The Chinese government will launch a nationwide campaign starting Saturday to inspect the country's offshore petroleum drilling and exploration businesses to prevent future oil spills, according to a report in Xinhua.
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.
Norway sys it will commit up to USD1 billion to help Indonesia meet its emissions reduction target, according to a report on the website Scandasia.com.
Excessive emissions of contaminated water in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) in southern China, home to over 120 million people, has "severely polluted" fishing ports and seafood in the area, experts said.
"The content of copper and zinc in fishing ports near Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Hong Kong and Macau is much higher than in other domestic waters," Zhang Gan, a researcher with the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Yangcheng Evening News.
As senior Chinese politicians make more frequent statements regarding the importance of protecting the nation's environmental resources, a new pollution treatment project has been launched in Baiyin in northwest China's Gansu Province.
Indonesian Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan has reiterated the government’s commitment to applying forestry development policies which are sustainable and able to improve the welfare of people living around forests, according to the country’s Antara News Service.
Australia and Norway have crafted a proposal they hope will get troubled global climate talks back on track and win agreement on a broader climate pact by 2015, writes Reuters. If they succeed, it could mean a new climate deal could go into force by 2018. But the idea is facing resistance from developing countries, especially in Asia, which back an extension to the existing Kyoto Protocol.
The seedy business of shark fishing is coming under increasing pressure in its own main market – Asia. It's a business that could be worth over USD30 billion a year. The latest move against the business was the announcement of Singapore's supermarket chain Cold Storage (a subsidiary of Dairy Farm International Holdings) that it has joined the WWF Singapore Sustainable Seafood Group with a commitment to stop selling shark fin and shark products in its 42 outlets across the country.
In a move that has taken environmentalists by surprise, Myanmar's president has suspended construction of a Chinese-backed hydroelectric dam. Thein Sein made a statement to parliament saying the USD3.6 billion Myitsone dam was “contrary to the will of the people”.
News of China's miracle strain rice appear to be over-fertilised. Literally. Developed by a team lead by Dr Yuan Longping, known as the father of hybrid rice research and a World Food Prize recipient, the new strain delivers nearly 14 tonnes per hectare.Liu Shi, chief executive officer of Yuan Long Ping High-Tech Agriculture Co Ltd (Long Ping High-Tech), told China Daily that: “The super rice requires a certain planting environment, and we are now targeting 2 million to 2.5 million hectares of high-yield fields in China."
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has praised China's efforts in developing carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, the China Daily has reported."The Chinese government is making serious efforts in CCS in both investment and technological research, which has put it ahead of many other countries," said Ellina Levina, energy analyst of the agency's CCS unit, the newspaper quoted.
One of China's richest men and a solar power pioneer, Huang Ming, is one of the four winners of the 2011 Right Livelihood Awards. The honor was for developing cutting-edge technologies for the solar industry
Biomass power plant provider DP CleanTech has been contracted to convert an ageing coal-fired power plant in Thailand to operate on waste wood such as eucalyptus bark.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Tuesday urged local governments to step up efforts in energy conservation and emissions reduction as the situation remains serious.
International charity and pressure group Oxfam has released a report highlighting the problems that a modern “land rush” is bringing to poor communities. Fingers have been pointed at palm oil corporations and agribusinesses as being primarily responsible for many of the land deals that have left local communities without homes or livelihoods.The report, Land and Power, says that as many as 227 million hectares have been sold, leased or licensed in large-scale land deals since 2001, mostly by international investors.
The European Union say that, when airlines are incuded in carbon emissions cap-and-trade scheme next year, its will allow airlines to emit 85 percent of their carbon dioxide limits free in the hope they will use the money to modernize their fleets, according to the Associuated Press.
Delhi Metro has become the world's first railway network to earn carbon credits from the United Nations for helping cut greenhouse gas emissions.Figures from the UN show the system, opened in 2002, has reduced the city's CO2 emissions by 630,000 tonnes a year. As a result it qualifies for carbon credits under the UN-run Clean Development Mechanism which translates into USD9.5 million a year for seven years.
Hotels will be able to contribute to climate change mitigation while also increasing their profits under a new United Nations-backed ‘green’ scheme offering an online toolkit to evaluate energy consumption, find renewable sources and improve energy management, thus cutting costs.
China says it will invest two trillion yuan (USD313 billion) to promote low-carbon economy from now until 2015, the China Daily reported on Sunday, citing a senior official from the country's top economic planner.
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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