The Environment Chronicle

Norway invited the Contracting Parties to the 1973 polar bear Agreement to a meeting of the parties in Tromsø 17 - 19 March 2009. Around 1970 widespread hunting had reduced polar bear populations in many parts of the Arctic. The polar bear Range States, Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Norway, Russia and USA, entered into an agreement in 1973 to protect polar bears and their habitat. The five Contracting Parties met last time in Oslo 1981 and decided then that the agreement would be valid indefinitely. The purpose of the 2009 meeting was to provide an update on the conservation status for the polar bears, review implementation of the polar bear Agreement, identify useful polar bear conservation strategies and discuss mechanisms for enhanced implementation of the polar bear Agreement.

On 16 March 2009 Greenpeace activists draped a giant banner from a Deutsche Bank tower in Frankfurt to demand more funding for efforts to combat climate change. The banner was hung to call for more financial commitment by the government to international climate protection.

Papua New Guinea has created its first national conservation area to preserve forever a swath of pristine tropical forest larger than Singapore. Named for its three main rivers – the Yopno, Uruwa and Som of the Huon Peninsula – the YUS Conservation Area covers 187,800 acres (76,000 hectares or 760 square kilometers) of tropical forest stretching from PNG’s northern coast to interior mountains.

Budapest won the 2008 European Mobility Week Award. The Hungarian capital was judged by an independent panel of experts to have done the most to raise public awareness of air pollution from traffic and promote cleaner alternatives during European Mobility Week.

Stockholm and Hamburg were today named as the first winners of the new European Green Capital award. The Swedish capital will be European Green Capital in 2010 followed by Hamburg in 2011. The European Commission's new award scheme encourages cities to improve the quality of urban life by taking the environment systematically into account in urban planning.

The Federal Minister for Education and Research, Dr Annette Schavan, inaugurated Neumayer Station III on 20 February, 2009. The new German research facility is located 6.5 km south of the old Neumayer Station on the Ekström ice shelf in Dronning Maud Land in the Antarctic. The construction project of about 40 million Euros was financed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with long-term funds for polar research, and it was realized within the framework of the International Polar Year.

The environmental ministers from over 140 countries agreed to begin negotiating a treaty to control global mercury pollution at a meeting of the UN Governing Council in Nairobi, Kenya.

Belgium opened a new 20 million euro "zero emissions" polar science station in Antarctica on 15 February, 2009. The Princess Elisabeth research station is totally energy self-sufficient and also aims not to emit any carbon dioxide emissions, according to the Belgian-based International Polar Foundation that runs the base.

Over 350 cities across Europe have made a green pledge to make a 20% cut in CO2 emissions by 2020. The "Covenant of Mayors" pledge was made Tuesday 10 February at the European Parliament. Each city will now draw up a sustainable energy action plan over the next 12 months.

In January 2009 the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft had founded the new Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy Systems Technology IWES. The new Fraunhofer IWES institute consists of the former Fraunhofer Center for Wind Energy and Maritime Technologies CWMT in Bremerhaven and will be extended during 2009 by the Kassel Institut für Solare Energieversorgungstechnik – ISET e. V. after the transfer had been completed with the prescribed formalities.

The Swedish parliament decided in 1980 that no further nuclear power plants should be built, and that a nuclear power phase-out should be completed by 2010. On February 5 2009, the Swedish Government announced an agreement allowing for the replacement of existing reactors.

The European Commission adopted the first ever EU Plan of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks. The aim of the plan is to ensure that effective steps are taken to help rebuild shark stocks wherever they are under threat and to set down guidelines for the sustainable management of the fisheries concerned, including those where shark are taken as by-catch. The plan also includes measures to improve scientific knowledge of shark stocks and shark fisheries. The measures set out cover not only sharks, but also related species, such as skates and rays, and will apply wherever the EU fleet operates, both within and outside European waters. The Commission is also committed to working to ensure that the EU's action in international bodies and agreements is coherent with its policy on sharks at home.

Elite scientists from all over the world will conduct research at the newly-founded Institute for Advanced Climate, Earth System and sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam. Their aim will be to find solutions for the most pressing challenges of our time: climate change and the preservation of our environment. As the home of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Studies and the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam is already a center of earth and climate research. The German Federal Government and the State of Brandenburg will support the IASS with 9 million euros annually for the next seven years, most of which will come from the budget of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Klaus Töpfer, who has served as Germany’s Environment Minister and the General Director of the UN Environment Program has been tapped to lead the Institute.

At www.erneuerbare-energien.de/english the Federal Environment Ministry (BMU) now also provides a broad range of information in English about renewable energies. This gives the international public easier access to information which has been available in German at www.erneuerbare-energien.de since 2003 on the latest developments in the fields of solar and wind power, hydropower, biomass and geothermal energy.

HALO – High Altitude and Long Range Research Aircraft landed at Oberpfaffenhofen research airport on 24 January 2009. The aircraft, a Gulfstream G550, has been converted into one of the world’s most state-of-the-art research aircraft for climate and atmospheric research. After an approximately nine-hour ferry flight from Gulfstream’s manufacturing facility in Savannah in the US, HALO touched down on the landing strip of its new home airport shortly after 10am. With its range of up to 8 000 kilometres and ceiling of 15.5 kilometres, the new research aircraft can carry a scientific payload of up to three tonnes to areas above the ocean which could not be reached before, or to the polar regions.

The Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) was launched from the Tanegashima Space Center in western Japan at 12:54 p.m. on Friday, local time, into an overcast sky.

The first annual Zayed Future Energy Prize was awarded on 19 January 2009 to Mr. Dipal Chandra Barua, Founding Managing Director of Grameen Shakti for his visionary efforts to bring renewable energy solutions to the rural population of Bangladesh. Mr. Barua's organization, Grameen Shakti (GS), has installed more than 200,000 solar PV systems that currently provide power for more than two million rural people.

The German Government is making 1.5 Milliard euros available for an environmental or scrapping bonus. Owners of cars more than nine years old will receive 2,500 euros if they replace them with a new car.

The German research vessel Polarstern is currently on its way to the Southwest Atlantic Sector of the Southern Ocean. The team of 48 scientists on board left Cape Town on 7th January to carry out the Indo-German iron fertilization experiment LOHAFEX. LOHAFEX will provide more basic information to further our understanding of the role of ocean ecosystems in the global carbon cycle. It will help filling the gaps of knowledge mentioned by international conventions to classify the potential role of ocean fertilization as a means of reducing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.

Greenpeace UK , the actress Emma Thompson, the comedian Alistair McGowan and millionaire Tory Zac Goldsmith have bought a piece of land the size of a football pitch in the middle the proposed development to expand the airport. The organisation are allowing members of the public to become "beneficial owners" of the "Airplot" in order to register their protest and in the hope it will make it more difficult for a compulsory purchase order.

The Federal Environmental Agency, Dessau is one of the first buildings in Germany certified 'Gold' by the German Council for Sustainable Building (Deutsche Gesellschaft für nachhaltiges Bauen / DGNB).

American president George W. Bush designated nearly 500,000 square kilometre of the Pacific Ocean as conservation areas just two weeks before leaving the White House. The world's largest protected marine area encompass three distinct areas: the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific, a chain of remote islands in the central Pacific, and the Rose Atoll off American Samoa. The conservation plan will ban commercial fishing, mining and energy exploration within the protected areas.

2009 is the year of biosphere reserves in Germany. The first German biosphere reserves – Vessertal and stretches of the Middle Elbe valley – were designated as long ago as 1979, only three years after the nomination of the first biosphere reserves in the world. The German biosphere reserves cover almost 3 % of the German land area. Biosphere reserve is a category in the German federal law for nature conservation. All 13 territories designated under German law are at the same time UNESCO biosphere reserves. The 13 territories represent important German habitats, typical types of landscape and the diversity of ecosystems, fauna and flora in this country.

In 2009 renewable energies accounted for more than 10 percent of total heat, electricity and fuel consumption in Germany. This is the key finding of the report by the Working Group on Renewable Energies - Statistics (AGEE-Stat), which Federal Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen presented on 24 March 2010 in Berlin. According to this report, not only was the renewables sector able to avoid the economic crisis to a large extent, it even increased its share in energy supply in Germany, and as a result of rising investments was able to record a further growth in employment figures. More than 300,000 people now work in this sector. While electricity generation from conventional energy forms decreased in 2009, renewables remained stable - their share in electricity consumption rose further to 16.1 percent. In comparison with the previous year there was also a significant increase in biogas, photovoltaic and wind-power installations. Investments in the renewables sector reached a record total of 17.7 billion euros. The number of employees rose once again. Over 300,000 people, around 8 percent more than in the previous year, found a relatively secure job in the renewables sector.

Operators subject to emissions trading in Germany emitted a total volume of 428.2 million tonnes of climate-damaging carbon dioxide (CO2) in 2009. As compared to the previous year, emissions sank by 44.3 million tonnes CO2, or 9.4 percent, which is the lowest level since introduction of emissions trading in Europe in 2005. The installations engaged in emissions trading were thus responsible again in 2009 for the greatest absolute reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in Germany. The emissions trading sector affirms the overall trend announced by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) in early March 2010, according to which the financial and economic crisis has led to the steepest decline in climate gas emissions since the foundation of the Federal Republic. The greatest share in reduction within the emissions trading industry can also be traced to declines in production resulting from the economic downturn in 2009.

The world's first cargo ship, the Auriga Leader, partly propelled by solar power took to the seas in Japan, aiming to cut fuel costs and carbon emissions when automakers ship off their exports.

After eleven months of legislative work, the European Parliament gave its backing to the EU's climate change package which aims to ensure that the EU will achieve its climate targets by 2020: a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, a 20% improvement in energy efficiency, and a 20% share for renewables in the EU energy mix.

On 17 December 2008 the Federal Cabinet adopted the German Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change. This creates a framework for adapting to the impacts of climate change in Germany. It primarily describes the contribution of the Federation, thus acting as a guide for other actors. The strategy lays the foundation for a medium-term, step-by-step process undertaken in cooperation with the federal Länder and other civil groups and aimed at assessing the risks of climate change, identifying the possible need for action, defining appropriate goals and developing and implementing options for adaptation measures.

Europe's rich patchwork of protected flora and fauna grew further with a major extension of Natura 2000. The additions include 769 new sites and a total area of 95,522 km². Most of the new sites are in Bulgaria, Romania and Poland, and include areas in the Black Sea (Bulgaria and Romania) and the Steppic (Romania) bio-geographical regions. Natura 2000 now includes around 25,000 sites, covering almost 20% of the EU’s landmass, making it the largest interconnected network of protected areas in the world.

A meeting of representatives of EU governments has endorsed a European Commission proposal to phase out old-style incandescent light bulbs by 2012 in favour of energy-efficient light bulbs.

The sixth International Polar Day focusing on research Above The Polar Regions. This includes polar meteorology, atmospheric sciences, astronomy, and polar observations from space.

The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association and the engineering company Wärtsilä Ship Design Germany (formerly Schiffko GmbH) presented the technical design of the European Research Icebreaker Aurora Borealis in Berlin. Aurora Borealis will be a unique vessel – a combination of a heavy icebreaker, a scientific drilling ship and a multi-purpose research platform that can operate year-round in all polar waters.

The European Commission, the Council Presidency and representatives of the European Parliament agreed on the basic elements of a European CO2 strategy for passenger cars on 1 December. According to this strategy, the limit value of 120g CO2 per kilometre will become binding for the entire fleet of new vehicles in four stages from 2012 to 2015. The long-term target of 95g/km for the year 2020 will be legally binding. Massive fines of up to 95 euro per gram will be charged if these limit values are exceeded.

The Blue Angel is going to increasingly focus on climate protection: From the beginning of next year, the world’s oldest and most well-known eco-label will also be awarded to particularly energy-efficient and climate-friendly products and services and thus provide consumers with better purchase orientation. Germany's Federal Environment Ministry, the Federal Environmental Agency and the Environmental Label Jury present the new climate protection label on the occasion of the 30th anniversary celebration of the Blue Angel in Berlin on November 19, 2008.

Greenpeace Africa opened its first office in Johannesburg, a second office will be opened on 24 November in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo and a third in Dakar, Senegal, early next year.

The coalition agreement of 2005 entered into by the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and the Christian Socialist Party (CSU) stipulates that the government-owned areas along the former inner-German border be preserved for sustainable nature conservation. In a first step, 3,863 hectares of especially valuable ecological areas in the former border strip will be transferred free of charge from the Federal Government to the federal state of Thuringia. The green belt is supposed to be preserved as a nationally important habitat network, also in memory of the division of Germany. A comprehensive assessment conducted in 2001 proves that the green belt, which is some 1,400 kilometres long, represents a habitat network of particular importance to the Federal Republic of Germany.

Greenfreeze technology has been around since 1992 and is installed in over 300 million refrigerators worldwide. But it wasn’t allowed into the United States until September 2008 when the Environmental Protection Agency gave Ben & Jerry’s the go-ahead to test 2,000 Greenfreeze units. On 29 October General Electric announced its intention to manufacture and sell a GreenFreeze-style refrigerator in the United States.

The establishment of an International Renewable Energy Agency can now begin: at a conference in Madrid 51 states laid the foundations and agreed on the text of the Statute.The IRENA Statute will be signed at an official ceremony on 26 January 2009 in Bonn. In mid 2009 the seat and Director-General for the start-up phase will be designated and the organisation will gradually be established. IRENA will support industrialised and developing countries in expanding renewable energies.

The week of 20-24 October 2008 was declared by the Ministers responsible for forests in Europe to be the first European Forest Week. The week is being jointly organized by the European Commission, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, in close collaboration with the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, France. During the week, forest-related events will be organized throughout Europe by the public and private sectors as well as by civil societies.

The foundation Gemeinsames Rücknahmesystem Batterien celebrated its 10 Year anniversary. It was established in May 1998 by leading battery manufacturers and the German Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers' Association (ZVEI). The foundation is financed by contributions from its users. These manufacturers and importers pay disposal contributions to the foundation for the services rendered, through a trustee and in accordance with the quantity and type of batteries sold in Germany.