Sustainability in Curitiba and Urban Acupuncture

"A sustainable city is the one that integrates housing, work and leisure, while preserving its history and investing in public transportation." With this idea in mind, Jaime Lerner has turned Curitiba, capital of the Parana State in Brazil, into one of the greenest cities in the world.

Some of his ideas were to educate children on garbage separation in order for them to educate their parents, to exchange food for recovered garbage in favelas (poor settlements) in order to encourage trash separation, and to put sheep in parks for them to take care of grass and attract children.

Now on a project to revitalize the marine coast, solve the garbage management issues and transform the road system in Luanda, Angola; Lerner is constantly consulted by governments from cities around the world on environmental issues

read more (TreeHugger.com)

Diet for Small Planet may be most efficient if it includes dairy and a little meat

By Susan Lang, Cornell Chronicle, Oct. 4th.

A low-fat vegetarian diet is very efficient in terms of how much land is needed to support it. But adding some dairy products and a limited amount of meat may actually increase this efficiency, Cornell researchers suggest.

The study, published in the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, is the first to examine the land requirements of complete diets. The researchers compared 42 diets with the same number of calories and a core of grains, fruits, vegetables and dairy products (using only foods that can be produced in New York state), but with varying amounts of meat (from none to 13.4 ounces daily) and fat (from 20 to 45 percent of calories) to determine each diet's "agricultural land footprint."

"A person following a low-fat vegetarian diet, for example, will need less than half (0.44) an acre per person per year to produce their food," said Christian Peters, M.S. '02, Ph.D. '07, a Cornell postdoctoral associate in crop and soil sciences and lead author of the research. "A high-fat diet with a lot of meat, on the other hand, needs 2.11 acres."

"Surprisingly, however, a vegetarian diet is not necessarily the most efficient in terms of land use," said Peters.

The reason is that fruits, vegetables and grains must be grown on high-quality cropland, he explained. Meat and dairy products from ruminant animals are supported by lower quality, but more widely available, land that can support pasture and hay. A large pool of such land is available in New York state because for sustainable use, most farmland requires a crop rotation with such perennial crops as pasture and hay.

Thus, although vegetarian diets in New York state may require less land per person, they use more high- valued land. "It appears that while meat increases land-use requirements, diets including modest amounts of meat can feed more people than some higher fat vegetarian diets," said Peters.

Read more (Cornell Chronicle)

Education for Sustainability

Sustainability is more than a catchword - it is a new kind of thinking, a way to pursue environmental stewardship, economic security and social equity as complementary goals.

More and more, as students pursue degrees at institutions of higher education worldwide, they are exposed to the concepts of sustainable development. Long a hallmark in fi elds such as environmental studies or agriculture, sustainability issues now are cropping up in all walks of course work. Degree programs from Business to Engineering are incorporating discussions of the real-world application of sustainability in their curricula. This reality necessitates more discussion of sustainability in K-12 curricula.

The Children's Environmental Literacy Foundation's (CELF) mission is to bring about enduring institutional change to education by promoting sustainability as a core K-12 learning framework. Through early education we can equip students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes that will lead to a sustainable future for everyone.

Ultimately, we envision our children and future generations understanding the unique and complex systems that support the natural, as well as the human-built environments, and having the knowledge, the desire and the ability to save the integrity of those systems.

read more (celfoundation.org)

Is Sustainable Forestry Sustainable?

By George Wuerthner, Sept 22.

We hear praise for sustainable forestry from the timber industry, politicians, and even among many environmental groups. While sustainability is an admirable goal, most of what I have seen touted as sustainable practices are far from ecologically sustainable, especially when compared to wild landscapes. In nearly all instances that I have observed, the so called "sustainable" logging, grazing, farming-- fill in the blank-- is only sustainable by externalizing most of the real costs (ecological impacts) of production. That doesn't prevent people from trying to claim that they have achieved the Holy Grail and found a way to exploit nature and protect it too. Everyone wants to think they can take from nature and somehow not have to pay the full cost. It's the free lunch syndrome.

Sustainable forestry as practiced today is usually more of an economic definition than an ecological one. By sustainable, timber companies and their supporters in the "sustainable forestry" movement engage in practices that ensure a continual long term timber supply, not a sustainable forest.

read more (New West Environment)

A Lending Hand: Promoting Sustainability in Less-Developed Countries

by Jemilah Magnusson, The Green Guide.

Last weekend at Live Earth, Chris Rock joked, "I pray that this event ends global warming the same way that Live Aid ended world hunger." Cynicism aside, the bitter truth behind Rock's quip is that poverty and environmental destruction are inextricably linked. "When you are poor, environmental conservation is a luxury that you cannot afford," says David Woollcombe , president of Peace Child International, a nonprofit organization that works with local young people to promote sustainability in less developed countries. "If you are cold, you don't care about conservation of forests, you care about keeping warm. This is why many people say that poverty is the greatest enemy, the greatest polluter of the environment."

The poor, of course, also lack the clout and the resources to keep their environs from being exploited. Mindful of this issue, the United Nations produced its millennium development goals to reduce poverty by 2015, the seventh of which aims to "integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources." This translates into the complicated task of bringing prosperity to the impoverished by maintaining the natural world around them. And, it often comes down to local groups to bring these issues home. There are, however, many ways to help.

read more...(National Geographic The Green Guide)