CONSERVATION FUND

THE PROBLEM

We are experiencing the 6th mass extinction since the Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago.

A sharp global decline in biodiversity in recent decades, caused largely by overuse of natural resources, such as massive deforestation for both intensive agriculture and intensive livestock farming, and the depletion of fish stocks in the oceans to feed markets around the world. In both cases, the human being is solely responsible.

We are destroying the Amazon, the primary forests of Southeast Asia, the oceans, the rivers, the polar ice caps, etc.

Throughout the world, tropical forests and their great rivers, their tributaries, swamps and mangroves, are essential for fish food globally and decisive in ocean cycles, not to mention all the important environmental services that provide us.

The massive deforestation of these forests undermines these sensitive balances. At the same time, the surpluses released by intensive agriculture and livestock farming change the soil and increasingly poison the rivers, which in turn, together with the atmospheric pollution they absorb, destroy the seas. And without healthy oceans, there is no oxygen on Earth.

At the same time, the warming of the atmosphere caused by human action is causing the ice at the poles to disappear. In turn, this massive melting dramatically increases methane emissions, a greenhouse gas that accelerates global warming and is also released in overwhelming quantities by intensive livestock farming, agriculture and the large carbon footprint of a consumerist society.

We thus give life to a descending vicious circle, which feeds back on itself and could lead us to collective extinction.

Key actions include reducing intensive agriculture and intensive livestock farming and restructuring fishing quotas and methods. It involves an urgent change in our attitude as consumers.

It also involves creating and supporting nature conservation projects. One hundred years ago, two thirds of Costa Rica was covered by forest, but in the eighties, only 25% of the territory was reduced by intensive deforestation for agriculture and cattle breeding. However, the Government promptly intervened by supporting landowners to replant wild forest. Today, 55% of its territory is once again covered by forest, of which 25% are national parks and protected areas, and Costa Rica is a world success story in nature tourism.

There is no nature conservation without including human beings in the equation, as the case of Costa Rica has taught us, where financial support for landowners to reconvert land into forest has meant that after only 20 years these families can make a living from ecotourism instead of intensive exploitation of their natural resources.

It is therefore urgent to support these types of conservation projects and these poorer families, who throughout the world are willing to change their way of life for the planet, provided they have a viable alternative to their existence.

THE SOLUTIONS

OUR HELP

Elemento Terra wants to be part of this global transformation process, helping to change consciences and contributing so that local nature conservation projects around the world can have the financial capacity to continue to exist and carry out their mission.

Therefore, in every country where we have Expeditions, we financially support a local nature conservation project.

We hope in this way we can contribute to a brighter future for the planet, its wildlife, small local communities and ultimately, for all of us.