About Green Living Association
Over the last seven decades, global system of production and consumption has exploited renewable and non-renewable resources with unparalleled intensity and expansion. Ecosystems are being disfigured, altered and destroyed at a previously unimaginable pace, while the demand for food, drinking water, wood, minerals, cement, energy and so forth expands in an unsustainable manner. Nationally, a number of serious environmental problems are inherent in Pakistan which are of great ecological concern in terms of its sustainable economic future. The major constraint to overcoming these problems, in-fact perhaps the main contributor to their intensity is alarming rate of population growth, which is very high in contrast to the natural limited resources that are available to the people. The critical environmental issues in a society not only challenge ecological and economic sustainability of the country but also contribute negatively toward global environmental conservation.
Green Living Association (GLA) is a non-governmental – non-profit organization and partner of the Cleanup the World and United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). GLA is working to raise awareness about Environmental Conservation and to extend practical Environmental Education to all societal segments in Pakistan. Green Living Association was formed in 2007 as a research based initiative to extend Environmental Education and since then is successfully achieving its objectives of practically educating people about Environmental Conservation by involving them to innovative and inspirational practical activities.
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Environmental Issues
Globally, biodiversity has continued to decline despite a few encouraging achievements and increased policy action. The global rate of species extinction is escalating and is now estimated to be up to 1000 times the natural rate. Evidence is growing that critical ecosystem services are under great pressure all over the world. According to one estimate, approximately one quarter of the potential net primary production has been converted by humans, either through direct cropping (53%), land-use-induced productivity changes (40%) or human-induced fires (7%). While such figures should be treated with caution, they do give an indication of the substantial impact of humans on nature al ecosystems.
Pakistan inherently faces a number of critical environmental issues which are posing serious ecological challenges in the way to its sustainable economic growth. These include soil erosion, pesticide misuse, deforestation, desertification, urban pollution, waterlogging, salinity, freshwater pollution and marine water pollution, just to name a few. An extremely high rate of population growth is one of the biggest challenges to environmental and economic sustainability. According to an estimate less than 5% of the industrial plants meet international waste treatment standards and there are serious effluent problems and lack of sanitation affecting the natural resources and posing dangerous health risks.
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Save the Planet
Save the Planet is an awareness-section in the initiatives of GLA to keep the society informed about the critical dangers to our planet and to inspire people in taking immediate action to Save the Planet. We have all over-used the planet and the result is too much CO2 in the atmosphere. This is leading to Global Warming so, the climate needs fixing. The need to limit Global Warming to 2°C was agreed by the world leaders during Paris Climate Change Conference (COP 21) in 2015. But the action is too slow – we must act now.
The effects of Climate Change are already with us and getting worse – CO2 is now over 400 ppm and needs to be less than 350 ppm in order to achieve between 1.5 and 2°C. We simply cannot continue to keep doing what we are doing now. Climate Change may become irreversible if we do not act fast and on a massive scale. The situation is urgent and thereby GLA is committed to motivate people to immediately stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
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Green Living Association – Activities
Green Living Association (GLA) runs modern Environmental Education campaigns especially for the schools’ students and generally for all segments of society by arranging innovative, colourful and interactive activities. The focus of our campaigns and activities is to inspire each member of the society to contribute his/ her part in the process of pollution check, effective waste management and energy conservation in order to make an Environment Friendly society.
Under a methodical plan of action GLA has successfully achieved the objectives of its two 5-yearly campaigns (KARE – 2007-11) and (CARE 2012-16). Credit goes to our research-based innovative ways to organize colourful environmental activities for the schools’ students and their families. A prominent research based feature of the GLA’s educational activities is ‘association’ by which each student is to be associated with his/ her 4 – 5 family members (who contribute as partners) and to work collectively with them on the given environmental assignments. Another innovative idea in achieving a mega success is to declare each Green Angel a winner by presenting him/ her at least one recognition.
Such innovative and creative methods have proved to be highly successful and have helped GLA in successfully achieving its planned educational objectives.
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Prizes and Awards
Education and competition are two universal ingredients of all human cultures, in fact, of almost all animal life. Humans have always considered education and competition important issues, both in the past and in the present. Of course, there have been fluctuations in emphasis and much has changed throughout the centuries. Awards and prizes make the participants and winners of an activity special and honoured and this enhances their interest many folds in an educational subject. Such awards are great encouragement for the achievement of goals and to develop interest to accomplish future assignments. Those enhance well being, self esteem and confidence of the participants in general and of the students in specific in learning the newer subjects and adapting to the positive changes.
One of the prominent ways of making our activities and campaigns inspiring, colourful and participative is recognizing the participants of the activities with lucrative and colourful prizes and awards. We call each Green Angel (the participating student of an activity) a Winner and offer him/ her recognition. Besides presenting the prizes like abroad study trips, lucrative cash prizes, laptops, desktop computers, LED Monitors, smart electronic devices and gifts of practical nature to the prominent performers, GLA offers at least one recognition to each participant of an activity in making it colourful and striking venture for the participants.
