Baha'i Perspective On Gender Divide

Nearly 121 million children around the world receive little or no schooling, and the majority of these children are girls. Why is the gender divide so deep? What is holding us back from pursuing a policy of enlightened self-interest?

The Baha'i international community has long recognised the importance of educating girls because as future mothers, they would be better equipped to encourage Generation X - of either gender - to go to school. Nearly 90 years ago, Abdu'l-Baha said: "The education of women is of greater importance than the education of men, for they are the mothers of the race, and mothers play an important role in rearing children. So, they must be capably trained in order to educate both sons and daughters".

Read more here: » Women Rights: Baha'i Perspective On Gender Divide

Too many choices sometimes create conflicts and problems, and lead to unhappiness. Recent scientific and sociological studies done on a large number of subjects show that there seems to be a direct correlation between unhappiness and the number of choices available.

Read more here: » Spiritual Growth: Options for Sustainable Life

Concept Of Freedom Down The Ages

The 20th century has been one of the most memorable periods in history. Imperialism, colonialism and feudalism folded up and monarchy died a natural death, showing that however powerful a tradition may be, it becomes redundant once its role in social evolution is over. The driving force and the foremost objective of that process is greater freedom for mankind.

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Oneness: For the Good of the World

The Bhagavad Gita lays utmost emphasis on the good of the world or lokasamgraha. Work done for lokasamgraha not only prevents destruction of the world; it also contributes towards social efficiency.

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Erection of the statues: All Statues Have Feet of Clay

The Anglo-American war in Iraq had many aspects to it, but the most poignant image to many was that of the dramatic collapse of Saddam's larger-than-life statue in Baghdad's Firdaus Square.

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Permaculture

Permaculture is a system for designing sustainable human environments It can be practised by anyone on any scale from a balcony or small town garden to farms and villages.

"Everything animate or inanimate that is within the universe is controlled and owned by the Lord. One should, therefore, accept only those things necessary for oneself, which are set aside as one's quota, and one should not accept other things, knowing well to whom they belong."

Isa Upanishad

Read more here: » Permaculture: Permaculture - a system for sustainable human environments

CERES' purpose is to "initiate and support environmental sustainability and social equity with an emphasis on cultural richness and community participation." The 4 hectare park, adjacent to picturesque Merri Creek, includes: An animal farm. Community gardens. A café open 7 days a week. Educational walking trails. Origin Energy sustainable living demonstrations. Multicultural exhibits. Facilities for hire. Many events are held at CERES including a c ...

See also:

Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies, Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies - Features, Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies - History, Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies - Support

Read more here: » Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies: Encyclopedia II - Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies - Features

Green buildings conserve energy, water and resources without polluting either indoor or outdoor environments. Similarly, autonomous buildings use available resources such as rainwater, solar power or wind turbines, in order to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels and other resources. Often they can be constructed of recycled materials as well, reducing their total energy requirements for construction. Most official agricultural services claim that existing pesticide protocols and methods of soil conservation adequately protect tops ...

See also:

Sustainable design, Sustainable design - Examples of sustainable design

Read more here: » Sustainable design: Encyclopedia II - Sustainable design - Examples of sustainable design

Fiscal policy of governments usually claims to be concerned with identifying social and natural deficits on a less formal basis. However, in a democracy at least, such choices are usually guided more by ideology than by economics. The primary benefit of embedding one approach to measurement of these deficits would be first to direct monetary policy to reduce them, and eventually achieve a global monetary reform, e.g. Global Resource Banking, by whic ...

See also:

Triple bottom line, Triple bottom line - Triple bottom line accounting, Triple bottom line - Arguments in favor of the Concept, Triple bottom line - Arguments against the Concept, Triple bottom line - Legislation

Read more here: » Triple bottom line: Encyclopedia II - Triple bottom line - Arguments in favor of the Concept

Using untouched reserves as a model, we can try to recreate those better forest conditions. Selection cutting is a practice which mimics a natural disturbance like a tree falling down. If we can mimic natural conditions, trees have been evolving to grow well under those conditions far longer than under modern forestry conditions, and our mimicry will yeild better trees. Selection cutting is based on gap sizes and woody debris found in our natural reserves. Sustainable forestry also involves re-introducing fire to forests. This has the added ...

See also:

Sustainable forestry, Sustainable forestry - Old Growth Forests, Sustainable forestry - High grading, Sustainable forestry - Fire suppression, Sustainable forestry - Harvest, Sustainable forestry - Fragmentation, Sustainable forestry - Solutions

Read more here: » Sustainable forestry: Encyclopedia II - Sustainable forestry - Solutions

Organic food - Less toxic. Organic proponents cite evidence showing that certain chemicals used in conventional farming, including pesticides and herbicides, mimic hormones - usually estrogen - when inside a person. They claim that this is significant even at the minute levels that the average person is exposed to. The US government states that these chemicals are safe when used correctly, but proponents claim such tests are only done on healthy adults - and that it is instead childre ...

See also:

Organic food, Organic food - Types of organic food, Organic food - Identifying organic food, Organic food - Legal definition, Organic food - Preservatives, Organic food - Claimed advantages over conventional farming, Organic food - Less toxic, Organic food - Energy and environmental, Organic food - Tastier, Organic food - Nutritional value, Organic food - GMO free, Organic food - Summary, Organic food - Related movements, Organic food - Facts and statistics

Read more here: » Organic food: Encyclopedia II - Organic food - Claimed advantages over conventional farming

Marshall’s Libertarian extension encompasses those theories that extend human rights to non-human animals and possibly even the inanimate. Michael Smith classified the extension of rights to non-human animals a biocentric ethic, since it focuses on the rights of biotic entities. Andrew Brenmann however was an advocate of ecologic humanism (eco-humanism), the argument that all ontological entities, animate and in-animate, can be given ethical worth purely on the basis that they exist. The work of Arne Næss and his collaborator Sessions als ...

See also:

Environmental ethics, Environmental ethics - Libertarian Extension, Environmental ethics - Ecologic Extension, Environmental ethics - Conservation Ethics, Environmental ethics - Humanist Theories, Environmental ethics - Anthropocentrism

Read more here: » Environmental ethics: Encyclopedia II - Environmental ethics - Libertarian Extension

Many people confuse the ecology movement as a whole with political Greens - who have social justice concerns beyond ecology. Green parties have roots in the ecology movement, though. Today the term "ecology movement" is associated often with the more moral, more confrontational, and more rigorous stance taken by Greenpeace and other even more radical NGOs, e.g. Earth First, Earth Action, Sea Shepherd, in favor of the Precautionary Principle and strong fundamental preventive measures for biosafety, biosecurity and biodiversity. The m ...

See also:

Ecology movement, Ecology movement - Looking under the umbrella

Read more here: » Ecology movement: Encyclopedia II - Ecology movement - Looking under the umbrella

Ecology, or ecological science, is the scientific study of the distribution and abundance of living organisms and how these properties are affected by interactions between the organisms and their environment. The environment of an organism includes both the physical properties, which can be described as the sum of local abiotic factors like climate and geology, as well as the other organisms that share its habitat. The term oekologie was coined in 1866 by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel; the word is derived from the G ...

Including:

• Ecology - Scope
• Ecology - Disciplines of ecology
• Ecology - History of ecology
• Ecology - Fundamental principles of ecology
• Ecology - Biosphere and biodiversity
• Ecology - The ecosystem concept
• Ecology - Dynamics and stability
• Ecology - Spatial relationships and subdivisions of land
• Ecology - Ecosystem productivity
• Ecology - Ecological crisis

Read more here: » Ecology: Encyclopedia - Ecology

While organic food accounts for 1–2% of total food sales worldwide, the organic food market is growing rapidly, far ahead of the rest of the food industry, in both developed and developing nations. World organic food sales were US $23 billion in 2002.[8] The world organic market has been growing by 20% a year since the early 1990s, with future growth estimates ranging from 10-50% annually depending on the country. In the United States, organic food is federally regulated by the National Organic Pr ...

See also:

Organic food, Organic food - Types of organic food, Organic food - Identifying organic food, Organic food - Legal definition, Organic food - Preservatives, Organic food - Claimed advantages over conventional farming, Organic food - Less toxic, Organic food - Energy and environmental, Organic food - Tastier, Organic food - Nutritional value, Organic food - GMO free, Organic food - Summary, Organic food - Related movements, Organic food - Facts and statistics

Read more here: » Organic food: Encyclopedia II - Organic food - Facts and statistics

The World Summit on Sustainable Development, or Earth Summit took place in Johannesburg, South Africa from August 26 to September 4, 2002, to discuss sustainable development issues. It was organised by the United Nations and gathered a number of leaders of nations, businesses and Non-governmental organizations, 10 years after the World Summit in Rio de Janeiro. (It was therefore also informally nicknamed "Rio+10".) George W. Bush decided not to attend or send a representative, earning him praise in a letter from conservative, corporate-sponsored organizations such as Americans for Tax Reform, American Ent ...

Read more here: » Earth Summit 2002: Encyclopedia - Earth Summit 2002

Various alternative organic standards are emerging. They generally bypass formal certification, which can be expensive and cumbersome, and provide their own definition of organic food. One such, the Authentic Food standard, proposed by leading US organic farmer Eliot Coleman, includes criteria that are incompatible with current agribusiness: All foods are produced by the growers who sell them. Fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, eggs and meat products are produced within a 50-mile radius of their place of their final sal ...

See also:

Organic food, Organic food - Types of organic food, Organic food - Identifying organic food, Organic food - Legal definition, Organic food - Preservatives, Organic food - Claimed advantages over conventional farming, Organic food - Less toxic, Organic food - Energy and environmental, Organic food - Tastier, Organic food - Nutritional value, Organic food - GMO free, Organic food - Summary, Organic food - Related movements, Organic food - Facts and statistics

Read more here: » Organic food: Encyclopedia II - Organic food - Related movements

Underdevelopment is the state of an organism or of an organisation (e.g. a country) that has not reached its maturity. It is often used for economic underdevelopment, and then means poverty, including lack of access to health care, to drinkable water, to food, to education and housing. The concept of economic underdevelopment was popularised from the late 1960s by Andre Gunder Frank who studied the effects of imperialism in Latin America. The argument was that that rich or industrialised countries blocked or defor ...

Read more here: » Underdevelopment: Encyclopedia - Underdevelopment

Green issues Worldwide green parties (list): Global Greens · Africa · Americas · Asia-Pacific · Europe Global Greens Charter: ecological wisdom · social justice · participatory democracy · nonviolence · sustainability · respect diversity In green economics, value of Earth is the ultimate in ecosystem valuation, and important to value of life calculations. It begins with the simple problem that if the Earth ceases to support life, and human life does not continue elsewhere, all economi ...

Including:

• Value of Earth - Replacement methods

Read more here: » Value of Earth: Encyclopedia - Value of Earth

In United States politics, the Green Party has been active as a third party since the 1980s. The party first gained widespread public attention during Ralph Nader's presidential runs in 1996 and 2000. The FEC-recognized national committee of the party is the Green Party of the United States (although there remains also a mostly-defunct separate Green national political organization, the Greens/Green Party USA). Unlike Green parties in other nations, Greens in the United States have won elected office mostly at the local level; ...

Including:

• Green Party United States - Ten Key Values of the Green Party
• Green Party United States - History
• Green Party United States - Founding
• Green Party United States - National organizing and campaigns
• Green Party United States - National party co-chairs
• Green Party United States - Geographic distribution
• Green Party United States - 2004 national ticket
• Green Party United States - List of presidential candidates
• Green Party United States - List of National Conventions/Conferences
• Green Party United States - Sources

Read more here: » Green Party United States: Encyclopedia - Green Party United States

Today, the phrase "back-to-the-land movement" usually refers to a North American social phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s (which is discussed further, below in this article). This particular back-to-the-land movement was a migration from cities to rural areas that took place in the United States, its greatest vigor being before the mid '70s. Back to the land - A recurring pattern. By way of context, a few things may be usefully said. The American poet/anthropologist Gary Snyder (who is also an amateu ...

Including:

• Back to the land - A recurring pattern
• Back to the land - The recent North American instance
• Back to the land - The target lifestyle
• Back to the land - The few who succeeded
• Back to the land - The many who returned
• Back to the land - The end of the movement?
• Back to the land - Related topics
• Back to the land - Bibliography

Read more here: » Back to the land: Encyclopedia - Back to the land