Singapore will soon become more of a garden than a city
The impact of Singapore’s biodiversity efforts have been substantial. In the last ten years alone, the region’s National Parks Board has seen around 500 new species of flora and fauna either reemerge or appear for the first time. Members of Singapore’s government also believe that the city’s environmental efforts have gone a long way in attracting foreign investment and biotech companies.
No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life by Thich Nhat Hanh. Is it possible to live a life unfettered by fear?
Zen master Nhat Hanh turns his hard-earned wisdom as a survivor of war, persecution, and exile to the age-old dilemma of what happens when one dies. If the greatest fear is, as he suggests, that one becomes nothing, then how is one to live with this threat of complete annihilation? Using Buddhist parables and anecdotes, Nhat Hanh offers an alternative perspective. Buddhists see birth and death as mere concepts, not manifestations of reality. When someone dies, they are still with us, just in a different form. In this view, a continuation, a connection between people and nature persists because time is understood as being circular: nothing begins; nothing ends; it just is.
Turning olive waste into “ecologically perfect” fuel.
Olives are being looked at as a renewable energy source, since its wood produces 2.5 times more energy than others, the smoke it releases has no negative impact on neighbors or the environment, and the ash left can be used for fertilizing gardens.
Snow Leopards Rebounding in Africa
“Afghanistan has been devastated by 30 years of conflict, so you might not expect there to be a lot of large wildlife left. But there does appear to be a fairly large population of snow leopards, and that’s wonderful,” said Peter Zahler, who launched the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Afghanistan program in 2006.
Greatest Person of the Day: Redefining student aid in Africa
…23-year-old [Michelle Milee Chang] is the co-founder and CEO of Ambassadors for Sustained Health (ASH), a public health organization that is bent on treating public health and aid to developing nations in a more mature and sustainable way. ASH has a handful of flourishing projects in Wamuini, Kenya, and aims to create a public health model that can be used around the world.
“Our take on health is that it’s not just about passing out pills and walking away — but also housing, education and clean water,” Chang said. “These are all players in the fight to stay healthy. Lack of education and poverty are all barriers to increased public health.”
Water hygiene and safe waste disposal are two of the biggest causes of infant mortality in the developing countries. Bill Gates and his foundation hope to create inexpensive toilets to vastly improve the living conditions of millions of people. It could save lives around the world.
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Remarkable women developing solutions and guiding us towards a sustainable future.
Eco Amazons brings together for the first time the women leading the charge to create a sustainable future for all life on Earth. Their efforts demonstrate how individual concern gives rise to passion, how passion leads to action, and how action effects meaningful change—efforts that can be emulated by each and every one of us.
A beautiful rainbow toad species, thought lost for nearly a hundred years, is found alive and well in Borneo.
Conservationists report that the Sambas Stream toad, one of their top 10 “lost” amphibian species, has been rediscovered in Malaysian Borneo 87 years after it was last sighted.
On any given day, the average person’s life is entrusted to more than 2,000 different people who are complete strangers.
The report, which shows how any one of these anonymous individuals making a single mistake can easily cause another person’s death, concluded that it is only through sheer luck that anyone ever makes it through a 24-hour period alive.
Same-sex marriage is now legal in Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, as well as Mexico City and in these parts of the United States: Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, plus Washington, D.C. and the Coquille Indian Tribe in Oregon. Civil unions and registered partnerships are legal in 20 other countries.
The Paradigm Project co-founder wants to bring fuel-efficient stoves to poor, rural communities around the world. The stoves can save time and money, while also reducing toxic emissions from wood fires by 40 to 60 percent. That results in 7.5 metric tons of carbon offsets, which can then be sold in European and American-based carbon markets
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