Blog Action Day - My environmental challenge: Earth, my garden

My environmental challenge

A story for Kids, Fathers and Authorities.

My backyard is facing an environmental challenge: my garden is disappearing.

Plants haven´t grown any more, birds haven´t visited my bird-feeders. Butterflies and bees haven´t looked for my flowers as they used to do.

What is happening on my backyard?

The spring arrival means the Nature revival. For some people, the frozen windy Southern Winter and its colours makes it a favourite season. But not for other one, as birds, many plants and a lot of people that love Spring. For birdwatcher, the green spring would be better than a gray winter because birds can catch insects and grains while butterflies and dragonflies look for flowers and water.

Early morning my backyard often provided beautiful scenes: at seaside and lagoons overhead everywhere, birds - (Neotropic Cormorant (Phalacrocorax brasilianus), Gray-hooded grull (Chroicocefalus cirrocefalus; Larus dominicanus) - was drawing geometrical figures on sky. By other side, birds - Rufous-browed Peppershrike (Mimus saturninus); Blue dacnis (Dacnis cayana); Great Kiskadee (Pitangus sulphuratus), Double-collared Seedeater (Sporophila caerulescens), White-vented Violet-ear (Colibri serrirostris ) and Bananaquit (Coereba flaveola) -arrived for some food as bananas and papaya.

Mammal-watching was not so easy as bird or insect-watching. Bats first must be found, but I could watch them flying by night for some fruits. And bats are not cooperative subjects.

I always hunt and catch a lot of those animals and plants but I used to take only my photographic cameras.

However, plants haven´t flourished any more, Birds haven´t visited my bird-feeders. Butterflies and bees haven´t looked for my flowers as they used to do.

My garden is disappearing.

These environmental problems are caused by some persons, enterprises and government because the environment have wilderness habitat destroyed by new projects of no sustaining actions and some agribusiness activities. Some projects cause overexploitation of natural re­sources. No properly use of agrotoxic products and pollutant elements kills people, animals and plants. From coal and oil burning to produce energy result elements as carbon dioxide CO2, “greenhouse gases” that trap too much heat in the atmosphere, rising the planet temperature. The same pollution occurs when forests are destroyed and people drive vehicles to work or leisure.

But why has my backyard garden gone?

My backyard has gone because I am an individual member of the Earth community. I have to support all my quota of terrestrial injuries. But I have to think about a healthy planet in order to save my backyard garden.

In order to improve environmental conditions in my garden, I need a planning of low carbon economy, with the cooperation of enterprises, individuals and public authority’s activities. Private managers and public administrators know diagnostics on the causes of climate change and its consequences. Finances and technologies will be required for the deployment of a low carbon economy.

Several interests and the required times for each Country to accept and develop their plans for sustainability are the major obstacle to a sustainable economy. However, low carbon policies depend on opportunities for processing global and national economies. Also low carbon depends on management of strategies for creating a new model for public and private governance. Public policy and business planning are needed for a new model of sustainability. That new model of governance and that new global decision have their chance to rise at that meeting in December Copenhagen 2009.

My garden and the planet will thank for the achieved results.

Luiz Ramos_2009©

Photos: ramosforest©