Today millions of Americans are sitting down to celebrate Thanksgiving with their friends and family.

Then, the Christmas season will be officially upon us, and we’ll start to work on making great memories for our parents, siblings, friends, and (most importantly) children.

What if we did that by giving some fantastic memories to kids who need a little hope?

On December 16th, Compassion’s Bangladesh office is having a Christmas party for 2000 street children—children who have never really known what it’s like to be loved. They are children without hope.

It’s an opportunity to share the good news of the birth of Jesus with those who might not have a chance to otherwise hear it and to show these kids that they are loved by God.

And they need $7430 to do it.

So let’s do it.

Let’s put together the money they need to give a little hope and joy to these kids.

My family is giving. I hope you will, too.

Donate now and let’s see if we can get this paid for by Dec 1 – stay tuned for updates.

“Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”
Luke 2:10-11

ORANGE BRIGHTENS this scene of a couple walking the streets of Kushtia town, in Bangladesh.

Oh, by the way! “Happy Birthday!” to Matthias. Hope it is a special day for you.

And for all my American friends, “Happy Thanksgiving!”

DIGITIAL BANGLADESH is on the move.  Here is a sign painter at work in Kushtia town.

In case you are thinking of purchasing the new global version of Amazon’s Kindle for Christmas, be aware that there are still quite a few places that the global version will NOT work.  I was disappointed to find that the new version still will not work in my country.

Apparently the new global version will only work in SOME countries.   I thought it would be helpful to most expats to have a complete list of which countries it will, or will not work in (below).

It’s also interesting to note the PATTERN of groups of countries where the Kindle doesn’t work–some countries probably lack satellite coverage or delivery systems, while others probably don’t WANT readers to be able to download whatever they want by satellite.

STARRED (*) countries marked below indicate that Kindle needs to be ordered from a SPECIAL PAGE on the Amazon site.

The Global Kindle version DOES work in (as of Dec. 2009):

Aland Islands, Albania, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Aruba, Australia*, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Boznia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cambodia, Canada, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Finland, France, French Guiana, French Polynesia, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guatemala, Guernsey, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Holy See, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jersey, Kenya, Kiribati, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Latvia, Liberia, Leichtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macao, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Moldovia, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Mozembique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Caledonia, Nicaragua, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Norway, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Réunion, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Serbia, Seychelles, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka,  Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Virgin Islands – British, Virgin Islands – U.S.,  Wallis and Futuna, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

The Global Kindle version does NOT work in (as of Dec. 2009) the following countries:

Afghanistan, Algeria, Antarctica, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bouvet Island, British Indian Ocean Territory, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chile, Chad, China, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, French Southern Territories, Gambia, Guinea, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Isle of Man, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Korea – Democratic People’s Republic of, Korea – Republic of, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco (including the Western Sahara), New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palestinian Territories, Pitcairn, Qatar, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Helena, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands, Sudan, Svalbard and Jan Mayan, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tokelau, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, United States Minor Outlying Islands, Uzbekistan,  Yemen.

El programa de estudio, basado en audio y SMS, se llama “Janala,” bengalés para ventana, y fue lanzado la semana pasada por la BBC y seis operadoras telefónicas.

Un programa de audio de tres minutos cuesta tres “takas” (cuatro centavos de dólar) y es menos del precio de una taza de té. Las lecciones se apoyan en el sitio ex¡scuela www.bbcjanala.com.
“Es el primer servicio de este tipo en el mundo,” dijo en conferencia de prensa Alan Freedman, director del servicio exterior de la BBC en el país. “Esto ayudará a los bengalíes a acceder a mejores empleos en todo el mundo y mejorar su condición económica”.

Ashraful Islam, destacado funcionario del ministerio de educación, dijo que las lecciones a través del celular mejorarán el nivel de aprendizaje del inglés en Bangladesh. “Tenemos una notable escasez de profesores de idioma inglés en Bangladesh. Esto nos ayudará a superar el problema”, dijo a la prensa.

Más de seis millones de bengalíes trabajan en el exterior, fundamentalmente Oriente medio, Europa, y Estados Unidos. Sus remesas son una fuente fundamental de divisa extranjera para el país y de ayuda financiera para las familias.

I spent a few days traipsing around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with Dave Thompson a few weeks ago and I wanted to highlight his incredible photography today.

Dave has been writing about travel professionally on his site since 1996. He began Dave’s Travel Corner after a life-changing trip to Nepal in which he trekked near Everest Base Camp.

Dave Thompson on a boat in Bangladesh

The site was started as a creative outlet to explore his love for the outdoors, writing, photography and of course travel. Dave’s Travel Corner is not just a place for him to display his talent, it’s also a travel community where members contribute articles, journals, photographs tips and links.

Dave’s latest endeavor is The Napa Wine Project which has taken 4 years to date and is expected to be an 8 year project that involves wine tasting at all Napa Valley commercial wine producers.

He has personally visited & tasted with nearly 600 commercial Napa wine producers to date and written about every one. His first book is titled, “The Freeways of Los Angeles” and is scheduled to be published by early 2010.

The only way to stop global warming is for rich nations to pay for the damage they’ve done – or face the consequences

NAOMI KLEIN

One last chance to save the world — for months, that’s how the United Nations summit on climate change in Copenhagen, which starts in early December, was being hyped. Officials from 192 countries were finally going to make a deal to keep global temperatures below catastrophic levels. The summit called for “that old comic-book sensibility of uniting in the face of a common danger threatening the Earth,” said Todd Stern, President Obama’s chief envoy on climate issues. “It’s not a meteor or a space invader, but the damage to our planet, to our community, to our children and their children will be just as great.”

That was back in March. Since then, the endless battle over health care reform has robbed much of the president’s momentum on climate change. With Copenhagen now likely to begin before Congress has passed even a weak-ass climate bill co-authored by the coal lobby, U.S. politicians have dropped the superhero metaphors and are scrambling to lower expectations for achieving a serious deal at the climate summit. It’s just one meeting, says U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, not “the be-all and end-all.”

As faith in government action dwindles, however, climate activists are treating Copenhagen as an opportunity of a different kind. On track to be the largest environmental gathering in history, the summit represents a chance to seize the political terrain back from business-friendly half-measures, such as carbon offsets and emissions trading, and introduce some effective, common-sense proposals — ideas that have less to do with creating complex new markets for pollution and more to do with keeping coal and oil in the ground.

Among the smartest and most promising — not to mention controversial — proposals is “climate debt,” the idea that rich countries should pay reparations to poor countries for the climate crisis. In the world of climate-change activism, this marks a dramatic shift in both tone and content. American environmentalism tends to treat global warming as a force that transcends difference: We all share this fragile blue planet, so we all need to work together to save it. But the coalition of Latin American and African governments making the case for climate debt actually stresses difference, zeroing in on the cruel contrast between those who caused the climate crisis (the developed world) and those who are suffering its worst effects (the developing world). Justin Lin, chief economist at the World Bank, puts the equation bluntly: “About 75 to 80 percent” of the damages caused by global warming “will be suffered by developing countries, although they only contribute about one-third of greenhouse gases.”

Climate debt is about who will pick up the bill. The grass-roots movement behind the proposal argues that all the costs associated with adapting to a more hostile ecology — everything from building stronger sea walls to switching to cleaner, more expensive technologies — are the responsibility of the countries that created the crisis. “What we need is not something we should be begging for but something that is owed to us, because we are dealing with a crisis not of our making,” says Lidy Nacpil, one of the coordinators of Jubilee South, an international organization that has staged demonstrations to promote climate reparations. “Climate debt is not a matter of charity.”

Sharon Looremeta, an advocate for Maasai tribespeople in Kenya who have lost at least 5 million cattle to drought in recent years, puts it in even sharper terms. “The Maasai community does not drive 4×4s or fly off on holidays in airplanes,” she says. “We have not caused climate change, yet we are the ones suffering. This is an injustice and should be stopped right now.”

The case for climate debt begins like most discussions of climate change: with the science. Before the Industrial Revolution, the density of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — the key cause of global warming — was about 280 parts per million. Today, it has reached 387 ppm — far above safe limits — and it’s still rising. Developed countries, which represent less than 20 percent of the world’s population, have emitted almost 75 percent of all greenhouse-gas pollution that is now destabilizing the climate. (The U.S. alone, which comprises barely five percent of the global population, contributes 25 percent of all carbon emissions.) And while developing countries like China and India have also begun to spew large amounts of carbon dioxide, the reasoning goes, they are not equally responsible for the cost of the cleanup, because they have contributed only a small fraction of the 200 years of cumulative pollution that has caused the crisis.

In Latin America, left-wing economists have long argued that Western powers owe a vaguely defined “ecological debt” to the continent for centuries of colonial land-grabs and resource extraction. But the emerging argument for climate debt is far more concrete, thanks to a relatively new body of research putting precise figures on who emitted what and when. “What is exciting,” says Antonio Hill, senior climate adviser at Oxfam, “is you can really put numbers on it. We can measure it in tons of CO₂ and come up with a cost.”

Equally important, the idea is supported by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — ratified by 192 countries, including the United States. The framework not only asserts that “the largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries,” it clearly states that actions taken to fix the problem should be made “on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities.”

The reparations movement has brought together a diverse coalition of big international organizations, from Friends of the Earth to the World Council of Churches, that have joined up with climate scientists and political economists, many of them linked to the influential Third World Network, which has been leading the call. Until recently, however, there was no government pushing for climate debt to be included in the Copenhagen agreement. That changed in June, when Angelica Navarro, the chief climate negotiator for Bolivia, took the podium at a U.N. climate negotiation in Bonn, Germany. Only 36 and dressed casually in a black sweater, Navarro looked more like the hippies outside than the bureaucrats and civil servants inside the session. Mixing the latest emissions science with accounts of how melting glaciers were threatening the water supply in two major Bolivian cities, Navarro made the case for why developing countries are owed massive compensation for the climate crisis.

“Millions of people — in small islands, least-developed countries, landlocked countries as well as vulnerable communities in Brazil, India and China, and all around the world — are suffering from the effects of a problem to which they did not contribute,” Navarro told the packed room. In addition to facing an increasingly hostile climate, she added, countries like Bolivia cannot fuel economic growth with cheap and dirty energy, as the rich countries did, since that would only add to the climate crisis — yet they cannot afford the heavy upfront costs of switching to renewable energies like wind and solar.

The solution, Navarro argued, is three-fold. Rich countries need to pay the costs associated with adapting to a changing climate, make deep cuts to their own emission levels “to make atmospheric space available” for the developing world, and pay Third World countries to leapfrog over fossil fuels and go straight to cleaner alternatives. “We cannot and will not give up our rightful claim to a fair share of atmospheric space on the promise that, at some future stage, technology will be provided to us,” she said.

The speech galvanized activists across the world. In recent months, the governments of Sri Lanka, Venezuela, Paraguay and Malaysia have endorsed the concept of climate debt. More than 240 environmental and development organizations have signed a statement calling for wealthy nations to pay their climate debt, and 49 of the world’s least-developed countries will take the demand to Copenhagen as a negotiating bloc.

“If we are to curb emissions in the next decade, we need a massive mobilization larger than any in history,” Navarro declared at the end of her talk. “We need a Marshall Plan for the Earth. This plan must mobilize financing and technology transfer on scales never seen before. It must get technology onto the ground in every country to ensure we reduce emissions while raising people’s quality of life. We have only a decade.”

A very expensive decade. The World Bank puts the cost that developing countries face from climate change — everything from crops destroyed by drought and floods to malaria spread by mosquito-infested waters — as high as $100 billion a year. And shifting to renewable energy, according to a team of United Nations researchers, will raise the cost far more: to as much as $600 billion a year over the next decade.

Unlike the recent bank bailouts, however, which simply transferred public wealth to the world’s richest financial institutions, the money spent on climate debt would fuel a global environmental transformation essential to saving the entire planet. The most exciting example of what could be accomplished is the ongoing effort to protect Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park. This extraordinary swath of Amazonian rainforest, which is home to several indigenous tribes and a surreal number of rare and exotic animals, contains nearly as many species of trees in 2.5 acres as exist in all of North America. The catch is that underneath that riot of life sits an estimated 850 million barrels of crude oil, worth about $7 billion. Burning that oil — and logging the rainforest to get it — would add another 547 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

Two years ago, Ecuador’s center-left president, Rafael Correa, said something very rare for the leader of an oil-exporting nation: He wanted to leave the oil in the ground. But, he argued, wealthy countries should pay Ecuador — where half the population lives in poverty — not to release that carbon into the atmosphere, as “compensation for the damages caused by the out-of-proportion amount of historical and current emissions of greenhouse gases.” He didn’t ask for the entire amount; just half. And he committed to spending much of the money to move Ecuador to alternative energy sources like solar and geothermal.

Largely because of the beauty of the Yasuní, the plan has generated widespread international support. Germany has already offered $70 million a year for 13 years, and several other European governments have expressed interest in participating. If Yasuní is saved, it will demonstrate that climate debt isn’t just a disguised ploy for more aid — it’s a far more credible solution to the climate crisis than the ones we have now. “This initiative needs to succeed,” says Atossa Soltani, executive director of Amazon Watch. “I think we can set a model for other countries.”

Activists point to a huge range of other green initiatives that would become possible if wealthy countries paid their climate debts. In India, mini power plants that run on biomass and solar power could bring low-carbon electricity to many of the 400 million Indians currently living without a light bulb. In cities from Cairo to Manila, financial support could be given to the armies of impoverished “trash pickers” who save as much as 80 percent of municipal waste in some areas from winding up in garbage dumps and trash incinerators that release planet-warming pollution. And on a much larger scale, coal-fired power plants across the developing world could be converted into more efficient facilities using existing technology, cutting their emissions by more than a third.

But to ensure that climate reparations are real, advocates insist, they must be independent of the current system of international aid. Climate money cannot simply be diverted from existing aid programs, such as primary education or HIV prevention. What’s more, the funds must be provided as grants, not loans, since the last thing developing countries need is more debt. Furthermore, the money should not be administered by the usual suspects like the World Bank and USAID, which too often push pet projects based on Western agendas, but must be controlled by the United Nations climate convention, where developing countries would have a direct say in how the money is spent.

Without such guarantees, reparations will be meaningless — and without reparations, the climate talks in Copenhagen will likely collapse. As it stands, the U.S. and other Western nations are engaged in a lose-lose game of chicken with developing nations like India and China: We refuse to lower our emissions unless they cut theirs and submit to international monitoring, and they refuse to budge unless wealthy nations cut first and cough up serious funding to help them adapt to climate change and switch to clean energy. “No money, no deal,” is how one of South Africa’s top environmental officials put it. “If need be,” says Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, speaking on behalf of the African Union, “we are prepared to walk out.”

In the past, President Obama has recognized the principle on which climate debt rests. “Yes, the developed nations that caused much of the damage to our climate over the last century still have a responsibility to lead,” he acknowledged in his September speech at the United Nations. “We have a responsibility to provide the financial and technical assistance needed to help these [developing] nations adapt to the impacts of climate change and pursue low-carbon development.”

Yet as Copenhagen draws near, the U.S. negotiating position appears to be to pretend that 200 years of over-emissions never happened. Todd Stern, the chief U.S. climate negotiator, has scoffed at a Chinese and African proposal that developed countries pay as much as $400 billion a year in climate financing as “wildly unrealistic” and “untethered to reality.” Yet he put no alternative number on the table — unlike the European Union, which has offered to kick in up to $22 billion. U.S. negotiators have even suggested that countries could fund climate debt by holding periodic “pledge parties,” making it clear that they see covering the costs of climate change as a matter of whimsy, not duty.

But shunning the high price of climate change carries a cost of its own. U.S. military and intelligence agencies now consider global warming a leading threat to national security. As sea levels rise and droughts spread, competition for food and water will only increase in many of the world’s poorest nations. These regions will become “breeding grounds for instability, for insurgencies, for warlords,” according to a 2007 study for the Center for Naval Analyses led by Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former Centcom commander. To keep out millions of climate refugees fleeing hunger and conflict, a report commissioned by the Pentagon in 2003 predicted that the U.S. and other rich nations would likely decide to “build defensive fortresses around their countries.”

Setting aside the morality of building high-tech fortresses to protect ourselves from a crisis we inflicted on the world, those enclaves and resource wars won’t come cheap. And unless we pay our climate debt, and quickly, we may well find ourselves living in a world of climate rage. “Privately, we already hear the simmering resentment of diplomats whose countries bear the costs of our emissions,” Sen. John Kerry observed recently. “I can tell you from my own experience: It is real, and it is prevalent. It’s not hard to see how this could crystallize into a virulent, dangerous, public anti-Americanism. That’s a threat too. Remember: The very places least responsible for climate change — and least equipped to deal with its impacts — will be among the very worst affected.”

That, in a nutshell, is the argument for climate debt. The developing world has always had plenty of reasons to be pissed off with their northern neighbors, with our tendency to overthrow their governments, invade their countries and pillage their natural resources. But never before has there been an issue so politically inflammatory as the refusal of people living in the rich world to make even small sacrifices to avert a potential climate catastrophe. In Bangladesh, the Maldives, Bolivia, the Arctic, our climate pollution is directly responsible for destroying entire ways of life — yet we keep doing it.

From outside our borders, the climate crisis doesn’t look anything like the meteors or space invaders that Todd Stern imagined hurtling toward Earth. It looks, instead, like a long and silent war waged by the rich against the poor. And for that, regardless of what happens in Copenhagen, the poor will continue to demand their rightful reparations. “This is about the rich world taking responsibility for the damage done,” says Ilana Solomon, policy analyst for ActionAid USA, one of the groups recently converted to the cause. “This money belongs to poor communities affected by climate change. It is their compensation.”

[From Issue 1091 — November 12, 2009]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30841581/climate_rage

El mundo social

Expomanagement es un evento organizado por HSM México en el que se congregan los más altos ejecutivos del país para oír a algunos líderes mundiales y descubrir nuevas ideas para sus empresas. Desde Premios Nobel hasta lo más selecto de las mentes de negocios puede ser oído cada año en este evento inigualable en el pais.

Disclaimer: fui invitado a bloggear el evento en un esfuerzo por aumentar su alcance y distribuir el conocimiento a través de los medios sociales, pero no recibí dinero alguno, ni estoy obligado a hablar positivamente o promocionarlo como tal, lo hago de buena fe y, porque soy gran fan de los eventos organizados por HSM.

Este año no fue la excepción en la calidad tanto del evento, la logística y sobretodo, los exponentes del evento. No hubo una sola plática por parte de los 9 conferencistas que no causara revuelo, comentarios y emoción en mi y me atrevo a decir en todos los asistentes; hasta cobertura nacional de la prensa se llevó uno que otro. La lista de expositores principales la pueden ver aquí.

Además de las conferencias magnas, el área de negocios era impresionante, con participación de grandes empresas dándole un gran valor agregado al evento dado que no solo estaban ahi para promocionar productos sino que también se ofrecieron más de 50 pláticas en los 4 auditorios extra al cual podía ir el equipo de trabajo de los directores que atendían las conferencias magnas. Y en una buena táctica por parte de HSM se ofrecieron entradas gratis a través de Twitter. Me pude encontrar con varios conocidos de ese medio en el lugar y todos salieron con muy buen sabor de boca de las conferencias que vieron.

Los temas fueron desde estrategia, economía, creatividad y filantropía y cada personaje, aportó gran valor a las ideas de los empresarios presentes.

Creatividad, Innovación, Tema recurrente.

Thomas Frey, Gary Hamel, Venkat Ramaswamy concordaron todos en el tema de que el país, y las empresas en él, requieren mayor creatividad e innovación, pero no solo hablando de productos o servicios. La innovación más importante está en el modelo mismo de administración, en lograr que tu empresa cambie y se adapte a la misma velocidad con que está cambiando el mundo. Llevar nuestra cultura a una cultura emprendedora, de colaboración, sin jerarquías y con amplía libertad y reconomiento y “empowerment” para el empleado. Son temas claves de las nuevas tendencias de administración. Llevamos manejando nuestros negocios con los mismos métodos creados hace 100 años, cuando la tecnología y el cambio en el mundo han rebasado ya por mucho lo que veían esos pioneros del management.

Por otro lado Jack Welch, complementó el tema con sus ideas acerca de cómo debes dejar al empleado crecer, hacerle saber que te preoucpas por él y que es parte de una familia y de esa forma fomentar en él la pasión para que, sin necesidad de supervisión, cree cosas nuevas, haga crecer a la empresa y busque el bien de todos.

Pleito Económico entre Premio Nobel y Carstens

Otro gran punto fue por parte de Joseph Stiglitz, premio Nobel de Economía quien afirmó que no cree que México haya enfrentado la crisis como debiera, sus comentarios fueron tomados por la prensa y usados para atacar al secretario de Hacienda Agustín Carstens, quien replicó que el Nobel de Economía estaba equivocado por “no conocer méxico”.

¿Estamos listos para no ganar dinero?

Premio Nobel de la Paz, Muhammad Yunus, empresario de Bangladesh nos habló de cómo creó el sistema de microcréditos en su país y después como lo ha hecho crecer en un nuevo modelo de negocios llamado “Negocios Sociales”, presentándolo como una nueva opción al único modelo de negocios existente: el de hacer dinero. Simplemente nos pide entender que háy más allá del dinero, el comenta: “Hay más cosas en la vida que nos pueden dar satisfacción, les presento una opción de blanco contra el negro que ya existe, y se vale buscar grises”.  Una fantástica experiencia oír sus palabras y motivarnos a buscar un problema social y más allá de simplemente fundar una organización sin fines de lucro, crear una empresa que solucione el problema con productos baratos y sin ganancias.

Finalmente, los expresidentes de Colombia y España nos dieron sus perspectivas respecto al futuro de Latinoamérica. De notar fue la plática de Andrés Pastrana, quién en su tiempo a la cabeza de Colombia le tocó enfrentar a la FARC y a Pablo Escobar de frente. Le tocó ser secuestrado cuando era alcalde, y nos platicó cómo está de acuerdo en las acciones que toma hoy México contra el narcotráfico pero sin dejar pasar las alternativas de legalización como opciones viables de enfrentarlo, pero con una principal idea necesaria: la coordinación entre todos los países, tanto productores como consumidores como los de tránsito para poder realmente llevar a un nivel satisfactorio esta batalla.

En conclusión, un gran evento, con los speakers al nivel de lo prometido, la asistencia fue a Full tanto en las magnas así cómo en el área de negocios, me dicen que cerca de 6,000 personas asistieron y no creo que nadie haya quedado decepcionado.

মন্ত্রিসভা মুক্তিযোদ্ধা গণকর্মচারীদের চাকরি থেকে অবসর গ্রহণের বয়স বৃদ্ধির প্রস্তাব অনুমোদন এবং প্রধানমন্ত্রী শেখ হাসিনা ইন্দিরা গান্ধী শান্তি পুরস্কারের জন্যে মনোনীত হওয়ায় তাঁকে অভিনন্দন জানিয়েছে। প্রস্তাবে মুক্তিযোদ্ধাদের চাকরি থেকে অবসর গ্রহণের বছর ৫৭ থেকে দুই বছর বাড়িয়ে ৫৯ করা হয়েছে। সোমবার সচিবালয়ের মন্ত্রিপরিষদ বিভাগের সভাকক্ষে মন্ত্রিসভার নিয়মিত বৈঠকে এই সিদ্ধান্ত নেয়া হয়। এতে সভাপতিত্ব করেন প্রধানমন্ত্রী শেখ হাসিনা। বৈঠক শেষে প্রধানমন্ত্রীর প্রেস সচিব আবুল কালাম আজাদ সাংবাদিকদের জানান, প্রধানমন্ত্রী শেখ হাসিনা ইন্দিরা গান্ধী শান্তি পুরস্কারের জন্যে মনোনীত হওয়ায় মন্ত্রিসভার বৈঠকে তাঁকে অভিনন্দন জানিয়ে বলা হয়, বিশ্ব শান্তি প্রতিষ্ঠায় এবং গরীব সাধারণ মানুষের ভাগ্যোন্নয়নে তাঁর অবদান চিরস্মরণীয় হয়ে থাকবে।
 
মন্ত্রিসভা জাতির জনক বঙ্গবন্ধু শেখ মুজিবুর রহমানের হত্যা মামলার সুপ্রিমকোর্টের রায়ে সন্তোষ প্রকাশ করে। এই রায় কার্যকর করার মধ্য দিয়ে দেশ থেকে হত্যা ও ষড়যন্ত্রের রাজনীতি চিরদিনের জন্যে বন্ধ হবে বলে বৈঠকে আশা প্রকাশ করা হয়। মন্ত্রিসভার আজকের বৈঠকে মুক্তিযোদ্ধাদের চাকরি থেকে অবসর গ্রহণের বয়স দুই বছর বৃদ্ধি করা ছাড়াও ২০১০ খ্রিস্টাব্দের সরকারি ছুটির তালিকা, বাংলাদেশ মেডিকেল এন্ড ডেন্টাল কাউন্সিল এ্যাক্ট ১৯৮০-এর সংশোধনী প্রস্তাব, মৎস্য হ্যাচারি আইন-২০০৯ প্রস্তাব এবং ইপিজেড শ্রমিক সংঘ ও শিল্প সম্পর্ক সংশোধনী আইনের প্রস্তাব অনুমোদন করা হয়। বৈঠকে ইপিজেড শ্রমিক সংঘ ও শিল্প সম্পর্ক আইনের সংশোধনী প্রস্তাব অনুমোদন করে ইপিজেড শ্রমিক কল্যাণ সংঘ করা হয়।

Urban biodiversity and Dhaka dwellers

Cities are growing rapidly, in 50 years more than 80% of the world’s population will live in an urban environment. Urban green areas e.g. parks and gardens, woodlands and forests with socio-cultural values are important for urban life. Moving in search of a better life, people across the globe have abandoned traditional socio-economic systems, broken ecological bonds with nature, and flocked to urban centers. While this process started in the “northern” or “developed” world, less developed countries have quickly caught up.

Sustainable urban development requires providing a healthy and sustainable living environment with basic services for all. A healthy and multifunctional urban green structure is one of the basic services to provide. Urban and peri-urban forestry (UPF), focusing on the tree-dominated part of urban and periurban green space, is a strategic, integrative, interdisciplinary, and participatory approach. Its goal is to sustainably develop the multiple benefits of forests and trees in urban environments.

Ongoing urbanization has brought about a wide range of challenges across the globe, and not only in terms of population growth. In the United States, for example, metropolitan areas tripled in size between 1950 and 1990. More land is needed for urban areas to provide inputs and outputs of resources and energy, with a detrimental effect on forests and other green areas. During the early 1990s, more than a quarter of green spaces in Asia were expected to be lost within two decades due to continued urbanization and suburbanization.

Continuing urbanization in the developing world has led to major problems in terms of hunger, poverty, inadequate shelter, social segregation, unemployment, pollution of water, soil, and atmosphere; and so onward.

Experiences and research during recent years have shown that urban green structures are more than just “icing on the cake.”

The thought of urban forestry is new in Dhaka. As a developing country, city authorities are busy most of the time to give service facilities to the people rather than think about green resources. Most of the time different green institutions in the city and government deal with big urban greening programme by tree plantation activities. There are no exact areas wise statistics for the percentage of trees in the city and also no area wise planning for tree plantation. In 2002 Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) were able to plant only 29 thousand trees out of the targeted 45 thousand because of lack of empty space. In 2003, DCC has planned to plant six thousand trees to replace those that have been uprooted, and a further ten thousand in whatever empty space is available in Uttara and Mirpur area of Dhaka. But adequate open spaces are needed for the sustainable development of a city.

Let’s discuss why we really need urban biodiversity in term of social, economic and environmental context.

Nursery activity is an important entrepreneurial outlet for the poor people. 78% of nursery owners indicated that the management of their nursery is their only employment. The average daily sales of the nurseries surveyed exceeded USD 130, the biggest and most successful one third of nurseries, however, have average daily sales in excess of USD 190.

Considering among data it can be assume that most of the beneficiary of this industry are low income groups of the urban area.

In Dhaka studies shown that suspended particulate matter (SPM) and ambient sulphur dioxide levels of air pollution are about 4 times and 5 times higher than the levels prescribed in Bangladesh Air Quality Standard. An ADB report shown that 3,850 premature deaths could be avoided had there been a reduction of SPM concentrations in Dhaka to the level of Bangladesh Air Quality Standard.

Economic cost, because of such deaths and illnesses in Bangladesh, may reach US $800 Million a year. One of the most effective ways to control air pollution is creating more woodland around the city and increasing the number of trees in the parks and street in Dhaka. The SPM can be captured by the leaves of evergreen tree species .Several research in US revealed that trees can remove pollution by intercepting airborne particles. In 1994, trees in New York City removed an estimated 1,821 metric tons of air pollution at an estimated value to society of $ 9.5 million. Another study found that woodland in Nottingham was estimated to reduce concentrations of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides in the air by 4-5%.It is also well known that all vegetation absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen, do purifying the air.

It found that in Dhaka 33% inhabitants experience hearing problems from noise pollution. But increasing trees and other vegetation can play an important role in attenuating noise through and absorbing sound energy. In US one research estimate suggested that 7db noise reduction was achieved for every 33m of forest while other reported field tests show apparent loudness reduced by 50% by wide belts of trees and soft ground.

According to Dhaka city structure plan 1995-2015 policy 10 &11 demands the augmenting of city open space and securing the future open space although there have no specific policy which can support sustainable livelihood.

Well-planned and well managed green areas are essential for environmental and high quality of life for Dhaka city dwellers. So it is very much for RAJUK and Dhaka City Corporation to rethink about these issues and necessary actions need to be taken.

Source – The New Nation

WHERE DID THEY GET TO?  We got off of the bus together, but with photos to take, etc.  The three ladies in the front got to New Market long before we did!  It seemed like all of Dhaka was near New Market doing pre-Eid shopping!