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Food Insecurity
Hunger is one of the worst miseries,
and in spite of all the technological and social advances
that humanity has achieved, more than 800 million
people on the planet suffer its effects today.
In slightly more technical terms,
it is a matter of "food insecurity". It
is when people go hungry and fear dying of starvation,
according to a definition posted on the website of
the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization,
better known as the FAO.
The FAO has convened a World
Food Summit for June 2002 in which the main focus
will be the need to intensify the fight against hunger
worldwide.
The delegates are to make an
assessment of what has been achieved since the previous
summit, in 1996.
On that occasion the Rome
Declaration was signed, a commitment to cut the
impact of world hunger in half by the year 2015. But
little progress has been made so far, and it will
be difficult to meet that goal.
One of the objectives of this
year's summit is to strengthen the political will
of the world's governments to fight hunger.
The Internet holds abundant
information on the issue, ranging from World
Food Program news about food emergencies to proposals
for political action suggested by activists and organizations
with a presence on the web.
FAO
World
Food Summit - 2002
World
Food Summit - 1996
Rome
Declaration on Food Security
The
State of Food Insecurity
World
Food Program
International
Food Security Treaty
Educational:
Feeding minds, fighting hunger
Yahoo!
Directory: websites on hunger and food security
Space Rocks
Asteroids stimulate our imaginations
about outer space because these relatively small celestial
bodies, which share our solar system, pose a danger
to life as we know it a large one should happen to
collide with Earth.
The notion of this danger has
been disseminated by some million-dollar Hollywood
films, which themselves are inspired by a popular
scientific hypothesis: an asteroid collided with Earth
millions of years ago causing such destruction that
it wiped out the dominant species of the age, the
dinosaurs.
We can see immense craters today
that serve to record these traumas from outer space.
The possibility of another such
collision is considered a true danger by some scientists.
The U.S. space agency NASA has a service that monitors
objects that pass close to Earth. In January 2002
two asteroids came within a relatively short distance.
One, measuring one kilometer in diameter, was within
11 million km, not too far considering the vastness
of outer space.
The Internet holds numerous
websites dedicated to explaining the nature
of asteroids
and comets. The smaller objects that collide with
the Earth's atmosphere are known as meteors,
and according to one definition found on the Internet,
those that survive the fiery trip and reach the ground
intact are called meteorites.
Meteorites may be pieces of asteroids
or even of planets, which is why they are the object
of a great deal of research,
capturing the human imagination, and turning some
people into meteorite hunters,
who study these space rocks or sell them to collectors.
NASA:
Asteroids and Comets
NASA:
Asteroid and Comet Impact Hazards
Nine
Planets website: Asteroids
International
Meteor Organization - IMO
IMO:
Links to websites on meteor astronomy
Simulation
of asteroid impact
Meteorite
Central: meteorite hunters
Yahoo!:
Comets, meteorites, asteroids
High Relief
The mountains of the entire planet
are the honorees of their own "International Year"
in 2002. The United Nations has issued an appeal to
involve institutions and individuals around the world
in achieving a fundamental goal for the Earth's well-being:
the sustainable development of its mountainous zones.
The website
of the International Year of Mountains states that
one of the key objectives is to incorporate these
ecosystems into the development programs of each country.
Another priority is to ensure the well-being of the
communities living in these high altitude regions.
The idea that the international
community needs to pay special attention to mountains
was proposed in 1992 at the UN-sponsored Earth Summit
in Rio de Janeiro. Coming out of that summit was Agenda
21, a broad plan for the world's sustainable development.
Chapter
13 of that document is dedicated to mountainous
regions.
"Mountains are an important source
of water, energy and biological diversity. Furthermore,
they are a source of such key resources as minerals,
forest products and agricultural products and of recreation.
As a major ecosystem representing the complex and
interrelated ecology of our planet, mountain environments
are essential to the survival of the global ecosystem,"
says the text.
Approximately 10 percent of the
world population depends directly on mountains and
their resources for their livelihood, but a much larger
portion utilizes resources that originate in mountainous
areas, such as freshwater.
The Internet holds a great deal
of information about the importance of mountain ecosystems.
Some organizations specialize in promoting their conservation,
and others in disseminating
information about mountains from around the globe.
International
Year of Mountains
International
Year of Mountains: Concept Paper
United
Nations Environment Program/World Conservation Monitoring
Center: Mountains and Mountain Forests
Agenda
21: Sustainable Mountain Development
Mountains
of the World
Mountain
Forum
Mountain
Agenda
Yahoo!:
Mountain-related websites
The
Mountain Institute
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