To what extent does the state of our oceans depict the global attitude to the environment?
Last night Simon Reeve's Indian Ocean programme highlighted the state of the oceans in the tourist hot spot of the Maldives and how some islands are being used for waste dumping!
Arguably in a post-industrial society we have moved towards 'valuing' the environment very differently to how we used to perceive it; an economic resource to be exploited under the guise of such paradigms like industrialisation, modernisation or globalisation. According to Kuznets would the West place itself in an era of increasing environmental awareness and decreasing degradation?
Since Carson's Silent Spring and the emergence of radical environmentalism in the 1970s &1980s, the environment has become an issue of common parlance and to put it simply, the environment matters. Today the environment should be (and to some extent is) viewed as as a holistic concept (economic, biodiversity, social-cultural etc etc) as UNESCO outlines in it's definition & mission statement. Clearly though, the latter developments have meant that from an economic perspective whilst economists still see value in the environment, it is fundamentally a different type of value to the one in the industrial period (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17448634).
The new paradigm of the environmental movement of the 1990s and new millennium was Sustainable Development, and as the environment became an issue of national (and international) security, politicians and academics started to see the need not only to protect but also to preserve the more subtle cultural and often spiritual connections organisms had to the environment. It appeared that the cries of deep ecologists to revert back to pre-industrial times had been answered (well not really!) - alas though, the the environment is and always has been/will be a contested category providing that the human population conitue4s to grow and expand and nations continue to industrialise. Thus, with the Advent of the new Rio Summit there are cries (as there were in 1992) to improve our level of protection and romantic platitudes of a return to some modified form of a pristine wilderness...!(Just look at the BBCs recent programming over the past 5 years to increase our environmental awareness).
I would argue though that on the hand yes, protection is paramount, but from my time researching in Honduras, i would caution outright protection as often the Western model of a core and buffer zone can alienate the local people from the land and cut the connections which make that particular environment so diverse - just look at Ayres Rock (or Uluru) to see how poor management can lead to severe conflict...Israel, Palestine and the West Bank water security issues is another example.
Q: To what extent do different cultural attitudes to the environment make conflict inevitable?
Discussion: Is there such a thing as a pristine wilderness as Humboldt asserted or not? Discuss.
The MDGs formed at the start of the Millennium when aspirations were high that the world could unite against the global problems of poverty (the bottom billion), climate change and move towards a much more pro active post-industrial sustainable attitude towards the use of our shared environment.
Yet in 2012, with the mantra of sustainability to some extent part of political rhetoric but a global recession stifling the good deeds of many a different player, are the MDGs now just too idealistic or were they always going to be given the attitudes of the emerging superpowers like China and the other BRICs?
This video provides a useful overview and the questions are for you answer and discuss.
Q: Which in your opinion is the most important and why?
Q: What do you think are some of the barriers to achieving the MDGs? Think of current examples to back up your opinion.
Q: Do you think the MDGs will be achieved by 2015 - why?
To Infinity and beyond so said Buzz to Woody...but it looks like a new form of extreme adventure tourism and science is about to begin 70years after Don Walsh made his monumental dive!
In an age when most students and adults are globally connected to the web 24/7 either through high speed fibre optics or wi-fi it seems strange to us*(written from a Western perspective) that other people could have their Internet right (?) controlled and even denied!
Where are these Internet black spots and to what extent is it all down to physical geography and levels of development - what role does geopolitics play? Which factor is the biggest barrier to technological development in terms of Internet access...is the Internet a fundamental human right? and is there any evidence that economies who are connected are the most prosperous?
Just think how panicked you were the last time your phone died, the TV would not work or the computer had the blue screen of death. We are hooked on technology - we are technocrats not Luddites. This dependency was compounded by the recent Wiki scare; jokes on numerous social network sites (just imagine if they crashed - it is ok I'm joking!) suggested that Phds could not be written and that the media would slowly grind to a halt. But, it did raise the point of the wider question that the young techno-dependent, BB and I Phone hooked, spotify generation really do not know what happened before we could Google or arguably worse, You Tube it. The impatient generation as i refer to them expect things to be done instantaneously and this is also reflected in the business world - markets now do not sleep (neither do some of those that work for them) and it is unsurprising that employees of the Uk are the most workaholic in Europe. o is technology a good thing...YES of course, but like everything moderation is important and it helps to switch off now and tune out every now and again!
TerraPower aims to develop a sustainable and economic nuclear energy system while greatly reducing proliferation risks and creating new options for converting low-level waste into vast energy resources.The nuclear-power firm that he and Bill Gates are promoting, which would use depleted uranium (castoff waste from traditional nuclear plants) as fuel. TerraPower has impressive plans but has yet to build its first plant.
Kenya's Masai traditions threatened by climate change
Masai living in Kojiado district, near the Tanzanian border, are finding traditional cattle herding harder because the weather is getting hotter and the rain more unpredictable. Pasture is becoming harder to find, so many are diversifying to grow crops as well or turning to farming full-time. They are also working with traditional farmers to ensure that both lifestyles can share the resources available without encroaching on each other's survival. Sending children to school is also becoming a priority so that they are better equipped for their changing world.
One of the green movement's major coup's must be the the eco-city. Branded often as green cities and environmentally friendly it is no surprise that China has cottoned onto this concept with it's design & plan for, of course, the ultimate eco-city - Tianjin.
Questions:
To what extent are eco-cities a model for future urban growth?
Are they sustainable? If so how?
And is this a concept which could catch on elsewhere?
We love our cell phones and the selection between different models has never been bigger. But the production of phones has a dark, bloody side.
The main part of minerals used to produce cell phones are coming from the mines in the Eastern DR Congo. The Western World is buying these so-called conflict minerals and thereby finances a civil war that, according to human rights organisations, has been the bloodiest conflict since World War II: During the last 15 years the conflict has cost the lives of more than 5 million people and 300.000 women have been raped. The war will continue as long as armed groups can finance their warfare by selling minerals.
If you ask the phone companies where their suppliers get minerals from, none of them can guarantee that they aren’t buying conflict minerals from the Congo.
The Documentary Blood in the Mobile shows the connection between our phones and the civil war in the Congo. Director Frank Poulsen travels to DR Congo to see the illegal mine industry with his own eyes. He gets access to Congo’s largest tin-mine, which is being controlled by different armed groups, and where children work for days in narrow mine tunnels to dig out the minerals that end up in our phones.
After visiting the mine Frank Poulsen struggles to get to talk to Nokia, the Worlds largest phone company. Frank Poulsen wants them to guarantee that they are not buying conflict minerals and thereby is financing the war in the Congo. Nokia cannot give him that guarantee.
Blood in Mobile is a film about our responsibility for the conflict in the Congo and about corporate social responsibility.
A great article here that i picked up in The Week which discusses how the globalisation of financial markets and the subsequent dependence on super-computers and algorithms has blurred the boundaries to the point of no return.
A
spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of capitalism. A vast and highly
unstable mixture of debt — trillions of dollars of sovereign, corporate and
private borrowing accumulated over decades — is strapped to the advanced
Western economies like a suicide bomber’s gelignite vest.
The task facing our politicians is somehow to
defuse this bomb without inadvertently triggering the sequence of defaults and
bankruptcies that would set it off. No wonder they walk around the problem
scratching their heads, prodding it gingerly here and there. The horrible truth
is dawning that the problem may well not be technically solvable.
For the
first time in my life — I am 54 — I get the sense of what it must have been
like to have lived in my grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ generation: in
1913, say, or 1937. One feels a great smash coming ever closer, almost in
slow-motion, and yet there seems to be nothing that can be done to avoid it.
How have
we got ourselves into this mess? After all, we were supposed to be living in an
era of unprecedented peace and prosperity.Communism had
collapsed and the threat of nuclear annihilation had receded. Immense advances
in computer technology were creating whole new economies. Vast markets were
opening up in the developing world. Above all, we were supposed to have learned
enough about economics to have created the necessary institutions — the World
Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the G20, the OECD — to ensure we never
repeated the mistakes of the Thirties.
Where did it all go
wrong? To read more click the link here
Illegal logging, coca farming and unchecked exploitation of natural gas reserves - for the indigenous people of the Tipnis this could be the way of life, a far cry for the current tropical rural idyll, if the new Amazon highway is built by the Bolivian government. The proposed 300km (190-mile) $211million road, known as the Isiboro national park highway, financed by Brazil, would link Brazil to Pacific ports in Chile and Peru.But it will also pass through an Amazon nature reserve that is home to about 50,000 people from three different indigenous groups.
Bolivia is a very poor and impoverished country. A country defined by it's geography; located in the heart of the Andes and landlocked, it encapsulates one of Collier's poverty traps: 'Being landlocked with bad neigbours'. Despite macroeconomic stability for the past 15year, Bolivia's economy has grown at only about 4% a year in the 1990s, and has been much lower over the last two years. At this rate, it will take over 40 years for the per capita gross domestic product to double. With a population growth rate of 2.3%, the economy needs to grow significantly faster and distribute benefits more broadly in order to alleviate poverty. Therefore, in order to develop, one could argue that Bolivia needs to develop it's infrastructure in order to improve the transportation of goods and services to and from its' neighbours. The government argue that, like the Trans-Amazon highway (a highway which aims to run from Peru to Brazil), the "road is essential for development and would encourage trade by linking remote communities to market towns" (BBC News). It would also enhance links with one of the emerging superpowers, Brazil.
However, since August hundreds of people, many of them indigenous from the Tipinis region, have been protesting and marching towards the administrative capital of La Paz. The protests are not only concerned about the project's potential negative impacts on the area's biodiversity, but also because the government have seemingly ignored the constitutional rights of the people by not consulting them. The latter point has been the main criticism directed to the President Morales, who was elected based upon his commitment to defend local people and 'Mother Earth'.
It is not surprising to learn therefore that after violent clashes on Sunday 28th September between police and about 1,000 protesters marching towards La Paz combined with the resignation of the Bolivian Interior Minister Sacha Llorenti (after being heavily criticised over a police crackdown on a protest march), Morales has suspended the the Isiboro national park highway until a referendum has been conducted - Bolivia it seems has had it's own mini-Spring and the the message for the moment is that people power can make a difference.
This story raises a number of points that should interest both geographers and economists as well as those with a wider interest in the environment. Questions for contemplation could include:
1. Should the 'Business as Usual' approach of economic concerns over environmental heritage always be applied, even when it concerns the most fragile and biodiverse ecosystems?
2. To what extent should local indigenous people be involved in the process of national development? Are their views an obstacle to development or a useful tool?
3. Is it fair that Bolivia bears the brunt of the costs for a Brazilian project? And how will Bolivia benefit, if the road goes ahead?
