Athens/Bonn, 17 August 2006 - At today’s meeting of the UN-affiliated International Maritime Organization (IMO), UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner, together with representatives of other UN Agencies and countries in the affected region, focused on how to contain the oil spill and the related environmental disaster caused by armed conflicts in Lebanon.
The CMS Family has offered to help countries in the region to cope with the environmental damage as it relates to migratory species. The Convention and two of its Agreements asked Mr. Steiner to convey their offers of technical assistance to the international high-level meeting that was working towards a coordinated UN response to the oil spill.
The actual impacts of the oil spill on migratory species have yet to confirmed. However, in collaboration with the Secretariat of the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA), and in consultation with the Agreement on the Conservation of Cetaceans in the Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea and contiguous Atlantic area (ACCOBAMS), the CMS Partners and members of the CMS Scientific Council, the CMS Secretariat has undertaken a preliminary assessment of the potential impact of the Lebanese oil spill.
The results of the assessment have been compiled and are available in summary form.
Impacts to cetacean species are expected to be mainly indirect. ACCOBAMS has offered to provide an expert to advise the Lebanese authorities on possible cetacean-related impacts from the spill.
For waterbirds the situation could deteriorate in the very near future when the autumn migration starts and over-wintering marine and coastal birds (cormorants and gulls) start arriving in the affected region and other migrants utilize the coast for foraging. AEWA has offered access to its network of experts and would be ready to undertake a study to help identify potential risks posed by the oil spill on populations of breeding, migrating and wintering waterbird species in the region, if funds were made available.
The preliminary CMS assessment identifies green and loggerhead turtles and their nesting beaches in Lebanon and Syria as potentially at risk. Consequently, CMS has offered the affected countries access to its network of experts on marine turtles and has offered to contribute its global expertise to future coordination efforts on the spill and to any post-conflict environmental assessment.
For more information, please see http://www.cms.int/news/PRESS/nwPR2006/August/nw081706_oilspill.htm
Linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans across the Latin American landmass has often been presented as one of the holy grails of development for the region. While China’s idea of a ‘Nicaraguan Canal’ has made headlines globally, another major infrastructure project is in the works further south: the Bi-Oceanic Railway. The idea has already spurred transboundary environmental cooperation, but the public is still in the dark.
Using a progressive environmental security concept can help to tackle a range of environmental issues related to armed conflict, such as deforestation, loss of biodiversity, tensions over natural resources, conflict pollution, and damage to ecosystems. The environment can actually play a role in peacebuilding. This article briefly outlines why such an inclusive and environmental protection approach is needed and how it could be implemented.
Climate action and free trade have been perceived as contrary agendas for a long time. Despite more and more governments seeing tremendous potential for win-win outcomes, aligning trade and climate has become harder. This is due to changes in our current geopolitical landscape, as Christian Hübner explains in light of the upcoming G20 summit.
Human activity has caused the temperature of the Earth and its atmosphere to rise by about 1°C above pre-industrial levels, triggering fundamental changes to the planet’s physical and social landscapes. On 8 October an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that temperatures were rising faster than expected, and that 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels could occur as early as 2030.