The world at large is faced with many pervasive issues as of date, including the three planetary crises: global warming, climate change and extreme weather events. Many parts of the globe are being battered by unprecedented cyclonic storms, hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes and surging sea waves.
By Salam Rajesh
The bright morning rays of each Sunday these past weeks has ushered in a new, fresh push for safer, cleaner and healthier lifestyle in urban Imphal, and elsewhere in the State. With its campaign on biking for the environment, the Directorate of Environment and Climate Change (Government of Manipur) is pushing well ahead with the simple strategy that everyone’s commitment to nature can solve many issues.
The world at large is faced with many pervasive issues as of date, including the three planetary crises: global warming, climate change and extreme weather events. Many parts of the globe are being battered by unprecedented cyclonic storms, hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes and surging sea waves.
At the same time, many parts of the globe are facing acute symptoms of drought and water scarcity, cloudbursts, flash floods and mudslides, extensive landslides, intolerable heat waves, unpredictable rainfall patterns affecting the agricultural cycles, coral deaths, diseases and heat related illnesses, and much more.
Taking everything into account, the United Nations had called upon all of its member States to come up with strategies to combat these ills. On this note, the Government of India is picking up the threads to mobilize its citizens to kick start seriously on ushering better lifestyles fused with the principles of healthy living in harmony with nature, with particular concerns for the natural and human environments.
This is then part of the Government’s campaign ‘Nation First @ 75 Campaign’ with reaching seventy-five years of democratic processes and governance, and setting the tone for infusing its citizens to work for the environment keeping in mind the concerns on the planetary health.
In tune with the thrust on healthy environments and meaningful lifestyles, the State’s Directorate of Environment and Climate Change is renewing its focus on mobilizing citizens, more emphatically the youths, to participate whole-heartedly in the national campaign.
Thought provoking interactive sessions with university, college and school faculties and students aligned with taking to the streets is forming the thrust of the state-level campaign. The bicycle rides on Sunday mornings serves to achieve two-fold strategies: one, to create general awareness on pushing for healthy environment, and the other to engage people at large with environment friendly activities.
The bicycle rides has multiple-end focuses. One, to realize that bicycle rides is healthy for one’s physical health. Two, bicycle rides are cost effective as eco-friendly commuting, while being relatively important as zero-emission exercise.
The world community under the lead of the United Nations is currently engaging actively on dialogues to find the right strategies to achieve net zero emission by the year 2050, and absolutely by the target year 2100.
Achieving net zero emission needs proactive participation from the levels of governments to the grassroots, where every single action counts. Governments’ decisions to cut down on fossil fuel use are critical while citizens’ role in greening landscapes and maintaining hygienic spaces is absolutely vital in achieving the set targets.
On Saturday last week (27 September) the Directorate of Environment initiated a dialogue process for schools to engage actively in ‘EcoClubs’ under the Government of India’s Mission LiFE (Lifestyle For Environment), a program fitted to its green education for schools.
The initiative sought in vitalizing the youth force, here represented by school-going students guided by their teachers, to engage in principles of healthy living as envisaged by the government, such as maintaining clean, healthy locales and school campuses, green activities (tree plantations, green fencing, green buildings), dissuading from the use of Single-Use Plastic items and their safe disposal, and contributing to achieving net zero emission.
The EcoClub activity model comes in rhyme with the Sunday bicycle rides when seen from the active participation of school and college students in the activity, increasingly with each activity out there on the streets.
The messages carried by the bikers are clear: say no to plastic pollution and stop littering around, live in harmony with the surroundings for better lifestyle devoid of sicknesses and unhygienic surroundings, and participate in activities that absolutely contribute to zero emission (from polluting fume and gas, smoke and combustion from reeking fossil fuel driven vehicles, rotten garbage piles, stubble burning, and many more).
It is asserted that global warming is largely influenced by reckless human activities that involve in the release of greenhouse gases (GHGs) through different means. Burning of coal, gas and wastes, and ranching, in large quantity is said to release carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous gases which when accumulates in the atmosphere become a blanket shield that prevents sunlight from reaching Earth while trapping heat that rises from the Earth’s surface.
The end result is the formation of a dome-shaped thick layer of gases over Earth, trapping heat like in a pressure cooker and subsequently accelerating temperature rise on Earth’s surface. This in its turn impacts the climatic and weather conditions on the blue planet, giving rise to multiple issues in weather and climate anomalies.
The consequential impacts are on the human and environment health, disrupting the agricultural cycles and affecting crop production, effecting physical changes to the natural landscapes, and ushering in a process that deviates from the normal course of the regular rainfall and other weather conditions in the annual agricultural or seasonal year.
While introducing electric-vehicles and plastic bottle banks to minimize human imprints on the environment, the Directorate is pushing hard to rope in the human resource to achieve the target of zero emission at the best possible levels.
The only hurdle could be the non-sensitive attitude of people in general on these concerns, which is why the role of youths in spearheading the campaign becomes vital. The target could ultimately fit into all of the 4000 schools in the State, whereas, the kick-start is aimed at a modest beginning with 75 selected schools.
Imphal urban city areas and all of the other peri-urban towns and settlements, except for a very few, are pictures of neglect and abuse in many forms. The dust kicked up from inefficiently managed roads, the random littering of plastic wastes on roadsides and public spaces, the reeking drains, the unplanned tree planting and the unregulated tree chopping, are all symptoms of a population less concerned on healthy environments.
The need of the hour, as the Directorate foresee, is mobilizing citizens to engage wholly in a campaign that seeks better living conditions fitted to healthy environments. Youths (whom many say are the ‘pillars’ of society) needs to take the lead in achieving the set goals.