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In Bali, Aboriginal people grow crops in the midst of a diverse tropical forest. Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Just 19% of Earth’s land is still ‘wild,’ analysis suggests
Apr. 19, 2021 , 3:00 PM
Since the 1960s, conservationists have had a standard solution for saving biodiversity: Protect natural areas from human influence. But a new analysis of Earth’s land use going back 12,000 years suggests that even in the time of mammoths and giant sloths, just one-quarter of the planet was untouched by humans, compared with 19% today. Because some of those inhabited areas are now biodiversity hot spots, people probably helped sustain and even increase the diversity of other species for millennia, the authors write. The findings also suggest many traditional practices and Indigenous peoples play a key role in preserving biodiversity.
Columbia Climate School Leadership Team Announced – Bwog bwog.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bwog.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
April 19, 2021
Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:
In July of 2020, I wrote announcing the creation of the Columbia Climate School the first of its kind and the first new school at Columbia in more than 25 years. Since then, we have been hard at work on all that is required to establish a school that will keep Columbia at the very forefront of the fields of climate and sustainability. Essential to this, of course, is leadership.
I am now delighted to announce that the Columbia Climate School will be co-led by four of Columbia’s most eminent climate experts: Alex Halliday, Jason Bordoff, Ruth DeFries, and Maureen Raymo. I know this collaborative leadership arrangement is somewhat unique, but I am confident that in this case, given these four extraordinary people, this structure will ensure its success. Alex, Jason, Ruth, and Maureen are not leaving their current roles. Rather, their leadership of the Climate School is an addition to their existing portfolios, all
Apr 16, 2021 07:32 PM EDT
Ruth DeFries in March 2020 completed a manuscript over five years in the making. It resulted to be both prophetic and prescient. In this document, the Columbia University professor disputed that global crises are now unavoidable due to the interconnectedness and difficulty of our modern civilization.
(Photo : Getty Images)
Ruth DeFries Concluded Her Project
Just as she concluded the project, as she puts it, all hell broke loose with COVID. That manuscript would turn into a book, published at the end of 2020. These were precisely the kinds of shocks that I was attempting to be persuasive [about], in the book, [when I let the readers know] they could truly happen, DeFries says.
Thanks to Us, the Amazon Is Now a Net Greenhouse Gas Emitter, Study Finds 16/04/2021
An aerial view of the Amazon rainforest near Manaus, Brazil. Photo: Neil Palmer/CIAT
Something is wrong in the lungs of the world. Decades of burning, logging, mining and development have tipped the scales, and now the Amazon Basin may be emitting more greenhouse gases than it absorbs.
Most of the conversation about climate change is dominated by carbon dioxide. While CO2 plays a critical role in the complex climate equation, other forces such as methane, nitrous oxide, aerosols and black carbon are also factors.
In a first-of-its-kind effort, a group of 31 scientists calculated the balance of all natural and human-caused greenhouse gases coming in and out of the massive Amazon Basin. The team concluded that warming of the atmosphere from agents other than CO2 likely exceeds the climate benefits the Amazon provides via CO2 uptake. Or more simply: due to humans, the Amazon Basin is