News
Meet the activists risking life and limb to protect rivers
In late March of this year, an unusual group of activists gathered in Tbilisi, Georgia for a four-day conference to strategize around stopping destructive hydropower projects across the globe. Hailing from countries as diverse as Chile, Congo, Albania, Mongolia, China, Thailand, and Colombia, they had ...
Nepal burns more than 4,000 confiscated wildlife parts
On Monday, the Nepalese government set fire to more than 4,000 items of confiscated wildlife parts in an attempt to demonstrate zero tolerance for the illegal wildlife trade. The stockpile included parts from 48 species, including 67 tiger skins, 418 common leopard skins, 354 elephant ...
Coal miners owe the Indonesian government hundreds of millions of dollars
Indonesia is now one of the world’s largest exporters of coal, an industry that contributes around four percent of the country’s gross domestic product mostly through exports to China and India. Despite its massive size, however, observers are concerned that the sector’s actual contribution to ...
Trump failure to lead on climate doesn’t faze UN policymakers in Bonn
Kaisa Kosonen, a political advisor on climate action for Greenpeace in Germany is prepping for the mid-year United Nations climate conference in Bonn, running May 8-18. But she pauses to answer my question. Here’s the set up, I say: Under President Obama, the U.S. played ...
The meat hook: satiating Asia’s demand for beef
Beef has never been a favored meat in most of Asia. Cows are harder to raise than chickens and pigs, which take up less space and can be fed scraps. A large majority of India practices Hinduism, a religion that reveres cows. Islamic societies, too, ...
Overestimated range maps used for endemic birds in India’s Western Ghats lead to underestimated threats, study finds
New research suggests that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature is overestimating the ranges of several bird species endemic to the Western Ghats mountain range in India, which can have major implications for determining the extinction threat faced by those species. The IUCN ...
ASEAN easing stance on China's maritime encroachment
As leaders of Southeast Asian nations prepare to meet for an annual summit starting Wednesday, their collective stance against China’s territorial ambitions appears to have grown markedly softer, reflecting delicate balancing acts by countries vying for economic assistance from Beijing.Keep reading ...
Trump targets cheap Chinese steel in probe, rallying US steel stocks
President Donald Trump on April 20 launched a trade probe against China and other exporters of cheap steel into the U.S. market, raising the possibility of new tariffs and sending shares of some U.S. steel makers up over 8 percent. Citing concerns about national security, Trump ...
Foreign ministers of US, ASEAN to meet in May
The U.S. Department of State on April 20 said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will chair a meeting with his counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, to be held on May 4 in the U.S. capital. The foreign ministers will discuss China’s maritime aggression ...
Forest conservation might be an even more important climate solution than we realize: study
It’s estimated that deforestation is responsible for about 10 percent of global carbon emissions. Of course, in addition to the direct emissions created, the destruction of a forest means the removal of a valuable carbon sink, as well, which is why deforestation represents a “double ...
