International Conservation & Development

Countries are loosely interpreting the legal meaning of “rational use” of natural resources to escalate fishing efforts in Antarctic waters and hinder efforts to establish marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean, scientists and legal scholars say.

A research team lead by Indiana University faculty member Rebecca Lave has been awarded a National Science Foundation grant to study the introduction of market-based environmental conservation policies in the European Union. The two-year, $314,750 grant will fund research focusing on habitat banking, in which the environmental costs of development projects are offset by purchasing credits generated by restoration projects elsewhere.

A critically endangered French Polynesian ground-dove known locally as Tutururu has been given a new lease on life in its endemic home, the Tuamotu & Gambier Archipelagos. Only 150 of the birds remain in the world but safe habitats now available to them have more than doubled thanks to an ambitious conservation effort to eradicate introduced rats from the Tuamotu group.

Dr. Doreen Stabinsky, professor of global environmental politics at the College of the Atlantic, Maine, told IPS that “noteworthy to me is the heightened concern of Latin American and African countries.” These regions are on the frontlines of climate change, and the risks there are turning into grim realities of more extreme storms, droughts and falling crop yields, she added.

Never before have Vietnam’s top leadership stooped down like this to worry about the sagging tourism industry. After signing off on visa waivers for five more European countries — France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the UK — last month, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has continued to press ahead with the visa exemption.

The food-systems collaboration between UVM and South Andros High is based on reciprocity. In January, Walter Poleman, senior lecturer at the Rubenstein School and GreenHouse faculty director, took students from his service-learning course to the Bahamas to help build an aquaponics system at the school’s farm. In the system, waste from freshwater tilapia provides nutrients for assorted vegetables, which in turn remove excess nitrogen, a waste byproduct. Last summer, South Andros students assisted with a garden project at UVM.

he success of the Paris climate talks, COP 21, this December will not be measured by whether or not countries can all agree on a new global deal. It will rest on deals made outside the negotiation halls and beyond the traditional scope of international climate talks.

As the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, China has made a number moves in the past year to reduce emissions and clean up its environment.

This week’s G7 leaders declaration struck some strong messages in speaking to the need to address climate and energy challenges and in supporting developing countries as they transition to low carbon economies. This is especially true in regards to language on the necessary phase out of fossil fuels over the course of the century. Yet the leading global economies missed some important details in mapping actions that would benefit the poor.