<
https://www.afar.com/magazine/norway-plans-to-designate-10-new-national-parks>
"Through an oversized window streaked in raindrops, I make out tiny cottages
with snowy grass rooftops as a crackly voice announces, “We’re stuck on ice.”
It’s late May, practically June, and to the beeping of the tour bus in reverse
I imagine what it’s like for nearly half of Norwegians living seasonally off
the grid in these modest wooden holiday “hyttes,” tucked perfectly into the
alpine mountainside, adapting to the region’s rugged beauty—and now the
gripping effects of climate change.
This is Norway, the land not only of fjords, but of more waterfalls than I’ve
ever seen at one time, trickling and rumbling down towering glacierized cliffs
deep into slowly shifting valleys. On a detour during a recent Holland America
Line (HAL) shore excursion, we ascend onto the largest naturally eroding
plateau in Europe, which also happens to be Norway’s biggest national park.
Hardangervidda, scientists realized only two years ago, formed as a result of a
massive glacier collapsing during a rapid temperature rise in Earth’s final Ice
Age. And it’ll happen again in the arctic, first in Greenland and eventually
along Norway’s fjords, if greenhouse gasses aren’t reduced.
Today, Norway, which has already protected 17 percent of its country
(Hardangervidda and 46 other national parks), aims to bump that number to 30
percent by 2030, along with more than 100 other countries. In an effort to
halve its 1990s carbon emissions by then, the government announced a proposal
last fall to establish 10 new national parks along the western edge of the
country. That includes designating four brand new national parks and upgrading
six existing conservation areas to national parks. (The proposal also includes
the expansion of eight existing national parks.) If approved by each individual
municipality, Norway will join a growing number of countries, including
Scotland and Costa Rica, vowing to protect the land through the creation and
expansion of national parks with the sole purpose of combating climate change.
The designations will help to minimize flooding by protecting the
infrastructure from storms, improve water quality by preventing contaminated
wastewater that comes from urbanization and roads, and cool the air under a
canopy cover of protected land that will help reintroduce threatened plant and
animal species. After all, scientists have shown that undervalued wilderness
can cut extinction risk in half, and we’ve all seen the sometimes irreparable
damage that can occur after recent historic wildfires and flooding in
Yellowstone National Park and other wilderness areas."
Via
Future Crunch Oct 28, 2022:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-clean-water-rewilding-spain-tipping-points-clean-energy/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
