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Pat Mooney
Pat Roy Mooney, for more than thirty years, has worked with civil society organizations on international trade and development issues related to agriculture, biodiversity and emerging technologies. He was born and lived on the Canadian prairies for many years where his five children were raised. He now resides just outside the village of Wakefield, Quebec. The author or co-author of several books on the politics of biotechnology and biodiversity, Pat Mooney received the Right Livelihood Award with Cary Fowler in the Swedish Parliament in 1985 for "working to save the world's genetic plant heritage." In 1998 Mooney received the Pearson Medal of Peace from Canada’s Governor General. He also received the American "Giraffe Award" given to people "who stick their necks out". Pat Mooney has no formal university training, but is widely regarded as an authority on agricultural biodiversity and new technology issues. In June of 2017, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Right Livelihood Award
The Right Livelihood Award is an international award to "honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today." The prize was established in 1980 by German-Swedish philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull, and is presented annually in early December. An international jury, invited by the five regular Right Livelihood Award board members, decides the awards in such fields as environmental protection, human rights, sustainable development, health, education, and peace. The prize money is shared among the winners, usually numbering four, and is €200,000. Very often one of the four laureates receives an honorary award, which means that the other three share the prize money. Although it is promoted as an "Alternative Nobel Prize", it is not a Nobel prize (i.e., a prize created by Alfred Nobel). It does not have any organizational ties at all to the awarding institutions of the Nobel Prize or the Nobel Foundation, unlike the Nobel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in cities. The history of agriculture began thousands of years ago. After gathering wild grains beginning at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers began to plant them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs and cattle were domesticated over 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture in the twentieth century came to dominate agricultural output, though about 2 billion people still depended on subsistence agriculture. The major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, fuels, and raw materials (such as rubber). Food classes include cereals ( grains), vegetables, fruits, cooking oils, m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biodiversity
Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic ('' genetic variability''), species ('' species diversity''), and ecosystem ('' ecosystem diversity'') level. Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on Earth; it is usually greater in the tropics as a result of the warm climate and high primary productivity in the region near the equator. Tropical forest ecosystems cover less than 10% of earth's surface and contain about 90% of the world's species. Marine biodiversity is usually higher along coasts in the Western Pacific, where sea surface temperature is highest, and in the mid-latitudinal band in all oceans. There are latitudinal gradients in species diversity. Biodiversity generally tends to cluster in hotspots, and has been increasing through time, but will be likely to slow in the future as a primary result of deforestation. It encompasses the evolutionary, ecological, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cary Fowler
Morgan Carrington "Cary" Fowler Jr. (born 1949) is an American agriculturalist and the former executive director of the Crop Trust, currently serving as a senior advisor to the trust. On May 5th, Dr. Fowler joined the U.S. Department of State as U.S. Special Envoy for Global Food Security. Background Fowler was born in 1949 to Morgan, a General Sessions judge, and Betty, a dietician. He graduated from White Station High School in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1967, and attended Rhodes College in Memphis, but transferred in his junior year to Simon Fraser University in Canada, earning his B.A. Honors degree in 1971. He received a Ph.D. degree in Sociology from Uppsala University in Sweden. Fowler was active in civil rights demonstrations in Memphis. He was present at the Mason Temple on April 3, 1968, when Martin Luther King Jr. made his last speech, " I've Been to the Mountaintop". During the Vietnam War, he obtained conscientious objector status and worked at a hospital in North ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pearson Medal Of Peace
The Pearson Medal of Peace is an award given out annually by the United Nations Association in Canada to recognize an individual Canadian's "contribution to international service". Nominations are made by any Canadian for any Canadian, excluding self-nominations. The medal was first announced in 1979 and named in honour of Lester B. Pearson, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Canada's fourteenth Prime Minister. The medal was to be selected by a jury of "eminent Canadians" and awarded by the Governor-General of Canada on United Nations Day, October 24. After the 2004 medal was awarded to Roméo Dallaire, it was not awarded again until it was revived in 2011 to honour peace activist Ernie Regehr.Campbell Clark"Governor-General honours veteran of the war on war" ''The Globe and Mail'', January 20, 2011. Recipients of the Pearson Medal of Peace * 1979 - Paul-Émile Léger * 1980 - J. King Gordon * 1981 - E. L. M. Burns * 1982 - Hugh L. Keenleyside * 1983 - George-Henri Lévesque * 1984 - G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ETC Group (AGETC)
The Action Group on Erosion, Technology, and Concentration (ETC), is an international organization dedicated to "the conservation and sustainable advancement of cultural and ecological diversity and human rights." 'ETC' is intended to be pronounced "et cetera." ETC often publishes opinions on scientific research by its staff and board members in topics including community and regional planning, ecology and evolutionary biology, and political science. History The ETC Group was known as RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International) until 1 September 2001, and its history runs back to the National Sharecroppers Fund that was established in the 1930s by Eleanor Roosevelt (among others) to alleviate the plight of the poor, mostly black tenant farmers in the U.S. In the early 1970s, Pat Mooney, Hope Shand, and Cary Fowler began working on the Seeds Issue through the Rural Advancement Foundation—and, in time, set up an international arm concerned with the rights of farmers in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Climate Engineering
Climate engineering (also called geoengineering) is a term used for both carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM), also called solar geoengineering, when applied at a planetary scale.IPCC (2022Chapter 1: Introduction and FramingiClimate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA However, they have very different geophysical characteristics which is why the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) no longer uses this overarching term.IPCC, 2021Annex VII: Glossary atthews, J.B.R., V. Möller, R. van Diemen, J.S. Fuglestvedt, V. Masson-Delmotte, C. Méndez, S. Semenov, A. Reisinger (eds.) IClimate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change[Masson-Delmo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology, also shortened to nanotech, is the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal of precisely manipulating atoms and molecules for fabrication of macroscale products, also now referred to as molecular nanotechnology. A more generalized description of nanotechnology was subsequently established by the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which defined nanotechnology as the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers (nm). This definition reflects the fact that quantum mechanical effects are important at this quantum-realm scale, and so the definition shifted from a particular technological goal to a research category inclusive of all types of research and technologies that deal with the special properties of matter which occur below the given size threshold. It is therefore commo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synthetic Biology
Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature. It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad range of methodologies from various disciplines, such as biotechnology, biomaterials, material science/engineering, genetic engineering, molecular biology, molecular engineering, systems biology, membrane science, biophysics, chemical and biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering, control engineering and evolutionary biology. Due to more powerful genetic engineering capabilities and decreased DNA synthesis and sequencing costs, the field of synthetic biology is rapidly growing. In 2016, more than 350 companies across 40 countries were actively engaged in synthetic biology applications; all these companies had an estimated net worth of $3.9 billion in the global market. Definition Synthetic biology currently has no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Food First
Food First, also known as the Institute for Food and Development Policy, is a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California, USA. Founded in 1975 by Frances Moore Lappé and Joseph Collins, it describes itself as a "people's think tank and education-for-action center". Its mission is “to eliminate the injustices that cause hunger”. According to the Food First website, its main goal is to forge food sovereignty for human rights and sustainable livelihoods, and to do so it has three programs of development: building local agri-foods systems, farmers forming food sovereignty, and democratizing development. The organization is meant to offer policy analysis on poverty, agriculture, and development, and is highly critical of the policies implemented by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The organization focuses on the Green Revolution which was supported in the 1970s and which did not produce the development people hoped for. Instead it put in place a syste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Democracy Now!
''Democracy Now!'' is an hour-long American TV, radio, and Internet news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman (who also acts as the show's executive producer), Juan González (journalist), Juan González, and Nermeen Shaikh. The show, which airs live each weekday at 8 a.m. Eastern Time Zone, Eastern Time, is broadcast on the Internet and via more than 1,400 radio and television stations worldwide. The program combines news reporting, interviews, investigative journalism and political commentary, with a focus on peace activism linked to environmental justice and social justice, guided by the ethics of ecofeminism as a philosophy. It documents social movements, struggles for justice, activism challenging corporate power and operates as a watchdog outfit regarding the effects of American foreign policy. ''Democracy Now!'' views as its aim to give activists and the citizenry a platform to debate people from "The Establishment". The show is described as Progressivism in the Uni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
