Let’s give Mother Nature her Voice Back

Sarah, Duchess of York

I grew up on a farm, surrounded by nature. In many ways, I’ve always been most comfortable in the open air, preferably in the company of children and animals. When my mother left to live in Argentina, my ponies became my best friends. Today, I have six Norfolk terriers who are my pride and joy.

I draw a lot of strength from being in the countryside. I’m a keen photographer, and I’m fascinated with capturing patterns in nature: flowers, leaves and trees.

I also love the underwater world. Many years ago, Jean-Michel Cousteau, the environmental filmmaker and son of famed marine conservationist Jacques Cousteau, took me diving in the Bahamas and opened my eyes to the treasures that exist under the sea.

So I’m incredibly proud to be a global ambassador for The Perfect World Foundation, which is doing so much to promote animal and nature preservation and conservation. Among the many issues I’ve been focusing on is the plight of the Asian elephant, which is threatened by poaching and the loss of habitat. It once roamed across most of Asia, but now it is limited to just 15 percent of its original range. In just three generations of animals, its numbers have halved. We need to fight to save this majestic creature.

All around, our planet is trying to speak to us. We don’t just need to listen, we need to up speak for her, and that’s what I will go on trying to do.

Through The Perfect World Foundation, I have been privileged to meet some of the world’s leading environmentalists and thinkers: Richard Leakey, Sylvia Earle and Sir David Attenborough.

As Sir David, who I was pleased to present with an environmental award in Gothenberg last year, has pointed out, he was born in the geological age of the Holocene – a 12,000-year-long period of stable climate that enabled our species to settle, adopt agriculture and create civilisations.

But in his lifetime, everything has changed. We now live in what has been called the Anthropocene, an age when human activity has come to dominate the Earth. Humans are now so all-powerful – and so careless – that we are wiping out other species without even noticing that we have done so.

SARAH, DUCHESS OF YORK presented The Perfect World Foundation’s honorary award ‘Conservationist of the Year’ to SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH during the organization’s award banquet in Gothenburg, September 2018.

Scientists have recently sounded the alarm about an ‘insect apocalypse’, which has seen many insect populations collapse to a calamitous degree and means that 40 percent of species are now threatened with extinction.

Whereas in the previous history of the Earth, it has been natural disasters such as asteroid strikes or supervolcanic eruptions that have driven extinction events, now it is our activities as humans that are causing them.

Scientists are telling us that if insects were to disappear, the effects for all of life on Earth would be truly catastrophic. They believe insects are being wiped out by overuse of pesticides and fertilisers, urbanisation and, of course, climate change. I’m not an expert, but I do think we should listen to those who are – and they tell us that temperatures are breaking records all around the world.

Arctic sea ice has been in rapid decline in the last few decades, and the amount left at the end of summer is now around 40 percent smaller than it was even in the 1980s. Sea levels, meanwhile, are rising at their fastest rates for 2,000 years, and the number of people exposed to the risk of flooding each year is expected to triple by 2030.

Plastic pollution in the seas is another major problem, that my family has sought to highlight. My daughter Princess Eugenie recently became an ambassador for Project 0, a charitable initiative committed to protecting the ocean from pollution by single-use plastics. We were proud to ensure that her wedding last year was a plastic-free occasion. We try to do our bit by recycling and using environmentally friendly products wherever we can.

All around, our planet is trying to speak to us. We don’t just need to listen, we need to up speak for her, and that’s what I will go on trying to do. If all of us who care about the future of our world work together, we can give Mother Nature her voice back.