Human Interest

"Once energy dependent, Chile is on track to become a renewables powerhouse with the potential to export electricity. Chile is on track to rely on clean sources for 90 percent of its electricity needs by 2050, up from the current 45 percent."

Three-quarters of flying insects in nature reserves across Germany have vanished in 25 years, with serious implications for all life on Earth, scientists say

Place is a news and information website designed to shed light on the many issues revolving around land and property rights.

Company admits it doesn’t know how many of its 305,000 fish are left after a net ‘failure’ amid concern about the impact on native species

The real cause of over tourism. It’s not tourists and tour operators! The unspoken impacts created by airlines, cruise ships and Governments.

Tourism, like all globalised trends, can be a force for good, but can also wreak immense localised damage

Henderson Island is isolated and uninhabited—but its beaches are still covered in garbage.  

Henderson Island (article or podcast) is about the most remote place you can visit without leaving the planet. It sits squarely in the middle of the South Pacific, 3,500 miles from New Zealand in one direction and another 3,500 miles from South America in the other.  Henderson should be pristine. It is uninhabited. Tourists don’t go there. There’s no one around to drop any litter. The whole place was declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations in 1988. The nearest settlement is 71 miles away, and has just 40 people on it. And yet, seafaring plastic has turned it into yet another of humanity’s scrapheaps.

Tags: pollution, Oceania, water, environment, sustainability, consumption.

What economists around the world get wrong about the future.

The idea that economic growth can continue forever on a finite planet is the unifying faith of industrial civilization. That it is nonsensical in the extreme, a deluded fantasy, doesn't appear to bother us. We hear the holy truth in the decrees of elected officials, in the laments of economists about flagging GDP, in the authoritative pages of opinion, in the whirligig of advertising, at the World Bank and on Wall Street, in the prospectuses of globe-spanning corporations and in the halls of the smallest small-town chambers of commerce. Growth is sacrosanct. Growth will bring jobs and income, which allow us entry into the state of grace known as affluence, which permits us to consume more, providing more jobs for more people producing more goods and services so that the all-mighty economy can continue to grow. "Growth is our idol, our golden calf," Herman Daly, an economist known for his anti-growth heresies, told me recently.

Tags: op-ed, economic, industry, sustainability, development, consumption, climate change, environment, resources.

As the world works to achieve the sustainable development goals, a recent UN report identifies six issues that challenge ambitious targets

A single individual is enough for hope to exist, and that individual can be you, says His Holiness Pope Francis in this searing TED Talk delivered directl

Elon Musk’s electric car company has been valued at $49bn, leaving the 100-year-old motor manufacturer lagging behind

The world will never again build cities as rapidly as it does this century. If we are serious about limiting global warming, tackling air pollution and promoting innovative, resource-efficient growth, there is a narrow window of opportunity

As the world’s biggest cities continue to sprawl, they’ll look to many of the technologies and tactics covered in today’s infographic from Raconteur to work smarter – and not harder – for their inhabitants.

The real cause of our environmental crisis is captalism, says the Guardian writer George Monbiot

Travel opens our eyes to the world – but it also means closing them. We ignore the hordes of people like us, all of whom want authentic tapas and a photo for Instagram

Surprise! Individual actions do matter.

Some global corporations are trying to address the environmental impact of throwaway culture, but campaigners say they remain part of the problem

Shigeatsu Hatakeyama’s oyster farm was completely destroyed by the deadly tsunami that hit north-east Japan in March 2011.

To reduce the pressure on the world's productive land and to help assure long-term food security, writes Herbert Girardet, city people are well advised to revive urban or peri-urban agriculture. While large cities will always have to import some food, local food growing is a key component of sustainable urban living.

IKEA is to open production centres in refugee camps in Jordan as part of a long-term plan to create employment for 200,000 disadvantaged people around the world.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled the civil war in South Sudan and resettled in Uganda. This 12-minute documentary shows the daily struggle to get water.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled South Sudan to escape the civil war. When they arrive in Uganda, water is what they need most. Without it, they will die.

Report warns of catastrophic consequences and blames manufacturers for ‘systematic denial of harms’ and ‘aggressive, unethical marketing tactics’