RSS Feed
Author Archive
With pollinators in decline around the world, conservationists turn to traditional farmers for answers
Posted by Ensia: None Given on March 1st, 2016
Ensia: In northwestern India, the Himalaya Mountains rise sharply out of pine and cedar forests. The foothills of the Kullu Valley are blanketed with apple trees beginning to bloom. It’s a cool spring morning, and Lihat Ram, a farmer in Nashala village, shows me a small opening in a log hive propped against his house. Stout black-and-yellow native honeybees -- Apis cerana -- fly in and out.
For centuries, beehives have been part of the architecture of mountain homes here, built into the thick outside...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on With pollinators in decline around the world, conservationists turn to traditional farmers for answersCities are finally treating water as a resource, not a nuisance
Posted by Ensia: None Given on September 2nd, 2015
Ensia: Memorial Day barbecues and parades were thwarted this year in Houston when a massive storm dumped more than 10 inches of rain in two days, creating a Waterworld of flooded freeways, cars, houses and businesses, leaving several people dead and hundreds in need of rescue.
But it was a predictable disaster. That’s because, thanks to a pro-development bent, the magnitude of stormwater runoff has increased dramatically as Houston has sprawled across 600 or so square miles of mud plain veined with rivers,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Cities are finally treating water as a resource, not a nuisanceSeven wonders of a hopeful world
Posted by Ensia: None Given on December 30th, 2013
Ensia: Seven billion people and growing. A quarter of them living in poverty. Unsustainable -- and unequal -- resource use. Landscapes vanishing, along with their nonhuman inhabitants. Global warming upending natural systems. These are tough times on planet Earth. But while sustainability remains far from a global edict, hopeful signs of progress are poking up around the world. In some places, in some cases, we are doing things right, taking steady steps toward a smarter future. Here we offer seven of them...