The Environment Chronicle

On 13 February 2011 in canton Bern 51.2 per cent of voters said yes to building a new nuclear power plant in Mühleberg to replace the old one there.

On 13 February 2011 Greenpeace published a map of 408 potential German CCS storage sites. According to the published information, possible CCS storage sites are mainly located in East Frisia, below the East Frisian islands of Spiekeroog and Langeoog and the mudflats off the coast of Schleswig-Holstein. There are also possible sites in or near the cities of Hamburg, Berlin and Munich and in certain parts of North Rhine-Westphalia and Mecklenburg Western-Pommerania.

A constitutional complaint against the extension of the operating times of German nuclear power plants has been submitted to the Federal Constitutional Court. The complaint is supported by Greenpeace.

Recognizing the role that forests play in everything from mitigating climate change to providing wood, medicines and livelihoods for people worldwide, on 2 February 2011 the United Nations kicked off a year-long celebration to raise awareness of the value of this important resource. “Forests for People” is the main theme of the International Year of Forests, which was launched at a ceremony at UN Headquarters in New York attended by world leaders, Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai and forest experts.

On 2 February 2011 the global community celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.

On 2 February 2011 NOAA reopend 4,213 square miles of Gulf of Mexico federal waters off Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to royal red shrimping. The area was closed to this type of deep water fishing on Nov. 24 as a precautionary measure after a commercial shrimper discovered tar balls in his net. The "fingerprint" analysis to determine whether the source of the tar balls was the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil was inconclusive. Further fish and shrimp sampling and testing from the area showed no oil or dispersant contamination. This reopening was announced after consultation with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. All commercial and recreational fishing is allowed within this area.

New satellite imagery showed Malaysia was destroying forests more than three times faster than all of Asia combined, and its carbon-rich peat soils of the Sarawak coast were being stripped even faster, according to a study released 1 February 2011. The report commissioned by the Netherlands-based Wetlands International said Malaysia was uprooting an average 2 percent of the rain forest a year on Sarawak, its largest state on the island of Borneo, or nearly 10 percent over the last five years. Most of it is being converted to palm oil plantations, it said. The deforestation rate for all of Asia during the same period was 2.8 percent, it said.

The European Commission (EC) has established a new method for detecting marine biotoxins in bivalve molluscs, with techniques based on liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry. This method will replace the previous mouse bioassay. The Official Journal of the European Union published on 10 January, Regulation (EU) 15/2011, which amends the previously applicable rules on the subject, dating from 2005. This Regulation entered into force on 31 January 2011.

The Federal Environment Agency (UBA) presents the brochure entitled Umwelt und Landwirtschaft [Environment and Agriculture], published in the Environmental Data (Daten zur Umwelt) series, with an overview of key facts and figures to enable a sound discussion about conservation in agriculture, and to present what has been achieved as well as where problems exist. Graphs, maps and tables serve to illustrate existing interrelationships.

On 28 January 2011 the Berne Declaration (BD) and Greenpeace Suisse denounced the particularly flagrant human rights abuses and environmental sins committed by corporations. With the 2011 Public Eye Awards, BD and Greenpeace “reward” two corporations that exemplify those WEF members and enterprises whose social and environmental offences expose the flip side of purely profit-oriented globalization. For the contamination of land and poisoning of people from gold mining in Ghana, the South African mining corporation AngloGold/Ashanti receives the jury-selected Public Eye Global Award. For the Web-based Public Eye People’s Award, mobilizing more than twice as many voters this year as in 2010, Neste Oil cleaned up with 17'385 votes, thus relegating BP (13'000) and Philip Morris (8'052) to runners-up. The Finnish biofuel producer – and soon the world’s largest palm oil purchaser – sells bio-diesel Europe-wide under the shameless name “Green Diesel.” The huge jump in demand for palm oil fuels rain forest destruction in Indonesia and Malaysia, threatening the remaining refuges of the already endangered orangutan.

Never before in the past 2,000 years the Atlantic Water in the Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard was as warm as today. This was revealed by a study of marine sediments from the western Svalbard continental margin which was led by German researchers from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) and the Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and Literature Mainz, and performed together with colleagues from Bremerhaven (Germany), Tromsø (Norway) and Boulder (USA). The scientists assume that the recent decrease in sea ice coverage and the rapid warming of the Arctic are connected to the enhanced heat transfer from the Atlantic.

On 26 January the European Commission set out its views on a strategic framework that should deliver a more sustainable use of natural resources and the shift towards resource-efficient, low-carbon growth in Europe. This strategy is the seventh and last of the Europe 2020 flagship initiatives which aim at building smart, sustainable and inclusive growth for Europe. It establishes resource efficiency as the guiding principle for EU policies on energy, transport, climate change, industry, commodities, agriculture, fisheries, biodiversity and regional development. By using synergies across these policy-areas, the strategy will be instrumental in reaching a variety of EU objectives, from reducing European greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 95% by 2050 to reforming the agricultural and fisheries sectors, from reducing food insecurity in developing countries to making the Union more resilient to future rises in global energy and commodity prices.

A 28 month long pilot scheme initiated by WWF Germany/TRAFFIC using sniffer dogs to detect wildlife products smuggled through Frankfurt airport has proved so successful, it is to be extended Europe-wide. WWF Germany presented information on the project, which is funded by the European Commission Directorate-General for Home Affairs (DG Home Affairs), at a three day global forum on the use of detector dogs and handler teams in enforcement operations taking place this week in celebration of World Customs Organization Day on 26th January 2011.

ON 26 January 2011 the Chair of the German Advisory Council on the Environment (SRU), Prof. Dr Faulstich, presented Federal Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen with the special report "Pathways towards a 100% renewable electricity system (Wege zur 100% erneuerbaren Stromversorgung)." The study comes to the conclusion that a 100% renewable electricity supply is possible in Germany by 2050. The report shows various scenarios illustrating how a 100% renewable electricity supply in Germany can be achieved. The main scenarios analysed are a purely national expansion strategy, collaboration with Denmark and Norway and a European solution incorporating North Africa. In addition to the significant expansion of renewable energies, increased energy efficiency and the expansion of grid and storage capacities are crucial to the successful implementation of the development illustrated in the scenarios.

On 26 January 2011 the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources - IBAMA gave the go-ahead for initial work to begin on a huge hydroelectric dam on a tributary of the Amazon River. IBAMA approved the clearing of forest at the planned site for the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant.

Alternative fuels have the potential to gradually replace fossil energy sources and make transport sustainable by 2050, according to a report presented to the European Commission on 25 January 2011 by the stakeholder expert group on future transport fuels. The EU will need an oil-free and largely CO2-free energy supply for transport by 2050 due to the need to reduce its impact on the environment and concerns about the security of energy supply. The expert group has for the first time developed a comprehensive approach covering the whole transport sector. Expected demand from all transport modes could be met through a combination of electricity (batteries or hydrogen/fuel cells) and biofuels as main options, synthetic fuels (increasingly from renewable resources) as a bridging option, methane (natural gas and biomethane) as complementary fuel, and LPG as supplement.

The French government has announced plans to seek investors for a €10 billion project to build the country’s first offshore wind-power facilities. The project calls for the installation of 600 wind turbines at a number of sites along France’s lengthy Atlantic coastline. The turbines will have a total capacity of 3 GW.

On 21 January 2011, EU Member State representatives adopted the European Commission’s draft Regulation banning the use of credits from industrial gas projects in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) post-2012.

On 17 January 2011 Greenpeace UK released a new report with partners from Platform and Oil Change International about oil investment and increasingly risky sources of oil. The report "Reserves Replacement Ratio in a Marginal Oil World: Adequate Indicator or Subprime Statistic?" examines current practices of reporting on oil reserves to be derived from tar sands, deep water drilling and Arctic crude. The international oil industry has entered an era in which maintaining production numbers involves unprecedented risk, escalating costs and tighter margins. Adequate profits from equity production will increasingly depend on a high demand and high oil price environment which is not only far from assured but is also counter to the interests of climate protection.

A tanker ship, the Waldhof, carrying 2,400 tonnes of sulphuric acid capsized on the Germany's Rhine River on 13 January 2011. The accident took place near the Lorelei rock.

On 11 January 2010 the U.S. National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling released its final report and recommendations in Washington, DC.

Toxic pollution from flooded farms and towns along the Queensland coast will have a disastrous impact on the Great Barrier Reef’s corals and will likely have a significant impact on dugongs, turtles and other marine life, WWF warned on 10 Januar 2011.

Energy production from plants could provide up to twenty percent of the world's energy demand in 2050, half of it from biomass plantations alone – but only at the price of a substantial expansion of land used for cultivation, to the expense of nature. This is the finding of a study carried out by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), “which for the first time determines the potential and the risks of energy production from biomass plantations in a complex biogeochemical computer simulation,“ lead author Tim Beringer says. Human land use could increase by ten to thirty percent, depending on the scenario, and irrigation water demand could double.

The Directive on industrial emissions 2010/75/EU (IED) has been adopted on 24 November 2010 and published in the Official Journal on 17 December 2010. It will enter into force on 6 January 2011.

Insect of the Year 2011 is the narrow-headed ant (Formica exsecta).

The Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) has announced their 2011 Dinosaur of the Year award. 2011’s dinosaurs are the cruise ship industry. The German-based NABU singled out cruise lines AIDA and TUI, based in Germany, as the representatives of their branch. NABU President Olaf Tschimpke states that cruise ships emit particle pollution equivalent to 5 million cars driving the same distance as a cruise ship travels.

Poisonous Plant of the Year 2011 is the common yew, or European yew (Taxus baccata).

Reptile of the year 2011 ist the Common wall lizard (Podarcis muralis).

The European Commission awarded Hamburg the title of European Green Capital 2011 in Brussels, February 23, 2009. Hamburg, a city of 1.8 million people, is a city that matches environmental policy commitment with appropriate funding. Air quality is very good, numerous awareness raising programmes are in place, and the city has introduced extremely ambitious climate protection goals such as reducing its CO2 emissions by 40% by 2020 and by 80% by the year 2050. Measures introduced include a cost-efficiency benchmark for energy-saving measures in public buildings, with programmes for lighting, boilers and refrigerator replacement. Over 200,000 conventional lamps in more than 400 public buildings have been replaced, and in recent years €18 million has been spent replacing more than 600 boiler systems with modern condensing boilers. CO2 emissions per person have been reduced by about 15% compared to 1990, with annual energy savings of some 46,000 MWh. Almost 100% of Hamburg's citizens have public transport within 300 meters. There is also a systematic structure of green spaces which are easily accessible to citizens. Hamburg was also commended for its communication strategy, and its proposal to launch a 'train of ideas' where other cities ‘own’ a wagon and promote their green ideas, achievements and future plans.

The competition “German Capital of Biodiversity” was organised by Deutsche Umwelthilfe and started in July 2010. All municipalities were invited to participate. To ensure a fair competition, all towns and cities were grouped according to their size: Towns below 10,000 inhabitants, between 10,000 and 30,000, 30,000 to 100,000 as well as cities above 100,000 inhabitants. 124 municipalities, over one third of which were large cities of over 100,000 inhabitants, filled out the comprehensive questionnaire and submitted altogether nearly 900 biodiversity projects. The award ceremony took place on 6 April 2011 in Cologne. The city of Hannover, capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony, was the clear winner of the competition „German Capital of Biodiversity 2010/2011“ and received a prize money of 25.000 Euros donated by the Vibrant Cities Foundation.

The 2011 German Environmental Award of the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt (DBU) has been given to two prize-winners who have demonstrated the potential for environmental relief in the German small-firm sector: the prize, worth altogether 500,000 euros, is shared by the associate, co-founder and board spokesman of memo AG (Greussenheim), Jürgen Schmidt (48), and the managing directors of the company WS Wärmeprozesstechnik (Renningen), Dr Joachim Alfred Wünning (81) and Dr Joachim Georg Wünning (48). Schmidt is receiving the award for the way his climate-neutral mail order company contributes to sustainable consumption in the office, school, home and leisure time with its ecological products. The Wünning father-and-son team is being presented with the prize for their efforts in making possible a more efficient use of energy and considerable reductions of emissions in energy-intensive key technologies, and for setting international standards in innovative environmental technology. Christian Wulff presented the prizes in Stuttgart on 30 October 2012.

At 450 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, 1,640 power generation and industrial facilities required to participate in emissions trading in Germany emitted approximately one percent less climate-damaging CO2 in 2011 than in 2010. Despite a very strong economy and nuclear phase-out, the reduction of CO2 emissions has continued since 2008. According to preliminary calculations, CO2 emissions were especially reduced in the energy sector compared to 2010. In this sector, emission reductions are between two percent in large combustion facilities and six percent in smaller combustion facilities.

Stephen R. Carpenter, Professor of Zoology and Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, will receive the 2011 Stockholm Water Prize. This announcement was made on 22 March 2011 in connection with the UN World Water Day. Professor Carpenter's groundbreaking research has shown how lake ecosystems are affected by the surrounding landscape and by human activities. His findings have formed the basis for concrete solutions on how to manage lakes.

Greenhouse gas emissions are dropping further despite the decommissioning of eight nuclear power plants in 2011. When compared with emissions from 2010, emissions in 2011 fell by 2.9 percent, mainly due to weather conditions. This amounts to 27 million tonnes less carbon dioxide equivalent. The greatest reductions were recorded in combustion plants for the generation of space heating and as a result private household emissions fell. Over the past few years most sectors have recorded a weaker rate of reduction. However, by contrast, emissions were reduced by almost 27 percent in 1990.

In its resolution 61/193 of 20 December 2006, the General Assembly proclaimed 2011 as the International Year of Forests and invited Governments, the United Nations system, relevant non-governmental organisations, the private sector and other actors to make concerted efforts to raise awareness at all levels to strengthen the sustainable management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests for the benefit of current and future generations. In resolution 61/193, the Assembly requested the Secretariat of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs to serve as the focal point for implementation of activities for the observance of the Year, in collaboration with Member States, the Collaborative Partnership on Forests and international, regional and sub regional organisations and processes as well as relevant major groups.

Eighty years ago, Lake Fúquene was the largest lake in Colombia and an important habitat for indigenous species. Today, only 3,000 hectares of the once 10,000 hectares are left. The shallow water body has been dried up or filled in with land, to gain more farmland for agriculture and livestock breeding. At the same time, invasive plants are suffocating the lake. Since 2004, on the Worlds Wetlands Day (2nd February) GNF nominates the “Threatened Lake of the Year” to call attention to a threatened lake and help solving environmental problems. Laguna de Fúquene is located at 2,540 meters on the Bogotá plateau and is the last bigger fresh water body of the Cordillera Oriental, the Eastern range of the Andes Mountains. The lake belongs to a water landscape of the Ubaté Valley which connects various rivers, wetlands and small lakes and has a total surface of 1,974 square kilometers.

Animal of the Year 2011 is the lynx (Lynx lynx).

Avenue of the Year 2011 is a maple-ash avenue in Brandenburg (Kremmen).

Cactus of the year 2011 is the Epicactus.