News Archives » Ecology
JPIC Report Fall/Winter 2014 Issue Now Available On-Line September 17th, 2014
The Fall/Winter 2014 issue of JPIC Report is now available on line as a PDF. It will soon be available in print form.
Please contact Mary O’Herron in the JPIC Office if you want to be added to the mailing list.
You can find all issues of JPIC Report on this website in the Resources section. (Download a PDF of the latest issue)
Corn from White Earth Indian Reservation Grows in Washington, DC! September 11th, 2014
![photo[2]](http://omiusajpic.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/photo2.jpg)
Bear Island Flint corn seed from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota produced this ear of corn grown in Washington, DC
Corn from the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota was planted in the garden at the Oblate headquarters in Washington, DC by farmer, Gail Taylor, and has yielded its fruit! Aware of the work of Winona LaDuke, the well-known Native American activist who lives and works on the White Earth Reservation, to preserve native seeds, Gail has been ordering seed for the garden at 391 from The White Earth Land Recovery project, although she wasn’t aware of the Oblate mission presence at White Earth.
The mission of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, which LaDuke founded, is “to facilitate recovery of the original land base of the White Earth Indian Reservation, while preserving and restoring traditional practices of sound land stewardship, language fluency, community development, and strengthening our spiritual and cultural heritage.” LaDuke is also the Executive Director of Honor the Earth, where she works on a national level to advocate, raise public support, and create funding for frontline native environmental groups.
We are delighted to have corn from this special place growing on Oblate land in Washington. It is also nice that the mission to save native agricultural heritage is alive in both places.
Gail Taylor, the farmer at the Oblate property in Washington, DC working in the garden.
Urge a Yes Vote on the Urban Ag and DC Food Security Bill of 2014 September 8th, 2014
The Garden at 391 Michigan Ave., NE at the Oblate headquarters in Washington, DC
If you live in Washington, DC, please join us in supporting the Urban Agriculture and DC Food Security Bill of 2014. The legislation is moving through the City Council this month, and your voice is needed!
DC City Council Member David Grosso, who spent time visiting the Garden at 391 last April, introduced this legislation, with the idea of building on the legacy of the urban farming act of 1986 and the DC Healthy Schools Act of 2010. This bill takes those initiatives a step further by opening up more public and private land to grow healthy food. Passage of the Urban Agriculture bill is very important as a way to develop local food growing capacity.
Gail Taylor, the farmer of the lower field at the Oblate headquarters in Washington, DC has been building the soil and productivity on the city plots that make up Three Part Harmony Farm for the last 3 years, but she and her fellow farmers need these policy changes to take the next step to really grow (in so many different ways!).
Please get involved in this brief grassroots effort to make sure the City Council knows how important this issue is to residents of DC.
Contact the Chairman and members of the DC City Council Finance and Revenue Committee. They are currently in the mark up phase of the bill.
Please feel free to use these points as a guide:
“Hi, My Name is:
I live in Ward:
I’m calling/ emailing to let you know that the D.C. Urban Agriculture and Food Security Act of 2014 is an important piece of legislation for our city and that I hope it will be passed soon.
• The Act encourages private, District landowners to lease their land for agricultural purposes and encourages urban farming on unused city owned land in response to problems of blighted property.
• The Act responds to the District’s continued struggle to address chronic hunger amongst residents with a local solution: encouraging urban farmers to donate a portion of their produce to District-based food banks and shelters.
• The Act enables urban farmers to sell their produce both on and off the leased land, bringing easy, fresh food access to neighborhoods across the city, including those currently identified as food deserts.
Thank you!”
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Please write or call:
- Chairman Phil Mendelson: (202) 724-8032; pmendelson@dccouncil.us
- Jack Evans: (202) 724-8058; jackevans@dccouncil.us
- Muriel Bowser: (202) 724-8052; mbowser@dccouncil.us
- Marion Barry: (202) 724-8045; mbarry@dccouncil.us
- David Catania: (202) 724-7772; dcatania@dccouncil.us
Thank Grosso and Cheh for their leadership, and the other supporters of the bill as well:
- David Grosso: (202) 724-8105; dgrosso@dccouncil.us
- Mary Cheh: (202) 724-8062; mcheh@dccouncil.us
- Jim Graham: (202) 724-8181; jgraham@dccouncil.us
- Kenyan McDuffie: (202) 724-8028, kmcduffie@dccouncil.us
- Tommy Wells: (202) 724-8072; twells@dccouncil.us
Thanks to Three Part Harmony Farm for the information in this post. For more information on Three Part Harmony Farm, visit: http://threepartharmonyfarm.org
Catholic Sisters Release “Earth as our Home” Booklet August 11th, 2014
Too often when we hear the word ‘house’ we only think of a physical building and its rooms. But what if we began to think of Earth as our house – with various rooms – what would we need to do to make this ‘house’ a true ‘home?’ The Catholic Sisters for a Healthy Earth have prepared a reflection booklet on the various rooms of a house, placing each room and its activities into the broader context of our Earth-home.
Catholic Sisters for a Healthy Earth is made up of representatives from congregations of women religious from the upper Mississippi Valley in eastern Iowa and southwestern Wisconsin. The group’s coordinator, Joy Peterson, PBVM explains, “Our intention is to take a new look at how everything we do, no matter where we are, is interconnected and tied to the well-being of all living things.” The booklet includes suggestions of simple actions for families to take in order to live more sustainably and walk more gently on Earth.
You can get a free download of the booklet at the Sisters of St. Francis website.
Human Rights Mentioned in Proposed UN Sustainable Development Goals July 23rd, 2014
Used under Creative Commons license; courtesy of Steve Cadman
Civil society welcomes human rights language in the open Working Group (OWG) outcome, while continuing to call for a rights-based approach towards development justice.
The Mining Working Group at the UN has reported through VIVAT that they congratulate the members and co-chairs of the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the completion of their work and their adoption by consensus of an outcome that includes seventeen proposed goals and an introductory chapeau. The group said: “In particular, we celebrate the mention of the human right to water in paragraph 7 of the chapeau, as an essential entry point for further work on ensuring a rights-based approach to development. With the Blue Planet Project and more than 300 civil society partners, we advocated long and hard for those two small words – “and water” – to be added to the text, and we applaud this achievement on the part of the governments that championed this language: Palau, Nauru, Papua New Guinea; Italy and Spain; Bolivia, Argentina, and Ecuador; and Uruguay.” Please see the OWG Press Release MWG
For more information on the Mining Working Group please visit miningwg.com
