On Sunday, June 5, 2011 the global community under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programmes (UNEP) once more marked the world environment day. It was a day set aside by the world body, in 1972, to sensitize mankind on the need to take adequate measures to preserve and protect our environment against degradation but particularly to address concerns of developing countries – ‘human settlements, health, land, water, and desertification’.

The theme of this year’s celebration “Nature, forest at your disposal” was apt, especially coming at a time when many countries across the world are suffering untold devastation from nature’s fury. Japan, for example, is still battling with the aftermath of a devastating earthquake and Tunami that claimed thousands of lives as well as property estimated in billions of dollars.

The earth has indeed sustained life for millions of years. Land, forests, oceans and the atmosphere provide us our food, shelter and medicines. They purify our air and water, stabilize the earth’s climate and protect us from sun’s harmful rays. Yet we consume them as if there is no tomorrow.

Scientists have consistently sounded alarm that the planet earth is running out of fresh water. Even as the ozone layers is being continuously depleted by pollution thereby creating more water, only harmful water is being added, with the result that less than one percent of all water on earth is fresh. This situation leaves mankind with much of sea water and polar ice.

In the year 2000, it was reported by the UN-sponsored World Commission on water for the 21st century that one billion of earth’s six billion people did not have access to safe water and 2 billion lacked proper sanitation. It was also found that half of the world’s 500 major rivers are seriously polluted and depleted; only the Amazon and Congo rivers were considered healthy. Ten years after, not much progress has been recorded in the efforts to remedy this situation.

Scientists have again confirmed an over 50 per cent decline in the population of identified 281 fresh water species – animals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fishes.

If one issue has dominated the environmental debate over the last decade, it is global warming. The grave consequences are well known and ranges from projected rise in sea levels, loss of important ecosystem and bio-diversity, to severe natural disaster like floods and drought which have also become regular feature in Africa.

Through mismanagement, unsuitable planning, and over-use of fertilisers and pesticides, uncontrolled waste dumping, pressure from high population growth, poverty and even polluted rain, an estimated 2 billion hectres (nearly 5 billion acres have become degraded.

Perhaps of more serous concern is the fact that today, over 80 per cent of wood lands that originally circled earth’s surface in abundance have been cleared, fragmented or degraded. Most of the natural forests that remain, occur in just a few places. These forest blocks are valuable because they house indigenous people, culture, shelter and bio-diversity which contribute to economic growth, protect water sources and provide recreation. Worldwide, only about 3.55 billion hectres (more than 86 billion acres) of forest remain, half in the tropics, the rest in temperate and boreal zones.

The destruction of earth’s rainforest by an estimated 10-20 hectres or 25-30 acres every single minute is saddening  especially when half of all prescription medicines come from natural sources like plant species found in rain forests.

In Nigeria, where forest management is still at its prime, deforestation and uncontrolled urbanization pose big challenges. Again desert encroachment and oil pollution even pose a bigger challenge.

Occasions like this should therefore provide ample opportunities for us to reassess efforts and strategies employed in forest conservation bearing in mind that our lives and most of our livelihoods are based on bio-diversity – the wealth of wild species. Many more efforts are urgently needed if we are to save the over 100 species scientists fear are being extinguished on a daily basis as humans deliberately or inadvertently destroy the natural systems that sustain life on earth.

Like any inheritance, bio-diversity can flourish if well managed, or it can be squandered and lost.

Today’s massive loss of species and habitat will be slowed only when the human community understands that nature is neither an inferior to be exploited nor an enemy to be destroyed but an ally requiring respect and replenishment.

The Rivers State government has taken the lead in environmental conservation through its urban renewal efforts that has seen the restoration of urban greenery, parks and gardens.

Other governments must take a cue. Also oil companies, whose activities have been a source of environmental distress and ecological quagmire in the Niger Delta region must launch, as a matter of urgency, remedial programmes that would seek to re-lunch disappearing species back into active life in their natural habitats as co-partners in our battle for survival as human species.

Tree planting campaigns must not remain an occasional pastime, but a consistent policy like the monthly environmental sanitation exercise, so that individuals families and neighbourhoods will imbibe the habit as a sure way of replenishing our plundered nature.