The 5th World Environmental Education Congress takes place May 10 to 14, 2009, at the Palais des Congrès de Montréal. Jointly organized by Congress co-chairs Bob Jickling of Ontario's Lakehead University and Lucie Sauvé of Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), along with the Association québécoise pour la promotion de l'éducation relative à l'environnement (AQPERE) and the Canadian Network for Environmental Education and Communication (EECOM), this event follows in the footsteps of other World Environmental Education Congresses (WEEC) coordinated by the WEEC Secretariat.
The vision for this World Environmental Education Congress is “Earth, our common home”. This is the “Oïkos,” or shared household, in which all life exists and in which all human and more-than-human activity rests. This “household” is the basis for all relationships and foundation for ideas about identity, solidarity, and socio-ecological relations with all forms of life. It is also the context that gives rise to ecology, ecosophy, and economy and relationships amongst them. This Congress will examine contributions that environmental education can make towards the development of relationships amongst these spheres of understanding at a critical period in Earth's history, when we need to profoundly and urgently realign human endeavour within the capacities, limits, and systems of our home.
Extensive climate change is now affecting every form of life in the Arctic, according to a major new assessment by international polar scientists. In the past four years, air temperatures have increased, sea ice has declined sharply, surface waters in the Arctic ocean have warmed and permafrost is in some areas rapidly thawing. In addition, says the report released today at a Norwegian government seminar, plants and trees are growing more vigorously, snow cover is decreasing 1-2% a year and glaciers are shrinking. Scientists from Norway, Canada, Russia and the US contributed to the Arctic monitoring and assessment programme (Amap) study, which says new factors such as "black carbon" – soot – ozone and methane may now be contributing to global and arctic warming as much as carbon dioxide.(...)
Due studi diffusi in questi giorni illustrano come il riscaldamento globale del clima contribuisca a prosciugare alcuni dei grandi fiumi del pianeta, e allo stesso tempo abbia messo sotto stress le grandi foreste.(...)
La semplicità è la sua forza: composto soltanto da due scatole di cartone, Kyoto-box è il forno ad energia solare che ha vinto il Climate Change Challenge, la gara per le eco- invenzioni organizzata dal Financial Times, e che promette una incredibile rivoluzione. (...)
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has released the fourth issue of its FoodClimate newsletter, which contains interviews, updates and notes on upcoming events on climate change relating to agriculture, fisheries and forestry. The feature story, an interview with members of a livelihood adaptation to climate change project in Bangladesh, focuses on technology transfer, actor involvement and other prerequisites for and obstacles to community adaptation.
A second story reports on the project “Gender-sensitive Strategies for Adaptation to Climate Change: Drawing on Indian Farmers’ Experiences,” documenting how men and women farmers in eight villages perceive climate shifts as well as the adaptation strategies they adopt to ensure their food security. Other articles address: FAO activities on climate change mitigation in agriculture, including a submission to UNFCCC on enabling agriculture to contribute to climate change mitigation; a report on the first policy board meeting of the UN-REDD Programme, a collaborative initiative between FAO, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP); the third FAO Community-Based Adaptation Workshop, held from 18-24 February 2009, in Dhaka, Bangladesh; and the outcomes of the international conference “Beyond Kyoto: Addressing the Challenges of Climate Change,” held from 5-6 March 2009, in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The newsletter also includes announcements on the publication of FAO’s ninth State of the World’s Forest Report addressing the theme “Society, forests and forestry: adapting for the future” and two reports on adaptation in the fisheries and forestry sector.
Green Cross Italia - Tavola rotonda “L’Italia del 2020. Scenari e opportunità per superare la crisi”
«Parlare di crisi oggi significa parlare della necessità e della possibilità di un cambiamento. È chiaro che la globalizzazione renda indispensabile intraprendere nuove strade, ma è anche chiaro che il modello di sviluppo che deve essere abbracciato da tutti i paesi deve avere dei pre-requisiti di base come il rispetto per l'ambiente, sostenere l'equità e l’inclusione». Questo il saluto del premio Nobel Mikhail Gorbaciov all’apertura dei lavori dell’Assemblea nazionale della sezione italiana di Green Cross, l’associazione da lui fondata nel 1993.(...)
