Hope2012

Ecuador Extends Rights To Ecosystems – Treehugger 1/18/09

Bolivia leader redistributes land – BBC 3/15/09

Looking ahead, Brazil’s farmers take up reforestation

Top Ten Natural Ways to Remove Heavy Metals – Natural News 8/20/09

Reintroducing Wolves to Scotland Could Bring Back the Forests of Old – Treehugger 7/23/09

Sand Dams An Answer To World’s Water Woes? (Video)

How the Bushmen of Africa Can Save Us from the Global Water Crisis (Video)  - Treehugger 11/9/09

Citizen-Led Groups Leading the Way for New Water Policy – Alternet 6/30/09

Fog Catchers Bring Water to Parched Villages – National Geographic 7/8/09

A rain-starved community in Peru collects hundreds of gallons of water a day using special fog-catching nets.

The Cheonggyecheon, Once a Highway, Now a Haven – NYTimes 7/16/09

In what is sometimes called “daylighting,” cities from San Antonio to Singapore are resuscitating waterways that once lay buried under rivers of concrete

Making Sweet Water From (Almost) Perpetual Motion – Forbes 9/7/09

Destroying Levees in a State Usually Clamoring for Them – NYTimes 6/19/09

Two brothers plan to return a muddy river in northern Louisiana to its ancient floodplain by removing miles of levees.

How to Craft Water Democracy, Earth Democracy & Survive Climate Change: TreeHugger Interviews Dr. Vandana Shiva  

Cochabamba: From War to Water Management – Alternet 6/2/09

The poor of Bolivia drove out the neoliberal model of water management. Now, they are fighting for equitable community control.

How to Get Your Home Off the Water “Grid” – Alternet 2/9/09 

Peter Gleick: How We Can Avoid a World Without Water – Alternet 2/19/09

Incredible Edible: How To Make Your Town Self-sufficient

8 Ways to Join the Local Food Movement – Alternet 4/1/09

How to turn a lawn into lunch, swap preserves, glean, boost your food security and live the good life.

Buy, Sell, or Trade Homegrown Produce With Veggie Trader – Treehugger 3/25/09

Food-backed Local Money – The Oil Drum 3/4/09

Creative Food Economy Emerges in Ontario – Treehugger 3/9/09

Ten Things You Can Do to Start a Community Garden – The Nation 9/9/09

Brazilian City Makes Food A Basic Right And Ends Hunger – Treehugger 3/14/09

The City that Ended Hunger – YES! Magazine via Global Research 8/18/09

In just a decade Belo Horizonte cut its infant death rate, widely used as evidence of hunger, by more than half, and today these initiatives benefit almost 40 percent of the city’s 2.5 million population. One six-month period in 1999 saw infant malnutrition in a sample group reduced by 50 percent. And between 1993 and 2002 Belo Horizonte was the only locality in which consumption of fruits and vegetables went up.

The cost of these efforts?  Around $10 million annually, or less than 2 percent of the city budget. That’s about a penny a day per Belo resident.

Behind this dramatic, life-saving change is what Adriana calls a “new social mentality”-the realization that “everyone in our city benefits if all of us have access to good food, so-like health care or education-quality food for all is a public good.”…  “I knew we had so much hunger in the world,” Adriana said. “But what is so upsetting, what I didn’t know when I started this, is it’s so easy. It’s so easy to end it.”  Adriana’s words have stayed with me. They will forever. They hold perhaps Belo’s greatest lesson: that it is easy to end hunger if we are willing to break free of limiting frames and to see with new eyes-if we trust our hard-wired fellow feeling and act, no longer as mere voters or protesters, for or against government, but as problem-solving partners with government accountable to us.

Planning: Lawn Be Gone: The time has come for edible front yards. – The Localizers 8/16/09

Crop Swap: Free Food in Hard Times – Treehugger 7/21/09

High Rise Farms? The New Model for Sustainable Cities – Alternet 4/20/09

Americans growing ‘recession gardens’ – CNN 4/1/09

People to the Power: Energy Utility Provides Community Garden Plots – Treehugger 5/14/09

LA Times on guerrilla gardeners – BoingBoing 6/1/08

Crop Mob One Year On: NC Land ‘Raids’ Continue

News of a large group of landless young people invading a farm tends to bring images of revolution. And NC-based Crop Mob does indeed have revolution in mind, but the group’s methods are more about giving than taking. As I noted in my original post on Crop Mob, the organization is part of a wider resurgence of young people taking up farming. It was borne out of a discussion group on the problems facing young farmers, but rather than sit around talking about challenges, the group decided it was better off getting things done. So, armed with hoes, shovels, wheelbarrows, and bucket-loads of good will, the Mob has been descending on local farms to offer a helping hand. And after a full year of Mobbing, the idea is spreading.

Can A Farm-in-a-Backpack Feed Sub-Saharan Africa?

Rice Biodiversity Techniques Remain Intact in Rural Thailand – Treehugger 8/1/09

DIY fridge uses almost no energy – Mother Nature Network 8/21/09

From Arid, Salty Desert to Permaculture Garden: Greening the Desert Revisited (Video)

Growing Food, and Community, in the Desert

 A cynic might look at a program like the Edible Schoolyard — the much-lauded school garden initiative launched by Chez Panisse’s Alice Waters — and wonder if such a thing would be possible outside the favorable growing climes (and foodie sensibilities) of California, and without the support of a famous chef. But as a moving article by a young teacher in rural Arizona shows, the answer is a resounding “yes.”

[analysis] The Food Sovereignty Movement in Venezuela, Part 1

[analysis] The Food Sovereignty Movement in Venezuela, Part 2

Circular Hakka Houses Create Self-Sustaining Communities - Inhabitat 11/13/09

How To Live Without Air Conditioning: Syrian Beehive Houses – Treehugger 8/6/09

Utopian Communes in the British Isles – via Metafilter 9/25/09

Transition Towns in America: UK Pioneer Interviewed (Video) – Treehugger 2/2/09

Transition Towns USA in the New York Times – Treehugger 4/22/09

The Transition Handbook – via Metafilter 2/21/09

The Transition Handbook should be helpful to you if you are a proponent of planned energy descent and independence from fossil fuels and would like to start a Transition Town of your own.  The transition model emboldens communities to look peak oil and climate change squarely in the eye and unleash the collective genius of their own people to find the answers to this big question: for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive

Los Angeles Ecovillage: Building a Sustainable Urban Community (Video) – Treehugger 1/30/09

Tribe Weaves Floating Islands, Homes and Boats on Lake Titicaca – Treehugger 1/14/09

RELATED: Models for a Different Society: Cooperatives, Economy, Education & Transportation