Our Environment
Jan 4th, 2012 by admin
The first female African Noble laureate Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan environmental activist was at the forefront in the fight to save the environment. Culled from my Interview with her.
Her determination to bring about a change has pushed her beyond limits she never imagined, despite continued opposition to her work in the home front. To her any form of opposition is in principle because those who oppose her work are directly responsible for the destruction of the environment, privatizing the forest, public lands and disrespecting human rights.
As an environmentalist the first thing is to ensure that the right thing is done to protect the environment. This gave birth to the planting of trees several years ago. Some of the reasons, at the time was the reelection of her husband into public office. The realization of the huge problem Africa will face if its environment is not protected. There is no doubt that the resources available to the continent have made it susptible to conflicts, as access to the resources and its distribution continues to be a problem. Another reason is the attraction people from outside the continent have to the existing resources, resulting in exploitation quite often at the expense of the African people.
After the colonial period many African leaders changed positions with the colonial masters so Africa ended up with leaders who instead of exploiting the resources to the benefit of the people rather exploited the resources to their benefit accumulating resources quite often excluding large numbers of Africans either because of their ethnicity or political affiliations resulting in conflicts that have caused damage to the economies of the continent.
Her message, which the Norwegian Noble Committee recognized is that Africa, has a lot of resources, a rich continent that must use its resources to the benefit of its people. Africa has to ignore the system of governance to better manage the resources more responsibly and sustain ably for the benefit of Africa, only then would Africa preempt many of the reasons why she and its people are fighting.
Furthermore, Africans should have an obligation to plant trees to help the environment. If each person has a responsibility to plant at least ten trees, the environment is beautified and cooled. This ensures that our planet stays alive.
With the many challenges facing Africa such as poverty, dependence on primary resources is the norm as such majority use energy from the world therefore contributing to the emission of carbon monoxide, making it difficult for poor people to think of tomorrow. They worry more about survival and tomorrow never arises therefore it is the responsibility of the leaders to address the issue. But, a problem arises when leadership trivializes the environment, and then of course the rest of the environment does not care.
Scientists tell us that Africa has not contributed very much to the emission of green gases, nevertheless, because of Africa’s geotropically positioning within the tropics, poor technology in agriculture dependency is on the subsistence level as such agriculture tends to destroy the environment and bring very little yield. Examples are the encroachment of the Congo forest and National forest, because value is not added to the timber, many companies try to access it to sell at give away prices.
Desperate measures are needed within Africa to ensure that Africa appreciates and takes care of its environment. To counteract the negative impact of climate change, better methods must be adopted. Knowledge, skills, more technology and capital are needed.
However if African leaders open their eyes to understand the threat of climate change, a lot can be done to reduce its impact.
If everyone is involved in the planting of trees to protect the forests; investment in alternative sources of energy is a priority. Implementation of these factors will make a lot of capital available to Africa and Africa will follow in the path of fossil fuel and invest in other sources of energy like solar.
Absolutely valuable material. thank you