Mbali Vilikazi Words of encouragement Eco-Warrior Award

th e Eco-warrior Award

DESMOND D’SA: SDCEA

The South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) is a non-governmental coalition of 17 community and environmental organizations concerned with environmental justice and sustainable development in south Durban and eThekwini (the broader Durban municipal area). SDCEA was launched in 1995 to unite members in a common struggle for a healthy living environment and environmentally sustainable and socially just development in south Durban. SDCEA has been both unique and tenacious in challenging both government and industry to address the inequities of pollution and environmental injustice in the area. The SDCEA engages with members and communities through providing information and capacity building workshops. The SDCEA gathers information on environmental and community challenges and facilitates co-ordinated advocacy, lobbying and protest actions to improve the situation in south Durban. Pollution, health and livelihoods are a major focus of the SDCEA’s work. SDCEA is constantly vigilant and vocal in critiquing, and even preventing new developments that will increase the burden of pollution and destroy the environment or commandeer the space that local communities depend on for their livelihoods.

BLAKE DYASON: LOVE OUR TRAILS

Blake Dyason has been an eco warrior for the past decade. In 2016 Blake challenged 5FM after they held an environmentally unfriendly balloon release and hosted Cape Town’s biggest cleanup at the time. In 2015 Blake started Love our trails, originally an organisation cleaning litter from trails and educating trail users to care for and protect our environment. This has grown over the years with Blake running school talks and workshops. In January 2019 Blake launched a gardening and waste management initiative with his first school, where the children grow their own food for the school kitchen and manage recycling, composting and waste. In March 2020 Blake launched a hiking program with the same school to connect children with nature, showing them the value of nature, and allowing them to experience the benefits of nature, while learning about leadership skills, how to manage anxiety and prevent bullying. In 2018 Blake also spearheaded the partnership between Brownie Points and Shoprite Checkers to host Africa’s biggest cleanup with over 500 groups conducting cleanups across 15 African countries.

PHIL MCLEAN: SANBI BIODIVERSITY CRIMES PROJECT

The Cape Floristic Region is THE most species rich landscape per unit area on planet earth! The single biggest threat to this biodiversity is unlawful transformation of land for agriculture and urban expansion. Legal developments must go through an application and approval process, but there is an increasing trend of landowners ignoring regulations designed to protect biodiversity and ploughing /clearing previously undisturbed virgin veld. The SANBI Biodiversity Crimes Project is a capacity-enhancement project designed to increase the successful policing and investigation of unlawful destruction of indigenous vegetation within the Cape Winelands Municipality. The Project is funded by the UNDP’s GEF5 Fund through the South African National Biodiversity Institute’s (SANBI) Biodiversity and Land Use Project and supports the employment of critical skills, specifically those of a Specialist Botanist, into the Environmental Law Enforcement Directorate (aka the Green Scorpions) of the Western Cape Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning.

THE ECO-LOGIC CALCULATOR

Albert Einstein said: “The world we have created has problems – and you can’t solve those problems using the same way of thinking that created those problems!”

WITH TODAY’S RISING ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES WE NEED A NEW WAY OF ECO-LOGICAL THINKING. � How Eco-Logical is your thinking? � How Eco-Logical is your Lifestyle? � How can you evolve – to become an Eco-Logical human being?