Best of our wild blogs: 14 May 19

Singapore Reefs In A New Light
Hantu Blog

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Policy loopholes turn Indonesia into dumping site: Environmentalists

Straits Times 13 Mar 19;

JAKARTA (THE JAKARTA POST/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - Environmentalists have called on the Trade Ministry to immediately revise its 2016 regulation on waste imports, saying it contains several loopholes that have turned Indonesia into a dump site for developed countries.

The activists argued that even though developed nations, excluding the United States, had recently agreed to restrict global waste trade, Indonesia still needed to tighten its policies to prevent plastic waste smuggling.

A Greenpeace report issued in April shows that there has been an increase in the shipment of plastic waste from developed countries to developing nations, including Indonesia, since China banned waste imports. The Chinese ban on imports of 24 types of waste material went into effect in February 2018.

Waste imports to Indonesia soared from 10,000 tonnes per month in late 2017 to 35,000 tonnes per month in late 2018.

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'Step-change' in energy investment needed to meet climate goals: IEA

Marlowe HOOD, AFP Yahoo News 14 May 19;

Paris (AFP) - The world must double spending on renewable power and slash investment in oil and coal by 2030 to keep the Paris climate treaty temperature targets in play, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Tuesday.

For that to happen, however, trend lines on both fronts moved in the wrong direction last year, the agency reported in its 4th annual World Energy Investment overview.

Money going into new upstream oil and gas projects -- exploration, drilling and infrastructure -- rose four percent in 2018, while investment in new coal sources went up by two percent, the first increase in that sector since 2012.

At the same time, investment in new renewable power of all kinds dipped by about two percent.

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