July 2012
Ten days of life-changing knowledge
Submitted by Cleaning Up the Mess on Mon, 2012-07-30 16:26Last week Kenyan-born Erle Rahaman-Noronha who has a BSc in Applied Biochemistry and an MSc in Zoology from the University of Guelph, Canada told us of the origins of Permaculture. This week, Rahaman-Noronha tells us in detail what the Permaculture Design Course entails.
Last week I explained how permaculture which has its origins in the ’70s describes a holistic system which connects many components on an agricultural site, has grown and evolved into a practice (permanent culture) that is embraced by urban communities—growing food and harvesting water and sunlight in their backyards—rural communities seeking empowerment, self-sufficiency and retention of their cultures and university communities seeking to bring a change in the status quo.
GEF reaches out communities
Submitted by Cleaning Up the Mess on Thu, 2012-07-26 13:48Thinking Globally,
Acting Locally
The GEF is the largest public funder of projects designed to address global environmental priorities at the national level. Projects funded by the programme fall within five focus areas: biodiversity conservation, protection of international waters, prevention of land degradation, climate change (mitigation and adaption) and reduction of persistent organic pollutants.
The value of nature: Living on one planet
Submitted by Cleaning Up the Mess on Tue, 2012-07-10 14:48The minister dismissed her with the wave of a hand, saying: “That’s just a small part of the Savannah. When we ready we can pave the whole thing. There’s plenty more bush in the country.”
So many things became clear in that single statement. Apart from bush being a rural symbol and paving an urban one (speaking not just of the will but the capability and resources), this demonstrates a well-defined attitude to land, to natural resources, and the prevailing desire to get “out of the bush” to civilisation. And so we see house lots in which the house is built with barely any yard, and if there is a “yard” it is paved.
Our relationship to other living things—be they plants, trees or bush; bachacs or tarantulas, pothounds or pitbulls—remains for the large part, unilateral or utilitarian. Do they serve us? Do we need to avoid them? If they are harmful to us, then kill them.
We don’t usually perceive nature as something that we need to fit into, in our daily lives. We seldom think about the most important future resources—water, food and energy.
Tobago’s coral reefs in danger
Submitted by Cleaning Up the Mess on Tue, 2012-07-10 14:17
This week in Guardian Media environmental space, writer and blogger PAT GANASE tells us about two young scientists, one of whom, a Trinidadian student who are doing important research in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
If you could live on an island small enough for you to walk around in a couple hours, what would you need to give your life purpose?
Two young scientists have seized the opportunity to do research on a coral island in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
They join a growing band of colleagues who are not only interested in the animals and systems that build coral reefs in tropical waters, but who are investigating more deeply to build on previous work and adding their research to increase the body of knowledge about coral systems. Scientists in symbiotic relationships!
Amanda Ford is a student from England attending the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Anjani Ganase, from Trinidad and Tobago, did her first degree in marine biology at the Florida Institute of Technology, and then chose the University of Amsterdam for a master’s.
