It was Wendell Berry who said “the earth is what we all have in common.” Then surely it isn’t fair for one group to take more than their share’s worth. This greed, over the years, has slowly destroyed the luscious green foliage, the tall icebergs, the bountiful soil; basically, all the things that give our earth life.
In 1972, the attendees of the Stockholm Convention realized that this would turn out to be a huge problem in the coming years, and so, as a solution, they declared the 5th of June as ‘World Environment Day.’ The celebrations started in 1974, with the theme of ‘Only One Earth.’ Then, in 1988, different countries started hosting ‘World Environment Day’, starting with Bangkok’s ‘Environment First, Development Last’ theme. This year, Pakistan, as the host country, is calling attention to our ecosystems; theme- ‘Generation Restoration.’
Ecosystems are these majestic systems of interaction between living and non-living things. It is where plants are touched by sunlight and roots hold soil together; its where animals give birth to young ones and others become food for these young ones; its where the rain comes to alleviate dryness and where winds come to carry species everywhere- it is truly a place of magic.
In fact, ecosystems are so magical that they alone sustain over 80% of all living things. And the remaining 20% are indirectly benefitted by them. Ecosystems have enough resource to add to half of global GDP- they offer pastoral jobs to 2 billion people, they control 30% of all carbon emissions by trapping them in peat, they control temperatures with the help of trees…the list is endless!
‘World Environment Day’, this year, aims to restore ecosystems by reimagining, recreating and restoring nature. At MMG, we believe that these three processes require you to go one step further from the conventional ‘reuse, reduce, recycle’- we also must ‘replenish and regrow’. Only if we begin practicing little things now, can we give to future generations a similar planet to what we inherited; after all, “the earth is what we all have in common.”
