Air Pollution News

Over the past few weeks, residents of New Delhi, India’s capital, have come out in protest at the proposed felling of thousands of trees for a development project. The project…

Away from the frenetic tourism development that has taken over the beaches of southern Bali, the Indonesian resort island’s northern coast remains largely rural and agrarian. Per capita income here…

The Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s most prestigious award for grassroots environmental activism, has announced seven winners this year. Six of the winners are women. Dubbed the Green Nobel Prize,…

JAKARTA — A highly contentious set of revisions to Indonesia’s Criminal Code threatens to undermine the fight against environmental offenders and polluters, activists warn. Deliberations on the new draft are…

JAKARTA — Indonesia, the world’s fifth-biggest carbon emitter, has significantly scaled back its electricity output plans to boost the share of renewables, but will remain heavily reliant on coal. The…

Human beings evolved among trees. Even today, hundreds of millions of people live in and around forests, and depend upon them directly for their food, fuel, and livelihoods. Many of…

Most people probably don’t think of megacities — urban areas with 10 million or more residents — as being part of nature and hence in need of conservation efforts. New…

Economists generally expect climate change to cost a lot of money and impact nearly every sector of the economy. And now, according to new research published in the journal Nature…

The United States Forest Service is about to release a huge new database chronicling the abundance and diversity of lichens across the country. Why lichens? Because these amalgamations of fungi…

Nitrogen pollution can alter the way temperate forests function, a new study has found. Excess nitrogen from air pollution slows down decomposition of plant matter by soil fungi, which in turn…

In a week of sweeping executive actions related to the environment, President Donald J. Trump and his administration moved to seal off the public's connection with several key government agencies,…

Once again, the planet set a record in 2016 for the warmest year yet since we started keeping track of global temperatures in 1880. NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration…

Air pollution from coal-fired power plants is already a major killer in Southeast Asia and that death toll could more than triple in the next 15 years, according to a…

Sixty-nine million people were exposed to toxic haze as a result of last year’s devastating wildfires in Indonesia, a new study has found. Little is known about the health impacts…

Indonesia’s peat restoration agency is advocating for greater foreign investment to fill an expected funding shortfall in the government's plan to rehabilitate more than 2 million hectares of peat across…

The health ministries of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore have played down a study by Harvard and Columbia universities estimating a mean of more than 100,000 premature deaths resulting from the…

On July 1, two gunmen on motorcycles shot and killed anti-coal activist, Gloria Capitan, inside her karaoke bar in Mariveles, Bataan in the Philippines. Capitan, 57, sustained three gunshot wounds, two…

Harmful ozone-causing emissions are on the rise again, a new study has found. Naturally occurring ozone in the upper atmosphere is good, protecting us from the sun’s ultra-violet rays. But…

In late 2015, Indonesia featured heavily in the global headlines. Parts of the country were burning so badly that the fires were coined “the greatest environmental disaster of the 21st…

Last year’s forest and peatland fire catastrophe is a memory now. But it may have claimed another life this week, with the passing of one of Indonesia’s foremost advocates for…

The prospects for greater international collaboration in the effort to prevent another Southeast Asian haze crisis hit a bump in the road this week, with Jakarta taking umbrage at Singapore’s threat…

Struck early this year by the annual haze scourge, Malaysia has proposed to amend the Environmental Protection Act so that the state can seize badly burning land, often set alight by…

It didn’t matter who the president was. Nor how much time passed: first ten years, then three, another two, and so on until reaching 18 years of breaches and delays…

A major heatwave caused by the ongoing El Niño weather phenomenon continued across Malaysia this week after fires and haze pollution damaged air quality and sent temperatures soaring as high…

The environment you live in could be killing you. Nearly one in every four deaths can be attributed to polluted air or water, climate change, chemical exposures, or other environmental…

In December 2015, China announced a three-year ban on new coal mine approvals, starting 2016. China -- the world’s biggest coal producer and consumer -- is also planning on a number…

Helicopter over a forest supplanted by a mature oil palm plantation and it will look verdant from the sky. The ocean surface over a bombed-out reef still glimmers aquamarine. But…

One legal letdown was enough for Siti Nurbaya. The Indonesian environment minister plans to be directly involved in appealing the court decision in favor PT Bumi Mekar Hijau, a plantation firm accused of…

An ongoing methane gas leak at a facility in Southern California — what’s been called “the nation’s biggest environmental disaster since the BP oil spill” — has officially been declared…

More than 50 plantation companies are being punished or investigated by the Indonesian for fires linked to the choking haze that polluted skies across Southeast Asia this fall. A week…