#biodiversity

Gill nets cause unnecessary harm to sharks and other wildlife while failing to reduce local shark presence, since sharks are highly migratory and have no fixed territory. Healthy shark populations are essential for balanced ecosystems.

It is largely unknown how radionuclides from degrading drums (Co-60, Nb-94, Cs-137, Am-241) move into deep-sea sediment, water, and living organisms over decades — and the drums themselves have become hard-substrate habitat, putting fauna in direct contact with the waste.

From 1946–1990, ~14 nations dumped 200,000+ barrels of radioactive waste into the deep ocean under a

Headline tree-planting counts measure seedlings in the ground, not living forest years later. Wrong species, wrong site, no aftercare, and monocultures mean large shares of planted trees die — yet the numbers are routinely used to claim climate and biodiversity impact.

Litter from streets, rivers and beaches concentrates along coastlines and in the sea — the ultimate sink for land-based debris. Once there it is dispersed, hard to recover, and lethal to marine wildlife through entanglement and ingestion.

In wild and remote areas there are few or no bins and no cleaning crews, so even small amounts of dropped trash — wrappers, micro-litter, food scraps, human waste — persist, harm wildlife, and degrade the very experience that drew visitors there.

Discarded packaging, cigarette butts and other small waste builds up along roadsides, trails, parks, rivers, beaches and the ocean — harming wildlife, degrading shared spaces, and costing the public hundreds of millions a year to clean up.

Conventional desalination discharges 58–78% of inlet water as hypersaline brine that raises local salinity and depresses dissolved oxygen, damaging the inshore marine ecosystems coastal fishing communities depend on for food and income.

Protecting one biome or commodity can just displace clearing to the next. The Amazon Soy Moratorium shielded rainforest but pushed soy and pasture into the less-protected Cerrado savanna, now often the hardest-hit biome. Savannas and dry forests get weaker legal protection.

Fund local partners to restore native species on degraded land — not carbon-rich habitat that doesn't need trees — with multi-year aftercare and satellite-plus-field monitoring. Report trees alive over time, not seedlings planted.

A fence from seabed to surface and shore to shore fully encloses a swim area, keeping sharks out without trapping or killing wildlife. Inside the enclosure protection is near-absolute, but it suits sheltered beaches only and protects just that zone, not the open surf.

Bottom-set gillnets off bathing beaches entangle and kill large sharks to thin local numbers. Long-established, but they are a culling device, not a barrier: sharks pass around them, bycatch of turtles, dolphins and rays is high, and bite-reduction evidence is weak.

Plant and steward trees, prioritizing the specific streets that heat-mapping shows are hottest and have least canopy. Trees cut surface and air temperature through shade and evapotranspiration, and also reduce stormwater runoff.

An open space on the edge of King's Lynn, Norfolk, was planted with around 6,000 trees in plastic tree guards, intended to create a carbon sink. Reporting found that almost all trees died. Three compounding errors were…

On 11 November 2019 ('National Forestation Day'), Turkey's government ran 'Breath for the Future,' planting roughly 11 million saplings at over 2,000 sites in a single day. At Çorum, volunteers set a Guinness World Reco…

Ecosia funds local partner organisations in biodiversity hotspots and degraded land across 35+ countries; partners grow, plant, and nurture trees through establishment. The program uses 900+ diverse native species, expl…

After a four-month trial at Coogee Beach (December 2013–April 2014), the City of Cockburn installed an Eco Shark Barrier made of rigid plastic mesh panels that exclude sharks while letting small marine life pass, avoidi…

Hong Kong introduced seabed-to-surface shark prevention barriers in the early-to-mid 1990s after a cluster of fatal attacks between 1991 and 1995. Unlike gillnets, the barriers fully enclose the swimming area from seabe…

Australia's oldest beach shark program, operating continuously since 1937. For the 2025–26 season, bottom-set gillnets were deployed at 51 beaches across 8 local government areas between Newcastle and Wollongong (1 Sept…

Begun in 2018 as part of Paris's Climate Adaptation and Resilience Strategy, "Les Cours Oasis" depaves asphalt schoolyards and replaces them with trees, permeable ground, shade and water features, then opens them as nei…

Since the 1960s 'Garden City' vision and now the 'City in Nature' / Green Plan 2030 strategy, Singapore grew green cover from 35.7% (1986) to roughly 48% even as urban density rose. Key mechanisms: mandatory greenery re…

Launched in 2016 to counter urban heat island effects and severe air pollution in the Aburrá Valley, Medellín built 30+ interconnected 'green corridors' (corredores verdes) along road verges, streams, parks and hillside…

#FreetownTheTreeTown is a community-driven reforestation program in a rapidly urbanising coastal city that lost roughly 12% of its canopy per year between 2011 and 2018, raising landslide and flood risk. Community growe…