Search Results for: Environmental Health

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A JOINT letter signed by more than 100 environmental groups – including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, WWF and the European Environmental Bureau – has called for a “radical overhaul” of the European Union’s Euratom treaty in an ongoing review of EU institutions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH the European Union’s eastern border set to move a few 100 miles eastwards on May 1 next year, preparations are under way to set up tough frontier controls against the food hygiene badlands of Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union report has encouraged local authorities to take more environmental considerations into account in their public procurement programmes – especially for energy – claiming that if every EU public body switched to renewable sources, they would meet 18 per cent of Europe’s Kyoto Protocol obligations.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is taking the unusual step of taking the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers to court to try and force it to toughen moves to criminalise environmental offences across the EU.

Ministers in January adopted an EU Decision – without referring to other European institutions – that calls on Member States to criminalise wilful and negligent pollution, but leaves flexibility on what kind of offence is made a crime and on how it should be punished.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FRENCH government has proposed a summit of G8 environment ministers, the creation of a strong World Environment Organisation, which would take over the responsibilities of the United Nations Environment Programme as well as those of environmental departments amongst other multilateral agencies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has said it wants to launch quickly into an analysis of sites in Iraq targeted with weapons containing depleted uranium (DU), now that the US-UK led invasion appears to be winding up.…

BY PHILIP FINE

AN AREA of northern Bolivia is to be the focus of an innovative Canadian aid mission designed to offer advice on preventing landslides in communities pock-marked with small mines, notably those for gold prospecting.

Canada will fund a team of scientists to help the community of Chima, a remote gold-mining village that was hit by a deadly landslide last month; the specialists want to ensure that they do not suffer from a repeat the tragedy and to help such communities better deal with such disasters, if they do occur.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank has drawn up plans to lend Germany’s E.ON Energie Euro 300 million to fund a 2-year investment programme aiming at promoting energy efficiency within its electricity production and distribution facilities. An EIB note said that the money would fund “state-of-the-art energy management in electricity production including renewables,” adding that the money would be focused on research and development.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ORGANISATION for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Environment Agency (EEA) have developed a database containing information on environmental taxes, subsidies, tradable emission permits, and deposit refund systems in 43 countries. They want to help public authorities choose environmental policies by providing examples from around the world.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AS AMERICAN and British military forces secure control of Iraq from the regime of dictator Saddam Hussein using the latest military technology, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has released a cautionary report confirming for the first time that depleted uranium shells can and have contaminated drinking water.…