Nothing is immune from the current financial crisis / credit crunch / liquidity meltdown / world doom. Even Nature News is not immune, as we’ve just launched our ‘Finance in crisis’ specials page.

If that’s not enough, below the fold you can find what the rest of the world’s media is saying about science during the squeeze regarding:

Forest finance

Many papers are making a link between a new report on deforestation and the financial situation. The Times suggests the lukewarm reception for the report’s suggestion that, as it puts it, “rich nations should pay their poorer cousins £19 billion a year to leave their rainforests alone” may have been the fact it is “coming right in the middle of the credit crunch, economic meltdown and general financial bedlam”.

The Guardian is more positive, saying:

Unless we somehow safeguard the forests, the carbon savings needed elsewhere could entail virtually shutting down the fossil fuel economy. Yesterday a government-commissioned review by the businessman Johan Eliasch spelled out this steely logic. It made an overpowering financial case for investing in the world’s arboreal lungs.

Food finance

Problems with food supplies in many developing countries have generally fallen off the media radar in the mass of financial coverage, but Oxfam is trying to get them back on the radar.

In a new report the charity says less than $1 billion of the $12 billion pledged to fight problem has actually been ponyed up. The Guardian quotes the report thus:

Rich countries are directing their attention to high fuel prices and turmoil in the financial sector, but the number of malnourished people in the world rose by 44 million in 2008. Nearly one billion people are now going hungry. When you consider the speed of the world’s response to the credit crisis, the delay in acting is shocking.

The Philippines Inquirer says in its headline food is “A problem bigger than financial crisis”.

University finance

The Chronicle of Higher Education looks at US university finance. It doesn’t look pretty:

As the economy enters a recession, those who follow philanthropic trends expect such giving to drop, especially among companies that are filing for bankruptcy, being acquired, or drastically losing stock value.

…

GivingUSA Foundation data from the last 40 years show an average 1.6-percent decline in donations by corporations to all charities during years with recessions that last eight months or more (and an average 1.9-percent drop in total giving for education during these years). One expert in philanthropy expects worse: He predicts this economic decline will cause corporate giving to all nonprofits to go down at least 10 percent.

In the UK a number of papers are reporting that many universities have millions tied up in Icelandic banks that it’s unclear they’ll be able to extract as that country melts down.

The Independent says Oxford “has admitted 5% of its cash deposits [approx £30 million] are invested in three banks and has now called on the regulator of universities to help solve the crisis”.

The Sunderland Echo says Durham University has £2.5 million “frozen” in an Icelandic bank subsidiary. Aberystwyth faces a £4million hit and Glyndwr University in Wrexham could lose £3 million says the Press Association. Cambridge is potentially in the hole for £11 million, says the Daily Telegraph.