Environment | WPN World People News

People living on the Comoros archipelago in the Indian Ocean are needing to adapt to climate change.

A weakened Cyclone Fani struck Bangladesh Saturday after leaving a trail of destruction Friday in India’s eastern Odisha state.

Authorities said they are investigating at least 12 reported deaths in India and at least four in Bangladesh, although a significant human disaster appears to have been averted.

In Mozambique, a UNHCR team arrived in the north-eastern town of Pemba on Saturday(April 27th), a day after the surrounding region was hit by Cyclone Kenneth, one of the strongest storms recorded in mainland Africa. Although the area is less populated than other parts of Mozambique, the damage and flooding along its path has been extensive. Currently 38 people are reported dead and more than 160,000 others have been directly affected.

Two Greek shipping companies, Avin International LTD and Nicos I.V. Special Maritime Enterprises, were sentenced in the Eastern District of Texas before Judge Marcia A. Crone on charges stemming from several discharges of oil into the waters of Texas ports by the oil tanker M/T Nicos I.V., on May 3, announced Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division and United States Attorney Joseph D. Brown for the Eastern District of Texas.

Water contamination, crop death, illness, and the open burning of plastic waste have all flooded into Southeast Asia along with the world’s “recycled” plastics, according to a report by GAIA (Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives) with data analysis on the global waste trade from Greenpeace East Asia.

Four peaceful activists from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Germany have climbed the oil rig West Hercules, located near Rypefjord village in the north of Norway to protest against drilling for oil in the Arctic. While a growing movement calling for real action on climate change is happening all over the world, Equinor’s rig is preparing for a season of oil drilling in the Arctic waters of the Barents Sea.

The Regional Directorate of the Police Corps in Trenčín, Criminal Police Department, decided that 12 activists from across Europe, who were peacefully protesting coal mining in the Horná Nitra region of Slovakia, committed no crime.

Greenpeace Slovakia Director, Ivana Kohutková, welcomed the prosecution’s decision:

“The decision to uphold the right to peacefully protest against a polluting mining industry was the right one. We are racing against irreversible climate change and acts of courage, like we saw at the mining tower in Nováky, must be heard and not muzzled.”

“Because land transfer fees are such an economic booster for many Chinese cities, the redevelopment of polluted sites is an obvious choice. But the human and environmental health risks are ignored in this process, where cities sell land for development before even considering soil quality. Polluters rarely pay for the mess, and that burden goes from them to cities, developers, and finally to people who don’t even know they’re on toxic soil.”

On April 26, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it is taking final action to approve the state of Florida’s request to redesignate the Nassau County Area from nonattainment to attainment for the 2010 1-Hour Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) standard.

Marking International Mother Earth Day, the UN on Monday debated how best to build “an equitable and sustainable future” for all, through enhanced education and climate action, on the road to a key international summit on the issue due to take place in September.