Green enthusiasts of the city will come together on World Environmental Day, which falls on Wednesday, to undertake programmes like tree plantation campaigns, seminars, ‘no waste bin’ campaign, cyclothon etc.
Public Works Minister V K Ebrahim Kunju will inaugurate the district wing of ‘Haritha Keralam-2013’, a state government initiative to conserve the biodiversity and ecology of the state, at Muppathadom Government Higher Secondary School at 10.30 am. This year, 4.5 lakh tree saplings will be planted in the district as part of ‘Haritha Keralam’.
A day-long programme will be held at Taj Gateway hotel, where conservationists and environmentalists from across the country will join together to honour environmentalist and academician Professor M K Prasad.
Also, a national seminar on the subject “Environment and Society: The India Challenge” will be held. A festschrift, a volume of contributed articles and papers by experts in the field of environment, will be released on the occasion. Madhav Gadgil, Sunitha Narain, Anand Parthasarathy, Justice V R Krishna Iyer, V S Vijayan and B Ikbal are scheduled to attend the seminar.
A seminar on ‘Social conservation of natural resources’ at Ernakulam Gandhi Bhavan will be conducted by the Kerala Sarvodaya Mandalam. KSM state president P Ramachandran will inaugurate the programme. KSM district president M Thankappa Menon, KSM state secretary P Peethambaran, Sarva Seva Sangam national secretary T R N Prabhu, V P G Marar, M R Rajendran Nair, P G Krishnan Nair and P R Sadhasivan Pillai will also attend the function. The Le Meridien hotel will organise a series of activities based on this year’s theme: ‘Think, Eat, Save’, embraced by the United Nations Environment Programme. The hotel will observe a ‘no waste bin’ campaign at the associate cafeteria between till Friday along with a collage competition which will be held on Wednesday. The hotel chefs will organise a cold buffet at the cafeteria which will reduce food and energy wastage. Videos portraying facts and figures regarding food wastage and its consequences will also be showcased at the cafeteria.
The hotel will initiate a ‘plant-a-sapling’ campaign along with a clean drive just outside the premises of the hotel. The Oberon Mall in association with Cochin Bikers Club will hold cyclothon. A parking slot for cycles will also be inaugurated. In between Wednesday and Friday, the mall will hold a series of events, including a live painting on the theme of environment, an awareness campaign by Green Peace India, a tree adoption drive and various other workshops and exhibitions.
On Tuesday, the Team for Ecological Equilibrium planted 5,000 tree saplings in the median from Edappally to Vytilla bypass as part of its eco-day celebrations. Film director Major Ravi inaugurated the event. District Collector Sheik Pareeth, actor Baburaj and Janapaksham Society chairman Benny Joseph attended the event. Supreme Court Justice K S Radhakrishnan inaugurated a series of environmental conservation programmes to be observed for the next three days by the Lawyer’s Environmental Awareness Forum. He said areas like as Mangalavanam should be protected as these are important for our ecological diversity. High Court Chief Justice Manjula Chellur inaugurated the tree sapling distribution ceremony.