Feature Articles
The modern economy experiences two types of cyclical debt cycles: the short-term business cycle that produces the familiar oscillation between expansion and recession, bull and bear; and the long-term debt cycle that we are experiencing now. During the 75-year period of these cycles, the debt-to-income profile of the entire economy gradually builds up a stock of household, corporate, and...
For most of the two hundred thousand years or so of human existence, we used but a small fraction of the earth’s freshwater resources. It has been only a few thousand years since humans first learned to exert any control over water by channeling it for irrigation and supply for cities. In a geological heartbeat, however, we have reached the point where we now use half of the world’s freshwater...
Noteworthy
A clever, albeit brutal, goat eradication program on the Galápagos Islands is credited for successfully saving a rare population of giant tortoises from extinction.
More than 1,500 giant...
In an effort to fill the gaps left by our financial institutions, many are searching for local alternatives to national currencies. Time banks are one option that promotes community self-reliance while...
More than almost any other recent technology, the mobile phone has penetrated the developing world and sparked innovation. And in Kenya, where more than three-quarters of the population owns a mobile...
In Andavadoaka, a Vezo village on the western coast of Madagascar, marine ecosystems are a precious resource. Over 71 percent of Vezo people rely on fishing as their sole source of income. But local...
At a time when we need visionary leaders more than ever, the loss of Ray Anderson last August was a body blow. Awakened years ago by an epiphany about the damage his carpet industry was doing to the...
Green capitalism is thriving in India and nowhere more so than in the renewable-energy sector. Take the entrepreneurs behind the homegrown company Husk Power Systems. Seeing an opportunity to both do...
More than almost any other nation, Bangladesh is on the front lines of climate change. It’s one of the world’s poorest and most densely populated countries, and most of its lands are less than 30 feet...
Germany has committed to shutting down all of its nuclear reactors by 2022, making it the biggest industrial power to go nuclear-free. Prompted by the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, the German...
In an effort to legitimize Liberia’s timber industry, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is putting barcodes on her nation’s trees. The barcodes will be instrumental to a deal signed in May with the...
With the support of President Evo Morales, Bolivia is poised to pass a national law giving nature unprecedented legal rights. According to Vice President Alvaro García Linera, the legislation will make...
The collapse of fisheries worldwide endangers the livelihoods and food security of tens of millions of people. These fisheries are often small and ill-suited to top-down regulatory intervention. In...
Slums of cardboard boxes and metal sheeting are synonymous with many Latin American cities. In Mexico, such crude housing, often unstable and overcrowded, begins at the U.S. border and stretches across...
We haven’t seen a single car for 466 kilometers. It’s November 15, 2010, and Alec Neal and I are finishing our “Solutions Revolution”—a cross-country bicycle trip filming a documentary about local...
Off one of Bangkok’s main streets, down a tree-lined lane, is Cabbages and Condoms (C&C), a nonprofit restaurant that serves up good food and a healthy dose of sex education. The restaurant was...
It’s time to change the way America gives aid. The international women’s rights organization MADRE is calling on the United States government to stop flooding African nations with its agricultural...
Perspectives
It is an article of faith that global trade will be an ever-growing presence in the world. Yet this belief rests on shaky foundations. Global trade depends on cheap, long-distance freight transportation. Freight costs will rise with climate...
From competition among hunter-gatherers for wild game to imperialist wars over precious minerals, resource wars have been fought throughout history; today, however, the competition appears set to enter a new—and perhaps unprecedented—phase. As...
Within the U.S. military, there is no debate about the risks, threats, and challenges of climate change and energy dependency as they relate to our national security.1 Climate change and energy efficiency have become standing military...
Two decades of research into the management of what economists call common-pool resources suggests that, under the right conditions, local communities can manage shared resources sustainably and successfully. These revolutionary findings...
Interview
On the Ground
Coquille Forest,
United States
Editorial
Featured Media Review
Book
We have made much progress in understanding how ecosystems (forests, oceans, the atmosphere, and so on) function and provide the services upon which human communities depend—air and water...
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Exploring solutions presented in our special July/August issue on Appalachia
967
Bowdoin College's Phil Camill offers a fresh perspective to the issues surrounding environmental change.
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This is the University of Vermont Solutions Group. We are based in and around Burlington, VT.
Ecosystem services and resonance
Effective Communication
Ecosystem Services as Conservation Strategy
Community based pasture management
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