Green Options - Book Review: Earth Democracy

As part of Eco-Libris' ongoing content partnership with Green Options Media, we feature a post that was originally published by Kelli Best-Oliver on September 15 on Planetsave. Today's post is about a new and important book of Vananda Shiva.

In Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace, Indian physicist turned environmental activist Vandana Shiva calls for a radical shift in the values that govern democracies, decrying the role that unrestricted capitalism has played in the destruction of environments and livelihoods. By no means a new release, Shiva's book is incredibly timely as skyrocketing fuel costs jeopardize the rationality of globalization. Through explaining problems with expanding globalization and privatization of public goods and services, then illustrating examples of communities rejecting the intrusion of corporations into communities, Shiva outlines core beliefs that should result in what she deems “earth democracy”, a global community that honors and respects diverse forms of life and their respective cultures.

Green Books Reviews - 'A Spring without Bees' by Michael Schacker

"Only 26 years” said the beekeeper, “this is how long we have. After that, you will be eating only corn, wheat and rice.”

We were enjoying a sunny afternoon at the Port Townsend farmer's market on the north eastern end of the Olympic peninsula. I just had a yummy raw pizza and the xylophone band were in the middle of their second exhilarating set. People from all walks of life were taking the time to stop when meeting and have long conversations before heading home with bountiful fresh produce in their tote bags. We stopped at the beekeeper's honey booth for a chat. “Yes, you see all these farmers?” he continued, pointing at other stallholders selling fresh vegetables and herbs, “Some of them are starting to ask me what is going on with the bees. They begin to realize something is wrong. But by the time farmers will join us beekeepers in calling for action, it will be too late.”

Driving back to Seattle, I had bees on my mind. I decided it was time to finish reading and review Michael Schacker's 'A Spring without Bees'.

The reason beekeepers all around the world are worried is that for the past years whole hives of honey bees are disappearing at alarming rates as part of what is now called “Colony Collapse Disorder” or CCD for short. The reason we should all be worried is that a significance portion of all the food in the world requires a healthy population of honey bees to be grown. How come? Schacker explains it in the beginning of the book. Sometime around 130 million years ago one of nature's most amazing synergies was negotiated. Flowers evolved to attract insects that will lubricate the intricate business of plant sex, and a certain specie of wasps answered the intoxicating seductive call of nectar to evolve into the tiny bee, a highly efficient pollinating machine. As I recently re-learned by watching the summer squash and tomatoes in the garden, most food crops rely on flowers for their reproduction, and therefore on insect life. And as the Port Townsend farmers are now discovering, no bees equals no crops.

In today's world of agricultural business and mega production it means that commercial pollinators regularly rent their bee hives to sit in crop fields and make sure pollination happens at the right season. But now as bees go AWOL the pollinators go out of business, as record percentages of their hives, as high as 80% per season, disappear. The worker bees simply go to work in the morning and never come back.

All of this may not be new to some of you, and probably you have read a version of it as part of the media's coverage of the “mystery” of the bee's disease, maybe in a novelty piece about how cellphone radiation or power lines may be the culprit, and how American scientists and beekeepers are supposedly baffled. Nothing like a good mystery to keep the work enthralled, right? Not always. According to Schacker what we're dealing with here is a series of industry red herrings designed to distract the US from the most likely cause, toxic chemical pesticides. He shows that the real mystery is how did the EPA and FDA, the federal government bodies that are supposed to regulate pesticides, become the legal loophole clearinghouse that they are, systematically allowing the chemical companies to bring to market toxic materials without proper environmental reviews, using certain clauses that allow them to waive important safety requirements for economic reasons.

So is the bottom line that big business once again bought the research and politicians with everyone else paying the price? It certainly seems that way, and Schackers level headed analysis and step by step explanations of the regulations, how they are circumvented, and how credible information from France is systematically ignored, makes a good case of it. In France an important study showed how minuscule quantities of certain chemicals would cause severe harm to the bees. When these chemicals were banned there, the result was a marked comeback of the bee population.

What are the solutions? The last chapter of the book, named “Plan Bee”, outlines these plans Immediate ban on these pesticides in the short term is a no-brainer. With a world food crisis in progress it only makes sense to take this precaution, which in nothing but following the real intent of the existing regulations, while plugging the loop holes used to fast track poisons into the market.

But in the long haul, a government sponsored move to organic farming will be required. At home, he encourages people to avoid certain lawn pesticide products, and suggests campaigning for “green golf”, as golf courses are a major user those similar products as well.

Colony Collapse Disorder and the dangers it poses to the world's food supply is one of the most important issues that are hardly acted upon in green activism these days. 'A Spring without Bees' is no doubt an important book that will hopefully pave the way for more literature on the subject, and will galvanize a movement to maybe do something about it. Hell, where do I sign up?

Book: A Spring without Bees

Author: Michael Schacker

Publisher: The Lyons Press

Publication Date: June, 2008

Available on: AMAZON • BARNES & NOBLE
BOOKSENSE • BORDERS • GPP

Notes:

Bee picture via flickr under creative commons license by MrClean1982 , pollen picture by TonyVC

Best,

Eylon @ Eco-Libris

Plant a Tree for Every Book you Read!

Green Options 2: The Nature Conservancy: 320,000 Acres of Forest Protected in Landmark Deal

Usually we republish every Tuesday one post from Green Options, but today we make an exception and republish two. The reason is a very important announcement of the Nature Conservancy on one of the most significant conservation sales in history. We wanted to bring you the full announcement with all the details, and we thank Jonathon D. Colman for approving to reprint his post that was originally posted on PlanetSave on June 30. Eco-Libris congratulate the Nature Conservancy for this remarkable deal and we hope to see many more acres of forestlands being preserved with their help!


Few places on Earth are as untouched as the "Crown of the Continent" — a 10-million-acre expanse of mountains, valleys and prairies in Montana and Canada. The area has sustained all the same species — including grizzlies, lynx, moose and bull trout — for at least 200 years.

Now — in one of the most significant conservation sales in history — The Nature Conservancy and The Trust for Public Land have preserved 320,000 acres of forestlands in western Montana that provide valuable habitat for species in the Crown of the Continent.

"There hasn't been an animal extinction here since Lewis and Clark encountered it in the early 19th century," explains Kat Imhoff, the Conservancy's state director in Montana. "It's the only such ecosystem in the Lower 48 states."

The deal is part of the Conservancy’s large-scale efforts to protect forestlands around the world — the majority of which are working forests supplying sustainably harvested timber.

Over the past five years, the Conservancy has protected 3.5 million acres of forestlands — at a time when nearly one-half of Earth’s original forest cover is gone and global deforestation rates continue to rise.

World Fair Trade Day 2008: Fair Trade + Ecology

Tomorrow is World Fair Trade Day, and this year's theme is “Fair Trade + Ecology”. It was first celebrated in 2005, and has taken place each year since, on the second Saturday in May.

Here's the wiki definition of fair trade:

“Fair trade is an organized social movement and market-based approach to alleviating global poverty and promoting sustainability. The movement advocates the payment of a fair price as well as consciousness of social and environmental standards in areas related to the production of a wide variety of goods. It focuses in particular on exports from developing countries to developed countries, most notably handicrafts, coffee, cocoa, sugar, tea, bananas, honey, cotton, wine, fresh fruit, and flowers.”

You can read more about it on IFAT's website, the organization that is an umbrella network for hundreds of fair trade organizations from all around the world.

So, what's so green about fair trade? There are several reasons that fair trade products can be greener than others, but here is the main one: Many fair trade products or materials are manufactured by local communities in developing countries, where resources and infrastructure are scarce, and continuous subsistence and livelihood are dependent on the sustained existence of these resources. Since the community in a fair trade setting is much more empowered than in an exploitative setting, it can often take positive action to make sure that its production practices do not irrevocably harm its surroundings.

For example, we can take fair trade rubber tapping in the Brazilian Amazon, conducted by local community co-ops that also stand against deforestation. Veja, is a French company that sources the rubber used to make it's line of fair-trade sneakers from such co-operatives. If the rain forest is destroyed, as is often the case with renegade logging operations, these tappers lose their livelihood and way of life. Fair Trade enables them to compete with rubber coming from big rubber tree plantations, and helps them keep the forests alive and flourishing.

But the thing I like best about the way Fair Trade and Environmentalism interact is that these are simply complimentary. They help one another but do not necessitate one another. Paying a fair living wage, and refraining from cutting down the rain forest are simply good things to do on their own, without any external or material incentives.

Yep, I'll celebrate that!

Eylon @ Eco-Libris

Plant a Tree for Every Book you Read!

Naked in the Woods : A Book Review

A man walks completely naked into the wilderness to survive for two months without any food, human contact, tools or ready made shelter. Sounds like the latest episode of Survivorman? Well, almost. While Survivorman's Les Stroud is performing quite impressive feats, and is “One man – alone in the wilderness... no food, no shelter, no fresh water, no tools... no camera crew”, he is in some ways merely writing another page in the book that Joseph Knowles, the infamous “Nature Man” of Maine, started writing already back in 1913. Upon emerging from his ordeal after two months, Knowles became a sensation and triumphantly toured the nation, lecturing about and demonstrating his woodsman survival skills.

In Naked in the Woods, environmental author and journalist Jim Motavalli not only portrays faithfully the life and times of Knowles, and the enthusiasm and controversy around his wilderness exploits, but also opens a window to the era. The author travels with Knowles from the forests of Maine to the Oregon coasts, the newsrooms of Boston to an artists' driftwood cottage in the Pacific Northwest. Motavalli contextualizes the events in the relationship of Man and Nature, Knowles' life, and the media's exploitation of popular trends, then and now.

Knowles was quite a character, that's for sure. Born in 1869, he grew up in Wilton in rural Maine, and by the time he walked naked into the forest in front of the clicks of the newspaper cameras he already manged to travel the seas with the navy, learn woodcraft with Native Americans, and establish himself as an artist living in a studio in Boston. Like Les Stroud the survivorman, Knowles did not need a camera crew with him, but sent dispatches and drawings to the media written with his cookfire charcoal on birch bark. But did he really spent all this time in the wilderness? Or did he retire to a luxurious cabin for two months, courtesy of a newspaper looking to boost its circulation? The book investigates these claims in detail.

Motavalli also explores the reasons for Knowles' story becoming such a media sensation at the time. Why then? He concludes that the main reason was the American anxiety over losing its frontier at the turn of the century, and transitioning from a rural to an urban society. Nature was slipping away from day to day life of the average American in a matter of a generation or two. Knowles the “Nature Man” was there to show the American public that the wilderness and the frontier were still there to face and conquer.

This is not only a strict academic study, and Motavalli does not present us with a dense cultural theory. He does however flesh out existing cultural history theories about Frontier, Nature, Wilderness and American culture, by using this particular instance to show us how it all played out.

There's no doubt “Nature Man” loved the forests and the beaches where he lived, but would he be called an environmentalist today? Probably not. When he went into the woods he wanted to demonstrate that modern man could best nature, hardly part and parcel of today's green ethos with its more harmonious undertones. But I am sure that he would have a thing or two to say about the bona fide-ness of today's armchair environmentalists with their cozy REI gear and Coleman gas stoves, and can inspire some of us to follow his lead and go naked into the woods one day. Well, if he really did it, that is.

Title: Naked in the Woods – Joseph Knowles and the Legacy of Frontier Fakery

Link: http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/dacapo/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0786720085

Author: Jim Motavalli

Publisher: Da Capo

Publication Date: January 28, 2008

Pages: 352

More News from the Field : Help Sustainable Harvest International Win $10,000

We got today a newsletter of our planting partners and friends at SHI (Sustainable Harvest International.) Recently storms and hurricanes hit parts of Honduras, Belize and Nicaragua, where SHI operates. But as the newsletter reports planting trees helps prevent more severe damages:

Despite these recent hardships, we feel lucky. Sustainable Harvest Honduras Field Trainer, Juan Carlos Sandres tells us that SHI is not in the business of disaster relief, but disaster prevention - and it's working! In his own words, "After the experience of devastation in my country from Hurricane Mitch in 1998, Sustainable Harvest Honduras has been dedicated to sharing agro-forestry techniques with families that were impacted by the disaster. We have been able to improve many vulnerable areas through soil conservation, reforestation, crop diversification and disaster prevention training. We know that when there are natural disasters, the families we work with are more resilient and their parcels of land are much less susceptible to erosion and crop loss."

So here's your chance to assist SHI with their work in these communities to bounce back from the hurricane damages, and do even better in other places:

SHI has created two groups on a new social networking site and will be eligible to win $10,000 if we can get 100 people to join our online groups. It is free, easy and will not lead to any unwanted mailings. $10,000 could allow SHI to begin work in at least 3 new villages, reaching many more Central American families that are anxiously waiting for our help. Please take a moment to join today and encourage others to do the same.

Register at http://beta.razoo.com/ and join our groups at http://beta.razoo.com/groups/shi and http://beta.razoo.com/groups/sw. Then make sure to tell everyone you know how to join each of these groups!

And don't forget to mention that you are joining because you heard about it right here :)

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!