URBANA, Illinois, April 22 (IPS) – Around the World, Earth Day 2022 being organized. This year’s theme is “Investing in Our Planet”. To mark this day, activities such as tree planting, demonstrations, marches, trash removal and conferences will be held to highlight the importance of investing in and taking care of our planet.
This is essential because our planet in it worst shape ever, follow 2022 and Year 2021 Reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and its citizens are facing tough challenges including food insecurity and COVID-19.
Other evidence to highlight our unhealthy planet includes an increase in the occurrence of billion dollar climate and weather disaster with serious impacts on humans and other species living on our planet, land and land degradationand accelerate the loss of biodiversity and species including insect.
Since there’s nothing important to celebrate, just work to do, it’s only fair that we reflect on what it means to invest in our planet.
And so I took some time to think about what this topic means to me, as someone who grew up on a farm on the Kenya Coast, as an advocate. food security and as an African female scientist.
My research aims to find sustainable ways to feed our growing population and discover new ways to combat the extreme effects of climate change such as floods, droughts and droughts. Insects that destroy crops for agricultural crops.
First, investing in our planet means investing in the people who live on it and making sure everyone around the world has access to nutritious food. At this time, more than 800 million people living on our planet are hungry. According to the United Nations World Food Program, 44 million people in 38 countries are facing hunger, all due to climate shocks, conflict and global pandemics.
Addressing hunger for the millions of people affected, many of whom live in developing countries, means investing in agriculture. The majority of the world’s poor, including women, are rural earn a living from farming.
To accelerate progress, it is imperative to invest in ensuring that farmers have the tools and knowledge base to mitigate the impact of climate change on agriculture. These tools include access to finance, agricultural inputs as well as extension services and capacity building and technology transfer programs to ensure that farmer can implement scientifically proven climate-smart farming practices.
Practice climate-smart farming purpose accomplishes three goals: sustainably increase agricultural productivity, adapt and build resilience to climate change, and reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.
These initiatives utilize and encourage a number of strategies including timely planting of improved crop varieties, diversification of the crop base, use of integrated pest and weed management, and provision of provide timely current and seasonal weather information to farmers and share agricultural improvements.
Second, investing in the planet means investing in the empowerment of women and girls, especially women from marginalized communities. Women continue to play many roles on our planet including serving in the agricultural workforce as food producers.
In many African countries including Cameroon, Gabon, Kenya, according to the World BankWomen make up more than 40% of the agricultural workforce.
Third, investing in our planet means investing in science. Science will continue to offer new solutions to these challenges and will compel developed and developing countries to invest and increase the national budgets allotted for science funding, in particular the science of understanding a changing climate and strategies to increase climate resilience.
Fourth, investing in our planet means highlighting and nurturing all voices – Black, White, Lesbian, Gay, and Gay.
Although the problem affects all of us, surprisingly the voices that continue to be heard remain always white and straight. This must change. We must reiterate the fact that the effects of a changing climate affect everyone and do not respect the boundaries that humanity has created.
We must encourage and highlight activists from all continents and backgrounds. Doing so reinforces the message that we are on this planet together and that together, we can act.
Clearly, the Earth and our planet and the people who inhabit it will continue to experience new and harsh realities in part due to climate change. We all have to try to reflect and take the initiative to do something. Time is the essence.
Dr. Esther Ngumbi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and a Senior Fellow in Food Security at the Aspen Institute, New Voices.
© Inter Press Service (2022) – All rights reservedOrigin: Inter Press Service
