In 2009, for the first time more than half of humanity lived in cities.
Nearly 700 new towns, housing more than 250 million people, have been created since the 1990s. Megacities of more than 20 million inhabitants are emerging: after Tokyo and Mexico City, Mumbai, Dhaka, Sao Paulo, Karachi … For the UN, ”the twenty-first century is the century of cities“, and the urbanization of the world upsets balances economic, social and ecological regions. In many countries, agriculture has become industrial, nature is reduced to endless fields framed by roads or highways. Tarmac and concrete cover the earth, the rivers are trapped between the dikes or captured in giant pipelines, the fields are full of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Gradually, the man away from nature and believed to have dominated. And one day, one wakes up. Mass media sound the alarm: the greenhouse gases destroy the ozone layer that protects against solar radiation, they warm up the Earth’s atmosphere. Glaciers are melting, sea water threatens to engulf thousands of islands in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean! Cyclones and storms devastate entire countries! No country is immune because we are part of a global ecosystem. Deforestation in the Amazon basin changes the patterns of rainfall from Mexico to Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. Similarly, logging in Africa has an influence on rainfall in central-western United States, while deforestation in Southeast Asia is changing the rainfall in China and the Balkans.
More and more people become aware that we can not isolate ourselves from nature. We are part of it. We need the its oxygen to breathe, its water to drink, its plants to feed us and protect us.
If we poison it, we also poison us. We discover that the world is small for 7 billion people. The resources of earth are limited and we do not have a spare planet.
Time is come to react. We can do much, even at the level of a small team. If you wish to engage in an action project for the environment, we offer three tracks:
1. Reconnect with nature, discover the wonders of the natural environment, confront the natural elements and rhythms to discover ourselves and become familiar with nature. This is not strictly speaking a project but rather a way to find the fundamental links with the natural environment without which we can not live. Forging new ties will also help you find the basisi of a real environmental action. To learn more about that, download the handout ”New links with nature” from the Toolbox.
2. Take action to protect nature and raise public’s awareness about the need to do it. Now preserving the natural environment is a global concern. Scientists worldwide have launched alarm: time is running out, we must change our behaviors and our life styles. If you want to protect and preserve the natural environment, download the handouts ”Preserving the natural environment”.
3. Studying natural systems and experiment with new solutions for sustainable development. Our planet is a whole ecosystem in which all the elements interact with each other. Without understanding these interactions, people make foolish choices or make short-sighted decisions that pollute and destroy nature. If you want to discover the ecosystems and contribute to new solutions for sustainable development, download the handout ”Nature to learn and invent”.
Obviously, these forms cannot provide you with turnkey projects. They are designed to give you ideas, references and guidance. You need to use your imagination and your creativity.
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