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The M23 rebellion has forced the park authorities to shut down what was a fast-growing tourism trade. In 2009 the park received 550 visitors; last year 3,000 tourists came to Virunga and that figure was projected to rise to 6,000 in 2012.

To De Merode's relief, the rebels and government forces this week agreed to allow a team of 45 rangers to search for and monitor the mountain gorillas. The Virunga park authorities said some of these gorillas have not been seen for over 10 weeks. There was further heavy fighting in the area this week, heightening fears for the gorillas' safety.

"There are around 210 mountain gorillas in the park, which is roughly a quarter of the world's population," he says.

"Without properly trained science journalists to serve as honest brokers ... the public is increasingly ill-equipped to sift through the cacophony of anti-scientific propaganda that pervades the public discourse and to identify the emerging threats to our health and our environment," Mann said. 

With two editors and seven reporters dedicated exclusively to environmental coverage, the Times has long been home to the single largest environment staff of any daily U.S. newspaper. Its coverage has become even more important in recent years, because many struggling papers have slashed their reporting staffs, often relying on the Times as inspiration for the stories they do cover.

Once the Times' environmental desk is dismantled, the nation's top five newspapers by readership—the Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal—will have about a dozen reporters and a handful of editors among them whose primary responsibility is to cover the environment. The New York Times has yet to reassign its reporters so a precise tally is not possible.

Pavan Sukhdev, head of UNEP's Green Economy Initiative and lead author of the 2010 Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study, tells Scidev.Net that the commission's report will in part be aimed at businesses preparing to exploit the high seas with new technologies.

“I don’t think there’s any question” that climate change is already affecting wheat production in North Dakota, says Roger Johnson, a former durum farmer who was the state’s agriculture commissioner from 1996 to 2009.

The televised horrors of Hurricane Sandy may help break the climate silence that still afflicts many Americans. “Mother Nature is better at bringing people to Jesus than any politician is,” notes Jay Fuhrer, the extension agent. But a fear of offending friends and neighbors still inhibits many. “The first thing we always talk about here is the weather, because it affects our lives so much,” says Donny Nelson. “But global warming, people just don’t get into it.”

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"There is no point in asking for change at a macro or sector level without also targeting change at the agent level. We have a serious agency problem. Corporations are 60% of GDP and 70% of global employment and left to themselves, 'Corporation 1920' type companies are unlikely to create the green economy. As the saying goes, turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

In the world of Corporation 2020, financial leverage would be limited by regulations that align corporate interests better with societal goals such as financial and economic stability. At present, this task is left largely to investors, with fund managers becoming the unlikely conscience-keepers of society. This is an unwise situation, to say the least.

the imposition of taxes on resource extraction, for businesses to be transparent about their impacts on society, and the creation of rules to make companies more accountable in the way they advertise products and services.

What is a sip of clean water worth? Is there economic value in the shade of a tree? And how much would you pay for a breath of fresh air?

That study, started in 2007, has estimated the world economy suffers roughly $2.5 trillion to $4 trillion in losses every year due to environmental degradation. That's up to 7 percent of global GDP.