Environment | WPN World People News

Greenpeace on March 11, commemorates the more than 15,000 people who died six years ago in the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami, and the tens of thousands of survivors of the ongoing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

A report by lawyers at Earthjustice and Environmental Justice Australia, launched last week in Paris, outlines the international legal responsibilities of nations with World Heritage-listed coral reefs to take action to protect those reefs from the devastating effects of climate change.

Greenpeace Australia Pacific, on March 9, releases shocking photos and footage documenting the Great Barrier Reef’s first severe coral bleaching to happen two years in a row. The bleaching is the result of 12 months of above-average sea temperatures, which is “cooking the reef alive”.

Fields planted with GMO crops, and sprayed with pesticides, are located adjacent to homes on Kauaʻi.

A 3,545 hectare slice of Papua’s rainforest, on March 9, was officially placed in community hands, to be protected and managed by the indigenous people of the Knasaimos landscape in West Papua’s Bird’s Head Peninsula. This is the first Village Forest to be established in Papua and it allows the communities of Manggroholo and Sira villages, situated in South Sorong district, to put a stop to the threat of deforestation from illegal logging, palm oil and pulpwood plantations.

Palm oil is extensively used in food, cosmetics and biofuels, however the unsustainable production of the cheap vegetable oil leads to deforestation, loss of nature habitats and greenhouse gas emissions. Czech GUE/NGL member Kateřina Konečná calls on the European Commission to take measure to promote the responsible cultivation of palm oil and phase out its use for biofuels. The environment committee votes on her report on 9 March.

For the second time in as many years, a federal judge last Friday upheld the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s decision to end the “No Otter Zone”—a failed program that the government determined would harm the sea otter population by excluding the animals from their historic range along the southern California coast.

On March 7, Columbia Riverkeeper, Washington Environmental Council and Sierra Club—represented by Earthjustice—took steps to defend the Washington Department of Natural Resources against a high-profile lawsuit filed by backers of the nation’s largest coal export terminal. On Feb. 2, Millennium Bulk Logistics and NW Alloys (a subsidi

Japan’s policy to resettle residents to heavily contaminated areas in Fukushima is in contravention of Japanese law and multiple international human rights treaties. On March 7, Greenpeace Japan and Human Rights Now detailed numerous human rights violations resulting from the Japanese government’s response over the past six years to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.