Worldwatch Institute in the context of "Cooperative ownership"

A cooperative (also known as co-operative, coöperative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-controlled enterprise". Cooperatives are democratically controlled by their members, with each member having one vote in electing the board of directors. They differ from collectives in that they are generally built from the bottom-up, rather than the top-down.Cooperatives may include:

• Worker cooperatives: businesses owned and managed by the people who work there
• Consumer cooperatives: businesses owned and managed by the people who consume goods and/or services provided by the cooperative
• Producer cooperatives: businesses where producers pool their output for their common benefit
  • e.g. Agricultural cooperatives
• Purchasing cooperatives where members pool their purchasing power
• Multi-stakeholder or hybrid cooperatives that share ownership between different stakeholder groups. For example, care cooperatives where ownership is shared between both care-givers and receivers. Stakeholders might also include non-profits or investors.
• Second- and third-tier cooperatives whose members are other cooperatives
• Platform cooperatives that use a cooperatively owned and governed website, mobile app or a protocol to facilitate the sale of goods and services.

Research published by the Worldwatch Institute found that in 2012 approximately one billion people in 96 countries had become members of at least one cooperative. The turnover of the largest three hundred cooperatives in the world reached $2.2 trillion.

Bird conservation is a field in the science of conservation biology related to threatened birds. Bird conservation efforts aim to protect species and mitigate the decline of threatened bird population numbers. According to Worldwatch Institute, many bird populations are currently declining worldwide, with 1,200 species facing extinction in the next century. Current estimates imply a total of nearly 11,000 extant species, suggesting that 11.6% of all bird species, a near ratio of one in nine birds, have gone extinct over the last 126,000 years of human history. The biggest cited reason surrounds habitat loss. Other threats include overhunting, accidental mortality due to structural collisions, long-line fishing bycatch, pollution, competition and predation by pet cats, oil spills and pesticide use and climate change. Governments, along with numerous conservation charities, work to protect birds in various ways, including legislation, preserving and restoring bird habitat, and establishing captive populations for reintroductions.

See Late Quaternary prehistoric birds for birds which disappeared in prehistoric and early historic times, usually due to human activity (i.e., starting with the Upper Paleolithic Revolution). For birds having gone extinct in modern times (since 1500), see List of extinct birds.

Lester Russel Brown (born March 28, 1934) is an American environmental analyst, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, and founder and former president of the Earth Policy Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C. BBC Radio commentator Peter Day referred to him as "one of the great pioneer environmentalists."

Brown is the author or co-author of over 50 books on global environmental issues and his works have been translated into more than forty languages. His most recent book is The Great Transition: Shifting from Fossil Fuels to Solar and Wind Energy (2015), in which he explains that the global economy is now undergoing a transition from fossil and nuclear energy to clean power from solar, wind, and other renewable sources. His previous book was Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity (2012).

The State of the World (SoW) was a series of books published annually from 1984 to 2017 by the U.S. based Worldwatch Institute, a thinktank that was founded in the 1970s by renowned environmentalist Lester R. Brown and ceased operations in 2017. The series attempted to identify the planet's most significant environmental challenges.

The 2010 edition discussed different ways of changing current cultures such that it felt as natural to live sustainably as living as a consumer felt at the time. The 2011 edition looked at the global food crisis and surrounding environmental and social problems, with a particular emphasis on global innovations that could help solve that worldwide problem. The 2012 edition showcased innovative projects, creative policies, and fresh approaches that were advancing sustainable development in the twenty-first century. The 2013 edition defined the term sustainability, and assessed attempts to cultivate it.