Reunión Plan Fuerteventura 2014 M.Cedenilla.  (764)

THE CENTURY THAT IS GONE

If anything has characterized the twentieth century, it was undoubtedly its bellicosity and destructive power. Two world wars and countless conflicts, civil, regional, genocide, arms races, blocs and alliances, bombs of mass destruction, nuclear era, dictatorship, famine, social inequalities, massive population displacement, persecution, refugees, and a long etc.

The environmental aspect of the century has not been less impressive. The great technological development devoted to the domain of nature. Overexploitation of land and seas, destruction of virgin forests, occupation and loss of vital habitat, the development of highly polluting industries, nuclear power, massive use of pesticides CFC at intensive single crops farming, massive burning of fossil fuel, CO2 emissions, greenhouse effect, ozone layer, global warming, loss of biodiversity and ecosystems at an unsustainable rate ….

And many species disappearing or close to extinction, such as the Mediterranean monk seal. Between 50s and 90s, they were intentionally nearly extirpated from the shores of the western Mediterranean, by destructive fishing gears and by urban and tourist development of the coast. The intense fishing activity on the 70s decimated them in the waters of the Sahara. Secluded in small population nuclei, barely surviving 600 monk seals between the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.

But the twentieth century has also been the century of harmony and awareness, the alliance of civilizations, the planetary assemblies of the United Nations, the invention of the ecology, biodiversity, protected areas and sustainable development. The one of the NGO for the human and the natural. Conventions, agreements, policies, international standards, laws across the board to amend, repair, recover, restore what was destroyed.

Increasingly protected areas on land and ocean, numerous species being saved in extremis from extinction, harmonization of human societies with nature, integration and sustainable use of the planet with human development. The new century gives humanity the possibility to rectify, to find the essential paradigms for their continuity as a species on the only planet where life has emerged as an emotional and dramatic diversity and variety of forms. The Homo sapiens, as the dominant species, in this century has the chance to reconcile with the planet and with the vast diversity it contains if it wants to be kept in it.

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