The Environment Portal

The concept of the natural environment can be distinguished by components:

• Complete ecological units that function as natural systems without massive human intervention, including all vegetation, animals, microorganisms, soil, rocks, atmosphere and natural phenomena that occur within their boundaries.

• Universal natural resources and physical phenomena that lack clear-cut boundaries, such as air, water, and climate, as well as energy, radiation, electric charge, and magnetism, not originating from human activity.

As human population numbers increase and as humans continue to evolve, human activity modifies the natural environment at a rapidly increasing rate, producing what is referred to as the built environment. The potential of the natural environment to sustain these anthropogenic changes while continuing to function as an ecosystem is an issue of major worldwide concern. Key environmental areas of interest include climate change, water supply and waste water, air pollution, waste management and hazardous waste, and land use issues such as deforestation, desertification, and urban sprawl.

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A number of solutions have been tried in order to reduce the rate of desertification and regain lost land. Leguminous plants, which extract nitrogen from the air and fix it in the soil, can be planted to restore fertility. Stones stacked around the base of trees collect morning dew and help retain soil moisture. Artificial grooves can be dug in the ground to retain rainfall and trap wind-blown seeds. Windbreaks made from trees and bushes to reduce soil erosion and evapotranspiration was widely encouraged by development agencies from the middle of the 1980s.

Did you know...

• ...that the word smog is a portmanteau of smoke and fog?

• ... that the recycling symbol is based on the Möbius strip?

• ... that the global ecological footprint is 1.8 global hectares (gha) per capita?

• ... that each year in 22,500 cemeteries across the United States approximately 30 million board feet (70,000 m³) of hardwoods are buried as caskets?

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On 22 December 1988, Mendes was assassinated by gunshot at his Xapuri home. In December, 1990 rancher Darcy Alves Pereira and his son Darli Alves were sentenced to 19 years in prison for their part in Mendes' assassination.

Current events

• Wikinews Environment portal
  • September 5: Mount Sinabung erupts in Sumatra, Indonesia
  • September 3: Wikinews Shorts: September 2, 2010
  • September 3: Wikinews Shorts: September 3, 2010/Fuel tanker aground in Northwest Passage
  • September 1: EU ban on 75W bulbs comes into force

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Toyota Prius is one of the first mass-produced and marketed hybrid electric vehicles. Hybrid technology allows the vehicle to use both gasoline and electricity, thus reducing fuel consumption. It also reduces the amount of hydrocarbon emissions in the form of escaped gasoline vapour.

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The Brundtland Commission, formally the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), known by the name of its Chair Gro Harlem Brundtland, was convened by the United Nations in 1983. The commission was created to address growing concern "about the accelerating deterioration of the human environment and natural resources and the consequences of that deterioration for economic and social development." In establishing the commission, the UN General Assembly recognized that environmental problems were global in nature and determined that it was in the common interest of all nations to establish policies for sustainable development.

The Report of the Brundtland Commission, Our Common Future, was published in 1987. It was welcomed by the General Assembly in its resolution 42/187. The report deals with sustainable development and the change of politics needed for achieving that. The definition of this term in the report is quite well known and often cited:

"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts:

• the concept of 'needs', in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and
• the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs."

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