Worldcrunch
Updated August 21, 2024 at 11:00 a.m. Brazil reports fires burning in the Amazon Rainforest at unprecedented rate on this day in 2019. How extensive were the fires in the Amazon rainforest? The fires in the Amazon rainforest of 2019 were widespread, affecting multiple countries in the region. The exact extent of the fires varied, […]
NEW DELHI — I had never given thought to the provenance of funeral wood, until news reports revealed in late April that officials in Delhi had begun receiving requests to chop trees in city parks amidst the colossal surge in COVID deaths. It was a jolting statement to encounter, for it forced me to reframe a life-giver into a death-enabler in ominously stripped, urgent terms. Wood, of course, had been used for cremation since ancient times, but to think of it as coming from our very midst instead of some sequestered supply-area bore a sting of abrasiveness. Would our public […]
PARIS – “We’re proud to be pioneers…” It was a few days before Christmas, and Air France CEO Anne Rigail had a smile on her face, as she sat in an armchair surrounded by other noteworthy personalities, including Bertrand Piccard, co-pilot of the solar-powered plane Solar Impulse. Rigail was relishing the impact of an announcement […]
BOGOTA — Maybe money does grow on trees. This week, in the Ciudad del Río sector of Medellín, Colombia’s second largest city, passersby were surprised to see a tree “flowering” with banknotes. Fastened to the tree’s branches (with laundry clips) were real peso bills. Too good to be true? Some people seemed to think so […]
LUBHU — How do you celebrate your birthday? By throwing a party and cutting a cake? In Nepal some people plant a tree instead. Making tea at home in her village 11 kilometers outside Kathmandu, Sunita Poudel says, “Forests are everything for us. We are dependent on wood and grass. Some of my neighbors cook with small sticks from the forest — they are very poor and can’t afford gas stoves. I have some cows and goats, so I also need grass from the forest every day.” But due to mismanagement, the forest around the village of Lubhu is in […]
Who’d have thought Lebanon’s cedars could actually root out loud for their own preservation? The country’s Ministries of Environment and Education have helped a team of bioacoustic engineers extract the natural sounds emitted in the Barouk Forest by a cedar tree, the endangered national symbol of Lebanon. They then let Beirut-based DJ ESC work his […]
Japanese artist Hiroshi Sunairi has a personal connection with Hiroshima. Apart from growing up in the city, his mother and grandmother were exposed to radiation when the atomic bomb dropped on the city in 1945. Many years later, while working with the Hiroshima museum, Sunairi attended a lecture by botanist Chikara Horiguchi who spoke about Hibaku trees, some of the so-called “silent survivors’ of that fateful day. “I was really moved by his work and philosophy. He talks about trees and nature not having an ideology, but they can symbolize a lot of things if we think about them alongside […]
CLARIN (Argentina) Worldcrunch BUENOS AIRES – The old-growth forests of South America’s Patagonia region are now, more than at any time in the past 600 years, extremely slow growth, according to researchers from Argentina’s National Council of Scientific and Technical Research, or CONICET. What’s causing the slow down? The scientists point to ozone depletion in […]