Species die out, languages and cultures are forgotten - globalization and climate crisis accelerate these processes. But with every language that is no longer understood, a worldview disappears, know that with every plant and animal, a possible answer to problems of today or in the future is destroyed. We are committed to maintaining the biological and cultural diversity. Support us!
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Globalization and variety - data and facts
Protect biological and cultural diversity!
More than a third of the mammal and plant species are threatened with extinction. Over half of the currently around 6,000 actively spoken languages will be lost in this century. It is not new that species disappear and cultures go down. However, the displacement process accelerates so rapidly through globalization and climate change that more is destroyed than can be created. Terre des Hommes is therefore committed to maintaining and promoting biological and cultural diversity. Because every child has the right to grow up in an intact environment. Today and in the future.
Cultural adjustment is progressing
Cultures and people develop through the exchange with others, but the global exchange processes take place in the context of unequal distribution of power. Globalization paves what is not global mainstream: now there are the same films everywhere, the same music, the same fast food and fashion products. Wisdoms, languages and diverse other cultural knowledge treasures are lost.
Biodiversity decreases
Man also destroys many animal and plant species. For example, the increasing use of machines and agriculturalism in agriculture is increasingly reduced by plant and insect diversity: FAO (UN Organization for Food and Agriculture) is estimated that up to 75 percent of global crop and variety realm have disappeared in a few decades. The emerging monocultures are more susceptible to pests and diseases, which in turn results in increased use of pesticides. The pesticides get into rivers and contaminate the drinking water.
Protection of biological and cultural diversity
Children are particularly often affected by pesticide poisoning; You get skin infections, hair loss or acute abdominal pain. According to Article 24 of the UN Child Rights Convention, every child has the right to live a healthy life. The United Nations also signed an agreement for the protection of cultural diversity: the "Convention on Protection and Promotion of Diversity of Cultural Expressions".
Terre des Hommes, together with his partner organizations, is committed to ensuring that these internationally recognized conventions are actually implemented and thus preserved the cultural and biological diversity of the world.
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- A language dies every two weeks.
- Only twelve languages fill 98 percent of all websites.
- There are 4,000 to 5,000 indigenous cultures worldwide.
- More than 17,000 animal and plant species are threatened with extinction.
Demands and goals
In order to maintain the biological diversity and to enable children to grow up healthy in an intact environment, environmental standards and pollutant limits are indispensable internationally.
Terre des Hommes from the Federal Government calls for a safe, healthy and intact environment at the UN summit for sustainable development in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012 for the rights of children and future generations. For this purpose, the federal government is intended to appoint an ombud pollution who, regardless of short -term economic interests, also represents the future generations.
In the traditional indigenous communities, children at school meet a European language of education and European values. The school books come from an urban world, which does not respond to the environment and the wealth of knowledge of the rural population with any word. The result of this upbringing is alienation and identity problems. The children are ashamed of their mother tongue and rural origin. The older parishioners feel school as an attack on their values and cultural identity.
In order to be able to preserve your own culture, a rethink must therefore take place. The primary school lessons must take place in the mother tongue, the timetable has a connection to the living environment of the students and bring them closer to the old traditions.
In order to achieve this, Terre des Hommes supports projects that enable ethnic minorities to live their culture and to pass on their language, their knowledge treasures and their wisdom to their children. Ecological and agricultural knowledge is preserved, traditions are upgraded and protected against the degradation by so -called "modernizers".
Your contact person
Jonas Schubert
Speaker Advocacy