Save Eco Destinations

Fishing in the Kawabe River

The Construction Ministry in Tokyo wants to build a dam on the Kawabe River in southern Japan, and everyone seems to be against it. At least for now, the dissenters are winning.

Environmentalists, farmers, and fishermen and women are objecting to the project on various grounds. Environmentalists are worried that a dam will damage the scenic gorges. Farmers assert they do not need irrigation water from the reservoir. Commercial fishermen and women are worried fish would swim elsewhere if the river torrents become blocked by the dam. Not to mention that half a dozen small villages had already been relocated for the future building of the damn dam. And what for? Purportedly, for irrigation (which farmers tell us they don’t need) and flood control (which dams have a bad reputation for preventing in Hitoyoshi).

And so these people got together and set up a petition opposing the $3.6 million project. They got 34,000 signatures, half of the residents in the city of Hitoyoshi.

Last September, this group gained the support of the governor of the Kumamoto prefecture, Ikuo Kabashima. Kabashima then requested that Tokyo suspend the dam’s construction (which, again, hadn’t yet begun). Tokyo consented. Thank goodness.

This is a big deal because usually local governors are essentially ignored by Japan’s central government, which gets to decide what happens all over the country despite what the locals might want. Kabashima stood up to the central government both because he empathizes with the plight of the locals, and because he thinks the central government exercises too much power in these situations.

This phenomenon spawned others (yay!). Other regional governments throughout Japan spoke up against plans to build dams in their prefectures. In November, four prefectural governments in the western Kensai region asked to have the dam project cancelled. Last month, the governor of the Niigata prefecture said he would not help finance a new bullet train line and the governor of Osaka refused to pay for a new bridge to an airport.

Now, some of these oppositions are due to the global economic crisis-budgets are limited. Regardless, this gradual deconstruction of the central government tyranny is something to be both noted and celebrated.

And there’s more: the Liberal Democratic Party is drawing up a bill to turn Japan’s 47 prefectures into 9-13 entities with enough power to balance out the central government’s. This may not happen anytime soon, though, as Prime Minister Taro Aso, who proposed the bill, is not very popular right now. But many are standing up to Japan’s central government, so something substantial is absolutely taking place, bill or no bill.

Read more.

Goes to show what grassroots power can do.

So far, TRU Organic Spirits has planted 50,052 trees as of March 2009 along as a result of its “one tree per bottle” method. The products are completely certified USDA organic and consist of infused vodkas and gins. Mmm…

Each planted tree, TRU says, removes 500 lbs. of CO2 from the atmosphere per year and later 1800 lbs. per year when the trees mature. Apparently, that’s the equivalent of two months of average driving (1800 lbs. of CO2). Not bad at all.

“To make sure those trees have maximal impact, we work with organizations such as Sustainable Harvest International, in tropical zones, because those are the most environmentally sensitive areas suffering rampant deforestation,” they say.

Volunteer for Sustainable Harvest International's Cacao Campaign

So, how do we know TRU is legitimate? The company has been issued a certificate by Sustainable Harvest International (SHI).  Sounds good. With this certificate in tow, it’s easier to believe TRU when they claim that they are 760 times carbon negative (!), they maintain clean farmland and groundwater, and use recycled and recyclable lightweight bottles, among other laudable practices. Independent organizations evaluate these claims. Read more here.

Speaking of which, SHI organizes Smaller World Tours–you can take a vacation to volunteer in Central America to fight poverty and deforestation.  SHI has tours coming up in Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama and several of their tours coming up in the next few months are already filled up! Awesome.

Another thing you can do through SHI is intern in Central America through their Field Programs. There’s still room to apply for summer 2009. Check it here. The information is also available in Spanish.

Haters

Remember my recent post about Earth Hour? I brought up the qustion of how legitimate it really is–sure, it raises awareness, but wouldn’t it be so much better if that hour was advocated toward raising awareness more actively? What about an eco-themed potluck or picnic? A letter writing campaign? A workshop at your local community center to teach people how to make lamps from recycled materials?

There is so much we could do instead of shutting off the lights, that would be so much better. And wouldn’t inconvenience our lives. It’s really cold in some places, and shutting off the heat would suck (not everyone lives in a “passive house“, right?)

So I would say I am opposed to Earth Hour and that my reason is valid and legitimate. It turns out I’m not the only one against it, although some opponents’ reasons are ridiculous. Planet Save reports that libertarian groups are getting together to tell people to keep the lights ON “in protest of the fraud that is global warming.” Definitely, as PS says, lame.

Looking b ack, did you turn your lights off for Earth Hour 2008? I hadn’t heard about it, so I didn’t.  Time magazine makes a compelling if simple argument: we need all the awareness and effort and Earth-friendly action we can get. So even if turning off the lights for one hour will not make a difference in terms of our carbon footprint, what matters is that we care enough to do it. It’s the symbolism of the action that counts, not the immediate environmental effect.

Sure, we need all we can get.

But I still think an eco-themed potluck or workshop beats turning off the lights for an hour.

Have you heard of Earth Hour? The idea is that people around the world can do something to fight against global warming by sitting in the dark for an hour drinking beer and throwing peanuts at each other.

Well, if you want to. That’s as much good as it’s gonna do global warming, anyway.

In truth, the idea is to turn the lights off for an hour and head outdoors to do something useful, or at least non-polluting. Bring your friends and family with you. Don’t forget your non-human animal companions! Earth Hour’s goal is to reach 1 billion participants. Supposedly, your actions will influence the fate of the Earth via the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009. Earth Hour thinks that if enough people turn off their lights for 1 hour on 1 single day of the year, politicians will put their greedy interests on the back burner and vote to help stop global warming.

Flip it off on March 28, at 8:30pm local time.

The website reads: “For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming.”

Whatever.

Earth Hour started two years ago and bloomed into what some (although I think not I) would call a massive movement. Maybe it’s monumental among certain green groups in the US, I don’t know, but not in the places where I most recently lived in the US, and certainly not where I live now either. I mean, it’s in the paper, but I haven’t heard anyone talking about it. Have you? That’d be nice.

I mostly think these events are rubbish, honestly. Like those “don’t buy gas” or “anti-consumer” days. For something to be effective, it needs to be practiced consistently and regularly, not once a year and for one hour. Spend all this time and energy to teach people how to make a difference in their daily lives, not shut off their lights for 1 measly hour and leave them on while they take naps in front of the television, which will just make these gals and chaps feel absolved of any guilt because “I JOINED EARTH HOUR.”

Please!

Additionally, I find it repulsive that corporations like Unilever; YPF, WalMart, Nike, etc. are “supporting¨ the movement. Listen, Unilever, when you stop the vivisection and remove all the carcinogenic compounds from your products, maybe we’ll talk. Goddamn hypocrites.

Do you think I’m wrong? Let me know.

Rape has been used as a weapon of war in both the First Congo War and Second Congo War. (Picture by USAID/Leah Werchick, 2001)

In the ecotourism microcosm and the green world in general, we speak a lot of green transportation, greener choices, polluting less, and so on. Switch to a hybrid, offset the carbon footprint of your flights when going on vacation, and so on and so forth.

We’re lazy.

Honestly, some of the best things you can do are:

(a)    Stay home!

(b)   Walk

(c)    Ride a bike, rollerblade, skateboard, and so on

(d)   Swim-and always leave the motorboats and jet skis in the store (think of the coral reefs, sea turtles, etc., whose populations are diminished yearly by these machines)

(e)    Did I mention stay home?

Think of what would happen if we actually stuck to these principles. Because, you know, it’s we who are polluting and ruining the planet. We-privileged, middle-to-upper class people with access to the internet and enough education and spare time to inform and educate ourselves about ecological issues. We are the ones with enough money to travel and the resources that allow us to choose how and when we will do it.

Not indigenous tribes in Venezuela, in the Amazon Forest, the sort of people who coexist harmoniously with their green surroundings. And we can’t ask the poor women in South Jordan to switch to energy-saving light bulbs, the raped women refugees in eastern Congo to implement low-flush toilets, or those left homeless in Tartagal to incorporate solar panels into their homes when if they get to rebuild them.

But we can ask our friends to be more conscientious in their choices-because they have choices-when they shop, travel, use electricity, eat, discard, and even when they vote if we spread the word about key bills and laws and work together to support or protest against them.

Pick up trash if you see it in the street and take it home to recycle or at least toss it in a trash can. Reuse containers instead of throwing them away and buying new ones. Cut down and eventually abolish meat and animal products from your diet. Get your lighting fixtures taken care of if they don’t take energy-saving bulbs. Stop buying Cif and bleach and switch to vinegar, baking soda, and alcohol for all your home cleaning needs. Turn off and unplug all appliances when not in use.

And on and on.

If you, who gets to choose and make changes, don’t, then you can’t complain when, several years from now, you find yourself having to move out of Florida and into a home farther from the coast and higher and higher than sea level. And don’t even start about how first class has gotten more expensive-focus on what’s important. Green travel is no travel unless it’s on foot, bike, or by other ecological means.

Let’s help people walk the talk.

Your life will be cleaner, greener, simpler, cheaper, healthier, and better.

Read a compelling article about this at Worldchanging.

What tips do you have?

What do YOU think?

Flooding in Tartagal, Argentina

If you called in or emailed Argentine President Cristina Kirchner last week, you deserve an enthusiastic pat on the back: it worked!

Greenpeace reports that over 1,000 people harassed the government daily demanding the signed implementation of the Forest Law-and we got it. Things like this always make me smile, and wide.

Such efforts are crucial to fight deforestation and the resulting natural disasters such as the flooding in Tartagal, up in the northwestern province of Salta in Argentina, where thousands lost their homes to the violent infiltration of volumes of mud.

Deforestation is about destroying the fertility of soil, biodiversity, and leaving the soil useless to protect the land against intensive flooding (due to accelerated erosion) as it warps the natural regulation of river basins. Fighting it is, therefore, imperative to our planet-and our human and non-human community.

Meanwhile, Tartagal lays drowned in mud, with dead animals rotting in the streets, people missing, snakes everywhere, its waters polluted, and ravenous mosquitoes sucking the blood out of everyone in sight. As a bonus, people have to watch out for explosives in certain areas, as oil companies’ explosives were dragged out by the flood. Some explosives have fortunately been found and subsequently deactivated. Apparently, something as seemingly innocuous as a cell phone can trigger them.

The people in Tartagal are poor and humble, with nothing to spare and now nothing at all. The capitalist efforts to force oil out of the ground, tear down trees, and the ten million other atrocities they commit every second of every day make me want to puke.

Please take action however way you can to spread the word when you hear of something, and make your voice heard to demand change.

Always remember the wise Margaret Mead’s words: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

While air, water, and soil pollution poison the ecosystem and the region’s inhabitants, thousands of square miles of (previously) pristine Northern Canadian forests in Alberta are being killed for oil. Watch a video here.

Gigantic digging machines are tearing into the soil and harming the forests’ topsoil to the extent that the land becomes sterile. This is going on daily, hourly, constantly, like it previously did in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. And it’s been going on for years. (I’m surprised, Canada!)

What’s great is that the Canadian Government is using several billions of its people’s tax money to go about this destruction of “Canada’s Amazon of the North.” Even in Brazil–in South America, where corruption tops North America’s by a landslide-the government is doing something proactive, taking a responsible ecological stance to help protect its natural habitats (whether the Brazilian Government is achieving its goals is certainly another matter). Evidently, this isn’t even your everyday forest, it’s a vast stretch of dense, rich land-which, as it rots courtesy of the aforementioned digging machines, produces obscene amounts of CO2. And don’t forget the water pollution (and marine wildlife pollution, and the pollution ingested by humans when they consume said wildlife). AND THE OIL.

Well, I guess this are will no longer be an eco destination!

Maybe I don’t know anything and I’m talking out of my —, but I thought Canada was more progressive than the States about things like this. Well, obviously I was wrong: the CO2 emissions originating from the Tar Sands, which Canada is ruining on purpose, puts the country way up there with the U.S. in terms of pollution.

Know this, Canada: all the polar bears drowning in the Arctic because of accelerated glacial melting are cursing you with their last breaths.

So now what? Just like we ought to call Argentina’s president and demand she stop Tartagal’s deforestation, we ought to give Canada’s politicians a beating. Wait. I mean, we should demand a law against ecocide. All of us, around the world. The more the merrier.

Check out comments on this issue here.

Floods in Tartagal, 2009

In the northwest of Argentina lays a province called Salta, a popular tourist spot, whose trees corporations love to chop down. Salta comprises many rich ecosystems-well, fewer and fewer ecosystems these days.

Currently, the city of Tartagal has been experiencing very destructive floods-since at least 2006, actually! Watch a video here . Every year Argentina gets a rerun, and in other provinces too, e.g. Tucumán (see picture above).

The 2006 flood is evidence that the deforestation of this region’s Argentine forests is a direct cause of these dismal consequences. Now thousands of people have lost their homes because some greedy corporate businessmen have sold their souls to desecrate the planet and fill their fat pockets with crisp dollar bills.

It’s 2009, and still there’s been no progress. There is no firm policy against the massacre of Salta’s forests. See, last year, 1.5 million Argentines stood up and helped create the Forest Law-which hasn’t been put into practice by the government. It’s a shame that with a woman-a minority-president, things remain the same as before. But hey: greed knows no sex, race, class, sexual orientation, or anything else, right? Dough is dough, and when you’re vile enough to rig an election to win the presidency, people can’t expect much…

Please tell the Argentine Government what you think and demand they stop Salta’s deforestation – stop the Forest Law boycott!! or, if you can speak a little Spanish and can spare a couple of bucks, speak up! Call the Red Greenpeace Phone Line at 0011-5411-4000-5580 Mondays through Fridays from 7AM to 3PM EST and tell President Cristina Kirchner to get her ass in gear about the Forest Law.