Voice of climate-by Naseem Sheikh

  While living in China, one can clearly observe the fact that people here love nature very much. Every colour of nature, be it trees, flowers, rivers, or any form of biodiversity, is the way of thinking and behaviour of Chinese people. Both will focus on nature conservation. When it comes to water resources, after visiting various coastal areas and rivers of China, you must pay tribute to the Chinese government and the Chinese people for how they have preserved these beautiful natural colours. No encroachments will be seen, no garbage will be found, no contaminated water from any factory is discharged here and no human activity can be seen which is detrimental to these resources. One of the main reasons for this is the attitude of China’s top leadership, which convinces the people that we should not develop at the expense of nature but promote economic and social development that is in harmony with nature. China’s top leaders regularly review the biological environment of these wa...

Desertification is nothing new to the world, but global warming combined with human activities is accelerating this phenomenon. The old saying “rain follows the forest and desert follows man” is rather depressing, but it doesn’t have to be if we understand how deserts are created and how we can reverse the process. It is difficult to do much about another country, but we can learn from mistakes made in other places to make sure we don’t repeat them. Luckily, we live on a relatively big island. Our population is small and we have a sense of aloha aina, so let us focus on our own gardens. A garden planted with no thought given to dry spells will do well in rainy periods but deteriorates without irrigation in dry periods, even in East Hawaii. Fortunately, many garden plants in Hawaii are fairly hardy when it comes to short water supply, so we have a long list to call upon. It’s important to vegetate these areas so that our islands don’t look like Death Valley in years to come. ...