MY STORY PART 2 Let me today, share with you a great time that I had with a friend. I call this person a friend because he has joined hand with me to savage our deteriorating environment and stressed up planet. So, let us go to the story I wanted to tell you. Yes!, I met this friend of mine (who before then I could not consider as a friend as he came as an antagonist to my personal passionate vision, which is to have a world that gives living hope and desirable growth and prosperity to its people in a healthy environment,). Nevertheless, after sharing the good-news according to the book of Environmental Sustainability and the chapter Zero Waste Society, I realized later through his works that his passion and enthusiasm to share the good-news that I informed you earlier sharing with him is absolutely an impeccable one. I want to believe that you are too my friend. Meaning you would awaken to this personal responsibility to living to our good-news of living in a way to sustain the environment and planet earth. Now! the story. I met my friend on a bus on my way to meet with one of G-YES partners. I asked my friend, what do you say about global calls to protect the environment and preserve our beautiful planet earth. He was silent a moment and then, begun to talk, I could not say anything really to the question that you asked, but I think you people are taking this thing of protecting the environment and preserving the planet too far especially you, since I have seen you on quite a number of occasions propagating this message. He continued I am not responsible to protecting the environment not to mention preserving the planet. The planet must take care of itself; after all, I am to dominate it. I cannot even pinpoint what I really derive from the environment you are to referring. If it is about keeping the environment clean, there are people in charge who must do that. Wow!’ I murmured. I went into silence a moment then begun to expound to my then antagonist but now a friend the real issue at stake in relation to protecting the environment and preserving our only planet. I needed to get something about him, which I could use to convey my message for him to relate. I did have that and I begun, Sir, I admire your frankness, boldness and clarity - important tools that we need as people to handle life as it unfolds itself to us. I admire your dressing, they look expensive. Now, to speak to your point of view, Sir, I would like to start with source of our everyday items and materials that we use including your nice dress. Many at times, it escapes us to pause to think about where these materials are coming from, where they would go after they are no more in our possession and are they everlasting or have limitation. Indeed, the dress, the shoes, the cosmetics, the medicine, the water that we drink, the food that we eat, the breath that we take and even our good health are products of our environment. Then I again asked him, ‘Sir, do you agree with me on what I have so far said. He answered, indeed, you have brought my attention to things that, as you had said, I have not hitherto taken my time to really consider. I said in continuation, ‘these are Ecosystem Services - services/resources/provisions that we derive from nature/environment to sustain our lives. Ecosystem Services are our life-support systems. Without them, we do not exist; air for example. Implicating that the old idea or view of us dominating nature was an old paradigm, which is now being fast replaced with a one that we know holds not only through our personal experience but through time-tested models. The new paradigm shift is man is part or constituent of the whole (earth) and all are interrelated/interconnected. This means that, action and inaction of any component of nature would have impact on the other. The impairment of any of the life-support systems as mentioned previously would definitely affect us. No wonder we have many flooding, diseases (respiratory and vector borne diseases especially), hunger, etc. Arguably, provisions or services of nature are not everlasting, though some seem to be renewable. However, advances in knowledge in recent times have shown that the capacity of renewable provisions can be impaired or become non-useful to us if we are not able to live according to some rules. Typical example here is water. However, really, water that can give us a good and sustainable life is clean water. This means that, if we pollute our water sources (including ground water) with chemicals that could be dangerous to our health, pollute our atmosphere, which could lead to change/shift in our hydrological systems/cycles and remove our forest and change landscapes, which are very crucial in regulating hydrological systems then, there is no issue of usefulness or water being a renewable resource. If we do not have water, what are we? We would be dead and forgotten! Thus, this is how personal the issue of protecting the environment and saving the planet is, if we even do not want to consider it as an entity that has right to exist just as we exist as humans. Regarding where materials go after they exit our possession, probably you have heard of this before that nothing vanishes as far as nature is concerned. What leaves one’s presence would end up somewhere, either degraded or non-degraded. This is basics of the law of conservation of matter - matter/materials can neither be created nor destroyed but can only be transferred or transformed from one state/form to another. This law is very important if we could understand the danger of our throwaway lifestyle, which is causing lot of damage to the environment and ourselves. Do you want evidence? Just walk our streets; you would see chocked gutters and streets with litter. Effects? There are lots of them! Many of our invaluable water bodies are drying up. Living organisms are demising. Increasing loss of properties as a result of flooding. Hospital birds are full of people suffering from malaria, which put strain on our scarce resource. If I may repeat what I have said earlier, we are gradually fastening tight a rope around our neck. We should and must hold our leaders accountable if they do not perform duties we have in them trusted. However, we must not forget to ask ourselves ways in which we are assisting them not to perform their roles. ’ I paused after having taken my friend through the lengthy but very important lecture. Ever since, my friends become ardent evangelist of our message and often invite me to join him as he shares this invaluable message with the people. I have already taken you as my friend even as you take your time to read this piece. However, I have a special appeal to you; our friendship needs to be a deeper and sustainable one. Hence, this is what you can do to establish that, well you may not be verbally talking to people about this (which, I think may not be too expensive for you to do though), but you can live by example. Anytime you approach a store to buy an item, you could ask yourself whether you need those extra wrapping. You can also begin to ask whether you need to keep buying extra attires, which you often throw away soon after. You may ask what about giving them to a neighbour or send them to the countryside to give to someone who has barely to put on. You cannot remember the last time that you have not removed packed spoilt food items from your fridge. You can donate the excess. If you cannot calculate by yourself, get assistance from experts such as our group (Global Youth in Environmental Sustenance) to help you calculate your carbon footprint and how you can reduce it, as well as, help you with water and energy saving tools (we can assist you with this if you can promise yourself of reading my future publications). I want to part you by leaving this quote with you ‘Money can be made working with the ‘earth.’(Daniel Forman).’ Written by: DIEUDONNE KWAME AGUDAH (MSc) [Founder & CEO of Global Youth in Environmental Sustenance (G-YES)] Email: [email protected]
Posted on: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 09:06:02 +0000
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