In terms of conservation, plants do not receive as much attention as cute cuddly animals like pandas or polar bears. Let’s face it – they don’t even rank up there with giant salamanders.

But plants provide food for all living things and are essential to life on Earth. The untapped medicinal and technological resources in plant life around the world are unknown but potentially invaluable. Therefore preserving plant species and maintaining botanical biodiversity is an important, if often overlooked, issue.

One fifth of the 380,000 plant species on Earth are threatened by extinction, mostly due to human activity. This month, the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan will attempt to hash out a deal for ‘equitable sharing’ of the benefits of such resources and attempt to prevent what is being called the ‘sixth great extinction’.

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Like something straight out of the Bible, swarms of locusts are spreading throughout the Australian states of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria.

Australia’s wettest September on record followed years of drought, providing ideal conditions for a massive locust plague. It is feared that millions of euros worth of crops will be damaged in what is being described as the worst locust invasion in 75 years.

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It may sound illogical to produce biofuels in the Middle East, a region generally associated with oil. It may sound even stranger to ship biofuel all the way from the US to the Afghanistan in order to power the vehicles of the US military.

Well this is geopolitics, don’t try to make simple sense of it.

Afghanistan, though neighbors with some big oil producers in the Persian Gulf, does not have a fossil fuel industry. It does, however, have a big opium and heroin economy.

A recent study proposes that a biofuel industry in Afghanistan, with the US military as the main consumer, could at once replace poppy farming among locals and attacks on military fuel convoys. It would have the added benefit of meeting the military’s environmental program targets.

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A recent study of crows in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia in the South Pacific shows that the birds use tools to catch their food.

From an article in the New York Times:

The crow uses twigs to poke at a beetle larva until the larva becomes so agitated that it grabs onto the stick with its mandibles, at which point the crow yanks out the twig, having successfully captured its prey.

For the family of birds known as corvids – which includes ravens, magpies and jays – the term ‘bird brain’ has no proper meaning. The brain to body weight ratio in corvids is equal to that of great apes and cetaceans (whales and dolphins).

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Coastal population centers have always been more vulnerable to natural phenomena like storms and erosion. It’s the price we pay for the economic advantages of coastal ports and fancying living by the sea.

Throughout history, storm surges have caused death and destruction in coastal towns and cities – from a 14th century storm surge that killed as many as 25,000 people in Nordfriesland, Germany to Burma’s tropical storm Nargis in 2008, which left some 140,000 dead.

A storm surge happens when windstorms cause sea levels to rise, resulting in flooding like what took place in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

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A pod of around 80 pilot whales stranded itself on a New Zealand beach earlier this week.

The whales were spotted Wednesday morning on a beach at Spirits Bay on New Zealand’s North Island. Dozens died before a rescue effort successfully moved 24 of the whales to another beach some 50km south for release. An additional three died during the relocation effort according to an AAP report.

Now at Rarawa Beach, the surviving whales will be released tonight and herded in the right direction by boats.

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Indoor air pollution from cooking stoves is the a serious health risk in developing countries. According to UN figures, it causes cardio-pulmonary diseases and low birth weight, killing some 1.9 million people every year – mostly women and children.

Rudimentary cooking stoves in poor nations are usually fueled by foraged wood, crop waste, coal and dung. Besides being a major health hazard, the use of such stoves has substantial and manifold effects on the environment. The soot, or black carbon, produced by these stoves has a fast acting, though short-lived impact on global warming.

Gathering wood for the stoves has also contributed to significant deforestation in Africa and Asia. The depletion of these cooking fuel sources in regions that depend on cooked grains would severely impact nutrition and hunger.

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In his recent piece for the Guardian, entitled ‘Climate change enlightenment was fun while it lasted. But now it’s dead’, George Monbiot laments the undeniable failure of legislation, global cooperation and civil society to tackle the problem of climate change. One of the loudest voices for British environmentalism has given up on the political machine he has tried for years to influence. Because it isn’t working. Anywhere.

In fact things are just getting a lot worse. For example, Europe’s ‘robust’ carbon cuts have been dwarfed by the outsourcing of emissions to developing countries – mainly China.

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Typhoon Fanapi caused power outages, evacuations and landslides Taiwan, but the eye of the storm has now left the island, according to a report on Focus Taiwan.

Winds reached 220 kmph (136 mph) in some regions, causing problems for infrastructure and leaving 314,000 households without power. Mudslides caused by torrential rains blocked roads in mountainous areas. Flights, ferry services and Taiwan’s extensive high-speed rail network were also disrupted by the storm.

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India: a country of nearly 1.2 billion people with over 28% living under the official poverty line, as defined by Indian government in 2004-2005. Some 400 million of these poor depend on government food handouts, which fall short of meeting demands.

Yet experts say that there are over a billion tons of grain rotting away in government warehouses, an amount that could feed over 600,000 people for 10 years.

And though feeding the poor can expense, the consequences of not feeding them are much greater – economically as well as morally. The antipoverty group ActionAid calculates that the poorest nations lose more than ₤290 billion (€346 billion) due to hunger. Halving global hunger by 2015 is estimated to cost just a tenth of that money.

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Xinjiang autonomous region is China’s frontier land for renewable energy. China has poured cash into wind energy projects in Xinjiang, fuelling a boom in the country’s largest and most western region.

Because of the Chinese government’s investment in renewables, like the wind farms of Xinjiang, China has recently been named the best place to invest in green energy.

But for many people in Xinjiang, particularly the Muslim Uighur community who make up its largest ethnic group, the ‘wind rush’ is just another stage of colonization by the People’s Republic of China. Uyghers have for the most part not benefitted from China’s economic boom and many feel discriminated against.

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The Chagos Islands, aka British Indian Ocean Territory, is an overseas territory of the United Kingdom containing many small islands, the largest being Diego Garcia.

Diego Garcia was famously – and forcibly – evacuated by the UK government in the 1960s to make way for a US military base. After several court cases, the islanders have still not been allowed to resettle their homeland. The Chagos’ only inhabitants are currently US military living on Diego Garcia.

Furthermore, last April a 250,000 square mile (650,000 sq km) Marine Protected Area (MPA) was established around the archipelago prohibiting commercial fishing.

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Xintang, China is home to some 15,000 textile factories which produce 200 million pairs of blue jeans every year. The wastewater from these factories turns local rivers an unnatural shade of blue.

Residents of Xintang complain of health problems such as birth defects, breathing difficulties and skin rashes, but no serious studies have been conducted to link health maladies to pollutants from the textile industry.

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As Sri Lanka’s human population grows, its number of wild elephants diminishes.

It is a conflict that the elephants are losing, as humans take over tracts of land necessary for elephant survival. Land corridors are being marked off with electric fences and used for cattle farming, effectively reducing elephant food and water supplies.

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Coconut methyl ester (CME), the biodiesel extracted from coconut, is considered “green” since it is environmentally friendly and can help mitigate global warming.

Greenhouse gases produce the so-called “greenhouse effect,” which traps heat near the Earth’s surface. Many human activities increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which can result in a gradual increase in the Earth’s surface temperature.

Carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, occurs naturally but excessive quantities of it are released by burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil to generate electricity and gasoline for vehicles. Over 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide are released each year by burning fossil fuels.

The Philippines is the first country to use coconut as source for biodiesel. Studies have shown that for every liter of CME consumed, it generates a reduction of three kilograms of carbon dioxide. Furthermore, being a saturated biodiesel, the emission of nitrogen oxide (another greenhouse gas) is substantially reduced.

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It did get me wondering, however – and bear with me this is a tenuous connection – what some influential Muslims are saying and doing regarding environmental issues – specifically in the name of Islam.

Is there an ‘ecological’ Islam?

Most religions to some extent preach anti materialism, are against waste and wanton destruction of ‘God’s green Earth’, etc., but I’m curious about the here and now. As environmentalism has made – at least superficial – inroads into modern culture, how has is the ancient tradition of Islam responding to this current shift in consciousness?

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The global boom in sushi and overfishing have gone hand in hand for the last two decades. The tuna auctions, especially the Tsukiji in Tokyo, are a kind of Wall Street. There, each day,  2,000 tonnes of fish are sold, of which fifty of bluefin tuna are auctioned and sold at the price of gold. Eighty percent of tuna caught and consumed in the world goes through Japan.

Providing fresh seafood to industrialized countries has become a greedy business. Between 1995 and 2005, ten Mediterranean countries began to exploit their waters and soon after were joined by Japanese, Korean, Russian and South American fishermen.

All the great powers of globalization overexploit bluefin tuna. The greatest damage occurred  in 2007, when more than 60,000 tonnes were captured, twice the amount authorized.

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Geo-engineering doesn’t prevent at all the rise of the tides. Engineering on a global scale is not a solution, even in an emergency, to the climate damage caused by human activities. This is the conclusion reached by a team of British, Chinese and Danish researchers after a new study on the future of the Earth’s oceans.

In their opinion there is no escape: sea levels will rise at least 30-70 cm by the end of 2100, even using the latest weather manipulation techniques. Substituting geo-engineering for the control of emissions would create an enormous risk for future generations, according to research published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The highest authority on climate change, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) predicted that sea levels will be 20-60 cm higher by the end of this century. This is an estimate which many scientists now revise upwards, bringing it up to 1-1.5 meters.

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In Japan, 5355 schools out of the 29,600 public primary and junior high schools with canteens for students, served whale meat at least once up to March 2010, during the school year , a survey by Kyodo news revealed.

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Celebrities are raising their voices to aid in the fight to help the people of flood-ravaged Pakistan.

Pakistanis adding their star status to the cause include politician and former cricketer Imran Khan, film actress Meera and pop star Abrar-ul-Haq.

Hollywood actress and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie has donated $100,000 (€78,000) to the aid effort and is lending her voice in order to urge others to help.

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Japan’s economic success is causing many serious environmental problems, but one stems not from its factories but from too many golfers. In the late 1980s, several groups actively opposing golf course throughout Japan met in Kobe for their third annual national convention.

Here is powerful testimony to the seriousness with which communities consider the adverse effects of golf courses. According to a report by the OECD, Japan’s early success in combating pollution is threatened by increasingly wasteful patterns of consumption.

Japan’s total land area is about the same as the state of California. Over 100 million people live in this land space.

Before World War II, there were only 23 golf courses in all of Japan and only 72 in 1956. Now, there are a total of 1,700 golf courses in operation, with another 330 under construction and roughly 1,000 in various stage of planning.

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In the wake of a summer that spawned harsh heat waves and forest fires in Europe; and catastrophic floods in China, Pakistan and elsewhere in Asia, climate debate is back in the news.

Debate about the significance or even existence of anthropogenic global warming featured prominently the headlines last winter during the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, the ‘Climategate’ scandal the IPCC and the Met Office were embroiled in; and when parts of Europe and the US experienced unseasonably cold temperatures.

These major events were followed by a relative lull in media coverage of climate issues, punctuated by the odd story about overfishing or biodiversity. Then came the Icelandic volcano and the granddaddy of all eco-news stories, the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe and blundering BP.

Now, dear friends, the debate – like the planet – is hotting up again.

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