By Prof Govind Singh Rajwar
The Planet Earth is certainly our Power. We are born on it and use the planet’s resources for our survival, such as air and water. Though we can utilise Mother Earth’s resources sustainably, our greed has exploited it to a large extent making it impossible for the survival of future generations. The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 22 April as International Mother Earth Day through a resolution adopted in 2009. This International Day recognises the Earth and its ecosystems as humanity’s common home and the need to protect her to enhance people’s livelihoods, counteract climate change, and stop the decline of biodiversity and degradation of all its resources. The theme for Earth Day 2025 is “Our Power, Our Planet“. In 2025, 22 April marks the 55th anniversary of Earth Day, a milestone that reflects more than half a century of environmental activism and awareness. The theme rightly recognises the importance of Planet Earth and its ecosystems in terms of exploitation, actually over-exploitation, and encourages humans to protect its land and resources. This year’s theme encourages people, organisations, and governments to use renewable energy sources and build a sustainable future. The Earth Day theme for 2025 aims to triple the use of clean energy sources by 2030, to end reliance on fossil fuels and the damage they cause to the environment and human health, promote energy equity, and create millions of new jobs worldwide.
Since Mother Earth faces many degradation problems, we still have time to restore it through many measures. Considering the alarming rate of receding glaciers due to climate change, the UN General Assembly has declared 2025 the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation (IYGP). Climate change, man-made changes to nature as well as adverse activities that disrupt biodiversity, such as deforestation, land-use change, intensified agriculture, replacement of pasture lands by human settlements, or the growing illegal wildlife trade, can accelerate the speed of destruction of the planet. Mother Earth is urging a call to action: a need to shift to a more sustainable economy that works for both people and the Planet. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), jointly with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), has facilitated a global initiative that seeks to unite efforts worldwide to protect these vital water sources, which provide freshwater to more than 2 billion people. Glaciers and ice sheets hold around 70 per cent of the world’s freshwater, and their rapid loss exhibits an environmental and humanitarian crisis. In 2023, glaciers experienced their greatest water loss in over 50 years, marking the second consecutive year in which all glaciated regions worldwide reported ice loss. According to WMO, Switzerland, for example, had a glacier loss of 10 per cent of its total mass between 2022 and 2023. As per the UNESCO report, 50 UNESCO heritage sites with glaciers represent almost 10 percent of Earth’s glacier area, and another study warned that glaciers in one-third of these sites are projected to disappear by 2050.
WMO confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record, at 1.55 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. The 1.5℃ marker is significant because it was a key goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement to ensure that global temperature change does not rise more than this above pre-industrial levels, while striving to hold the overall increase to well below 2℃. WMO said that the Paris Agreement is “not yet dead but in grave danger”, which explains that the accord’s long-term temperature goals are measured over decades, rather than individual years. Every additional increment of global warming increases the impacts on our lives, economies, and our planet. Fire incidents in different parts of the world are another factor for temperature increase and loss to properties, forests, biodiversity and wildlife. The problem is alarming in Uttarakhand and other states of the Indian Himalayan region. A UN international study published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, reported that the ocean is the warmest it has ever been as recorded by humans, not only at the surface but also for the upper 2,000 metres. According to WMO report, about 90 per cent of the excess heat from global warming is stored in the ocean, “making ocean heat content a critical indicator of climate change”. Globally, the sea level is rising faster and higher than ever before, creating what the UN has described as an “urgent and escalating threat” to people worldwide. It has been estimated that the oceans have risen by approximately 20-23 centimetres (8-9 inches) since 1880. Rising sea levels result from ocean warming and the melting of glaciers and ice sheets, which are important consequences of climate change. Rise in sea level is also threatening the tourism industry in many places. Thus, rising sea levels have wide-reaching implications not just on the physical environment, but also on the economic, social and cultural aspects of vulnerable nations worldwide. Tourism sector is very likely to be badly affected due to climate change. In fact, the sea level rise is a symptom of climate change. The oceans absorb much of this excess heat caused by climate change. People living in the coastal zones of densely populated countries like Bangladesh, China, India, the Netherlands, and Pakistan will be at risk and potentially suffer catastrophic flooding. Major cities on every continent, including Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Lagos, London, Mumbai, New York and Shanghai, are also at risk. Solutions to mitigate such a catastrophe include: building infrastructure, such as sea walls and storm surge barriers, to protect against flooding and erosion; improving drainage systems and constructing flood-resistant buildings; restoring natural barriers like mangroves; and protecting wetlands and coral reefs to absorb wave energy and reduce the impact of storm surges. Many countries are using their disaster risk reduction plans, and early warning systems, to deal with sea level-related incidents. Communities may also be relocated in some areas from vulnerable coastal areas as part of adaptation measures, an approach known as managed retreat. Across Asia and the Pacific, women and girls, especially those from rural, indigenous, and marginalised communities, are at the frontlines of climate change and environmental degradation. While they often bear the brunt of environmental crises, they are also powerful agents of change and maintain stability in socio-economic, cultural, environmental and political domains, particularly in cross-boundary regions.
The power of Planet Earth is also recognised as the ecosystem services provided by various ecosystems on all continents. These services include various forms or resources provided by nature for the survival of humans, such as air, water, soil, food, medicine, raw forest and rock materials and minerals, and firewood. Biological diversity, in short biodiversity, is often understood in terms of the wide variety of plants, animals and microorganisms, but it also includes genetic differences within each species, for example, between varieties of crops and breeds of livestock, and the variety of ecosystems (lakes, forest, deserts, agricultural landscapes) that host multiple kind of interactions among their members (humans, plants, animals). Biodiversity resources are the pillars upon which humans have built civilisation. Fish provide 20 per cent of animal protein to about 3 billion people. Over 80 per cent of the human diet is provided by plants. As many as 80 per cent of people living in rural areas in developing countries rely on traditional plant‐based medicines for basic healthcare. The loss of biodiversity threatens all, including our health. It has been proven that biodiversity loss could expand zoonoses, the diseases transmitted from animals to humans, while, on the other hand, if we keep biodiversity intact, it offers excellent tools to fight against pandemics like those caused by coronaviruses. Approximately 9 million types of plants, animals, protists and fungi inhabit the Earth, so too do 7 billion people. Two decades ago, at the first Earth Summit, the vast majority of the world’s nations declared that human actions were dismantling the Earth’s ecosystems, eliminating genes, species and biological traits at an alarming rate. This observation led to the question of how such a loss of biological diversity will alter the functioning of ecosystems and their ability to provide society with the goods and services needed to prosper. Women are stewards of natural resources, innovators in climate solutions, and leaders in community resilience in all parts of the world, including the Himalaya. Yet, their contributions too often go unrecognised, and they continue to face barriers to full and equal participation in environmental decision-making. On International Mother Earth Day 2025, UN WOMEN called for urgent action to protect our planet while advancing gender equality. A sustainable future is only possible when women and girls are empowered to lead climate and environmental action – when their knowledge, leadership, and rights are at the heart of efforts to restore and safeguard Mother Earth.
Earth Day 2025 in India, like globally, is celebrated annually on 22 April and focuses on raising awareness about environmental issues and promoting sustainable practices on the theme, “Our Power, Our Planet“, emphasising the need for a shift to renewable energy and triple clean electricity generation by 2030. Every individual or group can participate in Earth Day 2025 celebrations by doing one or more activities: Educate, Advocate, Raise awareness in your communities; Clean up your neighbourhood, Create or find an Earth Action event; Tree planting; Recycle Campaign; Inspire your Youth; Get out the word on social media; Donate to support Earth Day’s work; Sign a Nature Pledge. The celebration on Earth Day 2025 in India is being done by organising several activities conducted by schools, colleges and universities supported by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, which include participation of the Schools, colleges, and institutions in border areas of the country, human chain/rally with slogans and placards like “Save Energy – Save Earth’, “Renewable Energy”, “Har Ghar Saurya Urja”, etc. Plantation activity, competitions in poem writing and drawings, slogan writing to create awareness on renewable energy and Mother Earth, encouraging use of cloth bags, making working models of solar or wind-powered weather observing sensors for atmospheric pressure, temperatures, humidity, wind, etc., are other activities to be conducted on this day in many academic and Government organisations.
(Professor Govind Singh Rajwar, PhD, FLS London, FNIE, FSPR, MNASc is Professor Emeritus, Sparsh Himalaya University, Co-Chair Ethics, International Society for Ethnobiology, USA, Vice President, Himalayan Academy of Science and Technology, Fellow, Linnean Society of London, Fellow, National Institute of Ecology, Fellow, Society for Plant Research.)
