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by Jordi Miro, with Allison Jackson in Rio de Janeiro Agence France Presse PORTO VELHO, Brazil (AFP) — Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro signed a decree Wednesday to ban burning throughout the country for two months, government sources cited in local media said, as the authorities scramble to defuse the Amazon fires which have triggered a global outcry. The blazes that have engulfed parts of the world’s largest rainforest — which is crucial for maintaining […]
https://youtu.be/I3IYV46TsGw NGOS say they are ‘pleased’ with the decision taken in Geneva by the regulator of global wildlife trade to impose a near-total ban on sending African elephants captured from the wild to zoos. AFPTV TEAMS, ELOI ROUYER / AFPTV / AFP
Yokohama, Japan (AFP) — The fires tearing through the Amazon represent a “tipping point” for the health of the rainforest, the head of a top global forestry management body said Wednesday, urging the world to do more to save the trees. The situation in the Amazon is “very urgent,” stressed Gerhard Dieterle, executive director of the International Tropical Timber Organisation, an intergovernmental agency group that promotes sustainable forestry use. “This is something that might affect […]
https://youtu.be/hecHHfoyvQM by Clara WRIGHT Agence France Presse London, United Kingdom (AFP) — British supermarkets are starting to go “nude”. Bowing to pressure from environmentally conscious consumers, big brand shops have begun taking steps to strip their shelves of plastic wrapping over concerns about saving the oceans from waste. “Nude zones” and “Food in the Nude” campaigns are already being rolled out in places such as New Zealand and South Africa, where many fresh fruits and […]
Washington, United States (AFP) — Scientists in Australia have discovered how to save starving koalas whose fussy eating habits make them vulnerable to habitat loss: by feeding them poo. A team of researchers used fecal transplants in the form of orally ingested capsules to alter the microbes in the marsupials’ guts, thus allowing them to eat a wider range of eucalypts. Their work was described in a study published in the journal Animal Microbiome on […]
https://youtu.be/0L_6fyH8KfI Videographic showing how cities can respond to heat waves. Northern hemisphere summers will deliver dangerously longer heatwaves, droughts and bouts of rain even if humanity manages to cap global warming at two degrees Celsius, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. VIDEOGRAPHICS Fred Garet, Emmanuelle Bailllon / AFP Videographics / AFP
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AFP) — A Pacific summit has descended into tears, recriminations and shouting between pro-coal Australia and low-lying island nations facing an existential threat from climate change. The annual Pacific Island Forum wrapped up in Tuvalu late Thursday with Australia and the group’s 17 other members sharply at odds, potentially undermining Canberra’s efforts to curb China’s growing influence in the region. “There were serious arguments and even shouting, crying, people, leaders were […]
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AFP) — Time is running out for Jakarta. One of the fastest-sinking cities on earth, environmental experts warn that one third of it could be submerged by 2050 if current rates continue. Decades of uncontrolled and excessive depletion of groundwater reserves, rising sea-levels, and increasingly volatile weather patterns mean swathes of it have already started to disappear. Existing environmental measures have had little impact, so authorities are taking drastic action: the nation […]
by Angelos TZORTZINIS MAKRYMALLI, Greece (AFP) — Firefighters on the Greek island of Evia were still battling Wednesday to contain a fire that has caused massive damage to a pristine mountain wildlife habitat after threatening four communities. “It’s a huge ecological disaster in a unique, untouched pine forest,” said acting regional governor Costas Bakoyannis. The fire that broke out in the early hours of Tuesday on Greece’s second-largest island prompted the evacuation of the villages […]
SINGAPORE, Singapore (AFP) — Singapore said Monday it will impose a blanket ban on the domestic sale of elephant ivory and products from 2021 as the government tightens its campaign against illegal wildlife trade. The announcement on World Elephant Day followed two years of consultations with non-government groups, ivory retailers and the public. Authorities in the city-state made their largest ever seizure of smuggled ivory last month, impounding a haul of nearly nine tonnes […]
by Harry PEARL JAKARTA, Indonesia (AFP) — Dozens of people clutching bags full of plastic bottles and disposable cups queue at a busy bus terminal in the Indonesian city of Surabaya — where passengers can swap trash for travel tickets. The nation is the world’s second-biggest marine polluter behind China and has pledged to reduce plastic waste in its waters some 70 percent by 2025 by boosting recycling, raising public awareness, and curbing usage. The […]
by Ekaterina ANISIMOVA BOGUCHANY, Russia (AFP) — Svetlana Tuflyakova is in a hurry as she pushes her small son in his pram, keen to get back inside her house and away from the permeating smoke of Siberian wildfires: “It feels like it fills your whole body,” she says. Tuflyakova lives in the village of Boguchany in Krasnoyarsk region, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from raging fires which have engulfed vast territories and filled residential areas […]
