Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The Long and the Short of It
At present, the Arctic continues to experience discrete pockets of intense local environment-
al degradation due to local Arctic sources of acidifying emissions. At the same time, there is
little evidence to suggest that emissions from outside the Arctic are causing significant Arc-
tic impacts. However, data are essentially unavailable to enable an assessment to be made
for the Eastern Asian Arctic.
Despite this conclusion, the acidification story is very important in an Arctic context
because it:
·
Showed how decisions to take remedial action to alleviate air pollution impacts
close to sources (by building taller smokestacks) exacerbated the problem in distant
regions, such as the Arctic.
·
Exposed national and regional governments to the first powerful demonstration of
how widespread anthropogenic pollutant emissions in one geographic region can -
through the transport of pollutants in the atmosphere - lead to widespread signific-
ant environmental impacts in a different and distant region. It is a phenomenon that
turned out to be a harbinger of other and more painful consequences of long-range
transboundary air pollution for the Arctic. We will learn the details from the Arctic
Messenger when we consider persistent organic pollutants and mercury.
·
Demonstrated that governments were willing to work cooperatively to address the
problem by creating the CLRTAP and by subsequently adhering to the emission-re-
duction regimes of its protocols.
·
Created a forerunner to several actions taken later to address other pollution issues
of universal importance to the Arctic.
·
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