Environmental sustainability refers to the responsibility to conserve the natural resources of the planet and safeguard global ecosystems to support the well-being and health of all living species on the planet in the present and future. It is crucial for several reasons, especially for enhancing the quality of the environment. It promotes healthy communities where there is clean air, natural resources, and an environment that is non-toxic to plants, humans, and animals. Sustainability has the objective to deploy resources effectively for benefiting the community and campus.
Reforestation as an environmental sustainability example
There are several ways via which you can promote environmental sustainability, and one of the most effective ways is via reforestation. Sustainable forests are the need of the hour to protect the planet.
Forests, as an environmental sustainability example, cover almost one-third of the land area on the Earth. They are essential for the health of the environment. For instance, forests and trees absorb and keep the carbon dioxide in the air that is the cause of climate change today.
The importance of forests to the planet today
They are home to about 80 percent of the terrestrial biodiversity on the Earth and regular water cycles, maintain the soil quality, and reduce the risks of natural calamities from taking place like floods.
Forests are essential for arresting climate change and its negative impact on the globe
Efforts for reforestation are often undervalued despite being the key to green growth and resilience for global, national, and local communities. It is here that governments of all the nations of the world should increase funds and finance for forest protection and conservation, especially during the time when natural resources are falling under economic, climatic, and demographic pressure.
Though it is evident that the speed of deforestation has decreased in major regions, the globe still loses about 14.5 million hectares of forestland annually. Across the world, there is an estimate of about two million hectares of degraded or lose forest landscapes that could have been rehabilitated or restored in a bid to return communities and landscapes to a productive potential healthy in nature.
Reforestation and afforestation are not the same in meaning
One should not be confused with the terms reforestation and afforestation- though both of them have the same goal- they do not mean the same. Afforestation is the effort to forest land or area which originally had no cover of trees. It is the endeavor to make way for new forest areas in any area with no cover for trees. It refers to the efforts to create new forests in an unforested area or a portion of the land that never was under a forest cover in the past.
Reforestation refers to repopulating an area that has lost its population of trees. It is an environmental sustainability example that several NGOs, businesses, and communities are working relentlessly towards across the world. It is a serious undertaking to maintain the planet’s ecological balance and protect its environment and natural resources with success.