Interviewtimes 
In the year 1972, 5th June was marked by the UN General Assembly as World Environment Day with the theme“Only on Earth” which was used for the first celebration of the environment day in year 1974. Since then, this day has been celebrated to create awareness about multiple issues our environment is facing. Furthermore, the day inspires us to bring about changes in action towards protection of the environment.
This year the focus is on restoring the ecosystem, recreating the lost biodiversity, and re-imaging a future where the life of all living organisms are respected. It’s been decades since we are over utilizing, wrecking, exploiting, and profiteering from our Eco-system. In hunger of creating human made beauty in every three seconds, we are damaging the natural resource to the size of football pitch.
The damages are not limited to lands. Our underwater ecosystem suffers the casualty. By now we have almost lost 50 percentage of our coral reef and in nearby future if steps are not taken towards restoration the possibilities are we could lose 90 percentage of coral reef by 2050 (United Nations ,2021) The planet is heating up with rise in temperature. The effects of global warming and climate change are much more palpable on the ground. The burning heat is melting our glaciers, shifting precipitation pattern, and damaging the homes of wildlife’s. Moreover, if warming continues with the passage of time, hurricanes, floods, draught ensues resulting in destroying millions of precious life and livelihoods. It can further wreak havoc causing the extinction of species like polar bears which have the cold climate as their natural habitat. Furthermore, water
borne diseases like malaria can’t be ruled out.
India is not alien to the issues. Rural India bears the brunt of this cataclysmic effect every year as damage is inflicted on the ecosystem in the name of growth. In India, there are lot of environmental issues such as poor wastes management to water pollution, the situations were much worse between 1947 to 1995 ( Chopra, 2016) with over utilization of resources, soil erosion, deforestation, increase in urbanization and over population.
As per World Bank evaluation, investigation and study from year 1995 to year 2010, India has been trying to build harmonious relationship with the nature. Still, degradation of environment is posing threats in terms of diseases. Human beings are inviting the wrath of nature’s vagaries. As Indians, we have a long way to go to achieve the desired environmental quality.
On a massive scale, we have to work towards bringing back the life of lost living organisms from the brink of extinction, to the top of mountains and ultimately from the bottom of the sea. A small day to day initiative from people such as planting trees, rewinding our gardens, using the 3R principle (reduce, reuse recycle) to cut down waste and halting human activities that pollute our natural resources. On a community level, we can start CHIPKO- “An Unfinished Movement”, that was initially started by group of people, particularly women for protecting nature and life of thousand living organism. It had a humane appeal: Cut me Down before you Cut Down the Tress. The other movement that propelled strong community engagement was “Jungle Bachao Andholan” where the tribal population of Jharkhand and Odisha joined hands together to protect the cutting down of holy Sal tress by the corrupt government officials and mafias. As a youth or as a community we can take these non-violent social movement as an inspiration and further work together as a team for creating awareness and designing eco-friendly technologies to overcome waste and pollution. The youth participation in restoration of environment will not only provide an ecological source of solution and income but will also provide a space where they can experiment with ecological technologies to fight climate change and global warming.
By Meghna Rani
UNICEF, Bhubaneswar
