News articles on gabriel thoumi
Mongabay.com news articles on gabriel thoumi in blog format. Updated regularly.
All the world's rarest birds in one book: photo contest enlivens new guide
(05/06/2013) The World's Rarest Birds is an extraordinary bird book. 590 different bird species are classified as Endangered or Critically Endangered, with many species only existing in captivity. A new book, The World's Rarest Birds, catalogs all of these species. Each species is shown with remarkable color-photography and illustrations. Threats to species habitat are described, population estimates per species are given, and each species has a quick response (QR) code that takes the reader to a species-specific BirdLife International webpage. The book also covers 60 Data Deficient species. Data Deficient means that there exists little to no information on the relative abundance and distribution of the species.
Climate Myths: how climate denialists are getting away with bad science
(04/29/2013) In Climate Myths: The Campaign Against Climate Science, Dr. John J. Berger deconstructs the climate change denialists' myths in simple, easy-to-read terms. According to the Pew Research Center: "Nearly seven-in-ten (69%) [Americans] say there is solid evidence that the earth’s average temperature has been getting warmer over the past few decades, up six points since November 2011 and 12 points since 2009." Yet implementing national-level climate change mitigation legislation is not occurring in the U.S.
The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors - book review
(04/22/2013) Richard Crossley, Jerry Liguori, and Brian Sullivan have produced a unique and much needed bird book in The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors. The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors is a book you study at home so you can easily recognize North American raptors.
REDD+ and Business Sustainability: A Guide to Reversing Deforestation for Forward Thinking Companies – book review
(04/08/2013) Brian McFarland has published a concise, yet comprehensive, DōShort book titled REDD+ and Business Sustainability.
Carbon Management in the Built Environment - book review
(04/02/2013) Carbon Management in the Built Environment, written by Rohinton Emmanuel and Keith Baker, is the complete introductory textbook covering low carbon management for the built environment. Carbon Management in the Built Environment integrates climate change science, design, materials science, and policy into a classroom friendly text.
Carbon Markets or Climate Finance - book review
(03/25/2013) Carbon markets or climate finance? This is the question posed by Carbon Markets or Climate Finance, edited by Axel Michaelowa. First of all, let’s define climate finance as the financial resources used to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
The Role of Science for Conservation - book review
(03/18/2013) The Role of Science for Conservation, edited by Matthias Wolff and Mark Gardner, celebrates Charles Darwin’s Bicentennial and 50 years of research by the Charles Darwin Foundation in The Galápagos, Ecuador.
Solar Photovoltaic Projects: In the Mainstream Power Market - book review
(03/11/2013) Solar Photovoltaic Projects: In the Mainstream Power Market, written by renewables energy pioneer Philip Wolfe, is an excellent introduction to the solar photovoltaic project development and power markets sector.
A New Blueprint for a Green Economy - book review
(03/04/2013) Edward B. Barbier and Anil Markandya, contributing authors to 1989 classic Blueprint for a Green Economy, have revisited the theme to implement a green economy and published A New Blueprint for a Green Economy. The central theme of A New Blueprint for a Green Economy is how we can make economies green today given what we have learned from our efforts since 1989.
Full Product Transparency: Cutting the Fluff Out of Sustainability - Book Review
(02/25/2013) Full Product Transparency: Cutting the Fluff Out of Sustainability, by Ramon Arratia, Sustainability Director, Interface, provides us with a clear, concise challenge.
Imagine a bird without feathers...
(02/18/2013) In The Unfeathered Bird, Katrina van Grouw exquisitely combines creative and intellectual curiosity and produces a wonderful book. The Unfeathered Bird simply is a delight. Each page I turned over was like reliving the awe and discovery of childhood. Broad strokes of creativity confined and structured within the natural anatomy of birds. Raw curiosity and intrigue drawn patiently one pencil stroke at a time illustrating our unfeathered friends.
Finance and carbon markets dictionary with English and Spanish versions
(02/07/2013) The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) recently released a lexicon—or dictionary—of carbon finance and markets terms.
Lean Design Management: Applications to Natural Resource Management
(02/04/2013) Lean Design Management is a design management process that is applied most often within the construction sector. Its applicability to natural resources management is evident through the similarities between construction management and natural resources management.
Energizing Sustainable Cities: Assessing Urban Energy - book review
(01/28/2013) Energizing Sustainable Cities: Assessing Urban Energy, edited by Arnulf Grubler and David Fisk, is a very well written book describing challenges and opportunities to define, analyze, and implement sustainable energy development for 21st Century urban centers. Urban populations, while roughly 50% of the global population, consume over 75% of the globe's energy. Therefore, developing frameworks to assess, analyze and implement sustainable energy systems that meet the criteria for these urban populations is foundational to mitigating climate change, halting biodiversity loss, and improving water quality globally.
Birds of the Masai Mara - book review
(01/23/2013) Birds of the Masai Mara by Adam Scott Kennedy, is the first dedicated bird book to the Masai Mara region. This handy guidebook, covering over 200 species of birds, on purpose avoids any unnecessary ornithological techno-jargon while presenting the region’s birds using high-quality photographs followed by short text. Building upon the recently published Animals of the Masai Mara, the format of this guidebook is user-friendly and filled with entertaining stories.
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Local and Regional Policy - a book review
(01/21/2013) The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Local and Regional Policy, edited by Heidi Wittmar and Haripriya Gundimeda, provides thoughtful and actionable approaches to integrate nature’s benefits into decision-making frameworks for local and regional policy and public management institutions. Filled with numerous case studies, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Local and Regional Policy, delivers a compendium of concepts and ideas.
A second look at 'Fewer, Richer, Greener: The End of the Population Explosion and the Future for Investors'
(01/14/2013) Fewer, Richer, Greener: The End of the Population Explosion and the Future for Investors (November/December 2012, Vol. 68, No. 6: 20–37), by Mr. Laurence B. Siegel provides us with a commentary of population explosion and green investment opportunities over the long-run.
From Intelligent to Smart Cities - a book review
(01/08/2013) From Intelligent to Smart Cities brings together recent and leading research on transitioning to smart cities from intelligent cities.
Animals of the Masai Mara - book review
(01/06/2013) Animals of the Masai Mara is the first illustrated guidebook to the Masai Mara region along the Kenya and Tanzania border. This is the world famous region of wildebeest migrations, large felines, towering African elephants, fascinating cultures, and great flora and fauna diversity. This is the guidebook for every child, and child inside of us, between the ages of 5 and 105 that has ever dreamt of learning about the fascinating animals seen on a safari in Africa.
Solving complex problems through simple physics - book review
(01/02/2013) Guesstimation 2.0 Solving Today's Problems on the Back of a Napkin succeeds where most popular science literature so often fails. This is because it provides its readers with a scientific tool they can use immediately in their everyday lives.
Ecological Restoration and Environmental Change: Renewing Damaged Ecosystems - book review
(12/03/2012) Stuart K. Allison, PhD’s excellent book Ecological Restoration and Environmental Change: Renewing Damaged Ecosystems clearly explains the current state of affairs regarding ecological restoration. He addresses key issues and challenges to ecosystem restoration science dogma. He questions how we define ecosystem restoration and against which baseline. Baselines are various and can be difficult to define on a species by species level.
Science and Public Reason - book review
(12/03/2012) Professor Sheila Jasanoff’s superb treatise Science and Public Reason, part of Earthscan's, is a wonderful book describing, through a collection of her essays and articles from the past 25-years, the rise of the field of Science and Technology Studies. The book could not have arrived soon enough, as we now globally face the triple threat of 1) massive biodiversity loss, 2) nutrient cycling disruption (greenhouse gases, Montreal Protocol gases, nitrogen fertilizer caused eutrophication, etc.), and 3) water quality degradation (saltwater intrusion, depleted aquifers, lack of clean drinking water, etc.).
Mr. Jeremy Grantham and Extreme Weather and The Financial Markets: Opportunities in Commodities and Futures
(11/19/2012) Mr. Jeremy Grantham, co-chair of the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment and co-founder and chief investment strategist at GMO, published an online column November 14, 2012 in Nature asking scientists to speak out forcefully, publicly and directly on strategies to mitigate climate change. Mr. Grantham’s column titled Be persuasive. Be brave. Be arrested (if necessary) is a clear clarion call for action. As a fellow natural resources scientist, I agree with Mr. Grantham’s intent.
Good Derivatives: A Story of Financial and Environmental Innovation – Book Review
(11/18/2012) In Good Derivatives: A Story of Financial and Environmental Innovation, Richard Sandor, PhD has written a rich compelling first-person narrative of the development of financial futures and environmental markets over the past 40 years. With personal stories describing both failures and successes, Dr. Richard Sandor engages us with details that expand our knowledge of the capacities and limitations capital markets present to us in our efforts to finance climate change mitigation and natural resources conservation.
How to see the forest for the trees: new textbook helps to craft a global understanding of forest economics for all stakeholders
(11/13/2012) Environmental economics is similar to other expanding fields, it turns out. For example, Tauhid Zaman, assistant professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Business, lamented that network analytics far too often focuses on the purely theoretical, and quipped that his colleagues "want to date a model more than they want to model data." William F. Hyde might argue that the same could be said for environmental economists.
First REDD Textbook - Forest and Climate Change: The Social Dimensions of REDD in Latin America – Book Review
(10/08/2012) Thank you Professor Anthony Hall. After many years, we finally have a REDD textbook that can be used in the undergraduate and graduate classroom. Professor Hall has produced an excellent contribution to the growing Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) literature.
The Human Quest: Prospering Within Planetary Boundaries – Book Review
(07/22/2012) Icarus, according to ancient Greek myth, attempted to escape Crete by flying using wings that his father constructed from feathers and wax. Icarus willfully flew too close to the sun causing his wings to melt resulting in him falling into the sea and drowning.
Nature's Compass: The Mystery of Animal Navigation – Book Review
(07/06/2012) Migration patterns, natal homing, and daily activities by animals all require significant navigation capacities. In Nature’s Compass: The Mystery of Animal Navigation, Dr. James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould explore the mathematical and physical underpinnings of what it takes for these species to successfully navigate.
The Cardamom Conundrum: Reconciling Development and Conservation in the Kingdom of Cambodia – Book Review
(07/04/2012) Tim Killeen’s new engaging book, The Cardamom Conundrum: Reconciling Development and Conservation in the Kingdom of Cambodia, describes decision-making options that the Government of Cambodia could engage in to develop their nation along a path of sustainability through resolving the sustainable economic development paradox, or “conundrum”. Dr. Killeen’s analysis demonstrated that this conundrum could be resolved based on a green economy with four pillars.
We Were an Island: The Maine Life of Art & Nan Kellam – Book Review
(02/14/2012) We dream to make a difference yet how many of us can say we are the difference that impact others, much less we are the difference that impacts others while accompanied by our life’s partner, our loved one, our soul mate, our spouse?
Teaching Sustainability/Teaching Sustainably: Book Review
(02/07/2012) In Teaching Sustainability/Teaching Sustainably, Danielle Lake writes the best sentence I have ever read summarizing sustainability: "Understanding sustainability as a wicked problem, and recognizing how an egoist ethic otherizes the environment and is thus in large part responsible for the abuses that have led to a number of current environmental and social problems, are central to the resolution of this pressing situation."
Sustainable Materials With Both Eyes Open: A book review
(01/26/2012) Sustainable Materials With Both Eyes Open: Future Buildings, vehicles, products and equipment – made efficiently and made with less new material is a remarkable popular impartial well-written engineering book that addresses sustainable production of cement, plastic, paper, aluminum and
steel and their long-term impacts on the environment. The authors provide a comprehensive background regarding the uses of said materials.
Climate and The Oceans - Princeton Primers in Climate: A Book Review
(01/25/2012) Climate and The Oceans by Dr. Geoffrey K. Vallis provides a coherent, well-articulated primer on how the oceans impact the Earth's climate. This easy-to-read illustrated book, filled with both data and accessible mathematical equations demonstrating the impact of the oceans on the Earth's climate, offers practitioners and stakeholders' state-of-the-art scientific analysis of how the oceans and climate interact that is both user friendly to the non-expert yet scientifically rigorous enough as bridge material for graduate students as they grapple with the compelling field of climate science and oceanography.
The Cryosphere-Princeton primers in climate: A Book Review
(01/23/2012) The Cryosphere by Dr. Shawn J. Marshall, Canada Research Chair in Climate Change, University of Calgary, is an excellent book because it summarizes leading scientific
research into easily accessible chapters each one on a different component of the cryosphere. The cryosphere, which incorporates the Earth's snow and
ice mass including seasonal snow, permafrost (both land-based permafrost and below water permafrost), river and lake ice, sea ice, glaciers, ice
sheets, and ice shelves, is intrinsically related to global climate change. Hence, understanding how the cryosphere interacts with and is at risk
because of climate change and its greenhouse gases is fundamental to developing effective policy mechanisms that mitigate climate change.
Conserving Ecuador's Paramos, the alpine tundra ecosystem of the Andes
(01/17/2012) Grupo de Trabajo en Páramos del Ecuador (GTP) is a remarkable self-organized group of páramo experts that have met over the past 13 years in Quito, Ecuador. Páramo is an alpine tundra ecosystem which is located in the northern Andes of South America and adjacent southern Central America. Recently, the Grupo de Trabajo en Páramos del Ecuador published an excellent summary of their analysis from the past 13 years. Robert Hofstede, one of the editors of Páramo: Paisaje estudiado, habitado, manejado e institucionalizado, recently sat down with Mongabay.com and discussed the situation of páramo conservation in Ecuador.
Issues of the Day: 100 Commentaries on Climate, Energy, the Environment, Transportation, and Public Health Policy: Book Review
(12/14/2011) Issues of the Day: 100 Commentaries on Climate, Energy, the Environment, Transportation, and Public Health Policy is a wonderful overview of 100 different issues presented in two-page briefs by teams of expert individuals.
Carbon Coalitions: Business, Climate Politics, and the Rise of Emissions Trading: Book Review
(12/13/2011) Jonas Meckling, PhD., writes the first critical analysis demonstrating how various types of not-for-profit, governmental and for-profit coalitions over
the past couple of decades have led to the development of the global carbon market, valued in 2010 at US$ 142 billion.
The Atlas of Climate Change: Mapping the World’s Greatest Challenge – a book review
(12/12/2011) The Atlas of Climate Change: Mapping the World’s Greatest Challenge presents in clear and concise visual form the impacts and effects, solutions and mitigation actions surrounding climate change - which is our greatest global challenge.
From Red to Green? How the Financial Credit Crunch Could Bankrupt the Environment - a book review
(09/19/2011) Paul Donovan and Julie Hudson, CFA argue in From Red to Green? How the Financial Credit Crunch Could Bankrupt the Environment that twin credit crunches – both environment and financial – have been underway for some time. With chapters on food, water, energy, infrastructure, housing, consumer durables, health, education, work and leisure accompanied by a thorough economic analysis regarding both credit and environmental debts driving supply and demand of these goods and services, the authors discuss at length how global economics may be impacted in an environmentally constrained future.
The Global Carbon Cycle: a book review
(09/19/2011) The Global Carbon Cycle, by Dr. David Archer, is an excellent primer on the global carbon cycle. An easily readable format, this lightweight book is an excellent companion to those who need a quick on-the-go reference or for those who need a compendium for their office or lab. With chapters on the basic carbon cycle, geologic carbon cycle, unstable ice age carbon cycle, present and future carbon cycle, and methane, The Global Carbon Cycle is an authoritative book with numerous examples explaining scientific phenomena associated the global carbon cycle.
Measuring Livelihoods and Environmental Dependence: Methods for Research and Fieldwork - Book Review
(09/18/2011) eveloping a systematic approach applicable globally to measuring the environmental impacts associated with rural economic development in the developing world, as measured through landscape-level carbon accounting, is critically important as these communities begin to implement land-based carbon projects. To be able to successfully compare carbon sequestration activities between communities, we need to develop quantitatively robust methodologies to measure rural livelihoods' environmental impacts. With these methodologies in place it is possible to begin to measure financial effectiveness and equitable distribution of revenue associated with these land-based carbon projects.
Biodiversity and Social Carbon: Sustainable Development and the Carbon Market - Book Review
(09/18/2011) Our 21st century economy faces to twin challenges - biodiversity loss and climate change - and in Biodiversity and Social Carbon, authors Divaldo Rezende and Stefano Merlin, describe the Social Carbon methodology and its approach to protecting and enhancing biodiversity while mitigating climate change. Moreover, the authors also provide numerous case studies on how the Social Carbon methodology functions.
Tropical Ecology: A Book Review
(09/15/2011) Dr. Kricher's full-color textbook is a great introductory textbook for tropical ecology courses. With increased interest globally in forest carbon and the underlying tropical forest ecological fundamentals that forest carbon offsets are manufactured from allowing climate change mitigation, this book provides a one-stop tropical forest ecology resource for those who work in the forest carbon field in the tropics. Key topics addressed, through a pan-tropical lens, include evolution, tropical rain forest structure and biodiversity, carbon flux and climate change, forest fragmentation, nutrient cycling, species richness, and flora and fauna relationships.
Conserving and Valuing Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity: Economic, Institutional and Social Challenges
(09/11/2011) Conserving and Valuing Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity: Economic, Institutional and Social Challenges provides a much needed survey reflecting upon recent institutional experience yielding analysis that concludes that there exists financially rigorous rationale to justify conservation of biodiversity for economic reasons, above and beyond the usual rationale of conservation only for biodiversity, spiritual or ethical reasons.
EcoCommerce 101: adding an ecological dimension to the economy
(09/02/2011) EcoCommerce 101: Adding an Ecological Dimension to the Economy provides a foundation for an analysis of environmental economics from the perspective of a theorist and a practitioner. The author, a fifth-generation farmer living in the USA with a background in economics, separates his book into three easy-to-read sections.
World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse
(08/30/2011) World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse clearly describes in terms of national and social security how the looming current threat to our collective global future is not from catastrophic war as many describe in hindsight the 20th Century, rather from cataclysmic climate change, biodiversity loss, and water degradation.
Reducing Disaster Risks: Progress and Challenges in the Caribbean Region
(08/23/2011) Disaster management is a global policy problem with a critical land-use change component related to settlement patterns, deforestation, and agriculture development. This is further exacerbated by climate change.
Ecosystem Goods and Services from Plantation Forests
(06/06/2011) Given that plantations cover 140 million hectares, or 4% of the global forested area, and are a growing source of round wood and pulp, Ecosystem Goods and Services from Plantation Forests is very well timed edited value that can add value to the discussion and implementation of sustainable forest management within a carbon constrained and biodiversity depleted global economic system.
Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet
(05/23/2011) Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet challenges us to imaging a world where growth and unmitigated consumption do not equal development. In fact, as clearly described throughout, countries with unmitigated consumption are the underdeveloped countries of the 21st Century expanding our global ecological debt at the expense of countries who are more sophisticated in their development practices with similar prosperity levels while incurring less "national" ecological debt.
Valuing Ecosystem Services: The Case of Multi-functional Wetlands
(05/16/2011) Valuing Ecosystem Services: The Case of Multi-functional Wetlands provides the clearest guide yet to describing and implementing in a systematic fashion payments for ecosystems services (PES) strategies for wetland protection mechanisms. By focusing initially on frameworks and obstacles to implementation of wetland protection strategies such as property rights, measuring and monitoring, behavior and compensation, cultural barriers and external factors, the authors posit that is possible to effectively value multi-functional wetlands.
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