The Chairman of Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, Dr Frank Habineza, asks the people from rich countries to slow down the speed of development in order to save the environment.
In interview with Bwiza.com, he said, “People in Western countries; i.e. Europe, America and elsewhere, have very large appetites, and their appetites are the ones that cause damage. Because they want everything in large quantities. They need a lot of wood, forests and they don’t have any, they come to cut those in Africa, they eat a lot of meat, and many other materials they need a lot and they come from Africa, others from Asia or South America.”
For this reason, Habineza pleads with the people in rich countries to slow down their development speed to reduce the environmental damage. Dr Habineza said: “For them, I would say that they should slow down because they have already progressed. They reduce the desire to develop too much, because if they want to continue to develop too much, they end up with everything else and then the consequences of environmental damage will also reach them. They need to go back for the Earth to exist, and then we (Africa) need to go up.”
These days, in different parts of the world, the effects of climate change are becoming apparent, where in some areas there is a lack of rain, while in others it falls too much, causing floods and killing people’s lives, damaging various infrastructures like recent one that claimed over 130 lives in Rwanda.
Juliet Batsinda
