It's official, the Canigou Massif in the Eastern Pyrenees has just achieved the label 'French Grand Site'.
Pic Canigou
It is the first site designated as such in the Pyrenees. The site includes Pic Canigou the highest point in the site at 2 874m/9 133 feet and the sacred mountain of the Catalans. It also includes the St Martin de Canigou Abbey, the Cortalets and Marialles Refuges and 3 nature reserves.
The Canigou Massif is rich in wildlife like these Isard.
To earn the French Grand Site label from the Ministry for Ecology and Sustainable
Development, the site must have implemented a programme of conservation, management and development that follows sustainable development principles.
The Grand Site de France logo.
Pyrenees Mountain Adventure plans to add a 7 night walking holiday in the Canigou Massif, including an ascent of Pic canigou, to its existing range of summer walking holidays for autumn 2012. Have a look at the PMA website for more information.
Three videos from the Patagonia that ask some important questions that will hopefully get you thinking. As the founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, says 'Lead an examined life'. Reflection is the key!
What's Done in Our Name? Social Responsibility and the Patagonia Supply Chain
21 Apr 2009. Patagonia customers tell us their desire for fair working conditions for the people who build their product; experts at universities and NGOs outline the challenges inherent in global production; and Patagonias social-responsibility and production staff talk about the tightrope walk of doing the right thing yet working in a competitive world.
What Comes Next? Environmental Responsibility and the Patagonia Supply Chain
|2 Oct 2009. Patagonia asks the experts: What are the greatest threats now facing the environment? Is sustainability a real and achievable goal? Can business ever move beyond sustainability - leaving the planet better than we found it? How do we need to change business - and our behavior - to start to substantially lighten our footprint? We get some surprising and contradictory answers.
What Is Quality for Our Time? Responsible Business and the Patagonia Supply Chain
28 May 2010. Can a good product be made in a bad factory? We talk to business people and teachers about a contemporary definition of quality that includes social and environmental responsibility and every process involved in the creation of a product.
Business As Unusual was the title of a book by Anita Roddick a British businesswoman, human rights activist and environmental campaigner. She was best known as the founder of The Body Shop, a cosmetics company producing and retailing beauty products that shaped ethical consumerism.
The 2011 Sustainable Development Week is coming to an end in France. Across the country, towns have showcased sustainable development principals and practices.
The most often-quoted definition of sustainable development is that adopted by the Brundtland Commission in 1987: development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
Essentially development that is sustainable is an allocation of resources that aims to meet human needs now, while minimising damage to the environment, so that these needs can be met also in the future. For example, taking too many of a particular fish out of the sea - ‘over fishing’ - will certainly meet consumer needs at present. However, if fish stocks are unable to recover and that particular fish disappears, then in the future, meeting human needs will be compromised. But this would never happen in real life would it?
The Collpase of Atlantic Cod Stocks: East Coast of Newfoundland
The graphic shows the collapse of Atlantic cod stocks off the East Coast of Newfoundland in 1992. From the late 1950s, offshore bottom trawlers began exploiting the deeper part of the stock, leading to a large catch increase BUT a strong decline in the underlying biomass. Internationally agreed quotas in the early 1970s and, following the declaration by Canada of an Exclusive Fishing Zone in 1977, national quota systems ultimately failed to arrest and reverse the decline. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Northern_Cod_Fishery Sustainable development tries to balance 2 major problems : the Earth has a carrying capacity that is limited and humankind’s wants are unlimited. It is economic growth that is in harmony with ecological support systems. For Pyrenees Mountain Adventure, Sustainable Development is a core principal. Every time there is a business operating decision to be made, that option which creates the minimum negative impact on the environment is chosen. In every area of the business, always! If the minimum impact option cannot be chosen immediately, it becomes a goal to attain in the future. How is Pyrenees Mountain Adventure attempting to be as sustainable as possible? The 7 night summer walking holiday that PMA offers uses an eco – friendly trail side lodge with solar panels to generate electricity and heat water. A £100 cash back is given to those clients arriving by train rather than flying. Several walks have been designed to start and finish at the accommodation to minimise client transfer time. Where a client transfer is required, public transport is preferred.
General day to day operating decisions where the minimum impact option has been chosen include office hardware, office consumables, business travel, business banking and even the walking kit I use (see Blog article: Top 10 Kit Manufacturers.) The linear ‘Take – Make – Dispose’ system, which depletes natural resources and generates waste, is deeply flawed and can be productively replaced by a restorative model in which waste does not exist as such but is only food for the next cycle - Ellen MacArthur (round-the-world yachtswoman)http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/
It's not a choice between our environment and our economy; it's a choice between prosperity and decline - President Barack Obama (2009)
