Adapting to the Much Needed Green Mentality

Now is the most appropriate time of the year to write about thinking green, as it is the rainy season in most parts of the country and planted trees can be watered by the sacred tear from above.

Though it is not a widely used strategy, there is an immense potential in cities and towns for mobilising people, mainly university undergraduates who are on summer holiday, by creating a volunteering platform.

Campaigns to plant trees in mass, by millions every year, have been around for decades now. Though rigorous scientific studies about the overall environmental impacts of these campaigns are necessary to claim whether they were effective or not, it is possible to point out some flaws in these approaches too.

People in a typical Kebelle plant thousands of trees at a time and mostly abandon them. The natural question that follows is what proportion of these trees survives?

How many of them die for different reasons? How many of them actually grow before ending up being eaten by livestock?

It may be worth noting, in passing, that failure to distinguish between an output and an outcome is common in public services. Performance reports are filled with tables of figures representing some participants in a programme, or the number of seedlings dispatched.

Notions like welfare impact, environmental implication, feedback effects and sustainability potential are left aside for reasons partly to do with the methodological difficulties, and partly out of necessity, that is, a development agent finds it easier and sufficient to tally and report simple numbers.

That said, a gentle reminder for everyone to think green is in order for several reasons. First of all, a lot of resources are invested in the government sponsored campaigns to plant trees every year, but it remains dubious that the outcomes actually match the effort, even better the demand.

Secondly, climate change is hitting us hard already, and catastrophic events may not be very far away if we do not do something about it. It is recognised that storing carbon in forests is one of the relatively easier mitigation strategies globally.

This is partly the essence of the Climate Resilient Green Economy, a formal strategic direction for our regulated economy. Yet, thinking and living green should be brought to the mainstream lifestyle of every citizen, as adapting to the changing climate while trying to mitigate its adverse effects is a matter of survival.

It is widely known that climate change is a universal problem. However, its consequences, except that which may devour the planet once it reaches a tipping point, may be felt differently. The poor are more vulnerable and, Ethiopia, being heavily dependent on agriculture, has already tasted the bitter realities of drought due to the El Niño climate phase.

Thirdly, thinking green does not necessarily mean planting trees. It is a vast concept with almost infinite possibilities. More interestingly, thinking and living green does not only save the planet but in many cases also helps the practitioner save money. It is a life philosophy predicated on simplicity and being more humane.

One source of ‘green ideas’ for everyday life is to observe the facts on the ground: that cities are becoming congested and hotter; that the demands for clean water and energy are soaring day by day; that flood may threaten many poor neighbourhoods; that piles of plastic bags and bottles are almost everywhere.

The catastrophic consequences of a damaged environment are not limited to rural areas. Thinking green should be a motto everyone remembers and is reminded of on a daily basis. The most straightforward message being that every Ethiopian should plant a tree, thinking green requires that they consistently use resources wisely.

It demands that everyone becomes both aware and conscious of our actions and their consequences. After all, everything is linked to everything else, which means everything matters. The junk that we keep, the plastic bags we use while shopping, the food we put on the table, the ride we take downtown, all leave some scar on the environment, and surely affect our and our children’s lives.

Consider food. It comes from soil, makes use of energy, water, transport and labour. The labourers use other services including clothing, which needs dying, weaving and sewing, all done by other people with other machines powered by electricity. There is an infinite relationship among things we use in our daily lives.

Thinking green concerns understanding that, no matter how trivial it may sound, each and every action matters. It matters for its own sake. It also matters as it affects other actions of other people.

For instance, the more meat one chooses to consume, the more greenhouse gases (GHG) that will be emitted into the atmosphere both directly through the production, distribution and consumption of meat in one’s meal and indirectly through the signal one sends to suppliers that there is more demand for meat. At which point, suppliers have to cut trees to make place for beef cattle pasture.

One may, on the other hand, choose to consume more environmentally friendly cuisines that come from plants. Plants capture carbon from the atmosphere to make their food. They store carbon. Though one has to kill plants to make food, this does not emit as much toxic materials into the atmosphere as livestock would.

Livestock is one of the most dangerous sources of GHG emissions. Our country ranks 10th globally in terms of the head count of live cattle. Livestock is the major cause of forest degradation in rural areas. As there is overgrazing, there is hardly any fodder, so people start cutting tree branches to feed their livestock. This has been causing desertification.

The bottom line is that thinking green is a mindset shift whereby one uses a ‘green criterion’ while making choices. Much the same as one considers direct pecuniary costs of their decisions, people have to think about the ecological footprint humanity is leaving in general and their own direct and indirect contribution to the environment.

Climate change concerns everyone irrespective of age, gender, affluence and education.

How the planet can become greener cannot be prescribed here. The necessary condition being a paradigm shift, the range of decisions and actions which resonate with this holy initiative are, as pointed out earlier, nearly infinite.

Besides crucial personal commitments to think and grow green, putting some institutional platforms in place may facilitate the process. From behavioural economics, policy options like coaxing, which have been hinted at in previous articles in Fortune, may be used. Family and schools are always ideal in nurturing children.

It is claimed that poverty is an enemy to the environment in the sense that the poor focus on securing their daily bread and are not willing and able to make pro-environment choices. However, this can be proven wrong by recognising that an environmentally friendly lifestyle is much cheaper.

To the social planner, property rights and institutional setup, where environmental stewardship is properly and publicly rewarded, may also be an effective way of incentivizing people to invest in green technologies and sustainable ways of life.


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