We have detected that the browser you are using is no longer supported. As a result, some content may not display correctly.
We suggest that you upgrade to the latest version of any of the following browsers:
close notification
Date
: 20/06/2005
Source: Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism
Title: van Schalkwyk: Western Cape Sustainable Development
Conference
Keynote Speech by Marthinus Van Schalkwyk, Minister
of Environmental Affairs & Tourism, at the Western Cape
Sustainable Development Conference
Introduction
In December 1968 three men gave to humanity a gift unique in all
recorded history. They provided us with the first real glimpse of
how fragile and incredibly precious life on Earth remains.
Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar
Module Pilot William Anders were the crew of Apollo 8 – the
first manned spacecraft to escape Earth’s gravity and to
reach the moon. The video footage that they recorded, of a small
blue sphere hanging in the void, was the first time that we saw our
home from afar, and their words captured a turning point in our
shared understanding of our place in the universe. “The vast
loneliness is awe-inspiring,” they said, “And it makes
you realise just what you have back there on Earth.”
The message of sustainable development is too often clouded by
academic discussions, technical jargon, and cryptic acronyms. The
reality is much simpler. It is about ensuring the future of our
people and our planet. It is the balancing act between growth and
development today, and the health and well-being of our children
tomorrow.
It is also of burning importance to all South Africans. Our county
has incredible natural resources – magnificent landscapes,
mineral riches, and plant and animal diversity. But ours is also a
semi-arid, water-scarce country in which people and the environment
balance on a very fine edge. For us, sustainable development
is about hard-hitting questions like will we have enough clean
water to drink in ten or fifteen or twenty years? Will we find by
2020 that our children even know what fynbos is, or will it be the
stuff of history textbooks alone? Will there be enough soil in our
third and fourth decades of freedom to grow the food to feed our
people? For us, sustainable development is about survival.
Western Cape Conference & the NSSD
This is why, Programme Director, the Western Cape Sustainable
Development Conference is so important. This is the first
time that the global message of the World Summit on Sustainable
Development (WSSD) has been translated into a programme of action
on provincial level in South Africa. I would like to take
this opportunity to thank and congratulate Premier Ebrahim Rasool
and MEC Tasneem Essop for their leadership and vision in this
regard – we can only hope that this conference will provide a
model to be applied in other provinces and ultimately at the level
of local government as well.
Map
