Environment
Need some good news about the environment? The Optimist Daily is your go-to herald of positive environmental news, highlighting eco-friendly solutions and scientific progress around climate action, circularity, conservation, and more. Learn about everything eco in our Environment section.
Trees do more than absorbing CO2, they regulate water and climate
Science News from research organizations Source: World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) Summary: Forests and trees play a major role on water cycles and cooler temperatures, contributing to food security and climate change adaptation. In recent decades, the climate change discourse has looked at forests Read More...
Chocolate companies are uniting to stop deforestation
The chocolate industry’s biggest players have admitted that their buying habits have helped destroy virgin forests, and have signed an agreement to help stop deforestation in major cocoa-growing areas. The agreement commits companies like Nestle and Mars to present a plan-of-action to address Read More...
Guyana tribe goes hi-tech to protect its land
Eleazer Mawasha speaks haltingly. English is not his first language, and Skype not his preferred method of communication. An elder of Guyana's Wai-Wai people, Mr. Mawasha is more familiar with the sounds and rhythms of the rainforest with which its indigenous inhabitants have enjoyed a profound Read More...
You can’t smoke industrial hemp but it is great asset for a sustainable economy
Centuries ago hemp was a major resource for the economy: sails and clothing depended on it. Industrial hemp lost its popularity because of the health concerns related to the marijuana variety of hemp. But you need to smoke a cigarette the size of a lamp post to get high on industrial hemp. Hemp Read More...
The baby elephant saved from a palm oil plantation in Indonesia
Pushing on 400 kilograms, baby Paichit knows when it’s feeding time. He lets out an appreciative bellow, a rumbling baby elephant purr from his patch in the Sumatran jungle, as soon as his mahout (keeper) Julkarnaini approaches bucket in hand. “He’s getting much healthier,” Read More...
Tompkins Conservation donates 1 million acres for new national parks in Chile
Tompkins Conservation signed an agreement with Chile's government on Wednesday to donate 1 million acres for new national parks in the largest private donation of its kind for the South American nation. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet signed the deal with Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, the widow Read More...
'Spinning sail' could make cargo ships a whole lot greener
International shipping runs largely on highly polluting “bunker” fuel, which is why the industry is under increased pressure to play its part in tackling climate change by reducing emissions. Drawing on a type of “spinning sail” invented almost a century ago, ships could reduce their fuel Read More...
5 cities leading the charge on climate action
For centuries, cities have been at the heart of the arts and culture, thriving businesses and innovative ideas. More than 90 percent of urban areas are coastal, which means that most cities on the planet are extremely vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis as sea levels rise, polar ice Read More...
China’s coal consumption declines despite increasing energy consumption
New figures published by China’s National Burea of Statistics show that while the country’s total energy consumption increased by 1.4% in 2016, the country’s coal consumption declined by 4.7%. Following China’s use of coal and the country’s corresponding carbon dioxide emission levels has Read More...
Microbes measure ecological restoration success
The success of ecological restoration projects around the world could be boosted using a potential new tool that monitors soil microbes. Published in the journal Molecular Ecology, University of Adelaide researchers have shown how the community of bacteria present in the soil of land that had been Read More...