Hello friends, it's the Environment Show and welcome.
As many of us visit a national park this summer, we may notice the roads in disrepair trails
not well kept and even trash going uncollected.
National park service officials say they know about all this.
In fact, they say it's their fault, a plan for the future just ahead.
Also this time, a political scientist assesses the recent world meeting in Rio.
This is a midpoint in a process which began 20 years ago in Stockholm.
If Rio is a success, it will be a success because it accelerated the process which had already
been ongoing.
The Environment Show is a national production made possible by Hemings Motor News, the national
Bible of the old car hobby monthly from Bennington Vermont and by the J.M. Kaplan Fund of New
York.
This is Bruce Robertson.
In the midst of our national efforts to protect natural resources, our rivers, mountains and
historical landmarks are being lost to development and threatened by pollution.
One of the few guarantees in this fight for protection traditionally has come from the
National Park Service.
For 75 years, the department's mandate has been to preserve forever the natural beauty
in parks all over the country.
But according to Lauren Fraser of the National Park Service, Allah has changed since then.
The mission of the organization is defined in the statute or the legislation, the law
that created us in the 1960s.
To paraphrase larger than it is, we are at the preserve.
The organization is charged to preserve forever the resources that it manages for the enjoyment
of the visiting public and those resources are to be managed in a way that leaves them
unimpaired forever for the enjoyment of the public.
That's the mission that drives us today.
What is in fact happening is that there is an evolution of the or an expansion, if you
will, of that mission.
The kinds of parks that we have that are in the National Park system are rather dramatically
different than 75 years ago.
Largely when the organization was created, well, actually exclusively, National Parks
were in the Great West, the American West.
They were big, open spaces, majestic mountains, lakes, you know, the classic sort of marble
man kind of a place, the great outdoors.
Today, the parks are managed as urban parks in cities.
We manage rivers, we manage trails, we manage, in fact, most of the units in the National
Park system today are historic and cultural.
And our charge as we interpret today, the mission is to interpret to the public these resources.
But many say that growth has brought problems.
In October of 1991, 600 people from the park service and the community gathered to review
the past and plan for the future.
Fraser says, faculty at the Kennedy School of Government, the World Wildlife Foundation
and the National Park Foundation were among those who met for the symposium in Veil
Colorado.
Park officials instructed participants to look at the department with a critical eye.
They were not disappointed.
The resulting 150 page report describes an organization buckling under the weight of
financial trouble, low employee morale and a lack of direction.
Fraser, in charge of implementing the symposium's recommendations, says the service struggles
not only with an increase in parkland, now up to 362 from the original 35, but with other
responsibilities as well.
Today, there is a requirement on the part of the park service to know a lot about a lot.
The responsibilities that Congress has given us in addition to managing parklands is really
has grown considerably.
We are also a provider of technical assistance packages to state and local communities.
We are advisors to the states and local governments about parkland development and maintenance.
We provide grants also for the preservation of historic structures.
We manage the National Register of Historic Places.
We are really an advocate in a way of preservation and conservation.
So we are beyond simply managing parklands.
We are becoming a leader, if you will, in encouraging others to make parks and to preserve historic
places.
Fraser says much of this work falls into the hands of park rangers.
They often must act as biologists, historians, park police officers and teachers, but Fraser
says they are among the most poorly treated employees in the National Park Service.
A park ranger has a wide variety of skills and job requirements.
They can include collecting tickets as people enter the park.
They can include law enforcement and growing problem in the parks.
They can include search and rescue.
They can include teaching the public and as an interpreter, as we were talking a little
while ago, they can include routine cleaning and maintenance at times.
It is a breadth of functions that is not recognized in the federal structure as being professional
and skilled, and yet the responsibilities of a park ranger in overseeing, if you will,
are watching and safeguarding the flow of tens of thousands of people.
It is quite significant.
We have an important element of our workforce that is quite frankly underpaid and unhappy.
Additionally, the living conditions of many rangers in the parks is not what it should be.
According to the Department of Interior, more than 1 billion people visited our nation's
federal and state parks, forests and recreational areas last year.
Fraser says we may have noticed the gradual erosion of park services.
Maintenance has suffered, roads and trails and some parks are not being cared for.
While financial constraints are partially responsible, Fraser says many problems stem from a low morale among employees.
As a result, his implementation team is developing better opportunities for promotion and recognition within the park service.
They are also changing the employee training program.
Fraser hopes to move away from a focus on security and maintenance towards a staff which works more on education and research.
Participants in the symposium called for scientific experiments within the park
to learn how we should better take care of our natural resources.
But in addition to the internal changes, Fraser says it is time the National Park Service became a leader outside of its immediate boundaries.
There is across the organization a belief that the park service
can and should speak out more about environmental conditions or problems or the need for the organization,
or the need for the country to be more conscious of problems that we are having.
We look upon the park service employees, look upon the National Park System as a great educational center or education.
One of our friends is Professor Robin Wink, the University of the United States, refers to the National Park System
as the largest university in the world, university with more branch campuses than any other in the world.
We think that, and this is why we, in fact, have the sort of schizophrenia we love to encourage people to visit parks
because they can learn more about the world, how the world works, and more about our past.
And thus, hopefully, we think be better citizens.
We are concerned about the impact of, you know, hordes of people moving through our parks.
But we believe that we can and should speak up more about the environment and play a larger role in society at a community level.
Fraser hopes the higher profile will be used to meet the needs of the park service.
He says, in the past, park service officials were reluctant to approach Congress with their problems,
but the symposium committee recommends officials take a greater role in the legislative process.
Lauren Fraser is project coordinator for team implementation with the National Park Service in Washington, D.C.
He says a lot of work is being done, but he expects most of it will go unnoticed by the public.
He says the problems were caused by a slow erosion of policy, so the repairs also will not happen overnight.
However, the public will have an update on the improvements with a progress report due out in two years.
Fraser hopes by that time the National Park Service will have reestablished its reputation as the chief protector of our natural resources.
This is Bruce Robertson.
There is a building boom of sorts going on on Colorado's front range from Colorado Springs to Denver to Boulder,
Earth ships, as these houses made from old tires are called, are springing up at a record pace.
They have been around for a decade or so scattered across the Western US,
but as Vince Winkle reports, there could be a lot more of them by the end of the year.
It's a Sunday afternoon on Hurricane Hill,
perched above Boulder, Colorado, and married choices again, packing old car tires with dirt.
This unusual spectacle has been going on for a few months now, as Joyce and her friends prepare her
earthship for takeoff.
The name Earthship has a lot of meaning. The concept is that the homes will be
totally self-sufficient in in harmony with the environment.
We've taken a slight slope to the south on our property and dug about five and a half six feet
into the ground, and we've constructed tire walls in the shape of use that are 18 feet across
and 26 feet deep. That will be earth-birmed on the east, west, and north sides.
The entire south side of the house is going to be glass, and that's where we get our solar gain.
An earthship is designed to produce its own energy, heating cool itself, grow its own food,
and deal with its own waste.
Electricity comes from photovoltaic panels on the roof that turns sunlight into energy.
The toilet is a composting one.
If the structure is built without hired help, the cost of the home could be as much as 80 to 90%
and less than if someone built a more conventional house. Joyce estimates the total cost of
her house, including the acre of land it sits on, will be $20,000 when she moves in.
She says the low cost key to the earthship is in the tires.
The tire stores have to pay to have them hauled away and dumped.
What happens when they dump them, they try to bury them in landfills and they keep popping back up.
There are real problem in society today. There's billions of tires now that we don't know what to do with.
So here's a way to take a tire and turn it into a very viable housing building material.
When Mary Joyce has finished putting up her tire walls and a conventional roof is on the structure,
she'll cover her tires with a doby in six months. The visitor will never know that the walls
are made from good years. Michelin's and bridge stones. But while most building inspectors and
county officials are accepting earthships and securing a building permit is becoming easier,
not everyone is crazy about the idea. Rich Tilletson is owner of handmade homes and
incorporated and has been building more conventional solar homes in Boulder County for a dozen years.
The concept is great and I really like it. But personally I wouldn't
want to live in a structure like this until more research had been done on the outgassing
of the materials involved with tires as far as indoor pollutants in the home.
Earthship builders admit that the homes are not for everyone and that sacrifices need to be made.
The occupants need to be more conservative in their use of water and electricity.
Also banks are not yet convinced that earthships are worthy of loans.
So financing could be a problem for prospective builders.
But those concerns haven't slowed midge meager. She's planning an earthship community a few miles
from Rocky Mountain National Park, spread out over a hundred acres. I want the average
American to know that they can do this too, that it doesn't take a million dollars, that we can live
without thirty year mortgage payments to keep us a slave to the system.
And we do need to really be more concerned on how we build our houses and how we live in the
houses that we do have. Meager will break ground on our project this summer.
That report prepared by Vince Winkle for the High Plains News Service,
a production of the Western Organization of Resource Councils in Billings, Montana.
Recently, we introduce you to Sabina O'Hara, an environmental economist representing the World
Council of Churches at the United Nations Earth Summit. In journal notes from Rio dated June
2nd, she describes a visit she had to a mission project about an hour from Rio, where she met some
children who asked a very simple question. After a 50 minute ride, we arrive in Anacansaga.
The ministries offered here include a farm, an orphanage, a used program which prepares neighborhood
kids for service jobs in Rio businesses, offices and banks, provided they attend school regularly.
Community Gardens project and a Reforestation program are in the planning stage,
and all this on a shoestring budget. We enter the center, a preschool area, a dining hall,
I take a peek into the boys' dorm, plain rows of beds and a row of metal lockers, empty.
These kids owe nothing. Yet their beautiful, dark eyes sparkle as they try to talk to me.
I wish I had brought some of my own boys close and toys.
We go over to the gym where about 40 youths are waiting for us with their advisors.
We introduce ourselves and answer questions about the United Nations Conference.
We explain about the dangers of pollution, about global warming caused by greenhouse gases like
CO2 and about the importance of the forests which help clean our air. We explain about biodiversity and
our need to protect plants and animals and preserve the richness of our natural world.
Preserve for whom one asks, I feel caught. He didn't mean to be bold or anything he just asked
an honest question. For Brazil, I say, and for all of us, we're all connected, you know,
that is what our environment teaches us. How true. Yet what a lie.
One of the stumbling stones of the biodiversity treaty is the fact that the developing countries
ask for their share in the patents of products developed from their rainforest plants, their snake venom.
And we most certainly don't want to share that. And preserve our own forests, our own species for
the good of our global environment. Well, of course, that's another story when it comes to the
logging industry on the west coast or townhouses in the Adirondix. But I don't say that.
I just think that and the thoughts just don't want to disappear. As I sign my name and address
in dozens of notebooks of bright, beautiful looking youngsters who tell me in their few words of
English, I love United States. I love you. Sabino O'Hara, a representative of the United Methodist
Church and the World Council of Churches at the Earth Summit with journal notes from Rio.
On official delegates, far outnumbered official delegates at the Earth Summit meetings in Rio
Dijonero of the more than 30,000 attending the series of conferences, only 200 or so were official
government representatives. Political scientist Peter Haas attended the conference. He says this
ratio represents the greatest imbalance ever at an international summit, whether on arms control,
economics or the environment. Haas says this is especially significant in this post Cold War era
where old alliances are shifting according to new priorities. One of the perhaps most important
long term effects of the Rio conference will be to better integrate these actors into international
politics. We now see international negotiations being conducted not merely by representatives of
governments, by diplomats, but also by non-governmental organizations and citizens groups who are
concurrently holding their government publicly accountable for environmental and development
activities. But what are the implications of having international relations being influenced
if not actually crafted by unofficial organizations and individuals? What influence will these
relationships have on negotiations over the official treaties signed at the summit, for example?
Haas sees at least two implications. One is that because all of these non-governmental organizations
are present in the international sphere, they are able to exchange information, perhaps more
effectively than governments can, and thus both make it easier for governments to coordinate their
activities because they know better what their neighbors are doing and the nature of overall
environmental quality, for instance. But also these groups can monitor government activity
and publicly embarrass countries who do not comply with international commitments. Thus they can
work hand in glove or work together with the United Nations system and with governments
in monitoring whether international treaties are complied with or not. Though this was an
Earth summit, competition and international tensions were not easily set aside in favor of working
for the common good of protecting Earth. In fact, Haas says there continues to be a great deal of
skepticism over just what ideology and what special interests the various environmental organizations
represent. At the global forum meetings attended by thousands of environmental organizations from
around the world were groups with such obscure yet specific names as people against the river
crossing, a British group of 200 founded in 1986 to work on issues relating to the East London
River or Japan's International Society for Mangrove ecosystems established in 1990 with 150
members from 23 countries. Of these diverse groups says Haas? Because they all seek to gain
influence in international negotiations, they are willing to pool their agendas so that each group
in turn promotes the objectives of other groups. Sometimes this works out for the collective good
creating a more holistic agenda in which some groups look out for the interests of others and a
more complete list of concerns is promoted. In other cases it falls apart and remains to be seen
in fact how holistic an NGO agenda emerges in the future. Haas says it is not likely that nations
ever will relinquish territorial ownership attitudes towards sovereign natural resources.
Malaysia has been holding out for example on rights to continue logging its rainforests saying
that Malaysian trees belong to Malaysia and no other nation may dictate internal policies.
The United States holds much the same position regarding industrial output of carbon dioxide.
What will change says Haas is that governments will respond to scientific evidence. The Montreal
Protocol for example set limits on chlorofluorocarbons only after political leaders were convinced by
scientific evidence. Says Haas, a global climate change treaty will not be signed until an equally
convincing widely accepted body of scientific evidence has been presented.
In both the short and the long run says Haas the summit must be judged a successful milestone.
This is a midpoint in a process which began 20 years ago in Stockholm. If Rio is a success
it will be a success because it accelerated the process which had already been ongoing.
The way in which Rio can accelerate this process or set international environmental efforts off on a
stronger trajectory is by committing governments to stronger obligations and holding them accountable
for living up to their international obligations. It can only do this by circulating institutional
measures by which information about government's environmental activities are made more widely
available internationally. Peter Haas, an assistant professor of political science at the University
of Massachusetts at Amherst recently returned from the Earth Summit. He is a specialist in international
environmental politics having written three books on the topic. He says perhaps the most important
immediate result of the conference was the establishment of a new United Nations body called
the Sustainable Development Commission to be responsible for coordinating the exchange of
international information. How powerful the SDC will be is likely to be a topic for discussion
in the next session of the General Assembly. This is Bruce Robertson. That's our report on the
Environment Show this week. Our story on the National Park Service was written and produced by
Karen Kelly. For a cassette copy of this program called 1-800-767-1929, ask for the Environment
Show program number 132. That's 1-800-767-1929, program number 132. The Environment Show is a
presentation of national production solely responsible for its content. Dr. Alan Chartak, executive
producer and this is Bruce Robertson. The Environment Show is made possible by the JM
Kaplan Fund of New York and by Heming's Motor News, the national Bible of the old car hobby,
monthly from Bennington, Vermont.
