Rescue Mission Planet Earth

The aim of this WebQuest is to understand and publicise why and how we have to solve problems of living sustainably. The process of learning is based on three objectives of action-education.   The objectives are presented as an integrated process in eight steps, to gather, understand and present information about current environmental problems that confront everyone and which have to be solved to ensure the well-being of future generations.

Objective 1. Understand we are part of nature in everything we do by undertaking action to live sustainably.

By adopting Agenda 21 countries recognize that by making plans for economic development they are inevitably coupled to the ecosystems of all other nations.  Agenda 21 calls on governments to adopt national strategies for implementing Agenda 21 at all levels of society by promoting the use of renewable resources.

The conclusion of the Rescue Mission team was that it is important to enable communities to lead local renewal projects with a neighbourhood-scale approach.  This is the most cost-effective way to ensure our villages, towns and cities are fit for future well-being and create the conditions for people to thrive. Through empowering community groups to come together to tackle issues of local priority, and to work in co-production partnership with local government  and businesses, multiple benefits can be delivered. Upgrades to our physical infrastructure together with behaviour change to consume less, are appropriate responses to climate change.  The outcomes to make our communities safer, more cohesive and resilient. are the delivery of reliable and efficient transport networks, improvements in health and well being, security of self-sustaining ecosystems, commitments to the long-term supply of  housing, maximum employment opportunities.

But all these benefits require changes in our day to day behavior as consumers, which can be used as indicators of an understanding that we are an integral part of nature, limited by Earth�s ecological capacity to support Homo sapiens as one species among many..

Objective 2  Understand the connections between global warming, climate change and economic inequalities .

A major trans national theme for living sustainably is the need to find ways of  turning strategies of Agenda 21 into action plans on the ground in order to eradicate inequalities.  Poor people need more access to the resources they require to live sustainably. In this respect, the richer nations are a source of funding to help less rich nations develop in ways that have lower environmental impacts.

Beyond monetary aid, rich nations can help to build the expertise� the capacity� to plan and carry out sustainable development decisions in poor nations. This will require the transfer of information and skills to developing peoples, as the prime objectives of international aid programmes.  We can measure our understanding of the connections between global warming, climate change and inequalities  by how much we give to aid programmes to combat the effects of climate change.

Objective 3  Make an updated version of Rescue Mission Planet Earth

The young people who produced the 1994 Rescue Mission had the objective of creating a global democracy of children to make their voices heard  in an adult world.  They proposed to do this by networking individual and group action plans for living sustainably.  Their vehicle was to be a citizen�s environmental network.  The latter was actually  envisaged in the British plans for sustainable development and biodiversity.   They failed in this task because the Internet was in its infancy.  Now, social media is available freely to everyone to for spreading ideas and achievements and creating a digital democracy..