Curtin University embarks upon organising and supporting global challenges - beginning with the UNEP-DHI Eco Challenge 2015. The links connected here should not be seen as endorsements but rather suggested starting points for critical discussions. http://ecochallengeaustralia.com.au
The findings should not be seen as taking pressure off the need to tackle climate change, the authors and other experts warned. “We will still see significant warming and impacts this century if we don’t increase our ambition to reduce CO2 emissions,” said Forster.
Even a 1.5C increase will have consequences. With a single degree Celsius of warming so far, the Earth is already coping with a crescendo of climate impacts including deadly droughts, erratic rainfall, and storm surges engorged by rising seas.
A 3.5 C world, scientists say, could pull at the fabric of civilisation.
Since industrialisation took off in the early 19th century, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have increased by nearly half, from 280 parts per million to 407 parts per million.
Up to now global warming predictions have focused on the historical temperature record.
Cox and colleagues instead “considered the year-to-year fluctuations in global temperature,” said Richard Allan, a climate scientist at the University of Reading.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
The findings should not be seen as taking pressure off the need to tackle climate change, the authors and other experts warned. “We will still see significant warming and impacts this century if we don’t increase our ambition to reduce CO2 emissions,” said Forster.
Even a 1.5C increase will have consequences. With a single degree Celsius of warming so far, the Earth is already coping with a crescendo of climate impacts including deadly droughts, erratic rainfall, and storm surges engorged by rising seas.
A 3.5 C world, scientists say, could pull at the fabric of civilisation.
Since industrialisation took off in the early 19th century, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have increased by nearly half, from 280 parts per million to 407 parts per million.
Up to now global warming predictions have focused on the historical temperature record.
Cox and colleagues instead “considered the year-to-year fluctuations in global temperature,” said Richard Allan, a climate scientist at the University of Reading.
"Basically, when we haven't got enough money, we have to decide who's not going to get food," says Peter Smerdon, a spokesman for the U.N.'s World Food Programme in East Africa.
And even though the program's budget is at a record high, it's not enough to keep up with the number of refugees and people in other crisis situations who need emergency food aid. Continuing conflicts in countries like Syria and Yemen and other crises led to the agency's multibillion-dollar budget shortfall last year. It received a total of $6.8 billion from countries, organizations and private donors when it needed $9.1 billion to do its job.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
The U.N. is facing a terrible dilemma.
"Basically, when we haven't got enough money, we have to decide who's not going to get food," says Peter Smerdon, a spokesman for the U.N.'s World Food Programme in East Africa.
And even though the program's budget is at a record high, it's not enough to keep up with the number of refugees and people in other crisis situations who need emergency food aid. Continuing conflicts in countries like Syria and Yemen and other crises led to the agency's multibillion-dollar budget shortfall last year. It received a total of $6.8 billion from countries, organizations and private donors when it needed $9.1 billion to do its job.
The world’s last great wildernesses are shrinking at an alarming rate. In the past two decades, 10% of the earth’s wilderness has been lost due to human pressure, a mapping study by the University of Queensland has found.
Over the course of human history, there has been a major degradation of 52% of the earth’s ecosystems, while the remaining 48% is being increasingly eroded. Since 1992, when the United Nations signed up to the Rio convention on biological diversity, three million square kilometres of wilderness have been lost.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
The world’s last great wildernesses are shrinking at an alarming rate. In the past two decades, 10% of the earth’s wilderness has been lost due to human pressure, a mapping study by the University of Queensland has found.
Over the course of human history, there has been a major degradation of 52% of the earth’s ecosystems, while the remaining 48% is being increasingly eroded. Since 1992, when the United Nations signed up to the Rio convention on biological diversity, three million square kilometres of wilderness have been lost.
Violence has consequences that go well between the physical pain it inflicts. Research tells us that it affects children's self-esteem, their ability to learn and their ability to succeed as adults. Victims of childhood abuse are less likely to provide attentive care and more likely to be neglectful of their own children. Witnessing violence and being exposed to toxic stress at home also has an impact on developing brains. The report combines this sad evidence with examples of case studies that can be used to help. It is everyone's responsibility to take action.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
Violence has consequences that go well between the physical pain it inflicts. Research tells us that it affects children's self-esteem, their ability to learn and their ability to succeed as adults. Victims of childhood abuse are less likely to provide attentive care and more likely to be neglectful of their own children. Witnessing violence and being exposed to toxic stress at home also has an impact on developing brains. The report combines this sad evidence with examples of case studies that can be used to help. It is everyone's responsibility to take action.
Each year I start out with the same question for my students: What is the biggest issue you think our world faces, and what can we do to solve it?
This challenge-based learning approach allows my students to design our class and focus on real-world issues. With their ideas, we build our class projects together.
Students next identify a problem in our own community. We discuss all of their ideas and then look at the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Using this resource, we investigate the problems they identify and compare them to world issues. For example, a few years ago, students decided that childhood obesity was a problem in our community. After researching the Sustainable Development Goals, they determined that globally, malnutrition was possibly a bigger issue. I developed a guiding question, asking students to ponder the following: Which was more of a problem, obesity or starvation? Which had a more negative effect on the body? After much debate and argumentation, students decided that overall health was more of an issue than either topic.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
The challenge based learning approach is also being adopted by Curtin Learning Futures in the Balance of the Planet, Global Goals Challenge and other learning experiences.
Geneticist and climate activist David Suzuki explains how conventional economics a form of brain damage in this clip from the 2011 documentary "Surviving Progress."
Kim Flintoff's insight:
Geneticist and climate activist David Suzuki explains how conventional economics a form of brain damage in this clip from the 2011 documentary "Surviving Progress."
Your independent tool for choosing your seafood wisely
Welcome to Australia's Sustainable Seafood Guide Online - the first online sustainability guide for seafood consumers in Australia. It was developed in response to growing public concern about overfishing and its impact on our oceans and their wildlife. It is designed to help you make informed seafood choices and play a part in swelling the tide for sustainable seafood in Australia.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
Your independent tool for choosing your seafood wisely
Welcome to Australia's Sustainable Seafood Guide Online - the first online sustainability guide for seafood consumers in Australia. It was developed in response to growing public concern about overfishing and its impact on our oceans and their wildlife. It is designed to help you make informed seafood choices and play a part in swelling the tide for sustainable seafood in Australia.
Thirty-five years ago an American biologist Terry Erwin conducted an experiment to count insect species. Using an insecticide “fog”, he managed to extract all the small living things in the canopies of 19 individuals of one species of tropical tree, Luehea seemannii, in the rainforest of Panama. He recorded about 1,200 separate species, nearly all of them coleoptera (beetles) and many new to science; and he estimated that 163 of these would be found on Luehea seemannii only.
He calculated that as there are about 50,000 species of tropical tree, if that figure of 163 was typical for all the other trees, there would be more than eight million species, just of beetles, in the tropical rainforest canopy; and as beetles make up about 40% of all the arthropods, the grouping that contains the insects and the other creepy-crawlies from spiders to millipedes, the total number of such species in the canopy might be 20 million; and as he estimated the canopy fauna to be separate from, and twice as rich as, the forest floor, for the tropical forest as a whole the number of species might be 30 million.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
Thirty-five years ago an American biologist Terry Erwin conducted an experiment to count insect species. Using an insecticide “fog”, he managed to extract all the small living things in the canopies of 19 individuals of one species of tropical tree, Luehea seemannii, in the rainforest of Panama. He recorded about 1,200 separate species, nearly all of them coleoptera (beetles) and many new to science; and he estimated that 163 of these would be found on Luehea seemannii only.
The report is launched during the first Conference of Parties for the Minamata Convention which addresses mercury issues and is a major agreement to protect human health and the environment.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
The report is launched during the first Conference of Parties for the Minamata Convention which addresses mercury issues and is a major agreement to protect human health and the environment.
Proper development and maintenance of critical infrastructure needs to be understood as a core component of disaster risk reduction. Particularly in emerging economies and developing countries, however, infrastructure is frequently of insufficient quality, which contributes to a country’s vulnerability, especially with regards to coping with a disaster situation. In Africa, for example, there are only 65 kilometers of paved roads per 100,000 inhabitants, compared with 832 kilometers in Europe or 552 kilometers in the Americas. This means that there are fewer redundancies in transportation routes and, consequently, fewer alternatives if the main road to an affected area becomes impassable.
Crops like corn, tomatoes, sorghum and sunflowers are transforming more than 200 hectares of sand dunes into an oasis – all within six months.
It’s all thanks to new technology developed by researchers at Chongqing Jiaotong University. They developed a paste made of a substance found in plant cell walls.
When it’s added to sand, it’s able to retain water, nutrients and air.
“The costs of artificial materials and machines for transforming sand into soil is lower compared with controlled environmental agriculture and reclamation,” Yang Qingguo, professor at Chongqing Jiaotong University said.
The research team has big future plans. This fall, it hopes to transform an additional 200 hectares of desert – and possibly more than 13,000in the next few years.
The method could be promising for China. In three years, the country hopes to reforest 50 percent of degraded desert land that can be treated. By 2030, the United Nations is aiming to reach zero growth of desert farmland around the world.
China’s breakthrough experiment in converting sand to soil is promising for making land seemingly hostile to life, fertile ground.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
China’s breakthrough experiment in converting sand to soil is promising for making land seemingly hostile to life, fertile ground.
Linking specific extreme weather events to global warming is difficult, and this plays into the hands of climate-change deniers.
In the past couple of weeks, tropical storms have devastated communities around the world. Hurricane Harvey has wreaked havoc in Texas, destroying homes and claiming lives. Typhoon Hato has left a similar trail of destruction in southern China and Hong Kong.
There is a strong argument to be made that humans are at least partly responsible for both of these extreme weather events. The problem is it’s often difficult to produce tangible evidence.
What we do know for sure, however, is that climate change enhances storm surges and causes flooding — both of which can have devastating consequences.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
What we do know for sure, however, is that climate change enhances storm surges and causes flooding — both of which can have devastating consequences.
For decades, the donation bin has offered consumers in rich countries a guilt-free way to unload their old clothing.
In a virtuous and profitable cycle, a global network of traders would collect these garments, grade them, and transport them around the world to be recycled, worn again, or turned into rags and stuffing.
Now that cycle is breaking down. Fashion trends are accelerating, new clothes are becoming as cheap as used ones, and poor countries are turning their backs on the second-hand trade. Without significant changes in the way that clothes are made and marketed, this could add up to an environmental disaster in the making.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
For decades, the donation bin has offered consumers in rich countries a guilt-free way to unload their old clothing.
In a virtuous and profitable cycle, a global network of traders would collect these garments, grade them, and transport them around the world to be recycled, worn again, or turned into rags and stuffing.
Now that cycle is breaking down. Fashion trends are accelerating, new clothes are becoming as cheap as used ones, and poor countries are turning their backs on the second-hand trade. Without significant changes in the way that clothes are made and marketed, this could add up to an environmental disaster in the making.
Each generation is normalising the erosion of our environment, and the devastating losses to fragile ecosystems mount up
What you see is not what others see. We inhabit parallel worlds of perception, bounded by our interests and experience. What is obvious to some is invisible to others. I might find myself standing, transfixed, by the roadside, watching a sparrowhawk hunting among the bushes, astonished that other people could ignore it. But they might just as well be wondering how I could have failed to notice the new V6 Pentastar Sahara that just drove past.
As the psychologist Richard Wiseman points out: “At any one moment, your eyes and brain only have the processing power to look at a very small part of your surroundings … your brain quickly identifies what it considers to be the most significant aspects of your surroundings, and focuses almost all of its attention on these elements.” Everything else remains unseen.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
Each generation is normalising the erosion of our environment, and the devastating losses to fragile ecosystems mount up
What you see is not what others see. We inhabit parallel worlds of perception, bounded by our interests and experience. What is obvious to some is invisible to others. I might find myself standing, transfixed, by the roadside, watching a sparrowhawk hunting among the bushes, astonished that other people could ignore it. But they might just as well be wondering how I could have failed to notice the new V6 Pentastar Sahara that just drove past.
As the psychologist Richard Wiseman points out: “At any one moment, your eyes and brain only have the processing power to look at a very small part of your surroundings … your brain quickly identifies what it considers to be the most significant aspects of your surroundings, and focuses almost all of its attention on these elements.” Everything else remains unseen.
In short, panic There’s a lot to glean from this graph, but here’s the takeaway: We’ve already crossed over into moderate risk on the first three RFCS. Pushing temperatures up 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels — the target at which the world claims to want to stop warming — puts us at high risk on the first three and moderate risk on the last two. That is the best-case scenario.
Three degrees over preindustrial levels, where we are very likely headed this century, puts us at high risk across the board, very high for those uniquely threatened systems. Five degrees, which is entirely possible, puts basically every human and ecological system at high to very high risk.
We are already in danger, there’s more danger to come, and the best we can hope for is to slow and stop the process before the dangers are catastrophic. That’s the shape of things.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
In short, panic There’s a lot to glean from this graph, but here’s the takeaway: We’ve already crossed over into moderate risk on the first three RFCS. Pushing temperatures up 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels — the target at which the world claims to want to stop warming — puts us at high risk on the first three and moderate risk on the last two. That is the best-case scenario.
Three degrees over preindustrial levels, where we are very likely headed this century, puts us at high risk across the board, very high for those uniquely threatened systems. Five degrees, which is entirely possible, puts basically every human and ecological system at high to very high risk.
We are already in danger, there’s more danger to come, and the best we can hope for is to slow and stop the process before the dangers are catastrophic. That’s the shape of things.
Plastics have got themselves a bad name, mainly for two reasons: most are made from petroleum and they end up as litter in the environment.
However, both of these are quite avoidable. An increased focus on bio-derived and degradable composites as well as recycling could lessen pollution and, in fact, plastics could make a positive contribution to the environment.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
Plastics have got themselves a bad name, mainly for two reasons: most are made from petroleum and they end up as litter in the environment.
However, both of these are quite avoidable. An increased focus on bio-derived and degradable composites as well as recycling could lessen pollution and, in fact, plastics could make a positive contribution to the environment.
If it's quiet solitude and beauty you seek, there is no better place than the surface of Mars. Mars has earned its moniker as the red planet, but the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) can transform the subtle differences of soils into a rainbow of colours.
At first glance it may not seem so, but the story of the now-vanished island of Nahlapenlohd, a couple of kilometres south of Pohnpei Island in Micronesia, holds some valuable lessons about recent climate change in the western Pacific.
In 1850, Nahlapenlohd was so large that not only did it support a sizeable coconut forest, but it was able to accommodate a memorable battle between the rival kingdoms of Kitti and Madolenihmw. The skirmish was the first in Pohnpeian history to involve the European sailor-mercenaries known as beachcombers and to be fought with imported weapons like cannons and muskets.
Today the island is no more. The oral histories tell that so much blood was spilled in this fierce battle that it stripped the island of all its vegetation, causing it to shrink and eventually disappear beneath the waves.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
Climate change and rising sea levels take away more than available land - they begin to erode and devastate culture.
Whether releasing wax moths on the world’s surplus plastic really is sensible is not yet clear. For one thing, it has not been established whether the caterpillars gain nutritional value from the plastics they eat, as well as being able to digest them. If they do not, their lives as garbage-disposal operatives are likely to be short — and, even if they do, they will need other nutrients to thrive and grow. Another question is the composition of their faeces. If these turn out to be toxic, then there will be little point in pursuing the matter. Regardless of this, though, the discovery that wax-moth larvae can eat plastic is intriguing. Even if the moths themselves are not the answer to the problem of plastic waste, some other animal out there might be.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
Whether releasing wax moths on the world’s surplus plastic really is sensible is not yet clear. For one thing, it has not been established whether the caterpillars gain nutritional value from the plastics they eat, as well as being able to digest them. If they do not, their lives as garbage-disposal operatives are likely to be short — and, even if they do, they will need other nutrients to thrive and grow. Another question is the composition of their faeces. If these turn out to be toxic, then there will be little point in pursuing the matter. Regardless of this, though, the discovery that wax-moth larvae can eat plastic is intriguing. Even if the moths themselves are not the answer to the problem of plastic waste, some other animal out there might be.
At the end of every summer, scientist Li Zhongqin takes his seasonal hike near the top of a glacier in the Tianshan mountains in China's far northwestern region of Xinjiang.
Li scrambles over a frozen ridge and heads toward a lone pole wedged in the ice. Clouds emerge from a peak above and quickly blow past. He stops to catch his breath. He is at 14,000 feet. The snow is thick. The air is thin.
"This is called a sight rod," he says, grasping the pole. "We come up here each month to check it, to see how fast the glacier's melting. Each year, the glacier is 15 feet thinner."
Li, who heads the Tianshan Mountains Glaciological Station of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, points to a valley beyond a valley of boulders below to another glacier in the distance. "Twenty years ago, when I was a young scientist, these two glaciers were connected," he says. "But now, look: They're completely separate. Things are changing very, very quickly."
Kim Flintoff's insight:
Li, who heads the Tianshan Mountains Glaciological Station of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, points to a valley beyond a valley of boulders below to another glacier in the distance. "Twenty years ago, when I was a young scientist, these two glaciers were connected," he says. "But now, look: They're completely separate. Things are changing very, very quickly."
Blue is a feature documentary film charting the drastic decline in the health of our oceans. With more than half of all marine life lost and the expansion of the industrialization of the seas, the film sets out the challenges we are facing and the opportunities for positive change. Blue changes the way we think about our liquid world and inspires the audience to action. Along with the film is an ambitious global campaign to create advocacy and behaviour change through the #oceanguardian movement. To watch the film and become an ocean guardian, see the website.
Cool Australia and Northern Pictures would like to acknowledge the generous contributions of GoodPitch² Australia, Shark Island Institute, Documentary Australia Foundation, The Caledonia Foundation and Screen Australia in the development of these teaching resources.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
the health of our oceans. With more than half of all marine life lost and the expansion of the industrialization of the seas, the film sets out the challenges we are facing and the opportunities for positive change. Blue changes the way we think about our liquid world and inspires the audience to action.
A Curtin scientist is collaborating with a South Korean production company to research a new method of recovering precious metals hidden in discarded smartphones and other end-of-life consumer products.
Go to any landfill and you’ll discover a sea of waste, but it’s a sea that hides a treasure trove of precious metals. A smashed computer could reveal a central processing unit lined with gold. A broken LCD monitor could expose a cathode ray tube composed of copper. And these precious metals can all be mined, if treated correctly.
For some countries, it’s reasonable to say this unorthodox source may act as a lifeline. This is particularly true for South Korea, which imports 99.3 per cent of its metals due to a scarcity of natural resources.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
A Curtin scientist is collaborating with a South Korean production company to research a new method of recovering precious metals hidden in discarded smartphones and other end-of-life consumer products.
Robert Muggah, global security expert and research director at the think tank Igarapé Institute, knows. Earth TimeLapse, an interactive platform created by Muggah and Carnegie Mellon University, details over a 15-year span from 2000 to 2015 where migrants are leaving and arriving.
Data comes from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Each red dot represents 17 refugees arriving in a country, while yellow dots represent refugees leaving their home country behind.
The resulting maps are nothing short of mesmerising.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
Data comes from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Each red dot represents 17 refugees arriving in a country, while yellow dots represent refugees leaving their home country behind.
WWF-India's One Planet Academy is a unique portal imparting education for the environment among children, and laying a foundation for building a sustainable future.
Our environment is essential for survival. We are all deeply inter-connected with nature, and each one of its creations plays a significant role in forming the web of life.
The portal hubs stories, games, films, competitions and much more encouraging students to become young explorers of the natural world.
For teachers, it offers classroom solutions in form of creative activity and project ideas with environmental themes seamlessly woven into mainstream subjects.
The short term Online Training programmes upgrade teacher skill sets and encourage them into becoming environment educators.
The schools play an important role as school environment, culture, beliefs and practices nurture the inquisitive and impressionable minds of young children.
Adopting sustainable or green practices should be an integral part of every school's vision.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
"The future will belong to the nature-smart. The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need."
- Richard Louv, Author National Best Seller 'Last Child in the Woods
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The findings should not be seen as taking pressure off the need to tackle climate change, the authors and other experts warned. “We will still see significant warming and impacts this century if we don’t increase our ambition to reduce CO2 emissions,” said Forster.
Even a 1.5C increase will have consequences. With a single degree Celsius of warming so far, the Earth is already coping with a crescendo of climate impacts including deadly droughts, erratic rainfall, and storm surges engorged by rising seas.
A 3.5 C world, scientists say, could pull at the fabric of civilisation.
Since industrialisation took off in the early 19th century, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have increased by nearly half, from 280 parts per million to 407 parts per million.
Up to now global warming predictions have focused on the historical temperature record.
Cox and colleagues instead “considered the year-to-year fluctuations in global temperature,” said Richard Allan, a climate scientist at the University of Reading.