Spanish singer-songwriter Alejandro Sanz is making final preparations for a July 14-20 Greenpeace expedition to the Arctic region, a trip organized to bring attention to the need to protect that unique ecosystem.
The trip's objectives include documenting the extent of Arctic glacier and ice-cap retreat "due to climate change," as well as demonstrating the danger a potential oil spill would pose to that practically unexplored frontier region and its inhabitants, Greenpeace said.
"We have to acknowledge the fact that if we help save the Arctic we're saving much more," Sanz said in a statement released by the watchdog.
"It's the most important environmental battle because it is one of the few places on Earth where an environmental balance still exists. Much is at stake and what happens there affects us all."
The Spanish artist, a three-time Grammy and 16-time Latin Grammy winner, will travel to the extreme south of the Arctic polar circle to see first-hand the beauty of that remote land and the way of life of the native Inuit people.
He also will observe how climate change and human pressure is threatening that group and the environment on which it depends for its survival.
According to a Greenpeace report, the Arctic could be entirely ice-free in the summer within 10-20 years, with serious consequences for people, flora, fauna and the economy.
Sanz, a Greenpeace ambassador, is urging people worldwide to visit www.savethearctic.org and join Greenpeace in its efforts to have that area declared a "global sanctuary," or an area legally protected from large-scale industrial development such as industrial fishing and oil drilling.
More than 3 million people, including Sanz, have already signed on to that campaign to protect the Arctic. EFE