As the world gears up for the next round of United Nations climate-change negotiations in Durban, South Africa, in November, evidence has emerged that a cornerstone of the existing global climate agreement, the international greenhouse-gas emissions-trading system, is seriously flawed. Critics have long questioned the usefulness of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which was established under the Kyoto Protocol.

Globalization means that Earth's life-support system can no longer be treated as separate from the socio

The future of the world's biodiversity hangs in the balance as countries convene for crucial negotiations in Nagoya, Japan. The 193 signatory nations to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) pledged eight years ago to cut species loss "significantly" by this year. But studies show that the health of global biodiversity is reaching a crisis point, with extinctions of mammal and amphibian species continuing to rise.

The problem of desertification sits at the interface of environmental and developmental concerns. In this article, we examine the institutional relationship between desertification science and policy through focus on the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and its subsidiary body, the Committee on Science and Technology.

When nations made plans to save the ozone layer, they didn't factor in global warming. Quirin Schiermeier reports on how two environmental problems complicate each other.