Blog Action Day 2010 - Water

When Water Becomes a Commodity

It’s that time of year again – Blog Action Day - and the good folk at blogactionday.change.org have made this year’s the topic, water.

Water’s something most of us probably take for granted. We don’t think about it much, like the air we breathe, it’s just there. But what if there was no air. We’d suffocate. And what if there was no water. We’d die. Everything would die. The blue planet would cease to be.

If you live in a water-plenty country the concept of being without water may strike you as bizarre. But when you live in an arid place, you are acutely conscious of just how precious water is.

A few years ago we had a drought here. Two winters of little of no rain meant come the summer stringent water restrictions were applied. I learned to use dishwater and bathwater to water the garden, carrying out buckets of water to precious plants and watching as much of my garden wilted and died. We kept a nervous eye on the pool – we couldn’t do much to top it up and there was a danger it could pop right out of the ground. I learned to switch off the tap when brushing my teeth and to take short, three minute showers. For someone who views the shower as a writer’s psychic phonebooth for creative ideas, I was lost.




Yet this is nothing compared to what some have to endure. In Africa people die regularly as the result of water shortages – they have to compete with animals, who have as much right to the water as humans do, they have to live with water which is frequently contaminated or inaccessible – some walking miles each day to find water. Did you know that 2.6 billion people live without a safe toilet and 884 million people, across the globe, lack access to clean water?
When people talk about Africa being a “dark continent” mired in poverty and disease, stop to consider the very real reasons why this might be the case. A lack of water and sanitation combine with other issues to create a massive crisis which undermines health, education, economic and gender equality progress.

Children, every nation’s future, are often the worst affected. 4000 die from preventable water related diseases every day making it the biggest killer of young children, killing more than HIV/AIDS, malaria and measles combined every day. To make the point, let me put that to you another way, about 1.5 million children under the age of five die each year and 443 million school days are lost because of water and sanitation related diseases.

The issue of water is huge, and yet, because most of us take water so for granted we just don’t really stop to think of life without it. Consider this, not only do we need water in our daily personal lives to drink or bathe in, we need it to grow crops, to power industry. And more to the point, without water, we’d have practically no energy. Without energy—and therefore cars, planes, laptops, smartphones, and lighting—we wouldn’t be doing much. Human productivity as we’ve come to know it would grind to a halt. To highlight the point, did you know that your shiny new iPhone requires half a litre of water to charge? Okay, it may not seem like much, but with approximately 6.4 million active iPhones in the US, that’s 3.2 million litres to charge those alone. Or, did you know that in the in the United States alone, on just one average day, more than 500 billion litres of freshwater travel through the country’s power plants—more than twice what flows through the Nile? Or how about this - 10 litres of water go into the manufacture of a piece of A4 paper

As human civilization has progressed, so we’ve become even more dependent on water – forgetting, for the most part, that it is a finite resource.




It’s not surprising then that some of those who realised how precious water is, decided it was a highly tradable commodity. In the early to mid 2000’s, traders – hedge fund and investment managers – piled into water as a commodity set to become more precious than oil. In 2002 Fortune magazine predicted that water promised to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th: the precious commodity that determines the wealth of nations. A Bloomberg report in 2006 reported that “the world's biggest investors are choosing water as the commodity that may appreciate the most in the next several decades. The United Nations estimates that by 2050 more than 2 billion people in 48 countries will be short of water.”

But did anyone stop to think what happens if you commoditize and/or privatize something which is a basic human right? The right of access to clean and affordable water becomes severely threatened. Price and availability suddenly become dependent on the vagaries of domestic and international markets. Developing countries, in which there are already water shortages, are hit with a double whammy – not only do they not have it, but to get it they will have to pay more than they can afford. It has already been shown that the privatization of water resources, promoted as a means to bring business efficiency into water service management, has instead led to reduced access for the poor around the world as prices for these essential services have risen. And so we see an increased inequality to water access, as control of water sits in the hands of huge corporations and powerful governments.

Thank goodness then that in July 2010 the UN General Assembly declared that access to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life and all other human rights. The question is, will the UN’s declaration be enough to stop the march of commoditisation and the greed of commodity traders and their investors? Or, put another way, how much might access to this basic human right cost those who can’t afford it? Might one really hope for a true partnership and shared responsibility between all nations in alleviating water crises – given the UN have already acknowledged (in 2006) that what lies at the heart of the global water crisis is power, poverty and inequality. Same old, same old.

Until humans learn to value and respect each other, until we get past our innate greed and fear, bypass power struggles, and alleviate inequality and poverty, water will remain a very wet sort of battle ground. It will be, until then, yet another case of the haves vs. the have nots.




© Nicky Schmidt; October 2010

Blog Action Day - Climate Change

One day this valley in which I live could be the ocean, and that world famous mountain could be just an island...

In thinking about climate change today, on Blog Action Day, I'm struck by the concept of "take care of today and tomorrow will take care of itself". The only problem is world leaders, multinational corporations, governments, civic bodies and individuals are not taking care of today in a way that even affords a tomorrow. Too much focus is on an unsustainable form of economic growth, whether for personal or national gain. It is a limited mentality and a myopic form of economic growth which forgets a global tomorrow - resulting in no future for future generations and a destructive future for the planet.

It is one thing to "live in the moment", it is quite another to live that moment in a manner which is unconscious of everything but the self and the now. Living in the moment is about living mindfully, living mindfully is about directing one's actions, not just for personal good but for greater good. Without the greater good, there can, in any event, be no personal good - the two are inseparable. To think and do otherwise is to negate the concepts of society and humankind per se.

We may see ourselves solely as individuals, but we are not, we are a collective, a whole - and a whole which is, whether we accept it or not, in unity with the planet. To forget that is to assure our own demise - and that of everything around us. This is not about "getting spiritual", this is about seeing life as it truly is and viewing it pragmatically. We are interdependent and the actions of one affects the other. To focus solely on "the one" is a fast path to a dead end.

In considering climate change, I am also struck by the short-sightedness of developing nations - my own being a prime case in point. "We, the developing world, expect money -- as of yesterday," said our esteemed minister of environmental affairs, while a cabinet spokesperson has said South Africa would not commit to emissions targets in Copenhagen. The country's long-term strategy sees local emissions peaking between 2020 and 2025, stabilising by 2035 and declining absolutely by 2050. Of course, this assumes we make it to 2050.

As one critic observed, this leaves South Africa "sounding like a petulant child that is ignorant of its own resources, opportunities and standing commitments." Never mind being a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, there are resources in this country that could go a long way to finding solutions - rather than just demanding handouts. Finger-pointing at developed nations is not part of the solution. The status quo is here and now. To adopt any other position is tantamount to shooting oneself in the foot - it's being part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Perhaps the esteemed minister and her colleagues need a lesson in unity and mindfulness. Oh, no, wait, this is South Africa, we're still stuck in the politics of race, never mind global unity and a single humankind.

Oh well... on that note let me point you towards some groups who are doing sterling work in promoting the desperate need for a shift in policy regarding climate change.

Avaaz

Friends of the Earth

Seal the Deal - the UN worldwide campaign on climate change

Greenpeace

Please consider signing at least one of the petitions and becoming part of the solution.

Look at that, a blog post!

Yegods, look at this, a miracle... I'm finally getting my butt into gear and doing a blog post...

I can only say that I appear to have turned into an all-time lousy blogger. Not posting, not reading. I suspect a lot of the problem has to do with the fact that most of the things I want to write about are just thoroughly depressing and mostly centre around the current “climate” in South Africa. I’m appalled, for example, at the treatment of medal winning athlete Caster Semenye both by the local head of Athletics SA and the IAAF. And as much as I am appalled by that, I’m revolted by the media circus that has surrounded it and I’m horrified how the whole thing has been turned into a race issue, which is now bringing the race debate back to the fore - and with a vengeance. Yes, ladies, gentlemen and jellybeans, the Rainbow Nation has proved to be an utterly fallacious dream and is as dead as the poor old dodo. Racism is alive, well and thriving in sunny South Africa. If I start getting into this, I will be going down a road I’m not sure is appropriate for this blog. And since it’s been occupying my mind of late, there’s a good reason, I guess, for not blogging. And oh, this is just the tip of the iceberg... I could mention that crime stats are up, rape stats are up, South Africa's refusal to cut carbon emissions... But oh let's just not go there.

On a cheerier note, and another reason for not blogging - my pc finally started sounding its death knell with much grinding, snorting and coughing. For a hopeful moment I thought it might be hatching a dragon. No such luck. But I now have a new pc, custom built, super fast, frighteningly silent and super powerful. Cool. It means I can finish the book trailer I started making – it was looking quite good before everything crashed…

On a more important note, Blog Action Day is coming up and the topic, somewhat unsurprisingly is Climate Change. Blog Action day takes place this year on October 15th and more details can be found on the Blog Action Day website. The notification I received says:

To be a part of this year's event, all we ask is that you commit to writing one post, in your own voice, on October 15, on the topic of climate change.

More than a dozen top blogs, including Mashable, The Official Google Blog, TMZ,
Autoblog, and Daily Blog Tips, have already registered.

But this event won't be successful with big blogs alone. We want bloggers everywhere, of all types and sizes, involved in discussing the wide-ranging way in which climate change affects us all.

To register to participate, go to the Blog Action Day website.

By the way, has anyone noticed that you can no longer post images without giving Google a bunch of exclusive royalty-free rights? I was going to put up some pictures, but...

Blog Action Day 2008 - Do we really want to see the end of poverty?

I have shown in my previous two posts some of the aspects of poverty and wealth discrepancy that challenge us as a species. And now I want, with the input of D, to pose some further questions. Let me state at the outset that any attempt to tackle the subject of poverty in a single blog post is impossible – it is too big and complex a subject. What I propose to do here is take a broad overview, which might at least stimulate some thinking and debate, by raising, and perhaps answering, a part of the issue.

Let’s start by trying to get a grip on what poverty is. The internationally accepted definition of poverty is having less income than is necessary to sustain an adequate standard of living. But here’s the rub: this definition differs from nation to nation. The poor in the US, for example, are not remotely comparable to the poor in Cambodia. So, perhaps we need to look at it differently and say that poverty means having less income than is needed to meet the lowest level of Maslowian needs, namely, food, water and shelter. You might think of this as absolute poverty – it’s a self limiting condition; people who suffer from it, die.

Now there’s a simple reality that strikes me when I consider the question of poverty: while there are millions who live in poverty, there are also a small number who live with vast wealth and others who live with relative wealth. To get an idea of the ratio, I suggest you look at the global Gini coefficients. Considering this discrepancy between rich and poor, I’m inclined to a view which says the rich would appear to be rich at the cost of the poor (the story of South Africa’s gold mines highlights this perfectly). And the truth is, poverty will remain with us until the imbalance and injustice is redressed.

I’m not talking about handouts or communism as solutions here. Neither is the answer as history has already shown. Instead what is needed is a multi-pronged approach, which starts with a fundamental change of mindset and an improvement in education. I say this with one caveat: there appears to be a level of inequality that is natural. I hasten to add that this inequality is not exclusively a human phenomenon. Look at the natural world and you’ll see it at work there too. The strongest survive, the rest get eaten or beaten (you may recall my posts on the Kruger National Park). That said though, I would hope, given our human intelligence and compassion – our basic humanity - we can go beyond the “wilder” response. Unless that is too much for us as a species?

Let’s postulate for a moment. Could it perhaps be that the rich nations need the poor nations to be just that – poor? What might happen to the economy of Europe or the US, for example, if Africa were magically transformed overnight into the largest economy on earth? Given that the US consumes 25% of the world’s energy resources and has only 5% of its population, it depends on other countries to underconsume resources in relation to their population, because when those poorer nations start to consume at higher levels – as, for example, China has been doing – then the cost of those resources rises massively. And increased costs mean rich countries can no longer sustain extravagant consumption. And that’s not a comfortable prospect when you’ve been used to having it all.

Let’s look at the problem from a different angle: Why is it that the poor don’t die? After all, if being poor means having less income than is needed to survive, you’d expect the poor to disappear quite quickly.

But here’s the thing: they are dying - all the time. Between 25,000 and 50,000 people starve to death each day – an exceptionally awful way to die. Yet the world produces more than enough food to feed them. The food thrown away each year in the UK alone would probably sustain these hapless people. The $720 million spent each day on the war in Iraq – that is, between $14,400 and $28,800 for each person who starves to death on a given day – would certainly make a big difference if it were applied to poverty relief. Surely this is one of the easier problems to fix? So why then aren’t we fixing it, really fixing it?

Yes, of course, we believe we are, we’d like to think we are but… let’s go back to the first point – do the rich economies really want the problem to be fixed?

Let’s assume for one moment that they did. What might they do?

Two things would make an enormous difference. First, the dismantling of agricultural subsidies that make poor countries’ products uncompetitive would allow them to compete fairly. Second, a meaningful effort to tackle the scourges of poverty - fundamental infrastructural deficits (water, sewage, road and rail transport, electricity) and preventable disease – would massively boost productivity levels and allow education levels to rise. Access to credit without structural adjustment burdens would be a good start.

But here’s the rub: Aid at current levels won’t fix these problems – it’s too little – almost all rich nations constantly fail to meet their target aid obligations - and its purposes are generally skewed. To see what I mean consider the observations of Pekka Hirvonen of the Global Policy Forum:

Development assistance is often of dubious quality. In many cases,
· Aid is primarily designed to serve the strategic and economic interests of the donor countries;
· Or [aid is primarily designed] to benefit powerful domestic interest groups;
· Aid systems based on the interests of donors instead of the needs of recipients’ make development assistance inefficient;
· Too little aid reaches countries that most desperately need it; and,
· All too often, aid is wasted on overpriced goods and services from donor countries.

To my mind these failures leaves us with one fundamental question which must be answered if we are to ever truly tackle poverty and create improved global equality: Are rich nations truly willing to allow the poor to join them at the banquet table? Until the answer is an unequivocal and unbiased “yes”, poverty will remain with us.

© October 2008. No part of this article may be reproduced or otherwise used without prior written permission from the authors.

Local poverty haunts suburban restaurants

Hout Bay on a summer's day

Blog Action Day is looming – 15th of October for those of you not yet in the know. As a result, the question of poverty is very much in the forefront of my mind – and I’m seeing it more clearly than usual – all around me. I imagine some may find this post a little hard to handle. For that I make no apology. I write what I see, what I feel, what I wonder about. I write with the eyes of a writer and a storyteller…

Hout Bay beach

As I sat today, at a streetside trattoria in a seaside suburb, I pondered two things – one, the ostentatious wealth and two, the abject poverty – which sat side by side.

Luigi’s Trattoria, one of my favourite places for a lazy Sunday nibble, is a laidback place – friendly, convivial and with good, hearty Italian fare. The gelateria next door does the most sublime Italian ice-cream. The nicest tables at Luigi’s are those that spill out onto the sunny pavement - but that means that the less wealthy inhabitants of Hout Bay (the suburb) walk on by and either gaze covetously at, or harass the diners. Hout Bay, you see, is the strangest of places, where wealth sits cheek by jowl with wretched poverty.

Luxury homes in Hout Bay

A shanty town, very like the one in Hout Bay, only these people don't have sea and mountain views

Because I’m a writer, stories fling themselves at me as I sit there. Every aspect of life in South African society tears at my soul. I see the thing as a four handed monster. On the one hand, sublime landscapes that tear at your soul with their evocative beauty, on the other, the unbelievable displays of wealth played out by those living in wedding cake houses and driving Jaguars, Bentleys and BMW SUVs that make you retch with their insensitivity and crassness. On the one hand the beautiful weather, the balmy spring days that warm body and soul, on the other, the dismal poverty of those who have nothing, who have been promised everything yet who remain in tin and wood shanties that flood in winter and reek all year round.

This is the nature of Hout Bay, which is, in effect, a microcosm of the macrocosm.

Hout Bay seaside home

Tin shack dwellings

As I sit there sipping my Sauvignon Blanc, nibbling on my antipasto misto, a series of “characters” invades my own personal story.

The first is black guy, drunk and is masturbating as he shambles past the restaurant. He’s muttering to himself, his fly undone and is so far gone he’s largely oblivious to the world. One seeks, I guess, pleasure in any corner…

The second are a group of street urchins, their clothes torn, ready to harass the whiteys dining out, singing, dancing and berating, in the hope that if they keep it up for long enough a tourist will give them a buck or two.

The third is a guy of mixed race, sporting a faux American accent (you must remember that even in the “new” South Africa, race remains a fundamental part of the mix) . He’s already harassed Luigi and friend, rebuking them liberally before passing on to us, and saying “Yeah, if I was a whitey like you, I’d complain about the service.” Had I had the wit in that moment, I’d have asked for his story – but I was still reeling from the first guy.

The fourth are two children, mixed race, with a homemade petition pleading for money for their school. “Agh, please, merrem, marster,” they whine, “give us money for our school.” Because we know longer know where reality ends and trickery begins, we just say, “Sorry.” It seems a paltry response under any circumstances. You feel screwed whatever you do.

The fifth, another black man, is so drunk he can barely stand up straight. He slurs and staggers, mumbling incomprehensibly. The manager of the restaurant tells him to “go away”, but this doesn’t deter him, he just rants a bit more. “Go away! Go!” bellows the manager and the drunk staggers off, heading who knows where, to drown more of who knows what.

It’s not, I have to tell you, good for the digestion. For someone with an over-active imagination it’s not particularly uplifting either. I see stories in the eyes of these passerbys, just as I see stories in the eyes of those sitting around me – like the little toddler with blonde hair who is soaked in tomato sauce and relishing her meal with greedy gusto, the three Muslim guys who drip gold and treat the black waitress as though she is some servile beast, to the five tourists, who admire the weather, marvel at the locals, and think… what, one wonders…

I wondered, as I sat there, how many of you are faced with real poverty on a day to day basis? I wondered, how often you drove past people who sleep on the ground, sheltering under freeway bridges and in bushes, or who live in tin shanties that leak, that have neither plumbing nor electricity? I wonder, how often people beg from you, people who are destitute and without hope, people who look at you with eyes that are either blank or filled with dark resentment? I wonder how often you stare into the eyes of children and see, beyond the blankness, a glimmer of demons? I wonder how often you face real poverty, see it as a norm, as a daily fact of life, intertwined with crime and violence and drug abuse and… And I wonder how you feel about it, how it touches you, whether it tears at your soul – or whether, perhaps, it’s simply not part of your world, but something “out there”?

Wealth vs poverty

Two posts in one - Announcing Blog Action Day

Sabie River Dawn

I have, I realise, gone completely bush mad. There’s a nice, but very rude expression for it in Afrikaans, but aware of bloggy sensibilities, I won’t use it here – it’s translatable enough for anyone to understand!

However, I’m that bushmad that I’m trying to get back to the bush. And what I’m wondering is, why has it taken me so long, and literally on the eve of our leaving SA for the Wet and Soggy Place, for me to discover the bush. Perhaps it’s because South Africans just take the bush for granted. We know it’s there, so you know, no big deal. But it is a big deal. It’s an awesome deal – that sheer magic of being out in wild nature is just irreplaceable. I would wish for every single one of you to experience it. And by experiencing it, I mean going out and actually walking in the bush - the real bush, where the lions and elephants and impala live.

As for getting back into the bush, I considered an African swansong – Victoria Falls on the Zimbabwean/Zambian border (staying in Zambia) and Chobe Game Reserve in Botswana. But the thing that really grabbed me by the throat (and totally out-budgeted me) was the cost. Hideously expensive. I’m utterly staggered at the price of safari holidays, at how much private lodges and hotel chains charge for accommodation per night – never mind the airfares and airport taxes, park fees, activity charges etc. There are some people who are making a lot of money out of all this.

And here’s the rub. While hotel chains and private lodges are creaming it, the people who work for them and the people who live in the immediate environment remain horribly poor – often living below, on or just above the poverty line. It’s no small wonder that service in Africa is berated as being awful. How, after all, would you like to work for some fatcat serving “wealthy” tourists, when you don’t even earn enough to put food on the table. At the Victoria Falls curio markets, stallholders will barter goods – clothing, children’s clothing in particular, shoes and pens are all gratefully accepted as currency – because they are so unaffordable and so unavailable.

Township realities and tin shanties (near Johannesburg)

And this brings me to the next element of this post. Blog Action Day. It’s on the 15th of October this year and the topic is Poverty. I think I’m pretty well placed to write about poverty given it’s all around me. I’m hoping to rope D in to co-write with me, as an ex academic (socio-political theory) and well-published in his own right, he will bring extra depth to anything I might have to say.

Do go and check out the Blog Action site and sign up to participate. If you feel you’d have nothing to say, and I find that hard to believe! the site gives a host of ideas and suggestions for post topics on the day.

It's Blog Action Environment Day - The Impact of Housing Developments

This is a lengthy post and I make no excuse for that. Issues of the environment need air time. What follows below is specific to the region where I live, but it is an issue which affects all of us in one way or another, wherever we live.

Developments and bill boards abound. Areas that were once wide open veld or virgin forest are all succumbing to developer's greed.

We only have the one world. When we’ve plundered all the wild places and used up all the natural resources, we’ll be done for – and so will our children, and our children’s children, and our children’s children’s children… We won’t leave a legacy. We’ll leave nothing - just a vast emptiness in time and space, a place where we once were.

As you know from all the phoktobering I’ve been doing, I live in a beautiful part of the world – a place with pristine beaches, rugged mountains, open plains, tumbling rivers, shaded ravines, flowering meadows… The magnificence of nature here is unsurpassed. The wildlife who enjoy it are many and varied – lions, elephants, giraffes, zebra, cheetahs, leopards, baboons, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, springbuck, eland, kudu, nyala, bushbuck, porcupines, wildebeest, hyenas, wild dogs, monkeys, dung beetles, butterflies, tarantulas, whales, dolphins, sharks, puffadders, cobras, genets, otters, ostriches, herons, guinea fowl… Okay, you get the picture.

This pristine stretch of beach is coming under increasing pressure as the land behind it is turning into a "housing complex". Log cabin holiday homes which have been here for years are being bought, knocked down and turned into huge multi-million rand homes...

Of course all this beauty, this wild magnificence, brings with it opportunity for those who would get rich quick and couldn’t be bothered about the future. Humanity’s lack of vision, the inability to see beyond the present, always amazes me. Does the future really hold so little value? Are we really that myopic? That greedy? Do our fears run so deep, is our consciousness that unevolved? The answer in so many instances would appear to be yes. For what we have here are those who would make a fast buck and benefit personally as they set out to destroy the wonder that is this land. (And yes, it’s not just here, it happens everywhere but I’m not qualified to speak about other places – you do that, okay?). Here, developers are all too quick to take pristine wilderness and turn it into gated or luxury housing estates. The irony is profound. Wilderness and luxury housing – in the same breath… I think not. It’s as insane as conservation through commercialization – another “concept” which plagues us.

A few days ago I showed you some photos taken along the Garden Route – the travesty is that this beautiful area is rapidly being eroded. There are more gated and luxury housing estates, golf estates, polo fields and commercial developments than I have ever seen – all catering to the ultra wealthy – many of whom are foreigners – all devastating the environment. It’s a beautiful area see so we all want some of the action never mind that we’ll destroy it in the process. Talk about the fallacy of composition… One man comes for the lifestyle and believes his coming will have little or no impact on the environment. But his friends soon follow him and the environment staggers beneath the strain as what the one man sought fast disappears.

Once an exclusive seaside playground for the rich, Plettenberg Bay is now wall to wall houses and developments as everyone wants a slice of the cake.

This entire stretch of coastline is being subject to massive over-development. Beyond the curve of the bay are at least three polo fields, luxury and golf estates. To the left of the shot, half the headland, most of which, fortunately, is national park land, is being turned into gated estates...

Over the past few years one such development has raised particular controversy. Called the Lakes Eco and Golf Reserve (yes, please do laugh very loudly at the name) the project plans included 1200 residential stands, 2x18 hole champion golf courses, 300 timeshare units, 120 home retirement village, 80 room hotel, dams and water storage reservoir, sewerage treatment works, village centre, restaurants, aqua driving ranges, sports facilities, sports academy, fuel storage, adventure sports, polo fields, equestrian centre, hiking trails, nature reserve, water sports, airstrip, marina… You can read more about the concerns here and about the developers and their plans here. Of course, the developers argued that they are “giving back” to the community by creating employment for underprivileged communities. Hmm, destroy it and give back just what – can a job really replace the land? You may have money to buy food but what if there’s no land on which to grow that food? As the people of the area said, “We can’t eat golf balls!” and “We don’t play golf or polo!” Oh yes, there’s employment and that’s great, but as maids, gardeners, caddies, stable-hands and waiters to the wealthy... That’s neither sustainable development nor sustainable upliftment. These things have to be viewed holistically because of course environments include people and their needs – their sustainable needs.

(It is amidst virgin forest and on the rise of the hills just south of where this shot was taken, that the Lakes development is planned.)

Of course, as with all things in this benighted land, every developer has government connections and regrettably our young democracy has shown us that our new government is rife with corruption. Everybody wants to make a quick buck – after all, we see the example of the rest of the world and follow in their footsteps...

Another prime example is a beautiful bay on the outskirts of the city. For years it was enjoyed by windsurfers, surfers, dog walkers – anyone who wanted to feel the sea air in their face and the sand between their toes. Now it is wall to wall development, a blanket of buildings crowded together obliterating the landscape - the legacy of the city’s previous mayor in her personal bid to get rich quick.

The irony in all this is that every development is supposed to be subject to an Environmental Impact Assessment – but when the assessor is being paid by the client i.e. the developer, nine times out of ten, the development gets the go ahead. Everyone has their price, it seems.
Two years ago I wrote an article about the destruction of the Garden Route and attempted to get it published in several local and national newspapers. No one would touch it. Why? Because it was contentious. It stated the facts as they were and made no excuses for human greed. As you will know from reading this blog, I ain’t afraid to tell it like it is – and many don’t like that.

These are but two examples of how man’s greed destroys and will continue to destroy our world. Last Wednesday Jan, over at Jan’s Writing Journal posted about Oliver James’ book Affluenza – go and take a read – it strikes me that it sums up some of the reasons why we are so willing to destroy the planet – so we can all go off and catch this new virus and make ourselves sick. It’s insane. What species willingly sets out to destroy itself and its environment? Just how much have we totally lost the plot so that we can “have it all”. A lot? Completely? Yes. What will we have left to have if we keep up this madness? It’s time we got back to basics. Time we reassessed our values, our ethics, our humanity and our priorities. Time we stood up for the planet and all the life on it – not just greedy humans - unless, of course, we really do want to make ourselves and every other living organism on the planet extinct.

But let’s end on an optimistic note. First, in relation to this post – having not followed the Lakes development for a while – I was too busy trying to save trees… I have just read that the Minister for the Environment of the local region has rejected the application to allow the Lakes development to go ahead! Yes! Of course, this doesn’t mean the developer won’t appeal and go to court but at least the Minister has drawn a line in the sand and maybe the already endangered Knysna seahorse whose number was truly up as a result of this development has been granted a reprieve that will last for a very long time… In the case of the Lakes enough local people stood together and protested. They lobbied local councilors, they marched, they wrote letters to the press. They formed an association and said “No, not on our land!” And this is something everyone can do. Yes, it takes guts, it takes strength, it takes time. But if we do not speak up, we have only ourselves to blame. So, if there is something that concerns you, lobby, motivate, raise hell. The rejection of the Lakes application shows that united voices make a difference.

Secondly, we have Blog Action Day - today! - and the focus on the environment – here’s hoping that the united voice of millions of bloggers will raise a sufficient outcry on the multiple issues concerning all of us so that we and our governing bodies sit up, take note, do our bit and stop the madness and the rot that threatens to destroy our environment and our world.

I leave you with a quote from Jared Diamond:

What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it? Like modern loggers, did he shout "Jobs, not trees!”? Or: "Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we'll find a substitute for wood"? Or: "We don't have proof that there aren't palms elsewhere on Easter, we need more research, your proposed banning on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering"? Similar questions arise for every society that has inadvertently damaged its environment.

(Jared Diamond: Collapse – How Societies Choose Or Fail To Survive ; Pg 114; Penguin Books 2006)

(When I was a child, this area was just bush and mountain...)

(NOTE: an ironic aside - while developers are quick to create luxury estates for those who can afford them, millions of South Africans still live in tin and wood shanties... We have curious priorities...)

Magic Mushrooms and...

On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. The idea is to get everyone talking towards a better future. Follow the link and take a look.

Frankly, I have no idea at this stage what I'll post about but for now let's get on with things Phoktoberish and enjoy a feast of mushrooms. Okay, so I stand corrected, funghi... And they do after all form a part of our environment. Enjoy, but don't try to eat or smoke the pictures, okay?!



















Tomorrow, I'm going off to see if I can find the whales for you to admire... Watch this space...