Biodiversity

TRADE: What Will China’s Legacy in Africa be by 2049?

By Stephanie Nieuwoudt
With its recent history of tremendous economic growth, China has a few lessons to teach Africans. But African governments should be vigilant in ensuring that their countries also reap benefits from their relations with China.

DEVELOPMENT: For-Profit Seeds Hurting Farmers, Biodiversity

By Haider Rizvi
Large biotechnology firms are not only depriving poor farmers of inputs essential for their livelihoods, but are also pushing up food prices, according to a new U.N. report.
Scientists aboard the Lake Guardian research vessel prepare to sample water from Lake Michigan. Credit: Adrianne Appel/IPS

ENVIRONMENT-US: Greatest of Lakes Hit by Climate Change

By Adrianne Appel
The weather was right for swimming this summer along the shores of Lake Michigan, but on many days, the only living things seen on the beach were gulls, picking away at zebra mussels ensnared in a thick, green slime that covered every rock, pebble and grain of sand for miles.

BIODIVERSITY: Earth’s Life Support Systems Failing

By Stephen Leahy
The world has failed to slow the accelerating extinction crisis despite 17 years of national and international efforts since the great hopes raised at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

AFRICA: Climate Change Worsening Farming’s Trade-Related Woes

By Julio Godoy
Numerous research institutes and international organisations agree that climate change will in the short and medium term worsen Africa's agriculture and food production capabilities, unless greenhouse gases emissions (GHE) are substantially reduced and adequate trade and investment policies put in place.

BIODIVERSITY: Dwindling Fish Catch Could Leave a Billion Hungry

By Stephen Leahy
Fish catches are expected to decline dramatically in the world's tropical regions because of climate change, but may increase in the north, said a new study published Thursday.
Massimo Candelori, representative of U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification. Credit: Marcela Valente/IPS

Q&A: Desertification and Climate Change Go Hand in Hand

By Marcela Valente
"The entire social fabric of an area is compromised when soils are depleted," says Italian expert Massimo Candelori, whose fight against desertification is increasingly linked to global efforts to combat climate change.
Coral reef on the Mexican coast. Credit: Courtesy of the Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas

MEXICO: Underwater Museum to Protect Coral Reefs

By Verónica Díaz Favela
Four sculptures in human forms, made of concrete, will be submerged in November in the Mexican Caribbean - the first of 400 figures that will comprise the world's largest underwater museum.
Crocodiles at Boca de Guama nursery in Cuba's Cienaga de Zapata. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

ENVIRONMENT: Cuba Encourages Ecotourism in Largest Wetland

By Patricia Grogg
The Zapata wren (Ferminia cerverai) is known in Cuba as the "soprano of the forest" for its lovely song. But this tiny bird is very timid and, at the slightest sound, will hide in the vegetation in the Cienaga de Zapata - Zapata Swamp - 160 km south of Havana on the island’s south-central coast.

UGANDA: Carbon Trading Scheme Pushing People off Their Land

By Wambi Michael
As the world's attention increasingly turns to the impact of climate change, at least one project intended to reduce global carbon emissions is accused of displacing indigenous persons from their home in Uganda.
Faidherbia albida in a maize field in Burkina faso: this tree's leaves provide fertiliser for crops growing around it. Credit: Marco Schmidt/Wikicommons

AFRICA: Plant Trees To Boost Agricultural Output

By Servaas van den Bosch
The outlook for food security in East Africa is looking bleak this year following poor rains, underscoring the urgency of raising farm productivity while adapting to a changing climate in Africa. Agroforestry experts have put forward planting trees as a possible solution.
Critics say the solution lies not in planting trees but in recycling and cutting back on a highly wasteful consumer lifestyle. Credit: Servaas van den Bosch/IPS

ENVIRONMENT: For Trees, Against Monoculture

By Servaas van den Bosch
Growing demand for products like timber and biofuels is putting pressure on shrinking rainforests.

LATIN AMERICA: Desertification – an Invisible Cancer

By Marcela Valente
"Desertification is the cancer of the earth," Argentine geographer Elena Abraham told IPS. "It is a process of degradation that does not manifest itself in spectacular ways but furtively advances, and by the time it is visible there is nothing to be done, and people have to move away, in search of an alternative."
Eduarda Román at her house, next to a mural of Tacarigua lagoon. Credit: Humberto Márquez/IPS

VENEZUELA: Women Recycle for Income and Environment

By Humberto Márquez
The women of this town in northern Venezuela no longer say "garbage" but rather "secondary raw material," and instead of referring to recycling, they talk about "separation at point of origin."

ENVIRONMENT-CHINA: What Makes A Good Dam?

By Prime Sarmiento
The Chinese government needs to engage local communities in harnessing its vast water and hydropower resources and pursuing sustainable development, says environmental advocate Yu Xiaogang, recipient of the 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Participatory Social Impact Assessment for Watershed Management.

CHILE: War Over Seeds

By Daniela Estrada
Environmental organisations, organic farmers and indigenous people in Chile are opposed to a draft law that would expands the rights of the developers of new varieties of plants, while the government and seed companies argue that there will be no negative impacts on small farmers and biodiversity.
Eye of a European Green Toad, Bufo viridis, featured in the EOL. Credit: Matt Reinbold

BIODIVERSITY: Amateur Biologists Join Global Bid to Catalog Species

By Stephen Leahy
Save the living environment and the physical environment will automatically be saved, according to E.O. Wilson, the world's leading biologist and father of the online Encyclopedia of Life, which plans to create a web page for every known species - all 1.8-plus million.
Bolivian hillside village in Los Yungas, in the tropical Andes. Credit: Diana Cariboni/IPS

ENVIRONMENT-SOUTH AMERICA: Mapping the Riches of the Tropical Andes

By Humberto Márquez
The Ecosystems Map of the Northern and Central Andes could serve as a guide for environmental conservation of this South American area covering 1.5 million square kilometres and holding the world's highest concentration of biodiversity.
Paolo di Croce Credit: Miren Gutiérrez/IPS

Q&A: About Peas in a Pod

By Miren Gutierrez
Slow Food, obviously, is the opposite of fast food. And it's a movement now with more than 100,000 members in 132 countries. But what does "slow food" mean in practical terms?

BIODIVERSITY: Tight Controls Could Save Global Fisheries

By Stephen Leahy
The global race to catch the last fish left in the oceans has been successfully halted in a few regions and fish stocks have rebounded, a new landmark study has found.

ENVIRONMENT: Monsanto, Dow Stacking the Deck, Critics Say

By Stephen Leahy
The most complex genetically engineered corn (maize) yet has been approved for use next year in Canada and the United States without its potential health and environmental risks being investigated, anti-biotech activists charged Wednesday.
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