Local action, global voice

Sustainability is a misused word, and it’s often misleading.

It is often presented as a band aid – trimming back waste and amending some of our bad habits to minimise our excess and keep on consuming happily.

Yet while sustainability is a friend to big business, the word ecology has been dropped from common discussion of our effect on the earth. The word 'Ecology' is given to “the study of organisms in their place in the environment.”

It is an important term to understand because all organisms, including humans, live in a system of co-dependence. Within this system, no individual organism is more or less important than the system itself. Natural environmental factors create competition within this system, leading to some organisms ceasing to exist.

So what happens when we humans add to the pressure of competition?

It’s hard to estimate how many species exist or are being made extinct because we simply don’t have and cannot get the data. The often publicised guesses about the number of species that go extinct each day come up with high numbers and includes estimates for unknown exotic insect species in patches of tropical rainforest, as rainforest clearance occurs on a daily basis.

However, the numbers are a lot smaller for animals and plants in areas that expanding human populations want to use for agriculture and forestry, reservoirs or urban expansion.

Here we can more plainly see that ecological damage is at present the inextricable result of the expansion and activity of human beings.

So what impact does this have on the value of talking about “sustainability”?

Sustainability is a base case – it’s often presented as doing something to reduce our impact on our resources on a local level. Acting locally, like planting a veggie garden and recycling, is a great start.

But there is also something important that we can do that will have a bigger effect on a global scale.

While changing our personal habits, we can change how we use our voices. When we don’t speak up, our silence agrees with the status quo, perpetuating the problem. Instead, we can use our voices to lobby governments and big businesses not doing their part, and encourage others to do so as well.

Let’s think and speak globally, while acting locally.