23-May-2019: China continues to use ozone depleting CFC-11 in violation of Montreal Protocol
China has been illegally emitting Trichlorofluoromethane or CFC-11 — the banned ozone-depleting chemical — according to the research published in the journal Nature.
CFC-11 was phased out under the 1987 Montreal Protocol. Despite being the signatory to the Montreal Protocol, and agreeing to phase out production of CFC-11 in 2010, China continued to emit the polluting gas.
A study released in May 2018 found that emissions of CFC-11 were on the rise since 2013. In fact, the emissions increased by 25 per cent since 2012.
Between 2008 and 2012, eastern China emitted an average of about 6,400 metric tonnes of CFC-11 per year. That number increased to about 13,400 metric tonnes per year from 2014 to 2017.
Since 2013, about 7,000 more metric tonnes of the banned CFC-11 has been emitted each year from eastern China. This increase was traced to China’s Shandong and Hebei provinces — which account for at least 40 to 60 per cent of the global increase last year.
It is vital that we find out which activities and industries are responsible for the new emissions. If the emissions are due to the manufacture and use of products such as foams, it’s possible that we’ve seen only a small part of the total amount of CFC-11 that was recently produced.
China has the world’s largest polyurethane foam market, accounting for about 40 per cent of the world’s consumption. According to UK-based non-profit, Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), the Chinese foam manufacturers have been using CFC-11 illegally to save on the higher cost of alternatives, such as hydrochloro-fluorocarbons like HCFC-141b, which is to be phased out in China by 2026.
The hole in the ozone is on the path to recovery according to the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO's) assessment; and reduction in the atmospheric concentration of CFC-11 has made the second-largest contribution to the decline in the total atmospheric concentration of ozone-depleting chlorine since the 1990s.
But this gas still contributes one-quarter of all chlorine reaching the stratosphere, and a timely recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer depends on a sustained decline in CFC-11 concentrations.
Continued success of the Montreal Protocol in protecting stratospheric ozone depends on continued compliance and China must adhere to it.
7-May-2019: Rising demand for sand calls for resource governance
With the global demand for sand and gravel standing at 40 to 50 billion tonnes per year, a new report by UN Environment reveals that aggregate extraction in rivers has led to pollution, flooding, lowering of water aquifers and worsening drought occurrence.
The report Sand and sustainability: Finding new solutions for environmental governance of global sand resources presents how shifting consumption patterns, growing populations, increasing urbanization and infrastructure development have increased demand for sand three-fold over the last two decades. Further to this, damming and extraction have reduced sediment delivery from rivers to many coastal areas, leading to reduced deposits in river deltas and accelerated beach erosion.
We are spending our sand ‘budget’ faster than we can produce it responsibly. By improving the governance of global sand resources, we can better manage this critical resource sustainably and truly demonstrate that infrastructure and nature can go hand in hand.
According to the report, sand and gravel resources are the second-largest resource extracted and traded by volume after water. With sand extraction regulated differently around the world, important regions for biodiversity and ecosystems are made more vulnerable by challenges in the local implementation of these regulations. A growing trend of unsustainable and illegal extraction in marine, coastal and freshwater ecosystems makes this a sustainability challenge with a display of the various extraction impacts on terrestrial, riverine and marine environments.
Sand extraction is fast becoming a transboundary issue due to sand extraction bans, international sourcing of sand for land reclamation projects and impacts of uncontrolled sand extraction beyond national borders. International trade in sand and gravel is growing due to high demand in regions without local sand and gravel resources and is forecast to rise 5.5 per cent a year with urbanization and infrastructure development trends.
Unsustainable sand extraction does not only impact the environment but can also have far-reaching social implications. Sand removal from beaches can jeopardize the development of the local tourism industry, while removing sand from rivers and mangrove forests leads to a decrease of crab populations—negatively affecting women whose livelihood depends on the collection of crabs.
The report further alerts that to meet demand in a world of 10 billion people without harming the environment, effective policy, planning, regulation and management will be needed. Currently, sand extraction and use is defined by its local geography and governance context and does not have the same rules, practices and ethics worldwide. The report aims to be a starting point from which a productive global conversation on sand extraction can begin.
To curb irresponsible and illegal extraction, the report suggests a customization of existing standards and best practices to national circumstances. It also points towards investing in sand production and consumption measurement, monitoring and planning, and further suggests establishing dialogue between key players and stakeholders in the sand value chain based on transparency and accountability.
This report was presented to policymakers at the United Nations Environment Assembly where a new Mineral Resource Governance Resolution was adopted, including call for actions on sustainable sand management.
6-Mar-2019: Annual UN report recognises the threats posed by nitrogen pollution
The annual Frontiers report 2019 published by the United Nations (UN), has included a chapter on nitrogen pollution in its latest edition, in a sign that pollution caused by the reactive forms of nitrogen is now being recognised as a grave environmental concern on a global level.
The report, released by the United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA) in Nairobi on March 4, 2019, highlights that “growing demand on the livestock, agriculture, transport, industry and energy sector has led to a sharp growth of the levels of reactive nitrogen — ammonia, nitrate, nitric oxide (NO), nitrous oxide (N2O) — in our ecosystems.”
Some of these forms of nitrogen like N2O can have far reaching impacts for humanity. N2O is 300 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (CO2). The Frontiers report claims that the total annual cost of nitrogen pollution to eco system and healthcare services in the world is around $340 billion.
Nitrogen is essential to all life on Earth as it forms an important component of life-building and propagating biochemical molecules like proteins. But overuse in agriculture in the form of fertilisers and other fields have made this important element more bane than boon.
This is why many scientists including N Raghuram, who is the current chairman of the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI), have called nitrogen the “new carbon”. They also want the international community to work on both issues simultaneously.
The Frontiers report also warns that “the scale of the problem remains largely unknown and unacknowledged outside scientific circles.”
In 2017, a large team of Indian scientists under the leadership of Raghuram, had come out with The Indian Nitrogen Assessment (INA). With the Assessment’s publication, India had become the third country/entity after the United States and the European Union to have assessed the environmental impact of nitrogen on their respective regions comprehensively.
The INA shows that agriculture is the main source of nitrogen pollution in India. Within agriculture, cereals pollute the most. Rice and wheat take up the maximum cropped area in India at 36.95 million hectares (ha) and 26.69 million ha respectively;
India consumes 17 Mt (million tonnes) of nitrogen fertiliser annually as per the data of the Fertiliser Association of India. Only 33 per cent of the nitrogen that is applied to rice and wheat through fertilisers is taken up by the plants in the form of nitrates (NO3). This is called Nitrogen Use Efficiency or NUE. The remaining 67 per cent remains in the soil and seeps into the surrounding environment, causing a cascade of environmental and health impacts. The European assessment puts an even higher number on such wasted agricultural nitrogen resources at 80 per cent.
But the scenario is changing and governments are also taking steps towards dealing with nitrogen pollution. Recently, the United Kingdom invested of £20 million (Rs 187.51 crore) for research on nitrogen pollution and its consequences for the South Asian region.
The premise of this project is that regional (nitrogen) assessment provides the much-needed depth and well-grounded policy underpinnings for global processes (both science and policy processes), which should facilitate global cooperation.
The Indian government is also leading a resolution on nitrogen pollution in the UNEA in Nairobi that starts from March 11. This is a historic event as India has never pushed for a resolution of such importance at any UN congregation before.
And this has happened because India can now leverage its own nitrogen assessment and its strong support to South Asian and other regional assessments as a part of its highly respected legacy of inclusive approach globally, to lead a process for faster global consensus and a more realistic programme of action.
But more needs to be done. For example, in India, nitrogen pollution in water is already monitored, but it would be nice to have tighter regulations on nutrient effluents, especially from livestock farms, municipalities and hotels near water bodies, keeping in mind that different ecosystems have different levels of sensitivities to nutrient pollution. For example, the requirements for coral reefs, mangroves, and other marine/freshwater ecosystems are very different, as are potable water bodies and recreational water bodies.
The past efforts to engage with all forms of reactive nitrogen have been fragmented, which can also be seen in the policies promulgated by various countries regarding nitrogen pollution. Bringing together nitrogen pollution and benefits under one framework will help in calculating the tradeoffs between the two and informing governments and the public about the total societal cost of using nitrogen.
For this, all the policy frameworks which deal with nitrogen should be studied and a single framework like the one that exists for carbon should be built. Report also call for an international convention and forum for the discussion on nitrogen.