Olinka Rebecca Koster and the climate change
Olinka Rebecca Koster Climate change is a global threat, and poor, rural and Indigenous women are hardest hit.
They are impacted first and worst by the food shortages, droughts, floods and diseases linked to this growing danger.
They are sources of solutions, inventing innovative, locally-rooted responses that offer a blueprint for effective, global action.
Yet their priorities, experiences and knowledge are notably missing from economic and environmental policymaking spaces.
South Africa is faced with a difficult challenge in trying to juggle three imperatives – development (conventionally based on fossil fuels), poverty eradication and climate change. On the one hand, the country has to fast track provision of adequate transport, power, communication networks, water, sanitation and other infrastructure services. Much of this development implies that South Africa’s GHG emissions will increase. The provision of these services is essential to improving people’s well being and to reducing poverty.
Animal protection
South Africa has by far the largest population of rhinos in the world and is an incredibly important country for rhino conservation. From 2007-2014 the country experienced an exponential rise in rhino poaching – a growth of more than 9,000%.
Most illegal activity occurs in Kruger National Park, a 19,485 km2 of protected habitat on South Africa’s north-eastern border with Mozambique. Kruger consistently suffered heavy poaching loses, and so in the last few years, the government and international donors have channeled ever more funding and resources into securing the Park. Despite these extra protection measures, the impact of such intense poaching has caused Kruger’s rhino population to drop by 60% .
2020 has been defined by the Covid-19 pandemic.
We can relate SO much to the regular memes that suggest switching off 2020 and switching it on again, to see if that might fix things.
In Africa and Asia, where those magnificent rhinos live, our conservation partners usually get their income from two main sources – from all of us, individually and sometimes through our businesses and governments, and also from the many people that travel to see rhinos and other wildlife
