Environment Well-being Archive

Antarctic Glacier | Photo credit: Bernhard Staehli

Oct 04, 2021 Climate Change, Food Systems, and Health Impact at the United Nations

Posted at 12:03h In Articles, Environment Well-being, Letter from the President, Sustainability/Biodiversity, Well-being, WellBeing News - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

Three significant gatherings address various aspects of climate change, and global limits started in September and proceeded through early November. In September (21 to 27), the United Nations (UN) held its 76th annual meeting (also known as the General Assembly) in New York. During this...

Jun 15, 2021 How to Save our Planet: An 8-minute thought-provoking video from the World Wildlife Fund

Posted at 18:18h In Animal Well-being, Articles, Environment Well-being, Human Well-being, Oceans, Public Awareness/Attitudes, Tales of WellBeing - By Andrew Rowan

This video is worth watching simply to feast on the photographs and video images from around the world. The images are stunning, but they are freighted with warnings and eventually with an outline of specific goals that the video argues could help humans change the...

Glacier Lagoon in Greenland | Photo credit: Stereo Lights

May 28, 2021 The Human Footprint from the Last Ice Age to the Present

Posted at 10:25h In Articles, Environment Well-being, Sustainability/Biodiversity, WellBeing News - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

Around 20-25,000 years ago, the earth was in the grip of an Ice Age. The sea level was around 400 foot lower than it is today, global rainfall was lower and approximately a quarter of the earth’s surface was covered in ice. The earth then...

May 10, 2021 The Dasgupta Review and the Economics of Biodiversity

Posted at 10:40h In Articles, Environment Well-being, Public Awareness/Attitudes, Sustainability/Biodiversity, WellBeing News - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

Every now and again, a publication or report comes along that changes how we think about life. In the animal space, Ruth Harrison’s Animal Machines (1964) was such a publication. In the environmental space, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and the Club of Rome’s Limits...

Feb 26, 2021 “Making Peace with Nature”

Posted at 08:57h In Articles, Environment Well-being, Land Management, Letter from the President, Sustainability/Biodiversity, WellBeing News - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

This past month, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) issued a 168-page publication entitled Making Peace with Nature. The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, comments in a Foreword that “Humanity is waging war on nature” and “Making peace with nature is the defining task of the...

Jan 13, 2021 An African Conservation Cinderella Story

Posted at 10:36h In Animal Well-being, Articles, Environment Well-being, Tales of WellBeing, Wild Animals - By Guy Pfefferman

Once upon a time a remarkable lady, Anna Merz, decided to jettison her business and instead dedicate her life to trying to save black rhinos. She tells her story in Rhino at the Brink of Extinction.[1] These were the dark days during the time of...

Jan 13, 2021 Mangrove Restoration Supports People, Animals and Environment

Posted at 10:33h In Animal Well-being, Articles, Environment Well-being, Human Well-being, Tales of WellBeing - By Andrew Rowan

The Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) featured in the article on conservation management in this newsletter includes several member conservancies in Lamu County on Kenya’s coast who joined the NRT in 2013.The three eastern-most conservancies (Awer, Kiunga and Pate) have a combined area of 215,000 hectares...

Cattle Feedlot | Photo credit: Alf Ribeiro

Dec 29, 2020 Impact of Animal Agriculture on Land Use

Posted at 10:09h In Articles, Environment Well-being, Land Management, One Health, Sustainability/Biodiversity, WellBeing News - By Andrew Rowan

In an earlier ‘Letter from the President’ in WellBeing News (October 2020), we mentioned that the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO) has predicted that the production of animal products would have to double to meet global demand in 2050. This prediction...

Wind turbines and solar panels as alternative renewable energy.

Nov 02, 2020 Predicting the Future – or Managing for the Future?

Posted at 14:02h In Articles, Environment Well-being, Letter from the President, Population, Resources, Sustainability/Biodiversity, WellBeing News - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

A relatively recent saying, attributed to many different people, is that “prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” In contrast, Peter Drucker, the global management guru, is quoted as saying that “the best way to predict the future is to create it.” ...

While diving on a coral reef in Tahiti, French Polynesia, we crossed a hawksbill turtle resting on a ledge of the coral reef, about 20 meter deep. Once it noticed us, it turned towards us to check us out

Nov 02, 2020 Determining Historical Baselines in Ocean Ecosystems

Posted at 13:50h In Articles, Environment Well-being, Oceans, Sustainability/Biodiversity, WellBeing News - By Andrew Rowan

An earlier issue of WellBeing News explored the shifting historical baselines phenomenon. This phenomenon illustrates the tendency of ecologists to use recent wildlife population numbers as the baseline for their studies, even though the recent wildlife population may be much lower than the population 50...