AlertNet: The world has to transition to a green economy for its survival but the current economic downturn will make it hard to strike a deal at this month’s Rio+20 sustainable development summit, a senior U.N. official said on Friday. The June 20-22 meeting in Brazil, which is expected to attract more than 50,000 participants

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Cockrell School of Engineering: Professor Daene McKinney is part of a group of more than 30 scientists from 15 countries around the world who are studying Nepal, Peru and other places affected by rising glacial lake levels. High above a community of villagers, Nepal’s Imja Lake rises quietly each year, expanding its reach in both

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UNEP: EBA Decision Support – Moving from Principles to Practice : A new ‘EBA Decision Support Framework’ (EBA-DSF) is under development by UNEP and partners to assist national planners and decision-makers select, design, implement and track Ecosystem-Based Adaptation (EBA) approaches as part of a wider adaptation strategy. The EBA-DSF centers around four iterative steps and

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The Daily Beast: Bjorn Lomborg on the Rio Green Summit: Poverty Pollutes. A message from Bjørn Lomborg to organizers of the Rio+20 environmental summit: poverty pollutes. The upcoming United Nations green summit in Rio de Janeiro is in trouble—and with good reason. The planners of the mammoth event have been unable to agree on just

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UNCSD: The United Nations environment agency today warned that the world “continues to speed down” an unsustainable path in spite of hundreds of internationally agreed goals to protect the planet, and stressed that drastic actions and big-scale measures are needed to reverse this pattern. “If current trends continue, if current patterns of production and consumption

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Bio-One: This study presents satellite data and in situ measurements to estimate the concentration of suspended solids in high altitude and remote lakes of the Himalayas. Suspended particulate matter (SPM) concentrations measured in 13 lakes to the south of Mount Everest (Nepal) in October 2008 and reflectance values of the Advanced Visible and Near Infrared

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