Pacific Ecologist 3 - Spring 2002

PEACE OFFERING

Appeasing the gods of war: On Sept 11 Gisborne activist Manu Caddie posted a container of refined oil to the United States Embassy in Wellington to protest the plans of the United States and Britain to attack Iraq.

EDITORIAL

Making the World Safe for billions of hungry people

STATE OF THE WORLD BRIEFS

After decades of increasing development why does the United Nations Human Development report find the world's people are suffering from "grotesque global inequality?" The following briefs from UNDP and State of the World reports, describe the situation. And after 3 decades of talks and over 300 international environmental treaties, the earth and its life-sustaining resources are deteriorating rapidly. Why?

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

The great U-turn for survival: Modern society with its belief in development and economic growth, EDWARD GOLDSMITH observes, is unable to resolve the increasingly serious problems it generates. The relentless destruction of the environment and communities can only be reversed by a change of direction.

Exporting ENRON environmentalism: the Bush Vision for the future. Pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol was just the beginning, writes VICTOR MENOTTI. The Bush plan to promote more corporate growth would strip away the few structures there are to protect people and the planet.

FOOD AND AGRICULTURE

Famine as Commerce: DEVINDER SHARMA exposes the barbarous inhumanity of famine. This inhumanity reaches new depths with the United States Agency for International Development forcing GE food grain, rejected by world consumers, onto famine-stricken African countries.

Free trade - development of rich-country interests and a rich line in hypocrisy: KEVIN WATKINS, observes that the only in their demands on poor countries do rich countries behave like free traders, using international agencies like battering rams for market entry.

GE-free seed: a sustainability issue: New Zealand should not be bullied into accepting GE contamination in crops grown here, says Green Party co-leader JEANETTE FITZSIMONS. She says seed import rules should be tightened in response to the discovery of a contaminated maize crop in August. New Zealand should aim to be an integral part of a sustainable GE-free seed-trading network between countries that have not commercially grown GE crops.

Think global, eat local: If you feel powerless to make a difference think again. HELENA NORBERG-HODGE explains how eating local food will change the world.

WATER AND SANITATION

World's Troubled Oceans

The Politics of Community Sewage and Waste Water Management: A key commitment from the recent World Summit on sustainable Development is to halve by 2015 the number of people without access to basic sanitation and safe drinking water. JOEL CAYFORD takes a look around the S-bend of New Zealand's conventional, water-wasteful, polluting sewer systems and finds its time to reinvent the green toilet. It will be disastrous for the world, if conventional sewage systems were to be installed in third world countries - new water conserving technology is essential.

PACIFIC NEWS

Pacific News Spotlights

PACIFIC REGIONAL SUSTAINABILITY REPORTS

Urban trend degrading Pacific Islands - Report UNEP: Rapidly increasing urbanisation and the shift to monetary economies is creating social and environmental stresses in Pacific Islands. Most people are still involved in subsistence lifestyles and rely on the land and sea for food. But with modernisation has come greater demands on natural resources than traditional resource management practices. Threats posed by climate change mean improved water and land resource management are imperative for survival.

A decade of little progress on sustainability in Aotearoa: New Zealand has many qualities that could make it a world leader as a sustainable society. But in the recent report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, MORGAN WILLIAMS observes that New Zealand has made little progress towards sustainability since 1992, although the country adopted the concept then at the Earth Summit.

In reverse - Australia's environmental performance 1992 - 2002: PETER CHRISTOFF finds that Australia is failing in its commitments to sustainable development within the country and is also a renegade state, opting out of its international environmental commitments.

CHANGING THE ECONOMIC MODEL

Economy and environment: competitors or partners? SHARON BEDER argues that the market cannot solve environmental problems. There is an urgent need to find a solution that embraces the ethical dimension of environmental protection in the sustainable development debate.

Public property rights - a sustainable path: KEITH RANKIN examines development problems and concludes that a solution would be to extend the commons or public property rights, the common wealth of humanity. People and governments need to feel responsible for what happens, not just in their own country but for the whole world.

INTERVIEW / REVIEWS

In a Land of Plenty: the story of unemployment in New Zealand - Interview by Rosanne Robertson with documentary maker ALISTAIR BARRY

In the Name of Growth documentary video dir. 'ATU EMBERSON-BAIN - reviewed by ... Teresia Teaiwa

Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World by JOHN R. MCNEILL - book review by ... Les Gilchrist

The Health of Nations - PERCE HARPHAM