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                                             Urban Development – Solid Waste Management




   Ask a mayor of a developing country city about his or her most pressing problems, and solid waste management generally will be high on the list. For many cities, solid waste management is their single largest budget item and largest employer.

   It is also a critical matter of public health, environmental quality, quality of life, and economic development. A city that cannot effectively manage its waste is rarely able to manage more complex services such as health, education or transportation. And no one wants to live in a city surrounded by garbage.

   As the world urbanizes, the situation is becoming more acute. More people mean more garbage, especially in fastgrowing cities where the bulk of waste is generated. We estimate that cities currently generate roughly 1.3 billion tonnes of solid waste per year; with current urbanization trends, this figure will grow to 2.2 billion tonnes per year by 2025 – an increase of 70 percent.

   Managing waste will also become more expensive. Expenditures that today total $205 billion will grow to $375 billion. The cost impacts will be most severe in low income countries already struggling to meet basic social and infrastructure needs, particularly for their poorest residents.

       Because it is such a major issue, waste management also represents a great opportunity for cities. Managed well, solid waste management practices can reduce greenhouse gas emission levels in a city, including short-lived climate pollutants that are far more potent than carbon dioxide. A city's ability to keep solid waste out of drainage ditches can also influence whether a neighborhood floods after a heavy storm.

                                                                                                                         (www.worldbank.org. Adaptado.)

Sebastião Salgado’s blue eyes have seen a bit of everything in this world - and this might not even be an exaggeration. For the past eight years in particular, the 69­year­old Brazilian photographer has travelled to more than 30 isolated regions of the world, collecting images of dozens of remote tribes, endangered animals and unusual landscapes.

The Genesis project is a singular photographic journey that began in 2004 and ended in 2012, at a cost of one million Euros a year. The result will be shown in magazines, books, a documentary by Wim Wenders and a series of exhibitions around the world, each displaying some 250 black­and­white photos.

The first exhibition will open in London on April 11, with former Brazilian President Lula - Salgado’s long­time friend - as special guest. “We want to create a little movement around these photos to provoke a debate on what we need to preserve,” he says. Salgado defends environmental causes through his organization, Instituto Terra. Even after travelling to so many exotic places, Salgado, now living in Paris, still takes vacations in Brazil. Here are excerpts from a conversation Salgado had with Folha, with new details about his travels, photographic techniques and new environmental projects.

• Coldest trip I visited the Nenets, in the Yamal peninsula, in northern Siberia, Russia. They are a nomadic tribe who raise reindeer in extreme Arctic conditions. When I went there it was spring and weather ranged between ­35ºC and ­45ºC. I didn’t wash myself for 45 days. They don’t take baths because there is no water. The only way to get water is to break off a piece of ice and warm it in a pot.

• Frozen equipment I used a Canon, an EOS1 Mark III, a very powerful machine. The problem was the batteries. In the Siberian temperatures, they quickly lost power. On average, I take 2,500 shots per battery, but this time I could only take 300­400 photos before the battery stopped working. I would put it inside my clothes, my assistant would give me another one, I would take 300 more pictures and, when that battery ran out energy, I would take out the other one and it would work again.

• Going digital for the first time I started Genesis with film and changed to digital. The airport X­Ray scanners degrade the quality of film, and so I decided to change to digital and was quite surprised. Quality was better than the one I had with negatives in medium format. I turned off the screen on the back of the camera, and used my camera as I have always done. When I came back to Paris, I printed contact sheets and edited the photos using a magnifying glass, because I don’t know how to do it in the computer.

• Stone Ages I met tribes that are still living in the Stone Ages, with working tools such as stone hammers. There were clans of about 10 people living in treetops. They had already seen white people before. They looked towards the direction I had come from and the chief asked me whether I was part of the white people clan that usually came from that direction. Because, for them, the world is all made of clans

• Brazilian arrows I met the Zo’e tribe, in Brazil, who were first discovered 15 years ago and live in a state of total purity. You see the guy working with an arrow. He warms it, put some weight on it, a straight feather if he wants a quicker arrow, a rounder one to have it slower. It is the same science as for rockets. And he’s got the same problem as in Cape Canaveral, to recover his rockets. If his ballistic calculations are wrong, he loses his arrow. He takes only 10 arrows with him when he goes hunting, no more than that

• Activist or photographer? Photography is my life. When I am taking photos, I am in a deep trance. When I have my camera and am travelling with the Nenets, it’s my life, morning to night. I have taken incredible photos, but my life is also the environment and Instituto Terra.

In Higher Education, a Focus on Technology

By STEVE LOHR
The education gap facing the nation’s work force is evident in the numbers. Most new jobs will require more than a high school education, yet fewer than half of Americans under 30 have a (2) postsecondary degree of any kind. Recent state budget cuts, education experts agree, promise to make closing that gap even more difcult. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and four nonproft education organizations are beginning an ambitious initiative to address that challenge by accelerating the development and use of online learning tools. An initial $20 million round of money, from the Gates Foundation, will be for postsecondary online courses, particularly ones tailored for community colleges and low-income young people. Another round of grants, for high school programs, is scheduled for next year.

Just how efective technology can be in improving education - by making students more efective, more engaged learners - is a subject of debate. To date, education research shows that good teachers matter a lot, class size may be less important than once thought and nothing improves student performance as much as one-on-one human tutoring. If technology is well designed, experts say, it can help tailor the learning experience to individual students, facilitate student- teacher collaboration, and assist teachers in monitoring student performance each day and in quickly fne-tuning lessons. The potential benefts of technology are greater as students become older, more independent learners. Making that point, Mr. Gates said in an interview that for children from kindergarten to about ffth grade “the idea that you stick them in front of a computer is (3) ludicrous.”

(1)
higher education: educação superior.
(2)
postsecondary: termo que se refere aos cursos feitos após o high school ou, no modelo educacional brasileiro, o Ensino Médio.
(3)
ludicrous: ridícula, absurda.

How can consumers find out if a corporation is “greenwashing” environmentally unsavory practices?