News
Publish date: December 7, 2009
Written by: Tone Foss Aspevoll
Translated by: Charles Digges
News
Bellona’s pavilion will be open during the entirety of the climate summit, which started yesterday and will run through December 18th in most highly touted and anticipated gathering of its kind for nearly 20 years.
“We will build the foundation for a new international system, and I think we will come a long way in this very edifice her in Copenhagen,”said Solheim, and praised Bellona and Norway’s Statkraft, Europe’s largest renewable energy producer, for focussing on solutions to the climate crisis at their pavilion with the Hopenhagen future city expo.
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“I think that we should be able to say on December 18th that, yes, we were able to take climate combating architecture one step further,”said Solheim after cutting the ribbon to the Bellona Pavilion.
Solutions in sight
“We want to showcase the solutions so that politicians know that it is possible to solve the climate crisis,” said Bellona President Frederic Hauge of the opening of the pavilion, which serves as the future city of Hopenhaen, and where visitors can become acquainted with already existing climate technologies that can be put into use today.
“This applies not only looking at cost effectiveness, but at the technical possibilities and solutions ,” he said.
A call for funding
The same evening Copenhagen’s Lord Mayor Ritt Bjerregard, former Norwegian Prime Minister and UN Special Climate Envoy Gro Harlem Brundtland, and Yvo de Boer, head the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and UN chief negotiator, were on hand for the official opening of the entire Hopenhagen endeavor.
“All our hopes are not ties to Copehagen, said Brundtland.
“We nee a global agreement” she continued, adding that the negotiators in Copenhagen had better agree on more than just setting a new deadline for an internationally binding agreement.
“We need a meaningful financial package,” Brundtland said to great applause to many who had turned out in the mild Copenhagen winter chill.
Level of ambition
De Boer underscored in his speech that the world must act now.
“The level of ambition for an agreement must be proportional to the size of problems we face,” he said.
Throughout the past year, our mission at the Bellona Environmental Transparency Center has focused on two key, but intertwined issues—nuclear and radiation safety as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drags on, and the worldwide influence of Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, which itself is actively involved in the war and has participated in the occupation of a Ukrainian nuclear power plant.
At the beginning of the year, reports in the German and Russian press suggested an approximate 70% increase in uranium imports from Russia to Germany in 2024. But does this reflect broader European trends? It does not. Overall, imports of uranium and nuclear fuel from Russia to Western countries actually dropped sharply in 2024. Unlike the situation in Germany, this is already an established trend.
A Lingen, Germany plant could begin producing nuclear fuel in cooperation with a subsidiary of Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear corporation, which is directly involved in the war in Ukraine and occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution and climate change.