The United Nation's has announced that Mongolia will host this year’s World Environment Day (WED) which under the auspices of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) will focus on reducing food waste and loss.
In the most optimistic diplomatic announcement for some time, China and Japan have agreed to “promote technical co-operation and explore further measures for dealing with harmful air pollution”.
The chickens from China’s decades-long custom of turning a blind eye to the damage inflicted on its environment in return for developing an economic powerhouse are finally coming home to roost as an increasingly-agitated populace demands action from its leaders.
With suffocating smog in Beijing and other major cities still making headlines around the world, renewed focus is now being turned on China’s deplorable fresh water conditions as the government scrambles to show it is in control by issuing reams of new standards on industrial pollution and promising to punish violators.
Despite plans to invest up to USD850 billion over the next ten years in a bid to improve filthy water supplies, experts warn of minimal impact on the damage caused by decades of pollution during China’s rapid economic growth. Rather than more cost-effectively preventing pollution at source, money is being poured into water treatment and desalination.
The central government has earmarked 4 trillion yuan (USD650 million) for investment in rural water conservation projects between 2011 and 2020 – four times as much as was spent in the previous decade.
The Thai government faces a legal challenge to the bidding procedures for a THB350 billion (USD11.7 billion) water-management scheme – drawn up in the wake of massive flooding in 2011 - over concerns about the likelihood of corruption in the contract process.
The major elements of the scheme have also been criticized by a Japanese expert as being unnecessary, which will reinforce local concerns that – like many major infrastructure projects in Thailand – it is a boondoggle designed to line the pockets of politicians and bureaucrats.
Declining harvests of caterpillar fungus, also known as yarsagumba in the Himalayas, could lead to a relapse in efforts to conserve forests and biodiversity in the mountain region, according to two recent studies.
China is to introduce a set of new taxation policies designed to preserve the environment, including a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, according to a senior official with the Ministry of Finance (MOF). This is in addition to establishing seven pilot carbon markets this year with the goal of creating a national cap-and-trade scheme by the end of 2015.
In an article published on the MOF's website Jia Chen, head of the tax policy division, said the government will collect the environmental protection tax instead of pollutant discharge fees, as well as levy a tax on carbon dioxide emissions.
Shanghai plans to promote wildlife protection, a green economy ethos and youth engagement with environmental conservation following the signing of landmark agreement with the UN Environment Program (UNEP).
In a country well used to the everyday reality of water pollution, revelations that industrial companies have been illegally pumping hazardous waste underground for years has shocked many in China.
Underground water pollution is a serious matter in China because groundwater-based sources account for a third of the country’s total water resources. Experts say that 90 percent of the nation's groundwater contains varying degrees of pollution, with a massive 60 percent being heavily polluted.
President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech had few surprises except in his use of China as way to motivate rivals to stand behind his green policies. Obama put most of the onus on new climate policies on a less-than-enthusiastic Congress, but dropped a strong hint that if they don't do something, he would use his executive muscle to address climate change “for the sake of our children and our future.”
It appears that there may be light at the end of the tunnel in the ongoing dispute between China and the EU over aviation emissions by skirting the latter’s provocative Emissions Trading System (ETS).
A partnership between the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ - German Agency for International Co-operation), BASF and Cargill plans to improve the livelihoods of 2,500 coconut growers in the Philippines. The partnership is co-financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development through its program develoPPP.de.
The program focuses on smallholder coconut growers in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, aiming to raise farmers’ incomes by improving productivity and coconut oil quality.
Scientists from Norway and Nepal say they are ready to launch a plan to manipulate the breeding cycle of carp stocks and get the fish species to spawn more than once a year to improve food security in the Himalayan country.
The plan for a low-cost system for off-season fry production was announced last month at the first annual review of the USD3.3 million, four-year, Fish Farming Development (FFD) project that was launched in April 2012.
In a groundbreaking study issued by the World Future Council the future usage loss resulting from current oil, gas and coal consumption has been put at between USD3.2 and 3.4 trillion per year.
Opponents of renewable energy claim conventional energy sources are cheaper on the whole, but the new World Future Council report asks what costs are incurred when renewable energies are not used.
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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