Here's another one from the very cool F&ES. and yes, that means folks at Yale wrote it, not me, and it's not edited by me either. They do very interesting things over there and I love to share it. (Plus, it's my blog, so I can post whatever I want) Make sure you scroll to the bottom and click on their blog too. Let's hope those smart folks also can figure out a way for the world to save the sharks. (that's one we all need to care about)

Twenty-five students from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies are participating in the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Durban, South Africa.
The students are in Durban to support vulnerable small island states in their negotiations, represent official delegations, lobby, blog and immerse themselves in the arcana of bureaucratic give-and-take. They researched, tracked and wrote briefs on important issues for negotiating teams in preparation for the conference and will be analyzing and defending positions in draft texts of the countries they are representing during negotiations.
F&ES students are representing the small island states of Papua New Guinea, Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Maldives and Latvia, as well as Afghanistan and Latvia.
"These students are well-prepared to inject themselves into the substance of the proceedings," said Roy Lee, who teaches an Environmental Diplomacy Practicum at F&ES. "The Yale team has formed a supportive network to share information and keep each other apprised of quicksilver changes in events."

Delegates from 194 nations are gathering in Durban, South Africa, to seek agreement on ways to address climate change, specifically the differing obligations of industrialized and developing nations, the question of who will pay to help poor nations adapt, the urgency of protecting tropical forests, and the need to develop and deploy clean energy technology.
Last year in Cancun, Mexico, delegates produced an agreement that set up a fund to help poor countries adapt to climate change, created mechanisms for the transfer of clean energy technology, provided compensation for the preservation of tropical forests and enshrined the emissions reductions promises that came out of the Copenhagen meeting.

The F&ES students are blogging about their experiences at http://environment.yale.edu/blog/category/conferences/unfccc-durban/.

Editor's note: All information in this post was contributed.

This is a press release. (that means someone at Yale wrote it) It is posted here as a public service and because it's really interesting. It's not really edited, except to take out acronyms in first references, which are quite irritating, and to make the paragraphs shorter because they were too long.

The Association of Yale Alumni and ONE, a grassroots advocacy and campaigning organization that fights extreme poverty and preventable disease particularly in Africa, are launching a strategic partnership to promote global service and advocacy by linking the Yale Alumni Service Corps with ONE's education and advocacy programs.

The Yale-ONE partnership will begin in 2012, with the YASC Africa Project in Cape Coast and Yamoransa, Ghana, July 27–Aug. 7, 2012.
ONE policy experts, advocacy leaders, and field organizers will join with over 100 Yale alumni in Ghana. The project features direct service work with community partners, organized with AFS-Ghana, including teaching with a summer school program, a medical clinic, community building projects, and micro-business consulting.

During the trip, ONE  leaders will offer seminars for Yale volunteers about issues in West Africa and take corps members on site visits to examine agriculture, education, health care, and other sectors to experience the issues discussed in seminars. After they return home, Yale alumni can join in ONE campaigns for community development in sub-Saharan Africa.

Together, Yale and ONE can connect more people to Africa and motivate their ongoing involvement, building a larger group of influencers than either might on its own, note leaders from both organizations.
Co-founded by U2 lead singer Bono, ONE raises public awareness to support effective policies and programs that save lives, help put children in school, and improve the future for individuals and their communities.
Yale in recent years has pioneered alumni community service initiatives, with the AYA moving from an organization merely serving alumni to one that calls Yale graduates to lives of ongoing service in their home communities and across the world.

The alumni service corps began with work in the Dominican Republic in 2008. To date, six corps totaling more than 700 alumni, students, family, and friends have served in Mexico, Brazil, China, and the DR. Ranging in age from 19 to 85, corps members have worked with local partner organizations to offer health services, arts education, and business assistance. 
"Service corps participants tell us they want to remain engaged as advocates when they return home, to take what they have learned and put it to ongoing use," says Mark Dollhopf, executive director of the Association of Yale Alumni. "ONE has a powerful track record of education and advocacy. Our partnership will leverage Yale's alumni network to address critical global challenges of poverty, health, and education through ONE's high-impact campaigns."
"We at ONE always say, 'We're not asking for your money; we're asking for your voice.' Likewise, the Yale alumni association encourages graduates to give their time and talent to strengthen community," notes Sheila Dix, U.S. executive director of ONE. "We're both about bringing people together to learn, serve, and develop human potential. Yale plus ONE can make a real difference in ongoing advocacy for African development."
Yale and ONE expect the initial project in 2012 both to inspire the development of future YASC programs and to serve as a template for ONE to work with other colleges and universities.

"Education is a gift that must be passed on if it is to have meaning," Dollhopf says. "Alumni associations increasingly recognize we have an urgent responsibility to inspire alumni to action.  We hope Yale's partnership with ONE will provide a model of alumni engagement that our peers will adapt and use."
More information on the partners can be found on the Yale Alumni Association homepage, the Yale Alumni Service Corps website and the ONE website.

Maybe.
Do I suck?
Maybe.
And I already feel crummy about it.
After years of being a vegetarian, I am doing a meat month.
What does that mean?
It means I caved to pressure from someone in my life.
I'm not a follower but in this case the intense and long-lasting pressure and lectures made me decide to try something different.
The insistent voice of a committed carnivore is that I would feel better if I ate meat.
So far all I feel is guilt. How could I not?
Just listen to news stories about how we treat food animals.
The Associated Press reports this week about one farm: "... images shot by Mercy for Animals showed a worker swinging a bird around by its feet, hens packed into cramped cages, male chicks being tossed into plastic bags to suffocate and workers cutting off the tips of chicks' beaks."
For the love of God.

Kudos to McDonald's and Target for seeing this and taking action.
But the person in my family promised I would feel better. So I promised a month.
So far I feel crummy.

This is totally a press release, Why am I posting it as is?  Because it's interesting and if I didn't you might not see it!

It was sent by David DeFusco, drector of Media Relations and Outreach and editor, Environment:Yale magazine. (Who by the way, I think is pretty cool) So these are his words! (not mine! Thanks David!)

 

NEW HAVEN —A Yale program that aims to restore tropical forests and the livelihoods that depend on them has received a six-year, $5.5 million grant by the Arcadia Fund to continue its work in Latin America and Southeast Asia.

 

The Environmental Leadership & Training Initiative (ELTI) for Biodiversity Conservation in Tropical Forest Regions trains environmental managers and local decision-makers to support conservation efforts where forests have been cleared and exploited in Borneo, Brazil, Colombia, Panama, the Philippines and Sumatra.

 

"With Arcadia's renewed support, ELTI will continue to empower and inspire conservation leaders in the tropics to restore and conserve forests and biodiversity in transformed landscapes," said Mark Ashton, ELTI's principal investigator and a forest ecologist at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

 

Yale has directed the program in collaboration with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the National University of Singapore since 2006. The Arcadia Fund grant will extend the life of the program to 2018. Since its launch, ELTI has trained 2,293 people in the Neotropical countries of Brazil, Honduras, Panama and Peru, and in the Southeast Asian countries of Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.

 

Although the global rate of deforestation has slowed over the past decade, the tropics have been transformed by the industrial farming of soy, oil palm, tea, sugar cane and beef cattle, unsustainable logging, oil exploration, mining, infrastructure development, land cleared for subsistence farming and colonization, and forest fires sparked by these activities.

 

The grant will train government ministers, indigenous peoples, farmers and representatives of international conservation nongovernmental organizations to rejuvenate forests, which provide water, wildlife habitat, carbon sequestration and climate mitigation, open space and recreation, food and shelter.

 

The program also will restore and conserve thousands of hectares of remnant natural and secondary forests in the Philippines, Panama, Indonesia and Brazil, rehabilitate marginal agricultural lands with native tree species, and implement sustainable land uses, such as agroforestry and silvopastoral systems, in agricultural and cattle-ranching areas of the Philippines, Colombia, Brazil and Panama.

 

          "These restored areas will be used to improve the connectivity between remaining patches of natural and secondary-growth forests and create riparian corridors that protect waterways and resources," said Ashton.

 

ELTI will also launch an online training program that will significantly expand the program's audience of university students and professionals worldwide on tropical forest restoration and conservation on transformed lands. Web-based training is increasingly being used to reach people who are unable to take part in formal academic programs or who are better served by programs that provide greater flexibility.

 

Beginning next April, the program will add more than 40 courses, workshops and conferences in the Neotropics and tropical Asia, reaching 2,500 more decision-makers and practitioners. ELTI will also support more than 50 alumni of the program to put into practice forest restoration and conservation initiatives.

 

"We're grateful for the Arcadia Fund's support, because it will allow ELTI to rehabilitate lands that are critical to the health of the planet and whole societies," said Peter Crane, dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

 

Arcadia is the charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. Since its inception in 2001 Arcadia has awarded grants in excess of $200 million. Arcadia (www.arcadiafund.org.uk/) works to protect endangered culture and nature. For more information about ELTI, visit http://environment.yale.edu/elti/.