Antara News: Indonesian minister proposes new-car ban

Antara News: Indonesian minister proposes new-car ban

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Indonesia's environment minister has proposed a ban on the sale of new cars in a radical bid to slash pollution levels in the nation's rapidly growing urban areas, a report said Thursday.

Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said the plan could be introduced if new national anti-pollution measures did not improve air quality, AFP reported citing the Jakarta Post.

"If there is no progress in restoring air quality, we will stop (new car sales)," Witoelar said. "It is a bitter pill to take, but it is for the sake of public health."

He said Indonesia had already introduced new emission standards based on international guidelines but "if we don't take further action, the numbers of cars and motorcycles will exceed our country's population."

The capital Jakarta and some other Indonesian cities have chronic smog levels and traffic congestion is a major problem.

Private car ownership is increasing by about 11 percent a year, data from Jakarta's local government shows.

New moves to combat pollution include publically grading cities from the dirtiest to the cleanest, the minister told the newspaper.

Witoelar acknowledged that the social impact of the ban on new cars would be horrendous for thousands of Indonesians. But he said pollution from vehicles was equally damaging, including contributing to global warming. (*)

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April 19, 2007

The lives of 30 million people living and dependent on Lake Victoria are in danger as a result of uncontrolled municipal and industrial waste, urbanisation and slum overpopulation, a senior United Nations official said on Thursday.

"Lake Victoria is a fragile ecosystem and the international community must now come to its aid since urbanisation, pollution and overpopulation in towns surrounding it continue to degrade it, contributing to its slow death," said Anna Tibaijuka, the executive director of UN-Habitat.

Tibaijuka, speaking at the launch of phase three of the lake's City Development Strategies (CDS) in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, said the CDS aims to enable municipal authorities to address local environmental issues and urban poverty to achieve sustainable urbanisation by providing improved environmental planning and management policies.

The lake is the world's second largest fresh water body shared by Kenya (6 percent of the lake), Tanzania (49 percent) and Uganda (45 percent) and a third of the combined population of these countries dependent on it for fishing, agriculture and domestic use.

Some of the problems facing the lake and its people include loss of biodiversity, habitat destruction, pollution, soil erosion and natural resource depletion. Poverty and HIV/AIDS are other key issues according to UN-Habitat.

The initiative was started in November 2006 by UN-Habitat, with support from the Swedish International Development Agency, Lake Victoria Region Local Authority Cooperation (LVRLAC), and other local authorities around the lake.

It intends to mobilise local authorities and stakeholders to address the absence of effective planning in urban centres that leads to the degradation of the lake's environment. Eight cities are involved: Uganda's Kampala, Jinja and Entebbe; Kenya's western towns of Kisumu and Homa Bay, and Tanzania's Musoma, Mwanza and Bukoba.

Some US$5 million allocated for the CDS will help in capacity building, addressing issues of poverty eradication, and HIV/AIDS in the regional towns, Priscah Auma of LVRLAC and Mayor of Kisumu said during the launch.

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Le coût des programmes s'est alourdi dans les dernières semaines de la campagne

Officiellement, le PS, l'UMP et l'UDF s'en tiennent donc à leurs chiffrages initiaux : 35 milliards d'euros "net", c'est-à-dire en tenant compte des dépenses et des recettes, pour le pacte présidentiel de Ségolène Royal, 32 milliards pour le projet de Nicolas Sarkozy, et 11,2 milliards pour celui de François Bayrou.

En réalité, le coût des programmes de la candidate socialiste et du candidat de l'UMP s'est sensiblement alourdi, ces dernières semaines. Leur rival centriste, qui se pose en champion de la réduction de la dette publique, campe peu ou prou sur ses engagements de départ.

A l'aune des surenchères, M^me Royal fait la course en tête, juste devant M. Sarkozy et loin devant M. Bayrou. Soucieuse, depuis toujours, de ne pas se laisser enfermer dans la question du financement de ses mesures, dont la cellule de chiffrage de l'Institut de l'entreprise, composée de 3 experts de sensibilités politiques différentes, évaluait le coût, le 6 mars, à 61,68 milliards d'euros, la candidate socialiste est restée jusqu'au bout généreuse et/ou dépensière.

Elle a annoncé, au cours des dernières semaines, la création d'une agence européenne de lutte contre le cancer, le "renforcement de moyens" des services de police et de justice, un plan en cinq ans en faveur du spectacle vivant ou encore, le 7 avril, un contrat première chance (CPC) vite rebaptisé "parcours première chance" pour qu'on ne puisse pas en confondre le sigle avec celui du contrat première embauche (CPE) de Dominique de Villepin. Selon la sociologue Dominique Méda, qui a "planché" dans l'urgence sur ce dispositif, le parcours première chance sera, "inférieur dans tous les cas" à un milliard d'euros.

FLOU SUR LE PARCOURS PREMIÈRE CHANCE

L'évaluation semble, toutefois, a minima pour une mesure comportant la prise en charge par les pouvoirs publics, pendant un an, des charges et du salaire d'un jeune non qualifié recruté dans une PME - soit 15 000 euros le parcours sur la base du smic - pour un public potentiel de 190 000 personnes. Utilisé à plein, le dispositif coûterait quelque 2,85 milliards d'euros. L'Institut de l'entreprise fait, lui, l'hypothèse d'une prise en charge de 140 000 jeunes pour un coût global annuel de 2 milliards d'euros, qui s'ajoutera, selon lui, aux 4,5 milliards budgétés pour les emplois-tremplins. Toutefois, les deux formules se recoupent partiellement, ce qui entretient un certain flou sur le coût final du parcours première chance.

Au fil de la campagne, des mesures ont été précisées, et l'institut que préside Michel Pébereau a réactualisé ses chiffrages : 300 millions pour la baisse de la TVA sur les éco-industries et autant pour l'agence de réindustrialisation industrielle.

A droite, c'est la baisse de 5 points du taux de l'impôt sur les sociétés (IS), annoncée par l'un des porte-parole du candidat de l'UMP, Xavier Bertrand, à La Tribune, qui pèse le plus lourd : 6 milliards, auxquels s'ajouteront, selon l'Institut de l'entreprise, les 2 milliards liés à l'augmentation de 25 % du minimum vieillesse. Le projet de suppression de l'imposition forfaitaire annuelle (IFA), s'il est mené à bien, coûtera 1,2 milliard à l'Etat. L'exonération des droits de succession pour 95 % des Français est estimée à 5 milliards au lieu des 3 prévus par la cellule de chiffrage.

Ce surcroît de dépenses devrait être difficile à financer sans augmenter le déficit de l'Etat avec la "croissance douce", autour de 2 %, que l'Insee prévoit pour la France en 2007.

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An IOC inspection team said the Chinese capital was making "considerable progress" after a visit on Thursday.

But it asked for more details on plans to improve air quality because of the smog that often hangs over the city.

"This is of the utmost importance to the athletes, who are the most important part of the Games," said IOC official Hein Verbruggen.

"(We have requested) contingency plans, if needed, for the test events this year and also for 2008... (but) it is not totally clear what the effects will be.

"We have asked that the effects of the contingency plans be calculated so that we know the air will allow the athletic performances we expect to happen here."

Verbruggen, the IOC's coordination commission, also said more work was needed to ease traffic flow on Beijing's notoriously congested streets.

"This kind of congestion, we will obviously have to avoid at Games time. But we have a lot of experience of this.

"Before the Athens Games it was a major worry ... but in the end it worked out," he said.

"We still need more details but we are confident it will be sorted."

The IOC team also told reporters that the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) must make the most of the 26 test events planned for Beijing.

"Test events this summer are a crucial opportunity the organisers must use to test how operations, planned for so long, will actually work in practice."

Overall, the message from the eighth visit of the coordination commission was positive.

"We have had detailed presentations on many different issues and without exception considerable progress has been made," Verbruggen said.

"So we are able to say they are at a level of preparation, we would expect BOCOG to be. With only 477 days to go, there is still an awful lot of work to be done. That is normal."

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April 18, 2007

Felix Osike and Mary Karugaba
Kampala

PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has for the first time explained why he is in favour of giving 7,100 hectares of Mabira Forest to the Mehta Group for sugarcane production.

In a letter to the NRM MPs, of December 8, 2006, the President argues that his main motive for giving land to investors was job creation.

"Employment creation is one of my main interests when I support manufacturers and hotels in acquiring land," he writes. "How long shall we go on with this problem of educated people without jobs?"

Apart from job creation, manufacturers bring in added value, export earnings from processed goods and taxes on the manufactured goods as well as on wages.

He gives the example of Madhvani, who employs 6,500 people at Kakira Sugar Works. "Suppose we had 2,000 Madhvanis, we would be able to employ 13 million people."

As for Mehta, he argues that Amin destroyed the nucleus of the Ugandan economy by expelling Asian entrepreneurs.

"When we came into government, we brought these entrepreneurs back. Many of them have attained their 1972 levels and even surpassed them. They are now facing new challenges."

One of the challenges, the President observes, is competition from China, India and other developing countries, forcing Ugandan companies to expand and lower costs.

"According to Mehta, in order to be competitive, he should go from his present level of 55,000 tonnes per annum to 110,000 tonnes. He needs 1.2m tonnes of sugarcane per annum, which can only be produced on 22,500 ha of usable land."

The President explains that Mehta had already 10,000 ha, would buy 1,500 ha from private people, while out-growers would supply him with 60,000 tonnes of sugar cane.

"Therefore, he needs an extra 7,100 ha from the Government We cannot shift the factory and the present 10,000 ha. When Mehta brought the proposal of the forest land, I supported the idea without hesitation."

The reason for using forest land, he argues, is that there is no other free land. "Much of the land is occupied by peasants who are engaged in traditional, subsistence farming. Both physically and legally we cannot access this land. That is why I have been using Government land to fill this gap."

He also emphasises that by-products of sugarcane can be used to produce electricity and to make fuel that can be mixed in petroleum.

Industrialisation is the only way to move away from poverty and backwardness and ultimately to protect the environment, the President believes. He asserts that it is more difficult for a backward country to guard against environmental degradation.

"The Government has no money to police and protect the environment. There are too many people in primitive agriculture techniques who in the process destroy the environment using wrong techniques. And without electricity, the population uses firewood, thereby destroying the bio-mass."

He, however, notes that there are forests which should not be touched. "The forests next to the lake should never be touched because it helps to filter the water flowing into the lake. Wetlands should never be touched because these are water reservoirs for our country. We should plant forests on all the bare hills of Rwampara, Ssingo, Kabale, Karamoja, Akokoro. We shall end up with more forests, more factories more employment."

The President was expected to communicate his position to the Cabinet last night after environment minister Maria Mutagamba presented a report in the morning session.

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ROAP MEDIA UPDATE

THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE NEWS

Friday, 20 April, 2007

UN or UNEP in the news Gov’t perks key to ‘green’ energy push - Manila Bulletin Asian businesses urged to be eco-friendly - KalingaTimes Policymakers Lagging In Responses To Environment Issues – UNEP - Bernama Global corporations need to fight climate change - The News UN Agency Honours Seven ‘Champions Of The Earth’ – Scoop Al Gore receives UN environmental award - Brisbane Times Business world has big role on climate: UNEP - Financial Express.bd Business world urged to play role on climate: UN meeting - Zee News UN Urges Businesses to Tackle Climate Change - The Irrawaddy News Magazine Business world has big role on climate: UN meeting - Channel News Asia UN urges Asia to invent products and technologies to save environment - Channel News Asia Global business summit for environment kicks off in Singapore - People’s Daily Online Asian businesses urged to be eco-friendly - Malaysia Sun Business world urged to play role on climate: UN meeting - The Nation Meet the serene green beauty queen - Electric New Paper Norway to host first-ever eco-tourism conference in May - Express TravelWorld Shaming can lead to change, says Champion of the Earth - Today Online OSRAM CEO Martin Goetzeler at UN conference in Singapore – ANTARA Singapore meeting takes on climate change Asia - Radio Australia Climate change will cause mass conflicts in future, warns UN - Daily News & Analysis 7,000 Square Foot Building "Dried In" in 6 Days – AzoBuild Global ICT Response for Global Emergencies - IDM.net.au U.S. rejects call for tougher U.N. environment role - PeaceJournalism.com Melting Himalayan glaciers pose risk: UN - Brisbane Times

General Environment News
Australian drought hits farming – Cosmos Online

Environment minister hints at ban on new cars - The Jakarta Post