Category: News

Published: Monday, 28 May 2018 09:57

by By Fong Jia Qi

The environment has become a hot topic of discussion and debate, on all public platforms. The more the discussions, the higher the awareness, and the polluted the earth becomes. Isn’t it a thing to ponder about? While we discuss so much about environmental issues and pour in a lot of environmental effort, the Earth unfortunately continues weakening. The Earth is a beautiful living planet of the Universe as a habitat for more than 7 billion humans & millions of other species. Our Earth provides us with food, shelter & most of our necessities.

As we further discuss about the environment nowadays, we have to reflect on what we have done to the natural environment – our attitude towards the environment. Being an irresponsible person who tends to litter around, practise open burning and stepping on grass that is prohibited to be stepped on, influences the environment to deteriorate gradually. Despite knowing that we share our water resources with other species, there is still a large number of irresponsible people disposing dirty sewages, solid waste and even chemicals recklessly into water bodies. If we aren’t concentrated on saving those water resources, then in near future water can be as expensive as petrol or one day people can die due to thirst. If we can change our attitude, I believe that we can start making a difference.

We continuously preach about keeping our environment clean but, when it comes to contributing to the cleanliness, every one of us unfortunately contribute to the dirtying of the earth instead. For a simple example, we all agree that, we should keep our environment clean, however many of us have the habit of tossing the trash out on the road, river or in front of the neighbor’s house. Environment isn’t just our home, but also encompasses the surrounding of a home. Having said that, it doesn’t mean that no work is being done in this world but most of us are not aware of our duties and responsibilities in the waste issue.

Furthermore, what we need to bear in mind is that, being a person is not just limited to learning things in our school or life, but also learning on how to deal with our nature or our respective land or in other words, our environment. This is because we live in this world as a community and we are not alone. In this manner, we should consider certain things to ensure that all the people can live in peace without being disturbed by the others or by our attitude that can gives an impact to the society itself. In order to preserve and conserve the environment, we should practice an environmental friendly lifestyle. If we practice this, we can avoid ourselves from the detrimental effects on the environment and society. 

Solutions of environmental problems are not impossible if one is committed to tackle the problems. As a youth and global citizen, I too have the responsibilities towards the Mother Earth. My first role towards nature is to reduce my own carbon footprint via eco-friendly activities. Then, I can adopt the existing green technology along with other enthusiastic youths to raise awareness among our peers, neighborhood and the community about environment sanitation by converting organic wastes into compost and implementing the 3R principle (reduce, reuse & recycle) for solid wastes. Other than that, I can organize workshops with the local people to spread the awareness of reducing air pollution by replacing household energy sources such coal and firewood. The youths have the voice to encourage the government to implement eco-friendly development policies and proper planning of cities. Through smart partnerships, we can also organize orientation programs about the climate change in schools and colleges to induce other youths towards conservation of nature.

It is the responsibility of every person in checking the causes that affect the environmental disaster and playing a positive role in improving it. We must realize the importance of a healthy environment and that it is for his/her own benefit to protect it and to take measures to keep the world clean and green because as the proverb says ‘We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment’ by Margaret Mead.

Thus, for the sustainability of our planet, I take a pledge to fulfill my responsibilities towards Mother Nature as a global citizen to protect my living planet from deterioration, handing over a clean and green planet to our future generations. Our single efforts may seem small but if thousands of youths can unite together towards nature conservation then one day our efforts will be a drastic step to protect our motherland Earth from destruction.