Red Planet Day !

Red Planet Day is celebrated on November 28 as it commemorates the launch of the Spacecraft Mariner 4 by NASA in 1964, which was the first craft to ever reach Mars. It took almost eight full months for the craft to reach the red planet, finally performing a fly-by on July 14, 1965.

Mars is only about 1/2 the size of Earth.

• Galileo Galilei was the first person to view Mars by using a telescope. The name of the planet came from the Roman god, which is related to its red appearance.

• Mars has weather that is made up of extreme temperatures and, being further away from the Sun, it is generally colder than Earth. Temps can range from -191 degrees F to +81 degrees F.

• The gravity on the Red Planet is roughly 1/3 of that of planet Earth. This means that a person who weighed 100 pounds on Earth would only weigh about 38 pounds due to the difference in the pull of gravity.

• Because it is further away from the Sun, it takes Mars a lot longer to make its orbit. A ‘year’ on Mars would take around 687 days, which is almost twice the length of a year on Earth.

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World Environment Day- 5th June 2021

 5th June 2021

REIMAGINE. RECREATE. RESTORE.

For too long, we have been exploiting and destroying our planet’s ecosystems. Every three seconds, the world loses enough forest to cover a football pitch and over the last century we have& destroyed half of our& wetlands. As much as 50 per cent of our coral reefs have already been lost and up to 90 per cent of coral reefs could be lost by 2050, even if global warming is limited to an increase of 1.5°C.

Ecosystem loss is depriving the world of carbon sinks, like forests and peatlands, at a time humanity can least afford it. Global greenhouse gas emissions have grown for three consecutive years and the planet is one pace for potentially catastrophic climate change.

The emergence of COVID-19 has also shown just how disastrous the consequences of ecosystem loss can be. By shrinking the area of natural habitat for animals, we have created ideal conditions for pathogens – including coronaviruses – to spread.

With this big and challenging picture, the World Environment Day is focus in the ecosystem restoration and its theme is “Reimagine. Recreate.Restore.”

Ecosystem restoration means preventing, halting and reversing this damage – to go from exploiting nature to healing it. This World Environment Day will kick off the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), a global mission to revive billions of hectares, from forests to farmlands, from the top of mountains to the depth of the sea.

Only with healthy ecosystems can we enhance people’s livelihoods, counteract climate change and stop the collapse of biodiversity.

World Environment Day 2021, which counts with Pakistan as the host country this year for its official celebrations, calls for urgent action to revive our damaged ecosystems.

From forests to peatlands to coasts, we all depend on healthy ecosystems for our survival. Ecosystems are defined as the interaction between living organisms - plants, animals, people - with their surroundings. This includes nature, but also human-made systems such as cities or farms.

Ecosystem restoration is a global undertaking at massive scale. It means repairing billions of hectares of land – an area greater than China or the USA – so that people have access to food, clean water and jobs.

It means bringing back plants and animals from the brink of extinction, from the peaks of mountains to the depths of the sea.

But it also includes the many small actions everyone can take, every day: growing trees, greening our cities, rewilding our gardens or cleaning up trash alongside rivers and coasts.

Restoring ecosystems carries substantial benefits for people. For every dollar invested in restoration, at least seven to thirty dollars in returns for society can be expected. Restoration also creates jobs in rural areas where they are most needed.

Some countries have already invested in restoration as part of their strategies to bounce back from COVID-19. Others are turning to restoration to help them adapt to a climate that is already changing.

Did you know?

• Over 4.7 million hectares of forests – an area larger than Denmark – are lost every year.

• Nearly 80 per cent of the world’s wastewater is discharged to our oceans and rivers without treatment.

• Wetlands are being drained for agriculture, with some 87 per cent lost globally in the last 300 years.

• Present in more than 180 countries, peatlands are vital, super-powered ecosystems. Though they cover only 3 per cent of the world’s land, they store nearly 30 per cent of its soil carbon.

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Happy Earth Day

Every year, April 22 is celebrated as the global Earth Day. The year 2020 marks 50 years since the start of this modern environmental movement in 1970. With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic—as most parts of the world remain under lockdown, the Earth Day has gone digital to keep up the momentum.

The theme for Earth Day 2020 is climate action. The enormous challenge — but also the vast opportunities — of action on climate change have distinguished the issue as the most pressing topic for the 50th anniversary.Climate change represents the biggest challenge to the future of humanity and the life-support systems that make our world habitable. As glaciers continue to melt, droughts and floods increase, species go extinct, heat waves get intense, and weather patterns change, the call for climate action has grown louder than ever. “The impact of the coronavirus is both immediate and dreadful. But there is another, deep emergency—the planet’s unfolding environmental crisis. Climate disruption is approaching a point of no return. We must act decisively to protect our planet from both the coronavirus and the existential threat of climate disruption. The current crisis is an unprecedented wake-up call. We need to turn the recovery into a real opportunity to do things right for the future,” said António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, in his message for the day.

the main objective of the day will be to educate the masses—about greenhouse gases, an increase in carbon emissions and individual carbon footprints. The day will bring together experts and influencers from diverse fields to engage in a dialogue and spread the message of climate action.

From simple lifestyle changes to driving local or national climate policy, every one of us has the potential to contribute to mitigating climate change. As the world has come to a screeching halt, this Earth Day reminds us that the time is ripe to rethink about the future of planet Earth.

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World Earth Day !

April 22nd Is World Earth Day 2019 is This is year theme is 'Protect Our Species'.

It aims to draw attention to the rapid extinction of species across the world, which is directly linked to human activity which causes climate change, deforestation and pollution.

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The Thorn in India’s Environmental Side: Open Defecation and a Review of Swachh Bharat

Happy World Environment Day from all of us here at HEEALS! In honour of this important day, this blog post will reflect on India as this year’s global host for World Environment Day, with specific focus on The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation’s “Swachh Bharat Mission”, and it’s goal of making India Open Defecation Free (ODF) by 2019.

India is the open defecation capital of the world, with just under half of the population - 564 million people - unable or unwilling to use a toilet.^[1] Beyond the obvious and devastating impacts that this has on Indian health, open defecation is a serious environmental concern for several reasons. Human waste introduces toxins and bacteria into the ecosystem that cannot be broken down in a sustainable time, relative to the amount that they are released. This buildup of microbes harms aquatic systems and the life that occupy them. Open defecation also contributes to eutrophication, preventing light diffusion and oxygen from reaching life underwater. Above the surface, even the smell of human waste in excess pollutes the surrounding air.^[2] One often hears of open defecation from the perspective of it's health impacts, and for good reason; However, regarding open defecation from an environmental lens provides a more nuanced and complex perspective to the issue.

On October 2nd, 2014, the Prime Minister of India launched the “Swachh Bharat Mission” with the objective of facilitating a clean and ODF country over a five-year time span. The strategy for implementing this massive task includes augmenting the institutional capacity of districts to allow for behaviour change activities at the grassroots level. The program also intended on providing more flexibility to states, so as to incentivize local communities based on individual context and maximize coverage.^[3] The mission places priority on facilitating behaviour change, as many rural communities are unaware of the health and environmental impacts of open defecation, and therefore see it as more convenient than using a toilet.

So, with just over a year left until the projected “ODF India”, let’s explore how the project has performed; The Swachh Bharat website suggests the facilitation of 17 ODF states since 2014, with a grand total of 73,680,690 household toilets built since October 2014.^[4] The mission has reached 62.48% of its goal, and while nowhere near the projected 100% ODF, one must commend the mission on having made it this far. With a population size like India’s, making any claim for completeness - especially regarding something as ingrained in society as open defecation - is quite unlikely to be achieved. Nonetheless, 62.48% is quite significant. The five districts with the highest ODF coverage are ordered as follows: A & N Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigard, Chattisgarh, and D & N Haveli.

Now for the projects downfalls. For a project that claimed to give more autonomy to individual states, there is a significant gap in the project implementation that leaves Low-Income States (LIS) behind. The four listed LIS - Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh - lack the same progress as their neighbouring states in terms of ODF districts. For example, of the 33 districts in Assam, only 11 were declared ODF, and the verification information is not listed on the website. In Uttar Pradesh, only 7 out of 75 states were declared ODF, and of those 7, only 2 were actually verified ODF.^[5] This is in comparison to states such as Haryana, Gujarat and Chattisgarh, where 100% of districts were both declared and verified as being ODF.

While it makes sense to contextualize local realities by regulating Swachh Bharat at a state level, it does not help to ignore state capacity in the process- without aiding Low-Income States reach the same level of progress as those more capable, Swachh Bharat becomes less of a national mission, and more of a fragmented mission open to states who are able to implement it properly.

This World Environment Day, let us reflect on our own individual capacities to do better for our world, and take these capacities into account in our advocacy work. Let us raise each other up in the process of creating a better and more sustainable planet. Happy World Environment Day!

-Jayde 

WASH and Menstrual Hygiene Intern Coordinator

source:

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^[1] http://www.teamswachhbharat.in/get-the-facts.php

^[2] https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/how-open-defecation-affect-human-health-environment-and-solutions.php

^[3] http://swachhbharatmission.gov.in/sbmcms/index.htm

^[4] http://swachhbharatmission.gov.in/sbmcms/index.htm

^[5] https://sbm.gov.in/sbmReport/Report/Physical/SBM_VillageODFMarkStatus.aspx