Environment | WPN World People News

Palm oil plantation

As the sun sets on another California day, a flare burns in an oil field.

The World Bank Group, on November 15 announced a new plan to ramp up support for countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to confront the multiple threats of climate change. Over the next four years, the MENA Climate Action Plan aims to nearly double the portion of Bank financing dedicated to climate action, taking it to around US$1.5 billion per year by 2020.

Country Flags outside the UN COP22 venue in Marrakech, Morocco.

Less than one year after adopting the Paris climate agreement, world leaders and negotiators are meeting for talks in Marrakesh. The COP22 conference on 7-18 November focuses on ways of implementing the first universally binding global deal on climate change, a matter of huge urgency for the planet. Parliament is represented at the talks by a delegation of 12 MEPs led by Italian EPP member Giovanni La Via.

Greenpeace launched a report on November 14, identifying four pollution hotspots around the globe where chemical companies producing per - and polyfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) have contaminated the environment and are raising concerns on the consequences among residents living in surrounding areas.

In Sindh province, Pakistan, a mother tries to shield her four-year-old daughter from scorching heat.

The first week of the UN climate summit in Marrakech was overshadowed by the result of the US presidential election. But it has not been derailed. New leadership and renewed commitment has emerged, which is taking forward the Paris Agreement.

Exactly 20 years since the first Cork Declaration, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and the Committee of the Regions (CoR) organised a joint conference on balanced territorial development under the title "Cork+20: leaving rural areas behind is no longer an option". At stake was the European Commission's new rural development strategy, set with the Cork 2.0 Declaration, which according to the two Committees is not concrete enough and fails to address some of the vital needs of rural areas.