A new draft agreement text emerged from the Paris climate meeting late Thursday that brought the process “extremely close to the finishing line,” said French foreign minister Laurent Fabius. [The Washington Post]
Royal Dutch Shell waged a behind-the-scenes campaign to circumvent environmental regulations to enable it to drill for oil in the Chukchi Sea. [Alaska Dispatch News]
International banks have ploughed hundreds of millions of euros into a wave of hydropower projects sweeping across many pristine national parks and environmentally-protected regions in the Balkans. [The Guardian]