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July 02, 2026
 

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ENVIRONMENT

In Japan, key stakeholders, including corporations and industry groups, are working to make ESG investment a pillar of sustainable growth despite global headwinds.
BUSINESS / Economy
Dec 31, 2025
Japan strives to sustain ESG investment amid global retreat
Corporations and industry groups are pushing back against the global headwinds and working to make ESG investment a pillar of sustainable growth.
Women use a pipe to fill water from a bore well in a village in Alwar, Rajasthan, India.
BUSINESS
Dec 30, 2025
India’s water crunch brews risks for beverage giants
The challenges for the brewers in Rajasthan mirror a wider crisis across India, which holds 17% of the world’s population but just 4% of its freshwater.
In 2025, overlooked climate challenges included the warming effects of reduced pollution, stalled progress in green hydrogen and rising financing costs for renewables.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 30, 2025
Here’s the bad climate news you missed this year
The current renewables boom will need to prove those fossil plants superfluous, and quickly, if we want to stop them getting built.
Workers assemble new Nissan Leaf electric vehicles at a production facility in Sunderland, England, on Dec. 16.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 29, 2025
The positive climate news you may have missed this year
Much climate news is gloomy, but there are positive developments all the time — so many, in fact, that it’s easy to miss some of the things that have been happening.
An Eiffel tower replica statue is on display outside the United Nations COP21 climate summit in Paris in November 2015.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 28, 2025
Ten years after the Paris agreement, let’s redouble efforts
France has reduced greenhouse-gas emissions by 30% compared with 1990, including 20% between 2017 and 2024.
A container ship departs the Yangshan Deep Water Port in Shanghai. U.S. President Donald Trump's trade wars only serve to drive up global emissions.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 24, 2025
Trade wars destroy the planet
If trade tensions reshape industrial structures in China and the U.S., the shift toward more energy-intensive activities will raise the weighted-average carbon intensity.
Dried out trees in a forest near Reiskirchen, Germany
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Dec 23, 2025
How German engineers are building future-proof forests
Forest engineers are working on ways to future-proof forests in ‍North Rhine-Westphalia under a program that includes mixing tree varieties to build resilience.
Earlier this month, the central government announced plans to introduce a system that would require third-party organizations to verify the safety of megasolar projects before construction begins.
JAPAN / Regional Voices: Hokkaido
Dec 22, 2025
Hokkaido governor sharpens stance against megasolar development
Gov. Naomichi Suzuki’s decision to toughen up on the sector comes amid growing local backlash against several projects in Hokkaido.
U.S. Marine Corps Futenma Air Station in the city of Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, in 2023
JAPAN
Dec 19, 2025
U.S. military rejects Okinawa access requests over PFAS findings
PFAS have been found in nearby rivers and other sites, raising concerns about potential effects on drinking water.
This year Japan sweltered through its hottest summer since records began. Hundreds of people across Japan filed the country's first lawsuit against the central government on Thursday, seeking damages over what they call “unconstitutional” inaction on climate change.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Dec 18, 2025
Hundreds sue Japan’s central government over ‘unconstitutional’ climate inaction
The 450 plaintiffs in the landmark lawsuit say the country’s “grossly inadequate” response jeopardizes health and livelihoods.
Yamaha Motor President Motofumi Shitara said Wednesday that the company plans to release a 125 cc moped model that meets new emissions rules in March.
BUSINESS / Companies
Dec 18, 2025
Yamaha to launch 125 cc moped that meets new emissions regulations
Companies are working to develop new models due to the difficulty of existing mopeds with engine displacements of up to 50 cc to conform to the new rules.
Under the current law, storage is regulated only when scrap brought into yards is classified as “waste.”
JAPAN
Dec 18, 2025
Japan to introduce permit system for scrapyard businesses
The move is a response to cases in which environmental problems like fire and soil contamination were caused by improper storage of such scrap as used metals and plastics.
ANA Holdings are equipping its commercial jets with sensors to track gases like carbon dioxide.
JAPAN
Dec 17, 2025
Passenger jets are Japan’s newest tool to track climate change
ANA and the nation’s space agency are accelerating efforts to use sensors mounted on commercial jets to improve the monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions.
A Volkswagen T-Roc is loaded into a delivery tower at the German carmaker's plant in Wolfsburg, Germany, in November. Carmakers such as Volkswagen have pushed for an easing of carbon dioxide targets and fines for missing them.
BUSINESS / Economy
Dec 16, 2025
EU set to scrap 2035 combustion-engine ban in boon for car industry
Critics say an anticipated proposal to target reducing emissions by 90% instead risks undermining the EU’s green agenda and deterring investments in electrification.
The ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party, will reconsider the route of the planned Hokuriku Shinkansen section between Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture and Shin-Osaka Station in Osaka Prefecture.
JAPAN
Dec 16, 2025
Japan to reconsider route of planned Hokuriku Shinkansen section
The existing plan, adopted by the then LDP-Komeito coalition in 2016, has faced opposition from some due to environmental and fiscal concerns.
Unmanned Chinese electric mining trucks at an open-pit coal mine in Yimin, China, in May
BUSINESS
Dec 15, 2025
China confronts the cost of dismantling the world’s biggest coal sector
Coal has been closely tied to the Communist Party’s history and to its efforts to transform China’s economy over the past decades.
Mount Fuji observed from Kamakura in Kanagawa Prefecture in October
JAPAN
Dec 14, 2025
Government eyes giving prefectures power to coordinate scenic landscape protection
To implement the move, the ministry plans to submit a bill revising the landscape law to next year’s ordinary session of parliament, the sources said.
Solar panels power an environmentally friendly mosque in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana. Japanese companies are supporting green energy projects across Central Asia, promoting renewable power, climate resilience and sustainable development.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Dec 10, 2025
Japan should unveil a ‘Green Master Plan’ for Central Asia
Japanese companies are driving green energy projects across Central Asia, advancing renewable power, climate resilience and sustainable development.
A coal-fired power plant in Shanghai. China’s on track for another year of record mine output.
ENVIRONMENT / Energy
Dec 10, 2025
Energy demand boom keeps Asia tethered to coal
Concerns over energy security and costs are trumping the climate agenda in the region’s high-growth, high-polluting economies.
The sun rises by the Eiffel Tower and the Sacre Coeur Basilica in Paris on July 1 as the city is on red alert for high temperatures. Global temperatures have been stoked ever higher by humanity's emissions of planet-heating gases, largely from fossil fuels burned on a massive scale since the industrial revolution.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Dec 9, 2025
2025 on track to tie as second-hottest year on record, EU monitor says
Scientists warn rising temperatures, even incremental ones, are already destabilizing the climate and making storms, floods and other disasters fiercer and more frequent.
More facilities in Japan placing sanitary bins in men’s restrooms
A sanitary bin with an awareness sticker placed in a men's restroom in the Nagasaki Municipal Government building
Inside Japan’s rigid adoption system, a British family finds a way
James Benstead, his wife, Jesse, and their three children. Their adopted son is in the rear stroller.
Life inside Japan’s largest prison for women
Western-style rooms spanning the size of four tatami mats with hardwood floors, a toilet and soft mattresses on bed frames are designated for foreign nationals and those with health conditions at Tochigi Prison.
India’s gig workers pay the price for exposure to New Delhi’s hazardous air
Rohit Kushwaha waits for a customer as he delivers his last parcel of the day, in New Delhi in January. His work as a delivery driver has helped pay the family’s bills, but has had a significant impact on his health.
Reform panel calls for easing data center building standards
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi emphasized that the government will promote reforms of regulations and systems that fit the artificial intelligence era.
Japan’s fertility system offers few safe paths for same-sex couples
A Tokyo Pride parade participant holds a sign that says "we want to be a married couple, not a couple."
Life inside Japan’s largest prison for women
Western-style rooms spanning the size of four tatami mats with hardwood floors, a toilet and soft mattresses on bed frames are designated for foreign nationals and those with health conditions at Tochigi Prison.
Inside Japan’s rigid adoption system, a British family finds a way
James Benstead, his wife, Jesse, and their three children. Their adopted son is in the rear stroller.
A French ship with close ties to Japan combines arts and sciences on the high seas
Romain Troublé, the executive director of Tara Ocean Foundation, speaks to visitors aboard the Tara during a rare port call in Tokyo in April.
In Kyushu’s far south, Senti.U sparks a culinary destination
Chef Yasuhiko Uchida was born in Saga Prefecture but has made his home in Kanoya, Kagoshima Prefecture, since 2012.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

The Terasaka Rice Terraces are seen with Mount Buko in the background.
What Yokoze can teach Japan about rural revival
By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

New Logistics Consortium baton to accelerate trucking efficiency
New Logistics Consortium baton to accelerate trucking efficiency

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