Plants play a major role for lives to sustain on earth, but have not drawn the much-needed attention they deserve, and that’s indeed unfortunate.

Plants, which make up 80 per cent of the food we eat, and produce 98 per cent of the oxygen we breathe, are under constant and increasing threat from pests and diseases, the UN food agency, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned recently, and the message should be considered in all seriousness.

FAO’s recent launching of the United Nations’ International Year of Plant Health (IYPH) for 2020, which aims to raise global awareness on how protecting plant health can help end hunger, reduce poverty, protect the environment, and boost economic development, is a timely and welcome move.

Every year, up to 40 per cent of global food crops are lost to plant pests and diseases. This leads to annual agricultural trade losses of over $220 billion, leaves millions of people facing hunger, and severely damages agriculture – the primary income source for poor rural communities.

This is why policies and actions to promote plant health are fundamental for reaching the Sustainable Development Goals.

“Plants provide the core basis for life on Earth and they are the single most important pillar of human nutrition. But healthy plants are not something that we can take for granted,” as FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu points out.

Climate change and human activities are altering ecosystems, reducing biodiversity and creating conditions where pests can thrive.

At the same time, international travel and trade has tripled in volume in the last decade and can quickly spread pests and diseases around the world causing great damage to native plants and the environment.

As per FAO officials, the annual trade in agricultural products has grown almost three-fold over the past decade, largely in emerging economies and developing countries, reaching $1.7 trillion.

FAO estimates that agricultural production must rise about 60% by 2050 in order to feed a larger and generally richer population.

Climate change threatens to reduce not only the quantity of crops, lowering yields, but also the nutritious value.

Rising temperatures also mean that more plant pests are appearing earlier and in places where they were never seen before.

Interestingly, in the UAE, the Liwa City Services Division recently launched a range of initiatives to protect wild plants and encourage their cultivation.

The initiatives included the establishment of a wild plant nursery in Liwa, on an area of 313,960-square metres. The first phase of the nursery covers an area of 900-square metres and hundreds of thousands of wild plants will be cultivated at the nursery, which supplies official and non-official authorities and individuals.

The nursery cultivates over 20 species of wild plants, such as arta, thamam, ghadeh, marsh, tribe, hala, hanga and ghaf. It also collects and classifies seeds.

The division, represented by the region’s planning, community relations, parks and entertainment facilities administration, recently implemented numerous initiatives, including the distribution of 1,000 ghaf seedlings during the Liwa Dates Festival, to encourage local people to cultivate indigenous plants.

Protecting plants from pests and diseases is certainly far more cost effective than dealing with full-blown plant health emergencies.

Plant pests and diseases are often impossible to eradicate once they have established themselves and managing them is time consuming and expensive.

What is increasingly obvious is that much more still needs to be done to ensure plant health. As the matter concerns every life on earth, the earlier we act, the better.