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That the world's population is cramming into cities at a rapid pace has countless environmental benefits. A big one is that as people urbanize, we chop down fewer trees. The world’s forests double as the planet’s lungs.

United Nations agency says about two billion people worldwide are infected with viruses that cause potentially deadly liver disease

Every day more than 1,000 infants worldwide are infected with HIV during gestation, delivery or breast-feeding, according to U.N. estimates

By Robert Evans GENEVA (Reuters) - Governments must work toward a major shift toward small-scale farming if endemic food crises are to be overcome and production boosted to support the global population, the United Nations said on Tuesday. [More]

GENEVA (Reuters) - The worst drought in 60 years in the Horn of Africa has sparked a severe food crisis and high malnutrition rates, with parts of Kenya and Somalia experiencing pre-famine conditions, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The worst drought in 60 years in the Horn of Africa has sparked a severe food crisis and high malnutrition rates, with parts of Kenya and Somalia experiencing pre-famine conditions, the United Nations said on Tuesday. More than 10 million people are now affected in drought-stricken areas of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda and the situation is deteriorating, it said. [More]

GENEVA (Reuters) - Chrysotile asbestos will not be listed as a hazardous industrial chemical that can be banned from import after countries including Canada and Ukraine blocked consensus, a United Nations spokesman said Friday. The decision was taken at a meeting of states that have ratified the Rotterdam Convention despite the treaty's scientific review body having recommended the inclusion of "white" asbestos on health grounds, a U.N. spokesman said.

LONDON (Reuters) - The world would not have to dig so much metal out of the ground if it strongly embraced recycling, which could be higher, the United Nations Environment Programme said on Thursday. Smarter product designs and support for developing country waste management schemes would encourage recycling, said Thomas Graedel, a professor at Yale University and one of the authors of a report on metals recycling rates at a briefing. [More]

The human enterprise now consumes nearly 60 billion metric tons of minerals, ores, fossil fuels and plant materials, such as crop plants and trees for timber or paper.

By Quirin Schiermeier of Nature magazine After months of soul-searching, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has agreed on reforms intended to restore confidence in its integrity and its assessments of climate science. Created as a United Nations body in 1988 to analyze the latest knowledge about Earth's changing climate, it has worked with thousands of scientists and shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. [More]

Ethonomic Indicator of the Day: 140 billion tons--the amount of resources the global economy will consume in 2050. As it stands, economic growth is largely dependent on resource consumption

Global warming and decades of outmoded fire prevention strategies are merging to set the stage for massive "mega-fires" that scar communities' homes and pocketbooks, according to a new assessment. Preliminary findings from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released this week trace the circumstances around eight mega-fires across the world in a quest to uncover clues on how best to ward them off and minimize their damage.

The people of the world get 75 percent of their sustenance--either directly, or indirectly as meat--from four crops: maize (corn), wheat, rice and soybeans. The world's rising population--now predicted by the United Nations to reach 10.1 billion by century's end --has been fed thanks to rising yields of all four of these crops during the past century.

Vestergaard Frandsen makes an ingenious water filter that's too expensive for the people who need it. They figured out how to give it away and still make money. Swiss-based Vestergaard Frandsen --makers of mosquito nets and the LifeStraw --has figured out a solution to turning a profit while saving the world

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - U.S. and Russian greenhouse gas emissions fell in 2009, according to data submitted to the United Nations, as economic decline cut the use of fossil fuels