I am writing this letter to you from the Marshall Islands, which are (or should be) infamous for the 67 nuclear bombs that the United States chose to explode here in peacetime.
How did I get here? Well...my concern about the environment began at a young age. It occurred to me then that the World is like the MOST Precious Jewel. One that is way beyond price. One that absolutely deserves both our reverence and our active protection.
As an adult, with this in mind, I became actively involved with the Nuclear Free movement.
I saw nuclear weapons as ludicrous in the extreme. The antithesis of a gentle respect of the earth, and the sensitive life subsisting here. The Nuclear Free movement started from very humble beginnings with only scattered neighbourhoods declaring themselves Nuclear Free. People said we were ridiculous at the time. They said, "Well, a nuclear bomb isn't going to discriminate between which suburb is Nuclear Free and which isn't."
In a relatively short time suburb after suburb declared itself Nuclear Free. Then, city after city. Then, as the suburbs and cities coalesced, the Whole of New Zealand became Nuclear Free. This was enshrined in legislation. To this day we are still Nuclear Free - much to the disapproval of the United States and much to the Pride of the Kiwis.
This process was, in many ways, much as Gandhi said:
"First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win."
More recently I have been involved with the NZ Green Party and, in particular, its fight to keep Genetically Modified Organisms out of the environment.
I believe there are multiple urgent environmental problems:
- The lack of political will to move from fossil fuel dependence (Witness the recent
Iraq invasion),
- Deforestation,
- Illegal logging,
- Species loss,
- Unsustainable fishing practices and resource use.
The list is long and daunting. Greenpeace is an organization dedicated to researching and confronting these and other issues.
Before I joined this campaign I met a man who worked for a year on a Taiwanese fishing vessel. He described to me the practise of purse seine fishing (which I had never heard of before).
He said, "We use nets nearly one kilometre long. We use helicopters and bombs with dye in them to catch and drive the fish into the nets. Then we pull the drawstrings tight on the top and the bottom of the net - to create a 'purse' (hence the name: purse seine)".
From this enclosure there is no escape. Whole schools of fish are taken. Everything from juveniles to adults-wiped out in one go! There is NOTHING left behind to maintain the fish stock in the future - it is Elimination....Not sustainable fishing.
Then he said to me, "What you wouldn't believe is the number of whales, dolphins, swordfish and other non-commercial fish that get caught and drown in these nets".
He said, "We caught 1,000 tons of fish every 1 - 4 weeks, of which a vast quantity we threw back crushed and dead. Tuna is the only fish we actually want to catch."
I said, "Surely this is illegal". However, every island we have visited so far in the Pacific issues licences to purse seine vessels. This is a classic example of a grossly wasteful and inherently unsustainable fishing practice.
Just as drift nets are called "The Walls of Death", so to in my view purse seine nets should be called "The Containers of Death". I would like to see this fishing practice stopped.
On this trip, we have banners which say-
"Our Ocean, Our future, Our Choice"
In the Bigger picture this could read-
"Our World, Our Future, Our choice"
-- Pippa
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