The following extract is from recent items published in the Hout Bay press.

Obligations to the environment - Not rights to the environment.

By Neil van der Spuy

We are all familiar with the popular cry of "My Rights", "Our Rights" and "Your Rights".

I suggest that the time has perhaps come to reverse our thinking and rather consider our obligations to others and in the context of our precious environment, our obligations thereto. Indeed people do not have rights to the environment. To the contrary, they have obligations to the environment.

It all stems from a skewed National Constitution regarding the environment, by which the government at all levels is guided. The relevent chapter refers to the entitlement of all citizens to the environment. How could we ever have the audacity to establish expectations from the environment? What came first "the chicken or the egg"? Homo Sapiens depends upon the environment and not the other way around.

Logically the National Constitution should have provided for a "Bill of Environmental Rights" which should have taken precidence over a Bill of Human Rights. We have the ability to determine and shape our own destiny. The environment is not posessed of that "God given" characteristic. In fact without a doubt we are the custodians of the environment.

Until Governments and the population gear their thinking to their dependance for survival upon the environment rather than their entitlement thereto and cease the incessant cry for rights and recognise  the environment in its widest meaning, man has little chance of winning the battle for survival on this planet.

Neil van der Spy

20/09/1999