The Environment Chronicle

An important agreement was signed between the four founding institutions of the International Standard for Sustainable Wild Collection of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (ISSC-MAP) to endorse global implementation of the standard through the FairWild Foundation. ISSC-MAP is a standard that promotes appropriate management of wild plant populations used in medicines and cosmetics to ensure they are not over-exploited. Under the new agreement, the FairWild Foundation will help develop an industry labelling system so products harvested using the sustainable ISSC-MAP criteria can be readily recognised and certified. Use of the standard will be promoted throughout the herbal products industry. ISSC-MAP was developed by a partnership including the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), the IUCN SSC Medicinal Plant Specialist Group (MPSG), WWF-Germany, and TRAFFIC, plus industry associations, companies, certifiers and community-based NGOs. The announcement was made at the World Conservation Congress, currently underway in Barcelona.

The German North Sea saithe trawl fishery has successfully completed the assessment to the MSC’s environmental standard for well-managed and sustainable fisheries. It is the first fishery in Germany to receive the MSC eco-label.

The International Polar Year 2007/08 was launched in March 2007, and will continue through early 2009. During this time, a regular sequence of International Polar Days will raise awareness and provide information about particular and timely aspects of the polar regions. September 24th, 2008 marked the sixth quarterly International Polar Day, this time focusing on people.

The first sustainable disco opened in Rotterdam on the 4th of September 2008. The flagship is a energy generating dance floor. The floor is made up of modules that move slightly in the vertical plane when a person is dancing on the surface. This movement is registered by advanced mechatronics, and converted into electricity. The savings on water consumption, for example, are achieved with a rainwater flush system for toilets.

Germany's Federal Office for Radioactive Protection (BfS) is to take over the Asse nuclear storage facility in the state of Lower Saxony. The site will now be treated according to nuclear laws and not mining laws as was the case so far. In future, the facility will be under the jurisdiction of the federal environment ministry instead of the research ministry.

Registration of pollutant emissions by German corporations has made a successful start via the new European (E-PRTR). A new data collection software system known as BUBE-Online (Betriebliche Umweltdatenberichterstattung-Online) will make it easy for industrial corporations to report their emissions data via the Internet to the appropriate federal state authorities. The PRTR data will be forwarded upon review to the EU Commission via the Federal Environment Agency.

The Federal Environment Ministry has launched the Internet database "Legal sources on the generation of electricity from renewable energy sources (RES LEGAL)". It allows interested parties from the political sector, administrations, associations, companies and the scientific sector to research fundamental legal aspects concerning the promotion of and grid access for electricity from renewables from the EU Member States. The provisions for wind and solar energy, geothermal energy, biomass and hydropower are listed in detail. This database, unique in Europe, can be used free of charge.

A team from Greenpeace dropped three ton boulders near the Sylt Outer reef off the coast of Germany in order to discourage bottom trawling. The area is near the North Frisian Islands near Schleswig Holstein and the South coast of Denmark.

OneGeology is an international initiative of the geological surveys of the world and a flagship project of the 'International Year of Planet Earth'. Its aim is to create dynamic geological map data of the world available via the web. A fully operational edition was launched at the International Geological Congress (IGC) in Oslo, in August 2008.

Geneva, 15 July 2008, the CITES Standing Committee has approved, the one-off sale of 108 tonnes of legal ivory stockpiles from four southern African countries to Japan and China. This decision paves the way for the automatic start of the subsequent nine year moratorium on trade in ivory.

Marburg has become the first municipality in Germany to impose a requirement for solar construction throughout its area. 20 June 2008, the City Council approved a Solar Code. According to the code, any building owner who builds or renovates a building, fixes its roof or replaces its heating system, muss install a certain number of solar collectors on the roof in the process. The primary purpose of these devices is to heat water for household use and to heat the rooms.

The International Polar Year 2007/08 was launched in March 2007, and will continue through early 2009. During this time, a regular sequence of International Polar Days will raise awareness and provide information about particular and timely aspects of the polar regions. The IPY Day on June 18th will focus on Land and Life: the plants and animals of polar lands and the changing permafrost and hydrologic systems.

Starting in 2010, one European city will be selected as the European Green Capital of the year. The award will be given to a city that has a consistent record of achieving high environmental standards, is permanently committed to ambitious action, further environmental improvement and sustainable development, and can act as a role model to inspire other cities and promote best practices in all other European cities. All EU cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants can apply for the European Green Capital Award. Entries will be assessed on the basis of ten environmental criteria. The jury is composed of representatives from the European Commission, the European Environment Agency, ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability, the European Federation for Transport and Environment (T&E), the Union of Capitals of the European Union and the Committee of the Regions.

In late April and early May 2008 a bee mortality occurred in parts of South-West Germany, which affected approximately 11,000 colonies of bees. After this became known, an intensive search for the causes of these incidences was started. Soon, maize seeds which had been treated with the insecticidal substance clothianidin were suspected as a possible cause. In the meantime, a clothianidin poisoning has been confirmed by the Julius Kühn-Institute. It is assumed that the detected clothianidin originates from treated maize seeds where the active substance did not adhere well enough to the grains. This minor dressing quality led to a strong abrasion. In the Upper Rhine Valley pneumatic seeding machines with vacuum systems were employed, which, due to their construction, release abrasion dust into the air. This way the abrasion dusts could settle on blooming plants.

The International Polar Year 2007/08 was launched in March 2007, and will continue through early 2009. During this time, a regular sequence of International Polar Days will raise awareness and provide information about particular and timely aspects of the polar regions. March 12th, 2008 was the third International Polar Day - Changing Earth; Past and Present.

On 26 February 2008 the Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened on a remote island in the Arctic Circle, receiving inaugural shipments of 100 million seeds that originated in over 100 countries. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is designed to store duplicates of seeds from seed collections from around the globe. If seeds are lost, e.g. as a result of natural disasters, war or simply a lack of resources, the seed collections may be reestablished using seeds from Svalbard.

Construction of Masdar City has now officially commenced with a formal ground-breaking ceremony on February 9, 2008. The City will be constructed over seven phases and is due to be completed by 2016. Masdar is a planned city in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. Designed by the British architectural firm Foster and Partners, the city will rely entirely on solar energy, with a sustainable, zero-carbon, zero-waste ecology. The initiative is headed by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (ADFEC). The city will cost $US22 billion to build and be home to 50,000 people. The car-free city is intended to cover six square kilometers, with no point further than 200 m from a public transport link. Masdar will be the site of a university, the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. The project is supported by the global conservation charity World Wide Fund for Nature and the sustainability group BioRegional.

In a ruling on 16 January 2008, the Criminal Court of Paris condemned the world's fourth largest oil group Total SA to a fine of €375,000 – the maximum allowable penalty for maritime pollution – claiming "ecological prejudice" caused by the sinking of the Erika. The case represents the first time that a French court has handed down a conviction for environmental damage and the landmark ruling could establish a legal precedent for suing companies or persons over major ecological disasters.

After the pilot phase, the second trading period in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) started on 1 January 2008, during which tighter national emissions budgets are valid throughout Europe. For Germany this now means a total of 453 million emissions allowances per year for the industrial and energy sectors. A certain percentage of allowances will no longer be allocated free of charge, due to be sold or auctioned instead (40 million per year).

On 19 December 2007, the General Assembly declared the period 2010-2020 as the United Nations Decade for Deserts and the Fight against Desertification, on the recommendation of the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) (resolution 62/195).

The International Polar Year 2007/08 was launched in March 2007, and will continue through early 2009. During this time, a regular sequence of International Polar Days will raise awareness and provide information about particular and timely aspects of the polar regions. December 13th, 2007 was the second International Polar Day, this time focusing on Ice Sheets.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore (former vice-president of the USA) receive Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

Each year the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (GfdS) announces its selection of the top-ranked words of the year. The German "Word of the Year" for 2007 is Klimakatastrophe.

Dresden Elbe Valley has received the UNESCO World Heritage status in 2004. In 2006 it has been placed on the red list because of the planned Waldschlößchen bridge. The building of this bridge has been started on November, 19th 2007. UNESCO is expected to retract World Heritage status in July 2008.

The National Strategy on Biological Diversity was adopted by the federal cabinet on 7 November 2007.

The International Polar Year 2007/08 was launched in March 2007, and will continue through early 2009. During this time, a regular sequence of International Polar Days will raise awareness and provide information about particular and timely aspects of the polar regions. On September 21, 2007, the International Polar Year (IPY) was launched its first ‘International Polar Day’, focusing on Sea Ice.

The World Heritage Committee took the unprecedented decision of removing a site from UNESCO's World Heritage List: the Arabian Oryx Sanctuary (Oman), home to the rare antelope, because of Oman’s decision to reduce the size of the protected area by 90%, in contravention of the Operational Guidelines of the Convention. In 1996, the population of the Arabian Oryx in the site was at 450 but it has since dwindled to 65.

An alliance of 44 stakeholders joined the European Commission in organising the first ever European Sustainable Energy Week (EUSEW). This initiative, destined to be the key annual reference point for sustainable energy issues, brought together more than 5,000 experts and decision-makers at a multitude of events in Belgium, Austria, France and Spain during the week of 29 January 2007. Key events of the EUSEW week included the European Renewable Energy Policy Conference and the annual ManagEnergy Conference, which generated ideas, and developed solutions and action plans for different sectors of the economy. The European Commission intends to repeat this very successful event next year.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has launched a major worldwide tree planting campaign. Under the "Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign" people, communities, organizations, business and industry, civil society and governments are being encouraged to plant trees and enter their tree planting pledges on this web site. The objective is to plant at least one billion trees worldwide in 2007. The idea for the "Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign" was inspired by Professor Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize laureate for 2004 and founder of Kenya’s Green Belt Movement, which has planted more than 30 million trees in 12 African countries since 1977.

The Elisabeth Mann-Borgese Sea Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Government has been awarded for the first time on the 26th November 2006 in the Schleswig-Holstein Land representation in Berlin. The prize, worth €20,000 and named for the daughter of writer Thomas Mann, honours in the one case an outstanding contribution to the marine sciences and in the other political and social commitment to the conservation and protection of the marine environment.

Friends of the Earth in Germany, Italy and Switzerland together with the Dutch Vlinderstichting call for a nationwide butterfly counting on the 1st and 2nd of July. The count is to take place during the 1st International Butterfly Day.

The former "German Environmental Information Network (gein)", established in June 2000, has been relaunched by the "German Environmental Information Portal (PortalU)". PortalU is the result of a cooperation between the German "Länder" and the German Federal Government, implementing requirements of the Directive 2003/4/EC on public access to environmental information.

The compulsory deposit has been extended to all ecologically unfriendly one-way packaging and the so called individual solutions were discontinued. Under the "individual solutions", discounters only had to take back one-way drink packaging sold by their own sales chain. Since May 2006, stores that sell drink cans, glass or plastic bottles are obligated to take back corresponding packaging from other drinks manufacturers. Empty one-way bottles and cans can be returned to any outlet where one-way packaging is sold. This is also done to promote the development of a uniform nationwide return system which is now being build up by the economic operators.

On March 20, 2006, the members of the NaDiNe expert group working on the topic of oil spills gathered at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven for their first meeting. Participants were scientists from the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), and the GKSS Research Center Geesthacht.

Adopted by the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM) on 6 February 2006 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) is a policy framework to foster the sound management of chemicals. SAICM was developed by a multi-stakeholder and multi-sectoral Preparatory Committee and supports the achievement of the goal agreed at the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development of ensuring that, by the year 2020, chemicals are produced and used in ways that minimize significant adverse impacts on the environment and human health. Another goal of SAICM is to bundle the variety of existing activities and initiatives for a safe chemicals management within an overall framework .

Brazilian soy farmers have extended their moratorium on Amazon deforestation for another year, reports Greenpeace. The moratorium was established in July 2006 in response to concerns among big soy buyers that soy expansion was driving large-scale destruction of Earth's largest rainforest.

The Act on Control of high-activity radioactive sources enters into force. It is the national implementation of Council Directive 2003/122/Euratom of 22 December 2003 on the control of high-activity sealed radioactive sources and orphan sources. The Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) maintains a centralized register.

The eco-design of Energy using Products (EuP) Directive (2005/32/EC) became law in the European Union (EU) on the 11th of August 2005. The Directive establishes a framework for the setting of ecodesign requirements for energy-using products.

The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the years 2005 to 2015 as the International Decade for Action 'Water for Life'. The primary goal is to promote efforts to fulfill international commitments made on water and water-related issues by 2015.