Latest news with #environmentalissues
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Local residents reimagine their communities
ASHTABULA — The Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition hosted a Reimagining Communities event Tuesday at the YMCA of Ashtabula County. The event brought various community members together to discuss how to work within their communities to deal with issues related to climate change and crisis. 'This is a way for us to talk with the community about climate change and about resilience,' NEOBHC Executive Director Yvonka Hall said. 'Basically, we want to know what kind of pieces have been put in place for the community in times of crisis. So, what are some of the things that are going on in their communities that they can tell us about?' Hall said the NEOBHC is looking for what kinds of issues communities are dealing with more often because of climate change, like flooding, and where people go in times of crisis, like their local church or community center. 'For us, the bigger part of this work is marking sure we have this whole thing around community involvement and engagement,' she said. NEOBHC was also interested in hearing about other environmental issues, like complications from air pollution, that are affecting communities of concern. 'It can be Black communities. It can be white communities. It can be Hispanic and Latino communities,' she said. 'It is community members that are living in areas that have been destabilized because of the industries that are there.' Attendees heard presentations from the Ohio State University's Center for Health Outcomes and Police Evaluation Studies. 'We do this whole educational piece, because that's part of these conversations is the education,' Hall said. 'The other part is for them to educate us.' Many local community leaders were at the event, including from local churches and the local chapter of the NAACP. NEOBHC gave out air purifiers to attendees toward the end of the event. The Reimagining Communities event is the third of several the organization is hosting in Northeast Ohio, with events recently happening in Lake and Cuyahoga counties. NEOBHC Finance Director Zina Hempstead said the project is is being funded through a $1.3 million Climate Resilience Regional Challenge Grant from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, which runs from October 2024 to September 2027. Hall said information from the events will be compiled into a report the organization hopes to have out in early 2026. The NEOBHC is no stranger to county events, hosting one about asthma last year. 'In Northeast Ohio over these last few years, we've had a higher incidence of asthma, particularly in young children,' Hall said. 'We have had a number of young children who have died from asthma attacks.' Many of those children come from poorer and nonwhite communities, Hall said. 'African American children are about 14 times more likely to die from an asthma-related incident than their white counterparts,' she said. Hall has dedicated much of her life to community outreach, she said. 'I started off doing HIV work 31 years ago,' she said. 'I've also done harm reduction around syringe exchange and harm reduction programs.'
BBC News
07-07-2025
- General
- BBC News
East Grinstead pond oxygen crash sees up to 200 fish die
Residents of a town say a "total lack of care and maintenance" of a pond caused scores of fish to be washed up dead in the Pond in East Grinstead, West Sussex, suffered an oxygen crash on Friday, leading to the death of up to 200 White said the dead fish had caused a "revolting" smell and claimed proper maintenance would have avoided the problems.A spokesperson for Mid Sussex District Council, which maintains the pond, said it was "committed to maintaining and improving the condition of our green spaces". Mr White said: "Families come here to picnic and was a thriving place during the Covid-19 pandemic for people to exercise."A lot of generations have watched it go through its best times but now it is going through one of its worst times. "There's a total lack of care and maintenance. If that was followed we would have avoided this catastrophe."An oxygen crash occurs when levels of oxygen in a body of water rapidly deplete, leading to the death of fish. 'Woefully inadequate' Mr White said he first reported the problem on Friday and had returned to the site each morning since.A council spokesperson said officers first visited the pond on Thursday, when it was found to be in a "good condition", but had since heard from residents about the dead council added that contractors had since removed the dead fish and cut back EA spokesperson said fish had died due to "decaying weeds" causing oxygen levels to Sussex councillor Julie Mockford said she was "disgusted" by the incident and called current maintenance "woefully inadequate".An Environment Agency spokesperson said it was "continuing to provide guidance" to the council.
BBC News
28-06-2025
- General
- BBC News
River Biss rubbish causing 'deep concern' in Trowbridge
A wildlife trust has said it is "deeply concerned" after traffic signs, road cones and rusty shopping trolleys were found in a Wildlife Trust is urging the public to protect waterways after a large amount of debris was discovered in the River Biss in Trowbridge by staff from the town council."Recently items such as roadworks cones, signs, shopping trolleys, baskets and various bottles and cans were discovered in the river," a council spokesperson comes after the Environment Agency said earlier this year that rusty trolleys in the river could pose a "potential flood risk". "We will continue to take action to remove debris and encourage the community to do their part in keeping our rivers clean," Trowbridge Town Council trolleys and an office chair were also found dumped in the same part of the river last Environment Agency is responsible for managing the River Biss alongside the town council."Litter in watercourses isn't just a public nuisance, it can be a flood risk and bad for the environment," an Environment Agency spokesperson said."If you spot rubbish which could cause a flood risk or pollution, please report it via our incident hotline on 0800 80 70 60." 'Direct threat' Wiltshire Wildlife Trust said rubbish in the river is not just an eyesore, but a symptom of a wider environmental issue."Our rivers are corridors for nature, they are habitats for species that cannot live elsewhere such as the water vole, otter, and kingfisher, as well as a rich diversity of fish, insects, and plants," it said."The presence of large-scale litter and fly-tipped items poses a direct threat to this wildlife through entanglement, physical injury, and the leaching of harmful pollutants that degrade water quality for years to come."We urge the public to help us protect these precious habitats by ensuring all waste is disposed of responsibly and by reporting any incidents of fly-tipping to Wiltshire Council immediately."
Arab News
24-06-2025
- Business
- Arab News
Corporates have changed their tune on ‘stakeholder capitalism'
In 2019, the Business Roundtable, an association of the most powerful CEOs in the US, won widespread praise by announcing its commitment to 'stakeholder capitalism,' which delivers value not only to shareholders, but also to other affected actors, such as employees and communities. Now, however, the Business Roundtable has changed its tune: its April report, 'The Need for Bold Proxy Process Reforms,' reads almost like a manifesto against stakeholder capitalism. The reason for this volte-face is obvious. The Roundtable's 2019 'commitment' was a clear attempt to get on the right side of popular sentiment: Engagement with social and environmental issues was up, and so were demands that powerful institutions get on board. But the political mood has changed. At a time when Americans are preoccupied with intensifying pressures on their own pocketbooks, the new second administration is actively rejecting environmental and social issues. For many CEOs, this looks like a golden opportunity. So, the Business Roundtable is calling on the US Congress to 'enact legislation precluding the inclusion of shareholder proposals relating to environmental, social and political issues in a company's proxy statement.' With this, CEOs want to scrap one of the few formal mechanisms through which a diverse range of stakeholders can influence corporate behavior on issues such as climate risk, inequality, worker safety, and political transparency. There is plenty of precedent for this. While the Business Roundtable's CEOs like to pay lip service to voluntary corporate-responsibility initiatives, they have strenuously objected to public policies that would require them to follow through. The fact is that delivering real value to workers and the environment would cost money, which would reduce shareholder dividends and executive pay — the real priorities of the Business Roundtable's members. In fact, the compensation of CEOs who signed the stakeholder-capitalism 'commitment' has continued to reflect their success in delivering shareholder value. The only way to rein in corporate power is to confront it head-on. Christopher Marquis As many critics warned from the start, the Business Roundtable never meant what it said in 2019. Whatever its claims about environmental or social responsibility, it has always been motivated by three interconnected objectives: avoiding accountability, maximizing short-term profits, and enriching executives. To be sure, even from a commercial perspective, this approach is fundamentally flawed. A growing body of research shows that failure to account for social and environmental imperatives poses clear, material risks to firm operations and performance — not at some point in the distant future, but now. But there is no reason to expect the Business Roundtable's CEOs, or corporations more broadly, to change voluntarily. On the contrary, their April statement lays bare the transactional, opportunistic, and utterly dishonest nature of their moral posturing, which in reality, serves just one purpose: to get consumers and regulators off their backs. This should serve as a wake-up call to lawmakers, who have long cozied up to billionaires and large corporations, placing their hopes, against all evidence, in self-regulation. The only way to rein in corporate power is to confront it head-on. That means mandating corporate commitments to structural change, imposing tougher punishments for corporate abuses, cracking down on dark money, strengthening antitrust enforcement, and expanding regulatory oversight, including of corporate influence over climate, labor, and economic policy. • Christopher Marquis is Professor of Management at the University of Cambridge and the author of "The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs" (PublicAffairs, 2024). ©Project Syndicate.
BBC News
19-06-2025
- General
- BBC News
'Not contaminated' designation of Arnold Fields to be reviewed
A council will need to reassess its decision not to call a perennially burning rubbish dump "contaminated".Havering Council's decision was challenged in the High Court on 17 June by Clean the Air in Havering, a group set up to tackle the fires at Launders Lane in landfill site, on Arnolds Field, has caught fire more than 100 times since 2019, sending smoke into homes, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) leader Gillian Ford said: "The site belongs to the landowners and it is their responsibility to make it safe – we are ready to work with them to solve the problem." 'Summer of hell' Justice Nathalie Lieven ruled the decision not to designate the land as contaminated by Havering Council in July 2024 as "premature and unlawful".She also found the town hall misunderstood the law by failing to consider smoke as a potential contaminant under contaminated land rules. The council has said its options are "limited".Ford added: "We are now reviewing the detail in the ruling. One thing that is clear is it has asked us to reconsider our decision on whether Arnolds Field is 'contaminated land' or not."Despite the landowner's claims that they're trying to 'improve the site for the local community', the fact remains that they have not yet submitted a formal planning application, and we have seen no evidence to suggest they are serious in finding a solution." Ruth Kettle-Frisby, one of three local mothers leading the campaign, said residents had reported "constant coughing and stinging and irritated eyes," and had been forced to "close all windows during this hot weather"."This month, Rainham residents have reported their understandable distress as they enter 'another summer of hell', with smoke already entering nearby schools," she added. Emily Nicholson, from the law firm Mishcon de Reya, who represents the campaign group Clean the Air in Havering said: "This is the first judgment that we are aware of which deals with assessment under the Contaminated Land Guidance, and it clarifies an important point on smoke being able to be assessed as a contaminant linkage for the purposes of the contaminated land regime. "It also makes clear that where health impacts come from specific sporadic events, such as fires, decisions must be made based on evidence of the impacts of those events."
