Some childhood memories never fade. One of mine is of a crystal-clear stream outside our house where we bathed, washed, and drank. It was alive and integral to our daily life. Today, that same stream has been reduced to a narrow drain carrying grey wastewater from kitchens and bathrooms.
Sadly, this is not an isolated story. Across Kashmir, streams, springs and water channels are increasingly choking under sewage, garbage and encroachment.
Our collective neglect also shows up in unexpected places. At a recent wedding feast in a nearby village, I watched guests enjoy a grand celebration, only for large amounts of food waste and disposable material to be dumped along the roadside afterwards. We spend generously to make our personal events beautiful, yet pay little attention to the environmental mess left in their wake.
Why do we care so much about celebrating, but so little about the environment in which we live?
As Abraham Lincoln argued in 1854, government should do for people what they cannot do, or cannot do as well, for themselves, while individuals should take responsibility for what they can do on their own. This principle is particularly relevant to environmental protection.
The government certainly has a responsibility to provide functioning sewage systems, waste management, drainage infrastructure and effective protection for wetlands and water bodies. But a government can clean a stream repeatedly, and still fail if citizens continue to treat it as a dumping ground.
Our relationship with nature is reciprocal. When we protect it, it sustains us with clean water, healthy ecosystems and natural protection against environmental hazards. When we pollute and degrade it, the consequences eventually return to our health, safety and future.
Garbage can block drainage channels, while encroachment and degradation of natural waterways can reduce their capacity to carry rainwater. During intense rainfall, these conditions can increase waterlogging and flood risks. At the same time, pollution of streams and springs threatens Kashmir’s long-term water security.
We have gradually normalised the unacceptable: streams become drains, drains become dumps, and roadsides become event-waste sites.
Nature has not failed us; we have weakened the natural systems that once protected us.
The solution requires both government action and public responsibility. Authorities must strengthen waste collection, sewage treatment, drainage maintenance and protection of water bodies. Citizens, meanwhile, must stop treating natural water channels and roadsides as convenient dumping grounds and must ensure that waste generated during marriages and other gatherings is properly collected and disposed of.
My childhood stream may never fully recover. But its decline should force us to ask a simple question:
What kind of environment are we leaving behind for the next generation?
Protecting it is not someone else’s job. It begins with each of us.
The author is an environmental science researcher and educator.