Indonesia has the potential to realize major reductions in national greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, and simultaneously earn significant new income for national and regional governments, if policies to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) are developed with strong and specific economic incentives, said scientists in a new paper published in the leading scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
India's National Green Tribunal (NGT) has ruled that it can listen to anyone's complaint that the environment requires protecting. The decision means any citizen can make a complaint against a project even if they are directly affected by it.
Large-scale miners and commercial wood producers have hit back at special interest groups linking their respective sectors to the devastation wrought by tropical storm Sendong in northern Mindanao and nearby provinces in the southern Philippines, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
A group of environmental experts finished a preliminary investigation regarding 'ecological immigration' near a cross-border lake in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province earlier this month, reported Xinhua.
Yet another bio-diversity hotspot in under threat according to a new report looking at India. Only recently a new WWF report identified the Greater Mekong as a biodiverse area also under imminent threat.
Conducted by the Asian Nature Conservation Foundation at the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bengaluru, Gujarat Institute of Desert Ecology in Bhuj, western India and the College of Environmental Sciences at Tajen University in Taiwan, the study will be published in the Journal for Natural Conservation.
According to reports in kompas.com, Indonesia and China are looking for ways to cooperate on developing renewable energy.Speaking after a meeting with Chinese Science and Technology deputy minister Cao Jialin, Indonesia's forestry minister Zulkifli Hasan said “It is important for the two countries to develop renewable energy in the face of declining fossil energy resources. After all, China has relatively advanced technology on renewable energy, such as solar and hydro energy technology.”
China plans to plant 26 billion trees over the next 10 years, or two trees annually for every Chinese citizen, to greatly boost its environmental credentials, a senior forestry official said Tuesday, the Global Times reports.
Bloomberg reported today that Greenheart Group Ltd., the timber merchant controlled by Sino-Forest Corp., fell the most in six months in Hong Kong trading after its Toronto-listed parent said it will default on a bond payment due tomorrow.
Israeli company FuturaGene, a biofuel feedstock developer, has opened a China headquarters in Shanghai, building on a number research projects it has been pursuing in the country over the past few years.
South Korea took an important step in nurturing global green growth by agreeing last month with ASEAN member states to form the Asian Forest Cooperation Organization (AFoCO), the Korea Forest Service (KFS) told the Korea Herald on Thursday.
Joint efforts by South Korea and China to stop desertification in the Inner Mongolian desert have made headway, creating a large artificial forest. The Forestry Department of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region of said an 8.7-square-kilometer forest in the Ulan Buh Desert was completed by the Korea International Co-operation Agency and the Bayan Nur municipal government.
Four Asian countries have been named as being among the world's worst perpetrators of deforestation. Indonesia, Cambodia, North Korea and Papua New Guinea were rated as being at 'extreme risk' with economic growth, poverty, corruption and the rise of biofuels being identified as being among the major causes of deforestation.
In addition increasing demand for products like palm oil and an intensifying scrutiny of business and environmental practices at home, have pushed large Asian companies to expand their activities to West Africa in particular.
While on her visit to Indonesia, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed an agreement to provide the country over USD600 million in aid, more than half of which will go to a "green prosperity" program.
A senior Chinese official said Monday the country will help developing countries cope with global climate change.
Xie Zhenhua, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic planning agency, made the remarks this week at a seminar attended by 45 officials from 26 developing countries.
Indonesia is to receive USD600 million in US aid, half of which will go to the country's "green prosperity" program. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed the agreement which aims to kick-start economic development through clean energy and sustainable management of Indonesia's natural resources.
The Wall Street Journal this week reported that the independent committee investigating Hong Kong-based Chinese timber producer Sino-Forest Corp. said it found no evidence of fraud at the company and emphatically rejected allegations by a short-seller that sent shares tumbling 80 percent.
The most expensive street in the world can be found in Hong Kong, as can some of the world’s most expensive office space. In a place of high land premiums, it is astounding that Hong Kong can come out favorably in statistics about green space.
Indeed, some 42 percent of the land mass in Hong Kong has been designated as country parks and special protected areas, making it a territory with one of the highest percentage of protected areas on the globe.
Richard Curtis, the British group managing director of Cahya Mata Sarawak (CMS), might soon be replaced as top executive of Sarawak's largest corporation following his angry public complaints against Sarawak's long-term state government.
Sino-Forest, a Hong Kong-based Chinese company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, confirmed on Friday that it was the subject of a criminal investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, according to the New York Times.
An Australian scientist involved in producing the recent United Nations Environment Programme report Resource efficiency: economics and outlook for Asia and the Pacific, has warned that if the current rate of logging in Asia continues the region will run out of millable timber in less than thirty years.
This report by the World Bank spells out what the world would be like if it warmed by 4 degrees Celsius, which is what scientists are nearly unanimously predicting by the end of the century, without serious policy changes.
Companies in Asia reveal expectations that regulations that could lead to rising costs for reporting and reducing GHG emissions will also be the main sources of climate-related business opportunities.
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