In today’s edition, we’re covering the development of an ocean reserve the size of the Amazon built on Indigenous knowledge, the government-run school meal plans getting food to more hungry children than ever, and the Pakistani train driver making history.
When complete, the Melanesian Ocean Reserve will cover more than six million square kilometres of ocean and islands, an area as vast as the Amazon rainforest, in order to protect some of the most biologically rich seas on Earth.
Since 2020, the number of children receiving school meals through government-run initiatives has increased by roughly 20%. This brings the total to at least 466 million, including an additional 20 million children across African regions such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, and Rwanda.
The changeable flow of energy from sun and wind, the greatly increasing energy needs of Europe, and the digitalisation of grids call for a grid system that responds in seconds and has the capacity to store renewable energy so that no power is lost. The EU is readying a package of measures to adapt its electrical framework for modern conditions.
The US multinational energy corporation has been ordered to pay almost three quarters of a billion dollars, after a Louisiana jury found the oil giant responsible for years of environmental destruction along the state’s coastal wetlands.
With neighbouring states seeing strict abortion bans, Illinois has made history by signing the first law in the Midwest to require public colleges and universities to ensure students have convenient access to essential health services
With higher temperatures and more frequent droughts, interest is growing in ‘xeriscaping’, which uses low-irrigation, often native plants instead of the traditional highly water-consumptive grass lawn. More biodiverse and friendly to pollinators, low-water landscape ideas range from rock gardens to prairies.
According to new data, global agricultural land use peaked in the early 2000s and has been dropping ever since. In short, this means that destructive farmland is gradually being replaced by grasslands and forests, and wild animals are returning to areas they had once dominated.
The benefits of nature are proven such that doctors now prescribe nature visits to reduce inflammation and stress. In a new study, researchers compared exercise in a fitness gym, outdoors along an urban route, and outdoors in nature, finding that the natural setting better lowered stress and increased joy.
As towns and cities across the globe saw unprecedented high temperatures this summer, the small island nation’s approach may well have given it the best shade infrastructure of any city on Earth.
In a country where patriarchal values still take a prominent place in everyday society, Nida Saleh has become the first-ever woman to work as a metro train driver in the region.
