The Environment Chronicle

The Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf fringing the Weddell Sea, Antarctica, may start to melt rapidly in this century and no longer act as a barrier for ice streams draining the Antarctic Ice Sheet. These predictions are made by climate researchers of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association in the 10 May 2012 edition of the science magazine “Nature“. They refute the widespread assumption that ice shelves in the Weddell Sea would not be affected by the direct influences of global warming due to the peripheral location of the Sea.

On 7 May 2012 the Club of Rome launched the report, "2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, by Jorgen Randers". Published in the run-up to the Rio Summit, this Report to the Club of Rome: 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years (published by US publishers Chelsea Green) looks at issues first raised in The Limits to Growth, 40 years ago. This earlier Report, also to the Club of Rome, of which Randers was a co-author, created shock waves by questioning the ideal of permanent growth.

On 5. Mai 2012, the last working reactor in Japan was switched off. This is the first time since 1970 that Japan has been nuclear power-free.

The longest deployment of the Zeppelin NT for climate research so far was officially launched on 4 May 2012, in a campaign coordinated by scientists from Jülich. For a total of twenty weeks, the airship will fly across Europe to measure the composition of the air above the Netherlands, Italy, the Adriatric and finally, in 2013, Finland. The measurement flights are part of the pan-European "PEGASOS" large-scale project, which involves twenty-six partners from a total of fourteen European countries and Israel investigating relationships between atmospheric chemistry and climate change. Federal Minister of Education and Research Annette Schavan praised the campaign at the official launch in Friedrichshafen.

The Australian government has listed the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) as a threatened species in parts of the country for the first time. It says the species faces numerous threats including from climate change, disease and habitat loss. Koala populations in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory have been placed on the national list of vulnerable species, following intervention by environment minister, Tony Burke, on 30 April 2012.

On 27 April 2012, a press conference took place in order to finish off an international youth-climate-week where approximately 200 prospective climate ambassadors from four continents have met. The students presented their plans for local sustainability projects within the frame of which they aim at putting into action ideas for concrete daily life measures against the climate change. The UNFCCC Executive Secretary Figueres, the European Commissioner for Climate Action Hedegaard as well as the Lower Saxon Minister for the Environment Dr. Birkener supported YOUTHinkgreen. They gave the green light for a new online network which provides students from all over the world with the possibility to exchange ideas and experience on an active sustainability commitment.

On 25 April 2012, the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies approved controversial changes to the country's Forest Code.

On 25 April 2012, a large amount of diesel fuel was spilled into the Angara river. The accident occurred because of an illegal tie-in into the local oil pipeline where it intersects a storm drain in Usolye-Sibirskoye. Current estimate say that about 300 metric tons of diesel fuel were spilled into the river.

On 25 April 2012, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety announced the creation of a new national working group for renewable energy, the Renewable Energy Platform. The working group shall coordinate the future growth of renewable energy sources, their market integration, their interplay with conventional energy sources and the necessary grid expansion resulting from growing renewable energy capacities. The platform shall comprise of representatives of the German Federation, the federal states, cities and municipalities, the renewable energy industry, the transmission and distribution system operators, environment and nature organisations, consumer protection agencies, trade associations, conventional power plant operators as well as scientists.

Results from ESA’s CryoSat mission were presented on 24 April 2012 at the Royal Society in London. The complete 2010–11 winter season data have been processed to produce a seasonal variation map of sea-ice thickness. This is the first map of its kind generated using data from a radar altimeter at such a high resolution compared to previous satellite measurements.

The European Commission has joined the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, a new international initiative to accelerate the reduction of emissions of short-lived climate pollutants such as methane, black carbon (soot) and hydrofluorocarbon gases (HFCs). The meeting convened in Stockholm, Sweden, from 23-24 April 2012, and welcomed Colombia, Japan, Nigeria, Norway, the European Commission and the World Bank as new partners.

Bonn has been chosen for the secretariat of a UN expert panel on biodiversity, the organisation announced on 19 April 2012. The decision was made at a plenary meeting in Panama City of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, or IPBES, according to an announcement on the platform's website.

A biodiversity resource assessment conducted in the Southern Leyte Province of the Philippines in November 2011, has resulted in the discovery of two new species of frog and a total of 229 recorded flora species, 31 of which are endemic. The assessment was led by Fauna & Flora International, the National Museum of the Philippines, the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau-DENR and DENR Region 8. The new species were unveiled at the Marble Hall of the Museum of the Filipino People on 17 April 2012.

The European Agency for Maritime Safety (EMSA) would get new powers to step up cooperation against piracy, prevent maritime pollution, improve training for seafarers and help establish an EU maritime space without barriers under an informal deal struck on 12 April 2012 by Parliament’s negotiating team, and the Council’s Danish Presidency.

New guidelines on best practice to limit, mitigate and compensate soil sealing made public by the European Commission on 12 April 2012, collect examples of policies, legislation, funding schemes, local planning tools, information campaigns and many other best practices implemented throughout the EU. The guidelines call for smarter spatial planning and using more permeable materials to preserve our soil.

The Russian government has created a new national park to protect critically endangered Amur (Siberian) tigers and and the world’s rarest big cat: the Far Eastern leopard. Called “Land of the Leopard” National Park, the new protected area in the Russian Far East was declared on 9 April 2012. It safeguards 262,000 hectares of leopard and tiger habitat. The park was created through the merger of three existing protected areas: Kedrovya Pad Reserve, Barsovy Federal Wildlife Refuge, and Borisovkoe Plateau Regional Wildlife Refuge. In addition, key previously unprotected lands have been added along the Chinese border and in the northeast portion of the leopard's range.

After 10 years of service, Envisat has stopped sending data to Earth. On 8 April 2012 the contact with the satellite was unexpectedly lost. Envisat has exceeded its planned life of five years by far. Since it was launched in 2002, this remarkable satellite has orbited Earth more than 50 000 times delivering thousands of images and a wealth of data to study and understand our changing planet, establishing itself as a landmark success in observing Earth from space.

Penly Nuclear power station located 6 miles northeast of Dieppe, Normandy, France was automatically shut down on April 5, 2012 at 11:20 UTC. Operating company EdF reported two small oil fires inside the reactor building from a leaking oil pipe. By late afternoon, a defect was identified on a joint of one of the four cooling pumps of the nuclear reactor 2, causing a leak of radioactive water collected in tanks designed for this purpose. This event has been classified as level 1 on the INES scale.

On 4 April 2012 the Federal Administrative Court in Germany backed the night-flight ban at Frankfurt airport.

On the 26th Chernobyl anniversary the Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) presented the first European Citizens Initiative for clean and secure energy in Europe. On 1 April 2012, BUND along with many international partners submitted the ECI "My vote against nuclear power".

On 23 March 2012, the European Climate Adaptation Platform (CLIMATE-ADAPT), an interactive web-based tool on adaptation to climate change, went online at the European Environment Agency (EEA) in Copenhagen. The European Climate Adaptation Platform is a publicly accessible, web-based platform, designed to support policy-makers at EU, national, regional and local levels in the development of climate change adaptation measures and policies.

31 March 2012 marked the 20th anniversary of the signing of the ASCOBANS Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic, North East Atlantic, Irish and North Seas. The Irish Sea and parts of the North East Atlantic were included only recently. The goal of cooperation under ASCOBANS is to ensure transboundary protection of cetaceans and dolphins against adverse effects of human activities.

Germany has come an important step closer to cutting solar feed-in tariffs. With 305 representatives in favour of the bill, 235 against and one abstention the German Bundestag (Parliament) on 29 March 2012 approved the latest EEG amendment that cuts solar feed-in tariffs (mainly) as of 1 April 2012 for new plants.

The IPCC released its Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) on 28 March 2012. The report assesses the evidence that climate change has led to changes in climate extremes and the extent to which policies to avoid prepare for, respond to and recover from the risks of disaster can reduce the impact of such events.

On 25 March 2012, Total reported that a gas leak occurred following an operation on well G4 on the wellhead platform at the Elgin gas field which is located in the UK North Sea approximately 240 km east of Aberdeen. On May 16, Total announced that the leak was stopped after a well intervention operation, which involved pumping heavy mud into the leaking well. From an estimated initial gas flow rate of around 2 kg/second, the leak had progressively decreased to an estimated 0.5 kg/s.

On 23 March 2012 the European Commission proposed new rules to ensure that European ships are only recycled in facilities that are safe for workers and environmentally sound. The new rules, which will take the form of a Regulation, propose a system of survey, certification and authorisation for large commercial seagoing vessels that fly the flag of an EU Member State, covering their whole life cycle from construction to operation and recycling. This system builds upon the Hong Kong Convention for the safe and environmentally sound recycling of ships, which was adopted in 2009. The proposal aims to implement the Convention quickly, without waiting for its ratification and entry into force, a process which will take several years. To speed up the formal entry into force of the Hong Kong Convention, the Commission also presented a draft decision requiring Member States to ratify the Convention.

On March 23, 2012, Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson Jackson overturned a decision by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that revoked a permit for the Spruce 1 mine project in Logan County, West Virginia. In her ruling, Jackson stated that the EPA did not have power under the Clean Water Act to rescind the permit.

The International Water Management Institute (IWMI), with headquarters in Colombo, Sri Lanka, has been named the 2012 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate for their pioneering research that has served to improve agriculture water management, enhance food security, protect environmental health and alleviate poverty in developing countries. This announcement was made on the UN World Water Day.

On 21 March 2012, the German Cabinet decided that Germany would express its interest in hosting the Green Climate Fund (GCF). The place at which the Fund's headquarters would be established is the Federal City of Bonn. The GCF provides funding to developing countries to help them make their economies climate-friendly and adapt to unavoidable consequences of climate change. The Fund was created at the 2010 climate conference in Cancún and was made operational at the Durban climate conference in December 2011. It will deliver a substantial portion of global climate finance, which is to reach an annual 100 billion US dollars by 2020.

Large quantities of globally produced plastics end up in the oceans where they represent a growing risk. Above all very small objects, so-called microplastic particles, are endangering the lives of the many sea creatures. An estimate of how greatly the oceans are polluted with microplastic particles has so far failed in the absence of globally comparable methods of investigation and data. Together with British and Chilean colleagues, scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association have now analysed all published studies on this topic and have proposed standardised guidelines for the recording and characterisation of microplastic particles in the sea.

On 17 March 2012, the two GRACE twin satellites will have been in orbit for exactly 10 years. The scientists named them Tom and Jerry, because they chase each other on exactly the same orbit around the earth. Since their launch from the Russian cosmodrome in Plesetsk, the two satellites have circled the Earth more than 55 000 times on a near polar orbit at about 450 to 500 km altitude and a distance of 220 km, and continuously collected data. For the first time, the melting of glaciers in Greenland could now be measured with high accuracy from space. Just in time for the tenth anniversary of the twin satellites GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) a sharp image has surface, which also renders the spatial distribution of the glacial melt more precisely. The Greenland ice shield had to cope with up to 240 gigatons of mass loss per year between 2002 and 2011. This corresponds to a sea level rise of about 0.7 mm per year. These statements were made possible by the high-precision measurements of the GRACE mission, whose data records result in a hitherto unequaled accurate picture of the earth's gravity.

On 16 March 2012, Greenpeace activists boarded icebreakers in Helsinki in a protest against Arctic oil drilling. They went on board the Fennica and Nordica boats at Hietalahti harbour.

Chevron filed to temporarily halt production operations in Brazil on 16 March 2012 after it detected oil in the same offshore field where it suffered a high-profile leak in November 2011.

On 16 March 2012 the Spanish Government authorized oil drilling off the Canary Islands.

On 15 March 2012, "One Life" an highly acclaimed feature-length BBC documentary started in Germany.

The Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA) was officially launched on 15 March 2012, in the Namibian town of Katima Mulilo. The KAZA TFCA was formally established on 18th August 2011 when the Heads of States of the Republics of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe signed the KAZA Treaty at the SADC Summit in Luanda, Angola. The signing of the Treaty established the world’s largest (444,000 Km²) and critical conservation landscape.

Scientists have identified a new species of leopard frog in and around New York City. The frog was found hiding in plain sight on the borough of Staten Island. In the research, available online in the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, scientists used mitochondrial and nuclear DNA data to compare the new frog to all other leopard frog species in the region and determined that it is an entirely new species.

In adopting a proposal on accounting of greenhouse gases emissions, on 12 March 2012, the European Commission has taken a first step towards incorporating removals and emissions from forests and agriculture into the EU's climate policy. The proposed Decision establishes accounting rules for greenhouse gas emissions and removals in the forest and agriculture sectors, the last major sectors without common EU-wide rules.

Frank Sherwood Rowland, Nobel Prize-winning chemist for showing that chlorofluorocarbons could destroy the Earth’s ozone layer, died on 10 March, 2012. He was 84.