The environment in the news monday, 26 May 2008
G8 environment chiefs discuss biodiversity conservation
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- Asia and the Pacific pays high price for progress
G8 environment chiefs discuss biodiversity conservationMay 25, 2008 Environment ministers from the Group of Eight (G8) held their first session on biodiversity conservation Saturday, highlighting biodiversity and climate change are not isolated but closely related issues. During the session, environment chiefs reached a consensus on the importance of biodiversity and the adoption of effective measures to significantly hold down the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, said that climate change and biodiversity are not isolated from each other, they should thus be addressed and examined as relevant issues. His remarks were echoed by most delegates present, who argued that the issue of forest best reflects the close relations between biodiversity and climate change. They said that illegal deforestation is one of the factors that speed up the shrinking of forest area. The environment chiefs also stressed the important role that systematic monitoring and sustainable exploitation have played in maintaining biodiversity. During a bilateral meeting held on the sideline of the conference, Japan and the United States agreed to set up a multilateral "clean technology fund" to promote the development of technology aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions to combat global warming. The G8 environment ministers meeting opened earlier Saturday in the run-up to the G8 summit scheduled for July 7-9 at the Lake Toya resort in the Japanese northern main island of Hokkaido. Three major issues of biodiversity, climate change and 3Rs ( Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) are on the agenda of the three-day conference. Environment chiefs and relevant officials from the European Commission, 10 developing countries, including China, India and Brazil, and eight international organizations are also invited to be present at the gathering. Source: Xinhua http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/6417727.html .............................................................. G8 environment chiefs discuss biodiversity conservation25/05/2008 - http://english.vietnamnet.vn/international/2008/05/784836/ ………………………………………… Burma agrees to accept foreign aidUN chief gets junta to open its doors to relief UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said yesterday the eyes of the world were now on Burma after pushing the secretive military regime to accept foreign aid workers to cope with the cyclone disaster. After more than two hours of talks with junta leader Snr Gen Than Shwe, Mr Ban said he had convinced the regime to agree to a full-scale international relief effort _ three weeks after the storm left at least 133,000 people dead or missing. Following his success in pressuring the junta, Mr Ban will today join Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej in opening the cargo hangars at Don Mueang airport which will be used as a staging post for relief aid to Burma. The opening will be joined by Asean Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan. The cargo hangars are being used to assist the UN World Food Programme, which wants to use Don Mueang airport as a relief hub and sorting centre for relief supplies for the cyclone victims. Mr Ban said he was encouraged by his talks with the military regime's top general _ who refused to take his calls after the tragedy struck _ but said Burma now had to back up its talk with concrete progress on the ground. ''The world is watching,'' he told a news conference in the main city Rangoon. ''Implementation will be the key.'' He said 2.4 million survivors were in need of emergency aid, which has been held up by Burma's refusal to let foreign disaster experts into the country as well as logistical bottlenecks. Cyclone Nargis ripped through the country's southern Irrawaddy Delta on May 2-3, wiping out entire villages and laying waste to critical rice-growing areas weeks before the onset of the planting season. The UN chief said he had told Gen Than Shwe that ''more needs to be done'' to get a full-scale relief operation up to speed following the worst natural disaster in Burma's history. ''I specifically asked the government to liberalise visa policies and to grant unhindered access to foreign aid experts and also journalists so they can operate freely and effectively to help Burma,'' Mr Ban said. ''I came here to give the people of Burma a message of hope _ the world is watching, and that the world is with you,'' he said. ''I am humbled by the scale of this disaster.'' He met reporters after a trip to Gen Than Shwe's remote bunker capital of Naypyidaw, where the general stayed out of public view for more than two weeks after the cyclone. Meanwhile, US military units on the Cobra Gold 2008 military exercise in Thailand will remain and help get relief supplies to Burmese hit by the cyclone. Lt-Gen Surat Worarak, director of the Directorate of Joint Civil Affairs of the Royal Thai Armed Forces, said US troops were asked to stay on after they completed their mission on Wednesday. The US soldiers will stay on at U-Tapao airport in Rayong until the end of the month. '' There should be no problem. The US aircraft are only used to transport [Thai] aid,'' Lt-Gen Surat said. The Thai air force has so far spent about 15 million baht shipping supplies to Burma aboard its aircraft, he added. Wantanee Kongsomboon, deputy director of the Relief and Community Health Bureau attached to the Thai Red Cross Society, said the agency plans to transport 1,000 doses of snake bite anti-venom, which is now urgently needed in the flood-hit Irrawaddy Delta. It was not immediately clear if Burma would now allow aid from US naval ships nearby. AFP and BANGKOK POST http://www.bangkokpost.com/240508_News/24May2008_news01.php …………………………………………………. Asia and the Pacific pays high price for progressNairobi, 25 October: Asia and the Pacific, home to 60 per cent of the world's people, are making "remarkable" progress in reducing poverty, a UN report says. The region is also improving its ability to protect the environment, energy efficiency is increasing in many places, and drinking water provision has advanced considerably in the last decade. But progress has come at a price. Increases in consumption and associated waste have contributed to the exponential growth in existing environmental problems. Serious challenges remain, including urban air quality, fresh water stress, agricultural land use (a threat to food security) and increased waste. The illegal traffic in electronic and hazardous waste is a new challenge affecting human health and the environment. Environmental and economic policies have not been fully integrated, a major obstacle to establishing an effective system of environmental management. The warnings come in Global Environment Outlook 4, GEO-4, the latest in the series of flagship reports from the Nairobi-based United Nations Environment Programme. GEO-4 is published 20 years after the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission) produced its seminal report, Our Common Future. It describes the changes since 1987, assesses the current state of global atmosphere, land, water and biodiversity, and identifies priorities for action. GEO-4 salutes the world's progress in tackling some relatively straightforward problems, with the environment now much closer to mainstream politics everywhere. But despite these advances, there remain the more persistent issues for which existing measures and institutional arrangements have systematically demonstrated inadequacies and where solutions are still emerging. Failure to address these persistent problems, UNEP says, may undo all the achievements so far on the simpler issues, and may threaten humanity's survival. The report adds - "There are no major issues raised in Our Common Future for which the foreseeable trends are favourable." But it insists: "The objective is not to present a dark and gloomy scenario, but an urgent call for more stringent action." GEO-4 says the well-being of billions of people in the developing world is at risk, because of a failure to remedy the relatively simple problems which have been successfully tackled elsewhere. It says the world as a whole is living far beyond its means. The human population is now so large that "the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available…humanity's footprint [its environmental demand] is 21.9 hectares per person while the Earth's biological capacity is, on average, only 15.7 ha/person… ". GEO-4 says ecosystems and human health in Asia and the Pacific continue to deteriorate, while population growth and rapid economic development have driven significant environmental degradation and loss of natural resources. However, the report also recognizes the region's achievements in protecting its environment, key to tackling poverty. Several countries have already achieved many of the MDG targets and have set themselves new and more demanding goals, called MDG Plus. This is the first GEO report in which all seven of the world's regions emphasize the potential impacts of climate change, which GEO-4 says is likely to mean more severe droughts and floods in the region, as well as soil degradation, coastal inundation and salt water intrusion caused by sea level rise. Agricultural productivity is likely to decline substantially, because of warmer temperatures and shifting rainfall. South Pacific island states are extremely vulnerable to climate change and associated sea-level rise, and some may have to consider migration and resettlement. Health problems are likely to worsen, with higher rates of cholera, dengue fever and heat-related illnesses. The climate change threat is now urgent. Some experts have identified a 2°C increase in the global mean temperature above pre-industrial temperatures as a threshold beyond which climate impacts become significantly more severe, and the threat of major, irreversible damage more plausible. This implies emission reductions of 60-80 per cent by 2050 in developed countries. Negotiations are due to start in December on a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the international climate agreement which obligates countries to control anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Although it exempts all developing countries from emission reduction committments, there is growing pressure for some rapidly-industrializing countries, now substantial emitters themselves, to agree to emission reductions. GEO-4 says climate change is a "global priority", demanding political will and leadership. Yet it finds "a remarkable lack of urgency", and a "woefully inadequate" global response. On air quality, the region's growing energy needs and the "exploding" growth in motor vehicles are causing serious damage, with haze pollution from forest fires in South East Asia making matters worse. Excessive use of surface and underground water, industrial pollution, and inefficient use of fresh water all contribute to water stress. There are also indications of unprecedented glacier retreats in the Himalayan-Hindukush region. South East Asia has set aside 14.8 per cent of its land for protection, above the world average for 2003 of 12 per cent. But elsewhere in Asia and the Pacific less than 10 per cent of land is protected. Arable land is being degraded in all sub-regions; some countries appear to have taken counter-measures sufficient to overcome the impact on agricultural production such as substituting new arable land for degraded land. Since 1987, Asia and the Pacific has become the world's fastest developing region, imposing enormous pressures on its ecosystems, such as mangrove forests and coral reefs. This development, the region's greater affluence and new lifestyles, have led to changes in consumption patterns and the generation of large quantities of waste. Unsanitary landfills contaminating land and groundwater are of particular concern. More than 90 per cent of the 20-50 million tonnes of electronic waste produced globally every year-ends up in Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar and Pakistan. But Asian workers are reported to be "using obsolete technologies to process 21st century wastes". Effective waste management strategies and systems are either completely lacking or else inadequate in many Asia and the Pacific countries, posing a serious threat to human and environmental health. The future will be largely determined by the decisions individuals and society make now, GEO-4 says: "Our common future depends on our actions today, not tomorrow or some time in the future." For some of the world's persistent problems the damage may already be irreversible. GEO-4 warns that tackling the underlying causes of environmental pressures often affects the vested interests of powerful groups able to influence policy decisions. The only way to address these harder-to-manage problems requires moving the environment from the periphery to the core of decision-making: environment for development, not development to the detriment of environment. Regional Highlights: China's sustained growth and the acceleration of India's economy have contributed to the reduction (between 1990 and 2001) by nearly 250 million, of the number of people living on less than US$1 a day. Efforts at reducing malnutrition, however, have been less successful. Across the region, 17.6 per cent of the people (655 million) still lack access to safe water. South Pacific states have made no progress, and Central Asian countries have fallen back. The World Health Organization estimates that more than a billion people in Asia are exposed to outdoor air pollutant levels above WHO guidelines, causing the premature death of about 500 000 people a year. There is evidence of significant adverse effects from tropospheric (ground-level) ozone on staple crops in some developing countries, including China, India, Pakistan. Fertilizer application in the East China Sea's catchment area has risen by up to 250 per cent and the number of harmful algal blooms in coastal waters, often caused by fertilizer pollution, has also risen dramatically. Properly conserved ecosystems support human well-being: the large mangrove forests in Phang Nga, the most tsunami-affected region in Thailand, gave significant protection in the 2004 disaster. Nearly 120 square kilometres of mangroves planted in Viet Nam at a cost of about US $1.1 million have saved $7.3 million a year in dyke maintenance. Between 1987 and 2004 energy use in Asia and the Pacific increased by 88 per cent, compared with a global average rise of 36 per cent. During the 1990s the number of cars and two-wheeled motorcycles in China and India rose by more than 10 per cent annually. Orange roughy stocks off New Zealand were fished to 17 per cent of their original spawning biomass within eight years. -GEO4 http://nation.ittefaq.com/issues/2008/04/27/news0321.htm .............................................................. Directory: cpi -> briefs briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news Download 461.99 Kb. Share with your friends:
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