Category: Archive

Employment in Germany’s renewable energy may nearly double to 300,000 by 2020

admin /28 March, 2006

Employment in Germany’s renewable energy sector might double by 2020,
helping to lower the country’s near record jobless rate, Environment
Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, said at a media conference.

Five times more jobs than in nuclear energy industry: Bloomberg
quoted Gabriel as saying about 157,000 worked in the renewable energy
industry in 2004 compared with 30,000 in the nuclear energy industry,
He said the number employed in renewables would rise to 170,000 this
year and to 300,000 by 2020.

New jobs can be created, old jobs secured: “Environment policies
can give momentum for innovation, investments, growth and employment,’
Gabriel said, “Especially in structurally weaker regions, expansion of
the renewable energy industry can help to create new jobs and secure
old ones.’

Unemployment rate at 11.3 per cent: Gabriel’s comments came as
Germany’s unemployment rate, adjusted for seasonal swings, levelled at
11.3 per cent last month, the same as in January, when it was the
third-highest in the euro region after Greece and France.

More than 5 million out of work: The unadjusted rate remained
above 5 million for the second month running, a level reached in
February 2004 for the first time since World War 11

Talks soon on energy policy: German Chancellor Angela Merkel
said earlier this month that she would start talks with the energy
industry on 3 April about Germany’s energy policy up to 2020.

Aim to have quarter of power from renewable sources: Gabriel
said the Government aimed to supply one-quarter of Germany’s
electricity from renewable means by 2020, beating its own target by 5
per cent.

India’s resources boom stirs the politics of poverty

admin /28 March, 2006

Forty staff were wounded when hundreds of tribal people attacked a
sponge iron plant near the town of Birmitrapur in the state of Oriya in
India, reported The Australian Financial Review (28/3/2006, p. 12). This follows an incident on January
2, when numbers of tribal people and police were killed in a
confrontation at the Oriya village of Kalinganagar, where India’s Tata
Group plans to build a steel mill.

Faced with growing Indian
and international demand for steel, Indian and foreign firms – among
them South Korea’s Posco, London-based Corus and Australia’s BHP
Billiton – are turning to Orissa’s large iron ore deposits.

But tribal people, Adivasi, make
up a significant proportion of the state’s population of 40 million and
are among its most disadvantaged inhabitants. Friday’s attack was organised
by a tribal rights organisation, the Anchalika Suraksha Samiti. But
resistance to development is also growing among India’s lower castes,
including in Orissa’s neighbouring state of Bihar where popular unrest
is being led by the Naxalites, Maoist peasant insurgents.

Posco seeks comprimise: Posco is keen to reduce local resistance
to its planned $US12 billion ($17 billion) iron/ steel project, billed
as India’s largest foreign investment, near Paradip in Orissa. Last
week the company said that it had reduced its land requirement for the
development from 2000 to 1600 hectares.

Attempt to minimise family relocations: “The plant area has been
downsized after we came to know that 2000 less families will have to be
relocated,” the deputy managing director of Posco-India, TaeHyim Jeong,
told India’s Business Standard financial daily. “Now, just 400 families will have to be taken care of.”

State Govt blocks BHP project: BHP Billiton’s proposed
involvement in the Paradip iron mine/steel mill was blocked when the
Orissa government refused permission for the project to export iron
ore. But this won’t be the end of Australian involvement in Orissa’s
minerals boom.

Fed government to provide funding for projects that encourage farmers to conserve native vegetation

admin /27 March, 2006

The Federal Government is a step closer to developing a plan to pay
farmers for native vegetation conservation work they perform on the
community’s behalf. It will spend $2 million over the next two years
from the Natural Heritage Trust for a series of regional pilot projects
aimed at producing more flexible native vegetation rules, according to Queensland Country Life (23/3/06, p. 6.)

Pilot products help farmers balance business concerns with conservation attempts:
The pilot projects will assess voluntary mechanisms, such as property
management systems, incentive payments, offsets, and extension and
information services. Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran told this
week’s Veg Futures Conference in Albury. “Helping farmers to develop
sustainable, profitable businesses while managing native vegetation for
public and private benefit is an important goal”.

Vegetation policy needs three main features: Mr McGauran said native vegetation policy should:
• Allow farmers to demonstrate their sustainable land use and environmental credentials.
• Recognise the contribution farm management makes to regional priorities and targets.
• Share the costs of managing native vegetation between landholders and the Australian community.

Farming community welcomes these aims The final point has long
been a desire of the farm sector, which believes it has been unfairly
forced to foot the bill for an ill-informed community desire to protect
the environment through inflexible and restrictive land clearing rules.
A recent study by ABARE found the opportunity cost of restricting crop
development to conserve native vegetation in Central and Western NSW
was $1.1 billion (net present value).

Dramatic shrinking of many African rivers from climate change will trigger massive refugee movements

admin /27 March, 2006

Climate change was expected to shrink many African rivers dramatically,
triggering massive refugee movements and even war, according to
scientists at the Africa Earth Observatory Network (AEON).

Significant cut in water supplies: The Reuters Foundation AlertNet said a study published in the journal Science
by the scientists calculated that a predicted drop in rainfall would
significantly reduce water supplies across a quarter of Africa by the
end of this century.

Threat to poverty eradication: “Future climate change poses one
of the greatest threats to poverty eradication on this continent, and
related changes in surface water supply will exacerbate this,” the
scientists warned.

300 million have no access to safe drinking water: Some 300
million of the African continent’s estimated population had no access
to safe drinking water, and 313 million lack basic sanitation.

UN targets not being met on access to water: The United Nations
said earlier this month that, with the exception of Uganda and South
Africa, sub-Saharan Africa was failing to meet UN targets set at the
start of the millennium to halve the number of people without access to
clean water or sanitation by 2015.

Slight rainfall changes to have large impact: The AEON study –
the first to examine the impact of climate change on Africa’s rivers in
such detail – pointed out that 75 per cent of African countries fell at
least partly into a rainfall band where changes in precipitation had a
surprisingly large impact on surface drainage.

10 per cent drop in rainfall cuts surface water by 50 per cent:
The research found that, in regions receiving 500mm of rain a year, a
10 per cent fall in precipitation would cut surface water by 50 per
cent.

Kofi Annan nominates leading Greenie, Achim Steiner, for United Nations Environment Program

admin /27 March, 2006

United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has nominated Achim
Steiner, the head of the world’s largest environmental network, to be
the next executive director of the United Nations Environment Program
(UNEP), succeeding Klaus Toepfer on 15 June.

Four-year term: Steiner, a German national who was expected to
be elected to a four-year term by the General Assembly, is
director-general of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) which had more
than 1000 members including States, government agencies, and
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in 140 countries.

Wide experience: “He has worked both at grassroots level and at
the highest levels of international policy-making to address the
connections between environmental sustainability, social equity, and
economic development,” a spokesman for Mr. Annan said.

Other experience: Before going to the Conservation Union in
2001, Steiner served as head of the World Commission on Dams, the chief
technical adviser of a program for sustainable management of Mekong
River watersheds and as senior policy adviser of IUCN’s Global Policy
Unit, where he developed partnerships between the environmental
community, the World Bank and the UN system.

Five priority areas:
Toepfer, who decided not to seek a third four-year term, began work as
UNEP chief in February 1998. During his tenure, the program was
restructured into five priority areas:

• environmental assessment and early warning;

• development of policy instruments;

• enhanced coordination with environmental conventions;

• technology transfer; and

• support to Africa.

Common Law may stop WorkChoices

admin /27 March, 2006

The government’s ideological obsession with smashing the union movement may be the Achilles heel in the WorkChoices legislation

Industrial Relations lawyers rubbed their hands in anticipation as the Workplace Relations regulations rolled off the presses last week. Their glee is only partly due to the re-emergence as a WorkChoices fable of the famous tale of Sir Frank Packer sacking a delivery boy by accident.

They stand to get more than laughs from the large body of frustrated employers, likely to take the government’s rhetoric at face value and seriously overstep the rules of procedural fairness inherent under common law.