1 . Climate change is causing more areas to turn into deserts. This issue is affecting the lives of 250 million people as land that used to be good for farming becomes dry and unproductive. Around one-third of the world’s land is impacted, including regions in Africa, southern Europe, Asia and America.

Sand to Green is a Moroccan company that can transform a patch of desert into a sustainable (可持续的) and profitable plantation in five years, according to Wissal Ben Moussa, its co-founder and chief agricultural officer. The solution is using agroforestry (农林业)to create a new kind of agriculture that is sustainable and that can be resilient (有适应力的) in front of climate change.

The system can be set up close to any source of salty water, which Sand to Green cleans using energy from the sun. It then grows different types of fruit trees and plants together in the same area—a method called mixed planting—and waters the plants’ roots directly with the cleaned water, to reduce water loss to the air. The soil is regenerated using what Sand to Green calls “green manure”, a mixture that includes compost, biochar(生物炭)and microorganisms that help the soil “wake up”. Biochar is a form of charcoal that can help dry soil hold on to water.

In a five-hectare trial in southern Morocco that’s been running since 2017, Sand to Green has tried out a variety of plants in search of the best performers. Among the intercropping herbs (草本植物) that have been successfully trialed are rosemary, geranium, vetiver and citronella, which Ben Moussa describes as “very low-maintenance and very high-profit”.

Sand to Green is now working to scale up to a 20-hectare commercial site, also in southern Morocco. It says a site of that size would cost around $475,000 to set up and would start bringing financial returns in about five years.

According to Ben Moussa, with this system they create biodiversity, which means better soil, healthier crops and a bigger yield. The plantation can generate 1.5 times more yield, thus making more money than a farm that grows only one type of crop in the same space.

3 . World Water Day

Everyone needs water, and every drop is precious. On 22 March, World Water Day draws attention to the essential role of water in our lives.     1       

We all need water to stay alive, but about two billion people around the world live without clean water in their homes     2     Many of them live in rural communities or in places where there are wars and conflicts. Meanwhile, climate change is making the little water they have access to less and less.

    3     Thousands of children worldwide die every day from diarrhea caused by dirty water. In some countries, people walk many kilometers every day to get water, and sometimes the water isn’t clean. If children spend most of their day walking for water, they can’t go to school.

In 1992, the United Nations made a special day for water, and World Water Day has been celebrated on 22 March every year since 1993. On this day, many countries hold events to educate people about the problems of dirty water.     4    

Some charities organize fundraising events for World Water Day. People do things like sponsored walks, cycles and swims.     5     , where people walk four, eight or 12 kilometers each day in March to see how it feels when they have to walk a long way to get their drinking water. People give them money to do these things, and all this money helps provide clean water to as many people as possible around the world. So, this World Water Day, what will you do?

A new report suggests Canada’s Western Hudson Bay polar bear population     1    (drop) 27 percent during the past five years.

Every autumn, bears     2     (live) along the western edge of the Hudson Bay pass through the sub-Arctic town of Churchill, Manitoba. The yearly movement has helped make the area’s bears one of the most studied     3     (group) in the world. Bear watching adds about $5.3 million to the local economy each year.

But a report     4     (recent) issued by the government in Canada’s northern territory(地区) of Nunavut found that just 618 polar bears remained in     5     area. This represented a 50percent drop in the population from the 1980s.

Polar bears depend on frozen salt water called sea ice     6     (help) them hunt seals for food   But the Arctic is now warming about four times     7     (fast) than the rest of the world. Around Hudson Bay, seasonal sea ice is melting earlier in the spring and forming later in the fall. This is forcing bears to go longer periods     8     food.

John Whiteman,     9     is chief research scientist at the nonprofit conservation group. Polar Bears International, called the population drop “totally shocking”. He said, “Scientists fear that if continued sea ice loss cannot     10     (stop), it will one day lead to a total loss of the area’s polar bear population.”

From green sporting venues (场馆)     1     (equip) with wind, photovoltaic and other clean energy sources to technological applications including driverless buses and digital torchbearers, green technology became one of the     2     (big) highlights of the 19th Asian Games, held from Sept. 23 to Oct. 8 in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province.

Through the Games, Hangzhou’s green and high-tech development concepts served as models for other cities in China, which also showed the country’s     3     (commit) to low carbon and innovation-driven development.

The 65 venues and related facilities of the Games realized 100 percent green electricity supply. At the Hangzhou Olympic Sports Centre Aquatic Sports Arena, the intelligent light guide system can save 100,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year by introducing outdoor     4     (nature) light in to the arena through 210 tubes on the roof. At the Fuyang Water Sports Center,     5     variety of green plants made the arena’s greening rate reach 45 percent,     6     can collect carbon and release oxygen, and also make the arena warm in winter and cool in summer.

As Hangzhou     7     (be) one of China’s digital cities, intelligence became a major feature of the Games. The opening ceremony used 3D wire-guided technology in a large space     8     the first time, making the flame lighting ceremony the first digital lighting ceremony. with digital substantive integration. All venues     9     (cover) with 5G systems, new energy charging piles and intelligent management systems, while the tournament was broadcast in 4K ultra high definition,     10     (create) a new immersive viewing experience for viewers.

6 . As Christmas approaches and Christmas trees come down, Earthwatch offers the opportunity to sponsor the planting of a new tree with the Tiny Forest initiative.

Earthwatch Europe’s Tiny Forest initiative is devoted to increasing biodiversity and enabling people to reconnect with nature through citizen science. Since planting the first forest in 2020, the movement has grown to almost 150 forests, resulting in increased biodiversity and carbon storage.

There have been some reports to suggest that when poorly planned or managed, planting trees can actually do more harm than good. This can happen when trees are being planted with the express purpose of carbon storage to offset (抵消) carbon emissions by, for example, big companies—the trees planted for this purpose aren’t always native species. The planting of nonnative trees can lead to monocultures (单种栽培) that cannot support life.

Biodiversity needs to be a key consideration for reforestation, but this doesn’t offer the financial return s of planting for carbon storage or timber (木材) markets, so it can often fall by the wayside.

It is estimated that 50-60 million Christmas trees are produced and cut in Europe annually. In the run-up to Christmas, Earthwatch’s Sponsor a Sapling campaign offers the chance to sponsor the planting of a tree for £8.

Josh Kubale, Senior Communications Manager at Earthwatch, says, “We’re delighted with the Tiny Forest Sponsor a Sapling campaign, which will help people engage with what we’re doing at Tiny Forest and gives the option of an alternative and environmentally conscious Christmas present, As well as being a great Christmas gift, the campaign will help to fun d Earthwatch’s work across all our programmes. We’ve now planted 160 Tiny Forests and as we celebrate our third anniversary, we hope to plant many more!”

7 . Jace Tunnell, the founder of Nurdle I troll and Reserve Director at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute, is listening to the same question often.

“I hear every day, somebody says, ‘What is a nurdle?’” he said.

Tunnell explained nurdles are tiny balls of plastic that are typically used to make almost every plastic item we use, so they’re everywhere! He said nurdles are usually spilled (溢出) during transport from cargo ships or railroad cars. “These things would be out here for hundreds of years if we’re not picking them up,” Tunnell said while on a recent Nurdle Patrol cleanup along Galveston Bay.

Since 2018, Nurdle Patrol has grown to thousands of volunteers worldwide. Many people -volunteer with Nurdle Patrol and work for the Galveston Bay Foundation. Nurdle Patrol groups upload their findings to the nonprofit’s website map. It’s marked in colors to show where the highest concentration of nurdles is found.

“They look natural, and birds think that they’re food,” Tunnell said, “Birds, fish, sea turtles and other sea animals can eat nurdles and finally die from hunger because of a false sensation of fullness and lack of nutrition.”

I ended up finding 123 nurdles in 10 minutes. That’s high concentration,” Tunnell said about a recent cleanup. “I plan to take those to an elected official and say, ‘Look, these are what I found on our beaches here. We need to do something about this.’ So, it kind of puts in motion change that can happen.”

Nurdle Patrol has sent out hundreds of kits (工具包) globally, many to schools and volunteer organizations, with information about gathering nurdles and reporting the findings safely. Anyone can request a kit through their website.

10 . Edward Davis was a professor who worked on ocean research. However, bored with writing death records of ocean species, he quit his job in 2007. Rather than spend any more of his life recording the dying. Edward decided to try to protect the living creatures in the few remaining areas of the ocean.

These areas are the last wild places of the sea still undamaged by overfishing, pollution and climate change. “It is necessary for us to go to places that still look like the ocean as it was 500 years ago.” Edward says. “These areas, like Palau, are the examples of sustainable (可持续的) development. Maybe we can’t bring all of the ocean back to this state, but these places show us what the potential is.” Beneath the surface of a stormy sea off Palau in the western Pacific live various lively corals. The tiny island nation has protected 80 percent of its waters as a no-fishing area—the largest percentage of protected ocean area in the world. The remaining 20 percent can be fished only by Palauans.

To protect these places, Edward and his team started a project on ocean protection in 2008. Over the past years, the project has helped create 22 ocean reserves. These make up two-thirds of the world’s fully protected ocean areas. Now Edward and his team have set an even bigger goal—to protect more than a third of the world’s oceans for the purpose of keeping biological diversity.

For Edward, one of the most satisfying aspects of his job is working with local communities in the places he and his team are seeking to protect. The team worked closely with about 50 local people on the island. “We showed them an underwater world they had never seen,” Edward recalls. “Huge schools of fish will surely swim in some of the clearest waters ever measured in the Pacific.”