Spreading the Word About Protecting the Environment
Agencies and charities involved with developing countries have long known that encouraging people to work with the land and wildlife habitats produces much greater, long-term sustainability of local resources and local employment.
Nature-based economies can be worth billions of dollars to countries such as Africa and education of adults and school children alike has proved that teaching them to respect conservation issues and their natural resources can have a huge impact. Eco-tourism is growing year after year. This is a valuable source of income for many poor developing countries. Where education has embraced this, both wildlife and local people have benefitted.
In India there are schemes were moving rural populations away from threatened wildlife habitats can have great benefits for people and animals. Government incentives such as better housing, schooling and employment were taken up quite happily were this was done in a sensitive way.
We still know very little about the medicinal qualities of many plants, both in terms of terrestrial and marine life forms. In the future these may well become major sources of income for local communities. Education will provide small communities with the means to make the most of what they have on their doorstep. When they know that maintaining the forest around them is far more valuable as a source of long-term income than cutting it down for short term gain, they will start to look after it better.
Aid in developing countries has rarely been used effectively, when it involved large-scale charitable projects but has shown huge successes where small communities got involved on their own terms, making the most of their century old local knowledge.
Shaking up the Complacent Developed World
Education of people in Western developed countries is perhaps best achieved by appealing to their eternal greed. Clear up operations of oil tanker disasters cost millions of pounds and the aftereffect of such oil pollution are felt by local communities for years to come. Re-educating people to see themselves as custodians and not masters of the land around them will be an uphill struggle, but the economic success of eco-friendly schemes is one way to do it.
A few years ago people wanting to grow vegetables organically were scoffed at and put down as cranks. Today the organic food market is worth billions every year across many countries.
Recent events in the Middle East have driven home the message to governments across the Western world that supporting dictatorships to suppress their own people while we harvest their oil is a short-lived, costly strategy. As Arabic peoples are finally seizing the freedom and chance for democracy, Western governments will have to educate themselves and their nations how to exist with less reliance on oil and petrochemical exploitation. It is long overdue and should serve as a wake-up call that we can no longer be complacent to the very real threat of global warming.
Incentive schemes to big business for eco-friendly projects and severe punishments to those who pollute must be part of environmental education.
