Week Seven

This week we discussed a lot about inequality and development in terms of climate change. We also had to pick our topics for our white paper. I choose to write on the issue of how climate change impacts animal populations and the ecosystems around them, making it harder for animal populations to survive. I have always had a passion for animals so I found that this topic would be a very interesting one for myself to research and I look forward to doing so. We need to look at how our emissions not only effects us as people, but also how it affects the things around us such as our ecosystems and the plants and animals that need these ecosystems to be functioning properly and at certain stages in order for them to be successful and be able to live and thrive. We also had a couple of interesting readings in which we learned about REDD+ and policies regulating emissions. Something that I found was interesting was the idea of land tenure. The concept of having the right to use the land but not physically owning the land or having the land as private property was strange to me. I was a little confused about what this meant specifically in regards to whether or not other people are allowed onto the land since the land is not private property and so on. We also talked about land development and what should be done in regards to this issue and how this should be handled. I believe that when it comes to land development we should not get greedy in terms of what we develop and always be sure to not take more than we need. We as a world need to make sure that we don't overstep our boundaries as caretakers for the land and ensure that we always make sure that we leave a large area of undeveloped land for the plants and animals that need such areas to live and survive.