As efforts continue in the United States to control the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, dubbed the worst environmental crisis ever in the US, another oil spill across the world is threatening a rich marine life habitat.

AFP is reporting that an oil spill in the Red Sea, off the shore of Egypt, is getting environmentalists worried about the weak regulations on offshore drilling.

How as if the the oil spill itself is not bad enough, the company responsible, which remains unnamed for legal reasons, did not report the spill for several days. The incidence was only discovered when oil began showing up on the popular tourist beaches in the area.

The Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Agency, a non-governmental organisation, is calling the event “catastrophic.”

The Res Sea is one of the richest marine areas, buzzing with wildlife from coral reefs to large dolphins and other exotic creatures. Many areas of the coast in Egypt are actually protected areas, and the oil is seeping into those too.

The economic value of the beaches there, which attracts millions of tourists annually has prompted authorities to take action. Ministers have quickly flocked to the area to see the damage done and overlook efforts to stop the spill.

Obviously this spill is much smaller than the Gulf of Mexico one. The ministers are reporting that the spill is “under control” now and cleaning up is taking place.

Personally, I remain skeptic. I also will wait and see if the oil company will be held accountable for the damage being caused. Yes the area is economically lucrative, but the environmental damage such an oil spill can cause in the region cannot be underestimated.

According to some excellent investigative journalism at The Times, US troops are leaving behind a mess in Iraq, a toxic mess.

According to the report, toxic waste is seeping into practically every aspect of the environment. From oil seeping in the ground and open barrels of sulphuric acid to toxic scrap metal and batteries discarded near farmlands, the health situation there is looking rather dire.

And that is only the tip of the iceberg. There are still tens of thousands of hazardous waste and used gas and oil waiting to be disposed. Pentagon regulations say these should be shipped back to the US and disposed of properly. However, the reality on the ground is different.

It is so bad that rats near the waste dumping areas have been found dead. People who handle the remains show blisters, burns and complain of bad coughs.

On the other hand, Iraqis also have to contend with a more immediate and serious thread, which is a rising level of contamination and salinity in their rivers. As reported in the New York Times, Shat El-Arab, which is a river formed by the convergence of Iraq’s two historic rivers, Tigris and the Euphrates, is now so salty that farmlands are becoming barren.

The river’s challenge, however, is not related to US troops or policies. The problem lies in proper, fair agreements on water resources management across borders. The problem between Iraq, Iran and Turkey is pretty much the same as that between Jordan, Israel and Palestine and among the countries of the Nile river basin.

Dams outside Iraq’s borders are siphoning large amounts of water that the Shat El-Arab river can no longer hold the sea at bay. Seawater has slowly been creeping inland over the years, contaminating freshwater resources that farmers depended on for irrigation.

Between all the threats that the young Iraqi government is facing, I wonder if the environmental problems are going to get the attention they deserve. It is easy to push these problems to the back when dealing daily with makeshift bombs and terrorism attacks. But with the environmental issues becoming so serious, it would be foolhardy to ignore them now.

Regardless of what effect the Copenhagen Accord will have in the future, most people would agree the Copenhagen climate change summit left a huge breach between developing and developed countries.

This week, the world gathers in Bonn, Germany, for another round of climate change talks. The biggest challenge will be building trust between the two camps once again. It will not be easy to repair the damage done in Copenhagen last year. But without that first step, nothing will be achieved in this round, wasting more time – which is one thing the world doesn’t have much of when it comes to climate change.

One of the few assurances to the developing world in Copenhagen was the promise of the West to provide USD 30 billion of “new and additional” funding annually till 2012, with that number going up to USD 100 billion per year by 2020.

And herein lays the problem, precisely in the “new and additional” part. As a result of the mistrust that resulted from the Copenhagen meeting, developing countries feel that industrialized nations will just rename some of the older aid promises and repackage them to fulfill their ‘promise’.

In a paper published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), academics warned that the developed world’s promise would be meaningless without first defining a baseline. The say that a UN-based system to define baselines and monitor pledges is the only way to regain the lost trust.

“Funding from developed countries to help developing countries tackle climate change has the potential to re-build the lost trust between the two sets of countries — but only if it is done properly,” says Saleemul Huq, a senior fellow in IIED’s climate change group. “Agreeing on baselines for assessing ‘new and additional’ climate funds is key.”

As the next round of talks starts in Bonn, it will be important to see how this issue will be addressed. If the West decides to ignore it, then the talks are set to fail before they start. Trust is the defining ingredient for a global climate agreement.

The full paper can be found here.

On another note, and just in time for the Bonn talks, the UNDP just released the Arabic version of its report “The Outcomes of Copenhagen – The Negotiations & The Accord.”

I wish the translated report came out earlier, Arab policymakers would have definitely found it useful going into the Bonn discussions. But better late than never, I guess.

I’m not very excited about the expected outcomes of the upcoming discussions, but I will be keeping my eyes open. A surprise may be just around the corner.