The Expedition: Blue Planet will chronicle the interconnectivity of water. A key aspect of the project will be its ability to show how individual stories are part of the larger, universal story of an interdependent, global water ecosystem. In this way, we will create a new vision for what it means to live in a world where water is our most precious resource, and a plan for what we must do to protect it.
We live on a Water Planet. It is a unique place in that it is the only planet we know of that supports life. And that life is nurtured and sustained by water.
Vital to all life on Earth, water moves through our world in a constant state of flux. Cycling endlessly through ecosystems, flowing under the poles and through the atmosphere, changing states, laying waste to entire regions or achieving perfection in the shape of a single snowflake — water is a mystery and a miracle, a source of conflict and a cause for celebration, a blessing and, in its absence, a curse.
The story of our Water Planet has never been more crucial and relevant than it is today. In an era of climate change, desertification, sea level rise, acid rain, drought, falling water tables, dead zones, and widespread pollution, water quality and quantity is becoming more critical by the minute. The global forces of extraction and expansion are jeopardizing the very substance that supports life on our planet.
It’s always exciting for me to meet people who are making change happen. I have met them in countries the world over and find that, invariably, they are the ones that inspire me and give me energy to continue working together towards the dream of a planet protected. They are, for me, the heroes of our common future.
As Paul Hawken says, “A sustainable society will only come about through the accumulated actions of billions of eager participants.” Sounds like a challenge right? But we have to start somewhere - with you, me, the people we know. Never doubt that by reaching out and inspiring change in our own communities, we can create a chain reaction that can absolutely change the world.
Having said that, I am so excited to introduce you to a friend that EarthEcho met this summer while we were working with VANS Warped Tour on their Warped Eco-Initiatives. This friend is making change happen and has inspired us with his passion and dedication to working to help protect our planet.
David McWane is the lead singer of Big D and the Kids Table and is sharing his earthecho with young people all over the world, inspiring them to become change agents themselves.
We wanted you to meet him and hear him talk about what he is doing. It’s amazing.
And you can expect that he will be sending more from the road as he tours around the country so stay tuned!
Here’s what David has to say:
First Step
My transformation from one who believed that solving the world’s environmental problems was a good idea to one who is proactive, was simple. I walked out of a movie theater in Harvard Square, a nice Saturday night in Boston, after seeing Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Once my feet hit the light New England snow, I paused. The information from the movie caught up to me, enveloped me. And I could feel things that I held to be important in my life begin to shift.
I looked up at the falling snow. I adjusted my hat so the streetlamp was blocked. Saturday night people chatted around me and I could smell popcorn mixed with exhaust from cars stopped at a red light. The snowflakes, hued red, floated down. I thought about how it was time for me to act. And about all the venues of my life that I could use to provide a fresh approach to the environmental issue. I thought about doing what I’ve always believed I would do, become someone I was proud of. I smiled. My shoulders lifted. And I knew my next step would be my first step in doing my part to help save this beautiful world. I glanced at the blinking crosswalk light, and as my cold breath floated up and the traffic light on JFK Street turned green, I took that first step.
Like everyone inspired by this global problem, I wasn’t sure what to do. I thought, “What did Al Gore do for me?” He educated me. So I will start with that – educating. If Al Gore was able to get me to stand up for environmental conservation, then, with the right knowledge, I too can make someone stand up.
To catch you up on who I am, my name is David McWane, I am the vocalist in the band BIG D AND THE KIDS TABLE. We just finished 2 months on a summer music festival called VANS Warped Tour; the popular summer music festival that averages 10 to 15 thousand kids a day. Looking back on my first thoughts of becoming proactive, I remember standing crammed with other Bostonians on the Green Line subway heading outbound a month before the VANS Warped Tour. I was on my way to a band rehearsal. As we commuters swayed and bumped about, I thought about how I needed to do more with my time on the Tour than just entertain people. I decided that I would use those two months to educate as many people – kids — as I could about how they can help prevent global warming and get involved in environmental issues. That summer I would be an educator.
Large stage banners were designed for Climate Emergency and Save Darfur and we displayed them at every concert. T-shirts, stickers, pins and patches that combined our band name with pro environment information were produced and sold or given out. Recycling competitions were held. Each day on stage I would give a speech, explaining to the kids that it takes more than being concerned about the environment to make any sort of change. I told them to “try out their voice“, and see if something resonated inside them.
I looked out at the high-energy crowd day after day and saw young kids wide-eyed and bursting with excitement. Each day they would run to our merchandise tent with bags filled with discarded bottles and cans. And we would talk for a while. I loved how the kids rattled on about their ideas and opinions faster than even they could keep up with. They would also say how exciting it was to see me take a position on environmental issues. We talked, we brainstormed, we planned; each kid leaving with a smile, an autograph, new information and, most importantly, motivation.
Like wildfire, non-profits on the tour would also come talk with me — at our tent, in the lunch line, after a concert. Rob from Skate4Cancer and I became friends designing a Big D Skate Deck for them to use. Aileen from Shirts For A Cure and I designed a BIG D T-shirt for them to sell, with the proceeds donated to cancer research. Murphy, a great guy from the Rainforest Action Network, found me, and I handed out their pamphlets with every autograph signed. I still do.
My goal was to come up with ideas on how to help kids take their first step for the environment. I also wanted to make it easy for them. Kids are often told to contact their representatives. But not all kids know how to do that. So I found websites that help them track down their congressman and senator. We printed these web addresses on stickers with the band name, hoping that school notebooks, guitars and cars would become backboards for this information. But the educating didn’t stop with the kids. We researched and rented a bio-diesel bus for our tour as an example to other bands. Now, I am not telling you all this so I can sound like a swell guy. It’s to let you know about my first step, with the hope that you will take your first step.
Today is January 9th and I have just come off our own headlining 2-month tour. What I found from the people I talked to last summer is inspirational. From state to state and the Canadian provinces, kids dashed up to me, talking a mile a minute with their hands flailing. They told me what they have done in their local communities — new leaders blossoming, excited, with a proactive future ahead of them.
Lora and Emma
Lora and Emma, for example, students from Cleveland, Ohio, caught up with me carrying the first issue of Green Light. Green Light is a zine the two girls write, print, and distribute for free. A “zine”, for those who don’t know, is a do-it-yourself pre-magazine. Kids design these zines on regular 8 ½ by 11 paper, photocopy them (often a sneaky pillage from their parent’s work), fold them, staple them in book form and hand them out to anyone they can find to let them know what they believe is imperative and eye opening information.
On a side note - many people think that the lessons of our forefathers on the foundations of democracy are fading. But I think that kids like Lora and Emma with their Green Light zine, show that those lessons are alive and well. Maybe, without knowing it, these two young girls are keeping the fire of the printed word alive, educating people to the power of democracy and freedom of the press.
Lora and Emma’s Green Light Zine
City after city, and even country after country, kids are contacting me to tell me about their “first steps”. Each story is impressive, wonderful, and enough to make anyone proud of our youth. John Davis from Georgia found me in a dark Atlanta nightclub. He had a video camera and a list of questions. His “first step” was to ask me about the environment for his documentary project in his video production class. John was excited, committed. And I could tell that that moment was one of many on his quest to do what he can to help global warming and environmental conservation.
And the examples go on. I talk every night to kids who have taken their “first steps”. And I speak to up to a 1,000 kids a night during our concerts, who I hope will take their first step and inform more kids, who will then take their first step, and… Well, you understand.
John Davis
My goal with my demographic of kids is to instill positive peer pressure for the environment. I have noticed that friends have no problems correcting friends in their environmental habits. I have also seen that most people appreciate being educated. It can lead to questions and then a discussion on other environmental issues. I have found that kids listen to my words and opinions more than, say, their parents, teachers or even the President. Hopefully, my and other musicians’ and artists’ perspectives on the environment will match up with those of teachers and parents; and a positive pro-environment peer pressure will cause habits to change.
As you can tell, my focus is on youth. My goal is to make “being green†and “doing your part†normal behavior. Youth are not afraid of the challenge of change. Their problem solving ideas have more passion and they seem to have the motivation to help solve this monstrous problem we all face. In a way, it’s the best defiance of adults that youth have ever had.
Let me end by saying that all of us who are part of this environmental movement should help each other by reaching out to our own demographic of people. Reach out and affect the people around you. By simply being environmentally aware and proactive, you will be doing your part in solving this global problem.
For all you fashionistas out there… listen up! Sustainable, organic and fair trade fabrics are IN. Sweat shops, pesticides, and toxic materials are OUT.
With the green craze that has taken us all by storm, even the famously fickle world of fashion has jumped on the bandwagon. Designers are starting to source their fabrics with more care and produce their clothes in a more responsible way. Yay!! This is so exciting! I have now resolved to try to gradually build a green wardrobe and there are really exciting options out there. Two of my personal favorites are Linda Loudermilk and Stewart Brown, both of whom have taught me that fabrics made of bamboo, organic cotton, sustainable silk, hemp, jute, corn, and seaweed can be just as soft and luxurious as the mainstream fabrics we are all used to. And there are an increasing variety of other options out there as well, many of which are outlined in the Green Guide to Fashion Fundamentals.
So why is this emerging green fashion trend so important? There are a lot of reasons and cotton is one of them. Check out some of these scary facts of cotton production from the Sustainable Cotton Project:
Cotton uses about 25% of the world’s insecticide and more than 10% of the pesticides (including insecticides, fungicides, miticides, herbicides, defoliants, and growth regulators).
In the United States, 25% of all pesticides used are applied to cotton.
In the United States, it takes about a third of a pound of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to grow enough cotton for a T-shirt.
In California, five of the top nine pesticides used on cotton are cancer-causing chemicals (cyanazine, dicofol, naled, propargite, and trifluralin).
All of the top nine cotton pesticides in California are labeled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as Category I or Category II materials, the most toxic classifications.
In India, 91% of male cotton farm workers regularly exposed to pesticides eight hours or more per day experience some type of health disorder, including chromosomal aberrations, cell death, and cell decay.
Cotton fibers account for almost 50% of the textile market worldwide.
Globally, nearly 90 million acres of cotton are grown in more that 70 countries. The United States is the second largest cotton producer in the world, growing approximately 19 million bales worth $6 billion in 1997 (enough to make approximately 9,215,000,000 T-shirts).
As much as two-thirds of a cotton crop can creep into the food chain. Each year, half a million tons of cottonseed oil make their way into salad dressings, baked goods, and snack foods; another three million tons of raw cottonseed are fed to beef and dairy cattle.
We can’t avoid wearing cotton but we can choose ORGANIC cotton and other sustainable fabrics for a greener wardrobe and a greener planet. For more tips on how to make your wardrobe more eco-friendly, visit Anca’s latest blog.
Are you in??
I just got back from the farmer’s market this morning with a week’s worth of organic produce and a lot on my mind. Usually, the market is a place for me to escape to on Sunday mornings, with my fabric shopping bags in tow, and reconnect with my values and my community. I love to chat with the local farmers about their produce and hear the wonderful stories about their farms and their families. I feel so happy as I peruse their wooden box stalls and take in the natural diversity in size and shape and color that indicate freshness and a lack of chemical pesticides. It feels so different from the waxy, uniform perfection found in conventional supermarkets and produced and packaged at enormous factory farms owned by multinational conglomerates. Here, I can feel close to the people who produce my food and feel good about knowing that my patronage can help to ensure their continued existence.
Today I heard that Priscilla the milk cow is sick but expected to recover soon, the creamer’s wife invented a new seasoning for her feta cheese, and Bluebell, the buffalo rancher’s favorite dog, is expecting puppies next month. I tasted no less than a dozen different types of apple while happily comparing flavor and consistency with the farmer’s daughter. But I also heard about the difficulties the produce farmers had this past winter with the bizarre weather we’ve had this past season, yoyo-ing between hot and cold all winter long. There is no doubt that climate change, as it continues to mold our future with unsettling consequences for all of us, will have a real impact on local farmers.
Just a few weeks ago, farmers in Australia were warned by a climate change forum that they might have to make some changes to their agricultural mix and reform some of their farming practices because of climate change. In Malawi—a poverty stricken country in Africa that is regularly ravaged by drought and famine—climate change threatens what little agriculture the people do have. In Scotland, farmers are experiencing what some call “climate chaos” in the form of reduced snow cover, more flooding and increased risk of landslides. And in the Washington DC area, local farmers feel just as concerned and just as threatened.
As the saying goes, there has never been a better time to “buy local, think global”. Find a farmer’s market in your area and read a few tips before starting out. After all, do you really need a banana that has been flown in from Ecuador? Or will a locally grown apple taste just as good? I choose the apple.
As some of you might know, I have spent the past two years living in Central America working on marine conservation issues. That work led me to collaborate with communities of poor fishermen, journalists, environmental groups, and government officials. It was an extraordinary experience that gave me a new understanding and perspective on the struggles to achieve meaningful conservation in the region. But it was also very frustrating to see the lack of resources, information, public commitment and/or political will to create lasting protections for these critical conservation areas.
My base was in Costa Rica, a country that has a global reputation for being an ecological paradise. And that brings me to why I think I just made a lot of people mad… A few days ago, an interview that I did a couple months ago was finally published (http://www.nacion.com/ln_ee/2007/abril/28/aldea1077541.html) and well, I think the title must have gotten people’s attention. “Cousteau says Costa Rica isn’t as green as they claim!” Yikes! That flies in the face of everything your average Costa Rican believes.
Of course, Costa Rica DOES have some achievements that they are justifiably proud of. They are a world leader in environmental services, a quarter of their country is put aside in national parks, they have no military and free health care, they helped to develop the concept of climate credits, and over 90% of their electricity comes from renewable energy sources (unfortunately though, mostly from damming rivers). The men and women that I have met and/or worked with at institutions like INCAE (www.incae.edu) or organizations like MarViva (www.marviva.net) are on the front lines of the struggle to promote sustainable development and find viable solutions to protect our environment and the people who depend on it. They are doing exceptional work and deserve our praise and support.
However, (and this was my point in the interview) Costa Rica does have serious challenges to overcome. Development is running rampant and sadly, over 95% of all the water used in households and industry throughout the country is channeled straight to the ocean with no treatment whatsoever. Deforestation outside the parks is as bad or worse than other Central American countries, and some laws that were passed to protect natural resources are not being respected by the government officials whose responsibility it is to uphold those very same laws.
One of the issues of poor governance that I am very worried about concerns the practice of shark finning. Although Costa Rica has laws prohibiting shark finning in their waters and/or the unloading of shark fins in their ports, the government officials are not enforcing the law as they should. The Taiwanese, who have long been fishing sharks (and just about every other fish they can get their hooks into) in Central American waters, have been granted “private docks” at which to secretly unload their catch. The docks exist behind high walls topped with barbed wire that prevent casual observation. Although officially, government officials are occasionally invited to observe the unloading of the ships to ensure that the Taiwanese are obeying local laws, I am positive there is a lot of additional unloading that also happens after they leave. Like those last few shark fins for example…
My friend Randall Arauz, president of Pretoma (www.tortugamarina.org) and one of the most dedicated and effective activists that I have had the pleasure of knowing, has actually taken the government to court to try to force them to comply with the law that states that private docks are now illegal. He has won three times and the government still won’t act. I wrote a letter to President Oscar Arias (he may be a Nobel Peace Prize winner but is he a friend to the sharks???) and have received no response.
Another friend of mine, Rodney Pietra, is a park ranger at Baulas National Park (http://www.leatherback.org/lasbaulas/costa-rica/), one of the last viable nesting beaches in the Pacific for the severely endangered Leatherback Turtle. There is a heated battle happening now between the park rangers and conservation groups who are trying to protect the beach and the developers who are anxious to put up some more hotels on it. Are a few extra hotels really worth the extinction of a species that has existed since the time of the dinosaurs? I guess they are. And judging from the death threats Rodney has received recently, human life isn’t that valuable either.
Costa Rica has spent gazillions of marketing dollars trying to convince the world to go visit their ecological paradise. And it has worked- Boeing-737s are dropping off thousands of new tourists every day. But there can be no doubt that if Costa Rica doesn’t give priority to addressing some of the urgent environmental issues in their country now, their ecological paradise might not seem so in a few years.
So, while I am sure that I made some people mad by saying all this, there are also quite a few who want to take me out for a drink to thank me for talking about what few in Costa Rica ever dare to mention. They are the ones I care about and who need our support.
I love seafood but there is so much of it I won’t eat because it’s not sustainable. “So, what IS sustainable?” is a question I get a lot. Check out this video blog by Brian Halweil of the Worldwatch Institute. It says it all!
Several chefs in the Washington, DC, area are have made a commitment to sustainable seafood in their restaurants. Today’s Washington Post article highlights the good work that our friend Barton Seaver is doing at his new restaurant Hook. EarthEcho is happy to be working with Barton and his staff to help them communicate their messages of sustainability.
As many of you know, our father died when we were little, too young to really remember him. But, thanks to my mother, he was present in our lives all the same and the stories of our parent’s adventures together are the inspiration behind all that we do today. If it weren’t for my mother, who embodies the living memories that guide our sense of purpose, we would certainly not be where we are today.
Too often, my mother is overlooked as the real reason we have been able to accomplish so much. All the focus is on our father and our grandfather, because they are so well known to the general public. Although their accomplishments are extraordinary and rightly celebrated by millions of people around the world, I know they would want us to honor my mother by recognizing the strength of her love for my father and her courage in overcoming the devastating loss of his death by keeping the legacy of his life present in ours. Her stories, which she shared yesterday in a speech at the Sea and Space Symposium in Dominica, are the bedtime stories that Philippe and I grew up with. They are an extraordinary glimpse into adventures that were unique to their time and will never be again. They are the stories of a group of intrepid explorers that brought the water planet into focus for the whole world to see. Their travels around the world were infused with excitement, humor, tragedy and discovery. And my mother was an integral part of those expeditions.
You might not believe this but I had never been to a Wal-Mart until… last week. Yikes! As I walked around the vast expanse dedicated to the convenient consumption of goods, my head was turning. Row after row of clothing, car batteries, beauty products, organic produce, bicycles, cameras, cookware. And there was more. People were getting their taxes done and indulging in manicures. Others were lunching at a McDonald’s. It was enormous, a real shopping behemoth. A one-stop shop.
To be completely honest, I felt a bit overwhelmed. I have just spent the last couple of years living in Central America where the farmer’s market I went to on Fridays was larger than the local supermarkets. I also tend to favor smaller “mom and pop” stores or local markets where I can get to know the shopkeepers, so the Wal-Mart shopping experience was completely new to me.
Of course I have heard about Wal-Mart, especially since it decided to go green last year. But being inside the store and browsing through all the products was impressive and I finally understand, if there are 5200 stores today with new ones being built all the time, how Wal-Mart could have such an influence on markets in general and on the environmental movement in particular with their decision to go green. While there will inevitably be things to criticize about the business practices of a giant enterprise like Wal-Mart, I have to say that I have been pretty impressed with some of their green initiatives.
One of their programs works with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and seeks to offset every acre they develop for their stores with an acre of priority wildlife habitat in one of the largest public-private partnerships of its kind. Another program seeks to raise the bar for electronics suppliers by having them analyze the sustainability of the products they sell at Wal-Mart. Certainly, if Wal-Mart can use their size and influence to encourage more sustainable practices in the electronics industry, more power to them.
As you can imagine, as I was strolling through the store one of my big concerns was the seafood counter. There seemed to be enough fish to feed a small army to say nothing of the Jacuzzi-sized lobster tank filled with those unfortunate creatures. Fortunately, as the largest seller of fish in the US, Wal-Mart has considered their impact on fisheries that reached capacity a long time ago. Over the next 3-5 years, Wal-Mart will switch their purchase of wild-caught seafood to that which is certified sustainable by the independent and non-profit Marine Stewardship Council as well as define guidelines for the purchase of farm raised fish with industry experts. This is truly cause for celebration because there is a desperate need for us to change the way we manage the ocean’s fisheries and Wal-Mart is poised to make a very important contribution towards achieving a more sustainable approach to providing for a seafood hungry society.
There are a lot of ways to have a positive impact on our world at the individual and corporate level. When Wal-Mart announced they would carry organic foods, they became - in the blink of an eye - the largest organic food retailer. Now they are poised to become the largest retailer of sustainable seafood, which could potentially help to protect small fishermen and drive down the cost of environmentally-responsible aquaculture technology. The implications of a decision by Wal-Mart to go green is enormous and reaches into everyone’s lives- even those of us who don’t shop there. Economies of scale, so often the bain of the environmentalists when it comes to companies like Wal-Mart, could suddenly become part of the solution.
About six months ago, I wrote a blog entry about how carbon emissions to the air aren’t just causing global warming — enough of them wash out into the oceans as carbonic acid that they’re destroying our beloved coral reefs, too.
I am still on the case to find out how we can stop this double devastation from happening.
Guess where my detective work has led me now—to those big ugly black bricks (OK some of them are white) that power up all our lovely laptops and iPods and cell phones.
And not just chargers, but the rest of the “always-on†gadgets in our houses—microwave oven clocks, computer fans and displays (yes, even pretty screensavers), and all those TVs and DVD players always waiting for our remote control commands.
What do our chargers and blinking gadgets have to do with coral reef destruction? A lot—since I found out that together these “vampire†energy-users are sucking up to 10% of the power used in a typical home. And more power use in America means more carbon. Over half of our electricity still comes from burning coal in big polluting power plants that have never had to fully live up to the Clean Air Act.
OK, so what now? While unfortunately the reefs are struggling to survive, we do know there’s plenty we can do about it just by making simple changes in our habits that wind up being cheaper and better for us as well as the planet.
Almost everything we do takes energy, including studying on our computers, turning on the lights, and heating our lunch in the microwave. One-fifth of the total energy consumed in the United States each year comes from household energy use.
But did you know that 80% of the energy used by your microwave is used just keeping the clock on?
Getting rid of the vampire power that’s consumed when appliances are turned off or are not being used is a great place to start. Wear a watch, and put your microwave on a power strip so you can turn it off when it’s not being used! In fact, by unplugging items such as your phone chargers, computers, televisions, radios, DVD players, and hair dryers when you are not using them, you can help save energy and protect oceans from those nasty carbon emissions that are damaging our ecosystem.
Go on your own exploration to find out how much energy is wasted in your own home and schools by visiting the home page of Environmental Education Week (EE Week), which is a program of the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation held the week before Earth Day each year. Get more tips and links from the EE Week website on how to conduct an “energy audit†of your home and learn more about where your energy comes from and where it’s going.
I am honored to be this year’s EE Week National Spokesperson. In this role, I’m headed to New York today, where I will visit the New York High School of Environmental Studies—an amazing place where 1,500 students from all five boroughs of New York get to learn everything they need for their diploma through the lens of environmental studies. I’m going to help them discover more about their energy. I’ll write more about that soon.
As I was reviewing some of my favorite websites and blogs today, I came across a description of “stuff” on www.WorldChanging.com that I wanted to share with you. Being an environmentalist and a consumer is sometimes hard to reconcile but I found this to be a very eloquent account of the importance of being informed and thoughtful about what we buy.
“Our things define us.
What we buy, what we use, what we keep and throw away, what we waste, and what we save: the stuff that surrounds us and flows through our lives is a key indicator of the kinds of lives we’re living. To be an affluent twenty-first-century person is to float on a sea of material objects - each with its own history and future.
They may be hidden from our eyes, but in practical global terms, those histories and futures tend to be the most important aspects of the stuff we own.”
Do you want to know more about “Strategic Consumption” and how you can send major market signals that will help to shift the production practices of the industries that supply us with our “stuff”? Check out this excellent blog entry by Alex Steffen.
Large stage banners were designed for 
I looked out at the high-energy crowd day after day and saw young kids wide-eyed and bursting with excitement. Each day they would run to our merchandise tent with bags filled with discarded bottles and cans. And we would talk for a while. I loved how the kids rattled on about their ideas and opinions faster than even they could keep up with. They would also say how exciting it was to see me take a position on environmental issues. We talked, we brainstormed, we planned; each kid leaving with a smile, an autograph, new information and, most importantly, motivation.
Lora and Emma
Lora and Emma’s Green Light Zine
John Davis
I just got back from the farmer’s market this morning with a week’s worth of organic produce and a lot on my mind. Usually, the market is a place for me to escape to on Sunday mornings, with my fabric shopping bags in tow, and reconnect with my values and my community. I love to chat with the local farmers about their produce and hear the wonderful stories about their farms and their families. I feel so happy as I peruse their wooden box stalls and take in the natural diversity in size and shape and color that indicate freshness and a lack of chemical pesticides. It feels so different from the waxy, uniform perfection found in conventional supermarkets and produced and packaged at enormous factory farms owned by multinational conglomerates. Here, I can feel close to the people who produce my food and feel good about knowing that my patronage can help to ensure their continued existence.
