POBNEWS24, Dhaka June 5, 2022 : World Environment Day has been observed on 5 June every year since 1984 under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Program. The theme of this year’s ‘World Environment Day’ is ‘Only One Earth’, which in Bengali stands for ‘Only One World’. This year’s organizer is Sweden. Note that the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment was held by the United Nations in 1982. And the slogan of that conference was the same. Fifty years after the Stockholm Conference in 1972, this fact still applies today, and it needs to be reminded again and again — the planet is our only home.
On this occasion, I went to the UN website and saw that the role was written in the form of many verses at the beginning;
There are billions of galaxies in the universe,
there are billions of planets in our galaxy,
but there is only one ‘Earth’ .
Let’s all take care of it together.
Among the billions of stars in the universe, our home is in the ‘solar system’, that is, the ‘Earth’ is one of the planets that revolve around the star called the Sun. But so far no planet other than ‘Earth’ is suitable for animal habitation. Considering the temperature, there is a clear explanation. Considering the closest distance from the Sun, Venus is the first planet on Earth, and Mars is the next. Interestingly, the three planets have temperatures of Venus (about 500 সে C), Earth (about 15 সে C) and Mars (about minus 50 সে C). Considering the distance from the sun, the temperatures of all the other planets increase or decrease respectively, which means that only the temperature of the earth in the solar system is habitable for animals, and no one else. No other planet has all the elements needed to sustain life.
The rate of urbanization in the country is increasing rapidly. As a result of unplanned urbanization, Dhaka has already been ranked among the most uninhabitable cities in the world by international standards several times, which is a shame. If the cities are not built in a planned manner at the district level now, most of them will be like Dhaka.
But even then, we all have to run a lot of propaganda to establish the idea of ’one world’ and all of us living in this same world. Going from village to town, the people of a village feel like their own, anyone in their own country feels like their own in distant exile, in the same way no matter what village, upazila or district they belong to. But since we have not traveled from this earth to any other planet, this opportunity has never come to us as we are the inhabitants of the same planet, whose name is ‘Earth’.
Again, in this same world, our connection with each other is also tied with the same thread. Various theories and formulas have also been introduced to establish this concept in ecology. The concept of ‘environmental unity’ states that the whole world is a ‘continuous’ or single entity. For a better explanation of the concept I would rather recall a story from my childhood, perhaps an English book in Class Seven.
Once the different parts of the body started a movement against the ‘face’ on the pretext that everyone else does so much work, and the face just sits and eats. Then the hands, feet and head all stopped working. As a result, there is no food in the mouth, and at the same time, the whole body and various organs became weak and incapacitated. Then they realized that they were all different parts of the same body, not different. The British environmentalist James Lovelock named another theory after the Greek goddess Gaia, known as the Gaia Hypothesis. It goes on to say that the whole world is in fact a single living entity. The forests are like its lungs or the rivers are like its arteries, veins and sub-veins etc.
In the context of 2022, on the occasion of World Environment Day, the United Nations is considering at least three issues of the present world with utmost importance;
1. The climate is heating up so fast that it is almost impossible for humans and nature to adapt;
2. An estimated one million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction due to habitat loss and other pressures;
3. Pollution continues to poison our soil, water and air.
In fact, the only way to get out of this predicament is to make our economy and society more integrated with nature and more inclusive and fair. Once this is confirmed, we can expect longevity on this only habitable planet. And so, in addition to the main theme, the emphasis on ‘sustainable living in harmony with nature’ as an underlying concept is also being considered as the main theme of this year’s Environment Day.
