Earth Day

April 22^nd is Earth Day, What is Earth Day?

 Earth Day has its origins in the US in the late 60’s when citizens alarmed at the degradation of their natural resources such as lakes rivers forests etc., began a movement to protect the environment. By 1970, April 22^nd officially came to be called the Earth Day, and as the movement grew, The United Nations in 2009 officially designated April 22 as the International Earth Day. Earth Day has now grown into a global movement with the participation of 192 nations around the world, to recognize and encourage environmental protection efforts, and bind disparate people and countries together in a common cause. Earth Day is now celebrated every year by more than a billion people across the globe.

This year, people all around the world marked Earth Day yesterday, April 22^nd by planting trees, cleaning up parks, rivers and lakes and so on.  However such measures are no longer enough, and Earth Day Networks are now working on growing this movement from single-day actions to long-term commitments, such as focusing on climate change.

Although Earth Day is a single day, each day of the year should be an Earth Day, as important as April 22^nd from the standpoint of the environment. Whilst tree planting cleaning lakes and rivers etc. were the agenda in the earlier days, action has now evolved to encompass many more areas amongst which waste recycling, energy conservation, and climate change have emerged as important focus areas.

How has India responded to the Earth Day Movement? Well, beyond a Google doodle on the search engine’s home page, precious little has been done as a country, and this day went virtually unnoticed. The Green Tribunals and the Environment Ministry have adopted the role of the regulator, rather than mentoring actual measures to protect and conserve our natural resources and environment. A country that is being ravaged and degraded environmentally, actual conservation has not permeated to the grass root level i.e. the children; the inheritors of the planet.

In the US for instance, waste recycling starts in kinder-garden; children along with their class teachers form small group workshops and work together on projects on how to recycle waste generated from their own homes such as plastics, paper and so on. Children are encouraged to think creatively on how to use such waste, and it’s truly amazing at the ideas the kids come up with at their tender age.

In India, energy conservation and efficiency is still in its nascent stages limited to persuading people to switch to CFL bulbs, whereas countries like Japan, Denmark, and Switzerland have incorporated energy efficiency in all walks of life. Global warming commonly referred to as climate change can checked by a reduction in the use of fossil fuels, and this has been a matter of much debate in the international forums.

Long journeys begin with the baby steps, and whilst we can leave the larger issues to the government, as individuals and communities we can plant trees, conserve electricity, energy & water, pollute less, recycle more and walk where we can. If we adopt such measures, we’d be celebrating Earth Day each day, and not waiting a year for 22^nd April to arrive.