environmental_justice

Stop buying farmed shrimp and start asking where your's is coming from

I want to apologize before hand for my last blog. I tried to get a video on here, but I'm not the most technologically smart person and have failed. At the end my rant I'll give the link to the website though and I hope you take a look at it. So many of us love shrimp and it shows. Almost everywhere one can go out to eat there will be at least one shrimp dish. Now most of us do not think twice where our shrimp comes from, but for those of us who do know how we get shrimp, it makes it difficult to eat it. I took an environmental health class at Seattle Central Community College a few years ago and learned a little about shrimp farming and since then I have eaten shrimp maybe 5 times, maybe. Shrimp farming is a lot like other types of fish/animal farming. It packs tons of shrimp into close quarters, uses an outrageous amount of water, pollutes the surrounding environment and can have devastating effects on the human populations around it. The video I wanted to post on this blog is by the Environmental Justice Foundation. It takes a look at shrimp farming in different parts of the world from Southeast Asia to South America. People are promised jobs when the shrimp companies come in, but many times outsiders are hired instead of locals. The local suppy of water is used to fill vast ponds for the shrimp to live in. THese ponds are man made and the ecosystems that were there before them are destroyed. Shrimp farms use a gross amount out antibiotics on the shrimp so they do not get disease from living in their own waste water and living so close to one another. These antibiotics stay in the shrimp for humans to ingest and also run off with the drainage water. In the video a local crabber is interviewed and he talks about before a shrimp farm was put near his village he used to get four times the amount of crab he gets today. These are just some of the impacts that shrimp farm have on people on the environment.So what can we do. Well you can decide not to eat shrimp. If you can't do that try to find sustainably caught shrimp, even shrimp trolling boats can ruin the environments the shrimps live in. Look for pot caught shrimp. Share this videos with others so we can take a stand and stop shrimp farming.Here is the link to the video.http://www.ejfoundation.org/page211.html

Eradicating Endosulfan

I was looking on the Environmental Justice Foundation website for ideas about my next blog when I came across an article about the pesticide Endosulfan. What really caught my attention were two pictures that were in the article. One being a deformed cow from an area in India where Endosulfan was sprayed heavily. The other was a picture of an Indian girl named Shruti whose hands are severely deformed. Her village has been exposed to aerial spraying of Endosulfan for a long time. So after seeing these pictures I asked myself what kind of pesticide is this Endosulfan and why hasn't it been banned all over the world? Well after reading about Endosulfan I learned a few things.Endosulfan is an organochorline pesticide. Like DDT it persists in the environment long after killing everything. It has been used on crops such as tea, coffee, fruits and vegetables, but it is was of the most widely used pesticide on cotton. Endosulfan is supposed to kill insects and mites that feed on the crops, but more often than not it will kill every small animal near the area that has been sprayed. It is also highly toxic to fish and there have been many reports of massive fish die-offs where Endosulfan and run off into lakes and streams.There is currently steps being taken in the right direction though. Many countries have already banned or restricted the use of Endosulfan and the Environmental Justice Foundation is pressing the European Union for the most retrictive ban yet that will almost eradicate the use and manufacture of Endosulfan. There is even an online letter you can send to the European Union Environment Commissioner so your voice can be heard and we can all work together to stop the use of this deadly chemical.Here is the link if you would like to read more about Endosulfan's uses and the effects it has on the environment.http://www.ejfoundation.org/page246.html

HungerFree Woman Campaign: raising awareness to rural women about their rights

Hey its Rachel K.Okay, after I finish this post, my requirements for environmental anthropology are complete. Yes, I finished the take home final a couple hours ago and its great.Ive really enjoyed this class. byeeee.Okay, so there is a campaign run by actionaid.org.here is the link: http://www.actionaid.org/pakistan/index.aspx?PageID=3775here is a link of the news story covering the initative: http://southasia.oneworld.net/todaysheadlines/campaign-demands-equal-land-rights-for-pak-womenThis is an initiative taking place in Pakistan that involves activists and educators to travel across the country to inform rural women about their rights; specifically about their rights to the land.The campaign hopes that it will help empower women and sway them from being victims in times of food crises'. The campaign lists a series of objectives that they wish to educate rural women about. Members of the community will then come together for a National Convention.Some of these demands are calling for a change in government laws that will help womens rights' protected as far as agricultural policy went and to ensure equitable distribution of land throughout women peasants. First off, I was not even aware that this was an issue. Women are marginalized in rural Pakistan so that they can not even receive land rights so that the woman may have a chance at being self-sufficient. Apparentally though, the initative is going really well. activists from actionaid said that "they found that 20 million acres of cultivable land was lying useless in the country." Currently the HungerFREE women campaign is lobbying the government so the land will be given to women, instead of being sold. This will help a gender group that has been considered subordinate and marginalized for so long in a country, back on its feet. I think this campaign is really cool and I wish them the best of luck.

FCC's DTV rulle will create an "e-waste nightmare"

Hey yall! Its Rachel K. with my 2nd post. hehe. Im running a little behind schedule.Anyways, I saw this video on the greenpeace site and the one world site. It is about the toxic waste from old and discarded technology that is being delievered to Ghana from developed countries. Apparentally the Basel convention created a law stating that discarded "e-waste" is not allowed to be dumped into developing countries; yet developed countries have managed to find a loophole in the law so that e-waste is still being sent. It is legal for developed countries to send "secondhand goods" to developing countries so this is what the developed countries are doing. But low and behold, the majority of the second hand goods arrive broken and unrepairable, thus equaling them as trash-and they have to be thrown away...in ghana. The video also discusses how the e-waste is being used as a means to find precious metal by burning the trash (which lets out all the toxins of plastic and other things that make electronic equipment) in hopes to find precious metals within the electronics that can be sold. This is extremely detrimental to peoples health and even worse, Ghana doesnt have the medical resources to deal with the consequences of these toxins being released into the air and water.This video came out in August of 2008. However, I thought it was interesting because of the FCC requirement that all television broadcasters switch to digital in February 2009. This means if you have an antenna, it will not work anymore-labeling a lot of usable, but old, televisions sets obselete. These television sets will most likely end up in developing countries as "second hand goods"

Katrina Consequences still happening.

Hi. Its Rachel K. with my first post!So, I have been pretty lazy on the posts. I have been waiting for a great Environmental Justice story to fall in my lap, however, since Environmental Justice issues are not really considered sensational, massively appealing stories-I waited for a long time. :)However, I did find an interesting article published recently that can be accessed here that shows that health consequences are still arising from the Hurricane Katrina FEMA trailers.For those that don't know, the FEMA trailers and mobile homes were found to have hazardous levels of toxic formaldehyde. Approximately, the levels were 5x the amount of what people are exposed too in normal homes. This was all found out last year. There is still debate on whether the makers of the trailers were aware that the formaldehyde levels were so high.However, the report that was released monday from the New York Childrens Health Fund is the first in depth review of the childrens' mental and physical health in regards to the children who live(d) in the temporary housing units. The results are alarming. One of the most alarming ones that I found was that 41% of children younger than 4 were diagnosed with iron-deficiency anemia. This is more than twice the amount of children in New York homeless shelters.I think that this qualifies as an Environmental Justice Issue because clearly people of lower-incomes and color had their rights disregarded when subjected to government items that were poisoned. Although this trailer park was eventually abandoned and the tenants were placed in other housing situations; it's important to think about why it took so long for FEMA to get together to handle this situation. A quote happens in the article saying "who knows what's happening to the kids that we aren't seeing." and I think thats true. These people who 3 years ago had their homes destroyed, should at least be assured the basic rights of having a safe and toxic free place to live.

This is Michael D. with my third post. So I was looking for some current events in the news paper to talk about for this next post. My little adventure took me from the paper to the computer where I found some really disturbing photos and videos from a foundation that deals with this topic exactly; the Environmental Justice Foundation. What I focused on from their website was the cotton production in Uzbekistan. I chose to bring this topic up because I work in retail and deal with cotton fabrics regularly. Since cotton products are purchased and thrown away every day I feel it is important to bring this topic up and also because this particular example deals with justice for Uzbekistanis. Think twice about where your cotton is coming from. If we support sustainable cotton production we can help reduce environmental impacts from this kind of production. Due to the nature of their production in Uzbekistan, the ocean has dried up, their economy has failed and the population is stuck either doing nothing or picking cotton, which led to environmental degradation in the first place. Children are taken out of school in order to pick cotton. Pesticides haven’t helped either. Because the sea has dried up much of the salt has created a skin over the soil and the chemicals used to produce the cotton have also accumulated. This leads to health problems when wind storms pick up the dust and carry it to towns where the people breathe it in. Cancer and other lung diseases are rampant. So not only does this cotton production destroy the land but it also leads to health problems on a massive scale. It’s a never ending cycle, especially now. So why don’t they try another approach you ask? Because the government has enough power to force the people to produce cotton this way. While this seems like a local problem to Uzbekistan, the issue is also tied to everyone who uses the cotton. That means everyone who deals with textiles, fashion, fabrics and other industries have a choice when it comes to what type of cotton production they want to support. They could support environmentally degrading cotton production, like that of Uzbekistan, or they could choose something sustainable like organic cotton production. Before I stumbled upon the EJF website I had a basic understanding of the environmental damage that commercial cotton production creates but I didn’t realize how extreme of an impact it can have. That’s not to say that all cotton production is drastically degrading or that Uzbekistanis are bad people for producing cotton. Cotton production like this can happen anywhere. This is just one example of how we need to think twice before we act. I hope you can check out the first like to the environmental justice foundation web site and the posted video “White Gold.” http://www.ejfoundation.org/White Gold - the true cost of cotton from Environmental Justice Foundation on Vimeo.

The Battle for Bristol Bay

Hey Guys!I decided for my final post that I wanted to contribute a video clip to add some variety to our blog. In search of a clip I ran across a cool section of the NY times that has a collection of all sorts of videos. The video I am going to link, struck me and I felt that it needed to be shared with our class. Currently in Bristol Bay Alaska there is a controversial mine proposed. This mine is supposed to be one of the biggest mines in North America and is predicted to have major environmental and economical impacts. If this mine is approved then it appears that the environmental impacts will outweigh the economic benefits. The biggest environmental concern is linked to the salmon. The Bristol Bay watershed is where the largest salmon run occurs so it is extremely important for their health that it get preserved. The open pit mine is in search of copper and gold. There has been a fair amount of studies done on how copper in streams effects Salmon. Copper desensitizes the salmon's ability to smell making them more vulnerable to prey and also kills off food sources. This has many locals concerned. The salmon contribute to their sense of place and local knowledge. Many in this video express that they do not know what they would do without the salmon. It is their life. I really wanted to draw attention to this issue because the acceptance of this mine will not only affect the people of Alaska and since it seems to currently to be mostly a local issue I do not think it has drawn much attention. Check it out. http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/environment/1194821066219/index.htmlAlso, here is an article that goes into greater depth about the repercussions that we may face by allowing this pebble mine.http://www.orvis.com/intro.asp?subject=4571&bhcp=1Ms. Smith

Seattle panel to focus on environment and energy from 3 perspectives:

In reading this article I found myself getting frustrated. I feel that along with going in search of alternative sources of energy we really need to encourage energy conservation. I feel like the idea of conservation has flown right out the window over the last few years. Everyone is too busy arguing over which new alternative energy offers the best relief to suit our current energy needs. Why is alternative energy the only topic that is grabbing people’s attention, whatever happen to limiting the amount of energy that is consumed? It takes alterations of the existing environment to place the infrastructure for these alternative sources in turn these alternative energies end up having some sort of negative impact on the environment in one way or another just like oil has. Who knows how long it will take before once again we are thrown on this mad hunt for a better energy source. One quote from this article that really stuck with me was, "We don't think the end of oil is around the corner," Kornylo said. "How do we find that right balance in how we continue to meet needs to lower CO{-2} [carbon dioxide], plus deal with our population increase and needs worldwide? My question is why is the over consumption problem being shifted to population, and how are they defining needs? Further more, what are the real needs worldwide and who gets to determine that?http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008347780_energyseries03m0.htmlMs. Smith

To protect salmon, restrictions placed on three pesticides

The endangered species act saves the day! Stronger restrictions on the use of these pesticides will be a step in the right direction. It is time to think of other ways to deal with “pests”. We have known that these toxic chemicals will create more problems than they have solved, yet we have continued to use them.“Joshua Osborne-Klein, an attorney with the environmental group Earthjustice, said this could prompt farmers to consider different, less-hazardous alternatives to controlling pests."We think it's quite a positive step toward dealing with this issue," he said.” I totally agree with him, maybe by implementing stronger restrictions we can get away from the use of toxic chemicals and look for a different method to control pests. This may mean that farmers need to junk the idea of monocropping to control the pests. I feel like Professor Pena has been trying to stress the importance of this all quarter. Through our readings and his lectures we have been introduced to many different methods of farming revealing ways to deal with pests without the use of chemicals. Why not implement them? With questions like such, money always seems to be the underlying factor. In the article Heather Hansen exemplifies this. “Farmers risk having their shipments blocked if those pests turn up, said Heather Hansen, of Washington Friends of Farms and Forests, which represents the agriculture industry on pesticide issues.” This is very anthropocentric. The message she sent to me is, "who cares about the fish, I am going to lose money if my shipments get blocked". Okay, from a business point of view I understand where she is coming from, but in reality, is it excusable to knowingly drive a species, especially a keystone species into extinction over possible blocked shipments? My ethics say absolutely not! In reality what good will the money be if we degrade the current environment into an environment that our species can no longer survive in. The answer is pretty obvious and complex. Finding a balance between environment and economics will be the key, but the challenge is determining that balance. Ms. Smithhttp://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008408557_pesticide19m.html

Hey it's Michael D again. So we have been talking about indigenous/local peoples and their rights over the quarter. It made me think about this presentation by a guest lecturer in my restoration ecology class who presented us with the amazing removal of the Elwah River Dams. This dam removal will not only be the largest dam removal in the United States but it will also be the return of the fish populations to the upper river and the reestablishment of the Elwah people to the entire spectrum of native land. This project encompasses many themes relevant to our class including native perspectives, restoration, politics, and environmental justice. There is also the fact that the dams were built in a way that was completely illegal under the laws at the time. Fish passage was necessary, but because the builder had enough money they could bypass that feature of the dam. The motive behind dam construction was economic gain which led to the environmental damage here. This focus on economic gain for the developer forced the Elwah people to move strictly to the mouth of the river where their economy of salmon fishing was now concentrated. But now that the dam license is expiring there is the opportunity to fix many of the problems. The land can be restored, the fish will repopulate the river, we can hopefully change policies in positive ways and the Elwah people can move forward. There is an article on the Elwah Dam project in the Seattle Times at: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001998230_elwha06m.htmlAlso check out this website I found:http://www.colorado.edu/law/centers/nrlc/summerconference/2007/papers/Busch.Session5.pdf