Wangari Maathai remembered in Armenia…

This fir tree at the Armenia Tree Project nursery in Karin Village is dedicated to the memory of Wangari Maathai. Dr. Maathai was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for empowering rural women to plant millions of trees with the Green Belt Movement. Today is the second anniversary of her passing...her vision and perseverance continues to be a great source of inspiration worldwide.

Wangari Maathai was an inspiration for ATP in 2003-2004 when the team in the field designed the backyard nursery micro-enterprise program for impoverished rural families to grow tree seedlings in Aygut. She was one of the leading voices raising awareness about the strong link between poverty and deforestation.

ATP made job creation and rural empowerment a strong element of that program, which was selected for a National Energy Globe Award for Sustainability at the European Parliament in 2008.

ATP founder Carolyn Mugar and director Jeff Masarjian published an op ed, The Planting of Ideas, in the Boston Globe on the occasion of Dr. Maathai's visit to Boston in 2006. The three had a chance to meet at a reception hosted by Boston’s Urban Forest Coalition, before her speech at First Church in Cambridge.

ATP was also one of the very first international organizations to make a pledge to plant trees as part of the Billion Tree Campaign initiated by Dr. Maathai and the United Nations Environment Program in 2006.

What's all the fuss about? I hope you can take some time to watch Wangari Maathai's lecture from Concordia University (her remarks start at 18:30). She is truly a bold leader and advocate for social justice and sustainable development at the grassroots level.

Prince Charles discusses forests & the value of natural capital...

We learned recently that the Prince of Wales will pay a visit to Armenia next week. It will be a first-ever visit by a member of the British Monarchy. Prince Charles is an outspoken leader on the issue of global forest and biodiversity protection, so I decided to post his latest statement on the link between forests and sustainable development. It was recorded for the World Forest Summit hosted by The Economist.

What happened to the environmental movement?

On the eve of Earth Day 2013, the New Yorker ran a lengthy review of Adam Rome’s new book, “The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-in Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation.” There has been no major environmental legislation in the US since 1990 when President George H.W. Bush signed a bill aimed at reducing acid rain. “Today’s environmental movement is vastly bigger, richer, and better connected than it was in 1970. It’s also vastly less successful. What went wrong?” asks Nicholas Lemann.

According to Rome, the original Earth Day held on April 22, 1970 remains a model of effective political organizing. Senator Gaylord Nelson’s idea of a “teach-in” was more than just sixties jargon, writes Lemann. It defined Earth Day as educational, school-based, widely distributed, locally controlled, and participatory. This is contrasted with Earth Day 1990 which was better funded and more elaborately orchestrated but had fewer lasting effects. Earth Day 1990 was more top-down and attuned to marketing than to organizing.

The more the US environmental movement becomes an established presence in Washington, the less it has been able to win legislative victories, notes Lemann. “It has concentrated on the inside game at the expense of broad-based organizing,” he writes, citing an example from his research for the Scholars Strategy Network. “The forces behind the climate change bill [in the US Congress] directed their money to the inside game in Washington and to messaging, rather than to organizing.”

Earth Day is now celebrated around the world, including Armenia (see poster from 2010 campaign). Yet the lessons from the US environmental movement should be of interest for Armenia’s nascent environmental movement, which organized mass protests against industrial air pollution in the late 1980s. Today’s movement is smaller, visibly younger, and focused around unsustainable mining with some attention to issues such as green spaces, threatened ecosystems, and biodiversity.

Armenia’s environmental movement has not been able to organize at the national level or at the grassroots, so it faces serious challenges ahead in terms of effectiveness and growth. We hope Rome’s account will provide at least some useful advice about organizing a generation of environmental leaders.

‘For us children, forests are our future’: Young activist tells adults at UN to ‘stop talking & start planting’...

Thirteen-year-old Felix Finkbeiner was invited from Germany to address the United Nations Forum on Forests in New York this month. Inspired by the United Nations Environment Program’s Billion Tree Campaign, Felix founded the Plant for the Planet organization to mobilize children around the world to plant trees.



In an eloquent speech at the launch of the UN's International Year of Forests, Felix declared: “For us children, forests are our future.” He referred to the poverty crisis and the problem of climate change and cited several reasons for a lack of progress on these issues including a perception of the future among adults that leads to short-term thinking among global leaders.

In response, Felix pointed out that “children have to take our future into our own hands” and outlined three goals: zero carbon emissions using existing technology, eliminating poverty through climate justice, and planting trees and protecting forests.

His organization started a new campaign called “Stop talking, start planting,” which has used photographs of children with global leaders and high profile environmental activists. Felix is pictured here with Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen, who was named a UNEP Goodwill Ambassador in 2009.

Stockholm Environment Institute looks at climate change in Armenia...

The UNDP Armenia has released a thorough and alarming study conducted by the Stockholm Environment Institute on The Socio-Economic Impact of Climate Change in Armenia. The 130-page report was written by Elizabeth A. Stanton, Frank Ackerman, and Flavia Resende, who are highly respected experts in the field of environmental economics.

The study points out that climate change will have far-reaching effects on social and economic life, and the ability for people to adapt will depend on whether or not funding will be available to support adaptive policy measures and how quickly these policies can be implemented. “Armenia’s future economic development will depend on the decisions that the current generation makes about investments in adaptation [to climate change],” warns the report.

According to this UNDP study, national scenarios forecast an increase to Armenia’s average annual temperature to be 4.5 degrees C in the lowlands and 7 degrees C in the highlands over the next century. Average annual precipitation is expected to decrease by as much as 9 percent, with the biggest reductions predicted for Yerevan and the Ararat Valley, which can expect 30 percent less precipitation by 2100. Higher temperatures will lead to more evaporation which means less soil moisture and reductions of up to 24 percent in river flows, which will reduce the availability of water for agriculture and power generation.

On an optimistic note, the experts from the Stockholm Environment Institute point out that many of the best available climate adaptation policy measures can be important for Armenia’s economic development. These include improving water and power generation infrastructure, integrating climate adaptation in plans for economic development and energy production, planning for more efficient use of resources in the context of growth and higher rates of consumption, and considering the needs and vulnerabilities of rural and low income households.

“Unless quick action is taken on large-scale adaptation measures, it is unlikely that Armenian families, their livelihoods, or their economy will be unscathed by climate change. Armenia’s poor and especially its rural poor populations will be particularly vulnerable,” warn the authors. “Social impacts will include an increased incidence of illness from heat waves as temperatures rise, a shortage of water and an increase to electricity tariffs as competing needs collide, food shortages or increased food prices as agricultural productivity falters, and an increased incidence of dangerous and damaging landslides, mudflows, and floods as dry soil and deforestation coincide with extreme storms.”

UNDP representative Dirk Boberg points out that this report is a pilot process undertaken by UNDP in only a few countries. He indicates that the priority sectors for adaptation to the impacts of climate change are water, agriculture, energy, and forests. “[This study] provides economic analysis and recommendations for decision-makers that need to manage the impacts of climate change by minimizing negative impacts and maximizing adaptation opportunities,” he writes in the foreword to The Socio-Economic Impact of Climate Change in Armenia.

Cicer blog supports global climate change editorial campaign…

This editorial calling for action from world leaders on climate change was published by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages. The text was drafted by the Guardian during consultations with editors from the papers involved. Most of the newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front page.

Here is the text of the editorial, Fourteen Days to Seal History’s Judgment on this Generation, which is free to reproduce under a Creative Commons license:

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting, and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time, and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C -- the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction -- would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June's UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: "We can go into extra time but we can't afford a replay."

At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided -- and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tons of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere -- three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world's biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down -- with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of "exported emissions" so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them.

Click here to read the rest of the editorial.

‘The Tree Lady’ honors Green Belt Movement…

This brief documentary about Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement was created by Will Levitt. It was the first place student winner in the My Hero film festival and was part of the National History Day competition in Washington.

“Though Wangari's message has been shared in many ways, most notably with her 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, I thought that it was important that I try and share her message in my own way. Through her work, Wangari is a hero to so many. She has stood up for countless issues: the environment, women's rights, just government, sustainable economies, international cooperation,” wrote Will on the My Hero website.

The 10 minute film describes the founding of the Green Belt Movement, when Wangari organized women to plant trees with the goal of improving their lives. She started by planting seven trees in her own backyard on World Environmental Day in 1977 and the project quickly expanded. Today, over 30 million trees have been planted with the Green Belt Movement and it has spread to 30 countries.

Will recounted meeting Wangari in 2006, when she was the guest of Boston's Urban Forest Coalition and also the subject of an article by the Armenia Tree Project leadership in the Boston Globe. “To meet her in person further displayed to me the importance of her work, but also made me grateful all the more for her work that has inspired so many,” Will noted.

Other Earthkeeper Heroes highlighted on the My Hero website include Alexandra Cousteau for her work to protect the world’s oceans, E.O. Wilson for his studies on human impacts on the planet, and Laurie David for her commitment to curb climate change.

Documentary photograher interested in Dark Tourism...

This building is the site of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial (A-Bomb Dome) because it was the closest structure to withstand the 1945 nuclear attack (Photo by Julie Dermansky)

I first learned about the photographic work of artist Julie Dermansky in what is known as Dark Tourism from a feature article in the New York Times back in 2005. At the time she was visiting sites around the world for her project: Mankind’s Monuments to Barbaric Acts and Other Unusual Vacation Destinations.

She had a tragically long list of these sites from around the world, and I contacted Julie to be sure she was planning to visit the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan on the day of April 24, when hundreds of thousands of citizens pay their respects to the victims of the 1915 genocide.

She was planning to go when funding and time allowed, but the project was put on hold when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and Julie was off to document the human and natural tragedy in New Orleans. I received periodic updates about her work from New Orleans, and she was in touch recently about her plan to go to Yerevan on April 24, 2008.

An immediate goal of the project is an exhibit at the American Institute of Architects in New York in September 2008, which she describes as a photographic survey of museums and monuments dealing with genocide and injustice.

If you’re in Armenia look up Julie when she’s there in April, and if you’re in the diaspora check out her work and give her your support!

Update: Here is an exclusive interview with Julie Dermansky in Hetq Online and Armenian Weekly. Click here to read the interview in French on Yevrobatsi.org.

Daily Show segment on the Armenian Genocide...

This Oct. 11 video clip from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart about the Armenian Genocide resolution in the US Congress was removed from You Tube within 12 hours of it being posted, but it is still available on the Comedy Central web site here. Also on the same topic, this Dan Wasserman cartoon from the Oct. 12 issue of the Boston Globe was great.

Update: The brief Oct. 12 coverage of the issue by Bill Maher was not as favorable, since he chose to gloss over the issue in the context of the war in Iraq. But even luminaries like Noam Chomsky have failed to put the legacy of the Armenian Genocide in the context of current day human rights atrocities. The issue is not a diaspora or US citizens lobbying their own government--it is about mass violence, accountability, intellectual responsibility, and government denial.