2024 Theme: Land restoration, desertification and drought resilience.
António Guterres, UN Secretary General’s message:
“Humanity depends on land. Yet, all over the world, a toxic cocktail of pollution, climate chaos, and biodiversity decimation are turning healthy lands into deserts, and thriving ecosystems into dead zones. They are annihilating forests and grasslands, and sapping the strength of land to support ecosystems, agriculture, and communities.”
Environment is our lifetime co-traveler. A safe environment assures us a safe travel towards our final destiny. However, our human greed is causing damage and destruction of land, vanishing of water sources, weakening of economies, overexploitation of resources, endangering of communities, and causing draught, famine and climatic calamities.
Holy Father Pope Francis tells the world, “With the passage of time, I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point. In addition to this possibility, it is indubitable that the impact of climate change will increasingly prejudice the lives and families of many persons” (Laudate Deum)
Let us humans own up our role in promoting a clean and safe environment and for preventing the onrush of calamitous climatic situations. Let us coordinate our efforts to help our future generation enjoy a wholesome environment and a healthy climate. Let us teach the children and youth how to care for mother earth, how to keep our environment safe and how to enjoy a healthy relationship with nature.
“In an attempt to simplify reality,” Pope Francis writes, “there are those who would place responsibility on the poor, since they have many children, and even attempt to resolve the problem by mutilating women in less developed countries. . . “As usual, it would seem that everything is the fault of the poor. Yet the reality is that a low, richer percentage of the planet contaminates more than the poorest 50% of the total world population, and that per capita emissions of the richer countries are much greater than those of the poorer ones.”