#GENERATIONRESTORATION: Ecosystem restoration for people, nature and climate
RESTORE ECOSYSTEMS TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE, SAVE SPECIES FROM EXTINCTION AND SECURE OUR FUTURE. It’s all interconnected like we are. Sorry about that, Separatists!
We need to slash greenhouse gas emissions by nearly half by 2030 to hold global warming below 2°C and avoid its most dangerous impacts. We can’t meet that goal without restoring ecosystems and their carbon stores. Ambitious ecosystem restoration and decarbonisation of glocal&national economies need to go hand in hand.
By halting and reversing the degradation of lands and oceans, we can prevent the loss of 1 million endangered species. Scientists say restoring only 15 per cent of ecosystems in priority areas can cut extinctions by 60 per cent by improving habitats.
Restoration is key to the prosperity and well-being of people. Vibrant ecosystems provide benefits from food and water to health and security that the planet’s growing population needs today and will need in the future.
A new report from the United Nations Environment Programme and Food and Agriculture Organisation highlights the urgency to restore Earth – and the benefits that await if humanity does.
I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy . . . and to deal with those we need a spiritual and cultural transformation —and we scientists don’t know how to do that.” Gus Speth, former director, Council on Environmental Quality
How can we, the economically advantaged portion of planet dwellers, do our part responsibly? Our response is situated between two extreme degrees of real interest in our planet’s people, animals, and plants AND THEIR DESCENDANTS. On the one extreme lies radically changing our lifestyle; and on the other, is doing the absolute minimum possible so as to impact our own (scarce) material welfare the least.
PET is a pragmatic charity, working at both extremes. By personal experience PET understands the pressures individuals are under to survive, let alone being able to give those few things up voluntarily!
And yet it also holds the clear “radical” vision that all of us have been able to experience since covid-19 started: a smog-free London/Los Angeles skyline; pristine view of the Himalayas from northern India, not seen for decades; clear sight of the Eiffel Tower from the Paris suburbs, previously obscured by pollution. With more local quality time&food, less travel, less burning of fossil fuels (&more zoom/less blah blah?! haha), all leading to a projected 8% official decrease in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 2020 — the largest drop ever recorded, according to the International Energy Agency.
Such striking and unexpected environmental consequences of the pandemic are unlikely to continue once the crisis has subsided and life resumes its former pace. Alas.
But PET diVisions are using this moment to examine how lessons from the Pandemic might spark further long-term PRACTICAL improvements in sustainability habits and social, environmental and wellbeing change/development activities, both in the Findhorn Ecovillage & in our wider Community (you!).
Housing:
The North Whins project is being built to better eco heating & waste management specs than even West Whins: for PET, development means real progression not illusory perfection.
Carbon Strategy:
PETs carbon offsetting service will ACTUALLY neutralise your “totally necessary” carbon emissions, by investing their equivalent cost in oxygen producing/carbon-sequestration &-minimisation projects, which also bring further socio-economic development to needy countries who aspire to our palatial lifestyles.
Caring Community:
Piloting and rolling out functional, adaptable and sustainable support structures for all vulnerable[mfn] this of course means every-honest-body at one time or another[/mfn] members of the Findhorn Ecovillage & wider Community.
Major climate and biodiversity conferences scheduled for 2021 are an opportunity to crank up our eco-ambitions. But what is really needed is implementation and the commitment to make it happen. Ten years of resolute action by all actors in all our communities has the potential to salvage not only Earth’s climate and its astonishing biodiversity, but to restore the whole of our precious planet, for the good of both people and nature. It’s mid 2021 already!
Join hands with PET in making the right choices — for our descendants’ sake. They will remember us! If you need more convincing:
* Here’s the UNEP & FAO Report: www.unep.org: ecosystem-restoration-people-nature-climate
* and check this out too: ecosystem-restoration-playbook
