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ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT ROBINSON ON THE TANGA COASTAL ZONE CONSERVATION & DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT ROBINSON ON THE LAUNCH OF THE TANGA COASTAL ZONE CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT PROJECT, DAR ES SALAAM

Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished guests,

It gives me great pleasure to be here today at the launch of the Tanga Coastal Zone Conservation and Development Project.   This important new project is, I understand, the first of its kind in Tanzania.  It is also a first for Irish Aid, and will form a significant part of the implementation of Ireland's commitment, made at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, to fund new environmental projects in developing countries.

By a happy coincidence, just one month ago in Dublin I opened a similar conference on coastal zone management, the first to be organised in Ireland for all the interests in the coastal zone, from Government to environmental N.G.O.s.  I emphasised then - and see no reason to change the emphasis here - the importance of placing coastal communities themselves at the centre of any discussion of coastal zone management.  And of listening to their concerns, their experience, their priorities.

Listening and speaking to you today, I have been greatly struck by the dedication and seriousness which all those involved, both Tanzania's national and regional authorities and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources are bringing to this project.  I have also been greatly impressed by the project's emphasis on community awareness and development.  Sometimes, in assessing environmental and aesthetic damage we can forget that we are also considering people's livelihoods.  For this reason, it seems to me, the great strength of the project which we are launching today lies in the stress which is placed on creating awareness among the people of the Tanga zone of the need to husband and protect the resources from which they draw their livelihood. 

It is my firm conviction that only through the creation of such awareness, and through the active participation of people in the protection of their environment can truly sustainable development take place. 

The launch of the Tanga project today is also significant in wider terms.  It is now more than two years since the Earth Summit in Rio drew up Agenda 21, the blueprint for a global partnership which will take our world into the 21st century and beyond.  In adopting Agenda 21, nations committed themselves to a certain path, to economic development that would not threaten the livelihoods of future generations.  The Tanga coastal zone project represents a concrete attempt on the part of both the Tanzanian and Irish Governments to meet their commitments under Agenda 21.  It also represents, for the people living in the Tanga region, a unique opportunity to renew and create for themselves and for future generations a sustainable resource base which will allow them the freedom to develop their environment so that it can meet their needs in a vital and regenerative way.

I believe strongly that when we look back at Rio 1992, we will realise that this was one of the great turning points of human history, when humanity finally recognised the responsibility that we all, nations, Governments, regions, businesses, private individuals, bear in passing on this earth to our children  and to their children, undamaged and regenerated.

History is however, full of turning points at which it has failed to turn.   We need therefore always to be alive to the need for implementation of the Rio principles and of agenda 21.  It is of vital importance that the UNCED summit, and the issues which were raised and debated there, should never be far from the agenda of the world's policy and decision makers. 

The United Nations has, indeed, worked hard in this matter as we approach the twenty-first century.  Following the success of UNCED the UN Conference on Human Rights met in Vienna in 1993. The UN conference on Population and Development, an issue which is deeply intertwined with the debate on sustainable development and the environment, met last month. Its conclusions also should serve as an important pointer towards meeting the needs of humanity in the next century.  Next year in 1995 the World Summit on Social Development will meet in Copenhagen.  Later next year the Woman's Summit will meet in Beijing under the able guidance of its Secretary General, Mrs. Gertrude Mongella of Tanzania.  As our world moves towards the twenty-first century these meetings offer us an important opportunity to reflect on the challenges which are facing us at this moment in time.

As I stated earlier, the element of the Tanga project which most impressed me is the emphasis which it is placing on creating an awareness and understanding among the people of the region of the need to conserve as well as exploit their environment.  There is a tendency in the great conservation/environment debate of our time, to forget that human beings are, among other things, economic individuals.  To the policy maker behind the desk in the international institution, the cutting down of a hardwood tree represents another step in the cycle of land degradation, global warming, erosion and climate change.  To the cutter it represents fuel for cooking and warmth for the foreseeable future, perhaps some desperately needed income which will buy food or medicine for needy children.  Until we can find a way to reconcile these two imperatives, nothing will change.

This then appears to me to be the central challenge facing the world today, as we approach the twenty first century.  For, in spite of Rio and its agreements and conventions, in spite of last months mould breaking population conference in Cairo, our planet and the life which it sustains continue to be threatened.  The forests continue to disappear, taking with them forever species we will never now know or study.  Arable land continues its retreat year after year, lost to the desert in a cloud of dust.  Every year famines and food shortages threaten vulnerable populations. Our rivers and lakes are drying and becoming polluted.  Herds of wild animals are dwindling to the point of extinction, the ethnic groups who once made a livelihood from them also vanishing, leaving holes in the fabric of our cultural ecology as their histories and traditions die with them.

This may seem an apocalyptic vision but it is not my intention here to exaggerate or alarm.  Rather, it is to reflect on the seriousness of the situation and to consider ways in which it can be remedied.  Already, there are, all over the world, signs of change, signs of hope that the world's people can meet this great global challenge.  I believe that humankind has within itself the imagination and the empathy to do so, but that great changes are needed in how we view our world and our place in it before these challenges can be met.

There is, in the first instance, a need for a change in consciousness, a need for recognition that there is only One World and that, space travel notwithstanding, the future of humanity is inextricably bound up with the planet earth for the foreseeable future.  We need to recognise and respond in an imaginative way to this interconnectedness of all things.  So, the owner of the "gas -guzzler" in the developed world needs to be aware, as he or she fills their tank from the diminishing supply of the world's fossil fuels that their action is not an isolated one, that it has consequences and repercussions for all of life on this planet.  This applies also to the industrial giants throughout the world who spill out unauthorised and harmful emissions for the sake of greater profits and in the name of economic growth.  It applies to the Governments who make the laws and regulations, and to the businesses whose profligate pricing and practices take no account of the real value of the scarce resources which are used up daily. It applies to the commercial loggers and developers responsible for much of the cutting down of our forests and it applies to the consumer everywhere whose convenient choices may prove, in the long run, not to have been convenient at all.

When this shift of consciousness has taken place it will be easier for the indiscriminate cutter down of the hardwood tree and the farmer whose cattle grazing is destroying marginal land to understand and act on the implications of their economic realities.  The time for compartmentalising, for dividing the world into segregated spheres and areas of influence has gone.  It is time that we realised that all our actions, all our inactions, impact on our world and on our reality. 

This brings me to another element which I see as vital to the challenges facing us in this last decade of the twentieth century:  the need for understanding, and the need to learn from each other.  In the last fortnight I have had the great privilege and opportunity to speak to and, more importantly, listen to, many individuals in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania.  I have had the opportunity, at first hand, to listen to their problems, their fears, and their aspirations for themselves and their families as Africa moves into the next millennium.  From this experience I have come away more convinced than ever of the need to talk to people, of the need to involve people in their own development.  Too often, in the past, development aid has been provided without sufficient knowledge of its likely impact or of the possibility that the problems it seeks to cure may be replaced in turn by even more serious ones.  From these experiences we must learn to do things differently. 

I hardly need to say here, in the shadow of the Oldupai gorge, that Africa is the world's oldest continent, from Africa all human life is believed to have evolved.  For centuries African farmers have grown grain in soils which, in the words of one commentator "A Nebraskan would not use for cement".  African market women need no lessons in private enterprise, African farming women find food in times of drought with an ingenuity that would startle many agricultural experts.  My visit here has served as a reminder, if one were needed, that people everywhere, in the end, find their solutions from within and through understanding and discussion, that nothing can be imposed from outside.

I would like to refer here especially to the role of women, all too often forgotten in our development equations and discussions on the environment.  There are signs, everywhere, that this situation is finally changing and that policy makers are at last realising the great loss to all of humanity which the stifling and stunting of woman's efforts and creativity everywhere has meant for our world.

The fact that, in spite of all the existing drawbacks, women in the developing world have still attained positions of pride and dignity, have succeeded against the odds in establishing businesses, participating in politics, in digging wells and building dams, in feeding their husbands and families, and educating their children, only serves to underline the great loss to humanity which all that great energy and talent, applied to other tasks than lifting and foraging, might have brought to our world. 

Yesterday, in Kimamba village, I had the opportunity to meet the women involved in the Programme for Rural Development at Village level and to discuss with them what the project meant for them and how they were using the project to improve their skills, leadership abilities and creativity.  I came away from the village with an even deeper conviction that if we wish to create a better quality of life for all of us who share this planet and ensure that our environment survives this difficult moment in our history, then it is at this, basic level of human interaction and awareness that we must begin.

For I have no doubt that women are central to the debate on environment and development.  Women are the first sufferers from environmental degradation.  As the resource base shrinks, it is women who will have to walk further and bear greater burdens, in the search for food and fuel and water.  But it is also women who, in many countries, are the leaders in the ecology movements and the fight to save their environment.  Thus in India the Chipko movement began with village women circling the trees and holding hands in order to prevent commercial felling  of the forests which provided their livelihood.  Eventually the Indian Government issued a ban on the felling.  In Kenya the Green Belt Movement, established through the country's National Council for Women had established 91 nurseries by 1988 and continues to expand.   Here in Tanzania projects have helped village women to restore deeply degraded hills and erosion gullies.   In one project, training in tree nursery management was given to the women and they started to raise seedlings of indigenous trees and fruit trees.  Within a few years the bare hillsides were verdant green and, instead of having to walk sixteen kilometres for fuelwood, it could be gathered from the trees which they planted.

Everywhere that women have been brought into the development process and encouraged to be active participators in decisions about their environment, the results have been positive. If we are truly committed to sustainable development, then working with women everywhere must be a first step.

Returning to that interconnectedness of all things to which I have referred here and elsewhere I would like to pause for a moment and reflect on one of the saddest moments of my visit here to Tanzania.  On Saturday last I left Dar - es - Salaam and flew north to visit the Rwandan refugee camps in Ngara. 

Speaking to the refugees,  men, women and children who have found a temporary security, food and shelter here in Tanzania, to the UNHCR and Tanzanian officials, and to the Irish Aid agencies who are working in the camps, it is hard for me to accept that this situation had to happen.  Earlier this year, watching the horrifying images of the massacres on television, hearing those unbelievable figures of half a million dead, I asked if the world had been listening, listening and responding to the needs of an anguished people.  Now, having visited the camps for myself, and spoken to people too terrified to return to their homes, I ask again.  How can we let this happen. And I am reminded of a reflection I read recently by Wangari Maathai, founder of Kenya's Green Belt movement:

I am concerned about the wounds and bleeding sores on the naked body of the earth.

Have we not seen the long-term effects of these bleeding sores?  The famine? The poverty?  The chemical and nuclear accidents?

The small wars and deaths in so many parts of the world? When we have seen all these calamities, have we done no more than ask: Who is responsible?

For me, personally, I know that I may be responsible for some of it.

I am sure that everybody else is responsible for some of it.

We are responsible directly or indirectly.

We are all of us strangling the earth.

Rwanda's ongoing tragedy is inextricably bound up with the themes I have been discussing here today.  Rwanda is a country with rich soil which, despite its many problems,  was capable of providing food and shelter for all its people.  Now the harvests are rotting in the fields while its people are wasting away in refugee camps  in spite of all the efforts of sympathetic host Governments, international agencies and the unremitting dedication of aid organisations and their volunteers. Even as I speak, for many Rwandans that change in consciousness of which I have spoken, that acceptance that there is only One World and that we are all, individually responsible for it, has come too late. 

We must all learn from the terrible experience of Rwanda.  The images of terror and destruction perhaps resonate even more forcefully, coming as they do at a time when some of the world's oldest conflicts seem at last to have become capable of resolution. 

That same month that saw that terrible outpouring of hate and despair in Rwanda saw too the great joy of the South African elections as the world watched a nation dance for joy in freedom.  Other areas of conflict also show signs of movement after many long years,  In the middle-east, moves towards a settlement continue.  In Ireland too, last month saw a milestone reached in the search for peace in one of Europe's troubled regions.  We must learn also from these processes, so that the world does not again have to watch in horror another Rwanda, another Bosnia, and ask, yet again, why this had to happen.

We are here today at what is essentially a hopeful, joyful occasion, full of promise for the people of the Tanga region and, in a wider sense, for all of our world.  I would like therefore to end today also on a hopeful note.  Thinking of that change in consciousness of which I have spoken, of that interconnectedness of our world today, I recently read the Nigerian poet Niyi Osundare's poem, I Sing of Change.

This poem, for  many reasons, seemed to resonate particularly strongly on an Irish consciousness and inspiration.  The poem is based on lines from W. B. Yeats:

Sing on: somewhere, at some new moon,

We'll learn that sleeping is not death,

Hearing the whole world change its tune.

From this Irish inspiration the African poet draws his own poem with which I would like to end today.

I sing

of the beauty of Athens

without its slaves

Of a world free

of kings and queens

and other remnants

of an arbitrary past

Of earth

with no

sharp north

or deep south

without blind curtains

or iron walls

of the end

of warlords and armouries

and prisons of hate and fear

Of deserts treeing

and fruiting

after the quickening rains

Of the sun

radiating ignorance

and stars informing

nights of unknowing

I sing of a world reshaped

Thank You