Mother Earth Calls Us

What’s the impact of climate change and what can we do to preserve our Mother Earth? It’s a recurring question while the planet languishes. Environmental deterioration is visible, progressive, and today more than ever social responsibility is urgent, and taking practices that respect the environment to live in harmony with nature.

The alert comes to us in different ways: the constant melting of glaciers, the increasingly acidic, hot seas, full of plastic and other waste; several marine and terrestrial species in the brink of extinction; as well as the occurrence of more severe meteorological phenomena, and the instability of the climate that subjects us to periods of intense heat and cold, also to floods due to sudden rains, or on the contrary, extreme droughts that cause forest fires; in addition to pests, viruses, diseases that affect crops, animals, and people.

On International Mother Earth Day, the call is for us to be concerned about the health of our world at all times, to create ecological awareness so that sustainable actions are part of each day, and not on designated days.

Although it’s not possible to completely restore what’s damaged, strategies are already being designed to slow down the effects of climate change, we just need to incorporate them into our personal routines. The participation of the government and the main economic leaders is more than important, since a vision-execution of greater scope is required, beyond the domestic environment, which implies drastic transformations in behavior and in the way of conceiving all processes as up to now .

Behind all this disaster is the hand of the human being, who is most responsible for the vulnerability of ecosystems, a predator of life on Earth. But this is not new, for several decades the scientific community has warned about the damage caused to the environment, and, although there are more and more initiatives, projects and activists that defend the health of the planet, it’s not enough.

Volunteering and community participation is not enough. The world needs public policies from governments and the intervention of the entire society to move forward because nature will not support deforestation, the overexploitation of soils, the excessive trade in plants and animals, the production of CO2, the dumping of waste... all this disturbs biodiversity and irreversibly harms all forms of life on Earth.

Faced with the threat, the planet needs the new generations to receive education with environmental awareness so that they learn to care for and respect their environment, and thus live in balance with the use of sustainable practices, the reduction of carbon footprint, and the low consumption of energy and natural resources such as water and fossil fuels.

Among the most common actions that can help are collecting garbage, planting trees, using more efficient technologies and means of transport that are friendly to the environment, because the pollution produced by combustion vehicles is one of the most important.

However, it’s also an economic issue when we look at it on a global scale. Resources are needed to replace the previous technology and generate more efficient methods such as solar panels, electric cars, among others. Therefore, the governments are the main protagonists, with the ability to decide how much budget to dedicate to the issue, and also ensure that it’s implemented.

April 22^nd is a day of reflection, to raise awareness, but all the other days are to protect and conserve the environment, taking into account that it’s a necessity because nature is finite. Our very survival depends on it.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff