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In the words of The Economist, "Forget China, India and the Internet – economic growth is driven by women", wrote Heather Ridout, chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, in The Australian Financial Review (5/9/2007, p.63).

Active in APEC: "In late June, I chaired a meeting of 400 Asia-Pacific leaders from business, government, academia and civil society, who met to consider issues critical to building a sustainable future. We met under the umbrella of the APEC Women Leaders Network – and I presented the report of the meeting to the APEC Business Advisory Council in Sydney this week."

Women with clear vision: The 2007 APEC WLN was made up of women experienced in the challenges that face small to medium enterprise entrepreneurs. They have clear ideas about the importance of removing regulatory impediments to women establishing new businesses and the value of setting in place business targets on skills development, diversity in decision making and carbon neutrality.

Smart economics: "If we do not draw on the insights and experiences of more than half our population, we are ignoring the knowledge of half our collective brain. By anyone’s thinking, that is not smart economics," Ridout concluded.

Reference: Heather Ridout is chief executive of the Australian Industry Group.

The Australian Financial Review, 5/9/2007, p. 63

Harmful chemicals commonly used: Gray then tried the same experiment with phthalates – the ubiquitous compounds used for softening plastics and thicken lotions, and found in everything from shampoo to vinyl flooring and flexible medical tubing. They also disrupted male development, in this case by stopping the foetus from making testosterone.

Increased risk through value additivity: The mix of two phthalates that Gray used caused many of the same effects on male rat foetuses as a mixture of vinclozolin and procymidone. It makes sense that chemicals targeting the same pathway would have an additive effect. But what about mixtures of chemicals that work via different mechanisms? Surely the individual doses of such chemicals would not be additive in the same way.

Principle does work: In 2004, Gray and his team put this to the test by mixing procymidone with a phthalate at levels that, on their own, would produce no effect. Because the chemicals work via different routes, he expected that the combination wouldn’t have any effect either. But they did.

Wreaking havoc in reproductive system!: Then the team mixed seven compounds – with four independent routes of action – each at a level that did not produce an effect. "We expected nothing to happen, but when we give all [the compounds] together, all the animals are malformed," Gray said. "We disrupted the androgen receptor signalling pathway by several different mechanisms. It seems the tissue can’t tell the difference and is responding in an additive fashion."

Time to take cognizance: All of this was throwing up problems for regulatory agencies around the world. Governments generally don’t take into account the additive effects of different chemicals, with the exception of dioxins -which accumulate to dangerous levels and disrupt hormones in the body – and some pesticides.

Easier said than done!: For the most part, risk assessments were done one chemical at a time. Even then, regulation was no simple issue. First you needed to know a chemical’s potency, identify which tissues it harmed and determine whether a certain population might be exposed to other chemicals that might damage the same tissue. Add in the cocktail effect and it would get harder still. "It is a pretty difficult regulatory scenario," admitted Gray. "At this point the science is easier than implementing the regulatory framework."

New Scientist, 1/9/2007, p. 46

"The nations at this summit generate more than half of the world’s man-made green house gases but are also home to over a billion people who live on less than $1 a day, where greater economic development and poverty reduction must continue," said Mr Oxley, the study’s author.

"They are looking for real progress without self harm for the region’s people and that is what the multi-track process offers."

The multi-track strategy allows for each nation to develop a strategy to tackle climate change that best suits it, giving nations more flexibility to reach emission reduction through a variety of means.

Mr Oxley says that pushing for hard targets when there is no consensus on the process for reaching them is "a recipe for failure".

Tying some of the leading APEC economies, such as Australia, China, Japan, Korea and the US, closer together on climate change could yield better progress globally.

"An APEC regional consensus would be a very good start towards real progress," Mr Oxley said.

"It could mean a greater chance at achieving results."

States would lose their legal powers to make companies disclose data on greenhouse gas emissions and energy under a proposed Federal Government takeover that a constitutional expert said would undermine state-based climate change initiatives, reported The Age (30/8/2007, p. 5).

Federal legislation overrides state and territory laws: In the first big step towards creating a national emissions trading scheme, the Government had introducted legislation setting out how big industrial polluters would publically report their emissions from October 2009. The law would override the states’ and territories’ ability to compel companies to reveal data about greenhouse gas emissions, greenhouse-savings projects, energy consumption and production.

The Age, 30/8/2007, p. 5

Reporting by Roddy Scheer

The minke whale is one species that will be spared as Iceland has suspended its whale hunt.

Responding more to economic realities than to political pressure, the government of Iceland last week announced that it is calling off its controversial whale hunt due to lack of demand for the product. Environmentalists are cheering the decision, hoping that it signals an end to commercial whaling in the region.

Last year, the Icelandic government faced cries of consternation from around the world when it issued permits for the commercial hunting of nine endangered fin whales and 30 minke whales.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), which campaigns globally to protect the world’s whales, welcomes the decision by Iceland’s fisheries ministry. Economic studies commissioned by the group there revealed very little demand for the meat. In contrast, the country’s successful whale-watching industry generates more than $20 million in revenue each year.

"This is fantastic news for whales and for Iceland,” says IFAW’s Robbie Marsland. “Whaling is cruel and unnecessary, and all of our studies have also shown there is little appetite for whale meat in Iceland or internationally. We hope that Iceland’s successful whale-watching industry will continue to grow without the country’s image being further tarnished by whaling.

Source: IFAW

Ongoing community education, incentives for heating replacement or wood heater surrender, and legislation to require the removal of non-compliant wood heaters when a house was sold were some measures to mitigate adverse health impacts from wood heater smoke, said Sally Talbot, Parliamentary Secretary representing the Minister for the Environment, in the Western Australian Legislative Council on 14 August 2007.

Policy paper details proposed solutions: Answering a series of questions, Talbot said: "The wood heater policy options paper was released on 23 May. This document includes details of the names and types of particles in the air from wood heaters. This information is detailed in Appendix A: Chemical properties of wood heater emissions. The wood heater policy options paper details the costs of adverse health impacts from the use of wood heaters attributed to wood smoke emissions in the Perth metropolitan region. It also details recommended actions to reduce these health impacts. These actions are ongoing community education, incentives for heating replacement or wood heater surrender, and legislation to include a requirement that at time of sale of a house, non-compliant wood heaters must be removed. The policy paper is still open for comment until 3 September 2007."

Health costs calculated in policy options paper: "The wood heater policy options paper includes details of calculations of health costs attributed to wood smoke emissions in the Perth metropolitan region," Talbot said. "The rationale and factors considered to calculate this figure are outlined in Section 2.3 of the paper. In addition to this, further information is available in a supplementary document titled Cost-Benefit Analysis of Wood-Smoke Reduction in Perth, which is available on DEC’s website."

Reference: Hon Giz Watson, Member for North Metropolitan, AG, Hon Sally Talbot, Parliamentary Secretary representing the Minister for the Environment, Member for South West, ALP, Legislative Council of Western Australia, Hansard, 14 August 2007. A copy of these proceedings can be accessed at
http://www.parliament.wa.gov.au

Erisk Net, 22/8/2007