Commentary: 12-Step Program to Stop Climate Change

by Alisa Gravitz

How much is enough to stop climate catastrophe? Baby steps and half measures won't do it. We need a plan of action and timeline that matches the scale of the problem and provides a bar for evaluating corporate, government, community, and household plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels we can live with.

The following is based on the work of scientists at Prince?ton University's Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI). The CMI group proposes we stabilize emissions at current levels, instead of more than doubling them over the next 50 years as would happen with business as usual. To tackle this challenge, they divide the task into “wedges” of equal size—each with the capacity to reduce carbon emissions by 1 billion tons per year by 2054. CMI lists 15 ways of getting there, out of which we need to achieve just seven to hit the target.

At Co-op America, we added our own filters to this building block approach. We screened out measures that are too dangerous, costly, and slow, and we beefed up those that are safe and cost-effective. Wind is now cost-competitive at utility scale; solar will be in three to five years. New nuclear, synfuels, and “clean” coal are not cost-competitive. In addition to the proliferation, waste, and safety hazards, nuclear power will take too long to scale up; four strikes, nuclear power is out.

With these filters, we developed a plan that uses current technologies; is safe, clean, cost-effective; and is more than big enough to meet the climate challenge—12 wedges when we only need seven. Each of the following could achieve 1 billion tons per year in CO2 reduction by 2054, except the solar and wind options, which would each reduce emissions by 1.5 billion tons.

1. Increase fuel economy for 2 billion cars from an average of 30 mpg to 60 mpg by 2054.
2. Cut back on driving. Decrease car travel for 2 billion 30-mpg cars from 10,000 to 5,000 miles per year by 2054, through increased use of mass transit, telecommuting, and urban design that is conducive to walking and biking.
3. Increase efficiency of new buildings and appliances to achieve zero-emissions, in order to achieve 25 percent average reduction across all buildings by 2054.
4. Decrease tropical deforestation to zero and double the rate of new tree plantings.
5. Stop soil erosion. Apply “conservation tillage” techniques to cropland at 10 times the current usage. Encourage local, organic agriculture.
6. Ramp up wind power. Add 3 million 1-megawatt windmills, 75 times the current capacity.
7. Do a major push for solar power. Add 3,000 gigawatt-peak solar photovoltaic, 1,000 times current capacity.
8. Increase efficiency of coal plants from an average of 32 percent efficiency to 60 percent, and shut down plants that don't meet the standard. No net new coal plants; for any new plants built, an equal number should be shut down.
9. Replace 1,400 gigawatts of coal with natural gas, a four-fold increase in natural gas usage over current levels—a short-term step until zero-emissions renewable technologies can replace natural gas.
10. Sequester CO2 at existing coal plants. Sequestration involves storing carbon dioxide underground, an unproven technology that may, nonetheless, be better than nothing.
11. Develop zero-emissions vehicles, including plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles powered by renewable energy.
12. Develop biomass as a short-term replacement for fossil fuel until better carbon-free technologies are developed, but only as long as biofuels are made from waste and can be made without displacing farmland and rainforests.

This framework can help us think big and fast enough to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. If we are to achieve each wedge by 2054, the next 10 years must see a major ramp-up. Anything less and we're kidding ourselves.

The good news is we can do this. We have the technologies and the know-how. Taking these actions opens the door to more jobs, energy security, real progress on the war against poverty, a cleaner environment, and a safer world.

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Alisa Gravitz is the executive director of Co-op America, a leading non-profit organization working on market solutions to social and environmental problems (www.coopamerica.org). She also runs Co-op America's Solar Catalyst Group, which is working to rapidly bring solar power to scale. See www.princeton.edu/~cmi for the CMI plan and methodology, and www.climateaction.org to learn how you can be part of the climate solution.

10 reasons why organic can feed the world

Can organic farming feed the world? Ed Hamer and Mark Anslow say yes, but we must farm and eat differently
Date:01/03/2008		Author:Ed Hamer & Mark Anslow
1. Yield Switching to organic farming would have different effects according to where in the world you live and how you currently farm. Studies show that the less-industrialised world stands to benefit the most. In southern Brazil, maize and wheat yields doubled on farms that changed to green manures and nitrogenfixing leguminous vegetables instead of chemical fertilisers.1 In Mexico, coffee-growers who chose to move to fully organic production methods saw increases of 50 per cent in the weight of beans they harvested. In fact, in an analysis of more than 286 organic conversions in 57 countries, the average yield increase was found to be an impressive 64 per cent.2 The situation is more complex in the industrialised world, where farms are large, intensive facilities, and opinions are divided on how organic yields would compare. Research by the University of Essex in 1999 found that, although yields on US farms that converted to organic initially dropped by between 10 and 15 per cent, they soon recovered, and the farms became more productive than their all-chemical counterparts.3 In the UK, however, a study by the Elm Farm Research Centre predicted that a national transition to all-organic farming would see cereal, rapeseed and sugar beet yields fall by between 30 and 60 per cent.4 Even the Soil Association admits that, on average in the UK, organic yields are 30 per cent lower than non-organic. So can we hope to feed ourselves organically in the British Isles and Northern Europe? An analysis by former Ecologist editor Simon Fairlie in The Land journal suggests that we can, but only if we are prepared to rethink our diet and farming practices.5 In Fairlie’s scenario, each of the UK’s 60 million citizens could have organic cereals, potatoes, sugar, vegetables and fruit, fish, pork, chicken and beef, as well as wool and flax for clothes and biomass crops for heating. To achieve this we’d each have to cut down to around 230g of beef (½lb), compared to an average of 630g (1½lb) today, 252g of pork/bacon, 210g of chicken and just under 4kg (9lb) of dairy produce each week – considerably more than the country enjoyed in 1945. We would probably need to supplement our diet with homegrown vegetables, save our food scraps as livestock feed and reform the sewage system to use our waste as an organic fertiliser. 2. Energy Currently, we use around 10 calories of fossil energy to produce one calorie of food energy. In a fuel-scarce future, which experts think could arrive as early as 2012, such numbers simply won’t stack up. Studies by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs over the past three years have shown that, on average, organically grown crops use 25 per cent less energy than their chemical cousins. Certain crops achieve even better reductions,including organic leeks (58 per cent less energy) and broccoli (49 per cent less energy). When these savings are combined with stringent energy conservation and local distribution and consumption (such as organic box schemes), energy-use dwindles to a fraction of that needed for an intensive, centralised food system. A study by the University of Surrey shows that food from Tolhurst Organic Produce, a smallholding in Berkshire, which supplies 400 households with vegetable boxes, uses 90 per cent less energy than if non-organic produce had been delivered and bought in a supermarket. Far from being simply ‘energy-lite’, however, organic farms have the potential to become self-sufficient in energy – or even to become energy exporters. The ‘Dream Farm’ model, first proposed by Mauritius-born agroscientist George Chan, sees farms feeding manure and waste from livestock and crops into biodigesters, which convert it into a methane-rich gas to be used for creating heat and electricity. The residue from these biodigesters is a crumbly, nutrient-rich fertiliser, which can be spread on soil to increase crop yields or further digested by algae and used as a fish or animal feed. 3. Greenhouse gas emissions and climate change Despite organic farming’s low-energy methods, it is not in reducing demand for power that the techniques stand to make the biggest savings in greenhouse gas emissions. The production of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, which is indispensable to conventional farming, produces vast quantities of nitrous oxide – a greenhouse gas with a global warming potential some 320 times greater than that of CO2. In fact, the production of one tonne of ammonium nitrate creates 6.7 tonnes of greenhouse gases (CO²e), and was responsible for around 10 per cent of all industrial greenhouse gas emissions in Europe in 2003.6 The techniques used in organic agriculture to enhance soil fertility in turn encourage crops to develop deeper roots, which increase the amount of organic matter in the soil, locking up carbon underground and keeping it out of the atmosphere. The opposite happens in conventional farming: high quantities of artificially supplied nutrients encourage quick growth and shallow roots. A study published in 1995 in the journal Ecological Applications found that levels of carbon in the soils of organic farms in California were as much as 28 per cent higher as a result.7 And research by the Rodale Institute shows that if the US were to convert all its corn and soybean fields to organic methods, the amount of carbon that could be stored in the soil would equal 73 per cent of the country’s (would-be) Kyoto targets for CO² reduction.8 Organic farming might also go some way towards salvaging the reputation of the cow, demonised in 2007 as a major source of methane at both ends of its digestive tract. There’s no doubt that this is a problem: estimates put global methane emissions from ruminant livestock at around 80 million tonnes a year,9 equivalent to around two billion tonnes of CO²,10 or close to the annual CO² output of Russia and the UK combined.11 But by changing the pasturage on which animals graze to legumes such as clover or birdsfoot trefoil (often grown anyway by organic farmers to improve soil nitrogen content), scientists at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research believe that methane emissions could be cut dramatically. Because the leguminous foliage is more digestible, bacteria in the cow’s gut are less able to turn the fodder into methane. Cows also seem naturally to prefer eating birdsfoot trefoil to ordinary grass. 4. Water use Agriculture is officially the most thirsty industry on the planet, consuming a staggering 72 per cent of all global freshwater at a time when the UN says 80 per cent of our water supplies are being overexploited.12,13 This hasn’t always been the case. Traditionally, agricultural crops were restricted to those areas best suited to their physiology, with drought-tolerant species grown in the tropics and water-demanding crops in temperate regions.14 Global trade throughout the second half of the last century led to a worldwide production of grains dominated by a handful of high-yielding cereal crops, notably wheat, maize and rice. These thirsty cereals – the ‘big three’ – now account for more than half of the world’s plant-based calories and 85 per cent of total grain production.15 Organic agriculture is different. Due to its emphasis on healthy soil structure, organic farming avoids many of the problems associated with compaction, erosion, salinisation and soil degradation, which are prevalent in intensive systems.16 Organic manures and green mulches are applied even before the crop is sown, leading to a process known as ‘mineralisation’ – literally the fixing of minerals in the soil. Mineralised organic matter, conspicuously absent from synthetic fertilisers, is one of the essential ingredients required physically and chemically to hold water on the land. Organic management also uses crop rotations, undersowing and mixed cropping to provide the soil with near-continuous cover. By contrast, conventional farm soils may be left uncovered for extended periods prior to sowing, and again following the harvest, leaving essential organic matter fully exposed to erosion by rain, wind and sunlight. In the US, a 25-year Rodale Institute experiment on climatic extremes found that, due to improved soil structure, organic systems consistently achieve higher yields during periods both of drought and flooding.17 5. Localisation The globalisation of our food supply, which gives us Peruvian apples in June and Spanish lettuces in February, has seen our food reduced to a commodity in an increasingly volatile global marketplace. Although year-round availability makes for good marketing in the eyes of the biggest retailers, the costs to the environment are immense. Friends of the Earth estimates that the average meal in the UK travels 1,000 miles from plot to plate.18 In 2005, Defra released a comprehensive report on food miles in the UK, which valued the direct environmental, social and economic costs of food transport in Britain at £9 billion each year. In addition, food transport accounted for more than 30 billion vehicle kilometres, 25 per cent of all HGV journeys and 19 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in 2002 alone.19 The organic movement was born out of a commitment to provide local food for local people, and so it is logical that organic marketing encourages localisation through veg boxes, farm shops and stalls. Between 2005 and 2006, organic sales made through direct marketing outlets such as these increased by 53 per cent, from £95 to £146 million, more than double the sales growth experienced by the major supermarkets.20 As we enter an age of unprecedented food insecurity, it is essential that our consumption reflects not only what is desirable, but also what is ultimately sustainable. While the ‘organic’ label itself may inevitably be hijacked, ‘organic and local’ represents a solution with which the global players can simply never compete. 6. Pesticides It is a shocking testimony to the power of the agrochemical industry that in the 45 years since Rachel Carson published her pesticide warning Silent Spring, the number of commercially available synthetic pesticides has risen from 22 to more than 450.21 According to the World Health Organization there are an estimated 20,000 accidental deaths worldwide each year from pesticide exposure and poisoning.22 More than 31 million kilograms of pesticide were applied to UK crops alone in 2005, 0.5 kilograms for every person in the country.23 A spiralling dependence on pesticides throughout recent decades has resulted in a catalogue of repercussions, including pest resistance, disease susceptibility, loss of natural biological controls and reduced nutrient-cycling.24 Organic farmers, on the other hand, believe that a healthy plant grown in a healthy soil will ultimately be more resistant to pest damage. Organic systems encourage a variety of natural methods to enhance soil and plant health, in turn reducing incidences of pests, weeds and disease. First and foremost, because organic plants grow comparatively slower than conventional varieties they have thicker cell walls, which provide a tougher natural barrier to pests. Rotations or ‘break-crops’, which are central to organic production, also provide a physical obstacle to pest and disease lifecycles by removing crops from a given plot for extended periods.25 Organic systems also rely heavily on a rich agro-ecosystem in which many agricultural pests can be controlled by their natural predators. Inevitably, however, there are times when pestilence attacks are especially prolonged or virulent, and here permitted pesticides may be used. The use of organic pesticides is heavily regulated and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) requires specific criteria to be met before pesticide applications can be justified.26 There are in fact only four active ingredients permitted for use on organic crops: copper fungicides, restricted largely to potatoes and occasionally orchards; sulphur, used to control additional elements of fungal diseases; Retenone, a naturally occurring plant extract, and soft soap, derived from potassium soap and used to control aphids. Herbicides are entirely prohibited. 7. Ecosystem impact Farmland accounts for 70 per cent of UK land mass, making it the single most influential enterprise affecting our wildlife.27 Incentives offered for intensification under the Common Agricultural Policy are largely responsible for negative ecosystem impacts over recent years. Since 1962, farmland bird numbers have declined by an average of 30 per cent. During the same period more than 192,000 kilometres of hedgerows have been removed, while 45 per cent of our ancient woodland has been converted to cropland.28 By contrast, organic farms actively encourage biodiversity in order to maintain soil fertility and aid natural pest control. Mixed farming systems ensure that a diversity of food and nesting sites are available throughout the year, compared with conventional farms where autumn sow crops leave little winter vegetation available.29 Organic production systems are designed to respect the balance observed in our natural ecosystems. It is widely accepted that controlling or suppressing one element of wildlife, even if it is a pest, will have unpredictable impacts on the rest of the food chain. Instead, organic producers regard a healthy ecosystem as essential to a healthy farm, rather than a barrier to production. In 2005, a report by English Nature and the RSPB on the impacts of organic farming on biodiversity reviewed more than 70 independent studies of flora, invertebrates, birds and mammals within organic and conventional farming systems. It concluded that biodiversity is enhanced at every level of the food chain under organic management practices, from soil micro-biota right through to farmland birds and the largest mammals.30 8. Nutritional benefits While an all-organic farming system might mean we’d have to make do with slightly less food than we’re used to, research shows that we can rest assured it would be better for us. In 2001, a study in the Journal of Complementary Medicine found that organic crops contained higher levels of 21 essential nutrients than their conventionally grown counterparts, including iron, magnesium, phosphorus and vitamin C. The organic crops also contained lower levels of nitrates, which can be toxic to the body.31 Other studies have found significantly higher levels of vitamins – as well as polyphenols and antioxidants – in organic fruit and veg, all of which are thought to play a role in cancer-prevention within the body.32 Scientists have also been able to work out why organic farming produces more nutritious food. Avoiding chemical fertiliser reduces nitrates levels in the food; better quality soil increases the availability of trace minerals, and reduced levels of pesticides mean that the plants’ own immune systems grow stronger, producing higher levels ofantioxidants. Slower rates of growth also mean that organic food frequently contains higher levels of dry mass, meaning that fruit and vegetables are less pumped up with water and so contain more nutrients by weight than intensively grown crops do.33 Milk from organically fed cows has been found to contain higher levels of nutrients in six separate studies, including omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin E, and beta-carotene, all of which can help prevent cancer. One experiment discovered that levels of omega-3 in organic milk were on average 68 per cent higher than in non-organic alternatives.34 But as well as giving us more of what we do need, organic food can help to give us less of what we don’t. In 2000, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that organically produced food had ‘lower levels of pesticide and veterinary drug residues’ than non-organic did.35 Although organic farmers are allowed to use antibiotics when absolutely necessary to treat disease, the routine use of the drugs in animal feed – common on intensive livestock farms – is forbidden. This means a shift to organic livestock farming could help tackle problems such as the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. 9. Seed-saving Seeds are not simply a source of food; they are living testimony to more than 10,000 years of agricultural domestication. Tragically, however, they are a resource that has suffered unprecedented neglect. The UN FAO estimates that 75 per cent of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost over the past 100 years.36 Traditionally, farming communities have saved seeds year-on-year, both in order to save costs and to trade with their neighbours. As a result, seed varieties evolved in response to local climatic and seasonal conditions, leading to a wide variety of fruiting times, seed size, appearance and flavour. More importantly, this meant a constant updating process for the seed’s genetic resistance to changing climatic conditions, new pests and diseases. By contrast, modern intensive agriculture depends on relatively few crops – only about 150 species are cultivated on any significant scale worldwide. This is the inheritance of the Green Revolution, which in the late 1950s perfected varieties Filial 1, or F1 seed technology, which produced hybrid seeds with specifically desirable genetic qualities.37 These new high-yield seeds were widely adopted, but because the genetic makeup of hybrid F1 seeds becomes diluted following the first harvest, the manufacturers ensured that farmers return for more seed year on year. With its emphasis on diversity, organic farming is somewhat cushioned from exploitation on this scale, but even Syngenta, the world’s third-largest biotech company, now offers organic seed lines. Although seedsaving is not a prerequisite for organic production, the holistic nature of organics lends itself well to conserving seed. In support of this, the Heritage Seed Library, in Warwickshire, is a collection of more than 800 open-pollinated organic varieties, which have been carefully preserved by gardeners across the country. Although their seeds are not yet commercially available, the Library is at the forefront of addressing the alarming erosion of our agricultural diversity. Seed-saving and the development of local varieties must become a key component of organic farming, giving crops the potential to evolve in response to what could be rapidly changing climatic conditions. This will help agriculture keeps pace with climate change in the field, rather than in the laboratory. 10. Job creation There is no doubt British farming is currently in crisis. With an average of 37 farmers leaving the land every day, there are now more prisoners behind bars in the UK than there are farmers in the fields.38 Although it has been slow, the decline in the rural labour force is a predictable consequence of the industrialisation of agriculture. A mere one per cent of the UK workforce is now employed in land-related enterprises, compared with 35 per cent at the turn of the last century.39 The implications of this decline are serious. A skilled agricultural workforce will be essential in order to maintain food security in the coming transition towards a new model of post-fossil fuel farming. Many of these skills have already been eroded through mechanisation and a move towards more specialised and intensive production systems. Organic farming is an exception to these trends. By its nature, organic production relies on labour-intensive management practices. Smaller, more diverse farming systems require a level of husbandry that is simply uneconomical at any other scale. Organic crops and livestock also demand specialist knowledge and regular monitoring in the absence of agrochemical controls. According to a 2006 report by the University of Essex, organic farming in the UK provides 32 per cent more jobs per farm than comparable non-organic farms. Interestingly, the report also concluded that the higher employment observed could not be replicated in non-organic farming through initiatives such as local marketing. Instead, the majority (81 per cent) of total employment on organic farms was created by the organic production system itself. The report estimates that 93,000 new jobs would be created if all farming in the UK were to convert to organic. Organic farming also accounts for more younger employees than any other sector in the industry. The average age of conventional UK farmers is now 56, yet organic farms increasingly attract a younger more enthusiastic workforce, people who view organics as the future of food production. It is for this next generation of farmers that Organic Futures, a campaign group set up by the Soil Association in 2007, is striving to provide a platform. Ed Hamer is a freelance journalist Mark Anslow is the Ecologist’s senior reporter References 1 Andre Leu, ‘Organic Agriculture Can Feed the World’ in Organic Farming, Winter 2007, citing Jules Pretty, 2001 2 Pretty, 2006. http://www.rimisp.org/getdoc.php?docid=6440 3 Pretty, 1999, ‘The Living Land’. 4 Cited in Woodward, 2003. http://www.efrc.com/?i=articles.php&art_id=42&highlight=organic 5 Fairlie, 2007, ‘Can Britain Feed Itself?’, The Land, Winter 2007-8. 6 EEA data for EU-15, 2003, for nitric acid production cited by Soil Association 7 Drinkwater LE et al. ‘Fundamental differences between conventional and organic tomato agroecosystems in California’, Ecological Applications 1995, 5(4), 1098-1112. 8 http://www.newfarm.org/depts/NFfield_trials/1003/carbonsequest.shtml 9 US EPA, 1998, ‘Ruminant Livestock and the Global Environment’ 10 Using a multiplier factor of 24.5 11 Russia annual CO2 emissions: 1,524,993,000 tonnes; UK annual CO2 emissions: 587,261,000 tonnes. 12 Weis, T. (2007) The global food economy: the battle for the future of farming, Zed Books, London. 13 UNESCO (2006) United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation, World Water Development Report 2006: http://www.unesco.org/water/wwap/wwdr/index.shtml 14 Alteiri, M. (1987) Agroecology: The Scientific Basis of Alternative Agriculture, Westview Press, Boulder. 15 FAO (1997) The State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, Food Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, Rome. 16 Lampkin, N. (1990) Organic Farming, Farming Press Books, Ipswich. 17 Lim Li Ching (2005) Organic Outperforms Conventional in Climate Extremes, web accesses: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/OrganicOutperforms.php 18 FOE (2006) http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/green_new_year_resolutions_08122006 19 Defra (2005) The Validity of Food Miles as an Indicator of Sustainable Development: Final report, Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs. 20 Soil Association (2006) Organic Market Report 2006, Executive Summary, Soil Association, Bristol. 21 Whitehead, R. (1999) UK Pesticide Guide, British Crop Protection Council, CABI Publishing, Cambridge. 22 World Health Organisation (1990) The Public Health Impact of Pesticides Used in Agriculture, WHO, Geneva 23 Pesticide Action Network UK (2007) Pesticides on a Plate, A consumer guide to pesticide issues in the food chain, PAN UK, London 24 Sustain (2003) Myth and Reality, Organic vs. non-organic: the facts, Sustain, London. 25 Francis, C. A. & Clegg, M. D. (1990) Crop Rotations in Sustainable Production Systems, Sustainable Agriculture Systems 107-122 26 International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (1998) Basic Standards for Organic Production and Processing, IFOAM, Germany 27 Soil Association (2006) How does organic farming benefit wildlife? Soil Association 2006. 28 Spencer, J. & Kirby, K. (1992) An inventory of ancient woodland for England and Wales, Biological Conservation 62, 77-93. 29 IFOAM (2003) Organic Agriculture and Biodiversity information sheet, International Federation of Organic Agriculture and Management. 30 Hole, A. G., Perkins, A. J., Wilson, J. D., Alexander, I. H., Grice, P. V., Evans, A. D. (2005) Does Organic Farming Benefit Biodiversity? Biological Conservation, 122, 113-130. 31 Worthington V. Nutritional quality of organic versus conventional fruits, vegetables, and grains. Journal of Complimentary Medicine 2001; 7 No. 2: 161–173 32 Soil Association, 2008: http://tinyurl.com/3aye3g 33 Gundual Azeez, Policy Manager, Soil Association, Personal Communication 01/2008. 34 Soil Association, 2007: http://tinyurl.com/3e3fby 35 Food and Agriculture Organisation, Food Safety & Quality as Affected by Organic Farming, Report of the 22nd regional conference for Europe, Portugal, 24-28 July 2000. 36 FAO (1997) The State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, Food Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, Rome. 37 Shiva, V. & Gitanjali, B. (2002) Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security, The Impact of globalisation, Sage Publications, London. 38 Soil Association (2006) Organic Works Report: An investigation into employment on organic farms conducted by University of Essex 2005. 39 ISEC (2002) Bringing the Food Economy Home: Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness, Zed Books, London.

10 reasons why GM won't feed the world

Genetic modification can't deliver a safe, secure future food supply. Here's why...
Date:01/03/2008		Author:Mark Anslow
1. Failure to deliver Despite the hype, genetic modification consistently fails to live up to industry claims. Only two GM traits have ever made it to market: herbicide resistance and BT toxin expression (see below). Other promises of genetic modification have failed to materialise. The much vaunted GM ‘golden rice’ – hailed as a cure to vitamin A deficiency – has never made it out of the laboratory, partly because in order to meet recommended levels of vitamin A intake, consumers would need to eat 12 bowls of the rice every day.1 In 2004, the Kenyan government admitted that Monsanto’s GM sweet potatoes were no more resistant to feathery mottle virus than ordinary strains, and in fact produced lower yields.2 And in January 2008, news that scientists had modified a carrot to cure osteoporosis by providing calcium had to be weighed against the fact that you would need to eat 1.6 kilograms of these vegetables each day to meet your recommended calcium intake.3 2. Costing the Earth GM crops are costing farmers and governments more money than they are making. In 2003, a report by the Soil Association estimated the cost to the US economy of GM crops at around $12 billion (£6 billion) since 1999, on account of inflated farm subsidies, loss of export orders and various seed recalls.4 A study in Iowa found that GM soyabeans required all the same costs as conventional farming but, because they produced lower yields (see below), the farmers ended up making no profit at all.5 In India, an independent study found that BT cotton crops were costing farmers 10 per cent more than non-BT variants and bringing in 40 per cent lower profits.6 Between 2001 and 2005, more than 32,000 Indian farmers committed suicide, most as a result of mounting debts caused by inadequate crops.7 3. Contamination and gene escape No matter how hard you try, you can never be sure that what you are eating is GM-free. In a recent article, the New Scientist admitted that contamination and cross-fertilisation between GM and non-GM crops ‘has happened on many occasions already’.8 In late 2007, US company Scotts Miracle-Gro was fined $500,000 by the US Department of Agriculture when genetic material from a new golf-course grass Scotts had been testing was found in native grasses as far as 13 miles away from the test sites, apparently released when freshly cut grass was caught and blown by the wind.9 In 2006, an analysis of 40 Spanish conventional and organic farms found that eight were contaminated with GM corn varieties, including one farmer whose crop contained 12.6 per cent GM plants. 4. Reliance on pesticides Far from reducing dependency on pesticides and fertilisers, GM crops frequently increase farmers’ reliance on these products. Herbicide-resistant crops can be sprayed indiscriminately with weedkillers such as Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’ because they are engineered to withstand the effect of the chemical. This means that significantly higher levels of herbicide are found in the final food product, however, and often a second herbicide is used in the late stages of the crop to promote ‘dessication’ or drying, meaning these crops receive a double dose of harmful chemicals.10 BT maize, engineered to produce an insecticidal toxin, has never eliminated the use of pesticides,11 and because the BT gene cannot be ‘switched off’ the crops continue to produce the toxin right up until harvest, reaching the consumer at its highest possible concentrations.12 5. ‘Frankenfoods’ Despite the best efforts of the biotech industry, consumers remain staunchly opposed to GM food. In 2007, the vast majority of 11,700 responses to the Government’s consultation on whether contamination of organic food with traces of GM crops should be allowed were strongly negative. The Government’s own ‘GM Nation’ debate in 2003 discovered that half of its participants ‘never want to see GM crops grown in the United Kingdom under any circumstances’, and 96 per cent thought that society knew too little about the health impacts of genetic modification. In India, farmers’ experience of BT cotton has been so disastrous that the Maharashtra government now advises that farmers grow soybeans instead. And in Australia, over 250 food companies lodged appeals with the state governments of New South Wales and Victoria over the lifting of bans against growing GM canola crops.13 6. Breeding resistance Nature is smart, and there are already reports of species resistant to GM crops emerging. This is seen in the emergence of new ‘superweeds’ on farms in North America – plants that have evolved the ability to withstand the industry’s chemicals. A report by then UK conservation body English Nature (now Natural England), in 2002, revealed that oilseed rape plants that had developed resistance to three or more herbicides were ‘not uncommon’ in Canada.14 The superweeds had been created through random crosses between neighbouring GM crops. In order to tackle these superweeds, Canadian farmers were forced to resort to even stronger, more toxic herbicides.15 Similarly, pests (notably the diamondback moth) have been quick to develop resistance to BT toxin, and in 2007 swarms of mealy bugs began attacking supposedly pest-resistant Indian cotton. 7. Creating problems for solutions Many of the so-called ‘problems’ for which the biotechnology industry develops ‘solutions’ seem to be notions of PR rather than science. Herbicide-resistance was sold under the claim that because crops could be doused in chemicals, there would be much less need to weed mechanically or plough the soil, keeping more carbon and nitrates under the surface. But a new long-term study by the US Agricultural Research Service has shown that organic farming, even with ploughing, stores more carbon than the GM crops save.16 BT cotton was claimed to increase resistance to pests, but farmers in East Africa discovered that by planting a local weed amid their corn crop, they could lure pests to lay their eggs on the weed and not the crop.17 8. Health risks The results of tests on animals exposed to GM crops give serious cause for concern over their safety. In 1998, Scottish scientists found damage to every single internal organ in rats fed blightresistant GM potatoes. In a 2006 experiment, female rats fed on herbicide-resistant soybeans gave birth to severely stunted pups, of which half died within three weeks. The survivors were sterile. In the same year, Indian news agencies reported that thousands of sheep allowed to graze on BT cotton crop residues had died suddenly. Further cases of livestock deaths followed in 2007. There have also been reports of allergy-like symptoms among Indian labourers in BT cotton fields. In 2002, the only trial ever to involve human beings appeared to show that altered genetic material from GM soybeans not only survives in the human gut, but may even pass its genetic material to bacteria within the digestive system.18 9. Left hungry GM crops have always come with promises of increased yields for farmers, but this has rarely been the case. A three-year study of 87 villages in India found that non-BT cotton consistently produced 30 per cent higher yields than the (more expensive) GM alternative.19 It is now widely accepted that GM soybeans produce consistently lower yields than conventional varieties. In 1992, Monsanto’s own trials showed that the company’s Roundup Ready soybeans yield 11.5 per cent less on harvest. Later Monsanto studies went on to reveal that some trials of GM canola crops in Australia actually produced yields 16 per cent below the non-GM national average.20 10. Wedded to fertilisers and fossil fuels No genetically modified crop has yet eliminated the need for chemical fertilisers in order to achieve expected yields. Although the industry has made much of the possibility of splicing nitrogen-fixing genes into commercial food crops in order to boost yields, there has so far been little success. This means that GM crops are just as dependent on fossil fuels to make fertilisers as conventional agriculture. In addition to this, GM traits are often specifically designed to fit with large-scale industrial agriculture. Herbicide resistance is of no real benefit unless your farm is too vast to weed mechanically, and it presumes that the farmers already farm in a way that involves the chemical spraying of their crops. Similarly, BT toxin expression is designed to counteract the problem of pest control in vast monocultures, which encourage infestations. In a world that will soon have to change its view of farming – facing as it does the twin challenges of climate change and peak oil – GM crops will soon come to look like a relic of bygone practices. Mark Anslow is the Ecologist’s senior reporter References 1 http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8521 2 http://www.greens.org/s-r/35/35-03.html 3 Telegraph, 14th January 2008, http://tinyurl.com/38e2rp 4 Soil Association, 2007, http://tinyurl.com/33bfuh 5 http://ianrnews.unl.edu/static/0005161.shtml 6 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/IBTCF.php 7 Indian Muslims, 20th November 2007, http://tinyurl.com/2u7wy7 8 New Scientist, ‘Genes for Greens’, 5th January 2007, Issue 2637, Vol 197 9 http://gmfoodwatch.tribe.net/thread/a1b77b8b-15f5-4f1d-86df-2bbca5aaec70 10 http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9927 11 http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpWESSEX/Documents/usdagmeconomics.htm 12 http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9927 13 http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/11/27/18463803.php 14 http://www.english-nature.org.uk/pubs/publication/PDF/enrr443.pdf 15 Innovations Report, 20th June 2005, http://tinyurl.com/3axmln 16 http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8658 17 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMcropsfailed.php 18 All references from ‘GM Food Nightmare Unfolding in the Regulatory Sham’, Mae-Wan Ho, Joe Cummins, Peter Saunders, ISIS report. 19 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/IBTCF.php 20 http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8558

The Ten Commandments of Mother Earth

I. Thou shalt love and honour the Earth for it blesses thy life and governs thy survival.

II. Thou shalt keep each day sacred to the Earth and celebrate the turning of its seasons.

III. Thou shalt not hold thyself above other living things nor drive them to extinction.

IV. Thou shalt give thanks for thy food, to the creatures and plants that nourish thee.

V. Thou shalt educate thy offspring for multitudes of people are a blessing unto the Earth when we live in harmony.

VI. Thou shall not kill, nor waste Earth’s riches upon weapons of war.

VII. Thou shalt not pursue profit at the Earth’s expense but strive to restore its damaged majesty.

VIII. Thou shalt not hide from thyself or others the consequences of thy actions upon the Earth.

IX. Thou shalt not steal from future generations by impoverishing or poisoning the Earth.

X. Thou shalt consume material goods in moderation so all may share the Earth’s bounty.

~Author Unknown

Five Ways to Help Save the Planet in 30 Minutes or Less

From Larry West,

Invest half an hour to protect the environment by changing how you live each day

You may not be able to reduce global warming, end pollution and save endangered species single-handedly, but by choosing to live an earth-friendly lifestyle you can do a lot every day to help achieve those goals.

And by making wise choices about how you live, and the amount of energy and natural resources you consume, you send a clear message to businesses, politicians and government agencies that value you as a customer, constituent and citizen.

Here are five simple things you can do—in 30 minutes or less—to help protect the environment and save Planet Earth.

Drive Less, Drive Smart
Every time you leave your car at home you reduce air pollution, lower , improve your health and save money.

Walk or ride a bicycle for short trips, or take public transportation for longer ones. In 30 minutes, most people can easily walk a mile or more, and you can cover even more ground on a bicycle, bus, subway or commuter train. Research has shown that people who use public transportation are healthier than those who don’t. Families that use public transportation can save enough money annually to cover their food costs for the year.

When you do drive, take the few minutes needed to make sure your engine is well maintained and your tires properly inflated.

• Benefits of Public Transportation
• Keeping Your Tires Properly Inflated Could Help Save the Planet—and Your Life

Eat Your Vegetables
Eating less meat and more fruits, grains and vegetables can help the environment more than you may realize. Eating meat, eggs and dairy products contributes heavily to global warming, because raising animals for food produces many more greenhouse gas emissions than growing plants. A 2006 report by the University of Chicago found that adopting a vegan diet does more to reduce global warming than switching to a hybrid car.

Raising animals for food also uses enormous amounts of land, water, grain and fuel. Every year in the United States alone, 80 percent of all agricultural land, half of all water resources, 70 percent of all grain, and one-third of all fossil fuels are used to raise animals for food.

Making a salad doesn’t take any more time than cooking a hamburger and it’s better for you—and for the environment.

• Plant-Based Meals: Can Peanut Butter and Jelly Save the World?
• What Are the Negative Health Effects of Red Meat?
• Does Eating Seafood Help or Harm Your Health?

Switch to Reusable Shopping Bags Producing plastic bags uses a lot of natural resources, and most end up as litter that fouls landscapes, clogs waterways, and kills thousands of marine mammals that mistake the ubiquitous bags for food. Worldwide, up to a trillion plastic bags are used and discarded every year—more than a million per minute. The count for paper bags is lower, but the cost in natural resources is still unacceptably high—especially when there is a better alternative.

Reusable shopping bags, made of materials that don’t harm the environment during production and don’t need to be discarded after each use, reduce pollution and save resources that could be put to better uses than making plastic and paper bags. Reusable bags are convenient and come in a variety of sizes and styles. Some reusable bags can even be rolled or folded small enough to fit into a purse or pocket.

• Reusable Bags: Paper, Plastic or Something Better?
• Why Stop Using Plastic Bags?

Change Your Light Bulbs
Compact fluorescent light bulbs and light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are more energy efficient and less expensive to use than the traditional incandescent bulbs invented by Thomas Edison. For example, compact fluorescent light bulbs use at least two-thirds less energy than standard incandescent bulbs to provide the same amount of light, and they last up to 10 times longer. Compact fluorescent light bulbs also generate 70 percent less heat, so they are safer to operate and can reduce energy costs associated with cooling homes and offices.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, if every U.S. household replaced just one regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb, it would prevent 90 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, the equivalent of taking 7.5 million cars off the road. On top of that, for every incandescent bulb you replace with an approved compact fluorescent light bulb, you will save consumers $30 in energy costs over the life of the bulb.

• Change a Light Bulb and Change the World
• A Bright Idea Goes Global: Nations Worldwide Phasing Out Incandescent Lighting
• China Makes Commitment to Energy-Efficient Lighting
• Let There Be Light: Solar-Powered LED Lamps Brighten Lives of Poor People

Pay Your Bills Online
Many banks, utilities and other businesses now offer their customers the option of paying bills online, eliminating the need to write and mail paper checks or to keep paper records. By paying your bills online you can save time and money, lower the administrative costs of companies with which you do business, and reduce global warming by helping to prevent deforestation.

Signing up for online bill paying is easy and doesn’t take much time. You can either choose to have certain bills paid automatically each month or elect to review and pay each bill yourself. Either way, you will receive outstanding returns on your small investment of time.

• Why Online Bill Paying is Good for the Environment

The Green City Vision

http://www.ecocitybuilders.org/downtown.html

llustrations of a downtown in transformation from car-city to the ecological pedestrian city...

A typical car-dominated city downtown with larger box-like buildings and “ample parking,” with its associated congestion, smog and paving of surrounding land for sprawl.

The downtown in transition: restructuring while recycling building materials, digging up once-buried natural waterways, adding pedestrian infrastructure and building upon a transition to “mixed uses” and “balanced development” in which the important activities are provided for within a short distance.

An ecocity downtown with waterways restored, bridges between buildings, pedestrian streets, solar active and passive energy technology and design, rooftop access to elevated “streets” and bridges between buildings. Slowly, people are moving in from the suburbs toward city and town centers using development profits to help pay for buying and removing buildings in automobile dependent areas. Now the city center runs on a fraction of the energy as before, has streets filled with fruit trees, is extremely friendly to the pedestrian and the whole city takes up much less room, making room for more agriculture and natural land.

http://www.ecocityworldsummit.org/index.htm

“The city can save the Earth” – the Charter of Calcutta, 1990

What is a Green City?

A Green City is an ecologically healthy city. No such city presently exists. We do, however, see hints of Green Cities emerging in today’s solar, wind and recycling technologies, in green buildings and green businesses, in urban environmental restoration projects, urban gardening and organic farming, and in individuals using foot, bicycle and public modes of transportation in preference to the automobile. Car-free urban centers, “mixed use” and “balanced” development projects represent land use and architectural changes moving in the right direction, too.

But despite such positive signs and efforts, the much larger trend around the world is toward cars and sprawl. And now we are at a point of crisis in the way we live, which is largely determined by the way we build. This continuing trend is promoting global warming, species extinction, loss of habitat and agricultural land, serious public health problems and even war.

The prevailing strategy for “saving the environment” has largely been to try to improve a dysfunctional system. But some things cannot be improved without causing further and more destructive problems.

Instead of trying to improve an unhealthy automobile and oil based infrastructure, this conference calls for the city, town and village to be redesigned around the measure, needs and potential of the human being and based upon ecological principles.

Specifically it calls for urban diversity at close proximity, instead of scattered uniformity. It calls for land uses, architecture and a steadily and rapidly growing infrastructure for pedestrians, bicyclists and transit, powered by renewable energy sources and balanced with preservation and restoration of natural and agricultural lands and waters.

We have not yet tried such an approach. Its promise for creative, productive and restorative solutions are enormous. All new things start with a small number of people clarifying and communicating their offering. You are invited to be among us.

— Statement from the conference conveners, adapted from the "Green City Visions" 2005 United Nations World Environment Day Conference convened by Ecocity Builders and the City of Oakland, California

Get ready to change the world!

Throughout Earth Day Week, April 22-26, 2008 in San Francisco, California, the Ecocity World Summit (7th International Ecocity Conference) will be convening an international community of inspired change-makers; courageous individuals who are addressing problems of the world's environment with thoughtful long-range solutions that are truly sustainable, ecologically healthy and socially just.

The International Ecocity Conference Series brings together the key innovators, decision makers, technologists, businesses and organizations shaping the conversation around ecological and sustainable city, town and village design, planning and development. We intend to put these issues on the economic and environmental agenda for 2008 and beyond.

Ecocity World Summit 2008 Themes

• People: population, health, equity, and access
• Nature: protecting and restoring the planet’s living systems and agricultural lands
• Sustainable Development: land use, transportation, architecture and infrastructure
• Economies & Technologies: building the supporting markets, businesses and technologies
• Incentives & Support Structures: role of government, organizations, institutions and individuals

The time to act is now. Life-threatening global environmental problems and limitations on resource consumption demand a restructuring of cities and transportation systems worldwide for long-term energy efficiency and conservation. Concerned citizens in every community - in every city, town and village - must get involved in formulating and implementing new land use and transportation policies and practices, preserving agricultural lands and open space, and reclaiming natural habitat.

Please join us in San Francisco, and let’s change the world, together!

Al Gore: New thinking on the climate crisis

About this Talk

In Al Gore's brand-new slideshow (premiering exclusively on TED.com), he presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act with a sense of "generational mission" -- the kind of feeling that brought forth the civil rights movement -- to set it right. Gore's stirring presentation is followed by a brief Q&A in which he is asked for his verdict on the current political candidates' climate policies and on what role he himself might play in future.

About Al Gore

Once the US Vice President, then star of An Inconvenient Truth, now Nobel Peace Prize winner, Al Gore... Read full bio »

Link: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/243

Ecospot: Grand Prize Winner: Sky is Falling

This PSA makes people think about how much crap we pump into the air, using a creative, simple metaphor so everyone can understand how much harm we're doing to the atmosphere and environment.

Link: http://current.com/items/87610321_ecospot_grand_prize_winner_sky_is_falling

It's Good to get Global! Global citizenship in the Early Years

By Kate Lea, Oxfam Development Education

We all live in an interdependent world and therefore our experiences and actions in our local area are linked with the experiences and actions of those living all around the globe. The foundations for understanding this and for helping children to see that world issues are issues for them are laid at the Foundation Stage.

So what is Global Citizenship? Why is it important to introduce Global Citizenship at the Foundation Stage? How does Global Citizenship apply to the early-years curriculum? This article aims to answer these questions, and then gives examples of Global Citizenship activities appropriate for the Foundation Stage followed by a list of useful resources.

What is Global Citizenship?

Global Citizenship starts with a knowledge of how the world works and an awareness of the links between the local and the global. However, it goes beyond this to foster skills and attitudes which enable us to have a positive impact on the world, in the belief that we can make a difference. Building empathy, appreciating diversity and developing critical-thinking and conflict-resolution skills are all key to this approach. Global Citizenship acknowledges our responsibilities both to each other and to the earth itself. It is about understanding the need to tackle injustice and inequality, and having the desire and ability to do so. The earlier positive attitudes and skills can be developed, the better.

Global Citizenship is an approach to the way in which all activities are carried out, rather than an additional curriculum area. It is an ethos which is best implemented through a whole early-years setting approach and involves everyone with a stake in educating children, from children themselves to those with teaching and non-teaching roles, parents and the wider community. The learning goals set by early years practitioners play a crucial part in enabling children to gain the attitudes and skills needed to become pro-active in making the world a fairer, more sustainable place in the future.

Why is it important to introduce Global Citizenship at the Foundation Stage?

• Children form ideas about who they are and how they fit into the world around them early on. They are already developing attitudes about their own self-worth and the worth of others by the time they reach the Foundation Stage. For evidence of this, see Catching Them Young, by Bob Dixon (Pluto Press, 1977) and Children and Race: 10 years on, by David Milner (Ward Lock Educational, 1983)

• The attitudes and skills needed to make a positive contribution to making the world a fairer and more sustainable place in the future need to be encouraged and developed from an early age because, as research shows (Milner, 1983 and Dixon, 1977) many of the attitudes and skills learnt by children at the Foundation Stage are there to stay.

• Global Citizenship forms an important part of good practice, and is in line with the current curriculum because it encompasses and develops issues of inclusion and equality. It builds on anti-racist education, multicultural education, gender education, human rights education, citizenship education and environmental education, and offers a specific – and unique – response to the challenge of poverty.

• The participatory teaching approaches of Global Citizenship develop critical thinking and this has a positive impact on children and can raise standards in the Foundation Stage.

How does Global Citizenship apply to the early years curriculum?

Global Citizenship is as relevant to Foundation Stage children as it is to older children and adults. Listed below are examples of the ways in which the key elements of Global Citizenship are applicable to younger children.

Being aware of the wider world and having a sense of wonder about it.

Some children will have experience of traveling overseas and many will be aware of people living in their own community with links to other parts of the world. All children can appreciate and enjoy the many excellent stories now available featuring children and animals from a wide variety of countries. Global Citizenship education makes full use of these experiences and resources through discussion and other activities to develop the children’s sense of place in the wider world and to develop their thinking about how to contribute to the world in a positive way. In addition, there is much evidence of the global dimension in the children’s local area, such as in food or clothing from other countries. The role of Global Citizenship education is to develop this early knowledge and understanding through finding out about the people and places from which familiar objects come.

Having positive attitudes towards a variety of cultures, communities and lifestyles.

Foundation Stage children are already learning about the differences among themselves. Global Citizenship education underlines that there are many similarities between different groups and celebrates the differences in a respectful way. Adults working with the children need to foster positive attitudes to diversity and encourage a willingness to learn from the experiences of others. For example, they can help children to build empathy with other children around the world, and the ways in which they play, by helping them to learn games from other countries (see resources section).

Developing social awareness and the ability to resolve conflict.

Children are already tackling issues of injustice and inequality in their play through learning to share toys. This can be developed into a desire for social justice as they learn that not everyone in the world has an equal chance to take advantage of life’s opportunities. Conflict resolution is a key skill in Global Citizenship education and children in the early years frequently need help to resolve conflict. Helping children to overcome their differences in fair and non-violent ways lays the foundations for how they will deal with conflict and related issues in later life, enabling them to contribute positively to society as a whole.

Caring for the environment.

Education for Sustainable Development is integral to Global Citizenship and children can be encouraged to consider why it is important to care for the environment. Children will already be learning to care for the environment around them (for example in learning where to place rubbish and materials for recycling). The children can be encouraged to consider how those in other places around the world deal with issues of waste disposal and to think carefully about why it is important to look after their environment. They can think about how looking after their own early-years setting means that it is a welcoming place not just for them, but also for new children who join the group or class. The children can be encouraged to take an active role in making decisions about how their early-years environment is set up.

Being responsible for actions.

Foundation Stage children constantly encounter the fact that there are consequences to their actions. Learning to admit to and learn from mistakes can in later life help to foster a belief that things can be changed for the better and that individuals can make a difference in the world. Children can role-play a variety of situations in which they explore the language and feelings associated with taking responsibility.

Developing self-confidence and a sense of identity.

Foundation Stage children are still forming ideas about their place in the community and much can be done to enhance their self-confidence through positive encouragement. Children can be helped to gain a positive sense of their own identity through seeing positive images of themselves in relation to others and others in relation to themselves. Global Citizenship uses such images of children from North and South, and children can be encouraged to look carefully at these and to identify with those featured. This enables them to develop their own identity as a valuable citizen of the world, equal to others.

Learning to think critically, solve problems and express opinions.

Foundation Stage children can be encouraged to ask questions about the stories they read, such as: ‘What would happen if…’, ‘How do you think the different characters feel about…’, ‘How would different characters feel if…’. Empathy with the characters can be developed through role-play, where problems can be introduced into the scenario for children to solve. Children can also ‘hot-seat’ certain characters.

Global Citizenship activities

Below are some more detailed practical ways in which Global Citizenship can be implemented at the Foundation Stage.

All in a day – outline lesson plan

Learning intention

Children will gain an awareness of similarities and differences between people, an awareness of different places, and a positive attitude towards difference and diversity.

Resources

You will need a book or books showing children’s everyday lives around the world, such as Wake up World! by Beatrice Hollyer (Frances Lincoln in association with Oxfam, 1999) Let’s Eat! by Beatrice Hollyer (Frances Lincoln in association with Oxfam, 2003) or a book from the Discovery Flaps series (Child’s Play International/Oxfam, 1995) plus paper and crayons/paint. See resources section for further information.

Activity

Look at and talk about similarities between the daily lives of those children in the books and our own lives. Then discuss some of the differences and some possible reasons for them (for example the effect of climate). Finally ask the children to illustrate a frieze entitled, “A day in the life of our pre-school/nursery/playgroup/class,” as appropriate.

Healthy eating – outline lesson plan

Learning intention

Children will gain an awareness of different places and an appreciation of their local environment.

Resources

You will need a box of fruit and vegetables. Include some produced locally (or at least within the country) and some grown overseas, including some unfamiliar kinds. You will also need paper, glue, scissors and materials for collage and if possible, different types of waste paper, plastic and straw. A large world map would also be useful.

Activity

Show the children the different fruit and vegetables. Encourage them to look at, handle and name everything. Ask them where they think each piece comes from, and how it might get here – introduce the words ‘local’ and ‘global’ or ‘near’ and ‘far’. Refer to world map, if desired. Give children the opportunity to taste the fruit and vegetables. Finally ask children to make collages of the produce for a ‘healthy eating’ display.

Note that this activity could also be done at milk time, with one fruit or vegetable introduced each day.

(Both the above outline plans are adapted from activities listed in Global Citizenship: The Handbook for Primary Teaching by Mary Young with Eilish Commins (Oxfam/Chris Kington Publishing, 2002)

Stories and photographs

Use both local photographs/stories and ones from overseas to link local and global issues. Spend time discussing similarities and in celebrating differences between people and places. This helps children to learn to have a positive view of cultural diversity both in their own community and in the wider world. The children can be encouraged to ask questions about photographs and about the places and characters featured in stories/fact books. Role-play activities, hot-seating and circle time can all be used to develop issues and questions further. Stereotyping can be avoided by ensuring that a good range of photographs and stories are shown, and by highlighting the similarities between the lives of those featured and those of the children in the group, alongside discussing the differences. Below are two specific ways in which photographs can be used in the early-years setting:

Using captions

This activity makes use of captions to extend knowledge about pictures.

Work with a small group of children, and give them a caption for a photograph. Read the caption to the group, and think together about what might be happening in the corresponding photo. Make a list of the things they expect to see in their photo. Ask each child to draw a picture to go with the caption. (Alternatively, the group could work together to produce a large, shared picture.) When everyone has finished, look through a selection of photos and 'claim' the photo that matches their caption. Other groups of children in the class can work with the other photos. If more than one group claims a photo, the teacher should help the children to decide. Finally, the original photos and the drawings can be looked at together and the class can compare the results.

Cropping

This activity helps children to understand that a photo is only a fragment of a much wider scene.

Crop a selection of photos in a way that will encourage pupils to imagine what is happening 'outside the frame'. Divide children into groups, and give each group a small part of a photo, stuck on to a large sheet of paper. Ask them to extend the picture by drawing. When they have finished, discuss what they have added. Show them the 'complete' photo, and compare it with their interpretation.

The above activities are based on activities from Oxfam’s Cool Planet for Teachers website. This site contains photographs and captions which can be used for the above activities and includes a wealth of other information about using photographs. Click here to visit the site page.

For further information about using photographs, see the resources section.

Help from parents/the local community

Many parents and others in the local community are actively involved at the Foundation Stage and this can provide a rich resource for information and materials. You could ask visitors to bring in everyday artefacts, such as food, eating implements and clothes from their homes and compare them with those in the homes of children in the group. Any photographs can be used in some of the ways described in the previous section.

Workshop for staff

It might be useful to hold a workshop with other members of staff to think about Global Citizenship in your own Foundation Stage environment. Brainstorm people’s current understanding of Global Citizenship and then consider any other principles mentioned earlier in this article. It should be noted that Global Citizenship can be understood by people in different ways, depending on their context. It is therefore useful to spend time as a group considering how to apply the principles of Global Citizenship to your own setting, and to allow people to explore their own ideas. Go on to look around the Foundation Stage environment and consider the strengths and weaknesses of resources for how well they reflect the principles of Global Citizenship. Think in turn about:

• books
• posters and photographs (for example are there pictures of children doing familiar activities like eating, playing or making journeys from around the world)
• games
• music (songs and tapes used, instruments)
• home corner (could it sometimes be set up using fabrics and containers from other countries?)
• dressing-up clothes (could these be sorted out into clothes for use in different climates?)
• food served at snack time.

Finish by discussing any themes being covered and consider ways in which Global Citizenship can be incorporated. For example, in a theme about food, children could consider ways in which children from other parts of the world carry out similar tasks (such as shopping for food or cooking). In a theme about the seasons, consider climatic conditions elsewhere in the world and think about the ways in which this affects clothing and play.

Resources

For free on-line teaching resources see Oxfam’s Cool Planet website .

There are many other resources to help early years practitioners implement Global Citizenship in their early years environment. These resources provide excellent opportunities for sound teaching and learning within the Foundation Stage curriculum.

Examples of resources which support early learning goals in Personal, Social and Emotional Development and Knowledge and Understanding of the World:

• Let’s Eat! by Beatrice Hollyer (Frances Lincoln/Oxfam, 2003) which features five children from different countries and looks at the food they eat through photographs.
• Wake up World! by Beatrice Hollyer (Frances Lincoln/Oxfam, 1999) which features eight children from different countries and looks at how they spend their day.
• A Child’s Day, From Dawn to Dusk series (Frances Lincoln). These are books based around photographs focusing on a particular child’s day (the series covers various countries).
• Small Worlds series (Zero to Ten, 1999). These books take one aspect of a young child’s life, such as bedtime, washing or celebrating and show how it is practised around the world.
• Your World, My World (Oxfam, 2001) which is a teacher’s photo-pack with plenty of activities exploring the lives of four children from round the world based around a citizenship theme.

Examples of resources which support early learning goals in Mathematical Development:

• A Triangle for Adaora by Ifeoma Onyefulu (Frances Lincoln 2001). This looks at shapes from around the world.
• Photo Opportunities Maths (Oxfam 2001). This is a teacher’s photo-pack with activities written by a Numeracy consultant. (reviewed here as a previous FSF product of the month)
• One Child, One Seed by Kathryn Cave (Frances Lincoln, in association with Oxfam, 2002). This encourages children to count from 1 to 10 using photographs and a simple text.

Examples of resources which support early learning goals Communication, Language and Literacy:

• W is for World by Kathryn Cave (Frances Lincoln/Oxfam 2004). This alphabet book features over twenty countries around the world.
• Under the Moon and Over the Sea , edited by John Agard and Grace Nichols (Walker Books, 2002). This is a collection of Caribbean poems.
• Skip Across the Ocean, selected by Floella Benjamin (Frances Lincoln, 1995).

For further information on using stories for Global Citizenship see:

• Talking Drum (Christian Aid/SCIAF, 1996)
• Start with a Story (Birmingham DEC, 2002).

For further information on games played around the world see:

• Ebele’s Favourite: A book of African games , by Ifeoma Onyefulu (Frances Lincoln, 2000). This is a book based on photographs and includes instructions for playing games.

• Games We Play (Manchester Development Education Project, 2004). This pack features ten ‘street’ games from around the world.

For further information on Global Citizenship see:

• A Curriculum for Global Citizenship (Oxfam, 1997) available on Oxfam’s Cool Planet for Teachers website, which can be found on-line here.
• Global Citizenship: The Handbook for Primary Teaching by Mary Young with Eilish Commins (Oxfam/Chris Kington Publishing, 2002)

For further information on using photographs (and in avoiding stereotyping) see:

• Global Citizenship: The Handbook for Primary Teaching by Mary Young with Eilish Commins (Oxfam/Chris Kington Publishing, 2002)

• Making it Real (Save the Children/Birmingham DEC, 1996).
• Photo Opportunities on Oxfam’s Cool Planet for Teachers website here.

Many of the resources listed above can be found in Oxfam resources for children in the early years, which can be found online here.

For a wider range of materials see Oxfam’s Catalogue for Schools 2003/4, available on-line here

Copyright © Oxfam GB 2005, exclusively for the Foundation Stage Forum