Umerkot, Sindh

Strengthening Participatory Organization (SPO) celebrated Earth Day under the theme “Planet vs. Plastics,” under the Norwegian Church Aid funded Faith in Action for Sustainable Climate Resilience project.

The event was the celebration of the community’s real contribution to protecting our planet from the scourge of plastics. The agricultural experts, agronomist, soil scientist, environment lovers, youth, women and community shared their views on contribution of local community specially women in practical solutions to combat plastic pollution and promote environmental sustainability in Umerkot and Sanghar area.

Jan Muhammad Mari, PRO Vice Chancellor of Sindh Agricultural University sub-campus, Vikram Kumar, Assistant Director Sindh Environment Protection Agency- SEPA, Umerkot, Shewa Ram Suthar, Program Manager at SPO, Saleem Chang, an agriculture expert, climate lover, and FACE member, Ms. Dheli Bai, Ms. Almas Kanbhar, President of the Women Self-Help Group in Sanghar district, Suresh Piragani, Program Manager at Sami Foundation, and others spoke at the event.

SPO setup more than ten stall to aware visitors/ participants of event through different models.

SPO and the Agriculture University sub-campus setup a stall of energy-efficient smart city technologies. Through this stall, the team sensitized attendees about how a smart city utilizes and promotes environmentally friendly practices.  The team also introduced a second stall demonstrating how homemade incubators can be used to store dairy products for modern livestock farms. Visitors were sensitized to this model through practical demonstrations. SPO and the Agriculture University team introduced a modern agriculture farm for agribusiness and tourism, aiming to bring benefits to the Umerkot area. They sensitized visitors to the potential of this initiative. SPO also introduced compost, soil classification, smart irrigation, automated irrigation system, energy efficient stoves, seed bank and cultural exhibition.

SPO honored role models from the Umerkot area who have made significant contributions to environmental protection and safeguarding the Earth, aligning with this year’s Earth Day theme.

The first award was presented to Dr. Teekam Das, who established an indigenous drought-resilient center in Umerkot at his own residence. He planted various species in Umerkot to promote environmental sustainability, combat climate change, and offer support to the community. He introduced an innovative system for organic waste management, converting it into biogas at a gobar plant. Dr. Teekam Das is livestock expert but his passion as agricultural and climate lover and he dedicated his life to service and is currently serving with the FACE group as a climate advocate, providing support and guidance to the community.

The second award was given to Lal Singh Sodho. He served Umerkot in a unique way by protecting the earth through planting thousands of trees of different varieties. He belongs to the Thakur community, which has always protected the earth and saved many species of animals and living trees. He encouraged youth to plant and properly care for trees, as he always keeps trees in his car. He controlled tree cutting and degradation in the Umerkot area. He also sensitized people through social media and raised many environmentally friendly campaigns.

The third award was given to Institute AZRC and Azizullah Shah, Director of AZRC Umerkot, for their services and commitment to arid agriculture and its beautiful growth and development. In the arid regions of Umerkot and Tharparkar, they introduced many varieties of drought-resistant crops, introduced 23 types of date palms in the desert, utilized grafting and drip systems for water supply to plants’ roots, and served Umerkot by making the arid region lush green.

The fourth award was given to Dr. Jan Muhammad Mari, Pro-Vice Chancellor of Sindh Agriculture University sub-campus Umerkot, for his services in protecting the earth and encouraging rural youth, especially from Umerkot, to play their own part in climate change.

Students presented three tableaus to ensure maximum participant comprehension of the value of the earth and the importance of avoiding plastic bags.

The event was attended by 150 participants from various segments of the community, including women, youth, students, stakeholders, NGOs, INGOs, UN representatives, CSOs, institutes, academia, and environmental enthusiasts from the Umerkot area. (PR)

Read: Umerkot City of Sindh becomes Epitome of Interfaith Harmony

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Abuja

Wars attract negative alliances that fuel a disastrous carnage on planet, and the writers around the world have a duty to expose the real causes and call for warring forces to look at the common interest of peace, says Mr. John RUSIMBI – President of the Pan African Writers Association (PAWA) in his opening remarks at the inaugural session of first Congress of World Organization of Writers (WOW) which began here on Thursday April 4, 2024. The Congress will continue till April 6.

Here are the opening Remarks from John RUSIMBI – President of the Pan African Writers Association (PAWA):

Today, I am honored to provide my remarks on this important day when writers from around the world gather to celebrate their unity and heroism as agitators for humanity, freedom and justice.

Writers around the world have been persecuted for their outstanding published work against oppression, exploitation, and racism. Many have gone to exile; others imprisoned and even killed for their honesty and love for justice.

Today, the world continues to see wars unfolding around the globe and claiming many innocent lives in Palestine, the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Ukraine.

It is more unfortunate when the wars attract negative alliances that fuel and inflame a more disastrous carnage on our planet. Behind the wars are crafty motives driven by ideological intolerance and greed for resources and supremacy.

Writers around the world have a duty to expose the real causes and call for warring forces to look at the common interest of peace.

Today, we continue to see racism linger in the most powerful nations on the world where non-whites continue to suffer discrimination, degradation, and misery.

Yet as the theme of the conference says “we are people of the same planet”. Writers across the globe have a duty to expose this evil and call for racial equality.

Deplorable periods of enslavement, colonialism and neo-colonialism have affected developing countries often complaining of both direct and indirect exploitation of their natural resources. The existing trade relations continue to favor more powerful nations at the expense of the weaker ones.

The international financial system is also designed to improve the North at the expense of the South. This increases the number of the most impoverished persons unable to get basic necessities of life on earth.

The World Organization of Writers (WOW) has a responsibility to promote the culture of peace and justice around the world by bringing together like minded heroic writers to expose and challenge evil while appreciating the common good.

Let me thank the founders of WOW for the noble enterprise that unites us all to avoid falling prey to manipulators who want us to trail their line of thinking even when they are wrong.

We should try to be objective in our writings and always advocate for equality and justice.

I thank the Secretary General of PAWA- Dr. Wale Okedran for the tireless efforts co-organizing WOW conference in Africa where most of the writers have demonstrated against enslavement, colonialism and neo-colonialism with its adverse effects on the African populace.

I particularly thank the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) for hosting the conference in Nigeria and hope that it will remain a memorable event for decades and centuries to come.

I wish you fruitful deliberations.

John RUSIMBI

President of PAWA

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Read: WOW and ANA Leaders meet ahead of World Writers’ Congress

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Hailing from Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Maid is 23 years old. In his spare time he writes poetry. He is moderator of the World Literature Forum Peace and Humanity, held in Bhutan. He is also the editor of the First Virtual Art portal led by Dijana Uherek Stevanovic, and the selector of the competition at a page of the same name that aims to bring together all poets around the world. Many works have also been published in anthologies and journals (Chile, Spain, Ecuador, Bosnia and Herzegovina, San Salvador, United Kingdom, Indonesia, India, Croatia, Serbia, etc.) as well as printed copies of the anthology of poems “Sea in the palm of your hand“, “Stories from Isolation”, and “Kosovo Peony” and others. In 2020 he was proclaimed a poet in the Indo-Universe group, which is also involved in charity around the world. He has been writing for over twelve years. Soon his works will be translated into several languages of the world (Chinese, Italian and French).

MY PLANET IS MY CHOICE

I live in the planet land made up of crust

And I see no reason to be angry

Why planet Earth is now sad

And dirty from rough rough…

I see no problem that people advise others

To fight for what their

Sacred is what was created

Our planet Earth will live

I know the planet country is beautiful

The center of all events and events

Which people do consciously by throwing a garbage!

And by the half because of our good

One day will the planet country

Return everything we did to her

And I believe she remembers steps

And will never forget them lightly

Because the land I love in the world the most

Although one mistake does not make up the spring!

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Also read: Greek Saviors of the Future – A Poem from Bosnia

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By Ranjit Devraj

 NEW DELHI

A study conducted over a 16-year period in India’s Himalayan region confirms what scientists have always believed — that large, grazing mammals play a vital role in stabilizing soil carbon and mitigating the effects of climate change.

Soil organic carbon created by decomposing matter supports all life on Earth and provides the largest carbon sink after the oceans. Climate change and sustainable development can be affected by even the slightest change in the quantity and quality of soil carbon, says a paper by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.

Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, fenced-off grazing herbivores, such as yaks and ibex, in selected areas of Spiti in Himachal Pradesh state and found that it resulted in the increased stability of soil carbon in the grazed area while there were increased fluctuations in the excluded areas.

“Domestic and wild herbivores are very similar in many respects, but they differ in how they influence plants and soil”

Shamik Roy

“Maintaining stable levels of carbon in the soil is key to offsetting the effects of climate change and the soil pool is a reliable sink that traps carbon,” says Sumanta Bagchi, an author of the study and associate professor at Centre for Environmental Science at the Indian Institute of Science.

According to the study, published October in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, soil contains more carbon than all plants and the atmosphere combined and it is important to ensure its persistence.

“Dead organic matter from plants and animals remain in the soil for a long time until microbes break them down, and release carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide,” said Bagchi.

Grazing ecosystems play a major role in “land–atmosphere feedbacks” because they cover about 40 per cent of the world’s terrestrial ice-free surface (nearly 50 million square kilometers) across grasslands, savannas and shrub steppes, and they contain about a third of all soil carbon, the study said.

Bagchi and his team of students collected soil samples from the fenced-off plots and compared the levels of carbon and nitrogen in the soil year after year. They found soil carbon fluctuating between 30 and 40 per cent in the fenced-off plots, while these elements remained steady in the plots that were open to grazing.

A key factor underlying these fluctuations is soil organic nitrogen generated by decomposing plants and animal wastes that help fresh plant growth. Depending on the soil conditions, nitrogen can either stabilize or destabilize the carbon pool. Grazing by herbivores, however, changes their interactions in ways that tip the balance in favor of the former, the study said.

Soil organic carbon improves soil aeration (the amount of oxygen in the soil) as well as water drainage and retention, lowering the risk of erosion and nutrient leaching while improving soil fertility and nutrient-holding capacity.

Recovering lost soil carbon can be frustratingly slow and uncertain, the study notes. “Alongside a growing focus on increasing the soil carbon pool, an equally important climate mitigation solution lies in our ability to protect the pre-existing soil carbon, the study says.

“The findings of the study are not surprising — previous studies have shown the importance of protecting grazing animals, whether domestic or wild, to keep soil carbon stable and mitigate climate change,” says Krishna Gopal Saxena, an independent consultant on ecosystem conservation and former dean at the School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

According to Saxena, who was not involved with the study, while grazing is beneficial, there is a need to safeguard against overgrazing as both excessive and intensive can equally be detrimental to ecosystems. “Much depends on the specific ecosystem and also kind of large mammals that are concerned — elephants and bison have different grazing or foraging patterns than smaller grazing mammals such as goats and sheep, for example,” Saxena said.

“In Spiti, it is common to see blue sheep grazing alongside livestock and this works well for ecology because of ‘species preference’ with blue sheep preferring to graze on woody, hard shrubs while livestock generally prefers softer material,” said Saxena who has expertise in high-altitude ecology.

“It is also worth considering that soils that are rich in organic carbon and nutrients may not always be considered to be healthy, especially if it causes injury to crops or supports pests,” Saxena said. “Soil health as a dimension of ecosystem health can be seen in terms of resistance and resilience of soil in response to various stresses and disturbances.”

However, Saxena pointed to the need to quantify carbon emissions from the dung of grazing animals, especially methane, a greenhouse gas that lingers in the atmosphere many times more than carbon dioxide. “Methane emissions from cattle have not been properly quantified and existing studies and estimations are based on lab experiments.”

While previous studies focused on measuring carbon and nitrogen levels at long intervals on the assumption that accumulation or loss of carbon were slow processes, the present study considered shorter-term, interannual fluctuations that can be consequential for climate change, linked as they are to large mammalian grazing, said Dilip GT Naidu, a PhD student working with Bagchi and a study author.

In the ongoing research in Spiti, Bagchi and his team are looking into how domestic herbivores such as goat and sheep differ impact the ecosystem differently from their wild relatives.

“Domestic and wild herbivores are very similar in many respects, but they differ in how they influence plants and soil,” says Shamik Roy, a team member and also an author of the study. “Understanding why they are not alike can lead us toward more effective stewardship of soil carbon.”

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Courtesy: Sci. Dev. Net (Published on October 27, 2022)

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Nearly one third of all honeybees in the country have reportedly perished in just a few years, which is matter of concern as honey bees pollinate one third of all the food we eat.

Public Opinion

We’re losing billions of bees each year to many complicated causes, including viruses, climate change, decreasing crop diversity and habitat loss. One of the major causes of death of bees is use of pesticides in agriculture sector.

A study by American Environment Protection Agency says that while pesticides are designed to kill pests and insects that harm crops, they also have unintended consequences. “Pesticides can wipe out entire species, even ones not targeted. This includes bees, insects which are essential to many crop yields,” the report says.

The people just think of bees as favorite buzzing pollinators and honey-producers, but in fact they do much more than making honey. Losing bees can cause big problems for ecosystem and economy of the world.

“Bees pollinate about three-quarters of fruits, vegetables and nuts in the U.S. only”, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Bees not only pollinate foods we eat, they also pollinate food eaten by birds and other mammals. Bees pollinate wild berries and nuts, as well as food eaten by domesticated livestock. “Take bees out of the equation and the effects can be felt all the way up,” says Earth Day Organization.

Besides pollinating heavy-hitting crops like fruits, vegetables and nuts, bees pollinate crops like cotton and other foods we don’t instantly think of when we think of bees (like coffee, tea and chocolate). Entire industries produce various beeswax- and honey-based goods. Together, bees affect multibillion-dollar industries that, if they collapse, could put tens of thousands out of work and send shockwaves through the economy.

Honey is the only insect-created food with therapeutic, medicinal, nutritional and cosmetic value.

Most bees leave the hive and spend their days collecting nectar and pollen from flowering plants, trees, and crops. All day, the worker bee flies from flower to flower, using its long hairy longue to suck liquid nectar from plants. The bees transfer the pollen between blossoms enabling many plants to reproduce. The bee stores nectar in its honey-stomach which brings nectar back to the hive and deposits it onto the honeycomb made of bees wax.

Bees flit their wings to dry up liquid nectar, transforming it into their food store for the year – gooey honey. Humans are lucky to get the leftovers.

Nearly one third of all honeybees in the country have reportedly perished in just a few years, which is matter of concern as honey bees pollinate one third of all the food we eat.

If the honeybees died, the process of trees and plants’ pollination would not only be fully affected but they would greatly affect the ability of the fruit and vegetable to grow.

Therefore it is pertinent to ensure taking measures that can help prevent death of bees. Saving honeybees would be saving the agriculture, saving the planet.

Farhana Kaleem Channa

Karachi Sindh

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