Good morning, committee .My name is Phatlapa Thongthao. I am a student in the fifth grade of Klongthomtai Municipality school, Krabi province. I am delighted to have been selected to represent the school to speak in the topic of ” Save world Save life.
Saving the world and saving lives. This is an important topic that many people will talk about but will not do anything about. This is a very broad topic but this speech will focus on the rainforest, climate change, clean water, and healthcare. I would like to start with the rainforest and its effect on global warming.
Global warming is a rise in temperature due to an increase in pollutants in the air and one of the main pollutants is carbon dioxide. Plants in the rainforests absorb a lot of carbon dioxide that is in the air and that slows global warming and gives us fresh oxygen to breathe. This is very significant as climate change is a direct threat to human, plant, and animal life. As the atmosphere heats up polar ice melts putting more water into the oceans. Naturally this is causing the sea levels to rise which are bringing coastlines further inland and consuming land. Last year five reef islands in the Solomon Islands were completely swallowed by rising sea levels. If the world’s oceans continue to rise they will take forests and communities with them.
The rainforest is also home to 50 percent of the world’s species and at the rate that we are losing the rainforests we are losing around one hundred and thirty five plant, animal, and insect species every day. Every day we cut down eighty thousand acres of the rainforest and damage another eighty thousand. Right now only about 2 percent of the rainforests are protected and at the rate of deforestation the rainforests could be completely cut down during my lifetime. It is time to step up and take action so that we can save the rainforests and save our planet.
The second half of this topic deals with saving lives. Right now I believe the greatest threats to human life are the fact that many people in the world do not have access to clean water and healthcare. Today there are seven hundred and eighty three million people that do not have access to clean water and nearly two point five billion people do not have access to adequate sanitation; every year 6 to 8 million people die from this. There are many organizations looking into ways we can provide the world with clean drinking water and sometimes it might be as simple as drilling a well and providing people with water filtration systems. Across the world there are many people like you and me who can help provide clean water we just have to get people to want to help.
Aside from clean water there is also the problem of access to healthcare. Today there are around 400 million people do not have access to healthcare and of the people that do have access to healthcare they can completely ruin their lives trying to pay for it. Healthcare can be very expensive and some people who are forced to pay for healthcare without help can become very impoverished. Many countries are taking steps in the direction of universal healthcare but we are still a long way from it and healthcare is something that every human should have a right to access.
At my school, Tessaban Khlong Thom Tai, we do our part to help. We make sure to recycle to cut down on waste, we turn lights off as soon as we are done so we do not waste energy, we also try to use as little water as possible to not waste any water. All of the students are happy help cut waste and are excited to learn what they can do to help save the world when they are not at school. The problems we face saving the world and saving lives are problems that we can solve with just a little education and motivation. The one big question that remains is; what will you do?