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Save Kerala’s Natural Resources
Unimaginable in `God’s Own Country’ … indiscriminate sand mining and a loss of green cover have made water sources dry up…
Kerala has been blessed with beautiful and bountiful natural resources. Kerala’s spectacular vistas; pristine lakes, rivers and streams; and bountiful wildlife areas are fascinating. The forests have been described as the “Lungs of our state” because it provides the essential environmental system of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. The beauty, majesty, and timelessness of a Kerala forests are indescribable. Kerala, with 44 rivers, hundreds of small rivulets and streams, 4.5 million wells, thousands of ponds and lakes and backwaters and nearly 3,000 mm of annual rainfall is perhaps one of the wettest and water-rich regions of India.
Kerala, once water rich, and fed by the rivers and its tributaries, was famed for its paddy fields, vegetable farms and lush forests. Gone are the days of plenty. We hardly get to see plants and trees, we are surrounded by tall and sky kissing buildings, over bridges .., birds have no place to build their nests. Converting fields into construction sites and roads led to an environmental disaster. Our climate has changed, the rainfall has dwindled and the rivers have dried up. All this means that the agro-based lifestyle of the state is gone forever. Rivers are dying and major watersheds are mismanaged. The fact that the air we breathe, the water we drink, the forests and oceans which sustain millions of different life forms and the climatic patterns which govern our weather systems all transcend national boundaries is a source of hope.
This blue planet of ours is a delightful habitat. Its life is our life; its future our future. Indeed, the earth acts like a mother to us all. Like children, we are dependent on her. Destruction of nature and natural resources results from ignorance, greed and lack of respect for the Earth’s living things, the future generations who will inherit a vastly degraded planet. It is essential that we re-examine ethically what we have inherited, what we are responsible for and what we will pass on to coming generations.
If there is one area in which both education and the media have a special responsibility, it is, we believe, our natural environment. We will not survive if we continue to go against Nature.
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