Environment

Environmental activists have warned of dire implications to the Indonesia’s rainforests, wildlife and indigenous communities following the release of new data showing the country has the third-biggest area of land in the world given over to foreign control since 2000.

China said it will conduct nationwide sampling of soil in order to map pollution levels across the country following recent revelations that portions of the country's rice supply were tainted with the toxic metal cadmium.

South Korea has signed a deal with the board of the UN Green Climate Fund (GCF) which will help the new UN fund establish its headquarters in Incheon, west of Seoul.

According to sources, India’s environment ministry is expected to close around 60,000 square kilometers of its Western Ghats — a mountain region spanning six states — to mining, thermal power plants and heavily polluting industries.

China’s first low-carbon highway will be open to traffic by the end of the year following the completion of the most difficult section of the new Chongqing to Chengdu link.

According to a statement from the White House, US President Barack Obama and his new Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, agreed during their weekend summit to co-operate in fighting climate change by cutting the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). HFCs were developed as a replacement for chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) – for use primarily as coolants and propellants – after the later were found to be destroying the Earth’s ozone layer. While CFCs have been phased out under the 1987 Montreal Protocol, the greenhouse gas qualities of HFCs have been raising alarms since they have a global warming potential 11,700 times higher than of CO2.

China's State of the Environment Report for 2012 suggests that the overall quality of the country’s environment, while not at all good, is at least stable. The condition of underground water sources and rising levels of rural pollution, however, are now major concerns. The new report, released by the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), is based on data collected from 5,000 monitoring stations in nearly 200 cities across the country. It says air quality in China’s cities remained "generally stable" last year, with emissions of sulphur dioxide - mainly from burning coal - falling 4.52 percent to 21.18 million tonnes.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has released an economic study proposing that Australia could increase its emissions reduction target from 5 to 25 percent by 2020, via carbon pricing, at very little cost to the economy.

A plastic bag ban launched in China five years ago has cut consumption by at least 67 billion bags, saving an equivalent of 6 million tonn of oil, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).