Restoring our relationship with nature
Biodiversity is the planet’s life support system and key to addressing some of the world’s greatest challenges such as climate change, sustainable development and food security, and conserving biodiversity has been central to the mission of IUCN since its creation in 1948. For more than 50 years, IUCN has compiled the world’s most comprehensive information […]
The fact is that plastics are a miracle material and could even be the very thing that saves humanity from catastrophic climate change. The problem in our oceans isn’t plastics, it’s what we do with them. Over the years, we got lazy – creating an infinite number of singleuse, throwaway items like bags, drinking straws […]
The trend to integrate trees in the urban fabric of cities and wood in architectural structures is growing rapidly. This photo essay highlights some of the latest buildings being built with timber and the tallest examples of design plans to reach above 300 meters in different cities around the world. From London to Toronto to […]
The CAO is equipped with the world’s most advanced passive-active remote sensing package. Known as the Airborne Taxonomic Mapping System, or AToMS, this system integrates a high-fidelity Visible to Shortwave Infrared (VSWIR; 400-2500 nm) imaging spectrometer with a dual-laser, full waveform Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensor that is capable of collecting 3-dimensional ecosystem data […]
The role of ecosystems and the concept and application of nature-based solutions (NBS) for sustainable water management is not new. Indeed, the use of natural processes to manage water spans millennia, but “nature-based solutions” terminology emerged only recently. NBS are increasingly recognized as important to address complex challenges in water management – water scarcity, quality […]
A worrying aspect of sustainability is that environmental ambitions often overshadow the social aspects. There is widespread acceptance that we must make more efforts to decarbonize transport – and that the way we pump fossil fuels into vehicles to move around is simply not sustainable. But the reality is that we cannot make transport sustainable […]
I was raised between the desert and the sea. To the south and east, mountains draw moisture out of the air coming in over the Atlantic and send it tumbling back down to the coast. I grew up on my parents’ farm in Morocco’s green coastal strip, in a country where many people have yet to come to terms with the reality […]
As we are witnessing expanding drought conditions here in Kenya, where the Headquarters of the UN Environment Programme are located, and also in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and elsewhere in Africa, we are starkly reminded that climate change is already affecting vulnerable regions and societies across the world. People, animals and plants are suffering […]
‘Abandoned’ imagines a Dubai of the near future, abandoned by people and inhabited by previously captive wild animals. The project is concerned with the fragility of prevalent human economic systems, particularly those that are reliant on exponential growth, and their impact on natural ecology systems, suggesting that ultimately natural ecosystems may prove more robust than […]
Heaps of Hogs People love pigs, and pigs create waste. An increase in global demand for pork products has driven a trend of concentration and industrialization in hog production worldwide, creating pockets of densely packed pig farms. Meanwhile, one hog can produce as much as four to eight times the feces as a human being. […]
In the mid-1990s, when sustainability was just emerging into corporate parlance, apart from a few ‘hero’ companies such as Patagonia, there was no corporate culture of sustainability. Instead, there was a small but passionate band of mostly senior mmanagers or directors often supported by a future thinking CEO. As one of this band myself within Walmart, I know from experience that it’s a […]
Some of Unilever’s brands – Flora, Lipton, Pond’s, Mimosín, AXE, Skip, Hellmann’s, Maizena, Dove, Rexona, Signal. Source: Unilever/Flickr
One spring day in 2004, I was smoking a cigarette and drinking freshly-squeezed orange juice on a bridge over the Barada in Damascus when a trash bag flew through the air and landed on the cement river bed. I was a little surprised but probably flicked the butt of the cancer stick into the water […]
One of the key challenges we are now facing in the quest for a more sustainable future is the way we produce food. Even though food production is inherently complex and diversified across the globe, its sources have narrowed over time. The exponential diffusion of modern and highly uniform commercial varieties of seeds has reduced […]
Throughout 2014, the international conservation community celebrated the 50th anniversary of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and its significant contribution to guiding global preservation action. The Red List is now the world’s most comprehensive information source on the global conservation status of animal, fungi and plant species. European Red Lists have been completed […]
In 2010, a couple of ex-corporate lawyers living in Ithaca, New York State, pioneered an innovative legal framework that gave municipalities the right to make local land use decisions. Helen and David Slottje provided pro-bono legal assistance, helping towns across New York defend themselves from oil and gas companies by passing local bans on fracking. Over 170 towns and cities across the state have […]
Biodiversity is the planet’s life support system and key to addressing some of the world’s greatest challenges such as climate change, sustainable development and food security, and conserving biodiversity has been central to the mission of IUCN since its creation in 1948. For more than 50 years, IUCN has compiled the world’s most comprehensive information […]
Between December 2005 and February 2006, Samir S. Patel traveled, with support from a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship from Columbia University, to five countries (Fiji, Nauru, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Tuvalu) over two-and-a-half months to report on environment stories in the South Pacific Ocean. The following images from this reporting trip highlight some of the […]
This series of photographs shows the gorgeous rock formations of central China. Melinda is a travel photographer who lives in Macao, China, where she has traveled extensively, capturing landscapes and beautiful sceneries. In the province of Gansu in central China, she photographed the fascinating Danxia land formations. Derived from the name of the highest mountain […]
“Art is an attempt to interpret the world,” says Massimiliano Lacertosa. His project VIII Giorno (Eighth Day) is a journey in time, where time is a desert. The cycle of a day, the eighth day is represented not in real time, but a mythical kind of it. Time by no means travels in a straight […]
This series of images is complementary to the feature on “Malta: Confronting Water Challenges” that appeared in Revolve’s Spring 2013 issue on pages 68-74.. Peter Easton is a British, but Brussels-based, hydrogeologist and water resources consultant of 25 years experience. Work has taken him to many countries to study water issues in a wide range of […]
Taking as their starting point images that depict the tangible reality of man-made wastelands, Wilmes & Mascaux probe the transience (or the pretension) of a civilization whose abuse of the natural world does not speak in its favor. As part of their project, they have “scanned” the memory of chaotic landscapes in Mexico, Europe, Quebec, the U.S.A. and Australia. In margin of the world, […]
Green tourism is gaining ground in Mexico. The National Agreement for Tourism focuses on sustainable tourism and encourages environmental protection projects. In 2011, more than 7.4 million visitors travelled to 174 protected natural areas, exceeding the expected total of 6 million, according to the Mexican english newspaper, The News. In the Sierra Norte mountain range […]
In 2010, Edward Burtynsky photographed agricultural areas in Spain including Monegros, a hilly,semi-desert area with extreme climatic conditions. Drawn by the organic expansion of farming areas created by successive divisions of land, Burtynsky became fascinated with the extraordinary level of visual complexity of Monegros he saw from a bird’s eye view. The resulting photographs here […]
Led by Dr. Greg Asner at the Carnegie Institution for Science, the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO) is mapping the rainforests around the world by measuring biodiversity density with laser scanners attached to a twin turboprop plane (Dornier 228). The CAO combines 3D spectroscopic and laser imaging with unique scientific approaches to study, explore and conserve […]
How can cities and urban areas confronted with climate change, urbanization and population growth create more sustainable futures? Planning and developing sustainable cities is a high priority around the world and a crucial component of global sustainability given rapidly increasing numbers of urbanites. Leaders and decision-makers are faced with difficult choices on how to simultaneously make […]
Aid agencies and international NGOs warn that almost half of Yemen does not have enough to eat, including about 267.000 children who face severe levels of malnutrition. During the Arab revolts, the Yemenis eventually ousted their dictator – Ali Abdullah Salah, but his specter looms large and Yemen remains the poorest Arab country. The economic […]
Deep in the Appalachian Mountains, in the center of North America’s coal country, a war is raging. Despite numerous mentions in international media outlets like the New York Times and The Guardian, many world and even U.S. citizens are unaware of this battle and their connection to it through energy consumption. Like many conflicts these […]
Another inconvenient truth: our “green” technologies, our production of renewable energy, our inseparable companions – the iPad, iPhone and iPod – and countless other products in our economic model, rely on those rare earth elements – China monopolizes their production and supply. Another black spot on “green” labels: the mining of the resources requires vast […]
Amongst the three largest emitters of carbon dioxide, along with meat production and transportation, the building industry is increasingly confronted with environmental challenges. Architects must, therefore, rethink their practice in order to develop new designs for a more sustainable future. Different in scale, use and form, the projects, Agriculture 2.0 and Retina rooftop, by the […]
In one of the only places left in the world where private companies can own oil reserves, the exploitation of tar sands in Alberta is causing extensive environmental damage, threatening the local population and wildlife beyond repair. Photojournalist, Alan Gignoux, take us on a tour of the destruction being wreaked on the boreal forests of […]
