Tag: environment

Environmental Consciousness

As I sit in my room at a resort in Coron in the Philippines, I look out over low trees to the strip of sparkling blue water and the almost uninhabited green hills behind, and recall the last few days of diving in the waterways of Coron Bay.

 

It’s been a nice holiday. I’ve met some new people, been active and adventurous, explored a bit more of the world. Scuba diving is a wonderful sport for a keen traveller. Shipwrecks, the big draw card of Coron, are fun to float through. Their eerie, dark stillness is exciting and paradoxically calming at the same time. It’s surreal to see fish pass by port holes, to recognize ladders and engines under coral growth, to swim through holes in steel.

 

But I’ve been disappointed, too. From my balcony, the view looks pristine and the landscape, healthy. Closer to the real world, it’s not so good.

 

There is a great big gash in the side of a hill. Dirt has been dug and removed. Down by the water, in front of the mangroves, a mound of earth rises up a couple of meters over the water line. It stretches half a kilometer one way and a quarter the other. Apparently, this is where the dirt was transferred; an illegal land reclamation. A group of developers thought it would be a good idea to create a housing and holiday village while no-one was looking, through Covid times. The only problem was, it wasn’t government approved, and there is no infrastructure. One road in and out. No sewer or water. Nothing. And now it sits empty, the investors fined a few thousand dollars, the land a vacant lot. An intrusive wasteland.

 

Under the water, the natural reefs are sparsely populated. There is little colour and variation amongst the corals. There are few fish. The water isn’t clear. I don’t know if it’s silty because the sea floor is denuded of grass, or because it’s covered in organic waste, or if something has stirred it up. Some of my fellow divers heard a large boom, felt a reverberation: dynamite fishing. I inwardly shrink when I hear this. No wonder there is so little life. On top of run off from land degradation and warming temperatures, there is mass killing of sea creatures.

 

I looked it up. I read part of the government’s Resource Management Plan. Yes, Coron has a problem. There are too many people struggling to make a living. Forests are cut down. The sea is over-harvested. There isn’t enough infrastructure to support the population. But tourism, conversely, is necessary to steer the economy away from destructive practices towards environmentally friendly ones. It’s a difficult situation.

 

I will leave this place with happy memories of being active in nature. The waterways are still lovely, the wrecks interesting, the tropical climate conducive to fun.

 

But I am also sad. Perhaps the hard words I’ve written will reverberate somewhere where they can help. I don’t know how, but I do know that ignorance is not bliss. It causes more destruction and fear. When we know what the truth is, we can face it and try to fix it. We can find a way.

 

What Coron needs is empathy, generosity, and appreciation. Come to think of it, this is what the whole world needs now, too. Each and every one of us needs to engage with nature and do our own bit to preserve and repair it. Just appreciating it is a start. I hope I’ve helped.

Extreme Start to 2020

I was in India when the bushfires were ravaging Australia. Even in an ashram in a tiny village in Rajasthan, news reached me that the coastal town of Sussex Inlet, where my beloved river house sits, was in danger. Fires were out of control throughout the South Coast of NSW devastating bushland, National Parks, and towns.

Over December and January, at least thirty-four people and a billion animals died; 186 square kilometres of tree-covered land including 5900 buildings, were destroyed; people lost possessions and livelihoods; wildlife lost their food.

It’s depressing to think that some things won’t recover. The fires were too vast and hot. That which will recover, will take a long time.

But feeling depressed doesn’t help. There’s too much to do.

People are rallying to help. Communities are growing and bonding over the effort. Solutions are germinating, just as plants will.

Ironically, I was in the ashram to talk creatively about the environment. Despite the huge environmental problems in India, it is a place of such spiritual energy at its core, it’s inevitable that seeds of recovery are sprouting there.

The ashram was the location of a conference-like festival called Utasava Maa, ‘a transformative all female festival, uniting extraordinary women from across the globe to share, inspire and collaborate in response to the ongoing international repression and violation of the earth and her daughters.’

Women, the traditional carers and protectors of the communal environment, joined heads and hearts to create ideas about change, starting with ourselves and the most basic of local levels.

Like many of the other Western women, I was attracted to the festival by the passionate motivator, Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love and Big Magic. This woman’s capacity to inspire and rejuvenate others is at goddess-level. To be in her company, and of others like her, for nine days in a soul-stirring environment, was life-changing.

On the eve of the end of 2019, Western and Indian women danced together. It was barefoot and free. We sat around the campfire wrapped in thick, woollen shawls, and listened to the guitar and the tabla, and the voices of those who sang or had something to say. We wrote things on paper, things we wanted to let go of, and burned them in the flames. We said goodbye to unhelpful things. It was a ritual that closed off the past and wiped the slate clean for the future. It was cleansing and uplifting.

Except, at home, the fires burned. The contrast was poignant.

I’m concluding that getting back to the ancient ways is a good place to start restoring health. But I’m not going to turn this Post into an opinion piece.

Despite the euphoria I felt at midnight on the other side of the world, reality is problematic. Since I’ve been home in Australia, the positivity I felt coming into the year, has been attacked several times.

Issues that lay dormant over the Christmas/summer holidays, have seeped through the cracks and emerged, persistent. Normal life is uncomfortable. It’s bills and emails, shopping and cleaning, responsibilities and duties.

Reality has a way of slapping you in the face if you get too carried away with dreams. A very dear friend, a passionate, loving, shining light of a woman, lost her struggle with cancer and died last week. Her light has gone out and she didn’t want it to. She had life to live.

It’s important that we live knowing that time isn’t endless. Not only is our time here on earth restricted, but it can be extinguished way before we’re ready.

My point is, that we should use each day well. Be positive and step forward. Do the things that you plan to do, despite the difficulties, the fear and obstacles; despite the chaos of real life. Think about the future, yes, but live each day with vigour, concern for others and care for the natural environment.

In National Parks, the motto is, leave nothing but footprints. But a national park is like an ashram. It’s the ideal. Ideas grow into deeds like seeds grow into trees. In the real world, leave your mark. Even on the smallest level, do something to make the world a better place. Raise the children to be community minded, grow a garden, lend someone your strength.

2020 is going to be another life-changing year for me, starting with moving house and ending with a publisher for my book. I do more than hope. I do something each day towards my goal; despite the everyday hassles and drama; despite what anyone says. My dreams mix with reality. They merge and flow and continue to grow with any fertiliser thrown at them.

Be uncomfortable. Be active. Do what you need to, to make 2020 a good one.

In the words of my guru, Liz G, Onward!

 

What will you do to thrive in 2020?

 

 

Seagrass keeps more than dugongs alive!

“The world’s seagrass meadows act like great carbon sinks sequestering twice the amount of carbon a tropical forest of the same size can store…” What? Really? I didn’t know that!

Feet up, Pinot Gris in hand and watching Nat Geo Wild’s Australia’s Hidden Islands, I was engaging in some armchair sight-seeing of Fraser Island. I heard this statement. I rewound the programme and replayed it! I heard right! On the screen was a dugong cow grazing on the seagrass munching away through 28kg of seagrass a day!

“Just one hectare of seagrass can capture 27.4 tonnes of carbon every year and produce 100,000 litres of oxygen per day, enough for 200 people to breathe.”

I’m suddenly fascinated by seagrass, something I like to kayak over on the river in Sussex Inlet, south coast of NSW. It’s great to see fish and sting rays startle and swish away as I pass. But I’ve not thought much more about it. Some people don’t like it around their jetty and illegally try to remove it. Instinctually, I knew this was wrong. Ruining natural habitats is not something that would occur to me let alone choose to do! But now I know a lot more about why it’s wrong.

If we’re going to continue to BREATHE, we need oxygen in the air and carbon stored in the earth. We need just the right mixture for our world to be healthy.

Mangroves, seagrass meadows and tidal wetlands (blue carbon coastal ecosystems) have unmatched ability to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it in the ground below. This process is called carbon sequestration. Carbon is stored in the soil of blue carbon habitats for thousands of years. When these habitats are damaged or destroyed the carbon can be released as CO2 back into the atmosphere.

(Forests are also good at carbon sequestration, but trees have limited storage: they get saturated and have a shorter storage life, say 100 years. Coal is the result of ancient forest and algae carbon sequestration.)

Seagrass meadows are diminishing in size. The reduction in available light caused by enhanced suspended sediment loads and elevated nutrient concentrations, is the most widespread and pervasive cause of seagrass decline. This is a result of coastal discharges including outfalls of industry, urban stormwater, wastes from aquaculture operations (think fish farms) and sewage discharged from boats and ships. They are also susceptible to fishing and boating pressures.

Seagrass is also important for binding sediment, stabilising shore lines against erosion and providing the nursery habitat for fish, crustaceans and molluscs. Sea turtles and dugongs graze directly on seagrass, an important enough point, and they spread seagrass seeds as they poo!

It seems to me that seagrass is extremely important and should be preserved and promoted as necessary to the health of all creatures on earth.

I hope you stayed with me on this one! Following my curiosity has once again paid dividends: not to the writing of my novel – unfortunately – but to my understanding of the earth and my place in it. I hope that I’ve passed along some knowledge that will affect your life – at least so you can prevent anyone you know from clearing the seagrass around their jetty!

 

Thanks to Foxtel’s Nat Geo Wild and

https://ozcoasts.org.au/indicators/biophysical-indicators/changes_seagrass_area/

amongst others.

IMG_6506