Campaigners against commercial kangaroo harvesting say it’s unsustainable and have convinced California to extend a ban on kangaroo imports. But are Australia’s world-famous roos really at risk?
Could municipal biosolids be a trove of tiny treasure?
Heather Lowers, USGS Denver Microbeam Laboratory
Mining waste rock from historic mines or even treated sewage to find useful metals and minerals could be a sustainable way to meet demand for these finite resources.
It’s high time we gave Australian wildlife a helping hand.
AAP Image/Sam Mooy
A 21st century government would put the environment on at least an equal footing with the economy. That means no more extinctions, and no more putting ourselves before wildlife or future generations.
Governments alone cannot achieve the UN’s big agenda.
Mike Segar/Reuters
After two years of negotiations, the UN Sustainable Development goals will be adopted today. How can society and government actually end poverty and achieve other lofty goals?
The “Africa we want” envisioned by the AU can be built - but not without universities’ help and hard work.
Shutterstock
A government for the 21st century needs to work out how we can grow our food, manufacture goods and dispose of waste without making such a huge mess.
Improving maternal mortality and ending preventable deaths in children are some of the health targets in the Sustainable Development Goals.
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade/Flickr
Health has secured its place as one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. But without clear mechanisms to report, finance or engage other sectors, could more end up as less?
Here’s a goal: no new coal mines.
Coal mine image from www.shutterstock.com
By championing economic growth, the Sustainable Development Goals are a barely disguised defence of the market fundamentalism that underpins business-as-usual. But in an age of planetary limits, sustained economic growth is not the solution to our social and environmental ills, but their cause.
Pope Francis and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon are together seeking to mobilise world opinion to change the way we live and produce.
EPA/L'Osservatore Romano
On his first visit to the US, Pope Francis will highlight the challenges of poverty and sustainability. A related issue, he acknowledges, is population. So what does that mean for Catholic teaching?
Methane monster – landfill in Danbury, Connecticut.
Evan Schneider/UN Photo
Later this week, world leaders will gather at the United Nations in New York and adopt a set of Sustainable Development Goals to guide global development.
Australia’s prodigious coal output is one of the factors that count against it in a new appraisal of sustainability among OECD nations.
John Englart/Wikimedia Commons
A survey of OECD nations puts Australia 18th out of 34 on progress towards the world’s new sustainability goals. It scores well on quality of life, but lets itself down on - you guessed it - climate.
More than thirty chemicals can go down the drain from products we use everyday.
Soap image from www.shutterstock.com
The ‘linear economy’ that drove 20th-century leaps in wealth is no longer sustainable, and our standard of living will not survive without a dramatic redesign.
A dumpster is fair game for scavenging.
Russ Allison Loar/Flickr
What does your vision of a sustainable future look like? Some people imagine a world where technology solves the world’s most pressing environmental problems.
Police officers stand guard in downtown Shanghai. China’s pollution crisis has reached epic proportions, driven by the country’s relentless pursuit of economic growth.
Reuters/Aly Song
Jason Hickel, London School of Economics and Political Science
The pursuit of endless industrial growth is chewing through our living planet, producing poverty and threatening our existence. The new Sustainable Development Goals fail to deal with this.
Let’s face it, your fridge looks nothing like this.
Anna Omelchenko/Shutterstock.com
Almost everyone wants to throw out less food. The good news is that even something as simple as organising your fridge into zones for different food types can stop your bin filling up.