World News
| Position | JD candidates, May 2007, at American University, Washington College of Law |
| Pages | 24 |
Page 70
Since an explosion on November 13, 2005 at Jilin Petrochemical Corporation's benzene factory in the northeastern city of Harbin, 45 other pollution accidents were reported to China's State Environmental Protection Administration ["SEPA"],1 including six "major disasters."2 The Harbin explosion poured one hundred tons of the carcinogenic benzene and nitrobenzene into the Songhua River in a plume of contaminated water 150 kilometers long.3 Ten thousand people were evacuated4 and four million people had no public water services for several days.5 On February 14, 2006, another major spill in the Yuexi River left 20,000 residents of the Sichuan village of Guanyin without water when high concentrations of fluorine, amine-nitrate, and phenol were discovered in the river.6
The Harbin spill raised national concern in China about the damage China's industrial boom may be inflicting on the environment.7 In response, SEPA has demanded that officials report spills within an hour of their outbreak.8 SEPA's own director Xie Zhenhua was forced to resign when officials failed to report the spill for three days, resulting in dozens of lawsuits.9 Moreover, in a recent nationwide survey, SEPA found that China has 21,000 chemical plants situated on its major rivers.10 Over 70 percent of China's rivers and lakes are polluted; water sources in 90 percent of cities are contaminated.11
Researchers at the University of Kansas and National Aeronautics and Space Administration's ("NASA") Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently released a study revealing that the rate of ice streaming into the sea from glaciers in Greenland has doubled in the past decade, in part due to climate warming and ice dynamics.12 Through the use of satellite data to follow the glaciers,13 the researchers indicated that widespread increased glacier movement is "clearly a climate signal."14Greenland's glaciers lost 59 trillion gallons of ice in 2005, as compared to 24 trillion gallons in 1996, and Greenland's largest glaciers have increased their speeds by approximately 57 percent over the past decade.15
The study further reveals that the ice dumped from these glaciers may be contributing more to rising sea levels than previously predicted.16 Streaming ice, together with the melting of Greenland's ice sheet, may annually contribute to seventeen percent of the global sea-level increase.17 This contribution to the global sea-level rise "is a problem of considerable societal and scientific importance."18 With the possibility of rising global temperatures, the contribution to sea-level rise from Greenland's glaciers will likely continue to increase.19
Due to rising ethanol demand, Brazil's state-run oil company, Petreleo Brasileiro SA ("Petrobras"), has announced the possibility of building an ethanol pipeline through Brazil's primary ethanol producing areas to a refinery located near So Paulo. The estimated price tag would be US$226 million and would transport one billion gallons of ethanol per year.20 Petrobras Chief Executive Sergio Gabrielli stressed that ethanol is cheaper to produce in Brazil, whose current ethanol supplies derive from sugar cane, than in the United States, which produces its ethanol from corn.21 Gabrielli further contended that Brazil is "the only country in the world that has the technology to build an ethanol pipeline," thus making the project significant for the global ethanol market.22
Some industry analysts question Brazil's ability to emerge as a consistent ethanol supplier in the global fuels market.23While Brazil's sugar cane industry is the largest in the world,24its supplies are currently stretched, and the sugar cane industry is projected to need US$10 billion investment capital for new mills and more sugar cane to meet ethanol demands.25 The International Energy Agency predicts that by 2025 ethanol may account for ten percent of the global gasoline supply, as countries begin to increasingly look to ethanol as a fuel source,26either to meet carbon dioxide emissions targets set by the Kyoto Protocol or to break from oil dependencies.27 Brazil can serve as an example for other countries wanting to switch to ethanol- based fuel, as Brazilian laws require that its domestic gasoline contain 25 percent ethanol and as the majority of Brazilian vehicles currently are able to use either ethanol or traditional gasoline sources.28 Page 71
As southern Somalia faces its worst drought in more than a decade, security issues have hampered aid efforts there.29Rainfall, cereal production, and pastoral land have all approached seven-year lows,30 while famine threatens more than two million people in the region, including 400,000 internally displaced people.31 Moreover, since March 2005 some 35 acts of piracy in Somali waters, including the hijacking of a vessel chartered by the World Food Programme,32 have forced aid agencies to deliver food by land, where it is vulnerable to seizure by local militias.33 Making things worse, Somalia has had no central government to enforce the rule of law for fifteen years, allowing rival warlords to loot the country and fuel internal conflicts.34
This February, the World Trade Organization ("WTO") ruled in favor of the United States, Argentina, and Canada that the European Union illegally banned imports of genetically modified crops.35 European governments resisted the use of genetically altered seeds to resist pests, disease, and drought, claiming that biotech crops threaten human health and the environment.36 However, the ruling might not signal immediate changes in the EU's policies since the EU can appeal or simply refuse to comply and accept the requisite penalties.37
The EU has a history of disregarding WTO decisions that conflict with its food policies.38 For example, in 1998 the WTO ruled that the EU's ban on hormone treated beef, based on a heightened cancer risk, was not sufficiently rooted in science.39However, the EU opted to pay US $116 million in fines rather than comply with the WTO's beef ruling.40 According to an EU poll, over fifty percent of the EU's 450 million consumers consider gene-engineered foods to be dangerous.41
Britain and Sweden have set lofty goals to reduce oil consumption. For instance, Sweden plans to be a completely oil- free economy by 2020.42 A Swedish government official stated, "The plan is a response to global climate change, rising petroleum prices, and warnings by some experts that the world may soon be running out of oil."43 Sweden leads Europe in the race for oil independence with 26 percent of its energy coming from renewable sources (the EU averages six percent). Only 32 percent of Sweden's energy comes from oil, down from 77 percent in 1970.44
Meanwhile, Britain plans to meet its Kyoto obligation of reducing emissions twenty percent by 2010 by using the three million tons of excess wheat it produces each year to make bioethanol.45 However, Britain's plan could prove costly, as bioethanol is twice as costly as gasoline production, and could likely prove viable only with the help of government subsidies.46 In addition, petrochemical companies own many of Britain's gas stations and have little interest in endorsing a product that would reduce their sales.47 Yet, the British government recently ordered that petrochemical companies make a certain portion of their products (close to three percent) from renewable resources.48
Yemen, one of the most water scarce countries in the world, is on the verge of a water crisis.49 The water table in Yemen is falling by more than two meters a year.50 Additionally, Yemen's population is one of the fastest growing in the world, compounding the problems of a water shortage.51 Yemeni engineers suggest that additional desalination plants could be built along the coastline to augment the potable water supply.52 A national plan announced in 2004 for 2005-2009 calls for confronting the shortage through a mixture of legal and political measures, as well as privatization and investment.53 Observers are skeptical that the plan can be implemented, especially since Yemen lost part of its funding from the World Bank54 and was suspended from the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation's Threshold Program in late 2005, both citing corruption.
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ENDNOTES: World news
[1] Reuters, China officials told to report pollution promptly (Feb. 7, 2006), available at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/DPAS- 6LSCSJ?OpenDocument&rc=3&emid=AC-2005-000197-CHN (last visited Feb. 15, 2006).
[2] Agence France-Presse ("AFP"), Water cut off for 20,000 people after latest Chinese river toxic spill, Feb. 17, 2006, available at http://www.reliefweb.int/ rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/VBOL-6M4DT3?OpenDocument&rc=3&cc=chn (last visited Mar. 3, 2006) [hereinafter Water cut off].
[3] United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ("OCHA"), Situation Report No. 3, People's Republic of China/Russian Federation: Chemical Spill (Dec. 22, 2005), available at http://www.reliefweb .int/rw/rwb.nsf/doc106?openForm&rc=3&emid=AC-2005-000197- CHN&po=0&so=63 (last visited Feb. 15, 2006).
[4] OCHA, id.
[5] AFP, Water pollution found in eastern Russia following Chinese factory blast (Feb. 14, 2006), available at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/doc106 ?openForm&rc=3&emid=AC-2005-000197-CHN&po=0&so=63 (last visited Feb. 15, 2006).
[6] Water cut off, supra note 2.
[7] Reuters, supra note 1.
[8] Reuters, supra note 1.
[9] Reuters, supra note 1.
[10] AFP, 21,000 chemical plants along China's waterways raises alarm (Jan. 24, 2006), available at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/doc106?openForm &rc=3&emid=AC-2005-000197-CHN&po=0&so=63 (last visited Feb. 15, 2006).
[11] Water cut off, supra note 2.
[12] See Eric Rignot & Pannir Kanagartnam, Changes in the Velocity Structure of the Greenland Ice Sheet, 311 SCIENCE 986 (2006); see also Julian A. Dowdeswell, The Greenland Ice Sheet and Global Sea-Level Rise, 311 SCIENCE 963 (2006).
[13] Rignot & Kanagartnam, id. at 986.
[14] Andrew C. Revkin, Glaciers Flow to Sea at a Faster Pace, Study Says, N.Y. TIMES, Feb. 17, 2006, at A8.
[15] Bryn Nelson, Glaciers Quicken Pace, NEWSDAY, Feb. 17, 2006, at A29.
[16] Rignot & Kanagartnam, supra note 12, at 990; Andrew Bridges, Greenland Glaciers Dumping More Ice, ASSOC. PRESS, Feb. 17, 2006, available at http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GREENLAND_ GLACIERS?SITE=TXWIC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAU LT (last visited Feb. 18, 2006).
[17] Bridges, id. 18 Rignot & Kanagartnam, supra note 12.
[19] Dowdeswell, supra note 12, at 964.
[20] Brazil Studies Pipeline to Meet Growing Demand for Ethanol, ASSOC. PRESS, Feb. 2, 2006.
[21] Brazil Studies Pipeline, id. 22 Brazil Studies Pipeline, id.
[23] Reese Ewing, World Ethanol Demand to Test Brazil Cane Industry, REUTERS, Feb. 9, 2006, available at http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/34983/story.htm (last visited Feb. 19, 2006).
[24] Carmen J. Gentile, Brazil Seeks to Bolster Ethanol Sector, UNITED PRESS INT'L, Feb. 6, 2006, available at http://www.upi.com/Energy/ view.php?StoryID=20060206-033036-3566r (last visited Feb. 19, 2006).
[25] World Business Briefing Americas: Brazil: Ethanol Requires $10 Billion Investment by 2012, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 24, 2006, at C5.
[26] Ewing, supra note 23.
[27] The net impact of carbon dioxide emissions from cane-based ethanol is lower than some other current fuel sources, because as the sugar cane grows, it acts as a carbon sink. Brazil Studies Pipeline, supra note 9.
[28] Gentile, supra note 24.
[29] United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Drought Emergency in Somali and Oromiya Regions, Ethiopia (Feb. 13, 2006), available at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/ db900SID/LSGZ-6M2LZT?OpenDocument&rc=1&emid=ACOS- 635NZE (last visited Feb. 15, 2006).
[30] AGRIFISH Unit, IPSC, Joint Research Center-European Commission, Monitoring agricultural vegetation in Somalia using SPOT VGT Vegetation Index, AFRICOVER and ECMWF Global Meteorological Modelling (Feb 13, 2006), at 1-2, available at http://www.reliefweb.int/ rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/VBOL-6MVDKK?OpenDocument (last visited Mar. 30, 2006).
[31] Press Release, United Nations Team for Somalia, The Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia Calls for Better Access to Drought Affected Populations (Feb. 14, 2006), available at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/ RWB.NSF/db900SID/LSGZ-6M2E8E?OpenDocument (last visited Mar. 28, 2006); see also Press Release, Drought Expected to Drive Refugees, Violence in Horn of Africa, CARE (Mar. 2, 2006) available at http://reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/RURI- 6MJQU2?OpenDocument&rc=1&cc=som (last visited Mar. 3, 2006).
[32] BBC NEWS, Somali 'food aid pirate' seized, Feb. 14, 2006, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4712258.stm (last visited Mar. 3, 2006).
[33] REUTERS, Militia roadblocks keep food from hungry in Somalia (Jan. 13, 2006), available at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/ ABES-6KZLVL?OpenDocument (last visited Mar. 3, 2006).
[34] Militia roadblocks, id.
[35] USA TODAY, WTO Rejects EU's Ban on Genetically Modified Crops, Feb. 7, 2006, available at http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/genetics/2006-02-07-wto-eu-crops_x.htm (last visited Mar. 6, 2006).
[36] BLOOMBERG, WTO Rules Against EU's Biotech-Seed Rules, U.S. Says, Feb.8, 2006, available at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= 10000103&sid=auax1qlUUocc&refer=us (last visited Mar. 11, 2006).
[37] Scott Miller and Scott Kilman, EU Loses a Round on Biotech Crops, WALL ST. J., Feb. 8, 2006, at A5.
[38] Miller & Kilman, id.
[39] WTO Appellate Body Report, European Communities-Measures Concerning Meat and Meat Product (Hormones), (Jan. 16, 1998), (adopted Feb. 13, 1998) available at http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/ dispu_e/cases_e/ds26_e.htm (last visited Mar. 8, 2006).
[40] Miller & Kilman, supra note 37.
[41] BLOOMBERG, supra note 36.
[42] GUARDIAN UNLIMITED, Sweden Plans to be World's First Oil-free Economy, Feb. 8, 2006, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1704955,00.html (last visited Mar. 11, 2006).
[43] Sweden, id.
[44] Sweden, id.
[45] CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, Britain Accelerates Toward Cleaner Future - with Wheat (Feb.8, 2006), available at http://www.csmonitor.com/ 2006/0208/p06s01-woeu.html (last visited Mar. 11, 2006).
[46] Britain, id.
[47] BBC News, Biofuel Raises Global Dilemmas, Jan. 17, 2006, available http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4603272.stm (last visited Mar. 8, 2006).
[48] Sweden, supra note 42.
[49] IRINNews.Org, UN OFFICE FOR THE COORDINATION OF HUMANTARIAN AFFAIRS, Water shortages a looming disaster, say experts (Jan. 24, 2006), available at http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=51296 &SelectRegion=Middle_East&SelectCountry=YEMEN (last visited Mar. 28, 2006).
[50] Lester Brown, EARTH POLICY INSTITUTE, World Creating Food Bubble Economy Based on Unsustainable Use of Water (Mar. 13, 2003), available at http://www.casavaria.com/eco/epi/030313food-bubble.htm (last visited Mar. 28, 2006).
[51] Brown, id.
[52] Khalil Al-Buraih, Alternative Water Resources Needed to Save Life,YEMEN OBSERVER, Vol. IX - Issue 04, Feb. 4, 2006, available at http://www.yobserver.com/news_9443.php (last visited Mar. 28, 2006).
[53] IRINNews.Org, supra note 49.
[54] IRINNews.Org, supra note 49.
[55] MILLENNIUM CHALLENGE CORPORATION, Yemen suspended from threshold program (Nov. 28, 2005), available at. http://www.mca.gov/about_us/ congressional_notifications/112805-cn_Yemen_suspended.pdf (last visited Mar. 12, 2006).
