A court in Suriname approved an injunction filed on behalf of twelve Indigenous and maroon groups concerned about losing approximately 1,322,013 acres of rainforest to agricultural development. The court said the government doesn’t have the right to grant land without free, prior and informed consent, a process in which developers meet with residents to explain how projects would impact daily life.
The Ministry of Ecology and Environment and three other government bodies have announced a campaign that aims to substantially clear the garbage in coastal areas by 2025, with ongoing, regular clean-ups established by 2027, Chinese news site Sixth Tone reported. It also calls for measures to be bolstered to prevent inland waste from reaching the sea.
In a sweeping change that could improve millions of Americans’ ability to own a home or buy a car, the Biden administration proposed a rule to ban medical debt from credit reports. The rule, announced by Vice President Kamala Harris and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra, comes as President Joe Biden beefs up his efforts to persuade Americans his administration is lowering costs, a chief concern for voters in the upcoming election.
Almost 30 years after nations first agreed to phase out these chemicals, which were widely used for air conditioning and refrigeration, scientists say global concentrations peaked in 2021. Since then, the ozone-depleting potential of HCFCs in the atmosphere has fallen by about three-quarters of a percentage point. Though small, that decline comes sooner than expected and represents a significant milestone for the international effort to preserve the ozone layer.
The seven horses, four mares from Berlin and a stallion and two other mares from Prague, were flown to the central Asian country on a Czech air force transport plane. The wild horses, known as Przewalski’s horses, once roamed the vast steppe grasslands of central Asia, where horses are believed to have been first domesticated about 5,500 years ago.
New York state has taken novel legislative steps to limit children’s exposure to computer algorithmic social media feeds, passing two laws to protect children from social media content and to protect their privacy. The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation for Kids Act requires social media companies to restrict feeds for users under 18. The second law, the New York Child Data Protection Act, prohibits online sites from collecting, using, sharing, or selling personal data of anyone under the age of 18.
For the first time, a major trigger in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and related conditions has been identified, and existing drugs can stamp it out, in what scientists call a “massive step” in successfully treating these debilitating chronic conditions. Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, in collaboration with University College London (UCL) and Imperial College London (ICL), have uncovered a problem gene enhancer that stimulates action along a specific biological pathway that causes IBD inflammation.
From Poland to Romania to the U.K., European wood bison are now firmly recognized as one of the best tools for returning what little wilderness Europe has left to as wild a state as possible. In Portugal, the gradual abandonment of the Greater Côa Valley has presented an unprecedented opportunity for rewilding in the small country. The government has already set aside a quarter million acres of land for conservation.
Tetanus is a bacterial disease that causes paralysis and can lead to death. Globally, it was estimated to kill more than 250,000 people each year in the early 1990s. Most of these deaths were in children. By 2019, annual deaths had fallen to less than 35,000. The rollout of the combined vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis among children has been crucial in driving this.
Bottom trawling, a practice criticized by NGOs for impacting ecosystems, involves dragging heavy nets over the seabed, damaging ecosystems, and releasing carbon into the oceans. Sweden is set to become the second EU country to ban bottom fishing in marine protected areas, going a step further than Greece’s April decision by banning it in all territorial waters.
