For those of you that have been following the progress of the Clipperton project will be please to watch the new trailer which shows the findings of the group's recent expedition earlier this year!
The Clipperton Project is a multi-disciplinary, international arts and science project which aims to take outstanding practitioners in the arts and sciences on expeditions to little-studied, inaccessible and complex territories which have been isolated by history.
In her latest work, Naomi Klein wonders: What makes our culture so prone to the reckless high-stakes gamble, and why are women so frequently called upon to clean up the mess.
What makes our cultutal attitude to the envionment lead to conflict and risk?
How has our attitude to the environment moved on from Rio 1992 when the paradigm of sustainable development was first publicy showcased.
Have we become a more globally and environmentally aware society?
Are we looking after the environment better and has our attitude to it changed from consumption to protection?
We will move towards a green economy in the next 50years? and more possibly are we on track to achieve the MDGs?
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Scientists have identified thousands of sites in the Arctic where methane that has been stored for many millennia is bubbling into the atmosphere.This article is a good link to Edexcel Unit 1 World at Risk to show the possible impacts of global warming and positive feedback mechanisms...
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!
An earthquake in northern Italy has killed at least six people and caused serious damage to buildings in several towns, officials have said.The 6.0-magnitude quake struck in the middle of the night, about 35km (22 miles) north of the city of Bologna.
Questions to consider:
i) Why so few deaths?
ii) What has the response been like?
iii) Is the loss of cultural heritage a significant impact & to what extent can cultural hertiage be protected from natural hazrads?
An ecological footprint measures the total amount of land and resources used, it includes your carbon footprint but goes further.See how your choices affect the environment and whether you are living beyond the capacity of the planet by clicking here - http://www.ecologicalfootprint.com/
The Economist provdies an excellent spatial overview:
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.
Despite the countless geographical case studies, the radical environmental groups and lobbyists and a global increased environmental awareness, it saddens me to read that yet another emerging superpower, one of the BRICs nonetheless, has chosen to put economics over environmental protection. After over a year of political wrangling Brazil's government have passed a law ( 247-184) which eases rules on how much land farmers must preserve as forest. Now, i know it is easy for me with my Western perspective to sit here an chastise the Brazilian government for following the lead of the hegemonic USA and post industrial attitude of China, but having been and for a short timed lived in the Amazonian rain forest i feel it will be the TNC loggers rather than the indigenous tribes who will reap the rewards.
Once again this issue touches upon the wider themes of how societies (and cultures) view and subsequently protect the environment. With the law now passed it will be interesting, yet very sad to watch how deforestataion rates possibly increase even more over the coming decade and taking a particular morbid line i wonder how many more incidents of this will occur: Loggers 'burned Amazon tribe girl alive'
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!
More than 1,000 people died in 1986 when a lake in Cameroon released a cloud of CO2 that suffocated entire villages. A much larger lake in Rwanda - with two million people living nearby - is also at risk of eruption, but plans are afoot to make it safer. Click here
Ok say ask any budding geographer how do you measure tectonic events and they will probably quote: Richter scale, Fujitsu scale, may be the Mercalli or even the VEI...but are some of these too out of date - according to topical popular science programme like QI they are!
Tectonic recording and measurements now focus and refer to the following:
As the Times states "a torrent of natural disasters in which about 30,000 people lost their lives has cost the worldwide economy a record $350 billion this year according to new figures published yesterday by Swiss Re".
Japan has been particularly hard hit - already struggling with an ageing population and an economy dependent upon imports - the earthquake and subsequent tsunami along with the flood in Thailand and the continuing uncertainty of the Eurozone's prospects dealt a severe blow to Japan's manufacturing confidence. The disasters in Japan will cost insurers $35billion, with the New Zealand earthquake in February resulting in payouts of $12billion and the floods in Thailand costing $12billion.
The fact is, according to Swiss Re's chief economist, Kurt Karl, "Unfortunately, earthquake insurance coverage is still quite low, even in some industrialised countries with high seismic risk, like Japan. So on top of people losing their loved ones, societies are faced with enormous financial losses that have to be borne by weither corporations, relief organisations or governments, and ultimately taxpayers".
The question in a time of global economic uncertainty and tightening of belts is how will the world's most vulnerable and hazard prone countries survive i they are already dependent on global voluntary aid - will we see a new form of moral protectionism or will we still want to give?
As the Times states "a torrent of natural disasters in which about 30,000 people lost their lives has cost the worldwide economy a record $350 billion this year according to new figures published yesterday by Swiss Re".
Japan has been particularly hard hit - already struggling with an ageing population and an economy dependent upon imports - the earthquake and subsequent tsunami along with the flood in Thailand and the continuing uncertainty of the Eurozone's prospects dealt a severe blow to Japan's manufacturing confidence. The disasters in Japan will cost insurers $35billion, with the New Zealand earthquake in February resulting in payouts of $12billion and the floods in Thailand costing $12billion.
The fact is, according to Swiss Re's chief economist, Kurt Karl, "Unfortunately, earthquake insurance coverage is still quite low, even in some industrialised countries with high seismic risk, like Japan. So on top of people losing their loved ones, societies are faced with enormous financial losses that have to be borne by either corporations, relief organisations or governments, and ultimately taxpayers".
The question in a time of global economic uncertainty and tightening of belts is how will the world's most vulnerable and hazard prone countries survive i they are already dependent on global voluntary aid - will we see a new form of moral protectionism or will we still want to give?
So, they did it, or did they? Ministers worked through the night in a desperate bid to salvage a new global climate deal to tackle climate change at the conference in Africa.
In a week in which India, China and the US had consistently taken a hard line in opposition to proposals for action to curb global emissions and continue/adhere to the Kyoto legacy, it appears that the strong sense of urgency from other nations has brought them round to a legally binding commitment.
So in it's simplest form Durban achieved it's goal - to bring the key polluters, players and stakeholders round a table and agree on a set agenda to tackle global climate change - the barometer of success, as ever, will be who will stick to it 6months, 1year and 5 years down the line...
Check out the following websites and blogs to get involved and offer your insight:
