Green Walk to mark World Earth Day

by Ruwan Harischandra

The Ministry of Environmental Affairs in collaboration with the Green Building Council of Sri Lanka has organised a Green Walk to mark World Earth Day on April 22.

"The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer; the horse, the great eagle. These are our brothers. The rocky crests the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony and man all belong to the same family".

Red Indian chief Seattle said so in his speech in front of the American President Franklin in response to a proposed treaty under which the Indians were persuaded to sell two million acres of land fro $ 150,000.

But today man has forgotten that he and other living beings are in the same family. So, man's activities lead to disaster.

Now where is the thicket? Gone! Where is the eagle? The end of the living and beginning of survival is coming closer. So, it is a good opportunity to discuss what will happen to the environment.

Challenge

Climate change and sustainable development is the greatest challenge of the day.

The increasing population growth which is predicted to be 9.5 billion by 2050 uses earth's limited resources at a rapid race. In the process we emit greenhouse gases to the atmosphere which will cause climate change threatening the very existence of the human race.

Scientists believe that frequent floods, droughts, cyclones, landslides and coastal erosion are due to climate change.One of the major concerns among people, scientists and environmental policy makers, is global warming particularly due to the increasing of emission of carbon dioxide.

This results in climate change. The emission of carbon dioxide has increased in Sri Lanka also at an alarming rate. The tropical rainforests are the key absorbers that balance the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

Gas emission

Deforestation due to human activities has caused an imbalance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. You may be surprised to note that Sri Lanka is the fourth in the list of primary forest loss.

Vice chairman Green Building Council of Sri Lanka Eng. W. J. B. Shiromal Fernando said, the construction industry contributes 40 percent of the Greenhouse gas emission.

The common argument on this matter is that the developed nations are the main culprits and small countries cannot do much about it. We look at the statistics, per capita carbon dioxide emissions of countries such as the United States, Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom is very much higher than that of Sri Lanka. We should not take our resources for granted. We have experienced a rapid disintegration of our natural construction material during the past few years such as granite and sand. Now we are looking for alternative construction materials.

We could have sustained the material for our future use. We use construction waste for landfills which causes environmental damage as well. If we had recycled at least 50 percent of it we could have saved five percent the material for future. Now we are looking for alternatives without considering the cost of the production of drinking water.