September Sustainable Development

Read the articles selected in September 2016

Protecting people through nature

by Marco Lambertini

The 2030 Agenda biggest challenge is to overtake the idea of the link between economic development and environmental degradation. An economy grounded on ecosystems protection does not mean only a sustainable future for all of us, but also a renovated finance, new infrastructures and development interventions.

How you can get involved

Source: http://www.unglobalcompact.org

If business is responsible and rooted in universal principles, can help people reduce poverty and realize their aspirations, doing that every person would be treated with dignity and equality. A world without hunger is an ambitious vision, and a sustainable agriculture cannot be achieved without a good business.

New York Declaration

Source: http://www.asvis.it/, 20 September

At the UN Summit on 19 September, UN States have adopted the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, to protect their lives and rights , with a plan for a safe, orderly and regular migration in 2018, and for a more equitable sharing of responsibilities for hosting and supporting the world’s refugees .

Words aimed at action

by Jill Radsken

Source: https://green.harvard.edu/, 12 September

The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks is a testament to environmental humanities by Ian J. Miller, history professor at Harvard. Humanities play a role in understanding beauty and meaning, and in giving an human response, not just scientific and politic, to climate change.

Plating up solutions

by Tara Garnett

Source: Science, 16 September

We cannot take control of our environmental problems whithout altering diets, since the food system is responsible for 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions. It is possibile to identify diets that are sustainable, and, as the global population is growing, we need “more food with less impact”.

Consulta l’articolo:

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6305/1202.full

No safe haven for polar bears in warming Arctic

by Quirin Schiermeier

Source: Nature, 14 September

Polar bears need sea-ice for roaming, hunting, mating, and with the Arctic probably ice-free in summer by mid-century, and the lenghtening of the time-span between the sea-ice maximum and the sea-ice minimum, their surviving conditions appear really difficult.

Appello per una nuova Europa

Source: http://www.asvis.it/, 13 September

WWF with Concord and Etuc have launched an appeal to restore sense and freshness to the idea of Europe, distant from citizens and the promise of humanity and solidarity of its historical project, on the UN Agenda 2030 perspective, against euroscepticism and easy deregulation.

Read more:

http://www.wwf.it/news/notizie/?24880

COP22 in Marrakech, 7-18 November 2016

Source: http://mediterranean.panda.org/, 14 September

COP22 will monitor the national climate change efforts , while the Paris Agreement is being ratified by governments until 21 April 2017, and it is important to ensure countries redouble their climate actions by 2020.

Military leaders warn that climate poses security threats

by Erika Bolstad

Source: Scientific American, 14 September

The Pentagon is focusing on catastrophic climate scenarios, that increase the risk of international or civil conflict, mass migration and instability around the world. Considering climate change and renewable energy give multiple benefits to militar forces, both in performance and in cost.

Harvard Law School to launch pilot food donation program with Food for Free in effort to reduce food waste and enhance food recovery

Source: https://green.harvard.edu/, 6 September

Harvard Law School has launched a project to reducing waste of food hosting a national conference with the aim to donate 50% of food thrown up in America, to the many families that can’t afford to put it on the table.

Executive update: let’s create a global movement

by Lise Kingo

Source: UN Global Compact

For the world that we all want and dream, we need to create a global movement, that would involve local business, since business is the foundation of the world. In the UN Private Sector Forum, the United Nations, Governments, Business and Civil Society are coming together to accelerate the pace to the SDGs.

Youth and inequality

Source: http://www.asvis.it/, 12 August

An Oxfam report compares the gap between the riches and the poors to the inequalities between generations. The new generation, impoverished from the wealth accumulation of their elders, is excluded from formal political processes and is subject to age-based systems of authority.

Drilling for earthquakes

by Anna Kuchment

Source: Scientific American, 28 March

Geology has known since the 1960 that pushing fluids like waste water from oil and gas operations into the ground can set off earthquakes, encountering the pressure from the injections new faults and disturbing them. The rise in quakes coincides with an increase in drilling activity in Oklahoma and Texas.

India’s first transgenic food crop edges toward approval

by Pallava Bagla

Source: Science, 7 September

After the introduction of GM cotton, India is going to approve transgenic food.The environment ministry said that GM mustard does not treath safety and health for human beings and animals, calling at any rate for continued monitoring of the environment near mustard fields.

Effects of a warming Arctic

by Theodore G. Shepherd

Source: Science, 2 September

Scientists have associated the unusually cold winters in northern-mid latidutudes of recent years with the warming of the Artic and the melting of Arctic sea-ice extent since the 1990s, but it’s impossbile to rule out natural variability as an explanation for the observed phenomen.

Use antimicrobials wisely

by Peter S. Jørgensen, Didier Wernli, Scott P. Carroll, Robert R. Dunn, Stephan Harbarth, Simon A. Levin, Anthony D. So, Maja Schlüter& Ramanan Laxminarayan

Source: Nature, 7 September 2016

The need to tackle the global threat of antibiotics resistance can’t make forget the life support we receive from the global microbiome. The 2015 Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance, supported by FAO, takes coordinates actions across economic sectors, especially in agriculture.

Tectonic tragedy in Italy

by Dana Hunter

Source: Scientific American, 27 August

Though it wasn’t much more powerful than the 2014 Napa seism, the earthquake occurred the August 24 in the central area of the Apennines has been terrifying because not only the old, but also the modern buildings, in this highst seismic region of Mediterranean, don’t comply with the law.

Cinema e sostenibilità: ilCIC stila la top list dei film che trattano la difesa del suolo

Source: http://www.asvis.it/

The Venice Film Festival assigns the Green Drop Award to the best film which interprets the theme of Sustainability, exploiting the expressive resources of cinema, able as few others media to sensibilize the audience to the values of ecology and sustainable development.

It’s hard to talk about climate change. This storytelling project wants to make it easier

by Lauren Katz

Source: green.harvard.edu, 22 August

Dear Tomorrow is a project of the Harvard Kennedy School, based on the idea to write letters to future generations to be opened in the future, where to collect what we’re doing and how we’re thinking about climate change, as if we were telling a story.

Welcome to the Anthropocene: the dawn of the human-influenced geological epoch

Source: http://www.asvis.it/, 1 September

The International Geological Congress held in Cape Town has declared that the Earth is living a new geological era, the Anthropocene, signifying the intense influence of human activity on its sediment, modified by radioactive elements, fossil fuels plastic pollution etc.

Human-induced climate change has been going on longer than you think

by Ian Sample

Source : Wired, 26 August

Tree rings, corals and ice cores can be read as signs of the first human-induced Earth warming due to greenhouse emissions, pushing back the onset of climate change to 1830s, with the begin of the Industrial Revolution.

Dear college students: you should take geology

by Erik Klemetti

Source: Wired, 31 August

Few disciplines are so important as geology today to safeguard our planet. Geology teaches to think on long timescales and on many scales of space, to think globally, and is crucial for understanding climate change.

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Pubblicato il : 03/10/2016
Modificato il : 04/04/2019

September Sustainable Development

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