Education key in battle against marine pollution
US scientist emphasises need to teach children about environment
AMERICAN oceanographer and National Geographic Society explorer in residence Sylvia Earle believes schools need to educate pupils from an early age about the role marine pollution plays in affecting the environment.
Earle was speaking at the four-day African Marine Waste Conference, which started at the Feather Market Centre yesterday.
The conference will host more than 200 delegates from various ocean sectors in a bid to formulate working solutions to eradicate marine pollution along African coastal areas.
Earle said schools had not been active in teaching children about the importance of marine life on the rest of the environment.
“The biggest thing any country, nation or school can do is to include, from the very beginning, the awareness of why nature matters and how we as individuals, communities and people around the world have to come together to take care of the natural world,” she said.
“Children today are already growing up in a world armed with knowledge which did not exist when I was a child.
“The view of earth and space did not exist and we need to use the knowledge we have to ensure we give the best of it to the children, as generations before us have done.”
Earle, formerly a chief scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, has authored 190 scientific, technical and popular publications, and logged more than 7 000 hours in underwater exploration.
She said the conference was a symbol of hope in terms of finding solutions to the problems that were evident in Africa and around the world.
The positive effects of urbanisation on coastal cities and towns included the construction of housing and economic development, she said.
“We are now starting to acknowledge the costs, the downside of what we take from the natural environment to promote our prosperity, the materials we extract and use.
“We have taken for granted the air we breathe and the water which falls from the skies or is extracted from the ground. We thought the oceans were too big to fail.”
She said now, through knowledge acquired, people were starting to recognise the costs and “we must account for that cost”.
“Only humans know that there are limits to what we can do to the air, water, wildlife and ocean, with all of them being interconnected.
“For the first time, the impact of humankind on the world is changing the nature of nature, and in the end we will bear the consequences of our actions,” she said.
She hoped the conference would be a stepping stone to bring people around the same table to address these issues.
Sustainable Seas Trust chief executive Tony Ribbink said the conference was aimed at finding best-practice solutions to marine pollution.
The aim was to share ideas from speakers around the globe.
“The strategy we are developing cannot be dictatorial or prescriptive in any way,” Ribbink said.
“It can only be what the best practice would be, because we cannot tell any business, organisation or municipality what they should do. We look to show them a way forward.”
He said the network would need to know how ideas from places like Europe, Asia and the Americas would need to be adapted to work in African cultures and traditions.
‘ We thought the oceans were too big to fail