The Davos Agenda, the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting to address the most pressing global challenges, took place over the last week. There, the BiodiverCities by 2030: Transforming Cities’ Relationship with Nature report was first released on Monday (17.01.2021). BiodiverCities by 2030(1) is an initiative of the World Economic Forum and the Alexander von Humboldt […]
The United Nations dedicates days, weeks, years, or even decades to specific topics, to raise awareness and stimulate action on them [1]. Currently there are several of these UN Decades running. In this post I will talk about one of them that could be of interest to you: The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which […]
When we shop for new clothes, a factor that most of us consider is how much we spend. However, while seeking out the best deals, many of us aren’t thinking about what the tag leaves out: a hidden, but steep, environmental and social cost. In fact, the price of your new outfit is probably higher […]
As it has been made clear in some of our previous blog posts, food insecurity is a great concern. Additionally, conventional farming harbors issues in itself. One approach to increase local food security and to move away from conventional agriculture and the corporate-driven global food production is community-supported agriculture. Community-supported agriculture (CSA) originated in Japan […]
Sandy beaches, large tides, a hotspot for biodiversity … sounds like a beautiful, faraway place? In fact, it is not far from home at all. On the north coast of Germany lies the largest tidal flat system in the world: the Wadden Sea. Given that millions of tourists head there every year – and you […]
Why do we need a One health approach? The last one and a half years have drastically shown how vulnerable mankind is on earth. The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the many problems we face today but also in the future. Since Covid-19 disease originates from zoonotic coronavirus, there is a strong linkage between humans, animals, […]
This week marked the release of the latest report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis is the Working Group I’s contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report, which is due out in full in 2022. This installment represents the work of over 230 authors across 66 […]
Climate change and biodiversity loss represent fundamental challenges that must be addressed in order to maintain a functioning planet on which people can have a good quality of life. Yet, these two issues exist within a complex system, where their interactions complicate the formation of an effective response. This could partly explain why, up to […]
Each year, we celebrate the International Day for Biological Diversity, or Biodiversity Day, on May 22. The United Nations sponsors this event as a way to increase understanding and awareness of biodiversity issues across the world [1, 2, 3, 15]. The Convention on Biological Diversity and Biodiversity Day In the late 1980’s, the United Nations […]
There are 7,865,834,495 [1] people (and counting!) currently alive on our planet. Out of that count, around 9 million people die of hunger each year [3]. It is clear that at the same time as humanity faces other struggles, like the COVID-19 pandemic or climate change, hunger remains a major threat and concern for us […]
