Biodiversity

BIODIVERSITY: The Insatiable in Pursuit of the Inedible

By Stephen Leahy
In an ironic twist, officially listing a species as endangered drives up its value to collectors and consumers, putting it on an even faster track to extinction, researchers in Paris reported Tuesday.

ENVIRONMENT-COLOMBIA: Megaport vs Megadiversity

By Constanza Vieira
The Colombian government has chosen the pristine Malaga Bay on Colombia's Pacific coast, which draws tourists interested in whale-watching, for a new deep sea port.

ENVIRONMENT: Trawling Moratorium Dead in the Water

By Stephen Leahy
Iceland and a few other fishing nations have successfully undermined a three-year international effort to place a moratorium on destructive deep-sea trawling.

ENVIRONMENT: Seafood Lovers’ Choice: Less, or None at All

By Haider Rizvi
With efforts to protect the world's fish populations largely failing to boost their dwindling numbers, a new study says that initiatives by seafood buyers, such as individual consumers, supermarket chains and restaurants, could prove more effective.

ENVIRONMENT: Global Forest Users’ Body Takes Root

By Marty Logan
One of the most grassroots of people's movements has planted an international seed.

ARGENTINA: Silent Extinction of Mbya Guarani People

By Marcela Valente
Mbya Guaraní children living in the subtropical rainforests of Argentina's northeastern province of Misiones are dying from preventable illnesses, and extra provision by the government of money, medicine and food seems unable to halt the catastrophe.

ENVIRONMENT: Ocean Life on the Brink of No Return

By Stephen Leahy
Every single commercial fishery in the world will be wiped before 2050 and the oceans may never recover if over-fishing continues at its current rate, a four-year scientific investigation has found.

ENVIRONMENT: U.N. Report Warns of Creeping CO2 Emissions

By Haider Rizvi
Alarmed by the results of a new study, United Nations experts on climate change are urging the world's industrialised nations to introduce further cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

ENVIRONMENT: Can the Free Market Slow Deforestation?

By Stephen Leahy
Tropical forests' ability to store carbon dioxide and mitigate climate change makes them more valuable than alternative uses like pasture or lumber, and rich countries ought to pay tropical countries to preserve their forests, the World Bank says.

ENVIRONMENT: Canada Fights Ban on “Bulldozers of the Sea”

By Stephen Leahy
Canada is trying to scuttle a proposed United Nations moratorium on destructive bottom trawling of the open ocean that has received surprisingly strong support from the United States, as well as other countries.

ENVIRONMENT: Marine Scientists Report Massive “Dead Zones”

By Stephen Leahy
Rising tides of untreated sewage and plastic debris are seriously threatening marine life and habitat around the globe, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned in a report Wednesday.

ENVIRONMENT: Farmed Salmon Killing Off Wild Cousins

By Stephen Leahy
Canada's open-ocean salmon farms are killing enormous numbers of wild salmon, threatening the species, a new study shows.

SCIENCE: Fossils Reveal Ancient Biodiversity

By Julio Godoy
The discovery of an amber deposit formed in the Amazon during the Miocene epoch proves that the region's rich biological diversity goes back some 16 million years, members of the research team that made the finding told Tierramérica.

ENVIRONMENT: Triage for an Ailing Planet

By Emad Mekay
The Global Environment Facility (GEF), the world's largest environmental funding body, received a shot in the arm Tuesday after 32 countries agreed to contribute a whopping 3.13 billion dollars for environmental projects over the next four years amid rising concerns about the impact human activities are having on the Earth.

US-MEXICO: Biodiversity Has No Use for Walls

By Stephen Leahy
Scientists fear that attempts to seal the border between Mexico and the United States will have a big impact on wildlife and the region's fragile and unique ecology.

BIODIVERSITY: Scientists Warn of Species Holocaust

By Stephen Leahy
The world's accelerating biodiversity crisis requires a new international coordinating mechanism to provide a united, authoritative scientific voice that can inform government decision-making internationally, experts say.

ENVIRONMENT-CANADA: Transforming the Northern Landscape

By Stephen Leahy
Over much of northern Canada, there is little more than trees, rocks, lakes and wetlands. But in northeastern Alberta, the landscape is changing dramatically as strip mining peels off the forest and soil to reach a molasses-like viscous oil mixed with sand and clay 40 to 60 metres below the surface.

ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Organic Farming, Answer to Farmers’ Suicides?

By IPS Correspondents
As the phenomenon of mass suicides by farmers turns into a major national issue, small cultivators in this sub-Himalayan state are demonstrating that the way forward to sustainable agriculture may lie in sticking to traditional methods.

ENVIRONMENT: Tropical Forests Protected on Paper Only

By IPS Correspondents
Less than five percent of the world's tropical forests surveyed in a new report are being managed in a sustainable way, although this still represents a huge improvement over the situation a decade ago.

ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: “Ignorance Is Hurting the Amazon”

By Mario Osava
Ignorance about the problems afflicting the Brazilian Amazon leads to policies based on erroneous views, says Tarcisio Feitosa da Silva, a winner of the 2006 Goldman Environmental Prize for his defence of a series of Amazon reserves that comprise the world's largest tropical ecological corridor.

LATIN AMERICA: Wave of Opposition Hits Hydroelectric Dams

By IPS Correspondents
A wave of opposition is rising in Latin America against the construction of hydroelectric dams. In Guatemala, activists and residents recently blocked a multi-million-dollar project, while in Brazil, El Salvador, Chile, Honduras and Mexico, the fuse of conflict has been lit.
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