
From left to right: Mr Donald TUSK, President of the European Council; Mr Boris JOHNSON, UK Prime Minister. Copyright: European Union Event: EU @ G7 Summit 2019
This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum.
Author: Sean Fleming, Senior Writer, Formative Content
The River Thames flows through the heart of London and has been integral to the city’s identity for almost 2,000 years.
It’s been a muse for great painters, writers and musicians. But by the 1950s, a broken sewer system and waste from riverside industry had led to it being so polluted it was declared biologically dead.
Today, though, the Thames has bounced back. Thanks to tighter environmental regulations, upgraded waste systems and many habitat enhancement projects, hundreds of species call it home.

A survey carried out by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), which runs London Zoo, has found there are more than 3,500 seals now living in the Thames estuary – 1,104 harbour seals and 2,406 grey seals.
And life in the revived waterway is so good the seals are breeding too. ZSL counted 138 seal pups in the river in 2018.
The finding was the result of the first seal pup count ZSL has conducted, and involved painstakingly analyzing aerial photos of London’s seal population.
Seal of approval

Protecting the world’s urban water sources brings a wealth of benefits to both people and the planet.
About 40% of land in the urban source watersheds – that feeds water to a river – of the world’s largest cities shows moderate to high levels of degradation.
Investing in nature to restore these areas wouldn’t just improve the quality of the water – according to the World Bank, it could also improve the health of 1 billion people, reduce impacts of climate change such as floods and erosion, and help store or capture 10 gigatonnes of CO2 a year.
Speak your Mind Here