The Environment Chronicle

The European Commission is asking the public how best to reduce the use of plastic carrier bags. It will ask if charging and taxation would be effective, or if other options such as an EU-level ban on plastic carrier bags would be better. Opinions will also be sought on increasing the visibility of biodegradable packaging products, and boosting the biodegradability requirements for packaging.

On 16 May 2011 the National platform for electric mobility submitted a second report to Federal Government containing an analysis of the potential of electromobility and strategies to achieve the government’s goal of having one million electric cars on German roads by 2020.

On 13 March 2011, after a flight lasting 12 hours 59 minutes, using no fuel and propelled by solar energy alone, Solar Impulse HB-SIA landed safely in Brussels at 21h39 (UTC +2). The Solar Impulse took off at 08h40 from Payerne aerodrome in Switzerland and then crossed the Alsace toward Nancy and Metz, before over-flying the Grand-Duchy of Luxemburg and finally arriving in Belgium to land on Runway 02 at Brussels Airport (Zaventem).

On 13 May 2011, the operator of the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Japan began the process of shutting down its reactors as part of an agreement with the government to temporarily suspend operations until it strengthens tsunami protections. Seismologists have long warned that a major quake is overdue in the Tokai region southwest of Tokyo where the Hamaoka plant is located. It is only 200 kilometres from the capital and megacity of Tokyo.

In a judgment issued today (12 May 2011), the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has given environmental protection organisations wider access to justice. According to the ruling, the German Law on supplementary provisions governing actions in environmental matters under Directive 2003/35/EC (Umwelt-Rechtsbehelfsgesetz - UmwRG) of December 2006, which entitles recognized environmental protection organisations to a right of access to the courts, does not fully implement the provisions of European law. Germany now has to adapt the UmwRG accordingly. Until the amendment enters into force, recognized environmental protection organisations can directly invoke European law to bring an action before the courts.

On 9 May 2011, the Aysén Environmental Review Commission in Chile approved a controversial project to construct five hydropower dams in Patagonia. The HidroAysen project would see the construction of five hydroelectric power stations, two along the Baker River and three on the Pascua River, in an area some 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles south of Santiago). A coalition called "Chilean Patagonia Without Dams" contends the project is unnecessary and would endanger pristine forests in a region that includes widely admired glaciers and lakes. The opponents claim that the project would disfigure wilderness areas of Patagonia, with the flooding of some 5,900 hectares.

Close to 80 percent of the world's energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century. This could lead to cumulative greenhouse gas savings that could contribute towards a goal of holding the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius. But it has to be backed by an appropriate policy framework and the development of system integration. These are the findings of a special report realised by Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Over 120 researchers from all over the world have worked on this Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN) for the last two years. On the 11th Session of Working Group III, 5-8 May 2011 in Abu Dhabi, government representatives by 194 nations have approved the report.

On 8 May 2011 the Greenland Government approved an application by Scottish oil company Cairn Energy Plc to drill up to seven oil exploration wells off West Greenland in 2011, of which Cairn will drill four wells. The drilling season for the area off Disko-Nuussuaq will end on the 1st of October 2011, while the southern region west of Nuuk the drilling season will last until the 1st of December 2011. Greenpeace International Oil campaigner Ben Ayliffe said:“By approving these permits, Greenland’s government has allowed Cairn Energy to drill for oil further north, at greater depths and deeper into the harsh winter months than ever before. "

On 7 May 2011, the Niedersachsen Wadden Sea National Park celebrated its 25 anniversary in Cuxhaven. In order to protect the natural landscape on Niedersachsen's North Sea coast, the area was made a conservation area in 1986. Since 2009, the Niedersachsen Wadden Sea National Park is part of the UNESCO World Natural Heritage Wadden Sea.

On 5 May 2011, the Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU) launched, in co-operation with national partners, the first "Fishing for Litter" project in Germany. The aim of the project is to clear the sea from litter, by bringing ashore the litter that is gathered in the fishermen's nets as part of fishing activities. Subsequently the litter was disposed of on land.

On 4 May 2011, the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ has for the first time stored carbon dioxide (CO2) from a power plant underground. In a trial experiment at the test facility in Ketzin in Brandenburg, the pilot site for the scientific study of geological storage of the greenhouse gas CO2, 2,000 tons of industrially separated CO2 from the pilot plant Schwarze Pumpe will be injected over the course of about one month. The pilot site Ketzin managed by GFZ is the first European research centre that studies the geological storage of CO2 in an onshore saline aquifer.

On 3 May 2011 the European Commission presented a new strategy to protect and improve the state of Europe's biodiversity over the next decade. The strategy includes six priority targets and accompanying actions which address the main drivers of biodiversity loss. The six targets cover: Full implementation of EU nature legislation to protect biodiversity; better protection for ecosystems, and more use of green infrastructure; more sustainable agriculture and forestry; better management of fish stocks; tighter controls on invasive alien species and a bigger EU contribution to averting global biodiversity loss.

Initial tests of the 22 seaweed samples collected by Greenpeace along the coast North and South of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and up to 65km out to sea by its flag ship Rainbow Warrior registered significantly high levels of radioactive contamination. Ten samples show levels over 10,000 Bq/kg, while the official safety limits for seaweed are 2,000 Bq/kg for Iodine-131 and 500 Bq/kg for Caesium-137 (1).

On 2 May 2011 Germany's first commercial offshore wind power park, in the Baltic Sea, officially opened. Baltic 1 is located some 16 kilometers off the Darss-Zingst peninsula. The 21 wind power turbines will produce 48,3 megawatts of electricity - about enough to power 50.000 homes.

WWF was founded in 1961 by a group of concerned naturalists and conservationists. WWF's 50th anniversary on 29th April 2011 marks the signing of the "Morges Manifesto", a document which led to the founding of the organisation and the first campaign to save endangered species. Since then WWF has grown into one of the world's largest and most respected independent conservation organisations, with more than 5 million supporters and a global network active in over 100 countries.

On 28 April 2011, Plains Midstream Canada experienced a pipeline failure on its 20” Rainbow Pipeline, located in Northern Sunrise County approximately 95 km northeast of Peace River, Alberta. The failure resulted in a release of approximately 28,000 barrels of crude oil.

The first chapter of WWF’s Living Forests Report, released on 27 April 2011, examines the drivers of deforestation and identifies the opportunities to shift from business as usual to a new model of sustainability, which can benefit government, business and communities. Based on a new global analysis showing that more than 230 million hectares of forest will disappear by 2050 if no action is taken, the report proposes that policymakers and businesses unite around a goal of zero net deforestation and forest degradation (ZNDD) by 2020 as a groundbreaking global benchmark to avoid dangerous climate change and curb biodiversity loss. During the 2011 International Year of Forests, WWF’s Living Forests Report is part of a year‑long conversation with partners, policymakers, and business about how to protect, conserve, sustainably use, and govern the world’s forests in the 21st century.

The new economics foundation (nef) has estimated the degree of self-sufficiency in fish consumption achieved by the EU as a whole and for each of its member states; self-sufficiency is defined as the capacity of European countries to meet demand for fish from their own waters. They have expressed the degree of self-sufficiency in the form of a ‘fish dependence day’. Based on a nation or region’s total annual fish consumption, the fish dependency day is the date on the calendar when it would start to depend on fish from elsewhere because its own supplies were depleted. For the EU as a whole this is 9 July, indicating that almost one-half of EU fish consumption depends on fish from non-EU waters. Since 2000 the EU’s fish dependence day has occurred earlier and earlier in the year and is now nearly a month sooner, revealing an increasing level of fish dependence. Germany's fish dependence day for 2011 was 27 April.

The fifth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP5) to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) was held from 25-29 April 2011, in Geneva, Switzerland. Over 700 participants, representing more than 125 governments, as well as intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations and UN agencies, attended the meeting. The Parties agreed to list endosulfan in Annex A to the Convention, with specific exemptions. When the amendment to the Annex A enters into force in one year, endosulfan will become the 22nd POP to be listed under the Convention.

On 25 April 2011 fire broke out on the High Fens, Belgium. Some 1,000 hectares of this nature area have been destroyed.

On 22 April 2011, Greenpeace activists occupied the rig Leiv Eriksson, which is on its way from Turkey to Greenland to explore for oil.

On 21 April 2011 Japan declared no-go zone around Fukushima Daiichii nuclear power plant. The government banned residents from entering the 20-kilometer evacuation zone due to concerns about high levels of accumulated radiation.

On 19 April 2011 the intergovernmental panel of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) deferred the final decision on the construction of the Xayaburi dam in Laos to the ministerial level, following concerns raised by Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. The decision comes amidst the submission of a growing body of evidence to the Commission highlighting risks to biodiversity, fisheries and livelihoods of millions of people in the Mekong River Basin. Particularly vulnerable areas include fisheries and the Mekong Delta. A WWF-commissioned review of the Xayaburi project found that the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Feasibility Study (FS) for the proposed dam were woefully inadequate and fell well below international standards for such studies. Changes in flows, sediment and nutrients are some of the areas that require further analysis, says WWF.

A study on the status of marine fish in the Mediterranean Sea released on 19 April 2011 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature says almost half of the species of sharks and rays in the Mediterranean and at least 12 species of bony fish are threatened with extinction due to overfishing, marine habitat degradation and pollution. This is the first comprehensive regional IUCN Red List assessment of the native marine fish species for an entire sea. The report also highlights the substantial lack of information on the conservation status of nearly one third of these Mediterranean marine fish (which were assessed as Data Deficient), a significant proportion of which are considered endemic to the region.

At an international conference in Kyiv on 19 April 2011, the world community pledged 550 million euros extra cash for the containment of the Chernobyl site. There is still a shortfall of 740 million euros in the funds needed for the two major projects in Chernobyl: a second New Safe Confinement (NSC) around the sarcophagus and the construction of an interim storage facility for spent fuel elements. The aim of the pledging conference was to close this gap as much as possible.

The coastline in Arctic regions reacts to climate change with increased erosion and retreats by half a metre per year on average. This means substantial changes for Arctic ecosystems near the coast and the population living there. A consortium of more than thirty scientists from ten countries was involved in preparing the 170-page status report entitled “State of the Arctic Coast 2010”. The study was initiated and coordinated by the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), the international joint project Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone (LOICZ), the International Permafrost Association (IPA) and the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) working group of the Arctic Council. The scientists jointly investigated over 100,000 kilometres and thus a fourth of all Arctic coasts and their results was published on 18 April 2011.The changes are particularly dramatic in the Laptev, East Siberian and Beaufort Seas, where coastal erosion rates reach more than 8 metres a year in some cases.

On 13 April 2011 the German government adopted the draft act on the demonstration and application of technologies for the capture, transport and permanent storage of carbon dioxide (CO2). This has created the prerequisite for CCS testing projects in Germany to receive EU support. In a technical assessment process the Länder can designate areas in which CO2 storage is permissible and in which it is not.

On 12 April 2011 the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) submitted a provisional International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) Level 7 rating for the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

On 11 April 2011 the Goldman Environmental Foundation announced the six recipients of the 2011 Goldman Environmental Prize in San Franscico. Ursula Sladek is one of the winners. In response to Germany’s expanded reliance on nuclear energy, she created Germany's first cooperatively-owned renewable power company. The Goldman Environmental Prize was established in 1989 by Richard and Rhoda Goldman. Prize winners are selected by an international jury from confidential nominations submitted by a worldwide network of environmental organizations and individuals.

On 4 April 2011 TEPCO discharged 11 500 ton of contaminated water from their radioactive waste treatment facility to the sea.

Honeybee populations are mysteriously dying off in Europe and elsewhere. On 24 January 2011, EU agriculture ministers discussed this alarming phenomenon on the basis of the Commission's communication on honeybee health. Europe has over 2,500 species of wild bees and one commonly domesticated species, the honeybee. In recent years, vast numbers of both wild and managed pollinators have disappeared. In a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, bees become disoriented and die far away from their hives. Many factors have been blamed, including parasites, viruses, fungi and pesticides. So far, however, scientists have not been able to pinpoint the exact causes. The EU aims to start a pilot surveillance programme by the end of 2011 to tackle the current shortage of comparable bee data. An EU Reference Laboratory for bee health will be set up in Sophia Antipolis, France, by April 2011. Member states' officials are receiving bee health training under the Better Training for Safer Food initiative.

On 1 April 2011, European Commission Regulation (EU) 310/2011 of 28 March 2011 amending Annexes II and III to Regulation (EC) No 396/2005 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards maximum residue levels for aldicarb, bromopropylate, chlorfenvinphos, endosulfan, EPTC, ethion, fenthion, fomesafen, methabenzthiazuron, methidathion, simazine, tetradifon and triforine in or on certain products, was published in the Official Journal.

Aviation contributes significantly to anthropogenic climate change by emissions of greenhouse gases, particles and nitrogen oxides as well as by changes of high (cirrus) cloudiness. An important but poorly explored component of the latter are contrail cirrus, comprising the familiar line shaped contrails and the irregularly shaped cirrus clouds that evolve from them. The contrail cirrus radiative forcing (a measure of Earth’s radiative imbalance due to contrail cirrus) has been simulated for the first time with a climate model in the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at DLR Oberpfaffenhofen and published as a research article in Nature Climate Change.

Hamburg, Stockholm, 29 March 2011: In a joint statement 50 Laureates of the Right Livelihood Award and members of the World Future Council demand a global nuclear phase out. "The conclusion we draw from the nuclear power plant accident in Japan is that the human community, acting for itself and as trustees for future generations, must exercise a far higher level of care globally in dealing with technologies capable of causing mass annihilation, and should phase out, abolish and replace such technologies with alternatives that do not threaten present and future generations. This applies to nuclear weapons as well as to nuclear power reactors."

Radioactive iodine-131 at a concentration of 3,355 times the maximum allowable level under the law was detected in a seawater sample taken on 29 March 2011 near the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Plutonium has been detected in soil samples taken from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. On 28 March 2011 the plant operators Tepco say the samples, taken at the plant on 21 and 22 March, could have been discharged from nuclear fuel at the plant hit by the March earthquake and tsunami.

On 28 March 2011 the European Commission adopted a comprehensive strategy (Transport 2050) for a competitive transport system that will increase mobility, remove major barriers in key areas and fuel growth and employment. At the same time, the proposals will dramatically reduce Europe's dependence on imported oil and cut carbon emissions in transport by 60% by 2050.

On 28 March 2011 the Indian government released new tiger population numbers for the first time since 2007, indicating that numbers have increased in the country that has half of the world’s remaining wild tigers. The government estimated current tiger numbers in India at 1,706, up from 1,411 during the last count in 2007. However, the 1,706 figure includes an additional tiger reserve in the count, the Sundarbans, that contained 70 tigers. This area was not counted in 2007. Therefore, when comparing the previous survey with the current one, the official estimate stands at 1,636 when leaving out the Sundarbans, or an increase of 225.

The German tanker Alspray caught fire in the night of 29 March 2011 at BP's Emsland refinery. The vessel sank after various explosions with 900,000 litres of gasoline on board. The accident happened during loading works.

On 27 March 2011 Japanese chief government spokesman Yukio Edana confirmed a partial meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. "According to reports that I have received, the radiation seems to have come from fuel rods that temporarily melted down and came in contact with the water, used to cool the reactor. The meltdown was not continuous."