Preserving Indigenous Cultures to Preserve our Planet

I went on a trip to Ecuador this summer with my mom and brother. While touring around the different parts of Ecuador, we stopped at the city of Santo Domingo and stayed for a couple days. Once there we decided to go visit the Tsachala Indian reservation. Our Tsachala tour guide showed us around the reservation while also teaching us about their medicinal practices and food preparation (see picture above!). The Tsachalas are an indigenous people that have been living in Ecuador for many years and hopefully will continue to do so. But as the New York Times article I read today talked about, there is the problem of climate change affecting indigenous peoples too. Climate change is something that affects everyone but since indigenous peoples rely on certain animals and plants being available in ecosystems, any shift may affect their traditional subsistence method. Problems can be anything from rivers water levels lowering to weather becoming more unpredictable. As Dr. Baptiste, the director of the Colombian Environment Ministry’s Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute said, indigenous cultures adapt to changes over long periods of time, thus the reason their cultures have lasted so long - but climate change is occurring rapidly, and it can be hard to adapt quickly. Some of the young people in the tribes are leaving their communites because of this and the lure of better economic prospects. But losing this cultural diversity also means losing a "resilient knowledge base for adapting to and counteracting the effects of climate change". Many of these indigenous peoples have their own ways and technologies of dealing with nature, and to lose this would mean to lose new knowledge and methods that could help now and in the future. Efforts are being made in many countries to strengthen the indigenous cultures against the threat of climate change. Let's hope these efforts succeed.
 

Eating Insects to Save the World?

So how many insects have you ever eaten? Well, you answer, none. But you may be mistaken - you may have never actually put an insect into your mouth and willingly chewed on it, but you may have eaten one unbeknownst to you. I always think of one of the old Saturday cartoons where one of the characters would be sleeping and then a fly or some other insect would land on their mouth, and they would yawn suddenly and almost eat the insect. (Actually that might have just happened in Snow White, with Dopey...) I've read other articles before about how often insects are consumed when we sleep. But did you know that you could also be eating insects when you're eating other food products such as chocolate, corn, or broccoli? So how bad could eating insects be if you already eat them unknowingly? That is the premise of Fraser Lewry's blog post from the Guardian's website. He talks about many insect delicacies that are eaten around the world and how delicious they are. Some dishes you could encounter are fried crickets, weaver ants, waxworm larvae, and (Lewry's favorite) chocolate dipped scorpion. Insects are a viable option to (somewhat) replace meats - they produce more meat per kilogram of feed than other animals and more of their body mass is edible. Harvesting them would not cause as much greenhouse gases to be emitted and best of all, the insects themselves are so good for you. They have vitamins, minerals, and lots of protein - sometimes even more than beef. Since the world's population is rapidly growing and thus food demand is also, insects could be the answer to a possible looming food crisis, that is, if we can ever get over our squeamishness.
P.S. Lewry mentioned in his blog post how the "New Yorker had devoted 6500 words" to the eating of insects. Very cool article - you should check it out.Mmm grubs.  Also, check out Lewry's photos of insect dishes that accompany his blog post - mmm mmm even more grubs.

Big Orange is the New Green

UT's event "Make Orange Green" kick-offed yesterday in Presidential Courtyard. It was a display of UT's efforts to make our campus sustainable and it was also a celebration of these efforts. Initially walking through Presidential Court I was surprised to hear a DJ and a radio station playing music. There were tables set up in the middle of the courtyard with many different green clubs and organizations. Some of them included the UT Mug Project, Campus Beautification Committee, and UT Farmer's Market. The Adopt-A-Stream organization had a really cool table set up where you could observe the effects of things such as newspapers, oil, or dirt on water systems on a plastic board with farm animals, trees, etc. My poison of choice was pesticides (aka dry lemonade mix) which I poured into a stream on the farm - it spread a little bit but when it rained (or the table worker poured more water) the pesticides spread everywhere! The Adopt-A-Stream organization's name implies what they're all about - clubs on UT campus can adopt a stream and clean it up two times a year. The Cruze Dairy Farm table had delicious locally-made ice cream that they were handing out in mini-cones for free. I asked one of the girls scooping ice cream what the ice cream consisted of exactly, and she said it was made using the milk from their cows and organic eggs. Yum. I didn't actually get to try this delicious ice cream for myself because they ran out when I got there but I heard it was amazing. They also told me that they have a corn maze going on in October (anyone who's interested..). And they're located just off of Strawberry Plains, so not too far away from UT. Parked all around the courtyard were the latest cars from Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Chevrolet which all had zero emissions. And if thats not cool enough, I have to say the cars looked pretty snazzy, if I do say so myself.
But, my personal favorite part of the whole event was when the random flash mob burst into the Cupid shuffle in the middle of the courtyard. I had been warned of the flash mob beforehand so I wasn't too surprised, but it was fun to watch all of the students who were checking out all of the green tables and other stuff to stop and watch us 'walk it by ourself'. Plus it added a spontaneous atmosphere to the event! I also really liked the UT Mug Project table - I always feel bad every time I go to Starbucks and see a person in line who has brought their own cup to fill with coffee. If alot more people did that then there would be less paper waste in the world. I overheard the girl working the table saying that they were going to be giving away alot of reusable plastic coffee cups - sounds like I'll have to be on the lookout for them! Overall it was a very cool event and it did make me aware of some of UT's efforts to be green and motivated me to look up ways to get involved in this green effort. COME ON FELLOW UT STUDENTS,  LET'S MAKE ORANGE EVEN MORE GREEN. Wooohoo.   

FAMINE

Famine. Let me say it again. Famine. It seems like such a foreign concept to me. Something associated with ancient stories in the Bible and far away third world countries. As a U.S. citizen it's really hard for me to grasp the concept of people going hungry - so hungry that they possibly could die. But it's very real and it's happening in the world right now. In Somalia because of a drought that has persisted for awhile there are now thousands of people going hungry tonight and some of them will probably die. One of the most tragic parts about it is how a lot of people in the world don't even know it's happening - or the extremity of it (I didn't - but then again, many times I'm found guilty of being a college student wrapped in my own bubble).There may be a brief clip talking about famine on the nightly news, but I don't think people take it in and really absorb that other human beings are starving. They might look up at the screen for a moment and think "Oh, how sad" but then they go on with their daily lives and don't give it another thought. I'm not saying these are bad or selfish people, because I'm guilty of it too, but I'm saying that I think it's something we should try to be more aware of. According to an article from the BBC published 9 days ago - there are 12 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in Somalia. And there are 750,000 at risk of death in Somalia. And that was 9 days ago - the numbers may have increased by then. The UN also said that it is "East Africa's worst drought for 60 years". Somalia isn't the only country affected - it's just the one able to least efficiently deal with the problem. Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda are also under the same conditions.  And sadly there have been similar famines throughout Africa lasting for different time periods, from the 1970s until now, that were also caused by drought or sometimes political instability and conflict.

On a more sustainable note, a news article from treehugger.com that was published today talked about how the deforestation happening in Somalia contributed to the extremity of the famine. If more trees were present, it could be easier for the people to cope with the drought because the trees serve as shade, as a possible food source, etc. It's sad to think that if people had cut down less trees then perhaps not as many would be dying.

And finally on a happier note - experts say a way to more effectively deal with the drought is to transform dry and barren land into agroforests. To do this farmers will plant trees on their farms along with the crops and livestock their lands already sustain. When they did this in Niger and a drought occurred, agroforest farmers were better able to cope with the famine. Plus planting more trees = less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Win, win, situation.  

Weed... not so green

Everyone knows that drugs are bad for you. As college students we have been inundated with this information ever since we were in elementary school, (or maybe it started in middle school, I can't really remember). Regardless of when it started, we all have grown up with the facts that drugs can seriously harm your health. But who knew that drugs are also harming the environment, too? I definitely didn't. A recent National Geographic article highlights just how different recreational drugs are each harming the environment in their own ways. Indoor growers of marijuana in the U.S. and Canada have to use lights, dehumidifiers, and other appliances so they can grow the marijuana in conditions just like the outdoors. Crazy fact: Smoking a single joint is worth two pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. What??? The process of producing meth requires using many toxic ingredients, thus producing quite a bit of toxic waste for the environment, that can be present for years. Rainforests in Colombia and other countries are being cleared to make land for growing cocaine. Khat, a stimulant chewed by people in Yemen, is such a big cash crop that it is causing farmers to drain their aquifers in order to bring water to this plant. And they have to burn fossil fuels in order to bring the water all the way to fields where the plants are. In Afghanistan where opium poppies are grown (see picture above!), the poppies deplete the soil after having been grown in one field a couple of times - leaving the land fallow. Also, extracting sap from the poppies to make heroin requires alot of toxic substance use as well. Plus for all of the drugs you have to add in the amount of fossil fuels used to transport the drug to different places and/or smuggle it across the border. Who knew that such natural substances (excepting meth, of course) could be so bad for our environment?

Eatin' green

Yo green eaters,
So as I was blowing up the google search engine this afternoon I decided to do a little searching to see how easy it is to find sustainable or "eco-friendly" restaurants. Surprisingly there are a couple of really cool search engines that will help you out. The first I stumbled upon was The Green Restaurant Association's website. They are a non-profit organization that certifies restaurants as "green" based on a point system. The restaurants have to earn a certain number of points to get a two, three, or four star rating. The more sustainable the restaurant is, the higher it's rating. Seeing as the website had a search engine I looked at how many sustainable restaurants Tennessee has. Ready? Two. Yeah, thats right - two restaurants that are green certified. Now I know this website is probably not all encompassing - it is only showing the restaurants which have applied to the green restaurant certification process and been approved. I'm sure there are many other restaurants out there which don't even know of this association or don't want to bother with certification. (Btw, both of the restaurants were in Nashville - they look pretty delicious, called Tayst and The Mad Platter). But when searching just the New York Metro area for green restaurants it pulled up atleast 100 restaurants - pretty impressive.

The next website I encountered was the Eat Well Guide . When searching it I typed in the UT zip code and it came up with 40 listings within 20 miles of the zip code - now this was more of what I was looking for. The website broke down the results into categories such as bakers, farmers, restaurants, etc and showed the distance from your zip code to the place. What we had the most results for was farmer's markets though which isn't surprising. Here in Knoxville I know we have the Market Square Farmer's Market every Saturday morning and also UT hosts a farmer's market on the ag campus every Wednesday from 4 to 7, May through October. When I viewed all of the results together, it listed many places that I've been to many times in Knoxville: Tomato Head (yum pesto!), Golden Roast Cafe (so close to UT's campus), Coffee and Chocolate (so good), and Fresh Market (where I would grocery shop if I weren't a broke college student). The only thing was that there wasn't a criteria such as the other website had to help you determine just how eco-friendly these places are. The coolest feature about the website is that it has a search engine for traveling where if you type in your starting point and then your destination it will show you sustainable eating all the way on your trip. I typed in my house as the starting point and my cousin's house in Florida as the ending point. It had 195 results! And it even had a cool map showing all of the places along our route where we could stop to eat. Yum. So much good food. 

P.S. If you ever happen to be in London, Cornwall, or anywhere in the UK and want to find some good sustainable restaurants there, I came across The Sustainable Restaurant Association which lists sustainable restaurants for the UK!

Save the fishies

As you read in my previous blog post, Chipotle is a fast food chain restaurant with surprisingly sustainable food practices. They are the only ones of their kind to use organic foods which is pretty awesome. This article will tell you more about the new non profit organization they have established to help assist family farms and educate young people about sustainable farming!

Florida is one of my favorite places in the world. Actually, it is my favorite place in the world - though Tennessee fans will probably all hate my guts after reading this. I grew up in Florida for a good third of my life and it has thoroughly become a part of me. Every summer my family and I make our annual trip to the beach and stay with my aunt. She lives in a rural town with only one high school in the county and lots of men who make their living off of fishing. Being right on the gulf of Mexico, these men go out every morning and come back in the evening with their various catches: grouper, marlin, flounder and lots of others. I've even been out on a fishing expedition or two with my cousins. The kind of fishing we're doing is just with a hook, line, and sinker. If we catch something we don't want to eat we throw it back into the ocean, and it can still live a happy fish life. But unfortunately for the big fishing companies, they can't do the same. With their huge fishing nets they pull in all sorts of marine animals that aren't supposed to be eaten - the most well publicized example of this is of course dolphins being pulled in with tuna. But it happens to lots of other kinds of animals too. In a new effort by scientists and fishermen alike, fishing gear is being changed to help save some of the "bycatch". Changes involve a differnece in hook design and net design, putting noismakers on boats, and making fishing lines more visible. Overall hopefully these modifications will save some of the most important and endangered marine species! You can read the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/science/23catch.html?pagewanted=1&ref=earth 

P.S. Just posted on the NY times a couple of hours ago: Obama is deciding not to take environmentalist's advice and enforce stricter ozone standards that he's been talking about enforcing through the course of his presidency. Smh. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/science/earth/04air.html?ref=earth