A new report on New Zealand’s lakes and rivers confirms that many freshwater ecosystems are in decline and warns that climate change will exacerbate existing threats.
Agave honey bee log hive honey comb harvest.
Neil Rusch/no reuse without permission
In the 1950s, the African yam was exploited by drugs firm Boots to produce cortisone. But South Africans fought back against the plundering of a plant that they used for traditional healing.
When bushfires break out anywhere across Australia, a new national bushfire defence force – like army reservists – could be deployed.
AAP/DFES Lewis van Bommel
There is a real risk a national inquiry could get bogged down in politics, or not lead to real change. But we need more federal action on bushfires. Our old approaches are broken.
The development of an industry in edible insects such as these mopane caterpillars has been slow.
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There needs to be more awareness of the benefits of insects as food, and support for farming and markets.
Waters from the Herbert River, which runs toward one of northern Australia’s richest agricultural districts, could be redirected under a Bradfield scheme.
Patrick White
The ‘New Bradfield’ scheme seeks to revive a nation-building ethos supposedly stifled by bureaucratic inertia. But there are good reasons the scheme never became a reality.
Aja Conrad, the Karuk Tribe’s workforce and internships coordinator, lights a prescribed fire in Orleans, California.
Jenny Staats
Instead of suppressing wildfire, the Karuk Tribe in the Pacific Northwest is using it as an integral part of its climate change management plan. Federal, state and local agencies are taking note.
The sacred site of Uluru. In our Law we know that rocks are sentient and contain spirit.
Dan peled/AAP
There are memorial stones scattered along songlines throughout the Australian landscape, victims and transgressors transformed into rock following epic struggles to stand as cautionary tales.
A black marlin in the sea. These apex predators can grow to 800 kilograms.
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A giant ocean fish swims into the heart of industrial Port Kembla looking for food. What if we take its presence, a few km from an ancient, living midden, as a symbol of both new and old ways to learn in the age of the Anthropocene?
Environmentalists and activists with posters “peace in the forest and an end to indigenous genocide” in protest of the rights of indigenous people, in São Paulo, Brazil, January, 2019.
PARALAXIS /Shutterstock
Indigenous peoples safeguard biodiversity better than any other group. But in 2018, 164 were killed defending the environment. It’s time for us to heed their knowledge, and protect their future.
Historically, Khoisan people from southern Africa were used as scientific subjects in racist experiments.
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Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation e Nina Maile Gordon, The Conversation
Mukurtu: an online dilly bag for keeping Indigenous digital archives safe
The Conversation71,5 MB(download)
Mukurtu - Warumungu word meaning 'dilly bag' or a safe keeping place for sacred materials - is an online system helping Indigenous people conserve photos, songs and other digital archives.
Three sisters (winter squash, maize and climbing beans) summer garden at the University of Guelph.
(Hannah Tait Neufeld)
Indigenous food and medicine gardens, and traditional manikin (wild rice) harvesting offer hope – for the future health of humanity and the earth that sustains us.
Addressing Canada’s health inequities through the health-care system will only take us so far. Real change will require listening to Indigenous stories, which teach about our relationships to one another as human beings, and between us and our four-legged, winged, finned, rooted and non-rooted relations.
(Unsplash/jongsun lee)
To improve Indigenous health in Canada we need more Indigenous health professionals and more culturally competent health-care providers. We also need to listen properly to Indigenous stories.
Park guards view maps and photos of high-altitude glaciers – information that can be shared with local communities dealing with changing water levels.
Anne Toomey
Science can’t just stay in the ivory tower. But what does impact really mean and how does it happen? A study of more than a decade of ecological fieldwork projects in Bolivia suggests a better way.
A team of researchers in northern Australia have documented kites and falcons, “firehawks,” intentionally carrying burning sticks to spread fire: It is just one example of western science catching up to Indigenous Traditional Knowledge.
James Padolsey/Unsplash
A double standard exists concerning the acceptance of Traditional Knowledge by practitioners of Western science.
Indigenous knowledge has aided and enhanced modern science and technology for centuries, Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, speaks about climate change at the global COP22 conference in Marrakech, Morocco, in November 2016.
(AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)
Traditional Indigenous knowledge and science has aided the development of modern scientific knowledge, and including Indigenous people in science is essential to its future.
African universities can work towards decolonisation while championing the UN’s Agenda 2030.
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