One of the fascinating aspects of science is that the more we learn, the more we discover there is to be learned. Led by curiosity and our desire to understand, we investigate the wonders of the universe, only to find it more wondrous than we imagined.
Human nature being as it is, much of what we [...]
Demand for water has never been as great as it is today, and it will only increase due to population growth and mobility, rising living standards, changes in food consumption, and increased energy production, especially biofuels. Access to basic water-related services (safe drinking water, sanitation and food production) remains inadequate in much of the developing [...]
Shifting seasons are destroying harvests and causing widespread hunger, and that is just one of the multiple climate change impacts taking their toll on the world’s poorest people, according to a recent report from Oxfam International. Oxfam is a U.K.-based confederation of 14 like-minded organizations working together and with partners and allies around the world [...]
Global population numbers are on track to reach 7 billion in 2011, just 12 years after reaching 6 billion in 1999. Virtually all of the growth is in developing countries. And the growth of the world’s youth population (ages 15 to 24) is shifting into the poorest of those countries.
The Population Reference Bureau’s 2009 World [...]
“It doesn’t matter if it’s contaminated, you have to eat,” says a 40-year old day laborer from Ecuador in a New York Daily News piece about fishing in the waters surrounding New York City.
In tough economic times, people will do whatever it takes to keep their families from going hungry, and for those particularly cash-strapped, [...]
Entirely too many items in our inbox to wait for the weekend…
How Did 100,000,000 Women Disappear?
In India, China and sub-Saharan Africa, millions upon millions of women are missing. They are not lost, but dead: victims of violence, discrimination and neglect.
Microbes Eat Hydrocarbons, Leave Behind Non-toxic Residue
ScienceDaily reports that researchers in China have found a new [...]
Mountaintop mining, more commonly known as “mountaintop removal,†ranks among the ugliest and most violent examples of man’s disrespect for nature.
Most prevalent in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, mountaintop mining became widespread in the 1980s, and involves literally blasting up to 1,000 feet from the tops of mountains to expose the [...]
Delivering food security to an additional one billion people in Africa will become ever more challenging over the next four decades unless more intelligent management of natural resources and emerging opportunities are brought to bear.
In addressing this and other similar crises, the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development provided some new and sobering costs on how [...]
Human-induced environmental change causes significant increases in emerging infectious diseases in both wildlife and human population, says Wildlife Trust conservation scientist Dr. Alonso Aguirre as published in the New York Academy of Sciences journal.
The driving factors of environmental change include deforestation, urban sprawl, transportation infrastructures, climate change, and the control of water resources for dams, [...]
Women are more likely than men to be killed by natural disasters such as cyclones, hurricanes, floods and heat waves,according to research by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Such disasters are on the rise as a result of climate change. A sample of 141 countries from 1981 to 2002 found such disasters [...]
