Fondazione Zoom, is an Italian Foundation, consisted of a team of professionals who have decided to undertake a new challenge: scientific research for the protection of threatened species and their habitats.
They have created the project for building a “Pollinator Park”, in a peri-urban green area in Turin, Italy, dedicated to pollinator insects. Their aim is to raise awareness and educate people on the importance of pollinators and their essential roles in the planet’s ecosystem. The park is set out to be in a public area and it will be open to everyone. The visitors will always be able to spend their free time in the park and learn-thanks to signage and signage with QR Codes-information about pollinating insects.
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1. Challenge Tackled
- Increasing knowledge on pollinators and their importance
- Increasing awareness on environmental issues
- Creation of a pollinator-friendly peri-urban green area, useful for repopulating the species.
2. Target group, beneficiaries or clients
- Park visitors including; citizens, families, students, associations, all stakeholders and the general public.
3. Solution
- A Pollinator Park where the target audience is in direct interaction with the pollinator species by observing them in their natural habitat while also being educated through signages around the park.
4. Innovation
- The project is innovative since it combines the components of scientific research and educational leisure time for the public.
5. Unique Selling Point
- The park will also be a place for scientific research by the Foundation thanks to the census of different species of pollinators in the area.
6. Impact
- It is highly impactful since it can easily each a very wide audience.
7. Feasibility/Transferability
- It is highly transferable since it is easy to replicate the same structure in other municipalities/regions.
https://www.fondazionezoom.it/en/bee-zoom
Contact Person:
Ms. Enrica Pautasso, e.pautasso@smarev.net
4 - Quality Education
The COVID-19 outbreak has caused a global education crisis. Most education systems in the world have been severely affected by education disruptions and have faced unprecedented challenges. School closures brought on by the pandemic have had devastating consequences for children’s learning and well-being. It is estimated that 147 million children missed more than half of their in-class instruction over the past two years. This generation of children could lose a combined total of $17 trillion in lifetime earnings in present value. School closures have affected girls, children from disadvantaged backgrounds, those living in rural areas, children with disabilities and children from ethnic minorities more than their peers.
The proportion of young people completing upper secondary school increased from 54 per cent in 2015 to 58 per cent in 2020, with completion slowing down relative to progress in the preceding five-year period. It is too early to predict the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on completion. Early indications from low-income countries based on phone surveys point to a small decline in attendance upon a return to school but a larger increase in repetition, which may increase dropout rates in coming years.
Data from 73 (mostly low- and middle-income) countries for the period of 2013-2021, indicate that about 7 in 10 children 3 and 4 years of age are developmentally on track, with no significant differences by child’s sex.
The participation rate in organized learning one year before the official primary entry age rose steadily in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic, from 69 per cent in 2010 to 75 per cent in 2020 but with considerable variation between countries (with the rate ranging from a figure as low as 13 per cent to nearly 100 per cent). This progress is being threatened by the COVID-19 pandemic, as schoolchildren in early childhood education and the early grades, especially from low- and middle-income countries, are the most affected by education disruption. In most countries, early education facilities and schools were partially or fully closed for more than a full school year.
Based on data for 2016-2018, the participation rate of youth and adults in formal and non-formal education and training in the previous 12 months among countries of sub-Saharan Africa with data is typically about 5 per cent or less compared with a rate of over 40 per cent in Northern American and many European countries.
12 - Responsible Consumption & Production
Developing countries bear a large part of the climate, biodiversity and pollution impacts of resource-intensive production processes, without reaping their benefits. This situation has been made worse by the impacts of the pandemic. As part of sustainable global pandemic recovery strategies, the implementation of sustainable consumption and production will maximize the socioeconomic benefits of resource use while minimizing the impacts.
In 2021, 83 policy instruments supporting the shift to sustainable consumption and production were reported by 26 countries, bringing the total number of policies developed, adopted and/or implemented up to 438 (as reported by 59 countries and the European Union for 2019–2021). However, the distribution of reported sustainable consumption and production policies has so far been uneven, with 79 per cent of policies reported by high-income and upper middle income countries, 0.5 per cent by low-income countries and only 7.7 per cent by least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing States.
The global material footprint continues to grow, although the pace has slowed. The average annual growth rate of the global material footprint for 2015–2019 was 1.1 per cent, compared with 2.8 per cent for 2000–2014, indicating a slowdown in the growth of economic pressure on the environment.
The proportion of food lost globally after harvest on farm, transport, storage, wholesale and processing levels is estimated at 13.3 per cent in 2020, with no visible trend since 2016, suggesting that structural patterns of food losses have not changed. At the regional level, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest proportion of losses at 21.4 per cent, with food being lost in large quantities between the farm and retail levels.
In addition to food loss, it is estimated that 931 million tons of food, or 17 per cent of total food available to consumers in 2019, was wasted at the household, food service and retail levels. Subsequent evidence suggests that household food waste declined during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns but has since returned to pre-pandemic levels.
The COVID-19 pandemic aggravated the global pollution crisis, in particular plastics pollution, making the effective implementation of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants so much more urgent and important. The year 2021 was marked by the establishment of a new global regime for controlling trade of plastic wastes for better transparency and tracing, following the adoption of the plastic waste amendments to the Basel Convention in 2019.
A preliminary analysis from a sample of over 10,000 public companies around the world shows that over 60 per cent of large companies published sustainability reports in 2021, a twofold increase from 2016. The sustainability indicators that are most widely disclosed by companies include direct CO2 emissions, board diversity E/2022/55 22-06472 19/25 and number of board meetings, while the least disclosed indicators include ozone depleting substances, gender pay gap and bribery and fraud controversies.
15 - Life On Land
Continued global deforestation, land and ecosystem degradation, and biodiversity loss pose major risks to human survival and sustainable development. Even as efforts are made in the domain of sustainable forest and natural resource management, commitments and instruments designed to protect, restore and sustainably use forests and biodiversity need to be urgently implemented to ensure healthy, resilient societies.
The world’s forest area continues to decrease but at a slightly slower rate compared with previous decades. The proportion of forest area fell from 31.9 per cent of total land area in 2000 to 31.2 per cent of total land area in 2020. Despite the overall loss of forest, the world continues to progress towards sustainable forest management. Between 2010 and 2020, the share of forests under certification schemes, the proportion of forest within a protected area and the proportion of forests under a long-term management plan increased globally.
Safeguarding key biodiversity areas through the establishment of protected areas or other effective area-based conservation is an essential contribution towards Sustainable Development Goals 14 and 15. Globally, this coverage of marine, terrestrial, freshwater, and mountain key biodiversity areas has increased from about one quarter of each site on average covered by protected areas 20 years ago to nearly half of each site covered in 2021.
Vegetation coverage of the world’s mountains remains roughly stable at approximately 73 per cent since 2015. Disaggregated data by mountain class shows that green cover tends to decrease with mountain elevation, evidencing the strong role of climate in mountain green cover patterns.
By February 2022, 129 countries had committed to setting their voluntary targets for achieving land degradation neutrality, and in 71 countries, Governments had already officially endorsed those targets. Overall, commitments to land restoration are estimated at 1 billion ha, out of which over 450 million ha are committed through land degradation neutrality targets.
The Red List Index shows continuing deterioration in terms of species extinction risk around the world, based on repeated assessments of the extinction risk of all amphibians, birds, mammals, corals and cycads, representing about 25,000 species in total. The index went from 0.80 in 2000 to 0.72 in 2022. The prevalence and rate of extinction risk are particularly severe in Central and Southern Asia, Eastern and South-Eastern Asia and small island developing States. COVID-19 pandemic impacts on species extinction risk are likely negative mainly because of reduced conservation capacity and resources, along with increased threats.
At the end of 2021, 68 countries had at least one legislative, administrative or policy measure in place to ensure the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge in accordance with the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from Their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Furthermore, 79 countries reported measures in place to implement the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture…