According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 129 million hectares of forest, an area almost equivalent to South Africa, has lost the planet Earth since 1990. Every year we lose an area the size of Panama.
About 15 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation, and countless species of plants and animals lose their habitats every day. These are disappointing numbers for the health of our planet and it simply can not continue like this.
What can we do about this massive ecological massacre? Although perhaps the situation makes a person feel small and helpless, however, it’s important to know that we can all make a huge change. Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado and his wife, Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado , decided to show what kind of change a small group of passionate, committed people can make.
Salgado is a renowned person – he has won many awards in photojournalism and has published several books. During the 1990s, after being physically and emotionally exhausted after documenting the genocide in Rwanda, he returned home to Brazil, a land that was once covered by a lush tropical rainforest.
He was shocked when he learned that the area is now deserted and no the wildlife no longer lives there. His wife Lélia got an amazing idea. She suggested that they try to replant the forest all on their own and bring it back to its original state.
“The land was as sick as I was – everything was destroyed. Only about 0.5% of the land was covered in trees. Then my wife had a fabulous idea to replant this forest. And when we began to do that, then all the insects and birds and fish returned and, thanks to this increase of the trees I, too, was reborn – this was the most important moment,” Salgado told The Guardian back in 2015.
She truly believed that it could be done
Over the period of 20 years, the wildlife returned, and where absolute silence ruled – today, birds’ chirping and buzzing of insects can be heard. 172 species of birds, 33 species of mammals, 293 species of plants, 15 species of reptiles and 15 species of amphibians returned. The entire ecosystem was rebuilt from scratch.
The couple founded Instituto Terra, an organization through which they hired other members who care about the environment just as much as they do.
“We need to listen to the words of the people on the land. Nature is the earth and it is other beings and if we don’t have some kind of spiritual return to our planet, I fear that we will be compromised,” Salgado explained.
As a conclusion, these amazing people are really doing a remarkable job. However, with so many people not paying attention to the state of the environment there can not be a real change.
If every single person in the world planted just one tree, we would have billions of new trees!
If you want to know more: http://www.institutoterra.org
