The time for action on HFCs has arrived. The Montreal Protocol is the only international body with the experience and expertise to initiate and effectively achieve a timely “HFC phase-down”. It is time to translate support for an HFC phase-out into concrete action that has become the hallmark of the Montreal Protocol
For the fourth year in a row, Brazil, China and India have prevented formal talks at the Montreal Protocol on proposals to end global production and use of HFCs, some of the most powerful known greenhouse gases in direct contravention of language that all three nations agreed in the Rio+20 Declaration
I travelled to Miami to record interviews with key agencies - Department of Justice (DoJ), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) - for a training film on combating illegal trade in ODS which EIA is producing in cooperation with the United Nations Environment Programme
I spent last week in Canada attending one of the regular meetings of the Montreal Protocol’s Multilateral Fund (MLF), the body established to help developing countries meet their commitments under the global ozone treaty
This week saw the death of one of the great scientific pioneers of modern environmentalism – F Sherwood Rowland, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist who, along with his student Mario Molina, identified the link between CFCs and ozone destruction
Environmental crime is recognised by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime as the third largest form of global crime, accounting for at least $3.5 billion a year. It exacerbates deforestation and climate change, threatens the existence of endangered species and affects the livelihoods of rural communities.