How Visionary Political Leadership Can Save the Environment for Future Generations
Political leaders have a key role to play in developing and taking action to combat the world environmental degradation, according to a recent survey of 1,350 professionals in position to make or influence large climate-related decisions in their governments, companies, or other organizations across 120 countries.
The performance of key actors - particularly national governments - has been inadequate to date with rhetoric at much feted climatic conferences over-dominating action states the survey.
Respondents in the survey conducted by the GlobeScan for the World Bank, The World Conservation Union (IUCN), and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), noted that there is currently little consensus on solutions to climate change.
In many parts of the world, the destruction of the environment is a daily reality in spite of the numerous statements that have been made about the terrible state of the environment.
But visionary political leadership can indeed influence a paradigm shift that can promote better treatment of the environment through requisite legal and policy mechanisms, but most importantly through political text that highlights the urgency of the matter followed by action.
As Kenyan Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai succinctly puts it the generation that destroys the environment may not be the one that pays the prize.
It is the future generations that will confront the consequences of today’s destructive activities of the current generation, she says.
