While climate scientists lament the fact that their flagship compendia, such as the IPCC reports, come under endless attack, scientists working on other environmental issues would love such high-profile pronouncements, even if they came with a similar cost. IPCC-envy was one of the rationales for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, published in 2005, and it is the main impetus behind the current development of an Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. When the equally inelegantly named TEEB process (it stands for The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) was set up at the G8+5 meeting in Potsdam in 2007 its political patrons had a clear model in mind. They hoped that just as Lord Stern’s review of the economics of climate change, published in 2006, firmed resolve for action among governments and helped set in motion the processes that led to last year’s Copenhagen climate conference, so this new report should encourage a more serious global approach to the costs that damaged and dysfunctional ecosystems impose on people.

It’s worth noting that this approach implicitly assumes, as do many people, that the point of the IPCC and such endeavours is to find reasons for action, rather than dispassionately to assess the issue. Another caveat is that, as far as the climate is concerned, big and well publicised reports have manifestly not delivered the goods in terms of what UN negotiators call “environmental integrity”—producing actions that really do reduce emissions. But that does not mean that the TEEB process is either propagandistic or pointless. Treating the services provided by ecosystems as part of the economy is a good idea, and the various ways in which their value can be sustained, or even enhanced, deserve study. ...

Thomas Brooks, a biologist with NatureServe, a conservation group based in Arlington, Virginia, has long been fighting to preserve biodiversity in the Philippines. Quite often it can feel like a lost cause. Conservation efforts in the country have struggled against ever greater deforestation and decades of environmental neglect. You might think that, when Mr Brooks heard that the Philippine government is considering opening some of its protected areas to mining, it would have been the last straw. Instead, it was an occasion for hope.

According to Theresa Mundita Lim, Director of the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau of the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources, who made the announcement at a meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nairobi, the move on mining is part of a larger strategy to improve how much biodiversity the government protects. By cutting spending on areas that are lower-priority and instead putting the money where it will be more effective in protecting nature, she hopes to get more impact out of the limited conservation funds available. ...

THE dinosaurs went out with a bang. Most palaeontologists agree that those creatures and much of the rest of Mesozoic life ended when the Earth collided with an asteroid or a comet 65m years ago. But the Mesozoic, too, began with a mass extinction. Some 251m years ago, the efluvia of Siberian volcanoes wiped out 95% of life in the seas, and almost as much on the land, in an episode known as the Great Dying. This was the end of the Permian period, and of the era of life called the Palaeozoic. The survivors regrouped, re-evolved and turned into the Mesozoic species that led eventually to the dinosaurs, pterosaurs, ammonites and belemnites that generations of fossil hunters are familiar with.

How that regrouping happened will be the topic of a presentation by Hugo Bucher, the director of the Palaeontological Institute at the University of Zurich, at the Third International Palaeontological Congress in London on July 3rd. According to Dr Bucher, it occurred faster than anyone had previously thought, but also stuttered on the way as the volcanic activity waxed and waned. ...

NY ALESUND, a village devoted to scientific research on the island of Spitsbergen, in the high Arctic, seems about as isolated as it is possible to get. Beyond the confines of the village and its outstations, there is no sign of human beings; just snow, water, rock and scrawny soil.

To the north, it’s a straight trip to the pole. This is true everywhere, by definition, but from Ny Alesund the trip is shorter than from any other permanently inhabited settlement. To the west is Greenland (the most northerly, uninhabited bit), followed by Ellesmere Island (part of Canada), a lot of sometimes frozen ocean and some Russian islands before a humanity-free circumnavigation brings you back to Ny Alesund. To the south is everything else in the world, most of it a very long way off. The nearest city, Tromso, is more than 1,000km away, and hardly a metropolis. For four months a year even the sun does not make it to Ny Alesund. Before the 20th century, no one lived here, nor would anyone have wanted to. ...

THE two leading auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, have come a long way since the dark days of late 2008, when the sudden collapse of the art market caused their revenues to plummet. At the time, they were forced to pay out nearly $200m in guarantees to honour contracts on works that had been consigned to auction, yet failed to sell on the day. Now, two years later, the sector is running ahead of itself. As the art-market recovery gets under way, auction houses now face a particularly delicate moment.

When art prices fell, auction houses struggled to attract sellers. Collectors faced with death, divorce or debt—three common reasons for selling—still consigned their works for auction. But discretionary selling fell back sharply. With the memory of the record prices of 2007 still fresh in many collectors’ minds, the question they asked themselves was “why sell if you don’t have to?” ...

DURING May and June, when the mighty bluefin tuna returns to the Mediterranean to spawn, fishermen arrive from all over the world to catch it (click here to watch a video). In days gone by, the fish were netted and killed on the spot. Now, in high-tech operations involving divers and video cameras, they are transferred from the nets into “farms”—arrays of cages anchored to the sea floor from Spain to Malta, to be fattened up. Then, come October, they are sold to Japanese boats, killed, frozen and shipped to Japan.

It is a lucrative arrangement. Anthony Grupetta, the director general of agriculture and fisheries regulation in Malta, says that in those few months most farmers can increase the weight of a wild-caught bluefin by 27-30%. (He claims the Maltese farms do better than this, but does not say exactly how much better.) The cages do not cost much, and the fish fed to a tuna are worth a lot less than the added kilos of tuna-meat that result. What is more, Japanese buyers prefer fish raised this way. They say the quality of the meat from a bluefin killed straight after being caught is less tasty, as the fish has been stressed. ...

IT IS either an embarrassment of riches or overkill. Either way, the abundance of art fairs in London this June is a dramatic departure from how things looked a year ago. Then, London's prestigious Grosvenor House Antiques and Fine Art Fair was closed down after 75 years. Pundits blamed the bad economy. The actual reason was that the owners of the Grosvenor House Hotel believed they could earn more by using the space for other purposes.

It looked as if London's art and antiques scene was shrinking, but two new ventures soon sprang up. A group of dealers have come up with Masterpiece London, a fair running from June 24th to 29th. Some of the top names from Grosvenor are among the 115 dealers who signed on to participate. Anna and Brian Haughton, London-based ceramics dealers and veteran fair organisers, had a similar idea. They too launched a new fair called Art Antiques London (AAL), which ran from June 9th to the 16th. Smaller than Masterpiece, it incorporated their prestigious ceramics fair and seminar. “We want quality and intimacy,” says Mrs Haughton, who attracted 60 participants—the fair's target number. ...

MARCH is the maximum month. In March 1979, the first year for which satellite records are available, the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean covered 16.4m square kilometres (6.4m square miles). By the time summer was gone, the ice was down to about 7.2m square kilometres. Every March since, the ice has returned to an annual maximum, but never again has it been as large as the one observed that first year. Every summer, it shrinks back down, and the minimum has for the most part been getting smaller and smaller. In 2007 it was just 4.3m square kilometres. At first, polar scientists watched the planet’s icy pulse with academic interest and justifiable pride in their new observational capabilities. Now they monitor its every hiccup as if it were a patient on life support. But that does not mean they know how to interpret what they see.

This year they noted that the Arctic ice cap had a late-winter growth spurt, reaching its maximum on March 31st, the latest date ever recorded. By the beginning of June, the ice cover—as defined by the percentage of ocean covered by at least 15% floating ice—had dropped far below what is usual for the time of year. Both observations, by themselves, sound as if they should contain meaningful information about what to expect in the rest of 2010. They don’t. ...

SOME of the trappings are the same. Outside the conference venue there are still followers of Supreme Master Ching Hai urging veganism as a path to climatic salvation. Inside, the public spaces are as thronged, the piles of paper as daunting and the procedures as arcane as ever. (Trying to explain the difference between a “negotiating text” and a “text that can form the basis for negotiations” a UN official looks flummoxed that anyone should not understand such a basic distinction. “It’s like the difference between a paper and a non-paper,” he observes helpfully.) The campaigning groups are still handing out “Fossil of the Day” awards, too, to the countries they think are being least helpful, and they are still going to America, Canada and Saudi Arabia with predictable regularity.

But this is Bonn, not Copenhagen, and though the colour-coded ID badges are the same, as well, and even use the same pictures taken for security at Copenhagen and since squirreled away on computer disks, the faces above the badges are different. “Have you noticed?” asks a climate-conference veteran from Greenpeace. “Everyone looks ten years younger.” ...

IN A time when the market for Chinese treasures is constantly breaking records, the success of the sale of George and Mary Bloch’s snuff bottles in Hong Kong still caught many off-guard. The May 28th event marked the first so-called “golden gavel” sale in Hong Kong for Bonhams, a London auctioneer, meaning every lot found a buyer (also known as a “white-glove” auction in Europe and America). This is rare, and often limited to sales with few lots in highly collectible sectors. That this was a niche auction with 141 lots makes the feat all the more remarkable.

The sale's final tally, at just over HK$66m ($8.5m), was three times higher than Bonhams expected. This has surely encouraged the sellers, who are planning to dispose of their entire 1,700-piece collection in a further nine sales over the next five years. ...

HAUNCH of Venison—an art gallery owned by an auction house—is a weird beast. When Christie’s acquired the firm in 2007, many doubted the health of this unconventional alliance of the primary and secondary market. Now that Haunch’s founders, Harry Blain and Graham Southern, have announced that they are leaving the gallery, skepticism may reach a new high.

The primary market offers work as it emerges from artists’ studios—that is, it’s for sale for the first time. The best primary dealers or “gallerists” tend to be quirky mavericks with such a good “eye” that they have their names over the door. They pay more attention to supply, so it’s paramount that they understand and nurture artists. Few are team players with a flair for corporate politics. The secondary market, by contrast, involves the resale of art objects, either through private dealers or auction houses. These traders focus on demand, and so have little contact with artists. Moreover, unlike primary gallerists, traders rarely opt to sell a work at a lower price to a museum in the interests of developing an artist’s career. High prices are an end in themselves for an auction house. ...

THERE is a hole in the green imagination about 20 years away. In the short term—the next ten years, say—the environmentalists’ vision is usually of a world similar to this one with a bit less of one thing (carbon dioxide) and a bit more of a panoply of others (windmills, forests, smartgrids and the like). In the far off future of 2050 and beyond, the world is meant to look very different indeed. Carbon-dioxide emissions should, by then, be less than half what they are now; in today’s rich countries they should have fallen by 90% or so. This means entirely new infrastructures and technologies, and perhaps entirely new ways of life, too.

That, however, leaves something of a disconnect around 2030. So there is a need to imagine a sort of bridge between the now-like near future and the Utopian not-so-near one. The Audi Urban Future Award, a project unveiled at a conference in London on May 28th, aims to help. Six innovative architectural practices have been asked to produce projects with a vision for 2030. The results will be revealed at the Venice Architecture Biennale later this summer, and the winner will receive €100,000 ($123,000). ...

IF ANY industry ought to be seeing silver iridescence in the dark slick of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, it is renewable energy. However, since what is perhaps the biggest environmental disaster America has yet seen erupted at BP’s Macondo prospect on April 20th the RENIXX index, which measures the world’s 30 largest publicly traded renewable-energy companies, has fallen by 15%. This is even worse than the 12% fall in the MSCI world stockmarkets index in that period. Moreover, it continues a longer-term decline of more than two-thirds from the index’s all-time high in December 2007.

The oil spill might have been expected to revive a sense of urgency that the world, and America in particular, should reduce its dependence on oil, not least by switching to cleaner, greener sources of energy. Instead it is increasingly common to hear investors asking gloomily, “Is green dead?” ...

WHEN Rene Magritte was 13 years old, his mother drowned herself in a local river. When the body was recovered her face was found to be covered with her nightdress. No one knew whether she had deliberately shielded her eyes from death or if the river current had simply veiled her face. Magritte had begun painting a year earlier.

He would become obsessed with the hidden. His paintings often include grey rivers, pale lifeless bodies, faces swathed in fabric, solitary men walking, sea water and rampant roses—as well as the floating apples, burning bassoons, fingerless arms, sponges and pipes that began to appear in his work after he met Giorgio de Chirico, an Italian artist, and converted to Surrealism. ...

MAY 2010 is looking like a good month for forests. In a couple of days, on the 27th, the Oslo Forest Climate Conference is expected to mark another step on the road to a comprehensive deal on tropical deforestation. And last week, on the 18th, an unlikely-seeming collection of forest-products companies and environmental organisations announced the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, which should drastically change the way in which huge areas of Canadian forest are managed.

The forests wrapped around the planet at high northern latitudes (boreal forests, also called taiga) are second only to tropical forests in total area, and account for as much as 200 billion tonnes of stored carbon. About a third of the ring is in Canada, which has some 570 million hectares (1.4 billion acres) of boreal forest: only Russia boasts more. Only about 13% of that land is subject to the new agreement—but that is still an area greater than that of Spain and Portugal. The parties to the agreement, 21 companies which make pulp, paper and other wood products, and between them hold 70% of the boreal timber rights in Canada, and nine big environmental groups, ranging from the uncontroversial Nature Conservancy to firebrands like Greenpeace, say this is the biggest conservation deal in history. ...

“VALUES” are all the rage at business schools nowadays. This week around 300 graduating MBAs at Harvard Business School will take an oath, pledging to play a positive role in society once they graduate. At the last count, this is slightly fewer Harvard MBAs than took the oath when it was introduced last year; but thanks in part to a new book by the authors of the oath, the idea is spreading through business schools like wildfire. There are now over 3,000 signatories from more than 300 institutions.

It will be unsurprising if, this time next year, taking the oath is compulsory rather than voluntary at Harvard, given Nitin Nohria’s recent appointment as dean of its business school. He, along with his colleague Rakesh Khurana, was an early advocate of an oath and helped the authors shape it. Even if Mr Nohria decides not to pick a fight over the ethical pledge with the many sceptics on his faculty, he has made no secret of his support. ...

The Europe.view column will henceforth appear as a weekly posting at Eastern Approaches, The Economist's central and eastern Europe blog.

IN THE communist era, the countries of eastern and central Europe were run by tightly knit clans. Connections, particularly those of your parents, mattered more than ability. The same kind of people held the top jobs in the ruling party, in government, in media and in commerce and industry. One of the most potent fuels for the revolutions of 1989 was public discontent with this closed system and the unfairness and incompetence that went along with it. ...

ONE of the obvious problems with predicting the future effects of climate change is that they haven’t happened. This makes climate studies highly dependent on models, which invariably and unavoidably make simplifying assumptions. This means that using their results to say anything of practical import needs care and caveats, both of which can often be in short supply, or stripped out to make a point.

However, it is now ever more possible for studies of climate change to look at the past, not the future. The 20th century saw a fair amount of warming, and it is sometimes possible to compare what this warming did and didn’t do with what future warming might or might not do. This is what a paper published in Nature this week does in an attempt to re-examine, and perhaps close down, long-running debates about malaria and climate change. ...

IF A single auction could encapsulate the crazy, competitive world of bidding for Chinese treasures, it was a sale of fine Chinese art at Bonhams in London on May 13th.

The consignors of the first 61 lots were the heirs of Jack Rose, an English collector whose widow died last year. Half of these were carved pieces of jade, many dating as far back as the 16th century. A number came with an exceptional provenance having been sold to Rose by Sydney H. Moss, one of London’s great post-war dealers. ...