About RIO - Race Is On
What’s on your table?
From the humble kitchen table to the powerful corporate/financial boardroom table, decisions are made every day that impacts nature, our family homes, own personal lives and the lives of millions of people around the world.
Table is used as a metaphor in international negotiations ‘what’s on the table’ and in political discourse to ‘table a motion’ and bring warring factions ‘to the table’. The table is seen as an essential place for negotiations and decision making.
Mortgage distress, home reposessions and Vulture funds have all taken a toll on our lives. In many cases we are being forced to pay for the criminal acts of Ireland’s financial sector.
The Magic Tabletop – Coming in 2026
A series of stories designed to get you thinking about everyday ‘challolutions’ (Challenges & Solutions) http://themagictabletop.com/
The image above is of a center leaf of a drop leaf table. It is somewhere in the region of 250 years old. The wood (still perfectly sound) is Honduras Mahogany – a commercially extinct species. The tabletop was found discarded in the municipal dump in Tullamore and became the reason for me establishing Just Forests in 1989.
You think Just Forests is just about trees?
Right? Wrong. Think again!
The icons used in the design of Just Forests logo depicts the many values and perspectives associated with forests. Forests provide shelter to people and habitat to biodiversity; are a source of food, medicine and clean water; and play a vital role in maintaining a stable global climate and environment. For billions of people, like myself, they are a source of livelihood. All of these elements taken together reinforce the message that forests are vital to the survival and well-being of people everywhere, all 8.1 billion of us.
Just Forests is all about people, about families. People just like you and me. About people like New York Attorney and human rights defender Steven Donziger. He won a major court case on behalf of 30,000 small-scale farmers in the Ecuadorian Amazon, who had their lives, their children’s lives and their livelihoods destroyed by Texaco – the big oil corporation. Yes, the one that sponsors the ‘Texaco Children’s Art Competition’ here in Ireland – now it its 71th year.
Just Forests is about places – like the tropical, temperate and boreal regions of the world and the goods and services we get from forests – like timber for construction, tone-woods for our beautiful musical instruments, medicinal plants that cure cancers, places for recreational activities, fresh water, wildlife and oxygen.
Yes, Just Forests is about Forests – our vital life support systems. About the families who live in forests and the families who don’t live in forests – but are equally dependant on them for vital services.
Since 1989, Just Forests has been steeped in development education and on-the-ground activism relating to forests and the people who live in and derive their livelihoods from forests – highly contentious and often very challenging and controversial issues.
People just like you and me depend on the world’s forests just as much as the tribal people of west and central Africa or the Americas. So, let’s enter the RACE and help ourselves by helping them.