How to save our high seas from overfishing, pollution

The UN health agency now ranks air pollution on a par with smoking or an unhealthy diet. As a result, it has issued new, stricter guidelines they claim could save millions of lives.

Lake Victoria, the planet's second-largest freshwater lake and the largest in Africa, is in serious danger from pollution. Because lakeside communities from Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania have practically no access to sewage infrastructure, a constant flow of sewage, fertilisers, garbage and plastic waste is suffocating what has long been the main provider of food and livelihoods in this part of East Africa. Despite what seems like an uphill struggle, young activists are sounding the alarm in order to raise awareness. Our France 2 colleagues report, with FRANCE 24's James Vasina and Camille Nedelec.

The yearly practice of "stubble burning" in Northern India has far-reaching effects. Delhi, some 250 kilometers away, once again faces dangerous levels of smog as farmers burn off their fields to prepare for the next crop. It's a major cause of air pollution in the country.

New air quality guidelines from the WHO could have saved the lives of almost 180,000 people in 2019, the European Environment Agency has revealed.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has called China a "savior." The people around the Bor copper mine, however, fear for their future, as Bor is part of the strategic investments around China's New Silk Road to Europe.

Oil giant Shell will pay a Nigerian community $111m (£80m) over an oil spill more than 50 years ago. A spokesman said the payment would mark the "full and final settlement" to the Ejama-Ebubu community over a spill during the 1967-70 Biafran War. The company has maintained that the damage was caused by third parties.

In Ghana, second-hand clothes once worn by Westerners are polluting ecosystems and causing significant public health problems. Every day, 160 tonnes of clothes arrive in the country: garments that were donated to charities in Europe or the US and are sent to Africa by recycling companies. An entire economy is based on the reselling of these old clothes, but few are in a fit state to be sold on. In the capital Accra, these unsellable garments form a huge textile mountain on the edge of the Atlantic. Residents regularly burn it, exposing locals to harmful fumes. Our France 2 colleagues report, with FRANCE 24's Camille Nedelec.

Nigerian civil servant and mother of four Grace Ekang has been having chest pains lately, and when she sneezes, black stains appear on her handkerchief. Inside her house in the Rivers state city of Port Harcourt, Ekang has noticed that the soot gathering on her floor is getting heavier. She and other residents blame this on illegal, makeshift oil refineries scattered across the Niger Delta.

Scientists have long warned about the effects of rising temperatures and plastic pollution in the world's oceans. Now, recent studies show the problems are getting worse.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will send experts and sophisticated monitoring equipment to help Peru assess and limit the environmental damage from a major oil spill in its coastal waters, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi told the Foreign Minister of the South American nation today.

With more than 700 kilometres of coastline on the Atlantic Ocean, Senegal is one of the top fish producers in West Africa. This is one of the richest oceans in the world and that has attracted industrial fishing vessels from China. Aside from their fishing methods having massive repercussions on the environment, local fishermen say their own catch has dramatically dropped.

Scientists have issued a stark warning: chemical pollution has officially exceeded the limits safe for humans and the planet. The ocean, which has become a dumping ground for a cocktail of toxic pollutants, is bearing the brunt of this pollution. We take a closer look in this edition of Down to Earth.