CARTAGENA, Colombia – A tour bus emits a cloud of black diesel smoke in front of Cartagena’s glittering white conference center. It is a vivid reminder that from the hottest tourist destinations to the slums of Latin America, Asia and Africa, nine out of ten people on the planet breathe dangerously unhealthy levels of air […] Continue reading ->
Many glaciers in western Canada, the United States, Scandinavia, Central Europe, the Caucasus, New Zealand and the tropics will not survive the 21st century – and this will have a “dramatic impact” on mountain communities and hundreds of millions of people who depend on water that originates from these glaciers. These are the key findings […] Continue reading ->
The past ten years (2015-2024) were the ten warmest years on record, individually and collectively, according to the State of the Global Climate 2024 report released on 19 March. The year 2024 was also the warmest year in the 175-year observational record of temperature tracking, according to the United Nations’ agency World Meteorological Organization (WMO), […] Continue reading ->
The US Environmental Protection Agency announced it would seek to roll back 31 climate, air and water pollution, and emissions regulations, declaring this is the “biggest deregulatory action” in US history. Leading environmental health voices say that rolling back pollution and climate regulations will inextricably harm the public’s health, though the Trump administration asserts that […] Continue reading ->
Tanzania has extinguished a deadly outbreak of Marburg virus, but elsewhere across Africa, an alarming surge of health crises continue to unfold – including expanding mpox infections in Uganda, a cholera outbreak in Angola and a first-ever cholera case in neighbouring Namibia. The Marburg virus outbreak in Tanzania has officially ended, Tanzanian health authorities declared […] Continue reading ->
A four-year, multi-country trial measuring health impacts of reduced indoor air pollution due to the shifting of households from biomass to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) has yielded mixed results – defying expectations that reduced indoor air pollution would yield significant health benefits. The study of 3,200 households in four Asian, African and Latin America countries […] Continue reading ->
Chad and Bangladesh ranked as the most polluted countries in 2024, while Delhi, India was the most polluted capital city, according to the 2024 World Air Quality report produced by the Swiss-based IQAir. But only seven countries worldwide met WHO air quality guidelines and Africa’s pollution levels remains under-reported. Pollution monitoring also fell victim to […] Continue reading ->
Countries agreed to raise $200 billion a year by 2030 to help developing countries conserve biodiversity at the resumed Conference of Party (COP16) of the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) in Rome last week. The deal marks a major breakthrough after negotiations over a finance package were suspended last November in the closing hours of […] Continue reading ->
Bolstered by strong support in Africa, Europe and Latin America, there are high hopes that an ambitious new Global Action Plan on Climate Change and Health will be approved in May by the World Health Assembly, said Maria Neira, World Health Organization (WHO) Director of the Department of Climate, Environment and Health. The WHO move […] Continue reading ->
WHO Member States appeared to give strong backing to a proposed new WHO roadmap to reduce air pollution’s health impacts – with the ambitious global goal of cutting mortality attributable to human-produced sources by 50% by 2040. At the same time, a draft Climate Change and Health Action Plan, also aired at Saturday’s WHO Executive […] Continue reading ->