The Environment Chronicle

On 5. Mai 2012, the last working reactor in Japan was switched off. This is the first time since 1970 that Japan has been nuclear power-free.

The longest deployment of the Zeppelin NT for climate research so far was officially launched on 4 May 2012, in a campaign coordinated by scientists from Jülich. For a total of twenty weeks, the airship will fly across Europe to measure the composition of the air above the Netherlands, Italy, the Adriatric and finally, in 2013, Finland. The measurement flights are part of the pan-European "PEGASOS" large-scale project, which involves twenty-six partners from a total of fourteen European countries and Israel investigating relationships between atmospheric chemistry and climate change. Federal Minister of Education and Research Annette Schavan praised the campaign at the official launch in Friedrichshafen.

The Australian government has listed the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) as a threatened species in parts of the country for the first time. It says the species faces numerous threats including from climate change, disease and habitat loss. Koala populations in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory have been placed on the national list of vulnerable species, following intervention by environment minister, Tony Burke, on 30 April 2012.

On 27 April 2012, a press conference took place in order to finish off an international youth-climate-week where approximately 200 prospective climate ambassadors from four continents have met. The students presented their plans for local sustainability projects within the frame of which they aim at putting into action ideas for concrete daily life measures against the climate change. The UNFCCC Executive Secretary Figueres, the European Commissioner for Climate Action Hedegaard as well as the Lower Saxon Minister for the Environment Dr. Birkener supported YOUTHinkgreen. They gave the green light for a new online network which provides students from all over the world with the possibility to exchange ideas and experience on an active sustainability commitment.

On 25 April 2012, the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies approved controversial changes to the country's Forest Code.

On 25 April 2012, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety announced the creation of a new national working group for renewable energy, the Renewable Energy Platform. The working group shall coordinate the future growth of renewable energy sources, their market integration, their interplay with conventional energy sources and the necessary grid expansion resulting from growing renewable energy capacities. The platform shall comprise of representatives of the German Federation, the federal states, cities and municipalities, the renewable energy industry, the transmission and distribution system operators, environment and nature organisations, consumer protection agencies, trade associations, conventional power plant operators as well as scientists.

The European Commission has joined the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, a new international initiative to accelerate the reduction of emissions of short-lived climate pollutants such as methane, black carbon (soot) and hydrofluorocarbon gases (HFCs). The meeting convened in Stockholm, Sweden, from 23-24 April 2012, and welcomed Colombia, Japan, Nigeria, Norway, the European Commission and the World Bank as new partners.

Bonn has been chosen for the secretariat of a UN expert panel on biodiversity, the organisation announced on 19 April 2012. The decision was made at a plenary meeting in Panama City of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, or IPBES, according to an announcement on the platform's website.

A biodiversity resource assessment conducted in the Southern Leyte Province of the Philippines in November 2011, has resulted in the discovery of two new species of frog and a total of 229 recorded flora species, 31 of which are endemic. The assessment was led by Fauna & Flora International, the National Museum of the Philippines, the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau-DENR and DENR Region 8. The new species were unveiled at the Marble Hall of the Museum of the Filipino People on 17 April 2012.

New guidelines on best practice to limit, mitigate and compensate soil sealing made public by the European Commission on 12 April 2012, collect examples of policies, legislation, funding schemes, local planning tools, information campaigns and many other best practices implemented throughout the EU. The guidelines call for smarter spatial planning and using more permeable materials to preserve our soil.

The European Agency for Maritime Safety (EMSA) would get new powers to step up cooperation against piracy, prevent maritime pollution, improve training for seafarers and help establish an EU maritime space without barriers under an informal deal struck on 12 April 2012 by Parliament’s negotiating team, and the Council’s Danish Presidency.

The Russian government has created a new national park to protect critically endangered Amur (Siberian) tigers and and the world’s rarest big cat: the Far Eastern leopard. Called “Land of the Leopard” National Park, the new protected area in the Russian Far East was declared on 9 April 2012. It safeguards 262,000 hectares of leopard and tiger habitat. The park was created through the merger of three existing protected areas: Kedrovya Pad Reserve, Barsovy Federal Wildlife Refuge, and Borisovkoe Plateau Regional Wildlife Refuge. In addition, key previously unprotected lands have been added along the Chinese border and in the northeast portion of the leopard's range.

On the 26th Chernobyl anniversary the Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) presented the first European Citizens Initiative for clean and secure energy in Europe. On 1 April 2012, BUND along with many international partners submitted the ECI "My vote against nuclear power".

31 March 2012 marked the 20th anniversary of the signing of the ASCOBANS Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic, North East Atlantic, Irish and North Seas. The Irish Sea and parts of the North East Atlantic were included only recently. The goal of cooperation under ASCOBANS is to ensure transboundary protection of cetaceans and dolphins against adverse effects of human activities.

On 23 March 2012, the European Climate Adaptation Platform (CLIMATE-ADAPT), an interactive web-based tool on adaptation to climate change, went online at the European Environment Agency (EEA) in Copenhagen. The European Climate Adaptation Platform is a publicly accessible, web-based platform, designed to support policy-makers at EU, national, regional and local levels in the development of climate change adaptation measures and policies.

Germany has come an important step closer to cutting solar feed-in tariffs. With 305 representatives in favour of the bill, 235 against and one abstention the German Bundestag (Parliament) on 29 March 2012 approved the latest EEG amendment that cuts solar feed-in tariffs (mainly) as of 1 April 2012 for new plants.

On March 23, 2012, Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson Jackson overturned a decision by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that revoked a permit for the Spruce 1 mine project in Logan County, West Virginia. In her ruling, Jackson stated that the EPA did not have power under the Clean Water Act to rescind the permit.

On 23 March 2012 the European Commission proposed new rules to ensure that European ships are only recycled in facilities that are safe for workers and environmentally sound. The new rules, which will take the form of a Regulation, propose a system of survey, certification and authorisation for large commercial seagoing vessels that fly the flag of an EU Member State, covering their whole life cycle from construction to operation and recycling. This system builds upon the Hong Kong Convention for the safe and environmentally sound recycling of ships, which was adopted in 2009. The proposal aims to implement the Convention quickly, without waiting for its ratification and entry into force, a process which will take several years. To speed up the formal entry into force of the Hong Kong Convention, the Commission also presented a draft decision requiring Member States to ratify the Convention.

The International Water Management Institute (IWMI), with headquarters in Colombo, Sri Lanka, has been named the 2012 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate for their pioneering research that has served to improve agriculture water management, enhance food security, protect environmental health and alleviate poverty in developing countries. This announcement was made on the UN World Water Day.

On 21 March 2012, the German Cabinet decided that Germany would express its interest in hosting the Green Climate Fund (GCF). The place at which the Fund's headquarters would be established is the Federal City of Bonn. The GCF provides funding to developing countries to help them make their economies climate-friendly and adapt to unavoidable consequences of climate change. The Fund was created at the 2010 climate conference in Cancún and was made operational at the Durban climate conference in December 2011. It will deliver a substantial portion of global climate finance, which is to reach an annual 100 billion US dollars by 2020.

Large quantities of globally produced plastics end up in the oceans where they represent a growing risk. Above all very small objects, so-called microplastic particles, are endangering the lives of the many sea creatures. An estimate of how greatly the oceans are polluted with microplastic particles has so far failed in the absence of globally comparable methods of investigation and data. Together with British and Chilean colleagues, scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association have now analysed all published studies on this topic and have proposed standardised guidelines for the recording and characterisation of microplastic particles in the sea.

On 17 March 2012, the two GRACE twin satellites will have been in orbit for exactly 10 years. The scientists named them Tom and Jerry, because they chase each other on exactly the same orbit around the earth. Since their launch from the Russian cosmodrome in Plesetsk, the two satellites have circled the Earth more than 55 000 times on a near polar orbit at about 450 to 500 km altitude and a distance of 220 km, and continuously collected data. For the first time, the melting of glaciers in Greenland could now be measured with high accuracy from space. Just in time for the tenth anniversary of the twin satellites GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) a sharp image has surface, which also renders the spatial distribution of the glacial melt more precisely. The Greenland ice shield had to cope with up to 240 gigatons of mass loss per year between 2002 and 2011. This corresponds to a sea level rise of about 0.7 mm per year. These statements were made possible by the high-precision measurements of the GRACE mission, whose data records result in a hitherto unequaled accurate picture of the earth's gravity.

On 16 March 2012 the Spanish Government authorized oil drilling off the Canary Islands.

On 16 March 2012, Greenpeace activists boarded icebreakers in Helsinki in a protest against Arctic oil drilling. They went on board the Fennica and Nordica boats at Hietalahti harbour.

Chevron filed to temporarily halt production operations in Brazil on 16 March 2012 after it detected oil in the same offshore field where it suffered a high-profile leak in November 2011.

The Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA) was officially launched on 15 March 2012, in the Namibian town of Katima Mulilo. The KAZA TFCA was formally established on 18th August 2011 when the Heads of States of the Republics of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe signed the KAZA Treaty at the SADC Summit in Luanda, Angola. The signing of the Treaty established the world’s largest (444,000 Km²) and critical conservation landscape.

In adopting a proposal on accounting of greenhouse gases emissions, on 12 March 2012, the European Commission has taken a first step towards incorporating removals and emissions from forests and agriculture into the EU's climate policy. The proposed Decision establishes accounting rules for greenhouse gas emissions and removals in the forest and agriculture sectors, the last major sectors without common EU-wide rules.

On 29 February 2012, the Federal Cabinet adopted the German Resource Efficiency Programme (ProgRess). At the core of ProgRess are new strategic approaches, activities and examples geared towards increasing resource efficiency. The Programme covers the entire value chain. It is about securing a sustainable raw material supply, raising resource efficiency in production, steering consumption towards resource efficiency, enhancing resource-efficient closed cycle management and using overarching instruments. The Programme seeks to support voluntary measures and initiatives in industry and society.

On 27 February 2012, Prof. Dr. Ulf Riebesell, Oceanography, Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) at University of Kiel, received the Leibniz Prize for his research on ocean change, one of the farthest-reaching corollaries and consequences of human-induced climate change.

A expert committee vote on 23 February 2012, did not find the required majority in favour of a European Commission proposal to designate oil from tar sands as particularly damaging to the environment.

Fruit seeds stored away by squirrels more than 30,000 years ago and found in Siberian permafrost have been regenerated into full flowering plants by scientists in Russia, a new study has revealed. The seeds of the herbaceous Silene stenophylla plant, whose age was confirmed by radiocarbon dating at 31,800 years old, are far and away the most ancient plant material to have been brought back to life, said lead researchers Svetlana Yashina and David Gilichinsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Thawing permafrost will have far-reaching ramifications for populated areas, infrastructure and ecosystems. A geographer from the University of Zurich reveals where it is important to confront the issue based on new permafrost maps – the most precise global maps around. They depict the global distribution of permafrost in high-resolution images and are available on Google Earth.

On 17 February 2012, the US Department of Interior approved an oil spill response plan for Shell's proposal to drill in the Chukchi Sea.

On 16 February 2012, the United States, Bangladesh, Canada, Ghana, Mexico and Sweden, with the support of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), launched the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants, which aims to reduce short-lived climate pollutants, carbon, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and methane.

On 14 February 2012, the WHO European Centre for Environment and Health opened in Bonn. Since 1 January 2012 the WHO European Centre for Environment and Health (ECEH) has been located entirely in the UN city of Bonn. The tasks of the Rome office, which was closed in December, have been transferred to the Bonn office. The WHO European Centre for Environment and Health in Bonn deals with the impacts of environmental factors on human health.

Released by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), the first EU Classification and Labelling Inventory lists the classification of all the chemical substances used in the EU which allows identifying those that are potentially hazardous and may damage health and the environment. The aim is to provide industry, and in particular small companies, with easy access to information on the hazardousness of a given substance, facilitating the task to correctly classify and label substances and mixtures, as well as substitution of hazardous substances with less damaging alternatives where feasible.

Forest certification body FSC has revised its standards following a long consultation with its members. On 10 February 2012 the majority of them backed the changes, which aim to update and clarify the scheme's principles and criteria (P&C). This was the first comprehensive review and revision of the FSC Principles and Criteria since their approval in 1994.

On 9 February 2012, Sub-Saharan Africa's first privately developed hydropower plant went online in Bugali, Uganda. With an installed capacity of 250 MW, the power plant will increase Uganda's available generating capacity by more than 50%, thus improving the energy supply for industry and private households. The hydropower plant sets an example in two ways. First, it has attracted private investors to a high-risk country. Second, complementary environmental and social campaigns have successfully demonstrated how hydropower plants can be built in a manner that respects the needs of the people and the environment.

On 27 January 2012, the California Air Resources Board approved a new emissions-control program for model years 2017 through 2025. The program combines the control of smog, soot and global warming gases and requirements for greater numbers of zero-emission vehicles into a single package of standards called Advanced Clean Cars. By 2025, when the Advanced Clean Cars rules are fully implemented, one in seven new cars sold in California – 1.4 million – would be those that emit with very little or no pollution, including.

On 18 January 2012, President Obama rejected the permit for the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.