Sustainability

Groundwater is the natural water stored beneath the Earth's surface and it is essential because it supplies a third of the world's population. As with other of our planet's elements, it also finds itself under threat from contamination. In fact, a recent study undertaken at the Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg (Germany) warns this threat could be greater than at first thought.

In recent decades, extreme weather events have become more frequent, intense and prolonged across many regions of the world. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), human-induced global warming is increasing the likelihood of extreme events such as heatwaves, droughts, torrential rainfall and tropical cyclones.

¿Cada cuánto tiempo cambias de móvil? ¿Y de ordenador? ¿Y de televisor? Seguramente ese tiempo haya ido acortándose en los últimos años debido, en gran medida, a la obsolescencia programada. Un fenómeno que no se refiere solo al hecho de que un objeto tecnológico deje de funcionar, sino también a que surja uno mejor o, directamente, a que pase de moda. La consecuencia es que la basura tecnológica no deja de aumentar y amenaza al medio ambiente.

You may not know what permafrost is, but its melting, which is advancing due to climate change and has reached a critical point, could have serious consequences for your future. This permanently frozen ground, located in circumpolar areas in Canada, Alaska, Siberia and elsewhere, has acted as a carbon sink for thousands of years and if it thaws it could release large amounts of this gas, amplifying the problem of global warming.

Reducing, reusing and recycling may be the best way to tackle resource depletion. Adopting this approach to managing everything we consume requires a commitment to the circular economy, which represents a fundamental shift in the way we address resource scarcity, environmental impact, value creation and employment.

The planet's biodiversity is under threat and the main culprit is the one who, paradoxically, depend on it most: human being. Slowing down biodiversity loss, understood as the reduction or disappearance of the variety of living beings that inhabit the planet, is one of humanity's great challenges. Below, we review the causes, consequences and possible solutions.

The concept of ecocide is not new, but from 2021 it has a legal definition. Specifically, "any unlawful or arbitrary act perpetrated in the knowledge that it is highly likely to cause serious, extensive or lasting damage to the environment". Its creators, a panel of 12 jurists from civil society, are seeking to have the crime incorporated as the fifth crime against peace in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The UN, which has been fighting desertification since 1994, defines it as the process of land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas as a result of various climatic and human factors. With climate change, these factors have only multiplied and it is now considered one of the world's major environmental problems.