How To Get Involved
Sustainability is your responsibility.
How to get involved:
- Initiate a volunteer neighbourhood clean-up.
- Report any environmental pollution in your area.
- Take part in public participation on environmental matters in your areas.
- Know your environmental rights and responsibilities.
- Make use of green tips for a cleaner environment.
Our generation has witnessed unprecedented economic growth and technological progress, which, while bringing benefits to many people, has also, caused severe social and environmental consequences.
There is an evidence of increasing decline of the physical environment in one way or another, a condition that affects all of humanity. It is absolutely vital that our communities insist upon measures that will support the kind of economic growth which will not have harmful repercussions on people; that will not in any way diminish their environment and their living conditions.
It is necessary to find ways to ensure that the resources within our City benefit all of humanity and provide the potential for raising the quality of life for everyone. This could be realised by associating ourselves with an ethic that espouses attitudes and behaviour for individuals and societies which are consonant with humanity’s place within the biosphere; which recognizes and sensitively responds to the complex and ever-changing relationships between humanity and nature.
Significant changes must occur in all of the people in Johannesburg to assure the kind of rational development, which will be guided by changes directed towards an equitable distribution of natural resources and more fairly towards satisfying the needs of all people within our City. This kind of development will also require the maximum reduction in harmful effects on the environment, the utilization of waste materials for productive purposes, and the design of technologies, which will enable such objectives to be achieved.
Above all, it will demand millions of individuals in Johannesburg to adjust their own priorities and assume a personal and individualized ethic and reflect in all of their behaviour a commitment to the improvement of the quality of the environment and of life of the people in Johannesburg. The reform of educational processes and systems is central to the building of this new development ethic and economic order.
We believe that as City of Johannesburg, we can order changes, and new development approaches can begin to improve the environmental condition, but all of these are no more than short-term solutions, unless our people, especially youth and women in Johannesburg receive a new kind of education. This will require new and productive relationships between students and teachers, between schools and communities, and between the education system and society at large.
We strongly recognize education, including formal education, public awareness and training as a process by which human beings and societies can reach their full potential. Both formal and non-formal educations are indispensable to changing people's attitudes so that they have the capacity to assess and address their sustainable development concerns. It is also critical for achieving environmental and ethical awareness, values and attitudes, skills and behaviour consistent with sustainable development and for effective public participation in decision-making.
We believe that education is critical for promoting sustainable development and improving the capacity of our people to address environment and development issues.
It is within this context that we have developed this Environmental Education and Awareness Strategy as a foundation for the City to be able to develop new knowledge and skills, values and attitudes, in a drive towards a better quality of environment and, indeed, towards a higher quality of life for present and future generations living within Johannesburg.
We hope that this Strategy will contribute towards the development of citizens that are aware of, and concerned about, the environment and its associated problems, and that have the knowledge, skills, attitudes, motivations and commitment to work individually and collectively toward solutions of current environmental problems and the prevention of new ones