The RAINS Model of Acidification [antikvár]

Foreword Since the late 1960s Europe has been aware of a new threat to the environment: the effects of pollutants that have been transported over a long distance. Contrary to the situation in decades before the 1960s, when pollution had a predominantly local character, the current effects of our pollution are visible in areas far away from large emission sources. As a consequence, international deliberations on coordinated policies started in the 1970s. At the UN Conference on the Humán Environment in Stockholm (1972), many governments still continued to view acidification as a local, geographically limited problem concerning mainly Scandinavian and Canadian laké areas. However, at the end of the 1970s, the acid rain problem became recognized in Europe and North America as one of the most severe threats to the environment. On the occasion of a high-level meeting on environmental protection within the framework of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), the Convention on LongRange Transboundary Air Pollution was adopted in Geneva on 13 November 1979. By the time the Convention entered into force on 16 March 1983, the parties were determined to put it to more than symbolic use. As a major eífort they strengthened the Co-operative Programme for the Monitoring and Evaluation of the Long-Rangé Transmission of Air Pollutants in Europe (EMEP), which had been established in 1977 by ECE with support from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and in cooperation with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). A second major step to implement the Convention was the Protocol on the Reduction of Sulphur Emissions or Their Transboundary Fluxes by At Least 30 Percent adopted at Helsinki on 8 July 1985. The Protocol entered into force on 2 September 1987. • • •