Each year, the world marks World Soil Day on 5 December to raise awareness about the growing challenges in soil management and soil biodiversity loss, and encourage governments, communities and individuals around the world to commit to improving soil health.
“We depend, and will continue to depend, on the ecosystem services provided by soils,” explains United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) soil expert Abdelkader Bensada.
While soil pollution traditionally has not received the same attention as issues like tree-planting, global momentum picked up in 2018, when the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) published a ground-breaking study: Soil Pollution: A Hidden Reality.

Roads are a tool of human dispersal that have allowed us to utilize land that otherwise would have been difficult to access. At the same time, however, they pose a substantial threat to wildlife through limiting its dispersal and the risk of road kills. Roads also severely impact adjoining forests, not only by causing a physical fragmentation of the landscape but also a thermal one. A road impacts the micro-climatic conditions in its surroundings which leads to an increase in temperature. This can have devastating effects on the trees and will most likely be accelerated by climate change. But how serious is the situation really?

This article of Specifier Review on ‘The Science of Sustainability’ was practically developed by a team of South East England based structural and civil engineers. Apart from enlightening us on the Science of Sustainability, Perega elaborated here on how the built environment is to be developed and maintained as per the latest sustainability norms as established by international institutions.

The world – or at least a large and dominant part of it! – is increasingly being run by so-called “experts”, sometimes dubbed honestly as “technocrats”. Their fields of “expertise” are many, and that list is growing steadily longer. The fact is, universities and research institutions must be seen to be “torch bearers” of progress, values, knowledge, scientific inquiry, freedom, justice … or whatever other words sound good in a speech or on a website. In vicious competition for student fees, research funds, private donations and government grants, every institution must proclaim “excellence” – somehow, anyhow.

A host of countries have recently announced major commitments to significantly cut their carbon emissions, promising to reach “net zero” in the coming years. The term is becoming a global rallying cry, frequently cited as a necessary step to successfully beat back climate change, and the devastation it is causing.