Explorer Adrian Hayes shares polar tales

Dubai-based explorer's pictures bring home climate change message to youngsters.

Arctic explorer Adrian Hayes admires the children's posters during his visit to the Raffles International School.

DUBAI // The Dubai-based explorer Adrian Hayes brought home a vivid personal account of the effects of climate change during a presentation yesterday evening.

The adventurer, who holds two world records, showed students at Raffles International School in Dubai images of melting ice caps at the north and south poles.

He described "ice melt water and tonnes of crevices" all pointing to what he portrayed as an alarming trend of climate change.

Mr Hayes set his first Guinness World Record by reaching the North and South Poles and the summit of Mount Everest in 19 months and three days.

At the North Pole in 2007, he said he witnessed the evidence of shrinking ice cover, which declined from between five to 15 metres 100 years ago, to less than a metre in 2007.

"There has been a dramatic, huge loss of depth [in ice cover] in the Artic," he told the students.

Two years later he set out for his record-breaking Greenland trip - the world's longest unsupported snowkiting expedition.

He said 300 square kilometres of ice is lost in Greenland each year, and is responsible for an 0.8 millimetres sea rise per year.

Mr Hayes was one of several guests attending an eco-evening organised by the school.

The event awarded the authors of three short environmental films as well as pupils who had participated in an environmental poster competition.

The posters, with messages such as "heal the world", "stop oil spills" and "clean the planet" appeared first in an exhibition and will continue to be used by the school as reminders to pupils about the environment .

Viktor Bozhinovski, 12, from Macedonia, was one of the winners.

"I care for the environment and for it to be clean," said the sixth grader.

The pupil will see his work exhibited in a competition among 20 schools, organised by the Emirates Wildlife Society - World Wide Fund for Nature (EWS-WWF).

Winning posters from all schools will be exhibited in Knowledge Village on May 19.

While some pupils received awards, Peter Milne, the school's environmental co-ordinator and one of the organisers, said the event was about more than just a handful of winners.

"It is really important to celebrate all the children's work," said Mr Milne, who also teaches third grade students at the school.

The event also acknowledged the efforts of the many students who contributed to a fundraising effort in April.

Yesterday evening, Dh11,700 of those funds were handed over to EWS-WWF to help their programme to fit satellite transmitters to endangered marine turtles. This follows an earlier Dh5,000 donation for the charity to buy camera traps, allowing them to study rare animals in the Wadi Wuraya protected area.

The school is also installing two special bins to convert food waste from its canteen into compost.

"We want to show the kids that you can compost food rather than just waste it," said Mr Milne.

The product, Bokashi, features two 120-litre plastic bins.

Food waste is placed there and mixed with a specially prepared ingredient that helps food waste ferment faster and more quickly turn into compost. It usually takes four to six weeks to produce the compost with the product.

The compost will be used to build an eco-garden of local plants on the school grounds.

Work on the garden will start next year, said Mr Milne, explaining that environmental education is a continuous process.

"It is a sustained effort and not about one-off activities to commemorate special occasions," he said.