Rev. Sun Myung Moon
As a Peace-loving Global Citizen is the autobiography of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Movement. It was published in 2009 in both Korean and English by Gimm-Young Publishers of Seoul, South Korea. The book was released in South Korea on March 9, 2009 and debuted at #3 on the Businesss bestseller's list. It has ranked in various bestseller lists since then and was ranked 15th on the General bestseller's list as of October 14, 2009.
A Single Dandelion Is More Precious Than Gold
It is not just fish that are plentiful in the Pantanal. The riverbanks have pineapples, banana trees, and mango trees. Rice grows so well there that it is possible to have three harvests a year, even without irrigated fields. That’s how rich the soil is. Crops such as beans and corn can be grown just by spreading the seeds over the ground. Very little human labor is needed.
Once while traveling down the Paraguay River on a boat, we stopped at a house sitting near the bank. The farmer who lived there realized that we were hungry, so he went into his field and dug up a sweet potato. It was the size of a watermelon! He told us that as long as he leaves the root in the ground it will continue to produce potatoes for several years. To think that potatoes can be harvested without annual planting left me with a strong desire to take them to countries where food is lacking.
People who advocate developing wetlands stress the economic benefits of such development. The Pantanal, however, provides plenty of economic benefit just as a wetland. The area has virgin forests of ebony pine, and the wood is hard with high density. Natives claim that a person could drive a spike into one of these trees and it would still live more than a hundred years. These trees are used to produce ebony, which does not rot and is said to last longer than iron. These trees are so large that a man cannot put his arms around them. Imagine what it looks like to have forests filled with such precious trees. I had some seedlings of these trees planted on four hundred hectares of land in the Pantanal. The trees our members planted have made the Pantanal even more beautiful.
It is human selfishness that is destroying nature. Human competition for the shortest route to economic success is the reason that the earth’s environment has been damaged. We cannot allow the earth to be damaged any further. Religious people must lead the way in the effort to save nature. Nature is God’s creation and His gift to humankind. We must work quickly to awaken people to the preciousness of nature and the urgent need to restore it to the rich and free state it enjoyed at the time of Creation.
