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by Moises AVILA Agence France-Presse Elieser Rodriguez emerges blackened from the thick smoke of burning pyres slowly transforming the limbs of mangroves into charcoal — a livelihood much maligned by environmental and climate campaigners in Panama. He says he has no other choice for a living. “This is the daily survival of my family, of my children, of my wife,” Rodriguez told AFP in El Espave, a town about 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Panama […]
by Linda Givetash and Griffin Shea in Johannesburg Agence France-Presse BALFOR, South Africa (AFP) – It’s spring in South Africa, and Danie Bester’s tillers are rusting in a corner of his farm. Freshly-turned earth stretches for miles on other farms as his neighbours prepare their fields. “I’m still playing golf,” said 37-year-old Bester. He might sound like Aesop’s grasshopper, wasting away the spring days while the ants next door work. But he’s actually made a […]
NEW YORK, United States (AFP) – A leading activist investor called Wednesday for Royal Dutch Shell to break itself up, bolster its low-carbon investment and return more cash to shareholders. Bemoaning how the Anglo-Dutch giant’s stock valuation has lagged that of oil industry rivals, activist Daniel Loeb called for a “bold strategy” shift from the oil giant as he announced that he took a stake in the company. “Shell has too many competing stakeholders pushing […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
NEW DELHI, India (AFP) – Nearly 200 people have died in floods and landslides in India and Nepal, officials said Thursday, with whole families buried in their homes and two young girls swept away as forecasters warned of yet more heavy rain. Experts say that they were victims of the ever-more unpredictable and extreme weather that has hit South Asia in recent years caused by climate change and exacerbated by deforestation, damming and excessive development. […]
