During the pandemic and the ensuing restrictions, the general picture in Denmark has been that older people have been much more worried about other people getting sick than they have been worried about themselves. Many were also worried about not becoming a burden during a difficult time for their families or anybody else. That was one of the insights from a large interdisciplinary research project at the University of Copenhagen that was launched shortly after the announcement in March 2020 of…
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Seeing the capital from up here, in the hills high above the rooftops, our perspective changes. The distance is small, but mentally, this is another world. A world with no mobile phone coverage. With no internet. A high place where the pandemic doesn’t seem to have reached.
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In the thick trees on the outskirts of Kisumu City in Kenya, a hut is as isolated as the 76-year-old woman who owns and lives in it alone. Without a child of her own, *Mary Atieno had called people "son" or "daughter" from the community she had built in church, a religious camaraderie that COVID-19 halted abruptly.
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With the COVID19 pandemic gripping the whole world, it has changed the way we learn, work, and socialize. As we get used to living in this new normal, as we call it, there had been a noticeable shift in the focus of research from some of the most pressing biodiversity issues to solely COVID19.
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While we fight for the last grain to survive, the Higaonon tribe – a group of indigenous peoples in the remote mountain villages of Bukidnon, Philippines – have lived for centuries utilising the plant resources in their ancestral land. These resources play an essential role in the resilience of the Higaonon tribal community.
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‘’Plato or Plumo’’. There is no other way I could start this article than by mentioning the famous intimidating words of Pablo Escobar, the drug lord who reigned not just Colombia but entire Latin America in the 1970s. It literally translates as ‘Silver (bribes) or Lead (bullets)’ in Spanish. The phrase itself says how ruthless the drug cartels were in those times. More than two decades after his death, cocaine still lurks as a livelihood strategy for many households in the region.
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Earth’s climate is dynamic. Past environmental conditions can be studied to give insights about current and future changes. As the planet warms quickly, scientists rush to investigate climate archives spanning thousands of years in order to unlock this information. Within the science community, there is an overwhelming consensus about human causing the current climate crisis among the science community, but it is a big challenge to raise awareness among the public.
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In October 2020, Krishnanunni Mavinkal Ravindran defended his Master thesis at Dept. of Food and Resource Economics (IFRO), University of Copenhagen. In this article, he tells about the fieldwork experience in Ghana. Krishnanunni studied the contribution of an edible pest species - shea caterpillars - to rural livelihoods in Ghana and the accessibility constraints associated with its harvest.
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‘Out of sight, out of mind’ is a well-known expression, but one with pernicious effects in the context of waste. We’ve always done things a certain way. Things are made, used, and thrown away. But where do all these thrown-away things go? What do they become? What could they become? Our linear way of thinking and behaving is being increasingly criticised as landfills overflow, water supplies dry up, and air becomes unbreathable.
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In 2018, the City of Cape Town declared a city-wide water crisis, which would be punctuated by ‘Day Zero’ – the day the city would run out of water. The drought had been looming for years, and the City of Cape Town had made some management changes, but all rested on the assumption that rain would fall at the same rate as in the past.
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