Don Cheadle
Don Cheadle, an award-winning American actor, rose to prominence in the late 1990s and the early 2000s
In addition, he played the lead in the movie Traitor, which was directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff who also directed the public service announcement (featuring Cheadle and five others) for the UN's global campaign to raise awareness on climate change. The campaign was titled 'Seal the Deal!'.
Don Cheadle, an award-winning American actor, rose to prominence in the late 1990s and the early 2000s In addition, he played the lead in the movie Traitor, which was directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff...
George Soros is Chairman of Soros Fund Management and of the Open Society Institute. Photo : © AFP PHOTO / ERIC PIERMONT
Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include Practical Ethics, One World, and, most recently, The Life You...
Marc Ona Essangui est né au Gabon. Atteint d’une poliomyélite depuis son enfance, il se déplace en fauteuil roulant, un handicap qui l’a contraint à renoncer à devenir avocat car les locaux de la...
Carl Zimmer travaille comme journaliste spécialiste des questions scientifiques et environnementales. Il a rédigé 6 livres et s’intéresse à des domaines aussi variés que la recherche dans les...
The World Bank is a source of financial and technical assistance to developing countries around the world. It is not a bank in the common sense. The World Bank is made up of two development...
Jeune Afrique (Young Africa) is a French weekly owned by the publishing group of the same name. Created on October 17, 1960 by the Tunisian journalist Béchir Ben Yahmed, Afrique Action becomes Jeune...
Appalachian Regional Restoration Initiative
13/07/2011 3:51 pm
As a newly appointed UNEP Goodwill Ambassador, I am learning the ropes on the how’s and why’s our planet is under threat. The science behind the issues can be daunting but seems irrefutable as I see the change, in just my lifetime, to my own backyard, the cities I grew up in and the far flung places I visit.
In my work as an actor and humanitarian, I have seen the devastating impact of dwindling and scarce resources from Rwanda to Darfur. This year, off our shores in the US, we have experienced the most devastating oil spill in human history. I guess these experiences constitute why it is not a huge leap for me to envision the very real threats we face if we continue to diminish the planet’s resources faster than they can be replenished. The choice to conserve and live more mindfully is not some esoteric concept, but a selfish decision to not bite the proverbial hand that feeds us.
Though the impact of humankind on our environment is apparent everywhere, the one that stands out most for me, both in terms of the rate of its destruction and because of its myriad resources, is the forest. But the good news is that we have more information than ever on the wide-ranging value of forests, and beyond conservation, we are starting to restore and transform destroyed habitats back into viable ecosystems.
I was moved by one such story of revitalization in an area that is endowed with a wealth of natural resources but has long struggled with poverty. The Appalachian region of the eastern United States is home to some 23 million people, but the exploitation of its coal reserves has left a scarred and damaged landscape in an area whose forests support some of the highest biological diversity in the world’s temperate regions.
The Appalachian Regional Restoration Initiative (ARRI) was created in an effort to reforest active and abandoned mined lands. Since 2007, over 40 million trees have been planted on 87,000 acres across the Appalachian coal states by volunteers. The results generated by the initiative have resulted in a proposal to plant 125 million trees over the next five years, restoring forests on approximately 175,000 acres, creating more than 2,000 green jobs and sequestering 3-5 times more carbon than the current grasslands. In a region facing high unemployment and environmental degradation, ways of increasing local wealth and job opportunities while sustaining biodiversity and aiding the recovery of damaged ecosystems is invaluable.
UNEP hopes that this project will help achieve their Billion Tree Campaign’s goal to plant a tree for every one of the 320 million US citizens and to serve as a model for other high impact grassroots initiatives around the world. I, in turn, hope to help raise awareness both for the issues and for the successful projects that may inspire people to get better informed and to make their own contributions.
La politique de l'extinction
par Don Cheadle
Extrait du livre « Des forêts et des hommes » rédigé par la rédaction de GoodPlanet à l'occasion de l'année internationale des forêts et disponible aux éditions de la Martinière.
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