August 12, 2009

An update from around the world

The environmental group Greenpeace dropped dozens of boulders into the Kattegatt, the strait between Sweden and Denmark, to fight “bottom trawling” with fishing nets that rake the seabed, Reuters reported.

France declared an “ecological disaster” in a nature reserve, The Observer said. A ruptured pipe spilled more than 4,000 cubic metres of crude oil into the Coussouls de Crau, a sanctuary for birds and dozens of rare species.

Indigenous tribes’ opposition to Amazon oil drilling is complicating efforts by president Evo Morales of Bolivia to rejuvenate the state-run energy company YPFB three years after he nationalised it, according to Reuters.

The Mozambican energy company Oilmoz has moved the site for a planned oil refinery to avoid putting the Maputo Elephant Reserve at risk, said Agence France-Presse.

The unique wildlife of the Galapagos Islands is under threat from disease-carrying mosquitoes arriving on planes and tourist boats, Reuters reported, quoting Ecuadorean and British researchers.

The coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef caused by climate change would cost Australia huge sums of money over the next century and devastate tourism in the country’s north, The Sydney Morning Herald said.

Groundwater in India, part of the world’s most intensively irrigated region, is being depleted at an alarming rate, Science reported a satellite study as indicating.

International climate talks resumed in Bonn as New Zealand became the latest nation to announce a 2020 CO2-reduction target, the Associated Press said. The country pledged to cut its greenhouse gases by 10% to 20% from 1990 levels.

The environmental organisation WWF urged Bhutan, India and Nepal to cooperate on conservation in the eastern Himalayas, a key biological hotspot, according to The Guardian.

The United States increased its successful car-scrappage scheme by $2 billion after an initial $1 billion in funding ran out, the BBC reported.

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rain forest in June was four times more devastating than in the previous month, Agence France-Presse reported, citing Brazilian satellite imagery.

The World Bank said it would buy carbon credits from a forest replanting project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Reuters.