Prelim

1% For The Planet

Mission Statement
"1% For The Planet is an alliance of businesses committed to leveraging their resources to create a healthier planet. Members recognize their responsibility to and dependence on a healthy environment and donate at least 1% of their annual net revenues to environmental organizations worldwide. The alliance aims to prove that taking environmental responsibility is good for business."

Web Link - 1% For The Planet NEWSROOM
                      link contributed by Jonathan Beggs

 

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Global Biodiversity Information Facility

Biodiversity Informatics
"Biodiversity informatics is a branch of computer science dealing with information about living organisms. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) exists to make the world's biodiversity data freely and universally available by developing biodiversity informatics tools to provide web access to primary information on the world's organisms.

"The GBIF network must be flexible enough to handle the needs both of data providers and also of users who wish to access biodiversity data. The GBIF Secretariat has developed an information architecture to achieve this goal. This document is an overview of the key concepts involved. "

Web Link - Quick Guide to GBIF Biodiversity Informatics
Web Link - Global Biodiversity Information Society
 
 

Jared Diamond

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Vanished Edens ?

... "But there are also differences between the modern world and its problems, and those of past societies and their problems. We shouldn't be so naive as to think that study of the past will yield simple solutions, directly transferable to our societies today. We differ from past societies in some respects that put us at lower risk than them; some of those respects often mentioned include our powerful technology (i.e. its beneficial effects), globalization, modern medicine, and greater knowledge of past societies and of distant modern societies. We also differ from past societies in some respects that put us at greater risk than them: mentioned in that connection are, again our potent technology (i.e., its unintended destructive effects), globalization (such that now a collapse even in remote Somalia affects the U.S. and Europe), the dependence of millions (and, soon, billions) of us on modern medicine for our survival, and our much larger human populations. Perhaps we can still learn from the past, but only if we think carefully about its lessons."

from
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How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
by Jared Diamond