Around The Web

UNEP is the leading global environmental authority that sets the global environmental agenda, promotes coherent implementation of the environmental dimension of sustainable development within the United Nations system and serves as an authoritative advocate for the global environment.

More than 8bn Tetra Paks are sold every year in Vietnam – and only a few percent are recycled. It’s having a devastating effect on the environment

It takes 45 minutes to pick up all the milk cartons that have washed up on Long Hai beach overnight. “I feel like all I do is collect them,” says Nguyen Thi Ngoc Tham, gesturing towards the quiet length of sand that fronts her beach house in the south of Vietnam. “I fill about three or four bags every morning, but then there will be a big wave, and when I look back over my shoulder the sand is covered again.”

Continue reading...

Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator approved 18 new offset projects over the past week amid a minor rush by developers to qualify in time for the coming week’s Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) auction.

Protesters walk from Sydney to Mt Kosciuszko to draw attention to increasing damage feral horses are doing to national park

It is not a precise way to measure public sentiment. But as five seasoned bushwalkers made their way on foot through the New South Wales deputy premier John Barilaro’s electorate of Monaro, taking several days to reach Charlotte Pass before hiking up Mt Kosciuszko itself, they received more words of encouragement and support than opposition to their message.

The walkers were walking in protest against legislation shepherded through the NSW parliament by Barilaro in June that declared feral horses, or brumbies, a protected heritage species in Kosciuszko national park.

Continue reading...

Labor senator Kristina Keneally says the former prime minister can pick a time and place to appear for questioning

Malcolm Turnbull has been offered his pick of time and place to front a Senate inquiry into a controversial $444m grant given to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

While the former prime minister is not obliged to attend, Labor Senator Kristina Keneally wants him to appear for questioning.

Continue reading...

Stories of resurrection and revival. If you could bring an extinct animal alive again what would it be? Should we if we could?

Governments are taking too long to tackle climate change and here's why.

More than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered in water, but only around 2.5 percent is drinkable. In this episode we talk to various scientists engaged in making water out of thin air.

It takes a eucalyptus tree more than a hundred years to develop hollows suitable to shelter Aussie animals, and just moments to cut it down. Madeleine De Gabriele, Deputy Editor: Energy + Environment Wes Mountain, Multimedia Editor Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

It’s only 30 kilometres east of Brisbane but the economic gap between Cleveland and the Queensland capital is massive. Now an influential developer wants to revitalise the coastal town by building a $1.4 billion precinct on the foreshore. There’s just one problem: the region’s wetlands are protected under an international treaty known as the Ramsar convention. So who prevails in a battle between birdlife and business? Steve Cannane investigates.

A major climate conference in Poland has failed to adopt a key report after a dispute over a form of words.

Bird experts call on ministers to plug gap left by EU grants worth millions of pounds

They are some of the most elusive birds to nest in the UK. Indeed, they hide so well in their reedbed homes that ornithologists can only estimate bittern numbers by counting the sources of the booming sounds made by males in summer. It is a census that has produced alarming results. Only 11 booming bitterns were counted across the country in the 1990s.

But since then the bittern has begun to bounce back – thanks to a remarkable system of EU environment awards called Life grants. One of these, worth €3.9m (£3.5m), has helped ecologists restore the bittern’s reedbeds in South and West Yorkshire and rebuild bittern numbers.

Continue reading...

The carbon intensity (CI) benchmark for diesel-based fuels under the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) will revert back to its normal, more stringent schedule next year after state regulator ARB fulfilled a court order.

TUI Airways comes top of 2018 Atmosfair Airline Index while Virgin Atlantic ranks 83rd

Airlines are failing to take up the most efficient planes in sufficient numbers to make a significant dent in their carbon dioxide emissions, a new study has found.

The most efficient new aircraft models, such as the Boeing 787-9 and Airbus A350-900 and A320neo, can achieve substantial carbon savings over older models, but no airlines have invested sufficiently in the new types to reach the top levels of energy efficiency, according to a ranking by Atmosfair, a German NGO.

Continue reading...

When lobsters are life, environmental change affects livelihoods, and warming waters will ultimately bust the lobster industry

The American lobster is a symbol of Maine, central to the state’s ethos and economy.

Its image appears on license plates, restaurant signs and clothing. It is sold alive, with its claws banded shut, on docks, at highway rest stops and supermarkets. Cooked, it is served everywhere from seaside shacks to the finest restaurants.

Continue reading...

A farming practice where cows are tethered and restricted to sitting or standing is still commonplace, particularly in southern Germany. Now farming groups are calling for a ban

Jürgen Weber points to a lesion on the hind leg of one of his cows, a common health problem in “tie stalls”, where the animals are kept permanently restrained in one position. His herd of 30 cows face each other in two rows inside the dim, low-ceilinged barn on the side of the family home in the town of Boxberg, in the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg.

In a farming system criticised as “medieval”, each cow is held in place by a chain or strap around her neck, which restricts movement to standing or sitting. Food and water is brought to the cow, although some farmers untether the animals and allow them into a yard or on pasture for part of the day or during summer months.

Continue reading...

With a taste for the nectar of Australian flowers, the Western Pygmy Possum is the sweetest little thing you'll hear about today.

Mass plantings of palm oil are bad for the environment. The alternatives are worse.

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.