Blogs
On the 19th of October, we met up with students from Croatia over Skype, to discuss our countries' environmental situations.
As we here in South Africa are experiencing our worst drought in decades and as Croatia is a country with plentiful water resources that is in fact often hit my floods, it was shocking yet also enlightening to see how different our countries are.
Our attitudes towards water are radically different, as here in South Africa we have no other choice but to save water by doing things like watering gardens with grey water and not washing cars, yet, in Croatia, purified water is used to wash streets and they have a river running through each town.
You can clearly see that only when a resource has become limited in quantity do we truly appreciate it and use it wisely. In today's rapidly changing world, this will be the case more and more frequently. I therefore believe that we should all begin using resources wisely, irrespective of whether they are plentiful in our city or country or not. Who knows, just like in South Africa, any country's once reliable water supply could very quickly dry up and by then it would be too late to do anything!
We also discussed solutions to other problems we have regarding water. One of Croatia's problems was the presence of pesticides from farmlands in their water supply. By using environmentally-friendly farming methods (such as biointensive farming ( organic farming that aims to produce as much food as possible)) pesticides don't even have to be used on farmlands.
It was a fascinating experience to meet up with other young green minds from halfway across the world to discuss our environment. It is only through global collaborations like these that we will be able to successfully combat environmental problems.
Keanu Canto
Willowridge High School
South Africa
