Yellow & Blue - somewhere in between

Past 3 years I have been following The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), which announces a theme every year to focus on all aspects of environment. This year's theme 'Forests: Nature at Your Service' underscores the intrinsic link between quality of life and the health of forests and its ecosystems. Not surprisingly India will be the global host of World Environment Day 2011 (WED) on 5 June

 

I guess the choice on the host was unanimous on this aspect, India is a country of 1.2 billion people who continue to put pressure on forests especially in densely populated areas where people are cultivating on marginal lands and where overgrazing is contributing to desertification. Why the crisis, you may ask. It is largely due to the fact that we use too much resources, reuse too little of them and produce too much waste.

 

There are four major factors that have contributed to shedding of forests: agriculture and farming which requires land for growing crops & rearing animals due to which large areas of forests have been cleared leading to reduction of oxygen in the atmosphere, population explosion which means more people & indirectly more resources thereby more demands on the earth’s overburdened resources, technological advances and modern lifestyle, both of which indirectly harm to the forests.

 

I am sure by now you would have chosen to move-on to the next article with a frown saying “we already know this”. But have you ever realized that with the knowledge you have, you have not taken that extra step towards being the savior? I would not want to list the “To-Do” options, but urge you all, the readers not to take a small but a large initiative like green computing on this regard. Else it will always be complaining about the scorching sun in the summers & mentioning it never used to be this way earlier. Enough of bleeding blue, let’s focus on the green shall we?