UN opens Biodiversity Year with plea to save world's life-supporting ecosystems

Kicking off the new year with a little press release from the UN on the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity.

1 January 2010 – In a bid to curb the unprecedented loss of the world's species due to human activity – at a rate some experts put at 1,000 times the natural progression – the United Nations is marking 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity, with a slew of events highlighting the vital role the phenomenon plays in maintaining the life support system on Planet Earth.

“Humans are part of nature's rich diversity and have the power to protect or destroy it,” the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which is hosted by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said in summarizing the Year's main message, with its focus on raising awareness to generate public pressure for action by the world's decision makers.

“Biodiversity, the variety of life on Earth, is essential to sustaining the living networks and systems that provide us all with health, wealth, food, fuel and the vital services our lives depend on. Human activity is causing the diversity of life on Earth to be lost at a greatly accelerated rate.

These losses are irreversible, impoverish us all and damage the life support systems we rely on every day. But we can prevent them.

Read the entire UN press release here.

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It Ain't Easy Being Green, But It's Worth It!

By Lon S. Cohen

This post originally ran in my "Ask Dad" column in Long Island Pulse Magazine's April 2008 issue. It has been edited slightly for a wider audience.

While environmental issues have been talked about ad nauseam since Senator Gaylord Nelson put them squarely onto the nation’s conscious with the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, popular commentary such as Al Gore’s, A Inconvenient Truth, show that we still have a long way to go.

So what’s a parent to do in a world succumbing to the effects of a disastrous global policy toward the earth? Is anything going to work in the face of such a monstrous tidal wave of environmental doom and gloom? Perhaps there are a few strategies we can employ with our kids.

Tu B'Shevat is called the “New Year for trees” in Judaism. It’s frequently used as an opportunity to teach children about the environment by planting a new tree or learning about fruits. Think: Jewish Arbor Day. Religion instills a sense of stewardship over the earth as protectors of God’s creation. If you are raising your child with any religious affinity, try to put environmental lessons in there for good measure.

Expose children to nature, firsthand. Take them out to see what this world has to offer in the way of natural preserves and wilderness; believe it or not, there’s still a lot left around here. Better yet, plan a camping trip with the kids and tech them to live with nature at the basic level. There are plenty of campsites with direct access to woodland trails, waterways, and animals in their natural habitat.

Instruct and inform children on how to be a better environmental citizen. Start by not littering. Even a flick of used chewing gum amounts to wastefulness. Teach that on a personal level it’s a small effort to live by the three R’s of environmentalism and it can go a long way over time.

Lead by example. There are plenty of ways to do this, but here’s one tip: Use eBay. My friend buys lots of good quality toys for her kids from eBay. Not only does it reuse items that might end up in the trash, it reduces the amount of waste because the toy has already gone through the wasteful packaging cycle. And who doesn’t hate opening those little plastic twisty-tie things anyway? Even better, why not consider opening an eBay store yourself to recycle the toys your kids are finished with, instead of throwing them in the trash.

It ain’t easy being Green, but it’s worth it.

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