I thought about what book to present on environmental issues.  I've read a lot of books as part of my studies in environmental science, in communication and political science.  I could talk to you about any one of those books. But I decided to show you some books that helped form my mind when I was a little boy. It was actually a series of books published by the United Nations Environment Programme.  The first book I got was from a UNEP conference I attended at the young age of 11.  I was part of the Philippine delegation to the 2008 UN Childrens' International Conference on the Environment in Stavanger, Norway.  There were 700 kids from over 100 countries and they had lots of giveaways including books.

My favourite book was THEO AND THE GIANT PLASTIC BALL.  This was a story about a boy named Theo who wanted to join the school soccer team, but couldn't because he didn't know how to kick the ball. Since he didn?t have enough money to buy a soccer ball, he decided to make a ball out of plastic bags that he found as litter everywhere. Without knowing it, he picked up so much plastic bags that he formed a huge ball.  The villagers saw the ball and realized that the effort was helping to clean the surroundings so they all helped until they had a giant ball of plastic and very clean grounds. The story shows how one person's idea helped educate a whole village about the how harmful plastics are. This story stuck in my mind as I was growing up and our children's group initiated many plastic clean-up drives in our own City.  In fact, our Sachet Recovery Project, wherein schoolkids collect used sachets of household products, is a way of keeping softaflextic wrappers away from landfills and water sources.

There were many other books in that series. There was  TESSA AND THE FISHY MYSTERIES, which described the environmental issues in marine areas like pollution in the water, erosion of soil,  indiscriminate fishing, loss of mangroves, etc.  Another one was TINA AND THE GREEN CITY, which discussed urban gardening, carpooling and biking, green buildings, etc. There was also TING AND THE POSSIBLE FUTURES that showed the possible effects of climate change and how we can mitigate them through use of renewable energy sources and green lifestyle changes.

Our network is TUNZA ECO-GENERATION. We started as young kids and learned about environmental issues through books like these.  TUNZA means "to treat with care and affection" and through the years we have learned to treat our Mother Earth with the care and affection it deserves.  I hope these UNEP books which I took photos of (below) are still available for young children to read and become familiar with.  It would be a good thing for our young TUNZA Eco-Gen members in elementary to have access to books like these like I did when I was a young boy.  READ, LEARN AND BE INSPIRED!!