Volunteers gather to discuss precautions to maintain eco balance

LUDHIANA: A state level volunteer gathering meet was organised by the Washington-based “EcoSikh” Club at Gurdwara Sarabha Nagar on Sunday. The purpose behind this meeting was to create a network of environmental leaders from across the state, who can fight for the betterment of state while maintaining the ecological balance. More than 100 volunteers from across the state took part in the 4-hour training sessions supervised by the best state level environmentalists and entrepreneurs.

During the session, they had gave people an understanding of the environmental urgency of Punjab and well-planned strategy to be set out to engage the communities via awareness campaign. They asked them to reduce wastage of water, air pollution and use of thermocol and plastic garbage at homes and places of worship.

Punjab is losing ground water at the rate of 3 feet per year. Four major cities of Punjab i.e Ludhiana, Khanna, Gobindgarh and Amritsar are among the top 25 most polluted cities of the world. And now, the state is only left with 3.8% of forest cover and none of the cities of Punjab has a legitimate waste-recycling scheme.

EcoSikh

’s India project manager Ravneet Singh stated, “The entire life chain on earth is suffering due to bad quality of air and water. Currently, Punjab’s future is not safe. It was for the first time in history that Punjab’s educational institutions were shut down due to smog in November 2017. This was a warning sign to all of us as citizens. Political leadership ought to take meaningful and remedial steps.”

EcoSikh campaign head Gurpreet Kaur released a yearly calendar and highlighted importance of annual Sikh Environment Day, March 14 for engaging the masses with various activities like plantations, bicycle rallies, organic langar, seminars and recycling programmes.

Dr Rajwant Singh, global EcoSikh president from Washington, joined live via internet to share his motivating words. He emphasised that each of the Punjabi home should have one sensitive environmentalist to lead the way. He said, “Young people of Punjab and India need to see that worsening environment is going to affect them and the next generation and their activism is the need of the hour.”

Since 2010, EcoSikh has organised Sikh Environment Day celebrations annually in 18 countries. Organic langar, youth environmental leadership workshops, organic farmer trainings and organic mandi, green Nagar Kirtans, educational environmental movies, and green Diwali are some of the recent signature campaigns of EcoSikh. EcoSikh has worked with international bodies like the United Nations and the World Bank. In addition, it is frequently being invited by the White House on climate change issues.