Suzanne Goldenberg in Half Moon Bay, California

UN's top environmental official says switch from coal to natural gas is delaying critical energy transition to renewables

Lynne Labanne

A quarter of the world’s sharks and rays are threatened with extinction according to The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™, with ray species found to be at a higher risk than sharks.

BBC News

Nearly 30 million people around the world are living as slaves, according to a new index ranking 162 countries.

The Global Slavery Index 2013 says India has the highest number of people living in conditions of slavery at 14 million.

Lauren Riga

As the world is undergoing the largest wave of urban growth in history, increasing from approximately 3.4 billion in 2009 to 6.4 billion in 2050

Arthur Neslen Sep 18 2013

 An architect of the UN’s Millennium development Goals (MDGs) says he fears that a lack of strong leadership at the UN could lead to its poverty eradication goals being replaced by an over-politicised and unachievable “wish list” after 2015.

Alister Doyle

Sep 10 , 2012

Robert Engelman

Although most analysts assume that the world’s population will rise from today’s 7 billion to 9 billion by 2050, it is quite possible that humanity will never reach this population size.

mpact of Air Travel on Global Spread ofInfectious Diseases

This combined image shows the number of years children and young adults attend school. Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Middle East, and North Africa are the three most education-deficient regions as shown on the map. The bottom graph depicts the distribution of years spent in school, showing the number of years spent in pre-school, grammar/secondary school, and post-secondary school by region. 

Shows the percent of the population living in poverty (less than 1.25 USD per day) by country.