Posts Tagged ‘Al Jazeera’
Help Wanted: 27 Planet Earths
This story was featured on the IPS wire and on the Al Jazeera network in 2011. It shows that national parks, conservation and protected areas do not and cannot halt the decline in biodiversity that is humanity’s life support system. It is hopeless without addressing the root causes: too many of us, taking too much and having too big of an impact. On our present course we’ll need 27 planet Earths by 2050 experts conclude. — Stephen
By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jul 29, 2011 (IPS)
Protecting bits of nature here and there will not prevent humanity from losing our life support system. Even if areas dedicated to conserving plants, animals, and other species that provide Earth’s life support system increased tenfold, it would not be enough without dealing with the big issues of the 21st century: population, overconsumption and inefficient resource use.
Without dealing with those big issues, humanity will need 27 planet Earths by 2050, a new study estimates.
The size and number of protected areas on land and sea has increased dramatically since the 1980s, now totaling over 100,000 in number and covering 17 million square kilometres of land and two million square kilometres of oceans, a new study reported Thursday.
This independent environmental journalism depends on public support. Click here learn more.
But impressive as those numbers look, all indicators reveal species going extinct faster than ever before, despite all the additions of new parks, reserves and other conservation measures, according to the studypublished in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series.
“It is amazing to me that we haven’t dealt with this failure of protected areas to slow biodiversity losses,” said lead author Camilo Mora of University of Hawaii at Manoa.
“We were surprised the evidence from the past 30 years was so clear,” Mora told IPS. Read the rest of this entry »
Environmental Journalism in the Public Interest
I’m an independent journalist who covers international environmental issues in the public interest. 
My work has been published in publications around the world including National Geographic, The Guardian (UK), Sunday Times, New Scientist, Al Jazeera, Earth Island Journal, The Toronto Star, AlterNet, Common Dreams, and Straight Goods News.
I’m also the senior science and environment correspondent at IPS, Inter Press Service News Agency the world’s largest not-for-profit news agency.
I am the 2012 co-winner of the Prince Albert/United Nations Global Prize for Climate Change. You can read much of that coverage on this site.
Multiple environmental crisis represent “the greatest challenge in the history of our species”
– Thomas Lovejoy, professor, George Mason University, former chief scientist of the World Bank
Despite the importance of environmental issues, media have slashed their coverage of environmental issues. It is impossible to make a living as a freelance environmental journalist.
Swiss journalist Daniel Wermus in 2010 article: “Stephen Leahy, a Canadian, and one of the world’s best-known investigative reporters on environmental issues, has launched a challenge:
if corporations won’t pay for the news, then it is up to communities and the public to fill the gap.“
Since for-profit corporate media won’t pay for environmental journalism in the public interest then I am hoping people will.
In 2009 I launched Community Supported Environmental Journalism. In exchange for producing articles about important issues that millions will read*, I am asking people to provide some support. Just $10 a month helps guarantee informative and useful articles like the ones on this site will continue to be written. All supporters receive a personal, one-page weekly newsletter. Without your support I can’t work for all of us — Stephen
*Yes, millions of readers. When I write an article for IPS it is used in hundreds of newspapers and magazines in different languages around the world. That’s great but unfortunately I only get paid $175 even if it took a week to research and write the article. Many of my articles are also reprinted by news websites such as Reuters AlertNet, the Guardian, Al Jazeera, AlterNet, Common Dreams, Truthout, InfoSud, Straightgoods.com and others. None of these pay me for this reuse.
Contributions can be made safely and easily via PayPal or Credit Card
( All supporters receive a one page weekly newsletter)
Monthly support options starting @ $10 a month
Click here to make a single, one-time donation
For more info on how you can help.
“We need people like you. In tough economic times, where information flow is increasingly channeled and controlled…”
– E. Ann Clark, Associate Professor, University of Guelph
Help keep this site ad free.
Please throw something in the tip jar before reading on.
Stumble It!
