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In our current “post-truth” climate, inoculation may provide the key to making facts matter again

It’s fitting that as Donald Trump continues to flirt with anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, inoculation may provide the key to effectively debunking this sort of misinformation.

That’s the finding of a new study published in Global Challenges by Sander van der Linden, Anthony Leiserowitz, Seth Rosenthal, and Edward Maibach. The paper tested what’s known as “inoculation theory,” explained in the video below by John Cook, who’s also published research on the subject. The video is a lecture from the Denial101x free online course, which itself is structured based on inoculation theory:

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Writer and professor, Ashley Dawson, argues in his new book that capitalism is behind our current mass extinction crisis. But installing universal guaranteed income in biodiversity hotspots may be one remedy.

Human nature isn’t driving mass extinction – as some have argued – but our acceptance of capitalism is, according to English Professor Ashley Dawson with the City University of New York.

In his recent, slim, eye-opening book, Extinction: A Radical History, Dawson lays out the case that our current global economic system is pushing the Earth ever closer to a mass extinction event – one not seen since a rogue comet ended the reign of the dinosaurs. But he also argues there are potential solutions, including giving a universal guaranteed income to populations living in or near biodiversity hotspots to counter poaching, deforestation, and other harmful activities.

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South Yorkshire Fire Brigade were called in to assist in giving a polar bear a dental check-up.

US President Donald Trump has withdrawn from the TPP, so what's the future for the world's largest trade deal?

A Rodrigues fruit bat has been born by C-section at San Diego Zoo.

Tyne Green, Hexham: Through binoculars, it feels as if I’m watching a wildlife documentary in this country park, minutes from town

The sun comes out as I near Tyne Green, saturating everything in olive-gold light; the trees on the bank, the arches under Hexham Bridge, the billowing plumes of steam from the chipboard factory. As I slow down, I become aware of Sunday morning sounds. Bells are being rung in the abbey on the hill. A women’s eight slices upriver with a rhythmical dipping of oars. Chattering mallards are grouped hopefully by the waterside steps. A double note from a train, traffic on the dual carriageway, the muffled flow of the weir.

Minutes from town, this linear park is busy with dog walkers, runners and golfers thwacking balls among undulating grassy tumps. On the river alongside, parallel lives are lived on the safety of the water or within its thick fringe of willows. A goosander scratches its cheek with an orange-red foot, before taking off, straight as an arrow to skim the surface. A cormorant holds its head up, watchful as a cobra. A shaggily white-chested heron stands motionless by a the calm of an inlet.

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Major retailer ERM becomes first to choose paying penalty price over investing in new wind and solar, taking advantage of extensive tax losses.

Total electricity usage in NSW increased by 7.5 per cent1 in January compared to the same period last year, driven largely by householders efforts to combat the extreme heatwave.

The Hangzhou-based company invested approximately 1.8 billion yuan ($262.6 million) in the project, which spans about 299.5 hectares.

Hearing Josh Frydenberg putting forward a call for coal that seems to echo the Abbott rhetoric of a few short years ago will do nothing for energy investment. It's surprising that the political instinct is so poor.

A closer look at the extraordinary price volatility that marked "sizzling Saturday" in Queensland and sent electricity prices soaring.

GIANT OTTER: Scientists have unearthed fossils of an intriguingly large otter as big as a wolf that frolicked in rivers and lakes in a lush, warm and humid wetlands region in south-western China about 6.2 million years ago.

“Wetlands for disaster risk reduction” is this year’s theme – get Wetlands Australia e-magazine and the latest wetlands fact sheet, enter a photo competition or make an origami frog.

California shows it isn’t messing around when it comes to climate action, even in the face of federal rollbacks.

SAVING PLAN: The first captive-bred orange-bellied parrot to have survived its first week in the nest of an adoptive mother in the wild in a world-first fostering trial as a strategy to boost the endangered species.

Australian energy software provider GreenSync raises funds to help in shift to decentralised energy system.

Frydenburg guarantees RET support, but it's ultra-super-critical coal that has his attention, and he says it may help Australia meet Paris climate targets.

Monash University’s Sustainable Development Institute aims to ensure water access for urban poor

An Australian project that aims to revolutionise water delivery and sanitation in urban slums has been awarded $27m in funding.

Prof Rebekah Brown, the director of the Sustainable Development Institute at Melbourne’s Monash University, has been awarded a $14m research grant by the Wellcome Trust’s Our Planet Our Health awards in the UK. A further $13m from the Asian Development Bank would cover infrastructure and construction costs.

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Polluted water and inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene cause around 80% of diseases and one in four deaths in developing countries. The world is recognising that existing strategies simply aren’t working.

We are starting a five-year project early this year to implement an innovative water-sensitive approach to revitalise 24 informal settlements in Fiji and Indonesia.

Funded by the Wellcome Trust, the project aims to turn informal settlements into independent sites that:

• recycle their own wastewater;

• harvest rainwater;

• create green space for water cleansing and food cultivation; and

• restore natural waterways to encourage diversity and deal with flooding.

Working with local slum communities, the project will design and deliver modular and multi-functional water infrastructure. This will be tailored to their settlements. Providing secure and reliable water and sanitation services and flood management should improve public health and create more resilient communities.

This project aims to reduce both environmental contamination itself and the likelihood of human contact with contaminants. In doing so, it will provide some of the first quantitative data on the link between improved environmental health and better community health.

Water management innovations in slums can deliver healthier, more sustainable and environmentally compatible solutions. Time to rethink failed approaches

In 2010, the United Nations recognised that access to safe water and sanitation is a human right. Five years later, the UN acknowledged it had failed to provide 2.4 billion people with improved sanitation, a goal set 15 years earlier.

The conventional hydraulic engineering solution to these challenges has changed little in 150 years. This approach has major financial, environmental and social costs.

The conventional approach is also an unlikely option for informal settlements this century. These are typically found in developing countries with high rates of urbanisation. These countries are struggling with inadequate resources for basic infrastructure for growing national populations, let alone the poor and vulnerable in informal settlements.

Traditional urban upgrading projects generally focus on basic infrastructure such as housing and drainage. This is delivered primarily via one-dimensional technical solutions. The problem is that these typically don’t take account of the existing local and environmental context.

These approaches often fail to allow for the high rates of urbanisation that characterise informal settlements. This, in turn, exacerbates the inextricably linked challenges of sanitation, water supply and public and environmental health.

The benefits of a new approach

Drawing on programs in Australia, China, Singapore and Israel, the project will alter the biophysical landscape to greatly reduce communities’ exposure to faecal and other hazardous contamination in the environment, while also improving biodiversity.

We anticipate multiple benefits. These include better community health, fewer infections with disease-causing bugs resulting in less diarrhoeal disease, and better intestinal health among children leading to improved growth.

The changes in the living environment should also improve wellbeing, increase food production and decrease violence against women and girls who will, for the first time, have access to domestic sanitation facilities and reliable water supplies.

Importantly, the project begins with a two-year baseline data assessment of both environmental and human health. The infrastructure upgrades will be delivered in year three. These will be followed by another two-year assessment of environmental and health impacts.

A local focus to achieve global goals

The recently adopted UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) renewed the commitment to universal delivery of essential water and sanitation services.

This global agenda includes goals such as health and wellbeing (Goal 3), improved water and sanitation (Goal 6) and sustainable cities and communities (Goal 11).

While these goals are clearly important, achieving them demands an integrated and holistic approach. Trying to solve each goal individually is not only inefficient in terms of time and money, it can have unintended consequences as it misses the intrinsic connections and feedback loops between them. Our project aims to avoid these pitfalls.

The project includes a significant capacity-building dimension in Fiji and Indonesia. Through dedicated training programs, we will develop in-country communities of practice around the intervention (design and implementation) and the environmental and public health assessments.

Project personnel will provide training and transfer knowledge on the design, construction, operation and maintenance of the technologies.

We will collaborate with local engineers, contractors, governments and community organisations. By building local capabilities around water-sensitive infrastructure, together with our in-country partners, we hope this in-depth engagement will leave a lasting legacy.

An international consortium led by Monash University will deliver the project. It brings together leading researchers in medicine, architecture, engineering, ecology, economics and social sciences, across Monash, CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, Stanford University, Emory University and the University of Melbourne. Other partners include the Asian Development Bank (funding the infrastructure upgrades), Melbourne Water and South East Water, World Health Organisation, Oxfam International and WaterAid.

Our hope is that this project will provide an evidence-based proof of concept that will improve slum upgrading and revitalisation. Providing essential water services and cleaning up the environment should deliver radically enhanced health outcomes for some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

This, we believe, is a real-world solution to achieving what everyone recognises is a global human right: access to clean water and sanitation.

Rebekah Brown receives funding from Australian Research Council.

Karin Leder receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Tony Wong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Ministers should do more to prevent flooding, says a Commons committee report.