A few years ago, I had the opportunity to carry out a study to understand rural communities in Nicaragua as part of a team of social science and medical researchers. The topic of our study was childbirth – how do men and women decide whether to give birth in a hospital, a clinic, or at home?We made the journey in an ambulance from the hospital in the closest city to a town called Españolina.
Attempts to put a dollar value on the natural world – so-called “natural capital” or “ecosystem services” – have produced some frankly staggering numbers. A seminal 1997 paper valued the world’s ecosystem services at US$33 trillion a year. This estimate was controversial, given that it dwarfed the entire global market economy, which at the time stood at roughly US$18 trillion a year.
La principal ventaja de los vehículos eléctricos sobre los tradicionales es la simplicidad del motor eléctrico.
During this time when electricity prices are rising every day, lowering them by 10% may not seem like much. But a reduction of this magnitude should be considered very good news.Aún recuerdo una evaluación medioambiental de la respetada Unión de Científicos Sensibilizados (UCS, por sus siglas en inglés) que leí en los años 80.
Until recently, if I were asked to imagine ship-breaking operations, I would automatically think of one of those documentaries where skinny barefoot children crawl around inside beached and broken ships, pulling and cutting off the salvageable material, including scrap metal for recycling. For their efforts they receive only pennies plus a host of injuries and ailments. The leftovers, many dangerous and toxic, are often discarded with little regard for human safety and the environment.
In Latin America, 13 million child laborers can be found selling goods alongside the roads, working beside their parents on farms, as domestic workers in homes, and doing hard labor in hazardous industries. Globally, however, the number of children involved in child labor has declined by one third since 2000, from 246 million to 168 million children.