Events Anniversary for 2024-12-25

On 31 December 2012, the Euro VI norm entered in force. Thanks to new European legislation nitrogen oxides and dust emitted from new types of trucks and buses will be lowered. It means a reduction of 80% in emissions of nitrogen oxides and 66% in particulate matters.

Stricter regulations have come into effect on a number of chemicals, in accordance with the European REACH Regulation. The chemicals concerned include water- and oil-repellent substances as well as four perfluorinated carboxylic acids (PFCA). The ECHA commission has identified 54 additional chemicals as Substances of Very High Concern.

On 19 December 2012, Federal Minister of Economics Rösler and Federal Environment Minister Altmaier presented the first monitoring report “Energy of the Future” for the reporting year 2011.

2012 the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association (AWI) celebrates the 30th anniversary of the commissioning of Polarstern, the ice-breaking research and supply ship of the German polar research.

On 16 December 2011, the Maltese-registered cargo ship TK Bremen ran aground off Erdeven beach in southern Brittany, on the north-west coat of France. The public authorities said in a statement a kilometre-long strip of fuel was headed towards the beach.

Octylphenol will become the first chemical to be taken up on the European ‘Candidate List of Substances of Very High Concern for Authorisation’ because of its endocrine disruptive effect.Scientific studies have proven that octylphenol acts as an endocrine disruptor in fish. Even at low concentrations it impairs development and reproduction. Octylphenol, or 4-tert-Octylphenol, is used to manufacture paints, adhesives, and tyres. Effective immediately, octylphenol is classified as a ”substance of very high concern for authorisation“ which should be replaced, as stipulated by the EU REACH Directive. The EU states have thereby voted unanimously to approve UBA’s proposal.

The cities of Stuttgart, Arnsberg and Wuppertal and the WOGENO housing cooperative in Munich are this year’s winners of the Blue Compass contest (Blauer Kompass 2011). The prize is awarded for the best ideas in adapting to climate change in Germany. It is being awarded for the first time in 2011 by the German Federal Ministry for Environment (BMU) and the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) and represents one measure to implement the Federal Government’s Adaptation to Climate Change action plan. Participants included 59 municipalities, businesses and associations. All contest entries and other examples of adaptation measures are stored in a Federal Environment Agency database which is available to the public at www.tatenbank.anpassung.net.

As the 2010 United Nations International Year of Biodiversity comes to a close, the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG) and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG Kew) announce the completion of The Plant List. This landmark international resource is a working list of all land plant species, fundamental to understanding and documenting plant diversity and effective conservation of plants. The completion of The Plant List accomplishes Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC), which called for a widely accessible working list of known plant species as a step towards a complete world flora. The Plant List can be accessed by visiting www.theplantlist.org.

The German environment associations NABU (Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union) has named Jürgen Großmann, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) RWE AG, as its “Dinosaur of the Year” in 2010. NABU has presented the award every year to personalities who distinguish themselves with “antiquated ideas about environmental protection” since 1993.

On 21 December 2010 the European Commission presented draft legislation to strengthen rules on the control of major accident hazards involving chemicals. The revision of the so-called Seveso II Directive will align the legislation to changes in EU chemicals law and will clarify and update other provisions. This includes introducing stricter inspection standards and improving the level and quality of information available to the public in the event of an accident. The new Directive should apply from 1 June 2015.

A new international body aimed at catalyzing a global response to the loss of biodiversity and world's economically-important forests, coral reefs and other ecosystems was born on 21 December 2010 by governments at the United Nations 65th General Assembly (UNGA). The adoption, by the UNGA plenary, was the last approval needed for setting up an Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Governments gave a green light to its establishment in June at a meeting in Busan, Republic of Korea, coordinated by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), but this required a resolution to be passed at the UNGA.

Beginning in the year 2011, Ukraine plans to open up the sealed zone around the Chernobyl reactor to visitors who wish to learn more about the tragedy that occurred nearly a quarter of a century ago, the Emergency Situations Ministry said on 20 December 2010. Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Yulia Yershova said experts are developing travel routes that will be both medically safe and informative for Ukrainians as well as foreign visitors. She did not give an exact date when the tours were expected to begin.

On 20 December 2010 the EU Environment Council gave the green light for new provisions on CO2 emissions in light commercial vehicles. By 2020, these vehicles must reduce their emissions by around 27 percent on average, to 147 grams CO2 per kilometre travelled (about 5.6 litres of diesel). Moreover, an interim target of 175 grams CO2 per kilometre (around 6.7 litres of diesel) has been set for 2017. This will be introduced gradually from 2014. As an incentive to comply with the targets, vehicle manufacturers will face severe fines if they exceed them. The new Regulation also contains incentives for vehicles with particularly low CO2 emissions, such as plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles. In addition, innovative technologies which bring further fuel savings - eco-innovations - are also being supported, for instance, LED lights or improved heat management for engines.

A representative survey polling 2008 people which the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) carried out in Spring 2010 revealed that nearly two-thirds of those surveyed (62 percent) believe that the state should do more to protect the environment. 61 percent are in favour of Germany assuming a pioneering role in international climate protection policy. 85 percent agreed with the statement: “We need a resolute switch to renewable energies“. About three-quarters expect achievement of the environmental policy goal to increase energy efficiency through greater involvement of the state, e.g. cutting ecologically harmful subsidisation policies.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced on 15 December 2010 that the Justice Department has filed a civil lawsuit against nine defendants in the matter of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. The lawsuit asks the court for civil penalties under the Clean Water Act and to declare eight of the defendants liable without limitation under the Oil Pollution Act for all removal costs and damages caused by the oil spill, including damages to natural resources.

According to most recent measurements, the volume of radioactively contaminated saline solution which is collected in front of emplacement chamber 8 on the 750-m level of the Asse mine has doubled from four to eight litres per day compared to the amount measured half a year ago. The radiological analyses carried out on a regular basis show that the activity concentration of caesium-137 has increased from 2.4 to about 4.3 kilobecquerel per litre in the same period of time. Solutions that need to be pumped out of the collecting point are preliminarily stored underground in containers. The solution probably enters the mine through the overburden and takes up radionuclides on its path through chamber 8. In chamber 8, 11,278 waste packages containing low-level radioactive waste are being stored. The solution has been observed since 1991.

On 11 December 2010 the Climate Change Conference in Cancún agreed on a comprehensive package of measures. The Cancún package includes mitigation action by developed and developing countries, the establishment of a Green Climate Fund and arrangements on adaptation to the consequences of climate change, forest conservation, technological cooperation and capacity building in developing countries. A procedure was agreed to review which additional measures will be needed to meet the two-degree target. Moreover, basic agreements were made regarding the transparency of countries’ climate protection activities. The developed countries have pledged to mobilise 100 billion US dollars annually from 2020 for climate protection measures in developing countries.

On 10 December 2010 the Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, published the report 'Environmental statistics and accounts in Europe'. This publication covers key environmental statistics available at Eurostat, the Directorate-General for the Environment of the European Commission and the European Environment Agency.

On 9 November 2010, Avaaz and Greenpeace delivered the first ever Citizens’ Initiative inspired by the Lisbon Treaty to Health Commissioner John Dalli. Avaaz and Greenpeace have collected over a million verifiable signatures from all 27 member states, based on the ECI criteria proposed by the Commission. The petition calls on the Commission to ban genetically modified (GM) crops until a new independent, ethical, scientific body is established to assess their impact.

On 8 December 2010 Federal President Christian Wulff signed the four laws of the energy and climate package and ordered the laws to be promulgated. The package includes the controversial 11th amendment of the Atomic Energy Act (Atomgesetz – AtG) with the extension of the operating times of the German nuclear power plants.

New rules to prevent illegal timber being sold on the European market have come into force across the EU. The legislation will strengthen efforts to halt illegal logging which causes serious environmental damage and biodiversity loss and undermines the efforts of those trying to manage forests responsibly. The Regulation, which was first proposed by the Commission in 2008, was adopted by the EU last month and will apply in all Member States from March 2013. The new Regulation will ban the sale on the EU market of illegal timber or of products derived from illegally harvested timber.

The year 2010 is almost certain to rank in the top 3 warmest years since the beginning of instrumental climate records in 1850, according to data sources compiled by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The global combined sea surface and land surface air temperature for 2010 (January–October) is currently estimated at 0.55°C ± 0.11°C1 (0.99°F ± 0.20°F) above the 1961–1990 annual average of 14.00°C/57.2°F. The final ranking of 2010 will not become clear until November and December data are analysed in early 2011. Over the ten years from 2001 to 2010, global temperatures have averaged 0.46°C above the 1961-1990 average, 0.03°C above the 2000-09 average and the highest value ever recorded for a 10-year period.

With the slogan “Biodiversity is Life. Biodiversity is our Life”, the United Nations International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) won the coveted 2010 Green Award for best Global Campaign in recognition of the strength of a campaign that inspired activities throughout the world that showcase the value and beauty of biodiversity. The Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has served as the United Nations’ focal point for the Year. The award ceremony took place at London’s Natural History Museum on 2 December 2010 with more than 400 guests. The ceremony was attended by Sir David Attenborough, Britain’s best loved naturalist with more than 50 years of broadcast experience including the BBC Life series. Sir David Attenborough received the lifetime achievement award.

On 2 December 2010 the Worst EU Lobbying Awards 2010 were revealed during an outdoor celebration that took place in front of financial winner's office ISDA in Brussels. In the climate category, German energy giant RWE’s subsidiary npower, nominated for claiming to be green while lobbying to keep its dirty coal- and oil-fired power plants open, won with 58% of the total vote. BusinessEurope took second place with 24% of the total votes and Arcelor-Mittal came in third with 18% of the total votes. The Worst EU Lobbying Awards were born in 2005 out of the willingness of four organisations – Corporate Europe Observatory, Friends of the Earth Europe, Lobby Control and Spinwatch – to publicise their campaigning on transparency and lobbying through a publicly appealing event.

Research on biodiversity conservation is the key to fight the problems which are addressed by the UN Development Goals for 2015. This is the main message conveyed by the “Frankfurt Declaration” which has recently been adopted at the conference “Biodiversity and the UN Millennium Development Goals”. About 200 leading experts on biodiversity from 30 countries agree that environmental targets and developmental targets have to be pursued in a coordinated approach. The “Frankfurt Declaration” is the concluding statement to a conference that had been organized by the German Leibniz Association, the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F) in cooperation with the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). It was one of the first events which focused on the interrelated subjects of biodiversity research and sustainable development.

Marine species of Decmber 2010 in the International Year of Biodiversity is the Ceratoserolis trilobitoides. Ceratoserolis trilobitoides numbers among the largest and most charismatic crustaceans in the Antarctic. The species grows to a length of eight to nine centimetres and is a typical example of the Serolidae. It has a relative that very few would recognise as such at all, though even laypersons are familiar with it: the common woodlouse.

About 150,000 litres of diesel poured into the Wei river in Shaanxi province after a construction accident on 30 Dezember 2009. Pollution has been reported up to 33km (21 miles) downstream. Locals have been warned not to use water from the river. The leak occurred on the fuel pipeline operated by the state-run China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) that connects Lanzhou in the north-west province of Gansu with Zhengzhou in central Henan province. The diesel first went into the Chishui river, a tributary of the Wei. Around 700 emergency workers are said to be labouring round the clock, using floating dams and solidifying agents to contain the spill. The Yellow River is a source of drinking water for millions of people.

The German environment associations NABU (Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union) has named Hans-Werner Sinn, a German economist and President of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research, as its “Dinosaur of the Year” in 2009. NABU has presented the award every year to personalities who distinguish themselves with “antiquated ideas about environmental protection” since 1993.

In consequence to recent incident, environmentalists demanded an immediate shutdown of France's oldest nuclear power plant. According to French Safety Authority (ASN), problems appeared in the cooling circuit of Fessenheim's second reactor. The reactor was planned to go on line again on 27 December 2009 after maintenance work but after problems in a cooling circuit the restarting was delayed.

Two decades after the Exxon Valdez disaster, a tugboat working to prevent another oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound ran aground on the same reef and left a three-mile sheen of fuel oil on the water. The 136-foot tug Pathfinder had just finished checking for dangerous ice and was heading back to port in Valdez when it hit Bligh Reef. The boat is part of the Ship Escort Response Vessel System that was created after the Exxon Valdez ran aground in 1989 and spilled nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil - the worst ever U.S. spill. The Coast Guard said Thursday that two of its tanks - containing an estimated 33,500 gallons of diesel fuel - were damaged and there was a fuel sheen on the water about 3 miles long and 30 yards wide.

The 2009 Copenhagen Summit was held in Copenhagen, Denmark, between 7 December and 18 December. The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen fell short of expectations. The conference threatened to collapse on several occasions. Towards the end, the Danish presidency called together a small group of 25 states and worked with them to draft a closing statement. The substance of the agreement and the way it came about attracted vehement objections in the Plenary. Several developing countries said they could not approve an agreement that had been reached by a non-representative group. As a result, the COP merely ‘took note’ of the Copenhagen Accord.The closing statement contains a very general reference to the target of keeping global warming to a maximum two degrees Celsius. Industrialised states and emerging economies have until 1 February 2010 to ‘inscribe’ their national reduction targets.

A large number of companies, local authorities and private initiatives throughout Germany have already invested in energy efficiency and reduced their final energy consumption. dena therefore introduced a new Good Practice in Energy Efficiency label in November 2009 to advertise these activities and encourage emulation. The Good Practice label is awarded for successful energy efficiency projects in all sorts of areas, from a reduction in the energy consumption of machines and processes through energy-efficient building refurbishments to measures aimed at changing consumer habits. Companies and public institutions whose efficiency projects have been selected can use the label in their external and internal communications and at events.

Using funds from the Environment Ministry's International Climate Initiative amounting to 2.3 million euros, over the next five years the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) will press ahead with mangrove conservation in Fiji, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Samoa and Tonga. The project will implement initial recommendations of "The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity" (TEEB) study which was conducted on behalf of the Federal Environment Ministry and the European Commission and which clearly highlights both the ecological and the economic importance of intact natural habitats. For example, the cultivation and conservation of almost 12,000 hectares of mangroves in Vietnam cost 1.1 million US dollars, but at the same time saved 7.3 million US dollars in maintenance costs for dykes. Mangroves also form the basis for nearshore fishery, as they are home to the young of many fish species. But they are under threat from over-use. The project aims to counter this threat with a combination of different steps, including the participation of local people in the management of mangroves, the restoration of degraded mangrove areas, awareness raising and educational measures.

Deforestation in tropical rain forests could have an even greater impact on climate change than has previously been thought. The combined biomass of a large number of small forest fragments left over after habitat fragmentation can be up to 40 per cent less than in a continuous natural forest of the same overall size. This is the conclusion reached by German and Brazilian researchers who used a simulation model on data from the Atlantic Forest, a coastal rain forest in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, around 88 per cent of which has already been cleared. The remaining forest fragments are smaller, so the ratio between area and edge is less favourable. The reason for the reduction in biomass is the higher mortality rate of trees at the edges of forest fragments, according to the results published by researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research and the University of São Paulo in Ecological Modelling. This reduces the number of big old trees, which contain a disproportionately high amount of biomass.

The 15th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC and the 5th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol took place from 7-18 Dezember 2009 in Copenhagen and was hosted by the Government of Denmark. The goal was to make binding decisions on central elements of a new climate agreement. This was not achieved. In Copenhagen a group of representatively selected heads of state and government only managed to draw up the Copenhagen Accord (CA) during the last two days of negotiations. All countries supporting the Copenhagen Accord committed to the goal of limiting the rise in global temperature to less than two degrees. The industrialised countries pledged up to 30 billion US-Dollars for climate action in developing countries from 2010-2012. Further plans include establishing a Technology Mechanism and a REDD+ Mechanism. These mechanisms are aimed at supporting developing countries in technology programmes and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

On 4 December 2009, Nepalese government held a cabinet meeting at Mount Everest to highlight the threat of climate change to the Himalayas. The Nepalese prime Minister and 22 ministers were examined by doctors before boarding helicopters to Kalapathar ((5,250 meters), a rocky plateau just above Everest base-camp. The Cabinet spent only 20 minutes next to the mountain to prevent any of the ministers, unused to the heights of the Himalayas, from getting altitude sickness. All were provided with oxygen masks.