1 . It is late autumn—millions of gardeners across the northern hemisphere, pulled on their thickest sweaters, spent hours clearing large piles of leaves and packed them into plastic bags at the end of driveways.

In the US alone, nearly 10 million tonnes of garden waste go to landfill every year. That is a large amount of effort, not just from an environmental viewpoint but from that of our aching backs, too. So where does this advice come from? Well, it largely comes from the belief that thick fallen leaves can make plants under them unable to breathe, especially shorter grass. They shut down important photosynthesis (光合作用) and get in the way of the growth of the shorter grass. However, this received wisdom has recently been questioned by researchers at Wisconsin University.

The key finding of their new research was that although clearing fallen leaves is one of the most common gardening practices, it makes very little sense. In natural ecosystems, fallen leaves help return nutrients necessary for healthy plant growth to the soil, which greatly improves soil condition. Removing leaves year after year breaks this ecological (生态的) balance. Letting some leaves stick around to cover your garden is a great way to help your grass and the local ecosystem.

They further explained that if up to 50percent of your grass lawn (草坪) is covered by fallen leaves, you might as well go back indoors and put your feet up. The advantages of this light leaf coverage far outweigh the disadvantages—the leaves will quickly break down and help next year’s lawn grow far better than if you had cleared them. Only at over 50 percent coverage do the Wisconsin researchers recommend clearing.

So why not consider leaving the leaves? Save time, carbon and effort, and in exchange get a healthier lawn from this garden waste—that seems like a pretty good deal. And how many plastic bags could be saved by simply not binning fallen leaves every year? In the US alone, about 700 million.

2 . A couple has recently placed their garbage can out for collection for the first time in 14 months, all thanks to their recycling skills. Richard and Louise Arnold have established such an effective routine that they only need to put their garbage can on the side of the street once a year.

Louise explained that making small monthly changes in her life has resulted in her family producing very little waste. She said, “It’s not as difficult as you might think if you start with small steps. We began with soap, switching from bath cream to natural soap without packaging. These bars are large enough that we cut them in half, using one for the sink and the other half for the shower. It’s both cost-effective and environmentally friendly.”

“So it’s actually quite easy. Just go around your house and think of little things you can do gradually, and you’ll start noticing the difference,” Louise added. Currently, the couple takes recyclable waste to the tip, donates clothes to charity shops, and brings soft plastics and batteries to a shop that accepts them.

In 2017, the couple established No Waste Living, which initially started as a weekend stall at the local market and has since developed into a website. Louise regularly writes a newsletter for her hundreds of subscribers. They also started selling eco-friendly products, ranging from non-chemical household cleaning and washing solutions for a “less toxic home” to bamboo washing-up brushes. Louise mentioned, “I started No Waste Living because I wanted to show our achievement s and lead by example.”

Although the family occasionally faces criticism, Louise remains determined. She said, “The main point of contention(争论) for people regarding new waste rules is having to drive their waste to a recycling center, which adds to their already busy lives. However, in the long run, you will create more space in your home, save money, and spend less time dealing with garbage cans.”

7 . From Dec 7 to 19, delegates from around the world met at the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (also known as COP15), in Montreal, Canada. After two weeks of intense debate at COP15, delegates agreed on Dec 19 to adopt a landmark plan to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. “Finally, we reached our destiny. We adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework,” Huang Runqiu, COP15 president and China’s minister of ecology and environment, announced on Dec 19.

The new framework is a commitment by 196 parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity to conserve at least 30 percent of the Earth’s land and ocean area by the next decade. It also will increase the expected annual financial assistance from developed countries through 2030 to help developing nations with biodiversity protection.

The aim of COP15 is to ensure biodiversity loss is changed by 2030, and that humans are able to live in harmony with nature by 2050.To realize these objectives can be very challenging. At COP10 in Nagoya, Japan in 2010, the parties agreed on the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets (爱知生物多样性目标). But, as of now, none of the 20 objectives has been fully realized.

It is important to turn consensus into effective actions. Yet, as recent talks have shown, an aspect of effective international action on stopping climate change is the cooperation of developed countries. Developed countries, however, have fallen short of their responsibility as they have failed to fulfill the obligations according to the COP convention to provide funding and technology to poorer nations who lack the means to combat climate change.

To solve this problem, the framework creates a new biodiversity fund within the UN’s existing Global Environment Facility. This came about as a compromise between developing nations, which wanted a new fund, and developed countries, which did not. In addition, a global youth initiative (倡议) was also released, hoping young people to be leaders and advocates for biodiversity conservation.

8 . In the summer of 2021, an unseasonal event took place. More than 100 miles of Florida’s coast around Tampa Bay became an oxygen-depleted (缺氧的) zone containing dead fish along the nearby shoreline.

Much of the conversation around our climate crisis highlights the emission of greenhouse gases and their effect on warming, sea-level rise and ocean acidification (海洋酸化). We hear little about the effect of climate change on oxygen levels, particularly in oceans and lakes. But water without adequate oxygen cannot support life. For the three billion people who depend on coastal fisheries for income, declining ocean oxygen levels are devastating.

As ocean and atmospheric scientists focus on climate, we believe that oceanic oxygen levels are the next big victim of global warming. To stop the situation from worsening, we need to expand our attention to include the dangerous state of oceanic oxygen levels — the life-support system of our planet. We need to accelerate ocean-based climate solutions that boost oxygen. Examples include nature-based solutions such as those discussed at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) held in Glasgow.

Enhanced monitoring of oxygen and the establishment of an oxygen-accounting system are a must. Putting oxygen into the climate story motivates us to do the work to understand the deep systemic changes happening in our complex atmospheric and oceanic systems. We celebrated the return of humpback whales in recent years to an increasingly clean New York Harbor and Hudson River. However, dead fish blocked the Hudson in the summer as warmer waters carried less oxygen.

Ecosystem changes connected to physical and chemical system-level data may point the way to new approaches to climate solutions. It includes an enhanced understanding of the life-support system of our planet. Roughly 40 percent of the world’s people depend on the ocean for their livelihoods. If we do not save marine life from oxygen starvation, we starve ourselves.

10 . Roads and railways have made it easy for people to travel around the UK, but have had the precisely opposite effect for insects. Alongside housing developments, transport infrastructure (基础设施) has separated insect habitats, leaving many pollinators (传粉昆虫) stuck on decreasing islands of biodiversity.

A new conservation project aims to address that by creating a network of wildflower superhighways across the UK. The B-Lines network aims to join the dots between meadow habitats, enabling pollinators and other wildlife to move freely between them. Ten years in the making, the B-Lines initiative was launched by the insect charity Buglife on Tuesday and has already generated interest from unexpected quarters. “After the launch, some house builders rang up asking how they could include the network into house building, so it could have a really positive effect,” said Buglife’s Paul Hetherington.

Buglife has spent the last decade mapping potential routes for the insect superhighway. Hetherington said the proposed highway could give the UK’s weak insects a boost and a route out of habitats that become too hot due to the climate crisis and it can make a huge difference in easing declines. “The things that have really hammered pollinators are habitat loss, loss of connectivity of habitat, climate change and pesticides—this deals with everything except pesticides,” said Hetherington.

The B-lines network is not just a concept. Pilot sections have already been completed, including the South Wales B-Lines near Cardiff. “Since that was done, there have been recordings of one of our rarest bees in Cardiff town centre, which shows this connectivity can work,” said Hetherington. And in Norwich, Buglife has been working with Network Rail to plant wildflowers along the track. Anyone living along the proposed route can get involved in the project. All they need to do is let their lawns grow, or even just create a small herb garden, which Hetherington likened to creating a “motorway service station for bees”.