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News articles on Sustainability

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Mongabay.com news articles on sustainability in blog format. Updated regularly.

Can China Go Green?
(1/3/2008) China's booming economic growth over the past generation has come at the expense of the environment, putting its economic health at risk, argues a policy piece published in the journal Science.


Marriage is "greener" than divorce, finds study
(12/3/2007) Divorce has previously unrecognized environmental impacts including higher demand for resources and lower efficiency in household resource use, reports a new study published in the early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


Video game-makers score low on sustainability
(11/27/2007) While environmentalists, scientists, development exports, and policymakers across the political spectrum are ethusiastic about the idea of offsetting carbon emissions by preventing deforestation (a concept known as "avoided deforestation" or Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD)), the concept still faces many challenges, especially in implementation.


China urged to join sustainable soy efforts in the Amazon
(9/12/2007) Brazilian soy crushers have urged China to join an alliance to promote sustainable soybean production in the Amazon, according to Reuters. Brazil, soon to be the world's largest producer of soybeans, recently formed the Global Roundtable on Responsible Soy Association as concerns grow that global demand for biofuels will level the Amazon rainforest. Environmentalists say demand from China is playing an important role in surging soybean production in the region.


Guidelines to ensure biofuels production won't hurt the environment
(8/30/2007) Environmentalists have long seen biofuels as a means to improve the sustainability of transportation and energy use since they are a renewable source of energy that can be replenished on an ongoing basis. Further, because biofuels are generally derived from plants, which absorb carbon from the atmosphere as they grow, biofuel production offers the potential to help offset carbon dioxide emissions and mitigate climate change. Nonetheless, in recent years, there has been considerable backlash against biofuels, which are increasingly viewed as a threat to the environment. Green groups now point to large-scale land conversion for energy crops, higher food prices, and a spate to studies that suggest net emissions from corn ethanol are little better than those from fossil fuels, to caution that biofuels can cause more problems than they address.


Business has to lead the Clean Up of the Enviroment
(8/30/2007) Though the next two and-a-bit years will remain in a sort of ecological standstill, the remaining century is going to be the boiling point for earth. Will it crumble in to a roiling mass of disaster or will we finally manage to remove such a deep imprint as we have made over the past 30 years in the next 10.


Wall Street looks at energy efficiency to boost profits
(8/27/2007) Today the Wall Street Journal featured a special section on energy efficiency. The paper reports that business is increasingly looking at reducing energy use as a way to improve the bottom line.


Organic, shade grown cacao good for birds
(8/9/2007) Bird diversity in cacao farms in Panama is considerably higher when crops are grown in the shade of canopy trees, reports a study published earlier this year in Biodiversity Conservation. The research has implications for biodiversity conservation and the sustainability of cacao plantations.


Wal-Mart demand drives "greener" shrimp farms
(7/24/2007) Wal-Mart's demand for sustainably-produced products is driving "greener" production of shrimp in Thailand, reports the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).


In Alaska, fishing industry drives marine conservation
(7/24/2007) Alaska's fisheries are some of the richest in the world, with fishermen harvesting hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of salmon, crab, herring, halibut, pollock, and groundfish every year. However, such bounty has not always been the case. Over-exploitation and poor fisheries management in the 1940s and 1950s took a heavy toll on the industry. Born of this difficult origin, today Alaska sets the bar in fisheries management. Unusually for natural resource management, industry is leading the way, relying on dialog with scientists to determine catch levels and where to designate "no-fishing zones", while pushing for certification standards for sustainable seafood products. These efforts are coordinated by the Marine Conservation Alliance (MCA), an industry-backed nonprofit based in Juneau, Alaska. In July 2007, David Benton, executive director of the Marine Conservation Alliance, spoke with mongabay.com about MCA's work in Alaska.


Can organic farming feed the world?
(7/12/2007) Contrary to popular belief, organic farming can produce enough to feed the world, reports a new study published in Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems.


Ford Motor to introduce plug-in hybrids, but lags behind rivals
(7/10/2007) Monday Ford Motor Co. announced a partnership with utility Southern California Edison to test a fleet of plug-in hybrid (PHEV) vehicles in an effort to make the technology more accessible to consumers, reduce petroleum-related emissions and improve the cost-effectiveness of the nation's electricity grid.


McDonald's bolsters eco credentials with recycled biodiesel
(7/9/2007) McDonald's Corp. (Public, NYSE:MCD), the fast-food chain, has bolstered its 'green' credentials by announcing that its UK distribution fleet will be powered by biodiesel made of recycled cooking oil from its restaurants. While the move is expected to save only around 1,675 tons of carbon annually, environmentalists say it sets an important precedent for the parent company and the fast-food industry as a whole.


World's largest movement has no leader but 100M employees
(6/11/2007) The world's largest movement has no name, no leader, and no ideology, but may directly involve more than 100 million people, said a green business pioneer.


Can cattle ranchers and soy farmers save the Amazon?
(6/6/2007) John Cain Carter, a Texas rancher who moved to the heart of the Amazon 11 years ago and founded what is perhaps the most innovative organization working in the Amazon, Alianca da Terra, believes the only way to save the Amazon is through the market. Carter says that by giving producers incentives to reduce their impact on the forest, the market can succeed where conservation efforts have failed. What is most remarkable about Alianca's system is that it has the potential to be applied to any commodity anywhere in the world. That means palm oil in Borneo could be certified just as easily as sugar cane in Brazil or sheep in New Zealand. By addressing the supply chain, tracing agricultural products back to the specific fields where they were produced, the system offers perhaps the best market-based solution to combating deforestation. Combining these approaches with large-scale land conservation and scientific research offers what may be the best hope for saving the Amazon.


Globalization could save the Amazon rainforest
(6/3/2007) The Amazon basin is home to the world's largest rainforest, an ecosystem that supports perhaps 30 percent of the world's terrestrial species, stores vast amounts of carbon, and exerts considerable influence on global weather patterns and climate. Few would dispute that it is one of the planet's most important landscapes. Despite its scale, the Amazon is also one of the fastest changing ecosystems, largely as a result of human activities, including deforestation, forest fires, and, increasingly, climate change. Few people understand these impacts better than Dr. Daniel Nepstad, one of the world's foremost experts on the Amazon rainforest. Now head of the Woods Hole Research Center's Amazon program in Belem, Brazil, Nepstad has spent more than 23 years in the Amazon, studying subjects ranging from forest fires and forest management policy to sustainable development. Nepstad says the Amazon is presently at a point unlike any he's ever seen, one where there are unparalleled risks and opportunities. While he's hopeful about some of the trends, he knows the Amazon faces difficult and immediate challenges.


Reducing tropical deforestation will help fight global warming
(5/10/2007) Scientists have lent support to a plan by developing countries to fight global warming by reducing deforestation rates. Tropical deforestation releases more than 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year, though in some years, like the 1997-1998 el Nino year when fires released some 2 billion tons of carbon from peat swamps alone in Indonesia, emissions are more than twice that. Writing in the journal Science, an international team of scientists argue that the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation (RED) initiative, launched in 2005 by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is scientifically and technologically sound, and that political and economic challenges facing the plan can be overcome.


Ecosystems are capital assets argues report
(5/7/2007) Global ecosystems should be treated as capital assets argues a new report released today by the World Resources Institute (WRI). The new WRI report examines trends revealed in the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) by the U.N. and puts forth an agenda for business, governments, and civil society to reverse ecosystem degradation.


Better forest policies would reduce illegal logging in the Amazon
(5/6/2007) Brazil could improve sustainable forest management, reduce illegal logging, and perhaps cuts deforestation by introducing coherent policies for timber operations in the Amazon rainforest argues a new paper published in Frontiers in Ecology. However, successful implementation of sustainable timber production will require overcoming significant biological and political hurdles, suggest the authors.


Dutch plan restricts biofuels that damage environment
(4/29/2007) The Netherlands has proposed a system to reduce the environmental impact of biofuels production. The country becomes the first in the world to establish such guidelines. Environmentalists have expressed increasing concern for the establishment of energy crops in biodiverse and carbon-rich ecosystems like the peatlands of Indonesia and the Amazon rainforest. They say that conversion of these forests for oil palm and soybeans is threatening endangered species and worsening global warming. Further, they warn, demand for such biomass energy products is driving up prices for food crops.


Dutch will demand rainforest-friendly palm oil
(4/27/2007) In a report scheduled to be released today, the Dutch government will outline criteria for growing biofuels in a more sustainable manner. The guidelines will be closely watched by the rest of Europe, which is currently struggling with the environmental pros and cons of large-scale energy crop production, especially in ecologically-sensitive areas like the Amazon and Indonesian rainforests.


Renewable chemicals for green plastics gain ground
(4/19/2007) A bio-plastics revival is furthering driving up commodity prices according to an article in today's Wall Street Journal. The article reports that high oil prices are leading manufacturers to substitute agricultural produce-based plastics for petroleum-based plastics.


Luxury designers are clueless when it comes to green fashion
(4/19/2007) While cutting-edge designers use eco-friendly fabrics made from the likes of bamboo and hemp to craft comfortable and stylish clothes that have a reduced impact on the planet, 'green' fashion has been slow to take off at the luxury level, reports an article in today's Wall Street Journal.


Measures to drive adoption of super efficient cars in the U.S.
(4/11/2007) To reduce its growing dependence on foreign oil the United States could implement relatively low-cost measures to put millions of super efficient vehicles on American highways, said energy efficiency expert Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute in a speech at Stanford University. The measures could significantly cut oil usage, help fight climate change, and make U.S. roads safer.


Palm oil doesn't have to be bad for the environment
(4/4/2007) As traditionally practiced in southeast Asia, oil palm cultivation is responsible for widespread deforestation that reduces biodiversity, degrades important ecological services, worsens climate change, and traps workers in inequitable conditions sometimes analogous to slavery. This doesn't have to be the case. Following examples set forth by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and firms like Golden Hope Plantations Berhad, a Malaysian palm oil producer, oil palm can be cultivated in a manner that helps mitigate climate change, preserves biodiversity, and brings economic opportunities to desperately poor rural populations.


Eco-friendly palm oil could help alleviate poverty in Indonesia
(4/3/2007) The Associated Press (AP) recently quoted Marcel Silvius, a climate expert at Wetlands International in the Netherlands, as saying palm oil is a failure as a biofuel. This would be a misleading statement and one that doesn't help efforts to devise a workable solution to the multiplicity of issues surrounding the use of palm oil.


Littering with new plastic might not harm dolphins, sea turtles
(3/28/2007) A new environmentally friendly plastic that degrades in seawater may make it possible to toss plastic waste overboard without killing turtles, dolphins and other marine life, according to research presented at the 233rd national meeting of the American Chemical Society by scientists from the University of Southern Mississippi.


Cell phone batteries could be powered by OJ
(3/26/2007) Researchers at Saint Louis University in Missouri have developed a fuel cell battery that can run on virtually any sugar source -- from orange juice to tree sap -- and may last three to four times longer than conventional lithium ion batteries.


Carbon offset schemes damage environment says report
(2/21/2007) Existing carbon offset schemes are confusing and may be damaging the environment rather than helping fight climate change says a new report by the Transnational Institute, a Dutch pressure group that runs carbontradewatch.org.


Green construction booms as housing market tanks
(2/21/2007) While the residential housing market goes bust, the green construction sector is weathering the storm nicely, according to an article in today's Wall Street Journal.


Balloon technology could cut cost of solar energy 90% by 2010
(2/21/2007) With high energy prices and mounting concerns over human-induced climate change, there is intense interest in renewable energy, especially solar, which produces no pollution and is readily available in the form of sunlight. In recent years, however, the solar energy market has been hampered by supply shortages of refined silicon, the critical resource needed for solar cell fabrication. Further, because solar installations traditionally require a large surface area to capture as much sunlight as possible, solar arrays often take up real estate, occupying land used agricultural production and other purposes. Without government subsidies, solar is not presently viable in many areas.


Largest firms to cut global warming emissions
(2/20/2007) More than 100 top executives from the private sector and leaders of international governmental and non-governmental organizations unveileved a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions. They said governments need to take immediate steps to stop global warming.


$25 million prize to fight global warming
(2/12/2007) Friday Sir Richard Branson and Al Gore announced the establishment of a $25 million prize for the development of a technology that fights global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The prize follows in the footsteps of the X Prize, a contest that was won by the SpaceShipOne rocket plane as the first privately developed craft to reach the boundary of outer space.


HSBC gives Smithsonian $8 million to study global warming impact on forests
(2/12/2007) HSBC, one of the world's largest banks, today announced an $8 million grant to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) to fund the world's largest field experiment on the long-term effects of climate change on forest dynamics. The grant will enable STRI to expand the research capability of its Center for Tropical Forest Science, a network of tropical forest research stations across 20 sites in 17 countries.


Wal-Mart looks to eliminate non-renewable energy product offerings
(2/1/2007) Wal-Mart Stores announced a new Sustainability 360 environmental initiative on Thursday, encouraging employees, suppliers, communities and customers to reduce the company's direct environmental footprint.


Starbucks, Earthwatch team up to improve eco-friendly coffee
(2/1/2007) Earthwatch Institute, a leading environmental volunteering organization, and Starbucks Coffee Company announced they will team up to support environmentally-friendly coffee plantations in Costa Rica..


California bill would outlaw incandescent lightbulbs to help fight global warming
(1/31/2007) This week California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys) will introduce legislation that would ban the sale of incandescent light bulbs in California by the year 2012. Levine says that incandescent light bulbs waste energy and better, more-cost alternatives are available.


Savvy environmentalists challenge corporations to go green
(1/29/2007) Increasing rates of tropical deforestation in the 1970s and 1980s helped trigger the rise of several forest activist groups specifically interested in rainforests. Among the earliest of these organizations was the Rainforest Action Network (RAN). Founded in 1985 by Randall Hayes, RAN lead its first direct campaign in 1987 against Burger King, which at the time was using beef raised on deforested lands in Central America. In response to the nationwide boycott, which caused sales to drop 12%, Burger King canceled $35 million worth of beef contracts from the region and announced they would no longer import beef from the rainforest. Hailed as a major victory for rainforest protection, RAN initiated consumer boycotts of other firms engaged in destructive practices, eventually developing an effective strategy for promoting change at the corporate level. Today San Francisco-based RAN has expanded well beyond its original mission of protecting rainforests. Recently dubbed "the most savvy environmental agitators in the business" by the Wall Street Journal, the small but efficient organization (36 staff members and a $3 million budget) pressures some of the world's largest and most respected firms -- including Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Home Depot, and Boise Cascade -- to adopt wide-ranging green policies that impact everything from where they source their energy to how they finance development projects.


Are Brazil nuts really sustainable?
(12/20/2006) A lot of rainforest conservation initiatives embrace sustainably harvested non-timber forest products (NTFPs) like seeds and nuts as a means to provide income to locals without harming the forest. Operating on the premise that such products are eco-friendly, hundreds of outfits ranging from Whole Foods to the Body Shop to Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream tout their use of sustainably harvested Brazil nuts and related products. But really, how sustainable are these products?


China launches green buying policy
(12/19/2006) China's Ministry of Finance and the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) announced that starting in 2007, the country's central and provincial governments will prioritize their purchasing of environmentally friendly products and services.


New Zealand implements 'green timber' policy
(12/19/2006) New Zealand's government will only buy timber and wood products only from legally and sustainably managed forests according to a new policy paper put out Monday by the minstry of forestry.


Does green investing pay as well as conventional investing?
(12/17/2006) Socially responsible investing is now a major Wall Street trend. But the real question is this: Can you make as much dough when you're being virtuous?


How to cut paper waste when printing web sites
(12/7/2006) A new service reduces paper waste when printing web sites according to a column by Walt Mossberg in today's Wall Street Journal. Mossberg highlights GreenPrint, software that analyzes documents before printing to minimize paper waste.


Green computing - Dell releases energy-saving server
(12/4/2006) Dell released a premium line of energy-efficient servers that consume considerably less power than regular models, joining a list of firms that offer consumers 'greener' products.


Amazon Indians use Google Earth, GPS to protect forest home
(11/14/2006) Deep in the most remote jungles of South America, Amazon Indians are using Google Earth, Global Positioning System (GPS) mapping, and other technologies to protect their fast-dwindling home. Tribes in Suriname, Brazil, and Colombia are combining their traditional knowledge of the rainforest with Western technology to conserve forests and maintain ties to their history and cultural traditions, which include profound knowledge of the forest ecosystem and medicinal plants. Helping them is the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT), a nonprofit organization working with indigenous people to conserve biodiversity, health, and culture in South American rainforests.


Showerhead cuts water use by injecting air bubbles
(11/9/2006) As Australians become increasingly alert to the importance of using water wisely in the home, CSIRO researchers have found a way to use a third less water when you shower -- by adding air. The scientists have developed a simple 'air shower' device which, when fitted into existing showerheads, fills the water droplets with a tiny bubble of air. The result is the shower feels just as wet and just as strong as before, but now uses much less water.


Shark biomimicry produces renewable energy system
(11/1/2006) An Australian firm has developed a renewable tidal energy conversion system based on the highly efficient fin structure of shark, tuna, and mackerel. BioPower Systems Pty Ltd., a renewable energy systems company based in Eveleigh, New South Wales, says that its bioSTREAM technology for converting tidal and marine current energy into electricity is modeled on biological species, such as shark and tuna, that use Thunniform-mode swimming propulsion.


Bacteria can generate renewable energy from pollution, help fight global warming
(10/26/2006) Currently, most energy production generates carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming and local pollution. At the same time that carbon dioxide concentrations are rising in the atmosphere, fueling higher temperatures, burgeoning population growth of humans and livestock is producing ever-increasing amounts of organic pollution and waste. Now researchers at the Center for Biotechnology at the Biodesign Institute of Arizona State University are working on a way to solve both problems using bacteria to convert organic wastes into a source of electricity. Bruce Rittmann, Director of the Center for Environmental Biotechnology at the Biodesign Institute, and his team of researchers are developing microbial fuel cells (MFC) that can oxidize organic pollutants and create electricity from pollution.


Bacteria can ensure clean water say researchers
(10/24/2006) Water is shaping up to be one of the most critical problems facing humanity. With water consumption far outstripping population growth rates due to surging industrial and agricultural demand, the World Bank estimates that 40 percent of the world's population -- more than 2.5 billion people -- are enduring some form of water scarcity. In China, where massive river relocation projects to shift water from the south to the dry north are under consideration, an official government survey found that some 300 million Chinese drink unsafe water tainted by chemicals and other contaminants, while 90% of China's cities have polluted ground water. Elsewhere, development experts say that access to reliable, safe and affordable water is key to poverty alleviation efforts and that addressing declining groundwater supplies and water pollution is be critical to raising the quality of life in poor regions.


Eco vacationers engage in cutting-edge environmental research
(10/24/2006) There is a species of vacationer who, like me, cannot do what vacationers are meant to do: relax. I am incapable of lying on a beach and sipping an umbrella drink while listening drowsily to reggae hits. I need to be doing something. And given the deteriorating state of our planet, I would prefer it be something useful. This is not about moral strength. It's simply a case of obstinate curiosity, and a certain kind of incurable restlessness. For people like me, there exists the "volunteer vacation." Habitat for Humanity is among the best-known organizations to arrange such trips, but there are others whose missions focus on environmental rather than social causes. Global Vision and the Earthwatch Institute, for example, offer motivated travelers the opportunity to transport their curiosity and energy to exotic locales.



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