Ecocity World Summit 2008
The 7th International Ecocity World Conference continues this week in San Francisco, California and if a positive aspect exists about globalization, it can be seen at this conference. A buzz exists in what feels like a combination of the World Cup (the passion), the U.N. (the international flavor) and something like Greenpeace (the Green aspect). We ran into a potpourri of organic architects, city planners, NGO leaders, and other interested in sustaining the earth as we know it.
The speakers ranged from keynote speaker Jaimie Lerner, former mayor of Curitiba Brazil co-founder of the IPPUC, Parris Glendending (Former Governor of Maryland and President of Smart Growth Leadership Institute and Janet Larsen, Director of Research for the Earth Policy Institute and advocate for Lestor Brown’s Plan B. Larsen mentioned how Plan A refers to as “business as usual” and most of us can see that that plan isn’t working. Plan B doesn’t just refer to the U.S. Countries like Algeria who depend on their oil revenue can see the oil-less future and continue to create solar and thermal alternatives to power their future. Imagine an oil country funding alt energy sources.
Even beyond the large scope of the noted speakers, we appreciate the little aspects that the conference offered such as the organic lunches served in totally compostable containers, the organic fair trade coffee and tea. We didn’t see any bottles or cans of Coke.
Like any conference, we did find little hitches in the program. During some of the Academic Sessions, although interesting seemed haphazardly bracketed. We sat in on one session of Historic Places, Ecotourism and Ecodesign figuring that the session would encompass sustainable tourism but turned out to more about urban planning and sustainability of historic cities (by Sevgi Yucesan), followed by Edgard Antunes Dias Batista who proposed the first Brazilian national bicycles route, and finally Suzana Gueiros who spoke about the protection of the Amazon Rain Forest. The topics seemed somewhat disjointed. We appreciate the passion of the speakers but they might consider offering some degree of empowerment to the audience. It’s not good enough to hear gloom and doom about, say the Amazon rainforest, but not have anything to do about it.
Maybe we’re nitpicking but we’re excited for the next few conference days because it’s on with the sustainability show.
[...] ecoworldly for [...]
Hello there!
So…I guess you didn´t quite hear of what was said in my article presentation….the Amazon paper and slide show was proposing a strategy in order to empower the local industries - which have supports and benefits for being at the Amazon region and promoting economic development - in order to have an Eco-design model strategy for their products and processess. Until now, they are quite interested to have industrial parks, however, considerations about environmental impacts of the industrial activities are not quite the main goal for the acceptance for new investors. On the other side, we may notice that lots of foreigners are simply romanticizing the indian population and culture, so what we really needos to get them educated and working, instead of pretending that they are indians with MP3 players, nike shoes and good dancing presentations for tourists.
One thing is to preserve cultural values and identity, the other is to pretend, and ask for an everlasting support, land, and never get engaged on work, also, because they don´t need….with all the International NGO presence, supporting their everlasting appealling patterns of receiving support.
We need a strategy to empower local industries with environmentally less impactfull products and processes, as well as, when focusing on the poor, to socially and economically empower them learning how to survive and to be sustainable without depending on international NGOs financial support.
I also mentioned, that there are many national programs related to that region, not internationally known, for reasons I don´t quite understand, but the military forces are there, and with special programs - as I myself saw at the frontiers - with education, medical assistance - in regions were no private health plan will find it interesting to invest….
The stigma of the military actions in Brazil, has to be change, their presence at the region has not only kept our sovereingty by implementing local programs related to frontiers, but more than this, they have implemented systems of monitoring the Amazon region, to plan actions against irregular wood and deforestation, ilicits such as traffic drugs operations at frontiers, among other support programs to constantly promote and improve the Region.
I am very sorry that you didn´t quite understand that…
Suzana Gueiros
Dear Ms. Gueiros,
Thank you very much for your clarification of the points made at the Ecocity World Summit 2008. It seems that we got it wrong and I apologize on behalf of EcoWorldly. This article reflects what one writer took from the summit and in this case it seems that there was some valuable information lost in translation.
Thank you again for the time you took to correct this oversight.
Best,
Gavin Hudson
EcoWorldly, Lead Writer
Dear Mr. Gavin
Thank you for posting my comments.
Mainly, in developing countries like Brazil, when solving and gaining in one environmental issue we are always facing up others, problematic ones. The Amazon Region, as we mentioned, its forest lost, and other dillemas related to indigenous causes are always highlighted on the respectfull international news, however, never ever noticed the industrial park strategically located for international boundaries, with finantial support and less attention given to the environmental impact management and the nature of product in terms of eco-design improvements.
In my oppinion, although the industrial park has partially solved the economic bottlenecks and the attractiveness for investmentors, it might be a problem to deal with, if at some point, we do not built partnership in the improovement of design features and its local production, given the special atention to environmental aspects and targets to reduce or to avoid industrialization negative impacts on resources at the Amazon.