We are experiencing the greatest crisis in decades in our city. Suddenly we have realized that even in our city and our country, the system cannot always protect us. We are vulnerable. The human being is a species that has managed to dominate to a large extent Nature, impacting it like no other species has been able in the history of the Earth. But still, with all our technology and everything we know thanks to the advancement of scientific knowledge, we remain vulnerable to our environment. It is as if we had gone back a century, where a large part of the planet’s human population was the victim of disease. The feeling of security that we had against natural phenomena has vanished. We are used to catastrophic phenomena like cold drops. But not to pandemics caused by pathogens. It had been 100 years since we suffered from one of these characteristics, precisely another flu. We have no collective memory in this regard because the generation that suffered from it at the time has already died (with a very few exceptions) and, furthermore, we thought that our public health system was sufficiently robust in the face of any pandemic. But no. Is not always that way. It is better to assume it because history will repeat itself, sooner or later another pathogen will appear by simple chance – so important in the evolutionary history of any species – and will once again circumvent our defense systems and the medicine of the moment.
Much has already been written about how this pandemic will change our lives, at a social level, at least until researchers develop the vaccine, and at an economic level, with a weakening of globalization and a return at least in part to the local level. to the point of talking seriously about reindustrializing ourselves to avoid the shortage of strategic products. Our economy must undoubtedly be open – we Valencians are an exporting people, let’s not forget it – but it is also evident that there are strategic sectors where we must be largely self-sufficient.
This crisis has undoubtedly rearranged our priorities, especially in our latitudes. Contact with our friends, concern for the health of loved ones, solidarity such as that manifested among the neighbors at 8pm every day to applaud on the balconies, to help older people, to remember our dead . We have developed more than ever the feeling of community, of society. We have realized how important. What really makes us human. And among this, also the urgent need to be outdoors and enjoy Nature. We needed green, we wanted green, air, open landscapes. Observe the color and savor the smell of our spring in full swing right now. You only have to see the images of our parks in this principle of lack of clarity to demonstrate that contact with Nature is essential. Because Nature in a city is its parks and gardens, it is its trees, its plants. Now we realize how necessary green areas are. We have to make our cities spaces where biodiversity can establish itself. That is why a few months ago the mayor Joan Ribó and myself, as head of the Urban Ecology area, presented one of the great objectives as a government: The Green Plan and the Urban Biodiversity of Valencia. A strategic bet to reconnect our city to Nature. We have already started with this strategy, in fact. I recommend that when you cross the Serranos Bridge look down to admire the impressive beauty of the meadow of flowering plants that a few years ago the progressive municipal government established in this place in the Jardín del Turia. It is of a sublime beauty. An example of how to recover a space for biodiversity, with all the flowers, pollinating insects (there are always a multitude of butterflies flitting here and there), birds chasing these pollinators or looking for food among plants, singing everywhere that spring already reached the city. A true gift for the senses in an environment dominated by the beautiful Towers, undoubtedly one of the symbols of our city.
A city of the future where we promote non-polluting transport such as the bicycle or the use of public transport and where the use of the car is for what is strictly essential, where we recover public space from squares and avenues so that people can walk quietly, squares and avenues full of trees and plants, full of life. This city is possible, it is necessary and we can have it in a few years. I am convinced: Post-Covid València will be green.
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