THIS coming Monday, June 05, is World Environment Day (WED). The United Nations General Assembly established this yearly international celebration in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.
It was also on this date that the General Assembly created the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) through a resolution. UNEP is the principal body of the United Nations in the field of environment.
Every WED celebration has a theme. For this year, it’s "Connecting People to Nature." It implores us to get outdoors and into nature, to appreciate its beauty and its importance, and to take forward the call to protect the Earth that we share.
This year’s theme invites us to think about how we are part of nature and how intimately we depend on it. It challenges us to find fun and exciting ways to experience and cherish this vital relationship.
There are several ways to connect with nature. A hike to Mt. Arayat, a swim at Haduan Falls in Mabalacat City or Miyamit Falls in Porac or a trip to Mt. Pinatubo’s crater. It can even be as simple as walking in a park, appreciating the trees, flowers, grass and the birds. We can simply relax in a hammock and feel the breeze of cool fresh air.
Nature provides us with a lot of things. The world’s oceans, forests and soils act as vast stores for greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. The land and oceans provide us food and medicines. Scientists develop medicines using genetic material drawn from the millions of species that make up Earth’s astounding biological diversity.
But sometimes we don’t appreciate nature’s gifts because we don’t know their value in economic terms. For instance, it’s difficult to give the monetary equivalent of the services that trees give. How do you quantify the benefits they give like giving off oxygen, reducing air pollution, taking up carbon dioxide, reducing storm water run-off and providing shade? How do you put value on the role of bees in pollinating fruit trees? There are now ways being developed to quantify these "ecosystem services."
In 1997, Robert Costanza, Distinguished University professor of sustainability at Portland State University, Oregon, and colleagues first estimated that ecosystem services worldwide are worth an average $33 trillion annually ($44 trillion in today’s dollars), nearly twice the global GNP of around $18 trillion ($24 trillion in today’s dollars). That was 20 years ago. There are many questions on how the figures were derived. But whether correct or not, the point is we have to take care of Mother Nature if we want to enjoy her benefits.
By the way, in the Philippines, we commemorate WED not just for a day but for a month. The whole month of June is observed as environment month. This yearly observance started in 1988 when President Corazon Aquino signed proclamation No. 237 declaring the month of June as Philippine Environment Month. Coincidentally, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources celebrates its anniversary every June 10.
