Yarmouth’s first IncrEdible Picnic
A celebration of the local food harvest in a family-friendly community setting.
Sunday, September 11th, 11 am to 3 pm at Beacon Park (rain location – Beacon Hall)
“Buy local” options for your picnic lunch (BBQed meats; fruit; vegetables) or to supplement one that you bring along with you!
Musical entertainment and children’s activities.
For more information call 742-0085.
Tri County Local Food Network with Select Nova Scotia
NS lost at sea on coastal plan
Strategy oft delayed, but climate change waits for no one
By ASHLEY SPRAGUE
Crumbling coastal infrastructure, eroding coastal properties, rising sea levels and severe storms have made headlines across Nova Scotia in recent months. What is the Nova Scotia government doing to adapt to the changing climate and protect our vulnerable coastline? Surprisingly little, considering the enormous risk and cost at stake.
The province continues to put homes, infrastructure, people and important habitats at risk by still allowing building permits to be issued along some of the most high-risk sections of shoreline. Imagine finally purchasing a beautiful coastal property, going through all the necessary permitting requirements and building your dream home only to realize that it is not going to stand the test of time.
It is not only new developments that are at risk. As each storm washes away coastal lands, property owners are being forced to make extremely difficult decisions. Some are able relocate their homes by moving them further from shore. Many are opting to defend their property by building seawalls, which are only temporary solutions and have been shown to cause more harm than good in many areas. Others face the very real possibility of losing a cherished home.
It is time for the province to make a clear commitment to better protect and manage our coast. Reasonable setbacks must be established, leaving room for the coast to migrate and function as a natural buffer during extreme weather events. The current federal-provincial-municipal tangle of conflicting coastal jurisdictions must be straightened out. Coastal landowners need information on best practices to manage coastal erosion. Coastal communities, which clearly have the most at stake, need to be empowered to take a leadership role in determining their own futures. We are far from the first jurisdiction to face these challenges. But we are far behind places like New Brunswick and New England where governments have been proactive and implemented strong coastal policies.
The province is currently developing a Sustainable Coastal Development Strategy. Although the draft strategy was due for release in April 2011, it has again been delayed. The severe storms predicted by climate change models are now a grim reality in Nova Scotia and we cannot afford to wait much longer.
The strategy is an opportunity for the province to clearly state what can and cannot take place on our coastline. Will it be enough to help Nova Scotia adapt to climate change? We won’t know until we see it, but continuing to delay the release of the strategy is clearly not an option.
Ashley Sprague is the acting coastal co-ordinator at the Ecology Action Centre.
The photo below of Nowlans Lake in Digby County has been floating around on the web for several days. This lake is in the Meteghan River watershed and may be found on Page 71 of the Nova Scotia Atlas. Highway 340 runs along its east side.
The green colour is suspected to be a result of high levels of nutrients forcing plant and algae growth. It is interesting that it is the only lake in the system to have these conditions. Why does there seem to be no down stream impact of nutrient overload if that is the cause?
The lake has a relatively small watershed. The land uses within it are easy to identify. This would seem to be a good case study for the Department of Environment to conduct as factors are limited and testing of water quality and condition quite easy.
If anyone has further information on this lake, its setting and condition please feel free to note them in the comments section. On ground, on site, observations would be particularly useful.
A CONVERSATION WITH JANE GOODALL
AND
A TEDx TALK ON GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS IN BHUTAN
August 22, 2011
The Green Interview is happy to announce the release of a new interview between host Silver Donald Cameron and renowned primatologist Dame Jane Goodall. Goodall is world-famous not only for her trailblazing research with wild chimpanzees, but also for her international environmental advocacy and for her youth organization, Roots and Shoots.
“Naturally, we talked a great deal about the human relationship with animals, particularly wild animals,” says Silver Donald, “and I was smart enough to bring MacTavish, my little Shetland Sheepdog, to the interview. Jane Goodall loves dogs, but she now travels 300 days a year advocating and raising funds for environmental initiatives, so she can’t have a dog herself. But I just thought it was silly to talk with Jane Goodall without any animals present at all. She and MacTavish bonded instantly.
“She was particularly brilliant on the relationship between a healthy environment and a robust economy. People often talk as though we had to choose between job creation and respect for the environment. The truth is, if you wreck your environment, you also wreck your economy. Jane and her people have been doing a spectacular job of enlisting people around the chimpanzee preserve in Tanzania in the task of restoring their sustainable lifestyle by restoring their clear-cut forest.
Dr. Cameron noted that, as a Nova Scotian, he is particularly sensitive to the relationship between environment and economy.
“The destruction of the Atlantic cod stocks was one of the world’s greatest ecological disasters,” he said, “ and it destroyed 40,000 jobs in the fishery and devastated hundreds of coastal communities. If we’d protected the fish and its habitat, we’d still have the jobs.”
The Green Interview also recently posted Silver Donald Cameron’s TEDx talk on Bhutan, an entertaining, heavily-illustrated account of the tiny Himalayan nation and its decision to pursue Gross National Happiness as opposed to Gross National Product.
“Gross National Happiness sounds flaky, but in fact it’s extremely realistic – and it leads to good results,” Silver Donald explains. “If we’d been paying attention to the long-term happiness and well-being of our community, we wouldn’t have wrecked the fishery. If you measure progress by dollars alone, you end up with desperate people in a ruined landscape. Bhutan provides a whole alternative approach.”
The Jane Goodall interview is available at http://www.thegreeninterview.com/Jane-Goodall-interview. The TEDx talk is posted at www.thegreeninterview.com/tedx. For more information, contact Silver Donald Cameron at sdc@thegreeninterview.com or call (902)446-5577.
