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February 22, 2012

A global environmental update

Past winners of the Blue Planet Prize – the unofficial Nobel award for the environment – warned that the world faces an “absolutely unprecedented emergency” due to ecological and social problems driven by overpopulation, overconsumption and environmentally malign technologies, The Guardian reported. 

Society has “no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilisation”, the scientists and development thinkers said in a stark assessment published ahead of the Rio+20 “earth summit” in June. “Either we will change our ways … or they will be changed for us”. (See the assessment here.)

Nina Fedoroff, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said she was “scared to death” by the spreading anti-science movement, The Observer reported. “We are sliding back into a dark era,” the agricultural scientist told the group’s annual meeting.

Meanwhile, a leading American water scientist, Peter Gleick, sparked ethical controversy after admitting that he had tricked a conservative think tank, the Heartland Institute, into revealing its plans to discredit the teaching of science in US schools, The Guardian reported. 

The US announced a six-nation coalition to reduce short-lived pollutants that speed global warming and damage human health, Agence France-Presse said. Bangladesh, Canada, Mexico, Sweden and Ghana will join the US in the drive to curb black carbon (soot), methane and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).

Victims of environmental disasters or other abuses inflicted by corporations in Nigeria are being denied justice, Agence France-Presse cited the International Commission of Jurists as saying, because they are too poor or do not know how to seek legal recourse. The group’s senior legal adviser added that an aid scheme suffers from chronic underfunding.

Ships entering the US Great Lakes should be made to kill invasive species that enter their ballast tanks, say environmental groups challenging a proposed standard to combat the invaders, according to Reuters. Zebra mussels and other creatures brought into the lakes in ballast water have hurt the US$7 billion fishery of the world’s largest group of freshwater lakes.

Three new wildlife sanctuaries in Bangladesh will help protect endangered freshwater dolphins, Earth Times said. The protected areas in the vast Sundarbans mangrove forest have been specially created to help protect rare Irrawaddy and Ganges River dolphins.

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which holds the world’s largest collection of self-reported corporate environmental data, urged the chief executives of 415 of the biggest public companies to reduce their emissions, according to ClickGreen. CDP annually requests disclosure of emissions, climate-change strategies and water use.

A group of scientists and ethicists told a symposium of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that there is sufficient evidence of dolphins’ and whales’ intelligence, self-awareness and complex behaviour to enshrine their rights as “non-human persons” in national legislation and protect them under international law, The Guardian reported. (See the declaration here.)

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