Message from Dr. Abas Basir, the Director General of South Asia Co-operative Environment Programme on World Environment Day 2020
HAPPY WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY 2020!!
World Environment Day takes place every year on 5 June. It is the United Nations’ biggest annual event for promoting worldwide awareness and action for the environment. Over the years, it has grown to be one of the largest global platforms for public outreach, celebrated by millions of people including governments, industry, communities and individuals around the world.
You all know that we are celebrating this year’s World Environment Day at the time that we are facing a global health crisis due to COVID-19 — one that is spreading human suffering, infecting the global economy and upending people’s lives. The coronavirus (COVID-19) has generated an unprecedented impact in most countries of the world. The virus has affected almost every country on the planet (213 in total), spread to more than 6.5 million people, and caused around 380,000 deaths to date. On behalf of the South Asia Co-operative Environment Programme (SACEP), I convey my heartfelt condolences to the people and governments of South Asia as well as to the global community those who have lost their loved ones. We join the international community in mourning those who have succumbed to the coronavirus. We also wish quick recovery to those who have been infected and are undergoing treatment.
Covid-19 has revealed the world’s vulnerabilities, many of which intersect with the environmental challenges. At the same time, it has highlighted the importance of expertise and science, cooperation, information and transparency.
Scientific community considers the environmental issues particularly those of land use change as the key drivers of emerging zoonotic diseases. Deforestation, habitat fragmentation and an expanding agricultural frontier increase the contacts between humans and other animals, potentially increasing the chances of zoonosis emerging and spreading. Leading scientists also believe that the Covid-19 outbreak was a “clear warning shot”, given that far more deadly diseases existed in wildlife, and that today’s civilization was “playing with fire”. They said: it was almost always human behavior that caused diseases to spill over into humans.
The emergence of COVID-19 has underscored the fact that, when we destroy nature, we destroy the system that supports human life; that “to care for ourselves we must care for nature.”
This year’s theme for the World Environment Day is ‘Time for Nature’. Why is nature so important? Everything humans have needed to survive, and thrive, was provided by the natural world around us: food, water, medicine, materials for shelter, and even natural cycles such as climate and nutrients. As nature provides livelihoods, it also has the capacity to provide solutions for the many challenges that modern society is facing, such as climate change, air pollution, water resource depletion, food insecurity and disaster risks.
In this context, nature-based solutions (NBS) have recently been put forward by practitioners and quickly thereafter by policymakers. These solutions stress the sustainable use of nature in solving coupled environmental-social-economic challenges. While ecosystem services are often valued in terms of immediate benefits to human well-being and economy, nature-based solutions focus on the benefits to people and the environment itself, to allow for sustainable solutions that are able to respond to environmental change and hazards in the long-term.
Given the fact that the agriculture and sustainable land management depend heavily on healthy ecosystems and intact biodiversity, and the outcome of many of these interactions have significant repercussions for human health, both positive and negative, SACEP partnered with United Nations Environment programme and Bioversity International in implementing UNEP-GEF Healthy landscapes: Managing Agricultural Landscapes in Socio-Ecologically Sensitive Areas to Promote Food Security, Wellbeing and Ecosystem Health project in Sri Lanka. The Main Objective of this project is to realize health and environmental co-benefits of the village Tank Cascade Systems through managing the agricultural landscapes to promote food security, wellbeing of People, ecosystem health and maintaining biodiversity. The project will deliver global environmental and socio-economic benefits through a package of measures – practices, policies, knowledge management and awareness - that ensure future land use and production sector practices and decisions do not compromise biodiversity and ecosystem functions and recognise the importance of biodiversity, agriculture and health linkages. Measures will include scaling up methods and tools to mobilize agro-biodiversity at the cascade, farm and community level, knowledge management partnerships, capacity building, cross sectoral policies and planning and enhanced awareness and understanding of biodiversity, agriculture and health linkages so as to better manage future risks and safeguard ecosystem functioning while ensuring that social costs, including health impacts, associated with new measures and strategies do not outweigh potential benefits.
Finally, while maintaining social distance to prevent the spread of CoronaVirus, we invite you to be closer to nature as much as possible.
Thank you.
Dr. Abas Basir
Director general, South Asia Co-operative Environment Programme
