The environment in the news friday, 20 June 2008

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  AFP:Olympics: Beijing car ban targets pollution, gridlock
  
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  Reuters: FACTBOX - Olympics-Beijing's Battle for Blue Skies
  
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  BBC: Business chiefs urge carbon curbs
  
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  Reuters: Tourism boom threatens Costa Rica eco-paradise
  
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  Reuters: Retreating Antarctic sea ice threatens southern whales
  
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  China Daily: Bridging The Iran-West Divide To Save Cheetahs
  
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  AP: Dam helps increase fish in Northern Aral Sea
  

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  ROA
  
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  RONA
  
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  ROLAC
  

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  Environment News from the UN Daily News of 19 June 2008
  
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  Environment News from the S.G.’s Spokesman Daily Press Briefing of 19 June 2008 (none)
  

Associated Press: Technology 'may cut gas emissions'

The use of technology in industry and homes could cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 15% by 2020, a report has said.

The energy savings technology could deliver in areas such as manufacturing, buildings, transport and power networks could also save businesses £400 billion by 2020, the study by the Climate Group said.

The Climate Group, a coalition of businesses, political leaders and organisations set up to address global warming, said information and communication technology (ICT) had a "unique" ability to monitor and improve energy efficiency in a number of areas.

Technology, which currently accounts for 2% of total global emissions - through manufacture and use of devices and services ranging from broadband to mobile phones - looks set to double its own carbon footprint by 2020.

But the Climate Group said measures such as managing logistics so delivery vehicles did not travel empty, putting software in offices to switch off all computers at the end of the day, improving the efficiency of power grids and of machinery in factories, could save 7.8 giga-tonnes of CO2.

Improving energy efficiency and the product life of technology such as PCs and mobile phones could also deliver cuts in carbon emissions from the ICT sector, the report said.

Steve Howard, chief executive of the Climate Group, said: "PCs, mobile phones and the web have transformed the way we all live and do business.

"Global warming and soaring energy prices mean that re-thinking how every home and business uses technology to cut unnecessary costs and carbon is critical to our environment and economy.

"Supported by innovative government policy, ICT can unlock the clean, green industrial revolution we need to tackle climate change and usher in a new era of low carbon prosperity."

Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said the report

Bloomberg: Computers, Phones Can Cut CO2 15%, Save $1 Trillion, Study Says

By Alex Morales

June 20 (Bloomberg) -- Telecommunications and computers can be used to help cut carbon-dioxide emissions and save more than $1 trillion worldwide by reducing electricity and fuel use, the Climate Group said.

Technology can direct the load on power grids, guide freight trucks to shorter routes and improve the way buildings are lit, cooled and warmed, said the London-based nonprofit group, which advises governments and businesses on ways to reduce their effect on the climate, in an e-mailed report today.

Computers, telephones and other communications devices have the potential to trim emissions of CO2, the main gas blamed for man-made global warming, by an annual 7.8 billion metric tons by 2020, the report said. That's 15 percent of projected emissions under business-as-usual development, it said.

``A lot of these technologies exist already; it's a question of scale and training and capability,'' Molly Webb, leader of the Climate Group's technology program, said June 13 in a telephone interview. ``It needs joined-up policy thinking. This opportunity is about communications as well as buildings, environmental rules and climate-change targets.''

The Climate Group carried out the research along with the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, an association of technology companies, with analysis provided by the management consultant McKinsey and Co. The report was funded by companies including Microsoft Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Nokia Oyj, Dell Inc. and Vodafone Group Plc, Webb said.

$1 Trillion Saved

The cuts would help achieve the 50 percent reduction in global emissions by 2050 that United Nations scientists said last year are necessary to avert some of the worst effects of global warming. At climate talks in Bali, Indonesia, last year, the European Union and developing nations said industrialized countries should seek emissions cuts of 25 to 40 percent by 2020.

``This rigorous assessment underlines that the world can realize a green economy and make the transition to a low-carbon economy,'' Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program Achim Steiner said in a statement sent with the report. ``It also underlines the crucial importance of the international community reaching a deal on a new climate agreement.''

The total annual savings by 2020 of 644 billion euros ($1.015 trillion, based on the June 9 exchange rate used by the report's authors) include spending 553 billion euros less on fuel and energy, and 91 billion euros generated assuming a cost of carbon of 20 euros a ton. At present companies that are set emissions limits can buy additional permits to pollute on markets including the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme and the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism.

Electricity Grids

The researchers found that the biggest savings -- 2.03 billion tons -- could be made in improving management of electricity grids worldwide. In India alone, power lost in transmission could be reduced by 30 percent, the report said.

Improved monitoring allows electricity companies ``to plan better because they know where the load is going to be,'' Webb said. ``They can do more sophisticated modeling on where demand will be and when.''

Traffic monitoring, computer-aided design of transportation networks and global positioning system devices could slash another 1.51 billion tons of CO2, the report said.

``The real benefit in logistics is when you start to plan better so that trucks that are returning empty no longer have to return empty; they can be filled with another type of freight,'' Webb said.

No Easy Wins

Improving building design to use software that regulates temperature, ventilation and lighting could cut another 1.68 billion tons of CO2 pollution, while using computers to aid machines used in manufacturing could eliminate 970 million tons, according to the report.

``Most often, those engines run at the same rate regardless of how much load is on them,'' Webb said. ``The idea is to have a control system that makes the motors respond to load, and makes them more efficient.''

Other areas where technology can cut emissions, such as replacing business travel with videoconferencing and sending bills by e-mail, could cut 500 million tons of the gas, Webb said. The remaining 900 million tons of CO2 savings were spread across transportation, power, construction and industry.

``These are not easy wins: there are policy, market and behavioral hurdles that need to be overcome to deliver the savings possible,'' the report's authors wrote. ``Putting a man on the moon was one of the greatest technological challenges of the 20th century. In the 21st century we face an even greater test -- tackling climate change.''

Xinhua: UNEP, children seek to promote peace, reconciliation

www.chinaview.cn 2008-06-20 01:27:25 Print

NAIROBI, June 19 (Xinhua) -- More than 300 children and teenagers from across Nairobi are set to meet in Nairobi on Friday for the launch of a three-month event to promote peace and reconciliation.

A statement from the Nairobi-based UN Environment Program (UNEP)said the 'Play for the Planet: Play for Peace' initiative, organized by the UN environmental agency, has received about 40,000 U.S. dollars of support in cash and in kind from UNEP, the International Olympic Committee and sports-goods maker PUMA, as well as the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) and ABC Bank.

The three-month event will run until Sept. 21 to coincide with World Peace Day.

"The event aims to use the power of sport to promote peace and reconciliation among Kenyans, and to provide a positive environment for interaction for young people affected by the recent post-election conflict in Kenya," the statement said.

The June 21 launch at the Kenya Cultural Center will include theatre performances, acrobatic shows, peace and environmental messages and a live concert, as well as an exhibition of paintings by internally displaced children.

"A series of events for children and youth aged 6 to 24 will then take place in schools and communities across the parts of Nairobi most affected by the recent unrest: the informal settlements of Mathare, Huruma, Mathare North, Kibera, Dandora and Korogocho," the statement said.

Activities in schools and at community level will include talks, drama workshops, tree planting and a clean-up of the Nairobi river, as well as weekend sports tournaments.

UNEP said community-based organizations will also help implement the activities, and youth peer counselors trained by UN-HABITAT will also provide counseling to the affected and traumatized children.

Kenyan sports personalities such as world-famous marathon runners Paul Tergat and Catherine Ndereba will attend some of the events.

"Based on the success of the event, UNEP may consider extending the initiative to other parts of the country which were affected by the unrest," the statement said.

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Canberra Times (Australia): High Hopes For Satellite's Focus On Rising Sea Levels
June 19, 2008
Scientists who study global warming are eagerly awaiting the launch of a satellite today that will measure the sea- level rise around the world more accurately than ever before. If the Jason-2 satellite and its advanced radar altimeter are successfully put into orbit from a base in California, they will map almost all of the world's ice-free oceans every 10 days for at least the next five years, reducing the margin of uncertainty to within 2.5cm.

The satellite is part of a joint venture between European and United States space and weather agencies. The information it beams back from nearly 1340km above the Earth's surface will shed more light on one of the most controversial areas of climate change the extent to which the sea level will rise in future.

The issue is of critical importance to the Asia-Pacific region. Some coastal communities in Australia will be threatened and island states in the South Pacific will be swamped if the sea level keeps rising this century.

But Asia stands to suffer most. With more than four billion people, it is the most populous continent. Nearly 40 per cent of Asians live within 100km of the coast, many in low-lying deltas, including the Yangste and Pearl river deltas in China, the Mekong in Vietnam, the Ganges-Brahmaputra in Bangladesh, the Chao Praya in Thailand and the Irrawaddy in Burma, which was ravaged by a cyclone last month. The United Nations Environment Program has estimated that 100million people in the great Asian deltas could be displaced by a sea- level rise of more than 1m.

Summarising available scientific evidence on global warming, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast last year sea-level rises ranging from 18cm to 59cm this century, after an increase of 17cm in the 20th century. The panel suggested that most of the projected rise by 2100 would be the result of water in the oceans expanding as it warmed, with little being added by the discharge of water from the melting of the ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica.

However, some scientists point to recent signs that vulnerable parts of these two vast ice sheets are melting at an alarmingly fast rate. They say this latest evidence of a warming world indicates that the sea-level rise this century could be several metres, rather than the maximum of 60cm predicted by the panel. If the unstable sections of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets were to melt completely, sea levels around the world could rise by 10m to 12m.

A scientist working for NASA, Eric Rignot, believes that unchecked warming in the 21stcentury could result in a 1m global sea rise from water flowing off Greenland, 1m from Antarctica and half a metre as the remaining alpine glaciers melt.

The panel's report said that coastal zones, especially densely populated mega-delta regions in South, South- East and North-East Asia, would be at greatest risk because of increased flooding from the rising sea levels and storm surges. Some of these deltas would also be at risk from flooding coming down the rivers that flow into them, as mountain glaciers in the Himalayas and the Qinghai- Tibetan plateau shrivelled away, unleashing too much water at first and then too little for the many millions of people in China and South Asia who need their flow. A scientist at the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research and a coordinating lead author of the latest panel report, Gerald Meehl, says, ''The crux of the problem is that we are moving into an era where we are observing changes in the climate system that have never before been seen in human history. Ice sheets fall into that category. Quite simply, at this time we don't have a good upper-range estimate of how much the sea level will rise and how fast.'' Having the Jason-2 satellite in orbit should help. Variations in the height of the sea surface, when combined with measurements from other satellites and tidal gauges at sea level in various parts of the world, will improve weather and climate system models. Whether this prompts the panel to predict a much higher sea level this century than it did last year remains to be seen.

There appear to be some contrary factors at work. For example, warmer air can absorb more moisture and may, paradoxically, bring more snow to Greenland and Antarctica that would thicken and stabilise the cores of both ice sheets this century, despite some peripheral melting.

The director of operations for the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, one of the agencies supporting the Jason-2 launch, Mikael Rattenborg, says there is also more to the dynamics of the sea-level rise than just a single, global rise. ''Although we have seen, overall, global sea-level rise, there are areas that have decreased for long periods, followed by an increase,'' he says. ''We can only analyse the significance of regional variability of sea level rise if we have altimetry data. Jason-2 will help us model and explain this evolution.'' The writer, a former Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune, is an energy, security and climate change specialist at the Institute of South-East Asian Studies in Singapore.

Publication Date: 6/20/2008

18 June 2008

Jeff Otieno

The maize in the country's strategic reserves will last the next two months.

However, the deficit that will be experienced between July and August will be supplemented by the importation of about two to three million bags of the cereal.

Speaking on the sidelines of the ongoing Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) meeting at the Unep headquarters in Gigiri, Agriculture PS Dr Romano Kiome said that the Government was currently holding about eight million bags of maize for consumption.

The bags being held by the Government-owned National Cereals and Produce Board, comprise commercial stocks sold to millers, maize held in strategic reserves and grain set aside for famine relief.

The strategic reserves are currently holding three million bags - a deficit of one million. In a normal year, four million bags are put in storage.

Dr Kiome said that studies by the Ministry's officials had shown that the country would register good harvests for maize planted at the onset of the long rains.

As a result, the agriculture PS said that the Government will not be importing large quantities as initially feared.

"The Government will be releasing maize from its strategic reserves to ensure that it is available to the public and at an affordable price," said the PS.

In his Budget speech, Finance minister Amos Kimunya had indicated that the Government was planning to raise the strategic reserves from four million to six million bags in the next financial year and to a further eight million in the subsequent two years.

Mr Kimunya also said that NCPB will play a vital role in sourcing fertiliser at competitive prices to help stabilise its cost in the domestic market. He announced that Kenya had began talks with Uganda on the establishment of a regional fertiliser factory to ensure long-term supply.

Fertiliser prices have risen by more than 400 per cent recently, leading to fears of reduced and low quality crop yields as farmers abandoned the product.

The director-general of the International Livestock Research Institute, Dr Carlos Sere, said African Governments should start focusing on the livestock sector as an alternative to combat famine.

Dr Sere warned that the prices of livestock products will skyrocket if the prevailing conditions do not change.

Participants expressed concern with the rising fertiliser prices, urging petroleum exporting countries to consider reducing fuel prices.

The delegates also urged developed countries to increase development aid to poor countries in Africa to help them strengthen the agricultural sector.

President Mwai Kibaki will officially open the conference on Thursday.

Independent Online: The environment needs a true custodian

HOW strange that the United Nations has so many specialist bodies dealing with everything from money to health and even culture – yet the protection of the

global environment remains very much a poor cousin within the UN family.

In short, if world governments feel the need to finance or sanction edicated groups such as the World Health Organisation, the International Labour Organisation, the World Tourism Organisation, the World Trade Organisation or the World Bank Group,

why is that the UN has failed to establish a World Environment Organisation?

Yes, there is a global environmental organisation of sorts which is known as the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep).

is under sustained assault.

in 1972.
There are now more than 500 multilateral environmental treaties and agreements

dealing with everything from sea pollution to climate change, biodiversity, chemical hazards or wetland protection. And Unep, whose mandate includes serving as the “authoritative advocate for the global environment”, is finding itself increasingly

hard-pressed to co-ordinate and keep track of such a plethora of complex international

agreements.
Developing countries with limited financial resources are also finding it difficult to comply with the administrative burden of submitting regular status and compliance reports on a wide array of fragmented treaties or to hire suitably qualified scientific

and technical experts to negotiate on an equal footing at international level.

Most worrisome of all is the increasing mobility of global private capital and the ability of the World Trade Organisation to “persuade” developing nations to put short term

economic considerations ahead of long-term environmental and social imperatives.

When poor nations are given the choice of cancelling mounting financial debt and interest payments in exchange for selling off their cheap labour and natural resources

to global capital markets, the answer is more often than not a no-brainer.

Pollution of the sea and the air, as well as climate change, did not respect political boundaries. He warned that the pressures wielded by the forces of economic

globalisation and technological change were transforming the global environment as never before.
Shortly before the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, world governments agreed on the need to “greatly strengthen” the institutional

structure of the UN to address wide-ranging environmental threats. This would include a significant increase in financing for Unep. Unlike specialised agencies, such as the World Health Organisation, which can rely on steady and substantial budgets, it still relies

largely on voluntary and unpredictable payments from the richer UN members.
In 2000, the core budget for Unep was just over $40 million and has risen fairly steadily in recent years to $86 million. Combined with other contributions for specialist projects, Unep’s total budget for this year will be about $200 million.
To put this figure into some kind of perspective, it might be worth considering that almost $100 million was spent refurbishing the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Montreal

last year. That’s one hotel, in one city, spending half what the UN devotes to Unep’s global environmental advocacy role every year.

whether the programme is equipped with sufficient legal teeth and political authority to fulfil its mandate.

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  though it made it clear that the new organisation was not intended to be a rival to the World Trade Organisation.
  
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organisation or by reforming and expanding the role of the programme.

level of political support could it enjoy? Shortly before the Johannesburg World Summit, the noted environmental thinker Wolfgang Sachs outlined some ideas in a

memorandum published by the Heinrich Boll Foundation.
Sachs and 16 other authors argued in their Johannesburg Memorandum that the environmental challenge (along with peace) was the most essential issue around which the entire UN system should revolve.
The reality, however, was that Unep was born small and designed to “stay small for ever” with a meagre budget. This weak presence of environmental issues within the UN organization was one of the reasons why the World Bank, the International Monetary

Fund and the World Trade Organization had been able to usurp broad powers at the expense of the public values such as peace, human rights and the environment.

they said It was also essential for the organization to have a dispute resolution

mechanism since the World Trade Organisation had awarded itself the power to impose punitive fines and economic sanctions – even in areas that were far beyond its trade-related mandate.
“It is high time to restore a true balance of power between the two conflicting sets of global institutions – the WTO, IMF and World Bank on one side, and the United Nations system on the other,” Sachs argued in the memorandum.
But while Sachs argued that the time was ripe to establish the organisation, this view was not supported by a UN briefing document circulated at the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment in Johannesburg earlier this month.
The document, prepared for the UN General Assembly by the permanent representatives

of Mexico and Switzerland, recognizes the need to boost the finances and capacity of

Unep. However, recent consultations with member states suggested that “for the

moment, the time was not ripe to decide on a fundamental overhaul of this system”.

“While weaknesses are obvious and broadly acknowledged, the feedback received

Indicates a preference for an incremental approach that would improve the present

system. At the same time, the discussions on fundamental changes have to continue, in an informal setting, without prejudice.” Overall, the briefing document suggests that the issue of fundamental reform of Unep should be put on a back burner once again – until September next year at the earliest.
It was also argued that whatever body emerged in the future (an expanded Unep, a world environment organisation or a United Nations environment organisation) the new institution wouldhave to be properly financed.
“Changing the name or the status will not alter this underlying fact,” the document read.

Equally, several authorities have stressed the crucial need for the new body to enjoy broad and high-level political support.

believes that these fears are based on a fundamental misconception, and he argues that the “environment” and sustainable development are not simply about frogs and forests – but– but fundamentally about human rights.