L’EST REPUBLICAIN, 10th January 2003 – Translated from French by Ana Mattarollo

“L’an vert du monde” The team of French students which is currently preparing its trip around the world has now been enlarged. Since September, the one year scientific project called “L’an vert du monde” (World’s Back to Front or World’s Green Year) of Marcellin AUBERT, Matthieu BIRKER and Geoffroy GENAY, has made progress (read article “Popularizing sustainable development” in L’EST REPUBLICAIN, 17th September 2002). “Adding our contribution to increasing popular ecological awareness is still our goal”, explains Geoffroy. After having met Jean-Marie PELT, who has accepted with a lot of enthusiasm to become the parrain of this venture, the team has increased its size and is nearly on the point to becoming an association. Ana Mattarollo , young Argentinean girl studying Agricultural Ecology, at the University of Hertfordshire, England, joined the group in order to bring the experience she acquired within an indigenous community and also to share her skills gained while at Amnesty International. Siri Franck, a fourth year Swedish student at L’Ecole centrale in Paris, is going to work more particularly on the Chinese step of their trip. Aurelle Du Pont de Romémont, a third 3rd year student in Agricultural Engineering, at the ISRA in Lyon, is going to use her relations with Africa in order to work on desertification issues in Mali and ecotourism in

Niger, first step of their round the world.

October 2003 June 2004 These young people show great humility and wisdom. “By creating an association, we really hope that the links established in the world can eventually be useful for other people, far beyond our experience”. One point of agreement: not to be tempted by an ethnocentric approach. “Our project will be essentially set up under the light of environment”, confirms Marcellin. After October 2003 and the step in north Mali and in Niger, the direction will be the tropical rain forest of Brazil. “We will approach the ecocertification question of forest management with associations, enterprises and NGOs which are over there”, explains Geoffroy. Following Jean-Marie PELT advice, the next step will be Mexico: its urban expansion and its consequences and then, a stop in the Quintina roo state, where an experience of preserving biodiversity while maintaining human activity. An original step is the one of Tuvalu island, near Fiji. “The 11,000 inhabitants are threatened by the regular sea rise level and are reclaiming for an

ecological refugee status which does not exist yet in the International right”, explains Matthieu. He is also responsible of the Indian step in Bombay, in a similar scientific approach to the one engaged in Mexico city: in particular, the overpopulation. Two more steps, before they return back in June 2004.

world) the end will come with the European step in Kalundborg in Denmark. “This industrial area is exemplar in the way it integrates and manages in itself all kind of pollutions generated by the activities there undertaken”. Even though the meetings within the different stages are not excluded, contacts with scholar establishments are the priority. The first partnerships Looking for help have already been established with four different colleges: Baccarat and Blainville, The period in China is probably the one of Pagnyproblematical. A country sur-Moselle and the well known by Marcellin Francillien college of because of the work he has Chatenay-Malabry and already done. “But we are Sceaux. still missing contacts there. In order to raise funds, these If we cannot go to the young people are asking for gigantic Three Gorges dam multiple types of help. For construction, we will example, Marcellin the pianist probably go and investigate and Mathieu the flutist can in another dam, on the play if you ask them to. All Mekong, a border river with the information on their other Asian countries”. project is available on their After travelling by the trans- electronic mail Siberian train with a stop in [email protected] Baikal lake (the biggest store of fresh water in the D.L.