The Potato Park in Peru sends a delegation to Rio+20 Photo credit: Jose Proaño

The International Society of Ethnobiology (ISE) made news at the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development this summer.

Introduced to almost 700 governments, businesses, civil society groups, and universities was the “Montpellier Statement,” delivered by Helene Mandrous, the Mayor of Montpellier, France. The statement was developed at ISE’s 13^th Biannual Congress held earlier this spring in Montpellier. The Congress united over 600 global delegates to facilitate an ‘ethical space’ where different worldviews can interact and share information across geographical and cultural boundaries, creating an interactive forum for cross-cultural exchanges.

As a result the “Montpellier Statement” was created in support of indigenous, traditional, and local peoples to be involved in policy and decision-making when addressing global environmental challenges at Rio+20. Highlights of the ‘Montpellier Statement’ include:

• Sustaining inextricably linked biological and cultural diversities;
• Mitigating and adapting to climate change based on traditional knowledge systems;
• Creating resilient and productive forested, agricultural, and pastoral landscapes;
• Supporting equitable health and food systems to achieve food security and sovereignty;
• Protecting sacred natural sites, landscapes and territories, as the foundation for biocultural resilience; and
• Developing biocultural community protocols as means of defending rights and strengthening responsibilities to safeguard biocultural heritage.

The “Montpellier Statement” calls for recognition that the voices of members of the communities whose land is impacted within the global sustainable development are important to the global discourse.

For over two decades, the ISE has worked to promote biological and cultural diversity and support the vital role of Indigenous and local peoples in the stewardship of biological diversity and cultural heritage. This includes recognition of land and resource rights, as well as rights and responsibilities over tangible and intangible cultural and intellectual properties. The “Montpellier Statement” is just one of ISE’s many endeavors towards achieving a greater understanding of the complex relationships, both past and present, that exist within and between human societies and their environments.

To view the “Montpellier Statement” click here.

To learn more about the International Society of Ethnobiology visit their Facebook page or follow their Twitter account.

Sasha Rabin Wallinger works on social media and communications with the International Society of Ethnobiology.

At the recent Aspen Environment Forum, Rohit Aggarwala said most major world cities have plans to address climate change and lighten their environmental footprint. Aggarwala, the special advisor to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg with C40 Cities, works with civic leaders around the world to solve environmental problems at the local level.

Aggarwala pointed out that many of the services that have a direct impact on the environment are handled locally, such as building codes, zoning, waste removal, street planning, and so on. He added that mayors usually don’t have to contend with agriculture or other dominant industries.

This infographic made for an education website shows some of the ways cities are going green, so we thought we’d take a look:

Source: Best Sociology Programs

Brian Clark Howard is an Environment Writer and Editor at National Geographic News. He previously served as an editor for TheDailyGreen.com and E/The Environmental Magazine, and has written for TheAtlantic.com, FastCompany.com, PopularMechanics.com, Yahoo!, MSN, Miller-McCune and elsewhere. He is the co-author of six books, including Geothermal HVAC, Green Lighting and Build Your Own Small Wind Power

That doesn’t mean everyone is concerned about its progress. Generation X—individuals ranging from 32 to 52—may not be the stereotypical slackers they are often portrayed to be, but most are not extremely worried about climate change, according to a new poll. Only about 20 percent said they were highly concerned, while 42 percent were moderately concerned about climate change. The remaining 37 percent showed less concern or none at all. That said, when looking at the population as a whole, there is a “substantial” increase in the number of Americans concerned with the issue, according to a study comparing various opinion polls.

One technology intended to artificially cool the planet and combat climate change, may actually make climate conditions worse. Four separate climate models used by a group of scientists to test the concept of geoengineering—where an increase in the world’s atmospheric carbon dioxide levels was balanced by a “dimming” of the sun—showed undesirable climate effects, including a reduction in global rainfall. One map suggests many of these projects are already under way across the world—with one new field test proposed by Harvard researchers that would combine sulfate particles with water vapor to form aerosols to reflect the sun’s rays. “The time has come to differentiate: some geoengineering techniques are more dangerous than others,” said Victor Smetacek of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany. His team recently came out with a study that looks at dumping iron into the sea to bury carbon dioxide for centuries, potentially reducing the impact of climate change.

Temperatures, Drought Threaten Resources

Drought conditions, now gripping much of the country, have led the U.S. Department of Agriculture to declare natural disasters in more than 1,000 counties in 26 states. Labeled the sixth most severe drought in the United States since record keeping began in 1895, the heat and lack of rain is taking a heavy toll on crops—especially in key corn growing states in the Midwest—raising food and fuel prices. A map by the National Climatic Data Center illustrating the subtraction of precipitation and potential evapotranspiration in June attempts to show why. Even if there had been normal precipitation amounts, it would not have been enough to meet potential evapotranspiration demand in most areas, says Climate Central’s Andrew Freedman.

An iceberg twice the size of Manhattan broke off a Greenland glacier this week.  In addition, the Arctic lost in June about 1.1 million square miles of ice, a record. That’s nearly equivalent to the area of Alaska, Florida, Texas and California combined. The rapid retreat of snow and ice has sparked interest in the Arctic’s undiscovered oil and gas reserves. Shell already has plans to begin exploratory drilling in the area as early as this summer if permits arrive as projected. Proponents say if Shell finds oil, thousands of jobs could be created, while others voice concern over the possibility of spills and marine pollution. Regardless, the pace of widespread drilling in the region remains uncertain.

Countries Reconsider Nuclear

Following Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster a year ago, Germany opted to shut down all of its nuclear plants by 2022. The plan was to expand its current renewable energy portfolio—which makes up about 20 percent of the energy mix—to 35 percent by 2020 and 80 percent in 2050. Those targets may be less likely and could be readjusted if jobs are threatened. “The timeframe and the goals of the energy revolution are intact,” said Economy Minister Philipp Rösler. “But we will have to make adjustments if jobs and our competitiveness should become endangered.”

Meanwhile, Japan, which ordered all nuclear power plants shut down for inspection after Fukushima, will restart a second reactor to handle energy demand. The decision has prompted protests as Japan considers three energy options as it moves forward—reduce nuclear power to zero as soon as it can, decrease it to 15 percent by 2030 or aim for a 20-25 percent share by 2030.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Now, genConnect has released brief video interviews with some of the presenters. Browse the videos on genConnect’s website, or view here for some of the highlights.

How will we power the future? Photo: Brian Clark Howard

“Our fuel bill was $20 billion last year,” Sharon Burke, assistant secretary of defense for operational energy plans and programs, told a big crowd at the Aspen Environment Forum in late June.

Burke explained that the U.S. Department of Defense also spends about $4 billion a year in electricity costs for its 300,000+ buildings around the world, from bases to offices, representing about 80% of the federal government total for facilities. More than 25,000 people work in the Pentagon building alone, making it a massive user of resources.

Burke said the department is trying to lead the federal government in energy and fuel efficiency measures, especially since “fuel is a limiting factor” when it comes to battle situations. “We’re looking at how changing our energy use will make us a better force,” said Burke. “The Department of Defense has a history of being a powerful innovation puller,” she added.

Heather Quinley, head of stewardship for the utility Duke Energy, said the challenge is that “energy is not a top-of-mind thing for most people.” She said it will take a combination of new efficiency and renewable technologies and policy “that will drive us to the end game.”

David Owen, a staff writer for the New Yorker who moderated the Aspen session on energy, said an environmental economist told him, “frugality first then efficiency,” when it comes to green. Owen pointed out that energy conservation measures don’t always have a net positive impact on the environment, if the savings people realize in one area simply get plowed into some other consumption somewhere else.

Quinley said that needn’t always be the case, and she pointed to growing use of renewable energy as one part of the sustainability equation.

Limits on Growth?

During a later session on growth in Aspen, British environmental writer Mark Lynas, author of The God Species, argued that we have reached “peak” consumption in a number of key areas in the developed world, including “peak meat, travel, vehicle registrations,” and so on. Lynas pointed out that population growth is leveling off globally, especially in developed countries.

Lynas added that, in the United Kingdom, the gross domestic product has doubled since 1970 while consumption has largely leveled off. He pointed out that the planet “still has finite ecological limits,” and said we “still need more [economic] growth in developing countries.”

In steering the conversation to how to power that economic growth, Owen said, “One solar researcher I interviewed told me he was placing all his hope in nuclear fusion, while a fusion researcher told me he was placing all his hope on solar.”

Aspen airport.

Addressing today’s relative cheapness of natural gas and the fracking industry that partially drives that, Richard Heinberg, a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, asked the audience, “Twenty years from now we’ll be looking at a dried up industry that blew away, leaving half a million new holes in the ground, ruined aquifers, and we’ll wonder if it was all worth it.” (Much of the crowd cheered.)

Jamais Cascio, founder and blogger with Open the Future (and a co-founder of Worldchanging), said, “The oil industry says fossil fuels will be dominant for the next 50 years, but that’s not sustainable.” Instead, Cascio said we are near an “s-curve” with renewables, when they will begin to ramp up more quickly. “Nanotech will really drive down the price. Solar paint is going to be transformative,” he said.

Gernot Wagner, an environmental economist and author of But Will the Planet Notice?, pointed out that already, Germany gets half of its electricity from solar power on weekends when the sun is shining.

Half for Nature

Speaking on an Aspen Environment Forum panel called “Old Greens Versus New,” celebrated conservation biologist E.O. Wilson said, “We should reserve half the planet for nature. I think it’s possible.” Wilson pointed out that with declining fertility, increasing urbanization, and improving technology, “we can feed 10 billion people.”

Wilson joked that he is “one of two living people who worked with Rachel Carson,” and he said we should put much of our energy into preserving wild spaces and connecting those with corridors for plants and animals to roam. To put things in perspective, Wilson estimated we could save 50% of all species by setting aside hotspot reserves–a process that would only require 0.1% of global gross domestic product.

At the Aspen Environment Forum, it was clear that we face significant challenges as a species, though we also have considerable opportunities.

Brian Clark Howard is an Environment Writer and Editor at National Geographic News. He previously served as an editor for TheDailyGreen.com and E/The Environmental Magazine, and has written for TheAtlantic.com, FastCompany.com, PopularMechanics.com, Yahoo!, MSN, Miller-McCune and elsewhere. He is the co-author of six books, including Geothermal HVAC, Green Lighting and Build Your Own Small Wind Power System.

Photo by Andrew Howley

“Industrial fishing has never been sustainable, it’s always been using the capital, not the interest,” Daniel Pauly, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Fisheries Centre, told a rapt audience at the Aspen Environment Forum 2012 in late June.

Pauly explained that since the advent of modern industrial fishing, spurred by such inventions as refrigeration, diesel engines, and more recently, satellite navigation, commercial fleets have been fishing out waters and then moving on to the next area. Over a century, industrial fishers depleted waters off Europe and North America, and have been venturing farther south, in bigger and bigger boats (some nearly as large as aircraft carriers), until they are now essentially strip-mining the Southern Ocean around Antarctica.

“It’s been like a ponzi scheme,” Pauly told the audience in Aspen, Colorado, at the postcard-perfect campus of the Aspen Institute.

Ayana Johnson, a marine biologist and director of science and solutions for the Waitt Foundation, pointed out that marine protected areas cover only 1% of the ocean’s surface, and even in those places enforcement of restrictions on fishing “can be a problem.”

Johnson said her group has been working with local communities near marine protected areas to help them better safeguard and manage the resources. These safe zones provide critical habitat to many animals, many of which range far outside the protected areas and form part of the backbone of ocean ecosystems.

“Small-scale, artisanal fisheries have a great opportunity to be sustainable,” Johnson added. She pointed out that seafood protein remains a critical part of the diet of many people in developing areas, and that protecting sustainable fisheries is an issue of food security.

Miguel Jorge, director of National Geographic’s Ocean Initiative, said overfishing remains the most immediate threat to the blue planet. “It’s fixable,” Jorge said. “We need to reach out to a broader community.”

Pauly said one important step would be re-evaluating, and in many cases eliminating, the $26 to $27 billion in subsidies given to industrial fishers around the world.

Jorge added, “I believe we codify fishers’ right to fish, because they’ve done it for millenia, and link it to ecological limits, so they see it’s like a bank. We need to create a market that rewards fishermen for rebuilding fish stocks.”

"Her Deepness" Sylvia Earle at Aspen.

Better Alive Than Dead

National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia Earle told the audience, “Let’s look at fish as valuable alive as well as dead, as swimming in the ocean as well as swimming on your plate in lemon and butter.”

Earle said she wants to “shake up how we view the oceans.” When it comes to harvesting wild seafood, she said, “it’s all bushmeat after all,” referring to the much criticized practice of eating endangered or rare wild animals on land.

Earle said, “Trawling is like using a bulldozer to catch songbirds. We are seeing collapse of ecosystems. We’re taking out so much and disrupting the chemistry of the oceans.”

But Earle did point to some bright spots, especially recent anouncements by the governments of Australia and the Maldives, made at Rio+20 in Brazil, to set aside vast swaths of their exclusive economic zones as marine protected areas that disallow industrial fishing. Australia’s plan is to have 20% of its waters protected, she said.

(Learn more about how the oceans fared at Rio+20.)

“The Maldives made 100% of their waters a reserve because they get more money from tourism then they did from fishing,” said Johnson.

Earle pointed out that other developing countries are starting to exercise greater control over their waters, in some cases policing international fishing fleets closer, and in others at least demanding a higher share of the economic haul.

Earle added that when people ask her how much is enough when it comes to protecting the seas, she says, “Consider the ocean as the blue heart of the planet. How much of your heart would you save?”

Mislabeled Fish

When it comes to deciding which fish are ok for consumers to eat, Pauly told the crowd in Aspen that he has some doubts about the effectiveness of seafood guides, like the well-known ones put out by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program. Part of the problem is that traceability is often a serious challenge, and fish are commonly mislabeled all over the world.

“More than one-third of the time people in the U.S. aren’t eating the fish they think because it has been mislabeled,” Pauly said.

Johnson added that when people ask her which fish are ok to eat, she said you really have to know the species, where, when, and how it was caught, and how that local population is faring. “Asking consumers to understand all of that is absurd,” she said.

When pressed, Johnson said she tells consumers that the most important things to avoid are fish that are caught with large trawlers, which wreck havoc on the ocean bottom, and shrimp, since wild-caught varieties result in a “bycatch” rate of 90%, meaning nine pounds of ocean life is killed, and largely wasted, for every one pound of shrimp recovered. Johnson said about half of shrimp consumed worldwide is now raised through aquaculture, although she pointed out this practice has resulted in widespread destruction of critical mangrove forests along coasts.

Jorge added that, in order to make things as easy for consumers as possible, National Geographic has developed a seafood guidethat takes into account not only the health of fish populations, but also their healthy Omega-3 content and mercury content. “People should eat fish that is good for them and good for the ocean.”

“Her Deepness” Sylvia Earle told the crowd that she abstains from all seafood. She said people can get Omega-3s from new plankton-based products–the ultimate source of the heart-helpful molecule for many fish any way.

Earle asked, “Why can’t I buy a no-fishing license? Some want them dead and I want them alive. You can buy a patch of forest and decide not to cut the trees.”

Earle concluded by saying, “There’s a blue U.S. that’s larger than what’s above the water.” She asked the audience at Aspen to think about that and how we might take better care of our blue heart.

Check out this brief video interview I did with Earle on location in Aspen:

Brian Clark Howard is an Environment Writer and Editor at National Geographic News. He previously served as an editor for TheDailyGreen.com and E/The Environmental Magazine, and has written for TheAtlantic.com, FastCompany.com, PopularMechanics.com, Yahoo!, MSN, Miller-McCune and elsewhere. He is the co-author of six books, including Geothermal HVAC, Green Lighting and Build Your Own Small Wind Power System.

This Andy Goldsworthy sculpture enlivens the Aspen Institute. Photo: Brian Clark Howard

“I’ve been to a lot of international conferences, in Nagoya, Durban, and so on, but Rio [Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development] was bigger than any I’ve ever seen,” Matthew Shirts, the editor of the Brazilian edition of National Geographic, told a large audience at the Aspen Environment Forum this past weekend in Colorado.

Sylvia Earle, the National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, told the crowd, “I don’t think what comes out of that conference on paper matters as much as the spiritual lift that resulted.”

Echoing what she told National Geographic News last week, Earle called the conference June 20-22 in Rio de Janeiro “Rio+20 minus 40.” She added, “That would take us back to Stockholm in 1972 [The UN Conference on the Human Environment].”

Earle said, “Sometimes I put up a picture of the Earth from space and say, ‘That’s the real World Bank, and we’re drawing it down.’” Earle noted that the Stockholm gathering was held just three years after the first walk on the moon, and only a few more after the first complete photo of the Earth from space, a transformative image that showed how fragile, and how blue, the planet appears.

Jason Clay, senior vice president for market transformation at the World Wildlife Fund, had also come to Aspen just after Rio. He called the UN conference “a real mixed bag.” Clay said, “I was impressed with some things, but my impression of governments’ abilities to manage the planet has gone down…They were arguing over commas, and we needed more leadership.”

Clay pointed to several commitments by major companies as one positive development, including the fact that the Consumer Goods Forum pledged to have a net-zero deforestation footprint by 2020. That group includes such firms as Coca-Cola, Kraft, General Mills, Colgate, Johnson & Johnson, and more.

According to Sha Zukang, the Chinese diplomat who was the UN secretary-general of the Rio+20 summit, the nearly 700 side agreements forged at Rio carry a value around $513 billion.

Earle added, “There is good reason for companies to be doing these things because green is green.”

Still, Clay said global economic systems need to do a better job of accounting for negative environmental impacts of products and activities. “We have to figure out how to make it count when a tree falls that isn’t on someone’s ledger,” said Clay.

“Ignore the Official Stuff”

“The key to being happy with an event like this is to ignore the official stuff, don’t get credentialed, don’t expect anything from governments, and do things yourself,” Rohit Aggarwala joked to the group. Aggarwala, the special advisor to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg with C40 Cities, spent most of his time in Rio at the C40 pavilion, where he networked with other leaders of major cities to work on solving environmental problems at the local level.

Aggarwala explained that most major world cities have plans to address climate change, and C40 Cities is working to amplify those efforts. Aggarwala pointed out that many of the services that have a direct impact on the environment are actually handled at the local level, such as building codes, zoning, waste removal, street planning, and so on. He added that mayors usually don’t have to contend with agriculture or other dominant industries.

Aggarwala added that mayors tend to be pragmatic and that they often don’t wait for other cities around the world to take action before they jump in. Aggarwala quoted former New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia (1934 to 1945), who said, “There is no Democrat or Republican way to collect garbage.”

Aggarwala pointed out that many proposed increases in local taxes pass, although tax hikes at the national level tend to be unpopular. “We don’t trust Congress to redistribute the money,” he said.

He added that national policy often builds on what is accomplished first at the city level. As an example, he said the national highway system wasn’t backed by federal law until 1957, after several states had already crisscrossed their territories with pavement. “By starting with cities and companies, we lay the groundwork, otherwise it is like picking up the big end of a wedge,” said Aggarwala.

Perhaps the same thing could be said about Rio+20 overall.

Check out this video interview with Sylvia Earle at the Aspen Environment Forum, produced by genConnect.com:

Brian Clark Howard is an Environment Writer and Editor at National Geographic News. He previously served as an editor for TheDailyGreen.com and E/The Environmental Magazine, and has written for TheAtlantic.com, FastCompany.com, PopularMechanics.com, Yahoo!, MSN, Miller-McCune and elsewhere. He is the co-author of six books, including Geothermal HVAC, Green Lighting and Build Your Own Small Wind Power

“International urban experts called for creating and planning cities that make possible economic empowerment and increased opportunities for participation among the poorest urban residents,” said a news release about the discussion, issued by the New York-based The Ford Foundation (www.fordfoundation.org), an independent, nonprofit grant-making organization that seeks to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement.

Luis Ubinas

“Urbanization can improve lives and build a healthier planet,” said Luis Ubiñas, president of the Ford Foundation, in opening the panel event entitled, The Sustainable and Just City: Rio+20 and Beyond. “It is also possible to turn a city’s creative and entrepreneurial energy into a force for reducing poverty, increasing economic growth and reaching the twin goals of Rio+20, environmental sustainability and shared prosperity.” (Read the guest blog post for National Geographic News Watch by Luis Ubiñas: Natural and Urban Settings Both Need Our Attention)

According to the Ford Foundation statement, global population growth over the next four decades–an estimated 2.3 billion people–is expected to take place for the most part in urban areas, and this year for the first time, more people live in cities than not. “In convening two related events in Rio … the Ford Foundation helps to boost growing awareness of cities as engines of economic mobility and drivers of sustainable growth,” the Foundation said.

“Those who resist diversity, delay investments in infrastructure and fail to expand simple ownership will actually discourage the sustainability of cities. This will have grave consequences for all of us.”

“The unique qualities of metropolitan centers put many solutions within reach,” said Nilcea Freire, Representative of the Ford Foundation in Brazil. “But those who resist diversity, delay investments in infrastructure and fail to expand simple ownership will actually discourage the sustainability of cities. This will have grave consequences for all of us.”

The discussion was moderated by George McCarthy, director of metropolitan opportunity at the Ford Foundation. On the panel, Ubiñas was joined by Jorge Bittar, municipal secretary of housing for the city of Rio de Janeiro; Xavier de Souza Briggs, associate professor of sociology and urban planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Jeb Brugmann, founder of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability; and Raquel Rolnik, UN special rapporteur on adequate housing.

Among the topics addressed were the challenges faced by the city of Rio as it prepares for the Olympics and the World Cup, the Foundation noted. “Bittar, Rio de Janeiro’s housing secretary, is charged with planning and implementing land use changes that have raised awareness of the lack of land rights among many of the dwellers of the favelas that ring the hills around the city”.

Force for Positive Change

“Our experience suggests that these global events can serve as an opportunity to address many of the underlying problems that a city will have to handle in the long-term,” said ICLEI’s Brugmann. “We have evidence that when all residents of a city are drawn into the discussion of urban planning and given a voice in the proceedings, they can become a force for positive change.”

UN special rapporteur Rolnik, who also is a professor at the University of São Paulo, said that modern Brazil is unique in that it has in place laws and systems that protect and create opportunities for the poorest members of a community to voice concern and influence policy. But as in other countries that have prepared for these and similar events, participatory systems can be set aside. International organizers are looking for evidence of progress in creating the infrastructure they require, and local officials feel pressed for time.

“In this context, democracy disappears,” Rolnik said. “We have in Brazil city councils, housing committees, a national council on cities, but they are not being used. Decisions are being made that travel directly from the organizers of the World Cup, for example, to the local political powers–the mayor or governor, the local organizing committee and service providers.”

Brugmann’s work around the world, and that of Souza Briggs in the United States, suggests that an urban center’s poorest communities are often dynamic and well-functioning economic hubs, the Ford Foundation said. “Ignoring them in urban planning cuts out one of the most creative sources for solving a city’s problems.”

Key Principles

Ubiñas outlined three key principles as critical to ensuring success in taking advantage of cities as a vehicle for just and sustainable development:

• Density: It boosts creativity, entrepreneurial energy and jobs, while at the same time helping to mitigate climate change by ensuring that residents are close to where they live and work.
• Diversity: When embraced by a city, it can spur faster and smarter growth.
• Sound land use planning and formalization: This means ensuring that cities are designed for efficient land use and energy use and able to maximize economic opportunities for all residents. Similarly, they must give residents ownership of land and standing at the municipal and provincial levels, which unleashes creative energy and growth as well as a more profound commitment by urban residents to the sustainability of their communities.

“Granting residency rights brings residents into the economic mainstream, giving them a stake in the sustainable development of their own cities,” Ubiñas said. “It makes them a force for change that is much more powerful than anything that can be designed on their behalf from the outside.”

According to The Ford Foundation, other cities that have embraced this challenge include:

• New York City–Expecting one million more residents by the year 2030, New York launched its PlaNYC initiative in 2007. Since then, it has created or preserved more than 64,000 units of housing, built new neighborhoods with mass transit access, enacted ambitious energy efficiency laws for existing buildings, and reduced the city’s greenhouse gas emissions 13 percent below 2005 levels.
• Dhaka–The rapid expansion of Bangladesh’s capital highlighted the need for a sustainable approach to handling municipal solid waste. Since more than three-quarters of the city’s waste is organic, the government chose to recycle it into compost at a centralized plant employing 800 workers. Now, 50,000 metric tonnes of compost is produced, lowering the burden on the city’s landfills and reducing municipal greenhouse gas emissions by 89,000 tonnes of CO2 every year.
• Bogotá–In looking at reducing automobile traffic, the capital of Colombia expanded both its mass transit system and its bicycling infrastructure. The city’s TransMilenio Bus Rapid Transit system now carries almost 2 million passengers per day and almost 300km of bicycle lanes have been built, spurring an almost tenfold expansion of bicycle use.
• Nairobi–The central gateway to Eastern and Central Africa as well as the regional host for numerous international organizations, Nairobi also circled 2030 as a target date for economic development goals. Already, new topographical maps were created for the metropolitan region, 4,000 trees were planted along the Nairobi River while 109 illegal discharge points were blocked, 20 illegal land dumps on dry land were closed, and plans for a new bus and light rail transit system advanced.
• Bilbao–This Spanish city was historically a bastion of heavy industry.  But as this sector aged and declined, manufacturing jobs left. Bilbao chose to redevelop in a different direction, and a 30-year plan set in 1991 has invested more than €650 million to clean and regenerate brownfields and industrial land in four key areas. The effort included a branch of the Guggenheim Museum that established the city as a new cultural hub for Europe.

This post from the Rio+20 conference was based on news materials sent to National Geographic by The Ford Foundation. For more about how cities are coming to grips with the challenges of sutainability, please visit our special blog City Solutions. For more information about the work of The Ford Foundation, visit their website.

The map offers three layers–deforestation, fires, and extractive industries– to add critical context to  stories that hover directly above. News can be filtered by the main contributor sources involved in InfoAmazonia and by news submitted by readers. By taking this collaborative approach, the creators of InfoAmazonia seek to build a community of storytellers and data collectors to keep the map as current as possible.

“Maps have been a means to interpret reality for many centuries. With InfoAmazonia.org we use this old instrument in a digital age to visualize and communicate information in a better, innovative way,” explains Gustavo Faleiros, editor of the Brazilian environmental news agency O Eco, creator of InfoAmazonia, and a Knight International Journalism Fellow of the International Center for Journalists.

News can be browsed in Portuguese, Spanish, and English, reflecting the fact that the Amazon spreads across nine South American countries and is of global interest. Once a story icon is clicked, it appears in a sidebar along with photos or video.

“InfoAmazonia’s development happened at a time when there is a lot of talk about open source data,” added Faleiros. “There are many institutes and NGOs which have collected data about the Amazon region for many years. But they have not made this data available to the general public. This project will provide a platform to share this data together with other open source data such as on deforestation provided by Brazil’s government and on forest fires from NASA satellites.”

This innovative approach has a time-honored purpose: to help discover and protect the rich natural heritage of the world’s largest rainforest by encouraging an informed and active public.

Former U.S. Senator Tim Wirth is now head of the UN Foundation. Photo: Willie Shubert

As the president of the UN Foundation, former U.S. Senator Tim Wirth’s job is to connect people, ideas, and resources to help the United Nations solve global problems.

Two kinds of power, electricity and empowerment, were on Senator Wirth’s mind when he sat down to discuss Rio+20, the UN’s largest sustainable development conference happening now in Rio de Janeiro.

“I think the number one outcome of all the discussions that are ongoing here is Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s initiative Sustainable Energy for All,” Wirth told National Geographic News.

“The Secretary-General has asked for significant commitments from both governments and business leaders to provide modern energy services to the about 1.3 billion people on this planet that don’t have it,” he said.

The initiative calls for three complementary objectives–expand access, improve efficiency, and double the percentage of renewable energy production–to address energy issues on a global scale.

The numbers are staggering. One in five people lack access to electricity and even more rely on coal, wood, or animal waste for cooking and heating. To tackle this widespread and diverse problem Sustainable Energy for All is promoting a multifaceted approach that relies on empowering local communities and especially women.

In Ethiopia, a clean cookstove project has provided 2.6 million households with improved stoves that protect families from harmful particulate matter. Also, a group called Solar Sister has been training female entrepreneurs across Africa to start businesses selling solar lamps.

Sweeping initiatives like Sustainable Energy for All show that positive action can spring from international collaboration. So why has enthusiasm for Rio+20 been so muted?

“There is only so much political power in the world,” explained Wirth. “So, if you are going to empower girls and women, you are disempowering some of the old reactionary authorities and they don’t like that very much.”

(Learn more about Rio+20.)