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| Addressing the crowd on Earth Day |
Respected Director General, Deans, Lecturers, ladies
and gentlemen. I Tashi Dendup, on behalf of Earth Guardians Bhutan and Earth
Day Network would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude for approving our
proposal to celebrate the World Earth Day.
An educational
institute is the horde of national conscience. Therefore, it is of paramount
importance for us today to mark this day not only as a sign of solidarity with
billions of people around the world but also to enliven, rejuvenate, and
embolden the environment consciousness of the nation. Moreover, as an
inhabitant of this planet Earth, it is irrevocable call of duty upon each
individual to duly appreciate and mutually care for the earth we equally
inherit.
The EARTH DAY is
an annual event commencing on the 22nd of April each year, and observed world
over to demonstrate people’s commitment to safeguard the earth and its
environment and extend the arms of dutiful solidarity with those people around
the world who share common sense of this profound moral responsibility.
The Theme for
Earth Day 2016 is “Trees for the Earth”. Our planet is currently losing over 15
billion trees each year due to deforestation, land development, and bad forest
management, (which is roughly equivalent to 48 football fields every minute).
Coinciding with
this august occasion, the landmark Paris Agreement is scheduled to be signed by
the United States, china, and some 120 other countries.
This signing satisfies a key requirement for the
entry into force of the historic draft climate protection
treaty adopted by consensus of the 195 nations present at the 2015
United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. This day, therefore, is doubly significant as at the long last the
world is embarking on a journey which it should have long started.
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Allow me also to share a brief history of the
earth day.
In 1969 at
a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, US national peace activist by the name John
McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to
first be celebrated on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern
hemisphere. This day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a
Proclamation written by McConnell and signed by 3rd UN
General Secretary U Thant. A month later a separate Earth Day was founded
by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson as an
environmental teach-in first held on April 22, 1970.
To mark this characteristically important day, the EGB has proposed a programme to plant about 180 saplings along the road from upper hostel campus till the guest house, covering a distance of roughly 1.8 KM. Trees are the only reliable wealth of our country, yet each year we lose hundreds of acres of forest to the thoughtless frenzy of forest fires. Therefore, today let us commit to ourselves to safeguard our trees and live a healthy life. In any case though, building a formidable environmental consciousness is not beyond the call of duty. We are entrusted by the glorious constitution of the nation with a noble duty of safeguarding and protecting the environment, which we equally inherit. Let us today extend our genuine solidarity in one simple assembly of faith, action, and believe to the people around the world, to our fellow countrymen and women, to ourselves, and for that matter to every living being that inherit the earth equally.
Now for today’s
important program, we have MDP 1st batch, MDP 2nd
batch and SD final year students who will be assisting us in planting the
saplings along the road. Thank you one and all for joining us to observe this
important day. Wish you all a HAPPY WORLD EARTH DAY.
And may I end with a couplet from the Pilgrims’
progress
"Better,
though difficult, the right way to go,
Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe.”
Tashi Delek
Edited by: Benu Prasad
BSc.SD, Final Year
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