In defence of wallowing on the past…
Tag: Opinion
Human footfall: the new environmental calamity.
Beautiful, gnarled trunks. Cushiony moss underfoot. Epiphytes and lichens clinging on the branches. It’s the literal definition of a fairytale forest…At least within the 3.5 hectare area inside its borders.
What will future generations nickname the Anthropocene?
What will future generations nickname this tumultuous period in Earth history?
Building an ecosystem for change
It seems to me that we are stuck in a rut. The demise of wildlife and wild places continues unabated and although conservation works, it’s still stuck in the “small movement” phase. The restoration of an area of forest, or the down-listing of a species on the IUCN Red List […]
What’s the most important environmental problem to focus on?
On what environmental problem will you be able to make the biggest difference?
Conservation has to be scalable
To stand a chance, conservation has to back interventions that can go big
What wildlife conservation can learn from ninjas
Protected areas are the cornerstone of the conservation movement, and, for the most part, they work quite well. They do have some hefty pitfalls though. One of these is that the comings and goings of many globetrotting or wide roaming species pay little heed to whether an area has been […]
Shortcuts to staunching catastrophic wildlife declines
Disrupting catastrophic wildlife declines won’t be easy. But by focusing conservation interventions on a small set of disproportionately important places and projects, we can still leverage our way out of the sixth mass extinction. This is exactly why conservationists have long preoccupied over “biodiversity hotspots”–35 areas that jointly cover just […]
Building societies that don’t suck
We have to design systems that will incentivise pro-environmental decision-making. It’s not enough to rely on individual choices. Individuals are busy. Individuals have kids, careers and favourite TV programmes. And individuals are constrained by the inefficient and wasteful industrial systems through which they can meet their daily needs. Much easier […]
Time for a Manhattan Project on biodiversity loss
The most important conservationists of the future probably won’t even abide by that name. Already today, it’s politicians that decide on whether biodiversity loss is taken seriously or pushed to the fringes. It’s engineers who are designing disruptive technologies for tackling climate change and ocean pollution. It’s pioneering economists who […]