[posted by Lisa Cox on The Guardian, May 15th, 2018]   The government has released a new acreage for offshore oil and gas exploration in the Great Australian Bight that green groups says should have been kept off limits after it was cancelled by BP. The permit is one of two that BP cancelled after the company abandoned its plans for oil and gas drilling in the bight in 2016. Its remaining two permits were sold to the Norwegian...

[posted by Francesco Bassetti on Lifegate, 19 March 2018]   Marichuy was chosen to represent Mexican indigenous groups as an independent candidate in the 2018 elections. She didn’t make the ballot but her campaign has shed new light on feminism, indigenous rights and the environment.   Marichuy was elected as spokeswoman for the indigenous communities of Mexico, embarking on a campaign to run as an independent candidate in...

[posted by David Shukman on BBC, April 19th, 2018]   A crisis of plastic waste in Indonesia has become so acute that the army has been called in to help. Rivers and canals are clogged with dense masses of bottles, bags and other plastic packaging. Officials say they are engaged in a “battle” against waste that accumulates as quickly as they clear it. The commander of a military unit in the city of Bandung described it...

[posted by Josh Gabbatiss on The Independent, April 24th, 2018]   Scientists have found an unprecedented number of microplastics frozen in Arctic sea ice, demonstrating the alarming extent to which they are pervading marine environments. Analysis of ice cores from across the region found levels of the pollution were up to three times higher than previously thought. Each litre of sea ice contained around 12,000 particles of...

[posted by Rina Chandran on Global Citizen, April 25th, 2018]   Parched Cape Town, in South Africa, has managed to push back its “Day Zero” – an estimate of when taps in the city could run dry – to 2019 after successful water-saving efforts. But in India, “Day Zero” has come and gone for residents in many parts of the country, where taps failed long ago and people have turned instead to digging...

[by Sandra Leville, posted on The Guardian, April 12th, 2018] After plastic waste contributed to deadly floods in Recife, one neighbourhood took action. Now people can earn a living by cleaning up the river in a scheme being imitated around the world Maria das Gracas started collecting her plastic bottles after she saw the body of her neighbour floating past her house, carried along with the pollution that helped cause the deadly...