Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
A planned 300-kilometer Nicaraguan canal joining the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans could wreak environmental and cultural ruin, home of the Miskitu and other indigenous groups. Sam Gordon argues that many of the issues and impacts are hidden from public view and should require an independent environmental assessment.
Deep in the tropical forests of Southeast Asia grows a rare and beautiful tree whose wood is so highly prized that men will kill to possess it. In Thailand, environmental organizations and park rangers are fighting back against organized crime syndicates bent on logging it and smuggling it to the burgeoning Chinese market.
On a recent trip to the Kruta River near Cape Gracias a Dios on the Honduran Caribbean and the Nicaraguan Border, life without roads and little electricity proceeds slowly, detached from the world at large. Yet, drug trafficking is changing the economy and the culture of the Miskitu People, and due to overfishing, local people can only turn to harvesting jellyfish for China as an honest source of revenue.
In Siberia, shamans combine a distinctive imagery of reindeer and of bird-flight. Their costumes sometimes include imitation reindeer antlers, occasionally tipped with wings or feathers, placed on the headdress. Like the participants in the Eveny (Evenki) midsummer ritual, shamans may ride to the sky on a bird or a reindeer.
Rapid industrialization in China has caused a massive migration to crowded, faceless and polluted urban mega-cities of 10 million residents or more. They should consider Italo Calvino’s utopian “Invisible Cities” to rethink the role of imagination in urban planning.
We must re-create cities greener and more sustainable from the ground up. The goal: compact living environments requiring less resources that maximize utilization of land, water and energy. Here are some suggestions.