Restoration
Protecting nature
Community engagement
These words are everywhere. They’re used so often they’ve become buzzwords. And when words get repeated too much, they lose their weight, their power to make us stop and think. I’m not a philosopher, nor trying to be one, but I find myself wondering: why are these words, which carry so much importance, no longer able to stir us deeply?
Restoration matters. Community engagement matters — because without it, no restoration is possible. We need each other to succeed: to listen, to compromise, to reconnect. Protecting nature matters, because our own survival depends on it. We know this. We’ve heard it again and again, maybe too many times. And so the words slide past us. Their urgency numbs instead of moves us.
But the truth remains: we need to change. Not tomorrow, not someday — now. Change how we live, how we consume, how we treat this fragile world that is breaking under our hands. And if this sounds dramatic, it’s because reality is dramatic: the storms, the fires, the ghost of climate change that is no longer a warning but a daily presence.
So let me say it again, slowly, hoping the words recover their meaning:
Restoration
Protecting Nature
Community Engagement
These cannot remain only words. They need to become choices. They need to be seen in the trees we plant, the water we safeguard, the way we pass on respect to our children.
Because if we let them fade into empty noise, we risk losing not just language, but everything these words stand for: forests, rivers, birdsong, clean air, the future itself.
So pause with me for a moment. Breathe them in again. Let them take root in you, here, today. And then let them guide your actions, however small, however quiet.
Written by: Perla Rivadeneyra, FONDAZIONE ENI ENRICO MATTEI (FEEM)