A children’s book that encompasses the theme of environmental awareness and sustainability was published Wednesday in English and Korean.

“Our Beautiful Earth” was published by the Korea office of World Wide Fund for Nature, an international conservation organization.

The picture book centers on the critical threats the Earth will face if people keep their consumption-oriented habits and do little to protect the nature.
 

“Scientists continue to say that we are at a critical point, where if we do nothing, climate change will become unmanageable and the consequences will be devastating,” said Lee Jang-moo, a board member of WWF-Korea and a former president of Seoul National University, through a press statement. “I see children being an essential piece of solving this problem.”

“If we can effectively reach young children with the story of climate change and what we need to do to slow its impact, I think we have a chance at regaining balance across this planet Earth,” Lee added.

Through the words of friendly characters ― a panda, a bear and a crane ― the book introduces different concepts of climate change and key environmental terms, including ecological footprint, a measure of how much land it takes to sustain people’s current lifestyles.

It would take 1.5 Earths to continue generating the resources to support humanity’s current ecological footprint, explains the book, accompanied with an illustration depicting the polluted Earth.

If everyone lived in the same way as Koreans, it says, it would take 2.5 Earths.

“2.5 Earths!! Korea is using one whole earth more than the world average,” writes the book.

The book is financed by participation fees of 11,000 children who took part in the “35th Annual Green Lotte Children Art Competition” in 2014.

“Our Beautiful Earth” is available as an e-book at http://issuu.com/wwf-korea/docs/cartoon_en.

By Ahn Sung-mi (sahn@heraldcorp.com)