Author Spotlight
Emma Krause
One hundred global leaders, including presidents, ministers and businesses, pledged on Nov. 1 to end deforestation and land degradation by 2030.
This project will be funded by $19 billion in public and private funds, which will go towards protecting and restoring forests.
“A new U.S. plan would help the world deliver on our shared goal of halting natural forest loss and restoring at least an additional 200 million hectares of forest and other ecosystems by 2030,” President Joe Biden stated at the Nov. 1 press conference.
Government and separate private initiatives were taken to help reach their goal on Nov. 2. These included billions in pledges for indigenous guardians of the forest and sustainable agriculture.
United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson hosted a global meeting in Glasgow, Scotland discussing deforestation, where it was announced that 110 leaders — more than any initiative before — were committing to help reach this goal.
“We have to stop the devastating loss of our forests,” Johnson said at the meeting. “[And] end the role of humanity as nature’s conqueror, and instead become nature’s custodian.”
In 2020 alone, the world lost 99,600 square miles of forest, according to World Resource Institute’s deforestation tracking initiative Global Forest Watch.
This new pledge is similar to the previous one in 2014 called the New York Declaration on Forests. However, the current plan more precisely lays out the resources needed to reach that goal.
Sophomore Ella Howard, who’s passionate about working to keep the planet healthy, read about the new pledge and watched Biden’s deforestation speech.
“I think that the pledge will be beneficial and I hope that it ends up helping the environment, not hurting it,” Howard said.
Although there are recycling bins within East, the school currently doesn’t have a reinforced recycling system in place. But according to an Instagram poll of 227 students and East community members, 84% agree that East should better enforce recycling habits.
Senior Emma Kate Squires pointed out that recycling might not affect us personally, but a lack of it will eventually lead to a much greater negative impact
“It’s really disappointing to see a school that is so capable [of recycling] to fail at such a simple task,” said Squires.
In the next few weeks, science teacher Rusty DeBey hopes to encourage and advertise active recycling at East.
“As of right now we do not recycle,” DeBey said. “The bins keep getting emptied at night by the custodians, and to my knowledge they do not recycle.”
To many of the student’s knowledge East was practicing recycling, so it was a shock to learn that it isn’t taking place regularly.
“I always thought we recycled,” Sophomore Autumn Sun said. “The bins are already there so why not use them. We’ve always been trained at a young age to recycle and are told that it benefits the environment.”
A few East faculty members have also noticed that the trash and recycling goes in the same place.
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