AFP: EU nations to sanction serious environmental abuse

AFP: EU nations to sanction serious environmental abuse

STRASBOURG (AFP) — Illegal polluters in Europe face criminal sanctions for serious abuse of the environment, either on purpose or through negligence, under new measures adopted Wednesday at the European Parliament.

The rules will force European Union countries to sanction anyone who pollutes or degrades a protected site, misuses nuclear or hazardous radioactive materials and mishandles waste.

Trading in endangered plants or animals must also be punished bloc-wide.

Attempts to set fines and jail terms did not pass EU muster -- nations will enforce their own penalties -- but the document does oblige them to impose "effective, proportionate and dissuasive criminal sanctions".

EU nations jealously protect their authority in penal matters but Europe's top court ruled in September 2005 that the European Commission could make proposals on penal issues when they concern the environment.

"This agreement marks a significant contribution for strengthening the protection of Europe's environment," EU Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot said in a statement.

"No more safe havens will be possible for those responsible for polluting our environment," he said.

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said: "Making serious violations of Europe's environmental rules into criminal offences should have a major dissuasive effect."

The measures target individuals who introduce noxious products into the air, soil or water, or which might harm plant and animal life, or seriously injure or kill someone.

The illegal shipment of waste, the making of products that damage the earth's ozone layer or significant damage inflicted on wildlife habitats must also be considered criminal offences.

Companies that benefit from such acts could also be liable.

The move was welcomed by Green groups, in part because it will also oblige EU countries to lay out exactly how they plan to apply the new laws.

"Member states will no longer be able to systematically lift penalties for environmental crimes, and that represents progress of the highest importance," Monica Frassoni, Greens leader in the assembly, said in a statement.

"We'll be watching carefully," said the Italian deputy, whose country is mired in a waste removal crisis that the commission has taken legal action over in an effort to force Rome to tackle the problem better.

In France, "penal law will become more dissuasive", with the new option to "sanction dangerous conduct even before an attack on the environment has happened," said Arnaud Gossement, spokesman for the France Nature group.

Transposition of the new measures into the 27 national laws is supposed to be done within two years, and Barrot said that the EU's executive body would also be closely monitoring this process.

"For the gravest violations, only the sharp sword of criminal law can have any real dissuasive effect," he warned, during debate on the text in the assembly in Strasbourg.

BBC: Aviation impacts 'hotly disputed'

By Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analyst

UK ministers have been urged to halt airport expansion until the true costs and benefits of the proposed increase in flying are properly understood.

The Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) and the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) have been examining aviation policy for a year.

They conclude that so much fundamental data is disputed that an independent inquiry is needed to sort it out.

The government said it had serious objections to the report's findings.

A statement from the Department for Transport (DfT) rejected the notion that a further three-year debate, as requested by the SDC and IPPR, would serve any useful purpose.

Among the main areas of dispute are:

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  The economic benefit of aviation: Treasury analysis based on aviation industry research estimates future increases in economic activity through expanded aviation - but excludes any calculation of losses to the UK tourist industry through cheap flights abroad.
  
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  The impact of aviation's greenhouse gas emissions: This is a particularly difficult area as scientists are still trying to work out exactly how much the heating effect of aircraft emissions is magnified, as the gases are released at altitude. There is also uncertainty over how to express the significance of the heating effect of contrails.
  
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  The role of technology: The aviation industry believes that many problems can be solved by improved technology. But many experts warn that improvements in technology cannot keep up with the increase in demand for flying.
  

They want to see a full investigation - and airport expansion frozen until it is completed.

Despite its uncertainties the report does feel free to make one solid observation.

It says: "Clashing government priorities across different departments and agencies - including promoting economic growth, meeting future travel needs, protecting the environment, addressing climate change, and ensuring the health and well-being of communities - are contributing to a lack of coherence across government."

Hugh Raven, SDC commissioner, said: "The SDC and IPPR held meetings with the government, the aviation industry, academics, NGOs and citizens' groups over a period of a year.

"While we expected to find areas of conflict, we were unprepared for the level of fundamental disagreement over the data underpinning the government's whole aviation strategy.

"Until some basic questions are answered, the UK cannot be in a position to make major decisions about the future of air travel.

"The government must live up to its commitment to listening to voters' concerns, and ensure we make the best possible decisions for everyone involved."

Simon Retallack, associate director of the IPPR, added: "It is vital that the evidence is looked at again through an independent and widely supported process. Establishing a special commission to do that provides the government with the best way forward."

But a DfT spokesperson said it was "simply wrong to claim that there is a consensus that the evidence base is flawed".

"We strongly believe the aviation industry must play its part in meeting its environmental costs which is why the government championed the inclusion of aviation in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. But given the government has conducted a widespread debate over the last six years, deferring a decision in favour of a further three-year debate as this report suggests is not a serious option."

And Michelle Di Leo, director of the aviation lobby group FlyingMatters, said: "The Air Transport White Paper was based on 13 months of public consultation and 500,000 responses.

"To completely review that policy would create uncertainty and planning blight for communities around airports in the UK - that would be bad news for everyone not to mention the taxpayer who would have to foot the bill."

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Reuters: Denmark seeks unity over Arctic claims

Wed May 21, 2008 11:22am EDT

By Kim McLaughlin

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark called on Arctic coastal nations on Wednesday to avoid a scramble for the region's resources and urged all countries to abide by U.N. rules on territorial claims.

Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller meets leaders from Norway, Canada, Russia, the United States and Greenland's home-rule government next week.

The Arctic could hold as much as one-quarter of the world's remaining undiscovered oil and gas deposits, according to some estimates.

Countries around the ice-covered ocean are rushing to stake out claims on the Polar Basin seabed and have sought to bolster their scientific claims under a U.N. convention to extend their territorial sovereignty.

"My ambition is that we send a clear political signal which says that we will follow the rules already in place and solve any difference in accordance with international law," Moller told reporters on Wednesday.

Apart from territorial claims in the Arctic, the countries also plan to discuss cooperation on accidents, maritime security and oil spills when they meet from May 27 to 29 in Ilulissat, Greenland.

Moller said he was reasonably confident the conference would issue a declaration establishing that the United Nations would rule on the territorial disputes "so that we don't have this rush on who comes first or who plants their flag where".

The issue has become urgent because rapidly rising temperatures could leave most of the Arctic free of ice for several months in the summers in a few decades' time, scientists say. This would ease access for drilling.

Moller said it was important to agree on a framework now because any conflicts in the Arctic would become increasingly difficult to settle as the oil becomes more accessible.

Russia last summer angered the other Arctic nations by planting a flag on the seabed under the North Pole, further focusing attention on the race for hydrocarbon treasures made even more tempting by spiraling oil prices.

Russia and Norway have made submissions to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. Denmark and Canada are also preparing submissions to support extending their territory beyond the established 200 nautical miles from land.

(Reporting by Kim McLaughlin; Editing by David Fogarty)

Reuters: Crops' wild relatives need better protection: WWF

Wed May 21, 2008 8:10pm EDT
OSLO (Reuters) - Wild relatives of crops such as wheat, rice and potatoes are "dangerously vulnerable" and areas where they grow need more protection to aid world food supplies, the WWF conservation group said on Thursday.

Wild varieties often have natural characteristics that can be bred into food crops to help them resist everything from new pests or diseases to a changing climate.

"Basic food crops dangerously vulnerable," the WWF said in a headline of a statement about a new WWF map showing that areas in which wild varieties of crops are protected often cover less than five percent of their natural ranges.

"We already have reserves and national parks to protect charismatic species like pandas and tigers, and to preserve outstanding areas of natural beauty," said Liza Higgins-Zogib, Manager of People and Conservation at WWF International.

"It is now time to offer protection to the equally valuable wild and traditional relatives of the plants that feed the world like rice, wheat and potatoes," she said.

Almost 200 nations are meeting in Bonn, Germany, from May 19-30 for U.N. negotiations on ways to protect the diversity of animals and plants from threats including pollution, climate change and loss of habitats.

Among measures under consideration are to raise the extent of protected areas for vulnerable species. About 12 percent of the world's land area is set aside for wildlife but only some 0.5 percent of the oceans.

For wheat, the WWF said that a deadly strain of black stem rust was a threat to crops from Egypt to Pakistan. And in many regions, protected areas available for natural relatives of wheat and barley were below 5 percent of their natural range.

It said that other crops for which levels of protection for wild relatives fell below five percent included rice in Bangladesh, lentils and peas in North Africa and wild olives in Spain.

It said that the Americas were "slightly better" although protected areas for maize and wild relatives of the potato were below 10 percent of their natural areas.

"Our basic food plants have always been vulnerable to attack from new strains of disease or pests," Higgins-Zogib said.

"The result is often mass hunger and starvation, as anyone who remembers their school history of the Irish Potato Famine will know," she said.

-- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on:

http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/

(Editing by Diana Abdallah)

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BBC: Japan to probe whale meat 'theft'

By Justine Parker

Documents seen by the BBC confirm that public prosecutors will examine corruption allegations lodged by the environmental group Greenpeace.

It says crew members posted boxes of stolen whale meat to their homes.

Whaling fleet operator Kyodo Senpaku says small amounts of whale meat are routinely given to the crew as a "souvenir" at the end of the hunt.

A Fisheries Agency official said it had ordered separate internal probes by Kyodo Senpaku and the government's whale research body the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), which are due within a week.

ICR declined to comment on the prosecutor's case, due to its own internal investigation.

Japan catches whales in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica under a clause in international whaling regulations permitting hunting for scientific purposes.

'Personal baggage'

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's office confirmed it would investigate 12 production workers from the whaling ship Nisshin Maru.

The workers are accused of stealing whale meat from the Southern Ocean hunt, in a criminal complaint filed by Greenpeace after it tracked 47 boxes sent from the Nisshin Maru.

The environmental group also claims that government-appointed officials at Kyodo Senpaku and ICR were aware of the theft, and that restaurants and traders buy meat directly from the whaling ship before the government officially releases it for sale.

Last week, Greenpeace revealed evidence of the alleged fraud, including a box containing 23.5kg of whale meat with an estimated value between 110,000 and 350,000 yen ($1,100 and $3,500).

The box, one of four sent by a crew member to his home, had been listed as personal baggage containing "cardboard". Instead, it contained prized "unesu" meat used to make whale bacon.

Greenpeace Japan whales campaign co-ordinator Junichi Sato said the prosecutor's investigation would show Japan's public "for the first time" how its scientific whaling programme is conducted.

"Now the Japanese public will be aware how taxpayers' money is misused on this programme," he said.

Fisheries Agency official Tsuyoshi Iwata rejected this claim, saying: "We don't believe that there is any misuse of taxpayers' money on this whale research programme."

Mr Sato called for the Japanese government to halt subsidies to the programme and suspend Kyodo Senpaku's whaling permit during the investigation.

But Mr Iwata said the government would "absolutely not" suspend any whaling permits before the investigation was complete, and all research hunts would go on as planned.

The Antarctic fleet has returned to port, but the north Pacific season opens at this time of year.

Meanwhile, police are also investigating a complaint by trucking company Seino Transportation, which accuses Greenpeace of stealing the box containing whale meat from its office in the northern city of Aomori.

Greenpeace admits it intercepted the box to prove its embezzlement claims, but says that under Japanese law, such usage does not constitute theft.

Mr Sato said he had written to Seino Transportation to apologise for taking the box.

"I have sent a letter of apology to the company headquarters," he said. "We asked the company to understand why this needed to be done."

Kyodo Senpaku collects, processes and sells whale meat for ICR, a non-profit organisation authorised by the Japanese government to carry out research whaling. It reports to the Fisheries Agency.

The company says it gives each crew member about 10kg of meat as a souvenir of the Antarctic hunt; but Greenpeace claims that the 47 packages it followed were additional to the staff gifts.

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Christian Science Monitor (USA): Interview: Jane Goodall embraces a broader mission

Tom A. Peter Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Though Jane Goodall first attained international fame in the 1960s for her work with the chimpanzees of Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, today she spends more time promoting environmental causes than she does in the jungle.

She founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 to help people make a positive difference for all living things. Concerned that youths were feeling overwhelmed by environmental challenges, she created Roots and Shoots in 1991, an environmental group for youths that now is active in almost 100 countries.

Reaching beyond the animal kingdom, she has assisted local communities in Africa with a program called TACARE, which works to empower locals to improve their lives through microcredit projects and education initiatives. Most recently, she forged a partnership with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters to protect chimpanzees in Gombe and support the local human community by producing ecofriendly coffee.

Dr. Goodall's work with humans, animals, and the environment prompted the United Nations to name her a Messenger of Peace in 2002.

A Monitor reporter caught up with her on her recent visit to the Boston neighborhood of Mattapan. Here are some excerpts:

How did you make the shift from studying a small group of chimpanzees to becoming a global environmental activist?

[In 1986,] for the very first time, we brought together people from different [chimpanzee] study sites in Africa.... It was fantastic what we learned, but we also had a session on conservation. And it was so shocking to see that right across Africa were the same kind of problems I was seeing at Gombe National Park with the deforestation, the growing human populations and bush-meat trade, which is the commercial hunting of wild animals for food, the live-animal trade, shooting mothers to take babies. The chimpanzee population, which was somewhere between 1 million and 2 million a hundred years ago, definitely more than a million when I began in '60, and then in '86 the maximum would have been 350,000. Today, 220,000 is the closest estimate.

I realized that although I went to the conference as a scientist planning to carry on this wonderful life I was living - learning about the chimpanzees, being out in the forest, analyzing the data, doing some teaching, writing books, I mean, you know, idyllic - but I left as an activist, knowing I had to do what I could to help the chimpanzees, to try and do what I could to protect rain forests and raise awareness. First just in Africa, but then I realized that so many of Africa's problems could be related to the unsustainable lifestyles we have in the affluent societies, particularly in the developed world in the West. And so I realized I had to start taking this message of awareness to Europe, to North America, and increasingly to Asia.

What can people do to protect primates and the environment?

I think the most important thing is that so many people are concerned about the environment. They're concerned about the way we're poisoning air, water, and land, and the fact that in so many places people, especially children, are getting sick from environmental problems. They know what's happening with climate change, they know about the poverty, and the hunger, and the disease around the world. They feel so helpless in the face of all this ... that they don't do anything, because they feel that it's useless.

I always tell people that the most important thing you can do is to spend a little bit of time learning about and acting on the consequences of the small choices that we make each day, like: What do we buy? For example, clothing: Where does it come from, how was it made, did it involve child slave labor? Food: Where was it grown, how was it grown, did it have a lot of pesticides, can you buy organic?

What is the role of business in protecting the environment?

Those companies can only act in that way [that is, make environmentally conscious decisions] with their shareholders' approval.

So again it comes back to us: It's not the company. The company will be driven by the people who buy the products....

The hope for this Roots and Shoots program is that these young people ... will be the next entrepreneurs, the next business people, and they'll be the next lawyers, doctors, legislators, politicians, teachers, and parents. They are working on projects to make things better for people, animals, and the environment, and learning to live in peace and harmony with each other and between religions, between cultures, between nations, and between us and the natural world. It's so important and I hope they will understand that there are more important things in this life than simply making money, that we need money to live, but we must never live for money.

Is it harder for the developing world to take actions to protect the environment?

It depends on the government. In a repressive regime, it's very hard. They have to be very brave and a lot of people get jailed and even killed in the name of justice. But I don't think there are any problems anywhere in the world where people aren't desperately working, often for little or no money and risking health and life to try and put those problems right.

I think that more people are responding, because there's more awareness. So, one, you raise awareness and then you have to try and change behavior. That's the hard part, but you've got to get them aware, first. And then, as I say, there's this feeling of helplessness, so we have to empower them.

Everybody must remember that every one of us makes a difference, and we have a choice. We all impact the planet in one way or another. We can choose whether we end the day having made things a little bit better or a little bit worse.

(c) Copyright 2008. The Christian Science Monitor

Newsfactor Network: Greenpeace Pushes for Greener Video Game Consoles

Jennifer LeClaire, newsfactor.com Wed May 21, 4:41 PM ET

Greenpeace has released the results of its investigation into hazardous materials in next-generation video game consoles. The study reveals that the Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation 3 Elite and Microsoft Xbox 360 have all tested positive for hazardous chemicals.

The analysis of these toxic materials -- polyvinyl chloride (PVC), phthalates, beryllium and bromine, which is indicative of brominated flame retardants -- are contained in the organization's new report, entitled "Playing Dirty," and show that all three manufacturers failed the green-electronics test established by Greenpeace.

"Whether game consoles are classified as toys or not, they can still contain hazardous chemicals and materials that could harm humans," said Dr. Kevin Brigden of the Greenpeace Science Unit. "The technology is available for the manufacturers to design out toxins and produce greener game consoles now."

The report reveals that both the Xbox 360 and PS3 contained very high levels of phthalates that are not permitted in components of toys or childcare products sold in the European Union. One of the phthalates, DEHP, is known to interfere with sexual development in mammals -- including humans, and especially males. The other phthalate, DINP, found only in the Xbox 360, is prohibited from use in toys and childcare products in the European Union if children can place them in their mouths.

All game consoles tested positive for various hazardous chemicals. For example, high levels of bromine were found in the components of all three, with the highest by weight levels in the PS3 and the Wii. But the tests also showed that each of the manufacturers avoided or reduced the use of individual hazardous substances in certain materials within their consoles.

In the Nintendo Wii, beryllium alloys were not identified in electrical contacts, and the use of PVC and phthalates was determined to be limited. At the same time, the PS3 included examples of "bromine-free" circuit boards, and the Xbox 360 had a lower usage of brominated substances within housing materials.

"Our test clearly shows that a greener game console is possible," said Casey Harrell, a Greenpeace toxics campaigner. "By combining the best practices of each console design, we could replace most of the hazardous chemicals found in these game consoles with toxic-free materials."

Do Gamers Really Care?

The game-consoles market is one of the fastest-growing in consumer electronics, with more than 60 million sold and 14 percent growth last year, according to Datamonitor. They not only contain hazardous chemicals, but also contribute to the fastest-growing type of waste -- e-waste, according to Greenpeace. Discarded game consoles are often dumped and end up in unsafe and dirty recycling yards in developing countries, harming the environment and the health of workers.

Michal Ann Strahilevitz, Ph.D., an associate professor of marketing at Golden Gate University who studies corporate social responsibility and green consumer behavior, said a typical video game consumer is not likely to care that much about the toxins. But the companies may still make further strides to rid their products of them, for the greater good.

"I do think a company like Microsoft, that has made major steps toward carbon neutrality, and has invested a great deal in sustainability across the company, will likely do what they can to reduce any toxic materials in their portion of this market," Strahilevitz said.

The council will consider the resolution on May 22.

The resolution is part of a larger plan aimed at reducing plastic bottle use in all city operations.

"The distribution of bottled water involves plastic water bottles made from petroleum, the production of which contributes to global warming and poses a unique and pernicious problem for citizens, the environment, and wildlife," the resolution states.

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  Australia - Split Over Carbon Capture Technology - IPS
  
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  China - Bowing in Grief, to Public Demand – IPS
  
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  Viet Nam - President Triet warns: get ready for climate change - VNS
  
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  Viet Nam - Lawmakers examine healthcare - VNS