Along roads when King Ashoka had dug wells and planted trees for the benefit of humans and animals he would have never imagined we would need an annual event to save our environment.
World Environment Day (WED) is an annual event that is aimed at being the biggest and most widely celebrated global day for positive environmental action. It is really sad that conserving Environment has become annual event as oppose to our daily activity.
Theme for 2011: Forests: Nature At Your Service
Forests cover one-third of the earth’s land mass, performing vital functions and services around the world which make our planet livable.They play a key role in our battle against climate change, releasing oxygen into the atmosphere while storing carbon dioxide.From our school days, we have read that but we keep ignoring and destroying them.
Forests feed our rivers and are essential to supplying the water for nearly 50% of our largest cities. They create and maintain soil fertility; they help to regulate the often devastating impact of storms, floods and fires.
Forests are often referred to as the ‘lungs of the earth’. This is particularly because deforestation and forest degradation account for nearly 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, which forests would absorb if carefully managed.
Forests cover 31% of total land area in the world.
Forests cover 20% of total land area in India
Forests are home to 80% of terrestrial biodiversity.
Forests provide a home to more than 300 million people worldwide.
Forest products account for an estimated $ 330 billion of total global trade.
Forest contribute to the livelihoods of 1.6 billion people.
In developing countries more than 80% of total energy consumed by people and industry is derived from forests, such as fuel, wood and charcoal.
Important natural resources such as timber, fuel, rubber, paper and medicinal plants are forest products.
The five most forest-rich countries (the Russian Federation, Brazil, Canada, the United States of America and China) accounted for more than half of the total forest area.
Nearly half of the country’s forest cover is found in the state of Madhya Pradesh (20.7%) and the seven states of the northeast (25.7%).India set a target to cover 33 percent of its land area with forests and tree cover by 2012.
Mangrove forests are one of the key forest resources.They protect the coasts from erosion and cyclonic destructions. They also support coastal and inland fisheries, control floods and are a source of fuel wood.
Despite all these innumerable ecological, economic, social and health benefits, we are destroying the forests. Global deforestation continues at an alarming rate and every year 13 million hectares of forests (equal to the size of Portugal) are destroyed.
Many precious species face extinction and biodiversity is being eliminated. Continued and uncontrolled deforestation therefore not only has devastating consequences for the environment and the wildlife, but for economies around the world.
Mangroves are also disappearing, and about one-fifth have been lost since 1980. The greatest drivers for mangrove forest loss are direct conversion to aquaculture, agriculture and urban land uses.
Government and civil society should work in tandem to preserve forests.
Governments should protect the forest areas inhabited by endangered species and promote forest restoration where they have been depleted by enforcing strict laws and punishment.
Civil society can monitor and raise awareness about need to preserve plants and trees.
When people buy flats they look for parking space, gym, pavement for a morning jog, party hall, auditorium and so on.Hardly they look for the garden space.We need to do more than forwarding mails and SMSes.Our work does not stop by planting a sapling.We need to nurture them as well.We have reached a situation where conserving environment need not be to Save earth but as an investment.
We are not far from the days where people would run looking for Oxygen parlours.We would be rich considering we own plants and trees.Oxygen would be valuable than gold.
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