Canada's Environmental Voice
I LOOK OUT over the Credit River valley and the Niagara Escarpment from my home office. It’s early May and soon leaves will have burst open. But for a few days, there is an ephemeral green tinge to the maple and beech, basswood and birch trees that cling to the […]
"BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY means the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part: this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.” -United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity
CANADA WAS an active and enthusiastic negotiator in the early days of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). It was the first industrialized country to ratify the CBD, and Montreal is home to the CBD’s secretariat.
ANIMALS HAVE LONG ADORNED our currency. The nickel features a beaver, the quarter has a caribou and a five-dollar bill depicts a kingfisher. We continue to call our one-dollar coin a “loonie,” even though it doesn’t always show a loon. I used to be proud that nature was so central […]
This issue of Alternatives focuses on water soft paths. For most people this statement invites the question: What are water soft paths? Though noun and adjective have been reversed, water soft paths share a common heritage with the soft energy paths developed in the 1970s by a group of researchers […]
CANADIANS THINK of forests as “the lungs of the earth” or “natural air purifiers.” They understand that forests provide life-giving oxygen. They may not be familiar with the corollary benefit of sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, but they appreciate that having large areas of healthy forests helps balance the web […]
IT’S 2060. Your grandchildren are sitting in their classroom. On the wall hangs a photograph of a blue planet. But it isn’t Earth. It’s a planet in a distant star system. And we know that this planet harbours life. Humanity is not alone. Now imagine a different scenario. Suppose our […]
LISTEN TO the full 45-minute interview with Buzz Holling on our Podcast page. Nicola Ross: You’ve written that “Novelty emerges from the interaction between opportunity and crisis.” Can you explain what you mean by novelty?
Pear Tree Bottom in Runaway Bay, Jamaica is a haven for local residents, a habitat for coral, and the north coast’s last wetland. It’s also a target for international hotel developers. After joining the battle to protect the land, Marie Dixon Frisch says the political, legal and emotional conflicts were […]
THIS YEAR MARKED a new rise in concern about the global impacts of climate change, prompted, no doubt, by the release of former US vice president Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth. We’ve compiled a list of mostly Canadian noteworthy climate change reports, legislation and summaries published in 2006. International […]
