Austrian fruit grower jailed over bee deaths

Yahoo – AFP, September 26, 2018

More than 50 colonies of bees perished when a 47-year-old man spread a powerful
 insecticide over his trees in the Lavanttal area of Carinthia province, at a time when
their blossoms were still attracting bees (AFP Photo/SYLVAIN THOMAS)

Vienna (AFP) - An Austria fruit grower was handed a rare prison sentence Wednesday for having illegally spread an insecticide which led to the deaths of dozens of neighbouring bee colonies.

The 47-year-old man had spread a powerful insecticide called chlorpyrifos over his trees in the Lavanttal area of Carinthia province, at a time when their blossoms were still attracting bees.

More than 50 colonies belonging to two neighbouring apiarists perished.

The court in the city of Klagenfurt found the fruit grower guilty of "deliberately damaging the environment", pointing to his experience and role in training others in his field as evidence that he knew the consequences of his actions.

He was sentenced to a year in prison, of which four months will be without probation. Ordeer to pay more than 20,000 euros ($23,500) in compensation, he said he will appeal.

The court said it hoped the sentence would serve as a deterrent and to remind others that the "use of pesticides needs to strike a balance between the environment and economics".

The widespread use of pesticides has been blamed for a steep rise in deaths among bees and other pollinating insects. In April the EU voted to outlaw the use of certain pesticides from the neonicotinoid family blamed for killing off bee populations.

Dutch firm to recycle babies’ nappies to produce sustainable energy

DutchNews, September 18, 2018 

Waste processing plant ARN is building a separate facility for recycling babies’ nappies in an initiative supported by 8 local councils in the Nijmegen region. 

Babies use around 5,000 nappies until they are potty trained, with half a million nappy wearing children each year, sustainability advisor Milieu Centraal has calculated. More elderly are people are using incontinence pads as well. 

The process involves placing the nappies in a reactor which reaches temperature of up to 250 degrees at high pressure. ‘The nappies, including their contents of urine and faecal matter, become liquid and separate into different materials,’ process developer and patent holder Willem Elsinga told broadcaster NOS. 

‘The high temperature gets rid of the bacteria, traces of medication and viruses so all the products we make from the diapers will be safe. Otherwise we couldn’t sell them,’ the broadcaster quotes him as saying. 

The plant will turn the diapers into four products: green gas, plastics, fertiliser and biomass, which Elsinga says, can be used as an alternative for coal to fire coal plants. 

An earlier initiative to recycle diapers in Arnhem ten years ago failed. According to Elsinga that experiment came too early. ‘Everything has to be right: enough diapers, affordable technology and a market that is ready for the products at the end of the line.’ 

But now local councils are trying to reduce the amount of left-over waste after traditional glass, paper and plastics recycling. ‘We are producing between 150 and 200 kilos of residual waste per head of the population and local councils are keen on separate waste collection. This sort of thing fits in perfectly,’ Elsinga told NOS. 

If all goes according to plan, the new plant will come into operation in December.

Fed-up with a growing mountain of stinking disposable nappies, a Dutch firm has started building the country's first recycling plant to turn poo into profit https://t.co/B7ettpjAZQ

— AFP news agency (@AFP) September 18, 2018

KLM-backed bio-kerosene plant may open in the Netherlands

DutchNews, September 18, 2018 

Aviation is a major source of carbon-dioxide emissions. Photo: DutchNews.nl 

The Netherlands is on the verge of getting its first factory to produce bio-kerosene, an alternative fuel to tradition kerosene and made out of biomass, the AD said on Tuesday. 

A location for the plant has not yet been confirmed but Groningen is on the shortlist, the paper said. 

The plans have been confirmed by Maarten van Dijk, director of SkyNRG, which will build the factory. ‘We are in the last phase of selecting the location and suppliers. I think that we will be able to reveal more at the end of this year or beginning of the next,’ he told the paper. 

Rotterdam and Amsterdam are being considered as alternative locations. 

Airline KLM is a important shareholder in SkyNRG and has also confirmed that plans for the factory are being made. The airline currently imports bio-kerosine from Los Angeles and it uses the fuel mainly on its fights to the American east coast. 

The AD says there are no other bio-kerosines plants in north-west Europe and that the investment will create a large number of jobs. 

Pollution 

Passenger air traffic is currently responsible for between 2% and 3% of global carbon-dioxide emissions, but in the Netherlands, the figure is 7%, the AD said. 

Bio-kerosine is made from leftovers from the timber and agricultural industries, as well as the food processing industry. Wageningen University said earlier this year that bio-kerosene is a potentially important option to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the aviation sector. 

However, the price is two to three times that of ordinary kerosene and ‘the direct and indirect effects… on the aviation sector and the Dutch economy as a whole depend to a large extent on how the additional costs of biokerosene will be funded,’ University researchers said.

Indigenous peoples, key to saving forests, catch a break

Yahoo – AFP, Marlowe HOOD, September 14, 2018

Up to now, native communities in the forests of Latin America, Africa and Asia have
seen their ancestral lands degraded and destroyed -- sometimes with the
blessing of local or national governments (AFP Photo/Apu Gomes)

San Francisco (AFP) - Proven masters at sustainably managing forests that protect against global warming, indigenous peoples got a place at the table, and some cash, at an international climate summit in San Francisco this week.

New "guiding principles" for collaboration endorsed by three dozen mostly tropical provinces and states across nine countries bolster indigenous rights to land, self-governance and finance earmarked for safeguarding forests.

"The partnership between governments and indigenous leaders marks a paradigm shift for tribal and indigenous engagement," Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, said at the Global Climate Action Summit.

Up to now, native communities in the forests of Latin America, Africa and Asia have seen their ancestral lands degraded and destroyed -- sometimes with the blessing of local or national governments -- by extraction industries (oil, gold) and big agriculture (soy, palm oil, cattle).

Even UN-led efforts to involve indigenous peoples in preventing deforestation have unfolded "in a context of rights abuses, displacement and dispossession, threats and harassment over territories, and the repression and assassination of environmental activists by state and private forces," the non-profit Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) reported last year.

At least 207 environmental campaigners, half from indigenous tribes in tropical forests, were murdered in 2017, according to watchdog group Global Witness.

Deforestation -- responsible for about a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions -- intensifies global warming in two ways.

Losing a wooded area the size of Greece each year not only reduces Earth's capacity to absorb carbon dioxide, it releases huge amounts of the planet-warming gas into the atmosphere.

The principles were negotiated within the decade-old Governors' Climate and Forests Task Force, made up of state and provincial leaders from eight tropical countries and the governors of California, Illinois and Catalonia.

Keeping carbon in the trees

"Today we recognize the essential role of local communities and indigenous peoples for the conservation of forest territories and the development of effective climate change strategies," said Jorge Aristoteles Sandoval Diaz, governor of Jalisco, Mexico.

New "guiding principles" for collaboration endorsed by three dozen mostly tropical 

provinces and states across nine countries bolster indigenous rights to land, 

self-governance and finance earmarked for safeguarding forests (AFP Photo/Apu Gomes)

Tribal leaders, who helped forge the new charter, said it would make a difference.

"We live in, depend upon, and manage our forests -- and have done so for centuries," said Francisca Arara, leader of the Arara indigenous people in Acre, Brazil.

"These principals provide us with a stronger platform for negotiating equal ground with governments."

Experts described the charter as "an important step forward," but said more was needed.

"Recognizing the rights is really key to keeping the carbon in the trees and the soil," said Andy White, Coordinator of the Washington-based Rights and Resources Initiative, a research group.

"But the real question is how much money they put behind implementing these commitments."

Tropical forests provide livelihoods and anchor the cultural identities of tens of millions of indigenous people.

Research has shown that stewardship by local communities significantly slows the pace of deforestation.

"Thirty-seven percent of what is needed to stay below two degrees Celsius" -- the cornerstone goal of the 196-nation Paris Agreement -- "can be provided by land," said Andrew Steer, WRI President and CEO of the World Resources Institute in Washington DC.

"But only three percent of the public funding for mitigation goes to land and forest issues. That needs to change."

In a parallel announcement, nine foundations pledged nearly half-a-billion dollars over the next five years to boost indigenous management of carbon-rich forests.

"Solving climate change requires that forests, and land in general, be managed well," Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation, told AFP. "Indigenous peoples are the key to unlocking that solution."

Bill Gates, Ban Ki-moon, World Bank chief to head up Dutch climate initiative

DutchNews, September 10, 2018

Demonstrators for climate change in Amsterdam 

Former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, businessman and philanthropist Bill Gates and World Bank chief executive Kristalina Georgieva will head an international commission on climate change to launch next month, the Dutch government said on Monday. 

The Global Commission on Adaptation is a new international climate commission initiated by the Netherlands aimed at convincing countries worldwide to arm themselves against the effects of climate change. 

The commission will be housed in the Global Climate Adaptation Centre which has a base in both Groningen and Rotterdam. Georgieva will oversee the Rotterdam-based commission.

‘Climate change is not something that will take place in some far away future,’ said infrastructure minister Cora van Nieuwhuizen who sunk the first pile in the construction of the new floating office of the GCA in Rotterdam’s Rijnhaven. 

‘We are right in the middle of it. Large parts of Europe have been combating drought. With the commission we want to drive home the necessity of climate adaptation worldwide. I am very honoured that Georgieva, Ban Ki-Moon and Gates were prepared to lead this important commission.’ 

Ban Ki-Moon called the Dutch initiative ‘a critical step forward to set in motion more vigorous attention to and action around climate adaptation’ and said he looked forward to ‘worldwide mission to accelerate adaptation’. 

Ban Ki-Moon, Gates and Georgieva are coming to the Netherlands on October 16 to launch the new commission. Van Nieuwenhuizen will be one of the 20 commission members. 

In September 2019 the commission is expected to present an action programme which will show countries which short-term measures they can take to protect vulnerable areas from the effects of a changing climate.

Can crunch talks bring the Paris climate treaty to life?

Yahoo – AFP, September 2, 2018

As the pace of global warming races ahead of efforts to tame it, diplomats from more 

than 190 nations begin crunch UN climate talks in Bangkok Tuesday to breathe life 

into the Paris Agreement. (AFP Photo/JOEL SAGET)

Paris (AFP) - As the pace of global warming races ahead of efforts to tame it, diplomats from more than 190 nations begin crunch UN climate talks in Bangkok Tuesday to breathe life into the Paris Agreement.

This year is the deadline to finalise the "rule book" for the 2015 treaty, which calls for capping the rise in global temperatures at "well below" two degrees Celsius, and 1.5 C if possible.

The pact also promises $100 billion annually from 2020 to poor nations already coping with floods, heatwaves, rising seas and superstorms made worse by climate change.

"The Paris Agreement was like a letter of intent," said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University.

Unless detailed rules of implementation covering dozens of contentious and unresolved issues are agreed upon, he and other experts said, the landmark treaty could run aground.

Lamenting "uneven progress" to date, co-chairs of UN talks last month urged rank-and-file negotiators to produce "clear and streamlined options" that ministers and heads of state can push across the finish line at the December UN climate summit in Poland.

"If Parties do not achieve this in Bangkok, a satisfactory outcome in Katowice will be in jeopardy," they wrote in the unusual appeal.

The most persistent sticking points in the UN talks revolve around money.

Developing countries favour outright grants from public sources, demand visibility on how donor nations intend to scale up this largesse, and object to under-investment in adapting to climate impacts.

Rich countries want more private capital in the mix, prefer projects with profit potential, and have been reluctant to make hard-and-fast long-term commitments.

This tension flared spectacularly in July when the UN's flagship climate finance initiative, the Green Climate Fund, suffered a boardroom meltdown after members could not agree on funding priorities.

Symptom and cause

The executive director quit, and the paralysed fund -- hampered by US President Donald Trump's refusal to honour a US $2 billion pledge -- is facing a cash crunch.

The Fund's woes are both symptom and cause, and will complicate the broader talks on finance, experts say.

An even more daunting -- and arguably urgent -- task facing diplomats in Bangkok and Katowice is ratcheting up voluntary national commitments to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

Taken together, current pledges would allow average global temperatures to climb more than 3 C (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The mercury has gone up 1 C so far.

Under the Paris accord, countries are not required to revisit these commitments until 2023.

But waiting that long could doom the planet to runaway global warming, scientists warn in a UN special report obtained by AFP, to be officially unveiled in October.

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1.5 C report will show the need for increased ambition if we want to have a functional human civilisation in the future," said Wael Hmaidan, executive director of Climate Action Network, which groups hundreds of climate NGOs.

Debilitating heatwaves and deadly fires across the northern hemisphere this summer may be a mild foretaste of what a climate addled future would look like.

"We need to see announcements of increased ambition from some of the big countries that put out 2030 commitments -- China, India, Brazil, the European Union, Japan," said Alden Meyer, policy and strategy director for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington.

Bottleneck is governments

A handful of nations, including the United States, submitted plans running out to 2025.

Meanwhile, dozens of developing countries in the Climate Vulnerable Forum, an informal bloc, are announcing ambitious timetables for energy sectors run entirely with renewables.

"They are saying, 'if we -- the poorest, most climate impacted countries in the world -- are able to be in line with the 1.5 C goal, there is no excuse for bigger, richer countries not to do the same'," said Hmaidan.

Sub-national governments, regions, cities and businesses gathering in San Francisco in mid-September at the Global Climate Action Summit are also poised to unveil initiatives and commitments to speed the transition to a low- or no-carbon global economy.

But the full-throttle response needed tackle global warming has yet to materialise, as each sector looks to the other to take the lead.

"Businesses are looking to countries to build on the commitments they made in Paris," said Jennifer Austin, policy director for We Mean Business.

"Strong, clear policies are what give businesses clarity and confidence."

At the same time, even nations instrumental in forging the Paris pact have failed to redouble their efforts, said Hmaidan.

"The bottleneck for a real transformation is political will at the national level -- heads of state," he said.

France's environment minister Nicolas Hulot quit his post suddenly last week, citing among other reasons lack of progress on climate change.

Pope urges clean up of plastic waste from oceans

Yahoo – AFP, 1 September 2018

Pope Francis said access to water was a basic right

Pope Francis on Saturday issued a call to clear up oceans threatened by plastic waste and underscored the need to provide drinking water to all as a basic right.

"We cannot allow our seas and oceans to be littered by endless fields of floating plastic," the pontiff said in a message on the fourth World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation.

"Sadly, all too many efforts fail due to the lack of effective regulation and means of control, particularly with regard to the protection of marine areas beyond national confines."

The pope also said that access "to safe drinkable water is a basic and universal human right" and deplored that for many it was "difficult if not impossible.

"Our world owes a great social debt towards the poor who lack access to drinking water, because they are denied the right to a life consistent with their inalienable dignity," he said.