In The News

Waste Not, Want Not: Industries Innovate With Trash

Susan Froetschel October 11, 2016
With urbanization and a swelling global middle class come enormous amounts of waste. Many governments and companies respond to this challenge with sustainable solutions including recycling. Organic material – food, in particular – is the largest part of household waste in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Countries are changing laws, allowing redistribution of food or flexibility on expiration...

Pollution Controls as Infrastructure Investment

Euston Quah and Joergen Oerstroem Moeller October 6, 2016
Indonesia and the surrounding region produces 80 percent of the world’s palm oil. In the short term, slashing and burning brush is a low-cost way for farmers to clear land for palm-oil production. But a murky haze chokes the region, contributing to illnesses and deaths, not to mention lost production with business and school cancellations. The solution is to make slash-and-burn clearing less...

US Cities Reconsider LED Streetlights After AMA Warning

Alyssa Navarro September 26, 2016
LED lights have captured a greater share of the global market each year as Europe, the United States, India and China enact policies encouraging energy conservation. The light-emitting diode, invented in the early 1960s, sends an electric current through a semiconductor device. LEDs are about seven times more energy efficient than conventional lights and last 25 times longer, while cutting energy...

ICC: Environmental Destruction Is a Crime Against Humanity

Rowena Lindsay September 23, 2016
The International Criminal Court is turning attention to cases of environmental destruction and land grabs as crimes against humanity, reports the Christian Science Monitor. “This represents a significant shift in strategy at the ICC, which since its 1989 inception has been charged with investigating war crimes and human rights offenses when national governments were incapable of doing so,” notes...

Guess What Else Climate Change Hurts? Globalization

Eric Roston June 15, 2016
Multinational corporations rely on supply chains, and climate change could disrupt the efficiency. Weather-related disasters from flooding, droughts and wildfires cost billions of dollars in damage. “Manufacturing these days involves facilities in multiple countries, each of which has a sequential role in taking raw materials a step closer to being finished products,” reports Eric Roston for...

Africa Faces Worst Drought in Half a Century

Bartholomäus Grill May 13, 2016
Drought is devastating some of Africa’s poorest countries, threatening water supplies, power generation and agriculture. Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland have declared states of emergency. But some nations, like Ethiopia, are in denial about the impact of the abnormal sea and air patterns known as El Niño and the continent’s inability to handle population growth. Ethiopia’s...

How to Meet SDG and Climate Goals: 8 Lessons for Scaling Up Development Programs

Johannes F. Linn May 11, 2016
Most countries of the world have agreed to meet UN Sustainable Development Goals and targets to limit carbon emissions as outlined with the Paris Climate treaty. Writing for Brookings, Johannes F. Linn, a former World Bank vice president, points out that governments must find ways “to meet the top-down objectives with bottom-up approaches.” He offers recommendations for meeting the goals that...