DOHA, Qatar, November 20, 2008 (ENS) – Military experts from Australia, the Netherlands and the United States will help save the ozone layer and fight global warming under a unique partnership between the United Nations, national governments and the armed services.

Spearheaded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Defense, the new program will make use of technical experts in the military already on the ground.

The initiative was announced to delegates from more than 150 governments who are concluding a five-day meeting in Doha of Parties to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

Marco Gonzalez, executive secretary of the UN Environment Programme’s Ozone Secretariat, said, “The military in many countries have been at the forefront of efforts to phase out ozone depleting substances, ODS. Their experience can be invaluable for developing countries facing similar challenges.”

More than 90 percent of the chemicals that damage the ozone – the thin, high layer of gas that filters out the Sun’s harmful ultra-violet rays – have been phased out since the Montreal Protocol took effect in 1987. But the chemicals are stockpiled in old equipment that will soon come to the end of life.

Cylinders containing halon, a ozone depleter
used to fight fires (Photo courtesy IAEA)

]

Delegates at Doha learned that releases from these sources could add to ozone depletion as well as climate change because many of these substances are also potent greenhouse gases.

Without action to safely remove and destroy these chemicals, experts fear that by 2015 releases equivalent to several billion metric tonnes of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide could occur.

The military experts are offering to assist countries in the safe collection of stockpiles and banks of unwanted, ozone-damaging substances. They will give support and advice on the shipping, labeling and other procedures needed to fast-track the chemicals to disposal centers around the world.

The partnership could dramatically cut the costs of the disposal of ozone-depleting chemicals such as halons, hydrofluorocarbons and chlorofluorocarbons to a third or less of the current market cost. These and other chemicals containing chlorine and bromine were once used as refrigerants, for cleaning circuit boards, in aerosol sprays and to fight fires until they were phased out under the Montreal Protocol.

“The United States is committed to actions under the Montreal Protocol for the benefit of the global climate system and fragile ozone layer,” said James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “Experts who responsibly manage military ozone-depleting substances can transfer that know-how throughout the world to recover and destroy a significant portion of unwanted or unusable ozone-depleting substances.”

Argentina will be one of the first countries to take advantage of this opportunity to safely dispose of the obsolete chemicals.

“Argentina is proud to be one of the leaders promoting the climate benefits of the Montreal Protocol, and we welcome the opportunity to work with the technical logistics experts from the militaries of the world to continue these efforts to realize benefits for both the climate system and the ozone layer,” said Romina Picolotti, secretary of environment for Argentina.

“The Netherlands is proud of our national leadership in combined ODS banking for both industry and the military and pleased to share everything we know that can protect the global environment,” said Anton Janssen, who heads the Knowledge Centre for Occupational Safety and Health and Environment within the Netherlands Ministry of Defence.

“Technical cooperation on ODS application and replacement avoids costly duplication of effort and builds trust and networks so experts can work together for the good of human society,” said Janssen.

Many armed forces have existing, competitively priced contracts already in place for destroying ozone-damaging chemicals found as gases and foams in old military air-conditioning units and other kinds of army, navy and air force equipment.

The partners hope that by joining forces, civilian destruction programs will be able to benefit from these low-cost contracts, making them cheaper and more attractive to undertake.

Delegates at the opening of the high-level
segment of the Montreal Protocol meeting
in Doha. Laptops were everywhere at this
paperless conference. November 19, 2008
(Photo courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

The UNEP Ozone Secretariat will act as coordinator with the Secretariat of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal and other conventions to ensure the transport of unwanted ozone-depleting substances to countries with destruction facilities is correctly permitted.

Officials say this coordination will streamline the shipments of chemicals to proper destruction facilities.

“It is an honor for military logistics experts to use their considerable talent and experience to help the world protect the stratospheric ozone and climate,” said Robert Thien, U.S. Department of Defense ODS Program Manager.

“I am confident that the United States Department of Defense and our partners can provide guidance to developing nations concerning collecting, storing and banking and someday destroying CFCs, HCFCs and other ozone-depleting substances that also threaten climate,” said Thien.

“The military’s leadership shown by these partners will earn the praise of environmentalists and compliance officials from around the world,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, and director of the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement, a network of 4,000 environmental authorities in more than 150 countries.

Zaelke said, “Protecting the Earth against climate change is an environmental security campaign that we all support.”

View This Story On Eco–mmunity Map.

WASHINGTON, DC, November 17, 2008 (ENS) – The emissions of ozone-depleting substances should have “a negligible effect on ozone in all regions beyond 2070,” as long as governments continue to comply with the Montreal Protocol, according to a new assessment of the global ozone layer led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA.

The report shows that the United States has cut the production of ozone-damaging substances by 98 percent since the late 1980s.

This progress is being made despite that fact that the ozone hole over Antarctica, which fluctuates in response to temperature and sunlight, grew to the size of North America in a one-day maximum in September that was the fifth largest on record, since NOAA satellite records began in 1979.

The ozone hole over Antarctica, September 12,
2008 (Image courtesy NOAA)

The new NOAA assessment offers the first detailed look at the role of the United States in emitting and reducing the emissions of chemicals containing chlorine and bromine that deplete the ozone layer. These include chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, that were used as coolants in refrigerators and air conditioning systems before the damage they do to the ozone layer was discovered in the 1970s.

Emissions of ozone-depleting substances arise from their use not only as coolants, but also as fire-extinguishing chemicals, electronics cleaning agents, and in foam blowing and other applications.

The ozone layer, which surrounds the globe about nine to 28 miles above the surface, protects living things from the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays, but springtime holes in the ozone layer over the South Pole and over the Arctic have appeared annually due to the release of these substances into the atmosphere.

“With the efforts of the U.S. and the over 190 nations in the Montreal Protocol, we have avoided a future world of higher ozone depletion and exposure of humans and other living things to unhealthy levels of ultraviolet radiation,” said A.R. Ravishankara, NOAA atmospheric chemist and lead author on the new report.

The 1987 Montreal Protocol and its subsequent amendments established limits and eventual phase-outs for production and consumption of several ozone-depleting substances.

One in a series of reports coordinated by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, this ozone report was written by a team of 16 scientists from six different federal agencies. They developed information for and about the United States and drew material from two recent international scientific assessment reports to which the U.S. contributed, to distill a U.S.-specific perspective on this global issue.

The contributions of the United States to the emission of ozone-depleting substances to date have accounted for between 15 and 39 percent of the overall atmospheric abundance of ozone-depleting substances measured between 1994 and 2004, the report finds.

The United States has also contributed significantly to emission reductions of ozone-depleting substances, thereby helping efforts to achieve the expected recovery of the ozone layer and prevent large surface changes in ultra-violet radiation.

The U.S. percentage of the global total production has fallen to 10 percent in recent years.

As the report notes, without the Montreal Protocol, the levels of ozone-depleting substances in the “world we avoided” would likely have been 50 percent larger in 2010 than currently predicted.

Since the 1980s, global ozone sustained a depletion of about five percent in the midlatitudes of both the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere, where most of the Earth’s population resides; it is now showing signs of turning the corner towards increasing ozone, the report states.

“The large seasonal depletions in the polar regions are likely to continue over the next decade but are expected to subside over the next few decades,” the report predicts.

There is a relationship between ozone concentrations in the atmosphere at climate change. Ozone-depleting substances and many of the chemicals being used to replace them are potent greenhouse gases that influence the Earth’s climate by trapping heat radiation that would otherwise escape to space.

Ozone is itself a greenhouse gas. The stratospheric ozone layer heats the stratosphere and, indirectly, the lower atmosphere so stratospheric ozone is a key component that affects climate. Depletion of the ozone layer has a cooling effect on climate, though large uncertainties exist regarding this effect, which is a combination of multiple contributing factors.

To view the full Climate Change Science Program report, “Trends in Emissions of Ozone-Depleting Substances, Ozone Layer Recovery, and Implications for Ultraviolet Radiation Exposure,” and a summary brochure, click here [www.climatescience.gov].

View This Story On Eco–mmunity Map.