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Sustainable Development and Ecotourism
Seventeen brightly colored squares describe each of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. Sustainable cities and communities, goal number eleven, is a tidy row of white office buildings on a cheery orange background. It makes one of the world’s most pressing issues appear simple. We can solve that, a reader might think, while reading […]
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How Ecotourism Isn’t Eco-friendly After All
Others believe ecotourism is not a successful development tool because it is not environmentally sustainable. As Regmi states at the end of his 2016 article, ecotourism is a short-term solution in poor countries, but when it is developed past the point that it is manageable by the environment, resource base, and local population, it becomes […]
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The Argument Against Ecotourism
Some people believe ecotourism is not a successful development tool because it puts public health and livelihoods at risk. As briefly touched upon in this article by the Global Alliance Against REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), bushmeat is a dominant source of protein in some communities and restricting community resource use without alternatives for the purpose […]
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The Argument for Ecotourism
Some people view ecotourism is a successful development tool that discourages illegal, environmentally damaging and risky activities such as bushmeat hunting, the use of endangered species in traditional medicine, and deforestation. This is the perspective shared by Cate Twining-Ward and Colin A. Chapman on PlanetForward in the article, “Engineering Uganda’s conservation future to prevent the […]
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Sapelo Island Week One
I recently returned from a week of fieldwork on Sapelo Island, one of the barrier islands along the coast of Georgia in the Southeast United States. It was a gentle introduction to fieldwork in a humid subtropical climate. Our small team of graduate students helped each other measure average stem height and stem count in […]
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The History of Sapelo Island
Sapelo Island is famed for its rich history, but many accounts are confusing or gloss over important details. For instance, Georgia Coast Atlas refers to creator of Sapelo Island Research Foundation and co-founder of the University of Georgia Marine Institute, R.J. Reynolds, Jr., as a businessman. Another article refers to one previous island owner as […]
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Mother Russia, Father Oil
A reindeer herder stares in dismay at the slick rainbow liquid suffocating the grass. It signifies another unreported spill by the oil and gas company that infiltrated the land some years back. The community has something of a partnership with the oil and gas company, despite the unfortunate outcomes for the local environment. Executives receive […]
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Food Sovereignty
Food sovereignty is the right to have a means of obtaining healthy and sustainable food along with the ability to control the production and distribution of such foods. The following meal and the ingredients it contains are important to the food sovereignty and culture of Indigenous peoples.
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Gone Crawfishin’
The domestication of Pacific whiteleg shrimp from the eastern Pacific Ocean by the United States Marine Shrimp Farming Program in the 1980’s had the reverse effect of domesticated plants such as corn, maygrass, pea, huckleberry, and others. The latter domesticated plants made life simpler, while shrimping appears to have only made it more complex. Although […]
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Tap Tap Tap In
It’s the time of year that little green buds start appearing on trees, demanding sugars from the system at large to help them grow. As a result, sap starts to flow through the xylem from the roots to the leaves. Although it may be hard for some to believe that tapping trees can be sustainable, […]
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writing about the environmental issues nobody is writing about.
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