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ECOSYSTEM
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Let us be good stewards of the Earth we inherited.
All of us have to share the Earth's fragile ecosystems
and precious resources, and each of us has a role
to play in preserving them. If we are to go on living
together on this earth, we must all be responsible
for it.
~ Kofi
Annan
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No
piecemeal solution is going to prevent the collapse
of whole societies and ecosystems ... a radical re-thinking
of our values, priorities and political systems is
urgent.
-- Maude
Barlow
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The
destruction of aquatic ecosystem health, and the increasing
water scarcity, are in my opinion the most pressing
environmental problems facing human kind.
-- Maude
Barlow
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"Each
one [of the Earth's 5 million invertebrate species]
plays a role in its ecosystem. It's like we're tearing
the cogs out of a great machine. The machine might work
after you tear out ten cogs, but what happens when you
tear out a hundred?"
— Scott Black |
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you cannot tackle hunger, disease, and poverty unless
you can also provide people with a healthy ecosystem
in which their economies can grow.
-- Gro
Harlem Brundtland
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A
diverse ecosystem will also be resilient, because
it contains many species with overlapping ecological
functions that can partially replace one another.
When a particular species is destroyed by a severe
disturbance so that a link in the network is broken,
a diverse community will be able to survive and reorganize
itself... In other words, the more complex the network
is, the more complex its pattern of interconnections,
the more resilient it will be.
-- Fritjof
Capra
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"The
great ecosystems are like complex tapestries - a million
complicated threads, interwoven, make up the whole picture.
Nature can cope with small rents in the fabric; it can
even, after a time, cope with major disasters like floods,
fires, and earthquakes. What nature cannot cope with
is the steady undermining of its fabric by the activities
of man."
~ Gerald Durrell |
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We are all together in this, we are all together in
this single living ecosystem called planet earth.
As we learn how we fit into the greater scheme of
things, and begin to understand how the system works,
we can plan ahead, we can use the resources responsibly,
to show some respect for this inheritance that goes
back 4.6 billion years.
~ Sylvia
Earle
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We are all together in this, we are all together in
this single living ecosystem called planet earth.
~ Sylvia
Earle
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"We
consider species to be like a brick in the foundation
of a building. You can probably lose one or two or
a dozen bricks and still have a standing house. But
by the time you've lost 20 per cent of species, you're
going to destabilize the entire structure. That's
the way ecosystems work."
- Donald Falk
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"The
agriculture we seek will act like an ecosystem, feature
material recycling and run on the contemporary sunlight
of our star."
-- Wes
Jackson |
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To
achieve true sustainability, we must reduce our 'garbage
index" - that which we permanently throw away into
the environment that will not be naturally recycled
for reuse - to near zero. Productive activities must
be organized as closed systems. Minerals and other
nonbiodegradable resources, once taken from the ground,
must become a part of society's permanent capital
stock and be recycled in perpetuity. Organic materials
may be disposed into the natural ecosystems, but only
in ways that assure that they are absorbed back into
the natural production system.
-- David
Korten
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"I used to think of the environment as trees and blue
sky. Then I learned that for some people, the environment
is gangs and concrete. All the issues that we face
are connected. Worldwide, ecosystems are being destroyed,
and indigenous peoples are losing their homelands
and their entire way of life. Three out of every five
African-Americans and Latinos in the US lives in a
community with a toxic waste site. As long as pollution
is being produced, it's going to go somewhere, and
as long as there are marginalized communities where
land is cheaper and the people don't have the time
or the money to fight back, polluters will have a
place to deposit toxins. As long as people and the
planet are being exploited, and billions of dollars
are being made precisely because laborers and the
environment are being abused and used up, there will
be children going hungry and ecological destruction.
As long as war and violence are in our hearts and
our streets as well as in our nations, as long as
corporate greed and unsustainable consumption are
at the forefront of our economies, no child will be
born into a truly safe, peaceful or loving world."
~ Ocean
Robbins
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"Biological
diversity is being lost at a rate unequalled since the
appearance of modern ecosystems more than 40 million
years ago. A quarter of all mammals are threatened with
extinction and nearly 70% of the world’s fish stocks
are fully exploited, overexploited or depleted."
-- Royal Society |
Each
species on our planet plays a role in the healthy functioning
of natural ecosystems, on which humans depend.
- William H. Schlesinger |
Even
if we act immediately, the world is doomed to lose many
of its animal and plant species and this inturn will
reduce the ability of ecosystems to deliver vital services
to human populations. The Red List gives all of us a
practical tool for raising awareness of the biodiversity
crisis and for forging new partnerships within the international
community.
-- Achim Steiner, IUCN Director General |
Any
progress achieved in addressing the goals of poverty
and hunger eradication, improved health, and environmental
protection is unlikely to be sustained if most of the
ecosystem services on which humanity relies continues
to be degraded.
-- UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment |
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"To
halt the decline of an ecosystem, it is necessary
to think like an ecosystem."
~ Douglas P. Wheeler
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