The Environment Chronicle

BUND's annual Bodo Manstein Medal for exceptional services to the environment is awarded for the first time.

Five activists parachute into a building site for a Canadian nuclear reactor. During the confusion, other activists succeed in occupying the site.

Greenpeace targets the Icelandic whaling fleet, to stop it killing fin whales, whose populations have shrunk dramatically. In 3m waves, they manoeuvre their dinghies between the ships and the whales, with the result that not a single whale is harpooned.

Greenpeace discovers by chance that Great Britain and other European states are dumping nuclear waste in the North Atlantic. As the British freighter "Gem" reaches the dumping site, c. 960 km from the coast of Cornwall, carrying 2,000 t nuclear waste, two dinghies take up post below the loading ramp. The barrels continue to roll out, and the protest must end, although the media are on hand to record events.

The European Community starts its second Environmental Action Programme

Scientific studies by the FEA prove the dangers of fibrous asbestos dust in the environment as well. Despite early resistance, industry then halts the use of sprayed asbestos. Sprayed asbestos has been banned in Germany since 1979.

Expeditions begin in March to prevent seal culling on the ice off Newfoundland in Canada. Activists blockade an icebreaker, others protect seals from the hunters' clubs with their own bodies. They are fined by the Canadian authorities.

The first protest is aimed at the Soviet whaling fleet. Greenpeace members in rubber dinghies place themselves between the whales and the harpoons. Film of the protest alarms the entire world.

Objective proof of the connection between the destruction of the ozone layer and the release of aerosol propellants.

L. S. Rowland and M. J. Molina demonstrate the likelihood that the chemically stable, and therefore persistent, CFC compounds are destroying stratospheric ozone.

Greenpeace sail to the French atoll for a second time. French soldiers enter their yacht, beating up one protester, McTaggart. Others manage to smuggle photographs of the attack from board. These are published all around the world. France abandons the test series.

The European Community starts its first Environmental Action Programme

Greenpeace extends its protests to French atomic tests in French Polynesia. They hold their position 15 Knots from the atoll for many weeks, until they hear an explosion. They are unaware that radioactive dust is now falling near them. 2 yours later, a French warship rams them in international waters. The damage is such that the crew must be towed to Moruroa.

Since 1972, the European Union (formerly the European Community) has passed over 200 guidelines and directives, which belong to the core sources of environmental law in member states.

This programme was initiated by a decision at the UN Environmental Conference in Stockholm. It aims to support national action and regional cooperation in conservation and environmental protection, as well as developing, evaluating and monitoring international conservation and environmental law. It initiates regional programmes, advises governments, funds training and has produced reports and databases to support these projects. Prof. Klaus Töpfer, the former German environment minister has been its executive director since February 1998.

Fundamental change in waste disposal methods - instead of 50,000 smaller dumps, c. 1,000 larger landfills are used.

Greenpeace protests against US government atomic tests in the ship "Phyllis". The test continues, but provokes public anger, with demonstrations, strikes and threatened boycotts in Canada and the USA. 4 months later, the US Atomic Energy Commission announces the abandonment of the test series.

The German government's first environmental programme includes support for green technological advances, research and training, and an international approach to environmental problems. An Advisory Scientific Council (the SRU) is also set up.

The first Red List of Threatened Breeding Birds of Germany was published in 1971.

Discovery that nitrogen oxides can deplete the stratospheric ozone layer, thereby exposing the Earth's surface to excessive ultraviolet (UV) radiation.

The reserves were identified as such in the UNESCO programme "Man and Biospheres" (MAB). The key goal is to create a global network of reserves for the conservation and sustainable use of the natural world in large representative sections of natural and cultivated landscapes. Another aim is to explore the relationship between humans and the environment, monitor the environment and raise public awareness.

The first international environmental authority, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, is run by an administrator with cabinet rank, although without the status of a minister.

First evidence of ozone depletion.

Since a pulp and paper combine came into operation on the south bank, the Epischura, 98% of the zooplankton mass, and one of the first links in the food chain, have died out. This has seriously upset the ecological balance of the lake.

The World Food Programme (WFP) of the United Nations, adopted in 1961, provides humanitarian aid in emergencies, but also supports long-term economic development to ensure independent food supplies.

Marine biologist Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring, calling attention to the threat of toxic chemicals to people and the environment.

In June 1961, electricity generated by nuclear power is fed into the public grid for the first time in the Federal Republic of Germany from the Kahl Nuclear Power Plant.

The new Aswan dam (Sadd al-Ali) makes 3 annual harvests possible, instead of only 2, extends the arable surface by 25% and covers 70% of the country's electricity needs. The number of edible fish in the reservoir grows, even crocodiles and tapirfish return to the area. Negative side-effects are that the nutritious sediment remains above the dam, making fertilisers necessary; the reservoir becomes eutrophied and water hyacinth teems unchecked; far more water evaporates than expected, due to the large surface area and the river bed is less well cleaned, due to the lack of flooding; the Nile delta is no longer fed by sediment. The clear positive effect is security from drought.

The Federal State Unitary Enterprise ‘Production Enterprise Mayak’ was founded for the industrial production of plutonium for nuclear weapons. It is located in Cheljabinsk province in the South Urals, not far from the cities of Kishtym. An explosion of a tank with liquid radioactive waste occured on September 29, 1957. The accident released large amounts of fission products that contaminated an area covering 300 x 50 km, later called the Kyshtym footprint. The Kyshtym accident measured as a Level 6 disaster on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

The IAEA is the world´s center of cooperation in the nuclear field. It was set up as the world´s "Atoms for Peace" organization in 1957 within the United Nations family. The Agency works with its Member States and multiple partners worldwide to promote safe, secure and peaceful nuclear technologies.

On 17 October 1956, the Queen Elisabeth II opened Reactor number 1 at Calder Hall, bringing into service the world's first industrial scale nuclear power station.

The west of the lake has consumed all of its oxygen. Mayflies larvae die on the lake bed, and cannot decompose, due to the lack of oxygen. In addition, concentrations of fertilising nitrate and phosphate ions have trebled between the 1930s and the 1970s.

The worst smog on record hangs over London for five days. 4,000 more than average die during the period. The smog was created by accumulated sulphur dioxide from coal burning.

The Federal Republic of Germany became the 64th member state of UNESCO on 11 July 1951.

The 1948 Donora smog was an historic air inversion wall of smog that killed 20 and sickened 7,000 people in Donora, Pennsylvania in the United States, a mill town on the Monongahela River, 24 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development is set up in Paris as part of the Marshall Plan. It has an environment department, which deals above all with the relationship between economic activity and the environment. The OECD regularly publishes reports on the environment in OECD countries and other studies.

Invention of 2,4,5, trichlorophenoxyacetic acid. During the Vietnam War (1965-1971), it is used as a defoliant under the codename Agent Orange. It is expected that contaminated soil will need over a century to regenerate.

Discovery of insecticide DDT. P. Müller receives the Nobel Prize in 1948. DDT has been banned in Germany since 1972.

Otto Hahn and Fritz Straßmann discover nuclear fission.

Over these 40 years, the lake's phosphate concentrations rise from zero to 26 mg/m_, its nitrate content from 600 mg/m_ to 800 mg/m_. The mass of phytoplankton is a factor of twenty greater. The whitefish catch falls to an all-time low in 1963. A convention on safeguarding the water quality in the Bodensee is accepted in 1961. Eutrophication in the Bodensee remains stable from 1975.