A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT
Earlier this year, over 1360 specialist contributors reported in an Ecosystem Assessment
that humanity is degrading, or using unsustainably, 24 natural resources (United Nations
March 2005). This means many of the natural things such as fresh water, soil and fisheries
are being used in such a way as to threaten their collapse.
They concluded that i5 of those 24 resources of nature are in decline.
For 5000 years mankind has had a belief that nature is here for man’s use. He (I
deliberately use the male pronoun) has more and more interpreted this as meaning ‘use
nature up’, and perhaps worse, ‘man is in control of nature’.
We have now distorted that original axiom to be ‘man is the master of nature’ when in fact
we are eradicating nature, and doing that at an ever-increasing rate.
Those in command tell us our society has to ‘grow’ to be viable. They ignore the fact that
growth cannot go on forever, that everything has a beginning, a growth period and an end.
Nature will only go on living for longer if mankind stops behaving like a virus and thus
shortens its life.
Surely it’s time for us to understand that it is in our interest, our children’s and their
children’s interests that the services provided by nature such as breathable air, drinkable
water, soil that will grow food or provide clothing and shelter, need protecting NOW. We
must realise, and soon, that humankind is a part of nature and not above it.
We have interfered in so many ways. The nitrogen cycle is an example. We remove
nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it into fertiliser which finishes up in our
waterways. We do this at such a rate that it far exceeds all of the nitrogen extracted by all of
the vegetation on Earth. In so doing, we pollute that now endangered life support – water.
Our interference in the water cycle is prodigious. Humans now use about half of all the
available fresh water on the planet. The flows of carbon, sulphur and nitrogen into our
waterways is measurably changing the chemistry of the oceans.
The modern world is ruled by the making of money – called ‘economics’, ‘globalisation’,
and democracy’. Never mind the damage caused by pollution, deforestation and the rest.
It has become up to us, the ordinary people, to do what we can, and then get our leaders to
start leading. It won’t be easy. Every day we delay we make it harder.
-Jim Knight
Flindersia australis (Australian teak)