Miracle liquid

There is a long and rich history of using honey as medicine, especially in ancient times. Some records show that people have used honey as a balm, an inebriant, a psychoactive substance, or as a poison. Multiple contemporary studies suggest that honeys from honeybees and stingless bees have antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and wound-healing (34) .
Stingless bees make honey with chemicals (35) ward off microbial and fungal growth, an adaptation to keep the substance from spoiling in the tropics. Given the wide variety of plant biodiversity in the Amazon, and the incredible range of botanical chemicals the bees mix into their honeys and wax, it’s also no surprise it has medicinal value. Indeed, some call such honey a miracle liquid.
Already, people in the tropics use (36) types of stingless bee honeys and wax from their hives to treat upper respiratory infections, skin conditions, gastrointestinal problems, and even to treat diabetes and cancer. (37) research has begun providing a hint of support for some of these uses, much of it is still preliminary. More investigations into the honey’s medicinal benefits is (38) needed, says David Roubik, an expert on stingless bees at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

When he was nine years old, Felix Finkbeiner gave a class presentation on climate change. The young German spoke about deforestation and its effect on the planet. At the end of his talk, he challenged the people of his country to help by planting one million trees. Nobody thought much would come of a nine-year-old’s school project. Before he was 20, however, Finkbeiner’s efforts had resulted in the planting of more than 14 billion trees around the world.
Finkbeiner and his classmates began the project - named ‘Plant-for-the-Planet’ - by planting the first tree outside their school. Other schools followed the example, and news of the one-million challenge spread. As a result, Finkbeiner was asked to speak at the European Parliament. Other invitations soon followed, and when he was just 13, he spoke at a United Nations conference in New York. “We cannot trust that adults alone will save our future,” he said in the speech. “We have to take our future in our hands.”
Finkbeiner is now in his twenties, and Plant-for-the-Planet is an organization with around 70,000 members. It works to teach people about climate change and to encourage the planting of more trees. Germany’s one millionth tree was planted long ago. The goal now is one trillion - 150 for every person on Earth.

Over the last several decades, environmental specialists have proposed various strategies aimed at slowing down this process of deforestation in developing countries. Many of these proposals are indeed valuable ideas in that they are realistic attempts to address some of the causes of deforestation, such as farming, cattle ranching, and commercial logging. All of them rely on government involvement of some kind.
There are three broad categories of solutions: state economic policies, internal agreements, and international programs. Economic policies generally attempt to limit the activity of small farmers through government action. Government actions can include the clear proper definition and enforcement of property rights, meaning that squatting, or illegally setting on land, would be more difficult. Subsidies can be used to encourage conservation. That is, money may be paid to supplement the income of those farmers who make an effort to reduce the usual amount of damage to the forest that their farms cause. In addition, taxes can act as a deterrent to undesirable land use.
An internal agreement may be made between governments and indigenous or native people living in the moist rainforests and open woodlands of the tropics, where the vast majority of this deforestation is occurring. Such an agreement would allow people to carry on traditional activities adapted for some economic benefit.
Finally, international agreements usually involve the exchanges of monetary aid in return for government action to protect its forests. One such plan seeks to help pay a nation’s debt in exchange for restrictions on certain kinds of activities in rainforests. Instead of selling logging concessions to pay down that obligation, the government receives money for banning or restricting logging in its forests. There is also the proposal of a global fund created in order to grant money to countries that choose to protect their environments.
It is clear that something must be done to protect the forests of the world. If the current rate of deforestation continues, the world’s rainforests will vanish within 100 years, causing numerous adverse effects on the global climate and eliminating the majority of plant and animal species on the planet.