Look after environment so it can take care of us

Yesterday marked the official beginning of spring, but judging by the weather outside you would not think so.

If one has been following the weather patterns in the last few years, one would have noticed that the warm weather does not come at the months it usually did.

For instance, we now get snow in August and the wind we used to get in July and August is seemingly not a feature any more.

I have read a lot on climate change and how the cold days will become colder and hot ones will become even hotter as the years go by.

Climate change, throughout the earth’s history, has happened at glacial pace. For it to change, it usually took generations and even hundreds of years , but these days we are seeing major changes happening within a lifetime.

At this pace, we will see a totally different world within our children’s lifetime.

Many reasons have been advanced for climate change and I will not bore you with a long list of the causes, but suffice to say our behaviour as human beings has a lot to do with it.

This reminds me of our school days back in the ‘80s and ‘70s when we would have an Arbor Day, dedicating the day to planting trees in our school grounds and have people giving talks on the environment and how we should preserve it.

September 1-7 is designated as Arbor Week in our country. The department of agriculture, forestry and fisheries (DAFF) is responsible for the Arbor Week campaign, or at least that is what it says on its website.

It states: “Greening refers to an integrated approach to the planting, care and management of all vegetation in urban and rural areas.”

What is interesting is that the department stresses that this “greening” should take place in towns, townships and informal settlements “specifically because in the past the latter mentioned areas were disadvantaged in terms of planning for parks as well as tree planting in streets and open spaces”.

I would challenge you to go outside in the area in which you live, which has been established in the past 20-30 years, and tell me what you see. Have you seen any such “greening” campaigns in your area by the department or municipality?

This part of the mandate of the municipality has long been abandoned, it seems to never factor in the environment planning a new settlement.

There are no parks and no attempt to even designate one with all the accompanying greenery that is necessary.

Where I live, there is none whatsoever and no attempt to create one.

Do they still cut trees and grass in the suburbs where there are trees in the streets and open areas?

If they are not doing enough of these things then what are the workers at parks departments doing every day?

Is there a plan to revamp these departments to start fulfilling their mandates in the municipalities?

Perhaps we are not human enough to them to get all these “nice” things.

Anyway, why would they even attempt to do these “nice” things when they fail their core functions like picking up rubbish and keeping sewage away from our streets and yards?

If we fail to do the “small” things, we will definitely fail to do the “big” ones.

We have to start looking after our environment so that it, in turn, looks after us. Plant a tree to save the planet.