YOUR SIGNATURE FOR CLEAN AIR
THE PROBLEM
The health impact of pollution in Romania’s large cities is compounded by abusive logging of the last remaining patches of forest around them. Even the last trees of monumental size are being cut down. One by one, each plot is cleared and progressively turned into scrub under the name of regenerated forest, leaving the country’s cities without lungs. But old trees are not sick and do not need replacing. They produce the most oxygen, protect soil and water, absorb and store atmospheric carbon, provide shelter and food for many living creatures and regulate the climate. The forest’s social, recreational and ecological functions are now completely disregarded. Even in forests within Natura 2000 protected areas, no more than 1% of their area is strictly protected. The only source of oxygen and local climate stabilisation disappears day after day. Wildlife, including songbirds, disappears with them. We are also among Europe’s laggards in green space per inhabitant within cities.
As a result, citizens’ quality of life and forests’ potential to counter climatic, hydrological and geomorphological hazards have declined significantly, and biodiversity has been affected. Every year, 20 755 people resident in Romania die because of pollution, including 15 126 because of air pollution, according to the latest report by the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution.
THE SOLUTION
1. For the remaining forests
- Strict protection of all urban forests.
- Strict protection of all peri-urban forests within a radius of 10 km measured from the edges of cities (25 km for Bucharest).
- Practising selection-system forestry in forests within a radius of 10-20 km from the edges of cities
2. Establishing new forests that retain the fundamental natural species composition
- Afforesting all degraded and abandoned land.
- Establishing forest shelterbelts between all agricultural crops.
- Enriching grasslands with trees for biodiversity.
- Gradually transforming all zoos into forests.
TO WHOM IS THE PETITION ADDRESSED?
To the Environment Minister, Tanczos BARNA
To all mayors in Romania
912 signatures recorded in the article
