 energy and environmental groups, including the Conservancy, the Sierra Club and Audubon, joined with BP Wind Energy to form the American Wind and Wildlife Institute, which works to protect wildlife through "responsible" development of wind farms.

A rude awakening

On May 1, Tercek posted a statement on the Conservancy's site, writing that it was "difficult to fathom the tragedy" that was unfolding but that "now is not the time for ranting." He made no mention of BP.

Nate Swick, a blogger and dedicated bird watcher from Chapel Hill, N.C., chastised Tercek on the site for not adequately disclosing the Conservancy's connections to BP and for not working to hold the company accountable. Swick said in an interview that he considered BP's payments to the organization to be an obvious attempt at "greenwashing" its image.

"You have to wonder whether the higher-ups in the Nature Conservancy are pulling their punches," said Swick, who added that he admires the work the Conservancy does in the field.

A Conservancy official quickly responded to Swick's accusations, laying out the organization's ties with BP. A subsequent post by Tercek named BP and said the spill demonstrated the need for a new energy policy that would move the United States "away from our dependence on oil."

"The oil industry is a major player in the gulf," he said. "It would be naive to ignore them."

There might be a sense of the past among long-timers at the Conservancy.

Years ago, worried officials quietly assembled focus groups and found that most members saw a partnership with BP as "inappropriate."

The 2001 study, obtained by The Washington Post, found that many Conservancy members felt a relationship with an oil company was "inherently incompatible." And to a minority of members, accepting cash from these types of companies was viewed as "the equivalent of a payoff."

Despite Obama’s Moratorium, Drilling Projects Move AheadThe New York Times, 23 May 2010, By Ian Urbina

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/us/24moratorium.html?pagewanted=2&hp WASHINGTON — In the days since President Obama announced a moratorium on permits for drilling new offshore oil wells and a halt to a controversial type of environmental waiver that was given to the Deepwater Horizon rig, at least seven new permits for various types of drilling and five environmental waivers have been granted, according to records.

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The records also indicate that since the April 20 explosion on the rig, federal regulators have granted at least 19 environmental waivers for gulf drilling projects and at least 17 drilling permits, most of which were for types of work like that on the Deepwater Horizon shortly before it exploded, pouring a ceaseless current of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Asked about the permits and waivers, officials at the Department of the Interior and the Minerals Management Service, which regulates drilling, pointed to public statements by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, reiterating that the agency had no intention of stopping all new oil and gas production in the gulf.

Department of the Interior officials said in a statement that the moratorium was meant only to halt permits for the drilling of new wells. It was not meant to stop permits for new work on existing drilling projects like the Deepwater Horizon.

But critics say the moratorium has been violated or too narrowly defined to prevent another disaster.

With crude oil still pouring into the gulf and washing up on beaches and in wetlands, President Obama is sending Mr. Salazar and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano back to the region on Monday.

In a toughly worded warning to BP on Sunday, Mr. Salazar said at a news conference outside the company’s headquarters in Houston, “If we find they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’ll push them out of the way appropriately.”

Mr. Salazar’s position conflicted with one laid out several hours earlier, by the commandant of the United States Coast Guard, Adm. Thad W. Allen, who said that the oil conglomerate’s access to the mile-deep well site meant that the government could not take over the lead in efforts to stop the leak.

“They have the eyes and ears that are down there,” the admiral said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “They are necessarily the modality by which this is going to get solved.”

Since the explosion, federal regulators have been harshly criticized for giving BP’s Deepwater Horizon and hundreds of other drilling projects waivers from full environmental review and for failing to provide rigorous oversight of these projects.

In voicing his frustration with these regulators and vowing to change how they operate, Mr. Obama announced on May 14 a moratorium on drilling new wells and the granting of environmental waivers.

“It seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies,” Mr. Obama said. “That cannot and will not happen anymore.”

“We’re also closing the loophole that has allowed some oil companies to bypass some critical environmental reviews,” he added in reference to the environmental waivers.

But records indicated that regulators continued granting the environmental waivers and permits for types of work like that occurring on the Deepwater Horizon.

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In testifying before Congress on May 18, Mr. Salazar and officials from his agency said they recognized the problems with the waivers and they intended to try to rein them in. But Mr. Salazar also said that he was limited by a statutory requirement that he said obligated his agency to process drilling requests within 30 days after they have been submitted.

“That is what has driven a number of the categorical exclusions that have been given over time in the gulf,” he said.

But critics remained unsatisfied.

Shown the data indicating that waivers and permits were still being granted, Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, said he was “deeply troubled.”

“We were given the clear impression that these waivers and permits were not being granted,” said Mr. Cardin, who is a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where Mr. Salazar testified last week. “I think the presumption should be that there should be stronger environmental reviews, not weaker.”

None of the projects that have recently been granted environmental waivers have started drilling.

However, these waivers have been especially troublesome to environmentalists because they were granted through a special legal provision that is supposed to be limited to projects that present minimal or no risk to the environment.

At least six of the drilling projects that have been given waivers in the past four weeks are for waters that are deeper — and therefore more difficult and dangerous — than where Deepwater Horizon was operating. While that rig, which was drilling at a depth just shy of 5,000 feet, was classified as a deep-water operation, many of the wells in the six projects are classified as “ultra” deep water, including four new wells at over 9,100 feet.

In explaining why they were still granting new permits for certain types of drilling on existing wells, Department of the Interior officials said some of the procedures being allowed are necessary for the safety of the existing wellbore.

Pending the recommendations of the 30-day safety review, the officials said, drilling under permits approved before April 20 “may go forward, along with applications to modify existing wells and permits, if those actions are determined to be appropriate.”

But Interior Department officials have also explained that one of the main justifications of the moratorium on new drilling was safety. The moratorium was meant to ensure that no new accidents occurred while the administration had time to review the regulatory system.

And yet, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has classified some of the drilling types that have been allowed to continue as being as hazardous as new well drilling. Federal records also indicate that there have been at least three major accidents involving spills, leaks or explosions on rigs in the gulf since 2002 caused by the drilling procedures still being permitted.

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“The moratorium does not even cover the dangerous drilling that caused the problem in the first place,” said Daniel J. Rohlf, a law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, adding he was not certain that the Interior Department was capable of carrying out the needed reforms.

The moratorium has created inconsistencies and confusion.

While Interior Department officials have said certain new drilling procedures on existing wells can proceed, Mr. Salazar, when pressed to explain why new drilling was being allowed, testified on May 18 that “there is no deep-water well in the O.C.S. that has been spudded — that means started — after April 20,” referring to the gulf’s outer continental shelf.

However, Newfield Exploration Company has confirmed that it began drilling a deep-water well in 2,095 feet of water after April 20. Records indicate that Newfield was issued a permit on May 11 to initiate a sidetrack drill, with a required spud date of May 10. A sidetrack is a secondary wellbore drilled away from the original hole.

Among the types of drilling permits that the minerals agency is still granting are called bypass permits. These allow an operator to drill around a mechanical problem in the original hole to the original target from the existing wellbore.

Five days before the explosion, the Deepwater Horizon requested and received a revised bypass permit, which was the last drilling permit the rig received from the minerals agency before the explosion. The bore was created and it was the faulty cementing or plugging of that hole that has been cited as one of the causes of the explosion.

In reviewing the minerals agency, federal investigators are likely to pay close attention to how permits and waivers have been granted to drilling projects.

Even before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the use of environmental waivers was a source of concern. In September 2009, the Government Accountability Office released a report concluding that the waivers were being illegally granted to onshore drilling projects.

This month, the Interior Department announced plans to restrict the use of the waivers onshore, though not offshore. It also began a joint investigation of the offshore waiver process with the Council on Environmental Quality, an environmental arm of the White House.

The investigation, however, is likely to take months, and in the meantime the waivers are continuing to be issued. There is also a 60-day statute of limitations on contesting the waivers, which reduces the chances that they will be reversed if problems are found with the projects or the Obama administration’s review finds fault in the exemption process.

At least three lawsuits to strike down the waivers have been filed by environmental groups this month. The lawsuits argue that the waivers are overly broad and that they undermine the spirit of laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, which forbid drilling projects from moving forward unless they produce detailed environmental studies about minimizing potential risks.

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Gulf coast oil slick headed for Grand Isle, LouisianaThe Washington Post, 23 May 2010, By Joel Achenbach

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/22/AR2010052203042.html?sid=ST2010052203644

GRAND ISLE, LA. -- It has become an epic contest between water and oil along the Gulf Coast. Government officials have now opened wide the Mississippi River outlets -- what they call the diversions -- in a desperate attempt to overwhelm the massive oil slick approaching the ragged shoreline of Louisiana. This hydraulic defense employs snowfall from Montana, floodwater from Tennessee. The mighty river drains half the country, and every creek and stream and seep from the Rockies to the Appalachians has been enlisted in the battle.

But still it appears the oil is winning.

A steady wind from the southeast is blowing the oil ashore and into coastal bays. The forecast by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration projects a massive landfall Sunday to the west of the Mississippi River. The heaviest patch of oil is taking dead aim at Port Fourchon, which has boomed thanks to the proliferation of deepwater drilling.

Already the slick has polluted some of the biologically richest waters in America. Even worse damage could take place this week as oil soaks the beaches and passes through the feeble barrier islands to the inland bays, marshes and estuaries -- the nurseries for shrimp, oysters crabs. The names of these places will be in the news in the days ahead: Terrebonne Bay, Timbalier Bay, Caminada Bay and Barataria Bay. "All the diversions are wide open," Myron Fischer, director of a research lab for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries in Grand Isle, said of the river. "Just trying to push."

But a prevailing current near the mouth of the Mississippi flows east to west toward Texas, and it has caught the oil. An eddy appears to be forcing it directly toward Port Fourchon and Grand Isle.

What is poised to be a major disaster for fecund ecosystems ranging from brackish marsh to deep coral reefs in the darkness of the continental slope comes on top of decades of man-made stress: The gulf coast fisheries have long been threatened by the slow-motion crisis of coastal erosion.

For at least a century, the natural landscape has been pummeled by heavy industry and human engineering projects. With the river largely imprisoned between high levees, the natural floodwaters are no longer allowed to feed sediment to the marshes. Moreover, the oil companies cut canals for pipes and drilling rigs in the marshlands. All of this made it easier for salt water to invade the brackish estuaries. The grass died. Marsh became open water. Barrier islands began to erode. Hurricanes blasted them further.

The result is that Louisiana is vanishing. The state has lost 2,300 square miles of land since the 1930s, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) said this week.

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"If a foreign country tried to take this land away from us, we'd fight them," he said.

Jindal has joined with Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser in a campaign to win a permit to dredge a new set of barrier islands -- what Jindal calls sand booms -- as the first line of defense against the oil. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has not granted the permit, and Nungesser has grown increasingly exasperated.

"We can't lose this war. Because we'll never recover," Nungesser said.

The most vulnerable part of this ecosystem is the grass, the "canes," that give purchase to larval shrimp and other organisms that float in from the open gulf.

Rahall demands NOAA hand over environmental documentsThe Washington Post, 23 May 2010, By Juliet Eilperin

http://views.washingtonpost.com/climate-change/post-carbon/2010/05/rahall_demands_noaa_hand_over_environmental_documents.html

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall (D-WVa.) has demanded the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration turn over any documents that would help explain how the agency monitored how offshore oil and gas drilling might impact marine life in the Gulf of Mexico.

In a May 19 letter to NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco, Rahall asks her to provide his panel with information the agency has collected over the past five years in two key categories (direct quotes in italics):

• Unredacted copies of any and all documents related to potential impacts to threatened and endangered species, marine mammals, Essential Fish Habitat, critical habitat and fisheries as a result of energy development activities in the Gulf of Mexico, where such activities include but are not limited to leasing plans, lease sales, geological or geophysical exploration, exploration or development plans, and drilling permits; and

• Unredacted copies of all formal or informal consultations and official or unofficial comments under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act related to energy development activities in the Gulf of Mexico, where such activities include but are not limited to leasing plans, lease sales, geological or geophysical exploration, exploration or development plans, and drilling permits.</EM< em>

The documents could shed light on why the Minerals Management Service has approved energy exploration in the Gulf of Mexico in the past without obtaining the required NOAA permits under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. A number of groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, are now suing the Obama administration on the issue.

Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, lauded Rahall's move, saying the documentation--which is due before the House Subcommittee on

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Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife holds a hearing on the issue on June 15--will demonstrate a lack of government oversight.

"NOAA has been warning MMS since at least 2002 that it is violating the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act," he wrote in an e-mail. "You have to wonder why NOAA hasn't just shut MMS down by now. That may be what it takes to get the oil agency's attention."

More oyster areas closedLos Angeles Times, 23 May 2010, By Geoff Mohan

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State authorities closed 11 additional oyster harvesting areas along Louisiana shores Sunday in a precaution against oil that has spread farther west of the Mississippi River.

The bulk of the closures were in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes but included several in Jefferson and Plaquemines, according to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.

Three zones in St. Bernard's Parish that had been closed earlier were reopened last week.

Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration extended its no-fishing zone to encompass nearly one-fifth of federal waters in the spill area.

The closures already have had a serious impact on the multimillion-dollar seafood industry, and the effects have spread to restaurants nationwide.

States refuse to back down on climate policyClimateWire, 24 May 2010, By Nathanial Gronewold

http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2010/05/24/3/

NEW YORK -- Local environmental regulators say they will press ahead in their battle against global warming whether or not Congress strips U.S. EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gasses.

State and local officials from New York and New Jersey also predicted that new greenhouse gas-curbing rules regulating industries would continue even if Congress approves federal climate legislation. That includes the ability to set up their own regional cap-and-trade programs like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the Northeast's existing 10-state program, as well as the Western Climate Initiative and the proposed Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord.


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They called on federal authorities to complement state initiatives rather than circumvent them. That includes allowing the new EPA to continue its current activity, which is finally cooperating with state governments on cleanup and carbon control efforts.

"There's really been a sea change with EPA," said William O'Sullivan, air quality administrator at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. "We spent about eight years appealing EPA rules to prevent relaxations, and now we're struggling, even in this one year of the new administration, to keep up with EPA."

As part of their near-term planning, state governments seem to be gearing up for a fight to eliminate a provision in the latest version of Senate climate legislation that would put an end RGGI and other regional cap-and-trade systems emerging from state governments.

The stance is one of both principle and profit. The cash-strapped governments of New York and New Jersey have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds from the seven RGGI auctions conducted thus far. But the draft bill released by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) would allow current RGGI emission allowance holders to trade in their allowances for the federal version but would put an end to the 10 states' revenue stream.

"We believe that our work at the state levels can complement and build on a federal program," said Pete Grannis, commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Neither RGGI, WCI nor any other state initiatives should be "pre-empted under any circumstances," he demanded.

States make the case for harmonization

The vow was made last Friday at the biannual EPA Region 2 conference hosted by Columbia University Law School. There, state and local government officials outlined the steps they had taken so far to reduced greenhouse gas emissions in their jurisdictions.

But what drew the most attention were repeated pledges to continue adding new rules and policy instruments, suggesting many state and local governments have no intention of backing down even if Congress takes the helm.

These include new rules like ones that require new developments or construction projects in New York state to include greenhouse gas accounting and assessments in their state-mandated environmental impact statements. New York state and New Jersey officials also seem keen to emulate New York City's work tweaking building code standards to be more climate-friendly.

Agencies also promise to issue their own versions of EPA-issued "guidance" on industries operating in their borders. For instance, New York City's own technical manuals regarding compliance with its City Environmental Quality Review detail how building operations, mobile source pollution assessment and solid waste management must fit with the mayor's longer-term plan to reduce the city's carbon footprint by 30 percent by 2030.

"The challenges that we face are really very different than any other city in the United States," noted James Gallagher, senior vice president for energy policy at the New York City Economic Development Corp. Though the city's per capita CO2 emissions are already among the lowest in the country, Gallagher noted that the city expects to grow its population by 1 million more residents by 2030, necessitating that officials here continue with their own carbon-cutting efforts.

Grannis, for his part, acknowledged that having parallel state and federal cap-and-trade programs would pose problems. But he also expressed skepticism that Congress could deliver action as robust as what is now being devised by the states.

The best way for the nation to move forward on climate change, he said, is to have lawmakers work toward "harmonizing" the various systems, laws and regulations that are emerging and shape these all together to form a federal program. The example he provided was last week's white paper issued jointly by RGGI, WCI and the Midwestern states outlining greenhouse gas emissions offsetting standards.

Rather than pre-empt RGGI or other activities, Congress should work from the bottom up, Grannis added, taking in all the various greenhouse gas control provisions now on states' books, consolidating and standardizing these, and allowing regional initiatives to continue as they gradually evolve to become one nationwide program. RGGI even aims to link trading to the European Union's system, he added, efforts that should also continue regardless of Washington's policies.

"Clearly, pre-emption is something that I've always resisted and opposed," Grannis said. "I think it's a big mistake to cut off [state efforts], particularly in this program, where the model being used is the very model that they're seeking to pre-empt.”

Cutting carbon leads list of environmental concerns for business ClimateWire, 24 May 2010, By Joel Kirkland


More tax incentives and clearer government leadership are needed to shift companies into high gear to cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers study.

The Big Four consulting firm surveyed 700 business executives in 15 countries. Among the 90 U.S. executives, PricewaterhouseCoopers finds that most place the challenge of reducing carbon dioxide emissions at the top of a heap of environmental issues expected to affect U.S. companies.

The impact of regulations, the need to increase energy efficiency and consequences from state and federal legislation all weigh in as top concerns.

Two-thirds of executives surveyed in the United States said more government incentives are needed to significantly change behavior. Still, companies are responding to environmental pressures. Forty-four percent of U.S. respondents said they had started reaping cost savings by increasing the efficiency of their operations and energy use. Stripping the fat out of everyday business practices by increasing operating efficiency


and cutting energy use are often seen as the easiest and cheapest initial steps companies can take in response to climate change.

"That, to me, indicates that word is getting out about the low-hanging fruit," said Matthew Haskins, a PricewaterhouseCoopers tax partner in its climate practice.

Seventy-one percent of companies said governments, either through developing national economic policy or by example, should lead on slashing greenhouse gas emissions.

"Executives in the UK and China are most likely to say governments alone should have primary responsibility for leading change," says the report. "However, even in the U.S. and South Africa, where more than one-third of companies believe the market alone should lead, the majority of business leaders still feel the government must play the leading role."

U.S. businesses see change on horizon, but still few incentives

Eighty-seven percent of business leaders surveyed see their companies changing in the next two or three years as a result of concerns about climate change. The most skeptical business leaders with regard to how quickly changes will happen are in Brazil, India, China and Russia, with Russian business the most likely to shrug off climate change as a game-changing issue for businesses in the next two years.

Independents polls indicate Americans are generally more skeptical than Russians about global warming, PricewaterhouseCoopers noted, but only 11 percent of U.S. executives expect their businesses to experience no changes as a result of climate change. Nearly 50 percent of business leaders surveyed predicted no changes.

The vast majority, nearly 80 percent, of business leaders see their country's efforts to establish national emissions targets as helping the United Nations' goal of getting an international deal on climate change.

In the United States, the Obama administration's call on the government to reduce its carbon footprint 28 percent by 2020 could also drive behavior there.

"If the government were to push down that requirement through its supply chain to all government contractors and suppliers, the impact of U.S. business would be quite significant," said Kathy Nieland, who leads PricewaterhouseCoopers' sustainability and climate practice.

There are also supply-chain models in the private sector. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is pressing its suppliers to meet certain environmental standards. Once pulled through Wal-Mart's supply chain of companies that make and ship products to its superstores, the impact of an edict to cut greenhouse gas emissions has a significant domino effect. Wal-Mart has also started powering some 350 stores in Mexico from a 67-megawatt wind farm in the southern state of Oaxaca.

"Other large consumer products companies are looking at the program," Nieland said, referring to Wal-Mart. "Some are looking to replicate that, or conversely, how do they respond to the Wal-Mart pilot program."

On the tax issue, 88 percent of U.S. executives said that tax incentives had encouraged businesses to cut their environmental impact. Still, two-thirds of U.S. respondents said existing tax incentives don't motivate them to change business behavior on a large scale to get more.

"While it is not surprising that companies prefer more tax incentives, it is noteworthy that only three companies in 10 find the current incentives sufficient to change corporate behavior," Haskins said.

U.S. Unveils New Push For More Efficient Cars, Trucks Reuters, 24 May 2010, By John Crawley


President Barack Obama unveiled a government push on Friday to boost auto fuel economy for model-year 2017 passenger vehicles and beyond, and introduce a truck efficiency target for the first time.

Obama's policy initiative was characterized by leading environmental groups as an especially welcome step in the wake of the BP Plc Gulf Coast oil spill.

"I believe it's possible in the next 20 years for vehicles to use half the fuel and produce half the pollution that they do today," Obama said at a White House ceremony.

Separately, Canada announced similar steps for heavy trucks and hopes to propose a draft regulation within several months.

Cars and trucks account for more than 60 percent of U.S. oil consumption and more than 25 percent of domestic carbon pollution, environmental statistics show.

David Doniger, policy director for the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said tougher standards for cars and the first-ever efficiency goals for trucks will save consumers billions of dollars in fuel costs.

"These are important steps to cut our oil dependence and carbon pollution," Doniger said in a statement.

The new rules for passenger cars, sport utilities, pickups and vans will be carried out by transportation and environmental regulators.

California, a leader in the effort to curb vehicle emissions, will play an important role in developing an efficiency framework for the rule that will run from 2017-25.

The Obama administration in April completed regulations for passenger vehicles that will require a 30 percent decrease in carbon emissions and a 42 percent increase in auto fuel efficiency to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016.

Automakers sought assurances in recent weeks that the Obama administration would seek to extend federal oversight of those standards beyond the 2016 time frame.


Industry believes anything less than a firm government commitment on the subject would open the door to competing state standards that could vary from region to region, complicate product planning and add heavy costs.

But trying to gauge long-term fuel efficiency targets for 2017-25 could be trickier than past efforts that were strictly tied to gasoline use.

Industry has embraced cleaner burning fuels, more efficient engines and advanced battery technologies for gasoline-electric hybrids and full-electric cars that produce few to no emissions.

Automakers are moving fast to boost efficiency, and many cars on the road already meet or exceed the 2016 targets. General Motors Co and Japan's Nissan are racing to roll out the first mass-produced electric cars later this year and other manufacturers have designs in the pipeline.

The administration has provided important incentives to jumpstart production of vehicles that are powered by advanced technologies.

On trucks, the administration hopes to finalize a regulation by July 2011 covering truck fuel standards for the 2014-18 period, according to an executive order signed by Obama.

Preliminary estimates show that large tractor trailers, which represent half of all carbon emissions from the sector, can reduce that output by up to 20 percent with existing technologies, the administration said.

Trucks mainly run on diesel fuel, while cars use refined gasoline.

Trucking companies say they support new standards as long as they are technically feasible and do not affect the performance of their vehicles.

New diesel engines emit 90 percent fewer environmental pollutants, including those that contribute to smog, than engines made 20 years ago, industry said. Trucking companies also recommend that trucks not exceed 65 miles per hour and reduce idling time to save fuel.

Trucking company executives from manufacturers such as Volvo AB and Navistar International were on hand for the Obama announcement. Auto company officials from GM, Ford Motor Co, and Toyota Motor Corp also attended.

(Reporting by John Crawley and Patricia Zengerle; Additional reporting by Tom Doggett and Allan Dowd in Vancouver; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Jim Marshall)

Canada Plans New Emission Rules For Heavy Trucks Reuters, 24 May 2010, By Allan Dowd



Canada is on schedule for developing new emissions standards for heavy trucks, although the draft regulations will not be ready until later this year, the environment minister said on Friday.

Canada and the United States both unveiled plans on Friday to set efficiency targets for heavy-duty vehicles ranging from large-sized pickup trucks to tractor trailers used in long-distance hauling.

Ottawa expects to release draft regulations this fall that will spell out the requirements for heavy-duty vehicles and engines, starting between the 2014 and 2018 model years, Environment Minister Jim Prentice told reporters.

Officials said in April that Ottawa expected to release details of the proposed rules in late spring, but Prentice said the government was still on schedule with its plans to reduce vehicle emissions.

"These are complicated regulations," Prentice told reporters, adding later that they dealt with "heavy-duty vehicles that are at the very heart of our economy."

Big trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles accounted for 6 percent of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, Prentice said.

He added that while the Canadian and U.S. rules would be harmonized they would not be identical, reflecting national differences, such the fact that Canadian transport trucks usually carry heavier loads.

Environmentalists have accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government of lagging other countries in developing programs to fight climate change.

"Again, it's just rubber-stamping what the Americans are doing.", said John Bennett, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, adding that the rules were something Ottawa could have pursued two or three years ago.

The Canadian Trucking Alliance said any new rules must reflect the impact on fuel efficiency caused by the differences in terrain and cargo that truckers across North America face.

The alliance also wants the federal governments to address sometimes conflicting provincial and state rules on equipment that could increase fuel efficiency.

"We interpret today's announcement as opening the door for a meaningful dialogue on how we can move forward on this issue," the trucking group said.

WHITE HOUSE AND A TIRE STORE

There was a major style difference in how the two countries made their co-ordinated announcements on Friday.

President Barack Obama made the U.S. announcement at the White House with representatives of the major truck and auto companies watching. Prentice made Canada's announcement to reporters in front of a tire display at an autoparts store in Vancouver.

Prentice said that while efforts to develop "continental" emission standards for North America now involved only Canada and United States, both counties expect Mexico to eventually become involved.

"I think it is fair to say that we are further along in working together on a U.S.-Canada basis because we are so similar and our countries are at a similar state of development on the transportation system," he said.

(Additional reporting by David Ljunggren; editing by Rob Wilson)

Enviros criticize Canada's new truck emission regs ClimateWire, 24 May 2010, By Christa Marshall


Canada joined the United States Friday in setting new emissions standards for heavy trucks.

The move prompted criticism from environmentalists who said Canada was losing its way as a leader in environmental policy and turning into a copycat of its southern neighbor. The Canadian government and some analysts, however, argued that the global reach of climate change required a joint announcement with the United States.

"By developing regulations for heavy-duty vehicles that are aligned with United States standards, we are continuing our record of success," said Canada's Minister of the Environment Jim Prentice at an announcement on the new fuel rules in Vancouver.

"Just like passenger vehicles, manufacturers of heavy-duty trucks operate in an integrated North American market, so a closely harmonized approach makes sense for them."

The emissions from heavy trucks rose 63 percent, or more than double the rate of the rest of the country from 1990 to 2007, Prentice said. Heavy trucks now spew 6 percent of Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions, he said.

His remarks came on the same day that President Obama announced the United States was developing new regulations for large trucks (Greenwire, May 21).

The Canadian government pledged to develop regulations for heavy-duty vehicles sold between the 2014 and 2018 model years. Fifteen different types of vehicles, including buses, tractor trailers, dump trucks and garbage trucks would be covered under the new rules.


Greens push Canada to 'move first'

The government did not set specific targets for how much the gas guzzlers will have to cut emissions, although representatives from the trucking industry said they expected a call for truck fuels to be 20 percent more efficient than business-as-usual predictions by 2014.

The lack of details prompted criticism from environmentalists, who said the Canadian move was another example of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government dragging its feet on climate change. Harper might not have acted at all if not for trying to maintain friendly relations with Obama, they said.

"However strong the truck regulations may end up being, [the] announcement is another illustration of the federal government's approach of waiting for U.S. decisions before taking action on climate change," said Clare Demerse of the Pembina Institute, a Canadian environmental think tank.

Harper has been under fire for cutting some clean-energy programs in the national budget and supporting increased development of the Alberta oil sands, where oil production is projected to produce 15 percent of the country's emissions in the next decade, according to Ceres, a Boston-based coalition of investors.

Last week, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates released a report projecting that Canadian tar sands will become the top source of U.S. imported oil this year.

Environmentalists also have been pressing Harper to make climate change a central part of the agenda when the G-20 meets in June in Toronto. In May, Harper said global warming will not be a priority at the meeting, according to press reports.

The executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, John Bennett, fumed that Canada once led the United States on environmental issues but has abandoned its "move first" role.

He noted that Harper rejected the Kyoto Protocol, which was negotiated by the previous Liberal government. The previous government also had moved forward on fuel standards, he said, and Harper missed the opportunity to lead North America on the issue.

Harmonization key for government

The Canadian government recently lowered its pledge to cut emissions by 2020 from 20 percent to 17 percent from in order to tie itself to U.S. targets.

In a statement responding to the criticism, Environment Canada, an arm of the national government, said, "Given the deeply integrated North American economy, there are significant environmental and economic benefits to a harmonized approach."

Some analysts offered a similar assessment. Canada is too small an economy to go off in its own direction on climate change, said David Biette, director of the Canada Institute

of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Some energy-intensive industries already are struggling in Canada and don't want to be at a disadvantage if the United States has more lax rules on climate, he said.

Environmental think tanks such as Pembina have countered that argument with studies claiming that a price on carbon would spur the Canadian economy rather than harm it.

Prentice also emphasized in his remarks that Canada would implement the fuel standards in its own unique way.

"We will make sure that [the regulations] take into account certain uniquely Canadian considerations, including safety standards. For example, as a general rule, Canadian trucks carry heavier loads," Prentice said.

For its part, the Canadian trucking industry offered a mixed response.

Canadian Trucking Alliance Senior Vice President Stephen Laskowski said the new fuel standards were achievable, but the "devils would be in the details."

New tax incentives allowing trucking companies to purchase more efficient vehicles with cleaner fuel will be pivotal in determining whether the industry will support the measure, he said. Different Canadian provinces have different rules on trucking weights, so there's a long way to go to figure out how one national fuel standard would operate, he said.

"This could be an opportunity to address a lot of issues, or an opportunity to further muddy them," he said.

Lawmakers ponder energy implications of man-made DNA Environment and Energy Daily, 24 May 2010, By Katie Howell

http://www.eenews.net/EEDaily/2010/05/24/5/

The House Energy and Commerce Committee this week meets to discuss the energy and health significance of a recent scientific breakthrough that essentially reprogrammed an entire organism with a prosthetic genome.

The scientific achievement could have implications on a wide range of environmental and energy issues, including water cleanup and renewable hydrocarbon development.

Scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute last week announced they had successfully developed the first cell controlled by man-made DNA.

"This is the first synthetic cell that's been made, and we call it synthetic because the cell is totally derived from a synthetic chromosome, made with four bottles of chemicals on a chemical synthesizer, starting with information in a computer," Craig Venter said in a statement last week when the development was first published in the journal Science. "This is an important step, we think, both scientifically and philosophically. It's certainly changed my views on the definitions of life and how life works."


The researchers, led by Venter, had already synthesized a bacterial genome and transplanted the natural genome of one bacterium to another. In the Science study released last week, they put the two techniques together, effectively creating the first synthetic cell.

"This becomes a very powerful tool for trying to design what we want biology to do," Venter said.

The researchers have a few ideas in mind about how they plan to manipulate biology. For one, they plan to design algae that can capture carbon dioxide to make renewable hydrocarbons that can be fed directly into refineries. They also have plans to make new chemicals and food ingredients, to clean up water and to speed up vaccine production.

"This scientific achievement could some day lead to the development of new microbes that could consume carbon dioxide and turn it into clean-burning natural gas or that could efficiently clean up crude oil spills," said Brent Erickson, executive vice president for the industrial and environmental section of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, in a statement. "The understanding of metabolic engineering gained by today's research achievement holds great potential to open new avenues for research and development."

The energy implications of engineering renewable fuels have drawn much interest. Exxon Mobil Corp. last summer invested $600 million in Synthetic Genomics, the company that funded this research. In addition to founding the nonprofit Venter Institute, Venter is also a co-founder of privately held Synthetic Genomics. On Thursday, lawmakers are likely to address the energy issue as well.

The ability to engineer organisms for environmental cleanup is another timely topic that could see discussion at the hearing in light of the ongoing Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Lawmakers could address the economic issues of a potential monopoly on synthetic biology. Synthetic Genomics has already applied for several patents covering the work, and a technology watchdog has warned the actions could result in a monopoly.

The pharmaceutical implications are also slated to be another large part of the discussion. And lawmakers are sure to address the ethical issues surrounding the generation of man-made cells.

Schedule: The hearing is Thursday, May 27, at 10 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn.

Witness: Craig Venter, founder, chairman and president, J. Craig Venter Institute.

Oil, energy, infrastructure tax extenders bill set to move Environment and Energy Daily, 24 May 2010, By Katherine Ling


Democrats begin a race against the clock tomorrow to complete before Memorial Day a nearly $200 billion tax extender bill that includes a six-fold tax increase on the oil industry and a one-year extension of several energy and infrastructure tax incentives.


The House plans to at least begin debate on the bill H.R. 4213 tomorrow. Democrats would like to get it to the president's desk by Memorial Day recess, as several of the unemployment and Medicare payments to doctors also included in the bill will expire June 1.

But chances for such a speedy passage look dim as there are objections from Republicans and some Democrats about how the heads of the House and Senate tax committees paid for the package including through oil fees and taxes on investment profits known as "carried interest."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters last week, however, that House Democrats have the votes to pass the bill (E&E Daily, May 21).

Part of the bill's offsets include increasing an oil industry tax from 8 cents per barrel to 32 cents per barrel. The tax funds the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund account to help pay for economic and natural resources devastation from a spill. With the extra money in the fund to cover oil spill cleanup, it would free up between $5 billion to $10 billion of government coffers that would have been spent cleaning up an oil spill to offset other parts of the bill.

The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund currently has $1.5 billion, of which $1 billion can be used for any one incident. The bill would raise the liability per incident cap from $1 billion to $5 billion. The provision would also raise the limit of $500 million for natural resource damages to $2.4 billion.

Sens. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) tried twice last week to pass a bill on the Senate floor to raise the oil spill liability cap to $10 billion, but Republicans objected saying it would hurt small domestic producers.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar also voiced some opposition. He said while the liability cap should be raised he urged caution, saying $10 billion is an "arbitrary" number. "It is important that we be thoughtful relative to that, what that cap will be, because you don't want only the BPs of the world essentially to be the ones that are involved in these efforts, that there are companies of lesser economic robustness," Salazar told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

The American Petroleum Institute says the fee will increase the cost of operating and that may "result in a lower supply."

"It can force some suppliers out of the market," which hurts employment figures and puts pressure on the trade deficit, according to John Felmy, API's chief economist (Greenwire, May 21).

Republicans also complain that the oil fees should remain in the trust fund and not be spent again on other programs in the bill, like a $1 billion summer jobs program or the $4 billion Build America Bonds program.

There is still almost three-quarters of the bill that remains unpaid for because it is considered "emergency spending," including the extension of unemployment and

Medicaid payments and Medicare payments to doctors, which will concern Republican and Democrat budget hawks.

Democrats have framed the spending and the bill as a jobs and economic boost, part of a series of jobs measures they have passed this year.

"This is a bill about creating jobs, preventing outsourcing of jobs overseas, closing loopholes of corporations and wealthy individuals from avoiding U.S. taxes, and meeting the needs of those who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own," Pelosi told reporters last week.

The Rules Committee is scheduled to meet today at 5 p.m. to discuss the rule for floor consideration.

Biodiesel, energy efficiency extension

The bill would also extend several energy tax credits by one year, retroactive to Jan. 1.

It revives a $1-per-gallon production tax credit for biodiesel and renewable diesel, at an estimated cost of $868 million over 10 years. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas) have been pushing hard to get the tax incentive passed as the uncertainty has been hurting the industry, they say. The biodiesel credit could help balance objections from supporters of the oil industry, including Green.

Alternative transportation fuels -- including fuels from biomass, biogas, natural gas and propane -- will continue to receive the 50-cent-per-gallon tax credit, at a cost of $96 million over 10 years.

Added to the list of tax extensions is a $2.83-per-barrel-of-oil-equivalent tax credit for steel industry fuel -- recycled coal waste sludge for the coke making process -- and direct payment in lieu of energy-efficient appliance tax credits to manufacturers. Combined, the measures will cost more than $200 million over 10 years.

The bill would also revive an alternative motor vehicle credit for heavy hybrids, a tax break for sales of electric transmission property, an open loop biomass facilities credit, fuel production from coke or coke gas credit, and a credit for the construction of energy-efficient new homes. It also clarifies which energy-efficient windows qualify for certain tax credits.

It would also extend a mine rescue team training credit, expensing of advance mine safety equipment, expensing brownfield remediation costs and $1.5 billion in agriculture disaster relief over 10 years.

The agriculture disaster package targets a range of producers who lost money in 2009, including fruit and vegetable growers, livestock and poultry producers and aquaculture. For instance, the Agriculture Department would have $25 million to give to states for grants to assist aquaculture producers who faced high feed costs.

High prices for corn caused feed prices to surge last year but the prices for meat, fish and dairy did not keep the same pace -- leaving many aquaculture and animal producers to lose money on their products.

Infrastructure

The package has a number of infrastructure tax provisions to make it easier for states to finance transportation and water projects. It would extend the popular Build America Bonds program, as well as increase capital investment in water and sewer projects by more than $5 billion a year.

The legislation also seeks to amend a disputed provision in the one-year highway bill extension Congress agreed to earlier this year. Under the extension, nearly two-thirds of the $932 million pot for major transportation projects would be divvied out to four states -- Illinois, Louisiana, California and Washington -- with nearly a dozen states getting shut out entirely from the program. The package would amend the language to hand out the cash based on fiscal 2009 funding formulas.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James Oberstar (D-Minn.) has lobbied for the change for months, but a handful of senators -- most notably Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) -- have blocked the effort.

Reporters Josh Voorhees and Allison Winter contributed.

SolarWorld Sees Chance To Expand In U.S. Reuters, 24 May 2010, By Dana Ford


SolarWorld AG, one of Germany's largest solar companies by revenue, is betting big on U.S. production, expecting to lift its capacity here to 500 megawatts by year's end and maybe double that if demand remains strong.

Boris Klebensberger, chief operating officer of SolarWorld and president of its Americas unit, said the company is using about half of the available space at its Hillsboro, Oregon location.

SolarWorld is in the final stage of an expansion at Hillsboro, meant to boost U.S. production capacity to 500 MW.

But Klebensberger said there could still be room to grow.

"We could easily double (our capacity)," he told Reuters in a telephone interview on Friday. "When's the next step for the U.S.? I don't know. But will it come? I'm rather sure."

Many other foreign solar panel makers are also adding capacity in the United States.


While Germany is the No. 1 solar market, the United States is expected to emerge as one of the largest for the alternative energy source as European subsidies are cut and most U.S. states require utilities to increase their use of solar and wind.

Japan's Kyocera said in March it would begin making solar modules in California this year, while China-based Suntech Power Holdings Co and Yingli Green Energy Holding Co Ltd have announced similar plans to expand in the United States.

Klebensberger declined to comment on SolarWorld's U.S. sales expectations for the year and said the company was not operating with a specific market share target in mind.

Broadly, he said SolarWorld's goal is to be among the top suppliers in the United States.

Besides Oregon, SolarWorld also has a plant in Camarillo, California, which has been operational since the late 1970s.

The company, along with several of its German peers, voiced objections last year to the pricing practices of Chinese panel makers, which are among the industry's lowest-cost producers and are making big strides in the U.S. market.

"On a level playing field, we do not fear competition," said Klebensberger.

MORE RISK THAN OPPORTUNITY

Demand for solar equipment in recent months has rebounded from weak levels in 2009 as investors rush to install systems in Germany ahead of the expected subsidy cuts later this year.

But solar stocks have not followed the upward trend, as looming uncertainty weighs. The current weakness in the euro, and European markets more generally, also have been a drag.

"People see more risk than chances for the time being," said Klebensberger about solar opportunities.

Shares of SolarWorld, which have fallen some 45 percent this year, have been among the hardest hit.

Klebensberger said he expects to see a softening of panel prices after the subsidy cuts in July, but said prices should fall less than the 16 percent German feed-in tariff cut.

Specifically, he said he expects panel prices to fall less than 10 percent in the second half of the year. They dropped 40 percent on average last year.

As prices continue to drop, Klebensberger said competition among solar companies will be increasingly intense and that several likely will not survive.

"Overall in the solar sector, I guess it's all about finding out who will be the winner," he said.

(Editing by Richard Chang)

Canada:

Scharper: Precautionary tale in Gulf of MexicoThe Toronto Star, 24 May 2010, By Stephen Scharper

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/813029--scharper-precautionary-tale-in-gulf-of-mexico

Less than two months ago, U.S. President Barack Obama reversed his campaign promise and opened up 800,000 square kilometres of U.S. coastal waters to offshore oil drilling, ending a 20-year U.S. moratorium on new ocean oil rig construction.

“This is not a decision that I’ve made lightly,” Obama stated in making the announcement. “But the bottom line is this: Given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth, produce jobs, and keep our businesses competitive, we’re going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel . . .”

Today, following a deadly explosion April 20 that killed 11 workers, British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil well continues to spew life-threatening crude onto the Gulf of Mexico coastline and into the deep ocean currents that swirl toward the Florida Keys, Cuba and the east coast. As more dead marine life washes ashore, the short-sightedness of Obama’s thinking is becoming all too apparent.

With oceanographers claiming the gusher will have devastating consequences for marine life and coastal ecosystems, and local shrimp, oyster and other Gulf fisheries severely jeopardized, Obama’s comments that such drilling is needed to “sustain economic growth,” “secure jobs” and keep “businesses competitive” beg the questions: Whose economic growth? Whose jobs? Whose businesses?

For the fishermen and their families and for the tourist workers in the Florida Keys, the drill and spill approach to ocean oil and gas extraction may well eliminate their jobs, their businesses and their entire livelihoods for years to come. And expanding the areas where such drilling is allowed from the eastern Gulf of Mexico up to northern Delaware, as Obama has authorized, will only increase the risk of such horrific environmental disasters raising their oil-drenched heads in the future.

The notion of the precautionary principle, a type of “pre-emptive prudence,” has been invoked in international environmental accords and local decision-making for the past few decades. This principal calls on decision-makers to anticipate negative consequences, even when the scientific data is inconclusive, and to employ measures to prevent them.

As is becoming painfully clear, the precautionary principle was a no-show both in the decision to expand coastal drilling and in the specific case of BP’s Deepwater Horizon

http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/site/2931/



rig. At a recent U.S. federal investigation into the blowout, for example, Coast Guard Capt. Hung Nguyen, asking about the quality and installation of a blowout preventer on such rigs, learned that the defective device was “manufactured by industry, installed by industry, with no government witnessing oversight of the installation or construction.”

As the details of this spill leak out, it is becoming clear that the precautionary principal was ignored. It also appears that basic regulatory oversight was seriously compromised, suggesting a case of ecological “reckless endangerment,” one that threatens the livelihoods of thousands of American families as well as countless marine species.

In Canada, an unbowed BP Canada and other firms have been lobbying the National Energy Board to loosen regulations around drilling in the Arctic’s ecologically sensitive Beaufort Sea. While individual citizens can recycle, compost, ride bikes and use eco-friendly products, if governments do not put the common social and ecological good ahead of narrow corporate profits, our seas of life might be transformed into oceans of oil.

Present and future administrations, both in Canada and the U.S., must adopt an environmental policy of precaution rather than cleanup if we are to have lives worth living on a life-filled planet

Stephen Bede Scharper is associate professor at the Centre of Environment, University of Toronto. His column appears every fourth Monday.

Olive: Offshore drilling is safe if done rightThe Toronto Star, 23 May 2010, By David Olive

http://www.thestar.com/business/article/812658--olive-offshore-drilling-is-safe-if-done-right

Turns out Barack Obama wasn’t far off the mark two weeks ago, calling the explosion of a BP PLC oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20 a “massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.”

It’s scary to consider that the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon, which capsized and sank with the loss of 11 lives two days after fire engulfed the drilling platform, represents cutting-edge technology in the offshore drilling on which an oil-starved global economy is increasing reliant.

It’s equally disturbing that BP, one of the world’s largest industrial corporations, with revenues of $361 billion (U.S.) last year, has failed after 33 days to cap its out-of-control well about 80 km off the Louisiana coast.

BP for the longest time had no grasp of the magnitude of the disaster, insisting that oil was escaping its well – the deepest oil and gas well ever, about seven miles below the ocean surface – at a rate of 1,000 barrels a day when current estimates put the flow rate as high as 100,000 bbl/day.



An oil slick currently the size of West Virginia already has made landfall on the Louisana coast, home to the most productive fishery in the lower 48 states. BP itself now acknowledges that in a worst-case scenario, the Horizon disaster could eclipse that of the Exxon Valez spill of 1989 – the worst in U.S. history, at nearly 11 million gallons.

But that’s not the really scary part.

Especially in the U.S., energy policy has chronically taken the wrong lessons from disasters. Decision-makers have acted on emotion rather than common sense.

That simply can’t happen again. Continued oil consumption is the “bridge” between the eras of fossil-fuel use and emerging alternative energy sources still in their infancy.

The U.S. alone relies on oil for just over 37 per cent of its energy. Oil demand in the mature economies of North America, Europe and Japan will rise as those economies emerge from recession. Meanwhile, the industrial revolutions in China and India, with their combined population of 2.5 billion, will continue to grow GDP at a torrid pace of 8 to 11 per cent per year, likely for the rest of the decade. The International Energy Agency forecasts a 24 per cent increase in global oil demand by 2030.

As a standalone economy, India’s middle class of 400 million people alone would rank as the world’s fourth-largest nation. Like its counterparts in other rapidly growing developing world nations, an increasingly affluent India already has a voracious demand for vehicles, appliances, air conditioners and other energy hogs.

So we can’t turn our backs on oil or offshore drilling, tempting as that will be for policymakers. The lesson taken from the 1969 oil spill off Santa Barbara was for the U.S. to limited offshore oil production to the Gulf and Mexico and Alaska, whose ecosystems are far more delicate than those of offshore New Jersey or Oregon.

The lesson from the Three Mile Island incident of 1979 and the Chernobyl catastrophe of 1985 was to stop building nuclear-power reactors in North America. The result has been spiraling oil prices without nuclear power as a bigger part of the energy mix. That, and 31 lost years in technological advancement of nuclear as a safe alternative to our addiction to mostly imported oil from increasing remote and unstable regimes.

And the lesson from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was to mount an ineffectual “war on terror” and to keep shopping or, as George W. Bush said, “the terrorists win.” That was a colossal missed opportunity to rally a nation to implement bold changes in our private and public regard for energy.

Once again, crisis spurs us to conceive and embrace an energy policy worthy of the name.

We need to continue offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, which accounts for 25 per cent of U.S. oil production and 14 per cent of natural gas output.

It seems farcical now, the assertion made by BP’s vice-president of exploration for the Gulf in U.S. Senate testimony last November that offshore drilling “has been going on for the last 50 years, and it has been going on in a way that is both safe and protective of the environment.”

But that’s true, at least in North America. Our outsourcing of offshoring to the likes of Nigeria, Angola and Kazakhstan, where environmental standards are effectively non-existent, has resulted in a Valdez-sized spill in those regions every year.

But offshore drilling has proved itself safe when conducted responsibly, no matter that the technology is incredibly daunting.

BP’s giant Thunder Horse rig in the Gulf of Mexico was righted within a week of beginning to list dangerously in 2005 from human error – a break in a short stretch of pipe that allowed seawater into the ballast chambers. Six weeks later Thunder Horse was hit almost directly by Hurricane Katrina but suffered no damage. Of the seven million barrels of oil spilled due to Katrina, none was from the more than 3,000 drill sites in the Gulf.

After the Ocean Ranger tragedy in 1982 that claimed the loss of all 84 crew members, operators of that huge drilling platform 267 km east of St. John’s persisted and with vastly improved technology now maintain Canada’s most prolific oil well.

We need more regulatory scrutiny of offshore drilling operations. As the Wall Street Journal revealed earlier this month, the U.S. regulator, a branch of the Interior Department known as the Minerals Management Service, long ago fell victim to “regulatory capture” and allowed the BPs of the world to determine which costly safety measures to adopt or dismiss as unnecessary.

And so the Deepwater Horizon’s “blowout preventer,” which failed to cap the well at the moment of the explosion as designed, was not equipped with an acoustic switch that can be activated remotely, as operations in offshore Norway and Brazil are required to have.

We need to fast-track alternative energy. The U.S. spends just over $18 billion on R&D on alternative energy. The Chinese spend more than $34 billion, and are now the world’s leading producer of solar panels.

To finance accelerated R&D into alternative energy sources and more energy-efficient vehicles and buildings, we need to impose a carbon tax that provides a powerful incentive to conserve. The piddly 8-cent-a-barrel tax on oil companies for clean-energy research needs to rise to $2 or so.

We need a sweeping solution to our oil addiction. Environmentalists will balk at continued offshore drilling. Oil producers will carry on dismissing the potential of wind, solar and other alternative sources. On energy policy we’ve truly had a dialogue of the willfully hearing-impaired for two generations.

But with the threat of global warming on the horizon and Iran’s nuclear-weapons ambitions a clear and present danger, we no longer have the option of retreating into our ideological corners. It’s manifestly clear that we need a holistic approach to energy, and that time for adopting one is fast running out.

Offshore drilling moratorium stays: Prentice

The Montreal Gazette, 22 May 2010

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/world/Offshore+drilling+moratorium+stays+Prentice/3060578/story.html#ixzz0or5ANAuD

The moratorium on offshore oil development in B.C. won't be lifted any time soon, especially in the wake of the environmental disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice said Friday.

"It's in place and there's no changing of rules at this point. Obviously what's happening in the Gulf of Mexico has reinforced the desire for all of us to be careful," he said. "Nobody wants that to happen in Canada."

Prentice said he knows British Columbians are concerned about the potential environmental impact of oil drilling and oil-tanker traffic and doesn't "see the situation changing" in the near future.

"We need to be careful with offshore oil drilling," he said in an interview.

"We're all appalled by what we're seeing in the Gulf of Mexico. The true environmental cost is only now becoming apparent (now) that this stuff is starting to wash ashore."

He said it's important to "learn from the lessons of the Gulf of Mexico" as Canada moves forward on the issue.

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ROWA MEDIA UPDATETHE ENVIRONMENT IN THE NEWS

Monday, 24 May, 2010

Bahrain -Global biodiversity drive taking root Jordan- Environmental Media Award winners honoured Syria-State Ministry for Environmental Affairs Launches Green Competitive

Initiative for Companies



Bahrain

Global biodiversity drive taking root

GOVERNMENT and private schools in Bahrain will plant palm trees and other indigenous trees today in celebration of International Day for Biological Diversity.

The initiative is part of the Green Wave global biodiversity campaign to educate children and youth about the topic.

Schools participating in the initiative will plant a locally important tree in or near their school.

The campaign supports other national, international and global tree planting initiatives such as the Billion Tree Campaign by the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep).

The initiative and the International Day for Biological Diversity will be marked with a ceremony and palm tree planting at Annour Secondary School for Girls at 10am today.

It is being held by the Unep's Regional Office for West Asia in collaboration with the Education Ministry and GPIC.

The decline of palm trees in Bahrain is attributed to various reasons such as desalinisation and blocking of natural drainage channels.

Reports such as the Global Biodiversity Outlook 3 make clear that over-exploitation of species particularly trees has potentially serious impacts on the resilience of ecosystems.

GPIC general manager Abdulrahman Jawahery expressed the company's delight in collaborating with Unep and the Education Ministry.

He praised their active involvement in the development of a clean environment.

The 2010 theme for the International Day for Biological Diversity is "biodiversity, development and poverty alleviation".

Biodiversity is a key to reducing poverty because it provides people with basic ecosystem, goods and services as well as medicine among others, said officials.

Hurdles to agricultural growth to be probed

THE challenges facing Bahrain in achieving sustainable development in agriculture will be discussed at a key forum being held later this year.

The event, entitled Towards a Sustainable Agriculture Development, is being organised by the the Bahrain Agriculture Engineers Society.

Society president Fouad Khalifa said that the event aims to address the obstacles facing agriculture engineers and those who work in the sector.

He said the event followed a call by Her Royal Highness Princess Sabeeka bint Ibrahim Al Khalifa, wife of His Majesty King Hamad and Supreme Council for Women chairwoman, for initiatives to achieve a sustainable agricultural sector.

It will discuss various topics, including obstacles to agriculture development, water resources and the future of treated drainage water as well as investment in the agriculture sector.

It will also discuss successful experiences by neighbouring countries in sustainable agricultural plans, said Mr Khalifa.

"Agriculture in the region is in need of serious plans and realistic ones at that."

The society hopes to hold the two-day forum from October 19, if they get permission from the Municipalities and Agriculture Ministry.

He said that they hoped forum recommendations would be considered from the development of the agricultural sector.

Participants include representatives from the Works Ministry, Municipalities and Agriculture Ministry, as well as agricultural engineers and other experts in the field.

Jordan

Environmental Media Award winners honoured

AMMAN - Winners of the 2009 Environmental Media Award were honoured on Sunday, with Ikhlas Qadi from the Jordan News Agency, Petra, taking home first prize.

Qadi’s article tackled environmental problems generated by an abandoned sheep market in the Sahab area, categorised by authorities as an environmental hotspot.

Her prize is a trip to the KIA automobile factory in Korea to check on environment-friendly techniques applied at the plant.

Ziad Rebai from Al Rai daily won second prize for an investigation into water quality and diseases caused by polluted water, while third prize went to Mariam Nasr from Al Ghad daily for an article on plastic bags and the threats they pose to the environment and living things.

HRH Princess Rym Ali, who headed the panel of judges, distributed the awards to the winners at a ceremony yesterday.

The panel of judges evaluated the submissions on their originality, structure, quality of research, efficiency and the importance of the topic and environmental context.

The Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN) launched the Environmental Media Award, the country’s first prize on environmental reporting, in 2008.

Twelve journalists from various media outlets applied for the award, which seeks to highlight environmental issues by encouraging analytical reporting to raise public awareness on the need to preserve the environment, according to the society.

During yesterday’s ceremony, RSCN Director General Yehya Khaled announced that a similar award for “junior journalists” tackling environmental problems will be launched next year, highlighting that the media shares the responsibility of raising awareness on the country’s environmental problems, along with the authorities.

“Environmental challenges have increased recently, not only in our country but all over the world… they don’t impact a limited area but affect the global environment,” he noted.

http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=26836\

Syria

State Ministry for Environmental Affairs Launches Green Competitive Initiative for Companies

Damascus, (SANA)-State Ministry for Environmental Affairs launched on Wednesday the Green Competitive Initiative for Companies, in cooperation with the United Nations Environment Program Barcelona-based ''The Regional Activity Center for Cleaner Production (RAC/CP)''.

The project is launched in cooperation with Ministry of Trade and Economy and Ministry of Industry, and Chambers of Industry of Damascus and its Countryside and Aleppo, and Chambers of Commerce of Damascus and Aleppo.

The initiative is a prelude to a 3-year project which aims at laying out a framework for cooperation between Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs and the Regional Activity Center for Cleaner Production (www.cprac.org) to promote the initiative through Syrian companies and industries.

The project is due to be carried out in the Mediterranean countries including Syria.

State Minister for Environmental Affairs Kawkab al-Sabah Dayeh said the initiative aims at raising awareness of industry men, transferring and exchanging expertise regarding enhancing the green competitiveness in companies and raising sustainability in the industrial sector in Syria.

Minister Dayeh said preserving environment is based on the awareness of the reasons and results of pollution as well as using natural resources which necessitated creating strategies and adopting technologies for implementing environmental economy, the cleaner production, environmental effectiveness and supporting green competitiveness for decision-makers.

http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=26836%5C

For his part, Deputy Chairman of Damascus Chamber of Industry Basel al-Hamwi stressed the importance of the initiative in encouraging companies to use the available technologies of cleaner production, applying the optimal practices in industry and using environment-friendly materials.

Director of the Initiative Luisa Gracia Valdecasas said the Center has become responsible for dispensing with organic waste in the Mediterranean environment since 2008, adding that it promotes the Green Competitive Initiative in the Mediterranean.

The Green Competitive Initiative is a Mediterranean project founded to spread green competitiveness in medium and small-sized institutions through partnership techniques between the private and public sectors in Mediterranean countries.

http://www.sana.sy/eng/27/2010/05/19/288957.htm

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ENVIRONMENT NEWS FROM THEUN DAILY NEWS

24th May 2010

UN Daily News: Conference on saving world’s fish stocks opens at UNHeadquarters

A five-day conference on fish conservation opened at United NationsHeadquarters in New York today amid warnings that three quarters of the world’s fish stocks are in distress and nearing depletion while marine ecosystems continue to deteriorate.

The conference chairman David Balton, United States Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Fisheries in the Bureau of Oceans, cited over-fishing, the effect of fishing on the marine environment and the need for further assistance to developing countries as among the forum’s main issues.

The conference is reviewing implementation of the 1995 UN Fish Stocks Agreement that established a legal regime for long-term conservation and sustainable use of straddling and highly migratory fish stocks. It will provide an opportunity for countries to consider new measures to tighten implementation of the legal regime.

The agreement, which took effect in 2001 and has 77 States parties, covers highly migratory species that regularly travel long distances, such as tuna, swordfish and oceanic sharks, as well as straddling stocks that occur both within the exclusiveeconomic zone of coastal States – up to 200 nautical miles offshore – and areas beyond and adjacent to that zone, including cod, halibut, pollock, jack mackerel and squid.

http://www.sana.sy/eng/27/2010/05/19/288957.htm

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that currently three quarters of all fish stocks are in distress and nearing depletion and that the majority of straddling fish stocks, highly migratory species and other high seas fish stocksare either fully exploited or over-exploited.The conference, a resumption of the last review that was held in 2006, will “take a hard look at what is being done to give effect to the Fish Stocks Agreement,” Mr. Balton said. It will also consider progress made in the implementation of recommendations since 2006, many of which led to concerted action to improve fisheries. The conference is open all countries.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including many that raised concerns about the fate of Atlantic bluefin tuna and two species of sharks at the recent meeting of the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of WildFauna and Flora (CITES), are also participating.

Also kicking off today is a UN gathering of experts to discuss pollution in the Caribbean. The UN Environment Programme’s Caribbean arm, known as UNEP CEP, and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) have invited more than 50 pollution control specialists to a five-day meeting in Panama City.

Participants will focus on how to bolster the region’s commitment to ratify the Protocol Concerning Pollution from Land- Based Sources and Activities, or the LBS Protocol. That pact sets up regional guidelines and standards for reducing pollution’s impact on the coastal and marine environment, as well as on human health.

More than 80 per cent of the pollution of the Wider Caribbean’s marine environment is believed to be from land-based sources and activities. So far, only six countries – Panama, Belize, Saint Lucia, France, the United States and Trinidad and Tobago – have ratified the LBS Protocol.

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S.G’s SPOKESPERSON DAILY PRESS BRIEFING

25th May 2010 (None)

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