World Watch articles from January 2005

World Watch archives from January 2005

French fries.(LIFE-CYCLE STUDIES)
January 1, 2005... Raw Materials The potatoes are grown on monoculture farms using a single variety for uniformity. The oil for deep-frying comes mainly from soybeans. In the United States, six midwestern states account for 80 percent of the country's...

The moral environment.(EDITORIAL)(environmentalists and religious conservatives)(Editorial)
January 1, 2005... There's far too much mercury in fish; emissions of smog precursor chemicals are up; and the rate of increase in atmospheric C[O.sub.2] concentrations is accelerating. Russia just ratified the Kyoto Protocol, but the Bush administration, long...

Passing the torch.(NOTE FROM A WORLDWATCHER)(Editorial)
January 1, 2005... When I was 50, I ran a 146-mile footrace across Death Valley, from the lowest point in the contiguous United States (Badwater, 280 feet below sea level) to the highest (the peak of Mt. Whitney, 14,491 feet). The temperature for the 100 miles...

A challenge to conservationists: Phase II.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... Mac Chapin's article in the November/December issue of World Watch has generated the heaviest flow of letters to the editor since we began producing the magazine in 1988. This overwhelming response has led us to publish an unprecedented number...

From Conservation International.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... "A Challenge to Conservationists" (World Watch, November/December 2004) offered an interpretation of the relationship between indigenous peoples and conservationists who work to save biodiversity around the world. The article raised several...

From the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... Indigenous peoples have been the objects of violence, discrimination, and abuse for more than five centuries. Recent decades have eroded some of the cultural and geographical gaps between indigenous peoples and industrial society, but this...

From The Nature Conservancy.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... World Watch's recent article by Mac Chapin, "A Challenge to Conservationists," raises important issues regarding the fundamental need to involve indigenous and traditional communities in conservation efforts. An open dialogue is critical...

From the Ford Foundation.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... Mac Chapin's article "A Challenge to Conservationists" (November/December 2004) addresses a number of issues the Ford Foundation has worked on for many years and which we consider key to our efforts to reduce poverty and injustice among...

From the Amazon Alliance.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... [on "the unsupported belief that indigenous peoples cannot be trusted to take care of their own resources"] I would like to commend World Watch for its courage in publishing Mac Chapin's article, "A Challenge to Conservationists" and for...

From a grassroots conservation group.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... I am the former founding director of The Nature Conservancy's Baja California/Sea of Cortez Program, and currently the executive director of a small grassroots conservation team that helps local NGOs and rural communities in Mexico to...

From a researcher on "conservation refugees".(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... I read "A Challenge to Conservationists" with particular interest, as I have just returned from a month in South America researching a book on the history of conservation refugees--people evicted or otherwise displaced from traditional...

From The Rainforest Foundation UK.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... Mac Chapin raises some very important points in his article "A Challenge to Conservationists." Our own experience as an organization that has worked for the last 15 years to help indigenous communities throughout the tropics to secure...

From a former member of the CI board.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... As a former board member of Conservation International, I read with interest Mac Chapin's article on the difficulties that the large international NGOs seem to be having in reconciling their interests in biodiversity preservation with those of...

From colleagues on three continents.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... [on conservation as a social and political process] Mac Chapin's "A Challenge to Conservationists" raises a number of important questions about current approaches to international conservation that deserve wide and open discussion. We...

From American and Bolivian colleagues in the field.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... We are writing a response to the provocative article "A Challenge to Conservationists," by Mac Chapin. We have each been involved in the field for over 30 years; one of us is an American currently working for The Garfield Foundation and Field...

From Tom Lovejoy, Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... [on lauding the science-based approach] In 1989 at the request of COICA (the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon), I chaired that body's very first meeting with conservation organizations in Washington. It marked an...

From Jack Vanderryn, the Moriah Fund.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... In his article "A Challenge to Conservationists," Mac Chapin has raised important issues that need debate and constructive discussion. We appreciate publication of his article for this purpose. The key point we have raised in the dialogue...

From an American sociologist.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... Thanks to the editors of World Watch for publishing "A Challenge to Conservationists." I expect that Mac Chapin's article will incite a number of negative reactions. As a result, I would like to offer some thoughts that focus on the big picture...

From a Garifuna leader in Belize.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... Especially of concern, to me, is the continuing decline in the currency of indigenous peoples by conservationists and their friends and supporters. It speaks volumes, especially as the indigenous peoples themselves are losing ground among...

From the Global Greengrants Fund.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... We would like to thank Mac Chapin and World Watch for highlighting some of the challenges facing traditional and indigenous communities not only in Latin America, but around the world. We live in an era when transnational NGOs, corporations,...

From the Congo Basin.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... [on communities challenged by conservation] Mac Chapin's article in the last issue of World Watch accords powerfully with the perception of "Big Conservation" held by many indigenous and local communities from Central Africa. Chapin cited...

From the First Nations Development Institute.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... Thank you for having the courage and integrity to print "A Challenge to Conservationists" by Mac Chapin. I first wrote about this issue in the Environmental Grantmakers Association News & Updates Winter 2003 ("A Caution on Soft-Eviction...

From the Field Museum.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... We congratulate World Watch for highlighting the importance of the article "A Challenge to Conservationists" on the cover. The issues are serious and of global significance. As Mac Chapin observes, whether immediately evident or not,...

From the International Crane Foundation.(FROM READERS)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... Congratulations on your excellent article, "A Challenge to Conservationists." All conservationists from the developed world who work in the developing world must always be aware that they are guests ready to learn more than to teach. ...

The author's response.(FROM READERS)
January 1, 2005... The discussion sparked by this article, which began even before it appeared in World Watch, is gratifying. WWF, CI, and TNC all agree that the issues raised in the article are valid and important and need to be addressed. Of the three,...

Arctic warming accelerates.(ENVIRONMENTAL Intelligence)(Arctic Climate Impact Assessment )
January 1, 2005... The Arctic is now warming at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the globe, according to a new report. The warming is accelerating ice melt at the North Pole and has serious implications for the region's wildlife and people, global sea levels,...

Russia ratifies Kyoto Protocol.(ENVIRONMENTAL Intelligence)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2005... The Russian parliament in late October ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 global treaty to curb greenhouse gas emissions. President Vladimir Putin is expected to sign the measure, although when is not clear. The treaty will enter into force...

China adopts fuel-efficiency standards.(ENVIRONMENTAL Intelligence)
January 1, 2005... In early September, China's State Council approved the nation's first fuel economy standards for cars, sport utility vehicles (SUVs), and vans. (Pickup trucks and commercial vehicles are exempt.) Minimum standards will apply for each vehicle...

Organic Agriculture boosts biodiversity.(ENVIRONMENTAL Intelligence)
January 1, 2005... Organic farmers can now boast that their farming methods actually protect biodiversity at every level of the food chain, from bacteria and plants to earthworms, beetles, birds, and mammals, according to a recent report from English Nature, a...

As Chinese buildings rise, Asia's forests fall.(ENVIRONMENTAL Intelligence)
January 1, 2005... "The great sucking sound continues," wrote David Kaimowitz in a recent e-mail to forest policy experts about China's unquenchable thirst for forest products. That demand has propelled China in the last decade from the seventh largest importer...

NAFTA now agrees, genetically modified corn is a threat to Mexico.(UPDATES)
January 1, 2005... See Risking Corn, Risking Culture, Nov/Dec 2002, p. 8 NAFTA now agrees, genetically modified corn is a threat to Mexico Claire Cummings' article in World Watch two years ago recounted the discovery that genetically modified corn had invaded...

White house concedes that humans contribute to global warming.(UPDATES)
January 1, 2005... See "Dim Vision," July/Aug 2001, p. 12; "How Economists Have Misjudged Global Warming," Sep/Oct 2001. "A Warning from 100 Nobel Prize Winners," May/June 2002; "Climate Business as Usual," Jan/Feb 2003, p. 2; and "Bush's Scientific Relativism,"...

A third of all amphibians may face extinction.(UPDATES)
January 1, 2005... See "Amphibia Fading," July/Aug 2000, p. 13 A third of all amphibians may face extinction Four years ago, Ashley Mattoon's article in World Watch described a pattern of increasing extinctions of amphibians--noting that by the 1990s, there...

World Watch wins global media award for population coverage.(UPDATES)
January 1, 2005... See Population and its Discontents, Sep/Oct 2004, p. 13 World Watch wins global media award for population coverage The Population Institute selected World Watch as the top publication for coverage of population issues, in the 2004 Global...

Trespass.
January 1, 2005... "I have the feeling that science has transgressed a barrier that should have remained inviolate." --Dr. Erwin Chargaff, biochemist and the father of molecular biology Hidden inside Hilgard Hall, one of the oldest buildings on the...

A new security paradigm: it's easy to equate "national security" or "global security" with military defense against rogue states and terrorism, but a leading U.S. military expert says that view is far too narrow--and could lead to catastrophe if not changed.
January 1, 2005... Whatever else the year 2004 might be noted for by future historians--the U.S. political wars, the genocide in Darfur, the strategic debacle in Iraq--it may well turn out to have been a seminal year for the field of environmental security--the...

Less ugly pest control.(GREEN GUIDANCE)
January 1, 2005... When bad weather keeps you indoors, you probably would rather not share your space with pests or conventional remedies. The former can spread disease while pesticides can cause allergic reactions, irritate skin, eyes, and lungs, or poison...

Advertising war for a war president.(MATTERS OF SCALE)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2005... Advertising War for a War President U.S. presidential campaign ad spending in major TV markets in 2000 $200 MILLION U.S. presidential campaign ad spending in major TV markets in 2004 ...