YPD Japan on the move!

Although there are a few members of YPD Japan, we are motivated enough to work together! we bought handicrafts directly from villages of Thailand, some are made by YPD Chiangmai Team. We sold them in Japan to support YPD Chiangmai and YPD Karen. Jean-Joseph(YPD France) living in Japan came help YPD Japan. Everytime we do something, we meet young people to help us. This is the YPD work!
-Mako Higasayama, YPD International Team

Green WYD dialogues with Western MPs

Vince, Kins and Charles went to the Victoria Parliament Building to dialogue with the Western Members of the Parliament as a way of profiling the Green World Youth Day program. Water for Life as the theme of the program was received with much enthusiasm by the MPs and encouraged the holding of this international program at the Western Region.

The said meeting was facilitated by Mr. Thelmo Languillier, MP for Derrimut District. Mr. Languillier was once a student leader in his time at the Victoria University.

The Concert

We did not draw millions of crowds, there were no screaming fans nor hyped up paparazzis. It was a tame concert to the standards of many. It was a parish concert attended by the locals and the performers were from all over Melbourne.

EARTH POWER CONCERT

LET'S HAVE FUN TONIGHT!

CALLING ALL INTERESTED AND COOL PEOPLE IN MELBOURNE! THIS IS OUR LAST CALL TO REMIND YOU OF OUR CONCERT TONIGHT. DOORS OPEN AT 7 PM AND TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE AT THE GATE AT $10.

SHARE YOUR FRIDAY NIGHT FUN WITH THE GREEN WORLD YOUTH DAY ORGANISERS BY SUPPORTING THEIR FUNDRAISER.

VENUE: HOLY EUCHARIST PARISH HALL, 1 A OLEANDER DRIVE, ST ALBANS

SEE YOU THERE!

THE EVENT IS CARBON NEUTRALISED BY AN ANGEL.
THANKS MARIA!

YPD parties for the earth

The Young People for Development believes in sustainable growth wherein the environment is taken into consideration. Days before the Earthday in April, YPD hosted a party in honor of MOTHER EARTH. Volunteers and friends for the YPD came. The event was carbon neutral thanks to the support of some friends.

Food was simple and candles were used in some areas to minimize the carbon impact.

More importantly, there was fun and bonding for all those who were there.

More evidence of one metre sea rise this century

New Scientist quotes Svetlana Jevrejeva of the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, UK, who says a new, more accurate reconstruction of sea levels over the past 2000 years suggests that the prediction of a an 18-59 centimetre rise by 2100 made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is wildly inaccurate.

New predictions of sea level rises that for the first time takes into account ice dynamics predict that seas will be from 0.8-1.5 metres higher by next century.

At a European Geosciences Union conference in Vienna, Austria, this week, researchers including Jevrejeva said in a statement that the pace at which sea levels are rising is accelerating.

"For the past 2,000 years, the sea level was very stable," Jevrejeva said, explaining that they rose just 2 cm in the 18th century, 6 cm in the 19th century and a greater 19 cm last century.

"It seems that rapid rise in the 20th century is from melting ice sheets," she adds.

"If [the sea level] rises by one metre, 72 million Chinese people will be displaced, and 10 percent of the Vietnamese population," she concluded.

And climate change expert Nicholas Stern says he under-estimated the threat from global warming in a major report 18 months ago when he compared the economic risk to the Great Depression of the 1930s, according to The Age.

Latest climate science showed global emissions of planet-heating gases were rising faster and upsetting the climate more than previously thought, Stern said in a Reuters interview.

For example, evidence was growing that the planet's oceans - an important "sink" - were increasingly saturated and couldn't absorb as much as previously of the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2), Stern told reporters.

China gets greener

The BBC reports that there are now over 2000 environmental NGOs, according to official Chinese figures.

But another unofficial study says there are up to two million informal groups of students, farmers or other activists.

Several campaigns have received positive coverage in the state-controlled media, the BBC says.

However, green groups are still closely watched by the government.

An activist told the BBC that intelligence agents sometimes pose as green volunteers to keep an eye on what's going on.

Zhang Jingjing and her boss, Wang Canfa successfully assisted residents of a village in Fujian Province successfully sue a factory for compensation.

The factory was poisoning local crops with chromium.

But Ms Zhang sees limits to China's "green political space" because of the clout polluters have with local governments and judges.

"We have no independent judiciary, that is our problem," she says.

Because local officials and judges often side with polluters, the greens see central government as their ally. It's an internal power struggle in China that outsiders rarely see.

Others blame the West because much of the pollution is actually caused by factories which make products for export. The waste generated by "Made in China" products is left for Chinese people to deal with.