“Land is not a bequest we receive from our parents, but a debt we owe our children” – Swahili proverb.

Past generations of humans have tried to think ahead, care about the earth and its future,e and to plan with the future in mind.

The Swahili proverb, above, expresses a widely held belief, all around the world.

We in the west have rather lost sight of this, with the importance we have attached to ever-rising living standards for ourselves.

We have known, for many years, of the damage that our destructive, throw-away consumerist lifestyles have been doing to the environment (pollution, soil degradation, resource depletion, biodiversity loss), but, unlike past generations, we have not learned the lesson.

However, there is no reason why we should be different, no reason why we should be incapable of living up to the standards and ideals of the past.

We can recognise that looking after the earth and taking what steps we can to hand it over in good condition is something we should take seriously.

Many writers have pointed out that how we look after the earth is, at heart, a moral issue.

Looking after the earth is not something just for the few enthusiasts, something we can leave to other people.

It has to be everybody, or it will fail. It is a shared endeavour, a shared ideal, involving government, industry, and all of us.

It’s not something just to talk about or write about: it’s about how we live our lives.

Most of us can think of ways in which we could reduce our environmental footprint – and often this will save us money too.

It is very welcome that there has recently been agreement among leading politicians in parliament and in our local councils that environmental issues should be taken more seriously.

They can’t tell us how to live our lives, however. That is up to us.

Written by Henry Haslam, author of The Earth and Us