Happy Nirvana

Sea life in Papua New Gunea; Photo via Angell Williams In a move that is highly controversial among environmentalists, scientists and indigenous people, Papua New Guinea has given the go-ahead for a deep sea mineral mine that will extract materials such as copper, zinc and gold. This is a great case-in-point for Stephen’s recent post [...]

Photo via Daily Times The world’s largest tiger reserve was recently put into place in the Kachin state in Burma, news which conservationists and champions of the fast-declining species cheered. But it looks like the cheering came too soon — reports have surfaced that a Burmese real estate corporation is continuing to clear-cut the forests [...]

Photo via Plinkk This year’s coffee prices area already at a 12-year high due to low crop yields in South America, but it looks like prices could tighten again in the future if a particular beetle continues to bask in warming weather. Arabica coffee, a climate-sensitive plant, is grown in Ethiopia and Latin America. However, [...]

image: Maplecroft New analysis shows Afghanistan as well as several sub-Saharan African nations as having the greatest food security risk in the world, classified as ‘extreme risk’ (red in the image above). Furthermore, 36 of the 50 most at-risk nations in the world are found in Africa…. Read the full story on TreeHugger Credits to:TreeHugger

Photo via Flickr There’s some surprising news today out of Myanmar, the nation formerly known as Burma. The country, which is controlled by a brutal military regime, has nonetheless decided to created the largest tiger sanctuary in the world. With only 3,000 left in the wild, tigers are among the most endangered animals on the [...]

One of the world’s cleanest lakes, Lake Baikal is rapidly being polluted. Photo by Sergey Gabdurakhmanov via Flickr Nasty pollutants pouring into the world’s deepest and oldest lake from a pulp and paper mill are putting Russia’s Lake Baikal — which holds one fifth of the world’s fresh water — at risk of being dropped [...]

The World Health Organisation reports that half of the world’s population is at risk of Malaria, and an estimated 243 million cases led to nearly 863 000 deaths in 2008. The renewed effort to control malaria worldwide and move towards elimination in some countries is founded on the latest generation of effective tools and methods [...]

The Mosel valley. Photo by Dittmeyer via Flickr On the steep hillsides of the Mosel valley, in southwestern Germany, the vineyards are tended by hand, as they have been since Roman times. It is not uncommon for a modern vintner to have a family history in the region going back hundreds of years. But while [...]

The elusive North Pacific right whale may be too depleted to save. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons As the world continues to struggle over a plan to control—if not stop—commercial whaling, one of the industry’s victims struggles for survival. The North Pacific right whale—once numbering in the tens of thousands—was nearly driven to extinction by whaling [...]