I went to a really interesting lecture last week. It was held by the Meiji Gakuin University Sloth Club. The Sloth Club focuses on living a slow, healthy, simple, and sustainable lifestyle. Slow, like a sloth. It was held at Zenryouji Temple in Totsuka. The club holds events at the temple, which it calls Cafe de la Terra - because you can drink coffee and chat in the temple, just like in a cafe.
The guest speaker for the evening was a man named Carlos Zorrilla. He grows Fair Trade, shade-grown, organic coffee in the cloud forest of Intag, Ecuador in South America. Usually, many trees must be destroyed to make room for a coffee plantation, but when coffee is shade grown, it grows beneath the trees in the forest, so the trees never need to be cut down in order to grow coffee. Since the forest is home to many birds and other animals, shade grown coffee is good for them, too.
Unfortunately, copper - a valuable mineral - was found in the earth below Intag. Mining companies want to buy the land from the villagers of Intag in order to remove the copper from the earth. If this happens, the forest will be destroyed. The people and animals who live there will have to find another place to live. (Of course, this will be easier for the people than it will be for the animals...)
I hope the villagers of Intag can sell a lot of their coffee so that they can continue to say "No." to the mining companies.
You can read about the Sloth Club and find out about future events by checking this link:
http://www.sloth.gr.jp/tsuji/
14 comments:
I heard that nature is becoming to be desert now, because advanced nation(including Japan) destroy for their industry's development. Now many volunteer communities do afforestation. I did it when I was in Girl Scouts. Destroying nature is connected with destroying oureselves, I think.
Wow!! It sounds like a nice event to go. We should be stimulated by others about preserving our environment I think..
Underpriviledge people always suffer the most.Normally,the lives of those people have to be taken first priority.But greedy people don't take care of it. I think I may be one of them although I don't want to think so.
Many trees are cut down to make room for a coffee plantation and rainforest are cleared for cows to live on. We don't think of the consequences.
When I saw the word "The Sloth Club" at first, I have no idea about thier activity, but now I regard thier club because they tell important thing to people.
I hope the villagers in Intag are admitted thier achievement.
Can we buy coffee which was grown in the shade?
Chinami
I didn't know organic coffee in the cloud forest since I read your blog. It's a good approach to deforestation. Recently the number of convenience stores which don't give us disposable wooden chopsticks with packaged meal have been increasing. I've heard "Bring your own chopsticks campaign"(Maihashi, in Japanese). It's also effective to save the forest.
It is good event. I'm very interested in Fair Trade(after I learned from your class last year), so it seems to be very fun. We should think more about nature.
Drinking a cup of coffee at temple is really good and rare experience. In this term, I'm taking many classes about emviroment, so your blog is really interesting for me.
Nice event!
I want to join such events but I always hesitate to go...
Could you take us as class someday??
I'm interested in such kind of lecture. I'm also interested in the problem about world nature.
We have to think our nature more seriously.
The name of meeting is nice.
"Cafe de la Terra".
I like it!!
We have to preserve our environment. really.
I hope villagers can get enough sales to say "NO",too.
its grate!!
Meiji gakuin is famous for Hedborn!
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