10 Green Commitments
to ensure a more
Sustainable World for our Children
Understanding why we have climate change and how we can solve it.
It starts with us!
Protect nature (continued)
The NZ Maui dolphin is on the edge of extinction with fewer than 100 left in the wild. According to the Department of Conservation a ban on sea netting and trawling along part of the North Island’s west coast, together with more stringent controls over petroleum and mineral prospecting, and mining would be big steps to protecting the Maui dolphin. Instead, in 2014, we have Statoil prospecting for oil off the North Island.
Commercial fishing uses trawling nets to harvest the seabed: in NZ this still happens and as high as 30% of their catch is estimated to be thrown overboard (15). Current stock of the snapper has dropped to as low as 6% of its original (that is unfished) size in some areas such as the Bay of Plenty (15) - an unintended oxymoron. A quota system has been in place to enable some recovery in certain areas but the political will to make good environmental decisions while appeasing commercial enterprises has been weak. Meanwhile fishing is still glamorised in NZ. Factory ships plunder our oceans. The largest animal on the planet, the blue whale, is an endangered species with numbers down to 1% of the original 300 000 (4). Some good news is that a 2014 United Nations International Court of Justice decision has put a stop to Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean under the guise of research. Alas, early in January 2015, Japan announced it would defy this decision and would resume research with the intention of commercial whaling later.
Rhinoceros and elephant have been wiped out in many parts of Africa. Thirty years ago Kenya had 170 000 elephants; the number is now down to 30 000 (16). In Wankee National Park in Zimbabwe poachers recently used cyanide to kill elephants which contaminated the food chain when vultures which clean up the remains, were then poisoned. This destruction occurred to satisfy the demand from mostly Asian countries for ivory and horn for their supposed mythical erotic powers. Education is sorely needed if poaching is to be stamped out.
Another reason for the loss of wildlife is deforestation and the resulting loss of habitat. Riaan Manser who rode around Africa on a bicycle describes one such example in 2005:
‘My original surprise at the systematic destruction of the Mozambique forests turned to horror as I moved further south. Presumably the combination of professional logging (Chinese) and local charcoal industry was still the main culprit, but the scale of destruction was totally different. … I was seeing what looked like hundreds of kilometres of smouldering despoliation … but because I was crawling along on a bicycle … I was forced to witness every inch of this crime against nature.’ (17) All countries that have lost forests should have programmes to replant them, which would provide vital employment too.'
Bees are dying in vast numbers and the most likely cause is the use of certain pesticides. ‘Nearly one in three honeybee colonies in the United States died or disappeared last winter, an unsustainable decline that threatens the nation’s food supply’ because they pollinate our crops (18). At home we too can take care simply by tempering our use of poisons such as insect repellents, weed killers and detergents, or by choosing more eco-friendly alternatives. The simple question to answer is this: what world do we want to leave to children - one with a natural heritage or a concrete one? A concrete jungle might have bright lights and seem interesting and cool to some, but where will our food come from?
Indigenous people such as the American Indians, the Australian Aborigines, the NZ Maoris, the South African San and Khoikhoi to name a few, had a deeper appreciation for the environment that sustained them, than the supposed advanced Western civilisations. They all lived close to nature.