19 June 2017 (University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa) – Seventy-four percent of the world’s population will be exposed to deadly heatwaves by 2100 if carbon gas emissions continue to rise at current rates, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change. Even if emissions are aggressively reduced, the percent of the world’s human population […]
13 April 2017 (Radboud University) – Hunting is a major threat to wildlife particularly in tropical regions, but a systematic large-scale estimate of hunting-induced declines of animal numbers was lacking so far. A study published in Science on April 14 fills this gap. An international team of ecologists and environmental scientists found that bird populations […]
By Morgan Erickson-Davis31 March 2017 (Mongabay) – The earth’s forests have been broken into around 50 million fragments, the edges of which add up to a length that would make it a third of the way to the sun and which increase annual tropical deforestation carbon emissions by 31 percent. This, according to a new […]
By Léa Surugue31 March 2017 (International Business Times) – With temperatures set to rise in the coming decades, investigating the issue of whether climate change can exacerbate conflict is becoming more and more relevant. Looking at how past civilisations fared in the face of changing climatic conditions offers interesting insights. In a research now published […]
By Lauren Markham16 February 2017 JUMAYTEPEQUE, Guatemala (Huffington Post) – Junior Dario “J.R.” Henriquez* started thinking about heading north on the long, hard migrant trail to the United States when the coffee plants started withering. Drought and a pernicious fungus called roya ― coffee rust ― were wreaking havoc on the plantation here, where […]
6 February 2017 (Mongabay) – Most of the attention around palm oil production has focused on where the crop has the largest footprint: Southeast Asia. Yet oil palm plantations are rapidly mushrooming throughout the tropics, from the species’ ancestral home in West and Central Africa to Pacific islands to Latin America. A new film, Appetite […]
By Sandra Cuffe1 February 2017 (Mongabay) – Global Witness, a London-based NGO, published a report yesterday examining the involvement of government officials and foreign aid in violent conflicts over mining, hydroelectric, tourism, and palm oil projects in Honduras. The result of a two-year investigation, the report includes several case studies and a series of recommendations […]
By Russell A. Mittermeier and Anthony B. Rylands24 January 2017 (mongabay.com) – The Year of the Monkey has just ended, and won’t come around again for another 12 years. In the meantime, what is happening with our closest living relatives, the nonhuman primates? A recent paper in Science Advances by 31 of us indicates that […]
19 January 2017 (United Nations) – Obesity and overweight are on the rise throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, and are prevalent particularly among women and children, according to a new United Nations-backed report. Nearly 360 million people, or 58 per cent of the inhabitants of the region, are overweight with the highest rates observed […]
25 December 2016 (Desdemona Despair) – Ten years ago today, Children of Men, the brilliant, dystopian science fiction film, debuted in the United States. Directed by Alfonso Cuarón, Children of Men portrays Britain in the year 2027 as the last bastion of civilization standing against the imminent extinction of the human species. In 2006, Cuarón […]
