By Matters India Reporter
Patna, Sept 16, 2020: A renowned environmentalist in India on September 16 lauded a Jesuit college in Patna, Bihar, for selecting an annual theme that seeks to strengthen emission reduction.
“The Earth is in trouble and calls for sustained efforts to combat climate change and environmental degradation,” Sunita Narain, director general of the New Delhi-based Science and Environment, a non-profit organization, said in a video message to St Xavier’s College of Management and Technology on the occasion of the World Ozone Day.
The college has selected ‘Save Earth, Save the Future’ as its annual theme for the academic year 2020-2021. The college’s initiative “is so critical and I am happy to be part of it,” said Narain, a major proponent of the green concept of sustainable development and a winner of the Padmashree, one of the civilian awards in India.
Describing the staff and students of St Xavier’s as “earth warriors,” Narain said, “We need more such warriors, because saving the Earth, saving the future is like saving ourselves.”
Jesuit Father Robert Athickal, the founder and the first director of “Taru Mitra” (friends of trees), a green movement of students, said the whole human family was concerned about Earth and its future.
Congratulating the college for selecting a burning issue as its annual theme, Father Athickal said the college and its sister organizations occupy “a very unique place” in Patna because of its “very green compound” spread over about 50 acres of land.
Taru Mitra’s program coordinator Devopriya Datta called upon the staff and students to observe earth hour every day and try to save resources.
Earlier, in her introductory speech, Richa Prakash, a third year BBA student, said, “Saving the earth is a necessity to save ourselves.”
On the occasion, the college students joined a discussion on the importance of the ozone layer and the steps needed to save it from depletion.
The theme for the International Ozone Day this year is Ozone for life: 35 years of ozone layer protection.
It marks 35 years of the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, a multilateral environmental agreement that provided frameworks for international reductions in the production of chlorofluorocarbons due to their contribution to the destruction of the ozone layer, resulting in an increased threat of skin cancer.
It is one of the most successful treaties of all time, having been ratified by 197 states, including the Vatican, as well as the European Union. While not a binding agreement, it acts as a framework for the international efforts to protect the ozone layer; however, it does not include legally binding reduction goals for the use of CFCs, the main chemical agents causing ozone depletion.
Inger Anderson, executive director of UNEP, says the decisive global response to the ozone layer depletion has become a model of international cooperation.