Ensure environmental
Sustainability
William Tate
1 Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
2. Achieve universal primary education.
3. Promote gender equality and empower women.
4. Reduce child mortality.
5. Improve maternal health.
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
7. Ensure environmental sustainability.
8. Develop a global partnership for
development.
MDG 7 [from
the UN]
Integrate the principles of
sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources.
Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to
safe drinking water.
Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum
dwellers, by 2020.
MDG 7 for
Trinity
We live in one of the most sublime valleys anywhere in the world. This Shenandoah, this Daughter-of-the-Stars,
is a graceful landscape, gentle of travel, the bearer of awe. It is a landscape of legacy. It is one that demands stewardship of
beauty, resources, history, and memory.
However, the Shenandoah Valley is disappearing as we speak. As one who drives up and down the I-81
corridor, I have seen many barns go down, farmland disappear, more offered up
for sale. The rate is
accelerating. First you see the
advertisement-LAND FOR SALE, then the huge concrete pipes are delivered, then
the bulldozers come, and then everything is plowed. And we are not exactly building Monticello's on the 'new land'. The Shenandoah Valley I see has become a
suburb of distribution centers, which augment and infest more truck
traffic. It is a never-ending cycle.
Who is responsible for management of the land?
What is the difference in management and stewardship?
How do we stop rampant development?
Or do we let it continue?
Is erosion/depletion inevitable?
How do we live MDG 7 right here in our own valley?
How do we reverse the loss of environmental resources?
If we let it go, it is gone for good.
How do we fight for it?
What will be our legacy? How do
we become stewards of the land?
We must fight the development, the distribution centers, the land use
policies. A strong advocate we have is
the Valley Conservation Council. This is where the Trinity MDG 7 donations
will go in the month of April. They
have experience in the battle. We need
their help, and we need to help them; this is good steerage of our
resources. I further encourage joining
the VCC, taking on the politics, taking on the conservation of our Virginia
landscape, fighting the developer-ravagers, saving our valley.
I must stress the urgency of the times. The Shenandoah Valley is losing ground. We have already lost much that is irreplaceable.
The choice is yours. Do you
want to live in the Shenandoah Valley?
Or do you want to live in the next-NOVA?
My dears, it is a choice between Paradise and Hell.
And may I assure you, if we don't work for Paradise, Hell is coming.
VALLEY
CONSERVATION COUNCIL
Our
organization is dedicated to protecting the agricultural, natural, and cultural
resources of the Shenandoah Valley region in Virginia through private action
and public planning. We believe that to protect the Valley’s natural resources
we must provide solutions that foster the continued health of the region's
economy and quality of life, while solving problems presented by the area's
rapid population growth and sprawling suburban development patterns.
WENDELL
BERRY, Kentucky farmer-poet
All creatures live by God's spirit, portioned out to them, and breathe
His breath. To "lay up . . .
treasures in heaven," then, cannot mean to be spiritual at the earth's
expense, or to despise or condemn the earth for the sake of heaven. It means exactly the opposite: do not desecrate or depreciate these gifts,
which take part with us in the being of God, by turning them into worldly
"treasure"; do not reduce life to money or to any other mere
quantity.