Tropentag 2010

Another note about the Conference on Tropical and Subtropical Agricultural and Natural Resource Management (Tropentag). This year Tropentag is taking place in Zurich, Switzerland, 14 - 16 September 2010.

The Tropentag conference has just put out a call for papers. This years conference is titled: "World food system: A contribution from Europe" and will feature many young scientists from all over the world.

Tropentag is an annual conference for sustainable resource use and poverty alleviation. The style of the conference is interdisciplinary and involves people from a range of backgrounds addressing food security, sustainable land management among other things.

Tropentag has been called 'The most important International Conference on development-oriented research in the fields of Food Security, Natural Resource Management and Rural Development in central Europe' (CATST Hohnheim).

Tropentag will be a great opportunity for networking with professionals in sustainable forestry and agriculture, learning the 'state of the art' and meeting many of my professors and colleagues from Witzenhausen, Göttingen and Kassel.

This Blog is now listed on Best Green Blogs

Beekeeping

I came across'Joy' by Julie Cadwallader Staub this morning and had to share:

'Who could need more proof than honey—

How the bees with such skill and purpose
enter flower after flower
sing their way home
to create and cap the new honey
just to get through the flowerless winter.

And how the bear with intention and cunning
raids the hive
shovels pawful after pawful into his happy mouth
bats away indignant bees
stumbles off in a stupor of satiation and stickiness.

And how we humans can't resist its viscosity
its taste of clover and wind
its metaphorical power:
don't we yearn for a land of milk and honey?
don't we call our loved ones "honey?"

all because bees just do, over and over again, what they were made to do.

Oh, who could need more proof than honey
to know that our world
was meant to be

and

was meant to be
sweet?'

I also wanted to take the opportunity to talk again about the importance of beekeeping. I was blogging about Bees last year on Dr. Green's Perspectives website and wanted to press again the importance of bees in our lives for joy, for biodiversity and for the sustainability of ecological systems. The bees need our help.

The best way to help the bees is to start keeping your own. To start keeping your own bees pick up a book, or better yet, talk to your local beekeeper association or society; they are proud, happy and informative people. Responsenet is working on a set of pedagogical and direct action programs to support wild bees and to promote sustainable beekeeping practices. The International Bee Research Association has resources for professional and new beekeepers. And Apimondia the International Federation of Beekeepers' Associations offers a network for information, and connections to local beekeepers.

List of 25 Blasphemous Quotes Published by Atheist Ireland

The scary news this morning is that the Irish government has decided to make it illegal to offend religious beliefs - Effective yesterday blasphemy is now a crime punishable by a €25,000 fine.

It may not have a lot to do with 'Sustainable Practices' but it is nevertheless important; today I am writing to support free speech in Ireland by publishing some quotes that are considered blasphemy. 



Here are some of the quotes from Atheist Ireland: 


Mark Twain, describing the Christian Bible in Letters from the Earth, 1909: “Also it has another name - The Word of God. For the Christian thinks every word of it was dictated by God. It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies… But you notice that when the Lord God of Heaven and Earth, adored Father of Man, goes to war, there is no limit. He is totally without mercy - he, who is called the Fountain of Mercy. He slays, slays, slays! All the men, all the beasts, all the boys, all the babies; also all the women and all the girls, except those that have not been deflowered. He makes no distinction between innocent and guilty… What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.” Twain’s book was published posthumously in 1939. His daughter, Clara Clemens, at first objected to it being published, but later changed her mind in 1960 when she believed that public opinion had grown more tolerant of the expression of such ideas. That was half a century before Fianna Fail and the Green Party imposed a new blasphemy law on the people of Ireland.

Tom Lehrer, The Vatican Rag, 1963: “Get in line in that processional, step into that small confessional. There, the guy who’s got religion’ll tell you if your sin’s original. If it is, try playing it safer, drink the wine and chew the wafer. Two, four, six, eight, time to transubstantiate!”

Randy Newman, God’s Song, 1972: “And the Lord said: I burn down your cities - how blind you must be. I take from you your children, and you say how blessed are we. You all must be crazy to put your faith in me. That’s why I love mankind.”


Matthias, son of Deuteronomy of Gath, in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 1979: “Look, I had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was that piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah.”



Frank Zappa, 1989: “If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine - but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you’ve been bad or good - and cares about any of it - to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.”

Salman Rushdie, 1990: “The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.” In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie because of blasphemous passages in Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses.

Bjork, 1995: “I do not believe in religion, but if I had to choose one it would be Buddhism. It seems more livable, closer to men… I’ve been reading about reincarnation, and the Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren’t lesser beings, they’re just like us. So I say fuck the Buddhists.”

Amanda Donohoe on her role in the Ken Russell movie Lair of the White Worm, 1995: “Spitting on Christ was a great deal of fun. I can’t embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages, and that persecution still goes on today all over the world.”

George Carlin, 1999: “Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!”

Klimaforum09 Closing Ceremony

Now in cold Bonn glad to be out of a suit and away from the high tension and high security of Copenhagen and the COP15.

I want to bring some attention to the Klimaforum09, one of the more positive things to come out of Copenhagen. Unlike the disappointing end of the COP15 in the Bella Center the closing ceremony of the Klimaforum was a celebration of success. The various movements banded together in Copenhagen to put on a fantastic conference and several large peaceful demonstrations (Read the Earth Times Summary). The 'System Change not Climate Change' declaration was finished and ultimately shared in a short presentation to the Plenary inside the COP15.

During the closing event Tor Nørretranders gave a very moving speech about the sexiness of helping others. His speech (Read more on his blog 'What it Means to Be Human') centered around the theme of sex and success. Tor Nørretranders tells us that a basic aspect of evolution has been overlooked in Darwinian thought. What Darwin failed to notice is that evolutionary success is not just about being the fittest, sometimes it is about being the most generous. In other words, sharing and caring are also part of reproductive success - being attractive - being sexy. Being attractive is being generous.

Tor Nørretranders has several books out and is certainly worth keeping track of.

Hanging around in Copenhagen

The COP15 organizers (UN, UNFCCC, City of Copenhagen, Denmark) have either done a terrible job organizing this event or they have deliberately messed this up, either way 45,000 registrations were given for a conference that holds only 15,000 people, therefore civil society is left out in the cold. In some cases civil society has even been roughly evicted from the Bella Center. Luckily the IFOAM staff is extremely resourceful and industrious and have been organized enough to find a new space for a side event at Action Aid here in Copenhagen.

Despite the exclusion from the COP15 the NGO world has been active. The side events I witnessed today at the Klimaforum and Action Aid were phenomenal. IFOAM hosted a 2 hour side event dealing specifically with soil carbon and organic systems. Gundula Azeez of the Soil Association Timothy Lasalle of the Rodale Institute, Urs Niggli of FiBL as well as people from IATP, La Via Campesina and others presented information about organic systems.

Great day!

The situaton inside the COP15

Not only are the Danish police both bumbling and heavy handed here in Copenhagen the UN organizers of this 'Conference of the Parties' COP15 event have really made a terrible mess. The IFOAM delegation numbers have been restricted so severely that most of our delegates cannot gain access and we probably cannot host the side event we scheduled for tomorrow. The Friends of the Earth have been restricted completely (The chair was escorted and banned) from entering the event and the venue entrance is now filled with a sit down demonstration of several hundred NGO members who have gone through security but are still not allowed to enter the venue.

The UN organizers informed us last week that that tomorrow 'civil society' will be cut down to 1,000 and by Friday down to 90. Now it seems they have changed the story and intend to cut our numbers down today and restrict access altogether by Friday. The general consensus is that civil society is being marginalized here. For UN organizers to register 45,000 people for an event that they planned to limit to 15,000 attendees is wrong and it is terribly costly to the organizations. People have come from all over the world at great expense. Researchers in organic agriculture from around the world have come to present at our side event and take part in our press conference only to stand outside in the snow for up to 8 hours and then be turned away. Everyone is very upset. Andre Leu even said yesterday that the organizers of this event are incompetent on Australian National television.

What is left of the NGOs inside the COP15 have planned an organized walk-out from the Bella Center today. With less than 1,000 inside the place is quite empty and now that the Plenary sessions will allow only 300 and may not even allow us to speak. The collective understanding is that it makes more sense for us to concentrate our energies on the growing movement outside of the venue.

COP15

Modkraft

Reclaim Power COP15

COP15

The early bird gets the worm here at the COP15. It appears that Urs Niggli and I are the only members of the IFOAM delegation to make it inside the COP15 today.

This morning was a necessary early start here at the COP15 in Copenhagen. Half asleep without breakfast or coffee I made my way from our IFOAM flat in the north of the city to the Bella Center to join the ranks of shivering NGO workers. The line outside stretches from one tram stop to another and the line for those not yet registered is even longer. The que outside is probably already beyond the capacity of the center which is a real bone of contention for us -why would UNFCCC register more people for the center than capacity? There are some 40,000 people registered with a capacity for 15,000 for this event. Standing together in line with the rest of the members of 'Civil Society' we discussed the implications of this poor organization on the part of security staff here in Denmark. The lines are neither marked nor is the purpose of each line known to the security staff. It is a mess.

The Party members are now pouring past the IFOAM Booth with entourages of support staff and security. No plenary sessions officially start until after 1700 but these guys are on the way in to pick up tickets and see Prince Charles, Al Gore and Arnold Schwarzenegger speak to the issues.

That is all for now from the COP15