What a way to celebrate World Environment Day!

WOW!

I only went and ran THREE marathons in SIX weeks!

TODAY, on non-other than World Environment Day (WED), I am SO happy to have completed the challenge I set down for myself, and to have raised over £1,700 for Project Seagrass to continue their great work. What an amazing way to celebrate World Environment Day!

World Environment Day occurs on 5 June every year, and is the United Nation’s primary medium for encouraging worldwide awareness and action for the protection of our environment. The theme for World Environment Day 2017 is ‘Connecting People to Nature – in the city and on the land, from the poles to the equator’. It seems a poignant theme for me this year, having just ran these last two weeks through some of the finest examples of cities that are connected to nature anywhere in the world. Edinburgh boasts the most green space of the UK’s largest cities. At 49.2%, almost half of the Scottish capital boasts parks and green land, and Sweden’s capital Stockholm, with its 1.5 million inhabitants, is today recognised as one of the greenest and most beautiful metropolitan areas in Europe.

There is so much green space in Stockholm that you don’t always know you are in a city!

In Edinburgh a great effort has been made by the Scottish Wildlife Trusts and the City of Edinburgh Council to create, restore and connect green areas of the city in order to make the city more attractive and biodiverse. This concept has been touted as a ‘Living Landscape’ which focusses on ‘managing land at the ecosystem-scale to benefit people, wildlife and the economy’ A successful Living Landscape is one with a network of healthy, resilient ecosystems supporting all forms of life. Ecosystem health is restored and society benefits fully from the vital services that ecosystems provide.

It’s my impression that this is pretty much the same idea that Project Seagrass has for coastal ecosystems globally… The idea that we need to protect and restore the seagrass in our ‘Living Seascapes ’ to ensure that all the benefits that the coasts provide for us are maintained! I’m proud to be signing off today having been successful in my #ThreeBeforeThirty challenge, and in having raised both funds (much needed!), and the profile (hopefully) of Project Seagrass too! It was certainly a challenge!

Running the Stockholm Marathon was hard because I only ran the Edinburgh Marathon six days ago!

But the journey to raise the profile of seagrass doesn’t stop here. Richard Unsworth has taken on the baton and is running the Snowdonia Marathon in October! If you have any fundraising ideas, or ways that you think we can raise the profile of seagrass meadows then I know the Project Seagrass team are all ears! Just send an email to hello@projectseagrass.org

It was so good to have the support of Richard and Sarah for the final marathon!