An extract from

All I Know is Nothing  -  by Val Payn

“I thought I saw a seed of change begin to grow

in the patterned interconnections between us all.

Small still, fragile, yet a foetus of an idea;

but still a glimmer of abundant life to nurture,

to hold, to keep.

To Hope.

 

And was it worth it child, was it worth it?

 

Too soon to tell, yet too soon to tell!

 

But there is a way, though we may loose it yet

And many false paths may lead us to retrace our steps.

But slowly too the answers begin to come.

Faltering, and sometimes so imperceptibly

that we barely notice how rivers of truth begin to run free.

Slow saplings of knowledge planted grow into trees

and seed, and so we may yet see a forest spread.

 

Slowly and gently, my child

For out of the darkness arises the light”.

 

Val Payn is an artist and a writer. She lives on a farm in southern KZN and has worked amongst communities on the Pondoland Wild Coast. She has a deep interest in traditional livelihoods, food security and sustainability.     

Val sent this poem to us in response to the negative reports and publicity coming from the official Rio+20 Conference. From News24 June 24th we read:

Veteran observers who watched the 10-day event drag to a close on Friday shook their heads in dismay. To them, it was a fresh failure by the United Nations system, after the near-disastrous 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, to respond to eco-perils that are now approaching at express speed.

“It’s a demonstration of political impotence, of system paralysis, and it makes me feel pessimistic about the system’s ability to deliver,” Laurence Tubiana, director of a French think-tank, the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), said in an interview.

“The multilateral process today is not delivering the urgent action we need,” WWF’s Jim Leape told AFP in an email.

“International action is in fact important, to galvanize a global response to these challenges, but it’s clear that we need to look to leadership in other places… that means looking for changes everywhere – communities, cities, national governments and companies.”

Val commented:

I think the solutions are never going to come from the top, because the politicians are only interested in ‘solutions’ that they think their voters want to have and which entrench their power base.  The solutions will only come when there is a critical mass of people who are adequately aware of the implications of ‘non sustainability’ and who have already put in place new solutions and new sustainable technologies. Like the industrial revolution which didn’t happen overnight, but took over 400 Centuries of innovation and social change, the sustainability revolution will also happen by the growth of new technologies and ideas which prove themselves better than the old wasteful, destructive ones.