During the pandemic, people all over the world have marveled at the natural world and how rapidly it became cleaner and healthier. We relied on parks and green spaces to improve our mental health. We can and must hang on to cleaner air. The death toll of COVID-19 was worse where people lived with air pollution.
We know that before the pandemic hit, we were dealing with a biodiversity crisis. We were dealing with a crisis of plastics in our oceans. Post pandemic, we must accelerate the work to address these crises with a renewed commitment to the protection and restoration of nature.
- Provide more public access to nature and green spaces through:
- increasing national parks;
- increasing accessibility of national parks; and
- working with municipalities to create local, urban green spaces accessible by public transit.
- Reduce or ban single use plastics.