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Greenpeace launched an interactive web-based map that allows users to monitor deforestation and fires across Indonesia in near real time.

The UN Environment Program and other partners launched the Sustainable Public Procurement Program, a project to redirect public spending towards goods and services with environmental and social benefits. The initiative is part of the UN's 10-Year Framework of Programs on Sustainable Consumption and Production.

A Dutch court has ordered the government to cut the country's greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25 percent by 2020 in a groundbreaking climate case that activists hope will set a worldwide precedent.

The researchers contend in the paper published in the journal Nature that the social cost of carbon on the global economy is actually about $220 for each ton of carbon dioxide emitted, a far cry from the $37 calculated by the U.S. government.

A growing number of organizations from Google to the federal government are incorporating homages to nature into their office blueprints, not just to earn more green building certification points but to reduce employee stress, improve cognitive function and encourage creativity.

President Barack Obama will today order government agencies to reduce their carbon emissions by 40% over the next decade. That won't put a big dent in total U.S. emissions, but could give clean-tech startups and energy providers an important boost. "We can drive substantial reductions across the entire federal footprint and ... leverage both innovation and investment in the private sector," said White House senior adviser Brian Deese.

The global paradox that a third of all food grown and produced never makes it into people's mouths - even as 800 million people suffer from hunger - finally may be getting the attention it deserves. Thirty leaders from business, government and foundations gathered in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum vowed Thursday to work to cut food waste in half in the next 15 years.

France's environment minister, Nicolas Hulot, abruptly resigned from his post during a live French radio interview Tuesday, citing "an accumulation of disappointments" in Emmanuel Macron's government.

As the Arctic melts, oil companies are moving in to drill for more oil. Next year, the Norwegian owned oil company Statoil will drill further north than ever - unless we stop them. An unprecedented case was filed this morning that could do just that. This case is about holding back the oil industry at this final frontier, it is about protecting the beautiful Arctic, and it is about people stepping up to hold governments to account. If we win, millions of barrels of oil could be kept in the ground. We will argue in court that we must take action to keep the Paris climate agreement on track, and we will invoke Norway's constitutional right to a healthy and safe environment for future generations.

Environmental destruction and landgrabs could lead to governments and individuals being prosecuted for crimes against humanity by the international criminal court following a decision to expand its remit.

Cleantech company Mainstream Renewable Power will reportedly build and operate nearly 1 GW of wind power capacity in Chile by 2021. The 7 wind power projects have a combined investment value of more than $1.5 billion.

The governments of the East African Community hoping to ban imports of secondhand clothes. The logic is that by stopping the trade of used garments, the apparel industry will be revitalized, create jobs and exports, and bolster their economies. What impact would this ban have on the donating Western countries? If we could no longer offload our unwanted discarded clothing onto the poor, what would we do with those clothes?

Much of timber exported from Peru to the U.S. in January 2015 was illegally sourced, according to a verification report released yesterday by the U.S. government. The findings have prompted U.S. officials to call on Peru to step up the fight against illegal logging and trade.

Plastic Soup Foundation (PSF), a Dutch nonprofit, and New York-based Parley for the Oceans announced Tuesday a partnership to tackle the issue of microfiber pollution and to create a global alliance of companies, governments, NGOs and scientists. Microfibers - tiny, often synthetic threads shed from laundry, industrial clothing manufacturing and fishing nets - have been found in alarming numbers in recent studies of microplastic pollution.

The Brazilian government has ratified its participation in the Paris agreement on climate change, a significant step by Latin America's largest emitter of greenhouse gases that could spur other countries to follow suit.

It's been almost 10 years since the Coca-Cola Company (PDF) vowed to "safely return to communities and nature an amount of water equal to what we use in our finished beverages and their production," with a deadline of 2020 for doing so. To get there, it teamed up with a broad array of NGOs and government aid agencies, who established clear rules for "replenishing" the aquifers and waterways that make up a watershed, and in 2015 the company announced it not only had reached its target five years early, but even surpassed it by putting 15 percent more water into the system than it took out. This tiny pack, however, is dwarfed by a massive herd of corporates that have made similar promises without offering any indication of how they'll deliver or whether they're making progress - and it's not just a water problem.

Deforestation in the world's largest rainforest jumped 29 percent over last year, representing a sharp increase over the historically low deforestation rate seen just five years ago and the highest level recorded in the region since 2008, reports the Brazilian government. The numbers, released by Brazil's National Space Research Institute INPE on Monday, show that 7,989 square kilometers of rainforest were destroyed between August 2015 and July 2016. The loss is equivalent to an area 135 times the size of Manhattan or the combined land mass of the American states of Connecticut and Delaware.

Logging emissions is an important step in securing the transparency that China needs to solve its pollution problems, Mr. Ma argues. Among the harmful pollutants are air particles known as PM2.5, which can enter deep into the lungs and even into the bloodstream. In an interview, he talked about the considerable progress he sees in the Chinese government's approach to air pollution, but also how concerns about social unrest continued to constrain discussion of pollution's damage to public health. Before 2013, levels of PM2.5 [the finest and deadliest particulate matter] were not monitored or made public in a single city. Now it's monitored and released in more than 400 cities. China has entered an era when air quality information is released. It's much more transparent. The 11th and 12th Five-Year Plans only referred to "emission reduction targets," so local governments could play games by claiming they had reduced emissions. Now, by saying by what year the PM2.5 must be below a certain amount, it's much harder to fake. The 13th Five-Year Plan is a progressive plan because it says that the public has the right to participate, to monitor, and that it's the public's right to know.

The U.S. Government collaborated with India and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation to launch a $20 million initiative that aims to increase funding opportunities for renewable energy projects - such as distributed solar - across India.

India is delaying a decision on asking for a dispute settlement panel at the World Trade Organisation against domestic content regulations in renewable energy programmes run by eight states in the US as it is hoping to work out a "mutually beneficial'' solution with the new regime under Republican leader Donald Trump. "New Delhi is still hopeful that it could work out a compromise with Washington on the flexible implementation of the WTO verdict against it in the solar power programme dispute. It may decide not to ask for a panel against US renewable energy programmes if it gets an assurance from the Trump administration on leniency in the solar case," a government official told BusinessLine.