We have chosen and gathered the 10 most important stories of 2019 from the world of sustainability, explored across its environmental and social dimensions. To arrive ready for 2020, the year that opens the decade for the climate.
2019 will be remembered as the year of the turning point. LifeGate, which has been covering sustainability for twenty years now, has been able to observe that it is no longer a niche subject, but a matter of fundamental importance that has finally found its place in television news bulletins, on front pages and, above all, in the everyday conversations of ordinary people. For better and for worse. Some events have been as extraordinary as they have been painful: from the fires that are still devastating the Amazon, Australia and Africa's forests, to high water in Venice, to the discovery that plastic islands are found not only in the Pacific but also in the nearby Tyrrhenian Sea. That is why, starting with young people, the world's population has "thrown off the covers", got out of bed and understood that the time to act has come. Beginning with everyday life, but fighting for radical change. Because it is an epochal turning point that we need.
If 2019 was the year of strikes for the future, the year in which the voice of activists changed the face of institutional conferences, the year of grassroots protests in the name of human rights, 2020 will open what Greta Thunberg, along with the scientists of the Ipcc, have called "the decade for the climate". In 2020, governments around the world will have to present their new climate plans for 2030. And this time there will be no room for wavering: to avoid the most disastrous consequences of climate change, global greenhouse gas emissions will have to decrease by 7.6 per cent every year until 2030. Otherwise, nothing will be as we know it. Entire villages will be wiped off the map, animals such as the Javan rhinoceros or the Caretta caretta turtle will become a distant memory.
This first of January more than ever, therefore, new year's resolutions will have to be sincere and worthy of our full commitment. Not like the desire to go on a diet, or to go to the gym. Because in life, what matters more than a perfect physique is the people we love. And it is time we showed our planet all the love we feel for it.
While we wait to plunge into this new, exciting adventure, let us retrace the most important milestones of the journey we are about to complete.
On 1 May 2019, the United Kingdom Parliament declared a climate and environmental emergency, becoming the first country in the world to do so. "There is no time to lose. We are living in a climate crisis that will spiral out of control unless we take swift and decisive action," commented Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, presenting the motion, which was passed without opposition. After the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Italy and the European Parliament also declared a state of emergency, along with many local administrations.
The geography of the Tyrrhenian Sea is changing because of plastic. Between Corsica and the island of Elba, a new patch of "land" exists: a plastic island, similar to the one that has been present for years in the Pacific Ocean, has been found in the middle of the sea. Unlike what happens in the Pacific, however, changes in currents mean that the phenomenon is not permanent. "These are temporary accumulation zones, visible for periods ranging from a few days to a few weeks. Only in some cases does it last two or three months," specified François Galgani, director of the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea.
Hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps a million, took to the streets in Hong Kong on Sunday 9 June, staging one of the most significant demonstrations since 1997. The protest was organised to oppose a plan by the local government, which had sought to authorise extraditions to China. Despite the law not being passed, hongkongers continue to demonstrate against the local government and Beijing's growing control.
This year, on 29 July, humanity exhausted the budget of natural resources that our planet had made available to us for 2019. Never before had we used up the annual natural capital so early. Given the rate at which we have consumed the renewable resources the Earth is capable of regenerating over the course of 365 days, it is as if we were using those of 1.75 planets. Having only one, however, we will pay a heavy price for uncontrolled exploitation.
After the boreal forests of the Arctic caught fire with severe consequences for the climate, people and wildlife, the Amazon rainforest also fell victim to fires in August: as many as 74,000 broke out, an increase of 84 per cent compared to 2018. During the same period, the entire central belt of Africa, home to the "second green lung of the Earth", was also scarred by a multitude of blazes. In December, it was Australia's turn — a country that shows no sign of being free from the flames even with the arrival of 2020. The symbol of this tragedy is the koala, hundreds of which have already lost their lives.
As we mentioned earlier, 2019 was the year of the climate strikes, the so-called Fridays for Future. The idea was launched by young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who was the first to strike, alone, outside the Swedish Parliament in August 2018. A growing number of students — later joined by teachers and anyone who wanted to take to the streets calling for action against global warming — decided to follow her lead by organising marches every Friday, four of which took place on a global scale. The most significant were those of 20 and 27 September, which respectively opened and closed the Climate Action Week: with a total mobilisation of approximately 7.6 million people of all ages, the "climate action week" earned the title of the largest environmental demonstration in history.
In November, Italy's Minister of Education, Lorenzo Fioramonti, revealed that from the next school year climate change and global warming would become a compulsory subject in schools, for a total of 33 hours. The renewal process will involve all public institutions; but not only that: many traditional subjects — such as geography, mathematics and physics — will be studied from a new perspective linked to sustainable development.
At around 11:00 pm on 12 November, the water level in Venice reached 187 centimetres at certain points, as confirmed by Mayor Luigi Brugnaro. A figure just below the exceptional high water of 4 November 1966, when the tide had reached 194 centimetres. An event that caused the sea to submerge more than 80 per cent of the city, compounded by the very strong sirocco winds that swept across the hinterland.
It all began on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women outside the Supreme Court in Santiago, Chile, when a group of young women gathered to stage a feminist flash mob. Their protest song against rape and the impunity surrounding it, entitled "Un violador en tu camino, el violador eres tú" (A rapist in your path, the rapist is you), went on to become a viral anthem, filling and reverberating across public squares around the world.
Greta Thunberg has been named Time magazine's Person of the Year 2019. She is the youngest person ever to have received this honour. Due to the wrong actions taken in the past, she and her peers will inherit a planet that is drifting off course. But her message is clear, Time explains: we must act now. The world is changing faster than ever, and young people are those who risk bearing the worst consequences. That is why they have taken the reins of their own future into their hands. And have set off at a gallop in defence of the Earth.
