Thinking about what’s for dinner

Despite the fact that many people aren’t sure where their food comes from anymore, journalist Kiera Butler says a program over a century old may, if it tries, have the capacity to spread the sustainable food movement.

Reforms, not reformers

Industrial-scale agriculture has placed small farmers and their local environments at risk not just in the United States but across the developing world, warns Eric Holt-Giménez of the “think-and-do-tank” Food First. Fixing the problem, he argues, isn’t a matter of waiting for top-down reform — but of generating sustained pressure from below.

Into the great wide open

Today’s children spend less time in nature than any generation before them. Jon Alexander, brand strategist at the UK’s National Trust, and filmmaker David Bond tell SCOPE about the implications for children’s well-being, and about their ambitious (and irreverent) Project Wild Thing, a documentary that looks at what it would take to get boys and girls back outside.

More cows, moving faster

Desertification is a serious and rapidly-growing problem across wide swathes of the world, and cattle grazing plays a role in it. But if the environmental and economic success that Johann Zietsman has been having with his herds is anything to go by, the answer may not be fewer cattle but more.

Convict cells, graves, and gift shops

Driven by pleasure-seeking and curiosity, over the past century and a half tourism has evolved from a pastime of the leisured rich to a trillion-dollar mass industry. But tourism is about much more than fun and money, historian Richard White tells SCOPE: looked at the right way, it offers an invaluable view into a society’s relationship with its own past, and with its present identity.

Telling stories for a better China

If rampant consumerism is a cultural — not just economic — phenomenon, can a culture be deliberately changed to minimize its effects? Peggy Liu leads China Dream, a project that aims to achieve nothing less with the world’s most populous nation and oldest civilization. SCOPE asks her how she plans to succeed.

Night lights

Paul Bogard’s scientific, literary, and philosophical account of why the end of night — driven by unremitting and ever-increasing light pollution around the world — should worry us all.

Learning from Kigali

One of the fastest-growing cities in the world is Rwanda’s capital Kigali, and its challenges are as complex as any other urban centre’s. Guillaume Sardin explains how a new documentary research project led by his think tank and a team of Rwandan architecture students hopes to unveil the inner dynamics of one of its most diverse neighbourhoods.

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