Being Green

It’s National African Penguin Awareness Day on Saturday 8 October, and in this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Dr Alistair McInnes, Seabird Conservation Programme Manager at BirdLife South Africa, about the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment’s decision to declare some areas around the major penguin colonies as temporarily closed to commercial fishing, and the Avian Flu outbreak at the Boulders Beach penguin colony.

With news this week that there were leaks in the Nord Stream pipelines used to transport natural gas from Russia to Germany, Glynis Crook speaks to …. In this week’s edition of Being Green, about the potential environmental impact.

As we face more loadshedding, in Being Green this week Glynis Crook speaks to Hilton Trollip, a Fellow in the Global Risk Governance Programme at the University of Cape Town, about how quickly wind turbines and other types of renewable energy systems could be installed in the Cape.

It’s Arbor Month in South Africa, a time when we’re encouraged to plant and conserve trees. Much of the focus each year tends to be on the greening of our cities and towns and the important role trees can play in climate change mitigation. One of the organisations that has risen to the challenge, planting over 200,000 trees in South Africa, Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia since 2010, is Greenpop. In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to its head of programmes, Zoe Gould-Angelucci, about why the foundation believes the time has come to shift the focus from counting the number of trees planted, to ensuring they have a meaningful impact.

PROUDLY SPONSORED BY GERLINDE MOSER OF RE/MAX. Being Green – Your window on the environment broadcast every Friday morning at 9.30. Glynis Crook will focus on key issues affecting our lifestyles, science and research outcomes, the quest for sustainable living and a healthier planet.

PROUDLY SPONSORED BY GERLINDE MOSER OF RE/MAX. Being Green – Your window on the environment broadcast every Friday morning at 9.30. Glynis Crook will focus on key issues affecting our lifestyles, science and research outcomes, the quest for sustainable living and a healthier planet.

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Cedric Coetzee, regional manager for the east region at Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, which manages nature conservation in KwaZulu Natal, about the ongoing rhino poaching in the province’s Hluhluwe iMfolozi Game Park. It’s believed that over a 100 of the animals have died so far this year.

Over the past few years, there has been increasing concern about the number of trees in Cape Town that are being illegally stripped of their bark. Taking the bark off puts the tree at risk of viral or bacterial infections and can ultimately lead to its death. Lobby group, Friends of Table Mountain, recently raised the alarm about the destruction of Table Mountain National Park’s limited indigenous forests. It says the two areas that are most concerning are Newlands Forest and Echo Valley in Kalk Bay. In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to arborist, Francois Krige, about the issue.

The Southern Yellow-billed Hornbill, whic is endemic to the dry savannas of Southern Africa, was last evaluated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature or IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as of Least Concern. This despite the fact that the population appears to be decreasing. But a recent study at the University of Cape Town into the effect of climate change on their breeding success in the Kalahari Desert found that they could be wiped out by 2027. In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Nicholas Pattinson, one of the researchers at UCT’s FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology.

According to a recent assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the IUCN, more than 300 species of sharks, and their close relatives, rays, are threatened with extinction. South Africa is in fact one of the top 5 global hotspots for these marine animals, which is why it is good to hear that WILDTRUST, along with the government, has launched a new campaign to protect these incredible creatures. To find out more, in Being Green this week, Glynis Crook speaks to Dr Jennifer Olbers, a marine conservation scientist at the WildTrust’s Shark and Ray Protection Project.

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Stephanie Lamour, founder of the social enterprise, Komani, about their reusable sanitary pads. It’s estimated that it could take between 500 and 800 years for one disposable sanitary towel to decompose on a landfill. This is because they are largely made up of plastic. So when you consider that it’s believed that an average woman uses close to 300 sanitary products per year – that makes a lot of plastic out in the environment. In addition to reusable pads, other eco-friendly alternatives include period pants, menstrual cups and organic pads which have gained popularity in recent years.

Last month, an extensive spatial biodiversity assessment, prioritization, and planning project got underway in 4 Southern African Development Community countries. This may not sound like the most exciting of projects, but it is a crucial one. The mapping of ecosystems in South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique, and Malawi will help these countries to improve their environmental planning and monitoring of indigenous species and ecosystems. In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Ghislain Reb, head of the infrastructure and environmental team at the Agence Française de Développement, which is one of the co-sponsors of the project.

Today on Being Green, we’re talking about a new local waste-to-energy technology that has been developed by the South African National Energy Development Institute, SANEDI. Glynis Crook speaks to its project manager, Dr Neville Smith, who led the design concept alongside NECSA’s Dr Jaco van der Walt.

As climate change continues to make its presence felt across the world, one unexpected profession has decided it needs to clean up its act. Launched in the United States, the Clean Creatives campaign is asking individual creatives, agencies and PR firms to pledge to refuse future work with the fossil fuel industry. To find out more, in this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Stephen Horn, its South Africa Country Director.

Last week on Being Green, Glynis Crook spoke to 13-year-old Quinley Wild about his song - SOS or Save our Soil. He wrote it after his mom got involved in a global movement to address the crisis of soil degradation. To find out more about why taking better care of our soil is crucial, this week Glynis speaks to Dr Ailsa Hardie, a senior lecturer in soil chemistry at Stellenbosch University.

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to 13-year-old Quinley Wild about his song SOS (Save our Soil). He wrote it after his mom, Casey, got involved in a global movement to address the crisis of soil degradation. And big local stars like Zolani Mahola, originally from Freshly Ground and now known as ‘The One Who Sings’, joined in to make it all come together. Theo Crous from Springbok Nude Girls, the Khayelitsha Children’s choir, and a group of AFDA alumni also took part in the project.

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to UCT oceanographer and climatologist, Dr Sarah Fawcett, about the vital role played by South Africa’s polar research vessel and icebreaker, the SA Agulhas 2, in the field of climate science.

New Zealand has released a draft plan to tax farmers for the methane emissions from their sheep and cattle. The country is home to about 5 million people, and some 10 million cattle and 26 million sheep, and agriculture accounts for about half of its greenhouse gas emissions, mostly in the form of methane. There’s been a lot of criticism of the government’s failure to tackle the issue of emissions from the agricultural sector. Globally, agriculture is responsible for around one-third of greenhouse gas emissions. In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Christo Van Der Rheede, the executive director of Agri SA which represents the agricultural industry in South Africa, about whether this kind of system would work here.

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to 13-year-old Quinley Wild about his song SOS (Save our Soil). He wrote it after his mom, Casey, got involved in a global movement to address the crisis of soil degradation. And big local stars like Zolani Mahola, originally from Freshly Ground and now known as ‘The One Who Sings’, joined in to make it all come together. Theo Crous from Springbok Nude Girls, the Khayelitsha Children’s choir, and a group of AFDA alumni also took part in the project.

A recent study, published in the journal Nature, found that one-fifth of the world’s reptiles are threatened with extinction. Scientists examined over 10,000 species and found that 21% of them are critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable to extinction as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Reptiles include snakes, tortoises and turtles, lizards and chameleons. In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to herpetologist Johan Marais about why this is so alarming and what the status is of reptiles in South Africa.