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Lőszerraktárt ért találat a Krím félszigeten, az oroszok ismét Odesszát támadták

Bumm.sk (Szlovákia/Felvidék) - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 09:00
MTI: Lőszerraktárt ért ukrán találat a Krím félszigeten fekvő Dzsankojban hétfőn, miközben az oroszok újra Odesszát támadták az éjszaka folyamán – közölték helyi illetékesek.

EU-Rohstoffziele für 2030 nur schwer zu erreichen

Euractiv.de - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 08:47
Selbst wenn heute in der Europäischen Union neue Minen eröffnet würden, wäre es nach Ansicht von Experten des französischen Bergbausektors sehr schwierig, die EU-Ziele für die Gewinnung kritischer und strategischer Rohstoffe bis 2030 zu erreichen.
Categories: Europäische Union

Le triomphe attendu n’a pas eu lieu : en Espagne, la droite incrédule

Euractiv.fr - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 08:43
Incrédules, écœurés, consternés, les militants du Parti populaire (PP) espagnol rêvaient du large succès que leur promettaient les sondages, bien loin de leur courte victoire qui pourrait se traduire par un maintien in extremis de la gauche au pouvoir.
Categories: Union européenne

OSCE trains young Tajik professionals on project proposal writing with regard to water governance and management

OSCE - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 08:40
549028 Munira Shoinbekova, OSCE Programme Office in Dushanbe

The OSCE Programme Office (Office) in Dushanbe conducted a three-day workshop on project proposal writing with regard to water governance and management from 19 to 21 July in Safeddara. The Office organized the event in co-operation with Tajikistan’s National Commission on Irrigation and Drainage.

Fifteen young water professionals participated in the workshop and strengthened their skills and knowledge in writing project proposals by focusing on developing concepts, goals, methodologies, budgets as well as assessing impact and risks. The workshop involved both theoretical lectures and group works.

“The Office continues to support the Government of the Republic of Tajikistan in the development of water sector through implementation of various projects,” said Rati Japaridze, Officer-in-Charge of the OSCE Programme Office in Dushanbe. “We promote the involvement of youth in water management projects by taking into account the impact of climate change and organizing training courses for future leaders in the water sector.”

Bahrom Gaforzoda, the Secretary of Tajikistan’s National Commission for Irrigation and Drainage, stated: “Young generation is the future of water sector, and Tajikistan needs qualified young professionals who are able to introduce new ideas and innovative approaches to the water management. Involvement of young professionals will allow to attract more international investment to modernize existing water management structures by taking into account adaptation to climate change.”

The event is conducted in line with previously implemented activities by the Office in the area of water security, and it supports the participation of youth in decision-making processes. The workshop is organized to help promote sustainable management of water resources in national and transboundary contexts.

Categories: Central Europe

Az ENSZ elítélte az odesszai katedrális elleni rakétatámadást

Bumm.sk (Szlovákia/Felvidék) - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 08:40
Az ENSZ határozottan elítélte az orosz rakétatámadásokat, melyek következtében találat érte Odessza legnagyobb katedrálisát is. Az 1794-ben alapított ortodox székesegyház az UNESCO világörökség része.

Szalay-Bobrovniczky: Magyarország kamikaze drónokkal fejleszti haderejét

Biztonságpiac - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 08:35
Magyarország kamikaze drónoknak is nevezett cirkáló lőszerekkel fejleszti haderejét – jelentette be a honvédelmi miniszter.

Szalay-Bobrovniczky Kristóf a 32. Bálványosi Nyári Szabadegyetem és Diáktábor A békéhez erő kell! – NATO-csúcs után című pódiumbeszélgetésén arról számolt be, hogy lendületesen halad a magyar haderőfejlesztés, ezen belül az eszközfejlesztés.

Kifejtette: a magyar haderő teljes átfegyverzéséről lehet beszélni, az elmúlt 6-8 évben beindult folyamat eredményeképpen az elavult szovjet technológia maradékát cserélik le újra. A magyar haderőfejlesztés európai, azon belül is német-francia irányultságot vett. 2021-ben az Egyesült Államokat megelőzve Magyarország volt a német hadiipar legfőbb vásárlója, tavaly pedig – mintegy egymilliárd euróval – a második legnagyobb Ukrajna után – részletezte Szalay-Bobrovniczky.

Az eszközoldali fejlesztés folytatódik, mint mondta, Magyarország az orosz-ukrán háború katonai tanulságai alapján hozott döntést egy újabb csúcstechnológiás, izraeli technológián alapuló német-izraeli koprodukcióban gyártott eszköz, az úgynevezett cirkáló rakéták beszerzéséről. A tárcavezető a közmédiának elmondta: Magyarország a Rheinmetall – UVision konglomerátummal vásárol nagyon modern, nagy pontosságú csapásmérő képességgel rendelkező, célpont híján visszavonható drónokat.

„De a haderőfejlesztés egyéb aspektusai is folyatódnak, területvédelmi komponenssel egészítjük ki a hivatásos haderőt, így nemcsak a támaszpontszerűen jelen lévő high-tech eszközökkel felszerelt hivatásos katonák fogják az országot védeni, hanem az országban kapillárisszerűen, minden egyes járásban jelen lévő tartalékosokkal (.) a háttérobjektumok védelmével foglalkozó komponens is létrejön” – közölte a honvédelmi miniszter.

 

The post Szalay-Bobrovniczky: Magyarország kamikaze drónokkal fejleszti haderejét appeared first on .

Categories: Biztonságpolitika

Blue Tourism Spurs Development Goals in Bangladesh

Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 08:29

Deer sanctuary at Nijhum Dwip – the island of tranquility.

By Ramiz Uddin and Mohammad Saiful Hassan
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Jul 24 2023 (IPS)

Blue tourism, widely referred to as Coastal or Maritime tourism, is a distinct idea from traditional tourism, which capitalizes on a country’s ocean, sea, or coastal region.

Coastal tourism is the largest market segment in the world, accounting for 5% of GDP and contributing 6-7% of total employment. Furthermore, coastal and maritime tourism will employ 1.5 million additional people worldwide by 2030.

Though Blue Tourism is not a new concept, but off late Bangladesh has been realizing its importance as it can help earning a lot of foreign exchange contribute to its GDP and accelerate the pace of achieving SDGs by 2030.

Blue Tourism: A Potential Blue Economy Avenue for Bangladesh

According to Asian Development Bank (ADB), coastal and maritime tourism has immense potential in the blue economy and could become one of the largest sources of tourism revenue in Bangladesh. Ocean contributed $6.2 billion in 2015 in total value addition to the Bangladesh’s economy which implies 3 percent of GDP (Business Standard 2020).

Among different sectors of the Blue Economy, Blue Tourism is the most potential sector.

Figure: Why blue tourism shall be nurtured

Potentials of Blue Tourism in Bangladesh

Maritime area of 207K sq. km, with 580 km of coastline, 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone, and 12 nautical mile territorial zones creates unprecedent opportunities for Bangladesh to accelerate the growth of blue economy.

Icing on the top are the 75 large and small islands in the coastal and maritime zone of Bangladesh, which are regarded as touristy sites for their rich biodiversity. Coral reefs, seagrass reefs, sandy beaches, sandbars, marshes, flood basins, estuaries, peninsulas, mangroves etc. are a few examples of the aquatic life.

Currently these zones are endowed with 17 fish sanctuaries, 5 national parks, and 10 wildlife sanctuaries, all of which can spur the tourism sector’s expansion. As a result of the discovery of numerous new sea beaches, the sector continues to expand and diversify.

Policies and interventions introduced to nurture the potential

The government of Bangladesh along with the vibrant private sector have introduced various initiatives to develop and promote blue tourism in Bangladesh.

Since 2015, the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) has been working to unleash the potentials of Blue-Economy. To ensure rapid implementation Government of Bangladesh (GoB) has highlighted major action points in the seventh five-year plan (7FYP) and eighth five -year plan (8FYP) of Bangladesh.

Additionally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), GoB, had formed the “Blue Economy Cell” in 2017 to coordinate the running blue economy related projects across sectoral ministries and departments. The government of Bangladesh has also laid emphasis on the BLUE tourism in different development plans including Perspective Plan-2041, and Delta Plan-2100.

In order to exploit the tourism potential, Sea cruises between Bangladesh and India have already been launched in March 2019. To encourage foreign visitors to Cox’s Bazar’s largest sea beach, the Bangladesh Economic Zone Authority (BEZA) has been establishing three exclusive tourism parks there. These parks include Naf Tourism Park, Sabrang Tourism Park, and Sonadia Eco-Tourism Park.

Bangladesh Tourism Board has formulated a Tourism Master Plan for 25 years (2023-2047) for the country. Primarily a total of 255 tourist sites under 11 tourist clusters have been identified.

These tourist sites are potential for Eco-Tourism, Beach & Island Tourism, Pilgrimage/Spiritual Tourism, Archaeological & Historical Tourism, Riverine Tourism, Adventure and Sports Tourism, Rural Tourism, Ethno-tourism, MICE Tourism and Cruise Tourism in this coastal and maritime region.

The tourism master plan includes 200+ potential interventions overall. The Bangladesh Tourism Master Plan calls for the immediate development of 13 islands altogether in the coastal region.

Bangladesh Tourism Board (BTB) and UNDP Accelerator Lab Bangladesh’s Joint Initiative:

In the last quarter of 2022, Bangladesh Tourism Board (BTB) in collaboration with UNDP Accelerator Lab has conducted research on Blue Tourism in Bangladesh, especially in the coastal regions. The core objectives of the joint research comprise identifying the coastal and maritime tourism resources, facilities, and tourist activities in Bangladesh, mapping tourist minds, and identifying the sustainability of Blue Tourism in Bangladesh.

However, with the technical assistance of UNDP Bangladesh Accelerator Lab, Bangladesh Tourism Board (BTB) has begun to work on the execution of Bangladesh’s Tourism Master Plan.

Dr. Ramiz Uddin is Head of Experimentation, UNDP Accelerator Lab, Bangladesh; Mohammad Saiful Hassan is (Deputy Secretary), Deputy Director (Research and Planning), Bangladesh Tourism Board, Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism – Bangladesh.

Source: UNDP

IPS UN Bureau

 


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Categories: Africa

Migration : à Rome, les pays méditerranéens jettent les bases d’un fonds commun

Euractiv.fr - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 08:22
Le sommet des dirigeants du pourtour méditerranéen réunis dimanche à Rome par Giorgia Meloni a esquissé les contours d’un fonds pour financer les projets d’investissements et le contrôle aux frontières, avec l’objectif à moyen terme de mieux réguler les flux migratoires.
Categories: Union européenne

Transgender People Face Growing Violence, Discrimination in Pakistan

Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 08:20

Transgender people often entertain at weddings and other events, but they increasingly face violent acts, especially since part of an Act ensuring their rights was recently struck down. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Jul 24 2023 (IPS)

“The problems transgender people face start from their homes as their parents, especially fathers and brothers, look them down upon and disrespect them,” says 20-year-old Pari Gul.

Gul, a resident of Charsadda district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), left her house at 16 when her mother asked her to or face being killed by her father.

“I was born as a boy, and my name was Abdul Wahid, but when I came to Peshawar and joined a transgender group, I got a female name, Pari Gul. Since then, I have been going to weddings and other festive ceremonies to dance,” she says. “Dance is my passion.”

However, she has often been the brunt of discrimination and violence.

“During my five-year career, people have beaten me more than 20 times. Each time the perpetrators went unpunished,” she told IPS in an interview.

Trans people are often targeted in KP, one of Pakistan’s four provinces.

On March 28, a man shot dead a transgender person in Peshawar. It was the third incident targeting transgender persons in the province in less than a week. Despite the violence, violent attacks on transgender people aren’t considered a major crime.

Khushi Khan, a senior transgender person, says lack of protection is the main problem.

“People have developed a disdain for us. They consider us non-Muslims because we dance at marriages and other ceremonies,” she says.

“We had lodged at least a dozen complaints with police in the past three months when our colleagues were robbed of money, molested and raped but to no avail,” Khan, 30, says.

Last month, clerics in the Khyber district decided they wouldn’t offer funerals to transgender persons and asked people to boycott them.

Rafiq Shah, a social worker, says that people attack the houses of transgender, kill, injure and rob them, but the police remain silent “spectators”.

“We have been protesting against violence frequently, but the situation remains unchanged,” Shah said.

Qamar Naseem, head of Blue Veins, a national NGO working to promote and protect transgender people, isn’t happy over the treatment meted out to the group.

“Security is the main issue of transgender persons. About 84 transgender persons have been killed in Pakistan since 2015 while another 2,000 have faced violence, but no one has been punished so far,” Naseem says.

The lack of action by the police has emboldened the people.

“Health, transportation, livelihoods and employment issues have hit the transgender (community) hard. Most of the time, they remained confined to their homes, located inside the city,” he says.

There are no data regarding the number of transgender in the country because the government doesn’t take them seriously, he says.

In May 2023, the Federal Shariat Court (FSC) dealt a severe blow when it suspended the implementation rules of the Protection of Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act.

Farzana Jan, president of TransAction Alliance, says that FSC’s declaration that individuals cannot alter their gender at their own discretion, asserting that specific clauses within the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018 contradict Islamic law, has disappointed us.

The FSC declared un-Islamic sections 3 and 7 and two sub-sections of Section 2 of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018, five years after the law was passed, the FSC rolled back key provisions granting rights to Pakistan’s transgender community.

Some right-wing political parties had previously voiced concerns over the bill as a promoter of “homosexuality,” leading to “new social problems”.

The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018, is against the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and will cease to have any legal effect immediately, the verdict stated.

Amnesty International said the verdict was a blow to the rights of the already beleaguered group of transgender and gender-diverse people in Pakistan. It said some of the FSC’s observations were based on presumptive scenarios rather than empirical evidence. The denial of essential rights of transgender and gender-diverse persons should not be guided by assumptions rooted in prejudice, fear and discrimination, AI said.

“Any steps taken by the government of Pakistan to deny transgender and gender-diverse people the right to gender identity is in contravention of their obligations under international human rights law, namely the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to which they are a state party,” it said.

The government should take immediate steps to stop the reversal of essential protections, without which transgender and gender-diverse people will be even more at risk of harassment, discrimination and violence, AI added.

On July 12, 2023, transgender representatives from all provinces held a press conference at Lahore Press Club, where they vehemently condemned the recent decision by the FSC against the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018.

Arzoo Bibi, who was at a press conference, said it was time to stand united for justice and equality.

“Militants don’t threaten us, but our biggest concern is the attitude of the society and police,” said Arzoo.
IPS UN Bureau Report

 


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Categories: Africa

Extreme heat in Italy takes workers’ lives as temperatures pass 40C

Euractiv.com - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 08:20
Factory workers and labourers call for furlough as five people in Italy are believed to have died because of extreme heat, reports The Guardian, EURACTIV's media partner.
Categories: European Union

KÉT FILLÉRREL erősebb a forint: 379,58 HUF = 1 euró

Bumm.sk (Szlovákia/Felvidék) - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 08:20
MTI: Egy euró 379,58 forintra gyengült fél hétkor a péntek esti 379,60 forintról. A svájci frank árfolyama 394,24 forintról 393,84 forintra csökkent, ugyanakkor a dolláré 341,32 forintról 341,39 forintra emelkedett. Az euró jegyzése a péntek esti 1,1119 dollárról 1,1118 dollárra változott.

La Grèce brûle : chronique de l'inaction publique face au changement climatique

Courrier des Balkans - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 08:07

30 000 personnes ont été évacuées de l'île de l'île de Rhodes, où les feux sont toujours hors de contrôle. Sous des températures toujours caniculaires, la Grèce compte des dizaines de nouveaux incendies. ONG, scientifiques et activistes dénoncent l'inaction des autorités pour prévenir cette catastrophe annoncée.

- Articles / , , , , , ,
Categories: Balkans Occidentaux

Article - The benefits of the European Union (video)

European Parliament (News) - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 08:03
Find out more about what the European Union is doing for you.

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP
Categories: European Union

Artikel - Die Vorzüge der Europäischen Union (Video)

Europäisches Parlament (Nachrichten) - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 08:03
Erfahren Sie mehr darüber, was die Europäische Union für Sie tut.

Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2023 - EP
Categories: Europäische Union

Article - The benefits of the European Union (video)

European Parliament - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 08:03
Find out more about what the European Union is doing for you.

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP
Categories: European Union

A Néppárt nyerte a spanyolországi parlamenti választásokat

Bumm.sk (Szlovákia/Felvidék) - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 08:00
A konzervatív Néppárt nyerte a spanyolországi előrehozott választásokat, de egyedül nem tud kormányt alakítani. A nem hivatalos végeredmény szerint az Alberto Núnez Feijóo által vezetett legnagyobb ellenzéki erő 136 képviselői helyre számíthat a parlamentben.

Bulgarie : l'État veut reprendre la main sur le terminal pétrolier de Bourgas

Courrier des Balkans - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 07:59

La Bulgarie voudrait abroger la concession du terminal pétrolier de Rosenets, cédée en 2011 au géant russe Lukoil. Une initiative qui sonne bien dans le contexte de la guerre en Ukraine, mais qui a surtout à voir avec les équilibres politiques intérieurs au pays, alors que l'on reparle du projet d'oléoduc Bourgas-Alexandroupoli.

- Le fil de l'Info / , , , , , , ,
Categories: Balkans Occidentaux

Système surchargé: La justice suisse est au bord du gouffre

24heures.ch - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 07:55
Plus de 113’000 procédures étaient en suspens fin 2022. Elles peuvent durer si longtemps que les criminels sont parfois punis plus légèrement, voire pas du tout.
Categories: Swiss News

Latin America Must Regulate the Entire Plastic Chain

Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 07:48

In a Mexican city with buildings that reflect its level of modernization, a truck collects waste, mainly plastic, ignoring higher standards of care for health and the environment. Plastic garbage is just the tip of a serious social and environmental problem in Latin America and the Caribbean. CREDIT: Greenpeace

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jul 24 2023 (IPS)

Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have made progress towards partial regulations to reduce plastic pollution, but the problem is serious and environmental activists are calling for regulations in the entire chain of production, consumption and disposal of plastic waste.

The release of plastic waste into the environment “is the tip of the iceberg of a problem that begins much earlier, from the exploitation of hydrocarbons, to the transport and transformation of these precursors of an endless number of products,” Andrés del Castillo, a Colombian expert based in Switzerland, told IPS."That is why our main call is for an immediate moratorium on increased plastics production, followed by a phased out reduction in supply, and complemented by other crucial measures such as reuse and landfill systems." -- Andrés del Castillo

Ecuadorian biologist María Esther Briz, an activist with the international campaign Break Free From Plastic, said “plastic pollution in our countries is not on its way to becoming a big problem: it already is.”

“From the extraction of raw materials, since we know that 99 percent of plastic is made from fossil fuels – oil and gas – plus the pollutants that are released during the transformation into resins and in consumption, and in the more well-known phase of when they become waste, our region is already very much affected,” the activist told IPS from the Colombian city of Guayaquil.

Plastic production in the region exceeds 20 million tons per year – almost five percent of the global total of 430 million tons per year – and consumption stands at 26 million tons per year, according to the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), a coalition of 800 environmental organizations.

In the region, the largest installed production capacity is in Brazil (48 percent), followed by Mexico (29 percent), Argentina (10 percent), Colombia (8.0 percent) and Venezuela (5.0 percent).

The average annual consumption in Latin America and the Caribbean is about 40 kilos per inhabitant, and each year the region throws 3.7 million tons of plastic waste into rivers, lakes, seas and oceans, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

Del Castillo, a senior lawyer at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), warned that “if the trend is not reversed, by 2050 plastic production will reach 1.2 billion million tons annually. Paraphrasing (famed Colombian author of One Hundred Years of Solitude) Gabriel García Márquez, that is the size of our solitude.”

“That is why our main call is for an immediate moratorium on increased plastics production, followed by a phased out reduction in supply, and complemented by other crucial measures such as reuse and landfill systems,” del Castillo said from Geneva.

 

Volunteers from Peru’s Life Institute for Environmental Protection clean up plastic garbage washed up on the coast near Lima. In the waters surrounding cities, as well as in the oceans, discarded plastic waste that is not reused or recycled is added to other forms of pollution, severely affecting nature, including species and the landscape. CREDIT: IPMAV

 

Fearsome enemy

The plastic life chain is an enemy to health due to the release of more than 170 toxic substances in the production process of the raw material, in the refining and manufacture of its products, in consumption, and in the management and disposal of waste.

Once it reaches the environment, in the form of macro or microplastics, it accumulates in terrestrial and aquatic food chains, pollutes water and causes serious damage to human health, to animal species – such as aquatic species that die from consuming or being suffocated by these products – and to the landscape.

It also accounts for 12 percent of urban waste. UNEP estimates the social and economic costs of global plastic pollution to be between 300 billion dollars and 600 billion dollars per year.

It also affects the climate: the world’s 20 largest producers of virgin polymers employed in single-use plastics, led by the oil companies Exxon (USA) and Sinopec (China), generate 450 million tons a year of planet-warming greenhouse gases, almost as much as the entire United Kingdom.

And prominent villains are single-use plastics, such as packaging, beverage bottles and cups and their lids, cigarette butts, supermarket bags, food wrappers, straws and stirrers. Of these, 139 million tons were manufactured in 2021 alone, according to an index produced by the Australian Minderoo Foundation.

After alarm bells went off at the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on plastic pollution, composed of 175 countries, was created. It held its first two meetings last year, in Montevideo and Paris, and will hold its third in November in Nairobi, in a process aimed at drafting a binding international treaty on plastic pollution.

As if the boom in the production, consumption and improper disposal of plastics were not enough, the Latin American region is also importing plastic waste from other latitudes.

Studies by GAIA and the Peruvian investigative journalism website Ojo Público reported that in the last decade (2012-2022) Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Colombia received more than one million tons of plastic waste from different parts of the world.

Although it is claimed that plastic waste is sold to be recycled into raw material for lower quality products or textiles, this rarely happens and it ends up adding to the millions of tons that go into landfills every year.

“We cannot even deal with our own waste and yet we are importing plastic garbage from other countries, often with very little clarity and transparency, so there is no traceability of what is imported under the pretext of recycling,” Briz complained.

 

Single-use plastics, more than a third of global production and ubiquitous in everyday life, are seen as the main villains in the entire plastics business chain, and Latin American and Caribbean countries are moving towards banning them altogether or at least limiting production and use. CREDIT: Goula

 

Laws and regulations are on their way

On the other side of the coin, in 2016 Antigua and Barbuda became the first country in the region to ban single-use plastic bags, and it has gradually expanded the ban to include polystyrene food storage containers, as well as single-use plates, glasses, cutlery and cups.

Since then, 27 of the 33 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have enacted national or local laws to reduce, ban or eliminate single-use articles and, in some cases, other plastic products.

“There is a wide range: countries that already have strong rules to regulate plastics, especially single-use plastics, and they are applied. Others have very good regulations but they are not enforced. In others there are no regulations, and there are countries where nothing is happening,” Briz said.

In Argentina a 2019 resolution by the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development covers the life cycle of plastic (production, use, waste and pollution reduction) and a 2020 law bans cosmetic and personal hygiene products containing plastic microbeads.

Belize, Chile, Colombia, most Mexican states and Panama have passed regulations to progressively ban or limit the consumption of single-use plastics, as have Brazilian cities such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. But in some cases there are doubts as to whether these provisions are effectively enforced.

Brazil has had a National Plan to Combat Marine Litter since 2019, which, however, has not yet been implemented. Costa Rica also has a National Marine Litter Plan, which seeks to reduce waste with the support of the communities.

Ecuador is turning the Galapagos Islands into a plastic-free archipelago, and phased out plastic bags, straws, “to-go” containers and plastic bottles in 2018.

Fences, including those made from recovered plastic waste, are being installed in rivers in Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and the Dominican Republic to collect plastic waste and prevent it from being washed out to sea.

In Guatemala, Castillo noted, the municipality of San Pedro La Laguna, in the Lake Atitlán basin, was a pioneer, banning sales of straws and plastic bags in 2016, and the city government won lawsuits in court over the ordinance. The example is spreading throughout the country.

 


View of a petrochemical plant of the Brazilian giant Braskem. Environmentalists’ demands for a halt to the expansion of plastics production focus on states in Mexico and Brazil, which have the largest petrochemical facilities in the Latin American region. CREDIT: Braskem

 

From landfills to petrochemicals

Del Castillo, the Ecuadorian expert, said that “apart from initiatives of a voluntary nature, regional action plans, and the regulation of single-use plastic products, the ongoing negotiation of an international treaty promises to be the path that has been chosen to put an end to plastic pollution.”

The treaty should cover “all emissions and risks from plastics during production, use, waste management and leakage,” del Castillo said, but “we don’t have to wait for the treaty to act: States can already say ‘No to the expansion of virgin plastics production’.”

The MarViva Foundation, which fights marine pollution in Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama, argues that “the best way to manage single-use plastic waste is not to create it,” and advocates discouraging the production, use and consumption of these materials.

But in the face of such proposals, “one of the biggest obstacles has to do with the economic power of the petrochemical industry, which refuses to reduce production. In Latin America, the largest producers of plastics are the petrochemical companies of Mexico and Brazil,” said Briz, the Ecuadorian biologist.

“Plastic is a cheap product, since its environmental and social costs are not taken into account, and while the cost of production and distribution is low, the cost for the health of people and the environment is not,” said the activist.

In short, for activists, an approach based only on recycling and bans will be of limited scope until a moratorium is imposed on the expansion of plastics production, with a global market worth 600 billion dollars a year and which at the current rate could triple in the next two decades.

Categories: Africa

EU already late for its 2030 raw materials targets, French experts warn

Euractiv.com - Mon, 07/24/2023 - 07:43
Even if new mines were to be opened in the European Union today, experts in the French mining sector say it would be very difficult to achieve the EU objectives for extracting critical and strategic raw materials by 2030.
Categories: European Union

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