Jakarta is congested, polluted, prone to earthquakes and rapidly sinking into the Java Sea. Now the government is in the process of leaving, moving Indonesia's capital to the island of Borneo.

Indonesian officials say the new metropolis will be a "sustainable forest city" that puts the environment at the heart of the development and aims to be carbon-neutral by 2045.

Denmark pushed the button Wednesday on an ambitious project that aims to bury vast amounts of planet-heating carbon dioxide gas beneath the North Sea floor, in the hope that it can help the Nordic nation and others meet climate targets.

An international consortium including chemicals giant INEOS and gas and oil producer Wintershall Dea said Project Greensand in Denmark's North Sea will be the world's first cross-border carbon storage project.

Costa Rica went from having one of the world's highest deforestation rates in the 1980s to a nation centered on ecotourism, luring world travelers with the possibility of moving between marine reserves and cloud forest in a single day.

But the Central American country known for lush jungle and rich biodiversity now faces a dilemma as one environmental priority – reforestation -- runs headlong into another -- reducing the use of fossil fuels.

It's tradition in New Mexico's rural communities — to gather with neighbors each spring, shovels and rakes in hand, to clean the earthen irrigation canals that will direct snowmelt from the surrounding mountains to crops, gardens and orchards.

Doing the job in the traditional way — by hand — is nearly impossible this year because dozens of the irrigation systems known as acequias are choked with ash, silt and other debris from flooding that followed the largest wildfire in New Mexico's history — a conflagration sparked last year by the federal government during prescribed burn operations.

The No. 66 bus is packed on a recent weekday afternoon as it starts and stops its way from Chicago's near west side to Navy Pier along the Lake Michigan shore.

The seats and windows squeak and rattle just like a regular diesel bus, but no one seems to notice the high-pitched whine of the electric motor that makes it go.

A top oil company CEO who will lead international climate talks later this year has told energy industry power players that the world must cut emissions 7% each year and eliminate all releases of the greenhouse gas methane — strong comments from an oil executive.

"Let me call on you to decarbonize quicker," Sultan al-Jaber, CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., said at the Ceraweek conference, held in Houston.

For the first time, United Nations members have agreed on a unified treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas - representing a turning point for vast stretches of the planet where conservation has previously been hampered by a confusing patchwork of laws.

The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea came into force in 1994, before marine biodiversity was a well-established concept. The treaty agreement concluded two weeks of talks in New York.

Tremendous rains and snowfall since late last year have freed half of California from drought, but low groundwater levels remain a persistent problem, U.S. Drought Monitor data showed Thursday.

The latest survey found that moderate or severe drought covers about 49% of the state, nearly 17% of the state is free of drought or a condition described as abnormally dry. The remainder is still abnormally dry.

Residents of low-income communities in New Jersey that would get a second gas-fired power plant nearby are urging the governor to halt the project, which they said flies in the face of an environmental justice law he signed with great fanfare over two years ago — but which has yet to take full effect.

Competitive Power Ventures wants to build the second plant beside one it already operates in the Keasbey section of Woodbridge, about 22 miles (35 kilometers) south of Newark. The company says the expansion is needed because of growing demand for energy, pitching it as a reliable backup source for solar and wind energy when those types of power are not available.

An ongoing row between the European Union and coastal Indian Ocean nations over sustainable tuna fishing continues to simmer after a resolution in early February temporarily banned the use of destructive driftnets despite opposition from the European bloc.

Civil society organizations sent a petition Wednesday to the EU's oceans and environment commissioner, Virginijus Sinkevičius, accusing fisheries lobbies of exerting undue pressure on Brussels to object to the ban which applies to fisheries devices used by some corporations in the bloc.