Festival
Going Down Under
It was 40 years ago that Sunshine Coast Environment Council, a public body based in Australia, started World Environment Day Festival, a full-blown event that celebrates humankind’s relationship with the planet. All the activities have been shifted online this time, keeping the pandemic in mind. But that only means that you can sit anywhere in the world and log on to attend live performances, Q&A sessions and panel discussions that have biodiversity as the theme.
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Cause
Doing your bit
Even a little bit goes a long way. That’s the message that the people behind an organisation called Eco Schools Tanzania are sending, with an event where they are calling for people across the world to rise up for the environment. The idea is to document a small act that shows your concern for the Earth’s well-being. It could be something as simple as planting a sapling or putting unwanted garbage in its rightful place. Record the act on video, or take a photograph and send it to the organisers. They will then collate all the entries, to give it a cohesive structure that shows how we are all together in this fight to save the planet.
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Read
A swarm of locusts in Jaipur last month. Pic/PTI
The Next Great Migration
The whole country was quite literally abuzz with a swarm of locusts that reportedly migrated from southern Iran into our borders in search of food. It highlighted the sort of invisible, but deadly, ecological imbalance that is being wreaked upon the Earth. But is migration — be it of insects, animals or even human beings — a problematic phenomenon? Or does it have long-term benefits if we can control it in an organised manner? That is the question that science writer Sonia Shah asks in her new book, The Next Great Migration (Bloomsbury). Pick it up to find out what she has to say about this pertinent subject.
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Watch
Bong Joon-ho. pic/ap
Snowpierce
South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho is the toast of the cinematic world this year, and if you enjoyed Parasite, the good news is that a streaming platform has recently rebooted one of the Academy Award-winning director’s earlier films, Snowpierce, as a web show. The plot revolves around humankind developing a chemical in order to reverse climate change, but the process eventually backfires. The Earth is iced over, and almost the whole of the species has frozen to death, except for the inhabitants of a single train with interior heating. These people are divided into the sort of class structure that we saw in the film Titanic, and in Parasite as well.
Kids
Tiny steps
SmartPro Foundation is an Indian NGO that believes in starting young. They are putting together a competition for school children between classes 3 and 12 to sensitise them towards the dangers that the planet is facing. There are different categories including essay-writing, slogan-writing, poster-making and collage-making, and the kids will be judged according to their age groups. The theme is Healing the Environment. So, ask your little one to grab pen and paper, and show that it’s never too early to start caring.
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Quiz
Testing times
How much do you know about the issues that concern the environment? Find out by participating in a quiz being hosted by Intellectual’s Society for Entrepreneurship and Research Development (ISERD), a Mumbai-based organisation. The winners get a chance to work with the team, and here’s a warm-up question that we have for you ahead of the actual event. Approximately how long does it take for a Styrofoam cup to decompose? The answer is a staggering 400 years.
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