Human impact = destruction of natural systems and processes

Familiar case?

• Starvation in West Africa = outcome of land productivity decreased due to soil depletion and nitrogen deficiencies caused by land over-exploitation for farming purposes. 
• Global markets affect local land practice and land change over time, changing soil quality and productivity as an outcome of human activity.

So how destruction appears and whom to blame?

Soil erosion. Deforestation. Desertification. Biodiversity loss. Water pollution. Atmospheric and climate changes. Environmental crisis is a pressing concern to producers around the world who are making a living off the land. But perhaps, more importantly, these topics are a central interest to apolitical ecologists, whose dominant narrative - that people destroy ecosystems out of ignorance, selfishness and overpopulation - is the central target of political ecology critique.

By responding to the environmental cries of Malthusians (advocates of population control) and technocrats ( technology should be in control of all decision making), political ecologists see environmental destruction presenting analytical challenges.

While popular accounts put blame on population growth leading to resource scarcity crisis and mass starvation, political ecologists account that what plays role is:

- socio-economic and institutional changes. They made poor communities and households more vulnerable to scarcity (holding less land and fewer rights to it);

- political economic change which made ecological systems more vulnerable to degradation. The progressive pressures placed by marginal communities on the land were environmentally destructive, causing declines in land productivity which was difficult and impossible to reverse when the process already started.

Today reading awakening book on political ecology. 

I have never before heard of this discipline, therefore it raised my curiosity, and I must say leading me to pretty amazing mind transformations. It offers a deeply critical view on ecology, and combines various disciplines (policies, rights, politics among other) when discussing subject of conservation.

Today I am reading a chapter dedicated to the forests. destruction of nature and human impact.

According to an author (Paul Robbins), once appearing in a protected forest, it is not only about its thickness what we can notice and shadows it generates, but as well incredibly creepy homogeneity of the scene. When trees planted in order, and have a structural pattern on the group, the presence of human impact is inevitable. Not only by a fact there is no human impact at all (because it is protected area) but rather that this forest is a creation of human. Forest represents a degraded scar, where commercial and state interests have halted its chaotic natural processes creating linear tracks....

This is no forest anymore. Rather as a dream of an engineer, a social construction of what a forest should look like, made by real political planning and an extremely large scale.

Animal species are here, many of them foreign to that region, like migrants from the other lands. Some are descendants of human introductions and experiments gone wrong.

What is natural and what is not, what should be preserved and what should not, what is degraded and what is not, what can be controlled and what cannot.

 Is forest a natural wilderness to be preserved from human impact and depredations of development? Is it a degraded scar, which demands restoration and disconnection from institutional mechanisms? Is it a social construction, revealing a human imagination what a forest should look like? Or is it chaotic tableau landscape powered by of nature which takes its own pace despite humanity's efforts at control? 

Investigating political ecological process and seeking explanations of environmental and social change, the answer, of course, is that it is all of these.

The forest - is a victim of utilitarian extraction which degradation defined by a decline in natural productivity, biodiversity or usefulness. The forest - is a product where nature constructed by human imaginary mind and collection of assumptions how a forest ought to look like. The forest - is a production, and industry for itself and for a human needs.


Political ecology only questions to define a process and who involved creating it, modifying it, making decision about it. Whether is a process of 'destruction' or 'construction' of 'environmental systems' or 'landscapes'.

Human-environment interaction has two ways: nature is 'destructed' through systems and human impact on environment. In a meantime 'ecology' is also something humans 'construct' through categories of knowledge and imagination. So, what is 'natural' and what is 'unnatural' in this case? 

It is predetermined in the first place by social and cultural concepts, assumptions, filters and structures.

Alarming Loss of Wildlife

Alarming Loss of Wildlife - is where I capture information on human-wildlife conflicts and alarming disappearance of wildlife (keywords: illegal wildlife trade, rainforest logging, ecocide, poaching, rhinos, great apes, Africa, Asia).

That's I guess is where my inspiration starts to reflect in this blog all what I guess it kind of urgent. I want to write this blog with a strong believe it can bring a value someway somehow. Either awareness, knowledge, or inspiration, yet with some small impact to play its role...

5 years in between...

Years passed since I took a leadership course with the Earth Charter to which I was also assigned to start writing this blog and complete few assignments. Many things happened in life since then. But what's important - is who I became as a result of those experience. And I must say it is a different person from a girl who was writing those blogs here back in 2008..

Yet still, it is me. This blog can not truly reflect who I am. Yet I am existing, thinking, inquiring, observing, creating... and still lead by the same force - my passion for this world, the planet, the humans, and the Nature.

My animation :)

Here is the link to the animation I made about the "Nisporas fruit story" with a message to eat food rationally..http://www.beatboard.org/eGLO/index.html I hope you like it!

Videos for social change

To create a video or animation that could bring some change is not an easy task - it requires both the creativeness (sometimes shockable), emphasis of the problem and solution both on the emotional level and within practical context, and of course attractiveness for the viewer as important aspect for memorizing the main message of the video..

In response to the one of the e-Glo homeworks about finding and posting the videos or animations that can bring a social change, i would like to share with you some of them that recently attracted my attention and that i find both effective and creative at the same time!

First animation I would like to show is an educative animation cartoon produced by the WWF for raising awareness of less of biodiversity! Why I find it effective and interesting is because of its most creative part - to imitate a popular story of "DaVinci code" in one awareness raising cartoon about biodiversity!! Thus the name of the cartoon is as well related to the issue - "BioDaVersity Code" !! I shall admitt that the cartoon was produced at the time when the book of D. Brown "Da Vinci Code" was on the pick of its popularity. Of course in some sense the cartoon doesn´t deal much with change, but successfully raise the importance of the problem (causality among loss of biodiversity and the humans), and brings educative motives to the viewer to make some action within "what you can do" option at the end of cartoon!

The link to the animation is the following:

http://www.daversitycode.com/

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The second video is an advertisement to raise awareness of saving the energy. I find this ad powerful due to presenting the message in the opposite way with opposit effect - respectively instead of stating a message of "saving the energy" it promotes "the wasting energy day" ! Although the ad has an entertaining character, I am sure that it attracts many minds to check the website that has been promoted through this ad - which in result brings you to the website http://www.together.com/ with moto: "easy ways to fight climate change"! This ad, although with funny guy in it, in reality tries to rise a public awareness and especially to promote energy saving habits! This public campaign was launched last year in April in the UK, and I hope with successful results :) Some more info at:
http://www.greendaily.com/2008/03/26/energy-wasting-day-on-april-1st/
http://www.energywastingday.com/

Check yourself the ad, it is really entertaining, but makes to hope that there were no individuals who perceived the message of the ad in a wrong way! You will understand what I mean by watching it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6nAYIrxCiQ

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And the last video I would like to share with you is about attracting individuals to get involved more with environmental issues.. Altough the video as well have some entertaining manner (as well probably produced in the UK, since is possible to sense a presence of english black-humour on the background of landscapes of London), it clearly opens a message that "you don´t have to be a superhero to save the planet"! I got to know about this video from an e-mail that was sent to me from the WWF international few days ago, and I decided to spread it, so hopefully maybe you find it interesting and actual to get involved into campaign that WWF international is launching now! Here is the message of WWF together with a linkg to the video:

http://www.connect2earth.org/content_pages/super_hero.cfm


"Superman, Batman, Iron Man, Wonder Woman and Spiderman.Superheros have been saving our world over and over again for the past 60or more years. Whether it is fighting super villains, natural disasters ormonsters from another dimension, they always seem to come good in the end.But in real life you don't need to be a superhero to save the planet.Simple, small, every day actions can make a real difference. And best ofall they can be really easy! Whether that is leaving your car at home orswitching to energy efficient light bulbs... Every little bit counts.Watch our new "Superheros" video and start changing the world today:
http://mail.panda.org/inxmail0/url?vr4yqc0h0r4b0bipb3a3

And now you can do something even more amazing. This October world leaderswill be meeting in Barcelona, Spain, to discuss the pressing issues facingthe planet today. And we want you and your ideas to be there. One luckyperson will travel to Barcelona and tell the world just how important ourplanet is to us. How important we find the variety of life that lives onit. The vistas we see. The sites we marvel at. The things we care about.All we need are your ideas, so tell us (and the world) what you think!Watch the video and find out what you can do!
Sincerely,WWF International"


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