How to save the earth: Speakers tell audience to start battling climate change now

Dawood says that schools need to invest more in disaster management skills

KARACHI: The lack of environmental awareness in our country is so extreme, it is heart rending. I have heard children say oh, I didn’t know monkeys could exist outside cages or that huge mountains are present around us, said Sabrina Dawood, CEO of the Dawood Foundation at a session on climate change and children’s future on Day one of the School of Tomorrow.

Dawood said that, in terms of preparation for future challenges, we are doing nothing. According to her, the South Asian population explosion is directly linked to the increasing stress on land. “Most of the greenhouse [gases] are produced from the developed world and countries like ours have to bear the brunt of it,” she said, all the while maintaining that we have to do something for the future of our coming generations in the country.

Forestry scientist and environmentalist Muhammad Afzal Chaudhry was of the view that since world climate is a natural phenomenon, what has to be ensured is that the process is not accelerated. “Something that has to happen in one million years, should not happen now,” he warned. He then shed some light on Earth’s glacial and interglacial periods. “What we are experiencing today is interglacial [a warmer period]. We have to make use of it properly because when the glacial period takes over, everything finishes. So far, six glacial periods have been recorded in the climatic history of the world,” he explained.

So how do we prepare our children or the coming days? Dawood said that schools need to invest more in disaster management skills. “We have to change the way students think, encourage them to come up with solutions on their own and take that learning back to their homes,” she said. Chaudhry, on the other hand, suggested tree plantation for future security. “Oxygen given out from one tree is enough [to sustain] 65 infants,” he said. “When a child is born, plant a tree for him so that his oxygen provision is [taken care of] and not burdened on existing resources.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2015.