The 12 most-read 2011 articles in Environment - The Independent of the UK

2011 in Global development – in pictures

EU's new CSR report offers realistic initiatives to promote sustainability

Strategy report shows how businesses can benefit by becoming more responsible and also make Europe more competitive

In the midst of the Euro-zone crisis, it would have been easy to miss the recent publication of the new Communication on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) from the European Commission. Publication had been delayed several times as rival camps battled over the text.

The final product will disappoint those calling for far more regulation of business behaviour but it is an intellectually coherent, pragmatic and useful document.

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'Green deal' will fail, government's climate advisers warn

Scheme to make 14m UK homes more energy efficient will only reach 2-3m households, Committee on Climate Change says

The government's flagship programme to transform the energy efficiency of 14m homes in the next decade will fail and only reach only 2-3m households, according to an unprecedented attack from the government's own climate advisers.

The warning comes from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), which on Tuesday for the first time published an open letter criticising government policy. It follows soaring energy bills and the news that one in four homes are now in fuel poverty.

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EU set to charge international airlines for carbon emissions

The EU looks likely to impose a system of carbon trading on all passenger flights taking off or landing in member states

Europe's most senior court is expected to rule on Wednesday that airlines based outside the continent should have to pay for their carbon emissions on flights to or from EU member states, in a crucial test of climate change regulation.

At stake are millions of tonnes in carbon dioxide emissions from aeroplanes, as airlines at present have little or no incentive to cut their greenhouse gases.

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Sustainability Plan for 2012: What's Yours?

The web is full of information and advice on personal sustainability, sometimes to the point that it can put one into information overload. However if you are looking for a ‘how-to’ path to personal sustainability, you are more likely to discover a variety of definitions, perspectives, and approaches to applying general sustainability concepts. While general concepts can be used to describe the broad topic of ‘sustainability’, our personal consulting experience has led us to understand that each individual has a unique and personal story in the pursuit of a sustainable lifestyle.

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World pays Ecuador not to extract oil from rainforest

Governments and film stars join alliance that raises £75m to compensate Ecuador for lost revenue from 900m barrels

An alliance of European local authorities, national governments, US film stars, Japanese shops, soft drink companies and Russian foundations have stepped in to prevent oil companies exploiting 900m barrels of crude oil from one of the world's most biologically rich tracts of land.

According to the UN, the "crowdfunding" initiative had last night raised $116m (£75m), enough to temporarily halt the exploitation of the 722 square miles of "core" Amazonian rainforest known as Yasuní national park in Ecuador.

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Green energy investment bounces back to £2.5bn

Investment by companies into renewable energy projects in the UK has risen sharply this year but is still well down on 2009 levels.

The Government said £2.5bn of new privately funded projects had been announced since April. That marks an improvement on the £2.1bn measured in the whole of 2010 by research group Pew Environment. The projects will create nearly 12,000 jobs across the country.

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Germany's Wind Power Revolution in the Doldrums

The construction of offshore wind parks in the North Sea has hit a snag with a vital link to the onshore power grid hopelessly behind schedule. The delays have some reconsidering the ability of wind power to propel Germany into the post-nuclear era.

The generation of electricity from wind is usually a completely odorless affair. After all, the avoidance of emissions is one of the unique charms of this particular energy source.

But when work is completed on the Nordsee Ost wind farm, some 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of the island of Helgoland in the North Sea, the sea air will be filled with a strong smell of fumes: diesel fumes.

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Brazil, short of biofuel, can't open spigot to US

For three decades, the U.S. government sought to protect American corn farmers and ethanol makers from a feared flood of Brazilian imports by imposing a tariff that had the South American country crying foul.

But as the contentious tax finally expires at year-end, American farmers' fears of being swamped by sugar-based tropical biofuel seem unfounded. With Brazil's ethanol industry struggling to meet booming local demand, it's U.S. producers instead who are shipping millions of gallons to the south.

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Tide of plastic bags that started wave of revulsion

Since Rebecca Hosking reported the plastic pollution in the Pacific, levies and bans on single-use bags have spread

Plastic bags became almost a national symbol of waste and decadence thanks to BBC camerawoman Rebecca Hosking, who travelled to the remote Pacific island of Midway to film a nature documentary.

As the Guardian reported at the time: "Instead of finding some prelapsarian wilderness, she and a colleague were confronted with the horror of hundreds of albatrosses lying on the sand.

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Shooting an Elephant: Why GoDaddy’s CEO Was Wrong

The main reason why GoDaddy is not for me!!!

Onésimo Alvarez-Moro

GoDaddy competitor Namecheap has launched a campaign to woo away offended GoDaddy customers. Our colleagues at Techland have the full story: Switch business now, and Namecheap is offering to make elephant donations on your behalf.

We all shoot vacation videos, but most of us choose to keep them to ourselves — or, at worst, share them with our Facebook friends. Bob Parsons, CEO of the Internet-hosting firm GoDaddy.com, which you know from its lame Super Bowl ads and absolutely nothing else — likes bigger exposure.

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Global hunger for plastic packaging leaves waste solution a long way off

Despite measures to increase recycling, discarded plastic packaging continues to blight Earth

Five hundred tonnes of Christmas tree lights and at least 25m bags of plastic sweet wrappers, turkey coverings, drinks bottles and broken toys will be thrown away by UK homes this Christmas and new year. But only a tiny proportion of this waste will be recycled.

Even at other times of year, only a little under a quarter of the UK's plastic waste is recycled, but over the festive period still less escapes the tip according to a survey by home drinks maker SodaStream. Globally, recycling of plastics is even smaller.

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Why is it so easy to save the banks – but so hard to save the biosphere?

Agreements to bail out banks happen in days – but despite some good progress at Durban, we still don't have a legally binding deal to bail out the planet

They bailed out the banks in days. But even deciding to bail out the planet is taking decades.

Nicholas Stern estimated that capping climate change would cost around 1% of global GDP, while sitting back and letting it hit us would cost between 5 and 20%. One per cent of GDP is, at the moment, $630bn.

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An ethical guide to your home: from mobile phones to sofas

Are you sitting comfortably? Really? On a sofa that's helped destroy the rainforest? In jeans whose production causes silicosis? Find out what lies behind many of the items in modern homes

9 deadly sins… Your eco crimes are all around you. Photograph: Thom Atkinson. Graphic: Sarah Plane for Guardian Imaging
1 Mobile phone

It is a vision from hell. Deep in the Congolese jungle, in an illegal mine that is little more than a hole in the ground, men and young boys are standing on top of each other, scraping earth from the walls. At 45 degrees, it is unbearably hot. Danish film director Frank Poulsen describes being down these holes as "pretty testing". At points, the size of the space means he is unable to move forward and Chance, a 16-year-old who sometimes works in these conditions for up to a week at a time, takes over the filming.

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The gender gadget gap

According to figures from Nielsen, a market-research firm, women make up 59% of e-reader owners, and only 43% of tablet owners. The gender divide for smartphones, on the other hand, is pretty even. Why should this be?

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Can we afford eco-cities?

Making cities greener "actually makes a lot of sense" in spite of the economic crisis, says former Irish President, Mary Robinson.

"You save money," she said, adding that the real challenge is greening cities in poorer nations, like Bangladesh, where people live in "almost impossible conditions."

Robinson was one of four leading climate change thinkers discussing how viable it is to invest in sustainable cities in a debate hosted by CNN's Robyn Curnow during the 2011 U.N. Conference on Climate Change last week in Durban.

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Why women are world's best climate change defense

Women must make their voices heard in climate negotiations. The role of women as agents of change in their homes, places of work and communities is often underplayed. Yet their role is critical: Women understand the inter-generational aspects of climate change and sustainable development. We women think in time horizons that span the lives of our children and grandchildren. We need to use this understanding to influence the political process and to inject a much needed sense of urgency into the climate change negotiations.

Time is not on our side; report after report has shown this. This is not a trade discussion and we cannot wait until the next meeting or the meeting after that to take action. Time is running out for the planet. 2020 is too late to put a legally binding agreement in place.

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Top 10 Environmental Hazards of 2011

From oil spills from ship-wrecked tankers and stifling smokescreens as a result of forest fires to the unabashed disposal of sewage into rivers and marine ecosystems, 2011 has been a year marred by a number of environmentally harmful accidents.

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Chart Focus: What women in business want

Although women generate about a quarter of US GDP, they contribute less than they could—far too few of them move up the corporate ladder, for example, but not because they lack ambition. A McKinsey survey of about 2,500 college-educated men and women found that women who make the leap from entry-level jobs to middle management and on to senior management are not only increasingly interested in becoming leaders but also increasingly confident that they can.

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Eight Elements of Good Governance

Good governance has 8 major characteristics. It is participatory, consensus oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and efficient, equitable and inclusive, and follows the rule of law. Good governance is responsive to the present and future needs of the organization, exercises prudence in policy-setting and decision-making, and that the best interests of all stakeholders are taken into account.

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Dirty trade: How important are greenhouse-gas emissions from international transport? | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

It is well known that international trade leads to greenhouse-gas emissions but policymakers often focus their attention on the production of goods and not their shipment. This column presents findings based on a unique database that allows researchers to calculate emissions for every dollar of world trade. It suggests that international transport emissions warrant serious attention in current climate-change negotiations.

As the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end in 2012, member countries of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are meeting in Durban, South Africa, to decide on future actions to curb worldwide greenhouse-gas emissions.

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Europe crisis 'threatens Africa'

The finance ministers of Nigeria and South Africa have strongly criticised the European Union for failing to stop the spread of the Eurozone debt crisis.

Pravin Gordhan of South Africa and Nigeria's Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said market volatility was threatening Africa's economic prospects.

Mr Gordhan said Europe's financial problems were reducing global trade.

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Low-carbon technology 'will not mean big bill rises'

Claims that the costs of wind farms and other low-carbon technology will lead to sharp rises in fuel bills are wrong, government advisers say.

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) says increases in bills over the past few years have been largely due to higher wholesale gas costs.

Members said their "best estimate" was that green policies would add £110 to bills per household in 2020.

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The business plan to stop ecocide

Nature is under constant attack from corporate forces. But Polly Higgins wants to find a capitalist to fight for the environment

William Wilberforce is popularly credited with the abolition of slavery. But the campaigners – far ahead of their time in their methods – had recognised the need for a major business figure to stand beside them and declare his (it was two centuries ago) support. That man was Charles Grant, chairman of the East India Company, which then controlled over half of world trade.

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Endangered Species Conditions of Life: How Climate Change Has Driven Evolution

We are the products of our environment — and that goes for egrets and elephants as much as human beings. The history of all life on this planet has been one of change and adaptation. The environment changes, and life adapts. That’s evolution in a nutshell.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that as the planet’s climate has changed through the geologic past — and it’s changed severely, from the hot and humid earth of the Triassic period to the ice ages that ended just 20,000 years ago — life has changed along with it. In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a group of researchers plot out just how the changing climate has impacted mammalian evolution in North America over the past 65 million years.

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Microfinance's Latest Challenge: Cutting Back on Over-indebtedness Among Its Poorest Clients

ong before "99%" became a symbol of Occupy Wall Street, the microfinance industry used the number to describe the share of its clients -- poor entrepreneurs shunned by traditional banks -- who repaid their micro-loans on time. It's a number used less and less in microfinance these days -- not because of Occupy Wall Street, but because many micro-borrowers are starting to default.

"One of the major issues we face in Lebanon is the problem of over-indebtedness," said Youssef Fawaz, CEO of Al Majmoua, the leading nongovernmental microfinance organization in Lebanon. "We're noticing that clients ... drown themselves in debt by borrowing money from multiple institutions."

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Europe must change its attitude

As the Durban climate conference draws to a close, the European Union can not continue to address the issue of climate change with a condescending attitude towards emerging countries. Needing these same countries to help it emerge from the financial crisis, the EU risks having the terms of any future agreement being dictated to it.
Jacob Swager

The annual UN Christmas climate change market is underway once again, this year in Durban. Europe seems to have learned little from the conference in Copenhagen, where European idealism was the main reason it failed.

Then, developing countries were all too keen to go with the European approach, brushed aside all responsibility on their part, demanded compensation from industrialised countries for climate change (of course without any conditions on where those sums would go) as well as calling for draconian reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the industrialised world.

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Tidal energy turbine set up in the sea

A 100ft underwater turbine destined to form part of a major tidal energy project has been installed in the sea around Orkney.

The one megawatt (MW) device, which can power the annual electricity needs of 500 homes, will now undergo a series of tests to check its performance and reliability.

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The World from Berlin: 'Canada Should Be Shunned for Kyoto Ignorance'

Canada is under fire for exiting the Kyoto Protocol just one day after UN climate talks ended with an agreement to extend the treaty. Putting financial interests ahead of environmental commitments is an affront to global climate protection efforts, German papers write on Wednesday.

While it may not have come as a complete surprise, both the timing and reasoning behind Canada's exit from the Kyoto Protocol have been criticized worldwide.

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Disappearing Cerrado: 'Brazil's great untold environmental disaster' - audio slideshow

Photographer Peter Caton talks about his visit to the Cerrado – the world's largest savannah. It contains 5% of the world's biodiversity, but is being destroyed at an incredible rate to make way for monocultures that may have devastating long-term effects.

During his trip, Caton worked with local Brazilian environmental group ISPN and WWF on their campaign calling for UK supermarkets to source sustainable soya

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Vast methane 'plumes' seen in Arctic ocean as sea ice retreats

Russian research team astonished after finding 'fountains' of methane bubbling to surface

Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.

The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

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Durban Climate Deal: Staying Alive to Fight Another Day

Marathon sessions in Durban produced a global climate deal early Sunday morning, after the official talks were scheduled to complete. The world's governments have agreed on a mandate to adopt a legal agreement on climate change no later than 2015, which will come into force in 2020.

The Durban deal is a significant political breakthrough – the first time the world's emerging economies have agreed to enter into a legal arrangement on emissions reduction. The agreed package also includes a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol and the design of a Green Climate Fund to help poor countries tackle climate change.

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Lessons from Durban: How To Create a Successful UN Climate Summit

Once again, a UN climate summit has ended with limited results. In the end, the blockers and procrastinators prevailed. That's why the next global meeting must be transformed into a forum for mutual learning and not just one for haggling and meaningless legalese.

After two weeks of talks at the United Nations climate summit in Durban, South Africa, participants were only truly united on one issue: They just wanted to get home and away from the soulless conference center as soon as possible.

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Just one minister attends meeting to discuss exclusion of Israeli women

Ministerial Committee for the Advancement of the Status of Women in Israeli Society, was put in charge of organizing a task force to consider imposing sanctions against businesses that discriminate against women.

Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar was the only minister to attend a ministerial meeting Tuesday to discuss the increasing exclusion of women from the public sphere.

The Ministerial Committee for the Advancement of the Status of Women in Israeli Society, headed by Minister of Culture Limor Livnat, was put in charge of organizing a task force to consider imposing sanctions against businesses that discriminate against women.

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Frog-hunters of the Western Ghats

Growth damages the environment. It also produces people who mind about that

THE worst of the hazards travellers encounter in the mountainous rainforests of southern India is not the elephants, though they occasionally kill people; nor the creepy-crawlies, though the sudden appearance of a foot-long red-legged millipede can startle; nor the spiny-stemmed palms, though they shred unwary walkers’ clothes. It is the leeches.

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Seeking True Democracy: The Challenge and Promise of Full Equality for Women

Participants
Cherie Booth QC, Matrix Chambers
Chair: David Mepham, UK Director, Human Rights Watch

The speaker will explore how the development, protection and promotion of women's rights shapes and strengthens democracy. She will go on to discuss the structures, opportunities, and attitudes necessary to accelerate the drive to achieve these interlinked and mutually dependent ambitions.

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Shrinking glacier

China threatens trade war over EU jet emissions tax

The "environmental squeeze" that helped prompt British Airways owner IAG's takeover of BMI is set to ignite a trade war between China and Europe after the EU's top court upheld a move to charge airlines using the Continent's airspace for their greenhouse gas emissions.

Beijing yesterday threatened disruptions to trade with the EU after the European Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday that the emissions tax would go ahead as planned on 1 January. The move added China's voice to that of America, which last week warned that it would take "appropriate action" if the proposed charges were not amended or delayed.

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Climate Counts Releases its 2011 Scorecard

Our friends at Climate Counts have just released their 2011 Scorecard. It is the fifth time they have reviewed the climate and environmental performance of a number of leading corporations—they scored 136 companies this year on a number of different climate-related measures.

Climate Counts has earned wide respect for its careful and thoughtful measurement approach. When we started setting up our CSRHUB database, they were one of the first groups we reached out to for advice, and their approach to measuring climate performance had a big impact on our methodology. We showcase their 2010 data on our site (http://www.csrhub.com/alter/flag/CLC) and were able to incorporate their information into 117 of our ratings in 2010. It looks like we’ll be able to use their data to help us rate 119 companies, this year. (Climate Counts rates some private companies—including some in special interest areas such as baby equipment.)

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Urban ecology model 'needs to change'

The way researchers assess urban ecology needs to change in order to take into account the way modern cities are developing, a study suggests.

Scientists in Australia said urban areas were expanding rapidly in a complex "non-linear" way that existing models failed to capture effectively.

Assessments needed to be modified if ecologists were to get an accurate picture of the environment, they added.

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Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas

Russian research team astonished after finding 'fountains' of methane bubbling to surface

Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.

The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

See full Article.

Father of climate change: 2C limit is not enough

Talks to limit global temperature rises to 2C will not prevent the possibility of dangerous climate change, warns the scientist who first raised the alarm over global warming.

James Hansen, director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said there was a widespread misconception among international climate negotiators meeting in Durban, South Africa, that the 2C "safe" target would stop extreme changes.

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Climate Change and Health: Policy Priorities and Perspectives

• The risks to population health and survival, and to social stability, from climate change are greater than have been generally appreciated.
  
• Further climatic influences are likely to cause direct and indirect adverse effects, including on mental health. These impacts will threaten the pursuit of health gains in lower-income regions. Population health may be further threatened by tensions, displacement and conflict.
  
• Global health and development strategies must address the health risks of human-induced climate change as well as promote low-carbon strategies that improve health.
  
• Current economic estimates heavily underestimate the risks that poor health poses to labour and capital.
  
• The cost of expanded emergency services, healthcare facilities, extended surveillance and prevention programmes, resettling displaced groups and falls in workforce productivity will grow, impeding other social and economic goals.
  
• Mitigation offers 'win-win' opportunities for enhancing population health.
• Meanwhile, near-term and longer-term adaptation strategies are needed to lessen the adverse health impacts of climate change.

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What really drives value in corporate responsibility?

Few companies are clear about how investing in social initiatives will change stakeholder behavior or the harm a bad strategy can cause.

Now that stakeholders—including consumers, investors, and employees—pay increasing attention to the social and environmental footprints of business, corporate-responsibility efforts have moved into uncharted management territory. We see companies reengineering supply chains to make them “greener,” supporting social causes through volunteer programs for employees, or lobbying for human rights in far-flung corners of the globe.

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Who wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

Many of the assumptions about who wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are wrong. Gita Sahgal tells the less known story of the men and women who wrote this foundational, emancipatory and anti-colonial document

On the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we might consider whether the idea of human rights with their firm assertions, their belief in the ‘rule of law,’ and their globalised vision remain relevant in the world. The idea that there are absolute standards has come under attack from both the left and the right. The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre , author of 'After Virtue', said, Natural rights and self evident truths proclaimed in the American declaration of independence are tantamount to belief in witches and unicorns.

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The world health report

Health systems financing: the path to universal coverage

Good health is essential to human welfare and to sustained economic and social development. WHO's Member States have set themselves the target of developing their health financing systems to ensure that all people can use health services, while being protected against financial hardship associated with paying for them.

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Holiday Waste: How Not to Throw Out Your Old Electronics

‘Tis the season to keep propping up the consumer electronics industry and swap out your old phones and tablets and computers in favor of slightly better, slightly more expensive new versions. Whether it’s an iPad 2 replacing an iPad, an iPhone 4s replacing an iPhone 4, or whether you just received an Kindle Fire tablet and simply hate it, chances are you have some outdated electronics on your hands. And you’re not alone: in a new report from the analysts at Pike Research found that the amount of end-of-life electronics—better known as e-waste—around the globe will grow from 6 million tons in 2010 to nearly 15 million tons by 2025. That’s a lot of obsolete—or just old—gadgets.

And we can’t simply toss those phones and electronics into the trash—or at least we shouldn’t. The lead, mercury and other toxic materials in electronics can leak from landfills, threatening groundwater supplies. But you can’t throw them in the recycling bin either—few municipal waste firms can recycle electronics. So what should you do then?

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Durban: As U.N. Climate Talks End, Little Is Accomplished

There are deals and then there are deals. That’s my takeaway from the U.N. climate negotiations in the South African city of Durban, which finally concluded early Sunday local time — more than a day after the talks had been scheduled to end. Exhausted negotiators — seriously, look at these poor guys — managed to reach an agreement of sorts and stave off the total collapse of the U.N. climate process. Here’s how the Guardian reported it:

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Ten Species Near Extintion

The 10 Most Air-Polluted Cities in the World

Environmentalists here in the U.S. are not happy with President Obama, in part because he pulled back on a promise to tighten ground-level ozone and smog standards for air pollution. But American greens should remember: much of the rest of the world has it far, far, far worse.

That’s one takeaway from a new report by the World Health Organization that looked at urban air pollution around the world. The most polluted cities tend to be found in developing countries.

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