Radio Free Brighton

Activist’s Corner

Global Tool to Gauge Earth’s & Humanity’s Vital Signs Launches in Africa

by on Feb.26, 2012, under News

“We can no longer afford to make decisions without really see­ing the full pic­ture of what is hap­pen­ing to the planet… We need to put our fin­ger on Earth’s pulse.” - Dr. Sandy Andel­man, Con­ser­va­tion International

That is the motiv­a­tion behind an innov­at­ive new food secur­ity ini­ti­at­ive launch­ing today by Con­ser­va­tion Inter­na­tional and in the U.S. and Africa, with a new $10m U.S. three-year grant  from the Bill & Melinda Gates Found­a­tion, announced in Rome. The Africa Mon­it­or­ing Sys­tem is a com­pre­hens­ive, integ­rated policy tool to help decision makers and investors in Africa see the big pic­ture as they con­sider places and pri­or­it­ies for agri­cul­tural intens­i­fic­a­tion, par­tic­u­larly with regard to the tradeoffs and bene­fits to com­munit­ies and eco­sys­tems. Why is this import­ant? For the first time, these decision makers will be able to see all the data, gathered in a stand­ard­ized way, in one place — rather than search­ing for met­rics from vari­ous and incon­sist­ent sources. This hol­istic view will help to act like an early warn­ing sys­tem for nature, reveal­ing when eco­sys­tems that sup­ply fresh water, pol­lin­at­ors, arable soil, and other ser­vices which are essen­tial to agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion, become in danger of degrad­a­tion or col­lapse. It will also though, track meas­ures of human well-being such as live­li­hood and health, which are dir­ectly affected by the eco­sys­tem health sup­port­ing people.

Inter­ested in learn­ing more? Please read our full press release below, or con­tact me if you are inter­ested in speak­ing with Dr. Andel­man, the Exec­ut­ive Dir­ector of the Africa Mon­it­or­ing System.

Thank you,

Kim McCabe, Con­ser­va­tion Inter­na­tional — k.mccabe@conservation.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Global Tool to Gauge Earth’s & Humanity’s Vital Signs Launches in Africa

Africa Mon­it­or­ing Sys­tem launches with ground-breaking grant from the
Bill & Melinda Gates Found­a­tion to cre­ate a policy sup­port tool and “gold stand­ard”
envir­on­mental mon­it­or­ing sys­tem for hol­istic decision-making on agri­cul­tural development

 

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EVENTS

  • Tues­day 11th Octo­ber, 6pm
    Higher Edu­ca­tion Stop the Cuts Meet­ing
    Room C218, Check­land Build­ing, Falmer Campus, Brighton Uni­ver­sity
  • Thursday 13th Octo­ber, 7.30pm
    Stop the Cuts Pub­lic Meet­ing     ‘Defend Jobs and Pen­sions’
    Speak­ers from Southamp­ton Uni­son dis­pute and uni­ons bal­lot­ing on pensions
  • Fri­day 14th Octo­ber, 8pm-11pm
    Folk Against Fascism: Roy Bailey, music and song
    The Royal Oak Folk Club, Lewes
    £10 in advance, now on sale (apply the Royal Oak Folk Club tinvic@globalnet.co.uk), £12 on door
  • Sat­urday 15th Octo­ber, 1pm & 3pm
    Coun­ter­power book talks in Brighton

    Change can and does hap­pen. But why is it that some cam­paigns suc­ceed while oth­ers fail? Is it luck, or is there a com­mon strategy uni­fy­ing those that have achieved their aim?
    Act­iv­ist Tim Gee seeks to get to the root of how change hap­pens by tak­ing an in-depth look at the strategies and tac­tics that have con­trib­uted to the suc­cess (or oth­er­wise) of some of the most prom­in­ent move­ments for change over the last three hun­dred years.

    > 1pm: Brighton Peace and Envir­on­ment Centre
    > 3pm: Brighton Quaker Meet­ing House

  • Tues­day 18th Octo­ber, 6–8.30pm.
    CVSF Small Com­munity Groups Net­work meet­ing.
    The theme for the meet­ing is ‘How to Meas­ure the Dif­fer­ence that your Group Makes’. There will be the oppor­tun­ity to hear from Novas Scar­man and local com­munity groups about how they have designed and developed tools for mon­it­or­ing and eval­u­ation to meas­ure what mat­ters to their group. It will also be an oppor­tun­ity for you to meet other volunteer-led groups in the city, hear what groups are work­ing on and share know­ledge, ideas and experiences.The next meet­ing of this new net­work is Tues­day 18th Octo­ber, 6–8:30pm at Dor­set Gar­dens Meth­od­ist Church, Dor­set Gar­dens, Brighton, BN2 1RL. We are in the ‘small hall’ down­stairs. For dir­ec­tions to the build­ing, please fol­low this link http://tinyurl.com/687ozpv.  To book on, please email me back or call on 01273 810 242.At the first meet­ing of this group in July, the fol­low­ing emerged as themes that people sug­ges­ted the net­work could address:Ø  Devel­op­ment and trans­ition of groups — structures/governance/taking on paid workers/HR/employment advice/business planning/sustainability
    Ø  Evid­en­cing impact — being more ‘busi­ness like’ in approach to this
    Ø  Man­aging volun­teers and how to increase involve­ment
    Ø  Fun­drais­ing skills and sources of funding/sustainabilityTwo other themes emerged around shar­ing (phys­ical) resources and pro­vi­sion of back office ser­vices which have been linked into a fund­ing bid being developed around sup­port ser­vices to the Sec­tor (for more inform­a­tion on the Trans­form­ing Local Infra­struc­ture bid please con­tact gordon@cvsectorforum.org.uk).If you would like to learn more about what the Small Com­munity Groups Net­work is about, or know any­one who isn’t a mem­ber that would like to know a bit more about CVSF, tune into ‘the World Accord­ing to Ceri’ tomor­row Fri­day 7th Oct 11am on Radio Free Brighton: http://radiofreebrighton.org.uk/ to hear Ceri and her col­league Laura being inter­viewed! Altern­at­ively visit the Small Com­munity Groups page on our web­site: http://www.cvsectorforum.org.uk/network/community.
  • Sat­urday 15th Octo­ber 10am-12pm, Black His­tory Month work­shops.
    Sat­urday 22nd Octo­ber 10am-12pm
    http://www.nightingaletheatre.co.uk/We are hold­ing open work­shops dur­ing Black His­tory Month 2011. These are for
    immig­rants with a love of theatre to come along to one of these theatre
    work­shops and find out more about how to get involved in our first project.
  • Tues­day 18th Octo­ber The Brit­ish Insti­tute of Human Rights: Human Rights Tour — ‘Mak­ing Human Rights Hap­pen’
    Over 1100 people have booked onto BIHR’s Human Rights Tour. Join them!
    The Brighton event will be held on Tues­day 18th Octo­ber. Num­bers are swell­ing but there are still some places left — book now if you wish to attend.The Brit­ish Insti­tute of Human Rights: Human Rights Tour
    ’Mak­ing Human Rights Hap­pen’
    16 Rights | 16 Cit­ies | 16 Weeks­BIHR is run­ning a free-to-attend Human Rights Tour, vis­it­ing 16 UK cit­ies from Septem­ber to Decem­ber 2011. We will cel­eb­rate the Human Rights Act, look at how human rights relate to the Coalition’s plans, and address human rights issues both nation­ally and spe­cific to each region that we visit.The towns and cit­ies we shall visit are Bel­fast (23rd Nov), Birm­ing­ham (29th Sept), Brighton (18th Oct), Bris­tol (15th Sept), Cardiff (17th Nov), Derby (27th Sept), Lon­don (13th Dec), Manchester (8th Sept), New­castle (4th Oct), North Wales (Mold — 9th Nov), Nor­wich (1st Nov), Oxford (3rd Nov), Ply­mouth (21st Novem­ber), Scot­land (Glas­gow 30th Nov; Dun­dee 1st Dec), and Shef­field (13th Oct).Six events are being fun­ded by the Equal­ity and Human Rights Com­mis­sion (EHRC) through BIHR’s ‘Human Rights in the Com­munity Pro­ject <http://www.bihr.org.uk/projects/human-rights-in-the-community-project> ‘. These are Birm­ing­ham, Bris­tol, Derby, Manchester, New­castle, and Shef­field. They will fol­low a sim­ilar agenda to the other events with the addi­tion of spe­cific inform­a­tion on the Com­munity Pro­ject, input from the offi­cial part­ner, EREN (Eng­lish Regions Equal­ity Net­work), and present­a­tions from par­ti­cip­at­ing pilot organisations.

    For fur­ther details, and to book onto an event, please visit:

    http://www.bihr.org.uk/events/bihr-national-human-rights-tour-information-page

  • Sat­urday 22nd Octo­ber, 12.00 noon
    Protest against sub­sidies (ROCs) for bio­fuel and bio­mass power sta­tions
    out­side Depart­ment of Energy & Cli­mate Change, 3 White­hall Place, SW1A 2AW. Nearest tube sta­tions, Embank­ment & Char­ing Cross.
    For more details see www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2011/london-22nd-october-protest-against-biofuels-fuelling-climate-meltdown
  • Sunday 30th Octo­ber 4pm-5pm at Hove Town Hall, Black His­tory Month
    Cel­eb­ra­tionCome along if you are an immig­rant with theatre exper­i­ence (pro­fes­sional or
    ama­teur). We are look­ing for people who would like to share their stor­ies of
    arriv­ing in the UK and who might be inter­ested in devel­op­ing them into a
    pro­duc­tion over the next few months.
    No need to worry about your level of Eng­lish.
    We look for­ward to meet­ing you.

    Con­tact Nick for more inform­a­tion:
    Tele­phone: 07585 925439
    Email: theatreofimmigrants@gmail.com

  • Thursday 17th Novem­ber
    ‘Pro­fes­sional by Exper­i­ence’: Viol­ence against Women National Con­fer­ence- Brighton & Hov­e­Or­gan­ised by Rise.  Inform­a­tion and book­ings: www.riseuk.org.uk/conference
  • Fri­day 25th Novem­ber, 6pm-8pm
    White Rib­bon Day: Sur­viv­ors’ Net­work cel­eb­rates 21st birth­day
    Regency Room, Grand Hotel Brighton