Earth Day 2020 – more important than ever
Today (22 April) marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, a day when people around the world demonstrate their concern for the planet.
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As part of my role editing two of Knight Frank’s thought-leadership publications, The Wealth Report and The Rural Report, I have been privileged to interview some of the world’s leading UHNWI conservationists and lucky enough to see some of their work first hand.
From the Knepp Estate’s ground-breaking rewilding project in southern England, to the restoration of hundreds of thousands of acres of the Scottish Highlands by the Danish philanthropist Anders Holch Povlsen, to the long-term vision of the Tompkins family on the Samara reserve in South Africa’s Karoo, to the pioneering environmental balance sheet work of German businessman Jochen Zeitz, private individuals are really making a difference to the world we all share.
"Indeed, the latest instalment of The Wealth Report’s Attitudes Survey shows that environmental causes including climate change, the theme of this year’s Earth Day, are rising up the agenda of our clients."
While the focus of the Covid-19 measures has rightly been on human health, it’s important to recognise the potential impact of the global lockdown on some of the world’s most fragile eco-systems, the wildlife that inhabits them and the local communities that rely on them economically.
Take Rwanda and Uganda, for example. Both generate significant proportions of their GDP from tourists who pay to come and see the mountain gorillas that live in a small area of rainforest straddling the border of these two countries and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
I’ll be discussing the potential impacts in more detail in another blog post, but without those tourists – and I was lucky enough to be one of the last people to see the gorillas while launching The Wealth Report in Uganda earlier this year – the future will be tough, both at a local and national level.
I saw first-hand the pressure on the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park from agriculture and just how much the local community relied on the income generated by the trekkers, not to mention the wider economy.
It’s an irony that global air travel is considered by many to be one of the big contributors to climate change, but without it the future of some of our most iconic wild animals and landscapes could be at risk.
Once Covid-19 is beaten, hopefully the world will work out how to balance all of these things. I have no doubt that the people mentioned in this article will be leading the way.