A Big Idea from a small country

April 22, 2009. Earth Day. Four gigantic puppets walk through the streets of Central London to remind us who are the new Horsemen of the Apocalypse: red symbolizes war, green is climate change, white represents “crimes of money” and the black, poverty.

Each one more dramatic than the other, the horseman of climate change constitutes – perhaps because it could lead to the other three – the greatest global challenge facing current generations, who are already suffering from the first effects of this global phenomenon, but their inaction could make them responsible for impacts yet to come.

Increasing temperatures, rising sea levels and more frequent and intense extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and hurricanes, which have already begun, will have dramatic effects all over the planet. And, once again, developing countries will be the worst affected.

As the world becomes warmer, millions of people will find their basic elements of life disrupted: access to water, food production, health and the environment. Nevertheless, there is still time to halt the galloping of the horseman, that is, if we begin now to take decisive and forceful measures together.

Yasuni-ITT Initiative [1.39MB]