Reconciliation and Environmental Stewardship: (Week in Review)
Lecturer: Douglas (and Edith) Baartman
This week started out with Douglas sharing his personal testimony, especially with regards to his past hurt, bitterness and brokenness, and the power of Jesus Christ to reconcile, renew and transform. He then spoke on his passion - Environment and stewardship and shared how he got to where he was, and how he, as a government official in the domain environmental stewardship and waste management was dreaming with God, and actioning out projects and plans to deal with the problems and challenges South Africa, and in particular his area of influence, Eden Valley, were facing. He also shared some great initiatives being lead by others in South Africa in the area of waste management, and in particular besides focusing on waste management, he shared about Air quality and the factors that affect it, and how we can improve it and limit our carbon footprint as individuals and a society.
Some highlights or key points he talked about were;
The challenges faced by South Africa as a nation with regards to waste management. In particular, the main factors that contribute to such challenges as illegal dumping, or proper, due process of waste at official dumping grounds.
Some of the factors he shared were;
Lack of understanding and awareness from the public, and how education needed to take place,
the establishment of a Waste and Environmental budget and finding finances to bring educational awareness among other things.
Get a buy-in from Management and Politicians
• Trying to get group work between departments and collaboration.
• Recycling Workshops and centres to deal with the waste that actually doesn’t have to be waste, but can be recycled.
He also shared about his experience with Eden Valley District, and how changes and improvements were taking place.
And He shared about the challenges faced from the Governmental side of things with corruption and bribes, even at one point where his life and the life of his colleagues has been in danger, and some of his friends and colleagues being assassinated. For example, many politicians and people don't see environmental things as important, and want that money being filtered to other areas of government, and to their own agendas and projects, and businesses don’t want to have to follow environmental laws that are put in place.
IMPACT for me: Douglas would not just share information and intellectually, but he shared from his heart, his conviction, clearly from revelation from the word and from God. A week that could have been more or less ‘boring’ was alive with questions and debate, and our mental wires firing all the time as we wrestled through challenges and thought about things in a new light. I have grown up environmentally conscious, and my mother is part of the environmental team for Lays Chips in Nova Scotia, and so I knew a fair amount about recycling and what not, but Douglas brought so much more dignity to the topic of waste management, and it’s importance. He imparted, not just taught. He spoke with authority, and it hit our hearts. One area that challenged me was how Rwanda doesn’t use plastic bags - AT ALL! They are illegal. And because of that and the clean-up of their country that they committed to undertake after the terrible genocide, in part to physically represent the spiritual cleansing they were undertaking as a nation, they are the cleanest nation in Africa.
Conclusion, While Nova Scotia is doing pretty good in some areas with environment and waste management, there is still much room for improvement, and not necessarily expensive improvements, some can be grass roots and not involve high costs to implement. And the environment and the stewardship of it, affects all areas of life, and the quality of life of individuals and society as a whole. The world isn’t ours, we are merely stewards, and how will we be seen as stewarding it when Jesus returns?
