World Pays Ecuador Not To Extract Oil From Rainforest
The Guardian, December 30, 2011
By John Vidal
An alliance of European local authorities, national governments, US film stars, Japanese shops, soft drink companies and Russian foundations have stepped in to prevent oil companies exploiting 900m barrels of crude oil from one of the world's most biologically rich tracts of land.
According to the UN, the "crowdfunding" initiative had last night raised $116m (£75m), enough to temporarily halt the exploitation of the 722 square miles of "core" Amazonian rainforest known as Yasuní national park in Ecuador.
The park, which is home to two tribes of uncontacted Indians, is thought to have more
mammal, bird, amphibian and plant species than any other spot on earth. Development of the oilfield, which was planned to take place immediately if the money had not been raised, would have inevitably led to ecological devastation and the eventual release of over 400m tonnes of CO2.
Ecuador agreed to halt plans to mine the oilfield if it could raise 50% of the $7.6bn revenue being lost by not mining the oil. While the world's leading conservation groups pledged nothing, regional governments in France and Belgium offered millions of dollars – with $2m alone from the Belgian region of Wallonia. A New York investment banker donated her annual salary and Bo Derek, Leonardo DiCaprio, Edward Norton and Al Gore all contributed.
Other governments pledging support were Chile, Colombia, Georgia and Turkey ($100,000 each), Peru ($300,000), Australia ($500,000) and Spain ($1.4m).
Supporters of the scheme argued that it could be a model for change in the way the world pays to protect important places. The money raised is guaranteed to be used only for nature protection and renewable energy projects. Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon and other countries with oil reserves, have investigated the possibility of setting up similar schemes as an alternative to traditional aid.
Activists trying to combat Japanese whaling have gone high-tech.
The longstanding battle against whaling has mostly been a game of wait, watch, chase and hope for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
But activists are now hoping they'll be able to chase down whaling vessels before they ever make their first kill – with the help of drone aircraft.
Two of Sea Shepherd's ships are outfitted with long-range drones fitted with cameras and detection equipment, which help the ships scan hundreds more miles of ocean for whaling vessels,
thanks to a donation from Bayshore Recycling Corp. of Woodbridge, New Jersey.
And the technology has already proved successful for the group, which said it located the Japanese ship Nisshin Maru near the west coast of Australia on Saturday thanks to a drone.
Last winter, Japan cut short its planned December-to-April hunt by two months after anti-whaling activists from Sea Shepherd repeatedly interfered with the whaling vessels.
Sea Shepherd contends that the research hunts are a sham, with meat from the hunts being sold to consumers and served in restaurants.
The group claims it saved 800 whales by its actions during last season's hunt.
It's Official - The Key to Conservation Lies With Indigenous Peoples
Survival International, November 10,2011
By Survival International
Indigenous peoples are key to preserving the world’s forests, and conservation reserves that exclude them suffer as a result, according to a new study from the World Bank.
Its analysis shows how deforestation plummets to its lowest levels when indigenous peoples continue living in protected areas, and are not forced out.
Across the world millions of tribal people are conservation refugees, but the World Bank says its evidence shows ‘forest conservation need not be at the expense of local livelihoods.’
80% of the world’s protected areas are the territories of tribal communities, who have lived there for millennia. This is no coincidence: increasingly, experts are recognizing the link between the presence of tribal peoples and their ability to benefit forests by inhibiting deforestation.
Electronic waste, or "e-waste", is a major problem of the information age. As consumers continually upgrade their electronic devices, the old devices are discarded and usually end up in a toxic e-waste dump, usually located in a poor developing country. Such a dump is located in the capital city of the African country, Ghana.
Soil sampling was done from the surrounding properties, and the samples were tested for iron, magnesium, copper, zinc, cadmium, chromium, nickel, and lead, all metals that can be found in modern electronics. Dangerously high levels were found at the school and local market.
The Ghanan researcher, Atiemo Sampson, reported the results at the Solving the E-Waste Problem Summer School,
hosted in Europe by Philips and Umicore to a group of dedicated graduate students.
International shipments of e-waste are outlawed, but occur nonetheless by unscrupulous handlers. Students at the conference in Europe agreed that the e-waste problem requires technological, behavioral, economic, and political solutions. Manufacturers also need to incorporate life-cycle analysis in their products.
Test Trial Convicts Fossil Fuel Bosses of 'Ecocide'
The Guardian-Damian Carrington's Environment Blog, October 2011
By Damian Carrington
Top lawyers put fossil fuel bosses on trial in the UK's supreme court in a mock case to explore if ecocide - environmental destruction - could join genocide as a global crime.
Update: Two verdicts of guilty, one not guilty: that was the conclusion of the mock ecocide trial (details below) held at the UK's supreme court on 30 September. Real lawyers, judges and a public jury found the CEOs of fictional fossil fuel companies guilty of "extensive destruction, damage to or loss of ecosystem(s) to such an extent that the peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory, and of other territories, has been severely diminished", as a result of their company's extraction of oil from tar sands in Canada. The jury found one of the CEOs not guilt on the count of damage caused by an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Polly Higgins, the driving force behind the trial and who is working to have ecocide join genocide and three other crimes against peace in the UN, said: "For me the trial was a moment of truth. No longer is it acceptable to pursue profit without consequence. Corporate Ecocide is a global crime that is far greater and far more prevalent that most people realise. Those few people who dare to speak up about Corporate Ecocide in Wall Street have been arrested for speaking out about a greater crime, a far greater breach of the peace than their own shouting and campaigning. Surely it is now the time to prosecute the true destroyers of our world."
She added: "I'm not keen to see lots of [people] in the dock. What I want to see is people making responsible decisions. For example, a crime of ecocide could force governments to change the incentive structures for businesses by redirecting subsidies for fossil fuels towards clean energy sources. In this way the dirty energy companies that are wrecking the environment today could be transformed into the clean energy companies of tomorrow."
Popular Mechanics Honours Its 2011 Award-Winners Today
The Daily Green, October 10, 2011
By Dan Shapley
This year's Breakthrough Awards, chosen by Popular Mechanics, will be honored today in a ceremony at the Hearst Tower in New York City. The list of honorees includes many innovators and products that were inspired by nature or have the potential to greatly improve the environment. Here's a look at some of them:
High-Altitude Wind Turbine
Corwin Hardham, Kenny Jensen, Damon Vander Lind (Makani Power) created a turbine that takes off like a helicopter and flies like a plane, enabling it to reach winds that blow stronger and more consistently.
lightRadio Cube
Tod Sizer and team (Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs) shrank the functions of a cell tower to fit a device the size of a Rubik’s Cube, eliminating the need for new towers in urban areas.
Osorb for Water Treatment
Paul Edmiston (College of Wooster, ABSMaterials) developed a reusable glass powder capable of cleaning toxic water, such as wastewater from natural gas fracking sites.
BoralPure Smog-Eating Tile
Boral Roofing tiles with a titanium-dioxide coating that can react with and neutralize nitrogen oxide particles in smog.
Solaria Photovoltaic Panels
Solar panels manufactured with 50 to 70 percent less silicon than traditional panels, dramatically reducing the cost to consumers.
Expanding Desert, Falling Water Tables, and Toxic Pollutants Driving People From Their Homes
Treehugger, August 2011
By Lester Brown (adapted)
People do not normally leave their homes, their families, and their communities unless they have no other option. Yet as environmental stresses mount, we can expect to see a growing number of environmental refugees. Rising seas and increasingly devastating storms grab headlines, but expanding deserts, falling water tables, and toxic waste and radiation are also forcing people from their homes.
Lester R. Brown is one of the world's foremost environmental policy experts focusing on the impact of environmental limits on human population growth. He is the president of the Earth Policy Institute which provides valuable insight into and solutions for our environmental problems.
Photo credit: Celso Flores/Creative Commons
Can Cities Feed Us?
Conservation Magazine, September 2010
By Sarah DeWeert
Sometime in mid-2007, the world’s demographic scales tipped. Only a century earlier, urbanites represented just over 14 percent of humanity. But by 2007, a majority of the world’s people lived in cities, and more are on the way. Over the coming decades, cities will absorb all predicted global population growth and then some. According to the U.N. Population Division, there will be 6.4 billion urban dwellers by 2050—as many people as lived on the entire planet in 2004.
That stark reality leads to another: feeding this new urban world with an old agricultural model could be a recipe for environmental ruin—and human misery. The cost of growing food on large plots of land far away from cities and transporting it to the teeming masses has begun to outweigh its benefits. Not only is the carbon footprint of such a system huge, but more often than not traditional farming has been a disaster for natural ecosystems and wildlife. And then there’s the problem of space. Already, over 80 percent of the world’s arable land is in use—some of it highly degraded. Add the 2.5 billion people who are likely to join us on the globe by 2050, and there’s simply not enough room to keep farming the way we have been.
In response, Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, wants to turn the old system on its head. For the past decade, Despommier has been cultivating a vision of farms filling glass-and-steel towers the size of a city block and 30 stories high.
A Rain Forest Advocate Taps the Energy of the Sugar Palm
National Geographic News, June 22, 2011
By Marianne Lavelle
One of Indonesia's most ardent rain forest protection activists is in what may seem an unlikely position: Spearheading a project to produce biofuel from trees.
But tropical forest scientist Willie Smits, after 30 years studying fragile ecosystems in these Southeast Asian islands, wants to draw world attention to a powerhouse of a tree—the Arenga sugar palm. Smits says it can be tapped for energy and safeguard the environment while enhancing local food security.
Smits says that the deep-rooted feather palm Arenga pinnata could serve as the core of a waste-free system that produces a premium organic sugar as well as the fuel alcohol, ethanol, providing food products and jobs to villagers while it helps preserve the existing native rain forest. And scientists who have studied the unique harvesting and production process developed by Smits and his company, Tapergie, agree the system would protect the atmosphere rather than add to the Earth's growing carbon dioxide burden.
"The palm juice chiefly consists of water and sugar—made from rain, sunshine, carbon dioxide and nothing else," says Smits. "You are basically only harvesting sunshine."
Demand for oil made from the pulp and seeds of oil palm trees in Southeast Asia soared when European countries sought to displace petroleum fuels with biofuel in the past decade. It was a move that governments hoped would reduce carbon emissions, but the impact was the reverse. Tracts of rain forest were cleared, and peat land was drained and burned on a massive scale to make way for oil palm monoculture. Because of the carbon emissions caused by rainforest destruction, Indonesia leapt to the top tier of world greenhouse gas emitters, just behind giant energy consumers China and the United States.
Smits, who had been knighted in his native Netherlands, was among the forest advocates who sounded the warning around the world about the impact of large-scale biofuel production from oil palm in his adopted home of Indonesia.
Smits already had gained recognition as one of the world's most prominent protectors of Asia's great apes and their habitat, as founder of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. He laid out the biofuel problem, and the rain forest restoration efforts he had spearheaded, in talks around the world, including in the popular online series sponsored by the nonprofit TED.
TRAVEL almost anywhere in the world and you will see something so common that it may not even catch your attention. Wherever there are people, there are animals: animals being walked, herded, fed, watered, bathed, brushed or cuddled. Many, such as dogs, cats and sheep, are domesticated but you will also find people living alongside wild and exotic creatures such as monkeys, wolves and binturongs. Close contact with animals is not confined to one particular culture, geographic region or ethnic group. It is a universal human trait, which suggests that our desire to be with animals is deeply embedded and very ancient.
On the face of it this makes little sense. In the wild, no other mammal adopts individuals from another species; badgers do not tend hares, deer do not nurture baby squirrels, lions do not care for giraffes. And there is a good reason why. Since the ultimate prize in evolution is perpetuating your genes in your offspring and their offspring, caring for an individual from another species is counterproductive and detrimental to your success. Every mouthful of food you give it, every bit of energy you expend keeping it warm (or cool) and safe, is food and energy that does not go to your own kin. Even if pets offer unconditional love, friendship, physical affection and joy, that cannot explain why or how our bond with other species arose in the first place. Who would bring a ferocious predator such a wolf into their home in the hope that thousands of years later it would become a loving family pet?
I am fascinated by this puzzle and as a palaeoanthropologist have tried to understand it by looking to the deep past for the origins of our intimate link with animals. What I found was a long trail, an evolutionary trajectory that I call the animal connection. What's more, this trail links to three of the most important developments in human evolution: tool-making, language and domestication. If I am correct, our affinity with other species is no mere curiosity. Instead, the animal connection is a hugely significant force that has shaped us and been instrumental in our global spread and success in the world.
Talented 11-Year-Old Paints Birds, Raises Over $200,000 for Gulf Coast Relief Efforts
Treehugger.com, April 26, 2011
By Blythe Copeland
When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in April 2010, killing 11 people and exposing the Gulf of Mexico to a leaking well that pumped 5,000 barrels of crude into the water every day, aspiring artist Olivia Bouler didn't just wait for someone else to take action.
The then-10-year-old from Islip, New York wrote a letter to the National Audubon Society, asking if her bird paintings could help. They could and did in the form of a Audubon Society Book!
This junior environmentalist put her passion toward a good cause -- and her efforts are still paying off.
Two Cowichan Valley schools were recognized this spring as being among B.C.'s best when it comes to environmental initiatives. École Mill Bay and Brentwood College School were named medallists in the BC Green Games, a province-wide program of Science World. The competition is judged by scientists and environmental professionals, and the Green Games award 10 prizes of $1,000 to elementary schools and another 10 to secondary schools, acknowledging their work in making the world a greener place.
Representing École Mill Bay in the Games was the Roots & Shoots Club. Started at the school by teacher-librarian Joanne McLarty during the 2009/10 school year, the club comprised a group of 50 students in grades two through four who had worked on three projects that benefitted both people and the environment. The first was the "Don't Be Idle" program, which focused on reducing car idling. Students learned about global warming, then raised a banner in front of the school and distributed anti-idling fliers. That was followed by "Meatless Mondays," where the club learned about the impact their diet can have on the ecosystem because of the amount of fossil fuels needed to raise and transport animals for food. For their third project, the Roots & Shoots Club learned about fair trade -- specifically with regard to the chocolate industry's reliance on child labour. For Valentine's Day, the club made and sold fair trade organic chocolates, with the proceeds going to build a well in Zambia.
Just down the road from École Mill Bay, Brentwood also had Zambia on their minds. Inspired by a project to build a well and a school in the southern African nation, students and staff at the private school worked to make their own campus more sustainable through initiatives such as retrofitting older buildings with solar panels and making sure new buildings meet high standards of sustainability. The Brentwood Environmental Action Team takes part in neighbourhood clean-ups to rid the campus and nearby creeks of litter. Students and staff are growing potatoes and onions in the school garden, and one of the potential uses for the prize money is to install a deer fence for the garden. At the school's annual regatta later this month -- an event that attracts more than 3,000 people -- the BEAT will work towards a zero-waste result.
Dr. Goodall Leaves Tree, Inspiration Behind at Abilene Zoo
Abilene Reporter-News, March 8, 2011
By
Jeremy Goldmeier
Dr. Goodall was in Abilene to promote the 20th anniversary of Roots & Shoots, which has a local chapter. At the zoo, Dr. Goodall spoke to staff about the recent developments in Gombe, the region of Tanzania where she conducted her celebrated chimpanzee research.
Afterward, Goodall went outside to plant a tree near the zoo's entrance plaza. It had all the trappings of a publicity photo op, but Goodall took the endeavor to heart. After settling the tree into the ground, she explained to the crowd that she had a tradition of kissing a leaf of a newly planted tree.
"It's to give life and energy to the tree, so the tree can give life and energy back," Goodall said.
Only this one, a Nuttall oak, had yet to spring any leaves. So Goodall settled for a developing bud. That simple gesture encapsulates one of the amazing things about Goodall: for a researcher and conservation icon with such a deep knowledge of the natural world, she still brings an almost childlike wonder to her work.
Young Egyptians Rally to Protect Egypt's Ancient Heritage
National Geographic, January 30, 2011
By Ismail Serageldin
The world has witnessed an unprecedented popular action in the streets of Egypt. Led by Egypt's youth, with their justified demands for more freedom, more democracy, lower prices for necessities and more employment opportunities. These youths demanded immediate and far-reaching changes. This was met by violent conflicts with the police, who were routed. The army was called in and was welcomed by the demonstrators, but initially their presence was more symbolic than active. Events deteriorated as lawless bands of thugs, and maybe agents provocateurs, appeared and looting began. The young people organized themselves into groups that directed traffic, protected neighborhoods and guarded public buildings of value such as the Egyptian Museum and the Library of Alexandria. They are collaborating with the army. This makeshift arrangement is in place until full public order returns.
It never ceases to amaze the 84 year-old how much we want to make the animal world about us. “Animals have nothing to teach us,” he maintains, “that we can’t learn by looking at ourselves, yet some people think that the only thing we have to learn from animals is to do with humans. That seems to me to be an extraordinarily egocentric view.”
I wonder aloud whether the resurgence of youthful interest from young people in wildlife programmes (Sir David’s First Life series was watched by 3.16 million viewers) can partly be explained by this egocentrism. But despite the lure of technology and the instant gratification of reality TV, Sir David doesn’t believe that an interest in the natural world ever fell away. “It’s always been the case as far as I’m concerned. Of course adolescents are interested in iPods and iPads, but I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive.”
The Call of the Wild Helps Children Learn
Globe and Mail, November 12, 2010
By Anne McIlroy
At the Coombes school in southern England, the playground looks like an arboretum. Narrow paths snake through the shrubbery past apple, willow and walnut trees. There is a pond, two labyrinths, a garden and plenty of good spots to dig for worms. Lessons often take place outside.
It is the creation of Sue Humphries, an educator who, over four decades, transformed the once barren yard into a verdant outdoor classroom because of her conviction that sitting in chairs is not the best way for children to learn. There is mounting scientific evidence that she is on to something and it has become part of a growing outdoor movement that could transform the way school yards are designed and built.
While the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity finally wound to an end Saturday morning, a group of international students said their work toward COP11, slated for 2012 in India, was only just beginning.
"We aim to send youth from at least 100 countries to COP11," said Christian Schwartzer, 23, a German student and a member of Global Youth Biodiversity Organization, a network of international student groups working to protect biodiversity.
They will also prepare themselves to become official participants of the international biodiversity negotiations.
"The issues that politicians and negotiators are dealing with are about our future. These negotiations are about us, and if they are making decisions about us, then not without us," said Schwartzer.
Over the past 50 years, Jane Goodall has metamorphosed from an unknown woman studying chimpanzees in Tanzania to the public face of wildlife research. Touring the world 300 days a year, she has inspired generations to care about conservation. But few try to emulate the 76-year-old in conducting marathon science-based studies of imperilled species. These are the stories of six Canadians devoted to doing just that.
Pascale Sicotte, colobus monkey
Current project: Sicotte, 49, has been researching a species of black-and-white colobus monkey at the Boabeng Fiema Monkey Sanctuary in Ghana since 2000. Now based in Calgary, she sends graduate students to Ghana for up to a year in the field. They gather data to help her study the monkeys' habitat requirements, diet, ranging behaviour, social system and mating.
B.C. Students Urged to Make a Difference Every Day They Live
The Province, October 21, 2010
By
Cheryl Chan
Fifty years ago, Jane Goodall arrived in Gombe, Tanzania, to fulfil a lifelong dream: To study chimpanzees in the wild.
Today, Dr. Goodall-- a world-renowned primatologist who spends 300 days of the year travelling to raise awareness about the plight of chimpanzees -- still recalls fondly those years in the African wilderness.
"I love the time I spent in the forest following the chimpanzees," she said, a touch wistfully. "They were the best days of my life."
On Wednesday, the 76-year-old Goodall was at Science World as part of the 50th-anniversary celebration of her groundbreaking work, which challenged long-held scientific assumptions of the time and laid the groundwork for much of what we know today about primates.
Most of us don't enter upon our life's destiny at any neatly discernible time. Jane Goodall did.
On the morning of July 14, 1960, she stepped onto a pebble beach along a remote stretch of the east shore of Lake Tanganyika. It was her first arrival at what was then called the Gombe Stream Game Reserve, a small protected area that had been established by the British colonial government back in 1943. She had brought a tent, a few tin plates, a cup without a handle, a shoddy pair of binoculars, an African cook named Dominic, and—as a companion, at the insistence of people who feared for her safety in the wilds of pre-independence Tanganyika—her mother. She had come to study chimpanzees. Or anyway, to try. Casual observers expected her to fail. One person, the paleontologist Louis Leakey, who had recruited her to the task up in Nairobi, believed she might succeed.
Activists Win Historic Huling on 'People's Law on the Environment'
Ecologist, August 26, 2010
By Tom Levitt
Crippling costs of legal action prevents people mounting challenges over environmental damage, finds UN Committee
Activists were celebrating a damning ruling today on the UK's legal system which could now make it easier for individuals and NGOs to protect the environment.
Under the Aarhus Convention, signed by the UK in 1998, people should not be denied environmental justice because of the unreasonable financial risks of bringing a case to court.
On World Environment Day, World Scouting Receives Recognition for its Support to Clean Up the World
World Scout Bureau Inc., July 2010
By Thierry Tournet
In the Clean up the World Report for 2009, World Scouting receives recognition for its support to Clean up the World (CUW).
CUW works in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and in its Global Activity Report, launched to support World Environment Day on 5 June, WOSM is recognised as a key 'Ally'.
For most of us, recycling paper has become automatic: we hurl those scrunched-up balls into the recycling bin and not the garbage can. But in doing so, are we really doing enough for the environment?
“Recycling requires energy, and it’s also associated with pollution,” says Elah Feder (MSc 2007), the co-ordinator of a major paper conservation effort at the St. George Campus. “So that’s something that we really want to emphasize – it’s reduce first, recycle after.”
At the Gerstein Science Information Centre, the printers now print on both sides of the page. “Just that will save up to 100,000 sheets a year,” marvels Isaac Muise, a fourth-year environment and resource management student who’s implementing the library component of the paper reduction program by trying out new ideas at Gerstein. “We’re also going to put instructions on photocopiers so that people can print double-sided, and set up paper reuse stations, which is kind of like a ‘take a penny, leave a penny’ situation.”
Chimps With Everything: Jane Goodall's 50 Years in the Jungle
The Observer, June 27, 2010
By Robin McKie
Fifty years ago, a slender young Englishwoman was walking through a rainforest reserve at Gombe, in Tanzania, when she came across a dark figure hunched over a termite nest.
A large male chimpanzee was foraging for food. So she stopped and watched the animal through her binoculars as he carefully took a twig, bent it, stripped it of its leaves, and finally stuck it into the nest. Then he began to spoon termites into his mouth.
Belinda Stronach on Why Girls Need Their Own Summit
Globe and Mail, May 31, 2010
By Jill Mahoney
Before the world’s most powerful leaders swoop into Toronto for the G20 meeting, young women from around the globe will already have a head start hashing out the issues that matter most to them.
G(irls)20 Summit, a meeting of 21 girls from around the world, will gather June 15 to 18 at the University of Toronto to discuss and raise awareness of the most pressing issues that affect girls and women internationally.
Hosted and run by The Belinda Stronach Foundation, established by businesswoman and former politician Belinda Stronach, G(irls)20 has begun unveiling its delegates this week. Ms. Stronach talked to The Globe about why girls need a summit to call their own.
Where did the idea for the G(irls)20 Summit come from?
I established a foundation two years ago now and one of our key pillars is to improve the lives of girls and women around the globe. So in order to develop a strategy for this, to get further input in what we wanted to do, we gathered together young, influential media personalities in various areas – so from print to television, radio – a bunch of women. We got together and we had an informal dinner one night for several hours and we talked about what could we do in advance of the G8/G20 to create awareness about the challenges that young women and women around the globe face, but also … do something about it, try to develop solutions.
Villagers in the interior delta of the Niger River, already experiencing the harsh impacts of climate change, have a good understanding of the need to restore forests decimated by drought. Where forest cover has been rehabilitated, it is already reshaping the surrounding environment - and economy.
"It is important to set regulations to protect the restored forests against fresh destruction by drought," Yaya Bocoum, an elder from the Malian village of Youwarou, told IPS.
"I can still remember how people once feared wild animals such as lions and hyenas that lived in the woods surrounding their homes. We did not dare venture outside the villages at dusk."
The forest that was home to those animals in the 40,000 square kilometre delta was hard hit by drought in the 1970s and 1980s.
"There were over twenty forests in the delta that were important to local communities and animals. They have completely disappeared," says researcher Mory Diallo. Diallo is a research assistant at the local office of Wetlands International, a non-governmental organisation based in Holland.
TORONTO — It's not easy being green on a film set, says Colin Firth.
"It's a wasteful place," admits the Oscar-nominated actor.
"It is not ... because film people are free of conscience and they don't care about the planet. It's a very panic-stricken environment a lot of the time."
Firth says there are people in the film industry who will do anything to get a take on time.
"You get directors who say, 'Make the kid cry, get the scene right,"' he says with a laugh. "Things get wasted, thrown away, replaced. Whole sets go to landfill. Food gets laid out for the banquet scene and sprayed so it looks good but you can't touch it or eat it.
Fifty years ago, people laughed when a sprightly 26-year-old Jane Goodall went to the wilds of Africa to study chimps.
There was no money for what she remembers her doubters calling a “crazy” expedition to learn from the human-like creatures in the Tanzanian parks. But her breakthrough observation that they could make and use tools just like chimps in captivity was an epiphany that would change the way scientists studied hot-blooded animals.
Today, her work helping others to understand chimpanzees has expanded to become something of a social empire. She’s honed in on youth, motivating them to make social and environmental change through Roots & Shoots and other programs with the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada and in more than 100 other countries. She’s working on yet another book, this one about plants, and a documentary about her called Jane’s Journey is scheduled for release in the fall.
Guerrilla Gardener Seen Planting Up Close and Personal
Treehugger, March 22, 2010
By Bonnie Alter
The London Leaders programme was developed by the London Sustainable Development Commission. Each year the programme selects 15 people who are well respected in their fields and willing to commit themselves to a personal project that will make London a more sustainable city.
This year Reynolds is one of the leaders. His project is called " Pimp Your Pavement" which is all about "encouraging more people to take responsibility for a very local patch of their community by focusing on the opportunities of a space that's very immediate, very manageable, very sociable and yet sadly overlooked."
To that end he was in the east end of London, along with the local residents, planting sedum, primula, thrift and bee-loving lavender in this regenerated area. The residents had pushed for the newly paved "piazza" and the adjacent pub is committed to watering the new flower beds.
President Michelle Bachelet leaves office Thursday with a chunk of her country in ruins -- and her popularity in the clouds.
Despite complaints that aid was slow to reach the hungry and homeless, experts say Chile's response to one of history's most powerful earthquakes has been a model for disaster recovery.
At first, the problems were all too obvious: Chile's navy and emergency preparedness office failed to issue a tsunami warning that might have saved hundreds of lives after the Feb. 27 quake, and Bachelet didn't order soldiers to impose order in the streets until after looting had spun out of control.
But experts say other smart moves -- like insisting that foreign help meet specific needs, quickly patching up roads and having the military handle logistics -- made it possible to deliver 12,000 tons of relief in just 10 days.
For the first time, indigenous Amazonian tribesmen, long isolated by their location deep within the rainforest, will have access to the internet and telephone. The system, which includes a VSAT satellite dish, was installed by the System of Protection of the Amazon (SIPAM) to enable a closer monitoring of illegal logging operations. Up until now, indigenous tribes were aware of deforestation taking place on protected land but had little recourse to combat the problem--now they can twitter about it instantaneously.
SIPAM reports that the two main tribes in the region, the Kawahara and Piripkura of central Brazil, are pleased with their new connectivity.
Jane Goodall: 'There is No Problem in Having Empathy'
NewScientist,
February 24, 2010
By Charlotte Uhlenbroek
Half a century after Jane Goodall began studying chimpanzees in Tanzania, she talks to her former student Charlotte Uhlenbroek about chimpanzee fire-dancing, the peril of bushmeat and the empowerment of local people
"EVERYBODY studying animals in the wild today needs to be aware of the need for conservation and involving local people. It's rather unfair because when I began my study there were probably over a million wild chimps and the equatorial forest belt stretched across Africa - I was very lucky to be able to concentrate purely on research."
Jane Goodall is sitting in the corner of a cafe at Heathrow airport in the UK. I have managed to grab an hour of her time between a radio interview and her flight to Munich, Germany. Although Goodall became world famous through her long-term study of chimpanzees in Gombe National Park in Tanzania, these days she is on the road some 300 days of the year, rushing between meetings with top politicians, star-studded fund-raisers and remote African villages in a bid to save chimpanzees and their forests. "I am not doing any research at all. I can't even do any analysis, there's no time," she says with regret.
A neighbour started calling Andrea del Sol 'Perseverance,' and the name stuck. Since 1998, she and a small group of women from Alamar, on the outskirts of the Cuban capital, have been throwing their combined energies behind a common purpose: 'changing things.'
They faced plenty of difficulties, such as finding a space where they could meet, creating a library and cleaning up the surroundings. But all these needs were easy to fill compared with the daily gender violence that is the norm in Cuba's foremost dormitory town.
'People from more than 57 municipalities around the country live in my area. Everyone has their own customs, roots and religion, and this is something to bear in mind when conflict situations arise,' del Sol, who has lived in East Alamar for 20 years, told IPS.
Traditional Aboriginal Knowledge is Critical to Conservation
Cnews, February 3, 2010
By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola
The United Nations has declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity. It would be great if the year could be simply a celebration of the Earth’s biological richness, but Biodiversity Year is occurring while non-human life on our planet is in a more perilous state than ever before.
Experts believe the world is in the midst of a biodiversity crisis on par with earlier mass extinction events. Some 17,000 of the plant and animal species that we’ve identified and assessed are now in serious decline, including many that are well-known and well-loved by Canadians, such as caribou, polar bears, and some salmon populations.
This perilous situation for plants and animals threatens not only the ecological health of ecosystems like old-growth forests and arctic tundra but also the wellbeing and welfare of human communities that depend on the ecological goods and services that nature provides. The deep bio-cultural ties to the land and its resources, especially wild plants, that many of Canada’s aboriginal people have long held offer a direct illustration of this, as well as a source of knowledge that can benefit everyone.
The first aid aircraft to reach the Port-au-Prince airport in Haiti, within 14 hours of the devastation, was Venezuelan, with a search and rescue team. Almost immediately afterwards, they drove to a disaster site and pulled out four women alive. And then came the Americans.
Two very different visions of disaster aid and reconstruction are playing out in Haiti. Manuel Medina, a Caracas fire officer who was part of the first Venezuelan team, spoke of his country’s “historical debt” to Haiti. In 1815, President Alexandre Sabes Petion gifted Simon Bolivar hundreds of elite fighters, ships, arms, money and a printing press at a time Venezuela’s liberator was down and out. Now, Haiti and Venezuela have agreed on setting up a Petion-Bolivar Solidarity Brigade to focus on the country’s reconstruction. Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s Foreign Minister, said his country had no intention of occupying Haiti: “our deployment is that of solidarity, not of military force”.
Roots & Shoots in Action 
Partnerships in
Photo credit: Celso Flores/Creative Commons 
