Raising awareness in Fairgreen about deforestation!

Posted on December 8th, 2022.

This term in Science and I&S, Grade 7 students were learning about biodiversity and protecting biomes. In a recent assembly one of the Grade 7 students Jana Battal read out the speech she wrote as part of her I&S inquiry. This helped to raise awareness across the secondary school about deforestation.

Below is the speech that Jana wrote.

“Do we really want our planet to survive?”

Hi, my name is Jana and I’ll be talking about the endangerment of our amazon rainforest. Currently our amazon rainforest is in a bad situation because of us and this is causing our planet to suffer.

It’s not only the planet but our biodiversity is vanishing within a blink of an eye.

Deforestation kills 2.4 million animals a year causing us to lose our ecosystem within just days and 1.3 million trees are cut down.

Our trees hold carbon dioxide, to be clear, in one year, a mature, alive tree can absorb more than 48 pounds of carbon dioxide. Which gets permanently stored in its fibers until the tree experiences a physical event like logging or a wildfire happens then the carbon dioxide is released into the earth’s atmosphere,which is supercharging the natural greenhouse effect, causing the global temperature to rise which adds on climate change.

Let’s say an example where you recover from an injury in which, from the tree’s point of view your branches had grown back then all of a sudden someone comes along with an axe and chops your legs off. You wouldn’t be able to walk or do anything without someone to help you. Why aren’t we helping the trees then?

I can most likely tell that all of you are thinking “well what do you want us to do?” Well what I’d want is that you ladies and gentlemen try plant a tree or plant where you can, try your best to go paperless at school or workplaces , buy recycled products then recycle them again, support the products of companies or small businesses that are committed to reducing Deforestation and try raise awareness in your circle of friends and your community and we should try afforestation which is growing of trees in the forests. If we achieve these, this can prevent floods and droughts by regulating regional rainfall. Also many indigenous people rely on the forest for their livelihood, investing in reducing deforestation will provide them with the resources they need for a sustainable development without deforestation.

So in the end what I would want is I would like if we can listen to what advice there is out there maybe there is a chance our planet will survive. Also it’s not about getting something right in the end, it’s about achieving a goal that has been set in our minds since the start that is the definition of excellence. Thank you for your patience.