BY: Ishrat Sakii
The ultimate test of man’s conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard. Gaylord Nelson
Our planet is 4.5billion years old and humans are on this planet since 1,40,000 years – The smartest species on earth too smart for own good and look what we have done. We have made nuclear weapons in the conquest to conquer each other. We have made luxurious cars and aircrafts, industries and factories for better economies. We built tallest buildings !Yes we are developing more than ever before, we are cutting more trees than ever before, more carbon in the atmosphere than ever before, more pollution than ever before, more environmental destruction than ever before, more forest fires than ever before, more earthquakes than ever before, more droughts than ever before, more global warming than ever before, more diseases than ever before. Yes, we are smarter than ever before.
Since 1970s earth’s population doubled and consumption has increased by 45% per capita. Over the last 50 years nature’s capacity to support us has plummeted. Air and water quality is worsening, soils are depleting, crops are short of pollinators. About 77% of rivers longer than 10000km no longer flow freely from source to sea.
Coral cover on reefs has nearly halved in the past 150 years and is predicted to disappear completely within the next 80 years. Coral reefs are home to some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. Wild animals are being hunted to extinction for bush meat, ivory or medicinal products. At sea, huge industrial fishing boats equipped with bottom -trawling or purse-seine nets clean put entire fish population. Species rich wild forests are being destroyed especially in the tropics often to make way for cattle ranching soybean or palm oil plantations or other agricultural monocultures. Today about 30% of the planet’s land is covered by forests which is about half and much as before agriculture got started around 11,000 years ago. About 7.3 million hectares of forests are destroyed each year, mostly in tropics. Tropical forests used to cover about 10% of the planet’s land area, they are now down to 6 or 7 %.
Overgrazing monoculture, planting erosion, soil compaction, over exposure to pollutants, land use conversion — there is a long list how the soil is being damaged. About 12 million hectares of farmland a year gets seriously degraded.
Roughly one-third of the food production in the world for human consumption every year approximately 1.3 billion tonnes gets lost or wasted because of increased heat, droughts and insect outbreaks all linked to climate change.
Its right to say that Allah remind us that He is patient with us, our mistakes and allows us to progress without taking us to account while we still intend or are capable of improving ourselves. But this patience will not long last. He will surely held us accountable and our all bad deeds will pay us back. All of us make mistakes and alter like a small child learning to walk. We can’t start out by running, it takes time and effort to get to the point where we are comfortable on our own feet. So following are the measures we can take to reshape and recover our lost glory and save our earth for the future generations.
We have to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. Reduce emissions from agriculture, change industrial process. conserve what’s left of natural forests and restore degraded areas by replacing with native tree species. Concerted efforts need to be made to prevent further loss of biodiversity, protecting and restoring habitat is one issue and protecting against poaching and wildlife trade is another.
Experience has shown that when women are empowered to control their own reproduction and gain access to education and basic social services, the average number of births per women drops precipitously. Some right networked aid systems could bring women out of the extreme poverty even in countries where state-level governance remains abysmal.
- The writer is a poet and BA student at Kashmir University. She can be reached at ishratsakii97@gmail.com.
