Government▼Watch
For the first time, natural areas are being preserved from development in a unique project unfolding on Canada’s Arctic shores. The Mackenzie Valley Five-Year Action Plan aims to permanently protect 40 million hectares of culturally and ecologically significant land before construction begins on the proposed CAN$7 billion naturalgas pipeline in the Mackenzie River valley in the Northwest Territories. While the move is precedent-setting, critics say more action is needed to mitigate the impacts of development related to the pipeline. The federal government came out in support of the plan on December 21, 2004, with a $9 million funding commitment over five years. This will be matched by funds from the plan’s members: $6 million from conservation groups and $3 million from the territorial government and industrial partners, says Monte Hummel, president emeritus of the environmental group World Wildlife Fund Canada. The action plan is a smaller part of the Northwest Territories Protected
PHOTODISC
Conservation first in Canadian Arctic
The government has pledged CAN$9 million over five years to conserve culturally and ecologically significant land.
Areas Strategy, signed in 1997 by federal and territorial governments to ensure that development associated with exploration does as little damage as possible to sensitive Arctic ecosystems, Hummel says. Led by aboriginal communities, the plan’s members will identify areas for protection, inventory resources, and map boundaries, Hummel says. Existing legislation for national, historic, and territorial parks and na-
Methyl bromide phaseout drags The widely used fumigant methyl bromide (MeBr) is proving difficult to phase out. During an international conference held in November, government officials agreed to allow some industrialized countries to carry on using MeBr for certain uses after 2005, the internationally agreed phase-out date for these countries. The volume of exemptions requested was higher than expected, and some observers now claim that the phaseout process for MeBr has broken down completely. MeBr is a highly toxic, ozone-depleting fumigant used in agriculture for such crops as tomatoes, cut flowers, and strawberries. The U.S. EPA classifies MeBr as a Toxicity Category I compound, the most deadly category of substances. It can cause, among other things, neurological damage and reproductive harm. MeBr is the most important ozone-depleting substance still used by developed countries, but it is less damaging to the ozone layer than chlorofluorocarbons. Many farmers claim that MeBr alternatives for certain crops are not sufficiently effective.
© 2005 American Chemical Society
tional wildlife areas will be used to exclude development from the areas identified by the members. The action plan won’t be ready before construction begins; the inventory and the steps taken to preserve the inventoried resources will finish in 2009, the projected completion date for the pipeline. Once the pipeline is complete, additional development will commence, including wells, roads, and feeder pipelines, from 2009 to 2027, says Kevin O’Reilly, research director for the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, an environmental group. The federal government has created an additional complication by accepting mineral exploration permits for candidate conservation areas, a move that could result in a new mine in the middle of a conservation area. A new map based on industry data reveals a web of exploration lines, roads, wells, and feeder pipelines that, despite the protected areas strategy, will be extensive by the time the energy project is fully developed in 2027, says O’Reilly. The development will still have a significant impact on the landscape, he adds. —JANET PELLEY
In November, the parties to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer met in Prague (Czech Republic) and agreed to all critical use exemptions requested by country officials for 2005, a total of 2600 tonnes (t). This is in addition to 12,150 t agreed on at a special meeting held last March. U.S. users accounted for 61% of all exemptions. For 2006, the parties agreed to 11,700 t of exemptions and provisionally approved a further 3000 t. This outstanding amount remains under dispute and will be reviewed by a group of technical experts at a special meeting in the summer. U.S. farmers used about 7000 t of MeBr in 2003. With the exemptions, they are allowed to use 8942 t in 2005. “This could be seen as a phase-in, not a phaseout,” argues Juge Gregg of the independent Environmental Investigation Agency. “The process is clearly broken.” Another concern is that officials in developing countries are questioning their phase-out commitments. The assumption is that MeBr will gradually be phased out, so the worst the exemptions are likely to do is to delay the recovery of the ozone layer. —MARIA BURKE
MARCH 15, 2005 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY ■ 127A
