The key role that rapidly diminishing wetlands play in supporting human life and biodiversity needs to be recognized and integrated into decision-making as a vital component of the transition to a resource-efficient, sustainable world economy, according to a new report by The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB).
A damning new study on the global luxury leather industry has been released by NGO Human Rights Watch which claims workers in many leather tanneries in the Hazaribagh neighborhood of Dhaka, the Bangladesh capital, including children as young as 11, become ill because of exposure to hazardous chemicals and are injured in horrific workplace accidents.
Released last week, the study says that the tanneries, which export hundreds of millions of dollars in leather for luxury goods throughout the world, are also spewing pollutants into surrounding communities.
Developers of the Xayaburi hydropower plant in northern Laos expect to complete the redesign of the first run-of-river dam planned for the lower Mekong within the next few months, aiming to mitigate any negative impacts on neighboring countries.
Shanghai will set up a new water resource management system by 2014 which will boast the strictest standards for water savings and waste water treatment in China, the Shanghai Water Authority said today.
America’s First Solar has joined forces with India’s Sir Ratan Tata Trust to develop a pilot project using First Solar's advanced, thin-film photovoltaic (PV) modules to help off-grid villages in the country’s northern Uttarakhand state receive a reliable supply of clean energy for essential needs such as safe drinking water and irrigation.
A report was launched on the opening day of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) International Waters Science Conference held in Bangkok this week, based on a study of almost 200 major international water-related projects over the past 20 years, has identified a suite of existing and emerging challenges and how science can offer remedies.
The GEF partnered with the United Nations University and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to extract lessons from a portfolio of major trans-boundary water projects involving investments of more than USD7 billion.
Norway-based Aqualyng has secured an investment of USD12 million from the International Finance Corp (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, to construct seawater desalination projects in China to meet the growing demand for fresh water in the country.
Malaysia’s Natural Resources and Environment Ministry, under the Department of Environment (DOE), says it has taken legal action against five palm oil mills so far this year and that it will continue to monitor other sources of pollution including 34 palm oil mills operating in Borneo’s wild Kinabatangan River basin.
Coca-Cola has gone on the public relations offensive hailing its efforts on water conservation in the fourth edition of the Coca-Cola China System Sustainability Report, 2010-2011.
China's provincial, municipal and country environmental protection agencies have been ordered to publish environmental impact assessment reports on their websites from September 1 to make the evaluations available to the public, according to the state-run China Daily.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection said it issued the order to better regulate environmental impact assessments, after recent incidents in which environmental issues triggered widespread objections.
The Standing Committee of China’s National People's Congress (NPC) Monday began reading a draft law aimed at putting more emphasis on the role of the central and local governments in environmental protection.
The first revision since 1989 when China introduced its fundamental legal code on environmental protection — the Environmental Protection Law — the draft amendment was created after a four-year research project.
The lack of rains in large, monsoon-dependent, agricultural areas of South Asia has compounded concerns expressed in a recent report about an impending global water crisis and its detrimental impact on agriculture.
Vietnamese experts have once again called for a moratorium on dam building on the Mekong River yesterday, saying the lives of as many as 60 million people would be adversely impacted.
This comes on the heels of a report by Reuters that work had resumed on the most controversial of the 11 dams now under consideration for the mighty Mekong, the USD3.5 million Xayaburi Dam in Laos, despite assurances from the Laotian government to the contrary.
The Asia Development Bank is urging China to adopt a tough green taxation system if it hopes to meet its pollution reduction goals and promote sustainable economic growth.
The drought-prone Vidarbha region of Maharashtra is heading towards another form of water crisis due to a proposed cluster of coal power plants in the region, according to a report from environmental NGO Greenpeace.
Thai residents and conservationists have launched a legal action to stop the controversial USD3.6 billion Xayaburi hydropower project on the Mekong river. The action aims to block the Thai state-run Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) from buying power from the Laos project.
Recent official statements from Vietnam indicate the country is becoming increasingly aware of the environmental dangers facing it, but is unsure of the best way to tackle the problems.Prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung has publicly called on the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE) to improve the legal framework and efficiency of state management when it comes to exploiting environmental resources.
Dutch free-flow hydro specialist Tocardo International has established a joint venture with Nepalese renewable energy specialist Glow Tech Solutions to set up an assembly and production facility for Tocardo turbines in Nepal.
Asia's mangrove swamps may offer the region a future carbon trading option and pollution cleaning solution.
Two new sets of research show that the value of mangrove swamps to the environment has been vastly underestimated and that there are solid arguments for including such habitat in carbon-trade schemes similar to REDD+.
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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