Pedestrians and bicyclists in Asian metropolises like Beijing, Delhi or Jakarta often wear face masks as shields against the smog and polluted haze engulfing them. But they risk more than…
Singapore’s National Environment Agency called the “end of the dry season” on Sunday and said it would cease publishing daily health advisories related to toxic haze. The city state said…
While rain showers have diminished the number of fires burning across Indonesia's peatlands and forests in recent days, the fires have now surpassed Japan's annual emissions and could pass Brazil's…
With political pressure mounting on plantation companies, including threats of fines and legal action by the Indonesian and Singaporean governments and boycotts in consumer countries, palm oil and timber giants…
Greenpeace has released dramatic drone video footage showing burning forests and smoldering peatlands in Borneo. The video shows fires burning on peatlands, rainforests, and oil palm plantations surrounding Gunung Palung…
A satellite image released this week by NASA shows the extent of haze currently blanketing much of Southeast Asia. The photo captures plumes of smoke emerging from fires burning in…
Rainforest in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. In early March, scientists with the University of Maryland and NASA made an incredible announcement: they had discovered that vast…
Jungle in Belize. New research finds Belize has been drying out for over a century, likely due to pollution from burning fossil fuels in the northern hemisphere which has left…
Scientists call for a 'non-prejudiced' judgment on nuclear power Nuclear power at times faces antagonism from the environmental community, with opponents arguing that it produces harmful radioactive waste, leads to…
Oil palm plantation with the rainforest of Gunung Leuser National Park in the background of Sumatra. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. A new half-hour documentary investigate the impact of the…
Island off West Java. Photo by Rhett Butler Indonesia’s middle and upper classes are becoming increasingly interested and supportive of environmental conservation. Still, they have some way to go to…
Fires on deforested land trigger massive GHG emissions, haze Light haze over a drained and deforested peat forest in Riau, Sumatra in February 2014. Photo by Rhett Butler. Air pollution…
Fire hotspot data for the past seven days from the World Resources Institute's Global Fire Watch. Singapore's parliament has approved a controversial measure that could penalize companies — both foreign…
Last fall tens of thousands of Bangladeshis participated in a five day march that took them from the country's capital to the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest. They marched…
Biomass burning takes many forms: wildfires, slash-and-burn agriculture, clearing forests and other vegetation, and even industrialized burning for energy production. Yet this burning—mostly manmade but also natural—takes a massive toll…
The number of fires burning in Sumatra's Riau Province doubled on Sunday, raising concerns that dry conditions could unleash an especially severe haze this dry season in Indonesia. An image…
Draft regulation gives little consideration to local communities Inches away from being passed, a new regulation on peatlands management in Indonesia is drawing protests from civil societies that claim it…
This natural-color satellite image was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite on Feb. 28, 2014. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined…
Thick smog blankets Singapore's skyline on 06/18/2013 when the Pollutant Standards Index (PSI), Singapore's main index for air pollution, hit record levels. © Ferina Natasya / Greenpeace. Corporations will have…
Forest destruction in Riau Province, Indonesia on 06/23/2013. © Ulet Ifansasti / Greenpeace. Haze caused by burning peat forests in Indonesia kills an average of 110,000 people per year and…
Breathing in urban India is hard: of the world's top twenty cities with the worst air, 13 of them are found in India, according to a new analysis by the…
Satellite image, taken on March 7, 2014 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, shows fires outlined in red burning on Sumatra. Indonesian Pulp & paper…
Click image for interactive map Fires in Sumatra's Riau province have spiked to levels unseen since last June, finds new analysis from the World Resources Institute (WRI) that reveals widespread…
This natural-color satellite image was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite on Feb. 28, 2014. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined…
Courtesy of Jintai Lin et al. (2014) Twenty percent of China's air pollution can be attributed to goods exported to America, with some of those emissions drifting back to the…
This is an expanded version of an article that ran on Yale e360 on October 29th, 2013: A Key Mangrove Forest Faces Major Threat from a Coal Plant. Bengal tiger…
China's largest city and one of the world's biggest, Shanghai, is set to ban coal burning in just four years, according to a new Clean Air Action Plan. The city-wide…
Outdoor air pollution has been officially classified as carcinogenic by the cancer arm of the World Health Organization. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said air pollution from…
Fires that sent a choking haze across Singapore and Malaysia in June burned some 1,500 square kilometers in Riau Province and were predominantly concentrated on peatlands, reports the World Resources…
China's top two oil companies have been penalized for missing pollution targets, reports China Central Television (CCTV). The Ministry of Environmental Protection has suspended all refinery projects for China National…
