Environment | WPN World People News

Sustainability funds hardly redirect capital to sustainable activities compared to conventional funds, according to a new study commissioned by Greenpeace Switzerland and Greenpeace Luxembourg, and published today. Exposing these misleading marketing practices, Greenpeace demands policy-makers to secure binding standards to fight greenwashing and keep sustainability funds in line with the Paris Agreement climate goals.

A cargo ship with tons of chemicals on board sank near Sri Lanka’s main port, the government said Wednesday, sparking one of the country’s worst-ever marine environmental disasters.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) launched the ASEAN Regional Action Plan for Combating Marine Debris in the ASEAN Member States (2021 – 2025), which provides a scalable, solution-focused joint strategy to address marine plastic debris across the region.

Ensuring sustainability of crop and timber production would mitigate the greatest drivers of terrestrial wildlife decline, responsible for 40% of the overall extinction risk of amphibians, birds and mammals, according to a paper published on Apr.8. These results were generated using a new metric which, for the first time, allows business, governments and civil society to assess their potential contributions to stemming global species loss, and can be used to calculate national, regional, sector-based, or institution-specific targets. The work was led by the IUCN Species Survival Commission’s Post-2020 Taskforce, hosted by Newcastle University (UK), in collaboration with scientists from 54 institutions in 21 countries around the world.

In a new analysis, leading climate social scientists argue that influential studies that attempt to quantify different countries’ “fair share” of climate action have put forward a biased and oversimplified view of what is primarily a political and ethical discussion.

Activists on the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior have taken the first-ever action at sea against companies preparing to mine the Pacific Ocean’s seabed. The activists displayed banners reading “Stop Deep Sea Mining” in front of a ship chartered by DeepGreen, one of the companies spearheading the drive to mine the barely explored deep-sea ecosystem.

Following population declines over several decades due to poaching for ivory and loss of habitat, the African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) is now listed as Critically Endangered and the African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) as Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™. Before 25 Mar 2021’s update, African elephants were treated as a single species, listed as Vulnerable; this is the first time the two species have been assessed separately for the IUCN Red List, following the emergence of new genetic evidence.

A volcano erupted Friday night on Iceland’s southwestern Reykjanes peninsula, following small daily earthquakes in recent weeks.

The eruption lit the night sky and could easily be seen from the outskirts of the capital, Reykjavík, about 30 kilometers away.