From Alexandria to Aswan, urban gardening in Egypt is growing, especially on rooftops. The movement wants to be allowed to develop without the prying policies of a government that has other priorities.
Category: Green Or Gone
PARIS — Our fair-minded but ever subjective staff of journalists, translators and editors have chosen what we believe to be the year’s most engaging and provocative stories. Why The Chinese Are So Good, But Rarely Great CHINA / Caixin, Jan .5 That Slippery Euphemism We Call “Cultural Differences” FRANCE / Worldcrunch, Jan. 15 Artificial Intelligence […]
SÃO PAULO — When the dam at the iron ore mine in Mariana burst more than a month ago, killing at least 15 people, it was quickly described as Brazil‘s worst ecological disaster ever. The 40 billion liters of toxic mud unleashed in the central state of Minas Gerais, destroyed houses, roads, and left many […]
“Saving the Planet” isn’t enough. Activists must begin to think about other ways to push people towards an ecological approach to life.
PECS — When they first took the plunge two years ago, farmers around Pécs may have only seen it as a way to improve profit margins. Certainly nothing wrong with that. But as time went by, their foray into alternative energy production turned out to be much for this group of 50 pioneers, who live […]
Muslims are supposed to save water, Christians and Jews energy. In the past, we blamed those ideologies for ecological crises.
NAUBISE — In the village of Naubise, about 90-minute drive from the capital Kathmandu, farmer Nirbhaya Sapkota is experimenting with crop rotation, mixed cropping and even intercropping — anything to maintain soil fertility and moisture. Sapkota, 45, and others this area are contending first-hand with the effects of climate change, which is particularly hard-hitting in Nepal because of its high poverty rates and low adaptive capacity. The major earthquake that struck in April has complicated matters even more. But in this community, at least, Sapkota and other smallholder farmers refuse to go down without a fight. With the help of […]
PARIS — France, the host of the COP21, has in its hands the most vital mission it has ever been entrusted with: spare humanity the irreversible disaster that would come from a two-degree rise of the globe’s average temperature by this century’s end, compared to the pre-industrial era. There will be no second chance. We […]
The Quirimbas islands in northwestern Mozambique is the front line in the war on over-fishing.
Though 146 countries have pledged to fight global warming ahead of the UN’s COP21 conference, market realities and other forces means such commitments are unlikely to materialize.
An EU report issued to member states seven years ago offered an eerily accurate warning of what was to come — that areas affected by global warming and political tension (Yemen, Syria, etc.) would be vulnerable to destabilization.
Brazil has utterly failed to find an environmentally friendly response to waste disposal. The struggling economy makes change unlikely, meaning ever more garbage “pickers” making modest livings sifting through the dumps.
Traditional local populations are facing the brunt of the environmental fallout in the massive lake between Bolivia and Peru.
The MIT-educated activist and scientist travels the world to condemn the effects of multinationals on the environment. Her recent project in Bern was the 3D modeling of oceans.
-Editorial- BOGOTÁ — Colombia’s more than half-century old civil war has been, if nothing else, an environmental calamity. Besides causing tens of thousands of deaths and forcing millions from their homes, the protracted fighting between state forces, left-wing guerrilla forces and right-wing gangs has led to massive amounts of crude oil being poured into the country’s rivers, streams and wetlands. Data released by the oil industry suggests that over the past 30 years, some 4 million barrels of crude have been dumped in Colombia. That’s 10 times the amount the infamous Exxon Valdez tanker released off the coast of Alaska […]
Pope Francis’ recent encyclical on the climate had a major blind spot: cattle farming and meat consumption. Nowhere is the damage more evident than his native Latin America.
Buildings, tarmac and air conditioning are turning some cities into fetid, airless saunas. Experts urge more trees and grass to mitigate the heat of increasingly hot cement jungles.
Greeks are used to making history, and they’re at it again. What will last month’s election victory of Alexis Tsipras and his anti-austerity Syriza party mean for the future beyond Greece? And more specifically, could it mark a turning point for the urgent global issue of environmental change? A not-so-subtle fil rouge exists between economic […]
Helped by access to social media, environmental activists are calling for efficient measures against the scourge of pollution and degradation. A whiff of Western-style protest in the air.
PALAWAN — For 25 years, Filipino lawyer Gerthie Mayo-Anda has tirelessly campaigned for better legal protection of the environment. Often called a forest hero, in the 1990s she established the Environmental Legal Assistance Center (ELAC) to halt environmental destruction through court. “I thought it was important to establish a public interest environmental law group where my knowledge and skills as a lawyer can be utilized to help the poor and marginalized communities,” she says. Her group has filed dozens of cases against illegal logging, fishing and mining. “For now, the most difficult field is mining and coal because the parties […]
An experiment in the Amazon forest will test a hypothesis that higher levels of CO2, due to climate change, can avert the drought and high temperatures it was supposed to cause.