Climate change: Is Your New Year resolution green?

Dec 30, 2015

Deforestation rate has been increasing on a faster rate than the rate at which new trees leaf.

By Boaz Opio

A survey by Google published by Climate Analytics indicates that the word "Climate Change" and "Go Green" was mentioned over 800,000 times within a time span of one month in social media.

As if that's not enough, this year, climate change has been the biggest topic in the news. It is the only cause that brought together nearly 200 countries to Climate Change summit in Paris. The resolution was a pleasing one. For the first time, the world gathered to agree on cutting carbon emissions, discuss cutting edge production technologies to keep average global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius…

Recent satellite images taken by America's NASA reveal that deforestation rate has been increasing on a faster rate than the rate at which new trees leaf. The total number of trees is estimated by a BBC science documentary to be 3 trillion, 30 times less than 30 years ago and this has a say on the rising global temperatures.

While a study conducted by World Bank Group in partnership with Korea Green Growth Partnership, Promoting Green Urban Development in African Cities notes that Urban Africa has seriously lost much of its green vegetation. In Uganda, the so called Pearl of Africa, former public spaces and parks in Kampala and other towns have been converted into other urban uses.

Throughout Africa wetlands have been severely reduced in size and function as a result of encroachment and pollution as industrial effluent is channeled into the wild lands and rivers. A 2014 report "Wet lands or Waste lands" published by African Development Bank (AfDB) further estimates that 50% of African wetlands are in "dire filth."

This makes me question, as we concoct our 2016 heart desires, if your back yards and front yards don't look like another desert within the desert's Oasis?

Well, if you answered No, it is probably because you value the green of nature and you certainly are aware of the benefits of trees on earth's natural processes. Let's not beat around the bush greenies, trees are of matchless standing without which we can bet you couldn't have made into the last days of this year.

Unless you're still green about how human activities have injured the beauty of the environment, you will continue destroying forests or demanding more charcoal. With sparse tree cover, the vast carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere increasingly causes our one and only home, the earth to warm up to extinction a microbe after all living things.

Ever heard of ‘green revolution'? Everything is going green and if your front yard look like a Second World War grave yard, then am afraid, it's year to change as everyone will be ‘re-fixing' something about themselves. Planting more trees will help a great deal.

Also promise you'll agree to use green products growing in acceptance. These include recyclable packaging material; win yourself odd favour from mother earth lest you should buy the farm in the even numbered year. Uganda just abolished the use of polythene packaging bags!

Whereas huge undertakings to adopt renewable energies such as Wind, Solar and Geothermal is even more resolute for even banana republics.  Clean / green energy productions have shoot to 17%. This is a call on all economies to embrace green movements. In developed countries like Russia, UK, Japan, electric cars are increasingly hitting roads, a promise to break away from the bondage of Urban Carbon Karma. So 2016 is a year when cruising yourself in an electric Mercedes should make your ball roll past putting green.

Some countries are seriously embarking in ambitious tree planting programmes. Rwanda aims to plant 10 million trees across the country between 2015 and 2017. If these efforts could be accompanied by public consciousness, humanity's future would blossom.

From manufacturing plants to our studious digs, a thought of sustainable development is necessary for watering every development goal.

Challenging our awareness of the role of individual actions as a potentially potent force towards asphyxiating climate change epidemic by being part of the new green movement would guarantee a proper transplant of ecofriendly resolves that germinated during the just concluded Paris climate summit.

To do this, you must go green.

The writer is a climate tracker

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