Nature needs Nurture

Earth Day: Nature Needs Nurture

Earth Day, celebrated first in 1970 led by a U.S. senator Gaylord Nelson who proposed 'to shake up the political establishment' in the world's first nationwide environmental protest, has come a long way since and serves as the world's largest secular platform that unifies the East and West, the rich and the poor and the urban and the rural. The first Earth Day led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, today, the biggest global authority on all issues related to the environment. It also served to provide individual groups at the local, state, national, and global levels with partners that share their values and bridge the gap between concerned citizens and their political leaders.

The late 60's, before the environment was anywhere on anyone's agenda, saw the products of explosive economic development littered everywhere - polluted rivers, smog-filled air, mercury poisoned fish, and acid rain. A series of books called Silent Spring in 1962 and The Population Bomb in 1968 helped mobilize the movement further. Events like oil spills near England in 1967 and Santa Barbara, California in 1968 also underscored the urgency of the issue together with concern about nuclear radiation fallout from above ground testing.

The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 when 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy and sustainable environment helped crystallize the concerns being voiced on local platforms with a common denominator and in a big way. The national coordinator of the 1970 Earth Day movement, an undergraduate student by the name of Denis Hayes, and his youthful team organized massive coast-to-coast rallies in the U.S. where thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Senator Nelson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom - the highest honor given to civilians in the U.S. for his role as Earth Day founder.

'[40 years ago when Earth Day began], knowledge on climate change had not been understood or disseminated on a large scale. Consequently, [Nelson's] focus was rightly on conservation of resources at the local level and means by which environmentally friendly solutions could be developed and implemented by people at the grassroots level,' says Dr. Pachauri, TERI's Director-General and Chairman of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change.

By 1990, Earth Day had gone global, mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries highlighting the state of the environment on to the world stage, eventually resulting in the United Nations Earth Summit.

Today, over 1 billion people from 184 countries and 17,000 organizations participate in activities related to Earth Day, making it the largest secular event organized in the world in solidarity with Nature. Earth Day is an opportunity to grab, as is everyday towards a sustainable Earth, while it lasts.

Voices of Concern

Life,
Consists of propositions about life...
The whole race is a poet that writes down
The eccentric propositions of its fate...'
- A 19th century poem titled Men Made out of Words by Wallace Stevens

Voices of concern: world leaders join the green choir

In a world that is flooded with propositions for a better tomorrow, sustainable development is perhaps a topic that has received more propositions than any other. With all the attention that the issue has garnered, an entire spectrum of suggestions on sustainable development by a host of global leaders and eminent scholars now exists.

The world is now waiting for these propositions on paper to actually convert into actions. And although the recent Copenhagen conference failed to reach an accord, it at least brought the ‘whole race’ (in Stevens’ words) together to chirp in a ‘green choir’, discordant notes and all. Despite all the differences between the North and the South on the climate change issue, the recognition that national boundaries are fading away and that they no longer separate nations distinctly is coming fast.

Ranging from ideological shifts on sustainable development strategies to practical solutions, a variety of insights have been coming to the global ‘green’ table regularly. Who will serve as the international policeman if a particular nation fails to deliver on its obligations? What part of the cost of reducing emissions in the poorer nations will be shared by the richer ones? What steps will be taken to ensure that upcoming green technologies will make it to the market, despite stiff resistance because of their exorbitant prices as compared to fossil fuels? It is some of these vexed questions that will dog the post-Copenhagen discourse as the nations of the world stumble on to the Mexico meet later in 2010.

Jigyasa Jyotika and Suparna Mukherji bring to you the discussions by global leaders that crisscross the ‘green tables’ across the world. The themes range from novel suggestions for fundamental ideological shifts in sustainable development strategies to the constraints and unique perspectives of leaders of the developing world and the highly successful ‘green’ stories of the various countries.


Full story at http://terragreen.teriin.org/index.php