4 Green Lessons We Should Learn from “Avatar Film”

4 Green Lessons from “Avatar Film”

The jaw-dropping special effects, 12-year production process, and massive budget for James Cameron’s Avatar may be the qualities that are at the front of your mind while you’re watching the film, but don’t let the look and feel of the film distract you from its environmental message. Cameron has been frank about his intent to make the film a sort of green parable, highlighting his own eco morals—he and his wife live on a solar-powered ranch in Santa Barbara—while creating a story and film that get the point across. Here’s what should stick with you even after the credits roll.

Climate change isn’t the only issue.
Most of the movie takes place on an exomoon known as Pandora, where a team from Earth has been sent to mine a resource said to help with the planet’s energy issues. But while Cameron acknowledges the danger of global warming, he believes there’s more to environmental responsibility: “Science is unable to keep up with our industrial society. We are destroying species faster than we can classify them. We are destroying the food chain faster than we can understand it. The politicians are over in Copenhagen talking about climate change…but there are other issues as well,” he told The Sun.

Respect Mother Nature.
Pandora is home to a race of blue aliens known as the Na’vi, who place a huge premium on having a positive relationship with nature; by contrast, the Americans who travel to the planet are trying to take advantage of Pandora’s resources to fix the problems they’ve created on Earth. An ex-Marine becomes a liaison between the Na’vi and the American team, and then deals with the way both worlds collide—and the way they think differently. The Na’vi are clearly meant to be the “good guys,” and their respect for their environment plays a big part in that.

Respect the Earth.
Though they sound similar, this isn’t exactly the same as respecting nature; here, the lesson has more to do with resource management. It’s easy to see Avatar as a cautionary tale—a look at how things could be in the 22nd century if we aren’t more careful with the resources the Earth provides now. But once we’ve used up everything here, who’s to say this elusive replacement mineral will really exist on another planet?

Environmental issues aren’t always so simple.
In the movies—almost all movies—it’s easy to tell who’s the bad guy and who’s the good guy, but when it comes to real environmental debates, it’s not always so simple. As Michael said over on TreeHugger, even oil companies aren’t always as villainous as they’re made out to be, since “fundamentally, the reason why those companies are producing 80-something million barrels of oil each day is because most people have cars and drive around, and buy products that have been shipped from far away, etc.”

For more on the science behind Avatar, head over to Discovery.com for a making-of video and an interview with James Cameron.

(Ref : Planet Green)

Copenhagen’s Aggrement

COP15 In a Nutshell:

“We’ve Agreed Not to Do Anything Meaningful at This Time, Maybe Later”

After Copenhagen, Why not!

Aanlysis:

some commentators consider that “the future of the UN’s role in international climate deals is now in doubt.”

The editorial of The Australian newspaper blamed African countries for turning Copenhagen into “a platform for demands that the world improve the continent’s standard of living” and claimed that “Copenhagen was about old-fashioned anti-Americanism, not the environment“.

Reaction:

INGO: John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK stated that

“The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight … It is now evident that beating global warming will require a radically different model of politics than the one on display here in Copenhagen.”

Copenhagen urges protection of environmental journalists

World leaders at the UN Conference on Climate Change were urged by media freedom groups to pressurize countries, including Burma to protect journalists covering environment.
Vincent Brossel, Head of the Asia desk at the Paris-based Reporters Without Border (RSF) told Mizzima on Monday despite the world leaders’ efforts to come to an agreement on how to tackle climate change, many countries of the world including Burma are not doing well at home on the issue.
International Media Support, Reporters Without Borders, Internews and International Institute for Environment and Development on behalf of all the signatories on Friday made a call to protect journalists covering environmental issues and climate change.
“We have received information in recent years about the difficulties in reporting about deforestation and the issues related to logging in the areas [in Burma] which borders China,” Brossel said.
Brossel said Chinese companies present in Burma are freely into illegal logging, which causes serious impact on forests and other environmental damages.
“In fact, logging companies can do business without any problem because there is no accountability and the government is not treating the case seriously,” he added.
While the Burmese military regime allows reports about the general problem of global warming, Brossel said, Burmese journalists are restricted from in depth reporting.
“The important thing is to get foreign and Burmese journalists to be able to investigate the logging issue,” he added.
Brossel, in a statement released on Friday, said delegations of some countries attending the Copenhagen conference need to provide an explanation as to why journalists and activists investigating environmental issues in their countries are being jailed, beaten, threatened or censored.
“If Uzbekistan, Russia, China, Burma or Indonesia, for example, do not respect the right of their media to inform on such crucial issues, how can we expect them to really commit to fight the climate change?,” he asked.
Last week, a Berlin-based Climate Watchdog in its new report titled ‘Global Climate Risk Index’ ranked Bangladesh, Burma and Honduras as countries most affected by extreme weathers from 1990 to 2008.
The deadly Cyclone Nargis had devastated Burma’s Irrawaddy delta in May 2008, killing, according to UN figures, over 134,000 people and leaving over 2.4 million homeless.
Despite of the devastation, the Burmese junta had restricted journalists from reporting the catastrophe and arrested and detained some Burmese journalists.
“With an increasing number of violent attacks on journalists covering environmental and climate change issues, there is an urgent need for action,” the statement said.
James Fahn, Global Director of Internews Earth Journalism Network, in the statement said, “When climate change reporters move to the field and cover illegal logging and pollution, they face dangers similar to their colleagues covering the crime beat.”

COP15 Copenhagen 2009

How to make Japan EM Bokashi (organic) compost?

Japan EM Bokashi – Organic ဓါတ္ေၿမၾသဇာ သူတို႔ ဘယ္လိုလုပ္။

Ingredients
100 lb (20kg X 2 bags) of wheat bran
12 litres of warm water
240 cc of molasses
240 ml of EM

What you’ll need
a tarp, or a large, smooth area protected from the rain
a bucket, or a large spray bottle
a large air-tight container, such as an industrial plastic barrel with the lid

1. Spread wheat bran on a big plastic tarp.
A driveway or any other smooth surface would do fine, but you’ll want to make sure that you can protect it from rain – we think about these things in rainy British Columbia! With a tarp, you can wrap the whole batch up as a big bundle if rain threatens.

2. Mix the warm water, molasses and EM in a big container.

3. Spray the liquid mixture over the bran with a water jug or a large spray bottle.

4. Mix the bran and the liquid further by hand, crumbling the chunks down until the bran is evenly wetted.

5. Put the mixture in the air-tight barrel. Press it down as you stuff it in to remove as much air as possible.

6. Leave it for about a month in a warm place. (normal room temperature, or slightly warmer if possible)

7. When the surface of the mixture becomes covered with a whitish, fuzzy mold-like material and has a nice (at least for some of us!) sour fermented smell, it’s done.

8. The bokashi can be used right away. For longer-term storage, spread the mixture out on your plastic tarp away from direct exposure to sunlight and moisture until it’s completely dry. Break up any lumps; the bokashi should be completely granular. This usually takes a couple of days on the warm summer days of our area; in a hotter, drier climate it would presumably happen quite a bit quicker.

9. The dried bokashi should be good for at least two years.

Happy Composting!

၀ နဲ႔ ၀က္ (environmental poem)

(ကုိစည္သူလြင္ (Agri) ေပးတဲ့ ဒီ environmental ကဗ်ာေလး ၿမည္းၾကည့္ပါအုံး)

၀ နဲ႔ ၀က္

၀ေရ ၀ ၀ေရ၀

၀နယ္ေၿမ ၀လူမ်ဳိး

၀ါးပုိး၀ါးခုတ္ ၀ါးဘူးလုပ္

၀ါးပုိး၀ါးဖတ္ ၀ါးဦးထုပ္

၀၀တုတ္တုတ္ ၀သူငယ္

၀က္၀၀ေလး ၀မ္းကယ္ကယ္

၀ါးဆစ္ဘူး၀ယ္ လြယ္ကာသြား

၀သံ၀က္သံ ဆူညံသြား

(၀ ၀ါ ၀ါး    ၀ ၀ါ ၀ါး)၂ ။       ။

(ေမာင္စြမ္းရည္)

*note:  : ဒီကဗ်ာေလးအရ (ေတာ္ ေတာ္ၾကာႀပီ လုိ႔ထင္ပါတယ္) ၀နယ္ေလး ဟာ သာယာခဲ့ပုံ ထင္ရပါတယ္

ဒီေန႕ဒီအခ်ိန္မွာေတာ႔ ၀နယ္ဟာ food security အရ ၿမန္မာၿပည္မွာ အဆုိးဆုံးအေၿခအေနနဲ႔ရင္ဆုိင္ေန ေနရတဲ့ လုိ႔ WFP ကဆုိပါတယ္…ဆက္ပါအုံးမည္။

*Food security refers to the availability of food and one’s access to it.

Common-pool Resource

             In economics, a common-pool resource (CPR), also called a common property resource, is a type of good consisting of a natural or human-made resource system (e.g. an irrigation system or fishing grounds), whose size or characteristics makes it costly, but not impossible, to exclude potential beneficiaries from obtaining benefits from its use. Unlike pure public goods, common pool resources face problems of congestion or overuse, because they are subtractable. A common-pool resource typically consists of a core resource (e.g. water or fish), which defines the stock variable, while providing a limited quantity of extractable fringe units, which defines the flow variable. While the core resource is to be protected or entertained in order to allow for its continuous exploitation, the fringe units can be harvested or consumed.

            A common property regime is a particular social arrangement regulating the preservation, maintenance, and consumption of a common-pool resource. The use of the term “common property resource” to designate a type of good has been criticized, because common-pool resources are not necessarily governed by common property regimes.

            Examples of common-pool resources include irrigation systems, fishing grounds, pastures, forests, water and the atmosphere. A pasture, for instance, allows for a certain amount of grazing to occur each year without the core resource being harmed. In the case of excessive grazing, however, the pasture may become more prone to erosion and eventually yield less benefit to its users. Because their core resources are vulnerable, common-pool resources are generally subject to the problems of congestion, overuse, pollution, and potential destruction unless harvesting or use limits are devised and enforced.

           The use of many common-pool resources, if managed carefully, can be extended because the resource system forms a positive feedback loop, where the stock variable continually regenerates the fringe variable as long as the stock variable is not compromised, providing an optimum amount of consumption. However, wanton consumption leads to deterioration of the stock variable, thus disrupting the flow variable for good.

           Common-pool resources may be owned by national, regional or local governments as public goods, by communal groups as common property resources, or by private individuals or corporations as private goods. When they are owned by no one, they are used as open access resources. Having observed a number of common pool resources throughout the world, Elinor Ostrom noticed that a number of them are governed by common property regimes – arrangements different from private property or state administration – based on self-management by a local community. Her observations contradict claims that common-pool resources should be privatized or else face destruction in the long run due to collective actionproblems leading to the overuse of the core resource (see: Tragedy of the commons).

Common property regime

              Common property regimes arise in situations where appropriators acting independently in relationship to a common-pool resource generating scarce resource units would obtain a lower total net benefit than what is achieved if they coordinate their strategies in some way, maintaining the resource system as common property instead of dividing it up into bits of private property. Common property regimes typically protect the core resource and allocate the fringe through complexcommunity norms of consensus decision-making. Common resource management has to face the difficult task of devising rules that limit the amount, timing, and technology used to withdraw various resource units from the resource system. Setting the limits too high would lead to overuse and eventually to the destruction of the core resource, while setting the limits too low would unnecessarily reduce the benefits obtained by the users.

               In common property regimes, access to the resource is not free, and common-pool resources are not public goods. While there is relatively free but monitored access to the resource system for community members, there are mechanisms in place which allow the community to exclude outsiders from using its resource. Thus, in a common property regime, a common-pool resource appears as a private good to an outsider and as a common good to an insider of the community. The resource units withdrawn from the system are typically owned individually by the appropriators. A common property good is rivaled in consumption.

              Analysing the design of long-enduring CPR institutions, Elinor Ostrom identified eight design principles which are prerequisites for a stable CPR arrangement:

1. Clearly defined boundaries
2. Congruence between appropriation and provision rules and local conditions
3. Collective-choice arrangements allowing for the participation of most of the appropriators in the decision making process
4. Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators
5. Graduated sanctions for appropriators who do not respect community rules
6. Conflict-resolution mechanisms which are cheap and easy of access
7. Minimal recognition of rights to organize (e.g., by the government)
8. In case of larger CPRs: Organisation in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small, local CPRs at their bases.

               Common property regimes typically function at a local level to prevent the overexploitation of a resource system from which fringe units can be extracted. There are no examples of common property regimes which solve problems of overuse on a larger scale, such as air pollution. In some cases, government regulations combined with tradable environmental allowances (TEAs) are used successfully to prevent excessive pollution, whereas in other cases — especially in the absence of a unique government being able to set limits and monitor economic activities — excessive use or pollution continue.

Critique

                A common pool resource is defined above by a set of characteristics, but a common property regime is an institution. The implicit idea is that certain resources may have a propensity to be governed by common property institutions. This concept has limited usefulness because it suppresses the co-evolution of resource scarcity and institutional governance. The most that economists have been able to show, according to Copeland and Taylor 2009, is that resource characteristics may be identified that lead an institution being eventually governed by one institution or another. Three forces determine success or failure in resource management: the regulator’s enforcement power, the extent of harvesting capacity, and the ability of the resource to generate competitive returns without being extinguished. The transition of resource governance from open access to common property to regulated private property is less well understood.

Ref : Wiki

Elinor Ostrom

 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences           

       

                            Elinor Ostrom (born August 7, 1933) is an American political scientist. She was awarded the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, which she shared with Oliver E. Williamson, for “her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons“.She is the first woman to win the prize in this category. Ostrom is on the faculty of both Indiana University and Arizona State University. She is the Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University in Bloomington and Research Professor and the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity at Arizona State University in Tempe.

Education

                         Ostrom graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1951 and then received a B.A. (with honors) in political science at UCLA in 1954. She was awarded an M.A. in 1962 and a Ph.D. in 1965, both from UCLA in political science.

Her Research

                         Ostrom is considered one of the leading scholars in the study of common pool resources. In particular, Ostrom’s work emphasizes how humans interact with ecosystems to maintain long-term sustainable resource yields. Common pool resources include many forests, fisheries, oil fields, grazing lands, and irrigation systems. She conducted her field studies on the management of pasture by locals in Africa and irrigation systems management in villages of western Nepal. Ostrom’s work has considered how societies have developed diverse institutional arrangements for managing natural resources and avoiding ecosystem collapse in many cases, even though some arrangements have failed to prevent resource exhaustion. Her current work emphasizes the multifaceted nature of human–ecosystem interaction and argues against any singular “panacea” for individual social-ecological system problems.

Ostrom identifies eight “design principles” of stable local common pool resource management:

1. Clearly defined boundaries (effective exclusion of external unentitled parties);
2. Rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common resources are adapted to local conditions;
3. Collective-choice arrangements allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process;
4. Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators;
5. There is a scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules;
6. Mechanisms of conflict resolution are cheap and of easy access;
7. The self-determination of the community is recognized by higher-level authorities;
8. In the case of larger common-pool resources: organization in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs at the base level.

Nobel Prize

                              In 2009, Ostrom became the first woman to receive the prestigious Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited Ostrom “for her analysis of economic governance,” saying her work had demonstrated how common property could be successfully managed by groups using it. Ostrom and Oliver E. Williamson shared the 10-million Swedish kronor (£910,000; $1.44 m) prize for their separate work in economic governance.

                              The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Ostrom’s ‘research brought this topic from the fringe to the forefront of scientific attention’, “by showing how common resources—forests, fisheries, oil fields or grazing lands, can be managed successfully by the people who use them, rather than by governments or private companies”. Ostrom’s work in this regard, challenged conventional wisdom, showing that common resources can be successfully managed without government regulation or privatization .

Notable publications

• Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action Ostrom, Elinor, Cambridge University Press, 1990
• Institutional Incentives and Sustainable Development: Infrastructure Policies in Perspective Ostrom, Elinor, and Schroeder, Larry, and Wynne, Susan, Oxford: Westview Press, 1993
• Rules, Games, and Common Pool Resources Ostrom, Elinor, and Gardner, Roy, and Walker, James, Editors, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1994
• with Crawford, Sue E. S., “A Grammar of Institutions.” American Political Science Review 89, no.3 (September 1995): 582–600.
• A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective Action: Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, 1997. Ostrom, Elinor. The American Political Science Review 92(1): 1–22. 1998
• Trust and Reciprocity: Interdisciplinary Lessons for Experimental Research, Volume VI in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust, Elinor Ostrom and James Walker, Editors, Russell Sage Foundation, 2003
• Understanding Institutional Diversity Ostrom, Elinor, Princeton, Princeton University Press. 2005.
• Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice Ostrom, Elinor and Hess, Charlotte, Editors, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2006.
• Linking the Formal and Informal Economy: Concepts and Policies, edited with Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis and Ravi Kanbur (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006; paperback published in 2007)

WHAT IS AN ECOSYSTEM?

An ecosystem is a community of animals and plants interacting with one another and with their physical environment. Ecosystems include physical and chemical components, such as soils, water, and nutrients that support the organisms living within them. These organisms may range from large animals and plants to microscopic bacteria. Ecosystems inlcude the interactions among all organisms in a given habitat. People are part of ecosystems. The health and wellbeing of human populations depends upon the services provided by ecosystems and their components – organisms, soil, water, and nutrients.