On Friday 22nd October 2010 Rotaract Club of Lahore (for those who are unaware of what Rotary & Rotaract do please visit http://www.rotary.org/) organized a seminar by the Pakistan Sustainability Network.

The PSN team started off by explaining as to why they initiated PSN; it was to provide a platform to different independent organizations & projects that are working for protecting the environment for collaboration. As like in every other field a lot of efforts are taking place but there is a lack of collaboration. PSN along with its own independent projects works to bridge the gap between all such units. Another goal is to involve the civil society in this issue & instead of cribbing about the fact that our government is inapt to handle this be proactive & work at the grass root level for a change.

Though this event was labeled as a seminar but the boredom that is usually associated with seminars was nowhere to be seen, as the PSN team made it an interactive session from point A to Z. None of the attendees went to sleep. After the initial introductions the session started off with a word game. He threw words at the audience & we had to respond with the first thing that came to our minds. The first one was obviously Environment which was responded by peace, greenery, nature, landscape etc. next was Cycle which was attached to sports, bike & here it was mentioned that cycle is the most popular form of transportation in Lahore, a piece of information which was received with sound of astonishment as no one expected this.  This was followed by the words Politicians & Law. Words like corruption, low-intellect, feudals followed the word Politicians which was the quite natural & interesting at the same time.

From here we moved on to discussing the Environmental Laws. The highlights of this segment of the event were that most of the people generally don’t know that Pakistan has a very comprehensive environmental law & that we were one of the initial countries which made these laws & also participated in signing the International Laws on the subject. Unfortunately, we are lacking in the implantation part of it at a large scale. People who are proactive enough go around self-educating themselves & challenging the system in their own capacity. One of the example was the “Lahore Bacho” campaign which resisted the plan of the expansion of the canal road which would have resulted in the cutting down of the surrounding trees for making more space for cars. This movement saw the intermingling of people from all communities of the city joining in for a signal cause sending out the message to the government that they want a pure & better environment over more space for cars which will add to the already high pollution levels.

Here a small clip about the factors needed for sustainability was played which depicted that by continuing with our current way of life we are destroying our own natural system on which our survival depends. For improving this we need to burn less fossil fuel, use less synthetic materials, slow down deforestation & focus on re-plantation & most of all control our population growth.

Our environmental degradation has reached a level where it cannot be left to the environmental bodies to deal with, it is a time where everyone needs to turn into an environmentalist because it is a matter of our planet’s survival. International movements like the 350 degree (of which PSN was a part as well on 10/10/10) need our attention & contribution to that the government bodies are forced to take appropriate steps in reversing or at least slowing down the current rate of destruction.

By this time a lot of verbal discussing had taken place & it was game time. The audience was divided in two groups & each group assembled in a small circle. Each group was given a small stuff toy. The goal was that each member of the group has to touch the toy once & the team that does it in the shortest time span wins. You thinking what was the purpose of this game? Well all of us were engaging our grey matters in the same question all the while. Will let you know but before that allow me to boast that the team that I was a part of won. We took one second in which our group of nine people had touched the toy. All we did was touch the toy at the same time instead of tossing it around. Hopefully you guys have figured out the objective of the game by now & if not no worries your truly will explain.

The products we use pass through different stages before they attain their final shape. During this process they travel all around the globe & this consumes more & more resources & fuel which result in the production environmental wastage. The situation of tossing around the toy while on the other hand if every location produces it’s stuff locally there will be less to no environmental waste. The idea of the activity was to establish the fact that producing our goods locally is both efficient & environmental friendly. I mean what’s your first reaction to the fact that Pakistan imports wheat from the US? Mine was a swear word. An agricultural country capable of producing all the food it needs is importing food, how more absurd can all this get?

At this point the short animated documentary “Story of Stuff” was screened. And believe you me it sure did shake us up even those who were not too interested with all the previous discussion. Not only did strongly reinforce the idea that we need to localize our production system but also that the three Rs (reduce, reuse & recycle) better be turned into a way of life rather than the consume all attitude that we live with if we want this planet to survive as it is the only one that we have got & have to share.