The World Ocean Forum has been dormant too long. In the name of using all media to spread the word, I will be posting text from my weekly radio broadcast, World Ocean Radio, also available for download at prx.org.
-- Peter Neill
Recently, a NY Times article reported on decisions about environmental matters by the US Supreme Court in its latest session. The article, quoting Richard J. Lazarus of the Supreme Court Institute at the Georgetown University Law Center, pointed to the consistently negative decisions in cases brought by environmental organizations.
What was most interesting was the nature of the cases. The justices allowed the US Navy to test sonar proven to threaten migrating whales, to challenge US Forest Service regulations against dumping mining waste in Alaskan lakes, to limit liability of corporations responsible for toxic spills, and to allow the Environmental Protection Agency to use cost benefit analysis to decide how much marine life may be killed by cooling structures at power plants.
As you might imagine, these decisions were greatly acclaimed by their winners, related interests and corporations, and the US Chamber of Commerce.
Amazingly, every decision resulted in a threat against a healthy ocean. Research has proven the negative impact of certain frequency sonar on whale populations, and lower courts had decided, and were upheld on appeal, that the Navy’s argument based on national security was unjustified. Reversed. Over-ruled. Limiting corporate liability for the perpetrators of toxic spills, most frequently in coastal waters, removes responsibility for the event and delimits adequate resources for clean up, repair and mitigation. Mining waste in lakes may account for the ever-increasing presence of heavy metals in the draining streams and rivers, with continuing detrimental impact through the watershed all the way to the sea. And, finally, anyone who has ever played with an Excel spreadsheet knows how cost-benefit analysis can be adjusted to justify almost anything. Fish vs. power-plants: how do we do the math?
Just how much marine life can be sacrificed to permit a cooling structure for a power plant? How do we calculate the true value of the structure? For example, beyond construction cost do we also include the negative value of the CO2 emitted by that plant and its impact on climate and the world economy? Do we include the energy cost of the oil or coal that has been transported internationally or mined regionally with additional negative environmental expense? And what about the marine life? Is it valued simply as the market cost for useless biomass? Or is it valued for its reproductive potential lost along with the fecundity of the nearby spawning ground? Do we include its value as a source for food or fertilizer or pharmaceuticals? Do we calculate its place in an economic chain of related employment and downstream community viability? To reach the desired conclusion, just re-state the premises to your advantage. This EPA analysis could take forever, lead to a false conclusion, and, probably, provide more work for judges.
Are we prepared to accept that a true calculation might just demonstrate that the value of the marine life is greater than the value of the plant? Will the US Chamber of Commerce accept the outcome of a true cost-benefit analysis based on ecosystem calculations and social cost estimates that demonstrate the power plant is a negative contributor to the economy while the marine life is not?
The Supreme Court, tilted as it apparently is to a conservative, strict constructionist viewpoint, has by these decisions contributed cogently and deliberately to forces that will continue to poison the land and sea. Ironically, these decisions are evidence of just how blind justices can be, and, like the toxins enabled, they serve for life.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
World Ocean Day
June 8 is World Ocean Day, one of those designated moments intended to focus universal consciousness on a particular issue in the press and other media outlets. Depending on the enthusiasm of various organizers, there may be a few articles, a TV spot, some photogenic beach clean-ups and other activities that demonstrate a local interest, however fleeting, in the health of the world ocean.
But why isn’t every day world ocean day? Why is it that we succumb to the illusion that such concentration of effort on an arbitrary date will somehow contribute significantly to the year-round challenge of building public awareness and political will for a sustainable ocean? Isn’t one day just too little, too late to make any difference?
This fallacy is not limited to facile public relations. In international conferences of ocean experts, I hear the constant lament that the best research efforts and the most fervid calls for action fall mostly on deaf ears and that only increased education and global outreach can counter this ignorance and indifference -- and yet these very same observers will admit in the next breath that their organizational budgets and staff for these critical functions are severely under-funded, indeed frequently non-existent. If there is a problem, why do they ignore the most obvious solution? Do they really mean it?
The amount of energy and funds directed toward World Ocean Day is misspent. Those resources would be much better invested in ocean literacy efforts in the schools, or a cooperative program pooling organizational budgets for on-going press briefings on ocean issues, or for advocacy initiatives to promote a national ocean policy in the United States.
World Ocean Day is momentarily useful, but what’s left for the other 364?
But why isn’t every day world ocean day? Why is it that we succumb to the illusion that such concentration of effort on an arbitrary date will somehow contribute significantly to the year-round challenge of building public awareness and political will for a sustainable ocean? Isn’t one day just too little, too late to make any difference?
This fallacy is not limited to facile public relations. In international conferences of ocean experts, I hear the constant lament that the best research efforts and the most fervid calls for action fall mostly on deaf ears and that only increased education and global outreach can counter this ignorance and indifference -- and yet these very same observers will admit in the next breath that their organizational budgets and staff for these critical functions are severely under-funded, indeed frequently non-existent. If there is a problem, why do they ignore the most obvious solution? Do they really mean it?
The amount of energy and funds directed toward World Ocean Day is misspent. Those resources would be much better invested in ocean literacy efforts in the schools, or a cooperative program pooling organizational budgets for on-going press briefings on ocean issues, or for advocacy initiatives to promote a national ocean policy in the United States.
World Ocean Day is momentarily useful, but what’s left for the other 364?
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Fear of Ocean Governance? Why?
The ocean is often described as "the last wilderness" or "a vast commons." It is neither. Civilization has left its mark for centuries in the itineraries of ships, the migration of peoples, the records of trade and exploration, and the interactions of nations. Sea power has served as a major force in the shaping of culture, and competition for the natural resources of the ocean has affected the livelihood of an historic succession of settlement and empire. Today, the challenge of governance faces the ocean with all the complexity and contradiction faced on land. The community of nations has evolved a Law of the Sea, a treaty and legal work-in-progress that begins to address the conflict of proprietary interests in the ocean, the sustainability of valuable food supply and mineral wealth, and the future exploitation of an environment about which we know not enough. Various agreements and admistrative tools have evolved to mitigate conflict, protect national interests, and maintain the natural and cultural values inherent in the global ocean. The need is defined and many suggestions for improved governance and progressive action are in place.
But the United States does not respond with alacrity or substance. Why?
Why should the US Joint Ocean Commission Initiative (comprised of representatives of the two national commissions that examined American ocean policy and made substantial recommendations in 2004) this week give a second year "grade" of C- (up from last year's D+) on progress to date? Reading the reports, the improvements in various categories are subtle at best, nuanced in terms of small, cosmetic first steps and bureaucratic adjustments with no substantial further actions or resources to follow. It would not take much to conclude that almost no advancement has occurred.
Why should the US remain one of the two major ocean nations that has not yet become party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea despite strong public support, Congressional initiatives, and a letter of endorsement from President George W. Bush? Why, with all that, does necessary, meaningful action never quite get taken?
Why should the prospects for H.R 21 The Ocean Conservation, Education and National Security Act (Oceans-21), introduced in the House of Representatives on the first day of the 110th Congress, seem uncertain despite the shift in power resulting from the 2006 mind-term elections?
Why should the announcement of the largest marine protected area in the world (140,00 square miles in the Northwestern Hawaii Islands Marine National Monument) merit such vapid reception by the public, press and ocean conservation movement, seemingly interpreted as little more than a superficial gesture affecting little beyond the livelihood of the few fishers who can no longer fish there?
Why does a nation with the largest ocean Exclusive Economic Zone, with such a huge reliance on the ocean for its economic future, not get beyond the recommendations to assume leadership through exemplary actions, particularly when the financial resources demanded are so relatively small and the capacity to execute is in hand?
I'm perplexed. What is really going on here? I'd be interested in your reasons why?
But the United States does not respond with alacrity or substance. Why?
Why should the US Joint Ocean Commission Initiative (comprised of representatives of the two national commissions that examined American ocean policy and made substantial recommendations in 2004) this week give a second year "grade" of C- (up from last year's D+) on progress to date? Reading the reports, the improvements in various categories are subtle at best, nuanced in terms of small, cosmetic first steps and bureaucratic adjustments with no substantial further actions or resources to follow. It would not take much to conclude that almost no advancement has occurred.
Why should the US remain one of the two major ocean nations that has not yet become party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea despite strong public support, Congressional initiatives, and a letter of endorsement from President George W. Bush? Why, with all that, does necessary, meaningful action never quite get taken?
Why should the prospects for H.R 21 The Ocean Conservation, Education and National Security Act (Oceans-21), introduced in the House of Representatives on the first day of the 110th Congress, seem uncertain despite the shift in power resulting from the 2006 mind-term elections?
Why should the announcement of the largest marine protected area in the world (140,00 square miles in the Northwestern Hawaii Islands Marine National Monument) merit such vapid reception by the public, press and ocean conservation movement, seemingly interpreted as little more than a superficial gesture affecting little beyond the livelihood of the few fishers who can no longer fish there?
Why does a nation with the largest ocean Exclusive Economic Zone, with such a huge reliance on the ocean for its economic future, not get beyond the recommendations to assume leadership through exemplary actions, particularly when the financial resources demanded are so relatively small and the capacity to execute is in hand?
I'm perplexed. What is really going on here? I'd be interested in your reasons why?
Monday, February 19, 2007
Leap of Faith
I have a friend who is locked in a mortal dialogue with a college roommate about the existence of....global warming.
Forty years ago, when these two were inhabiting a funky House at Harvard, the argument would have been about God. But today it pits them in the 21st century amphitheater, long after the existence of God has been settled, and new questions abound. My friend is a Liberal, excuse me, Progressive, albeit a listening, inquisitive one. The roommate is a Conservative, certain as the day is long. It is a titanic encounter.
On February 5, 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its first major report since 2001 in which it declared that the fact of global warming was "unequivocal" and that human activity in the form of greenhouse gas emissions from powerplants and automobile exhaust was 90-99% likely to be the cause. Certainty was just short of the margin of error. When the report was inserted into the dialogue above, the roommate exploded in a hurricane of denial, alternative papers, contradictory web links, and even more fervid assertions of hoax. As with so much that passes for dialogue in America these days, no exchange of views became possible; civility declined; no evidence could persuade; there was no "ex," and there would be no "change."
So, the evidence of climate change as evinced in sea temperature rise and the relationship of ocean conditions to the genesis of ever more powerful storms was dismissed, just as was all the rest of the distinguished science and consequent analysis in the report. The event was reduced to a concretized heavyweight bout, Improbable vs. Probable, all grunt, no finesse. It was the tenth round; my friend was exhausted in his corner.
The situation called for some last blow, some penultimate move that would put the Conservative down. As second, I reached into my tired bag of tricks, remembered from my own sophomoric arguments of times past (west coast version, more sunshine) and brought out the "What if" rebut, a tactic invented by an old French titan, Blaise "The Wager" Pascal. Regarding the existence of God, it is true that rational evidence is not complete or certain, but "what if" one is wrong? What if there is a God, then one's denial means certain, catastrophic consequence. Like, er, death, damnation and the descent to Hell.
Hell indeed. Fictional renderings of a post-industrial world devastated by the projected impacts of global warming and other ecological betrayals (see the novelist William Gibson, all titles) do not paint a pretty picture (unless your taste in art runs to Pieter Bruegel the Elder or the Japanese hell scrolls). Even the Conservative -- not imagining, but rationally extrapolating the negatives-- might quake at the envisoned circumstances bequeathed to his children. Why risk it? Why take the chance and deny God in the small things, all contrary evidence notwithstanding? Aren't the consequences of such denial just too great?
Does this logic not pertain as well to the question of climate change? How can it be responsible to accept any percentage of improbability when the stakes are so high? How many Katrina's and devastated cities will it take to change the odds? Even if science can provide no absolute certainty, how can we responsibly ignore the verity of study after study, proof after proof? As we have seen so often during the past few years, adherance to ideological positions in the face of contradictory realities has caused terrible pain and devasting consequence. Should the Conservative not pursue Pascal's leap of faith, his affirmation of the unaffirmable as calculated risk? What if he holds fast to his immutable denial and inaction prevails? Are the rest of us prepared to drown in his ideological mistake? Is he?
The ocean plays an essential role in both the problem and solution to climate change. Its sustainability relates directly to the sustainability of climate, just as it does to fresh water, energy, food production and other essential contributions to the future of human survival. We can accept no denials, nor lack of action based on stubborn ideological beliefs. The cause and effect of ocean sustainability are ours to control; we created the conditions and we must change our behavior to redress the damage. There is little time for intellectual niceties; there is too little time for action. Failure to take the leap of faith, to ignore the evidence of critical contamination of the earth's resources, is irresponsible. Failure to take the leap of faith is the best opening for a knock-out punch for us all.
Forty years ago, when these two were inhabiting a funky House at Harvard, the argument would have been about God. But today it pits them in the 21st century amphitheater, long after the existence of God has been settled, and new questions abound. My friend is a Liberal, excuse me, Progressive, albeit a listening, inquisitive one. The roommate is a Conservative, certain as the day is long. It is a titanic encounter.
On February 5, 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its first major report since 2001 in which it declared that the fact of global warming was "unequivocal" and that human activity in the form of greenhouse gas emissions from powerplants and automobile exhaust was 90-99% likely to be the cause. Certainty was just short of the margin of error. When the report was inserted into the dialogue above, the roommate exploded in a hurricane of denial, alternative papers, contradictory web links, and even more fervid assertions of hoax. As with so much that passes for dialogue in America these days, no exchange of views became possible; civility declined; no evidence could persuade; there was no "ex," and there would be no "change."
So, the evidence of climate change as evinced in sea temperature rise and the relationship of ocean conditions to the genesis of ever more powerful storms was dismissed, just as was all the rest of the distinguished science and consequent analysis in the report. The event was reduced to a concretized heavyweight bout, Improbable vs. Probable, all grunt, no finesse. It was the tenth round; my friend was exhausted in his corner.
The situation called for some last blow, some penultimate move that would put the Conservative down. As second, I reached into my tired bag of tricks, remembered from my own sophomoric arguments of times past (west coast version, more sunshine) and brought out the "What if" rebut, a tactic invented by an old French titan, Blaise "The Wager" Pascal. Regarding the existence of God, it is true that rational evidence is not complete or certain, but "what if" one is wrong? What if there is a God, then one's denial means certain, catastrophic consequence. Like, er, death, damnation and the descent to Hell.
Hell indeed. Fictional renderings of a post-industrial world devastated by the projected impacts of global warming and other ecological betrayals (see the novelist William Gibson, all titles) do not paint a pretty picture (unless your taste in art runs to Pieter Bruegel the Elder or the Japanese hell scrolls). Even the Conservative -- not imagining, but rationally extrapolating the negatives-- might quake at the envisoned circumstances bequeathed to his children. Why risk it? Why take the chance and deny God in the small things, all contrary evidence notwithstanding? Aren't the consequences of such denial just too great?
Does this logic not pertain as well to the question of climate change? How can it be responsible to accept any percentage of improbability when the stakes are so high? How many Katrina's and devastated cities will it take to change the odds? Even if science can provide no absolute certainty, how can we responsibly ignore the verity of study after study, proof after proof? As we have seen so often during the past few years, adherance to ideological positions in the face of contradictory realities has caused terrible pain and devasting consequence. Should the Conservative not pursue Pascal's leap of faith, his affirmation of the unaffirmable as calculated risk? What if he holds fast to his immutable denial and inaction prevails? Are the rest of us prepared to drown in his ideological mistake? Is he?
The ocean plays an essential role in both the problem and solution to climate change. Its sustainability relates directly to the sustainability of climate, just as it does to fresh water, energy, food production and other essential contributions to the future of human survival. We can accept no denials, nor lack of action based on stubborn ideological beliefs. The cause and effect of ocean sustainability are ours to control; we created the conditions and we must change our behavior to redress the damage. There is little time for intellectual niceties; there is too little time for action. Failure to take the leap of faith, to ignore the evidence of critical contamination of the earth's resources, is irresponsible. Failure to take the leap of faith is the best opening for a knock-out punch for us all.
Thursday, January 4, 2007
International Environmental Education
In his recent critique of the international environmental movement, Red Sky at Morning, James Gustave Speth lists eight transitions required to move environmental actions from the accomplishments of the 20th century to the requirements of the 21st. The last three pertain specifically to the question of International Environmental Education: the transformation of knowledge and learning, a new seriousness about global environmental governance, and an expanded public awareness of environmental sustainability as a fundamental human right.
At the heart of all Speth’s transitions lies a demand for increased scientific and environmental literacy. And at the heart of literacy of any sort lies well-ordered effective education.
What It Is:
In the United States and certain other developed countries, environmental education has made significant in-roads into public consciousness as well as educational programs of every level of education. Thus, on many fronts, political will in the form of either protest against certain degrading actions and policies or affirmation of countervailing actions, is evident. Moreover, formal programs at the graduate, undergraduate, and secondary levels are well established, and informal, experiential programs have also found a sympathetic audience.
What becomes immediately apparent, however, is that beyond a small perimeter of affluent nations, the programs collapse into erratic, anecdotal initiatives of varying quality and effect. These programs fall into four general categories and can be characterized as useful but inadequate.
Resource Directories: There are a number of resource centers operated by UNESCO and other governmental organizations and such NGO’s as World Resources Institute and the WorldWide Fund for Nature. In many cases, these are directories organized by nation or subject interest; in other cases, they are web-based activity centers that require motivation, access, a willingness to engage in superficial activity, and, frequently, the ability to read English. In every case, the predictable user is educated and interested and probably best served by the discovery of a new activity, idea, or organization to promote an already developed interest.
What directories do provide, however, is a database for possible international contacts. For example, an excursion into the UNESCO site International Directory of Environmental Education Institutions finds fifteen listings, all but one a university-based or research institute program. One does discover the Theeerthamalai Environmental Awareness Movement, a NGO serving a Tamil-speaking rural population through non-formal educational activities. Bulgaria has two listings, one of which is the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, which promotes “information” to all levels of education, and the other is the national university. This small, but representative sample suggests that the level of activity and sophistication beyond the United States is significantly less, even non-existent.
International Linked Programs: A second category represents a single NGO managing a network of partner entities around a single subject. For example, ECO-Schools International, created by the European Commission in 1995, purports to address the objectives of Agenda 21 and to connect some 10,000 schools worldwide through a certification program (Green Flag and Blue Flag schools) based on didactic principles and a management system based on “an ISO14001/EMAS approach.” A closer look at what is actually offered as educational service, capacity building, and evaluation, however, suggests more of a statistical exercise than a serious experiment in the classroom. The program appears well intended, but superficial and disconnected.
Such an organization could be an effective system for communication and distribution of educational product; however at this point it seems concretized by bureaucratic objectives, restrictions, and justifications.
Specific Curricula: There are few places to go to find a central repository for curriculum that could be used and/or adapted by a teacher to a specific classroom use. There are nevertheless many such curricula to be discovered, typically the product of a particular teacher or local association of teachers and published on the web. For example, there is a Caribbean maritime science curriculum that could be effectively used in any developing nation or coastal community school, but finding this resource is unfortunately the result of teacher word-of-mouth, dogged perseverance, random access, or sheer luck.
NGO Programs: Certain larger NGO’s have developed significant field programs correlative to their mission. For example, Conservation International has programs on the ground in Guyana, Indonesia, Botswana, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia and Suriname which involve exhibits, workshops, capacity-building (interpreter and volunteer training), eco-tourism, and primary school curriculum. Other NGO’s have comparable programs, however these seem targeted primarily to conservation professionals and workers, rather than to schools.
Of all the programs discovered in this assessment, this model seems the most direct and effective. But one needs to ask what percentage of the financial resources available is actually delivered versus what percentage is used in the NGO’s overhead, administrative infrastructure, and management. Clearly, the best application of this model is to maximize the cost-benefit ratio and deliver as much value as possible to the community.
The Literature:
A quick survey of the literature discovers various suggestions for the improvement in scientific literacy in developing countries. Typical suggestions include the need for more funds, more materials, translations of existing materials, capacity-building at the university level, developing personal relationships with mentor scientists and teachers, international exchange, scholarships for graduate programs in the developed nations, and other predictable high cost information-sharing activities.
Dr. June George, Faculty of Humanities and Education, University of the West Indies, Trinidad, however, suggest one very interesting approach. In a paper entitled “Culture and Science Education: A Look from the Developing World,” Dr. George reviews “the science for all” movement wherein the science of daily living or indigenous tradition is “bridged” to conventional science both in the classroom and the field and “related” to patterns of thought, argument, and teaching with which the students are culturally familiar. Dr. George’s paper can found at http://www.actionbioscience.org/education/george.html.
The dichotomy is not a new one: the conflicting approaches of received learning, delivery of a didactic lesson through formal presentation, versus experiential learning, discovery of a flexible lesson through informal engagement.
It would seem clear by now – and anecdotal proof ought to be good enough – that for many students, regardless of culture, the second way is more than viable, indeed is tremendously effective as a method for alternative learning.
The integration of the two is not easy.
Who, and How to Serve:
Poverty = Educational Resources = Environmental Conditions = Quality of Life
This basic inter-relationship between these elements suggests that the highest benefit to be derived from innovation in international environmental education falls to the poorest with the least. If there can be an intervention, an improvement in the educational services provided, then there can be a consequent improvement in conditions for learning, living and collective opportunity.
How to serve?
What is required is the provision of direct training of local teachers in new methods of integration of environmental science and conservation values for the classroom and in the field through new curricula and practical teaching materials designed to affirm the cultural conditions of the community and to meet the educational needs of the indigenous student population.
What is required is a series of demonstrations, location by location, nation by nation, by which to invent this method, to select and train teachers in its delivery, to provide the inexpensive, practical resources, to implement in the classroom, to evaluate the outcomes, and to follow-up with additional contact and training on an annual basis.
What is required is a directed funding stream that maximizes local effect and minimizes infrastructure cost either by providing grant-based augmented services through existing organizations in country or by supporting a small base central organization managing contract curriculum developers, resources designers, teacher trainers, and evaluators on a nation by nation basis.
At the heart of all Speth’s transitions lies a demand for increased scientific and environmental literacy. And at the heart of literacy of any sort lies well-ordered effective education.
What It Is:
In the United States and certain other developed countries, environmental education has made significant in-roads into public consciousness as well as educational programs of every level of education. Thus, on many fronts, political will in the form of either protest against certain degrading actions and policies or affirmation of countervailing actions, is evident. Moreover, formal programs at the graduate, undergraduate, and secondary levels are well established, and informal, experiential programs have also found a sympathetic audience.
What becomes immediately apparent, however, is that beyond a small perimeter of affluent nations, the programs collapse into erratic, anecdotal initiatives of varying quality and effect. These programs fall into four general categories and can be characterized as useful but inadequate.
Resource Directories: There are a number of resource centers operated by UNESCO and other governmental organizations and such NGO’s as World Resources Institute and the WorldWide Fund for Nature. In many cases, these are directories organized by nation or subject interest; in other cases, they are web-based activity centers that require motivation, access, a willingness to engage in superficial activity, and, frequently, the ability to read English. In every case, the predictable user is educated and interested and probably best served by the discovery of a new activity, idea, or organization to promote an already developed interest.
What directories do provide, however, is a database for possible international contacts. For example, an excursion into the UNESCO site International Directory of Environmental Education Institutions finds fifteen listings, all but one a university-based or research institute program. One does discover the Theeerthamalai Environmental Awareness Movement, a NGO serving a Tamil-speaking rural population through non-formal educational activities. Bulgaria has two listings, one of which is the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, which promotes “information” to all levels of education, and the other is the national university. This small, but representative sample suggests that the level of activity and sophistication beyond the United States is significantly less, even non-existent.
International Linked Programs: A second category represents a single NGO managing a network of partner entities around a single subject. For example, ECO-Schools International, created by the European Commission in 1995, purports to address the objectives of Agenda 21 and to connect some 10,000 schools worldwide through a certification program (Green Flag and Blue Flag schools) based on didactic principles and a management system based on “an ISO14001/EMAS approach.” A closer look at what is actually offered as educational service, capacity building, and evaluation, however, suggests more of a statistical exercise than a serious experiment in the classroom. The program appears well intended, but superficial and disconnected.
Such an organization could be an effective system for communication and distribution of educational product; however at this point it seems concretized by bureaucratic objectives, restrictions, and justifications.
Specific Curricula: There are few places to go to find a central repository for curriculum that could be used and/or adapted by a teacher to a specific classroom use. There are nevertheless many such curricula to be discovered, typically the product of a particular teacher or local association of teachers and published on the web. For example, there is a Caribbean maritime science curriculum that could be effectively used in any developing nation or coastal community school, but finding this resource is unfortunately the result of teacher word-of-mouth, dogged perseverance, random access, or sheer luck.
NGO Programs: Certain larger NGO’s have developed significant field programs correlative to their mission. For example, Conservation International has programs on the ground in Guyana, Indonesia, Botswana, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia and Suriname which involve exhibits, workshops, capacity-building (interpreter and volunteer training), eco-tourism, and primary school curriculum. Other NGO’s have comparable programs, however these seem targeted primarily to conservation professionals and workers, rather than to schools.
Of all the programs discovered in this assessment, this model seems the most direct and effective. But one needs to ask what percentage of the financial resources available is actually delivered versus what percentage is used in the NGO’s overhead, administrative infrastructure, and management. Clearly, the best application of this model is to maximize the cost-benefit ratio and deliver as much value as possible to the community.
The Literature:
A quick survey of the literature discovers various suggestions for the improvement in scientific literacy in developing countries. Typical suggestions include the need for more funds, more materials, translations of existing materials, capacity-building at the university level, developing personal relationships with mentor scientists and teachers, international exchange, scholarships for graduate programs in the developed nations, and other predictable high cost information-sharing activities.
Dr. June George, Faculty of Humanities and Education, University of the West Indies, Trinidad, however, suggest one very interesting approach. In a paper entitled “Culture and Science Education: A Look from the Developing World,” Dr. George reviews “the science for all” movement wherein the science of daily living or indigenous tradition is “bridged” to conventional science both in the classroom and the field and “related” to patterns of thought, argument, and teaching with which the students are culturally familiar. Dr. George’s paper can found at http://www.actionbioscience.org/education/george.html.
The dichotomy is not a new one: the conflicting approaches of received learning, delivery of a didactic lesson through formal presentation, versus experiential learning, discovery of a flexible lesson through informal engagement.
It would seem clear by now – and anecdotal proof ought to be good enough – that for many students, regardless of culture, the second way is more than viable, indeed is tremendously effective as a method for alternative learning.
The integration of the two is not easy.
Who, and How to Serve:
Poverty = Educational Resources = Environmental Conditions = Quality of Life
This basic inter-relationship between these elements suggests that the highest benefit to be derived from innovation in international environmental education falls to the poorest with the least. If there can be an intervention, an improvement in the educational services provided, then there can be a consequent improvement in conditions for learning, living and collective opportunity.
How to serve?
What is required is the provision of direct training of local teachers in new methods of integration of environmental science and conservation values for the classroom and in the field through new curricula and practical teaching materials designed to affirm the cultural conditions of the community and to meet the educational needs of the indigenous student population.
What is required is a series of demonstrations, location by location, nation by nation, by which to invent this method, to select and train teachers in its delivery, to provide the inexpensive, practical resources, to implement in the classroom, to evaluate the outcomes, and to follow-up with additional contact and training on an annual basis.
What is required is a directed funding stream that maximizes local effect and minimizes infrastructure cost either by providing grant-based augmented services through existing organizations in country or by supporting a small base central organization managing contract curriculum developers, resources designers, teacher trainers, and evaluators on a nation by nation basis.
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
World Ocean Time
As we pass the solstice and calendar New Year, forgive me a few ruminations and questions...
With such passage, my thoughts looked to time, to the turning of a cycle, an interval against which to measure passage -- physically, psychologically, professionally, socially, financially, politically -- toward a variety of destinations. I got to thinking about "ocean time," the ocean as a dynamic system that contains within it cycles of growth, shifts in condition, and patterns of human behavior. I got to thinking about the ocean as a keeper of geological, climatological and social change that is as ancient as a techtonic shift, as unpredictable as the weather, and as immediate at today's breaking news. I thought to bracket increments, the interval, for example, between the tragic loss of ferry passengers yesterday in the Java Sea and the detritus of a Roman ship lost centuries ago and scattered on the floor of the Adriatic. I got to thinking about the ocean as a primordial clock, inexorably counting, tracking, marking time.
So what will it record this year? Will we see a vast shift in political understanding of and repsonsive action to the effect of climate change on the ocean, sea level rise, ocean warming and acidification? Will we invest significant financial resources in the research and development of technologies that will release the enormous capacity for energy production from ocean systems? Will we discover galvanic consensus on fisheries science, management, and governance that will not only support fishers but also the millions of individuals worldwide who depend on ocean products for protein and health? Will we focus on the polticial and economic structures required to address the tremendous disconnect in policy and action between terrestial development, fresh water supplies, sanitation, and the ocean? Will we realize that the goal of a sustainable ocean represents an extraordinary opportunity to modify patterns of use of environmental resources on land and sea, to mitigate past mistakes through therapeutic regeneration of coastal systems, and to relieve poverty and generate economic and social good through creative thinking and community development?
Is now the time?
With such passage, my thoughts looked to time, to the turning of a cycle, an interval against which to measure passage -- physically, psychologically, professionally, socially, financially, politically -- toward a variety of destinations. I got to thinking about "ocean time," the ocean as a dynamic system that contains within it cycles of growth, shifts in condition, and patterns of human behavior. I got to thinking about the ocean as a keeper of geological, climatological and social change that is as ancient as a techtonic shift, as unpredictable as the weather, and as immediate at today's breaking news. I thought to bracket increments, the interval, for example, between the tragic loss of ferry passengers yesterday in the Java Sea and the detritus of a Roman ship lost centuries ago and scattered on the floor of the Adriatic. I got to thinking about the ocean as a primordial clock, inexorably counting, tracking, marking time.
So what will it record this year? Will we see a vast shift in political understanding of and repsonsive action to the effect of climate change on the ocean, sea level rise, ocean warming and acidification? Will we invest significant financial resources in the research and development of technologies that will release the enormous capacity for energy production from ocean systems? Will we discover galvanic consensus on fisheries science, management, and governance that will not only support fishers but also the millions of individuals worldwide who depend on ocean products for protein and health? Will we focus on the polticial and economic structures required to address the tremendous disconnect in policy and action between terrestial development, fresh water supplies, sanitation, and the ocean? Will we realize that the goal of a sustainable ocean represents an extraordinary opportunity to modify patterns of use of environmental resources on land and sea, to mitigate past mistakes through therapeutic regeneration of coastal systems, and to relieve poverty and generate economic and social good through creative thinking and community development?
Is now the time?
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Data, Data Everywhere, but not a Drop to Drink
For years, a standard rejection of certain claims about the condition of the ocean, climate, air quality, and most other environmental matters has been the lack of comprehensive data on which to base a decision. Fair enough, and researchers have subsequently layed to with all manner of projects, devices and systems to collect the raw information, to define the baselines, and to guide the policy-makers toward actions based on "science."
There have been frequent complaints about financial resources, and it is true that many sources of such funding, primarily government agencies, have declined over the past few years or have succumbed to the more vociferous demands of researchers in other areas of inquiry. Nonetheless, millions have been invested in satellites, land and water-based monitoring systems, and institutional alliances with the express purpose of providing the data -- the fundamental knowledge -- about the changing conditions of the terrestial and maritime environment worldwide.
One such is an intergovernmental group called the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and its recently unveiled Internet-based comprehensive data site, GEONETCast (www.earthobservations.org/about/about-GEO.html). A system of systems, the endeavor is run by a consortium that includes the European Organization for the Exploitation of Satellites, the World Meteorological Organization, and the governments of the United States and China. A visit to the site reveals an ambitious ten-year plan, a list of acronyms representing many other member organizations, and some teasing glimpses into what the system is now and will be.
In order to benefit from this valuable material (said to be available free), a connection involving a dish and associated ware must be purchased at an estimated cost of US$1500, a fee which may not delay connection by some additonal agencies, but will certainly deny access to many other potential users such as schools, libraries, and other organizations engaged in informing the public, the invisible thousands who not only pay for the system through their taxes, but also have a need to know as urgent as the researchers.
It could be argued that their need is much greater as they are the instrument of awareness and consequent political action that ultimately drives increased funds and behaviorial change. Indeed, there is buried in the GEO Secretariat an element called "outreach" which, one presumes, means more than increased organizational membership and is devoted to finding ways to make this system easily accessible to all users.
This is a pet peeve of mine. I attend many meetings of ocean organizations, typically attended by accompished program managers and policy-makers whose constant lament is that no one understands what they do. I always ask about their agency's communications department, usually to discover that the budget, if any, is typically less than 2% of the total and that the outreach position was cut by retirement or downsizing and is yet to be refilled two years later.
The fact is that the leadership of most of the agencies do not understand their need for public engagement as a key element in the realization of their mission. To make any serious attempt requires minimal resources at the least, far beyond an annual report, a special pamphlet, or a web-site label. Slowly, some agencies have seen that education and public relations are a necessity, not just as a financial or political strategy but rather as a social strategy that relates their good work to circumstances in the marketplace, in the community. Whatever your opinion about micro-loans, for example, there is no doubt that that innovative link between a global strategy to alleviate poverty and individual lives on the ground created a transformative socio-economic effect, a brilliant connection that advanced everyone.
Communications is a discipline like science. It needs competent, imaginative individuals to do the work, the technical and financial resources to reach a vast audience, and an energetic committment by civil servants to meet the needs of civil society thirsty for knowledge.
There have been frequent complaints about financial resources, and it is true that many sources of such funding, primarily government agencies, have declined over the past few years or have succumbed to the more vociferous demands of researchers in other areas of inquiry. Nonetheless, millions have been invested in satellites, land and water-based monitoring systems, and institutional alliances with the express purpose of providing the data -- the fundamental knowledge -- about the changing conditions of the terrestial and maritime environment worldwide.
One such is an intergovernmental group called the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and its recently unveiled Internet-based comprehensive data site, GEONETCast (www.earthobservations.org/about/about-GEO.html). A system of systems, the endeavor is run by a consortium that includes the European Organization for the Exploitation of Satellites, the World Meteorological Organization, and the governments of the United States and China. A visit to the site reveals an ambitious ten-year plan, a list of acronyms representing many other member organizations, and some teasing glimpses into what the system is now and will be.
In order to benefit from this valuable material (said to be available free), a connection involving a dish and associated ware must be purchased at an estimated cost of US$1500, a fee which may not delay connection by some additonal agencies, but will certainly deny access to many other potential users such as schools, libraries, and other organizations engaged in informing the public, the invisible thousands who not only pay for the system through their taxes, but also have a need to know as urgent as the researchers.
It could be argued that their need is much greater as they are the instrument of awareness and consequent political action that ultimately drives increased funds and behaviorial change. Indeed, there is buried in the GEO Secretariat an element called "outreach" which, one presumes, means more than increased organizational membership and is devoted to finding ways to make this system easily accessible to all users.
This is a pet peeve of mine. I attend many meetings of ocean organizations, typically attended by accompished program managers and policy-makers whose constant lament is that no one understands what they do. I always ask about their agency's communications department, usually to discover that the budget, if any, is typically less than 2% of the total and that the outreach position was cut by retirement or downsizing and is yet to be refilled two years later.
The fact is that the leadership of most of the agencies do not understand their need for public engagement as a key element in the realization of their mission. To make any serious attempt requires minimal resources at the least, far beyond an annual report, a special pamphlet, or a web-site label. Slowly, some agencies have seen that education and public relations are a necessity, not just as a financial or political strategy but rather as a social strategy that relates their good work to circumstances in the marketplace, in the community. Whatever your opinion about micro-loans, for example, there is no doubt that that innovative link between a global strategy to alleviate poverty and individual lives on the ground created a transformative socio-economic effect, a brilliant connection that advanced everyone.
Communications is a discipline like science. It needs competent, imaginative individuals to do the work, the technical and financial resources to reach a vast audience, and an energetic committment by civil servants to meet the needs of civil society thirsty for knowledge.
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