Archivo etiqueta «Bosques»
By Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate and founder of the Green Belt Movement (THE GUARDIAN, 25/11/11):
This article was written by Nobel peace prize winner Wangari Maathai in September, shortly before her death. It addresses some of the main issues she and the Green Belt Movement were intending to raise at the UN climate summit, which starts in Durban, South Africa, on Monday
In 2011 the worst drought in 60 years engulfed the east of Africa, forcing millions into a desperate struggle to survive. Poor governance intensified the consequences: a drought, not unusual for this part of … Seguir leyendo
By Leão Serva, journalist and a former editor in chief of Diário de São Paulo. This essay was translated by Benjamin Moser from the Portuguese (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 17/11/11):
In 1888, Brazil became the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery — a profound moral stain for a nation that prides itself today on being a multiracial democracy.
During the long 19th-century struggle against slavery, at a time when abolitionists in Britain were protesting the forced transfer of millions of Africans from their homelands, Brazilian leaders denounced the global abolitionist movement for interfering in the country’s internal … Seguir leyendo
By William J. Dobson, a former managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine and senior editor for Asia at Newsweek International. He is writing a book on the challenges to democracy (THE WASHINGTON POST, 13/08/10):
The biggest story in Russia today is the battle to tame a national outbreak of wildfires. The flames have consumed nearly 2 million acres of forests, farms and villages in their path. More than 4,000 people have lost their homes. A dense blanket of smoke and pollution has settled over Moscow; hundreds are pouring into hospitals because of illnesses triggered by the suffocating smog… Seguir leyendo
Par Charles d’Angleterre, Prince de Galles et auteur du projet Rainforests (LE MONDE, 15/12/09):
Cette semaine, le monde espère que des progrès seront réalisés au sommet de Copenhague. Le processus international dans lequel il s’inscrit constitue, je crois, l’une des démarches les plus importantes de notre époque, car faute de limiter notre impact sur l’atmosphère de la planète, il faut s’attendre aux conséquences les plus terribles. Le défi à relever n’est pas simplement politique et technologique. Il s’adresse tout autant à notre volonté de coopérer et à notre aptitude à penser différemment.
A ce propos, j’ai été très impressionné … Seguir leyendo
By John Sauven, director of Greenpeace (THE GUARDIAN, 14/11/09):
My colleagues in the Amazon office of Greenpeace like to characterise deforestation as a lion, oscillating between periods of slumber and bouts of frenetic and violent activity. New figures released by Brazil’s government yesterday suggest that over the past year the lion has slept a little more soundly than usual. This is very good news, but we must not take our eyes off him.
The reported fall in the rate of Amazon deforestation should be kept in perspective. Over the past year “just” 7,000 square kilometres of rainforest was destroyed … Seguir leyendo
By Tony Juniper, a special adviser with the Prince’s Rainforests Project. To show support for the rainforests go to www.rainforestsos.org (THE TIMES, 09/09/09):
As the world commemorated the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, conservation biologists were scouring a dense area of rainforests in a mountainous part of eastern Papua province on the west side of New Guinea in Indonesia. They made discoveries that reminded us of the somewhat incomplete knowledge we have of the Earth. Their findings generated many headlines this week, with top billing given to the discovery of a new species of giant … Seguir leyendo
By Nicholas Stern. Lord Stern of Brentford serves on the steering group of the Prince’s Rainforests Project www.princesrainforestsproject.org (THE TIMES, 14/11/08):
Faced with a global credit crunch, the governments of the world are coming together to act with urgency. But faced with a far more serious climate crunch, we have yet to show our mettle.
If we are to prevent dangerous and unpredictable climate change, global greenhouse emissions must have peaked by 2015 and be cut by 50-80 per cent from 2000 levels by 2050. So how, in only seven years, can we reverse the gathering emissions momentum? A … Seguir leyendo
By James Cameron, vice-chairman of Climate Change Capital (THE TIMES, 06/12/07):
How do you make a tree worth more alive than dead? This question will certainly not be put so simply but it is one of the main ones occupying the minds of those gathered on the Indonesian island of Bali this week for the UN conference on climate change.
It is a question of vast importance to the world and if an answer is found then we will have gone a considerable way to combating climate change.
Bali is an apt venue. When you include emissions from deforestation, … Seguir leyendo
By Jonathan Rendall (THE TIMES, 28/08/07):
The first fires of the present Greek catastrophe were started on Mount Penteli, a towering slope of forest 30 kilometres north of Athens. I grew up there in my teenage years. At the turn of the 1980s it was an idyllic place to be.
The country tracks were not tarmac. You could walk up through the forest paths to the shepherds’ huts, and wander through the glades. If I’d been able to paint I’d have taken my water colours out, or at least a guitar to serenade the landscape that Byron said was too … Seguir leyendo
By William Powers, the author, most recently, of “Whispering in the Giant’s Ear” and Glenn Hurowitz, working on a book about the importance of courage in Democratic Party politics (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 16/06/07):
DEEP within Madagascar, more than 1,300 square miles of rainforest continue to breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen every day, helping to keep the planet cool. That may not seem like a big achievement for a bunch of trees, but elsewhere around the world tropical forests like this one are being felled to make way for timber and mining operations, cattle ranches … Seguir leyendo
By Birute Mary Galdikas, president and co-founder of Orangutan Foundation International in Los Angeles and a professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 06/01/07):
Once again, I am driving, under the blazing equatorial sun, down an uncomfortable, rutty relic of a road into the interior of central Borneo. With me are two uniformed police men, one armed with a machine gun. The landscape is bleak, no trees, no shade as far as the eye can see. Our mission is to confiscate orangutan orphans whose mothers have been killed as a result of the sweeping … Seguir leyendo
By Scott Weindesaul, the author, most recently, of “Return to Wild America” (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 30/05/06):
I sat on my farmhouse’s back step in the low light of dawn, watching two blackpoll warblers — slim, streaky and hyperkinetic — flit through the new leaves of the maples, which the sun turned into tiny lenses of green.
My trees were a way station for these birds, moving between their winter home in South America and their destination to the north — the boreal forest, the vast shield of spruce and aspen, of muskeg and marsh, that stretches from Newfoundland to … Seguir leyendo
By Don Melnick and Mary Pearl, a professor of conservation biology at Columbia University and the president of Wildlife Trust, respectively (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 20/04/06):
Our forests are the heart of our environmental support system. And yet, in the 36 years that have passed since the first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, we have lost more than one billion acres of forest, with no end in sight.
The people most vulnerable to the disappearance of forests are the poor: nearly three-quarters of the 1.2 billion people defined as extremely poor live in rural areas, where they rely … Seguir leyendo