Green Wave, the radio show produced by the Env.net Team in TEMA Foundation is now sponsored by Env.net for the coming three months. August, 11th was the 12th broadcast of the series.
This week on Green Wave we talked about our own “Sustainable Agriculture Network in the EU and Turkey”. Our guests Dr. Hikmet Öztürk, Forestry and Rural Development Department Head and Ayşe Kaptanoğlu, Project Coordinator informed our audience about their new networking project and how this network intends to encourage and stabilize interaction and cooperation of different stakeholders that are involved in organic agricultural production. They are currently working on an online networking platform which is expected to unite these mentioned stakeholders in a common setting. By enhancing online and in vivo interaction between various stakeholders, this project aims to encourage establishment of cooperative interactions. Although the platform currently operates offline, Env.net Team in TEMA intends to share updates on the network once it goes online.
Green Wave, the radio show produced by the Env.net Team in TEMA Foundation is now sponsored by Env.net for the comingfive months. August, 4th was the 11th broadcast of the series.
This week on Green Wave we talked about the first and only Cheese Museum, the Eco-museum Zavot in Kars, a Turkish city bordering both Armenia and Georgia. Our guest İlhan Koçulu, the co-president of Boğatepe Environment and Life Association and also the founder of the Eco-museum Zavot, explained how culture shaped the locals’ everyday life including how they founded the museum. Given the geographical location of the city, cheese making has become a cultural heritage to the region. However, due to lifestyle changes, environmental impacts and contemporary cultural influences cheese making heritage is diminishing, as the varieties of produced cheese have reduced significantly. To protect this cultural heritage unique to the region, Koçulu and the Association founded the museum, which attracted numerous sociologist and anthropologists but also was appreciated and supported locally and nationally.
His passion for preserving cheese making rituals as a part of the regional cultural heritage has affected our audience, but also us as the Env.net Team. We are looking forward to hear about similar social and cultural initiatives in the near future.
About 70 participants were present at the ENV.net simultaneous event organised on the World Environment Day on June 4th, 2016 in Gornji Milanovac, Serbia. This year the theme was “Go wild for life”. For this event, ENV.net partner from Serbia, Environmental Ambassadors for Sustainable Development, organised bicycles ride for local citizens in Gornji Milanovac.
Green Wave, the radio show produced by the Env.netTeam in TEMA Foundation is now sponsored by Env.net for the coming five months. July, 28th was the 10th broadcast of the series.
This week on Green Wave we talked about the project “Kids of Bosphorus getting to know the city through the sea”, a project carried out by Beşiktaş Science and Arts Center. Our guests for this broadcast were Hanife Küçüker, the project coordinator and Efsun Meva Bozbay, one of the “Kids of Bosphorus”. The project aims to raise awareness about the interrelation between the geographical location of the Istanbul peninsula and the urban culture. Beşiktaş Municipality Education Directory, Boğaziçi University Education Department, İstanbul Technical University Ship Building and Marine Sciences Department, Beşiktaş Municipality and TEMA Foundation have all contributed to the execution of the training “the Sea and the City”.
The effect of the sea on the urban culture, human behavior, nature, technology, science, history and art are the subtopics of the project. The project activities are based on the Thematic Education Model as a framework, which focuses on examining a phenomenon with help of different disciplines and sciences.
Secretary Permanent of Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning, based on the article 38 of the Law Nr. 03/L-189 for State Administration of Kosovo, took the decision of establishing a Council for organizing and marking the 22 September as the World Day without vehicles. ATRC is a member of this Council together with other representatives.
A Commission proposal for a pesticide ban on areas set aside for nature protection was discussed at a meeting of EU agriculture ministers in Brussels on Monday 18 July, in the presence of Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan. The proposal for Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs) is just one of 15 measures the Commission will put forward as part of its CAP simplification drive. At the AGRI Council meeting, the Commission also present Ministers with its analysis of the first year of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) greening implementation process.In July 2016, 16 MEPs called on the European Commission to conduct a major review of the CAP through a Fitness Check. The MEPs’ letter follows calls for a Fitness Check from 115 environmental, social, and health NGOs and a group of leading food experts. The EEB and BirdLife Europe have published a short booklet ‘UnCAP the Truth – Spotlight on EU Farm Policy’.
Together with its Dutch partner Both ENDS, TEMA Foundation is working on a project entitled “Connecting Sustainable Agricultural Networks in EU and Turkey ”, since February, 2016, which funded by EU and Republic of Turkey. The main objectives are establishment of links and cooperation between civil society in Turkey and the EU through a common platform for sustainable agriculture networks, and promotion of good agricultural practices (GAP), organic farming, environmentally friendly agricultural practices in Turkey, in harmony with relevant EU legislations and standards.
In this regard, to consult stakeholders’ perspectives on the content of the platform, a stakeholder meeting was held on July 22nd in Istanbul with the participation of 30 people from various parties. Problems in organic farming and GAP were discussed in an interactive way for the first session of the meeting. Based on those problems discussed, different solutions were suggested in the working groups. As the third session, how to integrate abovementioned solutions into the platform was explored.
This meeting will enable to address much needed issues in the platform thanks to crucial input from the participants. All the participants were quite engaged and ready for contribution during the upcoming steps of the Project
Registrations are now open for the EEB’s Annual Conference that will be organized together with EEB Austrian member Umweltdachverband in Vienna on Monday 26 September 2016. The EEB conference will be one of the first opportunities for those concerned about the environment across Europe to come together and take stock of the developments after the UK referendum on EU membership and its implications for the environment and sustainability. We will debate how the EU needs to now embark on an agenda of transformational change that puts the interests of people and planet first.
Within this framework, the conference will dig deeper into three issues that are high on the agenda this autumn, namely Climate and Energy, Biodiversity and Circular Economy. Confirmed speakers include the Austrian Federal Minister for the Environment Andrä Rupprechter, Ann Mettler, Head of the European Political Strategy Centre at the European Commission and Petros Fassoulas, Secretary General of European Movement International. Check out the full programme and register now on www.eebconference.eu
The Turkish Env.net partner TEMA Foundation was involved in an examination for the planned nuclear power plant in Mersin Akkuyu, with many other environmental organizations and professional chambers on July 11, 2016. The field trip included all the complainant parties (13 national and local organizations and 80 citizens) of the case filed to cancel the positive EIA decision regarding the Nuclear Plant. Parties expressed their concerns about the content EIA report.
TEMA Foundation reminded the public that even if we see no accidents, there will still be negative impacts like land loss, the effects of the cooling water to river and lake habitats along with many other devastating effects on the environment because of the nuclear power plants. Furthermore, the ongoing disaster of Japan Fukushima, which started on 11 March 2011 reveals the extent and scope of the destruction regarding nuclear power plants in cases of accidents. Nuclear waste storage issues have not been solved even with today’s technology. There is no answer to the questions of how and where the nuclear waste can be stored safely. This is an extremely dangerousproblem. During the field visit, volunteers fr om many organisations, including TEMA Foundation, rallied together outside of the construction site.
On July 20, 2016 – only seven months after the Paris Agreement, the European Commission published its proposal for the Effort Sharing Regulation and the rules for accounting the land use, land use change and forestry sector (LULUCF) up to 2030. This proposal is massively important. However instead of living up to the ambition of Paris, the Commission has opted to follow the path of least resistance set by EU member states. According to Roland Joebstl, Climate and Energy Policy Officer at the European Environmental Bureau (EEB): “The Commission has stuck with outdated targets for 2030 and has not included a mechanism to increase ambition in its proposal. Member States are to blame for the outdated targets as they have refused in their negotiations to countenance higher levels of ambition, but the failure to include a ratchet mechanism is the Commission’s own doing.”Furthermore, the proposal creates uncertainty about how the “ratchet mechanism” laid out in Article 14 of the Paris Agreement will be implemented in the EU climate legislation.
NGOs call on all EU Member States as they start their national ratification process to implement the Paris agreement to set down how they will deliver real action in all sectors and go beyond what the Commission has published today. Real climate ambition means fixing Europe’s building stock, switching to clean transportation, transforming Europe’s agriculture and putting energy efficiency first. A clear signal of change will trigger investments and jobs in Europe
This week on Green Wave we talked about our own “Sustainable Agriculture Network in the EU and Turkey”. Our guests Dr. Hikmet Öztürk, Forestry and Rural Development Department Head and Ayşe Kaptanoğlu, Project Coordinator informed our audience about their new networking project and how this network intends to encourage and stabilize interaction and cooperation of different stakeholders that are involved in organic agricultural production. They are currently working on an online networking platform which is expected to unite these mentioned stakeholders in a common setting. By enhancing online and in vivo interaction between various stakeholders, this project aims to encourage establishment of cooperative interactions. Although the platform currently operates offline, Env.net Team in TEMA intends to share updates on the network once it goes online.
