Oil companies seeking production sites on Alaska’s northern coast are reporting four times as many polar bear sightings as a decade ago, according to Reuters. Along the shoreline, bears are attempting to escape shrinking and thinning sea ice.

The multiyear ice covering the Arctic Ocean has effectively vanished, making it easier to open up polar shipping routes, Reuters quoted an Arctic expert as saying.

Canadian provincial governments and aboriginal leaders have set aside vast tracts of coniferous woods, wetlands and peat, The Guardian said, where logging, mining and oil drilling have been banned.

The mysterious people who etched the “Nasca Lines” across deserts in Peru hastened their own demise by clearing forests 1,500 years ago, according to a study cited by Reuters.

Scientists and development experts are racing to increase food production by 50% over the next two decades to feed the world’s growing population, The New York Times said, yet many doubt their chances of success.

Proposals to rescue collapsing fish stocks by restricting fisheries subsidies are under threat because of the lack of progress in global trade talks, Reuters cited environmental campaigners as saying.

Many people see the UN climate summit in Copenhagen as the last chance to limit the consequences of global warming – but failure is a real prospect, according to The Observer. Senior politicians face tough decisions and complex trade-offs.

European Union leaders agreed to contribute to a fund that would help developing nations adapt to climate change, but failed to set a firm figure for what the EU would pay, the Associated Press reported.

Nepal's cabinet plans to meet at the Mount Everest base camp to highlight the impact of global warming on the Himalayas, Reuters quoted the country’s forest minister as saying.

At least 90 people have been killed in flooding in central Vietnam caused by tropical storm Mirinae, which had earlier battered the Philippines, reported Agence France-Presse.

The US government raised grave questions over the oil giant BP’s safety culture, according to The Guardian, by imposing a record fine for failure to fix hazards at a Texas refinery where 15 people died in a 2005 explosion.

A British court has upheld a worker’s argument that his philosophical beliefs about climate change are so deeply held that they are entitled to the same protection as religious convictions, The Guardian reported.