By External Source
May 31 2021 (IPS-Partners)

These are just some of the beautiful ecosystems that we are lucky to have on our planet.

An ecosystem is the interaction between living things and their surroundings – from plants to animals to people.

The health of our ecosystems is what keeps us humans alive.

But we are destroying them and losing them at an alarming rate.

Forest areas the size of a country like Denmark are destroyed every year.

That’s the same as losing one football pitch every three seconds.

More than half of the world’s wetlands have disappeared over the last century.

Greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow and our planet is now at risk of a climate change catastrophe.

Imagine this: COVID-19 and everything that it did to our way of life is an example of what happens when ecosystems are allowed to die.

When a natural habitat for animals begins to shrink, we create the ideal conditions for harmful diseases to spread from them to us.

But we can make a change for the better.

We can act now to help the children of our future. Like me.

This year’s World Environment Day is all about Ecosystem Restoration.

It is a call for all of us to do our part in helping to heal our world and build a better future for everyone.

Restoring our ecosystems is a massive world project to repair billions of hectares of land so that people have access to food, clean water and jobs.

It means bringing back plants and animals from the brink of extinction.

But it also involves many small acts of kindness that every human can take – like planting a tree, rewilding our gardens, cleaning up trash and asking others to do the same.

The next 10 years of our lives are so important.

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