From time immemorial, much responsibility has been placed on man to care and protect his environment and to make it worth habitating and living. With these responsibilities placed on us humans, so much is expected of us, especially in this age of industrial activities.
The 5th of June is set aside to mark and celebrate World Environment Day. It is a day set aside to create awareness, enlightenment and raise the consciousness of people and their actions on the environment. It is a day that offers citizens across the globe and continents the opportunity to participate in having better understanding to make the environment safe for humans to live. This day is set aside to promote much interest and conversation about our environment with the aim to preserve and sustain the environment. It has been marked annually since June 5, 1973. The United Nation (UN) named 5 June as international world environment day at Stockholm in 1972.
The World Environment Day, also called Eco Day, is the largest global event that is marked and celebrated. It is the United Nations principal vehicle for encouraging, awareness and to raise consciousness for positive actions and participation in the environment.
This year’s theme which is; “Reimagine, Reinstate and Restore calls for collective, transformative action on a global scale to reimagine, reinstate and restore our planet/environment.
This year 2022 is a holistic milestone for the United Nations environment community to make us appreciate the environment and change our lifestyle towards restoring the environment.
We need our environment and our environment needs us. The environment is one aspect of God’s gift to humans that we can’t ignore. We breathe and carry out every activity in the environment. How we live, care and protect the environment should be deliberate and intentional by us. This implies the ability and capacity to manage our waste and control pollution in the environment and avoid abuse of the environment.
Everybody is ultimately responsible for keeping the environment clean. We should be accountable for the environment. The government is solely responsible and has a pivotal role for giving us a sense of direction, provision of waste bins, rules, laws and regulations on how to maintain and control our waste and environment.
We have the responsibility to ensure that our environment is clean by dumping refuse and waste products inside the waste bins at the designated refuse/waste dumpsites. Government and their agencies in charge of evacuating the waste products at dumpsites should live up to their expectations and responsibilities by being responsive, proactive, swift in action to evacuate the waste and refuse on a daily basis.
Both the citizens and the government should have the consciousness and awareness to keep the environment clean and neat. Refuse and waste products should not be dumped indiscriminately on the road sides and gutters to avoid blocking of gutters and flooding during the rainy season.
Indiscriminate dumping of refuse, waste products, open defecation and lack of proper waste management and evacuation by the government have severe health challenges resulting from foul odour and stench that ooze out from such wastes. People should change their mentality and attitude by not destroying and polluting the environment.
We all need to live a quality and healthy life. A healthy nation is a progressive nation. As we mark the World Environment Day, it’s important that we think best about a clean, neat, healthy nation and states that are free from catastrophic health hazards, health challenges and crises.
We should think best on how to Re-imagine, Re-instate and Restore our environment.
Udom Dominic Bassey writes via [email protected]
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