Rowan Roenisch's Letter

To my grandson, Ivor,

I'm so glad that you have learnt to love nature in your garden and every weekday enjoy your long walk to school through woodland and past a stream. When I was young I played in gardens and wild flower meadows and like you I soon learnt about animals, plants and insects from my parents who were equally passionate. Such things for us are wonderful and in our over-commercialised world, they seem to be free.

However, we must never forget that we have a responsibility to cherish and protect this natural world because, as you are fast learning, nature is not just something to love and enjoy, it is the fundamental basis of our life on earth. For example we just couldn't survive without the fresh air and food supplied by plants.

Today, especially in other parts of the world, escalating climate change is ravaging the nature we take for granted - causing flooding and extreme climate events. Our current lifestyles - our dependence on fossil fuels, over-exploitation of natural resources and the pollution of the air, sea, rivers and streams, are severely damaging this precious planet. Our very hot summer this year was minor compared to the extreme climate events devastating other parts of the world where people's homes are disappearing into the sea and drought is destroying crops and people's livelihoods.

I write to you to to encourage you to join us in ensuring by 2030 we live more sustainably; have stopped using fossil fuels; that we no longer pollute the air and waterways; and can begin to see a reversal of the devastation being wrought today.