Environment | WPN World People News

Widespread flooding and landslides in five provinces in central Viet Nam have left more than 1.5 million children at risk of disease, losing out on education and poor nutrition. At least 135,000 families have been directly impacted by flood water levels as high as two metres in certain municipalities, and over half a million people are unable to access safe water sources.

Smoke stacks and distillation towers at a large petrochemical plant are silhouetted against the golden evening sky.

Across Southeast Asia, thousands of waste pickers – many of them women – help to recycle waste that would otherwise become landfill. But plummeting prices for recyclables have hit them hard, and they receive no social security benefits nor a share of government pandemic relief.

Hurricane Delta made landfall near Creole, Louisiana as a Category 2 storm. Climate change-fueled storms like Delta can compound the climate crisis when they barrel towards oil, gas, and petrochemical refineries.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) on Oct. 8 announced it will deny protections for the rare and elusive wolverine under the Endangered Species Act, prompting a coalition of conservation groups to announce an intent to sue.

Britain’s primary environmental agency announced that beginning Thursday a ban on all “single-use” beverage straws is in effect, making it illegal for businesses to sell or supply them to individual customers.

On October 2nd, a federal court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violated the law by waiting a decade or more to investigate civil rights complaints filed by community groups across the country. The lawsuit challenged EPA’s failure to protect civil rights in the environmental context. Five communities filed the litigation, arguing that EPA had failed to complete civil rights investigations within 180 days as required by law.

A status conference on seismic litigation revealed on October 1st, the industry will not pursue efforts to employ seismic blasting to search the Atlantic Ocean for offshore petroleum deposits this year, and possibly for several years.

On Sept. 24, the House of Representatives passed the Clean Energy Jobs and Innovation Act (H.R. 4447), an important step to combat the climate crisis.