Environment

The City of Nanaimo is dedicated to providing residents with the highest possible level of service.  Part of this service includes making data available to the public to allow them to make the best possible decisions, to understand the City's business, and to engage in the democratic process to the fullest extent possible. The City has a strong history of making this data available, from building permit and business license searches, to geographic information in CityMap and Google Earth, through to fire incident reporting and more. This page follows the strong lead of initiatives like the DC Data Catalog, and Data.Gov in gathering all of the City's open data sources in a central location for ease of access by the public. Read More

Soils are home to over one quarter of all living species, yet Europe has no binding legislation to protect this precious resource. We depend on soil for food, fibres, construction materials, clean water, clean air, climate regulation, and antibiotics such as penicillin and streptomycin are derived from the soil. Soil biodiversity is the driving force behind this productive capacity, but that diversity faces numerous threats. A new report published by the European Commission suggests that mismanaging soil biodiversity could worsen climate change, jeopardise agricultural production and compromise the quality of ground water. The European Commission has been arguing for binding legislation in this area since 2006, but little progress has been made. The Soil Framework Directive is once more on the agenda of the Environment Council to be held on 15 March. Read More

The future of studies on forests across Africa hangs in the balance following the planned withdrawal of financial support to the African Forest Research Network, a continental body that funds forestry research, by its main donor. The Swedish government has notified the African Forest Research Network (Afornet) of its intention to freeze its 20-year old support over what Sweden's ambassador Ann Dismorr described as "administrative problems in recent years." All Africa

Forest ecologists warned leaders today that plans to log beetle-killed trees in remote backcountry, instead of implementing fuel reduction efforts directly adjacent to communities, will not make people safe and will squander scarce tax dollars. The report is based on years of field research and a comprehensive scientific literature review and is available online at http://nccsp.org.