In a world of higher electricity demand growth, clean electricity is stepping up to the challenge. Spearheaded by exponential solar expansion, clean power is set to grow faster than demand, marking the start of a permanent decline in fossil generation. 2024 both clarified and consolidated the shape of the global …
NOVO PROGRESSO, Brazil — This Sept 15, 2009 file photo shows damage done to the Amazon rainforest in a deforested area near Novo Progresso in Brazil’s northern state of Para. (PHOTO: AP) PARIS, France (AFP) — Gold mining has gobbled up some 1,680 square kilometres (650 square miles) of tropical …
Satellite images suggest tropical forests from the Amazon to the Philippines are disappearing at a far more rapid pace than previously thought, a University of Maryland team of forest researchers say. The annual rate of deforestation from 1990 to 2010 was 62 percent higher than in the previous decade, and …
It is now widely known that the natural resources and livelihoods of rural poor people are under increasing pressure. Growing demand for natural resources as well as ongoing and projected climatic changes indicate the necessity for developing and discussing adaptation strategies. This context has contributed to locating the topic of …
There’s no other way to put it: Cutting down tropical forests is disastrous. The lush plant life in these areas sequesters huge amounts of carbon, pulling it out of the atmosphere to fuel plant growth. Chopping down a rainforest releases carbon back to the atmosphere, worsening global warming. But at …
Rio de Janeiro’s state environmental agency says it is investigating a fish die-off that has left thousands of carcasses floating in waters where sailing events are to be held when Brazil hosts next year’s Olympics. The dead twaite shad, small whitish gray fish, were discovered Tuesday by inspectors conducting routine …
The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday gave approval for establishing the New Development Bank (NDB) and the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA). Heads of the five nation BRICS group — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — decided at their sixth summit in Fortaleza …
International wind turbine manufacturers saw a record-breaking year for global installations in 2014, but this is "disguising underlying challenges facing the industry", according global business advisory firm FTI consulting. According to Global Wind Market Update: Demand and Supply 2014 - a report by FTI Consulting due to be published in …
Lack of preparation leaves supply chains in Brazil, China, India and the U.S. more vulnerable to climate change risks than those in Europe and Japan, according to a new report by CDP, an international NGO formerly called Carbon Disclosure Project. Suppliers in India and Canada are not doing enough to …
Oil and gas access roads in western Amazon could open up ‘Pandora’s box’ of environmental impacts Oil and gas roads are encroaching deeper into the western Amazon, one of the world’s last wildernesses and biodiversity hotspots, according to a new study. Roads across Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and western Brazil …
The western Amazon is one of the world's last high-biodiversity wilderness areas, characterized by extraordinary species richness and large tracts of roadless humid tropical forest. It is also home to an active hydrocarbon (oil and gas) sector, characterized by operations in extremely remote areas that require new access routes. Here, …
Installations of wind power in the U.S. surged sixfold last year, making it the largest market for the technology worldwide after China. The U.S. added 4.7 gigawatts of new onshore wind capacity in 2014 compared with 764 megawatts a year earlier, largely due to the extension of the Production Tax …
Global demand for gold is putting some of the most remote and pristine tropical forests at risk, scientists warn. Some 1,680 sq km of rainforest in South America was lost to gold mining from 2001 to 2013, a study shows. University of Puerto Rico researchers say gold mining has become …
Southeastern Brazil is getting some rainfall a year after a record drought started, but not enough to eliminate worries about electricity rationing, drinking-water shortages or another season of damaged export crops, meteorologists said. Record-high temperatures and the most severe drought in at least 80 years punished southeastern Brazil last year, …
COULD São Paulo run out of water? The idea of South America’s biggest metropolis, home to 20m people, lacking something so basic seems fanciful. Yet shortages this year have forced schools to suspend classes and restaurants to shut in smaller towns across São Paulo state, where a fifth of Brazilians …
TO GET to the tent city in the grounds of Peru’s defence ministry, where UN climate talks are being held between December 1st and 12th, delegates and hangers-on must pass an assault course. Its obstacles of steep walls, ropes across ditches and parallel bars, normally used by soldiers, are a …
This report provides an overview of projected greenhouse gas emissions of seven major emitting countries (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, and the United States) out to 2030, taking into account the emissions trajectories based on current and selected enhanced policies.
In many places where forest carbon projects are implemented, traditional forest use has been blamed for forest loss while the drivers of large-scale deforestation remain unaddressed – and deforestation and the emissions associated with it continue. This article explores some of the controversies that arise when conservation groups or specialist …
Deforestation in the Amazon rain forest dropped 18% over the past 12 months, falling to the second-lowest level in a quarter century, Brazil’s environment minister said on Wednesday. Izabella Teixeira told participants at a news conference that 4,848 square kilometers (1,870 square miles) of rain forest were destroyed between August …
Brazil’s Jaguari reservoir has fallen to its lowest level ever, laying bare measurement posts that jut from exposed earth like a line of dominoes. The nation’s two biggest cities are fighting for what little water is left. Sao Paulo state leaders want to tap Jaguari, which feeds Rio de Janeiro’s …
Brazil extended on Tuesday a moratorium on buying soy grown in illegally cleared land in the Amazon rainforest as the government tries to protect the region, Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said. Satellite imagery presented by Teixeira showed the area of soy grown on illegally deforested land grew 61 percent to …
