Cleaning Antarctica - Action is better than words
By Megan Anderson
There is a much told story at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD)
of how 35 young people set out after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit to remove 1 000
tons of waste from the Antarctic in an ambitious project dubbed Mission
Antarctica.
Ten years later, Mission Antarctica is initiating a sustainable development
project in Alexandra township, Johannesburg. Says Robert Swan, the project
designer: “I want to leave something behind after the summit, either a
sustainable project or some sort of business.”
Swan, who attended the Earth Summit, says of the Alexandra-based project: “Their
task will be to clean up a section of the river that runs through the township.”
At Rio, Swan was tasked with designing a positive action campaign to inspire
the young, that would appeal also to industry and business. He was to report
back a decade later. Thus was Mission Antarctica born. Swan explains that the
idea behind the campaign was to help young people take action to change the way
they lived. Mission Antarctica ran for five years and required 200 people to
complete.
According to Marcus Kotschan, a fellow Mission Antarctica member, Swan “was
the only person to promise something at the last summit and actually deliver 10
years later”.
For their mission in Alexandra, Swan’s team joined forces with loveLife, a
South African non-governmental organisation, to get a local angle and foothold.
Once the summit is over, Swan and his team will head out on yet another
action campaign on the same scale as Mission Antarctica. -- Witsnews
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