# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An online resource from the Geological Society, outlining the tectonic history of the UK and how it has affected our landscape.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
How to classify a landslide - British Geological Survey

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to classify a landslide - British Geological Survey

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Landslides are classified by their type of movement. The four main types of movement are falls, topples, slides, and flows.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
World Tour 2: Building things and breaking things in China : Planet Money Summer School

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
World Tour 2: Building things and breaking things in China : Planet Money Summer School

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
China’s turbocharged growth may have made it rich, but now it has to deal with rich country problems. High-speed trains that connect every town. Gleaming new bridges and skyscrapers. An apartment (or two) for every family. No country on Earth has seen the kind of economic growth that China has over the last 50 years. China has become the factory to the world, a grand experiment in central government planning mixed with personal ambition. It was all enabled by what our guide for today calls, an engineering state, a central planning mindset where leaders believe they can engineer their way out of economic problems. And problems are mounting. Today on the show, the perils of prosperity and the despair of success as China deals with overbuilding. We’ll travel back to China’s free-wheeling boom-era of the early 2000s and hang out with a property developer who amassed his wealth at the center of the action – private jet rides, thousand-dollar fish soup, casual bribes. Then, as the economy slows, we ask what can we learn from the despair of success. Does rising youth unemployment signal a less prosperous future? With young people struggling to find white-collar jobs, some of them are opting out of work altogether. Featured Episodes:China’s real estate crisis, explained (2023) Young, “spoiled and miserable” in China (2023) Featured Terms: Socialism with Chinese CharacteristicsEngineering StateMalinvestmentSupport:Planet Money+Read: Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life (Audiobook here) Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletterOur weekly Indicator link round-up newsletterDan Wang’s book: Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the FutureFollow: InstagramTikTokYouTubeFacebookThis episode of Planet Money Summer School is hosted by Robert Smith. It was produced by Sophia Paliza-Carre, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Maggie Luthar. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark.Music: NPR Source Audio - “Setting up,” “Almost Anywhere,” “Malibu Sunsets,” “Dust or Smoke,” “This New Year Sham.”

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sand. It’s in buildings, windows, your cell phone. But there isn’t enough in the world for everyone. And that’s created a dangerous black market.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
How to beat the resource curse in Norway (Summer School) : Planet Money

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to beat the resource curse in Norway (Summer School) : Planet Money

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Let’s call it the luxury of restraint. This is what enabled Norway to avoid the fate of so many other countries when they discovered oil and it changed the mix of their economy overnight.Norway! It’s expensive, wealthy, and abundant in resources. We’re going to compare two of them in particular today: deep reservoirs of oil and icy waters full of salmon. While one resource was heavily in demand, the country had an oversupply of the other.In this episode, we learn how Norway built its wealth by carefully avoiding the pitfalls of discovering oil that have plagued countries in the past and how it creatively created demand for its raw fish abroad.How do you dodge the dreaded resource curse? What clever ways can you benefit from oversupply? And lastly, how do you get rich and stay that way?Featured Episodes:Norway Has Advice For Libya (2011)The Salmon Taboo (2015)Featured Terms:Resource curse / Dutch disease / paradox of plentyCoordination problemFree-rider problemSupport:NPR+Read: Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life (Audiobook here) Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletterOur weekly Indicator link round-up newsletterFollow: InstagramTikTokYouTubeFacebookThis episode of Planet Money Summer School is hosted by Robert Smith. It was produced by Sophia Paliza-Carre and edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Cena Loffredo with help from Annlie Huang and Robert Rodriguez.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Piles of cash and a town of solutions in Kenya, Nigeria (Summer School) : Planet Money

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Piles of cash and a town of solutions in Kenya, Nigeria (Summer School) : Planet Money

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Let’s head to a small town in Kenya that’s become globally famous for helping economists answer some of the biggest questions facing humanity.In Kenya and Nigeria, economics isn’t just theory, it’s real life. We’ll look at some radical experiments that turned out to be enormously successful.What are the building blocks of health, education and prosperity for all? How does a nation grow rich? What is the most effective way to spend a dollar to fight poverty? We find answers in a town that became the laboratory for new concepts in economic research that netted some researchers the most prestigious prize in economics.Featured Episodes:How randomized trials and the town of Busia, Kenya changed economics (2023)Nigeria, You Win! (2016)Featured Terms:Randomized controlled trialHuman capitalMissing middleSupport:Planet Money+Read: Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life (Audiobook here) Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletterOur weekly Indicator link round-up newsletterFollow: InstagramTikTokYouTubeFacebookThe series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Sophia Paliza-Carre. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark. This episode was fact-checked by Leyla Doss, with engineering by Annlie Huang.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Typhoon Dolphin: China evacuates more than 1 million people as massive storm arrives

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
More than a million people have been evacuated from their homes in eastern China including Shanghai, as Typhoon Dolphin made landfall on Sunday evening.
It packed maximum wind speeds of 150km/h (94mph) when it first slammed into Yuhuan in the Zhejiang province at 17:30 (09:30 GMT) before making a second landfall in the city of Wenzhou about an hour later, meteorological authorities said.

The typhoon halted transportation across the region - 1,400 flights were cancelled in Shanghai alone.

Chinese authorities had earlier issued their highest-level red alert, but by Monday morning they downgraded it to a tropical storm.

The storm is continuing to move further inland, and authorities are still warning of torrential rains, severe flooding and the risk of landslides through to Wednesday.

Heavy rain was forecast on Monday for the provinces of Shandong, Henan, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and the city of Shanghai.

Local governments have urged people to avoid outdoor activities, while several top tourist attractions remain closed, including parts of Disneyland and Legoland, and several viewing platforms along the Bund in Shanghai.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Typhoon Dolphin: China evacuates more than 1 million people as massive storm arrives

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Typhoon Dolphin made landfall on Sunday evening, affecting Shanghai and other parts of eastern China.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Create an account or log in to Instagram - Share what you’re into with the people who get you.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
How these slum dwellers went from one-room shacks to beautiful new apartments

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Pooja Gawali used to live in a one-room home with no indoor plumbing. The walls were tin sheets. The roof leaked when it rained. The 32-year-old shared the cramped space with her husband, her in-laws and her husband's two brothers.

She never knew what it meant to truly relax, she says. The lack of privacy in her home meant that she always had to always be on alert - conscious of how she sat or behaved.

That's not uncommon in Sanjaynagar, a crowded slum in the western Indian state of Maharashtra where she lives. On mud lanes slick with goat droppings, homes press against each other. Around 900 people are squeezed into 206 metal shacks.

Today, things are very different for Gawali. In 2022, she moved into an apartment on the second floor of a newly constructed three-story building with 33 units that houses not just her own family but 30 other families from her slum neighborhood. One brother-in-law lives in the apartment below hers; the other in one above. When their home was being built, the family had a request - they wanted their apartments to be connected through an inner flight of stairs. They got that wish -- and more.

"I relish the privacy I have now," she says. "It's a joy to be able to live freely. We're still a tight-knit family, but life is so much easier when everyone has their own space."

Residents have named the three-story building Swapnapurti- Marathi for "a dream fulfilled." It's easy to see why. Each unit has its own living room, a single bedroom, a kitchen, bathroom with running water and balcony. Green plants and benches line the central courtyard. Bamboo screens along the walls provide natural shade and ventilation.

And it's noticeably cooler. The architects used building materials like bricks made of crushed sand and ash residue that have been found to be effective insulators, deflecting heat.

A revolutionary design initiative called the Sanjaynagar Redevelopment Project is transforming the slum where Gawali lived in stages. It's a partnership between the local government, charitable donors, nonprofits and family members. Each participating family pays 10% of the costs of construction - roughly $1,000 for a 300-square-foot apartment -which they fund by taking out low-interest housing loans provided by the social lending platform Rang De. Rang De offers peer-to-peer lending, a financial method that connects individual borrowers directly with individual lenders, bypassing traditional banks. The federal government's low-cost housing scheme, called the PMAY, contributes $2,500 and philanthropic donors such as the U.S.-based Currystone Foundation contributed the rest.

Even in these early stages, the project is generating praise, winning the Silver at this year's World Habitat Awards for innovative and sustainable housing projects.

Francesca Lionetti, an expert on housing rights at UN-Habitat, which co-runs the awards, says: "The fact it is community-led means there is a lot of attention on communal areas and social services. It's showing a path for other communities in India and in other parts of the world."

Sandhya Janardhan, an architect with the Curry Stone Design Collaborative, the nonprofit that helped redesign the houses, says the project focuses on the design details alongside the deep bonds the community shares.

"All the apartments are built around a central courtyard," says Janardhan. "This is a shared space for children to play, with benches where residents can sit and rest, and where community events can be held. The apartments are flanked by wide corridors that bring light and fresh air into the building."

A sanctuary in the slums

No one was certain this project would succeed. That's because the organizers had to persuade families to leave the only homes they knew and move into temporary accommodations based on a promise that they would one day return to something better. Their wait spanned three years while their old houses were torn down and rebuilt.

That leap of faith was possible largely because of Snehalaya, a local nonprofit. Snehalaya had been working in the community for years before redevelopment began. Since 2004, the group has run a learning center for children, raised awareness about drug and alcohol abuse and brought doctors and mobile clinics into this neighborhood with very few basic services.

Over time, this sustained presence built deep trust with residents. When redevelopment was proposed, Snehalaya became an important voice, helping families understand the plans, express concerns and prepare for temporary relocation.

Hanif Shaik, a director of educationprojects at Snehalaya, says the idea began on a motorbike ride through the community in 2016. He wanted to show Janardhan, the architect, around a balvadi in the heart of the slum. It's one of seven community recreational centers set up by the state government and run by Snehalaya - a place for children to gather after school to play and to create art.

"Slums are easy ground for the spread of addiction, violence and child labor," says Shaik. "We noted that a lot of these troubles came from the living conditions - dark, dingy homes and no personal space." It was easy for arguments to break out in these tight spaces; the threat of violence was always imminent. A balvadi provided a safe space but was not really a solution.

Shaik and Janardhan had an inspiration - if they could work together to redesign the slum, it could do a world of good.

They solicited donors. They got the consent of residents. And in 2017, the real work began. "We submitted a proposal [to the local government] to redevelop the slum in the city of Ahmednagar together," Janardhan says.
A gazillion meetings
The local government provided land, temporary water supply, electricity and sanitation for makeshift camps.

"We gave the residents materials [like corrugated tin sheets, metal scraps and plaster] to create new shacks while their homes were being rebuilt," says Janardhan.

Snehalaya reached out to a younger generation of slum residents to explain the nitty-gritty details to the others and to help with paperwork. "They played a vital role," says Shaik.

Anjali Naydu, who's 30, is one such representative. She's been working with Snehalaya for the last 6 years. Her family, including her parents and five aunts, will soon begin the process of moving out. The single room home where she grew up in the middle of the slum is small, but cheery - one exterior wall is painted bright pink. Potted plants line a shelf above the entrance. Sometimes, her mother and father move their bed outdoors so they can have more room.

"At first, it was hard," she says of the relocation process. "We had to have meeting after meeting. When we first started work, many people just couldn't believe that someone would go to all this trouble to make their homes and their lives better."

Trained as a bedside nurse, Suryavanshi, 26, who is on a break from work to raise her child, serves as a community representative for the project as well.

"People have lived here for years, so of course, even if our homes aren't perfect, there's an emotional attachment," she says. "But they're also happy to move into proper homes. We told them: you have choices. You can choose your building, decide where exactly you want to live within it and even choose your neighbors and be involved in designing your home."

For many residents living in cramped rooms with adult sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren, the prospect of additional privacy was attractive. "For example, if there are parents and three grown sons in one slum home, each son can get a separate unit without paying extra costs," says Naydu. "Slowly, people began to believe in the project. Many volunteered to give it a try."

After several meetings, a slum committee and eight housing cooperative societies [a collective body of residents who will own, manage, and govern the new housing] were instituted to ensure that the interests of different groups were represented across the project.

"We often forget that slums possess high levels of social capital," says Janardhan. "These are networks built over the years on trust and solidarity." For instance, neighbors rely on each other for mutual support during tough times or for childcare. Many NGOs offer free services, like breast cancer checkups, dental checkups, medical outreach for the community.

"Most low-income re-housing programs [in India] displace residents completely from where they've lived, moving them to an entirely new location, and they stand to lose all of that. We didn't want that to happen," she says.

A "dream fulfilled"

Savitha Yadava is a 42-year-old widow. After her husband passed away several years ago, she could no longer even afford to live in the Sanjaynagar slum. She moved back to her native village with her three children - a son and two daughters. To provide for them, she worked long hours as a farmer.

When the redevelopment project began her in-laws urged her to come back. They said their two sons were eligible for two housing units and though Yadava had lost her husband, they wanted her to bring the kids back to Sanjaynagar and move into the new unit with them..

The decision to return changed their lives, she says. With better lighting, and a home that did not fill up with mud and water during every monsoon, her children began to perform well in school. Her son, who lives with them, had access to better paying job opportunities in the city. Yadava takes pride in decorating her home. "I really enjoy it," she says. From her son's income, she's changed the flooring from cement to gleaming white tiles, added plenty of new wardrobes, a television and a small altar in the corner of the living room. Her college-going daughter Sonali, who is good at art, painted murals on the walls.

As residents have watched the first few families move into the newly designed homes -- and seen how their lives have changed as a result -- interest in the project has grown.

The government could cause some delays. With an ongoing overhaul of housing laws, legal and policy changes are expected. As a result, philanthropic support will likely be paused till the new policy takes effect.

But the project is going to move forward -- and will be "be more cost-effective and self-reliant, " says Janardhan. For many families still waiting to move in, this has sparked hope. Pooja Suryavanshi's toddler son is playing with his kittens on the chipped cement floor of their kitchen. "I dream of the day he will grow up in a home with sturdy walls that keep out the wind and rain, and with the possibility of a more secure future," she says.

Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, Southern India. She reports on global health, science and development and has been published in The New York Times, The British Medical Journal, the BBC, The Guardian and other outlets. You can find her on X @kamal_t

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How these slum dwellers went from one-room shacks to beautiful new apartments

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It's a bold new experiment and it's already won a prize. Residents in a jam-packed slum, many of them living in one-room tin shacks, help design their apartments in a brand new building.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An independent think tank producing data-driven analysis on how business and finance are impacting the climate crisis

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Why is improving agricultural productivity crucial to ending global hunger and protecting the world's wildlife?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The use of land for agriculture has been the main driver of the destruction of the world's biodiversity for a very long time. A look at our history makes clear why.

Our planet has a land surface of about 150 million square kilometers. Almost a third of it is free of vegetation. It is covered by rocks, deserts, and glaciers - especially the large glaciers in Antarctica.

The remaining 71% of the planet's land surface was once covered by wilderness: large forests, shrubs, and grasslands.
The world's land surface 10,000 years ago:
How have things changed since the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago?

The 10.6 billion hectares that were once covered by wilderness are called the world's "habitable land". The following chart shows how this land is used today. Almost half is used for agriculture.

The global land area used for agriculture today measures 48 million square kilometers. For comparison, that's an area around five times the size of the United States.

Considering this immense transformation, this article's first sentence is not surprising: agricultural land use has been the main driver of the destruction of wildlife and nature over the last millennia.

This environmental problem - agricultural land use - does not get the attention it deserves. It's mentioned far less than other environmental challenges like or plastic pollution . But if we want a future in which we preserve the world's wildlife, this is the key problem we must focus on.

We can't look at this problem in isolation. At the same time, as we protect the world's environment, we also have to find ways to produce the food needed to end hunger and malnutrition . But - and this is the point of this article - these two goals are no longer at odds with one another.

For our ancestors they were at odds with one another: our ancestors had to take natural land and convert it into agricultural land if they wanted to produce more food. This is not the case for us today: we can produce more from less.

To increase food production while restoring wild habitats, we must find ways to produce more food on less land. We have to increase agricultural productivity.

This is possible. In fact, we have already achieved a lot, as the following chart shows.

After centuries of stagnation, humanity has recently achieved a large increase in land productivity. The chart shows that land use per person declined by more than half. At the same time, increased in every region of the world.
You can explore the changes in food production in hundreds of metrics in our .
The fact that land use per capita has declined does not mean the problem is solved. While agricultural land use has been strongly reduced in some regions, it is increasing in others. Global croplands have not yet peaked and are . And while total land use is lower than 20 years ago, it is still an enormous 4.8 billion hectares, as we saw above. If we want to see the planet's wildlife thrive, we must reduce our land use further.

Closing the "yield gap" to produce more crops from less land

Achieving this future is not inevitable. It depends on what we do today.

What can we do?

Land productivity is measured as yield: the amount of food produced per unit of land.

With the modernization of agriculture, yields have increased substantially. Sixty years ago, the world's farmers produced around one tonne of wheat per hectare of land. Since then it has increased to three and a half tonnes. This means that wheat yields have increased 3.5-fold.

Big yield increases were also achieved in other important crops, as the following chart shows. Because of these productivity increases, the land area to grow a given quantity of crops has in the last sixty years.

The world has already achieved large increases, but thanks to the research on "yield gaps", we know that more is possible. Yield gaps are estimated by agricultural researchers and represent the difference between the current yields that a region achieves and the yields that are attainable using currently available crops, technologies, and farming practices. In our Crop Yields Data Explorer, you can explore the yield gap for countries around the world for crops, including , , , and .

What stands in the way of closing yield gaps?

The binding constraints differ significantly between different regions. It often hinges on adopting technologies like irrigation, fertilizers, and better seeds. But one level deeper, what is needed are changes to the finance systems that make the adoption of technology possible and provide access to markets; political changes that enable fair trade arrangements and strengthen the land rights of farmers; and scientific efforts to produce high-yielding crops suitable for the climate and soil of each particular agricultural region.

We could free up a lot of land if we'd reduce global meat production

Not just changes to production can make a big difference. Changes in consumption, too, could spare much more agricultural land.

Most of the world's farmland today is used for the production of meat and dairy, either as grazing land or cropland to grow animal feed. 77% of all agricultural land is used to raise livestock for meat and dairy.

In total, this is an area of 38 million km². For comparison, that's the size of the total land area of the Americas - from Alaska in the North all the way to Tierra del Fuego in the South.

But, as you can see in the chart below, the food produced on this land only contributes about 40% of the world's protein and of the world's calories. This shows the problem: meat production is a particularly inefficient way of using land for food production.

This is because, at each level of the food chain, some energy is lost. It is more efficient to eat plants rather than animals that eat plants.

My colleague Hannah Ritchie how much of a difference it can make if the world ate less meat. If everyone shifted to a plant-based diet, we would reduce global land use for agriculture by 75%. This shows just how much of today's agricultural land use and destruction of biodiversity is due to our consumption of animals and their products.

Technology that allows for sustainable intensification of crop production and the reduction of meat consumption are two of the main ways to produce more food on less land. We can achieve additional gains by reducing food waste and the use of biofuels.

We send two regular newsletters so you can stay up to date on our work and receive curated highlights from across Our World in Data.

Research on the global demand for food in the future shows that we should expect a growth in demand. The meta-analysis by van Dijk and colleagues in Nature Food shows that global food demand is expected to increase by 35% to 56% by the middle of this century. An increase that we should be able to meet.

We have seen just how important the productivity of agricultural land is for achieving a sustainable future. Humanity has just entered a new era: after millennia in which increases in food production were only possible by turning the planet's wilderness into agricultural land, today, we can increase food production while making more space for other species.

We can achieve a future without hunger and a future in which the planet's wildlife rebounds if we can further increase the productivity of agricultural land.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Hannah Ritchie for her helpful comments on this essay and visualizations.

Further reading:

For more research on this, have a look at the work of my colleagues at the Oxford Martin School's Future of Food Programme , led by Sir Charles Godfray.

On the question of how agricultural productivity on the African continent can increase, see Tavneet Suri, Chris Udry et al. (2022) - Agricultural Technology in Africa , published in VoxDevLit.

Cite this work

Our articles and data visualizations rely on work from many different people and organizations. When citing this article, please also cite the underlying data sources. This article can be cited as:

Max Roser (2024) - "Why is improving agricultural productivity crucial to ending global hunger and protecting the world's wildlife?" Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260727-182932/agricultural-productivity-crucial.html' [Online Resource] (archived on July 27, 2026).

BibTeX citation

@article{owid-agricultural-productivity-crucial, author = {Max Roser}, title = {Why is improving agricultural productivity crucial to ending global hunger and protecting the world's wildlife?}, journal = {Our World in Data}, year = {2024}, note = {https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260727-182932/agricultural-productivity-crucial.html} }

Reuse this work freely

All visualizations, data, and articles produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

The data produced by third parties and made available by Our World in Data is subject to the license terms from the original third-party authors. We will always indicate the original source of the data in our documentation, so you should always check the license of any such third-party data before use and redistribution.

All of our charts can be embedded in any site.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why is improving agricultural productivity crucial to ending global hunger and protecting the world's wildlife?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A future in which humanity produces more food on less land is not inevitable, but possible.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Why is improving agricultural productivity crucial to ending global hunger and protecting the world's wildlife?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The use of land for agriculture has been the main driver of the destruction of the world's biodiversity for a very long time. A look at our history makes clear why.

Our planet has a land surface of about 150 million square kilometers. Almost a third of it is free of vegetation. It is covered by rocks, deserts, and glaciers - especially the large glaciers in Antarctica.

The remaining 71% of the planet's land surface was once covered by wilderness: large forests, shrubs, and grasslands.
The world's land surface 10,000 years ago:
How have things changed since the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago?

The 10.6 billion hectares that were once covered by wilderness are called the world's "habitable land". The following chart shows how this land is used today. Almost half is used for agriculture.

The global land area used for agriculture today measures 48 million square kilometers. For comparison, that's an area around five times the size of the United States.

Considering this immense transformation, this article's first sentence is not surprising: agricultural land use has been the main driver of the destruction of wildlife and nature over the last millennia.

This environmental problem - agricultural land use - does not get the attention it deserves. It's mentioned far less than other environmental challenges like or plastic pollution . But if we want a future in which we preserve the world's wildlife, this is the key problem we must focus on.

We can't look at this problem in isolation. At the same time, as we protect the world's environment, we also have to find ways to produce the food needed to end hunger and malnutrition . But - and this is the point of this article - these two goals are no longer at odds with one another.

For our ancestors they were at odds with one another: our ancestors had to take natural land and convert it into agricultural land if they wanted to produce more food. This is not the case for us today: we can produce more from less.

To increase food production while restoring wild habitats, we must find ways to produce more food on less land. We have to increase agricultural productivity.

This is possible. In fact, we have already achieved a lot, as the following chart shows.

After centuries of stagnation, humanity has recently achieved a large increase in land productivity. The chart shows that land use per person declined by more than half. At the same time, increased in every region of the world.
You can explore the changes in food production in hundreds of metrics in our .
The fact that land use per capita has declined does not mean the problem is solved. While agricultural land use has been strongly reduced in some regions, it is increasing in others. Global croplands have not yet peaked and are . And while total land use is lower than 20 years ago, it is still an enormous 4.8 billion hectares, as we saw above. If we want to see the planet's wildlife thrive, we must reduce our land use further.

Closing the "yield gap" to produce more crops from less land

Achieving this future is not inevitable. It depends on what we do today.

What can we do?

Land productivity is measured as yield: the amount of food produced per unit of land.

With the modernization of agriculture, yields have increased substantially. Sixty years ago, the world's farmers produced around one tonne of wheat per hectare of land. Since then it has increased to three and a half tonnes. This means that wheat yields have increased 3.5-fold.

Big yield increases were also achieved in other important crops, as the following chart shows. Because of these productivity increases, the land area to grow a given quantity of crops has in the last sixty years.

The world has already achieved large increases, but thanks to the research on "yield gaps", we know that more is possible. Yield gaps are estimated by agricultural researchers and represent the difference between the current yields that a region achieves and the yields that are attainable using currently available crops, technologies, and farming practices. In our Crop Yields Data Explorer, you can explore the yield gap for countries around the world for crops, including , , , and .

What stands in the way of closing yield gaps?

The binding constraints differ significantly between different regions. It often hinges on adopting technologies like irrigation, fertilizers, and better seeds. But one level deeper, what is needed are changes to the finance systems that make the adoption of technology possible and provide access to markets; political changes that enable fair trade arrangements and strengthen the land rights of farmers; and scientific efforts to produce high-yielding crops suitable for the climate and soil of each particular agricultural region.

We could free up a lot of land if we'd reduce global meat production

Not just changes to production can make a big difference. Changes in consumption, too, could spare much more agricultural land.

Most of the world's farmland today is used for the production of meat and dairy, either as grazing land or cropland to grow animal feed. 77% of all agricultural land is used to raise livestock for meat and dairy.

In total, this is an area of 38 million km². For comparison, that's the size of the total land area of the Americas - from Alaska in the North all the way to Tierra del Fuego in the South.

But, as you can see in the chart below, the food produced on this land only contributes about 40% of the world's protein and of the world's calories. This shows the problem: meat production is a particularly inefficient way of using land for food production.

This is because, at each level of the food chain, some energy is lost. It is more efficient to eat plants rather than animals that eat plants.

My colleague Hannah Ritchie how much of a difference it can make if the world ate less meat. If everyone shifted to a plant-based diet, we would reduce global land use for agriculture by 75%. This shows just how much of today's agricultural land use and destruction of biodiversity is due to our consumption of animals and their products.

Technology that allows for sustainable intensification of crop production and the reduction of meat consumption are two of the main ways to produce more food on less land. We can achieve additional gains by reducing food waste and the use of biofuels.

We send two regular newsletters so you can stay up to date on our work and receive curated highlights from across Our World in Data.

Research on the global demand for food in the future shows that we should expect a growth in demand. The meta-analysis by van Dijk and colleagues in Nature Food shows that global food demand is expected to increase by 35% to 56% by the middle of this century. An increase that we should be able to meet.

We have seen just how important the productivity of agricultural land is for achieving a sustainable future. Humanity has just entered a new era: after millennia in which increases in food production were only possible by turning the planet's wilderness into agricultural land, today, we can increase food production while making more space for other species.

We can achieve a future without hunger and a future in which the planet's wildlife rebounds if we can further increase the productivity of agricultural land.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Hannah Ritchie for her helpful comments on this essay and visualizations.

Further reading:

For more research on this, have a look at the work of my colleagues at the Oxford Martin School's Future of Food Programme , led by Sir Charles Godfray.

On the question of how agricultural productivity on the African continent can increase, see Tavneet Suri, Chris Udry et al. (2022) - Agricultural Technology in Africa , published in VoxDevLit.

Cite this work

Our articles and data visualizations rely on work from many different people and organizations. When citing this article, please also cite the underlying data sources. This article can be cited as:

Max Roser (2024) - "Why is improving agricultural productivity crucial to ending global hunger and protecting the world's wildlife?" Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260727-182932/agricultural-productivity-crucial.html' [Online Resource] (archived on July 27, 2026).

BibTeX citation

@article{owid-agricultural-productivity-crucial, author = {Max Roser}, title = {Why is improving agricultural productivity crucial to ending global hunger and protecting the world's wildlife?}, journal = {Our World in Data}, year = {2024}, note = {https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260727-182932/agricultural-productivity-crucial.html} }

Reuse this work freely

All visualizations, data, and articles produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

The data produced by third parties and made available by Our World in Data is subject to the license terms from the original third-party authors. We will always indicate the original source of the data in our documentation, so you should always check the license of any such third-party data before use and redistribution.

All of our charts can be embedded in any site.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why is improving agricultural productivity crucial to ending global hunger and protecting the world's wildlife?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A future in which humanity produces more food on less land is not inevitable, but possible.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
In the past, most people worked in agriculture; in today's rich countries, only a small share do

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Since the agricultural revolution, the majority of the labor force in countries like France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and the Netherlands worked in farming.

But over the last few centuries, this share has plummeted. Today, less than 5% of the workforce is employed in agriculture, and in many cases, it's just a few percent.

This trend is shown clearly in the chart, which is based on data from the International Labour Organization and historical reconstructions by Broadberry and Gardner (2013).

The chart also includes the even steeper decline in agricultural employment in China over the last 40 years, as people have shifted to manufacturing and services.

Many other middle-income countries are on a similar trajectory, moving through this transition faster than European countries did in the past.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
In the past, most people worked in agriculture; in today's rich countries, only a small share do

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Since the agricultural revolution, the majority of the labor force in countries like France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and the Netherlands worked in farming.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Rich countries have ten times as many doctors per person as poor ones

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A person's access to doctors depends heavily on the income level of the country they live in.

High-income countries have around ten times as many doctors per person as low-income ones. You can see this in the chart, which shows the number of medical doctors per 1,000 people.

The global average is around 1.9 doctors per 1,000. Low-income countries have around one-fifth of that figure.

These figures include generalist physicians and specialists.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Rich countries have ten times as many doctors per person as poor ones

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A person's access to doctors depends heavily on the income level of the country they live in.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Most of the world’s fastest-growing megacities will soon be in Africa

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Most of the world’s fastest-growing megacities will soon be in Africa

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Many cities across East Asia and Latin America have grown quickly over the last few decades. Since 1950, São Paulo’s population has grown sixfold. Shanghai’s nearly tenfold.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Joe Hasell and Bertha Rohenkohl and Pablo Arriagada and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How is inequality measured, who produces key databases, and what does the data tell us?

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
It’s time to bring back Dartmoor’s lost rainforests

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
It’s time to bring back Dartmoor’s lost rainforests

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Campaigner, author and Dartmoor Nature Alliance core group member Guy Shrubsole describes why it’s now time to bring back Dartmoor’s lost Rainforests. Raindrops bead along a gnarled branch of oak, covered in verdant moss that’s as thick as deep-pile carpet. A downpour has drenched you to the skin, but you’re too enthralled to care: the tree in front of you is draped with grey-green lichens, more lustrous than Gandalf’s beard. A crack in the gunmetal clouds causes sunlight to flash through the ac

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Rewilding our waters in an era of offshore wind

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Rewilding our waters in an era of offshore wind

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How to turn Britain’s offshore wind boom into a win for marine biodiversity and coastal communities. Read our research report.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
The Wild View: Food and nature, not food vs nature

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Our greatest ally in securing our food supply lies in restoring - not competing with - the living systems that feed us, says Rewilding Britain's Founder and Chief Executive Rebecca Wrigley in her latest Wild View.

The Knepp Estate in Sussex produces slow-grown beef from the old English longhorn cows that graze freely across their rewilding project. © Knepp Wildland

Author: Rebecca Wrigley, Founder and Chief Executive

We are living through an era of cascading risk. From fractured global trade routes to climate breakdown and the accelerating collapse of our ecosystems, frighteningly obvious during this summer's heatwaves and wildfires, the foundations of our national security and resilience are shaking. In this context, the debate around land and marine use in Britain is too often framed as a zero-sum game: nature restoration versus food production.

And yet, food production doesn't sit alongside nature, it grows directly out of it. We cannot secure the resilience of our food supply while breaking the natural systems that create it. What threatens our ability to feed ourselves is not a false choice between food and nature. Instead, it is the continued degradation of the ecological systems that underpin all food production: our soils, water cycles, pollinators, marine ecosystems, as well as the stability of our climate. [1,2]

To reverse this decline, it's time we moved beyond polarised debate to having genuine conversations that embrace complexity and uncertainty, so that we can make more collaborative decisions about how we manage our land and seas in the face of 21 st century realities.

The false choice: food vs. nature

Our land and seas are vital resources. From them comes climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience; nature recovery; food, timber and fibre production; clean air and water; and energy provision. They are a lynchpin of our economy, and are integral to our collective health and wellbeing. These competing demands mean we must make informed decisions about how we best use our land and seas - and the natural resources we receive from them - to achieve our long-term economic, environmental and social aims.

And yet, the narrative often positions rewilding at scale as a competitor to farming and fishing - a luxury that we can ill afford: it is ​'taking land out of food production'[3] or an ​'anti-fishing agenda'[4]. We now know that allowing our natural systems to decline and climate change to accelerate ​'poses a systemic threat to UK food security, affecting domestic production, global supply chains, and population access to affordable, nutritious food'[5]. A report from the Food Standards Agency stated that ​'urgent action is needed to enhance the resilience of food systems to short-term shocks and longer-term stresses in order to enable food security, environmental sustainability, and decent and equitable livelihoods for all'[6]. These shocks, stresses and threats include:

Yield collapse: extreme weather cycles - including historic winter deluges and severe spring droughts - have reduced the harvest for wheat, winter and spring barley, oats and oilseed rape by 18% on the five year average[7]. Droughts are projected to reduce the proportion of UK land surface classified as ​'high quality farmland' from an average of 38% (1961 to 1990) to 11% by 2050[8].

Soil crisis: Soil degradation is estimated to have cost England and Wales up to £1.4 billion annually in lost productivity in 2015[9]. In Scotland that figure is £125 million per year[10]. Our bare, highly managed fields are becoming structurally incapable of absorbing climate shocks.

Pollination loss: The economic value of pollinators has been estimated as being around £500 million in the UK[11]. And yet, between 1980 and 2024, the overall distribution of 393 key pollinator species decreased by 23%, with almost all of this decline occurring after 2000[12]. Rising temperatures mean flowering times are shifting earlier, disrupting plant reproduction and directly threatening the insect workforce that underpins many crop yields.

The marine deficit: Overfishing and the degradation of the seabed are fracturing the food webs of our seas. Over half of the fish populations vital to UK fisheries are being overfished or are in a critical state[13]. This selective overharvesting has fundamentally changed marine life; over the last 20 years alone, the average size of caught fish like cod has decreased by 48%[14].

This is a massive wake-up call - but it also hides a surprising truth: growing evidence suggests that we do not have to choose between a thriving planet and a resilient food system.

If we want a secure, resilient future with nature restoration and food production working hand-in-hand, we must have more thoughtful conversations about how we balance competing demands. © Photocech CZ / Shutterstock

Rewilding: a ​'productive' use of our land and seas

At Rewilding Britain, we advocate for 30% rewilding - the mass restoration of nature until it can take care of itself, and us, again. By focusing on natural processes, like free-flowing rivers and reinstating missing species, we can replenish nature's remarkable web of life while bringing communities together to find new ways to work, live, and prosper.

Rewilding can happen across a spectrum of approaches (see our Rewilding Journeys toolkit), depending on the extent to which nature takes the lead and guided by local community, context and culture. Some of these approaches overlap with or can sit alongside regenerative farming, fishing and aquaculture. Recent research[15], including our own analysis, suggests that, by focusing on areas of land with highest naturalness potential and least agricultural value, we can achieve this 30% target with minimal impact on our overall calorie production. This means prioritising more marginal land, uplands, and non-arable areas, where carbon storage, climate resilience, flood mitigation, water quality and biodiversity combine to offer a highly productive use of the land.

In rewilding systems, where nature is the primary land use, there may also be opportunities to continue to produce some wild or semi-wild range meats. These use low-density, naturally grazed native breeds - such as hardy cattle and pigs - and/​or the sustainable management of deer numbers. This allows vulnerable land managers to move away from a volatile reliance on commodity food markets and can unlock additional diversified revenue streams, e.g. through nature-based enterprise, public payments and diversified products, ultimately creating more stable and resilient rural livelihoods[16].

Furthermore, because much of this transition will occur on land that already carries low livestock densities or does not produce food (such as grouse shooting estates), the impact on national herds is remarkably small. Our modelling indicates that transitioning improved pasture and intensively managed grouse and deer shooting estates into rewilding requires only an approximate 12% reduction in total cattle and a 25% reduction in sheep. As we are already eating much less of these meats - with a 30% decline in beef consumption and 55% decline in lamb consumption between 2008 and 2019[17] - this trend poses little threat to our current diets or food resilience.

In the marine environment, we know that rewilding can trigger a remarkable rebounding of marine life while actively enhancing the productivity of our fisheries. For example, since bottom-trawling was banned in the Lyme Bay Marine Protected Area there's been a four-fold increase in the abundance and diversity of fish populations[18]. In addition, the wellbeing and livelihoods of fishers directly involved in the project have improved[19]. However, our current policies are failing our seas. We boast that 38% of the UK's marine areas are ​'protected', yet the overwhelming majority still permit bottom-trawling and dredging - the most destructive fishing practices of them all. True protection, that can support small inshore fisheries and have positive ​'spillover' effects into the surrounding seas, is still the exception, not the rule.

If trading food production off against nature is a false choice, it leaves us with a far more compelling question: what are the unseen levers we can pull to secure both our food supply and the living world on which it depends?

We know that rewilding can trigger a remarkable rebounding of marine life while actively enhancing the productivity of our fisheries. © Richard Shucksmith/scotlandbigpicture.com

The protein transition: focus on optimising calorie production

Securing our food supply isn't about imposing restrictions - it is about unlocking opportunity and ingenuity. Right now, we are using a staggering 85% of our agricultural land to graze livestock or grow animal feed when we know that growing plants for human consumption generates roughly 12 times more calories per hectare than producing meat[20]. A nationwide protein and calorie transition that also improves the nutritional value of our food is our chance to innovate. By focusing on optimising sustainable calorie production on our most fertile land, and through sustainable fisheries outside our Marine Protected Areas, while weaving a natural process-led approach across the rest, we can build a healthier, more resilient Britain. Crucially, this vision must be realised without inflicting further ecological damage - such as the agricultural pollution caused by intensive poultry production - or simply offshoring our ecological footprint to other nations.

That transition is already transforming our seas. Until recently, the largest industrial fishery in the UK's North Sea wasn't catching food for human consumption; it was vacuuming up sandeels to be ground into fishmeal for intensively farmed livestock and salmon. This is incredibly inefficient because between 70 - 85% of the protein in wild fishmeal is entirely lost compared to being eaten directly by humans[21]. The historic 2024 ban on sandeel fishing in English and Scottish waters shows what's possible when we prioritise ecological resilience[22]. By leaving these vital fish in the sea, we protect the marine food web and allow commercial fish populations to recover.

We are not short of options. By re-evaluating what we prioritise, incentivise, and invest in, we can unlock significant potential.

Here's just a few things we could do.

The National Food Strategy calculated that we could produce the same amount of calories on 30% less agricultural land by reducing meat consumption by 30%, increasing core farm yields by 15%, and halving food waste[23].

Diverting productive land to grow crops for biofuels is an inefficiency we can no longer afford; instead we could choose to use that land to feed 3.5 million people[24] and transition to more efficient forms of renewable energy production.

We could choose to slightly loosen the strict quality criteria UK flour mills use for breadmaking. This simple adjustment could allow millions more tonnes of British wheat to be used for human food rather than being downgraded to animal feed, while reducing our reliance on imports.

We can choose to scale up domestic fruit and vegetable production, which enhances national food resilience using very little land, while simultaneously diversifying farm businesses.

We can invest in research and innovation that links food production with ecological health, e.g. local varieties of peas, beans, and lentils that naturally enrich the soil, reducing fertiliser costs for farmers[25] or scaling up alternative food sources like microbial protein, wild edible plants (greens, nuts, seeds, grains and berries), wild mushrooms, insects, fish and seafood, seaweed and algae[26].

We can agree to ban bottom-trawling across our Marine Protected Areas, allowing degraded seabeds to recover into rich nursery grounds that naturally restock our commercial fisheries. Simultaneously, we can invest in community-led inshore fisheries and low-impact, restorative aquaculture - such as native seaweed and shellfish farming.

Projects like the Langholm Moor community buyout in Scotland are showing how communities can take ownership of marginal uplands to balance ecological restoration, eco-tourism and regenerative land uses. © Shona Dickson

The courage to adapt

We can no longer put off these choices. If we want a secure, resilient future with nature restoration and food production working hand-in-hand, we must have more thoughtful conversations about how we balance the competing demands on our land and seas. We need to form genuine partnerships built on mutual respect - ones that move beyond polarised debates and bring food producers, rewilders, scientists, policy-makers and entrepreneurs together as allies on the same journey.

These conversations are not hypothetical; they are already happening. The members of our Rewilding Network provide many inspiring examples. We see community-led marine initiatives like the Sussex Bay project, where local fishers, scientists, and authorities collaborated to establish a nearshore trawling ban. By giving the seabed breathing space, they have triggered a spectacular rebound of native mussel beds, black bream, and kelp forests - proving that a healthy sea is the ultimate foundation of a thriving coastal economy.

Further north, projects like the Langholm Moor community buyout in Scotland show how communities can take ownership of marginal uplands to balance ecological restoration, eco-tourism and regenerative land uses. Along the southern coast of England, the Purbeck Heaths in Dorset demonstrates how rewilding at scale can thrive within a wider agricultural landscape. Here, fences have been removed to let hardy, free-roaming cattle, pigs and ponies act as ecosystem engineers across thousands of hectares, kickstarting natural processes while continuing to produce low levels of high-quality, wild-range meat. A similar approach is being used at the Knepp Estate in Sussex which now produces 75 tonnes of wild range meat a year[27].

Across our Rewilding Network, this ecological transition has unlocked a wealth of diversified nature-based enterprises as well as a huge increase in job numbers[28] - proving that a wilder landscape can be a prosperous one. We are also working closely with brilliant initiatives like the Nature Friendly Farming Network, whose members are demonstrating that restoring soil biology and welcoming back pollinators can protect their bottom line. Together, this is creating an interconnected, nature-rich mosaic of rewilding sites alongside high-nature-value farming - providing vital ecological corridors and stepping stones through more intensively managed land.

These trailblazers are showing us what is possible. The choice ahead of us is clear - we just need the courage to adapt.

References

1. Bullock, J.M., Sailley, S., Argudin-Violante, C., Wagstaff, C.,(2026) The Fourth Climate Change Risk Assessment - Independent Assessment (CCRA4-IA) Technical Report, 'Chapter 5: Land, Nature, and Food'

2. Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, (2026) Nature security assessment on global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security

3. Galbraith, P., (2025) The Telegraph, 'The rewilding cash grab driving farmers off the land'

4. McBride, O., (2025) The Fishing Daily, 'UK Fishermen Condemn Marine Protected Area Fishing Ban Proposals'

5. Bullock, J.M., Sailley, S., Argudin-Violante, C., Wagstaff, C.,(2026) The Fourth Climate Change Risk Assessment - Independent Assessment (CCRA4-IA) Technical Report, 'Chapter 5: Land, Nature, and Food'

6. Hasnain, S., Food Standards Agency, (2024) Impact of Climate Change on the UK Food System

7. Lancaster, T., Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (2024) Confirmed: England has second worst harvest on record with fears mounting for 2025

8. Bullock, J.M., Sailley, S., Argudin-Violante, C., Wagstaff, C.,(2026) The Fourth Climate Change Risk Assessment - Independent Assessment (CCRA4-IA) Technical Report, 'Chapter 5: Land, Nature, and Food'

9. Graves, A.R., Morris, J., Deeks, L.K., Rickson, R.J., Kibblewhite, M.G., Harris, J.A., Farewell, T.S., Truckle, I., (2015) Ecological Economics, ' The total costs of soil degradation in England and Wales'

10. Environmental Standards Scotland, (2024) The risks to Scotland's soils: a scoping report

11. Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, (2024) Insect decline and UK food security

12. JNCC, (2024) Status of pollinating insects

13. Oceana, (2023) Taking stock: The state of UK fish populations 2023

14. Young Han, K. Brennan, R. S., Monk, C. T., Jentoft, S., Helmerson, C., Dierking, J., Hüssy, K., Endo Kokubun, É., Fuss, J., Krause-Kyora, B. Thomsen, T. B., Heredie, B. D., Reusch, T. B. H., (2025) Genomic evidence for fisheries-induced evolution in Eastern Baltic cod

15. Dimbleby, H. (2021) The National Food Strategy - The Plan / The Royal Society, (2023) Multifunctional landscapes

16. Rewilding Britain, (2021) R ewilding and the rural economy

17. Stewart, C., Piernas, C., Cook, B., Jebb, S. A., (2021) Trends in UK meat consumption: analysis of data from years 1-11 (2008-09 to 2018-19) of the National Diet and Nutrition Survey rolling programme

18. Williams, A., (2021) Marine Protected Area status can boost fish populations by almost 400%

19. The Commonwealth, (2020) Case Study: Lyme Bay Fisheries & Conservation Reserve, UK (on-going)

20. Dimbleby, H. (2021) The National Food Strategy - The Plan

21. Fry, J. P., Mailloux, N. A., Love, D. C., Milli, M. C., Cao, L., (2018) Feed conversion efficiency in aquaculture: do we measure it correctly?

22. Murphy, P, BBC, (2025) Sandeel fishing ban to remain in place

23. Dimbleby, H. (2021) The National Food Strategy - The Plan

24. Green Alliance, (2022) Food security and UK crop-based biofuel use: selected analysis in support of a limit to crop-based inputs

25. Bangor University, (2021) Crop rotations with beans and peas offer more sustainable and nutritious food production

26. Green Alliance, (2024) A new land dividend: the opportunity of alternative proteins in Europe

27. Sims, M., (2021) The Knepp Estate is proving that rewilding can mitigate climate change and restore nature while turning a healthy profit

28. Rewilding Britian, (2024) 412% increase in jobs at Scotland rewilding sites, research shows

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Wild View: Food and nature, not food vs nature

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In her latest Wild View, Rewilding Britain's Founder and Chief Executive Rebecca Wrigley, challenges us to move beyond the false narrative of food vs...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When reporter Olivia Humphreys had her first baby in London, the hospital sent her home with an underwhelming package: a small drawstring bag containing a few tiny samples of baby shampoo and diaper cream, and tons of coupons. And looking through the bag she couldn’t help but wonder if there was anywhere in the world

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Conservation Concepts for Teaching and Learning | Ecology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Conservation Concepts for Teaching and Learning | Ecology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn key conservation concepts in 2-minute videos by Bill Sutherland. Ideal for classrooms, lectures, and anyone studying ecology and conservation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
As Sudan’s war crosses borders and millions are made refugees, could Ethiopia’s plan solve ‘humanity’s migration issue’?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
As Sudan’s war crosses borders and millions are made refugees, could Ethiopia’s plan solve ‘humanity’s migration issue’?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Amid fears of fresh bloodshed, the country is hoping its offer of education and employment can provide a model for other nations to follow

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Emergencies on planet Earth: images from the climate crisis - in pictures

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Emergencies on planet Earth: images from the climate crisis - in pictures | Photography | The Guardian Skip to main content Skip to navigation

From fierce flooding and escaped pigs to birds that can't fly due to the weight of plastic in their stomachs, mankind's biggest challenges are on stark display at Summit Photo 2026

Desperate scenes ... refugees from Mykolayiv leave Odesa railway station bound for Lviv. Photograph: Simon Townsley

Explore more on these topics

Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning

© 2026 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. (dcr)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Emergencies on planet Earth: images from the climate crisis - in pictures

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From fierce flooding and escaped pigs to birds that can't fly due to the weight of plastic in their stomachs, mankind's biggest challenges are on stark display at Summit Photo 2026

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
People across the world are becoming increasingly concerned about climate change: 8-in-10 people see climate change as a major threat to their country.

As I have shown before, food production is responsible for one-quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

There is rightly a growing awareness that our diet and food choices have a significant impact on our carbon 'footprint'. What can you do to really reduce the carbon footprint of your breakfast, lunches, and dinner?'Eating local' is a recommendation you hear often - even from prominent sources, including the United Nations. While it might make sense intuitively - after all, transport does lead to emissions - it is one of the most misguided pieces of advice.

Eating locally would only have a significant impact if transport was responsible for a large share of food's final carbon footprint. For most foods, this is not the case.

GHG emissions from transportation make up a very small amount of the emissions from food and what you eat is far more important than where your food traveled from.

Where do the emissions from our food come from?

In the visualization we see GHG emissions from 29 different food products - from beef at the top to nuts at the bottom.

For each product you can see from which stage in the supply chain its emissions originate. This extends from land use changes on the left, through to transport and packaging on the right.

This is data from the largest meta-analysis of global food systems to date, published in Science by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018).

In this study, the authors looked at data across more than 38,000 commercial farms in 119 countries.

In this comparison we look at the total GHG emissions per kilogram of food product. CO ₂ is the most important GHG, but not the only one - agriculture is a large source of the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide. To capture all GHG emissions from food production researchers therefore express them in kilograms of 'carbon dioxide equivalents'. This metric takes account not just CO ₂ but all greenhouse gases.

The most important insight from this study: there are massive differences in the GHG emissions of different foods: producing a kilogram of beef emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gases (CO ₂-equivalents). While peas emits just 1 kilogram per kg.

Overall, animal-based foods tend to have a higher footprint than plant-based. Lamb and cheese both emit more than 20 kilograms CO ₂-equivalents per kilogram. Poultry and pork have lower footprints but are still higher than most plant-based foods, at 6 and 7 kg CO ₂-equivalents, respectively.

For most foods - and particularly the largest emitters - most GHG emissions result from land use change (shown in green), and from processes at the farm stage (brown). Farm-stage emissions include processes such as the application of fertilizers - both organic ("manure management") and synthetic; and enteric fermentation (the production of methane in the stomachs of cattle). Combined, land use and farm-stage emissions account for more than 80% of the footprint for most foods.

Transport is a small contributor to emissions. For most food products, it accounts for less than 10%, and it's much smaller for the largest GHG emitters. In beef from beef herds, it's 0.5%.

Not just transport, but all processes in the supply chain after the food left the farm - processing, transport, retail and packaging - mostly account for a small share of emissions.

This data shows that this is the case when we look at individual food products. But studies also shows that this holds true for actual diets; for example, researcher Vilma Sandström and colleagues studied the footprint of diets across the EU. Food transport was responsible for only 6% of emissions, whilst dairy, meat and eggs accounted for 83%.

Eating local only slightly reduces your emissions

Eating local beef or lamb has many times the carbon footprint of most other foods. Whether they are grown locally or shipped from the other side of the world matters very little for total emissions.

Transport typically accounts for less than 1% of beef's GHG emissions: choosing to eat local has very minimal effects on its total footprint. You might think this figure is strongly dependent on where in the world you live, and how far your beef will have to travel, but in the 'dropdown box' below I work through an example to show why it doesn't make a lot of difference.

Whether you buy it from the farmer next door or from far away, it is not the location that makes the carbon footprint of your dinner large, but the fact that it is beef.

Example: how much does distance traveled impact the footprint of beef?

You might think this figure is strongly dependent on where in the world you live, and how far your beef will have to travel. If you live somewhere very remote you'd assume this must be much, much larger than if your beef is produced by your local farmer. But the key point here is that the difference in transport figures is very small relative to the total footprint of beef.Let's take the example of beef from a beef herd - the average footprint is approximately 60 kilograms of CO ₂ eq per kilogram of beef. Let's compare the transport footprint of buying from your local farmer (who turns out to be your neighbor), versus someone in the UK buying beef from Central America (approximately 9000 kilometers away).

Transporting food by boat emits 23 grams of CO ₂eq per tonne of product per kilometer. To transport the 9000 kilometers from Central America to the UK therefore emits 0.207 kilograms CO ₂eq [9000km * 23g per tonne-kilometer / 1000 / 1000 = 0.207 kg CO ₂eq per kg]. This is equivalent to 0.35% of the total footprint of the 60 kilograms of CO ₂ eq per kilogram of beef.

If you buy from your local farmer - let's assume you walk there, and have zero transport emissions - your beef footprint is 59.8 kilograms CO ₂ eq per kilogram [we calculate this as 60kg - 0.2kg]. It makes almost no difference.

Especially for foods with a large footprint, transport as a share of the food's total emissions is fairly insensitive to the distance travelled.

In a study published in Environmental Science & Technology, Christopher Weber and Scott Matthews (2008) investigated the relative climate impact of food miles and food choices in households in the US. Their analysis showed that substituting less than one day per week's worth of calories from beef and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a plant-based alternative reduces GHG emissions more than buying all your food from local sources.

By analysing consumer expenditure data, the researchers estimated that the average American household's food emissions were around 8 tonnes of CO ₂eq per year. Food transport accounted for only 5% of this (0.4 tCO ₂eq). This means that if we were to take the case where we assume a household sources all of their food locally, the maximum reduction in their footprint would be 5%. This is an extreme example because in reality there would still be small transport emissions involved in transporting food from producers in your area.

They estimated that if the average household substituted their calories from red meat and dairy to chicken, fish or eggs just one day per week they would save 0.3 tCO ₂eq. If they replaced it with plant-based alternatives they would save 0.46 tCO ₂eq. In other words, going 'red meat and dairy-free' (not totally meat-free) one day per week would achieve the same as having a diet with zero food miles.

There are also a number of cases where eating locally might in fact increase emissions. In most countries, many foods can only be grown and harvested at certain times of the year. But consumers want them year-round. This gives us three options: import goods from countries where they are in-season; use energy-intensive production methods (such as greenhouses) to produce them year-round; or use refrigeration and other preservation methods to store them for several months. There are many examples of studies which show that importing often has a lower footprint.

Hospido et al. (2009) estimate that importing Spanish lettuce to the UK during winter months results in three to eight times lower emissions than producing it locally. The same applies for other foods: tomatoes produced in greenhouses in Sweden used 10 times as much energy as importing tomatoes from Southern Europe where they were in-season.

Avoid the small share of foods that are air-freighted

The impact of transport is small for most products, but there is one exception: those which travel by air.

Many believe that air-freight is more common than it actually is. Very little food is air-freighted; it accounts for only 0.16% of food miles. But for the few products which are transported by air, the emissions can be very high: it emits 50 times more CO ₂ eq than boat per tonne kilometer.

Many of the foods people assume to come by air are actually transported by boat - avocados and almonds are prime examples. Shipping one kilogram of avocados from Mexico to the United Kingdom would generate 0.21kg CO ₂ eq in transport emissions. This is only around 8% of avocados' total footprint. Even when shipped at great distances, its emissions are much less than locally-produced animal products.

Which foods are air-freighted? How do we know which products to avoid?

They tend to be foods which are highly perishable. This means they need to be eaten soon after they've been harvested. In this case, transport by boat is too slow, leaving air travel as the only feasible option.

Some fruit and vegetables tend to fall into this category. Asparagus, green beans and berries are common air-freighted goods.

It is often hard for consumers to identify foods that have travelled by air because they're rarely labeled as such. This makes them difficult to avoid. A general rule is to avoid foods that have a very short shelf-life and have traveled a long way (many labels have the country of 'origin' which helps with this). This is especially true for foods where there is a strong emphasis on 'freshness': for these products, transport speed is a priority.

So, if you want to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet, avoid air-freighted foods where you can. But beyond this, you can have a larger difference by focusing on what you eat, rather than 'eating local'. Eating less meat and dairy, or switching from ruminant meat to chicken, pork, or plant-based alternatives will reduce your footprint by much more.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
'Eat local' is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. How does the impact of what you eat compare to where it's come from?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Veronika Samborska and Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Around 80% of the world’s population lives in cities, towns, and suburbs rather than rural settlements. How has this changed, and what does urbanization look like across the world today?

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
'Children were calling for their mummies': UK pupils struggle in 40C-plus classrooms

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The extreme heat that has hit the UK twice in the past few weeks has left teachers struggling to cope as temperatures in some classrooms climb above 40C, with pupils and staff suffering from heatstroke, nausea and headaches.

Teachers say they have been desperately trying to keep children safe, with some covering younger pupils in wet paper towels as they lie on the floor, while older students have been given trays of water under their desks to put their feet in.

Staff say learning on the hottest days is almost impossible, with pupil behaviour and attention deteriorating rapidly.

Some teachers and pupils have fainted, while others say they have had to buy fans and window shades out of their own pockets to try to keep themselves and their pupils safe.

One primary school teacher said: "Everyone was lying or sitting on the floor with their water bottles, sweating, moaning and feeling tired, [complaining of] headaches and nausea.

"The adults barely coped and most of the children were calling for their mummies and daddies. There was no learning, just surviving the best we could."

Many school buildings are simply unable to cope with the heat as they have little or no shade and lots of glass.

Buildings are often old and poorly insulated, with artificial grass or concrete in playgrounds that exacerbates the impact of the heat, while many schools do not have air conditioning.

Government climate advisers say air conditioning should be installed in all schools within 25 years. Photograph: mar-fre/Alamy

Some staff have reported pupils and teachers sitting on the floor of any classrooms they could find with shade, with the lights turned off. In May, the government's climate advisers said air conditioning should be installed in all schools within 25 years and that the country was "built for a climate that no longer exists".

"No one seems to know how to cool the buildings," said one teacher. "Changes to the fabric of the building and the planting of trees instead of the hot expanse of the playground are needed.

"I've worked three years in much hotter countries, but they had four ceiling fans in each room and rules about windows/blinds/doors that created a livable environment."

This year western Europe has been hit by its hottest June on record as the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis accelerates.

The UK entered its third heatwave of the year this week with temperatures peaking at 35C. The current high temperatures are expected to drag out over a sweltering 10 days and the oppressive heat on land has been accompanied by high global ocean temperatures that experts warn could cause "mass-mortality events" for some species.

The extreme weather led to more than 1,000 schools in England and Wales either closing or partly closing at the peak of the June heatwave, according to figures compiled at the time by PA Media.

Department for Education (DfE) statistics show one in five sessions of school in England were missed - the highest daily absence rate so far during the 2025-26 academic year.

Experts say closing so many schools puts pressure on the entire community and the economy.

The Round Our Way group estimated that the economic cost of the June heatwave was between £100m and £200m. It said its impact rippled out beyond schools and teachers to parents, who might have had to take time off work, and the wider community.

Roger Harding, the group's co-director, said it could not be left to individual schools and teachers to try to cope with the realities of the climate crisis.

"We need to see a plan from government to protect people, including children in school, when extreme weather hits," he said.

skip past newsletter promotion

Sign up to Down to Earth

The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential

after newsletter promotion

"This needs to go hand-in-hand with measures to cut the pollution causing this climate change in the first place to ensure this extreme weather doesn't get worse and worse."

A survey of 1,000 UK parents carried out on behalf of Round Our Way found that during June's heatwave more than half had one or more child miss at least a day of school; 40% reported children coming home overheated and exhausted; 46% said their children were unable to play outside because it was too hot; and almost two-thirds said summers in the UK were "starting to feel genuinely unsafe for children".

Teachers were asked about the impact of the June heatwave in a survey carried out by Round Our Way in partnership with the UK's biggest education union, the National Education Union (NEU).

Jenny Cooper, a teacher and NEU safety rep for London, said recent heatwaves had taken a severe toll on the capital's schools.

"I heard of colleagues fainting, others shared photos of thermometers in their classrooms showing way over 10 degrees above safe working levels," she said.

"Our schools should be places where we can learn and teach safely. A place for children whose homes are not safe. Extreme heat and other climate impacts are jeopardising this."

Lorna Powell, an NHS urgent care doctor in east London and co-director of the Mothers Rise Up climate group, said as a parent and medic the recent "onslaughts of heat" had been frightening as she struggled to keep her two children and her patients safe.

She said the closure of so many schools was changing people's mindsets. "Most people I know don't really think or talk about climate change. But when our primary school closed in June, it became a regular topic of conversation. One mother said to me: 'We just didn't have summers like this when we were young, did we?'"

Powell said people were also starting to make the link between the fossil fuel industry, its funding of political parties and extreme weather events.

"Once people start to understand that vast coal, oil and gas interests prop up the political parties calling for more drilling, it's a lightbulb moment.

"It all makes sense and they can see through the bogus information suggesting that more expensive oil and gas will lower our bills and provide energy security when in reality it is making the world much more dangerous and expensive for us all."

A spokesperson for the DfE said schools were responsible for making their own decisions on whether it was safe to remain open, but that they should do "wherever possible".

The spokesperson added: "Schools have well-established measures to manage hot weather, including ensuring children stay hydrated, adapting uniforms where appropriate and avoiding strenuous activity during the hottest parts of the day."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Children were calling for their mummies': UK pupils struggle in 40C-plus classrooms

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teachers call for schools to be urgently adapted for hot weather amid reports of nausea, fainting and heatstroke

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
The Lead Untangles: Why is the UK seeing so many wildfires?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
The Lead and Ella Glover and The Lead Editors

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Lead Untangles: Why is the UK seeing so many wildfires?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The UK is increasingly at risk of experiencing wildfires, with last year seeing the most blazes on record. But are we prepared?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Shared Resource - Educational Recording Agency

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The ERA Licence enables schools, colleges and universities to make educational use of recordings of TV and Radio broadcasts.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Each year, the UK’s 4,500 secondary schools hold thousands of subject options evenings for students considering their key stage 4, key stage 5 and higher education subject choices. Our aim is to empower every Geography teacher in the country to advocate for Geography as a career-defining subject, with conviction to rival the most applied of STEM disciplines. Working with leading employers and universities, we are building this definitive resource for use at school options evenings and university open days.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How drone technology is helping plant 100 million mangrove trees in the UAE by 2030

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Move over Chutes & Ladders: Schisto & Ladders has educational value plus worms

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Move over Chutes & Ladders: Schisto & Ladders has educational value plus worms

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Spread by parasitic worms that can infect via a splash of water, schistosomiasis causes debilitating symptoms. It hits kids hard. A board game teaches how to prevent it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The third category 5 tropical cyclone of 2026 crossed the U.S. Northern Mariana Islands and Guam before continuing toward Asia.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Smoke, soot and toxic fumes: Nigerian families living in shadow of burning oil well six years after blowout

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Smoke, soot and toxic fumes: Nigerian families living in shadow of burning oil well six years after blowout

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Villagers in Awoye in the Niger Delta say the ongoing pollution is causing sickness and environmental destruction, while pleas for help go unanswered

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Gatwick Airport Natural Flood Management Project

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Gatwick Airport Natural Flood Management Project

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Discover how we’re restoring the Upper Mole catchment using natural flood management to reduce flood risk and support wildlife.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Togetherness: How co-operation built the world

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Togetherness: How co-operation built the world

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Rowan Hooper talks about his book Togetherness

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Jamaica’s beach access crisis: ‘We shouldn’t be forced to fight for what is already ours’

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Jamaica’s beach access crisis: ‘We shouldn’t be forced to fight for what is already ours’

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Activists argue business model is ‘plantation tourism’ designed to benefit elite and disadvantage most Jamaicans

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
BBC Coast S02E01 - Dover to Isle of White - video Dailymotion

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
uploaded with File Uploader (z-o-o-m.eu)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Shared Resource - Educational Recording Agency

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The ERA Licence enables schools, colleges and universities to make educational use of recordings of TV and Radio broadcasts.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
15 stunning 3D visualisations of Earth. Geographic, demographic and economic views include tectonic boundaries, climate zones, average temperature and precipitation, political maps, GDP per capita, population density, energy consumption, GINI index, fertility rate and population growth.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
CPRE London is leading a drive to link up existing wooded areas around the capital via the best opportunity sites to create a continuous ring of treescapes around the capital weaving through a rich mosaic of other habitat: a superhighway for nature!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Interactive charts on Natural Disasters

The number of deaths from natural disasters can be highly variable from year-to-year; some years pass with very few deaths before a large disaster event claims many lives.

If we look at the average over the past decade, approximately 45,000 people globally died from natural disasters each year. This represents around 0.1% of global deaths.

In the visualizations shown here we see the annual variability in the number and share of deaths from natural disasters in recent decades.

What we see is that in many years, the number of deaths can be very low - often less than 10,000, and accounting for as low as 0.01% of total deaths. But we also see the devastating impact of shock events: the 1983-85 famine and drought in Ethiopia; the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami; Cyclone Nargis which struck Myanmar in 2008; and the 2010 Port-au-Prince earthquake in Haiti. All of these events pushed global disasters deaths over 200,000 - more than 0.4% of deaths in these years.

Low-frequency, high-impact events such as earthquakes and tsunamis are not preventable, but such high losses of human life are. We know from historical data that the world has seen a significant reduction in disaster deaths through earlier prediction, more resilient infrastructure, emergency preparedness, and response systems.

Those at low incomes are often the most vulnerable to disaster events: improving living standards, infrastructure and response systems in these regions will be key to preventing deaths from natural disasters in the coming decades.

Globally, over the past decade, natural disasters accounted for an average of 0.1% of total deaths. This was, however, highly variable to high-impact events and ranged from 0.01% to 0.4% of total deaths.

In the map shown here you can explore these trends by country over the past few decades. Using the timeline on the chart you can observe changes across the world over time, or by clicking on a country you can see its individual trend.

What we observe is that for most countries the share of deaths from natural disasters are very low in most years. Often it can be zero - with no loss of life to disasters - or well below 0.01%. But we also see clearly the effects of low-frequency but high-impact events: in 2010, more than 70% of deaths in Haiti were the result of the Port-au-Prince earthquake.

Number of deaths from natural disasters

Annual deaths from natural disasters

In the visualization shown here we see the long-term global trend in natural disaster deaths. This shows the estimated annual number of deaths from disasters from 1900 onwards from the EMDAT International Disaster Database.¹

What we see is that in the early-to-mid 20th century, the annual death toll from disasters was high, often reaching over one million per year. In recent decades we have seen a substantial decline in deaths. In most years fewer than 20,000 die (and in the most recent decade, this has often been less than 10,000). Even in peak years with high-impact events, the death toll has not exceeded 500,000 since the mid-1960s.

This decline is even more impressive when we consider the rate of population growth over this period. When we correct for population - showing this data in terms of death rates (measured per 100,000 people) - we see an even greater decline over the past century. This chart can be viewed here.

The annual number of deaths from natural disasters is also available by country since 1990. This can be explored in the interactive map.

Average number of deaths by decade

In the chart we show global deaths from natural disasters since 1900, but rather than reporting annual deaths, we show the annual average by decade.

As we see, over the course of the 20th century there was a significant decline in global deaths from natural disasters. In the early 1900s, the annual average was often in the range of 400,000 to 500,000 deaths. In the second half of the century and into the early 2000s, we have seen a significant decline to less than 100,000 - at least five times lower than these peaks.

This decline is even more impressive when we consider the rate of population growth over this period. When we correct for population - showing this data in terms of death rates (measured per 100,000 people) - then we see a more than 10-fold decline over the past century. This chart can be viewed here.

Number of deaths by type of natural disaster

With almost minute-by-minute updates on what's happening in the world, we are constantly reminded of the latest disaster. These stories are, of course, important but they do not give us a sense of how the toll of disasters has changed over time.

For most of us, it is hard to know whether any given year was a particularly deadly one in the context of previous years.

To understand the devastating toll of disasters today, and in the past, we have built a Natural Disasters Data Explorer which provides estimates of fatalities, displacement and economic damage for every country since 1900. This is based on data sourced from EM-DAT; a project that undertakes the important work of building these incredibly detailed histories of disasters.²

In this visualization I give a sense of how the global picture has evolved over the last century. It shows the estimated annual death toll - from all disasters at the top, followed by a breakdown by type. The size of the bubble represents the total death toll for that year.

I've labeled most of the years with the largest death tolls. This usually provokes the follow-up question: "Why? What event happened?". So I've also noted large-scale events that contributed to the majority - but not necessarily all - of the deaths in that year.

For example, the estimated global death toll from storms in 2008 was approximately 141,000. 138,366 of these deaths occurred in Cyclone Margis, which struck Myanmar, and is labeled on the chart.

What we see is that in the 20th century, it was common to have years where the death toll was in the millions. This was usually the result of major droughts or floods. Often these would lead to famines. My colleague Joe Hasell looks at the long history of famines here.

Improved food security, resilience to other disasters, and better national and international responses mean that the world has not experienced death tolls of this scale in many decades. Famines today are usually driven by civil war and political unrest.

In most years, the death toll from disasters is now in the range of 10,000 to 20,000 people. In the most fatal years - which tend to be those with major earthquakes or cyclones - this can reach tens to hundreds of thousands.

This trend does not mean that disasters have become less frequent, or less intense. It means the world today is much better at preventing deaths from disasters than in the past. This will become increasingly important in our response and adaptation to climate change.

Human impacts from natural disasters are not fully captured in mortality rates. Injury, homelessness, and displacement can all have a significant impact on populations.

The visualisation below shows the number of people displaced internally (i.e. within a given country) from natural disasters. Note that these figures report on the basis of new cases of displaced persons: if someone is forced to flee their home from natural disasters more than once in any given year, they will be recorded only once within these statistics.

Interactive charts on the following global impacts are available using the links below:

Injuries: number of people injured is defined as "People suffering from physical injuries, trauma or an illness requiring immediate medical assistance as a direct result of a disaster."

Homelessness: number of people homeless is defined as "Number of people whose house is destroyed or heavily damaged and therefore need shelter after an event."

Affected: number of people affected is defined as "People requiring immediate assistance during a period of emergency, i.e. requiring basic survival needs such as food, water, shelter, sanitation and immediate medical assistance."

Total number affected: total number of people affected is defined as "the sum of the injured, affected and left homeless after a disaster."

Natural disasters by type

Earthquakes

Earthquake events occur across the world every day. The US Geological Survey (USGS) tracks and reports global earthquakes, with (close to) real-time updates which you can find here.

However, the earthquakes which occur most frequently are often too small to cause significant damage (whether to human life, or in economic terms).

In the chart below we show the long history of known earthquakes classified by the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) of the NOAA as 'significant' earthquakes. Significant earthquakes are those which are large enough to cause notable damage. They must meet at least one of the following criteria: caused deaths, moderate damage ($1 million or more), magnitude 7.5 or greater, Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) X or greater, or generated a tsunami.

Available data - which you can explore in the chart below - extends back to 2150 BC. But we should be aware that most recent records will be much more complete than our long-run historic estimates. An increase in the number of recorded earthquakes doesn't necessarily mean this was the true trend over time. By clicking on a country in the map below, you can view it's full series of known significant earthquakes.

Alongside estimates of the number of earthquake events, the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) of the NOAA also publish estimates of the number of deaths over this long-term series. In the chart below we see the estimated mortality numbers from 2000 BC through to 2017.

These figures can be found for specific countries using the "change country" function in the bottom-left of the chart, or by selecting the "map" on the bottom-right.

At the global level we see that earthquake deaths have been a persistent human risk through time.

The number of people dying in natural disasters is lower today than it was in the past, the world has become more resilient.

Earthquakes, however, can still claim a large number of lives. Whilst historically floods, droughts and epidemics dominated disaster deaths, a high annual death toll now often results from a major earthquake and possibly a tsunami caused by them. Since 2000, the two peak years in annual death tolls (reaching 100s of thousands) were 2004 and 2010. Earthquake deaths accounted for 93 percent and 69 percent of such deaths, respectively. In fact, both events (the Sumatra earthquake and tsunami of 2004, and Port-au-Prince earthquake in 2010) are in the deadliest earthquake rankings below.

What have been the most deadly earthquakes in human history? In the visualization we have mapped the top 10 rankings of known earthquakes which resulted in the largest number of deaths.³ This ranking is based on mortality estimates from the NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC).⁴

Clicking on the visualization will open it in higher-resolution. This ranking is also summarized in table form.

The most deadly earthquake in history was in Shaanxi, China in 1556. It's estimated to have killed 830,000 people. This is more than twice that of the second most fatal: the recent Port-au-Prince earthquake in Haiti in 2010. It's reported that 316,000 people died as a result.⁵

Two very recent earthquakes - the Sumatra earthquake and tsunami of 2004, and 2010 Port-au-Prince earthquake - feature amongst the most deadly in human history. But equally, some of the most fatal occurred in the very distant past. Making the top three was the earthquake in Antakya (Turkey) in the year 115. Both old and very recent feature near the top the list. The deadly nature earthquakes has been a persistent threat throughout our history.

Ranking

Location

Year

Estimated death toll

Earthquake magnitude

Additional information

2

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

2010

316,000

7

Death toll is still disputed. Here we present the adopted figure by the NGDC of the NOAA (for consistency with other earthquakes); this is the figure reported by the Haitian government. Some sources suggest a lower figure of 220,000. In the latter case, this event would fall to 7th place in the above rankings.

3

Antakya, Turkey

115

260,000

7.5

Antioch (ancient ruins which lie near the modern city Antakya) and surrounding areas suffered severe damage. Apamea was also destroyed and Beirut suffered severe damage. A local tsunami was triggered causing damage to the coast of Lebanon.

5

Tangshan, China

1976

242,769

7.5

Reported that the earthquake risk had been greatly underestimated meaning almost all buildings and structures were designed and built without seismic considerations. Estimated that up to 85% of buildings collapsed. Tangshan therefore large comprised of unreinforced brick buildings which resulted in a large death toll.

9

Dvin, Armenia

893

150,000

Unknown

City of Dvin was destroyed, with the collapse of most buildings, defensive walls and palaces; estimated that only 100 buildings were left standing. With its city defences ruined, Dvin was taken over and turned into a military base by Muhammad ibn Abi'l-Saj, the Sajid emir of Adharbayjan.

Volcanoes

There are a large number of volcanoes across the world which are volcanically active, but display little or only very low-level activity.

In the map we see the number of significant volcanic eruptions which occur in each country in a given year. A significant eruption is classified as one that meets at least one of the following criteria: caused fatalities, caused moderate damage (approximately $1 million or more), with a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 6 or larger, caused a tsunami, or was associated with a major earthquake.⁶

Estimates of volcanic eruptions are available dating back as early as 1750 BCE, however, the data completeness for long historic events will be much lower than in the recent past.

In the visualization we see the number of deaths from significant volcanic eruptions across the world. Using the timeline on the map we can see the frequency of volcanic activity deaths over time.

If we look at deaths over the past century we see several high-impact events: the Nevado del Ruiz eruption in Colombia in 1985; the Mount Pelée eruption in Martinique in 1902; and 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia.

Landslides

Global landslide mortality risk distribution - SEDAC (NASA)⁷

Famines & Droughts

We cover the history of Famines in detail in our dedicated entry here. For this research we assembled a new global dataset on famines from the 1860s until 2016.

In the visualization shown here we see trends in drought severity in the United States. Given is the annual data of drought severity, plus the 9-year average.

This is measured by the The Palmer Drought Severity Index: the average moisture conditions observed between 1931 and 1990 at a given location is given an index value of zero. A positive value means conditions are wetter than average, while a negative value is drier than average. A value between -2 and -3 indicates moderate drought, -3 to -4 is severe drought, and -4 or below indicates extreme drought.

Hurricanes, Tornados, and Cyclones

Extreme precipitation and flooding

In the visualization shown we see the global precipitation anomaly each year; trends in the US-specific anomaly can be found here.

This precipitation anomaly is measured relative to the century average from 1901 to 2000. Positive values indicate a wetter year than normal; negative values indicate a drier year.

Also shown is US-specific data on the share of land area which experiences unusually high precipitation in any given year.

We can look at precipitation anomalies over the course of year, however, flooding events are often caused by intense rainfall over much shorter periods. Flooding events tend to occur when there is extremely high rainfall over the course of hours or days.

The visualization here shows the extent of extreme one-day precipitation in the US. What we see is a general upwards trend in the extent of extreme rainfall in recent decades.

Extreme Temperature (Heat & Cold)

Extreme temperature risks to human health and mortality can result from both exposure to extreme heat and cold.

In the visualizations shown here we see long-term data on heatwaves and unusually high temperatures in the United States.

Overall we see there is significant year-to-year variability in the extent of heatwave events. What stands out over the past century of data was the 1936 North American heatwave - one of the most extreme heat wave events in modern history, which coincided with the Great Depression and Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

When we look at the trajectory of unusually high summer temperatures over time (defined as 'unusually high' in the context of historical records) we see an upward trend in recent decades.

Wildfires

How are the frequency and extent of wildfires in the United States changing over time?

In the charts below we provide three overviews: the number of wildfires, the total acres burned, and the average acres burned per wildfire. This data is shown from 1983 onwards, when comparable data recording began.

Over the past 30-35 years we notice three general trends in the charts below (although there is significant year-to-year variability):

on average, the annual number of wildfires has not changed much;

on average, the total acres burned has increased from the 1980s and 1990s into the 21st century;

the combination of these two factors suggest that the average acres burned per wildfire has increased.

There has been significant media coverage of the long-run statistics of US wildfires reported by the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). The original statistics are available back to the year 1926. When we look at this long-term series it suggests there has been a significant decline in acres burned over the past century. However, the NIFC explicitly state:

Prior to 1983, sources of these figures are not known, or cannot be confirmed, and were not derived from the current situation reporting process. As a result the figures prior to 1983 should not be compared to later data.

Representatives from the NIFC have again confirmed (see the Carbon Brief's coverage here) that these historic statistics are not comparable to those since 1983. The lack of reliable methods of measurement and reporting mean some historic statistics may in fact be double or triple-counted in national statistics.

This means we cannot compare the recent data below with old, historic records. But it also doesn't confirm that acres burned today are higher than the first half of the 20th century. Historically, fires were an often-used method of clearing land for agriculture, for example. It's not implausible to expect that wildfires of the past may have been larger than today but the available data is not reliable enough to confirm this.

Lightning

World map of frequency of lightning strikes - Wikipedia (NASA data)⁸

Global disaster costs

Natural disasters not only have devastating impacts in terms of the loss of human life, but can also cause severe destruction with economic costs.

When we look at global economic costs over time in absolute terms we tend to see rising costs. But, importantly, the world - and most countries - have also gotten richer. Global gross domestic product has increased more than four-fold since 1970. We might therefore expect that for any given disaster, the absolute economic costs could be higher than in the past.

A more appropriate metric to compare economic costs over time is to look at them in relation to GDP. This is the indicator adopted by all countries as part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals to monitor progress on resilience to disaster costs.

In the chart, we see global direct disaster losses given as a share of GDP.

Disaster costs by country

Since economic losses from disasters in relation to GDP is the indicator adopted by all countries within the UN Sustainable Development Goals, this data is also now reported for each country.

The map shows direct disaster costs for each country as a share of its GDP. Here we see large variations by country - a 100-fold difference ranging from less than 0.05% to 5%. This data can be found in absolute terms here.

How many deaths does it take for a natural disaster to be newsworthy?

This is a question researchers Thomas Eisensee and David Strömberg asked in a 2007 study.⁹

The two authors found that for every person killed by a volcano, nearly 40,000 people have to die of a food shortage to get the same probability of coverage in US televised news.¹⁰

In other words, the type of disaster matters to how newsworthy networks find it to be. The visualizations show the extent of this observed "news effect". The chart shows the proportion of each type of disaster that receives news coverage, and the second shows the "casualties ratio", which tells us-all else equal-how many casualties would make media coverage equally likely for each type of disaster.

The study, which primarily set out to examine mass media's influence on US natural disaster response, considered over 5,000 natural disasters¹¹ and 700,000 news stories from the major US national broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN) between 1968 and 2002.

The findings tells us, among other important things, that networks tend to be selective in their coverage and attention is not reflecting the severity and number of people killed or affected by a natural disaster.

Instead of considering the objective damage caused by natural disasters, networks tend to look for disasters that are "rife with drama", as one New York Times article put it¹²-hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, earthquakes all make for splashy headlines and captivating visuals.

Thanks to this selectivity, less "spectacular" but often times more deadly natural disasters tend to get passed over. Food shortages, for example, result in the most casualties and affect the most people per incident¹³ but their onset is more gradual than that of a volcanic explosion or sudden earthquake. As a result, food shortages are covered only 3% of the time while a comparatively indulgent 30% of earthquakes and volcanic events get their time in the spotlight.

Additionally, when the researchers "hold all else equal" by controlling for factors such as yearly trends in news intensity and the number of people killed and affected, the difference in coverage is even more pronounced.

This bias for the spectacular is not only unfair and misleading, but also has the potential to misallocate attention and aid. Disasters that happen in an instant leave little time for preventative intervention. On the other hand, the gradual disasters that tend to affect more lives build up slowly, allowing more time for preventative measures to be taken. However, in a Catch-22 situation, the gradual nature of these calamities is also what prevents them from garnering the media attention they deserve.

There are other biases, too. Eisensee and Strömberg found that while television networks cover more than 15% of the disasters in Europe and South Central America, they show less than 5% of the disasters in Africa and the Pacific. Disasters in Africa tend to get less coverage than ones in Asia because they are less "spectacular", with more droughts and food shortages occurring there relative to Asia.

However, after controlling for disaster type, along with other factors such as the number killed and the timing of the news, there is no significant difference between coverage of African and Asian disasters. Instead, a huge difference emerges between coverage of Africa, Asia, and the Pacific on the one hand, and Europe and South and Central America, on the other.

According to the researchers' estimates, 45 times as many people would have to die in an African disaster for it to garner the same media attention as a European one. The two visualizations show the extent of this bias.

ABC News's slogan is "See the whole picture" and CNN's is "Go there", but good follow-up questions might be: what exactly, and where?

One of the major successes over the past century has been the dramatic decline in global deaths from natural disasters - this is despite the fact that the human population has increased rapidly over this period.

Behind this improvement has been the improvement in living standards; access to and development of resilient infrastructure; and effective response systems. These factors have been driven by an increase in incomes across the world.

What remains true today is that populations in low-income countries - those where a large percentage of the population still live in extreme poverty, or score low on the Human Development Index - are more vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters.

We see this effect in the visualization shown. This chart shows the death rates from natural disasters - the number of deaths per 100,000 population - of countries grouped by their socio-demographic index (SDI). SDI is a metric of development, where low-SDI denotes countries with low standards of living.

What we see is that the large spikes in death rates occur almost exclusively for countries with a low or low-middle SDI. Highly developed countries are much more resilient to disaster events and therefore have a consistently low death rate from natural disasters.

Note that this does not mean low-income countries have high death tolls from disasters year-to-year: the data here shows that in most years they also have very low death rates. But when low-frequency, high-impact events do occur they are particularly vulnerable to its effects.

Overall development, poverty alleviation, and knowledge-sharing of how to increase resilience to natural disasters will therefore be key to reducing the toll of disasters in the decades to come.

There are multiple terms used to describe extreme weather events: hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones and tornadoes. What is the difference between these terms, and how are they defined?

The terms hurricane, cyclone and typhoon all refer to the same thing; they can be used interchangeably. Hurricanes and typhoons are both described as the weather phenomenon 'tropical cyclone'. A tropical cyclone is a weather event which originates over tropical or subtropical waters and results in a rotating, organized system of clouds and thunderstorms. Its circulation patterns should be closed and low-level.

The choice of terminology is location-specific and depends on where the storm originates. The term hurricane is used to describe a tropical cyclone which originates in the North Atlantic, central North Pacific, and eastern North Pacific. When it originates in the Northwest Pacific, we call it typhoon. In the South Pacific and Indian Ocean the general term tropical cyclone is used.

In other words, the only difference between a hurricane and typhoon is where it occurs.

The characteristics of a hurricane are described in detail at the NASA website.

A hurricane evolves from a tropical disturbance or storm based on a threshold of wind speed.

A tropical disturbance arises over warm ocean waters. It can grow into a tropical depression which is an area of rotating thunderstorms with winds up to 62 kilometres (38 miles) per hour. From there, a depression evolves into a tropical storm if its wind speed reaches 63 km/hr (39 mph).

Finally a hurricane is formed when a tropical storm reaches a wind speed of 119 km/hr (74 mph).

But, hurricanes/typhoons/cyclones are distinctly different from tornadoes.

Whilst hurricanes and tornadoes have a characteristic circulatory wind patterns, they are very different weather systems. The main difference between the systems is scale (tornadoes are small-scale circulatory systems; hurricanes are large-scale). These differences are highlighted in the table below:

Hurricanes/typhoons

Tornadoes

Diameter
60 to 1000s miles

Up to 1 - 1.5 miles (usually less)

Wind speed
74 to 200 mph

40 to 300 mph

Lifetime
Long (usually days)

Very short (usually minutes)

Travel distance
Long (100 metres to 100 miles)

Short distances

Environmental impact
Can have impact on wider environment and atmospheric patterns.

Local (although can be very high impact). Little wider impact on atmospheric systems or environment.

The intensity or size of volcanic eruptions are most commonly defined by a metric termed the 'volcanic explosivity index (VEI)'. The VEI is derived based on the erupted mass or deposit of an eruption. The scale for VEI was outlined by Newhall & Self (1982), but is now commonly adopted in geophysical reporting.¹⁴

The table below provides a summary (from the NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center) of the characteristics of eruptions of different VEI values. A 'Significant Volcanic Eruption' is often defined as an eruption with a VEI value of 6 or greater. Historic eruptions that were definitely explosive, but carry no other descriptive information are assigned a default VEI of 2.

Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI)

General description

Cloud Column Height (km)

Volume (m³)

Qualititative Description

Classification

How frequent?

Example

A key issue of data quality is the consistency of even reporting over time. For long-term trends in natural disaster events we know that reporting and recording of events today is much more advanced and complete than in the past. This can lead to significant underreporting or uncertainty of events in the distant past.

In the chart here we show data on the number of reported natural disasters over time.

This change over time can be influenced by a number of factors, namely the increased coverage of reporting over time. The increase over time is therefore not directly reflective of the actual trend in disaster events.

This same data is shown here as the number of reported disaster events by type. Again, the incompleteness of historical data can lead to significant underreporting in the past. The increase over time is therefore not directly reflective of the actual trend in disaster events.

Wikipedia has several lists of disasters, and an overview of these lists can be found at List of Disasters.

Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), Global Burden of Disease

EM-DAT - The International Disaster Database

Data: EM-DAT is a catalogue of disasters listing detailed information on natural disasters: droughts (famines), earthquakes, epidemics, extreme temperatures, floods, insect infestations, mass movement (dry & wet), storms, volcanos, and wildfires. There is also a data section on technological disasters.

Geographical coverage: Global - country and regional level (primarily cross-country data set, but also contains the name of the sub-national regions affected by disasters)

Time span: 1900 onwards

Available at: EM-DAT

Raw data has to be requested but the section on disaster trends encompasses a number of visualizations (time series and maps).

EM-DAT is maintained by the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED)

EM-DAT data on the annual number of deaths and number of affected by drought, epidemics, earthquakes, extreme temperature, flood, storm, tsunami, plane crash by country is available at Gapminder.

Earth Observatory by NASA - Natural Hazards

Natural Hazards Data - U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC)

Data: Data and maps on many natural hazards including cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, and wildfires. It includes the 'Global Significant Earthquake Database, 2150 B.C. to present' (5500 events) and 'The Significant Volcanic Eruption Database' and 'Global Historical Tsunami Events and Runups' among many other datasets.

Geographical coverage: Global - exact location

Time span: Millennia

Available at: Online here

Download maps as pdf or ArcIMS interactive maps, and data in tab-delimited data files or html.

Global Risk Data Platform

Data: Spatial data on tropical cyclones and related storm surges, drought, earthquakes, biomass fires, floods, landslides, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.

Geographical coverage: Global

Time span: Recent past

Available at: The website can be found here.

Users can visualize, download or extract data on past hazardous events, human & economical hazard exposure and risk from natural hazards.

Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) - by NASA

Center for Hazards & Risk Research at Columbia University

Hotspots: Risk levels calculated by combining hazard exposure with historical vulnerability for two indicators of elements at risk-gridded population and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per unit area-for six major natural hazards: earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, floods, drought, and cyclones

Natural disaster profiles: Profiles for 13 countries provide information on sub-national areas at risk from natural hazards including cyclones, droughts, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, and landslides.

Geographical coverage: Global for hotspots data

Time span: Recent past

Available at: Online here

Global Earthquake Model (GEM)

Data: GEM Global Historical Earthquake Catalogue (1000-1900) and the ISC-GEM Global Instrumental Earthquake Catalogue (1900-2009)

Geographical coverage:Global

Time span: 1000 onwards

Available at: Online here

ATSR World Fire Atlas - by the European Space Agency (ESA)

Data: Monthly global fire maps

Geographical coverage: Global

Time span: 1995 onwards

Available at: Online at the website of ESA here

Unisys Data on Hurricanes

Data: Data on the track of the storm plus a text-based table of tracking information. The table includes position in latitude and longitude, maximum sustained winds in knots, and central pressure in millibars.

Geographical coverage: Atlantic, East Pacific, West Pacific, South Pacific, South Indian, and North Indian

Time span: 1851 until now

Available at: Online here

This data set was used by Dean Yang (2008) - Coping with Disaster: The Impact of Hurricanes on International Financial Flows, 1970-2002. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy. Volume 8, Issue 1, ISSN (Online) 1935-1682, DOI: 10.2202/1935-1682.1903, June 2008. Online here.

National Climatic Data Center (NOAA)

National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC)

Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program (GVP)

Data: Complete list of current and past activity for all volcanoes on the planet active during the last 10,000 years. Data includes eruption type, maximum Volcanic Explosivity Index, start and end dates (when known), and the type of evidence for the eruption.

Geographical coverage: Global

Time span: Past 10,000 years to present day

Available at: Online at the Volcanoes of the World Database

Full reference: Global Volcanism Program, 2013. Volcanoes of the World, v. 4.7.3. Venzke, E (ed.). Smithsonian Institution. https://doi.org/10.5479/si.GVP.VOTW4-2013

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Where and from which disasters do people die? What can we do to prevent deaths from natural disasters?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mapping habitats for nature recovery: lessons from Space4Nature - Ecosystems Knowledge Network

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This webinar provides an overview of the Space4Nature project, which has explored innovative approaches to mapping and monitoring priority habitats to inform nature recovery.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Radical with Amol Rajan - The End of Endless Growth: Should We Put the Brakes on Economic Expansion? (Kate Raworth) - BBC Sounds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Radical with Amol Rajan - The End of Endless Growth: Should We Put the Brakes on Economic Expansion? (Kate Raworth) - BBC Sounds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The ‘Doughnut Economics’ author argues that prioritising growth is dangerously outdated

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Subterranean fungi networks more than 100 quadrillion km in length, study finds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Subterranean fungi networks more than 100 quadrillion km in length, study finds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
First ever global mapping of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi shows scale of hyphal systems that sustain plant life

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Choose geography: careers in the built environment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Choose geography: careers in the built environment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A student webinar showcasing geographical careers in the built environment in collaboration with the Built Environment Schools Trust.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Pilot ‘hyperlocal’ job support scheme in England shows promising signs of effectiveness

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Pilot ‘hyperlocal’ job support scheme in England shows promising signs of effectiveness

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Government-funded JobsPlus trial in 10 neighbourhoods could be scalable nationwide, evaluation shows

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Global Justice Project attempts to set out a new vision for global progress in the 21st century: grounding human development and equality in planetary habitability. It explores the conditions under which the world could move toward this horizon and traces an economically and ecologically consistent transition path from 2026 to 2100.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fieldwork involving water - Geographical Association

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The purpose of this set of resources is to provide support, guidance and ideas for teachers to carry out fieldwork involving water.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Secondary Geography - Deforestation and the growth of soya in Paraguay

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
KS3/GCSE Geography. Deforestation. Simon Reeves is in Paraguay to find out about the deforestation there and the reasons for it. BBC Teach.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Geography KS3/GCSE: Agriculture - issues with intensive arable farming

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
KS3/GCSE Geography. A student from North Norfolk investigates the pros and cons of intensive farming.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Geography KS3/GCSE: Use of natural resources - the advantages and disadvantages of fracking

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
KS3/GCSE Geography. A student investigates the pros and cons of fracking by speaking to advocates and opponents.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Geography KS3/GCSE. A short film for secondary schools explaining tertiary and quaternary industries, what they are and how they fit into global economy. BBC Teach.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Geography KS3/GCSE. A short film for secondary schools explaining primary and secondary industries. BBC Teach.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Exploring how animals and people adapt to live in the desert biome

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
KS3/GCSE Geography. Exploring how people, plants and animals have adapted to the desert biome in the Arabian Peninsula. Suitable for teaching Geography at KS3, GCSE, National 4 and National 5. BBC Teach.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to answer Geography Questions (Top tips for 4, 6 and 9 mark questions) AQA GCSE Geography

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Blossoming among spoil heaps: how 1,000 years of lead mining gave birth to banks of pansies and pennycress

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Blossoming among spoil heaps: how 1,000 years of lead mining gave birth to banks of pansies and pennycress

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Calaminarian grassland is a rare habitat where plants thrive in soils contaminated by heavy metals. But should these toxic meadows be protected or allowed to fade away?

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
River Wye granted rights in UK first that could help in fight against pollution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
River Wye granted rights in UK first that could help in fight against pollution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Charter to be adopted along river’s entire catchment from Cambrian mountains to Chepstow and Bristol Channel

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
The unusual ways Fijians predict when a cyclone is approaching

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It's July, a month when Fijian farmers begin watching wild yams closely. "If they see wild yam vines creeping along the ground, there's going to be a hurricane in between November and April - the hurricane season," says farmer Marika Radua. If the vines shoot upwards, it's unlikely a hurricane will hit, he says.

In the dense jungle on Vanua Levu, Fiji's second largest island, Radua's farm is a riot of green. Every plant has its place - from rows of delicate lettuce, to sturdy taro and cassava. For years, Radua has read the signs in nature to know when, and where, to plant his crops to ensure they thrive each season.

Yam vines are natural indicators of extreme weather, according to Fijian traditional ecological knowledge. This environmental knowledge comprises ancient traditions held and practiced by indigenous peoples. When the vines hug the ground, "they are already trying to protect themselves from the wind. It's nature," Radua says.

Many Fijians - especially those from older generations who are more likely to use traditional farming methods - believe other organisms act as natural weather forecasts, such as bananas, bees and breadfruit.

Climate resilience officer Marika Radua on Vanua Levu (Credit: Frankie Adkins)

Before modern technology, environmental indicators like these were used across the world to predict natural disasters. But in the last century, data from satellites, weather radars and computers has provided increasingly precise monitoring and forecasting.

In the Pacific, communities are returning to ancient wisdom to anticipate extreme weather, to enhance modern methods. Scientific studies and Fiji's meteorological service are recording these local "early warning signs" of tropical cyclones and flooding. As climate-change-driven disasters pick up pace in the Pacific, traditional knowledge might buy communities more time to prepare.

A total package

In 2024, the Fijian Meteorological Service announced it would integrate traditional environmental knowledge into its scientific forecasting - describing the pair as "a total package".

Fiji follows in the footsteps of Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa, Niue and the Solomon Islands - Pacific nations participating in an ongoing project to integrate traditional knowledge in their early-warning systems.

Siosinamele Lui, the climate traditional knowledge officer at Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), an intergovernmental body, says natural indicators are key to helping remote communities can prepare for weather events.

"In most parts of the world, traditional knowledge and national services are not mentioned in the same sentence," says Lui. "But in the Pacific, it's now becoming the go to. It's normal practice."

Since 2016, the SPREP project has been researching natural indicators, with Pacific islanders reporting early warning signs directly to the Pacific Meteorological Desk via calls, messages, social media or local climate centres.

Vanuatu is "leading the way" with an app named ClimateWatch, says Lui. The app has a database of crowd-sourced natural indicators - for example, green turtles nesting further inland suggests a cyclone may be approaching.

However, using traditional knowledge to preempt weather events is not an instant process, says Lui.

"You cannot integrate a data set that's only five years old with a data set that's 100 years old. At the moment, most of our monitoring data is not old enough for us to build it into the climate forecast," she adds. Therefore, the government is studying the correlation of traditional indicators with weather events, before building this into their climate forecasting model.

Like other Pacific Islands, Fiji is vulnerable to cyclones which are predicted to increase in severity (Credit: Getty Images)

However Lui says that promoting traditional weather knowledge can help people in secluded areas.

"To put it in context, you're looking at the biggest ocean in the world, and you have thousands of islands that are widespread. You don't have monitoring equipment on every island," says Lui. This technology is expensive and sparsely located, leading to gaps in meteorological data, she adds.

Not everyone will be able to get critical warning information on time, if at all. "That's where this programme comes in," says Lui. "Whether it's from the Meteorological Service or whether it's traditional warning systems. The goal is for people to respond and be prepared," she says.

Listening to the land

For Fijian people, traditional knowledge such as how the seasons change isn't "black and white", Radua says. "We don't write things down - they are translated from one generation to the next through stories, songs, dances and idioms," he says.

Radua, who is a climate resilience expert on Vanua Levu, began compiling this cultural wisdom into a seasonal calendar available for farmers on the island. Many farms, both commercial and family-run, in Fiji have converted to modern ways of farming - for example monoculture, planting and cultivating a singular crop. Radua teaches subsistence farmers how to return to traditional agricultural methods, such as planting multiple crops at different times of the year.

Not only is this better for nature, but it means farmers can listen to the land for early warning signs, says Radua. "The trees will tell them, when something flowers, it tells them," he says, explaining how farmers keep an eye on shifts beyond normal seasonal patterns. "That's preparedness and resilience," he adds.

For Pacific communities, the need to buffer against extreme weather is more urgent than ever. Radua recalls Cyclone Winston, which caused widespread damage, costing Fiji's agricultural sector over $2m (£1.5m). "Most of us lost all of our crops," he says.

According to a 2025 report that assessed the country's climate risk - ranking Fiji 103 out of 190 countries - tropical cyclones are predicted to increase in severity in Fiji. Pacific Island countries need around $1bn (£730m) for climate adaptation investments, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Although several ideas are being considered to increase the country's climate resilience - from seawalls to climate migration - integrating ancient wisdom is being proposed as a low-cost part of the solution in Fiji.

"Almost everything about mitigating climate change is pointing back to traditional knowledge," says Radua.

Buying time

Some Fijian communities reported that traditional signs were the first and most reliable way of being alerted that Cyclone Winston was approaching.

In a coastal village in the Province of Tailevu, on the southeastern fringe of Vitu Levu, Fiji's main island, villagers noticed nature reacting in uncharacteristic ways up to four months before the cyclone.

In a 2025 report, published by independent think tank the International Institute for Sustainable Development, 10 villagers in Tailevu recalled witnessing a spectrum of signs, that have been previously seen happening prior to cyclones.

Around three to four months prior to the cyclone, hornets nested close to the ground, five or more breadfruit grew on one stalk and the central shoots of plantain plants curled instead of growing straight. One month before the cyclone, fishers noticed the sea felt hotter, while small fish were found dead on the shorelines. One week before the cyclone, seabirds flew towards land, swooping lower than usual. (Read more about how seabirds predict tropical cyclones.)

Fijian men harvesting reeds that will later be used to build traditional structures (Credit: Frankie Adkins)

The report suggests that tracking natural indicators gives communities more time to prepare prior to a disaster. With greater warning, villagers could stock up on food and fresh water, reinforce their houses and move farm animals to sheltered spaces.

"Faced with escalating climate risks and climate impacts, mounting costs and overstretched budgets, local and national governments are looking for ways to address the climate crisis in a cost-effective way," says Alec Crawford, the director of nature for resilience at the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

But nature-based solutions grounded in traditional ecological knowledge goes beyond their cost effectiveness. "They are the most well-suited adaptation actions to implement, because local communities are the ones who know best how to adapt to their changing environment," adds Crawford.

Coping mechanisms

Joeli Veityaki, a climate scientist from the University of the South Pacific, says traditional indicators were developed centuries ago as important "coping mechanisms". "There are examples that our technology is just as good as tech in other parts of the world that are so dominant," he says.

Patrick Nunn, a professor of geography from the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia, says we have hardly "scratched the surface" of traditional ecological knowledge.

"In places like Fiji, all of its traditional knowledge is empirical based - people see something and they infer an association," he says. Nunn gives the example of when black birds fly over the land, and people deduce that a cyclone is on its way.

"This knowledge has already been validated simply by the fact that they've been shown to work over long periods of time. If the sighting of black birds over the land is not a reliable indicator of an approaching tropical cyclone, then people wouldn't have retained that knowledge for so long," he adds.

Nunn refers to oral stories from the Pacific that describe ant behaviour, which aligns with scientific observations. For example, leaf-cutter ants appear to detect subtle environmental changes that signal impending rain, prompting adaptive responses. While this does not constitute scientific proof that ants can predict tropical cyclones days in advance, it does suggest that their behaviour may be predictive in ways consistent with Pacific traditional ecological knowledge.

The idea that Pacific Islands are inherently "vulnerable" or "lack resilience" is misguided, says Nunn. "People arrived in the Western Pacific more than 3,000 years ago, and they've been there ever since. They didn't survive by luck - they survived by design."

This doesn't mean the region is without challenges, or that climate change isn't reshaping traditional ways of life. Between 1999 and 2018, Fiji ranked as the 13th country most affected by extreme weather events.

More like this:
* How indigenous conservation protects Canada's environment
* These Florida domed homes have survived category 5 hurricanes
* Climate scientists are working with indigenous tribes

"But there is a formidable body of traditional local knowledge in every Pacific Island community that is able to assist in developing strategies for coping with future climate change," says Nunn.

Back on his farm in Vanua Levu, Radua echoes a similar sentiment. "Knowledge evolves with time, but it's not just about traditional knowledge," he says. "It's about living in harmony with nature."

--
For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The unusual ways Fijians predict when a cyclone is approaching

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Creeping yams and bees behaving strangely - in Fiji, farmers read nature's warning signs to predict hurricane season.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A GCSE geography resource looking at the expansion of data centres to support the growth of AI use in the UK.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Geographical careers in coastal management

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Geographical careers in coastal management

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Find out about careers in coasts through the role of geographer Lauren, a Coastal Project Engineer at Coastal Partners.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Dredging: an impact of development in Lagos

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Dredging: an impact of development in Lagos

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As Lagos, Nigeria's largest city, continues to expand, huge amounts of sand are being dredged from rivers to support the contruction industry.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Coastal erosion and management in Slapton, Devon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Simon Pinfield

Introduction

Coastal processes are a core part of physical geography. This dynamic landscape and how humans interact with it is constantly changing. Slapton Sands in Devon is a barrier beach system is a good example of a landscape which is undergoing rapid change.

This StoryMap helps pupils understand the processes at play in its creation and development. It has been designed so that pupils can explore at their own pace or as part of a more structured learning programme.

GCSE specification links

AQA
3.1.3.2 Coastal landscapes in the UK

Cambridge International (first exam 2027)
2 Changing coastal environments

Edexcel A
1A: Coastal landscapes and processes

Edexcel B
4A: Coastal change and conflict

Edexcel International
Coastal environments

Eduqas A (WJEC)
Coastal Hazards and their Management

Eduqas B
Key Idea 2.1: Shaping the landscape - coasts and coastal management

OCR A
1.1 Landscapes of the UK

OCR B
3.2. What influences the landscapes of the UK?

Slapton case study content

The StoryMap includes the following sections:

What and where is Slapton Sands

How did Slapton Sands form?

Coastal processes

Recent coastal erosion

Management strategies

Examination-style questions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Coastal erosion and management in Slapton, Devon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A GCSE Geography teaching resource focussing on coastal erosion and management in Slapton, Devon.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Meet the rewilders: Sussex Kelp Recovery Project

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Meet the rewilders: Sussex Kelp Recovery Project

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In Sussex relentless campaigning by an eclectic group of individuals unified by the Sussex Wildlife Trust has brought coastal kelp beds back from the...

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
12 Principles of Rewilding: Rewilding Practitioners Putting Theory in Action - The Global Rewilding Alliance

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
12 Principles of Rewilding: Rewilding Practitioners Putting Theory in Action - The Global Rewilding Alliance

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Rooted in interconnectedness, hope, and collaboration, the 12 principles of rewilding guide practice to heal degraded lands and seas while protecting what remains intact. They provide a global framework for restoring ecosystems by working with nature and communities. Credit: Grégoire Dubois

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
I have completed the first leg of my year-long expedition to Caucasia which covered the Boot of Europe region as well as the dank lands of Germany and the UK further inland, and finally the ruins of… | Patrick Gathara

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
I have completed the first leg of my year-long expedition to Caucasia which covered the Boot of Europe region as well as the dank lands of Germany and the UK further inland, and finally the ruins of… | Patrick Gathara

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I have completed the first leg of my year-long expedition to Caucasia which covered the Boot of Europe region as well as the dank lands of Germany and the UK further inland, and finally the ruins of the troubled nation of Greece. It has been a gruelling month of navigating airport checkpoints manned by armed local militia and strange native tongues and customs, all while trying to comprehend the scale and devastation of the flavour crisis that has been ravaging the Middle North and North America. As I leave for some rest, recuperation, and trauma counselling in Nairobi, I can reflect on what I have seen: from the ruins and destitution in Athens, to the quiet, heartbreaking drabness of Dundee; from the empty despair of Berlin, to the excitement and wonder in the eyes of innocent children in Perugia after tasting flavour for the first time. I have been privileged to accompany the brave African aid workers, youthful volunteers and even expatriates who daily brave the horrors to save lives, and bring some semblance of humanity and flavour to the Caucasian people. They are true heroes. There is no doubt in my mind that the catastrophic flavour famine sweeping the region is entirely man-made. Some point to the European pseudo-continent’s unfortunate geography and the struggles of the tribes inhabiting it to adapt to the modern world as root causes. But it is also true that the world produces more than enough flavour to feed every human being on the planet. There is no flavour shortage; what is lacking is the political will in the international community to devote significant resources to end the famine. Africa in particular could be helping much more. In addition to the trillions of shillings we send every year in the form of illicit financial flows, we could easily ramp up the number of trucks and boats delivering humanitarian supplies of flavour, and pressure Caucasian governments, politicians and warlords to do more for their own people. Throughout this trip, I have seen how so much potential is going to waste. Sub-Scandinavian Europe, for example, is filled with undiscovered and unnamed lakes, rivers and mountains, making it difficult for locals to utilise them. While the African Union has set an ambitious target of helping to discover and name at least 10,000 natural landmarks every year, this has to be backed by a commitment to equip and send an army of African explorers to do it. There also needs to be a concerted effort to improve education standards, beginning with teaching African languages. In addition, we must help combat the twin scourges of corruption and tribal conflict that have for too long blighted the lives of the region’s people. We must reject the ignorant isolationists who say “Caucasian solutions for Caucasian problems”. History - and my observations on this expedition - have made it abundantly clear that this strategy is not only unsustainable, but also risks precipitating a third internationalised Caucasian Tribal War.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Key Stage 3+ Mission - Inspiring The Future

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Key Stage 3+ Mission - Inspiring The Future

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Find information on our Inspiring Aviation competitions including parameters, terms and conditions and how to submit.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This makes it your best opportunity to have a positive impact on the world.

If you're fortunate enough to be able to use your career for good, but aren't sure how, our career guide can help you:

Get new ideas for fulfilling careers that do good

Compare your options

Make a plan you feel confident in

It's based on 10 years of research alongside academics at Oxford. We're a nonprofit, and everything we provide is free.
Read our career guide

Career guide

Our career guide covers everything you need to know about how to find a fulfilling career that does good, from why you shouldn't "follow your passion," to why medicine and charity work aren't always the best ways to help others.

It's full of practical tips and exercises, and at the end, you'll have a draft of your new career plan.
Read our career guide
Or read the two-minute summary, or get the guide as a free book.

Research

The issue you work on is probably the most important factor determining your impact. It's important to focus on issues that are not only big, but also neglected and tractable. We think some such issues even threaten the long-run future of humanity - making them especially high priority.

The highest impact paths are those that put you in the best position to tackle the most pressing problems. To help you get ideas for ways to contribute, we review some common options and list some unusual but especially high-impact paths.

The series covers our most important and novel research findings about how to increase the impact of your career, including: what "doing good" even means, why reducing existential risk might be humanity's biggest and most neglected priority, and how to avoid accidentally making things worse.

Podcast

In-depth conversations about the world's most pressing problems and how you can use your career to solve them.

Subscribe here, or anywhere you get podcasts:

Job board

Our job board provides a curated list of publicly advertised vacancies that we think are particularly promising. We post roles that we believe are opportunities to either (and often both):

1. Contribute to solving key global problems.

2. Develop the career capital - skills, experience, knowledge, connections and credentials - to solve these problems in the future.

View the job board

Get 1-1 advice

If you're interested in working on one of the global problems we highlight, apply to speak with our team one-on-one for free. We can discuss which problem to focus on, look over your plan, introduce you to mentors, and suggest roles that suit your skills.
Get 1-1 advice

Our community

Back in 2011, we helped found the effective altruism community. It's a group of people devoted to using evidence and reason to figure out the best ways to help others - whether through donations, political advocacy, or their careers. Learn more about the community and how it might be able to help you to have a more impactful career.
Our community

Who are we?

We started 80,000 Hours when we were about to graduate from Oxford in 2011. Our aim was to provide the advice we wish we'd had back then: transparently explained, based on the best research available, and willing to ask the big questions. By doing this, we hope to get the next generation of leaders tackling the world's most pressing problems.
About us
How come this is all free?

We're an independent nonprofit funded by individual donors and philanthropic foundations. They donate to us so that we can help people have a greater positive impact on the world. We don't accept any corporate sponsorship or advertising fees.
Our donors
Who is this for?

Our aim is to help people tackle the world's biggest and most neglected problems, and our advice is aimed at people who have the good fortune to be able to make that their focus, as well as the security to change paths. Due to our limited capacity, some of our advice focuses on a narrow range of paths, and is especially aimed at talented college students and graduates aged 18-30, though many of the ideas we cover are relevant to everyone.
Our audience
What research is your advice based on?

Our advice is based on hundreds of expert interviews; what we've learned advising 4,000+ people one-on-one over 10 years; and where possible, the academic literature on global problems and career success. We're affiliated with the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford.
What is our advice based on?

Reader stories

Katie Hearsum

Katie was working at a bank, but she had a feeling that she wanted to use her career to help others - she just wasn't sure exactly how. She spoke to an 80,000 Hours advisor who helped her realise she could have an impact by helping to improve the long-term future and connected her to a network of people working in this area. After exploring her options, Katie realised she had a strong personal fit for operations work and accepted a role in operations at Longview Philanthropy, an organisation aimed at reducing the risks of a major global catastrophe. Katie was promoted to head of operations a year later.
Read more

Elika Somani

Elika started her career in global health, which she describes as "my first love, career wise". Over time, 80,000 Hours and the EA community helped her conclude that she could increase her expected impact by pivoting into biosecurity. She applied for, and was offered, the role of Fellow with the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. After speaking with an 80,000 Hours advisor, she decided to accept the job. She now conducts research on neglected problems in biosecurity, and also in clinical research ethics.
Read more

Ethan Perez

Ethan Perez was studying computer science when he came across 80,000 Hours, which convinced him that the risk from advanced artificial intelligence was a highly pressing problem. After speaking with an 80,000 Hours advisor, he decided to work full time on AI safety instead of pursuing a career in self-driving car technology. He went on to write his PhD thesis on fixing undesirable behaviour in language models and took a role as a research scientist working on AI safety at Anthropic.
Read more

Have a greater positive impact with your career

Join our newsletter to receive a free copy of our career guide, and weekly high-impact job opportunities and updates on our research.

You'll be joining our community of over 350,000 people, and can unsubscribe in one click.

80,000 Hours is an Effective Ventures project. Effective Ventures Foundation (UK) (EV UK) is a charity in England and Wales (with registered charity number 1149828, registered company number 07962181, and is also a Netherlands registered tax-deductible entity ANBI 825776867). Effective Ventures Foundation USA Inc. (EV US) is a section 501(c)(3) organization in the USA (EIN 47-1988398). EV UK and EV US are separate charities that collaborate closely under the "Effective Ventures" name.

Please contact us to suggest ideas, improvements, or corrections.

We do our best to provide useful information, but how you use the information is up to you. We don't take responsibility for any loss that results from the use of information on the site. Please consult our full legal disclaimer and privacy policy. See also our cookie notice and adjust your cookie preferences.

© 2023 - all rights reserved. Please contact us if you wish to redistribute, translate, or adapt this work.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This makes it your best opportunity to have a positive impact on the world. If you're fortunate enough to be able to use your career for good, but aren't sure how, we can help

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Japan closed nearly all of its nuclear plants after Fukushima, but some are coming back online

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Japan closed nearly all of its nuclear plants after Fukushima, but some are coming back online

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Japan closed down most of its nuclear plants after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in 2011, and nuclear production dropped dramatically.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
More than a million people die from road injuries every year

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Around 1.3 million people die from road injuries across the world every year. That includes the deaths of drivers, passengers, and pedestrians.

As the chart shows, this death toll has been similar for decades, in the range of 1.25 to 1.35 million deaths each year.

However, with a larger global population and many more cars on the road, this means the from road injuries - the number of deaths per 100,000 people - has fallen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
More than a million people die from road injuries every year

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Around 1.3 million people die from road injuries across the world every year. That includes the deaths of drivers, passengers, and pedestrians.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
How Capitalism Creates Poverty | Olivier De Schutter on Inequality & Building a New Economy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Capitalism Creates Poverty | Olivier De Schutter on Inequality & Building a New Economy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Episodes that discuss the impacts of flooding and variety of different strategies for adaptation and resilience to this threat.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
‘Six lanes of tarmac and vehicles doing 70mph’: can ‘green bridges’ help animals cross the UK’s motorways in safety?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‘Six lanes of tarmac and vehicles doing 70mph’: can ‘green bridges’ help animals cross the UK’s motorways in safety?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Cockrow Bridge in Surrey will open in the coming weeks to provide wildlife, including lizards and insects, with the ability to move between fragmented habitats

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
‘A long road ahead’: could community car-sharing help UK hit climate targets?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‘A long road ahead’: could community car-sharing help UK hit climate targets?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
East Midlands electric car club helps residents and cuts emissions – but the need for a volunteer-led scheme reflects a much wider problem

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Free Careers Education Resources For Teachers And Careers Leaders - Youth Employment UK

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Young Professional Programme is our series of free and interactive online learning programmes designed with and for young people.

Young Professional Programmes can fit into your existing programme or be accessed independently.

Available programmes:
Young Professional: Preparing for Your Future
Ideal for 14-16 year olds who are exploring their future options.
Young Professional: Journey to Work
Ideal for 17+ year olds and young people who are closer to the world of work.

Course content helps young people to:

Understand themselves, their strengths, barriers and opportunities

Learn about the world of work through virtual work experience and impartial careers information

Understand the range of pathways available including vocational, academic and technical routes

Learn how to build their own career plan and set useful life, study and work goals

Understand the skills they will need for life and work and how to develop them

Learn how to prepare themselves for work with job searching, CV and interview preparation

Understand what being in work is like and how to progress once in work

What happens on completing a course?

On completion of each course, the Young Professional learner will receive a certificate. Their Provider can use this or our Group Management System to evidence the progress young people have made during the programme.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Free Careers Education Resources For Teachers And Careers Leaders - Youth Employment UK

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Young Professional Programme is our series of free and interactive online learning programmes designed with and for young people. Young Professional Programmes can fit into your existing programme or be accessed independently. Young Professional: Preparing for Your Future Ideal for 14-16 year olds who are exploring their future options.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Indigenous communities in the Amazon | Amazon under Threat - Educational Recording Agency

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
BBC News, 2019 - Since the election of Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil, the protected rainforest reserves of indigenous group Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau are being threatened by farming.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Ice core reveals longest-ever continuous record of Earth's climate

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A Europe-wide collaboration has unveiled the longest continuous record of Earth's climate and atmospheric conditions, stretching back 1.2 million years. The data were extracted from a 2.8-kilometre-deep ice core drilled in Antarctica, and show how the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere tracked changes in global temperatures across multiple cycles of climate change.

Researchers still have a great deal of information to extract from the ice, but "what they've got so far is pretty amazing", says Edward Brook, a palaeoclimatologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis. "We can now look at each cycle, see how they are different in CO ₂ concentration. We really didn't know that before."

The Beyond EPICA collaboration - which involves laboratories in ten European countries - presented the findings last week at the general assembly of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna. They have not yet been peer reviewed.

Ice age mystery

The core covers a period during which Earth's ice ages mysteriously became less frequent, but more intense. Until about a million years ago - in the middle of the Pleistocene epoch - ice ages occurred every 40,000 years, apparently caused by periodic wobbles in the Earth's orbit and axis of rotation. But during the 'Mid-Pleistocene transition', the periodicity switched to once every 100,000 years. The severity of natural climate cycles also increased, producing longer, colder glaciations with thicker ice sheets.

Researchers don't know exactly why this happened. One hypothesis is that something caused a sharp drop in atmospheric CO ₂ concentrations, which then led to longer, more severe ice ages. "It is thought that greenhouse gases had a minor role before the transition compared to after - but what caused the change is not firmly established," says Beyond EPICA project coordinator Carlo Barbante, a glaciologist at the Ca'Foscari University of Venice, Italy. "That's why we need a record from which we can extract both gas concentrations and temperatures."

Enjoying our latest content?
Log in or create an account to continue

Access the most recent journalism from Nature's award-winning team

Explore the latest features & opinion covering groundbreaking research

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ice core reveals longest-ever continuous record of Earth's climate

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Data from Antarctica could help to solve the mystery of why ice ages were so brutal. Data from Antarctica could help to solve the mystery of why ice ages were so brutal.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Cut borrowing costs for poorer countries to free up $900bn for development – report

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Cut borrowing costs for poorer countries to free up $900bn for development – report

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
G77 nations spend $8tn a year servicing debts, but analysis shows how comprehensive relief could benefit social spending

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An interactive photo timeline of NASA’s Artemis II mission — scrub through every crew moment, lunar flyby shot, and audio clip from April 1–10, 2026.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Giant map reveals thousands of cities worldwide with successful green policies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Giant map reveals thousands of cities worldwide with successful green policies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Greenhouse-gas emissions from burning fossil fuels have been mapped across thousands of cities worldwide.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
0845 on the Thames, Sunday 10 August 2025

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
0845 on the Thames, Sunday 10 August 2025

# data[].attributes.body
Chapter 10: Who owns rivers?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us

# data[].attributes.body
Use the tables on pages 20–23 and consider the barriers that could get in the way of achieving these goals and how they could be overcome.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
river advice, consultation, projects, RRC

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The River Restoration Centre offers technical advice and information on specific projects as well as general river restoration related advice.

# data[].attributes.body
Simon reeve visits the Tana Delta, the point where Kenya's longest river flows into the Indian Ocean, and interviews local people over land and river exploitation disputes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
API Resource - Educational Recording Agency

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The ERA Licence enables schools, colleges and universities to make educational use of recordings of TV and Radio broadcasts.

# data[].attributes.body
This report is a great example of what can be achieved when different organisations work together. The 600+km of rivers in London have faced many challenges as the city developed, often being seen as a hazard rather than bringing environmental benefits. This project involves communities in restoring their local rivers. 111 projects have been carried out and case studies of projects tackling flood risk management, climate change resilience, access to nature, urban greening and biodiversity are given (with accompanying photographs).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Restoring Our Rivers | Our Changing Planet - Educational Recording Agency

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
BBC One, 2025 - Liz Bonnin and Ade Adepitan investigate two ambitious river restoration projects: in the US, the largest dam removal in the world, and in France, the colossal detox of Paris’s River Seine.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As complaints to the Consumer Council for Water rocket over lack of affordability, why is the price we pay for our water increasing so rapidly?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As complaints to the Consumer Council for Water rocket over lack of affordability, why is the price we pay for our water increasing so rapidly?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As complaints to the Consumer Council for Water rocket over lack of affordability, why is the price we pay for our water increasing so rapidly?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Driving into New York City from the north, an unavoidable cluster of thirty-five identical brick high-rises dominates the horizon just past the Bronx border. All of them over twenty stories tall, all with the same brick facades. They’re easily mistaken for a public housing project. But the complex is Co-op City, the largest housing cooperative