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Observance of the World Environment Day on 4th June 2021

The World Environment Day, which is celebrated on 5th June every year, was observed by Bahai Academy on 4th June 2021. The Pan-India Network of Mentors from across the country and the Global Unity Campaigners along with more teachers and students from higher academic institutions and other educational organizations, industries and others, about 300 participants in total, attended the program. Prin. Dr. Sanjay Chakane, Member of the Management Council and Senate of SP Pune University, welcomed the speakers and the participants. 

Prin. Dr. Sanjay Chakane, Member of the Management Council and Senate Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune And the Bahai Academy Advisory  Committee

He said, "In 1972, the UN General Assembly designated 5 June as World Environment Day (WED). The first celebration, under the slogan “Only One Earth” took place in 1974."  His welcome note was followed by Lesan Azadi, Director of the Bahai Academy, who gave the opening remarks.

Lesan Azadi, Director, Bahai Academy, Panchgani Opening Remarks

Azadi said," We are the generation of the era of climate change.  Never before it has been so urgent as today to look at and discuss the destiny of mankind, a frightening image of the future we wish it will never happen. Climate change that earlier  was only a scientific debate in now being addressed more holistically from cultural, social, and political perspectives. And more so it is now to be discussed from the moral and spiritual perspectives too.  The human family today shares one global destiny in one global homeland. This is a truth the implications of which can no longer be ignored. We therefore organized this occasion to discuss how duties toward the collective trust that is our shared planet can be most effectively discharged. According to the Bahai  International Community Office at the United Nations:

“Historically, humanity_s growing impact on the climate was closely tied to remarkable advances in industry and production. Placing our on-going advancement on more ecologically sustainable foundations will require a similarly robust spirit of ingenuity and intellectual inquiry. The scale of innovation needed will require a vast expansion in scientific and technological endeavour, not merely on the part of select populations, but across all segments of the global community. The challenges ahead will demand the generation, application, and diffusion of knowledge by all the earth_s inhabitants and in light of our shared planetary future.” (https://www.bic.org/statements/united-nations-climate-change-conference-lima-peru)

We as academic fraternity bear a responsibility towards this: To research and innovate. But it is not just limited to us. According to Amitav Ghosh in The Great Derangement, “When future generations look back upon the Great Derangement they will certainly blame the leaders and politicians of this time for their failure to address the climate crisis. But they may well hold artists and writers equally culpable—for the imagining of possibilities is not, after all, the job of politicians and bureaucrats.” (p.181) For example 3rd June was declared by the UN as the World Bicycle Day. Bicycle is affordable, reliable and eco-friendly. Can our institutions campuses be only Bicycling and tricycles campuses not allowing vehicles to run?

Azadi noted, the observance of the World Environment Day was the second joint activity of The Pan India Mentors Network and the Global Unity Campaigners to observance  the UN_s World Environment Day. The participants were invited to initiate activities on 5th June to promote the theme of this Day  "Reimagine. Recreate. Restore" as declared by the UNO.

Speech by Dr. Laurent Mesbah:

Dr. Laurent Mesbah Expert For The EU And The UN (Protected Areas And Biodiversity Conservation), Faculty, Wilmette Institute, USA Topic: Resetting our Relation with Nature

I am a member of the governing board of the international environment forum, which is a Bahai inspired organization, which is dealing mainly with a policy making on environmental issues.

The question we want to ask here is what is our relation with nature as human beings? When I asked my students and I said, imagine if nature was your friend on Facebook, what would you write, what kind of relationship you have? Is it a love relationship? Are you in love with nature, or is it, and then they started thinking and they said; in fact, it is complicated. I would write it is complicated: we have a complicated relationship with nature.

We have a love but at the same time our relationship is not easy. If we asked the question to someone who lives in a city in urban village or in a village, it will be a different answer; and if we ask indigenous person living in the forest in Papa New Guinea, or if I ask a New Yorker, or one commuting for work in the metro, that would be a different answer. And if I ask a farmer in India, taking care of his cow, it is all different than an Indian who is a businessman, working in Mumbai. It would be different for someone who is in contact with plants and animals since childhood, and for someone who spends most of his time in an apartment in concrete building or for a park ranger in Kenya, and a car assemblage factory worker in China. So we all have different experiences with nature.

And, but has it always been like that with us humans? Is our relationship with nature the same now, as it was in the past? And we are very fortunate to be on this planet Earth. That is the only planet we know so far, which has been blessed to have life appearing on this planet. More than 3 billion years ago first forms of life appeared in a very primitive way such as bacteria agley mono cellular, evolved, eventually, in all the diversity of life that we know on this planet. And so life appeared and took place and colonized every part of this planet. We can find life in the air, in the ocean, on the land in different forms, beautiful and diverse forms that we have mushroom a part of the fungus,  insect,  fish, mammals, reptiles, birds, and plants, of course, as well as our God appeared first. Together with bacteria, they evolve into more evolved plants but they are still the main producers on the planet, they are able to produce food for the whole web of life; they are at the bottom of the food chain, like plantains in the oceans. And they also have been adapting to different climates, different conditions.  And trees are those that can actually accumulate these energy and material and turn energy of the sun into material, but also into food, adapting to different climates around the world, being able to survive harsh winter and wait for the spring.

We have a diversity of animals. We have mammals such as elephants, gigantic, very strong, just able to take all this energy only from plants based food, which is an example that you can actually be very strong; you do not have to be carnivore to be strong and evolution also is very interesting.  It is fascinating to see how life evolve on Earth, taking different shapes, different creativity, we see the mammals who used to be on land went back into the ocean and took the shape of a fish, and which is actually still a mammal but gigantic; imagine the size of your baby thousand kilograms.

And this is a result of evolution, and they are part of the ecosystem. They actually are essential part of the food chain in the oceans. We have seen also that they  actually contribute to reduce climate change because with their food they actually fertilize the ocean so that plantains can grow and then other forms of life can also follow this food chain. So they actually contribute to absorbing greenhouse gases.

So humans have also colonized every corner of the earth and you can see them here in the valley in soluble where I live. Every place on earth we are present. And we are part of this evolution so we evolved; what is our place in this story of the evolution?

And we are able to dominate all the species; we are somehow in the top of the food chain, so what is our responsibility? We do have an important responsibility as we have a very strong impact on the planet. We actually are the species that has the most impact. And what we call an ecological footprint, we are having strong put footprints on the ecosystems   on the land on the on the oceans, and unfortunately we have been using so much resources we continue to use more and more resources; but we are not able to renew these resources as we use them faster than they can renew themselves. So we are going beyond the capacity of the earth. We have already gone beyond as we are using more than one planet, and therefore we are going on a clearly unsustainable path. We have to see how can we actually go back to a more sustainable way of living.

And as the UN Development report indicates in 2020 ““Though humanity has achieved incredible progress, we have taken the Earth for granted, destabilizing the very systems upon which we rely for survival”. In addition, to hear a statement from the international environment forum ““If human activities are the cause of natural degradations threatening the diversity of life to the extent of extinction of species and collapse of ecosystems, how does our moral responsibility towards our environment but also for our own survival express itself in ensuring a livable future on this planet ?” Clearly our relationship with nature needs to be reset. There has to be a change: what change do we need to do and how do we do it? What is the place of humans in the world of creation, what is the purpose of humans in this planet? Why are we here what is the purpose of life? That is not a new question of course. But it is becoming more urgent now than before.

In his concluding remarks Dr. Mesbah said, nature has been and continues to be a source of inspiration for the arts and sciences. Beyond functionality and structure, nature and the living world can also be a source of inspiration for the intricate and balanced relationships between species and the different components of the ecosystem. This could very well be an inspiration for more just and efficient economic and social systems. ( The Eco Principle: https://bahai-library.com/vickers_dahl_eco_principle)

Prof. Dr. Nitin Karmalkar, Honble Vice-Chancellor ,  Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune The Chief Guest of the Programme Topic: Ecosystem Restoration

From the previous speaker you understood that this is the only liveable planet or Living Planet Earth is only living planet in the entire solar system. And it is a very dynamic processes.  When we speak about the planet Earth obviously, we speak about actually four different spheres. It is a  "lithosphere" (land), "hydrosphere" (water), "biosphere" (living things), and "atmosphere" (air), and the seamless balancing side;  balancing kind of an interaction among these. And what is called as an ecosystem, there is a liveable habitat indigenous to that particular region asset, whether it is land, or whether it is bird species or animal. But that all depend upon basically the balancing kind of interaction that is happening among these four different spheres.

We, the human being, have to a great extent exploited every sphere of it. And we have created imbalance from great destruction or degradation of these different ecosystems. So ecosystem is nothing else but basically, as I said, ocean is an ecosystem, then land is an ecosystem, within the land again there can be variation-- the grassland is different, the peat-land is different, the forest is different. So each individual has its own ecosystem asset, and once a particular thing gets disturbed obviously you find a devastating effect on the ecosystem.

So, basically, what are we trying to do, you know, we call logical restorations ecological restoration -- the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded damaged or destroyed. So, human beings to a great extent are responsible. For the development of society or for any developmental purpose, any developmental project, the first thing that we do is actually extract the resources that are available, that it is land with water, or anything else. And that is how we start actually degrading the ecosystem. And we are responsible for this. Of course it is required, especially for very different purpose of development it is necessary, but at the same time, we are to see that how best we can maintain balances.

So another definition of the restoration of ecology is the full or partial replacement of biological populations, and or their habitats, that have been extinguished or diminished.

Now, as I said, sometimes the human being, to a great extent, are responsible for the destruction, but sometimes it happens due to some natural processes. For example, I have been a student of geology, and I have worked in geology field for more than four decades. So I have travelled extensively. So basically, when we are in Maharashtra especially, and we all see a typical kind of a rough patch in the length and breadth of this particular state, only one single kind of rock that exists. And this is a product of a gigantic volcanic activity that took place 65 million years ago.

And then, this particular activity, volcanic activity, basically threw, I would say, tons of carbon dioxide. Or, rather, kilo cubic metres of carbon dioxide have been actually given out during this particular period, which continued for more than one million years. And throughout this particular time span, obviously, this particular activity gave a severe blow to the ecological stability of the entire planet, not alone the Indian part, but worldwide. Perhaps the effects must have been seen and what happened basically, to the kind of habitat that was present during that particular time. We all have seen the dinosaurs, which during the Jurassic Period they got completely extinct.

The output of this volcanic eruption is not lava alone, but such kind of poisonous gases that get injected into the atmosphere, as well as along with that certain amount of debris we call volcanic ash, that also get transported for more than 10 kilometres, and then because of the wind it reaches a larger area to form a temporary kind of blanket, and the effect is basically reaches the earth planet, and are equally important for our living. So altogether the net effect of all these to a great extent was responsible for the extinction of dinosaurs and many more such spices.

So this is a very natural process. But besides that many times, you can have the hurricanes, floods, all those different natural process also sometimes destroy the ecosystem. So basically it is not man alone, but man is mostly responsible.

To watch the full programme and access full speeches please visit: https://youtu.be/TsoG7RazFaw

Report of the activities carried out by some of the participants of the World Environment Day Programme.

To read the summary of all the above activities please download the attached PDF Document.