ECOLIFE MAGAZINE - Life, Nature, Living

environment

Urban front runners — cities and the fight against global warming

Barcelona is becoming a leader in solar energy use, Malmö is developing a carbon neutral residential area and London is setting ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets. Cities are joining in the fight against climate change.

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Better policy needs better information

Passengers on ferries sailing between Northern Denmark and Norway can view information on the sea water below relayed on TV screens. The data are collected by specialised equipment on the ships and are used by researchers to monitor the marine environment in the area.

The simple act of making environmental information, gathered for research purposes, available to the passengers is a simple but important step — one that must be replicated on a much grander scale if we are to make full use of the data and engage and empower the public environmentally.

Robust, far-sighted policy also requires better, more detailed information. The European Environment Agency wants to help drive technology, particularly the Internet, in new directions in terms of its interaction with the environment. Two new EU initiatives, in which the EEA is playing a leading role and which will be further developed throughout 2009, are at the heart of this drive. They are the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) and the Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS).

GMES will use satellites and sensors on the ground, floating in the water or flying through the air to monitor our natural environment. The information provided through the GMES initiative will help us understand better how, and in what way our planet may be changing, why this is happening, and how this might influence our daily lives.

SEIS is a collaborative initiative of the European Commission, EU Member States and the EEA. It will harness the wealth of data collected locally and at national level by connecting one system to another until a European wide network exists with which the public can interact via the Internet.

International shipments of waste and the environment:
Is your old TV better travelled than you are?

Waste without borders
Zhang Guofu, 35, makes EUR 700 a month, a huge wage in provincial China, sifting through waste that includes shopping bags from a British supermarket chain and English-language DVDs. The truth is that waste placed in a bin in London, can quite easily end up 5,000 miles away in a recycling factory in China's Pearl River delta.

Europe has a body of legislation in place regarding the shipment of hazardous and problematic waste. However, further evidence is required as to the effectiveness of the legislation in terms of easing pressure on the environment.

Electronic waste, which is considered hazardous, is an important case. In Africa and Asia it is often dismantled with little or no personal protection equipment or pollution control measures. Components are often burnt in the open to retrieve metals and fly ash particulates laden with heavy metals and other toxic materials are usually emitted, resulting in increased human exposure, as well as contamination of food, soil, and surface water.

There isn't a clear picture when it comes to waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) shipped within and out of the EU partly because ambiguous codes are used for the reporting of shipments of electronic waste. It is difficult to tell if a television is being exported as a second hand device, which is acceptable or as waste for disposal, which is not. In general, export of WEEE from the EU to non-OECD countries is prohibited. However, the export of a TV that still works is perfectly acceptable.

There have been well documented cases that break this ban. Indeed, it appears that a significant portion of the exported used television sets, computers, monitors and telephones to non-OECD countries are waste purchased with the intentions of retrieving the components and elements mentioned above.

If the EU cannot sufficiently enforce its own prohibition on exporting WEEE to non-OECD countries, this could seriously undermine the ratification of the ban at the global level under the Basel Convention.

Arctic Ocean

As temperatures rise and sea ice melts, expectations of large undiscovered oil and gas resources are already driving the focus of the oil industry and governments northwards towards the Arctic Ocean, according to the EEA report, ‘Impacts of Europe’s changing climate’, published in 2008.

As marine species move northwards with warmer sea and less ice, fishing fleets will follow. It is, however, difficult to tell whether the fisheries will become richer or not. Fish species react differently to changes in marine climate, and it is difficult to predict whether the timing of the annual plankton blooms will continue to match the growth of larvae and young fish.

Shipping and tourism are likely to increase, although drift ice, short sailing seasons and lack of infrastructure will impede a rapid development of transcontinental shipping. Traffic linked to extraction of Arctic resources on the fringes of the Arctic sea routes will most likely grow first. While these activities offer new economic opportunities, they also represent new pressures and risks for an ocean that has until now been protected from most economic activities by the ice.

Fish out of water - Marine management in a changing climate

A fisherman's tale: On the night of 6 October 1986 lobster fishermen from the small town of Gilleleje, north of Copenhagen, fishing the Kattegat Sea, found their nets crammed with Norway lobster. Many of the animals were dead or dying. About half were a strange colour.

Observations of dissolved oxygen in the water in combination with the dead lobsters told researchers at the National Environmental Research Institute in Denmark that an unusually large area on the bottom of the southern Kattegat was devoid of oxygen. The strange events were caused by 'anoxia' or lack of oxygen on the sea bed that night. Scientists believe the lobsters were suffocating!
Twenty-two years later, large parts of the Baltic are affected by anoxic areas or 'dead zones'.

Collapse of the Bornholm fisheries
Bornholm, an idyllic Danish island situated at the entrance of the Baltic Sea more or less between Sweden, Germany and Poland, is well known for its smoked herring. For centuries the abundance of fish was the cornerstone of the local economy. In the 1970s about half of the fisheries income came from cod. By the end of the 1980s cod fisheries had increased to 80 % of the total value. Many fishermen imagined a bright future and invested in new vessels. However, by 1990 the catch was on a steep decline. It has never recovered. This collapse put huge financial pressure on the local community. The scale and rapidity of the collapse of cod stocks in the Baltic has meant that a lot of energy has gone into understanding what caused the boom and subsequent collapse. The region has become an international case study with lessons for other regions. The Baltic story is not a simple one — indeed the complexity of the situation illustrates the challenge facing policy makers in the marine environment.

If left alone for two years, the cod population in the Baltic would recover.
Henrik Sparholt, ICES Advisory Programme Professional Officer

Climate Progress

"Debate over. Further delay fatal. Action not costly." This headline pretty much sums up Joe Romm's message. Romm is a one-man anti-disinformation clearinghouse. His Climate Progress blog (http://climateprogress.org), a project of the liberal Center for American Progress, counters bad science and inane rhetoric with original analysis delivered sharply, usually with either humor or incredulity or both. Romm occupies the intersection of climate science, economics and policy. Resist temptation to lump him in with knee-jerk enviros. On his blog and in his most recent book, Hell and High Water, you can find some of the most cogent, memorable, and deployable arguments for immediate and overwhelming action to confront global warming (with infrequent guest bloggers — present company included).

By ERIC ROSTON / Time

Solar Sketch @ Freakangels

Over on Freakangels, a free weekly ongoing comic written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Paul Duffield, our heroes are experimenting with post-apocalyptic solar power.

Published every Friday Freakangels set in a post-apocalyptic London, featuring a bunch of young telepathic weirdoes who, somehow or another, seem to have been responsible for destroying the world and feel kind of guilty about it. Have an 'ickle' read... http://www.freakangels.com