Our challenge
While we have had many successes in the past year, the truth is our environment is still deteriorating.
Greenhouse emissions are still rising, many rivers are less healthy now then they were a decade ago and native ecosystems continue to be destroyed, replaced by housing and farming. The bottom line is that while more and more people say they care about our environment, taking action to safeguard it is still not part of peoples everyday thinking and it certainly is not fundamental to government planning.
We believe the major problem is lack of scale. The actions are not big enough and the leadership is not bold enough.
In the past, creating a new national park or making a regulation to reduce pollution was considered an environmental win, and it still is an important outcome. But the problems these days are so big and global in their impact that small decisions, investments and outcomes are no longer enough.
Our problems are so big that the only way we can solve them is to think and act BIG.
We need billions of dollars invested in safeguarding our environment, not a few million as we so often see in government budgets. We need businesses taking up the new green economy opportunities to provide jobs for Victorians and reduce emissions, return water to rivers and use less resources. And we need all Victorians to take action to green up their lives.
We need to transition our thinking, our actions and our economy to be working for, not against, our environment. Our strategy has been to develop solutions to our problems and then form partnerships with businesses, communities and experts to lobby for their adoption by government.
In 2008/09, Environment Victoria worked hard to develop solutions to solve our climate, water and waste problems. We now have plans to halve greenhouse gas emissions, plans to secure our water supply for both ourselves and our rivers, and plans to reduce waste and help people live more sustainably. And we have shown how adopting our plans can save money and create green jobs and economies.
And these plans are BIG and will take big investment and bold leadership from government.
To get this leadership, we are working to mobilise 5 million Victorians around our solutions and to take their own green actions. We are ramping up our efforts now to make sure that solving our climate, river health and waste problems and improving our unsustainable lifestyles is core to every party’s election platform in 2010, and to ensure that governments, businesses and communities take BIG actions for our environment.
You can help us mobilise the people we need to solve the problems we face.
