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Conservation Can Help Achieve Poverty Reduction
by Linda Yun, Conservation International
Dec. 18, 2006:
There are nearly 250 million people living on less than a dollar a
day in Earth's most biologically rich and threatened places. That’s
why conservation must be about improving
human welfare just as much as it is about protecting the
environment.
CI and KfW Sign Memorandum of Understanding
Conservation International (CI) made a commitment today with KfW,
the German-state owned development bank and a leading international
donor, to make future progress toward reducing
global poverty and conserving biodiversity. The Memorandum of
Understanding between CI and KfW outlines cooperation on projects
that will finance the creation and management of protected areas and
payment for ecosystem services, and assist countries in better
planning and management of large-scale landscapes and natural
resources...
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for the rest of the story.
That Low-Priced
Cashmere Sweater has a Hidden Cost
by Evan Osnos, Seattle Times
ON THE ALASHAN PLATEAU, China — Shatar
the herdsman squinted into the twilight on the ruined grasslands
where Genghis Khan once galloped.
He frowned and called his goats. The
wind tasted like dust.
On the other side of the world,
another morning dawned in the historic embrace between the world's
low-cost factory and its best customer. Every minute of every day
last year, America gobbled up $463,200 worth of Chinese goods,
including millions of cashmere sweaters made from the hair of goats
like Shatar's...
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here
for the rest of the story.
Toxics in Perspective: Risk
Assessment at the Biomonitoring Crossroads
By Dr. Gary Ginsberg, ENN
Nearly 25 years after the National
Academies of Science codified the practice of environmental risk
assessment with their 1983 “Red Book”, this relatively young field
now comes to a critical stage in its maturation. As the key
scientific method that underlies toxics regulations, the manner in
which risk assessment is conducted is not trivial. Since 1983 it has
gone through many refinements, from beginnings in crude, high dose
animal tests, it has advanced to increasingly more sophisticated
procedures that tell us how toxicants behave in animals and are
likely to act in people. The newer models forecast dose and toxicity
in young children, pregnant women and those whose metabolism may be
deficient due to their unique genetic makeup. But all these advances
are becoming overshadowed by biomonitoring, the capability to
measure low levels of specific toxicants (or their breakdown
products) in humans, typically urine or blood...
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rest of the story.
Industry Attempt to
Strip Orca Protections Tossed by Federal Court
By Center
for Biological Diversity
SEATTLE, WA — A federal court threw
out a challenge to federal Endangered Species Act protections given
to Puget Sound Southern Resident Orcas. The case was brought by the
Building Industry Association of Washington and the Washington Farm
Bureau. The court ruled the challengers didn't prove they'd be
harmed by such protections, and therefore had no standing to bring
the case.
A number of conservation organizations, represented by Earthjustice,
intervened in the lawsuit to make sure the orca protections stayed
in place. These same conservation groups successfully sued the
federal government to win the protections.
"With the Endangered Species Act tools in place, the orcas have hope
that the causes of their decline can be addressed and they will
continue to share these inland waters with the people in this
region," said Steve Mashuda of Earthjustice's Seattle office. Patti
Goldman of Earthjustice represented the groups in the case...
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