【推荐1】In the 1990s, when an area of Brazilian rainforest the size of Belgium was cut down every year, Brazil was the world’s environmental villain (反派角色) and the Amazonian jungles the image of everything that was going wrong in green places. Now, the Amazon ought to be the image of what is going right. Government figures show that deforestation fell by 70% in the Brazilian Amazon region during the past decade. If clearances had continued at their rate in 2005, an extra 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide would have been put into the atmosphere. That is an amount equal to a year’s emissions from the European Union. Arguably, then, Brazil is now the world leader in addressing climate change.

But how did it break the vicious cycle (恶性循环)? The answer, according to a paper is that there was no silver bullet but instead a three-stage process in which bans, better governance in frontier areas and consumer pressure on companies worked.

The first stage ran from the mid-1990s to 2004. This was when the government put its efforts into bans and restrictions. The Brazilian Forest Code said that, on every farm in the Amazon, 80% of the land had to be set aside as a forest reserve. As the study observes, this share was so high that the code could not be followed --- or enforced. This was the period of the worst deforestation. Soybean prices were high and there were a vast expansion of soybean farming on the south-eastern border of the rainforest.

During the second stage, which ran from 2005 to 2009, the government tried to boost its ability to police the Amazon. Brazil’s president made stopping deforestation a priority, which resulted in better co-operation between different bits of the government. The area in which farming was banned was increased from a sixth to nearly half of the forest.

The third stage, which began in 2009, was a test of whether a system of restrictions could survive as soybean expansion continued. The government shifted its focus from farms to counties (each state has scores of these). Farmers in the 36 counties with the worst deforestation rates were banned from getting cheap credit until those rates fell.

By any standards, Brazil’s Amazon policy has been a success, made the more remarkable because it relied on restrictions rather than rewards, which might have been expected to have worked better. Over the period of the study, Brazil also turned itself into a farming superpower, so the country has shown it is possible to get a huge increase in food output without destroying the forest. Moreover, the policies so far have been successful among commercial farms who care about the law and respond to market pressures. Most remaining deforestation is by small holders who care rather less about these things, so the government faces the problem of persuading them to change their ways, too. Deforestation has been slowed, but not yet stopped.

【推荐2】As warming continues, scientists warn the oxygen content of oceans across the planet could be more and more reduced, with serious consequences for the future of fish and other sea life.

    1    One is the simple fact that as water gets warmer, it can hold less dissolved (溶解的) oxygen. The other reason is less obvious. The entire ocean gets its oxygen from the surface — either from the atmosphere, or from photosynthesizing algae floating at the top of the sea.     2    

Global warming is expected to reduce the mixing of the ocean by making surface seawater lighter. That’s because in a warmer world we can expect more rainfall and more melting (融化) of glaciers, icebergs, and ice sheets.     3    The extra heat from the warming atmosphere will also make surface water expand and thus make it lighter still.     4    Instead, more of the oxygen will remain near the surface, where it will be used up by oxygen-breathing organisms.

A low-oxygen ocean may become an inescapable feature of our planet. A team of Danish researchers wondered how long oxygen levels would drop if we could somehow reduce our carbon dioxide emissions to zero by 2100. They determined that over the next few thousand years oxygen levels would continue to fall, until they declined by 30 percent. The oxygen would slowly return to the oceans, but even 100,000 years from now they will not have fully recovered.     5    

【推荐3】Climate change disproportionately affects the world’s most vulnerable people, particularly poor rural communities that depend on the land for their livelihoods and coastal populations throughout the tropics. We have already seen a chain of tough suffering that results from extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, and more.

For remedies, advocates and politicians have tended to look toward cuts in fossil-fuel use or technologies to capture carbon before it enters the atmosphere – both of which are crucial. But this focus has overshadowed the most powerful and cost-efficient carbon capture technology in the world. Recent research confirms that forests are absolutely essential in reducing climate change, thanks to their ability to absorb and isolate carbon. In fact, natural climate solutions such as conservation and restoration of forests, along with improvements in land management, can help us achieve 37 percent of our climate target of limiting warming to a maximum of two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, even though they currently receive only 2.5 percent of public climate financing.

Forests’ power to store carbon dioxide is staggering: one tree can store an average of about 48 pounds in one year. Intact (完整的) forests could take in the CO₂ emissions of some entire countries.

For this reason, policymakers and business leaders must create and enforce policies to prevent deforestation, foster reforestation of degraded land, and promote the sustainable management of standing forests in the fight against climate change. Protecting the world’s forests ensures they can keep performing essential functions such as producing oxygen, filtering water and supporting biodiversity. Not only does the world’s entire population depend on forests to provide clean air, clean water, oxygen and medicines, but l.6 billion people also rely on them directly for their livelihoods.

Unfortunately, a huge amount of forest continues to be converted into agricultural land to produce a handful of resource-intensive commodities — despite zero-deforestation commitments from companies and governments. So now is the time to increase forest protection and restoration. This action will also address a number of other pressing global issues. For example, in less developed and rural areas — especially in the tropics — community-based forest-management programs can forge pathways out of poverty. In the Petén region of Guatemala, for instance, community-managed forests boasted a near-zero deforestation rate from 2000 through 2013, as compared with 12 percent in nearby protected areas and buffer (缓冲) zones. These communities have built low-impact, sustainable forest-based businesses that have stimulated the economy of the region enough to fund the creation of local schools and health services. Their success is especially noticeable in a location where, outside these community-managed zones, deforestation rates have increased 20-fold.

【推荐1】Last year my children gifted me a stainless steel (不锈钢的) coffee plunger (法式按压咖啡壶). I love to start the day with a strong black coffee and couldn't wait to use it. I looked forward to the following morning's coffee making, knowing that I probably wouldn't smash (打碎) this plunger as easily as I had done so often in the past.

But as I poured my first cup of coffee, the plunger spilled (洒出) all over the table. Thankfully no one was around to see my disappointed face! I kept trying, but each morning would see me wiping up the coffee. Then I realized that if I poured very slowly there would be no spilling.

This was at first a very painful experience. My normal practice was to rush through breakfast so that I could get on with my day.

But in time I learned not only to pour slowly but to enjoy the experience: the smell, the taste, and the stillness of a new day.

It prompted (促使) me to reflect upon whether there were other areas of my life I was rushing through. Most of life, it seemed.

I started to leave extra time to do even the most ordinary tasks. When shop owners would apologize for keeping me waiting, I'd say, "Not a problem, I'm not in a hurry." Even hanging out washing became pleasurable when a couple of extra minutes of standing still and listening to the birds singing in the trees around me became part of my routine.

Besides, one of my favorite experiences living in the inner city for many years was sitting on the front doorstep of our home spending time with strangers. We sat on the steps, each of us with a cup of coffee in our hands, listening to each other's stories. It was one of the warmest things about living in a busy city. It was as if the world around us slowed to a pace (步伐) we could both handle.

Stillness and quietness not only slow the pace of life, but also feed the soul, helping us to enjoy the world's small pleasures.

【推荐2】Darrell Blatchley, a marine biologist and environmentalist based in the Philippine city of Davao, received a call from the Philippines, Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (渔业与水产资源局) early Friday morning reporting a death of a young whale.

When the necropsy (尸检) was performed, Blatchley told NPR, he was not prepared for the amount of plastic they found in the whale’s stomach. “It was full of plastic nothing but nonstop plastic.” he said “It was filled to the point that its stomach was as hard as a baseball.” That means that this animal has been suffering not for days or weeks but for months or even a year or more,” Blatchley added.

Blatchley is the founder and owner of the D’Bone Collector Museum, a natural history museum in Davao. In the coming days, the museum will display all the items found in the whale’s system. Blatchley and his team work with the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources and other organizations to assist in rescue and recovery of marine animals.

“Within the last 10 years, we have recovered 61 whales and dolphins just within the Davao Gulf,” he said. “Of them, 57 have died due to man whether they took plastic or fishing nets or other waste, or gotten caught in pollution — and four were pregnant.”

Blatchley said he hoped that the latest incident would launch the issue of plastic pollution in the Philippines and across the globe. “If we keep going this way, it will be more uncommon to see an animal die of natural causes than it is to see an animal die of plastic,” he said.