THE World Environment Day, one of the biggest and most significant annual global events was observed in Bangladesh as elsewhere around the globe on Saturday (June 5) to generate awareness among people to protect the environment from various challenges the world faces today.
The UN Assembly first established the day in 1972 in the Stockholm Conference on the human environment. The day was first observed in 1974 in the United States with the theme ‘Only One Earth’. Since then, various host countries have been observing the day allowing people an opportunity to join an important platform where they can promote development goals, particularly those linked to the environment.
The theme of this year’s World Environment Day is ‘Reimagine, Recreate, Restore’ as this year marks the beginning of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. In line with this, Pakistan was selected as the host of World Environment Day 2021 to uphold the theme in all effective manners to recover the ecosystems. World Environment Day 2020 was hosted by Colombia with the theme ‘Celebrate Biodiversity’.
When the thrust for preserving nature has become a movement across the world, the government and non-government actors in Bangladesh are in competition to destroy nature on various fronts for a plethora of excuses. The natural shield from cyclone and other calamities, the Sundarbans is now under existential crisis. The government is constructing a coal-fired Rampal power station near the Sundarbans that might be responsible for destroying its pristine beauty and bio-diversity. UNESCO has recognized Sundarbans as the World Heritage Site. Many environmentalists have already raised their voices and organized people to compel the government to abandon the power plant to protect nature for the next generation. But it went on the deaf ear.
Similarly, powerful local leaders and big traders have occupied the beds of Brahmaputra, Meghna, Shitalakshya and Dhaleshwari rivers. Big plants and big factories have been built at many places. Fact remains, experts have warned that by the middle of this century South Asian countries, including Bangladesh, would be the hardest hit in the world. By the next 30 years, perhaps 200-300 million people from South Asia will be forced to move elsewhere to live.
Time has arrived for us to take pragmatic initiatives to address the effects of climate change. The diversity and vitality of natural ecosystems that include everything from forests and farmlands to coasts, freshwater, oceans should be protected from mindless destruction.
