Reimagine ~ Recreate ~ Restore
World Environment Day (June 5) offers a platform to inspire positive change and pushes individuals to think about the way they consume. It pushes businesses to develop greener models and for farmers and manufacturers to produce more sustainably. It urges the government to invest in repairing the environment and lastly it calls on educators to inspire students to take action.
Each year World Environment Day has a theme and a host country. In 2018 India hosted the 45th celebration of World Environment Day using the theme “Beat Plastic Pollution”.
This celebration saw 6,000 people gather at Versova Beach in Mumbai to participate in a beach clean-up. The group collected over 90,000 kg of plastic during the clean-up. Further to this the Indian government made a commitment to ban all single use plastics by 2022 along with European Lawmakers agreeing on a ban by 2025. (We’ll have to check in on India to see how they’re doing with their commitment next year!).
This year the host country is Pakistan with the theme of “Ecosystem Restoration”, which calls for urgent action to revive our damaged ecosystems.
Ecosystems are defined as the interaction between living organisms: plants, animals, and people: with their surroundings. While these surroundings include nature, they also include human-man systems such as cities or farms.
Pakistan is endowed with a wide array of ecosystems, and the country is blessed with amazing biodiversity. Scientists have recorded 174 species of reptiles, including the endangered green turtle, and 188 species of mammals, among them the Indus dolphin, the snow leopard and Pakistan’s national animal, the Markhor. The seas off Pakistan are also home to blue whales, the largest creatures on Earth.
In one of the world’s most ambitious afforestation efforts, Pakistan plans to expand and restore forests across the country through a drive it calls the 10 Billion Tree Tsunami. The campaign includes restoring mangroves and other forests, as well as planting trees in urban settings, including schools, colleges, public parks and green belts.[1]
The keywords reinforcing the theme of the campaign are:
Reimagine, Recreate, Restore.
How can you participate in this global event? Some World Environment Day Activities may include:
- Plant flowers and vegetables that attract native bees.
- Participate in a beach clean-up.
- Start your own home compost. The best way to regenerate and restore soil is to compost.
- Create your own neighbourhood clean-up. This can simply mean taking a walk around your neighbourhood and collecting the plastics left scattered in the area. Plastics are an issue everywhere, even in the cleanest neighbourhoods. It’s unlikely it will take you long to find a bag full of plastic trash. Removing this trash will mean one less piece of plastic will find its way to the ocean, to a nearby waterway or as feed for an unsuspecting animal.
- Plant a tree in your backyard or join a tree planting day.
At EORTH 1% of our profits are donated to an Australian regeneration initiative that benefits our backyard. Rainforest Rescue is an Australian not-for-profit organisation that’s been restoring rainforests in Australia and most importantly, Far North Queensland’s Daintree Rainforest since 1999.
Rainforest Rescue’s approach is to purchase properties that are high conservation value rainforest and protecting their biodiversity.
Their projects re-establish rainforests through planting, maintenance and restoration programs, as well as purchasing and protecting high conservation value rainforest and preserving its biodiversity.
You can help Rainforest Rescue with their mission to regenerate and renew rainforests by donating on their website: https://www.rainforestrescue.org.au. All donations are tax-deductible.
And as we always say at EORTH every day is Eorth (Earth) day. World Environment Day is focussed on raising awareness surrounding environmental issues, but that doesn’t mean you can’t participate in those activities any day of the year.
We cannot turn back time. But we can grow trees, green our cities, rewild our gardens, and clean up rivers and coasts. We are the generation that can make peace with nature.
This World Environment Day, join #GenerationRestoration to revive and protect our ecosystems.
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References
[1] https://www.worldenvironmentday.global/about/pakistan
