sustainable development31
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Socially Speaking, the State of the Planet
If you wanted to get a sense of the State of the Planet, you didn’t need to be at the Columbia University conference on Oct. 11. You just needed to follow #SOP2012. Six hundred people gathered at the event to think about the future of sustainable development, while 476 people sent 1,300 tweets, making about…
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Hiron Point in Sundarban
We traveled by boat to the south part of the Sundarbans near the Indian Ocean to install a GPS at Hiron Point, this isolated facility also hosts a tide gauge recording long-term water level changes due to rising sea level and land subsidence. Our GPS will help distinguish how much of each there is in…
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Polder 32
Polder 32 is one of the many inland islands in Bangladesh that was enclosed by an embankment to protect it from flooding. When that embankment failed during Cyclone Aila in 2009, the island was flooded for almost 2 years. Subsidence of the ground inside the embankment with no sedimentation to compensate made it worse. We…
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Khepupara to Kokilmoni
Leaving Dhaka, we spend an entire day getting to Khepupara in southern Bangladesh. Then we spent a long morning installing a GPS to monitor subsidence of the delta before heading back on the road again.
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Watering the World’s Crops, Drop by Drop
Dr. Daniel Hillel was recently honored with the World Food Prize for his pioneering work in sustainable agriculture.
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Partnering for Impact
Our highly interconnected and interdependent world has given rise to an extraordinary collaborative effort to design a future that is sustainable, prosperous and empowering. The recently concluded Clinton Global Initiative 2012 annual meeting’s theme, “Designing for Impact,” focused on designing our lives, environments and the global systems that can create more opportunity and equality.
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Nature’s Toxic Crusaders
Can mushrooms help clean up oil spills? Can oysters filter sewage pollution? Industrial waste is being injected into the planet’s soil and water as a result of human activity. Pioneers in the field of conservation and sustainability are employing nature’s own biological task force to help clean up.
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Joanna Rubinstein Named Assistant Director for International Programs
Dr. Joanna Rubinstein has been appointed today to the position of assistant director of the Earth Institute for international programs. Rubinstein will help to lead the Earth Institute’s international programs for sustainable development, with a key role in coordinating the Earth Institute’s new role as Secretariat of the UN Sustainable Development Solution Network, an initiative…
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Rio 2016 Olympics: Another Reason to Watch Brazil’s Rise
If public-private partnerships are essential to successfully carrying out the Olympics and using it to catalyze positive change for the host city, then Rio could have an important advantage for hosting the games in 2016.
By studying thousands of buildings and analyzing their electricity use, Columbia Climate School Dean Alexis Abramson has been able to uncover ways to significantly cut energy consumption and emissions. Watch the Video: “Engineering a Cooler Future Through Smarter Buildings“
