Earth Day 2022

?The journey of thousand miles begins with a small step.

Earth Day: I feel should be celebrated and marked every day but each year 22nd April marks the anniversary of the environment movement started in 1970. The senator In USA was the one who initiated it. After a massive oil spill in California in 1969, he wish to infuse the energy of students in the right direction with public consciousness about air and water pollution. Slowly and steadily this movement turned huge and 22nd April was declared as the earth day .

After 20 years, in 1990 Earth Day went global. A group of environment leaders organised a major campaign for the planet. 200 million people of 141 countries brought environment issues at the world stage. It was a great initiative and drive. Finally in 2010 Earth Day witnessed great challenges for all the environmentalists to fight against cynicism of climate change denials, oil lobbies, and uninterested public and major differences amongst the environmentalists. The Earth Day in India was initiated amongst all these challenges. Over the decades now Earth Day is celebrated around the globe and engage around more than 1 billion people.

As an educationist, I strongly feel that every day is Earth Day. If we involve students and the young generation for any cause we can witness wonders. Over the last three decades in education, I have observed that whatever is being told to children by their teachers, it’s a gospel’s truth for them. Not only they follow it they ensure they parents do so too. The minutest steps taken in the right direction can witness major changes.

Sharing a small anecdote here:

My Rockwoods School, Udaipur is one of the best, beautiful and green campus now. The environment is serene and air-quality index is always very low and air is very pure. My school is surrounded by a lot of trees and greenery. This was not the case in 2010. The complete area was a slurry dump yard and planting trees was impossible. In 2010, my chairperson Mrs Alka Sharma and her son, our director-?Mr. Deepak Sharma took the plunge and they planted 3000 trees then. Unfortunately, not even a single tree survived. Again in 2011 ,they planted 3000 trees and this time only three trees survived. They did not lose hope and kept on planting 2000 to 3000 trees year after?year. After a decade we can see the result as the whole surroundings are green and have lots of trees. Each year, they plant 2000 trees in the month of July. With the small initiative and practice they could contribute towards a larger cause and became an inspiration and motivation for others.

Over the last few years we have been hearing about global warming, carbon footprints climate change and so on. Since 1800s, human activities have been the main cause and catalyst of climate change, primarily due to burning of fossil fuels, cutting down the trees and greenhouse gases effects. Strange but true, during lock down we all witnessed a paradigm shift in the health of our mother earth. The air was cleaner, no pollution and we could see and hear chirping sound of so many birds.

The theme of this year Earth Day 2022 is “Invest in our planet.” The time has come where we need to take care of ourselves and at a macro level :our mother earth. When we are teaching our students the lesson of gratitude, they?must learn to pay gratitude for the rising sun, soil, air water and entire universe.

This year the spiritual guru-Sadhguru has started an initiative and movement called #save the soil# to address the soil crosses by bringing all together around the globe to take a stand for soil’s health and Europe in all the political leaders to make policies and take action to words increasing organic content in the soil. According to the research, lack of organic content in the soil will deplete the mother earth and lead to food prices, scarcity of water, major loss in biodiversity, climate change and loss of lives of many farmers.?We all know, the healthy earth and the healthy soil is needed to have the best nutrients in fruits, vegetables and grains. The farmers are the one who are feeding the entire human population and sadly we all know many commit suicide due to depletion of soil and they are not able to grow the crops how they want to. We must all pay our?Gratitude at a macro level, to all the farmers who ensure that we get all the food supplies including fruits, vegetables, grains and cereals. The scientist feel, if proper measures are not taken in the next 20 years the food production will be less by 40%..

The mother earth contains 70% of the water and lack of water retention in the soil will lead to scarcity of water causing imbalance and droughts and floods. We cannot imagine a day without water. Due to the climate change, global warming and deforestation major loss in flora and fauna take place. The research states 27000 species are becoming extinct every year.?

On this earth day how can we invest in our planet, how can we ensure that our mother earth continues to be a beautiful place to live in and how can we ensure that our young generation takes the initiative for such a great cause. It’s on adults to be a role models for them and let’s decide and take a pledge to make this planet earth ready and healthy for coming generations.

• Let’s follow 3 R’s-reduce reuse and recycle
• ·?????Educate the people around you about the significance of natural resources
• ·?????Conserve and save water
• ·??????Use electricity wisely
• ·?????Stop using plastics completely
• ·?????Use reusable shopping bags

Wishing all the readers a very Happy Earth day