In 2024, the sixteenth edition of the “Love Planet Earth” calendar offers us a journey through twelve regions of the planet where Nature, thanks partly to the support of space technologies, is showing how resilient it is, recreating habitats and restoring areas that humans had been actively altering as recently as a few years ago.
Love Planet Earth has been working with IUCN Italia, the Italian branch of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, an international organisation dedicated to preserving biodiversity and promoting sustainable practices for the management of natural resources and to Federparchi, which represents the system of protected areas in Italy.
With their help, Love Planet Earth explains what has been happening, for example, in the Valle del Ticino natural park in the region of Lombardy (northern Italy), between the provinces of Milan, Pavia and Varese. In the rivers in this area, the numbers of Adriatic sturgeon (a critically at-risk species) have been slowly but constantly increasing thanks to the numerous protection programmes created by the authorities.
In fact, in the calendar, each image of a species is alternated with a satellite photo of the world's most beautiful, protected areas. In a protected area of Macquarie Island, in the Pacific Ocean (between New Zealand and the Antarctic), there is another story of resilience Love Planet Earth can tell us about - the story of golden-crested royal penguins, which are now constantly increasing in number, after the population had been threatened for decades.
Travelling among the four corners of the Earth, from Vietnam to Spain, from the Galapagos Islands to the United States, the Love Planet Earth 2024 stories are told through the images, processed by e-GEOS, of COSMO-SkyMed, the Italian satellite constellation created thanks to the investments and commitments of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and the Italian Ministry of Defence.
By constantly monitoring the Earth, the first- and second-generation satellites of COSMO-SkyMed are carrying out a crucial mission to protect the planet, allowing us to admire Earth’s incredible biodiversity from a unique point of view.
The species depicted are all reported on the "IUCN World Red List" of threatened or endangered species. The Red List, established in 1964 by the IUCN and updated periodically, is the world's most comprehensive list of the global endangered status of animal, fungal and plant species. The IUCN Red List is a key indicator of the health of the world's biodiversity as well as an important tool for informing and catalyzing action to protect ecosystems. In the calendar, each image carries the IUCN Red List risk category symbol assigned to the species portrayed. The main ones are: Critically Endangered (CR), Endangered (EN), Vulnerable (VU).
Love Planet Earth is an initiative that has effectively come into being through the organisation of exhibitions, events and the creation of a calendar, whose aim is to raise awareness of sustainability topics in the public. It is part of Leonardo, e-GEOS and Telespazio’s wider commitments in this sector, which stem from the awareness of the close link between the space sector, the protection of the planet and the achievement of the sustainable development goals of the UN 2030 Agenda.