By Claire Ireland, Senior Environment Specialist, AusAID

Collective action towards protecting the environment has a powerful impact, and the possibilities to make a difference are endless.

Today, people around the world will be celebrating World Environment Day in a multitude of ways. Colleagues have told me about a variety of plans—riding to work; making a special effort to recycle or switch off lights when not needed; or getting outside to join in community tree planting events.

For Faith Nyati in Zimbabwe, her day will be very different. She and her daughter Ellen will be up at 5am to collect water for the day. They will queue for up to an hour, depending what time they arrive at the communal well. After breakfast, Ellen’s older brother will go off to school but Ellen will stay behind to help their mother collect firewood—roughly a two-hour task. Faith says it didn’t always take so long but firewood is becoming scarce and the trees aren’t as plentiful as they used to be. Once the firewood is collected, they’ll head to a small plot of land to prepare it in the hope that the rains will come and their crops will grow. Ellen says she would like to go to school but helping out at home is more important. The family need water, firewood and food before she can get an education, she tells me.

A community worker talks to a group of women who are waiting to collect their food aid, including from Australia, at a World Food Programme food distribution point at Epworth in Harare, Zimbabwe in April 2009. Photo: Kate Holt/Africa Practice

I met Faith and Ellen in 2009 when they were queuing for food rations. The rains had failed to come and their crops had not grown. An estimated 6.9 million people received international food aid at the height of Zimbabwe’s ‘hunger season’ that year.

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