We human beings need to stay in touch with nature-many studies show how much better people feel when in sight of trees. Yet even more importantly，nature itself needs us to stay in touch. Many politicians and scientists have told us that we can "conquer" nature，but in reality nature will always be beyond our control---we do have the power to destroy it. The fate of all the animals and their habitats depends largely on our attitude towards them. Whether or not we ourselves survive depends on how well we look after the rest. For our sake as well as theirs，we need to consider it seriously.

But how can we care at all if we spend our lives indoors？Born in South London at the end of the Second World War，at least I knew what a sparrow was（they're rare now）and you couldn't put a spade into our tiny garden without cutting a worm in half. We knew，too，that milk comes from cows and that old men can grow amazing carrots on poor land. Ultra-urban（极度城市化）as we may have been，at least we were in touch.

"Now we have a generation who frankly are not in touch. So how can they care if the countryside is sold off to the highest bidders，and used to park helicopters，and our crops come free from Monsanto and our livestock live in factories？They will know no other way.

But if we settle for the ultra-urban life，if we allow all wilderness to be compromised and hand our farming over to industrial chemists then，quite simply，the world will fall apart--as it has been doing already. We have to rethink what agriculture is really for，and why conservation matters to us，as well as to other creatures. Changes of strategies begin with attitude and attitude begins with awareness.

Financial regulations in Britain have imposed a rather unusual rule on the bosses of big banks. Starting next year, any guaranteed bonus of top executives could be delayed 10 years if their banks are under investigation for wrongdoing. The main purpose of this “clawback” rule is to hold bankers responsible for harmful risk-taking and to restore public trust in financial institution. Yet officials also hope for a much larger benefit: more long-term decision-making not only by banks but also by all corporations, to build a stronger economy for future generations.

“Short-termism” or the desire for quick profits, has worsened in publicly traded companies, says the Bank of England’s top economist, Andrew Haldane. He quotes a giant of classical economies, Alfred Marshall, in describing this financial impatience as acting like “Children who pick the strawberries out of their pudding to eat them at once” rather than putting them aside to be eaten last.

The average time for holding a stock in both the United States and Britain, he notes, has dropped from seven years to seven months in recent decades. Transient(短期的) investors, who demand high quarterly profits from companies, can hold back a firm’s efforts to invest in long-term research or to build up customer loyalty. This has been called “quarterly capitalism”.

In addition, new digital technologies have allowed more rapid trading of equities( 股 票 ), quicker use of information, and thus shortens attention spans in financial markets. “There seems to be an advantage of short-term thinking at the expense of long-term investing,” said Commissioner Daniel Gallagher of the US Securities and Exchange Commission in speech this week.

In the US, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has pushed most public companies to delay performance bonuses for senior executives by about a year, slightly helping reduce “short-termism.” In its latest survey of CEO pay, The Wall Street Journal finds that “a substantial part” of executive pay is now tied to performance.

Much more could be done to encourage “long-termism,” such as changes in the tax code and quicker disclosure(披露) of stock acquisitions. In France, shareholders who hold onto a company investment for at least two years can sometimes earn more voting rights in a company.

Within companies, the right compensation design can provide motivation for executives to think beyond their own time at the company and on behalf of all shareholders. Britain’s new rule is a reminder to bankers that society has an interest in their performance, not just for the short term but for the long term.

A project in Gambia is empowering women and reducing dangerous waste at the same time.

The   Waste   Innovation   Center,   funded   by the   European   Union’s   Global   Climate   Change Alliance，shows women in the Brikama area how to recycle waste into useful materials and products, which they can then sell in local markets.

Wood-like waste is recycled into charcoal (木炭)，for example，which can be used to supersede firewood and reduce the number of trees that are cut down for firewood. Food waste is recycled into compost(混合肥料）to function as environmentally friendly fertilizers and plastic is turned into many useful things.

Supported by WasteAid UK and the Gambia Women’s Initiative (GWI), among others, the project provides women with skills they can use to become self-sufficient (自给自足的). Women learning at the center come from five communities, and some of them travel as far as 12 miles to learn these important skills that will provide them with an income, according to The Guardian.

Isatou Ceesay, who now leads the GWI，highlighted the need to focus on economic equality in her country, telling The Guardian, “In terms of education, women are the ones who are always behind. Boys are chosen to go to school. When we conduct our training, we find women can do a lot，but don’t know who they are, or how to implement (实施）things. ”

According to the World Health Organization’s Country Cooperation Strategy 2008—2013 report, the main environmental issue facing Gambia is poor waste management in urban areas.

Ndey Sireng Bakurin, executive director of the National Environment Agency, has voiced concern over health and environmental risks, such as water pollution, the increase of insects as well as flooding that occur as a result of poor waste management.