Earth Charter

"Earth, our home, is alive with a unique community of life."

The forces around us make living a demanding and uncertain adventure, but Earth has given us the conditions we need in life's evolution. The sustainability of the community of life and the well-being of humanity depends on making sure we preserve a healthy biosphere with all of its ecological system like: plants, animals, fertile soils, waters, and air. The protection of Earth is a vital essential to our survival. Our demanding desires of production and consumption is causing serious environmental destruction, decrease of resources, and a huge extinction of species. Injustice, poverty, violent conflict, and ignorance are causing great suffering and a rise in human population has overburdened our ecological and social systems.

Photo Concept by: Joe Carter

"The choice is ours: form a global partnership to care for Earth and one another or risk the destruction of ourselves and the diversity of life." 

Fundamental changes are necessary in our institutions and way of living. We need to see that when it comes to basic needs, human development is about being more, not having more. We have the technology and knowledge to provide and reduce our impacts on the environment and the emergence of a global civil society is starting new opportunities that will build a democratic and humane world. We must make a decision to live in a sense of universal responsibility and everyone shares this for the present and future of the well-being of our living world. We need a shared vision of basic values that will provide us with a good foundation for the emerging world community and together we can start a sustainable way of life for us all. 

Photo Concept by: cleanuptheworld.org

"To fulfill this promise, we must commit ourselves to adopt and promote the values and objectives of the Charter." 

This is going to require a change of mind and heart, as well as, a new sense of global interdependence and universal responsibility. We have to develop a plan of a sustainable way of life locally, nationally, regionally, and globally. We have to come together and harmonize diversity with unity; every individual, family, organization, and community plays a vital role. In order to build a sustainable global community, the world must renew their commitment to the United Nations, and support the Earth Charter principles of international environment and development. 

Photo Concept by: Pat Bertram

Healing Earth's Scars

"Thirty years ago, the Hudson River and its surrounding waterways were so polluted that its population of short-nosed sturgeon became the first fish species to be listed (in 1972) as endangered". (Goodall 166).

This caused a huge effort to clean up the river and over the past 15 years, the population of these fish in the Hudson River has grow by more than 400%. The Manhattan area has become way more urbanized, so the cleaning of the waters is a huge conservation success story; there are even plans to bring oyster reefs and shoreline wetlands in Harlem. I think it is a great idea to introduce more of this type of environment in an area where most people have never seen wetlands or exotic marine life; with them being exposed to this they will be more likely to help protect it.

Photo by: Avery Collin

"The aquatic ecosystems have been destroyed-the Yangtze River dolphin became extinct." (Goodall 168)

There has been so much destruction of habitats worldwide and having harmed so much of their own environment, China is desperate to get the materials like timber and minerals to help with economic growth, that is plundering the natural resources of other countries. Especially in Africa where many people in politics are willing to sell of their children's future just to make some quick money; it is getting worse because of the country's staggering number of people in need and a failing government that refuses to admit that there is anything wrong in their country. 

Photo by: Jasmine Waltz

"It would be irresponsible to introduce ways of growing more food and saving the lives of more babies, without, at the same time, talking about the need for small families." (Goodall 171)

It has been shown that as a woman's education improves, the size of families decrease. Having information about family planning, access to health care for their children, helps women to really plan for their families. If women also receive education things will also start to get better; so many people have started scholarship programs for girls because a poor family is likely to educate the boys instead of the girls. I think this idea is great in the sense that woman will be looked at as more as just homemakers and child bearers but as a people that have something to offer to the world. 

Photo by: Ellie Woods

The Obligation to Endure

"The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials." (Carson 153)

Throughout the history of living on earth there has always been am interaction between the living and their surroundings. The earth's vegetation and animal life has been formed by the environment around them and only one species, man has had the significant power to change the nature of their world. The increase in change and the speed of which new situations are made based of the pace of man rather than the pace of nature is destructive. To change or better the environment from what man has done will take generations to fix if even possible at all.

Photo Concept by: Seppo.net

"Much of the necessary knowledge is now available but we do not use it." (Carson 159)

We teach and train ecologists in our universities and we even give them jobs in governmental agencies but we rarely use them or take their advice. We allow things like chemical death rain to fall as though there is nothing we can do to prevent it from harming our environment. Have we become a mesmerized state of mind that sees the world and what is happening to it as something that we really can not change? This is a scary thought because to accept the destruction that is happening and will continue to happen to our world is not the way to go about it. We as a people have changed society and the way the world operates on many occasions so I know we can better the way we treat our world if we all come together to make this change happen. 

Photo Concept by: thebigrocks.com

"There is still very limited awareness of the nature of the threat." (Carson 160)

This is the era that is dominated by industry, in which making a dollar at whatever cost is priority. When the public protest because of some evidence of damaging results of pesticide applications, they are fed half truths. We need to stop false assurance and sugar coating facts because the public has the right to know the truth; they are the ones being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers predict. The public must decide what they want to do and that can only happen if the are presented with all the right facts.

Photo Concept by: fourletterword.com

Biodiversity

"Biodiversity means the diversity of life - the rich diversity of life forms on our beautiful planet." (Shiva 38)

Biodiversity gives the conditions for life's maintenance, as well as, different ways in which that life is shown. This is the embodiment of centuries of cultural growth, because humans have evolved with other species in the diverse ecosystems that is the world. With biodiversity shaping the world's diverse cultures; the erosion of biodiversity and cultural diversity go hand in hand. However, both have been threatened by the globalization of an industrialized culture based of off technology and the growing want of resources. We are all looking for different ways that will conserve our being and provide sustainable solutions for our health and nutrition. 

Photos by: George Carter

"Biodiversity is not just a conservation issue, it is an issue affecting economic survival." (Shiva 50)

Biodiversity can be viewed as the means of production for the poor who have no access to other means of production. For food, medicine, crafts, etc. the poor depend on the wealth of biological resources and skills that go with biodiversity. As this goes away, the poor are pushed further into impoverishment and deprived of the health care and nutrition that biodiversity gives. The way the consumption of the rich and powerful can determine the consumption of the poor by contributing to the erosion of biodiversity. 

 Photo Concept By: Wiley-Blackwell

"It is estimated that 100 million of the world's poorest people depend on fishing for all or part of their livelihoods." (Shiva 53)

Most of the large fishing boats are under transnational corporations and use all the latest technology in fish-detection, catching and processing, making them great hunting machines, and leading to the problem of overfishing. The decrease of the commerical value results in the development of technologies and large catches are made possible because of the destruction of livelihood and diverse species. For example, shrimp in India was an export commodity through fisher development; and little by little there become less shrimp to catch and eat. Also landings of the major sea bottom-dwelling fish began to decrease due to the excess fishing and the destruction of the seabed. 

Photos by: Marine Conservation

A Tale of Two Farms

"The monumental ruins left behind by those past societies hold a romantic fascination for all of us." (Diamond 20).

We often are amazed as children when we first learn of these interesting ruins through pictures and when we grow up we plan many vacations just so we can experience seeing them up close. We gain this attachment to the spectacular beauty of it all and you can tell that the ruins tell an incredible story. When you look at all these huge and mighty buildings you begin to wonder how can a society who created such power in their buildings not still be around today. This makes me think about America and how we are seen as such a powerful country but how long will that power last? Rome may not have been built in a day but it is now just a monument of a once great people the Romans; the rate America is going it might not be long until America falls as well.

Photos by: pixelkuss.com

"It has long been suspected that many of those mysterious abandonments were at least partly triggered by ecological problems: people inadvertently destroying the environmental resources on which their societies depended." (Diamond 20).

This suspicion has been confirmed by discoveries found in recent decades by archaeologists, historians, climatologists, etc. Past societies have brought their own downfall on themselves by damaging their environment with deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems, water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, human population growth, etc. Population growth made people adopt increased means for agricultural production so they could supply food to the growing number of people who needed it. Consequences of this was food shortage, starvation, and wars between the people fighting over the little resources available. In the end population decreased and the society lost their political, economic, and cultural edge that it once had. 

 

Photos Concept by: Jason Reid

"Environmental problems that are hard to manage today were surely even harder to manage in the past." (Diamond 25).

In the past societies we were not able to read about ecological damage and other things like we can today. The societies that ended up collapsing were just like us and they were prone to either fail or succeed. Yes, there may be be some differences between the situations the past faced and what we face today but there are still enough similarities that we can learn from thanks to what happened in the past. We are lucky that now we have the technology and knowledge to help us out so that we will not become a collapsed society but actually flourish for generations to come. 

Photo Concept by: Lisa Crew