Asia

"A U.S.-funded project using satellites to track and publish water levels at Chinese dams on the Mekong river was announced on Monday, adding to the superpowers’ rivalry in Southeast Asia."

"The coronavirus pandemic has slowed efforts to make safer the often hazardous job of dismantling old ships in Bangladesh, officials said, following the latest worker fatality."

"Japan’s ruling party will call on the government to promote environmental investment with a major decade-long spending programme for the country, whose Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has made a green society a key policy priority."

"A new book by Jon Mitchell exposes “countless” releases of PFAS chemicals by the U.S. military in Japan."

"Glaciers in China’s bleak Qilian mountains are disappearing at a shocking rate as global warming brings unpredictable change and raises the prospect of crippling, long-term water shortages, scientists say."

"President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, one of the world’s most fossil-fuel reliant economies, said on Wednesday the country will go carbon neutral by 2050."

"Japan will be carbon neutral by 2050, its prime minister said on Monday, making an ambitious pledge to sharply accelerate the country’s global warming targets, even as it plans to build more than a dozen new coal-burning power plants in the coming years."

"China delivered a diatribe against U.S. climate policies on Monday, saying that under President Trump, the United States “is widely viewed as a consensus-breaker and a troublemaker.” Beijing’s Foreign Affairs Ministry blamed Trump’s “negative stance” and “retrogression on climate change” for undermining progress on an international climate accord."

"Nearly a decade after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan’s government has decided to release over one million tonnes of contaminated water into the sea, media reports said on Friday, with a formal announcement expected to be made later this month."