April 22, 2006	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 23, 1427

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ISLAMABAD: April 21: Speakers at a seminar here on Friday asked politicians and civil society to jointly fight for the conservation of the country’s environment and save the earth from contamination caused by unbridled human greed.

Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) had organised the event in connection with the Earth Day. The institute had also organised a walk from its premises in Diplomatic Enclave to the Parliament House to highlight the importance of the day and clean environment.

The participants of the walk were carrying banners and placards inscribed with the slogans condemning human greed which under the cover of industrial development has destroyed environment and human health.

“The earth can satisfy our needs not greed,” said a slogan inscribed with a banner.

At the seminar Faisal Gorchani of the SDPI highlighted the role of American Senator Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day who proposed a nationwide protest to shake up the political establishment and force this issue onto the national agenda of the US.

As a result of Mr Nelson’s campaign, for the first time Earth Day was observed in 1970 in which more than 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy and sustainable environment.

The first earth day led to the creation of US Environmental Protection Agency and passage of many environment-related acts including those on water, clean air and endangered species.

Senator Nelson was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the highest honour given to civilians in the US.

Earth Day became global in 1990 which mobilised 200 million people in 141 countries, bringing environmental issues on the world stage, Mr Gorchani said.

Dr Mahmood A. Khawaja of the SDPI said one great outcome of initiation of the day in the US was that environment and environment-related issues gained importance and priority in national politics and eventually at global scale. He hoped that political leadership and national political parties in Pakistan would also give due importance to environment and make it one of the priority issues of their respective party manifesto.

He informed the participants that both chemical and bacterial environmental pollution were mostly man-made, resulting from excessive use of chemicals and from dumps of municipal solid/liquid wastes respectively. He said over 25 million tons of chemicals were being used in the country annually. Hospital waste in the country has been estimated at 45,000 kgs per day. He particularly referred to environmental and health impacts of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), also known as “Dirty Dozen” which were to be globally reduced and eliminated from use under The Stockholm Convention 2001.