Green Morning everyone !

Today is 05 June, internationally dedicated as a day to celebrate and conserve our Environment. World Environment Day is the day we celebrate our collective love of and reliance on nature. It helps to encourage action to protect our environment and fosters a deeper appreciation of our connection to the natural world. With the major environmental challenges we're facing now, we need environmental leadership more than ever. And I'm glad to have been involved with Tunza Eco-Generation in such a capacity.

As a 22nd Regional Ambassador, I strongly believe that we all can contribute our small but significant efforts to sustain our environment. Although planting trees is a very remarkable and praise-worthy attempt to nourish Mother Nature, but at the same time, we've to understand that we need to go beyond "merely planting trees" because the environment encompasses a lot of things other than just plants.

And since "Beat Air Pollution" is the theme of WED 2019, I'd like to request all of you to do "your" bit for "our" environment. I'm calling you all to join me in shutting down a significant source of air pollution - aviation. The environmental impact of aviation includes emissions of heat, noise, particulates and gases which contribute to climate change and global dimming. Airplanes emit particles and gases such as carbon dioxide, water vapor, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, lead, and black carbon which interact among themselves and with the atmosphere. It is true that cars, power stations and factories do more damage but aviation’s contribution to climate change is going to become relatively larger because air travel is growing at an astonishing rate as the new middle classes now find cheaper airlines offering discounted tickets for domestic travel. Forecast says that about 7.8 billion people will become air passengers by 2036, which means that there will be more passengers getting on planes every year than there are people alive in the world today.

Hence I request all of you to "fly only when it's the only and last option available" - kindly refrain from using flights for short distances, domestic travel, or when you've a cheaper & reasonable quality alternative like 1st class coach of train available. Flying saves time but not flying will save our environment; the latter is obviously the better.

Long live our environment ! #WED2019

Green Love,

Ananya Singh