Excerpts from the Speech of Ms. Monica Griefahn

To have human rights is one important thing, but to have a natural environment is another important thing. You need on one hand, the dignity and the human rights, and you need on the other hand, a clean environment. We should be part of the environment, we should live within it and not abuse it. We should use it in a way that the nature can get it back.

So, an important point for me to live in harmony, is to have three principles. One is that we use nature in a way that we don’t have any wastage any longer. That means we give nature back the elements and the materials that we use; and we use it again and again. And everything is reduced with renewable energy so that we don’t need any coal mines, we don’t need any nuclear power.

First, I organized Greenpeace, and worked against pollution of the rivers because the rivers are so polluted you can’t have any drinking water out of it. If you fell into the water you have to go into the hospital because you could have been severely damaged by the chemicals which were in there. And so we protested against dumping of the materials into the sea and rivers. I then thought it is not enough only to protest in an NGO but I have to go into politics Actually I had one discussion with your Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh and said, “If you want to really make India a country of the future, do it yourself without nuclear power.

Education is one of the important things all over the world that I really work on. We have to do all our production and that is what I am organising now. An association which is called Cradle-to-Cradle Association which tries to get companies to work in technical and biological cycles. We have now companies making things bio-degradable , we are making them produce things so that we can dismantle them and then work up again. And, what I do is really to find the solutions available from all over the world.

I have been working with the Alternative Nobel Prize Award, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation for 27 years now and have a lot of Indian award winners. I am very proud to be in this committee because we find all the wonderful people who are examples and show that solutions are there. As Mahama Gandhi said, "There is enough for everybody’s need but not enough for everybody’s greed". That is the motto of this organization, and we have now 162 people from 56 countries. If we follow these people then we can solve the problems of the world.

So, let’s think of the cherry tree as the symbol of abundance and of solutions, and be positive and leave a positive footprint behind and not the negative one.