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Bushfires in Victoria, an Australian state located in the southeast section of the country, killed 173 people and injured more than 400 in 2009. Those 400 fires—the worst on record—were blamed on prolonged drought and extreme temperatures caused by global warming. Southeastern Australia is one of the world’s most fire-prone areas, along with southern California and Mediterranean Europe. Read on…

When a gang of ducks congregated in front of me at the edge of Lake Como in Lombardy, Italy, they must have been praying I’d throw them some pizza and not another plastic bottle to add to the collection bobbing between the lumps of natural and man-made waste.

I’m not saying Italy’s third-largest lake isn’t beautiful—George Clooney owns villas there for a reason—but there’s something wrong with the water: it’s green. The phosphates and nitrates from pollutants have caused an excessive growth of algae, a process called eutrophication. Ducks might enjoy the extra food, but decomposing algae remove oxygen from the water, which is detrimental to fish. Read on…

Even though the fallout from Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station disaster has almost completely disappeared from the headlines, catastrophe-proof renewable energy continues to be thrust into the spotlight as a safe, long-term energy alternative. And, as if on cue, on the edge of the Arabian Desert, an experiment is unfolding with a grand vision for a clean-energy future: It’s called Masdar City and it seeks to be the most sustainable city in world history. Read on...

As my favorite two foods are pizza and ice cream, I walked around Italy drooling like a dog. Every two meters I’d find a gelaterie selling countless flavors of ice cream, sorbet, granita and frozen yogurt—in cones, cups and brioche rolls. But whenever I was tempted to skip to pudding first, I’d stumble across a pizzeria selling slices as big as my face for €2 and be ‘forced’ back into my sensible mains-before-pudding routine. Read on…

“I discovered that in Paris, there are a heap of other birds than just pigeons or sparrows. During our outing, we saw more than 60 different kinds of birds; extraordinary!” a participant in last year’s Festival of Nature observed.

A celebration of nature, a discovery of biodiversity, and an urgent call to action for its conservation, the Fête de la Nature (Festival of Nature, 18-22 May 2011) embraces all of these as one of the biggest and widest-reaching nature festivals in the country. Created by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Terre Sauvage nature magazine, the festival celebrates the richness of biodiversity in France, while raising awareness of the need to protect it. Read on...