Asia is drowning in plastic, with national production and imports from the global north having devastating environmental and public health impacts. According to a report by Friends of the Earth Asia Pacific, most South and East Asian countries lack proper waste management strategies, regulations and facilities to deal with the plastic waste crisis. Often, communities are forced to resort to…
Climate litigation is an increasingly common area of environmental law that people are using to hold countries and public corporations to account for contributing to the climate crisis. In 2021, Friends of the Earth Netherlands, known locally as Milieudefensie, won a landmark victory for climate justice in the People VS Shell climate case. Now, Friends of the Earth Asia Pacific…
The Philippines has 421 principal rivers spread across 119 proclaimed watersheds. Aside from providing water to drink for 110 million Filipinos, these are also the source of irrigation for almost a million hectares of agricultural lands across the nation, and a significant source of electricity, comprising 10% of the current power mix. But the Philippine government’s emphasis on big dam…
The annual UN climate talks took place in the Egyptian coastal town of Sharm el-Sheikh this year, from 6 to 20 November. This was the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, better known as “COP27”. In a press release issued at the end of the talks, Friends of the Earth International celebrated…
Agrcommodities have been ravaging forests across Malaysia and East Asia for decades. Since the 1990s, monoculture plantations have replaced logging, yet they are no less destructive on the environment or communities. “You can see the movement of the transnational logging industry first in the Philippines, then after the forest is gone, Thailand and then Malaysia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.…
For many years, communities and civil society organisations in Japan have been repeatedly calling on their government to suspend support for new coal-fired power projects in Indonesia and Bangladesh, notably the Indramayu and Matarbari power plant projects. Not only would these projects fuel the climate crisis, they would also damage the livelihoods of local people and worsen the oversupply of…
Agriculture is the main source of livelihood for many in the Philippines. 25-30% of working people are involved in cultivation, animal rearing or fish farming, and the sector contributes around one tenth of the country’s economy. The industrial food system, with its focus on monocropping and chemical inputs to maximise harvests for export, is devastating the environment and livelihoods of…
Before the Green Revolution came to Sri Lanka in the 1960s, with the imposition of modernised machinery, high yielding varieties, increased use of fertilisers and other agrochemical inputs, the country had an ecologically sustainable agricultural system. Farmers used mixed farming techniques and cultivated in a manner that protected the natural environment and human health. They maintained soil fertility through the…
The Israeli blockade in Palestine has severe impacts on the daily lives of people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip: from blocking their access to water, to limiting their food sovereignty. Missile bombings over decades have damaged crop lands and wells, destroyed crops, killed hundreds of animals and deeply damaged artisanal fisheries. These were some of the impacts…
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released, on 9 August 2021, the first part of its Sixth Assessment Report: “Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis”. The rest of the report will be released over the next few months. “Many of the changes observed in the climate are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, and…
