News

The Forest Footprint Disclosure Project (FFD Project) is a new initiative, backed by 34 financial institutions with $3.5 trillion in collective assets under management, created to help investors identify how an organisation’s activities and supply chains contribute to deforestation, and link this 'forest footprint' to their value.

Virgin chief and fellow business leaders call for action and say energy crisis threatens to be more serious than credit crunch
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/oilprices/7203172/Brita...
http://peakoiltaskforce.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/final-report-uk-i...
The report issues a range of recommendations including:
General policies:
Government, local authorities and business must face up to the Peak Oil threat and put contingency plans in place

If you have not already seen in this BBC Horizon special, naturalist Sir David Attenborough investigates whether the world is heading for a population crisis.
In his lengthy career, Sir David has watched the human population more than double from 2.5 billion in 1950 to nearly seven billion. He reflects on the profound effects of this rapid growth, both on humans and the environment.

This guide, published by the Centre for Research on Environmental Decision (CRED) at Columbia University, details many of the biases and barriers to scientific communication and information processing relating to climate change. The ultimate solutions to climate change are workable, cost-effective technologies which permit society to improve living standards while limiting and adapting to changes in the climate. Yet scientific, engineering, and organizational solutions are not enough. Societies must be motivated and empowered to adopt the needed changes.

The food we eat accounts for 30% of the UK's carbon footprint, according to a new report published by WWF-UK and the Food Climate Research Network (FCRN). Land use change, primarily deforestation, is a major source of climate changing emissions. Each year, globally, an area of forest equivalent to half of England is lost, largely as a result of the expansion of the food system as land is cleared to grow crops and rear animals.

The Crash Course seeks to provide you with a baseline understanding of the economy so that you can better appreciate the risks that we all face.
http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse
(Chris Martenson)

A new report, 'The State of Happiness', from the Young Foundation and the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) highlights that promoting and influencing happiness is no longer an airy aspiration. As the recession forces difficult public spending choices, services focused on wellbeing are delivering widespread economic and social benefits - especially to children. It also examines happiness and wellbeing in the context of public policy.
Against a background of intense pressures on public spending, the report recommends prioritising programmes that:

Excessive consumption has spread to developing countries and could wipe out efforts to slow climate change, Worldwatch Institute says.
Erik Assadourian, the project director who led a team of 35 behind the report, said: "Until we recognise that our environmental problems, from climate change to deforestation to species loss, are driven by unsustainable habits, we will not be able to solve the ecological crises that threaten to wash over civilisation."
http://www.worldwatch.org/sow10

International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)
Fair Miles: Recharting the food miles map

Hilary Benn has unveiled the UK Government's new food strategy, Food 2030. The strategy sets out goals for 2030, and the changes that need to be made to achieve them.
Hilary Benn says:
"We need to produce more food. We need to do it sustainably. And we need to make sure that what we eat safeguards our health."
The six key themes of the strategy are:
1. Encouraging and enabling people to eat a healthy, sustainable diet
2. Having a resilient and economically sustainable food system
3. Increasing food production sustainably