By its very nature, water can only be successfully managed by consensus. It flows from one place to the next, often in a meandering way, blind to human demands and arbitrary boundaries. Conflicts often arise, smart solutions typically the exception, rather than the rule. Nowhere are water issues more a propos than in the landlocked South American nation of Bolivia.
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Think about resources crucial to human survival. What comes to mind? Fresh, clean water for sure. Food tops the list. Earth’s primary living products – plants that grow from seeds – are the foundation of humanity’s food supply. Wheat, barley, oats, corn, potatoes and a dizzying variety of beans and legumes … Conserving these seeds of survival – as a common resource – is one of humanity’s greatest challenges … Never more so than in the age of global climate change and plant disease pandemics.
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Stuart Franklin is turning air miles into trees. Franklin — the founder of a grassroots carbon offsetting project in Ecuador — calculates how many seedlings he has to put in the ground in order to generate a carbon bank big enough to capture the carbon dioxide emitted by tourists jetting to the popular Galapagos Islands each year.
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The city of Curitiba, in southern Brazil, is famous among urban planners for its innovation and rational development, with a reputation for being highly livable and very sustainable. It was one of the first cities to market itself as “green” in a 1980s advertising campaign. And it is.
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Once upon a time, the US was the world’s top emitter of carbon dioxide, the major man-made, heat-trapping gas. The average American still emits more than the rest of us, but – sometime last year – fueled by a rising demand for coal and cement – China’s annual emissions surpassed the US’s, at about six billion tonnes. As the Chinese choke on fume-filled air, their leaders are turning to the wind.
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