munching for marmots sleeping with batssample chapter …2 munching for marmots, sleeping with bats:...

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MUNCHING FOR MARMOTS, SLEEPING WITH BATS:

ENVIRONMENTAL STORIES

FROM AROUND THE WORLD

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Munching for Marmots, Sleeping with Bats: Children’s Ecological Stories from Around the World

OVERVIEW

Munching for Marmots, Sleeping with Bats is to be a book of children’s stories and art about their experiences working on environmental projects. The stories are about how adults, children and decision-makers can work together for a better world. About 25 stories will be included in the collection. One is a story of a 10 year-old Canadian girl, Paige, who bakes cookies to raise money to save the endangered Vancouver Island marmot. Another is the story of a 12 year-old boy, Vivek, who sleeps with endangered bats in the Mahadai Valley in India and works passionately to save them. Then there is the story of Maria Candelaria Sabalajo, Guatemalan children who learn about Mayan medicinal plants and other traditions from community elders, giving us a unique perspective on their relationship with the natural world. We will profile children who work on their own as well as those who are deeply involved in projects and campaigns with their families, schools or community groups. Our profiles reveal the delight that ordinary children take in the natural world, the ideas they develop for taking action, and the frustrations they feel in not being heard. The point of the book is to offer hope, inspiration and practical ideas to children, parents and teachers. It will inspire each one of us to take action in partnership with children, and to support their eagerness to develop responsive and responsible relationships with nature. The book will be readable and entertaining for children aged nine to 13, as well as for parents, teachers, and those who work with children in the environmental field. Some content will be presented in short essay and interviews. Themes will also be developed using children’s drawings, cartoons, poems and songs. The work in the book is the children’s own. Their writings were culled from hundreds of essays submitted; their voices were collected in follow-up interviews. The book will be lively and visually appealing for children - inspiring by artwork as well as through writing. Many of the stories for the book were gathered in association with the “legacy project” of the United Nations Environmental Program Children and Environment Conference held in Victoria in May 2002. Others were solicited through the project committee’s international connections. While the book was conceived as a legacy for the conference, the conference proceedings will not be central to the book. Each of the book’s chapters, however, focus on the conference’s themes-water, resource conservation, healthy communities and climate change – with a final essay on what motivates children to engage with nature and become agents of change. Each chapter will be introduced by a world figure known for their work in the field. Children’s troubadour and ecology advocate Raffi has written an introduction. The water chapter will be introduced by 12 year–old Ryan Hrlejac, an Ontario boy who has raised over half a million dollars to dig wells in Africa. The resource conservation chapter will be introduced by Jane

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Goodall. Severn Suzuki will write the introduction to the chapter dealing with climate change. Nobel prize winner Rigoberta Menchu will introduce the healthy communities chapter. An appraisal of other publications on related themes suggests that there are few books available that take a holistic child-centered approach to environmental issues. Even fewer profile individual children’s own work, or give voice to their thoughts and feelings about living in the natural world. There is little in print that relies on children’s own voices to tell stories on any subject, and we could find nothing along these lines that focuses on environmental issues. The book’s publication is being led by the International Institute for Child Rights and Development. It results from a collaboration between ICC Canada 2002 – the organizing body of the 2002 UNEP International Children’s Conference on the Environment, Troubadour Music Inc., the Environmental Youth Alliance, and the International Institute for Child Rights and Development. The junior Board of the UNEP International Children’s Conference on the Environment is also represented on the book advisory committee. World leaders at the 1992 Earth Summit recognized that because children represent one third of the world’s population and because they bring a unique perspective to the issues, they must be involved in the decision making and implementation of environmental programs. The UNEP International Children’s Conferences, which are held every two years, are part of a global response to that need. Munching for Marmots, Sleeping with Bats, which arises from the 2002 conference held in Canada, will serve as a living legacy of that conference, by documenting some of the amazing things that children are doing, and by inspiring others to take like action.

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OVERVIEW STORIES FOR THE BOOK

Prologue/Introduction: Raffi WSSD Speech & Challenges

WATER

CLIMATE CHANGE

HEALTHY COMMUNITIES

RESOURCE CONSERVATION

Ryan Hreljac Severn Suzuki Rigoberta Menchu Jane Goodall Cows conserve water Cody McNalley Canada (prairies)

Greener Areas in Our City Geovana Brazil

Doggy Doo Nicole Clark Canada (BC)

Art of Children helps Save the Earth Natalia Batwini Russia

From forest to sea Galiano scool-Conservancy Canada

‘Sauvons la nature’ Club Florence Laplante Canada (Quebec)

Maples for the millennium Rebecca Dixon Canada (Ontario)

Schools for Ancient Forest Germany

Telling the kids ‘this is our right’ Yvonne Maingey Kenya

The Climate Change Boogie Andrea Abbott Canada (Whitehorse)

Me and the jungle Gilberto Garcia Gomez (Lacandon Maya) Mexico

Munching for Marmots Paige Whitehead Canada (Vancouver Island)

My dream: water in the morning Swapna India (Kolkhata)

Air pollution Nonjabulo Mangoni Swaziland

Harmony between nature and mankind Don-Jin Sohn Korea

Free-tail bats Vivek Danewale India

Plastic bottle raft Neringa Buzavaite and EditaRuksenaite Lithuania

My Climate Investigations Marek Karm Estonia

Buster’s Page Matt Garcia USA

Everglades Adrian Mahoney USA

Encouraging care for our wetlands Siyasisanda Mdayi South Africa

The Ing’s Thing North Yorkshire Floods Jamie Young and Charles Anker-Morfoot

Thanking Maria Candelaria Sabajalo Guatemala

PET plastic bottle recycling Jamaica

Water testing Poem Clean India

Inuit

NITS Xavier Green Australia

Energy boxes & wonder boxes Azola Lingani South Africa

Alor Riday Ram Nath Rajak India (Kolkhata)

Planting trees in my village Jan Thailand (Mong)

I love hunting Drew Kisoun Canada ( Inuit- North)

My family loves the forest and wildlife poems Laos

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SAMPLE CHAPTER FOR PUBLISHER

Water Introduction

MAKING A DREAM COME TRUE

Ryan Hreljac, Canada

As fast as you can snap your fingers people are dying because they don’t have clean water. Every eight seconds another person dies in the world because they have dirty water or no water at all. That makes me very sad. I was six years old when I decided to build a well. I was in Grade 1 and we were talking about children who didn’t have toys or Nintendo or even clean water. One cent was for a pencil. Two dollars was for a blanket. Five dollars was for five hot lunches. Then I heard Mrs. Prest say that $70 was for a well. My teacher told us that people were dying because they didn’t have clean water. I couldn’t believe it. I went home and asked my Mom and Dad for the money. I begged and begged them. They told me that I couldn’t have the money but I could do extra chores to earn it. I did lots of chores like vacuuming, washing windows, picking up brush from the big ice storm we had and picking up pinecones for my Nana’s crafts with my brothers Jordan and Keegan. After four months I saved $70. Then, I found out that my well was going to cost $2,000! So I said I would just do more chores! I saved on my own at the start but with lots and lots of help from other people and organizations like CIDA (that’s the Canadian International Development Agency), we have helped raise over half a million dollars. I know I am lucky because I was born in a country that has lots of clean water. People in other some countries are not as lucky. In July 2000 I got to go and see my very first well. I went all the way to Africa. The well is right beside Angolo Primary School in northern Uganda. It was awesome. I even drank from my well. It tasted great! People ask me if I’m sad because my friends in Africa are poor. They want to know if I am sad because I live in a brick house and they live in mud and grass houses. They might be poor because they don’t have much money but in other ways they are not poor at all. In Africa they say, “Water is Life.” Now I really understand what they mean. There are so many great kids in the world. I know that lots of them will grow up and make the world a better place. Whether you want to help with clean water or some other project, what is

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important is that we all make a difference. I dream of the day everyone in the world has clean water. That’s a big dream. I learned that you can do anything if you really try hard and you really want to. The world needs kids and they need grownups too. Adults like Nelson Mandela are doing great things to make the world a better place. He is like a big old oak tree and kids like us are like little seedlings. With lots of water, sun and love, maybe we will grow up to be big old oak trees too. Who knows? If all the kids and adults work together, then maybe someday there will be peace and clean water for everyone. Please remember…whatever you do…don’t waste water. When you brush your teeth or have a shower, turn the tap off straight away! I heard that some day we might even run out of fresh clean water. If we are not careful, one day when you want a drink, maybe it will be gone… BOOM …HISTORY …so we have to take care of the water we have AND we have to make sure that everyone on earth gets enough water to live or we’re all going to be in big trouble. There are wars right now over things like oil. In the future there might even be wars over water. Life is like a great big puzzle. I found where my puzzle piece fits in the world. I hope you can figure out where your piece fits too. I pray at night for clean water for not just my family but for every single family on earth.

I hope my dream comes true one day. And I hope your dreams come true too.

Ryan’s Fundraising ideas: Car wash, bake sale, garage sale, sell bottled water. Some schools are doing what I did and they do extra chores to reach a school goal of building a well. If every student in a school saved $1 a week for 10 weeks and there were 100 people in the school then that would be $1,000!!! Some students donate part of their babysitting money or pick up litter in their neighbourhood. The average Canadian uses about 431 litres of water per person and theaverage person in Uganda uses around 8 litres. Some kids sell t-shirts or water bottles with 431 vs. 8 on their shirts to tell people that we need to save more water.

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TELLING THE KIDS ‘THIS IS OUR RIGHT’ Yvonne Maingey, Kenya Yvonne Maingey is 14 years old lives on a farm in the Athi River region of Kenya. She has initiated environmental projects in her school and town and has been involved in speaking for children in the international community for 4 years. Kenya is in East Africa and lies across the equator. Most of the nearly 30 million Kenyans are subsistence farmers. English and Swahili are the official languages, with English as the language of government and education. Some of the major environmental problems Kenya faces are deforestation, deteriorating water quality, and over grazing. My name is Yvonne Maingey, I am in year 10 at Rusinga School, Nairobi, Kenya. I live on a farm in Athi River, next to Kenya’s second largest river. My father tells me that the river derived its name from the earthy colour hence the locals who could not pronounce earthy called it Athi. My environmental activism started about 4 years ago when I noticed the level of pollution in the river. The earthy coloured water was turning green and my father, an ardent fisherman, constantly complained of the depleted fish life. There was also too much plastic being dumped into the once beautiful and pristine countryside. I was in year six in Loreto convent in Msongari, a beautiful school for girls. There was a little river that passed through our school and on close investigation I discovered that this river was also heavily polluted and smelled of raw sewage. This is what spurred me into action. Together with a few girls from our school we formed an environment club " The Loreto Convent Msongari Environmental Action Group" under the patronage of one of our teachers, Mrs. Mwaura. We had weekly meetings where we educated our fellow students on the need to take good care of our environment. We planted trees and cleaned the little river going through our school grounds. We also organized bake sales and fund-raising fun days in which we involved the whole school, the community, and the media to raise funds and awareness for our club. In May 2000, about 10 girls from our club attended the Millennium International Children’s Conference in Eastbourne, England. It was a great learning experience for us and we shared our concerns and experiences with about 700 children from all over the world. Philip Tinker from the UK and I had the privilege of taking the childrens’ challenges and resolutions to the global ministerial forum meeting in Malmo, Sweden. I met my environment minister in Malmo and shared with him the problems of pollution in Athi River. I must say it was quite a surprise when the minister paid a visit to my home in Athi River and toured the river. Soon after his visit, a factory that was disposing its waste directly into the river was closed down and the flower farms were ordered to close down and to stop discarding their waste plastic directly into the river. So, for about a month and a half they stopped altogether. Then there was a re-

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shuffle in Kenya’s cabinet, and the minister of environment was changed. Immediately after that it is like they forgot, and they went back to dumping in the river. Since then I have attended and participated in children’s conferences all over the world such as the Asia Pacific Eco Summit in Japan, the Media Summit for children in Thessaloniki, Greece, and the Special Session for Children in New York. I also served as a junior board member for the International Children’s Conference on the Environment in Victoria, Canada. Our environmental club also started getting involved in child rights activities. In fact right now I have been working quite a lot with UNICEF. There are a lot of slums and underprivileged children in Kenya and we want these children to know more about the “Say Yes for Children” campaign and to know more about their own rights – because they don’t know that they have any rights. The “Say Yes for Children” campaign that is going on right now states that a healthy environment is one of the rights of a child. One of the key points is to protect the Earth for children. Every now and then on week-ends, we go to these areas and talk to the kids to tell them “this is your right”. We have been doing this for the past two years now and we have got quite a few kids involved. I enjoy talking to other kids and seeing how happy they are when we talk with them. It has really helped me a lot because now I am able to talk in front of people, really big, important people without being scared or hesitant or whatever. I also present a children’s program on TV where I highlight issues that affect children and the environment. An adult produces the show, but I do my own scripts and help with the editing. The show goes on every Saturday and is targeted at children from the age of 3 to 18. Is a planet capable of supporting life a dream? Perhaps, but those who do not have a dream, do not have a future. I believe the dream of a better environment lies in the hands of children. If all the children are educated on good environmental practice there is hope for our planet because children are the leaders and the decision makers of tomorrow.

UNICEF Have you heard about UNICEF - the United Nations Children’s Fund? It was first called the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund and was created after World War II to help European children. Now it works all over the world to help children living in poverty and in the midst of wars and natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes. UNICEF has many programmes, projects and publications all aimed at building a world where children live in dignity and security. Find out more about what your local UNICEF office is doing and how you can help support children where you live and in many other countries. http://www.unicef.org

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Global Movement for Children The Global Movement for Children is a call to everyone to change the world through children. It aims to help ordinary citizens inspire those in positions of power to make a difference in the fulfillment of children's rights. The Movement’s 10 Priorities: 1. Leave No Child Out All forms of discrimination and exclusion against children must end. 2. Put Children First It is the responsibility of everyone – governments, individuals, non-governmental organizations, religious groups, the private sector and children and adolescents themselves – to ensure that children's rights are respected. 3. Care for Every Child Ensure all children the best possible start in life. 4. Fight HIV/AIDS Protect children and adolescents and their families. 5. Stop Harming and Exploiting Children Violence and abuse must be stopped now, as must the sexual and economic exploitation of children. 6. Listen to Children Respect the rights of children and young people to express themselves and to participate in making decisions that affect them. 7. Educate Every Child Every child – all girls and boys – must be allowed to learn. 8. Protect Children from War No child should experience the horrors of armed conflict. 9. Protect the Earth for Children Safeguard the environment at global, national and local levels. 10. Fight Poverty Invest in services that benefit the poorest children and their families, such as basic health care and primary education. Make the well-being of children a priority of debt relief programs, development assistance and government spending. Find out more about who’s doing what and where and what you can do in your own community. Say yes for children. http://www.gmfc.org/en/index_html

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COWS CONSERVE WATER Cody McNalley, Canada Cody McNalley lives on a farm in Cadogan, Alberta, Canada with his mother and father. This prairie province produces about 60% of Canada’s beef. The province also has most of Canada’s reserves of gas and crude oil. Major environmental problems in this area include drought and the pollution problems associated with the oil and gas industry. I am 11 years old and live on a hay and cattle farm in rural East Central Alberta. My concern is the drought that has plagued our area for 3 to 4 years. It has affected our farm very greatly. In a good year our farm should produce 1800 feed bales. For the past two years we have only had 400 bales each year. Our cows have less and less water to drink, our hay has less and less rain to make it grow. If the drought continues another year our farm will not survive, nor will many other small farms. This means there will be less beef and grain on the market for the rest of the world to buy for food. I know I cannot stop the drought, but I want to help conserve water on our farm and make others aware of how to conserve water. For example, my dad and I put a cattle nose pump in our dugout to save on water use. A nose pump is a lever and whenever the cow needs water it pushes the lever with its nose, water comes up a hose from the dugout, goes into a dish and the cow drinks, When the cow stops drinking, the water stops flowing and isn’t wasted. When dad and I first put the nose pump in, the cows all gather around it because it’s a new thing. My dad walks in and he pushes it and pumps the water in and when the cows see that, they put their nose on it and just push, and then once one cow does it they all do it. But the calves, they can’t push it, so we have a little opening that just the calves can get in to and they can walk in and drink right out of the dug-out. I’d like to get more ranchers to use these nose pumps, and then we can conserve water, because those motorised pumps, they spray water out. I know that 90 per cent of people around us have dugouts and they have those motorized pumps and they have to go out and start them every morning and they’re putting fumes into the air because it’s running all day.


There’s a lake that’s not far from here, it’s only about ten minutes away, and I couldn’t go swimming this summer in it because there’s an illness in the lake. There’s no fresh water. It’s usually perfectly clear. When you walked into it, it was really hot. It almost burned you, because the days were so hot and there was no fresh water. The spring that the water came from had dried up Our area relies on farming and cattle for its survival. The world relies on farming and cattle for food and grain production. If our farms can’t continue there won’t be a future for the children in my area and the world will see a drastic reduction in its global food supply.

Farming and Water Guess what consumes most of the world’s water supply? No, not washing machines, dishwashers or even power plants. It’s farming. Growing food consumes about 70 percent of all the water we use, and that amount is expected to rise as the world demands more food. Just one ton of grain takes between 1,000 and 3,000 tons of water to grow. Raising beef cattle takes up even more. Intensive use of water for irrigation can seriously strain water reserves, which is why it is important to carefully manage farmland. The United Nations expects the amount of water used in irrigation to increase by 50 to 100 percent by the year 2025. Most of that rise in demand will occur in developing countries due to their expanding populations and growing needs. If these trends continue, two-thirds of the earth's population will suffer from serious water shortages by 2025.


FROM THE FOREST TO THE SEA Galiano Community School and the Galiano Conservancy Association, Canada Galiano Island is a small rural island located off the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. The climate is the most temperate in Canada. About 1000 people live on Galiano Island. Galiano is part of a group of islands called the Gulf Islands. These islands have some of the most popular waters for boating and fishing on the west coast of North America. Very little of the old growth forest cover remains in this area, and the abundance of fish species are only a fraction of what they once were. Galiano Community School students participated in two projects with the Galiano Conservancy Association, a local conservation group: The first was habitat restoration at Murchison Creek on John Pritchard’s field. A reach of the creek dries up in the summer and a pond was built to give the Cutthroat trout a place to survive the dry summers and to provide refuge from high flows in the winter. Kimberley Schnare, Emily Buttery, Laura Langtry Coburn, Mandela Harris, Hannah Gummeson, Patrick Wilson and Ashley Hawes wrote essays and were interviewed about the project Kimberly: Our class has been working with the Galiano Conservancy Association as part of our science curriculum. We have only 54 students in our school and 14 of them are in my Grade 6/7/8 class. Recently a species of cutthroat trout was discovered in Murchison Creek. One part of the stream dries up in the summer, and some of the fish die. The Galiano Conservancy built a small, deep pond in John Pritchard’s field, and a channel connecting Murchison Creek to the pond. My class planted native plants for protection and shade for the cutthroat. Some of the things we planted were Willow, Garry Oak, Nootka Rose and Huckleberry. We also cleared away non-native plants, including broom and thistle. We tested water for pH, turbidity, oxygen, temperature, and measured stream width and velocity. Our results were sent to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Ashleigh: We went out in November and just planted trees, but we didn’t help with the digging of the pond or anything. We split up into three groups: one group went and played a game, called the web game, about how everything’s connected to everything else. The second group did water testing, seeing how fast the river went, what was in the water, like if it was the right temperature and pH level. And then the third group planted native trees and bushes and stuff for shelter for the fish. They pulled out broom too. Sidebar on Web Game Kimberly: In the bottom of the pond were a few logs and big rocks for shelter and the sides were made of clay soil to keep the water in. I feel good about being part of a project to create a


better environment for Galiano’s Cutthroat Trout. The new pond will give them a chance to survive where they wouldn’t have otherwise. In the future, I hope to walk along Murchison Creek and discover these trout swimming around their new home! The other project that Galiano School has been working on is a habitat restoration project at Laughlin Lake, the largest freshwater lake on Galiano Island. Laura: Right now we are working at Laughlin Lake and my group is working on the birds. We’re trying to find out what specific birds need to live in or around the lake habitat. We have to study the habitat so we can make it a good place to live for the birds. We are going to help this lake survive. Hannah: The first day we went up there, we were split into three groups, and I was a beaver. There were beavers up there and there’s a beaver lodge. We went and we were looking for signs of if anything had been there, and we found a couple trees that had been chewed up by beavers. We found a couple beavers’ dams, and that was pretty cool. Ashleigh: In the amphibian group, we looked in the places where frogs would originally be. We tried to find some, but we didn’t find any amphibians, but we took pictures of moss-covered logs that were close to the water where amphibians would hide. Hannah: I saw bufflehead ducks out on the other side of the lake. It was pretty cool. Patrick: On that day I removed some broom from that area. [Was it easy to pull out?] No! It was hard to pull out. [With your bare hands?] Yeah, we had gloves. We had to. Kimberly: Broom is kind of like crabgrass; it takes over, so you’ve got to get it out while the little seedlings are young and only so tall [about 30 cm]. You gotta take them out then before

Alien invasions The Aliens have landed! That’s right although they haven’t come from outer space but from our own planet. An alien plant or animal is one that has been introduced to a new area – usually by people - and then multiplied so much it crowds out native species. Almost every corner of the Earth has now been ‘invaded’ by animals or plants from elsewhere. The result is the loss of biodiversity, a fancy word meaning all the varieties of life on Earth. One example of an alien invader is the plant Broom. It was introduced to Vancouver Island in 1850 by Scottish immigrant Captain Walter Grant. Broom is a stringy plant with long, dusty green tendrils and bright yellow flowers. Of the seeds he planted, three germinated. Descendants of these three plants now colonize most of Vancouver Island and surrounding Islands. Like other invasive plants broom grows quickly and is hard to get rid of. Examples of animals that have successfully invaded much of the globe are crows, rats, coyotes and humans! Want to know how you can help endangered species? The Australian government has some super tips for kids at www.ea.gov.au/biodiversity/threatened/information/kids


they get too tall, and too hard to get out. We want to get rid of it because, as I said, it takes over. It’s not a native plant. Laura: If you get rid of most of the broom, then more trees grow there, because it takes over and it won’t let any other plants grow except for broom. So if you get rid of it, then it’s better.


WATER TESTING India To test the water there is Jal TARA Kit, an interesting game to learn and to make my memory fit. Take a test tube and fill it with water. Put the pH paper to test the quality of water. Phosphate, chloride, ammonia and nitrate these are my favorites. It is fun for me The rest will take a while. Oh! what a magic comes in my hand which on shaking the colour changes into blue. For a while I stand in a trance, for I get a chance to be a scientist. I enjoy to test and I want to tell you that water is our life and some water borne diseases can be a threat to our life. Stuttee Arora, Kendriya Vidyalaya, Masjid Moth - New Delhi CLEAN India


Water Facts Every person needs about 1.5 litres of water a day for survival, depending on climatic

conditions and how physically active they are. Taking a bath may use 110-150 litres. A two-minute shower may consume up to 40 litres.

A washing machine can easily use 100 litres each cycle.

In many industrialized countries, the average person uses 150 litres of water every day.

Many people in developing countries survive on as little as seven litres per person per day! People suffering from water-borne diseases occupy half the world’s hospital beds.

In China, India and Indonesia twice as many people die from diarrhoeal diseases as from HIV/AIDS.

The World Health Organization says the 1.8 million children who die annually from water-related diseases could be saved by prevention or better treatment. For £11 billion (about US$15.7 billion) the number of people with no sanitation could be halved.

Globally about 43 per cent of environmental disease falls on children under age five. That same group makes up only 12 per cent of the world's population.


THE PLASTIC BOTTLE RAFT Neringa Buzavaite and Edita Ruksenaite,Lithuania

Twelve-year-olds Neringa Buzavaite and Edita Ruksenaite live in Lentvaris, Lithuania. They write about their friends, Vaiva Braskute and Zivile Kereviciute’s project and work that they have done with their school. Lithuania is located in Central Europe on the Baltic Sea. It is in a region known as the Baltic Republics. There are many lakes and rivers in Lithuania. Plants and animals have suffered from loss of habitat through the drainage of land for agricultural use. Problems have also been caused by the development of unsafe and poorly regulated industries that empty pollutants into the air, rivers and lakes. We live in a town surrounded by a beautiful scenic nature, which is not far from the capital Vilnius. There is a wonderful park with centuries old buildings, a glittering lake and rivulet with spectacular waterfalls close to our school. We feel concern about our surroundings. We want water to be crystal and clean, because only in such water fish can live and people can swim. We want adults to be responsible for clean water and an unpolluted environment.

Our project consists of various projects: art, environmental, monument preserving. This summer two girls, Vaiva Braskute and Zivile Kereviciute, collected 400 plastic bottles and made a raft of them and sailed on it all summer feeding fish, looking after the banks of the lake, taking photos and making drawings. The drawings show what pollutes our water, how we clean the banks of the lake and rivulet. We studied clean water and polluted water and we show the lake in different seasons of the year. It's impossible to

Industry and Water Pollution Water pollution harms the health of humans, animals and plants, causing death as well as cancer, infections and other health problems. Poisons in our lakes and oceans can disrupt food chains, cause animals to be born deformed or not born at all. In developing countries, over 70 percent of industrial waste is left untreated and simply dumped into the water supply, thereby contaminating usable waters. Each year between 300 and 500 million tones of toxic sludge, harsh chemicals and other pollutants build up due to industrial practices. The food industry and other industries are high contributors of pollutants. Did you know that packaging green beans for long-distance travel can use up to 17,000 gallons of water per ton? Children in many developing countries face great risks from the food industry such as poisoning by harmful chemicals used in crop spraying. Many children work in the fields and they are at special risk compared to adults because they are still developing. Half of Cambodian farmers asked recently by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said they allowed their children to spray crops.


survive without. Water is very important to us, because, to my mind, it's one of the vital sources for life on the Earth. Plants won't grow without it. People and animals will die of thirst. What is more, our project is mainly connected with water. The lake where Vaiva and Zivile sailed, is artificial. It was made in the XIX century. The water from a very big lake flows into it and then along impressive cascades through the stone gate flows into another big lake. It is a solid water system. So if somewhere the water is polluted it becomes polluted everywhere. The water is contaminated by the carpet(?) factory, by the people living and visiting . They leave garbage and plastic bottles on the banks of the lake. This lake, surrounded by the park and the forest, is our favourite holiday place. It is only 10 minutes on foot from our home. The water in the lake freezes and then fishermen come to fish in ice-holes. Edita's father makes ice- holes for the fish to breath, because he is a fisherman and preserves nature. In spring we will take a boat, make a flag with an environmental sign and sail in the lake to collect floating rubbish. Then we'll go to clear the park. People living around it will see children working and we hope, they will start preserving their surroundings and nature.


ENCOURAGING CARE FOR OUR WETLAND Siyasisanda Mdayi, South Africa South Africa is a country of unique cultural and ecological, and sociopolitical diversity. The country covers 1,219,090 square kilometers with a population of 44 million people. There are eleven official languages: Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Pedi, English, Ndebele, Sotho, Setswana, siSwati, Venda and Stonga. This cultural plurality is mirrored by an ecological diversity almost unparalleled in the world. South Africa also reflects many of the great divisions of inequality present in the world today, with it's population divided along lines of race, ethnicity, and economy. These social divides have created an enabling environment for a host of social ills including: high levels of violent crime, the rampant spread of HIV/AIDS, and spiraling unemployment. Arising from the ashes of apartheid, young people in South Africa have an unprecedented opportunity to overcome these incredible social challenges by drawing on the great natural, social, and cultural capital of their country. My name is Siyasisanda Mdayi. I come from a place called Balfour, which is in the rural areas of the Eastern Cape province in South Africa. My family lives on a smallholding where we grow a garden to feed my family and sell the vegetables to the neighbours and at the market in town. We live in a traditional house made of mud called a Ronta. It is round and the roof is like a triangle. We have animals too, cows, goats, chickens and 4 dogs. The cows are for meat and milk, the goats are for traditional ceremonies and the chickens are for meat and eggs. I grew up playing games like “undize” (hide-and –seek), and “onopopi” (playing dolls that we made from sticks). When I was nine, I helped my parents in the garden. I remember the first time I planted a seed, I didn’t do it well because I was still playing. I learned how to grow the garden from my parents. My mother plants the seeds and my father drives the tractor. It is my job to learn how to plant like my mum. One of my favourite places to go when I need to think about something important is a dam near my house. It is so peaceful and quiet there. My parents taught me that respect for all people, especially those who are older than me, is one of the most important things in life. They also taught me to be happy with what I have and not to want a lot of material things.


My parent’s value education very much and they want me to grow up with a good education. So, when I was 13, they sent me to live with my aunt in Port Elizabeth which is three hours drive from my home. I only see my parents once a year during Christmas holidays, and I miss them and my two eldest sisters very much. I love to go home and see them and work with them in the garden again. My life in Port Elizabeth is very different from my life in Balfour. The people in Balfour are much friendlier and speak more politely than the people in Port Elizabeth. I live in a township just outside of the city called Govan Mbeki. The house I live in is my aunt’s house and it is made of cement and is shaped like a square. My school is called Gqabera High School and I have been going there for the last three years. When my older sister and I came to the school, we joined the eco-club because we both love nature. We were attracted by this piece of land beside our school and it was a beautiful land so we wanted to make it into a picnic place, but we didn’t know what it was so we phoned people from the “Enkuthazweni” (a wildlife society, the word means to encourage) and the Wildlife Society and they came to us and they told us that it was a wetland. It absorbs water like a sponge and it has beautiful birds and vegetation. It is very deep because the water comes up from under the ground. We have a group of community members who grow food in our school and we asked them to help us to have the community to come to the meeting but there were few of them and they were drunk. Some of them didn’t come because they thought we wanted them to clean the school. We sent a letter the councillor in April to ask them to build a bird-watching place there for people like me who love birds. We noticed that there were a lot of plastics and papers in the wetlands and we decided to clean it up. This year we are going to write a letter to the councillor to ask that they

Wetland Wonders Nobody likes to walk on soft, soggy ground where getting stuck is a possibility and getting wet is guaranteed. But ponds, bogs and marshes are more than mud - they are wetlands, teeming with animals and plants. Wetlands are areas where water is the main factor organizing life. They contain some of the richest environments in the world and are home to a huge number of organisms. They are also important for their role in ecological processes like capturing rainfall, retaining sediments and purifying water. Unfortunately, due to ever-expanding industries and cities, wetlands and their wonders are disappearing. That’s why on February 2 of each year the global community celebrates World Wetlands Day. This date commemorates the 1971 signing of the Ramsar Convention in Ramsar, Iran. The convention aims to protect wetlands around the world. Right now, 1,235 wetland sites in 133 countries have been chosen to be included on the list. Countries that sign up pledge to preserve wetlands, establish nature reserves and support training in wetland management and research. Find out more about Ramsar at www.ramsar.org and more about wetlands at www.wetlands.org.


put a fence around the wetlands to stop the cows and goats from eating the grasses, which are important to the birds and frogs that live there. I love to go to the wetlands even when I am not cleaning it up because it reminds me of my special place at home and because it is a quiet and beautiful place where I can go and think. I love the environment very much because I grew up playing in the environment and I learned the meaning of respect, which is why I want to respect the environment and help to keep the wetlands beautiful and clean, for the health of the community.


MY DREAM: WATER IN THE MORNING Swapna, India Swapna lives with her mother, father, four brothers and sisters and grandmother in Kolkata, India. Kolkata is the largest city in West Bengal State with at least 10 million residents. Every year tens of thousands of people from rural areas in neighbhouring states go to Kolkata looking for work. These people often live without proper shelter, on the streets or in ever-growing slums. The Kolkata environment is congested and harsh. Air pollution, mainly by vehicle emissions, the poor quality of waste disposal and sewage systems and contaminated water supplies are direct threats to health. Swapna was interviewed in her home in Panchantala, a very poor area in Kolkata, for this story. These are her own words. We have a lot of problems with water. Sometimes we don’t get water, some times we get it. At 4:00pm the water comes. It only comes for twenty minutes I have to get up at 6:30am and go to school. I live in Panchantala. The water tap is not that far from my house. But the water doesn’t always come. Because of my water problems I can’t go anywhere (in the evening, to play). Water comes in both the morning and the afternoon, but we can only get it in the afternoon. Different groups can come within their time periods, but each family can only stay for twenty minutes. We have to use this water until the following afternoon. I fill one large jug, a bucket and three other containers. If the water runs out we have to wait until it is our turn (the next day) to get more. Our bathing water is separate from our drinking water. We get our drinking water from a totally separate tap. The drinking water is quite far from the house. About a block and a half away. The drinking water is stored in separate bottles. I learned from school to separate drinking water from bathing water. The teacher that taught me this lives in the same neighbourhood. I bathe with a bucket of water that I get from the tap. I can only use one bucket. In the water there are different bugs and worms, only in our bathing water.

I heard of the school, and so I went. And after I went all the other children went too. I went into the school (for the first time) and everyone in the class said “namashkar teacher”, and I thought if everyone else was saying it, why couldn’t I, so I said it too.


My brother and my friends all saw I was going, so they went too. What I learned in school in terms of environmental knowledge are singing, dancing, studies, behaviors (good manner). To brush your teeth in the morning before school. Washing your hands before you eat. After all my friends saw these new skills my friends said, “we want to go to school with you”. Q: What would you do if you had magic? A: I wish all the fighting would end amongst people. In terms of the environment, then if the environment was loved. At 4:00 there is water, but if I had magic than it would be good if it came in the morning (too). Q: Do you enjoy spending time outside now? Do you have (or when you were younger) a special place in nature? A: Yes I like it. I like to sit near the lake (a pond) and beside it there is a nice breeze, and I like that. Q: What is your first memory of something you did for the environment? A: I once planted a tree, it was a baby when I first had it, and it became very big. I planted this near my house. My parents gave me this plant. Q: What are the biggest environmental problem in community? A: In the winter it is hard because it is cold, and in the monsoons water gets right into my house. There is a drain by my house, but the water cannot get through (the drain is blocked). Q: In the world? A: I wish there was more love. People don’t treat each other well enough.

Water Crisis Many people believe that a shortage of clean water is one of, if not the most, serious result of the harm we are doing to planet earth. In 1998, 28 countries experienced shortages of clean water. By 2025, this number is expected to double. If that happens, two-thirds of the earth’s population would live with serious water shortages. The decline of usable water is caused by population growth and expansion of cities but also by people cutting down forests, farming huge areas of land with only one crop and mining. These practices destroy nature’s ability to catch, keep and clean water.


MY PROMISE TO GOD Brian Rainbow, Canada I am beside the ocean because I like the ocean and most of the environmental projects I have done have been on or near water. The person on the Quilt Square is a self-portrait of me (Brian). I put a rainbow on the Quilt Square because in the Bible the rainbow means a promise. When I was baptised, I made a promise to help God's critters. The green on the rainbow signifies land, the blue signifies water and the yellow signifies air. Rainbow is also my last name. The dove with the olive branch signifies peace. I made pottery doves with my Mom and sister and sold them to raise money to remove land mines from the ground.


Tips to conserve water: Turn water off while shaving, brushing teeth and scrubbing dishes

Keep drinking water in the refrigerator, rather than letting the tap run till the water gets cool.

• Take showers instead of baths, and make them short. When you do take a bath, close the drain first, then turn on the water. Don't fill the tub more than halfway.

• Water your lawn and plants in the early morning or late evening when the temperature is lower.

• Put a small basin in your sink to collect water. Reuse the water for plants and cleaning.

• Replace conventional toilets with ultra-low flow toilets, and save an average of 4 gallons per flush. Alternatively, put plastic containers filled with water in your toilet tanks. This saves less, but still helps. (Just keep the containers away from the flush mechanism.)

• Install low-flow aerators and showerheads to save 2-3 gallons on average per minute.

• Repair all leaks, which can cost tens of thousands of gallons a year. A leaky toilet alone can waste 200 gallons per day -- and the leak is often invisible. To see if you have one, add food coloring to the tank water. You know there's a leak if colored water appears in the bowl.

See: http://www.ucsusa.org/publication.cfm?publicationID=435


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