Storm Xynthia: A Year Later

A year ago the hurricane winds of Storm Xynthia drove the sea over much of the Charente-Maritime and Vendée coastline to devastating effect. Many people lost their lives. France’s Government has set up a new coastal defence plan costing €500 million over six years.

Trade group sues over polar bear critical habitat, Anchorage, Alaska

Designation of critical habitat does not automatically block development but requires federal officials to consider whether a proposed action would adversely affect the polar bear’s habitat and interfere with its recovery.The lawsuit is the first filed in opposition to the critical habitat designation.

California Islands Give Up Evidence of Early Seafaring

The sea-going people may have followed a “kelp highway” stretching from Japan to Kamchatka, along the south coast of Beringia and Alaska, then southward down the Northwest Coast to California. Rising seas have since flooded the shorelines and coastal lowlands where early populations would have spent most of their time.

EU Pledges 90m Euros in Climate Funds for Sinking Pacific Island States

Building on the Cancun Climate Change Conference, the High Level conference on Climate Change in the Pacific will be hosted by Vanuatu on 4 March and is organised by the European Commission. Sinking Pacific island states on the frontline of climate change, are to receive funding for climate-related projects.

King Tide: The Sinking of Tuvalu

The fragile strips of green that make up the small islands of Tuvalu are incredibly beautiful but also incredibly vulnerable.
The group of nine tiny islands in the South Pacific only just break the surface of the ocean, but for how much longer?

One Plastic Beach

Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang have been collecting plastic debris off one beach in Northern California for over ten years. Each piece of plastic they pick up, comes back to their house where it gets cleaned, categorized and stored before being used for their art.

Waste Land, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Deservedly nominated at this year’s Oscars as Best Documentary Feature, Lucy Walker’s life-affirming film Waste Land, travels to the squalor of Rio de Janeiro, which boasts the largest landfill site in the world.