Fiji has become the first emerging market to issue a sovereign green bond, raising 100 million Fijian dollars, or $50 million, to support climate change mitigation and adaption. Home to over 870,000 people, Fiji’s 300 volcanic islands include low-lying atolls that are highly susceptible to cyclones and floods. In 2016, Tropical Cyclone Winston – the most intense tropical cyclone in ...

Two influential UN-related wildlife bodies are proposing to join forces on a new initiative to halt the serious decline of Africa’s great carnivores. The Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) will submit their plan to the CMS COP12 wildlife summit in Manila later this month. Proposals for inclusion of ...

Ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP23) scheduled to hold in Bonn, Germany from November 6 to 17, 2017, the Ethanol Europe Renewables Ltd (EERL) and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have partnered to boost the deployment of biofuels in the transport sector. Transport is the second biggest source of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions world-wide, and the ...

India’s abysmal management of pesticides has started taking a deadly toll, according to the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). Over 35 farmers have reportedly died and hundreds have become ill due to pesticide poisoning in several districts of Vidharba region in Maharashtra, since July 2017. These incidents have been reported from the districts of Yavatmal, Nagpur, Akola and Amravati ...

Herdsmen and farmers in Mashegu Local Government Area of Niger State have signed a peace agreement to stop clashes among them. Alhaji Abdullahi Babayo, Director-General of Nomadic Affairs Agency in the state, disclosed this in a statement issued to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Minna, the state capital, on Wednesday, September 18, 2017. Babayo said the aim of ...

Several high-profile and international organisations will launch a new non-binding multi-stakeholder partnership to curb the capture, trade and consumption of endangered, threatened or protected aquatic mammals, reptiles and birds in West and Central Africa. The announcement of the Abidjan Aquatic Wildlife Partnership will take place during the 12th session of the Convention on Migratory Species Conference of the Parties (CMS ...

The Nigerian Tobacco Control Research Group (NTCRG) and the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth (ERA/FoEN), in collaboration with the African Tobacco Control Alliance (ATCA), will on Thursday, October 19, 2017 at the St. Paul’s Anglican Church Hall in Yemetu, Ibadan, Oyo State, present a national research that shows how tobacco companies strategically situate tobacco products and advertisements near primary ...

The urgent call to fight against climate change-related catastrophe, which is already taking its toll in numerous geographic zones, is a galloping man-induced disaster of global proportion. To this end, an international agency based in Kenya has warned communities in Cross River State in Nigeria to protect the remains of its forest to avoid climate change disaster. The organisation, Mainyoito ...

A new intergovernmental task force to curb the illegal killing of birds crossing one of the world’s greatest migration paths will be high on the agenda at this year’s largest wildlife summit, which takes place in Manila next month. The East Asian-Australasian Flyway spans 22 countries from the Russian Federation to Alaska in the USA in the north, through much ...

Around 245 BCE Ptolemy III, ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt, made a decision that still puzzles many historians: After pursuing a successful military campaign against the kingdom’s nemesis, the Seleucid Empire, centred mainly in present-day Syria and Iraq, the king suddenly decided to return home. This about-face “changed everything about Near-East history,” says Joseph Manning, a historian at ...