Dame Lynda Topp is lending her energy and mana to the
Vote for our Environment campaign – a people-power
initiative that is enabling voters to tell all the political
parties that they are only voting for a party committed to
robust environmental policies. Their message is “No
commitment = no vote”.
“This election is a
critical one” says Dame Lynda. “We’re running out of
time to fix these problems and need a government that fully
understands that’s the case and acts
accordingly”.
The campaign supporters sign the Kiwi
Environment Election Pledge which sets out how they will use
their vote. They then inform all the party leaders and their
MP of their pledge and voting intention underscoring the No
commitment = no vote approach. An on-going email campaign
reinforces the message.
“We know many people are
hurting right now in this country” says Dame Lynda.
“They’re very concerned about keeping a roof over their
heads, jobs, health care and the cost of living. They may be
thinking they have to choose between voting for basic
necessities and a healthy environment. They don’t.
Anybody saying they do is probably benefiting
financially from wrecking the environment,” she says.
“The truth is that people and the economy can only thrive
when the environment does. And right now our environment is
getting sicker and sicker.”
The campaign is calling
for parties to align their policies with the Nature-Positive
Policy Roadmap released by Greenpeace, WWF and Forest &
Bird earlier this year. “It’s the blueprint that we need
to be using if we’re serious about turning things
around” says Dame Lynda. “So far Te Pati Maori and the
Green Party have policies that meet that benchmark. We hope
other parties will manage to do the same thing by the time
people are voting”.
Advertisement – scroll to continue reading
The campaign will be launching a
video of Dame Lynda with the Vote for our Environment call
to action on Friday at noon on Instagram and Facebook. It
can be found on the Vote for our Environment Facebook group,
Instagram page @voteenvironment, Dame Lynda’s and
Greenpeace’s website.
VFOE was started by two people
who were part of the 1980’s Votes for Peace campaign which
enabled the huge groundswell of public support and will for
the Nuclear Free NZ policy to become political will and
reality – using postcards sent to politicians. Aware of the
current situation they felt the time was right for another
such campaign.
The tally of pledgers is growing and
the expectation is that it will be mushrooming with Dame
Lynda’s
support.
