Abuja – Nigeria today joined the rest of the world to mark the 2015 World Environment Day (WED), to raise global awareness and to take positive environmental action to protect nature and the planet Earth.
The theme for 2015 World Environment Day is “Seven Billion Dreams. One Planet. Consume with Care.”
The coordinating Ministry for the event, Federal Ministry of Environment through its Permanent Secretary, Mrs. Fatima Mede, said Nigeria’s focus for this year will be on ‘Management of Sustainable Environmental Development’.
The WED theme this year is “Seven Billion Dreams. One Planet. Consume with Care”. Living within planetary boundaries is the most promising strategy for ensuring a healthy future. Human prosperity need not cost the earth.
Leading the road walk From Area 1 which terminated at the NTA Area 11, Mede enjoined Nigerians to cultivate the habit of living sustainably.
She said, “Living sustainably is about doing more and better with less. It is about knowing that rising rates of natural resource use and the environmental impacts that occur are not a necessary by-product of economic growth.”
Adding that, the theme for 2015 is how the well-being of humanity, the environment and economies ultimately depends on the responsible management of the planet’s natural resources.
Mede explained that the well-being of humanity, the environment, and the functioning of the economy, ultimately depend upon the responsible management of the planet’s natural resources because people are consuming far more natural resources than what the planet can sustainably provide.
Continuing, the United Nations Environment Program, UNEP, in a recent report stated that many of the Earth’s ecosystems are nearing critical tipping points of depletion or irreversible change,The report reads: “pushed by high population growth and economic development.
By 2050, if current consumption and production patterns remain the same and with a rising population expected to reach 9.6 billion, we will need three planets to sustain our ways of living and consumption.”
“Through WED, the UNEP enables everyone to realize not only the responsibility to care for the Earth, but also reminds one and all of their individual power to become agents of change. Every action counts, and when multiplied by a global chorus, becomes exponential in its impact. (Vanguard)
