September 01, 2010

A global environmental update

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the world’s leading climate-science body -- must “fundamentally reform” its organisation and operations if it is to regain public trust, according to a major review cited by New Scientist.

Twelve Mongolian ministers held a cabinet meeting in the Gobi desert to draw attention to climate change, the Associated Press said. They discussed the topic in scorching heat in a sandy, formerly arable valley.

Scientists believe poor land management, outdated irrigation systems and logging are at least as much to blame as global warming for Pakistan’s devastating floods, according to Reuters. Water covers a fifth of the country and has damaged 14% of cultivated land.

In north-west Pakistan, livestock deaths -- and the threat of epidemics among hungry and weak animals that survived the floods – have compounded the country’s misery, The Washington Post reported. The calamity is measured locally in milk shortages and job losses. Nationwide, the loss of livestock is part of a wide-scale drowning of Pakistan’s agricultural economy.

The Indian parliament approved a bill to open up the country’s US$150-billion nuclear-power market, said Reuters, sealing legislation crucial for the entry of major US companies. Prime minister Manmohan Singh said the move was critical for India’s energy security.

Canada’s oil-sands operations are polluting the Athabasca river system, researchers said in report that is bound to fuel the environmental battle over developing the resource, Reuters reported. Contradicting Alberta provincial government assertions that toxins in the watershed occur naturally, the scientists said mercury, arsenic, lead and cadmium are among 13 toxins released into the river.

Shell said it was starting up a demonstration project to test a new method of speeding the reclamation of toxic-waste ponds at oil-sands operations, according to Reuters. Tailings ponds are a major source of friction in the oil-sands dispute.

British Columbia signed an agreement that will see that Canadian province share tax revenue from the mining industry with aboriginal groups, Reuters said. The industry hopes the deal will improve relations between miners and First Nations people and make native groups more receptive to mining activities.

European Union countries must drop their biofuels targets or risk plunging more Africans into hunger and raising carbon emissions, The Guardian quoted Friends of the Earth (FoE) as saying. In its report “Africa: Up for Grabs”, FoE accuses European companies of land-grabbing to grow biofuel crops that compete with food crops.

Caviar from Caspian Sea sturgeon – one of the world’s most highly prized foods – may become the latest casualty of Russia’s drought, The Financial Times cited scientists as warning. Sea levels in the Caspian are expected to drop by up to three metres in the next few months.

Blaming changes to forestry law, Russian environmentalists say the country’s wildfires have cost US$300 billion in forest loss, according to Agence France-Presse.
 

August 27, 2010

A Chinese environmental update

Fierce rain pounded the Yalu River basin in north-east China as the week ended, just days after the river on the border with North Korea flooded, Xinhua quoted flood-control officials in Liaoning province as saying. At least eight people were reported dead, with 170,000 evacuated and 1,100 houses toppled. Shipping on the swollen Yalu has been at a standstill since August 19.

In what has been the worst year in a decade for floods and landslides in China, authorities halted shipping through the Three Gorges Dam when it was to experience another flood peak on 24 August, the Associated Press said. Water levels at the world’s largest hydroelectric project, on the upper Yangtze, have been high for weeks. Shipping was suspended twice in July.

An increasing shortage of farmland and water resources may prevent China from achieving its ambitious grain output targets in the next decade, China Daily cited officials and experts as saying. Such shortages are now considered the main restraints on the country’s ability to ensure its food security.

Facing a looming environmental deadline, China has ordered thousands of companies to close high-polluting plants, Agence France-Presse reported. The government has pledged to slash energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product by 20% between 2006 and 2010, but official data suggest China is likely to miss the year-end target.

China’s push to harness nuclear, wind, solar and biomass energy hinges on making the cleaner fuels competitive with cheap, carbon-intensive coal without derailing industrial growth, Reuters said. The country aims to cut carbon intensity as much as 45% from 2005 levels by 2020 and increase the share of renewables to 15% of primary energy consumption.

The country’s top energy official, Zhang Guobao, told Sina.com that China will expand its installed hydropower capacity to 300 million kilowatts by 2015 from the current 200 million in an effort to cut carbon-dioxide emissions.

China will build a multi-million-dollar research base in the eastern coastal city of Qingdao as it steps up efforts to search for energy sources and rare earths on the ocean floor, Agence France-Presse quoted state media as saying.

A new study published in Atmospheric Environment suggests that the process by which electronic parts are separated during recycling in China causes harmful chemicals to be leached into the atmosphere, the National Post said. Scientists who conducted research in Shantou city, Guangdong province, suggested this may also be contributing to global contamination.

A 30-kilometre traffic jam formed on August 27 on the Beijing-Tibet Expressway used to transport coal to China’s eastern ports, Bloomberg News reported. Citing China National Radio’s website, the agency said more than 2,000 vehicles were stuck at the Badaling section of the road in Hebei province. An earlier, much longer jam lasted nine days. Coal trucks and roadworks have been blamed.

Prepared in cooperation with PACE

August 25, 2010

A global environmental update

At least 800,000 Pakistanis stranded by floods are at risk of dying from starvation or disease unless the United Nations gets more helicopters to urgently reach them, Reuters quoted officials as saying. The dire situation underscores the challenges the disaster has created in a country that could face unrest if it fails to compensate people for the loss of homes, crops and livestock and ensure the economy does not sustain too much long-term damage.

Pakistan’s “slow-onset disaster” – one difficult to “market” to donors -- is another factor in the series of unprecedented events conspiring to shape the catastrophe, the Sydney Morning Herald noted. Yet the disaster is no surprise: climate modellers have been forewarning of it in the abstract for years, and meteorologists could see it brewing in reality for weeks.

The aid agency Oxfam warned of "double disaster" for millions of people in Niger, where heavy rains and flooding are compounding food shortages caused by a prolonged drought, Agence France-Presse said. More than seven million people -- more than half the population -- are facing starvation, the United Nations said, and nearly 70,000 are homeless.

India's decision to reject Vedanta Resources’ plans to mine bauxite on forested hills sacred to a primitive tribe points to tighter enforcement of environment laws and a commitment to playing by the rules, Reuters reported. Environment minister Jairam Ramesh said his decision was made without emotion, politics or prejudice, and purely on legal violations by Vedanta, according to The Guardian.

British-based Cairn Energy has set its sights on Greenland for the foreseeable future, The Financial Times reported. One drill off Greenland’s west coast is said to have met with thermogenic gas, which could indicate hydrocarbons – a development that has dismayed environmental groups. Many Greenlanders, long reliant on fish and tourism, are cheered, however, according to The Guardian.

Canada will promote itself as an Arctic power in asserting its sovereignty over the resource-rich region, Reuters cited the government as saying in a statement laying out its foreign-policy plans for the far north. Officials said Canada views its domestic and foreign policy claims as intertwined.

Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin traveled beyond the Arctic Circle this week to look into evidence for climate change after a record heatwave ravaged central Russia, Reuters said. At a Russian-German research station opened in 1998 to study melting Siberian permafrost, Putin mused over whether humans were to blame for climate change. He was rebuked by a German scientist, according to Agence France-Presse, who told him: "Climate change has never happened like now and mankind is making a large impact.”

Environmental campaigners have launched a “Rethink Alberta” campaign, urging potential visitors to reconsider a visit to the province that is home to Canada’s tar sands industry, according to the Edmonton Journal. The campaign juxtaposes pictures of scenic destinations with photos of despoiled land and dead, oil-covered ducks.

August 20, 2010

A Chinese environmental update

Rescue crews continued to search for scores of people left missing and feared dead in south-western China, the Associated Press said, after torrential rains triggered massive mudslides during a summer plagued by deadly rains and flooding. The latest landslide, a layer of mud and rock several metres thick, crashed down on Puladi township, a mountain community in Yunnan province, this week.

China’s mid- and late-season rice crops face increasing threats from pests after widespread floods made conditions ideal for insects to breed, Bloomberg News quoted the agriculture ministry as saying.

As Yi Gang, China’s chief currency regulator, noted in late July, China has overtaken Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy after the United States. The milestone was confirmed by Japan on August 16. The New York Times called it “the most striking evidence yet that China’s ascendance is for real”.

If Chinese households’ wages and purchasing power keep rising slower than the country’s capacity to produce goods and services, the world will be in trouble, according to American public-policy expert Robert Reich. “All over the world, we’re witnessing a growing gap between production and consumption, while the environment continues to degrade,” Reich wrote in a commentary published by Salon.

China’s energy plans are unlikely to offer direct support for carbon-capture technologies as Beijing remains wary about their cost and feasibility, Reuters quoted industry officials as saying. Xu Shisen of China Huaneng Group, the country's biggest utility, said policy makers were likely to wait until carbon capture and storage (CCS) had been tested on a commercial scale before offering any substantial policy support.

A UN panel will review carbon-offset requests by three Chinese projects that destroy a potent greenhouse gas called hydrofluorocarbon-23 -- a sign that the most lucrative projects under the Kyoto Protocol may face more scrutiny, Reuters reported.

A year after the Three Gorges dam went into full operation, cracks are showing in the public image of the project, the Los Angeles Times said. This year's torrential rains have severely tested the dam's capacity to control the Yangtze -- the world's third-longest river – and have worried engineers.

The pollution and long-term impact on the coastal ecosystem resulting from the Dalian oil spill of July 16 could last for decades, according to Pacific Environment, a US-based NGO focusing on the living environment of the Pacific Rim. Its conclusions were echoed by Greenpeace China.

In its latest response to western criticism of China’s commercial deals in Africa, state-owned television, radio and news companies are working more closely with African journalists, according to Asia-Africa Confidential. Beijing conducted a week-long seminar in July on “actively guiding” public opinion, the newsletter said.

An emperor penguin has hatched at Dalian's Laohutan Ocean Park, Xinhua reported. The hatching was the first successful one in China by the species, which only inhabits the Antarctic.

Prepared in cooperation with PACE

August 18, 2010

A global environmental update

Burning straw and waving sticks, Pakistani flood victims blocked a highway in Sindh province to demand government help, MSNBC reported, as aid agencies warned that relief has been too slow to arrive for millions without clean water, food and homes. Public anger has grown, directed at a government overwhelmed by Pakistan’s worst-ever flooding disaster, which has killed at least 1,600, made two million homeless and disrupted the lives of at least 10% of its 170 million people.

Nearly half the US$459 million needed to fund initial relief efforts has been secured after days of lobbying donors and warnings that Pakistan faces a spiraling humanitarian catastrophe, a UN spokesman told Reuters. “Donors are realising the scale of the disaster,” the spokesman said, “but the challenges are absolutely massive and the floods are not over.”

Among Russia’s troubles this summer, perhaps none have been so persistent and difficult to remedy as the underground peat fires, to which the area around Moscow is particularly vulnerable, The New York Times said. The only foolproof method of suppressing the smoldering, smoky fires in drained, dried-out bogs is to re-flood them -- a tremendously difficult job.

Some scholars and analysts in Moscow argue that Vladimir Putin’s dismantling of Russia’s national forest service in 2007 and “the inaction of bureaucrats” left the country vulnerable to the kind of fire disaster that has unfolded this summer, according to Euroasia Review.

Already buffeted by drought in Russia and floods in Pakistan, commodity markets are now facing up to a new potential disruption: La Niña, The Financial Times said. Meteorologists say conditions caused by a fall in water temperature in the tropical Pacific could have the greatest adverse impact in such breadbaskets as Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and Australia.

US researchers in Florida and Georgia warn that the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a bigger mess than the government acknowledges and that much crude is lurking deep below the surface, the Associated Press reported. Alabama, meanwhile, became the first state to sue BP and its contractors Transocean and Halliburton for “catastrophic harm”, Reuters said.

Following an oil spill into the Kalamazoo River in the US state of Michigan in July, debate has erupted over exactly what was spilling out of the underground pipeline, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Greenlight blog. Environmental and industry experts say it was likely tar-sands oil -- the viscous bitumen mined and drilled in Canada’s Alberta province – being transported to US mid-western refineries.

Vedanta Resources is willing to relocate a mine planned on land considered sacred by tribal groups in India, the Hindustan Times quoted the company’s chairman as saying. A report commissioned by India’s environment ministry said Vedanta’s planned bauxite project in the Niyamgiri Hills of Orissa state would deprive tribal people of their rights and shake their faith in laws.

August 13, 2010

A Chinese environmental update

Torrential rain across western China has caused more mudslides and flooding – and additional deaths -- Reuters quoted state media as saying. Gansu and Sichuan provinces have been badly affected, and more rain is forecast.

From Beijing, Bloomberg News cited a water-resources ministry official as saying that a major landslide in Gansu’s Zhouqu county was “a natural disaster that occurred under extreme weather conditions” on loose, weathered terrain, and not the result of excessive logging on surrounding slopes. Xinhua quoted a land and resources ministry official as attributing the ground conditions to the effects of lingering drought and the Sichuan earthquake of 2008.

But the mudslide in Zhouqu was more than a natural disaster, according to The Christian Science Monitor. Official records, the newspaper said, show that government-run lumber companies cut 313,000 acres (127,000 hectares) of forest from the slopes of Zhouqu county between 1952 and 1990, denuding the geologically vulnerable mountainsides and subjecting them to soil erosion.

Two Chinese scientists -- Ma Dongtao and Qi Long --  published a paper 13 years ago warning that following “the destruction of the eco-system” in the area, “a rainstorm will carry debris down the gully, destroying farmland, houses, roads, bridges, water facilities and power systems, and causing death and injury”. The Monitor quoted Qi as saying now: “The mudslide was caused by geology, but it was worsened by deforestation.”

Xinmin Evening News also discussed early warnings of a large-scale mudslide and possible human causes of the disaster, including engineering projects related to hydropower construction. In an article based on the Chinese news report, International Rivers distributed a summary in which a geology expert said that hydropower is the region’s economic backbone, “but if you only consider short-term economic gain, you may eventually face heavier environmental and human losses”.

China has ordered more than 2,000 highly polluting, unsafe or energy inefficient plants to shut down within two months, The Guardian reported. The announcement named specific facilities and outlined stiff penalties for companies that do not comply. Eighteen industries reportedly are affected, including steel, paper, cement and dyeing.

In the race to feed the growing demand for green technology, China holds the world’s largest reserves of rare-earth metals and dominates global production, according to Reuters. China controls 97% of production of the little-known class of 17 related elements, for which worldwide demand could well exceed supply by tens of thousands of tonnes by 2012.

A China-made pill to treat cardiovascular conditions has become the first Chinese-patent traditional medicine to pass the US Food and Drug Administration’s strict Phase II clinical trials, Xinhua reported. Tasly Pharmaceutical’s Compound Danshen Dripping Pill – composed of herbal extracts – thus moves a step closer to entering western drug markets.

China’s first liquefied natural gas (LNG)-diesel hybrid river vessel has started a 45-day trial voyage in Wuhan in an effort to reduce exhaust pollution, Xinhua said.

Prepared in cooperation with PACE

 

August 11, 2010

A global environmental update

Russia’s heatwave and the south Asian monsoon floods could be more than isolated examples of extreme weather, Wired reported. This year, scientists say, some of the air driven upward by the monsoon rains appears to have gone north to Russia rather than coming down as usual over the Mediterranean region. 

Flooding brought on by heavy rains in Pakistan is creating a humanitarian and national disaster not seen in generations, according to United Press International. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said more than 1,600 people have died and another six million are in need of emergency assistance. Over one million hectares of crop land are under water, Pakistani officials said, and more than 300,000 homes have been destroyed.

Local people, foreign tourists and Indian soldiers are among the 185 people killed and hundreds missing after flash floods swept through the Himalayan region of Ladakh last week, Agence France-Presse reported. The floods swept away buildings, roads and power lines in Leh, in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, and stranded many people in the mountains.

Smoke from forest fires smothering Moscow adds to health problems from near-permanent "brown clouds" from Asia to the Amazon, Reuters quoted environmental experts as saying, and Russian soot may stoke global warming by hastening a thaw of Arctic ice. Moscow’s top health official said about 700 people were dying every day, twice as many as in normal weather.

Many more people will die of heart problems as global warming continues, the BBC quoted experts are warning. As climate extremes of hot and cold become more common, people’s hearts will be strained, doctors say. A study in the British Medical Journal found that each temperature drop of 1° Celsius on a single day in the United Kingdom is linked to 200 extra heart attacks. Heatwaves, meanwhile, increase deaths from other heart-related causes.

The entire ice mass of Greenland will disappear if temperatures rise by as little as 2° Celsius, with severe consequences for the rest of the world, a panel of scientists told the US Congress. Meanwhile, Greenland shed its largest chunk of ice in nearly half a century last week, The Guardian reported, quoting one researcher as saying: “What is going on in the Arctic now is the biggest and fastest thing that nature has ever done.” The Associated Press said the drifting ice island from the Petermann glacier could threaten oil platforms and shipping.

Russian emergency workers have increased forest patrols in the western Bryansk region contaminated by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, trying to prevent wildfires from spreading radiation, according to the Associated Press.

Greenpeace activists hung a banner from the roof of Poland’s environment ministry demanding the preservation of a primeval forest they say is under threat from logging, the Associated Press said. The Bialowieża forest is Europe’s last primeval forest.

 

August 06, 2010

A Chinese environmental update

An investigation by Greenpeace into the Dalian oil spill makes a compelling case for an alternative account of the July 16 accident, The New York Times reported. In preliminary findings, Greenpeace said that after the explosion at the Dalian Xingang oil terminal, large quantities of oil were deliberately released from onshore tanks to avert devastating damage to a storage tank filled with dimethylbenzene, a flammable and poisonous chemical. The Greenpeace report examined the size of the spill, the clean-up response and the impacts on fishing, tourism and the environment.

China has suspended traffic on the swollen Yalu river, its border with North Korea, because of record rainfall in an area already badly hit by floods, the BBC said. More than 40,000 people have been moved from their homes in the border city of Dandong. In China this year, rain-triggered floods have left 1,072 people dead and hundreds missing.

Thousands of tonnes of trash washed down the Yangtze river by torrential rain are threatening to jam the locks of the Three Gorges Dam, Reuters quoted state media as saying. An official said tonnes of rubbish were being collected daily at the dam, but manpower was insufficient.

China’s economic resurgence has helped the mining industry achieve record profits, The Guardian said. The mineral-resources giant Rio Tinto, for example, reported a 125% increase in profits for the first six months of the year, mainly because of surging Chinese demand for iron ore.

An environmental-protection tax may be launched in four provinces, China Business News cited an environmental planning official as saying, according to Global Times. A proposal for collecting the tax in Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi and Gansu provinces is expected to be proposed soon.

Frenetic development has been a disaster for conservation, wasted huge amounts of building materials and produced boring cityscapes, China’s top cultural heritage official said, The Guardian reported. Shan Jixiang’s comments echo growing concern about the destruction of Chinese buildings that date back centuries.

Two Chinese sites -- China Danxia and the historic monuments of Dengfeng -- are among 21 new places added to UNESCO’s world heritage list. In the country’s sub-tropical south-west, China Danxia is characterised by spectacular red cliffs and a range of erosional landforms that have helped to conserve evergreen forests and host many rare or threatened species. The Dengfeng monuments, in Henan province, include some of the best examples of ancient buildings devoted to ritual, science, technology and education.

A Chinese photographer and two government officials are among this year’s winners of the Ramon Magsaysay Awards. Huo Daishan was cited for his efforts to save the polluted Huai river. Pan Yue, vice-minister of environmental protection, and Fu Qiping, a village chief in Zhejiang province, were honoured for their advocacy of the inseparability of development and the environment.

Prepared in cooperation with PACE


 

August 04, 2010

A global environmental update

As BP claimed significant progress in efforts to plug the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico that resulted in the world’s worst accidental marine oil spill, US scientists said nearly three-fourths of the spilled oil is now gone – thanks to burning, skimming, direct recovery, evaporation, dissolution or dispersal. The rest remains as a sheen or tarballs, buried in sediment or washed ashore, according to Reuters.

More than 230,000 species inhabit the world’s oceans, according to the Census of Marine Life, a 10-year study of the diversity, distribution and abundance of marine life. But surveys undertaken by some 360 scientists also highlighted major collapses of fish stocks and crab or crustacean populations, due to over-harvesting and poor management of fisheries, The Guardian reported.

As well as overfishing, the study found, the main threats to marine biodiversity include degraded habitats, pollution and invasive species. Other problems lie ahead, according to an overview published in PLoS One: rising water temperatures and acidification due to climate change, and the growth of low-oxygen “dead zones”. (See images here.)

In another study, Canadian researchers said a century-long decline in phytoplankton could disrupt the global ocean food chain, including human consumption of fish, Agence France-Presse said. The tiny organisms have been disappearing at a rate of 1% per year, most likely due to global warming, the scientists found.

Russia continues to suffer its worst heatwave on record, which has helped to ignite hundreds of forest and bog fires across central and western regions of the country, the Associated Press reported. The blazes prompted Russian officials to make what Time considered “for them is a startling admission: global warming is very real”. President Dmitri Medvedev declared: “What’s happening with the planet’s climate right now needs to be a wake-up call to all of us, meaning all heads of state, all heads of social organisations, in order to take a more energetic approach to countering the global changes to the climate.” (See Time photos here.)

Ecuador agreed to refrain from drilling for oil in an Amazon rain forest reserve in return for up to US$3.6 billion in payments from rich countries, the BBC said. Under an agreement with the United Nations, the oilfields under the Yasuní reserve will remain untapped for at least a decade.

Madagascar’s rain forests of Atsinanana and Everglades National Park in the US state of Florida were among four new sites added to UNESCO’s list of endangered world heritage sites, while Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands were removed from the danger list. The UN agency also named 21 new sites to the heritage list, including China Danxia in the country’s sub-tropical south-west and the historic monuments of Dengfeng in Henan province.

Argentina and Uruguay agreed to a joint environmental monitoring programme along the Uruguay River, ending a seven-year pollution controversy over a Finnish paper mill on the Uruguayan side, Agence France-Presse reported.

July 30, 2010

A Chinese environmental update

China has overtaken Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy, according to the country’s chief currency regulator, Reuters reported. Yi Gang noted the milestone in an interview posted on the State Administration of Foreign Exchange’s website. Whether the pace of growth could be sustained was an issue, Yi said, not least because of the environmental constraints China faces. 

Responding to questions from Bloomberg News, the environmental protection ministry said environmental accidents rose 98% in the first six months of 2010, as demand for energy and minerals lead to poisoned rivers and oil spills. “Fast economic development is leading to increasing conflicts with the capacity of the environment to absorb” demands, the ministry said.

Zijin Mining Group said one of its vice presidents, Chen Jiahong, has been detained by police in connection with the spill of copper-mine waste that poisoned the Ting river in Fujian province, the Associated Press reported. Blamed for the industry’s worst waste leakage in China in two years, Zijin said in statements to the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges that it will limit production at a gold mine in the accident area, according to Bloomberg News.

The frequency of industrial accidents this summer has raised new questions about whether China can maintain expansion without doing catastrophic harm, Time said. A fatal explosion at a plastics factory being dismantled in Nanjing is the latest in a series. On the same day, floodwaters swept thousands of sealed barrels containing toxic chemicals into the Songhua in Jilin province.

Meanwhile, the Dalian oil spill has been stopped from reaching international waters, the city’s vice mayor told state media. Xinhua quoted Dai Yulin as saying the clean-up work was “arduous”. An oil pipeline exploded on July 16, triggering a blast on an adjacent pipeline near Xingang harbour.

The Associated Press quoted an American marine conservation specialist as saying the spill is dozens of times larger than the government has reported. Rick Steiner – acting as a consultant for Greenpeace China -- estimated that 60,000 to 90,000 tonnes of oil had gone into the Yellow Sea.

Acid rain fell on 189 monitored Chinese cities in the first half of 2010, and in eight areas of those every rainfall was acidic, People’s Daily cited a spokesperson for the environmental protection ministry as saying.

Chinese scientists have successfully tested the country’s first experimental fourth-generation nuclear reactor, Zhang Donghui, general manager of the project, told Xinhua. Zhang said the reactor is “safer, more environment-friendly and more economic than its predecessors”.

China plans to send two of its prized giant pandas to Japan early next year, the Associated Press quoted Xinhua as saying. The five-year-olds are to move from the Wolong Nature Reserve to Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo for 10 years.

Prepared in cooperation with PACE