OSLO (Reuters) – The world’s rivers are in crisis including in North America and Europe where governments have invested trillions of dollars to clean up freshwater supplies, a study showed Wednesday.

“Threats to human water security and biological diversity are pandemic,” Charles Vorosmarty of the City University of New York, co-lead author of the report in the journal Nature, told Reuters.

BERGEN, Norway (Reuters) – European nations agreed on Friday to set up fishing-free zones in remote parts of the Atlantic Ocean in the world’s first high seas network of protected areas beyond the control of national governments.

Environment ministers from 15 European states, forming the OSPAR group overseeing the North-East Atlantic, said they would seek recognition of the six areas at the United Nations and from the United States and Canada on the other side of the ocean.

OSLO, Sept 23 (Reuters) – Fifteen European nations agreed
on Thursday to review rules for new oil drilling permits in
extreme environments after BP Plc’s Gulf of Mexico spill
earlier this year.

A partial moratorium proposed by Germany was rejected.

“The compromise proposal was agreed,” said Gard
Nybro-Nielsen, spokesman for the Norwegian Environment Ministry
at the Sept. 23-24 talks among environment ministers in Bergen,
West Norway.

OSLO (Reuters) – Efforts to clean up and protect the North East Atlantic have made some progress since 2000 but new threats are looming such as ocean acidification linked to climate change, a study said on Thursday.

The report, by the OSPAR Commission that groups 15 European nations and covers an area from the North Pole to the Azores, said there had been advances in reducing oil spills, discharges from nuclear installations and some hazardous wastes.

OSLO (Reuters) – A cold snap in northern oceans around 1970 may have caused a dip in world temperatures that briefly interrupted a trend of global warming, scientists said on Wednesday.

Many experts had previously explained a slight global cooling around 1970 as a side-effect of a slow build-up of sun-dimming air pollution from factories, power plants and cars that cleared up in later years with stricter air pollution laws.

OSLO (Reuters) – Flowers picked up to 150 years ago in Victorian England show that old collections of pressed plants around the world can help the study of climate change, scientists said on Wednesday.

Ecologists compared samples of early spider orchids, held in collections with notes showing the exact day in spring when they were picked in southern England from 1848-1958, and dates when the same flower blossomed in the wild from 1975-2006.

OSLO (Reuters) – World leaders will next week consider a target for halting extinctions of animals and plants by 2020 that many experts rate impossibly ambitious given mounting threats such as climate change and loss of habitats.

“Biodiversity losses are accelerating,” said Anne Larigauderie, executive director of the Paris-based Diversitas Secretariat, which groups international scientists and reckons the goal laid out in a draft U.N. plan is out of reach for 2020.

OSLO (Reuters) – Nations including Democratic Republic of Congo are making surprise progress toward taking part in a $200 million project for slowing deforestation from late 2010, World Bank experts said.

They also said Latin America, with forested nations around the Amazon, had strong incentives to take part since most of the continent’s greenhouse gas emissions came from deforestation and shifts in land use, rather than use of fossil fuels.