Class Action
Student Summit
While the passage of NAFTA has held the interest of adults living along the U.S.-Mexican border, students from one border area were recently concerned more with ways to clean up the environment on both sides. Students from the environment group at El Paso Country Day School in Texas took part in an environmental summit with students from across the border in Juarez, Mexico as part of the schools' "Hands across the Border, Plan It for Our Planet" project.
The project was designed to raise awareness of environmental issues and involve students in both countries in making plans to solve environmental problems, while taking part in activities to reduce pollution. The project was one of 10 winning entries in the "Class Act Environmental Challenge" sponsored by Newsweek, Inc. and Amway Corporation.
On the day of the summit, students on both sides walked to the border carrying environmental posters and picking up trash and recyclables. The students met on the bridge that joins the two countries, and then returned to the U.S. side to discuss the state of the environment and what students could do to make a difference. At the conclusion of the summit, the El Paso students presented a tree to their Juarez counterparts, who gave each El Paso student a book on ways to help the environment. The students parted on the bridge between El Paso and Juarez, resolving to continue their cooperation in cleaning up the border region. |
Class act. El Paso Country Day teacher Regina de Wetter presents environmental awards to her students.
On Earth Day, students from elementary and middle school classes will travel to Washington, DC, for an environmental summit with members of Congress. The students are representatives from 10 winning classes in the third "Class Act Environmental Challenge" sponsored by Amway Corporation and Newsweek, Inc. Schools from across the nation were invited to enter projects that promote environmental awareness and responsibility. Two students and the teacher from each winning class will share their projects with members of Congress during the expense-paid trip to Washington.
Each of the winning schools received a $5000 cash prize to support long-term needs for the schools' environmental education, such as classroom and lab equipment or updated environmental learning materials. Teachers from the winning classes also received a $500 gift award. In addition, each winning class will be featured in one of a series of advertisements in Newsweek. The winning projects range from school recycling programs to studies of water quality issues to the creation of multicultural environmental pamphlets.
"Newsweek has a long-term commitment to informing readers about environmental issues, so we're pleased to be a co-sponsor of the Class Act Environmental Challenge for a third year with Amway Corporation, recognizing outstanding student projects," said Richard M. Smith, Newsweek editor-in-chief. "The winning projects show imagination and prove that students do make a difference."
A panel of judges consisting of environmental educators, Newsweek editors, and key management from Amway Corporation, judged the entries on positive environmental impact, creativity, originality, and execution.
"In Amway's free enterprise tradition, we salute the outstanding accomplishments of these young environmental entrepreneurs," said Nan Van Andel, Amway vice president for catalog and communications. "We hope these innovative efforts become environmental models for students and others to take action in their own communities."
The winning schools and projects are:
- Making a Difference Every Day, Charles E. Teach School, San Luis Obispo, California. Students implemented a school recycling program, held a beach clean-up day, made recycled holiday gifts, and sold an environmental calendar.
- Environmental Boxes, Arvida Middle School, Miami, Florida. Wooden fruit crates were transformed into three-dimensional environmental "messages" and placed in businesses throughout the community to raise awareness about environmental issues.
- Catch the Message, Barton Open School, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Working with the Minneapolis Public Works Division, students created 175 messages near storm drains to discourage people from dumping pollutants into the system.
- Hands across the Border, Plan It for Our Planet, El Paso Country Day School, El Paso, Texas. Students created an environmental pamphlet in five languages and held an environmental summit with students from Juarez, Mexico, to discuss ways to clean up the El Paso, Juarez border.
- A River Runs through It, Glendale Middle School, Salt Lake City, Utah. Students did experiments and built models as part of the study of the Jordan River ecosystem, located next to their school.
- KARE/Kids against Ruining the Earth, Governor Mifflin Middle School, Shillington, Pennsylvania. Seventh-grade students initiated an environmental group to educate elementary students about preserving the planet.
- A.C.T.I.O.N., Jamieson School, Chicago, Illinois. Students participated in Chicago's Adopt-a-Street, Adopt-a-Park, and Graffiti Blasters programs, and initiated a school litter patrol.
- Libby Latah Project, Libby Middle School, Spokane, Washington. An interdisciplinary project introduced inner-city students to the interrelationship between the environment and Native American cultural history of the Latah Creek watershed through field studies including water quality testing and land use studies.
- Habitat for Creation, Montessori Children's Cottage, Conyers, Georgia. Students selected nine animal species indigenous to Georgia and created prototype habitats for the animals and placed them in the Davis Arabia Mountain Nature Preserve.
- Project Achievement Ecosystem, Sandburg Intermediate, Alexandria, Virginia. Students from the Project Achievement after-school program helped to plan, install, and maintain a children's discovery pond.
Earth Day 1994
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Critical condition. For Earth Day the Sierra Club will focus on five ecoregions in North America including the Sierra Nevada. |
To keep the spirit of Earth Day alive, organizations around the country are making plans for April 22. Some of the larger environmental groups are organizing forums and educational programs, while smaller groups are planning activities on a local level. Many of the organizations are emphasizing in their activities that a committment to the environment is not a once-a-year event. Said Jane Elder, director of ecoregion planning for the Sierra Club, "We're trying to move beyond the 'this year in Congress' approach to looking at the next 20 years."
To aid smaller groups in planning for Earth Day, an organization has been formed by the United States Public Interest Research Group.The group, Earth Day Resources, is a permanent national Earth Day organization. Started in 1991, the group's goal was to ensure that there would be a grassroots effort to keep the Earth Day tradition going. The group not only works to promote Earth Day but also supports environmental programs throughout the year.
Earth Day Resources provides support to community organizers, educators, and college activists in the form of materials and organizing assistance. Upon request, the group will specifically provide organizational manuals, advice from a national organizing team, updates, brochures, posters, information about other participants, and media support to any environmental organization for Earth Day. The group will also sponsor the national Earth Day Spring Clean to encourage Eath Day participants to clean up their local community while raising money for environmental projects. Groups such as the Green Corps, the field school for environmental organizing, the Student Environmental Action Coalition, and the Sierra Student Coalition have pledged to do "spring cleans" this year.
Among the larger environmental groups making plans for Earth Day is the League of Conservation Voters. LCV, the bipartisan political arm of the national environmental movement, will hold its annual Greenvote Forum in Washington, DC, on Capitol Hill April 21 and 22. It will invite members of Congress with excellent environmental records, leading environmental journalists, members active on its board, leading donors, and members of its political advising committee to participate. At the forum, the group will examine upcoming environmental issues in Congress and review the environmental records of potential candidates for Congress.
The Sierra Club, one of the oldest and most active environmental groups, is expanding its concept of Earth Day this year (and to a certain extent its overall philosophy) to focus on longer-term issues. As an informal part of the group's Second Century Agenda, the Sierra Club has identified 21 regional ecosystems in the United States and Canada and is developing long-term strategies to address their environmental problems, revolving around three themes: preserving wildlife, ensuring health, and promoting sustainable systems. For Earth Day, the group will feature one of these themes in relation to each of five ecoregions.
With respect to the Great Lakes ecoregion, the emphasis will be on developing a health plan for the area to deal with continuous food web issues such as food toxins and environmental estrogens. Activities concerning the Mississippi River Basin ecoregion will attempt "to get people to look at the Mississippi as a living system," according to Elder, who said that the environmental effects of the midwestern floods will continue to cause problems for a long time. The group plans to work toward a long-term environmental response plan for the area and will hold informal workshops on flood plain awareness. Elder said this is a particularly appropriate ecoregion because Earth Day falls at the peak of the Midwest's spring rains, which last year wreaked environmental havoc.
Plans are not yet finalized for the other ecoregions the Sierra Club will feature: the northern forests of New England and Maine, the southern Appalachians, and the Sierra Nevada. According to Elder, the group decided to target North American ecoregions because, although most people are aware of the decline of rainforest ecosystems, they do not realize that many North American ecosystems are in more danger of destruction than rainforests, even though the rainforests are being destroyed at a faster rate. Said Elder, "We feel that looking in our own backyard is the mature thing to do." The Sierra Club is also developing an Ecoregion Quiz designed to "try to get people to realize that they are part of a national landscape."
The National Wildlife Federation will promote environmental education during its National Wildlife Week, coinciding with the week of Earth Day. The group will mail out 600,000 Wildlife Week kits, free of charge, to teachers around the country. The theme of the kits is "let's clean up our act: pollution solutions." The kits include posters and 25-page guides detailing projects and activities that teachers can conduct in classrooms. One of the activities suggested is a debate involving issues related to solid waste and hazardous substances. This activity is designed for language arts, science, and social studies classes. Through the distribution of these kits, NWF hopes to help incorporate environmental education into curricula.
Environmental Information Superhighway
Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network
Internet:
ciesin.info@ciesin.org
User Services:
(517) 797-2727
Address:
2250 Pierce Road
University Center, MI 48710 USA |
In an age when the importance of access to information is increasing, scientists have created an outlet for environmental science information. The Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), established in 1989 as a private, nonprofit organization, is announcing plans toward its goal of furthering the interdisciplinary study of global environmental change.
CIESIN specializes in access and integration of physical, natural, and socioeconomic information that crosses agency missions and scientific disciplines. The CIESIN mission is "to provide access to and enhance the use of information worldwide, advancing the understanding of human interactions in the environment and serving the needs of science and public decision making."
CIESIN aims to create a virtual data archive, making the data collected by U.S. government agencies, the scientific community, nongovernmental organizations, and international governmental organizations available for widespread use in scientific research, public policymaking, and education. CIESIN focuses on identifying and acquiring data in eight categories: populations dynamics, human and environmental health, land use, agricultural metabolism, social and political structures and institutions, economic activity, industrial metabolism, and human attitudes, preferences, and behavior.
The foundation of the consortium is an information cooperative, a technical infrastructure in which data and information are input and shared by organizations around the world through an electronic network. "We are finding that many research centers around the world want to share their data and information resources, but prior to this there was no mechanism like the Information Cooperative that permitted them to do so," said CIESIN President and CEO Roberta Balstad Miller.
CIESIN will also provide services through systems such as the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center of the NASA Earth Observing System Data and Information System and the Third World Network of Scientific Organizations. CIESIN also manages the Global Change Research and Information Office for White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Access to the CIESIN system is through Internet.
Members of the information cooperative include the Center for International Research of the U.S. Bureau of Census, the Economic and Social Resource Council Data Archive of the United Kingdom, Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Programme (HDP) of the International Social Science Council, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, Michigan Resource Inventory Program of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, National Institute of Public Health and Environmental Protection of the Netherlands, United Nations Environmental Programme Global Resource Information Database, World Conservation Monitoring Centre, World Health Organization, and World Resources Institute.
The consortium will build its headquarters on Ojibway Island in Saginaw, Michigan, incorporating sustainable development concepts and using environmentally sensitive materials and technology to "benefit present and future generations without detrimentally affecting the resources or biological systems of the planet." The new facility is scheduled to be completed in 1996.
President Orders Justice
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Leticia Marsvilla |
Carol Browner |
Tom Goldtooth |
Pamela Tau Lee |
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Connie Tucker |
Philip Lee |
David Satcher |
Phyllis Glazer |
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Kenneth Olden |
Mildred McClain |
Rose Marie Augustine |
Benjamin Chavis |
Voices in the struggle. Community leaders and government representatives were heard at a recent conference on research needs and environmental justice. |
Responding to charges that the poor and minority communities face a disproportionate risk from environmental pollution, President Clinton signed an executive order on Feburary 12 mandating that federal agencies identify and eliminate racial inequities from their environmental policies.
The order comes after more than a decade of environmental activism from grassroots organizations led by people of color. The order will have a significant impact on environmental health issues that disproportantely affect low income and minority communites such as lead poisoning, air pollution, exposure to pesticides, and water pollution.
"All Americans have a right to be protected from pollution--not just those who can afford to live in the cleanest and safest communities," Clinton declared after signing the order. "Today we direct federal agencies to make environmental justice a part of all that they do."
The order directs federal agencies to examine their programs for adverse health or environmental effects in low-income and minority communites, consider health hazards and environmental risk facing poor and minorities when conducting research, ensure that disadvantaged communities have access to public information on health and the environment, and conduct all environmental activities in a manner that does not discriminate against the poor and minorities.
Those involved in the struggle against environmental discrimination called the order an important step toward eliminating environmental racism. "This order says that at the highest level of government, environmental justice is being taken seriously," said Robert Bullard, author of Dumping in Dixie, a study of environmental racism in the south. "This will make federal agencies protect everyone equally. No longer will environmental protection be excluded from civil rights."
Charles Lee of the United Church of Christ's Commission on Racial Justice agrees. "This order touches on the key points we in the environmental justice movement want to deal with and sets a clear direction for federal agencies to follow."
The order is not a law that can be contested in the courts but a set of instructions from the president to the head of federal agencies directing them to carry out certain actions. Federal agencies have one year to implement an environmental strategy that identifies and addresses environmental inequities in their policies, programs, and activities.
The presidential order came during a four-day conference held in Arlington, Virginia, on research needs and environmental justice. The conference was co-sponsored by NIEHS, EPA, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and several other federal agencies. Nearly 500 people attended the event including EPA administrator Carol Browner, Ben Chavis, executive director of the NAACP, Senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minnesota), civil rights activist Dick Gregory, and representatives from six cabinet-level departments. The conference marked the first collaboration between community groups and governmental agencies in addressing the problem of environmental racism.
Congressional Scorecard
State of the environment. The League of Conservation Voters scores congressional representation on environmental issues. Percentages represent percent of pro-environment votes on scored legislation.
"The sorry truth is that today's Congress would not enact many of the landmark environmental laws of the late '60s and early '70s that turned the tide against pollution," said Jim Maddy, president of the League of Conservation Voters, in an introduction to the group's National Environmental Scorecard of the first session of the 103rd Congress. The scorecard, which rates the actions of the nation's representatives on environmental legislation, states that this year's scores reflect a sharp polarization between Republican and Democratic parties on environmental issues, often framed within the context of a debate over property rights.
According to a January 1994 poll by Environment Opinion Study, Republicans are just as likely to consider themselves environmentalists as Democrats; however, scores in the LCV report reflect that they often fail, more so than Democrats, to cast environmentally positive votes. The scorecard states that although strong initiatives were put forth under the leadership of the Clinton administration, these proposals came up against strong opposition from Republican leadership. Rank-and-file Republican politicians were often forced to choose between falling in line with party leadership (often allied with pro-business interests) or voting for environmental progress. The scorecard notes, however, that usually strong environmentalists in both parties, "faced with heavy lobbying from home-state industries, betrayed their best instincts and voted for the status quo."
Although the nation's lawmakers were rated on a wide range of environmental legislation issues, the LCV scorecard describes a prevailing theme throughout much of the debates. The debate centers around the movement, referred to by proponents as "wise use" of natural resources and by environmentalists as "phony property rights," which rests on the interpretation of private property rights in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution which states that the government may not take private property for public use without just compensation. The movement has far-reaching implications for environmental legislation, particularly pollution clean up, mining and grazing rights on public land, and protection of natural habitats. At issue are two types of "takings": the physical acquisition of property for public use and the "regulatory taking" of property resulting from government regulation of land use that significantly reduces its value. It is the latter that is the most troublesome because it is sufficiently ambiguous to potentially be used to justify the blockage of environmental legislation or require government compensation for regulatory actions.
The LCV scorecard singles out the Private Property Rights Act (HR 561), which has 106 co-sponsors, as the most grievous threat to environmental actions. The bill would make into law an executive order issued by former President Reagan that required the U.S. attorney general to review all regulations promulgated and would give the attorney general the authority to veto any regulations that result in a taking. The LCV declares that the bill "could weaken or abolish regulations safeguarding public health and safety by characterizing them as takings of property rights."
In the scorecard, Senate votes on 16 environmental actions were rated, including such issues as mining and grazing reform; the BTU tax, hydroelectric power and nuclear energy; wetlands and desert preservation; and the Endangered Species Act. Representatives in the House were rated on 20 issues, including some of those above, as well as rules for conducting the National Biological Survey, wastewater treatment, hazardous waste cleanup, and the global population crisis.
In the Senate, delegations receiving the highest scores included New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Highest scores in the House were given to Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Hawaii. Lowest scores for Senate delegations included Alaska, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Idaho, North Carolina, and Wyoming. Lowest House delegation scores were given to Wyoming, Alaska, Iowa, Louisiana, Idaho, and Alabama.
Last Update: August 14, 1998