Environment | WPN World People News

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management [BOEM] proposed new standards to rein in air pollution from offshore drilling. This update was spurred by a December 2011 policy rider that shifted responsibility of air permitting for offshore drilling from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Department of the Interior

Tuesday, a Swanton, Vt. cheese manufacturer and the owner of the property agreed to pay $100,000 to settle penalty claims by the US Environmental Protection Agency that it violated clean air, Superfund and right-to-know laws between 2011 and 2015.

Conserving natural ecosystems such as mangroves helps developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Data released on Wednesday by the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows a stalling of global energy-related CO2 emissions in 2015, for the second year in a row.

Earth Hour 2016 - Cambodia

The number of doctors and nurses has reached record levels in the OECD. Countries should now reform their training and employment strategies to better respond to people’s changing health needs and also reduce their reliance on foreign-trained health workers from developing countries, according to a new OECD report.

Federal officials on Tuesday released a draft plan that would protect the Atlantic Ocean from offshore oil and gas drilling until at least 2022. This is a huge step forward for the region, and it is a decision that advances the President’s unprecedented commitment to taking meaningful action on climate change. But the plan would leave open federal waters in the Arctic Ocean to offshore oil and gas drilling during that same time, putting at risk a fragile and irreplaceable region and undermining positive steps to combat climate change.

The World Bank Board of Executive Directors approved a US$150 million loan that could benefit four million Ecuadorians through risk protection and mitigation works. Specifically, the financing seeks to reduce the possible effects of the El Niño phenomenon and the Cotopaxi volcano, and to support the resumption of basic and productive services in case of a natural disaster.

As a new forest fire crisis builds in the country, with fire hotspots numbering in the hundreds on many recent days, Greenpeace Indonesia on Tuesday launched a mapping tool allowing the public to monitor fires and deforestation in near-real time, and see to an unprecedented extent who controls the land where they are taking place.

This is a joint release of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, the University of Colorado Boulder and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.