World Environment Day ! TOGETHER WE CAN ACT, TOGETHER WE CAN PROTECT

TOGETHER WE CAN ACT, TOGETHER WE CAN PROTECT

FOR NATURE: JUNE 5, WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL DAY

“I CAN FIND GOD IN NATURE, IN ANIMALS, IN BIRDS, AND THE ENVIRONMENT” – PAT BUCKLEY

Celebrated every year on June 5^th to stress on the importance of the active participation in conserving the environment, WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY is celebrated to emphasis on sustain living in the age of indiscriminate waste production. Since 1974, it has been 45 years and celebrated every year on 5^th June for raising awareness on emerging issues such as global warming, wildlife crime, human overpopulation and action towards protection of our environment. .It is hosted every year by a different city and commemorated with an international exposition through the week of June 5.

World Environment Day is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations (UN) stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action towards improving the environment. This observance also provides an opportunity to sign or ratify international environmental conventions. The main colors featured in many promotions for this event are natural colors depicting nature, the Earth and its natural resources. Images of natural Earth’s features, such as mountains, beaches, rivers, and pictures of flora and fauna, including fern and leaves, are used to promote campaigns supporting the day.

Each year the celebrations focus on a particular problem. Over the last ten years key features have included wildlife, forests and plastic waste, air pollution and other things. Each issue have a slogan like “raise your voice, not sea level”, “Think, eat, save”. Hashtags have also become important for the campaigns too.

According to the United Nations, “With 1 million species facing extinction, there has never been a more important time to focus on biodiversity.”For 2020, the theme for World Environment Day is ‘Celebrate Biodiversity’, which, as per the United Nations, a concern that is both urgent and existential. Citing the recent events taking place in Brazil, the US, Australia, Africa and the global COVID-19 pandemic, it said it all demonstrates the interdependence of humans and the webs of life, in which they exist.As has been happening every year, Colombia has this year been chosen as the country to host the World Environment Day 2020 event in collaboration with Germany. Last year it had been hosted by China, and the theme had been ‘Beat Air pollution’.

Biodiversity is the foundation that supports life on land and water below.Our planet comprises of living and non-living things, and each has a role to play in keeping the environment safe. When the environment is clean, people, animals and plants thrive, and we as humans have to ensure that we keep it that way.

. As we approach the World Environment Day on June 5, it is a time to reflect on our relationship with Nature and surroundings, wake up to the urgency of the climate crisis and focus on the planet’s long-term survival instead of plundering it for short-term profits. 

These days when the world is either freezing or melting or there is environmental exceptional times like COVID-19, the situation does look bleak, but there is hope and together we can act. In our country where industrialization is rapid and cost of development is often harming the environment, states like Kerala has planted more than one crore plant saplings. It is important that we do our part too by implementing things that we are taught since childhood. It is important that we conserve energy and educate ourselves and others too. The little things like following the three R’s to conserve natural resources , volunteering for cleanups in your locality, closing the running tap whenever you see one, switching of the lights in your classrooms, in your homes, shopping wisely and using cloth bags , also planting a tree and use of bicycles for a short distance.

So, this environment day, let us pledge to make a cleaner and greener environment and let us be more responsible. Let us pledge to make our environment so lively, so vibrant and so beautiful. Let us join hands to save our planet. We are planting sapling,are you?

THE NATURE IS SENDING A MESSAGE

To care for ourselves we must care for nature.

-Pooja Sarkar

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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