What will your personal environmental legacy be? 🤔
This blog was originally written by Jon Sinclair and published on LinkedIn.
———
We are losing touch with nature. Real nature that is, not the beautiful parks and reserves that scatter our country.
This article explains how I view our current state of environment and I discuss 3 ways you can grow your personal environmental legacy.
From my observations
With nearly 90% of the NZ population living in urban areas, chances are most of us don’t encounter real nature regularly.
Many of us won’t know that NZ has lost 1,000 sq km of native forest since 1995 or that 4000 of our native species are under threat of extinction.
Urban living seems to have frayed our connection to nature and as a result, we are poor custodians of our natural environment.
Where did this start for me?
When I completed a Masters in Ecology in the 1990s we would run undergraduate trips to native forest areas and complete bird call surveys. This involved stopping at intervals to listen to, and identify, the many different bird calls as a way of determining populations.
Recently I hiked with my 11 year old son to the Pinnacles in Coromandel.
After a 5 hour return trip through native bush, we only heard a single fantail call.
This fundamentally bothers me.
It was native forest and it should be teaming with our unique bird life.
The brilliance of our natural environment in Aotearoa is gradually getting dimmer and we are the generation “in charge”.
A thriving natural environment may not feel like something that is directly important to your daily life. However the truth is that our environment is a wonderful, beautiful and complex system where all parts rely, directly and indirectly, on each other to function.
There is no living in the city without a thriving natural environment. It is also easy to dismiss the problem as being too big for individuals to help turn the tide of this massive decline.
I have long grappled with the question of individual impact and the biggest realisation for me is that it is not a job solely for the Department of Conservation, the Government, landowners or philanthropic trusts (like the amazing Next Foundation).
I believe it is a job for all of them, as well as you, me and everyone else.
Three ways to build your environmental legacy
We are lucky because, like no other time in history, the power of the crowd can now be harnessed online to achieve extraordinary things.
So if you are serious about leaving a positive environmental legacy, here are 3 simple ways you can do so without leaving the city:
Join a predator free group - the Predator Free 2050 goal is so wildly ambitious that it just might work as a growing community gets behind it. Imagine flourishing native bird populations on the mainland and not just remote offshore islands. The goal has sparked big dreamers around NZ to make a difference. Find your local group online and join the movement. Watch this to understand how easy it is to get involved in backyard trapping.
Invest in reforestation - pine forestry is an important part of our economy, but there are small blocks of forestry that have no clear path forward. The idea behind Regenerate New Zealand is to enable everyday New Zealanders to profitably invest as little as $20 per month to regenerate pine tree blocks back to native forests within 100 years. Balancing native forest regeneration, environmental good and with profitable returns.
Support environmental startups - there is a growing number of really smart people turning their attention to environmental challenges. Most startups want support to make their ideas fly. Find one that excites you and offer to get involved. There are lists of ambitious startups online and if you have money to invest then organisations like Ice Angels are great at aggregating smaller investors together. Look at Nilo, Mint Innovation or Envico to get some inspiration for exciting NZ environmental startups.
The environmental challenges that we face can feel overwhelming and it will take time to change the course we are on.
The biggest mistake, in my opinion, is to believe that as individuals we can’t make a difference.
For me I currently have a couple of predator tunnel traps in my backyard (shop here) to support, with my kids, the predator free movement.
I support regeneration projects on Hauraki Gulf islands in Auckland (being a lifetime supporter of Tiritiri Matangi) and I have also signed up to be part of Regenerate NZ.
Through Ice Angels I have invested in innovative sustainability focussed startups. Although small at present, I know that these active steps are contributing to building a personal environmental legacy that, with time, will be significant.
It is not the size of your effort that matters, it's through joining together in common causes that we can collectively have a positive environmental impact that is greater than the sum of the parts.
Dream big. Start small. Act now
Jon Sinclair
———
This blog was originally written by Jon Sinclair and published on LinkedIn.
Want updates like this? Feel free to join Regenerate NZ by signing up today.
