Air quality is a major challenge globally and is the single greatest environmental risk to human health. More than 90 per cent of the world’s population lives in areas that exceed the World Health Organization guideline for healthy air. In North America, Canada and the United States of America have …
This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the search for a home, or homes, for hosting international deliberations and action on energy subsidy reform. The two most obvious contenders for such an ?institutional home? are the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). …
An unlikely coalition of logging companies and environmental groups has reached an agreement to protect more than 300,000 square kilometres of Canadian boreal forest
Terry Macalister The successful development of Canada's tar sands has triggered a rush by Shell and other oil companies to set up similar operations in Russia, Congo and even Madagascar, a new report reveals. Soaring crude prices and a growing shortage of drilling sites have encouraged the energy industry to …
A globally consistent methodology using satellite imagery was implemented to quantify gross forest cover loss (GFCL) from 2000 to 2005 and to compare GFCL among biomes, continents, and countries. GFCL is defined as the area of forest cover removed because of any disturbance, including both natural and human-induced causes. GFCL …
The state of Maine experimented with drugs last year. The state had already tested several methods?for collecting unused pharmaceuticals, with varying degrees of success. After tracking surprisingly high concentrations of pharmaceuticals in landfill leachate
To conserve biodiversity, considerable efforts have been focused on preserving pristine environments, such as wilderness, where human activities are minimal. However, biodiversity conservation also involves human-influenced areas, such as socio-ecological production landscapes, which can contain rich sustainable practices and traditional knowledge. This document is a collection of case studies and …
This synthesis focuses on estimates of biodiversity change as projected for the 21st century by models or extrapolations based on experiments and observed trends. The term
Many climate change impact studies have been conducted using a top-down approach. First, outputs from global circulation models (GCMs) are considered which are downscaled in a second step to the river basin scale using either a statistical/empirical or a dynamic approach. The local climatic signal that is obtained is then …
Our current concepts of abrupt climate change are strongly influenced by compelling palaeoclimate evidence for events like the Younger Dryas, in which massive changes in climate occurred essentially instantaneously. It is generally thought that an injection of freshwater from the retreating Laurentide Ice Sheet altered the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation …
A thousand years after the last ice age ended, the Northern Hemisphere was plunged back into glacial conditions. For 20 years, scientists have blamed a vast flood of meltwater for causing this
A US backed proposal to ban the international trade of polar bear skins, teeth and claws was defeated on Thursday at a UN wildlife meeting over concerns it would hurt indigenous economies and arguments the practice didn't pose a significant threat to the animals. The US argued at the 175-nation …
Mumbai: Fourteen exoplanets have been discovered since the year began while the figure for 2009 was 84, said eminent astronomer Malcolm Longair, of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. Exoplanets are those planets that lie outside the solar system. There are billions of stars in our galaxy and a significant percentage …
Treating HIV infection aggressively before symptoms appear could help to control the spread of the disease, according to data presented at a retroviral conference. Independent studies in Canada, the United States and Africa support the strategy in both the developed and developing world. However, the studies are not definitive and …
PCBs, used to manage risks from the flammability of dielectric fluids and to increase the durability of elastic sealants, had declining environmental concentrations after legislation banning new production was passed during the 1970s and 1980s in Europe and North America. To answer why PCB temporal trends are now nearly stable …
