Today, October 26th 1977, in Tbilisi ended the most important conference of United Nations on the issue of environmental education. Our heritage is the Tbilisi Declaration, that noted the unanimous accord in the important role of EE as a powerful weapon against the degradation of the world\u2019s environment and towards the achievement of a sustainable society, respectful of Earth and its living communities (not only human ones!).
\nA sustainable development, as we said, has been defined in the Brundtland Report \u201cOur Common Future\u201d as the \u201cdevelopment that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs\u201d. It means respecting natural cycles and balances while exploiting natural resources, leaving to our offspring the healthy, beautiful and rich world we\u2019ve known in the past and present. Not dirty, polluted, and unlivable Earth.
\nUnfortunately we\u2019re far from this goal. Every year the Earth Overshoot Day, the calculated illustrative calendar date on which humanity’s resource consumption for the year exceeds Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year, is earlier and earlier. This year it was August 1st, 15 years ago it was September 9th, 30 years ago it was October 15th, and so on… You can learn more about it on the website https:\/\/www.overshootday.org
\nEcological footprint is a very useful indicator that measure the impact of human activities in terms of the area of biologically productive land and water required to produce the goods consumed and to assimilate the wastes generated. More simply, it is the amount of the environment necessary to produce the goods and services necessary to support a particular lifestyle, and it is different for each country \u2013 USA\u2019s footprint is much higher than India\u2019s footprint for example \u2013 and each person too, depending on our daily actions. Today humanity uses is the equivalent of 1.7 Earths to provide the resources we use and absorb our waste. This means that we use more ecological resources and services than nature can regenerate through overfishing, overharvesting forests, and emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than forests can sequester.
\nThe solutions are numerous, we saw many of them in the past articles. New methods and technologies are coming up to help our dealing with this issue, but the most powerful weapon is human will. We need to involve everyone and stand for it.
\nToday in many cities in the world is taking pace the Climathon, a symbolic marathon to for the climate change., in particular on the climate change. Global events like this are fundamental to grab the media\u2019s, governments\u2019 and people\u2019s attention on the environmental issue.
\nLet\u2019s go for it.<\/p>\n