The Environment Chronicle

From the morning of 7 May to the afternoon of 11 May 2016, Portugal's electricity consumption was fully covered by renewable sources. For 107 hours, Portugal powered all of its electricity from biofuels, hydropower plants, wind turbines, solar panels, and geothermal heat.

On 5 May 2016, Dilma Rouseff, President of Brazil inaugurated the hydroelectric power station of Belo Monte in Para state.

On 3 May 2016 Brazilian federal prosecutors filed a civil lawsuit demanding that mining companies responsible for a catastrophic dam failure in November 2015 shell out up to 155 billion reais ($43.55 billion) for cleanup and remediation.

The global temperature for May 2016 was 0.93 °C warmer than the May base period. Every month since October 2015 has broken the record for that month.

The European Commission is referring Germany to the Court of Justice of the EU for failing to take stronger measures to combat water pollution caused by nitrates. Nitrates are essential for plants to grow and they are widely used as fertilisers. However, excess levels cause severe water pollution, with consequences for people's health, the economy and the environment. The decision follows a reasoned opinion sent to the German authorities in July 2014. The latest figures submitted by Germany in 2012 and several recent reports from the German authorities show worsening nitrate pollution in groundwater and surface waters, including the Baltic Sea. Despite these trends, Germany has not taken sufficient additional measures to effectively address nitrates pollution and revise its relevant legislation to comply with the EU rules on nitrates (Council Directive 91/676/EEC). Since the Commission considers that the water pollution by nitrates is also not sufficiently addressed in the framework of the ongoing revision of the national action programme, it has decided to refer Germany to the Court of Justice of the EU.

Energy-intensive industries have received too many pollution permits for the period 2013-2020 under the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), the European Court of Justice ruled on 28 April 2016.

On 27 April 2016, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the European Commission adopted a policy proposal that will guide the actions of the European Union in the Arctic region. The European Union will step up its existing action and engagement in the region with 39 actions focussing on climate change, environmental protection, sustainable development and international cooperation. The particular importance of research, science and innovation is reflected across these priority areas. The Arctic covers the Central Arctic Ocean, its regional seas such as the Barents, Kara and Chukchi seas, as well as the territories of Canada, the Kingdom of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden and the United States. Three EU Member States are therefore also Arctic States, while Iceland and Norway are members of the European Economic area.

The second Sentinel-1 satellite – Sentinel-1B – was launched on 25 April 2016 to provide more ‘radar vision’ for Europe’s environmental Copernicus programme. Sentinel-1B lifted off on a Soyuz rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at 21:02 GMT (23:02 CEST), separating from the rocket’s Fregat upper stage 23 min 35 sec later. Sentinel-1B joins its identical twin, Sentinel-1A, in orbit to deliver information for numerous services, from monitoring ice in polar seas to tracking land subsidence, and for responding to disasters such as floods.

In an extraordinary show of support for the Paris climate agreement 175 countries signed the Paris Agreement at a ceremony at UN Headquarters on 22 April 2016 that far exceeded the historical record for first-day signatures to an international agreement.

Ferries and ships will be banned from dumping toilet waste in the Baltic Sea the International Maritime Organization said on 22 April 2016 in London. The ban will come into force in June 2019 for new passenger ships and two years later for older vessels, the IMO said in a statement.

On 20 April 2016, German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks submitted an official request to the Belgian government that two nuclear reactors – referred to as Tihange 2 and Doel 3 – be taken offline until further safety checks can be completed.

The Indian monsoon’s yearly onset and withdrawal can now be forecasted significantly earlier than previously possible. A team of scientists developed a novel prediction method based on a network analysis of regional weather data, and will propose this approach to the Indian Meteorological Department. The heavy summer rains are of vital importance for millions of farmers feeding the subcontinent’s population. Future climate change will likely affect monsoon stability and hence makes accurate forecasting even more relevant. “We can predict the beginning of the Indian monsoon two weeks earlier, and the end of it even six weeks earlier than before – which is quite a breakthrough, given that for the farmers every day counts,” says Veronika Stolbova from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the University of Zurich, the lead-author of the study to be published in the Geophysical Research Letters.

On 19 April 2016, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed Supervisor Scott Wiener’s legislation to require solar panels be installed on new residential and commercial buildings constructed in San Francisco. From January 2017 all new buildings in the city with 10 floors or fewer must have either solar PV or solar thermal panels installed.

More than seven trillion US dollars economic damage and eight million deaths via natural disasters since the start of the 20th century: These figures have been calculated and collected by the risk engineer Dr. James Daniell from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). His database CATDAT looks at examining socioeconomic indicators as well as collecting and evaluating socioeconomic loss data through time, and has built a massive base for his post-disaster risk model which helps governments and aid organisations with catastrophe management and assessing rapidly the scale of a disaster. On 18 April 2016 James presented his results at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna. As part of CATDAT, James Daniell has collected and evaluated over 35,000 natural disaster events since 1900 globally. Around a third of economic losses between 1900 and 2015 have been caused via floods. Earthquakes have caused around 26 percent of losses, Storms around 19 percent, Volcanic eruptions around 1 percent. „Over the last 100+ years the economic losses via natural disasters, in absolute terms, have increased“, said Dr. Daniell, who conducts research at KIT as a John Monash Scholar is at the Geophysical Institute as well as the Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology CEDIM. Over the whole time period, floods have caused the highest amount of economic losses, however, in recent times, since 1960, the highest percentage has switched to storm (and storm surge) with around 30% of losses. Over 8 million deaths are shown in the CATDAT database since 1900 for earthquake, flood, storm, volcano and bushfires (withough counting deaths due to long term effects or drought/famine). The amount of deaths due to earthquake between 1900 and 2015 from the database at around 2.32 million (with a range of 2.18-2.63 million). Around 59 percent of them died as a result of the collapse of masonry buildings, and 28% of them due to secondary effects such as tsunami or landslides. Volcanic eruptions in the same time period have killed only 98,000 people (range: 83,000-107,000). However, volcanic eruptions before 1900, like the Tambora 1815 event, have the possibility to cause massive death tolls and also cause lower temperatures around the world leading to food security issues. With each event over 100000 deaths, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (around 230,000) and 2008 Cyclone Nargis (around 140000) in Myanmar are the largest disasters since 2000 in terms of deaths. The event with the highest death toll to date is the Great Floods of 1931 in China with a mean estimate around 2.5 million deaths.

On 15 April 2016 EU member states supported proposals not to renew the EU approvals for the herbicides, amitrole, isoproturon and triasulfuron. The three active ingredients previously had their existing approvals extended to June 30th due to ongoing delays in the EU renewal programme.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) responded positively to the invitation from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to provide a special report in 2018 on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 ºC above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways.

Nearly half of all natural World Heritage sites are threatened by harmful industrial activities, according to a WWF report, published on 6 April 2016. These sites provide vital services to people and the environment, but are at risk worldwide from activities including oil and gas exploration, mining and illegal logging. The report, produced for WWF by Dalberg Global Development Advisors, shows how natural World Heritage sites contribute to economic and social development through the protection of the environment, but also details global failures to protect these areas of outstanding universal value. According to the study, 114 natural and mixed World Heritage sites out of 229 either have oil, gas or mining concessions overlapping them or are under threat from at least one other harmful industrial activity.

Arctic sea ice was at a record low maximum extent for the second straight year, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA. Air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean for the months of December, January and February were 2 to 6 degrees Celsius above average in nearly every region. Sea ice extent over the Arctic Ocean averaged 14.52 million square kilometers on 24 March 2016, beating last year’s record low of 14.54 million square kilometers on 25 February. The peak was later than average in the 37-year satellite record, setting up a shorter than average ice melt season for the coming spring and summer. This year’s maximum extent is 1.12 million square kilometers below the 1981 to 2010 average of 15.64 million square kilometers and 13,000 square kilometers below the previous lowest maximum that occurred last year.

On 24 March 2016, Longannet Power Station in Fife, Scotland switched off its four generating units for the last time, signalling the end of coal-fired electricity production in Scotland. Its owner, Scottish Power, said the high cost of connecting to the grid was to blame. Friends of the Earth Scotland said the move showed the positive steps taken in the fight against climate change.

One in five home appliances tested by consumer and green groups consumes more energy than claimed on packaging. The three year investigation into fridges, dishwashers, light bulbs and other energy-using products found undeclared energy use in a majority of product groups. The MarketWatch project, co-financed by the European Commission and run by a coalition of European civil society groups, instructed accredited labs to follow official procedures to verify compliance with EU product efficiency rules. The project used a range of intelligence to focus on products and sectors thought to be failing, so the results do not reflect the market as a whole. Sample sizes reflected those used by market surveillance authorities for half the products studied. Smaller samples were used where manufacturers accepted initial findings or products were being discontinued.

New Greenpeace International research released on 22 March 2016, on World Water Day, finds that coal power plants around the world consume enough freshwater to sustain 1 billion people. Greenpeace International commissioned the Dutch engineering consultancy Witteveen+Bos to develop a model to calculate the existing and growing fresh water withdrawal and consumption (hereafter referred to as water demand) from coal-fired power plants and coal mining, and to analyse the detailed impact of coal-fired power plant water demand on surface freshwater resources. Their calculations show that existing coal-fired power plants alone consume 19 billion m3 of freshwater per year globally. This means that annually the world’s 8,359 coal-fired power plant units consume enough water to meet the most basic needs of more than 1 billion people. If we add the water that the coal industry uses to mine hard coal and lignite, this number rises to 22.7 billion m3 of water per year, enough to meet the most basic water needs of 1.2 billion people.

On 20 March 2016 the Great Barrier Reef marine park authority raised the threat level of coral bleaching to a peak of three, triggering its highest level of response to “severe regional bleaching” in the northernmost quarter of the 344,400 sq km marine park.

The International Co-ordinating Council of the Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme of UNESCO added 20 sites to the World Network of Biosphere Reserves during its meeting in the capital of Peru on 18 and 19 March 2016. The newly adopted sites include 18 national site and one transboundary site shared between Spain and Portugal. The Council also approved 9 extensions to existing Biosphere Reserves. Following the withdrawal of two sites at the request of Austria, this brings the total number of biosphere reserves to 669 sites in 120 countries, including 16 transboundary sites. The Lima Declaration was adopted by consensus by some 1,000 participants attending the Congress.

On 17 March 2016, SeaWorld Entertainment, Inc. announced that the killer whales – or orcas – currently in the company's care will be the last generation of orcas at SeaWorld. The company will end all orca breeding as of today.

WWF researchers are celebrating the first live sighting of a Sumatran rhino in Kalimantan, the Indonesia part of Borneo, since it was thought to be extinct there. This is also the first physical contact with the species in the area for over 40 years and is a major milestone for rhino conservation in Indonesia. The female Sumatran rhino, which is estimated to be between four and five years old, was safely captured in a pit trap in Kutai Barat in East Kalimantan on 12 March 2016. The captured female rhino is being held in a temporary enclosure before being translocated by helicopter to a new home – a protected forest about 150 km from the capture site. The rhino's new home is envisioned as the second Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Indonesia.

In a report published on 11 March 2016 in the journal Science , a team of Japanese scientists described a species of bacteria that can break the molecular bonds of one of the world’s most-used plastics - polyethylene terephthalate, also known as PET or polyester. The Japanese research team sifted through hundreds of samples of PET pollution before finding a colony of organisms using the plastic as a food source.

On 9 March 2016 the Otsu District Court in Japan ordered Kansai Electric Power to halt operations at Takahama reactors numbers three and four. It was the first time a Japanese court shut down an operational nuclear power plant.

On 8 March 2016 the EU postponed a decision on whether to extend the approval of glyphosate for another 15 years.

On 4 March 2016, the Council adopted a statement concerning a recent ruling regarding endocrine disruptors. The General Court considered that the Commission failed to specify in due time scientific criteria for these substances. The statement underscores the importance of urgent action by the Commission to comply with the judgement and its legal obligations, in order to prevent any further delay in developing science-based criteria for endocrine disruptors.

On 2 March 2016 the Oregon Senate passed a bill that would eliminate coal from the state's energy supply by 2030 and double state mandates on renewable power by 2040.

A growing number of pollinator species worldwide are being driven toward extinction by diverse pressures, many of them human-made, threatening millions of livelihoods and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of food supplies, according to the first global assessment of pollinators. However, the assessment, a two-year study conducted and released on 26 February 2016 by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), also highlights a number of ways to effectively safeguard pollinator populations. The assessment, titled Thematic Assessment of Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production and the first ever issued by IPBES, is a groundbreaking effort to better understand and manage a critical element of the global ecosystem. It is also the first assessment of its kind that is based on the available knowledge from science and indigenous and local knowledge systems.

Kristjan Loftsson, the director of Iceland’s largest whaling company, told daily newspaper Morgunbladid on 25 February 2016 that Hvalur HF would not be sending out vessels to slaughter fin whales this season because of difficulties exporting the meat to the Japanese market.

On 23 October 2015, Southern California Gas Company discovered a leak at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility. This reservoir is the second-largest natural gas storage site in the western United States and about one mile north of homes in Porter Ranch, a neighborhood in the northwest region of the San Fernando Valley region of the city of Los Angeles, California. The gas leak began spewing 110,000 pounds of methane per hour. On 6 January 2016, Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency. On 18 February 2016, state officials announced that the leak was permanently plugged. At its peak this blowout effectively doubled the CH4 emission rate of the entire Los Angeles Basin, and in total released 97,100 metric tonnes of methane to the atmosphere. The total release from Aliso Canyon will substantially impact the State of California greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets for the year and is equivalent to the annual energy sector CH4 emissions from medium-sized EU nations, the Science reported on 25 February 2016.

On 16 February 2016, the third ESA-developed satellite was launched for Europe’s Copernicus environment programme. The Sentinel-3A satellite was carried into orbit on a Rockot launcher from Plesetsk, Russia, at 17:57 GMT (18:57 CET; 20:57 local time). The first signal from Sentinel-3A was received after 92 min by the Kiruna station in Sweden. The mission is the third of six families of dedicated missions that make up the core of Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring network. Copernicus relies on the Sentinels and contributing missions to provide data for monitoring the environment and supporting civil security activities. Sentinel-3 carries a series of cutting-edge sensors to do just that. Over oceans, it measures the temperature, colour and height of the sea surface as well as the thickness of sea ice. These measurements will be used, for example, to monitor changes in Earth’s climate and for more hands-on applications such as marine pollution and biological productivity. Over land, this innovative mission will monitor wildfires, map the way land is used, check vegetation health and measure the height of rivers and lakes.

New research shows that more than 5.5 million people die prematurely every year due to household and outdoor air pollution. More than half of deaths occur in two of the world’s fastest growing economies, China and India. The research, presented on 12 February 2016 at the 2016 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), found that despite efforts to limit future emissions, the number of premature deaths linked to air pollution will climb over the next two decades unless more aggressive targets are set. “Air pollution is the fourth highest risk factor for death globally and by far the leading environmental risk factor for disease,” said Michael Brauer, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health in Vancouver, Canada. “Reducing air pollution is an incredibly efficient way to improve the health of a population.“ For the AAAS meeting, researchers from Canada, the United States, China and India assembled estimates of air pollution levels in China and India and calculated the impact on health. Their analysis shows that the two countries account for 55 per cent of the deaths caused by air pollution worldwide. About 1.6 million people died of air pollution in China and 1.4 million died in India in 2013. In China, burning coal is the biggest contributor to poor air quality. In India, a major contributor to poor air quality is the practice of burning wood, dung and similar sources of biomass for cooking and heating.

Fiji became the first country in the world to formally approve the UN climate deal agreed by 195 nations in Paris in December 2015. On 12 February 2016 the island nation’s parliament unanimously agreed to ratify the Paris agreement, according to local news reports. The Paris agreement will open for signature in April 2016 to all 197 parties of the UNFCCC. It will enter into force only if 55 countries that produce at least 55% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions ratify, accept, approve or accede to the agreement.

On 9 February 2016 the countries of the Danube river basin agreed in Vienna on joint steps to protect the Danube. At a conference of the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR), representatives of 14 states agreed on management and flood-prevention plans for the entire Danube river basin. The 2015 to 2021 management plan is the first update of the management plan presented for the first time in 2009 under the EU Water Framework Directive. The 2015 to 2021 management plan is the first update of the management plan presented for the first time in 2009 under the EU Water Framework Directive. It also contains a package of joint measures.

On 2 February 2016 by an overwhelming majority of 592 to 52, Members of the European Parliament voted to approve a report on the Mid-term review of the EU's Biodiversity Strategy, which calls for the protection of the Birds and Habitats Directives. The report was an ‘own-initiative report’ led by the Belgian MEP Mark Demesmaeker. The report stresses that full implementation and enforcement of these laws, collectively known as the Nature Directives, are needed to achieve the targets of the EU Biodiversity Strategy.

The February average temperature for the globe was 2.18°F above the 20th century average. This was not only the highest for the month of February in the 1880-2016 record (surpassing the previous record set in 2015 by 0.59°F ), but it surpassed the all-time monthly record set just two months ago in December 2015 by 0.16°F. February 2016 also marks the 10th consecutive month a monthly global temperature record has been broken.