Latest news with #environmentaldegradation
France 24
18-07-2025
- France 24
Pakistan bans new hotel construction around tourist lakes
Unregulated construction of hotels and guest houses in Gilgit-Baltistan -- which boasts around 13,000 glaciers, more than any other country on Earth outside the polar regions -- has sparked major concerns about environmental degradation. The natural beauty of the region has made it a top tourist destination, with towering peaks looming over the Old Silk Road, and a highway transporting tourists between cherry orchards, glaciers, and ice-blue lakes. However, in recent years construction has exploded led by companies from outside the region, straining water and power resources, and increasing waste. "If we let them construct hotels at such pace, there will be a forest of concrete,' Khadim Hussain, a senior official at the Gilgit-Baltistan Environmental Protection Authority told AFP on Friday. "People don't visit here to see concrete; people come here to enjoy natural beauty," he added. Last month, a foreign tourist posted a video on Instagram -- which quickly went viral -- alleging wastewater was being discharged by a hotel into Lake Attabad, which serves as a freshwater source for Hunza. The next day, authorities fined the hotel more than $5,000. Asif Sakhi, a political activist and resident of the Hunza Valley, welcomed the ban. "We have noticed rapid changes in the name of tourism and development," he said, adding hotel construction was "destroying our natural lakes and rivers". Shah Nawaz, a hotel manager and local resident of the valley, also praised the ban, saying he believes "protecting the environment and natural beauty is everyone's responsibility".
CBS News
16-07-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Miccosukee Tribe wants to join federal lawsuit against Alligator Alcatraz detention site
Citing "significant concerns about environmental degradation" and threats to "traditional and religious ceremonies," members of the Miccosukee Tribe are trying to join a lawsuit challenging an immigrant detention center in the Everglades. The facility, dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz" by Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republican leaders, neighbors 10 villages that are home to the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida in the Big Cypress National Preserve — including a village 1,000 feet away from one of the detention center's boundaries — as well as areas where tribal members work and attend school. "The Miccosukee people have lived in and cared for the land now known as the Big Cypress National Preserve since time immemorial," lawyers for the tribe wrote Monday in a motion to join the lawsuit that environmental groups filed June 27 against state and federal officials. Tribal members from throughout Florida travel to the preserve to "hunt, trap and hold sacred ceremonies," the court document said. Lawyers for the tribe echoed legal arguments by Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, which filed the lawsuit alleging that officials failed to comply with a federal law requiring that an environmental impact study be performed before developing the facility. The detention compound, which was erected adjacent to an airstrip known as the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport is "surrounded on all sides by the preserve or lands perpetually leased" to the Miccosukees, the tribe's lawyers said in Monday's motion. But Gov. Ron DeSantis has disputed that the facility threatens the environment, in part pointing to the decades-old airport, which is used for flight training. The court document filed by the Tribe's lawyers included a historical overview of the tribe's treatment by settlers dating to the 1800s and addressed the detention center's impact on the tribe's "primordial connection to" and "longstanding stewardship of" the surrounding land. The Miccosukees "continue to live in traditional villages within the preserve and routinely hunt, fish, trap, gather plants, hold sacred rituals, and lay their deceased to rest in the preserve," their lawyers wrote in Monday's document. The detention center's "proximity to the tribe's villages, sacred and ceremonial sites, traditional hunting grounds, and other lands protected by the tribe raises significant concerns about environmental degradation and potential impacts to same caused by the construction and operation of a detention facility" at the site, the document said. Members of the tribe also are concerned about "impacts to their freedom to hunt and fish in the immediate area adjacent to a securitized federal detention and immigration facility, as well as the possibility of a facility escape posing a security risk for their community," the filing said. The Miccosukees' motion argued that the number of occupants at the facility — which state officials said will house up to 4,000 detainees and another 1,000 workers — will "at a minimum, more than double the residential density in the area," which is accessible by a two-lane highway, known as the Tamiami Trail, which stretches across the state. "The construction and operation of a detention facility without necessary environmental studies potentially poses a substantial threat to the rights and interests of the tribe and the livelihood of tribal members who live adjacent thereto," the motion said. Attorneys for the DeSantis administration have argued in the lawsuit that the National Environmental Policy Act, the federal law that requires evaluating potential environmental impacts before projects affecting sensitive areas can move forward, does not apply to the Everglades facility because it is being operated by the state. Groups of state and federal lawmakers toured the facility on Saturday. Speaking to reporters after the visit, U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., called the conditions for detainees inhumane. Frost said that "cages" inside tent-like structures on the site each house 32 men, who share three toilets that are equipped on top with a dispenser used for drinking water. "All in all, every Floridian should be ashamed of the fact that our taxpayer money is being used for this internment camp where people are in horrible conditions in hot Florida sun," Frost said. "It's a gross misuse of resources to dehumanize immigrants and dehumanize people who were all Latino men in this facility." But Attorney General James Uthmeier, who was instrumental in selecting the site for the detention facility, disputed Democrats' criticisms. "I don't know what they're doing. They were elected to serve American people yet they're crying and bending over backwards to fight for illegal aliens, many of whom are wanted for serious, serious crimes," Uthmeier told reporters Tuesday. The state has estimated it will cost roughly $450 million a year to operate the detention facility, and another facility is planned at North Florida's Camp Blanding, which is used by the Florida National Guard for training. DeSantis has said the money would be reimbursed by the Trump administration. After the state dubbed the detention center "Alligator Alcatraz," Republican party officials are selling merchandise emblazoned with the moniker. President Donald Trump, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other state and federal officials toured the facility before detainees began to arrive this month. Noem has said she is in talks with five other GOP-led states to launch similar detention centers. While DeSantis and others have extolled the Everglades center, information about its operation — which is being conducted through an agreement with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — has been difficult to obtain from official sources. After news reports identified contractors observed at the detention complex, vendors began obscuring the names of their companies on vehicles. State Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat who also toured the detention center on Saturday, released a copy of a purchase order Tuesday showing that the state Division of Emergency Management has agreed to pay Jacksonville-based Critical Response Strategies LLC $78.5 million for correctional services and "onsite transportation" at the facility. Also, immigration attorneys and families of detainees have said they are having problems locating people at the facility, who may not appear on databases that are supposed to track detainees accused of being in the country illegally. Katie Blankenship, an immigration attorney who has several clients at the Everglades center, said that information is often difficult to obtain about people being held at similar immigrant-detention centers. "But this is an escalation we haven't seen before," Blankenship told The News Service of Florida in an interview, pointing to the Trump and DeSantis administrations' stance on immigration. "This is a perfect storm and sort of a sick mixture, a cocktail of state and federal action and working together this way has contributed to the confusion, intentionally."
Al Jazeera
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Climate & War: The Destruction of Gaza's Cropland
Israel's war on Gaza has wiped out cropland and trees, creating food shortages and exacerbating environmental degradation and climate change. The Destruction of Gaza's Cropland is part of a series called Climate & War, commissioned by Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), which tells personal stories to reveal how war exacerbates climate change. Learn more at: Climate and War | ARIJ
Arabian Business
12-07-2025
- Climate
- Arabian Business
Sand and dust storms impact 330million worldwide, fuelling health and economic crises: WMO
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has reported that sand and dust storms affect 330 million people in more than 150 countries worldwide, causing growing harm to both public health and the global economy. In the annual WMO Airborne Dust Bulletin, the organisation stressed the need to continue enhancing monitoring, forecasting and early warning systems. The Bulletin highlighted that although the global average of annual mean dust surface concentrations in 2024 was slightly lower than in 2023, there were big regional variations. Dust and sand storms In the most affected areas, the surface dust concentration in 2024 was higher than the long-term 1981-2010 average. Every year, around two billion million tonnes of sand and dust enter the atmosphere. More than 80 percent of the global dust budget originates from the North African and Middle Eastern deserts and can be transported for hundreds and even thousands of kilometres across continents and oceans. Much of this is a natural process, but poor water and land management, drought and environmental degradation are increasingly to blame. The report, issued to mark the International Day of Combating Sand and Dust Storms on Saturday, July 12, noted that while a significant part of the phenomenon is natural, poor water and land management, drought and environmental degradation are increasingly contributing factors. It added that, in 2024, sand and dust concentrations were lower than the long-term average in many of the main source areas, and higher than average in many areas to where the dust is blown. The regions that are most vulnerable to long-range transport of dust are: The northern tropical Atlantic Ocean between West Africa and the Caribbean South America The Mediterranean Sea The Arabian Sea The Bay of Bengal Central-eastern China In 2024, the transatlantic transport of African dust invaded parts of the Caribbean Sea region. WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said: 'Sand and dust storms do not just mean dirty windows and hazy skies. They harm the health and quality of life of millions of people and cost many millions of dollars through disruption to air and ground transport, on agriculture and on solar energy production. 'This Bulletin shows how health risks and economic costs are rising – and how investments in dust early warnings and mitigation and control would reap large returns. 'This is why sand and dust storms are one of the priorities of the Early Warnings for All initiative.' A new sand and dust storm indicator developed by WMO and the World Health Organisation showed that 3.8bn people (nearly half the world's population) were exposed to dust levels exceeding WHO's safety threshold between 2018–2022. This represents a 31 percent increase from 2.9bn people (44.5 percent) during 2003-2007. Exposure varied widely, from only a few days in relatively unaffected areas to more than 87 per cent of days, equivalent to over 1,600 days in five years, in the most dust-prone regions. This indicator and the associated findings were published in the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change: 2024 Global Report. The economic impact is often underestimated, according to a case study from the United States of America. In the USA alone, dust and wind erosion cost an estimated $154bn in 2017- more than a fourfold increase over the 1995 calculation. The estimate included costs to households, crops, wind and solar energy, mortality from fine dust exposure, health costs due to Valley fever, and transport. The true cost of dust was certainly much higher, since reliable national-scale evaluations of many of dust's other economic impacts (for example, on human morbidity, the hydrological cycle, aviation and rangeland agriculture) were not available, according to the study, which was published in Nature.
The Independent
16-06-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Supreme Court to hear appeal from Chevron in landmark Louisiana coastal damage lawsuits
The Supreme Court announced Monday it will hear an appeal from Chevron, Exxon and other oil and gas companies that lawsuits seeking compensation for coastal land loss and environmental degradation in Louisiana should be heard in federal court. The companies are appealing a 2024 decision by a federal appeals court that kept the lawsuits in state courts, allowing them to move to trial after more than a decade in limbo. A southeast Louisiana jury then ordered Chevron to pay upwards of $740 million to clean up damage to the state's coastline. The verdict reached in April was the first of dozens of lawsuits filed in 2013 against leading oil and gas companies in Louisiana alleging they violated state environmental laws for decades. While plaintiffs' attorneys say the appeal encompasses at least 10 cases, Chevron disagrees and says the court's ruling could have broader implications for additional lawsuits. Chevron argues that because it and other companies began oil production and refining during World War II as a federal contractor, these cases should be heard in federal court, perceived to be friendlier to businesses. But the plaintiffs' attorneys — representing the Plaquemines and Jefferson Parish governments — say the appeal is the companies' latest stall tactic to avoid accountability. 'It's more delay, they're going to fight till the end and we're going to continue to fight as well,' said John Carmouche, a trial attorney in the Chevron case who is behind the other lawsuits. He noted that the companies' appeal 'doesn't address the merits of the case.' Chevron's counsel, Paul Clement said in a statement that the company was 'pleased' with the decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Exxon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The court's decision to hear the appeal offers the chance for 'fair and consistent application of the law' and will 'help preserve legal stability for the industry that fuels America's economy,' said Tommy Faucheux, president of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association, in an emailed statement. In April, jurors in Plaquemines Parish — a sliver of land straddling the Mississippi River into the Gulf — found that energy giant Texaco, acquired by Chevron in 2001, had for decades violated Louisiana regulations governing coastal resources by failing to restore wetlands impacted by dredging canals, drilling wells and billions of gallons of wastewater dumped into the marsh. 'No company is big enough to ignore the law, no company is big enough to walk away scot-free,' Carmouche told jurors during closing arguments. Louisiana's coastal parishes have lost more than 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) of land over the past century, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, which has also identified oil and gas infrastructure as a significant cause. The state could lose another 3,000 square miles (7,770 square kilometers) in the coming decades, its coastal protection agency has warned. Chevron's attorneys had argued that land loss in Louisiana was caused by other factors and that the company should not be held liable for its actions prior to the enactment of a 1980 environmental law requiring companies to obtain permits and restore land they had used. The fact that the lawsuits had been delayed for so long due to questions of jurisdiction was 'bordering on absurd,' the late-federal judge Martin Leach-Cross Feldman remarked in 2022 during oral arguments in one of the lawsuits, according to court filings. He added: 'Frankly, I think it's kind of shameful.' Louisiana's Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, a longtime oil and gas industry supporter, nevertheless made the state a party to the lawsuits during his tenure as attorney general. 'Virtually every federal court has rejected Chevron's attempt to avoid liability for knowingly and intentionally violating state law,' Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement. 'I'll fight Chevron in state or federal court—either way, they will not win.' ___
