JOHANNESBURG - We have all heard about Kenya’s Nobel-Prize winning eco-warrior Wangari Maathai, who died two weeks ago, but did you know we have a similar environmental activist in Jo’burg?
Virtually every week a large corporate puts out a media release to say that it has sponsored the planting of 1 000 or 2 000 trees in one bleak township or another under the auspices of Food & Trees for Africa.
Having received 40 or 50 of these releases over a few years, this week I made enquiries as to who FTFA are.
The organisation was started by Park, a young English immigrant, in her garage some 21 years ago.
Ahead of the Durban conference on climate change next month and just after the death of Wangari Maathai, it seems appropriate to recognise the work of Park in SA.
She was ahead of her time because climate change arose as a big issue only 15 years ago.
“When I started in 1991, I was called a whacky tree hugger.” The accusation is still made occasionally but Park is happy to plead guilty.
FTFA is run like a business. It has a staff of 30, many of them advisers or extension officers. A lot of the work is outsourced or undertaken by participants in communities. The organisation turns over some R18m a year. Park tries to make it transparent and happily distributes audited accounts to anyone interested.
The trees and vegetables being planted by FTFA feed people, give them shelter from the sun and improve the scenery. They also pump out oxygen at night. FTFA makes it its business to educate people on water use and has advocated rain harvesting, mulching and compost use from the outset.
The sponsors are a Who’s Who of corporate SA. This week it was PPC, last week it was Audi. Before that it was Woolworths, Engen and other corporates demonstrating social responsibility and offsetting their carbon footprints. Donations are tax deductible.
The achievement of FTFA was to persuade hundreds of hard-nosed corporates that tree planting in poor areas was a reasonable place to put their money. Judging by the number of repeat sponsors, they are quite convinced.
Initially most trees went towards improving life in the drab townships of SA. As residents saw trees being planted, then growing to bear fruit and flowers and to provide shade and beauty, many were won over to the green cause.
Says Park: “The educational impact has been enormous – as important as the direct environmental impact.”
FTFA has organised many of its tree and vegetable planting activities through schools, thereby involving thousands of pupils. Initially some 40% of the trees planted died from neglect. No longer.
Says Park: “Because people appreciate the trees, they care for them and the survival rate now is close to 90%.”
Of course millions of trees are not cheap. The orders for trees go to nurseries all over the land, many of them established by township residents specifically to supply FTFA. The emphasis has been on indigenous trees that can handle drought – and fruit trees that can feed the people.
The trees are priced at R90 each. If you buy more than 500, the price falls to R80 each. Donations are tax deductible.
The environmental benefit of trees is described by Wikipedia thus: “Trees sequester carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, converting carbon dioxide and water into molecular dioxygen (O2) and plant organic matter, such as carbohydrates (e.g., cellulose). Hence, forests that grow in area or density and thus increase in organic biomass will reduce atmospheric CO2 levels.”
On its website FTFA has an ingenious carbon calculator. You input the amount of flying and driving you do, add your electricity and paper consumption and the calculator gives you your footprint. You can buy trees or credits to neutralise your carbon footprint.
FTFA nowadays is emphasising the planting of bamboo, “a cash crop which doesn’t need much water, for which there are a thousand uses”. FTFA has also stepped up permaculture and encouraged people to grow their own vegetables.
FTFA has expanded its activities into related matters, for instance helping to get boreholes installed, helping farmers to run their businesses better and even to acquire access to cold storage.
Park prefers organic farming methods, though the Economist says they are not as productive.
Denialists would sneer at all fuss about a crisis that they deny is happening. Carbon trading and carbon taxing in their view are a Big Government conspiracy. But Park really does believe Al Gore and the climate change lobby have it right.
She contends: “The extreme weather we have been witnessing all over the world is the result. There is no further debate on the subject. The only denialists left these days are linked to fossil fuels.”
Park has little time for US presidential candidate, Rick Perry, “a climate change denialist whose home state, Texas, is burning because of a drought that is the result of global warming”.
As we shall see at the Durban conference, the war goes on.
Author: David Carte
11 October 2011
http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page295023?oid=553977&sn=2009%20Detail&pid=287226
