Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Sustainable Forestry Initiative's Deceptive Eco-Labeling

Hi Fellow Growers,


Here is a revealing publication by ForestEthics from last fall.  It serves as a reminder of the need for skepticism in our efforts in sustainability.


"Among the worst of these marketing schemes is the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, or SFI, which is funded, promoted and staffed by the very paper and timber industry interests it claims to evaluate."


http://www.forestethics.org/downloads/SFI-Certified-Greenwash_Report_ForestEthics.pdf

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SSC

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Sustainable Development and Agenda 21

"Managing Planet Earth"
This article, written before the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (Rio+10), provides an overview of issues and perspectives concerning sustainable development. With Rio+20 only a year away, have me made much progress?

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/20/science/earth/20MANA.html?pagewanted=1

UN Commission on Sustainable Development
A few Grow bloggers will be attending the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) at the UN the first two weeks in May. CSD originated from Agenda 21, which was adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. You can read up on CSD at their website (http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/csd/csd_csd19.shtml) and follow our blog posts from the event.

Have questions about CSD? Are there sustainable development or policy issues you want us to try to address in New York? Feel free to comment on this post or send us an email at thegrowblog@gmail.com.

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SSB

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Let Them Eat Bread: How Food Subsidies Prevent (and Provoke) Revolutions in the Middle East

Here is a great article from Annia Ciezadlo writing in Foreign Affairs.  


"Change is sweeping through the Middle East today, but one thing remains the same: the region once known as the Fertile Crescent is now the world's most dependent on imported grain. Of the top 20 wheat importers for 2010, almost half are Middle Eastern countries. The list reads like a playbook of toppled and teetering regimes: Egypt (1), Algeria (4), Iraq (7), Morocco (8), Yemen (13), Saudi Arabia (15), Libya (16), Tunisia (17)."


"The bread wars go back to the Cold War era, when the two superpowers wooed smaller nations with guns, grain, and other goods. It was during this time that many Arab regimes instituted social safety nets based on the Soviet model of centralized bread distribution. "


"As expensive as they are, bread subsidies do not succeed in lifting people out of poverty; in fact, by discouraging domestic agricultural investment, they have often hurt the very people they are intended to help. According to the United Nations' 2009 Arab Human Development Report, the Middle East is the only region outside of sub-Saharan Africa where the number of malnourished people has risen since the early 1990s."




http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67672/annia-ciezadlo/let-them-eat-bread?page=show

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SSC

Friday, March 25, 2011

"'Nudges' for Safe Water"


The above photo from Ghana shows the poor quality and sanitation of water in rural areas. The article below discusses several strategies to encourage household water treatment in rural communities:

"(Researchers) tested the effectiveness of one-on-one and village-wide encouragement of chlorine use by NGO workers, the importance of social networks in getting people to adopt chlorine, and the impact of paying local promoters to pitch the product within villages. The authors found some interesting things about the first two interventions — village-wide marketing worked slightly better than one-to-one, and community leaders’ chlorine usage appeared to influence other people’s decisions somewhat — but they only led to small and short-term increases in overall usage. Having a local promoter drawn from the village itself, on the other hand, drove up usage both immediately and persistently."


http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/03/22/nudges-for-safe-water/

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SSB

Monday, March 21, 2011

"BARAKA"


Dear Growers,

We do suggest you watch this documentary. Here's the trailer and a short synopsis of it:


"Baraka, the Sufi term for “blessing”, is a nonverbal film with dramatic images of nature, religious ritual, oppressive city life, and war. The film, in the words of director Ron Fricke, is a journey of rediscovery and reconnecting. The dominant message is a mystical one: God is nature, big cities are unnatural, and we connect with nature through organic religious rituals. The movie was filmed during a 13 month period in 24 countries at over 150 locations. It was shot on 70 millimeter film which gives it especially high resolution (the normal film size for a feature-length movie is 35 millimeter). Baraka follows in the tradition of the groundbreaking nonverbal film Koyaanisqatsi (1983), directed Godfrey Reggio, of which Fricke was the cinematographer. Wearing the director’s hat this time, Fricke set out to make “The ultimate nonverbal film in the ultimate format,” as Baraka’s producer Mark Magidson puts it. While the film contains no narration or dialogue, it nonetheless contains a clear three-act story. Act 1 depicts scenes of natural wonder and religious rituals that blend together. In Act 2 the movie shifts direction as a Brazilian rainforest tree is chainsawed to the ground. An enormous strip mine scars the landscape. Cities progressively increase in size and take on a mechanical breathing sound. The result is overpopulation, mass production, factory farms, poverty, prostitution, war, and ultimately genocide. Act 3 is one of redemption. Civilizations ultimately collapse under their own weight, and people are purified by returning to nature and religious ritual."
A gallery of images from Baraka is at this website:
http://www.spiritofbaraka.com/baraka.aspx

Hope you enjoy it and hope it helps inspire new ideas and perspectives in your mind!!

Saturday, March 19, 2011

The Right to Development under Globalization

Hello dear Growers!

First of all a big thank you to all our followers, few for now, but I'd say we've had sustainable growth... :)

So today's post is an article. We'll just name the article and it's author but we will not upload the article for it is not in a public domain. So you will just have to find it by yourselves, which shouldn't be hard.

The article:

"Realization or deprivation of the right to development under globalization: Debt, structural adjustment, and poverty reduction programs" by Robert Mazur, published in Geojournal, Volume 60, Number 1, Pages 61-71.

Excellent view of how Development has evolved and started gaining strength through out the last 30 years. A must read for all Growers...

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

IPCC Climate Change Report

Dear readers of this blog, we hope you are having an amazingly green and sustainable experience through this blog. Next, we would like to post the latest available Climate Change Synthesis Report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We hope you enjoy this reading and find it useful!

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_assessment_report_synthesis_report.htm

THE GREAT GREEN WALL

Amazing initiative from African Communities to fight Drought and Climate Change.


http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=farmers-in-sahel-beat-back-drought-and-climate-change-with-trees&offset=4

Thursday, March 10, 2011

UN Report: Agroecology and the Right to Food

A new report from the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food identifies agro-ecology as the production method best able to ensure food security, environmental sustainability and improved nutrition for the world's poor.

http://www.srfood.org/index.php/en/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1174-report-agroecology-and-the-right-to-food

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SSB

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Food, Inc.

This is a great documentary:


"Kenner jumps all over the food map, from industrial feedlots where millions of cruelly crammed cattle mill about in their own waste until slaughter, to the chains where millions of consumers gobble down industrially produced meat and an occasional serving of E. coli bacteria." -- New York Times


http://www.foodincmovie.com/

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SSC

Monday, March 7, 2011

"Solving Africa's Hunger"

"Africa is hungry - 240 million people are undernourished. Now, for the first-time, small African farmers have been properly consulted on how to solve the problem of feeding sub-Saharan Africa. Their answers appear to directly repudiate a massive international effort to launch an African Green Revolution funded in large part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation."

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2010/10/201010178242499808.html

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SSB

Friday, March 4, 2011

Grow: Our Mission

Grow was founded to provide a forum to discuss and develop ideas of international development and sustainable agriculture while applying interdisciplinary perspectives. The organization was started in Ames, Iowa by students at Iowa State University.

The Grow Blog shares interdisciplinary knowledge and resources among students of international development and sustainable agriculture. It is intended to supplement learning and prompt discussion, exchange and development of ideas.