Home/Posts Tagged ‘biodiversity’
Posts Tagged ‘biodiversity’
Climate Change, Conservation, Pollution, Dec 27th, 2011,
The original Green Revolution was essentially a Cold War tactic of the United States to win over Third World countries by supplying them with agricultural technology, thereby dramatically increasing their food production. The main recipients of Green Revolution techniques were India, Mexico and the Philippines, as well as some African countries (with markedly less success). Although the Green Revolution increased food production, it has its drawbacks and criticisms: unsustainable population growth – leading to mass starvation; genetically weak and less biodiverse monoculture farming – meaning crop failures are more likely, requiring more chemical pesticides to compensate for this risk. Monoculture…
Tags: biodiversity, Brazil, Cerrado, farming, Green Revolution, monoculture
Climate Change, Conservation, Politics, Jun 7th, 2011,
The UK government has released the Natural Environment White Paper, an official report on its environmental vision for the next 50 years. In the wake of the somewhat revolutionary report by Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) entitled the UK National Ecosystem Assessment (UK NEA), which I wrote about last Thursday, the white paper attempts to address questions of biodiversity in tandem with climate change, population, etc. From Defra’s website: We will work to improve the quality of our natural environment and will aim to halt the decline in habitats and species, degradation of landscapes and erosion of…
Tags: biodiversity, Defra, National Ecosystem Assesment, Natural Environment, NEA, UK government, white paper
Conservation, Nature, Jun 2nd, 2011,
The second installment of Adam Curtis’ new documentary series “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace” (recently on the BBC) focuses on how ecologists once reasoned that nature was made up of mechanistic, computer-like systems, consisting of many factors working in harmony in order to maintain balance. This view of ecosystems, which does not fully account for the chaos caused by the inherent flux of nature, has fallen out of fashion among many contemporary ecologists. They claim previous ecological theories were inspired by man-made machinery and not nature itself. Yet despite the fact that nature may be chaotic,…
Tags: Adam Curtis, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, biodiversity, capitalism, commodification, Conservation, Defra, ecology, ecosystems, natural capital, NEA, TEEB
Conservation, Videos & Documentaries, May 10th, 2011,
Depending on how you measure wealth, Costa Rica could be considered one of the world’s richest nations. The Central American republic is home to only 4.25 million people and is considered the oldest Latin American democracy. Though not particularly rich monetarily speaking, Costa Rica compares well with other countries of similar incomes, in terms of human development and environmental issues. According to the 2010 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) it ranked 3rd in the world and 1st in the Americas. The New Economics Foundation’s Happy Planet Index puts Costa Rica at number one. But this tropical treasure trove of biodiversity (Costa…
Tags: biodiversity, Climate change, Conservation, Costa Rica, deforestation
Climate Change, Conservation, Wildlife & Flora, Apr 14th, 2011,
Environmentalists, NGOs, relatively progressive governments and the UN made a lot of noise about climate change a couple of years ago. Nothing really happened. Then 2010 was hailed by the United Nations as the “Year of Biodiversity” in order to draw awareness to the catastrophic loss of natural resources, which global ecosystems (including humanity) depend on for little things like livelihood and survival. But comfort, convenience and promises of wealth trump doomsday scenarios every time. Just like with climate change, governments are failing to significantly act on biodiversity loss. Large corporations couldn’t give a toss, because they make money from…
Tags: biodiversity, biodiversity loss, Climate change, UK, UN
Climate Change, Green living, Nature, Politics, Oct 27th, 2010,
You may not know this, but since the 1970’s, more than 40 percent of the earth’s species (plants and animals alike) disappeared from the face of our planet. So when the UN declared 2010 the international “Year of Biodiversity” it was with a clear message: to help save what’s left of our world’s ecosystems. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated: “Biological diversity underpins ecosystem functioning… its continued loss, therefore, has major implications for current and future human well-being.” Unfortunately there are still too many people that believe that biodiversity is “a kind of washing powder”, as this article from the BBC…
Tags: 2020, access and benefit sharing, biodiversity, Nagoya, Rio de Janeiro, summit, UN, united nations
Climate Change, Conservation, Politics, Oct 8th, 2010,
The international effort to halt the destruction of rainforests and biodiversity loss is considered to be far behind the fight to stop or mitigate man-made climate change. Since the later has been more or less a total failure so far, how can we hope for the former? Representatives at the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan will attempt to put a price tag on the preservation of natural resources such as forests, coral reefs and wetlands. What is hoped for is to achieve a deal for ‘equitable sharing’ of the benefits of such resources to prevent what is being…
Tags: biodiversity, Climate change, deforestation, forests, Nagoya, rainforest
Conservation, Videos & Documentaries, Wildlife & Flora, Oct 4th, 2010,
In terms of conservation, plants do not receive as much attention as cute cuddly animals like pandas or polar bears. Let’s face it – they don’t even rank up there with giant salamanders. But plants provide food for all living things and are essential to life on Earth. The untapped medicinal and technological resources in plant life around the world are unknown but potentially invaluable. Therefore preserving plant species and maintaining botanical biodiversity is an important, if often overlooked, issue. One fifth of the 380,000 plant species on Earth are threatened by extinction, mostly due to human activity. This month,…
Tags: biodiversity, biological, convention, diversity, japan, Nagoya, plants, species
Pollution, Wildlife & Flora, Oct 3rd, 2010,
Human beings have severely impacted 80% of the world’s rivers to the point that 5 million people, along with thousands of aquatic species, are in danger. A new global study, published in the scientific journal Nature, identifies various types of human impact on the Earth’s waterways, such as pollution, irrigation and dams, and quantifies how they affect River Biodiversity and Human Water Security. From Rivers In Crisis: The Earth’s limited supplies of fresh water and irreplaceable biodiversity are vulnerable to human mismanagement of watersheds and waterways. Multiple environmental stressors, such as agricultural runoff, pollution and invasive species, threaten rivers that…
Tags: biodiversity, Europe, rivers, security, species, US, water, wildlife
Climate Change, Health, Politics, Wildlife & Flora, Sep 25th, 2010,
According to recent estimates, species are disappearing at 1,000 times the natural rate due to human activity and climate change. At a UN summit on Wednesday in New York, world leaders attended a meeting to discuss how to halt biodiversity and habitat loss. In a situation that mirrored the gridlock at the climate change talks last December in Copenhagen, developing countries, led by China, argued for payments from rich countries to encourage the protection of forests and other crucial habitats in poor nations which contain natural biological resources. Such a mechanism is not contained in the currently proposed Intergovernmental Science…
Tags: biodiversity, crisis, food, loss, meeting, UN
Climate Change, Nature, Aug 21st, 2010,
The headline in The Ecologist, ‘Human response to climate change is making matters worse’, is a bit of a f*&#(^@ downer. Upon reading the actual article, it doesn’t get that much better. A recent study has researched the impacts of human response to climate change on biodiversity. The study, recently published in the journal Conservation Letters, attempts to assess the impact of responses such as the biofuel industry, which has contributed to the destruction of rainforests and peat bogs in South East Asia. Hydropower projects like China’s massive Three Gorges Dam have also left their marks on biological habitats. From the…
Tags: action, biodiversity, biofuel, China, Climate change, ecologist, ecosystem, human, humanity, impact, Indonesia, react, resource, response, study, Three Gorges Dam
Climate Change, Politics, Wildlife & Flora, Aug 19th, 2010,
In advance of a major UN meeting for the Convention on Biological Diversity, the organization’s secretary-general, Ahmed Djoghlaf, recently warned of the threats posed against the natural world – and life itself – by population growth, urbanization, agriculture and climate change. Despite these increasing threats and an ongoing mass extinction in the natural world, which is almost 1,000 times the normal ‘background’ rate, governments are simply not acting to preserve biodiversity and the overall health of the planet. No country has met its targets to protect nature. We are losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate. If current levels [of destruction]…
Tags: Ahmed, biodiversity, biological, change, climate, convention, diversity, Djoghlaf, Nature, rainforest, threats, UN
Green living, Aug 18th, 2010,
A: The environmental impact of meat and dairy products is a complex problem. The livestock industry is damaging our planet in many ways. It is polluting the air – according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report, it generates more greenhouse gas emissions, including CO2 (18%) and methane, than the whole world’s transport (13,5 %). It is polluting the water – gigantic containers called “lagoons”, where livestock animals’ manure and urine are stored, may leak or even break under heavy rains and storms. The waste is highly toxic and very often contains lots of antibiotics and dangerous bacteria….
Tags: Air Pollution, biodiversity, co2, dairy, ecosystem collapse, environment, lagoons, livestock, meat, methane, overfishing, TOXIC, water pollution
Conservation, Politics, Science & Technology, Aug 10th, 2010,
As Russia’s crops wither and burn in record heat and wildfires, the oldest and first seed bank in the world is under threat. Russia’s Pavlovsk agricultural station, located outside of St. Petersburg, was established in 1926 with the purpose of preserving plant diversity and breeding new crops in response to potential food crises. During World War II’s siege of Leningrad, twelve Russian scientists starved to death rather than eat from the seed bank. Now private developers would see it destroyed to make way for new housing. From an article in the Guardian: More than 90% of the plants are found…
Tags: berries, biodiversity, crop, developers, diversity, global, Pavlovsk, property, Russia, Russian, seed bank
Videos & Documentaries, Wildlife & Flora, Aug 6th, 2010,
The Census of Marine Life is a 10-year worldwide project conducted by a network of researchers and coordinated in part by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership. The aim of the census – the first global study of its kind – is to ‘explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of life in the oceans’. From an article in the Telegraph: They hope that by creating the first catalogue of the world’s oceans we can begin to understand the great ecological questions about habitat loss, pollution, overfishing and all the other man-made plagues that are being visited on the sea. The truth…
Tags: biodiversity, census, ecological, fish, life, marine, Mediterranean, ocean, overfishing, Pollution, sea
Pollution, Wildlife & Flora, Aug 3rd, 2010,
A survey of wildlife around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine – site of the worst nuclear accident in history – has shown that biodiversity there is declining. On April 26, 1986 explosions at the Chernobyl plant sent radioactive fallout into the atmosphere, which spread over much of Europe, eventually killing thousands. 24 years later, the downwind city of Pripyat is still off limits, though some have returned there illegally to farm. The wildlife around Chernobyl has been the stuff of legends. Highly irradiated, rumors of mutated wolves and moose abound, but the reality – as usual –…
Tags: accident, animals, biodiversity, chernobyl, contamination, nuclear, Pripyat, radiation, Ukraine, wildlife
Conservation, Politics, Videos & Documentaries, Jul 22nd, 2010,
The Economist recently featured an interview with ‘green economist’ Pavan Sukhdev on their regular segment ‘Tea with The Economist’. Pavan Sukhdev is a study leader for The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity study (TEEB), a report commissioned by the G8+5 and funded by the European Union. He is special advisor and head of the UN Environment Program’s (UNEP) Green Economy Initiative, also funded by the EU/EC and Norway. In the following video interview, Sukhdev discusses natural capital and economic as well as political solutions to preserving and encouraging biodiversity an environmentally conscious business practices. Pavan Sukhdev on the green economy…
Tags: biodiversity, capital, Economist, economy, environmental, Green, initiative, natural, Pavan, Sukhdev, TEEB, UN, UNEP
Conservation, Green living, Jul 19th, 2010,
The rise of inexpensive non-European wines and convenience-obsessed consumer culture are threatening the ancient and sustainable cork industry. But besides the potential loss of long-established ‘green jobs’ and the fact that plastic stoppers and screw caps are bad for the environment, the cork industry also sustains large areas of industry-managed forests, which are hotspots for biodiversity. Large bird populations depend on these forests, as does the endangered Iberian Lynx. Cork forests are not cut down, but rather the trees are stripped of their soft bark every nine years throughout their 200-year lifespan. This makes the industry very sustainable because it…
Tags: biodiversity, caps, cork, environment, forests, Green, Iberian, industry, lynx, Portugal, screw, stoppers, trees, wine
Conservation, Nature, Jul 18th, 2010,
Russia’s recent heat wave led to 1200 cases of drinking and drowning as revelers fatally beat the heat. The country’s Polar Bears suffer too, but might finally gain new relief as a result of the government’s commitment to expand its protected regions to 3% of its vast territory. Mostly on the Kurill Islands, a volcanic archipelago, along the mountainous southern border, and in the Ural mountains on the western plain, 9 nature reserves, 13 national parks, and 1 million ha of marine buffer zone will be established by 2020.
Tags: biodiversity, International Year of Biodiversity, Russia, The Nature Conservancy, WWF
Conservation, Jul 14th, 2010,
A recent study published in the scientific journal Nature found that quality is more effective than quantity when it comes to nature conservation strategies: Replacing the least cost-effective 1% of Australia’s 6,990 strictly protected areas could increase the number of vegetation types that have 15% or more of their original extent protected from 18 to 54, of a maximum possible of 58. This approach to conservation may seem businesslike or even Darwinian, but human beings have already, in a manner of speaking, ‘won’ in terms of outcompeting the rest of the world’s species. However, if humanity’s successes go too far,…
Tags: australia, biodiversity, Conservation, Philippines, rainforest, species
