By Harry Jacques, Thomson Reuters Foundation
6 Min Read
SUKOHARJO, Indonesia, May 13 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - On a grass verge by a road dissecting miles of rice fields in Central Java province, a group of volunteers with ‘Aisyiyah, Indonesia’s oldest Islamic women’s movement, walk along a row of mahogany, sengon and teak trees they recently planted.
A short drive away, Ismokoweni, who leads ‘Aisyiyah’s local environmental chapter and goes by one name, picks her way past painted gravestones towards an area of damaged forest where the group has also planted seedlings.
After a drought dried up wells here, members purchased gallons of water from the local utility for affected households, Ismokoweni told the Thomson Reuters Foundation shortly before Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
The U.S. Federal Reserve has asked lenders to start providing information on the measures they are taking to mitigate climate change-related risks to their balance sheets, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.
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JAKARTA, April 21 (Reuters) - Indonesian farmer Albertus Wawan hopes a new government regulation means the small plot of land where he grows palm oil trees in a forest reserve on Borneo may be recognised as a legal plantation and eligible to access funding.
But the hopes of thousands of smallholders like Wawan for the acceptance of their farms inside designated forest areas is alarming green groups and comes at time when palm oil is under scrutiny in some Western countries for its links to deforestation.
The changes, part of President Joko Widodo’s sweeping liberalisation of regulations to boost Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, illustrate the trade-offs countries make to protect the environment or provide jobs to raise living standards.
3 Min Read
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Europe experienced its hottest year on record last year, while the Arctic suffered a summer of extreme wildfires partly due to low snow cover as climate change impacts intensified, the European Union’s observation service said on Thursday.
FILE PHOTO: Power-generating windmill turbines are seen during sunset in Bourlon, France, February 23, 2021. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol
As world leaders prepared to brandish their plans to fight climate change at a U.S.-led summit on Thursday, EU scientists issued a stark reminder that the impacts of a warmer world are already here.
Europe’s average annual temperature in 2020 was the highest on record and at least 0.4 degrees Celsius above the next five warmest years all of which took place in the last decade, the Copernicus Earth observation service said.
7 Min Read
KWALE, Kenya (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Standing under a thick green canopy in coastal Kenya’s Shim Hills, Mohamed Mwaramuno squints at his fellow forest ranger’s smartphone.
With about a dozen rangers, he has been using an app that through satellite feeds maps signs of forest fires, illegal logging and people encroaching on water sources, to stem worsening deforestation in Kwale County during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The app has made work easier for us,” said Mwaramuno. “Instead of patrolling the dangerous terrain we just receive these feeds and then we can directly go to the sites that have been disturbed.”