The BMW Group has now set itself the goal of enhancing the transparency of its battery cell supply chain and exploring options for model projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The BMW Group is also currently working with an independent partner on a feasibility study to explore to what extent the social and ecological situation can be sustainably improved through model mines for artisanal mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. MORE

million tons of identified lithium resources, respectively, while Brazil, Congo, and Serbia each contain approximately 1 million tons. Korea Herald. A Korean consortium including Korea Resources Corp. KORES ) and steelmaker POSCO has entered an agreement with Bolivia’s state-run miner Comibol (Corporación Minera de Bolivia) to set up a joint venture to produce lithium intended for lithium-ion batteries. MORE

°C in the Amazon Basin and the eastern part of the Congo Basin. Global land-use changes caused by a major ramp-up in biofuel crops—enough to meet about 10% of the world’s energy needs—could make some regions warmer, according to a new integrated modeling study by researchers from MIT and the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole. MORE

Elsewhere in West Africa, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo and Cameroon collectively waste about 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas every year. Gas-flaring countries and trends. Click to enlarge. A newly released GE study — Flare Gas Reduction: Recent Global Trends and Policy Considerations —estimates that 5% of the world’s natural gas production is wasted by burning or “flaring” unused gas each year, despite some progress on the flaring issue. MORE

miles) offshore Congo. Eni, which holds 65% of the Marine XII Block, quickly activated with the joint venture’s partners New Age (25%) and the national company SNPC (Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo, 10%) the studies to ensure a rapid commercial development of these significant hydrocarbon reserves with the aim of launching a first oil production from 2016. MORE

India and Bangladesh come in near the bottom of the rankings, with Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Nepal rounding out the bottom five. The 2018 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) finds that air quality is the leading environmental threat to public health. MORE

Lake Tanganyika is bordered by Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, and Zambia—four of the poorest countries in the world, according to the United Nations Human Development Index. A team of researchers led by Brown University has found that Lake Tanganyika in east Africa—the second-oldest and the second-deepest lake in the world—has experienced unprecedented warming in the last century. MORE

About half of the world's cobalt supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a country with high rates of child labor under very poor working conditions. Electric cars provide a zero-emission driving experience, but one of the most important raw materials for their batteries—cobalt—has a supply chain that needs some work. MORE

In this picture provided by the environmental group Greenpeace, Greenpeace climbers rappel down the face of Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, S.D. on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 to unfurl a banner that challenges President Obama to show leadership on global warming. MORE

First authors of the paper are Micheline Ngaki, a Fulbright Scholar from the Congo and a graduate student in genetics, development and cell biology at Iowa State; Gordon Louie, a research scientist at the Salk Institute; and Philippe. MORE

The Parties included Micronesia and other small island nations, the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Congo, Nigeria, the 27 countries of the EU, as well as Japan, the US, Canada, and Mexico. Led by the tiny Pacific island of the Federated States of Micronesia, a growing group of low-lying islands and other vulnerable countries are calling for fast action on the approximately 50% of global warming that is caused by pollutants other than carbon dioxide (CO 2 ). MORE