Why no Earth Hour in Namibia?

THE global Earth Hour campaign should be supported by every country in the world to make people conscious of the importance of preserving the environment.

‘It [Earth Hour] is an excellent idea,’ says Namibian environmentalist Dr Peter Tarr. A handful of Namibians, including Tarr, switched of their lights on Saturday to join the campaign, in which millions of people around the world switched off lights from 20h30 to 21h30 to raise awareness about climate change and to send a visual message to world leaders to take action.Many countries and cities switched off the lights at famous landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris. In Namibia, however, inquiries whether the floodlights at Windhoek’s Heroes’ Acre, for example, would be switched off drew no response.Tarr, the Director of the Southern Africa Institute for Environment Assessment (SAIEA), says the campaign is not so much about energy saving as about making people aware of the importance of protecting the environment.Shirley Bethune, an environmental lecturer at the Polytechnic of Namibia, says media coverage of Earth Hour is a good thing because it raises awareness and convinces people to take partShe says besides saving power, an hour of darkness also makes people realise just how invasive light pollution is and makes them think of all the insects and other animals that have evolved over thousands of years to use natural light and now suffer because of artificial lighting.’Think of all the moths that endlessly exhaust themselves flying around spotlights. Also take time to think that we do not need spotlights to shine up into the sky as it is the ground we want to light up for safety,’ said Bethune.She wants the campaign to be observed more often. ‘Maybe twice a month, both at full moon and new moon.’The Earth Hour campaign, initiated by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), started in Australia in 2007. This year 4 000 cities and towns all over the world switched off their lights in and the global conservation organisation described the campaign as ‘the single biggest community action in history’. In South Africa, the campaign resulted in a 15 per cent reduction in power consumption, writes the South African newspaper Cape Times.The spokesperson for the Nairobi-based United Nations Environment Programme (Unep), Nick Nutall, was quoted as saying that Earth Hour is of special significant to Africa as this is the continent with the least responsibility for climate change, yet perhaps the most vulnerable to it.