A boatload of tourists in the far eastern Russian Arctic thought they were seeing clumps of ice on the shore, before the jaw-dropping realisation that some 200 polar bears were roaming on the mountain slope.

"It was a completely unique situation," said Alexander Gruzdev, director of the Wrangel Island nature reserve where the encounter in September happened. "We were all gobsmacked, to be honest."

Endangered Amazon hardwood trafficked by a Brazilian exporter allegedly behind the massacre of nine farmers this year is being sold unimpeded around the world, according to environmental pressure group Greenpeace.

The group said Tuesday that the purchase of products by importers from as far apart as Japan and the United States illustrates lack of control over a logging industry ravaging the world's greatest rainforest.

Regulators in the U.S. state of Nebraska on Monday granted a key approval needed for construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, the source of a nearly decade-long feud between environmental activists and the energy industry.

Officials in Nebraska granted TransCanada the final major permit it needs to begin construction of the 1,180-mile (1,900 kilometer) pipeline, days after a leak in the existing Keystone line spilled around 5,000 barrels of oil in South Dakota.

Negotiations to bolster the climate-saving Paris Agreement, crafted over two decades, closed in Bonn Saturday, deflated but not derailed by Donald Trump's rejection of the treaty and defence of fossil fuels.

French screen legend and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot on Friday slammed U.S. President Donald Trump as "unfit for office" after his administration's "shameful actions" in authorizing the import of Zimbabwean elephant hunting trophies.

The move Thursday reverses a prohibition imposed under former president Barack Obama, permitting the import of "sport-hunted trophies from elephants hunted in Zimbabwe" between January 21, 2016 and December 31, 2018. Zambia will also be covered under the revised rule.

UN negotiations on implementing the Paris climate change agreement wrap up Friday after two weeks of talks that were slowed down by the United States defending the use of fossil fuels.

Floods caused by two days of torrential rains have left five people dead in Haiti and more than 10,000 homes inundated, authorities said Thursday.

The toxic smog that has covered parts of Pakistan for weeks has exposed official torpor over rampant pollution that has killed thousands more people than have died in years of militancy.

The echo of Koranic verse from a religious school in Senegal's Saint-Louis is familiar, but just metres down the beach classes have fallen silent in another building abandoned to the ravages of climate change.

In the northern Indian city of Moradabad fumes from burning electronic waste blend with seasonal smog to create an even deadlier mix of pollutants than in Delhi, where filthy air has caused public outcry and made global headlines.

India's smog crisis has centred on the capital but pollution is as bad or worse beyond its borders, with millions in smaller cities like Moradabad barely aware of the harmful effects of the air they breathe.