Main photo: A man crosses a canal on a fallen tree following Cyclone Yaas in Digha, Purba Medinipur district in the eastern state of West Bengal, India, May 27, 2021. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri

More than 96,000 hectares (237,221 acres) of agricultural land has been inundated in parts of an eastern Indian state hit by a powerful storm this week, officials said on Friday, a year after the coastal region was ravaged by a super cyclone.

Colombia is the second most biodiverse country in the world and around half of its land territory is forest-covered. Deforestation is one of the biggest worldwide threats not only for biodiversity but also for climate. In fact, removing trees by burning them or then letting them decompose in their entire life cycle, leads to massive carbon dioxide release currently reaching up to 10-15% of all the human greenhouse gases emissions.

Current estimates of land-use change may be capturing only one-quarter of its true extent across the world, new research shows.

• Botum Sakor National Park in southern Cambodia has lost at least 30,000 hectares of forest over the past three decades.
• Decades of environmental degradation go back to the late 1990s when the Cambodian government began handing out economic land concessions for the development of commercial plantations and tourist infrastructure.
• NGOs in Cambodia are said to be unwilling to speak out against the destruction of Botum Sakor because they are afraid they will not be allowed to operate in the country if they do.

Local people evicted and livelihoods at risk in Barguna district, as civil society group warns plant will damage important hilsa fish populations.

A Chinese-backed coal power plant is being built in Bangladesh allegedly by evicting locals from their land and grabbing a riverbed.

On social media, global indigenous leadership addresses South African magnate Elon Musk, who has launched a global award for carbon sequestration projects. Up-to-date technological solution is the same it has always been: ancestral wisdom

Today, the world celebrates Earth Day, a commemoration that began in 1970 to mark the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement. Since then, Earth Day has become a global event where the international community at large focuses the spotlight and global momentum on tackling the most pressing environmental challenges of our time.

Today, on Earth Day, the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean, commonly known as the “Escazú Agreement,” en

MESSAGE FROM AN INDIGENOUS LEADER AT THE BIDEN CLIMATE SUMMIT

The Congo Basin’s forests and peatlands are a major component of Earth’s life-support systems, and it is a key supplier of vital minerals needed to build a low carbon economy. The case for the people of the Congo to benefit from not exploiting these resources is irrefutable.

Few people, if asked to name the most strategic countries in the world, would place the Democratic Republic of Congo at the top of the list. But the natural resources of the DRC will be critical to the existential battle to save the planet.

Systematic effort to change Tamil areas’ demographics, alleges Batticaloa MP Shanakiyan Rasamanickam.

Over the last few months, farmers of Mavadi Odai in Sri Lanka’s eastern Batticaloa district frequently spotted something crop up on their land overnight — a border stone they had not planted.

Dzuds, a weather phenomenon characterized by extreme cold, used to be unusual. Now, they’re becoming the new normal.

DALANZADGAD, UMNUGOVI PROVINCE, MONGOLIA — Clouds gather in the moody winter sky, and the wind picks up. As the temperature plummets, sheep and goats turn from the pasture where they were grazing to huddle in the shelter of a shed.