Surprise surprise

“Surprise evening”, so was written in the timetable and up until yesterday I wondered and I - not too subtly – enquired. The mystery was suddenly revealed to me when, during the hectic preparation, Milosz started to rave about gardening tools, plants and so on… “is it guerrilla gardening tonight?”

After reaching a no man’s suburban place in Rome we started planning and planting a flower-bed.

There were about forty of us. The heap of tools disappeared in no time and feet were in stepping on the ground. There was a strange bee-hive energy among all of us because motivation was up and kicking. The idea behind guerrilla gardening is to act against neglect of public spaces and reclaim it to public use.

In Rome, as in many other cities I guess, there are plenty of unused or abandoned areas that could easily be transformed by our own small actions. Planting a seed could be a way to change our surroundings and give a clear message that we do value green areas in our grey cities. It is even a way to stretch the idea that the city is ours and we want to take a good care of it, care that often is lacking in municipality policies.

Just arrived we set up for our dinner, a kind of strange picnic in between two roads and a roundabout. An then: we “digged”, we giggled, we sowed, we “singed”, we racked, we “runned”, we planted and, in the end, we just did it!

Neighbourhood was curious and people started coming down to see what was going on. They were pretty happy to see us around and started asking questions. One even brought us a plant! Cars were slowing down to have a peek and they showed their support in a variety of ways. In the end, we spent a good time in an unusual way (it really was a surprise), we joined local people improving their city and, as usual, “deeds no words”!

Some links go dig deeper:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_gardening

and

http://www.guerrillagardening.org/

We are doing stufffff.....

After yestrday session about SCI's history and mission, participants of the Seminar got very much into the motto of the organization - „Deeds and words”. The morning of the 3rd day of the seminar started with a visit of some activists from the „Happy De-growth” movement from the Rome group. We could hear from the first hand how does the Italian de-growth functions, what are the activities of the group and, most improtant, reasons standing behind those actions.

De-growt movement philosophy is not new. The most important propositions are:

1.We buy much more than we need. A lot of the things we need, we can do on ourslves, exchange with others or even get as a present from the others.

2.If we need to buy less, we need less money and as a consequence, we can work less! As a consequence, people will have more time to devote to their families, cpommunities, hobbies, art and culture.

3.De-growt doesn't mean going back to ancient times. It is about using what we have, but in sustainable way. Instead of growth, people should put more attention to developement. It means focusing on quality, instead of quantity.

So the propositions are actually finctioning in different periods of history. But nowadays for sure they are worth reminding!

The theorethical introduction was followed by presentations about composting and community gardening. Straight from the seminar room we went outside, to check how all that works in practice.

The group was divided into Bread Lab (daling with bread and pasta making), Compost Lab (preparation of the terrain for compost nets wich will be put up tomorrow) and Community Garden group, learning how to set up a garden, that in the cities is usually hidden under the concrete.

At the end of the session, almost everybody had to cut the pastry for the noodles, so that we can eat lunch before the sunset.

But you can be sure, that the handmade gnocchi and freshly baked bread was absolutely best lunch most of us ever had!

It started... with an action!

Sunny Monday welcomed the participants of the „European Youth taking the lead of environmental challenges: cre-active reflections for future concrete innov-actions” seminar in Rome! 17 participants form different corners of Europe joined together to learn, discus, share ideas, experiences. But most importnat – TO TAKE ACTION! And the first day already provided us with great opportunity to engage in deeds, not words (only).

Italy is facing major social issue currently. Italy's parliament approved legislation allowing private management of water services . The new law obliges authorities to lower their shareholding in municipal utilities with water businesses. Opposition leaders have expressed concerns that allowing private management of water services, even if the network remains in pubic hands, could lead to an increase in tariffs. And the activists form Citta dell'Utopia in Rome are definietely agains the idea of making water the object of business as usual tactics. Monday 22nd, March is the World Water Day. Before it happens, on Saturday a mobilisation for public water is going to happen in the streets of Rome and other major cities of Italy.

But our small seminar group managed to make a contribution fo the action already. On the first evening, instead of usual drink and regular chit-chat, we decided to join SCI Italy's activists in their late evening action. Together we were prepering signs, saying „Water is not a commodity. NO for prvate water” and giving details of the venue of the Saturday demonstration. Later in the evening we divided into groups and put the signs next to public drinking watr fountains in the neighbourhood of Citta dell'Utopia. We managed pretty well, and one of the groups was even hidding from the police!

Learn more and thake your stand!

You gotta fight for your right to...

...safety, the right to be informed, the right to choose and the right to be heard

Do you recognize these four rights? The right to safety, information, choice and to be heard are the official consumer rights, since 27 years annually celebrated on a World Consumer Rights Day on 15^th of March. They are your rights, because 'Consumers by definition, include us all', as John F. Kennedy, the founder of WCRD day once said, 'They are the largest economic group, affecting and affected by almost every public and private economic decision. Yet they are the only important group... whose views are often not heard'.

The Bill of Consumer Rights was recognized, legitimated and acknowledged by all members of United Nations. As Guidelines for Consumer Protection it was even expanded to the list of eight rights:

• to satisfaction of basic needs,
• to safety (of the products to consumers life),
• to be informed (honest labeling),
• to choose,
• to be heard (in the process of developing the products and well as governmental policies),
• to redress (to receive satisfactory settlement for unsatisfactory services),
• to consumer education (being aware of basic consumer rights and responsibilities and how to act on them),
• and the right to healthy environment (understood in terms of sustainable development).

Even though internationally acknowledged, consumer rights are being ignored and violated both by governments and producers and retailers. It sometimes seems that unofficially it was made much shorter into the list of right to watch commercials and the right to buy, buy, buy.

On this symbolic day, 2^nd Gaia seminar is starting in Rome! Twenty activists from Italy, Hungary, Serbia, Poland, Macedonia, Croatia and Georgia will be learning and working on new ideas for making change in the world around us!

In your activities celebrating WCRD you can focus on many different things, like food safety, consumer education, responsible shopping and more. During the Gaia event we will touch those topics, as well as we will work on how to implement them in practice during our projects. To learn more, follow the creatclimate4peace blog and remember to leave your comments!

Permaculture as a sustainable choice

Were you ever wandering, how the world of the future could look like? Apart from science-fiction books, movies, comix, you can also take a look at permaculture. The name means PERMAnent agriCULTURE and in practice it stands for a way of designing human surrounding (housing and food production) in the way that would mimic nature's ecosystems. The idea is one of the methids of adaptation to climate change phenomenons, but first of all the aim is to bring people closer to the nature.

Participants of the „Youth facing global challenges” seminar got a great opportunity to learn even more details thanks to the guest lecturer, Bruno from Croatia. He not only told us about permaculture and eco-villiges, but is himslef a co-funder of one.

The lecture and the discussion evolved around the topic of greening the desert programes, houses made of waste, modern design, that would mimic organic tissue. All that caused thrilling inspiration for many of the listeners. It was followed by specific examples of eco village communities, with detailed presentation of the eco-farm in Vukomeric, which our lecturer came from.

Is that one of possible ways for the developement of GAIA... you will learn in upcoming posts.

SAVE BAIKAL

Best part of SCI seminars is when you can apply the knowledge from the sessions. WWF Workshop during Youth Facing Global Challenges for Sustainable and Peaceful Future was about campaigning and especially which methods they used during Earth Hour campaign. After we came with own ideas for real problem happening in Russia – campaign against reopening of pulp and paper mill on the shores of the Siberian lake Baikal. It is the most voluminous freshwater lake in the world and contains a total of roughly 20 percent of the world's surface fresh water. Located in the south of the Russian region of Siberia, the body of water is also known as the "Pearl of Siberia". Baikal is home to more than 1,700 species of plants and animals, two thirds of which can be found nowhere else in the world and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. Baykalsk Pulp and Paper Mill (BPPM) was constructed in 1966, directly on the shore line, bleaching paper with chlorine and discharging waste into Baikal.

Support the campaign and SPREAD THE WORD!!!

Phenomenon called Climate Refugees

Who is a climate refugee? It is a person displaced by climatically induced environmental disasters. Such disasters result from incremental and rapid ecological change, resulting in increased droughts, desertification, sea level rise, and the more frequent occurrence of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, cyclones, fires, mass flooding and tornadoes. But, even though it sounds quit logical, can we really say Climate Refugee?

According to the UN Convention on Refugees: a refugee is “(...) any person who (...) owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country”

Therefore, technically someone changing habitat due to environmental degradation does not fall into this category since they are not persecuted directly by anyone. There is also a fact that most of the people that are forced to migrate, never leave their home country, and thereby also do not qualify to be a “refugee” according to the UNHCR definition. Of the ones that do leave their countries, most stay in neighboring countries.

Speaking about neighboring countries, we need to mention story about Tuvalu Islands. Just to give you an example how it functions in a reality.

The Pacific Ocean is home to 22 Island States with a total of 7 million inhabitants, one of the culturally most diverse regions in the world. What is really interesting, these Pacific Islanders emit approximately 0,06% of the world's greenhouse gases, at the same time they are three times more at risk to climate change than countries in the developing world. The highest point on the Tuvalu Islands is only 4.5 meter above the sea level. Yes. And it is the home of 11000 people. By 2050, Tuvalu is expected to become uninhabitable. The islanders risk becoming stateless not only the physical island, but all the institutions of a modern state –parliament, police, law course, state education, health care and other welfare institutions – may disappear. This means that their cultural heritage might be lost, and migration or relocation to other states may be the only realistic option; the complete extinction of a state without there being any successor state.

And here we come to the point about neighboring countries. Facing the fact that the islands will disappear due to the rising sea level, local politicians have been trying to make arrangements with their neighbor countries Australia and New Zealand to accept them as climate refugees. And what happened? Well… Australia has said no. How come? Easily. They don't want to create any special arrangements with single countries. This is particularly ironic since Australia is one of the countries in the world with the highest CO2 emissions per capita, and thereby a main contributor to global warming. What about New Zealand? New Zealand has proposed an immigration scheme, allowing 75 immigrants per year. However, these immigrants must comply with a range of prerequisites such as being between 18-45 years old, speak English, and having a concrete job offer in New Zealand once they arrive. Sounds difficult? Considering the location and level of access to resources, it is practically impossible. And even if it was, there is still a fact that the elderly and the poor, the most vulnerable, will have trouble being accepted as refugees. In other words, they are left on their own.

Obviously, mitigation achieving the rights to a new country is not the principal goal of the Tuvaluans. In the worlds of their Governor-General, known as “The Tuvalu Statement”; “Taking us as environmental refugees, is not what Tuvalu is after in the long run. We want the islands of Tuvalu and our nation to remain permanently and not be submerged as a result of greed and uncontrolled consumption of industrialized countries. We want our children to grow up the way we grew up in our own islands and in our own culture.

The U.N. currently states that more refugees are now displaced by environmental disasters than by war, more than 25 million climate refugees (ecologically induced migrants), and experts have projected that number will double within the next five years to over 50 million. Several organizations like the IPCC, Red Cross and The Christian Monitor estimate between 150 million and 1 billion climate refugees will be displaced within the next four decades, yet not one single international law gives asylum or even a helping hand to environmental refugees.