May the 22nd is the World Biodiversity Day, instituted by the United Nations in 1993, with the goal to increase the knowledge on the theme of biodiversity and to raise awareness on the importance of its protection.
The theme chosen for this year’s edition is “Biodiversity and sustainable tourism”, a decision that agrees with the United Nation, that decided to proclaim 2017 as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for the development, raising awareness on the political and economical matters that are directly connected to the preservation of biodiversity.
A decision that has also been taken by the European Commission and by the European Investment Bank that, with the “Natural Capital Financial Facility” (NCFF), will provide a 6 million Euros loan for the “Rewilding Europe Capital”, supporting the existing 30 projects to restore and protect the natural areas. Among the first areas that will take advantage of the funding, also some areas of the Central Italian Apennine, a naturalistic treasure for the whole country.
Biodiversity in the world has impressive numbers. By now, more than 1 million 700 thousand species have been discovered, but we suppose that more than 12 million species might exist in our planet. The animal species are about 1.318.000, 1.265.000 of them are invertebrates and 52.500 are vertebrates (2.500 fishes, 9.800 birds, 8.000 reptiles, 4.960 amphibiouses, 4.640 mammals). There are also 10.000 different species of bacteria, 72.000 different mushrooms, 50.000 protists, 270.000 plants.
Anyway, safeguarding biodiversity doesn’t only mean to preserve the flora and fauna of our woods and seas, but also to preserve the urban green areas, increasing the relationships between people that live in cities, avoiding excessive tree prunings, that are often useless and damaging. Those are the principles that inspired the new Lipu-Birdlife Italia’s document called “The urban greenery and the trees in the cities”, part of the collection “Documents to preserve nature”.
On its side Probios has been supporting for years projects that aim to preserve the biodiversity of the Country. Since 2015, the company uses Italian Senatore Cappelli wheat, supporting local agriculture with the brand Natura Toscana, that also includes the chickpeas from Florence and the Monococcum spelt.
Source: www.cbd.int, ansa.it, ansa.it e wwf.it
