Friday, June 5, 2009

Protect the Environment


We live in a wonderful and lovely planet. It has the most beautiful of mountains, lovely valleys and gardens, green and thick tropical forests, vast expanses of desert land, snow covered hills, lovely lakes & rivers and the most exotic and wonderful creatures inhabiting it. It would take several lifetimes to explore and fully enjoy the lovely planet we were born in. It is our home and it belongs to all of us.

When something belongs to us, what do we do with it? We take care, protect it, grow it, nourish it, and take pride in showing it off to everyone, right? So, if we have to take care of our planet, our environment which belongs to us, what should we do? The first and most important thing is to treat it as our own. Yes, we should not look at the planet as belonging to someone else and give up our rights to it. We should strongly believe it to be ours and fiercely protect it.

Like the Bishnoi tribals in Rajasthan for whom the wild life is almost divine - they revere it, the love it and would even give up their lives to protect it. I can vividly recollect the picture of a tribal woman who was captured on camera breast feeding an orphaned doe. She treated it as her own child. That is the spirit with which we need to care for our environment.

And why not? We get everything from the environment. If we pollute it, destroy it or spoil it, who will be the loser? When it fails to rain or the summers are excessively hot who suffers? When unnatural calamities like floods, typhoons and earthquakes occur, who gets impacted? When food production dwindles who is affected? It is us - whether directly or indirectly, whether we accept it or deny it.

We cannot be silent spectators to the destruction of our environment. We cannot look the other way when someone else is trying to destroy our beautiful planet. We have to conscious of our every action or inaction and its impact on the environment. Lets us pledge to commit ourselves to improving the quality of our planet by saving and increasing the green cover, reducing pollution and waste, protecting wildlife and preventing anyone from causing damage to our lovely planet.

5 comments:

anupama said...

dear vish,
your post is very informative and encouraging.i've read about the love of Rajasthanis'towards enviornment.first we should have the sense of belongingness.
we have to leave a better world for the forthcoming generation and we must be greatful to our forefathers for giving us a beautiful world to live in.
happy blogging
sasneham,
anu

Vijay V said...

Sir,
your post on preserving our nature in very much informative and i don't have words to express my gratitude for considering my words in writing a blog to preserve nature.
I share this blog with my friends who are working on our own small ways to preserve our nature. The message ll defenitly have an impact in all of us.

regards
Vijay.V.

Anonymous said...

vish: thank you for the article; most relevant for the times. dee put something up on the community you mention -- the 'bishnois'. she's working on a few projects here on the subject as well. do keep up the good work of writing for a better world.
best,
arnab
http://deezden.blogspot.com/search?q=bishnoi

Dithi said...

Dear Vish,

This is such a great post, indeed. The special mention of the Bishnois is so appropriate here as they were the very first environmentalists in India. The story of Amrita Devi (back in 1730), of how she laid down her life to start the Chipko movement is incredible. Each one of us need to engage and commit to this value, to respect and protect our environment.

(Thank you for your encouragement and support.)

Regards,

Dithi.

Ramapriya said...

Everything that we purchase or consume leaves a huge dent on mother earth and impacts survival of our fellow being. I recently read the amount of acid used to purify one gram of gold and how the effluents spoil the soil and make it unusable for cultivation. Mines eat up a lot of agricultural and forest land. Also, how by digging oil wells in forests, river valleys and ocean beds, we disturb the natural habitat of millions of living things, all for satisfying human greed.