Celebrating World Environment Day on 5 June 2013

Think.Eat.Save.

The theme for this year’s World Environment Day celebrations is Think.Eat.Save. Think.Eat.Save is an anti-food waste and food loss UNEP - United Nations Environment Programme campaign that encourages you to reduce your foodprint. 

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), every year 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted. This is equivalent to the same amount produced in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, 1 in every 7 people in the world go to bed hungry and more than 20,000 children under the age of 5 die daily from hunger. 

Given this enormous imbalance in lifestyles and the resultant devastating effects on the environment, this year’s theme – Think.Eat.Save – encourages you to become more aware of the environmental impact of the food choices you make and empowers you to make informed decisions. While the planet is struggling to provide us with enough resources to sustain its 7 billion people (growing to 9 billion by 2050), FAO estimates that a third of global food production is either wasted or lost. 

Food waste is an enormous drain on natural resources and a contributor to negative environmental impacts. This year’s campaign rallies you to take action from your home and then witness the power of collective decisions you and others have made to reduce food waste, save money, minimize the environmental impact of food production and force food production processes to become more efficient. If food is wasted, it means that all the resources and inputs used in the production of all the food are also lost. 

For example, it takes about 1,000 litres of water to produce 1 litre of milk and about 16,000 litres goes into a cow’s food to make a hamburger. The resulting greenhouse gas emissions from the cows themselves, and throughout the food supply chain, all end up in vain when we waste food. In fact, the global food production occupies 25% of all habitable land and is responsible for 70% of fresh water consumption, 80% of deforestation, and 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. It is the largest single driver of biodiversity loss and land-use change. 

Making informed decision therefore means, for example, that you purposefully select foods that have less of an environmental impact, such as organic foods that do not use chemicals in the production process. Choosing to buy locally can also mean that foods are not flown halfway across the world and therefore limit emissions. So think before you eat and help save our environment! Know more at http://www.unep.org/wed/

Is Green Enough ?

Mal Warwick asks Who would have believed it, even ten years ago?

All across America, and increasingly in other parts of the world as well, the people who run businesses, both large and small, are discovering that green is their favorite color. Green is in.

There’s no mystery about this. The public is rapidly coming to appreciate the severity of the threat posed by global climate change. A younger generation that learned about ecology in grade school is coming of age, changing attitudes from within the business world. And evidence continues to mount that consumers favor companies that are environmentally sensitive. Is it any wonder, then, that corporate executives and small businesspeople alike are scrambling to integrate ecologically sound principles and practices into their business operations?

It’s no wonder—we agree. But most of us involved in business have been far too slow to ask a second and equally important question:

Is green enough?

The words “sustainable” and “sustainability” have come to be equated with the ecological perspective summed up by the label “green.” But is that equation fair? If a company—or, for that matter, a society, or the planet as a whole—is run on the basis of green principles, is it sustainable?

I believe the answer is a resounding No. The planetary burden of nearly six billion poor people is sufficient to prove the point, without even exploring the economic implications of the profound gulf between Earth’s rich and poor. But let’s set aside these larger questions until there is an opportunity for us to discuss them at length. For now, let’s just focus on the business case for running our companies not just as environmentally sound enterprises but as what I term “values-driven businesses” grounded in the assumption that collaboration is the path to sustainability.

Values-driven business is based on five fundamental premises:

- Employees work more productively and pay more attention to a company’s profitability when they’re working for something they believe in, are treated with respect, well-paid, and receive a share of the profits. They also tend to feel better if the owner or top managers aren’t making out like bandits by comparison.

- Customers are more loyal and willing to forgive errors when a company’s dedication to quality products and services is obvious and when they deal with highly motivated employees—especially when employees are allowed to take the initiative to apologize and make things right.

- Consumers often show a strong preference to do business with companies that demonstrate a commitment to their community—and are sometimes disinclined to patronize those who don’t. Values alignment between a company and its customers builds loyalty. Customers are more forgiving of mistakes and less apt to buy from a competitor when its goods are on sale.

Your business will be better prepared for the future and more likely to survive its inevitable disruptions if you build stronger relationships today with your employees, your customers, your suppliers, and your community. And the planet we share will be more likely to survive the ravages of the human race if you do everything in your power to lighten your footprint on the environment. In other words, to use the contemporary jargon, your business will be more sustainable.

You—as the company’s owner or manager—will live a less stressful and more fulfilling life if you look on your employees, customers, suppliers, and the community as partners rather than adversaries.

In a values-driven enterprise, an ecological perspective is central. But the same logic that leads us to understand the interdependence of all living things helps us grasp the inescapable truth that a collaborative approach to our customers, our employees, our community, and our suppliers is equally important.

Mal Warwick’s latest book is Values-Driven Business: How to Change the World, Make Money, and Have Fun, co-authored with Ben Cohen, the first volume in the Social Venture Network Series. (See Svnbooks for more information) ©LOHAS

Two Acres and a Pile of Leaves

Conner Voss explains why today's Farming is not what it used to be!

Scritch, scritch, scritch. As a shovel to soil, axe to wood or chisel to stone—putting the rake to leaves is a timeless task of cosmic constancy. When I find myself taunted, twisted and oddly bound by the realm of infinite possibility in life, there is welcome peace in the simple, undeniable progress of a big leaf pile.

For so many reasons, this is good work: my feet are gentle on the ground, and my hands hold the tool—quiet, ancient—perfectly suited to this task. Scritch, scritch. There is room here for thought. It dances among my steady breath and between the shuttering leaves, all at once connected and irrelevant, meaningful and meaningless. With an undeserved degree of self-satisfaction, I am pleased by this paradox. I tell myself that there is wisdom in there somewhere, and then I pause, assume a familiar propped position, and begin to contemplate the purpose of this heady chore.

This is chestnut-tree detritus. Every autumn, descending in ligneous, spiny abandon, this fawn mat of organic matter blankets Digging Roots, our two-acre urban farm. If raked into huge piles and left undisturbed for a few years, the unfriendly mix of burrs and leaves would eventually mellow into a nutrient-rich leaf mold. If, on the other hand, it were left in place beneath the expansive arboreal reach, the very same thing would happen on a much longer timeline—as on a forest floor—and we would sacrifice valuable summer pasture, the ability to easily pluck chestnuts from the ground and perhaps the tolerance of our 12 neighbors, who are not keen on these suburban fence-lines becoming buried beneath wind-blown leaves. And so we rake.

Scritch, scritch. Resuming the satisfying rhythm, I cannot help but feel somewhat conflicted about this energy expenditure. Will I be here to utilize this leaf mold? Does it matter if I am? Does true stewardship require a sense of security?

My wife Sarah and I moved to this suburban lot roughly three years ago, ecstatic about the opportunity to develop our farming enterprise within an inspiringly vibrant social and professional community. We gladly accepted the responsibility of tending two close-in acres for what seemed very reasonable rent and the freedom to experiment with small-scale farming systems. If two acres proved an overwhelming task, we might have the social capital to rethink our long-term aspirations. Maybe I’d go back to school or take up a trade, or open a café. There are surely many ways to build a well-rounded, fulfilling livelihood.

But two acres isn’t too much for us. Quite the opposite—it isn’t enough, and we are yearning for more. The more we plan, the more we learn, the more we allow ourselves to reach for a full-time farming future, the more difficult it becomes to rake leased chestnut leaves on a sparkling Saturday afternoon. It’s impossible to pinpoint the exact moment in time when we became dissatisfied with our short-term arrangement. Slowly, subtly, we began to question the sanity in a system that does not encourage long-term decisions about our place.

Scritch, scritch, scritch. How do these monstrous piles of mined minerals, later to be deposited upon our vegetable beds, and eventually spread upon our dinner tables, fit into a month-to-month lease? How does the improvement of our pasture, later to be grazed by healthy chickens and lambs, further enhanced through dung and selective palates, and transformed into sustainable solar protein, fit into a month-to-month lease? Scritch, scritch. This labor, this tined effort is at least a four-year investment in soil fertility, self-sustenance and business security. As human participants in an all-encompassing cycle of life, death and return, the most efficient work is work that provides a service toward future fertility, diversity and resilience. Sarah and I are learning that the principle of working less, smarter, is easily applied within a system that maximizes the natural regeneration of our most valuable resources.

Our successful role as stewards seeking to survive, thrive and grow from the bountiful surplus of solar energy is completely dependent upon unwavering observation and well-timed participation. We need to see ourselves as part of the future of a place, and then perhaps we may be rewarded with the “interest” of life-long stewardship.

With this in mind, we hope to own land someday soon. Over two years ago and many leaf piles later, we started our farm search. It is an emotional trial far beyond anything we could have anticipated. We’ve researched hundreds of properties, and visited dozens and dozens more. Every candidate is cause for the difficult condition of detached projection—where we try to articulate the possibilities without fostering an unhealthy connection. Weekend after weekend, we’ve thrown ourselves into this arresting duet, frequently tumbling through a brief existential crisis when the chips don’t fall quite right. Many times we’ve returned home to wonder if this limbo is worth the trouble.

Neither of us was born into farming. There is no land to return to, and no native cultural knowledge to draw upon. Our approach is largely a scratch-and-sniff, pay-to-play, fake-it-’till-you-make-it type of operation. Given this pursuit, there is occasion to consider how wealth (specifically land) is transferred through time and space in our culture. We come from solid, middle-class families who have worked tirelessly to provide us with a plethora of options in life. In the first place, this safety net allows us to imagine a life as farmers at all. Our parents emerged during a time when small family farms were evaporating amidst the rapid commoditization of our food system, along with a depressing decline in rural agrarian communities.

It was the ’50s, and canned food was cool. And now, as the privileged offspring of baby-boomers, we are bequeathed the resources to examine voluntary simplicity, endowed the good credit to gamble with debt, and gifted the ideological support to swim against the social fish ladder. Even so, given our relatively affluent backgrounds, strong educations and bull-headed determination, good farmland feels like an uncomfortable financial stretch.

Perhaps the single greatest irony for us is that farming itself does not initially pave a welcome path toward owning a family farm. The major reason we transplanted to Portland was to work to save money to buy land. Full-time farming, for the time being, was put on hold. The burning question is: If there is an entire generation of young, aspiring farmers chomping at the bit to realize their agricultural destiny, but they must first move to the city to gain the capital to afford the inception of that destiny, will a resettling of our rural communities happen soon enough to change the game? That the prevailing method of changing the paradigm is to capitalize on it first is a mind-boggling contradiction. Doesn’t such a model imply that we are fighting ourselves?

To put farmers on the land, and keep them there, we may need a cultural reckoning wherein the true definition of profit involves the sustained ability to productively harness the energy of the sun. And let that be enough. Unfortunately, we can’t pay a mortgage with sunshine, and in many cases, with many lenders, we aren’t even enabled to pay a mortgage with farming.

My question is: In the end, what is land really worth? Is it worth its utility? Beauty? Ecological richness? Potential for subdivision? We’ve found that this assessment is grossly arbitrary, depending on who holds the deed, and what predominates the surrounding land use. In addition, the fate of farmland no longer accessible through traditional financing structures is utterly dependent on the emotional constitution and financial expectations of the owner. Are they willing to carry the loan? Are they willing to sell below “market (development) value” so that a couple of modest means might be provided the opportunity to carry on true small-scale agriculture in that place?

One of my favorite Chinese proverbs states: “You cannot build a foundation upon the sand.” Long-term tenure is the bedrock of our future foundation. Without it, there is little incentive to prioritize regenerative agriculture over short-term gains. The management processes that flow from cautious observation are qualified only as we build life in our soil—this takes time, patience and a measure of success not easily captured through cut-and-dry cost-benefit economics. The soil, our greatest asset, appreciates in value with time and dedicated care—a task for which we, as humans, are well suited, and to which we cannot afford to tend without complete commitment to our future.

Conner Voss first joined 'Oregon Tilth' as an AmeriCorps member and has served as the Organic Education Center’s garden coordinator since October 2008. He is currently establishing a farm. This essay originally appeared in In Good Tilth , a magazine devoted to the organic movement. IGT is project of Oregon Tilth , a non-profit advocating for biologically sound agriculture.

FireFighting a Global Warming Duel

Daily news continues to roll in with regard to global warming and weather change especially but international and national policymakers remain unsure of both its veracity and consequences. Information that supports the theories of eco-alarmists and environmental skeptics alike seem to pepper the airwaves, while news of bush fires in Australia and devastating floods in India only aggravate the issue. To add to the barrage, I recently read that an internationally funded Weather satellite has just been tasked to exclusively study the melting of ice that sits atop the North Pole, allowing researchers to watch the movement of ice in great detail for the first time (yes, apparently first time). And the borders of Italy and Switzerland have to to reworked due to the melting icepeaks!

This issue that the human industrial presence was causing an unprecedented rise in global temperatures sparked a lively discussion among 2 of my close friends who are also involved in this area but in diametrically opposite fields. One is a researcher at a Greencetric NGO that actively hunts environmental violations by corporates and fights it out in courts while the other is a lawyer who coincidentally represents these corporate baddies. I played the firefighter albeit with a green bias and got to hear interesting arguments.

For my attorney pal, he dismissed the alarmist point of view and argued that nature needs to be harnessed. With regard to ice melting at the poles and the Italian-Swiss borders, he felt we could gather scientific data before jumping to political conclusions. Just because a wacky global warming activist misrepresents scant satellite information for her own visionary schemes, he felt there was no reason to go off half-cocked and ban the global internal combustion engine.

He complained that there were too many people who wanted social change at all costs, such as those who released urban bred animals to certain death in the forests rather than use them to warm our bodies or fill our stomachs, those who would rather leave millions starve for water than let build a dam and those who preach about poverty alleviation, govt negligence but themselves don’t pay the tax. Hmmm!

Even if the ice was indeed melting at the poles, he argued that we needed to avoid the divisive rhetoric of the eco-radicals in dealing with it, if we need to deal with it at all. After all, he felt there has been far more damage to forests from Mother Nature’s rains and floods than harvesting by loggers would ever cause. And responsible loggers replant with a constructive purpose; nature still needs to be harnessed. Mother Nature doesn’t think, and often environmentalists and global warming worrywarts don’t take time for that either. He stated both needed to be challenged when they run amuck.

After my lawyer pal was through downing almost a full bottle of Smirnoff, my eco-warrior buddy made his case for caution in our overconsumption and overcopulating ways.

Mother Nature, as you say, “needs to be harnessed” because we as a species have this mistaken notion that our running amuck is a “natural” Progression. If we hadn’t been so arrogant as to think plopping down 7 billion people on this planet wouldn’t have adverse effects on the climate, ecology, etc. then we’d understand that losing 200,000 acres of forest to wild fires isn’t that big a deal – or wasn’t till we reduced our forests to such a small tiny mass. We’d rather believe that this planet can get along fine with very limited populations of all species except our own.

Sure, the ecosystem is very large and not all effects are felt immediately; however, the belief that our present course of action won’t result in the destabilization of said system and the destruction of the planet as we know it - is the same stupidity and lack foresight and judgement which resulted in so many our children being born deformed due to their parents either exposed or/ of drinking contaminated water and food. He added that everyone wanted to believe that if it looks good two years down the road, then there are no worries… but as we all now know, that’s a big mistake and too big a gamble to risk this planet.

After hearing this loud verbal duel, I was left with enough food for thought of my own that I couldn’t declare a verdict nor present my personal view to this hugely gigantic issue. Mankind I realized needed a much bigger, collective and gargantuan firefighter for this burning problem and I was just a small fry. Really small indeed.

- Websnacker is a blogger/bootlegger from Antartica