The year 2014 may be seen as a turning point in the public debate on inequality, which is in large part thanks to Thomas Piketty’s best-selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century.1 There is no doubt that Piketty’s tome of analysis has done a great service for progressives in that it uses comprehensive data sets […]

In BriefIn 1999, at the start of its process of social transformation known as the Bolivarian Revolution, Venezuela became among the world’s first countries to adopt a national policy of food sovereignty. Its newly reformed constitution guaranteed its citizens the right to food through a secure national food supply based on sustainable …

In BriefMarkets are potentially effective tools in the management of natural resources. This is because of their ability to allocate resources efficiently in the increasingly complex relationship between ecology and the global economy. Nevertheless, increasing environmental degradation means that system and market failures, which impact the …

In BriefUsing findings of the Cities and Biodiversity Outlook (CBO), we propose three specific solutions to mitigate the loss of ecosystem services and biodiversity in our urban and urbanizing landscapes. The CBO identified continued loss of critical habitats for biodiversity conservation and degradation of many important ecosystem services …

In BriefNew Zealand is highly dependent on ecosystems for a range of services. Since the arrival of Europeans in the 19th century, many natural ecosystems have been converted to managed ecosystems. This conversion has been accompanied by biological invasions. Managing the balance between natural and managed ecosystems is crucial. In this …

When Diana Jean Schemo co-founded 100Reporters, a news organization dedicated to fighting corruption through investigative reporting, she wanted to give citizens a way to leak material confidentially, knowing it would be reviewed by trusted journalists. Even before Schemo launched her news site in 2011, she invested in Whistleblower Alley,1 a …

One of my favorite memories from my childhood was finding a box turtle living under a line of gnarly Osage orange (Maclura pomifera) trees in my suburban Chicago neighborhood. It was not until many years later that I realized that this row of rough trees, threading through backyards and along roadsides, was a remnant farm […]

The Interfaith Sustainable Food Collaborative (ISFC) is a nonprofit organization working in California’s Sonoma and Marin Counties.1 It gathers clergy and lay-people for monthly roundtable discussions about food and faith. In June 2014, members of Lutheran, Quaker, Congregational, Methodist, Seventh Day Adventist, Episcopal, and Catholic …

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) atrocities against women have provoked worldwide outrage, generating increased support for U.S. action in the region and hundreds of airstrikes in Iraq and Syria since August. Yet for all this indignation, similar abuses against women, including child marriages, legalized marital rape, and …

While poverty is traditionally associated with immediate economic hardship, it is particularly debilitating if it persists over time and is passed on across generations. This is true throughout the world. People can still succeed despite short dips in income, but it is much more difficult to thrive without the array of individual resources and …

“Schools and businesses were closed for a second day and thousands of residents still couldn’t go home Wednesday as a weakened timber dam threatened to give way and spill a 6-foot surge of water into downtown Taunton.” “Impassable dams have undoubtedly been the immediate cause of the decline of many fisheries, and a …

In the eyes of many, Thomas Jefferson embodies the contradictions of the young American republic. The principal writer of the Declaration of Independence was a man deeply committed to the democratic and equalitarian ideals of the Enlightenment and who professed to hate slavery. Yet, he was at the same time one of the largest slaveholders […]

Societal and technological transformation in the face of climate change will be won or lost in our cities and urban communities. This is not just because of the global urban demographic shift with more than 50 percent of the population now living in urban conditions, or because cities contribute around 70 to 80 percent of […]

For 25 years, Tim Phillips has worked to promote peace and reconciliation in Central America and Northern Ireland, among many other regions and countries, and helped the new leaders of post-communist Europe and post-apartheid South Africa confront the painful legacy of violence and repression. Using the “shared experience” approach, Tim and …

With a burgeoning, wealthier middle class demanding luxuries once reserved for the privileged, cooks in China have come under fire for a hallmark dish of many Chinese weddings since the Ming dynasty: shark fin soup. No one knows exactly how many sharks have been killed for their fins in recent years, but as a top […]

Maude Barlow, the author of Blue Planet, is the chair of the board of Food and Water Watch, founder of the Blue Planet Project, a much honored and tireless human rights activist, and a recipient of the 2005 Right Livelihood Award (the “alternative Nobel Peace Prize”), as well as numerous other commendations. She is also […]

Few were surprised to hear of the selection of Malala Yousafzai for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, but, alongside the famed young Pakistani girl was another, less well-known child activist also being awarded the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, Kailash Satyarthi. Satyarthi is a 60-year-old Hindu Indian, who quit engineering and teaching in 1980 in order …

A new residential community development on the outskirts of Sydney is stepping up to the sustainability challenge—and creating an unusual amount of attention in the process. Constructed over what was previously a private golf course, the master plan includes restoration of wetlands and waterways connected into its stormwater management plan, …

Since Istanbul, Turkey is notorious for its hours-long traffic jams, one might not get terribly excited over the development of another car. But, this is not just any new car. The Portacar is a solar car named after the orange (‘portakal’ in Turkish), the symbol of Antalya, and also because the steering system was built […]

A prison is not the first place one would expect to find an art exhibit, nevertheless one exploring themes of freedom and human rights. But this is exactly where Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has chosen to display his work- at the United States’ notorious island prison, Alcatraz, found off the coast of San […]