Earth Protect Blog

Charter of Responsibilities
Let’s Take Care of the Planet
We, the young people of the world, and the delegates of this International Conference, invite you to share the responsibility to take care of the Planet.
This Charter, created by the gathering of 53 countries, represents the responsibilities and actions coming from different nations with diverse cultures, languages and societies.
We are all aware of the environmental challenges that our Planet faces. Some people say that money is the solution; some say that intelligence is. Money does not matter when more than 400 boys and girls get together to take care of their home. A home that has been damaged over time, with an unstable and unsure future.
If we want to protect ourselves from environmental changes, we need to take on these actions and responsibilities ourselves.
If not now, then when? If not us, then who?
Responsibilities and actions
1. Raise awareness and inform people about the efficient and responsible uses of water, energy, and biological and mineral resources, improving our own consumption habits as well as everyone else’s.
Reduce energy consumption by switching off electric appliances when they are not in use, using eco-friendly transportation, and using renewable energies as an alternative to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Stimulate water saving and re-use whenever possible, raising awareness on the responsible use of water through publicity campaigns, student publications and eco-clubs.
2. Reduce, in order to stop, the pollution of water with support and action from governments, companies, farmers and others.
Raise awareness of water contamination through available means of communication in an interactive and dynamic way, adapting the communication to the realities and the context of each community.
Plant trees on riverbanks to protect rivers, counting upon the support of the government, NGOs, community organizations and companies and put up signs against littering.
3. Inform and encourage people to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, through the use of all renewable resources that are accessible and available, counting upon support from the government, when possible, taking actions that we can all put into practice.
Hold public events to encourage the use of renewable energies, avoiding increasing pollution and climate change, fighting for political and financial support.
Organize creative, practical, educational and eco-efficient activities relating to the appropriate use of clean and renewable energies in each of our communities in order to spread knowledge about contamination and sustainable alternatives.
Pressure governments towards the establishment of a progressive tax directly related to the pollution emitted by different companies.
4. Stimulate sustainable agriculture with conscious and less harmful social and environmental impacts, without pesticides and GMOs, promoting rural education in order to put into practice new and more efficient ways of using resources, assuring food security, and, in some countries, avoiding forest fires during the preparation of the fields.
To disseminate information about the consequences of using agricultural chemicals and genetically modified products and offer alternatives to producers and consumers, informing them about the importance of organic agriculture and consuming organic products.
To organize seminars and public campaigns for educating children about technologies in agriculture and their respective environmental impacts.
To campaign for equal and rational distribution of food resources, so that it is possible to guarantee food security and eradicate extreme poverty.
To consume local food products, stimulating the economy without social exploitation.
5. Care for the environment, strengthening and deepening educational projects, investing in youth participation and their decision-making abilities, informing them through environmental education, demanding that their participation and decision making are respected, in order to transform communities and schools into learning communities.
To form student groups involved with the environment that will implement environmental education in schools by means of environmental projects, involving the mass media, the universities and all the community.
To stay constantly up to date regarding the social-environmental situation of our Planet so we can educate by our own example and implement concrete actions that will put our ideology into practice, and thus form a chain without boundaries to transmit the environmental message.
To create large youth organizations that can organize ways of pressuring the government, businesses and others through demonstrations, petitions, raising awareness and political engagement.
To strengthen and deepen educational projects through media, technologies, workshops and a series of hands-on activities in educational centers and outdoor education.
6. Create ecological groups, in schools and communities, that protect, preserve and value biodiversity, caring for ecosystems so as to contribute to the sustainability of biospheres, reducing waste and using natural resources in a responsible manner.
To cooperate and support youth organizations committed to work together to pressure the government; to create informative campaigns, such as demonstrations, petitions, awareness campaigns, conferences and social and virtual webs.
To form clubs and groups of students in all the schools of the world to encourage environmental education through educational games, films, speeches, and theatre for responsible uses of natural resources.
7. Foster responsible consumption and the 5Rs policy (reflect, refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle) through informative advertising, adapted to everyday life and thus constituting sustainable societies and lifestyles.
To create non-governmental organizations for the environment that encourage practices which apply the 5 R’s and foster ecology centers, mobilization, publicity and barter fairs.
To use communication like social networking websites and blogs so other people can post their ideas, video sharing, publications, songs and more to create environmental networks that perform ecological activities, strengthening environmental education in all people.
To boycott products that are harmful to the environment or do not respect the fundamental liberties of human beings.
To promote hands-on interactive learning that will teach people about the environment while at the same time having fun.
8. Reduce the use of polluting energies, becoming aware and mobilizing society regarding the use of ecological means of transportation, respecting the changes that will come with new behaviors.
To invite people through communication media, didactic and artistic workshops, and through ongoing dialogue, to comprehend the negative effects of carbon gases emitted by our actions, using renewable energies and alternative transportation, such as bicycles, scooters, skateboards and skates.
To put pressure on our governments to convert to clean technologies.
To create and disseminate websites to help drivers organize themselves to take other people in their cars when going to the same place (carpooling).
To encourage the people through mass media to use filters in cars, emphasizing the damage of carbon emissions.
Start promoting the Day Without Cars, pressuring the government to tax whoever uses cars, and then provide long term continuity through subsidies for purchase of ecological cars and public transit.
Co-production:
Production:
9. Implement environmental perspectives and values, developing the people’s point of view in order to encourage an active citizenship.
Develop an ecological culture through educommunication and arts practices to encourage new sustainable ideas.
To create information campaigns using all means of communication, like newspapers, radio, TV, internet, to encourage people through practical examples to take a positive attitude and to use environmentally friendly products.
Today, young people and adults from all over the world, present at this Conference, recognize and accept that we are now and we will always be responsible for what happens to our beloved Earth.
We come from different countries and diverse cultures, and even though we are separated by oceans and continents, we are all one, united by one goal: to take care of the Planet!
To accomplish this, we need my help, your help, help from everyone. We need to act now and start from our houses, our schools, because by taking care of ourselves, we take care of all of humanity and prove that humans are not what they say but what they do.
Join us!
Sign the Charter at http://www.letstakecareoftheplanet.net
Brasilia, June 5-10th 2010