The European Patent Office presented the 2009 European Inventor of the Year Awards on May 4 this year, awarding several inventors for their environmental contributions, and selecting a well-known solar energy researcher as the recipient of their Lifetime Achievement Award.

80-year old German scientist Adolf Goetzberger, which the conference nicknamed “the Sun God”, was presented the Lifetime award for recognition of his career-long achievements in both popularizing and harnessing solar energy. His earliest work helped to increase the efficiency of solar cells in the 1970’s and led him to roles as lead researcher in groundbreaking solar implementation plans throughout Europe. Goetzberger has been widely credited as a driving force behind Germany’s acceptance of solar power, which has led his nation to be the world’s leading market for solar photovoltaic technology.

Winners of the 2009 awards also were frequently tied to environmental success. Among them was Joseph Le Mer, a French mechanical engineer who took home the SMEs/Research award for 2009. Developing heating systems, Le Mer realized that home heating was often two things that consumers did not want: expensive and environmentally unfriendly. By designing an elegant, single-tube heat exchanger that could be manufactured cheaply and with a minimum of resources, Le Mer helped the entire industry take a large step toward sustainability. Combining that with his company’s insistence that work not be outsourced, Le Mer appears to have hit on a promising solution for a sometimes wasteful industry.

In the medical category, no winners were more environmentally sound than a Chinese team led by Professor Yiqing Zhou of the Beijing Institute for Microbiology, who used Chinese herbal knowledge to extract compounds from plants used for centuries to help develop an efficient and sustainable source of malaria-fighting drugs.

Image: Joseph Le Mer

Population growth in the Middle East is expected to decline after more than 50 years of sharp rises, according to a report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Mirroring trends in other areas of the world, birth rates are expected to fall as urbanization and contraception become commonplace, but also as women have greater access to education and employment.

As the report makes clear, there is no question that the population drop raises a new set of challenges. Countries in the region will have to adapt first to a wave of young employment-seekers, many of whom want to find premium civil service jobs, and then a second wave of elderly retirees. Yet the slow-down of population also might allay some fears that the Middle East is overpopulated beyond its resource base, with arable land and, most severely, water always a concern. As writer Nina Hjerpset Ostlie explains in an editorial on population growth, the need to address issues of overpopulation and resource use in the Middle East has been brewing since populations first began to expand in the 1950’s. She worries that European leaders will be particularly hostile toward Muslim immigrants who will be forced to emigrate from their home countries into Western Europe due to problems stemming from overpopulation. Likewise, she cites population growth as a taboo subject for politicians, saying:

Every decade the growth of mankind far exceeds the present number of humans in Europe from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Range. How many decades can the globe’s environment sustain this? In this situation, will it be at all possible to save the globe without limiting the growth of populations, for example like the Mullahs’ measures in Iran? But what politician can get away with saying something like that?

Image: Crowds in Dubai

An investigative report by US-based watchdog group CorpWatch has implicated textile manufacturer Ramatex in the indiscriminate disposal of hazardous wastewater into Namibia’s capitol Windhoek, while also pointing the finger at the Namibian government for doing little to stop it.

According to the report, Ramatex, which opened its Namibia factories to much popular support, promising to staunch the flow of Namibia’s high unemployment rate and establish southern Africa’s largest garment factory, departed suddenly in 2008, leaving in their wake a litany of environmental damages. Supported by massive investments and infrastructure provided by the Namibian government, Ramatex was virtually untouched by the required environmental impact reports, which were either rarely conducted or largely ignored. According to business practices monitor Trade Union Solidarity Center of Finland:

The company managed to mislead Namibia (in particular the government) time and again by providing false information to hide its true intentions of using the country merely as a temporary production location.

In another call for cleanups, Ugandan General Elly Tumwine called upon his fellow citizens to better educate themselves about the risks of deforestation to preserve the national environment, which he cited as having some of “the cleanest water in Africa…because of the high number of trees we have.” He said that an educational program free of sectarian divisions would be the key to Ugandan’s understanding the importance of their environment.

Image: Anti-Tamarex editorial

New findings by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Bangladesh Ministry of Environment and Forests indicates that biologists could be able to breathe a sigh of relief over the imperiled position of the Irrawaddy dolphin. The species, which lives primarily in sheltered bays in the Asia-Pacific region, was long feared by scientists to be a leading candidate for extinction, so much so it was placed on the IUCN Red List in 2008.

Working in Bangladesh’s Sunbardans mangroves, scientists counted a robust population estimated at 6000 Irrawaddy dolphins living throughout the region and neighboring Bay of Bengal. This is a sharp uptick from the previous assessment, which counted numbers barely in the hundreds. Lead researcher Brian D. Smith was effusive:

This discovery gives us great hope that there is a future for Irrawaddy dolphins. Bangladesh clearly serves as an important sanctuary for Irrawaddy dolphins, and conservation in this region should be a top priority.

Nevertheless, the scientists’ findings suggest a habitat that is growing increasingly hostile towards its aquatic inhabitants. Fishing pressure, lack of freshwater due to growing populations and rising sea levels, and growing human influence all conspire to make life for the Irrawaddy dolphin a sometimes difficult search for food and habitat.

Image: Irrawaddy dolphins

In a statement from the Japanese government issued in advance of the Japan-Pacific Islands Forum to be held in Hokkaido in May, the Japanese government said a key negotiating point in the forum would be the formation of a Pacific environmental community dedicated toward developing a regional approach to climate change and other environmental issues.

With each country intended to be an “equal partner” in the discussion, the community pact would likely focus on developing solutions for biodiversity loss, sanitation issues, and global warming. Japan, in particular, has pledged to provide much of the technical expertise community members will need to combat rising sea levels and put in place warning systems for tsunami.

Japan hopes that the establishment of an environmental network will help to strengthen pro-Japanese sentiment in the region, as well as establish a more open dialogue between Japan and the smaller Pacific islands nations and regional powers like Australia and New Zealand. Already, Japan has hosted the chairman of the Pacific Islands Forum as a means of enhancing relations with their island neighbors.

Image: “Marine Diving” by the Marine Art Center for the Japan-Pacific Islands Forum