A day before Asia Inc's National Environment Conference 2011 "Green Brunei" on Wednesday at the Rizqun Hotel, I received an email from the organisers that had the words "Dress Code/Attire" in the subject line. We were advised to come in normal work wear, preferably no suits or ties, casual but no jeans. I really wish they had gone out on a limb and got a real themed conference going with participants turning up in hemp outfits or dressed as their favorite close to extinction hill tribe...but it was a conference, not a party, so some degree of decorum was expected. These days, a professional dress code can also mean red soles, and I definitely spotted a couple of flashes of red at the conference so we were definitely stylish, if not green.
In the 90s former Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir Mohamed was infamous for his position against the ecological lobby. For him it was not just about east and west, the fact of the matter was that the center of economic power was shifting.
The discussion that has gone on for many years on environmental issues has gone like this: the developed countries have said that, yes, developing nations may develop, but should not do so at the expense of the trees and the rivers. So say the developed countries, shrouded in our minds by the fog from the fire of the bones of the last European Red Squirrel. Anyone read Dickens lately?
I remember the famous Lat cartoon of the 90s. The first panel of which showed a group of environmentalist lecturing the natives on saving the planet. The second panel has the same group back home in the industrialized world speaking of their successful trip in the shadow of a factory chimney belching black smoke.
These days our civil society has decided that it's somewhere in between. That you've got to develop and at the same time think about the consequences of doing so. Our Minister of Development alluded to that in his speech at the opening of the conference. He also said that a civil society is one that will encourage a greener way of living, and will try and convince others to do so.
What we also discovered from the environmental conference, apart from the fact that we Bruneians love our exotic heels, was that at the end of the day most of us are concerned, in varying degrees, about the quality of the lives of our children and grandchildren. We are slowly taking steps to become more environmentally conscious.
We also learnt that many young people at schools are being led to have empathy for our planet that is heartening. I had no idea SMJA grew vegetables and herbs around their school. Or that teenagers thought using tumblers instead of plastic cups saves the planet and are cool.
Brendon Sing, founder of The Shark Guardian, spoke on marine biodiversity and encouraged everyone to say no to eating shark fin and always question whether the fish that you are about to consume came from a sustainable source. Mark Cheng, one of the invited speakers from Singapore is young, accomplished and green almost from the get go. You see him at the mall and you'd never guess just how widely recognised he is for his efforts at conservation. I think the tips of his spiky hair was red. Rizan Latif co-founder of The Beach Bunch, an NGO with an aim to free our beaches of debris, also spoke. He showed harrowing pictures of the bellies of dead animals containing plastic material. One of the panelists, Associate Professor at Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Dr Debra Enzenbacher, pointed out that it was probably not a good idea for every participant at an environmental conference to be issued with a small plastic bottle of drinking water, and shuddered at the thought of the amount of plastic heading into a landfill.
At the end of the day it's always useful to have conferences like this because it broadens your mind, you know a little bit more that the little things we do can matter, and that it is sensible to address ecological issues.
We recognise that big wholesale changes may not be possible but we are encouraged to take little steps towards a greener future and bluer skies.
@emmagoodegg
Illustration by Cuboi Art.
For the online version with the edited title click here.
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