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Eiffel Tower to Undergo Major Makeover

The illuminated Eiffel Tower and La Defense business district (background) are seen during the traditional Bastille Day in Paris, July 14, 2014. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes
The illuminated Eiffel Tower and La Defense business district (background) are seen during the traditional Bastille Day in Paris, July 14, 2014. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes
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Eiffel Tower to Undergo Major Makeover

The illuminated Eiffel Tower and La Defense business district (background) are seen during the traditional Bastille Day in Paris, July 14, 2014. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes
The illuminated Eiffel Tower and La Defense business district (background) are seen during the traditional Bastille Day in Paris, July 14, 2014. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

With a forty-million-euro budget, a major workshop to repaint the Eiffel Tower in compliance with the health and safety standards has kicked off.

The works will also include the completion of the glass wall surrounding the site to protect it from expected terrorist attacks.

The workshop, which is expected to end by 2021, is the largest maintenance process the tower has ever seen since its establishment in 1889.

During this operation, workers will be forced to reduce the tower’s weight, and to shrink the quantity of iron used in its structure, because of the new paint’s extra weight, which will reach 60 tons, while the total weight of the tower is currently 10,000 tons, and must not be exceeded for safety requirements.

In his book "The 300-meter Tower", Gustave Eiffel, the tower's engineer, said that the “only guarantee for the tower’s survival is to take care of its iron”.

The tower celebrates its 130th anniversary next year.

A monument that has become a milestone in the French capital, but weather conditions such as rain and wind had caused the erosion of some of its parts. Thus, the painting process is repeated every seven years, and it takes three years at a time. To maintain the structure, 19 layers of gradient paint must be placed.

But, “La SETE”, the company that manages and invests in the tower's works, faces a complicated problem this time, caused by the presence of lead in its former paint. According to a report by the Department of Health Insurance in Paris, the inhalation of lead dust can cause serious diseases, and therefore the company that invests the tower should take this information into account, in order to protect the workshop’s workers.

The site will remain open during the maintenance period. And to protect the workers assigned to remove the old paint layers, nylon barriers attached to each other will be placed between the tower’s ground and first floors, the two areas most in need of maintenance. These barriers will keep the lead dust away from the workshop's workers, as well as tourists who visit the tower known as the "Iron Lady", one of the most visited tourist features in the world, hosting seven million visitors last year.

In 2016, the Paris Court of Cassation convicted the “La SETE” company for obstructing the work of the Health and Safety Commission in checking the working conditions, and fined it €18750.

The company’s lawyer stated that they were not aware that the lead ratio in the paint was 21 times higher than the allowed limit, adding that the health committee will be very vigilant to protect the safety of workers and visitors from any risks.

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Varieties

Protecting 1.2% of Earth Would Prevent Most Extinctions, Study Says 

Mexican gray wolves, an endangered native species, are seen resting in their enclosure at the Museo del Desierto in Saltillo, Mexico July 1, 2020. Picture taken July 1, 2020. (Reuters)
Mexican gray wolves, an endangered native species, are seen resting in their enclosure at the Museo del Desierto in Saltillo, Mexico July 1, 2020. Picture taken July 1, 2020. (Reuters)
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Protecting 1.2% of Earth Would Prevent Most Extinctions, Study Says 

Mexican gray wolves, an endangered native species, are seen resting in their enclosure at the Museo del Desierto in Saltillo, Mexico July 1, 2020. Picture taken July 1, 2020. (Reuters)
Mexican gray wolves, an endangered native species, are seen resting in their enclosure at the Museo del Desierto in Saltillo, Mexico July 1, 2020. Picture taken July 1, 2020. (Reuters)

Setting aside an additional 1.2% of the world's land as nature preserves would prevent the majority of predicted plant and animal extinctions and cost about $263 billion, according to a study published on Tuesday.

The world is racing to meet a goal to protect 30% of the world by 2030 to protect wildlife that is being decimated by climate change, pollution and habitat destruction.

Global policymakers will meet at a United Nations summit in Colombia in October to discuss plans for reaching that goal.

The study in the journal Frontiers in Science aimed to identify the highest value areas in hope that they be included in those protection plans, said Carlos Peres, a study co-author and conservation ecology expert at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.

"Most countries do not actually have a strategy," Peres said.

"The 30-by-30 targets still lack a lot of details because it doesn't actually say what 30 percent should be protected."

The study's proposed protections would cover an additional 1.6 million square km (633,000 square miles) - an area about a fifth the size of the United States - across 16,825 sites globally that are home to rare and threatened species.

That's on top of the nearly 16% of the world that already have some level of protection.

The study estimated the $263 billion bill is how much it would cost to acquire the new areas, many of which include private property, at current value over the next five years.

"Time is not on our side because it will become increasingly more expensive and more difficult to set aside additional protected areas," Peres said.

Land acquisition makes up most of the cost of creating protected areas, and the study did not consider the upkeep costs for policing the reserves.

About three-quarters of the sites are tropical forests, as those are the world's most biodiverse ecosystems. The Phillipines, Brazil and Indonesia are home to more than half of the high-value sites.

Russia is the single country with the most high-valued area ripe for conservation with 138,436 square km identified in the study, an area the size of Greece.

Several African countries also topped the list with Madagascar having the fourth-highest number of sites overall while the Democratic Republic of Congo had the largest area targeted for conservation on the continent.

The United States is the only developed nation among the top 30 countries in the analysis, with 0.6% of the sites or an area twice the size of Delaware.

The researchers only considered land and freshwater ecosystems but not oceans or marine protected areas. Researchers did not include invertebrates in the study, as the geographical distributions insects and other such animals are not well mapped.