Water, CA: Creative Visualizations for a New Millennium
www.watercalifornia.org

Water, CA is a series of 22 contemporary projects engaging the history, mystery, and challenge of California’s water. Presented by Antebi and artist Enid Baxter Blader, Water, CA is a multimedia experiment in geography that incorporates mythological and playful understandings of complex histories. The enticingly interactive website features essays, painting, photography, video animations, and a California water timeline.

And I think we may just be looking at the future of creative, place-based multimedia. It is accessible, informative, artistic, and — once you’re familiar with the format — easy to move through. I admit it took me a while to figure out how to get into the individual projects (hover over the location of your choice then click the artist’s name). Ideally there should be a connect between the list of water projects in the blue box and the website visitor’s ability to then get into the projects — but they only indicate where in the state those projects are located. Just remember where they’re at, hover your pointer over that location, and you can dive in, so to speak.

That aside, we at Terrain.org think this is a pretty fantastic collaborative effort, and encourage you to check it out, pronto.

Geotourism at Loreto Bay, Baja California Sur, Mexico. Photo by Simmons Buntin.

WASHINGTON (Feb. 4, 2010)—The Second Annual Geotourism Change Summit at  National Geographic headquarters showcased travel leaders from around the globe presenting success stories from both major cities to countrysides, all with the mutual purpose of preserving the character of the world’s special places and furthering sustainable travel.

The  200 attendees on Feb. 2 heard inspiring presentations by the winners of the 2009 Geotourism Challenge, sponsored by National Geographic and Ashoka’s Changemakers, as well as speakers discussing advances in geotourism and other new trends in sustainable travel.

Geotourism is defined as tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place — its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage and the well-being of its residents.

“The forces of globalization are making places look just like the next one.  The Summit   honored those who have not bowed to mass tourism — in fact, they are offering the most authentic experiences possible,”  said Jonathan Tourtellot, director of National Geographic’s Center for Sustainable Destinations.

Award-winners ranged from river.India.com, the world’s first outfitter on the challenging Siang River, that has trained locals to be river guides, to Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto, which took an abandoned brick factory and has turned it into a vital part of the city, with farmer’s markets, summer camps and an ice skating rink.

Tourtellot noted that despite terrorist threats, a shaky world economy and the increasing inconvenience of air travel, people are still traveling, and the number will likely top 1 billion international trips within very few years.

Other news from the Geotourism Summit:

• Economist James Gilmore, coauthor of the books Authenticity: What Customers Really Want and The Experience Economy, provided the keynote address.  He said that the world is moving out of the “service economy” into what he calls an “experience economy” – a desire by consumers for authenticity and memorability. His message to travel entrepreneurs at the Summit: consumers now desire a combination of the “four E’s”:  entertainment, education, esthetic and escapism.

• National Geographic unveiled its Geotourism Impact Map Concept, to be integrated into the Center for Sustainable Destinations website, and a testament to the proliferation of geotourism around the world. It will become a huge aggregate for geotourism practices and existing maps, available to both businesses and travelers.  It will also identify regions where geotourism activities are unknown and need help.

• Details of the 2010 Geotourism Challenge were announced. The theme will be  “Places on the Edge: Saving Coastal Destinations.” Tourtellot noted the world’s coast lines, more than any other geographical feature, are under pressure from tourism.

• Vanessa Healey, vice president, global brand marketing, InterContinental Hotel Group, was a member of the panel devoted to destination stewardship strategies. She shared how the hotel group has fully embraced geotourism, including training their 60,000 employees in how to help visitors “go local.” Information cards on local activities and history are often left at night on guests’ pillows.  Other comments from panelists:  “We must move from Joe Tourist to Joe Citizen;  “follow the locals’ lead”;  “travel is a life value.”

• Geotourism Challenge-winner Alex Khajan, CEO of Nature Air in Costa Rica, conveyed the passion of Summit attendees to preserve the world’s special places.  “We are rebels by nature and want to be catalysts for change,” he said to the group when accepting his award.

The Geotourism Challenge is a global competition of tourism-related projects that promote natural and cultural heritage while improving the well-being of the local people. The 10 finalists honored at the Summit are the best of 610 entries from 81 countries,

“The Geotourism Change Summit offers an opportunity to showcase the true nature of tourism. These 10 innovators demonstrate not only that tourism needs a major rethinking, but also that these pioneers have already done it and are now leading initiatives to help alleviate poverty, conserve natural and cultural assets, and provide enriching experiences for visitors. If we want to know what the future of travel looks like, this is it,” said Charlie Brown, executive director of Ashoka’s Changemakers.

The three Geotourism Challenge winners — Nature Air (Costa Rica), PEPY (Cambodia), and Wikiloc Community Maps (Spain) — were selected by online voting. Each received a $5,000 award at the Summit.  The winners:

• Nature Air, the 100 percent carbon-neutral airline in Costa Rica, offsets 100 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions to encourage reforestation of tropical forests in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula.
• PEPY (“Protect the Earth, Protect Yourself”) is Cambodia’s Educational Volunteer Tourism Program, providing adventure bike tours and on-site volunteer projects, like building rainwater collection units.
• Wikiloc Community Maps in Girona, Spain, created by a software engineer with a passion for travel, is built on maps, photos and video submitted to offer honest impressions about destinations.

The seven Geotourism Challenge runners-up:

• Ger to Ger Foundation, Mongolia, links visitors with genuine nomadic families.
• Evergreen Brick Works of Toronto, Canada, is an adaptive re-use of the heritage structures at the Don Valley Brick Works.
• Virgin Islands Youth Heritage Exchange Farm Excursions, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, focuses on food as the basis of youth identity and education.
• Context Travel, based in Philadelphia, offers walking seminars in major European cities, encouraging sustainable ways to visit urban destinations.
• RiverIndia.com’s Bamboo Eco-Lodge River Trips, Arunachal Pradesh, India, help protect India’s Siang River through locally guided expeditions.
• Trout Point Lodge, Nova Scotia, a Five Green Key-designated nature retreat in Canada, has revitalized backwoods and Acadian French cultural tourism.
• Reality Tour Viagens e Turismo Ltda’s Route of Freedom, Rua Bom Jesus, Brazil, commemorates the African Diaspora in Brazil.

For more details about the innovative work of all 10 finalists, go to www.changemakers.net/geotourismchallenge.

The Multilateral Investment Fund (FOMIN) joined forces with the National Geographic Society and Ashoka through the Changemakers Geotourism Challenge 2009 “Power of Place” competition. The goal was to capture regional creativity and demand as well as provide co-financing opportunities for small geotourism initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean that benefit local communities by improving the competitiveness, social use and sustainability of the tourism sector. The FOMIN received 319 proposals from 24 countries, selecting seven projects for co-financing.

About Ashoka’s Changemakers

Changemakers is an initiative of Ashoka, an organization with over three decades of finding, funding and expanding the work of social entrepreneurs across the globe. It is a global online community of action that connects people to share ideas, inspire and mentor each other, and find and support the best ideas in social innovation. The Changemakers online community builds on this history and expands the Ashoka vision by creating an “Everyone a Changemaker” world through networking, relationship-building and the sourcing of funding opportunities. Through its collaborative competitions and open-source process, Changemakers has created one of the world’s most robust laboratories for launching, refining and scaling ideas for solving the world’s most pressing social problems.

About National Geographic

The National Geographic Society is one of the world’s largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations. Founded in 1888 to “increase and diffuse geographic knowledge,” the Society works to inspire people to care about the planet. It reaches more than 375 million people worldwide each month through its official journal, National Geographic, and other magazines; National Geographic Channel; television documentaries; music; radio; films; books; DVDs; maps; exhibitions; live events; school publishing programs; interactive media; and merchandise. National Geographic has funded more than 9,200 scientific research, conservation and exploration projects and supports an education program promoting geographic literacy. For more information, visit nationalgeographic.com. To learn more about the mission and work of the Center for Sustainable Destinations, visit www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/sustainable/.

About the Multilateral Investment Fund

The Multilateral Investment Fund (FOMIN) is an autonomous fund composed of 38 member countries that is administered by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the main source of multilateral financing for development in Latin America and the Caribbean. Since 1993, the FOMIN has been providing grants, loans and equity investments for innovative projects that promote economic growth and poverty reduction through private sector development, focusing primarily on micro, small and medium enterprises. It is the largest private sector-focused development donor in the region, with an extensive network of over 650 local executing agency partners. Created in 2004, the FOMIN’s sustainable tourism cluster is a group of 27 projects in 19 countries aiming to increase the competitiveness of locally owned micro, small and medium enterprises by mainstreaming sustainability in the tourism sector.

Thanks guys!

To say that Orion magazine is one of the publications (and websites) we can’t live without is an understatement. In mission and content, the magazine continues to serve as a beacon.

New Anthology Offers Personal Stories and Reflections on Global Warming from New and Established Writers and Photographers

Unique collaboration between nonprofit and publisher will make interactive book accessible to millions of Americans for free.

NEW YORK – A new generation of writers and photographers with a personal connection to global warming are taking inspiration from Henry David Thoreau and other legendary environmental authors by publishing their works in a special anthology from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Penguin Classics.

The nonprofit science group and Penguin Classics selected essays and photos by 67 Americans for the new book Thoreau’s Legacy: American Stories about Global Warming. The contributors include scientists, students, grandparents, activists, veterans, journalists, evangelical Christians, artists, and businesspeople who live in 32 states stretching from Alaska to Florida. A foreword on global warming by award-winning novelist, poet and nonfiction author Barbara Kingsolver helps to set the context.

UCS and Penguin Classics will offer the anthology for free online as an interactive book at www.ucsusa.org/americanstories and a forthcoming eBook. A limited edition hardcover also will be available for purchase. The online interactive book will allow the anthology to be instantly shared with friends through emails and on social media sites.

“This partnership was unique in so many ways, but no more so in the reversal of roles we each played,” said Kevin Knobloch, UCS’s president. “Penguin Classics spearheaded efforts to inform the public about the need to speak out about global warming, while we took the editorial and publishing lead.”

“I have great respect for the work of the Union of Concerned Scientists,” said Elda Rotor, editorial director at Penguin Classics, “and it’s been very satisfying for us to have been able to help generate public participation in this project, and we hope their voices will be heard; particularly as Congress debates legislation to reduce the pollution that contributes to global warming.”

Personal Perspectives from Across the Nation

As Ms. Kingsolver writes in her foreword, to find hope in our future “we must radically reconsider the power relationship between humans and our habitat.” The contributors to Thoreau’s Legacy do just that. We see the changes in New England’s natural beauty through the eyes of an observant ninth-grader. We learn how pollution and a warming climate are affecting the Yakama Indians’ way of life. We follow a family whose faith has led them on a journey to protect the planet. We look into the fearsome eyes of an old polar bear crossing the Alaskan ice. And we get a useful, if painful, lesson from a New Orleans native who can never go home again and who worries for other American cities. These are just a few of the many personal accounts about climate change in this collection.

The Genesis of this Anthology

UCS and Penguin Classics teamed up in September 2008 to encourage writers and photographers to submit their personal impressions of global warming — in words or images — for publication in a new book.

Hundreds of bookstores across the country joined the effort by displaying easels and distributing free bookmarks about the project. Both Penguin Classics and UCS featured the project prominently on their Web sites.

The partners received nearly 1,000 submissions from established and aspiring writers and photographers from across the country. They submitted 200- to 500-word personal accounts or photographs that focused on the places they love and want to protect; the animals, plants, people and activities they fear are at risk from a changing climate; and the steps they are taking in their own lives to stem the tide of global warming.

A team of reviewers from Penguin Classics and UCS selected 67 contributions for the anthology. Working with Mixit Productions, they produced an innovative interactive book. In July a limited edition hardcover coffee table book and a downloadable eBook will also be available.

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The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world. UCS combines independent scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions and to secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices.

Penguin Classics is the largest and most comprehensive publisher of classic literature in English in the world, and as a publisher is committed to using paper products from manufacturers that are committed to sustainable paper production techniques, and to in-house conservation and recycling in our daily business practice.

The criteria for judging are Non-Corporate, Brilliant + Dynamic Content, Long-Lasting, Cosmetically Efficient.

We’re delighted to make the cut, and hope that Terrain.org meets all of your criteria, as well!

Visitors simply enter a zip or postal code to search for food that is free of antibiotics and added hormones, and produced by healthy and humane methods that include organic, pasture-raised and heritage. Check it out at http://www.eatwellguide.org/i.php?id=Home.

And today (happy Earth Day, by the way!) the Guide launched The Green Fork, its new blog. Read it at http://blog.eatwellguide.org/.

Both are quite yummy, if you’ll parden the pun.

How does a green girl live without her very own green magazine just for girls? She doesn’t have to!

Positively Green is just the magazine you’ve been looking for; with eco-gossip, fashion and beauty, health and green issues, the coolest green products, the best green travel destinations as well as simple green solutions and tips on cooking green. The magazine will launch in August but pre-subscribers can sign up at a discount AND with every one year subscription, Positively Green will donate $2 to the eco-charity of your choice so you can save the planet while you’re learning how to save the planet. Rachelle Begley, co-star of Living with Ed, graces the cover of our premiere issue.

To subscribe and see a small 32-page preview (the actual magazine will be 112 pages printed on recycled paper and we offset our carbon footprint from shipping, etc) go to http://www.positivelygreen.com.

Look for Simmons’s second entry tomorrow (Tuesday), and then new entries each Tuesday. You can see these and the other interesting city-related blog entries at:

http://americancity.org/updates/category/blog/

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http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/69068

View the full list at http://www.intlistings.com/articles/2007/top-100-architecture-blogs/.

Of course, that makes us feel a bit guilty that we don’t update this blog as often as we should. Ah, shame is always good incentive….