Ignore environmental protection at your own peril

Sustainable development is the need of the hour for we need to knit back together what we tore apart, before it completely breaks and causes our destruction.

“Forests precede mankind. Deserts follow.”

A rag-picker sorts through plastic bottles and polythene bags near a garbage land fill on World Environment Day in New Delhi. (Prakash Singh/AFP)

Said to be at the top of the development chain, humans have become the embodiment of destruction of nature. The lap of nature in which evolution takes place is deteriorating due to the greed of humanity. With the execution of actions against Mother Nature herself, the survival of our species will soon be in danger lest we continue to ignore the needs of the environment.

Development is a continuous process and for a species as advanced as humans, which continues to strive for a better tomorrow, it is unconstrained. But development that is detrimental to the environment is precarious, as it will result in the end of all that we have endeavoured to achieve.

Due to this very reason the concept of ‘sustainable development’ was introduced in the international forum in 1987 and has been a topic of great discussion ever since. Sustainable development refers to the idea of constructing a developmental plan for meeting human development goals without compromising on nature.

In a world, where global warming is increasing, has a depleting forest cover and where a bleak future is imminent, this is a step towards the positive direction. Sustainable development is the need of the hour for we need to knit back together what we tore apart, before it completely breaks and causes our destruction.

(The author of this essay is a Class 11 student at Delhi Public School, Vasant Kunj.)