ISLAMABAD, April 22: The Earth Day was commemorated on Monday with special children of the twin cities articulating their vision of environment in a creative way at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute.

Children from special schools of the twin cities, including the National Institute for Hearing Impaired Children, the National Institute for Mentally Retarded Children, Al-Makhdoom School for the Blind, Al-Farabi and Al-Ghazali, participated in the arts and crafts competition.

The Earth Day competition for special children was held in conjunction with worldwide celebrations to emphasize the importance of protecting environment and to make commitments. Biodiversity, water, energy, forests and equity have been stressed as themes that are central to the environment movement.

Earth Day is the world’s premier global environmental celebration, held on April 22 every year since 1970.

Its purpose is to increase awareness, responsibility and action towards a clean, healthy future for all living things, using events, campaigns and networking as catalysts.

The largest environmental event in the history was the Earth Day 2000, involving over 5,000 organizations in 184 countries, with an estimated 300 million participants, and events in major cities including Dublin, London, New York, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Beijing, Mexico City, Moscow, Cairo, Hong Kong, Seoul, New Delhi, Kathmandu, Manila, Tel Aviv, Nairobi, Toronto, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires and Istanbul.

The paintings and posters made by the special children at the SDPI focussed on clean energy as the international theme for Earth Day 2002.

Many of the themes that were highlighted by children included the need to contain various types of pollution, especially pollution from factories and vehicle emissions. The paintings also emphasized the need to protect trees and other flora.

A press release issued by the SDPI said the government should play a responsible role in abiding by laws designed to ensure the protection of environment.

“It is troubling that the largest national park in the country, Kirthar National Park, has been earmarked for oil and gas exploration by large multinational corporations with the explicit approval of the petroleum ministry.” This was done despite the laws on statute books for protecting Kirthar, the press release said.

The Sustainable Development Policy Institute condemned the disregard shown by the United States for international efforts to protect the environment in its unilateral decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol. It said such actions only hurt the cause of the environment movement in the interest of profit, and the imbalance would haunt the future generations.