Rafting is continuously gaining in popularity due to the fact that one does not need to be a real professional athlete to paddle down the waves. This unique experience intrigues many tourists that join crews lead by experimented guides who are familiar with the risks and the potential dangers of different rivers.  In order to prevent dangerous accidents, rafting rivers are classified by experts in a scale that ranks from 1 to 6 indicating how demanding or risky some paths of the rivers. The more risky the river is the more likely it is that the paddlers will end up become swimmers for more than once.

The International Rafting Federation (IRF) defines rafting as a “human activity conducted on running rivers requiring physical skill using paddle and oar power in soft crafts and which is generally accepted as being a social, commercial and competitive sport” (Source: http://www.internationalrafting.com/?page_id=529).  This world organization oversees rafting activities all over the world trying to advocate the need to preserve the social values associated with this sport. Perseverance, respect for other and team spirit are crucial to this sport.  The mission of IRF is to maintain and promote the values and conditions to the safe practice of this sport at the competition or recreational level. In addition, the IRF is working hard in order to promote rafting as a safe sport defending its interest at a national and international level. Finally, one of IRF’s most important goals is to promote water conservation and the respect for the rivers and the wildlife surrounding them.

Many specialized travel agencies organize rafting vacations in breath take wild scenarios around the United States or Canada. This sorts of trips allow tourists to experience a unique adventurous experience while discovering the beautiful nature and wildlife in the most remote areas like the Firth River, a hidden jewel north of Canada.  This river is situated deep in the northern Yukon Territory, close to Alaska. The Firth river “flows through the centre of Ivvavik National Park where the wildlife include muskox, caribou, wolves, eagles and falcons that can be observed in the rocky panorama of the Arctic scenery.

Another unique rafting experience that is perceived by the ultimate rafting experience by extreme water sports lovers and experts is the Patagonia rafting experience down the Futaleufu river, acclaimed as one of the most challenging rivers in the world. “The river’s name is derived from a local Mapuche Indian word meaning “big big river” and it lives up to its billing in every respect” (Source: http://www.exchile.com/fachome.html). Expediciones Chile organizes a series of different vacation tours that rank from a week of rafting down Futaleufu to a concentration of four extreme rafting days. An interesting alternative that combines nature to all sorts of sports is the Futaleufu Multisport Chile rafting week. This special excursion mixes the pleasures of rafting to the ones of mountain biking and hiking. This adventurous vacation is way to discover a beautiful country, meet no friends and overcome all your fears.

From a method of transportation to a recreational activity that unites people from all over the world, rafting is a sport that enables people to develop a close relationship with nature. Numerous rivers around the United States are a perfect scenery for tourists or beginners who strive to acquire expertise in this sport. For those who love risks and extreme adventurous the Futaleufu river is what of the most thrilling experience when it comes to rafting.

Along the course of the Mekong river, one has the pleasure to discover sediments of history that are still partly living today; from the Tibetan nomad culture to the ancient Kingdom of Siam, the river fosters an incredible quantity of fish species that assure the survival of most of the local communities from the six different countries. The river is also the home of the world’s largest freshwater fish, “ the Mekong giant catfish that is distinguished by the near-total lack of whisker-like barbells, the absence of teeth and its gigantic size” (Source: http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/wherewework/mekong/species.html).  This unusual specie that can reach 600 pounds and grown the size of a grizzly bear, can feed an entire village for at least a week. The future of this unique specimen is at risk, due to the various flood control schemes, dams and other changes created by human kind in order to gain control over the river. Another endangered species living in the pool of the Mekong River is the Irrawaddy dolphin that is often known as the “river dolphin”.  This slow swimmer’s life is at risk, and its population is “estimated to be as low as 70 to 100 individuals” (Source: http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/wherewework/mekong/species.html). The dolphin is in high demand in zoos and aquariums that often seem to forget that even limited trade is now prohibited because the specie is so endangered. You can adopt a toy Mekong Dolphin in order to help raising money for their survival at http://www.worldwildlife.org/ogc/species_SKU.cfm?gid=68&sc=AWY1100WC900.

These two species are only a tinny examples of all the treasures buried inside this long river. The cultural, social and commercial value of this wetland is gigantic; courted by many stakeholders the future of the Mekong River is at risk without a proper conservation plan.

For this reason, on 5 April 1995, was founded The Mekong River Commission (MRC), an official agreement between Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Viet Nam. These states signed  The Agreement on the Cooperation for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong River Basin in order to come up with a joint management plan to share water resources and the development of the river.  This association aims at promoting regional cooperation and its goals are also to “promote and support coordinated, sustainable and pro-poor development, to strengthen basin-wide environmental monitoring and impact assessment and to strengthen the Integrated Water Resources Management capacity and knowledge base on the MRC bodies “ (Source: http://www.mrcmekong.org/). In addition to this organization, the WWF is also working hard in order to address the threats facing the long-term sustainable survival of the river and all its precious resources. Indeed, the WWF Living Mekong Programme is working in partnership with the MRC in order to achieve a set of goals that comprehend: sustainable river basin management, the conservation of freshwater ecosystems while raising awareness on these issues amongst the local populations and all the interested stakeholders.

A strong interest for hydropower development in the lower part of the basin is dividing many invidious stakeholders around the world amongst private and public companies. In order to mitigate the demand, the MRC has launched the Initiative on Sustainable Hydropower (ISH) in order to study the potential side effects of a large-scale hydropower development and to come up with a basin management strategy. This initiative serves as a fundamental funnel for ideas and proposal where dialogue and communication is much needed in order to compromise economical interests with the ones of the conservation of the river and all its ecosystems.

Any sort of development and action plant taken to modify the course of the river, the balance of its rich biodiversity could have a life-changing impact on the lives of 60 million people and on the survival of various precious endangered species. This rich wetland is worth a lot from an economical standpoint. States need to remember that a violent over-exploitation could but an end to all the precious resources the river has to offer. Nature is generous only if it is treated with respect and dignity.

For centuries to come sailing remained a means of transportation and the centre pillar to fishing activities.  In the 17^th century, this activity gradually became a sport with the Dutch who started to use small boats called “Yaghtschip” (which meant “hunting ship”) for recreational purposes. Today these boats are commonly called yachts. In not time sailing became popular in Holland and England and this new passion was quickly exported to the colonies. Sailing clubs quickly started spreading all over Europe and soon enough sailing competitions started taking place in the American colonies. This new sport soon turned into a real social phenomenon, with sailors forming clubs and groups in different towns, gathering to plan new trips or to discuss the latest news.

This gave like to the world’s oldest “Yacht Clubs”.  “The world’s first yacht club was founded in Cork, Ireland in 1720” (Source: http://www.athleticscholarships.net/history-of-sailing.htm) and one the of world’s most famous clubs, the New York Yacht Club was founded in 1844. John Cox gave birth to this prestigious club when he decided he wanted to start racing other local sailors. Only ten years later, the New York born club, was taking things to the next level as they started racing internationally. Little did he know that this was the starting point that gave life to America’s Cup, one of the world’s most important and prestigious sailing event. For 132 years in a row (1851 to 1983) the Americans proudly won every single trophy until they had to give their title away to Australia. “Since then, the only other countries that have won the Cup were New Zealand in 1995 and Switzerland in 2000” (Source: http://www.athleticscholarships.net/history-of-sailing-1.htm). Founded at the beginning of the 20^th century, the International Racing Union establishes a set of international norms and regulations that need to be respected in order to render all events more objective and fair.

This sport is now recognized officially and has its own special magazine publication called Sailing Magazine with quality pictures and the latest news on sailing. This magazine is the oldest one in America, it was founded in 1966 by “an avid Great Lakes sailor” (source: http://www.sailingmagazine.net/about).  The publication offers advice about the boats, keeps the readers informed about the latest events and presents breath taking testimonial cover stories.  If you have already flipped through the magazine daydreaming about giving this amazing sport a shot, you probably know that sailing comes in a variety of different boats that can go from the small boats to keelboats.

Small sailing boats, also known as centerboards are the easiest and cheapest way to get started. Generally under 25 feet in length, they “include a wide assortment of dinghies (open cockpit), daysailers (with foredecks and gear enclosure) and small day sailing keelboats” (Source: http://training.ussailing.org/Learning/Getting_started.htm).  Most reacreational centres, day camps and universities rent small sailing boats as the obviously have a cost that is much more inferior while still providing quality results. On the other hand, the term “keelboat” is used to described sailboats with a weighted keel, also known as the vertical fin of the boat.  This term is used to describe yachts of considerably large sizes. These boats have the necessary commodities for longer trips, like bathrooms, or cooking facilities.

If you don’t consider taking up this sport seriously or you simply don’t have the time or money to invest into expensive equipment or sailing lesson you still have one valid alternative to enjoy the beauty of these boats. Many locations all over the world offer all inclusive vacation trips on sailboats. This is a great way to enjoy the ocean and discover the majestic power of the wind without making too much of a commitment. A sailing trip vacation might just become one of your most adventurous and memorable vacations for the next couple of years to come.

Well, good morning to you as weel my lovely friends!

It is a nice sunny day outside! Well, not that it makes any difference for me, since I am stuck in the superstore. No wait, the supermarket!  Well I don’t really know what they call it super, since its not that super to me…It is cold all the time, the lights are to strong and well people come and look at us through the glass…they stare, point and stare some more. Some of people actually are nice they open the door and pick me up! Boy does it tickle, but at least I feel warm for a couple of seconds. After reading the paper that is all around my tummy, they exchange looks, nod and usually but my right back on the shelf. This is starting to happen way too often lately. Does nobody want me anymore? Maybe because I have been here a while now and I am not the cutest one anymore. I want to get adopted I am nice!! Anyone out there?!!!

“You silly silly young boy! It has nothing to do with you not being the cute one anymore!” said Mrs. Goldendiamondy with a smear. Why does she always have to know the secret to everything! She quickly explained, that the problem is that people don’t like plastic water bottles anymore. According to miss know-it-all, more than 60 cities in the USA have banned the expenditure of tax dollars on other bottles like me. Everyone is now convinced that we are terribly bad for the environment and we get discarded, ruining the “natural habitat” of animals and the sea creatures. What is a “natural habitat”?? It sure sounds like a funny word! Is it a fancy grown-up way to say “home”? Well, then I guess my “natural habitat” is the cold fridge of the superstore! Nobody is ruining my habitat; I sure don’t want to disturb birds, and fish and bears by entering their homes uninvited.  Mrs.Goldendiamondy even told me that water is heavy and its transportation internationally uses a lot of energy that could be saved to serve more useful purposes. She even sounded very smart and cool when she told me with nonchalance that every year, the bottled water industry can generate around 30 000 tonnes of carbon dioxide only in transportation! Do you even realize how much 30 000 tonnes means? Well, I can’t this is why I am convinced it is super gigantic. Bigger than the supermarket, bigger than the city! Bigger than the earth?! I still have to figure that out but anyways that it is a lot of carbon dixide. I am not completely sure I understand what that long word carbondixide means, it probably is something for grown-ups, but it sure does sound important.

Well thank god I have Miss Evian to keep me company and keep me laughing all day long. She is very nice and most of all she is the prettiest plastic water bottle I have ever seen in my entire short life.  This is why, I must confess, if you promise you won’t tell anyone, I am kind of happy that customers visiting the superstore are putting us back on the shelves; leaving me and Evian alone!  I am kind of happy people are realizing the truth, the fact that they can save money, drinking fresh cold water from the tap in order to try to lower down the number of close to 30 million plastic bottles, daily abandoned in landfills where they are left to rot alone for the next thousand years.  Oh my liquid heart would break at the thought of empty miss Evian, cold and alone in a landfill for the next hundred years to come…. Thank god customers are slowly waking up…!

The first kayaks date as far as 1900, they were constructed from driftwood and animal skins and used by the Inuits and other native tribes. ”Lashed together with animal sinews, these early boats used seal bladders filled with air to make the them buoyant and nearly unsinkable” (Source: http://www.kayakingjournal.com/kayak-history.html ). Caribou skins are soaked in water and once they are dried stretched as much as possible. Caribou fat was their secret to render to kayak waterproof. With the European colonization of North America, these practical means of transportation quickly conquered the heart and minds of the European people who quickly imported this invention in their homelands. Kayaks quickly became a recreational activity that capture water lover from France to Germany.  Around 1900, a German scholar, inspired by a Inuit design decided to build his own version of a collapsible kayak.  This “foldable” kayak could be carried around in a bag and quickly be assembled on the shore of a wetland.  This ancestor of the kayak became a favorite in Europe, being more practical to ride rivers than the large open boats previously used.

In 1936, kayak races became an official sport at the Olympics on 1936 in Berlin. Today the sport has evolved greatly and kayaks are now “built from covered frames or from shells of fiberglass or plastic. Durable marine or exterior-grade plywood is used for the frame while waterproof glue and mechanical fasteners join the wooden pieces” (Source: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Kayak.html). Today, kayaks can now be build with an eco-green perspective in order to respect the environmental that is so fundamental to this sport. Environmentalists can be thrilled at the idea that a kayak sheel can be constructed from recycled plastics. The central element to a plastic kayak is polyethylene. This waterproof material can be easily manipulated through simple heating or cooling procedures that render this material very useful for the construction of kayaks. “Adequate supplies of polyethylene recycled from plastic beverage bottles are now available with sufficient durability and strength for use in making kayaks. This is a valid alternative to the recycling of plastic bottles that will sure please all nature lovers.

Kayak is continuously growing in terms of popularity and the increasing curiosity for this sport is also driving continuous evolution from the technological and design point of view. The USA team put together a great performance at the Junior Sprint Tour. At the Nova Scotia regatta, team USA “reaching the podium 11 times against Team Ontario and six clubs from Nova Scotia” (Source: http://usack.org/news/2010/07/22/kahookele-nurmia-rack-up-the-medals-in-canada/37428). This sprint tour took off with stops in Lake Placid, N.Y. and Bochum in Germany. Today, the Olympic Games feature more than 10 different kayak events and it seems like the number will only grow in the future.

Most of people don’t know that an important portion of the world’s oxygen comes from the ocean, a key player to the carbon cycle. Yet, most of us also don’t know or fail to realize that “only a mere 0.5% of the oceans are protected!” (Source: http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/where_we_work/east_african_coast/publications/?21432/Marine-Protected-Areas-providing-a-future-for-fish-and-people). Today, our world’s ocean is under great stress due to overfishing, pollution, degradation, and overuse of marine and coastal resources. Even the 0.5% of the oceans that are under official protection are nonetheless open to fishing and to tourism. In most regions where MPAs are already efficiently in place fishing activities have been more prolific. In those areas, it appears to be that fishers seem to move their activities closer to the protected boundaries; “such fishing-the-line allows fishers to benefit from spillover of animals from inside the closed area” (source: http://assets.panda.org/downloads/marineprotectedareas.pdf). Most fish have floating larvae or eggs that often drift out of the protected zone and therefore nurturing unprotected distant fishing grounds. As the stock increases inside the protected area, mature fish move out in order to populate foreign patches. Fishermen can then safely collected their harvest.

A concrete example of this beneficial result is the case of the Apo Island Reserve in the Philippines. Since the implementation of the marine protected areas, catches in this region have increased ten times more and have been stable for the last 15 years. In addition, MPAs have the ability to function on a large scale with the same positive results. In the Georges Bank region off Maine, after lowering maximum number of fish caught annually and banning gear that could accidentally harm other species, fish stocks have increased and so have the variety of attractive species. “By protecting spawning grounds and areas where juvenile fish spend their time growing up, fish can be spared until they reach maturity and have already given rise to offspring before being caught” (Source: http://assets.panda.org/downloads/marineprotectedareas.pdf). Protecting fish by allowing them to live longer, grow and multiply has beneficial consequences for the fauna e marine ecosystem but also for the economy.

Close to 40% of the world population lives in the vicinity of a coast and most of these people depend on the resources of the sea for their survival. As poverty becomes an acute problem in many of those regions, this phenomenon often goes hand in hand with overfishing and the over use of natural resources. This overuse is unsustainable resources on the long term, creating a vicious circle. For instance, “the artisanal reef fishery on Zanzibar, Tanzania, is crucial to approximately 60, 000 fishers and contributes to over 60% of protein to local communities” (Source: http://assets.panda.org/downloads/marineprotectedareas.pdf). In order to secure the future of such communities the increase number of marine protected areas is fundamental.

Few people realize that poverty is a serious cause of the diminution of biodiversity.  Environmental initiatives need to collaborate with NGOs and other organizations that work to fight poverty in order to establish a common plan of action. Communicating this to local communities while having them directly involve in such long-term sustainability projects is crucial to the success of MPAs.

Mrs. Goldendiamondy has been like this all week! She just won’t leave Miss Evian alone for one second. It seems like she is always looking for excuses to talk to her or to steal her away from me. I am oh so happy that in the end Miss Evian decided to stay with us at the supermarket instead of trying to escape to go to the Rice-Castle with all of the other important French water bottles.  Oups! Yah, your right! I get confused all the time; it’s not the Rice-Castle but the Ritz Carlton! I still think that the “Rice-Castle” sounds so much funnier! I can just imagine a big castle made out of rice! Hahaha! But what is the Ritz-Carlton anyways?? Mrs Goldendiamondy told me it is a place like the supermarket but instead of being for bottles it is for real people. Sounds funny, I didn’t know they had people supermarkets as well… I need to ask Mrs Goldendiamondy to tell me more about those places like the Ritz, I think that they are called something like “botels”, or was it “motels”? No wait I am pretty sure they are called “hotels” now that I think of it!

Anyways, Miss Evian doesn’t need the Rice-Castle, she seems to be doing better at the super-market! Now that we have made peace we are really good friends and I like chatting with Miss Evian, she is very nice and funny. Last night, she was telling about her cousin from Australia, Aussie Bottled Water, who is being moved to America. Aussie comes from the town of Bundanoon in Australia. I don’t know about you but I think the name Bundanoon is absolutely hilarious! Well, anyways, getting back to my story, Miss Evian told me that Aussie was “deported” to the United States because Bundapoo, I mean, Bundanoon is the first city in the world to have completely banned bottled waters like me, from the shelves of all stores! I am not really sure what deported mean, but it doesn’t sound too good especially since Miss Evian told me that Aussie was so sad to leave her home. This is scary, they are trying to kick us out from everywhere! First the Rice-Castle and now Bundaboo!

Of course, right when Evian was telling me this story about her cousin, Aussie, Mrs. Goldendiamondy was spying on us and she immediately jumped in saying: “ once someone buys us and finishes all of our water we usually end up being discarded somewhere in the environment or in the ocean where the fish never welcome us in a very warm manner”.  I’ m not sure I understand what discarded means, but I sure know I love the beautiful ocean and the fish and I surely don’t want to get them mad.  I trust Mrs. Goldendiamondy, she is older than all of us here and seems to know many top secrets things! She sure is nice even if she is making me worry with all her talks about how we, plastic bottles, are so bad for the environment! At lunch, she even told me that we cost a thousand times more than normal water that comes from the sink !!! A THOUSAND TIMES!!! That sure sound like a lot! I hope our water has some magical powers because I really don’t understand why people would spend so much money on water they can get from their own kitchen. Maybe it is a grown up thing that I can’t understand who knows…! Oh! I have to run, or should I say, roll, tonight I am going to have lunch with Miss Evian!

(Source: http://www.thegreenguide.com/food/buying/bottled-water, http://www.justmeans.com/-Battle-Ban-Bottled-Water/20493.html)