The Environment Chronicle

The European Commission has approved funding for 210 new projects under the third call for the LIFE+ programme (2007-2013), the European fund for the environment. The projects are from across the EU and cover actions in the fields of nature conservation, environmental policy, and information and communication. Overall, they represent a total investment of €515 million, of which the EU will provide €249.8 million.

Hundreds of dead penguins and other sea animals have washed up on Sao Paulo state's shores and scientists are investigating the causes, environment officials told Folha Online news agency. The Institute of Environment and Natural Resources said 530 penguins, numerous other sea birds, five dolphins and three giant sea turtles have been found in the coastal towns of Peruibe, Praia Grande and Itanhaem, with more likely on other nearby beaches.

One of the rarest and most threatened primates in the world, so mysterious it was once thought to be extinct, has been caught on camera for the first time. The pictures of the Horton Plains slender loris (Loris tardigradus nycticeboides) were taken in the montane forests of central Sri Lanka by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Sri Lankan researchers. Until now this subspecies of slender loris has only been seen four times since 1937 and disappeared from 1939 to 2002, leading experts to believe it had become extinct. Conservation biologists from ZSL’s Edge of Existence Programme surveyed 2km transects for more than 200 hours, looking for signs of this elusive wide-eyed primate.

The spill in the north eastern port city of Dalian, happened after two pipelines exploded on 16 July 2010, spilling oil into the Bohai Gulf. The pipelines were transferring oil from a Liberian tanker ship to storage facilities in Dalian’s Xingang Port. One pipe exploded, triggering a series of explosions in another pipeline and breaking open a storage tank. An estimated 11,000 barrels (1,500 tons) of crude leaked into the ocean, creating an oil slick that has expanded over 435 square kilometres.

The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association will be thirty years old on 15 July. Through its innovative scientific and excellent research infrastructure the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) has developed into one of the world’s leading internationally recognised centres for climate research on both polar regions and the oceans. The Alfred Wegener Institute is distinguished by top research on sea ice, the polar oceans and their ecosystems, the North Sea, Wadden Sea, the ice shelves of Greenland and the Antarctic, the polar atmosphere, permafrost regions, the climate history and past of our Earth. Other characteristic features include its strong international network and broad scientific expertise. To solve the questions of today, biosciences, geosciences and climate sciences work closely together. Field research under extreme conditions is just as much part of the everyday tasks as work in modern laboratories, with high-performance computers and methods of remote sensing. Because polar and marine research is always also a logistics challenge, AWI has an excellent infrastructure that it makes available to the national and international scientific community. This includes research vessels like the ‘Polarstern’ and the ‘Heincke’, research stations manned seasonally or throughout the year, such as Neumayer Station III in the Antarctic and the German-French research base ‘AWIPEV’ on Spitsbergen, scientific observatories, innovative measuring systems and the polar aircraft ‘Polar 5’.

On 14 July 2010 Federal Economics Minister Rainer Brüderle and Federal Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen presented key elements of the joint draft act on the demonstration and application of technologies for the capture, transport and permanent storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Berlin. With this draft act, the German government has opted for a gradual approach to the further development of the respective technologies. For the time being, therefore, the draft act only permits testing and demonstration of storages. The state of development of the technologies will be thoroughly evaluated in 2017. After being suspended in summer 2009, the draft act has undergone a substantial revision.

On 13 July 2010 the Commission proposed to confer to Member States the freedom to allow, restrict or ban the cultivation of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) on part or all of their territory. While keeping unchanged the EU's science-based GM authorisation system, the adopted package consists of a Communication, a new Recommendation on co-existence of GM crops with conventional and/or organic crops and a draft Regulation proposing a change to the GMO legislation. The new Recommendation on co-existence allows more flexibility to Member States taking into account their local, regional and national conditions when adopting co-existence measures. The proposed regulation amends Directive 2001/18/EC to allow Member States to restrict or prohibit the cultivation of GMOs in their territory.

The business community too is increasingly recognising that the Earth's natural resources represent economic value, business possibilities and opportunities for profit. Worldwide, the costs of biodiversity loss amount to many trillions of dollars and thus have a growing influence on markets and consumers: 60 percent of consumers in America and Europe and more than 90 percent of consumers in Brazil are aware of the problem of biodiversity loss. More than 80 percent of consumers throughout the world said they would no longer buy products from companies whose business plans neglect ecological and social considerations. These are the findings of the recent TEEB for Business Report which was presented on 13 July 2010 at a conference in London. The TEEB experts conclude that companies can only meet today's market requirements if they integrate sustainable biodiversity management into their corporate strategy.

On 11 July 2010 at 15.00 PM, hundreds of thousands of Europeans simultaneously jumped into Europe’s major rivers and lakes, all at the same time on the same day, showing their support for protecting and improving the health of Europe’s water. The Big Jump project includes numerous actions on the main European water basins, like the organisation of a serie of transboundary swimming days on different European water basins. Educational events on the theme of water quality or river restoration are always held during these actions. The project will culminate in 2005 , 2010 and 2015 with the “European River Swimming Day” on all the big European river basins or stretchs where the quality standard has been reached.

TerraSAR-X mapped the oil-polluted area in the Gulf of Mexico in a series of images acquired on 9 July 2010. The oil slick appears black on the satellite imagery – the oil glazes the surface of the water, so the radar signals are reflected away and not returned to the satellite. Beyond the island group just off the Mississippi coastline, the oil that is approaching the coast is shown as a black patch. The frayed offshoots reaching out from the individual oil slicks reveal that the oil was driven forward by the wind. Ships and drilling rigs are visible clearly as points on the water’s surface.

The competition “German Capital of Biodiversity” is organised by Deutsche Umwelthilfe (German Environmental Aid - DUH) and started on 8 July 2010 in Stuttgart. All municipalities will have four months to fill in a questionnaire by means of which the winners of each category will be selected. The best municipality will also be awarded the “German Capital of Biodiversity” (Bundeshauptstadt der Biodiversität). The questionnaire contains four main topics: ‘Green in the city’, ‘Biodiversity protection’, ‘Water bodies, agriculture and forestry’ as well as ‘Organisation, communication and cooperation’. Within these topics, municipalities can demonstrate their strategies and actions for biodiversity by answering a number of questions and presenting related projects. In addition to the above categories, we also ask municipalities to describe their actions in local environmental justice, i.e. projects that tackle both biodiversity and social challenges simultaneously. In the implementation the competition, DUH will ask for the support of municipality federations, environmental organisations, national agencies and selected local authorities.

On 8 July 2010 a new report was published by environmental group EEB, Europe’s largest federation of environmental citizens’ organisations. The report, “10 years of Water Framework Directive: a toothless tiger?” reveals that European governments are doing very little to protect and restore Europe’s waters. Based on eight river management plans around Europe, it was discovered that despite eight years of preparation and planning there appears to be little improvement forecast in the coming years. The findings revealed River Basin Management Plans - national plans for protecting and improving water - are showing little or minimal success. Indeed, many of the plans delay any improvements until 2027, suggesting a widespread abuse of the exemptions the law provides.

A ban on the sale of illegally-harvested timber, along with traceability measures and sanctions, has been given the green light by MEPs. The new law aims to reduce illegal deforestation and give consumers better assurances about the products they buy. The new legislation bans illegally-harvested timber or timber products from being placed on the EU market. This will prevent such wood from effectively being laundered once it reaches the EU. Member States will be responsible for applying sanctions to operators who break the rules. The legislation sets out guidelines for imposing fines: the environmental damage caused, the value of the timber and lost tax revenue can all be taken into consideration. EU countries can also impose criminal-law penalties on unscrupulous dealers. To ensure traceability, each operator along the supply chain will need to declare from whom they bought timber and to whom they sold it. Council has already informally agreed with the terms of this draft legislation but will need to rubber stamp it before it can pass into law. The rules are expected to take effect in late 2012 to allow timber operators time to adapt.

On 7 July 2010 the president of the UBA, Jochen Flasbarth, inaugurated the new biocide information portal (www.biozid.info)in Berlin.

On 5 July 2010 the Mediation Committee agreed on a two-step process for reducing the feed-in tariff for solar electricity. The proposed reduction from 1 July 2010 remains in place, but for the time being support will only be cut by 13% for rooftop installations, 8% for freestanding installations on so-called conversion areas - for example former military or industrial sites - and by 12% for other freestanding systems such as those in business parks. The rest of the draft act, including the abolition of the tariff for cropland, is unchanged. The 3% reduction step contained in the original draft will now be implemented on 1 October 2010.

The Commission Regulation (EU) No 271/2010 regarding the new EU organic logo was published in April, 2010, thus making it a legal requirement for all pre-packaged organic products to carry the European Union from 1st July, 2010 onwards.

The prolonged heat and lack of wind or storms has given the cyanobacteria the chance to form the largest carpet since 2005, covering about 377,000 square kilometres of the sea’s surface – roughly Germany’s entire land area. The carpet stretches from Finland down to the Curonian spit on the coast of Lithuania, over to the Bay of Pomerania on the coasts of Germany and Poland and across to Rügen, the German island off the coast of Mecklenburg-Western Pommerania.

Marine species of July 2010 in the International Year of Biodiversity is the Antarctic krill Euphausia superba in the Southern Ocean.

Only 30 eastern North Pacific right whales are left on the planet, making it the world’s smallest population of whales, according to a paper published in the Royal Society Biology Letters on 30 June 2010. Paul Wade, a research biologist at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, and his colleagues used several different methods, including DNA analysis and photo-identification surveys, to count the eastern North Pacific right whales. The estimates all came to very similar conclusions, all pointing to around 30.

With the signing of contracts in Berlin at the end of the two-day conference entitled "Financing climate protection in developing countries and threshold countries – instruments and incentives for environmentally-friendly investments in the private sector", the German Federal Ministry of the Environment (BMU) and KfW Entwicklungsbank have taken the first steps to set up an innovative global climate protection fund. The fund provides financial support to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) as well as private households in developing countries and threshold countries for investment in energy efficiency measures and renewable energies. Together, BMU and KfW Entwicklungsbank have promised more than USD 100 million of initial funding. In addition, further funds are also to be raised from public and private investors.

On 30 June 2010 the first floating nuclear power station (PATES), the Akademik Lomonosov, set sail from the Baltiysky Zavod shipyard in St. Petersburg. Sergei Kiriyenko, head of the state atomic agency Rosatom, said that floating nuclear power stations “open a new era and create new prospects for modernizing the power energy infrastructure of some of the more distant and isolated regions of Russia.” The vessel carrying the plant is scheduled to start operating in late 2012, according to officials.

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) has granted Greenland the right to hunt humpback whales. Greenland's indigenous people now have the right to add humpbacks to a list of whales they are allowed to hunt, according to a decision made at the end of the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting in Agadir, Morocco on 25 June 2010. They will now be allowed to kill and consume nine of the giant mammals each year through 2012.

On 23 June 2010 the IPCC released the final list of selected Coordinating Lead Authors, Lead Authors and Review Editors of its fifth Assessment Report (AR5)in Geneva. 36 climate experts from German universities, research institutes and private companies are among the more than 800 contributors from all regions of the world. This means that almost a third of the candidates nominated by Germany have been selected. In total, IPCC has received more than 3000 nominations from governments and observer organisations. The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) will be published between 2013 and 2014.

The 62nd Annual Meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) took place from 21 to 25 June 2010 in Agadir, Morocco. The delegates to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) were unable to reach consensus on a proposal that would see the legitimization of commercial whaling. The moratorium (ban) still stands and Japan, Iceland and Norway continue to whale outside of the sanction of the IWC.

On Saturday, June 19, 2010, oil spread northeast from the leaking Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil appears as a maze of silvery-gray ribbons in this photo-like image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite.

On 18 June 2010 started metroradruhr as the biggest bike sharing system in Germany. Up to 3000 bikes are available to rent in ten cities of the Ruhr: Bochum, Bottrop, Dortmund, Duisburg, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Hamm, Herne, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Oberhausen.

The Jebel al-Zayt oil spill was an oil spill off the Egyptian Red Sea Coast of Hurghada . The spill was caused by a leak from an offshore oil platform in Jebel al-Zayt north of Hurghada and has polluted about 160km of coastline, including tourist beach resorts. The platform began leaking on 16 June 2010, and the leak was sealed by 23 June 2010. The Northern Islands protected area is the most heavily impacted region. These islands are one of the few pristine areas in the northern Egyptian Red Sea, and are of high ecological value.

To combat pollution, climate change, acidification, over-exploitation and biodiversity loss in the Baltic Sea, the EU is to co-fund "BONUS", a seven-year joint R&D programme initiated by Baltic coastal states Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden. A plan to match their money with €50 million in EU funds was approved by Parliament on 16 June 2010.

A new biodiversity management handbook for companies was presented by parliamentary state secretary at the Federal Environment Ministry, Ursula Heinen-Esser, at the international business conference "SusCon" (Sustainable Business and Consumption) in Nuremberg on 15 June 2010. Using many examples, the Corporate Biodiversity Handbook gives companies a clear picture of the importance of biological diversity for business. It also shows what companies can do to actively supportthe conservation of biodiversity in practice.

History was made on 11 June 2010 in the South Korean port city of Busan, when delegates from close to 90 countries gave the green light to an Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The independent platform will in many ways mirror the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which has assisted in catalyzing world-wide understanding and governmental action on global warming.

Maria Damanaki, European Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries decided to close the bluefin tuna fishery to purse seiners in the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic, due to the exhaustion of the quotas allocated to them. France, Greece and Spain have been informed of this decision which will become effective on 10 June 2010. The closure of the purse seine fishery is necessary to protect the fragile stock of bluefin tuna and to ensure its recovery as envisaged by the recovery plan of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT). The Commission has declared a zero tolerance approach towards overfishing and will take all necessary measures to ensure full compliance across the board.

The Commission decided on 10 June 2010 to encourage industry, governments and NGOs to set up certification schemes for all types of biofuels, including those imported into the EU. It laid down what the schemes must do to be recognised by the Commission. This will help implement the EU's requirements that biofuels must deliver substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and should not come from forests, wetlands and nature protection areas. The rules for certification schemes are part of a set of guidelines explaining how the Renewable Energy Directive, coming into effect in December 2010, should be implemented.

The European Aerospace firma EADS presented the world's first airplane thats runs only on algae fuel at the ILA Berlin Air Show (ILA). On June 8, a Diamond Aircraft DA42 New Generation plane powered by 100 percent algae biofuel took part in the flying demonstration, marking the first time that the technology has been used to power a flight.

Average June ice extent was the lowest in the satellite data record, from 1979 to 2010. In June, ice extent declined by 88,000 square kilometers (34,000 square miles) per day, more than 50% greater than the average rate of 53,000 square kilometers (20,000 square miles) per day. This rate of decline is the fastest measured for June.

Marine species of June 2010 in the International Year of Biodiversity is the Crassostrea gigas, a Pacific oyster in the Wadden Sea.

On 27 May 2010 heads of state and government, ministers and other representatives of some 50 countries concluded an agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation. Around 4 billion dollars has been pledged for the period 2010–2012 for measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries. The global forest partnership marks the start of closer global cooperation on reducing deforestation and forest degradation in tropical developing countries. The partnership will support and contribute to the UNFCCC process.

The recently-conducted “Synovate and Deutsche Welle Global Study on Climate Change 2010” has shown that people around the world still see global climate change as a major threat and extreme weather conditions as one of the major risks. Synovate surveyed more than 13,000 people from 18 different countries about the potential threats, the effects and the possibilities that exist to counteract climate change. The “Synovate and Deutsche Welle Global Study on Climate Change 2010” is the third survey that Synovate has completed on this subject. Researchers relied on more than 13,000 respondents from 18 countries for the results, which were collected between February and May throughout the world – including Germany, France, Brazil, USA, China and South Africa.

Norway and Indonesia agreed on 26 May 2010 to enter into a partnership to support Indonesia’s efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation of forests and peat lands. Indonesia will take immediate and decisive action to reduce its forest and peat related greenhouse gas emissions. Norway will support those efforts with one billion USD over the next few years.

On 25 May 2010, the tanker Bunga Kelana 3 collided with the bulk freighter, MV Waily, in the Singapore Strait, 13 km southeast of Changi Air Base. An estimated 2,000 tonnes of crude oil may have spilled into the sea.

A new Energy Labelling Directive was adopted by the European Parliament on 19 May 2010. The existing Labelling Directive introduced the energy label for household appliances such as refrigerators, freezers, ovens, air-conditioners, dishwashers, washing machines, washer-driers, tumble driers and lamps. The recast of the Directive extends its scope to also cover products in the commercial and industrial sectors in the future. With adoption in Parliament, the directive has been formally adopted and is expected to be published in the Official Journal in June. Member States will have one year to transpose it into national legislation. With the new directive, the existing labelling scale from A-G will be further differentiated by adding the new classes A+, A++ and A+++ on top of class "A".