Restoring Our Only Home, a Collective Responsibility

We, humans, are known to be the greatest ecological offenders of all times after natural catastrophes. The food, health, water, and climate crisis and our ever-increasing angst can be traced, at least in part, to our relation to the environment.

Planet earth remains our only home. It provides us with sun, food, water, air, soil, forests, and all necessary for our very existence and survival. We enjoy its beautiful mountains, lakes, rivers, and deserts, and use its resources to construct the buildings and infrastructure that give us comfort.  Yet we have weakened ourselves with ecological malpractices that have caused devastating landslides, droughts, floods, diseases, climate change, poor crop yields and famine amongst others.

When world leaders and countries the world over, meet and sign conventions, treaties and agreements to protect planet earth and the resources therein, as well as fight against crisis induced by our ecological malpractices, it gives the assurance that our leaders are conscious of the solutions to global challenges. But when the same signatories turn to take or better still approve actions that deplete the same earth and resources they committed to protect, it casts doubts on the future sustainability of “our only home”, planet earth.

On July 20, 2020, for example, President Paul Biya of Cameroon signed to an agreement on the conservation of gorillas and their habitats. On July 22, 2020, barely two days after, a Prime Ministerial Decree was issued approving the logging of some 68,385 hectares of the Ebo Forest, a 2,000 km² proposed national park in the Littoral Region of Cameroon, home to gorillas and other endangered species. Though the Government later revoked this degree following petitions and widespread online condemnations, there is apparently a road construction project around the corner that will see part of this carbon sink and biodiversity hotspot destroyed. On July 22, 2022, eight Cameroon-based conservation organizations addressed a letter to the Delegation of the EU to Cameroon, British High Commission, German, French, and U.S. Embassy requesting their urgent intervention to halt the construction project.

The Government, like every individual, may have several arguments to advance but it is again a truism that rapid industrialization, pollution, deforestation unchecked consumption of natural resources do not only endanger nature but our existence too!

Just like the theme of the 2022 World Environment Day; ‘Only One Earth’, which highlights the need to live sustainably in harmony with nature, it is time to make peace with nature before it completely takes away our peace than it has already done. It is time to shift from harming nature to healing it; it is time to build a greener, safer, and more sustainable planet for all to thrive. From the presidency to the slums, now is the time for every individual, community, company and organization to save the Earth; to control environmental pollution and global warming by saving water, trees, biodiversity species, and other natural resources for the future generations and ourselves. Like Helen Caldicott said: “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”!

By Ndimuh B. Shancho