Ambassador Wigemark marks 2016 Earth Day

Head of EU Delegation and EU Special Representative in BiH, Ambassador Lars-Gunnar Wigemark, and Mrs Rebekah Wigemark today marked the Earth Day, an annual event celebrated on April 22, to demonstrate support for environmental protection.

The Earth Day was first celebrated in 1970, and is now coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network, and celebrated in more than 192 countries each year. Its mission is to broaden and diversify the environmental movement worldwide and to mobilize it as the most effective vehicle to build a healthy, sustainable environment, address climate change, and protect the Earth for future generations.

They made the following statement:

“Today is the 46th year of the Earth Day movement that continues to inspire caring for the earth, to challenge ideas for environmental understanding and motivate people to action for protecting earth, and especially planting trees. Now, more than ever, in light of climate change caused by human error, we urgently need to re-forest our earth.  Inspired by activist John McConnell and Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970, this symbolic Earth Day movement helps give voice to environmental issues around the globe.

This is an opportunity to remind everybody of our own individual and collective responsibility to act with care and resolve towards the environment.  And this is not only about a single day. Environmental awareness should be essential to our daily lives: it is about making smart choices in our energy consumption, reducing food waste, and responsibly preserving nature. Trees help us breathe cleaner air, combat climate change and achieve environmental sustainability for communities across the world. And it is up to each of one us to do more.

For the European Union, preventing destabilising climate change and adapting to its consequences are key priorities, and it traditionally sponsors and takes part in volunteering tree planting activities across Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Each year, my wife Rebekah and I plant as many trees as possible during this time, both in communities where we are posted and in our home turf.  This year at the EU residence, we have planted a tall Paper Birch, a Cydonia Oblonga Quince, a Black Prunus Plum Tree, a Prunus Armeniaca Apricot Tree, a Flamingo Willow, a Pink Lilac, A Japanese Salmon-Pink Quince, a White Cytisus Multiflorus Spanish Broom Bush, a Blue hibiscus, a Disentra Spectabilis Bleeding Heart, a White Wisteria Tree, a Persimmon tree, a Blue Cedar of Lebanon and a unique Caucasian Silver Pine.  These trees are small now, but will grow for future generations, birds and insects, offering a lasting abundance.

Last year in the Sarajevo city park, we planted a “Tree of Life” Mountain Ash and a special Blue Spruce; and at the residence, we planted an Apple Tree, a Pear Tree, a Plum Tree, and a Cherry Tree.  Rebekah also plants permaculture gardens, herbs and trees everywhere we reside.  If every family would plant trees each year, it could help to combat climate change in immeasurable ways.

On Earth Day we must remind ourselves the old proverb:  “we not only inherit the time on earth from our ancestors, we also borrow it from our children and future wildlife”.  Each tree planted today is their future food, shade and protection.”

Europa.ba