Lesley Rochat, executive manager and director of education and awareness of the Save Our Seas Shark Centre, along with Clem Sunter, former CEO of the biggest gold mine company in the world, Anglo American, and now well known author of the best seller, Mind of a Fox, and a leader in the field of scenario planning, recently addressed a mixed audience of over 200 business people and matriculates in Cape Town, South Africa.
While Clem focused on discussing future scenarios that could play out in the world economy, and in South Africa, Lesley focused on the future of the world’s oceans, and sharks in particular. Her talk entitled The Future of the Oceans is in Your Hands, looked at the harsh reality of the environmental challenges facing our world’s oceans, and all life they support, including our own. While she highlighted that some of the destruction, in particular due to over-exploitation, is a current issue, there are others we are yet to pay the price for. In particular the impact on the world’s oceans as a result of global warming is yet to be realised, and as Clem humorously later added, the youth in the audience needed to get ready for living in a microwave. She stressed, however, that there is a ray of hope, which we each hold in our hands. She encouraged the audience to take ownership of our beautiful oceans, and responsibility for assisting in the changes necessary to preserve our world’s precious but limited resources, in order to save many species from extinction, including ultimately the human race.