Tourism and water: are local communities losing out?
As my colleague Vera Barbosa said in her blog last week, here at CABI HQ in the UK we have been experiencing our wettest spring and early summer on record. Not surprisingly therefore, when going on holiday many of those who are able like to jet off to parts of the world where we can…
Climate change: what is Europe doing to adapt?
I heard in the BBC weather forecast for the UK this morning that some regions of the UK will receive over 40 mm of rain today, which is the amount we would normally get for the whole of the month of July. Here in the UK, we had the wettest April on record this year,…
Rio+20 – Platform now open for voting on solutions to achieve ‘the future we want’
Banner from http://vote.riodialogues.org/?l=en It is only 8 days to the start of the Rio+20 UN Conference, where world leaders, along with thousands of participants from governments, the private sector, NGOs and other groups, will come together to shape how we can reduce poverty, advance social equility and ensure environmental protection to get to the future…
The Future of Our Forests
I recently attended ‘Future Forestry’, the Institute of Chartered Foresters’ Annual Conference. The speakers were excellent and covered a wide range of topics – from the changing world in forest management through to forest research in a changing climate. The presentations are all now freely available to view on the ICF website if you’d like…
REDD and forest carbon – finding a path through the trees
Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) is a key concept in trying to tackle climate change. The core idea is that a way can be found to fund the avoidance of deforestation and forest degradation, thus reducing carbon emissions. But will it work? Rainforest, Santa Elena, Costa Rica Dirk van der Mad Frances Seymour,…
Mystery disease in Ethiopia solved: linked to weed toxin
Imagine this… A mysterious disease terrorising your community, not infectious but spreading nonetheless, and killing your relatives and neighbours. All you want to do is pack your bags and flee. Worse, when your plight comes to the attention of the health authorities, they are stumped and its not going to be easy or quick to…
“Precipitationsheds” – a new concept for water science!
It is well known that precipitation derives in part from evaporation from oceans and in part from recycled moisture from terrestrial surfaces. In fact, a new model by van der Ent et al. (2010), which was highlighted in an International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) presentation demonstrates that up to 50% of rainfall in many areas…
Towards an ecology of belief: The limits of science for preserving public parks
The following guest article was written by Will La Page, author of the new book "Rethinking Park Protection: Treading the Uncommon Ground of Environmental Beliefs", which has just been published by CABI. It describes the inspiration for the book and for the thinking behind it. A small group of park scientists friends were sitting around…
Mobilize the Earth – Earth Day 22 April 2012
More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world.
Forests on the move
Studies on ‘natural’ and ‘forced’ migration of forests threatened by climate change. A multi-European project trying to anticipate the effects of climate change on forests is taking shape. In parts of Europe, established forest trees are showing signs of vulnerability – such as drought stress – as their ‘climate niche’ changes. An ambitious long-term project…