Blog posts by related to Environment & Sustainability

What does change look like in action? Show us—share your images in our #ZoomChange contest. 

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What do you know about water? Specifically, what do you know about the global water crisis? (Video after the jump.)

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[Editor's note: Terra Nova, along with the two other winners in our Property Rights competition, are at a World Bank event today to share the innovative work that distinguished them from a pool of more than 210 entries from around the world.]

Brazil. Land Rights. Poverty. 

What picture do these words bring to mind?

For many, it conjures up City of God-like images of crowded violent favelas and communities living in chaos. With over 12 million Brazilians living in 3.2 million informal dwellings without access to public services, that dark visualization wouldn’t be far from the truth.

Yet to Andre Albuquerque, founder of Terra Nova and winner of the Property Rights: Identity, Dignity & Opportunity for All competition, it means much more – it means hope.   
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Christine Eibs Singer was honored as an Ashoka ChangemakeHER, Changemakers's inaugural celebration of the world's most influentual and inspiring women. Find her fellow honorees' voices here.

by Christine Eibs Singer, CEO and co-founder of E+Co. Singer has overseen the organization's growth from a start-up to an international leader in the developing country energy finance space. She is instrumental in maintaining E+Co’s mission to empower local small and growing enterprises that supply clean and affordable energy in developing countries, producing social, environmental, and financial returns.

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“I am an entrepreneur at heart, I knew that one day I would launch a solar PV business.” -Yvonne Faye

Women and children are most affected by the lack of access to basic energy resources in developing countries. They experience a heightened risk of developing respiratory diseases from firewood stoves with “black soot” emissions, suffer burns from kerosene, and have less time for economic or education opportunities as they labor hours a day in the pursuit of firewood and water.  However, with their firsthand knowledge of the negative repercussions of a lack of energy resources, they may be the best answer to effective implementation of energy solutions for “Base of the Pyramid” communities, and the most likely to focus on a solution that is affordable, available, and appropriate. [...]

Prerna Singh Bindra was honored as an Ashoka ChangemakeHER, Changemakers's inaugural celebration of the world's most influentual and inspiring women. Find her fellow honorees' voices here.

Prerna Singh Bindra is a journalist and lobbyist for conservation. She has consulted with Friends of Women's World Banking to make microfinance more accessible to rural women. She edits the conservation journal Tigerlink and received the Carl Zeiss Award for her work in wildlife conservation.

★★★

Who are your favorite female changemakers from history?

  1. Rachel Carson’s seminal work Silent Spring helped spark the environmental movement as we know it today. She showed the world what pesticides have poisoned our world—the presence of toxic chemicals in water and on land, in our soil and food, and its impact on other creatures of the earth.

    Rachel warned about the presence of DDT in mother’s milk. She faced the wrath of the pesticide industry, but her work resulted in the banning of DDT and enactment of environment regulations.

    Rachel Carson showed the world the power of the pen, and what one woman can do—to change the world.

  2. Dr. Jane Goodall, the world’s foremost primatologist and conservationist is my hero. She went into the jungles of Africa (Gombe National Park, Tanzania) to study wild chimpanzees in 1960. Her research and books changed the way we looked at our next of kin. She is courageous, compassionate, and a pioneer in her field.

  3. All those woman who fight against all the odds to stand up for their rights, such as Bhanwari Devi, who was gang raped by the upper-castes in a village in Rajasthan, India. She risked her life and faced social boycott to fight for justice and bring her rapists to book.

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Albina Ruiz was honored as an Ashoka ChangemakeHER, Changemakers's inaugural celebration of the world's most influentual and inspiring women. Find her fellow honorees' voices here.

Interview by Lorena López, Ashoka Changemakers

Albina Ruiz, founder of Ciudadsaludable.org, created a system of micro businesses that are dedicated to collecting and processing urban waste, promoting cleaner and healthier cities in Peru. Perhaps their most important success has been dignifying the job of garbage collectors, who have been included in a formal and decent employment system with social and pension payments. Here, Albina shares her entrepreneurial experience and she has succeeded in improving the living standards for many people.

What are three strengths that make a change agent successful? Perseverance, ethics, and a certain dose of craziness. And above all, you must love what you do, because you need to be a little crazy and truly love what you do in order to achieve changes within the system.

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[Editor's note: This article was written by Alicia Graef and was originally featured on Care2.com.]

More sea turtles died or became disabled in the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico than in any other event in the past two decades, according to the National Wildlife Federation, the Sea Turtle Conservancy and the Florida Wildlife Federation.

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Australia’s leading entrepreneurs and business rock stars met at 24 Moons Bar on AC/DC Lane in Melbourne last week for Anthill Magazine’s 2010 Cool Company Awards.

The Cool Company Awards is an initiative launched to celebrate Australian organizations making real change through innovative means – rule-makers, rule-breakers, and trend-setters in attitude and action

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