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BDN EARTH DAY EDITORIAL – EARTH DAY 2020
April 22, 2020
Today is Mother’s Day. No, not that mother, but our older, bigger, original, irreplaceable one – Mother Earth (with due respect!). Yes, April 22, is celebrated around the world as Earth Day.
Established in 1970, Earth Day has now become an annual global event – a day that creates awareness, highlighting the unprecedented global destruction and rapid reduction of plant and wildlife populations which are most directly linked to causes driven by human activity with its far-reaching impacts: deforestation, climate change, trafficking and poaching, habitat loss, overfishing, unsustainable agriculture, pollution, and pesticides.
This year, Earth Day is focused on the immediacy of “#climate action”.
As we celebrate Earth Day today throughout the Caribbean, BDN encourages our readers and supporters to join climate action wherever you are to address climate change: end plastic pollution; protect endangered species; broaden and activate the environmental movement in your country, across the region and globe.
Everything in life has its purpose and each plays a unique role in preserving life in our fragile ecosystem. There are various species threatened or endangered throughout the region. We must work together to protect them. In the Caribbean, these include our coral reefs, turtles, whales, bees, and also, Dominica’s national bird, its indigenous parrot (Imperial Amazon), the Grenada Dove, Trinidad Euphonia bird, Jamaican Iguana, Martinique Robber Frog, the Cuban Crocodile, the Antiguan Racer snake, and various other animals and endemic plant species in every territory across the region.
As a region of Small Island Developing States, with tourism dependency, the very resources that make us attractive to the global markets – our flora, fauna, and coral reefs – are the most vulnerable to climate change. Our Caribbean is particularly fragile and climate-vulnerable. Almost every year a particular Caribbean state’s economy is wrecked by a natural disaster, the frequency and intensity worsened by climate change.
The current COVID-19 global pandemic has exposed just how helpless we are to wider global forces such as globalization, reminding us that even our direct local action may not be enough. This, of course, should not disarm us from taking action where we can make a difference.
Earth Day may be an opportune time to begin rethinking our development priorities. For example, the extent to which we depend on tourism; how much we cooperate regionally on climate change priorities; how much we do as civil society and governments to encourage activities such as reviving the agricultural sector and encouraging a more plant-based diet; attention to efforts at reducing or eliminating pesticide and herbicide use; raising awareness about the rate of extinction of local species; how much we promote and facilitate recycling; actions to advance and encourage local and regional climate advocacy, and the embracing of nature and its values. In addition, the long-overdue official recognition of the virtue of some aspects of Rastafarian philosophy and that of other indigenous belief systems that have long promoted earth-centered livity.
We encourage you to join all-day climate action across the Caribbean region, such as: YoungWomen4ClimateAction (Jamaica); Earth Day Photo Challenge (Trinidad and Tobago); VCHT Virtual Earth day/Dia de la tierra virtual vcht.org (Vieques, Puerto Rico); Earth Day 2020 Panel Session: Climate Action (Bahamas); Earth Day Virtual Celebration (Bermuda); Earth Day Social Media Campaign (Dominican Republic)
Happy Mother’s Day! Happy Happy Earth Day! Mother’s Day is every day; Earth Day is every day!
That photo in your article with the Jamaican kids on the beach brought me back to Grenville Bay during my days in Police Boys Club. We were tasked to clean up the area around the old courts, the now thriving Grenville Bus Station.
I remember the impact such environmental initiatives had on me — glad to see you sharing that with the world in your writing, reminding them that small things…by small people, can have a prolonged impact.
Happy Saturday and thanks, Brother Martin (and Big Drum Nation), for keeping the Caribbean flame alive…and burning bright.