In honour of the upcoming World Environment Day, we take a look at three organisations working to care for South Africa’s environment.
South Africa (02 June 2023) – While June is celebrated as Youth Month in South Africa as a reminder of our history and a celebration of our future, United Nations World Environment Day is also an annual global celebration, marked on 5 June. World Environment Day is also a reminder of the importance of working to save our planet’s future so that the youth we fête this month have a planet that will sustain them and the generations that will follow them.
World Environment Day is a global platform for inspiring positive change. People from more than 150 countries participate in this United Nations international day, which celebrates environmental action and the power of governments, businesses and individuals to create a more sustainable world. The event has been led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) since its inception in 1973.
Each World Environment Day is themed and hosted by a specific country and in 2023 – the 50th celebration – that theme is #BeatPlasticPollution and the host country is Côte d’Ivoire, in partnership with the Netherlands. The aim of the day is to remind people that their actions on plastic pollution, matter. The steps governments and businesses are taking to tackle plastic pollution are the consequence of this action. It is time to accelerate this action and transition to a circular economy.
Côte d’Ivoire is showing leadership in the campaign against plastic pollution. Since 2014, it has banned the use of plastic bags, supporting a shift to reusable packaging. The country’s largest city, Abidjan, has also become a hub for environmentally-minded start-ups. Partners, Government of the Netherlands, is one of the countries taking ambitious action along the plastic lifecycle. It is a signatory of the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment and a member of the Global Partnership on Plastic Pollution and Marine Litter.
In South Africa, there are many organisations seeking to educate people about our precious natural environment and the need to protect it. MySchool MyVillage MyPlanet supports many of these organisations via Supporter swipes at partner retailers, with the retailers donating a small percentage of each linked sale to the Supporter’s selected Beneficiaries – at no cost to Supporters.
Coastal Ghost started as a road trip to show South Africans how beautiful our country and its wildlife and people are. The beach clean-ups that the organisation has subsequently become known for were never the main focus, but a three-month project soon virally garnered international attention, visiting 90 beaches across 57 travel days and removing tons of waste from beaches, that would otherwise have ended up in the ocean. The 2019 Coastal Ghost Trip was the longest solo team coastal clean-up in the Southern Hemisphere and the project continues to grow, inspiring South Africans to take care of our beaches.
Roots & Shoots, founded by Dr. Jane Goodall, is a global movement of passionate youth who are empowered to use their voice and actions to make compassionate decisions, creating positive influence and leading change in their communities. Roots & Shoots focuses on bringing youth together from across the planet to work together and create the change the world needs for our environment, animals and people. Roots & Shoots is about understanding, selecting and implementing projects to make the world a better place. It is about learning to live in peace and harmony, not only with each other, but with the natural world. Since 1991, over 12 000 groups involving a total of nearly 790 000 participants in over 62 countries have taken on the challenge of making the world a better place for the environment, animals and people. Roots & Shoots youth are not only the future – they are the present, and they are changing the world!
In 1961, a broad call for support, the Morges Manifesto, was signed by 16 of the world’s leading conservationists. This manifesto stated that while the expertise to protect the world environment existed, the financial support to achieve this protection did not. The World Wildlife Fund was established on the back of this manifesto to work in collaboration with existing conservation groups and bring financial support to the worldwide conservation movement. In 1968, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (then president of the World Wildlife Fund) approached Dr Anton Rupert to work towards securing South Africa’s wildlife and nature. Dr Rupert garnered support from a group of local business aficionados. They realised that something had to be done quickly if South Africa’s biodiversity – its plants and animals and the ecosystems they live in – were to be conserved. The Southern African Wildlife Foundation was formed in 1968, later becoming the Southern African Nature Foundation and in 1995 renamed to WWF South Africa. Since its founding, WWF has been dedicated to protecting South Africa’s natural heritage. This includes plant and animal species, and people.
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