On 22nd April, it was World Earth Day. I have been very fortunate to have worked in many parts of the world, participated in several conferences and also developed may programmes related to ecosystems/environmental management. What I have learnt for sure is that the planet is indeed fragile and many of us are tinkering on the edges. In fact many environmentalists I know do one things during their "work" time and live a totally different life "outside work". An unsustainable lifestyle.
It begs the question: Who are we fooling? How can we as a collective "Be the change we want to see?"
During my reflections this World Earth Day - I just felt that the more I travel to different parts of natural environments with my children (any part of Africa) the more I feel that they deserve to inherit a living planet.
In the photo collage I put together (above) - I have shared some snippets of my life and how they are connected to this earth: the traditional mushrooms picked from a forest close to my village in Mansa, Zambia (they are delicious); my precious daughter and son; the dandelions I walked past in a field I was hiking in just outside Vienna, Austria; a picture of me with Janene Yazzie - an Dinetah Indigenous woman (environmental defender) from the United States of America whom I interacted with at the Global Landscape Forum in Bonn; a cup of Uganda coffee that I love to have every morning; the mountain landscape of Bhutan and the elephant from Amboseli in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro.
In a nutshell - we are in a global village and part of a collective. Alas the taking care of earth will remain a collective effort.
There is a proverb in my language Bemba which says: Ichalo, bantu (the world is made up of people).
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