Among the numerous platforms where online abuse is rampant, Facebook is the platform most cited by environmental defenders where they have been victims of online abuse, followed by X, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

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Environmental defenders, historically subject of physical abuse, attacks, and appraisals, are now falling victim to new types of threats, this time disseminated online. 

In recent years, environmental defenders who rely on digital platforms to organize, share information, and campaign have increasingly experienced and become the targets of online attacks, according to a new survey by Global Witness. 

The non-profit surveyed land and environmental defenders through an online questionnaire between November 2024 and March of this year. Of the 204 defenders surveyed, 92% said they have experienced some form of online abuse or harassment as a result of their work. This ranged from personal cybersecurity attacks and doxxing to harassment and abuse.

Doxxing is an act of exposing someone’s private information, including their names and addresses, without their permission. Cyberattacks include hacking and data breaches, which aim to damage or gain unauthorised access to computer systems, networks, causing information to be leaked. 

60% and 63% of respondents said that this kind of abuse made them feel anxious and fearful, respectively, about their own and their community’s safety. Meanwhile, 45% reported losing productivity as a result. 

Environmental defenders play a crucial role in protecting the environment and defending key forests, habitats and ecosystems. Indigenous people alone steward around 20% of the Earth’s land, which contains 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. 

Facebook Leads the Way

Among the numerous platforms where online abuse is rampant, Facebook is the platform most cited by environmental defenders where they have been victims of online abuse, followed by X (formerly Twitter), WhatsApp, and Instagram.

In recent years, many of the most popular social media platforms have backtracked on fast checking and hate speech regulations. 

In 2022, X dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, which had been addressing hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm and other problems on the platform since 2016. A year later, the platform – which is now owned by billionaire Elon Musk – removed a feature that had previously been allowing users to report misleading information, and more recently, it announced that it had hired just 100 in-house content moderators, significantly fewer than the 1,500 moderators the company employed before Musk’s tenure.

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, followed suit, announcing in January this year that it would end its third-party fact-checking program in the US and relax its hate speech policies. The company said the shift aims to promote free speech, but it was welcomed with widespread criticism for fears that the spread of misinformation and hate speech would go unchecked.

Global Witness warned that these moves allow for hate speech, climate denial, and death threats to proliferate unchecked, endangering the work of environmental defenders and ending up silencing them.

“They have said things like, ‘If I were there, I would run you over with my car,’ or ‘This is why I have a shotgun’,” said Fanø, a member of different climate activist groups in Denmark. “I reported these threats to Facebook, who said they would investigate, but nothing seems to have happened.”

Almost three-quarters of defenders said they reported abusive and harassing behavior to the platforms, but only 12% were satisfied with their response.

Regional Disparities

The survey also identified regional disparities among online platforms in their allocation of resources to protect defenders.

Although the survey found that online abuse against environmental defenders is relatively evenly distributed globally, 72% of European defenders said they had at least received a response to their complaint, while half of African respondents denied receiving any kind of response.

Defenders who reported being subjected to abuse online also reported being attacked in the real world, with 75% of respondents who experienced offline harm for their activities saying they believed online harm has “directly” or “somewhat” contributed to it. The vast majority of defenders having experienced offline harm –  84% – were from Africa, Latin America, and Asia. 

196 defenders were murdered in 2023 while exercising their right to protect their lands and the environment, according to the Global Witness report published last year. 85% of all killings occurred in Latin America, where poor legal safeguards, widespread corruption, and fierce disputes over land and resources make it one of the most perilous regions for environmental defenders.

“I think there is a relationship between what’s happening online and offline. Attackers use the online space as a means of defamation and shaming, and then use the offline space to physically threaten us, putting us under surveillance,” said Sharanya, who has been working with NGOs in India for more than two decades. 

“They are trying to silence us. These are tactics and strategies that they use to try to malign us, and put fear into us,” she added. 

This is not the first time that defenders have faced hate speech on these platforms. A 2023 Global Witness survey revealed that 39% of 468 climate scientists had experienced online harassment related to their work, with this figure rising to 49% among more achieved scientists. The abuse mostly took place on X and Facebook.

Featured image: Karen Toro/Climate Visuals Countdown.

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Two major heatwaves affected much of western and southern Europe, one between June 17 and 22 and the second one between June 29 to July 2.

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Two extreme heatwaves swept through much of western Europe last month, contributing to the warmest June the region has ever recorded. 

The average temperature stood at 20.49C, 2.81C higher than the 1991-2020 average, according to the European Union-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service.The previous record of 20.43 was recorded in 2003. 

On June 30, the daily surface air temperature averaged over the western European region reached 24.9C, setting a new record for June. The same temperature was recorded on July 1. This is one of the highest daily temperatures ever observed in western Europe during summer, exceeded only between mid-July and mid-August, Copernicus said.

Two major heatwaves affected much of western and southern Europe, one between June 17 and 22 and the second one between June 29 to July 2. Feels-like temperatures exceeded 38C in much of the region, and soared to 46C in parts of Portugal and Spain. 

In most of Spain, Portugal, France, and the UK, the average temperature recorded between June 17 to July 2 was the highest for that time of year since at least 1979.

The heatwaves were caused by a high pressure system over western Europe known as a heat dome, a weather phenomenon where a large area of high atmospheric pressure acts as a lid that traps hot air underneath continuously, causing temperatures to rise over an extended period of time.

Europe has continually become drier, following the lowest precipitation and soil moisture levels since at least 1979 in north-western Europe last month. Relative humidity averages over the European landmass reached a new low in June, at 2.7% below average and slightly below the previous record of -2.3% set in June 2022. 

The average global surface temperature was 16.46C, 0.20C cooler than the record June of 2024, and 0.06C cooler than June 2023, currently the second warmest on record.

More on the topic: What Do Heatwaves Tell Us About Climate Change?

Record Ocean Heat

Meanwhile, an exceptional marine heatwave developed in the western Mediterranean with the daily sea surface temperature reaching a record-high of 27C for June. 

These exceptionally warm waters reduce nighttime air cooling along the coast, increasing humidity and worsening heat stress on the human body. According to Copernicus’ report, marine industries, such as fisheries and aquaculture, are also affected by reduced water oxygen levels, which can severely impact marine life and disrupt ecosystems.

The reduction of oxygen in the ocean can compromise the habitats of marine organisms, reducing growth rates, disrupting reproduction and limiting where aquatic organisms can breed. Oxygen depletion also contributes to ocean warming and acidification.

Deadly Heat

A study looking at  12 major European cities found that 2,305 heat-related excess deaths were recorded, with 1,500 of these – or about 65% – linked to human-induced climate change. Over 80% of these deaths occurred in people over 65, the World Weather Attribution study found.

Approximately 163 million Europeans are expected to face unprecedented summer temperatures under a 2C global warming scenario, the report also said. 

Severe wildfires broke out across the Mediterranean region as the heatwave increased fire-prone conditions, with the smoke from these fires further aggravating the health impact of extreme heat. 

“June 2025 saw an exceptional heatwave impact large parts of western Europe. In a warming world, heatwaves are likely to become more frequent, more intense and impact more people across Europe,” said Samantha Burgess, Strategic Lead for Climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

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More than a year after implementing the first phase of the single-use plastics ban, Hong Kong restaurateurs are lamenting the lack of suitable alternative materials. As the city’s problem with plastic waste persists, the government can learn from successful international case studies and accelerate the adoption of proper plastic alternatives to achieve a plastic-free future.

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The implementation of a two-phase ban on single-use plastics in Hong Kong has taken a hit, as the city struggles to find alternatives.

Last month, Secretary for the Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan said on Commercial Radio that the government is looking to launch a trial campaign with selected restaurants within two months to test alternative products and provide feedback to suppliers for improvement.
“We will implement the second phase of the legislation only when the alternative product technology is more mature,” Tse told iCable in June. “It is difficult to require everyone to use their own utensils when buying take-away food, we need to find suitable alternatives before we continue with phase two,” he added.

Two-Phase Ban

The Legislative Council passed the Product Eco-responsibility (Amendment) Bill for regulating disposable plastic tableware and other plastic products in October 2023. 

The first phase prohibits the sale or supply of styrofoam tableware, disposable plastic tableware such as straws, stirrers, cutlery, and plates, as well as the supply of cups, cup lids, food containers, and food container lids to dine-in and take-out customers in catering establishments. In the second phase, the supply and sale of all of the above plastic tableware in Hong Kong will be forbidden. 

At the same time, hotels and guesthouses are banned from providing free disposable toiletries and grooming products (including rubber-handled toothbrushes, toothpaste, shower caps, razors, nail files, combs, and any liquid products stored in disposable plastic containers), as well as free disposable water in plastic bottles in rooms. The second phase will further prohibit the sale and free supply of multipack rings, table cloths, and plastic stemmed dental floss, and the distribution of free earplugs.

The manufacturing, supply and sale of oxidizable biodegradable plastic products – plastics that cannot be completely decomposed – have also been prohibited since the first phase was implemented in April 2024.

Businesses failing to comply with the regulation will be issued a notice and fined $2,000 if they have not taken action within 21 days from the notice. Repeated offences may result in fines of up to HK$100,000. 

More than 19% of the 3.97 million tonnes of municipal solid waste disposed of at Hong Kong’s landfills in 2023 was plastic waste, a 10.5% decrease from the year prior, according to Environmental Protection Department (EPD) figures. Meanwhile, the quantity of plastic recycled locally rose from 119,900 tonnes in 2022 to 126,600 tonnes in 2023 – but still represented only 6.5% of the total waste.

Other Initiatives

To counter the rising plastic problem in the city, the EPD in 2021 also rolled out a Reverse Vending Machine pilot scheme for collecting plastic beverage containers, which was subsequently expanded to 120 machines scattered across all 18 Hong Kong districts. The machines offer a HK$0.10 rebate for each plastic beverage container returned. Customers need to register an account, and can return a maximum of 30 containers per day. 

“The machine is effective and does not require a huge monetary incentive. The refund of 10 cents for each plastic bottle is already attractive enough for the public to be willing to recycle,” Tse said in February. 

As of last month, the scheme had collected 179 million containers, which are sent to local recyclers, saving more than 6.7 million kilograms of carbon emission, according to EPD data.

However, some critics have argued that the incentive is too low. According to Robert Kelman, Director at Reloop Pacific, an international non-profit that tackles packaging waste throughout the Pacific, the HK$0.10 rebate – the lowest in the world for such a program – is “virtually meaningless” to most Hong Kong consumers. He further argued that the low number of plastic bottles received at the recycling centres is disincentivizing recycling companies to invest in the scheme. 

For Kelman, a scheme cannot succeed unless it is both convenient to consumers and offers an adequate refund value.

“I’m not sure which studies Tse was referring to when he said the rebate of 10 HK cents (1.3 US cents) was ‘attractive enough’ after lawmakers raised doubts about the effectiveness of such a rebate,” said Edwin Lau Che-feng, Executive Director of local environmental organization Green Earth. “Why not use a deposit approach in light of successful cases around the world, some of which have achieved a recovery rate of more than 90 per cent?” 

Lau was referring to so-called Deposit Refund Schemes (DRSs), which apply an initial deposit, or “tax”, on the purchase, which is then returned to the consumer upon proper recycling. 

More than 40 countries around the world have implemented DRSs. Slovakia, for example, requires consumers to pay a deposit of €0.15 (HK$1.37) for packaged beverages. The scheme, launched in 2022, resulted in a recovery rate of 70% in the first year. Similarly, Germany imposes deposits on glass and plastic beverage containers ranging between €0.08 and €0.25 (HK$0.73-2.28) and in 2022, it was able to achieve a 98.4% return rate. 

“The authorities should realise that had they taken the deposit approach, coupled with a higher deposit value than the current rebate of 10 HK cents, producers, with retailers’ support, would have no trouble reaching a recovery rate higher than the suggested initial targets of 10 per cent for drink cartons and 30 per cent for plastic bottles,” said Lau.

You might also like: 3 Waste Management Solutions from Around the World

Plastic-Free Matters

Plastics take 400 years to decompose – and even then, they do not fully disappear but rather break down into tiny particles known as  microplastics. According to Greenpeace East Asia, 97% of Hong Kong’s riverine waste is plastic, of which more than 70% is food, logistics and beverage packaging as well as disposable tableware. 

In 2021, Greenpeace found microplastics in Hong Kong’s countryside streams for the first time, and last year, it detected microplastics in the feces of countryside mammals.

“Country streams are at the front end of the entire water cycle. The fact that they are contaminated by microplastics is a major warning sign that plastic pollution in urban rivers and oceans may be even more serious,” said Tam Wing-lam, the Greenpeace’s Project Director. She warned that microplastics can contaminate the water system, threatening public health.

Christelle Not, Senior Lecturer of Department of Earth Sciences in University of Hong Kong, said Greenpeace’s findings demonstrated that wildlife can still take up microplastics from the environment even when they are far away from urban areas and human activities.

Microplastics carry harmful additives and toxins that can damage the nervous, immune and endocrine systems when they accumulate in the food chain and enter the human body. Exposure to plastics and microplastics is linked to chronic diseases such as diabetes, developmental disorder, cancers, birth defects, and endocrine disruption.

Plastic is also detrimental to animals. Sea animals like turtles often mistake plastic for food, but their bodies are unable to digest it. They can become entangled, leading to injuries and even death. 

A research team at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) found that micro beads, manufactured micro plastics used in products ranging from facial scrubs to toothpastes, ending up in the digestive tracts of fish and other marine creatures can affect their growth and development. 
“Despite all the adverse impacts these minute plastic pollutants have on the marine ecosystems, they are still being used in many personal care products around the world – including here in Hong Kong,” said Karen Chan, Assistant Professor from the Division of Life Science at HKUST and study lead.

Finding Alternatives

The most common plastic substitutes in Hong Kong include paper, bamboo, wood, and plant-based fibers such as wood pulp, grass pulp, and bagasse. Among these, paper and bagasse are the most widely used in both tableware and daily accessories due to their eco-friendliness and practicality. 

While considered more eco-friendly than plastic, paper packaging manufacturing is still associated with carbon dioxide emissions and extensive water usage. According to local environmental NGO Friends of the Earth, producing one tonne of paper generates approximately 950 kilograms of carbon dioxide and requires 2,700 litres of water. Still, contrary to plastic, paper is a natural, biological, and in most cases renewable material, making it a better alternative.  

The Hong Kong Consumer Council also reported in 2022 that perfluorinated and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) were detected in 23 samples of bagasse-based vegetable fibre tableware, with some paper drinking straws exceeding the European Union’s safe limits. 

PFAS – better known as forever chemicals – are synthetic chemicals used in the manufacture of heat-, oil-, and water-resistant coatings for products like nonstick cookware or waterproof clothes. They are associated with increased risk of certain cancers, including prostate, kidney, and testicular cancers, and found to reduce the body’s immune system’s ability to fight off infections.

In 2023, researchers from the University of Antwerp in Belgium who examined 39 different types of straws (paper, glass, bamboo, stainless steel, plastic) discovered that PFAS was present in 90% of paper straws and 80% of bamboo straws. 75% of all tested plastic straws also contained PFAS.

The cost of non-plastic tableware is also one of the factors that restaurants need to take into account. According to the Environmental Protection Department, the price difference between the lowest-priced disposable plastic product option and its lowest-priced alternative is still relatively large, ranging from HK$0.12 to HK$0.68.

However, costs are expected to decrease as demand, and consequently production, ramp up, said Simon Wong Ka-wo, President of the Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants and Related Trades. 

Some restaurant owners or customers were also unhappy about the quality of alternative options. “If you’re walking home with your takeaway order in this box, that’d be fine. But if you have to drive, then that wouldn’t work,” the owner of a Shanghainese restaurant, who is surnamed Lee, told Hong Kong Free Press last April. 

“It literally takes two sips [before] the [paper] straw starts getting soggy, and the forks don’t even work!” said one of his customers.

At the end of the day, neither recycling nor switching to biodegradable tableware is the best solution, environmentalists argue. 

“Instead of placing our hopes in recycling and the use of degradable plastics, we should seek to avoid, reduce at source and reuse,” said Lau. “We must ditch our addiction to single-use plastics, slash plastic production at source and develop genuine plastic-free and harmless alternatives.” 

Featured image: Martina Igini.

The post The Challenges of Setting Hong Kong Free From Single-Use Plastics  appeared first on Earth.Org.

The US Environmental Protection Agency has proposed to repeal all “greenhouse gas” emissions standards for the power sector under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act and amend the 2024 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, moves that some legal experts have described as “illegal” and a threat to the health of millions of Americans.

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Earlier this month, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) put forward a proposal to repeal all greenhouse gas emissions standards for the power sector, dealing another blow to climate action. 

The new rules target pollution control standards for coal and gas power plants established by the EPA under the Clean Air Act in 2015 as well as Biden-era regulations to phase out emissions from electricity-producing fossil fuel plants.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin earlier this month said that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants “do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution,” when in reality, they are a major contributor and a huge threat to human health. Carbon dioxide (CO2), a by-product of burning fossil fuels, is the principal anthropogenic greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

“This is the scientific equivalent to saying that smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer,” climate scientist Zeke Hausfather said in response to Zeldin’s claim. 

The health benefits associated with reducing long-term exposure to air pollution are significant, as exposure to toxic pollutants has been found to cause certain types of cancer, such as lymphoma, leukemia, breast cancer and liver cancer and even lead to premature death. Approximately 7 million people die each year from air pollution globally. 

Zeldin and Energy Secretary Chris Wright anticipated the administration’s move when they publicly attacked the EPA’s Endangerment Finding earlier this year, threatening to end it.

“The 2009 Endangerment finding has had an enormously negative impact on the lives of the American people for more than 15 years. It’s past time the United States ensures the basis for issuing environmental regulations follows the science and betters human lives,” said Wright.  

Issued in 2009, the finding revealed that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can endanger both public health and the environment for current and future generations. The proposed rules effectively dismiss these findings, enabling weaker power plant regulations by overturning the original restriction. 

Mercury

The new proposal also targets the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which former president Joe Biden toughened last year. The new rule would cut emissions limits for toxic substances like nickel, arsenic, and lead by two-thirds and reduce regulation on mercury emissions by 70%.

44% of all manmade mercury emissions come from burning coal for electricity. Power plants that burn coal to create electricity are the largest source of mercury emissions in the US, though activities involving the burning of electronic waste such as phones and batteries, as well as steel production, also generate mercury emissions. 

Overexposure to mercury is linked to health issues such as speech impairment, hearing, walking or muscle weakness, insomnia, and changes in nerve responses, possibly even leading to memory loss. Exposure to methylmercury, a highly toxic form of mercury that is formed by bacteria in water and soil, can adversely affect unborn infants’ growing brains and nervous systems, children exposed to methylmercury while they are in the womb can have impacts on their cognitive thinking, memory, attention, language, fine motor skills, and visual spatial skills.

‘Legally Baseless’

The Trump administration described the new rules as necessary to restore American energy dominance by removing undue burdens on coal-fired plants, and as a way to accomplish the EPA’s “core mission” of protecting human health and the environment. But critics warn that these rollbacks will have serious repercussions on the health of millions of Americans.

“It would lead to the biggest pollution increases in decades and is a blatant give-away to polluters,” more than 200 health experts wrote in the letter published after the EPA’s announcement. They added that any attempt to reverse the endangerment finding would be “legally baseless”, and would harm communities already suffering from the impacts of climate changes, like extreme heat.  

According to the Sierra Club, a grassroots environmental organization, rolling back the EPA’s standards limiting emissions from gas- and coal-fired power plants would release seven times as much CO2 as they currently put into the atmosphere. “This repeal means more climate disasters, more heart attacks, more asthma attacks, more birth defects, more premature deaths,” said Patrick Drupp, the Sierra Club Climate Policy Director. 

Howard Frumkin, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health, warned that the rollbacks will have “major, direct consequences” for the health and well-being of Americans, adding that “Americans will die needlessly.”

“They would lead to more illnesses, which in turn would mean more days missing school and work, more visits to doctors and hospitalizations, and increased medical costs,” said Vickie Patton, General Counsel of Environmental Defense Fund.

You might also like: California Sues Trump Over Blocking Its Clean-Air Rules For Cars, Trucks

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