On Monday, June 17, 2024, 20 out of the 27 countries in the European Union (EU) voted to adopt the world's first Nature Restoration Law. The law passed with a slim majority, as Leonore Gewessler, the Austrian Minister for Climate Action, decided at the last...
On December 19, 2022, representatives from 188 countries adopted a new agreement on biodiversity, now known as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). The 2022 GBF aims to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by adopting four overarching global goals and 23 targets, including conserving 30%...
As a graduate student at Yale University School of Forestry, Thomas Crowther was intrigued by a question his roommate was asked: how many trees were on Earth? While his roommate didn't see the significance of the question, Crowther took up the challenge of using a...
April 22, 2024, will be the 54th anniversary of the first Earth Day.The 1960s decade in the USA was a time of widespread citizen protests and demonstrations. Citizens used protest marches and sit-ins to campaign for civil rights. Women demanded equality in the labor market...
In a critical step towards global sustainability, the United Nations (UN) adopted seventeen Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) in 2015. SDG12 addressed consumption and production. Its third indicator target (SDG 12.3) focused on food waste and loss. The UN set a target of halving food waste by...
In 1700, so many beaver pelts were stored in Montreal warehouses that they threatened to glut the market, something that traders had already experienced in previous years. So, fearing that prices in Europe would crash, orders were given to pile up and burn fully three-quarters...
Wild animals are integral to healthy ecosystems; even small changes in species composition may affect biodiversity. For example, a recent paper reports that an invasive ant from Mauritius has adversely affected lion predation in Kenya by reducing the impact of native ants who protect acacia...
Increasingly, the world recognizes human population growth, excess consumption, overuse of natural resources, and degradation of the natural environment as threats to planetary sustainability.Linear vs. Circular EconomyThe current global linear economic framework, characterized by resource extraction, product manufacture, and consumption, followed by product disposal, is...
IntroductionThe twenty-eighth session of the Conference of Parties (COP28) on climate change opened in Dubai on Thursday, 30 November, and is scheduled to last until Tuesday, 12 December. Early speakers included King Charles III and President Narendra Modi, who addressed a gathering that included more...
The climate conference in Dubai in December 2023 is the 28th such Conference of Parties (i.e. COP 28). The first such conference was held in Berlin in 1995. But, as economist Jeffrey Sachs opines, the world’s governments do not have much to show for their...
