WORDS by Andy Ridley

IT's time to mobilise citizens.

Ten years ago, I stood on the banks of Sydney Harbour and waited as we counted down to the first Earth Hour. It was a feeling of pure nerves, mingled with raw excitement. We had started this campaign in the hope that people would show they cared, that they would join in a common cause to show we cared about the one thing we all shared: the place we live - Planet Earth.  

At 7:30pm across the grand skyline of this world city, lights began to turn off. First the logos on top of the buildings switched off, then the tower blocks themselves, then the lights in the hotels, the Harbour Bridge and those famous sails on the Sydney Opera House. It all happened gradually over a couple of minutes, and I was holding my breath for most of it.  As the lights went off we realised the moon was bright and our city was bathed in moonlight.  You can imagine the feeling of citizens across the city, the vast majority of whom had never met, had joined together in a simple but powerful act that surprised and inspired the world.  For me, it illustrated that we should never underestimate the power of people when it comes to a shared common purpose.  Like Live Aid more than two decades earlier, the power of the crowd can change things for the better.

Earth Hour grew from one city to more than 7,000 and in many places grew beyond the hour to an event that inspired massive conservation outcomes in places as far and wide as Argentina, Russia, China and Uganda.  Every time something amazing happened, such as a marine area protected or  a law was changed, it was a community, a mayor, a business or a school kid who drove this change.  In other words it was people-driven. 

Ten years on we have moved an extraordinary distance, but it is frequently one step forward, two steps back.  In the meantime, climate change has accelerated, often outstripping the most pessimistic of predictions made by the world’s scientists.  However, in parallel the predictions around the rapid evolution of technology from the power of digital to the efficiency of renewables has far outperformed most predictions.

So, we find ourselves beyond the safe time to make decisions on what direction to take.  Instead we find our linear ‘take, make, waste’ model creaking under the strain of more than 7 billion people driving pollution and climate change, as well as causing socio-economic problems from the rust belt in the USA to the lungs of the citizens in every major Asian city.   In the end, the maths doesn’t add up.  Within decades, the global population will hit 9 billion.  In the coming decade, billions of people will join the middle class.  For this to work we have to transition to an economy where prosperity is decoupled from the wasteful use of resources and material use is local and repeated.

After leaving Earth Hour back in 2014 I went to the Netherlands to run an organisation called Circle Economy. The Netherlands is fast becoming a circular economy hotspot, that is a place where the pursuit of a prosperous economy is decoupled from wasteful material use. I became convinced that the circular economy was flourishing there because the Dutch are intrinsically entrepreneurial as a nation.  Also their historically evolved ‘polder’ model of cooperation to manage water across their below-sea-level lands meant that cooperation was intrinsic to survival. While Earth Hour proved you could mobilise hundreds of millions of people across the planet behind a common purpose, the circular economy illustrated that at a practical level, you could apply a successful economic approach that can deliver the prosperous future desired by us all without the devastation of unrestrained resource use.  Currently we reuse just 7% of the materials we dig up on our planet every year.

So it was as I worked in the Netherlands that I saw the beginnings of the stories about the major bleaching event happening on the Great Barrier Reef. A couple of friends of mine, a few years before, had mentioned an idea for engaging people across the world in the future of the Reef.  James and Nancy were the people who came up with the brilliant Best Job in the World campaign. We touched base and they mentioned that they had been talking to a chap called Alex de Waal who wanted to make everyone around the world a Citizen of the Great Barrier Reef. 

To get the project up and running has been a classic case of persistence and perseverance, and now as we pull every favour to build a team based on people working on the project as a second job, the Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation is taking shape. 

We are focusing on three core elements to the organisation:

• Tangible and practical direct intervention projects for the Great Barrier Reef;
• Helping the citizen become informed, inspired and able to advocate; and
• Engaging and embracing cities, communities and businesses that are speedily transitioning towards a circular economy based business model.

As we get ready to officially launch in July we will let you know the projects, sectors, businesses and communities that we are working with and we will be asking you - our first citizens - to help get the ball rolling.   Success will come from the sum of all the parts, inspired by the idea extolled by JFK:  "Don’t ask your country what it can do for you but what you can do for it".  

It’s time to work together and show not only that we care about one of the world’s greatest natural wonders, but we’re also prepared to do all we can to ensure its future.

* Andy Ridley is the CEO of the Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation

Earth Hour is this Saturday 25th March between 8.30 and 9.30pm. Click here for more information.

Will you be switching off for Earth Hour? Let us know in the comments below!

* Readers are encouraged to use their full details below to ensure comment legitimacy. Comments are the opinions of readers and do not represent the views of Newsport or its staff. Comments containing unlawful, obscene, defamatory or abusive material will not be published.