The Green Horizon

HQ : Zemjelos Major

Found on : Zemjelos Major

 

 

In response to environmental degradation and unwelcome modifications to the natural patterns of the ocean, the Green Horizon was initially formed by concerned scientists and activists.  Over half a century, it gradually transformed into a world assembly, recognised by the governments of the large cities and funded by them.

Any independant settlement, from the size of a kelp farm up to the greatest megapoles, can claim a seat in the assembly of the Green Horizon.  Of an estimated fifty thousand across Zemjelos, eight thousand are thus represented, one seat each.  The larger cities tend however to exert a certain degree of control over the assembly, as they are generally elected to its government.

The Assembly meets in Khariton for the first five years of each new Sitting, then spends the following five years moving about the globe.

There are, of course, politics, but scientific concern over the fragile ecosystem of Zemjelos primes.  The vast majority of representatives have scientific backgrounds.

Thus, the Green Horizon decides ecological policy at a worldwide scale, its laws taking precedent over all others in these domains.  Only very few settlements refuse to recognise its authority.  The Green Horizon also sponsors educational programs.

On the whole it is neither purely utopian nor wholly radical : the Green Horizon is a visionary movement struggling to balance planetary stewardship with practical governance.

The organisation is credited with such sea-changing initiatives as :

-  Reseeding the Scarred Belt.  These are formerly over-exploited mining zones, concentrated along the Equatorial Rifts.  Over a century of careful management, they have been biologically rehabilitated using engineered seedstorms, with aerial drones dispersing genetically tailored bacteria, flora and biological regulators.

-  The Veltrine Project, whose artificial bioluminescent shoal matrices have coaxed Thalmarid Leviathans back into migration patterns that human colonisation had pushed them to abandon.  Another century-long project, it has been partially successful.  The leviathans return in sporadic waves but their behaviour remains altered and unpredictable.

-  The umbrella treaty banning High-Orbit Laser Mining has completely eliminated coral fracturing, at least in theory.  It caused severe tensions with various off-world corporations, who have often resorted to alternative extraction methods that are just as damaging.

-  The development and implantation of Cindrel Listening Arrays is a controversial effort to communicate with these reefs via protein signal mimics.  Although the results have stood up to scientific examination, the Green Horizon is diversely accused of either making them up, or trying to put native lifeforms before humans themselves.

 

The Green Horizon is an increasingly costly endeavour.  This is natural, as the human population grows, but obviously provides ammunition for its critics.  The refusal to aim for short-term but fragile gains means that the policies sometimes require decades or even centuries to produce tangible results, and many suggest that it is just one big smokescreen to cover up massive fraud and profiteering.

Refusal to use certain invasive off-world crops and organisms genetically modified outside of their control, in a context of food shortages in certain isolated zones, has even caused internal debates, which rage between "green purists" and "adaptive pragmatists".

Critics often cite the "Red Bloom Incident" to point out the hubris of actively intervening in ecology at a planet-wide scale.  This was a premature reintroduction of Glaucen Drifters into a group of coastal ecosystems.  This led to mimic behaviour and an unexpected coordinated release of their neurotoxic spores, which killed hundreds and ruined the health of many more.