Soil Restoration Vital To Climate Change Mitigation A soil scientist at The Ohio State University, earned the 2019 Japan Prize, considered one of the most prestigious honors in science and technology. Rattan Lal is the first Ohio State scientist and the first soil scientist to ever receive the prize. He is Distinguished University Professor of […]
EU Targeting Biofuel Applications The latest European Union plan to ban palm oil has been defeated, but the anti-palm oil forces in Europe have only just begun. The different lawmaking arms of the EU — the European Commission, Parliament and the Council — recently reached a compromise on the bloc’s revised renewable energy regulations, known […]
Hunger, Poverty Add To Migration And Conflict Every year, 12 million hectares of land are degraded because of drought and desertification. The Food and Agriculture Organization Of The United Nations hopes to reverse that trend and return land to agriculture production. A major EU-funded FAO-programme called Action Against Desertification has paved the way for large-scale […]
Soil Depletion Releasing Carbon Into Atmosphere By Ellen Wulfhorst, Thomson Reuters Foundation Agriculture has contributed nearly as much to climate change as deforestation by intensifying global warming, according to U.S. research that has quantified the amount of carbon taken from the soil by farming. Some 133 billion tons of carbon have been removed from the […]
Deforestation Threatens Biodiversity Today is the International Day of Forests. Deforestation is a major contributor to global warming, wildlife extinction, droughts and other threats to life as we know it. Forests are the most biologically-diverse ecosystems on land, and home to more than 80 percent of all known terrestrial species of animals and plants. They […]
Although it is possible to produce most things in a sustainable way, it’s not possible to grow large volumes of palm oil in a truly sustainable way–one that protects and promotes biodiversity. Most of these plantations are consuming a massive footprint in what used to be our tropical rainforests. In most cases, owners of the palm […]
Most Africans Rely On Farming Judging from the daily outpouring of commentary, opinions and reports, you would think that there were two African continents. One of them is the new land of opportunity, with seven of the world’s 10 fastest growing economies, offering limitless possibilities to investors. There is, however, this other image: a starving […]
Climate Change Drying Up California It’s an ironic twist of fate. After serving as an oasis during the dust bowl, California is rapidly becoming a dust bowl itself thanks to the worst drought on record mixed with a record high population. While researchers have sometimes connected weather extremes to man-made global warming, usually it’s not […]
Global Warming An Industrial Experiment By Naomi Klein One of the most disturbing ways that climate change is already playing out is through what ecologists call “mismatch” or “mistiming.” This is the process whereby warming causes animals to fall out of step with a critical food source, particularly at breeding times, when a failure to […]
Reforestation, Forest Conservation Fights Climate Change The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) mitigation report, released Sunday in Berlin, explores some 1,200 scenarios to avert the worsening effects of global warming by 2100. The proposals range from planting more trees to relying much more on nuclear power. “This report is a wake-up call about global economic opportunity […]