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also below PlanetArk website, 6 Jun 05 UN Urges "Green" Planning for Burgeoning Cities Story by David Fogarty PlanetArk website, 6 Jun 05 FACTBOX - Environment Suffers as Cities Boom PlanetArk website, 6 Jun 05 Environment Atlas Reveals Planet Wide Devastation Story by Jeremy Lovell UNEP website, 4 Jun 05 “One Planet Many People” Atlas Launched to Mark World Environment Day 2005 Rapid Urbanization, Shrimp Farming and Forest Loss Among Highlights Environment News Network, 7 Jun 05 Mayors from Around World Sign 'Urban Environmental Accords' By Justin M. Norton, Associated Press BBC Online, 4 Jun 05 Changing planet revealed in atlas Satellite images reveal how the environment has changed dramatically in recent decades. An atlas of environmental change compiled by the United Nations reveals some of the dramatic transformations that are occurring to our planet. It compares and contrasts satellite images taken over the past few decades with contemporary ones. These highlight in vivid detail the striking make-over wrought in some corners of the Earth by deforestation, urbanisation and climate change. The atlas has been released to mark World Environment Day. The United Nations Environmental Programme (Unep) produced One Planet Many People: Atlas of our Changing Environment in collaboration with other agencies such as the US Geological Survey and the US space agency (Nasa). Transformed world Among the transformations highlighted in the atlas are the huge growth of greenhouses in southern Spain, the rapid rise of shrimp farming in Asia and Latin America and the emergence of a giant, shadow puppet-shaped peninsula at the mouth of the Yellow River that has built up through transportation of sediment in the waters. The effects of retreating glaciers on mountains and in polar regions, deforestation in South America and forest fires across sub-Saharan Africa are also shown in the atlas. see BB's in pictures for the photos This year's World Environment Day, which will be hosted by San Francisco in California, will focus on ways of making cities more environmentally friendly and resource-efficient. "The battle for sustainable development, for delivering a more environmentally stable, just and healthier world, is going to be largely won and lost in our cities," said Klaus Toepfer, Unep's executive director. "Cities pull in huge amounts of resources including water, food, timber, metals and people. They export large amounts of wastes including household and industrial wastes, waste water and the gases linked with global warming. "Thus their impacts stretch beyond their physical borders affecting countries, regions and the planet as a whole." World Environment Day was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. It is celebrated each year on 5 June. PlanetArk website, 6 Jun 05 UN Urges "Green" Planning for Burgeoning Cities Story by David Fogarty (Reporting by Alister Doyle in Oslo, Anis Ahmed in Dhaka and Tamora Vidaillet in Beijing) SINGAPORE - From Bondi Junction in Australia to Bindura in Zimbabwe, millions marked World Environment Day on Sunday by planting trees, picking up litter and staging rallies aimed at making cities cleaner and greener. By 2030, more than 60 percent of the world's population will live in cities, up from almost half now and just a third in 1950, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said. The growth poses huge problems, ranging from clean water supplies to trash collection. This year's theme for World Environment Day is better "green" planning for the world's burgeoning cities, many of them blighted by air pollution, fouled rivers and poor sanitation. "Already, one of every three urban dwellers lives in a slum," Annan said in a statement. "Let us create green cities," he said, adding that unless planning improved, the UN goal of halving poverty by 2015 would not be met. Activists around the world mark June 5, the date of the first environmental summit in Stockholm in 1972, as the UN's World Environment Day. In San Francisco, the main host of the event, mayors from more than 50 cities including Shanghai, Kabul, Buenos Aires, Sydney, Phnom Penh, Jakarta, Rome and Istanbul planned to sign up for a scheme setting new green standards for city planning. Cities would be ranked from zero to four stars according to compliance with a set of 21 targets. In Sri Lanka, a group was to plant trees to help build up the coastline after the devastating Dec. 26 tsunami, while in Greece, the port of Zakynthos planned to ban cars and allow free public transport. Around Australia, green groups and local councils organised festivals to promote awareness of environmental issues from recycling to tree planting to cleaning up waterways. At Bondi Junction in Sydney, the Waverley Council's event coincides with an organic food market and demonstration of a truck running on compressed natural gas. In Bindura, Zimbabwe, students will initiate waste minimisation scheme and a town clean-up is also planned. India, the world's second most populous nation, is staging myriad events to promote greener cities with foundations, companies and NGOs organising anything from poetry readings to debates, tree planting to mass clean-ups. In the Gaza Strip, a beach clean-up was also planned. BATTLE FOR THE FUTURE The United Nations says cities are placing a huge drain on the world's dwindling resources and time is running out to make them far more efficient and less polluting. "The battle for sustainable development, for delivering a more environmentally stable, just and healthier world, is going to be largely won and lost in our cities," said Klaus Toepfer, head of the UN Environment Programme. Managed well, cities can help protect the environment by reducing pressure on rural areas where humans can threaten the habitats of animals and plants. In China, home to a fifth of humanity, the focus in 2005 was to curb noise pollution and clean up fouled water, air and rubbish in urban areas, Pan Yue, vice minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration, told Chinese Central Television. About 90 percent of rivers running through Chinese cities were severely polluted, CCTV said on Sunday. Bangladesh, a crowded nation of 144 million people, faced serious problems including rising sea levels and crippling floods, Environment and Forest Minister Tariqul Islam said. Just as alarming, the population of Dhaka, the capital, would rise from 10 million today to 25 million in 2030 if the current trend of migration and birth rate persisted, he told a news conference on Saturday. The mayors' meeting in San Francisco would set goals including a cut in their cities' emissions of heat-trapping gases from cars, factories and power plants by 25 percent by 2030. That is more ambitious than under the UN's Kyoto protocol, which seeks to cut emissions from developed nations by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. "Cities are prolific users of natural resources and generators of waste. They produce most of the greenhouse gases that are causing global climate change," Annan said. Other targets for the cities will include ensuring that residents would not have to walk more than 500 metres (550 yards) in 2015 to reach public transport or an open space. Some cities used Sunday to get tough on waste. The west Australian city of Perth announced a crackdown on litterbugs while the South Australian state government called for a national ban on plastic shopping bags by 2008. PlanetArk website, 6 Jun 05 FACTBOX - Environment Suffers as Cities Boom SAN FRANCISCO - The world marks annual World Environment Day on Sunday grappling with headaches caused by fast-growing cities. The UN Environment Programme gave the following facts about cities: * The world is becoming more urban. In 1950, fewer than one person in three lived in a town or city. Today, nearly half the world's population is urban and by 2030 the proportion will be more than 60 per cent. * Fastest growth in the next 25 years will be in urban areas in developed nations with fewer than 500,000 people. In 2000, there were more than 400 cities with more than one million inhabitants. * "Mega cities" -- urban areas with more than 10 million inhabitants -- include Tokyo/Yokohama, Mexico City, Seoul, New York, Sao Paulo, Mumbai, New Delhi and Los Angeles. In 1950, New York was the only city with more than 10 million people. * In developed countries, 75 per cent of the population is urban, with lower percentages in poorer regions. * Urbanisation in rich countries has largely coincided with economic growth, a trend not matched in poor regions. In Africa, more than 70 per cent of the urban population -- more than 160 million people -- lives in slums. * At least one billion people, or one-sixth of humanity, live in slums and informal squatter settlements, mainly in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The figure could double by 2020. * One target of the UN's millennium goals is to "significantly improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by the year 2020". * Unsafe water, inadequate sanitation and air pollution are among threats in slums. Acute respiratory infections and diarrhoea are the biggest killers of children under five. * Power generation, industry and transport, now mainly associated with towns and cities in the developed world, are responsible for most emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming. * Climate change could swamp low-lying coastal towns and cities as a result of a rise in the sea level, and cause more frequent and severe storms. About 40 per cent of the world's population lives within 60 km (40 miles) of the coast. * Municipalities can spend as much as 30 per cent of their budget on waste disposal, mostly on transport. * An average North American city with a population of 650,000 requires 30,000 sq km (11,580 sq mile) of land to service its needs. By contrast, a similar sized but less affluent city in India requires just 2,800 sq km. * A city of 10 million people -- such as Manila, Cairo or Rio de Janeiro -- imports at least 6,000 tonnes of food every day. * Managed well, cities can support growing populations. Examples include tree plantings and setting aside green spaces, the use of so-called "grey water" to flush toilets, low-polluting vehicles and efficient public transport systems, low-energy lighting and waste recycling. PlanetArk website, 6 Jun 05 Environment Atlas Reveals Planet Wide Devastation Story by Jeremy Lovell LONDON - The devastating impact of mankind on the planet is dramatically illustrated in pictures published on Saturday showing explosive urban sprawl, major deforestation and the sucking dry of inland seas over less than three decades. Mexico City mushrooms from a modest urban centre in 1973 to a massive blot on the landscape in 2000, while Beijing shows a similar surge between 1978 and 2000 in satellite pictures published by the United Nations in a new environmental atlas. Delhi sprawls explosively between 1977 and 1999, while from 1973 to 2000 the tiny desert town of Las Vegas turns into a monster conurbation of one million people -- placing massive strain on scarce water supplies. "If there is one message from this atlas it is that we are all part of this. We can all make a difference," UN expert Kaveh Zahedi told reporters at the launch of the "One Planet Many People" atlas on the eve of World Environment Day. Page after page of the 300-page book illustrate in before-and-after pictures from space the disfigurement of the face of the planet wrought by human activities. UN Environment Programme chief Klaus Toepfer has chosen efforts to make cities greener as this year's theme for World Environment Day on Sunday on the basis that the world is becoming increasingly urbanised. "Cities pull in huge amounts of resources including water, food, timber, metals and people. They export large amounts of wastes including household and industrial wastes, wastewater and the gases linked with global warming," he said in a statement. "Thus their impacts stretch beyond their physical borders affecting countries, regions and the planet as a whole. "So the battle for sustainable development, for delivering a more environmentally stable, just and healthier world, is going to be largely won and lost in our cities," Toepfer added. The destruction of swathes of mangroves in the Gulf of Fonseca off Honduras to make way for extensive shrimp farms shows up clearly in the pictures. The atlas makes the point that not only has it left the estuary bereft of the natural coastal defence provided by the mangroves, but the shrimp themselves have been linked to pollution and widespread damage to the area's ecosystem. And images of the wholesale destruction of vital rainforest around Iguazu Falls -- one of South America's most spectacular waterfalls -- on the borders between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay evoke comparisons with a bulldozer on a rampage. "These illustrate some of the changes we have made to our environment," Zahedi said. "This is a visual tool to capture people's imaginations showing what is really happening." "It serves as an early warning," he added. Environment News Network, 7 Jun 05 Mayors from Around World Sign 'Urban Environmental Accords' By Justin M. Norton, Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO — Mayors from around the world on Sunday signed an international treaty calling for increased use of public transportation and drastic cuts to the amount of trash sent to landfills. The signing of the "Urban Environmental Accords" capped the United Nations World Environment Day Conference in San Francisco. The nonbinding accords list 21 specific actions that can make cities greener. San Francisco was the first U.S. city to host the annual conference. Much of the conference focused on global warming and what mayors can do to curb emissions of "greenhouse gases" such as carbon dioxide that trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere. Mayors participating in Sunday's ceremony came from Zurich, Istanbul, Melbourne, Seattle and dozens of other cities. They signed the agreement before heading outside to hear a 500-member gospel choir sing a song composed for the event called "Together We Can." "What you are doing here today is taking a different approach -- a united approach -- on the stewardship of the environment," U.S. House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi said. The accords call for policies to expand affordable public transportation coverage for city residents within a decade. They also call for increasing access to safe drinking water, with a goal of access for all by 2015. Other goals include creating an accessible park or recreation space within a half-mile of every city resident by 2015 and achieving zero growth in the amount of waste being sent to landfills and incinerators by 2040. Among the most pressing issues was a recommendation to increase the use of renewable energy to meet 10 percent of a city's peak electric load within seven years. "The challenge is to take these goals and ideas and to manifest them. We are accountable to getting things done," San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said. Source: Associated Press UNEP website, 4 Jun 05 “One Planet Many People” Atlas Launched to Mark World Environment Day 2005 Rapid Urbanization, Shrimp Farming and Forest Loss Among Highlights full report | selected images from the report Extracts San Francisco/London/Nairobi, 3 June 2005--The dramatic and, in some cases, damaging environmental changes sweeping planet Earth are brought into sharp focus in a new atlas launched to mark World Environment Day (WED). Produced by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), One Planet Many People: Atlas of our Changing Environment compares and contrasts spectacular satellite images of the past few decades with contemporary ones, some of which have never been seen before. The huge growth of greenhouses in southern Spain, the rapid rise of shrimp farming in Asia and Latin America and the emergence of a giant, shadow puppet-shaped peninsula at the mouth of the Yellow River are among a string of curious and surprising changes seen from space. They sit beside the more conventional, but no less dramatic images of rain forest deforestation in Paraguay and Brazil, rapid oil and gas development in Wyoming, United States, forest fires across sub-Saharan Africa and the retreat of glaciers and ice in polar and mountain areas. The atlas, produced in collaboration with organizations including the United States Geological Survey and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), highlights this theme showing the explosive growth and changes around some of the major cities of the world such as Beijing, Dhaka, Delhi and Santiago (see below). Also covered are developed world cities including Las Vegas, the fastest growing metropolitan area in the United States, and Miami. Miami’s spread westwards may endanger Florida’s famous everglades and their important wildlife and water supplies. Klaus Toepfer, UNEP’s Executive Director, said: “ People living in San Francisco or London may look at these images of deforestation or melting Arctic ice, and wonder what it has to do with them. That these changes are the result of other people’s lifestyles and consumption habits hundreds and thousands of kilometres away. But they would be wrong.” “Cities pull in huge amounts of resources including water, food, timber, metals and people. They export large amounts of wastes including household and industrial wastes, wastewater and the gases linked with global warming. Thus their impacts stretch beyond their physical borders affecting countries, regions and the planet as a whole,” he added. “So the battle for sustainable development, for delivering a more environmentally stable, just and healthier world, is going to be largely won and lost in our cities,” said Mr. Toepfer. Highlights from One Planet Many People Atlas of Our Changing Environment Asia Pacific and West Asia Asia Pacific Cities It may come as no surprise that Beijing, China’s capital city, has undergone tremendous growth since the start of economic reforms in 1979. Its population now numbers some 13 million. The satellite images underline just how tremendous this has been with Beijing mushrooming from a small central area to one that has turned towns some distance away, such as Ginghe and Fengtai, into suburbs. The expansion is seen to have also gobbled up the deciduous forests to the west and the rice, winter wheat and vegetable plots that once surrounded the city. A similar, huge expansion is seen for Delhi, India’s capital. In 1975, the city had a population of 4.4 million or 3.3 per cent of India’s urban population. By 2000, the city had well over 12 million inhabitants. By 2010, it is set to rise to nearly 21 million. The latest satellite images show Delhi’s growth concentrated in the suburbs of Faridabad, Ghaziabad and Gurgaon. Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, has grown from a city of 2.5 million in the early 1970s to one with more than 10 million. The images chart the spread of urbanization north into Tonji and towards Turag. Sydney is Australia’s largest city with over four million inhabitants. Its growth is seen spreading west towards the Blue Mountains. The urbanization is leading to more and more homes being built in the bush making them vulnerable to summer fires. links Related articles on Global issues: biodiversity biodiversity loss, extinction threats, commercial applications of biodiversity Global issues: global warming issues, policies |
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