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Listen to thisIt is estimated that the current population of the Earth is about 6 billion people and that figure will double by just 2050. That’s a lot of people and a lot of children and youth. For decades we have had constant reminders of an ever-increasing number of environmental problems which daily emphasize the urgent need for us to evaluate available environmental resources (Hardin, 1993; Cohen, 1995). As a student, I remember well the Greenpeace and Planet Earth demonstrations which did so much to politicize and radicalize our thinking. But, we have gotten lazy.
The World Health Organisation estimated recently that as many as 40,000 children die daily from malnutrition and other diseases and there is much to exercise us here in the “developed world”. It is an accepted fact that all of our basic resources, such as land, water, energy, and biota, are inherently limited (Lubchenco, 1998). We need to consider this carefully as the decisions we take today, or indeed do not take today, will have a profound impact on the type of planet we leave to our children. This may sound corny but we, in the Child and Youth Care community, should be amongst those leading the field in this debate and I have noticed a silence on this topic with the exception of a few articles and books (see, for example, a wonderful discussion by Moane, Little and Burnett, 2005).
As I get older I find myself reflecting more and more on the fact that I live on an island on the periphery of Western Europe. Unbelievably, more than 90% of human food comes from the terrestrial environment with less than 10% coming from the oceans and other aquatic ecosystems. How could this be? Why do we eat so much meat, allow battery hens to live by the thousand in cramped environments, enforce cows to huddle together in mass food bins? We know of the devastation of fish stocks off the eastern coast of Canada and now, too, in many ocean areas across the world. What is it about human greed and thoughtlessness that makes us so as a species?
So many resources will either be extinct in the next few decades or on the way to extinction that it is frightening. As human populations continue to expand and finite resources are divided among increasing numbers of people, it will become more and more difficult to maintain prosperity and a quality of life, and personal freedoms will decline. But, this to me is the tragedy of the 21st century. We seem to live in an age that celebrates only the individual. We seem not to appreciate the difference between what we want and what we need.
I was struck by the connection between what we do and what results as I wandered around Dublin Zoo this past weekend with my wife, Susan, and son, Conor. It’s always best to see and listen to the world from a child's point of view if you want to get the real low-down. There were several cages and pens where the animals were loaned out on breeding programs to other zoos in laudable conservation measures. Conor simply saw that there were areas that there should have been animals and now there weren’t. “Where are the Elephants Daddy?" Good question that. On all the information boards, I noticed a depressing commentary around the loss of habitat and the depletion of resources. And yet, we share this earth “not own it. How arrogant we are as a species.
I want my son and children and youth more generally to be able to play in the trees of their choice. I want trees to be around. I want green open spaces with safe oxygen in the air with less concrete and less chimney plumes. I want children and youth to respect the environment and, most of all, I suppose I realize now that we must set the example at home and in the workplace. And here the Child and Youth Care community can play a part.
What can the individual Child and Youth Care worker do to affect at least some change in all of this mass produced post modern life? Well, funnily enough I want to return to the individual as one potential source of change and I know that other countries are streets ahead of us in Ireland in your thinking and actions. Nonetheless, I have set myself a target of traveling to work by train for 75% of my journeys instead of car this academic year whereas last year the figure was in reverse. I want to consign my car to the car pool car park. I have installed a green thrash system in our home and our three year old son now speaks regularly of the need to “use different bins for different things". My son knows the difference between a bottle bank and a money bank which is a lot more than I knew at this age.
We can learn so much from our children and youth who are usually more willing to change than us adults. If every Child and Youth Care agency and college program made just one environmental change for the positive this month, what a difference that would make. Let’s try it. Let’s inform CYC-Net of the contributions we are making to environmental heritage.
References
Cohen, J.E. 1995. How Many People Can the Earth Support? New York: Rockefeller University.
Daily, G. 1996. Nature's Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.
Gleick, P.H. 1993. Water in Crisis. New York: Oxford University Press.
Grant, L. 1996. Juggernaut: Growth on a Finite Planet. Santa Ana, CA: Seven Locks Press.
Hardin, G. 1993. Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lubchenco, J. 1998. Entering the century of the environment: a new social contract for science. Science 279: 491-497.
Moen, K., Little, J., & Burnett, M. (2005). The earth is dying: A readical Child and Youth Care perspective. Relational Child and Youth Care Practice, 18:1, 7-14.
WHO. 1992. Our Planet, our Health: Report of the WHO Commission on Health and Environment. Geneva: World Health Organization.
WHO. 1995. Bridging the Gaps. Geneva: World Health Organization.
WHO. 1996. Micronutrient Malnutrition: Half the World's Population Affected. World Health Organization, 13 Nov. 1996, Pages 1-4, no. 78.
