World Environment Day #wed2010
I have dedicated the past 15 years of my life, in one way or another, to improve the environment I live in. To study, research, analyze data and synthesize models that help explain human behaviour towards its habitat. My research has focused in problems that I think receive less attention than more high-exposure ones, such as wastewater management, industrial and urban restructuring, hazardous and solid waste management and transnational environmental social movements.
June 5th marks World Environment Day, and the theme for the year 2010 is Biodiversity. While I have spent years of my life analyzing environmental policies in Canada, the US, Mexico and the European Union, I have focused very, very little on the topic of biodiversity.
Except, this year I taught Global Environmental Politics, and one of the main international environmental regimes I explored along with my students was the biodiversity regime (and the Cartagena Convention on Biological Diversity). Protecting species from extinction is only one of the multifaceted elements of a biodiversity protection regime.
On this day, World Environment Day, and in the face of the recent BP oil spill (which will surely threaten a number of species of marine life and avians) I urge you to think beyond climate change as an urgent environmental problem. To think about ways in which you can reduce your impact on the environment (by recycling, reducing your water consumption, shifting to food groups that have less of an ecological footprint).
More importantly, I urge you to do something EVERY day to better your own environment.
Because we shouldn’t think about the environment only on World Environment Day, but every day.
Make small changes that will yield large societal changes.
And as I’ve read in many places (I sometimes forget who the quote is by, but I seem to think it’s by Gandhi) – be the change you want to see in the world
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Good stuff! That reminds me… off to tend to my veggie garden, pull some weeds that have accumulated from our considerable precipitation of late, and then sit back and watch the fruits of my labour grow. My little apple tree needs some care, so I will have to use a non pesticide (maybe a little dish soap diluted in water) to keep the bugs from burrowing into the fruit. Sorry little bugs… I’ll be sure to spare the bugs I need. Lady Bugs, your welcome to stop on by my place ;~)