It is kind of a cliché to emphasize the human impact on climate change, yet it is only when you see how much individual human beings are capable of changing the environment that you reflect on what we have done to it.

Last month, I set off to Antarctica as a part of the Antarctica Youth Ambassador Program to know more about this mysterious continent. Before departure, I had always imagined Antarctica as a cold, white, bleak, indestructible place. But the truth is the total opposite: It is in fact a lively, colorful, but fragile place.

I have heard many people describing Antarctica as the only place we human beings haven't yet left a mark; there was no native population and it doesn’t belong to any country, nor does it have an official language or currency.

But is it true we have never left a print on this continent?

On the last day of my journey in Antarctica, we came across a colossal iceberg floating in the Antarctic sea. That ice shelf is believed to be a part of the huge Larsen B ice shelf, which disintegrated in February 2002. This kind of large disintegration was never recorded before and is likely due to the climate change.

Other than the striking view of the floating iceberg, my trip to Antarctica also unveiled many hidden concerns behind the ecosystem in Antarctica, such as the decrease in the number of krill which is the fundamental species in the Antarctic food chain. The major reasons behind the decrease are overfishing by human beings and global climate change.

The breaking icebergs and dying ecosystem — are these not marks we have left on this most remote continent? But of course we have to be optimistic. There is always hope. If we are able to cause these changes in Antarctica or around the world, then we must be able to fix it. That was one of the goals for my trip: to find a way to influence more people around me to make a change.

Everything we did will leave a mark on the environment, even if it is around 130,000 km away from us. But I always believe that if we as individuals could do something good for the environment, it then will benefit ourselves in return. Maybe Antarctica is far away from our daily life, but the environment in our home cities, in Abu Dhabi or in our school is closely related to us. Start caring about the environment we live in; start with turning off the lights when leaving the room, start printing double-sided, because everything we do counts.