How can we save polar bears if we can't even protect Cape Town's pelicans?

One person can’t make a difference. So my mother used to say, but being a parent, she was wrong, of course.

But without misguided parents, there would be no psychiatric industry. Pharmaceutical companies would not earn zillions by persuading us that sadness and disillusionment are unnatural and if we only take a tab a day, or several, we will be happy. Without the errors of our parents we would not have a barometer for improvement.

Never has it been more important for individuals to make a difference. Global warming demands we act in small and large ways; it may be as little as recycling, but never before has there been an issue that has demanded such intense universal action.

Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change collect Nobel Peace prizes on December 10, international human rights day, for their efforts. We as individuals don’t need awards, we need sustainable life.

We can’t pin our hopes on the 10 000 world leaders and activists meeting at a luxury resort in Indonesia from now to December 14 to discuss a new strategy to combat climate change.

Already they are finding excuses. The United States has still not agreed to sign the Kyoto Protocol, which will be replaced by decisions at Bali. The Kyoto Protocol binds 36 rich nations to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, by 5% below 1990 levels by 2012 to curb droughts, floods, heat waves and rising seas. What has happened in effect, however, is that carbon emissions are rising fast globally.

Of the world’s top five emitters, only Japan is compliant with Kyoto; the United States is dragging its heels, China and India, the world’s two most rapidly growing nations with fast-rising emissions, are exempt and Russia has easy caps. China and India say they cannot curb emissions because they need to burn more fossil fuels to end poverty — although at current rates of climate change and the floods and droughts being experienced, climate change will end poverty by eliminating the people.

South Africa has signed Kyoto but is the worst carbon-dioxide emitter in Africa. Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk flits around the world signing endless conventions, leaving behind rivers that are little more than streams of sewage, filthy beaches, littered roadsides and the state energy utility happily building new coal-fired power stations.

At Bali, world leaders will put down their sunblock long enough to agree to more committees and a new declaration, but little of the accelerated action we need.

If the world relied on politicians for meaningful progress, we’d still be in animal skins hunting rabbits. Individuals have always driven real change. And you cannot do it by email petition or Facebook group. You have to get out of the office and into the world; you have to make the time; you have to get your hands dirty; you have to be inconvenienced; you need to take personal responsibility for the change you claim you want.

When he visited South Africa in 1966, Robert Kennedy said: “Each time a man stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And, crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Those words, applied to men and women, can be used for every political action, every personal quest for transformation. You are helpless until you act. You are insignificant until you step forward. No one hears until you speak. The challenge is not to work on your own, but to inspire others to follow or to participate; as Mahatma Gandhi said: “Be the change you want.”

Which brings me to this week’s task. The Black River in Cape Town starts on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain and wends its way through informal settlements and posh suburbs. Golfers in Rondebosch have herons, kingfishers, cormorants, wild geese and fish eagles swooping past from nesting sites on the Black River; they are among 200 bird species that live along the river.

Motorists on the M5 and N2 drive past rare great white pelicans bobbing along the Black River near the Berkley road turn-off. From air-conditioned vehicles the birds and river are beautiful; it’s only as you approach on foot that the stench hits you. One of Cape Town’s green lungs is being polluted to death. Cape Town resident Leila Beltramo decided that instead of watching, she’d do something.

The pelicans are a red-data species threatened with extinction; it’s a fate that could befall individuals who fall into or drink from the river with E. coli levels three times above danger levels. That pollution, mostly from Cape Town’s aging Athlone sewage works, threatens humans and the creatures that live in or along the river, including the endangered west leopard toad, the Cape otter, water mongooses and duck-breeding colonies, according to Clifford Dorse of the City of Cape Town’s biodiversity management branch.

For the past three months Leila has, despite a busy job, almost single-handedly motivated Cape Town city and department of water affairs officials, and cajoled sparse help from corporates or small businesses, to clean the river. The best help has come from the public who are willing, this Saturday, December 8, from 10am to 2pm, to clean the banks of the river and from Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Derek Hanekom who, with his wife and staff, will also don latex gloves and drag garbage bags behind them and clean.

There have been plenty of nay-sayers, exhausted environmentalists who say clean-ups aren’t enough, that they are not sustainable and that no one really cares. But the obvious points are these — when we stop, nothing happens; when we become discouraged, deterioration persists. The challenge is to use disappointment as a signal to restrategise, to start again. It took Gandhi 50 years to bring independence to India after he was first thrown off a train in Pietermaritzburg and decided he was sufficiently annoyed to devote his life to justice for Indians. Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison. Martin Luther King gave his life.

Neither freedom nor comfort comes easily. The greatest advances in science take years of repetitive work in small laboratories. The best marriages are those where partners carefully work through, and with, differences. In this quick-fix world it’s easy to forget that true greatness comes through patience and intelligence, the capacity to swallow disappointment and to start again. Greatness comes once you’ve accepted the need to be humble, while never surrendering assertiveness, and making personal sacrifices in the quest for change.

Research by Benjamin Abban of the University of Cape Town’s faculty of engineering and the built environment in February last year suggested that “businesses in the catchment area should adopt the pavements in front of their premises and keep them free of litter … Street sweepers need to be educated on the effects of dumping litter into the drainage system.”

His advice has been ignored. This holiday season, Cape Town businesses will make millions from tourists visiting this beautiful city; only R75 000 is needed by Cape Town City to rid the Black River of water hyacinth. So far only Transnet (which owns more than half the land the Black River runs through) has contributed R15 000 to this.

The Black River flanks some of the oldest and wealthiest suburbs in Cape Town (Claremont, Rondebosch, Rosebank and Mowbray); it goes past important historical sites (the Royal Observatory, Prince of Wales Blockhouse) and some of its wealthiest businesses, all of which have the capacity to prevent the dreadful loss of one of Cape Town’s most important ecological arteries.

Leila Beltramo is exhausted. She’s had to dig deep into her own pocket. She said: “I never knew activism was such hard work.”

It is. It always is, without it we surrender to that which harms.

To help, take the M5 highway toward Milnerton. The Berkley road offramp is at Ndabeni; once you take this offramp you will see the area where parking is permitted.

Once we’ve saved Cape Town’s pelicans (and protected those who drink from or swim in that filthy river), then we can save the polar bears.