What looked like an admittedly temporary reprieve for the swift currents and extraordinary biodiversity of the Mekong river is now over. In December the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an intergovernmental body made up of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, called again for approval of a potentially devastating dam at Xayaburi in northern Laos to [...]
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Stretching across six countries in Southeast Asia and Melanesia (Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Timor Leste), the Coral Triangle contains the richest marine ecosystems on earth. While encompassing just over 1.5% of the world’s oceans (and1% of the earth’s surface), it contains a staggering proportion of the world’s marine [...] As today’s conscientious travellers seek authentic experiences with the people of the lands they visit, tourism can be a vehicle for preserving ancient cultures, while socially and economically empowering marginalised or remote indigenous communities. At the first Pacific Asia Indigenous Tourism Conference (PAITC) held on the traditional land of the Larrakia people in Darwin, [...] “The Arctic is hot,” says Gustaf Lind, the Swedish ambassador who will chair the Arctic Council meeting in Stockholm on March 28th-29th. The other members are America, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Russia, plus six non-voting representatives of indigenous Arctic peoples such as Sami and Inuit. he top of the world is warming [...] A group of 11,000 Nigerians launched a suit against Royal Dutch Shell at the London High Court on Friday, (March 23, 2012) seeking tens of millions of dollars in compensation for two oil spills in 2008 that they say destroyed their livelihoods. The case will be closely watched by the industry for precedents that [...] Almost 24 tonnes of illegally harvested ivory were seized by investigators in 2011—the largest haul since records began in 1990 and more than twice the amount in 2010. Traffic, a wildlife watchdog, reckons around 2,500 elephants must have died to produce so much ivory. This year could be worse. More than 200 elephants were [...] A rapid increase in shipping in the formerly ice-choked waterways of the Arctic poses a significant increase in risk to the region’s marine mammals and the local communities that rely on them for food security and cultural identity, according to an Alaska Native groups and the Wildlife Conservation Society who convened at a recent [...] Chevron is being sued for more than $11 billion by Brazilian prosecutors [for spilling at least 2,400 barrels of oil offshore Brail]Officials say they are preparing criminal charges against Chevron and its management….Eager to halt criticism from regulators, politicians and environmental groups, Chevron said last November that it ”accepted full responsibility” for the incident. [...] New research from Chris Costello and Steve Gaines of the University of California, Santa Barbara (under peer review for the journal Science) reckons that those unassessed fisheries are gravely depleted, with on average about half the fishy biomass they need to maintain their maximum annual yield (the usual definition of sustainability). Another analysis, using [...] |
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