As I wander in the Camargue I am surrounded by swamps, bogs, marshes and estuaries. lakes, marshlands, salt marshes, and salt water lagoons (Etangs) as well as dunes, pools, grasslands, and forests.
Flamingos flame in the marshes while their young, still white, move in the tall reeds. Small bulls and white horses roam free in the horizon.
I am surrounded by a living and diverse organism. It is a dynamic system with a mind of its own that demands complex management. It is a system where one part inalterably affects another. It is vulnerable, beleaguered by its centuries of containments.
Despite centuries of anthropogenic activities the Camargue remains a vast expanse governed by the flow of saline and fresh waters with changing shapes and boundaries - with a will of its own as the pulsing flow of water carry sediments through its veins - its life blood.
Like other deltas the Camargue is a guardian at the gate and it needs protection.
The story of the Camargue and the efforts made there to bring people together through democratic processes with tools such as participatory research are important contributions to the question: how we are going to manage the uncertainties ahead?
Climate change is happening. (READ)
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HAPPENINGS
January - March 2025
law environment public health movements technologies human rights government migration immigration basic needs civil liberties development education society public spaces people war and peace public public health/healthcare climate change happening archives participatory Democracy media art
In Democracy Now- Doing what formal international institutions can’t or apparently are not ready to do, including the International Criminal Court (ICC), a nonprofit based in Belgium called the Hind Rajab Foundation, has filed lawsuits that hold individual Israeli soldiers accountable for war crimes including the targeting of civilian and the destruction of homes.
Much of the evidence came from the soldiers’ online boasts and celebrations of their war crimes. The nonprofit which is gaining volunteers around the globe is named after 6-year-old Hind Rajab, who was killed, along with her family, in a January 2024 Israeli attack. During the interview co-founder, Dyab Abou Jahjah, strongly urged the international community to step up and take responsibility as the Foundation was doing a job that they should be doing. (posted January 15, 2025)
In Bloomberg, Mexico City hosts busy airport traffic so it was decided to build a new six runway international airport. It would be the best $13 billion can buy.
Construction for a new airport on the dry lakebed of Lake Texcoco started and then in 2018 it was stopped. It became one more failed project in the vast Texcoco Basin.
Then audaciously the site was turned into a ecological park.
The city suffers from extreme heat, droughts and pollution. It is also sinking as underground aquifers dry up. Water is increasingly scarce.
The mission was regeneration. Masterful hydraulic engineering was required to bring water back into the basin for people and for wildlife habitat.
The price tag was around $1.7 billion and there was plenty of conflict. The Park opened in July 2023.
With human help or without help, the large public park might survive and adapt into perpetuity.
Maybe adapting to and mitigating climate change is all about balance.