Rio+20 Points the Way to a Green Economy Without Poverty

Rio de Janeiro, host city to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in June 2012.

In June 2012, Brazil will host the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, known as Rio+20.

The time is right: there are clear signs that the current development models must be reformulated. Countries—regardless of their wealth—face serious economic and financial crises, social inequality, hunger, unemployment, losses in biodiversity and climate change. These multiple crises point to the timely and urgent need to implement sustainable development models, i.e. national projects that take a balanced and integrated approach to economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental protection.

Rio+20 will be an opportunity to hold this discussion at the highest level. The Conference will be fundamentally different from its predecessor, Rio 92. The Summit held 20 years ago represented the final stages of long negotiation processes that culminated in the signing of important documents and conventions. In turn, Rio+20 looks to the future, building a new sustainable development agenda. To the extent that Rio 92 was a point of destination, Rio+20 may be considered a point of departure.

One of Brazil’s priorities in Rio+20 will be discussing the eradication of poverty and the strengthening of financial and technological flows in order to implement sustainable development commitments, which require significant public, private, and political resources.

The Rio+20 agenda is organized around two major subjects. The first is green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication. On this, a general agreement has been emerging among the different countries on a few aspects: there is not one single model for green economy; and one must not think about a green economy without taking into account the eradication of poverty, that is, without pursuing social inclusion goals.

Each country will create its own green economy design, based on its national realities, the resources available, and the development challenges it faces. In Brazil, for example, green economy will be based on the widespread use of renewable energy, as well as on effectively combating deforestation and raising income levels for millions of Brazilians. The adoption of a single green energy standard for all nations could potentially create distortions, such as trade barriers, which would deepen the disparities among countries, aggravating social problems, particularly in the developing countries.

The second subject is governance for sustainable development. In other words, it is necessary to adapt the framework of the UN system, so as to strengthen multilateralism, reduce the democratic deficit and provide greater integration among the social, economic, and environmental aspects of sustainable development.

Rio+20 may decisively contribute to tackling global warming, because sustainable development is the best answer to the challenges associated with climate change. Brazil has played a key role in the recently held United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, contributing to the Conference’s positive outcomes through its leadership and proposals. Thanks to Durban, the conditions are now set for a constructive exchange on global warming at Rio+20, which could potentially strengthen the international system regarding climate change. This should clearly be achieved without duplicating intergovernmental negotiations, whose legitimate forum is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The world looks to Brazil, the host of Rio+20, for leadership. We have solid credentials for that, as a nation at the cutting edge of clean and renewable energies and also inclusive economic growth policies. Brazil has demonstrated that it is possible to grow and to include, while protecting and preserving.

As President Dilma Rousseff mentioned in January 2012, at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre: after Rio+20, we want the word “development” to always be associated to the adjective “sustainable.”

Heart breaking Tsunami 2004

Tsunami the Aftermath is the hearth breaking story of those who survived December 26, 2004. The Tsunami thrashed the coast of Thailand (Phuket and Khao Lak in Thailand)and 12 other countries. It is estimated that over 227,000 people died and when the movie came out, 50,000 bodies were still unaccounted for. In 2006, the Tsunami was considered one of history's most cataclysmic disasters.. This film was directed by Bharat Nalluri, has shown me a natural landscape is wonderful, so majestic, so immense, and it also showed me the happiness, fun, relaxed that nature has given to human. And it took me to see the devastation, destruction damage, death ... as well

I feel that the tsunami that hit Khao Lak was a real catastrophe; it swept the whole village down with one big wave. Khao Lak is a beautiful place that attracts many tourists, so most of the victims of this ruinous disaster were the foreigners. In this movie, I saw the monks burned corpses of the victims of the tsunami, and they didn’t care whether the corpses were foreigners or locals. I know it that the burning was done to prevent the spread of diseases, but they had to respect the cultural differences. Maybe the Thais see the body as vessel, but the westerners need the bodies for burial for the closure. The monks in this movie just burned the corpses and ignored all complaints from others. Another thing that I feel about the burning is that it’s unfair for the family members of the corpses, because it made the family members didn’t even know whether the member of the family that they were searching were still alive or not, as they thought the other members of the family were still missing.

After watching this movie, I feel that the importance of education and the warning systems had a huge role in the number of victims during the tsunami in 2004.  People in this movie saw that the birds flew away, and the windows were shaking, but they ignored the warning signs. If they ran to the high ground directly, the number of victims wouldn’t be as much as it was.

New Life-Forms Found in Blue Holes—Clues to Life in Alien Oceans?

We have found new forms of life that are totally unkown in underwater caves in the Bahamas called "blue holes." These caves can provide clues on how life evolved not only on Earth but possibly on alien worlds.

The researchers, led by Tom Iliffe, a marine biologist at Texas A&M University at Galveston, examined three inland blue holes in the Bahamas and discovered that layers of bacteria exist in all of them, although the microbes are significantly in one sinkhole are significantly different from the others.

The findings that each cave has different conditions from the others and thus a different forms of life will help scientists analyze the diverse routes life might have taken on Earth, according to researchers.

"These bacterial forms of life may be similar to microbes that existed on early Earth and thus provide a glimpse of how life evolved on this planet," Iliffe explained. "These caves are natural laboratories where we can study life existing under conditions analogous to what was present many millions of years ago."

Fire tornado in Brazil and Hawaii (Reflection)

A rare weather phenomenon called a fire tornado occurred in Brazil and Hawaii over the past week and both events were captured on video.
The brush fire in Brazil, that produced a rare fire tornado followed 3 months of very dry conditions. The whirlwind of flames burned through fields beside a road in the northwest city of Aracatuba in Sao Paulo state briefly before dissipating.
In Hawaii, a large brush fire that charred over 1400 acres and created a fire tornado also followed very dry conditions. The  fire tornado was captured near Saddle Road on the Big Island, where firefighters worked to contain the blaze.
Also known as “fire devils” or “fire whirls”, fire tornadoes occur when a brush fire or wildfire is whipped up by strong, dry air currents to form a vertical whirl, which can consist of a whirlwind or hot air around or within the flames or vortex itself.
Fire tornadoes are usually 30-200 ft and a few meters wide, and last only a few minutes, but can reach more than a half a mile into the air, contain winds over 100 mph, and persist for more than 20 minutes.
Most large fire tornadoes are formed when a wildfire converges with a warm updraft of air, and can contain a number of fire whirls of varying intensity, size and duration.
While these fire whirls did not cause major problems, there have been some extreme events involving fire tornadoes in the past.
Near San Luis Obispo, California on April 7, 1926, a rash of large fire whirls developed after lightning struck an oil storage facility, killing two. Thousands of whirlwinds were produced by the four-day-long firestorm, which contained larger fire whirls that carried debris 3 miles away.
In Japan, the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake ignited a large city-sized firestorm that produced a large fire whirl, which killed 38,000 in fifteen minutes in the Hifukusho-Ato region of Tokyo.

Why do we study Geography?
Geography is the bridge between the sciences and the humanities and is most helpful in both major areas.

Geography is the most broad of all disciplines. There is a geographical component to everything else that can be studied. One definition of geography is "everything from the tip of your nose outward." I think it's important to be able to understand all of that.
Another way to think about it is that there are three important questions in geography:
What is where? Why is it there? Why do I care?

Geography is the study of location and place. Everything has a location, and there are patterns to places. Location and place dictate how we as humans interact with each other and with the environment that surrounds us. Politics, history, religion, society, medicine, economics, science, art, language, ideas... all are influenced by geography is ways that are obvious and ways that are subtle. Geography is the attempt to understand the "big picture" of it all.

That's why it's important to study geography.

Geography supplies information you need to function in your world. You can learn about the strengths and weaknesses of your own area. Geography helps to explain cultural and population differences. Geography shows where the rest of the world is and how close or far it is from you. Search the origin of the meter to see what geography can be.