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The 2006 movie, “A Night at the Museum” introduced people around the world to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.  But the real museum is even more spectacular than the special effects of the movie—and has been for nearly 150 years.

The governor of New York signed the museum into existence on April 6, 1869.  The mission, then and now, is straightforward:  “To discover, interpret, and disseminate—through scientific research and education—knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe.”

The founders wasted little time acting on their mission.  Within two years, specimens from the museum went on exhibit at an existing building, inside Central Park.  Almost immediately, that building provided insufficient, and a new site across the street from the park spanning four city blocks was purchased.  The cornerstone for the first museum building was laid in 1974 by President Grant, and the building opened in 1877.  Since then, it has been expanded repeatedly, with now 25 inter-connected buildings offering 570,000 square feet of exhibit space.

To fulfill its mission, the museum began sponsoring expeditions throughout the world, a “golden age of exploration that last[ed] from 1880-1930.”  Explorers sponsored by the museum discovered the North Pole, trekked across Siberia, Mongolia and the Gobi Desert, and reached the unknown interior of African jungles.  And that drive to explore continues today—during 2016, the museum sponsored 93 expeditions covering all seven continents.

The fruits of those expeditions have yielded a treasure of knowledge about our world and artifacts.  The museum has the largest collection of natural history objects in the world, now well over 34 million in total.  Included is the world’s most comprehensive and scientifically important collection of fossils, especially dinosaurs (one of which is exhibited in a soaring space that is the highest free-standing dinosaur skeleton in the world).

The museum was an early pioneer of anthropological research and collections.  Today “natural history” might mean wild animals and plants, but when the museum began the term also meant learning about the world’s human cultures.  The museum hired Franz Boas and sent him on an expedition of unparalleled scope to chronicle the culture of the native peoples of the Pacific Northwest.  He was followed by Margaret Mead, who worked for the museum for most of her career while studying the people of the South Pacific and Southeast Asia—and originating the modern science of cultural anthropology.

The museum also pioneered the display of animal specimens in their natural environments—the dioramas so common today in museums.  The pioneer of this display method was Carl Ackeley, who began building displays for the museum in 1913.  Those displays were—and are—renowned for their ecological accuracy and their artistic mastery.

The American Museum of Natural History has remained at the forefront of science education.  It continues to renovate its displays to incorporate new knowledge, technologies and interactivity.  Nearly 5 million visitors pass through the exhibits annually, along with others that view traveling exhibits and participate on-line (not to mention the viewers of those night-at-the-museum movies!).

A major change to the museum is currently underway (in spring of 2022).  For nearly a century, the main entrance to the museum has featured a statue showing three human figures.  One is Theodore Roosevelt, riding a horse as though on a hunting expedition.  The other two are standing on either side of the horse; one represents a Native American and one represents an African man.  In recent years, the statue has become controversial, interpreted as showing Roosevelt dominating the other two figures, an intentional representation of racial inequality.  After several years of debate and studies, the museum began removing the statue on January 18, 2022.

References:

American Museum of Natural History.  2022.  Addressing the Statue.  Available at:  https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/addressing-the-statue.  Accessed April 6, 2022.

American Museum of Natural History.  2016 Annual Report.  Available at:  https://www.scribd.com/document/367739575/AMNH-Annual-Report-2016#download&from_embed.  Accessed April 6, 2018.

American Museum of Natural History.  History.  Available at:  https://www.amnh.org/about-the-museum/history.  Accessed April 6, 2018.

NYC-Arts.  American Museum of Natural History.  Available at:  https://www.nyc-arts.org/organizations/54/american-museum-of-natural-history.  Accessed April 6, 2018

April 7 is celebrated each year as World Health Day.  As Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland (learn more about her here) famously noted in her leadership of the world’s first comprehensive look at sustainability, the issues of public health, environmental quality and economic development are not three issues—but one.

World Health Day is celebrated on April 7 to recognize the founding of the World Health Organization (WHO) on that date in 1948.  WHO is a United Nations agency that focuses on public health concerns around the globe.  It employs 7,000 people in 150 countries, 6 regional offices and the headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

As the constitution of WHO states,

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.

The health of all peoples is fundamental to the attainment of peace and security and is dependent upon the fullest co-operation of individuals and States.”

            Thoughtful leaders understand that people who are unhealthy (or living in poverty) must be concerned most about their immediate issues—hunger, illness, disability and imminent death.  Consequently, they are less likely to act positively on longer-term behavior to enhance environmental sustainability.  As Brundtland understood, jointly solving the issues of health, poverty and environmental sustainability is the only successful route to a world of peace and plenty for all.

Each year, World Health Day highlights a particular theme.  For 2022, the theme is “our planet, our health.”  WHO notes the following:

• 90% of the world’s population breathe unhealthy air, caused by pollution
• 13 million people die every years from avoidable environmental causes
• Climate change is the biggest threat to human civilization; burning fossil fuels costs $8 billion per day in reduced health and prosperity

As the 2022 World Health Day site states, “The present design of the economy leads to inequitable distribution of income, wealth and power, with too many people still living in poverty and instability. A well-being economy has human well-being, equity and ecological sustainability as its goals. These goals are translated into long-term investments, well-being budgets, social protection and legal and fiscal strategies. Breaking these cycles of destruction for the planet and human health requires legislative action, corporate reform and individuals to be supported and incentivized to make healthy choices.”

Assuring a healthy human population is as much a conservation and sustainability issue as assuring healthy populations of the rest of nature’s species and ecosystems.

References:

World Health Organization.  2006.  Constitution.  Available at:  http://www.who.int/governance/eb/who_constitution_en.pdf.  Accessed April 6, 2018.

World Health Organization.  2017.  Tokyo Declaration on Universal Health Coverage.  Available at:  http://www.who.int/universal_health_coverage/tokyo-decleration-uhc.pdf?ua=1.  Accessed April 6, 2018.

World Health Organization.  2017.  Universal health coverage (UHC) fact sheet.  Available at:  http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs395/en/.  Accessed April 6, 2018.

World Health Organization.  2022.  World Health Day, 2022.  Available at: https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-health-day.  Accessed April 6, 2022.

If you go to a state or national park, you will probably be walking on a trail, sitting in a shelter or standing on a scenic overlook that was built in the 1930s by the young workers of the CCC—the Civilian Conservation Corps.  The CCC is one of the great American success stories of conservation, a silver lining from the cloud of the Great Depression.

In the early 1930s, America was in the worst economic conditions in history.  Unemployment was nearly 25%, and half of young men were out of work.  At the same time, the country’s natural resources had been devastated by soil erosion, forest over-harvesting and loss of wildlife habitat.

As soon as Franklin Roosevelt was elected president, he asked Congress to give him authority to address both those problems by creating the Emergency Conservation Work Act, which we know as the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC.  Congress did so on March 31, 1933, and Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6101 creating the CCC on April 5.  He appointed Robert Fechner, a union leader, as the director.

They wasted no time.  Two days later, the CCC started enrolling young men into the program.  It was a military-style operation.  Only unemployed young men, aged 18-25, were eligible.  They lived in wooden barracks or tents, in camps throughout the country.  They were given uniforms and their meals in exchange for six days of hard work per week.  They were paid $30 per month, but $25 of that was sent back to their families to relieve the desperate situations at home.  Participants “enlisted” for at least six months, but many spent years in the program.

Within a year, more than 250,000 men were operating in the CCC, growing to a high of 500,000 at one time in 1935.  In total, over the life of the CCC from 1933 to 1942, more than 3 million men participated.  Most were white, but as the program developed, segregated camps for minorities were started, serving about 250,000 African-Americans and 80,000 Native Americans.  In later years of the program, women were also allowed to participate (about 8500 overall).

The CCC was immensely popular.  Thousands of camps were eventually established in all 48 states and Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.  Both Republicans and Democrats endorsed the program, and local politicians loved the money it brought to their communities.  The participants became healthier and learned skills; many took educational courses in the evenings, including an estimated 57,000 illiterate men who learned to read.  The money sent home improved life there.  In the communities near camps, the labor needed to build and maintain the camps created jobs and economic activity.

But the real winner was conservation.  Over the nine years of the program, the CCC created an enormous legacy.  The men built 3470 fire towers, cleared 97,000 miles of fire roads and spent more than 4 million man-days fighting fires.  Long before FEMA, they provided the workforce to help victims of floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters.

Known as “Roosevelt’s Tree Army,” they planted three billion trees, representing half of all reforestation that has occurred in the U.S.  The CCC established 711 new state parks and built the roads, campgrounds and picnic areas within them and another 170 state, county and municipal parks.  Nearly 200 CCC camps were within national parks and monuments, responsible for most of the infrastructure in those parks.

While many leaders wanted to establish the CCC as a permanent part of the federal government, a more immediate threat arose—the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  As the U.S. entered World War II, the country realized that young men were needed most for the war effort.  And, so, in early 1942, the CCC was shut down.

The CCC may be a part of history today, but the legacy lives on.  Similar programs have followed in various forms, at both federal and state levels, for conservation and other societal purposes.  So, whenever you walk a trail in a park, or marvel at the craftsmanship of the  beautiful stone bridges, cabins and visitor centers in one of our national parks, remember the young workers of the CCC—and thank both them and the foresighted leaders of our country for their commitment to our future.

References:

Civilian Conservation Corps Legacy.  CCC Brief History.  Available at:  http://www.ccclegacy.org/CCC_Brief_History.html.  Accessed April 5, 2018.

Digital Public Library of America.  Roosevelt’s Tree Army:  The Civilian Conservation Corps.  Available at:  https://dp.la/exhibitions/civilian-conservation-corps/history-ccc.  Accessed April 5, 2018.

History.com.  Civilian Conservation Corps.  Available at:  https://www.history.com/topics/civilian-conservation-corps.  Accessed April 5, 2018.

Paige, John C.  1985.  The Civilian Conservation Corps and The National Park Service, 1933-1942, An Administrative History.  National Park Service.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/ccc/index.htm.  Accessed April 5, 2018.

All this sustainability stuff is deadly serious, but can we take a minute now and then to laugh at ourselves about it?

That’s just what the British comedy series, The Good Life, did.  In 39 episodes, starting on April 4, 1975, and running through 1978, the television show spoofed the desire to become self-sufficient and get back to nature.  The show is considered among the best British comedies of all time, ranking near Fawlty Towers (but no show will ever match that one).

The show depicts the struggles of Tom and Barbara Good (played by now famous actors Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal) to divorce themselves from the modern rat-race and become “eco-warriers,” living off the land.  Unfortunately, their land is a small plot in the suburbs (the village is named, appropriately, Surbiton).  And what follows is a hilarious look at the perils of growing your own food, from plants to animals, dealing with waste, keeping warm and satisfying innumerable other needs more easily served from the supermarket and dry-goods store.

The Good’s new lifestyle is the bane of their neighbors, the Leadbetters.  Particularly affected is Mrs. Margo Leadbetter, played by the inimitable Penelope Keith.  Hopelessly middle-class and trying to go higher, she rebels at the mess, sounds, smells and general chaos of her neighbors.

And so they do battle—sustainability versus consumerism.  The Leadbetters put up a windbreak on their fence, the Goods complain that it will shade their fruit trees.  The Good’s try to improve their vegetable yields by talking to their plants, disturbing their neighbors with all the chit-chat.  When the Good’s buy two pigs, Pinky and Perky, they inevitably escape to terrorize the Leadbetter’s yard.

But, along the way in each show and along the series as a whole, the neighbors grow together, managing to stay friends despite their differences.  In fact, the release of the show in the U.S. was re-titled “Good Neighbors.”

As funny as the shows were, they also highlight the real dilemma of trying to incorporate environmental sustainability into our everyday lives.  Sure, we recycle and take reusable bags to the grocery store.  But we drive to the grocery store and we recycle way too much excess packaging and other one-use materials.  The more serious our attempts get, the more difficult they become—and the more at odds with the rest of society.

But I think the real lesson, of both the television show and a proper outlook on modern living, is that it is okay to be less than perfect. Better be, because none of us is perfect, and so making friends of those who are a bit more or a bit less sustainable is the best strategy.  The bottom line is that improving is what matters—reducing our impacts a bit at a time when we can, and keeping society’s eyes on the prize of a more sustainable world, both locally and globally.  Remember, sustainability is a journey, not a destination.  And it’s good to laugh along the way!

References:

IMDB.com.  Good Neighbors.  Available at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075511/.  Accessed April 3, 2018.

Ask just about anyone to name a famous living biologist, and the answer is likely to be, “Jane Goodall.”  Goodall, who studied chimpanzees in Tanzania for half a century, is a hero to people throughout the world, and especially a role model for young women interested in science, research and adventure.

Goodall was born on April 3, 1934, in London.  As a girl, she loved delighted in nature, spending her free time observing the behavior of animals.  She developed two specific loves—animals and Africa.  “I got my love of animals from the Dr. Doolittle books and my love of Africa from the Tarzan novels,” she said.  Those loves grew stronger as she matured.  She completed high school, but did not have enough money to attend college.  She worked for years as a secretary and waitress, saving money to afford to go to Africa.

She achieved her dream when she accompanied a friend to Kenya in 1957.  There she met Louis Leakey, the famous paleo-anthropologist, and began working for him as a secretary and field assistant. Realizing her interest in animal behavior, Leakey sent Goodall to study the vervet monkey on an island in Lake Victoria.

Leakey believed that studying primates in nature would yield great insight into the evolution of humans.  He thought Goodall would be perfect for the work, because her lack of a college education would make her an accurate observer, un-influenced by theory or current dogma.  So, in 1960, accompanied by her mother (local authorities would not let a young English woman travel on her own), she traveled to the Gombe Stream National Park in what is now Tanzania to begin observing chimpanzees.

For a long time, Goodall could not get close to the chimpanzees.  When she was still hundreds of yards away, they would retreat and disappear.  But she kept at it, appearing at the same location and time every day and waiting patiently.  Eventually, the chimpanzees came closer and closer, and within a few years, they had accepted her presence among them.  She became a neighbor, rather than an intruder.

Goodall’s close access allowed her to discover two behaviors that rocked the zoological world.  First was the fact that chimpanzees were omnivores, not herbivores, often eating meat that they hunted in groups.  Second, and more important, was her observation that the animals made and used tools—specifically, she observed chimpanzees stripping the leaves from twigs, then inserting the twigs into termite nests and then removing them to eat the insects that had climbed aboard.

Goodall’s work became widely known, but Leakey knew she would not be considered seriously without academic credentials.  So, at his insistence, she enrolled at Cambridge, earning her PhD in 1965.  Hers was a remarkable achievement, becoming one of only a handful of Cambridge students who earned a doctorate without a bachelor’s degree beforehand.

As soon as she was finished with her degree, she was back at Gombe observing chimpanzees—and continued to do so for nearly fifty years.  She wrote several books based on her observations, introducing the world to the complex and human-like societies of chimpanzees. Some animal behaviorists objected to her practice of naming individuals and ascribing feelings and personalities to individual animals.  She didn’t care, asserting, “You cannot share your life with a dog…and not know perfectly well that animals have personalities and minds and feelings…. In a way, my dog Rusty gave me the courage of my convictions.”

And, of course, those convictions have now become the core of animal behavior studies the world around.  Scores of scientists have followed in Goodall’s footsteps, using her patient observational techniques to study gorillas, orangutans, lions, elephants, wolves and countless other species.

Along the way, Goodall has become a household name to anyone interested in wildlife and conservation.  In 1977, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute which works holistically to “improve the lives of people, animals and the environment.”  In 1991, she co-founded an organization for youth called “Roots & Shoots,” which now has chapters in 100 countries.  Her philosophy as a conservationist is simple and profound:

“Only if we understand, will we care.  Only is we care, will we help.  Only is we help, shall all be saved.”

References:

Biography.com.  Jane Goodall.  Available at:  https://www.biography.com/people/jane-goodall-9542363.  Accessed April 3, 2018.

Jane Goodall Institute.  About Jane.  Available at:  http://www.janegoodall.org/our-story/about-jane/.  Accessed April 3, 2018.

McKie, Robin.  2010.  Chimps with everything:  Jane Goodall’s 50 years in the jungle.  The Guardian, 26 Jun 2010.  Available at:  https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/jun/27/jane-goodall-chimps-africa-interview. Accessed April 3, 2018.

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His tombstone in Arlington National Cemetery says simply that John Wesley Powell was a “Soldier, Explorer, Scientist.”  Those three words summarize a life that makes Powell one of America’s greatest students of the vast western region of North America.

John Wesley Powell was born on March 24, 1934, in New York State (died 1902).  But along with his family, he moved early to farms in Ohio, Wisconsin and Illinois.  He was always interested in nature, taking every opportunity to informally study the science he loved.  He took expeditions throughout the Midwest, collecting specimens for the Illinois Natural History Survey.  At age 22, he rowed the entire length of the Mississippi River, collecting mollusk specimens and other biological and geological artifacts.  He followed that expedition by rowing the entire Ohio and Illinois Rivers.  Without a college degree, he nonetheless became widely known as an expert naturalist, so much so that in 1859, he was named Secretary of the Illinois Natural History Society, housed at Illinois State Normal University.  He was an accomplished explorer and scientist before he turned 30.

But the start of the Civil War put a temporary end to those pursuits—it was time to become a soldier.  As a devoted opponent of slavery, he enlisted in the army as a private, was rapidly promoted to lieutenant and served in many battles as an artillery officer.  At the Battle of Shiloh, he was shot, resulting in the amputation of his right arm.  As soon as possible, he returned to active service, fighting later at Vicksburg.  He required another surgery, but returned to fight again, earning the rank of major.

After the war ended, he became a professor of geology at Illinois Wesleyan University, allowing him to visit the western U.S. on field trips.  He was mesmerized by the landscape and determined to explore the great unknown regions of the arid southwest.

The crowning achievement of his life as an explorer occurred during the summer of 1869.  With a crew of ten and four boats, he launched off to explore the entire length of the Colorado River, a feat never before accomplished.  For three months, the team ran rapids, portaging around the worst and barely surviving the rest.  They ran an estimated 500 significant rapids during the 1000-mile trip. Undaunted by the absence of an arm, Powell climbed mountains without hesitation, recording the geology and topography of the landscape.  Reduced to two boats and just six men, the team emerged at the southern end of the Grand Canyon, emaciated but triumphant.

News of the expedition made Powell a national hero, and his chronicle of the journey, in books and lectures, furthered that reputation. He repeated the expedition two years later, this time producing the surveying data that filled in the gaping hole in the U.S. map.  Fully understanding the need to document the condition of the West before it could be effectively settled, Powell lobbied successfully for a geological agency in the federal government—the U.S. Geological Survey was established in 1879 and Wesley became its second, but clearly most influential, director from 1881 to 1894.  At the same time, he directed a new Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution, devoted largely to Powell’s goal to document the cultures of Native Americans.

Powell had a particular view of the use of the arid West.  He believed that it could not be settled like the water-rich eastern states and territories, but rather required a detailed survey of the land and a specific settlement strategy matching the realities of the environment.  He also believed that Native Americans were badly misrepresented and their cultures needed documentation and explanation to the rest of the country.  Unfortunately, neither of these views could overcome the nation’s drive to colonize the West at the expense of Native American peoples.

Powell died in 1902, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, along with his wife, Emma.  At the time of his death, he was nearly penniless.  But his legacy endures.  A news report at that time noted that he was among “the foremost rank of geologists and anthropologists of the world.”  And a noted historian wrote that, “No part of Powell’s life is more spectacular than his heroic efforts to preserve the public domain from pillage for private gain.”

References:

Arlington National Cemetery.  John Wesley Powell, Major, United States Army.  Available at:  http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jwpowell.htm.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

BBC News.  2014.  John Wesley Powell:  The one-armed explorer.  4 January 2014.  Available at:  http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25491932.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

Jenkins, Mark Collins.  2018.  John Wesley Powell:  Soldier, Explorer, Scientist and National Geographic Founder.  National Geographic Blog.  Available at:  https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2018/01/02/john-wesley-powell-soldier-explorer-scientist-and-national-geographic-founder/.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

Powell Museum.  The Life of John Wesley Powell.  Available at:  http://www.powellmuseum.org/museum_powell.php.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

Sitka, Alaska, lies in the resource-rich archipelago of islands that make up the tail of the state alongside the north Pacific coast.  The history of Alaska and that of Sitka intertwine in a complex story of cultures and natural resources.  To commemorate that history, Sitka National Historical Park was created.

Sitka sits on the shore of Baranof Island, an island slightly larger than the state of Delaware.  The Tlingit people have lived there for at least 10,000 years, establishing a rich culture based around the abundant natural resources of the region.  The ocean is rich in fish and shellfish, the forest grows massive Sitka spruce and other trees, suppling wood for homes, canoes and other needs.  The forest is rich in wildlife, providing another source of food and hides for clothing and shelter.  Because of the stable and beneficent resources, the Tlingit people established strong families and communities, with traditional music, dance and art.

The abundant resources also attracted European settlers beginning in the late 1700s.  Russians in search of fur pelts dominated the region for much of the 18th Century, establishing the city of Archangel (later Sitka) as their primary trading and administrative hub.  The Tlingits fought back against this colonization, notably in two battles, in 1802 and 1804, that the national park commemorates.  Although the U.S. bought Alaska from Russia in 1867, the Russia heritage of the region continued—and Sitka now contains two of only four Russian-built structures in the Western hemisphere, one in the national park.

The combination of rich Tlingit, Russian and American heritage led early Alaskan leaders to create a local historic park dedicated both to the individual cultures and their fusion.  As early as 1890, President Benjamin Harrison enacted the rudiments of a park, making it the oldest federally designated park in Alaska.  However, little notice was taken of the action beyond the local community.  The park suffered from vandalism and neglect until a group of leading Sitka residents convinced President Taft to designate the park as a national monument, on March 23, 1910.  In 1972, the park was re-named a national historical park.

Today, Sitka National Historical Park occupies just 113 acres, but its small size belies its importance.  The park honors the Tlingit people and their culture with a series of more than 25 standing totem poles and a heritage center that not only houses an impressive collection of Tlingit artifacts (nearly 250,000), but also teaches succeeding generations of Tlingit children about their cultural traditions.  Annual visitation to the park is about 200,000.

References:

Antonson, Joan M. and William S. Hanable.  1987.  An Administrative History of Sitka National Historical Park.  National Park Service.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/sitk/adhi/index.htm.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

National Park Service.  Sitka National Park, Alaska.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/sitk/index.htm.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

National Park Service.  Sitka National Historical Park, Sitka, Alaska.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/cultural_diversity/Sitka_National_Historical_Park.html.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

Every year on March 22, the world celebrates the importance of freshwater through World Water Day.  The UN declared March 22 World Water Day in 1992, following the recommendation of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro earlier that year.

As we all know, water is the ultimate resource.  While many forms of alternative energy and other materials exist, nothing can replace water.  And although the earth is awash in water, only 2% is fresh and only 0.4% is available for human use (the rest is frozen in glaciers and ice sheets).  Humans can exist for a long time without food, but we can live only a few days at most without water.

The availability and use of water varies greatly around the world.  The United States is a great country for many reasons, but chief among them is the abundance of water.  Our water is used not only for consumption, bathing and waste removal in our homes, but also to produce electricity (cooling water), food (irrigation and watering of animals) and the materials we use every day.  Making a t-shirt uses 660 gallons of water, about the same amount as needed to make a typical fast-food restaurant sandwich.  The average American uses about 2000 gallons of water per day when all uses (direct and indirect) are combined.  The average African family, in contrast, uses about 5 gallons per day.  The biggest use of water worldwide is irrigation, absorbing 70% of all freshwater use (in the U.S. that number is only about 30%).  Second comes energy production (about 45% of all water use in the U.S.).

Water scarcity impacts around 3 billion people around the world.  And when water isn’t scarce, it often turns out to be a problem by being too abundant, producing floods.  Floods and related impacts account for 70% of all deaths from natural disasters.

Our ability to supply clean water to the world’s poorest people has improved greatly over the past two decades, the result of our focus on the Millennium Development Goals.  About 90% of humans now have improved supply, leaving about 700 million people worldwide still without good water. But sanitation—the removal of human and other wastes from living areas and their treatment—still lags behind other improvements.  About 2.4 billion people lack basic sanitation facilities, causing almost 1000 children to die every day from diseases related to the lack of sanitation .

To draw attention to the importance of freshwater, the UN develops a theme for World Water Day every year.  In 2023, the theme is “Accelerating Change” emphasizing that the world needs to speed up its efforts to protect water resources if we are going to meet the goals set out by the UN Sustainable Development Goals. These goals, agreed to by the world’s nations, include Goal 6—Clean Water and Sanitation.  The specific targets for this goal include, by 2030, the following:

• Achieve universal access to safe and affordable drinking water for all
• Achieve universal access to basic sanitation for all
• Cut the amount of untreated wastewater in half
• Make the use of freshwater sustainable through efficiency improvements
• Protect and restore water-related ecosystems, including those on national boundaries.

In order to meet these goals, we need to get going!

References:

Save the Water.  250 Water Facts.  Available at:  http://savethewater.org/education-resources/water-facts/.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

UN Water.  2018.  The Answer is in Nature.  Available at:  http://worldwaterday.org/.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

United Nations.  Sustainable Development Goal 6.  Available at:  http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/water-and-sanitation/.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

United Nations.  World Water Day, March 22.  Available at:  http://www.un.org/en/events/waterday/index.shtml.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

The United Nations has declared March 21 as the annual International Day of Forests.  The day has been celebrated since 2013.  An accompanying celebration called World Wood Day (not associated with the UN) occurs on the same day.

Forests, of course, are part of a sustainable earth.  About one-third of the earth’s land area is covered in forests (and the U.S. has about the same percentage of its land in forests).  More than 1.6 billion people—about 20% of the world’s population—rely directly on forests for their food, fuel, housing, medicine and jobs.  Included in that are 2,000 indigenous cultures.

Forests are biodiversity treasures.  About 80% of the earth’s terrestrial biodiversity lives in forests, a much higher concentration than any other terrestrial ecosystem.  Forests also serve as the lungs for the planet, breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen.  They are enormous sinks for storing the greenhouse gases that modern human life emits into the atmosphere.  Through their metabolic activities, including evapotranspiration, forests drive the global climate system, directing wind and precipitation patterns.

Nonetheless, forests continue to decline in area across much of the earth.  About 14 million net acres of forest are lost annually, converted mostly to agriculture but also to urbanization and other human-related uses.  Almost all net forest loss occurs in tropical and sub-tropical regions, while forest area is actually increasing across North America and Europe (total forest area in the U.S. hasn’t declined in about 80 years).  The good news is that the rate of deforestation has slowed greatly over the last 25 years, and continues to drop annually.  In Brazil, for example, which had been a major location for forest loss, the rate is now near zero.

To say that forests and their products are important to human civilization is almost unnecessary.  Each day, people use massive amounts of forest products, including wood, paper and other biological resources, in every aspect of life.  World Wood Day goes on to recognize the cultural importance of wood and forests as well—wood is valued as art, for musical instruments, in architecture and elsewhere.  It is an eco-friendly product and, as the World Wood Day program emphasizes, “Wood is good!”

The UN decided to celebrate the goodness of forests, trees and their many values by creating the International Day of Forests in a December, 2012, resolution.  Each year features a new theme; for 2023, the theme is “Forests and Health.”  As the official website for the day states, “Forests give us so much to our health. They purify the water, clean the air, capture carbon to fight climate change, provide food and life-saving medicines, and improve our well-being.”

So, as spring begins, so does a new year of life in forests and trees wherever they grow.  On March 21, say thanks to the forest—and go ahead, hug a tree!

References:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN.  2016.  Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015—How are the world’s forest changing?  Second Edition.  Available at:  http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4793e.pdf.  Accessed March 19, 2018.

United Nations.  International Day of Forests, March 21.  Available at:  http://www.un.org/en/events/forestsday/index.shtml.  Accessed February 21, 2023.

World Wood Day Foundation.  About World Wood Day.  Available at:  http://www.worldwoodday.org/about.  Accessed March 19, 2018.

The book, Our Common Future, is not one that most people would recognize.  But most people would recognize one 30-word sentence from the book, a sentence that has re-directed the world’s pathway to a sustainable future.

The book is the final report from the World Commission on Environment and Development, which ran from 1983 to 1987.  The commission was chaired by Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway’s Minister of the Environment in the 1970s (the first woman environmental minister in the world) and later three-time prime minister of the country.  Brundtland was a medical doctor by training, working in the area of public health, when she was tapped to enter Norway’s government (learn more about Brundtland here).

The environment was getting increasing attention through the decade of the 1970s, and the United Nations had sponsored a variety of limited gathering to discuss environmental problems and recommend solutions.  But those efforts were plagued by two constraints.  First, they were each limited in scope, addressing just one aspect of pollution, population growth, soil degradation or the like.  Second, because they occurred within the UN’s political structure, their recommendations were always hobbled by the individual agendas of the participating countries.

So, the UN Secretary-General opted for a new strategy:  Create an independent commission outside the UN itself.  That had worked well for an earlier Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, created to address the problem of nuclear proliferation.  This commission would deal broadly and comprehensively with environmental and development issues.  He called on Brundtland to lead this new organization, giving her complete freedom to organize the membership, conduct the work and issue a report.

Brundtland, between terms as prime minister, agreed to lead the group and began work in December, 1983.  She did things differently than other commissions.  She put together a team that equally represented developed and developing countries.  She held meeting not in a glitzy European capital, but throughout the world, including site visits and public hearings in places with dire economic and environmental conditions.  With the commission’s executive director, Jim MacNeill, she determined to produce a report that integrated the ideas of environmental quality and economic development.  And they conspired to make the report the beginning, not the end, of their work.

Perhaps better than any global leader, Brundtland understood the connections between health, prosperity and environmental quality.  Rather than seeing the environment as something to be cleaned up after economic activity produced pollution, habitat change and public health issues, she saw the three as being inescapably connected.  The commission termed the connection “sustainability,” thus defining a word that has now become the universal standard for more appropriate public policy and private actions.

And on page 8 of Our Common Future, Brundtland coined the definition of sustainability that has also become the universal standard:

“Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable—to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

With those 30 words, the commission set the world on a course that has produced a continuing series of global meeting and agreements on environmental improvement, from Rio to Copenhagen and, most recently, to Paris (learn more about the Paris agreement here) . The original commission is now known popularly as the Brundtland Commission, and those 30 words as the Brundtland definition of sustainability.

References:

Nielsen, Larry A.  2017.  Nature’s Allies:  8 Conservationists Who Changed Our World.  Island Press, Washington DC.  255 pages.

Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development:  Our Common Future.  Available at:  http://www.un-documents.net/wced-ocf.htm.  Accessed March 19, 2018.