The Environment Chronicle

On 18 May 2016, German federal cabinet agreed to set aside some 600 million euros to encourage people to buy electric cars - via an "environmental bonus." The costs of the scheme will be shared with the auto industry, which is also putting up 600 million euros. New car-buyers stand to get a 4,000-euro subsidy if they buy a purely electric car, and 3,000 euros if they opt for a hybrid car, which combines a battery and a small combustion engine. Not only that, electric cars will be exempt from motor vehicle taxes for 10 years.

On 17 May 2016, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found in favor of four youth plaintiffs, all supported by Our Children's Trust, the Conservation Law Foundation, and Mass Energy Consumers Alliance, in the critical climate change case, Kain et al. v. Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. The Court found that the DEP was not complying with its legal obligation to reduce the State’s GHG emissions and ordered the agency to “promulgate regulations that address multiple sources or categories of sources of greenhouse gas emissions, impose a limit on emissions that may be released . . . and set limits that decline on an annual basis.”

On 13 May 2016, a waste ground containing tons of vehicle tires caught fire near Madrid. The local government has issued a catastrophe alarm due to the extremely dangerous and highly carcinogenic fumes produced by the blaze. The waste ground stretches over some 10 hectares and contains an estimated five million vehicle tires weighing 100,000 tons, news agency Efe reported.

On 12 May 2016, the Brazilian Government announced the creation of five new protected areas in the State of Amazonas. These lands together stand for 2.69 million hectares. All of these areas are located in the Madeira River basin , in the southern Amazon. They were established due from studies funded by the Amazon Protected Areas Program (ARPA) – a Brazilian government initiative supported technically and financially by WWF for more than a decade. The Conservation Director of WWF-Brazil, Mário Barroso, celebrated the creation of the new areas. “Creating protected areas is one of the most effective strategies to protect and promote the conservation of biodiversity. So, we welcome the action of the Brazilian Government and found this decision very interesting and important”, he said.

On 9 May 2016, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew released the first annual report on the State of the World’s Plants. The World's Plants report, which involved more than 80 scientists and took a year to produce, is a baseline assessment of current knowledge on the diversity of plants on earth, the global threats these plants currently face, as well as the policies in place and their effectiveness in dealing with threats. The first section focuses on the diversity of plants on earth, noting that there are now an estimated 391,000 vascular plants known to science of which 369,000 are flowering plants -- with around 2,000 new vascular plant species described annually. In terms of the uses of plants, the report collates data from multiple data sources to reveal that at least 31,000 plant species have a documented use for medicines, food, materials and so on. The majority (17,810 plants) of those now documented have a medicinal use. A large movement of invasive alien plant species is also occurring. Nearly 5000 plant species are now documented as invasive in global surveys. These plants are causing large declines in native plants, damaging natural ecosystems, transforming land-cover and often causing huge economic losses.

On 9 May 2016 environmental officials in El Salvador announced a three-month emergency over a molasses spill in a river in the Santa Ana department. The civil protection service issued the alert after 3.4 million liters of sludgy, brown, hot molasses was released into La Magdalena river near the town of Chalchuapa, 55 kilometers (35 miles) west of the capital San Salvador. The environment ministry said the spill occurred on 4 May 2016.

The Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM) takes effect on 8 May, 30 days after the number of countries adhering to this legal instrument reached the necessary threshold for its coming into force. One hundred and two countries have now adhered to the Amendment, which amount to two-thirds of the 152 States Parties to the CPPNM. The Amendment expands the original Convention, adopted in 1979, to also cover the protection of nuclear facilities and nuclear material in domestic use, storage and transport.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.