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:) Inspirational environmentalist... |
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by Prakriti Dhakal | 27-03-2017 01:40
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Hello all eco-warriors, hope you all are doing well :) Due to the busy schedule in university I wasn't able to post the article on due date, my huge apologies for that. Here I am writing about the inspirational environmentalist whom I met in an international conference, he is really an inspirational and energetic idol who also have helped me in various environmental projects too. Here is a short interview with him... Abdul Wahid Khan comes from a very small village of Yarkhoon, high up in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Chitral, Pakistan. He is currently a junior in Habib University Karachi doing BSC in Social Development and Policy program with a major in Ecological Justice and Social Movement. He was the president of Habib University Student Council and is a teacher assistant of SDP program at Habib. How your journey started towards environment?? ?My journey towards environmental care started with my consciousness of the Anthropocene era that we live in and from the guilt I l felt thinking of what we are doing to our earth in the form of massive devastation. I started the first Environmental club in Aga Khan Higher Secondary School in 2009 and planted few trees in a newly built school. I went on a one year exchange program through Youth Exchange and Study Program (YES) to the United States of America and lived with a naturalist host family. I learned so much from them about the nature of the nature and the importance of investing our time and energy for preservation of the nature and environment. My major involvement with the cause of environmental protection started when I took up a one man army of a local NGO called ?Chitral Heritage and Environmental Protection Society? (CHEPS) which was founded and run by Rehmat Ali Johar. CHEPS has been working for more than ten years with the cause of preserving the culture , heritage and environment of Chital in specific and Pakistan in general. Soon after taking a lead in this initiative, I made CHEPS Youth Wing (CYW) of energetic and dedicated youth in every city of Pakistan. We carried out different cleanliness and awareness campaigns in different cities. We started off 2017 with cleanliness campaigns with our members in Dubai followed by a cleanliness drive and cleaning of the shrine of the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in Karachi. The campaign we are running now is called ?Clean and Green Pakistan? and it is going to every city of Pakistan. Starting from Karachi, our second event took place in the fort of Lahore followed by a cleanliness walk in the capital Islamabad and then we are doing in Peshawar. This campaign will go all the way back to the absolute north of Chitral and Hunza. We got great media coverage from print media to Television coverage to spread our message of creating environmental consciousness. All the updates about our work can be seen on our page ?www.chepsgreen.com?. Most hardship you feel in journey?? Fighting for environment is very important yet equally challenging because at times we have to go against the capitalist idea of comfort and worldly development. Most people would not even consider environmental challenges as real problem and many of my friends would call me names like ?garbage cleaner? etc. It is hard to find people who will support you with your struggle with full heart, nevertheless, there are a few people who really understand the cause and they have helped me throughout. Most of all, it requires a lot of time and energy to raise voice against ecological injustice and environmental degradation, and it has been difficult for me to balance my university life and environmental. What do think most greatest step to mitigate environmental issues?? And your message to the readers?? There is no going back to what we have done to the environment globally, but the key aspect now to mitigate environmental challenges is to confess what we have done and to be extra careful about our future. The era we live in is called Anthropocene because we have objectified the environment and have been always placing nature and environment in the background, and it is about time that we change our priorities and make environmental consciousness a major part of our learning experience. I am trying to develop curriculum about environment consciousness that can be taught in schools as part of the daily citizenship subject. This would require real movements across the globe to let everyone know from small communities, government officials to huge industries, about what the future holds for the generation to come if we ignore the environmental degradation now. It is a need of the hour that people come together and work across borders and across disciplines to join hands for environmental protection. My message to everyone would be that we are a guest to the earth and we should act like guests no exploitation of the nature and no overconsumption, because we all will leave the world one day but the earth has to host uncountable generations to come. We should not take away the experience of nature from them for our own narcissistic desires. Nature is what makes the world beautiful let?s do not snatch the beauty rather everyone of us should put up our part to make it even more prettier and healthier to live.
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5 Comments
thanks for sharing
Posted 06-02-2018 23:23
good report
Posted 06-02-2018 23:21
Hello Prakriti, thanks fo sharing interesting interview:)
His story is really inspiring! I really sympathize with most of what he said including it is challeging to fight for the envrionment but it definately is worth doing so.
Thanks for your report again!
Posted 28-03-2017 13:36
Such an inspiration!
Posted 27-03-2017 16:08
Thanks for introducing and highlighting Abdul Wahid Khan, indeed a great and inspirational environmentalist.
Posted 27-03-2017 01:55