e2 - Eye on Earth, a service of
World Watch Magazine in partnership with the
Blue Moon Fund, provides our community with a unique perspective on current events, newly released studies, and important global trends. This update service offers context to critical world events that are seemingly disparate yet often closely related, highlighting the connections between human consumption and the natural world, while telling the stories of individuals and organizations that are supporting new approaches to resource use, energy use and urban development. Eye on Earth presents the news of today with an eye towards tomorrow, illustrating how current events will shape our own future and that of generations to come.
During a June 28 visit to Washington, D.C., Ralph Klein, the premier of Canada’s western province of Alberta, spoke about the vast energy potential in his region and reassured U.S. government officials that Alberta’s oil reserves are secure. The following day, two leading North American environmental organizations, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Canada’s Pembina Institute, hosted a panel discussion in Washington to provide what they considered to be a more complete picture of Albertan oil development.
A recent Supreme Court decision could make it harder for conservationists to safeguard wetland areas previously protected under the U.S. Clean Water Act.
A study released in May by Britain’s Soil Association concludes that organic farming provides 32 percent more jobs per farm in the United Kingdom than conventional agriculture does.
A recent cholera outbreak in the southern African country of Angola has sickened 43,000 people and claimed more than 1,600 lives since it began in February.
A little-known project of the Bush Administration may have substantial ramifications for the future of the North American continent.
At the 58th annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) last week in St. Kitts and Nevis, member countries voted 33 to 32 in favor of a resolution declaring the international ban on commercial whaling “no longer necessary.”
On June 20, the non-profit organization Environmental Defense hosted a lunch meeting in Washington, D.C., to discuss the shortcomings of Africa’s largest water diversion scheme, the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP). An outgrowth of a 1986 treaty between South Africa and Lesotho, the project involves the construction of five large dams in Lesotho’s Orange/Senqu River Basin to supply water to South Africa’s industrial Gauteng Province.
In 2007, for the first time in history, more than half the human population will live in urban areas. To discuss the implications of this momentous demographic shift, thousands of delegates from more than 150 countries have gathered in Vancouver, Canada, for World Urban Forum 3.
At a May 25–26 workshop in Hohenkammer, Germany, scientists, economists, and insurance analysts agreed that regardless of its underlying causes, climate change has had an increasing influence on disaster trends in recent decades.
Bicycle taxis are rapidly supplanting gasoline-powered minibus taxis in parts of western Kenya. Residents of Kisumu, a small city 500 kilometers from Nairobi, have long relied on the minibuses, or “matatus,” to get around. But as improvements in the bicycle industry lead to lower production costs, sales of the pedal-powered alternatives are booming.
