Good Fact

Costa Rican Wins!

- Adam Clare

a faceCarlos Manuel Rodriguez, a really cool Costa Rican environemntalist won the Blue Moon Fund’s first annual Conservation Leadership Award! The Worldwatch Institute has the great reason why he won the award.

“Rodriguez is credited with implementing a unique conservation policy in Costa Rica, whereby the users of a forest’s environmental services, such as carbon fixation, water, and biodiversity, are required to pay the forest’s owners for these rights. By establishing an economic incentive to maintain forests, Costa Rica was “able to start decreasing illegal logging to a rate that was unprecedented in the country,” says Rodriguez. Worldwide, the average rate of illegal logging in tropical regions is some 80 percent, while in Costa Rica it is now only some 15 percent, he notes. Costa Rica is probably the first tropical country to reverse the process of deforestation, and there are now twice as many forests in the country than there were 20 years ago, according to Rodriguez.”

Slumming it

- Adam Clare

In India a fantastic social experiment is literally paying off. Sick of being ignored by their government, some slum residents in India have taken matters in their own hands. They used cunning and unrelenting determination to improve their slum with some good self-directed improvements. Change Makers has the story.

“Three citizen organizations in India have joined forces to turn this scenario upside down. They are helping slum residents organize themselves to gain the skills they need to be powerful advocates for their own interests.

As empowered citizens, these slum residents are learning to recruit local government agencies and banks to help them win control of real estate. They are becoming the architects of their slum’s destruction, replacing it with a new community that they help locate, design, build, and eventually own themselves.”

Church: God Cares About the Environment

- Adam Clare

The Church of England has deemed it good religious policy to protect the environment. I hope those SUV driving religious people are reading this post. I digress. The Church is calling their environment-protecting campaign “Shrinking the Footprint,” a noble cause indeed.

“The current climate change situation is such that it will be a long walk – simply to restore the world’s balance we need to cut carbon emissions worldwide by 60% of current levels by 2050. Not only is this a daunting goal but its end lies at least two generations in the future. The results of our actions will only be felt by our children and grandchildren. For individuals and institutions alike, taking action (however simple and obvious that action may seem) and sustaining it will require considerable effort.”

You too can lower the impact you have on the environment, check out My Foot Print and Carbon Footprint.

Issue Lab

- Adam Clare

issue lab logoIssue Lab looks like a pretty neat concept! Essentially it’s a place for non-profits, charities, and other research bodies to amplify their research results. You can post your research there to ensure that more people can get access to it and know that it exists in the first place.

Every month they have a feature topic, this month is concentrating on immigration.

“Nonprofit organizations consistently build on an important body of written work that focuses on understanding and solving societal problems. IssueLab was created to help bring this body of work into focus.

Launched in 2006, IssueLab is a wide-ranging, searchable and browseable archive of critical publications. It simplifies the process of locating and accessing research and policy analysis materials, including reports, white papers, fact sheets, case studies, data sets and more.”

Man Grows Furniture, Art From Living Trees

- Benny Powers

It’s called arborsculpture, and Richard Reames has been doing it for years. He plants trees in patterns, and uses bending and grafting techniques to form the saplings into benches, staircases, sculptures, and an assortment of other amazing living things.

I believe that if enough people put their minds to using living trees, we can learn to grow houses. I believe that if we put our minds to it, like going to the moon, there’s no reason we couldn’t all be living in houses where the walls and ceilings are composed of living tree material and there are leaves coming out of the roof. We could accomplish this in one generation. We’d build doorways and windows that the trees would grow around, and also plumbing and electrical conduits. The trees would just swallow all the pipes. We’re going to call this “arbortecture.”

You’ve just got to see the pictures in this article!

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