Rethinking environmental degradation

OPINION | ENVIRONMENT

Rethinking environmental degradation in bid for Economic development: A reminder of the World Environment Day

By Joan Akiiza

The world environment day (WED) always commemorated on the June 5  is a day that reminds us how our environment has been destroyed and usually a call on what  can be done to restore it and put in place measures on how to safeguard it.

First held in 1974, the world environment day has been a flagship campaign for raising awareness on emerging environmental issues from pollution, global warming, deforestation, wetland degradation to sustainable consumption among others.

WED has grown to become a global platform for public outreach, each year, WED has a new theme that major corporations, NGOs, communities, and governments worldwide adopt to advocate environmental causes.

This year's theme was "connect to nature: appreciate biodiversity". The significance of this theme was to appreciate the different species and ecosystems not forgetting the role they play in our daily lives.

Borrowing a quotation of Professor Wangari  Mathai the founder of the Green belt movement which has planted over 51 million trees she once stated that ‘'the environment and the economy are really both two sides of the same coin If we cannot sustain the environment we cannot sustain ourselves".

We cannot therefore talk of economic development when our environment is perishing.

Relating this saying to the day's theme rings a bell of the drama performances by Bujumba youth smart drama actors who performed on the environment day celebrations whose performance highlighted key impacts of oil palm growing in kalangala.

In their performance they highlighted how most of the land has been taken to grow oil palm leaving people with little or no land to grow food to sustain their livelihoods, fertilizers and pesticides used in the palm oil plantations that are washed into the fragile ecosystem of Lake Victoria, planting oil palm without adherence of the 200 meter buffer zone, deforestation, among other key issues.

It should be noted that all this is being done in the name of boosting our economy and yet it is associated with social and environment impacts. How can this be achieved when the environment is being degraded, people do not have enough food to sustain their families. 

The celebrations of WED should, therefore, be a reminder on how best we can improve our environmental practices instead of having it as an event that comes and goes with nothing much put in place to revert environment illegalities.

In conclusion, we as human beings need the environment more than it needs us and so let's treat mother earth our life depends on it for it is our duty to conserve the environment.

The writer is Legal and Advocacy officer with National Association of professional Environmentalists (NAPE)