United Nations’ preeminent instrument, the annual date #Jun5th ‘World Environment Day’ (WED) creates awareness and encourages environment protection—WED has been a dais comprising of over one-hundred-and-forty-three countries- voicing and addressing various environmental worries like: marine pollution, global warming, wildlife crime, human overpopulation, and sustainable consumption. WED was established in the year 1972, and with the theme ‘Only One Earth’, the first WED was hosted by the United States in its city Spokane in the year 1974——India has hosted two WED celebrations: first in the year 2011 with the theme ‘Forests: Nature at your Service’; and, second in the year 2018 -the theme was ‘Beat Plastic Pollution’. where the Indian government aimed at eliminating all single use of plastic by the year 2022.
In the year 2001, Rajagopalan Vasudevan -an Indian scientist developed a polymerised mix (mixture of shredded consumer plastic waste and bitumen) for road construction—with his this method cost-effective yet durable roads can be constructed much faster than ever before—well, globally Chennai was amongst the first cities to adopt this technology in a big way to construct and commissioned one-thousand kilometres of plastic-roads in the year 2004, and since then the concept and technology was followed by major Indian Municipalities including: Mumbai, Delhi, Surat, Indore, Lucknow, and Pune. Using this technique widely in functioning on the WED theme of ‘Beat Plastic Pollution’ nationally, now majorly the Indian rural roads are constructed with polymerised mixture. And while this is written, according to reports the Indian government has constructed over one lakh kilometres of road in its eleven states aligning with its ’Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ -mission that aims at reducing garbage crisis.
Coming back to WED -the global affair —— Abhay Kumar (Abhay K, Indian poet and diplomat) 1980 born of Rajgir, Bihar, India penned down and released ‘Earth Anthem’ (anthem for the planet Earth) — the ‘Earth Anthem’ is primarily translated into Eight languages- Six official languages of United Nations: Arabic, Chinese, French, English, Russian and Spanish – the Seventh: Hindi and Eighth one Nepali, then this anthem has been translated into over hundred languages across the globe. On WED 2017 Abhay Kumar’s anthem composed by L. Subramaniam and sung by Kavita Krishnamurthy was released in Brasilia capital of Brazil——to mark WED’s 50th Anniversary, a new video on this Earth Anthem was released on 22nd April, 2020 -and- on the occasion of WED’s 51st Anniversary- over hundred eminent artists across the world came to gather and recite – render this Earth Anthem, the day was 22nd April, 2021.
Well, that is India and ‘The World Environment Day’ -alliance and commitment — let us all come together as one great nation and pledge to create and maintain a clean, hygienic, healthy environment, and step forward in the direction of sustainable development.
“On this ‘World Environment Day’ let us all come together as a great nation, and commit to impart a heritage of clean-healthy environment to our next generation,” –UTTAMADITYA.