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Far from supermarket shelves, in coastal communities, tuna fisheries are extremely important for food security and are a pillar of local economies. In the Indian Ocean, for example, coastal tuna fisheries make up 36 percent of all the tuna caught, and they are caught almost exclusively by artisanal or very basic industrial fisheries. GLAND, Switzerland – Tunas include dozens of...

Brussels, Belgium. According to new data released today by the NGO Shipbreaking Platform, 674 ocean-going commercial ships and offshore units were sold to the scrap yards in 2019. Of these vessels, 469 large tankers, bulkers, floating platforms, cargo- and passenger ships were broken down in primitive, substandard conditions on three beaches in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, amounting to near...

Alaska’s congressional delegation is pushing to dismantle Tongass protections by opening areas to harmful logging. Logging of old-growth trees in this region comes with impacts to the ecosystem health, and thus the health of the communities these ecosystems sustain. Additionally, the Tongass National Forest functions as a major carbon sink that removes excess carbon from the atmosphere – meaning...

Madrid  – Nations around the world can make breakthroughs on the shift to renewable energy, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) said today, adding that such a move would drastically cut emissions and help get the world get on track to meet the Paris climate goals and limit global warming to 1.5...

CALGARY — JAN GORSKI, analyst at the Pembina Institute, made the following statement in response to Tuesday’s announcement of the new TIER system: “The government’s new industrial carbon pricing policy, the Technology, Innovation and Emissions Reduction system, is weaker than what is currently in place, and creates uncertainty at a time when we need the exact opposite. Investors are looking...

In the summer of 2019, a handful of cities in California banned developers from adding natural gas installations to new buildings. Soon several more cities, including Seattle, may follow suit. Natural gas, as it turns out, might be even worse for the atmosphere than other fossil fuels like coal and oil, according to experts who study methane leakage along...

(Washington, D.C., September 19, 2019) A study published today in the journal Science reveals that since 1970, bird populations in the United States and Canada have declined by 29 percent, or almost 3 billion birds, signaling a widespread ecological crisis. The results show tremendous losses across diverse groups of birds and habitats — from iconic songsters such as meadowlarks to...

MONTREAL – Two scientific literature reviews published today show links between exposure to certain pesticides widely used in Quebec and the risk of autism and Parkinson’s disease. These reports were produced by Autisme Montréal, Parkinson Québec, Alliance pour l’interdiction des pesticides systémique (AIPS) and the David Suzuki Foundation. Today, the authors1 Louise Hénault-Éthier, Electra Dalamagas, Isabelle Pitrou and Pascal Priori...

Fires that are raging in the Amazon rainforest are compounding the stress on the global climate and environment already unleashed by exceptional fires in the Arctic. There are also widespread fires in parts of tropical Africa.   Satellite imagery shows thousands of fires in Brazil, parts of Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay. Using Copernicus Sentinel-3 data, as part of the Sentinel-3 World Fires...

Amsterdam, Netherlands – At least 50 million hectares of forest – an area the size of Spain – is set to be destroyed for commodities during the 10 years of corporate commitments to end deforestation, according to new analysis by Greenpeace International. Greenpeace International’s report Countdown to Extinction, published today, comes as a thousand CEOs and senior managers of global...

A country’s overshoot day is the date on which Earth Overshoot Day would fall if all of humanity consumed like the people in this country. To calculate a country’s Overshoot Day, we use the latest data available from the National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts. The 2019 edition features data from 2016, as data is reported to the United Nations with...

Study finds a little more than one-third of the longest rivers on the planet remain unobstructed by human-made changes Only 37 percent of the world's longest rivers remain unimpeded and free-flowing from their source to where they empty, according to a study published today in Nature. Free-flowing rivers are ecologically crucial — replenishing groundwater, bolstering biodiversity, and reducing the impacts of...