Our blogs
Peter Knight writes about nature, conservation and how people are adapting to climate change.
All images on the site are by Sophie Balhetchet. She writes about art.
Spikey habits: how the porcupine accelerates the impact of climate change in the Karoo
The porcupine is playing a deadly role in the destructive impact of climate change on the unique plant life in South Africa’s semi-desert called the Karoo.
Converting invasive plants to cash
Creating markets for products from invasive species provides broad benefits for people and the environment. This is especially true for charcoal.
Memories in steel
Redundant blast furnaces, gasworks and tank farms are being repurposed as cultural centres and adventure parks around the world. Landscape architects leading the projects argue their designs preserve the collective memories of the communities once defined by heavy industry. Do they?
Floating in happiness…
While the UK’s South Downs National Park may seem dull in comparison with the world’s more glamorous national parks, its value lies in its inclusiveness and the opportunity it provides to experience the Downs’ subtle beauty.
Smoke triggers the fire
In the Cape Fold Mountains of South Africa there’s a patient native of the Fynbos. Its bulbs will wait in darkness until bushfire jump-starts germination. Images and words by Sophie Balhetchet.
How to manage aliens in the landscape
Invasive Australian blue gums define the Californian landscape, loved and hated in equal measure. Should they stay or go?
Living without electricity
South Africans show how to overcome fear when the lights go out. Electricity rationing in the most industrialised country in Africa remains bad news for people, air quality and the climate.
Pressing Time
My friend Mike Dibb has been sorting through his past. We’d worked together, moons ago, on a TV series with John Berger, About Time, and now here we are in his kitchen, prising the rusted screws of a sturdy flower press he’d made for his children some 40 years before...
What’s the future of faux foods?
Manufacture of fake meat has been a flop but the future of faux looks bright, if a bit further away than many hoped.
Black becomes the new green in the UK countryside
How the UK countryside is being used for solar farms, causing controversy.
Why the Prince should be thanking Putin
Why Prince William’s Earthshot prize is both a wake-up call and nostalgic
How UN conventions make a better moisturizer
Your rainforest plant-based miracle moisturizer feeds your skin but also carries cash to the people who protect the trees that provide active ingredients. We can thank a thing called the Nagoya Protocol for making our daily moisturizing an ethically soothing...