The FIFA Women’s World Cup will kick off in Germany on June 26th and runs until July 17th, and it looks set to be an exciting tournament with the some of the best teams and players in the world. FIFA has also made a strong commitment to making this year’s world cup a green one.

In February, the organization launched its environmental initiative “Green Goal 2011” with the aim of assessing the World Cup’s environmental impact and finding ways to reduce that impact throughout the tournament. That means organizers are monitoring things like energy and water consumption, trash disposal, transportation and food as part of an eco-friendly management system in all the stadiums.

“Fifty years ago, the single-use plastic bag was almost unheard of. Now we use them for a few minutes and they pollute our environment for decades,” says Janez Potocnik, Environment Commissioner of the the European Union. Each European uses 500 of these bags each year, most of them are used just once.  In 2008 alone a total of 3.4 million tonnes of plastic bags were produced in Europe, that makes the same weight as two million cars.

Starting this week (18. May) the European Commission is seeking a solution. The approach is planed to be made with the help of European people and the bags manufacturers. The Commission calls everyone to a online-poll. Finally a tax or a ban on plastic bags is considered. The Commission called for suggestions on how to deal with the billions of bags used in the European Union each year. The public consultation will close at the end of August.

Biodiversity is important to protect, especially in the world’s rainforests, oceans and mountain ranges where we often find rare species. But biodiversity is important in “ordinary” places, too – like continental Europe. The region boasts a lot of its own unique species, like the Iberian lynx in Spain (pictured above) and the Bavarian pine vole in the Alps. But those animals might not be around much longer.

A new report from the European Union shows that hundreds of species in Europe are now facing extinction. In fact, that assessment includes about up to a quarter of the species native to the continent. All types of animals and plants could vanish, including birds, reptiles, mammals and butterflies.

The problem stems from a variety of factors, including pollution and climate change. The EU has set forth some targets to protect Europe’s biodiversity, like restoring ecosystems. But there is no funding to back those proposals, so some critics don’t believe anything will change.

We already know a lot of the effects that climate change has on our planet–like extreme weather, vanishing resources and rising water levels. But the earth’s water levels aren’t just rising, they’re getting warmer, too. And that has an impact on the wide variety of marine life that lives in our oceans.

A new study in the “Nature Climate Change” Journal shows that temperature hikes in the southern hemisphere ocean are starting to have a negative impact on marine species too, especially a type of fish called the “banded morwong” (pictured above). One of the study’s authors says ocean warming can have a serious effect on how a species grows, how the animals’ bodies function and even how they behave. Usually, warmer temperatures in the waters make a species multiply faster. But the ocean has warmed up too much at this point, and it’s taking a toll on the banded morwong population. Scientists were able to see increased stress on the fish, and that’s caused some of the morwong to die.

If you live near the ocean, tell us some climate change indicators you’ve seen around you…

Friends of the Earth is an international network of environmental organizations that considers environmental issues in their social, political and human rights contexts. The campaigns seek to address the economic and development aspects of sustainability. The campaigns are mostly about economic justice and resisting neoliberalism, forests and biodiversity, food sovereignty and climate justice and energy. Daniel Pentzlin is a campaigner at the European division of Friends of the Earth. He is working from Brussels to coordinate campaigns all over Europe. GLOBAL IDEAS talked to Daniel at the re:campaign in Berlin about the fascinating and the frustrating aspects of his work.