President Thabo Mbeki and the people of South Africa’s commitment to cultural and environmental diversity and their efforts towards achieving the goals encapsulated in the Millennium Declaration of 2000 and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation adopted at the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 2002 are noteworthy.
The people of South Africa have not just made substantial progress in the sustainable development of their own country, they have provided leadership and support for the continent as a whole. President Mbeki is well known as one of the architects of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), which has a strong environmental component. South Africa also provided the perfect stage for WSSD, which it hosted under the slogan “People, Planet, and Prosperity”. Holding WSSD in South Africa gave delegates a valuable insight not only into the many formidable challenges that Africa faces, but also into how Africa can and will rise to those challenges.South Africa’s implementation of the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation is well on track to meet the Johannesburg targets on water and sanitation. It is also a world leader in conservation practices, through its innovative use of a wide variety of available management tools and its spearheading of the groundbreaking sponsorship of the Peace Parks concept to support cross-border conservation of critically important wild habitats.
With the declaration of four new Marine Protected Areas in 2004, it has also brought almost 19 per cent of its coastline under protection, already nearly achieving the 20 per cent target set at WSSD.As well as being a party to more than 43 multilateral environmental agreements, South Africa has enacted a wide range of domestic legislation, backed up by specialist environmental courts, to protect South Africa’s environment. Laws passed by President Mbeki’s government include instruments to safeguard biological diversity, improve air quality, promote environmental impact assessments in business and industry, implement waste management strategies, and curb the pollution of the environment by plastic bags. South Africa also deserves recognition for the unity with which it is pursuing its sustainable development goals. In the words of Martinus van Schalkwyk, South Africa’s Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, speaking on World Environment Day 2004, there is a “groundswell of support with one shared central theme: the absolute imperative to protect, preserve and promote our natural environment.” Millions of South Africans are striving to make a positive difference. “In homes, businesses, factories, schools, churches and community centres we are experiencing a quiet greening revolution.”There is no doubt that this revolution is taking its lead from the top. As President Mbeki said at the opening session of the meeting of Heads of State and Government at WSSD, “we can and must act in unity to ensure that there is a practical and visible global development process that brings about poverty eradication and human advancement within the context of the protection of the ecology of the planet Earth.” President Mbeki and the people of South Africa are setting an example for the world to follow.
Excerpt from President Thabo Mbeki’s address at the welcome ceremony at WSSD:
“South Africans of many races, colours, cultures and religions are hard at work to achieve peace and national reconciliation.
Proud of the fact that they are Africans and moved by the fact that the peoples of Africa share a common burden of conflict, poverty and underdevelopment, they are determined to work hand in hand with their brothers and sisters throughout the continent, to end five hundred years of suffering and the treatment of Africans by others, as less than human.
These South Africans, who occupy the land that is the cradle of humanity, also know what has happened to the natural environment that enabled the evolution of all life on earth, and the emergence of humanity itself.
Around them they see the degradation of the soil. They know the central importance of water to the sustenance of life. They have seen how the natural forests were decimated.
They know of the depletion of the resources of the giant oceans that meet along our southern coast. They experience the pollution of the earth, the air, the rivers and the seas, caused by human activity. They know of droughts and floods. They experience the environmental suffering borne by slum-dwellers and others immersed in poverty.
Understanding the umbilical cord that ties us to the planet earth, they are determined to do everything possible to save the earth from ourselves, to save the earth for ourselves, to ensure that as it took millions of years for humanity to evolve and emerge, so must humanity survive and develop for millions more years on the basis of a healthy partnership between people and the planet, on the basis of a sustainable relationship between a prosperous world and a healthy environment.
His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, known in Europe as the 'Green Patriarch,' has taken the lead among religious leaders in his concern for the environment. His Holiness has initiated seminars and dialogues to discuss the need for the mobilization of moral and spiritual forces to achieve harmony between humankind and nature. One of his environmental initiatives, which is part of Religion, Science and the Environment, is the Symposium entitled The Caspian Sea - Linking People and Traditions, scheduled to take place aboard a ship, which will circumnavigate the Caspian Sea from 17-25 June 2005. The symposium also aims to encourage understanding and a dialogue between the Christian and Islamic faiths.
Writing in a 2004 issue of UNEP's flagship magazine Our Planet on 'Seas, Oceans and Small Islands', His Holiness called for more attention to be paid to marine pollution.
"At the foundation of the world, 'in the beginning ... the spirit of God swept over the face of the waters' (Genesis 1:1-2). The Judeo-Christian scriptures speak of water as a sign of blessing and peace (Deuteronomy 8:7). The way we relate to God is reflected in the way we respect water. Water pronounces the sealed covenant between God and the world; drought and thirst announce the rupture of this binding relationship, an apostasy from the divine commandments (I Kings 17). The heavens, too, are set among the waters (Revelation 4). Marine pollution is nothing less than the violation of a hallowed promise.[...]
In Eastern Orthodox iconography, blue is interchangeable with green. These colours are predominantly used for foregrounds and backgrounds, being reserved also for the depiction of the celestial. As in the viewpoint from space, so also in the perspective of icons: both heaven and earth are blue! We tend to call earth our habitat; yet, in many ways, water might be more appropriately hailed as our home or natural environment. If there were no water, there would be no world. Marine pollution is nothing less than the devastation of our earthly premise.
There is, then, something sacred, almost sacramental in the very fabric of water. The meaning of water somehow conceals the very mystery of God. In this respect, Orthodox theology proposes a model of environmental action based on the spiritual significance of water. On a planet where oceans and rivers are polluted, we would do well to remember the original and radical relationship between living sources of water and the life-giving spirit of God. In a world where the unjust demands of the few stifle the fundamental survival of the poor, water reminds us of the need to live simply and simply to live. At a time when wastefulness has become so rampant and pervasive, we are challenged to recall the implications of our actions as well as to assume responsibility for a society where water is justly shared and where everyone has enough.
In light of this commitment, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has to date organized five international, inter-religious and inter-disciplinary symposia: in the Aegean Sea (1995), on the Black Sea (1997), along the Danube River (1999), around the Adriatic Sea (2002) and in the Baltic Sea (2003). A sixth is currently being prepared for the Caspian Sea in the summer of 2005. The purpose is to call attention to the plight of our seas; to attract religious leaders, scientists, environmentalists, politicians and journalists; and to raise awareness about collective responsibility for our environment for future generations. None of us is able to resolve the environmental crisis alone; 'everyone has a part to play', as we stated in a Common Declaration with Pope John Paul II at the closing ceremony of the Adriatic symposium.
All of us know that we are surrounded by rivers, seas and oceans. What we do not immediately recognize is the way in which these are intimately and innately connected to one another as well as to our environment. We may not immediately discern the close relationship between the world's waterways, the world's people and the world's Creator. There is an interconnection and interdependence between the water of baptism, the sap of plants, the tears of humans, the bloodstream of animals, the rainfall of a forest and the flow of rivers to the sea.
We are called to avow water as the wonder of life if we are ever to avert the world crisis in water pollution and distribution. In order to correct the wrongful politics of water by those who regard it as their rightful property, we must first celebrate water as the irreplaceable patrimony of all humankind; we must accept the indiscriminate and inalienable right to water for all people in the world. Water can never be reduced to a marketable commodity for profit - especially for the affluent, especially for the few. It must always be protected as part of the fundamental quality of life - especially for the more vulnerable, especially for our children.
On the third day of creation, 'God gathered the waters under the sky into one place; and God saw that it was good. ... So God created every living thing, with which the waters swarm. And God saw that it was good.' (Genesis 1:9-21). The Greek word for 'good' implies beauty and harmony. The very least that we owe God, this world and our children, is to preserve the beauty of our planet's water, to leave behind a world that remains good."
When she was growing up in an Inuit community in northern Quebec, Sheila Watt-Cloutier never rode anything faster than a dog sled.
Now the 50-year-old grandmother jets across the globe speaking out on environmental issues and warning of the impending catastrophe that is global warming.
Her people are witnessing first hand the devastating affects of climate change and its relentless assault on their traditional way of life.
And if there is one place on the planet where the effects of the "great warming" are immediately felt it is in the Arctic. As President of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (Canada) in 1995 and re-elected to the position on a full-time basis in1998, Watt-Cloutier represents some 155,000 Inuit in Canada, the USA, Russia and Greenland.
The minutest change in the Arctic changes everything, every eco system. The changes in climate have brought a lot more insects and bugs, and new species of birds never before seen in the arctic are appearing every year.
Watt-Cloutier is fully involved in United Nations work and has for years been working on the treaty to eliminate the use persistent organic pollutants, or POP's.
As President of ICC Canada, Ms. Watt-Cloutier maintains a seat on the international ICC executive council, working in cooperation with Inuit leaders from Greenland, Alaska and Chukotka (Russia). She also holds the position of Vice-President of the national Inuit organization, Inuit Tapirisat of Canada.
Ms. Watt-Cloutier is now applying her vast experience at the international level. She is an effective spokesperson on a wide range of Arctic and Indigenous issues, and has made numerous presentations to governments and international bodies
Some 50 nations have signed on to the new treaty making it one of the fastest ratified UN treaties on record. But the global work to get there took some 15 years.
Watt-Cloutier is one of the environmental heroes featured in The Great Warming, a three-part documentary narrated by Alanis Morissette and Keanu Reeves, which premiers Earth Day, April 22, on the Discovery Channel.
Julia Carabias Lillo coordinated a research and rural development programme in extremely impoverished peasant communities in the four regions of Mexico called the 'Integrated Use of Natural Resources' (PAIR the acronym in Spanish).
She was a member of the Commission for Developing Countries and Global Change, which published the report For Earth's Sake during the 1992 Conference on the Environment and Development in Brazil sponsored by the UN. Carabias is currently a member of several consultative councils and forms part of the academic councils of various national and international organizations, such as member of the Board of Directors of Leadership for Environment and Development (LEAD International) until 2001, the Scientific Committee of SCOPE from1994 to 2000, and at present she is a member of the National Steering Committee of LEAD Mexico, member of the Board of Directors of the World Wildlife Fund, and of the Resources for the future.
In February 1994, Carabias was named President of the National Ecology Institute, then a decentralized agency of the Social Development Ministry. In December 1994, she was asked by the then President of Mexico to form part of his Cabinet as the Minister of Fisheries. That same month, the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Fisheries was created with Carabias as Minister. She served in that position for six years until the end of the administration in November 2000.
In 2002, she was named Chair of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and is serving a term of four years. She continues to be a member of the Faculty of Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) coordinating a new Masters Degree programme in Restoration Ecology, and she is President of the NGO Centro Interdisciplinario de Biodiversidad y Ambiente (CEIBA).
Carabias is the author of numerous scientific articles on botany, ecology, natural resource management, ecological restoration and conservation. She is also the co-author of Ecology and Alimentary Self-sufficiency, Rural Production in Mexico, Ecological Alternatives, and Natural Resource Management and Rural Poverty.
Mr. Zhou Qiang currently occupies the most senior position in southern China’s Hunan Province as Party Secretary. From 2006 to 2010, Mr. Zhou was the governor of Hunan and during his tenure he dedicated himself to transforming the province into a model of environmental sustainability, calling on the protection of the Dongting Lake, China’s second largest fresh water lake, and the Xiangjiang River as well as promoting wastewater treatment and reforestation.
“A Green Hunan icon not only boasts of the beautiful scenery and sound ecosystems in the province but also represents the province’s initiative in promoting green development and a Green Economy. I hope I can keep working on the green development, not only for Hunan province but also for my country and our homeland Earth. I also hope that the resources of Nature that we have now can continue to benefit future generations,” he said.
Born in 1960 in central Hubei province, Mr. Zhou early on indicated an interest in protecting the environment. While serving as Chairman of the All-China Youth Federation (ACYF), he also launched in 1999 the China Mother River Protection Operation for the Xiangjiang River which runs through the province. As head of the ACYF, he has mobilized youth and social communities to work on protecting the environment and join in the Mother River Protection Operation which aims to reduce the discharge of major pollutants, improving the water supply and protecting the wetland areas.
As the only national youth association in China, the ACYF is a very important force for protecting the environment in China and the global environment. To date, the youth organization has undertaken 882 afforestation projects and 191,000 hectares have been reforested. In addition 300 million youth have been mobilized to participate in the Mother River Protection Operation, and exchanges and cooperation in the field of environmental protection have grown among young people in more than 50 countries and regions. On 4 May 2002, the President of China inscribed the message of "Protecting the Mother River" to express his full support. The Operation, initially advocated by Zhou Qiang, has now become one of the most well known environmental protection initiatives in China.
Michelle Bachelet, President of the Republic of Chile, was recognized in the Policy Leadership category for her outstanding leadership in creating marine protected areas and boosting renewable energy.
“Chile has shown the world that you don’t need to be a rich country to preserve the environment.,” said President Bachelet. “I feel honored to be included in this outstanding group of people and grateful for being acknowledged as one of this year’s Champions of the Earth, the UN’s highest environmental recognition.”
In October 2015, President Bachelet established 3 marine protected areas in Chile to conserve biodiversity. These include the marine park Nazca-Desventuradas in San Ambrosio and San Felix Islands, a range of protected areas and marine parks in the Juan Fernandez Islands and an extension of the protected areas in the Easter Island.
The total coverage is now over 1 million km2, making it the largest in the world. This initiative is aligned with the UN mission of protecting at least 10 per cent of the oceans by 2020.
Aside from marine environmental protection, her policies have helped to facilitate a nationwide transition to clean energy. In the four years leading up to 2017, renewable energy production surged from 6 to 17 per cent of Chile’s energy mix.
In June 2017, two new marine parks and a permanent assessment group on climate change were planned.
Dr Paul A. Newman & NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center won in the Science and Innovation category, for outstanding contributions to the Montreal Protocol – which has phased out 99 per cent of ozone-depleting substances and led to the healing of the ozone layer.
“Ozone is our unseen natural sunscreen,” said Dr. Newman, Chief Scientist of Atmospheric Sciences. “It’s crucial to understand and carefully watch this vital Earth resource."
The first satellite instrument to measure ozone was put into space by the Goddard center in 1970, and the first Antarctic ozone hole pictures were made using Goddard satellite data in 1985. Since the early 90s, the center has been instrumental in leading updates to the Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion, looking at how policies impact the atmosphere and setting a new high-water mark for international scientific cooperation.
The ozone layer is now healing and will return to 1980 levels by mid-century. As a result, up to 2 million cases of skin cancer may be prevented each year by 2030. The Kigali Amendment to the protocol, signed in 2016, is now targeting hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are climate-warming gases with significant global-warming potential. Action in this area can help avoid up to 0.5° Celsius in global warming by the end of the century.
