Embrace Mother Earth

Let's not forego the environmentally friendly practices that we adopted during the pandemic and continue to embrace them for the sake of a healthier and more livable planet

- Sujatha Rao

As the lockdowns across the globe in 2020 and 2021 negatively impacted the way human beings live and work, paradoxically, the air pollution decreased in cities, and global emissions went down by 7 percent (as per Global Carbon Budget 2020). But without systemic changes, and with the economic recovery, these emissions are bouncing back.

If there's anything positive that we learned from the tragedy of COVID-19, it is the reality of how little we actually need in our lives.

With the non-lockdown period opening only for a few hours in the morning, and with only essential things to sustain us, we discovered with renewed eyes, how small that essential list is. We realised with a start that for a great part of our lives our "wants" lists have been ruling over our much simpler "needs" list.

With the perils of overuse of 'steroids," 'antibiotics,' 'Zinc supplements,' overindulgence in 'junk food,' excessive sitting, overdrinking, in fact, over-anything, constantly hitting us from the news around us, we woke up to the reality of the adage 'less is more' like never before.

As we enter 2024 lets not forget what we learned in the pandemic hit times and continue to practice them to avoid another similar catastrophe.

What the pandemic taught us about minimalistic sustainability

• "You have consumed 1,44,000 litres of oxygen to recover. Now please plant ten trees after going home" was an appeal made to a 41-year-old woman who had just recovered from Covid in Nagpur by the doctor who treated her. A doctor in Ahmednagar of Maharashtra urged his patients to plant a sapling on his prescription paper through a rubber-stamped message.