Thousands join to celebrate Earth Day 2017

0
1858

The Earth Day 2017 celebrations saw participation from thousands of people including school children who joined a number of campaigns, awareness drives, emotional appeals through street plays.

April 22 marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environment movement in 1970. On the occasion of Earth Day, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged citizens to keep our planet green and clear stating that it was our duty to live in harmony with the environment and it is our obligation to pass a clean and green Earth for generations to come. He hoped that this year`s theme of “Environmental and Climate Literacy” would help in creating awareness about protecting nature and natural resources.

Hundreds of volunteers were out on the streets in New Delhi to promote air quality awareness among people of the national capital and conducted a survey. The US embassy in cooperation with programme partner Clean Air Asia organised a two-day campaign “Better Air, Better Earth” to promote air quality awareness. The campaign saw involvement of volunteers from embassies of the US, Sweden, Spain, the High Commission of Canada and Clean Air Asia`s Youth Clean Air Network (YCan), who were posted at various locations here to record PM 2.5 levels and take a perception survey.

NGOs, Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) and Wildlife SOS organised a Snake Awareness Workshop. The aim of the workshop was “to promote wildlife wakefulness among public and to mitigate the effects of wildlife human conflict”. During the workshop, the team of Wildlife SOS demonstrated how snakes play a key role in the functioning of the entire ecosystem.

Campaigns were also organised to raise awareness among the masses to save water.

“Eat less meat, opt for carpooling and unplug unused electronic devices — do your bit and make a huge difference to saving Earth,” suggested Google’s Earth Day doodle. The doodle followed the story of a fox, who dreamt about an Earth that had been polluted and adversely affected by climate change. Doing these small things could go a long way to help save the only known planet in the universe that harbours life, it said.

“Whatever you do today, we hope you`re able to take a moment to savour and cherish this boundless, stunning Earth that we inhabit,” Google said in a statement.

At an estimated 4.543 billion years of age, the Earth is also the densest planet in the solar system and the largest of the four terrestrial planets.