It ain´t much, but it´s a honest work

It is a fact that if we organize ourselves at the international or confederal level we can really achieve unimaginable goals. Don´t forget it.

We start from the assumption that we, humans, are good at making animal species gone extinct... in the last few years 160 animal species between invertebrates and mammals have disappeared...

Acrocephalus Nijoi was a nice little bird that populated the Northern Mariana Islands until 1995 and was declared extinct in 2017 after the introduction of alien species in its ecosystem such as dogs or cats;

Chelonoidis Abingdonii was a nice turtle whose last specimen, called "George the lonesome", died in 2012 at an estimated age of about 100 years, surviving poaching and illegal animal trade practices.

But as I was saying, the awareness of not living on a planet with unlimited resources has meant that today humans are starting to do something to avoid the apocalypse.

For example, since 2010 China, Nepal, India, and Indonesia, in collaboration with WWF, have started a campaign called Tx2, whose aim was to double the number of tigers by 2022 through interventions to recover their habitat, using new technologies as spies to control and monitor the feline population, and a ruthless fight against poaching and illegal animal trafficking.

In fact, in the last 100 years the number of tigers had fallen from 100 000 to about 3200 wild tigers; some areas such as Nepal and Bhutan have already reached the target of doubling, proof that it was not wasted money and energy . 

Encouraging results, not only in Asia, are obtained when several states and organizations form a network to collaborate against problems, as also in the case of gorillas.

Until 40 years ago there were 254 in central Africa, decimated by poaching and civil war, but since Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo began to engage on it, the gorilla population has not only stopped decreasing, but a slow process of repopulation has begun.

The Ministry of Tourism, Natural Resources and Antiquities of Uganda declares that today the population has increased by 15%, bringing the Gorilla from the position of "critical endangered species" to "endangered species"... It ain't much, but it's honest work.

This example can be made with many other animals, not only terrestrial ones: humpback whales, which after the wild hunt started at the end of the 19th century (the period when moby dick was written, just to contextualize the sensibility of the time on the subject), had been reduced to little more than a hippie community, including 450 specimens in the south of the Pacific.

Today, however, they can breathe a sigh of relief, feeling part of a species that counts about 25 000 specimens.

Or again a good example is the sea lion, which in the 1990s was on the verge of extinction due to poaching and climate change,but is now considered to be at minimal risk.

I don't take too long to tell similar stories about the bald eagle, Californian condor, Przewalski's Horse in Mongolia or the golden frog (the famous frog that if you lick it you´ll get super-stoned, and we don't want this animals to go disappear, don´t we?).

I consider these to be evidence that when governments go for it they can get results on a large scale and in the long run. 

We all remember when at school we were talking about Ozone, a strange and kind gas that protected us from the ultraviolet radiation of the Sun, but in the ´80s it was discovered to be reduced to a sieve... Well, after the Montreal Protocol signed in September 1987, where every state committed to stop using all those gases that ruined our UV Shield, the hole began to shrink, and even NASA says that compared to 2005 today the hole has been reduced by 20%.

This article would not be on Youthreporter if I forgot giving my congratulations to the European Union...

The EU is the most virtuous international organization on the planet which, having participated in all the agreements, including Paris and Kyoto, is often ahead of the schedule.

From 1990 to 2013, EU emissions fell by 23%, although the economy grew by 53%: this is because in the old continent we have managed not only to establish new regulations, but also to create incentives for the use of green and renewable energy.

Obviously there are discussions going on, there are countries like Germany that pollute more and others like Latvia that contributes only 0.2% of the european emissions, but in general the trend of each of the countries of the Union seems to be decreasing.

Who has ever heard of the "Green New Deal", the european super-project that aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2050?

For all this we have to thank all those movements that have started from the bottom and arrived to the top, sensibilizing people in the last 3 years and that have reached their peak with the spread of the famous "Fridays for the future", until the point of making the European Green Party the fourth political party in the European Parliament.

If you read until this point, now You will have enough points to answer when some Boomer starts yelling the pointless arguments such as “protesting is useless”, and if he says that it's not by protesting on Friday morning that things can change, well... he's wrong.

So in Europe we are doing well, but also economic powers that we don't normally imagine as interested in the environment as China can sometimes surprise us.

A few years ago China started a policy of reforestation of the Gobi desert, which was constantly expanding, planting almost 7 million hectares of new wood made up of trees that would adapt well to the local climate of the area where they would be located,

and as a target for 2035 they set the country's green areas to cover at least 25% of the total area.

In conclusion I must answer in advance to the ones who will say things like “Antonio, what you say is really cool, but impossible to realize on a big scale and for a long time in our industrialized country, based on rooted business models!”.

Well… it's true, but what about alternative business, created in the last years as a natural answer to all the eco-friendly movements that spread around?

Yes, I´m also talking about the “artificial meat”, that will allow us the pleasure of a good steak, without deforesting several square kilometers in South America to breed Farting Cows, responsible for 2.5 kg of CO2/hamburger (source: FAO).

Did we already consider the thousand of new jobs that the maintaining of an artificial forest, like the new chinese one, would create? And how many new tourists would be interested in spending their big money to see strange and fascinating animals in many countries, as it's already happening since several decades in Africa with safaris?

I´m not an economist, but it sounds like “big money”.

All I can say is that what we are doing “ain't much, but It's a honest work”.

Antonio Stocchi

 

Sources:

Some extinguished animals in the last years:

https://www.lifegate.it/persone/news/quante-specie-sono-state-dichiarate-estinte-nellultimo-decennio

Tx2 project:

https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/how-nations-are-uniting-to-double-the-world-s-tigers

How many tigers do we have left?

https://www.repubblica.it/ambiente/2019/07/27/news/restano_solo_3_890_tigri_sul_pianeta_via_alla_sfida_per_salvare_la_specie-232179732/

Gorillas:

https://www.lifegate.it/persone/news/cresce-popolazione-gorilla-di-montagna-censimento

Whales:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191021161128.htm

Sea lions:

https://bestlifeonline.com/almost-extinct-animals/

Lab produced meat:

https://ilfattoalimentare.it/carne-coltivata-miglioramenti.html

Europe pollutes less:

 https://www.infodata.ilsole24ore.com/2019/06/27/co2-leuropa-tagliato-le-emissioni-del-25/

European green new deal:

 https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal_it

China is Planting trees to stop the expansion of the gobi desert:

https://ecobnb.it/blog/2019/07/cina-alberi-fermare-deserto/