As a part of the Earth Day Celebrations various NGO’s will be coming together for a walk on Friday at the Beach Road. Observing Earth Day, environmental experts and members of various NGOs reportedly voiced out their opinions that the word ‘development’ is always like a coin with two sides. They stated that in the enthusiasm to provide employment to jobless youth by building industries and enhancing the economic development of the country, they are depleting the natural resources by cutting down forests and polluting water bodies for industrial purposes. It is also known that in search of economic development, the authorities have missed the idea of holistic development and are severely impacting the environment.
A Zoology Department professor from Andhra University, C Manjulatha reportedly stated that the forest wealth in the city has rapidly dwindled in the last three decades. She also said that, “We have lost about 60% of the Forest cover, in the quest to build concrete jungle. The wetlands have shrunk to 1.07 sq km from 13.44 sq km as recorded in 1974.” The Earth Day is going to be celebrated on Saturday across 192 countries, the two themes being ‘Environmental and Climate Literacy’ for the common man and ‘March for Science’ for the scientist and research community.
JV Ratnam of Green Climate, while addressing a gathering said that globally deforestation has been a major issue and only 6.2 million sq km is left out of 16 million sq km of forest in the globe. He also said that we need to improve the forest cover in order to control the increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which is really harmful for our future generations. The rampant and unplanned deforestation has resulted in soaring mercury in the city and even the hills are not being spared. To control this we need to take up forestation on the hills on a war footing, he said.
An environmental engineer from the Pollution Control Board, P Srinivasa Rao said that planting of bamboo trees on the hill slopes can be a good idea.
