THE world is misusing a valuable resource. According to a meeting of the World Water Forum in Kyoto (快猫短视频, 29 March, p 5), we are mining some of our water reserves hundreds of times faster than they can be replenished. So I asked Elliot Morley, the new environment minister with special responsibilities for water resources, to outline government policy on the UK鈥檚 vital groundwater stocks.
Morley said the government recognises the importance of sustainable management of water resources and has reviewed the systems for licensing water abstraction in England and Wales. The review revealed the kind of changes needed to achieve sustainable abstraction from groundwater systems. These are being added to the Water Bill, recently introduced into Parliament.
As a result the bill will now end most exemptions from abstraction licensing control. For example, trickle irrigation will have to be licensed in line with spray irrigation. While trickle irrigation may be more efficient, it can still damage the environment. The Environment Agency will therefore have the power to control such abstractions, said Morley. And MPs involved with the committee stage of the Water Bill tell me that special attention is being paid to aquifers.
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A RECENT report from the World Conservation Union says that the great whale debate ignores the plight of some of the smaller cetaceans, such as the baiji and vaquita dolphins (快猫短视频, 24 May, p 11). Elliot Morley also sits on the International Whaling Commission (IWC), so I asked him what could be done for these smaller cetaceans.
Morley replied that for many years a number of the IWC member states have argued that small cetaceans fall outside its remit. But the UK thinks otherwise, and at the 53rd annual IWC meeting held in London in July 2001 it secured the adoption of two resolutions on small cetaceans.
Since then China has devised a national action plan to protect the baiji dolphin. This includes a moratorium on fishing areas in the Yangtze river. Mexico also has a recovery strategy for the vaquita, and this has encouraged regional cooperation on small cetacean conservation measures.
I am delighted to learn that the UK delegation successfully raised the matter again at the IWC meeting in Berlin in June. A resolution was specifically drafted to strengthen the earlier resolutions on the conservation of smaller cetaceans. For the time being, though, in many parts of the world several of the smaller species of cetacean are being hunted to unsustainable levels.
