Generally life period between children and adulthood, there is no global consensus on age boundary, however UN has declared 15-24 age groups as youth and it varies from country to country. Well whatever the age boundaries be, these group of people are characterized by their courage, enthusiasm, innovativeness, inquisitiveness, confidence that guides their way of life. This group constitutes large part of world population. They have special concerns and responsibilities towards today’s environmental conditions. So are considered important stakeholders (in recent days…) in different aspects of
environment management decision making and policy formulation. Likewise they do have important role to play for cleaner and greener environment: one of the global issue, which wasn’t indeed in its peek never before in this magnitude, because decisions made affect their life today and in future. Also they provide intellectual contribution, bring unique perspectives and solutions to problems.
Today’s youth are brought up on era where the environmental issues have loomed large. They are also exposed to formal and informal environmental education than other group of people. So they have more responsibility and role to play on issues like cleaner and green environment. They have the role to bind the people within the family, between family, communities, societies….. and work as agent of clean green and sustainable environment.
Well for the clean and green environment youth have to play three fold roles of Grass root activism, participation in the conservation projects and involvement in policy making bodies (GOs, NGOs and INGOs).
The roles that youth can play to maintain the cleanness of the pastures of High Mountain, reduce pollution (all kinds) of Kathmandu valley, air pollution of Beijing, stopping deforestation of Amazon river forest and controlling wild fires in the forest that destroys thousands hectares of forest and its biodiversity within no time, throughout the world can be different, varying from grass root activism, awareness generation , peaceful protests, advocacy at decisions making and policy formulation level, etc.
For the environment to be clean the components of the environments like soil, water, and air should be free from the pollutants. Pollutants (degradable and non- degradable) are the result of consumption pattern, way of life and production system (agricultural and industrial).
To minimize this youth can initiate from self. For this he/she can follow certainecofriendly consumption patterns that:
- Mitigate waste production.
- Increase efficiency of energy consumption.
- Reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
For this he/she can
- Use of renewable energy sources instead of fossil fuel that reduce emission of green house gases and preserve natural resource base.
- Reuse and recycle of possible goods.
- Composting of degradable waste which serve to reduce bulk of solid waste and also provide organic fertilizer fro kitchen gardens, indoor gardening etc.
- Use of public transport instead private vehicles.
- Sustainable construction and designs.
- Local food growing free of excessive use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides as these pollute soil and water.
In case of production system youth can raise his/her voice against the polluting corporate production system through organizations. It is imperative to raise voice there must be collaboration between corresponding organizations (both youth and non youth), so that the voice can be heard and taken into consideration during decisions making and policy formulation. Both commercial agriculture and corporate production systems are so powerful that individual voices become like a drop of water in ocean.
Since most of the production systems are targeted to youth, so protests or boycott against the polluting companies can also be done which trigger them to rethink their entire corporate strategy.
For the green environment effort can be started from home. Indoor gardening, kitchen gardening…etc can be some ways that consume less space, money, time and are recreational too, providing benefits of products for home consumption, greenery and biodiversity.
Plantation in the public areas with foliage trees can also be done. Forestation/reforestation programs in degraded and barren lands. Control of deforestation by making people aware about its resulting consequences (like flood, landslide, erosion etc) of deforestation. Informing people about the legal consequences of deforestation. Also people should be made aware about forest fires that occur during dry seasons causing huge biodiversity loss changing green forest to grey.
Governments have laws that mandate percentage of greenery that should be maintained around house during construction. For that people should be informed and encouraged to do so. At the same time it is necessary to keep awake authorities for regular monitoring.
Similarly other roles can be:
- Dissemination of information obtained through suitable communication process as they are the most informed group in the society.
- Environment / conservation education program.
- Promotion of environmental friendly technologies.
- Help in the execution of laws, rules that support environment sustainability.
- Inform, inspire and empower other youths and mobilize them.
- Exchange of information and experiences.
- Practical environmental projects.
- Search why the anticipated results have not been achieved and work on lags and weaknesses.
- Traditional ecological knowledge and practice should be preserved and practiced.
- Work to translate environment value commitments into real kind in terms of lifestyle adjustment or political activism.
- Reforming and extending the environment education and including the media to play role in facilitating in learning about the environment.
So youth individually and as a part of organization should work jointly with other corresponding organizations so that the effectiveness of the efforts increase and anticipated result can be obtained. At last role should be directed to produce ecological citizens rather than green consumers.