HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam has evacuated hundreds of thousands of people and closed schools and airports as it braces for Typhoon Kajiki, its strongest storm of the year so far.

Forecasters said the typhoon had winds of up to 166 kilometers (103 miles) per hour at 10 a.m. Monday but is expected to weaken slightly before making landfall between central Vietnam’s Thanh Hoa and Ha Tinh provinces later in the afternoon.

The typhoon started as a weak tropical depression on Aug. 22 but grew into a powerful storm in less than two days, matching last year’s Typhoon Yagi as one of the region’s fastest-growing, according to state media. Its rapid strengthening forced Vietnamese authorities to rush emergency measures as strong winds and heavy rain hit the region.

Last year, Typhoon Yagi killed about 300 people and caused $3.3 billion in damage.

Kajiki has already caused devastation in China, with strong winds and heavy rain whipping Hainan Island and nearby parts of Guangdong province on Sunday. About 20,000 people were evacuated from high-risk areas, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported.

One man in Nghe An province died Friday after being electrocuted while trying to secure his roof ahead of the storm, state media reported.

The storm is expected to move inland into Laos and northern Thailand.

Vietnamese state media reported plans to evacuate nearly 600,000 people in the provinces of Thanh Hoa, Quang Tri, Hue and Danang, where more than 152,000 homes are in high-risk areas.

The government said over 16,500 soldiers and 107,000 paramilitary personnel have been deployed to assist with evacuations and remain on standby for search and rescue.

Vietnam halted flights at two airports in Thanh Hoa and Quang Binh provinces on Monday, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said while dozens of flights have been cancelled.

Scientists published a study last year warning that seas warmed by climate change will result in Southeast Asia’s cyclones forming closer to land, strengthening faster and lasting longer, raising risks for cities.

“It’s frightening to see our projections from just last year already materializing,” said Benjamin Horton, Dean of the School of Energy and Environment and a professor of earth science at City University of Hong Kong.

He said that the speed at which these changes were unfolding was a “clear signal” that the climate crisis is moving faster than expected. “We are no longer predicting the future — we are living it,” he said.

By Aniruddha Ghosal, Associated Press

Banner image: People sit on a boat to get to their flooded homes in the aftermath of Typhoon Yagi in An Lac village, Hanoi, Vietnam Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Hau D

Many communities, especially those in the Global South, are increasingly burning plastic as a fuel for stoves or simply to get rid of waste. In the process, they’re releasing toxic chemicals into the environment and raising public health concerns, reports Mongabay contributor Sean Mowbray.

Roughly 2 billion people globally lack waste collection services, leaving many poor and underserved neighborhoods to burn plastic trash. That solves two problems: it removes the trash and provides a free fuel source. Nearly all plastic is made from fossil fuels and burns easily, making it attractive for cooking and heating in communities with limited resources.

Much of the plastic waste in the Global South arrived there from the Global North supposedly for disposal, a practice called waste colonialism.

“What is economically viable for recycling, will be recycled. But a lot of the other stuff will oftentimes get burned,” Gauri Pathak, a medical anthropologist and author of a 2024 paper identifying open burning as an urgent global health issue, told Mowbray.

Less than 10% of the 400 million metric tons of plastic produced every year is recycled; the rest ends up in landfills or the environment. A large portion is burned in poorly controlled incinerators, as household fuel, as industrial fuel, and in the open. Around 17% of global waste is incinerated, according to the U.N. Environment Programme. But a lot of the plastic burned in the open isn’t accounted for, Pathak said.

Cressida Bowyer, deputy director of the Revolution Plastics Institute at the University of Portsmouth, U.K., told Mongabay that because incineration is cheap in the Global North, it’s often used to generate energy. However, she said, “it’s dirtier than burning coal.”

In the Global South “refuse-derived fuel” (RDF) is broadly used, from fueling the production of tofu in Indonesia to household cooking stoves in Guatemala. Some Indonesian communities burn plastic to create smoke to get rid of disease-transmitting mosquitos.

Plastic is essentially solid fossil fuel, and contains a host of toxic chemicals that are released when burned, contaminating soil, water and the food chain. The same toxins can have cumulative and long-term health effects that are dangerous but hard to document.

“Indoor air pollution from burning plastics leads to elevated risks of respiratory infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and other life threatening conditions,” a 2025 paper warns.

In Indonesia, chicken eggs near a plastic-burning tofu factory tested positive for high levels of dioxins, which cause cancer and immune system damage.

Research from Guatemala found open burning was responsible for 24% of the country’s black carbon, 23.6% of PM2.5 fine particulates, and 2.4% of the nation’s total carbon emissions.

Roland Weber, an environmental consultant focused on plastic contamination, said international extended producer responsibility policies are urgently needed to hold plastic producers accountable.

Read the full report by Sean Mowbray here.

Banner image of waste burning in the Maldives. Image by Divya Singh/IFC via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.

In the turquoise shallows of Raja Ampat, Indonesia, a conservation experiment is attempting the rewilding of an endangered shark.

The initiative, known as ReShark, seeks to restore populations of the Indo-Pacific leopard shark (Stegostoma tigrinum), also called the zebra shark, to reefs from where it had vanished. Led by Re:wild in partnership with the IUCN SSC Shark Specialist Group (SSG), Conservation International, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, and more than 100 institutions in 20 countries, the project draws comparisons to terrestrial reintroductions such as that of wolves in Yellowstone in the U.S.

“This is a first for the ocean, and especially for sharks,” Mark Erdmann, ReShark’s executive director, told me. The effort involves breeding sharks in captivity, shipping their eggs across oceans, hatching them in Indonesian nurseries, and releasing them into the wild. In less than three years from its first planning meeting, the team achieved its first release.

Leopard sharks once thrived in Indo-Pacific shallows but were decimated by the shark fin trade. By the time Raja Ampat became a shark sanctuary in 2012, the species had already disappeared locally. Genetic research revealed that populations in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef share the same eastern Indo-Pacific lineage, making reintroduction feasible.

The breakthrough came when aquariums — so successful at breeding leopard sharks they sometimes separate sexes to prevent overpopulation — offered surplus eggs. Transport protocols now allow eggs to be shipped from the U.S. to custom hatcheries in Raja Ampat within 40 hours. There, “shark nannies” raise the pups on wild shellfish before moving them to sea pens for a growth phase.

So far, 126 eggs have been shipped, 82 pups hatched, and 39 released. Modeling suggests 50 to 75 releases per year could reestablish a viable population within a decade — far faster than natural recovery.

Local communities are central to the project. Indonesians have been trained to manage hatcheries, children help feed pups, and former shark fishers have joined releases. “We’re cultivating the next generation of shark lovers,” Erdmann said.

The program has also reshaped perceptions of aquariums, positioning them as partners in active species recovery. New efforts are underway in Thailand, and more species are in the pipeline. Erdmann remains cautious: without strong marine protections, rewilding could fail. Yet in an era of accelerating biodiversity loss, ReShark offers measured optimism, backed by science.

Read the full story by Rhett A. Butler here.

Banner image: An adult leopard shark at the North Stradbroke Island summer aggregation site in Australia. Image courtesy of M.V. Erdmann.

Brazil’s antitrust regulator suspended a key mechanism for rainforest protection, the Amazon Soy Moratorium, on Aug. 18, less than three months before the nation hosts the COP30 climate summit.

The Amazon Soy Moratorium is a 19-year-old voluntary private-sector agreement to not source soybeans from areas deforested after 2008 in the Brazilian Amazon. It is estimated to have kept at least 18,000 square kilometers (6,950 square miles) of rainforest standing.

Environmental NGOs, including Greenpeace Brazil and Imaflora, warn that suspending the soy moratorium could put huge areas of the Amazon rainforest at risk of being deforested and replaced with soy farms.

“Dismantling an effective, internationally recognized agreement built over nearly twenty years, in the name of unchecked deforestation, would be a shot in the foot,” Cristiane Mazzetti, Greenpeace Brazil’s forest coordinator, said in a statement. “It opens the way for soy to become a major vector of Amazon deforestation, burying Brazil’s chances of meeting its climate targets.”

Brazil’s federal antitrust agency, the Administrative Council for Economic Defence (CADE), issued the suspension. It asked moratorium members — including multinational commodity giants such as Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus and Cofco — to remove all public information about the moratorium, including impact and results, from their websites.

“This kind of behavior sounds much more like a political decision than a technical concern,” João Gonçalves, a senior director at environment nonprofit Mighty Earth, told Mongabay by email. “If this political decision isn’t reversed quickly, it will cost the Amazon dearly.”

Gonçalves warned that each day the soy moratorium remains suspended during CADE’s investigation, the risk to the Amazon increases — adding that the probe could last for years.

The move was initiated by petition from a chapter of Aprosoja, a soy industry lobby group, in December 2024. It claimed that the Amazon soy moratorium imposed restrictions beyond Brazilian law and cost the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil’s biggest soybean-growing state, an estimated 20 billion reais ($3.7 billion) in annual losses.

Before the soy moratorium in 2006, 30% of soy expansion resulted in deforestation, by 2013 that number dropped to just 1%. Farmers instead planted on already deforested land and increased soy production even as deforestation dropped. Brazil is now the world’s largest soy exporter, and the pact is credited for boosting acceptance of Brazilian soy in global markets.

“At this critical crossroads months before the climate COP in the Amazon, Brazil must decide whether to align its agribusiness sector with global sustainability standards or risk sacrificing long-term planetary health for short-term economic interests,” Mighty Earth’s Gonçalves added. “Will it choose to protect the Amazon or allow it to be traded away?”

Banner image: Soy fields in the southern Brazilian Amazon. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

TALATAN, China (AP) — Chinese officials have showcased what they claim will be the world’s largest solar farm on the Tibetan plateau. It covers 610 square kilometers, or about 235 square miles, and is part of China’s rapid solar expansion. A study published Thursday said China’s carbon emissions fell 1% in the first half of the year, continuing a trend since March 2024. This decline suggests emissions may have peaked well ahead of the nation’s goal of before 2030. However, experts say a sharper reduction is needed for China to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. One challenge is aligning green energy distribution with industrial needs across the country.

By Ken Moritsugu and Ng Han Guan, Associated Press

Banner image: Tibetan sheep graze at a solar farm in Hainan prefecture of western China’s Qinghai province on Tuesday, July 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Three conservation trusts have together purchased an area of a severely threatened vegetation type found in the Overberg region of South Africa’s Western Cape province. Known as the renosterveld, this unique habitat characterized by shrubs and grasses is also a breeding ground for endangered black harriers, the three groups announced in a joint press release.

The Overberg Renosterveld Trust (ORT) partnered with the U.K.-based World Land Trust (WLT) and the Mapula Trust to buy the 270-hectare (667-acre) property called Goereesoe. The site is part of the Eastern Rûens Shale Renosterveld, an ecosystem considered to be critically endangered. The renosterveld used to cover a large part of the Overberg region, but now only 5% remains, due to land conversion for agriculture, ORT said.

“This is a significant win for renosterveld and the Black Harrier,” Odette Curtis-Scott, CEO of the Overberg Renosterveld Trust, said in the release. “By securing this land, we are protecting critical habitat and species whose futures are teetering on a knife edge.”

The black harrier (Circus maurus), found mostly in South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini, has fewer than 500 breeding pairs left in the wild. Goereesoe, along with the neighboring Haarwegskloof Renosterveld Reserve and another property called Plaatjieskraal — all managed by the ORT and known collectively as the Haarwegskloof Cluster — together support around 30 pairs of breeding black harriers, or 6% of the global population, ORT said.

ORT added that securing Goereesoe will help researchers track movements of black harriers, which have been impacted by wind turbines, as previously reported by Mongabay.

Curtis-Scott said the Haarwegskloof Cluster, the largest connected stretch of renosterveld left on Earth, has now grown to more than 1,300 hectares (3,200 acres), after adding Plaatjieskraal and Goereesoe. ORT said it hopes both properties will receive nature reserve status soon, and is working with neighboring farms to grow a conservation corridor.

“It means that wildlife, especially our precious pollinators and invertebrates, can move freely and safely across this natural remnant patches in this highly transformed landscape,” Curtis-Scott said.

The renosterveld ecosystem features unique vegetation, including shrubs like the renosterbos (Elytropappus rhinocerotis) and very rare flowering bulbs like Hesperantha kiaratayloriae and Lachenalia barberae, that grow over fertile, clay- and shale-based soils and outcrops of white quartz. Renosterveld, Afrikaans for “rhinoceros field,” was possibly named for the gray renosterbos bushes resembling rhino hide, or refers to black rhinos that historically roamed the area before being killed off by European settlers.

“Protecting this site means safeguarding one of the most threatened ecosystems on Earth, and the species that depend on it,” said Catherine Barnard, CEO of World Land Trust.

The acquisition of Goereesoe was made possible through WLT’s Buy An Acre program, which allows people to directly help purchase and protect threatened habitats.

Banner image of a black harrier over the Eastern Rûens Shale Renosterveld by Odette Curtis-Scott/ORT.