My Community, Our Earth: A Student Project Guide to SustainableDevelopment and Geography

A Student Project Guide to Sustainable Development and Geography

My Community, Our Earth isn't just the title of this book or a catchy slogan. It's an invitation to put real meaning into those words by participating in a project that will bring students from around the world together in a showcase of great ideas and practical applications of sustainable development. The foundation of sustainable development is built on one simple that what you do has consequences not only for your family and friends, but also for your neighbors, and their neighboers, and their neighbors, across state lines and national boundaries--and not only for people, but also for animals, plants, mountains, micro-organisms, forests, glaciers, the oceans and the thin blanket of air that surrounds our planet.

To that end, My Community, Our Earth has established some guidelines for projects and their submission, and a central clearinghouse for both digital and hand-made projects. A number or the most provocative, thoughtful, and important projects will be selected by a panel of educators, scientists, government officials, and professional geographers for public display at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, an international conference to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa in September of 2002.

To help students get started, this resource book provides definitions and descriptions of ten basic themes of sustainable development, written by experts in those fields from the United Nations Environment program; a glossary of geographic terms; five sample projects; and an introduction to spatial reasoning and geographic information systems.