As seen last week, the Earth Day unites nations around the world to drive meaningful action for our planet across several issues from climate action, science and education, people and communities, conservation and restoration, and plastic and pollution.
Conserving and restoring the various ecosystems evoluting across our planet is one of the key sustainability challenges. As said by Rachel Carson in 1962: "in nature, nothing exists alone". Earth Day highlight the importance of human action repercussion on the biodiversity collapse. Indeed, by provoking climate change, humans have irrevocably upset the balance of nature. Species are undergoing their greatest extinction rate in more than 60 million years. If we don’t take action now, extinction may be humanity’s most enduring legacy. Cut down enough tropical forests, and the reminder will switch from rainforest to savannah and all the benefits provided by forests will be lost. In the same vein, raise the planet’s temperature enough to cause ice sheets to collapse, and less of the sun’s heat will be reflected back to space, causing the warming to accelerate. One famous picture released during the covid 19 crisis depicts the importance of preserving the planet's biodiversity, underlining how COVID-19 is only the tip of the iceberg. Looking at the nine planetary boundaries model created by Johan Rockström, we can see that the biodiversity boundary has already be crossed. While the goal would be to maintain 90% of biodiversity across the globe, biodiversity has dropped to 84% in parts of the world such as Africa. This drop increases the risk of generating large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental changes. These planet boundaries raise an unanswered question: is crossing one boundary can have effect on the other boundaries? For instance, if ocean acidification killed most of the seas’ plankton, dramatically reducing the oceans’ ability to pull carbon from the atmosphere. It will therefore result in a global warming acceleration. But these risks can be avoided by taking reasonable steps to stay within the boundaries says Rockström.
In every ecosystems, all living things have an intrinsic value, each playing a unique role in life's complex web. Preseving life on land and below water is, indeed, part of the 17 SDGs set by the UN in 2015. Both goals embrace the willingness to slow the rate of extinction currenlty existing. Climate Change is threatening the stability of ecosystems around the world: deforestation, sea-level rise, increasing of temperatures, ocean acidification... However, many of the declining, threatened or undangered species can still recover if all stakeholders, from consumers, to governments and scientists, ask for immediate action. One of the Earth Day main actions focus on cleaning up the oceans from plastic pollution, coastal prevention, ocean protection, protecting the health and sustainability of water resources and the conversation of marine biodiversity. Nowadays, our oceans and coasts are at the center of the climate crisis. Life began in the ocean billions of years ago. Even today, the ocean is home to the majority of land-based plants and animals, from tiny single-celled organisms to the blue whale, the largest animal on the planet. By educating and raising awareness about the threats faced by the both marine and earth ecosystem, we might be able to preserve and save all these species.
The Earth Day's Conservation and Biodiversity program seeks to build a global movement encouraging individual actions such as adopting plant based diet, voting for politicians who prioritise climate action, volunteering in your community with association, like Surf Rider, Tara or Sea Shepherd, avoiding plastic packaging or stopping pesticide and herbicide use while choosing nontoxic, local and organic products when you can.
In conclusion, and even if the true goal is to make everyday Earth Day, pointing out one day to highlight all the challenges humanity will have to face is important. Climate Change and biodiversity loss are strongly interlinked. Both currently have disastrous effect on our ecosystems and will continue to if no actions are taken. But efforts are coming together around the world and the hope of humanity being united around sustainable development is possible.
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