By Thuy Binh25 November 2012 AN BIEN, Vietnam (IPS) – For the last decade, many families in this southwestern Vietnamese province have been uprooted at least once every two years – but this is not due to economic or political upheaval. Rather, extreme weather has forcibly turned many of these coast-dwellers into unwilling travellers, as […]
By Deborah Zabarenko9 November 2012 WASHINGTON (Reuters) – For a clue to the possible impact of climate change on modern society, a study suggests a look back at the end of classic Mayan civilization, which disintegrated into famine, war and collapse as a long-term wet weather pattern shifted to drought. An international team of researchers […]
25 October 2012 (mongabay.com) – Timber traders in Madagascar are smuggling illegally logged rosewood despite an official export ban, alleges a new report published by a Malagasy researcher. The report, authored by Hery Randriamalala and based on press clippings, cargo manifests, and eye-witness accounts, indicates that traders are covertly reducing rosewood stockpiles accumulated during a […]
By Jeremy Hance8 October 2012 (mongabay.com) – From 1990 to 2010 almost all palm oil expansion in Kalimantan came at the expense of forest cover, according to the most detailed look yet at the oil palm industry in the Indonesian state, published in Nature: Climate Change. Palm oil plantations now cover 31,640 square kilometers of […]
By David Biello 12 October 2012 NEW YORK CITY (Scientific American) – The state of the planet is grim, whether that assessment is undertaken from the perspective of economic development, social justice or the global environment. What’s known as sustainable development—a bid to capture all three of those efforts in one effort and phrase—has hardly […]
By Mark Duell18 October 2012 These incredible pictures show the bleak landscape of bitumen, sand and clay created by the frantic pursuit of 173 billion barrels of untouched oil. The Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada, are the world’s third largest oil reserve – but lush green forests once blanketed an area there larger than England. […]
12 October 2012 (PhysOrg) – A new pan-European study suggests that the economic value of forests will decline between 14% and 50% due to climate change. If measures are not taken to change this, the damage could reach several hundred billion euros, say researchers led by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape […]
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent11 October 2012 (Reuters) – Governments need to spend $80 billion a year to halt extinctions of endangered animals and plants, many times current levels and only half the amount paid to bankers in bonuses last year, a study showed. The extra spending is vital to protect natural services such as […]
By Sara Reardon and Rowan Hooper 1 October 2012 It’s not as glamorous as chercocaine or diamonds, but the illegal logging industry has become very attractive to criminal organisations over the past decade. A new report finds that up to 90 per cent of tropical deforestation can be attributed to organised crime, which controls up […]
By Matt Walker, Editor, BBC Nature28 September 2012 Great apes, such as gorillas, chimps, and bonobos, are running out of places to live, say scientists. They have recorded a dramatic decline in the amount of habitat suitable for great apes, according to the first such survey across the African continent. Eastern gorillas, the largest living […]
