#nature

The last Saturday in March is Earth Hour, an initiative of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to raise awareness about climate change by voluntarily switching off for one hour.

International Forest Day is celebrated on 21 March, a global initiative to highlight the importance of these ecosystems in the fight against climate change and to warn of the danger of their degradation. In line with this objective, at the Iberdrola Group we join in the conservation and restoration of forests with different programmes to ensure their survival.

Two out of five plants are threatened or endangered. Biodiversity is suffering and many foods may disappear from our menu in the future. Seed banks, in addition to storing seeds of different species in case worse comes to worst, are used to develop more resistant varieties.

Sustainable management of resources is essential to minimising the impact of climate change, and this must also apply to forests, whose health is of concern in view of the advance of deforestation. Specifically, the FAO states that forests should be harvested at a rate that maintains their biodiversity, productivity and regeneration capacity.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), by 2050 there will be more deaths related to superbugs than cancer and they will be the leading cause of death on the planet. And, when this study was published, the institution had not taken into account the acceleration that the excessive and incorrect consumption of antibiotics caused by the covid pandemic would cause.

The carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions we release into the atmosphere not only worsen air quality, but also have an impact on the health of the oceans. Specifically, they cause a phenomenon known as acidification, which reduces the pH of the water, modifying its chemical composition and seriously affecting marine organisms. Solutions include reducing the use of fossil fuels in favour of renewable sources.