Are the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games the most sustainable ever?
Photo taken by Vera Barbosa A report has just been published to update the 2005 BioRegional, WWF and London 2012 framework report on producing the most sustainable Olympic and Paralympic Games ever. The 2005 report, Towards a One Planet Olympics, became part of London’s bid and then part of London’s promise to the world. Towards…
Plant problems? No problem…
At CABI we’re always trying to deliver useful, relevant and timely scientific research, as well as help you find that needle of information in the haystack of data. Today we’re releasing another resource which does that – and it’s free! Today CABI announce the launch of a new online resource with information for all involved…
Mythbusting sports and exercise products
The Olympics are now only a week away, and watching the world's top athletes in action may inspire less elite sports participants to look for ways in which they can boost their own performance. There is a large industry offering all kinds of products claiming to do just that: sports drinks and supplements, shoes and…
Bioenergy – opportunities and challenges of sustainable production
From the 1970s to the 1990s, Brazil was the only country known to have successfully produced and used liquid biofuels in the form of sugarcane ethanol. Now hardly any country can be found that is not producing or considering biofuels production. The International Energy Agency predicts bioenergy will contribute up to 21% of the global…
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,…
Neglected tropical diseases: the future is multidisciplinary and ‘one health’
A new society has been born – the International Society for Neglected Tropical Diseases. The society’s reason for existence is to provide a space where people from different disciplines can meet and develop new ways to control neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). I went to their inaugural conference. The talks were many and varied as was…
Barking mad! can humans make more sense of barking dogs?
Dog barking can be a nuisance, but why do they do it? Elsa Flint of Massey University argues that we need a better understanding of why dogs bark if we are to find ways of managing and controlling this behaviour. In an article in CAB Reviews, Flint points out that domestic dogs bark in a…
Is the world better or worse than it was 20 years ago?
Focussing on the UN Sustainable Development Conference – Rio+20, which starts tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I came across an interesting interactive way to quickly assess if the world is doing better or worse than it did 20 years ago.
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…