New Video: Water Wars or Water Woes?

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Emhgb_8ZwA&hl=nl&fs=1] In the new video ‘Water Wars or Water Woes? Water Management as Conflict Management’ Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) Director Geoff Dabelko explains that although newspapers and politicians constantly warn of impending “water wars,” water rarely leads to interstate violence. By focusing on “water wars,” which evidence shows are extremely rare, we…
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Invaders – the good, the bad and the ugly…

Not all invasive species are bad, and in the case of plants it seems that they usually increase biodiversity rather than making native plants extinct. A recent article in PNAS by Dov Sax, an ecologist at Brown University and Steven Gaines, a marine biologist at the University of California, investigates how species invasions and extinction…
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Live Webcast of a meeting of the board that finances projects on cleaning the environment in developing countries

<!– /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Arial; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} @page Section1 {size:595.3pt 841.9pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –> The Live Webcast of the 3rd Meeting of the Adaptation…
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The Environmental Impact of NutritionandFoodSciences…dot org

We’ve explored obesity in many different forms during the course of this year and if you’re a regular Handpicked reader (enter your email in the box on the left and click on ‘subscribe’ to become one if you’re not already), you’ll by now be well aware of a recurring theme in our nutrition posts. Energy.…
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Pollinator Presence Plummets

<!– /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Arial; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –> National Wildlife Week in Canada was from 6-12 April and this year’s theme was pollinators. Hot on its heels was…
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The first great ape to go extinct?

A worrying thought indeed that any of our great apes should be facing extinction yet a paper recently published in Oryx reveals the latest figures for orang-utans in the wild …and it doesn’t make for comfortable reading.
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Water recycling – bathing in greywater!

Yes, it is happening already! Greywater, which is non-industrial wastewater generated from domestic processes such as dish washing, laundry and bathing, comprises more than 50% of residential wastewater. It gets its name from its cloudy appearance and from its status as being neither fresh (white/clear potable water), nor heavily polluted (blackwaters). Hence it has the…
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Hide and seek: 125,000 gorillas found in Congo

Thomas Breuer ©WCS-Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology More than 125,000 western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) have been discovered deep in the isolated forests of the Republic of Congo. This new find is a huge boost to their population, at least doubling estimates to between 175,000 and 225,000. The gorillas were found during the…
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…get out of the kitchen

One of the implications of all this energy we waste to swap coffee and wheat is that we’re giving climate change a helping hand. The contribution made by today’s food production systems to climate change globally will have tremendous impacts on the food it produces in the future. So this week, in a document much…
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First PEFC certified construction project

It may look like a large, odd-shaped mud hut but this is actually the Beacon building at the Zaragoza 08 Expo, the water and sustainable development expo running until 14 September in Spain. In July this became the first construction project in the world to be certified to the PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of…
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