Palau's pioneering ban on "reef-toxic" sunscreens took effect Wednesday as the tiny Pacific island nation introduced strict environmental measures that also include one of the world's largest marine sanctuaries. 

Thailand began the year with a ban on single-use plastic bags at major stores, continuing a campaign launched by the government and retailers towards a complete ban in 2021 to reduce waste and debris in the sea.

Britain, the birthplace of coal power, produced more electricity from zero-carbon sources such as wind, solar and nuclear than from fossil fuel plants for the first time in 2019.

Britain's Prince William launched a multi-million pound prize on Tuesday to encourage the world's greatest problem-solvers to find answers to Earth's biggest environmental problems, saying the planet was now at a tipping point.

Two titan climate campaigners, Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough, joined forces on Monday to push politicians and businesses to step up action on climate change after a year in which schoolchildren took to the world's streets in protest.

Bank of England head Mark Carney, soon to become UN special envoy on climate action and finance, urged companies on Monday to move faster on helping to cut carbon emissions.

Teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg said on Monday that talking to US President Donald Trump at a United Nations summit on global warming would have been a waste of time since he would not have paid any attention.

A petition to cancel Sydney's famous New Year's Eve fireworks and use the money to fight bushfires ringing the city has topped 260,000 signatures, but officials say the show will go on.

Expanding the use of bioenergy, as currently pursued with the B30 biodiesel program and hopefully to be increased to B50 and beyond, is a real effort to reduce dependency on fossil fuels.

Somewhere beneath the forest canopy was the African giant swallowtail: the largest butterfly to appear by day on the African continent, virtually unrecorded in scientific annals but known to be venomous.

At least 15 natural disasters linked to climate change this year caused damage of over $1 billion and seven of them cost at least $10 billion.

For the last three decades, botanist Julio Betancur has braved minefields and penetrated deep into jungle territory infested with drug traffickers and armed gangs in a bid to document Colombia's rich biodiversity.

 An environmental group has estimated that forest fires, illegal logging and mining activities in Jambi province throughout the year have caused environmental damage amounting to Rp 17 trillion (US$1.2 billion).

As the long-awaited regulation has not yet been issued, independent efforts by residents, organizations and business entities to reduce plastic use have started to gain traction. Some stores have begun to charge for plastic bags or simply not provide the bags at all to force customers to bring their own shopping bags.

Mexico is better known for cactus-dotted deserts and Caribbean beaches than winter sports, but the capital's central square is celebrating winter with an enormous, eco-friendly artificial ice rink.

To show our support for a green Christmas, we can stop marking the holiday with consumerism. This behavior is far from the spirit of Christmas.

Winters in Moscow usually look like something out of a picture book: the Russian capital is covered in snow, people go skiing, and temperatures are well below freezing. But this year things are different. 

Extinction Rebellion Indonesia, established in July 2019, is the first social movement to demand the government declare a climate emergency and to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2025 because the earth has already reached a point of crisis.

A Vietnamese entrepreneur is promoting an environmentally friendly way to sip drinks by using grass stems to make reusable, biodegradable straws.

Amsterdam is trying out a "bubble barrier" to help remove plastic from the city's canals by capturing trash hidden beneath the surface of the water.

The program certainly should be greatly welcomed as it will reduce fossil fuel consumption, cut oil imports that last year cost US$30 billion and support the country’s campaign to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent by 2030.

Petrol and diesel vehicles will be banned from a street in central London in an innovative attempt to reduce pollution, local authorities said.

But after discussing her idea with the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump, Fonda did not hear back, which eventually helped convince her to move for several months to Washington and use the power of her celebrity to help drive mass mobilizations.

Now that more people are able to consume beyond the level of necessity, a non-critical practice of it will potentially bring more harm than good.

Besides providing a large source of global food, fueling economic development and protecting human health, the ocean acts as a massive climate regulator, emitting half of the Earth's oxygen and absorbing 25 percent of carbon emissions.

While most plastic waste in Indonesia is recyclable, Enri pointed out that recyclers only accepted about 30 percent of all types of plastic waste found in the country. The remaining share ended up in landfills.

Private equity and venture investors in Southeast Asia are betting on something new — sustainability. Bain research shows a significant increase in capital flowing to companies that contribute to environmental and social progress.

While the city administration struggles to tackle the complex problem, communities and businesspeople have shed a ray of hope by getting their hands dirty, as there have been growing movements in society where members of the public actively take part in reducing waste through numerous innovative programs.

Environmental activist Greta Thunberg urged young people in Italy on Friday to seize the next decade to fight climate change, and chastised world leaders for acting "as if there is no tomorrow".

Awed by the blue-green hues swirling across the marble-like surface of the Earth below, an Italian astronaut made an emotional appeal from space on Wednesday for world leaders to pull their "heads out of the sand" over climate change.