An hour in the dark and some bright insights

An hour in the dark and some bright insights – Exo Foundation participated in Earth Hour 2011.

What did you do last Saturday? We from Exo Foundation participated in this year’s Earth Hour – a promising initiative by the WWF to raise people’s awareness on the need to take actions on climate change. The idea is as simple as innovative: switch off your lights for one hour and think about what you can do to help protecting our planet. And so we did. Spending one hour in the dark gave each of us time to reflect on our engagement so far and make new plans for the future.

As a foundation here in Southeast Asia one of our main objectives is to support the preservation of those marvelous natural wonders surrounding us. We do this by using resources responsibly, for example by saving energy and water whenever possible, and by providing active support for projects such as Trees for Life in Thailand.

Trees for Life is a project in Thailand that encourages locals and visitors alike to help rebuilding the forest. Illegal logging and deforestation is a wide spread problem across Southeast Asia. Poor rural communities often do not have many alternatives besides relying on forest products to make a living – and this sometimes in a rather unsustainable way. Trees for Life offers employment to local community members and thus prevents those potentially unsustainable ways of income generation.

In view of the increasingly devastating consequences of global warming, reforestation projects are of great importance. They do not only help to rebuild the natural habitat for wildlife and thus contribute to a prevention of a loss of biodiversity, but can also positively impact soil degradation. Most importantly, as trees naturally absorb carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere, larger scale reforestation projects qualify as carbon offsetting projects. Sequestering carbon emissions in the long term, those projects can make a great contribution to the fight against global warming.

Although Trees for Life is operating on a smaller scale, planting a tree today can contribute to a brighter future tomorrow. Every single action counts because together our actions will add up – a message impressively demonstrated by the Earth Hour event.

 To continue our support we joined the “Beyond the Hour” initiative. See what actions we take at:

https://www.beyondthehour.org/Home/Act/92976/