Tag Archives: UNEP

Articles of Interest

UN Hosts Banquet Of Bruised Food To Highlight Waste

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By The Huffington Post News Editors

OSLO, Feb 19 (Reuters) – The United Nations treated government ministers and officials to a meal of blemished African fruit and vegetables on Tuesday to highlight how perfectly edible food is being rejected by European supermarkets.
The five-course meal for 500 delegates at a week-long United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) event in the Kenyan capital included grilled sweet corn tamales, yellow lentil dal and mangomisu – a tropical version of the Italian dessert tiramisu.
The food was all reject-grade by the standards of European buyers, who sometimes cancel orders after produce has been harvested. The rejected food often rots or is fed to livestock because farmers produce more than local markets can absorb.
“No economic, environmental or ethical argument can be made to justify the extent of food waste and loss currently happening in the world,” said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) which hosted the dinner.
“With this dinner, we are demonstrating to retailers, consumers and policymakers who can push for change that the astonishing amount of food we throw away is not just edible and nutritious, but also delicious,” he said.
A total of 1.7 tonnes of food was collected, both for the meal and as a donation to local charities.
Tristram Stuart, a British founder of the Feeding the 5000 campaign group that worked with UNEP, said farmers singled out supermarkets in Europe as the worst of their buyers abroad.
Fruit and vegetables were often rejected for cosmetic reasons such as colour or shape. French beans had to be exactly the right length, for instance, and any that were too long had to be cut short, with the ends fed to livestock.
“We are demonstrating the colossal scale of gratuitous waste, even in countries like Kenya where there are millions of hungry people,” he said. “The waste of perfectly edible, ‘ugly’ vegetables is endemic in our food production systems.” (Reporting By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post

News, Politics, Government

Treaty aimed at reducing mercury emissions signed

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More than 140 nations adopted the first legally-binding international treaty Saturday aimed at reducing mercury emissions, capping four years of negotiations on how to set limits on the use of a highly toxic metal.

The treaty was adopted after all-night negotiations that capped a week of talks in Geneva, U.N. environmental officials and diplomats said. A signing ceremony will be held later this year in Japan, and then 50 nations must ratify it before it comes into force, which officials said they would expect to happen within about three to four years.

“To agree on global targets is not easy to do,” UNEP executive director Achim Steiner told a news conference. “There was no delegation here that wished to leave Geneva without drafting a treaty.”

The treaty will for the first time set enforceable limits on emissions of mercury, which is widely used in chemical production and small-scale mining, and to exclude, phase out or restrict some products that contain mercury.

“We have closed a chapter on a journey that has taken four years of often intense, but ultimately successful negotiations and opened a new chapter towards a sustainable future,” said Fernando Lugris, the Uruguayan diplomat who chaired the negotiations.

But some supporters of a new mercury treaty said they were not satisfied with the agreement.

Joe DiGangi, a science adviser with advocacy group IPEN, said that while the treaty is “a first step,” it is not tough enough to achieve its aim of reducing overall emissions.

For example, he said, there is no requirement that each country create a national plan for how it will reduce mercury emissions.

But proponents of the treaty say it will set meaningful controls and reductions on a range of products, processes and industries where mercury is used, released or emitted.

These would include medical equipment like thermometers, energy-saving light bulbs, mining and cement and coal-fired power industries.

Swiss environmental ambassador Franz Perrez said the treaty “will help us to protect human health and the environment all over the world.”

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

UN finds rising mercury emissions, need for treaty

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Mercury pollution in the top layer of the world’s oceans has doubled in the past century, part of a man-made problem that will require international cooperation to fix, the U.N.’s environment agency said Thursday.

The report by the U.N. Environment Program showed for the first time that hundreds of tons of mercury have leaked from the soil into rivers and lakes around the world.

As a result of rising emissions, communities in developing countries face increasing health and environmental risks linked to exposure to mercury, the U.N. agency says.

Mercury, a toxic metal, is widely used in chemical production and small-scale mining, particularly gold. It is a naturally occurring element that is found in air, water and soil, and it cannot be created or destroyed.

Mercury emissions come from sources such as coal burning and the use of mercury to separate metal from ore in small-scale gold mining, and mercury pollution also comes from discarded electronic and other consumer products. Mercury in the air settles into soil from where it can then seep into water.

The report, an update on its previous global tallies of mercury in 2002 and 2007, comes in advance of talks in Geneva next week between nations negotiating a new legally binding treaty to reduce mercury emissions worldwide.

Such a treaty would represent a major reversal from previous years when major powers including the United States, China and India sought voluntary reductions.

Mercury concentrations accumulate in fish and go up the food chain, posing the greatest risk of nerve damage to pregnant women, women of childbearing age and young children.

The report says parts of Africa, Asia and South America could see increasing emissions of mercury into the environment mainly due to small-scale gold mining, and through coal burning for electricity. It found that mercury emissions from artisanal gold mining had doubled since 2005 due to factors such as rising gold prices and better reporting on the emissions.

Asia accounts for just under half of all global releases of mercury, the report said.

Over the past 100 years, mercury found in the top 100 meters of the world’s oceans has doubled and concentrations in waters deeper than that have gone up by 25 percent, the U.N. agency said, while rivers and lakes contain an estimated 260 metric tons of mercury that was previously held in soils.

UNEP‘s executive director, Achim Steiner, said mercury pollution remains “a major global, regional and national challenge in terms of threats to human health and the environment” but new technologies can reduce the risks.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News