Publications

A discussion paper about whether the shift in re-sponsibility from emitters or investors to host country government would limit or even elimi-nate emitters’ incentives to engage in seeking cost-effective mitigation options and if so, by which means such outcome could be avoided or limited.

In this issue:

• Strategies for more environmental justice
• Berlin pilot project on environmental justice
• Research and activities from Germany and Switzerland

As a Party to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC), since 1994 Germany has been obliged to prepare, publish and regularly update national emission inventories of greenhouse gases. In February 2005, the Kyoto Protocol entered into force.

This study by the Federal Environment Agency investigates the role of sinks and emissions from land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) within existing and planned emissions trading systems. The harmonization of standards is an important aspect so that regional emission trading schemes form an effective and efficient international carbon market.

Fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-gases) are 100 to 24,000 times more harmful to the climate than CO2. The contribution of fluorinated greenhouse gases to global warming is projected to triple from nearly 2% to around 6% of total greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050.

The Federal Environment Agency believes a speedy phase-out of nuclear energy use as of 2017 is both feasible and compatible with the goals of climate protection1. The Federal Environment Agency recommends adoption of a tiered approach.

With ballast water in ships, marine organisms are transported around the globe and to environments on which they may have adverse effects (e.g. displacement or even elimination of indigenous species).

Climate protection strategies today basically pursue two approaches: Firstly, measures should be taken to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emisssions. Secondly, measures should be implemented that enable humans and the environment to adapt to unavoidable climate change.

Position paper of the Ad hoc Subcommittee “Natural Attenuation” of the Contaminated Site Committee (ALA) of the Federal/State Working Group on Soil Protection (LABO), translation by order of the Federal Environment Agency.

Raw material conflict occurs in various forms: in the form of supply bottlenecks and crises, violent disputes, or even war; as well as due to the effects of environmental destruction, whereby the sources of people's livelihoods are lost. Raw material conflict is a reality in many instances, but in others is merely postulated.

"Rare earths are to China what oil is to the Middle East," stated Deng Xiaoping in 1992 (Wang 2007). China accounts for 97 percent of global rare earth production, and as such the world is more dependent on it than it is on oil from the Middle East. That situation is significant because rare earths, although usually used only in small amounts, are of great strategic relevance.

In Bolivia's western highlands, at an altitude of some 3,600 metres, lie the largest identified reserves of lithium in the world.