The Earth Institute, Columbia University is pleased to announce 10 research assistant opportunities for undergraduate students during the fall 2012 semester. Undergraduates from Columbia and Barnard will be able to serve as research assistants on exciting research projects related to sustainable development and the environment, and engage with distinguished faculty and researchers at the cutting…

In an article published in The Lancet, Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs outlines his own ideas for sustainable development goals, and how how these goals can build on the Millennium Development Goals, the UN’s set of targets that aim to reduce extreme poverty and boost social well-being in many other ways by 2015.

An important piece of earthquake-science history popped up a few weeks ago on Jeopardy!: “The Press-Ewing was an early seismograph, recording waves from these events. If you didn’t know a Press-Ewing from a French press, you were in luck. For $200, all you needed to know to formulate the question is what a seismograph measures.…

High-value resources such as diamonds have been linked to civil conflict. But they can also contribute to promoting development in post-conflict countries. This possibility was explored during an all-day conference, “Identifying Lessons for Natural Resource Management in Post-Conflict Peace-building,” held at Columbia University on April 25.

An estimated 9 million species of living things inhabit the Earth. But those species are disappearing at an alarming rate, and this loss of biodiversity appears to be a major driver of environmental changes that can affect the biological and chemical processes that humans rely on.

Explore the country of Niger in this visual essay while learning about the importance of seasonal forecasting to the Sahel, one of the poorest and most climate-vulnerable regions in the world.

Many of us have clothing, accessories, and linens that we haven’t used in years. Instead of letting them take up valuable storage space in your home, help them find a second home through recycling.

“I strongly recommend that policy students and professionals make an effort to get to know the language and structure of environmental law and that law students and lawyers reciprocate.” MPA in Environmental Science and Policy Class of 2012 member Josh Garrett reflects on his role this past semester as a volunteer policy analyst at the…

The NPL Superfund Footprint Mapper is an interactive, online mapping application—a clickable map—that lets users visualize a rich variety of population and environment characteristics of areas in the vicinity of Superfund sites.