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Portal:Environment

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Welcome to the Environment Portal
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Introduction

Land management has preserved the natural characteristics of Hopetoun Falls, Australia while allowing ample access for visitors.

The natural environment or natural world encompasses all biotic and abiotic things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses the interaction of all living species, climate, weather and natural resources that affect human survival and economic activity. The concept of the natural environment can be distinguished as components:

In contrast to the natural environment is the built environment. Built environments are where humans have fundamentally transformed landscapes such as urban settings and agricultural land conversion, the natural environment is greatly changed into a simplified human environment. Even acts which seem less extreme, such as building a mud hut or a photovoltaic system in the desert, the modified environment becomes an artificial one. Though many animals build things to provide a better environment for themselves, they are not human, hence beaver dams and the works of mound-building termites are thought of as natural. (Full article...)

Land management has preserved the natural characteristics of Hopetoun Falls, Australia while allowing ample access for visitors.

The natural environment or natural world encompasses all biotic and abiotic things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses the interaction of all living species, climate, weather and natural resources that affect human survival and economic activity. The concept of the natural environment can be distinguished as components:

In contrast to the natural environment is the built environment. Built environments are where humans have fundamentally transformed landscapes such as urban settings and agricultural land conversion, the natural environment is greatly changed into a simplified human environment. Even acts which seem less extreme, such as building a mud hut or a photovoltaic system in the desert, the modified environment becomes an artificial one. Though many animals build things to provide a better environment for themselves, they are not human, hence beaver dams and the works of mound-building termites are thought of as natural.

There are no absolutely natural environments on Earth. Naturalness usually varies in a continuum, from 100% natural in one extreme to 0% natural in the other. The massive environmental changes of humanity in the Anthropocene have fundamentally affected all natural environments including: climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution from plastic and other chemicals in the air and water. More precisely, we can consider the different aspects or components of an environment, and see that their degree of naturalness is not uniform. If, for instance, we take an agricultural field, and consider the mineralogic composition and the structure of its soil, we will find that whereas the first is quite similar to that of an undisturbed forest soil, the structure is quite different. (Full article...)

Green marketing refers to the marketing of products that are considered environmentally safe. It encompasses a broad range of activities, including product modification, changes to the production process, sustainable packaging, and modifications to advertising. However, defining green marketing is not a simple task. Other terms that are often used interchangeably are environmental marketing and ecological marketing.

Green, environmental and eco-marketing are part of the recent marketing approaches which do not just refocus, adjust or enhance existing marketing thinking and practice, but also seek to challenge those approaches and provide a substantially different perspective. More specifically, these approaches seek to address the lack of fit between marketing as it is currently practiced and the ecological and social realities of the wider marketing environment. (Full article...)

List of selected articles

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

  • ... that Flathead Lake Biological Station can detect invasive aquatic species in real-time using eDNA technology?
  • ... that critics objected to Dangers of the Mail in the 1930s for government support of lewdness and in the 2000s for creating a hostile work environment?
  • ... that the volcano Carachipampa is surrounded by a lake and a salt flat, and has a Mars-like environment?
  • ... that environment minister Peng Chi-ming drafted Taiwan's first weather insurance policy?
  • ... that Enriqueta Legorreta, who was the first Mexican woman to appear as Sieglinde in Wagner's Die Walküre, became an award-winning environmental activist?
  • ... that Hoàng Thị Minh Hồng's environmental activism inspired Barack Obama?
  • ... that Desulfovibrio vulgaris can remove toxic heavy metals from the environment?
  • ... that environmental journalist Gloria Dickie wrote her thesis on how cities in Colorado changed garbage laws to prevent bear incursions?

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Atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
Atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
Credit: United States military

The detonation of nuclear weapons leads to the release of radioactive material into the environment. This radioactive material affects human health and the natural environment.

Current events

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Arne Næss in 2003

Arne Dekke Eide Næss (/ˈɑːrnə ˈnɛs/ AR-nə NESS; Urban East Norwegian: [ˈɑ̂ːɳə ˈdɛ̂kːə ˈæ̂ɪdə ˈnɛsː]; 27 January 1912 – 12 January 2009) was a Norwegian philosopher who coined the term "deep ecology", an important intellectual and inspirational figure within the environmental movement of the late twentieth century, and a prolific writer on many other philosophical issues. Næss cited Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring as being a key influence in his vision of deep ecology. Næss combined his ecological vision with Gandhian nonviolence and on several occasions participated in direct action.

Næss averred that while western environmental groups of the early post–World War II period had raised public awareness of the environmental issues of the time, they had largely failed to have insight into and address what he argued were the underlying cultural and philosophical background to these problems. Næss believed that the environmental crisis of the twentieth century had arisen due to certain unspoken philosophical presuppositions and attitudes within modern western developed societies which remained unacknowledged. (Full article...)

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The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is a Swiss-based international non-governmental organization founded in 1961 that works in the field of wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in Canada and the United States. WWF is the world's largest conservation organization, with over 5 million supporters worldwide, working in more than 100 countries and supporting around 3,000 conservation and environmental projects. It has invested over $1 billion in more than 12,000 conservation initiatives since 1995. WWF is a foundation with 65% of funding from individuals and bequests, 17% from government sources (such as the World Bank, FCDO, and USAID) and 8% from corporations in 2020.

WWF aims to "stop the degradation of the planet's natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature." Living Planet Report has been published every two years by WWF since 1998; it is based on a Living Planet Index and ecological footprint calculation. In addition, WWF has launched several notable worldwide campaigns, including Earth Hour and the debt-for-nature swap, and its current work is organized around these six areas: food, climate, freshwater, wildlife, forests, and oceans. (Full article...)

List of selected organizations

General images - load new batch

The following are images from various environment-related articles on Wikipedia.

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Greta Thunberg
You don’t listen to the science because you are only interested in solutions that will enable you to carry on like before. Like now. And those answers don’t exist any more. Because you did not act in time.

More did you know - show different entries

Chemical structure of carbon dioxide
Chemical structure of carbon dioxide
Incandescent light bulb
Incandescent light bulb
  • ... that the concept of reduce, re-use, and recycle as three equal options, but they are instead meant to be a hierarchy, in order of importance?

Main topics

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