This is part 1 of a two-part blog. Urbanisation has been identified by some authors as the top human cause of species endangerments and extinctions. That it has such a large impact on biodiversity is pretty surprising when you realise that cities occupy a very small fraction (estimated at 1.5-3 %) of all the [...]
No doubt, I’m far from the only person thinking about climate change at the moment, what with the Paris Conference underway. Of course, as a conservation biologist, I’m often thinking about climate change (and sometimes driving my boyfriend crazy with my admonishments to turn off lights, water heaters and the air-con and even closing the faucet [...]
This is part 3 of a three-part blog. If you’d like to read part 2, click here. Finally, time for Ms Ervin’s lecture at NUS, to a pretty full auditorium. She started by describing how the term “green building” has evolved. Not so long ago, it might have evoked images of something like the turf [...]
This is part 2 of a three-part blog. If you’d like to read part 1, click here. I spent the day with the Ervins and several other people, most of whom are involved in green building in Singapore. These included representatives from the Singapore Government’s Building and Construction Authority (BCA) and City Developments Limited (CDL). [...]
Green wall on Blusson Hall, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada Although I was only planning to update this blog perhaps a couple of times a month, I already felt inspired by a recent event I participated in, the 3rd annual Asia Environment Lecture, which is jointly organised by NUS’ Master of [...]
https://youtu.be/u9Ip6vBUXIs This is an invited presentation that I gave for the Faculty of Science at the National University of Singapore on the occasion of an outreach event organised for junior college students. It gives an overview of how urbanisation is not only a major factor in the ongoing loss of biodiversity, but also a trend [...]
