#risewithhenoko: "Our Island's Treasure" tells the story of Henoko, Okinawa's elders' struggle to save their sacred coral reef and dugong ecosystem for future generations

Our Island's Treasure (私達の島の宝) from Kaiya Yonamine on Vimeo.

#RiseforHenoko - Kaiya Yonamine of Global Uchinanchu Alliance　グローバルうちなんちゅ同盟: May 31, 2019 - asks that supporters of Henoko's coral reef and dugong ecoregion and advocates of planetary survival, please spread, and share the link to her documentary film “Our Island’s Treasure” Documentary ドキュメンタリー映画「私達の島の宝.  Please tag environmental orgs, human rights and indigenous rights groups, media and teacher groups.

“Our Island’s Treasure" tells the story about the indigenous Uchinanchu people's fight to protect their sacred dugong and coral reef ocean in Henoko, Okinawa from Japanese government landfill and construction of an offshore US military training airstrip and port (over an ecoregion covered with quicksand pits which will take years to reinforce, if possible, and an earthquake zone).

Frustrated by the lack of media coverage of the Okinawan 22- year struggle to save Okinawa's last intact, healthiest and most biodiverse coral reef and best dugong ecosystem, mother and daughter team, Moe and Kaiya Yonamine, made and sold thousands of cookies and paper cranes to raise funds to pay for flights and to stay in Okinawa.  They went to Henoko to support their elders

"This is one of the most biodiverse ocean regions on the planet and [Japanese and U.S. governments'] destruction is being done against the democratic will of the Okinawa people who voted vehemently against it," explains Moe Yonamine.

"Nonstop, our island’s people—with their bodies—are blocking construction trucks on land at sit-ins and die-ins, and—with their bodies—on kayaks, are blocking construction ships in the ocean — mostly led by hundreds of now elderly child survivors of the Battle of Okinawa," Yonamine adds.  (The air, sea, and ground fighting between Americans and Japanese in Okinawa was the bloodiest battle in their 4-year war in the Asia-Pacific.)

Kaiya Yonamine, a 17 year-old, 2nd generation Uchinanchu living in Portland, Oregon, released the trailer for her film on Earth Day.

"This documentary aims to show the fight of the elders and youth on the ground fighting to protect our ocean in Henoko and the interviews taken just weeks ago while we were there. Singing along with an old island song that I sang to her as a little girl,  and one that my grandmother sang to me, she shares  it in our indigenous language and with our indigenous instrument," Yonamine describes the beautiful song in the video trailer.

Please watch and share her trailer and HELP DISRUPT THE MEDIA SILENCE on the Sea of Henoko (not just a "less populated area in the north") but, instead, Okinawa's last intact, healthiest, most biodiverse, millennia-old coral reef, and best dugong seagrass habitat. Okinawans and their worldwide environmentalist, peace, and democracy supporters have been working for 23 years to save the Sea of Henoko.

Partial trailer transcript:

"Beautiful Sand. Proud People. Living along sparkling ocean waves. Ancient history of kings and queens. The kingdom overthrown by Japan in 1879. Violence brought upon this peaceful land during WWII.

"After the war, the U.S. put Okinawans in concentration camps while taking land to build bases. On what was left of this tiny paradise (the main island of Okinawa is 70 miles long and 7 miles wide) crammed with 32 bases, burdened with 70% of all U.S. military bases under Japan against the democratic will of the Uchinanchu people.

"Now the construction of a new base has begun. This time, in the ocean...Oura Bay is the name of the ocean that is being destroyed. This is one of the most biodiverse waters in the world bursting with life of over 5,300 species and 262 endangered species that are dependent on the sea. The Jp govt. is actively destroying this ocean. Concrete crushing coral. Using our own red soil to fill the sea. Killing our ocean.

"Kayactivists have been blocking ships. Elders have been staging sit-ins. War survivors have been blocking trucks. Raising fists. Singing island songs. Fighting for our ocean. And the media remains silent. As the destruction continues, our fight continues. We call on you to join us. And protect our ocean. Before we lose it forever."

YOU WILL FIND THE DOCUMENTARY LINK HERE ON FRIDAY, 5/31: Our Island's Treasure

Kaiya explains the urgency of her mission:

"The concrete began to be crushed in the beautiful ocean of Okinawa back in Dec..there was no media in the U.S. about it...I knew that people are fighting with their lives on the line for the ocean, for us, for all of us. So I decided I needed to take a camera and bridge us across the ocean... listening to the stories of people on the ground, I made this documentary to tell the world their story and show their fight -- our fight. The documentary is the result of interviewing Uchinanchu elders and student activists who are doing everything to protect our sacred ocean, even when the media ignores what's happening."

Okinawan American  Moe Yonamine is a teacher in Portland and a co-founder of Global Uchinanchu Alliance　グローバルうちなんちゅ同盟, which seeks to deepen connections between Overseas Okinawans and Okinawans living in their homeland (which includes the sea and all animals and plants living in the sea).

Okinawan-Hawai'ians Stand with Sacred Stone

Okinawan-Hawai'ians Stand with Sacred Stone Camp

(Via (HOA) Hawai'i Okinawa Alliance)

Tokyo Ainu Stand with Sacred Stone Camp

Tokyo Ainu Stand with Sacred Stone Camp
(Via (HOA) Hawai'i-Okinawa Alliance)

Humanity May Face Choice By 2040: Conventional Energy or Drinking Water

Andy Tully at Oil Price: "Humanity May Face Choice By 2040: Conventional Energy or Drinking Water," via Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism:

A set of studies based on three years of research concludes that by 2040, the need for drinking water and water for use in energy production will create dire shortages. Conventional electricity generation is the largest source of water use in most countries. Water is used to cool power plants to keep them functional. Most power utilities don’t even record the amount of water they use.

“It’s a huge problem that the electricity sector do not even realize how much water they actually consume,” says Professor Benjamin Sovacool of Denmark’s Aarhus University, one of the institutions involved in the research. “And together with the fact that we do not have unlimited water resources, it could lead to a serious crisis if nobody acts on it soon.”

The research, which included projections of the availability of water and the growth of the world’s population, found that by 2020, between 30 percent and 40 percent of the planet will no longer have direct access to clean drinking water. The problem could be made even worse if climate change accelerates, creating more heat and causing more water evaporation.

That means humankind must decide how water is used, Sovacool says. “Do we want to spend it on keeping the power plants going or as drinking water? We don’t have enough water to do both,” he says...

So how to prevent this conflict? The studies agreed on starting with the simplest solution: Alternative sources of electricity that don’t require massive amounts of water.

The recommendations are improving energy efficiency, conducting more research on alternative cooling mechanisms, logging water use at power plants, making massive investments in solar and wind energy, and abandoning fossil fuel facilities in all areas susceptible to water shortages.

This last proposal may be the most difficult to implement because parched areas now include half of Earth. But Sovacool says it would be worth the investment.

“If we keep doing business as usual, we are facing an insurmountable water shortage – even if water was free, because it’s not a matter of the price,” he says. “There will be no water by 2040 if we keep doing what we’re doing today. There’s no time to waste. We need to act now.”

Keibo Oiwa on the Localization Movement & Heirloom Vegetable Revival in Yamagata

In Keibo Shinichi Oiwa Tsuji's (14-min.) talk, "Cultural Creatives and Localization Movements in Asia," at the 2013 International Society of Economics and Culture (ISEC)  Economics of Happiness conference, the slow life advocate explores the heirloom vegetable revival in Yamagata, a prefecture in northwestern Tohoku:

Many people feel that localization is isolation. This is totally wrong. In fact, localization is to rediscover and recreate relationships. It restores meanings to relationships.

I will try to illustrate this with one example from Japan.

Shonai is the northeastern part of Japan, in Yamagata Prefecture. At the center of this local food movement is a charismatic chef and restaurant owner, [Masayuki] Okuda. Today he is one of the most renowned chefs in Japan and recognized as one of the slow food master chefs. He is known for his cooking philosophy: The distance that ingredients travel from field to table should be as short as possible. Dinners are served with the freshest of local ingredients, brimming with life energy.

When I met Okuda, he was a young and unknown chef and had just opened his own restaurant in Tsuroka City. He was active in a citizens' group called "Good Water Fan Club" protesting the construction of a dam and trying to preserve underground water wells that were soon to be destroyed.

I asked him why he got involved in this kind of movement. And his answer was, "The kernel of cooking is water." In fact, the region of Shonai was known for good water throughout history, and good sake.

The name of his restaurant, Al che-cciano, sounds to Japanese like Italian, but is actually an expression in Shonai dialect, meaning "It's been always here, hasn't it?".

Just after he opened his restaurant, he became good friends with one of his regular customers, [Hiroaki] Egashira, an agronomist from Yamagata University. Okuda would tell Egashira that, "My mission as a chef is to let people rediscover the quality of almost forgotten local foods, to encourage and support local farmers, and to create a community with a vibrant local economy."

So this rediscovery is what Okuda really meant by Al che-cciano.

Egashira was so happy learning about his new friend's mission as he himself was just launching production of a variety of heirloom vegetables.  Inspired by each other's passion for heirloom crops, Egashira and Okuda formed a team and started to explore the Shonai region, looking for farmers still preserving heirloom seeds...Egashira formed the Yamagata Forum for Indigenous Crops, with a magazine called Seeds...The forum's researchers have identified already more than 160 varieties of plants which had been, at one point, heirloom crops, transferred from generation to generation, but which had been almost forgotten.  Today, the forum's membership amounts to almost 400 citizens with many different backgrounds.

Kusajima, one of the key figures in the Shonai local food movement, and now a member of the prefectural parliament, is a good example of the new political activism. At the time of the Great Kobe Earthquake in 1995, Kusajima left work in Tokyo, and went to work in the disaster zone in Kobe. It was there he felt, for the first time, that he was part of a community where people willingly helped and supported one another.

He decided to return to his native region, Shonai, where he got involved in environmental issues, and found himself in a community of ecologically conscious people like Okuda and Egashira. With the support of this group, he was elected as a city councilor, and later a prefectural member of parliament, independent of any political party.  Since he played a leading role in the Good Water Fan Club, Kusajima's main campaign was about safeguarding the natural water system.

His thinking has not only been influenced by modern Western teachings, but also stemmed from the ancient nature religion of the region. He's a believer and practitioner of Shugendo...of which one of the traditional centers is the holy mountains of Haguro, in the middle of the Shonai region.

Shugendo is an ancient religion that originated in ancient Japan. It's an amalgamation of Taoism, Buddhism, and Shintoism...In this tradition, enlightenment is achieved by attaining oneness with the kami (deity...or spirits). This enlightenment is achieved by understanding the relationship between human beings and nature...

Another member of the local food movement is [Satoshi] Watanabe, a Shonai native and professional filmmaker. Her second feature documentary is Reviving Recipes, a colorful portrait of a community in the making. The protagonists of this film are Okuda, Egashira, and a local businessman and partners whose mutual collaboration leads to the emergence of a new local economy.

Watanabe explains, "In plants are a living cultural heritage that have been passed through decades and centuries, to provide generations not only food...but also farming methods and cooking methods.  In this day of globalization, however, that heritage had been overshadowed by big-scale market agriculture and was on the brink of being forgotten."

Watanabe shares the view with fellow members of this movement: An understanding of heirloom plants leads to an understanding of food, farming, and all the people involved. To revive and pass on local heirloom plants is not just a means to enjoy the bounty of food, but also to create and strengthen bonds among local people.

He and all the supporters of the film hope that Reviving Recipes will help remedy the serious problems surrounding food and farming today, not only in Japan, but throughout the world.

It is important to note that the local food movement in Shonai has its roots in the movement to safeguard the communal access to deep underground water and seeds. The sense of the commons is the foundation of a community. Starting with air, water, and seeds. This is what global corporations are trying to commodify.

The sense of the sacred is essential for community, especially in a time of global market economy when nothing is sacred and everything is translated into monetary value.

The local food movement in Shonai is inseparable from the local spiritual tradition like Shugendo. I recently interviewed one of the leaders of this tradition, Hoshino...and he defined what the meaning of yamabushi [practitioner of Shugendo] is.  It is a connector. Anybody who connects things and people: that's yamabushi...

It is a connector, anyone who connects.  All of us here might be yamabushi.  It is a community of prayer.

The word for happiness in Japanese is shiawase.  Awase means to relate and to bring together. This implies that being slow is an essential part of happiness.  A slow life is a happy life. A slow economy is not a bad economy. A slow business is not a bad business.  It is an art that restores, discovers, and creates meaningful relationships between humans and nature, humans to the land, to the community...

As we get local, we get better connected.  Our life gets more interesting and exciting. A slow life is an exciting life. But I'm afraid it might be a busy one.

Oiwa Tsuji is a professor of international studies at Meiji Gakuin University, and the co-author (with David Suzuki) of The Japan We Never Knew: A Journey of Discovery (with David Suzuki), a groundbreaking travelogue/history/exploration of Japan's indigenous, environmentalist, peace, and nuclear-free movements.

More: 

"Japan's Heirloom Vegetable Revival" (April 6, 2012, Slowfood.com)

Sloth Club (Japanese)

Slow Japan (Sloth Club blog in English)

More great speakers from the 2013 Economics of Happiness conference on video:  http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org/conference-video-gallery-2013.

Earth Focus: "Fracking Hell: The Untold Story"

"Fracking Hell: The Untold Story"

Is fracking the US for LNG (liquified natural gas) the answer to Japan's energy needs?

This original investigative report by Earth Focus and UK's Ecologist Film Unit looks at ecological and human costs of fracking in the Marcellus Shale in rural Pennsylvania.

How many eco-regions and communities  (in Japan, the United States, and worldwide) will be degraded, contaminated, even destroyed, before we move from nuclear and dirty fossil fuel energy to clean and renewable energy?

Via Link TV (http://www.linktv.org/earthfocus):

Marcellus Shale contains enough natural gas to supply all US gas needs for 14 years. But as gas drilling takes place, using a process called hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," toxic chemicals and methane gas seep into drinking water. Now experts fear that unacceptable levels of radioactive Radium 226 in gas development waste.

Fracking chemicals are linked to bone, liver and breast cancers, gastrointestinal, circulatory, respiratory, developmental as well as brain and nervous system disorders. Such chemicals are present in frack waste and may find their way into drinking water and air.

Waste from Pennsylvania gas wells -- waste that may also contain unacceptable levels of radium -- is routinely dumped across state lines into landfills in New York, Ohio and West Virginia. New York does not require testing waste for radioactivity prior to dumping or treatment. So drill cuttings from Pennsylvania have been dumped in New York's Chemung and other counties and liquid waste is shipped to treatment plants in Auburn and Watertown New York. How radioactive is this waste? Experts are calling are for testing to find out.

New York State may have been the first state in the nation to put a temporary hold on fracking pending a safety review, but it allows other states to dump toxic frack waste within its boundaries.

With a gas production boom underway in the Marcellus Shale and plans for some 400,000 wells in the coming decades, the cumulative impact of dumping potential lethal waste without adequate oversight is a catastrophe waiting to happen. And now U.S. companies are exporting fracking to Europe [and LNG (liquified natural gas) to Japan].

Is fracking the US for LNG (liquified natural gas) the answer to Japan's energy needs?

Trailer for "Gasland", Josh Fox's documentary film that details the 

fracking industry's ecological impact on rural America

The largest natural gas drilling boom in American history is drastically impacting the natural landscape and small town culture of the rural United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has let loose a drive to exploit American shale gas deposits, the so-called "Saudia Arabia of natural gas" now increasingly marketed for export to keep prices (and profits) high.  The cost: earthquakes and hazardous water contamination.

Fracking involves injecting massive amounts of water mixed with toxic chemicals (including benzene and lead) at high pressure into the ground to fracture shale rock, thereby releasing natural gas. The toxic chemicals and methane seep into nearby drinking water, contaminating it and making it combustible. In Pennsylvania and Appalachia, radioactive Radium 226 is released during fracturing; creating radioactive fracking waste (too radioactive) for hazardous waste dumps).

Fracking chemicals are linked to bone, liver and breast cancers; gastrointestinal, circulatory, respiratory, developmental as well as brain and nervous system disorders.

Via Gasland: 

"But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. Part verite travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown."

Moreover, is fracking the US for LNG (liquified natural gas) the answer for Japan's energy needs and a path to a "nuclear-free" Japan? And at what cost to rural communities and family farmers throughout the US?

Via Texas Sharon, a website run by rural Texans negatively impacted by fracking:

We get the impacts, Japan gets the gas: Japan buys into shale gas boom:

This explains why so many Japanese news stations have been in the Eagle Ford Shale recently. Most of the stations did not want to learn about impacts or talk to people who are suffering. They wanted happy stories for happy Japanese people who will happily cook their noodles and warm their buns using Texas gas. Only one group is interested in the impacts.

On Friday, while Texans were too busy being happy about the weekend, Obama approved another permit to export our domestic fracked gas...

This contract is for 20 years to export up to 1.4 billion cubic feet per day. Two of Japan’s largest utilities have contracts to buy LNG from the Texas facility for 20 years.

A massive infrastructure buildout and, with the rapid decline rates of fracked shale gas wells, lots more drilling will be required to meet the demands of this contract.

Texans get the impacts to air, water and land, Japan gets the gas, the Fracking Mafia gets the profit.

The Sierra Club on the TPP, Japan, and fracking:

Japan -- the world’s largest importer of liquefied natural gas – is seeking to import the dirty fuel from the United States. Exporting natural gas would raise domestic energy prices, harm the middle class and U.S. manufacturing, and significantly increase the practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. That means we’ll be paying the price here, with more fracking in our backyards, near our schools, and next to our hospitals – only to help a handful of big gas companies profit by shipping natural gas overseas.

Paul Hawken: "The Biggest Global Movement in History"

It is my belief that we are part of a movement that is greater and deeper and broader than we ourselves know or can know. It flies under the radar of the media by and large. It is nonviolent. It is grassroots. It has no clusterbombs, no armies, and no helicopters. It has no central ideology. A male vertebrate is not in charge.

This unnamed movement is the most diverse movement the world has ever seen. The very word "movement" is too small to describe it. No one started this worldview. No one is in charge of it. There is no orthodoxy. It is global, classless, unquenchable, and tireless. Its shared understanding is arising spontaneously from different economic sectors, cultures, regions, and cohorts. It is growing and spreading worldwide, with no exception.

It has many roots. But primarily the origins are indigenous cultures, the environment and social justice movements. Those three sectors and their subsectors are intertwining, morphing, and enlarging... This is a democracy movement...It's marked by kinship, communities, symbiosis. It's Pachamama ("Mother Universe"). It's Mama. It's the earth talking back, waking up...

This talk is now five years old––but this clip of Paul Hawken speaking at a 2006 Bioneers conference describing the collective energy of hundreds of thousands of civil society organizations made up of tens of millions of people––if not more, from all over our planet–– is still breathtaking.

The social entrepreneur drew his talk from his 2007 book, Blessed Unrest: How The Largest Movement in the World Came Into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming.

The movement Hawken describes is not something new. Citing poet/environmentalist Gary Snyder and actor/activist/writer Peter Coyote––Blessed Unrest refers to "the great underground, a current of humanity that dates back to the Paleolithic and its lineage can be traced back to healers, priestesses, philosophers, monks, rabbis, poets, and artists 'who speak for the planet, for other species, for interdependence, a life that courses under and through and around empires.'" 

Hawken's imagination was captured by not only the explosion of movements––but also by the shift towards the "intertwingling" of causes––environmentalism; renewable energy and sustainability; biodiversity; indigenous issues; civil society, children's issues; community development; cultural heritage; democratic activism; fair trade; good governance; human rights; social and economic justice; disarmament and peacemaking; water and other resource rights; and gender issues.

Orion excerpts Blessed Unrest here.

Wangari Mathaai: When we destroy our natural environment, we degrade ourselves; in helping the earth to heal, we heal ourselves

Wangaari Mathaai, the late Kenyan visionary, articulated the interconnections between democracy, demilitarization, human rights and environmentalism in her holistic vision of a life-sustaining civilization:

Spiritual Environmentalism: Healing Ourselves by Replenishing the Earth

During my more than three decades as an environmentalist and campaigner for democratic rights, people have often asked me whether spirituality, different religious traditions, and the Bible in particular had inspired me, and influenced my activism and the work of the Green Belt Movement (GBM). Did I conceive conservation of the environment and empowerment of ordinary people as a kind of religious vocation? Were there spiritual lessons to be learned and applied to their own environmental efforts, or in their lives as a whole?...

However, I never differentiated between activities that might be called "spiritual" and those that might be termed "secular." After a few years I came to recognize that our efforts weren't only about planting trees, but were also about sowing seeds of a different sort—the ones necessary to give communities the self-confidence and self-knowledge to rediscover their authentic voice and speak out on behalf of their rights (human, environmental, civic, and political). Our task also became to expand what we call "democratic space," in which ordinary citizens could make decisions on their own behalf to benefit themselves, their community, their country, and the environment that sustains them...

In the process of helping the earth to heal, we help ourselves.

Through my experiences and observations, I have come to believe that the physical destruction of the earth extends to us, too. If we live in an environment that's wounded—where the water is polluted, the air is filled with soot and fumes, the food is contaminated with heavy metals and plastic residues, or the soil is practically dust—it hurts us, chipping away at our health and creating injuries at a physical, psychological, and spiritual level. In degrading the environment, therefore, we degrade ourselves.

The reverse is also true. In the process of helping the earth to heal, we help ourselves. If we see the earth bleeding from the loss of topsoil, biodiversity, or drought and desertification, and if we help reclaim or save what is lost—for instance, through regeneration of degraded forests—the planet will help us in our self-healing and indeed survival. When we can eat healthier, nonadulterated food; when we breathe clean air and drink clean water; when the soil can produce an abundance of vegetables or grains, our own sicknesses and unhealthy lifestyles become healed. The same values we employ in the service of the earth's replenishment work on us, too. We can love ourselves as we love the earth; feel grateful for who we are, even as we are grateful for the earth's bounty; better ourselves, even as we use that self-empowerment to improve the earth; offer service to ourselves, even as we practice volunteerism for the earth.

Human beings have a consciousness by which we can appreciate love, beauty, creativity, and innovation or mourn the lack thereof. To the extent that we can go beyond ourselves and ordinary biological instincts, we can experience what it means to be human and therefore different from other animals. We can appreciate the delicacy of dew or a flower in bloom, water as it runs over the pebbles or the majesty of an elephant, the fragility of the butterfly or a field of wheat or leaves blowing in the wind. Such aesthetic responses are valid in their own right, and as reactions to the natural world they can inspire in us a sense of wonder and beauty that in turn encourages a sense of the divine.

The environment becomes sacred, because to destroy what is essential to life is to destroy life itself.

That consciousness acknowledges that while a certain tree, forest, or mountain itself may not be holy, the life-sustaining services it provides—the oxygen we breathe, the water we drink—are what make existence possible, and so deserve our respect and veneration. From this point of view, the environment becomes sacred, because to destroy what is essential to life is to destroy life itself.

Read more of this entire excerpt of Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World here.

"The Indigenous Call: Take Back Our Future"

Brenda Norrell: Native Americans and First Nations were arrested Friday, Sept. 2, 2011, at the White House to send a message for President Obama to say "No!" to the Keystone XL Pipeline.

In the video, Gitz Crazyboy, First Nation Dene/Pikini (Blackfoot), Alberta, Canada, describes the threat of the tar sands for generations to come. The video includes images of Native Americans and First Nations arrested at the White House sit-in.

The pipeline would go across the heartland, and the massive Oglalla aquifer, from Canada to Texas, endangering the environment and generations to come. Already the Alberta tar sands are destroying the homeland of First Nations in Alberta.

Vandana Shiva urges "Time to End War on the Earth" in Sydney Peace Prize speech

Dr. Vandana Shiva, recipient of this year's Sydney Peace Prize, urged the cessation of war on the earth (in the form of unsustainable environmentally destructive genetically modified, pesticide-intensive industrial agriculture); the end to the commodification of every aspect of life; and the promotion of "Earth Democracy" in her Nov. 5 acceptance speech:

When we think of wars in our times, our minds turn to Iraq and Afghanistan. But the bigger war is the war against the planet. This war has its roots in an economy that fails to respect ecological and ethical limits - limits to inequality, limits to injustice, limits to greed and economic concentration.

A handful of corporations and of powerful countries seeks to control the earth's resources and transform the planet into a supermarket in which everything is for sale. They want to sell our water, genes, cells, organs, knowledge, cultures and future.

The continuing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and onwards are not only about "blood for oil."  As they unfold, we will see that they are about blood for food, blood for genes and biodiversity and blood for water.

The war mentality underlying military-industrial agriculture is evident from the names of Monsanto's herbicides - ''Round-Up'', ''Machete'', ''Lasso''. American Home Products, which has merged with Monsanto, gives its herbicides similarly aggressive names, including ''Pentagon'' and ''Squadron''. This is the language of war. Sustainability is based on peace with the earth.

The war against the earth begins in the mind. Violent thoughts shape violent actions. Violent categories construct violent tools. And nowhere is this more vivid than in the metaphors and methods on which industrial, agricultural and food production is based. Factories that produced poisons and explosives to kill people during wars were transformed into factories producing agri-chemicals after the wars.

The year 1984 woke me up to the fact that something was terribly wrong with the way food was produced. With the violence in Punjab and the disaster in Bhopal, agriculture looked like war. That is when I wrote The Violence of the Green Revolution and why I started Navdanya as a movement for an agriculture free of poisons and toxics.

Pesticides, which started as war chemicals, have failed to control pests. Genetic engineering was supposed to provide an alternative to toxic chemicals. Instead, it has led to increased use of pesticides and herbicides and unleashed a war against farmers...

Making peace with the earth was always an ethical and ecological imperative. It has now become a survival imperative for our species.

Violence to the soil, to biodiversity, to water, to atmosphere, to farms and farmers produces a warlike food system that is unable to feed people. One billion people are hungry. Two billion suffer food-related diseases - obesity, diabetes, hypertension and cancers.

There are three levels of violence involved in non-sustainable development. The first is the violence against the earth, which is expressed as the ecological crisis. The second is the violence against people, which is expressed as poverty, destitution and displacement. The third is the violence of war and conflict, as the powerful reach for the resources that lie in other communities and countries for their limitless appetites...

The elevation of the domain of the market, and money as man-made capital, to the position of the highest organising principle for societies and the only measure of our well-being has led to the undermining of the processes that maintain and sustain life in nature and society.

The richer we get, the poorer we become ecologically and culturally. The growth of affluence, measured in money, is leading to a growth in poverty at the material, cultural, ecological and spiritual levels.

The real currency of life is life itself and this view raises questions: how do we look at ourselves in this world? What are humans for? And are we merely a money-making and resource-guzzling machine? Or do we have a higher purpose, a higher end?

I believe that ''earth democracy'' enables us to envision and create living democracies based on the intrinsic worth of all species, all peoples, all cultures - a just and equal sharing of this earth's vital resources, and sharing the decisions about the use of the earth's resources...

We have to make a choice. Will we obey the market laws of corporate greed or Gaia's laws for maintenance of the earth's ecosystems and the diversity of its beings?

People's need for food and water can be met only if nature's capacity to provide food and water is protected. Dead soils and dead rivers cannot give food and water.

Defending the rights of Mother Earth is therefore the most important human rights and social justice struggle. It is the broadest peace movement of our times.

Find out more about Dr. Shiva's book, Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace here at South End Press.

In "The Corporate Killing Fields" published at Asian Age in July of this year, Dr. Shiva reveals that pesticides kill 220,000 people every year and shows that " ecologically organic agriculture produces more food and better food at lower cost than either chemical agriculture or GMOs."

Read more about Navdanya, a network of seed keepers and organic producers spread across 16 states in India, here.

See Sarah Ruth van Gelder's great 2002 interview with Dr. Shiva about the "earth democracy" at Yes! Magazine:

There is, I think, a spontaneous resurgence of thinking that centers on protection of life, celebrating life, enjoying life as both our highest duty and our most powerful form of resistance...

Mizubeni Asobu Kai's community-based conservation program at Nakatsu Tidal Flats wins World Wetland Network "Blue Globe" in Nagoya

Yuriko Ashikaga of Mizubeni Asobu Kai accepts "Blue Globe" award in Nagoya. (Photo: World Wetlands Network)

Mizubeni Asobu Kai (headed by Yukiko Ashikaga), a community-based conservation program to restore and protect Nakatsu Tidal Flats won a World Wetland Network "Blue Globe" for best practices and wetland restoration in Nagoya.

The Oita-based group is a dynamic facet of Kyushu's vibrant civil society and interconnects with communities throughout Japan, the A-P, and the rest of the world. This past event "Water - connecting the human life and wildlife of Oita, Japan and the Asia-Pacific region" flyer reflects Mizubeni Asobu Kai's holistic framework and outreach. The NPO proposed and helped to organize the first Asia-Pacific Water Forum, held in 2007.

Nakatsu Tidal Flats. (Photo: Biodiversity Center of Japan)

They completed the Nakatsu Tidal Flats conservation project in 2005:

Natural morphologies, such as sand dunes, river mouth bars and wetlands around a river mouth, are formed by dynamic processes of waves, river currents and wind, and are dynamically stable unless a large-scale anthropogenic effect is induced.

Their coastal protection and ecosystem functions for maintaining habitats of many organisms were re-evaluated. The sand dune and wetland in front of an earth dike were maintained as they were, and the overall morphology was regarded as a shore protection facility against storm surges. The setting back of the protection line for maintaining a sand bar and a salt marsh was planned for the first time in Japan with the participation of local citizens and stakeholders, and the construction was completed in 2005.

These conservation activities are effective not only for enhancing the safety of the area but also for keeping the sustainability of fishery.

Congratulations to Yoshiko Ashikawa and her colleagues at Mizubeni Asobu Kai and the other winners of the World Wetland Network awards in Nagoya!

For more info on Nakatsu Tidal Flats, see this page at the Biodiversity Center of Japan's website. For info on more wetlands in Japan, see this page at the same site.

Finding Connections: Sea, Forest & Our Lives—Pacific Asia Resource Center DVD features individuals who saved their eco-systems

The Pacific Asia Resource Center (PARC) has worked since the 1970’s to promote sustainable development and fair trade in Asia. The Japanese NGO has released their newest DVD, Finding Connections: Sea, Forest and Our Lives, produced to encourage sustainable development and biodiversity conservation in Japan and abroad—particularly in rapidly developing Asian countries.

In the name of "development," humans are destroying ever-increasing swathes of our planet; thus wiping out entire eco-systems which we depend upon for food production and the continuation of life itself. Finding Connections: Sea, Forest and Our Lives features ordinary people who defy this trend living in harmony with nature—often against overwhelming forces. By listening to their experiences, we learn about the intimate interconnections between humans and nature.

Patterns of human relationships with nature reflect values that have changed with time. During the 1960's, Japan’s oceans, rivers, forests and fields underwent major changes as the country attempted to double its national income by exporting industrial products. At this time, productivity and efficiency ruled. Finding Connections: Sea, Forest and Our Lives paints a picture of staggering environmental damage throughout the Japanese archipelago:

• Coastal tidal flats, precious habitats for various aquatic species that sustain the food chain of the sea, were destroyed when corporations reclaimed shores to build industrial plants.

• The flows of rivers, which bring rich nutrition from mountains to the sea, were interrupted by dams built to generate electricity, prevent floods, and create reservoirs. The government build the dams meet projected increases of industrial and domestic water demand.

•  Broad-leafed trees, the natural vegetation of the Japanese archipelago, were replaced with conifers in order to meet growing demand for wood, which later began to face fierce competition from imports.

•  Planted conifer trees were left abandoned; their reduced water-holding capacity resulted in floods and landslides.

•  Chemical fertilizers and pesticides were introduced to agricultural fields through which rivers and oceans flowed.
However, ordinary citizens, who dedicated their lives to saving the natural eco-systems that make up their homes and provide their livelihood, made a difference:

Kudoh Kohta (Representative director of Iwaizumi Pure-wood Funiture): “All living things are protected by the environment and the earth...humans are just one of these species.”

Kohta believes that trees must only be used sustainably, taking into consideration the pace of forest regeneration. The furniture artisan runs a furniture work shop that operates on the concept, “Making furniture that last for 300 years with trees that have lived for 300 years.”

Kumagai Hiroyuki (Former Executive Director of the Campaign Coalition Against the Niitsuki Dam): “We’ll never get back those 27 years. We spent blood and sweat, but now we have peace of mind. We preserved the foundation of our livelihoods.”

Kumagai led the campaign coalition against a local dam project for almost three decades; engaged in relentless civil research and promotion until the project was finally frozen in 1997. He was elected as a local city council member.

Hatakeyama Shigeatsu (Oyster farmer, Representive Director of Mizuyama Sea Farm): “It’s important to raise awareness among people living in the river basin.”

Hatakeyama, a fisher, planted broad-leaf trees along upstream mountains along a river slated for a dam project, to let people know that rivers are vital sources of nutrition for the blessings of the ocean. His movement, named “The Forest Is the Sweetheart of the Sea,” gathered widespread attention.

Ohno Kazutoshi (President of Funabashi City Fishery Cooperative): “Rivers flowing into Tokyo Bay were once full of aquatic species. Tokyo Bay and its tidal flats were also habitats for various marine species. But human beings destroyed these habitats. They didn’t do so on purpose, but out of ignorance.”

Ohno lived on Tokyo Bay for over 60 years carrying out his family’s fishing business. Its tradition may be traced back to the 17th century. He contributed to the conservation of Sanbanze, an 1800-hectare tidal flat remaining in Tokyo Bay. The fisher emphasizes its importance for the fishery.

Onodera Hiroshi: “With wet rice paddies, you can harvest a certain amount of rice without fertilizer, since the water from forests is rich in nutrients.”

Onodera, a farmer living upstream of the basin, joined “The Forest Is the Sweetheart of the Sea” movement, thereby becoming inspired to stop raising broiler chickens and become an organic farmer.

With natural resources rapidly disappearing throughout the world, we believe the Japanese experience can help us reconsider the concept of “development” itself—helping us to relearn what we’ve lost. It is our hope that more people will make the choice to return to natural, sustainable lifestyles.

For further information, please contact Natsumi Koike from PARC: Tel: +81-3-5209-3455 Mail: video@parc-jp.org

PARC would be very happy to provide sample DVDs upon request.


Video information:
Title: Finding Connections ; Sea, Forest and Our Lives
Directed by Suzuki Toshiaki, Produced by Pacific Asia Resource Center (PARC), May. 2010

● 35min, DVD (NTSC or PAL)
● Bilingual (Japanese/English)
● Price $20 for developing countries, $60 for developed countries
● “Finding Connections; Sea, Forest and Our Lives”

Contents

Chapter 1: Nature Changed by People
Humans and Nature in the Modern Era / Reclaimed Tidal Wetlands and the Impoverished Sea

Chapter 2: Severed Connections
The Agricultural Basic Law and the National Income-Doubling plan / Extensive Forestation and Increased Timber Imports

Chapter 3: The Roles of the Forests and Rivers
The Soil and Water Holding Capacity of Mountains / Proliferating Dams / Connecting the Mountains and the Sea / Awareness Changed Reality / Harnessing Nature in the Mountains

Chapter 4: Interconnected Lives
Culture of Broad-leaf Forests / Sanbanze, a Fishing Ground in Northern Tokyo Bay / Values behind Choices

The video website page is here.

CONSCIOUS EATING, KIND DIET: UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet; shift away from "Western" consumption pattern

Via The Guardian:

CONSCIOUS EATING, KIND DIET

UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet: Lesser consumption of animal products is necessary to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change, UN report says

guardian.co.uk
Wednesday 2 June 2010

A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.

As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management.

It says: "Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."

Professor Edgar Hertwich, the lead author of the report, said: "Animal products cause more damage than [producing] construction minerals such as sand or cement, plastics or metals. Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as [burning] fossil fuels."

The recommendation follows advice last year that a vegetarian diet was better for the planet from Lord Nicholas Stern, former adviser to the Labour government on the economics of climate change. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has also urged people to observe one meat-free day a week to curb carbon emissions.

The panel of experts ranked products, resources, economic activities and transport according to their environmental impacts.

Agriculture was on a par with fossil fuel consumption because both rise rapidly with increased economic growth, they said. Ernst von Weizsaecker, an environmental scientist who co-chaired the panel, said: "Rising affluence is triggering a shift in diets towards meat and dairy products - livestock now consumes much of the world's crops and by inference a great deal of freshwater, fertilisers and pesticides."

Both energy and agriculture need to be "decoupled" from economic growth because environmental impacts rise roughly 80% with a doubling of income, the report found...

Agriculture, particularly meat and dairy products, accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption, 38% of the total land use and 19% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, says the report, which has been launched to coincide with UN World Environment day on Saturday...

Prof Hertwich, who is also the director of the industrial ecology programme at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said that developing countries – where much of this population growth will take place – must not follow the western world's pattern of increasing consumption: "Developing countries should not follow our model. But it's up to us to develop the technologies in, say, renewable energy or irrigation methods."

Read the entire article here.

Blue Gold: World Water Wars showing at theatres throughout Japan

Water, water every where,
nor any drop to drink...

This epic line from the Rime of the Ancyent Marinere (1798) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge describes the ironic doom of sailors lost at sea, surrounded by water, none of which can quench their deadly thirst.

We, too, are like those very crew members, lost to thickening seas of polluted, plastic soup, due to our negligence and abuse of the mother of life as we know it--Water. This way of life is leading us to a global water crisis.

Award winning, Blue Gold: World Water Wars takes us straight to the source of the water crisis by exploring how U.S., Canadian, British, French, and Japanese multinational corporations--by trying to privatize water as a commodity--are polluting and diverting water resources at the expense of local communities, resuling in large-scale desertification and wars fought over the most precious resource on our planet.

According to Michael Quinion at World Wide Words, "water wars" are:

...a type of conflict (most probably a form of guerrilla warfare) due to an acute shortage of water for drinking and irrigation. About 40 per cent of the world’s populations are already affected to some degree, but population growth, climate change and rises in living standards will worsen the situation: the UN Environment Agency warns that almost 3 billion people will be severely short of water within 50 years. Possible flash points have been predicted in the Middle East, parts of Africa and in many of the world’s major river basins, including the Danube. The term has been used for some years to describe disputes in the southern and south-western United States over rights to water extraction from rivers and aquifers.

Yet, there is hope. Including interviews of New Delhi-based environmental activist and author, Vandana Shiva, Oscar Olivera, the industrial worker and spokesperson for Coalition in Defense of Water and Life who led the Bolivian uprising against US multinational Bechetal, and countless other inspiring individuals and organizations, Blue Gold provides us with realistic examples of how we can reverse the water crisis if we act now.

By taking the viewer into the lives of those struggling, often successfully, for their basic rights to water, the film challenges us to critique and challenge economic and political systems that forfeit our lives to global corporations. As Blue Planet Project founder, Maude Barlow proclaims: “This is our revolution, this is our war”.

Blue Gold will be showing in theaters all throughout Japan in April.

Click on the link to each theater for more information:Kanazawa @ Cine Monde (4/17-23 at 12:30pm)

• Kobe @ Art Village Center (4/17-19 at 8pm; 4/ 21-23 at 8pm; 4/3-5 /1 at 820pm)
• Kyoto @ Minamikaikan (4/5-9 at 11am; 4/10-14 at 12:35pm)
• Osaka @ 7th Art Center (4/4-9 at 4:55pm; 4/10, 12-16 at 6:55pm)
• Tokyo at Uplink (3/27-4/ 7 at 10:45am & 2:55pm; 4/10th- ? at 11am)
• Toyama at Forza (4/4-9 - 3:35pm; 4/10-16 -5:50pm)

Understanding the need to spread knowledge about the water crisis, producer Sam Bozzo, who created the film at his own expense, has agreed to allow the film to be downloaded as a DVDRip from the Pirate Bay and One BitTorrent. However, this blogger requests that downloaders support his work with a donation that can be made through the Blue Gold website.

For more on water resources:

• Watch The Story of Bottled Water and 'take back the tap!'
• Read the pdf: BLUE GOLD: The Global Water Crisis and the Commodificatin of the World's Water Supply
• Visit Water Justice Now! The Blue Planet Project, Water Wars World Wide
• Follow Blue Gold Water News Daily
• Take control back of your watershed with the Blue Gold Action Plan

The Insular Empire: America in the Marianas -- What's it like to be a colonial subject of the US?

Filmmaker Vanessa Warheit asks what it's like to live as a colonial subject of the US in her new film The Insular Empire: American in the Mariana Islands. In this investigative documentary, she focuses on the lives of the residents of Guam who are facing US military expansion on their island--one third of which is already occupied by military bases.

The historical experience of Guam's indigenous Chamorro people mirrors that of Native Americans (and Ainu in Japan and Russia). And the contemporary neo-colonial exploitation of their lands mirrors what is happening to Native Americans as well (and Ainu and other indigenous people who live in Sakhalin, given Russia's exploitation of that island for oil).


Warheit has a great blog with the latest on oppostion the proposed military expansion on Guam (1/3 of the island is already covered with military bases). Her Jan. 8 post, "What's at Stake" outlines a fact sheet detailing the devasting impacts to the environment and quality of life of the residents, including the indigenous Chamorro:

Koohan Paik has assembled a fact sheet about the proposed military buildup on Guam. This concise document distills the intimidating 11,000 page EIS document (released in November by the military) into something the average person can wrap their head around.

The results are chilling. Just a few of the many disastrous effects outlined in the EIS:

* Depletion of Guam's fresh water supply

* Destruction of historic archaeological and sacred cultural sites

* Dredging of 2.3 million square feet of fragile coral reef (that's 40 football fields!)

* Destruction of the largest mangrove forest on US soil
... and the list goes on and on.

In addition to the obvious environmental disaster this buildup portends, I think it's really important to keep in mind the threats it also poses to the endangered Chamoru culture. I'm posting here two videos (one of them is posted here) highlighting traditional island culture - they are inspiring, and remind us all of what is at stake.