For interspecies justice, animal welfare, and animal rights, the planet needs to be divided on the basis of species' natural resource requirements. The Half-Earth View is that to maintain viable populations of the Earth's remaining species, half of landscapes and seascapes need protection from intensive economic activity. This protection is needed outside the nature preserve system, such as in agricultural areas or cities, so nature can co-exist with local communities. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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Op 22 april is het Earth Day, een dag waarop sinds 1970 wereldwijd aandacht wordt gevraagd voor milieubescherming en duurzaamheid. Een belangrijk thema, want de aarde staat onder druk door klimaatverandering en andere milieuproblemen. In Nederland zijn er verschillende initiatieven vanuit de overheid, het bedrijfsleven en ook burgers om te verduurzamen. Maar hoe belangrijk vinden kiezers het eigenlijk dat Nederland duurzamer en klimaatneutraal wordt? En wie is daar volgens hen voor verantwoordelijk en waar lopen ze tegenaan bij het (verder) verduurzamen van hun eigen leven? In deze blogpost bespreken we de resultaten van een recent en landelijk representatief onderzoek onder ruim 2.500 consumenten naar de opvattingen van Nederlandse kiezers over duurzaamheid. De resultaten van dit onderzoek zijn samengevat in een interactief, online dashboard: https://goldman.eco/de-relatie-tussen-de-politieke-voorkeur-van-nederlanders-en-duurzaam-leven-lessen-voor-earth-day/
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The Tuntang Watershed is an important watershed in Central Java. Management of watersheds in the Tuntang stream is a priority for various parties to carry out. One of the things that threatens the sustainability of the Tuntang watershed is erosion. The erosion rate can lead to sediment accumulation and siltation in the Tuntang River reservoir, which can cause catastrophic flooding. Flood disaster mitigation caused by erosion needs to be done, one of which is by calculating the erosion rate per year that occurs in the Tuntang watershed. This study calcultated the predicted erosion rate (per year in the Tuntang watershed) using the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) method, processed using the Google Earth Engine (GEE). Google offers a cloud-storage technology called GEE. Programming in JavaScript is required to operate GEE. GEE is a petabyte-scale data-based tool that can be used to analyze and archive geospatial data that is open source. The computing environment is designed for the processing of geospatial data, including the depiction of spatial analysis of satellite imagery. Data for RUSLE is obtained from the database in GEE, and the results can be imaged on a map. According to the study's findings, the degree of soil erosion throughout the Tuntang Watershed was essentially constant, with Moderate erosion predominating in the majority of locations. Senjoyo Sub Watershed, Rowopening Sub Watershed, and Tuntang Hilir Sub Watershed are the primary locations with severe erosion. Rowopening Sub Watershed is the region that is the worst.
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In today’s technological world, human intertwinement with the rest of nature hasbeen severely diminished. In our digital culture, many people hardly have any direct experience of and sense of connection with “the real” of the natural world. The author assumes that when we want to find ways to mend this gap, arts-based environmental education (AEE) can play a meaningful role. In AEE, artmaking is regarded as itself a way of potentially gaining new understandings about our natural environment. As a reflective practitioner, the author facilitated three different AEE activities, at several times and at diverse locations. On basis of his observations, memories, written notes, audio-visual recordings and interviews with participants, teachers and informed outsiders, he interpreted the experiences both of participants and himself. To this end he employed interpretative phenomenological analysis paired with autoethnography.The artmaking activities researched here aimed to bring about a shift in focus. Participants were encouraged to approach natural phenomena not head-on, but in an indirect way. Moreover, the artmaking process aspired to heighten their awareness to the presence of their embodied self at a certain place. The research questions that the author poses in this study are: (1) What is distinctive in the process of the AEE activities that I facilitate?; (2) Which specific competencies can be identified for a facilitator of AEE activities?; and (3) Does participating in the AEE activities that I facilitate enhance the ability of participants to have a direct experience of feeling connected to the natural world?In this explorative study, the author identifies facilitated estrangement through participating in AEE as an important catalyst when aiming to evoke such instances of transformative learning. In undergoing such moments, participants grope their way in a new liminal space. Artmaking can create favorable conditions for this to happen through its defamiliarizing effect which takes participants away from merely acting according to habit (on “autopilot”). The open-ended structure of the artmaking activities contributed to the creation of a learning arena in which emergent properties could become manifest. Thus, participants could potentially experience a sense of wonder and begin to acquire new understandings – a form of knowing that the author calls “rudimentary cognition.” The research further suggests that a facilitator should be able to bear witness to and hold the space for whatever enfolds in this encounter with artistic process in AEE. He or she must walk the tightrope between control and non-interfering.The analysis of the impacts of the AEE activities that were facilitated leads the author to conclude that it is doubtful whether these in and of themselves caused participants to experience the natural environment in demonstrable new and deep ways. He asserts that most of their awareness was focused on the internal level of their own embodied presence; engagement with place, the location where the AEE activity was performed, seemed secondary. The findings show that AEE activities first and foremost help bring about the ignition and augmentation of the participants’ fascination and curiosity, centered in an increased awareness of their own body and its interactions with the natural world. The present study can be seen as a contribution to efforts of envisaging innovative forms of sustainable education that challenge the way we have distanced ourselves from the more-than-human world.
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Tropical forests are the most diverse and productive ecosystems on Earth. While better understanding of these forests is critical for our collective future, until quite recently efforts to measure and monitor them have been largely disconnected. Networking is essential to discover the answers to questions that transcend borders and the horizons of funding agencies. Here we show how a global community is responding to the challenges of tropical ecosystem research with diverse teams measuring forests tree-by-tree in thousands of long-term plots. We review the major scientific discoveries of this work and show how this process is changing tropical forest science.
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Paper presented at ATLAS Annual Conference 2025 – Tourist destinations at a crossroads. Space, community, products, politics and evolutionary processes in the age of transitions., Vila-Seca, Spain.
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