Hello friends, it's the Environment Show and welcome.
Murray Strong, Secretary General of the Earth Summit last year, says the good news is
much progress has been noted in a year.
The bad news, not enough progress has been noted in a year.
Rio, a year later, just ahead.
And Eugenia Barnabuck, Director of an Aerial Photography Project at Cornell University,
says the project is a useful educational tool for young people.
The idea is that we'd like to work with a group of educators and a group of teams in the
14 to 17-year age range, where we're teaching them how to use these tools, but in the end,
we're really getting them to look at the landscape.
That's our goal.
The Environment Show, a national production, made possible by Heming's Motor News, the
National Bible of the Old Car Hobby, monthly from Bennington Vermont, and by the J.M. Kaplan
Fund of New York, and this is Bruce Robertson.
When Murray Strong banged the gavel at the end of the Earth Summit last June in Rio
Dijonero, he said it was time to come down from the summit into the trenches.
After talk there must be action.
Well today, a year later, there continues to be a lot of talk and a lot of action, but
too much of the former, not enough of the latter, says Strong.
Murray Strong was Secretary General of the Conference, formerly titled, The United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development.
The Earth Summit brought together leaders of 178 nations and hundreds of non-governmental
organizations for 12 days of intense negotiations, resulting in a series of agreements and formal
treaties.
But what has happened in a year?
We reached Mr. Strong in Toronto, Canada, where he is chief executive officer of Ontario
Hydro.
We thought a curious position to hold for someone who just a year earlier was working
the other end of the room, so to speak.
Mr. Strong, forgive the bluntness of this leading question, but what are you doing at Ontario
Hydro?
I am endeavoring to practice what I have been preaching and about sustainable development.
It is the largest energy utility in North America, and by that I include, of course, the United
States.
My mandate here is to, of course, fix up the corporation, like many utilities.
It has been experiencing its difficulties, but at the same time to make it into a world
class example of sustainable development.
Can we think of you as something of a Trojan horse then?
Well, I wouldn't say it was a Trojan horse.
I think there are quite a number of Trojan horses in this organization, and I am finding
a surprising number of allies.
Obviously, lots of resistance.
That is normal, and an organization that has been around for almost a century.
And as you know, where habits are deeply entrenched, but we are well on the way to trying to
make this a very good practical example of sustainable energy development.
Well, that all sounds like a conversation definitely for a later date, but right now, Mr.
Strong, we want to turn our attention to another matter.
You were Secretary General for the Earth Summit last year.
As far as the various declarations and treaties are concerned, technically speaking, what is
happening today now one year later?
Well, first of all, the two conventions.
The convention on climate change and biodiversity have been signed each of them by over 150
governments, which is the majority of the governments of the world.
Now in the case of the biodiversity treaty, as I am sure you and your listeners will recall,
the US was one of those that declined to sign that convention.
It also declined to accept targets and timetables in respect of its CO2 emissions.
And therefore, in order to get US agreement on that convention, those provisions were left
out.
The new administration in Washington, I am pleased to say, through President Clinton's
statement on Earth Day, has now committed itself to signing the biodiversity convention.
In fact, it was signed, I believe, last week.
And also has indicated it is now prepared to accept timetables and targets for reduction
of its CO2 emissions.
So that represents some significant action on the part of the largest single nation in
the world, that action that wasn't in evidence at Rio itself.
Now one thing to remember too is that the declaration of Rio, the declaration of principles
and agenda 21, well of course in the course of negotiations amongst 180 countries, there
were some areas that were weakened and these documents are certainly fired from perfect.
But on the whole, they do represent the most comprehensive and fire-ranging program of
action ever agreed by governments before.
On these issues, and the fact that they were agreed by virtually all the governments
of the world, most of them at the highest possible level, their presence or prime ministers,
does give them a unique political authority.
We don't have world government at this stage, so there is no absolute capacity for enforcement.
But never so political will and political commitment has to be the highest form of international
agreement at this stage.
And you will have that, but as I reminded the governments before they left Rio, the
fact that they've agreed does not guarantee that they're going to carry out those agreements.
But where are these documents now in the sense of when can we expect the world of nations
to begin following some of the sort of the agreements?
Well that process has begun, I'd like it frankly at the level of government, it's much slower
than I would like to think.
I'm a naturally impatient.
We have to recognize that government processes are slow and we also have to recognize that
the changes called for under agenda 21 and the Declaration of Real are very fundamental
in nature and it shouldn't be surprised that they are taking some time to get the degree
of implementation by governments that they require.
However, let me give you one of the most interesting and important examples.
China, representing some 22% of the world's people, the third largest economy in the world,
soon to become the largest in aggregate terms.
China is developing its own national agenda 21 in response to the global agenda 21 adopted
at Rio.
Every single ministry and agency has been asked to review its policies and programs in
relation to agenda 21.
You know they haven't changed everything yet, but they're in the process and that is
happening in a number of countries in the world.
Having said that, it's happening in all two few.
The change of administration in the United States, as I've already said, promises a renewal
of U.S. leadership in these issues.
That's probably the single most important and positive thing that's happened.
The other hand, at the level of money, budgets, if anything, have been diminished, not increased.
There has been little tendency to try to meet the needs of developing countries to ensure
that in the course of their development, they don't add unnecessarily to the pressures
and burdens and risks that we've created.
So there are pluses and minuses at the moment at the level of governments.
I would say there is more lagging than leading.
But at the level of people, it's quite a different story.
There's been a literal explosion of initiatives at the grassroots level.
In the context of the great debates and great disagreements, too, over the general agreement
on tariffs and trade, you know, GAT, coming together of the European Economic Community
and to hear in this hemisphere the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement, in this context
where we see such lack of agreement and apparent inability to work together and all of the
economic concerns that are attached to that, what are the prospects of achieving a worldwide
series of environmental protection agreements, especially when many of these agreements
would, in fact, affect any given nation's economic well-being by how much money they might
have to spend to abide by these agreements?
Well, again, I think that we have to recognize that the Earth Summit did provide the impetus
for two very important agreements.
Yes, it's true that they're not yet at the level they have to be, but we've got basic
agreements now on climate change and on biodiversity.
We're initiating one of very important to developing countries on desertification, on
the whole question of deterioration of arid lands, and so the process of negotiating international
agreements was given a tremendous impetus by Rio, but having said that, it is a slow process.
We in Canada have been spending years trying to negotiate amongst ten provinces and a federal
government as some constitutional changes.
So it does take time.
I think the fact that we were able to get 180 countries at Rio after two and a half years
of negotiation to agree on agenda 21 and that declaration as well as the two conventions
really is a remarkable thing.
That's scarcely ever happened to the same degree in any individual country.
So I think it does show that it's possible, but it also shows it's difficult.
Glory strong, Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development,
the Earth Summit held last year in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
He spoke to us from Ontario Hydro headquarters in Toronto, Canada.
Next time in part two of our conversation, Mr. Strong will discuss where it is he thinks
we are going in this business of global environmental protection.
This is Bruce Robertson.
You ever heard the old folk song, had a dog, his name was blue, dug big holes in my backyard.
Dogs do that, you know, mine does and I haven't figured out what he's looking for.
Anyway, many of us have holes or otherwise missing parts of our lawn.
We visited Larry Sompke, the environmental gardener recently as he was apparently working
on just such a problem.
Morning Larry, what are you doing raking your lawn here?
Well I'm getting ready to patch my lawn because the other day about 6.30 in the morning,
the horse next door, flash got loose, running up and down the main street of Hollowville
and ended up in my backyard and cut some big divots back here.
So I've got to patch my lawn a little bit.
No, patching, what are you talking about patching here?
Well I'm not going to over seed or dig up my entire lawn just for this little bit.
And a lot of people have these problems, they might have some construction or some septic
work or they have a little spot in their lawn that they want to reseed.
Kind of a bare patch.
Yeah and then what you do is get a nice heavy duty steel garden rake and really rough up
the soil, really dig it because the grass seed needs to have good contact with the soil.
So dig it up really well like that so you get all the crud out of there and get down to
a nice dirt, bare dirt again and put the rake aside.
Now in the next step is to put down some fertilizer and just a little bit.
You just want to sprinkle it on there.
This is the organic fertilizer we talked about last time.
Right, natural organic fertilizer, put that down, nothing's going to burn and it'll help
this fertilizer will help the grass get going.
Now I always need a little bit of food and also natural organic fertilizer has organic
matters that we're always adding back to the soil.
Now I've got to get my grass seed out.
And I went to the grass seed this year.
I went to the hardware store the other day and got something I really like.
People should know that when they buy grass seed they should buy the best grass seed
they can afford because with grass seed you get what you pay for.
If you buy cheap grass seed you're going to get low germination and a poor quality seed.
There's lots of new seeds on the market now, new types of grass seed that are disease resistant,
they're pest resistant, they're drought resistant and they just grow better.
I picked out an improved turf type tall fescue for my backyard mixed in with a little
Kentucky bluegrass.
What's fescue?
Fescue is just a type of grass and there's several types, there's bermuda grass, there's
Kentucky bluegrass, there's fescue, several types of fescue, there's perennial rye grass.
Now will this fit in with your existing lawn, the grass that's in your existing lawn?
Yes it will and because I know there's some fescue back here and I know there's some blue
grass back here but one way you can help make that blend in a little better is that even
right where you are make where you're going to plant, sprinkle some of the other grass seeds
around it so it helps blend in with the other types.
So I'm just going to cut this open.
Cut my back of grass seed open here and then just sprinkle it on there.
Whenever you do this make sure you put a lot of grass seed in there because we've gone
to all this work to dig up the area and gather all my material, spend the time to do it
so you might as well put down quite a bit of grass seed that gives you a better chance
of success.
So you can't put down too many seeds?
No put it down you can see you don't want them on top of each other but just so it's
completely coated and sprinkled like you're peppering up a your favorite plant or fried
eggs.
You know get a lot of pepper and then also work that in just a little bit with your hand
or with the rake because grass seed needs to come in contact with the soil and needs
to have real good soil contact to get good germination.
You know naturally you know if you're really going to recede your lawn you would want to
do this in the fall or the spring but you know like I said there's lots of times when
you just have to get out there and do it even in the middle of the summer.
And then after you've got the grass seed in there and you've got a little contact with
the soil then put down some sort of something on top.
I'm putting down some peat moss.
Some people like to use straw I'm sure you've seen highway departments put straw down
but just a little come see that why is that?
You need to put something down on top of it to cover it up so that it won't dry out.
You're going to try to keep the soil moist and damp and without too much sun on it so
it won't dry out and desiccate the seeds.
So you just put a little bit of this down on top of it then naturally you water it and
keep it watered every day until it germinates which can take you know a couple weeks for
good grass seed to germinate it can take a couple weeks sometimes three weeks.
And then all this little areas should be nice and grassy and then over the period of
years I'll transform my whole backyard into this real nice new improved disease and
pest resistant grass seed.
Okay looks pretty good right now we'll keep an eye on it see how it grows to the summer.
All right well I hope it grows too.
And keep the horse off it Larry.
Yeah keep flashing as corral we already had a big talk about that.
See you next time.
Thanks a lot.
Larry Sommeke, the environmental gardener author of beautiful easy gardens and noted
lecturer on horticulture he is backyard in fact his whole house is in Hollowville,
New York and this is Bruce Robertson.
Sometimes we just need a different perspective on a problem before we find a solution.
Sometimes we need to get the big picture you know an overview.
Virginia Barnaba a researcher at Cornell University's Center for the Environment gets
the really big picture through a program called clears.
I guess I should tell you what that acronym means it's the Cornell Laboratory for Environmental
Applications and Remote Sensing and that's why we use the acronym clears because it really
is a mouthful but it's the focal point for Cornell University activities in remote sensing,
geographic information systems and resource inventory.
It would seem that one of the key identifying features of the program is what you refer
to as remote sensing part of the title even.
What is remote sensing?
Well I think one of the easiest ways to explain it is to just say that it's learning from
a distance, learning without touching and learning more efficiently because you are able
to see so much.
The various kinds of remote sensing that we have are the images that are collected from
satellites, from low and high flying aircraft where a photographic product is produced and
what it is is a unique tool that can collect information about the landscape or about the
planets.
We don't do planetary, we do earth-based things here at clears.
By collecting these images and bringing them into the laboratory you have an opportunity
to learn about what it is you are looking at and to devise new methods of utilizing them
for environmental problem solving for example.
Describe how these tools and techniques including the use of aerial photography describe how
they might be used for gathering information and developing solutions to a problem.
One application would be recently completed with the staff here a project for Putnam County.
Putnam County is situated along Hudson River.
It's really kind of a bedroom community to New York City and they have been experiencing
over the past 20 years and extremely rapid growth in development, housing, commercial and
light industry kinds of things.
I had a working relationship with the planning department there for many years and they came
to me a couple of years ago and asked if we could help them in trying to determine what
kind of information would be useful to them to do some better planning.
They were concerned about water quality and quantity.
They were concerned about developing appropriate services to the people who were coming in.
They were concerned about losing a lot of open space.
Typically all the issues that are coming up now among within local government units.
So we got together and created a plan jointly and we developed an educational component
about what it is we do and how can we transfer this knowledge about developing a land use
inventory that they would be able to use in the planning process.
This is specifically helpful about aerial photography.
How can you use that in a way that can give you information that you can't see by taking
what you might call a windshield survey just looking around at what you see at ground
level as you drive around?
One of the things that's really neat about using satellite images or aerial photographs
is that you get to see so much geography.
A lot more geography from the air than you can from the ground.
For years we've done windshield surveys where you go out and you get a sense about what's
happening on the landscape.
But sometimes you can't get in off the back roads and you don't see what the fields look
like and you don't see the developments occurring on the hills.
So satellite imagery, aerial photography allows you to get that aerial perspective and
you can see tremendous amounts.
In fact, volumes of information, more information than you can possibly digest at one time.
So typically what happens is that we interpret what we're seeing on those images and from
that interpretation create a map that just about anybody can understand, showing what the
land use pattern is in any given area.
Not everybody understands the complexity that they're seeing on an air photo, but when
you convert that data to line information on a map, it can be extremely useful because
out of that then you can pull a number of maps.
When I say land use, I mean you're trying to show the development along a corridor.
For example, how much land area is devoted to residential or commercial or industrial
and what is the mix?
What is the pattern that you see happening over time?
And with aerial photographs, you are able to do historical analysis.
As the photos have been around since the late 20s, you can go back, get aerial photos,
and create a picture, a map of what happened in the decade of the 30s or the 40s or what
have you.
And then do the same thing today and do a comparative analysis with those two data sets to see where
the trend in development is occurring and is there something you need to do to provide
better services to enhance the road network, to look at the installation of sewage treatment
or do you go septic tanks?
I mean it allows you to see where the development patterns are occurring, and potentially what
you need to do in the future to either protect the open space or enhance some development
project.
It depends on what the legislature and the planning people and other local government officials
are wanting to do.
Barnabha says as you would expect planning boards and various political bodies responsible
for planning long-range needs of a community are those most often found to be using the
information.
The photos, maps, and compiled data typically would be on the table during a town planning
board meeting.
But the information is also found its way into schools.
A few years ago, Barnabha began developing a project now funded by the National Science
Foundation to bring together groups of educators to teach them how to use aerial photographs
and maps to look at local issues.
Issues school children would know about in their own community.
The very first thing that people do when they see an aerial photograph of their home community
or their school, they want to find their houses.
And what happens is we find they get hooked immediately and they're very interested in
it.
And it's kind of glitzy because they get to use an instrument called the stereoscope
that allows you to see three dimensionally.
The idea is that we'd like to work with a group of educators and a group of teams in
the 14 to 17-year age range where we're teaching them how to use these tools.
But in the end, we're really getting them to look at the landscape.
That's our goal.
Look at what's out there.
What's happened to it over time?
What do you think we ought to do about it for the future?
And hopefully they'll begin to get some behavioral change that will, number one, let them think
a little bit differently about themselves.
It will empower them with some skills that they hadn't had before.
And they also will get some empowerment about their own community.
From Cornell University, Eugenia Barnabha, the program is called Clear's, the Cornell Laboratory
for Environmental Applications of Remote Sensing.
One of these co-director of the project, Clear's or Variations thereof would be useful
in any part of the nation.
So the next time you are confronted with a complex environmental problem, get the big picture,
literally, get Clear's.
This is Bruce Robertson.
That's our report on the Environment Show this week.
For a cassette copy of the program, call 1-800-767-1929, ask for the Environment Show
program number 180.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national production solely responsible for its content,
Dr. Ellen Shartock Executive Producer.
This is Bruce Robertson.
The Environment Show is made possible by the J.M. Kaplan Fund of New York and by Heming's
Motor News, the National Bible of the Old Car Hobby, monthly from Bennington, Vermont.
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