Environment | WPN World People News

More than five hundred people joined together to form the messages “Defenda os Corais da Amazônia” and “Petróleo Não” (“Defend the Amazon Reef” and “No Oil”, in English) around a huge butterfly fish on the sands of Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, this morning to show their support for protection of the reef discovered at the mouth of the Amazon River. The Amazon Reef is threatened by the possibility of a spill from nearby oil drilling.

The board of Westinghouse’s parent company, Toshiba, on March 29, approved the filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy for its drowning U.S. company – a defining moment in the decades-long downward spiral of the global nuclear power industry.

On March 29, Earthjustice—representing the Center for Biological Diversity and Zack Klyver, Head Naturalist for the Bar Harbor Whale Watch Company—along with the Natural Resources Defense Council and Conservation Law Foundation filed a Motion to Intervene in a case brought by the Pacific Legal Foundation. On March 7, 2017, the Foundation brought the case on behalf of several commercial fishing organizations to challenge President Obama's designation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument under the Antiquities Act in September 2016.

On March 29, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt signed an order denying a petition that sought to ban chlorpyrifos, a pesticide crucial to U.S. agriculture.

Responding to President Trump’s latest Executive Order, which attempts to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, amongst other climate actions, Jennifer Morgan, Greenpeace International Executive Director

On March 28th, a federal judge overturned an April 2014 decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denying endangered species protection to coastal martens. The court’s action is in response to a lawsuit filed by Earthjustice on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity and Environmental Protection Information Center.

Activists from Greenpeace Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland and the United Kingdom on March 27th, unveiled resistance art in the heart of the Belgian operation of Total, in the port of Antwerp. The peaceful protestors are calling for a halt to Total’s plans to drill for oil in the mouth of the Amazon.

Federal dam operators on the Columbia and Snake rivers must increase water releases over spillways at eight dams to improve survival rates for juvenile salmon migrating to the ocean starting in 2018, a federal court ruled on March 27th.

Samsung on March 27th, officially published its plan to deal with the 4.3 million Galaxy Note 7 devices produced and recalled worldwide following battery faults. This major win comes after nearly five months of campaigning and global protests addressing the environmental impact of the recall.