Environment

How ConocoPhillips is trying to manipulate locals in San Martín César, Colombia into accepting fracking.

The duty to save seeds and defend seed freedom is an ethical and ecological imperative. Seeds are the first link in the food chain and the repository of life’s future evolution. As such, it is our inherent duty and responsibility to protect them and to pass them on to future generations. The growing of seeds and their free exchange among farmers is the basis of maintaining biodiversity and food security.

At current rates, there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050.

What might growing interest in agroecology mean for those committed to more ecological agriculture in the U.S.? After all, the discussion of agroecology at the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization and in many contexts has been directed toward the developing world and its “peasants,” not American farmers and activists.

Soil pollution is posing a serious threat to our environment, to our sources of food and ultimately to our health. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations warns that there is still a lack of awareness about the scale and severity of this threat. Global production of municipal solid waste was around 1.3 billion tons per year in 2012 and it is expected to rise to 2.2 billion tons annually by 2025.

Thousands of logs loaded into makeshift boats at the port of Inongo at Lake Mai-Ndombe stand ready to be transported to Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. “We witness this kind of spectacle every day, whereby tons and tons of logs and timber find their way to the capital either via the Congo River or by road, where they will eventually be shipped overseas, or just sold to the black market,” said environment activist Prosper Ngobila.