Portal:Environment

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Introduction

Land management has preserved the natural characteristics of Hopetoun Falls, Australia while allowing ample access for visitors.

The natural environment or natural world encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses the interaction of all living species, climate, weather and natural resources that affect human survival and economic activity. The concept of the natural environment can be distinguished as components:

In contrast to the natural environment is the built environment. Built environments are where humans have fundamentally transformed landscapes such as urban settings and agricultural land conversion, the natural environment is greatly changed into a simplified human environment. Even acts which seem less extreme, such as building a mud hut or a photovoltaic system in the desert, the modified environment becomes an artificial one. Though many animals build things to provide a better environment for themselves, they are not human, hence beaver dams, and the works of mound-building termites, are thought of as natural. (Full article...)

Land management has preserved the natural characteristics of Hopetoun Falls, Australia while allowing ample access for visitors.

The natural environment or natural world encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses the interaction of all living species, climate, weather and natural resources that affect human survival and economic activity. The concept of the natural environment can be distinguished as components:

In contrast to the natural environment is the built environment. Built environments are where humans have fundamentally transformed landscapes such as urban settings and agricultural land conversion, the natural environment is greatly changed into a simplified human environment. Even acts which seem less extreme, such as building a mud hut or a photovoltaic system in the desert, the modified environment becomes an artificial one. Though many animals build things to provide a better environment for themselves, they are not human, hence beaver dams, and the works of mound-building termites, are thought of as natural.

People cannot find absolutely natural environments on Earth, and naturalness usually varies in a continuum, from 100% natural in one extreme to 0% natural in the other. The massive environmental changes of humanity in the Anthropocene have fundamentally effected all natural environments: including from climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution from plastic and other chemicals in the air and water. More precisely, we can consider the different aspects or components of an environment, and see that their degree of naturalness is not uniform. If, for instance, in an agricultural field, the mineralogic composition and the structure of its soil are similar to those of an undisturbed forest soil, but the structure is quite different. (Full article...)

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Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change is a 2010 non-fiction book by Australian academic Clive Hamilton which explores climate change denial and its implications. It argues that climate change will bring about large-scale, harmful consequences for habitability for life on Earth including humans, which it is too late to prevent. Hamilton explores why politicians, corporations and the public deny or refuse to act on this reality. He invokes a variety of explanations, including wishful thinking, ideology, consumer culture and active lobbying by the fossil fuel industry. The book builds on the author's fifteen-year prior history of writing about these subjects, with previous books including Growth Fetish and Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change.

Requiem for a Species has been reviewed in Resurgence magazine, Socialist Review, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Common Review, and Times Higher Education, which named it "Book of the Week". Extracts of the book have appeared in The Guardian and Geographical magazine. The book won a 2010 Queensland Premier's Literary Award. (Full article...)
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Credit: Mstroeck and Bryn C

Nanotechnology refers broadly to a field of applied science and technology whose unifying theme is the control of matter on the molecular level in scales smaller than 1 micrometre, normally 1 to 100 nanometers, and the fabrication of devices within that size range. Nanopollution is the result of waste generated by nanotechnology and has implications on the wider environment.

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Maathai in 2005

Wangarĩ Muta Maathai (/wænˈɡɑːri mɑːˈð/; 1 April 1940 – 25 September 2011) was a Kenyan social, environmental, and political activist who founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 2004 she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

As a beneficiary of the Kennedy Airlift, she studied in the United States, earning a bachelor's degree from Mount St. Scholastica and a master's degree from the University of Pittsburgh. She went on to become the first woman in East and Central Africa to become a Doctor of Philosophy, receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Nairobi in Kenya. In 1984, she got the Right Livelihood Award for "converting the Kenyan ecological debate into mass action for reforestation." Maathai was an elected member of the Parliament of Kenya and, between January 2003 and November 2005, served as Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki. She was an Honorary Councillor of the World Future Council. As an academic and the author of several books, Maathai was not only an activist but also an intellectual who has made significant contributions to thinking about ecology, development, gender, and African cultures and religions. (Full article...)

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The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) was a United Nations-hosted organization contributing to Sustainable Development Goal 6, Target 6.2 on sanitation and hygiene. It was established in 1990 and closed at the end of 2020. WSSCC advocated for improved sanitation and hygiene, with a focus on the needs of women, girls and people in vulnerable situations.

WSSCC's main areas of focus were large-scale sanitation and hygiene behaviour change programmes through the Global Sanitation Fund. (Full article...)
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Frank Lloyd Wright
I believe in God, only I spell it 'Nature'.

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London Smog
London Smog

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