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Nearly 200 people have been arrested in Indonesia over their possible connections to the massive wildfires raging in the nation's forest, officials said this week.
Hundreds of wildfires have burned nearly 840,000 acres of forest in Indonesian Borneo and Sumatra this year, in the country's worst fire crisis since 2015. Officials say that some 80 percent of the fires, usually a regular occurrence in the dry season, are due to slash-and-burn techniques to clear the land for agriculture.
The fires have led to evacuations and unhealthy air quality levels across the country and in neighboring Singapore and Malaysia, with more than 600 schools in Malaysia forced to close from the smoke.
For a deeper dive: CNN, New York Times $, Mongabay
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- Indonesia Forest-Clearing Ban Criticized as 'Government Propaganda' ›
- Historic Verdict in Indonesia's Fight Against Deforestation - EcoWatch ›
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By Raphael Tsavkko Garcia
Rarely has something so precious fallen into such unsafe hands. Since Jair Bolsonaro took the Brazilian presidency in 2019, the Amazon, which makes up 10 percent of our planet's biodiversity and absorbs an estimated 5 percent of global carbon emissions, has been hit with a record number of fires and unprecedented deforestation.
Microsoft announced ambitious new plans to become carbon negative by 2030 and then go one step further and remove by 2050 all the carbon it has emitted since the company was founded in 1975, according to a company press release.
Nestlé, the world's largest food company, said it will invest up to $2 billion to address the plastic waste crisis that it is largely responsible for.
Winter is upon us and so is the risk of vitamin D deficiency and infections. Vitamin D, which is made in our skin following sunlight exposure and also found in oily fish (mackerel, tuna and sardines), mushrooms and fortified dairy and nondairy substitutes, is essential for good health. Humans need vitamin D to keep healthy and to fight infections. The irony is that in winter, when people need vitamin D the most, most of us are not getting enough. So how much should we take? Should we take supplements? How do we get more? And, who needs it most?
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An expanse of uncommonly warm seawater in the Pacific Ocean created by a marine heatwave led to a mass die-off of one million seabirds, scientists have found.