EC Environmental Policy

Despite a decade of intensifying efforts to slow tropical deforestation, last year was the second-highest on record for tree cover loss, down just slightly from 2016. The tropics lost an area of forest the size of Vietnam in just the last two years.

There are currently 11 wildfires blazing in the Arctic circle, The Guardian reported Wednesday. While fires are also raging in Russia, Norway and Finland, Sweden has seen the most extensive Arctic fires, which have forced four communities to evacuate,

According to new data, tropical countries lost 158,000 square kilometers (39 million acres) of tree cover in 2017 - an area the size of Bangladesh.

The European Union on Wednesday finalised new climate rules after months of talks, targeting a total energy saving of 32.5 percent and an uplift in the share of renewable energy to 32 percent by 2030.

Surprisingly, there are a small percentage of TV meteorologists that express skepticism on climate change. On the June 21, 2018 Summer Solstice, over 100 meteorologists will wear an item of clothing like the tie below. This pattern could not be more simple... red for warmer temperatures than normal, blue for cooler than normal from 1850 to 2017.

India is facing its "worst-ever" water crisis, according to a report from a government think tank issued last week. Around 200,000 Indians die each year due to lack of water access, the report finds, and demand will be twice as much as supply by 2030.

As You Sow is pleased to announce the launch of the Plastic Solutions Investor Alliance, an international coalition of investors that will engage publicly traded consumer goods companies on the threat posed by plastic waste and pollution.

An estimated 50 to 80 percent of southern wetland forest is now gone, and that which remains provides ecosystem services totaling $500 billion as well as important wildlife habitat. Logging is considered one of the biggest threats to the 35 million acres of remaining wetland forest in the southern U.S., and conservation organizations are saying this threat is coming largely from the wood pellet biomass industry.

Lazada, an e-commerce giant in Southeast Asia is yet another entity that adopted World Environment Day's Beat Plastic Pollution theme. The website offered all visitors a list of suggestions that could substitute for single-use plastic items like plastic bags, cups, straws and even diapers.

India turned their hosting of this year's World Environment Day into far more than a symbolic act when it announced plans Tuesday to eliminate all single-use plastics by 2022, UN Environment reported.

Alaska, a major oil and gas producer, is crafting its own plan to address climate change. Ideas under discussion include cuts in state emissions by 2025 and a tax on companies that emit carbon dioxide.

In a recent GreenBiz webcast, a panel of experts - including strategists from General MIlls, Kering and McDonald's - explained why going big on sustainability goals is increasingly a smart business strategy, as well as a good stewardship policy. They discussed the intersection of today's major frameworks, such as science-driven goal setting, the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTI), planetary boundaries, Sustainable Development Goals, and more, and provided concrete business cases from several organizations on how they are conducting this transition.

Chile is set to become the first country in the Americas to ban plastic bags to help protect the environment and especially the ocean. Congress unanimously approved the measure on Wednesday. The bill was initially designed to outlaw plastic bags in Patagonia, but was later extended nationwide.

Currently, around one-fourth of human generated carbon dioxide emissions are absorbed by oceans, making them the world's largest carbon sink. But researchers from Newcastle, Heriot-Watt and Exeter Universities found that surfactants, invisible biological particles on the ocean's surface, can reduce the exchange of gases between the ocean and the air by up to 50 percent.

"The effect of long-term warming is to make it harder to count on snowmelt runoff in wet times," said David S. Gutzler, a climate scientist at the University of New Mexico. "And it makes the dry times much harder than they used to be."

a new study has examined the health of the Great Barrier Reef over the last 30,000 years, and found that it has suffered five "death events" in the past - but its current woes could be the last straw.

It started as a dialogue about "ingredients of concern" in cosmetics and other personal care products, orchestrated by rival retailers Target and Walmart. Three years later, that ongoing conversation - facilitated by the Sustainability Consortium and Forum for the Future, and representing 18 industry stakeholders - has produced an ambitious series of recommendations that guide principles of sustainability for this class of consumer goods and how these metrics should be disclosed.