In connection with the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, Green Living Association, cordially announces the Green Educators Awards 22 which will be awarded to the winner schools’ networks after the results announcement of ‘My Green Community’ activity.
In what has been called the ‘Decade on Ecosystem Restoration’ by the United Nations, we have seen institutes, industry leaders and consumers alike begin to make significant changes to ensure a more sustainable future and more institutions and companies are challenged to respond to the reality of climate change.
In recognition of the green ambitions and contributions of prominent educational institutes, we planned the Green Educators Awards to bring exposure to the institutes that have worked to ensure sustainability is at the heart of their performance. The Green Educators Awards will be presented based on the institutes’ flair in providing environment-friendly education as well as their active participation in this year’s activity ‘My Green Community’.
Achieving a Green Educators Award or Prize is the perfect way to affirm your status as a green leader in the field of education, while instilling confidence in your students, parents, and peers that you are providing award-winning educational services.
The ultimate objective of honouring the Green Initiative Awards is not only to recognize valuable contributions from the companies and the institutes for their commitment and green initiatives taken to protect environment, but also to motivate other companies and institutes in Pakistan to take green initiatives in order to successfully addressing the core environmental challenges like global warming and climate change.
Global Environmental Challenges
Our Dying Oceans
Overfishing has decimated most fisheries and the oceans are now devoid of over 95% of its larger predatory fish, such as sharks, Bluefin tuna, and billfish. Coral reefs are degrading almost everywhere they occur due to warming and acidifying (caused by more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) seas, overfishing, and sediment- and toxin-laden runoff from the land. And the tons and tons of discarded plastic that ends up in the ocean kills and sickens marine life up and down the food chain. As this plastic breaks down the resulting micropellets will continue to cause lasting harm in ecosystems.
What can be done? Humanity needs an international effort to regulate and enforce sustainable fisheries, as well as a system of coastal and offshore marine protected areas that protect at least a quarter of the ocean.
Sources of ocean plastic, from plastic shopping bags and flip flops in river runoff to industrial pellets and toothbrushes dumped offshore, need to be cut off, and truly biodegradable plastics (not just ones that break into smaller pieces) need to be widely adopted. To paraphrase the Inhabitat mission statement, the imperative of ‘good design’ today is not only about colour, style or trends – but instead about thoughtfully considering the user, the experience, the social context and the impact of a designed object, system, or interaction on the surrounding environment, and, increasingly, biosphere stewardship.
The Loss of Biodiversity
Our species’ activity within the last century is responsible for rapidly diminishing the diversity of life forms on this planet. Each species lost is a storehouse of environmental knowledge selected for over millions of years. The exploding sciences of biomimicry, bioengineering, and genetic manipulation highlight the enormous potential a single species may have in helping humanity create a healthier, more sustainable interaction with our environment through improvements to medicines, food production, nutrition, technologies, and resilient ecosystems.
A conservative estimate is that well over a hundred species a day are going extinct, with the rate of disappearing species accelerating as natural habitats shrink, fragment, and degrade and commercial exploitation of vulnerable species escalates. The loss of species is irreversible and the loss of old-growth natural habitats irretrievable within centuries. The fewer the species remaining on this planet, the more tenuous our own existence.
The environmental experts rightly warn that our destruction of the Earth’s biodiversity will be the thing that future generations will least forgive us for.
Degrading the Ozone Layer
Without the protective ozone layer high above in the stratosphere we would literally fry from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Certain industrial compounds, such as organohalogens (the refrigerant Freon is an example), break down ozone in the stratosphere at very high rates for long periods of time and greatly reduce the ozone’s ability to protect surface life from UV radiation. The US and China recently agreed to work to diminish the production and use of these compounds, which is a great step forward in wise biosphere stewardship.
Changing Climates
Humanity has released sufficient quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over the last century that we are now starting to feel the effects of an inevitably warmer world. Pronounced droughts, floods, wildfires, and storms are expected more frequently, rising seas will inundate coastlines, and climate patterns will be reconfigured around the planet. Agricultural zones will shift and water may become scarce in many areas prompting mass migrations, great social upheaval, collapsing economies, and wars. Humanity is already committed to a great deal of change in our global climate, but reducing greenhouse gas production and creating more efficient technologies and production systems now will benefit future generations and help us back away from thresholds of irreversibly harsh conditions.
Food
The meeting emphasised the effects of modern food production processes on the environment and human health, and discussed the best ways to provide food of the required quality, in sufficient quantities and in a sustainable way. The many advances made over the past century in increasing the food supply have been achieved by the introduction of new practices and added substances, resulting in a series of effects, some of which are detrimental to the environment and human health. Contamination of air, soil and water from a variety of sources have contributed to these problems. Of particular importance are the effects on human health, the environment and a variety of ecological systems.
This is among the prime objectives of GLA to educate future leaders at the nexus of agriculture, food, and environmental science and policy, and empower them by providing rigorous training, an ethic of social change, as intellectual community generating visions and models of alternative systems.
Investments in nature
Normal is also a warming planet, with wildfires, storms, droughts and glacier melt intensifying. It is humanity altering three-quarters of the planet’s surface and placing the existence of one million species in doubt. It is our economies polluting the air, land and water.
Normal, therefore, is placing our future in doubt by damaging the health of our species, societies, economies and the planet. We cannot go back to our old ‘normal’. Instead we must go forward, charting a future where we focus our energies on building low-carbon, nature-positive economies and societies.
Financial reboot
Part of the change must come through pandemic recovery stimulus packages that align our economies with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and international processes that target healthy biodiversity. Over the next six to 18 months, governments are expected to inject trillions into pandemic recovery, on top of money already spent protecting people and jobs.
Early signs show we are not moving fast enough. The UN Secretary-General has noted that as of September, G20 countries had committed 50 per cent more funding to support fossil fuels than to low-carbon energy. He emphasised that “fossil fuel subsidies should have no place in any rational Covid-19 recovery plan”.
We need to invest much more in nature-based solutions, sustainable agriculture, renewables, conservation and green and blue infrastructure.
Such large-scale investments can bring massive returns. Between now and 2030, the restoration of 350 million hectares of degraded terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems could generate $9 trillion (£6.5 trillion) in ecosystem services and remove up to 26 gigatonnes of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere – more than last year’s global energy-related emissions.
The economic benefits are 10 times more than the cost of investment. To take advantage of these cost-benefit ratios, the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration from 2021 will marshal the global community to restore degraded land, coasts and seas.
The Role to be played by Young Children
In a crisis, we must protect the most vulnerable. The last few years have seen young people around the world raising their voices on an unprecedented scale, asking adults and leaders to protect them from climate change. Now, by staying inside and taking their climate marches online, young people are showing solidarity with the older members of society, who are more vulnerable to the virus, by helping to stop the spread.
This kind of intergenerational solidarity is what solves crises. As the impact of climate change intensifies over time, it is the children and young people of today who will face its worst effects. Young people have been telling us that they are afraid of climate change with the same urgency as people now feel about COVID-19. This is a time for children and young people to talk with parents and grandparents, to discuss the kind of world we want to create when the pandemic has passed.
We can all play a part in spreading accurate facts and science, countering the misinformation that puts lives at risk.
Green Initiative Awards
As we have seen during the past few years that various educational institutes are notably contributing their part in developing younger generations into responsible, law abiding and environment-friendly adult citizens in the development of a responsible and modern Pakistani nation, we decided to recognize their outstanding contributions on annual basis. Such recognitions are really significant not only to appreciate the remarkable positive work done by the institutions, but also to inspire more educational institutes, companies and organizations to contribute their parts in the development of a unified, patriotic and greener Pakistani society.
In connection with the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, Green Living Association, cordially announces the Green Educators Awards 22 which will be awarded to the winner schools’ networks after the results announcement of ‘My Green Community’ activity.
The Green Educators Awards have been planned to bring exposure to the institutes that have worked to ensure sustainability is at the heart of their performance. The Green Educators Awards will be presented based on the institutes’ flair in providing environment-friendly education as well as their active participation in this year’s activity ‘My Green Community’.
The ultimate objective of honouring the Green Initiative Awards is not only to recognize valuable contributions from the companies and the institutes for their commitment and green initiatives taken to protect environment, but also to motivate other companies and institutes in Pakistan to take green initiatives in order to successfully addressing the core environmental challenges like global warming and climate change.
*************