Portal:Environment

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Introduction

The natural environment or natural world encompasses all biotic and abiotic things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses the interaction of all living species, climate, weather and natural resources that affect human survival and economic activity. The concept of the natural environment can be distinguished as components:

Complete ecological units that function as natural systems without massive civilized human intervention, including all vegetation, microorganisms, soil, rocks, plateaus, mountains, the atmosphere and natural phenomena that occur within their boundaries and their nature.
Universal natural resources and physical phenomena that lack clear-cut boundaries, such as air, water and climate, as well as energy, radiation, electric charge and magnetism, not originating from civilized human actions.

In contrast to the natural environment is the built environment. Built environments are those in which humans have fundamentally transformed landscapes such as in urban settings and agricultural land conversion. Even in acts that seem less extreme, such as building a mud hut or a photovoltaic system in the desert, the modified environment is considered artificial. Though many animals build things to provide a better environment for themselves, they are not human; hence beaver dams and the works of mound-building termites are considered natural.

There are no absolutely natural environments on Earth. Naturalness usually varies in a continuum, from 100% natural in one extreme to 0% natural in the other. The massive environmental changes of humanity in the Anthropocene have fundamentally affected all natural environments including: climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution from plastic and other chemicals in the air and water. More precisely, considering the different aspects or components of an environment, it becomes apparent that their degree of naturalness is not uniform. For instance, in an agricultural field, the mineralogic composition is quite similar to that of undisturbed forest soil while the structure is quite different. (Full article...)

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The Kyoto Protocol (Japanese: 京都議定書, Hepburn: Kyōto Giteisho) was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that global warming is occurring and that human-made CO₂ emissions are driving it. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. There were 192 parties (Canada withdrew from the protocol, effective December 2012) to the Protocol in 2020.

The Kyoto Protocol implemented the objective of the UNFCCC to reduce the onset of global warming by reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to "a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" (Article 2). The Kyoto Protocol applied to the seven greenhouse gases listed in Annex A: carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆), nitrogen trifluoride (NF₃). Nitrogen trifluoride was added for the second compliance period during the Doha Round. (Full article...)

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... that Katherine Sleeper Walden was a journalist, postmistress, innkeeper, community organizer, environmental activist, and conservationist who now has three mountains named after her?
... that 1ES 1927+654, a galaxy in Draco, exhibited such extreme nuclear activity that it challenged conventional models of black-hole environments?
... that researchers estimated that training the model for ChatGPT used the equivalent energy footprint of "driving 123 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles for a year"?
... that Israel's destruction of trees and farmland in Gaza has been described as an ecocide?
... that German social media personality Maya Leinenbach became vegan after completing a school project on the influence of nutrition and consumption on the environment?
... that Maciej Grabowski became the Polish minister of environment in 2013 despite having no environmental experience?
... that the urban environment around Glasgow's Argyle Street ash tree may have helped it to survive ash dieback disease?
... that Hoàng Thị Minh Hồng's environmental activism inspired Barack Obama?

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Credit: Cary Bass

Radioactive contamination is the uncontrolled distribution of radioactive material in a given environment. It is typically the result of a spill or accident during the production or use of radionuclides (radioisotopes). Contamination may occur from radioactive gases, liquids or particles. For example, if a radionuclide used in nuclear medicine is accidentally spilled, the material could be spread by people as they walk around. Radioactive contamination may also be an inevitable result of certain processes, such as the release of radioactive xenon in nuclear fuel reprocessing.

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Environment news

17 September 2026 – Environmental policy of the second Trump administration: The United States Fish and Wildlife Service narrows its enforcement of the Endangered Species Act by excluding unintentional wildlife deaths from its definition of prohibited take, including foreseeable deaths linked to activities such as commercial fishing and logging. (AFP via France 24)
17 August 2026 – Immigration policy of the second Trump administration: United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) commissioner Rodney S. Scott pauses construction of a $1.7 billion border-security project in Big Bend National Park, Texas, while the CBP reviews the plan amid bipartisan local opposition and environmental concerns. (AFP via RFI)
21 July 2026 –: The French Parliament approves legislation allowing limited use of acetamiprid and flupyradifurone, pesticides banned nationally but permitted in the European Union. Environment minister Monique Barbut says she will resign over the measure. (AFP via News.com.au)
17 July 2026 – Wildfires in 2026: The U.S. state of Connecticut's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection deploys firefighters to assist with wildfire efforts in Quebec, Canada. (CT.Gov) (WVIT)
15 July 2026 – 2026 Canadian wildfires: IQAir ranks Toronto, Ontario, Canada, as having the worst air quality among major cities worldwide as smoke from wildfires in northwestern Ontario reaches the city, prompting the Canadian environment ministry to advise residents to remain indoors. (AFP via ABS-CBN News)

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Clare Palmer (born 1967) is a British philosopher, theologian and scholar of environmental and religious studies. She is known for her work on environmental and animal ethics. She was appointed as a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Texas A&M University in 2010. She had previously held academic appointments at the Universities of Greenwich, Stirling, and Lancaster in the United Kingdom, and Washington University in St. Louis in the United States, among others.

She has published three sole-authored books: Environmental Ethics (ABC-CLIO, 1997), Environmental Ethics and Process Thinking (Oxford University Press, 1998) and Animal Ethics in Context (Columbia University Press, 2010). She has also published two co-authored books and has edited (or co-edited) seven collections or anthologies. She is a former editor of the religious studies journal Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion, and a former president of the International Society for Environmental Ethics. (Full article...)

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The network of communities Alliance in the Alps is an association of currently more than 300 local authorities and regions from seven Alpine states and was founded in 1997. On the basis of the targets set by the Alpine Convention, its members, together with their citizens, work to develop their alpine living environment in a sustainable way. "Exchange – Address – Implement" is the guiding principle behind the Alliance's activities.

The network of communities offers a sharing of experience and information beyond the boundaries of language and culture. All the publications and events are in four languages: German, French, Italian and Slovene. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various environment-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1WWF terrestrial ecoregions (from Ecoregion)
Image 2Compartments established by C&SF projects that separated the historic Everglades into Water Conservation Areas and the Everglades Agricultural Area. One-fourth of the original Everglades is preserved in Everglades National Park. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 3Proportion of forest area by forest area density class and global ecological zone, 2015, from Food and Agriculture Organization publication The State of the World's Forests 2020. Forests, biodiversity and people – In brief (from Ecoregion)
Image 4Climbing ferns overtake cypress trees in the Everglades. The ferns act as "fire ladders" that can destroy trees that would otherwise survive fires. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 5Blue Marble composite images generated by NASA in 2001 (left) and 2002 (right) (from Environmental science)
Image 6Global oceanic and terrestrial phototroph abundance, from September 1997 to August 2000. As an estimate of autotroph biomass, it is only a rough indicator of primary production potential and not an actual estimate of it. (from Ecosystem)
Image 7Environmental science examines the effects of humans on nature, such as the Glen Canyon Dam in the United States. (from Environmental science)
Image 8View of Earth, taken in 1972 by the Apollo 17 crew. Approximately 71% of Earth's surface (an area of some 361 million square kilometers) consists of ocean (from Ecoregion)
Image 9Crown-of-thorns starfish and eaten coral off the coast of Cooktown, Queensland (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 10A false color composite of the greater Boston area, created using remote sensing technology, reveals otherwise not visible characteristics about the land cover and the health of the surrounding ecosystems. (from Environmental science)
Image 11Natural water drainage patterns prior to development in South Florida, circa 1900 (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 12Roseate spoonbills, along with other wading birds, have decreased by 90% since the 1930s and 1940s. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 13A conifer forest in the Swiss Alps (from Ecoregion)
Image 14Environmental science is the academic discipline with the largest change in the number of works per year in OpenAlex after one decade compared to the output in 2015. A 2025 study found that for 1365 identified papers about environmental degradation, the annual number of papers increased tenfold between 2016 to 2022 A similar study found articles related to the carbon footprint of economic growth surged after 2017 (from Environmental science)
Image 15Spiny forest at Ifaty, Madagascar, featuring various Adansonia (baobab) species, Alluaudia procera (Madagascar ocotillo) and other vegetation (from Ecosystem)
Image 16Rachel Carson published her groundbreaking monograph, Silent Spring, in 1962, bringing the study of environmental science to the forefront of society. (from Environmental science)
Image 17Aerial view of stormwater treatment areas in the northern Everglades bordered by sugarcane fields on the right (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 18Ibex in an alpine habitat (from Habitat)
Image 19This coral reef in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area provides habitat for numerous marine species. (from Habitat)
Image 20Acropora with brown band disease, Lizard Island (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 21Funding for climate change research in the natural and technical sciences compared to that in the social sciences and humanities according to the study "The misallocation of climate research funding" (from Environmental science)
Image 22Trichodesmium bloom off the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 23Summary of a machine learning-based analysis of the global literature on climate change and human health (from Environmental science)
Image 24A map of the Amazon rainforest, which is composed of multiple ecoregions. The yellow line encloses the ecoregions within the Amazon per the World Wide Fund for Nature. (from Ecoregion)
Image 25Biological nitrogen cycling (from Ecosystem)
Image 26An Antarctic rock split apart to show endolithic lifeforms showing as a green layer a few millimeters thick (from Habitat)
Image 27A major coral bleaching event took place on this part of the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 28Twenty-five years after the devastating eruption at Mount St. Helens, United States, pioneer species have moved in. (from Habitat)
Image 29Current water drainage patterns in South Florida in 2005 (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 30The Amazon River in Brazil. (from Ecoregion)
Image 31The High Peaks Wilderness Area in the 6,000,000-acre (2,400,000 ha) Adirondack Park is an example of a diverse ecosystem. (from Ecosystem)
Image 32A team of British researchers found a hole in the ozone layer forming over Antarctica, the discovery of which would later influence the Montreal Protocol in 1987. (from Environmental science)
Image 33Wetland habitat types in Borneo (from Habitat)
Image 34Tropical Cyclone Larry over the Great Barrier Reef, 19 March 2006 (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 35A BERTopic-based analysis of studies shows an increase in the research about climate change tipping points (from Environmental science)
Image 36The Shen Neng 1 aground on the Great Barrier Reef, 5 April 2010 (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 37Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World (Olson et al. 2001, BioScience) (from Ecoregion)
Image 38A portion of the C-38 canal, finished in 1971, now backfilled to restore the Kissimmee River floodplain to a more natural state (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 39Catchments along the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 40The leaves of an Alnus nepalensis tree provide a microhabitat for species like the leaf beetle Aulacophora indica. (from Habitat)
Image 41Sea temperature and bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 42Structure 65B on the Kissimmee River is destroyed by the Corps of Engineers in 2000 to restore the natural flow of the river. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 43Sequence of a decomposing pig carcass over time (from Ecosystem)
Image 44Storage Silos on the Gladstone waterfront, an industrial area in the water catchment area (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 45A protest against the Adani Carmichael mine, 2016 (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 46Desert scene in Egypt (from Habitat)
Image 47Flora of Baja California desert, Cataviña region, Mexico (from Ecosystem)
Image 48The Earth's atmosphere (from Environmental science)
Image 49Rainforest ecosystems are rich in biodiversity. This is the Gambia River in Senegal's Niokolo-Koba National Park. (from Ecosystem)
Image 50Planned water recovery and storage implementation using CERP strategies (from Restoration of the Everglades)