THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE NEWS
Tuesday, 19 June, 2012
UNEP and the Executive Director in the News
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Reuters: Large Economies Don't Look So Hot Once Natural Assets Are Factored In
Xinhua (China): China has good story to tell in Rio: former UNEP chief
IPS: Earth’s Future Not for Sale, Activists Say
New Scientist (US): Rio+20 conference suffers lack of leadership
Economic Times (India): HCC only Indian company to be featured Climate Report by
UNEP
All Africa: Kenya- President Kibaki Travels to Brazil for UN Conference
Scoop (New Zealand): UN and Partners Plan To Achieve Sustainable Cities
London Sunday Times (UK): Once again, the US blows Rio out of the water
Times of Malta (Malta): Risk of failure staring at us
Saudi Gazette (Saudi Arabia): New GDP plus index shows lower growth for major
economics
Universities World News (UK): New global universities partnership on the environment
launched
Vanguard (Nigeria): Ogoni residents flay FG over delay in UNEP report implementation
All Africa: Nigeria- Rio+20 - Group Warns the Nigeria of Green Economy
Times Of India: Desi mangoes to yield sweet dividends
Other Environment News
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BBC News (UK): Rio+20: Expert panel's call to 'seize moment'
CNN (US): CNN ECOSPHERE: Digital garden visualizes live discussion at Rio+20
Guardian (UK): Rio+20: Big businesses club together to demand water is given fair value
Forbes (UK): Rio+20: Are We There Yet?
Fox News (US): Rio +20 -- saving the Earth, one resort meeting at a time
Telegraph (UK): Rio+20: The world is getting too heavy finds new league table of fattest
countries on Earth
Bangkok Post (Thailand): RIO+20: Reshaping how we do business and how we live
Asahi Shimbun (Japan): RIO+20: Tiny island off Canadian west coast stimulates thinking
about environmental issues
Kaieteur News (Guyana): Hope fades for benefits from Rio+20 Earth Summit
Tunis Live (Tunisia): Tunisian President Marzouki Cancels Trip to Rio + 20 Sustainable
Development Conference
Guardian (UK): Rio+20 Earth summit: scientists call for action on population
Independent Online (South Africa): Rio+20 summit to broach climate woes
Reuters: Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative: Capital markets leaders explore
sustainability at Rio+20 side-event
All Africa: Rio+20 Must Commit to Transforming the Global Food System
Christian Science Monitor (US): Rio+20: Latin American cities on the frontlines
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IRIN News: RIO+20: Sticky issues and hope
Trinidad Express (Trinidad and Tobago): Why Rio+20 will transform Earth Summit
Times of India: Carnival city gets ready for Rio+20
The Nation (Pakistan): Rio+20 and green economy
SciDev: Rio+20 solutions too Northern, say South Asian analysts
Selected Blogs
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Huffington Post (US): Rio+20- 'I Want to Light a Fire, and Remind You of the Urgency of
Our Task'
CNN (US): Philippe Cousteau: Humanity is on a knife edge
TreeHugger: The UN's Rio+20 Conference Matters
Environmental News from the UNEP Regions
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ROA
ROAP
RONA
ROWA
ROLAC (None)
Other UN News
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Environment News from the UN Daily News of 19 June 2012
Environment News from the S.G.’s Spokesman Daily Press Briefing of 19 June 2012
UNEP and the Executive Director in the News
Reuters: Large Economies Don't Look So Hot Once Natural Assets Are Factored In
17 June 2012
Some large economies show significantly lower growth when natural assets such as forests and
water are factored into growth indicators, an index showed on Sunday, a few days before an
international sustainability summit starts in Rio de Janeiro.
The Inclusive Wealth Index was unveiled by the United Nations University's International Human
Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (UNU-IHDP) and the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP).
Scientists and environment groups have been pressuring governments to include the value of
their countries' natural resources - and use or loss of them - into future measurements of
economic activity to show their true future growth prospects.
The idea of an expanded indicator known as GDP+ to include GDP and natural capital will be on
the agenda of the Rio+20 summit from June 20 to June 22, when environment ministers and
heads of state from around 200 countries will try to define sustainable development goals.
The index shows the "inclusive wealth" of 20 nations, taking into account manufactured, human
and natural capital like forests, fisheries and fossil fuels, instead of relying only on gross domestic
product (GDP) as a growth indicator.
The index assessed Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Ecuador, France,
Germany, India, Japan, Kenya, Nigeria, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, United
States, Britain and Venezuela, from 1990 to 2008.
Together, these countries accounted for almost three-quarters of global GDP over the 19-year
period.
The index showed that 19 out of the 20 countries experienced a decline in natural capital. Six
nations also saw a decline in their overall inclusive wealth, putting them on an unsustainable
track, UNEP said.
"Rio+20 is an opportunity to call time on Gross Domestic Product as a measure of prosperity in
the 21st century, and as a barometer of an inclusive green economy transition," U.N. UnderSecretary General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said in a statement.
"It is far too silent on major measures of human well-being, namely many social issues and the
state of a nation's natural resources," he added.
NATURAL CAPITAL
The index showed that even though China, the United States, Brazil and South Africa
experienced GDP growth, their natural capital was significantly depleted.
When measured solely by GDP, the economies of China, the United States, Brazil and South
Africa grew by 422 percent, 37 percent, 31 percent and 24 percent respectively between 1990
and 2008.
When their performance was assessed by the IWI, China's economy grew by 45 percent, the
United States by 13 percent, Brazil by 18 percent and South Africa decreased by 1 percent,
mainly due to the depletion of natural resources, UNEP and UNU-IHDP said in a statement.
Six nations - Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Colombia, South Africa and Nigeria - experienced
negative growth under the IWI, whereas it was positive under GDP measurements.
Commenting on the report, John Sulston, chair of the Royal Society working group on population
and Nobel Prize-winning scientist, said traditional measurements of wealth do not take into
account the state of the world around us and the inclusive wealth index was a way of correcting
this deficiency.
"Applying the IWI to a sample of 20 countries reveals some that are considered good economic
performers are actually in the environmental red, borrowing natural resources that they just can't
pay back," he added.
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Xinhua (China): China has good story to tell in Rio: former UNEP chief
18 June 2012
"China has a good story to tell here in Rio and I hope it will tell it," Maurice Strong, former head of
the UN Environment Program (UNEP), told Xinhua here in an interview.
"I use China as an example of how a rapidly growing economy can still deal with environmental
issues," said Strong Sunday, who was appointed the first executive director of UNEP when it was
established in 1972 by the UN General Assembly.
China has been doing so even though it is difficult, because the "rapid growth in the economy
tends to offset the progress China makes in environment," he said.
Strong recalled that he had worked closely with the Chinese delegation at the first UN meeting on
environment held in Stockholm in 1972, which was chaired by him.
After the meeting, China dealt with all sorts of difficulties and established an environment
protection agency in 1973, which was "very new at that time," he recalled.
Strong, who was also secretary-general of the last historic Rio Earth Summit in 1992, said China
should share at the Rio+20 summit here its "good" story with other countries.
China should share "what it is doing and what it is planning to do with its harmonious development
based on science," he said. "And China's policy is based on science."
For example, China is the only country he knew where officials are judged partly on their
environmental performance, he said. "I don't know any other country doing that."
Strong also noted China still faces many challenges, like high energy consumption per unit of the
GDP and air pollution, "but the progress is very good and the story which China has to tell is very
good."
"China is setting an example, and it still has to move further domestically," he said. "But it is
moving, its policies are moving in the right direction."
During the Rio+20 conference, China should share its experience, its progress achieved, and its
policy for the future, he said. "The world cannot achieve sustainable development without China,
and China cannot achieve its future without the world."
As a world leader, China needs the world and the world needs China, Strong said. "I am very
convinced that China is the most important influence now in the modern world."
On June 20-22, more than 130 heads of state or government and tens of thousands of delegates
will gather here to discuss a sustainable development blueprint and make important decisions on
the global sustainable development process.
In comparison with its previous version 20 years ago, the Rio+20 summit comes at a time when it
is very difficult to "get the kind of decisions that we need," Strong said.
"But hopefully, it can be the launching pad for a new period of positive negotiations and progress,"
he added.
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IPS: Earth’s Future Not for Sale, Activists Say
18 June 2012
Just ahead of the start of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20),
many are worried about the influence that corporations will have on the summit’s agenda.
Friends of the Earth, a grassroots environmental group, is one of the groups concerned about the
influence that private sector lobby groups hold over the U.N.
“Increasingly we see U.N. policies that do not serve the public interest but rather support the
commercial interests of companies or business sectors,” the group said in a statement. “The U.N.
is captured by the corporate sector.”
A petition released by Friends of the Earth, described as a “civil society statement to reclaim the
U.N. from corporate capture”, has received several hundred signatures from activists from
Catalonia to Canada.
One of the top priorities of the Rio+20 summit is to discuss ways in which to offset the global
impact of consumption, urbanisation and pollution. Also on the agenda is the transition to a “green
economy” – a new economic paradigm that limits the toll of ecological and environmental loss.
According to a United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP)-backed study on the 3,000
biggest public companies in the world, the total cost due to corporate environmental damage was
2.2 trillion dollars – approximately equal to the total GDP of the world’s eighth-largest economy,
Italy.
Most of the cost is attributed to emissions of greenhouse gases, local air pollution and the
depletion and pollution of fresh water.
There are numerous civilian protests and campaigns scheduled in anticipation of the Rio+20
summit. The Occupy movement is also planning to have a presence at the movement and have
released a “people’s petition” online, with one of the main issues protested in the petition being the
role of business lobbying at the talks.
Daniel M. Kammen, professor of public policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at U.C.Berkley, disagrees that business involvement has a negative effect, saying that business plays a
crucial role in the talks.
“It has to be part of a conversation, of a dialogue,” he says. “Without the private sector, the climate
just becomes a debate between national leaders.”
U.S. President Barack Obama has received criticism for his policies regarding corporate interests,
much to the chagrin of environmental activists and labour unions.
A document recently leaked by Public Citizen, a consumers’ rights group, found that under new
trade provisions, multinational corporations operating in the U.S. would be able to appeal laws
regulating trade to a more-lenient international tribunal, which has less strict measures on
environmental policy.
Brazil has itself recently been the victim of corporate environmental pollution. In March, FUP, the
Brazilian oil workers’ union, filed a lawsuit against the American energy company Chevron and the
offshore drilling corporation Transocean, as the result of offshore oil spills off the coast of Brazil
last November.
The lawsuit attempts to revoke those companies’ abilities to operate within the country of Brazil.
The oil spill leaked about 3,000 barrels of oil into the Atlantic Ocean.
Transocean, one of world’s largest offshore drilling corporations, was also involved in the 2010 BP
oil spill that released 4.9 million barrels into the Gulf of Mexico, the largest spill ever in U.S.
territory.
Previous summits have dealt with these kinds of problems. The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio took
place a year after the Kuwaiti oil fires and Gulf War oil spill, the largest oil spill in modern history.
The U.N. has taken steps to improve energy efficiency, in an effort to negate the rampant need for
oil, through the Sustainable Energy for All initiative, spearheaded by U.N. Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon. The proposal was meant to correspond with an increased focus on global economic and
environmental sustainability.
“If current patterns of production and consumption of natural resources prevail, and cannot be
reversed and decoupled, then governments will preside over unprecedented levels of damage
and degradation,” said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.
In its quinquennial report, UNEP stated that globally there had been significant progress on only
four of the 90 most important environmental issues that they had previously laid out, indicating
that humans consume at their own expense.
The resulting depletion of biodiversity and resources in the two decades between the conferences
threatens to get worse.
“We will face even greater economic and environmental disaster in the future if we do not urgently
address the loss of our natural capital and reset our economic compass,” Pavan Sukhdev, an
adviser to UNEP, said.
“We have an ethical duty to act now – to delay is immoral.”
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New Scientist (US): Rio+20 conference suffers lack of leadership
18 June 2012
"There is no energy here. It's an empty shell": Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment
Programme. "I am disappointed in the process, and I am not alone": Rachel Kyte, vice-president
for sustainable development at the World Bank. "There is a terrible lack of leadership": Fabio
Feldmann, veteran Brazilian environmentalist and personal representative of the Brazilian
president.
The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro this week is not looking promising. The conference will be
devoid of the world leaders who attended its predecessor, 20 years ago. And there are no
headline-grabbing treaties to sign. Its final declaration will not be binding to anyone. The main
outcome will probably be to launch a set of "sustainable development goals" on issues like
protecting forests, fisheries and water supplies.
Delegates here bemoan that most environmental indicators have gone in the wrong direction
since the original Earth Summit, yet they are reaching for the same solutions.
In 1992, developing countries agreed commitments on protecting biodiversity and forests in return
for promises of a "green fund" of development aid.
They got about $5 billion. This time, the Brazilian hosts are calling for a $30 billion "global fund for
sustainable development", and want the rich world to set aside its short-term economic concerns
and cough up. "We cannot be held hostage to financial crisis in rich countries," says Luiz Alberto
Figueiredo, environment director at Brazil's Ministry of External Affairs.
There is hope. The ostensible theme is "green economics". At fringe meetings all across this
megacity, economists and natural scientists are discussing in detail how to put a dollar sign on the
loss of natural capital like forests, minerals, water and fisheries, and to integrate these new
measures into national and corporate accounting systems.
They are convinced that if governments and corporations included such measures in their
accounting, alongside other indicators of the sustainability of their economies and businesses,
leaders would take more care of nature.
In one such initiative, Steiner launched an Inclusive Wealth Index last week.
It found that while China's economy has grown four-fold in the past two decades, its stock of
natural capital has fallen by 17 per cent. Taking that into account, its "inclusive wealth" had only
increased by 45 per cent.
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Economic Times (India): HCC only Indian company to be featured Climate Report
by UNEP
18 June 2012
The United Nations Environment Programme has recognized HCC ( Hindustan Construction
Company), an infrastructure construction and development company, of being the only Indian
company to be featured in its Climate Report.
The report titled "Caring Business and Climate Change Adaptation: toward Resilient Companies
and Communities" presents ten case studies from amongst ten global companies who have
responded creatively and effectively to address climate change opportunities, risks, and impacts
in developing countries and emerging economies.
HCC's initiatives have been featured among the case studies of ten global companies, including
Coca Cola, Nokia and Eskom. The HCC case study highlights its efforts towards water neutrality
and showcases its initiatives at two HCC projects-the Strategic Oil Storage Cavern project at
Visakhapatnam and the Delhi-Faridabad Elevated Expressway.
In Visakhapatnam, HCC installed a wastewater treatment plant to utilize the seepage wastewater
for construction thus completing construction without external water supply to the project even
during severe water scarcity in the region. Installation of the plant enabled HCC to recycle and
reuse nearly 95 percent of the wastewater for the project saving an amount of water equivalent to
nearly six months of water consumption of the city of Vizag.
In the Delhi-Faridabad expressway project, water resources were of particular concern in this lowrainfall part of the country. HCC implemented several measures to conserve, recycle, and reuse
water, including creation of an artificial rainfall-fed pond and rooftop rainwater harvesting. The
most notable of HCC's efforts was a unique model for harvesting run off rainwater from the
expressway itself as a way to recharge aquifers in the surrounding area.
The Company conducts public consultation processes to collect primary data, inputs, and
perspectives from local communities, sometimes in collaboration with local civil society groups.
HCC takes a "4 R" approach to water interventions (reduce, reuse, recycle, recharge) at its
construction sites, where it is typically on the ground for two to six years, and also in longer-term
BOT (Build, Operate, Transfer) projects.
HCC is the first Indian signatory to the CEO Water Mandate, comprising more than 80 companies
whose chief executives have committed to individual and collective action to advance water
stewardship in their own operations as well as in their supply chains, watersheds and
communities.
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All Africa: Kenya- President Kibaki Travels to Brazil for UN Conference
18 June 2012
President Mwai Kibaki Monday evening travelled to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to attend the United
Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio +20).
During the conference President Kibaki will lead the Kenyan delegation in pushing for the
upgrading of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) into a United Nations
Environment Organization (UNEO) based in Nairobi.
Kenya has been lobbying for the transformation of UNEP into a United Nations Environment
Organization, with several key countries pledging their support.
An upgraded UNEP will be in a position to operate on an equal footing with other UN specialized
agencies which enjoy stable and predictable funding.
This will enable the transformed environment organization effectively execute its mandate as the
principle international body for environment.
In anticipation of a favourable outcome of the Rio conference, the Kenya Government has set
aside a 16 acre piece of land, adjacent to the UN Complex at Gigiri, which could be used for the
necessary expansion of infrastructure to cater for the proposed upgraded UNEP.
Other issues that will be discussed during the Rio conference include the reform and
strengthening of the United Nations Economic and Social Council(ECOSOC) to enable the body
to play an integrative role in promotion of the three pillars of sustainable development namely
economic, social and environment.
The conference will also discuss the possible transformation of the United Nations Commission on
Sustainable Development (CSD) into a Sustainable Development Council (SDC) through a
merger of the Global Ministerial Environment Forum (GMEF) and the Commission of Sustainable
Development (CSD).
The plane carrying President Kibaki and his entourage departed Jomo Kenyatta International
Airport shortly before 11.00 p.m.
The President was seen off at the airport by Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, Defence Minister
Yusuf Haji, Assistant Minister Simeon Lesrima, Chief of Defence Forces Gen. Julius Karangi and
acting Head of Public Service and Secretary to the Cabinet Mr. Francis Kimemia among other
senior Government officials.
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Scoop (New Zealand): UN and Partners Plan To Achieve Sustainable Cities
19 June 2012
The United Nations and its partners today unveiled a new initiative to achieve sustainable urban
development by promoting the efficient use of energy, water and other resources, lowering
pollution levels and reducing infrastructure costs in cities.
The Global Initiative for Resource-Efficient Cities was launched by the UN Environment
Programme (UNEP) and partners in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, just days ahead of the
start of the high-level meeting of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).
The initiative, open to cities with populations of 500,000 or more, will involve local and national
governments, the private sector and civil society groups to promote energy efficient buildings,
efficient water use, sustainable waste management and other activities.
UNEP notes that by 2050, up to 80 per cent of the global population is expected to reside in cities,
which are increasingly becoming the focus of international sustainability efforts.
Today, urban areas account for 50 per cent of all waste, generate 60-80 per cent of all
greenhouse gas emissions and consume 75 per cent of natural resources, yet occupy only three
per cent of the Earth’s surface, the agency points out in a news release.
Yet water savings of 30 per cent, and energy savings of up to 50 per cent, can be achieved in
cities with limited investment and encouraging behavioural change, it adds.
“In the context of rapid urbanization and growing pressures on natural resources, there is an
urgent need for coordinated action on urban sustainability,” said UNEP’s Executive Director,
Achim Steiner.
“This is essential both for preventing irreversible degradation of resources and ecosystems, and
for realizing the multiple benefits of greener cities, from savings through energy-efficient buildings,
or the health and climate benefits of cleaner fuels and vehicles,” he added.
UNEP also notes that the economic opportunities associated with making cities more sustainable
are numerous. As centres of technology, cities can spearhead the creation of green jobs in
sectors such as renewable energy. Projections show that some 20 million people could be
employed in the wind, solar and biofuel industries by 2030, for example.
The practical steps that cities can take towards resource efficiency are the focus of a new UNEP
report, also launched today at Rio+20.
Using case studies from China, Brazil, Germany and a host of other countries, Sustainable,
Resource Efficient Cities in the 21st Century: Making it Happen highlights opportunities for city
leaders to improve waste and water management, energy efficiency, urban transportation and
other key sectors.
Rio+20’s high-level meeting runs 20-22 June, and is expected to bring together over 100 heads of
State and government, along with thousands of parliamentarians, mayors, UN officials, chief
executive officers and civil society leaders to shape new policies to promote prosperity, reduce
poverty and advance social equity and environmental protection.
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London Sunday Times (UK): Once again, the US blows Rio out of the water
17 June 2012
Times have changed but they also seem to have come full circle. Twenty years ago this month,
thousands of us arrived in Rio de Janeiro, somehow expecting to stem the destruction of the
planet’s natural capital, forests, clean water and animals, and to check the advance of man-made
climate change.
Overnight, though, the wire services revealed a problem. Worried British officials confirmed that
the United States could not put its name on one of the two treaties to be signed — on biodiversity.
It turned out to be the biggest story of the Earth summit, on its first day.
Now, as nations gather again in Rio to mark another milestone on a journey that began with the
first global conference on the human environment, in Stockholm in 1972, I have an overwhelming
sense of déjà vu. This time Washington has difficulties with a proposed new treaty that would
allow the creation of marine protected areas on the high seas, outside national jurisdiction. It is the
logical next step after the creation of big reserves in national waters — such as the one the size of
France in the Coral Sea, declared by Australia last week. The treaty would come under the
umbrella of the 1982 United Nations convention on the law of the sea (UNCLOS), but America
has never signed this, because it thinks that its provisions about the mining of minerals on the sea
bed are against US interests. However, 162 countries have ratified it, so it is now the basis of
international marine law.
President Barack Obama wants to sign UNCLOS. The Pentagon wants to sign it — because it
would help America’s claims to the sea bed under the melting Arctic ice. But the State
Department, by some strange twist of legal logic, thinks that amending UNCLOS would make it
harder for the US to sign. So once again America is placing the common good on hold.
You have to admire the way the US plays hardball in international negotiations, but you also have
to concede a greater and more unpalatable truth. The lesson of the 20 years since Rio is that the
world has failed, and America bears a large slice of the blame. Leading nations, including the US,
pledged at Rio to freeze their fossil fuel emissions by the end of the decade. They promised to
stop the erosion of natural capital. Since then we have lost an area of forest the size of Argentina,
vertebrate populations have declined by 30% and we are using more water than can easily be
renewed by natural processes.
There are going to be 3 billion more people to consume our scarce resources by about 2100. The
concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 1992 was just over 350 parts per million
(ppm). It is now at 392 ppm.
The failure to live up to the ideals of Rio is a systemic failure far greater than that of the banking
system or the euro — because you can’t bring back natural capital once it is gone.
The resulting collapse in fresh water, in soils, in trees, in fish stocks, in birds and in climate
stability will affect everyone and make life for anyone under 40 less rich than it was for the
generations before.
There are going to be 3 billion more people to consume our scarce resources by about 2100It was
ultimately a failure of political will. The solutions to the problems highlighted at Rio, and its
successor 10 years ago in Johannesburg, required some pooling of sovereignty. But national
interests prevailed.
The Rio principles, signed in 1992, say states have the sovereign right to exploit their own
resources only insofar as this does not cause damage to the environment of other states or areas
beyond their jurisdiction. The last bit was ignored.
Obama and David Cameron do not want to go to Rio, as they fear they will be tarnished by the
failure of their predecessors — and the meeting’s unambitious goals.
In both cases this decision looks like a failure of leadership. The conference was called for by
developing countries, and plenty of their leaders are there. The old order is changing.
So Rio+20 starts amid treaty fatigue, disillusion, constitutional dysfunctionality in the US and, on
the British government’s part, an unprecedented loss of faith in the multilateral system. Why have
British officials turned up to so few sessions? Why on earth is Andrew Mitchell, the international
development secretary, not there?
International co-operation is all we have to stop the erosion of natural capital on which human life
ultimately depends, and for a time it worked. I am reminded by Stanley Johnson, conservationist
father of Boris, the mayor of London, of the extraordinary achievements that followed Stockholm
in 1972 — a wave of successful anti-pollution legislation and the creation of the UN environment
programme (UNEP), which, under tough leadership, took on and dealt with the stratospheric
ozone problem.
The danger is now that, amid pressure to do something for nothing, politicians will come up with
some misguided institutional change that will damage UNEP, which does good work. Rio+20
needs to consolidate what works and create confidence that we can begin to make up for 20
years of inaction. Given the growth in global population and consumption expected over the next
20 years, that is no small task.
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Times of Malta (Malta): Risk of failure staring at us
16 June 2012
The United Nations Environment Programme is one of the success stories of the 1972 UN
Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. Through its Mediterranean Action
Programme, UNEP successfully brought together the states bordering the Mediterranean. In
1976, they signed the Barcelona Convention for the Protection of the Mediterranean Sea against
Pollution.
Malta signed the convention and a number of protocols, among which a 1980 protocol against
pollution from land-based sources and activities, known as the LBS Protocol. One of the
commitments that Malta entered into in the 1980s was to ensure that sewage should be treated
before being discharged into the sea.
Malta was not in a position to honour its LBS Protocol commitments as the finance required to
carry out the infrastructural development was not available. It was only as a result of EU
accession that such funds were made available for the Xgħajra and the Gozo plants. (Funds
through the Italian protocol were used to construct the Mellieħa plant.) This has come about
because, in 1991, the EU adopted its Urban Wastewater Directive, which Malta had to implement
on EU accession.
Notwithstanding the availability of EU finance, it was only in 2011, when the third sewage
purification plant at Ta’ Barkat Xgħajra was commissioned, that Malta finally came in line with the
EU Urban Wastewater Directive. This is clearly evidenced by the latest positive results on the
quality of bathing waters along Malta’s coast. The waters off Wied Għammieq/Xgħajra, site of the
sewage outfall for over 75 per cent of Malta’s sewage, have registered the most notable quality
improvement.
While recognising that Malta has honoured long-standing commitments, it is unfortunate that the
long wait was not utilised to identify possible uses of recycled sewage on the basis of which the
available EU finance would have yielded long-term benefits. Lessons learnt from the Sant’Antnin
sewage purification plant at Marsascala seem to have been ignored.
The sewage purification plants have been designed as an end-of-pipe solution. Situated at the
point of discharge into the sea, the whole infrastructure is based on the wrong assumption that
sewage is waste. Its potential as a resource was ignored at the drawing board. In fact, I remember
quite clearly the statement issued by the Water Services Corporation in the summer of 2008 in
reply to prodding by Alternattiva Demokratika. WSC had then derided AD and stated that the
treated sewage effluent had no economic value.
Since then we have witnessed a policy metamorphosis. Water policy has slowly changed to
accept the obvious and unavoidable fact that sewage is a resource that should be fully utilised.
During the inauguration ceremony of the sewage purification plant at Il-Qammiegħ Mellieħa,
Minister Austin Gatt had indicated that the possible use of recycled sewage would be studied.
The decision to study the matter had been taken when the design of the infrastructure was long
determined. At that point, provision for the transfer of the recycled sewage from the point of
treatment to the point of potential use was not factored in. Substantial additional expenditure
would be required for this purpose. This is a clear case of gross mismanagement of public funds,
including EU funds.
It has been recently announced that a pilot project is in hand to examine the impacts of recharging
the aquifer with treated sewage effluent. This pilot project was listed in the First Water Catchment
Management Plan for the Maltese Islands as one of three measures submitted to the EU in 2011
in line with the requirements of the Water Framework Directive. The other two measures are the
efficient use of water in the domestic sector and using treated sewage effluent as a source of
second class water.
AD agrees that a successful pilot project on recharging the aquifer could lead to a long-term
sustainable solution of the management of water resources in Malta. This is, however, dependent
on the nature of the liquid waste discharged into the public sewer. I am informed that tests which
have been going on for some time at the WSC pilot plant at Bulebel industrial estate have
revealed specific chemicals that are being discharged into the public sewer and which are proving
difficult to remove from the treated sewage effluent.
The successful use of treated sewage effluent for a multitude of uses, including recharging the
aquifer, is ultimately dependent on a tough enforcement policy ensuring that only permissible
liquid waste is discharged into the public sewers. Recharging the aquifer with treated sewage
effluent while technically possible is very risky. On the basis of past performance, enforcement is
an aspect where the risk of failure stares us in the face!
The technical possibilities to address the water problem are available. What’s lacking is the
capability of the authorities to enforce the law. I look forward to the time when they will develop
their teeth and muscles. Only then will the risk be manageable.
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Saudi Gazette (Saudi Arabia): New GDP plus index shows lower growth for major
economics
18 June 2012
The "Inclusive Wealth Index" unveiled by the United Nations University’s International Human
Dimensions Program on Global Environmental Change (UNU-IHDP) and the United Nations
Environment Program (UNEP) and contained in its "Inclusive Wealth Report 2012" launched
Sunday at the side event at the Rio+20 Conference here.The idea of an expanded indicator
known as GDP+ to include GDP and natural capital will be on the agenda of the Rio+20 summit
from June 20 to June 22.
The 370-page report is a joint initiative of UNU-IHDP and UNEP in collaboration with the UNWater Decade Program on Capacity Development (UNW-DPC) and the Natural Capital
Project.The Report presents the inclusive wealth of 20 nations: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile,
China, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Japan, Kenya, Nigeria, Norway, the Russian
Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, US, United Kingdom and Venezuela. The countries
selected represent 56 percent of world population and 72 percent of world GDP, including high,
middle and low-income economies on all continents. A few countries were chosen based on the
hypothesis that natural capital is particularly important to their productive base - as in the case of
oil in Ecuador, Nigeria, Norway, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela; minerals in countries such as Chile;
and forests in Brazil. The Report also focused on the sustainability of current resource bases, and
does not analyze the rest of the 19th and 20th centuries, when many developed countries
following an accelerated growth path may have depleted natural capital. Scientists and
environment groups have been pressuring governments to include the value of their countries’
natural resources - and use or loss of them - into future measurements of economic activity to
show their true future growth prospects.The idea of an expanded indicator known as GDP+ to
include GDP and natural capital will be on the agenda of the Rio+20 summit from June 20 to June
22, when environment ministers and heads of state from around 200 countries will try to define
sustainable development goals.
The index shows the "inclusive wealth" of 20 nations, taking into account manufactured, human
and natural capital like forests, fisheries and fossil fuels, instead of relying only on gross domestic
product (GDP) as a growth indicator.The index assessed Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China,
Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Japan, Kenya, Nigeria, Norway, Russia, Saudi
Arabia, South Africa, United States, Britain and Venezuela, from 1990 to 2008.Together, these
countries accounted for almost three-quarters of global GDP over the 19-year period.The index
showed that 19 out of the 20 countries experienced a decline in natural capital. Six nations also
saw a decline in their overall inclusive wealth, putting them on an unsustainable track, UNEP said.
The index showed that even though China, the United States, Brazil and South Africa
experienced GDP growth, their natural capital was significantly depleted.When measured solely
by GDP, the economies of China, the United States, Brazil and South Africa grew by 422 percent,
37 percent, 31 percent and 24 percent respectively between 1990 and 2008.When their
performance was assessed by the IWI, China’s economy grew by 45 percent, the United States
by 13 percent, Brazil by 18 percent and South Africa decreased by 1 percent, mainly due to the
depletion of natural resources, UNEP and UNU-IHDP said in a statement.Six nations - Russia,
Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Colombia, South Africa and Nigeria - experienced negative growth
under the IWI, whereas it was positive under GDP measurements.Despite registering GDP
growth, China, the US, South Africa and Brazil were shown to have significantly depleted their
natural capital base, the sum of a set of renewable and non-renewable resources such as fossil
fuels, forests and fisheries. Over the period assessed, natural resources per-capita declined by 33
percent in South Africa, 25 percent in Brazil, 20 percent in the United States, and 17 percent in
China. Of all the 20 nations surveyed, only Japan did not see a fall in natural capital, due to an
increase in forest cover.
If measured by GDP, the most common indicator for economic production, the economies in
China, the US, Brazil and South Africa grew by 422 percent, 37 percent, 31 percent and 24
percent respectively in the period covered.
However, when their performance is assessed by the IWI, the Chinese and Brazilian economies
only increased by 45 percent and 18 percent. The United States’ grew by just 13 percent, while
South Africa’s actually decreased by 1 percent. "Rio+20 is an opportunity to call time on gross
domestic product as a measure of prosperity in the 21st century, and as a barometer of an
inclusive green economy transition," UN Undersecretary General and UNEP Executive Director
Achim Steiner said in a statement."It is far too silent on major measures of human well-being,
namely many social issues and the state of a nation’s natural resources," he added.
Professor Anantha Duraiappah, Report Director of the IWR and Executive Director at UNU-IHDP,
said "the importance of keeping an eye on the full range of a country’s capital assets becomes
particularly evident when population growth is factored in. When population change is included to
look at the IWI on a per-capita basis, almost all countries analyzed experienced significantly lower
growth. This negative trend is likely to continue for countries that currently show high population
growth, like India, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, if no measures are taken to increase the capital base
or slow down population growth."
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Universities World News (UK): New global universities partnership on the
environment launched
16 June 2012
A new Global Universities Partnership on Environment and Sustainability (GUPES) was officially
launched by the United Nations Environment Programme and participating universities this month,
in advance of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development – Rio+20 – starting in Rio de
Janeiro on 20 June.
The launch of GUPES at China’s Tongji University in Shanghai from 5-6 June was part of a joint
UN Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI) involving other UN bodies including UNESCO
and the UN Academic Impact.
GUPES will provide universities with a platform to interact with policy-makers and others within
the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and other international organisations as well as with one
another specifically on sustainability issues.
“There is a deliberate attempt within UNEP to focus on universities,” said Mahesh Pradhan, chief
of UNEP’s Environmental Education and Training Unit in Nairobi, who was at the Shanghai
launch.
Many of UNEP’s reports and scientific assessments “include a lot of inputs from universities
around the world, and they are relevant to the higher education sector, which also provides a
reality check.”
In particular, UNEP says it is looking to boost university networking through joint research
projects. “We are looking at South-South collaboration, focusing mainly on developing regions
such as Africa and Latin America and Asia.
“We have laid the foundation now,” Pradhan told University World News after the launch.
Knowledge hubs
For example, with countries like China investing heavily in Africa, there is a great deal of focus on
Africa’s resources and planning on how they can be better used and preserved.
African governments and GUPES universities set up a water resource management research
initiative last year with funding from the Chinese government, based at Tongji University.
‘Knowledge hubs’ such as GUPES would provide a clear point of contact for government and
higher education institutions – like the urban knowledge hub at Tongji and the Asia-Pacific Center
for Water Security, where UNEP partnered with Peking and Tsinghua universities.
The global GUPES network grew out of a network of 80 universities in Africa, called
Mainstreaming Environment and Sustainability in Africa (MESA). It has been credited with some
small but tangible changes, according to Pradhan. For example, Botswana did not have any
environmental programmes until a MESA masters was set up.
Newer university networks based on MESA are being developed in the Caribbean under the
Mainstreamimg Environment and Sustainability in the Caribbean (MESCA) partnership
programme, and in Asia-Pacific with the Regional University Consortium on Environment for
Sustainable development.
Rio+20
Athough GUPES held its first meeting in Nairobi in 2010, and another in Chile last year, it has
become more international. Rio+20 is being seen as an arena where universities can provide
leadership and influence policy on the sustainability agenda.
Delegates at the Shanghai launch said one of the major contributions of universities would be to
elaborate the concept, principles and parameters for a green economy within the context of
sustainable development and poverty eradication, one of the major agenda items of the Rio+20
Summit.
In particular, universities could play a critical role in developing metrics for measuring progress in
green economy initiatives, which are being discussed at Rio+20. For example, the government of
Barbados linked with a local university for a green economy scoping study and, using the main
findings, the university provided guidance for a national green economy initiative.
Universities have already been important providers of inputs to UNEP’s sourcebooks on the green
economy and on ecosystem management, which will lead to masters degrees at GUPES partner
universities on these issues, according to Pradhan.
Through GUPES, UNEP will support universities in developing sustainability curricula and lowcarbon (green) campuses, and in developing and delivering training courses for policy-makers on
environmental and sustainability issues and management. It will also work to strengthen regional
higher education networks.
Training for the green economy
Universities will also be hubs to engage with policy-makers on training. “It is critical that policymakers ensure long-term productive capacity by promoting a new cadre of engineers, technicians
and scientists sensitive to sound environmental development,” said Bindu Lohani, vice-president
of knowledge management and sustainable development at the Asian Development Bank, in a
keynote speech at the GUPES launch.
He pointed out that in many regions of the developing world and emerging Asia, huge benefits
have been reaped from knowledge and innovation produced elsewhere. “The next level of
development means we bring this expertise and innovation home.”
And he added: “Most importantly, it means we must constantly retool our education systems to
ensure graduates are ready for the task.”
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Vanguard (Nigeria): Ogoni residents flay FG over delay in UNEP report
implementation
18 June 2012
Ogoni have decried Federal Government’s delay in implementing the United Nations
Environment Programme, UNEP, report on pollution traced to oil exploration in their area.
Prayer session
In speeches, yesterday, at a special prayer session at All Saint’s Cathedral Church of Anglican
Communion, Bori, the Senator representing Rivers East Senatorial District, Senator Magnus
Abey and Chairman, Provisional Ruling Council of Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People,
MOSOP, Professor Ben Naanen, said they were disappointed that almost a year after UNEP
released its report on Ogoni, which called for long and short term remediation in the area, the
government was yet to act on it. They said the prayer session was held to call on God to intervene
on the issue.
Calls on Jonathan
Magnus said: “It is because of our disappointment that we stand here today, after a series of
efforts to prevail on our son, President Goodluck Jonathan. We call on him to keep his word and
keep the commitment of the Federal Government that the report will be implemented.
The state House of Assembly, Senate and House of Representatives had passed a resolution for
the implementation of the report. The person that now has the power to implement the report is
the President.”
He expressed worries, that as a Senator, he could not speak authoritatively on when the Federal
Government was going to implement the report. While urging the government to act to save the
people of the area from pollution brought about by oil exploration, Magnus recalled that the report
stressed on the presence ”of benzene in water underneath the ground in Ogali parts of Ogoni.”
Tasks FG
“Apart from the state government, that has been trucking water to the community, the Federal
Government had not responded to the plight of the people of the area. We are in a democracy
and I expected that the Federal Government would be running around to address the issue.
If they had done that, we would not have any reason to speak. The Federal Government set up a
committee headed by the Minister of Petroleum that said the report had been submitted to the
President. But nothing had been done.”
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All Africa: Nigeria- Rio+20 - Group Warns the Nigeria of Green Economy
17 June 2012
The group Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria has warned Nigerian
government not to "jump into the craze of a green economy" at the UN Conference on
Sustainable Development next week in Brazil.
The United Nations Environment Programme has said a green economy will result in better
human well being and social equity as well as reduce environmental risks and ecological
scarcities, environment minister Hadiza Mailafia said at a press conference in the week leading up
to Rio+20.
The Green Economy is meant to emphasise less use of fossil fuel and increasing dependence on
newer, cleaner energy sources.
Mailafia explained it was "low carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive."
But ERA/FoEN has called the green economy agenda "a commodification of nature and the rights
of local communities to democratic access to land, water resources, finance and infrastructure."
It said the green economy agenda served "only the interests of the multinationals thus worsening
poverty and leaving out sustainable challenges."
"Green economy, as proposed, does not recognize the fact that local people are the guardian of
land and must live within environmental limits," said ERA/FoEN executive director Nnimmo
Bassey.
The group also urged Nigeria to "take the lead in Africa by siding with the community voices," in its
move to wean the world off fossil fuel.
Nigeria's draft report to presented at the Rio+20 will note existing problems to be dealt with using
greener means, including food shortage, urban population growth, oceans and disasters, as well
as desertification.
Ignored issues
The group describes the UN's green economy was simply "nature for sale" and says it radically
departs from the Earth Summit 20 years ago when nations agreed on sustainable development as
a major plank to address environmental challenges.
It said the current agenda for a green economy ignored issues of water, food and seed
sovereignty critical in African and Latin America.
It "refuses to confront the real causes of unemployment and rise of militarization in the context of
resource scarcity and unequal power relations," ERA/FoEN added in a statement.
It said Nigeria and other African countries should instead demand thata countries of the global
North take responsibility for the social, economic and environmental impacts of their extractive
industry.
One solution proposed to deal with environmental pollution and forest loss is the Reduction of
Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD)--but ERA/FoEN said REDD only allowed
polluting nations to "buy their way out of reducing their greenhouse emissions at source."
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Times Of India: Desi mangoes to yield sweet dividends
17 June 2012
Mango growers of Malihabad have decided to diversify their business. The move will serve two
purposes. One, it would bring additional income to them, and secondly, help save the 'desi'
varieties of mango, most of which are on the brink of extinction.
The growers, who have been traditionally growing 'desi' varieties, have found the support of the
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which has imparted specialised training to them
in making mango products. The farmers now want to put it to commercial use by opening a unit
selling mango products. "We plan to open a unit where we can sell mango products. This will also
fetch us extra income," said a Malihabad-based farmer Surendra Kumar Rawat.
Since indigenous (desi) mango varieties are not as popular as the commercial ones like Dussehri
and Safeda, growers are fast switching over to economically profitable varieties. This does not
augur well for already threatened 'desi' varieties.
To conserve the mango diversity, the Central Institute of Subtropical Horticulture (CISH) has
helped famers from four villages of Malihabad -- Kasmandi Kalan, Mohammadnagar, Sarsandi
and Gopramau - to register a society to grow indigenous mangoes. More than 120 farmers from
these four villages are members of the society.
Apart from CISH, the UNEP is also helping farmers to conserve the threatened varieties of
mango. UNEP has been training growers in making products using the pulp of 'desi' varieties like
Zard ameen, Surkha, Chand gola, Tuhru, Mujjad ameen, Ramkela, Seb Jannat, Desi bambai,
Zardalu, Tukami heera, Deshi mitthu and hundred others. Most of these are of suckling variety
and used for making mango pickles and mango powder.
During the four-day training programme held in May last week, farmers learnt the ways to diversify
the use of suckling varieties. "We were being told to make drinks like 'panaa' and other mango
soft drinks which are popular in the market, besides making 'aamchur' (mango-powder)," said
Rawat.
The poor commercial prospects of 'desi' mangoes have forced farmers to abandon them. The
varieties do not fetch more than Rs 8-10 per kg and are hardly known in the market, even though
some of them are much easier to grow as compared to the commercial varieties. Most of the
times, they grow out of discarded seeds. But, most of these mangoes remain confined to orchards
as they are not popular.
However, efforts of UNEP and CISH can help preserve the indigenous mangoes.
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Other Environment News
BBC News (UK): Rio+20: Expert panel's call to 'seize moment'
19 June 2012
Governments must seize the "historic opportunity" of the Rio+20 summit to put the world on a new
sustainable course, says a panel of Nobel laureates, ministers and scientists.
Society is "on the edge of a threshold of a future with unprecedented environmental risks", they
conclude.
Their declaration is being presented to government delegations here.
In the negotiations, Brazil's plan to sign off a new package by Monday night failed, with rows on
several issues.
The Rio+20 meeting comes 20 years after the Earth Summit, and was called with the aim of
putting humanity on a more sustainable pathway, alleviating poverty while preserving the
environment.
The panel's declaration made clear that as far as they were concerned, the challenge is
immediate and significant.
"The combined effects of climate change, resource scarcity, loss of biodiversity and ecosystem
resilience at a time of increased demand, poses a real threat to humanity's welfare," they write.
"There is an unacceptable risk that human pressures on the planet, should they continue on a
business as usual trajectory, will trigger abrupt and irreversible changes with catastrophic
outcomes for human societies and life as we know it."
Green economy
An economic system that takes account of natural capital and promotes development that does
not destroy or degrade natural resources.
The group of more than 30 signatories includes Nobel laureates such as Carlo Rubbia, Walter
Kohn, Douglas Osheroff and Yuan Tseh Lee, as well as politicians including Brazil's Environment
minister Izabella Teixiera and Finland's recently ex-President Tarja Halonen.
Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former Norwegian prime minister and World Health Organization chief
who led the Brundtland Commission on sustainable development in 1987, was also on the panel.
Prof Will Steffen from the Australian National University, one of the leading scientists in the group,
said he hoped the declaration would make the implications of ministers' choices clear to them.
"There are intrinsic limits to the planet's capacity, and we must recognise that we're transgressing
them - in fact, have transgressed some of them," he told BBC News.
"Business as usual is not an option."
Continue reading the main story
What is the Rio summit about?
Tarja Halonen said the declaration could and should encourage leaders to raise their ambitions in
Rio.
"What this says to negotiators is they need to push harder, they must be encouraged to do more,"
she told BBC News.
"The most important thing we are telling them is the urgency."
The host government's delegation chief Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado told reporters on
Monday afternoon that he was "absolutely convinced" negotiators would finish talks within hours,
leaving little for the estimated 130 heads of state and government to do when they arrive on
Wednesday.
But according to sources, the discussions - from which reporters are excluded - saw heated
exchanges over a number of issues, including the green economy, fossil fuel subsidies and
sustainable development goals (SDGs).
EU ministers complained that the hosts had pushed their version of the text through without real
negotiation, and that the outcome was far too weak.
In a joint statement, EU Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik and Danish Environment
Minister Ida Auken said the EU "remains committed, for as long as it takes, to achieving concrete
and ambitious outcomes from the Rio+20 negotiations.
"We believe that in these final stages, our ministerial colleagues are best placed to reach a
political agreement with the substance needed to bring the world towards a sustainable future."
However, if significant problems are left for governments leaders to resolve, the EU's capacity will
be compromised by the fact that most European presidents and prime ministers are staying away
from Rio, preferring to remain at home to manage eurozone-related fallout from Sunday's Greek
election - though some are at the G20 summit in Mexico.
Direct endorsement
Brazilian President Dilma Roussef is expected to present the "final" Rio+20 agreement to G20
leaders in Mexico on Tuesday, providing it is finished.
That would allow world leaders not going to Rio, including US President Barack Obama, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and UK Prime Minister David Cameron, to give the document their
endorsement before the final round begins in Rio.
The fossil fuel subsidy issue was highlighted during the day by environmental campaigners who
directed an internet-based assault at delegates to both the Rio and G20 meetings, in the process
attempting to set a world record for the most uses of a Twitter hashtag - in this case,
#endfossilfuelsubsidies.
G20 leaders pledged three years ago to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, without setting
a timetable or a mechanism.
A report from the research and campaign group Oil Change International, released before the Rio
meeting, found that none of the G20 members had moved towards meeting their pledge.
Instead, more are simply not reporting their subsidies to the G20.
Estimates of the extent of subsidies run from about $400bn to about $1 trillion per year. Studies
suggest that eliminating them would make a substantial contribution to reducing greenhouse gas
emissions and lead to social benefits such as increased employment.
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CNN (US): CNN ECOSPHERE: Digital garden visualizes live discussion at Rio+20
15 June 2012
For three days from June 20, heads of states, business leaders and civil society representatives
will gather in Brazil to tackle the world's environmental problems at Rio+20, the United Nations
Conference on Sustainable Development.
CNN International is inviting you to join the global discussion on climate change by using
ECOSPHERE, a digital tool that will visualize Twitter conversations around the Earth Summit in a
stunning evolving environment.
The computer-generated "living sphere" is built using a state-of-the-art 3D platform called WebGL
-- users are recommended to access the web-based interactive ecosystem with the latest versions
of Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari (with WebGL enabled). If you don't have the latest browser
and graphics card you can still see ECOSPHERE at work in a live stream on the same site.
'Plant your thought, watch the discussion grow'
How to use CNN's Ecosphere
The ECOSPHERE takes thousands of tweets from around the world and visualizes them in real
time in the form of an evolving digital garden.
The process is simple: Anyone sending out tweets that they want included must add the #RIO20
hashtag. Submitted tweets are scanned for keywords and then grouped together into specific
topics or discussions.
Each tweet stimulates growth in a plant or tree in the garden, forming conversations. New
thoughts are planted as seeds, which will grow as similar ideas are shared. The size, color and
growth of these plants give users a real-time view of how the global discussion is evolving.
More from Road to Rio
At any time in the evolution of the ECOSPHERE, there are up to 30 plants growing on the surface
of the sphere, representing the 30 most popular keywords or topics.
Users can explore the lush 3D environment by zooming in on the different branches while a
separate time line documents the development of the discussions and the ECOSPHERE
environment itself.
The website was first launched in 2011 at the the United Nations Climate Change Conference in
Durban. It was recently awarded with gold and silver prizes at the ADC and Clio Awards in New
York, at the Montreux Festival, at the ADC of Europe Awards in Barcelona, as well as with the
Grand Prix of ADC Germany.
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Guardian (UK): Rio+20: Big businesses club together to demand water is given fair
value
18 June 2012
It's not often that you get 45 of the world's most powerful CEOs calling on governments to push up
the price of a key resource.
But this is exactly what happened today when companies ranging from Coca Cola, Nestle, Glaxo
SmithKline, Merck and Bayer signed a special communiqué at the Rio+20 conference on
sustainable development highlighting the urgency of the global water crisis and calling on
governments to step up their efforts and to work more actively with the private sector, civil society
and other stakeholders to address it.
Of particular importance is their call to establish a "fair and appropriate price" of water for
agriculture, industry, and people.
Gavin Power, deputy director the UN Global Compact, which is overseeing the collaboration, said
that it was in companies' long-term interest to preserve water supplies and that in many countries
water is not treated with respect because it is too cheap.
"For companies this is enlightened self interest," he told the Guardian. "Those who can afford
water should pay. Water is essentially over exploited because we are not valuing it as an
economic good. Introducing methodologies such as escalating tariffs, which some countries have
already done, will help in terms of using water intelligently, often for the first time.
"If there is not appropriate pricing, it becomes a free for all around water with all sectors of society
drawing from the same pool and that will lead to acute water shortages. What will tend to happen
is that companies will get the blame for over-extracting.
"Companies like certainty and in areas where there is no pricing they are very vulnerable. It could
potentially push up prices in some markets but better to pay more and have certainty of supply."
The communiqué from the CEOs calls on governments for the development of policies and
incentives to improve water productivity and efficiency in all sectors, especially agriculture and for
increasing investment in infrastructure.
It also calls for the sharing of policies, innovations, and tools among governments and other
stakeholders in order to scale-up good practice.
Power says the communiqué is not just about signing a piece of paper but commits the
companies to actively lobbying for change. Any company that does not engage in political
advocacy and report on progress will be asked to leave the group.
"What is unique here is that companies commit to responsible engagement in public policy," says
Power. "There are very clear guidelines around how companies engage, for example they need to
make sure these are inclusive by involving communities."
Not only will the companies have significant influence by banding together, but Power says
countries will need to listen to corporate concerns if they recognise the risk that companies will
either move their factories or not put in new investments if water supplies cannot be guaranteed.
"The last thing they want is for companies to pull up stakes or consider stopping investment," says
Power.
For their part, the companies commit to expanding their water-management practices, which
include actions such as setting targets on water efficiency and waste-water management in
factories and operations, working with suppliers to improve their water practices and partnering
with NGOs, UN agencies, governments and public authorities, investors, and other stakeholders
on water-related projects and solutions.
In a letter to government leaders who are taking part in the Rio+20 talks, the CEOs write: "Water
is well recognised as one of the critical sustainability challenges of the 21st century. Problems
related to water availability, quality, and sanitation are undermining development in many regions
of the world – exacting an enormous human cost while also undermining critical life-giving
ecosystems.
"At the same time, it is important to consider the strong linkages between water-related challenges
and other sustainability issues, including energy, arable land and food security. Indeed, water is a
profoundly cross-cutting issue. Given the scale of the global water challenge, we pledge to
expand and deepen our efforts.
"As we look beyond Rio+20, we commit to working more actively with governments and public
authorities – in responsible and transparent ways – to help solve the global water crisis.
"However, we feel strongly that as an international community we will not make meaningful
progress towards global water security without much greater action by governments to create an
enabling environment in the form of proactive funding and supportive policies in the coming years
and decades. While important strides have been made by some governments in recent years, we
believe much more could be done."
Approximately 800 million people in the world lack access to safe drinking water, and 2.5 billion
lack basic sanitation. The UN estimates that two thirds of humanity will live in water-stressed
regions by 2025 as a result of population growth, urbanisation and industrialisation trends and
climate change,.
All 45 chief executives are already signatories to the Global Compact's CEO Water Mandate, a
business-focused initiative launched by UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon in 2007.
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Forbes (UK): Rio+20: Are We There Yet?
17 June 2012
No, we are not yet there, but we may be getting closer. On Saturday, the Brazilians took over the
once again informal negotiations on the outcome document. The world is fortunate in this regard,
as Brazil has one of the best diplomatic corps in the business.
To move the process forward, Brazil tabled a new text for negotiation which – given the inability of
the governments to come up with agreed text in the 3rd PrepCom – was certain to both please
and upset various delegations. Perhaps the biggest concern by most is that it was less ambitious
than it could have been, but again this understandable give the deadlock in formal negotiations.
(ENB coverage)
Nevertheless, the Brazilians bravely rallied the troops by steering the initial discussion on four
priority topics – Sustainable Development Goals, reform of the international institutional
framework for sustainable development, Oceans, and the so-called Means of Implementation
(MOI), i.e. financing. Though by Saturday evening, they had not made a great deal of progress, it
appeared as if the Brazilians might be able to provide the leadership needed to bring the
Conference to a resolution on a set of outcomes.
Business starts talking at Rio+20
Among the many events which took place on Saturday, there were a growing number of events
for the business community, including a full day of the RIO+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum.
The Forum is as widely focused as the official negotiations with Saturday workshops on ‘business
ecosystems,’ human rights, energy efficiency, multi-stakeholder planning, food security and
sustainable agriculture, planning in innovation, the base of the pyramid, responsible investment,
sustainable cities, sustainable water in textiles, corporate sustainability management and
reporting, the green economy and reporting, board oversight of sustainability, renewable energy,
sustainability standards, clean energy, and water conservation. And all of these took place before
the lunch break!
One of these events was organised by the Business Call to Action and explored “Profits and
Opportunities at the Base of the Pyramid.” Here was business coming together with other
stakeholders to discuss business models which can alleviate poverty among the poorest of the
poor. Clearly business can be part of the solution here.
Also on Saturday, 37 CEOs from the finance sector announced their commitment to natural
capital in the launch of a most interesting Natural Capital Declaration. This includes the following:
“Build an understanding of the impacts and dependencies of Natural Capital relevant to our
operations, risk profiles, customer portfolios, supply chains and business opportunities;
“Support the development of methodologies that can integrate Natural Capital considerations into
the decision making process of all financial products and services – including in loans,
investments and insurance policies.”
While our governments negotiate, business commits
In addition to the Natural Value Declaration, the UN has already registered dozens of voluntary
commitments. From the private sector, these include public commitments from ABB, ArcelorMittal,
BASF, Bridgestone, DuPont, Eskom, GDF Suez, Holcim, KPMG, Nike, Procter & Gamble,
Sumitomo Chemical, and Unilever. Expert more corporate commitments in the coming week.
It looks as if business is also getting there.
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Fox News (US): Rio +20 -- saving the Earth, one resort meeting at a time
18 June 2012
Delegates from around the world will descend on Rio de Janeiro, this week for a major United
Nations meeting on the environment. Dubbed "Rio+20," the event, will commemorate the 20th
anniversary of the first “Earth Summit.”
But, you might say, didn’t 15,000 or so of these same bureaucrats and environmental activists
gather at another world class beach resort—in Durban, South Africa— just six months ago to
discuss more-or-less the same issues? Why the need for another meeting so soon?
Good question.
The largely redundant Rio meeting provides the perfect occasion to reassess American taxpayer
support for several “Green” non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have been undermining
US policies and priorities for well over two decades.
Under the rubric of “Corporate Social Responsibility” many Green groups have asserted that
companies have “triple-bottom-line” obligations. This theory insists companies must deliver (1)
economic, (2) social and (3) environmental “returns” to justify the theoretical “license to operate”
granted to them by society.
One Green NGO, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), will promote its “Report or Explain” policy
in Rio. It demands that private companies “report their sustainability performance or explain why if
they do not.” GRI wants governments “to provide regulation [emphasis added] and policy that
promotes this kind of innovation and creativity.”
In other words, GRI wants even more onerous and expensive legal requirements loaded on
businesses.
Another powerful Green NGO travelling to Rio is the glamour-laden World Wildlife Fund. Its board
members include actor Leonardo di Caprio and Hollywood’s new chief lobbyist, former Senator
Christopher Dodd.
“We need Rio+20 to deliver new environmental indicators so that we can measure what we
treasure."
- Jim Leape, WWF Director General
WWF is pushing to redefine economic growth. According to WWF Director General Jim Leape,
“We need Rio+20 to deliver new environmental indicators so that we can measure what we
treasure. We need indicators that go far beyond GDP, measuring environmental quality, nature
and biodiversity, and social stability and wellbeing.” WWF also wants to change the way economic
growth is measured so that the “value of natural capital…is included in national accounts and
corporate balance sheets.”
At the original Rio summit in 1992, just months after the collapse of the Soviet empire, WWF
representatives argued that “free market capitalism will not solve the world’s environmental
problems.” Despite evidence to the contrary—nations with free markets have the highest
environmental standards in the world—WWF has used this assertion to carry out a 20 year
assault on markets and free trade.
Both GRI and WWF call for a global “green economy” and propose several mechanisms to control
and manipulate innovation, commerce, and trade.
For starters they want all tradable goods “certified” to ensure they meet “sustainability” standards.
Those standards, of course, would be set by these very same groups. That would give groups
such as WWF tremendous influence over the global trade of commodities such fish, paper, cocoa,
tropical woods, beef, palm oil and more.
Indeed, last week in Washington, WWF partnered with the Consumer Goods Forum to urge major
Western retailers to procure only “sustainably-sourced” palm oil. The utilization of these standards
will raise consumer costs and hurt small farmers throughout the world who need unencumbered
access to markets. In fact, denying small producers access to world markets would well lead to
more environmental damage and increased poverty than would leaving them alone – hence the
insidious nature of WWF’s calls for certification.
To add insult to injury, American taxpayer money (through USAID) is occasionally given to some
of these groups. And agribusinesses in the European Union have used pressure tactics by WWF
and other green groups as camouflage to protect themselves from foreign competition.
GRI and WWF are warning their donors that the Rio+20 Summit might fail. But given the antigrowth agenda they will promote there, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.
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Telegraph (UK): Rio+20: The world is getting too heavy finds new league table of
fattest countries on Earth
18 June 2012
Researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) estimated that the
adult human population now weighs in at 287 million tonnes, 15 million of which is due to the
overweight and 3.5 million due to obesity.
Most of the ‘extra weight’ caused by the overweight and obese is concentrated in the rich part of
the world, with the US supporting the most extra flesh and the UK coming in at 18th, despite our
small population.
The study says that the world’s ‘spare tyre’ from consuming too much is not only shortening the
lives of those individuals but driving climate change and destruction of the environment. The study
will be launched at the largest-ever United Nations conference, Rio+20, where 194 nations are
working towards a series of new international agreements on sustainable development.
The new research, published in the journal BMC Public Health, drew up a ‘league table’ of the
‘fattest’ nations that have the biggest share of obesity.
The United States is the heaviest nation on Earth if you are only weighing adult humans. While
the average body mass globally was 62kg, North Americans weigh in at 80.7kg. Despite only
making up five per cent of the world’s population, the US accounts for almost a third of the world’s
weight due to obesity. In contrast Asia has 61 per cent of the world’s population but only 13 per
cent of the world’s weight due to obesity.
The UK adult population is 13.8kg fatter than the rest of the world, with an average adult body
mass of 75.8kg. Despite being only one per cent of the world population, the UK takes up almost
3 per cent of the extra weight due to the overweight and obese.
Professor Ian Roberts, who led the research at LSHTM, said ‘fatness’ is just as much a threat to
the environment as over population.
“People tend to think the main threat to the environment is the growing population caused by poor
mothers in Africa having too many babies. But this measure of biomass is more relevant.
“In considering how many people the world can support, it is not how many mouths we have to
feed, it is how much flesh we have to feed.”
If all countries had the same average body mass as the USA the total human biomass would
increase by 58 million tonnes – this is the equivalent of an additional 935 million people.
Increasing mass means higher energy requirements, because it takes more energy to move a
heavy body. Even at rest a bigger body burns more energy. This means that ultimately heavier
countries are using more resources and driving deforestation and the release of greenhouse
gases that drive climate change.
The researchers put countries in a league table according to how much extra flesh they support.
The US came first in the table, using 243 kilocalories per person per day to maintain the
overweight and obese, followed by Kuwait, Croatia, Qatar and Egypt. The UK came 18th in the
table, using 150 excess kcals per person per day. Greece and Cyprus are the only other countries
in Europe that use more calories per day on maintaining people who are overweight or obese.
Bhutan is the ‘thinnest’ country on Earth, using just nine extra kcals per person per day.
At Rio+20, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, world leaders will discuss a series of
new international agreements, including plans to limit population growth and ensure access for all
to sustainable food, energy and water.
Prof Roberts pointed out that people do not necessarily eat more than they used to 50 years ago
but we move a lot less because of the use of machines.
“We do not move our bodies so much but we are biologically programmed to eat,” he said.
He said one of the key ways the rich world can reduce obesity is to make it easier to walk and
cycle in cities.
He recommended the world goes on a diet by introducing health programmes to reduce obesity
and making sure that production of energy and food uses less resources.
“Everyone accepts that population growth threatens global environmental sustainability – our
study shows that population fatness is also a major threat,” he said. “Unless we tackle both
population and fatness our chances are slim.”
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Bangkok Post (Thailand): RIO+20: Reshaping how we do business and how we live
18 June 2012
The global spotlight will be shining on Rio de Janeiro from June 20-22 when the Brazilian city
stages the Rio+20 conference on the environment. The name refers to the UN conference that
was held 20 years ago in Rio. The 20th anniversary event is expected to attract more than 130
national leaders plus 50,000 business and academic representatives all working to create a new
blueprint for a "green economy" and a stronger collaboration for global governance.
The work has come a long way: Rio+20 is the sequel to two predecessors _ Stockholm in 1972
and Rio in 1992. At the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, state leaders agreed to a blueprint on sustainable
development called Agenda 21. They also launched three important multilateral environmental
agreements on biodiversity, climate change and desertification.
Why does Rio+20 matter? In the future, the way we consume and dispose of water, food and
energy has to change. If not, our future generations will be forced to live in a degraded and
destructive environment and society.
Even now, we already see the impact on the earth, with changing weather patterns as a result of
greenhouse gas emissions. More extreme weather has resulted in greater business disruption,
variance in crop production and injury and death in various parts of the earth. Our global economy
has focused on consumerism and capitalism that intensifies the greenhouse gas emissions,
pollution and societal gaps. In order to sustain this planet and people, we must act together now.
"Act", "together" and "now" are the three key words that represent the spirit of Rio+20.
Imagine a day where business projects are decided not simply with return on investment as the
main criterion. A retailer, for example, must be able to explain to consumers, financial backers and
governments about how the poultry sold in its supermarkets were raised, fed and processed. The
retailers will have to keep consumers informed not just about the value-chain of the chicken farm,
but also the chicken feed.
Where did the feed grain come from? Did it come from an area at risk of deforestation? Did
fertilisers and pesticides affect the soil? Was the water managed and monitored properly? How
was water contaminated with pesticides treated? What about the well-being of the grain farmers
and their families? Are they suffering from any chemical impact?
Yes, we are now dealing with complex issues _ the impact of entire product life cycles will soon be
subject to regulations, reporting, audits and reviews. More complex and stringent sustainability
regulations may be one of the most critical issues facing chief executives in the future.
Reducing water and energy consumption isn't simply an issue of regulatory compliance or
corporate reputation. After all, in a world of declining resources, financial performance and cost
are directly tied to the efficiency of one's production processes.
While Rio+20 is not expected to result in any legally binding treaties, the event will focus on
targets for consumption and production and how to monitor progress. Eventually, this movement
will spread to businesses and consumers alike.
Why do we need an event such as Rio+20? Sustainability issues are highly complex,
interconnected and dynamic. No one can solve them alone. Rio+20 is about collaboration _
among policymakers, nations, businesses and people.
The UN Environment Programme recently warned that nature is being stretched beyond its
biophysical limits, which may cause sudden, irreversible and potentially catastrophic changes. Our
global population of 7 billion (and growing fast) means growing demand for water, food and
energy. This paradoxical future is the heart of the conversation at Rio+20.
What issues will Rio+20 tackle? There will be proposals to end hunger and make the transition to
sustainable agriculture and food systems, to protect our oceans and to better manage our forests.
Other proposals will consider the way we use and manage water resources and renewable
energy.
Social proposals will be addressed at the People Summit, a parallel conference. It will focus on
social proposals to promote measures of well-being beyond gross domestic product, to rethink
and change world governance and how to sustain and maintain life on earth.
In the nutshell, Rio+20 is the global stage for governments and businesses to come together and
agree on what needs to be done to address global sustainability. It still has a long way to go.
Let's see how all this unfolds over the coming days. Soon, you will see the second article about
what was being discussed in more detail. Meanwhile, stay tuned.
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Asahi Shimbun (Japan): RIO+20: Tiny island off Canadian west coast stimulates
thinking about environmental issues
18 June 2012
Few Japanese had likely ever heard of this part of British Columbia until mid-April, when news of
a Harley-Davidson with Miyagi Prefecture license plates washing ashore made headlines.
Peter Mark, 32, came across the motorcycle while riding his dune buggy along the coast. What
surprised him were the Japanese characters.
Haida Gwaii is about two hours by turboprop from Vancouver.
Mark reckons that if the Harley could make the journey across the vastness of the Pacific Ocean,
there is no reason to discount theories that people from Japan also moved to the island centuries
ago by drifting on rafts or other forms of seaworthy craft.
There is another, more current reason to visit the island, especially with the United Nations
Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20 summit, scheduled to begin in Rio de Janeiro
from June 20.
At the Earth Summit in Rio 20 years ago, when it was formally known as the United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development, a 12-year-old girl gave a speech that left the
audience of government officials and other participants in silence because she touched upon
some of the core reasons for environmental protection.
In a part of her speech, she said, "At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us how to behave in
the world. You teach us not to fight with others; to work things out; to respect others; to clean up
our mess; not to hurt other creatures; to share, not be greedy. Then why do you go out and do the
things you tell us not to do?"
That girl, Severn Cullis-Suzuki, now lives on Haida Gwaii, with her husband and two children,
aged two-and-a-half years and four months.
The now 32-year-old said now that she has children of her own she better understands why the
adults in the audience 20 years ago were so shocked by her speech.
Severn is a fourth-generation Japanese-Canadian. Her father is David Suzuki, the noted biologist.
While she only knows a few words of Japanese, she has high regard for Japanese culture and the
concept of "mottainai," which means not to waste anything.
At the same time, she admits to having been shocked at the waste she came across when she
visited Japan.
One scene that Severn remembers vividly is a garbage can overflowing with disposable
chopsticks. Having been told that most of the chopsticks were made in Canada, Severn said she
felt a huge gap between that reality and the Japanese tradition of expressing gratitude toward the
bounties of nature.
She moved to Haida Gwaii from Vancouver about four and a half years ago after marrying a
native islander. She was not only attracted by the nature on the island, but the sustainable lifestyle
of the islanders which was based on wisdom handed down over generations.
One example of that lifestyle is the seaweed on which herring have laid eggs. The herring are
forced into waters where the seaweed can be found so they can lay eggs. However, island
residents also strictly follow the rule of the native people to only harvest what they need. There are
strict rules governing where, when and how much of a certain type of seafood can be taken.
Severn explained that lifestyle in harmony with nature was the only way the native people
managed to survive. She added that while it may not be possible for people in Japan, the United
States and China to follow that example, they could still think about whether they were consuming
too much.
There is a lot of wildlife on the island. Bears and deer roam by roads, and seals and sea
elephants swim in the ocean.
The Haida Watchmen Program relies on volunteers to ensure that no vandalism occurs at sites of
native Haida villages. The name of the program comes from the human figures that are often
found on totem poles made on the island.
Sean Young, 38, is a volunteer. He said the Ainu people of Japan have a similar culture as the
Haida in that they only take from nature what a person and his or her family needs.
In the late 19th century, about 90 percent of the Haida tribe died as a result of contracting
smallpox brought to the island by Westerners.
Now, totem poles found in old village sites have deteriorated and are often covered with moss.
Severn will attend the Rio+20 conference as a member of a nongovernmental organization.
She said that like Haida Gwaii, Japan is also an island nation. In that sense, she said Japanese
should not forget that both locations serve as symbols of the Earth because with the limited
amount of land, water and air there is really no place to flee.
In the native language, Haida Gwaii means "islands of the people."
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Kaieteur News (Guyana): Hope fades for benefits from Rio+20 Earth Summit
17 June 2012
Weaknesses of small states in dealing with global environmental issues that mortally affect them
have become very evident in the pre-Conference negotiations for the UN Conference on
Sustainable Development being held in Rio in Brazil from 20-23 June.
Small states have few experts in this area and even fewer experts who are also capable
negotiators. Consequently, many small states – including some in the Caribbean – have either
been under-represented at the pre-Conference negotiations, or they have not been represented at
all. In the result, small states issues may be raised at the Conference and in its margins, but they
will not get the attention that they urgently need now. Indeed, the pre-Conference negotiations
demonstrate that the Conference is likely to witness a backtracking by developed countries on
firm commitments they gave in Rio, 20 years ago at the first Earth Summit especially financing.
Small islands and countries with low-lying coastal areas are now at high risk from global warming
and sea-level rise. This has been repeated so often that even the people of small states seem to
have become immune to the catastrophic effects that they are facing. It seems that almost every
government in the world is waiting for disaster before they act.
It is almost as if, at secret meetings in closeted rooms, big decision-makers have taken the view
that small countries are expendable, because their populations are tiny and their contribution to
global trade, global finance, global technology are so small as not to matter, whereas addressing
their problems – albeit caused by the polluters of the globe – is too costly and not worth it. Small
states may be swiftly becoming collateral damage even though the large polluting countries of the
world dare not say so.
This is worsened by conditions in the world economy that has given new rise to nationalism and
protectionism by large countries even as they coerce smaller ones into opening up their
economies.
If we are to measure the commitment of large polluting countries by their deeds, the worrying
signs are everywhere. They have already reneged on the delivery of financing for mitigating
climate change, and in the pre-Rio+20 negotiations, they have backtracked on fundamental
principles agreed 20 years ago.
Yet, apart from rhetoric, no red flag is being raised by governments of small countries collectively.
They have not moved their words into action. There appears to be a collective sitting on hands,
waiting for the polluting countries to be driven, by their own consciences, into action. To be fair,
however, it could also simply be the case that, overwhelmed by the lack of expertise and
resources, the authorities in small island states are paralyzed.
But, by taking no collective action, governments of small countries are in danger of being complicit
with the polluting nations in neglecting their own plight. If they wait too late to wake up to the
absolute necessity of defending their own existence, not even survival might be possible.
This may all sound like hyperbole and exaggeration. But the facts debunk those likely assertions.
Well-publicized, authoritative studies show that sea-level rise will not only erode coastal areas
affecting beach tourism, it will also dislocate hundreds of thousands of people from their homes,
and it will also adversely affect food production.
This reality strengthens the case for small states to fashion joint machinery to fight their corner in
these negotiations. Many of the issues that confront them are sufficiently common for joint
positions to be taken and a mandate given for joint negotiations.
The first Earth Conference was held in 1992. In the 20 years that have elapsed groupings of
small states, such as the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), have had time in which to develop
joint machinery for research and bargaining on their collective behalf, especially as the global
environmental situation worsened before their very eyes, hurting their countries.
There has been a brave attempt by the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) which is a group
of representatives of small countries at the UN to forge and argue a collective position. That is
good as far as it goes. But, lacking in resources, a firm mandate from governments and agreed
machinery to bargain collectively, AOSIS is simply a moral force. And, it is a moral force that is
reliant on non-governmental organizations to provide the small states with the studies and
information on issues that affect them.
Small states, should not expect transforming benefits from the Rio+20 Conference. The only
representatives likely to leave Rio satisfied are those who are the major polluters, and who benefit
from continuing business as usual. It is relatively easy to pick out which countries those are by
the leaders who are not attending. Among the notable absentees will be leaders of countries that
are among the world’s top ten polluting nations. They are David Cameron of Britain, Stephen
Harper of Canada, Angela Merkel of Germany, and, at the time of writing, Barack Obama of the
US.
While France’s new President, Francois Hollande, has said he would attend, he holds out no hope
for any advance. He is right in his assessment that governments of the developed world are now
preoccupied with the effects of the Eurozone debt crisis and the real risk of its knock-on effects in
other major economies that are exposed to the banking system in Euro currency countries. The
chances of them taking radical decisions and making progressive commitments that are
necessary for global sustainable development are nil.
None of this is to say that there have not been achievements since 1972 when the environment
first became an issue. More than 500 environmental agreements have been signed. If signed
agreements show progress then progress has occurred, but which small state can monitor all
those agreements, and how many of these agreements have addressed the problems of small
countries meaningfully? The two big agreements, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change remain suppressed.
Rio+20 will undoubtedly produce an “outcomes document”, but it will have little for small countries
for whom sustainable development is most urgently required.
They should move now to establish strong, joint negotiating machinery that cannot be ignored in
any future forum on this issue so vital to their survival. CARICOM should lead the way.
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Tunis Live (Tunisia): Tunisian President Marzouki Cancels Trip to Rio + 20
Sustainable Development Conference
17 June 2012
In a communiqué released yesterday, President Marzouki announced that he had cancelled his
trip to Brazil for the Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.
Marzouki had accepted the invitation to the conference in late April from the Brazilian Minister of
Foreign Affairs Antonio de Aquiar Patriota, but decided to cancel plans due to, “the current
situation in the [Tunisian] country.”
The “current situation” may be referring to the recent curfew in Tunis and various other
governorates, the unrest across the country which preceded the curfew, or possibly the call earlier
this month from Abou Ayoub – a Tunisian Muslim scholar – for a “holy war” against the
government and more specifically against Marzouki, himself.
The Rio + 20 conference will take place from June 20th to the 22nd, with the goal of uniting world
leaders from governments, the private sector, and NGOs to, “discuss how to reduce poverty,
advance social equity, and ensure environmental protection on an increasingly crowded planet,”
the summit’s website reports. President Marzouki has sent a letter of apology to Brazil’s President
Dilma Rosav for his cancellation.
In the same communiqué, it was announced that the president also cancelled a trip to Senegal on
June 19th. The trip would have continued a series of meetings between Senegalese and Tunisian
leaders to develop stronger bilateral trade, including the introduction of a direct sea-link.
President Marzouki, who was exiled in France during the Ben Ali regime, enjoyed approval ratings
of 78% in April, but nonetheless has been continuously faced with mounting challenges.
Next March, Tunisia will witness the first presidential elections under the country’s new
constitution, which is to be written and adopted prior to the event. Meanwhile, many Tunisian
citizens are becoming increasingly impatient.
“I keep telling the people, you can’t expect to eat the fruits of the tree [right away]. You have to
plant it and wait. They say okay, we understand, but we want them now,” Marzouki said in an
interview with the Guardian.
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Guardian (UK): Rio+20 Earth summit: scientists call for action on population
14 June 2012
The Rio+20 Earth summit must take decisive action on population and consumption regardless of
political taboos or it will struggle to tackle the alarming decline of the global environment, the
world's leading scientific academies warned on Thursday.
Rich countries need to reduce or radically transform unsustainable lifestyles, while greater efforts
should be made to provide contraception to those who want it in the developing world, the
coalition of 105 institutions, including the Royal Society, urged in a joint report.
It's a wake-up call for negotiators meeting in Rio for the UN conference on sustainable
development.
The authors point out that while the Rio summit aims to reduce poverty and reverse the
degradation of the environment, it barely mentions the two solutions that could ease pressure on
increasingly scarce resources.
Many in the scientific community believe it is time to confront these elephants in the room. "For
too long population and consumption have been left off the table due to political and ethical
sensitivities. These are issues that affect developed and developing nations alike, and we must
take responsibility for them together," said Charles Godfray, a fellow of the Royal Society and
chair of the working group of IAP, the global network of science academies.
In a joint statement, the scientists said they wanted to remind policymakers at Rio+20 that
population and consumption determine the rates at which natural resources are exploited and
Earth's ability to meet the demand for food, water, energy and other needs now and in the future.
The current patterns of consumption in some parts of the world were unsustainable. A sharp rise
in human numbers can have negative social and economic implications, and a combination of the
two causes extensive loss of biodiversity.
The statement follows a hard-hitting report by the Royal Society in April that called for rebalancing
of resources to reduce poverty and ease environmental pressures that are leading to a more
unequal and inhospitable future.
By 2050, the world's population is projected to rise from seven billion to between eight and 11
billion. Meanwhile consumption of resources is rising rapidly as a result of a growing middle class
in developed countries and the lavish lifestyles of the very rich across the planet.
"We are living beyond the planet's means. That's scientifically proven," said Gisbet Glaser of the
International Council for Science, who cited research on ocean acidification, climate change and
biodiversity loss. "We're now at a point in human history where we risk degrading the life support
system for human development."
The scientific academies stressed that poverty reduction remain a priority, but said action to
promote voluntary family planning through education, better healthcare and contraception can aid
that process.
"The P-word is not talked about because people are scared of being politically incorrect or
alarmist. Even so, the the population dialogue should not just be about sheer numbers of people –
that type of dialogue leads to finger pointing," said Lori Hunter, a demographer who was in Rio for
a side-event. She said the picture was more complex and touched upon the need to consider
factors that shape fertility decision-making. She mentioned that in some areas, scarcity of natural
resources leads to larger families as families need labor. There are also high levels of unmet
demand for contraception in many regions of the world.
"You need to push the levers that are shaping family size," said Hunter. "Basically, you can't save
the environment without reproductive health policies and programmes." She also mentioned that
processes such as migration, urbanisation, aging are important in considering the environmental
impacts of future consumption.
The draft negotiating text of Rio+20 mentions the need to change "unsustainable patterns of
production and consumption" but the US wants to delete passages that suggest developed
countries should take the lead.
There is also little recognition in the text that economic growth might be limited by ecological
factors. This is partly because although scientists talk about "global boundaries", there is no
agreement on where they might lie.
The stock taking of global inventory is still a work in progress, but it may speed up after the launch
on Thursday of a new scientific initiative – Future Earth – that brings together academies, funds
and international institutions to co-design research related to sustainable food production and
changes to the climate, geosphere and biosphere.
The picture might become clearer if proposals at Rio+20 to beef up the UN environment
programme are accepted, along with a plan for a "regular review of the state of the planet."
Glaser, who is the lead negotiator for the scientific community at Rio+20, said there was still no
agreement on the 80-page text.
"They're negotiating words rather than the issues behind the words. I'm afraid that if there's no
miracle, there'll be a relatively low common denominator that just drops all the main areas of
contention."
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Independent Online (South Africa): Rio+20 summit to broach climate woes
14 June 2012
Twenty years after the first Earth Summit, a renewed bid to rally the world behind a common
environmental blueprint opened on Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro against a backdrop of discord
and economic gloom.
Kicking off the so-called Rio+20 summit, Dilma Rousseff, president of host nation Brazil, called on
“all countries of the world to commit” to reaching an accord that addresses the most pressing
environmental and social woes.
The UN conference, which marks the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit - a landmark 1992
gathering that opened the debate on the future of the planet and its resources - is the largest ever
organised, with 50,000 delegates.
Around 115 leaders are expected to attend the main event itself on June 20-22 but a series of
conferences grouping businesses, environmental groups and non-governmental organisations are
being held in advance.
This frenzy of contacts and deal-making could well be more fruitful than the UN Conference on
Sustainable Development itself, analysts say, mindful of the failures of the 2009 climate summit in
Copenhagen.
Behind the scenes, there is incipient panic over the draft summit communique after three rounds
of preliminary informal negotiations left more than 75 percent of the paragraphs still to be agreed.
The charter is supposed to sum up the challenges and spell out pledges to nurture the oceans,
roll back climate change, promote clean growth and provide decent water, sanitation and
electricity for all.
The biggest divergences lie in four areas, according to sources close to the negotiations.
They include action on climate change, protecting the oceans and achieving food security, and
whether “Sustainable Development Goals” should replace the Millennium Development Goals
when these objectives expire in 2015.
The UN has not ruled out the possibility of intense negotiations continuing right up to the leaders'
summit that will be attended by French President Francois Hollande and Chinese Premier Wen
Jiabao, among others.
Nations all agree that the summit comes at a turning point, and its outcome is crucial.
But privately delegates expressed doubt that a consensus on how to tackle these problems will be
reached while many governments remain focused on the economic crisis.
The European Union will fight to the last for credible commitments in Rio but it will be “very, very
difficult”, the bloc's environment commissioner Janez Potocnik said in Brussels on Wednesday.
“After tough pre-negotiations in New York, unfortunately not enough progress has been made so
we have some intense days ahead of us in Rio,” the commissioner said.
Privately, EU negotiators were more forthright. “It will be very, very difficult to draw up concrete
measures and fix dates,” one told AFP.
“No promises were made during lead-up negotiations,” said another. “There was nothing
concrete, just a lot of blah-blah-blah and statements of intention.”
French dreams of creating a World Environment Organisation, for instance, are not expected to
see the light of day. “At best there'll be a bigger role for the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP),” said a senior European official.
A report released ahead of the gathering described an urgent need to tackle population growth
and voracious consumption that are placing Earth's resources under intolerable strain.
According to UN figures, global food demand will double by 2030 and energy consumption will
soar by as much as 45 percent, putting mounting pressure on finite resources amid growing social
inequality, water shortages and global warming.
Notably absent from the summit will be US President Barack Obama, who is facing a tough reelection race at home, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The United States will be represented in Rio by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
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Reuters: Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative: Capital markets leaders explore
sustainability at Rio+20 side-event
14 June 2012
Over 20 capital markets leaders from developed and emerging markets are due to convene
ahead of the upcoming the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), in
order to find ways to increase the sustainability of listed companies.
The leaders will meet as part of the Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE) Global Dialogue, taking
place on 18 June at the Windsor Barra Hotel, Rio de Janeiro. The meeting comes ahead of
Rio+20 which will gather global policy-makers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, between 20-22 June.
Participants include the Chairperson of the Brazilian SEC, the Commissioner of the Securities and
Futures Commission of Korea, CEOs and high-level representatives from BM&FBovespa,
Egyptian Stock Exchange, Istanbul Stock Exchange, Johannesburg Stock Exchange, and
NASDAQ OMX, along with major investors and asset managers from Aviva in the UK to the
Public Investment Corporation of South Africa.
The Sustainable Stock Exchanges initiative is co-organized by four United Nations organizations:
the UN Conference on Trade and Development, the UN Global Compact, the UN Environment
Programme Finance Initiative, and the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment.
Launched in 2009 by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, the SSE has become an international
forum for regulators, exchanges and investors to deliberate on issues of sustainability.
The 2012 dialogue will focus on creating a roadmap for enhancing corporate transparency, and
ultimately performance, on environmental, social and governance issues amongst companies
listed on leading stock exchanges.
The meeting comes amid an increased political momentum on the move for achieving a
consistent global approach on corporate sustainability reporting. Recent discussions have, and
continue, to take place among governments on whether to include a clause on corporate
sustainability reporting within the outcome document for Rio+20.
The push also comes from an Aviva led coalition of investors with assets under management of
approximately USD $2 trillion. The coalition is calling all governments at Rio+20, to commit to
develop a policy framework to further corporate sustainability disclosure amongst listed
companies.
The dialogue follows in the footsteps of a recent report by the Sustainable Stock Exchange
initiative in which it is revealed that the majority of exchange entities would welcome a global
approach to consistent and material corporate sustainability reporting. Based on a survey of 27 of
the globe's largest exchanges, the 2012 Sustainable Stock Exchanges: A Report on Progress
captures the headway made by exchange entities over the last years in promoting corporate
sustainability.
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All Africa: Rio+20 Must Commit to Transforming the Global Food System
14 June 2012
On June 20-22, world leaders and thousands of others from around the globe will gather for the
Rio+20 Earth Summit. Their charge is to forge high-level political agreement for how nations of the
world will work together to reduce poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental
protection.
Twenty years after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de
Janeiro, the world is confronted by food insecurity and climate change, and sustainable agriculture
is more important than ever to addressing these challenges. It is time to find new solutions for how
we produce, share and consume the food, fibre and bioenergy that sustains our societies and
provides livelihoods.
To be effective, global policy dialogues need a solid scientific evidence basis. This is why the
independent Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change was convened in 2011.
In March, my Commission colleagues and I released a report, Achieving Food Security in the
Face of Climate Change, which proposes specific policy responses to these global challenges
and highlights opportunities under the mandates of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Group of 20 (G20) nations.
The Commission has also created an animated video to illustrate why and how humanity must
transform the way food is produced, distributed and consumed in response to changes in climate,
global population, eating patterns and the environment.
The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) has
produced a short photofilm that illustrates ways people around the world are already taking
actions that align with the Commission's recommendations.
Over the coming days, venues all over the city of Rio de Janeiro will host a wide range of events
that will bring together people working on food security and environmental sustainability. Between
June 11-15, I will be joining hundreds of scientists at the ICSU Forum on Science, addressing the
issue of "What is the state of the Earth system?", in which I reiterate the key role of
interdisciplinary science and innovation in the transition to sustainable development, a green
economy and poverty eradication.
My Commission colleague, Dr Adrian Fernandez, also addresses food security issues during the
same event. With partners from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), he will
also be part of an official Rio+20 side event entitled "Feeding the World: Sustainable Agriculture
and Innovation" on June 16.
On June 18, the 4th Agriculture and Rural Development Day will focus on "Lessons in Sustainable
Landscapes and Livelihoods". Learning events will explore concrete cases of success that could
translate into a thorough transformation of the global food system, and afternoon sessions will
focus on science for a food-secure future.
A sustainable food system will only be possible if we make very real progress toward integration
of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, supported by robust systems for knowledge generation and
extension. This requires changes in policy, finance, agriculture and development aid.
Governments, international institutions, investors, agricultural producers, consumers, food
companies and researchers all have a role to play. Critical opportunities at the Rio+20 Earth
Summit must not be missed.
Dr Carlos Nobre is National Secretary for the Secretariat of Policies and Programmes in Research
and Development at Brazil's Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. CCAFS is coorganising Agriculture and Rural Development Day on June 18, 2012, ahead of the Rio+20
summit.
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Christian Science Monitor (US): Rio+20: Latin American cities on the frontlines
14 June 2012
Are Latin American cities more forward thinking than the rest of the world when it comes to the
consequences of global warming?
That's what a new report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) says, showing that
95 percent of cities in the region are well aware of and planning for the negative effects of climate
change. (That compares to just 59 percent of US cities.)
This doesn't mean Latin American countries are actually making concrete plans, but they are
doing their homework: meeting with local government environmental offices, conducting research
on consequences, and forming task forces and partnerships with NGOs and other local entities.
This flurry of action may not be propelled by a commitment to preparation, but instead by the fact
that Latin America is under more pressure than other regions.
Another new report, this one from the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in partnership
with other organizations like the World Wildlife Fund, shows that Latin America is among the most
vulnerable regions in the world when it comes to climate change: It could cost the region $100
billion a year by 2050 if current warming trends hold, the report says.
We recently wrote about the challenges of sustainability for megacities ahead of the UN's
Conference on Sustainable Development, for the Rio+20 conference underway until June 22,
looking specifically at Mexico City, Mumbai, and Lagos, Nigeria.
In Latin America, which accounts for only 11 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions, the
challenges of sustainable development expand beyond the metropolis. The IADB report details
the consequences of retreating glaciers, smaller agricultural yields, and natural disasters such as
floods and droughts.
From the coral biome in the Caribbean, to glaciers in the Andes, to the forests of the Amazon
basin, the region is dependent on natural resources under threat. And the region's financial loss
due to the impact of weather changes on agricultural exports alone could measure in at between
$30 billion and $52 billion in 2050.
Already, cities say they are feeling the heat. The MIT report, called “Progress and Challenges in
Urban Climate Adaptation,” looked at 468 cities across the globe, and shows that cities are
already feeling the consequences, from an increased frequency of extreme weather events, to
storm surges and coastal erosion. Mexico has been amid one of its worst droughts in decades,
there have been deadly landslides from El Salvador to Brazil, and unprecedented rising water
levels at Lake Atitlan in Guatemala.
Overall, 79 percent of cities worldwide report that in the past five years, they perceived changes
in temperature, precipitation, sea level, or natural hazards that they attribute to climate change.
Among cities that completed assessments, increased storm water runoff is the issue that most
anticipate they will need to address in the near term (65 percent), with storm water management
(61 percent) ranked close behind.
Some cities have taken action, and Mexico City is a clear example. Its ambitious 15-year "Plan
Verde," or green plan, promises to reduce vehicle emissions by 7 million metric tons before 2012
by investing in alternative energy, more green zones, and public transport such as electric buses.
"This is very exciting for a city that used to be one of the most polluted in the world," Martha
Delgado, the city's environmental secretary, told me on the heels of the World Mayors Summit on
Climate (WMSC) in Mexico City in November 2010, held as the UN climate talks got underway in
Cancun.
There Mexico City signed a voluntary pact – together with 137 other cities worldwide – to establish
a monitoring and verification mechanism to track emissions.
But as the MIT report shows, the challenges of turning pledges into concrete action are many. The
top-three challenges listed, according to the survey, include funding, communicating the needs for
adaptation to local officials, and gaining commitment from national governments to implement the
realities on the ground.
The Rio+20 summit could, optimists say, cover some important ground in alleviating these
setbacks.
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IRIN News: RIO+20: Sticky issues and hope
14 June 2012
“The pace is too slow” and “there is a lack of urgency”, grumbled a negotiator as preparatory talks
on the final political outcome document limped back into motion on 13 June at the UN Conference
on Sustainable Development, also known Rio+20, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
“We have just a week to go before the conference starts officially [on 20 June],” said Sha Zukang,
UN under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs, and secretary-general of Rio+20.
Officials, NGOs and members of other lobby groups have three days in which to work out their
differences before heads of state make a final decision on accepting the document.
Before the last round of talks in New York, in the first week of June 2012, only 6 percent of the text
had been agreed upon. This has now jumped to more than 20 percent and many additional
paragraphs are close to agreement, according to Ambassador Kim Sook of the Republic of Korea,
co-chair of the Preparatory Committee.
But with less than a week to go, there are still disagreements over the parameters of the main
issues on the Rio+20 agenda - the green economy, the institutional framework for sustainable
development (IFSD), and the more recently introduced sustainable development goals (SDGs).
Senior officials have been talking about “concrete decisions” and the need to come up with a
“binding agreement”. Sha indicated that Rio’s outcome would be about voluntary commitments
that countries are willing to make to set themselves on a sustainable development path.
Tara Rao, the lead author of a paper on a Southern perspective of a green economy for the
Danish 92 Group, an association of 22 Danish NGOs, noted: “The day countries’ finance ministers
and heads of state participate in these talks… would be an indication that they are serious about
commitments. At the moment sustainable development is still seen as an environmental issue,
and countries are represented by their environment or foreign affairs ministers.”
Sustainable development - a term coined by the UN some 20 years ago - means that countries
should achieve development and economic growth without compromising the environment or the
wellbeing of their people.
But on the 20th anniversary of the first Earth Summit, officials at the conference say Rio+20
should be seen as “the beginning of the process to draft a sustainable development pathway for
countries”. Besides, Sha pointed out, many issues (such as technology transfer from the
developed to the developing world to enable them to become greener) have remained stuck in the
UN climate change talks, the last round of which was held in Durban, South Africa, in 2011. Until
those were resolved it would be difficult for countries to move forward.
“Rio+20 is more about aspirations and not actions, as such,” said Saleemul Huq, a climate
change scientist at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a UKbased policy think-tank.
IRIN spoke to NGOs and think-tanks about their sense of unresolved issues, and asked them to
list three things that they hoped the world could draw from Rio+20.
The sticky issues
1) Defining a green economy: “Most would define this as an approach towards the economy that
can deliver growth, whilst being socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable,” said Dirk
Willem te Velde, head of the International Development Group at the UK think-tank, Overseas
Development Institute (ODI).
Other sticky issues
Right to food - some countries do not want a rights-based approach
Right to access reproductive health services - Those holding conservative views oppose this
approach
There are differing views on where to put the emphasis, he said.” Some countries would like to
[emphasize] sustainable consumption and resource efficiency, while Korea, China and Denmark
put emphasis on industrial policy and green technology, and small island states put it on [building]
resilience to environmental shocks.”
Harjeet Singh, of ActionAid International, said there were fundamental differences between the
rich and the poor world on how to implement actions towards achieving a “green economy”. In the
developing world, green technology was one of the ways to get onto a sustainable development
path, but it needed technology from the developed countries to do this.
Most of the technology is patented and costs money, and poor countries would like the rich ones
to help out. But rich countries argue that most of the technology is in the hands of the private
sector and they need to be mobilized.
2) The institutional framework for sustainable development: This has to do with who or what will
ensure that countries follow the new development model. Among the suggestions on the table is
the need to upgrade organizations such as the UN Environment Programme into a fully fledged
agency like the World Health Organization - with some teeth - said Rao.
There is also a need to develop a global body, “well-placed to monitor progress on the new
Sustainable Development Goals, bringing the economic, social and environmental aspects of
development together. It is all about long-term thinking, and how developed countries and
international organizations should help low-income countries with appropriate measuring of
progress,” said ODI’s te Velde.
3) Defining SDGs: The debate is around whether SDGs should be phased in once the deadline
for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) arrives in 2015, or whether it should it be a parallel
process. “One element of this complexity is that the MDGs define the relationship between aid
donors and recipients, while SDGs are relevant for all countries, including the large number of
middle-income countries that were marginal to MDGs,” said Tom Bigg, who is leading the IIED at
Rio+20.
He said there was “real concern” among the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) “that this new
focus will shift attention from their urgent and continued development challenges, so finding ways
to address these in combination, without weakening the significance of either, is a priority.
“It will also take several years to translate broad declaratory goals into detailed targets and
measures of progress that are useful at global / regional / national / sub-national levels. And
agreement to a shared set of limits, and the implicit commitment to greater equity in access to
scarce resources is hugely difficult politically, so this isn’t going to be a straightforward process,”
he noted.
Three things to hope for
1. “A sense of changing world order - middle-income countries being much more assertive in
setting out what they want from the multilateral system.
2. “A sense of how much is possible without global consensus - much as in the UNFCCC (UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change), there’s a huge amount that can be learnt from other
countries / contexts, and Rio should provide a space in which this kind of learning and sharing can
take place.
3. “A sense of how far there is to go before entrenched drivers of unsustainability are challenged
and changed, but also that there’s an agenda for change which can grow in strength and
influence, not least because the impacts of unsustainability will increasingly affect us all.”
Harjeet Singh, Action Aid International
1. “Reaffirm the Rio 1992 principles, such as common but differentiated responsibilities, equity
and historical responsibility, which developed countries at UNFCCC are trying hard to throw out of
the window.
2. “Recognize that the current exploitative market-led economic model is affecting all three pillars
(social, economic and environmental) of sustainable development, and we need a paradigm shift
from the business-as-usual approach and to adopt / strengthen a human-rights-based approach
to development.
3. “Reiterate and remind the rich countries of the responsibility and obligation to provide “means of
the implementation” (finance, technology, and capacity building) to the developing countries to
adopt a low-carbon pathway to sustainable development and deal with / adapt to the impacts of
climate change.”
Dirk Willem te Velde,ODI
“To some extent Rio is already a success, as it is helping countries and people to think long-term.”
1) Realize the threat posed by environmental problems, which will undermine inclusive and
sustainable growth.
2) Begin to formulate SDGs.
3) Design economic policies that can realize the opportunities of moving towards a new model of
inclusive and sustainable growth, e.g. by scaling up payments for ecosystem services in cases
where they work.
Sameer Dossani, Advocacy Coordinator, ActionAid International.
“At this stage, we have very few expectations in terms of the official outcomes. Most countries
seem bent on ensuring that the status quo will continue.”
”Rio +20 may serve as a kind of wake-up call to citizens, who should be angry that not enough
has been done in the 20 years since the first Earth Summit. When citizens start demanding that
their governments represent the best interests of everyone on the planet, not just domestic
business interests, then we will start to see a change.”
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Trinidad Express (Trinidad and Tobago): Why Rio+20 will transform Earth Summit
17 June 2012
As world leaders prepare for the Rio+20 meetings from June 20-22 in Brazil, now is a fitting
moment to assess the true legacy of the original Earth Summit in 1992.
In many respects, the Summit was a watershed moment for the environment. It brought together a
remarkable 172 countries, more than 100 of which were represented by their leaders, to start to
address at the global level the unsustainable use of natural resources and man's impact on the
environment.
Yet, two decades on, all the major scientific indicators continue to flash red. And, sadly, it is now
clear that a large part of the Summit's original potential has been squandered.
Since 2000 alone, forests equivalent in size to the landmass of Germany have been lost; 80 per
cent of the world's fish stocks have collapsed or are on the brink of collapse; and the Gobi desert
is growing by roughly 10,000 square kilometres every year. The list of environmental pressures
grows by the day, and there can be little doubt that the unsustainable use of natural resources will
be the biggest challenge facing mankind in the 21st century.
So why haven't we done better since 1992, and what needs to be done to achieve a course
correction now?
Crucially, it is not that leaders committed to the wrong objectives at Rio 20 years ago and in
Johannesburg 10 years later. These summits led to the creation of the UN conventions on
biological diversity, climate change and desertification, the principles on sustainable forestry and
Local Agenda 21.
By any standards, these are remarkable achievements that have set in train some key advances.
Examples include the significant decrease in deforestation seen in Brazil, and the qualified
success of the recent climate summits in Durban and Cancun.
Instead, the major problem in the past 20 years has been the failure of Governments to implement
properly their commitments from Rio and Johannesburg. Three particular parts of the jigsaw
puzzle have been missing since 1992.
First, there has been a lack of domestic legislation to underpin the Rio principles and conventions.
Second, there was a lack of credible and independent international scrutiny to monitor delivery.
And finally, the international community failed to convert the original Rio agenda into a language
that would hold sway in the most powerful Departments in each Government: the Treasuries and
Finance Ministries.
These are three critical omissions and, if Rio+20 is to be a success, they must be addressed by
the current generation of world leaders.
We are delighted that the Brazilian government, the Mayor of Rio and the UN Secretary-General
have recognised this. And that is why The Global Legislators' Organisation (GLOBE), supported
by the UN, will convene the first World Summit of Legislators immediately before the Rio+20
meeting of world leaders.
The World Summit of Legislators will involve more than 300 Speakers of Parliaments, Presidents
of Congresses and Senates, and senior legislators. It marks the beginning of a new international
process for legislators dedicated to strengthening delivery of the original Rio agenda and the
conventions on climate, desertification and biodiversity, as well as new commitments made at
Rio+20.
The World Summit of Legislators has three objectives. First, it will provide a platform to advance
laws and share good legislative practice to underpin the Rio commitments. Second, it will
establish a mechanism at the international level to monitor the implementation by Governments of
commitments made at the original Rio Earth Summit, Johannesburg and Rio+20.
The third objective is about incorporating the valuation of natural capital into government
accounting. Perversely, we still focus on GDP as the indicator of national wealth, when clearly it is
only a partial measure of income that does not take into account the stock of natural capital on
which we all depend and our economies rely.
A country can expand its GDP, creating the illusion of increased wealth, while becoming 'poorer'
as it destroys the natural capital on which its long-term prosperity depends. Recognising the role
of many national Parliaments in approving budgets and national accounts, the World Summit of
Legislators will examine how the value of natural capital can be integrated into our national
economic frameworks.
The Summit participants will agree a Rio+20 legislators' protocol. Legislators will be asked to
commit to take the protocol back to their legislatures to seek support, or formal ratification.
Legislators will then be asked to reconvene every two years to monitor progress in implementing
the Rio outcomes, as well as to share good legislative and scrutiny practices.
The World Summit of Legislators is thus just the beginning of a long-term, global process for
delivering transformational change that addresses the weaknesses of the original Earth Summit. If
parliamentarians are properly engaged, we are confident we can help create the foundation for
genuine sustainable development, and secure the prosperity of future generations, not just our
own.
It is critical we do so.
* Cicero Lucena is First Secretary of the Senate of Brazil and president of GLOBE Brazil. Joint
author of this article is John Gummer,
Lord Deben is former UK Secretary of State for the Environment and president of GLOBE
International.
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Times of India: Carnival city gets ready for Rio+20
15 June 2012
What do you feel about the UN Earth Summit returning to Rio after 20 years," I ask of a 20something Brazilian seated next to me on the flight to Rio. He was helping me fill the landing
form that was in Portugese. "It will be holiday time for many of us in Rio," he grins, as most
offices and educational establishments would simply shut down during the summit days as the
streets would overflow with demonstrators, protestors and of course, more traffic. "And what do
you think world leaders will discuss here," I ask. Would it interest him? "I guess it will be about
energy and renewables and all that. In Brazil we have plenty of hydro power, and renewables
too, mainly ethanol, so we don't really have to worry." He was going home after a holiday with
friends in London and looking forward to a few more days off during the Rio+20 summit to be
held June 20-22.
Across the street from the hotel where I checked in, I could see a moving river of protestors
shouting slogans into megaphones while others held up posters and waved banners: "Give us
better salaries and working conditions! Shame on Brazil's education system! Government, do
something!" They were poorly paid teachers, seeking the attention of huge numbers of media
persons and policymakers converging here for the Rio+20 Conference. What better way to draw
attention than to embarrass the Dilma Rousseff government (she is Brazil's first woman
president) before its international guests? More than 50,000 Rio+20 participants are expected to
reach here in the next few days, making it the biggest UN conference ever.
In the morning, walking in Rio's Lapa district, I came across an exhibition titled 'Terra Vista' of
beautiful photographs that told the story of environment from around the world. The blow ups
were displayed in two rows on either side of the path leading up to the Theatro Municipol
building. And on the other side, the exhibition faced Bapu's statue in the Mahatma Gandhi Plaza
and the road named after him. Walking past the telling images and captions, at last I found what
I was looking for - something from India! It was a photograph of field cultivation near Jodhpur
Rajasthan, a woman in bright coloured clothes wielding a sickle. The caption says despite
producing a large amount of cereal, India is yet to address its distribution problems as well as
those of water conservation and irrigation. Other photos include the Perito Morino glacier in
Argentina that is receding, melting ice caps in Greenland, plastic rubbish in open dumps in the
Dominican Republic and Flamingos converging on Lake Naruku in Kenya. Scores of visitors
saunter between the images on a bright Thursday morning on their way to work, taking in the
visual and text. It sets the mood for the upcoming conference that will discuss all these issues
and more.
"There is a real spirit of compromise and determination among delegations to produce a
document that can be endorsed by Heads of State and Government," said Sha Zukang, Rio+20
Secretary-General. "Rio+20 will provide the inspiration and the guidance to accelerate progress
on the sustainability agenda."
It is also the first major UN conference where there are more civil society representatives
attending from developing countries than from the developed world.
The UN Framework Convention for Climate Change has declared that Rio+20 is expected to
produce three types of outcomes: a negotiated document that will promote international
cooperation and action on sustainable development; the recommendations of civil society during
four Dialogue Days (June 16-19); and the announcement or launch of many major initiatives
and commitments that will advance results on the ground.
A UN spokesperson said: "At the heart of the political document is a call for a renewed political
commitment to sustainable development, and proposals for how the green economy could help
achieve sustainable development and poverty eradication, as well as the institutions needed to
promote and support sustainable development at the global level. In the negotiations, there has
been widespread support for a process to determine a set of sustainable development goals.
The goals may be similar in fashion to the Millennium Development Goals -- agreed to in 2000
with targets set for 2015 related to eradicating extreme poverty and hunger and improving
global health -- but possibly with a broader reach for all countries."
Youth from around the world, working with climate change organizers from international NGO
alliances like CAN and TckTckTck, have come together to deliver the "Fossil of the Day Award Rio" to the country at Rio+20 most responsible for blocking progress towards a strong
agreement. The award will be presented to the nation seen as doing the least to further, or the
most to block, issues related to climate change at Rio+20.
The Fossil of the Day Award is a long standing tradition from the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which has highlighted those nations most blocking
progress. It is presented in a creative, highly visible and theatrical manner by youth delegates
from around the globe. The NGO alliances behind the Fossil are Climate Action Network
(http://www.climatenetwork.org/) and the global TckTckTck campaign (www.tcktcktck.org)
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The Nation (Pakistan): Rio+20 and green economy
15 June 2012
The Rio Conference in 1992 was a defining watershed focusing attention on global
environmental problems, the risks of climate change and the need for collective action. Rio+20
seeks to revive a process often seen as faltering. Instead of climate change, the focus will be on
“The Green Economy”. How to define it and how to reach it will dominate the conference. While
the preparatory meeting are about to take place, the summit in Rio is from June 20-22, 2012.
In Pakistan, intensive and inclusive consultations have been held in public hearings conducted
by the Ministry of Climate Change and its Advisory Group composed of government, UN and
NGO experts. The SDPI under Ambassador Shafqat Kakakhel organised a well attended
seminar on the green economy with valuable recommendations. The high-level Pakistan
delegation led by the Prime Minister will carry national reports defining Pakistan’s vision of a
green economy suited for our conditions to be presented in a well planned side event.
The consultations process, laudable though it has been, raises the question as to how to further
broaden policy attention in this area which has traditionally remained in the hands of a small
elite composed of a few experts in this field. While they must be credited with doing their best,
awareness at the civic society level, within the government framework and the legislature has to
be raised. Till that is done, the very process of implementation will remain less sustainable than
required to face the grave challenges confronting Pakistan.
The implications of the green economy for the developing countries need to be constantly
analysed. Pointing out the risks and opportunities is, indeed, very important. Not seizing these
opportunities is itself a risk, as is not collectively forestalling risks such as new conditionalties on
trade protocols and assistance flows. Identifying areas on which to focus is also essential. To
give an example in Rio in 1992, transfer of technology was a key demand; however,
subsequently technology flows were driven by commerce and investment. Is that a lesson for
the developing countries on this issue now?
While the definition and parameters of the Green Economy concept continues to evolve,
Pakistan in the negotiations has to continually advance its own interests through advocacy and
forming or joining coalitions on key issues. Its diplomats have done well and need to build on
that in the conference and beyond.
The regional dimension needs to be kept in mind. While relations with both India and
Afghanistan are not encouraging for regional cooperation, efforts should be made through
bilateral, civic society and academic channels and through multilateral and regional
mechanisms such as SAARC and ECO to address issues of common concern. Watershed and
pollution management are key issues. Learning from advances in alternative energy
technologies and practices in our region and elsewhere is another opportunity.
On the central issue of the green economy, there is no doubt or question that Pakistan faces
grave and well documented problems: occurrence of natural disasters from extreme events due
to climate change; water stress including water logging and aquifer depletion; environmental
degradation comprising soils and atmospheric pollution; sanitation problems leading to gastric
diseases and infant mortality; and unsustainable population growth.
To begin with, we must agree on where to place implementing our national concept of a green
economy within the list of overall challenges that Pakistan and its people face. Not so that we
accord it less attention than it deserves, but to assess how far we can advance without
addressing the other critical issues.
The other well known challenges we face are: governance and institutional reform; terrorism
and extremism; lack of focus in and resources for inclusive education across the board; lack of
economic growth due to inconsistent policies, inadequate export promotion and energy
shortages; galloping population growth; high debt repayment and defence expenditure, which
requires higher economic growth and/or reduction of tension with our neighbours, not
dependent merely on Pakistan.
Faced with these challenges given the best of intentions and policies on the sustainable and
green economy progress will be modest. This is not a counsel of despair, but a pragmatic call to
place the green economy in the pantheon of problems Pakistan faces, so that we accept the
need to address them all simultaneously, to recognise the limitations we face in this crucial field.
As other countries, we face tradeoffs. Our need for energy drives us to exploit coal from
indigenous or imported resources if we can attract the investment, and to change all power units
to more efficient combined cycle systems. In fact, improved energy efficiency is needed acrossthe-board.
Our failure so far to pipe in natural gas from Central Asia, Iran and the Gulf, needs to overcome
as such projects would be essential for our economic progress, plus environmentally much
sounder than the alternatives of coal and furnace oil for power production.
The key question here is not the policy framework which this process represents, but the
implementation issue. Have government policies and institutions set up for specific purpose
been able to deliver? Let us make a score sheet and compare ourselves with other developing
countries. Take alternative energy development, agricultural research, sanitation, work for
livelihood supplementation including lining of canals, and other sectors. How do we fare? Such
analysis will help us identify policy and implementation problems and issues, and how to
overcome them or at least to do better.
The essential task should be to move from the academic and policy framework to the practical
task of making things happen, thus making a difference.
The 18th Amendment formalised the reality that the provinces operationally dealt with all the
major sectors of health, law and order, education and agriculture, and where all developmental
projects took place. The capacity imbalance always present in the provinces has been
aggravated, despite a larger share of the national budget now at their disposal, because the
centralised intermediary function of the federal government in dealing with bilateral and
multilateral aid flows is no longer there as donors have found to their cost and are scrambling to
come to terms with. Improving provincial capacity remains a key issue, including in the field of
the green economy and what it stands for.
Are negotiating skills, policy formulation and an improved institutional framework the keys to the
kingdom? While they are all extremely important, other pressing issues need to be addressed in
parallel. Raising awareness to change attitudes, habits and practices so that they become an
intrinsic part of civic responsibility for each citizen and school child is required. Without that we
will not move ahead. Making that happen should be our collective objective.
The writer represented Pakistan as the G77 Chairman for the Climate Change Convention and
Rio Declaration in the 1992 Rio process.
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SciDev: Rio+20 solutions too Northern, say South Asian analysts
14 June 2012
An absence of strong scientific and policy research in developing countries has stifled their
ability to contribute to Rio+20 debates, according to some South Asian development policy
analysts. Countries do not have the body of work behind them to help them articulate and
support their points of view, analysts say.
"A little discussed aspect of the global sustainability debate is the arsenal of policy research that
the developed countries deploy in their favour, based on fundamental work in areas such as
environmental economics," said T Jayaraman, a professor at the Tata Institute of Social
Sciences in Mumbai, India.
"The North is in the process of rewriting the intellectual and ideological terms of discourse of
sustainable development in general and in specific areas such as climate change," he wrote in a
commentary in India's Economic and Political Weekly (3 June).
"The developing countries have, however, little by way of knowledge capacities to fall back on,
in terms of alternative viewpoints and perspectives and detailed policy research based on
them."
SCIENCE AT RIO+20
This article is part of our coverage of preparations for Rio+20 — the UN Conference on
Sustainable Development — which takes place on 20-22 June 2012. For other articles, go to
Science at Rio+20
The Rio+20 summit (the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, 20–22 June)
takes place 20 years after the original Rio Earth Summit, which agreed milestones such as
Agenda 21 (a blueprint for sustainable development), and led to conventions on climate change,
biodiversity and desertification.
While profound environmental and poverty-related problems persist — and in many cases are
worsening — proposed mechanisms for dealing with them have changed or developed, with
ideas such as the 'green economy' and putting an economic value on natural resources
becoming mainstream.
But some developing countries, particularly in Africa and South Asia, are fearful that
environmental and economic issues are to take precedence over social, poverty and equity
issues.
Their primary concern is what they see as an incoherent definition of the green economy. They
also believe national priorities should determine each country's specific strategy for
environmentally-friendly growth.
Jayaraman told SciDev.Net that India is going to Rio "unprepared", without a clear national
approach to sustainable development.
"The southern voices are getting marginalised," Mohan Munasinghe, chairman of the Sri Lankabased think-tank, Munasinghe Institute for Development, told SciDev.Net. Munasinghe is part of
the UN team that won the Nobel Prize in 2007 for its work on climate change, and helped draft
Agenda 21.
"We [developing countries] need a whole generation of policy analysts who can support their
political leaders — who still depend on North-based or North-centric policy analysts," he added.
Developing countries are grappling with some basic dilemmas, Munasinghe explained. He cited
the example of the principle of 'weak sustainability' versus 'strong sustainability'.
Weak sustainability encourages countries to harness their natural resources for development
resources, such as national capital and health. Under the principle of strong sustainability
favoured by environmentalists, all natural resources must be protected.
"How will development take place then? There has to be some trade-off, especially if a
developing country has some abundant natural resource, which could become the springboard
for economic growth and poverty reduction.
"For developing countries, the problem is enormously complicated," Munasinghe observed, and
"the mainstream economic logic [often] comes from elsewhere."
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Selected Blogs
Huffington Post (US): Rio+20- 'I Want to Light a Fire, and Remind You of the
Urgency of Our Task'
18 June 2012
In less than two days, world leaders will gather in Rio de Janeiro to discuss the fate of our
planet whose future now hangs in the balance.
Earlier this month, scientists warned that the world is heading towards a catastrophic tipping
point which will usher in changes not seen for some 12,000 years:
"There is a very high possibility that by the end of the century, the Earth is going to be a very
different place. You can envision these state changes as a fast period of adjustment where we
get pushed through the eye of the needle."
"As we're going through the eye of the needle, that's when we see political and economic strife,
war and famine," says Anthony Barnosky from Berkeley University.
If that sounds apocalyptic, it is. And, what's worse, such views are echoed across most of the
scientific community. According to a recent report from the United Nations Environment
Program: "If humanity does not urgently change its ways, several critical thresholds may be
exceeded, beyond which abrupt and generally irreversible changes to the life-support functions
of the planet could occur."
A few months ago, the International Energy Agency (IEA) sounded a very loud alarm. It said
that the planet could experience a 6 degrees Celsius temperature rise by the end of this
century. "Energy-related CO2 emissions are at historic highs, we estimate that energy use and
CO2 emissions would almost double by 2050."
A 6C temperature rise will not only be uncomfortable -- it will mark the end of most life here on
earth. According to the IEA, we only have five years to act. After that, global warming will hit the
point of no return.
This leaves our planet and collective future in a rather precarious state. Yet, in the face of such
astounding revelations, world leaders are still reluctant to commit to sustainable development.
Once again, the economic crisis in Europe has taken center stage, whilst delegates continue to
squabble over the definition of "green economy" which may take years to refine.
But, as Luiz Figueiredo from the Brazilian delegation points out, "we cannot be held hostage to
the financial crises in rich countries. We are here to think about the long term."
How has the largest environmental meeting in history become mired in such deadlock and
despair? In the words of Mikhail Gorbachev, former President of the Soviet Union and 1990
Nobel Peace Prize laureate:
"The opportunity to build a safer, fairer and more united world has been largely squandered. I
can't qualify this failure as being anything other than one of leadership and vision."
Time has been squandered, but we still have a chance to build a future for our children's
children. However, we have to start now, for as the Prince of Wales points out, "once the worst
does happen, this time around it will be too late to act."
In the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, we need to recognize that
our economic and environmental woes are two sides of the same problem -- a wider systematic
failure caused by a world that is quite simply "too full".
As Paul Gilding, author of The Great Disruption points out, "we see the occupy protest, spiraling
debt crises, rising food and oil prices. And mistakenly, we see these as individual problems. In
fact, it is our system that is breaking down."
Last week, the world's leading scientists called for immediate action on population control and
over consumption: "We are living beyond the planet's means. We're now at a point in human
history where we risk degrading the life support system for human development," says Gisbet
Glaser from the International Council for Science.
What the world needs now is a dramatic paradigm shift fronted by brave leadership that is
willing to guide us through these turbulent times. In the words Ban Ki-moon, the UN's Secretary
General:
"For too long we have tried to consume our way to prosperity. Look at the cost: polluted lands
and oceans, climate change, and growing scarcity of resources. We need to invent a new
model; a model that offers growth that is more respectful of the planet's finite resources. I want
to light a fire, and remind you of the urgency of our task. If we do not take firm action, we may
be heading towards the end - the end of our future"
As Gorbachev points out, "in the face of every great challenge there is always a choice. The
future is not predetermined. The question is whether we want to ensure a safe and sustainable
future for everybody, or keep being held hostage by the current mix of political and economic
interests."
So, as world leaders prepare to gather in Rio, let's hope that they make the right choice, for the
future that we want lies in their hands. Winston Churchill once said that "success is the ability to
go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm .. We make a living by what we get,
but a life by what we give."
Although we may have failed in the past, the future that we want still represents a beacon of
hope which we must strive towards with courage and determination; for it is here, and only here
that we will find the world that we are looking for.
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CNN (US): Philippe Cousteau: Humanity is on a knife edge
15 June 2012
My grandfather Jacques Yves Cousteau shared with me many stories about the United Nations
Earth Summit in 1992 and the sense of hope that surrounded it. I have kept a copy of the
speech he made there on June 5th outlining his concerns for the future of humankind. The
insight it provides now, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of that historic event, is particularly
poignant.
Chief amongst those concerns was the issue of population, and how it directly relates to women
and education.
My grandfather believed that when women are empowered socially, economically and given
access to family planning and general education, the birth rate drops
Philippe Cousteau
To be clear, my grandfather was not a proponent of draconian policies restricting birth rates or
depriving people of their right to have children. While growing up, I heard his constant refrain
that the key to solving the population crisis is to empower women.
As he pointed out in his 1992 speech: "In all the countries with an excessive birth rate, women
are segregated, deprived of appropriate health care; the rate of illiteracy among women is onethird higher than for men."
My grandfather believed that when women are empowered socially, economically and given
access to family planning and general education, the birth rate drops. He was not alone; the rise
of the micro-credit movement and the success of organizations such as the Grameen Bank
have radically changed the way a woman's role is viewed in communities around the world.
Why do Jacques Cousteau's words continue to resonate today?
Since 1992, the global population has increased from 5.6 billion people to approximately 7
billion in 2012, and is expected to balloon to 9.5 billion by 2050.
Like too many people packed into a vault with an ever-dwindling oxygen supply, this drastic
growth still presents unprecedented problems for the global community as we continue to
consume natural resources and emit pollution at a staggering rate.
For example, just to keep pace with current population growth, it is estimated that food
production will have to increase 70% by 2050. The lack of access to clean, potable water is still
the number one killer of children under five years of age, and the United Nations estimates that
without concrete action to solve the world's water crisis, billions more people will lack access to
clean water by the middle of the century.
See also: Earth Summit timeline
Add to that the effects of climate change, ocean acidification, dwindling biodiversity and
collapsing global fish stocks, and the magnitude of the problem comes into dismal focus.
Humanity stands on the edge of a knife that becomes sharper with each passing day. We must
act boldly and courageously to build a world that realizes the simple birthright of every child
Philippe Cousteau
Now, from June 20-22, 2012, leaders from around the world will gather again in Brazil for the
United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20 as it is often called.
There is no doubt that this conference comes at a difficult time; a time when the world economy
is in crisis and global political action is particularly halting, especially and embarrassingly in the
United States thanks to vitriolic partisan battles over any environmental legislation as well as the
failure to enact even basic carbon-cutting initiatives.
Nevertheless I believe that there are still grounds for hope. Because while the challenges we
face are even more urgent than in 1992, the growing chorus of voices supporting sustainable
practices in the private sector, the growing prominence and respect for women in countries
around the world and the general willingness to face the realities of carbon pollution are cause
for cautious optimism. We must never stop fighting for a better world.
As my grandfather said in his closing remarks: "I wish that at this Rio Conference, heads of
state and their delegates realize the urgency of drastic, unconventional decisions. The people of
the world are anxiously awaiting a new light."
Now, almost 20 years later, humanity stands on the edge of a knife that becomes sharper with
each passing day. We must act boldly and courageously to build a world that realizes the simple
birthright of every child ... to live in a world where they can breathe fresh air, drink clean water,
and walk on green grass under a blue sky. The silent cries of future generations demand it.
Philippe Cousteau is an environmental advocate who heads the non-profit organization
EarthEcho International. He is the grandson of legendary ocean explorer and filmmaker
Jacques Yves Cousteau, who was a special guest at the historic 1992 U.N. Conference on
Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro.
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TreeHugger: The UN's Rio+20 Conference Matters
14 June 2012
As the world's eyes turn to the United Nations' Rio+20 Conference, there seems to be an
endless stream of negative press suggesting we should all just give up on global cooperation
and watch the planet burn.
While new global treaties are increasingly difficult, the days of international cooperation are far
from over. Indeed, it is more important than ever given the interrelated environmental crises we
face.
That's why we asked President Obama to come and lend his weight to a number of important
outcomes - from phasing out fossil fuel subsidies to mobilizing $500 million to support clean
energy access, to increasing support for reproductive health and contraceptive access (not to
mention a host of others). The only way to move forward on these important issues is
international cooperation, and that's why Rio Matters.
To start, governments around the world spend over $775 billion in subsidies for fossil fuels - a
costly, dirty, outdated, and unsustainable habit. While more than 53 countries now have publicly
committed to phase-out subsidies for fossil fuels, little concrete progress has been made. As our
friends at NRDC have pointed out, Rio+20 is clearly the time for getting out of the business of
subsidizing activities that are destroying the planet.
So where should our scarce public money be going? Let's start with achieving universal energy
access by delivering clean energy to the world's poor. If we want to deliver on energy access
goals in Rio, though, we cannot wait for the grid, and we cannot rely on fossil fuels. That's the
conclusion the International Energy Agency came to in a recent report stating an over reliance
on coal and grid extension will leave one billion of the world's poor without energy access by
2030 (PDF). That leaves us with one billion reasons to push public institutions like the World
Bank to invest in the alternative - distributed clean energy access. The Sierra Club, along with
Carbon War Room, Eight19, Greenlight Planet, and Greenpeace India are joining forces to
ensure world leaders get the message.
While we need to be sure everyone can access clean energy, we also need to slow population
growth and ensure family planning access if we expect communities to develop sustainably.
That’s why the Sierra Club's Global Population and Environment Program will be advocating for
population and reproductive health access to support sustainable development. They'll be
teaming up with Population Action International, Advocates for Youth, SustainUS, the Youth
Coalition, and the government of Sri Lanka for an event featuring the voices of young people
from around the world who have experienced the deep connections between sexual and
reproductive health and rights and the environment.
Why is this important? Remember there are 215 million women in the world with an unmet need
for family planning - those who want to plan their births but don't have the knowledge, access,
resources, or power to be able to do so. It is essential to individual, community, and
environmental health that we grant this access to women and families. When women have the
ability to plan their family size, they are better able to manage resources, participate in incomegenerating activities and community decision making, and adapt to the effects of climate
change.
Given the far-reaching benefits of this access for health and the planet, recognition is essential
at Rio+20 and organizations like the Royal Society, the Aspen Institute, the Center for
Environment and Population, the UN Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center
for Scholars will be in Rio de Janeiro advocating for attention to these issues and pushing for
official recognition of population and reproductive health and rights in the zero draft.
Ultimately, though, if we hope to achieve these goals and build a better more sustainable
tomorrow, it's vital we engage the youth. That's why our Sierra Student Coalition will be in Rio to
strengthen the international youth movement to work with the Mayor Group of Children and
Youth (MCGY). While most of our leaders can't agree to move forward on strong climate policy,
the youth from around the world are giving them an example by working as a united front.
Working through the MGCY the SSC'ers plan to meet with officials and highlight successful
campus and community campaigns that are moving the world towards a sustainable future (like
our highly successful Campuses Beyond Coal campaign). The SSC will be taking advantage of
social media blogging, tweeting (@Intl_SSC) and posting on Facebook, so be sure to follow
them to get all the most recent updates on Rio+20.
To recap, Rio has the potential to engage the world's youth to help push for meaningful
progress on phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, delivering universal clean energy access, and
promoting women's rights and slowing global population. These are all very important issues so pay attention.
-- Co-written by Justin Guay of the Sierra Club International Program. To follow along with
Sierra Club representatives in Rio for the conference, check out the Compass blog.
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Environmental News from the UNEP Regions
ROA MEDIA UPDATE
THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE NEWS
Tuesday, 19 June, 2012
Daily Independent (Nigeria): Rio+20: Passionate negotiations, as leaders open
summit
The Last two days of informal dialogues kick-off this morning in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, host
city of the ongoing United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), ahead of
Wednesday when heads of government and ministers begin the summit proper. Amid
widespread discontent among activists that some leaders such the UK’s David Cameron,
Germany’s Angela Merkel and US President Barack Obama would not be in Rio, President
Goodluck Jonathan will however address the high-level session at the global summit. Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton will lead the US delegation. It is expected that President Jonathan would,
in his submission, explore the nation’s past and present effort towards achieving sustainable
development through a green economy. Indeed, in a Rio+20 Country Report, Nigeria attempts a
stock-taking of, for instance, what it had achieved since the World Summit on Sustainable
Development (WSSD) held 10 years ago in Johannesburg, South Africa, and what the country
is doing in its efforts to achieve national sustainable development, particularly in the face of new
emerging challenges such as climate change, and the greening of an economy that is currently
fossil fuel-dependent. Nigeria’s pillars of sustainable development are: employment, energy,
cities/human settlement, gender/children, food, water & sanitation, oceans and disaster
management. Energy, food, gender/children and cities are however considered as priorities,
according to Environment Minister, Hadiza Mailafia.
She said last week in Abuja at a media interactive session to mark the 2012 World Environment
Day (WED) that every Nigerian has a responsibility to protect what God has bestowed on the
country. “This is a country where on the ground, under the ground, you have different Kinds of
resources. Everyone accepts that Nigeria is a blessed country.” She said, “Ecological problems
and challenges cut across geographical expressions. When there is a disaster in one country, it
trickles down to another. When there is flooding in one river, it overflows into another or into
some one’s home. We are all involved. All groups and persons need to work together with the
Ministry of Environment to form a synergy that would actualise the attainment of our objectives. I
therefore hope that you will partner with us to ensure that you answer the question: ‘Are you
part of the green economy?’” The minister emphasised that this year’s WED celebration calls for
action rather than speech. “I call on all of you to please reawaken the spirit in the nation, the
spirit of belongingness, the spirit that will protect our environment, take care of our neighbours;
that will save resources that we can use for further development by protecting and preserving
the environment.”
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All Africa: Tax Justice Can Help Fund Sustainable Development, Campaigners
Urge Rio+20
Getting multinational companies to pay the taxes they owe would generate billions in funding for
sustainable development, campaigners will tell delegates at the Rio+20 conference today
(Sunday June 17). At a tax justice event in the Rio Centro hosting the negotiations, speakers
will highlight how Governments are currently losing vast sums every year to tax dodging by
multinationals, with poor countries and people living in poverty worst hit. Christian Aid estimates
that developing countries alone lose $160 billion a year to the problem - far more than they
receive in aid.'Simply getting multinational companies to pay the taxes they owe developing
countries would generate billions more for life-changing initiatives such as sustainable energy
for all,' said Dr Alison Doig, Christian Aid's Senior Adviser on Sustainable Development. 'There
are many ways in which the corporate sector can contribute to a fairer, more sustainable world,
and paying the right amount of tax is clearly one of them. 'The latest text here in Rio speaks of
the need to mobilise "adequate financial resources" to achieve universal access to clean energy
- but it is completely silent on where the money might come from. Getting multinationals to pay
their taxes is an obvious place to start.'Dr Doig's comments came before today's tax justice
event organized by Christian Aid today in at the Rio Centro convention centre. (The event will
be in room T6 from 3.30 until 5pm.) Speakers will explain why tax dodging is currently so easy and what needs to be done to tackle it and generate resources for sustainable development.
They are Richard Howitt, a UK MEP who is European Parliament Rapporteur on Corporate
Social Responsibility, Michelle Pressend of Economic Justice Network South Africa, Luis
Moreno of Jubileo Peru and Latindadd, Lucidio Bicalho Barbosa of INESC in Brazil. Christian
Aid is campaigning for action against the financial secrecy which helps unscrupulous companies
and others to dodge tax. Specifically, it wants multinational companies to be required to disclose
more about their finances, including the taxes they pay and the profits they make in each
country in which they operate. This would help tax authorities identify companies which appear
to be dodging tax by artificially shifting their profits into tax havens. The development agency is
also calling for Governments to automatically share information with each other about who owns
what within their borders, to make it more difficult for companies and individuals to hide their
wealth and income offshore.
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Daily Independent (Nigeria): FG, UN, AAP stage Climate of Change
In an apparent bid to demystify climate change and intensify awareness on its multifaceted
impacts on the Nigerian society, the Federal Ministry of Environment, the Government of Japan
and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) under the ongoing Africa Adaptation
Programme (AAP) have thrown their support behind Theatre for Concerted Change’s premier
staging of “Climate of Change” in Zaria, Abuja and Lagos. The concerts are holding this month.
According to the sponsors, the support is an appreciation of the Arts as a potent tool for bringing
about social transformation and societal renewal. The play is a snapshot of rural dwellers’
struggle for survival and integral development in a climate-constrained world. It takes the reader
or audience on a journey into the lives of rural dwellers, while portraying their apprehension,
courage, despair, hope, flaws and strengths.
By emphasising the linkage between climate change on one hand, and then gender, health,
politics, conflicts and food insecurity on the other, the play seeks to draw attention to the fact
that climate change is indeed one of the defining challenges of our time and must not be treated
with levity, according to playwright, Elaigwu Ameh. Speaking about his reason for writing the
play, Ameh, a First Class Pholosophy graduate of the University of Zimbabwe, revealed: “I
wrote this play not only because of my realisation that climate change is one of the defining
challenges of our time, but also because of my burning desire to use theatre as a tool for
development to raise awareness on the manifold impacts of climate change on rural
livelihoods.” He added: “The play is a proactive medium for effecting positive environmental
change in society. It is a must-see not only because of its rich amalgam of entertainment and
education, but also because of its creative use of theatre-for-development techniques in
unveiling some overt or covert interconnections between climate change and livelihoods.” In the
same vein, he noted that “Climate of Change,” just like the story of climate change, is not all
about gloom and doom. Hence, he noted, the play also endeavours to communicate climatic
realities in the language of hope with a view to encouraging the Nigerian government and the
public to act positively and proactively. “Although Nigeria’s socio-economic development is
climate-constrained, climate change offers distinctive opportunities for renewing the Nigerian
economy. These opportunities are in the areas of renewable energy, carbon trading, transport
management and technology transfer,” he added. The play, which was expected to be
premiered in Abuja on June 5, 2012 as part of the commemoration of World Environment Day,
is now being staged first in the Drama Village of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria from June 14,
2012 to June 17, 2012.
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Nigeria: Ogoni Residents Flay FG Over Delay in UNEP Report Implementation
Port Harcourt — OGONI have decried Federal Government's delay in implementing the United
Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, report on pollution traced to oil exploration in their
area. In speeches, yesterday, at a special prayer session at All Saint's Cathedral Church of
Anglican Communion, Bori, the Senator representing Rivers East Senatorial District, Senator
Magnus Abey and Chairman, Provisional Ruling Council of Movement for the Survival of Ogoni
People, MOSOP, Professor Ben Naanen, said they were disappointed that almost a year after
UNEP released its report on Ogoni, which called for long and short term remediation in the area,
the government was yet to act on it. They said the prayer session was held to call on God to
intervene on the issue. Magnus said: "It is because of our disappointment that we stand here
today, after a series of efforts to prevail on our son, President Goodluck Jonathan. We call on
him to keep his word and keep the commitment of the Federal Government that the report will
be implemented. The state House of Assembly, Senate and House of Representatives had
passed a resolution for the implementation of the report. The person that now has the power to
implement the report is the President." He expressed worries, that as a Senator, he could not
speak authoritatively on when the Federal Government was going to implement the report.
While urging the government to act to save the people of the area from pollution brought about
by oil exploration, Magnus recalled that the report stressed on the presence "of benzene in
water underneath the ground in Ogali parts of Ogoni." "Apart from the state government, that
has been trucking water to the community, the Federal Government had not responded to the
plight of the people of the area. We are in a democracy and I expected that the Federal
Government would be running around to address the issue. If they had done that, we would not
have any reason to speak. The Federal Government set up a committee headed by the Minister
of Petroleum that said the report had been submitted to the President. But nothing had been
done."
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Daily Trust (Nigeria): Rio+20 - Group Warns the Nigeria of Green Economy
The group Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria has warned Nigerian
government not to "jump into the craze of a green economy" at the UN Conference on
Sustainable Development next week in Brazil. The United Nations Environment Programme has
said a green economy will result in better human well being and social equity as well as reduce
environmental risks and ecological scarcities, environment minister Hadiza Mailafia said at a
press conference in the week leading up to Rio+20. The Green Economy is meant to
emphasise less use of fossil fuel and increasing dependence on newer, cleaner energy sources.
Mailafia explained it was "low carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive." But ERA/FoEN
has called the green economy agenda "a commodification of nature and the rights of local
communities to democratic access to land, water resources, finance and infrastructure." It said
the green economy agenda served "only the interests of the multinationals thus worsening
poverty and leaving out sustainable challenges." "Green economy, as proposed, does not
recognize the fact that local people are the guardian of land and must live within environmental
limits," said ERA/FoEN executive director Nnimmo Bassey.
The group also urged Nigeria to "take the lead in Africa by siding with the community voices," in
its move to wean the world off fossil fuel. Nigeria's draft report to presented at the Rio+20 will
note existing problems to be dealt with using greener means, including food shortage, urban
population growth, oceans and disasters, as well as desertification. The group describes the
UN's green economy was simply "nature for sale" and says it radically departs from the Earth
Summit 20 years ago when nations agreed on sustainable development as a major plank to
address environmental challenges.
It said the current agenda for a green economy ignored issues of water, food and seed
sovereignty critical in African and Latin America. It "refuses to confront the real causes of
unemployment and rise of militarization in the context of resource scarcity and unequal power
relations," ERA/FoEN added in a statement. It said Nigeria and other African countries should
instead demand thata countries of the global North take responsibility for the social, economic
and environmental impacts of their extractive industry. One solution proposed to deal with
environmental pollution and forest loss is the Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and
Degradation (REDD)--but ERA/FoEN said REDD only allowed polluting nations to "buy their
way
out
of
reducing
their
greenhouse
emissions
at
source."
http://allafrica.com/stories/201206170366.html
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New Times: East Africa: MPs Want Restrictions On Used Cars
Importation of used motor vehicles and the environmental hazards they pose is one of the key
concerns legislators highlighted, this week, during a session of members of the standing
committee on budget and national patrimony of the Chamber of Deputies with officials in the
ministry of environment and natural resources (Minirena). EAC officials acknowledge that while
transportation is crucial to the bloc's economy, it is also a significant source of GHG emissions
The committee had sat to scrutinise the ministry's budget allocations in the 2012/13 budget.
The MPs noted that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by used vehicles are a danger to public
health. Abbas Mukama, the vice-chairperson of the committee inquired about imminent plans to
rid the country of cars that pollute the environment. Minister Stanislas Kamanzi noted that his
ministry with the Rwanda Bureau of Standards (RBS) are in the process of setting standards of
vehicles to be allowed into the country and "limits on the levels of exhaust fumes they can emit."
The Director of the Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA), Dr. Rose
Mukankomeje, told MPs that a team comprising IRST, the Police, RBS and REMA is engaged in
"a hard battle" with the private sector. "Our technicians recently held a meeting in the ministry of
EAC Affairs so as to agree on the age limit of vehicles that can be allowed to enter Rwanda.
Kenyans have done this and they agreed on eight years. Here, and in other countries, they
wanted 10 years. "On Friday (last week), we exchanged e-mails [with the private sector]
indicating that it is not acceptable. If we accept years higher than the Kenyans, they will always
buy vehicles and when they age, they will bring them here," she said, noting that allowing overly
old vehicles into the country would bring about congestion and pollution.
The REMA boss told MPs that their position is to go for eight years, like Kenya, to avoid the
likelihood of older vehicles from the region being dumped in Rwanda. In a related development,
a consultative meeting on the age limit of imported used motor vehicles entering the East
African Community (EAC), held in Nairobi, Kenya, on Tuesday, decided on the need to
harmonise the age limit of vehicles imported into the region. A related East African Business
Council (EABC) statement e-mailed to The New Times says up to now, there is no consensus
on the harmonisation of the standard. It noted that the Sectoral Council on Trade, Industry,
Finance and Investment recommended that stakeholders who attended the meeting needed to
provide a solution and come up with recommendations to policy makers on the way forward.
EAC officials acknowledge that while transportation is crucial to the bloc's economy, it is also a
significant source of GHG emissions. As noted, causes of air pollution from transportation
include; excessive use of the vehicles, age of the vehicle and technology used, poor
maintenance and unavailability or improper use of appropriate fuels. Variation in controls on age
limits poses challenges on the harmonisation of East African Standard Code of Practice - testing
of motor vehicles for roadworthiness regimes and technical regulations on road vehicles,
standards and procedures for controls of used imported which jeopardises the cardinal spirit of
regional integration. The Council of Ministers made a decision in 2007 to harmonise the age
limit of vehicles imported into the region by April 2009. The East African Standards Committee
(EASC) has been working on the harmonisation of the age limit for imported second hand or
used vehicles into the community. A proposal to adopt a tentative age limit of 10 years from the
date of first registration among all the partner states with the exception of Kenya which wishes
to retain the age limit of eight years was presented to the EAC Council of Ministers by the EASC
in 2008. The Council of Ministers deferred the proposal to pave way for further stakeholder
engagement.
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Standard (Zimbabwe): Turn to the Sun for Energy Needs - Nhema
COMMUNITIES should harness solar energy in the face of increased power cuts which are
affecting almost all sectors of the economy, a cabinet minister has said. Addressing delegates
at a three-day national climate change adaptation symposium in Harare last week, Minister of
Environment and Natural Resource Management, Francis Nhema, said the country was not
adequately utilising the abundant sunshine and water bodies found across the country. "With
lots of sunshine and water bodies littered across the country, there is need to harness solar
energy to overcome electricity and water challenges facing the country," said Nhema. Nhema
challenged delegates, who were mostly academics and researchers "to think deeply and put a
human element in their studies and return to that little river in their communities and harness the
water for the benefit of the local people". Power supply remains erratic in most parts of Harare
with the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa) failing to stick to a load-shedding
schedule it published in the media recently, seriously affecting many business operations.
Despite the long hours of power cuts, residents complain of exorbitant bills at the end of every
month. The cost of electricity is affecting thousands of households as they have to buy paraffin
and firewood at a higher cost, yet still have to settle their bills.
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Portail d’afrique : Journée mondiale de Lutte contre la désertification: importance
des oasis
À l'occasion de la journée mondiale de Lutte contre la désertification mise en place par l'ONU,
le RADDO tient à rappeler l'importance des agrosystèmes oasiens dans la lutte contre la
désertification et la dégradation des terres, pour l'avenir des zones arides. Les oasis
représentent un véritable potentiel pour ces régions. En plus de constituer des exemples
d'adaptation aux évolutions climatiques à travers les siècles et de ce fait être des exemples de
durabilité, les oasis participent pleinement à la sécurité alimentaire et à la fixation des
populations dans ces régions. Le RADDO plaide pour une attention particulière des États à ces
agrosystèmes afin de favoriser un développement durable et cela dans une volonté de
préservation des ressources et de soutien aux agricultures familiales. Le RADDO invite
également à relire l'appel des oasis lancée en 2002.
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Rwanda Express (Rwanda): Awareness On Gorilla Naming Ceremony Starts
-Rwanda Express-The Rwanda Development Board (RDB) has launched an awareness
campaign to raise the participation of local communities in the forthcoming Gorilla naming
ceremony ('Kwita Izina') slated for June 16, 2012 in Musanze district in the northern province of
Rwanda. Rica Rwigamba, the Head of Tourism and Conservation at RDB said that the aim is to
rally for support and create more awareness about the annual event among the communities, so
as to as have many local people participate and own the event. Some of the activities have
involved children participating in a race for fun in Musanze district and bicycle races from Kigali
to Rubavu district, which borders with Musanze in the western province. Rwigamba noted that
the involvement of youth and children will ensure a young generation that values aspects of
tourism and environmental conservation in Rwanda. Alexis Muhayimana, one of the youths who
participated in the race observed that the annual naming of young born gorillas is a very unique
and important occasion that deserves enough attention from Rwandans. "I imagine that there is
some revenue which is registered after successfully conducting this day. It is therefore our
responsibility to make the world know more about it," he said. Over Rwf1.4 billion was spent
during the past 8 years in support of community based projects like the provision of clean water,
sanitation, schools and other social amenities and over 220 projects financed. According to the
statement, the annual disbursement grew from an initial Rwf 41 million in 2005 to Rwf 256
million this year, as arrivals to Rwanda grew to 908,000 visitors in 2011, generating estimated
gross revenue of $252 million.
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ROAP MEDIA UPDATE
THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE NEWS
Tuesday, 19 June, 2012
China Post (China): New index shows lower growth for economies
19 June 2012
Some large economies show significantly lower growth when natural assets such as forests and
water are factored into growth indicators, an index showed on Sunday, a few days before an
international sustainability summit starts in Rio de Janeiro.
The Inclusive Wealth Index was unveiled by the United Nations University's International Human
Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (UNU-IHDP) and the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP).
Scientists and environment groups have been pressuring governments to include the value of
their countries' natural resources — and use or loss of them — into future measurements of
economic activity to show their true future growth prospects.
The idea of an expanded indicator known as GDP+ to include GDP and natural capital will be
on the agenda of the Rio+20 summit from June 20 to June 22, when environment ministers and
heads of state from around 200 countries will try to define sustainable development goals.
The index shows the “inclusive wealth” of 20 nations, taking into account manufactured, human
and natural capital like forests, fisheries and fossil fuels, instead of relying only on gross
domestic product (GDP) as a growth indicator.
The index assessed Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Ecuador, France,
Germany, India, Japan, Kenya, Nigeria, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, United
States, Britain and Venezuela, from 1990 to 2008.
Together, these countries accounted for almost three-quarters of global GDP over the 19-year
period.
The index showed that 19 out of the 20 countries experienced a decline in natural capital. Six
nations also saw a decline in their overall inclusive wealth, putting them on an unsustainable
track, UNEP said.
“Rio+20 is an opportunity to call time on Gross Domestic Product as a measure of prosperity in
the 21st century, and as a barometer of an inclusive green economy transition,” U.N. Under
Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said in a statement.
“It is far too silent on major measures of human well-being, namely many social issues and the
state of a nation's natural resources,” he added.
Natural Capital
The index showed that even though China, the United States, Brazil and South Africa
experienced GDP growth, their natural capital was significantly depleted.
When measured solely by GDP, the economies of China, the United States, Brazil and South
Africa grew by 422 percent, 37 percent, 31 percent and 24 percent respectively between 1990
and 2008.
When their performance was assessed by the IWI, China's economy grew by 45 percent, the
United States by 13 percent, Brazil by 18 percent and South Africa decreased by 1 percent,
mainly due to the depletion of natural resources, UNEP and UNU-IHDP said in a statement.
Six nations — Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Colombia, South Africa and Nigeria —
experienced negative growth under the IWI, whereas it was positive under GDP measurements.
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Un News Centre: UN and partners unveil new initiative to achieve sustainable
cities
18 June 2012
The United Nations and its partners today unveiled a new initiative to achieve sustainable urban
development by promoting the efficient use of energy, water and other resources, lowering
pollution levels and reducing infrastructure costs in cities.
The Global Initiative for Resource-Efficient Cities was launched by the UN Environment
Programme (UNEP) and partners in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, just days ahead of the
start of the high-level meeting of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).
The initiative, open to cities with populations of 500,000 or more, will involve local and national
governments, the private sector and civil society groups to promote energy efficient buildings,
efficient water use, sustainable waste management and other activities.
UNEP notes that by 2050, up to 80 per cent of the global population is expected to reside in
cities, which are increasingly becoming the focus of international sustainability efforts.
Today, urban areas account for 50 per cent of all waste, generate 60-80 per cent of all
greenhouse gas emissions and consume 75 per cent of natural resources, yet occupy only
three per cent of the Earth’s surface, the agency points out in a news release.
Yet water savings of 30 per cent, and energy savings of up to 50 per cent, can be achieved in
cities with limited investment and encouraging behavioural change, it adds.
“In the context of rapid urbanization and growing pressures on natural resources, there is an
urgent need for coordinated action on urban sustainability,” said UNEP’s Executive Director,
Achim Steiner.
“This is essential both for preventing irreversible degradation of resources and ecosystems, and
for realizing the multiple benefits of greener cities, from savings through energy-efficient
buildings, or the health and climate benefits of cleaner fuels and vehicles,” he added.
UNEP also notes that the economic opportunities associated with making cities more
sustainable are numerous. As centres of technology, cities can spearhead the creation of green
jobs in sectors such as renewable energy. Projections show that some 20 million people could
be employed in the wind, solar and biofuel industries by 2030, for example.
The practical steps that cities can take towards resource efficiency are the focus of a new UNEP
report, also launched today at Rio+20.
Using case studies from China, Brazil, Germany and a host of other countries, Sustainable,
Resource Efficient Cities in the 21st Century: Making it Happen highlights opportunities for city
leaders to improve waste and water management, energy efficiency, urban transportation and
other key sectors.
Rio+20’s high-level meeting runs 20-22 June, and is expected to bring together over 100 heads
of State and government, along with thousands of parliamentarians, mayors, UN officials, chief
executive officers and civil society leaders to shape new policies to promote prosperity, reduce
poverty and advance social equity and environmental protection.
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Economic Times (India): HCC only Indian company to be featured Climate Report
by UNEP
18 June 2012
The United Nations Environment Programme has recognized HCC ( Hindustan Construction
Company), an infrastructure construction and development company, of being the only Indian
company to be featured in its Climate Report.
The report titled "Caring Business and Climate Change Adaptation: toward Resilient Companies
and Communities" presents ten case studies from amongst ten global companies who have
responded creatively and effectively to address climate change opportunities, risks, and impacts
in developing countries and emerging economies.
HCC's initiatives have been featured among the case studies of ten global companies, including
Coca Cola, Nokia and Eskom. The HCC case study highlights its efforts towards water neutrality
and showcases its initiatives at two HCC projects-the Strategic Oil Storage Cavern project at
Visakhapatnam and the Delhi-Faridabad Elevated Expressway.
In Visakhapatnam, HCC installed a wastewater treatment plant to utilize the seepage
wastewater for construction thus completing construction without external water supply to the
project even during severe water scarcity in the region. Installation of the plant enabled HCC to
recycle and reuse nearly 95 percent of the wastewater for the project saving an amount of water
equivalent to nearly six months of water consumption of the city of Vizag.
In the Delhi-Faridabad expressway project, water resources were of particular concern in this
low-rainfall part of the country. HCC implemented several measures to conserve, recycle, and
reuse water, including creation of an artificial rainfall-fed pond and rooftop rainwater harvesting.
The most notable of HCC's efforts was a unique model for harvesting run off rainwater from the
expressway itself as a way to recharge aquifers in the surrounding area.
The Company conducts public consultation processes to collect primary data, inputs, and
perspectives from local communities, sometimes in collaboration with local civil society groups.
HCC takes a "4 R" approach to water interventions (reduce, reuse, recycle, recharge) at its
construction sites, where it is typically on the ground for two to six years, and also in longer-term
BOT (Build, Operate, Transfer) projects.
HCC is the first Indian signatory to the CEO Water Mandate, comprising more than 80
companies whose chief executives have committed to individual and collective action to
advance water stewardship in their own operations as well as in their supply chains, watersheds
and communities.
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Shanghai Daily (China): China has good story to tell in Rio: former UNEP chief
18 June 2012
RIO DE JANEIRO, June 18 (Xinhua) -- "China has a good story to tell here in Rio and I hope it
will tell it," Maurice Strong, former head of the UN Environment Program (UNEP), told Xinhua
here in an interview.
"I use China as an example of how a rapidly growing economy can still deal with environmental
issues," said Strong Sunday, who was appointed the first executive director of UNEP when it
was established in 1972 by the UN General Assembly.
China has been doing so even though it is difficult, because the "rapid growth in the economy
tends to offset the progress China makes in environment," he said.
Strong recalled that he had worked closely with the Chinese delegation at the first UN meeting
on environment held in Stockholm in 1972, which was chaired by him.
After the meeting, China dealt with all sorts of difficulties and established an environment
protection agency in 1973, which was "very new at that time," he recalled.
Strong, who was also secretary-general of the last historic Rio Earth Summit in 1992, said
China should share at the Rio+20 summit here its "good" story with other countries.
China should share "what it is doing and what it is planning to do with its harmonious
development based on science," he said. "And China's policy is based on science."
For example, China is the only country he knew where officials are judged partly on their
environmental performance, he said. "I don't know any other country doing that."
Strong also noted China still faces many challenges, like high energy consumption per unit of
the GDP and air pollution, "but the progress is very good and the story which China has to tell is
very good."
"China is setting an example, and it still has to move further domestically," he said. "But it is
moving, its policies are moving in the right direction."
During the Rio+20 conference, China should share its experience, its progress achieved, and its
policy for the future, he said. "The world cannot achieve sustainable development without
China, and China cannot achieve its future without the world."
As a world leader, China needs the world and the world needs China, Strong said. "I am very
convinced that China is the most important influence now in the modern world."
On June 20-22, more than 130 heads of state or government and tens of thousands of
delegates will gather here to discuss a sustainable development blueprint and make important
decisions on the global sustainable development process.
In comparison with its previous version 20 years ago, the Rio+20 summit comes at a time when
it is very difficult to "get the kind of decisions that we need," Strong said.
"But hopefully, it can be the launching pad for a new period of positive negotiations and
progress," he added.
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China Daily (China): Rio+20 won't be just a UN talking shop, Sha says
18 June 2012
More than 130 world leaders will gather in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil this week, and put their heads
together to deliver commitments on making the world a more sustainable place for future
generations.
In an exclusive interview with China Daily in New York, Chinese diplomat Sha Zukang,
secretary-general for what's billed as Rio+20 and UN undersecretary-general for economic and
social affairs, expressed confidence the Brazilian meeting won't be just "another UN
conference" but will establish concrete goals.
"The UN is a place where we practically have conferences every day, [but] this is the
conference which should have the potential to decide the future of mankind," said Sha.
"Rio+20 must be the place where decisions on the future of the planet are made for the next 10
or 20 years. It cannot be another talk shop. World leaders need to adopt an ambitious and yet
practical outcome that equals the magnitude of today's challenges," he added.
The three-day (June 20-22) United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development — its
nickname honors the 20th anniversary of the 10992 UN Earth Summit in Rio — will focus on two
themes: a green economy, in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication,
and an institutional framework for such development.
Sha said pursuing the first of these goals "can offer win-win solutions. It can be a broad avenue
to sustainable development, by opening up new opportunities."
While implementation of environmentally benign technologies has been shown to create jobs
and stimulate economic growth while protecting ecosystems, developing countries face
transition costs. They also worry that failing to move swiftly toward a greener economy could
mean conditions being attached to the aid they receive from developed countries or being hit
with trade restrictions.
"These concerns can be alleviated if development partners come forward to offer support in
finance and technology, and provide market access for green products for developing
countries," Sha said.
"A critical issue is intellectual-property rights, for which I have always stressed the key is
affordability. If technologies are not affordable, then all this pledge to international cooperation is
just empty talk."
UN member states, during months of negotiations before Rio+20, highlighted a number of
challenges to and priorities for reaching the sustainable-development goals, or SDGs, in the
conference's dual themes, Sha said. Disaster-risk reduction and resilience, food security and
sustainable agriculture, and water access and efficiency are among the priorities world leaders
will focus on in Brazil, he predicted.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said Rio+20 is "a once-in-a-generation opportunity" to
make concrete progress toward a sustainable economy for the world.
Premier Wen Jiabao, who is scheduled to attend the summit, said on June 7 in Beijing that
China supports Rio+20, which "could inject new energy in global sustainable development".
Sha recognizes China's efforts in sustainable development as a leader among emerging
economies.
"As a Chinese national, I am very happy that China has established commissions for economic
reform and development, which is actually a very strong institution at the national level. They
are coordinating all the economic, social and environmental protections," he said.
Rio+20 is also a follow-on to the 1992 Earth Summit, during which countries adopted Agenda
21, a blueprint for rethinking economic growth, promoting social equity and ensuring
sustainability.
"Indeed, from climate change to the loss of biodiversity, and from land degradation to depleting
fresh water, some of the key challenges that were already apparent in 1992 have unfortunately
become even more alarming," the diplomat said.
The conference, he added, "needs to secure strong political commitment at the highest levels of
government, and among all stakeholders. It must re-energize the global partnership for
sustainable development."
It will also consider establishing a Sustainable Development Council and strengthening the UN
Environment Programme by upgrading it to a "specialized agency".
Rio+20 also will strengthen arrangements and mechanisms that integrate sustainabledevelopment goals at international, national and local levels, potentially leading to stronger
institutions that ensure access to clean water, sanitation, shelter and energy.
Rio+20 is the biggest UN conference in years, estimated to attract 50,000 people from 190
countries, including heads of State and government along with thousands of participants from
the world body and its agencies, civil society and the private sector. Over its three days, the
conference will feature over 550 side events organized by the UN itself as well as
nongovernmental organizations including environmental advocacy groups.
However, some experts on the environment have voiced skepticism about the event, dismissing
it as yet another high-level salon that's unlikely to achieve anything substantial.
Previous UN meetings on global climate change, for instance, ended with a lack of concrete
achievements, mostly because of disagreements on language of the final documents among
world leaders.
Sha, however, is more optimistic about the Rio gathering, emphasizing that leaders need to
adhere to the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities" — a common phrase at
climate-change talks — reconciled with sustainable-development goals.
Countries could determine which goals should be accorded the highest priority in their
respective policy-making efforts, based on national circumstances, and then develop specific
targets appropriate for them, Sha explained.
"I don't see any conflicts between SDGs and the principle of common but differentiated
responsibilities," he said.
The conference, Sha added, will produce a list of measurable commitments. "Major groups,
governments and other stakeholders are encouraged to announce at Rio+20 over 1,000 new
voluntary commitments for a sustainable future."
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RONA MEDIA UPDATE
THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE NEWS
Tuesday, 19 June, 2012
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NASDAQ: New UNEP-IHDP Sustainability Index Shows Lower Growth In Major
Economies
New UNEP-IHDP Sustainability Index Shows Lower Growth In Major Economies
(RTTNews.com) - Growth in the world's major economies has been much weaker than the
current official estimates when the rapid and largely irreversible depletion of natural resources
are taken into consideration, a newly launched report showed Sunday.
The Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI) was unveiled in the Inclusive Wealth Report 2012, published
by the United Nations University's International Human Dimensions Program on Global
Environmental Change (UNU-IHDP) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
The index assesses the value of natural resources, which are being depleted by human
activities such as deforestation, in evaluations of economic growth.
When measured by the IWI, the economic performances of Chinese and Brazilian economies
improved only by 45 percent and 18 percent between 1990 and 2008. The U.S. grew by just 13
percent, while South Africa's actually decreased by 1 percent.
However, when measured by GDP, the most common indicator for economic production, the
economies in China, the U.S., Brazil and South Africa grew by 422 percent, 37 percent, 31
percent and 24 percent respectively over the same period.
During this period, the natural resources per-capita declined 33 percent in South Africa, 25
percent in Brazil, 20 percent in the U.S., and 17 percent in China.
Of all the 20 nations surveyed, only Japan did not see a fall in natural capital, due to an increase
in forest cover, the report said.
For comments and feedback: contact editorial@rttnews.com
http://www.rttnews.com
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Forbes: As Investment in Clean Energy Rises, Muddling Through is the Only Way
Forward
As Investment in Clean Energy Rises, Muddling Through is the Only Way Forward
Richard Martin, Contributor
Pike Research’s Smart Energy Annual Report 2012,released last week, estimated total revenue
from smart energy and smart energy storage at $222 billion in 2011. By 2015, that figure will
reach $420 billion – nearly doubling in 5 years.
That actually understates the case, if you refer to Global Trends in Renewable Energy
Investment 2012, which was released earlier this year by the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP), based on data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Global investment in
clean energy hit a record $260 billion in 2011, the UNEP report stated. The difference, while not
small – $38 billion – is mostly related to the definitions of “revenue” and “investment.” However
you slice it, that’s a big pile of change. And the UNEP report contains some other data worth
considering if you believe, as some commentators do, that the clean energy “bubble” has burst:


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Driven by a 50 percent drop in prices for photovoltaic panels, investment in solar power
grew by 36 percent to $136.6 billion
The two companies investing the largest amounts in clean energy are the planet’s two
largest emitters of carbon: China and the United States
The last 3 months of 2011 saw funding for several utility-scale renewable energy
projects, including a 288 megawatt (MW) offshore wind farm off Germany for $1.3 billion,
a 272 MW wind farm in Canada ($756 million), and solar thermal plant in China ($354
million)
“Rumors of the death of clean energy have been greatly exaggerated,” summed up Michael
Leibreich, the CEO of Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
The Slightly Less Awful News
All of which is reason for optimism about the future of the clean energy sector. Unfortunately it’s
not enough. In fact it’s not close to being enough.
This week the International Energy Agency released a report that said that global investments in
clean energy need to double by 2020 to avoid missing climate change targets. To keep the
average rise in global temperatures to an almost-manageable 2 degrees Celsius by 2050 will
require $23.9 trillion by 2020 and $140 trillion by mid-century, the IEA estimated. (Those figures
are an order of magnitude larger than the investment and revenue figures cited above, largely
because they include all government spending on clean energy.)
“Let me be straight. Our ongoing failure to realize the full potential of clean energy technology is
alarming,” said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven.
The slightly-less-awful news, according to the Agency, is that “Low-carbon electricity generation
is already competitive in many markets and will take an increasing share of generation in
coming years,” the report said.
That’s enough to make you throw up your hands in defeat, as some have done. On the other
hand, you could respond as have executives at Goldman Sachs, the much-reviled global
investment bank, which announced at its annual meeting in May that it is doubling down on
clean energy with a $40 billion fund to invest in renewable energy projects. Stuart Bernstein, the
head of Goldman’s clean technology and renewables group, compared the clean-energy
opportunity to the technology boom of the 1990s or the emerging economy land rush of the
early 2000s.
The eventual truth almost certainly lies somewhere in between. The most appropriate response
to the clean energy opportunity and the prospect of catastrophic climate change – and, let’s face
it, really the only available response – is probably muddling through. That’s the term that has
been attached to the work of Charles Lindblom, the Yale professor of political science who
developed the theory of Incrementalism: that policy change and economic shifts, indeed any
major transformation in human experience, are evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and that
making small steps along the way is the best one can hope for.
I would also apply the “muddling through” theory to the outcome: the results of global climate
change are likely to be less disastrous than the Cassandras predict and much worse than the
Pollyannas expect.
At least I hope so.
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United States
Washington Post: Green accounting movement to recognize costs of using
natural resources gains global traction
17 June 2012
Green accounting movement to recognize costs of using natural resources gains global traction
NEW DELHI — What is a sip of clean water worth? Is there economic value in the shade of a
tree? And how much would you pay for a breath of fresh air?
Putting a price on a natural bounty long taken for granted as free may sound impossible, even
ridiculous. But after three decades on the fringes of serious policymaking, the idea is gaining
traction, from the vividly clear waters of the Maldives to the sober, suited reaches of the World
Bank.
As traditional measures of economic progress like GDP are criticized for ignoring downsides
including pollution or diminishment of resources such as fresh water or fossil fuels, there has
been an increased urgency to arguments for a more balanced and accurate reckoning of costs.
That is particularly so as fast-developing nations such as India and China jostle with rich nations
for access to those resources and insist on their own right to pollute on a path toward growth.
Proponents of so-called “green accounting” — gathered in Rio de Janeiro this week for the Rio
Earth Summit — hope that putting dollar values on resources will slam the brakes on unfettered
development. A mentality of growth at any cost is already blamed for disasters like the chronic
floods that hit deforested Haiti or the raging sand storms that have swept regions of China,
worsening desertification.
Environmental economists argue that redefining nature in stark monetary terms would offer
better information for making economic and development decisions. That, they say, would make
governments and corporations less likely to jeopardize future stocks of natural assets or
environmental systems that mostly unseen make the planet habitable, from forests filtering
water to the frogs keeping swarming insects in check.
If the value of an asset like a machine is reduced as it wears out, proponents say, the same
accounting principle should apply to a dwindling natural resource.
“Environmental arguments come from the heart. But in today’s world based on economics it’s
hard for arguments of the heart to win,” said Pavan Sukhdev, a former banker now leading an
ongoing project that was proposed by the Group of Eight industrialized nations to study
monetary values for the environment.
That study, started in 2007, has estimated the world economy suffers roughly $2.5 trillion to $4
trillion in losses every year due to environmental degradation. That’s up to 7 percent of global
GDP.
“We need to understand what we’re losing in order to save it,” Sukhdev said. “You cannot
manage what you do not measure.”
Using the same accounting principles, some countries are already changing policy.
The Maldives recently banned fishing gray reef sharks after working out that each was worth
$3,300 a year in tourism revenue, versus $32 paid per catch. Ugandans spared a Kampala
wetland from agricultural development after calculating it would cost $2 million a year to run a
sewage treatment facility — the same job the swamp does for free.
But environmental accounting still faces many detractors and obstacles. Among them is
resistance from governments who might lack the resources and expertise to publish a “greened”
set of national accounts alongside those measuring economic growth. Particularly in the
developing world, many still struggle to produce even traditional statistics that are timely and
credible.
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Washington Post: News Summary: Risking backlash, Obama administration
backs tighter soot-pollution standards
15 June 2012
News Summary: Risking backlash, Obama administration backs tighter soot-pollution standards
LESS SOOT: Risking an election-year backlash from Republicans, the Obama administration is
proposing new air-quality standards to lower the amount of soot that can be released into the
air.
HEALTH RISKS: Environmental groups and public health advocates said the EPA was
protecting millions of Americans at risk of soot-related asthma attacks, lung cancer, heart
disease and premature death.
SEEN OVERLY STRICT: But congressional Republicans and industry officials called the
proposal overly strict and said it could hurt economic growth and cause job losses in areas
where pollution levels are determined to be too high.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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L.A. Times: EPA proposes more stringent soot rules
15 June 2012
EPA proposes more stringent soot rules
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced proposed new regulations Thursday that
would further reduce legal limits for fine particle pollution -- otherwise known as soot -- in the
nation’s air. Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation,
made the announcement in a phone call with reporters, saying that the new standard would
save thousands of lives and an upward estimate of billions of dollars in healthcare costs.
The EPA was under a court order, issued earlier this month, to propose new standards for fine
particulate matter under 2.5 micrometers, or PM2.5 as it’s called, according to the best available
science by Thursday.
The proposed regulations would reduce the acceptable amount of soot in the air from the
current standard of 15 micrograms per cubic meter of air to a level between 12 and 13
micrograms per cubic meter. This soot comes from varied sources such as power plants, diesel
engines and wood fires. The proposed standards will go through a nine-week comment process
and must be finalized by Dec. 14.
“The good news about today’s actions is that we’re already on the path for 99% of U.S. counties
to meet the proposed standards without the need for additional state or local action,” said
McCarthy on Thursday.
She went on to explain that regulations and programs already in place are projected to bring
soot levels down under 12 micrograms by the year 2020 in all but six counties nationwide,
according to EPA projections. Several of these programs, however, including the recently
announced Mercury and Air Toxic Standards, or MATS, are being challenged in court.
“Updating these standards will protect us from the tiniest particles that can cause the biggest
health problems. By limiting the smoke, soot, metals and other pollution our lungs and hearts
absorb, EPA is protecting all of us from asthma attacks, lung cancer, heart disease and
premature deaths,” said John Walke, clean air director at the Natural Resources Defense
Council, in a statement.
But not all environmentalists or trade groups were satisified with the news.
“EPA’s proposal could substantially increase costs to states, municipalities, businesses and
ultimately consumers without justified benefits,” said Howard Feldman, director of regulatory
and scientific affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, in a statement. He went on to explain
that companies will be reluctant to invest or build new plants or refineries in counties that cannot
meet the new standards, thus taking an economic toll.
McCarthy disagreed, saying, “In those few areas with specific, localized challenges, like old
diesel engines around ports, railyards or roadways or whether it’s wood stoves in valleys, EPA
will partner with those communities by providing technical assistance or other voluntary
initiatives – like our DERA (Diesel Emmisions Reduction Act, which provides funds for clean
diesel conversion) program – to help them to achieve clean air standards that others will be
enjoying.”
The six counties currently listed as projected to fail the new standard by 2020 include Riverside
and San Bernardino counties in California; Santa Cruz, Arizona; Wayne, Michigan; Jefferson,
Alabama; and Lincoln in Montana.
Conrad Schneider, advocacy director at a group called Clean Air Task Force (CATF), sent an
emailed statement hailing the new proposed standards, but saying the group would urge EPA to
take it down yet another notch to 11 micrograms/m3. “According to our ‘Sick of Soot’ report,
jointly released with the American Lung Assn. and Earthjustice, setting the annual standard at
11 micrograms/m3 would save an estimated 27,000 American lives more than under the current
standard, and fully 12,000 more lives would be saved than setting a level of 12 micrograms/m3.”
The EPA was required under the Clean Air Act to review its standards in light of the latest
scientific evidence. In 2006, the Bush administration issued PM2.5 limits that were eventually
rejected by federal courts in 2009 for failing to protect public health, and a court ruling earlier in
June required the EPA to sign off on new proposed rules.
“A strong body of science, which includes hundreds of new studies, shows fine particles harm
health,” said McCarthy. “Particles smaller than 2.5 micrograms, which we call PM2.5, can
penetrate deep into the lungs to cause premature death. This pollutant is also linked to a wide
variety of serious health effects, including heart attack, strokes, aggrevated asthma, and
increased hospital admissions and emergency room visits. Exposure to particle pollution is
estmated to cause tens of thousands of premature deaths each year.”
The EPA estimates that the cost of implementing the new standards would range from $2.9
million to $69 million, with savings in health costs estimated from $88 million to $5.9 billion.
McCarthy also noted that regulations regarding visibility, or haze, and course particulate matter
called PM10 would remain unchanged.
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Chicago Tribune: Judge limits attorneys' fees in BP oil spill case
15 June 2012
Judge limits attorneys' fees in BP oil spill case
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge overseeing the massive litigation stemming from the
2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill issued an order on Friday capping the amount attorneys can charge
plaintiffs who participate in a settlement with BP Plc.
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans gave preliminary approval last month to an
estimated $7.8 billion settlement BP reached to resolve more than 100,000 claims by individuals
and businesses affected by the spill.
In his order on Friday, Barbier ruled that attorneys for plaintiffs who settle claims through the
settlement must limit their contingency fee arrangements to 25 percent of any recovery a
plaintiff receives plus "reasonable costs."
Barbier emphasized that the 25 percent figure was a ceiling and that attorneys were free to
charge less.
"In many cases, a reasonable fee may be less than 25 percent, particularly for a relatively
simple claim by an individual," he wrote. "This Order is not intended to allow or encourage
attorneys to charge more than a reasonable fee under any circumstance."
The settlement BP reached includes two agreements, one for economic and property claims
and one for medical claims. Barbier has set a November 8 hearing to address objections, and
will then consider whether to grant final approval.
A group of attorneys who negotiated those agreements with BP, known as the Plaintiffs'
Steering Committee, are seeking $600 million for their work. Those fees, which would be paid
by BP under the terms of the settlement, must be approved by Barbier.
The case is In re: Oil Spill by the Oil Rig "Deepwater Horizon" in the Gulf of Mexico, on April 20,
2010, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana, No. 10-md-02179
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Huffington Post: Stop Public Handouts to Oil, Gas and Coal Companies, Now
18 June 2012
Stop Public Handouts to Oil, Gas and Coal Companies, Now
Every year, around the world, almost one trillion dollars of subsidies is handed out to help the
fossil fuel industry. Who came up with the crazy idea that the fossil fuel industry deserves our
hard-earned money, no less in economic times of such harsh human consequence? We fire
teachers, police and firemen in drastic budget cuts and yet, the fossil fuel industry can laugh all
the way to the bank on our dime? Something doesn't add up here.
We should not be subsidizing the destruction of our planet. Fossil fuels are literally cooking our
planet, polluting our air and draining our wallets. Why should we continue to reward companies
to do that?
As they go after more expensive and harder to access fossil fuels, it is like drilling a hole in our
pocketbooks. We pay more at the pump. We pay in taxpayer subsidies to a highly profitable
industry. And we pay in the rising costs of climate change in the form of floods, storms and
droughts that hurt our homes and communities.
Our world leaders are gathering in Rio over the coming days for a historic meeting twenty years
after the first Earth Summit. We are looking to our governments to show leadership and commit
to real timetables and actions for fighting climate change, including ending fossil fuel subsidies.
Sure, they've made commitments to stop these unnecessary payouts. But commitments need to
become action to have any meaning. And despite strong words, we are not yet seeing action on
the ground.
In the United States, President Obama has repeatedly proposed cutting $4 billion in annual
federal subsidies to the oil and gas industry and several bills to cut fossil fuel subsidies are
stalled in Congress.
Think about what else we could do with one trillion dollars. We could create clean energy jobs,
limit greenhouse gas emissions that create climate change and help make a healthier and more
secure life for our children. Instead, we give 12 times as much in subsidies to the fossil fuel
industry as we give to clean energy industries like wind and solar.
If you have a dollar to invest -- investing that dollar in clean energy creates three times the jobs
of the same dollar invested in the fossil fuel industry. In fact, studies show that fossil fuel
subsidies slow economic growth. Clean energy is a great example of building a green economy.
Ending fossil fuel subsidies is good for our pocketbooks, economic growth and for our health
and environment.
In poll after poll after poll, the public says they want more renewable energy and less fossil
fuels.
So why aren't our world leaders doing more to deliver what the public wants instead of what oil,
gas and coal companies want? We need to hold our leaders accountable for the choices they
make on our behalf.
People around the world are waking up to the absurdity of subsidizing Big Oil and Coal. Over a
million people have already signed onto a petition to end fossil fuel subsidies. And on June 18,
people from all over the world will be sending world leaders message on Twitter and Facebook
to #endfossilfuelsubsidies.
Just last March, President Obama said,
Instead of taxpayer giveaways to an industry that's never been more profitable, we should be
using that money to double-down on investments in clean energy technologies that have never
been more promising.
These proposals have so far failed in the face of strong industry opposition and the fossil fuel
industry is equally obstructive elsewhere in the world.
In a time of economic hardship, progressing climate change and a growing demand for reliable
and clean sources of energy, using taxpayer money to help oil, gas and mining companies
represent a reckless and irrational use of taxpayer money and government investment. We can
do better. We need the fossil fuel industry to stop asking us to pay the price for their greed. We
need our world leaders to turn their words into actions. And we can start by reminding them to
#endfossilfuelsubsidies.
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ENERGY POLICY: Republican energy package expected to pass House this week
18 June 2012
House Republicans will continue highlighting their disagreements with the Obama
administration over energy policy this week with a planned floor vote on a package of bills
aimed at delaying regulations and promoting oil and gas exploration.
The "Domestic Energy and Jobs Act," which comprises seven bills that previously passed out of
the Energy and Commerce and Natural Resources committees, will hit the floor Wednesday and
is expected to come to a vote Thursday, a leadership aide said Friday.
Most of the underlying bills were introduced earlier this year and were presented as remedies to
then-climbing gasoline prices, but Republicans are now emphasizing their potential to create
jobs as pump prices have fallen in recent months.
The package is seen largely as an election-year messaging exercise and stands little chance of
making it through the Democratic Senate.
Amendments to the bill are due to the Rules Committee by 4 p.m. today; none had been posted
as of Friday afternoon.
House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) assembled the legislation as the latest project of
his House Energy Action Team, also known as HEAT. In a conference call last week, McCarthy
and other bill sponsors said expanding access to federal lands for oil and gas drilling, reining in
environmental regulations, and streamlining permit requirements would aid job growth.
McCarthy cited the employment boom in North Dakota driven by new oil discoveries in the
Bakken shale formation to argue for increased drilling across the country. He said North
Dakota's oil sector has blossomed because the discoveries occurred on state or private lands,
whereas he and others accused the Obama administration of restricting access to oil and
natural gas deposits on federal lands.
Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), who sponsored one bill included in the HEAT package, said
insufficient access to private lands, combined with regulatory efforts such as new regulations on
hydraulic fracturing from U.S. EPA and the Bureau of Land Management, is "a recipe for losing
jobs and for losing our potential to be the world leader in energy."
Gardner's bill, H.R. 4480, which Energy and Commerce approved last month, would require
opening new lands to oil and gas production if the president were to tap the Strategic Petroleum
Reserve. The bill would limit to 10 percent of the total federal estate new lands that would be
open to drilling in response to an SPR drawdown, and it would exclude national parks and
wilderness areas.
The bill attracted support from three Democrats during committee markup but was opposed by
Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), who had indicated concern that it would allow drilling off his home
state's coast. The bill may encounter additional GOP opposition -- and Democratic support -once it hits the floor, if an earlier House effort to expand drilling offshore is any guide. Earlier this
year, 21 Republicans, mostly from coastal states, opposed a bill to expand oil drilling offshore
and in other areas, while 21 Democrats supported the measure (E&E Daily, Feb. 17).
Another bill from the energy committee, H.R. 4471, the "Gasoline Regulations Act" from Rep.
Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), is included in the package. It would delay a handful of EPA rules while
requiring an interagency study on how the agency's regulations affect the price of gasoline,
diesel fuel and natural gas. It also would require EPA to consider costs before establishing
ambient air quality standards, a provision that has especially rankled environmentalists and
public health advocates who say the standards should be based only on scientific
recommendations.
The package also includes five bills that emerged from the Natural Resources Committee earlier
this year.
They include a trio of bills -- H.R. 4381, H.R. 4382 and H.R. 4383 -- that would require the
Interior Department to more aggressively promote energy development on public lands (E&E
Daily, May 17).
Also part of the package are a bill from Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.),
H.R. 2150, that would ease access to oil and gas in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and
legislation from Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), H.R. 2752, to authorize the Bureau of Land
Management to conduct online auctions for onshore leases.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the package would reduce direct spending by
$385 million over the next 10 years and that its requirements would cost $189 million to
implement between 2013 and 2017.
Schedule: Debate on the legislation will begin Wednesday, June 20, at a time to be
determined.
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New York Times (blog): In Defense of Parasites
18 June 2012
In Defense of Parasites
Would you purposely allow Schistosoma worms to burrow into your body and take up residence
in your bloodstream, lungs and liver? Or perhaps allow writhing botfly larvae to feast upon your
juices before popping out of your skin as a hairy fly?
While not proposing anything nearly so extreme, a group of conservationists is calling for a
better understanding of parasites, those almost universally hated creatures.
“We’re trying to find elegant ways to spread the message that parasites are very important parts
of ecosystems, and that any reasons for conserving any animal out there — from pandas to
blue whales — also apply to parasites,” said Andres Gomez, an ecologist and veterinarian at
Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History.
Dr. Gomez and two colleagues, Elizabeth S. Nichols and Susan L. Perkins,
champion the parasite cause in a chapter of New Directions in Conservation Medicine,
published
last
month
by
Oxford
University
Press.
Not surprisingly, many people do not seem to share this view. Dr. Gomez and his colleagues
decided that something was amiss in the world of parasite conservation after taking a closer
look at conservation textbooks. they analyzed 77 books published between 1970 to 2009 for
mentions of parasites.
In the material used to teach future conservationists, they found, 72 percent either neglects to
mention parasites or speaks negatively of them. “Most conservation biologists throughout the
world today are probably oblivious to the relevance of parasites in terms of biodiversity, ecology
and evolution,” Dr. Gomez said.
Dr. Gomez said that when he was trained as a veterinarian, he was taught that parasites were
the enemy. It was not until he began his career in ecology that he began to view them in a more
favorable light. “The more you look at parasites, the more you’ll be amazed at their lifestyles,
their strategies for transmissions, their ways of fooling their hosts,” he said.
These expert manipulators have been the scourge of humanity over the millennia. They spread
disease, turn fields barren, haunt livestock and even kill people. But more and more, evidence
supgports the hypothesis that global ecosystems, and humans, cannot live without them. If all
parasites were to disappear off the face of the planet tomorrow, we’d have a teetering ecological
house of cards, Dr. Gomez suggests. “Everything would crumble,” he said.
That’s because parasites make up a significant chunk of global biodiversity, although
researchers still have no idea precisely how much. Some studies estimate that parasitic worms
alone are about twice as abundant as their vertebrate hosts. In a given ecosystem, there are
probably more trophic connections — links tying species together — between parasites and
their hosts than between predators and their prey.
By doling out death and disease, they shape the presence of animals across an ecosystem —
humans included. In Africa, for example, the protozoan disease trypanosomiasis played a major
role in determining the distribution of both man and animal for thousands of years.
Likewise, parasites drive the evolution of species. Like Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen, who must
constantly run “just to keep in the same place,” animals and their parasites are kept in an everaccelerating state of evolutionary motion in trying to outpace one another. The malaria pathogen
is one example, in that it has maintained the potentially deadly human sickle-cell gene, which
provides resistance to the disease.
The health benefits of having some parasite load for both humans and animals are becoming
increasingly apparent, researchers argue.
And no conservation discussion is complete without mentioning the intrinsic value of a species.
“It’s not that human benefit is the end-all of biodiversity,” Dr. Gomez said. “Things out there
have a right to exist.”
Despite these paramount ecological roles, the researchers write, it is with a “mixture of open
antipathy, disregard and lack of knowledge and awareness” that parasites are most often
viewed amongst scientists and the public alike. Yet they are threatened by the same biodiversity
crisis as tigers, polar bears or any other species.
Not surprisingly, only one parasite—the pygmy hog-sucking louse—is currently included on the
International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of endangered species, and it earned
that status only because its host, the pygmy hog, is listed as critically endangered.
Parasite conservation presents a critical conundrum: to conserve such bloodsuckers and
disease-spreaders is to explicitly conserve death and sickness. In nature, this is a normal part of
a functioning ecosystem, but for human society and health, those tradeoffs will not work. “If we
started asking people to accept higher parasite burdens in themselves or their pets or domestic
animals, then we’ve got a problem, and for good reason,” Dr. Gomez acknowledged.
He imagines a system in which parasites can thrive yet human livelihoods and health are
preserved. The conversation is still in its infancy, however, and finding that balance remains a
challenge. “We only ask that these tradeoffs are considered and that parasite conservation (or
elimination) is given appropriate weight,” the authors conclude.
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ClimateWire: Budget amendment changes how state can spend cap-and-trade
money
18 June 2012
Budget amendment changes how state can spend cap-and-trade money
A California budget bill slated for a vote tomorrow would shift how some revenues from the
state's upcoming cap-and-trade auctions are spent, directing them away from consumers and
into energy efficiency.
The measure also proposes to give part of the money to electricity customers in the form of
rebate checks. That would dash the hopes of the state's biggest utilities, which have argued that
the funds should be used to help reduce monthly power bills once cap and trade kicks in.
Californians are expected to pay more for energy as the program, part of the state's A.B. 32
climate law, penalizes power sources that emit greenhouse gases.
"We support A.B. 32 and we want to see the success of this program, but it's got to be done in a
way that is not going to have significant economic impacts on customers," said Lynsey Paulo,
spokeswoman for Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the largest of California's investor-owned
utilities. "We certainly think that energy efficiency programs and goals are good goals to have.
We just feel that it's critical that our customers see this benefit returned back to them."
The debate surrounds a portion of revenue expected to be generated from the sale of
allowances needed to cover greenhouse gas emissions under California's economywide
program. In the beginning of trading, the Golden State will give utilities as many allowances as
they need for free. The companies, however, must auction those off to the electricity generators
(which in many cases are also the same utilities). The proceeds from these sales must be used
to benefit ratepayers.
The money, expected to be about $635 million next year, is separate from the funds that the
state will take in from other allowance sales. That group of allowances is projected to bring in as
much as $1 billion next year, and there are battles over how to spend those dollars, as well.
The language on the utility auction proceeds -- contained in what is known in California as a
"trailer bill" that follows major legislation -- remains part of tense budget negotiations in both the
Assembly and Senate, those familiar with the dialogue said Friday. It could be pulled out before
the legislation reaches the floor of each chamber.
If passed and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown (D), the measure it would appear to block further
action by the California Public Utilities Commission. That agency was expected this summer to
issue a ruling on the best use of the money.
Reducing which bills?
When it comes to that money for ratepayers, there is a difference of opinion about what is in
their best interest.
California Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner (D), who has a bill that is similar to the budget bill
amendment, said that her legislation helps California's public schools while also benefitting
electricity ratepayers.
Skinner's A.B. 1186 seeks to direct 10 percent of the utilities' allowance money to schools for
energy efficiency programs.
"Taxpayers spend $1.1 billion annually to cover energy bills for public schools," Skinner said in
an emailed statement. "Improving school efficiency puts taxpayers' -- who are also ratepayers -money back into the classroom. In the long run, this benefits ratepayers by slashing electricity
use statewide and reducing the need to build more power plants."
Paulo, with PG&E, said that utilities already contribute to energy efficiency programs. PG&E,
Southern California Edison Co. and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. paid $1.3 million last year for
efforts to reduce power consumption, Paulo said.
The money, if returned 100 percent to electricity customers through their monthly bills, will hold
down rate increases that are expected once cap and trade begins, she said. PG&E estimates
that bills will rise 2.9 percent if the funds are returned through versus 5.9 percent without the
help.
A consumer group agreed that the money should go to electricity consumers.
"The money generated from cap and trade is not free money, it is money invested by ratepayers
in cleaner energy," Mindy Spatt, spokeswoman for San Francisco-based The Utility Reform
Network said in an email. "Because utility customers pay the costs of these investments through
rising electric bills, they should receive any offsets. Rising electric bills put California families at
risk, and everything possible should be done to mitigate that risk."
Spatt did not immediately give an opinion on whether the money should be rebated or used to
lower monthly bills. PG&E believes the rebates are less efficient because of the overhead costs.
Others have argued that it would be better for ratepayers in the long run if they could see the
cost of using energy sources that have carbon emissions.
"What our concern is, if it's a rate reduction and goes into the bill, ratepayers won't see that
prices are going up because of greenhouse gases," Chloe Lukins, of the CPUC's Division of
Ratepayer Advocates, has previously said. "What we want to do is change behavior and say to
the public, 'The price is going up, and this is the cost of greenhouse gas emissions, so this is
how we want you to change your behavior.'"
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ClimateWire: EPA's soot standards will have 'ancillary' benefits for climate -experts
18 June 2012
EPA's soot standards will have 'ancillary' benefits for climate -- experts
U.S. EPA's recently proposed rule to tighten ambient air standards for fine particulate matter will
have an indirect benefit of curbing climate change, especially if it targets diesel emissions, said
clean air experts.
Reducing levels of particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5) -- particles that are larger than 2.5
micrometers and smaller than 10 micrometers in diameter and are commonly referred to as soot
-- will have "an incremental climate benefit," said Conrad Schneider, advocacy director for the
Clean Air Task Force.
"We're not saying it's a big one," he said. "It's an ancillary benefit or co-benefit."
EPA proposed a rule Friday that would reduce the limit on soot in the atmosphere from 15
micrograms per cubic meter to between 12 and 13 micrograms per cubic meter averaged over a
year. A final rule is expected Dec. 14 (Greenwire, June 15).
The health benefits of the proposed rule are clear, said the agency and various public health
groups: PM 2.5 is small enough to enter the lungs and heart, triggering asthma attacks, heart
conditions, strokes, and other cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses. In some studies, fine
particulate matter was found to be responsible for 85 to 90 percent of air pollution-related
deaths, said Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford
University.
But the climate benefits of strengthening soot standards are more nuanced. Black carbon, a
component of soot from diesel engines and wood burning, is considered a short-lived climate
forcer. Although it stays in the atmosphere for only a short period, it can accelerate the rate of
climate change relatively quickly by settling in cold environments and melting snow by
absorbing heat.
End of the road for old diesel trucks?
Not all particulate matter contains black carbon, however. Soot from coal-fired power plants, for
example, contains nitrates and other particles that reflect heat and can have a cooling effect on
the climate.
"If they target diesel vehicles, there's definitely a climate benefit," said Jacobson. "If they target
coal-fired power plants ... there will certainly be a health benefit, but on the climate end, it won't
be so great."
Communities that do not meet these new standards by 2020 would need to develop individual
state implementation plans in which they choose the best path to lowering particulate matter
levels. The six communities that will be unable to reach a 12- or 13-microgram limit -- Riverside
and San Bernardino counties, California; Santa Cruz County, Ariz.; Jefferson County, Ala.;
Wayne County, Mich.; and Lincoln County, Mont. -- could focus on adopting clean diesel
technology, said Schneider, which would lead to cuts in black carbon. But they could also
choose to target power plants or other sources of particulate matter.
About 85 percent of the particle matter emitted from diesel trucks is black carbon. Legislation
that directly deals with diesel vehicles, like the transportation bill's "Clean Construction"
principles, and appropriations funding for the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act, are necessary to
curb emissions from older, dirty diesel engines, the leading source of fine particle soot in the
United States, said Schneider.
The Diesel Technology Forum welcomed EPA's proposal as an opportunity for the country to
replace old diesel engines with clean diesel technology. A recent study found that trucks in
compliance with the 1999 EPA standards for diesel engines produced 95 percent less
particulate emissions (ClimateWire, April 24).
"The diesel industry has contributed quite a bit to reducing PM emissions in the U.S.," said Allen
Schaeffer, executive director of the Diesel Technology Forum. "That will deliver benefits of lower
PM emissions across the board."
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EnergyWire: Man-made earthquakes -- should there be a law?
18 June 2012
Man-made earthquakes -- should there be a law?
It's not illegal to cause an earthquake.
You can't contaminate groundwater, pollute the air or poison endangered species. But federal
environmental laws impose no penalty for setting off a seismic rupture that collapses chimneys
or buckles roads.
Still, when humans make the ground shake with activities tied to oil and gas drilling, or by
injecting a power plant's carbon dioxide emissions underground, it tends to make the neighbors
antsy. And a study issued late last week by the National Research Council says that industry
and regulators could be doing more to prevent earthquakes (Greenwire, June 15).
"All of them should be talking together and coordinating," said Murray Hitzman, the Colorado
School of Mines professor who chaired the study on man-made earthquakes for the council,
which part of the National Academies. For example, they could check for fault lines before
pumping toxic waste tied to oil and gas production deep underground.
Underground waste disposal, which the report deems the most likely energy industry activity to
cause earthquakes, is regulated under the Underground Injection Control sections of the Safe
Drinking Water Act. The regulations that enforce it do have requirements to test some proposed
sites to see if wells could cause earthquakes, but they don't apply to wells connected to the
nation's expanding onshore oil and gas fields.
The National Research Council did not call for federal mandates, Hitzman was careful to point
out.
"That was not within the scope of what the committee was asked to say," he said in a
conference call with reporters Friday. "It's up to people in Washington what they want to do with
that information."
The committee's suggestions are "best practices," he said, which are usually voluntary for
industry. But the report also outlined a "traffic light" approach that could trigger a shutdown of
injection wells tied to or near earthquakes.
By raising the issue on a national level, some say the study inevitably invites questions about
whether federal regulation might be needed.
"They're very cautious, but there are parts where it indicates this has been successful so far, but
it may not work forever," said analyst Kevin Book, managing director of the Washington, D.C.based consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners. "It seems to lead to a call for some sort of
federal intervention."
It is an election year, and talk of federal intervention is politically sensitive. Such sentiments are
unlikely to surface Tuesday when the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee holds a
hearing on the National Research Council report. But that does not mean there isn't some
support for more oversight of the U.S. drilling boom.
"It's wrong to say there isn't any will in Washington," Book said. "It just isn't on Capitol Hill."
More wells, more quakes
Many environmentalists do not share President Obama's reluctance to challenge the preeminence of state regulation. The Natural Resources Defense Council has petitioned U.S. EPA
to end the hazardous-waste exemption for drilling companies, which would have the effect of
requiring seismic standards for oil and gas waste injection wells (EnergyWire, March 22).
But even in the absence of federal regulation, the report suggests that in areas susceptible to
man-made earthquakes, state officials could add seismic provisions to their permit approvals.
Few states have done so, though some have shut down wells after earthquakes.
"The committee suggests that the agency with authority to issue a new injection permit, or the
authority to revise an existing injection permit, is the most appropriate agency to oversee
decisions made with respect to induced seismic events," the report states. "In many cases this
responsibility would fall to state agencies that permit injection wells."
As dramatic as it may sound, it is established science that injecting industrial wastewater
underground can lubricate faults and create earthquakes. Hydraulic fracturing and carbon
capture and storage also can lead to "induced seismicity." But the small number of quakes
linked to fracturing itself have been almost too small to be felt, and there is no carbon storage
project large enough to cause a quake.
Fracturing in shale formations requires millions of gallons of water to be forced down wellbores
to crack the rock and release gas. Much of that comes back up, as a brine laden with salt and
toxins. Drillers dispose of it most commonly in deep underground injection wells. When the fluid
is injected into or near a fault, it can lubricate the fault and cause an earthquake.
Such earthquakes are rare, but there are more instances of oil and gas disposal wells causing
earthquakes than there are documented cases of water contamination from hydraulic fracturing.
As oil and gas drilling has increased in the past few years, there have been increasing numbers
of earthquakes linked to underground injection of oil and gas waste.
"If we have more wells, we have more events. If we have more events, more likelihood of
higher-magnitude events," Hitzman explained.
Oil and gas waste disposal has been linked to earthquakes in Arkansas, Colorado, Ohio and
Texas. Scientists have linked Oklahoma's largest-ever earthquake, a magnitude-5.6 event in
November, to brine injection from drilling. The earthquake injured two people and damaged 14
homes.
State officials have said linking the Oklahoma quake to oil and gas activity is premature, but one
seismologist has warned that the state is risking another damaging quake if it continues to allow
injection near faults (EnergyWire, April 19).
In need of more basic data
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee, asked for the National Research Council study two years ago, before many of the
most high-profile earthquakes linked to drilling activity.
The study found there is a lack of basic data on how underground formations, faults and liquid
interact underground and that more research is needed into the risks of man-made quakes.
The report's checklist proposal starts with the suggestion that regulators -- typically state oil and
gas agencies -- evaluate the possibility of an earthquake at sites where companies want to use
or drill a well. That is not usually done for wells that receive oil and gas waste. The report also
suggests that well operators could install seismic instruments in areas where there have been
earthquakes to record the strength and timing of earthquakes.
And its traffic-light protocol suggests that injection could be scaled back if it is tied to
earthquakes and could even be stopped if it becomes a broader concern for public health and
safety.
"The ultimate success of such a protocol," the report says, "is fundamentally tied to the strength
of the collaborative relationships and dialogue among operators, regulators, the research
community, and the public."
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_________________________________________________________________
Canada
Plastics recycling in Canada up 15% in one year
17 June 2012
The Canadian Plastics Industry Association (CPIA) has released a report informing Canadians
that their recycling efforts have increased the amount of post-consumer plastic packaging being
recycled across Canada. An additional 15% of plastic packaging was recycled in 2010
compared to 2009 as reported by Moore Recycling Associates Inc. This increase is the result of
more material collected for recycling as well as more companies providing recycling information.
In total, over 217 million kilograms of post-consumer plastic packaging were collected for
recycling
in
Canada.
The results are derived from a survey of over 500 companies who are handling recycled plastics
in North America. These companies are made up of reclaimers, exporters, brokers, MRFs
(Material Recovery Facilities) and other handlers of used plastics.
"We are elated that around 70% of the plastic packaging collected, was recycled in Canada.
This amounts to more than 149 million kilograms. We are building a recycling industry in
Canada, re-using valuable plastic materials and creating jobs to grow the economy" says Carol
Hochu, President and CEO of the CPIA. Plastic packaging collected for recycling includes
plastic bottles, non-bottle rigid plastics such as deli and dairy containers, bakery, vegetable, fruit
containers, and plastic film, bags and outer wrap. These valuable resources are reused to
make, for example, fleece jackets, new plastic bottles, pipe, pallets, crates and buckets, decking
and other lawn and garden products.
The plastic recycled quantities reported for 2010 by Moore and Associates Inc. compared to
2009 represent an increase of 13% for bottles (for a total of 150 million kilograms), an increase
of 6% for non-bottle rigids (for a total of almost 30 million kilograms) and an increase of 36% for
plastic bags and outer wrap (for a total of almost 37 million kilograms).
Of particular note, there was over a 50% increase in plastic film and bags collected for recycling
from commercial businesses. In addition, of the total film and bags recovered, a third came from
consumer curbside recycling programs across Canada. CPIA continues to work with partners
and stakeholders across Canada to increase recycling opportunities and it appears to be paying
off.
And even better, Canadian recyclers of plastics want more supply; they have underutilized
capacity creating ample opportunity for consumers and businesses to supply our recyclers with
more plastics. For instance, it is estimated that the film and bag recycling capacity in Canada to
be at 38% utilization of the capacity and non- bottle rigid recycling capacity is at a 47%
utilization of the capacity. There is plenty of room to increase plastics recycling.
"Given the large access to plastic recycling collection programs across Canada, we are calling
upon consumers and businesses to participate in them. Used plastics are valuable resources to
be re-manufactured into new products," says Cathy Cirko, VP of CPIA.
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_________________________________________________________________
Globe and Mail: Don’t defund freshwater research, Ontario and Manitoba tell
Tories
18 June 2012
Don’t defund freshwater research, Ontario and Manitoba tell Tories
Two provincial environment ministers are pleading with the Conservative government to
continue its funding of a research station in Northwestern Ontario that has studied the ecology
of freshwater lakes for more than 50 years.
Gord Mackintosh, Manitoba’s Minister of Conservation and Water Stewardship, and Ontario
Environment Minister Jim Bradley say the work conducted at the Experimental Lakes Area
(ELA) is relied upon by all Canadian bodies that are responsible for managing freshwater
resources and many of their international counterparts.
“As you know, the Experimental Lakes Area is a unique, world-renowned freshwater research
facility that has been a global leader in understanding human impacts on fish and the freshwater
they live in,” the provincial politicians say in their letter to federal Fisheries Minister Keith
Ashfield and Environment Minister Peter Kent.
“Today, we are recommending that the decision to close the Experimental lakes Area be
deferred,” they say in their letter, “and that you explore the possibility of a new operating
regime.”
The massive budget bill that is expected to pass in the House of Commons as early as Monday
cuts about $2-million in annual funding to the research station and the ELA will be closed unless
a new operator can be found.
Scientists say the decision was politically motivated, arguing Ottawa is ending its support of the
ELA because it was producing data the Conservatives did not want to take into account as they
promote the development of Alberta’s oil sands.
Mr. Mackintosh and Mr. Bradley suggest that five different federal departments – agriculture,
fisheries, environment, health, and natural resources – chip in to keep the centre running. At the
moment, it is funded by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans alone. And the provincial
ministers also urge the federal government to invite universities, provinces and territories to
develop a joint research agenda.
Among other things, the station has studied the effects of acid rain, mercury deposits,
greenhouse gas emissions, hydroelectric development, climate change and chemical pollution.
In their letter, Mr. Mackintosh and Mr. Bradley describe it as a “gem.”
The Conservative government says it understands the importance of the work that has been
done at the facility but it is now focussing its funding on fisheries and habitat management.
Scientists believe it will be very difficult to find another organization to operate the centre
because universities are strapped for cash and the province of Ontario has its own fiscal
problems.
And, although the government would save about $2-million a year if the ELA was shut down,
some estimates suggest it will cost as much as $50-million to close the site and remediate the
lakes that have been part of the experiments scientists at the facility have been conducting.
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_________________________________________________________________
Globe and Mail: Oil sands must do ‘heavy lifting’ to meet climate goals, Ottawa
told
17 June 2012
Oil sands must do ‘heavy lifting’ to meet climate goals, Ottawa told
Canada is facing a yawning shortfall in its commitment to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions,
and both Ottawa and the provinces will have to embrace far more aggressive measures to meet
their targets, the federally-appointed National Roundtable on the Economy and Environment
says in a new report.
In a report prepared at the request of Environment Minister Peter Kent, the agency said Ottawa
and Alberta will have to dramatically rein in emissions from the fast-growing oil industry as part
of a national climate strategy.
It singled out the Alberta-based oil sector as a key contributor to growing emissions – and
therefore a major part of the solution – and suggested governments will need to force the
industry to adopt some high-cost solutions, such as carbon capture and storage.
The Harper government has ended funding for the roundtable, with Mr. Kent arguing its work
can be done elsewhere. However, in a letter requesting the study last year, the Environment
Minister said the independent advisory group was “in a unique position to advise the federal
government on sustainable development solutions.”
The decision to eliminate the group, which brings together business, environmentalists and
academics, has been roundly criticized as an example of the Conservative government’s
unwillingness to hear challenging messages from federally-funded organizations.
Former Conservative MP Bob Mills – who served as chair of the Commons environment
committee and is now a roundtable appointee – said last week that Prime Minister Stephen
Harper’s approach to the environment is “disappointing” and has given Canada a black eye
internationally.
Mr. Kent has long insisted Ottawa has a plan to meet the commitment to the United Nations that
Canada would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17 per cent from 2005 levels by 2020, as
countries seek to limit global warming to no more than two degrees.
But roundtable executive director David McLaughlin said neither the federal government nor the
provinces have produced a plan to close the emissions gap. “We can still reach the targets if we
do some really heavy lifting, but as time goes by, the lifting gets heavier,” he said.
The Conservative government’s 2020 emissions goal is in line with the one proposed by U.S.
President Barack Obama. But it is well short of what the former Liberal government promised
under the Kyoto Protocol, or what environmentalists say is needed to show leadership in the
international battle to slow global warming.
And governments are falling short even with that less ambitious goal. Federal and provincial
measures either enacted or proposed to date would achieve less than half the emission
reductions required to meet the 2020 target, the roundtable said.
Ottawa is also trailing the provinces in making progress, with policies that will produce only half
the gains that will result from by provincial action by 2020.
“The analysis shows that Canada’s 2020 target is a challenging goal that will require significant
and more stringent policies to drive increasingly high cost reductions,” said the report, to be
formally released Wednesday.
“A gradual process of trying to capture only the lowest cost emission reductions will not be
successful.”
To achieve the goal, Ottawa and the provinces will have to work together more closely – either
in a single national climate strategy or at least in a more closely co-ordinated approach, the
report said. “Neither approach current exists in Canada,” it added.
But a spokesman from Mr. Kent said the government is “pleased” with progress and is planning
other initiatives, including regulations on industrial sectors like the oil sands, that will get it to the
target.
“We are the first federal government to take action on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions,” Adam Sweet said in an e-mailed statement. “Our government is focused on a
realistic approach to GHG regulations that will reduce emissions, while continuing to create jobs
and encourage the growth of the Canadian economy.”
The federal government has announced a patchwork of policies aimed at reducing emissions,
including increased vehicle mileage regulations, some modest initiatives to encourage energy
efficiency and use of biofuels, and regulations to force the power sector to reduce emissions
from coal-fired plants over the longer term.
Ottawa has promised further regulations aimed by major emitting industries, including the oil
and gas industry. But the government is not expected to introduce its draft rules before the end
of this year, and they will take more several years to have an impact.
Provincial government have a hodgepodge of policies, including a carbon tax in British
Columbia, regulations on oil industry emissions in Alberta, and Ontario’s plan to phase out coalfired electricity by 2014.
But the roundtable said none of the provinces are on track to meet their own targets, and will
have to introduce new and costly measures to get there.
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Globe and Mail: Former Reform MP rakes Harper over environmental coals
Former Reform MP rakes Harper over environmental coals
17 June 2012
Conservative politicians – including a former Reform MP who was his party’s environment critic
when Stephen Harper was opposition leader – have joined more than 20 other former members
in protesting the government’s decision to kill the National Round Table on the Environment and
the Economy.
Bob Mills, who represented the Alberta riding of Red Deer between 1993 and 2008, joined Mark
Parent, an environment minister in a previous Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative
government, and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May are among those who have written to the
Prime Minister asking him to reconsider.
The National Round Table of the Environment Economy (NRTEE), which was established by
the former Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney in 1988 to promote
sustainable development, is among a number of groups that lost their funding in this year’s
federal budget.
“I truly believe that the environment and the economy are tied. That they should be dealt with in
a very important way, that that’s the life blood,” Mr. Mills told a news conference Thursday
organized by Ms. May.
“I have been doing quite a bit internationally” he said, “and when I hear Canada mentioned it is
quite often with a slur and I don’t like that. I am a proud Canadian and that’s what’s most
important.”
But Environment Minister Peter Kent told the Commons Thursday that NRTEE’s time has
passed.
When it was created a quarter of a century ago, there were few sources of policy advice on the
relationship between the environment and the economy, he argued. “That is not the case today
and this is $5 million that can be better spent elsewhere.”
Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, a former environment minister, previously defended the
elimination of NRTEEby saying: “Why should taxpayers have to pay for more than 10 reports
promoting a carbon tax, something which the people of Canada have repeatedly rejected?”
But the current and former members of NRTEE maintain the group did not promote a carbon
tax, it merely outlined the predicted effects of man-made global warming and provided a range
of solutions.
“I have always said if you’re smart you surround yourself with a bunch of really smart people
and if you’re dumb you surround yourself with a bunch of cheerleaders,” Mr. Mills said.
“I am very disappointed that they would take a move like this,” he said. “Stephen Harper puts
other priorities, I think, ahead of the environment and I think that’s a mistake.”
Mr. Mills said he does not believe natural-resource production needs to be curtailed to prevent
environmental degradation. Rather, he said, resource companies are looking for “certainty” from
governments and, if industry knows what is expected of it, research will be performed to create
ways of reducing carbon that can be marketed to other countries.
On the other hand, he said, if Canada is seen as an environmental laggard, the rest of the world
will resort to punitive sanctions that make oil-sands products more difficult to market.
Mr. Parent said Nova Scotia and other provinces have looked to the NRTEE as they developed
their own research on environmental issues. And preserving the environment means preserving
the economy “not just in the short term but in the long-term,” he said.
As a Progressive Conservative, Mr. Parent said, “I am pretty sure conserve is in the name
conservative and I always thought that conservatives thought to conserve the best of the past
and the wisdom and insight, but also – and maybe foundationally – to conserve the
environment.”
Jim MacNeill, secretary-general of the Brundtland Commission, which was formerly known as
the World Commission on Environment and Development, said the actions of the current
government have caused him to reminisce fondly about Mr. Mulroney.
“At the time that he was in power I didn’t think that he was green enough but, in retrospect, I
realized that he was a prize, a real prize, from the point of view of the environment,” Mr.
MacNeill said. “He understood to a very large degree, the critical link between the environment
and the economy”
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Toronto Star: From gloom to gladness: The future of environmentalism
17 June 2012
From gloom to gladness: The future of environmentalism
There were no brilliant lightning flashes, no deafening thunder claps, and the earth did not
tremble, but a seismic shift in the environmental movement was nonetheless on display last
week in downtown Toronto.
David Suzuki, the dean of Canadian environmentalism, was joined last Thursday by U.S.
journalist Richard Louv, author of the bestselling book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our
Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, for a public conversation at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
As these two environmental pioneers parleyed, it became clear that an environmental agenda
centering chiefly on conservation, government policy and an urgent, doom-laden, sword-ofDamocles advocacy was quietly morphing into one focused on relationships, children,
education, wonder, joy and the healing power of nature.
In both our private interview and the public colloquy, Suzuki and Louv reflected on the
milestones and missteps of the environmental movement, which, as Suzuki notes, is this year
celebrating its 50th anniversary, having been spawned by Rachel Carson’s watershed 1962
publication Silent Spring, which sounded the alarm on the pernicious proliferation of pesticides.
While Suzuki noted that the first 30 years of the movement saw many successes, with DDT
banned, clean air and water legislation passed, critical wildlands preserved and a global
awareness raised about eco-concerns, he also noted that certain proposed pipelines and dams,
defeated decades ago, are again back on the table.
“When we started the Suzuki Foundation in 1990,” Suzuki recalled, “we thought we had only 10
years.” Influenced by data provided by the Worldwatch Institute, which publishes a much-cited
annual State of the World report, Suzuki rebuffed suggestions that the foundation focus on
schools, deeming there was “no time” given the grave and imminent threats to our ecosystems.
He now calls his decision quite candidly a “fundamental error.”
Louv echoed Suzuki’s sentiment, recounting a recent meeting with a group of U.S. university
students, all focusing on environmental studies, but none connecting with any mainline
environmental organizations. One factor was age — the average member’s age of the Nature
Conservancy is 68 — but a second reason was articulated poignantly by one of the students.
“I’m 20 years old. All my life I have heard we’re finished. The planet is doomed.” Such econihilism is rarely an effective recruitment tool.
Happily, Louv’s work is decidedly non-apocalyptic. Last Child in the Woods helped inspire a
growing movement reconnecting children with nature.
Harvesting clinical research showing that children suffering from attention-deficit disorder,
depression and suicidal tendencies are often greatly helped by exposure to nature, Louv cofounded the Children & Nature Network, whose vision is to foster “a world in which all children
play, learn and grow with nature in their everyday lives.”
In 2010, Louv was invited to address 5,000 pediatricians at the American Academy of Pediatrics
annual meeting. They not only warmly received his words, but in some cases have begun to
give “nature prescriptions” to children, recommending taking in nature rather than just taking
pills to get well. In Portland, Ore., Louv reports, an urban park has become a veritable wellness
centre for children, with park staff seeing themselves as “para-health professionals.” Adopting a
“climb two maples and call me in the morning” approach, park staff sign off on doctors’ health
prescriptions after children have taken their recommended dose of nature.
His most recent book, The Nature Principle, is a cogent plea for a newly imagined future — one
that eschews obsession with ecological armageddon and instead focuses on the restorative
powers of the planet.
Citing Martin Luther King, Louv states, “Any cultural movement will fail if it can’t paint a picture
of a world where people want to go to.” Louv is gravely concerned about the rash of popular,
post-apocalyptic cultural images of the future. If, when we think of the future, we only envision
some “Blade Runner-Mad Max-Hunger Games scenario,” Louv comments, “we are in real
trouble.” Such a post-apocalyptic framing of the future, he fears, is almost as great a threat as
climate change.
As these seasoned environmental leaders are seeing, their movement is not ultimately a protest
movement against government and corporate policies, but primarily a movement that strives to
embrace with joy the sanguine mystery and beauty of life.
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Vancouver Sun: Green accounting gains more attention
17 June 2012
Green accounting gains more attention
What is a sip of clean water worth? Is there economic value in the shade of a tree? And how
much would you pay for a breath of fresh air?
Putting a price on a natural bounty long taken for granted as free may sound impossible, even
ridiculous. But after three decades on the fringes of serious policymaking, the idea is gaining
traction, from the vividly clear waters of the Maldives to the sober, suited reaches of the World
Bank.
As traditional measures of economic progress like GDP are criticized for ignoring downsides
including pollution or diminishment of resources such as fresh water or fossil fuels, there has
been an increased urgency to arguments for a more balanced and accurate reckoning of costs.
That is particularly so as fast-developing nations such as India and China jostle with rich nations
for access to those resources and insist on their own right to pollute on a path toward growth.
Proponents of so-called "green accounting" - who will gather in Rio de Janeiro this week for the
Rio Earth Summit - hope that putting dollar values on resources will slam the brakes on
unfettered development. A mentality of growth at any cost is already blamed for disasters like
the chronic floods that hit deforested Haiti or the raging sand storms that have swept regions of
China, worsening desertification.
Environmental economists argue that redefining nature in stark monetary terms would offer
better information for making economic and development decisions. That, they say, would make
governments and corporations less likely to jeopardize future stocks of natural assets or
environmental systems that mostly unseen make the planet habitable, from forests filtering
water to the frogs keeping swarming insects in check.
If the value of an asset like a machine is reduced as it wears out, proponents say, the same
accounting principle should apply to a dwindling natural resource.
"Environmental arguments come from the heart. But in today's world based on economics it's
hard for arguments of the heart to win," said Pavan Sukhdev, a former banker now leading an
ongoing project that was proposed by the Group of Eight industrialized nations to study
monetary values for the environment.
That study, started in 2007, has estimated the world economy suffers roughly $2.5 trillion to $4
trillion in losses every year due to environmental degradation. That's up to 7% of global GDP.
"We need to understand what we're losing in order to save it," Sukhdev said. "You cannot
manage what you do not measure."
Using the same accounting principles, some countries are already changing policy.
The Maldives recently banned fishing grey reef sharks after working out that each was worth
$3,300 a year in tourism revenue, versus $32 paid per catch. Ugandans spared a Kampala
wetland from agricultural development after calculating it would cost $2 million a year to run a
sewage treatment facility - the same job the swamp does for free.
But environmental accounting still faces many detractors and obstacles. Among them is
resistance from governments who might lack the resources and expertise to publish a "greened"
set of national accounts alongside those measuring economic growth. Particularly in the
‫‪developing world, many still struggle to produce even traditional statistics that are timely and‬‬
‫‪credible.‬‬
‫‪And even practitioners are riven by debates on how to put a price on a vast range of natural‬‬
‫‪resources and systems that encapsulate everything from pollination by bees to the erosion‬‬
‫‪prevented by mangroves in an estuary. The single largest difficulty is that markets, which are‬‬
‫‪the easiest way to value goods and services, don't exist for ecosystems.‬‬
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‫‪ROWA MEDIA UPDATE‬‬
‫‪THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE NEWS‬‬
‫‪Tuesday, 19 June, 2012‬‬
‫‪Oman Observer (Oman): Oman Minister of Environment participated in RIO+20‬‬
‫بتكليف من جاللته ‪ -‬وزير البيئة يشارك في مؤتمر التنمية المستدامة بالبرازيل‬
‫العمانية‪ :‬بتكليف من حضرة صاحب الجاللة السلطان قابوس بن سعيد المعظم ‪-‬حفظه هللا ورعاه‪ -‬وصل معالي محمد بن سالم‬
‫بن سعيد التوبي وزير البيئة والشؤون المناخية أمس الى جمهورية البرازيل االتحادية لترؤس وفد السلطنة المشارك في مؤتمر‬
‫االمم المتحدة للتنمية المستدامة الذي يعقد بمدينة ريودي جانيرو خالل الفترة من ‪ 02‬إلى ‪ 00‬يونيو الجاري وسط حضور عدد‬
‫من رؤساء وقادة دول العالم وعدد من الشخصيات العالمية المهمة‪.‬‬
‫ويتضمن المؤتمر مناقشة واعتماد بنود المسودة «صفر» لمؤتمر التنمية المستدامة التي خرجت بها الجلسة الثالثة للجنة‬
‫التحضيرية للمؤتمر التي بدأت فعالياتها خالل الفترة من ‪ 31‬الى ‪ 31‬من الشهر الجاري ومنتدى التنمية المستدامة خالل الفترة‬
‫‪ 31‬الى ‪ 31‬من الشهر نفسه في المدينة نفسها بحضور أكثر من ‪ 392‬دولة ومنظمة حكومية وغير حكومية ومؤسسات المجتمع‬
‫المدني‪.‬‬
‫تحضيرا العتمادها في‬
‫وقد تم خالل الجلسة والمنتدى مناقشة عدد من الموضوعات المهمة أهمها مناقشة بنود المسودة «صفر»‬
‫ً‬
‫اجتماع القم ة الذي سيحضره قادة دول العالم‪ ،‬وموضوع اإلطار المؤسسي للتنمية المستدامة في الدول‪ ،‬واالقتصاد االخضر‬
‫والقضاء على الفقر والمدن المستدامة والقدرة على الصمود في مواجهة الكوارث والطاقة والغذاء والعدل االجتماعي والعمل‬
‫الالئق والمحيطات والمياه‪.‬‬
‫ويضم وفد السلطنة كال من سعادة ميثاء بنت سيف المحروقية وكيلة وزارة السياحة وسعادة الدكتور حمود بن خلفان الحارثي‬
‫وكيل وزارة التربية والتعليم للتعليم والمناهج وسعادة الشيخ الدكتور عبدالملك بن عبدهللا الهنائي مستشار بوزارة المالية وعدد‬
‫من المسؤولين الحكوميين من الجهات ذات االختصاص بموضوع التنمية المستدامة بالسلطنة‪.‬‬
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‫‪WAFA (Palestine): Palestine participates in RIO+20‬‬
‫فلسطين تشارك بمؤتمر األمم المتحدة للتنمية المستدامة في البرازيل‬
،‫ والذي سيعقد في مدينة ريو دي جينيرو في البرازيل‬،)02+ ‫تشارك فلسطين في مؤتمر األمم المتحدة للتنمية المستدامة (ريو‬
'.‫ 'أي مستقبل نريد‬:‫ بعنوان‬،‫يوم األربعاء المقبل‬
،‫ ويرافقه وزير شؤون البيئة يوسف أبو صفية‬،‫ويترأس وفد فلسطين إلى المؤتمر وزير الشؤون الخارجية رياض المالكي‬
.‫ وبعثة فلسطين لدى األمم المتحدة‬،‫ إضافة إلى وفد من وزارة الشؤون الخارجية‬،‫وستيفان سالمة من وزارة التخطيط‬
‫ مشيرا إلى أنه سيبحث عددا‬،3990 ‫ عاما من قمة األرض التي عقدت في ريو عام‬02 ‫وأوضح المالكي أن المؤتمر يأتي بعد‬
،‫ والتنمية االجتماعية‬،‫ و التي تتضمن الركائز الثالث األساسية للتنمية المستدامة‬،‫من القضايا األساسية على جدول أعماله‬
‫ وذلك للوصول إلى األهداف السامية في القضاء على الفقر والجوع والحد من المرض واالرتقاء بالتعليم‬،‫ والبيئة‬،‫واالقتصادية‬
.‫والتدريب والرعاية الصحية والعمل على زيادة االستثمارات بغرض توفير فرص العمل للشباب وتعزيز االندماج االجتماعي‬
‫ أن فلسطين ستقدم تقريرا وطنيا عن المحاوالت الفلسطينية من أجل تحقيق أهداف‬،‫ والذي سيلقي كلمة في المؤتمر‬،‫وأكد المالكي‬
‫ وسيعكس هذا التقرير الوطني اآلثار السلبية لالحتالل اإلسرائيلي‬،‫ وتحقيق مفهوم التنمية المستدامة في فلسطين‬،‫األلفية اإلنمائية‬
.‫على التنمية في فلسطين‬
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Gulf News (UAE): 12-year-old Dubai girl wins in UN competition
Dubai: A 12-year-old girl from Dubai was awarded as one of the four global winners of the
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in celebration of the World Day
to Combat Desertification on Sunday.
Celebrated worldwide every June 17, the UNCCD picked the essay of Kehkashan Basu, a
resident of Dubai, from contributions of children and youth aged 25 and below. The essays
tackled the future that the youth want for land and soil.
The competition was part of the run-up to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable
Development (Rio+20 Earth Summit) which will be held on June 20-22 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Every year, 12 million hectares of land — an area thrice the size of Switzerland — are lost due
to desertification, according to UNCCD figures. While fertile soil is the most significant nonrenewable resource in the planet, it continues to be degraded by human activity and climate
change, which inevitably affects 1.5 billion people globally.
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Gulf news (UAE): UAE delegation to attend Rio+20 summit
Dubai: Top foreign and environmental delegates from the UAE will join more than 100,000
officials attending the Rio+20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro June 20-22. In a high-level delegation
led by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, officials from Masdar in Abu Dhabi as well as the
Dubai Supreme Council of Energy, will showcase the UAE’s leading projects on environmental
sustainability ranging from solar power and carbon capture to green cities and alternative
energy.
The Rio+20 Summit, known formally as the United Nations Conference on Sustainable
Development, will focus on the future of sustainability, the green economy and new paths to
creating a sustainable planet.
United Nations organisers said ahead of the summit that, “a lot has been achieved in the past
two decades from putting the health of the ozone layer back on track in order to spare the Earth
from the sun’s deadly ultra violet rays to meeting the poverty-related Millennium Development
goal on access to safe water. But the fact is that a lot remains to be done, it is at best a work in
progress.
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Gulf Today (UAE): Field work for UAE soil survey completed
DUBAI: Field work for the UAE’s soil survey has been completed with final results to be officially
revealed next September, according to Minister of Water and Environment Dr Rashid Ahmed
Bin Fahad.
The survey which provides input to the UAE Soil Information System (UAESIS) will help
scientifically understand the exact components of the country’s soil and provide a reference for
decision makers and researchers, he stressed in a press release on the occasion of the World
Day to Combat Desertification and Drought which is celebrated this year under the theme
“Healthy soil sustains your life.”
Partnership
The Environment Agency — Abu Dhabi has undertaken the Soil Survey of Abu Dhabi Emirate in
partnership with the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) and the Soil Survey of
the Northern Regions in partnership with the Ministry of Environment and Water.
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Gulf Today (UAE): Masdar’s role in developing global solar, wind energy atlas in
focus
RIO DE JANEIRO: Masdar Institute of Science and Technology continues to play a vital role in
developing, hosting, and maintaining the global renewable energy atlas within its commitment to
building the global value chain of renewable energy potential, databases and atlases. This was
stated by Dr Taha B.M.J. Ouarda, deputy director of UAE Research Centre for Renewable
Energy Mapping and Assessment at Masdar Institute. Dr Ouarda was offering a presentation
titled ‘Adapted wind resource modelling in the GCC region’ at the Rio+20 Summit of the United
Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, to be held from June 20-22 in Rio de Janeiro.
As an institution that remains committed to sustainability, Masdar Institute has sent a delegation
to proactively drive participation at the event. The institute’s collaboration with its partners,
including the Abu Dhabi-headquartered International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) on
some of the leading projects — including the solar atlas — are being showcased at the event.
In his presentation, Dr Ouarda, specialist in hydrometeorology, environmental and public health
modelling, and risk analysis, highlighted that the Centre provides renewable primary energy
resource assessment capability to make the UAE a hub and knowledge centre for renewable
energy technology development. One of the projects of the Research Centre for Renewable
Energy Mapping and Assessment, the Global Atlas for Solar and Wind Energy is a collection of
geo-linked data layers that together provide detailed insights on availability and cost of
renewable energy.
Dr Ouarda said, “Innovation in the field of renewable energy lies in developing state-of-the-art
techniques that are adapted to the local climate and environment. Off-the-shelf tools are not
necessarily adapted to produce adequate results in the UAE and the GCC countries. The
selection of the appropriate distribution and the adequate values of the parameters have the
most impact on wind power estimation.
“Such developed tools can then be used and adapted in other countries with similar conditions
like the GCC region as well as the Sahel region in Africa. The centre in Abu Dhabi will share its
knowledge and empower others to draw from its ideas and actions for a sustainable future,” Dr
Ouarda added. The Global Atlas for Solar and Wind Energy, an initiative of the Department for
Energy and Climate Change at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on behalf of Irena, is supported by
the Environment Agency-Abu Dhabi (EAD), the Dubai Supreme Council for Energy and Masdar
Institute’s Research Centre for Renewable Energy Mapping and Assessment.
Dr Ouarda added: “Traditional approaches for the modelling of wind potential are based on the
hypothesis of ‘stationarity’ and the fitting of a probability density function to the wind speed data.
Classical frequency analysis of wind characteristics using the Weibull distribution shows that
there is a need to integrate non-stationarity in the modelling and estimation of future wind
potential.” Through its participation in the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) Multilateral Solar and
Wind Working Group, the Research Centre for Renewable Energy Mapping and Assessment
aims to position the UAE as a regional leader in renewable energy mapping and assessment.
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Gulf Today (UAE): UAE efforts in marine life protection win global plaudits at
Expo 2012 Yeosu
YEOSU, S.KOREA: The UAE pavilion at Expo 2012 Yeosu in South Korea continues to receive
official delegations and other visitors from different countries, who admire the daily events at the
pavilion organised by the National Media Council.
Minister of State in the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Trade, Fadhel Abdullah Fadhel, and his
accompanying delegation, were given a presentation on the efforts of the UAE for the protection
of marine life. Expo Yeosu 2012 is dedicated to the theme ‘Living Ocean and Coast.’ A film
documenting the initiatives of the UAE to save marine turtles from the hazards of plastic waste
has won the applause of thousands of visitors to the UAE pavilion. The pavilion also offers a
host of events portraying the growth of civilisation in the UAE, the modern development and the
progress achieved in social and economic spheres. The UAE’s relentless efforts in upholding
the cause of the welfare of humanity is also being highlighted through its various initiatives to
protect the environment.
The pavilion also hosts vibrant promotional programmes as part of the UAE’s campaign to bid to
host the World Expo ‘Dubai 2020’. The promotional material depicts the key advantages of
Dubai to receive this international event such as its modern infrastructure, besides the sociocultural, scientific and economic characteristics of the city. The easy access to UAE from all the
continents of the world is also highlighted.
A number of diplomats accredited to S.Korea and officials from other Asian and Middle Eastern
countries also visited the pavilion during the past few days.
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Yemen Times (Yemen): School forestation campaign begins
Under the slogan "Yemen is More Beautiful," a campaign was launched to plant trees around
schools in Sana’a. The campaign, which coincided with World Environment Day on June 5, was
launched by the Progress and Advancement Forum in Al-Sabeen Martyrs’ School. It aimed at
spreading the practice of tree-planting among Yemenis, not only in schools but everywhere. In
a speech, Yahia Mohammed Abdullah Saleh, head of the forum, said, "The change we all seek
must start from schools, particularly elementary schools, in order to build a new generation
equipped with education, patriotism and love for people. Education is what we need in Yemen,
not weapons, because we are a peaceful people. Education is the only thing we can use to build
a new Yemen."
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Trade Arabia (Bahrain): Bahrain to expand artificial reefs drive
A major initiative which aims to save Bahrain's depleting fish stocks by placing artificial reefs
into the sea in several areas is being expanded following its initial success. It is being carried
out by the Fisheries and Marine Resources Directorate (FMRD) with the support of the
Municipalities and and Urban Planning Affairs Ministry.
"Phase one of the project is already showing results as structures have already begun to attract
fish to the area," said FMRD director Dr Jassim Al Qaseer. "We have been depositing near
natural reefs, where there are good currents and the seabed is no more than 15 metres deep.
These structures are supposed to give fish new homes to breed in and stay safe from predators.
"The reason that the fish numbers have gone down is because reclamation has destroyed fish
homes, so this project will give us the opportunity to bring back a once lost ecosystem. Over
time these structures will attract coral onto them and in many years will be the building block for
a new coral reef.
"It will take years before the artificial reefs become settled, but fish will come in this area and
where there are small fish there will be big fish and this is a way of rehabilitating fish stocks."
More than BD1 million ($2.65 million) has already been spent on the Artificial Reef Project and
Dr Al Qaseer said the progress of the four-year project would be studied after the completion of
each phase.
Parts of the sea near Jarada Island, on the eastern coast of Bahrain, have already benefited.
"Phase two of the project was started at the beginning of June and is expected to take about
three months, the same as phase one, depending on the weather," said Dr Al Qaseer. "We put
this one near a reef called Fasht Al Jarem and placed the structures less than 15 metres deep."
Municipalities and Urban Planning Affairs Minister Dr Juma Al Ka'abi earlier said the project was
in line with the directives His Royal Highness Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al
Khalifa. – TradeArabia News Service
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ENVIRONMENT NEWS FROM THE
UN DAILY NEWS
19 June 2012
UN News Centre: UN and partners unveil new initiative to achieve sustainable cities
18 June 2012
The United Nations and its partners today unveiled a new initiative to achieve sustainable urban
development by promoting the efficient use of energy, water and other resources, lowering
pollution levels and reducing infrastructure costs in cities.
The Global Initiative for Resource-Efficient Cities was launched by the UN Environment
Programme (UNEP) and partners in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, just days ahead of the
start of the high-level meeting of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).
The initiative, open to cities with populations of 500,000 or more, will involve local and national
governments, the private sector and civil society groups to promote energy efficient buildings,
efficient water use, sustainable waste management and other activities.
UNEP notes that by 2050, up to 80 per cent of the global population is expected to reside in cities,
which are increasingly becoming the focus of international sustainability efforts.
Today, urban areas account for 50 per cent of all waste, generate 60-80 per cent of all
greenhouse gas emissions and consume 75 per cent of natural resources, yet occupy only three
per cent of the Earth’s surface, the agency points out in a news release.
Yet water savings of 30 per cent, and energy savings of up to 50 per cent, can be achieved in
cities with limited investment and encouraging behavioural change, it adds.
“In the context of rapid urbanization and growing pressures on natural resources, there is an
urgent need for coordinated action on urban sustainability,” said UNEP’s Executive Director,
Achim Steiner.
“This is essential both for preventing irreversible degradation of resources and ecosystems, and
for realizing the multiple benefits of greener cities, from savings through energy-efficient buildings,
or the health and climate benefits of cleaner fuels and vehicles,” he added.
UNEP also notes that the economic opportunities associated with making cities more sustainable
are numerous. As centres of technology, cities can spearhead the creation of green jobs in
sectors such as renewable energy. Projections show that some 20 million people could be
employed in the wind, solar and biofuel industries by 2030, for example.
The practical steps that cities can take towards resource efficiency are the focus of a new UNEP
report, also launched today at Rio+20.
Using case studies from China, Brazil, Germany and a host of other countries, Sustainable,
Resource Efficient Cities in the 21st Century: Making it Happen highlights opportunities for city
leaders to improve waste and water management, energy efficiency, urban transportation and
other key sectors.
Rio+20’s high-level meeting runs 20-22 June, and is expected to bring together over 100 heads of
State and government, along with thousands of parliamentarians, mayors, UN officials, chief
executive officers and civil society leaders to shape new policies to promote prosperity, reduce
poverty and advance social equity and environmental protection.
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UN News Centre: Rio+20: expectations remain high on last day of Brazil-led
negotiations
18 June 2012
Expectations to produce a strong outcome document at the United Nations Conference on
Sustainable Development (Rio+20) are still high, a senior UN official said today.
“Delegates are sharing feedback on the consolidated text presented by Brazil,” Rio+20’s
Secretary-General, Sha Zukang, said in a statement, adding that he remains optimistic that
delegations will reach an agreement before tonight’s deadline.
On Friday, the responsibility of the negotiations was handed over to the Brazilian Government,
which holds the Presidency of Rio+20. The South American nation has since presented a shorter
consolidated text for countries to work on.
Over the weekend, the Brazilian Government indicated that the consultation process on the
outcome document is expected to conclude on 18 June. It will then be put forward for adoption by
Member States when they meet from 20 to 22 June.
In a press briefing on Sunday, a Rio+20 spokesperson, Pragati Pascale, stressed that the new
version of the text reflects the same agreements and disagreements on the outcome document
which have engaged Member States over the past few weeks. She also emphasized that a
shorter version did not mean that the text had become weaker.
“They’re trying to find consensus,” Ms. Pascale said. “We’re all confident that the differences can
be bridged.”
Delegations working on the text are now concentrating in four key areas: building an institutional
framework for sustainable development, agreeing on the means of implementation, oceans and
the establishment of sustainable development goals.
“At this stage, Brazil is at the heart of the negotiations now,” the Head of the Rio+20 Secretariat,
Nikhil Seth, told reporters in Rio de Janeiro on Monday afternoon, adding that since the handover
to Brazil, there has been rapid progress, with parties agreeing on a number of issues.
“Delegates are not looking at linguistic refinement of paragraphs anymore, they are looking at the
bigger picture” Mr. Seth said.
Rio+20’s high-level meeting runs 20-22 June, and is expected to bring together over 100 heads of
State and government, along with thousands of parliamentarians, mayors, UN officials, chief
executive officers and civil society leaders to shape new policies to promote prosperity, reduce
poverty and advance social equity and environmental protection.
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ENVIRONMENT NEWS FROM THE
S.G’s SPOKESMAN DAILY PRESS BRIEFING
19 June 2012
UN News Centre: Secretary-General's Message on World Day to Combat
Desertification
17 June 2012
Healthy soil sustains your life: Let’s go land degradation neutral”
The World Day to Combat Desertification falls this year on the eve of the United Nations
Conference on Sustainable Development. Global efforts to halt and reverse land degradation are
integral to creating the future we want. Sustainable land use is a prerequisite for lifting billions
from poverty, enabling food and nutrition security, and safeguarding water supplies. It is a
cornerstone of sustainable development.
The people who live in the world’s arid lands, which occupy more than 40 per cent of our planet’s
land area, are among the poorest and most vulnerable to hunger. We will not achieve the
Millennium Development Goals by 2015 without preserving the soils on which their subsistence
depends.
Nor will we be able to guarantee our freshwater resources, 70 per cent of which are already used
for agriculture. By 2030 the demand for water is projected to rise by 35 per cent. Unless we
change our land-use practices, we face the prospect of diminishing and inadequate water
supplies, as well as more frequent and intense droughts.
Further, by 2050, we will need sufficient productive land to feed an estimated 9 billion people with
per capita consumption levels greater than those of today. This will be impossible if soil loss
continues at its current pace -- an annual loss of 75 billion tons. Important land-use decisions
need to be made, as well as critical investments ranging from extension services for small farmers
to the latest technology to support environmentally sustainable mass food production.
Rio+20 is our opportunity to showcase the many smart and effective land management systems
and options that exist or are in the pipeline. Twenty years on from the adoption of the United
Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, let us ensure that a commitment to sustainable
land management features prominently in the official outcome at Rio and in the wider mobilization
for sustainability that will also be part of Rio’s legacy. Without healthy soil, life on Earth is
unsustainable.
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Secretary-General's video message to Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum
15 June 2012
Excellencies, Distinguished guests,
It is a pleasure to welcome you to the Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum.
Next week, world leaders will come to Rio as part of a global movement for change.
You are integral to that momentum.
Corporate sustainability is an idea whose time has come.
You are showing that business is able and willing to lead the way in transforming our society for
the better.
I commend your commitment.
I welcome what you are doing -- in your boardrooms and factories, in your supply chains and
investments.
Your challenge now is to scale up. Bring your peers on board. Reach critical mass.
Do everything you can in your considerable spheres of influence.
I want Rio to be a tipping point for corporate sustainability.
We need companies everywhere to deliver value -- not just financially, but socially…
environmentally… and ethically.
This is the quadruple bottom-line.
Through your actions and commitments, you can show Governments – and the world – the
enormous potential of corporate sustainability.
All the issues on the table in Rio -- from energy and climate change to water and food, from
fighting corruption to empowering women -- should also be prime concerns for responsible
business.
I have great hopes that this Forum will inspire more businesses to embrace corporate
sustainability, and persuade Governments to do more to support responsible business.
I look forward to the outcomes of this Forum, and the commitments and the partnerships it
generates.
Thank you for being part of the future we want.
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