Monday, 31 January 2011 18:48

Written by Benjamin Kolb

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Dining on crickets, locusts, or even cockroaches, instead of cattle or pigs, could ease both food insecurity and climate change, according to researchers.

Insects caught in the wild are already eaten widely in the developing world. Now a study says that farming them on a large scale for food would damage the environment far less than equivalent livestock production.

Scientists compared emissions, by livestock and by insects, of the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide, which have a greater warming effect than carbon dioxide. They also measured ammonia production, which harms the environment by acidifying soil and water.

Monday, 27 December 2010 20:01

Written by Carol Smith

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Whether you are glued to the final details or were completely uninspired to follow this year’s climate summit, one thing is for certain: you are unlikely to have heard of, much less read, more than a fraction of the reports launched there.

You would not be the only one, however. As the author of one such study reportedly told Earth Journalism Fellow Alexander Kelly last week:

“Negotiators don’t take studies into consideration. You know, you don’t expect them to pick it [the report] up and have it make a difference to what they’re saying now. That takes time.”

Indeed, the author confided that climate conferences actually double as a sort of trade show, a marketplace of ideas, where his particular report (that assesses and rates the vulnerability of 184 countries to different climate impacts) will hopefully make an impression and be stuffed into briefcases and read sooner or later.

Monday, 27 December 2010 00:55

Written by Servaas van den Bosch

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All over Northern Namibia farmers tell the same story: the growing season is getting shorter and shorter and the rains more and more unpredictable. The Namibian government is predicting severe effects from climate change.

"The kids drive me crazy," laments Ndaafetwa Hifekepunye. "After going through all that trouble to collect rainwater, they open the tap on the tank and spray the water around. If it wasn’t for that the water would last longer." Then Hifekepunye laughs and asks with a shrug, "What can you do? All children like to play with water." But her smiles fail to hide a sense of desperation.

Yes of course all children play with water, but here - in one of the driest places in Africa – a severe hiding is the appropriate response to such foolishness, Hifekepunye seems to think. Water is precious, not a plaything.

Adapting to a failing rainfall

The Omusati Region of northern Namibia is on the margins of what any farmer would consider arable land, with temperatures routinely hitting 40 degrees Celsius or more and rainfall seldom exceeding a pitiful 270 millimeters per year. To make matters worse 83 per cent of the little rain that does fall evaporates as soon as it hits the ground.

Monday, 18 October 2010 00:00

Written by IRIN jk/mw

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[JOHANNESBURG] If the Indus delta in southern Pakistan were protected by mangroves, a few hundred villages would have been saved from the floods, say Pakistani environmentalists.

Thriving mangroves are a sign of healthy ecosystems, which require fresh water and a bit of investment. "Unfortunately we have not had both," said Ghulam Hussain Khwaja, president of Sindh Radiant, an environmental NGO based in the delta region in Pakistan's southern Sindh province.

Friday, 16 July 2010 00:52

Written by Ed Gillespie

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Source: OurWorld 2.0

The limpid eyes of an endangered species of charismatic mega-fauna stare pleadingly from the page, accompanied by a suitably dramatic headline: “On the brink” or “Last chance to save”.

We’re all familiar with the imploring, urgent tone of so much of the campaigning communication around nature conservation, where the words biodiversity and extinction are almost automatically conjoined. In fact, they’re so inextricably linked that campaigners often seem to find it difficult to mention species without the qualifier, “under threat”.

But beyond the arguably effective role that the notion of a “world without tigers” may play in fund-raising for conservation campaigns, does this persistent message of loss actually engage the public beyond the minority of “biocentric” people for whom biodiversity has intrinsic value?