War has been fought over environmental resources for as long as humans have existed... don't you think it's time for that to stop?

The UN declared Nov. 6

International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict

Here is a link to the resolutions (and statements) the UN made during it's introduction: http://www.un.org/en/events/environmentconflictday/documents.shtml ;
including:

• Resolution A/RES/56/4  declaring 6 November the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict 
• Statements made by members of the UN General Assembly during the introduction of the draft resolution (A/56/L.8) on the Observance of the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict (A/56/PV.37, pp. 21-26)  

Policy Reports

• Women and Natural Resources: Unlocking the Peacebuilding Potential 
• Greening the Blue Helmets (Executive Summary)
• Protecting the Environment During Armed Conflict: An Inventory and Analysis of International Law 
• From Conflict to Peacebuilding: The Role of Natural Resources and the Environment

Policy Briefs

• High-Value Natural Resources and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding 
• Assessing and Restoring Natural Resources in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding 
• Land and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding 
• Water and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding 
• Natural Resource Programming in Post-Conflict Situations 

Guidance Notes

• Natural resource management in transition settings – UNDG/ ECHA Guidance Note: This guidance note aims to help UN Country teams and UN Missions understand the negative and positive roles that natural resources can play in peace consolidation. It provides practical guidance to assist in thinking through how natural resource management principles and practices can feed into transitional analysis and planning frameworks.
• The EU-UN partnership on Land and Natural Resource Conflicts has developed a number of practical guidance notes and training materials on land and conflict, extractives and conflict, renewable resources and conflict, capacity-building for natural resource management and conflict prevention in resource-rich economies.

Technical Reports/Assessments

• Relationships and Resources: Environmental governance for peacebuilding and resilient livelihoods in Sudan 
• Taking Root: The cash crop trade in Darfur 
• Local Level Agreements in Darfur: A review with reference to access and management of natural resources 
• Haiti - Dominican Republic: Environmental Challenges in the Border Zone 
• On the Hoof - Livestock Trade in Darfur
• Livelihood Security: Climate Change, Migration and Conflict in the Sahel (Executive Summary)
• Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland
• Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment of the Democratic Republic of Congo 
• Sierra Leone: Environment, Conflict and Peacebuilding Analysis 
• Assessment of Energy, Water and Waste Reduction Options for the Proposed AMISOM HQ Camp in Mogadishu, Somalia and the Support Base in Mombasa, Kenya 

UN Resolutions and Declarations

• Protection of the environment in areas affected by armed conflict (UNEP/EA.2/Res.15)
  UN Resolution on Environmental Sustainability in Mali Peacekeeping Operations [S/RES/2100 (2013)]
• Environment and Security: a Global Agenda for UNEP [UNEP/GC.23/INF/21] 

Books and Case Studies

• Publications on Environmental Peacebuilding

A Brief List of Women Scientists through Time (The Middle Ages a.k.a. ~500-1500 CE)

Again, I start this blog with a caveat, throughout history there has been a tendency to under-report on women participating in the sciences... what follows is definitely not a comprehensive list. Please add your finds to the following list:

• Empress Theodora (500–545), Byzantine philosopher and mathematician
• Anna Komnene (1083-1153), Byzantine princess who was a scholar trained in all of the sciences, physician/hospital administrator, and historian. She was the daughter of the Byzantine emperor Alexios I and his wife Irene Doukaina, writing the Alexiad which is an account of her father’s reign.
• Hildegard of Bingen (1099–1179), German abbess who is considered the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.
•  Trota of Salerno (12th century), Italian physician and writer, she was one of the Ladies of Salerno who practiced medicine. It is somewhat controversial, but there is strong evidence that she wrote the Trotula Treatises.
• Herrad of Landsberg (c.1130–1195), German/French nun, and subsequently abbess, she was a natural philosopher who authored the pictorial encyclopedia "Hortus deliciarum" or "The Garden of Delights".
• Heloise (12th century), French scholar, mathematician, and physician
• Dame Péronelle (1292-1319), French herbalist and physician
• Magistra Hersend (13 century CE) French Royal Physician and Surgeon, she accompanied King Louis IX of France on the Seventh Crusade, 1249.
• Alessandra Giliani (1307-1326), Italian, she was the first known female anatomist and surgical assistant to the father of modern anatomy, Mondino de'Liuzzi, at the University of Bologna. She died at 19 and is known primarily from a memorial plaque from Otto Angenius (a fellow student of Mondino, and likely her fiance) which describes her work. Alessandra was apparently a brilliant prosector (preparer of corpses for anatomical study) and known for developing a method to replace the blood drained from a corpse with a colored hardening dye.
• Dorotea Bucca (14th century CE), Italian physician and professor of medicine, she held a chair of medicine and philosophy at the University of Bologna for 40+ years.
• Abella (14th century), Italian physician and writer and lecturer at Salerno School of Medicine
• Jacobina Félicie (14th century CE), Italian physician licensed and practiced in France (only 1 of 8 at the time in Paris, 1322). She was accused and found guilty of unlawful practice in Paris. Despite positive testimony she was banned from practicing medicine and threatened with excommunication. The court determined that, due to gender, a man could understand the subject of medicine better than a woman. This decision is considered the critical point, beginning the ban on women studying and being licensed in medicine in France until the 1800s, about 500 years.
• Constance Calenda (15th century), Italian surgeon specializing in diseases of the eye.

During this time, while it wasn't common, Italian schools never barred women and allowed them to study and teach alongside men.

A Brief List of Women Scientists through Time (Antiquity a.k.a. pre-5th century CE)

I start this blog with a caveat, throughout history there has been a tendency to under-report on women participating in the sciences... what follows is definitely not a comprehensive list. Please add your finds to the following list:

•  Merit Ptah, (2700 BCE) the world's first, currently known, female physician. 
• Enheduanna (c. 2285–2250 BCE), Sumerian (Akkadian) astronomer and poet, daughter of King Sargon of Akkad.
• Tapputi-Belatekallim  (~1200 BCE mentioned in a clay tablet dated), considered the first chemist. She was a Babylonian perfumer, the first person in history recorded as using a chemical process, the first referenced still.
• Theano (6th century BCE), philosopher, mathematician and physician
•  Perictione (5th century BCE), Greek philosopher, mother of Plato
•  Arete of Cyrene (5th–4th centuries BCE), natural and moral philosopher, North Africa
•  Pythias of Assos (4th century BCE), Greek biologist and embryologist with a special interest in marine zoology.
•  Agnodice (4th century BCE), potentially the first woman physician to practice legally in Athens. The story goes that she hid her gender except to her female patients, so she would be able to practice medicine, especially gynecology. When many women quit going to the the male doctors they brought Agnodice before the court and accused Agnodice of seducing "his" female patients. Agnodice then, graphically, exposed that she was a female. The response was to then  condemn her for violating the law by studying medicine. A crowd of women arrived to praise her medical successes. The result, the laws of Athens were changed and women physicians were allowed to treat women.
• Hypatia (370–415), Greek mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher.
• Aemilia (300-363 BCE), Gallo-Roman physician
• Favilla (2nd century), Roman physician.
• Aglaonice (1st or 2nd c. BCE), astronomer Greece, regarded as a sorceress for her ability to make the moon disappear, in other words she could predict the time and ~area where a lunar eclipse would occur. One of a group considered the "witches of Thessaly", that were active from the 3rd to 1st centuries BCE.
•  Maria Prophetissa (b/n 1st and 3rd c. CE), considered first western alchemist, developed several pieces of chemical apparatus.
•  Metrodora (ca. 200-400 AD), Greek physician and author
• Leoparda (4th century AD), physician and gynecologist
• Macrina (4th century AD), Greek physician and nun