分类： environment

On the tarmac of Tjilik Riwit Airport in Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan, technicians from Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency carefully load canisters of sodium chloride into a waiting aircraft. This routine pre-flight preparation is part of a high-stakes gambit: the Southeast Asian nation is turning to cloud seeding to curb an unprecedented wildfire crisis amplified by one of the strongest El Niño events in recent decades.

Indonesia’s biodiverse Borneo island, a region home to old-growth pristine rainforest and globally protected endangered species, is ablaze this dry season. Official government data confirms more than 100,000 hectares of land have already burned in the first six months of 2024. But independent analysis from deforestation monitoring project Nusantara Atlas paints a far grimmer picture, putting the total burned area through July at over 285,000 hectares—an expanse more than four times the geographic size of Indonesia’s capital Jakarta.

Cloud seeding, a weather modification technique that disperses silver iodide, salt particles and other nucleating agents into existing clouds to stimulate rain formation, is not a common tool for wildfire suppression across the globe. But for Indonesia, the strategy carries urgent weight: the country is still recovering from the devastating 2015 wildfire season, which was also driven by a strong El Niño, burned millions of hectares of forest and peatland, and sparked a transboundary toxic haze crisis that disrupted daily life across Malaysia, Singapore and southern Thailand.

Unlike popular misconception, cloud seeding does not create new clouds, explained meteorologist Safillah Anggie Wahyuni, who has accumulated more than 300 flight hours on cloud seeding missions since she carried out her first operation three years ago. Instead, the technique works by maximizing the rainfall potential of existing cloud formations. “Weather modification will only be effective if the conditions are right,” Safillah told AFP during an overflight of fire-stricken Central Kalimantan.

Data from Indonesia’s national meteorological agency BMKG shows the country has dramatically scaled up cloud seeding operations in recent years: between 2021 and August 2024, crews carried out 252 missions, compared to just 85 operations across the entire preceding decade. While many of these missions have targeted flood reduction by drawing rain away from vulnerable populated areas, a growing share is now focused on dousing active wildfire hotspots and wetting down parched, highly flammable peatland ecosystems. Currently, dozens of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft are on standby across the country to deploy cloud seeding at short notice, with security officials maintaining round-the-clock monitoring for any formation of rain-bearing clouds.

Still, the technique remains controversial, and the vast majority of Indonesia’s firefighting work still happens on the ground, where nearly 50,000 frontline firefighters are currently deployed across fire-prone regions. Critics point out that during the peak dry season, when wildfires are most intense and El Niño brings prolonged drought, clouds are often too scarce for cloud seeding to deliver meaningful results.

“Its effectiveness will be very low because of the lack of clouds,” said I Putu Santikayasa, a hydroclimatology lecturer at IPB University, located south of Jakarta. Beyond the issue of limited cloud cover, researchers have also noted that measuring the actual efficacy of cloud seeding remains methodologically challenging, while concerns have been raised about potential environmental harm from widespread silver iodide use and the high cost of sustained operations.

BMKG’s weather modification director Budi Harsoyo acknowledged that cloud seeding is only a temporary mitigation measure, not a long-term solution to Indonesia’s wildfire crisis. He also pushed back on safety concerns, noting there is no peer-reviewed evidence of harm from the levels of silver iodide used in current operations. A 2023 study authored by Harsoyo found that a 12-day cloud seeding operation in Central Kalimantan doubled expected rainfall and eliminated all mapped active fire hotspots during the operation period.

Environmental activists go further, arguing that technical fixes like cloud seeding distract from the root causes of Indonesia’s recurring wildfire crises. A large share of the country’s fire-prone land is made up of tropical peatlands: carbon-dense ecosystems that are highly water-retentive and fire-resistant when intact, but turn extremely flammable when drained for agricultural development, with underground fires that can smolder for months and reignite suddenly when conditions are dry.

Uli Arta Siagian, campaign coordinator for local environmental advocacy group WALHI, argues the core solution is protecting these vulnerable ecosystems from unsustainable development, rather than relying on emergency interventions after fires break out. “The responsibility for protection lies with the state by not issuing permits in areas that are vulnerable to fire,” she told AFP.

The 2024 wildfire season has already renewed regional concerns about transboundary haze, a recurring diplomatic and public health issue for Indonesia’s neighbors Malaysia and Singapore. In recent weeks, elevated haze from Borneo fires has pushed air pollution levels far past safe limits in the Malaysian portion of the island, forcing authorities to close hundreds of schools to protect children’s health.

Beyond cloud seeding, the Indonesian government has deployed a suite of additional response measures: ongoing peatland rewetting projects to restore water levels in drained ecosystems, satellite and ground-based monitoring of fire hotspots, and new enforcement directives for local governments. Large-scale plantation operators are banned from using fire to clear land, though the exemption for small-scale smallholders means the practice remains widespread, and is blamed for igniting the majority of annual wildfires. The country’s environment minister has now ordered local authorities to strengthen preventive patrols and pursue full legal penalties, including fines and criminal prosecution, for anyone caught carrying out illegal burning.

Climate scientists warn that this year’s extreme fire activity has been supercharged by the powerful El Niño event, a naturally occurring climate pattern that alters global wind, pressure and rainfall patterns, typically bringing severe drought to Indonesia. Already, the total burned area in just the first half of 2024 exceeds the total burned across the whole of 2023, the last year El Niño formed. Climate campaign group 350.org warned this week that human-caused climate change is amplifying the risk of extreme El Niño-driven fire seasons, noting that current El Niño conditions are occurring on top of already elevated global average temperatures that make extreme drought and fire far more likely.

The cry of “whale at one o’clock!” has become a familiar, electrifying sound for cruise passengers exploring New York’s southern shorelines. When a humpback whale breaches the Atlantic surface against the backdrop of Manhattan’s world-famous skyline, crowds rush to the starboard bow, scrambling to catch a glimpse of one of the ocean’s most magnificent creatures. What was once a once-in-a-lifetime rarity is now a regular occurrence in the city’s coastal waters, bringing unbridled joy to wildlife enthusiasts while forcing policymakers and marine experts to confront a growing threat: heavy boat traffic in one of the United States’ busiest port regions.

Decades ago, commercial hunting pushed humpback whale populations to the brink of extinction, and their remarkable recovery today stands as one of the global conservation movement’s most celebrated success stories. A growing population, dominated by young juvenile humpbacks, is now thriving off New York’s coast, where abundant food sources have transformed the area from a temporary migratory stopover into a permanent home.

“People travel across the globe for African safaris, but what most don’t know is that a world-class marine safari is right on our doorstep,” explained Carl LoBue, New York oceans director for The Nature Conservancy. Raised on nearby Long Island, LoBue recalled that whale sightings off the state’s coast were once almost unheard of. Now, he spots marine mammals on virtually every trip out on the water. While humpbacks are the most common visitors, the region also hosts rare sightings of the critically endangered North Atlantic Right whale. For LoBue, this new normal is nothing short of spectacular: “I never dreamed I would see whales this abundant right off New York’s coast.”

Several interconnected factors have driven this population shift, turning the New York Bight—the vast marine region stretching from New York City and Long Island to New Jersey—from a migratory highway into a permanent feeding ground. First, decades of federal protections including the U.S. Endangered Species Act allowed humpback populations to rebound, while stricter air and water quality regulations cleaned up coastal habitats that were once uninhabitable for large marine life. Second, new fishing regulations have supported the recovery of Atlantic menhaden, an oily small fish that serves as a primary food source for whales, dolphins, and seabirds, in addition to being harvested for commercial bait and dietary supplements. An adult humpback, which can grow to the size of a full-size city bus, consumes up to 3,000 pounds of fish every day, making abundant menhaden populations critical to supporting the growing whale community.

Climate change has also accelerated this shift, according to Chris St. Lawrence, a naturalist who leads whale watching tours and works for Gotham Whale, a non-profit marine research organization that monitors whale populations in the New York Bight. Warming ocean temperatures have shifted the distribution of bait fish, pushing whales to abandon traditional migratory routes in search of reliable food sources closer to New York’s coast.

When Gotham Whale launched its formal tracking program in 2012, the organization’s catalog included just five individual humpbacks. Today, St. Lawrence reports the group documents 80 to 100 unique whales every year, and recently identified its 500th distinct individual whale spotted around New York City since monitoring began. Some whales have even become minor celebrities among local whale watchers: NYC0318, a humpback spotted by AFP during a recent outing, regularly delights crowds with dramatic displays of lunge-feeding and full breaching that leave spectators screaming with delight.

Gotham Whale identifies individual whales by their unique fluke prints—distinctive pigment patterns on the underside of their tails that are as unique as human fingerprints, St. Lawrence explained. But many whales are also recognizable by the scars they carry, most often from collisions with vessels ranging from massive tankers and cargo ships to smaller recreational fishing and leisure boats.

For all the abundance of food New York’s coast offers, the region’s extremely heavy maritime traffic creates serious new risks for the growing whale population. While humpbacks in the New York area were removed from the endangered species list in 2016, just one year later the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared an Unusual Mortality Event for humpbacks along the entire Atlantic coast. This designation, granted under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, is triggered when unexpected mass die-offs occur, and it initiates formal investigation and response. The Unusual Mortality Event for humpbacks remains in effect today.

Global marine advocacy groups and government researchers confirm that vessel strikes and fishing gear entanglement are the two leading causes of preventable whale deaths worldwide. To address this growing risk in New York, Governor Kathy Hochul recently signed the Whale Awareness Act into law. The new legislation requires that marine mammal protection and education be integrated into mandatory state boater safety courses and vessel registration processes.

LoBue has helped develop new educational resources for the policy, including an online course that teaches boaters of all kinds how to recognize whale behavior, report sightings to regulators, and adjust navigation to avoid collisions. He notes that even experienced commercial fishermen never learned how to operate boats around whales, because the animals were not present in the region for generations. “We all have to learn new skills to adapt to this change,” LoBue said. “And at the end of the day, nobody wants to hit a whale.”

A high-stakes border infrastructure project in one of America’s most ecologically diverse national parks has been put on hold, after days of bipartisan local pushback and growing legal challenges over its potential environmental harm. The $1.7 billion project, pushed forward by the Trump administration as part of its broader border security initiative along the U.S.-Mexico boundary, broke ground earlier this month at Big Bend National Park in southern Texas. On Monday, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Rodney Scott announced the construction pause in a video posted to social platform X.

Big Bend National Park draws visitors from across the globe for its dramatic, one-of-a-kind landscape: it blends arid desert ecosystems, the winding Rio Grande, and towering mountain ranges, including the iconic Santa Elena Canyon. The protected area hosts extraordinary biodiversity, home to hundreds of native bird species, bobcats, black bears, and dozens of other threatened and endemic wildlife. The administration’s plans call for new vehicle barriers, expanded patrol roads, enhanced lighting, and high-tech detection systems to be built across the park’s public lands. Official project maps show the proposed patrol route and technology corridor cutting across the rugged slopes of Mariscal Mountain, a stretch that critics warn would require widespread dynamite blasting to clear, leaving irreversible damage to the fragile terrain.

In his announcement, Scott confirmed that all construction activity within the park has been halted pending an on-site review. “Last night, I put a pause on all activity in that park as far as construction goes, until I get down there and do a personal evaluation,” Scott said, noting he would meet with local stakeholders and share additional updates later this week.

The project has sparked unified, cross-party opposition from local communities and officials since it was first unveiled. All 14 Texas border county judges signed an open letter affirming their support for responsible border security while rejecting the current proposal, calling for more practical, less environmentally destructive alternatives. Data from CBP itself undermines the project’s core security justification: between January 2024 and July 2026, just 9,624 migrant apprehensions were recorded in the Big Bend Sector, a fraction of the 23,080 apprehensions recorded over the same period in the Swanton Sector along the far less contested U.S.-Canada border.

Local opponents emphasize that the rugged, remote terrain of Big Bend is already nearly impossible to traverse from Mexico, making the new barriers unnecessary. “It’s quite literally impossible to traverse, whether on foot or in a vehicle, from the other side into this area. Furthermore, this is not the will of the people of this region,” Jake Knight, executive director of the Big Bend Protection Alliance, told reporters during on-site protests.

Critics have also raised alarms over the procurement process and the scope of environmental rollbacks used to approve the project. The Trump administration has waived dozens of longstanding federal environmental protection laws to greenlight the construction, which was awarded through a no-bid, non-competitive contract – a provision that has drawn anger from local residents. “There’s a no-bid contract for $1.7 billion in our national park. And that’s an awful lot of money to spend. So we know that they will destroy things. They’re already in there right now,” 63-year-old local teacher Bernadette Devine said at a recent protest against the plan.

Legal challenges are already moving forward to block the project permanently. The Center for Biological Diversity, a national nonprofit conservation group, has filed a lawsuit against the federal government arguing the sweeping environmental waivers violate the U.S. Constitution. The group plans to submit an emergency injunction request Monday to halt construction permanently if the pause is lifted.

Laiken Jordahl, a national public lands advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, noted that local opposition has reached an unprecedented level of unity. “I’ve never seen communities so outraged and unified on a single issue, this has become a serious force to be reckoned with,” Jordahl told AFP. While activists have welcomed the temporary halt to construction, they have cautioned that the fight to protect the park is far from over. “And while it’s certainly welcome news that the bulldozers aren’t carving in the national park today, it is very likely that the pause will be lifted, we’re not considering this a victory yet,” Jordahl added.

As the Northern Hemisphere grapples with a record-breaking summer of deadly extreme heat, a new modeling study from United States researchers has delivered a stark warning: the public health risk that rising global temperatures pose to elderly communities has been drastically underestimated for decades.

Published in the journal *Lancet Planetary Health* and led by a team from Stanford University, the research addresses a critical gap in earlier climate and heat-related health studies. For years, researchers have relied on wet-bulb temperature — a metric that combines air temperature and humidity to measure how much heat the human body can tolerate before experiencing fatal heat stress. But the foundational data for this metric was collected exclusively from trials on young, healthy adults, failing to account for the biological vulnerabilities that come with age.

Older adults over the age of 60 naturally sweat less than younger people, often live with pre-existing chronic health conditions, and frequently have weakened cardiovascular systems that make it far harder to regulate body temperature during heatwaves. To correct for this gap, the Stanford-led team used updated data from recent wet-bulb experiments that specifically tested heat and humidity tolerance among adults over 60. The researchers then integrated global population aging trends to model heat exposure risks for three separate age groups by the end of the 21st century, under multiple different global warming scenarios.

The study’s core conclusion upends previous projections: “Intolerable heat will be experienced at much larger scales and for longer durations, affecting far more people than previously estimated.”

Breaking down the projected risks, the team found that if the world limits average global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels — the more ambitious target set by the Paris Climate Agreement — 22 percent of all people over 60 globally will be exposed to unsafe levels of heat for at least one month every year. For every additional 1°C of warming above this threshold, roughly an extra one billion older people will face at least one additional month of heat and humidity that exceeds their body’s ability to cope.

In a worst-case scenario where global average temperatures rise by 3°C by 2100, elderly populations in the hardest-hit regions — including South Asia and the Arabian Gulf — could face round-the-clock dangerous heat for three consecutive months each year. The nations at greatest overall risk are those with high poverty rates and limited access to affordable cooling technology: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Niger top the list of most vulnerable countries.

Beyond the immediate public health death toll, the study warns that widespread unmanageable heat could trigger a new wave of global displacement. “These results suggest that uncompensable heat could increasingly drive internal displacement and transboundary climate migration, raising new policy and humanitarian challenges,” the authors noted.

To avoid these grim outcomes, the research team issued two key calls to action. First, nations must accelerate deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions to slow the pace of global warming. Second, local and national heat action plans must explicitly prioritize vulnerable older populations, particularly since the majority of heat-related deaths occur indoors. Expanding access to affordable air conditioning and other cooling solutions for low-income and elderly households is a critical public health intervention, the team emphasized.

The findings come as the world already sees the deadly impacts of extreme heat: this summer, a record-breaking heatwave across the Northern Hemisphere has already contributed to tens of thousands of deaths, with Europe — the world’s fastest-warming continent — facing devastating concurrent wildfires, drought, and sustained high temperatures that are on track to make this the hottest summer the continent has ever recorded. Climate scientists project that 2025 will be even hotter than 2024, as rising greenhouse gas concentrations continue to push global average temperatures higher.

Four days into fighting the most extensive wildfire Belgium has seen in 100 years, emergency crews received a long-awaited boost on Monday when gentle rain fell across the fire zone in the Hautes Fagnes (High Fens) nature reserve, a protected peat bog and forest ecosystem along the country’s border with Germany.

The massive blaze, which ignited on Friday of unknown origin, has already scorched roughly 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of protected land — an area roughly half the size of Manhattan. For the past week, a historic heatwave and record-dry conditions have turned much of Western Europe into a tinderbox, triggering a wave of destructive wildfires across France, Greece, Portugal and Spain that have already been linked to thousands of heat and fire-related deaths. This Belgian blaze has emerged as the most active and high-priority fire front on the continent this week.

Around 500 Belgian firefighters and emergency personnel have been mobilized to contain the spread, supported by international resources: two water-bombing aircraft from Sweden, two Dutch military Chinook helicopters, and two additional Belgian aerial craft. Local farmers have also stepped in to assist, using their tractors to haul water tankers filled from nearby lakes to remote parts of the fire line that heavy emergency vehicles cannot reach. The boggy, uneven terrain of the High Fens has created major obstacles for ground crews: heavy trucks risk sinking into the soft peat, forcing firefighters to rely heavily on aerial support and making close-range fire suppression extremely difficult.

By Sunday, the fire had crept close enough to the German border to prompt an evacuation order for the small German border town of Monschau, and two Belgian villages near the ignition point were also cleared as a thick plume of yellow smoke drifted across the region. Smoke from the blaze was detected as far away as eastern France, where local officials issued an air quality warning for affected communities. As of Monday morning, all evacuated residents remain under orders to stay away from their homes for safety.

Crisis management spokesperson Tony Hosmans told reporters on Monday that the fire has stopped advancing toward the German border, a shift that comes alongside favorable wind conditions and the onset of light rain. Additional scattered showers are forecast for the region throughout the week, which officials say is helping slow the fire’s spread. “The wind is favourable and the current rainfall is helping to contain the spread,” Hosmans said. “At present, the fire is contained wherever intervention is possible.” Even so, Hosmans cautioned that the blaze is not yet fully under control, and an aerial reconnaissance mission scheduled for later Monday is expected to provide a full update on the fire’s footprint and remaining hotspots.

Historically, the High Fens region was last hit by a massive wildfire of this scale in 1911, during a similar period of extreme heat and drought. This current blaze is the largest to hit the country since that event more than a century ago. Local residents and business owners, many of whom have mobilized to provide food, water and supplies to on-site crews, say the fire marks a wake-up call for a region that once assumed extreme wildfires were a problem for other parts of the world. “You always think it happens somewhere else. Well, not anymore. It’s happening to us,” Annick Dodemont, a 41-year-old restaurant owner in nearby Eupen who has been supporting firefighting efforts, told AFP.

Belgium, like much of the European continent, has seen a recent surge in extreme summer temperatures, with highs reaching 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in parts of the country last Friday. These high temperatures, paired with weeks of below-average rainfall, have created ideal conditions for wildfire ignition and rapid spread across the region.