International Conservation & Development

In a significant move to save one of the world’s most-treasured marine animals, Peru has approved strong regulations to protect the giant oceanic manta ray, a species particularly vulnerable to fishing activity.

... [A]s reported by Haaretz correspondent Zafrir Rinat this week, Agricultural Minister Uri Ariel, has decided to cut almost all funding to the botanical gardens, reducing it to a paltry 100,000 shekels (less than 10,000 shekels per garden). The garden managers have already reported that they will have to cut back and cancel many of their gardens’ educational and research programs. Apparently, Minister Ariel has decided that these gardens are not worthy of public support.

"The Chinese government likes to hold authority over data for fear that different numbers than those from official sources could lead to social unrest," says Angel Hsu, a professor with the Yale School of Forestry And Environmental Studies, who has researched the poor quality of Chinese data. "China claims they don't have the human capacity to maintain and run the monitors," she says. "But they were monitoring air quality for over a decade; they just didn't release it because they were worried that it would lead to social unrest."

Without policies to protect the world’s most vulnerable from crop failure, natural disasters, waterborne diseases and other impacts of climate change, 100 million more people could sink into poverty by 2030, the World Bank said. The report unveiled yesterday is one of a growing number of high-level studies linking poverty to climate change. This one, World Bank officials said, goes further by combining findings from household surveys in 90 nations with modeling results on the impact of rising global temperatures on food prices, heat waves, floods, droughts and diseases.

Chris Bacon and his colleagues have received a $300,000 mult-year National Science Foundation research grant to study food and water security under climate change for smallholders in Nicaragua.

In the lead-up to the United Nations climate change conference US-China Today spoke with Kelly Sims Gallagher, Director of the Center for International Environment & Resource Policy at Tufts University, to see how the U.S. and China can best handle this existential threat.

he fungus that causes white nose syndrome—an often-fatal disease that has decimated populations of several bats species in eastern North America—has been found in several spots throughout eastern China. This is the first time that is has been documented in Asia, significantly enlarging its known range.

Melanie Allen is now the DGM Program and Logistics Coordinator for Conservation International. The Dedicated Grant Mechanism (DGM) is a global initiative dedicated to enabling the full and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC's) in the global effort to reduce deforestation and forest degradation.As a special window under the Climate Investment Fund’s (CIF) Forest Investment Program (FIP), the DGM is a unique endeavor to place climate financing directly in the hands of IPLC's.

Until recently, extinction was a natural and complex process where some species survived and others went extinct at the whim of mother nature (and with the help of some handy adaptations). Today, it is much more like the reality show, “Survivor”, where groups must fend for themselves in the wild while also competing in man-made challenges to survive to the next round.