At its best, eco-tourism is responsible travel to natural areas that safeguards the integrity of the ecosystem and produces economic benefits for local communities that can encourage conservation. At the nexus of population and the environment, eco-tourism is a creative way of marrying the goals of ecological conservation and economic development.

Unfortunately, while some eco-tourism projects succeed in promoting both of these causes, others are less successful. Environmental deterioration and inequitable development may in some cases actually be exacerbated by eco-tourism. To ensure that eco-tourism fulfills its promise, policymakers, promoters, and participants should make sure that all tourism activities have minimal environmental impact, that such development is welcomed by local communities, and that it promotes stable and equitable economic development.

(Jonathan Nash, April 2001)
http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2001/EcoTourismEncouragingConservationorAddingtoExploitation.aspx

Sustainable tourism is the concept of visiting a place as a tourist and trying to make only a positive impact on the environment, society and economy.^[1] Tourism can involve primary transportation to the general location, local transportation, accommodations, entertainment, recreation, nourishment and shopping. It can be related to travel for leisure, business and what is called VFR (visiting friends and relatives).^[2] There is now broad consensus that tourism development should be sustainable; however, the question of how to achieve this remains an object of debate.^[3]

Without travel there is no tourism, so the concept of sustainable tourism is tightly linked to a concept of sustainable mobility.^[4] Two relevant considerations are tourism's reliance on fossil fuels and tourism's effect on climate change. 72 percent of tourism's CO₂ emissions come from transportation, 24 percent from accommodations, and 4 percent from local activities.^[2] Aviation accounts for 55% of those transportation CO₂ emissions (or 40% of tourism's total). However, when considering the impact of all greenhouse gas emissions from tourism and that aviation emissions are made at high altitude where their effect on climate is amplified, aviation alone accounts for 75% of tourism's climate impact.^[5]

The International Air Transport Association(IATA) considers an annual increase in aviation fuel efficiency of 2 percent per year through 2050 to be realistic. However, both Airbus and Boeing expect the passenger-kilometers of air transport to increase by about 5 percent yearly through at least 2020, overwhelming any efficiency gains. By 2050, with other economic sectors having greatly reduced their CO₂emissions, tourism is likely to be generating 40 percent of global carbon emissions.^[6] The main cause is an increase in the average distance travelled by tourists, which for many years has been increasing at a faster rate than the number of trips taken.^[6][7][8][9] "Sustainable transportation is now established as the critical issue confronting a global tourism industry that is palpably unsustainable, and aviation lies at the heart of this issue (Gossling et al., 2010)."

There are only three northern white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) left in the world. Sudan, the eldest, is the only male. The other two, Najin and Fatu, are his daughter and granddaughter, respectively. They all live under armed guard at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.

None of the rhinos will ever reproduce again naturally. Sudan is too old, and his sperm quality is dismal, keepers discovered when they last collected his semen in 2014. Najin is too old to bear the weight of a mating male or to carry a pregnancy, while Fatu has uterine problems.

Regarding saving the subspecies, Sudan is already functionally obsolete, said Jan Stejskal, director of communications and international projects at Dvr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic, which technically owns the three rhinos. Najin and Fatu, both of whom still produce eggs, are the more valuable rhinos for the future, as their donor eggs could be used in in vitro fertilization with stored sperm from a deceased male. The resulting pregnancy could then be implanted into a southern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum simum), a closely related subspecies. The question becomes—is saving the northern white rhino worth it?

RHINOCEROS REPRODUCTION

Sudan is cared for around-the-clock by a team of veterinarians and protected from poachers by armed guards. Caregivers at Ol Pejeta Conservancy reported on Feb. 28 that a leg infection was threatening the elderly rhino’s life and that Sudan was responding poorly to treatment. Over the next week, however, Sudan began to stand, graze and even wallow in the mud.

Still, the last male’s death is likely not far in the future, given his advanced age. This vision of extinction has spurred debate in conservation circles, with some arguing that saving the northern white rhino is a poor use of resources. “[P]revention is better than cure,” according to Save the Rhino. The organization argues that the northern white subspecies is functionally extinct already; saving it with IVF and surrogacy is more akin to reviving dead woolly mammoths than saving a critically endangered subspecies.

“Much of the sub-species’ former range has lost rhinos in its entirety, with limited conservation programmes or expertise for managing a rhino population, and large-scale habitat loss,” according to Save the Rhino’s position statement on northern white rhino IVF. Focusing efforts on poaching prevention—rhino horn is coveted for its “medicinal properties," which are just a myth—and saving habitat would be more beneficial for the other rhino species that have a better chance at survival, according to the organization.

Stejskal and other researchers active in the IVF project see it differently. A substantial portion of the donations for saving the northern white rhino come from parties more interested in the development of IVF technologies for different species than in rhino conservation in particular, Stejskal said.

Salesforce Transit Center has been part of the drama unfolding at the nearby Millennium Tower, which is now infamous for sinking and leaning more than developers projected, as well causing a flurry of legal action. In October 2016, the building had already sunk 16 inches, 11 or 12 more inches than developers projected. Reportedly, a citizen, concerned about how much the building was leaning, kicked off the city's involvement by calling the public 311 information line.

While Millennium Partners was getting pummeled with the first of many lawsuits, the developer blamed the sinking on the de-watering going on at the Salesforce Transit Center. Meanwhile, city transit officials blamed the problem on the building's design, claiming that the 58-story building was sinking because its foundation piles were about 100 feet short of hitting bedrock.

In November 2016, the city filed a lawsuit against the Millennium's developers, alleging that they knew the building was sinking more than projected, and that they failed to notify homeowners before they purchased units there. Homeowners have also filed lawsuits against Millennium Partners.

As of Jan. 21, according to CBS News, the tower had not stopped sinking and was down 17 inches.

An independent inspection by city engineers noted some minor electrical damage, but indicated that it was safe to occupy and could withstand a major earthquake. They also suggested conditions in the building be monitored. Another inspection, however, revealed a potentially life-threatening situation.

Palo Alto, CA, architectural and engineering firm Allana Buick & Bers was hired to provide another assessment of the building, and found that the building's façade is pulling away from the structure, creating a path for a potential fire to spread quickly. Homeowners claim that the information was redacted from the copies of inspection reports they received.

The Department of Buildings Inspection, according to SF Weekly, has issued fire safety violations for the tower, and gave Millennium Partners until Jan. 19 to either fix the problem or provide an independent assessment that the building presents no fire hazard.

https://www.constructiondive.com/news/new-salesforce-tower-tallest-building-in-san-francisco/515524/

If each of us aims to run a sustainable household, which means thinking about the type and amount of resources we use, how we recycle and dispose of materials, the steps we take to manage and conserve the natural environment we all depend on, we are not only conserving energy, we are saving money too.

Little things like changing to a water-efficient showerhead can save hundreds of litres of water a year, and stop your dollars going down the drain.

If we build houses that are well insulated and designed, then it will cost less to heat and cool them. If we consider our purchases carefully, a lot less waste will end up as landfill and pollution. Every year, each Australian generates, on average, more than 2000kg of rubbish; in NSW alone, we throw away $2.5 billion worth of edible food a year.

Water usage remains a key environmental concern and there are many ways to use it sparingly, without compromising on comfort. Whether it’s fixing a leaking tap or installing a household greywater system, every little bit helps.

Lots of little actions by lots of people can help turn things around. We have compiled some simple steps and actions you can take:

Save energy
Tips to improve your home’s energy efficiency rating with better heating, cooling, hot water, insulation and lighting.

Be water-wise
Save water in the home and garden.

Smarter choices
Choose more water/ energy efficient appliances  and compare the running costs of different models.


Recycling and waste

Avoid, reduce, reuse and recycle waste by living sustainably.

A study published this week in Geophysical Research Letters finds that melt rates in western Greenland have been accelerating for the last few decades. Melting is now nearly double what it was at the end of the 19th century, the research suggests. And the scientists say a significant increase in summertime temperatures—to the tune of about 1.2 degrees Celsius since the 1870s—is mainly to blame.

Future warming may only continue to enhance the melting, the researchers warn—a major concern when it comes to future sea-level rise.

“If we’re going to make accurate predictions of sea-level rise, we have got to understand how Greenland responds to warming,” said study co-author Erich Osterberg, a climate scientist at Dartmouth College, in an interview with E&E News.

Much of the recent attention on Greenland’s ice loss has focused on icebergs breaking away from the ice sheet’s glaciers, eye-catching events that often draw media attention and capture the public’s imagination. But research suggests that melting from the surface of the ice sheet actually accounts for more than half of Greenland’s ice loss. So the factors influencing surface melt rates are just as important to understand when predicting future sea-level rise.

Satellite observations and ice models have helped scientists estimate surface melt rates from the last few decades. But there’s another method scientists can use to confirm these estimates on the ground.

While much of the meltwater runs off into the ocean, a substantial portion trickles back into the snow as it rolls down the ice sheet and refreezes.

“The record of that melt event is then locked into the glacier,” Osterberg noted.

Scientists can retrieve it by drilling into the surface of the ice sheet and drawing out a long core of ice, containing many layers of refrozen water, which they may then analyze in a laboratory. These ice cores can provide all kinds of valuable information about the age of the ice and the timing of melt events on the ice sheet.

Osterberg, along with lead study author Karina Graeter and a team of other researchers, voyaged to western Greenland to investigate in person. In a region known as the “percolation zone,” where meltwater tends to trickle back into the snow and refreeze, they drilled beneath the surface and extracted seven ice cores for analysis.

The cores provided a record of melting events dating back to the year 1550. They suggest that melt rates in the region have been significantly increasing since the early 1990s, and are currently higher than they’ve been at any other point in the record.

The researchers used models informed with historical climate data to investigate some of the climatic factors influencing melt rates from one year to the next over the last century. Fluctuations in ocean temperatures and certain atmospheric circulation patterns were shown to have a major influence on year-to-year variations in melt rates since the 1870s.

That’s important to note, because these oceanic and atmospheric patterns may change under the influence of future climate change. Scientists are still debating how they may be affected, but the new findings suggest that a better understanding will be critical to making accurate short-term predictions about melting and sea-level rise.

That said, ongoing warming is still likely to be the biggest influence on long-term melting trends. Despite many fluctuations in weather conditions over the last century, the scientists noticed that the oceanic and atmospheric conditions were nearly identical at the end of the 19th century and in the early 2000s—yet melt rates in the 2000s were nearly double what they were a century ago.

The major difference between these two time periods is that summer air temperatures had warmed by more than a degree Celsius in the intervening years because of ongoing climate change. These findings suggest that, all other weather conditions held equal, human-caused warming is the greatest long-term factor in Greenland’s surface melt rates.

And if melting has already doubled in the last 100 years, continued warming may mean that surface melt becomes an even greater contributor to sea-level rise in the coming years.

“Essentially, the weather patterns that control these year-to-year changes become less and less important when you look over longer time scales,” Osterberg said. “Several decades into the future, the long-term warming trend from greenhouse gases—that’s going to dominate the signal.”



Source:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/greenland-is-melting-faster-than-any-time-in-the-last-400-years/

Did you know that Norway previously set a goal at becoming carbon neutral by 2030?(i) One can find it contradictory, reconciling with the fact that Norway is one of the world's biggest per capita polluters produces and exports oil at a high rate. Nevertheless their goals for climate investements, through the campaign Klimaløftet,  is one of the most ambitious and extremely challenging goals any country had ever set. Norway was courageous on doing so, but unfortunately there is yet much work left to reach this goal and 2030 is coming closer.

The previous Government through eight years, led by Jens Stoltenberg and the Labor party announced at the time that "the plan calls for a "significant sum" of money to be earmarked for investment in renewable energy, mass transport and strategies aimed at lowering emissions from the transport sector; other "carrot and stick" measures - including a boost to research funding and a tax increase on diesel fuel and gas - will be implemented to "promote more environmentally friendly behaviour."(ii)

This way Norway aimed at achieving carbon neutrality by significantly reducing its own greenhouse gas emissions and offsetting the remaining by investing in environmental projects - primarily focused on fighting deforestation in developing countries - to obtain carbon credits.

Today we know that these goals can not be achieved unless oil activity is significantly reduced or put to a halt. Simply fighting deforestation and carbon offsetting is unsufficient.