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How to Create Change

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by Rona Fried As we know, the American consumer has yet to embrace the big changes required to halt climate change. We have a big hole to dig ourselves out of and don’t have the time to do it gradually. Americans have demanded everything to be cheap and industry has responded: food, clothes, airline tickets have become inexpensive enough for us to buy pretty much whatever we want when we want it. If we don’t have the cash, we just put it on a credit card or take the retailer’s offer to pay nothing for a year. That also worked for buying houses until recently; we continue to see car manufacturers hawk SUVs the same way in their endless television commercials. This consumer society is completely unsustainable for our environment and our economy. We’ve shipped our manufacturing offshore where it’s cheapest, hurting our economy and making it vulnerable to China’s whims. We are suffering from a severe leadership vacuum that few are willing to fill – utter words that intimate we might have to curtail our excesses and expect to get crushed by the political process and the media. I believe peoples’ attitudes will evolve with time – and strong […]

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Study: Certified Forests Yield Healthy Forests

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Community-based, sustainable forest management creates healthier forests that are less susceptible to wildfires and less likely to be cut down by locales. That’s the conclusion of a recent Rainforest Alliance (RA) study conducted in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve, which compared the health of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified forests with completely protected forests. For many years, NGOs such as Rainforest Alliance and Conservation International have been preserving forests by giving communities an economic stake in their preservation. The theory is when locales can make a living by preserving forests they are less likely to clear the land for cattle grazing, farming and other less sustainable activities. RA’s study shows the strategy is successful. From 2002-2007, the average annual deforestation rate for the entire reserve was 20 times higher than the deforestation rate for the FSC-certified concessions. Since 1998 the incidence of wildfires in the Reserve has ranged from 7-20%, while wildfires on FSC-certified concessions have steadily dropped from 6.5% in 1998 to 0.1% in 2007. "Nearly two decades ago, the Rainforest Alliance pioneered the strategy of using market forces to conserve forests knowing that economic incentives are key to protecting biodiversity and curbing deforestation," says Tensie Whelan, president of the […]

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