| Ships
to Save the Waters Keynote Speech July 1, 2000 Jersey
City, New Jersey -
Francine Cousteau
First, I want to say thank you to Pete Seeger
and all the people involved in his organization
to have invited the Cousteau Society here
tonight.
If we are so enthusiastic to carry on the work
of Captain Cousteau it is because he has brought
us so much happiness, so much courage and hope
that whatever the difficulties are, have been or
will be. When I remember him, I remember a smile
and this smile guides my tough duties.
Water
Waters of peace is the name of the program we
built after Cousteau was gone. Waters of Peace
has the ambitious goal to clean the waters of the
World of the tracks of wars – for that we
have planned tools:
- Expeditions to maintain a boat, Alcyone,
as a flag of Cousteau on the oceans.
- The Label Cousteau, a certification
program for the protection of marine
coasts and river banks and lake shores,
- Education programs with schools and the
endowment of chairs at universities, the
Ecotechnie program.
To clean the waters of the world looks like a
titanic task, an unrealistic objective. But what
the will of a man can do, the will of a woman
will do it too. Military wars have left in all
the oceans deadly poisons that time and currents
will scatter around. Economic wars have resulted
in incredible spoiling of resources, lack of
precautions and safety, the abandonment of
reusable production in favor of ready to use,
throw away merchandise. The increasing
accumulation of packaging results an incredible
amount of pollution landing on coasts, banks and
shores, with sometimes-irreversible destruction.
All these mistakes not only put at stake the
environment, but the people, who are first
concern.
What is the state of our resources in water?
Seventy one percent of the planet is covered with
water; most of it is saltwater. Only 5 to 7% is
fresh water, but most this is frozen glacier or
polar ice. So only a very small percentage of the
global water supply is liquid and only about
0.26% is available to human beings. A human being
needs 2 liters a day to live but in
industrialized nations the real use is 200 liters
a day or much more! One billion people have no
access to drinkable, safe water, which causes
over 25,000 deaths a day! So one child dies every
8 seconds because of lack of water or polluted
water.
The situation is alarming because only 9
countries share 60% of world water reserves. For
instance, Canada has 30%, Amazonia 15%. But those
two countries are among the less populated in the
world. – Less than 1% of the population. At
the same time, Asia, with 60% of the world’s
population, detains only 30% of the reserves in
fresh water. You can understand that the result
is an increasing risk of war for water.
Already, 400 million of people are victims of
hydric stress, which means their civilizations
use water quicker than nature can replenish it.
In 25 years the world population will increase
30%, jumping from 6 to 9 billion. The consumption
of water progresses twice quicker than the
population increase. So we can estimate that in
25 years 2 million five hundred thousand people
in 55 countries will not have access to fresh
water.
The situation is already not far from
explosive. In the cradle of civilization, turkey
could the precious waters of the Euphrates River.
Should this occur it would deprive Iraq and Syria
of fresh water reserves? In Israel, water is so
important that hydric security is integrated into
national security defense.
At this rate, water will quickly go on the
stock market and we will see Diasporas refugees
of the environment forcing open the doors of rich
countries. Investments that could solve the
problem are enormous. They have been estimated to
be 25 billion a year for 10 years just to clean
polluted fresh waters. Then if you consider that
we are more and more living in a global village,
we have to take measures to stop the global
pillage!
That is why the Cousteau society has taken the
time to think about supporting initiatives that
could favor the formation of global organizations
or institutions for governing the vital issues of
critical environmental risk:
Such institutions will have to make decisions
concerning the use of natural resources, actions
in case of major pollution, access to nature,
transportation of dangerous fluids, but at the
same time that we want global equity, we want to
insure local cultural equity.
The Biosphere is precious because of its
incredible richness of life, biodiversity. As
biodiversity is a factor of equilibrium between
species, the diversity of cultures and languages
is a factor of equilibrium between people. So we
are also in favor of very strong respect and
expression of cultures through their languages,
habits, religions. Cultures have been enriched
all along the millenniums by our ancestors. We
have the duty to carry them on and enrich them.
We must fight the uniformism of cultures. At a
time when the Internet allows the global
communication everybody must share the same
language to be efficient, but also people must
refer for their citizen life to the language, the
rules of the country they live in. at the same
time, they must be able to communicate with their
families and relatives with their regional
cultures. This is a factor of peace and with the
increase of population it is vital to favor the
plurality of cultures. People have to be able to
refer to these roots, their originality. This
condition is the price of their dignity.
It is the same for environment: we have to
cope with international global rules as waters
and air ignores boundaries. This will oblige
countries to leave a part of their national
sovereignty but at the same time we must enhance
the beauty and the rarity of every different
landscape – we must stop trying to put as a
standard for beaches white sands, parrots and
palm trees. Wherever we are, we must learn to
recognize the unique value of authenticity of
landscape, privilege them, retrieve the natural
rich, original ecosystems of each place and teach
our children the treasure that represent every
living creature, the miracle of life.
Now in less than 30 years, 70% of the world
population will live on the banks, shores and
coasts of the world. These places are the most
fragile places on earth. At the junction of land
and water there are nurseries for fish, birds and
plants. They are also the receptacle of all
terrestrial pollution. Sixty to seventy percent
of the water pollution comes from the land. The
pressure of urbanism and industries on these
fragile edges is increasing dramatically. If
nothing is done it will be too late
But we can do something. Most of what has been
done by governments or states is far from enough.
The huge amount of good will coming from
associations to accomplish what is not done by
governments has a very positive effect. But maybe
it is time to consider how in the middle of all
the situations I just described we could be more
efficient.
- Whatever our differences, maybe if our
goal is the same, we must fight for
rights and acts for saving our waters and
lands and if the name of Jacques Cousteau
can help, it is here for that.
- We must create employment, basic
employment for environment to maintain it
all year long. Our goal is long term.
- We must rethink the use of volunteers.
Volunteers:
Without the goodwill of people so many things
would never have happened! Forced by cuts in
government funding and increased desire for
profits, all around the world, the quest to find
people to help is increasing; for health care,
for children, for aged people, for environment.
But we have to stop for a while and ask ourselves
– concerning environment what is the place
of volunteers?
The most precious gift we can make to a cause
we want to help is intelligent thought anchored
on experience, skills,
creativity…intelligence that we use to be
executives, stars, students, craftsmen or taxi
drivers.… intelligence that allows us to
have time for others.
The worst gift we can make to a cause we want
to help is to do for free what could be done by
people who need a salary to live. I am speaking
very specifically about manual work in the
environment. The Unites States counts 13 million
of poor people living in precarity. Some come
from declining fisheries or have been rejected
from industry or agriculture. Most of them can
offer only their arms – hundreds of
thousands of arms. Cleaning and restoring the
quality of the environment is not a question of
huge mechanisms; it is a question of meticulous
hand care most of the time. Well managed, those
hundreds of thousands of arms are the seeds of
micro enterprises that we need for the long term
care of our rivers, lakes and shore. The
intelligence, the skills of volunteers have to be
used to think to solutions, to help management of
new approaches of the long-term care.
As it was done here today, we have to gather
volunteers at all levels to think, to propose, to
organize, to coordinate the actions on the ground
of people that are begging for a dignity in the
world we manage – destroyed environment,
destroyed people and vice versa. Everywhere
poverty reigns, everywhere that environment is at
risk.
But the market economy also has destroyed
environment: Short-term massive profits linked to
the extensive exploitation of resources and the
absence of precaution are leaving dramatic scars
to the environment. In its time, the socialist
economy achieves exactly the same result with
other means. Collectivism has also led to a
catastrophic situation of the environment in all
the countries where it has reign. Our expedition
to the Caspian Sea is a testimony.
The difference is that the market economy has
the power to restore what it has destroyed; if it
finds it in its interest.
In France, we apply the rule "you pollute
– you pay" – so the industry and
agriculture is subjected to important taxes and
obliged to be equipped the proper way. As they
are obliged and they don’t see the return in
the investment they have to make, they do the
minimum legal and only when they cannot wait
longer. At this point, the quest of the Cousteau
Society is to try to find a way so polluters
would not only invest to clean but they would
find an interest to do it, I mean an interest in
term of return on their investment.
Because the more we go and the less good will,
good feelings alone will not be enough to reverse
the massive destructive systems in which we
dwell. We live in a world of money, what has no
value has no interest.
But we know the unique value of nature; we
know the value of the beauty of fresh air, clean
waters, little lilies and the value of the song
of a bird – the value of silence. This was
offered to us and if we want to save it…we
have to put a price on it, we have to make it so
precious that nobody will have interest to
destroy it and everybody will desire and
everybody will desire to take special care of it.
It is with these kinds of considerations that
we decided to create the Cousteau label for
coasts and banks. What we do is: we consider a
gathering of riverine communities 70 to 100kms
long, 20 km inside the lands 300 meters in the
waters. We audit (replace with monitor?) all the
parameters that are present and we establish a
management plan for three years. We use all the
existing means that are already working on the
territory. We create new synergies between them
and we teach new methods to manage coasts and
banks with the help of micro enterprises created
from existing jobs. We teach, we evaluate, we
help, we verify, we adjust. As soon as the
community decides to enter the label process, we
open on the web what we call "the Cousteau
Site" – a reference sites where
communities communicate. After three years we
grant a certification and the label. Obliging all
the communities for excellence in all aspects of
the management of their territory is a very
exciting challenge. In addition certification
makes the value of real estate climbing, which is
good for the permanent resident, but because the
territory is controlled. At the same time, we
create jobs in the lower level of population, but
we also propose new kind of activity to most of
the year, which brings more revenues to the local
economy.
All the people concerned are voices that can
influence their representatives to affect
political change; to influence the creation of
new laws to protect the environment.
The Cousteau Label for coasts and banks refers
to a chart of quality and this quest toward
excellency is what makes the difference. Yes, we
put a price on our landscape because they deserve
it and our children and grand children deserve
it.
Fighting for the rights of future generations
have been one of the big issues of the Cousteau
Society. Captain Cousteau spent his last 15 years
on this subject. He collected 9 million
signatures and shook as many consciences at the
head of government that he could reach. Your
country (The United States) was a big support on
this matter. I want you to know that Mr. Gore,
your vice president, supported our position and
my fight for having these rights passed at the
general assembly of UNESCO in 1998. It is done
and it is a big victory. But the goal is to add
the rights of future generations to the chart of
the United Nations. And now I am going to tell
you what a single man can do, I am going to tell
you what a volunteer can do what the will of one
fragile human being can do.
His name is Pierre Chastan; he is a former
printer and a 15-year volunteer for Captain
Cousteau’s works. When he was traveling in a
plane, Pierre Chastan would manage that at the
end of the flight, all the passengers have signed
the petition for the rights of future
generations. He was doing the same in his
village, in any occasion he was meeting people.
One day he sold his business, made his family
safe, started to choose and cut trees on his
property and built a 34-foot boat. All by
himself. Then he traveled all along the canals of
France down to the south distributing the
petition to all people going near by. He had
decided to cross the ocean and bring the petition
to Mr. Kofi Annan at the United Nations. He wrote
to presidents, by the way they answered, to
encourage even President Chriac. He gathered the
help of scientists, teachers, people and one day
he left and crossed the Atlantic….
He is not a sailor. He is not a diver. He is a
fragile person with all the beauty inside and
such a strong will. Now he is in New York. The
mayor has allowed him free space in the harbor
and office commodities in the town hall. Now he
went to the United Nations and managed so well to
transmit the will of Captain Cousteau that he
will see Secretary-General Kofi Annan in October.
By the way, his boat of 34 feet is called
message and the man who built it, the man who
crossed the Atlantic all by himself to be the
voice for future generations, Pierre Chastan, is
right here in front of you. He is a symbol of all
what a single fragile person to help a course.
Here is Pierre Chastan
Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you that if
the name of Captain Cousteau has left us as an
heritage can help, federate, support, or
encourage the actions you have initiated, let us
do it together. I am here to serve…
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