Archive

BY MARK ROWE
JAPANESE companies Tomen and Toyota Tsusho are to supply four million tons annually of high quality low-sulphur from the Australian company Oakbridge Ltd to fuel a controversial coal-fired power plant in Thailand. The coal has been chosen because it contains significantly less sulphur than domestic coal used in Thailand and should minimise sulphur oxide emissions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AUSTRALIAN scientists have produced what they call the world’s first virtual tour of a stretch of ocean floor, an invention that could provide undersea mining prospectors with valuable geological and topographical information.

The 3D map covers 2 million sq km of the 11 million sq km of ocean over which Australia has sovereign rights, off the island continent’s south east shores.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Space Agency is offering to check how countries are implementing environmental treaties such as monitoring the growth of forests under the Kyoto Protocol or their rate of shrinkage under the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. Its Treaty Enforcement Services using Earth Observation can use ESA satellites to check the extent of national woodland stocks.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank is lending US$93.9 million to fund a China Sustainable Forestry Development Project, which aims to protect some of China’s most important remaining old-growth natural forests and associated biodiversity. The money will help protect vital watersheds and reduce the risk of downstream flooding, while ensuring wood supplies can meet the country’s growing demand for timber.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union, the USA, China and 87 other countries have agreed new global guidelines on how to rid wood packaging material of wood-eating insects, the United Nations has announced. To guarantee that packaging is pest-free, exporters would need to certify with a globally recognised symbol that the material has been heated or fumigated.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA, in Columbo
SRI Lanka’s Parquet (Ceylon) Ltd, the island’s long troubled wooden flooring manufacturer, appears to have emerged from the red during the last financial year, posting a trading profit of SLRupees 15.6 million for the 9 months ending December 31, 2001, up from a loss of SLRupees 13.7 million a year earlier.…

KEITH NUTHALL
ASSISITANCE from the European Union to boost the development of an efficient and privately owned forestry sector in the eastern European countries wanting to become Member States is crucial, EU enterprise Commissioner Erkki Liikanen has claimed.

In a speech to the European Economic and Social Committee, he said that the move from 100 per cent state ownership of forests in these former communist countries had created a number of problems that needed to be addressed.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission will propose the creation “as quickly as possible” of an EU administrative system for verifying the legality of imported wood products. This will be part of a promised EU action plan against illegal logging discussed at the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade workshop held in Brussels from April 22 to 24.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE JAPANESE electronics giant Sharp says it has created an air conditioner that not only cools your office but also rids a room of nitrogen oxide, a substance found in cigarette smoke. A test conducted by Japanese Government scientists found that the air conditioner was able to regulate the balance of positive and negative ions floating in the air and remove virtually all traces of nitrogen oxide the within 12 minutes.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
JTI-Macdonald Corp., Canada, has proposed that the federal government in Ottawa introduce an additional warning message on cigarette packages which would indicate that reduced tar products are not safer and that the tar levels should be prominent on cigarette packs.…