TO KNOW AND TO PROTECT: A JOURNEY THROUGH FILA’S ECOSYSTEMS

Established in 1992, after the UN adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity, the International Day for Biological Diversity is celebrated every year on May 22nd. With a purpose to raise awareness of the importance of nature to our planet and people’s health, this year’s theme was ‘Our food, our health and our biodiversity’.

But what are the ecosystems associated with FILA? And what can we do to take care of them?

The climbers Giorgio Bertone and Reinhold Messner remind us of the incredible importance of mountains. Professor of Climate Science at the University of Turin Dr. Elisa Palazzi describes them as ‘sentinels of climate change.’ ‘Mountains are the first things to be affected by temperature variations. In mountain areas, temperatures have increased by 0,3 degrees every ten years over the past decades, compared to an average of 0,2 degrees in the rest of the planet. This may not seem like much, but you only have to consider that glaciers have gradually retreated as the ice continues to melt’.

How can we stop this process? A suggestion comes from the reading of the Alpine Convention. It was signed in Salzburg by Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Slovenia and Switzerland – countries bordered by the Alpine chain and long committed to the protection of common habitat. Among the objectives of the agreement, which is cooperative in nature, are an accurate and sustainable forest economy (with forests enabled to fully develop their slope stabilisation and water drainage functions), as well as the development of a green economy based on renewable energy, public transport systems (avoiding the construction of new roads), and the promotion of ‘slow tourism’.

On the other hand, emblematic dives performed in AQUA TIME swimsuits in the 1970s and Giovanni Soldini’s sea crossings remind us to respect the seas and waterways. According to a continually updated WWF report, there are currently 86 million tonnes of plastic floating in our oceans. Plastic materials are not biodegradable, so they risk being ingested by animals such as whales, seagulls, and sea turtles. Not only that, fishermen, who lose their nets in the open sea or throw broken ones overboard add to the problem as predictably, whales, dolphins and numerous other marine mammals get caught in them. However as the WWF states, it is not too late to remind governments and companies of the importance of compliance and to encourage the creation of marine protected areas, where fishing is strictly controlled and drilling, such as oil drilling, is banned.

Onboard with this vision, we can only strengthen our ecofriendly initiatives, ranging from the creation of ecofriendly gadgets to educational activities using recycled materials.