Klaus Esterluss and Kerstin Schnatz, Doha

They all had to squeeze through: Shoppers and staff from surrounding restaurants moved past a tree made out of cans and tires at Doha’s traditional market area yesterday. 16 year old Mourad Farahat from Egypt and his friends from the organisation „You Think Green“ tried to raise the awareness of passers by for a greener future. Despite having received a permission for setting up their action at a spacious juncture a few meters further down, security guards told them to move the symbolic tree to a very inconvenient area with hardly any space, between a wall and the outside seating area of a restaurant.

Planting a tree at Doha’s Souq Waqif from DW_Global Ideas on Vimeo.

Critical juncture

By being in this awkward position of Doha’s „Souq Waqif“, the youths shared a fate with the international climate negotiations taking place in the same city that day. Civil society groups watching the international process carefully, are heavily critizising the Qatari Presidency for not showing enough leadership. „Key elements are stalling“ Wael Hmaidan, director of Climate Action Network, said. According to Hmaidan, the talks that are scheduled to end on Friday, December 7^th, were at „a critical juncture“. The NGO expert is in line with young Mourad, when asking for a global reduction of carbon emissions and more money to help poorer countries adapting to climate change.

You know houseboats, you know cars that are build to swim or tanks. But can you image to live on water in a  real hous? That is reality for example in Nigeria, where the people of Makoko build their houses on stilts above the lagoon.  What is tradition there, might be a model idea which other parts in the world can adopt to.

Rising sea levels due to climate change will force many people to leave their homes and migrate to places that won’t be covered with water in future time.

Facing this Scenario, the Maledive Islands government had an unusual idea: floating islands. They cooperate with a Dutch arcitechtural company to build artificial islands that stay above, no matter how much the sea level rises.

Do you think this is a proper idea to realize on large scale?

The video was uploaded to youtube by bittusahgal – it has amazing pictures and delivers a very strong message. The film is described as a ‘non-commercial attempt to highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless ‘consumers’ are combining to destroy life on earth.’ All you have to do is watching and think. There’s a lot possible to keep those beautiful pictures. The cut was compiled by the Sanctuary Asia network.

For the first time, we have a comprehensive idea of nature’s financial worth: the National Ecosystem Assessment
carried out an intensive study of the UK’s natural environment and how it benefits Britain’s economic prosperity. The result: nature is very important to the UK. According to the study, nature provides Britain with tens of billions of pounds in services every year – all for free.

Hundreds of experts in economics, social sciences and ecology worked together to assess different aspects of the UK’s ecosystems across a series of habitats, like woodlands and cities and farms. Those ecosystems provide services like water purification and crop fertilization that are extremely important to an economy, even when we don’t realize it.

The environment ministry says the study will help shape the UK’s environmental policy. But it’s also important to stock of the state of Britain’s natural wealth: 30% of the natural services they studied are suffering because of climate change.

What is nature worth in your country?