#nature

Twelve years after publishing his famous book — Frames of Mind (1983) —, in which he defined seven types of intelligence and which earned him the Prince of Asturias Award in 2011, Howard Gardner added an eighth branch to his model: naturalistic intelligence. This type of intelligence allows us to relate to the environment and other species.

When we talk about pollution, we tend to look up at the sky. However, this environmental challenge goes far beyond the atmosphere. Soils, which are essential for food production, are also seriously affected, compromising ecosystems as well as the quality and safety of our food.

The large cities in China, the USA and the EU exhale 54% of the world's CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Desertification, or the loss of fertile and productive soil, is one of the issues exacerbating climate change – as the number of trees decreases, the greenhouse effect increases. One solution is reforestation. Despite its challenges, it has become an alternative for restoring thousands of hectares of land to their former green state.

The invasion of plastics across the planet is a reality. Just consider that there are five large garbage patches in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans covering seven million square kilometres. If we want to preserve the planet, the time has come for each and every one of us to take action.

Every year an ever-greater amount of plastic floods our oceans, causing incalculable damage to marine ecosystems. Faced with this crisis we must urgently ask ourselves: how does it get there? What real impact does it have on nature? And above all, what actions can we take as citizens, businesses and governments to curb this problem? We analyse these issues below.