Humanity is wreaking havoc with Earth’s capacity to sustain life through destructive exploitation of natural resources and decimation of the planet’s biodiversity, the United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for Biodiversity, acclaimed actor and conservationist Edward Norton said on Saturday May 21.
“We are disrupting the natural systems of our planet in ways that will cause havoc for our way of life,” Norton told the UN News Centre in an interview on the eve of the International Day for Biological Diversity, which falls on May 22 each year.
“The UN is providing a forum for countries big and small to work together on how we can put into policy issues like environmental sustainability, protection of biodiversity, protection of forests, combating desertification,” he said.
The Hulk actor attended the Governing Council meeting of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, and visited a rural renewable energy project in central Kenya, intended to provide a community with an alternative to the use of firewood.
“This biogas project with small dairy farmers around the slopes of Mount Kenya [is] reducing, even eliminating, their use of fuel wood from forests by taking these digesters, putting the waste from their dairy cows, and producing so much methane that they power their whole houses, their farms and everything.
“There was a guy, the project manager – you could see his face shining as he talked about how they developed these systems to become very efficient providers of waste energy.”
He has been active in garnering support for conservation efforts, serving as a board member of the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust in Kenya, and took part in the launch of an innovative social networking platform called Crowdrise to boost participation in charitable work.
