United Nations Environment Programme
http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications/int_law.pdf

[Press release] The United Nations Environment Programme has just issued a report to coincide with the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment which is celebrated each year on 6 November.

This report inventories and analyses the range of international laws that protect the environment during armed conflict. With a view to identifying the current gaps and weaknesses in this system, the authors examine the relevant provisions within four bodies of international law – international humanitarian law (IHL), international criminal law (ICL), international environmental law (IEL), and international human rights law (HRL). The report concludes with twelve concrete recommendations on ways to strengthen this legal framework and its enforcement.

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme
http://www.teebweb.org/

[From Greenwire article] Investing billions of dollars today to protect threatened ecosystems and halt biodiversity loss could result in huge cost savings in the long-term, according to a U.N.-backed report released today…

An annual investment of some $45 billion on expanded protected areas would save up to $5 trillion a year over a period of decades, Sukhdev said. For example, last year Vietnam spent $1 million replanting nearly 12,000 hectares of mangroves, which will result in $7 million saved on dike maintenance.

Such examples should be multiplied thousands of times over, said Pavan Sukhdev, who headed the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity paper.

Shaping the Future of America’s Outdoor Resources
Source: Resources for the Future

The nation’s parks, public lands, waterways, and other outdoor recreational assets provide the American public a multitude of benefits, but a new study by Resources for the Future concludes that they face major challenges in funding and maintaining the condition of these lands and associated amenities.

This wide-ranging study, The State of the Great Outdoors: America’s Parks, Public Lands, and Recreation Resources, delves into the status of America’s outdoor resources, the demand for recreation, and the financing of conservation, parks, and open space. It was carried out in conjunction with the Outdoor Resources Review Group, a bipartisan assemblage of public officials, conservation specialists, and recreation professionals that released its own policy recommendations in a July 2009 report.

In the new study, the first comprehensive review of outdoor recreation since the late 1980s, RFF Researchers Margaret Walls, Sarah Darley, and Juha Siikamäki highlight notable trends and identify several emerging issues of concern for policymakers.

According to the authors, declining government support for parks and other public lands “have led to maintenance backlogs, deteriorating infrastructure, resource degradation, and overall reductions in the quality of the recreational experience in many locations.” These developments have had consequences for some 655 million acres currently managed by federal agencies, including the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Army Corps of Engineers, and Bureau of Reclamation. Original surveys by the authors revealed that state and local parks are also suffering.

+ Full Report (PDF; 11.2 MB)

What is your vision of how the public will track environmental issues and developments in the next five years?

I’m biased. I think public broadcasting and better government regulation can save the world.

OK, maybe not save it. But in terms of a mission driven information distributor, public media, in particular public radio, has the best shot. NPR is innovating by leaps and bounds, poaching talent from USA Today and the New York Times to ramp up their online distribution and across mobile devices. (Although I’ll be honest, I am fearful about bringing in so many commercial folks into public broadcasting – to me, it just shows how bad the System has been about cultivating talent – but that is for another blog post.)…

Tied in with public media’s role in distributing information about environmental issues is our public library system. Public libraries were dying 15 years ago. Now they are vital information access points in bridging the gap between the information rich and the information poor. I’d love to see public libraries as part of a revitalized public sphere, where we come together to talk about these issues. Using mobile technology to connect people digitally, the public library is the physical space where words become action, action becomes policy, policy becomes change. What I love about the public library model is that it mimics the Internet as well. Each library as a hub with its community network spreading out, connecting with other hubs.

I really believe librarians are going to serve a much more significant role as information midwives as newspapers decline and the role of journalism shifts away from gatekeeping. Can you tell I love libraries?

Even as the old  “that’s the way it is” model of mass media is increasingly tested by the Web, there are interesting experiments under way that show how far-flung, yet important, issues like marine pollution can still be effectively covered. One surfaced today in a Science Times article by Lindsey Hoshaw, known on Twitter as @thegarbagegirl. The feature is an up-close examination of the Pacific Ocean’s vast patch of plastic flotsam, reported with travel money provided by readers of Spot.us.

Here’s an idea we haven’t seen before. We were a skeptical at first but after a short time we can say we like what Newsy is up to. The current version of the service has been available since April, 2009 when it was relaunched. The Newsy iPhone app launched a couple of weeks ago.

The idea is as simple and and fresh. We’ve not seen anything similar available for free. Basically, take stories in the news and then bring together multiple video (and sometimes text-based) news reports from a number of sources and place them all on a single location. It’s not only a great way to see how a news story is reported but viewing the same story from different news organizations can potentially turn up facts from one source that the other source does not report on. By the way, the company likes to think to think of themselves as “news analyzer” and not a news aggregator. We think both phrases can work together Whatever you call Newsy there is plenty of value here.

Newsy can be useful in many situations. One potential use is helping to teach critical information skills by reviewing what is and is not reported on in a news story and how it’s reported. For example, how much time does each source give to the story.

But wait, there’s more. In addition to aggregating news reports on the same story, Newsy produces their OWN original video content summarizing the material from each source into a single report. For those who don’t want to view each source video one at a time, here’s a way to learn what each one is reporting in just a minute or two.

For one day each year, residents transform parking spaces across San Francisco into miniature parks.

ePals and Team Earth are joining forces to tackle five of the biggest issues facing our planet: climate, water, food, health and waste.

By almost any measure, this is the greenest White House in history, one that is rapidly reinvigorating federal environmental policy in a quest to deliver on the president’s campaign promises. How many promises ultimately get kept will hinge in large part on the level of pushback from Congress, the courts, and industry. But, no matter how strong the headwinds, long gone are the days when the Environmental Protection Agency was performing a vanishing act — failing, according to its many critics, to live up to its name.

EPA Releases Reports on Dam Integrity Assessments at 17 Coal Ash Impoundments
Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

As part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ongoing national effort to assess the management of coal combustion residuals, EPA is releasing the final contractor reports assessing the structural integrity of 17 impoundments and similar management units containing coal combustion residuals, commonly referred to as coal ash, at nine facilities. These 17 impoundments have a “high” or “significant” hazard potential rating. A high hazard potential rating is not related to the stability of those impoundments but to the potential for harm should the impoundment fail. A significant hazard potential rating means impoundment failure can cause economic loss, environmental damage, or damage to infrastructure.

The assessments have rated the structural integrity of seven impoundments as “satisfactory,” nine units as “fair,” and one unit as “poor.” None of the units assessed received an “unsatisfactory” rating. According to dam safety experts, only impoundments rated as unsatisfactory pose immediate safety threats.

+ Coal Ash Reports

Toward a Transatlantic Green New Deal: Tackling the Climate and Economic Crises
Source: Worldwatch Institute for the Heinrich Böll Foundation
From the Introduction:

The grave financial and economic crisis that broke into full view in the fall of 2008 has dominated not only headlines but also government and business deliberations. Bailout efforts and stimulus packages of unprecedented scope have taken center stage, as attempts to stave off the specter of a second Great Depression unfold. In sharp contrast with the laissez-faire attitude of the past three decades, the question now is not whether government can play a useful and central role, but what the specifics of government action should be.

As governments struggle to address the economic crisis, climate change presents another grave threat. The findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) make it increasingly clear that urgent action is needed to dramatically reduce global carbon emissions in the coming decades. Negotiations are currently underway on a successor agreement to the 1992 Kyoto Protocol, and are expected to culminate in December at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Failure to act threatens serious and irreversible damage to the world’s ecosystems, risks sea level rise and natural disasters of increasing frequency and magnitude, and is likely to have devastating impacts on food production, on economic well-being, and even on habitability in some parts of the world.

In some government and business circles at least, climate action is still too often seen as a recipe for economic damage. There is therefore a danger that some governments may decide to postpone serious action on climate until the economic crisis is resolved – even though fears of environmental action as a job killer are over-blown and climate inaction may ultimately cause large-scale job loss. According to the landmark 2006 Stern Review, failing to take action on climate change will lead to future annual economic losses of 5-20 percent of global GDP, while the annual costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to manageable levels would be around 1 percent of global GDP.

There is growing recognition of the imperative to address the economic and environmental crises together rather than separately. This means that the solution to current economic problems lies not in pushing “shovel-ready” programs like more road building or in simply restarting the engine of consumption, but rather in laying the foundations for a fundamental green transformation.

Support is growing around the world for an integrated response to the current economic and environmental crises, increasingly referred to as the “Green New Deal.” The term is a modern-day variation of the U.S. New Deal, an ambitious effort launched by President Franklin Roosevelt to lift the United States out of the Great Depression. The New Deal of that era entailed a strong government role in economic planning and a series of stimulus packages launched between 1933 and 1938 that created jobs through ambitious governmental programs, including the construction of roads, trails, dams, and schools. Today’s Green New Deal proposals are also premised on the importance of decisive governmental action, but incorporate policies to respond to pressing environmental challenges through a new paradigm of sustainable economic progress.

+ Direct link to document (PDF; 818.1 KB)

As far as top-level domains (TLDs) are concerned, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has full control over whether or not we see new TLDs make it to the web. Most of us are pretty content with the ones we have, like .com, .edu, .net, .org, but Dot Eco is trying to muster up support and momentum for a new TLD: .eco.

The organization has partnered with former Vice President Al Gore, the Sierra Club, and a number of other notably green personalities and organizations to create awareness for their .eco environmental initiative. The domain’s differentiating factor is that 50% of profits generated by domain registrations will be donated to non-profits and environmental causes.

The green blogoshphere pays homage to a senator who has done much for the environment. Plus, a bunch of news that will remind you just how much environmentalists will miss the Kennedy power house.

During the first seven months of the Obama presidency, the administration charted a new course for a green economy. It approved a stimulus package with roughly$50 billion for renewable energy and environmental projects while devoting other funds to everything from Cash for Clunkers to improving energy efficiency in the homes of Native Americans. So, who is behind the White House’s environmental efforts?

As the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson wears many hats: environmentalist, upholder of anti-pollution policy and toxic chemical regulator, to name a few.

But when she reflects on her role as the first African-American to head the agency, her aim is to make people see the connection between the environment and their lives.

Jackson spoke to ESSENCE.com about school safety, asthma, environmental racism — and what she’s doing to battle all three. The following is an edited version of that interview.

Compromises made to win passage of a climate-change bill have infuriated and disappointed environmental activists.

The CALL FOR POSTER ABSTRACTS has been released! (Poster Abstract Information) All poster abstracts are due July 31, 2009. The hotel room block and a preliminary agenda are also available. Symposium registration will be available in July. For the most up-to-date information about the Symposium, visit www.serdp-estcp.org/symposium. If you have any questions, please e-mail partners@hgl.com or call the Symposium contact line at 703-736-4548.

Scientific Integrity:  EPA’s Efforts to Enhance the Credibility and Transparency of Its Scientific Processes, by John B. Stephenson, director, natural resources and environment, before a joint hearing of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and its Subcommittee on Oversight.  GAO-09-773T, June 9.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-09-773T
Highlights – http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d09773thigh.pdf

Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor is now President Obama’s official nominee for the Supreme Court, and her background has already been picked apart by liberals and conservatives alike. But what does Sotomayor’s appointment mean in terms of the environment?

The Wall Street Journal reports that Sotomayor has an important environmental ruling under her belt — one that was just overturned by the Supreme Court, but may provide some insight into her environmental views.

Paul Anastas, the Director of Yale University’s Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering and Teresa and H. John Heinz III Professor in the Practice of Chemistry for the Environment, has been selected by President Obama as EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Research and Development. He will lead EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD), which is the scientific research arm of EPA.

Trained as a synthetic organic chemist, Dr. Anastas is credited with establishing the field of “green chemistry” — a term he coined inn 1991 — during his time working for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where he was the chief of the Industrial Chemistry Branch in EPA’s Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances and director of the U.S. Green Chemistry Program. From 1999 to 2004, during the Clinton administration, he was the assistant director for the environment in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He then served as the founding director of the Green Chemistry Institute, headquartered at the American Chemical Society. While there, he established 24 green chemistry chapters in countries around the world, including China, Ethiopia, India, Japan and South Africa.

Green chemistry is the study of how to design chemical products and processes in ways that are sustainable and not harmful for humans and the environment. Dr. Anastas spoke about green chemistry at NCSE’s 2007 national conference: Integrating Environment and Human Health.

Dr. Anastas told NCSE that if confirmed, he would “always fight for scientists”. NCSE congratulates Dr. Anastas on his nomination and looks forward to working with him when he is confirmed as Assistant Administrator.

EPA’s Office of Research & Development (ORD) is organized into three national laboratories, four national centers, and two offices located in 14 facilities around the country and in Washington, D.C. These labs, centers, and offices provide information and technical support to EPA program offices, regions, state/municipal/tribal governments, and other agencies performing environmental research, assessment, and risk management. ORD scientists also collaborate with private-sector partners to address important environmental issues. The National Center for Environmental Research supports EPA’s Science To Achieve Results (STAR) research and fellowship program.

In the early 1990s, Mary Dye began walking her dog in a large, grassy meadow at the Miller Meadow Forest Preserve in Maywood.

Back then, piles of limestone sat in a fenced-off area, the result of the ongoing Deep Tunnel project. As she strolled through fields of wildflowers, Dye said she waited for the day when Miller Meadow would be restored to its original state.

Today, Dye said she is still waiting, and now environmental groups have joined her in raising concerns about the restoration of Miller Meadow, contending that the site poses hazards to visitors and the environment.

Specifically, they are concerned about numerous shards of broken concrete, glass, brick and metal pipes that are scattered across the site — and the erosion that is carrying debris and gray sludge, used to promote vegetation, toward the nearby Des Plaines River.

To build support for legislation, environmental marketers are literally changing the terms of the climate debate.

Green at Fifteen? How 15-year-olds perform in environmental science and geoscience in PISA 2006
Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Never before have the stakes been so high for the role of science education in shaping how people interact with the environment. Human activities responsible for the production of greenhouse gases, the accumulation of waste, the fragmentation or destruction of ecosystems and the depletion of resources are having a substantial impact on the environment. As a result, threats to the environment are prominently discussed in the media, and citizens world wide are increasingly faced with the need to understand complex environmental issues.

Environmental science and geoscience continue to generate comprehensive and complex knowledge. Therefore, the challenge for education is not only to produce more and better trained environmental scientists, but also to support informed and motivated citizens who are capable of understanding, interpreting and acting upon sophisticated scientific theory and evidence. The OECD’s PISA 2006 assessment of the science competencies of 15-year-olds offers the first comprehensive and internationally comparative database of students’ knowledge about the environment and environment-related issues. Green at Fifteen? presents an analysis of this knowledge base, including information on the sources of students’ awareness of environmental science, their attitudes towards the environment and how these attitudes interrelate with their performance in environmental science.

+ Full Document (PDF; 3.9 MB)
+ PISA 2006 results

See also: Students Least Informed about Environmental Science Are Most Optimistic (National Science Foundation)

From a technology perspective, things have changed a lot since the first Earth Days of the 1970s.

After barely moving for decades, there’s been a surge in innovation in energy the past five years, fueled both by society’s growing interest in clean energy and by the technology revolutions in other industries, like IT and biotech. That has expanded the definition of clean energy from solar and wind to many other areas.

“We are in a new era of energy innovation,” declared Daniel Yergin last week at a forum on clean-energy policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Yergin is someone who should know. As the author of “The Prize,” a book about the history of the oil industry, and co-founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, he advises CEOs of giant oil and gas firms on energy strategy. Like many people in green tech, he’s not a typical 1970s-era tree hugger but a hard-boiled business man who sees technology change driven by economic, environmental, and national security reasons.

Innovation “runs across all sectors and it has a very strong climate change focus,” Yergin said. “Clearly, one of the areas of major innovation is the nexus of transportation, smart grid, and renewable and alternative” energy.

Which technologies specifically have a good shot at making the biggest impact? As part of our Earth Day 2009 coverage, we try to handicap technologies that bear watching.

The Association’s first annual meeting will take place in Madison, Wisconsin, October 8-11, 2009. Go to our web site to submit your abstracts and proposals for participation. See the attached PDF for information about the conference and opportunities for participation.

AESS provides identity, collective voice and continuing education for individuals in higher education engaged in environmental research, teaching, problem solving, and service to society. The Association promotes the development of these collective concerns by

• enlarging the capacity for cross-campus collaboration, mentoring, and shared scholarship;
• creating a collegial process for networking, sharing ideas, publishing, and promoting interdisciplinary programs and conferences;
• advancing professional standards and guidelines for environmental scholars and scientists;
• supporting the career development of students and faculty members;
• promoting research, discussion, and outreach that expand public knowledge about the environment and improve environmental science, policy, and management.

AESS is envisioned as a community of environmental scholars and scientists, rather than a confederation of disciplines. Fundamental to this vision is a conviction that broad advances in environmental knowledge require disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches to research and learning. AESS looks forward to working with existing disciplinary associations and is already working with the National Council for Science and Environment, its Council of Environmental Deans and Directors, and others engaged in the vital task of linking academia, government, business, and the public on matters of environmental sustainability.

The Association employs a variety of media and venues to carry out this mission, including its web site (www.aess.info), professional newsletter, a planned flagship journal, and national and regional conferences. Additional information about these communication channels are available on the web site, including three issues of our newsletter. Plans for the launch of the AESS journal in 2010 are well underway.

Complete with mug shots, the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of fugitives was established to draw attention to serious environmental crimes.

The energy and environmental front is coming into focus in the Obama transition:

President-elect Barack Obama will tap:

• Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu as his energy secretary.
• Former New Jersey environmental commissioner Lisa Jackson as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
• Former EPA administrator Carol Browner, who served in the Clinton administration and served as director of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection before that, as a high-level energy adviser reporting to the president.

A senior Democrat confirmed these appointments for Tribune’s Washington Bureau this evening. Obama plans a press conference in Chicago on Thursday.

Maryland State Police labeled members of a Montgomery County environmental group as terrorists and extremists days after they held a nonviolent protest at an appearance by then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. at a Bethesda high school.

Police files released to the activists reveal that the governor’s security detail alerted the state police’s Homeland Security and Intelligence Division to what troopers guarding Ehrlich described as “aggressive protesting” by the Chesapeake Climate Action Network in 2005.

League of Conservation Voters Releases 2008 National Environmental Scorecard
Source: League of Conservation Voters

The League of Conservation Voters, which works to turn environmental values into national priorities, today released the 2008 National Environmental Scorecard. For 30 years, the non-partisan National Environmental Scorecard from LCV has been the nationally accepted yardstick used to rate Members of Congress on conservation and energy issues.
…
The 2008 Scorecard includes 11 Senate and 13 House votes dominated by energy but also encompassing other environmental issues. This year, 67 House members and 27 senators earned a perfect 100 percent score, which is significantly higher than the 33 House members and 3 senators who earned a 100 percent in 2007. This year, 70 House members and 2 senators earned an appalling score of zero percent, compared with 48 house members and 9 senators in 2007.

The average House score in 2008 was 56 percent, and the average Senate score was 57 percent, which is slightly higher than the 53 percent House and 52 percent Senate averages in 2007. California, Connecticut, Michigan, Montana, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin all had perfect Senate averages of 100 percent, while Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and South Carolina’s senators averaged just 9 percent. In the House, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, and Maryland all averaged above 90 percent, while Montana and Wyoming were both below 10 percent.

+ National Environmental Scorecard 08

Matt collected data on the estimated power from potential wind farm sites and solar power facilities, and found that because solar and wind power are available at different times, using both sources together makes a more reliable and cheaper power system than just using wind or solar alone.

And Matt Fripp is only one of 32 dynamic, creative students who received EPA STAR fellowships to complete their masters or Ph.D. degrees and work on solutions to important environmental challenges for the future. Another 22 new students were awarded Greater Research Opportunities (GRO) fellowships to complete their graduate and undergraduate degrees.

“These remarkable young people will undoubtedly have an impact on the future of our environment, “said George Gray, EPA’s assistant administrator for the Office of Research and Development. “We are proud to help educate these fellows who are making an environmental difference.”

EPA’s Office of Research and Development supports several fellowship programs in an effort to address our country’s most important environmental workforce needs. EPA’s STAR graduate fellowship program supports some of the nation’s most promising masters and doctoral candidates. A total of 879 applicants competed this year for 32 fellowships.

EPA’s GRO fellowship program helps build environmental studies programs at universities with limited funding for research and development. A total of 156 applicants competed this year for 22 fellowships. Several former GRO fellows now work for EPA, including 2002 GRO fellow Toiya Goodlow who works as a chemist in the Office of Pesticide Programs, and 1990 GRO fellow Dr. Brandon Jones, who is a marine biologist in the Office of Research and Development.

Since the fellowship program began in 1995, EPA has awarded more than 2,200 fellowships to students in almost every state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. All applications for EPA’s fellowship programs are rigorously peer reviewed.

EPA is now accepting applications from students for GRO undergraduate fellowships. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or be lawfully admitted to the U.S. for permanent residence.

2008 STAR and GRO Fellowship Awardees: http://www.epa.gov/ncer/08fellowships

EPA also launched a new Web site that allows the user to search the full technical report for specific trends in air, water, and land.

The 2008 ROE HD, ROE and searchable eROE: epa.gov/roe

This one’s fun for the whole family –– who’s talking the green talk? Obama or McCain? And since when? SpeechWars, a nifty research tool developed by Jerusalemite Ben Reis, can help you find out what green words presidential candidates are really using in their speeches, and since when.

Fluorocarbons–common chemicals in which carbon is bound to fluorine–are potent greenhouse gases, and some form toxic compounds that can accumulate in the environment. But neutralizing fluorocarbons has required a process whose high temperature drives up its cost, limiting its adoption. Researchers at Brandeis University report in Science today that they have found a catalyst that breaks the carbon-fluorine bond at room temperature, promising easier and more effective disposal of pesky pollutants.

Devastating declines of amphibian species around the world are a sign of a biodiversity disaster larger than just frogs, salamanders, and their ilk, according to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley.

In an article published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers argue that substantial die-offs of amphibians and other plant and animal species add up to a new mass extinction facing the planet.

• Scars linger in Love Canal – and former residents — Associated Press, August 1, 2008
• The lessons of Love Canal lost unless Superfund is fixed — New York Daily News, August 7, 2008. Opinion piece by Lois Marie Gibbs, one of the Love Canal residents who spearheaded the community effort to get the state and federal governments to do something about the problem.
• On Love Canal Anniversary, Regional Institute Looks at WNY’s Environmental Burden — University of Buffalo Regional Institute, August 6, 2008. News release announcing the publication of a policy brief entitled Thirty Years from Love Canal that looks at the effect the disaster has had on environmental policy and public awareness.

For some historical perspective, see:

• The Long History of a Toxic-Waste Nightmare, a timeline published by the New York Times on the tenth anniversary in 1988.
• The Love Canal Tragedy — EPA Journal, January 1979. Piece by Eckardt C. Beck, who was U.S. EPA Region 2 administrator from 1977-1979.
• The Love Canal Collections, an online archive of documents and press clippings from the University of Buffalo Library.

The country has a chance to continue on its environmental path, beyond the Games and the borders of its capital.

Diana Beresford-Kroeger brings together Western medicine and botany to advocate for the planting of trees with beneficial properties.

Governmental inaction is prompting environmental groups and big business to cut unprecedented deals to promote energy exploration and other development in return for major conservation initiatives.

The agreements preserve large amounts of undeveloped land, impose stricter environmental practices than required by law and generate big investments in alternative energy. The deals also clear the way for oil drilling, new power plants and large residential developments.

The Environmental Protection Agency is telling its pollution enforcement officials not to talk with congressional investigators, reporters and even the agency’s own inspector general, according to an internal e-mail provided to The Associated Press.

The June 16 message instructs 11 managers in the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, the branch of the agency charged with making sure environmental laws are followed, to remind their staff members to keep quiet.

Weekend Edition Sunday, June 29, 2008 · Sci-fi writer Paolo Bacigalupi uses real environmental science as a starting point for his stories. His collection, called Pump Six, describes a near future where massive droughts create a black market for calories. Listen Now

A new partnership between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) and the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont will help decision makers more accurately determine the costs and benefits of actions that alter ecosystem services — the goods and services of nature such as clean air and water, erosion and flood control, soil enrichment, and food and fiber. Ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems.

Our decision to include the areas listed is based primarily on audit, evaluation, or investigative work we performed and additional analysis of Agency operations. Thus, it is possible that additional challenges exist in areas that we have not yet reviewed or that other significant findings could result from additional work. Our key management challenges are listed below with detailed summaries provided in Attachment 1. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss your reaction to the list and any comments you might have.

Management Challenge

• Threat and Risk Assessments
• EPA’s Organization and Infrastructure
• Performance Measurement
• Water and Wastewater Infrastructure
• Meeting Homeland Security Requirements
• Oversight of Delegations to States
• Chesapeake Bay Program
• Voluntary Programs – Update

A U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) investigation showed that pesticides and degradation products detected most frequently in shallow groundwater samples at four study sites were predominantly from triazines and chloracetanilides, according to a recent press release.

Biodiversity Hotspots, maintained by Conservation International, details the richest and most threatened plant and animal habitats on earth. Includes links to hotspot science, hotspots by region, and links to other resources. An excellent resource for exploring the effect of climate change and development on natural resources around the world.

Worldometers provides world statistics updated in real time. There are categories for Environment, Water, and Energy, among others.

• vehicles and engines
• fuel and fuel additives
• ozone depleting substances
• chemical substances regulated under the Toxic Substances Control Act
• pesticides, including pesticide residues on foods
• hazardous wastes
• plumbing products
• scrap metal.

The portal is being released in conjunction with the federal government’s update to the November 2007 Action Plan for Import Safety. The update summarizes achievements in import safety over the past several months and key steps planned to enhance the safety of imported goods.

EPA’s new Web portal is available at: epa.gov/compliance/international/importexport.html

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released a report that can help reduce the potential impact of climate change on estuaries, forests, wetlands, coral reefs, and other sensitive ecosystems. The report, entitled Preliminary Review of Adaptation Options for Climate-Sensitive Ecosystems and Resources, identifies strategies to protect the environment as these changes occur.