Natural Environment Blog

More than 120 local businesses have donated more than $280,000 to The Nature Conservancy this year, in order to help protect and conserve Hawaii’s natural environment.

The donations come as part of the Conservancy’s Corporate Council for the Environment.

The Corporate Council for the Environment was launched in 1987 by The Nature Conservancy to provide an avenue for local companies to help care for the environment.

Since then, more than 120 businesses have contributed more than $3 million dollars to the council, hence helping Hawaii’s natural environment.

Contributions

Companies that donated more than $10,000 each were:

• Alexander & Baldwin 
• Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc.
• Maui Land & Pineapple
• Monsanto Fund
• Outrigger Enterprises
• The Shidler Family Foundation
• Skyline Eco-Adventures

Other significant contriubtions came from:

• ABC Stores
• AES Hawai‘i
• Atlantis Submarines
• Bank of Hawai‘i
• Blue Planet Software
• Dowling Company
• First Hawaiian Bank
• Hula Grill
• First Insurance Company of Hawai‘i
• Goodfellow Brothers
• Haleakalā Ranch Company
• Kūki‘o
• Macy’s West

“We are very grateful to our local companies for their continued generous support,” said Suzanne Case, The Conservancy’s Hawai‘i Executive Director. “In uncertain economic times, protecting the environment can get deferred, but these companies know that in Hawai‘i the economy is the environment. Their vision and commitment helps us ensure a sustainable Hawai‘i – for us and for our children.”

The Nature Conservancy in Hawaii

The Nature Conservancy has been protecting native habitats and ecosystems in Hawaii for the past 28 years. It currently protects 40,000 acres of critical habitat across Hawaii. 

During that time, the Conservancy has extended it’s work from just protecting forests, to also protecting the coral reefs and marine life.

According to The Nature Conservancy, nearly one quarter of the plants and animals on the U.S. Endangered Species List are from Hawai‘i. Furthermore, more than half of the Islands’ original native habitat has already been lost

The Corporate Council for the Environment has enabled local businesses to assist The Nature Conservancy in taking their conservation efforts to the next level.

If everyone on Earth consumed its resources at the rate Americans do, we would need the regenerative capacity of three planets just to keep up with the demand. 

That’s what the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) say in their Greenprint document that they have handed to presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain. 

The Greenprint - entitled Leading the World Toward a Safer and Sustainable Future: Greenprint For A New Administration - is a roadmap document that outlines how the next administration should deal with environmental issues. 

The greenprint, which was made publicly available on Wednesday, emphasizes the importance of looking after our natural environment: 

Half the world still lives on less than $2 per day and does so only by subsisting on natural resources provided by the environment—an environment already stressed by unsustainable development, climate change and pollution.

The report also says this about global consumption:

Global consumption of natural resources currently exceeds the planet’s regenerative capacity by nearly 25 percent and is expected to increase threefold by the middle of the century as our numbers and demands grow

The document covers four key areas that the future president should address:

• Climate change
• Conservation of natural resources
• Food security
• Freshwater availability

Here’s a quick run down on what the greenprint recommends in those areas.

Climate Change

The WWF greenprint recommends that the next administration:

• play a constructive role in international negotiations on a new climate treaty
• curb deforestation (which accounts for nearly 20 percent of global annual greenhouse gas emissions)
• propose domestic legislation to establish a cap and trade program for greenhouse gases
• develop a preparedness strategy for confronting the impacts of climate change

Conservation of Natural Resources

The document recommends:

• to restructure America’s Cold War-era foreign assistance programs to better integrate conservation and sustainability into the framework
• renewed investment in natural assets
• a stronger engagement with China (WWF point out that China is developing at a rate that is stressing the world’s natural resource capacity)

Food Security

On food security, the greenprint recommends:

• development of performance-based standards for biofuels to ensure fuel supplies don’t diminish food supplies
• an overhaul of management policies to restore the health of the world’s declining fisheries (WWF also point out that this is a primary source of protein for more than 1 billion of the world’s poor).  

Freshwater Availability

The greenprint recommends that the government:

• make freshwater availability a strategic priority for the U.S. 
• lay the scientific and policy groundwork for global water security.

The Full Greenprint Document

You can read the full Greenprint document here (PDF document).

Rainforests are some of the world’s most ancient and complex ecosystems. They barely cover 2% of the Earth, yet more than half of all plant and animal species live there. 

Despite covering such as small part of the Earth, rainforests continue to be destroyed every day. At the current rate of deforestation, we will only have 20% of the world’s forests left by 2030.

Saving the world’s rainforests from deforestation is not a small task (just ask the UK government!). Many environmentally conscience individuals and organizations around the world are devising new ways to protect our valuable rainforests. 

Click to Save the Rainforests

One new way of protecting rainforests comes in the form of “The Rainforest Site”. The Rainforest Site is a website that allows us all to do our bit for the rainforests. By using this site, you can help keep rainforests around the world alive.

And the great thing is, it doesn’t cost you any money. Not a cent. 

All you need to do is click a button on The Rainforest Website. When you click that button, The Rainforest Website gets money from their sponsors. They then pass this money to charity organizations who help preserve the rainforests. 

According to The Rainforest Site, more than 150 million visitors have preserved more than 40,500 acres of land to date.

How Does it Work?

When you click on the button, the website displays advertising from their sponsors. These sponsors actually pay The Rainforest Site so that their advertising can appear.

100% of the sponsors’ money goes to their charity partners, who fund programs to protect and preserve rainforest habitat.

So it would follow that, the more popular the site is, the more likely sponsors will want to advertise (i.e. more people are seeing their ads). 

Who are the Charity Partners?

When you click, the following organizations get money (from the website’s sponsors). These organizations then use the money to protect the world’s rainforests:

• The Nature Conservancy
• Rainforest Conservation Fund
• World Land Trust-US
• Rainforest2Reef

These organizations protect and preserve rainforest habitat in countries such as Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, the United States, Canada, the Pacific, and more.

Cool, I Want to Help! How do I do it? 

To help save the rainforests:

1. Open The Rainforest Site
2. Click on the button entitled “Click Here to Give - it’s FREE!”
3. Repeat each day 

That’s all!

By repeating each day, you’ll ensure that money is finding it’s way to these important organizations who help protect the world’s rainforests.

To Help You Remember…

To help you remember, you could set The Rainforest Site as your “home page” when you open up the browser. Most browsers let you do this through their “Options” dialog box. 

For example:

• In Firefox, go to “Tools > Options“
• In Internet Explorer, go to “Tools > Internet Options“
• In Safari, it’s under “Edit > Preferences“

Well, I just downloaded Wordpress and created this blog. I have been wanting to do this for quite some time, as I have quite an interest in the environment and things we can do to help maintain it’s beauty.

I recently moved from a large city (Sydney, Australia) to a much smaller one (Cairns, Australia) with the aim of leading a simpler lifestyle and more in tune with nature.

Also, I figured that, if I maintain a blog, it will help keep me focused on the environment and I’ll constantly be on the lookout for new developments in this area. And hopefully, in the process I can provide useful info for others to peruse and do their bit for the environment.