Ministers charged for water pollution

Criminal charges over the pollution of the country's water supply were laid against three Cabinet ministers at the Brooklyn police station in Pretoria on Friday.

After laying the charges, TauSA chairman Louis Meintjes said the organisation had been forced to approach the police after Minister of Agriculture Tina Joemat-Pettersson, Mining Minister Susan Shabangu and Water Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica, had repeatedly failed to address the problem.

"We want them to act and get the water clean... a snowball that gets too big is a runaway snowball," he said.

Meintjes said mines which used seven percent of the country's water supply were responsible for 75 percent of water pollution.

He said Sonjica should have acted in line with the National Water Act and that Shabangu should have known that mining, water supply and food security were directly linked.

He said the act provided that it was criminal for ministers to knowingly or unintentionally allow for natural resources to be jeopardised.

"If it's not the ministers, who is responsible?" - Sapa

Developers downplay King Shaka leaks
By Gugu Mbonambi

Developers of the new multi-billion-rand King Shaka airport admit that there are "minor leaks" in the airport's fuel pipeline, but deny that these pose a severe health and safety hazard.

A previous problem had been repaired at a cost of R100 million by the developer,

The Sunday Times reported on Sunday that senior managers and members of the development team feared the possibility of an explosion within the 2 000-hectare airport grounds.

The paper alleged that Ilembe Consortium, the contractor responsible for the entire airport development, and Acsa had planned to downplay the matter should the media get wind of what was going on.

During the official opening of the airport on Saturday, Acsa managing director Monhla Hlahla mentioned in passing that one of the challenges faced was the issue of the pipeline.

While Ilembe Consortium project director Duncan Barry on Sunday admitted that there were defects in the pipeline, he said weekend media reports were factually incorrect.

"The problem was that quality data packs were either missing or certain weld records didn't correlate exactly with the weld positions. Every single weld is required to be X-rayed. Initially we understood the problem to be limited to a few welds, but it became progressively clear that we had a larger problem to resolve," he said. More

Two wind farms in the pipeline for the windy city
by Patrick Cull

The Windy City is going to be living up to its reputation.

Two wind farms that will generate a combined 70MW of power are planned for Port Elizabeth – one in the Coega industrial development zone (IDZ) and the other on the outskirts of the city.
They form part of a basket of renewable energy projects, worth nearly R2-billion, that the Central Energy Fund (CEF) is developing in partnership with the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality.

In addition to the wind farms, the projects include landfill to gas, biogas to energy that is being investigated by Singapore-based company Straits Chemicals, solid waste to energy, a number of sites on the Orange/Fish River Transfer Scheme for micro-hydro-electric projects and several solar projects that include the installation of 120000 solar water heaters across the city.

The metro’s director of projects, Peter Neilson, says the wind farm in Port Elizabeth will generate 23MW in the first phase with a possible extension to 100MW, adding that the environmental impact assessment was “progressing well” and once this was finalised and arrangements put in place to raise some R550-million, “the wind farm could be in production by September 2011”.
More

BP continues hunt to stop Gulf of Mexico oil spill

'Top hat', 'top kill' and 'junk shot' among ideas to stop oil spewing from Deepwater Horizon well 1,500 metres under sea
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent for the UK Guardian

Nearly three weeks after an oil rig explosion turned the Gulf of Mexico into an environmental disaster zone, BP today is still casting about for a clear plan to shut off the gusher of crude that has cost the company $350m (£235m).
BP crews were simultaneously exploring a number of different approaches to plugging the leak, known in industry slang as top hat, top kill, and junk shot.
"We are pursuing multiple options in parallel and we are learning all the time," BP's CEO, Tony Hayward, told reporters tonight. "There's a lot of real-time learning going on."
The search for an early fix comes as BP officials put the cost of its response to the spill to date at $350m. The final bill could run into the billions.
With the failure at the weekend of attempts to lower an enormous dome over one of two leaks, BP was turning towards deploying a more modest containment box known as a "top hat". More

Barcoding life and pricing nature proposed to tackle biodiversity crisis

Time is almost up for 2010's biodiversity targets, and by most accounts governments have failed to meet them. Now that climate change is emerging as one of biodiversity's greatest threats, scientists are proposing new ways to tackle the crisis.

In 2002, the world's governments agreed to significantly slow the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. Time is almost up, and by most accounts they've failed. Now that climate change is emerging as one of biodiversity's greatest threats, scientists are proposing new ways to tackle the crisis. In the latest, and last, issue of Nature Reports Climate Change, Hannah Hoag reports on some of the most promising efforts underway to protect biodiversity against rising temperature and other impacts of climate change.

In short, they are:

1. Barcoding life
Paul Hebert, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Guelph in Canada, devised a method for DNA barcoding in 2003, thus speeding up the process of taxonomy. The hope is that as the technology evolves, scientists will be able to use hand held barcoders to identify changes in a region's biodiversity.

2. Backing up biodiversity
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, opened in 2008, is the ultimate insurance policy against the loss of the world's crop genetic diversity. More than 522,000 seed samples from around the world are stored at −18 °C within the subterranean facility, like safety-deposit boxes in a bank.

3. Putting a price on nature
The Cauca Valley, a region in the southwest of Colombia sandwiched between two Andean mountain chains, is the site of a major water fund project involving of reforestation, water protection, soil improvements, education and training. By investing in the region's ecosystem services, the project aims to lessen climate change impacts and threats to biodiversity.

4. Shifting species
Efforts are already underway to relocate species that simply can't keep pace with climate change. These have been few so far, but they may become more common if biologist Camille Parmesan of the University of Texas at Austin has her way.

5. A moveable park
Traditional conservation approaches assume that species ranges will always stay in the same place: if you protect the geographic region, the species within it will be protected forever. But species don't stay put when temperatures move outside their comfort range.

6. An IPCC for biodiversity
Come June, biologists and policy-makers will gather in South Korea to discuss the future of a proposed scientific panel to monitor biodiversity and offer advice on its protection. Like the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) would improve the links between science and policy, and ensure policy decisions are based on the best available science. More
Third of plants and animals 'at risk of extinction'. More

One third of plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, a UN report is expected to conclude this week.

By Matthew Moore
The world's biodiversity is threatened by the economic growth of countries like China, India and Brazil, the study will say.

While Western countries are increasingly aware of the need to protect endangered species, the developing world's appetite for raw materials is destroying vulnerable ecosystems, the report's authors will warn.

Population growth, pollution and the spread of Western-style consumption are also blamed for hitting plant and animal populations.

Species at risk include the fishing cat, as its wetland habitats in India, Pakistan and south-east Asia are converted for agriculture. Maritime ecosystems are under particular threat, with the south Asian river dolphin among the species whose numbers have plummeted due to damming and overfishing.

The latest report – the third edition of the UN's Global Biodiversity Outlook – is based on data obtained from studies in more than 120 countries across the world.

It builds on recent work for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) which showed that 21 per cent of all known mammals, 30 per cent of amphibians and 35 per cent of invertebrates are threatened with extinction. More

Loss of wildlife threatens food supplies – UN

The 'collective failure' of the world to stop environmental degradation could cut off water supplies, push up food prices and even cause wars, the United Nations has warned
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent

The latest report on global biodiversity gives a more bleak picture than ever before of the state of the natural environment. In the last 35 years there has been a 30 per cent decline in the number of mammals, birds and other vertebrates on the planet, while the human population has doubled. It is impossible to count the loss of plants and insects because there are so many, but scientists fear millions of species could have been lost before they are even discovered.

Already major 'tipping points' are being crossed that will catapult the world into further irreversible loss, such as the decline of the Amazon rainforest, Arctic tundra and coral reefs.

Ban Ki Moon, the Secretary General of the UN, said the loss of wildlife is already being felt by poor people who rely on the plants and animals in their immediate area for food.

But he said the developed world will also suffer as fish stocks decline, fertile land becomes desert and food prices rise. Cure for diseases that are yet to be discovered could be lost forever. The fight for natural resources, as water sources dry up, could even cause major conflict.

"The consequences of this collective failure, if it is not corrected quickly, will be severe for all of us," said Mr Ban. "Biodiversity underpins the functioning of the ecosystems on which we depend for food and fresh water, health and recreation, and protection from natural disasters. Its loss also affects us culturally and spiritually. This may be more difficult to quantify but it is nonetheless essential to our well-being." More