Picture a towering garden overflowing with native wildflowers. Add a Hobbit hole, an Ewok village, an airplane and a pirate ship all made from recycled and repurposed materials. Weave it all together with a network of winding trails and hidden treasures, and what do you get? The most fabulous natural play space you can imagine!

Shauna Leis and Kirk Bergey have been designing and manually constructing this magical landscape – or “playscape” – in Wellesley, Ontario, for over a decade. As their two young children flitted around like woodland fairies, we toured the garden and learned some of its secrets.

In 2005, Richard Louv published Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder and brought popular attention to the importance of reconnecting children with nature. In a time and place of rapid urbanization, individual efforts to create and sustain natural spaces that welcome children have become critically important.

Spending time in nature has remarkable benefits for children’s health that researchers are only starting to explore.

Spending time in nature has remarkable benefits for children’s health that researchers are only starting to explore. Norwegian researchers found that when children play in green spaces, they are physically active in diverse ways, engaging a variety of muscle groups as they run, jump and climb. Play becomes more creative when children interact with loose parts that are inherently provided by natural settings. They even get along better, as there is less competition for resources and space. Time in nature has been tied to decreases in stress and anxiety, as well as improved attention. There are even studies demonstrating a link between time spent in nature and better vision, and a possible link between soil bacteria and learning ability.

RELATED: “Prescribing a Dose of Nature” in A\J’s Ultimate Health Issue.

While everyone’s health clearly benefits from time in nature, the long-term sustainability of our natural environment relies heavily on how today’s children understand and interact with the world. Children who spend time in nature develop a sense of responsibility for its welfare. Nature can become something familiar, reassuring and expected, rather than the occasional novelty. Providing children with these types of experiences will help ensure the survival of the natural world, as they grow up to become planners, politicians and parents.

RELATED: Generation Green

Despite these benefits, efforts to preserve natural spaces often revolve around the intentional exclusion of little feet and hands. Children can, of course, do significant damage to a landscape. However, I would argue, with a little creativity, there are countless ways to promote harmonious interactions between the two. Shauna and Kirk have created that harmony right in their own backyard. The family spends most of their time outside. The children are entirely comfortable and spend their free time exploring, playing, building, creating and imagining here.

Our tour of the one-acre garden begins with a lovely circular vegetable patch. The children are heavily involved with the planting and care of the vegetable garden from choosing the seeds to harvesting the rewards. The garden is bordered on one side by an arbour tunnel hosting both grape vines and a swing. On the other side is a fantastic play structure nestled in the trees. The structure features an “Ewok village” with bridges, ropes, planks, and multiple platforms. Attached are a pirate ship and airplane just waiting to play a role in daring adventures.

Photo taken by Paul Habsch (taken June 2013)

Next we explore the winding paths that meander through gardens of native species, downhill toward a pond. Along one path, we find a Hobbit hole nestled into the side of a hill, with a small round entrance leading to an underground playhouse. Following the network of trails, we come across a tunnel and plenty of other surprises – hanging guitars, a sunken chair, a bicycle. In winter the paths are converted into a speedy luge track.

Given this enticing natural setting for play, the children who live here are likely to develop an understanding and comfort with nature that is unusual in today’s society.

During the interview, our hosts offered a few tips on building natural playgrounds.

1. It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. All of the work in this garden was done by hand, and almost all of the materials were found by the side of the road, donated by friends or neighbours, or bought at garage sales or the re-store. Nothing was pre-fabricated.
2. Creativity in play space design is key. Almost anyone can set up standard play equipment from a local building store, but these structures fail to capture the imagination and are limited in flexibility and personalization.
3. The garden should evolve as the children grow. Components can appear gradually – and disappear – over time. As the children’s capabilities and interests change, so will the garden.
4. Involve children in the process, from dreaming up the initial ideas to helping them come true.

While this particular project took shape on an acre of land, natural playscaping doesn’t require a great deal of space. With a little imagination and some reclaimed materials, an appealing natural play space can be built almost anywhere, at very low cost.

There is a magic in this garden that is surprisingly difficult to capture with words or even pictures. As we watched the children dance around the yard, it was clear that some of its magic has been transferred to them. 

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THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION has identified three major areas in which climate change may impact global health: waterborne and foodborne diseases; malnutrition and food availability; and vector-borne diseases, such as malaria, which is spreading as mosquitoes follow rising temperatures to new locations.

Sherilee Harper is working to combat these problems. An epidemiologist and assistant professor in the Department of Population Medicine at the University of Guelph, Harper has joined an international team to tackle food security, malaria and waterborne disease through a research initiative called the “Indigenous Health Adaption to Climate Change” project. The project works closely with Indigenous peoples and their organizations in the Canadian Arctic, Ugandan Impenetrable Forest and Peruvian Forest.

A\J: What are some of the specific ways climate change is affecting health in Canada?
Sherilee Harper: In the Canadian Arctic, they are already seeing a lot of the impacts of climate change. There are already areas that have experienced three- or four-degree increases in temperature. One area of impact is that of waterborne disease. After a period of heavy rainfall or rapid snowmelt there are increased pathogens in the drinking water and we see significant increases in clinic visits for diarrhea after those events. In Southern Canada, we do have a lot of drinking water infrastructure that should protect us against some of those impacts but most Canadians actually rely on untreated groundwater, which is vulnerable to this type of contamination.

Also in Southern Canada, increased numbers of storms, the increased number of hot days in the summer, increased flooding – we can say those are linked to climate change. We are also expecting to see a [northern] extension in the range of ticks that carry Lyme disease, which could increase risk of exposure.

Why is the rise in temperature by three or four degrees so significant?
A 1^oC change in average annual temperature could mean the difference between ice and no ice. People who live in the Arctic depend on ice for travel. It’s how they bring food home and put it on the table. They have already reported challenges with that.

It also changes the types of species that are up North. Beavers are entering communities where they have never been before and carry pathogens that cause “beaver fever” (giardiasis). There are different bugs up there now that did not exist there before. These things are all changing because of that few-degree increase in temperature.

Is the funding the Canadian government puts toward climate adaptation shifting the discourse away from prevention?
It is actually the opposite. Climate change adaptation tends to receive less funding than mitigation. Both of them are equally important and both areas are currently underfunded. Adaptation is really important because climate change is already happening. Even if we reduced all of our emissions to zero, we are still expecting the climate to warm over the next few decades.

What is a good way to respond to these threats?
I think the most important thing that people can do is talk about it, and pay attention to what is happening in the Canadian North and abroad. Once you start talking about it, then politicians will listen.

With a federal election coming soon, what is the most important climate-related promise the parties can make?
The Canadian government used to make a lot of information publicly available online that described climate change projections, what types of changes people across Canada might expect to see and how those changes might impact health. In other words, taking the science that the Canadian government has been participating in and translating it for public consumption. I think that making this type of information available to the public would be a really important thing to look for. 

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CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR Sherri Mason made a splash in 2012 when she and a crew of 20 graduate students from the State University of New York at Fredonia set sail on the Great Lakes in search of plastic. Aboard the Flagship Niagara, a wooden replica of a War of 1812 tall ship, her group trawled for plastic pieces floating in open water. The results from 21 samples identified up to 450,000 individual plastic particles per square kilometre.

“We thought, we are looking upstream from the ocean, so what we’re going to pick up are bags and bottles,” Mason told A\J. “Instead it was the exact opposite. Seventy per cent of the plastic we are pulling out of the Great Lakes is actually incredibly small, less than one millimetre.”

A substantial portion of the floating Great Lakes plastic comes from exfoliating microbeads found in facial scrubs. Viewed under the microscope, a significant percentage of the plastic waste Mason and her team hauled from the Lakes was brightly coloured, perfectly spherical balls.

How bad is the problem? Research by Marcus Eriksen at the Five Gyres Institute in Los Angeles found an average tube of facial cleanser contained roughly 330,000 microbeads. They’re easily flushed down the drain and into local water bodies since water treatment plants can’t detect and remove such microscopic pieces.

Once released, these colourful pieces are ingested by everything from planktonic organisms at the very base of the food chain and up. The potential for plastic to bioaccumulate throughout the food web is enormous, Mason said. And since plastic absorbs polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other toxins, the poisonous trail is affecting many levels of aquatic life.

In response, cosmetics companies like L’Oreal, The Body Shop and Johnson & Johnson have committed to phasing out plastic microbeads by 2015. Proctor & Gamble has promised to do so by 2017.

However, further study showed the bigger fear for Lake Michigan is straggly microplastic fibres. When clothes are washed, thousands of synthetic fibres from polyester, nylon and fleece break away and go down the drain. They too end up in nearby water bodies where they may pose an even larger threat to aquatic life than microbeads do. While a fish may ingest a plastic bead, by 24 to 36 hours later that piece has likely been excreted, Mason said. But stringy fibres become entangled in a fish’s digestive tract, making it easier for toxins to leach.

While industry is moving to reduce or eliminate microbeads in body wash, numerous state governments are moving to ban products containing them. Mason recently met with Environment Canada to discuss how Ottawa can help divert plastic waste from the Great Lakes. And the rest of us? Avoid plastic bags in grocery stores, Mason suggests, and buy products that shun microbeads. As for that warm fleece jacket? “I don’t know what to recommend with regard to microfibre,” Mason said with a laugh, “because I’m definitely not going to come out and tell people they can’t wear fleece in winter.”

How much would it cost to clean up all the plastic in the Great Lakes? Find out here. 
Take action: Environmental Defence has a petition to ban microbeads in Canada.
Reduce your use: Visit Ban the Microbead to see what products are microbead-free.

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USA After a three-and-a-half-year study, researchers at the University of Georgia determined that between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes of plastic trash flowed into the world’s oceans in 2010 from 192 coastal countries.

Pointing to Polluters

USA After a three-and-a-half-year study, researchers at the University of Georgia determined that between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes of plastic trash flowed into the world’s oceans in 2010 from 192 coastal countries. The latest multinational research, led by the Five Gyres Institute in Los Angeles and published by PLOS ONE in December 2014, estimates more than 5.25 trillion individual pieces of plastic are present in the world’s oceans at all depths in all corners of the globe. The discovery, published February 13 in Science, was the first time scientists were able to attach a volume to the amount of plastic waste entering the world’s waterways. Using “social math” to help wrap her head around the massive quantity, lead researcher Jenna Jambeck calculated that the total input of plastic into the oceans every year is equivalent to finding five retail shopping bags full of plastic trash for every foot of coastline in the world. “When I did that conversion, I was shocked,” Jambeck told A\J. Solutions to waste mismanagement will differ between countries, the study concluded, but all start with reducing litter and boosting recycling and sorting programs.

Read the full story: “Waste Mismanagement Leads to Plastic-Filled Oceans”
Listen to Jambeck on CBC Radio

That’s Not Food!

VIRGINIA It’s not just microplastics that are a hazard to marine organisms. Last August, biologists from the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Centre were called about a young, disoriented female sei whale swimming up a busy industrial tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. After she died, it was discovered that the endangered species had swallowed a shard of a broken DVD case that had lacerated her stomach and prevented her from feeding. Sea turtles and birds are also frequent victims of lethal plastic ingestion. Laysan Albatrosses are reported to consume larger amounts of plastic, more frequently, than any other seabird. Chicks have been found with Styrofoam, beads, fishing line, buttons, disposable cigarette lighters, toys, golf tees, dish-washing gloves and magic markers inside them. 

News From the Gyre

INTERNATIONAL The planet has five major ocean gyres – areas of the open ocean with rotating currents where plastic garbage accumulates. The most well-known of these is the North Pacific gyre, where a famous accumulation of trash the size of Texas has been widely reported since the 1990s. A six-year study of the plastic found in all of the gyres was published in the December 10, 2014 issue of PLOS ONE. The most comprehensive examination of the situation to date, this study reveals that the marine garbage patches cannot be considered as repositories, but rather as shredders and redistributors of trash. Sunlight, oxygen, wave action and grazing fish all break large plastics into tiny fragments, which then leave the gyres for “dangerous interaction with entire ocean ecosystems,” says lead researcher Marcus Eriksen. The tiny microplastics are popping up in ice cores, coastal sediments, zooplankton, bivalves, fish and seabirds. Small particles have a greater surface area than large ones and act like sponges to absorb PCBs, DDT, flame retardants and other persistent organic pollutants in the oceans. “The garbage patches could be a frightfully efficient mechanism for corrupting our food chain with toxic microplastics,” says Eriksen.

Polar Polymers

ARCTIC Researchers were “shocked and saddened” to discover large quantities of microplastics from populated areas in the south stored in frozen sea ice. The study results were published in Earth’s Future (June 2014). Lead author Rachel Obbard reports that she saw “a lot of small threads, some solid chunks in oranges and reds and a bunch of small blue nodules.” She accidentally discovered the plastic while studying microscopic algae living under the ice. Until then, she had “consider[ed] the Arctic to be a pristine and remote area.” The investigation revealed that Arctic sea ice contains concentrations of the pollutant several orders of magnitude greater than what has previously been found in highly contaminated areas such as the North Pacific gyre. The impact of increased ice melting due to climate change, and the resulting release of this contamination into the world’s oceans, is unknown.

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Visit lindtoons.com and linddesign.ca.

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2010 to 2020 is the “critical decade,” the timeframe in which global carbon emissions must consistently decline if we are to stay within the moderate climate impact scenario outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – less than a 2 degree C rise in overall global warming. There is reason to feel a glimmer of hope as we reach the halfway mark in 2015. According to the International Energy Agency, 2014 marked an historic year – global CO2 emissions did not rise from the previous year’s levels, even as the global economy grew by three per cent.

This is a significant sign that we can indeed carve a path toward a more moderate climate change scenario and more harmonious relationship with the Earth. 2015 is Earth Day Canada’s 25th anniversary and my 25th year in the environmental sector. For many of us in the movement, this milestone could not have come at a better time. It provides hope that we can reduce the impact of climate change, transition to a low- carbon economy and achieve greater balance and harmony with the natural world.

Where do we go from here? We must stay the course, make good green choices and build on our successes, creating more opportunities for the market, consumers, educators and policy makers to chart a progressive course of action.

This year represents a significant opportunity both at the grassroots level and internationally. In December, 196 countries will meet in Paris to sign a new international climate agreement. The current agreement signed in 2009 set targets that will help us achieve 50 per cent of the carbon reductions needed by 2020 in order to stay within the two-degree warming scenario. The Paris agreement needs to set new targets that get us to 100 per cent of the emission reductions needed by 2020.

To mark this critical decade and support the efforts of Canadians at the grassroots level, Earth Day Canada (EDC) is launching its Earth Day Every Day campaign, providing an online, mobile-friendly platform for Canadians to act to reduce their personal carbon emissions and share their profiles and green achievements.

Those who sign up for the challenge to tackle climate change will be recognized on the Earth Flag we will take to Paris in December. The 2015 Earth Flag is inspired by EDC’s 1992 Earth Flag which included 500,000 signatures, illustrating Canada’s collective will to protect the planet. The final signatory, then–Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, took the flag to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit where the first international agreement on climate was signed.

Canada currently ranks 55th out of 58 countries in terms of tackling GHG emissions, ahead only of Iran, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia, and 27th on the environment out of the world’s wealthiest 27 countries. Our hope is that Earth Day Every Day and Earth Flag campaigns will inspire and enable Canadians to improve both our quality of life within Canada and our standing on the world stage.

The Earth Day Every Day campaign launches across the country on Earth Day, April 22, 2015. Visit earthday2015.ca to make Earth Day Every Day, sign the 2015 Earth Flag and help set us on a path to living in balance and harmony on the planet.

– Deborah Doncaster, President, Earth Day Canada 

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The world has seen many versions of Napoleon and his Russian campaign. Probably they have been with us forever. The ancient Greeks saw the phenomenon often enough to adopt “hubris” as the word for the dangerous combination of arrogance and error, overconfidence and disrespect.

Hubris is no longer merely individual. The most important modern forms are collective and institutional. Today’s equivalents of Napoleon and his Russian campaign include the political and economic arrangements that support ever-growing fossil fuel extraction and consumption when the best science says greenhouse gas emissions are already disrupting climate stability. They are also evident in the institutions that have allowed 80 individuals to amass wealth equivalent to that of the poorest 3.5 billion of the world’s human population, disregarding the practical as well as moral perils involved.

Hubris today is global. It is entrenched in the ambition and blindness of whole systems of convictions and organizations that guide most human activities on this planet. And the effects are mounting.

As the rippling consequences lead to more evidently desperate needs for change, we may expect calls for bold and authoritative action, for confident and charismatic leadership, for the granting of exceptional powers. Effectively, these will be calls for a green Napoleon and a Grande Armée of sustainability.

This is an excerpt from A\J’s Ultimate Health Issue

What’s the big idea? Get your copy of the Health issue or subscribe today to read Robert Gibson’s column.

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Matthew Ryan Smith: How does the place you call home, Yukon, figure into your art?

Amber Church is a writer, artist and climate change researcher who lives in Whitehorse and still believes she can change the world. Her work is being exhibited at a solo show from May 1 to 31, 2015, at the Artists at Work Gallery, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.

Matthew Ryan Smith: How does the place you call home, Yukon, figure into your art?

Amber Church: A large portion of my work is influenced by the Yukon – there aren’t a lot of places like it left in the world. We have an almost mythic cultural history in many people’s eyes but when it comes to the reality they often have an imperfect view. I like to express elements of that reality in my work.

You’re involved in your community through art, fundraising and environmental activism. Why?

It’s vital. We are living in a time when we are bombarded by environmental and social issues and where apathy and disengagement are easy options. The best way to combat this is to engage with your community. And it’s also really fun.

Your mixed media works are fantastical visions of nearly impossible places.

I use my work to challenge the status quo and traditional institutions – especially the representation of women in history and current environmental issues. If I can create a scenario where the audience sees the world in a new light, I feel like I have succeeded.

Water figures into many of your works.

Water has always played an important part in my life, from living in Yoho National Park to my master’s degree in glaciology and climate change to my current work with the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society to protect the pristine Peel Watershed in northern Yukon.

Can you tell me about teaching in Antarctica?

Teaching in Antarctica was amazing. I was there as part of the education staff of Students on Ice, a group that brings high school and university students to the Polar Regions and helps them foster a new understanding and respect for the planet. I’m lucky to have taught in both the Arctic and Antarctic.

You were also involved in the negotiations for the United Nations Climate Change program.

I attended three sets of UN climate negotiations. First in Montreal in 2005 with the International Youth Delegation. I then led the Canadian Youth Delegation to Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancun in 2010. I was part of the team who helped to draft the text for Article Six, which deals with public participation in the process. I stepped back in 2011 to focus at a more grassroots level in the North. The UN process is draining and it can easily disillusion you. I needed an outlet where I could inspire others and myself and re-foster my belief that we can solve the issues we face.

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The powerful industry, which bills the brute-force technology as “safe and proven,” repeatedly downplayed the earthquake risks the same way it belittled the threat of climate change.

FOR YEARS NOW the oil and gas industry has argued that “seismic activity caused by hydraulic fracturing is not a hazard or a nuisance.”

The powerful industry, which bills the brute-force technology as “safe and proven,” repeatedly downplayed the earthquake risks the same way it belittled the threat of climate change.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Association confidently declared, for example, that pumping large volumes of pressurized fluids to crack rock will indeed create small magnitude quakes but this activity “cannot be detected at the surface.”

The American Petroleum Institute was even bolder. It boasted that hydraulic fracturing “does not cause earthquakes” or create vibration “of noticeable size.”

But Canadian and American fracking operations have since proved the lobbyists very wrong. The industry has also rewritten the continent’s seismic record in shale gas fracking zones.

Read more Energy Matrix columns.

This is an excerpt from A\J’s Ultimate Health Issue

Order the Health issue or subscribe today to learn more about the relationship between earthquakes and fracking activity in North America.

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Researchers have recently found evidence that North America’s ancient volcanic eruptions not only dwarf those from modern times, but happened more often than you’d think. Should paleohistory repeat itself, will Canada be ready?

Without a single active volcano in the province, perhaps Albertans can be forgiven for not having an eruption response plan. It may be hard for residents to believe that the province’s largest environmental catastrophe in the human era was a volcanic ash fall. Approximately 7,600 years ago, the skies were blackened for weeks in southern Alberta as more than 10 centimetres of ash descended on the prairies. The airborne debris came from what is now Oregon, when 100 cubic kilometres of ash spewed from Mount Mazama. Crater Lake now occupies the site of the eruption, which makes modern disasters look like a sneeze: The 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens in next-door Washington State ejected just two km3 of ash, and the Icelandic eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in 2010 (which cost the airline industry more than 900 million euros in six days) ejected barely 0.25 km3.

Massive explosive force propelled Mazama ash high into the atmosphere, where winds spread it over a vast area east and northeast. It took an estimated 12 hours for the wall of ash to reach Alberta; then the “dry snow” fell for days. The ash fouled drinking water, killed food plants and left smothered forests susceptible to wildfires and mudslides. Archaeologist Gerald Oetelaar of the University of Calgary has found evidence that many human-occupied landscapes across the province were abandoned at this time.

Today, few Canadians are aware of the magnitude of this event or the frequency of past volcanic eruptions. Yet research into our paleo past suggests we may wish to consider its lessons for the present, as climate disruption threatens the habitability of some heavily populated areas. While governments might be unable to deal with a one-in-10,000-year ash blanket across the continent, could better briefings from paleoscientists prepare us for smaller but more frequent disasters such as megafloods, droughts and lesser eruptions? With 67 smaller volcanic eruptions in North America in the past 100 years, it’s worth girding for higher-probability, geologically modest but still serious events.

It often takes direct experience of a large-scale catastrophe to make us prepare for the next one. Volcanologist Catherine Hickson finds there is a window of just nine months to a year following a major disaster to enact change before public interest and political motivation fade. The current fabric of urban society, with large fixed populations and vulnerable infrastructure, combined with the short-term perspectives of modern politics, may in fact be weakening our resilience to large-scale disasters.

This is an excerpt from A\J’s Ultimate Health Issue

Order the Health issue or subscribe today to get more information on how we can learn from paleo disasters to prepare for the future.

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