GSBI at Planet Under Pressure (PUP) 2012 — Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative

Planet Under Pressure (PUP) 2012

Day 1 - Sunday:
The entire GSBI team will be arriving in London throughout the week in preparation for our inaugural workshop, Friday March 30th| 9am-3pm. Today we sat down to discuss the week's schedule- what talks we need to see, who we need to meet and the goals we want to accomplish. There are some big hitters at PuP 2012 and our goal is to bring awareness to GSBI.

Tonight at the PUP reception, the keynote speaker, Sir Bob Watson, spoke of our ‘imperative to act’, discussing the steps needed to make the world a sustainable place. Already we have surpassed a turning point- the world will be warming through 2030 and numerous species have gone extinct. Our goal now is to prevent further warming and environmental destruction in the following decades. Sir Watson spoke of education, research and development, and training as means to prevent further loss of biodiversity. Other actions needed include: education of children and elderly, empowering of women, improved healthcare for children and elderly and contraception for all. Surrounding all these actions we need improved economics, using GDP as a measure of economics health is not sufficient. Implementation of Sustainable Economics, going beyond GDP, is the next step. Sir Watson, finished, saying ‘the age of innocence is over’... ‘the time to act was 20 years ago’... ‘now governments must be held accountable’.

Ominous words to begin out week.

Shunichi Samihima of the Asahi Glass Foundation followed the speaker, taking a moment to talk about Rio+20, then inviting us to the reception.

Reception run-ins: Bonding with Peter Raven over ‘dirt bugs and worms’ (colloquialisms for microbes and nematodes). Tom Lovejoy, Gina Adams, Kathy Galvin, Steve Running, Hal Mooney all seemed excited about the GSBI prospects.

Dinner- Win for Kentucky!