Seven Billion Dreams, One Planet, Consume With Care

S. Kunjabihari Singh *

World Environment Day with MMC Director MAHUD on June 05 2016 :: Pix - TSE

The World Environment Day (WED) was celebrated on 5 June like every year before, the world over. This day has been marked specifically to raise global awareness about environmental issues and take appropriate action to protect Nature and Planet Earth by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). In 1972, the UN General Assembly resolved to celebrate the World Environment Day on the day of the UN Conference on Human Environment. The following year, 1973, this day was celebrated for the first time and later in 1974 it was officially celebrated worldwide.

It is a day of realizing the imperative need for taking action and also for pledging for taking some positive steps collectively towards sustaining the environment. Initiating the campaign from the local levels and galvanizing these local efforts towards conservation and sustenance at the regional and national levels, increasing awareness among the masses, the world over, the mother earth is expected to be a worthy place to live where the nature and the human beings live in harmony.

This year WED is hosted by Italy with the theme ‘Seven Billion Dreams, One Planet, Consume with Care’. The theme rightly tries to remind the people to be conscious of the rapidly increasing burden placed on the planet’s natural resources which are anyway limited, to manage responsibly towards conserving the same by discharging individual and collective responsibility by the entire seven billion population of the globe.

The theme is a timely warning that it is time to work collectively with full awareness of the limitation we are exposed to, if we want to sustain the environment to meet our needs, not mainly our present ones, but largely for the future generation, for our children, for the humanity in the years to come.

It is estimated that by 2050, another 35 years from now, when the world population would reach 9.6 billion, unless the current level of consumption and production is suitably mended, awareness of the need to sustain is increased and consequent remedial or protective measures initiated right away, we would a total of ‘Three Planets’, to sustain our ways of living and consumption even at the existing level.

The need is therefore, for all of us to appreciate the depleting resources of the mother earth, the need for enhanced awareness to do one’s bit to sustain, to conserve, to protect and to regenerate these to prolong the resources.

We can be part of the pledge, the effort by helping to raise awareness in the community, by taking measures to sustain, to conserve to the maximum and thus adopting a lifestyle more sustainable. The issues of global warming for instance are the talk of the people; and yet, we do not care to adopt any sustainable measure in an organized manner. The level of awareness, the remedial measures needed to be taken are still low and this is one area where the people should be made to be aware of.

The claim that the global average temperature rose from 0.6 to 0.9 degree centigrade between 1906 to 2005, a span of 100 years, is a timely warning for all of us to do something. More menacing could be the fact that the rate of global temperature increase has nearly doubled in the last 50 years since, the mid-sixties to this time around, the global warming becoming double in 50 years.

The primary cause for this global warming has been attributed to ever increasing volume of carbon dioxide plus other green house gases released by burning of fossil fuels, land clearing for agricultural and industrial establishments and a host of other anthropogenic forces the world over. This global warming would be catastrophic to our mother earth and it should be every ones’ bounden duty to initiate every plausible measure to arrest this trend right away. That perhaps could be the philosophy behind this year’s theme, ‘Seven Billion Dreams, One Planet, Consume with Care’.

Among the several measures to arrest this drastic change in environment, the simplest could be extensive plantation and thus conserve environment. Large scale plantation in and around our habitats, own homes, local areas, the schools, the roads and in effect any available patch of land could be covered to reduce environmental pollution. Statistics indicate 50% of the world’s tropical forests have decreased due to pollution. Every single day, 1.5 acres of rain forests are getting denuded. This is happening despite the elaborate celebrations of ‘World Environment Day’ since 1973, nearly over 40 years by now.

The time has come for all the stake holders as also all right thinking persons to ponder on the slow effects of this universal movement. Could it be the fact that the day passed off merely as a ritual to celebrate without the much needed focus on an organized plantation or could it be attributable to sheer lack of continuity in that not enough measures appear to be in place to sustain, to ensure the growth of the tree saplings planted all over the areas. Most appear to be dead before the next Environment Day.

In such drive for green-economy, requiring large scale plantation across our own state, can’t we evolve an integrated effort to draft a modest viable Action Plan associating the allied departments under the government? Going deeper, we can think of line departments like Social Forestry, Soil Conservation, Environment & Ecology, Education, Horticulture, PWD, PHED, DRDA, MAHUD, Municipalities etc. Even some of the NGOs, CSOs, Sports Organizations, Industrial and Business Houses could be roped in like elsewhere in the country.

MGNREGA could be one medium for local level plantations. A job card holder could be assigned with the dual responsibility of planting and maintaining, say, 10 saplings or so, the wages being adjusted against his or her 100 days’ wages in a year. These are only one way of tapping the enormous resources the state possesses and there are several other avenues to achieve. There is no dearth of anything; what is in short supply, that too drastically, is the zeal, collective or otherwise to perform. The commitment is one area where the state is the greatest casualty.

The occasion is passing away from our grip once again like several years in the past. It is painful that this opportunity to arouse public enthusiasm to come forward, to act and pave the way for reaping the benefit has again slipped away. One model step is set by the PM Shri Narendra Modi in Delhi. On the World Environment Day, he planted a ‘Kadamb’ sapling at his Race Course Road residence lawns. He also exhorted the masses to plant as many trees as possible.

He also placed a traditional earthen-pot along with the sapling, which is the traditional way conserving water and ensuring that the sapling has regular supply of water. So far so good; its one way for invigorating mass appeal to come forward to the cause, the cause for a balance of clean water, air and energy. The Union Ministry for Environment and Forests has proclaimed a mandate to strike a balance between the five elements of nature. The Ministry’s mission is directed towards ‘Clean Water, Air, Energy, Environment and More Green’.

All these are bound to be lost in the midst of the din of inaction from the part of the people like any time in the past. Next year the WED would have a new catch-phrase as yet another theme but the coefficient of inaction would be as great leaving the earth neglected a lot.