Biodiversity

No Safe Havens in Increasingly Acid Oceans

By Stephen Leahy
Oil, gas and coal are contaminating the world's oceans from top to bottom, threatening the lives of more than 800 million people, a new study warns Tuesday.

U.S. Science Reporters Becoming an Endangered Species

By Zofeen Ebrahim
The news for environmental journalism in the United States is grim and getting grimmer.

The Coming Plague

By Stephen Leahy
A climate plague affecting every living thing will likely start in 2020 in southern Indonesia, scientists warned Wednesday in the journal Nature. A few years later the plague will have spread throughout the world's tropical regions.

Small Island Economies Battered by Erratic Weather

By Desmond Brown
Malcolm Wallace always knew on which side his bread would be buttered.

Q&A: You Are One Percent Away from Being a Bonobo

By Anna Shen
When author Deni Béchard discovered bonobos shared almost 99 percent of human DNA, and based their relationships on cooperation and collaboration, he knew he had to write about them.

Rising Temperatures Hurt Pollination – and Food Production

By Patricia Grogg
A rise in temperature modifies the physiological features of some plants – a consequence of climate change that is less perceptible than stronger and more frequent hurricanes, but just as harmful to food production.

OP-ED: Sustainable Development Goals After 2015

By Olivier De Schutter, Jochen Flasbarth, and Dr. Hans R. Herren
Reducing the proportion of undernourished people by half until 2015 was one of the Millennium Development Goals that the international community set in 2000. It will not be reached: At least 870 million people worldwide – and one child in five – still go hungry; this in a world where we already produce enough food today to feed nine billion people in 2050.

Trinidad Cracks Down on Destructive Shrimp Trawling

By Peter Richards
Dianne Christian Simmons recalls the days when she would head out with her husband on fishing expeditions in the Gulf of Paria, a 3,000-square-mile shallow inland sea between Trinidad and Tobago and the east coast of Venezuela.

U.S. Report of GE Alfalfa Contamination Was “Inevitable”

By Carey L. Biron
With state and federal government agencies investigating a U.S. farmer’s complaint that his alfalfa crop may have been contaminated by a genetically modified strain, consumer rights groups are suggesting that such reports were inevitable.

If You Want to Conserve Biodiversity, Protect Latin America

By Stephen Leahy
A team of scientists who analysed the richness of plant species around the world concluded that the ecosystems in need of immediate protection in order to meet the 2020 conservation goals set by the Convention on Biological Diversity are largely concentrated in Latin America.

Q&A: Room for Negotiation in Decisive Battle over the Amazon

By Mario Osava
Everything indicates that the decisive battle between harnessing hydropower and preserving the Amazon will play out in the Tapajós river basin in Brazil. At stake there are a potential of nearly 30,000 MW and a vital part of the Amazon rainforest.

Sharks, Victims or Perpetrators?

By Bradnee Chambers
Recent fatal attacks off Réunion have re-ignited demands for sharks to be hunted. But when it comes to humans and sharks, who is predator and who is prey? And what lessons need to be learned when people venture into environments where they are exposed to dangers posed by wildlife? 

Q&A: Everyone Loses in War Over Amazon Dams

By Mario Osava
In the war over major hydropower dams in the Amazon jungle, everyone loses - even the winners who manage to overcome the opposition and build them, but who suffer delays, costs that are difficult to recoup, and damage to their image.

New Initiative Aims to Integrate Agriculture and Conservation

By Fabíola Ortiz
It took Brazil four decades to overcome food insecurity and earn a place as a major global food supplier. Now its experiences will contribute to the evidence base for a new initiative that seeks to reconcile agriculture and the conservation of biological diversity.

Angry Birds Skip Polluted Delhi

By Ranjit Devraj
Every winter the Okhla wetlands, a charmed haven in the heart of India’s bustling capital city, play host to Greater Flamingoes, Greylag Geese, Tufted Pochards, Northern Shovelers and other exotic, feathered visitors winging in from colder climes as far away as Siberia.

OP-ED: Rising Temperature, Rising Food Prices

By Lester R. Brown
Agriculture as it exists today developed over 11,000 years of rather remarkable climate stability. It has evolved to maximize production within that climate system. Now, suddenly, the climate is changing. With each passing year, the agricultural system is becoming more out of sync with the climate system.

Ecological Cuban Recipes Boost Sustainable Agriculture

By Ivet González
Vilda Figueroa and her husband, José Lama, live in Marianao on the outskirts of Havana, where they share hundreds of recipes based on Cuban-grown foods and sun-drying, along with other ecological food preservation methods.

Study Finds Many “Bee-Friendly” Plants Laced with Pesticide

By Carey L. Biron
Major U.S. retailers are selling garden plants that are billed as “bee-friendly” but laced with pesticides known to be toxic to bees, according to a preliminary study, the first on the issue, released Wednesday.

Highway through National Park Sparks Protest in Brazil

By Alice Marcondes
Environmental groups have appealed to UNESCO to help stop the reopening of Caminho do Colono, a stretch of highway in southern Brazil that crosses through Iguaçu National Park, declared a World Heritage site by the UN agency in 1986.

Environmentalists Alarmed at Tourism Plans for Small Islands

By Humberto Márquez
The Venezuelan government’s plans to develop tourism infrastructure on virtually uninhabited highly biodiverse small islands in the southern Caribbean have triggered warnings from environmentalists.

Steps to Protect South Africa’s Wattled Cranes

By Brendon Bosworth
On a winter’s afternoon in late July, potato farmer John Campbell and the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s Tanya Smith surveyed the Umgeni Vlei Nature Reserve from a hilltop on Ivanhoe Farm in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands.
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