Yaoundé, Cameroon
Bird of the Day: Splendid Sunbird
Yaoundé, Cameroon
Capsicum Futures
The World Vegetable Center conducts research, builds networks, and carries out training and promotion activities to raise awareness of the role of vegetables for improved health and global poverty alleviation.
Among the essential components of Kerala cuisine, various chili peppers were central in our diet during the India work years. I became quite tolerant of high intensity heat from capsicum, and learned to enjoy the steamy delirium of a typical mango curry. I am out of practice, not sure I can still handle high Scoville meals any more, but heartened to know that Derek Barchenger and the W.V.C team are taking care for capsicum’s future, so thanks to Clarissa Wei for this story:
The Quest to Save Chili Peppers
A seed bank in Taiwan is home to more chili varieties than anywhere else on earth. In a warming world, we’re going to need them.
In 1999, Susan Lin, a bespectacled plant researcher at the World Vegetable Center, in Taiwan, pulled on a pair of latex gloves and got to work cross-pollinating some chili peppers. She collected tiny white flowers from a cayenne-pepper plant, shook their pollen into a tiny test tube, and walked over to an aji-chili plant. Using tweezers, she removed the petals and anthers from its flower buds, exposing the thread-like stigmas that serve as the plant’s female reproductive organs. Then she dipped the stigmas into the pollen, hoping that they would eventually form peppers. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Dickcissel
Granger Lake, Williamson County, TX
Youth Is Not To Be Wasted In Montana
The plaintiffs look on during a status hearing for Held v Montana in the Lewis and Clark county courthouse in Helena, Montana, last month. Photograph: Thom Bridge/AP
At first it sounded like a gimmick, but listen to and read about it: there is a useful half hour podcast on this topic, and here we thank the Guardian for a bit more detailed coverage:
‘My life and my home’: young people start to testify at historic US climate trial
Some of the plaintiffs listen to arguments during the hearing in Montana. Photograph: Thom Bridge/AP
The plaintiffs note that Montana’s constitution pledges a healthy environment ‘for present and future generations’
The US’s first-ever trial in a constitutional climate lawsuit kicked off on Monday morning in a packed courtroom in Helena, Montana.
The case, Held v Montana, was brought in 2020 by 16 plaintiffs between the ages of five and 22 from around the state who allege state officials violated their constitutional right to a healthy environment by enacting pro-fossil fuel policies. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Common Redshank
Frauenkirchen, Austria
Pyrolysis, Advanced Plastic Recycling, Explained
Plastic waste at a disposal plant in Tokyo. THE YOMIURI SHIMBUN VIA AP IMAGES
We have a difficult time giving Exxon and other petroleum companies the benefit of the doubt, but at minimum we want to understand what they say about what they are selling:
As Plastics Keep Piling Up, Can ‘Advanced’ Recycling Cut the Waste?
Exxon’s advanced recycling facility in Baytown, Texas. BUSINESS WIRE
Proponents of a process called pyrolysis — including oil and gas companies — contend it will keep post-consumer plastics out of landfills and reduce pollution. But critics say that by converting waste to petroleum feedstock, it will only perpetuate a dependence on fossil fuels.
Bob Powell had spent more than a decade in the energy industry when he turned his attention to the problem of plastic waste. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black-throated Bushtit
Kumaon Hills, Uttarakhand
Bring Birds Back Podcast
A new (to us) podcast to get your bird nerd fix:
Let’s All Go to Gullah Geechee Sea Islands with Isaiah Scott
Bring Birds Back Season 4: Episode 4
This episode’s guest may be too young to remember the 90’s children’s show, Gullah Gullah Island, but he’s certainly influencing the next generation the same! Isaiah Scott, a rising Gen-Z bird-influencer and ornithologist, reconnects with Tenijah to dish all about his journey into birding while young, Black and curious. He also shares how his Gullah Geechee heritage continues to inspire his work, including a forthcoming field guide that seeks to preserve his ancestral connection to birds. There’s definitely “lots to see and to do there”– press play and take the journey with us!
Bird of the Day: Spotted Flycatcher
Shai Hills Resource Reserve, Ghana
Photography As Relief
A bee collects pollen on a hot summer’s morning in Burley-in-Wharfedale, UK
Photograph: Rebecca Cole/Alamy Live News/Alamy Live News.
For a brief visual bit of relief, visit Joanna Ruck’s collection:
The week in wildlife – in pictures
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including hot monkeys, baby flamingos and a hitchhiking cygnet
A European hoverfly (Helophilus pendulus) on pyracantha blossom in Dunsden, UK
Photograph: Geoffrey Swaine/Shutterstock
Bird of the Day: Crested Kingfisher
Kumaon Hills, Uttarakhand
Taking Inspiration From Smallhold Farms In Africa
A farmer in Niger tends to a tree sprout growing among his millet crop. TONY RINAUDO / WORLD VISION AUSTRALIA
I am nearing the point where I can offer an update on the trees we have planted in advance of 1,000+ coffee plants going into the ground in their shade. Thanks to Fred Pearce, reporting in Yale E360, I have some inspiration coming from across the Atlantic on the broader value of those trees:
Dooki (Combretum glutinosum) trees grow on a millet field in Niger. P. SAVADOGO / ICRAF
As Africa Loses Forest, Its Small Farmers Are Bringing Back Trees
The loss of forests across Africa has long been documented. But recent studies show that small farmers from Senegal to Ethiopia to Malawi are allowing trees to regenerate on their lands, resulting in improved crop yields, productive fruit harvests, and a boost for carbon storage.
For decades, there have been reports of the deforestation of Africa. And they are true — the continent’s forests are disappearing, lost mainly to expanding agriculture, logging, and charcoal-making. But the trees? Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black-crowned Waxbill
Yaoundé, Cameroon
Food Waste Best Practice, South Korea Edition
Unloading the food waste at a disposal facility in Seoul. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
One of the most covered topics in our pages during the decade since we started paying attention to it, still going strong for all the wrong reasons; so, our thanks to the New York Times for assigning John Yoon (reporting, writing) and Chang W. Lee (for photographs and video) to go to South Korea:
Food waste being separated from plastic bags at the Goyang facility.
How South Korea Puts Its Food Scraps to Good Use
When wasted food rots in landfills, it pollutes soil and water — and warms the planet. Here’s how one country keeps that from happening.
Around the world, most of the 1.4 billion tons of food thrown away each year goes to landfills. As it rots, it pollutes water and soil and releases huge amounts of methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Blue-throated Goldentail
Hotel Castillo del Arenal, Alajuela Province, Costa Rica
Costa Rica’s Ceramic Craft
Amie and I work together, but most of my days are consumed by coffee. Especially in the March to May period, when coffee harvests are finishing and the first cuppings of the new crops are possible, my time for other activities is limited. But in June, there is more time. For the past 4+ years our shared work has included my joining her to meet artisans whose work our shops might carry. This work never disappoints, even if we conclude that the product is not a good fit for Authentica. Recently we had an afternoon together with a ceramicist we knew about, but had not yet had the opportunity to spend time with. The biggest surprise was seeing this smoke stack in the photo below.
It is rustic, and at first sight not much to look at. But listening to him tell its history you can appreciate how often in history artisans lead the way that industrialists eventually follow. This was the first smokestack in Costa Rica using technology that reduces carbon and particulate emissions. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Blue-winged Minla
Kumaon Hills, Uttarakhand
Taking Better Care With Help From Kate Raworth
What? We never posted on this book or its economist author before? We correct that now with Hettie O’Brien’s article in the Guardian :
The planet’s economist: has Kate Raworth found a model for sustainable living?
Her hit book Doughnut Economics laid out a path to a greener, more equal society. But can she turn her ideas into meaningful change?
Raworth in Oxford. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian
Consider the electric car. Sleek and nearly silent, it is a good example of how far the world has progressed in fighting the climate crisis. Its carbon footprint is around three times smaller than its petrol equivalent, and unlike a regular car, it emits none of the greenhouse gases that warm the planet or noxious fumes that pollute the air. That’s the good news. Then consider that the battery of an electric car uses 8kg of lithium, likely extracted from briny pools on South America’s salt flats, a process that has been blamed for shrinking pasturelands and causing desertification.
A bike park in Amsterdam which offers free parking for more than 2,500 bicycles. Photograph: Jochen Tack/Alamy
The 14kg of cobalt that prevent the car’s battery from overheating have probably come from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where cobalt mines have contaminated water supplies and soil. As the demand for electric vehicles grows, the mining and refining of their components will intensify, further damaging natural ecosystems. By 2040, according to the International Energy Agency, the global demand for lithium will have increased more than fortyfold. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Village Weaver
Ndjeke, Cameroon
Seaweed Farming Further Considered
Severine von Tscharner Welcome forages for seaweed in Cobscook Bay, Maine.
Our thanks as always to Food & Environment Reporting Network. In this article by Bridget Huber, with photography by Lauren Owens Lambert, some of our earlier links to stories about farming in the sea are called into question.
A variety of seaweed harvested from the Gulf of Maine, including sugar kelp, sea lettuce, dulse, bladderwrack, and Irish moss.
Climate savior or ‘Monsanto of the sea’
Seaweed farming is being hyped as a major weapon in the fight against climate change. But skeptics say the rush to build industrial-scale operations risks unintended consequences.
Early on a cool spring morning, in far Downeast Maine, Severine von Tscharner Welcome and her husband, Terran, scrambled along a point jutting into Cobscook Bay. The Passamaquoddy people named the bay Kapskuk after the immense tides and wild currents that make the water seem to boil. Continue reading
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