Goods and services to be priced according to their environmental footprints

Goods and services should be priced according to the actual impact on the environment. Agricultural, forestry and fisheries policies should integrate, within them, environmental protection measures.

The proposal comes from Jacqueline McGlade, executive director of the European Environment Agency (EEA) who, at a conference on biodiversity protection on 27 April, told the audience the current price of goods and services “does not reflect their impact on the ecosystems that sustain them.”

Truth is the EU is failing to achieve its ambitious target of halting biodiversity loss in Europe by 2010. “External pressures on biodiversity are not uniform or held in place by geographical designations, and we must not focus all our efforts on preserving islands of biodiversity while losing nature everywhere else.”

The EEA believes “better ecosystem accounting, which indicates the real value of the natural capital that we deplete through our economic activity,” is necessary. The agency is urging the EU to integrate biodiversity and ecosystems into key sectors like agriculture, forestry and fisheries.

At the conference, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso confirmed the results of last year’s progress report on the implementation of the EU’s Biodiversity Action Plan, which revealed that the bloc is not even close to achieving its target of halting biodiversity loss in the EU by 2010).

According to the report, 50% of all species and up to 80% of habitat types in need of protection in Europe have “unfavourable conservation” status, which indicates species decline. The same goes for over 40% of European bird species.

“We are running up debts against the future of the planet that we will never be able to repay,” said Barroso, referring to the destruction of nature as “the ultimate toxic asset”.

Barroso presented the EU executive’s new “seven-point plan for nature protection,” which highlights the need to better communicate why biodiversity and healthy ecosystems matter, and how they underpin economic, social and cultural well-being.

The Commission president also urged member states to implement existing EU legislation, citing the Birds and Habitats Directives as examples. The EU must also “agree on new policies to address deforestation and to reduce the EU’s ecological footprint,” he added.

BirdLife International welcomed “the strong calls made by key decision-makers” to put an end to the loss of animal and plant species, but lamented the apparent “huge gap between aspirations and real action”. It also deplored the fact that the conference’s message remained “vague”, and was not ambitious enough regarding the policy reform required.

The ‘European Habitats Forum’ – comprising 17 conservation NGOs – presented the conference with its recommendation for the EU’s ‘post-2010′ biodiversity policy. The forum is calling for a complete reform of all EU sectoral policies which have adverse effects on the environment, to support the resilience of ecosystems. It is also urging the bloc to adopt new legislation on soil conservation and reducing invasive alien species.

European Union to help Jordan build solar energy plant

The European Union (EU) will collaborate with Jordan’s National Energy Research Centre in exploring feasibility of a pilot project in central Jordan to construct the Kingdom’s first small-scale solar power plant.

According to Patrick Renauld, head of the European Commission (EC) Delegation in Amman, the EU will extend a 10-million-euro grant to help establish the plant, the first of its kind, in Fujeij, near Shobak, which they hope will become a center for renewable energy training at the local and regional levels.

The site of the proposed project, which would generate around five megawatts (MW) of energy, would be situated near a projected 80-90MW wind power plant theJordanian Ministry of Energy aims to build and operate by 2011 in order to maximize existing infrastructure, according to the EC.

Also under the grant, a wind power testing station will be established in addition to training facilities for undergraduates, fresh graduates, experts and engineers within Jordan and across the greater Middle East.

International experts will explore renewable energy potential in desert regions under the Global Conference on Renewables and Energy Efficiency for Desert Regions, which will showcase academic papers on subjects ranging from solar thermal applications to biofuels.

Under the National Energy Strategy, the Kingdom should be able to generate 600MW of wind and 600MW of solar energy, 10 per cent of the country’s energy consumption, by 2020.

Critical to the plan is the Energy Ministry’s renewable energy draft law, which calls for the creation of a renewable energy and energy efficiency fund to finance initiatives and projects to achieve the strategy.

According to a recent study, some 76 per cent of Jordanians favour a greater emphasis on installing wind and solar energy systems.

EU, Russia interdependent on energy

European Union and Russia are mutually interdependent in their energy relations. Conflicts should and shall be avoided in the full interests of both parties.

The document released at the end of today’s meeting – held in Moscow – of the EU-Russia Permanent Partnership Council on Energy underlines how interconnected the two are.

The EU-team was composed of Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, Minister of Trade and Industry of the Czech Presidency, Martin Riman and Maud Olofsson, Minister for Enterprise and Energy and Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden. On the Russian side, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin and the Russian Minister of Energy Sergey Shmatko. The talks focused, of course, on the latest developments in the EU-Russia Energy Dialogue, bilateral cooperation on energy in the framework of other international organizations and exchanged views on future energy relations between Russia and the EU.

“Reinforcing confidence between the EU and Russia, based on strong legal frameworks, is crucial. While negotiations on the new EU-Russia Partnership and Cooperation agreement are already underway we also need to achieve progress in the short term. There are a number of ongoing initiatives, such as the Early Warning Mechanism, that should be enhanced and made more operational in terms of follow up and preventing crisis in the future”, said Commissioner Piebalgs.

The PPC enabled participants to improve mutual understanding of the evolution of EU-Russia energy relations in the near future, in particular by exchanging views on the impact of the financial crisis on energy sectors in Russia and the EU. Ministers also discussed the latest policy developments in the field of energy in the EU and in Russia. The sides continued rebuilding confidence and trust, following the January gas crisis. The meeting has been a good opportunity to propose options to enhance the EU-Russia Energy Dialogue, building on the January experience and lessons learnt.

Moreover, the EU and Russia achieved progress on joint initiatives, such as the Enhanced Early Warning Mechanism and endorsed the continued validity of the Terms of reference for monitoring of gas flows from Russia to the EU through Ukraine.

The next high level meeting that will, among other issues, address EU-Russia relations in the energy field will be the EU-Russia Summit which will take place on 21-22 May in Khabarovsk.

Overall limit to carbon emissions identified, scientists call on lawmakers for action

Preventing Earth’s average temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels requires limiting carbon emissions to no more than 1 trillion metric tons. The two-degree limit comes from the most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a way to reduce the risks of severe impacts from a warming climate.

The suggestion comes from several teams of researchers who gathered April 27 for a teleconference. Outcomes of the conference have also been published in the April 30 issue of Nature.

Limiting total amount of anthropogenic carbon and therefore carbon dioxide emissions, rather than a particular atmospheric concentration of the greenhouse gas, is a different approach being proposed by scientists. The advantage of placing attention on the whole picture rather than concentrating on smaller, individual components “actually makes the problem simpler than it’s often portrayed … because it treats emissions as an exhaustible resource,” says David Frame, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Oxford and a coauthor of the Nature papers. “If you burn a ton of carbon today, then you can’t burn it tomorrow.”

That’s why researchers are suggesting policymakers introduce cumulative limit on carbon emissions.

Why put the stake at 1 trillion metric tons, and what does that figure actually mean in human terms? That much of CO2 emissions is considered to be enough to trigger a 2-degree increase in temperature. Respecting that limit sounds pretty much like a daunting btask ecause human activity has already exhausted more than half that allotment since the Industrial Revolution began. At current pace, human activity will likely emit the rest of that budget in just a few decades.

Historical datas gathered by scientists show that, during the past century, the global average temperature rose about 0.74 degrees C . That increase, IPCC scientists say with 90 percent certainty, is linked to the rising concentrations of planet-warming carbon dioxide and other human-emitted greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide levels now sit above 380 parts per million and are rising about 2 ppm each year; before the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric concentrations of the gas averaged about 280 ppm.

Pinning down the precise relationship between global average temperature and the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is difficult, says Myles Allen, a climatologist at the University of Oxford in England and coauthor on the new Nature papers. While some researchers have suggested dire effects on climate if CO2 levels rise above 550 ppm, others have more recently hinted that 350 ppm – a threshold already passed – should be the ultimate target, he noted at the teleconference. Regardless of the level that’s chosen, he adds, the concentration never stabilizes. Levels rise and fall about 7 ppm each year as growing seasons come and go.

However, analyses suggest that there’s “a simple and predictable relation between the total amount of carbon we inject into the atmosphere and the peak projected warming in response,” Allen noted at the teleconference.

“If you want to limit the risk of exceeding 2 degrees C global warming to one in four, or 25 percent, then total CO2 emissions over the first half of the 21st century have be kept below 1,000 billion tons,” said Malte Meinshausen, a climatologist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and another coauthor. That level of emissions sounds substantial but actually isn’t: Between 2000 and 2006, human activities emitted about 236 billion tons of carbon dioxide, the researchers estimate. “Only a fast switch away from fossil fuels will give us a reasonable chance to avoid considerable warming,” Meinshausen says.

Writing in a commentary in the same Nature issue, Gavin Schmidt of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and David Archer of the University of Chicago suggest that, “unless emissions begin to decline very soon, severe disruption to the climate system will entail expensive adaptation measures and may eventually require cleaning up the mess by actively removing CO2 from the atmosphere.”

The researchers also estimate that limiting cumulative carbon dioxide emissions between now and 2050 to no more than 1 trillion tons would actually leave three-fourths of the world’s known reserves of oil, gas and coal in the ground unburned – unless techniques for capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide underground rather than dumping it into the atmosphere become commonplace in the future.

Pakistan struggling to regain control of Taliban’s territory

The Pakistani military is fighting to retake the Buner district, just a few dozen miles from Islamabad, from Taliban militants. Both air and ground forces were deployed in Tuesday’s assault. Military commanders now claim to have retaken control of the strategic down of Daggar and to have killed 50 Taliban in the fighting. The development came one day after the military deployed fighter jets and helicopter gunships against the insurgents. It was not immediately clear what level of resistance the Taliban had offered.

Pakistan’s redeployment of troops away from the border with India its troubled Northwest comes after heavy U.S. criticism that it was not doing enough to fight the Taliban on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and domestic outrage over the unchecked spread of the Taliban.

The Taliban’s advances into the Pakistani heartland will likely prompt a shift in emphasis in the U.S. Af-Pak strategy toward the “Pak.”

“We are facing stiff resistance in the area of Amabala,” General Abbas said, referring to part of Buner. “Our constraint,” he said, “is that we are launching an operation in an area where militants have held local population hostage. We are trying to ensure there is minimum collateral damage and minimum displacement of local people.”

General Abbas said he expected the operation to continue for at least a week.

Expo 2015 “sulla strada giusta”

Il Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) ha dato il proprio parere positivo all’andamento dei lavori per la preparazione dell’Expo 2015 a Milano. “Siete sulla strada giusta”, hanno commento Carmen Sylvain, presidente del Comitato Esecutivo del BIE e Vicente Gonzales Loscertales, segretario generale.

Il giudizio nei confronti di quanto Milano e la Regione Lombardia stanno facendo è stato espresso a Parigi, durante l’incontro tra i dirigenti del BIE e Gianni Rossoni, in rappresentanza del presidente Roberto Formigoni, il sindaco di Milano Letizia Moratti e Lucio Stanca, amministratore delegato di Expo 2015.

A Parigi è stato presentato anche l’Accordo Quadro di Sviluppo Territoriale, lo strumento che consente di coordinare le opere con tutti gli Enti locali del territorio, come pure lo stato di avanzamento delle grandi opere di collegamento. Tra queste, il primo lotto della nuova metropolitana M5, l’estensione della metropolitana M1 (i lavori inizieranno nel giugno 2009), l’autostrada Brebemi (luglio 2009), il primo lotto della linea metropolitana M4 (dicembre 2009), il secondo lotto della M5 (dicembre 2009), la TEM (dicembre 2009), l’autostrada Pedemontana (marzo 2010), il collegamento tra Strada Statale 11 e la Tangenziale Ovest Milano (ottobre 2010).

L’incontro con il Comitato Esecutivo del BIE, ha sottolineato il sindaco Moratti, è inserito nelle normali attività di raccordo con il Bureau e aveva lo scopo di preparare i temi della prossima assemblea, fissata per il 2 giugno a Parigi.

L’amministratore delegato Lucio Stanca ha scandito i tempi della tabella di marcia che porterà, nel maggio 2010, ossia a cinque anni dall’apertura di Expo 2015, alla registrazione ufficiale da parte del BIE: la composizione della squadra di lavoro (formata da professionisti italiani), l’allestimento del sito (quindi l’acquisizione dei terreni e poi la gara per i progetti), il Master Plan e poi il “Piano industriale” delle iniziative presentate in candidatura, cui seguirà il Piano economico-finanziario e l’assegnazione dei budget.

A loaf of bread in space to test antifungal treatments

A small satellite about the size of a loaf of bread will help scientists better understand how effectively drugs work in space.

The satellite payload sits fully assembled, covered in shiny solar panels. Image Credit: NASA/ARC/Christopher Beasley

Known as PharmaSat, this satellite – about 10 pounds in weight – is scheduled for launch May 5 at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. Equipped with a controlled environment micro-laboratory packed with sensors and optical systems that can detect the growth, density and health of yeast cells and transmit that data to scientists for analysis on Earth, it will also monitor the levels of pressure, temperature and acceleration the yeast and the satellite experience while circling Earth at 17,000 miles per hour. Scientists will study how the yeast responds during and after an antifungal treatment is administered at three distinct dosage levels to learn more about drug action in space, the satellite’s primary goal.

Once the experiment is started – via a ground-to-space radio signal – PharmaSat will relay data in near real-time to mission managers, engineers and project scientists for further analysis. The nanosatellite could transmit data for as long as six months.

PharmaSat is classified as secondary payload nanosatellite, considered to be an alternative to the International Space Station or space shuttle conducted investigations. Elwood Agasid, PharmaSat project manager at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., said that “The PharmaSat spacecraft builds upon the GeneSat-1 legacy with enhanced monitoring and measurement capabilities, which will enable more extensive scientific investigation.”

“PharmaSat is an important experiment that will yield new information about the susceptibility of microbes to antibiotics in the space environment,” said David Niesel, PharmaSat’s co-investigator from the University of Texas Medical Branch Department of Pathology and Microbiology and Immunology in Galveston. “It also will prove that biological experiments can be conducted on sophisticated autonomous nanosatellites.”

As with NASA’s previous small satellite missions, such as the GeneSat-1, which launched in 2006 and continues to transmit a beacon to Earth, Santa Clara University invites amateur radio operators around the world to tune in to the satellite’s broadcast.

“Less developed EU regions must be supported”

Interview with Mr. Cyril Svoboda

Cyril Svoboda is Minister for Regional Development for the Czech Republic. As such, during the six months of Czech Presidency of the European Union he’s leading works on this issue. Last Monday, April 27, he led the Informal Meeting of the EU Ministers for Regional Development.

At the end of the meeting, a communication has been released, which “defines the fundamental political position. The actual procedures will be enshrined in new European legislation to be adopted in 2011. So the basic position is as follows: the cohesion policy has to be about all EU Member States; less developed regions have to be supported in the first place, and a lot of money is necessary for cohesion.”

Mr. Minister, ecologically sustainable development is a must, by now, for all local and national governments. Cities and urban areas must plan their future developments accordingly. Many areas of the EU are actually spanning Member States national borders, like the Frankfurt-Bruxelles-Amsterdam area, or the Bratislava-Wien one. What can be done to harmonize plans and policies across national boundaries?

“This principle may be implemented only with massive political support and that is why it will greatly depend on what the EU political representation will look like; if it will be predominantly composed of those who believe in laissez faire, then help us God. Voters will decide about the fate of the EU.”

Bruxelles will host, in May, the Regional Governance in a Global Contest Conference. Due to the political crisis in your country, which led to a change in political majority and governmental coalition, you will no longer be minister. Despite that, from your experience, what would you like to see as conference outcome?

“If it was up to me, I would highlight mainly the ability to decentralize and strengthen the emancipation of regions within the boundaries of the cohesion policy.”

Regional development goes hand-in-hand with another important issue: enlargement. There is great pressure, from inside and outside the EU, for Turkey to be  accepted as a Member State. ?

“Turkey is a difficult country. I think it would be better to wait for the current 27 Member States to harmonize and integrate themselves better before letting a country as difficult as that join the EU.”

“Thank you very much for your questions. I look forward to the next opportunity to communicate with you.”

Wielkopolskie welcomes Jessica

Wielkopolskie is the first region in Europe to hug Jessica, the new tool offered by the European Union as a means of financing for sustainable urban development.

The agreement between the polish region and the European Investment Bank to implement JESSICA (Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas), which allows cities to benefit from innovative investments combining EU grants and loans, will be officially signed Wednesday, April 29, at a ceremony held during the “Five Years with Europe”, in Poznań. The signing will take place with the participation of Mrs. Danuta Hübner, Commissioner for Regional Policy.

Speaking ahead of her visit, Commissioner Hübner said that “In these times of economic slowdown, cities are important engines for growth. I am therefore delighted that Wielkopolskie is the first region in Europe which has decided to implement the new tool we offer for urban renewal. Cohesion Policy is a powerful instrument of stability and provides a secure source of financing. Investing in urban revitalisation can boost demand and help to create new jobs.”

launched in 2006, JESSICA is a joint initiative of the Commission, the EIB and the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEDB), enabling  Member States and regions to invest some of their Structural Fund allocations in revolving funds – rather than one-off grant financing. This means that financial resources can be recycled in order to enhance and accelerate investment in urban areas. These investments, which may take the form of equity, loans and/or guarantees, are delivered to projects via Urban Development Funds and, if required, Holding Funds.

Fifteen Member States have so far demonstrated interest in the JESSICA initiative (Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom), and detailed evaluations, jointly funded by the EIB and the Commission, are being carried out to help them to assess how the initiative could be implemented.

World Bank report “ignores facts”, Israel claims

Israel has fulfilled all its obligations regarding the supply of water to the Palestinians, and has even extensively surpassed the obligatory quantity.

The country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) issued a note in response to a World Bank report regarding water in the Palestinian Authority. “The Israel – Palestinian water policy – it reads the note – is based on an interim agreement between the two parties, particularly on paragraph 40 of the agreement, which relates to the question of water and sewage. According to the agreement, 23.6 million cubic meters of water will be allocated to the Palestinians annually. In actual effect, they have access to twice as much water.”

Israel rejects accusations claiming that it “has fulfilled all its obligations under the water agreement regarding the supply of additional quantities of water to the Palestinians, and has even extensively surpassed the obligatory quantity.”

According to the note issued, it is the Palestinians who have significantly violated their commitments under the water agreement. More specifically,  MFA points at “important issues such as illegal drilling (they have drilled over 250 wells without the authorization of the joint water commission) and handling of sewage (The Palestinians are not constructing sewage treatment plants, despite their obligation to do so. Rather, they allow the sewage to flow unheeded into streams, polluting both the environment and groundwater).”

Israeli authorities regret that, despite the authors of the report met with MFA officials, and were briefed on all the factual details, the report issued contains charges and accusations against the country policy about water. They were also presented with the Israeli position paper on the subject, which contained verifiable facts that contradict all the objections presented in the bank’s report.

“Significantly – cliams the note -, the authors chose to ignore the MFA position, and declined to take the facts presented to them into consideration in the published report. They rely totally on unsubstantiated information supplied by the Palestinian Authority, which raises a serious question mark over the credibility of the report and the intentions of its authors.”

It is important to note that Israel and the Palestinian Authority have several channels of communication and cooperation regarding water, including bilateral ad-hoc committees and coordinating committees between the water authorities of both parties. These meet at least once a month and solve water-related problems in accordance with understandings and cooperation.