I’ve had a daydream since I was young: if I suddenly became fabulously rich, what would I spend my money on? And while most of us will never have the opportunity to indulge on a massive scale, there is a lot of money out there, sloshing around in the world economy. A lot of it doesn’t seem to be doing much good – but what if we could get hold of some of it?

I turned my daydream into a thought experiment in my new book, How to Spend a Trillion Dollars. It imagines we have control of one per cent of world gross domestic product, which comes to about $1 trillion. By comparison, the richest 1% of people in the world own about $162 trillion in assets. I set some rules: no spending on military projects, and no spending on media or politics. You have to spend a trillion dollars on projects to improve human health and welfare, advance scientific knowledge, or protect and save the environment. I came up with ten megaprojects. From solving world poverty, to searching for alien life in solar system and beyond. I look at spending money aimed at curing all diseases and extending human lifespan, and at establishing a lasting human settlement on the Moon. There is an incredible amount of things we could do, for what in the grand scheme of things is not that much money.

The world faces many problems. The most pressing are the problems of climate change and the collapse of biodiversity. These are huge issues, and frankly some scenarios we could see in the coming years and decades are quite terrifying. But what I found in my book is that we already have the means to solve these problems. It will take political will, society will need to change, and our consumption will need to become sustainable, but the solutions are there and investment in the right areas can really do good – it could, in fact, save the world.

This decade is one of the most consequential in the history of the world. What we do now, in the next few years, will shape the planet for centuries to come. I’ve outlined the ways we can do this. From speeding the transition of our energy use away from fossil fuels, to restoring and protecting vast areas of land and sea in order to drawdown carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and to tackle the extinction crisis. We don’t have the trillion dollars, but the more we understand that the world’s problems can be solved, the more optimism and momentum we can build, and the more pressure and influence we can put on the rich and powerful people in the world. 

We can do this. Indeed, we must do this. How would YOU spend the money? 

Out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, it is Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities) that speaks the loudest to me.

Why?

Because Cities are where most people live, and where even more people will live in the future.  Making a small step towards sustainability in Cities can mean making a big difference.

Because Cities provide opportunities for people to exchange ideas and learn from each other, forging new friendships and new ventures for better futures, and I would like these opportunities to be accessible to everyone.

Because if we plan and design Sustainable Cities - what I do in my job as an urban planner - people will be healthier and happier, and our planet will be stronger and more resilient.

What if our Cities did not compete with Nature, and instead integrated with it?

What if our Cities had clean air, clean water, clean streets, and ran on clean energy?

What if our Cities were built for humans, young and old, and not for cars or for cash?

We would then have Sustainable Cities.

Voice of Huda Shaka

Huda is passionate about influencing cities towards a more sustainable and equitable future.  She is an urban planning consultant based in Dubai, and is a thought-leader and international speaker on the topic of sustainable development in Arab cities.   Her work involves advising on city plans and infrastructure projects as well as strategic policy frameworks, from an environmental and social sustainability perspective.   A Dubai kid, Huda witnessed and learnt from the phenomenal growth and transformation of this city. After completing her university degrees abroad, she returned to the UAE in 2007 keen to make a positive impact.   Huda's multidisciplinary academic background and professional experience, combining environmental science, public health, sustainability and urban planning, and her first-hand experience of living and working in the Arab world help her to bring a unique perspective to her work.   You can read more about her work on her blog: www.thegreenurbanista.com

Thank you, Voices of Future Generations Arabia, for this brilliant opportunity. In this blog, I would like to argue in favour of empowering children’s voices and quality education - SDG 4 & SDG 17, as I did in May during a symposium with over 1000 online participants.

My name is Nico, I am 11 and go to Kings College School in Cambridge. I am a UN Child Ambassador for the SDGs, and as part of this commitment I also edit an online blog - Nico’s Natural World - with over 9000 impressions, and hundreds of followers. Please come and visit it some time.

It is time that we all stand up for our children’s rights - as reflected in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), especially Articles 24 and 29 that promise us a healthy environment and education about nature, and also Articles 12 to 13 that guarantee us a voice in decisions that concern us.

Our future, and the futures of all species on Earth, concern us! They really do!

I might be only a small child, but I know that advancing the world’s SDGs, especially SDG 13 on Climate Action and SDG 15 to Protect Life on Land, makes the difference between a terrible global nightmare, and the future we want.

Even as our whole world is locked in frightening quarantines and curfews from the global COVID-19 pandemic, we can and must still speak out for our Earth, and for future generations of all species.

Climate change and biodiversity loss are real, dangerous and urgent.

As children, we are trying very hard to be heard, locally and globally, to stop the suffering and losses from getting even worse.

Even though we cannot vote, as children we already face the consequences of terrible climate change worldwide, including new viruses emerging, and old diseases returning, with impacts on our health and on the safely of everyone we love.

And we will face far, far worse in the future.

Currently, some decision-makers are doing the exact opposite,

backing up failing aviation and oil industries, which are causing the problem!

This is horribly unfair - it is a violation of climate justice!

The CRC promises us a healthy environment and this right means that willful destruction of natural habitats, without any regard for the plants and animals, nor for all future generations… just needs to stop.

We live in a climate emergency, and it will get worse if we can’t all work together, rather than re-starting all the harmful practices, and calling it recovery!

We also live in a biodiversity emergency, with thousands of species already lost, and many more at risk of going extinct forever—unless we all help to protect nature recovery when we plan economic recovery!

We must make sure our leaders tackle the climate and biodiversity crises with the same strength and unity they have shown us with the novel coronavirus pandemic, instead of ignoring it until everything is just too late!

If we want to make a difference, we must scale up our understanding, our education and our voices!

We need new guardian laws, institutions and networks.

The world after the COVID-19 pandemic needs to take children’s fears and interests much more seriously.

I am pleading for every single leader, including everyone reading online, to help us find new ways to stop the urgent threats of climate change and biodiversity loss, just as you promised in the SDGs.

Our rights are being directly infringed by current policies, laws and decisions – locally, nationally and internationally.

Even the smallest child CAN make a BIG difference, towards a more sustainable world for us all.

Voice of Nico Roman

Nico Roman (11), UN Child Ambassador for the SDGs, Voices of Future Generations Children’s Rights Initiative; Co-Chair, Cambridge Schools Eco-Council & YR6 Student, King’s College School (Cambridge)

Have you ever heard that without bees it would be almost impossible for humans to survive? It’s because bees are the most important pollinators in the world, essential for growing crops that we need for our food. Bees transfer pollen from flower to flower which allows plants to grow seeds and fruit.

Bees live in hives (or colonies). An average hive houses around 50,000 bees. In the hive, the most important bee is the queen bee. She lays the eggs that produce all the other bees. The female bees are called “workers” and they do the important work of pollination, whereas the male bees are called drones whose only job is to mate with the queen bee. A typical worker bee lives for about 5-6 weeks whereas a queen bee can live for up to 5 years.

Only female bees have stingers. A bee can only sting once because the stinger has barbs and it gets ripped off from the bee’s body when it stings someone.

Bees have a super sharp sense of smell. Each honey bee has about 170 odour receptors and they use these to distinguish between types of flowers and communicate with each other in the hive.

There are about 20,000 different species of bees but the type of bee we are most familiar with is the honey bee. Honey bees produce honey as a food source for themselves for the winter months. One of the reasons why vegans don’t eat honey is because of the problems with commercial farming and extraction where all the honey is taken from the hive and replaced by a sugary water for the bees which doesn’t contain the nutrients found in honey. Some advocate for “balanced beekeeping” so that humans can enjoy honey and leave some for the bees too.

Unfortunately, billions of bees around the world are disappearing. In some regions 90% of the bee population has disappeared. This is called ‘colony collapse disorder’. The reasons for this are not all known, but some scientists say it may be due to the harmful practice of commercial extraction of honey that leaves the bees ill or weak. The use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers on plants and the decline in biodiversity, especially nectar-carrying plants and flowers, is also contributing to it.

One of the things we can do is to plant a bee-friendly garden (even if it’s a few pots on our balcony) with plants such as lavender that produce the nectar bees feed on. 

Voice of Tamreez Inam 

Tamreez Inam works for the Emirates Literature Foundation. She is an avid reader and aspiring writer and loves talking about books on her Instagram account @tamreezi.