ENS Award

  STARKVILLE, Miss.—Scientists from Mississippi State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, along with other federal and academic organizations, met recently to solidify plans for a new MSU/USDA-ARS partnership focused on geospatial and environmental epidemiology. The USDA Agricultural Research Service is starting a new research collaborative, the ARS Geospatial and Environmental Epidemiology Research Unit, in partnership with MSU’s Geosystems Research Institute, College of Veterinary Medicine, and Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station. The new unit builds on long-standing partnerships between MSU and USDA-ARS, the USDA’s principal in-house research agency. The mission of the new unit is to harness advanced geospatial analysis, artificial intelligence and machine learning to focus on new approaches to cropping practices, predictive biology and disease epidemiology. The new unit brings together MSU and USDA-ARS scientis...

  Climate anxiety is very real, but these good news stories from 2024 prove there is hope for our planet. Eco-anxiety, climate doom, environmental existential dread - as green journalists, we see these terms used a lot - and often feel them ourselves. While there's a lot to be worried about when it comes to the climate and nature crises, we must not lose hope - because hopelessness breeds apathy. The media has an important role to play in combatting climate doom. It's our job to be truthful and accurate in our reporting, not trying to downplay or greenwash the situation. But it's also our job to show that there is hope. In 2023, as part of our ongoing effort to tackle eco-anxiety (both that of our readers and our own), we kept track of all the positive environmental news throughout the year. We racked up over 200 stories of eco-innovation, green breakthroughs and climate wins - more than double the number in 2022 and a sure sign of momentum. In 2024, we're confident the...

  India has seen an increase in environmental tech funding in the last five years, according to a report on Friday. The report by Tracxn, a leading market intelligence platform, comes in light of World Environment Day. It highlights key trends and emerging areas that are poised to make a significant impact in the fight against climate change. “India’s funding jumped from $225 million in 2018 to $1.5 billion in 2023, marking a compounded annual growth rate of 140 per cent,” the report said. While funding for environmental tech increased from Europe and India, contributions from the US saw a decline from 60 per cent in 2018 to 40 per cent in 2023. India is also seeing a significant rise in startups for solar energy technology, hydrogen production and storage, and electric vehicles, among others, the report said. There has also been a lot of funding for Indian startups tackling drought resilience through wastewater management. “Over $35 million worth of funding has been made to date, ...

 The environmental pillar of ESG focuses on how an organization performs with regards to the physical environment, taking areas into account such as energy use, pollution, natural resource utilization, conservation record, the treatment of animals and so on. Given the magnitude of the multitude of crises facing the planet and the increasing severity of environmental risks for companies, the E element of ESG has become more and more relevant.

  Millions of people across the globe are gathering to mark Earth Day and celebrate the environmental movement. The event began in 1970 in the United States, and is now marked around the world. What is Earth Day and when is it? Earth Day is a global event which aims to highlight the importance of protecting the environment. It takes place every year on 22 April. It was set up in 1970 by Gaylord Nelson, a US senator and environmentalist, and Denis Hayes, a graduate student at Harvard University. Both had growing concerns about environmental damage in the US, such as that caused by a large oil spill in 1969 in Santa Barbara, California. They came up with Earth Day as a way to engage the public and push green issues to the national agenda. The first Earth Day saw 20 million people across the US take to the streets. It became a global event in 1990, and now involves over one billion people of all ages in nearly 200 countries, according to organisers.

  Social media has been a connector of people near and far, but it has also fueled political conflict, threatened democratic processes, contributed to the spread of public health misinformation, and likely damaged the mental health of some teenagers. Given what’s come to light about these platforms over the last several years, it is increasingly clear that current guardrails—both government regulations and the companies’ internal policies—aren’t sufficient to address the issues plaguing the information environment. But for democracies and their citizens to thrive, a healthy virtual ecosystem is necessary. To get there, experts need an international effort to link policymakers to research by gathering, summarizing, and distilling relevant research streams. Two such initiatives, the International Panel on the Information Environment and the proposed International Observatory on Information and Democracy, have begun working towards that goal. Both are inspired by the Intergovernmental...

  The global average sea level increased by 0.76 centimeter's in just a year between 2022 and 2023, which experts call a relatively larger jump. n ShortNasa analysis reveals a significant rise in global sea levels Sea levels fluctuate due to seasonal climate phenomena Researchers use radar altimeters to measure sea level While several parts of the world including India reel under heatwaves, worsened by the El Nino phenomenon, oceans are not untouched. Analysis of the dataset has revealed how ocean surface heights continue to rise at faster and faster rates. The global average sea level increased by 0.76 centimeters in just a year between 2022 and 2023, which experts call a relatively larger jump. The jump is being attributed to a warming climate and the development of a strong El Nino.