Newsletter Volume 1 Issue 2, February 2004
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Newsletter Volume 1 Issue 2, February 2004 |
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Earth Community Organization (ECO)
the Global Community Theme Profit-based conservation strategies for natural ecosystems
Table of Contents | 1.0 Economic valuation as a framework incentive to enforce profit-based conservation strategies for natural ecosystems. A methodological approach, research conducted by Dr. Isabel Mendes
 by Dr. Isabel Mendes  for Discussion Roundtables #53 4, 19, 26, 28, 32, and 36 Assistant Professor Dep. Economia/Department of Economics Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao/Technical University of Lisbon Institute of Economics and Business Administration/CIRIUS Rua Miguel Lupi, 20 Lisboa/Lisbon Portugal 1249 - 078 Lisboa/Lisbon Phone: 351-21-392-59 67 Fax: 351-21-396-64 07 email: midm@iseg.utl.pt 
Biodiversity and Protected Areas exist neither in isolation nor independent of human activities. For local communities, this may
mean conservation represents a hindrance rather than an opportunity for sustainable development and thus lead to increasing
avoidance of the regulatory framework in effect. This paper defends changes to conservation practices in order to create a broader
consensus around objectives and practices. One means of doing this is to ensure people adopt profit-based conservation practices.
We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of economic valuation as a framework incentive measure to enforce local
co-operation in conservation decisions and management. By using a methodological and conceptual approach, we seek to assess the
reasons economic valuation, albeit an abstract, very theoretical and technical demanding indicator, may still be a useful
conservation tool serving as an incentive and support to decision-making, as a tool in education and a vehicle of information.
See complete paper under name 'Mendes' in Participants Listing. or read the paper
 by David Inkey for Discussion Roundtables #12 and 13 Antarcticu@aol.com http://www.labornet.org/news/0104/toopoor.htm Global online communication for a democratic, independent labor movement
I am too poor to go to war
Let me tell you the score Your last war left my crops asunder, Now my children hunger You planted mines in my field Nothing but misery, they yield Your current battle destroyed my cattle, Only a bull and a cow Because I am not a Muslim, you allow me a sow Your soldiers gloat that they got my goat Was it the marines who stole my sheep From you, many sorrows I do reap With preemptive interventions and multiple inventions, You tell me of good intentions? Who is supposed to explain the detentions? With great math, the wars cost you do extend, With your latest military budget, me, you do offend Who is to pay for road mending, for health care spending For student tending, for water vending Quartermaster, halfmaster, fullmaster Who would envision worse provision Domestically, you insist on standard testing, with efficiency You teach war games with proficiency Would that we could help children with educational sufficiency While far away, thousands of troops are quickly deployed In iraq, bosnia, haiti, siam or thailand At home, the streets fill with the unemployed I do believe I am too poor to go to war I am out of step, I am inept I am too poor Yes, I am rich with other stuff with Thomas Mann, I have a lease War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. Would I, would you, would we, if we could, afford peace I am too poor to go to war david inkey, 12/15/03
 by Dan HyperLinker and Marinella Castiglione for Discussion Roundtables 35, 21, 6, 17, and 15 Eudaemony Laboratory eulab@hyperlinker.com http://ars.hyperlinker.com/
In present human societies, in which the most important, the most strategic roles encompassing organization,
administration, finance, education, culture, information, health and public safety, are assigned for life to certain
persons, as a matter of fact the State lives well far from the common Citizens. The State appears like an impenetrable
hard stone, at all immodifiable by those who where excluded from it. These two entities, State and Citizens, that for
social pact should coincide, should be one only thing, as a matter of fact remain separated and often opposed.
It is often written in the constitutions of the countries of the world that "sovereignty belongs to the people" (meaning to all the people!), but the reality is vastly different. Most of the countries of the world literally belong to those persons who are assumed for life in the key positions of the State, whether they are representatives or their subordinates. Present nations are in the hands of a real oligarchy --of a low level but spread everywhere-- that still lords and subject in a subtle, sly manner the remaining part of the population. Nations are so prevented from a natural evolution towards that the various situational ambits indeed demand. If we are not in agreement with our government's policies, do not lose other time: concentrate our energies toward removing that particular model of social organization, which is the basis for every harmful behaviour of the Governments, and which gives full power to multinational corporations and economic empires. Public Employment for Life is the deep, hidden, mean origin of the majority of the world's problems, be they in ecology, human rights, peace or the economy, or in any other area. Demand, therefore, for what it is impossible to deny the absolute legitimacy: claim for rotation of Public Employment, so that it can become equally shared and of real common belonging. On the day in which this new social system would come to the fore, no longer, for example, public forces (persons that today are also them assumed for life, becoming so faithful keepers of oligarchyc States) will rage against the demonstrators. The seeds of a new society, without monopolization and exclusion, based instead on equal sharing and full participation by all, will take root. On that day even such ambitious aims as to see every woman, every man on Earth having a work, and therefore an income, minimum guaranted, will become much more easily attainable. Public Employment for Life is the weak ring of an otherwise indestructible chain that binds a whole world and keeps it from achieving social progress and justice. Public Employment for Life is the ring that today, in the interest of all and in a legally and morally unexceptionable way, we must definitively break.
by Bernie Slepkov Founder, Sustainable Niagara (http://www.SustainableNiagara.ca) 1-213 St. Paul Street St. Catharines, Ontario Tel: (905) 984-3493 Canada L2R 7J8 bernies@mergetel.com for Discussion Roundtables 1, 9, 28, 33, and 36
A question such as, "Do we need Nature?" leads me to contemplate which components of life’s sustaining machinery we could possibly live without. As I ponder this over, Nature herself fills my lungs. She processes and sorts nutrients taken in from the air, and sends them through my veins so that my thoughts may take shape.
Believe what we will, we are not capable of living beyond Nature’s subtle influences. She controls the wondrous complexities of the very life forces that sustain us and allow us our thoughts. As I delve further into this question of needing Nature, my eyes scan the hundreds of objects before them. There is not one whose source existence has not been fashioned out of Nature’s bounty! Being obsessed with sustainability’s enormous market potential, the impact of our society’s disconnection from Nature both concerns and intrigues me. The thought of tearing up as much as 96% of each dollar and sending it to a landfill is inconceivable. And yet when money is in the form of products made from toxic-laced non-recyclable or non-reusable materials, and society pays the costs hidden over time, that is inadvertently what does happen. Millions of people are employed within thousands of industries that ultimately manufacture waste in various forms. Every process at each individual stage of producing all of these products reduces, if not wastes, a myriad of raw materials that Nature has taken hundreds, and even millions of years to make available. For future generations’ sake, a greater accounting of human activities is direly needed. We must begin to put all our collective efforts towards creating a ‘restorative economy’ specifically intended to generate social and environmental profits – as well as financial profits. And what of myself? Am I not of Nature? Will not my great-grandchildren also be the sum total of millions of years of evolution? When we speak lightly of Nature, our thoughts might wander through the colorful beauty of wind-caressed meadows, or along the pristine shores of sun kissed mountain stream-fed lakes, the sun dancing lightly about the fluid surfaces. Even now those tranquil images lull my restless soul to further reflect upon Nature’s physical beauties. Many are the times of my life that I have found peace and sanity within Nature’s orchestrated symphonies. Not long ago I found myself standing in awe before an astounding scene. The entire view filled the breadth of my vision. I stood riveted, intentionally oblivious to sound, and suddenly realized the impact of the scene. It compelled me to try to comprehend the source of my growing uneasiness. Countless outcroppings jutted skyward and sprawled outward, violently ejected from the earth’s surfaces, although not by a spasm of quakes. Barren shades of grays and browns rarely yielded to plush vegetation. Deep chasms and passageways displayed telltale signs of human life. Looking at this vast, unnatural, modern cityscape, I wondered for how much longer our natural systems could continue feeding civilization’s insatiable hungers for comfort, convenience and luxury. My thoughts turned to all the stores packed with endless aisles of countless consumables. I struggled to grasp the enormous amounts of natural resources and human activity their production required. We feel that we have to possess it if it pleases our senses, amuses or entertains, is this season’s fashionable style or colour, organizes our stressful lives, or makes our days more convenient. For how much longer, I wondered, might the whole of humankind escape the consequences of our crippling Nature’s ability to sustain life? My dread turned away from our unsustainable, consumer-driven society toward my current need for ensuring that my great-grandchildren’s generation will have the wherewithal to meet their basic needs around the year 2040. This urgent global quest for sustainability challenges people within every municipality and region to see and begin to create their world anew. Dwindling regional prosperity could be renewed by focusing in on our current needs for healthy, vibrant and productive communities. Sustainability’s greatest challenge however, is in re-establishing our place within Nature’s chaotic complexities. The last two decades have witnessed the birth of new sciences intended to gain insights into the complex workings of ‘whole systems’. Over the course of history, sciences have evolved in isolation of each other. The emerging result is that we are losing sight of the interconnections that inextricably link them all into this concept we have always called ‘Nature’. Computer Science has played a major role in raising awareness towards how interrelated, complex and unpredictable Nature is. Having developed my own whole-systems thinking skills in order to write and troubleshoot computer programs efficiently, I was not surprised to see of the emergence of ‘Complexity’ on the heels of the computer’s advent. This newer science seeks out to determine whatever order can be found at the edges of chaos. In his 1992 book, ‘Complexity,’ Mitchell Waldrop touched briefly on the work of a 21-year old young wunderkind from England named Stephen Wolfram, who in the early 1980s experimented "with very simple rules to generate [by computer] patterns of startling dynamism and complexity." Wolfram’s initial programs simulated the complexities of cellular life by simply following a short set of ‘if-this-then-that’ programming rules called algorithms. Last year, after an entire decade of obsessive experimentation and documentation, Wolfram stunned scientific and non-scientific communities with his findings. His manifesto, "A New Kind of Science," presented compelling evidence that strikes at the foundations of virtually every scientific discipline. The universe’s complexities would appear to be more the results of simple algorithms than complicated mathematical equations. Some of Wolfram’s algorithms resulted in order and beauty similar to those found in Nature. Others started out with some semblance of order yet quickly collapsed into an ugly chaotic mess not unlike our economies, social systems and weather patterns. According to Wolfram, predicting the outcome of any one program proved impossible. James Lovelock’s recently formulated Gaian Hypothesis explores the theory that the Earth is actually a living superorganism. Just as each of our bodies is a complex organization of tightly integrated components working in unison to maintain and protect its ‘working unit,’ so is the Earth. As our organic bodies fend off or eliminate unwelcome foreign germs and viruses, so does Gaia. If Gaian Theory holds any truth the question really becomes, does Nature need us? Unpredictable weather patterns of endless destructive storms, floods and droughts, raging forest fires, and landscape-altering earthquakes may just be Gaia’s attempts at ridding herself of our viral attacks upon her overall well-being. It is we who must begin to yield to Nature, as Nature will never yield to us. While we as a species have evolved to the point of creative thought, technological invention and great engineering prowess enabling us to fashion some forms of control over our surroundings, we have yet to discover the means to produce something out of nothing. The suggestion of settling on other planets, or harvesting natural resources from even the nearest of worlds, remains the reality of vivid imagination. Until such time that we succeed at realizing any one of these aspirations, we will still have to depend on increasingly scant resources that have taken Nature a galactic lifespan to generate. Just one breath taken in over the course of an average lifetime endures in time far beyond that of humankind’s entire existence within a galactic lifespan. Within some extremely short timeline of that breath, industrialization has harvested and converted the vast majority of Nature’s resources into useless, even life threatening, waste. As we persist in recklessly designing and consuming products that challenge the very laws of Nature, we continue to limit the means of survival for each successive generation yet to be born. Will Nature afford us the time needed to restore her capabilities of sustaining life so that we might survive long enough to take in one last galactic breath? Discovering the secrets of complexity may well equal the challenge of proving the existence of God. By all accounts we may have left to us barely enough time to concentrate our efforts on adapting ourselves to Nature’s complexity. Viewed through historical prisms, we stand today at crossroads not unlike those which our ancestors faced. Beginning with the late nineteenth-century, the industrialization of horseless carriages altered the nature of life, work and travel. A hundred years later, over the course of the industrial age, life, work and travel have altered Nature herself. That brings back into perspective a restorative economy’s market potential for ensuring our survival within the 21st Century. Barely has the international sustainability movement begun, and a most provocative realization is stimulating some rather intriguing, multifaceted solutions. People are beginning to ask, "What is it that needs to be sustained, given the social, economic and environmental threats to our communities, and residents?" After assessing the life threatening results of the last industrial revolution, the Next Industrial Revolution’s leaders, architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart, are successfully enticing industrialists to embrace Nature’s mentorship. McDonough and Braungart’s ‘sustaining design principles’ of "Whose food is it?" draw attention back to Nature’s whole-system efficiency wherein nothing is wasted. Waste generated in one phase of a process becomes the nutrients at other phases, thus emulating Nature’s manner of maintaining perfect balances within closed-loops. Toxic-free materials used in creating new products are currently being designed such that they will become either the quality raw materials for future products or will decompose into safe, healthy nutrients for Nature’s use. Their magnificent splendor aside, McDonough’s wholistic building designs are awarded for their innate ability to integrate with, and even restore, their environments. And so, in the Next Industrial Revolution consumerism need not end but inherit complete respect for Nature, integrating smoothly with those complex ecosystems we need in order to perpetuate our species on this planet. Nature is what seems to have set this planet apart from any others we know. Whether by divine intent or by some abnormal happenstance, life thrives within, upon and above our Earth’s surfaces. Species come, and species go. If we homo sapiens value our continued existence, we will admit to our needing Nature and re-establish our connections with her. That is what will lie at the heart of our arduous struggle to achieve sustainability.
by Dr. Rose Anne Dyson Consultant in Media Education President, Rose A. Dyson & Associates Chairperson, Canadians Concerned About Violence in Entertainment 167 Glen Road, Toronto, Ontario M4W 2W8, Canada Telephone: 416-961-0853 Fax: 416-929-2720 E-mail: rdyson@oise.utoronto.ca or rosedyson@C-CAVE.com Website: www.C-CAVE.com for Discussion Roundtables 41, 42, and 43
Over the past 50 years, thousands of conducted studies - public inquiries among them - have demonstrated how mass media are instrumental in the socialization of youth. These studies have focussed on numerous themes, among them sexual exploitation and graphic depictions of violent imagery. More recently, the focus has shifted to the commercial exploitation of children due to sedentary lifestyles and diets heavy in junk foods leading to health problems such as obesity, heart disease and juvenile diabetes. Marketing is now an intense and pervasive presence in children's lives with connections between movies and products that surface both in the home and in the school. Indeed, it is often argued that television and other converging forms of communications technologies are the most powerful educators the world has ever known.
Many of these studies demonstrate that media coalesce into a seamless, pervasive and increasingly centralized, homogenized and globalized cultural environment that is drifting out of democratic reach. Among these trends, is the growing reliance on violence in popular culture as a cheap commercial ingredient that sells well in a global economy and translates easily into any language. Children, adolescents and young adults are the target audience for most of these cultural commodities. Youth video game players are now encouraged to get in touch with their "gun-toting, cold-blooded murdering side". Evidence accumulates that our collective, immune system to violence is breaking down, yet strategies for change remain hamstrung by quaint and dated interpretations of freedom of expression. While it is important that the basic integrity of the free press be protected, short sighted extension of the principle to protect the profit driven agendas of media conglomerates who now have a firm grip on the value systems of the next generation must be challenged. Such a mind set is incompatible with long term cultural and natural environmental sustainability. Strategies are required at all levels of government and in all sectors of society if a new age of global co-operation with a vision for caring for all forms of life on earth is to be achieved. Educational initiatives such as media literacy courses in schools continue to be needed but these must go beyond mere definition of problems. They should focus on new challenges posed in an era of rapid communications technologies and converging content. They must also be made available to adults as well as children in order that those in the best position to provide leadership for meaningful change in society can better understand the links between our new information based global economy and the commercial exploitation of youth. Only when we begin to recognize the futility of short term band-aid measures and endless inquires that end up collecting dust in the offices of academics, will we begin to make progress toward sound, integrated public policy on health, education, community safety, national security, environmental sustainability and a new age civilization. References (Books Only) Dyson Rose A. (2000) MIND ABUSE Media Violence In An Information Age. Black Rose Books, Montreal, New York, London. Dyson Rose A. (2001) "North America's Cult of Sex and Violence" in MEDIA, SEX, VIOLENCE, and DRUGS in the Global Village. Eds. Yahya R. Kamalipour and Kuldip R. Rampal. Rowman and Littlefield. Boulder, New York and Oxford. Dyson Rose A. (2003) " Missing Discourse in the War on Terrorism" in TERRORISM, GLOBALIZATION and MASS COMMUNICATION. Marquette Books, Spokane, Washington.
by Alanna Hartzok Co-Director Earth Rights Institute United Nations NGO Representative Box 328, Scotland, PA 17254 USA Phone: 717-264-0957 Fax: 717-264-5036 Email:earthrts@pa.net Website: http://www.earthrights.net for Discussion Roundtables 26, 4, 9, 28, 32,and 53
The biggest challenge for social democracy today is to articulate coherent policies based on a unifying vision for society. The policy approach should transcend the usual right/left divide and articulate a clear analysis of the problems inherent in the neoliberal macroeconomics structures.
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