Keshav Bhatia, Academic Content Writer at Edumarz
Living in harmony with nature is not new to our country, we have had these values for thousands of years. The Sanskrit Phrase “Vasudhev Kutumbakum”, mentioned in Maha Upanishad of the Atharva Veda translates to the whole world is one family, this phrase binds nature and the whole humanity with one another.’
Our religious practices, crafts, festivals, food, beliefs and folklore carry the idea of living in harmony with nature.
We often hear about environmental problems, these are often of a worldwide level and we may feel that we will never have enough power to solve them, we feel helpless about these problems.
There are international laws and regulations and there are local and national laws and regulations for protection of the environment.
There are many national and international organisations working tirelessly to protect the environment.
Awareness about reckless exploitation of resources has been spread recently in our society, and the impact of awareness is that usually a step is taken.
The Ganga Action plan was started in 1985 to save the river Ganga from pollution and improve the water quality, because the water quality had deteriorated very badly over the years due to reckless dumping of garbage, untreated human sewage, unburnt corpses and dumping of chemical effluents. Large sections of the river had died(no presence of aquatic life) due to toxicity.
The Union government approved the Namami Gange project, as a flagship program in June 2014. It is an integrated Conservation Mission and it will serve two purposes: one, it will reduce pollution in the Ganga river, two, it will focus on rejuvenation of the river.
National Mission for Clean Ganga(NMCG) is Namami Gange’s implementation wing, it was set up in October 2016.
Here’s a graph of faecal coliform in the river ganga, coliform is naturally found in the human body, in the intestines to be specific, it’s presence in water indicates the bio contamination of the water and the number of disease causing microorganisms it might have.
Refuse: refuse to buy or take what you don’t need, don’t buy things that harm the environment
Reduce: Use less, don’t waste food, water or electricity
Reuse: Use the things you buy again and again, use them, for example, glass jam bottles can be washed after use and pickles or spices can be stored in them
Repurpose: when we use a product for another purpose than its original intended purpose after it can’t be used for the original purpose anymore. For example, using old t-shirt for cleaning and crockery with broken handles or cracked crockery used as a bird feeder or plant pot
Recycle: An area’s Plastic, paper, glass and metal is recycled to make required stuff instead of making stuff by extracting fresh, this requires segregation of waste to be done first.
Our Everyday Choices can be environmentally friendly
Our choices may make immediate, long-term or long ranging impact on the environment.
Sustainable development is economically friendly in the long- term as it encourages forms of growth that focus on meeting current basic human needs while preserving resources for the needs of the coming generations. There can be no long term healthy economic development without environmental conservation.
Sustainable development requires people to be more perceptive about the condition of the environment and the socio-economic reality around them. It all depends on the readiness of each person to bring a change in the rate of use or the way they use natural resources.