Blog Activity: New York, before the city!

http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_sanderson_pictures_new_york_before_the_city.html

  This video by Eric Sanderson, shows how such landscape, as shown in the photo, turned into the big city of Manhattan. according to his research  his digital data, Manhattan was a living place for the Hampton who used the place for their every day activities. the large pond in Manhattan was earlier a downtown community center. the diversity of its ecosystem was also very important which made the Lenape have a high interest in the island. later on, the Lenape has a role in changing and modifying the environment by hunting.

BLOG REFLECTION2 : Our food system.

Taking a look at the products that food manufacturers throws at us. Our food supply has become modified that we are no longer eating food in their natural state. What i do find convenient when shopping at a grocery store, the outer portions of the grocery store is where the more unprocessed foods are located (vegetables, lean meats, fish and low fat dairy..). The interior isles are comprised of mostly highly processed, salted and sweetened foods,That way it is obvious for me to make a choice. Furthermore, labelled food is also a good way to know what nutrients and how many calories are in a typical Product. What scares me the most about our food system, is that i recently read that our food supply contain fructose corn syrup and trans fats in huge quantities, these products are highly modified and are harmful to our bodies. Furthermore, many kind of products that range from ethnic food, fruits and other veggies which can be in some cases beneficial but are not always present in a country, because they can not grow in a certain climate criteria, are then being imported from other places. Such act involve burning fossil fuels in great quantities and other implications involved. Finding organic food can also be a hard thing, and if a local grocery organic shop is found, prices are always higher than regular shops.  

BLOG REFLECTION: Zoos and conservation.

 I think that zoos play an important role in preserving and protecting wildlife. the presence of certain species in zoos guarantees their continued existence and prevent their extinction. for instance, capture breeding. some conditions are mandatory to take into account, in order to achieve a successful capture breeding. taking cheetahs for example, to breed, they much not be kept together all the time. what i do like about zoos, are the signs and posters that they put up. such thing make conservation problems more comprehensible to the public. however, on an ethical basis, animals have an intrinsic right to liberty. that is, only if conservation and animal welfare are the focus of such act, they may be kept in zoos.

Selection 41: Women's Indigenous knowledge and biodiversity conservation.

    gender and diversity are in many ways linked. First, women and biodiversity are put in a marginal important position. Diversity is the basis of women' s politics and politics of ecology. Gender politics is what concerns politics of difference. Eco-politics is also based on nature's variety and difference.

Diversity as women's expertise.

    In many communities of the third world countries depend on economies that rely on biological resources for their well being. In these communities, biodiversity is a means of production and and object of consumption. Labour technologies can be either productive or not, that depends on labour and if it is costly and scares or on the contrary abundant in which case labour displacement in unproductive because it would lead to poverty. Women' s background and work is central to biodiversity conservation because they tend to work between sectors and they are able to complete multiple tasks. For economics, women' s work is depreciated by economics because it falls outside the production boundary. What is labour and what is not labour is being increased in severity by the great volume of work women perform. Not to mention the fact that even if women work to sustain their families, their work is not visible because they are focused outside maker-related work and involved in multiple tasks.

Women:Custodians of biodiversity.

     Women are considered custodians of biodiversity since they produce, reproduce , consume and conserve biodiversity in agriculture. Nevertheless, their role in the development of biodiversity has been deemed as non work. Even though their labour has expertise, and based on sophisticated scientific practises, it has been defined into nature.

Biotechnology and destruction of biodiversity.

    First and foremost, biodiversity has instinct values. Multinational corporation has such different position from women farmers. The latter consider the seed as the continuity of life, whereas or the multinational corporations, they breed seeds that fail to rise to future generations. That way farmers are transformed into seed consumers. Biotechnology contributes to a loss of biodiversity as they steal safe and healthy food. Furthermore, genetic engineering, which has been thought to be a a safe procedure, is neither safe nor natural. In fact, genetic engineering is linked of many risks related to added toxicants to food and a decrease in nutritional quality of engineered food. Not to mention allergies and antibiotic resistant genes added to food, and the risk imposed to domestic animals.  

Section4: A sand county Almanac.

 

        In the community concept, all ethics share a single promise, that individuals are member of a community of interdependent parts. The individual competes for his place in that community and co-operate. We all struggle for safety, prosperity and peace in our time. Too much safety, though, yields to danger in the long run. The extension of ethics, that was only studied in philosophy, is a process in ecological evolution. In ecology, an ethic is a limitation on freedom of action in order to survive. On the other hand, in philosophy, an ethic, is a differentiation of social from anti social conduct. Another complexity that has seen the light as population density increased is so-operation mechanisms. The latter replaces free for all competition and with an ethical content.

The first ethics dealt with the relation between individuals, later natural increase dealt with the relation between the individual and society.

However, until now, no ethic deals with man and his relationship to land, animals and plants that grow and live upon it. An ethical relation to land can only exist if love, respect and admiration of land and high regard for its values are expressed, far broader than economic value.

The evolution of land is hindered by many obstacles, one serious one is the fact that our educational and economic system is headed away from an intense consciousness of land. An ecological comprehension of ecology is required for an ecological comprehension of land.

Section 29: Environmental, Energetics, and economic comparisions of organic and conventional farming systems.

nowadays, agriculture rely very much of synthetic chemical fertilizers and pesticides which are resulting in a dramatic effect on humans. More than 90% of US corn farmers rely on herbicides to control weeds. Another issue, is the consequences of modern agriculture on soil. The annual costs of public and environmental health losses to soil erosion exceed 45$ billion. On the other hand, organic agriculture is the aim to improve plant nutrition, preserve soil and water resources. Over all, it would not only improve the environment but also farm economies.

According to some experimental design of three cropping systems: conventional cropping, organic animal-based cropping, and organic legume-based cropping. The results and economics of organic systems compared with conventional systems seem to vary in a function of crops, regions and technologies used in the experiment. Not to mention that improvement in all of the land systems, water conservation and biodiversity... were greater in the organic systems than in the conventional systems.

Overall, organic technologies when used in agriculture result in an increase in soil organic matter and an abundance in biomass which conserve soil and water resources for drought years.  

section28: Food scarcity, an environmental wakeup call.

The world local economy was affected by the environmental deterioration. For instance, overfishing, loss of timber as a result of deforestation..etc these degradations of the environment has become more clear. In other words, actions such as deforestation has to have consequences such as rainfall runoff, erosion, flooding and so on.

==> agriculture.

Agriculture, according to archeologists, is the link between environmental deterioration and economic decline which started with water logging and erosion converting fertile wheat lands to desert.

The first sign that the world is on an economic and demographic path that is not environmentally sustainable was the rise of grain prices, followed by a doubling of grain prices in early 1996.

consequently, heads of households were unable to buy enough food to sustain their families and as a result the governments were taken responsible for such thing. Such situation multiplied, and since the worlds was expanding as well, it is becoming difficult to meed everyone's need

In research of land.

As the world population continues to expand, cropland and the amount of irrigation water are shrinking too. Many methods to expand the eras to produce crops include irrigation, terracing, drainage were used by farmers overtime. However, the frontiers of agricultural settlement has mostly disappeared after reaching its peaks in different time ranges.

In research of water

water scarcity, is another serious problem facing the world. High demands for water even resulted in a per-dried river before it reaches the sea. Most of world's wheat is produced on irrigated land since irrigation expanded faster than population. At the end of this, a sort of a competition has taken place between regions, making the losers import grains. That is, there is a shrinkage in both grain land and irrigation water.

The onset of food scarcity

 
     food scarcity has been accumulating by the degradation of the earth. Such thing has seen the light from overfishing, grain land productivity decrease below the growth in demand. In the United State grain stocks cannot be rebuilt with an outstanding harvest. Prices of some grains set higher records, not to mention the elimination of bread subsidy in Jordan because of the imported wheat high prices and the increasing fiscal deficit.

An unprecedented challenge.

It turned out that a revolution in human reproductive behaviour and stabilizing population and climate are the hard to get components to secure food supplied. The first component would challenge a generation. Climate stabilization means taking alcohol actions. Reducing carbon emissions means reducing fossil fuel burning and also increasing the efficiency of energy use. Water and land have also to be protected in order to meet future needs

when we secure food supplies, we will secure the whole upcoming future for next generations