#Citi Global

[reasonsforhope]

"With “green corridors” that mimic the natural forest, the Colombian city is driving down temperatures — and could become five degrees cooler over the next few decades.

In the face of a rapidly heating planet, the City of Eternal Spring — nicknamed so thanks to its year-round temperate climate — has found a way to keep its cool.

Previously, Medellín had undergone years of rapid urban expansion, which led to a severe urban heat island effect — raising temperatures in the city to significantly higher than in the surrounding suburban and rural areas. Roads and other concrete infrastructure absorb and maintain the sun’s heat for much longer than green infrastructure.

“Medellín grew at the expense of green spaces and vegetation,” says Pilar Vargas, a forest engineer working for City Hall. “We built and built and built. There wasn’t a lot of thought about the impact on the climate. It became obvious that had to change.”

Efforts began in 2016 under Medellín’s then mayor, Federico Gutiérrez (who, after completing one term in 2019, was re-elected at the end of 2023). The city launched a new approach to its urban development — one that focused on people and plants.

The $16.3 million initiative led to the creation of 30 Green Corridors along the city’s roads and waterways, improving or producing more than 70 hectares of green space, which includes 20 kilometers of shaded routes with cycle lanes and pedestrian paths.

These plant and tree-filled spaces — which connect all sorts of green areas such as the curb strips, squares, parks, vertical gardens, sidewalks, and even some of the seven hills that surround the city — produce fresh, cooling air in the face of urban heat. The corridors are also designed to mimic a natural forest with levels of low, medium and high plants, including native and tropical plants, bamboo grasses and palm trees.

Heat-trapping infrastructure like metro stations and bridges has also been greened as part of the project and government buildings have been adorned with green roofs and vertical gardens to beat the heat. The first of those was installed at Medellín’s City Hall, where nearly 100,000 plants and 12 species span the 1,810 square meter surface.

“It’s like urban acupuncture,” says Paula Zapata, advisor for Medellín at C40 Cities, a global network of about 100 of the world’s leading mayors. “The city is making these small interventions that together act to make a big impact.”

At the launch of the project, 120,000 individual plants and 12,500 trees were added to roads and parks across the city. By 2021, the figure had reached 2.5 million plants and 880,000 trees. Each has been carefully chosen to maximize their impact.

“The technical team thought a lot about the species used. They selected endemic ones that have a functional use,” explains Zapata.

The 72 species of plants and trees selected provide food for wildlife, help biodiversity to spread and fight air pollution. A study, for example, identified Mangifera indica as the best among six plant species found in Medellín at absorbing PM2.5 pollution — particulate matter that can cause asthma, bronchitis and heart disease — and surviving in polluted areas due to its “biochemical and biological mechanisms.”

And the urban planting continues to this day.

The groundwork is carried out by 150 citizen-gardeners like Pineda, who come from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds, with the support of 15 specialized forest engineers. Pineda is now the leader of a team of seven other gardeners who attend to corridors all across the city, shifting depending on the current priorities...

“I’m completely in favor of the corridors,” says [Victoria Perez, another citizen-gardener], who grew up in a poor suburb in the city of 2.5 million people. “It really improves the quality of life here.”

Wilmar Jesus, a 48-year-old Afro-Colombian farmer on his first day of the job, is pleased about the project’s possibilities for his own future. “I want to learn more and become better,” he says. “This gives me the opportunity to advance myself.”

The project’s wider impacts are like a breath of fresh air. Medellín’s temperatures fell by 2°C in the first three years of the program, and officials expect a further decrease of 4 to 5C over the next few decades, even taking into account climate change. In turn, City Hall says this will minimize the need for energy-intensive air conditioning...

In addition, the project has had a significant impact on air pollution. Between 2016 and 2019, the level of PM2.5 fell significantly, and in turn the city’s morbidity rate from acute respiratory infections decreased from 159.8 to 95.3 per 1,000 people [Note: That means the city's rate of people getting sick with lung/throat/respiratory infections.]

There’s also been a 34.6 percent rise in cycling in the city, likely due to the new bike paths built for the project, and biodiversity studies show that wildlife is coming back — one sample of five Green Corridors identified 30 different species of butterfly.

Other cities are already taking note. Bogotá and Barranquilla have adopted similar plans, among other Colombian cities, and last year São Paulo, Brazil, the largest city in South America, began expanding its corridors after launching them in 2022.

“For sure, Green Corridors could work in many other places,” says Zapata."

-via Reasons to Be Cheerful, March 4, 2024

[sad-leon]

did ya boi enter week 3 of @tmntfashioncompetition just to dress up my blorbo in a villain outfit? yes, yes i did ^_^

anyways~

yes, tis me, going up against @thegunnsara and @cokoweee

outfit is just Talulah (Arknights) cosplay :D

also special thanks to @v-albion for hyping me up everytime i shared progress shots <3

[pwh3]

Climate Change March & Rally in New York City, September 17th, 2023.

[ratatatastic]

If you could be anyone of your teammates who would it be and why? Panthers Cut.

[chez-sad]

it’s been one year…

[taviamoth]

🚨 IOF warplanes carried out 3 airstrikes on eastern Rafah in the southern #Gaza Strip amidst heavy firing by IOF helicopters in the area, as well as an airstrike on eastern Gaza City in the northern #Gaza Strip. An IOF drone also targeted a group of citizens north of Rafah, leading to injuries.

Scenes show the aftermath of a massacre carried out by the IOF in the Al-Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City today, which resulted in a number of martyrs and wounded, as Civil Defense crews try to recover casualties. The second video shows the recover of a child martyr from under the rubble of a home bombed by the IOF in Abasan in Khan Younis in the southern #Gaza Strip, while the third shows the IOF's bombing of residential blocks in Al-Zaytoun in Gaza City.

[mapsontheweb]

Global Cities around the world

[fountainpenguin]

Hey, can we talk about how the Founder's Day party was meant to celebrate Dale putting his statue up there with his ancestors' and yet the trivia contest prize was still a hat, not boots or anything themed around him?

Big opportunity for Dale to veer tradition with his own branding because it's HIS party, but he stuck with the hats (which we know have been a prize since Guzman was 9 or 10).

You'd think he could've made money selling a load of boot merch in honor of himself, but for some reason... he was big on keeping the party themed around his family history, not himself. There aren't even Dale facts in the trivia contest.

Also, his command tent is his dad's giant face despite Doug not appearing in the whole series and possibly not being alive.

Something something, I am once again sus about this whole city - including Dale's house - having Doug's Hat themes despite Dale making it explicitly clear he loves boots more than anything in the world.

He doesn't change anything that reminds him of his dad, huh? These are Daddy's Traditions and Daddy's Decorations and we do not make waves against Daddy.

[cyanbeetle]

I love Wonder Woman very much and I love her potential to explore themes of truth’s different meanings and violence against women and what it means for trauma to be passed on or processed in different circumstances but unfortunately all this potential is snubbed by her support of the military vis a vis her solider boyfriend and her origins as a character designed to encourage women to join the war effort. I think if you wanted to give her story real impact and meaning this would have to be completely removed and as such I long for a universe where Etta and the Holliday Girls are an internationally touring band and Steve is their loser friend who manages the finance and Diana follows them all around as the friend who can’t hold an apartment

[workersolidarity]

🇵🇸⚔️🇮🇱 🪖💥 🚨

AL-QASSAM BRIGADES CONDUCT COMPLEX OPERATIONS TARGETING THE ZIONIST ARMY

📹 Scenes from the mujahideen of the Al-Qassam Brigades, belonging to the Hamas resistance movement, target the forces of the Israeli occupation army in a series of four complex operations involving the detonation of several Zionist vehicles at the Al-Amin Muhammad roundabout in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, southwest of Gaza City.

Al-Qassam Brigades fighters set large explosive devices in various areas of the Al-Amin Muhammad roundabout, arranging cameras to view events from several locations to observe the passing of Israeli occupation army vehicles through the junction.

As vehicles pass in convoys, the fighters viewing the events from the tunnel networks below-ground detonate the explosives, while other fighters fire rockets from hidden locations, destroying or damaging a number of tracked and wheeled Zionist vehicles.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[phoenixyfriend]

Suggested Listening: Columbia Protests (as of 4/25/24)

Alright, folks, I've seen a couple different approaches to this situation, and I think there's something to be learned from each of the below. I know some of them have a contested reputation, but all media sources have a bias and I will be including some context on those biases.

The podcasts I'm sharing are:

The Daily (New York Times)

The Take (Al Jazeera)

Democracy Now! (independent radio broadcast)

Global News Podcast (BBC Radio)

It's come up a few times on NPR as well, but not in enough detail for me to include. I will be linking Spotify, but these are all available elsewhere, though official transcripts can take several days.

The Daily - April 25th, 2024: This podcast is a production of The New York Times. The paper is left-leaning, but has a noted bias towards Israel, and has run into trouble on trans issues in the recent past. The podcast is further left, though still more cautiously moderate than something like Democracy Now; the podcast has previously been responsible for fact checks against the more biased NYT opinion pieces.*

Why you should listen to it: This episode provides the most comprehensive timeline to what has happened, in what order, and why certain actions have been taken. It is notably more sympathetic to Columbia University President Shafik than other coverage, though that may just be the natural result of explaining the current political pressures. It is still more sympathetic to the protesters than to her, but I do think this is helpful for establishing a timeline of events. It is not the only one, and I will share another below.

* That infamous article about the alleged systemic sexual violence that Hamas committed on Oct. 7th was put through a fact checker by the podcast team when it came time to do an episode about it, and the inability to substantiate it led to not only the episode being cancelled, but the article itself being (quietly) edited to note that it was not substantiated. The NYT did not handle it well, but I want to make it clear that the podcast team is independent in many respects, and while I've taken issue with some of their episodes, they often have more comprehensive coverage of certain matters.

The Take - April 25th, 2024: This is a podcast from the English-speaking branch of Al Jazeera, a Qatari news organization that, while independent, does receive a certain amount of funding from the Qatari government. By that measure, I do hesitate to place it on a left-right scale due to existing outside the Western political spectrum. As a Middle Eastern, Arab news org, Al Jazeera provides a perspective much closer to the action than others, and one that is generally much more sympathetic to Muslim and Arab voices. It is also, like the others on this list, an award-winning journal. At this time, Al Jazeera is considered one of the most reliable news sources for information on what is happening in Gaza, through their Palestinian correspondents; they have also been banned in Israel as antisemitic propaganda.

I need to make it very clear that I am not in any way denigrating it for having Qatari government funding; the BBC shares many of those factors, just British.

Why you should listen to it: Al Jazeera got a reporter into the student protest encampment in Columbia, and got more direct interviews with some of the students on the ground. This is part two of their coverage of the protests; Part One (April 24th, 2024)provides another perspective of the timeline, which focuses on different factors, generally closer to the events in Columbia than the national factors.

Democracy Now! - April 23rd, 2024: This is a far left/progressive radio broadcast (repackaged for podcast streaming) that has been running since 1996. They often have interviews with people that I haven't necessarily seen other podcasts bring in, and while I would not consider them extreme, I do sometimes find that certain details get left out in pursuit of a more black-and-white narrative.

Why you should listen to it: Cohost Juan González has been in the field of progressive journalism for a very long time, but it's more relevant than ever for this episode: González was one of the original organizers for the 1968 Columbia protests that resulted in one of the largest mass arrests in NYPD history. The 1968 protests were massive, and deeply impactful on a national scale. González's perspective on how this current protest compares to the one he helped organize nearly sixty years ago is a fascinating way to think about the current events.

Global News Podcast - April 25th, 2024: BBC is a very centrist source for journalism, funded primarily by the UK government and advertising. As such, their coverage tends to lean in favor of the current party, though they do not 'toe the party line' as such. They do regularly platform right-wing activists, but they also have correspondents in the Middle East with a more progressive perspective. I would compare them to CNN in the US; ineffective in terms of opinion, and comparatively milquetoast on that front, but capable of getting access to high-level events that smaller networks aren't.

Why you should listen to it: ...honestly, this is just a 'round it out' kind of suggestion, to get an idea of what the international community is thinking of the events at Columbia. I don't think they necessarily contribute much in terms of factual discovery, but it helps with getting the lay of the land.

[murasaki-cha]

Something that will always puzzle me is how these freaking assbutts keep their bangs perfectly styled in the middle of an apocalypse!

Like masters teach me your ways what freaking hairspray do you all use?!?!?!!!!

[f-y-b-k]

[nando161mando]

[USA, New York]

100's of bankers are now outside the Citi HQ, locked out of their workplace.

Climate Activists are standing arm-in-arm with our partners, blockading every single door.

Citibank are the top financier of oil and gas in the Amazon and the second largest funders of all fossil fuels.

These bankers are climate criminals. They deserve not a moment of peace.

[moonsfireflies1993]

Why Panama is on Strike

From afar the Panama protests look like maybe a bunch of hypersensitive eco-fools or maybe like those people who think throwing paint on museums is making any difference instead of going directly to the companies. 

The reality is that Panama is protesting way more than just the “contract”. But, let's start with the contract. 

First, the company can own Panama by owning land property of the Panama state" inside or outside the 17,000 hectares from what was licensed.” This means that the ANATI (the National Authority of Land Administration) HAS to give it to the mining company with no setbacks.

The mine puts danger around 8 countries of Centroamerica with already reported 200 environmental damages

If the company wants to own private lands that are located inside or outside of hectares of the land that was licensed. The company can own the land and pay nothing in exchange, with no questions.

The contract was done with random permits without the proper process of acquisition. 

The contract promises to give Panama a very small quantity of payment to Panama when Panama already spends millions of dollars on the state. This means the company will give Panama less money than what Panama already invests in the country. So we are selling parts of Panama for less than what we already invested. 

Panama's government is allowing a foreign company to NOT pay 70% of their taxes during the first 10 years of copper extraction. 

The community of Donoso (where the mine is located) says they see tons of copper trucks going out every week and at the same time they complain they haven't seen improvements in their community. Ejm: railroads, electricity.

The company threatens with an international lawsuit of millions of dollars if Panama doesn't sign the contract. But if the company fails to comply with the contract, claims it will only pay 70 million dollars (Which is less than what they make extracting copper from the mine).

The contract has a clause that makes an actual law. The contract will reign according to the laws of Panama, except if a law looks inconsistent. In other words, if Panama makes a law that prohibits mining or a law that obliges them to pay taxes, because of their contract it will not apply at all because of that clause. 

The joke was that the president signed the contract in less than 3 hours.

Now, going to the other complaints of the population. Panama already has tons of issues and complaints that are not resolved. These issues have put the whole country on the verge of exploitation.

In September, there were massive protests in several parts of the country because of the sexual assault of the minor Madeleine at the hands of the National Juvenile Assembly. To keep it short. Every year the country makes a national juvenile assembly and this kid was from outside the city representing her district. She ate and drank with each political party and told a classmate to check on her because her water tasted like medicine. The kid hours later was attended by an ambulance with no notification of this to her mom. After this, the kid was behaving erratic and paranoid with a location on her phone that wasn't at the hotel in Panama where all the kids were. The other claims of the event were that all the minors had those dinners with the political parties representatives and on those tables were "Gringos" (foreign European or North American people). Why those kids were sharing tables with gringos in the first place?

When the kid arrived from the trip, she was in a catatonic state and with constant PTSD attacks. There's still no justice or any trace of who were the ones who committed those crimes, and even no accountability by the MEDUCA (The Ministry of Education of Panama).

It is not the first time since such an event happened at the hands of the state. In 2021, we had another state scandal when it was reported that one of the deputies ( Arquesio Arias) of the national assembly raped several women in the indigenous Kuna Yala region. Of course, you can imagine he was dismissed from the charges and when that announcement was published, one of the victims tried to kill herself and got into the ER.

Then there are the deputies who name some of their relatives to the state payroll and don't even work in the state but take tons and tons of money monthly. Meanwhile, the oncologico hospital keeps getting shortages of injections and gloves.

Panama is considered an international hub, one of the richest countries of Latin America and still we struggle with poverty and access to vital things for the population, why? Because people of the state and international companies steal the money, they sometimes build roads and bridges and the costs are higher to the price from the real costs of those constructions, for example, the Odebretch scandal. They charge lots of money, so they can bribe some of the money to both parties (the construction company and the one who is soliciting the construction.

But then again bribing is part of the panamenian culture as we say "juega vivo", bribing the police, the hospital, and the system is all about money and taking advantage of situations as they come even if it is illegal.

Is funny we are all fighting for water, Well my friends here where I am with the famous "Panama Canal" that provides us with most of our income as a nation while having lots of rivers and geographically we are surrounded by both the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean, having all of that I get shortages and cuts of water for more than 6 times a month.

This week, the IDAAN (the company that provides water to the whole nation), has been making shortages all week. My family and I have been saving water tanks each day because of the shortages. I keep joking internally that I have a toxic relationship with the IDAAN since we kind of got used to this and the irony is that while the entire country struggles with the shortages they still sign a contract that will even affect the water flow to the Panama Canal in the long term.

The protests are not just because of the damage to nature is that the government sold us to a foreign Canadian company that has shareholders from the US and China to exploit us leaving us with nothing.

My biggest worry right now is that our current president is sick, the whole country knows he has cancer and during his last speeches, he has been looking like a corpse with now rumours of him leaving the country to intern himself to a hospital in Houston Texas. If he dies then probably the vice president has to take charge, but he has been missing since the protests and people HATE him. So yeah, Panama is on the brink of chaos and if that happens .. well

[pensat-i-fet]

Babies ❤️