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'Brown Clouds' Are World's Newest Environmental Threat By TINI TRAN AND JOHN HEILPRIN / AP WRITER Friday, November 14, 2008 BEIJING - A dirty brown haze sometimes more than a mile thick is darkening skies not only over vast areas of Asia, but also in the Middle East, southern Africa and the Amazon Basin, changing weather patterns and threatening health and food supplies, the UN reported. The huge smog-like plumes, caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and firewood, are known as "atmospheric brown clouds." Cars drive through thick smog on a street in Beijing in September 2008. Enormous brown clouds of pollution hanging over Asia are killing hundreds of thousands of people, melting glaciers, changing weather patterns and damaging crops, the United Nations said. (Photo: AFP) When mixed with emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for warming the earth's atmosphere like a greenhouse, they are the newest threat to the global environment, according to a report commissioned by the UN Environment Program and released Thursday. "All of these points to an even greater and urgent need to look at emissions across the planet," said Achim Steiner, head of Kenya-based UNEP, which funded the report with backing from Italy, Sweden and the United States. Brown clouds are caused by an unhealthy mix of particles, ozone and other chemicals that come from cars, coal-fired power plants, burning fields and wood-burning stoves. First identified by the report's lead researcher in 1990, the clouds were depicted Thursday as being more widespread and causing more environmental damage than previously known. Perhaps most widely recognized as the haze this past summer over Beijing's Olympics, the clouds have been found to be more than a mile (kilometer) thick around glaciers in the Himalaya and Hindu Kush mountain ranges. They hide the sun and absorb radiation, leading to new worries not only about global climate change but also about extreme weather conditions. "All t

Great article about the trade off between enforcing environmental rules and economic activity. Also great example of what happens when the government does not enforce its own laws and why.

[Submitted by Marcelo Fonseca]

The aim of this lesson: To examine the environmental and human factors affecting patterns and trends in physical water scarcity and economic water scarcity. Updated Jan 2012

The aim of this lesson: To be able to explain the causes of soil degradation To be able to discuss the environmental and socio-economic consequences of soil degradation To be able to discuss soil degradation management strategies Updated Dec 2011

Global Forest Change - for use with environmental sustainability & biodiversity 

I wanted to alert you to an excellent source that would fall directly under the new IB syllabus for Patterns in Env Quality and Sustainability.  When asking for a case study on sustainable management strategies, I'm using China's Loess Plateau.  There is an excellent film (on youtube and on the website) of a watershed rehabilitation project that has been incredibly successful.  This case study connects concepts of soil erosion, watersheds, climate change, and the social/econ and environmental consequences of this World Bank/Chinese gov't project.

Collection of films about different environmental topics - these are part of an "online film festival" not sure how tong they will be available but for the moment quite a resource.

The aim of this lesson: To be able to evaluate internal (national) in terms of it's geographic (socio-economic, political and environmental) impacts at it's origins and destinations. To discuss the causes of voluntary, economic migration. To use China as a case-study of internal (national) migration. Updated July 2012

Excellent example