Our new book Future of the Western Hemisphere.
Here are some of the interesting features of the book:
Future of the Western Hemisphere, the Next Fifty Years has been called “an indispensable tool for every decision maker, scholar, and student interested in the Americas”, “magisterial” in scope and “magnificent” in detail. It looks at the Americas and its future as a unified whole geologically, botanically, biologically, and historically from coast to coast and pole to pole; from its initial Amerindian immigrants through its colonial exploitation to its embrace of the world’s “huddling masses” seeking a better life.
In its study, experts and practitioners in ten disciplines including Environment; Energy; Population; Food & Water; Health & Drinking Water; Governance; Language; Art & Culture; Poverty Alleviation; Social Issues; Religious Issues and Legal Issues have been brought together to make a difference in the life of the Western Hemisphere.
This study projects that the next fifty years of the hemispheric future will reveal a vibrant but fragile system whose interconnecting parts both support and endanger each other.
This study combines the best science with the latest available statistical data to see where problems lie and solutions are to be found.
This study weaves together experts and practitioners, intellectuals and field hands, politicians and stakeholders to create programs that will work.
So for once, this study not only defines problems but offers solutions.
This study presents its findings not as definitive knowledge, but as an opening that invites further contributions and adjustments from widely varied sources.
This study shows this Hemisphere to be one of the only large blocks of nature still with a chance of much of it being preserved in its primary state.This study is calling for the countries and peoples of this large and distinctive piece of terra firma to become aware of itself in a “hemispheric consciousness” so we can work together to make sustainable the Hemisphere’s natural, human and cultural resources.
“Sustainability” is often more honored in “the breach than in the observance”. This study invades our consciousness with an awareness of how we can actualize the ideal of Sustainability in our own back yard.
GCEEF, The Greater Caribbean Energy & Environment Foundation, Inc., a 501 C-3 tax-deductible NGO serving the Caribbean, Africa, Asia for 32 years in all areas of development: Environment, Microfinance, and Agriculture.
OUR SUSTAINABLE AND COMMON FUTURE ON PLANET EARTH
Every year in the U.S. A. alone another half million acres of coastline is destroyed. Add this to the half of the world's coastline already destroyed and you have a planet that should be hospitalized in intensive care.
We are asking you to help us make a breakthrough into the conscience of people. The breakthrough is successful action. When people know things can be done they have hope and they will act.
Every year an area of primary forest about the size of Kansas is forever lost. The world's fish harvest decreases by about one third every ten years. Many important species have already disappeared; many others are endangered.
Meanwhile millions of children die every year of protein malnutrition. Millions more grow up severely retarded mentally and physically needing simple health care or better nutrition.
These are great tragedies. But the greater tragedy is that the technology exists to remedy all these disasters, though the knowledge and the will to respond are lacking.
We must change our thinking and our awareness. It is too late to simply react to each global environmental crisis. In order to save our planet, our ocean and all the creatures who live in it, including us, the World Commission on Development and the Environment reports that "We must immediately move from reactive thinking to restoration, rehabilitation and prevention," former Prime Minister of Norway Gro Harlem Brundtland, chairperson of the World Commission concluded in "Our Common Future" .
When people know things can be done, they have hope and they will act. Hopelessness is a rational response to an impossible situation. We are determined to reverse hopelessness, so the earth and all its present richness can be saved. WE BEGIN ONE TREE AT A TIME AND YOU CAN HELP US.