Environmental Justice

Healthy soils are crucial to human nutrition and the fight against hunger. But worldwide 24 billion tons of fertile soil is lost annually. Barbara Unmüßig calls attention to the growing threat to one of Earth’s most important resources.    

The rules of the global economy also remain untouchable, making it nearly impossible to restructure financial and trade policies to ensure that they do not result in more poverty, unchecked climate change, and irreversible resource destruction. The language agreed upon so far is not reassuring. A timeworn commitment to economic growth at all cost is no answer to the question of how development can be balanced against the limits of our planet and the fact that billions of people live in poverty. In a finite world, infinite growth is impossible, and rising output will not put food on everyone’s table if the benefits of growth are not fairly distributed.

All graphics and texts from the Soil Atlas are published under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-SA. This means that you can use, edit, and publish all content from the Atlas under consideration of these conditions. 

The emissions from burning coal, oil, and gas are heating up our planet at such a rapid rate that increasingly volatile and dangerous climate conditions seem almost inevitable. Clearly, we have to reduce emissions fast, while developing alternative energy sources that allow us to leave fossil fuels in the ground.

After premiering in Rio, the International Uranium Film Festival traveled to other cities and countries. In the past years it has been in São Paulo, Lisbon, Berlin, and Munich, among others, as well as in ten major cities in India including New Delhi and Hyderabad. In 2014 the festival travelled from Rio de Janeiro to Washington DC, New York City, and Berlin. Now it is in Amman.

Supported by the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC) and hbs, Sameerah Awawdeh and Dr. Yousef Daoud are carrying out a project investigating the economic and social impact of the use of solar energy instead of fossil fuels to generate electricity in Palestine. The study particularly looks at the impact on public finance, external trade and labor market. 

Factory-style livestock production is a critical driver of agricultural industrialization. Its remorseless expansion is contributing to climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and human-rights violations – all to satisfy Western societies’ unhealthy appetite for cheap meat.