In 1970, 20 million people in the USA came out from their home to take part in the street, college campuses and hundreds of cities to protest ignorance to the environment and to shape the new plan for environmental protection.
Since then the earth day has been observed across the world to resolve environmental issues, and to make aware about environments, it’s important and influence policymakers to work for environmental conservations. And “Earth day continues to hold major international significance: In 2016, the United Nations chose the Earth Day as the day when the historic Paris Agreement on climate change was signed into force”.
This year world celebrating 50th anniversary of the earth day with the theme of “climate action”. The theme emphasizes the scope of actions to reduce environmental issues.
Since the very beginning of the civilization people only thought about their need, we’re happy to spoil natural resources for their requirement omitting common need. There is a theory in natural resource management called “The tragedy of the commons, is a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action”.
In the present earth, similarly, we are using forest, soil, water minerals and inhaling air for our benefit. Many cases we are avoiding our roles to protect all these elements and keep all these elements protected and safe for others.
Every day a person inhale 11000 litters air, ad-libitum solar energy, marine resources from the sea, and many other ecosystem services, but did we ever think about their conservations? No, never, because those are the properties not belongs to the individual thus, they face the tragedy of commons.
In the last 40 years, 58% of wildlife has been lost from the earth, since 1990 every year we are losing forest size with equal size of South Africa. And due to this massive destruction of all-natural resources interactions between wild fauna and human are increasing day by day and creating natural disasters like COVID-19.
The outbreak of the pandemic diseases in present situations indicates that we are still lagging to bring a balance between all living beings of the earth. This imbalance creating the scope of future natural disasters, pandemic and many other global threats for human society.
We just need to understand the environmental problems, let it know others and came forward to resolve these. The earth has equal right to live for everyone, a human is not the only species that’s should live in the earth, for the need of human all other species and the natural system should be protected.
A balance must be needed among all elements of the earth to lead the earth with a harmonic pace. In the current society, we reluctant to understand any issues before it happens and the current situations are one of them.
Though policymakers meet on climate action many cases they are not in the same opinions despite climate change and environmental issues is a global problem. In line with that many issues have gone without taking any action. For that, we should come forward and raise our voices before any devastating situations come again like COVID-19. And , for these type of action, global earth day has been celebrating every year to raise your voices.
No matter where you are, you can make a difference. And you’re not alone, because together, we can save the Earth. While the coronavirus may force us to keep our distance, it will not force us to keep our voices down. The only thing that can save the earth is a balance between all element and species of the earth.
Author: PhD Scholar, Chinese Academy of Sciences
