Helping enforcement catch up with environmental laws

 When Pakistani customs officers last year refrigerant—a powerful ozone-depleting substance and greenhouse gas—it showed how strong enforcement of environmental laws can make a real difference to protecting the planet.

In the largest seizure of its kind for Pakistan, customs authorities confiscated 18,000 kilograms of the refrigerant at Karachi Port in October 2018. The bust came when a customs officer, Rahmatullah Vistro, received a tip about the smuggling plans.

Vistro is one of many customs officers around the world who have received UN Environment training to identify ozone-depleting substances smuggled by methods such as misdeclaration and mislabelling—as was the case with this shipment.

Countries are phasing out hydrochlorofluorocarbons like R-22 under the Montreal Protocol, the treaty that protects the ozone layer. According to the latest Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion, stratospheric ozone has been recovering at a rate of 1 to 3 per cent per decade since 2000, thanks to actions taken under the Montreal Protocol.

R-22’s destructive impacts on the ozone layer are compounded by its huge global warming potential—over 1,800 times that of carbon dioxide. The greenhouse gas emissions from this shipment would have been equivalent to burning over 132,000,000 kilograms of coal.

Even so, demand for controlled substances is still high in some places where alternatives are expensive or don’t work as well at extremely high temperatures. The illegal trade in ozone depleting substances is worth almost US$70 million per year, according to the latest estimates.
Such successes show that enforcement of environmental laws is possible, even if it is not yet the norm. 
UN Environment’s first-ever global assessment of environmental rule of law, the result of exhaustive research throughout 2018, found weak enforcement to be a global trend that is exacerbating environmental threats, despite a 38-fold increase in environmental laws since 1972.

“This report solves the mystery of why problems such as pollution, declining biodiversity and climate change persist despite the proliferation of environmental laws in recent decades,” says David Boyd, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment

. “Unless the environmental rule of law is strengthened, even seemingly rigorous rules are destined to fail and the fundamental human right to a healthy environment will go unfulfilled.”
Strong institutions can enforce environmental laws and ensure more eff­ective management of natural resources. UN Environment works with countries to strengthen enforcement and compliance by promoting a rights-based approach to environmental management and by strengthening capacities to enforce legislation and combat violations.

“We have the machinery in the form of laws, regulations and agencies to govern our environment sustainably,” says Joyce Msuya, Acting Executive Director of UN Environment. “Political will is now critical to making sure our laws work for the planet.”

UN Environment works to build public support for the fight against environmental crime, thus encouraging governments and authorities to crack down through the laws already in place. For example, the Wild for Life campaign has mobilized millions of people in the fight against wildlife trafficking since its launch in May 2016. In 2018, the campaign’s advocacy helped bring greater protection for the snow leopard when the Government of Mongolia revoked mining licenses in Tost Nature Reserve.

UN Environment and partners also encourage further action through recognizing and awarding those who enforce laws.

For example, when a Thai court in 2018 sentenced wildlife kingpin Boonchai Bach, a 41-year-old Thai-Vietnamese national, to two years in prison for smuggling 11 kilograms of rhino horn, worth US$700,000, it was a major coup worthy of recognition. The team that delivered the evidence—the Thai Customs, the Royal Thai Police, and the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation for their work.

“I just dream about how to achieve a big goal like this, to hit the top of the syndicate,” says Klairong Poonpoon, a director in the Wildlife Conservation Bureau of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation. “We wanted to do something that can have an impact on the region.”
   SOURCE  UN ENVIRONMENT

Three Nigerian poachers arrested in Niger with massive haul

Source Guardian,

Three Nigerian poachers were arrested in Niger with a massive haul of slaughtered game from W National Park which straddles the borders of Niger, Burkina Faso and Benin, officials said Sunday.

Forestry agents discovered elephant tusks, giant snake skins and the carcasses or heads of various animals including buffalos and monkeys loaded into two vans in Niger’s southwestern Dosso region bordering the park, a statement said.

According to report by Guardian, they also seized a dozen hunting rifles, machetes, six bicycles and various chemical substances, it said.

Dosso state governor Moussa Ousmane praised the operation as “an unprecedented… exploit for our agents”.

The park, a UN World Heritage site covering some 10,000 square kilometres (nearly 4,000 square miles), contains a vast wealth of fauna and is an important migration sanctuary.

Are you ready for the World Water Day?

China to host 2019 World Environment’s Day

BY SAMUEL NABWIISO

China will host the Global World Environment day celebration for 2019 which is scheduled to take place on the on 5 June 2019. This year’s celebration will be commemorated under the theme air pollution.

The Announcement was made today by the Chinese’s Vice  Minister for Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu,  and Joyce Msuya, the  Acting Head of UN Environment. The announcement comes as environment ministers from across the globe are participating in the world’s highest-level environmental forum in Nairobi.

UN Environment boss Joyce Msuya

“China will be a great global host of 2019’s World Environment Day celebrations. The country has demonstrated tremendous leadership in tackling air pollution domestically it can now help spur the world to greater action. Air pollution is a global emergency affecting everyone China will now be leading the push and stimulating global action to save millions of lives.” She explained during the Fourth UNEnvironment Assembly taking place in Nairobi.

The Nairobi meeting commenced on the 11^th-March 15^th 2019 and it has been running under the theme “Innovative Solutions for Environmental Challenges and Sustainable Consumption and Production”.

It’s estimated that approximately 7 million people worldwide die prematurely each year from air pollution, with about 4 million of these deaths occurring in Asia-Pacific, Africa. World Environment Day 2019 will urge governments, industry, communities, and individuals to come together to explore renewable energy and green technologies, and improve air quality in cities and regions across the world.

China with its growing green energy sector has emerged as a climate leader. The country owns half the world’s electric vehicles and 99 percent of the world’s electric buses. By hosting World Environment Day 2019, the Chinese government will be able to showcase its innovation and progress toward a cleaner environment.

According to a new UN report on air pollution in Asia and the Pacific, implementing 25 technology policies could see up to a 20 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide and a 45 per cent reduction in methane emissions globally, leading to a third of a degree Celsius saving of global warming.

World Environment Day is a UN Environment-led global event, which takes place on June 5 every year and is celebrated by thousands of community’s worldwide. Since it began in 1972, it has grown to become the single largest celebration of our environment each year.

The Chinese Minister said his Government has committed to organizing World Environment Day celebrations across multiple cities, with Hangzhou, in the province of Zhejiang, to host the main event. The day comes also at a time when least developing countries in Africa are also experiencing the challenge of Air pollution.

Hanghou city where the main event will be celebrated 

Most Countries are still using poor technologies in Industrial production  which ends up polluting  the Air in the Atmosphere other pollution comes from Agricultural inputs, poor Transport systems  which produces a lot of greenhouse gases  such as  Carbon dioxide among other dangerous gases .

 

Global Warming could reduce the nutritional value of rice

SOURCE: UNENVIRONMENT

Hundreds of millions of people in Asia and Africa rely on rice not only as a staple but as their main source of nutrition. But new research suggests the rice they eat will become less nutritious due to rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

The study found that rice exposed to elevated levels of carbon dioxide contains lower amounts of several important nutrients. Currently, levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere average around 410 parts per million, up from 350 parts per million in the 1980s, largely due to the burning of fossil fuels.

 The researchers, a New York Times article explains, looked at how crops responded to levels of around 580 parts per million, which could prove tough to avoid this century without drastic changes.

Farmers attending to their Rice garden , the study  Indicates that global warming may affects the nutrients level   

The research involved exposing experimental rice fields in China and Japan to the same elevated levels of carbon dioxide that are expected to occur worldwide later this century.

What did the study find?

The scientists found that the chemical composition of a plant depends on the balance of the carbon dioxide it takes in from the air and the nutrients it absorbs from the soil. Upset this balance, and the plant can change in unexpected ways.

“A strong correlation between the impacts of elevated CO2 on vitamin content based on the molecular fraction of nitrogen within the vitamin was observed,” says the study.

“Potential health risks associated with anticipated CO2-induced deficits of protein, minerals, and vitamins in rice were correlated to the lowest overall gross domestic product per capita for the highest rice-consuming countries, suggesting potential consequences for a global population of approximately 600 million,” it concludes.

“We used multiyear, multilocation in situ FACE (free-air CO2 enrichment) experiments for 18 genetically diverse rice lines, including Japonica, Indica, and hybrids currently grown throughout Asia,” the authors write.

“While these CO2 enrichment experiments do indicate the threat climate change poses to nutrition security, rice breeding programmes across the world all breed and select under conditions of increasing CO2 and many are cognizant of the need to maintain and increase nutrient concentration in newly released rice varieties,” says Oliver Frith, Head of Business Development at the International Rice Research Institute.

Challenges ahead

Rice is the primary food source for 3.5 billion people, and production will need to increase significantly by 2050 to meet global demand. One challenge is the likely scarcity of water for rice production due to competing demands for water, environmental degradation and the effects of climate change.

Another conundrum for policymakers is that rice also accounts for 9-11 per cent of global emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. This could be significant, given that for every one billion people added to the global population, an additional 100 million tons of rice needs to be produced every year.

Atmospheric methane (CH4) is recognized as one of the most important greenhouse gases and may account for 20 per cent of anticipated global warming.

“We know that higher concentrations of atmospheric CO2 can lead to significant reductions in the amount of zinc, iron and protein in staple crops like rice,” says Montira Pongsiri, former 

Commissioner of the Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission on Planetary Health.

 “Particularly in Asia-Pacific, this has important implications for nutritional security – in fact, this is a nutritional insecurity issue for Asia-Pacific communities.”

UN Environment’s rice work

In October 2017 UN Environment and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) signed a partnership agreement to promote climate-smart and innovative technologies for rice production in developing countries.

Furthermore, the proposed Global Environment Facility (GEF) programme Inclusive Sustainable Rice Landscapes - securing multiple environmental benefits and improved farmer welfare is under development by a multi-stakeholder consortium led by UN Environment and the Food and Agriculture Organization, in partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

“The programme builds on the efforts of the Sustainable Rice Platform – hosted by UN Environment, and its 87 institutional members to work with governments and value chain actors at landscape level to drive adoption of proven climate-smart best practices and innovative technologies to reduce the environment footprint of the sector, as well as to benefit farmers’ welfare,” says UN Environment ecosystems expert Max Zieren.