Once again, UN University’s Our World 2.0 web magazine has published an outstanding essay well worth re-posting. The Future of Food in Japan, authored by the site’s editors in their usual clear-eyed fashion, touches on a host of daunting issues and challenges facing the country’s food self-sufficiency, energy security, and lifestyle in coming decades. The writer’s compelling [...]
Posts Tagged ‘economics’
31 Oct
Ecosystem Services as a Concept is Gaining Currency
In what is undoubtedly a positive development for the natural world, the concept of “ecosystem services” is poised to go mainstream. This is a good thing because the concept is based upon the idea that our status quo economic models do not properly recognize the value of so-called externalities and fail to take into account [...]
3 Aug
A nuke-free Japan in the near term?
Given the inherently un-sustainable nature of nuclear power generation – to say nothing of its profound lack of resilience – I have no doubt that the future of Japan, and indeed the world, will ultimately be nuclear free, perhaps within mere decades (albeit with residual nuclear contamination persisting for tens of thousands of years, well [...]
25 Feb
To Serve the Ecosystems that Serve Us
The following article appears in Our World 2.0. It is a modified (improved!) version of a an earlier post on this blog. Thank you, OW2.0, for picking this up and helping spread these ideas! What if we changed our relationship with the natural world from one of taking what we can to one of reciprocity [...]
11 Nov
Further signs of change in Japan: Portent or promise?
Inspired by the quickening pace of change occurring in Japan and around the world, a few weeks ago I began drafting a blog post tentatively titled, “Japan as Number One, Again?” in which I argue (as I have in previous posts – for example, here) why I believe that Japan is poised to once again [...]
30 Oct
From Ecosystem Services to Gift Culture: An Overdue Change in Perspective
What if we changed our relationship with the natural world from one of taking what we can to one of reciprocity and mutual giving? The International Satoyama Initiative formally launched at this week’s COP10 Biodiversity Conference in Nagoya, Japan, provides an important boost to preserving traditional forest and farmland (“satoyama”), and seaside (“satoumi”) ecological production [...]
5 Oct
Ecosystem Services – A transitional concept?
One of my favorite webzines, Our World 2.0, recently posted an article exploring the merits of developed countries paying developing countries to protect their so-called “ecosystem services.” The concept of ecosystems providing a valuable service to humanity, and thus being worthy of protection, is a key proposition in the Satoyama Initiative’s quest to protect biodiversity. [...]
21 May
When nature is an abstraction it’s easy to take it for granted
Yesterday, after reading Our World 2.0′s excellent article, Biodiversity, the world’s economic backbone, it occurred to me that we humans are being confronted by an entirely new challenge: How NOT to take nature for granted. After lunch I took a moment to watch from our deck as the rain fell lightly onto the leaves of [...]
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