Climate Change Deforestation Environment Human Rights Indigenous Communities

Indigenous forests could be a key to averting climate catastrophe

By Sue Branford and Maurício Torres This article originally appeared on Mongabay.com, 6 November 2017 (Republished under under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND).   A new study finds the world’s tropical forests may no longer be carbon sinks, with a net loss of 425 million tons of carbon from 2003 to 2014. Also, 1.1 billion metric tons of carbon is […]

Environment Noise Pollution Poverty

Urban noise pollution is worst in poor and minority neighborhoods and segregated cities

Top Photo: Under the El tracks, downtown Chicago. Franck Michel, CC BY Joan A. Casey, University of California, Berkeley; Peter James, Harvard Medical School , and Rachel Morello-Frosch, University of California, Berkeley Most Americans think of cities as noisy places – but some parts of U.S. cities are much louder than others. Nationwide, neighborhoods with […]

Environment Food Production Global Health

Micro solutions for a macro problem: How marine algae could help feed the world

  Microalgae (shown here, Haematococcus) convert water and carbon dioxide to oxygen and nutritious biomass in the presence of light. Algaennovation, CC BY William Moomaw, Tufts University and Asaf Tzachor, UCL   Our planet faces a growing food crisis. According to the United Nations, more than 800 million people are regularly undernourished. By 2050, an additional […]

Deforestation Environment Food Production

For cattle farmers in the Brazilian Amazon, money can’t buy happiness

Rachael Garrett, Boston University and Joice Ferreira, Federal University of Pará Picture the Brazilian Amazon. You probably don’t see a lot of cows in that image. But, in fact, in this rainforested part of South America – home to the world’s most booming tropical agricultural region – ranching has been the most common land use […]

Climate Change Environment Food Production Global Trade

Unfair trade: US beef has a climate problem

By Sean Mowbray This article originally appeared on Mongabay.com, 18 October 2017 (Republished under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND). Across the globe, beef consumption, is seeing rapid growth, fed by cheap imports and served by an industrialized agricultural global trade model that’s been linked to a host of environmental impacts, climate change chief among them. Beef consumption in previously meat-light […]

Deforestation Environment Indigenous Communities

Brazil scraps bid to mine Amazon natural reserve

The Brazilian government backed off a controversial proposal to authorize private companies to mine a sprawling Amazon reserve Monday after blistering domestic and international criticism. President Michel Temer’s office will issue a new decree Tuesday that “restores the conditions of the area, according to the document that instituted the reserve in 1984,” the Ministry of […]

Environment Global Health

Here’s how air pollution kills 3,450,000 people a year

Top image: Pollution is a global problem. Pexels Coal is costly Pexels Pollution is a global problem. Air Pollution kills. A study released yesterday in the journal Nature found that in 2007, air pollution lead to the premature deaths of 3.45 million people worldwide—a number equivalent to the population of the state of Connecticut. And […]