Environment

The issuance of a national plan to implement the Paris Agreement on climate change and the completion of maps of the Vietnam-Laos borderline are among outstanding events relating to natural resources and environment in 2016.

Japanese police said Thursday they were investigating the escape of four dolphins from a park in a Japanese town that has gained international notoriety for staging an annual slaughter of the mammals.

Visitors have flocked to a 30-ha lake in Hai Phong City over the past month after the water suddenly changed colour.

China will plow 2.5 trillion yuan ($361 billion) into renewable power generation by 2020, the country's energy agency said on Thursday, as the world's largest energy market continues to shift away from dirty coal power towards cleaner fuels.

The Chinese capital was on the second-highest orange smog alert in the depth of winter on Tuesday as city officials said the air quality was improving overall, citing data for the whole of last year.

Vietnam suffered losses of USD813 million caused by natural disasters in 2016, accounting for 0.4% of the country’s total GDP in the year, according to the General Statistics Office of Vietnam.

The largest ever number of rare Java pangolin (Manis javanica), 54 individuals, have been released into the wild recently by the Save Vietnam’s Wildlife (SVW) in coordination with Cuc Phuong National Park and Hanoi Wildlife Rescue Centre.

Police in central Hà Tĩnh Province’s Kỳ Thọ Commune discovered 12 dead langurs wrapped in newspapers on a passenger bus that was pulled over for a regular check in Kỳ Anh District.

Some 2.5 million people living in suburban areas in Hanoi do not yet have access to tap water, the city’s Centre for Clean Water and Rural Environmental Hygiene has revealed.

Many serious environmental pollution cases were uncovered and strictly handled in 2016, the Vietnam Environment Administration said.

Companies running 605 Chinese coal-fired power plants have been fined a total of 328 million yuan ($47 million) by the country's economic planning agency for breaching environmental rules and falsifying data to claim green subsidies.

The Ministry of Health has taken water samples at ten villages for a re-test after the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment reported high cancer rates because of polluted water sources.

Pak Vietnam Company from the southern province of Đồng Nai has been caught red-handed discharging black substance – suspected to be wastewater – into Thị Vải river.

Chinese customs seized over three tonnes of pangolin scales, state media said, in the country's biggest-ever smuggling case involving the animal parts.

Climate change and abnormal weather conditions have strongly impacted people’s health, triggering disease outbreaks including recurrence of new epidemics, the Ministry of Health says.

Natural disasters and environmental pollution can reduce GDP by 0.6 per cent per year from 2016-20, according to the National Centre for Socio-economic Information and Forecast under the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

China has passed a law that levies taxes on pollution, but ignores carbon dioxide, one of the major contributors to global warming, according to the web site of the country's highest legislative body.

Tens of billions has been spent on building dykes and embankments to protect Cua Dai Beach in Hoi An Town, Quang Nam Province from coastal erosion, but the situation has worsened.

Thai police rescued two baby orangutans in a sting operation after undercover officers arranged to buy the primates over a mobile phone messaging app from wildlife traffickers for nearly $20,000, officials said.