Please send a message to the Canadian Government urging them to immediately protect coastal habitats that help combat climate change.
Scientists of the United Nations Environment Program recommended to the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference that 80 percent of the world’s remaining seagrass and salt marsh habitat be protected as an important step among the range of strategies necessary to combat global climate change. The best way to protect coastal ecosystems is to set aside marine protected areas (MPAs) and regulate their use through marine planning and ecosystem-based fisheries management. As the nation with the longest coastline in the world, protecting these ecosystems is part of the action Canada should take to combat climate change.
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The Government of Canada has already committed to creating a national network of MPAs but has not adequately prioritized that commitment nor considered identifying natural carbon sequestering habitats as part of the network. Now is the time to act.
Natural carbon sequestration is the storage of carbon in a stable solid form. Some terrestrial and marine plants sequester or fix carbon into the soil or sediments around their roots in mineral form, storing it for thousands of years or more. These carbon sequestering plants are extremely important for reducing the amount of carbon circulating in the atmosphere and oceans, and play an important role in combating climate change and ocean acidification which are caused by increased CO2 in the atmosphere.
Seventy percent of the marine plants that naturally sequester carbon are found in coastal areas such as seagrass meadows and salt marshes. Much of these areas have been lost since the 1940s due to coastal development, and have been damaged by run off from agricultural and industrial activities. These coastal ecosystems are more effective than terrestrial ones when measuring climate change mitigation effectiveness. Half a kilogram of marine plant material can sequester as much as 1,000 kgs of plant material on land due to unique chemical processes within marine sediments
Protect Coastal Habitats
Tag Archive: government
With the World Cup over, all that’s really left to do is resume the drudgery of waking up every day to try to make the world a better place. Bo-ring. If we have to do it though, may as well be as informed as possible. Start with these important reads from the last week.
How Experience in Foreign Cultures Facilitates Creativity: Most of the folks I know who have spent significant time of broad probably would have argued this point before they had any data to back it up, but it’s very cool to see some significant research suggesting that being exposed to foreign cultures has significant, measurable positive impacts on people’s ability to think creatively and solve problems. Importantly, however, the study also shows that the attitude you have going in — the desire to actually engage with that foreign culture — is key to actually getting these benefits.
Revitalizing the American Dream: Inc magazine put together this awesome list of tips for revitalizing the American Dream, and it’s all about making it easier for people to start, join, and succeed in startups. This means teaching entrepreneurship across disciplines (not just in B-School), changing our general approach and disposition towards immigration (and immigrant entrepreneurs), and even some legal ideas like to stop enforcing “noncompete” agreements that force former employees of companies not to work for (or start) competing companies after leaving. Total must read.
Microfinance Group Unitus Shuts Down, Eyes ‘Reinvention’: This is one of those confounding stories that could be incredibly significant or totally irrelevant, depending on what’s behind it. Basically, one of microfinance’s leading institutions has shut its doors and laid off its staff, saying that it’s exploring a reinvention, without saying much of anything about what that is. If this is due to a lack of confidence in microfinance, it’s significant. If it’s a real-life example of a nonprofit actually “putting itself out of business” because it feels it has accomplished what it set out to do, it’s significant. If, more likely, the root of this is just difference in opinion about future direction within the leadership, it’s just internal politics and doesn’t much matter. A story worth watching, though, for sure.
Start-Up Chile: Putting some of the ideas from the Inc story above into practice, this new program from the government of Chile is offering $40,000 in startup grants for companies that are willing to relocate to Chile for a time. The goal is to welcome the global entrepreneurship community to the country and hope that some people decide to invest in Chile as a primary or secondary home for their companies. Few strings attached money is definitely a good way to grab an entrepreneurs’ attention.
Photo credit: Gonzalo Baeza Hernández
Weekend Entrepreneur Links: American Dreams and Foreign Cultures
Imagine our country (the world) in two generations time when the people now in power have been developing and practising Wisdom in their personal and professional lives since kindergarten .
Tell our government and schools that we want a better future for our kids.
The prevailing influences on our kids now are to feel more and spend more and to kill if you get frustrated.
To balance this we have to discover another way of relating to daily life.
Teaching Wisdom from kindergarten onwards sounds like a wise thing to consider.
teaching Wisdom in our Schools
What happens to young girls in Afghanistan who run away from forced marriages in desperate search of freedom? They are whipped and hit with sticks, leather straps, and rods, over and over and over. And the men that beat them? Well, their actions are justified. After all, these girls should know better …
In a rather disturbing video clip from CNN, we see a 14-year-old girl being whipped repeatedly after deciding to leave the man she was forced to marry at such a young age. Despite police promises of finding and prosecuting the man that was caught on tape beating her, and laws prohibiting forced marriage and marriage of children under the age of 16, nothing has been done. Sadly, though, this is not that surprising.
Organizations like Women for Afghan Women are coming to the rescue, offering shelter for young runaways, or other women who have been beaten, abused and raped by their husbands (yes, marital rape does occur).
But according to many Afghans — even some government officials — these shelters are evil. Yes, pure evil. They are evil for giving women and girls a place to turn. They are evil for supporting the rights of women and children forced and sold into marriages against their will. After all, women don’t deserve freedom, happiness, or an education, right?
Wrong.
