Home coming to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil creates profound experiences for me. This time I asked my taxi driver how long he had driven a taxi in Rio and he told me 52 years. I commented that I had noted from the air how much Rio had suffered deforestation since the first time I had seen it from the air 46 years ago. He told me that deforestation was the result of environmental ignorance and greed. He went on to say that one of Brazil’s richest men lived at the top of the hill where we were, that this man made his money cutting down the Amazon, turning the trees into charcoal to sell. The taxi driver said he had never spent a day in school. His illiterate father had taught him as a child to not plant in a dry streambed, because the water needed a place to run when the rains came, to not cut down trees because they provide fruit and shade, educating him in a way that city planners and council members need educating, so that they understand the effects of their actions. I got out of the taxi with tears in my eyes.

 I was in Rio to give a keynote speech at the Youth Assembly at The UN Habitat World Urban Forum in the Child Friendly Cities session. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child guarantees children and youth the right to participate in planning communities, physical facilities, services and events that are part of their lives. The purpose of the two days of youth-oriented meetings was to hear from young people around the world and the adults who work with them on the urban situations that affect young people’s daily lives. My presentation topic was the role of youth in urban agriculture in creating child friendly cities.

We did two participatory activities in our Child Friendly Cities Session. One involved people gathering on one side of the room or another to discuss whether they felt safe or not safe in the city where they lived. The second activity was for people to assess the green space, cement and empty dirt available in their communities. It was quite interesting to note that the people from Rio considered the city essentially green and also very unsafe. No one from the countries involved knew of community gardens serving youth in their towns.

It opened my eyes to see that internationally in urban assessment there was no awareness of the importance of parks for playing and dirt for planting food for community sustainability. The basic points I made were that children can assess very effectively the environmental needs in their communities, that all children need safe places to play outdoors, trees to climb, shade for comfort and protection, and that growing food improves diet, exercise levels and community cohesion. These points are backed up by research in many countries.

Every school around the world needs to engage children in planting and learning the role of photosynthesis. Until people realize that our very lives depend on us planting and caring for trees and plants we shall continue to get hotter and hotter and see more and more disasters related to flooding and water shortages.  We cannot pour endless cement on the planet and expect to have a place that sustains life.