Peter King's Blog

 As part of the preparatory process for the forthcoming United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (dubbed Rio+20) to be held in Rio de Janeiro in mid-2012, over 600 organizations have made submissions for inclusion in the "compilation document" which will be used to draft the final "outcome document".  The second intersessional being held in New York, during December 2011, will review the compilation document and agree on the outline of the draft outcome document.

 According to the UN, more than 20 provinces in Thailand&n

" The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced the release of a new mapping feature in EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database. As part of EPA’s ongoing effort to improve transparency, the EPA and State Enforcement Actions Map will allow the public to access federal and state enforcement information in an interactive format and to compare enforcement action information by state.

 Two news items today (i) Japan's Nuclear Safety Agency will be transferred from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Investment (METI) to the Ministry of Environment; and (ii) legislation has been drafted to make the government responsible for cleaning up the fallout from the troubled Fukushima nuclear plant, drew my attention to the massive task ahead in cleaning up the thousands of tonnes of solid waste, contaminated debris, and floating debris, still remaining from the triple disaster some 5 months ago.

 For readers interested in environmental compliance and enforcement in Thailand, the recent furore over illegal forest encroachment by resorts and the wealthy owners of large houses makes for an interesting case study into the problem of horizontal integration between government departments.  To refresh your memory, the following is from a recent editorial in the Bangkok Post.

 Over the past month or so I have attended a number of meetings or conferences where the forthcoming World Conference on Sustainable Development (dubbed Rio+20) in June 2012 has been a high priority item on the agenda.  To some, it is an opportunity to reflect on the various successes and failures since the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972 (hence Stockholm+40)—and yes there are still some people actively engaged who remember this event.  To others, it

 Hopefully you will have come across this blog as you were taking a look at our new AECEN website, which thanks to John and Milag is starting to get closer to being a really useful site for our members. In fact this will be a year full of changes for our members, as the AECEN Secretariat transitions to its new, permanent home in the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES).