- The Caribbean Basin is drowning in waste, especially plastic trash that’s contaminating rivers and the surrounding sea, poisoning fish and turtles.
- For years, governments in the region turned a blind eye to waste management. But now the problem is threatening their main industry: tourism.
- Eight Caribbean countries have joined together in the Caribe Circular alliance, which aims to implement circular-economy solutions for better waste management.
- This requires not only a means for cleaning up and recycling mountains of trash, it also demands a major shift in cultural patterns, requiring a cooperative effort between governments, industry, NGOs and individuals. As trash continues to mount, this costly endeavor becomes a race against the clock, facing huge obstacles.

- A new report shows that major banks operating in Southeast Asia are failing to address the environmental and human rights consequences of their investments in large-scale hydropower dams along the Mekong River.
- The report from sustainable finance watchdogs reveals regulatory shortcomings at regional and national levels that it says fail to hold banks accountable for their investments.
- Riverside communities and rights groups have long questioned why banks operating in Mekong countries continue to fund environmentally damaging hydropower projects in neighboring countries, despite the high costs and consequences for communities in their own country.
- The report calls on financial institutions to adopt more sustainable banking policies and practices when deciding which projects to support.

- A new monitoring platform tracks the loss of vegetation in all types of ecosystems, not just tropical rainforests, around the world.
- The OPERA DIST-ALERT was developed by the makers of popular forest monitoring platform Global Forest Watch.
- The monitoring system incorporates managed forests, grasslands, shrublands and croplands along with tropical forests.
- The data obtained from two of NASA’s Landsat satellites and two of the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellites reflected lost vegetation around the world due to various factors — ranging from fires in Canada to logging in the Republic of Congo and cyclones in Malawi.