A small voice

The innocence of young children provides a salutary lesson in humanity. They play with others without distinction or prejudice being applied to ethnicity, religion or social class, and embrace their mother with unconditional love. Such should be our relationship with one another, and with our 'Mother Earth', which sustains our life.

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'Civilisation' often brushes aside these fundamental values as inconvenient to the pursuit of technological advancement, wealth creation and power; this despite incontrovertible scientific evidence that human pollution and over-exploitation of natural resources is now 'killing' our planet at an alarming pace.

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Taking the actions necessary to restore the 'health' of our planet will be unpopular and difficult for political leadership, and is intuitively profit degrading to business. Sadly, most things only prosper in our world if they pay, so unless clean air, oceans and rivers, natural forestry and biodiversity can be attributed with economic value, they will all be irreparably damaged, displaced or consumed; probably within the next one or two generations.

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This, then, must be the responsibility of all governments; to use the instruments of taxation and regulation to ensure that commercial practices and behaviours are incentivised to protect, cultivate and value those resources that are critical to the future well-being of our planet, and mankind. Corporations 'follow the money', and citizens use affordability as a key decision making criterion.

Though so important, it feels to the 'ordinary man in the street' as though we have no ability to influence these matters, and the truth is that the day-to-day challenge to 'make end's meet', individually and collectively, drowns out the voice of those who argue for resources to be directed towards safeguarding the future.

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Abel to Speak is designed to project that voice on a publicly accessible platform, to draw attention to the dire ill-health of our planet and to convey the urgent need to take decisive action to remedy the harm that we have caused, if we are to avert an impending irreversible climate, food scarcity and ecological disaster.

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Reference is made to indigenous communities because, ironically, they are the peoples who understand best the need to live in harmony with nature, and whose voice has been systematically silenced by the advance of civilisation.