1 . In the northernmost edge of Colombia sits the coastal town of Acandí. Access to the town is only by water or air; there is no road that leads there. The residents there are faced with the struggles of balancing livelihoods while protecting biodiversity.

In the past, traditional community fishing methods, passed down by the elders, focused on the reasonable fishing and management of resources. However, the introduction of large-scale trawling vessels(拖网渔船) decades ago gradually depleted the area’s fishing resources, leading to damage to marine(海洋的) life seriously.

Jesús Antonio Julio Cuestas, who serves in the region’s conservation and management of marine resources, stresses the bad impact of these developments and calls for new fishing techniques. “Fishing and conservation co-exist as long as we have good management practices and reasonable use of our fishing resources,” says Cuestas. He and other officials actively monitor fishing activities in Acandí. Each morning, they visit the fish markets to gather data on fishery resources—including prices and sizes—to monitor the state of the local fishing industry.

Along with Cuestas, the fishers work to reduce their impact on the marine ecosystem. By changing fishing methods and adopting new practices, they aim for a more balanced approach to fishing. “This year the local fishermen have not used the trawl net s that were causing the death of the leatherback sea turtles,” explains Cuestas proudly. Changes include the efforts of boats to protect the seagrass that serves as feeding grounds for marine life and an end to fishers throwing net s where turtles lay their eggs.

This marine reserve in Acandí, Cuestas believes, is their greatest treasure. He attaches great importance to working together with local residents to improve the quality of life while preserving the marine ecosystem. By doing so, he imagines a picture where individuals from the fishing community can pursue various careers, such as engineers or lawyers, proudly stating that they are the products of the fishing tradition in Acandí.

2 . The world’s coral reefs do more for the planet than provide underwater beauty. They protect shorelines from the effects of hurricanes. An estimated 500 million people earn their livelihood from the fishing stocks and tourism opportunities reefs provide. The tiny animals that give rise to reefs are even offering hope for new drugs to treat cancer and other diseases.

Despite their importance, warming waters, pollution, ocean acidification, overfishing, and physical destruction are killing coral reefs around the world. So now scientists around the world are looking for all kinds of ways to protect and maybe even revive(复苏) corals. In the Bahamas, Ross Cunning, a research biologist at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium, is focusing on corals with genes that could make them natural candidates for restoration projects. He recently published a study of two Bahamian reefs, one that seemed to survive an intense 2015 heat wave, and one that didn’t.“It sets the stage to find out which genes are responsible for thermal tolerance,” says Cunning, adding that he hopes discovering those genes will help scientists one day breed more heat-tolerant coral.

In Massachusetts, Cohen’s research has found two key elements that seem to protect corals. The first: internal(内部的) waves beneath the ocean’s surface that bring cooler currents to heat-struck corals, essentially air-conditioning them as temperatures rise. The second: adaptation, a quality that corals found in Palau’s warm lagoons(环礁湖) seem to display.On average, these lagoons submerge(淹没) coral in water that is two degrees Celsius warmer than the water outside the lagoons. “We think the fact that they can deal with these higher temperatures is built into their genetics and allows them to deal with the heat waves.”

She’s also found evidence of corals evolving more quickly in the past two decades to withstand rapidly warming temperatures. The big question scientists are now enquiring into, says Cohen, is whether there’s a cap on how much more heat corals can adapt to. Cohen calls these regions with heat-adapted corals as “super reefs,” and like Friendlander, advocates for using marine reserves to protect them.

3 . Western Australia may soon be home to the world’s tallest wooden building, after authorities plans for a 191.2-meter-tall tower constructed using mass wood. Perth’s Metro Inner-South Joint Development Assessment Panel (JDAP) approved the developer Grange Development’s proposal for the tall building.

The tall building, currently named the C6 building, would stand nearly twice as high as the current record holder. The developers say 42% of the building will be constructed from wood, with the columns and core made of concrete (混凝土). If completed, the high-rise will go beyond the current world’s tallest wooden building, the Ascent tower in Wisconsin, America, which stands at 25 stories or 86 meters. The structure, located in South Perth, Australia, will also be taller than the coming wood Atlassian Headquarters in Sydney, which is expected to claim the record from Ascent but is yet to be completed.

Like Atlassian Headquarters, the C6 building will combine wood beams (横梁) with a steel supporting structure to support the whole structure. According to Grange Development, the 50-story building will contain more than 200 apartments.

It will be Western Australia’s first carbon-negative residential building. Grange Development’s director, James Dibble, said, “Our desire with the building is to shift the focus towards a more climate-conscious approach.” The building will use 7,400 cubic meters of wood harvested from 600 trees. “We can’t grow concrete,” Dibble said, calling the plan “a new open sourced blueprint that uses construction methods to balance out the CO₂ within our built environment, which is the single biggest trigger to climate issues”. “This is our opportunity to show that we genuinely care about the climate crisis we are doing very little about as an industry,” he added.

Philip Oldfield, head of the University of New South Wales’ School of Built Environment, said, “Typically we build tall buildings out of steel and concrete, Concrete is responsible for 8% of all CO release. So by replacing concrete and steel with a biological material such as wood, it is going to reduce the environmental impact of the building quite significantly.”

4 . The UK typically produces an additional 30% of rubbish throughout the festive period compared to the rest of the year, as Britons collectively send over 100 million bags of rubbish to landfills every Christmas.     1    .

Remember that less is more. Research from Business Waste found that UK citizens spend £700 million on unwanted gifts every year. In addition, of all the purchases made for Christmas, only 1% will remain in use six months down the line.     2    . Furthermore, try to choose products with minimal packaging and recycled materials wherever possible. Simple switches can make a big difference!

    3    . If you’re searching for a gift that does as good as it looks, step inside the Ocean Bottle Christmas Gift Shop. There’s something for everyone, including the planet. When you buy an Ocean Bottle, you fund the collection of one thousand ocean-bound plastic bottles before they enter the ocean. Besides, 67% of these award-winning bottles are recycled.     4    . So, you can rest assured that they won’t end up in the landfill before next Christmas!

You need to know the materials.     5    , it can be easy to forget about other things like wrapping paper or our clothing. For example, some cards and wrapping paper are finished with materials that can’t be recycled. So, from Christmas cards to your Christmas sweater, take the time to look at materials and understand if and how you can deal with them in the most planet-friendly way. Reusing old wrapping paper or purchasing recyclable paper is highly recommended.

5 . Growing up in Canterbury, Scartozzi recalls swimming in rivers as part of her childhood. When she returned many years later, however, she noticed things had changed. “Some of the places where I could swim before now have signs saying ‘polluted water, do not swim’,” she says. “I wanted to take my kids to places to swim but we couldn’t because these signs were up.”

Although the experience was sad and surprising, it has also served as fuel for Scartozzi, who’s now focusing on restoring the health of waterways. Her company called eCleanEnvirotech is developing technology to remove pollutants from waterways such as rivers, ponds and streams. It involves feeding polluted water into a system housing microbes (微生物) that eat or break up the pollutants.

The “engineered” nature of the technology, Scartozzi explains, means it’s adaptable for different environment conditions. Each system can be personalized with its own unique “soup” of microbes to remove the pollutants in any waterway where it is installed (安装).

Other advantages of the technology, she says, are that it can process water relatively quickly and that it can be used to treat waterways in a variety of sizes and locations.

She says she hopes to create cleaner water for the benefit of future generations. “My passion is around restoring the health of these waterways. And my purpose is to do anything that I can to return them to their former condition. That’s what drives me every day. If I can do anything, it is so that in the future, my kids and grandchildren have somewhere where they can go swimming and fishing.”

6 . During the summer of 2021, I flew to Greece to learn more about the wildfires there. I wanted to hear people’s stories, to understand what it meant to be displaced by environmental disaster.

In a cafe for people surviving the fire, I met brave children who now have to live with terrible scars, physical and emotional. I met a man who could not even speak to me, his eyes filling with tears.

I was expecting to hear a lot about loss; I was not expecting to learn so much about the attribution (归因) of blame. I came to understand how desperately people needed to blame a tangible entity (实体) –a person, a group of people, the government. Indeed, this was understandable and reasonable. The outbreak and mishandling of the fire needed to be explored, looked into and dealt with.

What surprised me, however, was that the survivors were completely silent over any mention of the climate crisis and global heating. It was made clear to me that this subject was unacceptable. Survivors felt that these issues had nothing to do with what they had suffered, and that the people actually responsible needed to pay.

But when it comes to climate breakdown, blame did not come to just one person, one corporation, one country. In Greece, the fire didn’t rage so hard because someone had set off a spark—— it raged so hard because years of global heating had dried up the land, part of a set of unsustainable (不能持续的) practices and inaction that had set our planet on fire. And now the fires are even worse.

The more I spoke to people, including climate scientists, the more I came to see that there is often a gap that separates science from public awareness. In her book “Engaging With Climate Change” Sally Weintrobe says that “many people who accept global warming continue to regard it as a problem of the future”. To my astonishment, this seemed to apply even to people who had themselves been affected directly by wildfires.

7 . During the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, there was a lot of talk about the environmental efforts taken. Athletes slept on beds made from recycled cardboard. The medals were produced out of old appliances such as smartphones and laptops. Over 90% of Japanese cities, towns and villages participated in the two-year effort to collect recycled materials to produce 5000 medals. Eighty tons of small electrical devices were collected to make this project successful.

With the 2024 Olympics Games underway in Paris, new environmental efforts are coming into play. Observers will sit on chairs made of plastic recycled from local bins. This decision was made due to a lack of unused raw materials to make new seats, so the eco-construction firm Le Pave turned to make the seats out of waste. Around 11,000 seats will be made from recycled materials.

The plastic collection for Paris 2024 has been carried out in the region’s schools, and over five million coloured bottle caps have been recovered. Moreover, 80% of the 100 tons of recycled plastic needed to make the seats come from the yellow bins collections. This is all part of the Paris 2024 “zero waste” strategy to limit single-use plastic usage and encourage a circular economy.

The Olympic Games organizers are planning to make the Paris 2024 Games the greenest Olympic Games yet. They intend to employ a carbon-neutral approach that will lessen the climate impact of the Games by predicting, avoiding, reducing and balancing emissions and encouraging others to get involved. The Summer Games have emitted 3.6 million tons of carbon emissions in previous years. The Paris 2024 Games has set a carbon budget of 1.5 million tons which includes the emissions from construction, transportation and operations of the Games.

These plans are ambitious but are achievable. If Paris 2024 successfully reduces emissions and promotes a circular economy, it might set the standard for future Olympic and Paralympic Games, regardless of where they are held.

9 . There was one minute left on Suzanne Horsley’s watch and the atmosphere remained thick with carbon dioxide, despite the efforts of her third graders to clear the air. Horsley, a wellness teacher, had directed the kids to throw balls representing carbon dioxide molecules to their classmates representing forests. “That was hard,” said Horsley after the round ended. “In this time period versus the 1700s, the way is more challenging, right?” “Yeah.” “In 2022, we got a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” said Horsley. “What’s the problem with it? What is it causing?” “Global warming,” volunteered one girl.

Two years ago, New Jersey became the first state in the country to adopt learning standards requiring teachers to instruct kids about climate change across grade levels and subjects. “There’s no way we can expect our children to have the solutions to these challenges if we’re not giving them the tools and resources needed here and now,” said Tammy Marphy. Kids need to understand the basics of climate change—the vocabulary, the logic behind it—before they can handle the climate crisis.

On a recent weekday, Cari Gallagher was reading to her students from No Sand in the House, which tells the story of a grandfather whose home is destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. Later, the students sat down to write about what they’d heard, drawing connections between the book and their own lives, world events or other books they’d read. Then, they built structures—carports, walls and other barriers made of Legos, blocks and straws—that might protect against climate change calamities(灾难).

At Horsley’s class, students reflected on the lesson. Wes said adults could have done more to protect the environment. Abby said it was up to humans to drive less and recycle and protect other species from climate disasters. “When I first found out we were going to learn about climate change in the gym, I was like, that’s surprising, because normally we learn that in class,” Abby added. “But I’m glad we did it in the gym,” she continued. “It was really fun.”

The Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park, bordering Russia and the North Korea,     1    (cover) an area of 14,100 square kilometers. It is the major habitat of the country’s Siberian tigers and Amur leopards and is    2    model for cross-border wildlife conservation.

Located in the central zone of the mixed coniferous (针叶的) and broad-leaved forest ecosystems in the temperate (温带的) zone of Asia, the park possesses splendid and attractive scenery in different    3    (season) In addition, there are plentiful plant species well    4    (preserve) in the park, including thousands   of medical plants, eatable wild herbs, honev plants, wild fruit trees and bushes. Some of them are endangered plant species and    5    state protection.

The park is a perfect place for the reproduction and survival of birds. Every spring, various forest birds start returning from the. south to prepare    6    (lay) eggs. The rich soil of the park also provides a    7    (favor) living environment for cold-blooded animals. At present, a community of flesh-eating animals and a community of plant-eating animals make up a complete food chain in the national park,     8    is extremely rare to see in China. The national park will    9    (effective) protect Siberian tigers and Amur   leopards,     10    (help) them continue to reproduce and live in harmony with nature.