The area of the squares is proportionate to the annual reduction in emissions in million tonnes of CO2 equivalent. Displaying main areas of housing investment, daily life and private car investment.

In the 1980s severe hygienic problems plagued parts of Curitiba where housing development was uncontrolled. The winding streets were too narrow for council trucks and waste rotting in the open caused disease. In 1989 the council decided to act. It sent environmental education teams into affected areas where they joined forces with neighbourhood associations to organise waste collection by local people.

At Beddington, south of London, a housing development known as BedZED (Beddington Zero energy development) was designed from the start to produce little waste of any sort. It was built on a depolluted plot of land, previously used by industry, and recycled materials were used in its construction.

At Beddington, south of London, a housing development known as BedZED (Beddington Zero energy development) was designed from the start to produce little waste of any sort. It was built on a depolluted plot of land, previously used by industry, and recycled materials were used in its construction.

From Trinidad to Tallahassee, Florida, tropical storms have ravaged the Caribbean basin, exacting a multibillion-dollar toll on housing, schools, hospitals, roads and sewage systems. Most of the casualties were in Haiti. But almost no community escaped unscathed. In Grenada, half of the population is now homeless, the famed nutmeg groves flattened, the power plants wrecked. The tourism industry that was the island’s lifeblood could take years to ...

Poverty is multidimensional. It varies in scale and context (political, social, cultural, ecological, historical, economic). The rural poor face different challenges from those in urban areas: they are concerned with natural resources (access, quality), whereas the urban poor care about access to energy, housing and sanitation, and about the quality and availability of water.

Each day 200,000 more people are added to the world food demand. The world’s human population has increased near fourfold in the past 100 years (UN population Division, 2007); it is projected to increase from 6.7 billion (2006) to 9.2 billion by 2050, as shown in Figure 4 (UN Population Division, 2007). It took only 12 years for the last billion to be added, a net increase of nearly 230,000 new people each day, who will need housing, food a...

As valuable timber becomes rare outside of parks, militias enter parks and illegally cut and produce charcoal inside parks – even the best protected park of the Virungas housing large shares of the Worlds remaining mountain gorilla popula- tion. Rangers here destroyed over a thousand kilns for charcoal inside the park in 2009.

The Sahel region of Africa, a belt of savanna ecoregion south of the Sahara desert, stretched from coast to coast. This region is not only known for long spells of drought (and desertification), but also from housing some of the World's poorest countries. Recent trends show good signs on the recovery of the region, and the relative vegetation index (NDVI) presented for the country of Niger in this map shows increases in the period from 1982 to 19...

Density of cabins in Norway, 2003

Cabins along the Southern coast of Norway

Average density of cabins per area in Norwegian fylker, 2003

Population growth puts pressure on coastal ecosystems. Increased population means growing demand for land for housing and infrastructure, increased use of living resources for food, and more use of available freshwater resources. The negative environmental impacts of the shipping industry also harm the coastal ecosystem. Impacts from shipping include oil spills and the discharge of ballast water and waste into the sea, which affect the quality of...