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by Claire GOUNON EIN GEDI, Israel (AFP) — In the heyday of the Ein Gedi spa in the 1960s, holidaymakers could marinate in heated pools and then slip into the briny Dead Sea. Now the same beach is punctured by craters. A spectacular expanse of water in the desert, flanked by cliffs to east and west, the Dead Sea has lost a third of its surface area since 1960. The blue water recedes about a […]
by Véronique DUPONT with Stuart GRAHAM in Dundee Agence France-Presse NORTH RONALDSAY (ORKNEY), United Kingdom (AFP) – On a tiny island in Scotland’s far-flung Orkneys, thousands of sheep spend the winter munching on seaweed, a unique diet that scientists say offers hope for reducing planet-warming methane emissions. Around 60 people share North Ronaldsay — an island just over 3 miles (5 kilometres) long, ringed by rocky beaches and turquoise waters off the north coast of mainland […]
by Henry MORALES ARANA Agence France-Presse COMUNIDAD CERRO AZUL, Guatemala (AFP) – Lazaro Yat looked on helplessly as his 17-year-old son left the family home in Guatemala and embarked on the perilous journey to the United States as an undocumented migrant. Two powerful hurricanes that struck the north of the Central American country in 2020 decimated cardamom crops, leaving thousands of indigenous people destitute. “Everyone suffered because their crops were left submerged in water,” Yat […]
LUXEMBOURG, Luxembourg (AFP) – The impact of surging gas and electricity prices globally threatens the EU’s energy market, but the bloc will not react hastily, officials said on Tuesday. An emergency meeting of EU ministers in Luxembourg to discuss the issue largely backed 11 member countries in rejecting proposals from Spain and France for deep-rooted reforms to the market. The ministers recognised the price hikes “jeopardised the integrity of the European energy market,” the chair of […]
TEHRAN, Iran (AFP) – Iran’s capital is suffering its worst drought in half a century, a water resources official said Tuesday, citing a 97 percent drop in monthly rainfall compared with last year. Tehran has had 0.4 millimetres of rain since September 23, compared with 14.3 mm over the same period in 2020, said Mohammad Shahriari, deputy director of the company that supplies the region. “Groundwater and surface water are at a critical state and […]
by Etienne BALMER and Hiroshi HIYAMA Agence France-Presse SHIMODA, Japa (AFP) – A boat’s crew casts a net into the seemingly clean waters off Japan’s Izu peninsula, but not to catch fish — they are scooping up microplastics to learn more about the pollution’s impact on marine life. Tiny floating fragments from plastic packaging, synthetic clothing and fishing nets have proliferated over the past four decades, and are now found in every part of the […]
MANAMA, Bahrain (AFP) – Bahrain announced Sunday it aims to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2060, a day after neighbouring Saudi Arabia made the same pledge ahead of the COP26 climate summit. The Gulf kingdom “aims to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, in order to face the challenges posed by climate change and to protect the environment”, its official news agency said. Bahrain will use technology including carbon capture, as well as tree planting, to […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) – China is targeting an ambitious clean energy goal of reducing fossil fuel use to under 20 percent by 2060, according to an official plan published by state media on Sunday. The cabinet document follows a pledge by President Xi Jinping to wean the world’s biggest polluter off coal, with a target of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality 30 years later. But the country has been criticised for pushing […]
by Anne-Sophie THILL Agence France-Presse BEAUHARNOIS, Canada (AFP) – With vast amounts of cheap and renewable electricity mostly generated from hydro dams, Quebec is seeing more and more tech giants setting up power-hungry data centres in the Canadian province. Demand for cloud services has sent the number of data centres soaring worldwide, and in Quebec alone fifty now operate where just 39 existed two years ago. Many are owned by multinationals such as Amazon Web […]
by Rania Sanjar Agence France-Presse RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AFP) – Top crude exporter Saudi Arabia will aim to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2060, its de facto ruler said on Saturday, days before the COP26 global climate summit. The kingdom, one of the world’s biggest polluters, said it would also join a global effort to cut methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. The UN says more than 130 countries have set or are […]
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) – Success at the upcoming COP26 climate summit is “definitely harder” than the 2015 Paris talks which resulted in a landmark accord, the British minister presiding over the gathering warned Saturday. The October 31-November 12 gathering in Glasgow is the biggest climate conference since the Paris summit and is seen as crucial in setting worldwide emission targets to slow global warming. Alok Sharma, the British minister in charge of the talks, […]
KAMPALA, Uganda (AFP) – Environmental watchdogs Saturday condemned the arrest of six Ugandan rights campaigners as a coordinated effort to silence critics of a contested energy project involving French oil giant Total. The activists from Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), the country’s highest-profile environmental defenders group, were detained without charge at a police station outside Kampala on Friday, the organisation said in a statement. Its French partners, Amis de la Terre France (Friends of the […]
