Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
Increasing energy use, climate change and carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels make switching to low-carbon fuels a high priority. Biofuels are a potential low-carbon energy source, but whether biofuels offer carbon savings depends on how they are produced. Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas or grasslands to produce food crop-based biofuels …
Brazil is losing its Amazonian forests to farmers at an unprecedented rate, latest satellite observations have shown. The destruction has so alarmed the Brazilian government that it called an emergency meeting in the last week of January, attended by the president, Lula da Silva. Only six months ago Brazil touted …
Letter from MOEF to Nirma Ltd on cement plant and captive power plant near village Padhiarka, Taluka Mahuva, District Bhavnagar, Gujarat dated 27 Feb, 2008 regarding Terms of Reference.
Using biofuels instead of fossil fuels will do little to cut carbon emissions, and could even increase them because of the extra land the crops will require.
The wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC issued a wake-up call to the Indonesian authorities this week: stop the illegal trade in Sumatran tiger body parts or the species will be hunted to extinction.
you see a lot of butterflies hovering around coffee plantations. The reason is the plantations have scattered stands of trees for shade. And a change in ecology can affect their numbers. Over the past five years, the native trees in the coffee plantations at Chikmagalur in Karnataka have been replaced …
Global warming is not a uniform process. Mongolia, particularly at the high altitudes around Lake Hovsgol, has been warming more than twice as fast as the global average. Unique ecosystems are feeling the heat. Here at the transition between the steppe grassland and taiga, plants and animals are confronted with …
"We apologise for recent price increases," reads the sign over the bread counter, "but they are due to global factors beyond our control." This is not a Third World food stall but an upscale supermarket in Brussels, capital of the European Union, whose farming system was once notorious for the …
A common assumption is that ecosystem services respond linearly to changes in habitat size. This assumption leads frequently to an "all or none" choice of either preserving coastal habitats or converting them to human use. However, the researchers survey of wave attenuation data from field studies of mangroves, salt marshes, …
While cutting down rainforests to grow palm oil for biofuels may constitute "madness" (1 December 2007, p 50), burning other vegetable oils is no more sane, nor less damaging to Indonesia's rainforests. Indonesia is expected to increase its palm oil production by more than half over the next 10 years. …
Human-wildlife conflict, particularly human-carnivore conflict, is a growing problem in today’s crowded world, and can have significant impacts on both human and wildlife populations. This study, based in the Idodi-Pawaga area adjacent to Tanzania’s Ruaha National Park, explored the main drivers of conflict between people and wildlife, particularly five focal …
This paper provides an overview of selected trends and conditions of ecosystem services, in particular, food production and impacts on the environment based on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. It then describes outcomes for future ecosystem services under alternative development pathways, with a focus on tradeoffs between food security and the …
This atlas by UNEP's World Conservation Monitoring Centre released at the Poznan climate meeting, demonstrates the potential for spatial analyses to identify areas that are high in both carbon and biodiversity. Such areas will be of interest to countries that wish to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from land use change …
Agricultural expansion, opening of new roads and migration of people to unexploited areas are all major causes of Amazon deforestation; thus many sectors share the responsibility for reversing it.
Promoting forest restoration and sustainable forest management has more promise for mitigating climate change than narrowly focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD).
The concept of Special Economic Zone and its impact on development has attracted the attention of economists as well as planners the world over as they provide foreign exchange earnings with promotion of exports, create jobs to alleviate unemployment, assist in income creation and attract foreign direct investment and technology …
The objective of the present report is 1) to focus on the present and past status of Sarus Crane 2) to throw light on the factors responsible for population decline, if any and 3) to recommend measures for Sarus conservation in the region. The study was conducted in selected areas …
Desertification involves many countries featuring different ecological, economic, and social conditions. In Mediterranean Europe, high human pressure, economic development, and climatic changes combine to produce land consumption, soil erosion, salinization, and fire risk, all considered as key factors to start desertification processes. For many years the term desertification has been …
Agriculture is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. Greenpeace's new report Cool Farming details the destructive practices resulting from industrial agriculture and presents workable solutions to help reduce its contribution to climate change. These practical changes will benefit the environment as well as farmers and consumers throughout the …
