In the aftermath of the Cancun COP on climate change, and for those who love cartoons, I leave hereby some links and my modest contribution. It seems that, after all, some other kids didn’t  play so fair as well…

Ainda no rescaldo da COP em Cancún, e para quem gosta de cartoons, sugiro a visita aos sites seguintes e deixo aqui a minha modesta contribuição.
Parece que afinal houve mais meninos a portarem-se mal…

Other cartoons / Outros cartoons: Climate Change Conference, Cancun Style! (cartoon), Cancun by Steve Nease, Cancun Climate Summit, Cancun, Finding climate common ground in Cancun , South Of The Border…, Game on (finally)… and many other.

So many species inhabited our lands, rivers and seas in the past. Biodiversity can be “mainstreamed” into local history awareness actions and vice-versa, as indeed natural and historical heritage are both building blocks of local identity. Despite the disappearing of so much biodiversity, it remained until our days in the names of streets, squares, in local tales and so on. When we speak about biodiversity, we can go back a few years, some decades or even centuries, to explain its importance. For instances, the Portuguese oyster, which disappeared from the Tagus estuary in the 60s due to pollution, was in fact important not only for the economy during many decades, but was a major item found among the evidences of the neolithic diet, found locally at Moita Municipality.

Hence, the idea of using a real person from the past to tell us how things were those days.

A British crusader that lived in the XII century and was at Lisbon in 1147, wrote a lively description of the conquest of Lisbon by the first king of Portugal with the help of crusaders from several parts of Europe. In his letter he refers that the Tagus estuary was so rich, that two thirds were water and one third was fish (The original document is a unique Manuscript in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge).

Departing from this, he “was asked” to come back and tell some real stories about Tagus and its biodiversity, since pre-history to the present times. The Sturgeon, the Portuguese Oyster and other missing or threatened species are some of the issues he talks about with the children. In the end, children are invited to do a “fishery” of colored paper fishes, where the smallest must be left behind so they can grow. Finally, if children really want to protect the Tagus, they may become knights.

I prepared this idea and a script for the crusader for the World Environment Day celebrations promoted by the Municipality of Moita. A total of aprox. 350 children participated.

This activity was promoted by the Municipality of Moita, Portugal, last April, with the support of Fenacoop (National Federation of Consumer Cooperatives), a member of Eurocoop, and the cooperative Pluricoop. It was inspired on the “Supermarket Tours” developed in Australia by the Ethical Consumer Group and was integrated in the project “Bio-Local – Diversity of Local Actions for Biodiversity”.

Issues such as biodiversity loss, energy and CO₂ emissions, waste, ethics, animal welfare, economic and social sustainability, local production and consumption were covered in a practical way, relating them to our consumption choices. The tour consisted on a “check-in” (lecture); an “indoor tour” (inside a supermarket) and an “outdoor tour” (to a local farm).

The “check-in” lecture was presented with the help of a slide-show (at top above). Near the end, the participants were invited to choose specific themes and form small teams (see list of themes on the slide-show). They were then given written forms to be filled at specific sectors at the supermarket.

The indoor tour, inside the supermarket, enabled participants to do an oriented search of products on the shelves and become aware of the information displayed on the product packages such as certifications, or the existence – or not – of other relevant information. In the end they gathered together in an informal meeting, to share impressions and opinions.

The last part – the outdoor tour – looked more as a normal tourism tour. We left on a bus and went to the rural area, to know a local farm production of strawberries and other vegetables. The farmer, a young woman engineer, applies practices of “integrated production” which is not organic farming (unfortunately there are not yet organic farms at Moita) but nevertheless is more sustainable than conventional farming, namely because of the reduction of pesticides use. Besides this farmer sells directly to the local consumer, with personalized baskets of products delivered every week. The local products are distributed to local people, therefore keeping their freshness, reducing carbon footprint and avoiding refrigeration. The tour ended with a strawberries tasting moment.

In the end the participants evaluated the activity with very high scores, remarking it had been very pleasant and interesting.

About the Project “Bio-Local – Diversity of local action for biodiversity”

It is a project I developed at the Municipality of Moita, basically an aggregation of several awareness raising initiatives on biodiversity, at local level. The international goal “To halt biodiversity loss”, to which Portugal formally adhered, requires in fact a set of measures and urgent actions at various levels. What we eat, what we do and the way we live has direct or indirect impacts on nature and biodiversity, either on the wild or cultivated species, and along with them, impacts on the services provided by nature to humanity.

This project, developed at local level and involving civil society partners, gathers awareness actions on three themes:

1. Local and regional biodiversity
2. Agricultural biodiversity
3. Biodiversity and consumption

Local and regional biodiversity

Consists mainly of a set of guided tours for school children in the municipality of Moita and surrounding region, so they learn more about the existing habitats and species and their relation with local history and development.

Agricultural biodiversity

Aims to create in schools a living arc for preservation of regional varieties and flavors in danger of disappearance, transforming the school gardens on custodians of agricultural biodiversity. Schools get practical training workshops directed for teachers and students. They get support to plant kitchen gardens and when collecting the crops, they keep part of the seeds for further plantation in next year.

Biodiversity and consumption

Includes awareness raising actions directed towards local consumers, promoting a better understanding about the sources and processing of products and its relation to nature and biodiversity. A Tour of the Ecological Consumer was developed, inspired on the “Supermarket Tours” developed in Australia by the Ethical Consumer Group.

It was at Gabala, Azerbaijan, that this idea crossed my mind; though probably it has already crossed the minds of many other people.

It just came out during an NGO discussion. We divided in 3 groups; our group was meant to prepare the NGO message to the Roundtable III – Post 2010 biodiversity targets and the Strategic Plan of the Convention on Biological Diversity: Priorities for the Pan-European region.

Our working group, designated the Bears (in fact we held our discussion in a nice small room opened laterally in one side, reminding somehow a cave) had a hot , vivid discussion, even a bit chaotic in some moments. At a certain point someone insisted the problem is that CBD is not be really binding and there should be effective sanctions for non compliance, therefore we should demand for that on the document. That’s when I interrupted and said that is the problem of most international law. Who binds and punishes, at UN level? I fiercely defended that was not a thing reasonable to ask for, would be seen as a naive claim because it would involve the changing of the whole system, unless…

The real binding decisions of the UN, subject to real sanctions, seem to be the ones UN takes at the level of the Council of Security. If we consider that wars and conflicts can arise because of water scarcity in some points of the globe — and that is quite identified already — the same potential problems may arise if we have ecosystem degradation up to a point that can compromise livelihood and trigger conflict risks. I gave the example of the sharp contrast of Haiti vs Dominican Republic, as the following picture shows:

In the end, the text of our message headline was:

“To make the slogan for Nagoya, “Life in Harmony, into the future”, a reality, immediate changes in the development paradigm are necessary. We must begin to tackle the underlying causes of biodiversity loss in Pan-Europe and globally. Humanity depends on biodiversity for our continued survival, making biodiversity conservation and climate stability matters of global security.”

This and other two message documents were proposed to be inserted in the final Gabala Declaration. The draft version of Gabala Declaration was later discussed during the plenary and an NGO representative argued some key messages were missing; I also added that the concept of “biodiversity as a matter of security” was missing and explained the intentions behind it were not just to do a nice phrasing with using a common sense concept, as referred by the Chair, but to prepare the path for biodiversity (together with climate change) to be considered in future, at UN level, as a matter of security; basically to mainstream biodiversity in Security.

Well, at the end of the day, the officials decided not to insert it in the final Gabala Declaration.

Maybe they thought it was a visionary thing, or maybe they did not feel they had the mandate to say such a thing in a Pan-European context or simply they did not want to risk such an approach before further reflection and discussion on it.

I feel responsible for such an idea, I did not have time to explain what could be meant by mainstream biodiversity into security matters and their discussion/decision fora, and to be honest I myself did not exactly know how. But the idea was basically and first of all to “upgrade” the speech on Biodiversity in a new important sector. Biodiversity is being progressively “upgraded” into the world of Economics for instances by the study on TEEB – The Economics of the Ecosystems and Biodiversity, not to mention other practical approaches.

If we start looking to biodiversity loss as an indirect driver for water scarcity and resulting conflict problems, or as as connected to desertification and related conflicts, or as a driver for food scarcity and resulting conflicts, it could reinforce the recognition of the value (not necessarily monetary) of biodiversity at the political level. It is a fact that, unfortunately, only when things become perceived as a risk (or a threat to security of any kind) for humans, they become really important items on the political agendas.

Meanwhile I found out that there is already a program involving UNEP, on Environmental Security. Below are some links to this and other articles.

In the NATO website you could also read:

Environmental Security

Based on a broad definition of security that recognizes the importance of political, economic, social and environmental factors, NATO is addressing security challenges emanating from the environment. This includes extreme weather conditions, depletion of natural resources, pollution and so on – factors that can ultimately lead to disasters, regional tensions and violence.

In ENVSEC priorities and future challenges you could read:

The Southern Caucasus, composed of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, has long been a focal point for change and a bridge between Asia and Europe. The region is in the midst of a tumultuous transition and has seen multiple inter-state and ethnic conflicts in its recent past, some of them escalating to full-scale warfare. In this context, the lack of regional cooperation threatens to exacerbate environmental issues, themselves a source of potential conflict in the region. Among the environmental concerns identified by ENVSEC in the Southern Caucasus are the management of shared natural resources (not least in the Kura-Araks river basin which covers a large part of the region), pollution from ageing industries and irrigation networks, and uncontrolled growth of capital cities. On the positive side there are quite a few opportunities to foster cooperation between the countries in the environmental field.

Some other sources of reading:

Water and security – An European Perspective (issued March 2010)
Saving Haiti’s environment, preventing instability and conflict
Biodiversity, Ecosystems, and Food Security
Food security through biodiversity
A FAO article related to agrobiodiversity and food security

As a Portuguese, I never had much interest on inland seas, such as the Black Sea, the Aral Sea, or Caspian Sea. But now, visiting Azerbaijan, a republic of the Caucasus region and having walked by the maritime water front at Baku, the capital city of the country, I wanted to know more. I only have heard about the existence of the Sturgeon, that fantastic mega-fish which has vanished along time ago from many EU rivers.

During my stay at the country I saw an article on the Caspian in a magazine I came across on business and development. It mentioned a rather low number of species, but also that it got closed around 5 million years ago, a unique salty lake, with a shallow morphology in the north and much deeper in the south. It is fed by several rivers, but there is no outflow to other oceans; it is isolated and the balance is kept by evaporation.

That made me think that even the Caspian might be quite polluted, there must be or at least have been a lot of endemic species. 5 million years is enough time for species to evolute into new ones.

I found the following data in World Lakes:

The Caspian Sea may be home to as many as 54 endemic fish species (out of 133 total), 190 endemic zoobenthos species (out of 380) and 64 endemic zooplankton species (out of 315 species).

Species in the Caspian listed in the Red Book as endangered include 63 birds, 41 mammals, and 27 fish.

125 thousand square km of the coast around the Caspian Sea is severely degraded. Parts of the Caspian coast are experiencing desertification due to overexploitation and poor management. Overgrazing and deforestation in the watershed have led to increased erosion.

Severe overfishing has decimated fish species and caused sharp declines in catches. Between 1920 and 1940, the most common commercial species were the Caspian lamprey, Volga shad, Caspian trout, and Caspian inconnu. The total catch of these species was about 80 thousand tons. All these species are now included in the Red Books of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Russian Federation, and other Caspian states.

In the Islamic Republic of Iran over-fishing of Caspian trout, bream, and zander, along with the damage of their habitats and spawning grounds, has resulted in an almost complete loss of these species. The Caspian zander disappeared due to massive catches in Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.

During the last twenty years, the sturgeon catch has declined by 88 percent.

90% of the Beluga spawning grounds are gone due to dams. Poaching may take up about 12 times the volume of the official catch.

More research is needed on the impact of invasive species on the Caspian. The comb jelly Mnemiopsis leidyi has recently been discovered.

More on the biodiversity of the Caspian Sea and an interesting article on environmental change.

Almada e a Justiça em Portugal

Para que servirá recorrer-se à Justiça em Portugal? Os processos duram anos e quando acontecem casos como o mencionado acima nem as providências cautelares emitidas pelos próprios Tribunais são levadas em linha de conta pelas Forças da Autoridade nem pelos representantes do Estado.

Depois do terreno vedado entrarão quanto antes — num terreno agrícola em exploração e que nunca deveria ser impermeabilizado — os buldozzers e os camiões carregados de inertes. Mesmo que outra providência cautelar faça as obras pararem de que servirá isso depois de terem sido destruídos milhares de Euros em infraestruturas de rega? De que servirá isso depois das culturas terem sido destruídas com prejuízo irreversível para o agricultor? Depois de bons terrenos agrícolas terem sido tornados absolutamente improdutivos pela deposição de aterros, muitas vezes de contaminantes, que demorarão anos a ser retirados… isto se a Justiça fizer o seu papel, o que seriamente duvidamos.

É com estas continuadas machadadas que a Democracia se vai esboroando em toda esta velha Europa e, particularmente, neste velho rincão à beira mar plantado.

Mas afinal a Barragem do Alqueva não foi feita para “irrigar o Alentejo”? Então agora o sr. Roquette vai fazer um mega-empreendimento turístico com “sete hotéis, quatro campos de golfe, aldeamentos turísticos, duas marinas, centro equestre e um campo de férias”… e muitos barcos de recreio, claro! Tudo para quem tiver posses que os pelintras que vão para o All-garve, já foi o Povo avisado.

E o impacto disso tudo na qualidade da água?

“O Alentejo é como o Oeste para os americanos. Tem esse romantismo”, explica. “Sabia que à noite é a única zona completamente negra na Europa? Ainda não foi tocada pelo desenvolvimento humano e agora temos este lago enorme [albufeira do Alqueva] que nos abre possibilidades que nunca estiveram lá.”

This is a very important presentation made by Alexander Osterwalder at Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany for the impACT program. Examples reviewed include Kiva, Grameen Bank, Wise and many more.

Although it may look like it is more dedicated to corporations it works as well for NPO and other civil society organizations.
It is really important that the myth surrounding the dualism of non-profit and for-profit disappears. Non-profit organizations should have profits to allow them to be sustainable and even to grow.

For-profit organizations should care more and more about their environmental and social impact in the world and in the communities they belong to. A non-profit (or not for profit) organization only means that the members of that organization do not share profits among them and nothing else.

The book behind the presentation can be bought at Amazon USA.

Environment NGOs from many countries in Europe attended this week in Madrid a Conference on Biodiversity, promoted by the Spanish Presidency of the European Union.

Knowing that the leader of the study The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity would speak at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, some of them decided to prepare a message to send to the Forum.

You can get the Message to Davos here and the portuguese Quercus’ Press Release here.