Plants remember. Those that manage to survive the flames devouring the Australian forests will probably remember for ever the horror they are witnessing. But plants are resilient. This is demonstrated by the haunting photographs taken by Mary Voorwinde in Kulnura, in New South Wales. In the language of the Aboriginal peoples, Kulnura means "with a view of the sea" or "among the clouds". Two perfect concepts for describing its delicate beauty: seen from above, it strikes you with its mix of vivid green hues that make it look like a fairy-tale oasis, complete with a few houses with swimming pools that would arouse the envy of any fairy. Something truly magical lies hidden there. Despite the fire stripping it of its colours, blackening the teeming world nestled within it, the forest's inhabitants have risen from their own ashes like phoenixes. Brightly coloured shoots have managed to work their way through the cracks in burnt bark, have sprouted from scorched earth, forcing themselves up through withered leaves. Plants pursue life with desperate urgency. And ours depends on theirs.

What plants do for each of us

This is why 2020 has been proclaimed the International Year of Plant Health (Iyph). The aim of this initiative, proposed by the Finnish government and taken up by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), is to remind us how much we depend on the plant world. More than 80 per cent of the food resources we consume come from it, as does 98 per cent of the oxygen we breathe. Forest ecosystems perform fundamentally important services, provide raw materials and are cradles of biodiversity.

Food and Agriculture Organization @FAO

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"A famous Russian botanist […] wrote that plants should be regarded as the link between the Sun and the Earth," writes Stefano Mancuso, director of the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology, in his book La nazione delle piante. Without them, "the Sun's energy would not be transformed into the chemical energy that sustains life. And not only that. They carry out a continuous work of decontamination by absorbing and degrading many of the polluting compounds produced by human beings."

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Protecting the integrity of plants can therefore contribute to achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations, including: feeding the world and eradicating poverty, saving the climate, preserving life on land and in the oceans, and building sustainable cities — given that urban forestry, that is, the inclusion of as many plant organisms as possible in urban centres, is proving to be a key strategy in the fight against global warming.

The threats looming over them

This shows how the concept of health cuts across boundaries: it does not concern only human beings — on the contrary, all living organisms are interconnected, and the wellbeing of each depends on that of the others. The wellbeing of people and that of the Earth are one and the same thing. "As with human or animal health, prevention is better than cure for plants too," stresses FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu. Every year up to 40 per cent of the world's crops are destroyed by pests, resulting in commercial losses of more than 220 billion dollars and millions of people reduced to hunger. "Climate change and human activities are altering ecosystems, reducing biodiversity and creating ideal conditions for the spread of pests," explain FAO experts. In Italy we know all too well how xylella is decimating our olive trees. "At the same time, over the past decade the volume of international travel and trade has tripled and can rapidly spread diseases throughout the world, causing serious damage to native plants and the environment."

Initiatives for the International Year of Plant Health

The International Plant Protection Convention will collaborate with the United Nations to ensure the project's success. A variety of events are planned abroad and in Italy where, in particular, we highlight the initiatives scheduled for World Food Day on 16 October 2020. The FAO website features tips on how to help protect the health of plant organisms, and it is possible to take part in a photography competition, open to amateurs and professionals alike, by sharing photographs of plants in good and poor health. Everyone, in any case, is invited to share content on social media using the hashtag #PlantHealth.

There is much to learn from the plant world

It is among the leaves, in the scent of resin, that the key to our salvation is to be found. Both for sustainable nutrition and for absorbing the CO₂ whose production we can (and must) reduce on our part. Plants have survived for billions of years. From them we can draw the elixir of long life which, when all is said and done, is not an impossible potion to formulate: it is simply a matter of learning to live in harmony with the environment around us.

"For plants, one of the main consequences of being rooted in the ground is that, for the purposes of obtaining nutritional or water resources, they can rely only on the nutrients available in the volume of soil that their roots can explore," Mancuso writes further. "Unable to move around, as animals do, in search of new territories to exploit when food is scarce, plants have learnt to coexist with the finite nature of resources and to modulate their development. […] They reduce their size, thicken, slim down, curl, bend, climb, creep, modify the shape of their body, halt their growth, do everything that is necessary for their equilibrium with the environment to be as stable as possible. Something that we too should start doing as soon as possible, perhaps drawing with humility on the behaviour of our friends the plants."

Among the good resolutions for 2020, therefore, there is not only the commitment to protecting these magnificent beings, which are far more intelligent than we think: there is also the attempt to become a little more like them.