Holidaying in a disaster zone might seem crazy, but “volunteer tourism” can actually help communities recover from natural disasters, a new study finds. And it can offer a unique and rewarding experience for volunteers, if done carefully. “When disaster hits a tourist destination – whether fire, flood, cyclone or earthquake – tourists naturally stay away,...
Nations across the world are following a United Nations blueprint to build a more sustainable future – but a new study shows that blueprint leads less to a castle in the sky, and more to a house that needs constant remodeling. Sustainability scientists have developed systematic and comprehensive assessment methods and performed the first assessment...
Hunting wild animals has been practised by humans for millions of years; however, the extraction of wildlife for subsistence and commercialisation has become a major biodiversity threat in recent decades. Meanwhile, over-exploitation is reported to be the second most important driver of change and biodiversity loss globally. To assess the state of affairs, an international group of...
“The inhabitants of the Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains on the Kwazulu-Natal/eSwatini border were cooking starchy plants 170 thousand years ago,” says Professor Lyn Wadley, a scientist from the Wits Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa (Wits ESI). “This discovery is much older than earlier reports for cooking similar...
Both species, humans and chimpanzees, can be extremely territorial, and territorial disputes between groups can turn violent, with individuals killing each other. In humans, such between-group competition can escalate to war and devastating loss of human life. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology studied wild Western chimpanzees to find out whether territorial...
Cities in the “global south” – densely populated urban areas that are part of low-income countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America – should phase out pit latrines, septic tanks and other on-site methods of human waste management. Instead, cities should invest in sewage systems, according to a report from the World Resources Institute/Ross Center...
Ten years after the publication of their first plan for powering the world with wind, water, and solar, researchers offer an updated vision of the steps that 143 countries around the world can take to attain 100% clean, renewable energy by the year 2050. The new roadmaps, published December 20 in the journal One Earth,...
Increasing access to clean and affordable energy and improving gender equality are two major sustainable development goals (SDGs) that are believed to be strongly linked. With electricity access, less time and effort in the developing world is needed for tasks related to cooking, water collection, and other housework, which are typically undertaken by women. “The...
Described as “living rocks”, giant land tortoises are lumbering beasts with a reputation for being sluggish in both speed and brainpower. But new research carried out by scientists from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) suggests we have greatly underestimated the intelligence of these creatures, who can not only be trained but also...
Growing up in the wild makes plants tough. Wild plants evolve to survive the whims of nature and thrive in difficult conditions, including extreme climate conditions, poor soils, and pests and disease. Their better-known descendants – the domesticated plants that are critical to a healthy diet – are often not nearly as hardy. The genes...
