Earth Guardians Bhutan CNR commemorates King’s Coronation

Cleaning Campaign

On 1^st November 2016, in commemoration of His Majesty the King’s Coronation, Earth Guardians Bhutan CNR conducted a mass cleaning campaign at Metsina. As early as 8:30 A.M in the morning, we marched in blues and whites towards our activity area with empty sacks. With a theme “Our place, Our Responsibility”, more than 55 energetic and young EGB CNR members participated in the campaign enthusiastically.

Claiming ourselves as young environmentalists and conservationists, the members besides picking up the litters around also did an awareness campaign on waste management to the local residents. More than 50 sacks of wastes are being collected within two and half hours of campaign which is a drastic improvement in the wastes management by the people. Most of the residents were found to have kept their wastes in proper place to be sent to dumping areas when waste collecting truck comes. As a support to the campaigners, the local residents donated some amounts to the club in its appreciation.

Stream Adoption

Following the cleaning campaign along Medina stream on World Rivers Day, the Earth Guardians Bhutan CNR decided to adopt the stream as “Our Sister Stream” with the financial support from College of Natural Resources and Dzongkhag Environment office of Punakha. 

The objective behind it is to manage and monitor the stream from getting polluted with careless dumping of wastes by the people around. Commemorating His Majesty the King’s 8^th Coronation on 1^st November 2016, the club put in place signboard of stream adoption. The inauguration event was graced by the Dzongkhag Environmental officer of Punakha, the chair of the club Dr.Sonam Tashi (Phd), the Thromde Tshogpa and the EGB CNR.

Signing of Collaboration Agreement on Stream Adoption among stakeholders

The management of the stream being the cross-cutting issue demands the collaborative efforts of the relevant stakeholders. To mark the shared responsibility of the stream management and monitoring, the agreement was signed among the aforementioned stakeholders led by Earth Guardians Bhutan CNR. The Earth Guardians Bhutan CNR agreed to carry out necessary activities like cleaning of the stream and monitoring it as our sister stream.

The adoption gave us the pride of belongingness and the attachment with the neighborhood stream. For any financial and technical matters the Dzongkhag Environment office of Punakha agreed to support the club in ensuring the health of the sister stream. The office also agreed to take necessary legal actions on defaulters of stream pollution in accordance to National Laws and Acts. While the third actors involved is Thromde Tshogpa who signed the document with an agreement to monitor the local residents from contaminating the stream.

With agreement signing on Stream Adoption, it is hoped that the stream can be managed and monitored closely ensuring the health of the stream. The healthy stream can be used by the downstream paddy cultivators for the irrigation purposes, it will support the lives of the aquatic species in it and the clean stream will help generate the clean energy in mega-hydropower projects downstream.

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the College Management and Dzongkhag Environment office of Punakha for the financial support. The Thromde Tshogpa for collaborating with us in carrying out the campaign and helping us in collecting the donations from the local residents and the shops. We also applaud Earth Guardians Bhutan CNR club members for your unwavering support in carrying out the club activities for the environmental and social welfare.